Two Women

Tonight I listened to the interview of David Huggins on The Paracast about his book "Love in Alien Purgatory: The Life and Fantastic Art of David Huggins". It is his account of a life-long relationship with an alien woman named "Crescent". Curious, I googled to find some of the images from his book. I came across this image (on the left) which was eerily familiar. He described her as a grey alien wearing a wig of long black hair. The face is strikingly like the face of the cigarette lady I saw as a teenager.

I previously related the story here and here.

Keep the Streets Empty for Me

Whirling dirvish - spinning into ectasy

Keep the Streets Empty For Me / Fever Ray from BECH on Vimeo.

Heart Buds

Drifting in sadness, heart buds rain down on me. Each breaks open to tantalizing new growth.

Mac Tonnies Remembered, 1975 - 2009

A tribute by Paul Kimball

Rest In Peace Mac Tonnies

You will be very much missed my friend.

Ecstasy unfolding

Next phase:

Early

manifestation

of joy

Early ancestors

\

Transformation Figure

Image of a bird with egg, manifesting another figure out of her beak. I'm told this is probably a mark of an eagle clan female figure (as signified by the egg). Spirit coming out of bird mouth - manifestation of... ?

Bear Track - Perfect Fit

A series of bear tracks leading northwest. This one fit my foot perfectly. Where are they going? To the trail in the nearby gorge? Or beyond?

Big Fish Swimming North

Copper Water

In my search for the Copper Star I ventured to the site of the Leo Petroglyph. I found many interesting images, each another clue on my hunt. Many of the images seemed to point to the trail located near the Leo stone. This led into a gorge with a stream. At one point, we encountered an area with copper-colored water; quite stunning.

Crypto-renaissance Art

More messages from grandfather Cranach: 

To be admitted to the table we must plough our way through an obstacle course of archetypal signposts. 

Lion waiting to greet deer from behind red hat and false holy robes. Ignorant birds wandering aimlessly about.

An hour glass on the wall, candelabra crucification on the table...

So much more.

An Old Song (to my husband)

I hear the soft wind sighing

in every bush and tree

the sound of my heart crying

when you are far from me

When we're apart my darlin'

there's sorrow in the wind

When we're apart my darlin'

sweet sorrow in the wind

Its a wonder I'm in this world at all

The other day, standing, looking off to left, the room started to twist and distort. A wave of nausea. Reality no longer real...

"Now and then there's a lonesome thought in my mind...ain't one soul in the whole world knows my name...but I've seen it by and by, cause its written up in the sky..."

Chaco Canyon Double Moon

Old painting I made of Chaco Canyon - double moon an after- thought, not sure why. 

I feel I may return to the area soon.

"Another message" posted below related to "Mishipeshu" concerns an exploration to be attempted this summer.

Shield

I am shielded by Dancing Lioness. I will share the story of my encounter of mountain lioness at Chaco Canyon another time. 

I travel now under my real name. The conduit will be provided by another party. 

Moving into new territory. Brings to mind a song: Leaving Louisiana (where I was born). 

Shift

May 4 crop circle seems similar to the base glyph of my posting of April 9.

Mishipeshu

A petroglyph was sent to me by someone who said it reminded him of the bird (owl?) in the Cranach painting.  It appears to be a human with sets of horns and bird feet. Like the bird in the Cranach painting it is gazing full face at the viewer. I get the sense this is someone traveling in spirit, with the ability of bird to see from above, the double set of horns that indicates power of some kind, perhaps in spirit. It reminded me of Mishipeshu of the Lake Superior Anishinabeg, the horned "great lynx" that is able to travel underwater  - it also looks a lot like a dragon! I read a bit about this fantastic creature: it is associated with copper! This is interesting to me because I awoke this morning with an image of a copper star - it seemed to be hammered (by hand). It had a decorative edge to it. I'm not positive how many points it had since my view of it was very close up from one side, near one of the points; it was wrapped in something and my view of it was close to one of the points, as though I was looking into the wrapping. By an odd coincidence (or not), last night I went searching for an old stone which as a child I plucked from the shores of Lake Superior near where we lived at the time. I could not find the stone but found a copper nugget I had picked up about the same time (up there). These were everywhere up there in abundance, just lying about like pebbles. Next morning I had the copper star dream.

Postscript: a Message

As I was falling to sleep for a nap after work: I had the following words said to me like a voice in my head: it was something like: the head (or face) of the deer is turned to the side, or turned aside.

Another Message (May 10)

I have been contacted again by Kentucky woman  (who has returned to Texas). She has additional information about what I am to find. I understand there may be photos of previous exploration - please contact KY woman and she will transfer them to me. I plan an expedition sometime this summer.

Strange Bug

I heard knock sounds again in my studio. This was the 4th time; 4 distinct knocks. Unlike the previous 3 times which occurred in the dead of night, this happened during daylight, about 8 pm. It startled me enough to want to get out of the house so dog and I went for a walk. As we approached a pond, upon hearing the peepers and other sounds, I got a flash of an image: a strange double-sided bug. Unlike the representation here, it was carved into a light-colored stone. 

Old Art

Great Grandfather+ 

(on mother's side) Lucas Cranach, northern renaissance painter (early 1500s). I like these paintings, especially the little detail of the owl (or hawk?) with it's kill flying away from the city on the hill towards the forrest, while the man with the book glances back. There seems to be a tiny man on the tower looking out towards the forrest. I always wondered what this little scene meant. As for the woman with the amazing disc hat: awesome.

Blue Flower / Mountain

Saw this in a meditation. I sketched it as a straight-up flower, stem and all. However, the roughly blue triangular shape morphed several times between a flower (right side up) and a mountain (upside down). Both with intense range of blues from deep indigo and cobalt to shades of cerulean and cyan. 

Helpers

This is an old sketch from about 15 years ago. I sometimes see these entities during meditation (eyes barely open, soft focus). They stand (float) about me, seeming to modulate a field of energy around me (I especially sense their hands, "combing" the energy). There always seems to be one primary entity, usually right in my face, others are more in the background. I don't get any verbal communication from them.

Another Perspective: An acquaintance gave me the following information after reading the above. While I find it interesting, l stand by my own experience as I described it above, but fwiw...

"[These] helpers are helping in the sense that they have insured that we have stayed with our choice to live multiple lives to gain wisdom. Grays are uneasily aligned with Serpent People along the model of "Service to Self" [this is part of Hopi concept of "Kopavi"] They also walked a path that we, fortunately, do not need to tread so for that alone, I am grateful!  Prolonged exposure to this system of "Service to Self" creates a vibration that causes Spirit to depend on the energy of those it controls.  This type [of] gray has chosen to try to continue to exist on the energy of others by moving back in time to where this is possible.  Creator has chosen to eliminate the model of "Service to Self" because it eventually yields weak and uninteresting leadership and a suboptimal existence for the lower rungs of the hierarchy. I have worked it through and it appears to me that the ultimate end result of service to self is a few unhappy, weak and desperate leaders perpetually exchanging positions of control and a giant spiritual battery of pain that feeds them. If I were Creator, I'd command its disassembly too! It served to accelerate the growth of those who chose other better models but its time has ended.  They will eventually have to embrace a more effective model of existence when they reach the end of their rope.  I think they will respond to gratitude and affection (they don't like the taste) and go away.   These are the things that will eventually rehabilitate them ironically. If they continue to hang out with you, you are operating under principal three [Hopi concept of "service to all"] by attempting their rehabilitation through love and gratitude. If I am wrong and they are beneficial, your gratitude and affection is doubly deserved (neat how service to all works - no wrong choices within its context!).   Earth is under the system of "Service To Self" as a sort of battery right now. The monetary system has been designed to act as a control mechanism.  To work, the service to selfers must gain the agreement of those it uses. It is really interesting to unravel the threads of the economy and see how they accomplished it.  Fortunately, they bent the rule here and allowed their system to remain illegal.  This was discovered in time and the appropriate actions are underway within the indigenous community to negate its hold irrespective of any future laws so long as we stay aligned with "Service to All"."

Rock and Rune

A few years ago I did a meditation on this runic symbol. I was attracted to it because it reminded me of the symbol for "infinity", a potentially interesting seed. The blue stone is a small rock I held in my hands; its colors were dazzling, reminding me at once of water, earth and sky. Small veins on the stone were like rivers, the whole like a small visage of planetary/celestial stuff.  

In looking over my notes the phrase "dynamic across eons" caught my attention. I don't recall exactly what this meant to me at the time, but certainly seems relevant now: something is connecting, converging. Perhaps by the simple act of posting my thoughts and images a tiny set of ripples is set in motion. As they move outward, contact is made with other currents, other ripples. This seems to be occurring with greater frequency. In posting the rock glyph photos last week I had no inkling of a potentially larger meaning. I was contacted by someone native to that region (hopi) who had something to say on the subject. What I saw as simple isolated images, have a larger meaning when read in the full context the images with one another, and of the surrounding stone. This seems obvious to me now - of course it makes sense - the glyphs are carefully painted onto very specific areas of the dimensional stone, forming larger more dynamic images. I will relate a bit more about this later. 

Some new information I learned today, a hopi interpretation:

V touching line:

This is the symbol for "snake tooth biting down" - snakes teeth or jaws represents "Spiritual Power"   When it is biting down it means "Use of Spiritual Power". Use of spiritual power for "good of all" causes multiplication of spiritual power (one tooth biting down yields four teeth (two XX together)

Figure 8 symbol means "All things unified with The Creator" The paths of the Hopi all have a figure 8 in them somewhere - at beginning I have found, to shake out the unaligned.

The Woman I Saw - II

The Woman I Saw - I

This is was my attempt several years ago (after the "opening") to portray the woman I saw in a vision - the time was far into the past - 30,000 years ago? That is the rough time that I seemed to be aware of. In any case, it was long before any form of history we have recorded). She was dead, lying on a bier of leaves. I was present, standing and watching. Her skin was milky white pale and smooth. I felt he most incredible grief. It was everywhere present. I had the impression she was very important. I show her as I imagined her alive. I seemed to know her.

The first image, drawn from various references, is the cartoon (under drawing) used for a painting, which is reversed for transfer purposes. The second is the painting of the image.

A Clue...

Tonight I felt an urge to dig up some old photos from a trip to the southwest in 2002. Among them I found an image of a rock glyph. For some reason I found this particular glyph so compelling I snapped 5 pictures of it (3 of which are here). This along with some of the surrounding glyphs are strikingly like many of the images I have been drawing. 

Snake Eye

A dream: beneath a veil of swamp green water, a blinking eye. 

Interlocking Worlds

Rough draft in progress

(see Equilibrium below for initial glyph)

The multi-modal image below popped into my head last night, fully formed, only it was multi-dimensional and immense, infinite (seemingly) in scale. It is somewhat like a fractal, each world (node) nested within another, without end. The tiny little worlds at the four cardinal points of the circle are depicted here as spheres (planets) in an orbit around another sphere. The larger red sphere is a feeder node. But this is just a 2D / 3D view, not how they exist in multi-dimensional reality. The circles (2D) / spheres (3D) are actually like tubes or intersections in expanded dimensionality. The overall structure has to do with an underlying web. These images are simple 2 dimensional "slices" of what I cannot portray. This is what our human brains can comprehend. I wish I had the ability to write about this more clearly - certainly the graphics are not sufficient.

Opening

When I was about 33, while in deep meditation with my yoga group, I sensed an entity behind me. I had previously sensed them in meditation before, so this was not alarming. I typically felt their presence as comforting and supportive. However, the entity this night was different. It was stronger, it presented a more distinct identity than usual. I next felt the entity behind me place its hands on my shoulders. At that instant of touch, I felt a rush of intense /light/ (as in radiant) energy course down through the crown of my head immediately followed by my body being "thrown" from a traditional sitting posture onto the floor. To other members in my group, it probably appeared I was having some kind of seizure as my body was shaking violently. This settled down after a few minutes but from my perspective here is what I felt: after the initial rush of energy, after my body was effectively being controlled by it, I experienced a second "cold" energy come into play, moving from the ends of my limbs (starting with toes and fingers) toward my body core. This is difficult to explain...the cold energy continued to move up my limbs and the closer it got the more I became scared. Prior to this I in a state of a sort of detached observation - but at this point, it was different. I felt that if that cold energy reached my heart I might die or something, yet I was helpless to do anything about it. Oddly, almost as soon as I had this thought / fear, someone in the group literally grabbed me into a bear hug. This stopped it. I was rather stunned - it was as if a switch had been thrown. In the years that followed, I seemed to have an altered -- more activated -- sense of other phenomena, dreams, visions.

Equilibrium

Worlds in tandem. 

Variation on a familiar theme.

Crash

I grew up in the air force - my dad flew KC 135s from about 1950 to 1970 (mostly cold war - SAC). When I was very young, about 3, we were stationed on a base in TX when an AF plane crashed behind our house. My father was not at home - most likely on alert or flying a mission. I have no conscious memory of the crash itself, but my mother said that it was so loud and shocking it caused me to go into convulsions. Our next door neighbor was a base doc. He gave me something to put me to sleep, then ran out to help the emergency crew. I don't know if I have the sequence of these events right; only what my mother related (it strikes me as curious that a doctor would stop to medicate me before attempting to help the plane crew - so I wonder if this happened in a different order than my mother recalls). My memory is this: I am walking among the wreckage of the plane. There is a smoke, and some hot stuff, possibly some fires here and there though this part is less clear. There are bodies and body parts. I remember seeing blood mixed in with red TX dirt. However, I was not actually physically there; I was there by another means. The strangest part is that I did not know that any of this was an actual memory until many years later. I experienced it as a recurring "nightmare" until well into my 20s. My mother had never spoken about the crash until I was in my mid-30s, so for years I thought it was just a nightmare that had nothing to do with anything real. When she told me about it, I was stunned with instant recognition. I can only conclude that my "nightmare" was a memory of coming out of my body (perhaps during the convulsions?) to visit the dead and / or injured crew. These sketches (created some time ago) depict highly abstracted views of fragments of plane parts and bodies on a field, with eddying pools of individual consciousnesses moving about (white chalk spirals).

Painted Red Man and Nuclear War

A pivotal event in my life: we were stationed at Kincheloe AFB in upper peninsula Michigan (near Sault Ste. Marie). This was a cold war SAC base (B52s and KC135s - the big refueling tankers) that had been plunked down on old native american land as part of the potential defense against soviet nuclear attack. Most of the missions my dad flew at that time were over Canada and the Arctic, practice runs to bomb the daylights out of the soviets (ala Dr. Strangelove). (As an aside, it would sometimes happen that my school bus ended up following a bomb tow; needless to say, I was rather intimate with the hardware and culture of nuclear war, such was my life in those days). When I was 10 or 11, I got very sick. My dad was on an alert mission, so my mom was alone with me and my sibs. At one point I became so feverish I started to hallucinate. I saw this (according to my mom I was "wide awake" and talked about it out loud): I was walking along a narrow worn path in a forested area near our house (an actual place where I often played). It was dark (night) and I could not see very far ahead, so the next thing I new, I ran smack into a native american man with a bare chest covered with either blood or red paint - whatever the substance was, it was bright and still wet. I can see it still in my mind and it is my belief that it was paint. He spoke to me in another language but I understood him. He gave me two little bundles placing one in each hand. Each had 10 sticks wrapped in something (leaves?). I was told to "keep them balanced", and "stay on the deer path". I turned around and started to walk home, but one hand became very heavy; the sticks were moving from one hand to the other on their own and I fell off the path into the dark woods from the imbalance. I "woke up" after this, sweating and upset. Looking back, this sounds ridiculously corny, but this happened in 1966, before new age or romanticized native american fads (at least as far as I was aware at that time). Later in life, I found this encounter to be (personally) profoundly important. There is more to the story that unfolded many years later, including a discovery of what the bundles meant (goes way back, related to the original native people in that area).

Glyph 6

Whirling consciousness / worlds coming into being. Additional imagery - the hollow tube represented by the central sphere.

Watery View

Spinal forms twisting 

across a watery scene.

Little Wild Man

In the year 1996 (or thereabouts - it was in the late 90s) I attended a annishinaube "Gathering of Elders" pow wow at Cape Croker on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario Canada. Long story how I ended up there (going back to an experience I had at the age of 10), but at the time it had to do with my interest in learning the language (which ultimately did not pan out). I had contacted Basil Johnston about an ojibwe language tape series he had created. In the course of our email correspondence, he mentioned the gathering, so my partner and I decided to attend. He suggested that we meet him thereafter to pick up the tapes.

The event itself was amazing. Several folks from other indian nations had come (annishinaube, 6 nations, and some far west), many elders, including one objibwe man I will never forget. He was completely blind, very old, and when it came time time for him to speak, he was led into the tent, very slowly, sat down, and, almost like a recording, starting telling the thousands-year old history of his people. I was entranced.
Later, an all night pow wow ensued. As the night went on, storm clouds came, the drumming and singing continued. At some point my partner and I retired to our tent, which was pitched not far from the edge of a bluff overlooking the georgian bay. We were attempting to sleep but the pow wow drum insisted otherwise. At around 2 or 3 am, the storm really broke loose, hard pelting rain with constant thunder and lightening over the bay (which our tent flap faced, looking east). The drumming seemed finally to stop, the players apparently giving into the storm. We were lying facing toward the tent flap (open except for the net cover; the wind and rain direction was coming from the west, so this along with a canopy over our door allowed us to enjoy the intense ozone and thundering of the rain, while watching the lightening over the bay. Suddenly something ran past our tent door in the area between our tent and the edge of the bluff. It was quite close, about 3 - 4 feet away. We saw it in a flash of lightening: a very small "man", about 18 inches tall. His head was very large in proportion to his body, his arms rather short (they were out in front as he ran), he seemed to be very hair all over. I was so shocked I was speechless for a moment. I noticed my partner had tensed up. We were kinda frozen for a some seconds. I remember my mind racing, trying to think of a rational explanation - could it be a squirrel, some other creature? Nothing came to mind that would explain what I had seen. I don't remember who spoke first, but one of us said "did you see that?" or "what was that?". We both started rattling off excitedly trying to understand what we had each seen, describing what few details we saw, trying to think of some animal that it could possibly be. We both had seen only the silhouette, no details as to clothing, facial or other features; just that it was running on two human-like legs, had a human like body (except for the head being overly large). We did not get out of the tent to examine the area - the rain was coming down very hard, the ground all about running with streams of water, so between the weather and our spooked feelings, we stayed put, eventually falling asleep.

The next morning, we went to meet Basil (who had a cabin on the reserve) to pick up the ojibwe language tapes. Since the encounter of the night before was so fresh in our minds, we asked him if he had ever heard of such a thing. He smiled and told us about the "pukwudjes" (not sure I have the spelling right, but roughly translated, it meant "little people" or "little wild men"). He said that though it was unusual to see one (I'm thinking maybe he meant especially a white girl like me), he was not surprised given the event of the night before. He said that they were known to be attracted by drumming; they would come out and hang about at the periphery of the woods listening and watching.

Thats it for the encounter at Cape Croker, but for another aspect to this event. Years before, around 1988, I had been involved with a yoga / meditation group, when during a particularly deep meditation one evening, I sensed an entity standing behind me. It placed its hand on my shoulders. This was immediately followed by a tremendous rush of energy down my spine, and my body being thrown from a seated position onto my back on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Something had taken over my body and I could do nothing to make it stop. Others in my yoga group gathered around me, not knowing what to do. It probably appeared to them I was having some kind of seizure (I discovered in subsequent research that I had undergone an accidental kundalini awakening; at the the time I had never heard of this). I was both a little panicked that I could not make it stop, yet oddly calm and detached as I observed what was happening. A freezing/burning feeling had begun to move up my legs and arms toward my chest. It was the most intense feeling of rushing energy. As this got closer to my heart, I started seeing a vision of my (then) body in a distant past. I was lying in a shallow grave, my legs covered in animal skins. Snow was rapidly covering me. I was dead, but I was also standing (or floating?) alongside my (former) body, looking down at it. At this moment someone grabbed me up off the floor in a bear hug which instantly stopped the flow of energy like a light switch.

That night I had several highly realistic dreams. It was as if the lid had been blown off some energetic / consciousness connection, allowing me to see other times / other places. That night they mostly centered around a place in a very distant past. I was in a heavily forrested area, playing "peekaboo" with an odd little two-legged creature. This creature was not exactly human but intelligent. It reminded me of the Pan deity of greek mythology. I could vaguely make out details of fur on the legs, but bare human-like chest and arms. The face seemed covered in hair but facial features were difficult to see. I repeatedly awoke, convinced that I was actually physically present in the forest watching this little creature. I have no idea what that was about but after I saw the little man at Cape Croker, it later occurred to me that it was somewhat like the little creature I saw in my vision years before, mostly in terms of size and proportion of head to body.

About the Cigarette Lady

Regarding the cigarette lady, some of the comment questions beg greater detail than I am probably capable of producing after so long a passage of time, but I will attempt to answer what I can.

I earlier addressed the ambivalence of gender, so I will skip that question here. However, I will continue to refer to the entity as a female, for sake of convenience.

As to my present question about whether this entity is a "gray" or a "hybrid", I can only guess. I have never seen what is described as a classic gray alien. Perhaps "hybrid" is most fitting simply because there seems to be some variety of attributes associated with this general category; i.e. that do not fit perfectly with the classic gray alien type (size of head being foremost).

Some details that I do recall with some clarity:

First, her skin: it was very pale, white with an almost bluish-gray tint to it, and of an unusually smooth texture. I have never seen anything like it before or since. I had previously seen an albino person; it was nothing like that; i.e., her skin was not UN-pigmented though there was an almost translucent quality to it.

Second, her facial features: Though I could not see her eyes due to the large Jackie-O style sunglasses she wore, other aspects were evident: an unusually long pointy chin. Exaggerated cheekbones out of proportion to the rest of the face. Practically no lips, only enough to discern that there was any mouth. A nose that was almost not there: there was very little structure to it, a small bridge area, and some structure around the nostrils, but not much.

Finally, her neck: though her coat collar was turned up, I could see some of the neck which was oddly thin.

The wig (obviously such: a long thick dishwater blonde mane made of cheap imitation hair easily obtainable at a k-mart in those days) seemed placed to hide other features of the head, so I cannot comment on these (ears, shape of head).

It puzzles me why I cannot recall her hand. Perhaps because it was what most startled me at first. The only thing I can relate to this lack of recall to is a nasty car accident I had years later: afterwards I completely blanked out the memory of the worst part of the accident (the part when it was occurring). I asked my doctor about this and was told that it was not uncommon for the human brain to "forget" traumatic or difficult events. I can only surmise the initial part of the encounter with the cigarette lady falls into this category.

There were no other people in the store. I was alone. It was afternoon. The year of this encounter was 1974, possibly 1975 (I worked both summers between high school and college, and between my 1st and 2nd years of college); but most likely 1974. The location was an area south of St. Louis, Missouri. I felt no lingering psychological effect from this encounter that I am aware of, other than extreme puzzlement (and the blocked memory of her hand). As to whether this changed me, I don't know. I think however, that other encounters did affect me, or perhaps some other events in my life (which I will relate later) provided a basis for encounters. But it is hard to say what propagated what - a chicken or egg question I guess.

I will relate the accounts of the the small entity (locally known as "pukwujes") that I and my partner saw at Cape Croker, and the blue ghost entity, in a later posting. There is some background associated with these encounters relative to my state of consciousness at the time, that likely contribute to my being able to perceive these beings. This will take a little longer than I have time for at present.

The History of Postreason

A few have asked why (and when) I started this blog. This blog was begun in 2004-2005, but for a very different purpose. 

My step-son Mike had been deployed to Iraq as part of the 101st airborne (716th bn) in April 2003. In October of that year during an armed transport of Lt. Col. Kim Orlando, he and his detail were caught in an ambush in Karbala. (I am shaking as I type this). This was one of the first major "insurgent" incidents of the war, when things started to unravel in a hurry. Orlando and 2 other soldiers were killed; at this point, Orlando became the highest ranking officer KIA in the war. Mike was driving him; 2 other humvees were in the group. When they drove through an alley they became trapped in an ambush - both ends of the alley blocked, several others on rooftops, about 80 shiites in all against about 15 US soldiers. No firing had started, so Orlando got out to try to calm the situation, along with Mike's buddy Sean Grilley. Kim was shot in the neck. Sean was shot - he was right outside the humvee door where Mike was sitting at the wheel. Mike got out to try to help him, nearly getting shot himself. Sean died in his arms. Another soldier, Joe Bellavia, was killed (I think he was already in the vehicle but I don't remember this part). 7 others were wounded. Teresa Broadwell manned the turret (the soldier assigned to that task was too scared out of his wits so she had to take over) on the other humvee and though she could not see out the turret window (she is under 5 feet tall), she was able to calculate where to fire by following tracers - she kept enough firepower going to provide cover, as Mike got out and got Sean's body in the vehicle, and with help, Orlando (who was not yet dead). He attempted to drive out of the alley. One tire had been knocked out; only 3 good ones left and the vehicle was rapidly filling with blood. Somehow he was able to maneuver the vehicle out of there. All 3 humvees took the wounded to the nearest army coalition hospital. Orlando died before they could get him there. But though he saved lives there was trauma from this and other events there. He was decorated by Petraeus (cmdr of the 101st at the time) for his action in the Karbala incident. Here's the story if you want to read more (MIke -- Michael Totten -- shared his story at the Winter Soldier hearings; his testimony is about halfway down the page): http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/19/half_a_decade_of_war_five.

After the Karbala incident, everything changed. My husband and I became much more politically active. This blog was used to write about some of what we were going through, though I did not keep it as up to date as I would have wished. I often found it emotionally difficult to confront my real anxieties at the time, both for Mike and my husband, who was having a far tougher time though this period. After Mike came home, I deleted all the content on these pages (sorry now that I did). They have been idle until early this year, when I began to post again.

About 1- 2 years ago, as things settled down in our personal lives (Mike was home back in college and our other kids were either at college or leading their own adult lives), I found I had the time and space to revisit old personal history, events and experiences that I had wondered about for years, but had put on the back burner in order to carry out my ordinary daily life. I began my exploration by joining Dreamland (www.unknowncountry.com) last year, participating in the chat sessions on that site. I met some wonderful people there with whom I shared stories of my past experiences, including the ones posted here. It felt "safe" as it was a temporary means of discussion without posting to a public board (which until recently I was hesitant to do). I also attended the Dreamland Festival event last year. I joined the Paracast board last year, but did not post much until recently. Mike Clelland's recent posts there frankly gave me the courage to come forward more publicly (thanks Mike!), though I still have this weird feeling of wanting to run an hide every time I talk about this. Yet I feel a strong compulsion that its time to do this. I feel I must get my stories out whether written or visual. This is largely a selfish act, something I need to do for me.

Worlds Becoming

An early variation of the snake rope imagery. Initially imagined as a cosmological concept, in looking at this now, I see another conceptual layer.

Encounters

A snippet of a story I recounted in a recent chat: ...later encounters included a small elf-like creature (he was about 18 inches tall, funny shaped body and head) up at Cape Croker where I was attending an anishnaabe (ojibwe) "gathering of elders" event in 1996. After I saw this little guy, I asked an acquaintance (a local author who had connected me to attend the event) about it. He told me that there are several stories among the annishnabek about these small people, confirming what I saw. Another time while solo camping in new mexico I was sitting in my tent, getting ready to go to bed, when a blue entity came up through the floor of my tent (out of the ground below). It was shaped like a gray alien, but was semi-transparent and sorta smoky. Another time when I was around 18 I was working in a small convenience store, when a "woman" came in to buy cigarettes. At first I didn't pay any attention to her until I saw her hand (when she handed me the money) - it was not like a normal human hand. This startled me so I looked up and saw a very pale entity, wearing a thin black coat (like a rain coat) with collar turned up to cover her neck, a heavy long haired wig, and very large black glasses. This did not entirely hide her strange face: a very pointed chin, scant lip and nose. She did not speak. Took her cigarettes and left! I was kinda stunned. Oddly I cannot remember the details of her hand (though it was the first thing I noticed). Nor did she leave in a car which was odd since patrons drove up the store (it was somewhat isolated).


Postscript: In a post on his Post-Human Blues, the belated Mac Tonnies compared my story it to other stories of odd encounters.

Glyph 5

A long time ago...windy pines...a song seemed to suit me...

The sketch with all the original waves.

Secrets

Thinking of an old old song: I know dark clouds will gather ‘round me
I know my way is rough and steep But golden fields lie out before me
Where God’s redeemed shall ever sleepI’m going there to see my mother
She said she’d meet me when I come
I’m only going over Jordan
I’m only going over home
[Sketching patterns and symbols buried in ornament...]