Significant Instances of the Word ‘Touch’ in VISIONARY novel

Cataloging Jonathan Margolis’ abilities to see, communicate, and intervene at a distance as noted in the novel.

Published by me in Tumblar House Press in 2008 in California, currently an ebook on Amazon.com.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod is washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne

All of those over whom Jonathan Margolis is watching are beginning to see connections that were invisible to them before. These signposts and coincidences are beginning to have profound meaning for them!

Significant uses of the word TOUCH in VISIONARY

PAGE 507

I thought about these circles, how time itself and life with all its currents seemed as intersecting and sometimes touching circles, whether from birth to death, from war to peace, from the sublime to the mundane; these circles defined and demarcated every aspect of our lives.

They gave us borders and brought order out of chaos. Countless examples came immediately to mind, each a living illustration of this impenetrable mystery, images of carousels, of the cycles of the seasons, of possession and loss, even of the silly zebra running in its circles.

Jonathan Margolis has special abilities across space/time as he watches and intervenes in the lives of his special people.

Page 3

Let me touch him or I’ll die,” she kicked and twisted against overwhelming opposition and jumped on stage into Nigel’s arms. Trembling in surprise, Nigel held her while she cried uncontrollably.

Because of incidents such as this, the sponsors of Nigel’s appearances instituted stringent security procedures wherever he spoke.

Page 52

Jim felt a tap on his shoulder and he turned his head to see who touched him. Sitting across the aisle was a man dressed in a long black robe, with a full beard and his hair long and tied in a ponytail behind his head.

Page 56

It concerned a zebra I had named Hal. Among the half a dozen zebras in the exhibit, he was the most temperamental one.

He refused to eat with the others and whenever it rained he would splash mud all over himself. We had been having several days of rain and he had completely covered one side of himself with mud.

So I decided to wash him down with a hose.

When the water sprayed onto his back, the strangest thing happened, he began to run around the exhibit at a full gallop. He circled it three or four times and then he stopped to eat his feed.

Out of curiosity, I did it again, and the same thing happened. Whether it was a trained response or something entirely of his own volition, I could never discover.

But as predictably as the sunrise, whenever water touched his back he ran around the pen and then he ate. When I showed Leonard what had happened he found the whole thing very amusing. I’d never seen him laugh so much.

Page 60

It’s taken me fifty years to understand what John Donne said so long ago, that each man’s life touches mine. If I had listened then, I’m certain, I wouldn’t have to endure this now.

Page 92

Then the nurse, with delicate fingers, began to cut the cast, beginning at the toes and moving along the right side of the calf. It felt a little like cold water touching the skin.

Soon she had reached the end and the cast popped open. Then she and the doctor spread the cast open and removed it from my leg. It was then that I saw the scar running six or seven inches down the side of my calf.

Page 113

Her preoccupation with cleanliness and order deeply annoyed him, and had he not been focused on what Nigel had been saying on the tapes, he would have gone after her and taken back his suit. Yet what Nigel was saying was beginning to touch him, because he too had spent so much of his last five years alone.

Page 143

The war had been so costly in lives, especially since D-day. There was no family which had not been touched, even ours. My cousin Richard had been killed on Omaha Beach along with thousands of others, and my mother had written me in September of the news. Of twelve men from the county who left for war, only six returned when it was over.

Page 207

Jim’s journey back to Bayside was surfeit with such self-reflection. Every image, impression, and impulse, that had touched his consciousness in those past few days, he held before his imagination and reexamined them.

Much of what Nigel had told him at the hospital he had immediately discredited. Still, he struggled to remember what he so willingly had forgotten. He had come to doubt his capacity to judge reality and wondered if he had been as mistaken in all of his opinions.

Page 218

I took the check to the bank the next day and deposited it in a savings account. I bought myself a new pair of shoes, a warm winter coat, and a typewriter. The rest of it I left untouched until Beth and I decided what charities deserved it best.

Page 273

I had hoped the issue of religion would remain untouched because I feared it would end in hostility, but Beth seemed prepared to answer any question.

Page 293

When we visited my father in the hospital, I found it difficult to look at him, his face transparent with his agony. The complexity of human suffering, of its inexplicable pervasiveness, had never touched me as personally or as profoundly.

Page 368

“You’re like Thomas. You have to touch the wounds before you’ll believe.”

Page 371

She flipped the pages until she found them, and then he asked her, “Please hold it closer so I can get a good look at it.”

He stared closely at a picture of Beth holding him in her arms. Then he lifted his right hand with great effort and began to touch the picture.

Page 388

“Elisavet,” an older woman began to shout and wave her arms. Then she ran across the square and embraced Beth who was rising to her feet. Soon others arrived, embracing and crying, and I too began to cry.

After several minutes of this nexus of intense emotion when I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore, she walked over to the plaque and began to read their names, one by one, touching the names of her family who had died that day sixteen years before.

I, too, was overcome with grief.

Page 414

He read the letter with quiet intensity, reverently turning each page of Beth’s meticulous Greek script, until he finished it.

Then he folded it carefully and placed it inside his robes. He spoke something in Greek which I didn’t understand and Emmanuel translated.

“You’ve lost your son Michael? He asked you.”

“Ne.”

His words were few and well chosen, no more than was necessary, and no less was necessary than to convey his meaning.

“God loves us,” he continued. “Loves us more than you or I could ever love a child. And we’ve all been kidnapped by the devil, stolen and raised as his own. We have forgotten God. This loss, Christ carried on the cross.”

I was stunned by his words and began to cry.

“Sygnomen,” he told us. “I will talk to you again.”

He rose from his stool, crossed himself, and then departed.

Once he had gone, I struggled to understand what he had said. I didn’t know why his words had touched me, but in some irrational and inexplicable way, in speaking them he had lifted a burden from me, and I felt more at ease. Emmanuel also seemed affected by them. He sat reflectively with his legs crossed and his hands cupped on his knees.

Page 421

Beneath us, I could see the edges of the shoreline and the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea. Above me was a sea of stars, more than I had ever imagined. I struggled to remember the names of the constellations and to find the North Star. But it all seemed a blur of light to me with each star seemingly touching the next.

I don’t know how long I sat there, gazing into the heavens and trying to make sense of everything that had happened. I remembered those summer nights in Wisconsin when Reginald and I would lie on our backs in the fields of rye and likewise gaze into the stars. It was on these nights that I first contemplated leaving Wisconsin, beginning the long journey that would lead to this epiphany.

>The heavens declare his handiwork,’ I vaguely remembered the line of a psalm. Was it not the heavens that forced Galileo to rethink the organization of the universe? Was it not the heavens that guided Columbus to the shores of this new world? Was it not man’s dream to reach up and touch the stars? I stretched out my hand and imagined sweeping the stars to the edges of the sky.

Page 434

She hesitated a moment and then embraced her brother, her eyes immediately filling with tears which she wiped with her fingers.

“Sygnomen, Pater,” she told him. He was the last living link to a past that had been stolen from her. She had come full circle in a journey that had taken sixteen years, from Greece to Cairo, to French Morocco, to England to New York, and back to Greece again.

I thought about these circles, how time itself and life with all its currents seemed as intersecting and sometimes touching circles, whether from birth to death, from war to peace, from the sublime to the mundane; these circles defined and demarcated every aspect of our lives.

They gave us borders and brought order out of chaos. Countless examples came immediately to mind, each a living illustration of this impenetrable mystery, images of carousels, of the cycles of the seasons, of possession and loss, even of the silly zebra running in its circles. I became distracted by these thoughts as the others went ahead of me.

“Neilos,” Beth called me. “We’re going upstairs.”

“I’m coming,” I shouted and rushed up to join them.

In the elevator, they began to speak in Greek. Father Niphon listened attentively but said very little as the small box rose. I was too distracted to pay attention to them.

I had the strangest sensation as though I were spinning around on a tilt-a-whirl and losing all sense of space and direction, as though eternity had captured me and God Himself lives in an infinite circle.

Page 463

I don’t know what it was about his words that touched me, but I found myself confessing to him everything that had happened, and he sat captivated by what I told him. Yet, I couldn’t understand why he seemed to believe me when on the surface it seemed impossible. But I always underestimated people’s capacity to believe.

I suppose if I’ve learned anything from all this pain, it must be what binds us to one another is often invisible. It transcends time and space and it begins in a capacity to believe the impossible. And that compassion always entails a payment, a rendering to God what is God’s, and if we knew the cost beforehand we’d never care for anyone. It hurts too much. Yet somehow, despite all this, it’s worth it.

Page 467

I embarked on a series of talks beginning in Pittsburgh which nearly became quasi-religious in tone. Michael would begin with a five-minute introduction, usually touching on highlights of his journey, and then he would paint a context for the dreams.

Page 470

As we drove out to the hospital in the patrol car, and I was sitting in the back where they normally carry prisoners, I felt like shouting, but I couldn’t speak a word to either of them. I kept blaming myself, telling myself that I shouldn’t have let her go, that I should have fought her more vigorously.

And once at the hospital, I realized it was far more serious than I could have imagined. When I saw her lying in intensive care, with tubes and monitors touching her from all directions, like a rag doll tied with strings, I simply fell apart. I was crying uncontrollably while a young nurse tried to comfort me.

Page 471

I remember her funeral as though it were a haunting dream, as hundreds of her admirers had come to wish her a final goodbye. So many lives, so many condolences, she had touched them deeply and profoundly, and they came to bear testimony to a life lived well, a transforming life that had touched thousands.

From her great acts of kindness through the small things she had done, all her works became manifest among them.