egdz23

00:00 / 04:47

Pestles on a Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, First Movement:

APT. 20

In Apt. 20 one memory plays over and over: the day that you climbed over the barbed wire, careful not to hook your clothes, following a trail to the creek, wading through a turpentine scent exhaled from blue curl--tough stalks with tiny purple steer's skulls--the silence heightened by squirrels and lizards scurrying over cinnamon-colored leaves curled into boat shapes as you touched the silver puzzle of the bark, knowing you could never fit it back together if you pulled it apart, noting the bones like huge drum-sticks scattered on the slope just before you turned to discover the pounding stone for the first time--all this keeps replaying to the exclusion of everything else, as if something were about to fit together, thousands of years flooding the hillsides, yet there was no time, the far-off howl of a coyote joined by another howl, children in the distance or the faint cries and laughter of some tribe, somehow near yet far away, reaching you in the stillness.

(You realize that you are on the right path because in a corner of the room you find an old box containing Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Poppies and Lupine after Rough Fire

PENDULUM DREAMS:

SIGHT

I stood peering beyond the clouds, glimpsing the shadow of a surfacing turtle, then turned and reached into the cracks between rocks sprouting star moss, the pounding stone always at the center, the mortars filling with leaves and and grass and bugs and pounded only by rain for over a century, the smooth cups in the stone my only evidence. A slightly haunted satisfaction washed over me even though I found nothing but dirt or slime under my fingernails, even though merely lounging by the creek as the breeze stirred my hair, the leaves, the languid water.
I have experienced, in this life and another, the two signs of the final terror--while ravished by the flowers and trees, the purling water, the breath of all the species near the creek flowing around me.
Once, I had driven toward the obscured mountains, straight on an avenue past orchards where a snow of blossoms revealed budding leaves, the road suddenly straying from the grid and veering northeast into the grasslands at the base of the foothills, across a canal that contained in concrete most of the San Joaquin River heading south now instead of north in its natural course to the delta, the road winding over a ridge into a small foothill valley. I knew they would pursue me until I paid, but I kept accelerating into the curves, suddenly noticing a slightly opened gate. I felt an uncharacteristic desire to trespass, so I turned around, parked the car, opened the loosely chained gate, and dashed down a short trail, over a berm with large boulders meant to hide a once-oiled road, now cracked, eroded, and quilted by cow droppings that sprouted red maids and miniature lupine. After hiking down the hill about half a mile, I wandered off the road onto a path next to the creek. At dusk alone in the foothills, the woods breathing peacefully as the air darkened and cooled, the bats looping soundlessly overhead and crickets chirping in the still-warm grass, I saw a flock of wild turkeys, resembling small dinosaurs, scurrying along the bank about fifty feet away. In the quiet, my chest heaved slightly from an inexplicable rage.
It wasn't just that I was trespassing, which I considered an act of civil disobedience, or that I was six months out of work. I had walked straight to a pounding stone, the mortars in the rock black with slime and decaying leaves. I suddenly knew without a doubt that I would find a path leading to another pounding stone. I stumbled a few feet and found the path right away and followed it. Soon I found another pounding stone about two hundred yards away on a ridge overlooking the creek.
The two pounding stones were close but blocked from view by a slope on the north side where the creek bends. I went back to the first pounding stone I had encountered and sat near a shallow mortar, which someone had not had time to deepen. Feeling the coolness of the rock and trying to empty my mind, I closed my eyes and felt the breeze and heard the laughter of women. I opened my eyes to the stone that had not changed in over a century, only now there were no people.
Picking up an oak branch to use as a walking stick, I was suddenly seeing through the eyes of someone else who was bent and dizzy and deeply troubled, ready to lie down forever. The walking stick was in my hand which was also someone else's hand. I had someone else's face or no face at all. I held the stick away from my body, imagining myself stretching out on the earth many years ago as the trees turned, everything passing away except the stone and the sun, and then my return.
Listening to long, almost human groans of utter despair, possibly from a bullfrog being swallowed by an eight-foot garter snake that ruled the evaporating creek, I returned to the pounding stone with the feeling that I was on the verge of remembering something. All that surfaced was the overwhelming urge to find my way to the top of the opposite ridge. I hopped over the rocks in the creek without getting my feet wet and climbed up the slope, avoiding poison oak, seeing nothing at first but dry grass and gray pines and a few bare spots with a little rosinweed. I strolled back and forth on the ridge several times, sure I was missing something, until, sweaty and tired, I surrendered to the shade.
I looked first to my right at a large stone under an old oak tree, and then to my left, seeing poison oak near a stone that the earth had nearly submerged. Looking down, I realized that I was practically sitting on a shallow mortar. Suddenly drawn to the oak tree, I discovered in the stone beneath the oak that a large pestle was plugging a mortar. With oak leaves needling my fingers, I cleared the pounding stone, finding ten other mortars. Looking back, I decided to check out the other stone and discovered that it also contained mortars filled with earth and grass. I was in the middle of another ancient village site, the round hollows of the house pits still worn in the earth.
I suddenly felt like a woman. Before I could begin to cope with that feeling, a terrible sorrow overcame me, as if I had lost someone I had deeply loved. Even though I had suffered many times from loss in my life, this grief was different, right on the surface. I felt the emotional surges of a teenager coupled with the maturity of an adult. Then I found a trail down to the creek and suddenly imagined that I was in some procession, and that I was about to say goodbye to someone for the last time. The grief was different from any I had experienced, nearly unbearable, impossible to suppress. I felt compelled to go on, as though it were out of the question to go another way, so I crossed the dry creek and followed a trail to a level stretch of land where I found more round hollows in the earth.
I knew right away that the round hollows were house pits, which confused me at first, until I remembered that some Native American tribes buried the dead under their houses. I felt an absurd desire to keep anyone from being buried there. The woman in that previous time must have fought with all her strength to stop the burial. I imagined that others, overcome by their own grief, did what they could to comfort her. Somehow I knew that she had remained inconsolable, and I had no rational explanation for how I knew this--or why I had found my way to those house pits.

All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Two Pestles in a Pounding Stone

conf23

00:00 / 06:07

Suite No. 11, Second Movement:
APT. 21

Sure that truth and morality and the arts don't mean much to anyone anymore, you fill the hot air balloons that you connected to your room and gently lift away from the apartment complex. Exhilarated by the view, you glide over the valley, a vast quilt of farms with packing sheds and processing plants and towns that have developed outward around the nuclei of malls, fast food restaurants, box stores, and gas stations. You notice that the small towns in the valley resemble serfdoms, with a few extravagant mansions and a few run-down middle-class homes and numerous tawdry shacks surrounding the inner core of affluence. You glide over to the foothills, some regions of which still remain pristine. You glimpse a network of trails and amuse yourself by trying to map the paths, realizing that they must form an ancient web connecting Native American village sites all over the range, but the trails keep vanishing in the grass. You fly higher above the smog and glimpse all the cultivated and urbanized land where wetlands and lakes used to be, now with dams on every river; beyond that are strip mines and patches of clear-cut forests. You go even higher where the oxygen grows thin and view a huge fault and the opening of a volcano, the ocean in the distance. Every now and then you hear jets and explosions, and you wonder how high you need to go to escape the wars and disasters as, breathing through an oxygen mask, you approach the cold blanket of outer space.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the middle of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

A Pestle in the Mortar of a Pounding Stone

PENDULUM DREAMS:

REGRESSION

   Ninety seconds before midnight, I was simply trying to figure out a reasonable way of avoiding more ecocide and genocide and the annihilation of humanity and the planet, so I did something I wouldn’t normally do.
I had become more and more excited about the possibility of reincarnation, and even though I had always considered myself a rational man, I decided to go to a hypnotist for a past life regression. The experience of being hypnotized at first struck me as a little awkward and perhaps even a little dangerous since I would be giving another person control over my psyche, but I couldn't resist seeking out the truth, so I made an appointment with a hypnotist, a Dr. Browning, who had a reputation for helping people quit smoking.
I drove to a house surrounded by tall pine trees, the natural setting as inviting as a forest. I was ushered into the house by a woman in her late fifties, who stared at me coldly for a moment and then led me upstairs to a loft above the garage with a large window that contained a view of the midsection of a pine tree.
"Have a seat on the couch," she commanded. "My husband will be here in a few minutes."
I wondered if making the client wait was standard procedure. In my case it wasn't working; I had the urge to fly out the door. Instead, I looked around the office. It was clean, decorated in a Southwestern style with paintings of Native Americans curled up next to big clay pots, a room devoid of any paraphernalia intended to mesmerize, as far as I could tell. Suddenly Dr. Browning rushed in, apologizing for being late.
He was an older gentleman, with protruding white eyebrows. "I just have a couple of questions before we get started," he said. "Have you ever been hypnotized before?"
"No," I replied.
"What do you expect to learn from this experience?"
"You'll probably think this is silly, or maybe not--I don't know. Recently, I've had feelings that I've lived before, and I was hoping that you might be able to regress me back to that time, if that's possible."
"Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I'm not sure."
"Are you religious?"
"I'm not sure what that means."
"Do you consider yourself a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim?"
"No. Really, I don't believe in any particular religion. Usually, I find my spiritual strength in the 'church of nature,' so to speak. In fact, that's where I first had these feelings. I was near a creek and I felt like I'd been there before. I felt like a Native American woman who had lost someone she had deeply loved. And I have never wanted to be a woman, if that's what you're thinking," I smiled.
"I appreciate your frankness. What you're asking is not easy, and if we are successful you might not like what you find. Every life contains a certain amount of brokenness and pain, as I'm sure you know."
"I'm willing to risk it."
"As long as you understand that there is an element of risk, or at least the possibility of some unpleasantness, I'm going to go ahead and start the process. You realize that I'm going to record this session. Is that all right?"
"Yes."
Apparently, I am a receptive subject. I remembered everything that had transpired during the session. After regressing me back to my birth experience, the hypnotist asked me to walk on the trail next to the creek again, but this time in my previous life. He asked me to describe what I saw. I described the huts on the ridge and women at the pounding stone gossiping and laughing. One man was making a spear, another a trap, while others appeared to be playing some game, possibly gambling.
"Tell me what happened to you," the hypnotist said.
I saw the village on the ridge in another time, noticing a hut near a small pounding stone by a trail. Suddenly I remembered that settlers had killed my husband as he was trying to steal their horses, and I had remained so inconsolable that I would run away from the village for days. The village elders one day had a meeting and decided to send me to live with my aunt and uncle in the village below because they couldn't continue sending men, who would normally be hunting, to look for me. As I looked around, I could see a few people were huddled around fires but almost everyone else in the village was still asleep. I gazed far off into the valley, where herds of animals were stirring. Rain was beginning to fall. I had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, but I was thirsty, so I decided to walk down the hillside to the creek for a drink of water. When I crouched down to cup water in my hands, I looked up to the hillside and witnessed white settlers attacking the village. I screamed, realizing at that moment that I was the woman in that past life.
Then I remembered what had happened to the woman. After she had been knocked unconscious by the rifle butt, the white settlers, some in uniform, had burned the village and the winter stores. When she came to her senses, she discovered that her hands were tied tightly behind her back. A few members of the tribe were wailing over the dead strewn across the ridge. The white men dragged her over to a group of men who were being whipped into line. A white man with a long beard and dressed in animal skins was arguing with a man in uniform and pointing at her angrily. Suddenly the bearded man stomped over to her and pulled her aside, just before a line of soldiers marched in front of the prisoners, lifted their rifles and shot them dead on command.    The white man with the long beard tied a leather strap around her waist and dragged her along behind him with her hands still tied behind her back. She could see her aunt wailing over the body of her uncle. She wanted to scream but could only grimace and weep, falling to her knees as she was dragged along and then pulled face down onto the ground. The white man turned around and whipped her hard across the neck and back until she got on her feet again. After that, every time she slowed, the white man whipped her until she moved at a pace more to his liking as they hiked up a trail that led to her old village, finally making camp on a ridge overlooking the great valley in the west and the foothill valley in the east where her tribe was still encamped.
The white man used her like a wife that evening and then tied her up tightly to an oak tree. She sat with her back to the tree, gazing at the constellations, seeing fires like tiny stars in the valley on land that no longer belonged to her people, as though part of the great sky had also been taken from them. In the morning, she stared, unable to move, as men in uniform marched past her over the ridge into the foothill valley. Later that morning, she heard gunshots far off in the distance.
They remained camped on the ridge several days, occasionally hearing gunfire.
After a few days she heard only birds and squirrels and frogs and crickets. The white man dragged her behind him on the trail into the foothill valley down to the creek near her village. They hiked along the hill above the creek, but even hundreds of yards above the village, she could smell smoke. The white man whipped her when she paused, so she trudged along behind him with tears streaming silently down her cheeks.    They finally made camp close to a place where some of her tribe had settled long ago, east of the creek where she had grown up. He used her practically every night whether or not she cried, and then he tied her to a tree. At times she could hear animals trampling through the brush, and one night woke to a bear sniffing her. She remained perfectly still until the bear grunted and wandered off. The next day the white man dragged her down to the creek, untying her hands, and then tied a string around her finger and slapped a bush with his whip to let her know what would happen if she tried to escape. He showed her large flat rocks and where to carry them, above the river bed in the clearing where he began stacking them as evenly as possible on top of each other. By the end of the day they had almost completed two walls, each several feet high. In a few days they had built a solid house with planks and branches for a roof.
Soon other white men made camp nearby in the clearing. They all had large pans and shovels and picks and spent most of the day by the creek. Her companion also spent a lot of time by the creek, showing the nuggets of gold that he occasionally found, but he would usually go hunting in the hills, leaving her untied but whipping the bush before he left. All the while, he had fed her well, deer and rabbit and squirrel and quail. After awhile, she realized she was pregnant. She had nowhere else to go, so she spent her days gathering acorns and making mush at the pounding stones by the creek just like her people had done for countless years. He refrained from whipping her, and they began to work more like partners.

After she had the baby, she spent most of her time near the house while her companion went off hunting, sometimes for days. He even had a mule that he had bought from one of the other miners. He would sell some of the meat he brought back for gold to the other miners if he had any meat left over. She took care of the baby and got along with her companion as much as possible.
She was always the first one to rise, just before dawn. The baby was usually asleep at that time, which gave her a little time to prepare herself for the day. One morning while she was at the creek at sunrise, the camp was attacked by several men from her tribe, who shot the sleeping miners in their tents and then either crushed their skulls with clubs or slit their throats. She started running toward her house just as her companion was coming out. A gun went off close by, and he looked at her, surprised and pained, before he fell flat on his face. As she screamed, one of the attackers crushed his skull. Her baby, who had been screaming, suddenly became silent, and one of the men stepped out of the house with blood covering his knife. She tried to run into the house but was restrained by one of the men. She fell to her knees, wailing.
The men took all the mules and the gold and whatever else they decided they could use and left her alone with the dead. First, she buried her baby under the house and then tore down the stones from the walls, one by one, to lay on top of her companion's shallow grave, the way she had seen the other miners bury an old man who had died of fever. She buried them all the same way, five in all, before she headed back up the creek to her old village. She found another body near a stone house by the creek and buried him under the house.
Her companion had shown her how to load and shoot a rifle, so she took a rifle and powder and bullets that the others had missed in the raid and made camp where her old village had once stood. She built a small hut on the ridge and survived by hunting and grinding acorns. (I understood then why I had found only one pestle in the mortar under the oak tree on the ridge.)
All of this quickly passed before my eyes fairly. Some parts seemed to move in fast forward. I saw clearly only what seemed the most significant aspects of the experience.
The hypnotist woke me gently from my trance. "Do you remember what you just told me?" he asked.
"Yes, I do," I replied. "I can't believe it. This is incredible. Why don't more people know about this?"
"'This' meaning reincarnation?" the hypnotist asked.
"Yeah. Imagine if everyone knew they had lived before and would live again. Wouldn't that knowledge eliminate a lot of horrible social problems?"
"I doubt that everyone is ready for this. You weren't ready until now, and how old are you?"
"Forty-one."
"I doubt that we could force anyone to do this. They have to be ready for it, like you. Anyway, realizing that you have an eternal soul doesn't necessarily mean that you will be a good person."
"Yes, but look at the power you have to do good! The white racist would realize that he could have once been black or brown--or might be in a future life. The sexist would realize that he was probably at least once a woman. The homophobe would realize that he might once have been gay, or might be in a future life."
"Yes, but prejudice is a type of power that very few people are willing to give up."
"But what if this became an accepted practice. Children could be regressed before they could become prejudiced!"
"You mean they would go to a hypnotist like they go to a dentist?" he laughed.
"Why not?"
"You are both a receptive subject and extremely brave, my friend! Unfortunately I don't have time to change the entire world right now. I do have another appointment," he said with a warm smile.
I thanked him and left the office, pondering the significance of reincarnation for many days afterward, without telling anyone.
I suspected that I was tapping into something huge, something that connected me to everything else in the world. All of experience must be imprinted in the subconscious mind, I thought, or maybe the subconscious can somehow tap into a record of experience somewhere in the "mind" of God or the cosmos. That was the only way I could view the woman’s experiences at times from her perspective and other times from a different perspective. That raised a question: What is identity? Was I the woman in a past life or was I simply reliving someone else’s experiences? If the latter, does that mean that I am a pair of eyes for the collective mind, even though for most of my life I have believed that I am a unique, separate individual?
Insanity is the denial of reality. If I, for instance, were to deny that I have celiac disease, foods with gluten that others can eat would poison me until I eventually died from a stroke or a heart attack due to atrial fibrillation. Why should having visions and intuitions and reliving a past life be any more or less insane? I have at key points in my life ended up adjusting my thinking and changing radically for strange reasons. Why should I do anything differently now?

All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone at the Confluence of Big Creek and the Kings River in a Drought Year

kings

00:00 / 04:11

APT. 22

Apartment 22 contains a scale model revealing a section of the foothills during the drought, with large rocks and even most of the trees--oaks, gray pines, sycamores, buckeyes, red-buds--accurately positioned. The reservoir is so low that the river resembles its former self. The slopes of the canyon, however, are stripped of life, except for a rusty crop of cockle-burs that has flourished underwater, the seeds brought in by the first herds of cattle. If you examine the terrain carefully with a magnifying glass, you can even see ancient Native American trails stretching from one abandoned village site to another, where pestles still protrude from the mortars of a few pounding stones. You can also still see in the floodplain an old road once used before the dam was built, as well as abutments where bridges spanned the river and its tributaries.
Buried under water for sixty years, a stone chimney still stands erect near pounding stones. Preserved by the cold water, dead trees still tower, stripped bare, almost black. Overgrown mining and logging roads, sometimes built over ancient Native American trails, wind around the hillsides above the denuded slopes, and in some places collapsed mines can be still be found, often near Native American village sites. Below the dam are canals and ditches that spurred one of the first water wars in the valley, but no obvious signs of conflict remain. Not far from the river is a creek whose water irrigated the first bumper crop of wheat that attracted the railroad to the big valley. Around the tracks, the city continues to grow. Not far away from the creek new houses are popping up, the city slowly leapfrogging into the foothills.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because near the model you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Ithuriel's Spears and Lupine

Suite No. 11, Third Movement

PENDULUM DREAMS:

BEYOND EXISTENTIALISM

If your child is dying, you don't sit by her bedside and think that life is absurd and meaningless. With every ounce of your being, you want your child to survive and to experience all the joys and, yes, even some of the horrors and tragedies of existence. If your child is dying, you probably feel broken. But through brokenness we come to know God.
The greatest mountains break down into sand and dirt. By accepting our brokenness we develop sympathy and know that God exists in the stones and the flowers and grasses and bushes and trees and the animals and in every human being. Through sympathy and empathy we know love and learn how to transmute negativity into harmony, and we learn how to neutralize dark forces (and negative people) to create balance. Through our brokenness, through our sense of absurdity and meaninglessness and mortality and through all of our losses, we come to know unity in all things. We come to know that the personality and the ego are transitory but the soul is eternal.
Several weeks before we were scheduled to move into John Blackmore’s rental house, I peeked through the garage door at empty shelves, smelling the familiar scent of dust and wood and turpentine and oil. At first I sensed the potential within the perpetually rough, unfinished space reserved traditionally for vehicles, junk, and men. Since women tend to avoid the garage, fearing plump black widows and roaches and rats, for a moment I imagined that I could turn the empty space into a man cave, a work space full of tools, or a modest gym with weights, or a music studio--each of which would require more effort than I am normally willing or able to expend. At that moment I also felt that I was not alone--even though nobody else was in the garage. My attention suddenly turned toward the ceiling. Long boards of different lengths--even what appeared to be an old door--stretched across the rafters.
When I was five or six, my brother coaxed me up a ladder to a similar makeshift ceiling in the rafters of the garage. After we climbed up the ladder, we searched the dim, fusty space, then stretched out, remaining silent when our mother called us. I felt oddly comfortable in that secluded space and closed my eyes. Apparently I fell asleep, and as I was snoozing, my brother sneaked down and moved the ladder. When I opened my eyes, I realized I was all alone. After a moment of panic, I again began to enjoy the sense of solitude, and I stayed in the same spot, furious that my brother had left me stranded, until my father pulled the car into the garage a few minutes later. After my Dad closed the door to the garage and went inside, I hung from one of the rafters, then dropped several feet onto the roof of the car. I was so small that I barely made a dent.
Curious about the rafters in Blackmore’s otherwise empty garage, I found a ladder and climbed high enough to peer over the large planks of wood. After my eyes adjusted, I could tell that water had seeped through a hole in the roof. I was about to step down but noticed a lumpy shape that resembled an old canvas bag in a corner. I moved the ladder as close as I could, curious but without much hope that anyone would have left any items of value.
The former tenant had died on the property. There was a remote chance that the item had been overlooked or ignored, so I strained to reach the bag, barely brushing it with my fingertips. I would have to move a heavy plank to get closer. Instead I strained to reach it one more time and pressed down with my fingertips on the edge of the bag, dragging it with great effort a fraction of an inch. Encountering success, I tried again, and eventually inched the bag close enough to pull towards me.
As soon as I got it down to the ground, I unzipped the bag, which was stuffed full of old clothes. Disappointed but still determined, I dug to the bottom and felt a hard item wrapped in linen. I unwound the cloth and discovered ten gemstones hanging like earrings from a strange matrix, each gem a different color. Not being a jeweler, I couldn’t tell whether the gems were authentic. I do not know much about jewels in general, but out of the ten gems, I recognized a diamond, a sapphire, a ruby, an emerald, an opal, and an amethyst. Purple is my favorite color, so I was immediately attracted to the amethyst.
As I touched the gem I felt a door open between my eyes. I don’t know how else to describe it. Suddenly I sensed that I could see into another dimension. I let go of the amethyst and blinked my eyes, and the sensation vanished. I have always been a little psychic, but right after I touched the amethyst, I thought that I glimpsed a ghost in the corner--which vanished as soon as I became aware of it. The experience was so fleeting that I ignored it.
I stared at the matrix on which the jewels were positioned. Each jewel hung inside a circle. I counted three pillars, the middle pillar with four circles and each outer pillar with three circles, for a total of ten circles. I then noticed also that the matrix could be viewed as three triangles positioned on three pillars. The top triangle pointed upward, and the middle and bottom triangles pointed downwards. One circle, which was not part of any triangle, stood alone at the bottom.
I needed to do more research to understand the significance of the matrix. I carefully wrapped the structure back up in the linen, then carried it to my car, unsure about whether I should share the treasure with John Blackmore or anyone else.
When I got home, I stretched out on the couch to contemplate my treasure and perhaps catch a quick nap. I soon drifted off. When I woke up, I was still fatigued, so I closed my eyes again and let my mind drift in a timeless state. I don’t know how long I remained in the void--perhaps over an hour--but suddenly I beheld a horizontal gray figure-eight floating above my head. I also saw the walls of my room so clearly that I thought I had opened my eyes, so I blinked. The figure-eight disappeared.
That vision, I now believe, was stimulated by the energies in the amethyst. I also realize now that when touching the amethyst, I experienced the energy of the ninth Sephira of the Tree of Life known as Yesod, an energy that opens up the psychic centers of the aura. Someone must have charged each gem on the matrix with the energy of each respective Emanation of the Tree.
Only an idiot would deny the existence of germs because he doesn’t see them, yet most rational people still don’t believe in spirits--because they have never “seen” one. Instruments for revealing spiritual entities in a scientifically verifiable manner do not yet exist, so people tend not to believe in ghosts or demons or angels until they have encountered one. All the while, a person might unknowingly become more and more unbalanced because of a subtle evil influence. Blackmore has attempted to kill me more than once--how many times I can only guess. I believe he has become obsessed with the notion. It’s possible that his mind has become unhinged by a dark force, what many might call a demon, the way that the body can be sickened by germs or a virus. A few days after the vision of the gray figure-eight, I visited the bookstore. While there, I had an unexpected and totally uncharacteristic desire to buy a pack of Tarot cards. Normally I would hang out exclusively in the literature section of the bookstore, but that day I searched through the New Age section. I was immediately attracted to a book on the Tarot and continued browsing until I discovered the Universal Waite Tarot deck. As the cashier was ringing up the items, he confided that he had been thinking about "getting back into" the Tarot himself. Not knowing quite how to respond, I paused, and suddenly the word "synchronicity" popped out of my mouth. I confess that at the time I wasn't even totally sure what the word meant. The cashier smiled and handed me my purchase. I then drove to another store on a different errand.
Before I got out of the car, I flipped through the book and stopped at a page that featured a striking photo of a man named Carl Jung. I glanced at the text below and immediately discovered that Carl Jung had coined the term "synchronicity" to suggest that events in the external world can significantly mirror the symbolic world of the subconscious mind; in other words, just as events are connected by causality, they are also, often without our realizing it, connected by meaning. I then opened the pack of Tarot cards. The second card I encountered, known as “The Magician,” shows a figure with a horizontal gray figure-eight floating above his head. I flipped through the book to a description of "The Magician" and discovered that the gray figure-eight, generally known as an infinity symbol or lemniscate, is a symbol of eternity. In the card, the lemniscate suggests the knowledge of the infinitude within.
I continued reading the book and decided that in my vision I had tapped into another dimension and had encountered a symbol, which a few days later surfaced in my conscious "real" life, and as I read on I discovered that the symbol system of the Tarot dove-tails in every way with the mystic symbol system known as the Tree of Life, which is an expanded version of the primary chakra system.
I usually avoid telling people about the other "coincidence": Before I envisioned the lemniscate, I had discovered a version of the matrix of the Tree of Life in the garage with gems hanging within the ten circles that represent the spheres known as the Sephiroth, or Emanations.
When I experienced the vision of the infinity symbol, I had been mentally purifying my chakras. As I continued meditating, I envisioned pearls in the joints of my fingers and I could clearly see the rainbow of wheels spinning in front of me along my spinal cord. I could clearly see impurities in the vortices, and I mentally wiped them clean with an imaginary damp white cloth.
Some of the spinning wheels were harder to keep clean than others, however. I kept mentally draining the blackness from my heart and emptying trash from my crown chakra, for instance, but the blackness and the trash kept returning, so for a long time--in fact, until this day--I continue to purify the primary chakras in my aura.
I also repeatedly experienced a vision of a golden equal-armed cross with an indistinct angel at each end. I did some research and discovered that the symbol revealed the basis for an extremely powerful ritual known as “The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram.” Nevertheless, despite my visions, I still doubted the existence of a spiritual realm. So I began to perform “The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram,” which invokes the Archangels of the four “Elements of the Wise.” Even though I felt clumsy while conducting the ritual, I was touched by the energy of an intelligence so far above my own that I felt like an amoeba in comparison--I was suddenly immersed in a thought-bubble of mind-boggling complexity, which impressed me with a sense of eternity and a level of knowledge and power that I cannot even begin to describe. My personality vanished, but at that moment I knew that my soul is eternal.
The next day at the end of the ritual I glimpsed a vague presence from a different dimension. It seemed to to be slanting into our dimension. Unfortunately, I neglected to do the banishing ritual of the pentagram, partly, I realized later, because I wanted to know for sure whether or not I was experiencing a spiritual entity. That night, as I was falling asleep, something shook me so violently that I felt like every cell in my body was vibrating. I didn’t know what to do, so I just continued to lie there, hoping that it would go away.
But just as I was falling asleep again, something nudged me hard in the ribs four times. I felt around for my dog and turned on the light, discovering that my dog was sound asleep on the other side of the room, and no one else--that I could see--was in the room.
I discovered that when you contact other spiritual dimensions, beings on the other side begin to notice you. If you are unbalanced in any way, some beings from the other side will try to terrorize you. The people around you become vulnerable, especially if the evil or malicious spirits cannot immediately unhinge you.
An evil spirit began tormenting my daughter. According to her, as she was falling asleep, she heard a voice that sounded like her mother’s voice whispering, “Don’t turn around.” This terrified her but aroused her curiosity. She slowly turned her head and saw a figure that resembled black smoke in the shape of a human being next to her bed. Suddenly the figure shook her bed so violently that my daughter starting bouncing up and sown. My daughter tore off her blankets and dashed to her mother’s room. On another night, my daughter could hear a man weeping and begging for mercy in her closet--a closet which I discovered later had blood splatters on the ceiling.
My wife began having nightmares. Several times, she stood up, sound asleep, yelling and swinging her arms. When she woke up, she had no recollection that she was fighting for her life.
I had no idea, when I first touched the amethyst on the Tree of Life, that each circle on the matrix represents a state of being, and each state contains both a balanced and an unbalanced aspect. Since someone charged each gem on the Tree of Life matrix with the energy from its respective sphere, anyone touching a gem on this matrix also touches the energy of that state of being and opens himself to both the unbalanced and balanced aspects of the energy, a virtue and a vice, so to speak.
The second gem I touched, the emerald, represents the Emanation of Venus: the sphere of nature and the arts and the beauty of the life force. The virtue of the sphere of Venus is unselfishness and the vice is unchastity--a chronic state of lust.
Right after I touched the emerald, I had the urge to drive out to the Kings River. While lounging on a rock, surrounded by oaks and sycamores, I sensed an overarching consciousness, as if all the plants and trees and even rocks in that place had tuned to one frequency, a peace beyond understanding, and I too had effortlessly tuned my mind to that vibration. My mind had tuned to the Over-soul of the place. I was on the path between Yesod, the ninth sphere of psychism represented by the amethyst, and Netzach, the seventh sphere of nature represented by the emerald. In other words, I had become psychic enough to experience the spirits behind the “outer robe of concealment" of the natural world.
After I got home, however, I began compulsively surfing through internet porn until I recognized that I had to deal with the influx of energy from the state of Netzach (Venus) in a more balanced manner. I was only able to return to a sense of harmony after I cleansed myself and the house with the banishing ritual for several days.
I am afraid--and I should emphasize that I am not entirely sure about this--that the demonic spirit that showed up might have followed John Blackmore and edged him even farther into a state of homicidal rage. Whatever actually happened on the spiritual level, I know that I had achieved a low point in my own karmic career, considering the circumstances. I could blame my failings on chronic illness and the way society crushes artists and activists and free thinkers, but I intuited that I needed to change radically in order to resolve the karmic debt. Unfortunately, I do not know exactly what I have done to deserve my fate, though I am pretty sure that it is warranted for one reason or another. Perhaps I had committed a heinous crime against John Blackmore in a previous life, or maybe all the negative energy that I had subconsciously projected at other people was boomeranging back to me. I continued meditating to heal my mind and heart to become more balanced--to attract harmony instead of the dark, destructive energies that attracted John Blackmore into my life.
As I continued meditating and performing The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, I began to experience black energies flowing into me, and I released them into the fires below the surface of the earth, just as I had released many of the dark energies within my chakras. I soon recognized that I was releasing and purifying the negative energies within the collective consciousness of humanity, and Gaia, our beloved Mother Earth, was burning them up and transmuting them into harmony, for the dark energies at a certain point in each ritual transformed into light. This of course was an act of sacred reciprocity, for humanity is destroying the earth and itself due in large part to the negativity in our collective consciousness....

All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Goldfields near Native American Village Site

betwnd

00:00 / 04:17

Suite No. 11, Fourth Movement:
APT. 23

The door opens on tules bordering a lake, and you remember dragonflies and red-winged blackbirds, which suddenly appear--the memory, perhaps, surfacing because of the faintest rustling of transparent wings and a burbling call far off in the distance. You hear an echo from a large rock outcropping, but instead of someone emerging from the grove, a woodpecker glides to a nearby tree and forages in the bark, knocking again without any rhythm you can follow. The woodpecker flies away. Suddenly the knocking sound resembles footsteps, and you find yourself waiting for people who brought you here to appear at the edge of the woods. Off in the distance, the sound of footsteps, more and more indistinct, continues. Sitting quietly in the breeze as dragonfly wings rustle in the tules, you gaze beyond the deep blue water to the mountains covered in snow.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Goldfields and Baby Blue Eyes

PENDULUM DREAMS:

SILLY ACT DISEASE

As I stepped into my bedroom, I sensed the presence of a fierce, menacing spirit. After a moment, I recognized who it was because each soul has a unique energy, an invisible signature written on the world, both in life and in death. I was surprised because I had not encountered the man in many years, and even though I knew he was extremely old, I was unaware that he had passed away. I try to avoid purposely insulting people, but a few years ago I had gone out of my way to offend the man because he had pretended to stand up for the powerless but had abused the little power that he had managed to command. He was a megalomaniac, a hypocrite, and I had publicly let him know my opinion of him.
The sensation of being attacked by a spirit is unmistakable. A malicious spirit will sometimes engulf a living person with a freezing, dense energy. Since the energy is so heavy, a sense of paralysis often occurs whether or not the living person is petrified by fear. At the mercy of an invisible spirit, a living person will usually emanate sheer terror, upon which the malicious or demonic spirit feeds, the way the legendary vampire feeds upon blood. Without any social constraints, a bully in life often becomes malicious in death (at least for awhile).
I have been attacked by spirits before, so fortunately I knew how to handle it. After I stepped into the room, the spirit did not immediately jump me, possibly because he was new at the game or waiting for me to get into bed. Since at first he didn't seem intent on attacking me, I ignored him. He soon overcame his hesitancy and made his move, engulfing me with his dense, freezing energy. I could tell that he soon regretted it, however, because he quickly lost his zeal when my soul started radiating light like the sun. When he experienced the intense light and realized that he was not scaring me in the least, he loosened his grip on me, and his energy dissipated and eventually vanished.
The morning after my encounter with his spirit, I found out in the paper that he had died of cancer.
His spirit came back to visit a few days later. He was at that point profoundly despondent because, I believe, without the distractions of the physical world, he could see himself clearly, which might have been quite a challenge for him. I don’t know if he wanted anything from me, but during the second visit he made no attempt to attack me. I mentally acknowledged his presence without hindering his progress in any way, and soon he disappeared again.
I have made myself sensitive to the spirit world through physical, mental, and spiritual purification. I usually do not see spirits with my physical eyes. My subconscious senses the energy and an image of the entity is cast upon the screen of my mind. I see it, in other words, with my “third eye.” I have only seen a spirit with my physical eyes once. Faintly effervescent, the spirit was transparent and seemed to slant in and out of this dimension. That spirit, extremely powerful and malicious, was the first I ever consciously encountered, and I could tell that it wished to do me harm the moment I glimpsed it. One night--invisible the whole time--it shook me so hard I thought I was going to fly into pieces, revealing that it could easily kill me. Then it nudged me hard in the ribs four times as I was falling asleep. A few days later, it made farting noises right behind me. That was when I started to learn how to deal with malicious spirits.
For the past few years, after I cleansed my aura and began having visions of spiritual archetypes, while totally awake I have been touched lightly on the forehead and face numerous times, tapped on the shoulder, caressed, and enveloped by beings that I cannot see. I have heard a capella singing and strange noises even though no other person is even remotely in the vicinity. To some extent, I have become clair-sentient and clair-audient and clair-voyant, experiencing spiritual vibrations with the subtle senses of the aura, the “soul senses.”
I ignored paranormal experiences for most of my life because society forces us to live within a very narrow range of vibration, conditioning us to block the pathways to the soul--that essential aspect of each one of us connected to vast, scary, powerful cosmic forces. Human beings, however, are comprised of these cosmic vibrations. (One symbol system, known as the Tree of Life, reveals the different types of energy in the cosmos and how they correspond to the auric field of the individual human being.)
These powerful subtle forces can make people feel small and fearful and without control. Our social system, on the other hand, strives to create the illusion that humans are in control of the world. We become afraid of any forces that challenge our limited perceptions of the cosmos. How many years did it take before we accepted that the Earth is not the center of the universe? It will no doubt take at least as long for humanity to accept that the physical universe is only a tiny aspect of the cosmos as a whole.
As a teenager, I struggled with a chronic physical illness and depression. I didn’t know then that I was suffering from celiac disease and food allergies, which, in my case, cause debilitating stomach problems, irritating joint pain, and even severe depression. Those problems have continued to grow worse until now I experience heart palpitations if I eat even a miniscule amount of gluten. Doctors, one of whom noted in his records that I am a hypochondriac, have misdiagnosed me for over forty years.
(Look, I know you don’t believe that food can cause heart palpitations and depression any more than you believe that I have encountered spiritual entities. In fact you probably won’t believe ninety-five percent of what I am saying even if it’s ninety-five percent true: The other five percent I'm just not sure about. I will forever remain a fiction that you will either find entertaining or ignore.)

The first time I made the connection between heart palpitations and food was a few years ago, right after I ate a leftover slice of chocolate cake from Rosine’s Restaurant in Monterey, CA. A few minutes after I finished the cake, my heart began beating wildly and continued to beat irregularly for over an hour. I managed to take a nap and woke up to a regular heartbeat. My digestive system had become so damaged over the years that a piece of cake loaded with gluten made my heart go haywire. Soon after that, if I ate even a little bit of gluten in a cheerio or a crust of bread, for instance, my heart would beat irregularly.
Your heart has no doubt at some point skipped a beat, and you may have wondered for a moment if you were dying from a heart attack. Imagine that your heart keeps skipping a beat every few seconds, for hours at a time--just keeps fluttering, unable to find a regular rhythm. This is what happens to me after I eat a tiny amount of gluten.
The gluten protein is hidden in almost every product on grocery store shelves. Even quinoa contains a protein that mimics gluten. To those who are truly sensitive, many of the products labeled “gluten-free” cause a reaction. The industry standard for that label is not adequate to protect a person with full-blown celiac disease.
For those with the disease, stimulants such as coffee can also trigger heart palpitations. Arrhythmia is the most frightening symptom, but the worst effects occur in the digestive tract. A piece of bread feels like acid as it slides down the esophagus--a precursor to what happens in the rest of the digestive system: nausea, severe cramping, excessive gas, diarrhea or the opposite, extended periods of constipation. I have spent hours on the toilet in so much agony that I thought I was going to pass out or die. (TMI?)
I am not noticeably crippled by the disease. In other words, I’m not in a wheelchair or using crutches or wearing a respirator, so people generally do not understand or even believe that I have a physical debility. Instead, most people jump to the conclusion that my symptoms are psychological--or that I am lying. One of my few friends keeps--consciously or not--pronouncing the word “celiac” as “silly act." Failures in society are often chronically ill, artistic, spiritual, antisocial, politically aware, or unlucky. I, unfortunately, happen to be all of these at once, and no doubt because of that a homicidal maniac has repeatedly attempted to kill me--but no one believes that either.
One night, a thud woke me up. The cat would sometimes leap to the floor or knock things over, so I wasn’t concerned at first, but then I remembered that I had rigged an “alarm" by positioning the ironing board, with the iron at its edge, next to my wife’s bedroom door, so that when the door was pushed inward from the patio, the iron would tip over and plunge to the floor. As my eyes adjusted in the darkness I remembered that I was in my daughter’s bedroom. I stayed alert, telling myself that I was being silly, when suddenly I heard, right in front of the door to the guest room across the hall--my “bedroom"--the sound of someone cocking a gun.
I held my breath. For a long time, silence dominated the house until I distinctly heard the click of someone unlocking the bathroom window.

Besides the family, only one other person knew that I slept in the guest room because of my snoring. Only one other person knew that my wife and daughter were away. Only one other person had a key to the house. One other person never caused the dog to bark. That person was probably lying in wait outside my door with a gun.
Suddenly I heard the clicking of claws on the wooden floor and my dog sniffing under the door. At that moment I realized that my friend had no doubt rehearsed this intrusion while everyone was away during the day, no doubt several times, so that he would know exactly how and where to step on the wooden floor without causing creaking noises.
This was his window of opportunity.
I listened carefully again. No one was stealing anything. I quietly lifted the shade and noticed the cat sleeping outside on a rug. Then I recalled that John, who had a reputation as a perfectionist, would never hire anyone else to do jobs around the house even though often he would start something and never finish it, overwhelmed by so many odd jobs that refused to be done just right....
One day, my daughter had noticed what looked suspiciously like blood splatters on the ceiling of her closet. Maybe there was another reason Blackmore never let any "professionals" into his houses....It would be just like John to paint over the wall perfectly and not notice the ceiling. When he was done painting the walls, he’d probably smiled, admired his work, and then with a sigh remembered all the other jobs he had to finish.
That afternoon, as I pulled into the driveway, I had discovered Blackmore, our new landlord, hard at work on the sprinkler system, which made me a little uncomfortable since my wife and daughter had already left on their trip, and no one had told me that John had planned to work in the backyard. He was on his hands and knees scooping dirt from a shallow trench with a large spoon. He had already used a narrow shovel to dig a trench, placing slabs of earth in a row on the sidewalk. John was methodically making the sides and bottom of the trench even, something that apparently was necessary before he could confront the leaky pipes. John practiced the art of maintenance better than anyone I have known. Most of the solutions that he found for practical problems remained a mystery to me, but I also respected the fact that he rarely did anything unless it was absolutely necessary.
"I hear Bush signed the bill for the feasibility study for Temperance Flat Dam," I mumbled.
"They just keep throwing money at that project, hoping something will actually happen."
"You don’t think anything will?"
"Everyone knows that the era of dam building is over. I doubt that the federal government is going to build another dam when the budget is hemorrhaging due to the war."
"But if the Interior Department finds the dam feasible, it is automatically authorized."
"That is probably the bigger problem, the way Bush keeps gutting environmental laws, but I think the project will probably be tied up in court for years, hopefully long enough at least to get another administration into the White House."
Since John is twenty-five years older than I am, I occasionally feel like a teenager in his presence, especially when discussing politics or practical matters. But I also suddenly began feeling a little uneasy again as I gazed at the dirt piled up in the flowerbed next to the garage.

John and I had shoveled the dirt out of the bed of his pickup awhile back because John had claimed that he was going to use it to “even out” the lawn. At the time I was living in another house, and I was simply helping him with one of his “rentals." To me, the lawn already appeared level. Over time, a small trench had formed at the top of the dirt pile where rainwater had fallen from the eaves, and Bermuda was taking over the flowerbed.

"So what sort of project have you got going here?" I asked.
"The sprinkler system is hemorrhaging. It’s clogged in one place and leaks in another. I’ll be at this for a few days."
"Well, thanks," I muttered. I again felt uncomfortable because I hadn’t even noticed the problem. At that moment I felt like the debt we owed John could never possibly be repaid, especially since I am chronically ill but can only hold down two part-time jobs. I focus what little energy I have left on being an artist, writer, composer and activist, activities that generally don't make a person rich. I confess that I am not much of a provider for my family, and I’m certainly not as practical as I should be. I would rather look at flowers than kill myself making a buck.
I went inside and stared at John through the window. I suddenly imagined a human body in the flowerbed and blinked to rid the image from my mind.
My wife and daughter were visiting a friend for the weekend, so that evening I binged on a six pack of beer. Just as I was finishing beer number six at around ten-thirty that night, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was in danger. I usually sleep in the guest room because I snore and my wife is a light sleeper. Since the door to my room does not have a lock, and since my wife’s bedroom features a door opening onto the patio that doesn’t always latch well, I decided to sleep in my daughter’s bedroom, which no one could enter without breaking down the door.
The house was built in the early forties with solid doors and plaster walls. A previous owner had cut one bedroom in two to create a hall and a guest room and added on the back bedroom, where my wife sleeps. My daughter’s room, the only bedroom left untouched during the restructuring process, is still virtually impenetrable except through the windows, both of which are visible to the neighbors.
After awhile, as I stretched out in the darkness, I started drifting off to sleep, telling myself that I would have enough time to react if I heard someone trying to break into the room. He would have to break down a door in his own house, one of the most solid doors I have ever encountered, and in the process he would lose the element of surprise. He might have to engage in physical combat. The thought that he might lose the fight even though he had a gun no doubt caused him to hesitate. If he did lose, he would be exposed as a sociopath, which would destroy his reputation--and land him in prison.
When I woke up the next morning after staying awake for most of the night, I inspected the house carefully to make sure no one remained hidden there and nothing was stolen. For a moment, I started to believe that I had imagined the intrusion, but then I remembered the most chilling sound of all: the unlocking of the bathroom window. I was the intended victim of a premeditated murder.
I have never told anyone except my wife, and she refuses to believe me. The first time, after several hours of straining to hear the intruder, I fell asleep and found no evidence of a break in. If I had accused Blackmore, he no doubt would have evicted me and my family from his house, and my wife would have lost a generous patron. You see, Blackmore was letting us live rent-free in his house and paying for her classes while she worked for a teaching credential. Since the house belongs to him, fingerprints would prove nothing.
John has remained an effective activist for many years and has “touched” the sphere of Mars in his battles for environmental quality. He has, therefore, unlocked both the virtue and vice of that sphere. He has courage and strength, in the form of mental acuity, but he also experiences the potential for great cruelty and destructiveness.
Descriptions abound of hauntings and demonic possessions. Has it ever occurred to anyone to ask why people aren’t visited by angels just as often? Despite our so-called rationality and all our laws and social conditioning, we remain in a highly unevolved state where our lack of balance attracts dark, horrific forces. I suspect that angels can hardly tolerate the unbalanced minds of human beings.

Pestles on a Pounding Stone

lvtree

00:00 / 04:35

Suite No. 11, Fifth Movement:
APT. 24

In Apartment 24 you are told that you cannot leave due to some great danger to your health. Unfortunately, you lose your job and quickly run out of money to buy food and pay rent and so many other bills. The government sends you a check, which you use to pay rent for one month and utilities and a little food, but the danger lingers on and on. As you hang out in your apartment you discover that three people in your country own as much wealth as half of the population, and these oligarchs are able to find every loophole imaginable to avoid paying taxes. They control the politicians through campaign contributions. Over half of the government's discretionary spending funds the war machine, not on preparing for health emergencies. Since you no longer have a job, you don't have any health insurance, and you would go bankrupt if you had to go to the hospital. For your job, you spent years going to college, which nearly bankrupted you. In Apartment 24, every night as you are falling asleep you dream that a huge monster is sucking the life out of you.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Pounding Stone in the Inundation Zone of Millerton Lake

PENDULUM DREAMS:

SOCIOPATHY

   John, my son-in-law, and I stayed at a cheap hotel in San Francisco after my daughter experienced a stroke due to an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation. She was in the neurological intensive care unit (NICU) of the hospital for a long time. At one point, John and I strolled down a crowded street in downtown San Francisco looking for a restaurant, and an exotic street person rushed up to John and gave him a big bear hug, addressed John by his nickname, and blurted out, "It's okay. It's all love!" John anxiously pushed the strange man away, yelling, "You don't know me." The man then skipped away as if he were the happiest human being on earth. John confirmed that the man could not have possibly known him or his nickname. My daughter was at death's door seemingly every second of every day that she remained in the NICU, and by that point, she had nearly died numerous times from causes related to the stroke.
To this day, I remain dumbfounded by the way the man comforted John, especially since at the time John and I had lived in Fresno, CA, for most of our lives, and we had never walked down that street in San Francisco before. At first I thought the man was a lunatic, but as far as I know no rational explanation exists for how the man knew John's unusual nickname or how he knew that John needed to hear that message.
Fortunately, after many months, my daughter made a miraculous recovery. Strangely, even though I have witnessed evidence of the genocide of Native Americans all over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and I know that humanity could vanish from the earth due to climate disruption or nuclear annihilation or both, and even though I am keenly aware that a different John, last name Blackmore, has tried to murder me more that once, the exotic street person's inexplicable message still resonates with me.
Before my daughter experienced her stroke, Blackmore had attempted to murder me a second time. My wife and daughter were again away on a trip, but this time I slept in my wife’s bedroom. That night I pushed a heavy chest against the door that accesses the patio and piled other heavy items, such as the TV, on top of the chest. I locked the hall door, and positioned empty beer bottles on the floor. Blackmore would not be able to enter without making a great deal of noise.
His strategy the second time, in fact, was to make as much noise as possible to spur me into the hallway. He entered the house a different way the second time, through the back door into the laundry room, and from there he tiptoed through the kitchen and dining room, then loudly pulled open the door between the dining room and the hall. Within a matter of seconds, he pulled open the guest-room door and the door to my daughter’s bedroom. Then, I assume, he stood, gun drawn, waiting for me to appear. Strangely, I knew the exact moment he realized that I was in my wife’s bedroom. An emotional current of homicidal rage, mingled with confusion and disappointment, flowed through the bedroom door.
I waited to see what his next move was going to be since he had lost the element of surprise. He didn’t make another sound. He did not come around the outside of the house to my wife’s bedroom patio door. At some point he simply slipped out. Despite my efforts to be prepared, I had forgotten to charge the phone. The phone’s battery was dead before he entered the house. Once again I had no proof.
The stakes had risen. At first he was determined to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder while I slept. Blackmore, of course, would never attempt such a crime when my wife and daughter were home, but the second attempt revealed that he was now willing to resort to physical confrontation to achieve his ends, and the chance that others might learn of his maliciousness was no longer stopping him.
Blackmore also probably had some reason to believe that I might suspect him. He no doubt went over every detail of his first attempt and at some point realized that I might have been sleeping in my daughter’s bedroom.
I pretended to be oblivious to his nefarious intentions while striving to understand the mind of a sociopathic killer.
He is obviously one of the most methodical and cold-blooded of killers, the kind who waits for years to let his plan unfold and lies in wait for his victim. He is willing to defer gratification to establish the most ideal conditions so that no one will ever suspect him.
His first attempt to murder me in my sleep was partly stealth, partly the act of a predator who has weighed all the risks before attacking, and partly cowardice. The second noisy attempt revealed a hint of desperation, a willingness to risk confrontation while maintaining a distinct advantage. He is of course aware that I dislike the thought of owning weapons of any kind.
At some point he committed himself irrevocably to deception. He must have realized that he might need to play a part for years while attempting to create greater intimacy with my wife, all the while never disclosing his real intentions. He dedicated himself to a total compartmentalization of feelings to accomplish his ends. He had to always, always present the kindest, most thoughtful side of himself even as in secret he was becoming more and more engrossed in carrying out his homicidal plan.
I am no psychologist, but I believe I understand a sort of primal motivation. As someone who is well aware that nature is red in tooth and claw, Blackmore no doubt prides himself on being stealthier and more ferocious than his prey, and I mean prey, plural, because I believe that I’m not the only one.    He owns seven rental houses, but one of them is full of his junk and several others are in disrepair. He is a hoarder, his own house a disaster-area overflowing with newspaper and styrofoam and cans and bottles and numerous odds and ends that he has collected over the years. He no doubt in his own mind has a clear system of organization, but an insistence on this system long ago resulted in a horrific, unrelenting disorder. A great deal of junk ends up in his unrented houses as well, and I’m betting that bodies can also be found on some of those properties. You do not have to be a genius to figure out that his houses reflect a chaotic inner state. In various attempts to assert control he no doubt has murdered other people along the way.
I must confess that at first I only tolerated him because he kept helping my wife and family, and unfortunately, since I have a chronic illness and never make enough money, I easily became duped by his phony generosity, especially since I considered him a comrade in our fight to protect the environment.    Signs of his deviousness should have alerted me. Blackmore is married--yet my wife has become the object of his devotion. He apparently has acted the perfect gentleman around my wife, in all but two instances. He once commented about how my wife’s blouse revealed too much cleavage, a comment that my wife vehemently objected to. He also asked my wife to act as a surrogate mother for him since he and his own wife remained childless. He proposed using a turkey baster to make my wife pregnant. My wife and I of course found the idea totally absurd.
In retrospect, I should have decked him and demanded that he never show his face around my house again. But Blackmore had at other times seemed so rational and had done so many things for us--for my wife--over the years, and he had also accomplished so many positive things for the community through his activism that I felt sorry for him. His “turkey-baster" proposal remained an embarrassment for him that no doubt became the trigger for a homicidal rage. He did not like to feel embarrassed around a man he considered inferior. Embarrassment no doubt also made him feel inadequate and out of control.
The first time Blackmore tried to murder me, one of the most chilling sounds was a sigh: He sighed immediately after he cocked the gun and stepped into the guest room, just before he discovered I wasn’t there. The sigh revealed excitement, satisfaction, relief, as if a pressure valve had opened for a moment: the almost sexual excitement of total domination, the ego satisfaction of proven superiority, the relief of successfully realizing his obsessive homicidal goals.
I have searched the mountains for Native American village sites for almost twenty years, but I never contemplated the motivation for genocide before Blackmore attempted to murder me. From what I’ve experienced, I now believe that the motivation for the systematic extermination of an entire race is similar to the motivation of the sociopath who kills in a calculated, methodical manner.
Several weeks after Blackmore’s first attempt, I explored the bottom of a reservoir at the confluence of a river and a creek. Cockle burrs blanketed the otherwise denuded slopes. A faint dirt road snaked through a Native American village site, close to the pounding stones, between the dark skeletons of oaks and sycamores, all of which had remained under water for over sixty years. At one point Blackmore and I at different times had fought the cultural and environmental devastation caused by dams, yet that had not created any real basis for comradeship. Instead he viewed me as a threatening rival, similar to the way the early settlers of European descent must have viewed the Native Americans.
The early settlers must have felt afraid of the unknown surroundings and the Native Americans who were far more knowledgeable about the environment. A sense of vulnerability must have at times overwhelmed those early settlers. Unfortunately for the Native Americans, the settlers had better weapons and enough fear to fuel their undeclared war day after day, year after year, until they finally cleared the region of the Native American presence.

Unlike other species, which use violence as a means of survival, killing in self-defense or when hungry, humans often exhibit a twisted type of maliciousness, providing an array of justifications for violence, usually for emotional, social, religious, economic or political reasons, a self-justifying behavior which is almost as common for social groups, political institutions, and religious organizations as it is for individuals. The overwhelming fear of being out of control sometimes leads to a vicious cycle; in recent times, for instance, governments have stock-piled weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the world many times over. The more destructive the technology, the greater the fear, and the more terrifying the weapons become.
Serial killers are often physically, emotionally or sexually abused as children and grow vengeful against a particular group, such as African-Americans, Native Americans, women, gays, or Hispanics, and they often target members of a group indiscriminately. Individual sociopaths and sociopathic groups tend to target others who are different, blaming them for causing negative feelings or circumstances. Some sociopaths have a predisposition for calculated, “instrumental” violence, which they direct at an individual with characteristics that trigger feelings of inadequacy or fear.
One of the most common causes of hoarding is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder--whose sufferers exhibit traits such as trouble finishing projects, difficulty throwing things away, exaggerated conscientiousness, and perfectionism. They constantly experience the sense of being out of control, so they hoard to address every possible material contingency.
Blackmore is articulate, intelligent, and interesting. The sociopath often has an abundance of charm and wit and may also appear friendly and considerate, attributes that are superficial. These personal qualities blind people to a personal agenda stemming from a profound feeling of inadequacy. My wife once told me that Blackmore had been deeply scarred by a cruel father and had remained powerless to protect a vulnerable mother--so it was logical for him to feel a subconscious desire to destroy men and protect women. Blackmore’s cruel father left him feeling vulnerable: He could neither protect his mother nor himself. He must have often felt inadequate in the eyes of his mother. Any man who triggered that feeling of inadequacy could easily become the target of a hidden, homicidal fury.
At one point Blackmore might have experienced the excitement of an assault where he was completely in control, an experience that propelled him over the edge to commit an act that would give him the ultimate sense of control: murder. The sociopath understands a crime’s seriousness but nevertheless experiences such a rush that he risks the consequences. If he has gotten away with murder, he continues to develop confidence, which motivates him to continue to seek the same excitement and sense of control.
As an activist, Blackmore has often undermined men who have gotten in his way, but he has earned the trust of my wife through seemingly limitless generosity. His unflagging kindness could not make my wife feel romantic love for him, however, which only made him resent me even more. Whenever we had problems with the car or around the house, my wife called Blackmore, and he would come running, but she would never offer to pay him back--in any way. This no doubt satisfied his unconscious need to be the hero for the female and to belittle the male in his own mind--without of course ever openly expressing his disdain.
Over the years, he developed a persona that makes him appear to be the most rational of human beings as a way to hide the fear and chaos in his soul, for he has proven to be one of the most calculating and treacherous and deceitful of men.
At one point, my wife and I experienced a rough patch and separated for several months. Blackmore must have considered my absence his chance to fill the void in my wife’s heart, but being married himself, he had to be delicate about it, and because he is calculating and methodical, he took too long. My sudden return must have unbalanced him, triggering old feelings of inadequacy. At that point, no doubt, I became his enemy for life.
The spiritual path is not for wussies. On one hand, you see the best in people. You know the magnificence, abundance, and harmony of the human spirit because you have experienced it in yourself. And you know that everything is profoundly and inextricably connected. On the other hand, you know the fear, guilt, shame, or sense of inadequacy that can make a person or group or society turn on you. Because of your sympathy and understanding, you have no desire to harm another person. Because of your heightened awareness, you know when someone is harboring a hatred for you that is motivating him or her to find every means imaginable to destroy you without being detected. Because of our fear and our deadly technology, as a race we are a few seconds from midnight. Even so, as a spiritual person, you can do nothing but establish and maintain harmony in your own sphere.
Truly a force to reckon with on the mental level, Blackmore attacks every problem, from fixing a toilet to influencing the political system, in a methodical manner. When it comes to matters of the heart, Blackmore has used the same method, calculating every move. Consequently it had taken him years to set up the circumstances that would lead to the perfect murder, using a business method perfected by Howard Hughes, first treating his adversary like a friend to gain trust and then destroying him. I’m guessing that at least five years have passed since Blackmore first began developing his plan, and in the process, his heart has simply continued to grow blacker. By focusing on committing the perfect murder, he has been channeling pure evil into his heart, transforming himself into a deceitful, cold-blooded killer, not a lover. Even if he succeeds in getting rid of me and winning my wife’s affections, the wheel has been spinning in the direction of evil for years; it would, at this point, be impossible to make it suddenly stop and spin the other way. Blackmore has destroyed his own ability to love. He has undermined himself, which of course is little consolation to me.

Mangled Bridge Near Pounding Stone

beat19

00:00 / 04:24

Suite No. 11, Sixth Movement
APT. 25

In Apartment 25, people around you don't believe that the most important facets of your being really exist. They don't believe that you have a chronic illness caused by gluten; they think you're faking it. They don't believe that you have had COVID at least five times. They don't believe that at one point someone was trying to murder you. They don't believe or don't care that you have discovered memorials of genocide all over the Sierra Nevada Mountains: abandoned Native American village sites. They don't believe that you have healed yourself of serious illnesses with your own mind during meditation. They certainly don't believe that you regularly invoke Archangels or that for a period of time you were relentlessly assaulted by demonic forces. They don't believe that during your daily ritual you feel a profound sense of eternity and your personality vanishes, which also causes all of your regrets and all of your negativity to disappear. In Apartment 25, you might as well be invisible.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the front room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Tiger Lilies in High Meadow (before the Creek Fire)

PENDULUM DREAMS:

CLEANSING RAIN

Rain out of nowhere suddenly smacked the windshield. After I switched from low beams to brights, the drops seemed to shoot out from an invisible shower nozzle floating about five feet above my improperly angled left headlight. No matter how fast I sped down the rural highway--sixty, seventy, eighty--the nozzle remained suspended in front of my car. All the while I could also see myriad drops exploding on the asphalt, the black orchards sliding into shadows of vineyards or voids of pastureland.
Suddenly I glimpsed in the headlights a massive bullfrog that resembled a malformed infant crawling across the wet pavement, its right foreleg stretching out to drag the rest of its bulky form directly into the path of my car. I swerved a little to the right; I will never know whether or not my car crushed it, whether or not other tires would soon be squashing it into a ratty, quickly graying mush.
Suspended in the eternal moment, able, within limits, to choose the quality of that moment, you might decide in complete innocence to explore a road and suddenly become a bloody mush on the asphalt. I shuddered a little but refused to imagine my own body lying mangled in the black rain because I have come to believe that thought forms infused with emotion tend to manifest. Instead I imagined the ritual that I would perform when I got home. I usually worked with the great Archangels Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Auriel in a ritual known as the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram. With the Archangels, I would heal and cleanse myself and my spiritual friends and sometimes even my enemies. Recently, after I had felt completely healed and cleansed, I began to realize that I was also healing and cleansing the collective consciousness of humanity. With each of the four great Archangels, I would find myself being crucified and then dropping into the fires beneath the earth's surface, where I, along with a great deal of dark energy, would burn up completely, transformed into white light. At one point, this just began happening during the ritual even though I have never considered myself a Christian. With each Archangel I feel a profound sense of eternity, and my personality disappears along with all the negativity in my aura.
Tonight, though, I imagined that I would put on a CD of the music that I’d composed and recorded, and after clearing my ritual space, I would send energy into my symbolic offerings to Thoth, Osiris, and Isis, each hieroglyphic symbol turning golden on the alter in the energy of my aura. Then I would send the energy into my paintings of the Gods. The Gods would ensoul those forms on the astral plane, sending their potent energy back into my energy field that would then be strengthened in ways that would only become apparent later--perhaps even years later.
Over five years ago, for several days in a row, I had asked Thoth, Isis, and Osiris to look favorably upon my longing to live in my higher self, and finally in the middle of the night, I had awakened. After an hour of painfully mulling over in my mind all of my points of vulnerability, I suddenly realized that I had to peer beyond appearances to the divine spark, the part of myself that recognizes the divinity within all things. The next day, the idea of "the divine spark" resonated in whatever I was doing. Even when I was washing dishes or taking out the trash, I sensed a divine intelligence permeating everything, a unity underlying all consciousness. During my next ritual, I envisioned an invisible sun that I immediately associated with Osiris and the crown chakra, Osiris torn into pieces and restored by Isis and Thoth, Osiris slain and risen into the higher life, a spiritual sun. I was surprised by joy and peace as if Osiris had somehow touched my soul.
As I drove, I envisioned The Magician, the Tarot card representing the path on the Tree of Life between Kether, the Crown of Creation, and Binah, the sphere of the celestial Mother, the root of form. I pictured a man in a robe holding up a wand with his right hand, his left hand pointing to the ground. The magician stands behind a table upon which rests a sword, a wand, a cup, and a pentacle, symbols of the astrological triplicities and the four elements of the wise, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth respectively. The magician uses all of the cosmic energies for the highest possible good, and above his head floats a horizontal gray figure eight, symbol of the knowledge of the infinitude within, a symbol that I, in the first of many synchronicities, had seen in a vision during meditation two days before I purchased a pack of Tarot cards. The Hebrew letter Beth, the first letter of the bible (but the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet), is associated with the card. Thoth also is associated with the archetype of the Magician in his Roman form as Mercury, “Thoth, the Logos who speaks the Word that manifests the meaning within the underlying patterns of existence” I thought as I swerved a little to avoid crushing another frog. I planned to place that card on the altar in front of my painting of Thoth for my ritual.
Rays of water kept shooting out from the invisible shower nozzle above my car, and as I swerved again to avoid smashing another lump on the road, I realized that just as the hearts of a great many people do not resonate with the beauty of nature, or with the concepts of truth and justice or with music or poetry or paintings, their hearts would not resonate with the concept of the higher self. In fact, I would be even more separated from the herd because of my desire to live in the higher self and even more vulnerable because of the ferocity of the group mind, which had the uncanny ability to identify and vilify anyone who is different, like the aliens in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
A jackrabbit suddenly shot in front of my car. I heard a sharp crack followed quickly by a thud in the undercarriage. I winced, remembering when my wife and daughter had left me alone for a weekend. I remembered hearing, late at night, a thud somewhere in the house. Soon after, I heard what sounded like the cocking of a gun in front of my tiny room where my wife had banished me due to my snoring. A few minutes later I heard a window being unlocked in another room.
I shuddered as I gazed at the rays of water; if it hadn't been for my intuition that something terrible might happen that night, I wouldn't have slept in a locked room, and my wife would have found me the next day, a lifeless, bloody lump on the couch.
Suddenly I felt the car wobble a little. Please, God, not now in this rain, I thought, as I pulled over next to an orchard. I flicked the hood of my jacket over my head, grabbed a flashlight from the trunk, and inspected the tire. The head of a nail glinted in a vulnerable slit between the treads. Slow leak. At that instant, a white Ford pickup truck flew by, splashing water from a large puddle all the way over the roof of my car and onto my face and jacket.

John Blackmore owned a white Ford pickup truck. Every man with any money in the San Joaquin Valley owned a white Ford pickup truck. The truck in the distance appeared to be turning around; I thought I glimpsed the headlights far off sliding over trees and then slowly growing larger on the wet pavement. Blackmore might have his gun. Blackmore could kill me and bury me deep in one of these orchards, and nobody would ever know. In a panic, I clicked off my flashlight and hustled over to the first row of trees, hiding behind a thin trunk. Sure enough, the white Ford pickup swung around and parked behind my car. A man with a large flashlight, about Blackmore's height--it was hard to tell due to the hood of the raincoat--bent over to inspect the tire. Then the man stood up and gazed down the road. Soon the shadow turned the flashlight on the orchard, and I dropped down to the roots of an almond tree. The man got back in his truck and drove off slowly down the road. Shaking slightly, I swore bitterly to myself as I watched the red tail lights growing smaller. But then the truck, far off in the distance, turned around again.
Only three people would have done that: my wife, a landowner searching for trespassers, or John Blackmore. My wife had no reason to suspect that I was having car problems, and a landowner would be crazy to search for trespassers on such a dreary night, unless of course he were totally insane about protecting his private property rights. The man got out of the pickup and began walking directly over to the orchard without a light to guide him. I panicked again, but knew that if I ran, I would probably make too much noise, so I tiptoed three rows deeper into the orchard before the shadow reached the trees. Suddenly light flowed slowly over the trunks, casting eerie shadows, and I slumped down as close to the roots as possible. The shadow carrying the flashlight suddenly stopped and waited.
A veteran trespasser, I knew that I would have to remain completely still until the man became distracted or wandered away; remaining calm, I decided that I would then move as quietly away from my adversary as possible. I would sit quietly like the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree, I thought with more than a little bitterness. I could not escape in my car, obviously, due to the flat tire, but I might circle around and try to see the license plate number of the pickup, to prove once and for all to my wife that Blackmore was a homicidal maniac who would stick a nail in one of my tires and then follow me to work on a wet, dreary night. I decided instead to disappear farther into the orchard and wait until the truck left for good.
I leaned against the tree, suddenly remembering a moment which had occurred over twenty years before. I, my girlfriend Karen, and my eight year old son from a previous marriage were all standing in the badly lit kitchen of our apartment. Karen, who for five years had rarely gotten along with my son, out of nowhere called the boy a “bastard and a mother f--ker.” She had attacked me vociferously many times before in front of the boy, often without what I would consider provocation, but she had never before, to my knowledge, verbally assaulted him in such a damaging way. Karen would sometimes harangue me for hours, becoming more and more furious as I tried to smooth things over or end the argument by going into another room; she would follow me wherever I went, still shouting. I remembered the moment clearly, possibly because it became clear then that I was living with a sociopath, and it was the beginning of the end of the relationship: she had carefully enunciated the words and then simply stepped back, waiting with a smirk on her face, as if she had just dropped a grenade between me and my son. Suddenly I stood up and my hand shot out, slapping her hard across the cheek. Furious, I then stomped into the bedroom, shoved open her closet door, grabbed as much of her clothing as I could and ran to the door, throwing the clothes in a heap on the front steps.
I had already imbibed several beers. I sat down on the couch, watched TV and finished off the six-pack as Karen made a phone call. Soon, my former lover, Anne, showed up on the doorstep where my wife's clothing still remained in a heap. That I suppose was meant to make me cringe: I had met Karen after she had become Anne's roommate in college, and since Anne had decided to marry another man, I decided to pursue other interests, in other words, Karen, her roommate.
Blackmore might have heard me splashing through the orchard, and might still be waiting for me, so I decided not to try to find my way back for a while. I realized also at that moment that, to be a spiritual master, I would have to remain focused even in the worst circumstances, to control the cosmic energies within myself even if my lover was about to poke my eye out with a red-hot wire or my friend was attempting to blow my head off. Before my spiritual awakening, I had been an atheist. I had started meditating, however, and during meditation and ritual I had touched the hem of eternity, envisioning archetypes and sensing intelligences that transcend anything humans could consciously understand. A human was little more than an amoeba compared to them. Those great intelligences remain ineffable due to the limited brain capacity of the species. Oddly, however, their presence could be felt if one exalted consciousness, and for some reason, the Archangels and Gods would elevate the human soul--as if the evolution of humanity were somehow significant to them. Their energy exalted me and made me stronger emotionally and mentally than I ever before believed possible.
I tried to clear everything out of my mind and, failing that, I focused on the image of Thoth. In my painting, the figure of Thoth stood against a yellow background and contained flashing colors--in other words, complementary colors of purple and yellow that vibrated if one stared at them long enough, the intense colors helping the mind tune to a higher vibration, so that the worshipper could more easily tune to the higher energies of the spiritual plane. I tried to hold the image in my mind, but instead, I remembered the argument that had occurred decades before.
As the rain dropped from the branches like tiny liquid fruit in the darkness, I cringed again. Why did sociopaths find their way into my life? Did I attract them? Are they unavoidable because of the way we are all socially conditioned? I have suffered demonic attacks ever since my spiritual awakening, but because of my spiritual practices they cannot harm me: Did demons target the people around me and stimulate their sociopathic tendencies? Maybe demons were trying to destroy me through other people instead since they couldn't harm me. When Karen left the apartment with Anne the day of the argument, I had been so angry, not to mention drunk, that I couldn't think of a thing to say as they left. I didn't even ask where they were going. Karen was gone three days before she phoned me to let me know that she was staying at the battered women's shelter. I begged her, in front of my son, to come home. "Oh," she stated. "They told me you might say that." She also mentioned that she felt foolish when she saw the other women at the shelter, some of whom, unlike her, had been brutally beaten, but she still refused to come home. Then I angrily yelled into the phone, "Stay away from us! You're a child abuser. We don't ever want to see you again!"
Stop tormenting yourself, I thought. Since then, I have purified myself over and over, physically and emotionally and mentally and spiritually, forgiving everyone who has harmed me. I have not seen or talked to Karen or Anne in two decades. The torment, nevertheless, continued. Karen, through her fiction writing in college, had become the darling of a popular feminist writer, and I was not rehired as a teaching assistant or as a tutor at the English Writing Lab the following semester. I wrote a shrill letter of complaint to the feminist professor, who asked me over the phone if I was going to sue her for sexual misconduct. Nonplussed once again, I could only give a weak reply in the negative, sensing that my eight years of grueling work at the university was all for naught. After that, if I ever submitted a resume mentioning that I had worked as a TA or a tutor at the university, I wouldn't get hired.
Old wounds were opening, and I suddenly knew why. When I had graduated from college, I had become an environmental activist instead of going into a doctoral program or becoming a teacher, and I encountered John Blackmore at numerous political meetings. Suddenly I shivered. I was getting soaked as big drops plopped from the branches onto my jacket and pants. When I closed my eyes, I imagined how Blackmore, after completing the perfect murder, would take my wife out on a date.
I suddenly envisioned Blackmore's heart center enveloped in blackness from which the snarling heads of wolves protruded. Blackmore was clever enough to hide his homicidal tendencies, but those wolves in his black heart kept anyone from getting close to him. At some point in his life, Blackmore had chosen to channel dark, ferocious energy, which presented itself to my psychic vision as snarling astral wolves out for blood.
In my imagination, I released all of the blackness, all of the negativity, into the fires below the earth's surface, where it burned up completely. The soul, or higher self, thought of simplistically as the conscience, can transmute negativity into light and harmony. My higher self does not care about social status or money or what kind of job I have or even if I am harmed by following its dictates. I had never regretted sending the letter to the feminist professor or working as an environmental activist because I was speaking truth to power. The higher self magically neutralizes dark forces to create balance, I thought--and life would be intolerable without magic, without a belief in something higher.
The rain and wind were dying down. I closed my eyes again and imagined the ritual that I had planned earlier. Even though Isis, Osiris, and Thoth were on my alter, I could only imagine Osiris clearly at that moment. In my imagination, I sent out golden energy from my heart to the hieroglyphic symbol of the Eye of Horus, which at home was positioned in front of the painting of Osiris. Suddenly, in my mind's eye, the symbol was no longer in black ink on paper but was the purest gold. I imagined then that the golden energy from my aura was infusing the astral form of Osiris until the form glowed. I felt the energy flow back into my heart and the intense circuit of energy made me tremble a little. "Osiris, slain and risen, perfected by suffering, thank you. I am resurrected," I whispered, imagining green, torn apart pieces of my soul put back together again. At that moment, I saw the spiritual sun at my crown. Whoever was trying to destroy me was so far away now, in some other part of the galaxy. Nothing could harm my essence.
Suddenly I heard coyotes howling in the distance. I opened my eyes. I could see the trees more clearly now. Perhaps the moon had broken through the clouds. I slowly stood up, groaning, and tip-toed down a row of trees, careful to avoid startling any wild animals. After what seemed like an hour, to my great relief, I found the parked car in the distance, and I trotted along in the mud, howling, in my mind, for joy.
I quickly changed the tire and brushed my hands off as I stood up with a groan. A smudge of gold glinted just above far-away mountain peaks as one light on the road suddenly split into two, far off in the distance, rapidly growing larger.

Graffitied Pounding Stone

9sol26

00:00 / 04:25

Suite No. 11, Seventh Movement:

APT. 26

In Apartment 26, you experience a feeling of vulnerability. You have a highly contagious skin infection, a relentless case of scabies--in other words, tiny spiders crawling around in your skin. You contract COVID every time a new variant surfaces, and you sometimes experience heavy brain fog and terrible bouts of insomnia. For decades you have suffered from a chronic illness that causes fatigue and makes it nearly impossible to operate at a socially acceptable level of energy. Inflation and higher interest rates are pounding everyone. You are an empath, which is mainly a curse because of all the suffering, all the trauma, abuse, betrayal, upheaval, abandonment, poverty and loss that people suffer. You feel the dark energies of genocide and ecocide both in the valley and the nearby mountains, and you have an overwhelming feeling that you must do something to end the brutality and exploitation and destruction that threatens the existence of the planet and all of humanity. You continually release dark energies from your aura into the fires below the earth's surface to cleanse yourself and discover that you are taking on the negativity of the collective consciousness of humanity: every day in your imagination during your ritual you are totally vulnerable--you are crucified, and on your cross you fall into the fires below the earth's surface. Your personality dissolves, along with layers of black negativity, but when cleansed, you feel the unity within all of creation and know the divinity of all energy.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in a closet you find a box containing a chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Fivespot

PENDULUM DREAMS:

THE POUNDING STONE AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

I returned to Sycamore Creek to see if I could experience more memories of a past life. After I parked the car on the edge of the hill, I scrambled down the slope through Chinese purple houses and Ithuriel's spears and baby blue eyes and fiddleneck, the unseasonably warm temperatures stimulating a few of the late spring flowers to bloom with the early spring flowers. As I stood enveloped by the breath of the plants and trees, I felt revived, the sun heating my skin even as the breeze chilled me. I had spent most of the past three weeks house bound, so the contrast felt almost shocking. As I paused to catch my breath, I sensed the life-force flowing into my aura until it penetrated my core. Everything was energy: the plants, the trees, the clouds, the purling air. Every part of me was pure energy: body, emotions, intellect, and spirit. In my third eye, even invisible forms of energy in my mind seemed to have a position in space, as if my feelings and thoughts were things made of some subtle substance. At the same time, I sensed that if those vibrations suddenly dissolved, I would experience my essence in some dimension beyond space and time.
A dream I had just before I woke up suddenly made sense. The dream, which resembled the many symbolic visions I have had associated with the Tree of Life, contained three pure white flowers, resembling lilies, against a pure black background. Every part of these flowers was white, even the stamen and the stems, and the petals formed a perfect circle at the apex of each flower. They seemed, as I stood on the slope feeling the life-force penetrating my essence, to represent the three supernal centers of the Tree of Life, a unified triad containing the primal polarity. The supernal spheres of the Tree of Life exist beyond manifestation, on the other side of what the Qabalists call the Abyss. The flowers were white to suggest the unity of all the colors and the underlying unity of all creation as well as the purity of remaining untouched by the influences of the manifested cosmos.
I, of course, have been preoccupied by thoughts of death due to Blackmore’s attempts to murder me and my struggles with celiac disease. My subconscious mind was revealing a symbol of my essence beyond death. Did this symbol mean that everything besides my essence would at some point fall away into pure blackness? Was the transient material universe like my body at some point also headed for the abyss, leaving only the supernal essence of the Universal Consciousness? If so, did that mean that everything I was experiencing in this space and time, including the flowers and trees and memories of a past life, would slip into oblivion, leaving only a supernal essence? Or is the material universe the abyss itself? On the Tree of Life, black is the color symbolically associated with the physical universe.
As I pondered these questions, I realized that I had become hyper-sensitive to the life-force, not just due to being housebound so long, but also because of a long process of mental and spiritual self-purification. In Western societies, the idea of a “life-force" remains in limbo even though every culture I know has developed some concept of it. My experience of the life-force is tangible to me. I can feel it flowing into the deepest part of every living thing open to it. Western science cannot explain how or why consciousness exists, but here we are, I thought, as I followed an ancient path down to the creek and found the ancient Native American village site once again.
At that point I wondered whether I was a Jewish or Christian mystic. When I was an atheist both Judaism and Christianity had repulsed me, but I decided that now after my mystical experiences, I was a little of both since of course Christianity grew out of Judaism. I was focusing mainly on purification, and I recognized four main types of negativity that needed cleansing: personal negativity, of which there is at least half a ton in just about every person alive these days; the negativity of the soul-group, family and friends and ancestors; the negativity of the culture and society in general; and the negativity of the collective consciousness of humanity, and these types of negativity tend to overlap. Based on personal experience, I know that when you are in the process of mental purification and you reach stage four, the purification of the collective consciousness of humanity, you can become seriously ill and lose everything like Job and then get crucified like Jesus on the emotional, mental, and spiritual levels, and of course you feel vulnerable, oh, so vulnerable. In the process, you develop empathy for all of humanity, for whom you take on, not "sin," but the negativity of the collective consciousness, and then you transmute the negativity into harmony. This, I now believe, is something that many of the saints have done in the past. Nowadays, though, there is so much negative energy because over seven billion people exist on this earth, many of whom are so damaged that their hearts would keep turning in the direction of evil even after they were purified by the holiest of men.
As I lounged on a pounding stone, I heard something crashing through the brush in the distance. When I turned, I glimpsed someone pushing through the branches of a fallen tree, the shoulder strap of his rifle caught on a twig. Since I was near the unfenced and therefore ambiguous border between public and private land, and he had a rifle, I dropped immediately to the ground. No predator in the wild terrifies me more than a human being with a weapon, so I peered at him through a crack in the stone. He was far enough away that I could not make out his features. I could see that he wore a stocking cap and long-sleeved shirt, both black, which seemed strange in the warm weather. Most hunters would be wearing t-shirts or some type of camouflage.
Blackmore, I thought to myself. As he approached, I scrambled down a steep slope and crouched behind a buckeye tree whose roots were breaking a rock in two. Suddenly I remembered the map of my location that I had drawn and pinned to the frig, against my better judgment. After I had left on my excursion, Blackmore must have visited my wife and noticed the map. He wouldn’t be able to resist hunting me down. After examining the map, he had no doubt made some excuses to my wife, jumped into his white truck, and drove out to Sycamore Creek. It wasn’t like him to make noise, but everyone in the woods sooner or later ends up struggling through the brush.
Hunting is normally a social enterprise, I thought, with two or more people involved. In fact, I have rarely encountered a hunter alone in the wilderness, nor have I encountered any hunters dressed in black. Blackmore wears a black t-shirt and black blue jeans all the time. As I hid in the tree roots, I began to wonder if I was just being paranoid. Could I be experiencing some form of PTSD due to Blackmore’s previous attempts on my life? In the most tranquil of places, I have found pounding stones. Near the creek, graves with numerous stones piled on top and deserted Native American village sites reveal that some tragic drama once occurred there--a tragedy that just might be about to replay itself, I thought, as if places steeped in violence continue to attract even more violence.
I wasn’t even sure Blackmore was the hunter. Why was I afraid? Was the survival instinct kicking in? When I have met people in the wild, I’ve always instinctively mistrusted them, as though for them and me it is understood that the rules of civilization no longer apply. Then, I thought, there is always also the general fear that weapons of mass destruction might wipe out the planet at any moment, a collective fear that we project onto other peoples and nations. Had I lived in denial of the horrors of the modern world so long that I was instinctively personifying my subconscious fear, personal and collective, in the form of one person, John Blackmore, the way someone might personify his repressed fear in the form of a monster or a demon?
I didn’t plan to hang around long enough to find out. I watched the hunter in black hurry down an ancient path toward the creek, so I headed in the other direction. Despite my fear, I still felt the tranquility of the life-force in the sycamores and oaks and buckeyes and manzanitas next to the gurgling stream. Even though I always feel at peace in the wild, I am also always alert, feeling a slight tension at the back of my mind, because I know that any second I might encounter a snake or a mountain lion and end up slipping into black.
Again, I found myself near the confluence of Sycamore Creek and Dry Creek, where before I had experienced an inexplicable rage. That day I had felt like I had stepped into a current of cold air floating by the creek that contained an intense emotion, a subtle emanated force.
I was not experiencing the cold current of energy again, but I suddenly experienced impressions of the past as though the very air were charged with information. I don't know how else to explain it, and I of course have no way of proving what I suddenly knew. In my mind’s eye, I envisioned a meeting place on the ridge above me. With rocks that formed a natural semi-circle where people could sit, the meeting place had often instilled fear in the tribe members because terrible judgments were made there, often at night when the fire gave an unearthly glow to the faces of the elders.
After climbing the slope on the other side of the creek, I found the stone semicircle and experienced another impression: The tribe was discussing some woman, judging her, deciding what to do with her. Suddenly shifting consciousness, I became part of the scene, and I gathered that her young husband had been killed by white settlers as he was attempting to steal horses from a farm that had once been part of the tribe's hunting grounds, and she had not been able to overcome her grief, avoiding or becoming angry at the other members of the tribe who tried to help her. She refused to believe that her husband was gone. She was slowly starving, weeping if she ate anything, and wandering off into the woods for days by herself, which was terribly risky because of dangerous predators. It was problematic for the tribe to keep sending men out to look for her.
She refused to speak when the elders talked to her. She just stood with her head down, tears welling in her eyes. They talked to her sympathetically, and in the end decided that she should be taken to the clan nearby so that she could recover in different surroundings, away from her husband's grave where she had spent so many hours, completely inconsolable. Relatives in that clan would take care of her as long as she didn't run away. If she disappeared again, they would have to let her go.
As if time could be fast-forwarded, I could see that she followed her brothers down the trail toward the valley to a large village at the base of a hill, next to a stream. Her brothers left her with two kindly old people who made her feel at home. At first she worked away from the tribe at a pounding stone with one mortar on a ridge overlooking the village. Soon, however, she was grinding acorns with the other women.
As though I was recalling a dream, I saw on the screen of my mind how she got up early to get water from the creek one morning and noticed a white militia crawling up the ridge. Her screams awakened the village just before white men began firing their guns into the huts. A few members of the tribe were able to arm themselves and attack from hiding places in outcroppings of rock on the hillside. She ran toward the battle and grabbed the rifle of a fallen white man and shot another one in the face before she was hit with a rifle butt and lost consciousness.
Suddenly I couldn’t see any more; the impressions of the past had vanished. The strange vision, which was very similar to what I had experienced when hypnotized, had left me with more questions. Was I experiencing retrocognition stimulated by the environment, or a memory from another life that had remained deeply buried in my psyche? Did my essence contain all memories from past lives? Did Blackmore have anything to do with stimulating the past-life memory as he was hunting me down? Was the vision revealing a past life for a reason? Was Blackmore also part of that past life? All questions that couldn't be answered.
I suddenly felt uncomfortable. I had not heard the hunter dressed in black firing his weapon in the distance, or had I? What if he had returned to the road and was waiting near my car to ambush me? I instantly regretted not rushing immediately back to my car and heading home the second I had first glimpsed the man in black. I decided to take a less-traveled path and soon found myself surrounded by poison oak. Taking a detour, I came upon a rivulet cutting a small ravine in the slope and followed a faint path that led to a waterfall, the small pond below it surrounded by flowers. I paused, unable to move, as though I had stumbled upon a hidden paradise. Suddenly I no longer cared about the hunter in black. He could lie in wait by my car all day if he wanted to. I remembered an old saying: When trapped on a cliffside with a mountain lion above and a bear below, reach for the blackberry in the brambles. I decided to hang out by the waterfall for the rest of the day, pondering my dream, my essence, my vision, the flowers.

Ithuriel's Spears in Poison Oak

3journey

00:00 / 04:09

Suite No. Eleven, Eighth Movement:

APT. 27

In Apartment 27, the people who step through the door turn into monsters. Some look like insects, some appear reptilian, but some look more like animals. One was ant-like, with very sharp pincers; one resembled a snake with extremely long fangs; one was a ferocious cat-like creature. One was even like an arachnid, a cross between a spider and a scorpion. The scariest of all are those who look like demons, and you are not sure if they are possessed or if they actually are demonic. Sometimes, a person who passes through the door of Apartment 27 doesn't immediately turn into a monster, but the moment eventually comes when they turn, and then, usually, all hell breaks loose. After awhile, you don't let people into the apartment anymore. "What kind of monster am I?" you wonder as you lock the door behind you. At some point, somebody had removed all reflective surfaces.

(You realize you must still be on the right path because in the kitchen you find a box with a chapter of Pendulum Dreams, by Justin C....)

Newts and Pounding Stone

PENDULUM DREAMS:

BUGS

The coffee maker began sucking, groaning, and growling, resembling both a huge salivating insect and an angry crowd off in the distance.
"Oh, sh-t," I thought, "I should have put on the water first." The water for the oatmeal would have boiled by the time I finished making the coffee if I had followed the right sequence.
Late again. As I was dumping the second cup of water into the pot for oatmeal, I remembered vowing the night before to be attentive at work. Strive to make eye contact and actually listen and respond thoughtfully, I had admonished myself.
Stomping toward the shower after waiting for the water to boil, I heaved a sigh--not because I wasn't feeling well-adjusted but because I didn't feel awake, I believed.
"You jerk," I hissed as I adjusted the hot and cold water faucets, launching again into the litany of self-deprecation which flowed out time and again when I was having an allergic reaction to gluten. This was the classic stage three reaction: the onset of depression, which included a lot of self-deprecation. Fortunately, all I needed to do was adjust my eating habits, alternating my foods more, and I might be emotionally placid in several days, if I were lucky. If I didn't take those measures, I would be mumbling on some street corner in no time. I sighed again, realizing I was one of the lucky ones who could identify the allergies and chemical sensitivities, but I laughed bitterly at myself for striving to overcome alienation in the workplace.
As the shower drops pelted me, I thought to myself, "Everyone else flies along steadily with a little turbulence now and then. But you have to go suddenly into a tailspin, spiraling downward, always when you least expect it. So far, you've been able to pull yourself out of it, but every time, you believe it won't happen again. You should never, ever make that mistake again."
I hid my symptoms from everyone at work and at home as much as possible. Even my mother suspected I was faking. The illness was undeniable when, as a child, I doubled over and groaned and sobbed for hours due to an allergic reaction to eggs. Physical symptoms carried no stigma. However, depression was a psychological problem, not obviously connected to anything in the environment: in other words, I should be able to overcome any negative feelings through sheer effort of will.
Suggesting that gluten and chemicals in foods caused debilitating depression made people uncomfortable even though nobody questioned the detrimental psychological effects of drugs and alcohol. By questioning the effect that basic foods had on me, I was also questioning authority, questioning the capitalist system and America's blessed way of life, questioning a government that had conducted a de-facto experiment on the populace by allowing copious amounts of gluten and chemicals in food and toxins in the air and water--for over half a century. If my illness were real, major changes would be called for, changes beyond the ability of average citizens to make--unless we banded together and organized a huge movement. For the most part, I realized I was usually considered a liar, a madman, or a revolutionary, or a mixture of all three. Those who actually believed me, even if only a little, treated me like a personal and political oddity, something between a communist and a leper, so I kept my illness to myself.
I toweled myself off and suddenly found it difficult to get dressed. Just another bad reaction, old man, I told myself. You'll be okay in a bit. Just hang on. I slowly put on my clothes, feeling suddenly exhausted, shaking a little. Then I downed my coffee and dashed out the door.

John Blackmore had pretended to understand, only because John at first wanted to appear to be my friend so that he could murder me more easily later on, without causing any suspicion.
I barely made it to the office on time. I worked as a part-time, contracted employee, a "quality control consultant" for a video distributing company, which meant that I sat in a cubicle all day and tested a program being developed for a new computerized cash register, which, besides handling transactions, also kept track of the inventory and remembered your childhood. I would go through the motions of conducting every transaction possible, in every imaginable order, writing down each new path I had taken, finding "bugs" just about everywhere in the new system. When the programmers fixed one bug, two more would often surface. I could tell that everyone in programming and management was getting pissed off at me even though I only documented the bugs.
Around 9:00 AM, while the radio was playing "Don't Forget Your Second Wind," a real bug, like none I had ever seen before, crawled out of my computer. At first, I thought the insect was lovely, but on closer inspection realized that it was just odd--pale yellow with a faint stained-glass-window design on its body, and with long, stick legs and a thin abdomen. I had read about synchronicities where external reality suddenly mingled with a person's internal state, as though both were actually part of one reality, so I pondered the bug carefully. It sat on my keyboard, fearless, in no hurry, completely at home, while I inspected it. I finally realized that I shouldn't waste any more time, so I brushed it onto the floor with a piece of paper. Twenty minutes later, realizing that it might have been shipped inside the computer case from another country, I searched for the bug and couldn't find it. I wondered if it had crawled back into my computer, but I couldn't find a hole large enough for the bug to crawl into--or out of, for that matter.
I decided to search for it on the way to the bathroom. As I ambled along, I gazed at the floor of the hallway and in all of the cubicles I passed, without success. The bug might be on the wall or the ceiling, so I paused and looked all around. Still no luck. As I proceeded to the restroom, I recalled another bizarre experience with bugs that occurred many years before, not long after my father died. I was on a camping trip with my brother and mother, and we were all eating cold cereal for breakfast. I callously complained that my mother didn't seem to care that my father had died. My mother cringed and groaned, staring down at her cereal bowl. Innumerable bugs were squirming in her cereal.
"How could they all end up in your bowl?" I demanded, spooning through my own cereal and then searching through the rest of the cereal in the box carefully without finding any other bugs. "You put them there yourself," I sneered, then stormed away into the woods. "Could that have been some kind of synchronicity?" I wondered as I was urinating into the urinal.
I recalled a dream that had occurred soon after my father died. I was fixing lunch while watching television and bugs started crawling out of my sandwich. Soon I noticed that bugs were crawling out of the TV, so many of them that I couldn't find a place to stand that was free of bugs.
When I returned to my cubicle, I discovered Brian, the head programmer, standing by my desk. "Oh, there you are," he said. "I've been looking for you. Let me guess, the program still isn't bug free?" "That was a lucky guess," I joked.
Brian smiled and looked down. "I'm afraid we have some bad news. We are running out of the money that we had budgeted for quality control. I'm afraid we can't keep you any longer than the end of this week."
I grimaced, "But what if the program is still full of bugs?"
"We're going to have the other programmers do some quality control and pray that the program works well enough after we release it in the field. We can't afford to do anything else, at this point. You've been doing great work, but we need to move this out of production. I'm sorry, but we had to make a real-world business decision here."
"That's understandable," I replied, partly relieved that my work was over.
"Thanks for understanding," Brian said sympathetically. "Just try to document as much as possible before the end of this week. Thanks."
"Sure, no problem," I replied as Brian was leaving. After Brian was gone, I muttered under my breath, "This is the worst possible f-cking timing!" Then I quietly hissed, "Nobody here gives a sh-t about anything but money."
Just then the head of production walked by with "a suit," examining the recently installed cubicles. The suit boasted, "You can see that the cubicles are effectively eliminating waste conversation." The head of production smiled and nodded, unaware that the programmers had obsessively consulted with each other about their work before the cubicles were installed.
"You better watch what comes out of your mouth," I thought to myself. "You still have two more days to go."
Then my phone rang. "Who the hell could that be?" I wondered. "Nobody ever calls me." I imagined an insect at the other end holding up a telephone. "Hello," my ex-wife mumbled. "Can you talk?"
"Oh, hi," I responded. "Yeah, but why are you calling here?"
"They found Russell's body," she groaned. "From what I hear, he surfaced with roses tangled in his hair."
"Oh, my god, I'm so sorry," I murmured.
"I just thought I'd let you know."
"Thanks," I replied and hung up the phone. I assumed that my ex-wife had been having an affair with Russell, which served me right, since I was having an affair. We had agreed to an open relationship, which had led to her staying out all hours after her shift at the IRS. My ex-wife, though, had insisted that she and Russell were only friends.
Suddenly I saw the bug crawling up the wall. I felt the urge to squash it, but I was too appalled to move. The last time I had heard from my ex-wife, she had informed me that Russell had drowned. Russell and his brother had gone out drinking in a boat on Millerton Lake at night with a friend. The brothers had gotten into a fist fight on the boat, and, according to the friend, Russell's brother had fallen overboard and Russell had dived in after him. Their friend had waited a long time in the boat, but the two never surfaced. They dredged the lake but found nothing. A memorial service on the lake was performed where the two had disappeared. Russell's ex-wife had thrown roses into the water at the service.
"Explain that," I demanded of the bug, which was just underneath the clock on the wall of my cubicle. I had the uneasy feeling that the bug was going to crawl inside the clock. I cringed, believing for a moment that John Blackmore had planted a venomous, exotic bug in my cubicle. But even then, my current wife was only interested in Blackmore as a friend, someone who would come running when she needed help. In retrospect it is obvious to me that Blackmore was channeling a homicidal rage, the most negative energy in the universe.
Something even stranger: my wife and I had eaten dinner with Russell's widow and her new boyfriend the previous Saturday night and had watched a video afterwards. My wife and the widow both worked as waitresses at the same restaurant and had become fast friends. Fresno was not a small town anymore. The odds were overwhelmingly against such a chance occurrence. I had seen Russell only once as he was driving away in a pickup at sunrise. How could Russell have suddenly come to figure so prominently in my life? After dinner, we had watched the Star Trek movie where the alien, some superhuman Latin lover type, had placed a bug that looked like a tiny crab into Checkhov's ear. Chekhov had writhed and screamed, and I grimaced and turned away.
I took my eyes away from the computer screen, no longer motivated. The bug had vanished again. I suddenly wondered again if the bug was poisonous and stifled the urge to dash out of the cubicle.
"This is just sh-t," I hissed. I couldn't keep a job. It seemed like I couldn't keep a relationship for any significant length of time. The whole world was being poisoned by mindless videos full of hatred and violence, which people would soon be able to rent at their corner mini-mart, thanks to me. It was being polluted in different ways every moment by huge corporations. At that very moment, as I was staring at the computer screen, the government was making and stockpiling chemical and biological and nuclear weapons that were unimaginably destructive and poisonous to the world. I took a bite of a candy bar and gagged.
On the way to the restroom, I cringed when I saw a programmer, a woman who had attracted me for weeks, chatting with another programmer in the hallway. She didn't notice me at all. As I passed, she wiped a strand of hair from her mouth, and for a moment it appeared to me that a bug had just scurried out of her mouth and down her neck, and I had to stifle a groan.
I returned to my cubicle and rebooted the computer. I felt a tickling sensation on the back of my hand but did not look down and did not move my hand away from the keyboard. Instead, with my right hand, I picked up the soda can and took another sip, placing the can down next to the computer, in direct violation of the rules regarding food in the work place. Instead of swallowing the soda immediately, I swished it around in my mouth, feeling the tingle of carbonation on my gums, holding the soda in my cheeks a moment before fluttering my tongue to rinse my palate. Then I took another bite of the candy bar, which contained several ingredients that I was allergic to.
I felt the tickling sensation again on my hand. This time, realizing with great certainty that sensations, even very small ones, don't occur without reason, and imagining an ant maneuvering between the hair follicles on the back of my hand, I shook my hand violently and returned it to the keyboard without looking down. The motion, though practically unconscious, distracted me for a moment, just long enough for my eyes to wander to a painting above my desk. The painting was extremely bright, with a large, intensely orange oval floating just above the center of the canvas. The paint appeared to explode around that orange balloon, as if it were a source of life. At first the painting appeared to contain depth, as though it were an expressionistic landscape, but after a few moments of scrutiny I realized that, in fact, nothing was delineated enough for the painting to be considered figurative. The orange oval, though evoking the sun and its symbolism as the source of life, was really only bright orange paint on canvas. It just was, or is, I thought, like a flower. Again I shook my hand, envisioning the hand of Buddha lifting up the lotus flower in his most profound, wordless sermon.
On the computer screen, a man and woman coupled doggy style, the woman with a pained expression on her face, and I felt a slight, involuntary arousal, as though a slug were slowly stirring awake. The figures seemed for a moment almost alien, a coupling of inscrutable protoplasm. Just as I lifted the soda can again, imagining that I was lifting a flower, I felt a stabbing pain in my left hand. A bite of some kind was all I could think as I shook my hand again, before I grew dizzy and my vision blurred.

Pestles on a Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, First Movement:

APT. 20

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(You realize that you are on the right path because in a corner of the room you find an old box containing Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

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PENDULUM DREAMS:

SIGHT

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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Two Pestles in a Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, Second Movement: APT. 21

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the middle of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

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PENDULUM DREAMS:

REGRESSION ​

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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone at the Confluence of Big Creek and the Kings River in a Drought Year

APT. 22

(You realize that you are still on the right path because near the model you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

PENDULUM DREAMS:

BEYOND EXISTENTIALISM

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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2023 by Jim Robbins.

Goldfields near Native American Village Site

Suite No. 11, Fourth Movement: APT. 23

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

PENDULUM DREAMS:

SILLY ACT DISEASE

Pestles on a Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, Fifth Movement: APT. 24

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

PENDULUM DREAMS:

SOCIOPATHY

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Mangled Bridge Near Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, Sixth Movement APT. 25

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the front room you find an old box containing the next chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

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PENDULUM DREAMS:

CLEANSING RAIN

Graffitied Pounding Stone

Suite No. 11, Seventh Movement:

APT. 26

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in a closet you find a box containing a chapter of Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

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Suite No. 11, Second Movement:
APT. 21

REGRESSION

Suite No. 11, Fourth Movement:
APT. 23

Suite No. 11, Fifth Movement:
APT. 24

Suite No. 11, Sixth Movement
APT. 25