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1989 2 of 4

3/4/89: Phoned Bob Geiger at home to find that he's been out of the hospital for two full weeks, NOT going back into the hospital during the month of March for any more chemotherapy, is taking steroids to increase leg-strength, and worked two part-days last week and will go to work on Monday, going out Saturday night to a near-by dinner and Sunday brunch also nearby, recovering.

3/5/89: Have feeling to "catch up" so I print movies, go to gym, get to Stress workshop, take stuff to Spartacus, and read the Times, that taking all day, but it was five items, so I figured I'd have to make a list of five items TOMORROW.

3/6/89: Figure today's list at 1) 1988-trip slide-list, 2) BH library for a) Consumer Reports on Word Processors, and b) Scotts stamp catalog, 3) Index-past list-catchup, 4) Susan's-index estimate, and 5) Vacuum, and that feels good.

3/7/89: LIFESPRING: Subway up by 7:25 and the LPs are holding the room! Coordinators sit about talking to themselves! Est was never like THIS! I sign a registration saying "The name I like to be called" is Bob and they wave my nametag before giving it to me; Dennis doesn't get one. Ron has to register across the hall. They ask for my phone number and I say NO. LOTS of est jargon: "be here/your life/opportunity/possibilities/look at/be with" etc. 45 hrs/5 days/$475/200 students; Graduate course 6 days/$950/50 students. 300,000 people in 15 years in 15 cities. SAME hours-long rule process. Training: lecture 25%, exercises 50% (35 of them: trust, relationships, career, past, parents, desires, etc), and sharing 25%, in dyads, small (10) groups (which Ron said you choose the group-leader, so three in his group chose the cute straight group-leader HE did), closed-eye guided imagery, and "trust" exercises in which you mingle with the whole group, saying "I trust you/I don't trust you." The ex-police captain from San Jose is off-putting at the start, growing only slightly more palatable as he tells funny stories on himself (Dennis thinks he's gay because he shared a house with a fellow cop)--and NO one trusted him at the beginning---obviously you go through at the end and EVERYONE trusts you. Good manipulation, like the one at the end, where even though Ron was delighted he could report that he made GOOD on his commitment [another ugly retained est- word] to bring one person [even bringing TWO], he regretted not being able to tear off a corner of his red GRADUATE nametag and put it onto a corner of your yellow GUEST nametag to indicate that he got us into the training session! It's Wednesday 7-12, Thursday 6:30-12 with "passion and commitment", Friday same hours as Thursday, Saturday 10-10, and Sunday 10-6 ending with graduation with graduates coming in with flowers. 1979 start in San Jose, where 450 of 750 cops took the training. Pope: does Sandy KNOW of this in San Jose? Our lecture is from 8-8:55, then an experience where we shake hands with someone we don't know (and I get Whoopi-Goldberg-like Deborah across the aisle) and hold their hands for 6 minutes (and look into their eyes WITHOUT the est-y "no expression," which is ONE good point) and say we're glad to meet them. Then we tell the purpose we came (I tell Dennis that I came to see Ron's pump-produced foreskin but he doesn't share that with the group!) to the person next to us, whether we know them or not. Then he talks about expanding our comfort zone, and we move chairs into small groups of 4-6, with graduates and with guests, and it turns out that graduates are more or less equally scattered in these groups, though they let room for two guests with one graduate, and everyone introduces themselves in 10 seconds. Artie is 39, divorced, into power; Elaine is 63, married 39 years, into compassion; I'm 53, gay indexer; Dennis is 40's, OK 42, wants to return to acting; Woman 1 is 23 and new to everything; Woman 2 got out of fashion consulting to write a book about some self-help travel plan. Then we PAIR off and I get Elaine, and SHE'S the salesperson as we answer what we'd like to do with our lives. I'm doing it, is my point. This goes on and on until 10, and I'm getting antsy to leave. Then the "coach" upfront goes into his HARD sell, and our friends return from next door graduation at 10:20 (with envelopes of certificates and names, phone numbers, and addresses of EVERYONE, which surprises all of us and would freak out Marj Mahle, as it probably did Terence McNally who was in Elaine's group) to try to clinch the deal, and I say that Ron is OK trying to get another EST hit with this, but MY first hit was with LSD (which Ron had never heard about) and the SECOND, much-lesser hit was with est, so I KNOW that I don't want to do this, which is TOO SIMILAR to est to offer me anything NEW, since I tell Elaine that there are places I can go to EXACTLY meet Mr. Right rather than here, and she gets (good try, lady) a gay WOMAN to talk with me, and SHE tries a bit of a harder sell, but I get away by simply saying "No." Dennis has a harder time but finally I get my coat and Ron gets his coat and we GIVE Dennis his coat, and we leave about 11:45, coach telling us that we can stay all night if we want to. Some are signing up around the side at the registration tables, but they DO telephone you and DO impose commitments on you and DO pull on your commitment- lines, so it's not something I want to REPEAT, though I tell Dennis that NOW I can call up and tell Pope that est is STILL alive and is just renamed Lifespring. Ruth Gamble said it was formed by Stewart Emery and two other former Werner Erhard trainers, and it seems like it was about the right time: I check calendars and I'd taken Actualization October 24-27, 1975. February '76 was a BUSY month: fasting 7 days, getting Rolfing 6-9, doing "About Sex" and "Making Relationships Work", having a 104.5 fever, and meet Dennis 2/20. And I find that I started est June 28, 1975, with something June 23 and intro June 16. So MY est was 15 years ago, when Lifespring supposedly STARTED. So THERE!

3/17/89: CAUGHT UP AT LAST!!!! First I was busy preparing for the Bayreuth trip, then I was busy coming back from it, then suddenly I was in the middle of Florida in the middle of January, writing out a list of things that I wanted to do. That list hung over my head (doing nothing on the most important item: getting back to writing plays, of course) as I got back from Florida, got vaguely caught up from that, watching TV tapes, getting new films, getting caught up on that list, then on the movie list, until there were only two to-do items on one of the lists: show Hungarian slides to Mrs. Johnson and vacuum. So I started going through my slides, deciding FIRST I had to weed through the DISCARDS and come up with, eventually, NINE boxes of THROWAWAYS, shortened to throways, about 350 slides, and putting the discards into boxes that I put into a larger box to free up 1) some of the slide trays so I could look through the slides with ease, and 2) some of the storage trays so I'd have more room for more slides. When I thought I was through I decided to RELOOK at the DISCARDS to come up with a MUSEUM box (which sounded like a good idea but didn't get very far---I guess the TWO-MONTH 1988 TRIP will contribute most of those, but I'm not LOOKING at that yet, waiting for Mom to come around May 1 so SHE can take the throways if she wants them AND can see ALL the slides, as she's done before) and a MALES box (which gets lots of nice items in it, but AGAIN there'll be lots from the current trip. FINALLY finished with the slides yesterday, and today went to Mrs. Johnson at 10:30AM and she said to come at 3PM. Glance at the videotape stack and put THAT into lovely order with newly labeled sides and back for EVERYTHING, and five rows in place of three, giving me room for adding 17 more tapes, obviously QUITE a bit in the future. Then there was NOTHING left to do but vacuum, so I started about 4 and finished about 6:45, first time since December 21, less than three months, better than the previous more than FIVE months, but then I'd been AWAY for two of those five months! Then put everything away, and got to the LAST thing preying on my mind: went through the trip-book-stacks and piled the table with 11 (or it will be, when Mrs. Johnson returns my Hungary stack!) stacks for the FIRST slide show which I set up with Sherryl, Pope, and Dennis on NEXT Saturday!! Since I still got NEITHER the $750 from Springer due since 2/6 NOR the $2400 from the Chicago checking account since my letter 3/10, I don't have any CASH, so I decide NOT to go to Brooklyn Heights Video for more tapes, since he'll ask me to renew my membership and I don't have the MONEY for it---but think that I can pay with Visa for lots of dinners at my table tomorrow at Settante Due and get lots of cash THAT way to tide me over the weekend, at least. Debate calling Pope for Scrabble but that doesn't seem practical. COULD go back and re-sort the discards (9 BOXES!) that the TWO discard stacks from France '85 made quite a mess of, but I frankly feel slided-out! Go through the "do stack" and pick out the Lotto numbers I wanted to play, the slide-names for the last of the Florida box, Bill's Nicoll xeroxes, and the two bills that I should have paid already but can't. Then thought I'd write this page about being CAUGHT UP, remembering the DELIGHT I felt yesterday when I had the TIME to read through Free Spirit and talk to Dennis and Vicki about the Woolger book on Past-Life Therapy, brag to Pope about having the time I want, including taping two porno tapes and typing out the lists for Sandy, and working various puzzles in Mensa magazines as they came in. Everyone agreed it must be my cold's finally leaving, which hasn't QUITE happened since the nagging cough has started, but I surely have more ENERGY nowadays than I had for the last week, though I admit the scrubbing and vacuuming took most of it away, sweating in the unnatural too-early-for-spring 60 degree weather. So I guess I WILL call Pope, just in case---but he's busy and not interested, though we talk for half an hour. Then I got out two 1988 stamp catalogs from the Brooklyn Heights library and haven't touched them yet; AND there are two indexes waiting for me to start them (though they're not due for one and two weeks yet and they'll just take a day each), so NOW I decide I WILL go out to get a Lotto ticket and TRY to sneak some tapes out of BHV without paying for my yearly membership yet---just to see?

3/30/89: STONED! STONED! STONED! It's 11:15PM on my 53rd birthday, and I've just returned from An American Place, treated by Susan to a $142+ FABULOUS dinner of baby asparagus "ambush" on cheese-soaked ham for her and duck sausage and corn fritters for me, (but this was after a kir for her and an apricot sour for me), then duck breast and corn samp (pasta made into orzo-like kernels mixed with onion and peppers in the middle) for me and "goat-cheese-encrusted lamb loin" (pink) with "buttery whipped potatoes" and sauteed fennel for her, all this with Schafer Merlot (1986) from Napa Valley with 13% alcohol that tasted about 16%, ending with the largest strawberry shortcake (and she said it was the baking powder that gave that tartness to the shortcake), with strawberries soaked in sugar-water to soften and sweeten even the most recalcitrant strawberry for her, and not-that-special "angel-food chiffon" with whipped cream and raspberry puree, but her Dalamain Brandy was only $5 where it was $7 at---some other place, and we ASKED for the "Paradiso" but he returned to say that it was 25-years-old and they charged $1/year, and maybe we'd like to reconsider, so I tried the Durbain-Robin (or whatever) for $5, and it wasn't NEARLY as nice as her Dalamain, but the (too-attentive, per Susan) waiter obliged with a four-sip snifter of the $25 Paradiso AND a second Dalamain when she asked for it AND wished me a "Happy Birthday" and said that the second was on the house!!! What a way to GO!! Then we took a taxi back and laughed all the way at the lakes on the East Side Highway because of the rain, and she found Rick going into her apartment JUST as we drove up, and I directed the guy to my place and found that the brochure that we picked up was "American Spoon Foods" so I phoned her to tell her that I knew about that from the review in New York Magazine, and I played back my phone messages to find a message from the American Psychotronics Association and the SECOND message was a "dialogue" that I figured the CALLER was doing, but I tried phoning Dennis, who didn't answer, it was 11PM and too late to call Pope, and I didn't want to try Spartacus---but I DO, and they'd (Spartacus and Norma) just gotten in a half- hour before, and NOW at 11:45PM I continue after having had a HILARIOUS conversation in which I'd played the tape for THEM and they INSISTED (as John did) that it was two different voices, and they insisted I check to see if I'd been burglarized! The festivities before my birthday have been marvelous: the dinner at the River Cafe with Vicki after her treating me to the Bargemusic concert on Sunday, the spectacular-view dinner at the corner of the Rainbow Room through sunset from 5:30 to 7:30 on Tuesday with Sherryl, who then treated me to prime $35 seats for "Anthologia de Zarzuela" at the City Center, AND the postcard from Spartacus today, which Pope had mailed only yesterday, which he told me when he called to REGALE me with favorable aspects in my chart for the coming year: advances and triumphs in publishing, personal relationships, travel, and money and expansion galore. I thanked him voluminously for his gift of the reading, and then tonight I couldn't thank Susan enough for her splendid gift of the dinner at An American Place. Then I'd done the index today that I had to do, know I can do the Metaphysics Index tomorrow that I have to do, have watched the tapes that I want to watch from the Brooklyn Heights Video and know that Video Reflections doesn't have a new list since 18 months ago; went through various volumes of Scotts for my stamp collection from the stamp club, from the Brooklyn Heights Library---AND now I'm setting up a SECOND showing of my trip-slides with Paul Bosten (when he calls to see when he's available Tue-Wed-Thur), which might include Susan and Rick, and JOHN now wants to see them too. Spartacus and Norma wish me a Happy Birthday; my mother called today to wish me the best, not even terribly concerned that I haven't repaid my loan due tomorrow; got cards from Michael Blackburn, Midge Hillsinger and Mom; and have the dinner Saturday to look forward to in ADDITION. May even get my missing $750 check quickly thanks to Terry Kornak at Springer, and continue to talk with seduction barely held back with Gene Crofts from Calibre, another job for $2 a page, which my last billing was LESS than! All is wonderful and I'll be jerking off tonight, hoping for a spurt of gloriousness!!

4/4/89: UP AND DOWN; OVERVIEW AND DETAILS; BACK AND FORTH. The pendulum of life and living. It felt WONDERFUL to be caught up (as on p.474) and to be feted for my birthday (as on p.475), and yet there have been periods of depression during the last few days as I had to do an index on the 31st and do an index on the 3rd (which I haven't mailed yet)---maybe because I'd been eating too much and too well and my weight when I went to the gym was actually up to 190 pounds, the most EVER. Then last night at the slide show Spartacus remarked about my stomach, almost as big as his, and this morning I chose to eat corn chips rather than cereal for breakfast while watching TV tapes to get at least into LAST week's storage. Then watching "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age," I was torn by the peace-strivings of Carter and the anti-Moscow fears of Zbigniew Brzyzinski: the spending on weapons only gives us MORE weapons that "demand" to be used, and each "trial" at an agreement leads to "just one more weapons system, either offensive or defensive" that spends more money and heightens tension and leads the world AWAY from richness and security. WHY is there such a drive AWAY from richness and security? 1) The rich who HAVE richness and security want to KEEP it, which means keeping the people (that they oppressed in GETTING their riches and security) essentially as slaves: chained to their upbringing that keeps the women stupid and pregnant (particularly if they can't get abortions) and the minority men high on crack and heroin and women and dope-selling for the fast buck so that they can't use their wits to organize and REVOLT against the oppressors. And the Russians foment (understandable) unrest in the Central American countries where 2% of the oligarchy own 90% of the land and profits, and the peasants have NOTHING unless they work for ALMOST nothing and give the profits of their sweat to the oligarchy so they can sit on the peasantry even HARDER. And the weapons- suppliers continue to reap their enormous profits by selling weapons and ammunition and napalm and handguns to people who want to USE them, and then we wonder why there are so many conflicts and high-weaponed confrontations in the world! And people still starve to death! So just STOP the weapon-making, but the politicians and military-industrial complex (why isn't that term used so much these days?) know that THAT would take money out of their ACCOUNTS, so they continue to sell weapons (and lament warfare) and chemicals (and lament chemical warfare) and "modern ideas" (and lament when the South American countries cut down their rain forests in order to BUY INTO the ideas we're so strongly selling to them) to "the third world" who only want to get enough money so that THEY can perfect atomic weapons and show their enemies (who are usually their closest neighbors and most like them: all Semites or Mestizos or Indians or whatever) that THEY are the stronger, the more MACHO, as is pushed by the movies and ads and TV programs and EVERY media-means of program, while the finger-pointing and LAMENTING programs are ignored as not being very interesting. Where the rape-film ("The Accused") and the nigger-film ("Mississippi Burning") and the manipulation-film ("Dangerous Liaisons") and the ugly-people film ("A Fish Called Wanda") battle it out for the Academy Awards without even a LOOK that this is glamorizing rape and niggers and manipulation and ugly people. I want to be PUBLISHED yet I keep watching TV film and want to REDUCE yet keep eating junkfood and want to ENJOY life but keep making lists of things that I have to finish before I can sit and listen to the music or watch the TV library or read the book or catalog the stamps. Though it is to be admitted that "cheating" and squeezing out a day with the stamps is certainly enjoyable BETWEEN the indexes, that writing this page is GOOD when I'd planned just to catch up with the TV taping I'd done, and there's not much planned for the evenings this week, so maybe I CAN catch up with the TV tapes, go back to the video stores to see if I can reduce the now-small TV- to-be-seen list, do more indexes for the taxes coming up NEXT WEEK (UGH, the NEXT difficult job), and show the slides a few more times and get THAT over, and then it'll be summer and I'll be trying to influence Vicki to drive me places in the country to enjoy the restaurants and summer leaves and sunshine.

4/6/89: Stan George calls this morning from Oxford University Press with a book on Psycho-Oncology, dying with cancer, and though my "ceiling probe" of 5 lines per page for the 800-page book at $3500 loses me the job (the production editor thought that $1500 would be more to the point), it leads me AGAIN to the typical thought that man is EVOLVING: the species that writes an 800-page book on Psycho-Oncology is NOT the same species that rises to warfare with the cheer that the peasants did in "Alexander Nevsky" which I watched on TV yesterday. Nor could this be the same species that burned the trailer of a family whose husband has AIDS in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as mentioned in a TV program last night. The idiots in the sit-coms that fly into terminal anguish if their hairdo isn't accepted by their neighbors are not of the same species as the narrators on the "Nature" programs who examine the intricate linkages among the politics, economics, forest-burnings, and ecological considerations in the Brazilian rain-forest. The Indian nature-linked mentality is not equal to the missionary-fanatic mentality that tries to "bring them to God" (when they are undoubtedly closer to god than the missionaries) is not equal to the producer- mentality that would say "We can't show this on commercial television because no one wants to see it" is not equal to my mentality writing this page on my computer at 10:35 on a Thursday morning. However, disquietingly, I'm quite sure that if I'd had the same UPBRINGING (essentially, belonged to the same CULTURE) as an Iranian Koran-student, I'd probably be in the forefront of the Carter-effigy-burning mobs in Tehran, just as in the case as I'd been one of those black women-children in Houston whose cultural upbringing made "impossible" their aborting a fetus that probably has the AIDS virus, or made so clearly BENEFICIAL the burning of an Indian wife who didn't bring in a sufficient dowry to satisfy the "honor" of the husband's family's cultural expectations, or so clearly REQUIRED the hari-kiri of the samurai whose honor was offended by an insult at a party, or so "naturally" cut off the negotiations of the Russians who would lose a "propaganda-publicity" advantage if they accepted an American arms-reduction proposal, but made it clear that THEY would walk out if the Americans refused to accept the SAME proposal made six years later. I thought of a page at that time entitled "DISHONORING HONOR" that would explicate honor as no physical part of a man which had to be respected at the COST of the death of that entire totality of the man---that there IS no "hungry soul" looking for replaced honor through the vengefulness of his male offspring to the offspring of the dishonoring influence of another family. In American terms, it's CLEAR to me that it's better Red than dead, while some still are convinced they'd lay down their life for the so-flawed American political system as opposed to living under a Russian system that we don't even KNOW ENOUGH about to evaluate accurately. Since the sexy Hungarian skating duo hasn't yet defected to New York, there must be SOME charm to their lives in Budapest that could satisfy their enormous talent and intelligence. With the bad publicity that ORDINARY IQ tests are now getting, there should be a CULTURAL IQ test that reveals the narrow-mindedness, the cultural rigidity, the brain-washed quotient of individuals, so that their responses could be evaluated from their MENTAL FRAMEWORK and not from their position of authority, "happening to be quoted because their father works for the company," or other factors which would bias the response. This page doesn't hold together, would be difficult to index analytically, and needs editing, but the MASH of ideas is there, and any page is better than no page, and I still have eight lines to fill before the bottom. Which leads me to stamps, which I've been indulging in with catalogs, but I seem NOT to be trading mint sheets at the Brooklyn Stamp Club, seem NOT to be exhibiting my collection to anyone so that I need more display books, and am taking away projects from my old-age by typing out lists NOW that can be simply updated in the future, so I'll finish with THAT this morning and put it AWAY, so that I can get to EDITING and PUBLISHING my writing before the Psycho-Thanatology of my OWN death cuts off any toehold I can get for ALL my writings being published for my "what's the good" post-death fame and money.

4/7/89: SKEW UNIVERSE

Iwoke, recalling a dream:
lost on a trip in Siam,
wandering paths in a jungle
with a smell under the blankets
----had my body decayed?----
shouting girls before the cantonment,
where the guard said "We don't want you here,"
when they laughed and asked where we were on the map
and Iwoke, asking where the Lahl Hotel was located,
followed them down a sidestreet where they
threw fortunes in matchsticks and Iwoke,
realizing the scam, broke into the jungle
where a striped tiger, nursing spotted cubs,
ran through calves without nipping any of them,
----had my fever-dream continued?----
late for the 8PM tour of ethnic dance,
spotted through hedges where music
played wetly in the twilight, after
waking fellow-tourists in the bus
to apologize for being the last
back from the river-voyage on the waters
where snakes swam in sheathed rainbow silks
----had my entrance been missed?----
and the tiger returned as a purring cat to
weave chocolate satin through my ears when
bells played dessert-tastes on my fingers
where travelers feared werewolves in were-
realities when the underground leaves them stranded
on the platform, arriving too late for scheduled departure
----rites of passages of transition?----
missing factuality by moments of distraction
as tumbled sheets admit temperature differences
that hint of changes not quite grasped in those
klongs of Siam, stretching for hours before Iwoke,
springing up in surprise, testing realism
----entry to skew universes?----
hoping for the best but fearing the worst
platitudes left far ahead
----fungi among me?----
left in the mazement of nucertainty notcertainly.
Trebor Kazrenloz

4/21/89: Letter to New Yorker

Robert Zolnerzak
167 Hicks Street
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201

April 21, 1989

Fiction Editor
The New Yorker
25 W. 43rd St.
New York NY 10036

Dear Fiction Editor:

Enclosed is SKEW UNIVERSE, which I hope you will consider publishing as a short story in The New Yorker. I have also enclosed a SASE for your response.

The first word of the story text is "Iwoke." When printed as the first word of a short story in your style of large initial capital-letter (I, in this case) followed by the rest of the first word (woke, in this case) in capital letters, the word would be printed as is the word Ignorance here.

Please do not leave a space between two words, as in I ought here.

Very truly yours,

Robert Zolnerzak

4/21/89: 3/30/89 note typed: MY Chalet Suisse for Susan was $116.45, while HER
An American Place for ME was $142!!!

4/21/89: From "Gravitation" p.760: WHAT IF "double" radio sources are extra- terrestrial communication systems? WHAT are the two signals from Cygnus A?? From 4/19/89 note: EB p15:475: "on either side of parent galaxy." WHAT???

4/21/89: De Vere, Edward, not in EB (16th Ed), but 11th ed gives, see Oxford. The 16th THEN says that he's been talked as Shakespeare since 1920; not NEW!!

4/21/89: Type 4/13/89 notes: 7:35PM "Ending a Relationship with Inner Peace" by Maryann Williamson at Course of Miracles at the Universalist Church with Pope. God IS the love in your mind. Peace is the awareness of love and the attainment of inner peace. Inner peace achieved by FORGIVENESS. KARMA is identical to the Law of Cause and Effect, is identical to the Golden Rule. Thought CAUSES emotion which CAUSES pain. If you get pissed, you in that area are not enlightened. Light is identical to deep understanding. "Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. Love exists." Those are the main points of Course of Miracles. Focus on LOVE makes all else SHADOWY. Ego is identical to the devil, which is your temptation to perceive WITHOUT love. God is the thought to think with love. She's founding a center on grief. If you see through eyes of FEAR, you SUFFER; if you see through eyes of LOVE, you PROSPER. Universe is based on a win for all. I must save ME from MY perceptions that bring me PAIN. It's not what OCCURS that hurts you, it's how you PERCEIVE it. "This time, anger will work," is FALSE. Only the ways of LOVE bring love. If he's GUILTY, you're WRONG even if you're right. If you hold ONTO your "right," you'll STAY in PAIN. ROMANCE promises bliss and delivers PAIN. The only good is to love EVERYONE as God loves. You're SAVED by the belief that there are NO separations. "I choose the Peace of God instead of pain. If it comes BACK, you haven't LEARNED yet. You CREATE what you DEFEND against. All God needs is your WILLINGNESS. ALL relationships are ETERNAL. Earth schools us in path of fear; we must UNLEARN this. RELEASE to the Holy Spirit all relationships EVERY morning---let my perceptions be guided by love. If you BIND a relationship, YOU will be bound. Miracles collapse time so that grief shortens. You are on the earth to be an instrument of peace and love. We are ALL here as FRIENDS to walk to God together. We're all MEANT to find our AUTHENTIC self. Love from ALL relationships is ALL still there. A MIRACLE is a return to PEACE; she talks to 8:25. 15-minute break over at 9:02. Christopher Macklin sings to 9:07. Course of Miracles leads you to think without fear. Meditation: God is the love in which I forgive (#46). People's NON-LOVE is fear, a call for LOVE. 9:30 questions: Course is ABOUT becoming a perfect person. It's not what we have; it's our ATTITUDE to it. Lectures are ALL the same. My peace stems from the love that I give. In course: do not underestimate the vengeance of the ego. Misery tempts us to go MORE inside ourselves. "Don't take it personally, she'd treat ANYONE who was her son that way." "Love is to fear as light is to dark." Friends positive? Be more compassionate. Ask how can I help? "If you want to be scared of AIDS, stay AWAY from people with AIDS. "Iran said they'd down an American airliner one year after." Response: we must stop being angry; we must rid attack-thoughts from our minds. Every moment you waste being angry, you could have been helping someone. Money won't heal AIDS, love will heal AIDS. We MUST tell people with AIDS to forgive the world. Hatred of the old world keeps you TIED to the old world. This goes to 10:08. Ends with prayer to 10:14 about Tish's husband's flight.

4/21/89: I'm catching up with EVERYTHING again, ready for Mom's arrival next week, up to page 970 of Gravitation, keeping up with gym for physical mid-May, & will see if finishing EVERYTHING lets me get back to writing ANYTHING at all!

4/21/89: Notes on January 1989 Harpers Magazine, where Updike on page 39 uses the word "rarified" rather than rarefied. Joel Agee's A Fury of Symbols talks of synchronicity, dreams, being shot and refusing an operation because he knows he'll recover, and superimposed photos and LSD and the I Ching.

4/26/89: A MAGICAL MOMENT: TOTALLY CAUGHT UP WITH NOTHING PRESSING AT ALL TO DO! At 12:45PM I typed that line: too early to eat lunch before going to the gym at 3:30, not having a needed conversation with the author of my next book to be indexed---I even telephoned Mitch Rose this morning to find that he's waiting for MLA to "settle down organizationally" before sending my "Indexing Handbook" to them, AND he says I should send him whatever pages (and proposal) I have for AIDS HOUSE next. Yesterday I finished "Gravitation" after 11 years, 7 months, and 13 days, nicely ODD, though I was disappointed to find that it took me over 12 years and 8 months to finish Being and Time, so I haven't even set a new record. Delivered orange juice, Sweet 'n' Low, and the Times to Vicki who gave me a National Writers Union brochure. Got new stamp catalogs from the library so I COULD start on THAT. Even caught up on tape-watching last night before going to bed at 2:10, consciously "earlier" to get used to Mom's coming visit starting tomorrow. Even have most of the groceries for her, and all I have to do is change the sheets and have dinner ready to be ready when she gets here late tomorrow evening. Most of the days are planned for her already, including Pope's mommy-sitting for her Friday night while I go to class. The place is clean enough (though CAN I trust the upstairs leak to have stopped since it leaked only twice since my letter, the last time over two weeks ago?---so I can clean the medicine chest AGAIN?? Can wash dishes today, too, just to "get ahead" with it. This writing is so insipid; I've done it, now I'll stop doing it and print this out and get to something ELSE at 1:05PM.

4/26/89: Entered letter to Bill:
Dear Bill, April 21, 1989
I'll start this now, not knowing when I'll finish, since it's 6:45PM and I'll be leaving at 7:40 to pick up some videotapes and take them to Spartacus's, who'll treat me to dinner in return.
Your Easter present of peanut-butter eggs went down VERY nicely; thank goodness Pope was here to share them with me or I would have had to eat them ALL. Thank you.
As to your letter of 24 Feb, I too look forward to the day on which I can send you a copy of a book, any book, that I'd just had published. Or did I answer this already, since I seem to remember having ALREADY told you that I DID get the early mint duck stamps???
More about that "dark" or "missing" matter in the universe: I've just read a section of a book entitled "Gravitation" that makes it clear that Einstein's equations of relativity DEMAND a certain ratio of MASS to SIZE of the universe, so the "search for the missing mass" is to VINDICATE the correctness of his theories---the authors of "Gravitation" are so certain that the mass IS, in fact, MISSING, as opposed to NOT THERE AT ALL, that they state their confidence that Einstein will be proved correct AGAIN, as he has been two or three times in the past when various scientists thought they had found flaws in his theories. It seems rather remiss of the articles concerning this that they don't make it clear: I keep REASONABLY abreast of such things, and was surprised to find such a CONFIDENCE that the missing mass will be "discovered." The book also discussed how OPPOSED Einstein himself was to one of the surprise results of his basic discoveries: that the universe had a BEGINNING and will have an END. He even threw in something he called a "cosmological constant" to "correct" his equations so that the universe could remain eternal, as everyone had always assumed it would be. With more work he called the cosmological constant "the worst mistake he ever made," threw it out, and accepted the idea of the "end" of the universe. Amazing how strong the pressure of "what you think OUGHT to be true" can actually be. Watched a film on PBS called "Gonzo the Spearman" about a husband who was lamenting that he had to kill his wife because she was reportedly unfaithful to him. He didn't even bother to verify whether she HAD in fact been unfaithful, just said "What a world we live in!" without bothering to look at the fact that HE and HIS CULTURE had CREATED the world that HE lived in, and if he'd had enough sense to step OUTSIDE his culture he could have lived happily ever after with his wife and children.
THAT leads me to what I underlined in your notes from "Beyond Theology": "...their desires are imagined so precisely and specifically that they can very often be carried out." Which reminds me of what I've said to myself (and maybe to you) so often before about Actualism: I'm not sure that all the levels and richness and complexity of the teaching is REALLY true, but if my acting AS IF they were true could BRING THEM ABOUT, it would be worth it.
I'd love to think of these television preachers convincing THEMSELVES that the agonies of hell are real, convincing themselves so STRONGLY that they actually CREATE their own hell for themselves in their afterlives.
You'll be happy to hear that I haven't fallen thru the ice ONCE this year.
I finished perusing your Excerpts from THE COMMENTARIES as long ago as 3/17/89. Reversed echoes of the above paragraphs are found on p.4:"If you do not believe in a thing, you have no force for it." Liked p.7: "...feel that you are living life and not that life is living you." I grumble about p.12: "the future and the past equally exist" which I absolutely agree with, coupled with "you can change everything." Your HOUSE exists, but I can't change anything there!
I promise you I will put absolutely NO force into p.13: "Earth is a pain-factory," despite what even Actualism insists upon: that which you DENY is kept attached to you by your denial. Frankly, m'dear, it's not PRACTICAL!
Obviously I'm one of the "one" in the excerpt at the bottom of p.17. Who's Audie? AH, yes, then comes what I DO believe strongly in, on p.25: "Understand clearly that we cannot change the events but only our way of taking them." So if I TAKE that I've changed something in your house, I HAVE THUS CHANGED IT!
Obviously I agree with P.33: "...try to imitate higher states of consciousness so as to attract them." Though I'd say "create," not "attract." Again on p.36: You cannot transform life, but you can begin to transform the way you take life. Love the practicality of p.38: To expect to be as usual when one is ill will make one depressed. Einstein should have read p.46: Everything comes to an end IN TIME. Yoga 4 asks a good question: "If joy is the nature of the self, then why does man feel miserable?" Does that agree with Earth being a pain-factory? And here we are again on Yoga 5: BELIEVE THAT WHICH IS NOT, IN ORDER THAT IT MAY BE! Yeah!
In 4 LIVING TIME I like "we can give one another more existence in our mental apprehension of one another."
You might be interested in SKEW UNIVERSE, which I just submitted to The New Yorker.
Mom is coming to visit on Thursday, April 27-May 2. Reserved two good restaurants for us during that time, and I guess she'll see a Broadway play on Saturday matinee when I have my last Metropolitan Opera subscription ticket of this year. I'm caught up with everything, so her visit won't cause much of a problem---I HOPE!!!! She'll be celebrating her 78th birthday here on May 1. MAYDAY, MAYDAY!
My old $5 barber's shop is pulled down on Myrtle Avenue, so I went to a barber in the neighborhood and almost COLLAPSED when he charged me $22!!! Last couple of times I went to "world-famous" Astor Place Barbers for $10+2 tip and thought THAT was too much. Where is the world heading, Bill?? But I guess since a shoeshine USED to be 20 cents and today I paid $2, a haircut that used to be $1 should be at LEAST $10!
Just past 7:30, so I guess I'll stop now and take this up later.
5:20PM Saturday, 4/22. Now to your tapes---believe it or not, I sit and LISTEN to your tapes and take NOTES to repond. Like your mentioning that ascorbic acid destroys viruses by means of hydrogen superoxide that creates free radicals that kill viruses, but you said that Vitamin E was a free-radical SCAVENGER---AND I'd heard that free-radicals were aging factors. You mean I gotta choose between aging and viruses? Is that why older people are more susceptible to viral diseases??
Your Indonesian sailing-ship eye-infection series is one of my favorite series: The Ring of Fire, and I liked them so much I copied them to look at them over the years. Very impressive---not to mention cute brothers who certainly seem to appear to be gay to me.
I'd never thought to rinse my mouth after orange juice and ascorbic acid to protect my tooth-enamel, though I do recall my teeth WERE sensitive when I drank a couple of gallons of OJ and lots of C to fight off a cold a month ago. I enjoyed your vocabulary lesson via Ms. Atwood.
This next may not be a very enlightened statement, but it's me: The external world may be non-basic, but it's THERE, and to INTEGRATE the world WITH the spirit is MY aim. My writing functions as a sort of surrogate memory, and in much the same way that people enjoy sharing their better memories with as many people as reasonably possible, I'd like to share MY memories, so that's why I'd like to get PUBLISHED. When I showed Dennis SKEW UNIVERSE he surprised me by saying he'd never thought I'd written poetry---I thought everyone knew that. When I showed it to Sherryl, she said she didn't even know that I WROTE, which surprised me even MORE. They accuse me of hidden talents I hadn't even thought I'd hidden!
When I fasted I used vitamin supplements, drank LOTS of water, particularly during the first day, which was the only day during which I felt any sensations of hunger, and it was only large numbers of television ads for food that started my hunger-pangs going after the 5th day in one fast and 8th day in another fast, when I'd sort of been aiming for 7 and 10 days. But when I started getting hungry AGAIN, I decided not to fight it and just start eating again.
I do still get and give Actualism bodywork, just not as OFTEN.
Mostly I use my VCR to tape programs when I'm not home (or when I'm home watching something and I want to watch something ELSE that's on at the same time), but often even when I AM home and something's on COMMERCIAL TV, I'll usually tape it so that I can watch it later and SKIP OVER the ads.
I've still gotten no answer (to my second call) about my book proposals---I'm about to DEMAND one, soon. And no, I've NEVER gotten any answers from authors I've written to. Again, I think of those letters as more like surrogate memory of what I thought of (and wanted to add to) the book.
Back to Vitamin C---it IS used in many AIDS therapies, but probably used WITH Vitamin E, which would counteract the free radicals? I don't think I ever heard anyone warning that you should NOT take E when you're taking C for anti-viral uses.
My gym has a Versa-Climber, or whatever it's called. I tried it once and didn't care for it. Even the Stair-Climber appealed a bit more, since it at least counted the number of "floors" that you ascended.
I have a physical exam coming up on May 5, during which I hope to get some x-rays to see WHAT is going on with my joints: I think I'll feel better knowing whether I have bursitis, arthritis, or something different.
Your daily intake of supplements is truly astounding.
I promise not to take seven pounds of pantothenic acid.
Sweetbreads aren't testicles (which are usually called Rocky Mountain Oysters, in my experience in California, and Calf Fries in Texas) but thymuses (thymi??). They're one of my favorite dishes.
Congratulations on your new TV set---there must be something in the air, John Vinton just got his FIRST one. Thus endeth my noteth on your tapeth.
My brain seems singularly caught up in matters of AGE recently: keep looking at the AGES of those who die of AIDS, usually younger than I. And noted that my mother is three months OLDER than Lucille Ball, who's recovering from a heart attack. Pope is suffering from increasing age and is just about to reach 65; Mary Vilaboa had her hair start to fall out and she's worried about aging, though she's still holding down a responsible secretarial job at (the rumored age of) 70; and Maya keeps having HEADACHES, which concern her (and she said she was sure they were NOT sinus headaches), and I guess she's over 70. My mother keeps insisting she'll never come again, and does less and less when she comes. Spartacus keeps congratulating himself (to me) that he feels as good as he does at 60. I had some wonderful celebrations around my 53rd birthday, which might explain my AWARENESS of age---and maybe just getting it down on paper will relieve my mind from having to think much of it NOW.
Have been starting to catalog my stamps on computer-listings, borrowing current Scott catalogs from the library (though I must say I got infernally angry when I found that someone had neatly extracted the two most- current pages of the USA listings from the 1988 catalog!), and pleased to find that some of the sheets I bought from Rowland Hill (who I recently learned was some historical generator of the first British stamps) Company on Long Island have been increasing in value, so that my sheets alone catalog for something like $10,000, which doesn't have any relationship to what I could GET for them, of course. But as my lists increase and I get more-current catalogs and want to update my listings, I find myself getting annoyed that I like STAMPS, like to look at them and soak them and sort them and put them in order, but recently I seem to be dealing in LISTS ABOUT stamps rather than the stamps themselves. So I'm looking for some kind of happy medium. I've long ago learned not to do indexes while my mother's visiting me (she doesn't understand how she can totally destroy any of my concentration with one of her inane remarks or questions), so I usually "play with my stamps." It leaves her with the idea that I do no work at all, but that's not my concern.
I somehow thought this would be a grand voluminous letter, but I now feel that I'd just as soon get this much off and get your tapes back to you and see what the return mail might bring from you in the next few months. Love, Bob

5/3/89: GURUDEV SHRI CHITRABANU walks into the room at the Doral Inn at 7:25 as I read more of "Isis Unveiled." At 7:30 there are about 33 of us, clearly over half are returnees. "So love is the Ocean, huh? We SWIM. But we are afraid of water so we stand near the shore." Small room, heavy air, pounding above and below, trucks and busses outside. More people filter in to make us 33. I write. "SAVE WATER. Do we WASTE our ENERGY by worry and fear?" Worry is a ROCKING chair: you DO something and GO nowhere. Worries CONFUSE the problem. FRIENDS leave us; worries DON'T. Meditation calms worries. In meditation, watch your breath. The Ego worries about its own annihilation. The SELF survives forever. I am energy, therefore indestructible. I will never die, so there's no reason for nightmares. Analogy of the burning coal of memory: blow away the ash to heat it back to glowing. Remember that past FEARED calamities did NOT happen. When DOUBT of SELF comes in, you're DOWN and it KILLS any joy or creativity. As GOOD passes, BAD Will pass; be patient by meditating. When you're BUSY, THAT'S the time to take time to meditate. Peope are like teabags: they don't know their own strength until they get in hot water. Fear SUCKS energy away. People want to live long, but FEAR old age. How can you have both? Candle sheds light to the VERY last instant. "You identify with clouds (which come and go); I identify with the SKY (which is always there)." When fear goes, you've FRIGHTENED fear. Achieve fearlessness, which he calls SOHUM, and this goes to 8:38PM. On 5/10 there's a free (?) open house for friends. Questions at 8:45: "We live in doggy-dog (dog-eat-dog) world." Let your light light other lights. Concern sheds light; worry is BLIND. Meditation will teach yuou do DUCK when worry approaches. To 9PM: last words: "Let world be blessed." I asked Maya (who thought I was asking her to JOIN me) if she knew Gurudev, and she mentioned someone she'd been to years ago whose name was something like Chitrabanu. Pope first thought he was the Maharishi's guru, but then said all the names were the same and he really wasn't interested in gurus.

5/5/89: FINISH "ISIS UNVEILED" AT LAST!!! And with that I wrote NONE across the top of the card labeled "Unfinished books" that went from five down to nil! 1. Gravitation (1973) to read 29-1219, 3/7/89 read 60, 3/26/89 read 265, LESS than 1000 left. Finished that biggest book on 4/25 at last.
2. Heidegger: Being and Time (1927), finished 7/16/88, leaving ONLY Gravitation
3. Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind (1807), was 182-808, finished on 5/12/88.
4. Kant: Critique of Pure Reason (1871), was 117-543, finished on 4/12/88.
5. Sartre: Being and Nothingness (1943), was 196-798, finished 6/22/88. Then 6. Blavatsky: Isis Unveiled (1887), was 194-1268, finished today, to end the list, which also included at an interim time(since I thought I'd NEVER read it) 7. Barth: Tidewater Tales, which I read from 1/31/89 to 2/26/89. When it was down to the last two books, I started keeping track of the totals and dates:
3/30 4/5 4/9 4/10 4/13 4/15 4/20 4/21 4/24 4/25 4/28 5/3 5/4 5/5 FINISHED!
1.846 735 626 516 412 335 245 172 53
2.605 573 573 573 573 541 507 507 493 493 398 299 199 0!
1451 1308 1199 1089 985 876 752 679 546

5/5/89: Now to finish off the page. It's now 5:30 and I'll be leaving for the Actualism tape as soon as I finish this. MUST finish an index tomorrow and Sunday, and then I can get to the results of the telephone call to Mitch Rose and Gene Crofts the day before Mom arrived. Still getting rid of the traces of her visit (I guess the last to go will be the paper-shreds from the inside of Rita's envelope with her birthday gift in it). Felt like finishing up "Isis Unveiled" before getting to work on the index---AND I've got to do LOTS of index-work to pay my BILLS: just BARELY getting through the end of May, and have to wait for ANOTHER check to arrive before I can even pay the UTILITY bills! Joe's scrabbling for money; Pope has none at all; Dennis has none; Alice is paying off her income tax; Vicki is saving; looks like I've bought into THAT mass-mind image, but I'll have to pay off Spartacus and Mom SOON!!!

5/9/89: "Yellowstone Under Fire" touched and saddened me. All the Republicans seemed to be determined to "harvest" the natural resources without regard to the long-term damage to the environment. All the Democrats tried valiantly to defend the speechless trees, birds, fish, and wildlife from the depredations of the "harvesters." Yellowstone seemed an embattled citadel surrounded by less- protected bastions of National Forests that were given away, as the commentary stated, at a greater rate in ONE year than in the DECADE preceeding. I sent for the transcript, hoping that I would remember my outrage at the lies of the politicians who wanted to appear to be sympathetic to the environment, but were only solely interested in the "harvesting" (read "exploitation") of the fragile environment. Then there was the additional insult of hearing about the "Church of Enlightenment and Liberation" (or whatever Elizabeth Clare Prophet called her rip-off organization) that bought the Forbes Ranch at the northern boundary of Yellowstone and then put up FENCES to keep out the migrating cattle from their age-old routes, and tried to milk the thermal sources which might affect Old Faithful. The politicians tried to snow the public, and the public- support organizations tried to respond with logic, love, and liberation. Then the next program on was about "Hands Across America" and I got teary-eyed as the people lined up (with a bit of cursing as Ron and Nancy joined the line) to "feed the hungry and house the homeless," and I'll cut immediately to the final freeze-frame which said that the movement raised $32 million, of which only $15 million went to house the homeless, which would not pay for ONE night's accommodation for the nation's 2.5 million homeless!!! Talk about PAIN!! People TRIED, and they still couldn't HANDLE it. The best intentions of the individual were thwarted by the concerted effort of the money-grubbers ensconsed in the government. Unutterable frustration!!! Rage and hate-kill!!! Yet the politicians continued in power (even as Noriega stole the Panamanian election from the democracy-loving public and Bush couldn't do anything for fear that Noriega would blab about Bush's and our "government's" drug-dealing and money-burying and influence-peddling. What a shitty situation!!! And I try valiantly to express my revulsion against the government and FOR the people, even thoug they don't have the ocncerted power to DO anything significant as the politicos continue to line their PERSONAL pockets at the expense of the PUBLIC welfare that they were ostensibly elected to protect. And I'm stoned from Tom's dinner, pleased with Dick's fascination with my tales of past-life therapy, out-of-body experiences, IBM training, LSD sessions, Actualism, and other consciousness-raising activities, and they could only manage to talk about the Metropolitan Museum where he's only in FINANCE, yet he can get Tom in on a MONDAY when only the staff is in the museum so that everyone has free access to the exhibits. It's now 1:15AM, and I'll have to send for the FRONTLINE transcript tomorrow, but at least I sent out the letters to Mom, Johannson, and Woolger, and tomorrow I can do another index to get more money to have more food to get a higher cholesterol level that will be tested tomorrow at noon, and I see that I'm only at line 46 and want to get to 60 so that I can print out the whole page, but this is the ESSENCE of my style, that I continue with a sentence when essentially I've run out of anything to say, and to continue the page down the viewscreem I continue to type, picking on any words that come next, determined to continue---and I didn't even talk about the restaurants I've been going to, but they were content to listen to John living across the hall that I'd gone around the world with in 1971 and Dennis living in the basement that I'd stopped relating with when he went off with Dick Curry, and they enjoyed hearing about the J/O clubs, and Man's Country, where I had the last of my fabulous encounters when I refused to hesitate to try someone MUCH better than me, and GOT them, despite my feeling of not being up to them, and I was glad I had my hooded jacket with me, because it was raining when I left, and Tom is supposed to call me to see if he wants to join Susan and me when we go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Sunday, and I want to join them on May 24 at Tavern on the Green for THEIR benefit, so it's ENDED!

5/16/89: NOTES from WOOLGER: OTHER LIVES, OTHER SELVES, read 5/5-5/11/89:
p.11: Jung: "We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." Psychological Reflections,p.220.(again p.311)
p.12: The guardian of the threshold prevents us from going TOO DEEP.
p.14: No longer doomed to relive a story no longer his.
p.29: Only a remembered trauma can be let go of.
p.39: Truth: What's real for the patient.
p.82: It doesn't matter if you believe in reincarnation or not---believe in the HEALING power of the unconscious mind.
p.84: therapy...may help further the emotional catharsis, self-understanding, and healing that are, in my estimation, the true goals of psychotherapy.
p.85: ....as valuable to someone in distress to focus on happy past lives as it is for a physician to treat a mangled left leg by examing the healthy one.
p.92: Facing death has great therapeutic value.
p.95: ...fear of flying.
p.136: Most psychological illness is inherited at a psychic level.
p.171: I am convinced that the likelihood of cure depends on whether or not I am able to guide my client to the crucial or key story from his past lives.
p.218: "Without contraries is no progression" wrote William Blake.
p.236: Jung: "You always become the thing you fight the most."
p.262: Grof...LSD sessions...intrauterine life before birth...birth...brings on visions of bloody sacrifice, death, and rebirth.
p.263: Premature birth...usually mirrors an untimely death in a past life.
p.264: Birth trauma...is a precise and highly condensed reminder of the karmic residues of previous deaths.
p.270: "grim sense of justice"---how about VILENESS and vicious circles???
p.271: Take full responsibility for that portion of darkness within himself that he was born to work with.
p.273: Consciousness is at the highest degree of intensity at death, with the result that thoughts and feelings that occur in this transition are deeply imprinted on the transmigrating consciousness.
p.277: One sees one's future parents copulating and there is a sexual attraction to the opposite sex parent (no GAY!!)...Huge karmic residues can be reexperienced (at the moment of birth) and, with help, released. WITH HELP???
p.284: After-death dialogues are..psychodrama created by deliberate intervention on my part.
p.289: Grof quotes: "He who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies."
p.290: Dhammapada:"All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him,like a shadow that never leaves him."
p.294: After-death: great release, realm of peace and rest, visions of light.
p.297: These are archetypal or universal experiences of death and transition that are recorded in the collective unconscious of the individual.
p.300: Madeleine's voice of wisdom: "You must learn through love, not just from suffering."
p.302: All creation...is a manifestation of Truth, Truth as it is.
p.306: For every one of the countless ways in which human beings have died there exist countless potential moments for such openings of grace and enlightenment.
p.308: Therapy does not work for everyone....fails.
p.313: Part of the psyche seems to understand and be comforted by the realization that these terrible or fearful happenings are both me and not me... Able to accept its own duality and its own multiplicity through this process.
p.314: Past life work, therefore, tends to be swifter and more concentrated than many therapies, with the one possible exception of psychedelic therapy.
p.317: Jung: Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible arise within him...he must find that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites.
p.318: In the realistic-cathartic stage we treat the stories as if absolutely real. In the symbolic-archetypal stage detachment occurs with insights into meanings of lives. Rarely attained: the integral-mystical stage when a kind of transcendent realization of the meaning of theentire process may begin to occur.
p.327: St. John of the Cross: "He who knows how to die in all things will have life in all things."
p.330: At the integral level of consciousness all past lives are present to the Self and all roles are known as aspects of the Self. We can no more have a universe without good and evil than without height or depth, as Ananda K. Coomaraswamp once put it.

5/19/89: NOTES TAKEN AFTER READING "AND THE BAND PLAYED ON"
I'd thought to read it over a period of time, but it was so gripping (and depressing and paranoia-causing) that I finished it in four days. WHAT AN INDICTMENT of practically everybody: the government administration, agencies, researchers, politicians, journalists, gay activists, and even patients (like Gaetan Dugas and others, who'd DEMAND their right to sex BEFORE telling their partners they have "gay cancer.). p.206: "They were told their partnerships were valueless by institutions that later scratched their heads and wondered why gays didn't settle into couples when it was so clear their lives were at stake." p.292: CDC personnel, lwho struck Steinmetz as peculiarly contentious, wanted to conduct their own review of files before letting Steinmetz see them." p.406 lists many closeted gays who were the MOST bigoted gay-bashers! p.422 relates a gay-bath owner telling a gay-patient doctor: "We're both in it for the same thing," he said. "Money. We make money at one end when they come to the baths. You make money from them on the other end when they come here." p.491: Everybody agreed the baths should have been closed sooner, health education should have been more direct and more timely, blood banks should have tested blood sooner, the search for the AIDS virus should have been started sooner, scientists should have laid aside their petty intrigues, the news media should have offered better coverage much earlier, and the federal government should have done much, much more. p.529: Gallo SWIPED his virus from Montagnier! p.532-3: David Sencer left black with syphilis untreated so doctors could study the long-term effects of the disease, killed more people with swine flu vaccine than died of the disease, and then "spent the epidemic erring on the side of inaction" when he was New York City's health commissioner. p.594 still hold true: "There was talk that no treatment or vaccine would get quick FDA approval for experimentation unless it was developed by the federal government; among AIDS organizers, NIH had become the acronym for the agency disinterested in treatments that were Not Invented Here. There was no stop the government did not pull out for AZT, a drug the National Cancer Institute had originally developed. However, there seemed no bit of red tape too minor to delay the release of other treatments." The band STILL plays on!! And it seems too clear that the government STILL looks to the disease to clear the streets of gays, IV drug users, hemophiliacs, prostitutes, minority groups, and the poor and homeless. AZT is STILL the only approved drug, and there's no NEWS of what might be available overseas, like the Chinese cucumber. The fat-assed fundamentalists have as much control over George Bush as they had over Ronald Reagan, and even NOW the news of Reagon's and Bush's connection with the IranScam and Noriega's murders in Panama doesn't seem to push anyone into concerted action against these CRIMINALS we allow to be elected to high office. How difficult NOT to have ill-will when they're KILLING us, LYING to us, and then PROFITING CONTINUALLY from these murders and lies. WHY wasn't the book praised more when it came out; WHY has nothing been changed even though evenyone CAN now know how criminal the government has been. IS Larry Kramer the ONLY person who's doing the right things to gain attention, no matter in how ugly a way? Of course I am content to write notes and LEAVE it at that!!

5/20/89: Out-of-body (OOB) session. I call at 9:50AM & it's at last night's high school! Into auditorium at 11AM, about 40 people scattered. 11:04AM: We'll start soon. 11:12: Rick Stack begins. Studied with Seth. Seth coined "You create your own reality." 10 OOB's ALREADY; in general 25%, lowest 10%, and 10 of 50 = 20%. DEATH is OOB. Focus: teach YOU to do it. 2 TYPES of OOB: 1) in PHYSICAL reality, 2) in NONphysical reality. "If you WANT to" is CRUCIAL factor. Leave body AND assumptions AND fears. He's physically clumsy. Can "communicate with dead" and "nonphysical teachers." Average six-weeks practicing to learn. Create a critical mass of energy, then practice for six weeks. BOOK has all the techniques. He never saw a "silver cord." You've ALREADY done it IN sleep EVERY night.Hemi-Sync works for some, not all. Questions to 11:32. Benefits: Adventure, most START involuntarily, about 85% are pleasant. 2/3 reduced fear of death. "You KNOW you survive death." SOME dreams are "created dreams," playing out THERAPEUTICALLY. Nightmares BREAK THROUGH your FEAR of FEAR. CAN go to future & past. FUNDAMENTAL rule: you GET what you FOCUS on. Start in physical,USUALLY go to astral. The YOU that you KNOW is eternal. Nothing is LOST in universe; there is only GROWTH. Our AIM is to practice spiritual growth. IN 6-week course, 35% go out, and "later, more." Some need to practice for 6-8 months. Benefits: You KNOW you exist ASIDE from body. It's a pathway to INTUITIVE knowledge. To solve problems and find teachers. In OOB you LEARN what's going on & TRUE about physical reality---it's not an ESCAPE. OOB is "practice" for after-death state. If you EXPECT hell, you'll FIND hell. 37% of NDE have OOB, per Kenneth Ring. "This accident is something I can live without." OOB & NDE CHANGE people's personalities. 12:06 exercise to 12:15: Relax, breathe, say "OOB is possible," & "I want inner-being help" affirmations. 12:16 break to 12:30. I buy book for $8 &I'm #51 on 53-total signup-list. $2500/day NOT BAD!I ask about "dream chronologies" and he'll only says it's HIS field and HIS course to handle it. 12:32 OOB narratives to 12:53. Those that HAVE OOB KNOW it's no dream. Belief systems HINDER OOB. Vern (lives on Governor's Island) read Monroe (pointing to me, who asked about Monroe, told it's good). "Tingling" in hypnagogic state as PRELUDE. An NDE OOB at 12. How do you PROVE it. Most believe in them, few not sure, NONE disbelieve. Prove by scientific REPEATABILITY. MIND RACE describes 46 remote-viewing experiments. For American Society for Psychical Research (on 73rd St), Osis experimented: Color, shape, quadrant, and clear seeing vibrates plates. Intrasomatic theory: ALL is in mind and body. Extrasomatic theory, you LEAVE body. Critics: It's NOT OOB, it's only ESP and telekinesis. "100 years from now, it's only OOB." I ask "Why are there still skeptics?" & he responds "Ultimate response is 'It's against the laws of God.'" I decide it's BESIDE the point when he says "YOU must experience it." 1:21 break (20 min) to 2:02, & I pick up HARDBOUND copy of "I, Libertine." 2:03 exercise for remote viewing: muscle relaxation, hypnosis,visualization,& deep-breathing. He puts up target picture (Vern interested in Actualism at break). Hypnosis is light trance state: Simply go into an altered state of consciousness. Exercise: walk downward, to 2:32. Walk to stage-front (I get sailboat, it was a circle with a dot in the middle). Communicate with someone at a distance. FEW raise hands that they got it. Lots of flak about experience. That was programming exercise, not really for OOB. 2:41 OOB techniques (in book). Lucid dreams in THIS or OTHER worlds. His first "sun rising at 4AM in Queens." He tells HIS first OOB. "You see your astral leg through your closed eyes." I walked THRU a wall and SAT in a chair. UM. In OOB you can enter other people's dreams. Mutual OOB can have astral sex. MANY INCIDENTS. All time is simultaneous---it's all happening NOW. 3:13 techniques (notes on p.105 & 108-109 in book. 1) & 2). You MEET what you EXPECT to meet."You're as DEAD NOW as you'll EVER be." You've made the dream of reality too vivid. "We are Gods in training-- in kindergarten. When we learn to be responsible CREATORS we'll be allowed to create.If you believe in your OWN worth,you'll believe in EVERYBODY's worth. Open you to the FACT that you are fundamentally a non-physical creature. When you PLAY, have FUN, you open yourself to the light, to knowledge, to rightness, to power. Only caution: have respect. Explore, don't meddle. 3:31 break: Paul Soba and Jill Hain take my cards. To 3:42: Book's chapters 4-7 describe BELIEF changes. There's WORK in there---DO it. Examine and change your beliefs. 3:45 exercise as preliminary to OOB, write down dreams, they have knowledge. 3:47 inducing OOB via flying dreams. 3:54 GREAT visualization of flying--- meadows, ocean, India, lovely. On-going classes, GET brochures.End in applause at 3:56.

5/25/89: "START OF OOB JOURNAL." Based on DREAM-290 and my thoughts this morning, I'll have to start ANOTHER section of my journal when (to be more positive than saying "if") I start OOBing. I think of the strange layering of thoughts in the last segment of the dream this morning: "that I seem to BE there, as in an OOB, simultaneously in the PAST when I HAD visited it and in the PRESENT as I'm looking at IT, rather than a SLIDE of it." So there's
1) OOB, 2) dream, 3) memory, 4) actuality, and 5) recording it, all glommed together with maybe 6) imagination, thrown in for good measure, not to mention 7) wishful thinking, which seems different from ALL the preceding. Then I think to record ALL the oob (too awkward to keep hitting upper-case) treats that await me:
1) watching humpy guys having sex, a) masturbating alone, b) having orgies, c) making movies and slides, d) meeting and mating at muscle-shows like at the Beacon last week,
2) revisiting distant locations that I've SEEN (as verification?), a) India, b) Burma, c) China, d) Russia, e) California, f) Florida
3) visiting NEW places that I'd love to see, like a) Australia, b) Antarctica, c) Angel Falls, d) Angkor Wat, not to mention
4) "fantasy-future-trip" places like a) the base of a geyser boiling-pool in Yellowstone, b) the Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic, c) the depths of the Marianas trench in the Pacific along with d) the newly-forming island to the east of the Hawaiian Islands, d) the North and South Poles, e) the Biminis for the Fountain of Youth and Atlantis, as well as
5) extraterrestrial places like a) the moon, b) the planets, c) Halley's Comet, d) the asteroids, e) the sun, f) other stars, g) other stars' planetary systems, h) other life-form civilizations, and of course
6) "mystery-solution" places like a) the Bermuda triangle, b) Rishikesh and the high Himalayas for "old masters," c) Louvre and Metropolitan for "hidden" masterpieces, d) Kremlin treasures, which leads to
7) political sites like a) the White House, b) Peking control-places at this time of student unrest and demands for democracy, c) Russian missile-control bases, d) submarine command posts, e) NIH planning-rooms for AIDS-sabotage, f) Central American subversive activities, g) Panamanian voting "truths," h) Russian Stalag visits----and this leads to the first of a series of QUESTIONS:
A) If oob's are possible, aren't political sites GUARDED ON THAT LEVEL TOO?
B) If oob's are possible, aren't "pictorial sites" JAMMED with oobers?
C) Does Vern remember answers to these questions in ALL his oob books?
D) Can truly NOTHING hurt you? a) Vacuum of space in space-transits?, b) Radiation from looking into how Chernobyl ACTUALLY is?, c) Heat of the sun's interior, d) Pressures of the surface of Jupiter?, e) Bodyguards around Russia's and China's and US's leaders?, f) other oobers jostling for position?
8) PAST destinations like a) Atlantis, b) Lemuria, c) Mu, d) Tikal, e) Paris, f) Changan, g) Ararat, h) South Pole (who WAS first?), i) New York, j) Akron (for MY OWN past???)
9) FUTURE destinations like a) New York (for MY OWN future???), b) next atom- bomb explosion, c) stock-market advances, d) end-of-the-world possibilities, e) my published book-markets, f) extraterrestrials IN FACT contacting earthlings, g) ecological disasters i) greenhouse effect ii) icecap melting iii) over- population iv) world famine v) ozone depletion vi) deforestation vii) greed viii) magnetic-field flips ix) solar heating or cooling x) earthquakes, etc.
AND it seems good to LIMIT the outline to TEN major categories (which might be shifted and changed and added to later---2) and 3) could probably be collapsed, as could 6) and 7) if I think of new categories of destinations, like
0) ALTERNATE UNIVERSE destinations or OTHER DIMENSION destinations), just for outlining convenience, since there are lots of SUBCATEGORIES of destinations in the 26 letters of the alphabet (260 subcategories in all should suffice), and then limit 9g ALSO to ten sub-subcategories, for 2600 sub-subcategories in all, which SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO GET ME STARTED & ENABLE ME TO FINISH THIS PAGE HERE!!

6/6/89: So my long bout with this year's flu is finally over, went as follows:
5/28: 12:05AM 101.3 fever and CHILLS. 6:45AM 98.6 with sore left throat.
7:45AM 99.0 with salt-water gargle. 12:15PM 98.2 down, sore throat still.
4:15PM 100.2, 6:15PM 101.2, 8:15PM 102.0, in bed; 10:05PM 102.0 fireworks
5/29: 11AM 98.9, 1PM 98.7, 4PM 98.8, 7PM 98.8, 9:15 100.3, 11:15 100.0 down!
5/30: 7:30AM 98.0 low normal, 4PM 98.7 normal, 12 midnight, 99.2 bit up only.
5/31: 9AM 97.9 low, then felt OK except for sore throat, continuing salt-water gargles through today, the FIRST day there's not a real SORENESS, but now gone.

6/8/89: DAMN! I thought I'd recorded my first past-life therapy session with Roger Woolger this afternoon, but when I tried to play the tape, there was only noise on it!! I don't know if there was anything wrong with my tape (though when I tried a test, it worked) or his machine, but now I have to try to RECONSTRUCT the two hours! Left here at 9:15, got to Port Authority at 9:45, paid $30.40 for the round-trip to New Paltz, and got to gate 30 for a middle- window seat and the bus pulled out EXACTLY at 9:59AM. Clouded ride to New Paltz to 11:25, and I wander town, have hot and sour soup and hot pork and broccoli for $5.65, reserved a return taxi for 3PM for the 3:25 bus, and took a $7 ride to Roger's at 12:45, where he told me to sit while he finished instructing someone (a daughter?) on a computer. I looked at a map of medieval French cathedrals with evocative names like Rocamadour, Perigueux, St. Benoit, Moissac, Selestat, etc. Then I tinkled and went into his little room just after 1PM and paid him by check and then he got data about my fear of flying from me: how I loved to fly as a kid, but then with the first JET swerving off landing because a small plane crossed its path, then the two engine-losses from New York to Oslo and from Karachi to Cairo, and the hard-stop landing at Yap, and the wing-dip over Canada, and the near-stop while landing in Los Angeles, and the flying into the "wall" on the way to Montreal, and the decompression finally agreed upon by the woman who sat next to me a few years ago---I thought maybe I even had a RATIONAL fear of planes. He said that it sounded like some unfinished business with a sudden death---as with Gandhi, who said "Ah, Ram," as he was shot and thereby attained happiness after death with the word for God on his lips: if he were shot in the back he might not have "completed" his death. He said there were lots of flying deaths in World War I, also that it sounded like I was being hypersensitive (even "in a state of altered consciousness") while on planes, but that was OK. I told him about my repeated (though not recent) dreams of jets crashing, one which stopped me from flying to Ohio (and he told me of someone reasonably important who was killed on a crash outside Chicago about ten years ago who'd always said that HE'D die in a jet crash, and told his wife before THAT flight, "This might be the one." RW: But I couldn't say how he held the idea of his own death; I'm not bothered by the idea of my dying, and we'll hope to bring you to the same place.
He seemed impressed with my unique dream of being IN a plane that "stops" WHILE I CONTINUE ON, and I said that I tried holding onto that GOOD feeling after the dream, but that it's faded and no longer helps my anxieties.
I mentioned being gay, working for IBM, being a freelance indexer which allows me to take many trips, some around the world (he said that his wife Jennifer and I would agree on our love of the Silk Road), yet I still feel TERRIBLE anxiety before a flight, so much so that I decided to take a TRAIN to Florida this January after just NOT being able to get to sleep over my anxiety about flying. He talked of people's fear of heights who like to tease themselves by going up high places or taking roller-coaster rides. I mentioned my love of roller coasters and he said that that might be an unconscious attempt on my part to "prove" that I'm not afraid: that I wouldn't get such a kick out of them if there weren't some connection with danger in my mind. I also mentioned the "false memory" from childhood of falling downstairs and "knocking my eye out" which he seemed to mark down (he covered a sheet of paper with his summation of our first conversation) as significant for me.
He said something like, "At BASE, I don't believe in past lives, but it gets at such deep material that I have to follow it up." And THAT'S not the PROPER quote, but it's the SENSE of it. It floated through my mind to ask "What if these are memories of FUTURE lives?" and he DID say "Future lives, I don't know what that MEANS," before saying that we had to make the idea of death seem EASY for me to accept to succeed. I DID go into detail about my LSD experiences: how I "had" to die, but when the first guide didn't work out ("It's very important to have a guide you trust," he supported me seriously.) and the second guide WAS a father, and it turned out to be partly about my own relationship with my father---which was "set up" by the morning's conversation with the guy who said "I wish I could talk to my father," and when I asked why he couldn't, he said, "He's dead." And I thought, "MY father's still ALIVE," so I could TALK with him before he died, and I felt our relationship had been completed, and I was grateful for that working out. I remarked that I DID believe in creating my own good luck, and I HAD had lots of good luck, even in coming HERE after being impressed by him in Omega---and he said that he'd not been invited BACK to Omega because some woman was more "noted" (though I hadn't heard of her name before) in past-life therapy than HE was, so they hoped to make more money and get more publicity through HER than through him. Which reminds me that I hadn't asked him about the sales of his book, about which I'm curious.
At some point he said, "Don't worry about anachronisms," no, he didn't say THAT---he SAID something like "Don't be concerned if you're in the 18th Century wearing contemporary clothes---I call it the 'multiple-slide effect,' like when you have two or more slides in the projector at the same time. People who START OUT wearing modern clothes usually at some point in the therapy find themselves wearing PERIOD clothing."
He talked about other cases: the woman who's currently stuck in a particular death and won't pass THROUGH it. He said he's worked THROUGH some cases of fear of flying, but he won't tell me how they came out---but he isn't afraid of saying that people fall onto a spectrum from very easy to VERY difficult to deal with, so he's not afraid of letting ME be a difficult case, or making the point "important" by NOT mentioning it. "Fear of dying is really a BIG one; it's so wonderful when you actually work THROUGH it"
Toward the end of our chat, we established that it was "anything out of the ordinary" that happened in the plane which attracted my hyperacute attention. I INTENDED (but didn't) tell him about the "not gaining altitude" sensations in leaving Nepal that so terrorized me before we pulled free from the clouds and ABOVE the Himalayas. I talked of the "clear air turbulence" that led the pilot to tell the stewards and stewardesses to strap in---he mentioned that he'd heard of that being done on occasion---and I just feared it would get WORSE AND WORSE until a wing snapped off, or something else broke, or it fell endlessly.
Then he said we could "start," and after I went to the john again, I took off my glasses and watch and ponytail cord and lay down on the short couch, and he suggested I started panting heavily with my mouth open: hah, hah, hah! I tried that, echoing him while he speeded up the tempo, feeling dry in the mouth, hoping I wouldn't brain-mind the whole thing, and then he said "Start shouting out the words: I'm gonna crash; I'm gonna fall!" I started to with a will, going on for what seemed a long time without getting any results. I tried "No, no, no, no" (while he rather amusingly egged me on by responding enthusiastically "Yes, yes, yes!") while shaking my head savagely back and forth, but that started to feel sick-making and I returned to "I'm gonna crash; I'm gonna fall"---and I don't recall if I made it through to "I'm gonna DIE!" He kept suggesting other wordings that might be more potent for me: "I'm not going to make it" or "It's coming apart." I tried a number of variations that came to mind like "I can't take it anymore" or "It's not right," and in general he sort of "pushed from the sidelines," egging me into my emotion, hoping to "catch" the right thread for useful work.
"Where do you feel it in your body?" "In my stomach" I avowed truthfully, which was clenched from my screaming. He kept saying that it was OK to scream as loud as I wanted to, no one would be bothered by it, so I DID, wondering vaguely about what turned out to be an apartment house made out of an old dairy barn about thirty feet from the stone farmhouse in which the Woolgers lived. I started kneading my stomach, my screams turning to "It hurts!" as I clenched and unclenched there, and as I stiffened I felt (which I can't feel NOW!) a "muscle" form DOWN MY MIDLINE from lowest ribs to waist, not below. The thought "Could I be trying to have a baby?" went through my mind, to be dismissed because this seemed so SURFACE, on the TOP of the stomach. "It's got to come out" I tried, and he asked me to describe what it felt like, and I could only fumble for words and say that it felt like a BONE or the front part of a SHIP (and he tried to say something about "parts of plane wreckage" but I pushed that away mentally)(and now at 9:05PM I decided to CALL and tell him that his tape recorder hadn't worked, trying to forestall the same thing happening to someone else tomorrow, and he apologized, saying that his recorder WAS fickle, and that he SHOULD have tested it beforehand, but that he'd be willing to make me a copy of his notes if I liked, which I would.)
Early on came a section in which I was still trying to get a handle on the pain in my stomach. I tried screaming "It hurts so much," and "It shouldn't hurt so much," and "There shouldn't be so much PAIN" and THAT seemed to get into a lot of emotion---whether it was just for current people suffering from AIDS or students agonizing in China, or something from MY past, I couldn't tell. I started to curl up onto my side, crying and moaning, coming out alternately with "I tried so hard" which went into "I tried TOO hard," to "I couldn't do it," to "I'm not ready," to---no, it did NOT go to "There's not enough time," but I'm sure THAT will be fruitful in the future---I should make a list of "statements" to work with? And I DO start that list with 1) "There's not enough time."
During the "heat" of it, I kept grinding at my eyes, and some of the screams lacerated my throat until I had a sore throat in the evening. Some of my "feeling sorry" was possibly feeling sorry for ME having to go through all THIS to get some clarity on what was what.
"I can't," and "I tried SO hard," and "I'm not ready yet" was tried by me again and again to get into something workable, and my memory of the ORDER is poor: maybe his notes will help me, but I'd like to get THESE as close as I can BEFOREHAND. It ALSO passed through my mind that I might be talking about ME in this form of THERAPY: that I'm trying too hard too soon to work "too well" in this form of therapy: to get through it as quickly as possible, or to pay as little as possible for it, or to "be a good boy" with it.
"It hurts so much" probably brought the apex of emotion during the first half of the session. It varied with "It shouldn't hurt so much; it shouldn't HURT so MUCH," I sobbed, not feeling sorry about feeling sorry for myself. I curled up around the pain in my stomach, weeping, and at some point began to cough (maybe from throat abrasion, maybe from phlegm from crying, maybe from therapy-connected feelings being brought up), and he patted me on the back, encouraging me with "Good, good, get it all up." It felt almost good to cough violently, long whoops exhausting all the air from my body, reminding me that I HAVE been coughing and it was something that I wanted to mention to him as part of my "problem." "It SHOULDN'T hurt so much" possibly changed into a statement of my belief that life should be beautiful and not a suffering. Maybe I was hurting and I was too valuable (to myself? to the world?) to be hurting so much. I felt sorrowful and vulnerable with this confession, gasping it out more and more quietly as I jerked on the mat and ended up on my face just off the mat, reminding myself with some part of my brain of part of the second LSD-session off the bed in THAT therapy room. I felt a relief getting it out and a sweet feeling of release and relief came over me and I started crying gently with pleasure and the welcome feeling of bodily ease.
This is the least-clearly-remembered section in sequence: I was still dealing with "It's too soon," and maybe even "I'm not ready," and he may have SAID something about my being my mother in this section, but I didn't consciously hear that idea until after the session, when I was "coming out of it."
At a time when he referred me to the feeling in my stomach again, I reported that it had changed into a nausea, that maybe I'd swallowed something that I had to throw up, and part of my brain revolted against the idea of becoming physically sick and vomiting.
At one point I DISTINCTLY felt a narrow band, like a thong or narrow cloth, across the TOPS of my eyes (which he LATER said was probably a sensation of my passing through my mother's BIRTH CANAL).
We dealt with the rest of the section of what HE would probably describe as my voicing my mother's thoughts, and then he directed that we return to the death that I'd experienced from the surprise projectile in my back (and in talking with friends that evening I referred to his Gandhi-shot-in -back as possibly triggering this).
He asked me to describe the surroundings, and I could just come up with dirt, earth, like a crater. It wasn't particularly muddy---it LOOKED, to my mind's eye trying to oblige him with a "picture" of my surroundings, like the churned dirt of World War I craters in old films, but there wasn't the artillery, nor the mud---the truest reporting would have been "earth in clumps scattered in waves like the waves on an ocean" but that didn't seem to make any sense at all.
"Who's fighting?" he asked. I struggled for "a glimpse" but could just try to describe "the flavor" of "maybe---Spanish, like Indians, not America or Mexico but South America." The image of the stone ruins of Machu Picchucame to mind and I dismissed them as being trite. "Spanish? With armor?" "No armor, no metal, all primitive---stone, wood---maybe leather---" "Cuirasses?" Somewhere I smiled inwardly at the odd word. "No, I keep thinking of BONE"---but what bone would be that huge, and the idea of being GORED from behind by some sort of antler or horn didn't seem to fit---and only later did my puzzlement at what it WAS seem to fit with "it came unexpectedly from behind." "It's all primitive---very rough---the, the---" I fumble a motion toward my back "the WOOD is rough, jagged, not pointed." I wanted to say that it wasn't a spear, but that seemed too sophisticated for me to say---was this (am I now overanalyzing??) because I (current) didn't want him to think I was brain-minding it or maybe because I (past-life) didn't have the words with which to express what it WASN'T??
When he asked about weapons, I couldn't see any, just wood, earth, like in a primitive country, and I said haltingly "Maybe it's just Indians fighting Indians, stupid, primitive," and through many stumblings I came up with a "picture" (I'm so FRUSTRATED that this isn't a TRANSCRIPTION OF THE TAPE, because I wanted the PROCESS in detail, and what I thought may have been too much of his LEADING, and some of my BLIND ALLEYS and CAVEATS before offering details---but this is what it has to be NOW) of a stone wall (Machu Picchu returns?) up which I was supposed to attack, and when HE said something about "If it's in your stomach it must have come in from the back," and I "ended up" with "I didn't know what hit me," and struggled with words and acceptable alternatives to come at last to a final picture that a broken piece of wheel, ending with broken spokes, fell off the wall and struck me in the back, probably breaking my back (I remarked that I'd really never had any problem with my back, so I was surprised to see THIS come up) so that I couldn't DO anything to raise my head from muddy ground. Recall having said "I can't do it," though not quite getting to "I can't help it," but more of a regret that I couldn't do what I'd been commanded to do. I keep wondering how much "dead space" there was in the session, whether his pushes came only after LONG pauses where I got nowhere or whether his liking is for "constant action."
"Did you die quickly or did it take a long time?" "Middle---I think I suffocated; I couldn't breathe." Maybe this came from me because I was again on my face, muffled, and I just couldn't battle NOT coming up with an answer to his stream of questions. Or maybe I just used this as a circumstantial "excuse" to take deep breaths and relax my stomach. He made me to go back to BEFORE my being wounded, to see where I was or who I was with, "There aren't many others around, maybe one or two,"but I felt it was only imagining and concentrated on my OWN death. So he made me pass THROUGH it again to see what happened, and my body only reported the bliss of being PAST the pain---I said, trying for clarity (after he insists that I "keep it in the present") that I feel RELIEF but I don't feel RELEASE: the PAIN has stopped, but I don't LEAVE the body after death, I merely "know" that the pain is over and the relief of pain is a relief to my body and to "me."
I "died" and just lay there, physically not breathing, HERE AND NOW relieved that I could stop screaming and thrashing about on the mat, and I did NOT breathe for a long time, feeling my body recuperate from hyperventilation, and reported on the body's relief from pain.
"How old are you?" "16-17 (or was it 17-18? He said "You were young," but I dismissed that with a feeling that I rather accepted I WAS old enough at the time; that wasn't an important part of it), it's just a STUPID, STUPID waste!" "The desire to live is strongest at that time. It's hardest losing life then, when it's just beginning. Younger children have little difficulty with dying; older people find it easier to let go; but late teens are the hardest age at which to die." I accepted that.
Near the END I kept rubbing and felt that I'd ABRADED my RIGHT eye, insisting that he look at it to make sure it was OK---I said that it felt like my upper right eyelashes had been curled under and were scratching my eyeball, and he said it was bloodshot but no more, and that I probably HAD abraded it in thrashing around (again, NOT his words, and how I WISH AGAIN I had that tape! Almost tempted to ask JOHN to try to play it, but no, I know the TAPE works. Roger ADMITTED it was probably his machine, so I should just GIVE UP on it. Is THIS part of the therapy, too?)
At the end he told me, to my great surprise, that he thought I was speaking in part for my MOTHER while she was giving BIRTH to me, and I told him of the circumstances of her shoveling snow on March 30 when I'd been due on May 21st (I check now, actually May 16th), and rushing to the hospital to be in pain, and her sister admonishing her, "No, don't, you'll scratch its head," and I was rather astonished when he remarked that my "It's not ready yet" could have been said by HER about ME.
He'd just about got out, "You should have some interesting dreams now" when his wife knocked on the door and, rather annoyed, he answered it to find his wife saying that the taxi was here. "Do you want the taxi? You can catch the bus right out here on the road." I was confused, only knowing that I wanted to catch the 3:25 bus, so I said I'd catch the bus. He told her to send the taxi away, but I said "No, I'll take the taxi," which led him to think that he'd got it "back end to" and apologized and told her to have it wait. "It might be good for me to end it abruptly," I said as I fumbled for my shoes and glasses and watch (it was only 2:55PM), "otherwise I might tend to intellectualize it and minimize it." "Good," he said, agreeing with me, but when I got to the taxi I was EXHAUSTED---I guess DRAINED would be a better word, and I sat idly recuperating on the bench waiting for the bus, glad that it wasn't crowded as we drove back toward NYC by 5PM, only to meet a line on the regular entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel which made the driver try an end-run which was disastrous: we got stuck in traffic in Mahwah and other small towns and pulled into Port Authority at 6:35, and I got home at 7PM and phoned people. I typed a bit from 9-10 (see NOTEBOOK 491-493 dated June 8), not happy with the chronology, and ate soup and got to bed at midnight, still feeling drained, hoping to feel more energized in the morning. Typed 491-495 on June 9.

6/10/89: 1989 Tony presentation: "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" gets 6, tops, including the TRUE best featured Actor, Scott Wise (who impressed me a LOT), and the true WORST actor, Jason Alexander, who was TOTALLY charmless in the parts. "Black and Blue" comes in second with 3, including costumes, choreography, and actress, while "Heidi Chronicles" gets two for featured Actor and Play and "Lend Me a Tenor" two for Director and Actor, neither of which seems appealing in its excerpts, and "Rumors," "Our Town," "Cafe Crown," and "Shirley Valentine" each get one. It seemed like a totally undistinguished yr.

6/12/89: Notes from 6/7/89 ASI meeting on Property Rights: These are divided into A. Real (immovable), B. Personal (movable), and C. Intellectual (produced) which is further divided into 1) Patents (Executive Branch has Department of Commerce has Patent and Trademark office which protects OBJECTS or DESIGNS which must be NOVEL, so it has to be CHECKED for 2-3 years. Protection lasts 14 years for design patents and 17 years for industrial patents (about 77,000/ year applied for). 2) Trademarks are divided by a) state, which uses TM in a circle, and b) federal, which uses R in a circle, for example the typography of "Sears" imprinted on a THING, and there are also service marks, which has SM in a circle, which includes the Sears NAME, and there are 55,000/year, which last for 20 years and are RENEWABLE. 3) Copyright is in the Legislative branch, under the Library of Congress, which has a court named the Copyright Royalty Tribunal. These are ONLY for LIFE + 50 years, and are no longer renewable! In a separate area, semiconductors have a 1984 quasi-copyright protection law. Lotus sued successfully for "look and feel" rip-offs. Companies are moving from copyrighting progrms to patenting them. "West (Law Books) versus Meade Data Central" suit said that indexes are copyrightable. Lexis database reports are on-line law summaries. If freelancers sign AWAY rights, they sign ALL rights away. I leave at 6:45 for WTC when boring questions start. Lorraine Andrews (who I'd talked to that day) signed up but didn't actually show up.