The Ballad of Charles and Suki
No more than a handful of people claimed to know much of anything about Charles and Suki. There were several good reasons for that. They tended to be the wildest, and most generally bizarre, as well as the most private couple associated with either the Sanctuary, or The Home for Wayward Souls. They came to South Florida about eight years ago, but other details were pretty sketchy. No one was especially sure of how old they were, or what they did before they came into the congregation.
Charles’ parents were from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia originally, but came to the United States in the Nineteen Sixties after defecting from the Soviet Union and Communism. In the USSR, Charles’ father was officially recognized as one of the top paranormal researchers in the employ of the KGB…officially…but Charles had also alluded to the fact that Vladimir Vliynczykovitch was also reputedly the most powerful warlock in all of Europe. Charles’ mother did cutting-edge research in the early development of lasers for the government.
When they came to the US, they changed their family name to Vincent, and tried to assimilate into the culture and generally maintain a low profile. Of course, Vladimir was immediately debriefed and inducted into a laboratory facility that unofficially did research for the CIA. Charles’ mother, Svetlana retired from research to bring lasers and holography to the world of art, and became quite self-sufficient doing so.
Their home was filled with people from the world of the Paranormal, Espionage and Intelligence as well as every manner of Artist. The central theme of Eastern European Witchcraft was also always present, (if you knew what you were hearing and understood its true meaning) like an underground stream running through their home.
Suki’s father, Omar was a Yugoslav electronics engineer who worked as a graduate assistant and later as an intern responsible for technical support in Vladimir’s laboratory in the USSR. They became friends over the years, and although Vlad was older, they socialized a great deal outside work. They had defected together, escaping first to Japan during a scientific expedition, where Omar met Umai-ko-shi Shindo, the chief archeologist supervising the dig at a site that had interested Vlad because of spirits that were said to inhabit the area. Umai-ko-shi traveled to the United States with Omar and Vlad once they secured asylum.
Omar and Vlad had been practicing sorcery together for several years in the USSR. Omar became Vlad’s understudy, so the fact that Umai-ko-shi was a Tsukimono-suji, or White Witch brought together a series of forces and influences that culminated in the birth of her daughter Suki. Although Charles was sixteen years old when Suki was born, the four parents agreed that their children would wed one day. Arranged marriages were a throwback to their ancestors, and most of the children in the US rebelled against it, nevertheless….
They had grown up together in the USA, and the decidedly unorthodox lives of their parents had the effect of producing a bond between them, like cousins, and Charles was very protective of Suki as she grew up, although she was quite independent and very capable of defending herself. She nonetheless adored Charles as a hero of sorts, and although they went their own separate ways for a few years while attending college, they reunited at a family holiday and fell deeply and passionately in love with each other, and eventually married.
Suki, who had become a nurse-practitioner often called herself “Nāsu Witchi”, (“nurse-witch”) amongst her friends. She embodied the mystery and passions of both cultures freely. She was sometimes regarded as aggressive, or confrontational, which was partly due to her economy of words and sparse context and partly because she made absolutely no concessions to fear or guilt, and embodied a sort of Shamelessness in her pursuit of the “delicious delinquency of neoteny in (the) seduction of all things conventional, comfortable, or chaste”.
The fact that almost no one ever understood what she meant by that (partly owing to her rich arabesque of accents and nuances), also meant she tended to respond very strongly to anyone who did understand even a part of it, sufficient to provoke an intense tutorial of Tantric to those who deserved it.
She had about a half-dozen phrases she used as a litmus test for the uninitiated, but she had formulated that phrase shortly after she first became aware of her crush for Charles, who understood it so implicitly, that she affectionately called him her “(She-)Devil(’s) Advocate”.
It also meant that Charles understood that no matter how great her love for him, that she was her own woman, and no amount of devotion and dedication to her mate would prevent her from pursuing all of her interests.
Another favorite of hers was “(Perhaps, If) You(‘d) like, maybe we (can) make (some) crazy sex-fuck time together, OK?”
…And the door swung both ways. And it was good….
Because Charles always tried to encourage Suki to believe in her heart, that no matter what she did, he would always love and support her pursuit of any indulgence within their means unconditionally, and unequivocally and joyously.
For a very long while….
People usually say “…but over the years…things have a way of happening.” or words to that effect, but in truth, “things have a lot more ways of not happening…”
Years of childrearing, careers, and generalized ambition have a way of pushing Romance into the background. Unresolved resentments, bouts of poor health, surgeries, disappointments, fatigue and depression had produced the effect of alienation of affections.
If you spend years finding and receiving pleasure from one person, it is easy to understand why it is that when things go badly, that we also attach them to an unspoken resentment for the calamity of events that seem to well up around us, forever asking the question “What’s to keep them from doing it?”
They became isolated, and bitter like two old car batteries left unused on the floor of their garage, dissipated, no difference of potential left…no charge, no current flow…sulfurous, and caustic. Their comings and goings were of little consequence to each other, and they both generally despaired of life.
Charles had a nervous breakdown that lasted about four years. His work and his income suffered, but he kept his job and endured for no good reason in particular. He took high doses of four different anti-depressants that were having catastrophic effects on him physically and mentally. Suki rarely got out of bed, spent most of the night in a reclining chair watching TV, snoring and falling asleep while smoking, setting herself on fire, and stating that she was always tired and never got any rest. They both got fat. This is hell.
It is said that a true Buddhist would go straight into Hell to rescue a friend, but Charles and Suki were in two different versions of the same hell, unable to reach each other or rescue themselves…nonetheless…if you find yourself at the beach on the Lake of Fire…and say, several of you decide to go to a rave there…you might be amazed at the people you might meet.
There are, no doubt, any number of Buddhists who were meant to go to Hell for one reason or another, because of some Kharma that they couldn’t escape, because it was part of their program, a glitch, a flaw, a paradox…a ghost in the machine…a date to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight…a character flaw, perhaps, but if we are not so quick to judge others harshly for their faults, instead recognizing them and non-judgmentally encouraging them to face everything fearlessly and shamelessly, we can learn to recognize our own mistakes and errors of judgment or action which we can neither escape nor deny without grievous consequences.
And Charles was very lucky because despite it all, he had paid ahead a great deal of good and positive Kharma over the years, such that it just so happened that one of the other Lost Souls standing there at that rave on the Lake of Fire would help him lead himself out of the flames, and maybe even save herself in the process…at least eventually.
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