Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

For a house so close to a big city, Pamela's home in the Dopana Valley was the most secluded place in the middle of a five-acre field that had been neglected for lack of care. It becomes a vegetation-covered wasteland; jacarandas, lemon trees, grape vines, blackberry bushes, etc., all grow unchecked and tangled together. It's time for you to prune.They were winding their way to her house in her SUV, Jeff said.She drives the four-wheel drive with ease and confidence, not realizing or caring how out of step she is in her smart gray dress and nail polish.Although she puts her fitted coat on the backseat and kicks her shoes aside to operate the clutch, she still looks like she should be in an insurance company's conference room rather than driving a dirt road into a deserted valley.

That's how they grow.She shrugged.If I wanted a decent garden, I'd live in Beverly Hills. Then you will waste a lot of good fruit. I buy whatever fruit I want at the farmers market. He didn't continue the topic.It was her own land, and she could do what she wanted, but Jeff couldn't help but be a little annoyed at the waste of money.He didn't know much about her yet.After briefly confirming his suspicion that she, too, was born again, she insisted on hearing his story from beginning to end, interrupting him frequently to wring more details from him.Of course, he left out a lot, especially some of the things he had experienced with Shara, but he hadn't heard her speak about her own experience yet.But he could clearly see that Pamela was full of contradictions.It makes perfect sense; he's full of contradictions himself.Who among them is not?

The house was modestly but comfortably furnished, with oak-beamed ceilings and a large picture window looking out over the woods on her estate and beyond to the sea.Like her office, the walls of the house are covered with framed mandalas, ranging from Wajo Indian to Mayan to Central Indian.Near the window was a large desk stacked with stacks of books and notebooks, and in the middle stood a bulky gray-green machine with an egg screen, keyboard, and printer.He frowned at it puzzled.What was she doing buying a home computer so early?At that time there was no That's not a computer, Pamela said.Wang An 1200 word processor, the earliest one.No disk drive, only cassettes, but still faster than a typewriter.How about a beer?

good.He's still a little shocked that she knew so quickly what he was thinking when he looked at that machine.The man in front of him had an intellectual frame of reference as extraordinary as he did, and it took him a while to get used to it after decades. The refrigerator is there, she pointed to the refrigerator and said, I'm going to change my clothes and get me a bottle by the way.She walked towards the back of the house with her shoes in hand.Jeff found the kitchen and opened two bottles of Beck's beer. He pored over her bookshelf and record collection for a while.She doesn't seem to read much novels, nor does she listen to much pop music.Most of the books are biographical, scientific, or related to the business side of the film industry; recordings are mostly Bach, Handel, Vivaldi.

Pamela returned to the living room in faded jeans and a baggy USC sweatshirt, took a beer from him, and plopped down on the overstuffed recliner.That thing you said about the plane, the one that almost crashed, was really stupid, you know. What do you want to say? Towards the end of my second life, when I knew it would start all over again, I memorized a list of crashes from 1963 onwards.Hotel fires, train wrecks, earthquakes, all major disasters I have memorized. I also thought about doing the same thing. You should do it.Anyway, what's next?What have you done since that incident? He sat down on a sofa chair across from her and began to explain the last nine years of his self-imposed exile; Fascinated by him, he sees life withering just for reproduction, buds and green fruits blooming endlessly from the withered vines of the previous year.

She nods thoughtfully, focusing on a delicate and intricate drawing of a mandala.Have you read Hindu philosophy?she asked. "Rigveda"? The Upanishads? I have only read Bhagavad Gita.A long time ago. You and I, Arjuna, she recites without difficulty, we have lived many lives.I remember everything you forgot.There was a warm light in her eyes.I sometimes think they are saying exactly what we experience: that we are not reincarnated on a linear time scale, but as a small part of the history of the world as a whole, living repeated lives from time to time until we understand what is happening and return to the normal flow of time.

But we're aware of it, and it continues to happen. Maybe it will go on until everyone understands.she said quietly. I don't think so; we all figure it out pretty quickly, it's just a matter of admitting it or not.But everyone else lives according to the same pattern. Except for those whose lives are affected by us.We can cause change. Jeff sneered, so you and I are prophets and saviors? She looked out at the ocean, maybe. He sat up straight in his chair and stared at her.Wait, isn't that what your movie is about, getting people ready for it?Are you planning to I'm not sure what the plan is, not yet.Your presence changed everything.This is something I hadn't expected before.

What are you trying to do, start a goddamn cult?you don't know what kind of disaster it's going to be I do not know anything!She flew into a rage.I'm as lost as you are, and I just want my life to have some meaning.Do you want to just give up without even trying to figure things out?OK, let's go!Go back to your bloody farm and live the life of the walking dead, but don't tell me what to do with it, okay? I just want to offer advice.For now, is there anyone else you would like to be qualified to offer advice on? She frowned at him in displeasure, a look of unabated anger.We'll talk about that later.Now, do you want to hear my story or not?

Jeff sat back on the soft cushion and watched her carefully.Of course I want to.He said in a calm tone.He didn't know what would make her suddenly angry.But he can understand the journey she must have gone through, so he can be considerate. She nodded her head, a little abruptly.I'm going to get two more beers. The next thing Jeff knew, Pamela.Phillips was born in 1949 in Westport, Connecticut, the son of a successful real estate agent.She had a normal childhood, no major ailments, and the joys and sorrows of adolescence that belonged to ordinary people.She was an art student at Bard College in the late 1960s, and like any young woman of her generation, she did a lot of drugs, went to the Washington demonstrations, and slept everywhere.As expected, she rehabilitated not long after Nixon stepped down, married a lawyer, moved to New York, and had two children, a boy and a girl.She prefers to read romance novels, draws pictures for self-entertainment in her spare time, and engages in charity activities from time to time.Worrying about not having a career of her own, she occasionally smokes a weed after the kids are in bed and does cardio to stay in shape.Died of a heart attack at thirty-nine.It was October of 1988.

what day in october?Jeff asked. The eighteenth, the same day as your heart attack, but at fifteen past one. Nine minutes later.he grinned.You see a little more of the future than I do. It almost brought a smile to her face.For nine dull minutes, she said, nothing happened but death. where do you wake up In the rec room at my parents' house.The TV was on, playing My Little Maggie on repeat.I'm fourteen. God, then why are you and your parents at home? My mother is out shopping, and my father is still off work.I wandered around the house in a daze, spending an entire hour checking my closet for clothes, going through my lost college journal and looking at myself in the mirror.I can't stop crying.I thought I was dead, God was going to make me look at my life one last time in this strange way.I was terrified of the front door because I really thought that if I just walked out the front door, I was going to heaven or hell or the netherworld or something.

Are you a Catholic? No, it was just these kinds of blurry images and fears swirling in my head at the time.Oblivion is a better word, and I really thought that if I went outside, I would find myself in a thick fog and nothing but death.Then my mom came home and walked in through the door that I was terrified of.I thought she was a ghost in disguise to drag me to my death, so I started screaming. It took my mom a long time to calm me down.She called the family doctor, and when he got home, he gave me an injection of anesthesia, possibly with cetine, and then I passed out.When I woke up again, my dad was there, standing beside my bed looking down at me with a worried face, and I think that was the first time I started to understand that I wasn't really dead.He wanted me to lie in bed, but I ran downstairs, opened the front door, and walked out into the yard in my pajamas. Of course, everything was normal.The surrounding environment is just as I remember it.The next door neighbor's dog bounced up to me and started licking my hand, which for some reason made me cry again. For the next week, I stayed at home and did not go to school.I feigned illness in my room, doing nothing but thinking. At first I tried to figure out what was going on, but it didn't take long before I decided it was a hopeless mission.Then, as the days passed and nothing changed, I began to think about what I should do in the future. Remember, I don't have those choices like you; I'm only fourteen years old, live at home, and just went to junior high.There was no way to play the horses or move to Paris.I'm stuck. That must have sucked.Jeff said sympathetically. It sucks, but I always get over it.I do not have any choice.I became I forced myself to be a little girl again and forget everything I went through in my first life: my college, married life my kids. She paused, looking down at the floor.Jeff thought of Gretchen, and he reached out to put his hand on Pamela's shoulder.She avoided his touch, so he stopped. All in all, she went on, weeks and months later, the first experience of existence seemed to fade from mind.It seemed to be just a long dream.I went back to school and started re-learning everything like I had never read it before.I turned into a shy and reserved nerd, not at all like the first time.I never go out on dates and hang out with the kids I know.Because they always bring back memories and impressions of them as grown-ups, which I can't bear.I want to erase all these memories and pretend that I never knew these things. Have you ever told anyone? She nodded after taking a sip of beer.Shortly after my sober screaming incident, my parents sent me to see a psychiatrist.After a few sessions, I thought I could trust her, so I started explaining what happened to her.She was always smiling, softly encouraging me to go on, and acting understanding, but I knew she actually thought it was all my fantasy.Of course that's exactly what I wanted to believe and so we all got our wish.Until I told her about the Kennedy incident a week before it happened. This completely discouraged her.She lost her temper and refused to continue seeing me.I had described the assassination to her in minute detail, but she couldn't face the truth, she couldn't face the fact that my fantasy had suddenly come true in the most horrific and devastating way imaginable. Pamela looked at Jeff silently for a moment.This thing terrified me too.she continued.I was terrified not only because I knew he was going to be shot, but also because I was sure the only killer was Lee.Harvey.Oswald.I've never heard of Nelson.Bennett Of course I had no idea you went to Dallas and how you got involved Since then my whole idea of ​​reality has changed.It was as if one minute I knew everything about the future and suddenly I knew nothing.I am in a different world with different rules.Anything could happen. My parents would die, a nuclear war would break out, or, on the simplest level, I could be completely different from who I was in a previous life or who I imagined I had been. So instead of Bard, I went to Columbia, where I majored in biology and then went to medical school.Life in medical school is tough.I had never paid so much attention to science before, my training in my first life was all in the arts.But also because of that, things got a lot more interesting because I wasn't just repeating stuff I'd read before.I was studying a completely different field, a whole new world, like my new life. I don't have a lot of social time, but during my residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, I met a young plastic surgeon who, well, I don't mean he really reminded me of my first husband, but He has the same passion, inner drive.Only this time, we have something in common: a dedication to medicine.Before, I hardly knew what my husband was doing every day. He assumed that I was not interested in these things and never discussed his legal work with me.But it's the exact opposite of David's plastic surgeon.We can talk about anything. Jeff gave her a questioning look.you mean No, no, I never told him what happened to me, he just thought I was crazy.I was still trying to get it out of my mind.I want to bury all the memories and pretend it never happened. Immediately after my residency ended, I married David.He was from Chicago, so we moved back there and he started a private practice and I worked in the intensive care unit at Children's Memorial.Since losing my own baby irretrievably well you know what it's like I've been avoiding having kids but I've got a whole hospital of kids and they're like my sons and daughters and they need me so much and they're anyway, this Work is extremely rewarding, just the kind of job I dreamed about as a deeply frustrated housewife, where I could use my intellect, I could make the world a better place and save people's lives Her voice gradually Faint until inaudible.She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. Then you die.Jeff said softly. Yes, I am dead again.I was fourteen again, totally helpless, and nothing the hell could change. He wanted to tell her how thoroughly he understood everything she said, that when she knew that the sick and dying children in her care were doomed to suffer again, and that her efforts to help them were in vain, That deep pain; but words are not needed now.Her pain was written all over her face, and he was the only person in the world who could understand the deep loss. Why don't we take a break, Jeff suggested, and go get something to eat?You can continue telling me the rest of the story after dinner. good.She said she was grateful to Jeff for interrupting her recollection.I can get something to eat here. No need.We saw some seafood restaurants on the Pacific Coast Highway just now, why not try one of them? I don't mind cooking, really Jeff shook his head.I insist.I am treating you to dinner. Well I have to go get another change. Jeans are fine.Wear some shoes if you want to be formal. For the first time since he had seen her, Pamela smiled. They dine outdoors in a secluded spot on the deck overlooking the crashing waves.As the two sipped coffee with citrus wine after dinner, the moon was hanging high in the Pacific Ocean. The reflection on the tall glass windows at the back of the restaurant seemed at first glance as if the white celestial body had merged with the dark ocean. Look, Jeff said, pointing to the dreamlike scene, it's like The Star Sea poster, I know.Where do you think I got the inspiration for this piece? amazing.Jeff smiled while raising his glass to toast her.Pamela hesitated for a moment, then raised her glass and touched Jeff's glass lightly. Did you really like that movie?she asked.Or is that just your ruse to find out who I am? You asked a lot of questions, he said sincerely, you know how good this movie is.I was as deeply moved as anyone else, though I know no one will be as shocked as I am when this movie comes out. Now you know how I felt when I first learned that someone I had never heard of killed JFK.What do you think this event signifies?Why did the assassination happen despite your efforts? Jeff shrugged.Two possibilities.First, maybe there really was a big conspiracy to murder Kennedy, and Oswald was just one of those lowly, unworthy characters.The mastermind had already placed Bennett aside to prevent the plan from going awry, and there may be more backups besides.Until Jack.Everything was pre-arranged until Ruby killed the person responsible for the assassination mission.For those behind the scenes, the exclusion of Oswald from the plan was a minor inconvenience.No matter what I did, Kennedy would still die, and the whole plan was too seamless for anyone or anything, no matter who they were, to stand in the way. This is possible one.Maybe the second is not so special, but it has a deeper meaning to you and me, and I am more inclined to believe it. What could be two? That is, it is impossible for us to use foreknowledge to influence the changes of big history, and there is a limit to what we can do.I don't know what the boundaries are or how they are imposed, but I think they exist. But you built an international conglomerate.You own a lot of big companies and have never been connected to before None of that really had an impact on how things worked out overall, Jeff said, and these companies still exist, making the same products, employing the same people.All I did was change the flow of the profit a little so that it flowed into my pocket.My own life has indeed changed dramatically, but in the larger picture, what I have done is insignificant.Most people outside of the financial circle, including you, don't even know that there is someone like me. Pamela twisted the napkin thoughtfully.What about "Star Sea"?Most people in the world know this movie.I introduced a new concept, a new perspective on the relationship between human beings and the universe. Arthur.Knight's comment on Variety, right? She raised her hand to hide her blush. I read all the reviews for this movie before coming to see you.It's a good movie, thanks to you, but it's mostly just entertainment. She gave him a moonlit glance that conveyed anger and frustrated pride.It can create more things.It can be a start. She stops talking and calms down.It doesn't matter.I'm not as pessimistic about our capabilities as you are, so let's stop here.Now, would you like to hear about my second rebirth?Rebirth, that's what you call these cycles, right? The way I see it, it's a good name.Do you want to continue? You've told me all about what happened to you, and I'll let you know my story so far. what's next? I don't know, she said, we seem to have very different attitudes about what to do next. But we don't have anyone else to discuss with, do we? Let me finish half of the story first, shall I?She had torn the napkin to shreds, which she now stuffed in the ashtray. Come on, Jeff said to her, another drink?Or another napkin? She gave him a sharp look, trying to see if there was a sarcasm in his face, but when she couldn't find it, she nodded.Jeff drew a circle in the air with his hand, signaling the waitress to bring another round of citrus wine. When I died the second time, Pamela began to say, I was furious.I woke up at my parents' house and found myself fourteen years old again.I knew immediately what was going on, although I still didn't know why.I just want something to smash.I want to scream, out of anger not fear.Like you said how you felt on your third rebirth.Medical school, the hospital, all the kids I took care of, it all seemed like a waste, it all meant nothing. I became very rebellious and even treated my family members with viciousness.I've been an adult longer than my parents combined, married twice and once worked as a physician.But here I am legally just a child with no rights or choices.So I stole some money from my parents and ran away.But the situation is miserable and no one will rent me an apartment, and I can't find a job. Girls that age can't do anything on their own, except live on the street, and I don't want to send myself into that hell.So I crawled back home to Westport, exhausted and alone.When I got back to school, I despised it all the time, and I skipped most of my classes because I couldn't bear to recite the same thing for the third time, those goddamn algebraic formulas. They sent me to the same psychiatrist I had seen before, the same one who was devastated when she found out that I had predicted the Kennedy assassination.This time I didn't tell her the truth.I had read most of the standard textbooks on child development and psychology by then, so I fed her the standard answers, which I knew could make me look like a slightly derailed teenager, just in transition and still pretty normal mentally . When the waitress brought the drinks, she paused, and did not resume her story until the girl was gone. In order to maintain at least part of my sanity, I returned to my original hobby, drawing.As long as I opened my mouth, my parents would buy me anything, so I asked them to buy painting tools.They're very proud of my art, and it's the only thing I do that they see as constructive.They didn't care that I'd been stealing gin from their liquor cabinet, hanging out with men in their twenties until midnight, and being put on academic probation every semester.They almost gave up trying to control me.They saw behind my disordered behavior a force too powerful, wayward, for them to handle.But I have talent, that's for sure.I put my heart and soul into painting, just as I did when I wanted to be a doctor.What they can't ignore my efforts, no one can ignore. I dropped out of high school when I was seventeen, and my parents found me an art school in Boston, where they read my portfolio and accepted me, regardless of my terrible grades.I started to shine in school and I could finally live as an adult again.I shared a loft with a schoolmate from the same school, started dating my composition advisor, and painted day and night.My work is filled with strange, sometimes brutal images: crippled children falling into black vortexes, photoreal close-ups of ants parading out of surgical wounds, intense imagery, anything you can imagine What a gifted girl can do.Nobody knows how to understand me. When I was twenty, I had my first art exhibition in New York.I met Dustin at the show, he bought two of my paintings, and we went for a drink after the gallery closed.He told me he had Dustin?Jeff interrupted her narrative. Dustin.Hoffman. that actor? right.All in all, he liked my drawings and I always liked his movies. Midnight Cowboy had just come out that year and I had to keep reminding myself not to mention anything to him about Kramer vs. Kramer or Slim The matter of Ladies and Gentlemen.There was an immediate spark between us.We started dating regularly whenever the other person was in New York.We got married a year later. Jeff couldn't hide his pleasant surprise.You marry Dustin.Hoffman? Yes, in one version of his life, she said with a hint of exasperation, he was a good guy, very smart.Of course, now he only knows that I'm a writer and producer, and he doesn't know anything about us being together for seven years.I just ran into him at a party last month.It's a strange feeling, looking at someone you've been so close to for so long and he doesn't know about it. Anyway, on the whole it was a good marriage.We respect each other and support each other's goals. I continue to paint and achieve moderate success.My most famous painting is a triptych called Echoes from Past and Future Selves.it is God, yes!I saw this painting at the Whitney Museum during a trip to NYC with my third wife, Judy!She loves the painting, yes, but she doesn't understand why I'm completely drawn to it.Damn, I also bought reproductions and framed them to hang over my desk at home!That's when I heard your name. Well, that was my last good drawing.Somehow my talent dried up after that.I want to express too many things, but maybe I dare not, maybe I can no longer express them vividly on the canvas.I don't know if art turned its back on me, or if I failed art, but basically I stopped painting around 1975 or so.That was also the year Dustin and I divorced.No big fights, our marriage is coming to an end, we both know it.Just like my paintings. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I was already halfway through that rebirth, and I knew that everything I had achieved would be wiped out years later.So I became a passerby, roaming the world, and like Roman.Polanski, Lauren.Hutton and Sam.Shepp (Annotation: Lauren Hutton (Lauren Hutton), the most famous model and actor in the United States in the 1970s; Sam Shepard (Sam Shepard), an American playwright, actor director.) and the like.Among these people, there is a community that allows people to stop for a while, a network of relationships, where you can find interesting but never too close friendships, you can stop or start again at any time, everything depends on your mood , or which country you were in at the time.Such a relationship is no big deal. Nothing is a big deal.Jeff said.I've felt that way too, more than once. It's a depressing way of life, Pamela said.There is an illusion of freedom and openness, but after a while everything becomes a blur.The people I met, the cities I stayed in, all kinds of thoughts and faces all belong to the fickle reality, and I can never see the true face clearly, and I can never find a way out. I see what you mean.Jeff said he thinks about the dewy years he spent with Shara. This approach seems to be suitable for our situation, but it is only suitable in theory, and it does not work in practice. That's right.At any rate, I drifted like this for several years, and when the time came I rented a secluded cottage in Mallorca.Lived there for a month, just waiting to die.I made a promise to myself that during that month, I decided that the next time, which is this life, must be different.I gotta make an impact in the world, I gotta make things change. Jeff looked at her suspiciously.You did it when you were a doctor, but the child you healed was doomed to suffer again the next time you reborn.Nothing has changed. She shook her head impatiently.This is a false analogy.In the hospital, I'm just tinkering with a small group of people.Only related to the body, and limited in scope.The intention is well-intentioned, but meaningless. Now you want to save the collective soul of the world? I want to wake the world up to what's going on.I'm going to teach them to be aware of these cycles, just like you and me.This is the only way, only then we, you and I, can break out of this pattern, don't you understand? No, Jeff sighed, I don't understand.How do you think people can be taught to take this awareness into the next rebirth?You and I have gone through three cycles by now and we knew what was going on from the beginning and we didn't need anyone to tell us. I think we are set to lead others, at least I believe so.I never expected you to show up.Don't you understand how important the task entrusted to us is? Who or what entrusted it?God?All this experience only made me agree more with Camus' statement: If God exists, I despise him. You can call it God, you can call it the universe, you can call it whatever you like.You know there is a passage in the Vedas: The reminiscing mind wakes up in the awareness of the Universal I, which to the ignorant is but night; the ignorant wakes up in their sense life, which they think is day; dark. We can light that darkness, she said with surprising enthusiasm, we can Listen, let's drop the mental stuff for a minute and get your story out of the way.What have you done in this rebirth?How did you come to make this film? Pamela shrugged.It's not hard, and it's not hard in most of the cases I'm funding.I was at school waiting for an opportunity and making plans.Movies are the most effective way to get my ideas across to the public, and I've become quite familiar with the industry through Dustin and everyone I've known in a previous life.So when I turned eighteen, I started doing some of the investments you talked about, IBM, Mutual Bonds, Polaroid, etc.You also know how hot the market was in the 1960s. Even if you buy blindfolded, it is difficult to lose money. For a person who knows a little about the future, it is even easier to turn thousands of dollars into millions in three or four years. . I'm proud of the screenplay I've written, but I've been thinking about it for many, many years.After I wrote the script and started my own production company, I just had to hire the right people to do the work for me.I knew all about those people and their strengths, and everything fit together seamlessly as I had planned. and now Now is the time to take the next step.The time has come to change the consciousness of the world, and I can do it.She leaned forward, watching him intently.We can join if you like.