When I left off my letter of April 6, 1991, I was staying with K'Leah in her extra bedroom. I had stayed there for a little over two weeks while the rain and snow came down. We had six inches of very wet snow for the St. Patrick's Day parade. The parade went on as the snow slowly melted. I stayed with K'Leah a few extra days after the rains stopped to finish my April 6 letter. It would be two months before it rained again.

My first campsite was on a direct line halfway between Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock. Bell Rock is an electric vortex and Cathedral Rock is a magnetic vortex. It was a very nice campsite, flat with trees to shade my van. There was even a tree branch situated such that I could hang up my hammock swing, the first time since I had left KC! I enjoyed my stay there and often had a campfire and listened to 60's music on my tape player. As usual, that had the effect of taking me back to the emotion I associated with the song originally.

The energy at this campsite was very intense and I had quite a bit of difficulty sleeping there, yet it felt right to be there. That Spring the temperature was about normal but it was the windiest Spring on record. One day during one of my outdoor camper showers, just after I had completely soaped up my body, a gust of wind came up and plastered me with red dust from head to toe. It didn't bother me, though, since I just rinsed the dust off with the soap. Had it happened five minutes later after I had rinsed off the soap and run out of water, I would not have been so mellow about the experience!

My friend from Bavaria, Heribert, and I climbed up to the top of Bell Rock. It was a very exciting experience. It is not an easy climb, though needs no special equipment. We stayed up there about an hour and meditated. The energy of the vortex made me feel that I could just take off and fly. Fortunately I didn't try! Coming down I came to a narrow passageway that would require me to jump to a narrow ledge about eight feet below me. I always felt that I could get down what I get up, but this time I was stumped. I was afraid that I would miss the ledge and tumble down the rock for many more feet. I don't mind dying, I just don't want to get banged up badly. After displaying my cowardice to Heribert for five minutes, who had already successfully made it to the ledge, I jumped. Successfully I might add. The rest was easy.

From the top of Bell Rock I could see a trail which was not on any of my maps. A few days later I decided to find it from ground level and hike it. It was to become, and still is, my favorite Sedona hiking trail. The trail starts out next to Bell Rock and winds behind the Village of Oak Creek, the southern extension of Sedona, before circling back to Bell Rock. The energy there seemed very conducive to my reflective/meditative hikes and I spent many wonderful afternoons on the trail. Somehow on that trail I could get in touch with my inner Self more easily than I could anywhere else on my travels.

After two weeks I moved to my next campsite on the other side of Sedona, off Dry Creek Road. Again there was ample shade and a tree limb for my hammock. But there was no out house nearby so I had to start using a latrine. I continued hiking 2-3 hours per day, 4-5 days a week.

The week leading up to Saturday, April 27, which was one year after my Crater Lake incident, I took as a retreat. I tended to avoid people and stay in my own space that week. During this week I got mice in my van again, so I set up my tent while keeping the mousetraps set 24 hours a day. Several mice bit the dust that week. On Wednesday I was hiking and stuck my knee on a mescal thorn all the way to the bone. I managed to hike the six miles back to camp, but the knee stiffened up too much to hike for the next two days. On Friday I had gone into town to take a shower. When I returned the tent had been blown down and had several tears in it. Was I pissed! In fact I was livid! Here I was trying to have a Spiritual retreat leading up to what I hoped would be some kind of awakening and I was getting more aggravating experiences. Well I gave up. I took down the tent, which was filthy with red dust, and went back to sleeping in the van with the mice.

On my last day there I had packed my van in preparation for moving to the next campsite. I had a ten o'clock appointment to get my hair cut at my campsite by a friend whom I had known in KC and who had since moved to Sedona. She was driving for one of the jeep tour companies, but had been a hairdresser before that. Well, I dug a new latrine and as I swung my ass over the hole, I sat on a prickly pear cactus. I spent the next ten minutes pulling thorns and hairs out of my butt. I think I still have a bald spot on my left cheek from that.

After my haircut I drove to a new campground at the top of Oak Creek Canyon. The entrance was across from a scenic view rest stop. There was an outhouse there so I felt like I was back in the lap of luxury. While looking for the particular place I would camp of the half mile abandoned logging road, the strap which holds my motorcycle on my trailer broke and my motorcycle fell off. The windscreen and one of the mirrors broke. The bike was entangled on the trailer and it took me 30 minutes of huffing, puffing and straining these 44 year old muscles to unhook the bike and get it upright again. Outside of a few scrapes and dents, nothing major was wrong with the motorcycle.

I eventually found a place to park my van at the end of the road. This was a flat area overlooking the top of Oak Creek Canyon. I could look straight down the Canyon for several miles. There were no hiking trails up there but there were several logging roads which I hiked. The terrain was quite different from Sedona. I was 1700 feet higher in elevation at 6200 feet. The earth was brown rather than red and the trees were tall pines instead of the scrub pines and firs which dominated the landscape around Sedona. I was halfway between Sedona and Flagstaff so spent even more time alone. I had gone there because it had gotten hot in Sedona and was 10-15 degrees cooler there.

The next day I went to Flagstaff to buy a new mirror and windscreen. The windscreen which I had broken had doubled in price in the ten years during which I had it. So I bought a smaller one. Riding the bike without a windscreen was tough. The bugs hurt when hit at sixty miles per hour and the wind force is very uncomfortable. I can't imagine riding without one. The small one I bought didn't do the job so I had to go back and buy the bigger one. Once again it cost me extra money trying to scrimp and get by with something that isn't really what I wanted. I hope I learn that lesson sometime soon.

After a few days a cold front came through so I went back down to Sedona and camped in various places. I was getting the urge to leave Sedona but wasn't sure where I wanted to go. Several people had mentioned that Durango, Colo was a Spiritual place and the more I thought about it the more it seemed like the place to go.

By this time it was the middle of May and hadn't rained for six weeks. The desert was in full bloom. It was amazing to me that even after no rain for six weeks the vegetation could bloom. There was color everywhere; blues, violets, reds, oranges, and yellows. No sooner did one flower or shrub stop blooming than another began to open up.

One of my favorite motorcycle drives was to take the road through Cottonwood to Jerome and on to Prescott. There are only three paved roads around Sedona so my choices for motorcycling there were severely limited. One road goes to Flagstaff through Oak Creek Canyon and is a very pretty drive. A second goes straight south for seventeen miles and hooks up with I-17 which goes to Phoenix. The third heads west.

The fifteen miles to Cottonwood are nothing special as it is flat with scrubby vegetation. But after you leave Cottonwood, you start climbing the mountain to Jerome, an old copper mining town which is now a tourist attraction and art center. It is perched on the side of the mountain a mile high. There is no flat ground. The city is carved into the side of the mountain. The road winds through Jerome and on up the mountainside. As you leave Jerome the first sight you see is copper colored rocks jutting out of the mountain. These are eroded in tiny cracks and are quite beautiful.

The road winds on through forested mountains until it reaches 7,023 feet. There is a brief highland before the road takes you down into the Prescott valley, a fifteen mile flat stretch of highway before you hit the next mountain. Five miles north of Prescott, the highway turns south. There are located the Dells; huge, smooth granite rocks sticking out of the ground, eroded by weather and time until they look like fairy, dwarf or gnome castles carved into the rocks. Seeing the Dells always makes me feel as though I am on the top of the world with the Earth's spine sticking through. They also make me feel like I have stepped into a faerie land, a very magical place. I tried to take pictures of the Dells but they just show a blob. I did buy the only two postcards of the place I could find. Indeed I had to make a special trip to buy them because the stores had just closed my first trip there.

There are four main vortexes, or places of intense energy, located in and around Sedona. I did make it to all four, though only spent time at Bell Rock and Boynton Canyon vortexes because they had trails to hike. The energy from the vortexes can be felt all over the area. I didn't care much for the energy in the town of Sedona itself, but truly loved the energy in the National Forest outside the town. The Airport Road vortex is in the central part of Sedona between Uptown and West Sedona. The vortex energy spirals out of two hills just off the road to the airport and from these hills you can see all of Sedona and the surrounding red rock hills. This is a must see!

There are all kinds of New Age people in Sedona. You have your channellers, your healers, your psychics and your UFO believers. People are always claiming that Sedona is a hotbed of UFO activity and that they frequently see UFO's. In all my time of camping there I never saw one. But there is a lot of UFO lore in Sedona. There are unmarked, black helicopters that frequently fly over the area, which I have seen, that are supposed to be connected to the UFO's in some way. There is supposed to be a UFO base deep in Secret Canyon north of Sedona. People are always telling of UFO encounters.

Every Wednesday I attended a meditation group. I heard of many unusual occurrences and happenings during these weekly meetings. It made me feel so normal. I did meet a woman from New York state who had had her legs paralyzed ten years earlier at age seventeen. She had taken several healing treatments from a local healer and had thrown her crutches away and was now going on hikes.

My last two weeks in Sedona passed quickly and routinely. I did the usual things of hiking, motorcycle riding and reading. I did make it to the Grand Canyon one cloudy afternoon. It is truly awesome and beautiful. I felt finished with Sedona and was looking forward to going to Durango.

The day before I left I washed my van and motorcycle and heard on the radio the song, "Time for a cool change". I thought that was appropriate. When I left the next day it was raining--for the first time in 60 days. I stopped in Flagstaff to pick up and install the motorcycle windshield which I had had to order. It was misting but I got it done.

The drive to Durango was very pretty as is most of the scenery in that part of the country. It was partly cloudy until I got to Colorado and I camped that night in the rain.

The next day I went to the Chamber of Commerce and the National Forest Service office to find places to camp. The nearest free place to camp was about 12 miles north of Durango. The mountain wildflowers were in full bloom and the air smelled very sweet. I found a nice place to camp just off a gravel road.

It rained almost every afternoon while I was in Durango. Apparently the late summer monsoon rains had merged with the lingering Spring rains. So I tried to hike early. In contrast to Sedona, there were several paved roads on which to ride my motorcycle. Unfortunately I didn't get to ride down too many of them because of the omnipresent rains.

There is a New Age bookstore there and I learned of a group which met on Tuesday evenings hosted by a channel named Anna Smith. She had four planets in Leo and was rather self-centered but had gathered some nice people around her. The meetings consisted of a guided meditation and the members of the group trying to psychically answer any questions the others might have. Apparently they thought they were the reincarnation of several characters from Camelot. They often claimed they were getting their answers from Merlin.

On my first night there, I noticed a young woman named Ely. Her six year old daughter was there and stared at me the whole time. Ely asked the group to tell her how she could do God's will in her life. They gave a lot of inane advice. It was easy to tell that everything that this woman did was heart centered. She had wonderful energy and just radiated love from her being. She and her daughter had to leave the group early. As she passed by me I told her that she was so love filled that I couldn't imagine that everything she did wasn't exactly God's will.

I was glad that I told her that even though I hadn't yet met her, because I never saw her again, as she left Durango for the rest of the Summer. That experience made me much more candid with others when I meet them. I felt there was never any harm in telling someone something nice about themselves. But the main reason I did it was because I felt like it; definitely not because I thought she needed to hear it.

There was a Days Inn on the northern edge of town which had an indoor swim club. They let me take showers there, sometimes for $3 and sometimes for free, depending on who was manning (oops! personning) the desk. They also had a lounge at the Days Inn where I drank no-alcohol beer and watched The Bulls beat the Lakers to everyone's surprise. One night there I met a woman who was a sales rep for Lifesavers. What a job! She gave me some more Lifesaver holes, which I think are a gas. Her husband was a goldminer for one of the last operating mines in the area, although I believe it subsequently closed down.

Back at my campground my van got stuck in the mud at an angle and I had to sleep on a non level cot and try to keep from falling out when I rolled over at night. The slopes on which I park my van seem to always be angled away from the wall of my van. So I am never in any danger of rolling into the wall of my van, just off my cot on the other side. It didn't dry up so after two days I got the idea to put pine needles under the wheels to get the van unstuck from the mud. It worked and thereafter I was very careful to park in a place where I could easily get out.

The mice were back with a vengeance. Every morning I had 2 or 3 dead mice in my three mousetraps. I was also plagued with mosquitoes. I would get 8-10 bites just going for a leak in the morning. I wasn't having a whole lot of fun. One day I had gone for a motorcycle ride and gotten caught in the rain. I got home and dried off. The sky had begun to clear so I took my motorcycle into town for a shower and to buy some groceries. It clouded up while I was in the grocery store and began to rain. So I stopped off at the Days Inn lounge to dry off and wait for the rain to stop. It stopped raining for 30 minutes so I decided to head for camp. The closer to camp I got the harder it rained and by the time I got there I was soaked for the third time that day!

My motorcycle kept falling over. Twice I came out of a store to find it lying on the ground. It weighs 459 pounds, so that was not my most favorite sight! A couple of times the kickstand would sink into the ground at night and I would have to pick it up to begin the day. Twice I was driving on rutted dirt roads and the bike got caught in the ruts and fell over. I got muddy but no other damage since I had been going only 2 or 3 mph. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what this was all about.

On Father's Day, June 16, I had taken the motorcycle to get a newspaper. The clouds were breaking up so I decided to go for a little spin. I had driven for several miles and had gone a short way down a lightly graveled road. On my way back I was going about 15 mph when something grabbed the front wheel of the motorcycle threw it back and forth a couple of times and then slammed the bike down on the ground with me under it. I was okay except for a cracked rib and the usual assortment of scrapes and abrasions. But my new, two week old $105 windshield was broken into small pieces. Now I REALLY couldn't figure what this was all about. After having my first windshield for ten years, I had now broken two in just over a month.

I spent the next week trying to figure things out with no success. That Tuesday night I decided to ask the group if they knew what was going on with the motorcycle and with the invasion of mice. Their consensus was that the mice were there for me to learn to love them and I was supposed to give up my motorcycle. Well I categorically rejected those "insights" as totally wrong. But I spent the next two nights and a day rethinking who I was and getting back in touch with who I feel that I am as a Spiritual Being, so some good came of it.

Two days later, on Thursday, I noticed that my back tire was bald. I had been keeping an eye on it as I knew it was getting old. But somehow I had missed that it was worn to the fiberglass in some locations. Well I thought this was just another in a series of unpleasantries which had been happening of late. The tire had only 6,000 miles on it and should have gotten at least twice that.

I had been at that campground for three weeks and on Saturday decided to change campgrounds and buy a new tire. The tire cost $110 installed and took only an hour. The moment I mounted the motorcycle after the tire was installed I KNEW that the bad things had been happening to the motorcycle to alert me to the fact that my back tire was worse than bald. I knew that those troubles were over, so I could buy another windshield without fear that it would break also. I felt great relief with this. Within a few days I had spent $100 on a new windshield.

The new campground was 17 miles west of Durango but had water nearby as well as an outhouse, so I thought I was in seventh heaven. The mosquitoes and flies weren't bad there either. There was a nice stream which flowed by this campground so I had the pleasant sound of running water to sleep to. And it rained only half the time the remaining three weeks I stayed there. The energy had definitely changed.

There is plenty of hiking around Durango, which is 6900 feet above sea level. Durango is located at the southern edge of the mountains and of the San Juan National Forest. The clear and rapidly flowing Animas river bisects the city. It is a tourist town, but most of the tourist activity is in the mountains north of Durango. It is a very clean and pretty city with an historic downtown area. It still has a frontier aura about it. I like Durango a lot.

The Colorado Trail begins here and goes to Denver. It is a very nice trail through mountains, valleys, forests and across several creeks. I hiked this several times (though not all the way to Denver) and got caught in the rain only a handful of times.

The road that goes past my second campground goes on to the top of the mountain. My camp was at 8,000 feet and was ten degrees cooler than Durango which was beginning to get to 90 degrees with some regularity. One day I took my motorcycle up the road as far as possible before it became passable only with a four wheel drive vehicle (or a two leg drive vehicle.) I walked all the way to the end of the road which, according to my National Forest map, was 12,500 feet above sea level. I took two breaths for every step and had to stop every 100 yards to catch my breath and still my beating heart. But it was well worth it. From the top of the road I could see mountain peaks one after the other in all directions. I felt as though I were truly on the top of the world.

There were some abandoned gold mines along the road. In the western part of the country quartz often is found with gold. I saw several rocks with small quartz crystals growing on them and, of course, had to have some for souvenirs. It was an all day trip but remains one of my favorite memories of my stay in Durango.

The Tuesday after I had moved to my second campground I went back to the group and told them a little about who I was and why I thought their insights were wrong. I didn't tell them everything but was fairly candid. Anna then said that she had asked her Guides who I was but they had refused to tell her. That was an interesting evening.

My second time at the group I met a woman named Calida who had just moved there from Sedona (as you could figure from the name.) She was a precious green eyed blonde Star Being. We became friends and did a little hiking together. She was very open when she was a little girl, both emotionally and psychically. Her parents were both old world German stock and insisted she suppress her psychic insights and control her emotions. So, of course, she did. Now she funnels her precious self through her head. She acts very mental though there is all of this soft, gentle energy about her. I talked to her about this and she said that I was just projecting. I guess I should learn to keep my mouth shut! But we continue to be friends, though I have not seen her in a year. Thank God for the Post Office.

For the Fourth of July weekend my friend, the beautiful and talented Amy from Kansas City and her three year old son Eric visited me. We hiked, camped, and campfired together for four days. The three of us would sit around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and listening to Donald Duck on Eric's tape player. It was so special having someone to share my experiences with. Amy is very love filled and open and so easy to get along with and I enjoyed having her in my space. Eric can be an absolute angel or a little devil, as one day he screamed for thirty minutes because he didn't get his way.

Eric taught me quite a lot. As I watched him around the camp I noticed you knew at all times exactly how he felt in the moment he felt it. He spent all of his time playing and expected to be taken care of at all times. He was totally "in the moment". There was no past or future for him; only the NOW. All of his thoughts, energies, attention and concentration were on the only moment that existed for him. Eric worry? Never! He would also come to me and say, "You nice. Me like you." And I thought, how simple to be that straightforward. I have tried to adopt that approach into my life.

Amy's gentle energy had permeated my being in those four delightful days and I felt sad when she and Eric left. I had to go back to hugging bears and trees.

By this time I had decided to leave Durango and move on to Taos, NM. Taos just seemed like the next place to go. The Tuesday after Amy and Eric left, I went into town in my van to shower and go to the group. My van overheated when I got to Days Inn, so I let it cool off while I showered. When I got out I noticed that the water had leaked out. I went to a grocery store nearby and used their hose to fill up. But the water ran out as quickly as I put it in. There was a hole in a three inch hose at the bottom of my engine block. By this time the town had closed up, so I quickly drove to the building where the group met. I spent the night in their parking lot and spent three hours the next morning putting on a new hose. It wasn't difficult, just hard to get to. Trying to squeeze that three inch hose onto those two metal nipples on either side was most of the battle. But I succeeded.

I delayed my leaving until after the group meeting the following Tuesday as I wanted to say goodbye to my friends there. I had broken camp and packed my van and spent the night again in the parking lot. It was strange to see lights at night. I left first thing the next morning.

I left Durango for Taos, New Mexico on Wednesday, July 17. The drive there was very beautiful with broad grassy valleys, forested mountains and rocky peaks. I found a campground seven miles west of Taos nestled between the highway and a mountain river.

It took me a week to make some contacts in the New Age community. There are a couple of New Age bookstores, but the biggest is Merlin's Garden, just east of the Plaza. The owner is a very nice woman named Margi. She opened the store the previous December but already it had her wonderful energy. I told her I would like to bring my cot in there and spend the night, I would be her watchdog, but she declined my offer. There was a channel named Rebecca who did weekly group channelings. Several people attended her sessions. For ten dollars she allowed everyone to ask one question. Her guides could not answer my questions to my satisfaction although the other people seemed to get a lot out of the sessions. So after two sessions I did not go back. But someone at that group told me of a meditation group which met on Sunday evenings.

I went there the next Sunday and met Francis and the host, Cathy Rae Black. She is a massage therapist who rented the building and was starting a healing center. She had wonderful energy which she spent eight years developing and learning to project to others. It was a fun experience. I did have to have a massage from her and it was a relaxing, pleasurable experience. I did not have an opportunity to get to know her better but did go to her meditations for the duration of my stay in Taos.

The days were warm and the nights cool. Since it rained almost every afternoon, I tried to hike in the mornings. I could not ride my motorcycle very much while there because of the constant threat of rain. I did ride it one very pretty morning down NM State Road 434 which winds along a fast running stream in a park like setting. When I was 50 miles from my camp a storm came up suddenly and it began to rain. It was July 29 and I rode through rain, hail and even some snow which was one and a half inches deep in places on the road. I got soaking wet and was almost knocked off the motorcycle when a bus and I reached a pool of water on the road at the same time and the spray from the bus hit me in the chest.

When I got back to my van, I was cold, wet and upset that such a lovely morning was so ruined by the second half of the day. So I decided to start giving God demerits. He got ten big ones for that fiasco. When He gets 500, He goes to Time Out and I get to take over.

My campsite was very nice and fairly private. Again, there was a stream running twenty feet from my van. There was a wooden bridge over the stream and two campsites on the other side of the stream. My campsite was at the end of the road and there were only three other campsites on this end of the road. Trees provided plenty of shade to keep my dark blue van cool. There was an outhouse on the campgrounds and fresh springwater five miles back toward Taos. There was no charge for camping there as there was no drinking water on the campground itself. The National Forest Service doesn't charge for camping even at developed sites unless there is fresh water on the grounds. Fortunately I could often find campsites with no water on the grounds but available nearby.

The campground hosts were very friendly, Susan and Royce Pound. Susan acted as the campground social chairwoman and made sure everyone knew each other. They were a couple in their mid 30's who received a small monthly income from the rental of their farm in south central Kansas. They and their three year old boy travel the country in their trailer.

After I had been there a couple of weeks they found a thirty year old woman dead in her car. She had shot herself during the night. Susan took this personally, so when Barbara showed up two weeks later and told Susan that she was a vegetarian and depressed, Susan came and told me I should go talk to her since I was a vegetarian and we had that in common. So I did.

Barbara was young and pretty and having boyfriend troubles. She slowly began to tell me about herself and since I did not feel like saying anything I just listened. She was nice. I liked her. She was a massage therapist from New York City and had been traveling in her camper van since April. Gradually she opened up and shared herself with me. She was a very pure and precious woman. We hung out with each other for several hours each day and just talked. So it was more than a twinge of sadness that I felt when she left five days later.

Just prior to Barbara's appearance Margi had invited me to dinner and to meet her live in boyfriend. Steve was a yoga teacher and was very nice. While laid back, he had very intense and aware energy but I later learned he didn't want to be on the planet. A week later he was in an accident and died. Even though Margi had been prepared for his death since he had wanted to leave, she took the actual event hard. Steve had been in charge of the store's newsletter so I offered to help Margi put out the September issue. She accepted and I worked with her a bit on her Macintosh. I actually didn't do much but it took several meetings to accomplish what little I did, and I got to talk to Margi. Mostly it was about Steve. I wanted to help her to emotionally recover from Steve's death, but never did figure out a way to do that.

They closed down the campground the day after Labor Day. Ranger Ben finally kicked me out on August 28, three weeks longer than is legal to stay. I was planning on visiting a friend from Sedona in Denver on September 5, but instead decided I felt like I should be in Kansas City by Labor Day. So I up and left Taos and drove to Wichita, Ks to visit a friend before heading back to KC.

But my stay in the great Southwest taught me a lot about other cultures, peoples and languages. And even an old dog like me is sometimes capable of learning a new trick or two. I did pick up a little bit of the local language. "Carpe diem " means that carp is the fish of the day. And "Que pasta" means I'm hungry, what's for dinner.

I stayed with my parents in KC and very much enjoyed my visit with them. The energy in KC had gotten heavier since I was last there in January. It was very hard on me. I was tense and anxious while there. They have discovered gangs and driveby shootings since I had left nineteen months earlier.

Although the energy there was heavier, many of my friends whom I hadn't seen in seven to twelve months had really blossomed. Several were now involved in meaningful romantic relationships and these are people whom I have known for many years and who have been "chronically single". They are now well into the process of expressing those wonderful qualities which I have long felt inside of them but that they were unable to express outwardly. This confirmed the feeling that I had for a long time that from September 1991 to September 1992 would be a time that many would open up; those who are the lightbearers and wayshowers. It is time to be who we are and put both feet firmly on our path and teach others by the example of how we live our lives and what we do.

My money was almost gone. I was no longer willing to go into the business world to make money. While hiking in late August it came to me that instead of laying down in a forest and waiting to see which would come first, starvation or enlightenment, I would go to Arkansas and watch the leaves change and dig crystals for five or six weeks. Then I would go back to Sedona and sell crystals wholesale to the public and do readings. I feel that the Universe wants me here on the planet and decided that it was about time that it started doing something to help keep me here. Actually, starving to death does not sound all that bad except that I think that I would find it extremely boring and may not be able to see it through, hour by hour, day by day. Though at least I would get my trim, boyish figure back.

The day I left Taos I received a letter that said a friend from Hawaii whom I had not seen in three years would be in KC when I got there. Dawna is a channel and has provided me with a lot of truly wonderful and joyful experiences and has given me much insight into myself and who I am. She brought with her a friend who is a Psychotherapist. Reenie is a beautiful being who always speaks and acts from the heart and is an excellent listener. Meeting her was a true joy and a blessing. I must have done something right along the way to deserve that! The three of us had much fun playing together.

I also enjoyed tremendously being reunited with my friend Stan. He is a local KC musician who plays jazz trumpet, keyboard and drums. He can channel the essence of your Spirit to you as music as well as creating music for you for specific reasons, such as to help you get in touch with the inner you or overcome fear or increase your heart energy, etc. He can do it by mail if you are interested.

Every chance we get Stan and I got together and "channel" for each other. This consists of getting into a more relaxed space and answering questions for each other. When Stan and I last channeled for each other I tried something new. I took my list of questions which I had asked him the time before and had him ask me those questions when I was in the channeling state. I didn't know if I would receive anything new or just regurgitate what I already consciously knew was true. I was amazed at how much new information came to me. And it felt much more complete. Interestingly, I could not get anything on two of my questions about who I am. But the experience was incredible! I felt so whole and happy. I didn't want to stop! I was very excited by the experience and couldn't wait to do it again.

On September 21, I went to Springfield, Mo to attend the wedding of Jennifer Lynn, Anna Jane Leigh's daughter. I had met her when Anna Jane and I dated, four years earlier. I got to see Anna Jane again which was a big thrill for me. I hadn't seen her since I was in Portland, Or in August of 1990. I also got to meet her 24 year old son, Chris as well as her first husband. I got to meet them all! And it was nice to get out of KC for a while.

I left shortly after this for Arkansas. Santarra, a friend whom I had met in Sedona the previous Spring, met me in KC and drove to Arkansas with me. She ended up staying for two weeks. We camped at a Corps of Engineers campsite on Lake Ouachita for three dollars per night. This off season rate included electricity and hot showers. She stayed in her camper-trailer and I in my van, so we split the three dollar rate. The weather was the best I have experienced on my two year trip: highs in the upper 70's and lows in the mid 50's with clear skies.

While we were camped there we met a young couple from New Jersey who thought they would dig crystals to support their trip across the US. They dug once and then visited a crystal shop. The old man who owned the store took a liking to them and sold them a flat of crystals for $20 which they could sell retail for $300 easy. They were clear handholding crystals. Santarra and I visited the same store and talked to the old man, but I guess he didn't take a liking to us because he didn't make us an offer for cheap crystals.

But a couple of days later, Santarra met two men at the Mt Ida craft fair who dug crystals and made jewelry. Santarra traded $200 worth of jewelry-making beads to them for about $2000 worth of crystals retail. Talk about stealing Manhattan from the Indians! These are large clear crystals and many were blue phantoms. By this time I was getting jealous. Everybody was getting crystals but me. I sucked it in and told myself my time was coming, not to be upset by others' good fortune. I never was to get many crystals while I was down there. I think I ate a jealous pout for nothing!

We dug crystals twice and seemed to spend most of our time cleaning them. I hiked, rode a motorcycle and stared into a campfire a lot and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. Nothing too serious. After two weeks Santarra had to leave to get back to Sedona. That same day I went to dig crystals again.

The next day it rained and didn't stop for the next eight days. Fortunately I had a TV, a VCR and many movies or I would have cracked in that ever increasingly small van. After eight days of constant rain, the forecast was for rain for the foreseeable future. So I decided I was supposed to be in Sedona instead of waiting for the leaves to change in Arkansas. I left for KC and drove into a cold front. We missed the forecasted five inches of snow, but I would have to leave KC before I would see the temperature above freezing again, only forty degrees below normal. Thank you Pinatubo!

While in KC I went to visit my worldly possessions which I have stored at my friend Felipe's house. Phil is a sports nut and watches sports constantly on his satellite dish. He has a very cute and outgoing five year old son named Jake. Jake had been asked the day before to say a prayer before the snack at his preschool. He said, "Thank you God for all you do. Thank you God this Bud's for you." And they say TV's not educational!

I left KC after five days and drove to Sedona. I arrived on November 7 at seven in the evening. My friend K'Leah was in Texas but her seventeen year old son was expecting me. K'Leah arrived after a week. I stayed in her extra bedroom, but kept my eyes and ears open for more permanent (and cheap) accommodations. I planned to join the New Age Center and the community and network my way to fame and fortune selling crystals and doing readings. I felt this was a good place for me to do that. At least it would be warm.

I did not seem to be as laid back as I had been the previous Spring. I didn't tolerate ignorance and bullshit like I could then. Part of it was that something happened to me early in the Fall. Exactly what I didn't yet know. The other part was that until recently I was retired and then, since I found it necessary to go back to work, I had become more Self assertive.

I didn't want to MAKE things happen for me any more. I insisted that Spirit take a larger part in my well being. I spent my first couple of weeks in Sedona hiking and just being and letting life unfold for me. Through K'Leah I did one reading and sold about $100 worth of crystals. I thought this is fine, the way it is supposed to be. Just kind of hanging out.

While in Arkansas I had talked to K'Leah and agreed to give a talk on Saturday night at her 11:11 seminar in January. When I got to Sedona I found out that nothing had been done to organize the seminar. There were six of us involved in the seminar and we all dug in and got to work. For some reason it seemed difficult to get things accomplished. But finally in mid December we got most of it done. We had some really great people and it could well have been a dynamite seminar.

I was having trouble finding a place to stay which I could afford. I tried networking to no avail and then the newspaper also with negative results. I had delayed getting my brochure printed because I wanted to wait until I had a permanent phone number. Which meant finding a permanent place to stay. I began to feel that I was not going to find a place to stay until I had a talk with K'Leah on some "stuff" between us. I hate confrontational talks and had tried to avoid it. But on the day before Thanksgiving, I went on a two hour hike and thought about this. I got charged up and knew exactly what to say. When I got back we had our little talk and it seemed to clear the air.

Santarra was staying in her trailer at Heart House, a New Age bed and breakfast in Sedona. She was to be in Michigan for the month of December and had offered me her trailer. I was leaning toward not staying there (at $200 per month which was what I wanted to pay.) The evening of the day I talked to K'Leah I was visiting Santarra at Heart House. While there I met this wonderful Being named Robert Nelson. He is multidimensionally aware and a very special man. I could see Light and Awareness shining from his eyes. Two weeks later I asked him to join us in our seminar.

The next day, Thanksgiving, I was at dinner with Santarra at Heart House. With us was a young man from Mt. Shasta City in California. After dinner he played the harp and the guitar for us while we all sat around and talked. It was really a fun and special experience for me. I realized that this would be a good place for me to stay. There would be a steady supply of New Age people staying here for whom I could do readings and to whom I could sell crystals. I would also have my own space and hopefully would be able to camp there in my van after Santarra returned. It seemed to fit all of my criteria. So I moved in a week later. And it did just sort of happen.

In return for a Thanksgiving dinner, I agreed to wash dishes. I think my Karma in this life is to wait and to wash dishes. I seem to do a lot of both. While washing a drinking glass I sliced the webbing between the little and ring fingers of my right hand on a broken rim. I cut the skin all the way through for about a quarter inch. I had always wanted to look inside myself, but not literally, physically. I had neither the time, the money, nor the inclination to go to the nearest emergency room 22 miles away. (There is no hospital in Sedona.) So we applied vitamin E to prevent infection and bandaged it with cotton and tape to keep the ends of the skin together. Nine days later it was completely healed up with no problem. I'm a quick heal. (Do NOT drop the quick and quote me!)

November, December and January are very slow tourist months for Sedona. Things moved very slowly for me, too. I had written what I wanted in my personal brochure while I was in Taos. I put it on my computer shortly after I got here. I was in no hurry to finalize it until I had a permanent phone number. I bought a roll of black and white film and had twelve pictures taken of me. It took a week to get them back. They were unusable as they were either under or overexposed. Back to step one. All the steps to get the brochure done seemed to lead to anywhere but the end result. I did finally get it done by December 18. Because I wanted a certain color paper it would take an extra week to order it. Then it was too heavy to be photocopied so it had to be printed instead. It ended up costing me three times as much as I had expected. But soon it would be done. Now at least the people would know I was there.

The first week I was at Heart House I met a young man staying there named Simon. He was 29 and from England. In April of 1990 he had a Spiritual awakening. Everything became clear to him. He had been an agnostic but now knew there was a God because he could feel the energy of the God presence inside himself. He was filled with endless love. All areas of perception were increased a thousandfold. He had boundless energy. This lasted for three months and then it settled down to about 25%. Eventually he came to America and to Sedona to try to understand what had happened and how to get it all back. I did have the pleasure of speaking with him for an hour before he left. The awareness radiated from his eyes. You looked at his eyes and you saw his Soul. He was that present and centered. It was a joy just to be in his presence. Soon he was off again to continue his search for what he thought he had lost. I just hoped he realized how much he had and how special he was!

On January 4th & 5th I planned to sell crystals with Santarra at a Psychic Fair in Phoenix. I had not been to phoenix, so I was looking forward to that visit as well as selling some crystals and making some MONEY! I was down to my last $20 and would soon be living on Master Card and Lady Visa. But I refused to worry as this was no longer my conscious concern. I AM the Universe and so will take care of myself.

The first two weeks in February I would accompany Santarra to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. She assured me that I would quickly sell all of my crystals, buy some more from the wholesale dealers there, sell those and make obscenely large profits. Then I could take it easy.

Santarra knows how to make money. I had plenty of opportunities in Arkansas and here in Sedona to see how people and money gravitate to her. She wears some of the jewelry which she makes and people are always asking where she bought it. So she takes them back to her van and makes a sale. I adopted her as my financial guru.

When I went to pick up my brochures they were not done. I was told they had to re-order the paper and they would be ready on Dec. 24. This kept happening until I went to pick them up on the 30th. Still no paper. I asked to speak to the manager but just got messages relayed from him or her. I decided to use stock paper instead. I told them I HAD to have it on the 2nd because I was leaving town on the 3rd. They were indeed ready on the 3rd. This time I did speak with the manager. He told me the paper I had ordered was out of print and I was to have been told that I needed to use other paper. He kept trying to put the blame on his employees or me. It was not his fault. He offered no apologies, only excuses. I told him that this was no way to run a business and really laid into him. I didn't want to, but I always wish I had later on. So I decided to do it in real time. It didn't really feel good, but maybe I got some energy out.

On Christmas Day Tanzara, who ran Heart House where I stayed, cooked a big dinner and invited several of her friends. She had some nice friends! In fact, these were the kind of people I keep looking for and do not seem to find. As usual, I ate too much. After eating my boring non-cooking for so long it is hard not to pig out when I am confronted with real food. (At least that is my excuse.)

Santarra came back from Michigan on the 30th and wanted her trailer back. Such nerve! Just as I was getting used to it. In the meantime Tanzara said I could stay in my van and plug into electricity at Heart House. All the conveniences of home and electricity and indoor plumbing, too!

We had another big dinner on New Years Day and I met some more nice people. However, because of my Thanksgiving accident I had retired from washing dishes and went on to drying them. I prefer washing, it's easier. Long ago I realized that it is my karma in life to wash dishes. When I went to Chicago to work in Nov. of 1988, I left behind a brand new $450 dishwasher in my house and had to wash dishes by hand in Chicago. There ain't no justice.

I continued to hike whenever I could. But it was an unusually cold and wet winter for Sedona. The average high temperature for December is 55 degrees. We hit that only three times. I bought one of those new ceramic heaters and it kept me toasty warm . I hooked up my VCR to one of Tanzara's TV's in the house and spent many evenings with Santarra and Tanzara catching up on all the good movies as well as some bad ones.

By the way, there is a city law in Sedona that says that you have to change your name to something strange after you live there for three months. It can be tough at times keeping people straight. I kept wanting to call the two women mentioned in the last paragraph "Tarzana". If you think it would be easy to keep them straight, YOU try it first thing in the morning! There are also KriAna and Kiandra. And then Jananda, K'Leah and THREE Solara's. Nobody is named Bob anymore. They are all Robert. These are supposed to be names given to them by Spirit. The only name I have ever been called by Spirit came to me in a meditation in 1980. I heard a voice in my mind that repeated three times, "you write the script, Jerk!" While it is very descriptive, I don't want anybody to know that. But it must be true because in high school and college I was "Kinerk the Jerk." Then, though, I was rescued by the Capitols' recording of the song The Cool Jerk, "deep inside you know I'm cool." But I hid from the law and didn't have to leave town.

On January 3, I drove to Phoenix to sell crystals at a Psychic Fair. My friend, Maria, works for Ramada Inn. Since the Fair was being held at a Ramada Inn, she was able to get me a room there for free for three nights. It had two double beds. Santarra and Shellie, also a vendor at the Fair from Sedona, slept in one bed and I slept in the other. Unfortunately they are both morning people and would fall asleep at 9:30 in the afternoon. I go to sleep at the normal hour of 1-2:00. They would both be up and at 'em at 6:00 in the night. So I didn't get much rest.

The Fair was a bust. Some of the psychics may have made their table fees, but I missed mine by $15. None of the vendors did very well. For some reason I found the energy at the Fair very intense on very little sleep, so I did not enjoy the Fair very much. Shellie hitched a ride to and from the Fair with me. She is also a massage therapist and I had previously scheduled a massage with her for the next week. On the ride home she offered to do the massage for free. So with the free room and the free massage I didn't do too awfully bad for the weekend. I have to snatch and count my blessings where I can.

A psychic from Sedona named Faye was supposed to have ridden to Phoenix with Shellie and me. Someone loaned her a car so she drove on her own. But I did introduce myself to her at the Fair. She is a delightfully open and aware being. She opened up to her psychic talents in 1977 and began to read professionally in 1983. She now makes her living this way. I visited with her in Sedona and we traded readings. It is nice to meet at least an occasional being like her. She became my best Sedona friend.

All I saw of Phoenix was I-17 and Indian School Rd into Scottsdale. There are orange trees EVERYWHERE along the roads. Apparently you can just stop and pick them. I wondered if they were able to sell oranges in the grocery stores with them growing all over. As green as Phoenix is it is hard to imagine their annual rainfall is only 7 inches. It looked almost tropical with palm trees growing everywhere. It was in the high sixties both days but cloudy and rainy, but it didn't matter since we were indoors anyway. It smelled like Spring. They had one and one half inches of rain in the first week of the year, almost one fourth of their annual total. Halfway back to Sedona we ran into snow. It totaled six inches of wet snow. Three weeks later some of it was still there, a highly unusual occurrence in that desert climate.

Most of the following week I spent preparing for the 11:11 seminar. Fortunately I had written down a lot of my ideas for my talks in November, because I wasn't getting any now. Finally, for better or worse, it came. I would be glad to just get it over with since setting it up had been so difficult. I was relaxed for my talk on Friday night. Unfortunately my mind wasn't and what I had to say wasn't flowing. I had prepared an outline of what I wanted to say and I had to refer to it often. I was very disappointed with myself. It had been over three years since I had done any public speaking but I expected to do better.

Saturday night I began to get wired thirty minutes before my talk. I had enough energy to take on a Sumo wrestler. I thought I might just explode. I took that energy and focused it into what I was going to do and say. When my time came I was ready. I was intense and knew what I wanted to say. With my energy level that high, I may have imprinted what I said onto their brains. Though intense, at least it flowed; I had no need this night for my notes. I don't know how I come across to other people. I had only a little feedback but it was positive, though no rave reviews.

Sunday afternoon I did three mini readings for attendees of the seminar. I didn't feel particularly tuned into them, but they seemed pleased with what they got. Each session was entirely different. One was a guided meditation and energy work; one was telling her who she was and the third was mostly listening to and affirming him. One thing that has always been missing for me in my readings is my consciously knowing what I am doing. Something gets done but I do not know what it is. It feels like trying to put things away in the dark. You never really know what you are doing or if you got it right.

We had about fifteen paid attendees and 7 or 8 freebies. We covered our expenses and made $66.60 each. Poor pay for well over 100 hours of work on my part. A couple of my partners kept saying they saw that 100 to 150 people would be at the seminar. I had my suspicions since it seemed to me that they were not living in the same world I was.

I decided that at least for the time being I was better suited for one on one and for writing. If larger groups were to be in my future, my future was not then. I did join the Center for the New Age, a networking group, and put out my brochures. I let each day unfold as it would and lived in the moment.

One good thing that happened was that Simon returned to Sedona. He and I had several conversations. He is very special. He has this presence and awareness that shines from his eyes and love and service which radiates from his heart. We shared and talked a lot. I felt that he and I were a lot alike. We have had many similar experiences. His Spirit is much more present that mine, and I am more consciously aware and psychically open than he is. But I feel a certain equality and comradeship with him that I have seldom felt.

While thinking about and writing my brochure, I had to do a lot of thinking about just what is it that I have to offer. A lot of self esteem and self worth issues had to be understood. I had to examine and own what it is that I do. It was tough when I didn't consciously know, but I used the feedback from people with whom I have worked to get a picture (accurate or not) of what I do. But there was still something missing. Other people channel, see things and hear voices that tell them what to do or say. I had to figure it out on my own. But I know people and I have learned to trust myself totally and to use the sixth sense that I have worked so hard to develop in this life.

Also I have been forced to live in the moment. So far I may not be in the moment but I am at least within 24 hours either way, which is progress for me! I was learning to trust that I would take care of myself. I am not just what I think and do but also I am that great spiritual being who is connected to All That Is. I am the Universe and of course I would take care of myself. I am a part of All That Is that doesn't judge, just gives. And I claim my divine heritage.

The weather had turned out to be rather nice in late January, sunny and in the 60's. I hiked everyday and began to get winter out of my system. Since I was leaving Sedona for the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in a couple weeks after the 11:11 seminar, I did nothing to promote my readings. I got used to living in my van again and determined, no matter what else, to have fun each and every day.

In mid January I did a Tarot reading for myself. For the first time in a reading for myself I picked up that a woman was coming into my life, sometime in March or April. Also at that time things would really come together for me and I would leave Sedona soon after. The cards had the feeling of love, money and purpose. But I decided not to not to hold my breath.

Before I knew it, it was Thursday, January 30, and time to leave for Tucson. It was a beautiful day and Santarra and I left about 11:00. We both bid a last farewell to Simon who was on his way to an Ashram in southern California the following week. The drive was an easy and relaxed five hours. The route from Phoenix to Tucson was slightly uphill through irrigated farmlands. We arrived at Boatner's Gas Station and Gem Show around 4:30. It was located just off Interstate 10 on a frontage road just south of downtown.

We had gotten down there a couple of days early to sightsee, but Friday morning Santarra was eager to set up. Of course, once we set up we had to stay there and watch it. We camped there right on the back lot of the gas station. We were about 200 feet from the frontage road. We weren't close enough to the road to get many customers back at our booth, but we were close enough to the freeway to get traffic noise and fumes night and day.

I was there a week before I made my first sale, $3 for the whole day. I was there for two weeks before I had my first large sale. A nice man came by and wanted ten pounds of small points at $5 per pound. This was about one sixth of my retail price but I was getting desperate. Later that evening as we were closing up, some Mexicans came by. They spoke no English and my Spanish was totally inadequate. Bob Boatner spoke Spanish so he helped the initial conversation. I thought they wanted to buy ALL of my crystals so I said $5 per pound. Bob had left before I found them picking out only the nicest crystals for such a low price. My heart sank, though it didn't have far to go by this time. But I figured that since it was supposed to rain for at least the next two days this might be my last sale. So I sucked it up and let it go. Eight and a half pounds at $5 per pound. My first $50 was by a personal check and this was by a $50 traveler's check for which I had to give cash as change. This left me with four dollars cash. And $2.25 of that went to pay for a shower later that evening. But at least they were sales. I figured I couldn't be too picky at this point!

The energy in Tucson was very heavy and totally brutalized me. My first Sunday there I could only sit and stare. I couldn't even communicate with Santarra. I had planned to spend my evenings catching up on my letter writing. That night I wrote one letter. It was so depressing that I apologized for writing it, though sent it anyway. It did teach me that I could write no more letters for a while. I truly thought I would have to leave the next day and go back to Sedona, leaving Santarra in the lurch to fend by herself. But during that night my energy shifted and I shut down and was able to live through the experience.

I had known that I did not have the quality or the quantity of crystals to sell at the largest Gem Show in the world. There were well over 2,000 vendors at various motels and convention centers in Tucson. Santarra and I were part of a two mile strip of vendors. Santarra had gone there last year and done very well. She could not do it alone so wanted me to go with her. She and I had mined 400 pounds of Sedona Marbles, round sandstones which have the energy of the vortexes in them, and she had been assuring me for weeks that we could easily sell enough of them to pay for our $600 booth fee. We didn't. We sold $67 worth. But I take responsibility for all of my actions and did not blame Santarra for this disaster. However, I did fire her as my financial guru. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we came out of this experience still good friends.

I met a nice man from Arkansas who was also selling crystals. Steve said we needed to sell the people as they walked by and looked at our offerings. So I did. I put the hard sell on anybody who would listen. I sold retail during my high school and college years and made a pretty good income off my commissions. I found myself rather enjoying the selling. All of my sales and quite a bit of Santarra's came from the hard press. I turned on all my charm and wouldn't let anybody leave once I had engaged them in conversation until they had bought something. I managed to sell one $8 crystal only by including the seven page copy of all my clean jokes from my old newsletter. But it counted.

When all was said and done, after nineteen days of grueling boredom and rain, I had sold enough, barely, to pay my half of the booth fee. But, thank God, at least it was over. It rained or threatened rain 15 of the 19 days we were there. That, the recession, and the bad booth location doomed our feeble effort to make a living. Santarra did little better than I did, selling her jewelry and stones. She went there realistically expecting thousands and made hundreds. Most of her money came from ear coning and 50 cent stones.

Ear coning consists of sticking a beeswax cone in your ear and torching it. It sounds horrible, but it isn't. The flame creates a vacuum and pulls out builtup wax. It is a easy and painless way to get your ears cleaned out. It was all the rage in Sedona. I had mine done just before we went to Tucson.

There were plenty of colorful characters there if I had been interested. There were 27 vehicles in our parking lot alone which had people living in them, at least for the duration of the Show. One of the characters was a man named Wiley. He was a redneck from Alabama who had stumbled upon a petrified log with smoky quartz growing inside. Being the totally friendly woman that she is, Santarra said that we would try to sell his pieces of petrified wood for him on consignment for 30% and said he could hang out with us as much as he wanted. Two days later she rued that offer when he began to get on her nerves. Wiley took to hanging around and engaging in his one topic of conversation--I wish I could get somebody to by my wood. To make things worse for Santarra, Wiley had a crush on her and kept trying to get her to go out with him. After a week I thought Santarra might actually do her First-Ever-For-Her Unkind Act. But Wiley took the hint and disappeared before she got out of the talking about it stage.

I liked Steve a lot. He is an old Earth Soul and is very real, grounded and actually has thought behind his spoken words. He was a beacon of stability in a miasma of unprofitable boredom and tight fisted "lookers". I did a free reading for him and gave him some things to think about, according to him. He is not New Age and refers to New Agers as "healy feelies". But his heart and head were in the right place regardless of his "Age". He was the one bright spot in Tucson for me.

My year of birth turned a year older while I was down there, as I am 27 again this year. Santarra insisted on inviting people over for a birthday cake after we shut down for the night. Fortunately they let me listen to the conversation without having to partake in it as I still didn't feel the slightest bit sociable. Most of the people I have met don't insist on a two sided conversation as long as they are the ones doing the talking. (Oops! There goes a demerit for me!) (I balance things out by writing letters.) But I did get three presents: a crystal from Steve, a pocket knife and a silver dollar from the booth next door, and a nice piece of smoky-quartz-covered petrified wood from Wiley. All in all it was a nice birthday, as birthdays go, although if I had known I was going to live this long I would have paid more attention to my arithmetic teacher so I could count this high.

Finally it was time to leave that horrible place. Santarra's 13 year old dog, Dusty, didn't like it either. He slept or moped for 19 straight days. I got back to Sedona Tuesday, February 18. When I turned onto the highway which leads to Sedona and saw the red rocks, I sighed deeply and felt as though a great weight had been lifted from my chest.

I spent the next several days hiking and being by myself to wash the Tucson energy from my system. I thought it would take at least a week, but felt it would only take 3 or 4 days. On my first hike I sat on a rock halfway through my hike and psychically went into myself. I felt the energy would clear out in a few days, otherwise my energy was okay, and March 12 would be a very good day for me. The following Saturday afternoon I hiked up a high ridge between two trails which overlook Sedona. The ridge was between 10 and 20 feet wide. I followed it for about a quarter of a mile, scampering over the peaks of the rocks. I could look down on everything. The trails, the tops of the red rock spires, and the city of Sedona lay spread out below me. I felt on top of the world. I could feel my spirits soar. I suddenly felt quite good. I had delightful thoughts the likes of which I hadn't had since Taos.

This good mood stayed with me for four weeks before it began to fade. No matter what I did I had this overwhelming feeling that something truly wonderful was about to happen. No matter what actually happened, I enjoyed the feeling. Concurrently with this I lost the ability to get to sleep. I didn't fall asleep until at least 4 or 5 in the morning. This got very boring, but except for one day I didn't feel tired the next day. And my attitude remained high. I also remembered that my yearly cycle is that my energy gets very low after the Christmas holidays and doesn't return until about February 23 or 24. It appeared to have returned with vigor. Since September in KC I hadn't felt like I was in touch with who I felt myself to be as a Spiritual Being. I felt bound in by the human. But now I was again getting in touch with who I feel myself to be as a Spiritual Being. I had become disillusioned last Fall and that began to disappear also.

Shortly after this I began to get to know Ann Osborn, a woman I first met on Christmas day at Heart House for dinner. She is a psychic and channel and is a very wise being. She paid me $8 per hour to do some yardwork for her. I wouldn't have done something I don't like for such little money but I liked her and wanted to help her out and get to know her. She had a nice three bedroom house on an acre of land and had a separate guest house, detached two car garage, and an 800 square foot storage building with electricity and plumbing. It was a delightful setup and was for sale for only $330,000! This gave me an opportunity to put a few bucks in my pocket and to get to know her better. She is one of those special and lucky people who has always been in auditory contact with her Spirit Guides. We traded readings and I found out that she is about to do some really neat stuff in the coming months. It seems that 1992 is the year that many of us open up and begin to do that which we came here to do.

Sedona is supposed to be a hotbed of Extraterrestrial activity with many UFO sightings reported. On one of my hikes I stepped in some alien poop. I know it was alien because it was glowing and floating a couple of inches off the ground. It was a close encounter of the turd kind!

I got a card from Simon. In it he said that he had only spent a week in the Ashram because of the rigidity of the headman. (I had told him he wouldn't stay there very long although he had thought it would be at least several months.) He decided to go back to London and close out his holdings (that's English for his-life-there) and set up a life for himself in Canada. He had felt most Spiritual on some islands off Vancouver, British Columbia. Along with his Spiritual opening he experienced a financial opening which will allow him to live like this for several more years. He considers $100 not enough to get him through the weekend.

Simon tried to tell me before I left for Phoenix that my apparent lack of funds was actually a blessing because money couldn't buy happiness. I told him I already had happiness, it was food and shelter I was trying to buy. He was going to read to me a poem by Kahlil Gibran on the non-necessity of money. But his next quarterly check from London hadn't arrived yet and he had to borrow $360 from my Mastercard to get his van worked on and to tide him through the weekend. I asked him what Kahlil Gibran would have to say about that. Simon smiled and said he was sorry, he wouldn't mention it again.

Well, March 12 did teach me one thing. I had agreed to cut Ann's yard for $8 per hour. It was hot, grueling, tiring work and it took me four hours--half of which time was with a weedeater! I decided there were better ways to make money. When I owned a house I paid someone to cut the grass at $15 per hour because I didn't like doing it. Never again would I do such hard work for such little money.

I did housesit for Ann in mid March. When I finished housesitting for Ann and her cat, I went to K'Leah's house to sit with her dog. Must be bad karma. When I got there I found a week's worth of dirty dishes in the sink and a houseful of trash laying about. Her 17 year old son was supposed to have cleaned, but didn't. It took me an hour and a half to clean it enough for me to live in. I don't know why I always clean other people's houses when I never wanted to clean my own. Maybe I should just avoid houses infested with teenagers.

During my stay at K'Leah's I learned that Tanzara, the woman who ran Heart House where I was staying, had taken a full time library job at Verde Valley School, a private school about 15 miles away. This included room and board. Santarra and a friend of hers from St Louis were going to keep Heart House open. Santarra wasn't going to charge me rent so that was good news!

Two weeks later Ann called and asked me to cut her grass for $10 per hour. I told her I would do it for $15. She said she had a lawn service who would do it for that price so she would give it to them. I never heard from her again. So much for friendship. Last year she had paid $90 each time she got her lawn cut so I did not feel bad about charging her $60. Nothing she told me in the reading in January came true. But she is a good soul and I do regret there was not more communication and respect there.

Towards the end of March my good mood began to fade. The feeling that something wonderful was going to happen, which had been a heart felt feeling, retreated to my head and then disappeared all together. I lost touch with it completely. Though I was glad for those four good weeks. That good mood lasted three weeks and six days longer than any other good mood I had ever had before.

In late March I met a woman at Heart House just before she returned to New York City. Two days later she called from New York and said that her Guides had been talking to her non-stop since she had returned. She said that she and I were supposed to go to Bell Rock, a Sedona vortex, at midnight and Jesus would appear to us and teach me to levitate. People tell me things like this all the time and I pay no attention to it. But when she said it was supposed to happen on April 12, I perked up. In a reading last October and in another in January I had told people their lives would change dramatically on April 12. So I thought maybe something would happen then.

On March 31, I watched a David Copperfield special. In it he flew! I could see no way he could fake it. There could have been no way something was holding him up from underneath. He turned somersaults in the air so it appeared there were no wires holding him up. He performed in front of a live audience. I first saw him in Chicago three years ago at the Chicago Lyric Theatre. At that time he levitated straight up and down. He has learned something in the three years since, either how to fly or how to create one hell of an illusion. He also has made the Statue of Liberty disappear on site in front of a live audience.

My article on Star Beings was published in Sedona Journal of Emergence in April. I was hoping to get some phone calls and some readings as a result but was totally disappointed. I had another article not originally published in my newsletter appear in Emergence in May.

Adrian, a friend from Switzerland who speaks 11 different languages, most fluently, and I hiked up Bell Rock on April 10. We were up there for thirty minutes and I got my first sunburn in 22 months. It had stopped raining. March is the rainiest month and it seldom rains again until the monsoon season begins in July, with late afternoon thunderstorms. In retrospect, this must be what I experienced ALL of last summer in Durango and Taos. Nothing special happened while on Bell Rock but it was fun.

Robert Nelson, whom I met last November at Heart House, is a very etheric looking and acting young man. He is slender with shoulder length blonde hair. He was to play some of his original music and sing on the evening of April 12 at Heart House. That morning I awoke to find him in Heart House. It seems the ex-boyfriend of a woman he had just started seeing had beaten him up the night before. The ex-boyfriend was in jail, though the next day the girlfriend would bail him out; only to be beaten by him the next day! A live soap opera here in Sedona. But it would get soapier.

Peggy, my friend from NYC, had told me that her Guides had told her that she was going to be teleported to the living room of Heart House at ten o'clock Sunday evening and then she and I were to go to Bell Rock. I told her that if she did teleport to the living room that I would follow her anywhere. Robert did play his music that night and if anything could have brought Peggy here, it was Robert's music.

We had taken him to the hospital that afternoon, but as nothing was broken he was released. Robert would have a tough time beating up a fly, so he was much bruised and contused by the ex-boyfriend. But full of pain pills he played beautiful music. He has a wonderful angelic presence and energy and has the ability to express it through his music and I thoroughly enjoyed the concert. Peggy was a no show, though, so I did not have to climb Bell Rock in the dark. She said that she, herself, was skeptical, but had to give her Guides the benefit of the doubt until it didn't happen.

Nothing happened for me on April 12. I woke up and still felt half asleep and not all there (bite your tongues!) as I had for the last 2-3 weeks. Oh well, another dose of groundedness.

But the soap opera was to continue. On April 14, two days later than predicted by me in January, Santarra's life changed drastically. She was visited by two men from the DEA and given a subpoena to appear before a Grand Jury in Michigan on May 13. Her boyfriend, with whom she lived for ten years and whom she left four years ago, was arrested in Michigan for trafficking in marijuana. She was to go and testify regarding her past association with him and what she knew about his drug dealing.

On Easter weekend Ray, who was to run Heart House with Santarra, showed up for a visit. He was an RN who is currently doing home hospice care. He is also a pretty good psychic. He was real enthusiastic about coming to Sedona.
That night I called Bill Bauman and had a nice chat with him. He would be in San Diego for a workshop over Memorial Day weekend and I planned on going, possibly with others from Sedona.

My friend Faye had started doing readings for a 1-900 psychic telephone line and was very happy with that and she urged me to do it also. It pays 30 cents per on line minute, or $18 per hour if you are busy the whole hour. She said that she was on line two and a half hours in every three. I thought about and felt it could be a good source of income. I checked with Tanzara and Santarra and they were okay with me doing it at Heart House. It would require a second telephone line strictly for the 1-900 calls. But there was already a second line installed in Heart House so everything was working out.

My friend Anna Jane from Portland, OR called and said she had confronted her other coast lover of 21 months about where they were going. He asked her to marry him and so she quit her job and would move to Pennsylvania in mid May. She would drop down through Sedona and then Albuquerque to see her son. Finally I would get a visitor in Sedona!

I had been getting a bad feeling about the way Ray and Santarra were going about taking over Heart House. For one thing it is an illegal bed and breakfast and secondly the landlady doesn't know about it. Ray and Santarra were going to take over the house and the lease and tell the landlady a couple months later. I felt that was going to cause trouble. So I expressed my concerns to Tanzara and Santarra.

Mary Lou Johnson (I told her she would never go over in Sedona with a name like that. But she only stayed two months.) and her friend Jenny both told me that they had felt much better about themselves, where they were at and where they were going, on April 12. They both were not working and were just hanging out. They had felt somewhat apprehensive about that because they felt they were wasting time and not doing anything. But since the 12th, they had felt at peace with themselves and had stopped worrying about where they were headed.

John Paul showed up at Heart House the end of April. He said that he had awakened on April 12 and had had his third eye opened and other things (he did not share with me what those other things were.) He said he would walk down the street and would see things, such as other people's thoughts, very clearly in his mind's eye, which he had never done before.

On the Friday after Easter, Ray called from St Louis and said he could not come to Sedona and run Heart House. He had had nightmares for two nights and three friends had called and said they had severe reservations about his new venture. Santarra could not handle it herself as she travels so we were all in a quandary.

I went for a motorcycle ride the next day and managed to sort things through for myself and decide what to do. I decided to try for the job with the 1-900 line. If I was accepted I could do it anywhere. I would hook up in Sedona and if I lost my place to stay I would move to a cooler clime, perhaps Durango or North Carolina or even Mt Shasta. If I could do the 900 line there for at least a couple of months I would have some cash and be able to decide if this was something I wanted to keep doing.

When I returned from my ride, Tanzara had decided to keep Heart house open through June, as she had reservations for that month, and then move to Verde Valley School. She felt that this was what God wanted her to do. Tanzara said I could do the 900 line in her house if I wanted to. Everything seemed to fall into place. A day later I decided I would move to Charlottesville, Va at the end of June. This was perfect timing. I could go to Arkansas first and visit Steve, whom I had met in Tucson at the Gem and Mineral show. Then I could go to KC for a couple weeks to visit my friends and be there for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary and then travel to Virginia and get an apartment and set up the 900 line. Everything seemed perfect.

Then the next day Tanzara decided that she couldn't stand to be at Heart House any longer and was shutting down the 15th of May and would move to Verde Valley School early in May. So once again my plans changed. In the meantime I had applied to the 900 line and ten days later was accepted. There was no time to hook up in Sedona so I told them I would move to Va and hook up with them around June 15th. They said that was fine and to call them when I was ready. That provided a great measure of stability in my life.

Then Anna Jane called and said that her fiance had called her and said he had made a mistake. He couldn't marry her and their relationship was through. In the meantime, she had quit her job and they had hired a replacement. She had given notice on her apartment and they had rented it. She had sold or given away most of her furniture. She now had no job, no home and no fiance. But she still wanted to come to Sedona for a few days. I told her not to make any hasty decisions about her future until she had come down there and unwound for a while. She would be able to make better decisions after she had been out of Portland for a few days.

It began to be obvious to me that SOMEthing had happened on April 12. There was a shaking out in the energy. People were being forced to be grounded. No more flightiness. No more opting out of the mundane reality because we don't like it. It was time to be here and be real. New agers must transform the mundane, not run away from it. Also, whatever emotions we are harboring are being forced to the front. We are being forced to confront ourselves, to express what we feel emotionally. If we feel good about ourselves, then that is what we experience. What we are running away from and what we fear and doubt are also manifesting.

In my first five months in Sedona I had done five readings for pay. Suddenly in the first two weeks in May I did seven! I even did my first two readings for people who had gotten my name from my brochure. I finally paid for it. I did get a call from a woman in Brooklyn who had seen my Star Being article in the Sedona Journal. She wanted a reading so I did it over the phone, a prelude to my work on the 900 line. It went well.

I have always known that I could fly. I began to have flying dreams in my early 20's. They progressed from merely floating straight up and down to doing just about anything and everything I wanted. After watching David Copperfield fly, I had the thought that we all have talents and abilities which we have learned in prior lifetimes, perhaps not on Earth. Such abilities might include levitation, astral projection, telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, manifestation, healing, mind reading etc. We also have great information stored within our Souls, such information which would transform our human existence. But when we incarned in these lives we had to turn in the fuses which activated these abilities. The knowhow is there. The ability is there. The energy is there. But the fuse is gone so we cannot translate these knowings into activity. Yet. That is coming and it is coming soon. Those things you always knew you could do, but couldn't seem to get done are on their way. In your heart you know it's true.

There is a lot of information about what happened to people in my life, but not much about what was going on with me. There is a reason for this. There was nothing going on in my life. I seldom could get to sleep before 2 or 3 in the morning, so I slept late. I got up, went for a hike in the hot sun, came home and drank a lot of water, ate dinner, read for a while and then stared at the ceiling of my van wondering why I couldn't sleep. Repeat this most days over a two or three month period and you understand why I didn't waste time telling you what I did.

I felt like I was in a doldrums. I just tried to find some way to spend time each day. This activity I call "treading time". I kept my brochures spread around town and did do free readings for the manager and the assistant manager of a New Age bookstore. They were impressed by my readings and promised to refer people, but there seemed to be a null blanket over my readings. I did get caught up on watching last year's movies on video with Santarra, who left for the Midwest and her date with destiny on April 26th. I did decide that my Guides were Trappist monks and had taken a vow of silence. Other than that I took each day one at a time and just tried to have fun each day.

My last week in Sedona was busier than I had anticipated. After having lived there for ten months and not having had any out of town visitors, I had two just before I went to San Diego. My friend Anna Jane came and stayed with me for two days. She went to see David Copperfield with us in Phoenix. He flew for us on stage and it was wonderful! The day after Anna Jane left my newlywed friends from KC, Mary and Steve, showed up. They were just passing through so we only met for dinner.

Friday morning, May 22nd, I got up early. I had decided to ride my motorcycle to San Diego, rather than drive my van, to attend a Bill Bauman workshop. It was sunny and cool. I thought I had plenty of time so I set out across the backroads of Arizona. I did see some beautiful country: mountains of rock and trees, desert and sand dunes. It was sunny the whole way except for one small stormcloud which found me and dumped on me for two minutes in the low desert of southwestern Arizona. And of course I ran into into clouds when I hit the city limits of San Diego. I had relied on the song that says, "it never rains in southern California". Well, it didn't; except for the last twenty minutes of my journey.

The distance of 575 miles was 75 miles greater than I had expected. I arrived at the Friday evening portion of the seminar 15 minutes before it started, soaking wet. I didn't know anybody and felt very obvious in my wet clothes.

My friend Sandy, whom I had met in Sedona did show up on Friday evening and offered to let me sleep on her living room sofa. I took her up on it. It gave me a place to be quiet in a busy weekend. Sandy was very nice and hospitable and I enjoyed my stay there. We got to talk and share philosophies and generally have a good time.

The seminar was different than others I have attended. California people are much more open than their midwestern counterparts, and they didn't let Bill talk as much as he is used to. At first I thought they were flighty. But I quickly realized that they were just as open and sincere as they appeared.

I met many lovely people there. One was Candace, who, ironically, lived in Sedona. She teaches Dreamspell among other things and would stay in California until after I had left Sedona. She showed up Sunday morning and sat next to me for the opening meditation. I felt all my attention and energy move to her. I couldn't concentrate on the meditation. I did have an opportunity to speak with her briefly at the lunch break but not as much as I would have liked. She left in mid afternoon after yielding to my insistence she give me her address and phone number in Sedona.

I left San Diego Monday morning, Memorial Day, and took the Interstate all the way back. I never did see the sun in San Diego. What little I saw of the San Diego area was very pretty. I stopped for gas about 10:30 Monday morning. I was hungry so I got two packages of Donut Gems and a coke. As I paid for them, I told the bored looking 17 year old girl who was the clerk not to tell my mother that this was breakfast. Just for a moment there she did look alive.

The rest of my trip back to Sedona, though pretty, was uneventful. The visor on my helmet kept the sun off my face, but I hadn't reckoned on the dry desert air. My face got horribly windburned and felt like leather for a week and a half until it had finished peeling. I was going to leave Tuesday morning for KC and Charlottesville but got a last minute phone call from another friend from KC, Nancy, who was in a motel in Winslow and was coming through Sedona. She had made a wrong turn in Topeka and ended up in Sedona instead of Reno. So I stayed another day and enjoyed showing "my" town to her.

It was strange the way I picked Charlottesville. For some reason I decided I had to get out of Sedona. I had settled on the Smokey Mountain/Blue Ridge area of Tenn/NC/VA. As I was looking at the map the city of Charlottesville jumped out at me. I had just read two novels which had taken place in and around Charlottesville. The description of the countryside had captivated me. I had wanted to come to this part of the country last Fall and follow the changing leaves south but my money ran out instead. I had assumed Charlottesville was a fictitious name. So when I found out it was real, I had to go there. It was a college town and was supposed to be a Spiritual Center, so it seemed perfect.

I was looking forward to getting settled in a place of my own. I was tired of being cooped up in my van. It would be nice to be able to stand up in the morning when I pulled on my pants. Also now I would be able to give up the name I channeled for myself the first night I slept in the van...Jimmy Van Camp!

I left Sedona the morning Nancy left. I drove through two days of rain and a stiff headwind that cut my gas mileage by 50%. I made it to Kansas City in one piece. I did not feel good on the drive. I had expected to feel good about my new adventure. I assumed it was the rain and the headwind which made driving a chore.

I spent four days in Kansas City, a city in which I have spent most of my life. Two of the four people I needed to see were out of town so I missed them. The whole time I was there I was dizzy, nauseated, and spaced out. These are things I never feel. I did my thing and got out. The energy in KC has changed.

I drove through two days of rain to get to Charlottesville. Rain seems to be my Karma lately. I found a nice studio apartment, unfurnished, for $335. It was more money than I had anticipated but the view out my front, and only, window is a grassy field with a forest behind it. It is located in the northern edge of the city. The main highway out of town is a block away but it is quiet where I live.

The country is beautiful. There are hills, grass and trees everywhere. There are plenty of winding and hilly paved roads for me to ride down if they ever take the rain out of the forecast. It has rained or threatened rain almost everyday here. This is the third of three hot summers in a row. It is usually mild here in the summertime. I bought several of Tanzara's Sedona posters at her garage sale and hung them on my walls. I also got a few crystals out hoping to ease the energy a bit. But it still didn't feel like home. It took six weeks before I stopped automatically thinking I had to go to my van to get something I then had stored in my closet. It IS nice to be able to stand up when I put on my pants in the morning. And when I go outside and get all hot and sticky, I come back in and take a shower. No problem. Modern conveniences are nice. Though, of course, I do not have a dishwasher.

Things went extremely slow for me. It took two weeks for the Network to call me back and get me set up to work for them. Two weeks after I got here a local woman who is a published author and who worked the same Psychic Line as I do was featured on the front page of the local paper. Later I read an angry letter to the editor complaining about that Line and an editorial cartoon ridiculing the line as a ripoff. Another curious thing was that when I asked to put my brochure in one of the metaphysical bookstores, they hesitated and then said okay but they would have to put it underneath other stuff because some people might be offended by what I do! Is that bizarre or what?!

On the other hand there are two New Age bookstores and two health food grocery stores. A young man who helped me at the print shop said that Charlottesville is a magnet for Spiritual people. But I didn't see a single card or brochure on any of the bulletin boards advertising psychic readings, just psychological self help, classes on Buddhism and body work. Solara is here with her Starborne group. She is the person who invented the 11:11 concept.

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach my first week here, followed by a feeling of unease for another week or so. Those feelings were gone after about three weeks, so I must have acclimated to the energy. There is much more crime in the East, mainly drugs and shootings, than in the Midwest. It is of concern even in Charlottesville, a town of 50,000. When I decided to come here I never even stopped to think about the energy. I must have assumed that it was small enough not to bother me. I am sure that energy is what I felt.

Candace has the same Sun, Moon, and Rising that I do. I had called her several times but couldn't reach her and finally left a message when I got a phone. She finally returned my call after nine days. Unfortunately I was not in. I misunderstood her message on my answering machine. My brain must have been retrograde that day. I called her at least forty times over the next ten days before I finally got through to her. She only had fifteen minutes to talk but it was nice. But not long enough to know why I feel this connection with her. I wrote her a long letter and have not yet heard from her.

My friend from Sedona, Simon, is staying at an Ashram forty miles south of Charlottesville. He got there a few days after I arrived. We got together in late June. I drove down there and brought him back to Charlottesville. We spent the next two days shopping. He spent well over $2,000 cash on stuff, including a computer and a printer and $50 for a pair of sunglasses. It must be nice to be rich. He couldn't find any Spiritual people in Canada so he came to this Ashram. He really enjoys it. At first he intended to stay only a couple of months but has recently signed a one year lease. He has to go back to England in early September to renew his visa and apply for immigrant status. He has stuff to pick up in England and then Canada, including a car which he can't bring to the States. And I thought I had my stuff scattered all over! Mine is in three basements in Kansas City. His is in three countries on two continents.

The Ashram's guru had just come back after a three week absence. I took Simon back to the Ashram after his shopping spree and stayed to attend the evening's gathering, called a Satsang. It began at 7:30 with 30 minutes of chanting and singing. This I really enjoyed. They created an energy which allowed me to get in touch with my inner feeling self. Nothing momentous happened but it was just a wonderfully relaxed feeling experience. It evoked feelings of joy and love. The energy on the grounds of the Ashram was very peaceful.

The Eastern Way's spirituality is very devotional and worship oriented. The people I met there, mostly from late 20's to mid 40's, did not seem very New Age. They are not my kind of people. On the other hand they are not doing drugs and shooting each other either. The rest of the evening got increasingly boring. The low point was when a twenty year disciple of the Guru gave a boring five minute talk and took twenty-five minutes doing it. The man had no personality. He had no energy. His words lacked meaning. There was no life, light or energy radiating from him. I suffered through it because I wanted to listen to the Guru talk to get a feel for him.

What a waste of time! The Guru was marginally better than his disciple. He kept saying that we should renounce the world and all book learning and thought. Then he exhorted his student/teachers to study books and learn and go out and teach others. First off I totally disagree with renouncing the world. We are here to live life, not renounce it. I feel that the spiritual philosophy of renunciation is a misunderstanding of what Buddha said. It is Old Age and will not last. The Guru had no charisma and little energy. He probably couldn't make it in India so he came to the States. Simon was as disappointed with his first glimpse of the Guru as I was. But he was there for the energy, not because of any Guru.

After I got trained by the Network I went to work the next day. It quickly became apparent that I could not make any money with them. My calls averaged six minutes each and twenty minutes between calls. I tried various times during the day and night. 1-2 AM is the best but it doesn't pay the bills. I averaged about $4.50 per hour on the Network. I did some hard thinking and decided that I had made a monumental mistake in coming to Charlottesville. So I called the headhunter who finds me my temporary insurance jobs. He had nothing going and expected nothing until Fall, but would keep me informed.

In late June Anna Jane called and said she and her friend, Steve, had reconciled. She had no plans to marry him, but would move to Pennsylvania (no abbreviation needed here because I know how to spell the word!) and live with him. Later she wrote to me and said that she had gotten there safely, enjoyed the trip across our beautiful country tremendously, and was enjoying her time off work. She was learning a new identity unassociated with a career.

I haven't been able to find any New Age people in Charlottesville. Not that they aren't here, but I have a genuine knack for not being able to find people. I did find and go to a Saturday meditation class. Counting me there were five people there. The energy they created in the group was kind of nice, but they were very mental. They were Buddhist oriented and followed a Guru who lived in Maryland. And anything he said was the absolute truth. The things they said and did were similar to what I call "mental metaphysics".

I did meet my first Star Being there, though I saw her only the one time. I did give her the Star Being article. She called me a few days later and was upset by the article. She didn't know what upset her about it, but she wasn't happy.

Later I went to a Starborne group meeting. Again there were five people there. The 75 minutes were extremely boring as they consisted of doing movements channeled by Solara with some mild chanting. These people had no energy. It was as if they thought if they did those movements enough, then they would be allowed to go through the doorway in 2012. I had nothing in common with them, was not interested in the movements and did not go back. Besides, I already did my nine first Fridays and my six first Saturdays as a child and am guaranteed a place in Heaven when I die. (If you don't understand this, ask a Catholic.)

I hike every 2 or 3 days. There is a high school track one mile away. So I go to it and walk around it for a couple of hours. I enjoy that a lot. It is secluded and surrounded by trees. My kindergarten teacher would be proud of me as I stay within the lines as I walk around the track! I sweat a lot but also get lost in thought nicely, too. Actually, I have much better meditative hikes here than I ever did in Sedona.

So my days pass quite a bit like they did in Sedona. I do get free basic cable with the apartment so in my boredom I watch a little baseball. I realized that if it weren't for beer commercials, I wouldn't get any sex at all! I record Mork and Mindy, Night Court and Married with Children each day and watch them after I finish with the Network. I call them my cartoons. I also watch quite a little politics on CNN. In one of his speeches, president Bush, coinciding with his "kinder and gentler new world order" declared that henceforth Greenwich Mean Time would be changed to Greenwich Nice Time.

In early July I was working the Network one night (I was working as much as ten hours a day at the time to make thirty dollars) and I was really tuned in. I just KNEW things. The information flowed from me. It was fantastic! But two days later when I next went on I had a hard time tuning in. It was suddenly very hard for me to tune in to those people. Ten days later when I went in to work the Network, I used Tarot cards on the first caller and they were meaningless to me. They were cold. They were just pieces of paper. So I tuned into her energy and got nothing. It scared me so I signed off. This had never happened to me before. In the last six months I have read people very easily and had even gained some confidence in my psychic work.

Since then I have felt acutely non-psychic. I have tried meditating, hiking, and playing music which usually puts me in touch with my emotions; all to no avail. I don't feel anything emotionally or intuitively. I don't know what's going on but this was extremely poor timing. Especially since the last week I worked was starting to get busy and I was going to make a little money. I took a week off before I tried to work again. I struggled for a few days and then gave up. My Psychic ability had disappeared.

I continue to go to the Satsang at the Ashram on Saturday nights. Although they sing the same chants and it is starting to get boring. I leave after the chanting. Simon and I get to chat before and after so this is the only thing for me to look forward to. Simon can be very mental as can I, so we get into some nice, juicy dialogues. He is very Karma oriented and thinks I "lost" my psychic ability because I abused it, but nonetheless our conversations are very enjoyable. In mid July he did a 14 day fast and looked great afterward. The fast really opened up his energy and he really shines now.

I did a lot of thinking on my hikes about going back into the insurance world. I don't want to do it. But I don't see any viable choices. It will be tough for me. The work itself is easy but the tough part is being around all those unhappy people in the office building and in the big cities. But being forewarned is to be forearmed. I can begin to shut down before I go there so I won't be as open to their energies. I will suck it up and tough it out. Though it is a lot easier to think about it beforehand than to actually experience it.

I do enjoy the lifestyle of having money and not working. So I will try to work for at least a few months and then go back to relaxing in the sunshine, probably in Sedona. I now owe about $7,000 so it will take me two months of insurance work just to pay off that debt. I also need some routine work done on my van and my motorcycle so that will take some more. Then I can start saving for my continued retirement.

On July 22nd I flew to KC to attend a reception for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. I was there a week. While there I had my radio alarm clock and my "work" clothes shipped to Charlottesville. So I'm ready

Basically my life has gotten rather boring. So much seems to be happening in other people's lives. Oh well, how about a joke? A Spanish couple had identical twin sons whom they named Amal and Juan (the Moorish influence.) In due course of time they grew up and left home, scattering all over Europe. One day their neighbor asked if they had recently seen Amal and Juan. Their mother said that Juan had been home the week before but Amal had not been home in quite some time. To which the neighbor replied that if she had seen Juan she had seen Amal! Well, since there is nothing else to say I guess I'll shut up.

I hope all is going well in the lives of all my many friends. I have enjoyed sharing myself with you in this way, though I wish there were more exciting things to share! And remember: the Post Office delivers here, too, and will forward my mail to me for six months after I leave here.
Consider yourselves loved, hugged, (and kissed, if appropriate.)