Ho! Ho! Ho! My merrie friends, let us rejoin the story of Little Jimmy discovers planet Earth. Lets see, where were we. Oh, yeah. I had just learned the trick about reversing the battery terminals in my van. A rather expensive lesson.

But first there is something I need to say about myself. I am not from this planet. Fifty some years ago I signed up for a cheap intergalactic tour. I had to use the restroom but the ship did not have one. So the spaceship stopped on Earth for me to use an outhouse. When I got out the damned ship was gone! No more cheap tours, I swear.

Anyway, I had to go native to survive until my distress signal was answered. I tell you! I was definitely not expecting to end up in that little tiny body. I mean, I couldn't even talk. I couldn't even tell anyone who I was. About the time I began to learn how to use that little body two things happened. First was that I began to forget who I was. Second was that they wouldn't believe what small amount I could remember. The indignity of it all.

Well. I remember now. I own this planet. I won it in a crap game on Alpha Centauri 13,000 years ago. This was my first opportunity to come and take a look at my planet. Listen, if I would have known how the natives were going to pollute it and how hostile they were, Id have insisted on cash! Oh, well, live and learn. (Wow. What a new concept. I didn't know we could actually learn from all these dumb things. Ill have to give that some serious thought.)

There I was, just north of Parker, Az, where in mid April the daytime temperatures were routinely 110 degrees. I was reduced to hiking at 7:30 in the morning to escape the heat. Looking back on it, I have no idea how I could have gotten up so early. I know the sun sets. I assume it also rises.

I was still there on Easter. I went hiking early that morning and was bitten by a rabbit. Right then I knew I was going to have a bad hare day.

I was reading a book a month ago in which the author said one of the characters watched a full moon rise at two in the morning. Now that's wrong. I learned about this at age 44 and figured surely everybody must have known about this but me. But maybe not. The full moon always rises at sunset. That is what makes it full, the sun being at the opposite side of the earth from the moon. The moon is full every 29.53 days. The moon rises 45 minutes later each day. A new moon rises at sunrise. The first quarter moon pops up about noon, the last quarter about midnight.

I stayed at Fox's campground in Parker during the heat for two reasons. I had paid for the whole month and I got to watch two NBA playoff games every night on cable TV.

On May 1st I left for Bullhead City to pick up Santarra and John and we moved to Flagstaff. Santarra stayed at a campground in town and I in the forest. The month of May was consistently 15 degrees above normal up there. But since normal was 55-60, it was very nice.

My car radio still wasn't working from the time I reversed the battery terminals. Though two months later it would turn out to have only been a fuse. Since the radio didn't work I sang in my car as I drove. Two elk died. I can carry a tune but I always end up in a different place. In one city my singing got me arrested for disturbing the peace. But it is nice to be wanted.

It had been an extremely dry winter in northern Arizona. They had not had any measurable precipitation since December 18. None of the ski areas had been able to open. It was so warm all winter that even the manmade snow melted on the mountain. The sky was this incredibly intense deep blue color every day. I camped for the first week at a campsite four miles west of town. I spent my days hiking and my evenings getting spoiled by Santarra's cooking.

Because of the dryness there was the constant danger of forest fires and there were talks of closing the forest to all human activity, as 90% of forest fires are due to human activity. In fact it was so dry that when I spit, it evaporated before it hit the ground. Santarra was camped at the eastern edge of town. One day there was a forest fire across the street and a quarter mile from where she was camped. Though there was talk of evacuating the campground it was not necessary. I saw a man fighting the fire who was so huge he had to beep when he backed up.

A couple of days later I woke up and smelled smoke. I couldn't see any fire, though if I could smell smoke then there was a fire and the wind was blowing it my way. So I broke camp and left. I later found out the Forest Service had hired a private firm to gather up a lot of the dead timber, dig a pit and burn it. They did and covered the ash with dirt. Apparently the fire wasn't out and smoldered for three months before flaring up again.

So I moved to a campsite 8 miles south of Flagstaff. It was late when I got there and I wanted to look around in the morning for the best place to park my trailer so I left my trailer hooked up to my van. In the morning the vans battery was dead. With the trees I hadn't gotten enough sunlight on my solar panels to keep the trailer batteries charged up and they had sucked my vans battery dry. I took my motorcycle in to see Santarra and John and John came back with me in Santarra's van to give me a jump start. I really did learn from this lesson because I have never since left the trailer connected to my van overnight.

Life continued: hiking, visiting Santarra and enjoying being able to stand up in my trailer in the morning when I put on my pants. Life
is filled with simple pleasures.

One of the many wonderful things Santarra does is to cone ears. She makes cones of muslim and beeswax. The narrow end is stuck in your ear and the other is lit on fire. The fire creates a vacuum which pulls impacted wax out of your ear. The experience and result is much better than this sounds. People often report improved hearing and a decrease in ear infections. I have this done whenever I get back together with her. She cones each ear twice to get all of the excess wax. Blondes are half price.

YOU MAY NEED YOUR EARS CONED IF:
You think your husband doesn't snore anymore.
The fat lady sings and you still try to watch the game.
Your wife says you don't mind her anymore.
You list to the left or right as you walk down the street.
The doorbell rings and you answer the phone.
The captain asks for volunteers and you raise your hand.
You think your wife said stand up and she said shut up.
You scrunch up your face and say "Huh?" a lot.
Your ears ring and there is no one there when you answer them.

If you have wax impacted in your ears and don't want to see Dr. Conehead, you can always hold your nose when you sneeze and blow the wax out, among other things.

After a week they closed the part of the forest where I was camped due to fire hazard so I had to leave. I checked with the Forest Service office to find a part of the forest which was open to camping. There was a free campground 27 miles south of town on Lake Mary Road. I found a beautiful location which gave me plenty of sunshine for my solar panels. It also had a tree with a low branch from which to hang my hammock swing. The only drawback was that it was a 54 mile round trip to get my newspaper each day. It is kind of ironic that for so much of my camping life I have looked for shade to park my van in because it heats up so much in the sun. Now I look only for places to camp which have maximum sun.

I stayed there the maximum allowed two weeks. The whole time I was there I never saw a cloud. Every day the temperature was somewhere in the 70s with the night temperature about 30. One of the beauties of the mountains for me is that the sky is just as deeply blue on the horizon between the tree branches as it is overhead. On one of my hikes I found a bunch of small crystals growing out of the ground. I had no idea that there were crystals in the area. I picked one up and for some reason tasted it. It was salt. I had heard of salt crystals but had no concept that that was what it meant. You probably already knew about salt crystals, but I'm not from this planet.

Barb, Dan and Robyn from Show Low came to visit me there for a couple of days. Barb had recently bought a new van and wanted to try out camping in it. So the three of them and their big dog, Mr. Bozworth, slept in it for a couple of nights. During the day we played. One morning we went to Flagstaff to a special coffee shop. We had a window table and who should we see walking down the street but Santarra. I ran out and dragged her in. (I would have drug her in but drugs are illegal so I didn't.) Naturally we all hit it off.

When I first met Dan I asked him what kind of work he did. He said, Whatever my wife tells me to do.

Barb agreed to arrange in Show Low a place and time for Santarra to give her talk on the healing properties of crystals and gemstones the first of June. On Memorial Day I left for Show Low. Santarra and Jon were supposed to follow me but Jon, age 27, and, according to Santarra, a real cutie, had a hot date that night so they would find their own way to Show Low the next day.

I went to Show Low to visit Barb and Dan and ended up staying for three months. I like Barb and Dan a lot. They are good people and have wonderful energy. I met Barb at a campground outside Taos, NM in 1991. After she left there she went to be with Dan and they have been together ever since. Dan likes to hike and he and I hiked many trails together. In August we did an all day, 14 mile hike up Mt Baldy, at 11,500 feet the tallest peak around. We felt we were on the top of the world as we could see seemingly forever in all directions. On the hike we talked about a lot of things. He said he liked to ask questions of people who were smarter than him. That was how he learned. I asked how come he never asked me questions. He just looked at me without speaking. I guess he didn't want to rub my nose in it.

My first stay was at a 14 day campground ten miles south of where Barb and Dan lived. I found a nice sunny campsite which helped my batteries recharge as they had been quite low. There were three hiking trails very close to my camp so I was just fine. I normally hike 8-10 miles every other day. It keeps me out of trouble and gives me something to do. I always feel better after my hikes, more relaxed like I get the cobwebs out of my mind. I hike more for the meditative aspects than the exercise, though I do enjoy both.

Shortly after I got to Show Low it was time to do laundry. I took my clothes to a laundromat at the Wal-Mart shopping center. It was a mild, sunny day. As I left the laundromat with my arms full of clean clothes, I heard a voice in the back of my head say that Id come home. Co-incidentally the exact same thing happened when I had driven through there in February. If I interpreted that correctly, home was the parking lot of a Wal-Mart shopping center. But I wasn't real sure just what that meant. I also felt that my trip this year was a gathering of the clan.

But I did feel a very special energy in the Show Low area. I felt that this area would become the next New Age Mecca after Sedona became too overbuilt. Over the coming months I would hear many stories of people moving into the area because they were drawn to it or because their angels told them to move there.

Santarra gave her talk at a delightful store called Ruth's Healing Spirit. It is kind of a New Age gift shop and bookstore. Ruth sells a lot of crafts made by local artisans. She also has classes and psychic readings at her store. There is a wonderful energy there and I and others like to go there just to hang out and meet people. Naturally, Santarra was a big hit there. She is one of the most wonderful people and greatest Spirits I have ever met. And everybody who meets her cant help but love her.

Through Barb and through Ruth's store I met many more very special people, many of whom are still my friends. I must have been a cannibal in a prior life as I have good taste in people in this one. There was young Veta into whose eyes I could gaze forever. Jerilyn was an always happy art therapist. Milly was a 89 year old woman who was still looking for a few good men. She is a Scorpio and a Spiritualist with a clear mind and clear eyes.

Jillian is a delightful woman with gentle and spiritual energy. She is a psychotherapist and also does a lot of work with pendulums. Milly and Barb started a meditation group while I was there. Jillian came and gave us a talk on pendulums one night. You can hold a pendulum between your thumb and forefinger and ask yourself questions. The pendulum will give yes or no answers from your subconscious by moving the pendulum in certain motions. These are called ideomotor movements.

You can ask yourself should I do this questions and get answers. Sometimes these actions get unpleasant results but are nonetheless in your highest good. You should always ask if it is in your highest good. I told Jillian that if what was in my highest good wasn't always fun, that I would always ask the further question will my lower self have fun, and if the answer was no then I wouldn't do it! She just looked at me and smiled tolerantly. But even though she is a very powerful woman, I did not disappear.

While there I did 10-12 psychic readings for people, so obviously there are a lot of intelligent people there! One of them was Shari. She is a nurse and works at the Apache Reservation Hospital thirty miles south of town. I got to know Shari quite well over the summer. We held the weekly meditations at her house. She is a Taurus and likes to cook and I like to eat so we became good friends.

Shari is also a channel. She has always been in touch with her Guides and speaks to them easily in a quiet meditation. She also can go into a trance and allow her Guides to speak to us through her. She is also what I had previously heard called a Deathwalker. A Deathwalker is someone who can consciously contact someone who has recently passed over and help them find and go to the Light and also to speak to them and get messages for their loved ones who were left behind. She does not go into a trance for this and can do this while talking on the phone. She is truly a special and amazing woman.

At these meditation groups we all hugged each other. I noticed that the people hugged me longer than they did any one else. At first I thought it must be due to my good looks or my charming personality, but later I was told it was because I wouldn't let go.

Being around all of these lovely and often psychic people helped me to realize some things. One was that the reason that I am schizophrenic is so I wont have to drink alone. While there I even had my first ever precognitive dream: I dreamt that I woke up and later on I did! In one of my past lives I was an important man in Egypt and that is why in this one I am big on denial!

One of Shari's best friends is Chris Bear. Chris is also a nurse and works with Shari. She is also an extremely knowledgeable herbalist and palm reader. Chris knows so much that when I am around her I can see the wisdom radiating from her head, almost as if there is so much there she can barely contain it.

One of the special things about being in Show Low that summer was that I got to know Barb and Dan's daughter, Robyn, who turned three that summer. She is the most precious of little girls and brings joy to all those who get to be in her presence. She says that she is an angel who came down from heaven to be with her mommy and daddy; and, frankly, I believe her. And apparently she sees auras because she calls me Dim.

I read for Barb's friends John and Kathleen when I was through there in February and we got to know each other better that summer. John, ten years older than me, is a Viet Nam veteran. Together John and Kathleen, inspired and helped by that Divine Source, conceived and put together a special recognition ceremony for Viet Nam vets on November 11, 1996. They had national support for this. They gave special medals to those vets who felt like accepting them. They had made more medals than they thought they would need but still ran out, though there were quite a few vets who came to the ceremony who chose not to receive medals. There was even a biker vet group from Phoenix.

Many vets came to them after the ceremony and said that had received a real healing from the day. John and Kathleen continue to help vets in the White Mountain region and the group they set up for this ceremony is now self sustaining. They received help from the Elders on the Apache reservation and a group of vets from the reservation attended the ceremony. All vets were welcome.

I am relating this from 18 month old memory. All inaccuracies are due to this. There is much more these wonderful people have done that my memory prevents me from relating. My heart is with them in this continuing endeavor.

Just before I left Show Low I met Argena. I walked into Ruth's one afternoon and noticed a woman surrounded by light. This was only the fourth time this has happened to me upon meeting someone. I determined to meet her before I left. I did. She has a big, open heart, is filled with Spirit and is a psychic. There....by naming her thus I guess I've limited her enough.

She invited me to camp on her land for the few days before I left. I was there three days, but unfortunately Argena had to go to Phoenix after the first day. She and three other people had felt inner directed to buy 40 acres of land east of Snowflake. They felt they were to be caretakers of this sacred land. In times past it was a Native American village. There was still an altar there and the remains of pottery.

Argena said there was a vortex of energy there and asked for my impression of it. I didn't really want to do it. I am very sensitive to human energy but didn't feel I would be able to notice the vortex. She asked me to walk around on the 40 acres until I found it. Reluctantly I did. After a few minutes I felt this rush of energy as if it were pushing me away; not like it didn't want me there, just like a rush of water from the ground. Obviously I had found it. I have been in all of the vortex areas of Sedona but have never actually felt anything like this before. I was impressed.

Argena rented a house across the road from her land, on which there were no buildings. She shared the house with Ray. Lee rented a trailer also on this land and had full run of the house. There were always hundreds of flies in the house. One afternoon Lee and I were in the house and I was commenting to him about all of the flies. He said he didn't know how they got in. Ray wouldn't let him use bug sprays or even fly paper to get rid of them so they just had to put up with them. The conversation seemed to center on him not knowing how so many flies could get into the house. After a while I left through the back door, which was wide open with the screen door propped open so his two dogs, which weren't allowed in the house, could sit in the doorway and not feel left out. I started to turn around and tell Lee I figured out how the flies were getting in, but I didn't. I decided that if he hadn't figured this out by now, my telling him wouldn't register either.

My last day camping on Argena's land I had another one of those dumb experiences I am so good at creating. I guess I only like good news so I only check my fresh water gauge when it reads full. That afternoon I was taking a shower. I had gotten all shampooed and soaped up and ran out of water. So I got out of the shower, put on gym shorts and tennis shoes, and went outside my trailer to pour a couple of my six gallon jugs of water into the trailers tank. It was cloudy, windy and about 62 degrees, and all of my soap didn't keep me at all warm. But I've only run out of water one other time since, so I'm learning!

Arizona is an interesting place. On the one hand it is a very individualistic state. It has the feel of the wild west. People walk down the streets with pistols on their hips. It is legal in Arizona to carry a gun as long as it is visible. Except, ironically, in Tombstone, where every day they re-enact the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Guns are prohibited because officials are concerned if someone did not know of the re-enactment, they might pull their guns and start shooting back, only with real bullets. Arizona is also number one in the nation in militia members per capita. We take our freedom seriously out here.

On the other hand there is a lot of New Age activity in Arizona, also. There is the New Age Mecca of Sedona. Show Low is a very Spiritual place and is drawing this kind of people to the region. Payson was, until recently, home to the people who publish the I AM America maps, which show the new configuration of the earth land forms after the coming earth changes. I guess Payson wasn't a safe place to be so they recently moved to Show Low. Even Phoenix has a lot of New Age Activity. The population of Arizona is 4 million, 3 million of whom live in the metropolitan Phoenix area so I guess this is not surprising.

However sometimes the wildlife in Arizona gets a little bizarre. I read an article which told that porcupines on Mt Lemmon, a popular weekend camping area for the Phoenix crowd, were eating through the brake lines on cars and drinking the brake fluid. Then the campers couldn't stop when they got down to Phoenix. Go figure.

I stayed an extra week in Show Low to meet Barbs friend, Robert McNary, who was coming to town to do a seminar. I couldn't stay for the seminar but did get to meet him at the group meditation and then later at a pot luck dinner. Robert is about my age and is a medical doctor. He had gotten his medical degree in the army while also reading intensely about the Edgar Cayce health readings. After a few years in private practice he gave up his license to practice medicine because he felt medicine was the wrong way to go about healing. A truly interesting man with good energy. I wished I had more time to get to know him.

Love is the glue which holds together the Universe. The Universe has a sense of humor (which is a facet of love.) The Universe has a sense of humor because God loves a good joke. That is why he invented Polacks; I mean rednecks; I mean NewAgers! However the biggest joke is on us. The first thing we do when we become enlightened is to laugh because we never were separate from God. We are one with God and the Universe, in fact we ARE God and the Universe.

By mid June it was starting to get hot, into the mid nineties. The Apache Reservation is just below the Show Low-Lakeside-Pinetop strip of cities. They are three cities on the highway built on a ridge in the beginnings of the White mountains. Over the years they have grown together. The elevation of Show Low is 6330 feet. It is built where the high desert meets the forest of the White Mountains. As you travel down the highway toward Pinetop you gain about 800 feet in elevation and are now in a dense forest. Pinetop ends and the reservation begins. The Apache Reservation is a beautiful place, forested and mountainous and is the traditional home of the Apaches. I was told that the Apaches were allowed to keep their ancestral home for their reservation because they aided the U.S. Cavalry.

The Reservation has several primitive campgrounds on which they allow camping for a $75 monthly fee. So I found one I liked and moved there for a month. It was Big Bear Campground. Here the elevation was 8300 feet. By this time most of the forests in Arizona were closed and all fires were prohibited, so I didn't have much choice. A couple of days there and the summer monsoon rains started. It rained most afternoons. But the mornings were gorgeous, the temperature climbing to about 80 before the clouds started building up between noon and one. Before the clouds came in, the sky was achingly blue. The air was crisp and fresh and life was good. I hiked the various dirt roads in the mornings and either read in the afternoons or drove into Show Low to visit my buddies. Most evenings the clouds were gone by sunset and the stars littered the night sky with light. How you could think we are alone is beyond me.

The Apache Reservation is famous because shortly after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he installed one of them in one of the outhouses there. Thus becoming the first man to wire a head for reservations.

George Nemec, my legal roommate from Dallas, came to spend a week with me and grace me with his wonderful and powerful presence the end of June. This was a special treat for me. I had met George through the Bill Bauman seminars, though I felt I had never really gotten to know him. For some reason unknown to me he likes me. We spent the week talking and getting to know one another. George is a walker so we did some good hikes, too. George walks in Dallas and picks up aluminum cans and other trash on his walks. He had already that year recycled enough aluminum to buy more than 10 CDs. So on our hikes we picked up the trash.

I tend to be a little obsessive-compulsive so when George left I still picked up cans and other trash on my hikes. Now my hikes were mostly for meditation and I couldn't maintain any meditative thoughts while searching for cans. I re-learned this one day when I picked up a can with my hand to find a snake underneath it. I don't know if the snake rattled or if it was the can when I dropped it, but I haven't picked up a can since. We all have our tasks in life and I guess mine is not to clean up after everybody.

Of course I took George in to town to meet all my rowdy friends. They took to George like a duck to water. He did his George thing with them and now they keep calling me to ask when is George coming back. Strange, they don't ask when I'm coming back.

While camped on the reservation before George came, one day I had an unusual experience. It was about noon and I sat down outside my trailer to eat my lunch. As I sat there I realized my heart wasn't beating. Then I noticed that my peripheral vision was fading to black until there was just a softball sized area in front of me through which I could see. I stood up, took several deep breaths and rotated my trunk trying to restart my heart. Finally I succeeded (do tell, duh!) I estimated my heart had been stopped for 10 seconds. I didn't really know what to think about the episode.

I went about my usual routine, including hiking, without incident except that I noticed that often my heart would beat erratically and rapidly in my chest until I took several deep breaths to calm it down again. Three weeks later I was shaving when I noticed my field of vision was again fading to black except for that softball sized area of light. I performed the same gyrations and the black faded away. This time I did not notice if my heart stopped or not, though it was beating afterwards (again, duh!)

Betty was another one of the people I met at Ruth's. She was a channel. I had a crystal ball for sale at a price which she could not afford. Even though I knew her Guides could not read me I agreed to knock $50 off the price in exchange for a reading. In the reading I asked her Guides about my experiences. They replied that they felt I needed to see a doctor. I told them I wouldn't see a doctor, would they please fix it for me. They said they understood my reluctance to seek medical help and would fix it for me. Though the rest of the reading was nonsense, as of that day the erratic heart beats decreased by 90%. And I have had no further semi-blackouts.

During my month on the reservation I began to pick up some bad vibrations. I wasn't sure where they were coming from. Many of the Native Americans on the reservation lead lives of poverty, despair, and alcoholism. Murder and abuse are common. Shari says many of them die in their 20s and thirties of alcohol related diseases. I thought perhaps I was picking up that energy as I was living on their land. So when my month was up I moved into town to a private campground at the eastern edge of Lakeside. This was a private and quiet place. I stayed there a month.

I continued to pick up these harsh, negative vibrations, especially when I was alone. I could still feel the very nice energy, but the bad
energy was an undercurrent where ever I went. I asked my friends about it and they said they were aware of it also, but it did not affect them. Unfortunately it did me. I was told that there was a lot of Satanic activity in the area. This involved some ritualistic abuse of children and ritualistic sacrificing of animals in the forest. There were supposed to be a lot of Satanic symbols in various places in the forest, though I never noticed any of this on any of my hikes. I never did figure out what was causing this bad energy.

While at this campground I had lots of time to think and meditate. I now have a frame from which to hang my hammock swing made from two by fours. We had a ten day respite from the monsoon rains and the weather was beautiful. I hung out in my swing and let my mind roam. One realization I had was that by the time I meet my soul mate we will be too old to go steady. Well just exchange walkers. There are two things I have learned from my camping. Time flies; and so does money. Actually it just flows through our fingers. I guess that is why they call it a liquid asset. The Golden Rule is a good rule to follow. Unless you are a masochist. (Think about it, you'll get it. And when you do, sent me a postcard!) I always thought fat grams referred to my grandmother.

While riding my motorcycle one afternoon I saw a sign asking us to elect Jake Flake to the Arizona Senate. At last, truth in political advertising! Imagine, Sen. Flake. Aren't they all!

Another true story. Last year a London insurance brokerage announced it would begin offering policies to people who are worried about alien abduction. A premium of about $155 per year would buy a benefit of $160,000 to an abductee (provided the abductor was not from earth.) The policy would pay double if the insured were impregnated during the abduction. Since alien powers are unknown men can purchase the pregnancy rider, too. This from the KC Star newspaper. I am sorry but the article did not include the phone number of the London brokerage firm.

At Ruth's I also met Joyce, another psychic. She felt drawn to me for some reason and we talked one day. She seemed to feel that I had had some trauma in my youth which I had suppressed and this was causing me trouble. Now, in college when I began to study Psychology I learned about repressed memories. So I examined my entire life and could not come up with anything which I might have repressed. I seemed to remember my entire life; such entirety as it was at age 19. There wasn't a whole lot to remember but what there was to remember, I did. Again when I began to develop my psychic abilities in the early 80s I again re-examined my entire life for missing memories or any events or times in my life which seemed to bring about anxiety, which would indicate that there was something buried there I didn't want to remember. Again I found nothing.

In my last letter of April, 1996 you may remember (if you haven't repressed it!) I spoke of what I called uni-dimensional thinking. I was having trouble making decisions because everything looked the same to me. I also had trouble remembering anything or learning anything new. One afternoon I hung out in my hammock for over three hours thinking about what Joyce had told me. Although I knew she was wrong about the repressed memory, I tried to figure just what was going on. I let my mind roam free seeking a solution.
After a while I remembered something that happened in January, 1993 in Lincoln. For three days in a row I felt myself present in my body only in my head; then only in the top half of my head; then just on the top of my head; and then not present anywhere in my body. For decades I have experienced an extreme drop off of my energy and the ability to function in my daily life the first of January every year. My energy seems to come back gradually with the return of the sun. This is a very sudden and dramatic drop off and happens every year. I just had to learn to live with it and try to compensate for it.

Now, I'm going to tell you something. I am not going to tell you in detail because no one I have ever told understood it or believed it. Briefly, at age 11 something happened to me which had a devastating effect on me. It caused a severe decrease in my ability to function in all areas of my life; including the physical and mental and (especially) the emotional and spiritual. School and socializing, among other things, suddenly became very difficult for me. In 1987 and subsequently I have learned that certain energies and connections to my inner self were taken away from me. I even remember when it happened. It was a Sunday morning in April and I was in the choir loft at church. I began to feel very hot, stuffy and very dizzy. I left to get some fresh air. Outside I fell against a car, unable to get up, while the world spun about me. Someone saw me and got my parents who took me home. An hour later I was fine. But that was the end of life as I knew it. I was not a walk in, I was a walk out.

Subsequent to that episode I have had other energies and abilities taken from me many times. In January, 1993 I had my mental energies severely limited. The connection to my subconscious mind was severed and my ability to reason was destroyed. In making a decision, the rational, conscious mind gathers the facts and the subconscious makes the choice from its greater perspective. I was cut adrift. Anything I had previously known I still knew and could remember. Anything I knew how to do I could still do. But I couldn't learn anything new.

Trying to learn something new was like picking up a shadow off the ground. I can see it while it is there but I cant pick it up and take it with me, and it is certainly one dimensional. I couldn't remember anything new. Memory comes from the subconscious. When faced with a situation I had never encountered before, I was totally lost. And furthermore I knew it was my inner spirit who was doing it to me. I just didn't know why. I didn't think my Spirit Guides were doing it, but they were complicitly involved. They were doing me no favors.

I absolutely do not care if you believe what I have just written. I know. It is my life. That is enough for me. But this is what happened to me and this is what I realized in August, 1996. It is very germane to me and will surface a couple more times in this letter. Rose wanted me to get a little more personal in these letters, so here it is.

Unfortunately this remarkable realization didn't change things. Though it did help me to understand what is going on so I could compensate a little. For instance, in my last letter I wrote that I bought two, not one but two, trailers that are the wrong one. I was livid about it for a month before I could get rid of the energy. I now know that I am incapable of making the correct decision about trailers because before January, 1993 I didn't know anything about trailers. So I leave well enough alone. I try not to buy anything of magnitude but if I must I try to limit the damage.

A couple of weeks later Shari and I went to Sedona for the day. We saw the sights and did the shopping. I had been begging Shari all summer to channel for me because her energy is especially clear and of a high vibration and I felt her Guides would be able to read me. In my life there has been only less than a handful of psychics and even channels who could read me at all. Being in the business I have had many readings, often in trade at their request. They get lots of information for me. It is just not true, not accurate. They cant see me or my energies.

While in Sedona, in Boynton Canyon, Shari did channel for me. I did feel her Guide, Ariana, could read me. Though while she answered all of my questions she didn't tell me much. Nonetheless I was satisfied. I asked her what happened to my mental ability to function. She told me that my Guides had disconnected me from the old way I took in new information but had not yet connected me to the new way they were creating for me. However I don't think my Guides had anything to do with it. I still feel my insights of above are accurate.

Since January, 1993 almost everything I bought (except food and CDs) had to be taken back because they didn't work or broke soon after the warranty expired with only a couple exceptions. In the last five years I have spent over $12,000 on repairs to the two vans I owned during that time. When something breaks on a Ford van, I now know what it is! My trailer has had extensive warranty work. This includes a leaking propane regulator, the refrigerator, the water heater(x2), the screens, leaks in the roof, repair of ALL of the light switches, none of which worked after the second day, the bathtub had to be replaced, the sofa bed hadn't been bolted to the floor, and other minor things too small to mention.

A partial list of items I have bought that had to be taken back because they didn't work or which broke shortly after the warranty period expired include: A camcorder, a TV/VCR, 2 bicycles, a videoplayer, a $350 boom box, 2 portable CD players (one of which cost $250), earphones, a cover for my van windshield, numerous smaller things, and anything ordered in person or by mail as they would send me the wrong thing.

Things I bought with which I had no problem (for equal time) are a motorcycle, this computer, and a new radio for my car, though it is still under warranty. I include this to show a bit of the tremendous frustration I have had in trying to bring some semblance of order to my life in the last five years; and this impacts with events later in this letter.

So I also asked Ariana why all these things were going wrong. She said when my Guides disconnected my mind it disrupted my energy so that my energy was expressing in a very scattered manner. Since I was very powerful my life was being created in a very disruptive and disharmonious way. This I understand totally and so will most of you.

Shortly before I left Show Low Argena and I met a woman at Ruth's named Emma. She had been having strange dreams and wanted our opinions about them. Now I don't have many facts, but I have lots of opinions; so I gave her a full helping and seconds.

Nonetheless she seemed to take a liking to the both of us. She and the father of her son, Rick, had bought 160 acres of land a few miles west of the Petrified Forest. A couple of days later Emma took Argena and me to see the land. They felt it was sacred land and bought it to preserve the Indian petroglyphs which were everywhere on the land. There was also a lot of petrified wood on the land, including huge trunks five feet in diameter and twenty feet long before they disappeared into the sand.

We stopped at the visitor center for the Petrified Forest National Park on the way home. I learned a lot. Petrified wood isn't really wood, though it once was. The tree dies and is covered by water. Over many thousands of years the molecules of wood are replaced by molecules of silicone, or sand. Over more thousands of years, usually under water, the sand hardens into rock. The sand maintains the formation, grain, and color of the original wood. The end product is a rock which looks exactly like a log, complete with bark. It is an amazing process.

Emma thought that I should meet the father of her son. I didn't know whether that meant that Rick was an ex-husband, an ex-boyfriend or just what. It turned out that they had been living together for many years and had had a son, Trinity, who was about 10 years old. I liked Rick a lot. He is an open and very aware being and an old,old soul. He claimed that he was a Bodhisattva and I could believe him on that. (A Bodhisattva is a soul who has completed its evolution of lives on Earth and has achieved Enlightenment. However, they keep incarning to help others progress and have vowed to keep coming back until all have achieved Enlightenment.) I went over to their house for dinner and we had lots of very fulfilling conversation, the kind I call normal conversation.

There was a song I remembered and liked from many years ago. I knew neither the name of the song nor the artist. I had described the lyrics to my friends many times over the years but none of them could help me out. One day I heard the song on the radio THREE times, each time with the name of the song and the artist. It was Turn the Page by Bob Seger. It took twenty years but I finally found it. Later I would buy a Greatest Hits CD with that song on it. I was very pleasantly surprised that several of the songs which I liked but never knew who did them were also on that CD. Usually I spend $16.95 and only like the one song.

Just before I left Show Low the group had a pot luck for Robert McNary. I left the next day so it was a time for goodbyes for me. I was sitting on a couch talking to Shari when I was overcome with such a strong feeling of love and yet a sadness at leaving. Tears came to my eyes. Before I could even recognize that this was highly unusual for me, I turned around and saw Barb sitting behind me, softly crying. I was feeling her emotions. What a gift to me that was to be able to know exactly how she felt about me leaving. This intense empathy has occasionally happened before and since, but it always catches me by surprise.

I had delayed my leaving Show Low a week so that I could meet Robert McNary. That accomplished I was ready to leave. I had agreed to go back to Lincoln to work the day after Labor Day. I had wanted to spend a week camping deeper into the White mountains as I had not even seen the interior section yet. But this I had to forego so I could spend a week camping in Arkansas and digging crystals. I stopped in Irving, Tx to visit George and register my trailer which I bought the previous March. On August 26 I arrived in Arkansas.

I stayed there six days. After one day during which it rained heavily (inside my trailer and out) the weather turned out fairly good. I camped at Jimmy Coleman's mine which is where I also dug. I love digging crystals. It cost $20 per day to dig but then all the crystals I found were mine for free. When I dig I don't take any but the most necessary of breaks. And I did the usual things, bending over at the waist until my back was too sore. It is only then that I remember to bend my knees, not my waist. Digging crystals is hard on my back and legs, though not on my feet. Too bad, because they are used to being in tough places and getting occasional teeth marks.

I got hundreds of crystals at this mine. I would find crystals in the exact places I had found crystals the day before. It was almost as if there were a crystal fairy who was putting out crystals each night for us to find. I have my own system for finding crystals. I don't like to dig, so I never find those virgin caches, but I have my fun. Though cleaning them isn't any fun and takes about five times as much time as finding them. But it is all part of the game.

I hadn't had a haircut for eight months and my hair was quite long by this time. As I bent over I never gave a thought to the fact that my long hair was falling to either side of my neck and my white neck was being exposed to the sun for the first time. Yes, I became an Arkansas redneck. I began to eat grits, call people Bubba and vote Republican. Sad but true.

To dig crystals I wore the same clothes every day as the red clay and dust turns them all red. Each evening I washed them out. Obviously I wore my oldest clothes. I wore a white tee shirt and an old pair of gym shorts with the elastic waist band just about shot. As I bent over to pick up a crystal in the noonday sun my tee shirt would ride up my back and my shorts slide even lower. Yes. I sunburned the crack of my ass. I guess I didn't see the sign that said say no to crack. But that is okay; I did see the sign that said don't inhale.

I spent a couple of days camped at Smithville Lake north of Kansas City while I visited my family and my dentist. On the map the campground looked rather close to KC. It wasn't. You know, if these things actually were learning experiences I would be a lot smarter than I am.

My boss in Lincoln, Rodger, is the nicest boss for whom I have ever worked. He is a prince of a man. If American businesses were peopled with men and women like him, we would all be better off.

Rodger told me that us temps were being put up in apartments this time but mine would not be ready for a few weeks. He offered to put me up at the Townhouse Motel, where I had stayed last time, until my apartment was ready. It was a very noisy place and I did not enjoy staying there last time so I told him I would stay in my trailer until the apartment was ready.

For the first two weeks I stayed at a state park about 15 miles from downtown. Due to parking limitations downtown I rode my motorcycle to work most mornings. It was very peaceful and relaxing to go back to the park after work each day.

One night after dark I was returning to the park in my van. In front of me I saw a very bright shooting star fall all the way to the horizon. A few minutes later I realized that it wasn't a shooting star but a UFO spaceship which I had seen and it had landed on the road in front of me. I stopped the van and got out to talk to some of the little beings from the ship. All the time I had spent in Sedona and I never so much as saw any suspicious lights and I run into extraterrestrials in Nebraska. So I asked them about that. I asked them how come I found them here of all places. They told my they were Cornhusker fans. So I guess the people of Lincoln are right: Lincoln IS the center of the universe.

After two weeks I moved to a private campground at the edge of town. Here I not only had water/sewer/electric hookups but also cable TV. I stayed there until the apartment was ready in late October. This campground was just off a freeway and I could go from my trailer to my desk in ten minutes. My kind of commute.

I hate working and will say very little about it this time either. The company is nice. The people with whom I work are all wonderful. Lincoln is a special town. But the energy of all the people there overwhelms me and hurts me more than I am willing to bear.

My van was too tall to fit into the covered parking lots in downtown Lincoln. The surface lots were daily parking and were always full by the time I got there at 9:00, so I had to park about six blocks away. Finally I did find a covered lot with 9 foot clearance which I could rent by the month. They had a space for me on the top floor. Unfortunately my vans roof got stuck on the ceiling between the first and second levels. I turned around and went back down. I went to the rental office and explained the situation to Brandi, the rental agent. She said no problem. She made a few calls and got someone on the first level to give me their space and take another one. This is the kind of nice behavior you can expect in Lincoln.

After I had been in Lincoln for a few weeks I noticed that the incidence of rapid and erratic heartbeats had decreased even further. They still came but not as often. I was somewhat surprised by this as I thought the increased stress would increase them. Though I wasn't complaining.

It was nice to reconnect with my New Age friends I had met on my previous trips to Lincoln. One of the special treats was getting back to my weekly massages with Amy, whom I love dearly. She claims that massages last an hour. I claim she speeds up time. I asked her if she could speed up time for me at the office but she said she doesn't do remote work. Damn!

At one of our get togethers with my friends in Lincoln I learned about a new healing technique. We all sit around in a group and get in touch with our deepest emotional garbage until we puke. It is called Ralphing.

One of the first things I did in Lincoln is to have my brain checked out. The doctor said someone must have already checked it out because it was gone. HA HA! Just kidding. He did run a brain scan. It came back negative. I knew that. He ran a culture test. It came back negative, too. That was no surprise. But he agreed with me that I had lost my mind. It seems that I had given so many people a piece of my mind that I had given it all away. Actually I remember what happened. I took my brain out to dust it off as my thoughts were getting a little dirty. I set it down somewhere and forgot where I put it. It must be noted that I am from Kansas and have a lot in common with the scarecrow from Oz. We are both looking for a brain. Unfortunately, whoever said life was a no brainer was wrong.

The phones in the office get more complicated each year. They have been smarter than me for at least 20 years. My phone in Lincoln had a button marked Not Ready. I always punched that button first thing every morning because I figured that button was made especially for me because it described me perfectly. Though my coworkers told me that was not what the button was for. Too bad.

I was put to work on a new underwriting unit set up to handle business from Allstate agents who were writing insurance policies with Lincoln Benefit. (Allstate owns Lincoln Benefit.) One benefit of this for me was that Christy also worked on this unit. She is the most precious human being whom I have ever met. I seldom saw or interacted with her but just hearing her voice in the background made the day go a little more easily.

Another added benefit this time was my immediate supervisor, Brad. He is a super nice man and he and I had lots of good underwriting and personal talks. He is a very good supervisor. Once a month he met with his workers to keep the lines of communication open, even with us temps. After Christy came out of her first such meeting with Brad I kiddingly asked her if Brad was going to chew us all out. She said that Brad had told her that we shouldn't worry so much about the teeth marks on our butts as the lip prints on his!

Getting back to wearing a tie is always rough. I must have been hanged in a prior life because I cant stand to have anything around my neck in this one. I think ties cut off the flow of blood to men's heads and make them stupid, which would certainly explain the current state of American business.

Arnold Swartzenegger is noted for the one liners in his movies. In Total Recall he kills the woman he was brainwashed into believing was his wife. After doing so he said, Consider that a divorce. That was one of those famous one liners. However he wasn't the first one to use that line. King Henry the VIII was.

I was talking to the Medical Director at work one day. Dr. Ashley had been an Internist in private practice before joining the company full time. One day I asked him what doctors did when they got sick. He said they went to the office anyway and spread the germs around. It was good for business.

I always wanted to be an Idiot-Savant. My friends tell me I got the first part down real good.

On September 21 I watched Arizona State University beat Nebraska 19 to 0, ending their hopes for a third consecutive national title. Now the people in Lincoln live for one thing, and that is a national football title, so this was no small thing. In fact an hour after the game the mayor had declared a state of emergency and medical facilities were set up at most major intersections to hand out free Prozac.

On my third day on the job I noticed a woman sitting at the empty desk just outside my cubicle. I thought nothing of it since half of the clerical staff were temps at that time and they sat at any empty desk they could find. But as I walked past her I had a real bad feeling. I generally ignore those feelings since I have nothing logical to base them on and don't want to be judgmental based on a feeling. Three days later when she was still there I went to someone and asked who she was. I was told that she was my clerical support person who would perform all my clerical needs such as filing, matching mail and ordering reports as requested. So I introduced myself to her. Her name was Kalani.

Unfortunately my initial bad feeling about her was borne out. She couldn't file, didn't order reports and didn't match mail to the correct files. Files were lost for weeks on end. She caused me no end of grief with the agents as I could not approve the insurance policies if I couldn't find the files and if the proper reports had not been ordered. I was not her boss. Brad was. I tried to work with her but was met with this stony cold glare as if she couldn't understand why I was being so mean to her. Finally I had to go to Brad because she was seriously interfering with my ability to do my work properly. Even Brad couldn't significantly improve her performance. Normally the clerks at this company are extremely competent. That was one of the things which always impressed me about the Company.

I shared my cubicle with another temporary underwriter named Owen. While I actually liked Owen, I found myself not wanting to talk to him or be near him. His energy bothered me. Again, I tried to ignore that and interact with him in a friendly manner. I was soon to find out why I was repelled by his energy. I didn't do lunch and sat at my desk working from 9:00 until 6:00 everyday. Owen was there about four of those hours. Where he was those other five I never learned. He was always antagonistic with the agents and would get in arguments with them several times a day.

One day he asked me how come he was behind in his work and everyone else was caught up. While it was probably a rhetorical question I couldn't censor myself in time. I said, Because you are never at your desk. I had further things to say but managed to bite my tongue before they got out. But he shouldn't be asking me the question if he doesn't want my answer.

One time Owen had to leave town for a week to attend to some personal business. While he was gone I did quite a bit of his work. It was quite obvious to me that to get caught up in his work he often didn't read the entire files as he had made several glaring errors. He was an intelligent and knowledgeable underwriter who would know how to underwrite correctly if he would read the entire files.

Some time after he came back he again complained to me about everyone being caught up except himself. He said that in order for them to be caught up and not him, the rest of us must not be reading the entire files. I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. I couldn't stop. I just turned back to my work and ignored him.

What I decided about him that caused me distress with his energy was that what he believed he was and expected others to believe of him was not the same as he was. This discrepancy set up a disharmony in his energy which was what I felt. At least that was my mental take on the whole thing.

What I learned from my experiences with Kalani and Owen is to trust my feelings, to acknowledge and trust what I feel. I wont at first know why I feel this, but I must know that it is a true feeling. As I get into the experience then I can know why I feel this. This is one lesson I HAVE learned and used repeatedly since then.

After three months both of the above problems were remedied when I was transferred to another unit. This time I had 18 year old Missy as my clerk. She was perfect. In the seven months I worked with her she never made one mistake. Her work was done five minutes after it hit her desk. She was the most competent clerk I ever worked with. And I made sure her boss knew that, too, writing two letters of praise of her work.

My new cubicle mate was Kommander Karl. He talks funny because he is from New York but I had someone translate for me. Karl is a very nice man and good with the agents and a very knowledgeable and competent underwriter. What a breath of fresh air after Owen. Kommander Karl is the name he uses for his deejay business. He is another temp and we continue to stay in touch wherever he is working through an 800 number. I really liked Karl and enjoyed working with him.

In all my many months of work at Lincoln Benefit I have had only one agent give me a hard time. And he later called back to apologize. I treat all of the agents the same way I would want to be treated if I were in their shoes. I treat them with respect and that is what I get from them in return. I listen to them and I explain my actions until they understand.

I always wanted to make history. My boss said to watch out or I was history, so I must be doing something right.

I want to build a treehouse as I always wanted to live off the land.

My motto in life must be: So many dumb things to do, so little time.

I used to be a good egg. Now I'm a chicken.

Another experience I had in Lincoln dealing with energy happened at a volleyball game. Amy had an extra ticket to the women's volleyball game one Friday night. Nebraska's team is usually ranked in the top ten nationally and tickets are hard to come by. She and I sat next to each other on our bleacher seats. There was a man sitting directly behind me. I could feel his energy pushing on me as if he were pushing me away from him with his hand on my back. When he got up to go to the concession stand or the restroom I knew it instantly because the intense pressure was gone. When he returned I could feel it there again. I have never felt such intense psychic pressure from a person before or since. Although he thoroughly invaded my space it didn't feel particularly negative, though I
certainly didn't want him there. I never did figure out what was going on.

In November I attended Amy Winters wedding to John Whitney in Estes Park, Colorado at the Aspen Lodge Guest and Dude Ranch. I flew to Denver and drove to Estes Park with Rae and Clare Winter. Amy Scott also flew in from New York. These were all people dear to me whom I had not seen for quite some time. I hope Amy and John had a good time at their wedding, because I sure did! It was like a non stop party for two days. I love lodges like that but had never stayed in one before. I felt like a real dude.

After the wedding Amy and John provided all the guests with a sit down dinner and a DJ until late into the night. I hadn't danced in at least ten years but I think I made up for it that night. Amy Scott is a woman who experiences life in a very feeling way. Whenever I am around her I feel a lot. She and I danced to Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers, always one of my favorite songs. That dance with her to that song was an incredibly wonderful and delightful feeling experience for me, one that I will re-experience every time I hear that song in the future. Thank you Amy. The name Amy comes from the Latin word for love. You cant have too many Amy's in your life!

And thank you John and Amy. If you ever want to renew your vows and party again, remember me!

I had been concerned about the weather in Colorado at 9,000 feet in November, though I figured the weather would certainly co-operate with Amy. And it did. It was sunny and in the forties during the days there except for a dusting of snow before the sun came out on Sunday morning. Saturday evening there was this big full moon that popped over a mountain east of the lodge, shining its light onto our dance floor. Amy said she had chosen that room for that particular reason. It had been very cold in Lincoln when I left. When I got back on the plane in Denver for Lincoln, the pilot came on and said it was 14 degrees in Lincoln. Since it was still 45 in Denver I asked if I could get off the plane but they said it was too late. Darn again!

During our drive back to Denver we saw someone swimming in a lake. I wondered out loud who could possibly be swimming in such cold water. Clare said, Just an otter fool.

While Rae, Clare and I were waiting for our respective planes in Denver, we saw Amy, John and Amy's son Eric. Eric is about 11 years old and a real neat kid and I like him a lot. When he saw me in the airport he pointed at me and said, There is the man obsessed with hugs.

Rae has traveled extensively in India over the last several years. Once when she was there she met a woman who had the same inexpensive watch which she had. Even the times were identical, to the second.

My oldest niece, Tina, got married in KC the Saturday after Christmas. At the wedding a horrible thing happened to me. I realized that I was older than all four parents of the bride and groom. Now that made me feel old.

I think it was this same weekend that I was staying at my parents house. I tripped coming down the stairs and hit the back of my head at the bottom. This was the first time I could ever remember falling out of control. Usually I realize that I am about to fall so do it on my own terms. But this time I fell head over heels. I felt mentally fuzzy for a few seconds and my mom rushed over to me and said, James, are you okay? Shaken, not stirred, I replied. OK OK. So that was something I wished I had said at the time. Picky, picky. Actually Id try to get away with it but there were witnesses. My family has tripped me before, however, hoping Id hit my head and knock this horrible sense of humor out of me, but it never worked. My mama didn't raise no fool. I raised myself.

Amy Williams in Lincoln had a New Years Eve party and all my rowdy friends were there. There was Lawrence with his great puns and, of course, Amy and Heather. Now all you need for a party is Heather at one end of a room and Amy at the other. They both have such stage presence and an urge to entertain. They Aren't the life of the party, they ARE the party.

I had known Heather for a year before I found out that before she settled down, got married and had kids she had been a roadie for a Rock band. She also did stand up comedy and once was the opening act for The Mommies, who recently had a sitcom on one of the Networks. By Midnight Heather was feeling no pain and the fun really started. We were dancing to the soundtrack from Forrest Gump and Heather just took over. She was dancing up a storm. She danced quite well, as if she were born to a stage. And to think I might never have known about her entertainment past but for passing remark in a conversation. It makes me wonder about the rest of you!

Lawrence wrote a whale song CD with ten tunes. He said that I could give you my favorite song titles: Fluke Skywalkers theme; Kelp! (I need some body); Killing me softly-- Roberta Fluke; and my favorite, It ain't heavy, its my blubber.

In addition to being a great punner Lawrence has worked as a psychological counselor for many years. He is also active in the Lincoln New Age community, which is how I met him. Last January, while driving home from work, he had a spiritual revelation of such a depressing nature it nearly killed him before he came to grips with it. I relate it to you as follows.

There are many Universes and each has its own Creator. Each Creator is essentially a LARGE spark of the Divine Eternal who exists outside of all Creation. Each Creator is pretty much given carte blanche to fashion a universe as s/he/it sees fit. The various Creators are largely forbidden to interfere with the work of the other Creators, although they, too, can send relatively large sparks to other creations to act as Adversaries--hence the mythos around Satan in this universe. If any Creator enters a Creation, even their own, that Creation/universe is destroyed, and that Creator is disqualified, so to speak, until the next round.

This has elements of a competition, or a game--there seems to be some sort of a time/efficiency limit that each Creator is trying to meet. I misdoubt that all the universes run on the same time line, so it seems that the time/efficiency ratios for each universe are unique. In essence the nature of the competition seems to be to find the most efficient way(s) to raise the vibratory level of the Creation to the point where it can be reabsorbed into the Creator without destruction. My impression is that whoever gets the best results either gains status or gets to call the tune on the next round...this part is unclear.

The Creators are also apparently allowed to send a few Avatars to implement design changes; again, Jesus comes to mind. I suspect, though, that the tinkering the Creators can do with their Creations is strictly limited--either that or it takes a long subjective time to evaluate the results.

Perhaps most importantly, from my perspective, is that the Creators not only stand outside their Creations, they really don't care much about them. Put another way, I believe that the Creator of this universe cares as much for each Being in the universe as we do for each of our skin cells--almost not at all, in other words. Because the Creator must stand outside the Creation, s/he/it is essentially indifferent to what occurs within it. This is why we need to find a Higher Being to focus our spiritual aspirations on (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc) because only those Beings are capable of manifesting Love within this Creation.

My impression also is that our Creator is something of a putz--I don't think things have been going really well this Time around. I sense that this universe was not always run on Pain--the Creators are apparently allowed a few design changes as the Game progresses, and ours added Pain as an incentive after trailing at the first quarter mile marker. Again, Pain was added not out of Love but a desire to win, or at least place or show. (NB--I am not even sure that the original Creator of our universe is still running it; I think s/he/it may have been transferred to the Boston office, so to speak.)

The upshot of all this? This is not a benign universe. The Creator doesn't give a rats ass, contrary to most New Age doctrine. We experience Pain not because of our ignorance of, or actions contrary to, Divine Law, but because we are supposed to. Its built into the plan. The Creator urges us Home not out of Love but out of the desire to gain status--and doesn't really care what we experience in the meantime. Love is manifest in this universe only because some advanced Souls decided to stick around and run things; the Ascended Masters, et al.

So, why rush Home? The Rules have changed since we showed up, and I don't think we were consulted. There is no Great Cosmic Muffin waiting to welcome us back--in the parable of the Prodigal Son, did anyone notice that the old man never went looking for his son? The kid could have been sold into slavery, raped, or killed, but the old man just sat there, waited, and then made a big to-do when the kid finally showed up. This is Love?

I offer this revelation to you because it is interesting and because it had such an impact on Lawrence. It doesn't really matter, however, what view of the universe we subscribe to or is ultimately true. The answer is always the same. We must know that we are God and claim all of the Awareness and Power that goes with that. Then we are no longer in, or a part of, the grand illusion.

For some reason my energy plummets to new lows every January first. That is why I often leave work at the end to the year. All I want to do is crawl into a hole and hibernate until the sun comes back. This year was no exception except I didn't leave work. I figure I didn't evolve from the apes because they don't hibernate. Maybe I was a bird in a prior life because I always want to fly south for the winter.

On January 23, 1997 there was an Astrological conjunction which produced the Star of David on a chart for that day. I forget exactly what Jan Holmes told me it represented, but it was very interesting.

In mid January I started feeling very, very bad. I hurt a lot emotionally. I just figured, as I always do, that I was doing something wrong or not handling things well. It got worse and worse until I felt I must scream. It took a lot of effort not to. I was afraid if I started screaming I wouldn't be able to stop. It was the most intense pain I have ever experienced.

They say that burning to death is the most painful death possible because all of the nerves are exposed. Let us imagine that we have an emotional body in which we feel all of our emotions. Well, my emotional body was on fire non stop for thirteen days. There wasn't a waking moment I didn't feel a strong need to scream. On the fourteenth day I woke up and the pain was gone. A friend called me at the office that morning and said, The energy is gone, isn't it? It was then I realized it wasn't me. Later I realized that the pain began seven days before the Star of David conjunction and lasted until six days after.

It was after this that I realized that I couldn't work anymore, ever. I would work until this job was done but would never work again. It is just too damn painful. I feel the jangle of everyone's emotional junk in my emotional body. At the office I often spend the entire day shuddering as if I have the creepy crawlies and am trying to shake them off my body. But they cant be shaken off because the energy is inside me and I cant get it out. Their emotional garbage is inside of me and I cant get it out. And it hurts. That is why I cant stand being in cities. That is why I must live by myself far away from other people.

I don't know at how great a distance I pick up this energy. I don't know if it is one mile or 20 miles. I do know that distance lessens it and walls block it. It is less hard on me to be in an open air stadium than inside a closed auditorium. A cement wall will block some of the energy from me if it is between them and me. But if I am in a closed room with them it seems to increase the energy like cupping your hands behind your ears. I am not willing to experience that pain anymore.

It is as if I have a seventh sense, beyond the sixth or intuitive sense, through which I perceive and actually experience the emotional energy put out by other people. This is as real to me as the noise you pick up with your sense of hearing. When I am around love and peace filled beings it can be very nice. But most people have in their emotional auras doubts, fears, anger, resentments, insecurities, prejudice, etc. These are NOT pleasant vibrations to pick up emotionally, especially when they are magnified by a hundred thousand or a million people.

Unfortunately when my emotional body hurts, so does my physical body. Actually I notice my physical body hurting first. When the energy gets more severe then my emotional body begins to hurt also. Before that I just have a sense of unease or discomfort. My gut is tied in a knot and all the muscles in my body tense up and hurt, and they are stiff and sore. Needless to say this is no fun. That is why I avoid cities.

Each day I take in much more emotional energy from other people than I can get rid of, until I feel that I will explode. It is as if I am an emotional lint screen for other peoples emotional blockages. They go away feeling a little better and I am left with the sludge which I have never been able to escape or get rid of, except by being alone in the forest.

After a few months at work I feel like I am constantly under attack. But there is nothing physical to ward off. It is as if I run an all day emotional gauntlet. Of course this puts me in a constant fight or flight syndrome. The adrenaline never stops but I have to sit quietly at my desk with my muscles running full speed and me with both feet on the brakes. Needless to say, this is very hard on my body.

Again, after I am there for a few months I am overwhelmed by all of this energy. The energy of all of these people suffuses and infiltrates my own so intensely that I cannot find myself, my own energy. I am lost. I can find nothing of me in all of this energy. I am acting out of all the combined energies which I have picked up from all these other people. It makes me feel unclean and violated to the innermost depths of my being. It is not a pleasant experience

When I am in a city I feel like I am a mile under the ocean with the pressure of all that water pressing down on me, making me implode, physically, mentally and emotionally. Somehow it also seems to jam my thoughts, like jamming radio signals. I cant think clearly. In fact, my only thought is to get out.

I am sure you all think that I am not taking responsibility for myself, or not protecting myself properly, have a bad attitude, expect this to happen, or am just plain doing something wrong. But this is not true. Though it is okay with me for you to go on believing this. Verbum sapienti satis est.

The company let two of us temps go the end of January. Rodger told me he was told to let two more go the end of February and would soon ask for volunteers. I immediately volunteered but I never heard another word about it and none of us were let go, apparently they changed their minds. Instead they hired another one.

He was in his late fifties. He said he was so conservative that he wouldn't eat the left wing of a chicken. He wasn't kidding either. For some reason he took a liking to me. Every conversation we had eventually turned to Clinton bashing--both Bill and Hillary. He absolutely hated them both and wanted them tarred and feathered and run out of town. Finally I had to tell him I didn't want to hear him say another word about the Clintons. I didn't so much mind him bashing the Clintons, but he was so hateful about it. He also talked about Woodstock. He said the festival was nothing more than a bunch of drunk drug addicts screwing in the mud. He said they should have sent in the National Guard and killed every one of them as they weren't fit to live. And he meant it. I tend to avoid people like that but I couldn't here. It was a rude awakening to experience an intelligent human being with so many bizarre and hateful views.

January is the longest month of the year and has at least six weeks in it. I swear it takes forever to end. February goes by much faster. Probably because it gives two of its weeks to January. I wish January would give two of its weeks to May. We would all be better off.

This was a particularly cold winter. There were days on end where I would drive to work at 9:00 AM and it would still be 8-10 degrees below zero. Though it was also dry so we had very little frost. My van doesn't warm up very quickly and it is heck scraping the frost and ice off that big window. March came in like a lion and stayed that way. We were all waiting for that March lamb to show up and when he did we were going to slaughter him and wear his wool as a coat to try to warm up.

September 19, 1995 Lincoln had a killing frost at 26 degrees, the earliest frost on record. The third week in April, 1997 the highs never left the 20s. The week ended with a 12 inch snowstorm. By this time we were into Daylight Savings Time. I figured that was real nice, so we could have an extra hour of winter each night. May 17 we had another hard frost at 27 degrees. I was ready to leave.

The company announced that the work that I and the others temps were doing was going to be done by the Allstate Home Office in Chicago, starting July 1. I didn't think that it was too likely that they could gear up that quickly, but I decided to use that date to leave. So I told Rodger that I would be leaving the end of June.

The last weekend in April I noticed that the batteries in my trailer had blown up and had leaked battery acid all over the front frame of my trailer. They were under warranty and I did eventually get new ones at no charge. I got the battery acid corrosion off the frame and found extensive rust underneath. So I scraped it off and repainted the frame.

The next weekend I drove to KC to attend a Bill Bauman seminar. When I pulled into the driveway of my parents my van died. I ended up having to have it towed. The alternator I had bought 54 weeks earlier had gone bad (heredity or environment?) So I bought a new one and a new battery since it was time anyway.

Something happened to me on April 1. My mind became devoid of thought. I could still do my work but I couldn't think of anything to say. My mind was a complete blank. At work I tend to not talk to anybody anyway except in the course of work. But this new temp, The Conservative, would come and talk to me and I couldn't think of anything to say. He talked to me and I stared at him until he stopped talking and went away. I am not sure if he realized anything was different. My lack of thoughts was to continue for some time.

However I still responded to simple verbal commands. Most of them were: Sit down, shut up and get to work.

I love watching March Madness and the NBA playoffs. One of the fascinating things for me is to watch the energy of the two teams and how it can change during the course of a game. We call this momentum, but momentum is merely the physical reflection of the individual team members energies, the collective team energy and the energy from the fans. Sometimes I think I can almost see the energy swirls behind all the movement. Think about why home teams win so often.

Basketball is so popular that now even God is playing in the NBA. God Shamgod (his real name) was drafted by one of the NBA teams from Providence University.

June 30th was my last day at the office. Unless things change I will never work again. I would rather die than experience that particular kind of torture. To borrow a phrase from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, I will work no more forever. I am not making a statement. I am not trying to create my own reality. I just cant do it anymore. Will the Universe support my decision? I don't know.

When I left Lincoln I decided that I was no longer responsible for my financial situation. If my inner spirit wanted me alive and on the planet IT would have to provide. If nothing more than to take away the pain so that I can function enough to work.

Depending on what the stock market does, I have enough to live for 7-10 years unless something catastrophic comes up. At the end of that time I am prepared to lay down and die.

I gave myself a week to close down my Lincoln apartment and make a quick trip to KC. I would leave from Lincoln. I don't know why but it took me every last minute to pack up and carry everything to my van and to my trailer. It could have been the heat, humidity and the fact that my apartment was on the third floor. I was still loading at midnight the night before I was to leave.

I almost didn't make it out. I have a removable carrier for my motorcycle on the front of the van. It is held onto the frame of my van by two pins. I had the pins in mid May but now they were nowhere to be seen and the stores were all closed. I tried to put water into the tank in my trailer but it all ran out.

The previous November I had made an appointment to have a lot of warranty work done on my trailer. Amy and her boyfriend, Jack, wanted to borrow my van for a trip to Colorado that weekend so I changed my appointment as I could never say no to Amy. When it came time to take my trailer to the shop I couldn't find the trailer hitch. Apparently I hadn't taken it off the back of my van and someone had stolen it. So I went and bought another one and made a new appointment. This time I was successful.

However, when they finished the work on my trailer they had not put the plugs back on my drain pipes from the hot water heater and the fresh water tank. Later I would need the adapter for the electrical connection and I would not be able to find it. Several months later I would find it inside the back cover of the refrigerator where they had placed it while repairing the refrigerator.

In any event I was able to load up everything and make it to the trailer shop the next morning to buy new pins and water plugs. Barring any big bumps I knew the motorcycle carrier wouldn't fall off before I made it to the shop. The parts man couldn't seem to understand what kind of plug I needed and sold me two wrong ones before I gave up and left without one. An hour on the road I figured out what I needed and that I could get it at any hardware store and did indeed get one that evening.

I was heading for Colorado and got to my campsite outside Nederland that evening. I had camped here exactly three years earlier. The next morning I got re-acquainted with my trailer. I had winterized it the previous Fall so had to get the antifreeze out of the system. I couldn't get the hot water heater to work. In fact I couldn't get ANY water out of the hot water faucet. In winterizing the trailer I installed a bypass of the hot water heater. I finally remembered this and switched the valve to let the water flow to the hot water heater.

But I still got no water. It took me two hours of going over every inch of the water system before I finally reasoned there must be two valves even though I could see and feel only one. I examined it again and found it this time. There, everything was up and functioning.

I like camping at this place because of all the hiking trails that are right there. They Aren't so much trails as 4 wheel drive roads but they are great for hiking. Nederland is three miles away for my daily paper and there is a National Forest Service campground five miles in the other direction where I could get water and throw away my trash. Nederland even has a recycling center. I had come back here because I wanted to visit John and Amy who lived in Boulder, about 30 miles away.

But first I would visit with my parents. My sister had come to Denver to attend a workshop. My parents had come a few days later with her son, David, with whom I had dug crystals a couple of years previously. After the workshop we all met in Nederland and later visited Rocky Mountain National Park. We had arranged where and when to meet while I was in KC the week before. I called their motel room in Denver several times but was unable to get in touch with them. They got lost and showed up at the parking lot in Nederland 90 minutes late. I was very frustrated because I had been unable to get in touch with them, and of course they couldn't call me. I wasn't sure that we would ever get in touch.

Two days later the five of us met in Estes Park and toured the National Park. It is a beautiful place on the top of the world. The road across the Park peeks at about 12,500 feet above sea level. There hadn't been much snow there that winter so most of it was gone by this time. It was fun to share these sights with my family, especially since I usually see all of these sights alone. It is more fun when someone else is there. And I like my family. They are all neat people. don't know, though, why they got stuck with me. Maybe the family was big enough they had to take in one rogue. Go figure!

I don't remember much about the two weeks I spent camping outside Nederland. I was still too full of work energy. I know I did see John and Amy a couple of times. And Eric and I got to spend some time together. He's cool. We did see a concert of Eastern Indian music which was just wonderful.

My campground was at 8300 feet. It took a little while to get re-acclimated to the altitude. The attitude I still had. Sunny, warm days and cool nights. It doesn't get much better than this, though I could have done without all of the flies.

There are lots of roads for a motorcycle there but I couldn't enjoy them this time. I had bought a new windshield in Lincoln before I left. They gave me the wrong hardware for it so I couldn't put it on. It took several phone calls before they mailed me the right kit. They even charged me extra for the kit to fit my larger than normal handlebars and then sold me the kit for the smaller one. When I called the factory they told me that I shouldn't have been charged extra. I got the correct one just before I left Nederland. Without the windshield I eat too many bugs.

While in Lincoln Robert McNary and I talked on the telephone quite a bit and really connected. I decided that I needed to go to Montana where he lived and spend some time with him. It was a two day drive from Colorado. Lavina, MT is a wide spot in the road. They claim the population is 167 but I think they counted the sheep. Robert lives in a one room house (plus a bathroom which was added on later) which he rents from his next door neighbor. I parked my trailer in his back yard and plugged into electricity (or would have if I could have found my adapter. Eventually I found out that Radio Shack carried them and purchased one.)

I came with the intention of visiting a few days but ended up staying six weeks. Surprisingly there are lots of New Age people who have been drawn to Lavina and the surrounding area. Montana has a population of 900,000. The county in which Lavina resides is 700 square miles, has two towns (the other not much bigger than Lavina) and 900 people, mostly cattle and sheep ranchers.

Billings, 44 miles south of Lavina, is Montana's largest city with 80,000 people. It is also the biggest city between Denver and Seattle. Billings is nestled in the valley of the Yellowstone River, so named because of the yellow rocks which adorn its banks and because it arises in Yellowstone National Park. The Billings airport is on the bluff which overlooks Billings. From this bluff you can look down and see all of Billings below you. It is quite an interesting and pretty sight.

You may think that 900,000 people are not very many people to have in a state. But it is twice as many people as live in Wyoming, whose largest city is Cheyenne with 50,000 people. Spaces are wide and people scarce in this part of the country.

I was in Lavina two days when George flew up from Dallas. He had told me some time ago that if I ever went to Glacier National Park he wanted to go with me. So he and I went to Glacier. Now Lavina is in the middle of the state and since Glacier is in Montana you might think we were fairly close to it, but we weren't. It was 330 miles to the Park and there was still lots of Montana left on the other side of the Park.

Glacier National Park is an awesome place. It was not named because of the many glaciers in the Park, but because the mountains there were carved by glaciers during the last ice age. There are a few glaciers left there but they are shrinking each year. There is one road across the Park cut into the side of the mountain. It is so narrow that vehicles over 21 feet are not allowed on the road, which precludes most RVs and trailers, though you can go in about ten miles before that restriction applies.

The beauty of Glacier is not that the mountains are so towering, because the tallest peak is less than 10,000 feet, but that you are so close to everything. You drive down the road and you can reach out the window and touch a mountain. There is snow-melt runoff and waterfalls everywhere. The ridges of the mountains were carved by the glaciers in such a way that they look like giant hatchet blades. If you cant go there, you must rent a video and see it for yourselves, because there is no way to adequately describe its awesome beauty.

At the eastern edge of the park is a small town called St. Mary. We camped at St. Mary campground just inside the Park. We arrived with a flat tire. I remembered running over a board with nails some miles back, but we made it to the campground before all of the air went out of the tire. We got it fixed first thing the next morning.

We spent the next seven days hiking and seeing the sites. There are lots of wonderful hiking trails. On one of our hikes we were delayed because of a grizzly bear on the trail. We had to wait until the bear left. Many people hike with, and these are sold at the Park, walking sticks with bells on them to scare the grizzly bears away. But the rangers say the bears are not at all frightened by the bells. They refer to the bells as dinner bells for grizzlies.

There is only the one road through the Park and only so much you can see from the road. To really experience the beauty you need to get out of your car and walk. The campground was at 5,000 feet and was 75 degrees during the day and 40 at night. It seldom got above 55 degrees in the interior of the Park due to the altitude. There was usually a wind, also, to keep things chilly.

George and I would often walk around the campground in the evening. It consisted of three loops. We were on loop C. A quarter of a mile away was the Visitor Center. We would often walk down there and watch some of the programs put on there. One that we saw was singing and dancing by some Blackfoot Indians. This was very interesting. The Blackfoot (called Blackfeet in Canada) were so named because their feet would often get black from the ashes from prairie grassfires through which they would run in their hunting.

One evening we were walking around loop A. There we noticed something very interesting. There was a brick outhouse next to a building housing modern toilet facilities. We read the plaque on it. It stated that it was the last outhouse built in Rome before the advent of indoor plumbing over 100 years ago. It had been disassembled and rebuilt in Glacier Park. It was the little latin loop A loo.

George and I left for Glacier on July 26. On the way there I was telling George that I was probably going to fire my Guides before the summer was out. He suggested firing my High Self also. Curious, I asked what he meant by High Self. He said it was a concept.... I never got past the word concept. I was lost in thought about the word concept. I realized instantly that the High Self was just a concept that we use to explain part of ourselves. The High Self doesn't exist other than us. My High Self is me. I am my High Self. It is a concept which we use to make that part of us more real. A couple of days later I again asked George to explain what he meant by the term High Self. And though I listened hard with both my ears, I couldn't and still cant remember a word he said past the word concept.

George said that July 26th was the day the Portal opened into the Fourth Dimension and was a powerful day. So that night after we set up camp at St. Mary campground, I fired my Guides and High Self. I refused to accept new Guides. Since I wanted no further interference in my life from the spiritual plane and since I truly understand that I AM the Universe, I decided that I would do it all myself. I also had four Protectors whom I dismissed with gratitude as I felt they had done some things for me. My Guides I commanded to have nothing further to do with me. I, on the human level, was now responsible for all aspects of myself and everything that happened to me. I will allow no interference from any source.

I did a little ceremony in which I claimed all authority, responsibility and control for ALL LEVELS of my being, inner and outer, for my conscious self. I would protect myself and reclaim all energies lost to me in this life. The first thing I did was to command my inner self to reconnect the mental energies which I lost in January, 1993. I gave it 60 days to accomplish this. It would be three weeks before I began to notice some thoughts start trickling back into my mind and with more clarity. But it was a good start.
Back in Lavina I took George to the airport. Why would a plane leave at 6 AM?

Through Robert I met some pretty neat people in and around Lavina. First was Rose. She and her husband, Tom, owned and ran the Lavina Crossing Cafe. Though every time I entered the cafe I heard Marty Robbins belting out his song El Paso in which he went to Roses Cantina, so to me the cafe was and will always be Rose's Cantina. When I first met Rose I saw Awareness fairly shooting from her eyes. Over the next several weeks I had a chance to get to know her a little.

She is an awesome being, one of the most powerful I have ever met. She seemed to have read just about everything and knew a lot about a lot. She had been in no formal groups or schools of New Age learning but always managed to find it wherever she was, even in central Montana where she searched the InterNet for the latest in New Age thought. She is also incredibly creative and artistic. She can make a plate of hamburger and fries look too good to eat. I don't know how she does it. She also writes and draws and paints. She showed me a painting of an Indian woman which she had done and I swear I saw a soul looking back at me through the paintings eyes. It was as if the woman in the painting were alive.

Terry and Glenna were new to the area. Glenna was Tom's niece. Later I would come to know that everyone in Lavina is related to either Tom or Rose except for Robert; which explains why they all look alike. Terry and Glenna are famous because their street address really is 123 Main St, Lavina. I thought that was major cool, though I had been in the forest for a while by then. While I was there Terry and Glenna had gone to a Native American gathering in a sacred valley in western Montana. They were quite impacted by the whole experience and had many tales to tell when they returned. This was their first big exposure to this culture and they connected with it on a very Soul level and met many members of their family.

I am not going to list all of the many wonderful people whom I met there. I don't want to tax my brain (where did I put that thing, anyway?) Nicholas lived several miles from town. He, also, was a transplant to the area. He developed herbal flea collars for pets and had a factory to make them in his basement. He employed several people on an as needed basis. His flea collars are sold all over the world. He is also very knowledgeable about the New Age and had read extensively. He also is a scientist and has tinkered with New Age machines. If I had the vaguest understanding of things like that I would tell you about them, but I don't. I just nodded when he explained them to me and tried to impress him with my silence. It is obvious to me that he has a storehouse of off-world information stored in his Subconscious. He will become aware of it when it is needed.

This past Fall I decided that I am no longer going to do readings for people I don't know, though I will for my friends. When I made that decision I began to gain weight. Then I realized that I used to be a medium, now I was a large!

Robert has a friend named Tim. In fact I think Robert lived with Tim for awhile when he first came to Lavina. Robert took me out to Tim's place, not far from Nicholas. Tim loves to plant things and had planted trees and gardens everywhere. I cant tell you much about Tim except that he walks to a different drummer. I am never sure what plane of existence he is on. He reminds me of the grey haired mad professor of the Back to the Future movies, played by Christopher LLoyd. One night Tim decided we needed to have a bonfire in his driveway. So we did. He threw on enough wood to keep the county warm for a week. But that's our Tim.

Jan lived across the street from Robert and is a very old Soul. I traded a dinner at Rose's Cantina to be able to watch the Chiefs on Monday Night Football as she had cable. She worked at another New Age factory. A Chiropractor and his wife who lived in the same area as Tim and Nicholas make these disks of silver or gold with crystals inside which repels energies not consistent with your own. It supposedly repels energy from computer monitors also. His wife channeled the exact configuration of the crystals on the inside of the disk. The disks are handmade at a factory on the Chiropractors land and are sold nationwide. The Chiropractor specializes in Neurology and has an office in Billings.

Jeanne is a medical records transcriptionist and works in her home in Roundup, MT 25 miles east of Lavina and home to the nearest grocery store. There is no grocery store in Roberts county. Robert helps Jeanne in her work when she gets more that she can handle. While I was there she bought a used motorcycle which was way to big for her. Jeanne and I did go for a couple of rides together, I on her bike and she on my smaller one. I strongly recommended that she trade hers for a smaller one which she could more easily handle.

Jane was Robert's next door neighbor and landlord. She does one of the Post Offices rural delivery routes. She gets $10,000 per year to drive her own truck on the three hour route six days a week. She gets no gas or mileage allowance. Every year she bids on the job and the lowest bidder gets the job. The pay isn't enough. The next time you meet a rural route driver be real nice to him or her. Robert and Jane are buddies and help out each other as needed. When Jane cannot make her mail route, Robert will drive it for her in lieu of rent.

While normally very dry and rather hot, the weather in Montana that summer was cool and very wet. As a result the mosquitoes were extremely abundant. If you went outside you got bit. If you stood still at all you got bit a lot. It wasn't until two days after I left that I wasn't itching from bites somewhere. I was going to photo one of these mosquitoes and include it with this letter, but the paper isn't big enough. Around these parts they are called Skeetersaurs and actual skeletons have been found on local farms. Next summer I am going to organize a hunting party. Well have meat for the winter. If you kill a mosquito it reincarns as an IRS clerk.

There weren't any hiking trails for me but there were lots of dirt roads for me to hike. The terrain is kind of flat with little hills everywhere. There are also rolling prairies and even an occasional mountain. There is a lot of hay and wheat grown in the area. In fact caravans of combines were everywhere this time of year and reminded me of gypsies. There weren't any trees except by rivers and on the mountains.

Robert bought an old building in downtown Lavina intending to open an old fashioned remedy shop in it, selling Cayce remedies and other natural remedies. The building was a two story warehouse type building. It had no heat or plumbing, but did have electricity. Robert and I spent my first week there repairing leaks in the roof. I have to hand it to Robert as I think he has taken on a monumental project. Every facet of the building has to be repaired. The upstairs of half of the building used to be the Lavina Opera House and the stage is still there, kind of. But now there is no entrance to it except by climbing up on the roof and going through a window. Robert calls it the Walled Off Astoria.

I hiked every other day, weather permitting, and it did dry out a bit after I got there. The town is two blocks long and two blocks wide so you could walk anywhere in 5 minutes. And so many neat people lived right there in town. It made me feel like I was living in a New Age village. Sometimes we would all gather at Terry and Glenna's house for an impromptu get together. Roses Cantina was the clearinghouse. She was kind of our message board.

Robert and I had many and long conversations. I seemed to be able to tap into his mental energy and use it. I really, really enjoyed the time I spent with Robert. He is a good man and a great spirit. I like him a lot.

I was going to leave the end of August but had to stay to watch the Chiefs game. Then they decided I had to have a crystal sale. Terry and Glenna's house on Main street had a large room facing the street which they didn't use. So we set up the crystal party in there. Rose made a flier; Rose and Glenna decorated the room; and Robert distributed the fliers on a mail run. We had about fifteen people show up and I made $188. Not bad.

Dave had been an electrician most of his life until he moved to some land close to where all the others lived outside town. He was farming about 5 acres in vegetables. Robert and I went out there to buy tomatoes and other vegetables. It was so good to get home grown tomatoes. They are my most favorite food. When Robert and I arrived at the farm we met Dave who was one third naked--the middle third. He said that was because he had no hips. Robert told him he had to do something with the crack of his ass. Dave said he would get some butt putty. One of the large local grocery stores in Billings was Buttreys (pronounced Butt trees) and I guess that is where Dave got his butt putty. However, to Dave's credit, whenever he went to town he did thereafter wear a white tee shirt with an extra long tail.

Finally I did leave Lavina on September 10. I got as far as Billings where I had to buy another alternator, my third in sixteen months. And of course the three month warranty had expired by one month. So another $250. But then it was smooth sailing. Two days later I was in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, where I had camped three years earlier. I had planned to stay there for two weeks but since I overextended my stay in Lavina I had little time to stay here.

Hot Sulphur Springs is the county seat and has a population of 450. The free campground is across the Colorado River from the town and is right on the river. I camped for a day and a half six feet from the river. I like camping near running water. I find it very relaxing. In my brief stay there I relaxed more than I can ever remember being. For some stupid reason I left.

For another stupid reason I didn't want to pull my trailer up the long hill going west out of Albakerk... Alqerbak... uh... Alb., NM, so I went a way which avoided that. Now I was already west of the continental divide. If I went west I would have to travel on a gravel road for twenty miles to get to I-70. I thought the intelligent thing to do would be to stick to the paved roads. Unfortunately that took me east back over the continental divide. Hot Sulphur Springs is at 8300 feet. From there I drove up to 11,700 feet to cross the continental divide. Then I went back down to 8,000 to get on I-70. Then up to 11,300 feet and then down to 8,000 and back up to 11,000 then down and back up to 11,000 and down to 8,000 and back up to 11,600 feet at Vail. Most of it at 20 mph. All this just to save me that New Mexico hill. But from there it was all down hill to Grand Junction 100 miles away. I just set the cruise at 60 and enjoyed the view. That made it all worth while (sic).

I spent the night just east of Grand Junction. The next day I drove pretty much in the rain all day. Just into Utah I took state highway 128 which took me to Moab. It was truly a beautiful drive as the road paralleled the river in the Colorado River Canyon. The road meandered with the river through a red rock canyon. It was gorgeous. The river had carved out some awesome landscape.

I stopped for gas in Moab and the rain began in earnest. Highway 191 south out of Moab is pretty special, too. Red rock hills are prominent there, also, for many miles south of town. The red rocks were obviously carved by water and in the rain I could see water falls spewing forth from the rocks. Often the rocks were three tiered with water falling from one level to the next as if on purpose. Round rocks with waterslides carved from them spewing water from one level to the next as gravity called the water relentlessly to the ground (I attempt to wax poetic.)

Slightly before sunset I made it to my campground in Show Low. They had had an inch of rain that day and most of it was sitting there on the ground waiting for me. As I backed my trailer into my campsite it seemed I was more likely backing a boat into a dock. But after five days on the road I was here. It had rained non-stop there since early July but began to dry out after I got there. This is why I had waited this long to get to Show Low as the monsoon rains usually stop in early September.

Four days on the road and I had plenty of time to think. Too bad I didn't. I understand that Dan Quayle wants to be president in the year 2000. He wants to carry on George Bush's kinder, gentler world. He will start by changing Greenwich Mean Time to Greenwich Nice Time. Frozen yogurt has 110 negative calories per 5 ounce serving. For every 5 ounce serving you eat, it burns off 110 positive calories you already ate. The more you eat the more you lose. Donut holes have no calories, everybody knows that. The reason is that when they make donuts they make the dough into a ball and then mash it flat. Then they centrifuge it and all the calories are forced to the edge of the dough. Since there are now no calories in the middle, they cut it out. Therefore you can eat as many donut holes as you want because they have no calories and that is why! If a married man is by himself in the woods and he talks to himself, is he still wrong?

Since I had left Show Low 13 months earlier I had had but one thought on my mind: to get back to Show Low. Now that I was actually there I had neither plan nor clue. I had to develop a new plan. It was to go to Ruth's Healing Spirit and to Barb and Dan's and reconnect with all of the wonderful people whom I had met the previous summer.

But things had changed. The people had scattered and were no longer a community. They didn't come to the groups. The handful of people with whom I had stayed in touch were still there. Most of the others I didn't see again. Ruth said the locals had stopped coming to her store. A couple of them told me they just didn't like being there anymore. Barb went to the store every Thursday afternoon to do massages if anyone came in wanting one. So I hung out there also.

Three weeks later I noticed that I felt very bad on Thursday nights and all day Friday, after I had spent the afternoon at Ruth's. In the meantime I had done a reading for Ruth telling her that the reason the store was doing poorly was that she needed to own her power and her store. If she would stand up and say Come to My Store they would come. I told her there was no outside energy attacking her store. It is amazing what you can get with a closed mind. After the third Friday I began to believe someone really had done something very bad to the store and that bad energy was causing me such pain when I went there.

A week later Ruth had an advertised sale of my crystals over the weekend. She advertised in a local ad paper. Their presses broke down and they skipped one issue so the only advertising came out late the first day of the sale so no one knew about it. I set up my crystals outside in front of her store. While sitting there I could feel and see 2 or 3 rivers of very negative energy being sent into the store. If I hadn't experienced these things I would never have believed them. This was energy which was consciously being sent to the store by 2 or three individuals. They were doing it with intent and knew what they were doing, using Majick or some other form of powerful ceremony to keep customers away from Ruth's store with the intention of putting her out of business.

I discussed this with Shari and Ruth. Ruth said Thank You somebody for finally believing me. I guess sometimes our beliefs get in the way of truth. For it wasn't in my belief system that someone could affect Ruth's store if she didn't want it. It was a real eye opener for me. None of us knew anyone who knew any white magic or ceremonial magic. Nonetheless Ruth, Shari, Ruth's son Bobby, I and one other friend got together the following Saturday after closing and did our own ceremony.

We called on the Archangels, Jesus and other Spiritual Masters to be with us. Each of us focused on Love to build the energy. We chanted and each of us stated our intentions. Ruth did not want to return the energy to the senders. She asked the Higher Powers to transmute it. But then she is a lot nicer than me. The following week Ruth said that business had picked up and stayed that way. I never again had difficulty being there. Others, also, said the energy had improved dramatically.

One of my experiences which helped me realize something was up at Ruth's happened on my third Friday there. I had been hiking my favorite trail for about twenty minutes. Already I was exhausted. I couldn't breathe and my heart was pounding rapidly and erratically in my chest (but, you ask, where else would it do this, on my sleeve? I think not!) I couldn't go on. I bent down and put my hands on my knees and gasped for breath. Then I commanded all energies not my own to leave. My heart and breathing returned to normal within a minute. And to this day I have had not a single irregular heartbeat since. These episodes have stopped completely. This was important to me also because I have commanded energies to leave me before but nothing ever happened. I felt it did now because I had fired my Guides and claimed absolute control of my energies for my conscious self, so I now had the power.

But the energy in the area had not improved. I could no longer feel that special energy which I felt when I was there before. The energy felt much harsher to me and I no longer enjoyed being there. Part of it surely was that I had become so much more sensitive to energies. Lucky me. But if that were all it was I should be able to feel the special energy more strongly also, yet I couldn't feel it at all. Nevertheless I stayed for two and a half months (and if I knew where the fractions were on this darn computer I wouldn't have to write that out each time.) As I continued to feel extremely uncomfortable there I remembered something that happened my first Thursday in the area. I had spent the afternoon at Ruth's. Afterwards Barb and I went to get the tires on her van rotated. To pass the time we walked around the block. During this walk I suddenly became nauseated, dizzy and extremely disoriented. This continued until I went to bed. I don't know what that was all about, but such an experience is not usual for me.

One day at Ruth's I met a woman who also had her crafts for sale at Ruth's on consignment. Ruth had given her a check and she needed to go to the bank but had no car. I offered to drive her. I had thought Ruth had called her Stormy but it could have been something like Djorme also. People in this area don't often have names like Jane and Bill.

On the drive to the bank I asked if her name was Stormy. She said yes, as in Stormy Webber (weather? what?) Before I could pursue it further she launched into her own explanation. It was Webber and she did have a normal birth name. On the night of her birth it was storming and her mothers sister said they should call her Stormy. Though Stormy went by her birth name and did not hear of this story until she was sixteen (about 7-9 years prior to this.) Since hearing the story of her birth at age sixteen, she has been Stormy.

She talked non stop to and from the bank. I was driving so couldn't take notes. She had been on her own since high school. Prior to coming to Show Low she had lived in her van for 18 months as she traveled about making and selling beaded jewelry. After she came to Show Low she somehow lost her van. (Was a boyfriend involved?) She was now working at the Pizza Hut. Her roommate had recently moved out stealing all of Stormy's jewelry and beads. Stormy found out where she was and stole them back. Now the cops were after Stormy. Then we got back to Ruth's and Stormy walked out of my life, never to be seen or heard again. But she was a delight. She is one of the Innocent Ones. Speaking of which have you seen Dharma and Greg yet? (Wed. on ABC)

I realize a lot of you are in mainstream society and therefore don't have a clue about what is really going on. So I am going to do my best to clue you in. You may want to take notes!

First is the New World Order, the Secret Government and the Trilateral Commission. This pertains to the government behind the government funded by $700 toilet seats and $300 hammers. Under the guise of the UN, Russian troops are going to take over this country and herd us all to concentration camps where we will be forced to make the consumer goods the Elite want. 100,000 Russian troops are stationed at Richards-Gebaur outside KC. The new $100 bills have magnetic strips in them so that when you go through airport security the government knows how much money you have.

Since the Second World War all medical shots have included a microchip so the government can monitor your whereabouts and control your behavior by using computer commands. We think that computers weren't invented until the late 50s and microchips until the 80s, but the Secret Government has all technology decades before they tell us about it.

Barcodes on food have secret commands in them to control our behavior and make us complacent. Every time your refrigerator light comes on the barcode is activated and the programming is transferred to the food and to us when we eat the food. The Government controls the weather and causes all earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. Throughout the country the government has towers which broadcast extra low frequency vibrations (ELFs). These ELFs make us complacent, spend our money, and erroneously believe that inflation and unemployment are down.

Our TVs watch us. The government can watch us with fiber optic cable even if we don't have a TV. Be sure to cover your TV at night and when not in use. All of our telephones are tapped. The recording tapes are triggered by words such as conspiracy, Democrat, militia, New Age, ETC.

The black, unmarked helicopters (these I have seen) were transporting Extraterrestrials to secret bases in the early 90s but now are ferrying about Russian troops to secret bases.

There are many more but these are all I got from my normal friends. If you want more information about these theories, mail me large sums of money in the OLD bills to my secret account in the Cayman Islands. And if any government agents are reading this; I really don't believe this, I made it all up, and there are no sources for any of this.

But speaking of UFOs, I have been battling the Grays lately. I find them in my hair, curly gray hairs like crop circles. I think the ETs are messing with my head. And if I had a metal plate in my head, maybe I could receive commands from them like some of the people I know.

I do so enjoy the terrain in northern Arizona. Ponderosa pines predominate. They are very tall trees with five inch needles. The forest is often not dense here, with little undergrowth (and not many underwriters, either!) It gives me a feeling of openness.

Dan had to go to California to help his brother with some construction. Barb and Dan asked me to camp in their front yard in Dan's absence. I agreed. It was five weeks before Dan returned. Dan had planted a small garden with tomatoes. They were still green when he left the end of September. We had a hard freeze not long after he left. When he got back he was signed for a movie to be titled Frosted Green Tomatoes.

The days seemed to pass without me actually doing anything. I visited with John and Kathleen. They like football (one the Cowboys and the other the Packers.) Since Barb didn't allow sports in her living room, except of course for good sports like me, I would often go to John and Kathleen's to watch Monday Night Football. Shari and I went to a couple of movies. Although the Fall was a little wetter and cooler than normal I hiked as often as I could. Four miles into one of my favorite hikes was a hill of red sandstone and manzanita bushes which always reminded me of Sedona. I called it the Sedona Point. I would often sit there for 20 or 30 minutes. It just felt so peaceful. I had wanted to spend a couple of weeks in Sedona but never made it.

Four year old Robyn and I are friends but when Dan left and I showed up in their front yard she started giving me a hard time. I thought it would abate when Dan returned but instead it got worse. Robyn missed her Daddy a lot and wanted to spend all of her time with him when he returned. I was not allowed to talk to Daddy. One day a few days after Dan returned I returned from a hike to find the three of them sitting in the front yard. I walked up to them to say hi and started talking to Dan about playing tennis. Robyn got mad at me for butting in on her Daddy time and put me in time out. She made me sit in a chair 30 feet away and I was not allowed to talk with them.

After about 30 minutes Dan was able to negotiate my release. I went inside my trailer and showered. That evening after dark I was reading in my trailer when I heard a little knock on my door. It was Robyn. She said, We need to talk. I went outside and she pointed to a chair for me to sit in. She pulled up one opposite. She asked me if I knew why she had put me in time out. I did, but said no. She said that I was causing trouble and being mean and rude and that was not very nice. We talked for a bit and then she said I could go back in my trailer. It was hard not to smile. I had never been chewed out by a four year old before.

In November, eight of us celebrated Milly's 90th birthday. She looks and acts 60 and one day I am going to ask to check her ID. We all had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. When the waitress found out Milly was 90, she asked how she managed to look so young. Man oil, Milly told her. Later the waitress asked if she could get Milly anything else, to which Milly replied, A couple of good men. Must be tough being a 90 year old Scorpio!

In early November Barb kicked me out of their front yard. She and Dan felt they had to concentrate on their relationship and that my being there gave them an excuse not to. I had already agreed to come back for a Thanksgiving pot luck so decided to stay in Show Low and moved to Shari's driveway. don't ya just love people with driveways?! Though as it turned out, Shari, I, Chris and a friend from their work ended up eating chopped and formed Thanksgiving turkey at Denny's. Everybody ended up going out of town but us. We decided to eat out rather than cook but couldn't find any place open.

Something very sad happened the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I was reading in my trailer that afternoon and my light bulb burned out suddenly. That evening I went in to Shari's to watch Suns basketball, turned on a lamp and the bulb burned out. Later that night we learned that Dan had died that morning. He had become extremely mentally confused after a series of epileptic seizures on Thanksgiving and the day after. In that confused state he wandered out of the house and into the path of an oncoming train outside Tucson, where he, Barb and Robyn had gone for Thanksgiving. He was killed instantly. He was 45.

His death hit me hard. I liked Dan a lot. We had things to do which we hadn't done yet. I felt like a part of me was missing. Of course it hit Barb much harder. They had been together about six years. I stayed in Show Low until Barb returned, to express my condolences. Unfortunately there is never much to say. Barb, the love and support of all your friends is there whenever you need it. We all love you so much.

Barb asked Shari to contact Dan as a Deathwalker to make sure he was okay. She did so that evening. Dan was waiting for her and said, What took you so long?! He said he was just fine. It was time for him to go Home as he had finished what he had come to earth to do. Then he gave Shari a couple of messages for Barb. Barb said later that he often came to her in her meditations and spoke with her.

Before I left Show Low in early December we had a five inch snowstorm. The morning I left parts of my trailer were frozen to the ground and I thought I might have to thaw it out before I could leave. But I managed to get my trailer ungrounded and left for Phoenix. When I arrived four hours later it was sunny and 65 degrees. It was like a different world. As I crossed the Salt River in Phoenix I couldn't help but smugly think that at least in Kansas we have water in our rivers (and in the Spring also in our basements!) The Salt River is wide and dry.

The beautiful Argena had moved to Phoenix last summer to live with two of her friends. She had met Al and Renee at the Stell Community in Illinois where they lived in the early 80s. Now they have their own little community again. I camped in their driveway for two weeks. (Love those driveways!) The three of them made me feel absolutely at home. Though I stayed in my trailer, I had the run of their home, including their larder. They rent a spacious three bedroom (with a fourth in the converted double garage) house complete with a large swimming pool in the back yard.

Life was easy. What a change from the cold in Show Low. It was getting close to Christmas but it was hard to get used to palm trees, sunny and warm days, and Christmas lights. It was like can you find three things that don't belong in this picture. Al is retired after spending a life in a variety of interesting jobs. He is now actively pursuing his own spiritual path, reading and meditating in his spare time. Renee has a delightful, down-to-earth quality which I really enjoy. She is kind of the House Mother. Anybody who shows up is welcome to stay as long as they like and guests drop in fairly often. I am sorry. I cannot give you their address.

I do not enjoy the energy of Phoenix at all and was not sure that I could stay more than a day. They live in west Phoenix, next to Glendale and Peoria and live on (HA! thought you were going to trick me, eh?) They had found a pocket of very tolerable energy and made it even better. As long as I stayed in their house or in my trailer I was okay. If I ventured into the city, I hurt. I ran my errands quickly and infrequently. I was on my way to Quartzsite to winter with Santarra, she joined us in Phoenix for the last couple of days. Before we left, Al, Renee and Argena had all become coneheads.

Phoenix is actually laid out very nicely. Major streets run every mile and are wide. Every couple of miles at the intersections of the major roads are shopping areas, so you never have far to travel to shop or get groceries. (Unlike Lavina where you have to drive 25 miles to shop.) One thing that I find quite interesting about Phoenix is that right in the middle of the city are several mountains which stick up several hundred feet and reroute traffic. This was a great idea on the part of the City Planning Commission to relieve the drudgery of an otherwise flat and desolate landscape.

On December 17th Santarra and I left for and arrived in Quartzsite, 120 miles west of Phoenix on I-10, 20 miles from the California border. It was sunny and 70 that day. Ah, paradise!

Things had changed since I had been there last, two years ago. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had closed the area to camping within 15 miles of Quartzsite in all directions except for three areas of 14 day limit free camping and the long term area in which you can camp all Winter for $100, double the $50 fee of two years ago. The long term area had trash pick up and outhouses and not much else for our $100. You say $100 for six months of camping is not bad. And it isn't except for two things. It is public land and by law we are supposed to be able to camp on public land for free. In January there can be up to 300,000 RVs camped on those 11,000 acres. NOT my idea of camping.

In the area between Quartzsite and Yuma, 80 miles south, there have been as many as one million RVs camped there at one time. If only half of them are in the long term camping areas, which are also in the Yuma area, that would be $50,000,000. Not a bad business to let us camp on our own land.

I camped at one 14 day area for thirteen days and then moved to another. On the third night in the second area I awoke at 3:00 AM and couldn't get back to sleep until after seven. Contrary to my usual practice I had left my shades open to let the sun warm the trailer in the morning. I was still in bed at 10:00 when two U.S. Marshals drove up in a jeep. I wasn't really dressed to receive a couple of
U.S. Marshals so I ran into the bathroom to dress.

To make a long story short, when I ran to the bathroom to dress he thought I was hiding drugs so he was very hostile to me. He wanted to search my trailer and I said no. He gave me a $50 ticket for exceeding the 14 day limit. It was not a pleasant experience. Several weeks later I went to the Quartzsite Visitor Center to get the Rules for BLM camping. I was told that if you exceed your welcome they just ask you to leave. You can camp in non restricted areas for up to 14 days and then have to go at least 25 miles away as the crow flies. 14 days later you can come back. The Marshall must have been convinced I was hiding drugs so he gave me the ticket instead of asking me to leave.

I moved to the same campground in Quartzsite at which Santarra was staying. There are only 4 real streets in Quartzsite, 2 perpendicular highways and two local roads. The year round population is 2,000. To keep these gray haired rabble rousing retirees on the straight and narrow path they had cops from the U.S. Marshall, the Quartzsite Marshal (city police), the County Sheriff, and the DPS (state police). I have no idea what heinous crimes they expected these elderly men and women to commit but there were cops everywhere. Even if they did commit a crime, they couldn't possibly get away as traffic was bumper to bumper on the two roads through town for at least a mile in either direction of the one stop sign.

They must have had a contest for most tickets written as even Santarra got a warning ticket from the state police for failing to signal a right turn into the campground. They were also giving tickets for jaywalking. Now you have to understand that Quartzsite is mainly on either side of a mile long road. There are no intersections, no crosswalks and no lights. How else are you going to get across? Drive?

And Clinton wants to give us 100,000 MORE cops? The ones we have now don't have enough to do. Violent crimes have gone down in each of the last five years. Some crimes are down lower than at any time since they began keeping national records in 1972. Murders are down. Burglaries are down. Rapes are down. They have been going down 5-10% per year for the last five years.

They use the War on Drugs to get us to spend more and more on Law Enforcement. They say that drugs ruin lives. Well, so does ten years in jail. I have never felt that the government should legislate morals or victimless crimes. We should legalize prostitution and drugs and tax them like any other business. We have more people in prison per capita in the U.S. than any other industrialized country except Russia.

I did not like the energy in Quartzsite at all. It hurt big time. It got so bad when I was in the campground in town that I had to get out every day; either to hike or just drive 5 or 10 miles outside the city and just sit for a few hours.

The first of February I moved to a campsite 20 miles northeast of Quartzsite without a neighbor within one mile. I could breathe again. I could start to loosen up. I do so love camping with no one else around, though I would sure like having my friends camp with me. Come on down, now ya hear!

To make my camping more enjoyable I bought a satellite dish and service from DirecTV. Now I get basic cable for $25 per month right here in the middle of the forest. ESPN! CNN Headline news! The weather channel! There is a God! God Shamgod owns 25% of DirecTV. (Just kidding.) I figured that I was spending much more than $25 per month going to Sports Bars to watch my Chiefs, Jayhawks and the NBA playoffs. And it is so darn easy now. Just try to drag me away. HA! Just try.

I could have bought an expensive Winegard brand dish to mount on my trailer but got the less expensive kind that you put on the ground. I was telling this to my friend Amy in Lincoln. She said she would have to buy one of those for her kids. I told that was not what it meant.

I had been looking forward to getting back to Quartzsite (that is a hard word to type) because the solar panels I had bought there last time weren't keeping my batteries charged up.