What Happens When You Read The Celestine Prophecy
While Listening to Johnny Cash

by
Jonathan Scovner

It was a quiet, perfect afternoon and we sat, reading in the warm lamplight. I was sitting in an old armchair, turning pages carefully, sipping a cup of reheated coffee from earlier in the day. My lover lay stretched out on the couch, a blanket over her, engrossed in her own fiction. The only sounds were that of my sipping, the turning of our pages and the wind blowing the dead and bare branches outside the windowpane.

   It was almost the end of winter. Any day now. Any week now. No sunlight had broken through the gray clouds all that morning and tomorrow didn’t look promising either.

   My lover then looked at me from over the top of her book. She raised a concerned eyebrow and asked, “So, you’re not going to become some New Age weirdo, are you?”

   “A New Age weirdo?” I exclaimed. “Me?!”

   I put down the copy of James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy that I had gotten from the library the week before, threw back my head and laughed and laughed and laughed some more. My face went the color of volcanic sunset. The sound and the force of my guffaw was enough to scatter the cats into other rooms, the hairs on their backs raised in readiness.

   “Me, a New Age weirdo!” I continued, rocking back and forth in the armchair, slapping my knees, slapping my forehead, slapping the coffee table. “Oh, that’s a good one!”

   My lover waited a moment, just to make sure I was done. “Geez, I was just asking,” she said, and returned to her book.

   And then silence settled back in. The cats returned. Pages were turned. A branch creaked in the wind.

   An hour later, my lover had left for work, and I was all alone. Carefully, I set the book down upon the coffee table. I put my shoes on. I put my jacket on. I opened the front door and stepped outside, and then…

   Energy!

   Surrounding me!

   Surrounding every living thing!

   The trees!

   The birds!

   Even the water-laden clouds above me, they all radiated pure energy in all of its neon hues!

   I could barely contain the emotion that swelled inside of me, the tears of joy that made waterfalls down my cheeks.

   But what was this? Did my body suddenly feel lighter? Could it be that I might be able to, that I might be allowed to, that it might be possible for me to… to…

   To fly!

   Zip! Zoom! Zang! Zing! Zimmerman! Watch me go! Wheee! Look at tiny Phoenixville! Tiny Collegeville! Look out, you majestic eagle! Watch yourself, low flying aircraft! Above the clouds I go, where no one can find me, until I am above the clouds, where the sun is shining brilliantly, where it is always warm and summer, where I’ve never felt so alive, so full of love for every single thing!

   The faces of all those I’d ever wronged floated around me, seeking restitution, and restitution I made.

   Oh, Barnes & Noble, I love you!

   Dan Brown, I love you!

   Nora Roberts, I love you!

   Nicholas Sparks, I love you!

   Amanda Scott - best-selling author of the Secret Clan novels - I love even you!

   “I pronounce love on everyone of you! I declare hallelujah over my body! May hallelujah rain down like manna from heaven on all of you beautiful writers, and all you glorious, beautiful readers who buy overpriced books indiscriminately! I was wrong to be judgmental, I see that now! I have been saved from myself!”

   At that moment, my feet alighted upon the spongy surface of the clouds. It felt like a trampoline, and I knew I could do flips and leaps miles high and miles wide.

   And that was when I saw it.

   At first it was only a glimmer of light on the horizon. A trick of the sun, I thought. But no, it was a creature, and it was coming towards me fast.

   I held my breath, not believing my eyes. But as it galloped closer, I knew that I had not been mistaken. It was, indeed, a unicorn. It was pure white, and its legs were well muscled and toned. The solitary horn sprouting from its head was firm and phallic.

   “Jonathan, congratulations are due to you upon finishing The Celestine Prophecy.” The unicorn did not speak in the proper sense; it did not open its mouth. But I could hear its deep, God-like voice in my head nonetheless.

   I bowed deeply.

   “There are many who think it is merely a work of fiction.”

   “They’re all fools!” I seethed.

   The unicorn nodded its head. “But to a believer such as yourself, who has read and understood all nine insights, there is only one gift: that of Enlightenment Absolute! You will now no longer require sex, drugs or alcohol to feel happy.”

   Suddenly, my eyes became glowing, yellow orbs, and I fell backward into the cloud, falling through it like a feather. “Goodbye, Mister Unicorn!” I called out. “I’ll never forget you!”

   As I floated back to earth, I could see the entire history of mankind, I could feel the movement of distant planets, I knew that we were all connected in a thousand, million ways. I knew that winter was an illusion, that so long as it was springtime in the bosom of my soul, then it would be springtime all around.

   “Hey, this is just like what happens to the main character in The Celestine  Prophecy!” I said aloud.

   I opened my eyes and was back in my chair. The Celestine Prophecy lay where I had set it. The cats regarded me warily.

   “Meow, meow, meow,” I said, which is Cat for, “Now I can read your thoughts!”

   The cats hissed and ran into other rooms.

   I threw back my head and laughed. My body floated up from the chair. No longer a prisoner of gravity was I!

   But what to do with my newfound powers? What can an infinite being do in a finite world such as this?

   Aha! Some music to exalt my ears!

   Eagerly, I hovered over to the music-making device and pressed the play button. Then I hovered back to the chair, closed my eyes, awaiting the holy music to wash over my senses. To hear music … to taste music, see music, touch music, to be smothered in music. What will it be like to experience music in my current state?

   That was when Johnny Cash began fingering his guitar.

   I hadn’t recalled putting in Johnny Cash. After all, in this exalted state in which I found myself, I lusted after something more ethereal. Wasn’t there any Enya in this house? Any Yanni? Maybe a little John Tesh could really begin opening up some   intra-dimensional portholes here where I could do some communin’ with some spirits while his keyboard lulls my darn soul into perfect stasis, you know what I’m saying? Not some Johnny Cash!

   But that was when Johnny Cash started singing.

   His voice carried such deep presence; it rooted me to the spot. I was breathing heavy. I could not hover any longer. And the music, it was surrounding me. The music had weight. As though there were a thousand tiny anchors sewn in my clothing. Gravity had me dead-for-rights.

   I tried calling to the cats for help. “Meow, meow…” and stopped just as quickly. My voice! What had happened to my voice? “Well, what’s a-going on here, then?” I said aloud. Someone had taken sandpaper to my voice. Someone had yanked it down a few octaves.

   The cats peeked their heads around at me.

   “Get!” I commanded. “Get on, turn that music off!” I motioned toward the music player. “Stop it before I…”

   Then I noticed my hand. Which quickly made me notice my other hand. Which quickly made me touch the skin around my neck and my cheeks and across my forehead. This was not my skin. A man knows his skin, goddammit. I was becoming enshrouded in calloused leather.

   Also, my clothes had gone and turned all black on me.

   “Mister Unicorn!” shouted the voice that came from my mouth.

   But there would be no response, I knew. The energy was gone. There was no more neon hue emanating from every animate and inanimate thing. Not even the trees. Not even the birds.

   The album continued to the next song. Johnny Cash began telling me the story of a vicious horse gang called, “Mean as Hell.” I began to become aware of a new dynamic pervading life. It was there in his voice, under his tongue, between each word, this need for redemption that we sinners have, a redemption that was only payable in blood. I became aware of a thousand fault lines running across the earth. Just beneath my feet. There was a redness emitting from those thousand fault lines. And heat. And a terrific roar of a great ring of fire.

   Everything in the world was corroding. Flesh and blood, wood and stone, the metals we encased ourselves with, it was all subject to entropy. Entropy was the price of sin. That was a truth, as real as the fault lines spider webbing beneath me.

   The cats were on top of the tilting bookshelf, holding onto each other, hissing at the flames as they rose high, trying to bat at them with their singed paws.

   I hung my head.

   I covered my ears.

   I sang along and I didn’t even know the words.

   An hour later, when my lover returned from work, she found me that way, with my head between my knees.

   “Man, it is a nasty, miserable day out there!” she announced, coming in. “Are you all right?”

   I lifted my head and looked at her through eyes that were not my eyes. “Come over here,” I said to her in a voice that was not my voice. When she was close enough, I reached out and touched her smooth, perfect skin, though it was not my skin that felt her.

   “Why are Oedipus and Zoë on top of the bookshelf?” she began, but then stopped just as quickly as I kissed her deeply, put an arm around her.

   She dropped her bag and came down with me. There wasn’t any language made between us. We made love that way, half-on and half-off the chair. Like the sinners we were. Yes, we made love like the sinners we were.