Welcome to The Mystical Underground

We recently visited our daughter in Orlando, and attended another one of her Paint Nite classes   – our third. I was hoping for a synchro that night – and wasn’t disappointed.

The venue for this one was in a German restaurant, which has an entire area at the back of the restaurant that is perfect for a class of 35 to 40 people. Rob and I were early. We wanted to grab a bite to eat before the class began, so we reserved our seats with two of the green artist aprons that you wear during the glass. Our seats were at the front, where we would have a close-up of how to paint the Eiffel tower.

While we enjoyed a German dinner, Megan and her assistant for the night, Justin, were doing the rather complex setup for the class. You can grasp a sense of it in the top photo. Each spot at a table requires three brushes of various shapes and sizes, an easel and canvas, a plastic cup with water in it for cleaning brushes, a paper towel for drying the brushes,  and a paper plate with a palette of basic acrylic colors on it – black and white, blue, red, and yellow.  When you’re expecting 35-40 students, this process takes awhile.

At the front of the area is a sound system and two canvases – a painting for that night and a blank canvas on which Megan takes us step by step to the completion of the painting during the two-hour class.

After we finished dinner, Rob and I donned our green artist aprons and took our seats. In front of us were the painting for the night and the blank canvas, which was about a foot to the right of the Eiffel tower. Megan had painted this one in preparation for her class.

Both canvases had bright lights that shone down over them. And because we were seated at the front, those lights served as a backdrop for this, formed by the shape of the easel on which our canvases stood:

“Rob, look! It’s the Eiffel tower!” I exclaimed.

His canvas also had the shadow tower and so did the canvases of the other three people at our table. We laughed about it and the three other women at our table  recognized  the “coincidence” as well.

The woman next to me was delighted. “This will make painting the tower much easier.”

Maybe, I thought. But as we started with the background paint and the preliminary outline of the tower, the silhouette became less visible. And you can see I’m already having some trouble with the, well, outline!

And painting the actual tower was the trickiest part of the entire painting. Mine came out looking like something from a nightmare, but Rob’s fared much better.

The evening was great fun and the odd synchro at the beginning of the class seemed to be saying, Relax and enjoy the ride!

During our trip to Minneapolis on July, we headed out one morning to Stillwater, Minnesota, a town on the Mississippi River, where we planned to have lunch. Rob’s mom, Ione, went with us.

On our way out, we stopped by a vintage car show in a local park. Ione’s neighbor, Mike, keeps his 1956 Ford Galaxy in her garage and in exchange, he drives her to the grocery store when she needs to buy stuff. We were curious about the types of cars that might be at the show. That photo above, by the way, was NOT in the show. But it was so weird looking, with all the astro turf covering it, that it could have been in a weird car show!

After Rob parked and we were walking down a shallow hill to the exhibit area, it occurred to me that car shows, antique or otherwise, aren’t on our usual agenda. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d gone to a car show. That said, there’s a certain mystique about vintage cars that intrigues me. Who were the original owners? What kind of lives had they lived? Were any of the cars haunted, like Christine, the 1958 Plymouth Fury in Stephen King’s book (1983) of the same name?

The exhibit was small, but fascinating. The windows of the cars were open and you could peer into the vast, pristine interiors that invariably featured HUGE everything. The steering wheels were usually the size of a two-year-old. The seats were leather, the glove compartments could easily accommodate several laptop computers, iPads, and leftover containers from lunch.  The back seats were spacious and looked comfortable enough to curl up on and go to sleep.

In this beauty, I could almost see Alfred Hitchcock at the wheel, headed toward the day’s filming of The Birds or 39 Steps or Rebecca.

Here’s an old fire truck – I don’t have any idea what year this is. But it was easy to imagine the firemen riding high on the truck, the tensions rising at it neared the fire.

When I first spotted this 1955 Ford, I texted it to our daughter: Is this Christine?? Goes to show how much I DON’T know about vintage cars.

But it had the same eerie feel as the car in the movie, the hood open like a giant mouth. The guy who stood beside it – who wasn’t in the photo I took – could have been a character from a King novel, a kind of down home sort of man with a quick laugh and strange eyes.

Here’s an old Corvette (I think) with a couple of other cars.

Here’s a  vintage Mustang. Years ago, one of my uncles worked for Ford and designed the original Mustang. I think he would enjoy seeing this one:

I have no idea how this truck was used or its year or make. But it’s easy to see it hauling butt on some interstate in the present, loaded up with produce – or artifacts from a UFO crash site…

I think this is Mike’s car, the one that’s kept in Ione’s garage. Then again, I may be wrong, and it may not be a Ford Galaxy at all!

I admit that when we first arrived, I expected to be bored since antique cars are definitely not my thing. But as I walked around, looked inside these beauties, studied what was under the hoods, my imagination began to play with it all. I realized it’s all creative fodder. And, who knows? In a future novel, maybe the ghost of Hitchcock will be driving that big ole black car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6t7SPbcX0

Rob and I watched President Obama’s address to the nation on September 10. And we watched the hour afterward, where TV pundits explained – or tried to – what it all meant.

Here’s what it meant to me: I felt like I was watching George W. Bush during a similar address more than ten years ago, when he told us it was imperative that the U.S. invade Iraq, which hadn’t even been involved in 911. His remark that the U.S. will seek out and destroy ISIS wherever it is bore eerie parallels to Bush’s axis of evil speech in his state of the union address on January 29, 2002.

I clearly recall Bush’s expression during that speech, the way his eyes narrowed, his mouth twitched, the way his voice struggled for sincerity and failed utterly and completely. Obama scared me. And I voted for this man twice. The first time he ran, Rob and I stood in a line in Fort Lauderdale for five or six hours, waiting to get inside an auditorium to hear this man who spoke so movingly of change. We actually got great seats and were riveted by his energy, his idealism, his vision. Now it’s six years later and guess what? Not very much has changed.

–       Gitmo is still open for business and has fewer than 150 prisoners who are costing the U.S. untold zillions a year.  Why? National Public Radio – NPR- recently conducted a program about Gitmo. Check it out. It’s an eye opener.

–       Surveillance on Americans has expanded under Obama, not shrunk. Just ask Edward Snowden. If you’re a blogger who ever mentions politics, be sure to check your Statcounter for the number of hits you receive from government spy agencies. Are you a danger to the U.S.?

–       We are supposedly out of Afghanistan this year, but there are still about 30,000 troops there.  Why?

–       And why do we still have more than 30,000 troops in South Korean, more than sixty years after WWII?

–       And why do we, civilians who just want to get from point A to B on a plane, still have to remove our stupid shoes and put them in a stupid tray when we go through security at the airport? I mean, really. There was ONE guy way back when who had a bomb in his shoe. ONE.

–       And why are TSA employees allowed to feel you up and over when, in any other situation, this behavior would constitute sexual battery or assault?

–       Why does the military/industrial complex receive untold zillions while we are constantly told that universal health care would be untenable financially?

I am so disenchanted at this point with Obama’s promise for change that unless the democrats run a true liberal in 2016, I’ll be sitting out the election. A true liberal would be, oh, let’s see, the list is short. Forget Hillary Clinton. She’s a hawk.  I love Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts who has never backed down from a fight; Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist who is up there on my hero list with Nelson Mandela; or Wendy Davis,  currently a democratic Texas senator who is running for governor.

She’s the woman who filibustered for 11 hours to block a truly restrictive abortion bill for that state. Think about that. You talk for 11 hours. You can’t sit down. I don’t know if you can even pause for a sip of water. I suppose they have time for a bathroom break, but maybe not. It’s Texas, after all, one of the most right-wing states in this country that pretty much hates women.

And that’s the thing, really. Our national politics are intimately threaded through our international politics. Eisenhower warned us about the military/industrial complex more than half a century ago. No one listened.

You notice how gray Obama has gotten in the last two years? My sense about this man is that he meant well, he really did. He hoped to initiate significant change, hoped to engage a recalcitrant congress, to work with them, but encountered one cement wall after another. When he rallied the U.S. military to save thousands of people stranded on a mountaintop where ISIS had chased them, I cheered for him. Humanitarian efforts are where we should we putting our military might.

When he started bombing missions to stop ISIS, I got nervous. Yes, two freelance journalists had been beheaded on You Tube, a provocation, an invitation to engage. Yeah, it’s barbaric, it’s Medieval – but Saudia Arabia, our ally – has beheaded 16-30 citizens this month (depending on which source you read) and one of those beheadings was for sorcery, which in that country might be nothing more than a weather prediction.

When I listened to Obama’s speech the other night, I realized he had caved, that he was channeling Bush, that not much has changed. For some reason, the consistent paradigm of US foreign policy is that we must be the world cop. We must intervene, conquer, and of course, always, “guard and defend our interests in Mideast” – i.e. OIL.

That’s tragic and sad. We could do so much better.And if the paradigm doesn’t change of its own volition, something will force that change.

This one will surely make you smile!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Ol9fsoiYE

Recently we received two synchronicity stories from Erica. They are quite different from each other and illustrate how synchronicity can manifest itself in any number of ways.

The first one involves a date, the second is about a book.

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Perhaps you are too young to remember that on 15 August 1945 WWII in S.E. Asia ended and was won by the USA.

I was born in 1935 in then Netherlands Indies, now Indonesia. I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic. As a child I lived through and survived the Japanese occupation (1941 – 1945).  My mother was very devoted to Mother Mary, the Holy Virgin.

During the war every day she prayed Hail Marys, begging the Holy Mother to please put an end to this horrible war. At last on August 15-  which in the Catholic church is the holiday of Mary Ascension – the Japanese surrendered  and that was the end of the war in S.E. Asia and the Pacific, thanks to U.S. General Mac Arthur.

To my mother this date of August 15 was PROOF that  the Holy  Mother had answered her prayers ! Coincidence?

In the 1960s I stopped going to church. I did not lose my faith, I abandoned religion.

Like your blog a lot.

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On a lazy rainy afternoon in the summer of 2007 I sat down reading “The Four Agreements” by  Don Miguel Ruiz.

When I  finished and closed the book I thought to myself, in Dutch, “This book is so good.” Then I decided to watch TV. The first thing I saw on the screen was Oprah Winfrey  throwing her arms high up in the air shouting, “That book is so good!”

Don Miguel Ruiz was her guest in that show! Everyone in the audience got a copy of that so good book.

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Only Erica can determine what these synchros meant for her. But the second one, at least to me, suggests she was clearly in the flow, in tune, experiencing that deeper reality in an immediate, personal way.

One afternoon, 15 years ago, I walked into a bar in Los Angeles and pulled up a stool next to Billy Dee Williams. I apologized for being late. I’d driven up from San Diego where I was visiting with a cousin. Even though I had started out early, traffic was nearly deadlocked at times and the 125-mile drive took more than three hours.

Billy and I talked about our novel PSI/NET and the plans for a sequel. The black protagonist was a retired remote viewer, or psychic spy, who re-activates and ultimately saves the nation’s capital from a backpack nuclear bomb. We also talked about the possibility of a movie or TV series, starring Billy, of course, as the protagonist, Trent Calloway.

Billy did most of the publicity for PSI/NET, but I  joined him in Atlanta where we made joint appearances at a science fiction writers conference and radio shows. I clearly recall one stop on the tour. We arrived at a black-owned radio station in downtown Atlanta in a limo that the publisher had provided. Billy had his window open and people on the street recognized him. He obviously enjoyed the recognition.

We entered the radio station, and I couldn’t help noticing that everyone working there was black, and so were the guests—except me. As the show began, I sat between Billy Dee and four-time world heavyweight champion Evander Hollyfield. I remember the radio personality asking Billy to repeat some of his famous lines from Lady Sings the Blues…and then, oddly enough, he would turn to me and say, “Now, Rob, you say the lines.” Kind of funny. I also remember asking Hollyfield what he ate for breakfast while he was in training. His answer: two baked chicken breasts. Yeah, breakfast…after running several miles. I didn’t ask him about his ear, but I couldn’t help taking a peek to see if I could see a scar.

I was thinking about all this stuff today because that novel, PSI/NET came out in a special e-book promotion along with five other science fiction novels. It’s called a ‘story bundle’ and for the next 20 days readers get all six books, but pay only what they want, a minimum of $3 for the bundle. Readers who pay $15 or more get even more novels from a secondary list. Trish paid $16 and got 13 novels. Sure, most of these novels, like PSI/NET, have been previously published, but the price is right and the stories are great.

So if you’re a science fiction/fantasy fan, take a look here. The novels are categorized as a sub-genre, cyber punk, which is defined as stories in a near future-dystopian setting, usually featuring high tech tools. I’m not sure that PSI/NET exactly fits that mold, but I’m glad to have it in the bundle.

I was thinking there’s no synchronicity in this post, but then I realized there actually was one. I wanted to get this post up as quickly as possible, Thursday being the earliest I could do so. That’s when I realized that I was writing about a story of a terrorist attack on the nation’s capital in a post being published  on 9/11.

Nika and Noah, enjoying a great view

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On August 29, we posted a story about our daughter’s dog, Nika, who had been hit by a car in June. Fortunately, she wasn’t badly injured. But the young man who hit her took Megan to small claims court  for the damages to his car caused when her dog hit his car.

The case was selected by Judge Judy, but the young man chose not to appear on her show – even though he stood to win the entire $1700 he was claiming. Before Megan had to appear at the mediation, I asked a psychic friend what she picked up on this. This woman is a TV writer whose psychic abilities she keeps to herself. Here was her response to my question about how this mediation hearing would unfold:

Unfortunately there feels like some law or statute that they can pin on Megan.  I don’t think this man is a sympathetic person to the court, but he may have her on a legal technicality.  I don’t think he’s going to get all the money he’s asking for.  He would have done better on Judge Judy.  He was right to be worried about being made fun of by her.  He feels almost like he has some sort of disorder, like Aspergers.  He just keeps repeating the same sentence over and over, which means he can’t let this go.  The root of it feels biological.  He appears unreasonable but he truly just gets stuck on something and he can’t let go.  It even exhausts him.  He’ll be talking about this 20 years from now as if it happened yesterday.  He might be right, but nobody likes him.

It’s like:  Did you run that stop sign?  And the answer is yes.  So Megan needs to have a good explanation for going against what the law is.  They will still find that the law was violated, but she could mitigate the cost.  Work on her reasonable explanation.  

Today, September 9, Megan arrived promptly at court at 9:00 a.m., as the summons stipulated. She didn’t get in to the mediation until 10:45. Two women were mediating. The driver stated his case, Megan stated hers. Megan explained that her dog had seen a squirrel and had raced away from her, still leashed, and that there was a video to prove that she was still on her leash. The young man said he couldn’t stop his car to avoid hitting Nika as she ran out into the road.

Megan explained that she was a dog walker and artist who lived paycheck to paycheck and couldn’t pay him a lump sum. Her vet bill alone for this fiasco had been nearly $500.  She offered $800 payable at $100 a month for eight months. The young man refused. Megan pointed out that he never asked her how her dog was doing, what her injuries were.

“Would that have made a difference in your willingness to pay me?” he asked.

“It would have made me less resistant to discuss things,” she replied.

And he said, “Your dog is irrelevant.”

Yeah? Irrelevant?

At this point, Megan broke down in tears and the mediators asked the man to leave the room. They asked Megan some questions about her work, her finances, and she explained her situation. What are you willing to offer him? $900 max, she said, paid out over 9 months. They asked her to leave the room and the young man returned. Megan believes the mediators convinced him to take her offer.

“I wish you’d told me from the beginning what you could afford to pay,” he said to her. “Then we could have avoided all this.”

He seemed to be missing the point that he had hit the dog with his car.

Two years ago, Nika was attacked by a pitt bull as she and Megan’s friend, Tim, were about to get in the elevator to go downstairs for a walk. The vet bill was $1,200. Megan didn’t take the man to small claims court. She tried to get him to settle amicably. She’s not someone who rushes to the law for recompense. In the end, she was reimbursed just $200 for that fiasco.

When I wrote to my friend about the small claims settlement, she replied:

So the “court” was on Megan’s side but technically she had to be found guilty.  $900 is better than 1700.  

 Megan needs to do some meditating on all the dog issues.  If any insight is passed along to me, I’ll share it with you, but this is old, deep stuff she’s working out.  When I ask for help understanding it, it’s like going down a long dark tunnel.  It feels like I’m looking at Shakespeare type clothing.  And this sounds really weird – only it feels like the future.  I see a triangle connection.  I have no clue what any of this means.  But the triangle has two long sides and a shorter bottom, like a candy corn.  And it’s on its side so the point is pointing toward San Diego (Is that east from me?  I think it is).  This has nothing to do with San Diego, it’s only a direction sign for me.  

I also see a third thing coming but she can cut the ties.  Imagine a big pair of scissors and snipping to the left and right.  Let this go.  She will stand up a happier woman and be done with this thing.  But her dog thanks her for remembering the bond they made.  She’s done enough.  It’s like she took on this payback to prove how sorry she was about something in the past/future, or a loyalty issue.  She’s proven it, now she can move on.   When she snips the ties, money will come more easily and paying him off will be a lighter experience, not the dirge it is now.  I feel like she’ll sell a small painting, or something.  It’s kind of a gift after this test she’s gone through.   

I emailed my friend’s insights to Megan, and she’s still puzzling over it. My friend was certainly on track with the young man’s personality. I did some research today on Asperger’s – and lack of compassion, obsessiveness, and repetitive behaviors are some of the symptoms.

Onward.

I first read about these large stones in Death Valley that supposed moved on their own back in the late 1980s. Specifically, I remember comments by skeptics, who found the idea hilarious. They suggested that the people who were reporting that the stones rolled across the valley on their own were scientifically challenged. In other words, wackos. If the stones did move, it was the work of pranksters. End of story. I wish I still had that debunking article.

Yes, the skeptics said the stones had trails behind them that seemed to indicate movement, but the logical answer was that someone pushed them across the valley floor—known as Racetrack Playa— or created the lines behind them.

They assured us that stones‑especially large ones weighing hundreds of pounds, don’t move on their own. They used this example as a way of showing the gullibility of people who believed in the paranormal, and accepted things that weren’t scientifically sound.

Well, now we know for a fact that the stones do move across Racetrack Playa, and pranksters are not the cause. We also know the mechanism by which they move.

It’s an interesting example of the process that takes place when the veracity of an idea shifts from the realm of the impossible and implausible to acceptance.

First there is ridicule. Then when evidence is presented, which might include measurements, strong doubts are raised and the evidence is dismissed because the idea is still preposterous, outside of scientific reality.

Finally, more evidence is presented and the explanation for what seems impossible is linked to a scientific truism. In the case of the so-called ‘sailing rocks,’ forces of erosion—water and ice—move the rocks along. The theory was supported by GPS readings and video proof. The skeptics accept the explanation, and they tell us that they knew it all along, that it’s another victory for science over nonsense. No alien intervention or mysterious magnetic forces were involved.

The problem is that the debunkers would not have solved the mystery. Because there was no mystery. Rocks don’t move on their own. Period. End of story.

Fortunately, there are still scientists who are curious about the unknown, and not simply in the business of defending the current scientific paradigm. Some tried to show that dust devils or strong straight-line winds moved the stones. But no one had seen the rocks moving.

In some cases the rocks’ trails were measured to be as long as 820 feet (250 meters), according to Slate.com. Some of the trails formed a graceful curve, while other trails created a straight line, then an abrupt shift to the left or right, which further baffled researchers.

In 2006, Ralph Lorenz, a NASA scientist investigating weather conditions on other planets (hello aliens!), took an interest in Death Valley. In particular, Lorenz wanted to compare the meteorological conditions of Death Valley to those near Ontario Lacus, a vast hydrocarbon lake on Titan, a moon of Saturn.

That pursuit led him to take an interest in the enigmatic sailing stones of Racetrack Playa.

Lorenz developed a kitchen-table model — using an ordinary Tupperware container — to show how the rocks might glide across the surface of the lake bed.

“I took a small rock and put it in a piece of Tupperware, and filled it with water so there was an inch of water with a bit of the rock sticking out,” Lorenz told Smithsonian.com.

After putting the container in the freezer, Lorenz ended up with a small slab of ice with a rock embedded in it. By placing the ice-bound rock in a large tray of water with sand at the bottom, all he had to do was gently blow on the rock to get it to move across the water.

And as the ice-embedded rock moved, it scraped a trail in the sand at the tray’s bottom. Lorenz devised his clever experiment by researching how the buoyancy of ice can cause large rocks, when encased in ice, to move by floating along tidal beaches in the Arctic Sea.

The ultimate proof came when James Norris, a research engineer, attached GPS to stones and set up video cameras. The right conditions eventually occurred and he had documented Lorenz’s theory.  

If you haven’t read Lois Lowry’s book The Giver, then do yourself a favor. Download it for four bucks and change. Buy the hard copy. You won’t regret it. This book, published in 1993, is one of those dystopian novels where the world is laid out through the eyes of a single character – a young boy named Jonas.

His world is fairly bleak. He lives with his parents- non-genetic parents, parents who were chosen for him when he was an infant – and a sister, who was chosen the same way. His father is a Nurturer, who tends to the Newborns in the community, and his mother is a judge who keeps track of the various infractions committed by community residents.  The power mongers are on the council and their decisions are binding, iron-clad.

With each birthday, children in the community receive certain gifts. Nines receive a bike. Twelves receive their “assignment” for life. Everything in this community is monitored for the degree of sameness the residents exhibit.  Jonas, at his twelfth birthday, is assigned the position of Receiver, an important and enigmatic position that places him in the internship of The Giver, the man who holds the community memories.

Our daughter recently read this book for the first time and called when she finished it. “Oh my God. I cried at the end of this. We have to go see the movie the next time I come home. I’m blown away by this book.”

The movie? This was the first I’d heard of it. “Who’s in it?”

“Jeff Bridges plays the Giver and Meryll Streep is the elder on the council.”

I Googled it. The reviews weren’t great. But anything with Bridges or Streep in it is good enough for me. So when Megan came home for the weekend before her 25^th birthday, so we could celebrate it with her a week early, she, Rob and I went to see The Giver.

For more than 90 minutes, I sat in this darkened theater completely enthralled. I had re-read the book before Megan came home, so it would be fresh in my mind. I realized that what had satisfied me twenty years ago when I’d read it had left me wanting this time, dissatisfied with the ending. But in the movie, that dissatisfaction vanished.

Movies provide various viewpoints and some of the most poignant scenes are those between Bridges as the Giver and Jonas as the Receiver. We come to realize that after whatever cataclysmic event changed things, the status quo (Council of elders) chose sameness over diversity. Through an unexplained technology and genetic engineering, they somehow erased the collective memories of the very emotions that make us human – love, passion, sensuality, sexuality, pain, sadness, grief, triumph, the tragedy of wars and their horrors.

Bridges is terrific as The Giver. His own daughter was selected as a Receiver a decade ago but as she was given the memories, she couldn’t stand it and asked to be “released.” And this word, released, has a precise meaning in this society of precise vocabulary.

In the movie, in the moment when Jonas actually understands and sees – through video – what this word actually means, is a powerful turning point. Jonas watches his dad – the nurturer- insert a syringe into the head of an identical twin whose weight isn’t up to snuff. His father doesn’t seem to understand that he is killing the twin.

In so many ways, the ending of the movie surpasses the book’s ending. This may be due to the fact that we see the moment when Jonas reaches the boundary of memories – and moves beyond it. Once he’s beyond it, the people of the community  experience the return of memories of love and hate, war and peace, all the emotions that make us human.

Lois Lowry, as a writer, a novelist, set these ideas into motion. But  Hollywood ran with them and made them real in  a dynamic, visceral sense, And I haven’t even mentioned the character who is pivotal to the second plot point in the story, an infant named Gabriel…

You’re in for a treat with this one.

This video is interesting and is best seen on a full screen. Since the local PA news covered it in late August the story has since been picked up by Good Morning America. I originally ran across it on Whitley Strieber’s website.