1987 1 of 3
My journal from 1987 is not as detailed or day-by-day as before; I just want to get the BASIC journal pages on the website. For missing days, I've included LIFELIST at the end of the year to supplement journal entries.
1/7/87: FIRST RANK OF RESTAURANTS: THE VERY BEST (6):
Le Bernardin, Quilted Giraffe, Cellar in Sky, Le Perigord, Cote Basque, Gotham.
Possibles: Box Tree, Maurice, Parioli Romanissimo. Have to try these more.
SECOND RANK OF RESTAURANTS: EXTREMELY GOOD (14):
Crossed off were Maxim's for lunch, La Cote Basque (moved up), Cellar in Sky-up
La Caravelle, La Grenouille, Four Seasons, Water Club, La Metairie, Montrachet, Cafe Argenteuil, Metropolis, Palio, Culinary Institute of America, Stonehenge, La Tulipe, Cafe de la Gare, New Deal, Cafe Luxembourg. Possible: Maxim's-dinnr
THIRD RANK OF RESTAURANTS: VERY GOOD (18):
Raphael, Top of Sixes, La Colonna, America, Primorski, Sylvia's, TavernonGreen, Cheese Cellar, Waverly Inn, Ville de Saigon, River Cafe, Gargiulos, Castellano, Sandra's, Westside Cottage, Heights Sea Grille, Henry's End, Cafe Pierre
FOURTH RANK OF RESTAURANTS: FAIL IN WAYS (11):
Le Cygne, Polo, Le Cirque, Le Regence, Le Perigord Park, Vienna '79, Felidia, Barbetta, Chanterelle, Colombe D'Or, La Ferrendi
1/8/87: Lafayette Restaurant with Joe: $13.50 Shrimp on greens appetizer sharp and tasty; $9.50 Creme de Cailles FABULOUS; $32 Venison wonderful; $28.50 Duck Breast Armagnac my mistake not medium RARE but medium; $12 two glasses white wine; $33 Aloxe-Corton 1982; $14 dessert; $8 coffee for $150.50 + 12.42 tax + $24 tip = $186.92; possibly first-rank restaurant.
1/9/87: Johnson: How are you? BZ: OK, but I didn't get my check yet. Johnson: Oh, I'll check into it. BZ: OK, fine.
1/15/87: 12:19AM: Incredible, superb, and astounding: the Quilted Giraffe for the SECOND time with Susan, on our first anniversary of the first time last year. No aperitif [and I RETURN to the keyboard at 12:27 after a VERY loose shit (though it's probably more likely caused by the gym this afternoon than by the food this evening), and having gotten a call from Susan to say that she THREW UP, she thinks because of the salmon, because that's what she threw up after when she joined me for lunch at the Cafe Pierre] because we planned on the bottle of white and glass of red as we'd done before. The wine-list seemed MUCH more expensive (I seem to remember being pleased with the Sancerre at about $25, regular expensive-restaurant price, rather than anything inflated to match the $100/dinner menu) with most starting at $40 and only a few at $35, and one ludicrous German wine for $17, but when I thought we might have a GLASS of white, we sort of quickly figured that $6/glass for 4 glasses is $24 ANYWAY, and so we might as well order SOME bottle, and then I saw the Chateau Comminaux or whatever, a white Bordeaux Graves for $35, and ordered that to find a VERY nice full-flavored, dry but fruited wine. We got water early and bread late, having to ask for both, and debated ordering ala carte after she said she couldn't have the Caviar Beggar's Purses nor the Lobster and Scallops on the LEFT menu, and I thought the Mushroom Soup and the Sauteed Shrimp looked a bit skimpy on the RIGHT menu, so we selected the shrimp for HER appetizer and some sweetbread thing for MY appetizer, and the Confit of Duck for HER main course and were looking at the Rare Breast of Duck in Armagnac for MY main course, and she noted that the taster's menu said POSSIBLE tasting menus, and I found it was OK to order the top three from the RIGHT menu and the bottom three from the LEFT menu. We had no amuse-bouch$ees to start with, missed (as we missed the LARGE floral arrangement to her right as we "moved up" one to sit in the MIDDLE of the side section, rather than to her extreme right, and the larger floral arrangement that hid the bar on her left), but she liked the tight sourdough roll and I thought the crust of the sweetish pumpernickel-nut bread was delicious with the pullet-egg-sized ovals of butter on the escarole nest, which I started with my SERVING knife, which remained buttery until it was taken away when I didn't use it on the duck. The mushroom soup came first, filling only half the lower half of the bowl, and I judged that it would be only a sip and a taste indeed, particularly with the huge-bowled giant-handled tablespoon as a utensil, but the first sip of the intense-creamed soup with the nip of onion and the reedy taste of the Japanese straw-mushrooms, and something that tasted like a chicken (though Susan suggested it was a FISH stock) base of almost nutlike intensity, with the scant flecks of black truffle, made this mushroom soup compare with Campbells like any other exquisite dish would compare with MacDonalds. Each sip of the strong wine cleared the tongue to submit anew to the creamy coating and rich flavor of the mushroom soup. Magnificent! Then came the salmon criss-crossed with a sweet lattice of glaze that matched in brownness the Japanese rectangular plate's lattice, echoed in the lattice of five crunchy asparagus spears, EACH WITH ITS OWN FLAVOR: one intensely and solely salty, another salt-and-pepper, another garlicky, another gingery, another something between, all perfectly crunchy (so crunchy that I refused to thwack down through it to ring on the plate, and picked it up and bit through the tasty spear), and the texture of the salmon I proclaimed "the baby for THIS meal" as a takeoff of Susan's reminding me of my description of a dish from before. Then the shrimp in cider sauce, which was SWEET, coating the greens with a creamy sirop, and the texture of the SHRIMP was preternaturally lush to our hypersensitive palates and tongues and jaws. I used my FORK to scrape the last bits of sauce from the plate, though Susan joked that I should use my tongue. We saved just a bit of the white wine to finish with the sweetness, which didn't work, and then I ordered two glasses of red with the two following dishes. The SMELL of the sweetbreads was supernal, and the TASTE was pure perfect hamburg in the coating, and transcendent essence of brain-paste in the sweetbreads themselves, served with a breeze of greasy-crunchy potato flakes weighing maybe three grams, and delicate slivers I thought were from turnips until Susan pointed out the red-edged tips of the radishes, and the green slivers I'd taken for the tiniest scallions she later told me were slivers of green pepper. I described the meal as a hallucination: nothing else could adequately capture the magic and magnificence of the food before us. The waiter showed me the label of the Chateau LaLande, or something, of the red wine, and it was OK, not much more. The confit was---well, it couldn't be BETTER, since every course was PERFECT, but I later said it was impossible to choose anything that DIDN'T work in the meal! The crust was crisp and FELT good as the fork slid through it, and then slid through the meat with the SAME EASE. The taste was intense and flavorful and gamy and rich and fatty and wonderful. The tiniest green beans were perfectly done, barely cooked; and the little cubes SHE knew couldn't be turnip and I knew couldn't be carrot were, per the waiter, squash. Staggeringly wonderful, and even BETTER toward 9PM when the loud family and bratty kids that Susan couldn't stand to my right-rear left, and the strange couple to my left left, with her paying the bill; & the frog-voiced fatty (whom I HOPED had a laryngectomy, rather than just being ostentatiously loud) quieted down (and his younger male table-mate stopped grimacing at Susan as she grimaced at the cigar smoke with which he filled the restaurant), and the volume of conversation actually REDUCED. We have to make our next year's reservation at 9PM, to get this silenter ending sooner. I decided to look at the menu for a half-bottle of dessert wine, and the only affordable purchase I could see was "Goudy's Essencia" from California, at $20, and the wine steward (whom Susan likened to Uriah Heep with his needle-nosed hand-wringing) overheard my comment about Baume de Venise and said that this was peachy and apricoty, so we ordered it and it WAS, even tastier than Baume de Venise, and Susan LOVED the taste of it, and I almost found the AROMA fuller and fruitier than the TASTE: MUST find some here in the Heights. Our desserts started in a tall silver coupe (to match the tall globe of the dessert-wine goblet, rounder than the white-wine glasses, narrower than the red-wine glasses, which were smaller than the water goblets): mango sherbet, of a FINENESS which made it seem almost like ice cream, on a cranberry sauce with strawberries and maybe cassis and red currants too. Then came the final plate: triangle of the waffle with the vanilla ice-cream on top and a triangle of pecans on the side, with that wonderful syrup overall, and a tiny heap of white-chocolate mousse with a frozen cross of some red-fruit puree over it, and a wedge of white-cake filled with chocolate, with blueberries and chocolate at the tip, and Susan took her mignardises: a surprisingly soft chocolate truffle (which, she said, was what I'd said LAST year) and a crisp dough-circle with something inside. She'd noticed drinks going by with tiny plastic giraffes in them, and we asked the steward for some, and he said of course and presented us with a pair each: a tall one and a short one. Then she said she wanted one for Marilyn, and I asked the cute boy for a pair of---- CAMELS, since she'd said something a moment before about camels, and he got a "WHAT?" expression on his face and I TOTALLY BROKE UP in thankfully silent helpless laughter. And he gave her TWO PAIR of the wonderful butterscotch-colored goodies. And she loved the dark-skinned waiter "that was really on my side," & we agreed that the Steve Martin lookalike HAD the sexiness that the REAL Steve Martin lacked. The odd couple to my right, the woman plain-dressed and Brit-accented, left, and someone who looked like Isabelle Rossellini from "Blue Velvet" sat beside Susan and listened to her recommendations but her parther ordered only California wines. The bill was $341.00: $200 for the meals, $35 for the bottle of wine, $12 for the glasses of wine, $20 for the dessert wine, and $6 for the coffees, for a total of $273, with 18% tip added of about $49 and the tax about $21, and it doesn't QUITE add, but it added when I checked the bill. We wondered if we couldn't come back in 6 months, got told by a female cook that the Weins had gone much to Eugenie les Bains, saw Barry Wein sitting behind me talking to a friend, and left redeeming the coats for $2 and paying $9.50 for the taxi back, for Susan to phone me and me to finish this at 1:15AM!
1/15/87: Notes from 12/6/86 AIDS Conference: I'd glanced through Brown's book to jot down questions for him:
p.10: Events NOW justify fear?
p.10: 40,000 by 1988
p.21: virus CULTURED but no ANTIBODIES?
p.24: vaccine STILL unlikely?
p.25: TIME versus (%AIDS from antibodies)
p.44: HBV vaccine per MY MD: More chance from VACCINE than CONTACT
p.78: Antibodies DISAPPEAR---and come BACK?
p.91: ONE life AEROBIC and ANAEROBIC?
p.94: HOW can this HAPPEN?
p.98: Abscissic acid?
p.105:New on somatids?1983 C.E.R.B.Naessens videotape--somatids&levurids&spores
p.116: retrovirus DISINTEGRATION???
Looked through page 127. Now notes from meeting:
AZT in ARC would yield cure?
"New" AIDS antibody-testing? not known
GRAD students will accept PPLO?
10:07AM: Brown quotes his book: healthy people don't get AIDS. "30% of those infected develope the disease (p.25?)
10:27: Dr. Lyla Mattman: Cell-wall deficient organisms/pleomorphic/L-form
Rheumatoid arthritis by Propionibacterium acnes.
Virus specific in Whipple's and Crohn's diseases and sarcoidosis:etiology FOUND
to 11:04, break to 11:29. Naessens: Every DAY we form cancer and eliminate it.
When the IMMUNE system is reduced, TREFONS increase and cancers grow.
Videotape to 12:30. Slides 3000x enlargement, and 4500X from 11/18-20/86.
Kaposi's polymorphonucleocyte CHANGES to filamentary "inclusions."
Kaposi cells have hydra-like FILAMENTS.
Granulations of somatides IN red cells in THAT sample, with thin fungus-like levurid forms and fungal MYCELIUM-formation around cells. to 12:56. Lunch on 8th floor to 2:15, with strange lawyer from the south who was probably gay.
2:25 Mattman: Kaposi's organism has been ISOLATED. Chlamydia is MOST PREVELANT sexual disease. to 2:40. Hoeckstra unavailable, so Dr. Steven Paul talks on Candida. Oral candidiasis IN ARC indicates coming of AIDS. QU: Could control of candidiasis prevent AIDS? Heartburn: suspect candidiasis! Cimetidine NOT given WITHOUT candidiasis test. Antibiotics kill intestinal flora that keeps Candida DOWN. Candida REPRESSES immune system, TO THE EXTENT your temperature does NOT rise. Protein-energy malnutrition shows SAME immune system malfunctions as AIDS. Sexual activity leads to lots of ejaculations leads to zinc deficiency leads to candidiasis leads to AIDS. to 3:35.
Ketoconazole (tegamet) NOT effective against Candida in ABSENCE of stomach acidity. Lead PREDISPOSES to certain enterotoxins. Dr. Katapodis: Sialic acid test for cancer (if value is more than 20). IMMUNOSUPPRESSED patients down to 7.4. Lipid-associated sialic acid (LASA) test: normal 15-20 mg/???
AIDS down to 4-5. Healthy gays 10-11. AIDS in remission 11-12. LASA to monitor chemotherapy in TUMORS. Anemia values 10-12; vegetarians 10-12. Advanced cancer and ascites in lungs values of 1-3. Chemotherapy 6-10. 90 in PRODROMAL cancer; KS not work: 5-40; cancer is low, then UP. To 3:47.
Brown: Kaposi's SARCOMA is misnomer; it's NOT malignant. T4/T8 ratio NO prognosis; but good if it improves. Helped by macrobiotics, vitamin C, and acupuncture, and hyperalimentation with amino acids, and German enzymes, and ozone therapy. Cholesterol less than 80 (normal 140-180) is SIGN of PPLO and AIDS. to 3:54. Chelation of lead in "cancer" patients in narrow-road Swiss village prevents cancer. PUSH for Gerovital (protein), anti-viral. Intravenous HCl increases white blood by 30%. UV blood irradiation GOOD in orchitis of six males. Cure effective in 7 days. To 4:02. He was very sad more of the press wasn't there, but the videotape, he hopes, will disseminate his message more widely.
1/15/87: 12/16/86 RAMTHA notes:
RAMTHA: CHANGE: THE DAYS TO COME, taped in Denver on May 17-18, 1986.
SIDE 1: 11:41-1:41
12:06: We are God; we create our own reality; we can change our reality.
1986: Year of preparation/ knowingness/ and decision.
"Ending in November, with the satellite."
Full ownership of the days to come.
AIM: Come to Christ-consciousness, so be it.
12:15: In deed: in power/action/love. Help? IN DEED it into life.
Can't get the FUTURE from the PAST.
That you lived BEFORE should let you know you'll do it AGAIN.
Humans on earth for 7 1/2 million years.
No one evolves if they are backtracking. No future lies in yesterday.
Your ATTITUDE creates destiny of mankind.
What you embrace emotionally BECOMES the future.
Nature is God, bethought, realizing itself in all beings.
Thought turned inward is realization, called light.
12:36: "Z particum" is LAST: breaking of light into lower form.
Continuum of light is broken into light particums.
YOU are the first light of the gods.
LOWER light forms started from Z particum dividing into X & Y particums.
Earth is HOLLOW??? "Short recap of eternity.":
Big bang only called because science doesn't know what came before it.
THOUGHT is everlasting LIFE.
Atoms have infinite atoms within: THOUGHT.
No such thing as "beginning of time."
Mother Sun: she is called Nature.
12:46: Thought contemplating itself produces life.
Sun, in fission (!), produces light.
If sun is in balance, your weather is in balance. Sun will have bellyache, will have a SPOT, which is explosion of THOUGHT occurring. Thought into fission of X, Y, and Z particums. Inevitable hole is explosion of sun EVOLVING. The fission in sun warms you. Clouds created by solar winds. Sun is becoming spotted; weather is becoming erratic and unpredictable. In 1987, which is the year 2122 of Egyptian king (no king THERE!), see a HUGE spot on sun, and flares, and drastic weather changes. Change is PURPOSEFUL evolution. Life, as God, will go on and on. Sun is in cycle of expansion. Will be drought, thirsty soil. Plenty has created LAZY entities. You concern yourself with PETTY things. Your vision is VERY constricted. At END of 1987: no water. The "breadbasket" will be depleted. (This does NOT agree with usual sun-cycle). It CAN change; it can be at later time. Drought is NATURE's future. Be like ants: store FOOD. Provide for TWO YEARS. Drought is already beginning. CITIES poor places in days to come. Cities first to spur disease and plagues. Store cans, dig wells. Great earthquakes in "Ring of Fire." PEOPLE melted glaciers and created ocean-valleys. Volcanos are steam-valves.
SIDE 2: 1:42-3:42: Leave the beaches and go inland. Seek dry, higher ground. Plate tectonTics, is God expanding. 1:50: Eastern seaboard---you're killing nature. STORMS coming from equator to east. Nature is heling its wounds; industrial plants, polluting, will fall. China and Japan have quakes and volcanoes. Himalayas grow higher. 1:54: Shall NEVER be nuclear war. NEVER have nuclear winter. Days of warlord are numbered. It's the time of humanity and the meek. Earth WON'T rotate on its axis. Enlightenment MEANS to be in knowledge OF. If you didn't have change, it would be a rather boring existence. People will think of SURVIVAL, not war. These days will be God's intervention. NATURE destroyed Spanish armada. No UFOs coming to bag you up ---that would be an IMMENSE babysitting job. Wrongo in the Congo. Many HAVE conquered gravity and travel in ships. Earthquakess take the EAST in 1987. Earthquakes for rest of 1986! TSUNAMIS will affect South Mexico and Baja California. New land-mass rising off Japan, END toward end of 1987. Japan moving WEST; China gets NEW land at end of century. Avoid MEXICO Summer-86 to end-87. In USA: Mountains rise in plains. Underground tests are implosions(!). Europe and Russia home of libertine---free to change---entities and are unsettled and enslaved peoples; Ukraine moving northwest. Russia is DYING land in end 1980's and end-1990's. Black plague returning as FAMINE. Earthquakes will splinter reactors. 2:50: There is NO higher self; you are only ONE self. You are God; know that you are. God is a lawless, free-willed, isness. Live the light to the world. In my time, there was no oceans. Old Eastern philosophy has nothing to teach the now. God's intervention brings rockets falling to earth. Days of warlords are numbered. By 1987-end only two heads of state left! Chernobyl will cause meek to revolt. USA will not know major war. You complain about King Reagan. He is the beginning of three who will let people rule themselves. I didn't vote for him. Reagan is divinely inspired(!). Reagan contemplates and prays daily for direction. By decade-end USA will be ruled by PEOPLE. What is YOUR destiny? If you pursue intellectuality, separating yourself from simple men, you're wrong. You are selfish, ignorant, arrogant, and dying. You don't embrance the God you are. When you see God in OTHER, you see it in YOU. If you judge/criticize OTHERS, you do it to YOU. Why don't you know answers to your own questions? UNCONDITIONAL love crowns Christ-awakening. Problems are ignoring solutions. I know you know I know the answers. By year-end you will know your reality. I will give you what you want by 1986-end.
SIDE 3: 3:56-5:51: You ARE learning. WHAT could be hold about a holy WAR? Decade-end: Jewish condition changed. Christ MEANS "God-Man Realized." God doesn't need fighting for. Holy wars at zenith before decade-end. Days of black and white are coming. Changes lead to superconsciousness. 4:43: end of Day 1. Blessed are the scribes who simply record the word. They salvage peace. 4:50: people ENTER; LOTS to black (kissing hand): I am happy you are here. Your child will not know disease or war. It is wonderful to smell the smells of a man. [Husband is NOT COMFORTABLE.] She "passes among" 4:50-5:35! I am waiting for the hour when you know who you are. [To "pusher": let me finish my dissertation."] There can never be true love in teachers and followers, only equals. Life as it is is the display of God.
SIDE 4: 5:53-7:35: Storms will hit Florida. Poisonous waters of New England states (entities drinking their own urine), Nature will REACT to that. Where to move to? Leave Atlantic seaboard and New England, and move to "Western Sphere." One should not live in the cities (2x). In drought, people will ROB you. Dig lawn and plant food; dig wells. Move to NORTHWEST. Midwest: keep to TREES and fresh water and farmlands. Get solar power: more sun. Gales will blow windmills. Store canned goods and LEARN TO PLANT. Learn to salt and dry meat and milk cows. Reactor-cracks NOW poisoning water. If you're on California beach: make your peace. Mt. St. Helens saved country. Rose petals not as multudious as this anti-welfare! No weak-minded, only weak-BACKED humans. Wanting to change someone only means you're not happy as you are. No such thing as hell, or Lucifer. Black holes are passages to parallel dimensions. Mourns holy wars in Ireland and Middle East. She preaches: no one needs to preach to the world; just leave it alone. When the light shines bright enough, they'll want to know who turned it on. Go where it feels right. Do what feels right. It is YOUR truth. Now spirit-guides arise every moment. NONE of them know what you need to know. This teaching will outlive all its contemporaries. 7:06: wine ceremony there at 2PM. Nature is God; it is the is. Wine: the ascended grape. Take wine. Calls self: Ramtha the Enlightened One! Over at 7:34, followed by address of Yelm, Washington, which is just SOUTH of Mount St. Helens, but far enough inland (I check with the Ring of Fire maps) to be safe in case the ring rotates. Taped it twice, and Shelley Hooe and Maya Bryant want to see the tapes. I'll have to schedule people on two nights sometime later this month.
1/16/87: In a funk! Lungs seemed to fill up before going to sleep last night, so my mind went through the "logical" progression of flu, PCP, AIDS, and death! Then this morning I sit mooning over the $50,000 Cryptogift, getting nowhere, and letting other "duties" slide. Debate starting new sections for restaurant menus (like some of those below), health notes (like the one below), but finally decide to just WRITE them ALL in notebook, and get OUT of the funk and let the reorganization come LATER. I just want to CLEAR my coffeetable of the piles of things to DO before I can get to STAMPS before the next INDEX is due!
1/16/87: Johnson: Check went out on Monday. BZ: OK, fine.
1/17/87: GOT $2700 check from Johnson. THAT'S cleared up at LAST!!
1/17/87: VERY impressed and moved by "Mother Teresa" a 1/5 hour movie on Ch.13.
Mother Teresa's Prayer for Peace
Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace:
that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is love, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.
1/19/87: FINALLY catch up on correspondence, writing SOME letters to people that I hadn't written to (except for my birthday invitation, response, and Christmas) for a year and a half. AND start on "Masks of the Universe," the VERY LAST BOOK of the pile of books I had to read for SO many years. And talked to everyone on the phone, and caught up with the notes that I have to type, so that I can at last think of getting to stamps again (after looking at taxes, that is), and THEN submitting myself, at last, to another long index.
1/24/87: Notes from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross tape "Life, Death, and Life after Death" #1 (45 minutes on each side, and VERY effective): She STARTED an unbeliever in life after death. Mankind's lived for 47 million years, 7 million years in the present form. What "converted" her: 1) Even the ANGRIEST and most DIFFICULT patients began to calm down, breathe deeply, and relax as death neared. They gained a sense of serenity. Moments AFTER death, their faces express PEACE. 2) Many patients' "hallucinations" of dead friends. 3) Her STRONG sense that patients have LEFT and DISCARDED their bodies: she had no one THERE to MOURN. 25,000 NDEs collected in world in 10 years. Only 1 of 10 have RECOLLECTIONS of experiences near death: youngest 2 years, oldest 97 years. When you die: 1) You leave body WITHOUT fear, panic, or anxiety. 2) You experience physical WHOLENESS in environment at HOME or at the scene of the fatal ACCIDENT, and you witness RESCUE efforts in a DETACHED way. You hear conversations and THOUGHTS. 3) Our SECOND, ethereal body (temporary)--amputees have legs, blind see, impaired FUNCTION---some REGRET coming BACK to handicaps ---life has NO pain or handicap. Only projection or wishful thinking? Blind ACTUALLY see COLORS and DESIGNS in NDEs. 4) IMPOSSIBLE to die ALONE. Children dying of cancer have OBEs. MOST have OBEs, unobserved, in DREAMS. IN OBEs, people (playmates/guardian angels/guides) [birth BEGINS at TAKING FIRST BREATH---so she'd be OK on abortions] who we have LOST are WITH us. Ethereal bodies travel in no-time and no-space WHEREVER they want. PARENTS make patient-children feel GUILTY about dying: Child: Mommy, I'm OK, go! Mom goes, kid dies. NO ONE dies alone, AND we can go ANYWHERE to be with whom we want to be. We can shed body in CRISIS, EXHAUSTION and in SLEEP. Viktor Trankel: "Searth for Meaning," studied OBEs, verified by Bob Monroe. EKR supervised by Monroe in OBEs in Menninger Foundation in Topeka. EKR has MANY cases of family SURVIVORS KNOWING which family-members die first. "Everything is all right now. Mother and Peter are waiting for me." They HAD died. NO NDE child makes mistakes!! In every 800-person audience, at least 12 NDEs. 1) We always get the dead we need most. 2) Pass through (tunnel/river/gate/pass) beautiful and individually appropriate. 3) Go toward light/Christ/God/love, surrounded by love and compassion. This SPIRITUAL energy, WITHOUT NEGATIVITY, makes it impossible to be CONDEMNED in this love. We become aware of what we COULD have been. We evaluate our TOTAL existence with ALL knowledge and understanding AND how it affected others. We LEAVE ethereal body and get IMMORTAL energy-pattern form of pre-birth, between-life, after-life and final god-merger. No two immortal energies alike as no two snowflakes alike. EKR SAW hundreds of immortals LIKE snowflakes. Those energy-patterns are around us NOW. We can ask them to make themsevles known to us; ask questions to be answered in our DREAMS. EKR's mystical experiences: (she wasn't even able to MEDITATE). Maybe sitting with DYING is meditation, though. We are physical/emotional/ intellectual/spiritual quadrants. AIM: To fulfill ALL lessons in ONE lifetime, so we won't HAVE to come back. Monroe's OBE (she went "too fast") INTERFERED with, and she WANTED to go FASTER and FARTHER, leaving only words "Shanti Nilaya." RELIEVED of bowel obstruction and slipped disk. She looked 20 years younger and RADIATED. Next NIGHT: she had to ACCEPT "gone too far." I LIVED THROUGH 1000 deaths of my 1000 patients. Asked for 1) shoulder, and got answer "You shall not be given." 2) hand, and got same anser, and 3) fingertip, NO fingertip: must have FAITH: to bear ANYTHING ALONE. But never to get MORE than one can bear. She THOUGHT, "OK, yes," and she survived, and lived through a rebirth experience, starting with vibration in ABDOMEN and spread to room, state, and planet earth. A lotus-flower bud opened in lotus, backed by LIGHT of death, which she moved INOT and became ONE with. Vibrations stopped and she slept, to wake and wear robe and watch sunrise in greatest ecstasy of existence, in total love and awe of all life around her: animal, vegetable, and minera. She WLKED on AIR. Awareness of cosmic consciousness and love, from which it took several days to come back. She read Bucke's "Cosmic Consciousness." Shanti Nilaya: final home of peace, after all agony, sorrow, and pain, and become being of harmony in ALL FOUR quadrants. TRUE love has no claims or IFs. All of us fulfill destiny in one lifetime. I knew society would shred me to pieces. That night enabled all talks and future work. Three and a half years ago SHE MET HER OWN guides, before 75 SEEING people, and they tape-recorded 7' 10" figure and old friend Salem APPEARED to her. All of you are loved beyond comprehension. You must learn compassion instead of judgment, empathy instead of pity, and unconditional love, and realize life in body is SCHOOL where we choose subjects, teachers, and tests; we graduate, return backhome, where we will all be united one day. Talks of next tape. She's a catalyst to share knowledge. I arrange to let Spartacus and Dennis hear tape.
1/24/87: PLOTZED back from Clover Hill because they charge $2.50 per glass of white wine and only $10/bottle, so OBVIOUSLY I order (and drink totally) an entire bottle of white wine (with the really awful vegetable terrine with [UGH] grape leaves surrounding it) and the boned (I thought it was SQUAB, but it's CORNISH HEN, which is a BIG BIRD [but notTHE Big Bird]) cornish hen, and the Brownie-All-The-Way, with vanilla ice cream, which is the ONLY way to have Brownies, for $40 (which could have been MUCH less, since the waitress-turned- hostess gave me a VISA receipt with NO FIGURES ON IT, and I told her I COULD have filled it in for $2.50), and I weave home (getting the Times, which was the POINT of going out for dinner coming back from Jessye Norman's "Tannhauser" at the Met [note that it wasn't Richard Cassily's "Tannhauser" {he was merely playing the role of Tannhauser}]) to get Dennis's message "You're not home yet!" And of course I AM home, which leads to a true-false labelling DEPENDANT ON TIME: It WAS true that I wasn't home yet when he LEFT the message, but I AM home yet when I receive the message! So the truth-value or false-value of statements DOESN'T matter, OR is dependent on time, so HOW IMPORTANT COULD IT BE that statemente are "proven" true or false??? And I have another "soft shit" (is this becoming a tradition??) and type this out by 8:50, and Dennis hasn't called back yet....which is true NOW, but WON'T be true when he DOES call back....unless the world ends, and then....who CARES, which is NOT related to Balanchine's ballet!!
2/4/87: At 1:45AM, high from Q.V., I think about my being in the Actualism class, and from the thoughts going through my head I copy out the following:
1) I act and LIVE behind an IMAGE of who I want to BE and who I want you to SEE 2) I miss RISK, and GROWTH, and TRUTH
3) I want AUTHENTICITY from myself IN FRONT of others
4) I've become COMPLACENT; I need me to give me a good SHAKEUP: this is IT!
2/4/87 [jotting from 1/20/87]: Title: Everything.Indexing, which stands for 1) Everything, 2) Indexing, 3) Everything-Indexing, 4) Indexing Everything.
Three people: me, yu, it
Three words: aye, nay, wha
Three indexes: A, B, C
A (list) [6] B (combinatorial) [81] C (self-referential) (infinite)
aye A A
it A/aye aye A
me A/B B aye A
nay A/aye/B C B aye A
wha A/B/it it C B aye A
yu A/aye/B/it me it C B aye A
....... .. .. .. .. .. ..
2/10/87: Before I got to sleep, my mind was so filled with the following ideas I had to make notes of them: 1) IS my reluctance to go to sleep (just watch ONE more television show, do some compulsive things, get everything organized, have the sense of "If I died at THIS moment...") equivalent to my reluctance to DIE? 2) Question: AT death, WOULD I go toward "the white light of release from the Wheel of Life" OR opt to return for MORE life? I KNOW that living is more desire, but I still haven't proved to myself by my ACTUAL satisfaction that the desire for more life leads to pain (though the arthritis is increasing, and there's a bit of sadness with the letter from Michael Zolnerzak about his last 8 years in a rest-home with blindness from diabetes, though I keep thinking it would be MARVELOUS to have all that time to listed to all the "Books on tape" of the past and modern classics that I haven't had a chance to read yet). I would hope to retain the THOUGHT that I should go to the white light, and it should be very ATTRACTIVE, but if I also retained the thought that there's no more travel---travel on the ASTRAL plane, that is, in the HUMAN body, so that I could get anywhere I wanted instantly and stay as long as I like: the old fantasy of watching over bodybuilders masturbating in a mirror, checking in on dozens of them in turn to see how they fall into a pattern of self-petting, or going to Antarctica or the Arctic to watch expeditions struggling for accomlishment without suffering the cold and hunger they suffer---like being able to watch endless real-life movies of my choice for as long as I'd want to: looking in on the luxuries and seductions and sexual couplings and even FOODS, though I'm sure I'd be concerned about the absence of touch and taste that I assume exists on that plane, since it seems reasonable that if I could TOUCH their bodies, they could feel ME touching their bodies, and that would produce a CHANGE in the events by my presence, which seems a bit much. But I hope that the pattern of my life is that I fulfil all those desires NOW, in THIS life, and won't need them in the NEXT life. When I DO actually choose to sleep, I REALLY WANT AND LOVE THE FEELING of sleep, so I hope that when I choose to DIE, I'll equally want and love the feeling of death. But I keep thinking I'd want to BARGAIN: COULDN'T I come back as a gay rock-star in a future time that's more accepting of gay rock-stars? Couldn't I be a ballet star, or a French chef, or a Russian tsar, or a billionaire philanthropist, or a cure-finding researcher, or a fabulously successful author, or a movie idol? And then there's the question, what does one actually FEEL in the white light: Chardin's individuality or a Hindu loss of identification? Problems still lingering!!
2/16/87: Conversation with Rolf on phone 10AM-1PM: He called "compulsivity" "Problem #4," and I asked what the first three problems were. He said that #1 and #2 had been solved, and #3, that of homosexuality, was well on the way toward solution. I said "If they're solved, they're not problems anymore." He said, "Well, they're still problems, like solved problems in a textbook." I told him that "problems" had a negative connotation when I used the term, but he said not for him, until he used the phrase "that was no problem" in PRAISE of something, and I accused him of using "problem" in a POSITIVE sense when he talked about his SOLVED problems, yet used "problem" in a NEGATIVE sense for "that was no problem." He said that didn't matter. After LONG conversation, I got the term "adaptive progress" from him to describe the (his word) transformation at Austin-Riggs from (his word) discomfort to (his word) Paradise, which he would even admit, after pushing, to calling "I changed." I was trying to get him to ADMIT that circumstances did NOT influence the transformation, or change in perception or attitude, from discomfort to Paradise, which he admitted could be experienced even in a concentration camp, when I finally pressed him to admit that the circumstances between Austin-Riggs and his "five minutes in Paradise when he agonized duty of writing a paper turned into a pleasurable Paradise (for five minutes) of writing the paper for HIMSELF" were quite DIFFERENT. He kept saying that if he CHANGED his circumstances (dropping his work for Manning and moving to Taos to build an adobe house) he could more easily "make the transformation." I ended by saying that I thought of my compulsivity as "the machine" (along with my background, intelligence, reading, bipedality, past "luck") which I could use to do anything I wanted. He'd never looked at his "Superego" (his term for what he'd internalized of the external rules and pressures of the world) and its relationship to "him," and I said it seemed to make it MORE difficult for him to effect any change at ALL. When he said he was kicked out of Austin-Riggs and quickly moved from Paradise back into discomfort when he "transformed," I made sure he didn't think he had to DIE when he succeeded in making his entire LIFE a Paradise. He kept saying it was "cute" to describe nature TV programs as "varmint" programs and his coworkers as "henchmen of Manning" and his life conditions as "problems." I kept insisting that happiness and content were BISTABLE situations (either you WERE or you WEREN'T, as vectors have a DIRECTION with EITHER a positive or negative sign AND a magnitude in ADDITION), and he might be mild in his negativity, but it was negativity nonetheless to keep speaking of problems after they'd been solved. I spoke of my USING my compulsivity to MAKE myself BREAK AWAY from my old syndrome of making out a "Things I want to do" list that because a "Things I MUST do" list, so that when I DID them there was no SATISFACTION in doing them. Just as I complained about his terming "work" the paper he was writing even AFTER he "transformed" the process from discomfort to Paradise. I suggested there might be some place in his vocabulary and thinking and DIRECTION OF VECTOR for such ideas as pleasure, accomplishment, and FUN. I said that I thought MY compulsivity would ALWAYS be there, and it was up to me to CHOOSE to use that to ENJOY myself ALSO. I had to leave to eat, without telling him of my idea of the MANY voices that cause the internal conflict that he ended the conversation with, the SOLUTION to which was simply QUIETING the nagging voice that kept saying "This is work, this is awful" when I did an index, and it was the QUIETING of that voice that allowed ME to work without observation of passing time, so that the index was finished EFFORTLESSLY and PERFECTLY without me ever thinking a NEGATIVE thought ABOUT it to mar the "Paradise" into which I entered to do the index. But even at the end, when I was tired of the conversation and telling him what I thought, I kept insisting that by MY using MY words, I wasn't leading HIM to realize anything, that it had to be things that HE expressed to himself in HIS terms that would get him to change, agreeing always that TALK and THEORY was NEVER as good as action in this area. My pleasure came many times when he said, "You're really touched on something THERE, Robere," and THOUGHT about it!
2/25/87: EFA meeting: They announce a 6PM 3/5 Computer-group meeting at the EFA office, and I note it down, but forgot to attend. At 6:05 they begin networking, and an awful woman next to me asks what indexing is all about, and apologizes for deciding to join the group across the way. 6:15 the unattractive woman starts on "Creating a Professional Attitude" and the only note I saw fit to take was "Look at you: write your own EULOGY." After my talk, which everyone liked, Margie (tried to find who she was, but she'd left) said "publish a guideline that the members would PAY for." Good idea??
3/9/87: Symptom starts: 1) COUGH Monday and Tuesday, 2) FATIGUE Tues PM, 3) OUTRAGEOUS sore throat 5AM Wednesday, no temperature, just 98.4. 4) UP 5:30 Wed AM, lungs uncomfortable. 5) To Doctor's 10AM Wednesday. Get Penicillin and Codeine cough syrup. (X-rays pretty good)
Then back to doctor's Friday 3/27 to Dr. Lemme for BRONCHITIS, to get Erythromycin E.S. and Tussi-Organidin expectorant (4 oz). (X-rays still OK)
Then back to doctor's Thursday 4/2 to Dr. Lemme for Bactrim for 10 days and a PINT of Tussi-Organidin for week with Kubler-Ross. (X-ray (3x) OK)
Then back to Dr. Chin Friday 4/10, who says I'm fatigued because I've been on antibiotics for a month. My throat is sore from screaming, not infection. X-rays are OK: probably had viral pneumonia which will just pass in time, since antibiotics don't work against them.
AIDS panic drove me to phone on Monday, 3/30, for an appointment on Wykoff Street for Thursday at 2PM, better than 5-week wait for Manhattan slot. Will phone for results 4/22 and go to pick them up 4/23. Fearful, to be truthful.
3/10/87: 1987 BEST OF RICH AND FAMOUS.
1) SOUTH PACIFIC: Tahiti and Rangiroa, Tonga, Fiji. Best on Moorea is Bali Hai Hotel at $265/day. Bali, Australia and Barrier Reef, New Zealand: Huka Lodge on Lake Taupo is $300/day for 2.
2) PERSONAL PARADISES: Hong Kong for shopping and Mandarin Hotel; China for Great Wall; Bangkok for Oriental Hotel; Tokyo for Hotel Okura $1500/day suite or Hiiragiya Ryokan; Dublin for Ashford Castle Hotel; London for Claridge's Hotel; Paris for Tour D'Argent; Zurich for Dolder Grand Hotel; Capri for Hotel Europa in Anacapri for $135/day; NYC in-spots of Nell's, Regine's, 21; Gstaad for Palace Hotel. NYC for La Cote Basque and Le Cirque with the best winelist in the world. DC for Le Lion D'Or. Le Francais in Wheeling, Ill. Rattlesnake Club in Denver. Stars in SF under Jeremiah Tower; Spago in LA and La Chinois in Santa Monica under Wolfgang Puck. Fandango in NYC for International Cuisine and Tse Yang in NYC and Arcadia is #2. Others on TAPE.
3/31/87: Last possible day to write ANYTHING in March, which has been a BAD month. This morning sufficed to summarize it enough. After starting with a cough on 3/9, going to HIP on 3/11 after waking at 5AM, with a sore throat so severe I debated going to a hospital emergency ward or calling 1-800-HIP-HELP for an energency, to get diagnosed for an upper respiratory infection with a prescription for penicillin and Phenergan, an anti-cough syrup with Codeine; cancelling my Washington trip on 3/13, on which day and following day I felt WORST with a temperature and malaise of the flu; and feeling badly enough on 3/27 to RETURN to HIP for a diagnosis of bronchitis and, after a chest x-ray, a diagnosis of freedom from the exudates that would foreshadow pneumonia, though I was told to return for an x-ray after the new Erythromycin Ethyl-something Solution (ESS) antibiotic 10-day prescription and a congestion-breaking cough- permitting cough syrup called Tussi Organdin with a newly-admitted drug that is supposed to be good.
But I woke this morning with a HEADACHE at 5AM that caused me some panic, though I tried to excuse it because of the Kir and over half-bottle of wine for my birthday dinner last night with Susan. I was "hoping" that the combination of antibiotic and alcohol was responsible for my discomfort, rather than "more symptoms of AIDS" which have been panicking me since the flu began. I decided DEFINITELY this morning (after having been recommended before by Rolf and recently quite strongly during this bout of disease by John) to go for the AIDS-antibody test today, though I was somewhat discouraged by the windy rainstorm that greeted me when I re-woke at 9:30.
WITH the AIDS-fear came inevitable thoughts of death. Somewhat AGAINST Susan's "encouraging" remarks last night that, if ever I got sick, she would have to be CHASED AWAY to prevent her from nursing me, I feared lying in a bed with the awful feelings I had at the moment: vague stomach bloatedness from the meal last night at Claire's, headache twinges from (I hope) the alcohol, a dry sore throat and a SLIGHTLY breathy-wheezy feeling from the bronchitis I'd hoped would be GONE by now, nausea, the typical hypothermia by 1.2 degrees when I took my temperature at 5AM, the clammy sheets of still another night-sweat, the pumping adrenaline of fear and anxiety about a horrible diagnosis, and a wonder of what people would say when I told them I had AIDS.
When I tried to look at the positive side (I was getting tired of my restricted life; maybe it was time to "reshuffle" the elements and come up with a new, fresher, person; the world was getting pretty god-awful anyway so why hang around; now I could take flights and FORGET about the anxiety of dying since I knew I was dying soon ANYWAY), I feared the possibility of my "giving up to death" or "giving in to the possibility of disease" actually ENCOURAGING my body to reveal the signs of the AIDS antibodies.
THAT line of thought I tried to combat with THIS line of thought: no, my body ACTUALLY either DOES or DOES NOT now harbor the AIDS antibodies. Taking the TEST will only TELL me what the ACTUALITY IS, and I can start to operate out of FACT, rather than out of FEAR OF FACT.
NOW I come up with the encouraging aphorism that it does NO GOOD to FEAR FACT.
It's a measure of my fear (and lassitude, to excuse myself a bit) that I've gone through the same thoughts over and over in the past three weeks and haven't managed to capture them YET in this NOTEBOOK.
The TYPICAL circle of thoughts in the past few weeks have been this: if I DID have AIDS---well, I was already being discouraged with the mediocrity of my current spate of movie-seeing, porno-selecting, dance-going, book-reading, and non-writing. BUT Lee Remick (and the impossible-but-true store) was gripping in "Nutcracker: Money, Madness, and Murder on television; and conversations with Dennis were pointing up the intellectual stimulation of his seeing Keith Jarrett, my reading John Barth's "Friday Book," my watching Sting's "Bring on the Night," and my views on modern art, and our discussing the attempts at new fusion or fission movements in music, literature, and art---new elements that are SO new they don't even have labels to DIFFERENTIATE and DISTINGUISH them from what was past. I gave Dennis the example that his "knowing what a Renaissance painting was about" came from what he knew NOW from HISTORY a couple of hundred of digestive years after a time when people didn't KNOW to call it Classical Art but complained about various artists' pushing the borders of medium and balance and composition in unpleasant ways---I'm sure Constable got the same criticism that Dennis gives "the five-foot red painting at the Modern" about which he describes himself as "needing to take into account where it fits into modern art to appreciate at all."
AND if I had AIDS, it would push me to DO what I still want to do: take the few trips I have in mind: Florida-and-Angel-Falls, capitals of Eastern Europe, and Antarctica-Australia; read the few books left on my list to read; go to the few restaurants left on my list; and get a new computer with "normal" diskettes so that I could actually PREPARE FOR PRINTING various books I'd love to publish myself.
THAT is then countered with the idea that I want MORE restaurants and meals and friends and books and walks and museum-exhibits and trips---I DO STILL want to live to be 105 years old. Is that only force of habit talking?
THEN I think of the irony: to be dying of AIDS when the nuclear holocaust or the worldwide earthquake or the millenium strikes, so that BOTH personal and planetary cataclysms coincide.
Other thoughts DID flock, such as refiling Tom's returned porno slides, viewing the movies and renting a camcorder to videotape the best parts, sending around the will, phoning people like Edgardo and Jean-Jacques, but it's now 11:30 and I'm becoming tired of doing THIS. At least I've caught SOMEWHAT up to date on a DREADFUL subject.
But I want to finish this PAGE: So I can quickly sketch out the additional irony of receiving news of my AIDS-antibody test during my Kubler-Ross Death and Dying workshop. Or the fantasy that my particular antibodies are PREVENTIVE antibodies for the first time, and my unique blood produces a Zolnerzak factor which WILL immortalize my name. Which leads me to the thought of children: I can NOW see that people WITH children "look forward" to dying in a DIFFERENT way: there IS something (i.e. someONE) left to carry on their name (and get their books published, as Dennis has insisted he does NOT want to do for me!). I fantasize putting an ad in New York Magazine (provided of course I'm tested negative for AIDS antibodies) to be a sperm-donor, but that leads very quickly to the knowledge that I DON'T want to share the responsibility of BRINGING UP the children, which is hardly meritorious for a would-be parent. Then I think that the disease will give me the CLOUT to publish the books, or to influence the burgeoning of peace in the world, the diversion of "defense" funds into the field of medical research. Appearing on talk shows and getting my name around so that publishers would be BEGGING me for the scrappiest manuscripts to be edited and printed by them with large advertising budgets.
And the ultimate question is still begging: will I die into the white light and never be reborn? Will I uniquely remember this life in the next---or somehow remember a PAST life under the pressure of illness in THIS life? Or is there just extinction and all the talk of continuance is ONLY talk, whistling in the dark to remove the agony of ultimate end, nothingness, after the agonies of having TRIED to do something IN life and FAILED, to WHATEVER extent.
4/1/87: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES (dum-de-dum: twenty-four little hours, brings the sun and the flowers, where there used to be rain [and in point of fact what I had planned as a clever digression turns out to reflect "fact": yesterday it WAS raining, and today it IS sunny, though that's hardly the important facet])! Woke this morning about 8AM with MINIMAL (though still palpable) night-sweat, and then dozed to a pleasantly erotic dream that woke me with an erection that I jerked off nicely, and then got up to read more of "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino, rich in self-referential postmodernist (terms thanks to my having read Barth's "The Friday Book" and finished it late last night) switching from character's "I" to author's voice to talking ABOUT the author's voice. Then Dennis calls and talks of his "unusual" experience at the Bijou yesterday (he's willing to praise the Bijou as being a possible site for such "unusual" experiences, yet talks of brothels as the equivalent "sex-spot" for heterosexuals with such a LIMITED range of possible experience that I feel obliged to point out that the legend of the "whore with the heart of gold" obviously AROSE from the "unusual" experiences of men who went just for sex and found a mother- or sister-figure in JUST such a way as he found "friends" at the Bijou). One guy (Peter Mullen, in fact) said that he was uncut then admitted to being CUT, and Dennis expressed amazement that their relationship was on such a non-sexual level in a sexy place that he COULD "lie" like that. Another guy and Dennis got into an argument about determinism versus choice. The guy angered Dennis by saying that he was a mystic, and joined the Catholic Church, because that was the way it was SUPPOSED to be: everything was predetermined. I made the obvious point that he was accepting the "stern-Father" figure as FATE, telling him what to do, and ALSO accepted the "stern-Father" figure of the Catholic CHURCH, telling him what to do. Dennis believes he has CHOICE. "I hate people like that," Dennis ranted. "They can be destructive and it's not their fault." "Which makes it difficult for people who say they have a CHOICE, because if they're then destructive, they're being SELF-destructive. That's a rough thing to admit to." Then after Dennis used the word "fact," I launched into a typical disquisition: if you come to a corner, decide to turn right, then perversely turn left, you can BOTH insist that it's TOTALLY your choice AND that it's totally determined by every bit of your ineluctably determined past life. In fact the ACTUAL determination of determinism versus choice could ONLY come in an improbable situation where you could ACTUALLY SEE the future in ONE way, and then CHOOSE BEFORE THAT to make the future ANOTHER way---though of course the determinists could then argue that your "actually seeing" was FALSE, it was only a TENTATIVE, DETERMINED picture of the future that you could then fool yourself into changing, whereas "in fact" the situation was STILL GOING ALONG PRECISELY AS HAD BEEN DETERMINED FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME. So I was probably MORE correct when I described the question of determinism versus choice as being ABSOLUTELY INDETERMINABLE, with the WORST, in a sense, possibility being that YOU DO IN FACT choose whether the world IS CHOICE or IS DETERMINED, and then everything that comes to YOU does in fact APPEAR to be the way you've chosen it. Dennis says something about words, then, and I go to the ultimate mystical position: using words NECESSITATES "chopping a piece from the One Real and naming it THIS rather than THAT." Being a person is "chopping a piece from the One Real, and naming it THIS rather than THAT." ANY distinction DETRACTS from the Ultimate Unity; EVERYTHING is FIRST based on DIFFERENCES between the knower and the known, God and the Devil, I and thou, that and not-that. What YOU do "wrong" is caused by the DEVIL in you and what you do "right" by the GOD in you, to one; where to YOU what the ONE does is caused by OPPOSITE beings, where in fact it's only because you are NOT (or you THINK you are not) him that you think anything DIFFERENT for him than you do for YOU! And the conversation is additionally rich about travel and books and piano-playing and coincidences, but I want to finish this page, feeling SO much better than yesterday that it's nice to be able to do this as verification that THINGS DO CHANGE. By choice??
4/4/87: Tape from Spartacus on Fear of Flying: It springs from fear of being fearful (which is what I thought to THROW AWAY at EKR's weekend!).
1) Deep breathing can CONTROL anxiety as PRIMARY tool for relaxing.
2) "Needing to be in control" can be changed with relaxation.
3) Stress leads to fatigue and PAIN.
4) Part of tension comes from trying NOT to show personal IMPERFECTION.
5) Relaxing movements: a) head in circle, b) shrug and drop shoulders, c) shift
weight on feet.
6) Wiggle your toes (faster and faster) during takeoff.
7) Stand, stretch, and march in place as seatbelt sign goes off (HA!)
8) Keep muscles loose during turbulence.
9) Low self-esteem and pessimism is harmful.
10) Technique: Left-you: frightened; Right-you: courageous. (How do you trust
someone who says that fears aren't inherited like birthmarks?)
11) FEARING FLYING HAS BECOME A HABIT. I've fed it & collected HORROR stories!
4/7/87: Up at 7:45, breakfast with LOVELY David Risk and Lloyd Gordon and Ashley and Martyn (Dutch). 9 to class (after doing teeth) and songs and at 9:30 Joan (from Switzerland, sounding like EKR) starts: EMOTION
Blockages no good.
FEAR ----- natural survivor instinct.
NATURAL UNNATURAL
Startle reaction to noise ALL OTHERS
Fall from height ARE LEARNED
Fight/flight FROM fear Phobias, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive acts
4/8/87: Sleep BETTER, but not fully. Up at 7, out of bed 7:55. Breakfast with Lloyd and Sandra, then songs 9-9:25. Anticipation of day. (Thursday PM: Pine-cone into fire to symbolize what you leave here.) 9:45: Larry: IF you berate yourself for not being angry or feeling, there's a LOGIC of SURVIVAL behind it. VICTIM TRIANGLE:
1) VICTIM: helpless, vulnerable. Hurt intentionally or unintentionally. MUST self-love. To excape, victim becomes 2) Care-taker of family, who needs VICTIMS to rescue. Independent/efficient/"cannot feel helpless." Hates to make a mistake. DON'T try to help them. These need 3) Perpetrators or persecutors or blamers, who find someone to blame, who abuse people emotionally and DON'T try to help them EITHER. GUILT is the fuel. NO ONE in the triangle feels DESERVING. If there's no one around, you do it to yourself. If you CARE, ask for what you NEED. To get OUT of the triangle risks being ALONE. To be ALONE, you must LOVE SELF. If you're HURT, you have to BLAME, but not parents (good), you blame SELF (bad), and keep secrets. SHARING secrets takes power from the accusers. If you trigger ANGER, be HAPPY because you're BROUGHT it OUT. CARE-GIVER gives out of JOY, not NEED. If you get rid of YOUR pain, you don't have to take other's pain. If you've gotten rid of your anger and grief, yuou can take OTHERS' anger and grief. If you make a CONSCIOUS CHOICE (mother-son) to get OUT of the triangle, you can choose not to be victim/care- taker/perpetrator, even if OTHERS stay in the triangle. It's YOUR choice.
4/10/87: Late start, fixing meeting-room, at 9:20. Note: Call Vanbala for NYC list if Evelyn, NYC person, doesn't do anything. Sharing to 9:50. David: now time to CLOSE DOWN emotional to the world---which is STILL out there. Importance of confidentiality. Share your OWN experiences, not someone else's story. NOW: take care of physical body first. This has been a deep process; pamper your body. You're open now: avoid alcohol and drugs. Must realize that high MAY come crashingDOWN. EKR: Don't make any BIG decisions REAL quick. SLOWLY come out of your triangles. Use discretion with what and how you share. If sad feelings come up, let yourself cry. Reach out for support from friends and family. Too-much sharing dissipates the emotional gains. Tell your Inner Judge to get off your back. Be patient about "What you got from this." Intensives are 20-30 people for 3 days matwork, without EKR. 10:25AM: Intellectual: this is PART of the way. Where did the feelings come from? Try to get COMPLETION of past and future feelings. JOURNALING is good for this. Look at your DREAMS and insights. You child-defenses built up. Externalize: roll up a towel and swat the bed OR the toilet seat and then FLUSH it down. This is NOT the training: you are NOT facilitators. First STEP to training is the INTENSIVE, then 3-day training #1 and 3-day training #2. Trainees, in Training #1, on Satursday, work FREE for matwork. Spiritual (at 10:32AM): Continue to support spiritual quadrant: continually choose LOVE. Leave negativity aside, to work with ASAP. Leave quiet time; be with nature; do rituals. I record VISA payment of $260 donation to EKR; JEFF wants the scarf.
On the last pages of the notebook I record the wonderful verses to : THE ROSE
Some say love it is a river/ That drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razor/ That leaves the soul to bleed
Some say love it is a hunger/ An endless aching need
I say love it is a flower/ And you its only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking/ That never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking/ That never takes a chance
It's the one who won't be taken/ Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying/ That never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely/ And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only/ For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter/ Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies a seed that with the sun's love/ In the Spring becomes the rose.
Then Wayne Melton had written his name in my notebook and I added it to the boards. Alan Taplow wants a copy of my indexing book, if I get it printed out.
4/16/87: Kubler-Ross seminar notes, started 4/6 and ended 4/10/87:
Monday 4/6: 8:30AM on "express bus" to Stony Point comes in to humid area, and I get on to sWEAT even in the cool bus. To corner in Stony Point at 10:30 with five others: Lloyd and Mel and Harriette and Jodie while Ashley phones. Ten minute check-in wait for Africa Room 204. In to unpack and meet Brian from GMHC, with "by chance" three PWA's in other rooms, and MY roommate, Wayne, is in his group. To lunch with Ashley and Sharami and Lloyd and four others, good food and filling, introducing Tempi, a bean curd chitterling. Talk and laugh, and then to get a corner seat (as I was THIRD on the food line) and write this til 1:37. Start singing 1:40 to 2:08. RULES: 1) Confidentiality (EVEN in awe and gratitude). Care-giving ("You were wonderful") is NOT OK. 2) Be SELFISH, week is for YOU. 3) Four-fingered request for hug, 1-finger denial. All have RIGHT to their own SPACE. ASHLEY is my buddy, in Asia 101. If you TOUCH, in feeling, you'll get a karate chop. "Touching" means "please stop, I can't take it." Tape recorders and notes OK for TEACHING material, not for SHARING. RECORD what pushes your buttons. 12-3 is break-time TWTh, for REST. Monday for start, Tuesday and Wednesday for mattress work to work on your stuff and leave it here. EKR comes a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, all day Thursday. Thursday 7:30-10 is Evening ceremony: outsiders OK. Friday, goodbye. Ask three times, if no three times, then YOU have to initiate work. Room open at NIGHT. Meals at 8, 12, and 6. Start at 9, 3, and 7:30. Buddy-system. To 3:20. Introductions: stand, say first and LAST name, why I'm here, and in one word my greatest strength and one-word my weakness. Break 3:20-3:40. Intros til 5:50. Dinner to 7:30. Pictures til 8. Two late intros after singing. At 8:30: "Why you're really here." Baby needs total
care
Spiritual (Intuitive) Physical 1 yr.
12 yrs. -------------------------------------------------------------
Intellectual Emotional
Physical: babies RECEIVE LOVE from EVERYONE. Physical PREDOMINATES ALL the time. No pain, nausea, coldness. No pain and clear mind with oral morphine and MST is continuous, taken only every 8 hours.
Emotional: EKR: learn tricks that ruin you for like. Self-love. Unconditional love AND firm consistent discipline in family.
Intellectual: curiosity, school, keep exploring. Retarded child/Alzheimer adult Spiritual: IS there life after death? The west looks like this:
A leukemic baby looks like this:
Self-indulgence COVERS agony of Physical and Emotional pain: so you try to cure everyone ELSE. DON'T LAUGH WHEN PEOPLE COVER PAIN WITH HUMOR. Spiritual quadrant (meditation) also used to cover pain. Exclusive religions/colors/sexes also cover pain. DRAWINGS bypass intellectual to show spiritual, physical, and emotional quadrants. To 9-9:15 break. Drawings: Susan Bach: Nonverbal language of soul. 1) Feelings (heart) calm/scary/upset.
2) Colors: Red for danger/anger/passion/stop; orange for change; yellow for energy; white for need to cover up; green for growth; blue for peace and greatest health; brown is manure for growth; black is grief and depression and fear; purple is spirituality and possessiveness.
3) High intensity of color corresponds with high ENERGY. LIGHT blue represents health fading OUT, but in good shape.
4) Placement in picture is DIRECTIONAL: Toward past----toward future
Far future---attitudes toward death Present
Past Immediate future (2-3 days)
5) Here-now picture AT THIS MOMENT is centered:
6) Mirror picture: using only HALF of poential:
Birds equal soul; Tree equals person; Sun equals Father/God.
7) NUMBERS in picture: family members, number of months, number of years.
Pictures are ways of DRAWING OUT what's going on. Is no good/bad, only INFO!
End 10:35, then TV movies (Dance-teacher five minutes; and Peege 30 minutes), then walk with Ashley til 12 talking. Hug goodnight, shower, and back to toss and toss and toss.
4/16/87: ANGER
NATURAL UNNATURAL
15-second get-it-over Recursive anger: A
Anger that ASSERTS is OK angry,B MORE angry
Brings change Rage/hatred
Self-protection Bittrnss/self-hate Assertiveness Aggressiveness
Powerlessness
LackOfInnerAuthrty Joan: Anger at DEATH may be anger AT something ELSE.
JEALOUSY ----- Stimulus that stimulates & motivates to growth
To WANT is natural. ANTI is ENVY and self-putdown. ANTI is CRITICISM.
"I had to work like the devil to be GOOD."
GRIEF ----- How we deal with and express loss.
Tears Denial: No ROOM to say it's awful
Marinating in self-pity/shoulds/guilt/remorse/
self-pity/depression/alcoholism/martyrdom
LOVE ----- Care, concern, relateness, nurturing.
Self-love UnreasonablExpects
"Tie Your Own Shoes" Demandingness
Loneliness
UnfinishedBusiness
11AM: Mattress work til Wednesday midnight, to clear up unfinished business.
To handle grief: Share and cry.
To handle fear: Shout it out and ASSERT.
To handle anger: Use language and rubber hose on telephone books, and get
tools for continuing growth work.
DON'T LAUGH at humor that covers pain. Don't ANALYZE, just FEEL.
"Who's ready to share?" gets it started.
I want to hold, and be held, but I'm afraid to take the risk. I look at the beautiful David Risk and feel so SAD and unfulfilled! "Painful physical manifestations from holding it in." And EVERYONE thinks everyone ELSE can work it through, but not YOU. Techniques: 1) Rubber hose the telephone book,
2) TEARING out telephone-book pages and RIPPING them. 3) Take the hose and check it out, if there's anger, it'll come out. Helplessness is SO bad that we BLAME outselves and hate the PEOPLE who REMIND us that we fail. VERY emotional til 12:10, at which time I wander into garden to think, but (sadly?) I find myself knowing that if Ashley or a WOMAN came to console me, I'd push them away; but I'd NOT push away lovely David Risk (so AFFECTING as HE was being affected by "sharing," though not NEARLY so much as WOMAN, like Brian, who SOBS ALOUD. But then I feel SO close to sobbing that I feel I could do it with one more push. Sad mother at daughter's death, adopted son lied to, only daughter raped by sons and unprotected by parents. AIDS victims brutalized by unfeeling mothers, mothers guilty about brutalizing children, and expressions of helplessness that bring tears to my eyes. I try to "think it out" (the emotional tumult and WHAT to work on), then decide to SEE what's for lunch and maybe get my PICTURE checked for clues. Get some outside data. (Oh, Janice Rous tells me she did Alexander work on my 7 years ago, and I feel GUILTY for not recognizing her.) Envy those sitting with Bill (Jeff, his AIDS-dying best friend) and David and ever-quiet (out of his depth and maturity) Martyn. Sit with Luiz (who says he knows me from somewhere, then later figures it was someone else) and try Joan for a picture, but she's going on a break. Corner Cat, who smiles at my recognizing her as mental, who tells me to KEEP in the heart when I get down there (into Unconditional Love and Infinite Compassion, as it feels, and I guess I worry about losing ME then in OTHERS, as I fear losing ME in DEATH.) She VERY much satisfies me by saying that I'm getting PIECES of the puzzle in my emotional reactions to the working people (and she praises me for listing my "buttons" in the journal [which at this point were: 1) Jangly bracelets, 2) Looking at BEAUTIFUL David Risk and HIS sadness, 3) Being told (by Larry), just lie down and just be (tears from TOTAL acceptance), 4) GENUINE fear, pain, and anger VERY touching. 5) NOW, the awful conviction on "Let your scream come from that place" that MY scream would be SO loud and long to set EVERYONE back on their heels!]), but I can't be expected to have ALL the pieces NOW, and there'll be time on Thursday to get some of the MENTAL links. So Cat "permits" me to be in my head AND use my heart, but to try to stay in the HEART as much as I can. Talk more to Luiz in the easy chairs near the side, have some cottage cheese and honey and bread and butter, so I feel I'm OK til dinner. Then get on queue for Larry after Marlene (the nun) and Ashley, but before Marcie, but Ashley is last and Larry says I'll be first at the DINNER break. Finish this at 2. I CAN'T berate myself for "cruising," since that's ALWAYS a chance at things like these, where young men are so openly gay. The TOUCH of that "Unconditional Love" breaking through my judging exterior feels GOOD, but doesn't come close to my fear of death. YET I'm only really ONE day into the 4-day seminar, so be PATIENT. Interesting talk with Alan on computers and HIS publishing company and maybe indexing! In to DIFFERENT seat at 3, and songs. 3:35, EKR enters. Leaves at 3:40. Ruth's MOM died when Ruth was 6. Technique: to Ruth: "Let Ruth talk to her mother." Then, "Allow the little girl to let her anger out." Then "Why did you leave us?" Coincidence: Larry asks Ruth what "her" (her grandmother's) name was, and Ruth thinks of HER grandmother-called name Ruttie, and someone in FRONT of me REACTS: Ruttie was HER pet name in childhood! Larry does my picture in five minutes flat: left is past, frief; right is present and future: more colorful but DIFFUSING. Did I release in the past from grief? Yes, with LSD. Focus possible? Maybe writing. Fantastic ENERGY in Brian and his father fucking a whore while his mother dies, and falty (?) and the coatroom (?), and the BLACK. And more and more, until I feel insignificant with my "fear of death." THESE people have PROBLEMS! The woman fucked over by doctors and hospitals who loses three fetuses. (If you HANDLE anger right away, you save yourself buckets and buckets.) The Vietnam Veteran with Agent Orange disability SCREAMING at US, and it's DESERVED, that OUR money killed 197 through ONE soldier, who'll kill AGAIN, here; and the people shot in half, wriggling for three hours before death, and it's OUR FAULT. Break at 11:15 is welcome, and agonized screams filter from "backrooms." And Martyn stares blankly, intently into space. Technique: collect 10 hugs. Technique: You feel THIS (he rubs his stomach), it's FEAR: find a safe place and SCREAM it out. "We shall overcome" at end at 12:45. Bed at 1:10 after shower.
"You know the rule!" If you CAN'T live with guilt, you ACCEPT being a victim, enter the triangle, and become caretaker or perpetrator. Technique: Say "I hurt." Lunch of awful shrimp, then through cemetery and pine-cone picking. Back to get behind Denice on "the list," about 11th, at 3PM. Catastrophes to 4:30...a number of AIDS cases, Jeff and Luiz talk, and some woman shrieks that the bloody sheet reminds of her helplessness at her father's death, and [notes unreadable]. Ten minute break and people quite shaken. I feel sweaty about going. But it goes WELL, good talk, good scream, then Joyce for "my ride home." Scream and empty and fill with love and get pillow of me, lover, me-lover, and smile and feel good. Back for more shit, and Jeff KNEW Nick de Noia and cries for him. Lots of reports: Sharami for the third time trying to get her legs to stop paining. Elena is one of the horror-stories. Father raping her, but beating the brother as a pervert when THEY are found making love. Mother getting a cerebral hemorrhage as she's about to marry one, father getting heart attack when she's about to get engaged because she's pregnant. Many talk against doctors, but find 4-5 doctors in the group, per Harold. Larry looks exhausted and Subhana takes over for a bit. Pimple-faced girl requests a rocking and Marty says "Want the vibrator now?" and jiggles her feet. Marty IS laughing many times, indistinguishable from crying. [9AM Joyce jokes about starting over. People VERY drowzy.] Martyn talks of working (in Dutch) all day in back. Rocking and singing IS nice! Arms and hands. Then I report, others close, sing the "Goodnight" song from Channel 68 and hug and hug and hug, and David Risk has an incredible body-building back and I admit "You feel as wonderful as you look." I'm SURE he wears Malcolm-like eye and cheek makeup. Ashley says no. Bed about 2:15.