Up until the afternoon in the Marin hotel room following Dr. Elfland's first surgical swipe at my accursed birthmark, I'd always experienced my trips into the Televisionarium as radical breaks. The adventures I enjoyed there, while relaxing and invigorating, were utterly alien. I could find no way to translate them or make use of them back in the world I shared with my mothers. Indeed, it was as if I were two separate beings living two unrelated lives. To penetrate the veil between them felt violent, like a puncture. When I returned to earth from my cloud castles or peppermint tea streams, I often felt what I imagined it must be like to receive an electrical shock.

But my visit with Madame Blavatsky in the underground junkyard and Magda's slummy shack was nothing like that. I couldn't even say for sure it was the Televisionarium. I arrived in the strange land gently -- not with a puncture, but in a rippling glide. The surroundings, the action, even the conversation were more like a hybrid of the Televisionarium and the material world, and I felt in full possession of both my sharp analytical faculties and my robust imaginative skills. In some ways the experience was like a lucid dream, as the Televisionarium had always been, but in other ways it was like lucid waking, or whatever you might call it when the daytime is infused with dream awareness.

Madame Blavatsky referred to this place as the Drivetime -- a dimension that was neither the Dreamtime nor the Waketime but both at the same time. It was my first awakening to the possibility that a shamanic quest need not be a brief and grandiose stab, but might work more like a time-release capsule that distributes the medicine slowly over a long period of time.

My Drivetime guide also hinted that my entry there had been facilitated by a mysterious and primal "machine" which she called the Televisionary Oracle. From her cryptic comments, I surmised it fit the definition formulated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Indeed, if Madame Blavatsky's assertions had any credibility, I myself created the Televisionary Oracle sixty-six million years ago, while in full possession of an archangelic potency which I have barely been able to tap into in my current incarnation as Rapunzel Blavatsky.

My departure from the Drivetime was a gradual ebb, like the tide going out. Long after the physical scenes had faded and my conversation with Madame Blavatsky had given way, I mulled over the events in a delicious hypnopompic state, engraving the details on my memory and letting them unveil further shades of meaning.

By 5 o'clock I had fully returned to normal waking consciousness. Or had I? In the back of my mind and in the bottom of my heart, I could still vividly feel the imprint of my sojourn in the Drivetime. Back then I would not have used the term "proprioceptive synesthesia," but it occurs to me now as I try to describe the sensation. It was as if inside my body there was a flowing current that was the texture of crumpled linen and the smell of sweet almond oil and the colors terra cotta and gold and the taste of warm lemony tea and the sound of a mysterious, lilting blend of Irish and Chinese music in a minor key. This internal stream was a palpable link -- not just a memory but a living taproot -- to the Drivetime.

I wanted to test its staying power. It was one thing to be lying alone in a quiet room, but could I remain in touch with my new secret while rubbing auras with folks on the street? I decided to take a walk down to Mandrake's bookstore to see if the weighty tome I'd ordered, Jung's Psychology and Alchemy, had come in yet.

All the clothes I'd brought from home for Operation Erasure were purposely unflashy. Now, from among the mass of drab colors and baggy shapes in the closet, I grabbed black jeans and a dark khaki green sweater. After gingerly covering my fresh wound with a large piece of gauze, I pulled on a black beret.

Half an hour later I stopped at a cafe. After a slow-motion communion with soup, scones, and tea, I trekked on to Mandrake's. Alas, Psychology and Alchemy had not arrived. But the clerk told me he'd just acquired a used copy of another one of Jung's alchemical treatises, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. Would I like to look at it? He led me to where he'd shelved it, and I sat down on a stool as I opened it up.

Turning to random pages to divine whether the book and I had any future together, I quickly found a couple of juicy parts. First there was Jung quoting Karl Kerinyi: "'Basic to the antique mysteries ... is the identity of marriage and death on the one hand, and of birth and the eternal resurgence of life from death on the other.'"

The second discovery, on another page: "In ecclesiastical allegory and in the lives of the saints a sweet smell is one of the manifestations of the Holy Ghost, as also in Gnosticism."

I'd never heard that one before, that the Holy Ghost smelled good, but I liked it. What exact odor, I wondered. I fantasized it might be like the sweet almond oil that I could still sense coursing through me, my link to the Drivetime.

In the spiritual beliefs of the Pomegranate Grail, there is a third party in a Trinity which also includes Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalen. "Holy Ghost" is not the name this character goes by, though, but rather "Mercuria" -- feminine form of the phallocratic archetype "Mercurius." Like the Holy Ghost, indeed, like Mercurius in the alchemical tradition, Mercuria is regarded as a go-between or messenger, and sometimes as the spirit of the union between any two opposites, especially Jesus and Mary themselves.

Ha! On page 462, two paragraphs after the Kerinyi quote, I found Jung saying, "Mercurius ... is not just the medium of conjunction but also that which is to be united, since he is the essence or 'seminal matter' of both man and woman. Mercurius masculinus and Mercurius foemineus are united in and through Mercurius menstrualis."

"Now what the Hades does he mean by Mercurius menstrualis," I puzzled. As I was contemplating this delightful enigma, I became aware of a new fragrance. Had my sweet almond oil mutated? No, this smell was definitely on the outside of my body, arriving from an unknown source. I tried to describe it to myself. Like parchment on an ocean beach, maybe. Ancient but fresh. But also like the aromatic lacquered woodiness of a guitar, with a hint of moist carrots just pulled out of the rainy ground.

"Hey, Artaud," I heard a voice whispering. "Artaud. How are you?"

Looking around, I saw that someone had silently crept up behind me in the narrow aisle. It was this person who owned the delectable fragrance.

I say "person" because I could not immediately discern what gender the creature was. He or she was about five feet nine or five feet ten, and wore all white -- work boots, baggy pants, an oversized man's shirt not tucked in, and a long cloth coat of the kind I'd seen worn by Sikhs. Breasts were not discernible, but they could have been cloaked by the abundant folds of white fabric. His or her face was a perfect hybrid of elegant male and witchy female. It was both noble and tricky. The thick, jaw-length flaxen hair and turquoise eyes reminded me of the style of the medieval Page of Wands, a figure depicted on a court card in the Pomegranate Grail's official Tarot deck. The person's age? I guessed mid-twenties, but I was not confident in that assessment. There was an ageless quality in his or her face.

"You talking to me?" I blurted out.

"Mais oui, Artaud. But I am not just talking to you. I am beaming at you. Gleaming my joy at having found you again after all this time."

His/her voice was, like the rest of him/her, exactly halfway between male and female. At this point I decided I couldn't tolerate the cognitive dissonance. Until further notice, I would think of this person as a him. I gazed at his throat, trying to decide if the swell in the middle was big enough to be an Adam's apple. Hard to tell.

"You must be mistaking me for someone else," I said, though I was in no hurry to drive him away. I hadn't had many social interactions in recent days and was a bit starved. I considered the possibility that he was just a dude on the make, but thought it might be fun to expose him. I rose to stand. We were the same height.

He took my left hand with his own and gave me what felt like a secret handshake. "Remember this?" he asked slyly, his left eyebrow rising comically. "Blasphhme sacri?" His middle finger stroked the base of my palm while his thumb thumped the top of my thumb.

French for "sacred blasphemy"?

"I'm your bonne amie (or did he say bon ami?) from last incarnation," he continued. "Not two lifetimes ago in Germany, but the one right before this one, in France."

"That's impossible," I said. "Last time I was on Earth before this was in Palestine, almost two millennia ago."

He held his head in his hands and uttered a "waaaaa," as if imitating a baby's cry.

"Wait here," he commanded. "Do not move. I will go retrieve some evidence."

I turned my attention back to Mysterium Coniunctionis, leafing to the index to glean where else Jung might have discussed Mercurius. Of the many entries under that heading, "dressed as woman," on page 442, caught my eye first. There Jung wrote that the hermaphroditic Mercurius was often dressed like a woman in the alchemical illustrations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nearby that passage was another seed: "In alchemy Mercurius is the 'ligament' of the soul, uniting spirit and body."

In a couple of minutes the odd stranger had returned. He was holding a book called The Theater and Its Double, by Antonin Artaud.

"I imagine this will still sound familiar," he said. "It has been a long time, but you did write it yourself, after all."

"Are you suggesting I was this guy Artaud in my past life?" I asked, rising off the stool to face him more directly.

"I am not suggesting," he replied. "I am stating as a fact."

"But I have no idea who he was."

"We can do a hypnotic regression later. I'm sure it will all spill out."

"Can you give me a few hints?"

"You were a mad poet who liked to say that all writing was pigshit. Merde du pourceau. You were a tormented actor and a visionary playwright who lusted to kill and resurrect the theater."

There was that word "kill" again, being applied to me. But other than that commonality, the description of Artaud was so far from my self-image that I had to laugh.

"You were the genius that thought up the Theater of Cruelty, Artaud," he continued. "Probably had something to do with you having meningitis as a kid."

"Ouch!"

"A sick little joke there. Sorry. You did not mean cruelty in the usual sense of the word. Not the way I just used it. You did not mean any word in its usual sense. That is one of the things I loved about you so much. You would say 'pourquoi' and really mean 'pourquoi pas?' Or you would say 'animal yawns' and actually mean 'the sound of sap rising in the tree.' Here is how you defined cruelty."

He read conspiratorially from The Theater and Its Double. I could still smell his aroma as vividly as when it first bloomed, which was curious. Normally a scent hits in all its fullness, then wanes as you get used to it.

"'My cruelty is not synonymous with bloodshed, martyred flesh, crucified enemies. Rather, it is an appetite for life, a cosmic rigor and implacable necessity, in the gnostic sense of a living whirlwind that devours the darkness.'"

"Oh yeah, I remember writing that," I lied.

"You did not want the theater to be simply a silly diversion," he said brightly. "You hated how it had become a showcase for pitiful little catharses about personal ambition and sentimental love and social status. You wanted it to be a real religious ritual. You plotted and schemed to strip people of their defenses and terrify them with so much beauty that they could not help but get high."

"Yes, I was pretty cruel."

"Once a wacko high priest, always a wacko high priest?" he winked.

"I resemble that remark," I said, quoting one of my mom Burgundy's favorite lines.

"I was simply hoping to jar loose a memory or two from some of your other past lives," he said.

"Such as?"

"Such as Eumolpus, for one."

"Oh yeah, Eumolpus. I seem to remember being Eumolpus. That was when I was Plato's barber, right? Slight hunchback. Big broken nose. Bad teeth."

"No, ma'am. Guess again. Much further back than that. You have identified the right part of the world, at least. When you were Eumolpus, you were -- how shall I say? -- a self-made hierophant. You even started your own mystery school. Once every year you threw a sacred party, and once every five years a really big sacred party. Which was actually an occult ceremony. Which was also a riveting theater piece starring the Goddess Persephone and her mother Demeter. Remember? You called them the Eleusinian mysteries. They lasted long after your death, more than a thousand years."

Now that was a weirdly apt guess, I thought. Wrong, of course, but having a strong resonance with the truth. What would be the odds of a complete stranger guessing there was a connection between me and Persephone? If riffing about reincarnation was his game for picking up chicks, he was good at it.

"Oh, here is one of my favorite parts in The Theater and Its Double," he was reading again, "where you compared the Theater of Cruelty to alchemy. You remember you were also the sixteenth-century German alchemist Paracelsus, right? Listen to this.

"'Alchemy permits us to attain to the sublime, but with drama, after a meticulous and unremitting pulverization of every insufficiently fine, insufficiently matured form ...

"'The theatrical operation of making gold, by the immensity of the conflicts it provokes, by the prodigious number of forces it throws one against the other and rouses, ultimately evokes in the spirit an absolute and abstract purity ...

"'I believe that the Mysteries of Eleusis must have consisted of projections and precipitations of conflicts, indescribable battles of principles joined from that dizzying and slippery perspective in which every truth is lost in the realization of the inextricable and unique fusion of the abstract and the concrete.... They [the Mysteries of Eleusis] brought to a climax that nostalgia for pure beauty of which Plato must have found the complete, sonorous, streaming naked realization: to resolve by conjunctions unimaginably strange to our waking minds, to resolve or even annihilate every conflict produced by the antagonism of matter and mind, idea and form, concrete and abstract, and to dissolve all appearances into one unique expression which must have been the equivalent of spiritualized gold.'"

"Wow. I was pretty pompous, wasn't I?" I said with mock admiration. "Especially for someone who accused other writers of spewing pig shit."

"Yes. Exactly correct. But no longer, I think. This time around you have arranged for a personality that allows you to take yourself less seriously. Am I right? Same intensity, but more humor."

I found myself imitating the response I had made to Madame Blavatsky while in the Drivetime a few hours back. Scrunching my face in the ugliest expression I could manage, I danced like a chicken as I whisper-sung "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

"No doubt we should get a theater group together," he said when I was done.

"Starting with a surrealist production of 'The Wizard of Oz'?"

"No. I do not mean the kind of theater group that puts on cute little plays. I am talking about radical rituals." He flipped through the pages of The Theater and Its Double, then read: "... by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out, on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior."

"Don't you think we should get to know each other better before we dive into such a serious commitment?" I said.

"But we have known each other for decades!" he protested. "Thirty-five centuries if you include our time together back in Germany and England and Eleusis. Do you not remember? Paris, June 11, 1923? The day we first met last incarnation? True, we both had different bodies at the time. But I recognized you the moment I saw you here in the bookstore. You cannot hide that -- how should I describe it? -- spasmodically rhapsodic soul of yours. Remember how you said, when you were Artaud, 'I am the man who has best charted his inmost self'? Well, it still shows all over your new face."

If this guy was making this stuff up, it was pretty entertaining.

"And how did you just happen to be here," I said, "in the same little bookstore in the same small city in Northern California at the exact same time I was?"

"Your wound," he replied. "As soon as you began showing up in my dreams with a bloody forehead, I knew that the real flesh-and-blood you was about to re-enter my life. In all our dream adventures up until recently, you see, you have always been a majestic and flawless goddess, not anything like a real human being. Our rendezvous have always been in archetypal landscapes -- windswept battlefields and thousand-foot waterfalls and crystalline palaces. Last night, I dreamed I found you in this shabby bookstore with uncombed hair and dark circles under your eyes."

The implications of what he was saying were boggling. I could barely focus on sorting them out. For the moment, I obsessed on how he could have known about my forehead. Instinctively, I put my hand up and found there was a tiny corner of gauze jutting out from beneath my beret. So maybe that explained it. I'd inadvertently given him a clue to use in his confabulations, if indeed he was confabulating.

I longed to ask him more about his dreams of me. Had he really, as he seemed to be implying, had an ongoing series of adventures with me over a long period of time -- comparable to my experience with Rumbler? But I wasn't ready to hear the portentous answer to that question just yet; if it were "yes," it would be too spooky.

"I would consider getting a theater group together with you," I said instead. "There's a slight problem, though. I have no experience as an actress whatsoever."

"Are you telling the truth? I find that hard to believe. I can plainly see a strong thespian streak in your physiognomy. But de toute fagon, the more important question is: Can you bleat like a charging rhino? You could do that back when you were Artaud. Can you whirr like a cloud of locusts? And ululate like a beautiful young woman dying from the plague?" "I can feel all those skills right on the edge of my memory."

"I have a very good idea," he said suddenly. "Shall we give you a crash course to help you get over your amnesia? I mean this very evening, a full-immersion exercise in the good old le Thibtre de la Cruauti? By the way, back in France I used to be Lugienne. You can call me that if you want. Or you may use my new name, Jumbler."

"Jumbler? What kind of name is that?" I said, not meaning to sound as shrill as I did. "'Jumbler' is a name I gave myself eight years ago -- in honor of my coming of age. It means I am the kind of person who loves to mix things up and put them back together in new combinations. What about you? Who are you this time around?"

"Rapunzel. Rapunzel Blavatsky."

Before I could expound, he reached out his left hand, and when I offered mine in return, he gave me the same secret handshake he'd applied before.

With his last announcement, the tide turned dramatically away from the interpretation that this character was merely a guy cruising for babes. First there had been his delectable aroma, which arrived just moments after I'd read about the Holy Ghost's sweet smell. Then he conjured up the scenario of me being connected in a past life to the Goddess Persephone, and confessed (I think) that he'd been dreaming of me for years. Now I'd found out that his name was one letter away from that of my magic companion in the Televisionarium.

I was torn about going along with the crash course he'd proffered. My imagination had become so excited by his improvisations that I was practically swooning. And wasn't this exactly the kind of adventure I had invited into my life by launching my apostasy against the Pomegranate Grail? But I worried that I should be more self-protective. I'd had surgery that morning, for one thing. And given the fact that I was an underage runaway, shouldn't I lay low and remain inconspicuous?

"Come on now, I will buy you these two books," he said, plucking Mysterium Coniunctionis out of my hands and heading towards the front of the store. I followed behind, hoping to find a definitive clue to his gender in the way he walked. There was the slightest swinging of the hips -- more than most men I'd ever observed, at least, though less than most women.

My taproot to the Drivetime was surging deliciously again: linen and sweet almond and gold-tinged terra cotta and a spritely but mournful Irish-Chinese tune. There was no way, I decided firmly, that I was going to break the spell.

Suddenly Jumbler and I were pushing through the doors of the store and out into the warm spring evening. I was mad at myself for not noticing how he'd paid for the books. Had he used a check and been required to produce a driver's license, I might have seen his real name and gender.

We were headed down the sidewalk past a seedy vacant lot when he stopped, put down the books, and spread his arms up to the sky in an expansive yet formal gesture.

"Plato long ago recognized," he began, "that besides eating, sleeping, breathing, and mating, every creature has an instinctual need to periodically leap up into the air for no other reason than because it feels so good. I mean no offense, Rapunzel, but I would guess that you have not been attending to this need for a very long time. Seeing as how it is essential to our exercise, I implore you now to do just that. Nine times, if you would be so kind."

Surprising myself with my lack of hesitation, I did just what he asked. My first jump was a twisting pirouette in which I tried to imitate an ice skater doing a double axle. The rest were increasingly less disciplined and more careening. On the ninth I lost my balance and sprawled as I came down to earth. Having set down the two books he was carrying, he responded with sustained applause and a "Bravo!"

"Then on the other hand," he continued as I reassembled myself, "there is me, who has always recognized that besides eating, sleeping, breathing, and mating, every creature has an instinctual need to contradict himself at all times -- since that is the only way to be like a god, n'est-ce pas? Again, Rapunzel -- I hope you are not insulted -- but my sense is that you have not had extensive practice in the art of smashing together the contradictions. Or rather blending them gracefully. I call this art tantra, and it is at the heart of the Theater of Cruelty crash course I wish to give you."

I had some knowledge of tantra -- enough to know that contrary to its hip New Age transmogrification, it was an ancient magical tradition with far more to it than exotic sexual practices. My sense was that it aspired to create a union of opposites on all levels, and sacred copulation was merely one strategy among many to accomplish that. Still, I was unprepared for Jumbler's interpretation.

He took out a pack of Virginia Slims cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit two, one for me and one for him. I had never smoked a cancer stick in my life, but I was willing to go along with the gag.

He launched into a series of strenuous exercises: ten quick sit-ups followed by eight push-ups and then a minute of jumping jacks. Through it all he puffed on his butt. Eager to please, I did the same.

"Excellent form!" he exclaimed at the end, gasping for breath. "Beautifully executed self-confutation!"

As I threw my cigarette on the sidewalk and stamped it out, he bent over to pick up something from the gutter. It was an empty, battered plastic bottle of Clorox bleach with the top off. He handed it to me as if it were a treasure.

"This is your reward for so faithfully taking up my challenge," he explained. "A priceless artifact from an ancient civilization. Long ago, this vessel was used in sacred water-purification rituals. All the reservoirs and aquifers of that once-proud land had been poisoned by pollution, you see, and only the potion contained in bottles like these could render the water safe for drinking again. I have rarely seen a better-preserved example. This will make a handsome addition to your home, if you choose to display it there. Or you will no doubt be able to sell it to a museum for a large sum. Accept it with my admiration."

I searched Jumbler's face for some sign of irony. But I was glad it wasn't there. I loved the inscrutable mood he had conjured up and didn't want it to devolve into a boringly literal conversation.

I put down my water-purification vessel and surveyed our surroundings to see if there were any gifts for me to offer in return. Awaiting my discovery was the gnarled knob of a root lying free on the edge of the vacant lot.

"And here is a token I want you to have in appreciation for how you've stuck by me all these centuries, Jumbler." I was trying to imitate his majestic cadences. "It's a precious goddess figurine from an even more ancient civilization, the peace-loving matriarchal society of Old Europe. As you can see, her shape is cast in the ideal of fertile beauty that prevailed back then: stocky frame with large, hammy buttocks and pendulous breasts. She was built for comfort, not speed."

Jumbler bowed deeply as he accepted my present. Just for fun, I did two exaggerated curtsies, pretending to extend the edges of my non-existent skirt. In response, he saluted me sharply with his right hand, and I couldn't help but salute back with my left, except with a goofy look on my face. Before I even realized the implications, he was scratching himself under the arms and jutting out his lower lip like a chimp -- though in a somehow dignified manner -- and I in turn stuck out my tongue and gave him the raspberry. Then he made the sign of the cross on his forehead with his index finger and stifled a big yawn, and I put my hands together in prayer and genuflected. He formally blew me a kiss, and I bared my teeth and growled. He aristocratically thumbed his nose at me, his eyebrows arched, and I replied by tilting my head to one side and holding my arms out in the offer of a hug.

By then I had become conscious of a memory from earlier in the day. While on the operating table in Dr. Elfland's office, I'd seemed to recall or maybe hallucinate that my dream at dawn had included a dialogue of gestures with Rumbler. It was an exchange eerily similar to the dance I was now doing with Jumbler.

I was paralyzed with an attack of self-consciousness. Jumbler didn't seem to hold it against me, though. He pointed his right index finger down at the top of his head and spun like a top, and when I failed to respond promptly, he retrieved our two books and simply resumed walking down the sidewalk, gesturing with a sweep of his hand. I picked up the valuable artifact he'd bestowed on me and followed along.

"Now be so kind as to tell me what the word is for that thing right there," he ordered cheerfully as we crossed Fourth Street, the downtown's main drag. He was pointing at a car that was stopped at a red light. I wasn't sure what the rules were for this part of the game.

"Voiture?" I said "car" in French, thinking maybe he wanted me to speak as Artaud would have.

"No, that is a rude dappled ganglion, my friend. Now tell me what that is." He was pointing at a parking meter.

"Uh. A black-market sphinx?"

"Better. Much closer than last time. Actually, it is a slippery loud fetish. But you are improving. What is this?" He was pointing at himself. "Flaming milk tree?"

"Yes! Yes! Excellent! Now I want you to give names to everything else. Remember, it is our hallowed responsibility to invent words for everything."

"Cobalt mermaid serum," I proclaimed, indicating an empty baby stroller in front of a store. "Almond whirlpool medicine," I added, coining a fresh phrase for what was once a "mailbox."

"Coral hydrangea sap. Swampy opalescent lather. Pearly ejaculating heart. Eucalyptus anemone guard. Ovarian hawk cedar. Peachy porcelain mist. Beaded mushroom face." So I bestowed new names on what were formerly a window, a door, a sign, a garbage can, an awning, a cloud, and the sky.

"That was extraordinary work," he said, directing us to enter the door of a small market. "You show great potential in the art of naming. That will come in handy in the latter-day version of the Theater of Cruelty, because in its domain absolutely everything must be blessed with a fresh name every day -- sometimes twice a day."

This was no sleek 7-Eleven we'd slipped inside. It was a dingy, claustrophobic place with narrow aisles and dusty products crammed on shelves that reached the ceiling. The signs and packages were all in Spanish, though many had English translations. Cheap jewelry and watches were arranged in a messy display next to grimy bags of charcoal and disposable diapers that looked like they'd been languishing there for months. A riotous assortment of herbs, as if in a witches' apothecary, hung in small plastic bags adjacent to tall candles in glass containers that were painted with Catholic religious icons. Mostly there were foods, some of it exotic stuff I'd never imagined existed, like cans of curdled milk pudding and jars of deep-fried pork skin in brine.

Jumbler was filling a hand-held red plastic shopping basket. "For our sacred feast," he beamed as I examined his haul: a jar of nopalitos, or shreds of tender cactus; a very large jar of pacaya, which seemed to be the fruit of the date palm tree, whatever that was, though it resembled small octopi with long tentacles; a can of olluco, an "ancient Andean tuber"; Pulparindo, a hot and salted tamarind pulp candy; Extraqo, popsicles made with jalapeqos; and rosa de castilla, a bag of rose petals. He'd also gathered a can opener and three of the Catholic candles. Into the basket I threw a mini-pack of Advil, which I had already opened and swallowed without the aid of water. My forehead had begun to throb.

"Will that be all, ma'am?" the clerk asked Jumbler as he used cash to pay for these items. He either didn't hear her or didn't correct her.

So now at least one observer had cast her support towards the theory that my new companion was of the female persuasion. I asked myself whether it made a difference to me. Would I alter my behavior if I thought I was dealing with someone of my own gender? Maybe. Even though I was not yet sure if I was physically attracted to Jumbler, I wanted him to be male. There'd be more of a charge; the mystery would have an edge of uncertainty and risk. If he were a she, I'd instinctively feel more trust, and would as a result be lazier about advancing the mysterious game we were playing.

Jumbler had engaged the clerk in conversation. They continued to chat long past the time the money was exchanged. He seemed fascinated with the older woman's stories about her girlhood in El Salvador, the unusual bright green fabric she had bought for five dollars a yard at a garage sale, her granddaughter's communion, and several other nondescript tales that I tuned out. It all went on so long that I wondered if it weren't somehow supposed to be part of my "crash course."

At least this break had given the four Advils time to cure my head pain. But I was anxious to get back to our game.

"In the new Theater of Cruelty," Jumbler said as we exited the market, "I would like to suggest that one of our basic performance rituals should be to listen with smart sympathy to people whom everyone else considers unimportant."

So that's what he'd been doing.

"I like that idea," I said. "Though I'm not sure what it has to do with cruelty."

"It is cruelty par excellence," he exclaimed excitedly. "A radical rejection of widely held values. Going vehemently against the grain of all the habitual emotional reactions that fuel the daily grind. What could be more cruel than expressing compassion with concentrated intelligence? It is a living whirlwind that devours the darkness of angry superiority, knee-jerk dehumanization, and unthinking competitiveness."

"But there must be better ways to cultivate that kind of cruelty without boring yourself to death. I don't agree with the tired old tradition that being of service to humanity means sacrificing your fun."

"But I did have fun talking to the clerk in the market. Please know that I was not acting in the tradition of the bleeding-heart liberal, whose compassion is condescending and sentimental. I was not merely being nice to appease my own harassing conscience."

"What possible fun could you have had gabbing about all those inane subjects?"

"First, Rapunzel, I have my bodhisattva vow to guide me: I will not accept liberation from the wheel of death and rebirth until I have worked to ensure that all sentient beings are also liberated. So you see it gives me the sweetest pleasure to imagine that I am creeping closer to nirvana by helping the market clerk get there with me.

"And then there is my second vow, my Rosicrucian vow: I will interpret every event in my life as a direct communication from God to my soul. With that as my guide, I find inspiration in the oddest and most unlikely places. As Carl Jung advised, I look for the treasure in the trash. As the alchemists recommended, I find the gold hidden inside the lead."

"And what great secret from the divine realm came your way courtesy of the boring clerk in the market?"

"Several. I will tell you one. When she described to me her grand-daughter's first holy communion, she looked straight at you and winked and cocked her eyebrow three different times. I am not even sure she realized what she was doing; perhaps God was making His own expressions appear on her face. At that moment I knew without a doubt -- perhaps God was also using her to communicate with me telepathically -- that you too are in some way making your first holy communion. How I cannot say exactly. In my mind's eye, the image of the clerk's granddaughter kneeling at the altar turned into you."

I immediately flashed on my vision in the Drivetime earlier that day. Madame Blavatsky had initiated a ritual she called "Magdalen's First Supper." She'd filled the Supersoaker with the unidentifiable red liquid from the Grail and sprayed it into my mouth while repeating a mutated fragment from the Christian eucharist: "Take and drink of this, for this is the Chalice of Your Blood, a living symbol of the new and eternal covenant. It is the mystery of faith, which will be shed for many, that they may attain tantric jubilation and kill the apocalypse."

Jumbler had seen true.

We had stopped in front of a pawn shop. It was closed, but the lights in the window revealed a display with Easter themes. One rainbow-colored basket contained fake green confetti grass, jelly beans, a chocolate bunny wrapped in pink and yellow foil, and numerous necklaces with centerpieces of the crucified Christ.

I was aswim with two competing emotional states. On the one hand, I had become as soft and gooey as I ever got. My mothers had often experienced my melted heart, and Rumbler had certainly shared my most tender feelings in the Televisionarium. But I had never even come close to letting my guard down in the company of an actual male -- if indeed Jumbler was a male.

On the other hand, my discriminating analytical mind was on full alert. (That this was possible, in light of my squishy state, was both delightful and unfathomable.) As close as I was beginning to feel to Jumbler, as much as I instinctively wanted to throw great heaps of trust his way, I was acutely aware that I knew almost nothing about him. Maybe there were grains of truth in his beliefs about me. Maybe he really did have some magical link with me that would be thrilling to explore. But my training as the avatar of the Pomegranate Grail demanded that I stay skeptical. Magical thinking serves you well, my mothers had taught me, only if balanced by scientific thinking.

My problem was how could I gather more concrete information about Jumbler without spoiling the mood he had created? I also thought it would be wise if I didn't let him control or initiate every aspect of our interaction.

"If you know so much about me," I finally said with as much poise as I could muster, trying to betray neither of my extremes, "why don't you seem to have any awareness of two of my most important incarnations? The one I had in Palestine almost two thousand years ago and the one I'm in now?"

"I confess that there are great gaps in my understanding of your destiny. I do not like this fact at all. It brings me pain."

"But how do you know so much about me in the first place?"

"I can give you three reasons."

"Please do."

"The first is that I remember my previous incarnations, or at least some of them, and in several of those I have been close to you. The second is that I am a true dreamer. That means that I know how to become awake while I am dreaming, and can discover secrets in my dreams about the waking realm."

We were standing at a red light waiting to cross the street. Just then three remarkable cars drove by in a mini-parade. They were old-style Mercury Comets, built in the 1960s. One was robin's-egg blue, one lemon yellow, one emerald green. With my recent meditations on Mercurius and Mercuria still fresh in memory, this vision lifted the levels of synchronicity to boggling heights.

Jumbler seemed to be hesitating or deliberating about the third reason he knew so much about me.

"And the third is," I jumped in, "you're good at making up strange stories about me that I have no way of confirming or denying?"

He took my hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed it.

"No, my dear. The third is hard to explain in the limited vocabulary of the English language. If only you understood ancient Egyptian...."

The kiss and the reference to me as his dear and the vision of the Mercury cars and his gracious forbearance in the face of my taunt: All had conspired to make my knees feel weak, my solar plexus mushy.

Or, my skeptical mind said, maybe it had more to do with the fact that I had barely eaten all day.

"I am not your holy guardian angel," he began. "No incarnated human being can be anyone's holy guardian angel. But your holy guardian angel and I have affinities. We have what you might call conversations. She works harder to serve you than I do because you're her only job, whereas I have my own destiny to attend to as well as yours. But I am one of your great helpers."

"Do you know my other helpers?"

"Do you?"

"Earlier today I made the acquaintance of one of them for the first time."

"May I ask which one?"

"Madame Helena P. Blavatsky. Though I suppose I should mention that she was not exactly clothed in flesh and blood. I encountered her in a place called the Drivetime. Have you heard of it?"

"Of course. The wormhole between the Dreamtime and the Daytime. The songline that connects the two and is a hybrid of the two. But don't tell me you just discovered this wonder today. Surely you have known about it from an early age."

"I've called it by another name before now."

"Thank God."

"And what about Madame Blavatsky. Do you know her?"

"No, I regret to say that I do not. But then, as I said, I only know a part of your destiny's overall scheme."

"Do you know the part about how I'm the reincarnation of Mary Magdalen?"

For the first time since we met, Jumbler seemed to have become shy or evasive. He wouldn't look me in the eyes.

"I am going to take you to the holiest, most beautiful place in all of Marin County," he said with a weird fierceness as we passed a Pizza Hut. "It is very close now."

"I refuse to go to the holiest, most beautiful spot until you say what you have against me being Mary Magdalen."

"I am sure I will get used to the idea in time."

"But what's the problem? Aren't you happy for me?"

"It is just that if what you say is true, I have been kept in the dark about a very, very large piece of the puzzle."

"Who's the mysterious and powerful puzzle-master, anyway? Who's doling out these pieces so stingily?"

"You know," he said mournfully, "when you were dying -- I mean when you were dying as Artaud -- you refused to see me. I even visited the hospital, and you put your palms over your eyes and your fingers in your ears until I went away. But I forgive you. I forgave you then. In the hour when you died, a few days later, I woke up from a nap dreaming that you were wrestling a cloud for the right to block the sun."

"And why did I refuse to see you?" I asked.

"Because I loved you too much."

Up until this point, Jumbler had seemed superhuman in his glib mastery of the flow. He had been dashing, confident, relaxed. But now his face looked defeated. I felt sorry for him. My first impulse was to help him get back to the state he had been in.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "'I loved you too much?'"

"It means I loved you more than you loved me. And it was not the first time."

"You had a desperate unrequited crush on me when I was Paracelsus, too?" I said, trying to lighten his mood.

"Do not mock me, my dear."

"Maybe the problem started with you being my great helper without me being your great helper. That would create an imbalance of power, don't you think?"

"But I have never had the expectation that you should pay me back. My gifts must have no strings attached. I am a bodhisattva."

"But why shouldn't I be in cahoots with your holy guardian angel, as you are with mine? What if I wanted to give to you as much as you gave me? How could I be so narcissistic as to let our relationship be one-sided?"

"It is not right for me to ask for your blessings to rain on me, or even to yearn for you to be in my special service."

I felt a sudden rage. "Maybe that's why I was so mad at you," I cried. "Maybe that's even why I couldn't love you as much as you loved me: because you set it up so that I wasn't allowed to give you as much as you gave me. That was selfish of you, don't you see? It was cruel. You wanted to be the big giver, bigger than me, and you trapped me in the role of the receiver. You made me into the objectified idol so you could be the holy devotee."

I couldn't believe what I was saying. Where were these ideas coming from? It felt like I was picking up a centuries-old conversation with Jumbler. I was trembling with the bizarre familiarity of it all.

We had arrived in the parking lot of Goodwill, a store that sold recycled clothes and furniture and other miscellaneous stuff. Jumbler set his books and bags down near a dirty white trailer that was parked next to the rear wall. It was the back half of a large truck, which presumably housed raw donations before they were processed. At one end it rested on two pairs of tires, and at the other on thick metal stilts.

Jumbler's eyes were closed as he leaned against the trailer. The rapid twitching of his eyelids indicated that he was following a stream of inner images. I could well appreciate the state he was in and wanted to give it all my respect. When he tottered and started to slide down, I grabbed him as best I could to guide him. He ended up seated with his back against the tires of the trailer. I sat next to him with my hand on his knee. The smell of diesel fuel and motor oil was pervasive at first, but faded as my nostrils got used to it.

We remained almost motionless in that position for a long time, maybe half an hour. Now and then he would twitch or mumble as if he were asleep and dreaming of adventures. I felt, ironically, that I was extemporaneously fixing the age-old imbalance. All my energy was pouring into him unconditionally, all my attention. I had no inclination to tune into my own inner dialogue, but wanted to make myself available to him in whatever way he needed me.

After a long time, he spoke words that were intelligible. "All these centuries, I have been trying to atone."

"Atone for what?" I asked.

"Atone for my failure to make you my equal in the new religion we spawned. I did not make it clear enough how crucial you were. I did not work hard enough to wear away the resistance of the male disciples. And so our successors distorted everything we worked together to accomplish."

I could not for a moment believe that the person sitting next to me, as inscrutably magical as he might be, was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Yet that is exactly what his vision seemed to have told him. I was willing to play along with this fantasy, as I had been responsive to his other improvisations, but I regarded it as inconceivable that he could have been ignorant of this amazing facet of his destiny until now.

"The world was not yet ripe for me," I said simply. "But it is now."

Jumbler rose and stretched and gave an exultant sigh.

"Yes," he agreed. "And that is why I must declare an end to my compulsive atonement. It is time to stop feeling guilty and start letting you help me do what we set out to do so long ago."

He circled around to three big cardboard box-fulls of fresh junk that lay at one end of the trailer. Apparently some donor had deposited the stuff here after the store closed. Jumbler pawed through it purposefully until he found something he liked.

"Sumptuous carpets for the sanctuary," he announced, holding up an ugly green cashmere sweater and purple wool women's pants along with a grocery bag of other old clothes. "With these I lay the new foundation."

He crouched down under the trailer, which was a space about waist-high, and spread out the garments on the oil-stained asphalt. When he was done, he plucked two plates and some silverware from the boxes and arranged them on the "carpet." Darkness had fallen, but two lights outside Goodwill's back door provided dim illumination.

"Come, my dear," he cooed. "Let us build a tabernacle in the wilderness."

I was brimming with curiosity. What exactly had he experienced during his vision? Had he felt and used the psychic energy I'd fed him? Why was he so sure that the scenes he saw proved beyond a doubt that he himself was Jesus? (My training taught me to evaluate shamanic epiphanies with the same skepticism I brought to all raw data.) Had he received any revelations that filled in the gaps in his knowledge about my destiny?

But I decided to forgo this line of inquiry for the time being. Sooner or later, I promised myself, I would indulge, but for the foreseeable future I would suspend my desire to frame our adventure with my questions. I wanted to be in a fully surprisable mode, not as much in control as I had been all my life.

Over the next few minutes, I helped him fill the space beneath the trailer with other discarded goods. There were pyramid-shaped salt and pepper shakers, Christmas ornaments with angel themes, a handpainted wooden egg within an egg within an egg within an egg, an Etch-a-Sketch, artificial sunflowers, a book of poetry by Sylvia Plath, a toy metal alligator, pipe cleaners, a rod and attached copper ball from inside a toilet, a roll of biohazard warning stickers, a troll doll wearing a doctor uniform, and a ripped print of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

As a finishing touch, Jumbler lit the candles he'd bought at the market and placed the food around the two plates. An elegant if campy shrine now filled the cramped, dusty space.

Briefly, I worried that we might be caught by someone. But I reasoned that we weren't breaking any law. And though there were many cars whizzing by on the busy street where one side of the parking lot ended, we were well hidden from them by the trailer's double sets of tires. I hadn't seen any pedestrians in the vicinity since we arrived.

"It is show time, O Queen," he said then. "The sacred space is designed beautifully. The lighting is perfect. The mood is pregnant. So let us begin the ritual feast. Dessert first, of course."

He opened the box of Extraqo, the jalapeqo popsicles. Each one was a double barrel, with two sticks. As we sucked the cold yet hot green treats, he told me a tale.

"Long ago, near Hereford, on the banks of the Wye River in merry old England, there lived an odd little creature named Robin the Mouth. The people of the town could not remember when Robin had first appeared, nor how she had come to do the strange job that everyone needed done but no one else wanted to do. Sometimes she seemed to be a ghost flitting at the edge of their dreams -- until that dire moment when they put out an urgent call for her flesh-and-blood presence.

"For Robin the Mouth was a Sin-Eater. That is to say, she took on the sins of recently deceased persons by ingesting food imbued with the last gasps of their departing spirits. Whenever a death occurred, Robin was called to the side of the corpse, upon whose chest lay a funeral biscuit and bowl of requiem ale. As she fed on this sepulchral nourishment, she pledged to pawn her own soul on behalf of the deceased, who might thereby find an unimpeded path to the kingdom of heaven.

"But there was a hitch. Have you heard the saying, 'No good deed goes unpunished?' Never was that more truly said than in regards to Robin the Mouth. The moment the Sin-Eater was paid, the corpse's relatives and friends chased her from the house amidst curses and threats, and often with sticks and stones as well. She was feared and hated for having such weird power to heal. And yet she would be asked to perform the same service the next time the community lost one of its members.

"Robin loved her job, despite its drawbacks. It was exciting to be so necessary during the greatest rite of passage of all. She was proud of how unique she was. Indeed, in time she grew ambitious to become even more unique. And when the opportunity presented itself, she began to innovate. No longer content simply to do as she was required, she ate the sins of those who were still alive.

"A wise, restless woman named Lethe was Robin's first experiment. How did it come about? A chance meeting between the two in the woods on All Hallow's Eve led to the discussion of forbidden topics and wild ideas. The Moon was conjunct Jupiter and Mars and Sun in Scorpio on that afternoon, and both women were in the darkly fertile time of the month when the blood flows. Surely these conditions invited them to plumb more deeply than either might have been normally inclined.

"The next evening Robin came to the cottage where Lethe lived, and the two conducted a rite that had never before been done.

"'Relieve me of my lapses, my malice, my thoughtlessness,' Lethe beseeched Robin. 'Devour my mistakes so that I may be born afresh.' And as Robin nibbled the biscuit and sipped the ale that lay on her chest, Lethe felt a great purification come over her, a release from the losses that had bent and twisted her destiny. 'This is high magic,' she exclaimed. 'You have made my heart light again. I feel endowed with the power to forgive myself.'

"In this way, Robin the Mouth discovered the rest of her calling. Secretly at first, she bestowed her gift on a few mavericks and odd folk. As she beheld the renewal she wrought, the burdens she lifted, she became emboldened to act more openly. That was her downfall, of course. If her healing had been barely tolerated before, now it became a menace.

"One spring morning, she ate the sins of the blacksmith's son, who then testified to all who would listen that he had been marvelously cleansed as not even the eucharist had ever done. Horrified, the townspeople went mad. Hunting the Sin-Eater down in her hut in the woods, they hurled sticks and stones at her with such force that she breathed no more.

"For in the end Robin was seen as a rival to Jesus himself. Was there not a perverse homology between their functions? In church, the supplicants ate the symbolic body and blood of Christ so as to have their sins absorbed and burned away by the devoured God. Robin, on the other hand, ingested the symbolic bodies and blood of the supplicants so as to take their sins into herself, that they might become closer to Christ.

"As I end this tale, my dear Rapunzel, I will ask you to guess what meaning it has for you."

The story had roused unfathomable emotions in me. They were huge and pungent but mostly out of the reach of my ability to articulate. The only words I could find that captured even a bit of the sensations in me were triumphant sadness.

At the same time, there was something dear and familiar about the Sin-Eater. I identified with her. I thought maybe it had to do with a theme I'd wrestled with for as long as I could remember: how risky it is to be a force for good; how delicate an operation it is to help people in a way that doesn't invite chaos and ruin.

Rocking gently back and forth, Jumbler was waiting for my reply to his question.

"Don't tell me you mean to imply that I was Robin the Mouth in one of my previous incarnations?" I asked tentatively.

"Not implying. Stating as fact."

"Antonin Artaud. Paracelsus. Eumolpus. And now Robin the Mouth. Anyone else I've been that I should know about?"

"Do not change the subject."

"I must admit I feel a certain resonance with Robin."

"You just ate her sins, by the way. I arranged for them to be contained in that jalapeqo popsicle I gave you."

Almost unconsciously, I had begun to perform a gesture I'd done hundreds of times back home inside my redwood tree. I was rhythmically stroking two popsicle sticks together. Jumbler was doing the same with his.

"What were Robin's sins?" I asked.

"Her biggest sin was that she was too proud of her innovation. That kept her from being cagey enough to stay alive, which in turn prevented her from developing her new art to its utmost. Had she been able to continue, she would have become a master not just in swallowing but in thoroughly digesting the sins she ate. That was the special destiny she should have had, you see. Though there were many other sin-eaters in old Europe, most of them turned into pitiful martyrs by the time they reached the end of their days. They were hapless scapegoats, after all, not illumined Christs. They did not possess the soul force to process the demonic waste they regularly absorbed.

"But Robin had stumbled upon the transformative trick of Jesus: how to use the devoured psychic poison as fuel; breaking it down so as to neutralize its danger even as she tapped into the vital force that had been trapped therein."

"I don't understand what that means."

"The task the sin-eaters performed was not merely symbolic. The stuff they absorbed in the act of 'eating' was real. Not real, of course, in the eyes of those modern folks who believe the material world is all there is. But absolutely real according to most other cultures, which have always accepted the objective existence of a subtler form of matter -- the stuff that composes the spirit realm."

"My people and I have always referred to it as the prima materia," I said, finally feeling a need to insert some of my own vernacular.

"But what the sin-eaters absorbed from their clients was not just any old kind of prima materia," Jumbler said. "It was the trashiest effluvia -- all the most ignorant, unripe, nasty aspects of the departing souls."

"What Carl Jung described as the shadow," I interjected.

"Exactly right. Now for most sin-eaters, this was a horrible burden. They gradually became bloated garbage heaps. But Robin was unlike her fellows, who by the way were almost exclusively men. She had the shaman's skill of breaking down the garbage into its component elements, thereby gaining access to the libidinous charge at the raw core of all psychic energy."

Now I saw what he was driving at. My Goddess Persephone is renowned for her power to dissolve distorted and outworn forms, returning their constituent matter to its "virginal" state. In the tradition of the Pomegranate Grail, if not of the patriarchy, Persephone is the very archetype of the Virgin.

"According to the alchemists," Jumbler added, "dissolution is the secret of the Great Work."

"According to Jung," I said, "fabulous treasure lies hidden amidst the unlovely shadow." I was exhilarated to be able to contribute to the unfolding revelation with my own cherished beliefs.

"So you're saying that I -- as Robin the Mouth -- was a Christ-like character?" I continued. "I freed people from their sick karma without myself being infected by their gross poisons?"

"You were not a lost soul victimized by those you served. You were a skilled alchemist who thrived on turning lead into gold. Or at least you were headed in that direction. But you never arrived there. You got yourself killed before your work was done. Fortunately, now you are ready to pick up where you left off."

"I'm supposed to pick up where Robin left off and where Artaud left off? I'm going to be a sin-eater in the Theater of Cruelty?"

"Blend the two, my dear, and you get the next phase in the evolution of both the sin-eater and the Theater of Cruelty: The Eater of Cruelty. All we have to do to get there is take the Theater of Cruelty and add an extra 'e' after the 'Th' in 'Theater.' Theater of Cruelty transforms into The Eater of Cruelty."

I was seduced by the elegance and intricacy of Jumbler's theories about my destiny. Though they seemed at odds with everything I'd been taught, I struggled to integrate them. There was not necessarily a contradiction between being Mary Magdalen, I reasoned, and all the characters he had paraded out. None of his candidates were alive in the first century Anno Domini.

Searching my own experience for some link with the Sin-Eater and The Eater of Cruelty, I fell into a reverie about Madame Blavatsky in the Drivetime. I recalled the pungent, astringent taste of the "wine" she had shot into my mouth with the Supersoaker. That was certainly a cruel thing to imbibe.

The ritual we enacted there was, like the work of the Sin-Eater, a variation on the Christian church's eucharist. According to Madame Blavatsky, the holy nourishment we dispensed was a symbolic representation not of Christ's blood but of mine, Magdalen's. And what could be more cruel than drinking an avatar's blood?

Then I glimpsed an electrifying notion that had not occurred to me when Madame Blavatsky and I celebrated "Magdalen's First Supper" a few hours ago. The blood the Christians drink is that of their murdered god. Indeed, its potency for salvation derives in large part from the fact that the god agreed to be sacrificed. But what if the blood of the new eucharist is shed by a goddess who is renewing, not immolating, herself? What if the divine nourishment is menstrual blood?

It was beautifully logical, the perfect correction of the phallocracy's half-assed distortion of Jesus' and Magdalen's joint revelation. It was also blasphemous, an uproarious revenge that would deeply offend every Christian alive.

"Jesus died for your sins," I fantasized myself explaining on Easter Sunday to the faithful during a global TV broadcast designed to compete with the Pope's address from the Vatican. "You drink the blood he shed in his final act of love. But I, Magdalen, don't have to die because I can menstruate for your sins. I expire just a little bit, enough so that I can cleanse and renew myself, and then I return to menstruate for your sins again next month. Pretty elegant arrangement, don't you think? Wouldn't you rather have as your role model a divinity who doesn't need to be murdered in order to serve you? What?! You say that drinking menstrual blood is a cruel, disgusting thing to ask of you?! Well, I'll have you know that it's no 'dirtier' than any other kind of blood. It is far less gruesome, too -- since no one has to die."

During my reverie, Jumbler had opened the food containers and filled our plates. The spread was dominated by what looked like a miniature octopus, though I knew it was pacaya, or date palm. Shreds of nopalitos, tender cactus, lay in a soggy heap nearby, as well as two pieces of olluco, the "ancient Andean tuber." The pihce de risistance was a flat strip of Pulparindo brand candy, a hot and salted tamarind pulp the size of an extra-wide piece of gum.

I hadn't eaten much all day, but as I gazed upon the feast Jumbler had prepared I was filled with a perfectly equal mix of hunger and repulsion.

"As we begin our cruel feast, my dear," Jumbler said, "I will ask you to feel empathy for every person in the world who is addicted to his or her signature form of suffering. This unique pain is comfortably familiar. It keeps them from being bored. It makes them feel special, and is in fact the lynchpin of their identity."

"It would be cruel to take away their anguish," I replied.

"It would be cruel to eat the cruelty they cling to," he agreed.

"You might have to resort to sneaky tricks in order to divest them of the feeling they love to hate."

"They might even despise you if they found out you were trying to steal their beloved suffering."

"Healing would be a dangerous act, both for the healer and the healed."

"You would have to be radical but discreet."

"Ferocious but friendly."

"Relentlessly tender and wildly disciplined."

"A living whirlwind that devours the darkness."

I picked up the yellowish white octopus, alias the date palm. It smelled like a cross between corn and lima beans. How the hell to eat it? Maybe twenty to twenty-five beaded, four-inch tentacles hung down from a short stalk. I gripped a few with my teeth and bit.

A chalky bitterness struck the roof of my mouth, followed by the taste of sour and rancid vinegar. With all my heart I wanted to spit it out but forced myself to press on. The texture of the tentacles was crunchy at first, but quickly turned into a crumbly mess of soggy granules. The acrid assault on all the tissues of my mouth intensified until out of self-defense I swallowed.

I immediately felt as if I were going to throw up. In an attempt to staunch the aftertaste, I took a bite out of the Pulparindo candy. It obliterated the previous imprint with a burst of unbearable flavor that was simultaneously salty and sweet and spicy hot and sour and chewy. It hurt my mouth too, but blocked the emetic urge. I swallowed it.

My face was puckered, my tongue sore, and I felt exhilarated.

"Bless you, my dear," Jumbler said as he took my hand. "You are indeed the tantric master I imagined." His touch was tender. It had a woman's suppleness. As he stroked my palm, I felt an impossible mix: sweet trust and a hot sexual rush.