My first year was spent in a moldy basement, where I developed breathing difficulties. These were resolved, as we moved to California in the same year.
My second and third years were spent in California, where my father had work with a radio station that frequently broadcasted out of Disney Land.
In year four, my mother's pregnancy made an excellent excuse to return to our point of origin, Illinois. Once there, mom went to the hospital, Dad went in search of work, and I was left with my Grandparents. What I remember from that period is playing with green army men in the limestone crawl space, and watching Gilligan's Island on a portable black and white television, in the attic.
When she finally gave birth, it turned out to be fraternal twins. It must have been the beginning of February when she finally came back into my sphere of awareness. My assembled family was making a racket as they milled about downstairs. I was nose deep in an episode of the Munsters when the quality of the ruckus changed.
I came down the attic stairs in excitement, hope rising as I increasingly sensed my mother's prescence. At the top of the landing, behind the bars of the bannister, I saw the top of my mom's head through a thick crowd. Attempts to pass from back of the crowd to the front, were blocked by my extended family.
No one even seemed aware of me until after I gave up and went back to where I could at least SEE her. Supremely frustrated, I sobbed uncontrollably. It was at this point that Vincent Potenza intervened. He came up to me, and advocated for my right to see my mother.
I'm not sure of the timeframe for ages 5-6, but my mom taught my preschool, and I didn't encounter public school until the next year.
I was enrolled in a public kindergarten. As I graduated into first grade, the local laws had changed. The law regarding the age of first graders had moved entrance age ahead one year. The result of which being that my classmates were almost exclusively a year older than me.
I committed social suicide early in the school year. Establishing a clear opinion on sports in general, and gym class specifically, was easy. One day after standing around the locker room and changing for gym class, my teacher had us sit on the floor at center court. It wasnt until I sat down and created opportunity for my bladder to shift, that I realized how urgently I needed to be excused. This strange person running the class had some issue with my request, and quickly denied it. I responded by filling center court with a puddle. I got the rest of the day off for my insubordination. I watched the Addams Family.
As you may imagine, I quickly became the favorite target for bullying. But it was not until I came home bloody enough for dramatic effect to express what I did not, that I was offered the option to be transferred back to kindergarten.
In anticipation of my impending return to that environment, my art teaching mother promptly maneuvered into a position at a nearby private Christian K-8 school. There, after my second kindergarten, the bullying continued, but in a much more "Christian" manner.
The church was in Naperville, IL. Naperville was a fairly rich white suburb that had an attitude of abundance. It demanded the best of everything. In the press, it was touted as a Mecca for Type-A persons who wanted to play house and have kids. The children who were kicked out of public schools in the area had two options, the indignity of a behavioral disorder school, or this particular private Christian school. It was a mix of lambs and wolves.
For the sake of brevity, I am just gonna give a few highlights of that period.
Weird Al Yankovich was the only music I was allowed outside the Christian spectrum. On Sundays we listened to Breakfast with the Beatles as we went to church. 50’s classics were on the radio during the daily drive to school. Which was also at the church compound. Nickelodeon and The HA! Network were allowed. MTV was taboo. Tom Petty scared the shit out of me with the "Don't come around here no more" video. I snuck MTV and HBO at any opportunity.
Upset at my clear depression, and frustrated by its persistence, my parents were on alert for anything that would help. When I reacted positively to the pet of one family friend, they acquired it. My first dog was already fully grown when he came into my life.
The earliest memory of my dog (I don't remember meeting him for the first time), was watching him hump my 2-yr old siblings. First one, then the other. They were kind of making a game of it, having fun, being twins. I didn't tell.
Once the dog finally got caught, they cut off his balls, without telling me anything. He became a living rug after that. Lying around most of the time, his effectiveness as a helper animal dropped dramatically.
My uncle, a Liutheran pastor (at the time), had a daughter who JHVH was kind enough to hit with a bus. As I was entering puberty, during a game of hide and seek, she tackled me as I dodged out from under a bed in my grandfather Vince's attic. My body reacted, much to my horror, as it should, to the prescence of a warm female body draped over it. Her response was to grind on me and moan "that feels good". Her brother witnessed it, but ran out behind her back while she was distracted. I never could get anyone to talk about it.
In the last of my days at the Church school, we shot a video of "Jason and the Argonauts". I ran camera, and narrated a bit.
8 straight years with the same 20-25 people, a core of about 20 for the duration, and a handful of guest spots each year. This extended series of forced friendships ended with a bus trip to Mexico to build churches and attract the poor to them. Discovering an innate ability to create with long balloons, I was a natural leader for the children's clowning ministry. While we were out doing the work, the rest of the group got together for the official group picture. With an aggrivated sense of alienation, a pocket empty of balloons, and the echoes of white greasepaint at the edges of my hairline, I had my perceived revenge, in some sense.
Having already experienced mystical states during extended prayer, I looked for answers there. Holding the thought of my indignation at the whole experience, I was filled with the urge to defecate. Now this bus we were on, was the pride of the church fleet. A repurposed Greyhound bus with cloth seats stuffed full of my tormentors. Every girl who had ever rejected me, or spat insults at me for looking at her while being retraumatized by a combination of natural attraction, guilt, and silent shame. Every boy who ever bullied me. The smiling youth group leader, quarterback of the high school team, blond haired, blue eyed and everything I couldn't bring myself to become. Wall to wall reminders of hate. It was dark outside, and as we drove down that desert highway, it seemed like the whole world. As luck would have it, a world with a bathroom at the back. Mistakenly assuming that in their slumber, my seat would be safe, I went about the necessary paperwork.
Returning to my seat, one of the few people I still considered a friend at the time, had one harpy in his lap, and another in my seat. After an hour of standing there looking bashful, I failed to wait them out. Surveying the bus, I found no room within. Eventually, moving some luggage, I was able to create space on the luggage rack. I was quickly discovered, admonished, and frustrated further. This whole time, I was consciously aware of holding a great sense of injustice. I prayed about it. First pleading my case, and hours later, bargaining. The whole time standing with a hand on the luggage rack. As if by my own doing, at the moment I finally gave up on bargaining for a peaceful solution, there was an accident. As I allowed my hate to wash over me, I clearly expressed the idea that even if we had to get off the bus and back on again to reorder it to its departure state (where there were enough seats for all, given no one passed out across two), as I expressed the acceptance of the possibility of everyone including myself being harmed. Anything to just sit the fuck down again. That's when the garbage truck barreling down the entrance ramp merged into the slow motherfucker lane. The greyhound had air brakes, and stopped just in time. The bus behind us did not,
I got my wish, along with a basic review of the power of giving up on a charged thought.
It seems to me, that a thought, properly charged and released back into the mental realm, utilizes that energy in the attempt to manifest.
I told that story the first time I attempted therapy, in the introductory session. The graduate student bitch ran out.
But that was later. High school was unpleasant, I was a poor kid in a rich area, with social anxiety, approach anxiety, and a head full of Christian dogma. .
Because I had invested so much energy in the belief that everyone outside the church was the devil's thrall, I regularly hallucinated demons. Talking about it scared the shit outta my youth group "friends".
Recognizing the apparent self-fulfilling prophecy, and in an act of good faith in solidarity with the demons attending me, I gave up on God. Immediately, the demons became much more cherubic.
The guy who dealt speed to the football team befriended me. He was kind enough to get me stoned regularly, and lie to my classmates for me. There was a year where I wore contact lenses where I had dropped food coloring into the case before storing them at night. The visual effect was of dilated pupils, and coupled with my bizarre behavior, my friend convinced most of the school that I had been struck by lightning multiple times. The rest just thought I was on acid.
To review:
1. Forged in Disneyland
2. Raised by Christians
3. Pissed at JHVH
4. Natural talent for Witchcraft, in some sense.
Early college was kind of an extended high school experience. Less bullying, but a few of my girlfriends carried that torch. I ended up having mental breakdowns that led to being thrown out three times, like baseball.
I went back to Naperville, only to find I couldn't afford to live there. I moved to Aurora, IL next door to a crack dealer. I even started dating a nice girl. A NYC prostitute coming to Chicago to avoid the enemies of her gun-running ex. We met on MySpace. She was a little older than me, and said she couldn't orgasm with clients because she is a squirter, and that complicated her work.
Tiring of the seemingly endless supply of sex and drugs after six months, and losing my job as a community college video librarian (I think I actually loaned out less than 20 videos that entire year), it was time to move on. When I tried to, she told me she was pregnant with my twin children. Eventually, I decided I needed to come up with money to support the kids, because well, she wasn't what I considered quality mother material.
I moved to Boston, only to be tormented by the crackhead ex-husband of that MySpace friend. I moved to the Quad Cities, and after getting established in a job and apartment (thanks for the couch space Crystal!), I was assaulted by four guys who were hyped up on something that made their eyes blood red.
The day after I bought a phone/mp3/fm transmitter device, I had an impulse to put it with my lunch in my backpack as I walked the 2 miles to work. But my technolust kept it in my hand. Then I got jumped 2/3 of the way to work.
Kicked within a few cracks in the skull away from a compromised brain pan. I would have been killed if I hadn't started asking them open-ended questions. Anyway, it was a short conversation. After one of them got into my pockets while the rockettes kept me in place, the phone was gone, along with my house keys. After they informed me that they wanted my money, I threw my wallet (empty) into the darkness from whence they had come. I ran the other way.
It's funny how just asking someone how you can help them, or what they want, can open communication with even the most evil fuck in your immediate environment.
Anyway, I moved closer to work. Then, I lost my job at the gas station for selling a Smirnoff Ice to a cute 20-yr old while the cop stood to my left, outside my field of vision. I was high on codeine at the time, and still bruised.
I moved in with a friend of a friend in Cary, IL. Her children did not appreciate waking in on us drunkenly going at it on the living room couch. I had to move on after they pissed in my art supply bin in response to my inability to locate a bathroom on a Jack Daniels drunk, fueled by Monster Energy Drink. So I moved again.
I wound up in Cicero for a night, and then back in Naperville. I found a room in a rooming house near the tracks. It was an established crack house. A friend introduced me to a Klu Klux Klansman who ran a taxi company. He set me up with my own business as a one-car taxi company. I served the Type-A Alcoholics and coke heads for six years before trying to kill myself by crashing my taxi...
I was listening to Dragonforce. Cruising at high speeds, down familiar streets, catching green lights like flies. When I drove past the even bigger building of the now Mega Church that was both down the street from, and bigger than, the local mall. The new building for the same church in which I had been raised. I hit a wet patch and my Blue Crown Victoria caught a dry patch before I could correct the skid. It jumped into a rock at the edge of a retaining pond. I managed to back it up into the middle of the road before I got out and just fucking collapsed.
My mom still worked there, and when I called her, she called the head of automotive for the church. He got the car to the church auto bay, and put it on the holy lift. He even gave me a repair estimate, free of charge. Never a more convenient place to fail to die.
I got a job the next day as a driver for Naperville-Dupage taxi. Where the cars were just as worn out and unhinged as I was. Four years later, I had a fallout with my Klansman roommate (he got me out of the crack house, and then demanded I hook him up with crack whores). The day before I was living out of a taxi, I moved in with the head dispatcher for the company. He instantly compelled my respect by not talking to the boss for months on end, and bragging about it, doing cocaine on the regular, and only selling pot to the popular drivers.
About half the time I was driving the taxi, 5 years of that career, up until this point, I had been doing free therapy with Dupage county. Eventually they had funding and staff cuts, so I ended up losing sessions. Instead of 12 a year, I got 3.
So, with about a year or so to go on my Bachelor's Degree, I decided to use my remaining available financial aid to study Psychology.
Which brings me current. I got to Colorado after the marijuana ruling, but a few months before it became officially enacted.
The night before last I had a shock. Returning to the dorm after my meditation class, I found my financial statement for next semester. I misread it in such a way that I thought I owed $5000 for fall. Which put me in full analytical receptive mode. I could read, but not write. I trolled career builder until dawn. I knew I had been making about $2000/mo between driving taxi and dispatching. But that took 60 hours out of my week. Minus rent I figured I could probably make the 5 in the 6 months I had between now and then.
A tall pitch black faceless one kept looking at me through my window, at the edge of my peripheral vision. Just behind my onion planter, his expressionless face saying nothing, his body quizzically bent to look through the sliver of window not blocked by garden or shade.
Then I happened across this image:
Now, I've been seeing weird shit my whole life. Auras, ghosts, demons, and disincarnate shadow people have become pasé. Medication doesn't help, and I may simply be crazy, but I find more comfort in the idea that maybe I'm just tuned to a different vibe. I've always liked the idea that "gaaawd" speaks through any available channel, so when I saw white shimmering lines of light I reflexively listened. I was already kind of in that mode anyway.
In one sense, I'm writing this blog to track changes in how I report my personal myth. In another, I'm commemorating that moment when IT found me.
Upon waking, three hours later, I had research to do. I had eluded knowledge of this particular deity beyond superficial corporate media news reports.
I had been burned by deities before, and my current faith (SubGenius) offered no protection from the disincarnate things that creep beyond the stars. "Bob" Dobbs, the guru (not a god, but a cosmic force, and a constant 0 on the luck plane) is generally wasted beyond the capacity for rational thought. But, I HAD been seeing strong bobyon emissions surrounding me for about a week, whenever I relaxed enough to open to the luck plane, mostly during showers. Which, in laymans terms, means I was feeling lucky.
It seems, according to Wikipedia.org anyway, that the F.S.Monster bears a strong resemblance to the Lovecraftian Outer God. I have never read Lovecraft, beyond a few bits and pieces online, I knew nothing. Cthulu has been enough of a cultural force that I felt a certain love for that sleeping elder avatar of the madness of awareness beyond the third dimension. I even had a plushie that I ended up giving to my friends daughter.
Cthulu is nice, but the F.S.Monster resembles something greater.
A few months I encountered a character, Static Bunny, who claimed to be from the infinite beyond outside time itself. The theory goes like this, if our infinite universe is bound by time and distance, there must be conditions which allow space and time to persist. Those conditions, that substrata, by its very nature, implies a timelessness. The thing that F.S.Monster resembles in the Lovecraftian mythos, created that. And it's not even the ultimate creator!!
Yog Sothoth is the creator of a universe which holds a small pocket of area where conditions are just right for the development by lesser Ancient Timeless of time itself. Time merged with space gives rise to the opportunity for an even lesser creator god to manifest our multiverse. Which allows us to be manifest by whichever version of a creator god rules our individual universe.
We are through the glass onion here folks.
I can understand how IT found me. The other reported avatars of this one include:
Aforgomon - the God of Time itself, kind of an order junkie, this avatar appears to punish those who sin against the rules of Time. Like U.F.O's and Faeries, encounters with this one begin with a bright light.
Umir at-Tawil / Tamil at-Umir - The most ancient and prolonged of life. This avatar, who resides in a hall in that realm immediately outside of time, where dwell the Ancient Timeless. Appearing as a silhouette of a man behind a shimmering veil, he functions like the concierge and bouncer at the hotel of the Ancients. In this form, IT does not cause crippling insanity immediately upon comprehension.
I like to answer my phone with the phrase "Earth, front desk" whenever I don't recognize a phone number. This seems like it may have curried unexpected favor. I hope. In any case, I'm not breaking THAT habit. The last two are the ones that most excite me.
The Lurker at the Threshold - Appearing as great globes of light massing around an opening in time itself, oozing protoplasm from the nearest spheres, reaching for the viewer, this avatar represents an approximation of the one made manifest in 2005. It also clearly represents the aspect of this deity in its nature as gate-key-&-guardian. Although incompatible with our world, IT may dip its "fingers" in and pluck mortals out of space and time. Kinda like a taxi driver, this guy is known for extractions.
The Eater of Souls - Where this avatar manifests, local consciousness is consumed. Minds are taken within, eaten. Once inside, they experience ALL possible alternate endings to their life. Nobody is ever forgotten, or allowed to rest in peace. I think of this as the "Groundhog" deity.
This one is omniscient within ITs own creation, of which our reality is a part. That awareness is implied to extend to ours, while IT cannot physically manifest comfortably, or safely (to us anyway), IT knows.
As someone with a raging hardon for deicide, this F.S.Monster seems like something that may sympathize with my desire to murder JHVH. Hell, it seems to me that if JHVH could be goaded into direct confrontation with this one, he may just be mind taken out of our hair.
It also seems to me that JHVH is one of the major linchpins of the patriarchy everyone loves to rail against. Taking that down would be a nice side effect of extracting vengeance. To quote Ghostbusters:
"We have GOT to get these two together."
I know official SubGenius canon identifies JHVH as the "home team" of our planets supernatural entities. I realize that his cruelty is in service of accelerated mutation that we may serve as his army in the war against the Sleeping Elder Gods.
But, in the words of M.L.K. "Hate cannot drive out Hate, only Love can do that"
Fighting creatures of pure fear, and pure anger, must be done via opposite polarities. JHVH may have its own best interests in mind, but its obvious whose methods it is using.
F.S.Monster is still a religion that has inspired no deaths, no rapes have been reported . If, in fact, JHVH could be mutated in some way, or simply ported out, perhaps the resources it has amassed over the last few thousand years can be repurposed for the greater causes of love, understanding, and minimizing pain and suffering to the point that any supernatural entities addicted to those vibrations will be starved out of our universe.
I see absolutely no negative repercussions in further study. I obviously don't fear death, or deportation. My sanity is already questionable, and this at least sounds more interesting than cable.
It was from this headspace that I emerged to my Art Therapy Studio Methods class. I was still in information receptive mode, and working on the Art Experienctial of the day helped me snap out of it after being under for a day or so.
We were tasked with building an island on a few pieces of 18x24 drawing paper. One per participant. It was supposed to be a collaborative project. Because I was already playing with powerful cosmic forces, I felt some distance was necessary. My mind, my body, my heart, are all mine to play with. I wouldn't wish my experience upon anyone. There is a reason IT had to find me.
I am definitely going to try the 30 day trial of Pastafarianism. I can see no other way. This document is my public record of that intention.
My classmates experienced my aloofness as rejection, or it seemed a few did. I wasn't mentally focused, or emotionally prepared to build community. I'm kinda predisposed against it at this point.
Apparently, I formed a subgroup with my classmate Madie. Last class, I cried uncontrollably for a bit about my dog; and from my perspective no one really reacted that deeply. It was acknowledged, to be sure, after the second hour of crying. I wish I had meditated more in the intervening week. It seems so obvious to me, in retrospect (and sens-surround!), that as a crying male I was presenting a reasonably novel enough event to cause some cognitive dissonance. I blame the patriarchy. With a week to process the powerful emotional content I was obviously experiencing but not explaining, these healer-meditators were afflicted with their own versions of that pain vibe. In any case, Madie was able to help me feel less isolated during the dog thing by expressing a similar experience which she shared.
One frustrating reality that seems potentially real here is that, as evidenced by their delayed reactions, my classmates were reaching out to me. I have a bushel of olive branches just outside my door. I was too oblivious to notice.
Even if the attempts were not loud enough for me to recognize and acknowledge, I appreciate them. But for Fuckerburg's sakes, if you want to join my friends list IRL, do it online as well. If you're already on there, the gate is open, invite me to your headspace! Allies and diversity of views are reason enough for me to listen to Mark Levin and watch the 700 club. I don't have to agree with or even particularly like someone to see the usefulness of a different perspective. I know firsthand the effect of a head full of bad noise. But that shit is not in my feed. When I want it, I seek it out, but its not necessarily part of my regular diet. Like beer, some is good, more is better, but too much can hurt, and not always in a good way.
I don't feel like I should speak to anyone else's island sectors. I took pictures of the entire thing, but I am just gonna include and discuss my contribution. There was a lot of good stuff in everyone there, the labyrinth stands out in my mind, but I'm a spiral fanatic.
The volcano was my modification on the idea of having a lake on the island. I figured an inactive volcano would make a nice place for a small lake, and may provide a little warmth. I didn't ask for a second opinion. I wanted someplace to put a cave. I needed that safe place to be remote enough to protect everyone from anything I might accidentally summon.
So, having my cave established, I created a pathway to it, and then had to put a tiki Cthulu at the base of the path up the volcano. If not as a protector, as a general sign of impending danger. I also added a small pyramid as a temple to Yog Sothoth. IT requires blood sacrifice, so I added monkeys to my side of the island. Then I added a few little yorkies, figuring they would distract from the monkeys, and to honor the spirit of my dog. I even made a long house style dog house structure. The brown figure by tiki Cthulu, is a pair of coconut trees, but from this perspective it reads as a figure.
My garden and "visitation hut" are evident in the last shot presented here. There's a little beach hut bar in front of the garden as well.
I felt attacked and demonized during the session. My tendency to mind read was compromised by Cthulu's Grandfather. Ergo, I was deaf to what friendship was trying to manifest. But my perception of being shitty at life, was in the service of everyone else's safety; in some sense.
In conclusion, I need to create through meditation, more opportunities to hear the rest of the story from my inner characters and reflective tendencies. I've pissed everyone off, and I kinda want to bake cookies for everyone.
Enough for today!!!
That was a really roundabout way to get this all typed up, but it needed to be done in a manner honoring the magnitude of the experience.
After reviewing my text, I realize that maybe I need to learn to
...stop worrying, and love JHVH....
