Jay's Journal by Beatrice Sparks
Tina came by this afternoon. By my house! Into my room! The doc had said I was to rest as much as possible for a few days. So I was just stretched out on my bed getting into my new tape when I heard this voice . . . her voice. It was like a dream and I didn’t want to wake up. She’d gone home from school and made me chocolate chip cookies . . . isn’t that bitchin’? Tina the little homemaker, the chocolate chip baker . . . Oh the joy.
She stayed for two hours and we just talked . . . saying nothing in words . . . everything in thoughts . . .
Man, I’m so spaced out by the very thought and nearness of her. Tina and Jay . . . TINA AND JAY!
I’ve been so alone and lonely and unbelonging for so long . . .
November 14
First day for “T.”
Well today I gave my first news report for KOVO, kinda weird. “Big Sister’s” still here and still there’s the plastic “play the game” front between me and her, and underneath the hate and disgust. But of more importance, Tina and I finally came to grips about our relationship. I love her and she loves me. That’s all there is to it except that our minds are still growing and this may cause a hassle, but what will be will be.
A happiness, a hopelessness, two children on the wing
A loving look, a storybook, and sacred hymns to sing.
I have invested my heart. There is a chance that it will be broken but also a chance at unlimited happiness.
The time . . .
So—
ANOTHER
(better?)
DAY . . .
(a thousand hearts, two thousand eyes, a million tears)
away—
November 16
Isn’t it funny that down times are SO DOWN and up times are SO UP!
My relationship with Tina has never been better. My relationships at school, at home . . . I appreciate everything, everybody! They appreciate me. Mom apologized about Cistina. She knew even at the time she called her that it wasn’t right to get a family member involved in something that they should be detached about. But people do weird things when they’re under pressure. Nobody knows that better than I do.
Tina has gotten out of the supernatural kick just like I wanted her to . . . except for Derrick. She went through the bit to make him admit that he was the holder, not me. I’m trying not to think about that scene but it is strange that Derrick admitted to his parole officer that it was his shit. Why in the world would he ever have admitted that except . . . Oh Judas, I’m not going to let myself think about it, the whole thing is a bummer.
Chaddy brought me home a little handprint he’d made in clay, in primary. He made it especially for me. For my desk. What a precious, sweet, little guy. I’ve got to be a good example to him!
Today I heard about a high school forensic meet in California. I do hope I’m picked to represent our school, our state.
All my teachers are so neat they’re letting me do outside work for extra credit so I can pick up what I’ve flushed the last couple of weeks . . . or past forever . . . it seems like forever, since I’ve been in the harmonious swing of things.
November 17
I’m free. Derrick having admitted it was his shit threw the whole case. Everyone thinks he was just in my car. That I was just giving him a ride. He didn’t mention I had bought from him and I didn’t mention it either. Man, that is strange! Nobody in their right mind would have—just up and out of nowhere have something that heavy laid on them when they didn’t have to. Forget it, man . . . forget it! You can’t even understand the powers that cause television, electricity, or the telephone to work. How can you expect with your little finite mind—lay off it, baby! It’s too heavy. Think of good things, like tonight . . . the game . . . Toad . . . Tina . . . love, wonder, belonging, real belonging. Oh I’m so hungry for her, so hungry and thirsty and starved and I saw her just this afternoon . . . but I can’t see her enough, be with her enough. I wish we could get married! Did I write that? Yes I did and it’s true! Man, is it ever true! I want her for twenty-four hours of every day like I’ve never wanted anything in my life before.
1:30 A.M.
The game is over, the dance is over, goodies at the Blue Moo are over, but my life has just begun! Tina and my life has just begun! She is home in her little bed, with her covers pulled up over her little head like a child. But she is going to be my wife. She said “Yes.” It is up to me to make preparations for our future, for my taking care of her. How? I must figure out how! I don’t want to wait until I’m in college. She doesn’t either. In primitive societies people just get married when they are ready; but in our ultra supersophisticated one, first we must have the education, then we must have the money, then we must have the material necessities. Shit—none of those things are important, only love is! And I love her! She loves me! We cannot exist without each other. That is all that is important! Our happiness, our immediate and complete rapture and happiness. I’ll find a way! Together, we’ll find a way.
November 18
Man, I went against a jock from Arizona High who’s got a brain like a sword. He’s so sharp he about slaughtered me. If I do as poorly tomorrow as I did today I’m out! I know it! I can feel it. He really knocked me on my ass. Tomorrow he’ll just shove it up to my eyeballs.
Tina called, she begged me to let her use voodoo but I can’t. Man, I want to go to the Nationals so bad ! I’m tempted to try anything I can, even that! After all, what can it hurt? If it’s so much hokey-pokey I’ll just skin my ass some more. If it works? I don’t want to admit it but I know it works! It’s like faith in reverse. With faith you have to use strength to make things happen. With—whatever it is—you have to just fight yourself and your normal inclinations and cultural patterning and brainwashing and programming so that you can let your cosmic consciousness do its powerful thing.
1:43 A.M.
I met with Tina and eleven other kids at eleven-thirty. For about an hour we talked about Cosmic Consciousness. We thirteen and the universe were one. There was no division of supernatural and natural. Together we placed ourselves in harmony with the harmony that governs all the planets in space as well as the tiny atom. The consciousness that directs and controls the physical universe pulsated in every cell of our beings. We were linked with infinity and could draw upon its power at will.
Together we shredded a wanga in my opponent, Jack Fry’s name, then we all concentrated in absolute togetherness: bad vibes, physical and mental disharmony, physical sickness, mental discord. A curse, a hex, a tonoa.
November 19
I can’t believe it! I massacred Jack. The word was around even before the debate started that he had come down with a terrible cold during the night and had wanted to withdraw but his coach wouldn’t let him. It wouldn’t have mattered though if he hadn’t been, well, unfortunate (was it a coincidence?) because I was in fine form, on top of things. It was a neat feeling to verbally disarm and defeat a foe. I wonder if this is how a hit man feels in the Mafia when he’s done his job well. Oh crap, the two things don’t have anything to do with each other. I’m just mixing Gadianton robbers with reality. I’ve decided one thing—I’m not going to try to figure things out anymore! I’m just going to accept a new power like my grandparents must have accepted radio and my parents must have accepted TV.
Tina and I are closer than we’ve ever been. I think the short time apart made us even more desirous of looking only for the good in each other, working only towards our future. Made her more interested in my happiness and well-being than in her own, and made me the same about her. It’s a wonderful relationship. I support her one hundred percent as school princess and vice-president. She, in turn, is my staunchest ally in all endeavors. I feel so happy I want to go out and do something exciting, but what? Run down to the market and squeeze the Charmin?
November 21
Tina’s got me uptight again. She’s pushing the coven bit! She promises she’ll use only white witchcraft! I feel skittish about the whole thing. Astra, the Rosicr
Tina came and tapped on my window at midnight. I crawled out and we went and sat in her dad’s car and talked till almost daylight. I guess she’s got me partly, well mostly, convinced that actually her coven would be more like a clique trying to scientifically understand and learn to use powers that have long been lost to mankind, than just some kind of cult worshipping nutso group.
If we’re going to use these unknown powers just for good like we talked about (no more cutting down, even like we did on Jack Fry at the debate), if we’re just going to use it to make the most of ourselves, improve and expand our own potentials and powers and outputs and help others . . . well, it’s kind of exciting and exhilarating when I think about it in that context, even Dell and Brad would go for that.
November 24
I guess everyone is seeking answers, particularly about the supernatural, about our psychic selves, especially me and Tina and Dell and Brad.
I don’t know where Tina got so much literature but it’s like a crash course we’re taking. This search into the slumbering cosmic power that all humans possess, but few understand and use, is becoming the central theme of our lives. Cosmic Seeking does not deprive us of anything good though indeed it feeds those attributes and beliefs: our relation to God, intuition, meditation, auras, ESP, life after death, the oversoul, and multitudes of other mystical spiritual studies.
Every day at noon we thirteen will meet, maybe in groups of three or four and relive the secret of initiation, erase a little karma so we can be more liberated. Sometimes the stuff seems quite childish, other times it blows me away. Like today, we were sitting in the last booth at the Blue Moo, and nobody else was around. Tina pulled both the knife and the fork across the table by mental magnetism, then knocked six cups, over by the kitchen, off the shelf, onto the floor, one by one. She’s positively fantastic, and doesn’t seem to have to concentrate very hard at all anymore. I can sometimes do it but it drains me completely, in fact doesn’t seem worth the price. Tina keeps assuring me it will come, in time, which is probably right, because all things that one persists in doing become easier, not that the thing changes, but that the person’s ability to do increases.
Sometimes, just to test our powers, we choose a person and for instance concentrate on his neck; within seconds he’s scratching like something bit him or something. It’s an amazing force! We must always remember that and be very careful to use it in the right way. That is the important thing! Tina says that’s the trouble with black witchcraft, they are prostituting a wondrous jurisdiction. I’m going to use all the power I can get to reach the goals I’ve set for next year.
I must not give myself too much, yet enough to keep me stimulated, alert, and ever with an open and curious mind! It has become my conclusion that as people grow older they close themselves into their own little worlds, indeed lock themselves in! Shut the windows of their eyes, bolt the exit and entry of their ears. They are not looking for new ideas, concepts, powers, indeed they will not accept them if they are presented. Not so with me! Forever I will be looking towards the infinite, the unknown, the evolving, the omnipresent, the omnipotent. My mind and my being will be open. I will search . . . and search . . . and search!
One time when I was young and we were out camping, Dad stumbled across a new cave. With a rope he scrambled down into the hole, literally just a gash in the ground, then asked me and my cousins to jump down to him in the darkness. None of them dared to but me. Sure I was afraid, afraid as hell, yet curious beyond my ability to bear. Besides, I trusted Dad. I knew he wouldn’t let me dash myself against the rugged rocks as I am sure my cousins, standing in the bright rim of sunshine up above, thought he would. No, my father caught me in his arms and together, with his small flashlight, we explored caverns and subterranean grottos, each more beautiful than the one before it. A miniature Carlsbad Caverns, with stalactites and stalagmites, reaching down to the floor and up to the ceiling. The colors were muted and eerie and an occasional bat flopped in the air high above our heads. We passed chasmal, gaping, yawning holes, some with the sounds of water gurgling in their depths.
It was my experience! . . . MINE ALONE . . . because I dared to take it! Dared to tackle the unknown! I dare to do it now! Dare pull my metal pen towards me from its holder without physical help, I cause the candle on my desk to burn higher or lower as my mental strength controls the amount of oxygen it is given, or whatever the explanation to the phenomenon is. A phenomenon only because I do not understand the principle upon which it works. I will not be afraid of things I do not understand!
I think of the caveman, surely he must have considered fire magic, and been afraid, as has mankind with each great step of science taken since that time.
I will not be among the blind! Or those who will not see or hear!
My rituals each night become more amazing! How grateful I am to Tina for bringing me into this new dimension.
I love her more than life or death
Or lives beyond this life.
Existence could not be,
On any plane,
Without her smile;
The tender look upon her face.
As master-slave we’ll bring extension
To the human race.
Tina has found a spot where we can meet regularly. It’s so difficult practicing our arts in areas where unbelievers may interrupt at any time. She says once we can concentrate and use our disciplines completely we will see miraculous growth in our abilities and controls.
November 27
I hate the superstitious namby-pamby of having to have thirteen people, and the candle and crap, but I guess it’s like having to add the extra two spoonsful of flour to a cake mix when you live at a high altitude, so it won’t fall in the middle. Little seemingly unimportant laws govern big things and their outcome. Anyway, somehow Tina got the key to a little supply shack just next to the cemetery. It doesn’t have any windows but it does have a small coal stove so I guess we’re set for a place, especially since I’m sure it’s rarely used except in the summer, for mowing and weeding and fertilizing supplies. Anyway, the place isn’t important, although she acts like it is, it’s just having privacy.
We are entering into a strange new world. The people around us are so fascinated with life on other planets and yet they do not even try to know the wonders of the unknown that are right now, right here on this one.
Tonight we put Tina in a suspended state. Glen had brought his dad’s stethoscope and blood pressure thing and there was no sign of life, no heartbeat, no pulse. When we lifted the lids of her eyes they were as blank as those of a dead cat or any other deceased creature I’ve ever seen. I’ll never let her do that again. In case something goes wrong. We’re not into it enough to control the unknown. We can make things happen but we don’t know the cause . . . only the effect. It’s too dangerous, especially for her.
I’m into cutting myself and being mentally able to slow down or speed up or even stop the bleeding altogether. It’s fascinating! What a priceless boon this will be to medicine. No medication, only one’s control over their own body! What miracles have we stumbled across? They must be used for good when we understand them a little more and can present them intelligently to the outside. These new concepts are so stimulating! So challenging, so exciting!
It’s strange how the occult works, though. Twice I’ve tried to present these unknown powers that we are experimenting with to adults in a scientific atmosphere, once to my science teacher Mr. Baugh, and once to my seminary teacher, just to show my control of my own body, but I guess there was so much unbelief and mockery in the atmosphere that I couldn’t work against it or I was so nervous and
I just found out there is a Dr. Hans Enger at UCLA who’s becoming accepted and respected in working with phenomena. He’s only one of many around the country. He says he has successfully used “energy healing” on scores of patients, even though he admits he has no idea why the procedures work.
In one spectacular demonstration he showed his technique by relieving the throbbing pains of a lady who suffered an agonizing nerve disorder of the neck and face and head.
This lady, a desperate Jane Elliot of Wood River, Ill., said, “He stood over me and put his hand above my head. Immediately I felt this tremendous charge of electricity pass through me, like the lightbulb into the socket. Then the pain seemed to scatter.”
For ten days Dr. Enger treated her, then she was “entirely free of pain.”