Somewhere in the middle of the sultry summer night, nature called. My lover unzipped the front flap of our tent and we headed outside onto the sand of a secluded beach cove along the southern California coastline. As we were alone, we exited the tent nude. A pleasurable breeze greeted us, briefly alleviating the swelter. Even with a nearly-full moon, the lush ceiling of stars above us was breathtaking. Adding to our overall feeling of auspiciousness, a shooting star fell seemingly directly in front of our path. My jaw dropped in awe, and I wondered aloud a most sincere approbation, “Oh, how you bless us God, life, spirit, universe…”
With that grateful invocation, my lover and I proceeded to relieve ourselves in the majestic ocean. (We rationalized that our good actions far outweighed this relatively minor infraction.) The shock of contrast between our warm bodies and the still-cool water was exhilarating. We dove under holding hands, then after we arose, we exuberantly collided in a delicious, playful kiss. As we separated our bodies ever-so-slightly, we noticed a captivating phenomenon: the bright light radiated by the moon cast us in an immaculately explicit, lucid shadow against the backdrop of pristine sand.
As we stood in the ocean, we were bewitched by watching the exquisite subtleties of our well-matched physiques. Every slow, sensual move we made was mirrored and magnified in the remarkable chiaroscuro of moonlight and shadow. In my heightened state of arousal, I felt my skin turn incarnadine, like a lust-drenched niacin flush. Without needing to accede, my lover and I met each others’ unspoken desires, choreographed in equal parts by erotic providence and spiritual syncretism.
Deliberately, we decided to delay the consummation of our mutual yearning until we got back to the tent. Both of us later confessed our suspicions that we might have literally drowned due to our sensual distraction. We returned to the tent giddy, overly-amped and very ready to merge our inner empyreans. As we made love, time became evermore malleable and fluid, its interstices seemingly yielding to our mutual need for extended, undulant erotic equanimity.
It was the ultimate power trip: we were reveling in the complementary, egalitarian nature of true inner power. Luxuriantly supine, I decided that if I had to die, I’d like to do it with him inside me, in precisely this position. But for the moment, I was ravenously consumed and consummately nourished by the vitality of living abundantly.
When I awoke a few hours later in the full illumination of dawn’s gorgeous color palette of light, my lover was momentarily gone. Resting on my belly was a velvet drawstring bag, sewn in the design of a labyrinth. Inside the bag was a smooth, flat dark-grey large stone that was a lapidary masterpiece. In Celtic-inspired calligraphy, it read in Latin:
ab ovo, ut terminus
et ab novus orsa
saecula saeculorum.
On the other side of the stone was the English translation:
from the beginning, to the end
and from the new beginning
to all eternity.
My lover returned in time to witness the resultant awe I felt at reading such lofty words which I had inspired. My stupefaction derived from being so comprehensively recognized and acknowledged by someone so much like myself. We kissed deeply, and as we prepared to delve again into erotic joy, I had an amazing epiphany:
Whole, healed lovers everywhere are the living antidote to Pandora opening the Box. By unleashing harmony, joy, understanding and reverence, perhaps we may break the spell of all the ills that have been cast upon this world.
