A Tale of Devotion:

It was obvious that Rhiannon cared more for Phoenix than for Ketchup. The first hint was that when Phoenix asked if Rhiannon loved Ketchup she did not hesitate to negate. Yet when asked if she could ever love Phoenix her response was more vague. Love was not a word that she felt comfortable employing in that instance. So it was to Phoenix’s intuition and Gnosis that had she felt comfortable using it then she would have said: I love you, and it would have carried all the weight that she was afraid to take on at that moment.

There were really two moments from that telephone conversation that stuck in Phoenix’s mind. The first was when in he identified her controlled pause on the phone as an opportunity for manipulation. She admitted to that tendency with in her self – that that was the motive for her pauses – so immediately that it not only corroborated Phoenix’s Gnosis but touched him. He would know that he could trust her through out the course of that conversation, for if she had lied through out its course then she would have all so lied about lying. Telling the ‘truth’ by de-fault.

The second instance that he could re-call there fore was when she admitted to caring for him deeply, ‘very much so’. A paranoiac would have suspected one reason that these two events stuck out in his memory in conjunction: The latter was a manifestation of which the former was the confession; she was manipulating him at the moment that she said that. Yet what motive could she have? She knew that he loved her but she unabashedly and with out defense asked him for advice: what to do about the Ketchup situation? This was not a practical or conniving person. She trusted Phoenix de-spite his due cause to be biased. Would [what] could he tell her about him? What WOULD he tell her that she could use?

In the same way that Phoenix could contrast his situation to that of Ketchup on the issue of ‘love’ he could contrast the two on the issue of Care. Really what vanquished his paranoia was the sense of bolstered immediacy with which Rhiannon made clear her sincerity. Per haps she had admitted to caring for Ketchup, and in a fit of jealousy and envy he asked if she cared for him as well. May be in fact he had asked her to tell him how she felt about him. At any rate, the exuberant, all most practical sincerity of her response, one that was only ‘practical’ because it seemed in no way falsely adorned but all most essential in and of its self to her at that moment, filled his heart with a joy more unique than the words he could use to describe it, because it felt unprompted and spontaneous. He KNEW that there was Cosmic Justice in the Universe they shared. She cared for him more than she could ever care for Ketchup, and if one could speak causally it was because, as they had both intuited by their respective Gnoses, he cared for her more than Ketchup ever could. And Phoenix had predicted this.

Phoenix wanted to know if he was permitted, either de facto or de jure, to sleep on the lucrative couches on the first floor of the University Library. Yet by the time that it occurred to him to ask the prospect seemed out of season.

He had texted Rhiannon a barrage of desperately well-meaning quotes and anecdotes pertaining to depression. At one point he referenced Hinduism by saying “Break the back of the ego.” It was immediately there after that he looked up to see the sense of division betwixt his self and the young couple sitting near by in the Library, dissolved. He became aware of how the space between his self and the girl’s young, lucrative body was unitive. He craved only to insert his member into her mouth. Yet then his ego kicked in. Hinduism never justified rape. That would be if any thing too extreme. But so would interrupting a perfectly decent conversation, what ever Phenomenal Antipathy he might have had towards the young man, who had become a de facto scape-goat for his lingering jealousy towards Ketchup.

What Hinduism DID of course justify was interrupting a bad conversation. Or entering into a good one. It would have been extreme to wave his hips before this young thing, saying “Hey girl. Ditch the dweeb.” It would NOT have been so extreme to simply approach her and say “Hey girl.”

He realized this as the young man made his exit with a noteworthy absence of pomp or intimacy. They were not dating. Phoenix realized it. He had been flirting with her.

Phoenix contemplated for the next hour approaching her. Yet he could not re-live his spiritual ecstasy. He could easily have approached, asking “is it okay if I lie down on this couch? Do they care?” Yet the excuse to talk to her would all ready have been too contrived. By the time that it had taken him to realize this she might all ready have noticed his eyes upon her one too many times. He noted her ear-phones, and he could not help feeling discouraged by the thought of interrupting her work and music. By simply formalizing this progression of “events” in his head Phoenix had successfully severed ties with the naked opportunity.

Yet why would he have taken it? He would not have allowed it to lead to any thing. He loved Rhiannon, even if she could not promise love in words or actions. This girl would merely have been an out let for the Will to Power: The energy that he would have invested in her he would have gotten back from her in interest. It would have kept him awake through the night. And the company of her could only have informed him, for Rhiannon’s sake, about the style of life that his would-be lover was immersed in. And of any thing he would have simply gotten practice talking to a girl who went to this University. It was not Biology that was responsible for this temptation. It was the memory of Rhiannon, and every thing that this girl did that was reminiscent of Rhiannon. Even the entire academic frame of reference that would have coloured and justified the approach, had he buckled to temptation or gathered the nerve, would have only been a product of the environment. And this environment, whose exquisite character had made possible his meeting with Rhiannon, now only served to remind him of her.

Dm.A.A.