The Mythos of Harriet, Part II
by the Speaker for the Dead,
Chief Scribe of Memphis,
Oin Mukraken
NOTE: Some of the links in here go to pieces written in Surrealist Jive Vernacular, a language rife
with neologisms. Some find it humorous and stimulating, while others find it simply annoying. I've
decided to make it easy for you to skip them. They have a blue button next to each one. The newer links,
in reg'lar Tennessee English y'all, have no blue button.
Autumn of 1968 I started as a freshman at the University of Tennessee at
Knoxville. I didn't stay long, maybe a month, then dropped out. I had a girlfriend
back in Memphis, and the paranoid side of my schizophrenia was getting out of
hand. I was on a C.S. Lewis trip engendered by his Perelandra trilogy. Modern
techno-science (not science itself) was the tool of a conspiracy to destroy or enslave
the human race. It was a conspiracy recognized by all paranoid schizophrenics. At
the source of everything vile was a vague group of hostiles known only as Them.
They were destroying the forests, polluting the air, bombing neolithic villages with
napalm, putting alien chemicals in our food and water to destroy and replace our
precious bodily fluids, brainwashing the masses, and, for all I knew, monitoring my
every move.
I still had not had my first psychedelic trip or even smoked pot. Interesting
point, one that I had hardly considered until recently. I had always thought of my
schizophrenia as drug-induced, but I now realize it wasn't. It may have been drug-
enhanced, but it was present since my earliest childhood. Let me see if I can lay it
down as a litany in fifty words or less: Long before I'd ever had a street drug, I had
seen a pixie (or the Goddess), had at least one prescient dream about Tibetan
Lamas, recalled being born here after a life in a heavenly paradise, astral-projected
involuntarily, encountered demons, conceived of a vast Plot on the part of Them
(whoever Them was) to destroy humankind, and tried to pedal to another universe
on my father's bicycle. This is what I remember. The gods only know what I may
have forgotten.
So here I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, paranoid, lonely, and perfectly sober.
One night I awoke to see a dark cloaked and hooded figure standing in the doorway
of my dorm room. My roommate later told me that I screamed a scream that
sounded like the howl of some animal.
The Bauhaus architecture of UT's dirty soot- and mold-stained, featureless
buildings didn't help any. Neither did Biology 101. The air in the biology lab was
rank with formaldehyde, and there was a plethora of animal cadavers for us to slice.
A dead cat lay supine on one table, opened from stem to stern, its flesh pinned back
to expose its innards.
The biology professor told us it was okay to practice vivisection on live frogs
because frogs were too primitive to feel any pain. I watched as he demonstrated.
The frog writhed in its bonds as he made his incisions in its torso. A weak,
despairing fluttering sound came from its throat. I said, "Looks to me like that
thing's in pain." The professor assured me that those were all reflexive responses,
that the frog's brain was too primitive to have the complex feeling we call pain.
Meanwhile, in Psychology 101, another professor was defining emotions and
sensations in terms of behavior. Pain was defined in terms of behavior that featured
thrashing about and uttering screams and moans.
Evidently there was some cognitive dissonance between the two sciences.
What with the paranoia and missing my Memphis girlfriend, I couldn't or
wouldn't focus on my studies. I dropped further and further behind. Bimeby I
withdrew from school and returned to Memphis.
Alas, my Memphis girlfriend had found herself a younger man of 16.
Heartbroken, I got a job at National Shirt Shop in the Southland Mall, with an eye
to starting at Memphis State University in the spring. Meanwhile, I dated my ex-
girlfriend's girlfriends, pumping each one for information about her. First was
Jane. Jane was a diminutive little intellectual who favored the works of Joseph
Heller and A.A. Milne. She handed me off to Leigh. Leigh was the daughter of
Elizabeth Smith, the Honors English teacher I described earlier, my favorite out of
all the teachers at Merrymount. Leigh looked like Princess Leia of "Star Wars".
The two of them got together and passed me off to a friend of theirs, Hebe Freigeist,
and the two of us dated for the next several months.
Dropping out of UT was good news and bad news. The good news was that I
met Hebe and serendipitously renewed relations with my cousins Tom and Tim, who
were bohemian troubadors in the process of becoming rural hippies. The bad news
was living in Memphis, working at National Shirt Shop, and attending MSU. The
worse news I didn't realize until thirty years later: If I had stayed at UT for the next
three years, I would have had Harriet Douthitt as a classmate.
But there was more good news, the best of all, and it neutralized all the bad
news, blew it right out of the water. Hebe introduced me to Fleebus, who became
one of the two closest friends I've ever had. Catfish was the other. (I'm not
counting my wife, here. Don't get mad, honey! It's one of those "boys only" things.
Well, okay, Harriet was an intimate friend, as were Jane, Janie, Cathy, Gwen,
Sharon, Revel, and maybe one or two other friends with two X chromosomes. But
that's it, dear! I swear! And I didn't have sex with them! That's the whole point.
Except for Gwen, but you already know about that. Yeah, well, and Sharon. Hey,
it's been over for twenty-five years! It was before I even met you! Cathy and I just
kissed, and Jane and I just slept together. Just slept! 'Cause I thought she was gay!
That's what she told me! Hell's Belles, it was the '70s! We had the Pill and no
terminal diseases! "All you need is love," my dear sweet honeybunch! Sugarbabe!)
Harriet called me a "gentleman" and "safe"; Jane slept with me for over a
month, cheeks to cheeks, and told me she was gay. This is getting downright
embarrasing. Time for a change of venue.
Living in Memphis also meant that I would get to know my friend Sheafer better,
once he dropped out of UT Martin and moved back to Memphis by way of a New
Orleans asharam. Sheafer turned me onto my first acid, Green Lime. You can click
on the link below to get more details about that first trip. I'll have to warn you,
though, it's written in Surrealist Jive Vernacular. One might want to read a little
of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake first, or at least drink some San Pedro Aura
Illuminator tea before embarking on any reading that might tend to put a crack in
one's cosmic egg. It's for adult epopts, only, Mack!
The Quest for the Cosmic Mammijazzm, Part 1
Then there's also another account of the proceedings, in ordinary English:
Pixies and Pirates in Pair o' Dice
In those days, Memphis State University required that all male students
complete two years of Air Force ROTC. After one semester of that nonsense, I
applied for a waiver on basis of being a conscientious objector. A fat little non-com
told me I would have to prove that I was a practicing member of an officially-
recognized pacifist church. Now, as far as I was concerned, any Christian church
would do. Anyone who thought Jesus Christ wasn't a pacificist simply had his
cranium so far up his rectum that he could lick his own larynx from behind without
stretching. But no, the little man told me, it would have to be one of the fringe
churches like Quakers or Amish. Gnostic-Christo-Pagan-Empiricist-Shamanist was
not on the list.
I gazed dreamily out the window and said, "That quad where everybody drills
would be a really nice place for a sit-in."
They gave me my waiver forthwith. "But," the little man said, holding up a
finger, "you'll have to take extra physical education classes!" He made it sound like
a doomsday curse.
Fine with me; I had always loved phys ed. I took a course in Fencing and one in
Folk & Social Dancing. I had a ball. Made an "A" in the former and a "C" in the
latter. Could've done better, but I had to dance with a halfback.
My first day in Physical Education I met Ellay, the psychotic biker who was to
become one of my closest friends. I was wandering around lost in the basement of
the gym, trying in vain to figure out which locker I had been assigned. The
numbering of the lockers seemed to follow no recognizeable pattern. You'd follow
one row to its end at, say, number 599. Then the next row would begin with locker
number 300. It was that way all over the gym basement, and my number was
nowhere to be seen.
I spied a student wearing a gym uniform of colors different from mine. I
assumed he was an upper classman, so I stopped him to ask directions. He was
about my size, had dark hair and one eyebrow that went all the way across his
forehead like that of a Neandertal. I handed him a piece of paper with my locker
number on it. He frowned at it for a minute or two, looked up and down the rows of
lockers, then handed it back to me. He offered to let me use his own locker, just for
this first class. He showed me where it was and told me the combination number. I
changed clothes and went to class. Naturally, I forgot not only the combination
number but also which locker it was. The Neandertal was nowhere to be found. So
now my clothes were locked away, including my wallet with all my money, my draft
card, my MSU ID, and my driver's license.
To school and state, the student is no more than a faceless number. For the next
three days, I was even less than that. It was thrillingly existential at first, but after
awhile it became a hassle. I went back to the gym several times a day, hoping to run
into him again, but he never showed. Finally I sought the help of one of the coaches.
He reluctantly gave me a list of every student in the row of lockers which I thought
the Neandertal's was in. There were thirty of them. I went down the list one-by-
one, phoning each one and asking him if he was the guy I'd met. Nada.
There was a guy on the list, one Ellay Reilly, that I hadn't been able to contact.
When I dialed his number nobody answered. After two days of this, I was ready to
surrender and start requesting new IDs from MSU, the State of Tennessee, and the
Feds. Getting a card from the US Selective Service was easy. I did that every time I
burned mine, which was at every anti-war demonstration and not a few pot parties.
But the driver's license and the MSU ID would cost money, at least five dollars each.
I could get two-thirds of a lid of pot with that money, enough for a week.
I decided to try his number one more time, first. I got his father, who said that
Ellay had been in a motorcycle accident the day he loaned me his locker. He gave
me the phone number of his son's hospital room, and I was finally able to retrieve
my clothes.
A few days later, Ellay recognized me on the quad. He told me that he was, like
me, new at MSU. He wasn't an upper classman at all. His PE uniform had been a
different color from mine because he was a PE major. We went on to become
intimate friends. I introduced him to Fleebus, Catfish, and Sheafer. Over the years,
we all came to comprise a tightly-knit group of friends.
He was one of the most iconoclastic people I have ever known, so he fit in
perfectly with nearly everyone I knew. We were all the most iconoclastic people
we'd ever known. Within a couple of months of our introduction, he had changed
his major from Physical Education to Philosophy. Shortly thereafter, he joined the
Family Motorcycle Club of Memphis. Though he loved fistfights, I don't believe he
ever started one with anybody. But if anyone picked one with him, he'd be all over
them in nothing flat. Yet, he could be a complete pacifist when he was with us,
discussing philosophy, listening to sitar music, and playing board games.
I also introduced him to the folks at Hivad House. He was able to hold his own in
any discussion of the sciences, philosophy, comparative religion, oriental mysticism,
or really any topic, intellectual or otherwise. Hold his own and somebody else's, too.
At one point, he wanted to run away to South America and be a Che-type
revolutionary. Later, he wanted to immigrate to South Africa and serve as a right-
wing mercenary. Another time, he was determined to disappear to Spain and live in
secret as a Trappist monk.
I also introduced him to LSD. We tripped together many times. One of his first
trips took place on a New Year's Eve. I tried to get him to visit Sheafer with me, but
he refused to enter the house. He said that he sensed an evil aura around the house.
He said he was going home. His own house was about three miles away. If I had
had my senses about me, I would have gone with him. As it was, I was tripping too,
and I committed a great Trip Sin. I let him go by himself.
He told me later that he had run all the way with people chasing him, throwing
confetti on him and yelling "Happy New Year!"
Hivad House and the Bikeman Karmyth
Not long thereafter, Ellay joined a motorcycle club, The Family. He had been in
another one before he met me, The Outcasts or The Outlaws-- I forget the exact
name. They were both the type clubs in which the members wore "colors" with
chains and plenty of grease stains. What little I saw of them, they seemed like nice
fellows. A little too fond of fighting for my taste, though. Too bad I was a pacifist at
the time. I might've bought myself a motorcycle and joined them. (Yeah, right, like
I'd have had enough money to buy a damn bike when I couldn't save ten dollars a
month to pay the rent!)
My second trip, a green tab with no nickname* was less exciting. I made out
with Hebe at a drive-in movie. She didn't trip with me, so at the end of the movie I
took her home and went to see my cousin Tom. While he and his wife slept, I
wandered around their apartment in a haze of Peter Max hallucinations and had an
excellent conversation with their central heating unit, a rather earthy hardhat
fellow with a huge family.
My third trip was at my friend Marvin's house. Marvin had a TV he had made
from parts he stole from the plant where he worked. Whenever people were over at
his place getting high and/or tripping, he would put it between channels and we
would watch the little colored dots of light flash across a black screen. This
comprised two favorite shows, "The Spaceship Races" and "The War of Galaxy X",
nearly indistinguishable from each other. Thirty years later, Captain Nemo told me
that two percent of those dots of light were leftover shrapnel from the Big Bang at
the beginning of the universe.
Later during that same trip I sat next to the matress watching Marvin and Shay
Lee make love, something I would never have had the nerve to do undosed. They
were my mandala as I rode the music of their breathing accompanied by the
psychedelic riffs of police sirens reverberating in the night, with the usual crickets,
cicadas, and nightbirds in the rhythm section.
It was around this time that Lin Baeder told us about the Giant Monolithic
Computer from Jupiter. The GMC was a titan computer of alien origin. It was
buried beneath Memphis State University. It was the source of everything that was
weird in a really bad way.
At first Fleebus and I played with the idea, pretending we were shooting at it
with sticks down by the river, exploring forbidden towers, tunnels, and chambers
around town with an eye to finding out what it was hiding in them. We told each
other we were looking for the GMC's prisoners, seekers much like us, to set them
free.
Over the years, though, my paranoia assimilated the tale. Eventually I was sure
that I was being monitored. Click on the link below for more details.
The War Against the Giant Monolithic Computer from Jupiter
It was my fourth trip that did me in. The Purple Double-Dome I got from my
Satanist friend Pope was more powerful than my previous doses. I spent the night
in jail for the second time in my life. Here's a link for those with a perverse interest in such things:
The Hoot on Hainted Hell
My fifth trip was at the Atlanta Pop Festival of 1970. (Surrealist Jive Vernacular)
The Atlanta Pop Festival
Many a trip was to follow. For at least two years, Fleebus and I tripped on a
psychedelic every other day. My grades at MSU went down from all A's to A's and
B's with an occasional C. By my third year at MSU, this was beginning to tell on
me. My grades were now more B's than A's. I had changed my major from English
to psychology to philosophy to anthropology over the past few years. I was taking
four upper-level undergrad archaeology courses plus assorted free electives when
the fit finally hit the shan.
I had been living in a commune in Midtown Memphis. Extracurricular activities
included not only tripping on psychedelics but also Sensitivity Groups (a la
Transactional Analysis and other Human Potential Movement processes), group
massage, free love/sex experimentation, yoga, meditation, witchcraft, and endless
discussions of everything under the sun. Most of us at the commune also
participated in political activism that consisted mainly of demonstrations and
marches.
I had a galaxy of karasses around which I used to orbit. The commune at Hivad
House was the main one, but there were separate groups that were more limited in
scope. While many of the Hivad group also participated in political activism, there
were also many political activists who missed out on the benefits of the commune.
They were generally more stressed-out and uptight than the rest of us, and a
number of them were involved in political groups with a distinctly red cast. One
such gathered around the MSU area to get high and debate the myriad forms of
communism and socialism. Marxists, Leninists, Troskyites, Maoists, and a variety of
other reds shook red books at each other and set each other straight on party lines.
But my paranoid delusions colored every political action in which I was involved. See link below:
The First Toryan War
Then there was the occult group I hung with. I think of it as Weird Luease's
Coven. We were a mixed bag: two Catholics, a Satanist, a natural witch, two
generic sorcerors, and an Acid Buddhist formed the core group, accompanied by
various hangers-on from time to time.
Hornstune in the Cattycombes
Our occult group started in 1969 and continued until maybe 1976. It was a
mixed bag. I call it "occult" as being a term as good as any to describe our activities.
There was one Satanist, a couple of Catholics, a natural witch, two generic
sorcerors, and a number of hangers-on. I was into a kind of shamanistic Buddhism
at the time, myself. We had no professed creed. We had no name for our group.
We were interested in doing the things most people only read about. We
investigated channeling, the Tarot, astrology, extra-dimensional travel,
reincarnation, and a kind of automatic sketching, among many other things, all in
"hands-on" mode. Most of the time, we were not high on any physical medium. We
also did some hiking and caving.
Greg Pope was, of course, the Satanist, Luease and Sita the Catholics, Petra the
natural witch, Kooky and Furri the generic sorcerors, and Penie one of the
hangers-on. The real Penie was actually 19 years old when all this took place. She
only looked like a fourteen-year-old. The rest of us were in our early twenties.
During one of our seances, Penie was in another room, non-participating. But
she seems to have gotten "possessed" during the seance. She must've weighed in at
about 80 or 90 pounds tops, but she was throwing all us guys around. All four of us
were rather muscley guys, but we could just barely hold her down, and that after us
getting tossed about a bit. I borrowed Kooky's knife and slashed the top of my
forearm. Then I drew phoney "mystic" symbols on her chest with my own blood.
As soon as she saw them, she pulled out of it. She didn't come to any more seances
after that, but she continued to party with us.
Luease and Sita were largely responsible for starting the occult group. The part
about them having oral sex with a disembodied Babylonian in the back of my car
was a true story. Literally. As Bear is my witness. (And all my witnesses are bare!)
Petra really was a natural witch. A natural witch is someone who seems to have
been born with her/his psychic abilities already well developed. Petra was sweet,
intelligent, and divinely attractive if your didn't mind the emaciated Dutch saint
look about her. About the only mean thing Petra ever did was play with my head a
bit one time when I was tripping at her house. I had found a quart of tomato juice in
her refrigerator, and was about to take a sip. "That's my blood," she said quietly.
"If you drink it, you'll be under my power." I chugged it, just to show her I wasn't
chicken.
A little later, she said, "I want to show you something." Now Petra was an
extremely thin, pale lady, beautiful after a Gothic fashion. When she offered to
show me something, testosterone required that I check it out. Her body shimmered
and changed. She wasn't a different person, still blonde, with an oval Flemish face.
But now she was full-bodied, a veritable Amazon. And her skin had a golden tan
tinged with the pinkish flush of health. She called it shape-shifting and said that
anyone could do it. To demonstrate, Sita and Luease shape-shifted their faces to
look like vampire women, complete with fangs in their mouths and dark shadows
around their eyes.
Fortunately for my peace of mind, I had been tripping for a couple of years by
this time. I was used to seeing perfectly ordinary people's faces shift into dozens of
characters, beasts, and bizarre caricatures. I never drank tomato juice during a trip
after that one, though.
By the way, Sita's grandmother really was a Conjure Woman, and Petra's
mother was a natural witch like herself. My Dad was a Knight Templar, which
tended to make the Presbyterian preacher really nervous. Not that there's anything
mystical about Knights Templar. :)>
Big Kooky Ooland was big and kooky. What to say about Kooky? Sources say
he was kin to a famous witch. Back in the old days in the Old South. North
Mi'sippi, maybe. He was intelligent, fun to be with, loyal to his friends. I had one of
my most intense and educational trips with him, on Clear Light Windowpane. He
introduced me to various pieces of classical music while we journeyed across
dimensions neither of us had previously strode. He showed me how one could make
sparks fly from one's fingertips, which was rather impressive to occult groupies.
Furri Overdell was a childhood pal that I hadn't seen in six or seven years when
Luease and Sita introduced him to me. We were both amazed to see each other
again in such different circumstances. Again, what to say? As a kid, he was so
rational, so scientific, a classic tech-head. As an adult, he looked and acted the same
as he had in his childhood days, except that he would calmly and rationally make
plans for interdimensional travel and otherworld communications, sort of an Oz-
tech-head. Weird!
Yes, the account in the "Saga of Penie Loopy" is mostly fiction. (Well, except for
the part about Tenebras and the caves. After all, we did go to the Devil's Den and
even the Devil's Icebox. That was true. And the episode with Petra behind the
cashbar. I was there; I knew these people.) But it is more authentic when taken in a
metaphorical vein or artery. Besides, it is literally true in one world, one dream of
Vishnu, or another.
It was in 1970 that I first practiced self-mutilation. I had been contemplating
suicide. Adrift in loneliness and anomie, I pondered Hamlet's "To be or not to be"
soliloquy. Thinking of Hamlet brought back to me the scene in which he accidently
killed Polonius. Hamlet was going into a furious rage against his mother for
marrying his uncle. Polonius was hiding in the curtains, eavesdropping. Just as
Hamlet drew his sword, Polonius stirred, upset at the thought that Hamlet might kill
his own mother. In that split intant, Hamlet's rage was turned aside and, thinking
there was an assassin hidden in the curtains, he stabbed Polonius to death.
Then I thought of how Vincent Van Gogh had cut off his own ear. It occured to
me that I could avoid the suicide impulse by setting a razor to my skin, which I did.
I carved several mystical symbols on my arms and chest. Then I thought of how
Huckleberry Finn's pappy had carved crosses on the soles of his boots to keep
vampires away. I looked in the mirror and carved a number "3" on my chest,
thinking it would keep away evil spirits. After all, my reasoning went, perhaps the
suicide impulse came not from my own subconscious but from the psychic
whisperings of some evil spook. I forgot that the mirror reversed everything.
Instead of a magic number "3", I now had an "E" on my chest. Everyone assumed I
had carved an "E" for "Ernie".
I cut myself in like manner several times over the next five years. I thought of it
as a kind of macho manhood ritual, like some Native American tribes used to do. By
1975, though, it was beginning to acquire a sexual element. That worried me, for I
was getting dangerously close to my groin area. I put away the razor and the knife
and never did it again, was never tempted to do it again. Sick.
In 1971, I moved into the Hivad Commune as a "permanent" resident for the
first time. And then:
Then I met Lilith.
I met the lady to whom I refer as "Lilith" at a sensitivity group at Hivad House
in 1971. Lived with her for a few months. We were kicked out of the commune at
Hivad for not paying our share of the expenses. Rightly so. She was addicted to
darvon and claimed to work for the Mafia, moving heroin. Even with the money
spent on darvon, though, it was amazing how little cash she had, for having such a
supposedly lucrative job.
I had the attic with its three gable windows. I kept my matress next to the
windows. Lilith and I spent a lot of time on that matress, doing this and that. I had
dropped out of MSU the month before, pulling F's in four archaeology courses
because it was after the withdrawal date. I couldn't make the ten dollars a month
rent I owed. I was working for Manpower for ten dollars a day. An ounce of pot
cost fifteen dollars, and I could get acid for a dollar or two a hit. Besides that and
gasoline, I had no other expenses. Still couldn't pay the rent, despite shoveling gravel for days on end.
One night I went out with Sheafer and his girlfriend Dawn. I had promised to
get the two of them and Lilith some acid. I found a fellow on the strip selling huge
purple tablets for $2.50/ea., kinda highpriced. We got four hits. Like a fool, I dropped not only
my own hit but also Lilith's. I tripped for the next three days, and the only way I
could come down from the trip was to let Hiva guide me through a self-hypnosis
session. As I dozed fitfully on that fourth day, I could hear both sides of telephone
conversations going on downstairs.
She was a natural witch, and she could twist anyone around her little finger. We
ended up living in a shotgun shack on Peabody Street. I worked at a plastics
extrusion plant during the day. At night we subsisted on grill-cheese sandwiches,
Colt 45, and occasional acid. She saw acid as a sacrament and seemed to view pot as
the work of the devil. She was VERY intelligent, superbly well-read, and a superior
conversationalist, which is why our relationship lasted as long as it did. After a few
months together, I told her I was going back to school and she decided to return to
her hometown in Georgia.
She was a good person in many ways, generous to a fault, tolerant of nearly
everything and everybody, sexy in an "anything goes" sort of way. But she had the
same faults most all addicts have. Maybe she's gotten off the stuff by now. One can
always hope.
PS, I used the pseudonym "Lilith" to refer to her long before the character of the
same name appeared on the television show "Cheers". I got the idea for the
pseudonym from George MacDonald's book Lilith, which I highly recommend.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the tale told is all true, except for the part about
the... Whups! No, that part was true, too! Oh well...
Click on the link below for further details of my life with Lilith.
The Interminable Coming of Lilith
At the end of my first semester as a Senior, I decided to stay awake throughout
final exams. I got myself a goodly cache of amphetamines and stayed up around the
clock five days and nights in a row. I did pretty well on my exams until I got to the
fifth day, when I was scheduled to take Psychological Statistics, a math course. I
had run out of amphetamines the night before, and all I could score to stay awake
was some psilocybin. I dropped it about a half hour before taking the test. Big
mistake. Somehow it never occurred to me to phone in sick and ask to take a make-
up exam. I watched in awe as my equations drifted off the page and proceeded to fly
around the classroom, much like my childhood pixie had done. They made quite a
show, and I made an F on the exam, bringing my total grade in the Psych Stat course
down to a D, which was unacceptable for a psychology major at Memphis State. I
would have to take the course over.
After those two years of intensive tripping, I cut down to once or twice a week.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
In his trips he had always noticed that there were myriads of little unidentifiable
thingies here and there. Spots on the wall or in the air seemed to have legs, tendrils,
tentacles that reached and sensed and quested. They would appear and disappear at
random. They seemed a combination of animal and plant, like the sci-fi aliens in the
book (and movie) The Day of the Triffids. Bubba christened them "pinoobrias",
deciding that they varied in type and size all the way from virus-level, up through
triffid-size, to gargantuan alien beings that sent out tendrils to different dimensions.
In fact, they lived in the interfaces between worlds. That's why some people could
see them when tripping, because they were hovering at the edge of our reality,
waiting for an opportunity to leech off energy from humans who ventured too close
to the edge of the Garden of Consensus Reality. He could catch a glimpse of the
smaller ones once in awhile. The larger ones could only be perceived by the ripples
they made in the fabric of reality. Or by their curious, cautious scritching at the
back of your consciousness in moments of distraction.
One chill winter night in the back yard at Hivad Commune, he heard several
titanic pinoobrias flying by overhead, one-by-one. It sounded like the rush of the
wind, but he could see a huge "V" shape in the cloudless stuff of sky, like the wake of
a ship on the ocean, each time he heard the rushing sound. He was perfectly sober
that night. He shivered and went back inside.
Bimeby, there was no place he felt perfectly safe. The modern buildings in the
city and on campus all seemed to be the insides of giant computers, filled with GMC
zombies. The old houses in Midtown were haunts of the alien pinoobrias, whom he
thought might be allies of the GMC. The woods were full of Lord-knows-what.
Oftimes he was afraid to go to sleep, especially at the end of a trip.
He was beyond the point where logic would help; it only made things worse.
After all, there was no easy way to prove his paranoia wrong through logic. Never
argue logic with an intelligent paranoiac; he's got it all worked out already.
Argument to absurdity is no effective objection to the schizophrenic, to whom
nothing is too absurd to believe. And he didn't hear a peep from religion. He
couldn't get out of the labyrinth on his own, and no help from Outside was in sight.
This state of drug-enhanced schizophrenia intensified until it reached a peak
while he was living with Lilith. It was then, though, after two 3-day nightmares
triggered by unknown entheogens, after the two of them were kicked out of the
Hivad Commune for failing to pay their $10/month rent, that mundaneity began to
sneak back into his mind. Working at a plastics extrusion plant while living on
grilled-cheese sandwiches and Colt 45 malt liquor tended to make mundaneity
difficult to ignore.
I graduated in 1973, took my Bachelor degree in psychology, and embarked on a
career as a rodman/chainman on land surveying crews. Meanwhile, beckoning
states:
A more or less scholarly commentary on schizophrenia
After he'd broken up with Lilith and returned to school to get his BA, the
schizophrenia slowly began to recede. He finally graduated in 1973. When he
moved to Rivendell Commune with Aramie in 1974, he was still far from Mundania.
But by then he'd quit taking tab acid and was only tripping on Clear Light
Windowpane. His schizophrenic impulses had entered into more positive occult
frameworks that included reincarnation and Gnostic Christianity. Certainly, one of
the major reasons he'd moved to the Ozarks was fear that the entire southern
portion of the USA would sink into the sea, perhaps at the behest of a nuclear attack.
But he no longer feared meeting pinoobrias or GMC agents at the turn of every
corner. Evil spirits there might be, but they were neither all-powerful nor all-
knowing.
Speaking of which, Richard Milhous Nixon was in the process of dancing a buck-
and-reel to avoid getting impeached. That proved there was a God in Heaven!
Perhaps a psychic tide of some sort was turning.
There was a turning point before he ever moved to the Rivendell Commune. It
was shortly after Fleebus had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Korea in 1973.
One day he just decided he'd had enough. What with the FBI, CIA, TBI, GMC, and
the pinoobrias all out to get him, he decided it was no use. They had all the guns, the
agents, the computers, the digital and analog brainwashing technology, and most of
all the money. He was ready to surrender, so he sat down on the curb and waited
for them to come pick him up. He even broadcast a message to that effect on the
psychic airwaves: "Here I am. I surrender unconditionally. Come pick me up and
make me a mind-slave. I'm ready." Whatever they did to him, it would be a relief
not to have to worry about it anymore.
He waited... And waited... They didn't come. After an hour or so, he decided
they must not be coming.
He pondered the situation. Near as he could figure, he had two choices as to how
to explain this delinquency on the part of the Opposition. Either: 1) The Opposition
didn't exist, or 2) he wasn't important enough for the Opposition to worry about.
On the one hand, he knew that some facets of the Opposition did exist and kept
extensive records on all activities of left-wing radicals and hippies. The FBI was
doing that for sure, and he'd been told that the TBI (the Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation) was asking questions about him at one time. On the other hand, the
notion that he wasn't important, well, that was simply unacceptable.
He lit upon a compromise. Neither the GMC nor the pinoobrias existed, and the
Secret Police had decided to let him alone because he was harmless. They were
simply not sophisticated enough to realize the danger to their own psychic reality-
framework, once left-wing radicals quit politics for the sake of occult endeavors.
The idiots didn't realize that evolution was far more of a threat to their precious
status-quo than revolution. Hot-cha!
He'd seen many radical activists destroyed by the idea that they could change
the System from the inside. They'd cut their hair, shave, and put on a suit. Then
they would either enter politics or follow a natural inclination to work their way
into whatever professional nook in the Establishment it seemed might lead to some
sort of position of influence. Or imagined influence. The result of that was that the
System would gobble them up and shit them out as politically-correct zombies.
Bubba would no longer try to destroy the System from the outside, nor was he
foolish enough to think he could change it from the inside. No, Bubba would initiate
a thorough brainwash of the System Itself. From the Weirdside.
Bubba had encountered many a scary spook on the Weirdside, but two things
he'd never found there were cops or politicians. It stood to reason that either they
were afraid to go there or else they simply didn't know it existed. It was a front they
had not fortified, and they would be helpless, unaware as he broadcast his own
voodoo-hoodoo over the psychic airwaves. Firing magic missiles of psychic
discombooberation at them would be like shooting ducks in a pond! It was highly
unsportsmanlike, but that couldn't be helped. The whole Sphere depended upon him
and his friends.
And the eldritch Lovecraftian horrors that might dwell and stalk in the
interfaces between realities? Well, no eldritch horror had ever called him "a
commie-fag peace-freak" or hit him over the head with a nightstick. The eldritch
horrors would just have to take care of themselves from now on.
So Bubba gradually recovered from his drug-enhanced schizophrenia. By 1976,
he was completely "cured" by moderate temperance, meditation, yoga, and other
practices, although he still dropped acid or ate 'shrooms about three or four times a
year. And in the first few months of his service in Peace Corps Korea, starting
January 1977, he was too busy with other worries to think about paranoia. Each
day had troubles sufficient unto itself. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, for
meanwhile back in 1974, he was in the woods.
I had met Aramie in 1973. It happened like this. Fleebus and I were tripping
down at the Highland Strip when I decided to use the restroom at Popeye's Pinball and
Record Shop. When I opened the door of Popeye's a beautiful redheaded girl
blocked my way, looked me in the eyes, grinned and yelled, "Fuck me!"
Now this was a conundrum to stop all conundrums. It was a dream come true,
the fulfillment of every young hippy gentleman's fantasy, that a beautiful stranger
would block a doorway and offer herself to him. There were two catches, though.
One, I was tripping, and two, I needed to pee really badly. I could have overcome
one such catch, but the two together did me in.
I had learned by then that the only way to get something done while tripping was
to focus on the task at hand to the exclusion of all else. In my condition of
psychedelic Zen focus, all I could think of was to get to that latrine. I tried to push
past her, but she blocked me again, yelling "Fuck me!" over and over. I finally lifted
her up and set her aside, then rushed to the men's room.
When I came back out, Fleebus was waiting for me. "You'll never guess what
happened," I said. Fleebus set me straight, reminding me what I was on this Earth
for. We frantically searched for the young lady who seemed so generous with her
body. Someone told us that she and her girlfriend had left to hitchhike to Overton
Park, so we crossed the street and stuck out our thumbs.
Nobody stopped to pick us up, so I told Fleebus about the art of using mental
visualization to conjure up a ride. "Let's both close our eyes and visualize a red
sports car stopping to pick us up." We did so, and just as as soon as we opened our
eyes, there was a red sports car there. We hopped in and rode as far as Central
Avenue.
That worked so well that we decided to try it again. "This time," said Fleebus,
"let's visualize two blond chicks picking us up and getting us high on pot!" We did
so, and again we immediately got a ride, this time with two young ladies of the
blonde persuasion sitting in the front seat.
They seemed a bit straight, so we whispered together in the back seat, trying to
decide if we should offer to share a couple of our joints with them. When we finally
built up the courage to ask them, they said, "Save your stuff. We'll take you to our
dorm at Southwestern University. There's bound to be some good hash there."
So we said to ourselves, "Screw the redhead and her friend! We've got two
blondes here offering to take us to their dorm room and smoke hash!"
So we rode with them to their dorm room and smoked hash with them. Their
school, Southwestern, was the Memphis equivalent of Ivy League. We found
ourselves surrounded by what seemed to be college kids from rich families. We had
the impression that they were in the habit of laying their clothes out in the parking
lot and running over them in their Porsches so they would look like the kind of
clothes poe boys like us wore.
Nothing ever came of it after that, and we never saw them again.
We did run into the redhead again. Somehow Fleebus made contact with her
and eventually became her steady boyfriend. Her name was Ani Plass. Bimeby, she
moved in with her grandmother, an artist who had lived in France and had known
Picasso or somebody. Her grandmother had an apartment on the second floor of her
house, which she had been renting out. It had a wooden stairs that led to its own
entrance.
As it happened, Ani was friends with Jim Bobson. Jim was a combat veteran of
the "Vietnam" war, now restricted to a wheelchair. I knew him from philosophy
classes at MSU. His brother was one of the leading undercover narcotics agents in
the Memphis area, one Candy Man. Jim, though, was a head. The two of us had
gotten high outside many a classroom.
One day he left a matress full of marijuana at Ani's apartment, asking her to
hold it for him until he could come pick it up. Fleebus and I were delighted at this,
and sampled the matress' contents whenever Ani was absent from the apartment.
We couldn't do it while she was there, because she had made Fleebus promise that
we wouldn't touch it. What we would do was, we'd take a big handful and boil it in
a bowl of chicken soup. The high we got was more like a psychedelic trip than it was
a pot high. Outa sight!
Finally Ani found out and took Fleebus to task over it. The two of them
were standing at the top of the stairs yelling at each other, when for some reason
they started to wrestle. I was alarmed and, thinking he might accidently push her
down the stairs, I rushed up them.
Fleebus was mad, Ani was mad, and suddenly I was mad at Fleebus and,
forgetting entirely that I was as guilty as he, I began to hit him in the face. The next
thing I knew, we were slugging it out.
After that, Fleebus and I stopped hanging out together for quite some time.
But I still used to visit Ani. One day when I was out of pot, I went to Ani's place,
hoping to get high. She was there with a friend of hers whom I hadn't met before,
Aramie. Aramie had long, dark hair and a look that combined the Middle East and
the British Isles. They were both tripping on some Clear Light Windowpane that
Aramie had brought. This was something new. I had had Windowpane before, but
I had never heard of the Clear Light variety. They said it was made by two chemists
down in Mississippi.
I sat there perfectly sober and watched as Aramie's face shifted to that of a
Celtic goddess, one that I had invented myself over the last few years prior, one that
I tended to visualize when listening to The Incredible String Band or the group
Pentangle. I had seen shape-shifts many times before, but only while I was tripping.
I instantly fixated on this. The result was that I became obsessed with getting to
know Aramie better. I hung around with them for the next week or two, tripping on
the Clear Light. It was the most powerful and clean LSD I had ever had, out of hundreds of trips.
Every hit was amazingly small and yet could be divided eight ways and still provide 10-12 hours
of cosmic travel.
Aramie gave me a few hits for my own stash. After that, she disappeared, and I
didn't see her again for another year. She and Ani had gone to New Mexico. I got laid off
from another land surveying job, so I used my visualization techniques to get a
position as a Psychiatric Technician at Tennessee Psychiatric Hospital.
While Aramie was in New Mexico, I had a trip with Kooky Ooland that taught me a
thing or two. We both dropped a hit apiece of the Clear Light. I told him about
seeing shape shifts done by Petra, Luease, Sita, and Aramie. He proposed that we do
an experiment. He said he'd done it before with other fellow trippers. It went like
this. I was to sit in an easy chair while he kneeled on the floor before me. I should
look at his face while he turned his own face at a slight angle away, looking past me.
Then just see what happened.
I watched fascinated as his face shifted through various personae-- Viking,
Aztec, Biblical prophet, Greek god, and even a lovely blonde woman. This last was
quite an accomplishment for a big-boned guy with a rough masculine face. Then I
wanted to try it.
We switched places. "Just let go. Let it flow," he said. I felt my features
change, slowly at first, then picking up speed. I went through Jesus and Buddha and
Roy Rogers, then Hitler, Attila the Hun, and Snidely Whiplash. Then my face began
shifting faster and faster. I flashed through personalities at the rate of one or two a
second. I started to worry that I might have a heart attack or something. In a panic,
I willed myself to come to a halt. The shape-shifting stopped, but now I was stuck in
an alien persona that was wholly unpleasant. I felt clammy and grimey. My body
seemed stiff, as if it were made of wood. "Can you help me?" I murmured.
Kooky said that he didn't know what to do. I was certain that I heard cold
worry behind his words. We both felt that something horrible would happen if we
didn't find a way out of this state. I felt myself growing smaller, shriveling, dying.
My voice trembled and cracked as I said, on a desperate hunch, "Read me the date
on your wristwatch!" He read me the date, and instantly I was myself again.
I took a few hits of that Clear Light with me when Fleebus, Catfish, and I went
to visit Harriet in Knoxville. Harriet and I dropped the Clear Light and we all went on a road trip to
Cades Cove.
The two links below give details on the Cades Cove trip. The first link goes into
more details on that trip than the latter.
Time-Tripping Among the Snake Dancers of East TN
Hymn: To Harriet
When Aramie returned to Memphis in 1974, I followed her to Greenville,
Mississippi where she lived. She told me that she had a friend who had some land in
the Ozarks, and that he wanted to start a commune there. So it was that I quit my
job at TPH&I and moved to Rivendell Commune outside Parthenon outside Jasper,
Arkansas. We lived there for a few months, then the commune broke up and we
moved back to Memphis.
Click on the link below for further details about the commune.
The Commune at Rivendell
On Being God
One of the symptoms common to many schizophrenics and manic-depressives is
megalomania, delusions of greatness. The lowest form of this is the Wannabe
Syndrome. We are all familiar with security guards who act as if they were police,
gun-freaks who think they are the only patriots, and children who refuse to study
because they are certain they will be picked up by the NBA. Those who live in Los
Angeles are acutely aware of the vast numbers of waitresses and busboys who are
really undiscovered stars. Much more widespread is the religious type who believes
that one day his divinity will come down from the sky and punish all those who have
wronged him.
Taking a few steps up the delusional ladder, we find the fantasy that one has
been chosen to serve as a spy for an undercover network, usually the FBI, CIA, or
more recently fashionable, the NSA. I expect that Homeland Security will be the
next fad in grandeur.
We want to feel important; I know I did. A paranoid schizophrenic of
intelligence will soon realize that there is no one more important than God. He
knows that there is a Grand Conspiracy going on all around him. The more he
thinks about it, the more he has to wonder, "Why me?" Since there is no obvious
reason so many people would be spending so much money and time monitoring his
every move, there must be a reason of which he is unaware.
There are a number of Twilight Zone fantasies that can pop up at this point:
Maybe I'm the only human in a world full of robots, aliens, ghosts, or some such.
Maybe it's all just a dream. Maybe I'm hallucinating all this. Or, maybe, just
maybe, I'm God, come down to Earth to find out what it's like to be human. Maybe
I had to give Myself amnesia in order to really grok the human condition. After all,
one couldn't genuinely appreciate the human condition if one were continually
aware of one's Godhood, if one knew that all one had to do was give the command
and everything would be hunky-dory. Where would be pain and suffering? Where
would be fear of death? Where would be sin and shame?
One might object that such a one's mortal nature would be revealed the first
time one tried to order the cosmos. Finding the cosmos did not obey, the delusion
should burst like a soap bubble. But it doesn't work like that. The paranoid
personality can reason away anything and everything. If the universe doesn't obey
My whimsy, that's because I set it up that way. Rules of the game, you know.
In 1971 I realized that I was God. I shot through the ceiling, passed the Sky
Barrier, and went straight up to Heaven, took one look and realized it was not for
Me at this time, then rocketed back down to Earth. Alas, the impetus carried Me
straight through the crust of the Earth to Hell, where I remained for the next seven
or eight months, earthly time. I worked in a plastics extrusion plant and lived on
malt liquor and grilled cheese sandwiches. The high point of My day was the
double-decker fish sandwich I had during My lunch break. My nights were haunted
by the Queen of the Damned, My paramour. We made love to the music of all-night
FM radio punctuated by the screams of closet queens as they stabbed each other
with spaying knives in the next room.
Bimeby I sent her home to her Mammon in another state, then returned to MSU
to get My bachelor degree. If I was going to dwell in Hell, I could damn well do it
behind a desk instead of sitting on a stool reeling plastic onto a hoop.
Lilith had isolated Me from all other occult influences. I returned to My friends
in Weird Luease's coven. I also began to see more of Ellay, Catfish, and Fleebus. One night
at Ellay's apartment, he told Me that his neighbor owed him fifty dollars he hadn't
paid. Ellay was going to smash down the neighbor's door and take it out of his hide.
He wanted Me along so I could witness that he didn't take more than fifty dollars
worth of hide.
He broke open the neighbor's door with a five-pound sledge hammer and went
inside. No one was home, so he stole a big fake-fur vest from a closet. He gave the
vest to Me and said that he was satisfied. Relieved that no one was hurt, I gladly
took the vest. What the hell, the concept of property was an illusion anyway, right?
So now you see what God Does in His free time. What? Accepting stolen
property doesn't seem appropriate? Well it beats the hell out of raining fire and
brimstone down on helpless neolithic villages! Listen, Mack, if you think I'm bad,
then go back to your Bible and take another gander at Jehovah. You should thank
your lucky stars you've got Me now! Besides, who are you to question the behavior
of divinity? Don't think about it; it's a Mystery. Take your meds and get back to
Group.
I could have been the Anti-Christ. I was offered the position. As a matter of
fact, I accepted, but nothing ever came of it. It was one of those "We'll call you"
kind of things, but of course they never called Me. Maybe they found out I was
already God. I could have moonlighted. It sounded like fun. Their idea was that I
would have a secret underground headquarters from which I would broadcast
subversive ideas.
But the job of being God grew onerous. It's quite a responsibility, you know.
You realize after awhile that You don't have to give commands in order to actually
run things. The entire cosmos is tied into Your daily thoughts and moods. You feel
good one day, and the sun is out, the birds singing, the economy up. Then when
You're feeling low, along come the clouds and the rain, economic recession.
Now you know why we had so much snow back in the seventies.
But this sort of thing is rough on any deity. Every time You have sex, You have
to consider the example You're setting. The world population is already way out of
hand. Maybe You shouldn't encourage them. Same thing with fatty foods,
cigarettes, beer, and even LSD. A Guy couldn't enjoy a bean burrito without feeling
guilty. A fart after lunch could mean a tornado in Iowa.
By the time I met Aramie, I had decided I didn't really want to be God. It was a
drag, man. I didn't so much resign the position, just simply forgot about it. What a
relief to feel ordinary human emotions again! Those of you who have never been
God can't know what a bore it can be when One fears nothing.
As I drove up to the Ozarks to join the commune at Rivendell, I pushed the speed
limit all the way. I had come to believe that there might be a nuclear war at any
second. The thrill of expecting Doomsday at any moment! I was alive again! And
free!
There was good reason for this anticipation of holocaust. Back in the sixties, I
had read an article which said that the super powers (America, Russia, and China)
had enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world seven times over. The defense
systems of each power were set to respond at the least sign of an attack. From the
military point of view, this was absolutely necessary. In the event of an attack from,
say, Russia, we would only have a short time to respond before being blasted to
smithereens. Even with anti-ballistic missiles and a plethora of other defenses, an
attack would mean nearly every city in America would be destroyed. Our only hope
was to be able to annihilate the enemy likewise. This was the philosophy of
deterrent, and it seemed to be working. After all, the Russian and Chinese leaders
were no fools. What doth it profit a totalitarian government if it gain the world but
lose its populace?
But these hair-trigger defenses could be put on Red Alert by a flock of geese
flying too close to an SAC radar dish. A nuclear war could easily start by accident.
(As a matter of fact, this actually happened once or twice over the decades. We the
public found out about these incidents long after they happened, of course. The
world almost ended, and nobody told us about it. Who knows what other accidental
cataclysms almost happened that they never told us about?)
If that wasn't enough to put the scare in a guy, there was also the possibility that
God would take some drastic action to prevent a nuclear scenario. Since I was no
longer in charge, anything could happen. The current Divinity might decide to hit
America and Russia both with devastating earthquakes, thinking that at least things
wouldn't be all radioactive afterward. Edgar Cayce, a most reliable psychic, had
said that large parts of California and the East Coast would sink into the sea if
humankind didn't clean up its act. I knew that most of the South, including the
Memphis area, had been a shallow sea some hundreds of millions of years ago.
Maybe this commune in the Ozarks was my call to be one of the survivors who
would create the new society, an agrarian commune that combined the best of
socialism and free enterprise. What was left of America would be dotted with
farming communities, swords beaten into non-polluting plowshares.
I figured I'd better hurry, though. God might be getting impatient. He might be
tapping His great foot, waiting for me to get out of the way so He could smite the
Bible Belt with a mighty swat. I quit my job at Tennessee Psychiatric Hospital, said
goodbye to my girlfriend, Becky Thatcher, and headed for the hills. Why didn't I
take her, you ask? Well, I still had enough sanity about me to doubt my delusions.
Why drag her down with me? Besides, she was a city girl. I couldn't picture her
tramping about in the snakes and stickerbushes. What with backpacking and land
surveying, I was used to it myself.
After the fall of Rivendell, I moved back to Memphis. Without the distraction of
living in that Edenic milieu in Arkansas, I was faced with the possibility that I might
still be God after all. After all, the fall of Milhous Nixon had exactly coincided with
my move to the commune. Maybe my farts were still making tornadoes in Iowa.
As I approached Memphis, I could see the dirty red-brown haze of pollution in
the air around it. Upon arriving in the city, with buildings and people hemming me
in on all sides, I felt like I was in a box. I had escaped the box once, then now gone
back into it again. It was a womb-prison of concrete and plastic. I doubted that the
Powers-That-Be would let me out again.
I was mistaken, of course. The truth of the matter was that the Powers-That-
Were didn't give a shit whether I was in a box or not. (I knew that. I just wanted to
see if you knew it.)
I was mistaken about having overcome my schizophrenia, too. It was still there,
just on the back burner. I soon found Myself visualizing blue pentangles of astral
light around people to make sure they were not demons. Then there was My
incessant smoking. What was that doing to our air quality? Could I reasonably
expect industrialists to stop pouring poisons into the air when I Myself was setting
such a bad example?
Throughout the remainder of 1974 and all of 1975 I hung with Aramie's crowd,
many of whom were gay or bisexual. I'm not even going to write about that now.
Too damn embarassing.
By 1976, I was living out in the woods again, in a little six-room house just across
the border in Mississippi. I was surrounded by an acre of pine trees, which was in
turn surrounded by hundreds of acres of fields, meadows, and pastures. I had no
telephone and no TV. My only modern media was a used stereo I'd gotten from a
college roommate for fifteen dollars. My only close companion was my dog Doo
Dah. My main means of entertainment were reading, taking walks, and growing
marijuana for personal use. Click on the link below for description of a typical
incident during this era:
The insidious Dr. Hem Pao Jung visits Star Route 64
I worked driving a delivery truck in Memphis. The company was owned by four
brothers who were hippies. "We don't care if you smoke pot on duty," they said,
"just don't drink any beer during working hours. And whatever you do, don't ask
us for benefits of any kind." We had a special deal where customers could get
anything delivered within city limits within thirty minutes. My friends would see
me driving my box truck down the road and try to catch up so they could wave at
me, but they could never catch me. We were serious about the half hour deal.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that we never delivered anything illegal. I also
neglected to say that I used to make the Avon run to Voodoo Village. Click on the
link below for info about Voodoo Village.
Voodoo Village, Tennessee
Often I would arrive home from work to find people sunbathing out in front of
my house. We were like that, then. Most of the time, we would visit each other
without calling beforehand, sometimes in the middle of the night. If they were
sleeping, they'd let you in and go back to bed, unless they were really serious
conversationalists. A really dedicated conversationalist would welcome the chance
to wake up in the middle of the night and discuss philosophy. I was that way myself.
Of course, they couldn't call me before visiting me, since I had no phone.
It was about that time that I decided to hand the crown of Godhood over to
Harriet. I had been looking for someone to take it off My hands for quite some
years, but no one seemed up to the task. So I passed the position on to her. Didn't
tell her about it: she might have refused. Or called the Men in White Coats. I
figured she'd find out about it soon enough. Hope it didn't stress Her out too much.
Maybe She passed it on before She passed on. Could be. I think Toyah Wilcox had
it for awhile. If not, if Harriet is now the Goddess, sitting up there in the clouds, I
can only hope She isn't omniscient. In that case, I also hope She doesn't read this.
I'm probably a fool for putting it out in the internet. (Hell's Belles, I'm a fool in any
event, but you know what I mean.) Anyways, She hasn't struck me with lightning
yet. (Hasn't let me win a lottery, either. 'Scuse me while I turn around three times
and visualize a protective psychic shield around my house.)
Okay, okay, it was a low-down dirty thing to do to a gal without giving her a
little notice aforehand. So I'm the most evil person in the universe. So sue me. At
least I'm not God anymore. Can't blame me for the shape the world is in.
After that I joined the Peace Corps and went to Korea. You know the rest. If
you don't, then click on the link below.
Peace Corps Korea
Now, twenty-four years later, I realize that we're all God, inasmuch as anything
in the universe can be called God. In the beginning there was God and nothing but.
God entered the time/space continuum we call the universe, thereby becoming the
universe, which wasn't there a nanosecond ago. We are each and every one a part
of that. Mystics say we each have a little microcosm of the universe within us. The
trick is to remember that every person you meet, no matter how evil, no matter how
annoying, no matter how seemingly insignificant to your life, is God. Please treat
Ourselves with respect, at the very least.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
There is a kind of epilogue to this story. Click on the link below to view it:
My last conversation with the Goddess
