I am lying on the floor looking up into a glass dome. It sheds autumn light into a central hallway off which there are doors and passageways. The hall has heavy woollen rugs, carved oak archways, a gigantic model of the globe, and grotesquely ornate wallpaper. I can hear the ancient plumbing creak.
The curved dome has sixteen gores – tapering outer panels reaching up and over, closed like a protective glass bud above the hallway. Below them, at high ceiling height, a flat circle provides a glass floor to the dome, divided into twelve sections. At the centre is a carved rose with eight petals. This is sacred geometry. The numbers beat with each other in musical syncopation.
Tuning in, I can hear and smell our dinner being made – the kitchen is astir with aubergine and sumac. I can hear Shakti sisters coming and going barefoot and sockfoot, making each other tea, sharing confidences. The place is astir with goddess love, flooded by it. If I forget to breathe, will I drown? But we are swimming in it, spinning in it, turning backflips – front crawl, butterfly. Breast stroke.
Tune in further. Can you hear the ringing of the now bell? Shakti sisters from beforetime are also here. I hear now and beforetime bedroom doors open and close. Shrieks of lingerie panic. A Shakti sister is coming down the stairs in a black shining basque and carrying a whip. There are whoops and cheers. A Shakti sister is coming down the stairs all dressed up in rustling satin, nerves tense and alight at the prospect of shedding their clothes, their prohibitions and their shame. Another swirls and is photographed at the head of the stairs clothed in an inner energy and an outer dress that their ex-husband did not, could not, would not see. But her sisters do and this hallway still echoes with loving applause.
Another Shakti sings opera under the glass dome. I lie and listen to the echo of this beforetime me in this place. In the now, I am lying on the floor looking up into the dome, examining how its sacred geometry beats with musical syncopation. I try to beat out the syncopation on the floor, but my hands want a simpler rhythm today. And hark, hark, the now bell is ringing in the now. It is time to go and play the game of saying who we are.