Leaving Man Weekend, in Out-of-Service, PA with Jethro Randolph and Nero the Pict, was a surreal experience. Not least was the lack of a phone for three days, a taste of the ascetic away from this ever beckoning noise. It was a liberation for many of us. One fighter found that he had neglected some 30 calls from his boss, being one of the most powerful men in the material world. As we left, young Richard Barrett gifted me some books. One is upon the Brickmouse Bookshelf. But this book on the astral plane has traveled with me this week entire, because of its slim dimensions, being a tramp and all.

Unplanned, we arrive in Baltimore four hours early and drop in on the owners of The Raven Inn, who appeared to be waiting for our return. The son, Sean, was there, and brought up an Irish visitor who had been there the previous night. The man turned out to be from Jeth’s small corner of Ireland, and sounded very much like a friend of his.

This brought us to a discussion of sendings. Earlier in the weekend, Jeth and I had discovered each other in a day and night of rambling with friends at Nero’s house in Lancaster, PA. A numb shock came across his face as I related work stories identical to his experience, identical to Nero’s experience, despite his youth, despite our scattered bodies distant berths, as if the same evil forces worked their banal webs of corruption about us. Three modest men, scraping mere pennies, on either side of a mighty ocean: a grocer, a musician and a barkeep, whose only unifying thread seems to have been a quiet dedication to our tiny physical autonomy—men who wish only to be left alone and are willing to toil in dimmest obscurity for peace-of-mind.

At the bar, Jeth brought up sendings again, something we had done a recording on a year and more gone. We traded stories. Jeth had numerous examples from his sleeping and waking life. The most chilling occurred in Venice, Italy. He spoke of being pleased to meet in the flesh, that I was a soul he could speak to on such things that draw ridicule, that he had no time for speaking truly of himself with those inclined to dismiss his experiences according to our much regarded Science of negation. I recalled Jeremiah Weed, Matt Weed, and Daniel Weed, all cannabis-addled who, in their ‘high’ state acted as ferrets, rooting me out of my reserve.

We both found out that we also suffered from “night terrors.” I did not know what a night terror was until Jeth told me. I thought it was just an evil being come to kill me in my sleep and drag me to hell. I will here relate two events from my sleep life. Not included is the “sleep seizure” I had on the second Wednesday night of December 2017, which I became convinced was a demonic attack two weeks later when I returned to my room to clean the caked and spattered blood. I opened a door and something stepped through.

The first event happened on countless nights throughout my life and is related in Yusef of the Dusk, a fantasy novel from 2018, I think. From boyhood, through youth, into early married life and into middle age, I was visited in dream and trance [1] by my “The Lady in the Night Sky.” This woman was fully so, not some teen virgin, but a lush woman in her 30s. She usually addressed me through her eyes alone, as she reclined upon a bed of stars or clouds in a sky of azure to cobalt blue. She gave me confidence always, winking at me that I was strong and would prevail, wanting only to witness my striving not to fail. On occasion, during times of extreme stress, SHE would descend, during sleep, in the body of a woman I was intimate with, seduce me, and then reveal her true form, leaving me for her starry bed once again. In 2017, a woman who matched her form, contacted me by mail, sending Walmart photos of her face and upper body clothed in conservative attire. She claimed that she discovered me on training videos and wished for me to visit her. For three years I demurred. Finally, in Emmeryville, California, April 2020, I met her, the very likeness of the woman in the lifelong dreams had from age 7 or so, in all appearances the same as the Lady in the Night Sky. Now, as an old man, that Lady remains with me always in my mind. I am able to consult her with a thought, and she answers simply, with the feeling of a gentle hand, a sighing cheek or a lone, cold tear on my sunken chest. I have been seduced, I am sure, for as long as this body remains my home, and I sense, beyond.

The second event occurred in the deep dark of Big T’s unheated garage in Portland, Oregon, a year after meeting The Lady, in about April 21. I had avoided three handlers, military contractors claiming an interest in me as a coach, who I sensed were out for my demise for some unknown party. I was half asleep, awakened by the blowing in of the garage door as the fog of early morning rose up from the river. I had a knife on the bed stead to my left as I lay on my left shoulder. I was unable, as the sense of dread approached, to reach that knife with my right hand, grown as numb as the one I slept on. ‘Reach, reach, reach—you worthless hand!’

I sensed it above me. I could not turn and look and face it, but heard it—or I heard the magnolia tree above the garage where the two crows nested scraping the roof. I felt pressure against my neck on the right side, turning my face into the pillow, willing me to submit. I reached up in my mind, trying to animate the right hand to strangle this bastard. The garage door breathed in and out, bringing the morning cold. I did not breathe but walked up inside of this damned, dead, right arm with my mind. I could not make the hand work. I asked The Lady, ‘should I give?’ I meant to speak it, but could only drool. I felt a burning hand pressed against my chest, a hand that was angry at my question. My hand came numbly to life and I grasped, pushed, reached and squeezed. I could finally roll back just enough to see where my hand would be in the gloom. My right hand was faintly illuminated by a dim, receding point of light, melting into the ceiling above. The effort resulted in a racing heart and a body soaked in sweat.

Oddly, yesterday, as I read the tales of Swedenborg and other astral travelers, and began considering the ancient sources in the text and appendices, I was moved to call Dove, my Eskimo Owner in Portland, who rescued me from that garage one stormy December night in 2021. Her friends at the dive bar where we met, had just called with a tale of a large, dark man, seeking me out by name and making the claim that I had stolen $50,000 worth of guns and ammo from him. She described the feeling as “spooky,” and asked me not to seek out the dark man on my return.

So, as to this subject to which I am like a toddler playing on the floor of a sublime symposium, I have only numbly recalled antics to relate. And it just occurred to this astral idiot that one of the Lady’s photos is serving as the bookmark to this spooky book…

Notes

1.) I did not understand that my day dreaming was a trance state until I began writing full time. Every time a person, to this day, calls me while I am writing, they apologize for waking me. When I take a call while asleep and waking, no such apology is uttered, them thinking me awake already.