Secret Planet — Trü-Sky

It is morning in the spice trade city of Melaka in Malaysia, and I'm staring drowsily at a glowing, incandescent orange wall.

I'm into day 2 of a short stay at a remotely located wellness resort. Breakfast was light, consisting of no more than a carbonated concoction of passion fruit and soda water, topped with the obligatory bobbing flower. My feet are bare, and I'm clothed in black compression shorts over which I've draped myself with the sort of high thread-count white cotton bathrobe that is typical in such plush environments. The only difference is that this robe is actually large enough to accommodate me, while the tightness of even an XXL is an occasional annoyance at many other places, even the expensive ones, across Southeast Asia.

Koreans have grown larger over the years, and I am semi-proud to report that I have apparently been leading the charge. I delude myself that I've grown stronger and therefore unavoidably even larger after a recent spate of visits to the gym, but the truth is that my struggle against paunchiness hasn't been entirely victorious.

This morning, the paunch is definitely winning.

I open my robe and expose myself—partially—to the orange wall. The wall is an illusion of fire, and I can almost hear the crackling of flames. But it's no more than salt really.

Himalayan salt to be precise. Salt that is pink, orange and a thousand other flecks of color.

The entire wall is covered with tiles of the stuff, and these are lit with hot incandescent bulbs, which are soothingly different from the new, blue and altogether too cool LED ones. The incandescent heat causes the salt to evanesce.

The theory is that the salt when heated then catalysed with broad-spectrum light begins to emit negative ions and a mysterious energy that together promote one's vital functions.

Years ago, when I existed in a somewhat different and much more starch-intensive incarnation, I dismissed these sorts of things as New Age gimrackery, placing them in the same category of forgettable barang-barang as mood rings and chia pets.

My dismissiveness is no longer automatic.

Perhaps it's because the New Age has actually begun, or is about to. And whether you call it the New Age, or the Age of Authenticity, or the Post-Modern Age, the Verge of Singularity, or the Accident of Trump, or the shift from Hegemony to Multi-Polarity, the phenomenon is the same.

At some stage, the roll and bounce of history became funny and highly non-linear. It's as though some dormant intelligence has suddenly woken up in all the forgotten corners of our planet, feeling impatient, a little angry and very, very hungry.

In any event, back to the wall. This orange wall is quite hypnotic. It seems actually to be alive, but in a vaguely alien sort of way.

I allow my thoughts to wander.

My back begins to itch.

The source of the itching is the secondary healing response to a hot cupping treatment from the previous afternoon. The treatment was quite aggressive and dramatic, and not—as I had feared—even in the slightest way at all orgiastic.

The hot cupping is part of the curative package, which is vaguely reminiscent of what one might have experienced at a European spa in the early 20th Century… except this cupping isn't European at all.

The cupping is an archetypal Pacific experience rendered popular by geographically untethered 21st Century social media. I am only part way through the cure. There are, no doubt, further surprises ahead.

But my back is surprise enough for this morning.

From deltoid to deltoid and blade to blade my back and shoulders are now adorned with a supposedly temporary scarring pattern shaped as wings. My new and quite painful wings have been drawn with many, many little circular hematomas shaded red, black and blue, each of which is the exact circumference of the tiny hot cups with which they tortured me upon my arrival.

The cupping has apparently released toxins into my body. I am feeling unwell, suddenly. I am at once dizzy, distracted and confused.

I think they call this a healing crisis.

I lean forward to expose my extravagantly scarred and bruised back to the alien fire of the glowing salt that flickers and dances in orange and pink along with geometric sprays of blue and violet.

I close my eyes and imagine looking down upon myself; and I am, in my mind's eye, an odd and somewhat menacing sight sitting with my broad winged back in front of the glowing salt in this strange room situated on the outskirts of Melaka.

Europe, America and the 20th century seem like distant concepts, like jumbled stanzas of flittering words from a half-remembered poem.

The thought occurs to me as I sit in front of this orange wall that I am flying into the future, into the deepest, farthest reaches of the 21st Century and beyond, although I have little idea what that might mean substantively. My thoughts are disjointed and running about in dangerous ways, like molecules of air playing recklessly with all those negative ions issuing from the hot salt wall.

I am lifting slowly upwards.

With my scarred and weary purple wings, I am in flight over the salty fires. I leave the salt wall. I leave the room. I rise above the building.

I am in flight across the FreeSky.

What is this place?

What planet do I occupy now?

I do not recognize it. The world has become unfamiliar and alien.

Though the New Age was supposed to be an age of light and peace, I suppose it would have been more reasonable to expect complexity and conflict, from the bunkers of North Korea to the wigwams and Winnebagos of the American separatists across that Great Land.

The truth is always a surprise.

I imagine myself flying higher and higher. The landscape is new to me. From this stratospheric height, the forests have taken on the appearance of a geometric rather than organic or natural organization. I see vistas of trees set out neatly in rows and columns that transform the land into a spreadsheet. The matrix of trees dominates the landscape and occupies all lines of sight for miles and miles and miles. They stretch across the infinite hectares to the blinding Southeast Asian morning horizon that is an endless expanse of regimented light.

And through the micro- and nano- droplets of dew that still linger through the humid morning, I see the diaphanous rays of the sun reaching out and up to me to touch my scarred back.

And I begin to fall.

I fall from the sky, tumbling through the rays of light, then accelerate through the air, twirling and tumbling, until my face brushes the circles of branches and the bundles of red fruits hanging from them.

I do not touch the ground.

The trees have left their matrix. I am enfolded in the wafting fronds and strange fruits.

And I hear as a whisper…

"There is a secret, there is a secret. There are secrets everywhere across our planet."

It is a woman's voice; raspy, ancient and kind.

"Is that you, Mrs. Graham?" I mutter, recalling for some reason the name of an American grade school teacher from an almost forgotten past. "You're still alive. Old long ago, and yet here… here… But how?"

I shake my head slowly and rub my eyes.

The orange wall has been toying with me. I am sick this morning, sick with the healing; and the wall has taken advantage of my disorientation.

If this is healing, perhaps it's better to continue to be ill; ill and paunchy.

"Enough," I mutter to myself, no longer amused with this combination of nausea and hallucination.

I reach for the phone sitting on the courtesy table next to my chaise-longue.

"Could you, please," I begin, "bring me a cup of coffee? Ah… actually, make that two, please. One for Mrs. Graham."

"Sir?" the attendant asks with a wide-mouthed perplexity. "Mrs. Graham? Is she a guest?"

"No, no," I answer. "I was quipping. A joke. I'll need two cups of coffee, real coffee… for myself. And some ice water, please. I'm not feeling well, actually. The cupping, I think, and the toxins and…"

"I see, sir. Two coffees, right away."

"Yes, I'd like two cups of Trü-Coffee," I say, not quite knowing what I mean. "And the ice water. Lots of it, please."

Singapore

TrüSky