Part 2. The Story Behind the Story
In the quiet of my very Spartan carrel, I stuck my hand into the etheric barrier. I had a notion that my little carpet would fit my carrel nicely. It did. Since I had planned to acquire a carrel long before, I then pulled out, with both hands, a single, large, open topped crate. It was made of slats of thin cheap wood with a label on one side, California Cuties Mandarin Oranges.
Inside was a white plastic two cup electric hot water pot, a large 24 oz. can of French Roast coffee for the morning, a box full of bags of good China Black Tea for the afternoon and evening, one cup for each (the two flavors are strong, don't mix, and can be easily tasted in the smallest quantity of residue); porcelain food bowl, microwaveable, with a blue, well handled, plastic under bowl; a large can of dry whole milk; large jar of peanut butter; a small jar of ghee; some raisins; and a box of quick oats. The oats were a stand in for roasted barley flour, "tsampa" in Tibetan, which we use for the same dish in the Land of the Dakinis. They grow barley in the Pacific Northwest, rich two row barley, but they don't roast it for eating. Put in the bowl the ingredients I had in the box: oats, ghee, salt, peanut butter, powdered milk, and one black tea bag, pour boiling water on it, stir it, and let it sit for three minutes, and you have what has been my breakfast for more than 50 years.
Later in the day, add some goat cheese and a few pieces of dry meat (I favor cut up Slim Jims) with no peanut butter, and you have my lunch. With my teacher the rules prohibited eating solid food at night so I indulge in one or two cups of very sweet tea, made with the sugar that was also in the box, before turning in.
All the needed utensils, such as can openers, cheese graters, and so forth were also in the box, with salt, pepper, and a few other spices. There were two army folding utensil kits of a (real and very sharp) knife, fork, and spoon. At that point I concluded the 36 hour marathon of getting to the Library and getting settled. Stepping into the cubby in the etheric barrier, I sat on the sailors cot, straight backed and with feet flat on the floor, did the 20 minutes of my evening chanting, and then turned in.
After 6 blissful hours, I awoke at 3:30 am for the hour's morning chant. One of the pluses of doing 50 years of yogic practice under a guru is that I have memorized hundreds of lines of chanting text, particularly the 40 or so I use daily. There was no light in my cubby, I have the Medium Clairvoyance from natural talent honed by those years of practice, so I can see in the dark nearly as well as I can see in the light. I can also locate persons, places, or things with no known limits. The night before, with a small piece of my mind while arranging the carrel, I scoped out the nearest places in the library for food, water, and a hot shower.
So there was no reason to be in a hurry and I settled back to enjoy the mental visualizations, the sequence of words from the texts, and the mental images of myself participating in those visualizations. Don't expect to learn more about it. To use the language of magic, I have a compelling geas not to. In the Land of the Dakinis we call it a samaya, a ironclad commitment, and the longer you practice, the more solid and unbreakable the commitment. Even for a beginner, breaching a samaya can have the same effect as stepping on the tines of a rake and smacking yourself in the face with the handle. For me the consequences would be much worse.
Chanting done, I grabbed my blue speckled graniteware cowboy coffee pot and my large flagon of water then stepped back into the carrel. Good morning merry 60 watt lightbulb sunshine. Water filling the hot pot, coffee into the graniteware, the hearty, good-for-you ingredients of my Tibetan oatmeal into the bowlall of this scattered across the carrel desk and attached credenza for booksand waited for the water to come to a rolling boil. I hadn't yet used this hot pot, so I spoke a magical word of Command to get it to a rolling boil whether The Little Hot Pot That Could made it that hot or not. For cowboy coffee the water in the pot MUST be boiling to extract the non-bitter flavonoids as well as the acid and the caffeine. You don't need it that hot for the oatmeal, but the ingredients blend flavors better if it is. Breakfast finished, I took up the problem of wearing something besides my breech clout
I was not only choosing my clothes, I was choosing my persona. It was very important that the ascetic yogi who woke up at 3:30 after not eating dinner and going to bed at nine be seen *only* at carrel 308 and that only when the door was open. That persona is the Hidden Yogi and my bug out one. If I have to leave the library on short notice for parts far away, that will be the persona I leave in. I'll speak a word of magical command and my face and hair will shift to fit the persona. We don't use magic that much in Dakini Land, or, to give it another of it's names, Urgyen, very few students even know it. But there are some things for which words of Command are more convenient to use than the yogic methods.
I got back into my Crazy Yogi clothes (which I wear with my usual face since I act so at the direction of my guru) another Hawaiian shirt, this time red with teal and green jungle foliage, a pair of kakhi cargo shorts, and minus the hat. I picked up a full garment and travel bag of the sort that is hung up by hangers, stepped out of the barrier, then out of the carrel door, locking it as I went, and started off to the little shower station and dressing booths area I found clairvoyantly the night before. There was a docent to distribute towels, soap, a comb, and a toothbrush with toothpaste. I walked up to it's counter. There was no one stirring anywhere near at 5:30 am. I flashed my library card, the docent brought up a detachable card reading hand to read the card, and I took the shower and dressing items into one of the line of tiny rooms and to start preparing for the day.
The library card allows you to be provided with all Library amenities, which are considerable. It is given to only the most reputable of magic, historical, humanist, and anthropological scholars. Books are meant to be read, and, even though there are more books in this library than will ever be read by all of us together, this means of a library card "fellowship" is an excellent way to support it's scholarly users for very long periods of time. The card also permits you to check out books, but since I have no home, such as Three Portlands, to conveniently return to, I requested a carrel. In a world with the Foundation, a GOC, a Chaos Insurgency, and other assorted loonies, I much preferred my little etheric annex in the buffers for sleeping at night instead of the scholarly studio apartments the library also offered. It rendered me as effectively "absent" from the Library without having to appear anywhere else on either side of the Veil. It also functions as a camouflaged hiding place in the event of an emergency. The books at the carrel desk have long "carrel charge" cards stuck in them. Docents with carrel master keys check them weekly. You may keep the books carrel charged indefinitely, unless requested by another patron. The docent will leave a note, then you simply turn the carrel charge card upside down, and the books disappear in the middle of the night.
While I'm showering let's discuss some things in more detail. Crazy Yogi is the persona I use when on the other side of the Veil. My guru has asked me to go into the ordinary world and display what is called "entering the action". This means excercising your yogic powers widely and "crazily" without regard to any social, religious, or magical norms. So you do things like flash your bare ass over Central Park while flying in coital union with She Who Is Wisdom Embodied and then taking a spin around the United Nations building. Afterward stopping for a couple of cold, cold Bombay Sapphire gin Martinis (see Appendix 1 "My Martini Secrets") in a tiny Manhattan bar, where someone was waiting to put choral hydrate in my second drink as the waitress passed by and my Crazy Yogi eyes followed her. I woke up in a containment cell in Foundation Facility 19.
So, be warned that the slapstick will resume when Crazy Yogi steps back into the mundane side of the Veil.
The other side of the Veil is not a friendly place. It's full of people wanting to either imprison, kill, sell, or otherwise exploit anybody that they deem to be "anomalous". A yogi entering the action fits their description just fine. I am the first of my guru's students to enter the action since the 7th Occult War, so he also has charged me with scouting out the lay of the land and bringing back a report about not only how perilous for the crazy yogi the place is now, but also to discern if it is developing any serious threat against Urgyen itself. He is now 120 and I'm 72 (yes, I know I look closer to 55, but I'm a Mage Magister with 50 years of clean living, remember?) my guru has accomplished the Great Clairvoyance, which can see into past and future as well as the present, and he is arranging matters in his yogic center for his inevitable passing. There are three of us who are his closest students, one will assume Guru-Ji's mantle as our teacher, one will found another yogic establishment in Urgyen, and I'm to be a wandering Crazy Yogi until the end of my days. Which might be very soon doing it around here.
According to my Guru the Veil between Protected Enclaves thinned during the 7th War and has been slowly thinning still. It could be restrenghtened before collapse, but the number of possible alternatives for this are becoming fewer and fewer. He can see the present far more clearly than I, but he can't hear or understand the words. So my charge is to sniff around, talk and listen to people and give him a sense of why the veil is thinning so rapidly here in, and within, a hundred miles on either side, including the Pacific Ocean. We suspect this may be due to the continuing conflict between the Foundation and the Serpent's Hand, so my first order of business is find Allison Choi, the Black Queen and her Little Sisters, if they be here.
But before then, I had to establish a third persona specifically for use in the Library, one that bears little to no resemblance to the other two. Let's return, I've just finished work with a straight razor on my cheeks and around my chin. Instead of my yogic silver hair and bushy beard I now sported a well trimmed but thick black mustache and close cropped hair, to use my ongoing balding rather than disguise it. My skin was porcelain pale, my eyes cornflower blue, and the straight razor was a necessity, not an affectation, if I didn't want a 5 o'clock shadow at noon. Even then, I always should reshave at 3pm and at 7pm for an evening out if possible. Trust Fund Scholar is the persona, down to the elegant, bespoke tailored, Oxford Gray 3 piece suit, the cordovan wing tip shoes, and the natty banded fedora. I developed this persona using the model of James Spader playing Robert Reddington, the millionaire master criminal on the television show, The Blacklist. Yes, we have Cable TV even in Urgyen and I watched "religiously" in the 1-2 daily hours of non-yogi time I had there.
A quick stick of the hand into the barriers left garment bag and shaving kit back at my cubby. This little trick was my ace in the hole for any trouble Crazy Yogi might get into in Foundationland. The buffers are just outside the edge of the universe and just beyond the Veil. People here don't think of using it, because it's space is quite limited, but it is everywhere and so is any space of it you might be using. I've spent 50 years in quarters equally cramped in the