Purple Light Farm

The Sun of Man has just poked its head above the horizon at 2 Lavender Lane. Of what was Yuma, Arizona, World.

The morning call has begun: Madonna’s Borderline plays over the communal loudspeakers. We wake to greet the day that shall be had at Purple Light Farm.

Borderline. Madonna - may her soul rest with Ascended - pushes my love. She pushes the love I have for my Inner through our perfect corner of what is left of the World. Most of all, She pushes my love for Ascended into my tender frame so that I might rise anew this dawn.

It happens almost in an instant now. I wake as the first of Her cadences grace my ears. Of course this is how it’s supposed to be. For I have reached Ten Year. I have been educated in the ways of Purple. One bubble from Her song of our hearts and I am lifted into flowing crescendo; out of my cubby bunk, into my fresh linen costume and out to the fields of my Keeper: Father Long.

Grace be eternal. Grace be Purple. Grace be the light.

Madonna’s Borderline wakes us each morning because it is Father’s favourite song. Borderline is the song Father first fell in love to in the Before Time. Borderline is too what let Him fall back in love with life after the World ended. Most importantly, Borderline connects Father to the strength of Ascended, so he may nurture the Maidens that now make Purple their home.

Father says Borderline is about Ascended’s love for us. Its melodies bind us and give us the courage to cultivate a family as pure and interwoven as the lavender we grow under Ascended’s wooden masthead sign: Purple Light Farm.

∞

My name is Sayr. This is the name Father was given for me by Ascended when I was saved. It is the name my Vessel shall be known by throughout my Education at Purple. It is the name I will be called when I am Chosen.

My real name was Jesse. I am allowed to keep this name in my Silent Heart. But I mustn’t share it with another soul so long as I live again. Not with the other Maidens. Never again with Father. Especially not with visitors from the Common Fold. That is the sort of thing that could leave you unChosen.

Jesse is the one thing that is just mine from the time before Purple. Father believes we must all know where we came from. Even if we can never go back. This is the cure for Shame.

Grace be eternal. Grace be Purple. Grace be the light.

∞

When we arrived at Purple - the twenty-four other Maidens and I that now make Light Farm our home - we became pupils of Ascended. Father Long is Ascended’s chosen Messenger, our Teacher and Keeper. We are not to regard Father as our savior. That is what the Common Fold believes Father to be. But that is because they don’t have access to Ascended. That is because they are not Pure.

Through Father, Ascended teaches us how to be Pure. Once you have become and can sustain Purity, your Vessel emits a purple light. Only Ascended and Father can see this light. This light is what lets Father and Ascended know we are practicing our Education, dutifully. Once our light has been bright and steady for 222 days we are ready to be Chosen: to be chosen for humanity.

∞

To an outside observer, it would appear that we spend each day at Purple in precisely the same way:

After rising to Borderline, we take our morning meal of two eggs and mash grain, then tend to the lavender fields until mid-morning. Before the Yuma heat might brown us, we head back to the cubby huts for exercise ritual, followed by our lavender bath, and then Education through the afternoon. At mid-eve we eat the meal of life, slowly for exactly twenty-two minutes, before it is time to wash our linen gown in lavender soak and hang it to dry for morning. Lastly, we gather our allotted lavender sprigs for sleep.

Ascended uses Four Ways to educate us in Purity through this daily sequence. We are taught these in Education: Word, Even, Mind and Body.

Word means to always use language as precise and pure as possible.

Even means everything is done evenly.

Mind means to mind your emotions. We are taught what each emotion capable of being experienced means and how to effectively and immediately resolve it. This is how we learn not to stray from our Inner for even a fraction of a second. Inner is Purity.

Body means perfecting our Vessel by contacting our Inner and feeling Ascended in each turn our flesh takes through time.

As we practice the same tasks in the same sequence each day of each year, we get cumulatively closer to sustained Purple until we reach Inner Purity.

∞

Ascended teaches that when you stray from the Four Ways of your Education, you experience Clash. Clash can be the mixing of emotions, of Common Fold and Inner knowledge, of odd and even numbers. Worst of all, it can be a mixing of the Before and Now Time. This is the most potent of Clashes. Yet, truly any Clash leads to a diming and unpurpling of your light.

Left unchecked, Clashing increases your chances of being unChosen. If you cannot be Chosen you are cast out and left to fend un-nurtured in the wilderness of the aftertimes.

Grace be eternal. Grace be Purple. Grace be the light.

∞

For the past twenty-two days, I, Sayr, confess that I have not been able to rid my sleep-self of the Before Time. I have seen where Father found me at six: the flooded Church basement where, in secret, He paid for my salvation, so that my innocence and orphan-hood could not be bartered by the Common Fold for mercy. No, I am not supposed to remember that the world flooded in the Great Undying Heat. I am not meant to understand that those who could not afford to move to the last inhabitable pieces of high ground were reclaimed, as my parents were, by Ascended himself.

No. I am to remain here at Purple Light Farm.

Yet in my dreams, the parents that raised me before the World ended have come to me. They’ve giggled the name Jesse, while feeding me Kraft Dinner on something call a spoon. The powerful, almost lustful specificity of the flavors and scents of this dreamtime Kraft, threaten to make the plain meal and sprout we eat at Purple taste bland and ungrateful. Plus spoons are forbidden here, as they are singular. Two hands to mouth, one Inner to Ascended.

Grace be eternal. Grace be Purple. Grace be the light.

∞

I have tried to extinguish my Clash through more diligent grounding in the Four Ways. This has proved ineffective.

Father has noticed my dimming. He spoke to me before lavender wash two nights ago. He is worried. He knows I am due to have sustained Purple by now. Plus it is nearly spring when the Common Fold Elite will arrive; that we might leave Maidenhood behind and be Chosen for Motherhood.

Through my ceaseless dreams, Ascended shows me that Clashes are a weed that grow deep within. They become as insidious as the purslane and burr clover we pull from the lavender hedge-rows, lest they choke our essential light supply.

Most unscrupulous of all, the lavender I bring to bed each night has changed. Lavender is the unspoken cure for nighttime Clashes. Two extra strands and it is understood you’re struggling with the night hours. Such a remedy is almost always required in your first few months at Purple: a sign you haven’t yet learned how to rid yourself of the Before.

Extra lavender is passible perhaps until the end of Education 1. After that, two extra sprigs may be used sporadically, when one is working through a particularly difficult Clash. But more than two, or two more too often – this can be cause for dimming: a sign you are unwilling to trust Ascended’s power to guide your Inner.

I have brought four extra sprigs to bed for the past twelve nights. This is unacceptable. I have Shame that not even Madonna can shake from me each dawn. I cannot recognize my Inner. It seems I have become Clash through and through.

Thankfully, one of the other Maidens discovers my nighttime hoard and informs Father. Father Long, face ashen with disappointment and uncertainty, brings me into his hut for words: an attempt to resolve the uncomfortable emotions my actions have spurned. We agree I know the price for my offence against Inner and Ascended.

The consequence is Solitary: one last chance, without distraction, to save my Inner from returning to the Common Fold.

∞

I go to Solitary without any lavender that night. I pray with desperate fear to Ascended before I shiver into bed undone.

I dream a singular dream. Of a black book, hidden in a stack of others just like it, kept under Father Long’s bed. Ascended shows me the book that is mine and I know, as clearly as my Inner has ever known anything, that this book is the answer to my Clash.

I awake in darkness long before Borderline will chime. I am moved through pure determination, past the chill of the night air, to the door of Father’s hut. I open it without hesitation. My Vessel moves toward my book as if propelled by Ascended himself.

I have but barely felt the gift from Ascended in my two anointed hands, before the room alights with Gaslamp and Father’s rage. In terror, He grabs my wrists.

My slight black book, made clearly of material lasted from the Before Time, falls to the floor. It opens to a rectangular leaf of paper, upon which are etched the same black marks we learn to make in Education 3. Through the dim I can make out a two and four careful zeros inscribed on what I will learn is a cheque. Perfectly even.

Our eyes meet in an emotion I have not yet been taught.

“What is it Father?”

He does not answer my question directly, as Ascended requires. “Sayr, how did you know this was here?”

I bleat the only truth I know. “I dreamed it Father. I dreamed it was the answer to my Clash. I am so very sorry.”

There are no words left to describe what is unfolding in time as we are stuck there in it.

I know so clearly: I will not be Chosen now. As my eyes stray from the black marks to Father, I see my unconscionable deed reflected in his pale eyes.

“My child, you do not know the price for this.”

“Father.” I brace myself for my last Education.

“Jesse, what you’ve found is your birth book – a ledger of your life. This marked sheet, it is the money you would be sent away with were you to leave Purple Light Farm unChosen.”

This name is a choice.

“Father, will I still be Chosen?”

“No Jesse. You cannot be Chosen now.”

Tears flow and I cannot resolve them. I am blended, fully clashed. Yet I do not feel shame. I feel free.

“You are yours now Jesse. You have learned to listen in a way that cannot be taught. Not even here. Now you get to choose. You are free to live the truth that lies beyond Purple Light Farm.”

“Father, I don’t understand. What could that be?”

Father Long stoops to the floor and returns with my book. “When you know, write it down here. To make it real. So that you’ll never lose sight again.”

I nod and open the first page.

It is prepared for me in comfort: Grace be eternal. Grace be Purple. Grace be the light.