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In February the visions began. There had been one harbinger on the cliff at Big Sur and another in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, but now they became a routine part of my daily life. None can pierce the vast black veil uncertain, the poet said, Because there is no light behind the curtain. Oh, but the light, the light, the light, the light is there! And it lit my winter days. At first the visions came over me no more often than once every twenty-four hours, and they came unasked, like epileptic fits, usually in the late afternoon or Just before midnight, signaling themselves with a glow at the back of my skull, a warmth, a tickling that would not go away. But soon I understood the techniques for invoking them, and I could summon them at will. Even then I was able to see at most once a day, with a prolonged period of recuperation required afterward. Within a few weeks, though, I became capable of entering the seeing state more readily—two or even three times a day—as if the power were a muscle that thrived with use. Eventually the interval of recuperation became minimal. Now I can turn the gift on every fifteen minutes if I feel like it. Once, experimentally, toward the early part of March, I tried it—on-off, on-off—constantly for several hours, tiring myself but not diminishing the intensity of what I saw.

If I don’t evoke the visions at least once a day they come to me anyway, breaking through of their own accord, pouring unbidden into my mind.