March 20, 2016 at 4:50am; Yorkshire Grey Place
He’s swirling again. If it weren’t for the stillness of his head as he stares out the window, I’d go right back to sleep. It used to be amusing to watch his body twitch and move in broken rhythm to whatever tune he was humming (usually 'Careless Whisper' — an homage to his legendary neighbor). Now it’s painfully dull.
Although not immediately clear why, my interest is piqued as his contortions and sad attempts at singing in tune are interrupted by something beyond the window. This enormous window where light rarely visits looks down upon the small entryway to our flat that is sunken meters below a tiny alley, Yorkshire Grey Place. With the inescapable overcast and heavy fog that rests so easily in this sunken recess where we live, there is very little to gaze upon from this window. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time a drug-induced narcolepsy led him to a standing slumber, but at this moment he is not only awake, he is alert and obviously attending to something.
I move closer to discern the cause of his sudden sobriety. At first, I sense nothing beyond the usual damp smell of our alley abode accompanied by a soft breeze that seemed warmer than the usual raw chill of dawn in March.
While everything seemed normal beyond the window, I freeze in horror as I look up at his face. His eyes are not only open, they are moving in what one would imagine REM sleep to look like with our eyes wide open. Even more frightening is the flood of words pouring out of his mouth. His voice almost imperceptibly low, he starts forming words carefully — big words (even for my proudly articulate friend) — and they come out faster and faster, but with a discordant calmness alongside the acceleration. I cannot make sense of the torrent of words, but realize it’s no gibberish or speaking in tongues — it’s a revelation articulated by someone very much awake.
And then the rummaging begins. I’ve not seen him move so urgently since we left the States five years ago. It’s not clear what he’s searching for until I see him furiously flipping through the pages of a book he had been trying to study for the past few weeks. In fact, I seem to recall him studying it last night before he started swirling.
I remember it’s Sunday. Not any Sunday, because on this Sunday morning he is supposed to finish his weekly lessons and learn from his Oxford professor, tutor, and guide whether he is to finally be confirmed into the Church of his baptism that had been calling to him ever since we arrived in London. He’s searching for something in the Catechism of The One True Faith, a book now smudged with mud from the ancient graveyard of Catholic martyrs behind our flat where we were spending far too much time. Whatever he was looking for, he definitely found it.
And then he falls. Not clumsily or from fatigue, but suddenly and gracefully, as if falling from thousands of feet in the air like the free-falls reminiscent of his skydiving he had taken up a few years ago.
On his knees, with tears flowing down his face, without a single sob or word spoken, he stares up in pure awe and wonder.
He was never completely sure what he saw that morning, but I saw everything very clearly at that moment. In full, not-in-Kansas-anymore technicolor, God was with him that morning, and I’ve been trying to convince him ever since.
He's Swirling Again