ADVENTURES OF THE MIND
Foreword
Take this narration as less about 'what I did', and more about the paranormal presence that's out there (OR IN HERE, OUR BODIES!) awaiting our acknowledgement of its presence. Onward to the 'tales of the mind's journey'!
Initiation
It's called that because me, the 3-to-4 year old kid in an empty refrigerator box swore a curse against God for a piece of candy being shared in that box out in the driveway. Call me 'Peter'. Call me 'Judas'. For that piece of candy I knew I was consciously and willing to denounce GOD. I knew at that moment I had in some way sinned against my soul. But it wasn't as much sinning against the soul as it was the initial estrangement and disaffection from the cultural paradigms and their intimidating bonding myths.
Synchronicity Events
Jump forward 5 1/2 years later and I'm on a patrol corner in the middle of January on a cold, wind-swept corner in a 10 degree or less weather day in a typical, then, Syracuse winter. I'm in a morose, self-commiseration for what's not there and has been gone since the end of October-the best and loveliest teacher I'd had to that point and who'd left on maternity leave. Ohhhhh... How I missed her!
But then, I hear the chugging of a small engine coming my way in an easterly direction on East Genessee Street. It was a Yellow Volkswagen-Bug with my anointed, saintly teacher. My heart leapt to my throat in joy. I couldn't restrain myself from waving wildly at her. She waved back at me as she turned the corner in front of me to drive past me as she headed south on Westcott Street.
I gave my thanks to the moment, and made a vow to that moment to be in thanks, 'As gracious as that moment was to me, I'd be to others on the pain of retributions (that did come)'. At that same time my adherence to being gracious would put me within a protective veil of grace that would protect me from the malevolence of other situations.
It stayed with me, though too often as a latent background memory, than something that was foremost on my mind. Its status as that came from the enveloping secular institutional structures, as well as the accompanying social background's drama that held my attention and emotions for those more temporal and tangible agendas. Despite that, I held onto the attitude of graciousness to the stranger and those forsaken to the margins.
There were, likely, less dramatic and less profound moments which I didn't give the deserved attribution to the graces between that time in mid-January of 1960 and May of 1967-such as the mumps I contracted in either that Summer of '60 or '61, when I was not only unconscious with a high grade fever, but also the cells in my balls that would be damaged enough so that my sperm count would be weak and low enough to exclude impregnating anything more than the surface of my right palm's dryness.. At that time in May '67, I needed and appreciated the grace which came again on the heels of another of my morose commiserations. This time for conditions I literally invited-though in altruistic faith-upon myself. The girl I had invited had less interest in me than curiosity for what would be her experience at my Junior Prom. She showed that disinterest with adolescent indifference towards me. If being too embarrassed by the indifference prevented me from having my face lying in the palms of my hands on the table, one wouldn't have needed a mind reader after seeing my face.
When I volunteered to get the coats and wraps so to escape the table, I did so with relief. At the check-out stand was a gal who had lived at the premises on the street behind mine, some four-to-five years before. She had blossomed even more from the pre-pubescent beauty I remembered from back then. She recognized me also, and we began the most enjoyable discussion I'd had that entire evening. Time seemed suspended as we chatted about ourselves and reminisced over how unlikely it was for our paths to cross like this after all those years. That conversation was my compensation and the redeeming feature of an otherwise miserable evening. 'Grace of Mercy' had pity on me that night.
FALL 1969. I was returning from a visit from seeing a cutey Italian-American gal who lived about two miles off-campus. I'd been at her place from about 6pm to 830-9pm, when I left. I reached the dorm section of campus near the corner of York-Elm streets when two underclassmen called me out by saying, "M...., You 'dog', you!".
Totally mystified (and a bit anxious over what they might know about my Italian-American, off-campus gal), I engaged them why they called me a 'Dog'? They responded, You know, "M.."!" You'd just walked out of the party with the finest gal there! I told them it couldn't have been me since I'd just returned from being off campus for the past three hours. They replied saying to the effect that if it wasn't me, it was my TWIN! Short of there being that look-alike, I wondered if I could have unknowingly generated a holographic incarnation of myself, who showed up at that party???
A few weeks later, I was at the Yale Peabody's Science Hill with my roommate and a new fellow-weed smoking underclassman, fellow-traveler. It was the end of an evening of one long walk and journey from romantic disenchantment about my Italian-American gal having a near fiance over and then seeing the graffiti 'BLACK WOMEN'S BELLIES ARE MADE FOR BABIES NOT BULLETS' on the space ship looking high school up in The Hill neighborhood. All three of us were crashing from the night of drug dissolution on the strong weed we'd had. We were staring at the northern view from Science Hill that took in East Rock Park's statue which overlooked and dominated the view to the New Haven waterfront. Thoughtlessly, I said "God, Damn you, !". Surprisingly, it was the deja vu reprise of what I had said as a 3-to-4 year old in the refrigerator box so I could obtain a piece of candy. This time the statue seemed to be wiped from the face of the Earth. We all freaked at what appeared to be the hand-of-God giving a reply to my cursing of 'Him'. In fact, it was the coincidental midnight, automatic or manual turn off of the flood lights which illuminated the East Rock Park Statue. We still noted the symbolic timing of that events to my curse. It was the moment letting me know there was little that I could do, compared to greater transcendent dominions, by carrying on in the 'sound and fury' with the forces of my fated journey.
Move forward to the Spring then the Summer of the following year, 1970. I was roaming The Hill Neighborhood streets and was headed home, when I spotted ahead of me by 150 yards at the corner a cute little something getting ready to cross. I yelled out to her, "What's happening, little mama. She shot back, "Not You!". I was totally in a flabbergasted chagrin at her reply. Jump forward three months, I was coaxed by a friend to stay in New Haven and work at this day camp as a counselor. I’m in the day camp reception office as one of the senior counselors for what would be the 12-16 year old age group when guess who enters inside the room. Lo’ and behold, one of my junior counselors was that the young gal who had told me off. We recognized each other, but don’t bring up to each other what had occurred back in April. We develop a trusting rapport and cordial friendliness with each other to the point that she invites me to a gig that will be that coming Saturday. I give her a positive response to her invite. Come that Saturday my own ‘Spaceman’ activities along with some probable latent insecurities on my part for her being there and being truly receptive to my presence keeps me away. The following Monday 'Miz Thang' storms up to me to question where I was. I come up with some lame excuse which included, “If I had remembered, I would’ve been there.” To which she memorably replied, “ If it had been that important to you, You would have remembered! ". Those were telling words of both admonition and instruction for me going forward. My word is as sacred a vow as that given to that 'Presence' back on that January day in 1960. From that point on I would follow through on all my ethically obligated vows I made to others.
~The dream, for the record~
Early Spring 1972, I was deep into the weeds of my Senior Paper. In this instance I had been seeing this gal in East New York part of Brooklyn from the time of my freshman Spring semester in college. I had dropped in on her every so often as a change of pace from my campus socializing. It was nothing more serious than conversations punctuated by kissing and maybe some touching (though, if my memory is serving me correctly she was a Pentecostal and had restrictions on where she could go and what she could do). I liked her but not enough to have her on my mind to have visited her frequently, as she probably was the 'change of venue' from my campus interactions.
By the Spring of my senior year I was taking inventory on whom I'd be seeing after graduation and during my looming, Draft-obliged, military enlistment, when I remembered her. From her point of view, I can see how she wanted a more definitive declaration of intentions by me to her. That was her tone, when I called her to arrange for another visit to Brooklyn. In empathy for her attitude, I earnestly set a date for a Friday evening visit.
My concerns with my senior thesis forced me to think to spend Friday night and Saturday working on rectifying what I had found unsatisfactory with my thesis, than traveling to-and-from Brooklyn. When I called her up to give her the postponing of my trip, she exploded with a tirade of demeaning comments, uncharacteristic from our former visits or phone calls. I retaliated at what I perceived, then, as an over-the-top reaction by her, and did my own verbal insults before slamming down the phone on her.
Just moments after I had slammed the phone down, it rang again. With me thinking it was she wanting to get in her last two-cents, I picked up the phone and gruffly answered, "Yeah!?". To my and also the callers surprise it was my bud from the dorm across campus. His home-girl had come down that day and had lunch with him, plus we, his regular eating partners. I had been entertaining the table (and her) with my theatrics, and she was impressively intrigued enough to ask my bud to see if I'd be interested in seeing her that evening. In pleased shock, I agreed to see her and I went over to the dorm to bring her back to my room. We had a good and fun conversation, but when the time came to bring her back to the dorm a snow squall had descended, coming down pretty heavily. She had just worn a light jacket, which had been good for the milder weather earlier, but was not for this storm. I was lacking any suitable clothing to give her for the walk back, so I suggested to her that she could stay over and have my bed. Though she gave me an askance look, I assured her there would be no advances by m-as it did turn out. The next morning when I awoke, she invited me to finish 'getting-up' with her in my bed where she had slept. An 'opening' of opportunity on the heels of a 'closing' one.
Some months before or after that, this surreal event occurred during a lunch encounter with two of my underclass neophytes about supernatural powers. I was viewed as being an irreligious heathen, thus I was the target of the more conventional and conservative thinking of these latter post-1970 black matriculates to Yale. I was harangued to the extent that when I departed the table I swore an oath at the ‘verse reciter’ in mocking seriousness, that “He’d have no relief until he called out for mercy from ME, instead of his Christian Lord”.
A little later that afternoon, as I was in the vicinity of the same location where I had left my two underclass-mates, they spotted me, calling out my name.. I rolled my eyes and facetiously turned to run from them, but stopped my fleeing gesture as their voices called out in urgency to me. They told me that when they left the dining hall and were trying to cross Elm Street with or against the light, they were frustrated by the more than heavier than usual traffic on Elm Street for that time of day.. Only by beckoning my name for assistance did the traffic let up to allow them to make the crossing. The female underclassmen, who was familiar with my dialectical philosophy knew that some 'THING' was associated with me.
These next three episodes will show how 'Life' as an external, independent agency or the adjunct, extensional connection with our soul's self-cognizance provides us with what we need. In that way we don't have to seek hither and yon for meaning. It will be set as 'a meal placed before us' in which we may partake-IF WE ARE WISE! I didn't appreciate this fact until very recently. Before I had hoped for such episodes from my active will. It's not from my conscious will, but the seeming result of what could be a visceral signal starting a catalytic process in motion. I'd be unawares of that autonomous process, as the following account will describe.
My last weekend on campus I'd had finished packing up my room and had the extra time to take a 'sentimental journey' walk; through the haunting locations of The Hill neighborhood. That part was empty streets, which had my mind propagating the emptiness with memories of the past, which made me ache for the 'woulda-couldas' of those times. When I got back to the downtown to crossing the streets of the New Haven Green to the campus, my yearnings were answered in the most non-nostalgic of ways. I encountered 'V', who had been a too-young fuck-buddy back in '70. She was an inebriated passenger in a car; still in her 'all about me' drama of the moment. Sad. 17 years old with all those emotional distractions ruling her. Moving on from where 'V' drove away on Temple Street I headed towards College Street and the Campus premises.
At the next crossing of College and Chapel Street I encountered 'K', one of the other senior counselors and a civilian activist in her own right. She and I had once had a pillow talk of cordiality that was much too few and rare in its minimal frequency. She was that night on her way in a car, headed back to The Hill. She, too, was disturbed over something of the moment, but hers-unlike 'V's more demonstrable emoting, 'K' 's was more the seething growl. It was sad to see her and 'V' in such states, but I had done little myself in ways that may have altered the disabusing of my nostalgia in those scenes with 'V' and 'K'.
The next day was Memorial Day and a parade up Chapel Street. I heard about it and went to see it. While there, here comes 'Ms Thang' pushing a baby carriage as if it was her baby-I assumed. The one person to whom I should've said something, and I was too tongue-tied in my own fatalistic issues of our past and my future to take the time. She looked well. Better than the other two. Was thankful for that parting memory given by the whatever fates of mine had graced me.
I was haunted by the would a-coulda-shouldas potential scenarios by seing all three of those gals. Those woulda-coulda scenarios were more self-serving than the 'It is what it is' reality that had passed by me the night before and that Memorial Day. Fate, destiny's algorithm, had plans for me, for which I had no conceivable notion!
VISIONS & DREAMS
2020 is, after Feb 29th, a day-by-day mirror of the 1970 calendar year. That year was my spiritual
and philosophical coming out year whose apex was Saturday 15 August
where I was confronted by my existential choice. I was as high as a kite on my return walk down Howard Ave
in New Haven's Hill Neighborhood nearing the corner of Congress Ave 
(note the 'x' on the SW corner). My
brain was in inebriated celebration from the perceptions of the joyous
mood that had developed on the street-to the tune, 'GLAD' from TRAFFIC's album, 'John Barleycorn Must Die' . At THAT moment I realized I had engaged a
conversation with 'Me', 'Self', and 'I'-all having disagreements with
each other. The awareness of this stunned me to the realization that I had
gone into a multi-polar personality disorder.
I asked myself, "What
can I do?". "Self" responded, "Do what ya gotta do. No time to wait on
others to understand or to be with you. Go ahead and begin what you must do-with or without them". This, otherwise referred to as a, psychotic eruption of me talking to my subconscious was the first and only "face-to-face" self-revealing of that mentoring force, my own subconscious processes? That was the challenging initiation exhortation I'm still engaging 50-years to this very August 2020 month. What seemed at first impossible, then later improbable and unfeasible, is now do-able as resolved acts of convictional purpose.
Just a short of one-and-a-half years later I had what I call "The Dream-for the record"
The early winter of 1971-72 I had a dream that was so symbolic for the time, yet so encompassing of my lifetime going forward to this point that I have considered it my personal prophecy.
The dream begins with me at a chalet. The crowd that was there with me I sensed that I had known them or will have known them in my future. There is the normal chatter that occurs at cocktail parties. In my boredom I move away from the crowd in the room to take in the view of the scenery surrounding the chalet and the overview which the chalet commanded.
As I looked out and down into the valley, I could see the pine and other deciduous trees giving a ‘green cathedral‛ sacredness of nature to my view of the valley towards the body of water below. On the water, I saw a military cargo ships docking and disembarking troops. The troops were not of our nation‛s military. The insignias I saw were foreign. I turned and re-entered the room, frantically relaying what I had seen.
Because I had been, by reputation, a notorious, aggressively assertive-to-obnoxious being, what I was trying to warn the people there was ignored and discounted. I saw what I saw, and I had done my due diligence to moral duty. (Besides that, I had estranged myself from that room and people because of their shallow-to-mindless banter of posturing, profiling, and signifying for each other with very little of proof of a committed substantive attitude-let alone an act-to their blatherings). I took off from them to save myself from what was sure to be a capture and slaughter by the ‘enemy‛ troops disembarking down by the water.
I entered the woods running as far as I could get from the chalet. I could feel my chest heaving and gasping for breath and my leg muscles laboring in their out of shape status to take me away. The Adrenalin of fear gave me the stamina and strength to keep going. Shortly into my run I could hear the sounds of heavy vehicles and light, motorcycle-type vehicles coming closer and stopping. I heard shouting, shots being fired, screams, then silence. The chalet had been stormed and ‘subdued‛. In a bit of ironical, laughing regret and cynicism, I thought sarcastically to myself, ‘There goes ‘The BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST!‛.
I continued to run, hoping I could go further than the troops would be searching. My hopes were in vain. I heard the ignitions of the trucks and light vehicles starting up and some were headed my way. I ran with more urgency, feeling my heart pounding with fear. Soon, I heard voices and the barking of dogs. They had picked up my scent. if I could get to a place to get them off my track. No luck.
They came upon me and encircled me with vehicles, men, and dogs. I was a goner but was not going to surrender. I let them approach me close to within arm's length to grab me, but i grabbed one of them. With unknown and unpracticed skill I fended or killed off the troops and dogs in a way Bruce Lee would smile in envious admiration.
With this threat dispatched, I returned to my run, away from any possible capture. The trail wound and curved to the edge of a big lake. I was moving along the shoreline looking for a means to cross the lake. I heard a rustling of a person approaching along the path to my front. It was a biblical looking person with a look of gravitas on his face. He told me to wait for someone to take me across. I intuitively trusted his words and leaned against a tree and slid down to rest on the ground to take in the lake view.
[end of dream]
~Post Script~
It
wasn't for a new association of a support group of people that became
my soul's redemption, but a newly found and appreciated aggregation of
insights and derived thoughts which gave me a new purpose and passion
for my existence from that dream.
[The Hampton Roads Harbor I would see 22 years later became the iconic surrogate for that broad lake in my dream. It would be another 22 years before I came across a house near that body of water and buy it.].
My 'Fates' were giving me the cryptic blue-prints for what I'd be facing and where I'd end up!
In the meantime, during that 44-year period...
I was in the military, alienated and detached from my previous intellectual and soul-driven aesthetics. In particular, I was detached from the people of my past, as I was disaffected towards the people of my present. My dreams in seeking to compensate my geographical and social anomie with my present did its holographic best to reconstruct the locales of affinity with my pining nostalgia with my New Haven past. One particular destination was into a sanctuary of a sacred temple. At the time of the dream it was frustrating since I was trying to navigate my way to a street address of the cherished 'Mizz Thang', and I end up in a sacred sanctuary! My fates were telling me that it would be the spiritual pursuit than the carnal satisfaction that would be
my experience.
After accommodating myself, perhaps too much, for most of the '70's to the secular ways that were profane to what made up my iconic logos of devotions of undergrad intellectual passions, I had a series of dreams. The first had 'God' on his throne on top of the hill at the junction of Harvard Pl & Westmoreland Ave
in 'Cuse. Even worse, he was peering into my eyes, knowing what jack-off thoughts of a dirty-old-man depravity I was thinking! That broke up my sleep!!
Soon there after, I had the dream of me walking home from work, and I was on my street, Cambridge, and was hearing the evening news of a tsunami that had originated off the coast of Japan and was heading to crash into the California coast, making Nevada and western Arizona our west coast, as well as knocking out the electrical grid for the entire country with the subsequent aftershocks.
By the time I reached the house the news was over, so I went downtown to the corner of Jefferson and Salina Streets to get a paper from the news stand there. I picked up a NY Daily News and they had made their front page a large font editorial that replaced the normal photo image there. The editorial lamented that none of the promotional TV ministers of re-known could do anything to stop the catastrophe, just when SOMEONE was needed to intercede with 'God'.
Weeeellllll... Yours and my Hero-Me, 'the Man with a Million Moves and not ONE fucking one right', JUST HAPPENED to be the guy; due to my past encounters with serendipity and synchronicity. BUT I had been the fuck-off for the past four-to-seven years since it seemed there was no interest or urgency by anyone or for me to do any more than show up and be alive and materialistically striving everyday. I took that dream as a warning alarm on the regressions of the past years after graduating from college, and I began my path back to where I had been in my studies at Yale and the related post-undergrad, surreal experiences. There was a path for me to follow but WHAT?
A few years later a kid called 'Gabe' (Gabriel??) said he had something I might want to read and gave me the paperback edition of the Bhagavad Gita. I read it and got to the parts on karma yoga (existential duty): Chapter 3, verses 22-25
Plus 'individual imperative duty'-Chapter 18, verse 47
That was the hinting clue I needed that took me to the jumping off point I call 'the Cosmic Religion'. Because of my ongoing adversarial relationships with institutions and the institutional gatekeepers had given me continued-broken promises by those authority figures, as well as unsatisfactory and unjustified institutional decisions and actions of those who were gave
lip-service to the virtues that they transgressed with me or others. That provided the motivation for me to seek other avenues of temporal satisfaction. Having been an informal and formally designated advocate for peers and subordinates, law school seemed to be a long delayed decision for entry.
While I was enjoying the philosophy and methodology of law study, the psychic liberty I had
as a civilian student renewed and re-opened the ‘paths of channeling’ for more intense communications. The intellectual pathway of rigor and flexibility I was gaining for law study was being used by Self ‘to transport’ the accumulated conclusions of years of conscious and subconscious data association provided by the ‘Mentors’ operating through ‘Self. It became the cosmic paradigm I named the “Cosmic Religion”-the religion of serendipitous resonations: By your actions you can put yourself in alignment, congruence, similarity with forces that respond to that ‘alignment’ and facilitate your means for you by trumping the temporal reality which would be your expected probable options of focus to achieve the more holistic ends you would be needing.
The articulation of the ‘Cosmic’ architecture provided the path that trumped my intention to seek ‘the law’ as my vocational and identifying expression for my life. I had greater resonance for the conceptions of Cosmic laws than American or common law. Resonance in its more visceral form was the penultimate experience for my standard. I didn’t realize that the resonance was more an incidental cognitive marker, than an invitation for social engagement. Learning that would be the next life lesson for these next thirty-five years of my life.
Arriving in the latter part of January '86 at Offutt AFB's EB Hospital , my stream of consciousness was working as an alternative-ego of thoughts that was centered on a naive evangelizing principle of a conscious, mental recognition by others who'd be so compelled to initiate and join an emotional affinity with me. [In fact it would not be by that paradigm] I got myself into considerable, short-term difficulties-institutionally with the hospital authorities and socially with the coworkers at the hospital. That zone-of-attainment was not for the ends I thought, but it did have its benefits.
Those benefits were a redemptive, vindicating phenomena that would manifest for me in times of emotional distress. ’The first time was at 'EB', shortly after the unit psychologist, working as an agent for my antagonists, used the extortion of an administrative, general discharge against me unless I had a change of attitude. My distress was so intense that a subsequent and concurrent ill fortune to members of that antagonistic group was seen as having been conjured in its origination by me [perhaps by 'Me', my inner subconscious?]. At the time, I attributed it to 'The Mentors', since I had no knowledge of the circumstances of my antagonists' ill-fortunes. This would occur again in the PI (Philippine Republic) when Mt Pinatubo became active, erupting ; thus ending the U.S. lease for Clark Air Base as an 'act of God' fait accompli, as well as releasing the personnel on the base from the obliged semi-confinement of base-wide ordered restriction, for the safety of the (white) service members who were targets of the anti-US guerilla movement in the PI.
Some positive things I could say of those months and days at 'Wright-Patt' after the evacuation from the PI/Pinatubo assignment was the continuation of the grace that anointed me relative to others. Or was that 'grace' more an ionic flow to my character? Meaning, there is a flow to-and-from opposite polarity of 'things' and from people. That flow acts as an equity equilibrium for the different states of being. In my instance my relative sincerity, honesty, and earnestness of my ethic of altruistic duty became a reservoir destination for 'good' seeking a home to manifest itself.
Several examples would be the 'partial 6-pack episode' and the chronologic synchronicity of symmetry with the plot of Foucault's Pendulum. The 6-pack episode began when my wife of the time, who normally mowed the grass for her exercise came in moaning of the scorching heat's effect on her scoliosis back and muscles. Feeling empathy for her anguishment, I told her I'd finish the job. It WAS hot-as-Hell out there on the front lawn on the west side of the house catching the post-4 o'clock rays of the Sun. I was laboring through that heat. My house I was renting was on the corner of a stop light. The light happened to turn red, and a carload of elder teens were waiting for the light in front of my yard. As they took off when the light turned green they threw the 4-remaining cans of the six-pack they hadn't drank on my lawn for me. I marveled and smiled at the act, because it was hot enough for a 'cold one' at that moment. I brought the remaining cans inside to put in the fridge and told my wife about it. She erupted, since all the times she had mowed the lawn during that hot summer (under a sense of grudging obligatoriness) no such beneficence had been bestowed on her.
With 'Foucault's Pendulum', I was reading the conclusion at a time symmetrically parallel to the events in the book-noon on the summer solstice!Another later example were two opportunity calls from the AFPERCEN for a TDY assignment away from my toxic work assignment for duty out at March AB, east of LA, off I-10. Those three, now thought about retrospectively, seemed to set the consistent template for past and future serendipities and synchronicities. When I was about an earnest altruistic duty, I'd be rewarded by the moment, spontaneously and by unknown expectations by me.
Something good that happened to me that was tangent to my Air Force
military existence was around the event of my first public broadcast of
the 'cosmic religion'-1993. I still have the military 'Dog tags' that
have imprinted 'Cosmic' as my designated religion. I was entering the
last Spring of being on active duty.. In the late winter-early spring, I heard or read an advertisement from WHIO Radio in Dayton of an essay contest to be a guest of its host. I whimsically wrote an essay for that contest. Within a week later I received the surprising notice that I had won a spot to be that interviewee! (Two intervening events occurred that in retrospect were meant to short-circuit that interview. The first occurred the week before during a pizza delivery I was doing for the Linden Ave Pizza Hut restaurant. I was returning to my car after dropping off a delivery when a robber came up to me and put a gun in my face, telling me to give him the money. Being here to tell this story, I DID give him my proceed's money. That didn't please my manager who suspected I had something to do with that robbery. One week later on the evening of the interview a winter cyclone came barreling across the region, dumping, at least, up to a foot of snow with high, howling winds. Those conditions were intimidating, and under different circumstances I wouldn't go out driving in such conditions. I took this as an existential, Nietzschean challenge to my will and defining being. I went there and did the interview. What I suspect that the normally opinionated listeners of those early-Rush Limbaugh days were stunned into no feedback as captive shut-ins on that blizzard night; forced to hear me out.. Except for the sole, stereotypically dismissive person and 'my ever-loyal', 2nd (now deceased in 2017) spouse, who called in with comments and questions, I gave a performance affirmation, validating my evangelistic conviction in the 'cosmic ethos'. In exhibiting that I was more than being an affected dilettante, my radio performance reinforced my desire to change the focus of my loyalties from temporal-secular dominions to this spiritual domain by leaving the Air Force.
I left the active duty military and came back to civilian life, residing in Hopewell Virginia. I had known for some time that even my civic service in the military was tangent to whatever I really should be doing. I found work at a hospital, and my supervisor was a sheik in an American Muslim sect. I confided with him about my personal history. He insight-fully said, "You won't find peace until you are doing what you're meant to be doing. With that he gave me a paperback titled "Futuh al-Ghaib (Treasures of the Unseen). In the 27th Discourse it stated:
That passage inferred that there was a 'truth' out there to which I must have a close coherence, if not an absolute, lock-step adherence to that truth. I could only surmise from my own experiences that what had proven to be consistently valid-the fortuities of serendipities and synchronicities of 'my fates' were the analogous metaphor of that tree. I then began the sorting and purging of my own index of presumptions so to be more aligned with the forces that were beneficial to me.
The Serial Nomad Years 1995-1999
The esoteric, intellectual thinking which contributed to my social
estrangement, had now given way to a significant meaning for practicing
ethics, than just a lip-service or dilettante speculation. I had a
meaningful and defining code that was the discriminator between the
essential and the elective priorities. There were events that occurred
consecutively between 1995 to 1997 in Syracuse, Corpus Christi, the
near-eastside of downtown Richmond, Prince George-Ft. Lee, and the south
side of Richmond that gave indications of that seeming connection.
When
I returned to Syracuse in April '95, I had access to my homeboys'
residence for doing my laundry. One afternoon when I was doing the laundry, I
was listening to NPR's 'Talk of the Nation'. The topic was the
non-necessity of mysticism and spirituality in an objectivist world.
The
proponents arguments for their proposition on non-necessity I was
mentally and vocally debating to the radio at them. By the time the
program ended, I had become quite agitated by
the proponent's
tone, as well as their arguments. And within moments of the
end of the broadcast, the phone rang. Since I was the only
person at the residence, I hesitated at first from answering
to
avoid explaining my relatively unknown status to what was likely a
stranger calling. But because their mother was in a coma at a nearby nursing home, the call could be from there
and I felt obliged to answer the ringing wall phone.
When I answered, the person calling asked for ME! Finding words through my stunned countenance, I acknowledged that I was the person they were looking for. The woman told me she was from the employer whose advertisement I had responded to. The woman asked me if I was available and interested in that position, which started in five days, and would be paying triple the amount I was earning working at a pizza shop though for 12 hour shifts, 7-days a week. The money I'd be getting off-set the qualms I had about the hours I'd be working. Thus my income worries were solved for the present. That call for that job coming for me at the apex
of my emotional agitation got me thinking along the lines of my own internal triggers causing these fortuitous results.
The following February I had the whimsical notion to go to Corpus Christi Texas for no other reason than its name translates to 'the body of Christ'. In the spirit of following the swo-called, external spirit that was influencing the thoughts of my stream of consciousness, I headed to that destination for the greater resonating vitality of doing so. While there I tried to rekindle relations with 'Mizz Thange' from New Haven that went back to that day of the walk in the early Spring of 1970. I had given no thought that she 'had a life' and she was probably living with someone. With not a thought for but 'the fool believing-me', I wrote the letter that received a merciless put-down. OF COURSE, crestfallen to shame, I manned-up; took the slap-down stoically to bed and to sleep.
During the sleep I dreamed I was in a wooded glen sitting on a log when up pops an angel with the face of a gal from my high school. The angel-face asks me "How ya doin'?". I shrug my shoulders, nodded and said, staring at her, "I'm OK". The angel give me an incredulous look
and says, "You men! Always trying to act so brave". She kisses me on
the cheek and the dream ends. I marveled at the morale-boosting of that
dream and how the mind comes to the aid of the conscious.
WELL.... Later that day I THOUGHT I was supposed to be at a wake. I show up there, but don't see anyone recognizable at this gathering of Mexican Hispanics at a seeming memorial for some tragic death. After searching the INSIDES of the brochure I had picked up and finding no familiar names, I closed the brochure and saw the front of it for the first time, the image was showing the same juxtaposition that I had with the angel-face in the dream the night before. THAT confirmed everything. I was no longer kicking and screaming as I had been doing for the past 24 years . But was it the doings of the psyche of my stream of consciousness or was it the work of an external metaphysics? That question would arise again three months later in the downtown neighborhood on the near-eastside Richmond.
I returned to Richmond Virginia soon after that event, and was working as a route delivery driver. On one stop I fucked-up after not reporting damage that my truck had done to the customer. I was justifiably fired and I returned home in a woeful condition of despair. After walking past my drug-selling and drug-using neighbors on the street and on the stairway to my apartment, I entered my place and noticed the message light on my answering machine was blinking. I hit the play-button and heard the voice of the supervisor at the nearby hospital who was seeking to contact me for a pre-employment interview! The sense of an ultimate calamity had changed to a relieved elation in the most timely synchronistic way. Again, was it the work of some mentoring metaphysics or had my own internal mechanisms conjured those circumstances? The intense emotional distress, even greater than the reaction to the shoot-down reply I received in Corpus Christi, was the condition common to that previous circumstance.
The following spring I was living close enough to the Petersburg National Memorial Battlefield to go there on my off days to take walks. On this particular walk, a yearling was moving in the same direction as I was, off to my right about 50 yard in the woods. It moved with such a conscious deliberation that I had the inspirational notion that the deer-yearling had a similar discernment to mine. Was that deliberation part of a genetic manipulation by extraterrestrials seeking a reservoir for some DNA with a reflective consciousness? The yearling's movement indicated such a heretofore, discounted by me, capacity. Were humans products of a similar gene manipulation of the ape zoology? Were the seven wonders of antiquity markers left by the extraterrestrials to remind later generations of humans of our cosmic origins and progenitors? This swayed my thinking towards there being incarnate mentors who visit and give anonymous moral mentoring to those humans showing a conscious receptivity to such paradigms of the extraterrestrials.
The next stream of conscious affecting serendipity came a year later when I was living back in south Richmond, near to E. Belt Blvd & Hull St (zip code, 23224). Back then I paid my bills by phone with my bank's telephone bill paying service. It was a ritual, I performed dutifully. This one time the payment hadn't arrived at the rental office, as it should have . The kindly old gals who ran the office, spotted me to let me know about this discrepancy in my payment owed. I insisted that the payment had been made to the gals, as I was leaving the complex on my way to an appointment. On my return to the apartment premises, the old gals waved me down to let me know that not only had my payment been validated, but their money drop to the managing agency had suffered a similar delivery detour, as mine seemed to have. This was learned by them prior to gaining my missing payment, so that they gained empathy and sympathy for my circumstance. Was that another reductionist explanation for a routine mishap, or were the forces acting on my behalf in affirmation to my efforts of being in coherence to them?
Before and after the the internet, the personal telephone chat-lines that could be trolled for spoken phrasings that rang-true to my Id. Richmond had the chat-lines for singles looking to speak to other singles . If you were a lonely 'nice guy' looking for a companion but have a 'lame rap', then you'll be as abused verbally, as a cuckolded husband is psychologically by his spousal bitch. But when you came-on or came back as a dominator or violator, the call-backs wouldn't stop. This ended the presumption of gentlemanly etiquette in informal settings, since the callers were not looking to be treated in a sisterly or in a maternal-respected way. They sought the titillation that would viscerally take them to a sublime, ultra-pedestrian mindset-something spiritual and occult. The salacious opportunities of those phone calls sharpened my prowling hunter mindset for an intonation of voice being a signal frequency of availability for a sensually predisposed mind in-sync with my flow of thoughts.
A brief hint of soul resonation came with my LittletonCO-Mama from the old Yahoo personals. Reflecting on how her kids being at Columbine that tragic, shooting day changed the course our relationship about how she liked getting fucked to the proverbial heights of the Rockies, or at those foothills, or seeking some miles away from there-which she did, I thought I found what would be a long-term 'soul mate!! There was no coyness or pretense in her rabid lusts for being satiated, and that enabled a free-flowing of equally synergistic and symbiotic intense and near-synchronistic thoughts and intentions between us-an affirmation for my previous speculations-until the Columbine tragedy changed things. The social idealism of finding and achieving a formal organization or an informal virtual group of congregants on the same wavelength as in this narration gained greater hope, despite the regrettable outcome with Ms LittletonCO and I choosing different priorities of focus!
My pursuit of those ends came with a retributive caveat. I wasn't entitled to deliberately seek those ends, but be rewarded by the organic serendipity of time for my previously noted altruistic earnestness in situations putting me in the position where things would seem to come to me.
But not having comprehended that crucial caveat, I went to Colorado hoping to find another
such 'Mama', like Ms Littleton. In ways I did immediately find her with my equally sensual Chicana, but other events showed I had gone 'a bridge too far'-a 'Napoleonic or Hitler hubristic invasion' by my aspirations which brought me to Pueblo. For the next 12 months I'd be tangibly and intangibly paying for this with car repairs and less-than-ideal living situations.
It became even more symbolically emphatic when I found that the residence for myJune 2000 job was an underground, basement apartment-neat and clean, but across from a cemetery near a literal dead-end off Antietam Street, the most lethal battle, per capita, of the Civil War..
This locale was secure, but sterile in atmosphere: dominance of the upper-middle class personalities of temporality and materialism. I was in a funk which related to the name of the town, Funkstown. I was so morose, I submitted to psychological assistance that led me to realize the extreme-shortcomings of psycho-tropic medicines used by psychologist. The positive tangent, was that I regained faith in myself that I could do NO worse than the 'expert clinicians' would have had done to me by the adverse effects of those meds would have had on me.
Another turning point by my rejuvenated 'I got this'-attitude, was when my signifying cousin backed out of a road-trip to the maternal homelands of White Stone VA. My new attitude made the trip with intrepid grit for the emotional non-dependence of doing it. Having done that, set up what would lead to the next chapter and the move to Omaha Nebraska..
2001-2014:
Re-invigoration while still on-hold
in a proverbial geographic and dialectic exile
There I was in White Stone Va at my older first cousin's place on James Wharf Road (VA-637)
I came to find out about some real estate, but the news that day and for the trip was, "Oh! My half-brother's widow lives in Omaha. You should go see her and give her my regards". That opened the door for having a friendly and reliable place to have, at that time, a yet to be known major abdominal surgery and a two month recuperation-plus wife #3. Obtaining a wife had more to do with temporal circumstantial ethics for me and a cosmic ethical debt for the preceding
generation of my mother and her good friend from Montclair NJ, who just happened to be the deceased mother-in-law of wife #3; since her son, the deceased of the widow (my #3), had been a wild, abusive child and man whose behavior affected negatively and cognitively the generation of his own progeny.
All that was a side show for me encountering the needed humility of cognizance of one who has only the dignity of their mortal body and sublime soul during that period in metro-Omaha between January 2002 until April 2011.
The body and its mortal existence was never meant for an acclaim or prestige for itself. It's the consciousness of the mind, which comes to the realization of its independence and autonomy from its carnal address to know the dimensions it may and should facilitate. That is its significance. That awareness would be known in Time's rear-view mirror I came to realize.
The 'in the moment' journey was the intuitive sense that 'Self', the inner-soul, had an imperative manifestation more important than the secular rules of the external culture, which would seek to co-opt, if not impose, a predominance on my psyche's consciousness by its sensory monopolizing, empirical presence. Yes, it was a series of hazards, hoops to jump through, obstacles of forced accommodation to hurdle, plus the immersive bells-and-whistles of distraction that were meant to suck me in. They would be the 'gauntlet of the purgatory' that would forge me in preparation of a seemingly presciently fated future.
Most things I had to manage on my own, but one seeming inevitability was changed with a too timely hole-in-the-ground that caught my foot and not only twisted my ankle but sprang my wrist as I sought to break my fall from that tripping interruption to my jogging to condition myself to what was to be a deployment in '04 to Iraq.
At the medical board for the deployment, the folks there didn't want to hear, let alone provide any therapeutic relief for the lingering injury. So, I was sent home and didn't have to go through the nonsense reported to me a year later by the returnees in the unit, let alone the macro-nonsense of the American expedition of a Neo-conservative regime change for very dubious and amoral intentions.
In the state of maintaining the necessities, I incidentally was learning the needed disciplines of discernment between the functionally needed and the superfluous and whimsical 'wants'. It no longer was a matter of want and desire but what the body needed to give what the soul needed. The soul could not have needs that would injure the body, and the body couldn't have needs or wants that would corrupt the soul. The lines of distinction within an indulging, consumptive culture and society were often blurred by the license culture gave the individual as a privileged entitlement of political, 'GOD-given' natural rights. THAT was the alluring snare for both my mind and body.
I entered this time frame thinking and believing that visceral desires seeking resonance with others was the end game, when it was only a side-effect, a tangent point in the intersection with the praxis-discipline. When one has reached that 'praxis point' one's visceral and neural energy are at a jumping-off point for cognitive awareness and meditations on sublime phenomena, which were precipitant after-effects of achieving that praxis point.
Yet, Metro-Omaha was full of gals across the demographic spectrum who had that suck-me-in-allure that fed the visceral resonance paradigm for the fallacious beliefs of mine. What such resonance, though short-term and dead-end it was, did was that it increased the body energy frequency we know as our 'vitality'. That vitality is a broadcast beam which crosses others so-called radar. The intersecting and the positive awareness afforded the radar signals from me or from others, and was the hint of dimensional power our visceral energy agitation can be. That's a more recent insight. Back 'in the moment', it revealed the synchronistic, similar incidentals in my cognitive field.
The good aspect of that was my energized vitality had more meaningful satisfaction than the state of my secularized acculturation. Blame my way of thinking, but also blame those whose ways were offensive enough to offer obstacles for me being motivated to some coherence or any adherence to their values and ways of operating. I was ready and determined to have a more self-determined work mode. I found it, for a time with cabbing, but my own emotional baggage-ala the visceral resonance-got in the way of me being good at it because of my hyper-stimulation, in retrospect. At the least I knew that being in a conventional work role of following someone else's rules was no longer satisfactory for me. That kind of mundane and conventional, rules-following vitality resonance was good for tangibles and their temporal trappings and atmospherics, but were inherently limited to that 'caste-level' of behavioral existence of social roles, even with its sometimes quite acute 'Tar Baby' pleasures.
June 2011 was a 'better lucky than good' serendipity outcome for me. I'd been suffering since the Spring '08 of shortness of breath, which-without any tests by my then VA-physician in Omaha- was diagnosed as me needing more exercise. It went on for the next three years to the point I was thinking I was being poisoned in someway by the step-kids who were conspiring against me. After my relocation to here in Hampton Roads I was working at a U-Haul when the symptoms were showing up more pronounced. This one Sunday a co-worker saw me nearly pass-out and helped me, then told the manager who was working that day. The manager told me to see a doctor and not come back until cleared of that condition.
As it turned out, me being a military retiree, there was a base hospital close by. I went there to its ER, where the intake-nurse recognized my symptoms as possible pulmonary embolism/deep vein thrombosis (PE/DVT). The tests and diagnostics came back positive that I had blood clots (THROMBI) in my lungs and groin. I was hospitalized then and there, and later sent to the bigger Naval facility for the completion of medical treatment of stabilization. I'd been a walking potential heart attack or worse for many years, since the fatigue-to-dizziness symptoms had been with me since '02, at the least. 'Better lucky'-Me that it was timely that nurse clinician was sharp enough to recognize the symptoms! Her actions defused that congenital time bomb and extended my actuarial survival by significant years for me.
Come 2014, I was seeking MORE THAN THE BASICALLY NEEDED income and saw an advertisement to be the expediter of either packages or money transfers and deliveries. Though it was presented as conventional, near altruistic tasks, I was facilitating and was being used as a middle-man for theft-by-fraud transactions. My bank noticed a transaction in which a person's account had been hacked and they transferred money to my account. I was notified. Had to return the part of the money that was my commission for that transaction. And I not only owed them money that had been lost, but that ended what I thought was a near ideal, contractor-self-employment deal for myself. I was leaving the bank, where I'd been informed of the financial liability I had become subject for paying back the lost sum of several thousands, when my phone rang. It was a business to which I'd been seeking employment-just like what happened in '96 when I was fired from the delivery job. They wanted me to come in for a job interview, which I did get! SAVED from economic calamity again, most fortuitously by my synchronicitous fates.
The 2011 alert about my PE/DVT condition and that 2014 fraud-liability/then job call once again pitted the notions of my 'better lucky than good' serendipities as being derived by third-party mentor forces or some internal signal that precipitates future prospective circumstances. Both, being in the realm of the incredible or improbable, have yet to satisfy me with certainty for either-but maybe both. Even my finding and obtaining a home to buy near the Hampton Road Harbor's north shore vistas-as in the prophetic dream of 1972-seemed too lucky, but for my serendipitous grace bestowing itself upon me. BUT FROM WHERE AND WHY FOR ME????
2020 Covid-19 Shutdown was something my developed disciplines and practices had me doing
as far as my estrangement of distancing myself from the social culture in my 'sanctuary-cave' of monasticism-by just adding a mask when going out the door! Was that preparedness a coincidence or another prescient orientation of mechanical navigation of an on-going process?
If so, are some incarnates being my benefactors or is there something within me that is my neurological and physiological telemetry monitor. That monitoring is an extension of this
cosmic Space's animistic nature throughout its multiversal dimensions? Only the dimensions will be able to inform Me and You who seek this meaning will learn of that cognizance.
If there's a common thread, it is visceral and neural intensity that is the precursor to the serendipitous, 'better lucky than good' events. That agitated emotional intensity when it crosses a thresh hold is a trip-wire. Why, was it my particular emotional intensities from the time I was a 9-year old crossing guard on that wind swept corner in mid-January in Syracuse? Me, an anointed-one; I don't think or believe so! Me, having a unique sensory learning experience which programmed me for these phenomena? If so, then why not others as or more mentally acute and perceptive and situationally proximal to similar conditions? OR Me having a "lucky" DNA-code that has that cosmic telemetry program as part of my make up, that would be the more likely scenario. I could be 'THE MUTANT' with his own unique fate of cosmic telemetry. That telemetry allows me to presciently act with an unknown awareness of the future, an ability to recall other incarnations, and be able to have visitations to parallel places and alternative places.
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Jacobin-Trotsky Populist Harpy
@JacobinTrotsky:'Never expect anything good from an asshole'
~Tiger-Year Virgo 8/24~
'For Life and its Vitalities'
