A Book Like No Other: Volume One

By Miles A Moody

We join Rachael in the aftermath of her courageous introspection. We grab hold of our seats and watch as the cable car of her life cascades into naked unpredictability. She is hungry for answers and ready for change; she pulls out all the stops unleashing the very currents of time and space in a rendezvous with destiny. She finds she is walking a tightrope of vulnerability where all familiarity fades into the obscurity of a possibility that she can only just feel. Without realizing this, she steps upon the mystical path of ‘The Heroes’ Journey’ to encounter a world of magic where transformation is real. True Love, in all its vast and unlimited permutations takes her by the hand to make the impossible possible. A deeply benevolent and abiding presence walks with her guiding her into the healing of her shattered heart. Together they journey through time to reunion with an ageless family bent on correcting grave mistakes of the past. ‘A Book Like No Other’ is not for the sentimental or the faint of heart. It is for those of us searching for the hero waiting deeply within us all. “What is there to love, anyway?” If you have ever wondered as I have wondered, then perhaps together we may find the answer here in the pages of ‘A Book Like No Other.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miles A Moody
• Release date: Feb 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311364449

Miles A Moody

Miles lives with his lovely wife, Lynne along with two teenage children, Brennen and Anneliese and Purple, the cat. He currently works as a veterinarian living in the mountains of North Carolina. Miles is passionate about relationship – not just the interrelationships we share as human beings, and not only in regard to the ways in which we relate to our animal companions, but in reference as well to a subtlety of relationship that is as intangible as it is incredible.Miles shares this: “As a young man I had succeeded in most every way, and yet my life proved less fulfilling than anticipated. A key element was missing in how I related to everyone and everything in my life, a quality of living that I lost touch with as a child. I chose to make my life about learning how to best integrate this quality of unconditional love into my ordinary moments, and I find that even the mundane can be exciting and challenging as ‘the unseen’ and ‘the intangible’ move more to the forefront of my awareness in teaching me a better way. One of the ways that Love reached out to me was through writing. Life became a healing journey and I continue to write because there seems no end to the wonder I am being shown.”Miles enjoys spending time in the natural world – siting by a quiet steam, hiking, camping or taking pictures. It was during these times spent in nature that he first began to realize that he had lost something precious somewhere along the way in life. “I had acquired most everything a man could want in life,” Miles writes, “and yet, I felt unfulfilled inside. I realized that I was very uncomfortable inside me. I began to put aside, one by one, the behaviors that I had used to keep me busy in distraction so that I didn't have to admit how I felt. I came to know that this inner world of feeling was something I need not fear. I discovered that I could move past my insecurities into an inner state of self-acceptance and interconnection with the world around me. I wrote this book to share with others, through analogy and symbolism, something of my ongoing journey of transcendence of fear. It is my sincerest desire that others will find hope, adventure, and inspiration within the pages of ‘A Book Like No Other’.”

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A BOOK LIKE NO OTHER

Volume I

Copyright 2013 Miles A Moody

Published at Smashwords

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Volume I

CHAPTER 1 Daniel Chen

CHAPTER 2 Manu Bastidas

CHAPTER 3 Rachael Lien Sorensen

CHAPTER 4 Joshua Evington

CHAPTER 5 John Smith

CHAPTER 6 Rachael Kaia Sorensen

CHAPTER 7 György and Viollca Petulengro

CHAPTER 8 Karsten Adler

Volume II

CHAPTER 9 Mr. and Mrs. Adler

CHAPTER 10 Deter Ercanbald

CHAPTER 11 Little Edelweiss Falls

CHAPTER 12 Fabian Jaeger

CHAPTER 13 Gaia

CHAPTER 14 Dragon Lines

CHAPTER 15 Emerich Vinzenz

CHAPTER 16 The Kings’ Sea

CHAPTER 17 Chayne of Toulouse

Volume III

CHAPTER 18 Genevieve

CHAPTER 19 Sister Margaret’s Brides of Christ

CHAPTER 20 Coyne and Ourson

CHAPTER 21 Mount Magnifique

CHAPTER 22 Bray

CHAPTER 23 Masselin

CHAPTER 24 Destin and Lien

Dedicated to Michael George King;

The Manu Bastidas in my life

CHAPTER ONE – DANIEL CHEN

Uh huh, I’ll probably be here at home most of the morning. I’m swamped….No; I know it’s a good thing….Yeah, I forget the gratitude sometimes; I just get caught up with the busy-ness; you know – overwhelmed… Rachael clinched her upper lip between her teeth and pushed her glasses higher upon the bridge of her nose. The glasses lent her beautifully symmetrical face with an intellectual allure, a distinct advantage in the shark infested business waters that she frequented as a corporate archivist. She pushed a stray lock of her blonde hair behind the ear clasped to her cell phone. You’ve said this before, at least a million times: ‘If I do what I’ve always done, I’ll keep getting what I’ve always gotten,’ and I get it, really, I do……well, maybe it hasn’t clicked for me, emotionally; I don’t know. I mean, how much control over my life do I really have anyway? Her voice dropped an octave, going from shrill to borderline despondency in the space of a sentence. I was planning to catch up on some things here this morning and then drive into the city for my three PM…..It’s a new account; they trialed me and now they want a face to face before they— Rachael’s brow furrowed as she shifted the phone to better hear. "I don’t see how taking the train is going to help me manage my life any better…..Okay, I’ll try it differently, but if I waste the entire morning ‘connecting with the city,’ then, Jeanie, it’s on your head."

Rachael urged herself back into the present pushing against the tide of her inner discomfort. Rehashing an hour old conversation with her personal growth mentor was less a threat than being here now in a crowded subway car with far too many strange faces surrounding her. She smiled at the irony. She dreaded her conversations with Jeanie almost as much as she was grateful for them.

Her eyes moved from one blank face to another, everyone’s eyes glazed over with distance, everyone marching to the same beat avoiding the threat of human contact. Her chest rose and fell beneath the fine summer wool of her business suit in a practiced rhythm of deep easy breathing. It helped to ease the tension; it helped her to simply feel as she felt without condemning the experience.

Her eyes came to rest on the middle-aged face of an Asian man. He’s probably Korean, she guessed. But it does no good to guess; you have to find out for sure if you’re going to get any better at it.

Almost in response to her thoughts, he looked up and a gentle hint of a smile came to his eyes. She averted her gaze, caught herself doing it, and then forced herself to return to his eyes to engage his presence. She writhed inside, a knee-jerk reaction to an inner expectation, yet she chose to hold his gaze and wait. The dreaded leer never came, that look of lusty invitation she saw so often in men’s eyes; instead, the look in his eyes swelled into a glow of contagion in his face until his lips parted into a welcoming smile. It was as if some ancient father had put a comforting arm around the shoulders of the frightened child inside her. Rachael relaxed, trusting the feeling and drinking it in. He nodded, acknowledging the wordless shared experience as the discomfort in her quieted.

He opened the newspaper folded in his lap, and looking down he began to read. A tear welled up spilling down his right cheek to strike the newspaper with a small gray blotch. His hand went to his heart, gently massaging his chest. More splotches of moisture joined the first as the glow in his face grew brighter. He looked up, his eyes returning to Rachael’s, his eyes wet with tears and beaming. It hurt to hold his gaze, then a tension gave within her and the distance between them dissolved away. Rachael removed her glasses to wipe her eyes and simply watched as the glasses trembled in her grasp.

He leaned forward across the aisle and placed a folded handkerchief in her other hand. She observed it there for a moment as her vision blurred then clarified behind the swell of tears, her mind initially rejecting the implications of his simple act in a losing struggle against the tide of her heart. Rachael had always been the type to cry only in private far from judging eyes that might degenerate her sadness into something stickier and harder to find her way out of. But he had risked it; he had made himself vulnerable before a stranger, and he was a man.

The train decelerated in that moment. The man rose from his seat. He nodded a farewell and drew his sleeve across his eyes before walking away and through the open door. The train continued along its way, speeding up to then slow to a stop - people boarding, others getting off. No one appeared to notice the smartly dressed woman quietly crying in the back, her head tucked into a corner, a veil of blonde falling across her face. Each in turn arrived to find a seat, to look upon her, perhaps to feel the distance diminish between, and then silently to give themselves over in support of a precious moment within a sacred space; hissing hydraulics, screeching breaks, rumbling drone of steel on steel and walls pitching from side to side; all of this and no less a sanctuary, no less a cathedral, and all the more a quiet miracle too easily overlooked. The train hurried on as Rachael grieved away the hidden hurt she carried inside.

______________

Rachael made her way toward the door, her stop not too far distant and feeling buoyed somehow. She claimed an empty seat adjacent to the door. The car slid to a stop, doors opened to admit an old grandfather and child. Rachael rose to offer her seat to the old man as the little girl climbed the step alongside him. Rachael sidestepped as the little girl pushed past; a filthy rag doll lay sprawled on the concourse at the foot of the open door. Rachael jumped from the train retrieving the doll. Little girl, Rachael shouted, holding up the doll. Is this yours!?

The child nodded abruptly, eyes wide in a mix of alarm and hope, hands groping around the waist of her proceeding grandfather. The jaws of the yawning mouth that was the train door snapped to close. Rachael pitched the doll through the last of the gap in the sliding door - a perfect toss to a celebratory squeak from the tiny catcher.

Rachael walked a wide circle on the subway platform, deciding whether she wanted to board the next available train or use surface streets. A billboard placard caught her eye; the notice was pasted at eye-level on a support post; it included a drawing of a ramshackle cabin in the midst of a snowstorm with a heading announcing a gallery showing of the works of Jubal Early. Rachael stood transfixed by the image created by the controversial African American artist/poet Thomas Jude Madrigal who insisted upon signing his works in the name of a Confederate general in the American civil war. White critics suspected him an imminent claimant to illegitimate ancestry while some in the African American community voiced opposition to a suspected ‘Uncle Tom.’ Rachael had her own suspicions, believing his work the product of hidden altruistic motives; she saw him as something of a modern day troubadour – a worker of light conveying higher ideals secretly through ordinary art forms. T. J. Madrigal consistently partnered his paintings with poetic commentary that Rachael found heavily laced in multi-leveled symbolism. This two part piece, entitled Prayer for the Departed, proved no exception.

Prayer for the Departed

By Jubal Early

Snow's storming, door's still open,

Empty lamp sits on the windowsill –

Burned out long ago.

Ash in the fireplace all but blown away;

Note on the mantle waiting all this time –

Reckon it forever will?

Share-cropper Mammy

Fire burnt the barn low,

Taters gone to the blight.

Early frost got the peaches.

Cow gave up the fight.

Waited long as we could;

You ain’t made it back.

Wolf calls from the wood

Most every old night.

Left the door wide open

‘Case you made it a’right.

God help you son;

Jus’ look to the light.

Lamp burns in the window –

My prayer in the night.

Bring my boy back to me

By morn’s early light.

Safe here to me,

Back into my sight.

My son home to me

By dawn's waking light.

She had that feeling now that she had taught herself to pay attention to, that feeling that something greater than herself was speaking to her through an ordinary experience. She turned about and headed for the New York City streets.

It would have been easier to simply board the next train, Rachael admonished, but instead I’m out here losing myself in this concrete wilderness. Why did I do this? I don’t know my way around here? Not too late to go back to the station, she thought, looking back briefly, but never breaking stride. I could get back on the train and stay there until I arrived at my proper stop. But no, here I am doing the very thing that makes the least sense. I’m lost already and I just keep walking.

Rachael searched above through the faint shadows of looming skyscrapers thrusting themselves into the gloom. The meeting is in the Haushofer Building. I know what that building looks like. I’ve been there before. She glanced reflexively at her wrist watch. I’ve got plenty of time.

She had been finding just enough work to keep herself afloat financially until recently. Her professional career had experienced a sudden positive spike as of a month ago and her bills were finally getting caught up. The relief had been tremendous, but beneath this, another feeling had persisted with extreme subtlety – a feeling of discontent with the choices she had made to bring about this financial windfall. This meeting today was another step toward sealing security into her financial future. But the closer she came to the Haushofer Building, the more her anxiety grew.

She arrived at an intersection and turned to the right. The area was becoming steadily less upscale, increasingly unfamiliar and threatening. I wish I’d put all that time at Pilates into Kung Fu training instead? She glanced at her feet, frowning at her Givenchy’s. Won’t get far in these heels in a chase, she murmured aloud. They would have to go.

She smiled at the imagined vision of herself barefoot and sprinting in a business suit, pursued by young gangsters swinging machetes over their heads. A studied glance of her surroundings produced a quick edit into the screen of her imagination, changing the youths from Jamaicans to Chinese and their unwieldy machetes into slender bladed Dao swords. Military boots, Rasta wear, dreadlocks and sunglasses morphed into two dimensional cartoons of Asian bad guys rendered in the anime style. She corrected herself, realizing that anime was Japanese and inconsistent with the droves of Chinese all around her. She shook herself back into reality. This is not helping. Just deal with the situation at hand; no need to imagine it worse than it is!

People swirled around her in a continuous flowing stream. She was a single blood cell in a major artery pulsing toward some unknown destination and feeling increasingly out of place. She spilled out into an opening in the throng, the only witness among hundreds, as an enraged young mother lashed out at the legs of her bawling child.

She’s probably Vietnamese, Rachael estimated, based on a few words she recognized within the morass of the woman’s verbal tirade. I’ll not be confirming it though, she reckoned as she observed herself briskly walking past in her habituated response of non-involvement. This isn’t my problem; I’ll only make it worse, she thought, defending her actions against another inner impulse that did not seem to want to leave her be.

Jeanie’s voice echoed from out of some deeper recess in her consciousness: You asked, Rachael. You asked what it meant to you emotionally. You want to know; deep down you do. You asked to take gratitude to a new level, to feel what it might be like to go there. Here’s your chance to find out. Do something different - get out of life something new.

She stopped in the millisecond it took for an alternative to play through her mind. She felt the righteous indignation of a child grown to an adult, a child punished by a mother who professed her abusive behavior to be an act of love. She was this child being punished in the street; some part of her cried out for the kind of satisfaction sought in retribution and that scenario played out in her head. It took less than a second for it to run; she felt the rage, the attack, and the momentary relief in venting, in believing that she had made her world a safer place for herself. Then in the next second she felt the aftermath washing over her like icy rain. No satisfaction - only emptiness greeted her, and some part of her reached out beyond the history book of her past experiences for a true solution, a new possibility, one that she could not see in her mind - there was only the feeling of it to guide her. She would need courage. Did she possess it? She decided to find out for herself.

An impeccably dressed fair skinned woman stepped forward from the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine to gently grasp the arm of America’s equivalent of Asian peasantry. The subsequent blow was averted as the young mother turned her rage in a new direction. Astonishment so diluted her rage that the woman seemed momentarily paralyzed. Rachael released her grasp, and removed her glasses to draw the back of her hand across her face. Rubbing fatigued eyes, Rachael began. I’m sorry, please forgive me. I’m lost and I need your help. Please, can you tell me where I am?

The young Vietnamese woman’s hand fell to her side grasping her child roughly by the arm. Her mouth was poised open – confused; her eyes raked across Rachael’s face, searching, deciding. Finally suspicious words in broken English came. What you want, lady….Why you bother me?

I have to find the Haushofer Building and I’m lost. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m confused. I need your help. Please. Will you help me? Can you tell me how to get to the corner of First and Adelaide?

Glaring through pursed eyes, the mother was slow to answer. You go that way twenty blocks, then you turn right! Two, three more blocks; you there!

The air felt thick with rage finding its way back to the surface of the woman’s astonishment. Rachael was Marie Antoinette being directed toward the guillotine, then something shook itself loose within her fearful mind; some new face shined itself into the moment; a face that was her own with a complexion she had believed lost to her, and it was courageous. Touching the young mother ever so gently on the shoulder, Rachael whispered, Thank you so much. I just didn’t know what to do until I met you. I’m so lost, you see. You’ve helped me so much. Thank you.

It was something of a magical moment for Rachael, because she knew she was being lied to even as she felt undeniable positive regard for the liar.

Rachael turned, departing in the direction indicated. Ten strides farther and she halted to the shout of the young mother. Lady! Stop! I mix up! Haushofer Building different way! Not sure how far! An extended finger pointed the way from a hand so small, so delicate in structure as to impress itself upon Rachael as quite a beautiful hand. You go that way!

Rachael smiled, and replacing her glasses she set off in a new direction. She was some distance away when she paused to look back. The child grasped her mother’s hand, the striking hand she held in her two tiny hands; her mother was bowed at the waist looking full into her daughter’s eyes, intently listening to a child’s earnest plea, a child finding the courage to explain better the thing that had so recently exacted her mother’s wraith. The mother’s other hand went to her mouth, and then crying out, she embraced the little girl, lifting her up off her feet. They stood there in the opening in the flow of the crowd, hugging, rocking. Rachael felt the distance close between her and them; she was that child feeling and knowing the true love of her mother at last. She reached for a parking meter to steady herself. There under the canvas awning of a small grocery store, she paused to let go of a burden she had carried long enough.

The crowd parted around her giving way without appreciating the gravity of the moment. A tiny hand lifted from her mother’s back as two pairs of eyes met, spanning the distance. It was no more than a flick of the wrist, with less impact upon the stuff of space and time than the flutter of butterfly wings. But for Rachael, the child’s dainty wave was a battering ram’s immutable splintering blow against the weakened shutters over her heart. It was as though time thickened to a crawl as a feeling of benevolence welled up in her chest. Rachael became aware of so much more of the life around her; it was an awareness of essence, an awareness of preeminent value inherent in all things. It was as though some part of her being was joined with all the rest, connected into all the rest and moving in an outward expansion into still more of it. The feeling was subtle; its implications were undefinable – beyond estimation and challenging to everything she had accepted as true. And yet, she sensed she had only scratched the surface.

Rachael continued on her way, an anchorless craft set adrift in the currents, her appointment all but forgotten. An unseen virtuoso now strummed the instrument of her heart; each turn she took kept the music building ever so slightly in an interminable crescendo. None of it matters, none of it, she thought, and everything matters like never before.

Tires squalled on black pavement to the blare of a car horn. A man staggered out of the street tumbling in a heap at Rachael’s feet. The rancid wave of unwashed skin swept after him assaulting Rachael’s senses like the realization of doom succeeding the catastrophe. She was a ballerina in her prime skirting the shores of his arrival in accomplished precision to exit the stage undeterred and untarnished. Every neuronal synapse, every muscular firing was a perfectly coordinated and automatic mechanism meant for survival; she dodged away in her Givenchy’s like a ballerina; she would never have looked back, had not she noticed, had not she observed her reaction and chosen to question.

Rachael turned about and waited. The man gathered himself upright into a tottering stance then bowed before her with a jester’s flourish. He gave his head an explosive shake as if casting out demons in one fearsome quake and then presented her with the most perfect of smiles, all his teeth in gleaming attention and marching order. Could you spare a war veteran the price of a cup of coffee, please? He held out his hand with a noble bow of his head.

It was all so contrived, this performance, this dance; a man nearly struck by a car rebounding and finding his footing in the practiced manipulation of others. And Rachael hated it. She hated how people used their war experiences as an excuse for giving up. You’re a vet, huh? Her question was more growled than spoken. What are you? Chinese? What war did you fight in?

The man shook his head from the shoulders up – tidying up a few final cobwebs in his thinking. He stared at her for a moment, then squaring his shoulders and standing to his full height he answered, I’m American as you; second generation American. My grandparents came over from China, so yeah, you guessed it – Chinese. He paused, saying no more, asking nothing but holding a tension between them like he had more to say. You don’t care what war I fought, he said finally. His tone was matter-of-fact, almost conciliatory. If I tell you then it’s wasted breath. That’s plain enough. You can’t see me because you don’t want to. A bum on the street, a pan-handler; I’m just someone you’ll use to make your point - nothing more than all the proof you need for what you already believe.

Rachael was taken unaware like an undisputed loser in a passionate debate with a three-year-old. So much of her wanted to keep talking until she punched her way back into the driver’s seat of this interaction, but she had been working on that pattern of control for some time now, training herself to simply pause in the midst of the confusion, to observe the turmoil and to lend constructive support to the insecurity inside her. He might have turned and walked away in victory having had the last word in the space of that pause. He didn’t. He simply stood there waiting as the city swelled around them, the auditory, the visual all melded into one vast and fluid sensation. They were two tiny whirlpools dancing about the other on the surface of a sea, completely set apart, as if the whole of the ocean was oblivious to their spinning presence and the two of them, equally oblivious to it. Then something changed abruptly, like dropping a straining engine into a lower gear. The sense of disconnection gelled into something all-together different to surge the surrounding waters into and through the dancing whirlpools; a fog lifted and Rachael sensed something of the essence of the man standing before her. He’s right; I wasn’t seeing him at all. I was seeing only who I believed him to be.

Pure understanding echoed to the forefront of Rachael’s mind to organize itself once more as thoughts spoken in the voice of her mentor, though no such memory actually existed and no such experience had ever happened. You asked and you sought and now it is coming. Tell me, Rachael, is it everything you had hoped for and anticipated?

An imagined scenario stampeded roughshod through her mind completing what she had begun to end in the successful humiliation of this ‘street person.’ The surface layer of satisfaction in proving herself right was whisked away in an overshadowing current to reveal a reeling underbelly of motivating shame in her. Where a prideful delusion might have contentedly bobbed upon the surface of her consciousness, only a clear calm sea of clarity remained. She saw in her imagination the writhing serpent of her delusion surface into her awareness and roll about to rear up into a venomous striking stance. She saw her own reflection in the slit serpentine pupils of its malevolence, but not only this. She saw herself as well in the foreign eyes of the man she had hoped to emasculate and this simultaneously valid dichotomy was disconcerting for her. A sobering current of clarity crashed through her softly from the inside out, moderating her demeanor in the serenity of its tide to settle as a feeling that took her by the hand entreating her to trust in a completely absurd possibility. This put a choice before her; she could give the man what he asked for, the price of a cup of coffee, and simply walk away, a semblance of virtue restored to her. Or she could yield to the ebb she felt in her heart.

You want a cup of coffee and I need someone to guide me, she began, putting words to the ever so faintly flowing inspiration she felt. I’ll pay you twenty bucks an hour to take me to the Haushofer Building. What do you say?

The man nodded once without hesitation, then turned and started away. Okay….Follow me, then.

Rachael hurried along, challenged in her heels to maintain his brisk pace. What’s your name? She shouted after him.

Weaving through the onrushing crowd, he failed to answer, until he came to an opening that allowed him to shout back without running into anyone. Daniel. The name’s Daniel Chen.

I’m Rachael! His left hand rose and fell as he continued walking without looking back. It was all the acknowledgment she was going to get.

They walked for some time. They might just as well have been exploring Venus for all the familiarity Rachael noted. She knew they were in Chinatown; the signs and faces told her as much. Beyond this, she had no idea as to which way they needed to go. She had begun to search the storefronts they passed hoping to replace her shoes (Although beautifully augmenting the curvature of her legs, her footwear did everything it might to otherwise deter forward mobility). This errand should have required only a couple of hundred yards walking; just within the maximum limit for high heels as far as Rachael was concerned. Though she had the build to appear at home in a pair of heels, she tended to avoid them with all the due diligence of any rational woman with sound orthopedic longevity foremost in mind. She was almost salivating at the thought of her cross trainers, enough so to spring for a second pair of anything that came close.

Daniel, she shouted, Are you certain you know where we’re going? I know for a fact that the Haushofer Building isn’t in Chinatown!

That’s correct, he shouted back. I’m shortcutting through Chinatown! It’s quicker this way!

Look! I’ve just about had it with these heels! Let me know if you see a place where I can buy a pair of sneakers! Daniel’s arm lifted immediately, wordlessly indicating a red and yellow painted storefront across the street. "Yow Linn’s General