• The worst part of it was the extremely cold, deep , alone feeling it left me with. I had never experienced anything of that intensity. I worked through this by spiritual contemplation. It was as if I were disconnected from the Divine.
• My wife Vivian and I both felt as if we had "brought something back with us" during travel (we were coming back from Florida, laying over briefly in DC).

I know this sounds completely off the hook, especially if you know me. But, I wouldn't talk about it like this if I didn't feel there was something distinct about the experience.

I missed out on writing about this whole thing where Pops got bit in the butt by a Brown Recluse spider, and ended up in the hospital. They took a 3X3" X 2" deep section of his a$$ out, and hooked some kind of suction pump up to him, including a portable version that died on him. He's back in for leg-to-a$$ skin grafting today. I'll spare the many details, including those on his endless fits about pain.

I am currently working on some music, harnessing my equipment and looking at new possibilities. Very little time, of course. I'm spread thin with work/home/church etc., but that's nothing unusual for a person. I think I have a lawn this year, having put some time in.

...maybe for good this time. But a spider bit his a$$, and it was all painful and nasty. While he was gone his AA sponsor and attorney absconded with retainer fees and is not to be found.

Other than that, just rolling through the summer, which is finally $%$# here, yay!

The place I work is actually being looked at as a basis for a TV sitcom. I'm not kidding. I think a lot of people are convinced their workplace is perfect for a sitcom, but they're usually wrong. My professional evaluation is that this place has all the elements. We'd been saying that for weeks, and all of a sudden an LA screenwriter was talking to my boss, and got real interested. I guess he's coming out.

Today alone would've been an episode. Crap, there's stuff going on right now while I'm writing this! It's bloody unbelievable.

OTA is coming out of the closet after nearly a year, and we're playing at a college amphitheater. These outdoor gigs always have a way of going horribly wrong.

I can't believe I let this go since May 11, but that means I have been busier than usual. Where? Everywhere possible, it seems. I do a lot of different things in a day, and sometimes I think I'm not cut out for that, but in the end I guess I am. As much as I adore my job, I'm definitely distracted by the weather, and wanting to stay around the house and do things. I think I'm becoming very boring, but that's not always a bad thing. There's actually quite a few things I could write about, but I'm playing my cards close to the vest for some reason.

I had this really skanky B-movie murder dream. I was in it, but it wasn't me, it was more like remote viewing. I'll spare the details, but in the end my accomplices and I were trying to make it look like someone else did it, we were going to write a "helter skelter" type message on the window, but we didn't want to because it would leave forensic evidence. Yeah, I know, but we've all had these kind of things. It closed with a view of the name "Dominyk" written in the fog of a window. I looked up the meaning of the name, it means "belonging to God."

Huh.

We're sitting in the service at the UU Church, pt. 2 of a series on Mysticism discussing Rufus Jones, and it comes to the traditional "Joys & Sorrows" section of the service. This, while useful, necessary, and cathartic for many people, also makes you brace for impact, because you just don't know what's coming down the pike.

So an old man stands up (he's wearing a hearing aid, has a suit on, and is sporting a big crucifix on a chain, he had to be 90). He announces that he's a newcomer, and that after his wife died he's been trying to get his shiq back together. I forget where he said he was (nursing home or something), but that when he was there Jesus visited him in person, he had a huge epiphany, and he came (who knows how he found out about us) to learn everything he could about mysticism. Jesus gave him a message to spread the love, which he symbolically tossed out to the congregation. Our minister Nicole was watching very closely, no doubt wondering if it was a plant, or for the fire and brimstone to start up, or both (a key feature of the UU church is that it doesn't recognize the Trinity, which of course causes some rucus). But, it was alright.

I think he might have had an experience, the most common way people interpret that is seeing Jesus, as that's all they have for a frame of reference. The reason I think he had one is because, like my own, it passes the litmus test in that he converted the experience from an internal one to external, to some kind of pretty direct action. Just barely, but something might have happened.

I'm trying to get refocused musically. I'm in much better shape than I was, but the energy is different, and its specifically affecting my compositional approach.

And, one of these days, I hope my sister finds out that I finally broke free. She has no historical reason to think so, yet here it is gone and happened. I want her to know because I think it will bring her a kind of peace that she surely deserves. How to do it, though? The blockade is incredibly strong.

The least likely current reading list I'd ever expect to have, I have:

William James (Collected Works, 1902-1910)

The Gnostic Scriptures

Although by necessity it is pretty far down the priority list, I am looking forward to leaving my tiny billet study downstairs, and turning the main floor bedroom into a library/office/music studio. It Will Happen.

One thing I didn't account for when I got off the juice after thirty years was the consciousness change, the chemical rebuild of my brain that's going on. This is a very widening experience, I love it. On the other hand, you get a lot of repressed stuff in the dream department. It's all in how you deal with it when you come to. My teenage self is apparently quite angry at my parents, for different reasons. It's very odd how my father is portrayed in these dreams, a total anti version of who he really is. He shows up as sort of a cavalier, self-absorbed playboy type.

Fortunately, the horses do not run the carriage, or sit on it and ride. I am attempting to reach out and reconnect, but I anticipate some trepidation, and even animosity in certain camps.

I got way too relaxed today, considering what I had to do.

I'm thinking it might be the weather, which is cold, wet, and dark. Or, I'm just not motivated worth a damn... my mind is in other places, not one in particular. Not a bad place to be, just not real functional. But, in a half hour I'll be on my way home, and up for some Chinese food. There are many promising things waiting for me there...

The not hah-hah funny thing about watching someone distintegrate before your eyes is the natural distancing and disconnection that comes over you. I'm no behavioralist, but it makes for a convincing case. Pops is not a heretic, because he doesn't have the faculties to be one. He is no more than a head full of bad wires, leading to processors in various states of disrepair. As the pressure of reality increases, his circuits keep switching from one redundant system to another. At this point, the whole mess is one giant redundant system, and not a good one at that.

Now me, I can say I'm back to being a heretic, because I'm able to choose again.

I am convinced that existence has turned Pops into a symbolic, jinn-like creature or familiar, to serve as my constant, itchy reminder of all the good reasons to not be a degenerate. A good choice, he is one-stop-shopping when it comes to that, including even such delicate touches as doing a mirror-perfect version of my mom's endless suicide dramas.

Other than that, ops normal, with the expected bump and grind that comes here and there.

I am itching to get back to music in a heavier fashion, but there's a lot in front of me right now.

I guess it is true to some extent that a writer does the edgiest work when they are at odds with things. If that is the case, then I'm going to have to engineer a workaround. I truly adore going at something with all the artillery blasting. But, on the other hand, there is a lot of unexplored pallette to work with.

I suspect is is much like music, it is much harder to write upbeat, major key things than it is to crank out another minor ballad, ripping out of the blackened soul.

"Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to the head, doth but leave it more exhausted, the result of mere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul.  Instead of nourishment and energy, she reaps only lassitude and disgust: whereas a genuine heavenly vision yields to her a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. I alleged these reasons to those who so often accused my visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination...I showed them the jewels which the divine hand had left with me:--they were my actual dispositions. All those who knew me saw that I was changed; my confessor bore witness to the fact; this improvement, palpable in all respects, far from being hidden, was brilliantly evident to all men. As for myself, it was impossible to believe that if the demon were its author, he could have used, in order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient so contrary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices, and filling me with masculine courage and other virtues instead, for I saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to enrich me with all that wealth."  St. Teresa, Autobiography, ch. xxviii

The final test of a belief is not its origin, but the way it works on the whole.

...others do in things interpersonal, but we can surely have some sway over ourselves, and that will show itself in the outcome, in others. We all have our moments of strength, and moments of weakness, but they should be looked at to see if they are real or not.

To maintain yourself properly, humanely, in a conflict is to live by the values that you aspire to. Not always that easy a proposition. But consider the consequences- if you do not, the other will not take your proselytizing as real. Your real intentions, what you love and belive in must be both durable, and fluid. Be like water my friend, indeed. I am learning.

No cutting research out of me on that one, sorry. I have some interest in medical materialism, how every behavior, ailment, or rapture can be traced to some physical malady.

Notice that even if an eccentric comes up with a great work, the work itself is rarely questioned. People have enough internal understanding to not do that.

Genius is often defined as being a thin hair from insanity, and purely unstable by nature. But, the work is never questioned.

When one has a true spiritual (I agree with my minister, let's be frank, spiritual is the modern, user-friendly, accessible way to say mystical ) awakening, it is only at least at first apparent to the person experiencing it.

In my case, there is little explanation for it, other than that I was for the first time in my life seriously trying to open the gate, and it did.

I have had small little glimmers and shifts, but nothing like this. Down to my toes, 24X7.

Of course, it is hard to share with anyone even if you don't have a history of conning and b.s.ing. I don't think anyone really believes me, and I am strangely undisturbed by that. The disconnection is gone, the desire to self-medicate has completely disappeared in a fashion I have never experienced. It is a feeling of openness and peace. Like everything in me got recentered and re-channeled. This is what "normal" feelis like. No unrest inside anymore, no swirling thoughts. All gone.

There are those who will say that I must always live under the fear of relapse. I believe to do that practically insures one; it is not a strong enough stance. And, to be honest, I believe that much of what is suggested to me is sprung from a very understandable fear of me becoming "That Guy" again. It is not possible, and I will not distrust my own mind, my own being, as if there is some pathology beyond my control that will suddenly take me over. The demon is gone, literally. I know what people mean by that now.

Reading William James' lecture "The Neurology of Religion."

Pops continues to claim (between manic/depressive bouts) that he is having entire 24 hr. memory losses.

He better be, because if this is theater, I'm going to be pissed.

I wake up happier every day (save for a recent, nagging headache that I attribute to weather change).

I am now back in the graces of common society, which basically involved driving, waiting in lines, and shelling out frogs to the local agencies. It's an entire underbelly of administrative money trolls out there. Needless to say I am glad to be legal again, because that breaks the dreaded cycle of offense piling. All in all, things are peachier than they have been in a long danged time. I don't hardly know what to do to avoid floating away into the clouds, since I have offloaded so many tons of anxiety, it could well happen. Doesn't make for a good news day, but, fucq it.

Pops went deep into the cosmos last night. We're still trying to figure it out. He had been fine earlier. First, I got some kind of unintelligible voice mail. When I finally heard from him, it was like he had dropped acid. Or some kind of hypnotic state. Viv was sure he was shot up on junk, but he's never done that, and furthermore I don't see how he could have, he's in the middle of nowhere. It was surreal, and disturbing. I talked to him today and he has virtually no memory of any of it.

Lost souls, man. Lost souls. I am feeling so good right now, better than I have felt in a long dang time.

I like the spaces blog but this Mrs. Grundy censorship protection scanning crap is making me nuts. When I use profanity, I use it well, and proudly. Why do they have to sanitize everything?