Thanks in part to the flowers and love and other intoxicating substances of the late Sixties, Billy developed a messianic complex. He claimed that Madame Blavatsky had contacted him, beckoning him to join her on the Other Side, from whence he would return to this plane and save our miserable world. He jumped out of a window to his death six months later.

Billy was my best friend. I painfully withdrew from The Scene on the Upper West Side, initially to Miami Beach and then on to Hawaii, where I lived in spiritual denial. I was sketching a palm tree on the grounds of the Kona Inn on Big Island one Saturday morning when I felt someone watching over my shoulder.

“Join us for refreshments," a male voice commanded. I turned and beheld a young man and young woman dressed in flowing robes.

"No thank you," I said, putting away my sketch pad. "I have other plans," I added, not to be rude, and walked away.

"You belong with us," the young woman sang after me. "Come, come with us."

"Yes, come, come with us," her companion chimed in. "We know who you are. Do not deny yourself. The world needs you. Come with us."

Spiritual weirdoes, probably in from Findhorn, Scotland I surmised. The geomagnetic properties of Big Island attracts them like flies to a light, I explained to myself, or maybe they’re from the Rajneesh camp in Oregon, and have lost their malas.

Eager to avoid any further contact with the odd couple, I hurried across the street to the bookstore and chatted with the owner while I perused West Hawaii Today. An advertisement therein announced that the Dorian Woodwind Quintet would soon appear at the Kona Surf Hotel in Keahou - I lived nearby, at the Surf and Racquet Club.

"Egads! That's Billy's quintet!" I exclaimed, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. "They still exist! What are they doing way out here, in the middle of nowhere?" 

The Scene I had long repressed returned to me on a flood of emotion as I cruised back to Keahou in my Mark IV. I heard the inner music again, a replay of Billy's favorite symphonic poem – Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra – as if the entire orchestra were in my head as I rolled along Alii Drive.

On yet another Saturday morning, fifteen years prior, I had woken up in my illegal sublet behind the temple on Central Park West with the same auditory hallucination. I donned my weekend-Hippie clothes and walked entranced through Central Park, having not the slightest idea of where I was going, the eloquent tone poem playing out in my head all along. I exited the north end of the park and soon found myself standing before the Theosophical Society's bookstore on East 53rd Street. Although I was acquainted with Madame Blavatsky's work, and had in fact introduced Billy to it, I was not aware of bookstore's existence until then. The internal concert ended on a drawn out note just as I arrived, and for a moment I heard nothing but the Voice of the Silence. The plate glass of the front door of the shop had been shattered; or rather there was a big hole in it, about the size of a man. Fine clothes had been neatly folded and laid on the sidewalk near the door, next to a pair of expensive shoes. Turquoise and silver jewelry had been laid out on top of the brown, velvet shirt.

It dawned on me that I was looking at my friend Billy's clothes! What a coincidence. What was he doing here? Where was he? The lights were out in the store because it was closed. I peered through the broken door, and there Billy stood in the buff, arms stretched towards me with palms open. He looked into my eyes and spoke. I could barely hear him at first, as if I had been underwater and had just surfaced with clogged ears, but finally his voice came through:

"David, people are not going to understand this,” he said, and stepped outside onto the sidewalk. “Do not stay here. Get out of here. Go to my apartment and get rid of the THC. It’s where I usually keep it."

"Oh, my God!" a woman shrieked from a window across the street. "God bless him, he's borne again, he’s just a baby!"

"David, leave," Billy reiterated. "They are not going to understand."

“Why did you do this? Did you get cut? Are you hurt?” I asked, looking him over for blood.

“No. I am the messiah of the East. You will understand some day, for you are the messiah of the West. But you have to get out of here now. Just go, and don’t look back….om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum….”