The Diamond Island

I haven’t done a menagerie daily life post in a while, so guess what? Menagerie!

The Battle of the Galaxies, my catch-phrase for the crazy adventure both psychic and non-psychic in which I find myself, continues on. Killer bees, patrol fighters, special assistance cruisers, attack armor, and mega-units. All sorts of constructs are assisting me in the battle.

Plus, I have numerous friends galore helping out with the assist. The famous fifty; love to ya’ll and shout out holler of respect! Hey, every ship and every thought transmission counts here.

The thing about PDX is that it’s essentially a gingerbread house populated by a gigantic witch energy being. All the groovy and delicious wonders of the land are yours to partake of, but you got to give a pound of flesh to the witch first. That means a bloodsucking freak pipeline to your wallet as well as your state of mind.

And holy crumbcake is this entity hungry!

I’ve been busy though, and I haven’t missed much. Figured out who the backstabbers are. Got a handle on how to get help if I need it from the most unlikely of locales. And I even have a plan now that I’ve got an idea of what to focus on and what to ignore.

If nothing else the battle has been worth the trouble because of what I’ve recovered from the past and recognized in the present. This is huge. That frees up energy I hadn’t even known was blocked. It sets me free to do things I hadn’t thought possible. The hold has got some loot I didn’t expect.

I’m whole.

But even though I’m doing everything possible, leaving no option off the table in my battle plan, ultimately I’m at the mercy of luck. This is one of those crazy and courageous ventures you make because you need to, not because it makes sense or is even a sane thing to do.

That gingerbread witch is a large collective entity that needs healing on a massive scale. I’m going all out with maximum warp AND shields, but while she’s taken some hilarious point blank pranks that witch is still ready to party.

It isn’t just me. K has noticed it too and is a little surprised at this plot twist. I see others struggling against the gingerbread witch of PDX as well: regular shakedowns of their live brains and ducats. That battle-ax doesn’t jack everyone exactly the same, but the fear is still there at the base of their spines.

Things are certainly looking bleak, but I still have a few surprises up my sleeves. If I can’t do this now then I could never have done it, and yet I believe now I was correct many years ago in my initial approach to the battle. I just didn’t have enough strength back then. Maybe I don’t even now. But right now anything goes. Watch out!

In the meantime, I’m mining for gold and doing my work despite the duh-buddies, draguloids, and hidden units. My purpose is still the same: To do what I’m meant to do while I’m alive, for the sake of all beings.

I understand that I’m being vague here. It’s hard to be clearer and more accessible when things are so difficult and all-at-once. I’m in the middle of things and doing tremendous work in the realm of the mysterious.

Then again, maybe the point isn’t to defeat the gingerbread witch physically and psychically, or even affect her such that she stops jacking people who live here. By stealing back what was mine, I’ve outwitted her and she can never forget it was me who tricked her.

And just like that, I won.

There’s been a mission in my quest station notebook for a while. That’s just how it is. Some adventures sit in the hopper for a long time. Maybe they come to fruition, maybe they don’t. They can hold you back and they can provide structure by reminding you of which inner landscape parts you aren’t choosing to regard.

Mainly I haven’t dealt with it because it’s such a high level I’m unsure whether I could handle the responsibility. I have a difficult enough time with reliably undertaking the basic levels of compassion and maturity as it is. Higher degrees of consciousness are mostly ideals I aspire to in a very caveman gazing at the numen sort of way.

Well, since I’ve broached the initial exploration of communications leader Jessica it figures that the Shiva Message mission started flashing with bright green lights. Green means time to go! Except when it means cool it down.

Actually, cooling down Shiva is part of the worship maneuvers one performs when showing devotion to this divinity. Yeah, Shiva, the cosmic dancer who destroys and blesses. The outsider who knows all the inside pathways of existence. This dude is serious business and doesn’t mess around.

Time to bring out a bunch of old devotional manuscripts from 1994 and examine them again. Get to figuring out where this quest station entry even is anymore. The map goes way back to when I was studying the goddess Kali, the Black Mother, as part of my hanging out with the Dark Goddess. She had jackloads of stuff to show me back in those days.

I had a small art project I was hoping to do–a Shiva message bracelet with bells, semi-precious stones, and various miscellaneous charms. It had to do with a dream I had during my studies, suggesting in a vague way that this is how I would communicate with this divinity. Ring the bracelet when it was done, and boom a message would arrive.

Except that I never finished the project. I gathered all the materials, but stored them away and gradually became distracted. How many video games are like that? You gather up all the plot coupons, only to burn out just before the end of the story and never return.

Now that I read back on my descriptions of those devotions, meditations, and imaginational explorations I realize I was in a very rare state of ecstasy and suffering. Did I really experience these waking dreams, disassociated states, and multi-party conversations with myself?

It is said that even to speak Shiva’s name is to deliver you from ignorance and guarantee salvation. I have to ask ignorance of and salvation from what? My own pitiful state of existence? A lot of Hindu worship seems this way to me—if you can understand then this is great, but if you can’t it’s enough to have the intention. This is tremendous blessing.

All this time I’ve been waiting for the message, but I’d already received it. This seems to be a common theme for me: Getting the message but not seeing it until the time is right. Looks like Shiva did send me a message. I have it written down in one of my meditations:

You will be permitted to find and know what you are seeking—but you must know that if you cannot handle the responsibility of what you seek, you will be destroyed. Good luck Paul.

Oh, crap.

For a long time I’ve had a roster of crewmembers who populate the internal main bridge of my psyche. You might say that the Star Trek organizational scheme provides a ready archetype for my thoughts and feelings to constellate around.

Handling the communications console is a personality named Jessica. I’m pretty sure she was meant to be the female companion who accompanies Logan in the 1976 film Logan’s Run. I had a childhood crush on the actress Jenny Aguetter who played Jessica in the movie.

At that age I thought Jessica the character was the real person and Jenny was just her name in our reality. So creating a character based on her in my own mind to accompany me on my journey of imagination, or just general life influenced by a personal inner world, seemed like a good idea.

The crew of the Starship Snipe still carries the internal psychic organizations I’ve given them to this day. However, I’ve never explored them in detail—they all embody personal connections with characters from books, movies and TV that I enjoyed growing up with.

With the UFO becoming the central organizing principle in my psychic voyage, it may be time to reexamine my crew and the starship model. Ultimately, Star Trek and the characters I’ve borrowed are someone else’s experience that has become collectivized.

Such communal models are easy to access and use. They have value to our survival. However, they can only be launch pads for our personal explorations. The human dimension of wholeness requires that we make a personal journey to inner space to align ourselves with the actual organic connectivity of people.

I need to strike out on my own and identify the processes and elements behind my image. What if I’m oppressing or harming some aspect of myself by relating to it through a simplified model of consciousness?

So here we go. Using my power of imagination to inquire about Jessica as an internal personality and psychological adaptation.

The name Jessica comes up in my dictionary as having a Hebrew origin—Yiskah and Iscah which means “shut up” or “confined”. There’s a Greek and a Latin version, Ieskha and Jesca respectively. Unfortunately there’s no cultural context to go on, I’ll have to beam in the Internet connection.

Which, as it so happens, is Jessica’s job on the starship. She’s helping me along with this, naturally. Maybe this is a search for identity episode, a character building moment where I finally gain enough understanding to grasp a concept of her personality.

I think of the Teen Titans comic issue #38—”Who Is Donna Troy?”—where a detective investigation leads to the truth of Wonder Girl’s parents.

A strange smell of sanctity runs past my nose. That Holy Ghost effect that I know Lucerna would find compelling evidence I am on the correct trail.

The first recorded use of Jessica comes from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and refers to the daughter of Shylock, who is of Hebrew origin in the story. I also dig up numerous baby name sites that give variations of the meaning as having to do with either God seeing, watching and beholding, or referring to gifts and wealth.

I let this trail of synchro-mysticism go off into the woods for now. Next up is the position itself.

The communications officer in Star Trek has often been criticized as being little more than a switchboard operator, with Lieutenant Uhura’s role minimized many times to the point of uselessness. I agree with this assessment, mainly because the position is actually critical to the operation of the ship. It requires someone who operates at a high degree of ability to perform properly.

Think about it. The communications officer has to direct the flow of information all over the ship. Repair crews, medical teams, and security details all rely on this officer’s leadership to act efficiently. If a crewmember notices something amiss the communications officer will likely be the first to hear of it and be able to warn the captain or relevant department head.

Depending on how you interpret the technology and schematics of a starship, the communications officer also needs a high degree of technical knowledge to operate the subspace radio and long range sensors that go along with that. I could see skills in computer programming and electronics as being necessary.

Maintaining a selection of diplomatic strategies and tactics is a huge order. Languages, linguistics and translation all need a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. The person in the position has to be adaptive, flexible, and open-minded as well as intelligent and highly trained.

There’s an element of espionage implied in this function too—ciphers, jamming enemy transmissions and releasing ship wide alerts. I can see why the Next Generation Star Trek world merged communications with security.

Needless to say, you see some hints of these roles with Uhura in the TV show, but it almost entirely disappears by the time of the movies. Space battles don’t require anything other than making sure the shields and weapons work. If they don’t speak English then shoot to kill. It’s profoundly anti-specialist, anti-technology, and anti-science.

Need to transmit or receive data or messages? Maintain channels of information in-ship? Jessica has done all this and more. I only vaguely comprehended it—mainly I fell into the trap of casting the girl on my ship into the role of social interaction mediator. See how powerfully influential role models can be?

The point of communication is to share, divide out, impart, inform, join, unite, and participate in. In other words, “to make common.” Such an important task! And yet, Star Trek has subsumed this role into something else after decades of making it a minor position.

No! Boo!

Well I’m bringing chat back, yo. Or at least recognizing what has always been there all along: Communications leader Jessica doing an incredibly difficult, complex, important job without recognition or respect from me. The collective reckoning needs to evolve; it’s way behind the times and has been fifty years ago.

At this point I have to start questioning my own assumptions. Is Jessica even her name? Is it a nickname based on a projection? Is Jessica really female, as a kid would grok it, or a human being from earth? I might be overreacting; it might just be the dialogue has been so limited as to include only basic details.

I’m usually not so good with practical questions. The time has come to face the difficulty and start asking, to open up a hailing frequency with my own communications officer.

Jessica, I’m listening!

I had a vision while I was wide awake. I was rising out of darkness, out of the water, and away from a relief-image of Cthulhu in the wet sand under the water. The shape of Cthulhu had been carved out of the currents, so I knew this was a naturally formed image and I was leaving it to look up at the sky. I was then bathed in white light and rising, flying to the sound of the wind and the shore.

There was a sensation in my mind telling me that I had survived the darkness and lowest levels of existence. Now was the time to rise out of the depths and behold the light, to experience the illumination of escape from my innermost prison of unredeemed functions.

I had never even thought about it before. Yet here it was, happening to me spontaneously.

Then I realized that the rise of Cthulhu is really the rise of the individual soul from the depths of primordial forces into a new experience of life. The idea of cultists summoning doomsday is a short circuit of the truth, the infantile desire to have all things destroyed so one might not have to live in a world of responsibility and suffering.

It is a judgment day in that your personal world has been transformed so radically that you can no longer live the ordinary life you once lived in the way you once did. This is the rising of the inexplicable city of your life out of the depths and the freeing of your basic core from the superimposed constraints of your unconscious psyche.

Cthulhu dreams so that we might awaken and no longer imprison him with our mindless worship of childish things beyond their usefulness. Only when one rises out of the waters onto the shores of new life does Cthulhu indeed wake. A human being who stands up out of the deep and reaches the light transforms the world.

Is that why the killer bees started swarming awake something fierce? They knew this was coming to pass and they were ready to party!

The UFO is built and I’ve learned how the controls work. I pour myself a dark cup of pirate cider and have a trance-like out of body experience just sitting at the command chair, taking in the enormity of what has happened.

The psychological cauldron is bubbling and boiling. Something is cooking in the kitchen of my brain, an idea forming and coming into being which will require digestion of the multi-human level of experience: spiritual, physical, mental, emotional.

I realize then that I hypnotized myself into building and learning this magnificent Karavos of exploration. I’ve also been doing work in the valley of the skeleton trees with the sleeping sphinx while the rains fall in the desert of the farthest reaches of inner space. Killer bees are buzzing.

Now the time has come to fly this thing; to complete the journey and return to the real world so that this UFO may know me living in the ordinary world in a non-ordinary way. I intend to see this voyage through for the sake of all beings.

So I check out the message on my answering machine from the Dark Goddess. She reminds me to watch out for being a gross persecutor. I take this point to heart, knowing I have in the past been this very thing to her.

She then reminds me to look in my backpack. Everything I need is there, but I forgot they were there. Hurriedly, I open my backpack and find a glowing crystal star I’d found a while ago but forgotten, and a huge key; like a ceremonial city key perhaps.

This key is necessary to start my UFO, and the star is part of the power source for the navigational array. You kind of need a central operating unit to power this critical feature. I had not even considered this!

I regard the star, remembering what it cost me to recognize this marvel; the double broken heart, the traversal through the horrific sewers of human existence, and the impossible healing of monstrous wounds. Time to do this; I know where it goes now and why.

The key is inexplicable to me, being a combination of inner imagination and outer consolidated form. Gorgeous and intricate, but so small and light—I didn’t expect that. It comes off as huge and gilded, yet in use it has a dimensional quality of being very useable.

Indeed, I use the key and realize what a tremendous thing it is we all do when we put a key in a lock and turn. This is a bottom up symbology with great power that reaches the elemental core of how things work in space and time, as well as the complexities of psychological reality.

I think about the time the Tom Baker Doctor Who put the key to time in the time cannon.

There is a moment of profound night-tide belonging, and then I realize the time has come to name this UFO. It’s a moment that has been on my mind in its approach since I sensed it coming. How could I possibly know what to do?

The Sticker Stasher comes to my rescue. A sticker of a brontosaurus falls out of a book I momentarily move to the side. I recall briefly this dang thing traveling around my possessions for some time and never managing to find its way into my sticker box.

I name this UFO Brontosaur.

It comes from the greek word bronte, which means thunder, and has connotations of growling and roaring. Saur comes from the greek word sauros, for lizard.

Yesterday it rained for a few minutes for the first time all summer, and there was thunder. A week before that I heard thunder, and the clouds obscured the sun for an hour.

The time has come for departure from the valley of the skeleton trees. The killer bees are already swarming into the bulkheads and Lucerna is on deck, waiting to see how well my meager knowledge holds up now that the moment has come to put me to the trial.

The gigantasaurus Sphinx is in the hold, moved by mystical means I barely understand; the transposing of thoughts with methods of play that transcend our limitations of vision.

Here we go.

The valley of the skeleton trees is left behind, through a storm of rainfall in a desert at the edge of inner space. The emerald avenue is no longer needed. Instead, passage is through the ruby avenue. Now the task of flying this UFO falls to me.

The balloon is filling with bubble cola; liftoff is ON.

See you on the other side this journey!

A while ago I decided to explore my own Tomb of Horrors, thanks to some helpful exposure osmosis insights from my trusty Chimera friend Shanna Mann. After some meandering about with various ingredients I am starting to build a formula of exploration.

I was going to put out an ad for a psychological being to handle the specifics, but this dude came knocking at my door as soon as the commitment formed in my brain. After some dialogue of a sort using mysterious hand signals and lip reading apparatus I believe we have come to an accord.

We’ve leased some imaginary property from a psychic patron in a settlement suitable for our needs. I had no idea such a town was located near the Diamond Island! Hidden treasures everywhere you look, if you see with the eyes of joy.

Of course, the inhabitants are going to be mighty surprised to see all this sudden activity in their accustomed unconscious existence. What can I say, I am shining a candle in my own individual way and this is where it has led me. There may be benefits as well as difficulty.

I have decided to explore, through the exploits of my new found friend, the role of horror host. He will be doing this in his own particular way, according to his own individual stance. I will, of course, be responsible for his actions as his conscious manager.

To this effect I have created a secret door to our mutual venture. The password will be most easily obtained by those with the secret decoder wheel, which is part of my Sooper Fun Pak currently only available on my Facebook fan page. by request.

So stay tuned for more tidbits, and if you are one of the fortunate folks to have a password wheel at your disposal (or have a small microchip brain for ciphers) you may be entertained!

The other day UFO Girl delivered a pizza to my brainpan, compliments of the Naughty Louse. Wait, who? Might that be another name for my Bad Ronald?

I know he’s been out there in the world, breathing the fresh air and squinting at the sunlight. By owning up to my own problems and breaking free, I got him outside to a new dimension of life.

I guess he has UFO Girl’s pizza delivery number, and maybe even a coupon. Come to think of it, a redeemable coupon or token for UFO Girl delivery must be a highly unusual contrivance.

In any case, this information extravaganza inside my brainstem calls up all the necessary ingredients for moving along to the next step in the building of the karavos, this UFO I am participating in.

In order to fly a UFO it may be necessary to adopt a control panel or command module of some kind. Consciousness works by directing disparate and in-conflict parts unified by a tendency towards out-of-chaos-into-dance using the twin beasts of the chariot to carry us home.

Here, out of the past, from a child’s hand in a different sector of space and time, an adult calls forth the preserved image of a kind of desired control panel interface. Touch, and the universe responds with your intent. This, the Dark Goddess has shown me.

Drawing upon the active imagination of movement from one form to another, one might advance the shy and hesitant emergence of a beautiful treasure from the unconscious, adapt it with the ability to breathe air and switch modes of existence.

I use the small and slightly more mature tools of thought at my disposal to render another version of the control panel. Connected to the previous version, yet also individual. An eye opens, an eye blinks, and a moment passes. In the gutter of that moment is revealed another image.

For you see, in order for this to be a navigation tool to fly with, from which other panels might spring from, you need to know what reality you are in. One must take a reading, so to speak, of where one is in psychic existence in order to know your non-existence parameters.

Remember, nothing is where it calls from!

I mean…err…comes from. You will explore more fully the abyss seeking where the unknown is likely to be. And again, a map arises out of the wondrous imagination of a child’s natural witnessing of what is all around and within. This is the baseline from which springs the core of a UFO’s wanderings at play.

This is a dangerous proposition to consider. To generate a star chart of this comprehensive a manner requires a spirit of adventure, but it also requires a readiness to be changed by what you encounter. As Doctor Who would say, “Travel broadens the mind”, yet behind that one must also realize that to embark on a venture seeking new ideas is to be exposed to risk if those ideas are to be fresh.

The spoor and tracks of the supernal super-predator mean business, yo.

Since this is a newly emergent ancient UFO, the display panel from the adult perspective is blank for now. Anything and everything might emerge upon this nothingness. The fool’s zero begins our journey with a bronx cheer.

All that remains now is to materialize a starting point with which to begin our journey of the UFO. In this case, the input of another person is useful in suggesting that which we might ourselves be blind to, or lack the courage to tackle ourselves. A true companion is a great assistance in regarding those things we might lack the resources to reckon with fully.

Home is a good place to decide upon as a reference point. Departure, return is a cycle that matches the lifeforce of the universe. Breathe in, breathe out. Eye open, blink. Time and space appears in the vast indescribable eternity that runs with us wherever we are or aren’t.

A form, an interface, an occupant, a journey. All pieces are now complete.

The pizza has been delivered.

Just the other day I got a message from the Dark Goddess. Since I got a message from my self from the future, I needed to write one back. Even though I’m in the moment, this stuff will end up being in the past and read in the future.

I’ve done this before, just didn’t really know it. Write messages to myself about my state of mind, my hopes and fears, and what I believe is going on or will go on. Reading some of these past messages can be a little embarrassing at times, and they can be pretty moving as I see how earnest I struggle to be bright.

So here goes nothing. It’s time.

Hey yo Paul Tristan Fergus, I got your message that I would make it, that I can do it, because I already have, that it will be all right.

All the stuff you showed me I have taken to heart and now know consciously. The understanding will come later. Thanks for sending this back to me. I never really realized how we’ve been supporting ourselves all this time, through time.

When I think about the last two years of absolute terror, humiliation, and defeat that followed the year of rest after the Haunted House it kind of blows my mind. I thought I would be working on my books and my workshop more, yet all I did was push the book out and move it along at a small and insignificant pace. Everything else has been emergency life support.

That must have been the proper and healthy thing to do, because all other resources went into the great change and building the UFO that you are likely experiencing now. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you, because from where I’m standing it’s beyond my understanding. The battle of the galaxies was something I could scarcely conceive of at the time I realized it was approaching.

I noticed in the previous letter that I had grown a lot since the letter before that, when all was chaos and the sinking of my entire life. The shock of great self-destruction was so total I never realized I would survive and grow, even though that’s all I prayed for. Darkness and suffering for so long it was a real risk for me.

So now there you are, and you are doing the stuff I can only dream of right now. I’ve grieved, I’ve let go, I’ve healed, I’ve moved on. I’m fighting for my life now and I finally see what I’m to do. I know you and all the rest of us are doing our best with what we’ve got, and the nightchild is with us, is us.

I’m building what I can for you, just as I know you are sending me love and encouragement from where you are. We’re entering a new life of the kind it takes an entire lifetime to create. You know how I’m feeling for you and what you are doing right now.

And yeah, that time when we were surrounded by people we thought were glorps and we spoke from outside the light about our secret fire? I’m on it man. All the other stuff too, I’m stumbling along as best I can so you’ll be strong and true.

The awesome is so overwhelming I’m humbled. Keepin’ the Faith Initiated Bullshit while performin’ the secret sign of distress in a world of doom to the ultimate destructoid!

Be you soon,

Paul Tristan Fergus

Checking out my quest station and man is it overloaded with indicator lights. It’s been kind of me and my space fleet against return of the skreeker assaultoids part one hundred.

Not like I have much choice these days. All power has gone into the UFO and working that major project out. I’ve had to make do on reserves and emergency power only.

But, you know, I’ve been doing it. This is the battle of the galaxy and here I am using maximum wizard powers with a dunce cap on. For the first time in like years I suddenly realized I’ve got the upper hand and the dog-dooers are on their last jackload of poop.

Outnumbered, alone, every other starbase bought off or neutralized. Here I am on the higher ground with a slapstick and a candle, wearing a funny hat. That’s all I got!

But I know something nobody else does. Smell that slight whiff of smoke, hear that tiny far-off thunder, feel that oh-so nearly undetectable rumble?

I’ve been taking my readings, and I know which way the bright force of new energy is going to run. Power levels are changing folks. Now you see me, now you don’t.

And then the missing trans-warp drive came back from nowhere.

And then the Dark Goddess left a message on my answer machine.

And then the killer bees started swarming awake something fierce.

And then UFO Girl delivered a pizza module to my brain’s back door.

Vuvuzella in effect, yo.

Whatever has been going on since I started down this creative procedure it has been going about its business hidden from conscious view. I haven’t been immediately aware of much more than “something” is happening, and so I’ve waited for the next step to appear and indicate whether I might join in with a conscious intent of any kind.

“Still waters run deep,” said my friend Kimaroo recently. Oh yeah, that’s right! I forget these things, whether its concerning people or matters of psychic complexity.

Then, an eruption. Or rather, an image of molten liquid in motion as if it were magma spilling out of the earth. And yet, transition into a process more amenable to human interaction: A foundry.

I live in the area of the country that is known as “the foundry” after all. Funny that something I take as a negative about the place I live should suddenly take on a very vital and important force of life!

I watch the opening sequence of the 1976 adventure yarn At The Earth’s Core and then it strikes me that this is exactly what is happening. Strange primordial powers deftly transformed by a sleight of hand into a process familiar to human endeavor. Though still fantastical given that a fantasy craft is being built out of this process, incredibly.

When I started I was composing a crystal matrices to bring together the elements and intentions I would need. Next I revealed the components and blueprints I would use (I’ve found others since then). I’ve been working on transpersonal narratives necessary to my journey. Molds that will serve to form the parts I will use to build the finished craft. And now, we are at the foundry.

I search for and find a diagram that shows me how it all works on a mundane but necessary external level. The elements are brought together into various furnaces and other mechanisms that turn the elements into the compounds that will make up the parts. Moving from lowest to highest, from the Blues up.

The central image of the molten liquids is where it all comes together—the crucible and cauldron of utmost hazard and intense energy directed towards the formation of psychic parts. Sparks fly, liquid fire falls to the ground in sizzling droplets. I am witness to a process inside myself of great childhood power.

The parts, cooled and cleaned then go to a place of manufacture. Industry is a word that has to do with women’s work. It may be directed towards mostly destructive, accumulative ends—yet the hands that strike the anvil and thread the wire are borrowing the true form of crafting: Introspection. Creating substance out of thought and from that substance, goods.

I dreamt of a UFO being sighted in a way that was also recognition of a form to be. Input from the dream state, cooperation from the unconscious.

I come across a video of The Bamboo Saucer, a film that in a way is about earthlings struggling to understand a UFO and direct its use towards peaceful means. This is, in a sense, a training manual and familiarity exercise to show me that I have been studying up for this since I was young.

K and I watch GalaxyQuest, and it dawns on me this is also a relevant experience of understanding. Of knowing that what you imagine is real, while also recognizing that it is absurd and that life is filled with terrible changes into new forms of consciousness from which life emerges, better than before.

I’m coming to an understanding of the tremendous forces at work within me, of me choosing to become part of this process and behold a beautiful, mysterious Karavos revealed to me.

Her name is coming to me.