The Red Line, a miraculous bus ride…

I sit here my friend, scribbling this note with the most ancient of tools on the dead skin of some poor animal and I have to confess, I am either insane or you will think I am as you read this simple tale that I plan to bury and hide for at least maybe one hundred and fifty years. Maybe by then, someone will read my story, and maybe only then will someone believe what I am about to write…

It all started on March 17th, Saint Patrick’s day here in the city of Phoenix, Arizona in 2001. A lucky day for the Irish, but for me, even though I am proudly Irish, it was just another day at work. At a degrading job that I truly hated, working for a man who seemed to dislike any success that any of his underlings may have attained in any way. I never understood that, or him for that matter.

I guess that I was lucky in a way though, working in what is called a call center for a multi-national telephony company with offices all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. We took calls for large companies and small, for the major names in telecommunications and people you probably never heard of. We handle their billing and complaints, sometimes it seems like a thankless job and the gripes and confusion together with the anger and cursing can really get you down. Still, it wasn’t rocket science and it wasn’t hard labor intensive work. …And the hours were usually pretty good. Usually.

On this March 17th however, some people from the second shift hadn’t come in and my service manager, the man I mentioned earlier, asked me to stay on for an extra eight hours. That meant a sixteen hour day of getting yelled at, asked to fix things that couldn’t be fixed and being sworn at in the most foul language you ever heard! I was dead on my feet, my eyes barely stayed open as I walked about a block and a half to the bus stop, a half finished shelter with no roof and an unpaved, gravel and dirt floor…but this is Phoenix and the temperature was about 72 degrees with beautiful, glistening stars in the black, velvet-like sky. I remember looking up and thinking how great it felt to be heading home.

The bus was flying down the darkened boulevard so fast that I barely noticed as it sped towards me. I looked up, saw it and quickly waved my arms, hoping that the driver would see me but afraid that he would pass me by!

Screeching to a stop, the doors seemed to explode open with a loud, gaseous burst of noise! I guess I was just being overly sensitive to sound or something; maybe I was being over sensitive to everything because I remember the bright florescent lights in the bus hurting my eyes. The pungent diesel fumes leaking from the laboring engine in the back stinging my nose.

The passengers too, there was something strange, no, eerie, no…I don’t know what the right word or phrase would be but I have to tell you, it almost looked like everyone on the bus just crawled out of a nearby cemetery or something. I could swear it, I mean a couple of people looked like they still had dirt on their clothes and more than one passenger looked like their color was gone, the smell was rancid, I’m not exaggerating…the cemetery, they looked and smelled, well, I told myself that I was just too tired and they must have been homeless people, clumps of grass and dirt clinging to their hair and clothes, heading downtown to the missions and shelters or something.

Before I could get to a seat, the bus driver took off and we were flying down the street again! As the balding tires rolled across the sun baked, broken pavement on the street below, I slumped into a seat next to some girl and made a nervous quip about this looking like a bad episode of ‘Tales From The Crypt’ or something. She laughed and said that she was thinking the same exact thing…that was it as I dozed off here, woke up at the next stop or street and repeatedly dozed and woke again and again. I was so tired, so exhausted and more than a little flustered with my own life.

The bus pulled into the airport, we lost a couple of ghouls, picked up a couple more and twisted and turned through the terminals around the parking areas and back onto the regular streets that snake through the city. I guess this was when I first saw it, the medal, medallion, the tear-shaped, web-like talisman that she was wearing. The girl next to me, I barely noticed her until I spotted the medallion out of the corner of my eye. The talisman, somehow I knew it was ancient American, somehow I knew it was ancient American Indian and don’t ask me how, but somehow I knew it belonged to the Anastazi.

It was a little like a dream catcher souvenir that they sell all over the Southwestern United States…but even then I knew, even as I was drawn to it, studied it, memorized it…even as it burned itself forever in my mind, I knew it was more, much more that what you see in the stores! It was made of pure silver with a flawless piece of turquoise at its heart. “It’s alright my friend”; a voice whispered deep within my soul: “It’s alright…” I felt calm, I felt some feeling that was warm and embracing as I stared at the medallion that somehow reminded me of a dream catcher and felt drawn in to the web like structure carved into it. Two dimensional became three dimensional as I studied it more and found my mind trying to climb into the structure, my soul trying to find its way deep, deeper, far into the medallion I felt myself starting a journey. “It’s alright”; the whispers were so sweet and soft and assuring.

My eye lids closed, but I still stared at the medallion and still climbing, seeking, journeying, if that makes any sense at all. Darkness washed away the anger and tension, softness cushioned the strain, comfort soothed my bones and muscles. Still the medallion was what I saw…in the darkness, softness and comfort…I could almost touch the silver medallion and read the strange text and symbols. Yet I was traveling in a spiritual sense finding my way through this web to the turquoise center, to the heart, her heart. I knew it was her voice that I was hearing. I knew it was her breath that warmed my ear and soul, it was her voice repeated again: “It’s alright.”

The girl, I saw the girl in the turquoise that became a clear and beautiful sky…she was in a strange and foreign place on the side of a mountain dressed in leather, her long dark, glossy black hair blowing along with a gentle breeze, the sound of a small stream gurgling in the background, stretching out her arms as she whispers: “It’s alright, come to me, come to me here.” Wanting to go, aching to leave this life behind, my bills, my job, my problems and responsibilities so badly that I actually ache!.

“It’s alright”; she whispers with her open arms and I want to accept her invitation. But this is the stuff of dreams and fantasies…I know it, you know it and any sane person would know it, right? So, what can it hurt? I nod my head, maybe in real time, maybe in a dream, maybe just in a beaten man’s imagination, I nod my head and whisper back: ‘Yes.”

Realizing this, I open my eyes and see the bright lights in the bus…I feel the pain of florescent lights in my eyes, I hear the noise pound in my brain and I almost gag on the smells of stale diesel and aged, mature body odor that surround me! Taking my hand in hers, the girl sitting next to me looks into my bloodshot and weary eyes and whispers: "Look back at the spirit catcher, look down at the medallion...accept it, accept what I have to offer you, accept me." I look at her and she squeezes my hand, I want to accept, I want to believe and losing myself in her deep, warm, dark, almost black doe-like eyes. How could any man, anywhere, how could any mortal refuse this Indian princess anything? "Follow the path,” she urges in a whisper that nearly melts my soul: "...follow the path of the feather."

Then, I feel a little dizzy…from the offences I just imagined, from my long day, from God knows what! I feel the bus spin around, my sight gets blurred, the bus, the ghouls…it all, they all blur. The noise gets louder and starts to fade, the bus spins and everything starts to fade. I try to look, to find the medallion, I see the silver flash before me, the web surrounds and consumes me, I look above and see the turquoise sky, to my right...I think, I believe, I sense a feather leading me out of the spinning web and I try to traverse the spine leading out through the feather. I confess, don’t really know what happened, a bright light a loud crash! It all happened so fast and then…the stream, the sound of birds and the soft, gentle breeze I could feel on my flesh!

An Indian maiden with golden skin and long, straight, silken hair, a beautiful virgin Anastazi princess clad in leather, the girl that only a fraction of the thinnest slice of a moment before sat next to me, she reaches out with a palpable gentleness, her hands catch mine as I spin, we spin, as we circle each-other. My sight sharpens, my hearing clears; my senses all come back to me. “It’s alright”; she whispers…”In your tongue, I would be called: ‘Light of the Sun.’” I stood stunned at my obvious hallucination, but managed to say: “I am John.”

Light of the Sun smiled tenderly tilting her head as she studied me. I would claim to be dazed, but shocked as I was, like I said earlier my senses felt sharp. I looked around and the lush green surroundings and asked where we were. She smiled broadly and answered: “You would still call this Phoenix.” “Phoenix”; I questioned. “Phoenix, or at least what will be Phoenix”; she responded: “…and believe it or not, I have just saved you John.” “Saved me from what”; I asked nervously: “You would have died soon in that world”; she answered: “…the God, He allowed me to save you from your life.” “So you’re an angel”; I said almost mockingly. Light of the Sun, keeping her smile looked at the heavenly, turquoise sky for a moment and told me: “Yes, I guess that I am, I was appointed to watch over my people.” “The Anastazi”; I quickly retorted, knowing their fate as the mysterious souls that once lived in the Phoenix area but who had disappeared without a trace hundreds of years ago. Again, this ‘angel’ looked to the heavens before responding: “The Anastazi, the Hopi, the Apache, the Mexicans, the Americans…even you John, you are all my people, we are all one family.”

“And you say this is Phoenix, but Phoenix is a desert…even in the past”; I test her skeptically. “Oh John”; the angel laughs: “Not always, nothing is always the same, not even the desert.” “Why me”; I ask. “John, you are a good and honest man, a decent person”; she tells me and then to add to the shock she confesses: “And, even an angel falls in love.”

Speechless, I find myself taken up a footpath, down a trail and we walk into a small Indian village of several families, at most two hundred people live here and they all know Light of the Sun. They all look at me, but talk with here, greetings and love pave our way until we reach a small shelter that she says is our home, a home she has prepared before time and before my soul was made. Seems God shared some secrets with my soul mate from the bus, one of them being me and how she would find me, save me…and yes, spend eternity with me.

Indeed we were wedded by the tribal chief in an ancient, forgotten ceremony that honored the one God and His Son in a more Christian way then you will ever know. I am happy, I have regained what a blessing it is to LIVE…I have met a most fortunate fate! Indeed there are many secrets, but my reason to write this note to you my friend…to the future is to reveal a secret, the secret of the Anastazi, Inca and indeed many of the ‘lost’ peoples of the Americas…they are not the pagans that evil people and the devil would have you think! And…they are not ‘lost’ people in any way. As I was ‘saved’ by the Light of the Sun, so have they been in many different generations and times!

Today in the here and now, Light of the Sun and I have been blessed with our child; a boy who like his mother is also more of an angel than a man. She and he watch over the Americans, past and present, here and there, in places gone and yet to be for their spirits do not have the constraints and they travel through time and place and dimension, with me always…yet with you and them and everyone.

If you ever find yourself out of place, not feeling like the time that you are in, remember this, my story. Remember my wife and our angel son. Remember that it all started on March 17th, Saint Patrick’s Day here in the city of Phoenix, Arizona in 2001. A lucky day for the Irish, but for me, the luckiest day ever! If you think me mad, so be it…for finally I am insanely happy as my wife and son…take lost souls from the time they are in to the place they were meant to be. Miracles happen from time to time…perhaps you are in the wrong time; perhaps you too have a journey yet to make.

Created: March 27, 2001r.
Last Updated: March 27, 2001r.