The Diamond Island

K and I get back from a grocery raid.  As I am opening the door, with Frankie’s Lazor-eyes recognizing me as friendly, we hear the sound of loud bongos being played somewhere down the street.  We’re both a little flummoxed.  I mean bagpipes are one thing, but now bongos?  What’s next on the phantom music soundtrack?

Still pondering that rascal sneaking about in the secret spaces of my brain.  Somebody’s been listening to old tapes of eighties tunes at night and eating our snacks.  The faucet being left on makes sense now.  When you’re thirsty you got to have a drink!  At least I know now there’s a kid in the psychic drywall.

There’s that darn monster that won’t show itself.  I’m thinking that I’m going to have to seek this thing’s lair out and confront the thing directly.  Maybe this thing is roaming the secret spaces also, and driving my Bad Ronald boy away.  In which case, I am duty bound to take care of business!

This monster has a certain psychic connection with me somehow.  It keeps popping up in daydreams, forcing me to consider it even as I find myself unable to come to any conclusions about it.  Premonitions of a struggle with a devouring force?  I’m wondering if I’m supposed to be the bait for this thing, or the ten-foot pole as you might fathom.

Okay, I’m going back to my fear of icky girl power series here.  I think this nasty monster might just want to have fun.  When I was growing up, there were these kissing-girls in the neighborhood that used to chase boys around.  What could be worse than girl cooties when you’re that age?  Yuck!  Pretty scary stuff.

Slapstick?  Check.  Candle?  Check.  Okay, time to enter the space between!

As I head into the apogee of my life, things become clear that were not clear before.  I’m thinking about how I’ve been trying to prepare for my life ahead of me.  Now I’m meditating on how to prepare for my death ahead of me.

Mind you, barring accidents or violence I ought to make it to the next round.  I might be acting premature considering how medical science and circumstance might conspire to extend my span.  But I think it’s a healthy pursuit to consider my mid-life transformation and what it means.

In other words, it is perfectly right and good to think about what I am going to leave behind and how I might best leave things for those who will come after me.  There is a tarot card from the Medieval Scapini deck, the Six of Cups I believe, where various versions of old age are considered for the viewer.

I always liked the figure that acted as a Santa Claus and gave presents to the community.  I think that would be a decent way to go out, dispensing presents.  I think a certain amount of the Krampus would be involved in that.  I’m not 100% good, nor do I think seeking to be perfectly good is a healthy goal.

Hexe tosses that all out the window for a moment and gives me a super duper deluxe present for my birthday.  She totally does a random and throws me for a loop.  Back when I was carrying a pass from my Mirage, I never figured I’d actually get to hold a physical manifestation.  But there you are, front and back.

This isn’t the first time something in my dreams or visions has appeared in real life.  But I have to say, this is the most intense version of events to date.  I hadn’t considered the pass having two sides, a light and a dark (moon) side.  The fact that it does makes this all the more meaningful.

Let me state for the record that Hexe knows the DEAL, and ain’t fooling around.  People might say yeah sure Paul, ha-ha ovens, and all that.  She does collage nonsense and weird artistic whatever, who cares?  I read a derailed train of thought from people making statements about what artists like Xtine do for a living.  It’s a familiar, if automated dodge to the need to construct meaning.  These people don’t know how serious this interplay is!

It is not a joke.  Unless the joke is on you!  Hope your insurance is paid up.

For me, wrapped as it is in an envelope of triple strength caring, I’m reeling from the transformational revealing.  I look at the genius clues in my hand and put a palm to my chin.  The great living spirit is shining behind someone’s work as a multi-faceted and unusual vision of what’s what.

I mean, that pass, which was just a fancy in the imagination.  Here it is, in physical form like the Imperial Seal of the Empress smack dab on the bloody forehead of a disbelieving retainer too late figuring out what time it is.

Hexe couldn’t have touched me in a kore personal place.  See the misspelling I made?  Right into me, where I hide my personal space.  If the shoe fits, I place it on my Pisces feet and walk the dancy ka-boom.

My Aquarian friend holds a mirror up to me.  See that face?  In the oven I’m cooked, silly walking in a coil of serpentine ways back and back, marking and re-marking walls until I put the shards together.

I still have Hexe’s picture of the numinous tree, which I am meditating on, and trying to form a clue inventory on.

Meanwhile, the pass has become real, and there are messages rising up from the depths towards me.  Hexe’s strange and unexpected knowledge from her magic microscope slime their way into my pond, my circle with the weird unexpectedness of a total surprise.

The other day she asked if she had surprised me, and like a dope I thought she meant just now.  So I said no.  But maybe I ought to have just said yes, because I’m still surprised!

My friends are so cool.

Time to go searching under the baseboards.  A lyric from a song I’ve been listening to a lot lately has been running in my mind.  Listen for the things you haven’t heard. My friend Xtine has been calling me “listener”, which is a title I couldn’t claim for myself even if I recognized and understood it as being true.  You really do need other people to call you on your crap, both good and bad.

Pisces modesty holds me back sometimes.  Maybe that Aquarian scrutiny of my friends Hexe and Alexi, with a touch of that raw, firey spirit of my Aries friend Xtine will give me the strength and the wisdom to look in the mirror long enough to do something that matters.

“Do without doing, and the doing gets done.”  There’s that crazy rune message again.  I keep thinking I have to do something.  Twelve years ago, a wise person I knew said, “People don’t need to do anything Paul, they shouldn’t have to do anything.  They’re already together.”  I thought she was nuts, nuts, nuts at the time.  She said, “Your best friend will call and you know you’ll come back to him.”

I thought she was full of it at the time.  Except for that weird crawly feeling at the back of my spine that told me I didn’t know squatle-dee-doo.

I mean, one miracle’s enough, right?  If you lose the best part of you and it is restored to you, when you thought it was gone forever — well hey I don’t know squatle-dee-doo, but I’d say that’s a pretty good day.

Xtine always said there’s a bonus round.  Hell, she IS a bonus round.

Stuff happens without us knowing the how and the why.  Dogs and cats, living together without warning, that sort of thing.  I was super fortunate to meet and know a best friend forever in this life.  I might forget the fun of playtime that reaches the height of consciousness in this life, but can any of that be undone?

I dunno, but it can be made into a living hell while you’re still alive.  You can be ground into the dirt and lose everything, and know it as long as you’re alive.  The glory of living at a high level of existence can be taken away from you at any time.

I never accepted that.  If it was granted, and taken away I screamed and raged until I didn’t know my own name.  I just didn’t know the cycle of being lost and returning, of finding and losing.  Someone was trying to make a point, that I just didn’t get it.  It wasn’t one thing or the other, it was both.

Part of me the last few months had been saying the other thing, but I wasn’t hearing it.  “This is how it goes down.”  Yeah, but how could it go down like that?  It makes no sense!  “Because it will.  You don’t know squatle-dee-doo, remember?”  I couldn’t hear what my instincts were saying.  Yeah, I think they’re right, but I haven’t a clue how it could happen.  I know nothing.  I got beat down, remember?

“You aren’t beat down anymore.  Answer the call.”

The phone was ringing, so I picked up.  Somebody wanted to talk.  I never thought in a year and a day they would.  But my wise friend was right.  All of a sudden I realized I was okay, and I could see clearly now.  A piece of my soul restored, as mysteriously as it had been removed.  How does that happen?  A bonus miracle, just in case I missed the importance of the first.  Judgment Day dude, you are waking up.  As many miracles as you need.

I follow that snapping, crackling, dancing Goob-a-loo all around the house and back to my folk’s home again.  Slowly, a large number of objects are considered and their fates decided.  Trash, donation or storage in brand new containers suitable for ease of access.  My folks and I exchange a few boxes of old keepsakes and papers that need going through.

I spend several exhausting days tossing 90% of my papers into the recycle bag as outdated, unimportant junk.  My schedule goes topsy-turvy, with odd hours of sleep until that Goob-a-loo feels like the King Mahar of all Goob-a-loos.

Then I have a dream.  There’s this lake out in the woods and I’m on a roofed pier on the edge.  I’m trying to write down important notes for people on the end of the pier’s wall with a Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pen.  There’s something enormous and frightening in the lake.  I can feel it swimming towards the pier and I have to flee back to land before it sees me.  I run back to shore as turbulence starts rocking the pier.

I half wake up and this whole message goes off in my head (you know, of the Hek-mail kind).  Mother Mary dropped by and left me a note, saying that I’m not ready for the lake yet, that I have to get right with my body and learn how to know myself better.  She says she will train me in her style of Kung Fu.  I scribble this all down on the notepad before the Goob-a-loo notices I’m awake and starts up again.

Once it’s on paper, I feel like its all been turned into the physical.  Oh wait, the Goob-a-loo is right there next to me!  He’s been hanging out all this time, but he’s quiet like the vacuum after a loud pop.  Then he’s gone and I notice a scrap of paper calling to me in the papers pile.  I scramble over in a daze and see it has the words “haunted house – trainwreck?” written on it.

I remember now!  There was this vinyl record with haunted house sounds on it that I used to have and was trying to remember something of.  I didn’t have the power of the internets back then, but now I do!  A sensor sweep and five minutes later I have it:  Disney’s Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House.  The title wasn’t trainwreck, it was shipwreck (though now that I’ve heard it again through the magic of the internets it does sound like a train crashing).

I think I understand.  Now that I’ve cleared up a lot of psychic space, the Goob-a-loo is satisfied.  This is his way of showing me how things that were blocked can come through when you clear out the junk.  The dream and the message from Mother Mary must be letting me know new energy is available for use.  All these clues, I’m going to have to do some more work.

In the meantime, here come more monsters!

Unexpectedly, my folks have been activated. They are going through their museum of a townhouse and stirring things up. All my old toys, high school and college artifacts, and forgotten keepsakes. They are trying to identify objects, group together related items, and either toss/donate unwanted things or put them away in new containers.Needless to say, such a psychological task stirs up more than dust. The ghosts of Paulie past are not amused, nor are the secret monsters dwelling in the crevices. And the only person who can name the pieces is me.

My folks have adopted certain superstitious taboos while going through their motions of digging up and accommodation. Only during daylight. Only when both of them are together. Always have a drink in hand. I can emphasize. When I am with them, they are able to make substantial progress.

It is as if I can name the secret creatures that lurk under the depths of existence. I emphasize with their desire to clear the field, for I too wish the dark corners of my past to be cleansed. I want to move forward and let go of anything that holds me back from living life.

I’m nostalgic, sentimental, and romantic. K has been telling me I need to focus more on the here and now, not so much in the past. I agree. I want harmony and balance. How much can I hold onto my Star Wars figures or my Ocean Adventure sets without regressing to a childhood I no longer have a right to? A new perspective is required.

My folks begin to dig up all sorts of things. It feels good to throw away notebooks of Algebra and World History that I will never return to in that form. Also, the sense that I am putting away valuable toys for the future makes me happy. I haven’t played with my Navarone Gun set in so long it feels like I’m looking at an alien puzzle when I put away the accessories for the Allied forces.

And the countless comic books, both in the standard size and the magazine and supersize designation. My folks get their hands on plastic bags and cardboard backing galore so they can archive the finds, before putting them away for a suitable storage. I never knew I had so many Richie Rich comics, or Shazam specials. It totally blows me away.

Digging up the corpses of my life, that’s what it amounts to. Weirdness. But it feels good to excavate this long, large detritus pile up. I sense this is timely, and necessary. But what is responsible for this sudden digging up of my life? What has changed that I should go over my life and set things in order for a change of outlook?

Unfamiliar, or forgotten aspects of my being must be at work. Newly revealed parts of myself that I’m only now making sense of.

Wait, what is that gigantic shambling thing in my old room? How is it that this magnetic electric spirit of blazing titanic fire can be in two places at once? Why, it’s the Goob-a-loo throwing a fanatic fit over all the junk people carry around with them. It builds up nothing but dust bunnies, which charge up the capacitors and wreck havoc with the Goob-a-loo’s allergies!

The only solution is to diffuse the build-up of psychic debris by disconnecting the memorial junk accumulators from the items held in unconscious repose for storage. This means getting into the piles of objects and separating the wheat from the chaff. Anything not likely to be consciously considered and handled must be removed to a disposal array – clothes in a bag to AmVets for example.

We’re holding on to too much stuff that has served it’s purpose, and the Goob-a-loo will dance on our heads until we ease the psychic continuum down to a less radioactive level of possessiveness. Goob-a-loos only want to stand still and coast on the ambient energy of household operations. Don’t we know they’re being made miserable existing in human object dumping grounds?

Hek-yeah, I’m on it.

I have guests in the haunted house who need attending to. The spookiness and the odd happenings continue. Weird sounds (what was that sound of someone landing in the wall?), strange smells (who’s cooking?), and sudden movements (the faucet turned itself on again). The floor warps and curls in odd places. K and I can hardly maintain a sense of propriety in the face of it all. But it doesn’t scare me, and that’s such a natural but unexpected feeling. It scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep before. Now I accept it as normal, that supernatural occurrences are a part of life.

And then my friends. I never knew I had so many. I scarce know what to make of it, because for so long I’ve been a jerk out of touch with myself. I’ve been displaced from my nature and didn’t even know it. My friends have faults, and so do I, so I hesitate to call this a massive hug session. It’s as if I see people in a darker shade, with the light coming from an unknown source. I know we will all make mistakes again. Somehow, it’s okay because I’m seeing in a different way that I can’t quite explain. Almost as if the mistakes and the screw ups lead to better things and I can’t wait for the discomfort, because that’s where the life is.

I let a good friend read my book. She read it so fast I was surprised. Lots of great suggestions from her. I really trust her instincts, so it’s nice to feel that I’m on the right track with my craft. And my editor asked to see the whole thing, which took me by surprise. She’s so unpredictable I can hardly comprehend what she’ll say. Not as if I have a lot of work to do, because I do.

The cover sketches are proving difficult – I’d forgotten how hard it can be to get tools to behave, and I’m still working out the rust of ages. Plus, I am considering the idea of illustrations to go with the book, one for each chapter. My editor has some really mind-bending ideas!

Oh yeah, back to the haunted house. All the ghosts and monsters have been coming up to me with requests. Suddenly I find myself having to find solutions to supernatural problems I hardly expected. And the killer bees are getting active again, despite the winter season. Yes, the year is in full effect and I’m the one who has to come up with ideas and work out the real world maneuvers.

Oh crumbs, here they come!

The Ghostly Fire of Her Raiment compels me to behold and honor subterranean majesty. There are creatures stirring in the deep crevices of inner space who will be recognized.

The Surface Swell of A Bright Green Tail ripples through my thoughts, stirring up feelings of wonder and excitement. Within a lost lake is a vital spirit beyond explanation.

The Whisper of Nameless Chill At The Door clutches me with anxiety and I shrink back. The daylight cries of the sorrowful evoke compassion from me with dire need.

All about me is mystery, secrets, the buried and forgotten. I’m going to start digging, and prying loose, and shining my unlight into the shrouds. No matter what snapping surprise, ghastly apparition or hostile grotesque comes spilling into view. See the space I have created, the circle I have drawn and stepped out of? Anything goes.

I pick up the pen and do the picture mentioned in the previous post.  Think of it as pulling away the cobwebs, prying loose the boards, and digging out the sludge.  Yuck, this is gross.  There’s a lot of butt-gut material here.

Thoroughly nastified by the experience, creaking walls making me nervous the whole structure is going to come down any moment, I make my way down into the foundations.  Before I know it, I’m crawling around in the mud for who knows what.

That’s when I find the one-woman flying saucer in the crud.  I scrape away the detritus and uncover the saucer bit by bit.  It’s a nameless, inexplicable thing not unlike a chocolate éclair.  The ship is as light as a feather.  It looks like it should weigh about a two thousand pounds, but I lift it out of the gunk and onto the floorboards like I would pick up a plastic, hand-sized toy.

The saucer opens, and I understand this is because I’ve been exposed to UFO Girl’s cooties.  I am contaminated correctly.  I scoot myself inside and the marvelous contraption closes around me like a puzzle.  The fuel meter reads full.  I touch the diode with my hand and the fiery spirit inside sneezes out of me in an instant.  I watch the dial go down to zero.

EMPTY POWER RESTORED.

I turn on the radio diode, and hear all sorts of rockin’ tunes that imprint themselves on my reptile baseline.  I realize I’m taking this all in calmly so I don’t poop my pants.  I’m only using the most primitive of functions on this saucer.  Good luck on the intermediate stuff.

The saucer ejects me faster than Bond shooting out a Goldfinger agent from his Aston Martin.  I never thought that would ever happen to me!  There’s a terrific knocking at the doors.  I scramble up the stairs and answer the knocking.  The doors open easily.

UFO Girl is there.  She’s been waiting for me too.  Behind her is a huge throng of life-no-life-unlife forms assembled, looking for shelter.  I remember a previous vision and decide it’s time to let ’em all in.

Before I know it, the place is hopping like mad with more strange activity in my head than I know what to do with.

In her inexplicable way, UFO Girl thanks me for finding her saucer.  She’s amazed I gassed down the tank without getting myself totally killed.  Her material form has been stuck on this savage planet for too long.  It was driving her crazy.  She beeps and twirts, and the saucer comes hoverin’ out of the basement to land beside her.

UFO Girl boards the flying saucer and gets ready to depart.  She says I should really appreciate that Dark Goddess, because she’s one in a million.  Knows how to treat an alien lunatic on a transubstantiation binge.

I’m like, wait, what about that trip on your saucer earlier?  She raspberries that one.  It was all an illusion using advanced technology on my ape’s brain.  Humans think they’re so smart.  She’s glad she met a real moron finally.

Hey!

I suddenly realize I’m in for another goodbye.  UFO Girl is taking off, and she’s not coming back to this neck of the woods for a million years.  Something about her subscription to lifeform events.  I really like UFO Girl.  She’s so weird!  I just got to know her and now voom.

VOOM.

No last words.  That isn’t her style.  I’m spinning out of control.  Zero for two, and now that’s it.  I think about my crazy friend Alexi, and his words comfort me: “No worries, just fun.”  My whacky-wise Aquarian buddy, I think those words are truth.  I’m going to let the mystery of UFO Girl be.

The End?

Outside, there’s a crazy party of activity going on.  Every conceivable creature is out here.  There are monsters, spirits, really weird beings, strangers, aliens, victims, and mad scientists.  I haven’t the wherewithal to deal with that right this moment.  One thing at a time.

Naturally, I walk through the door and into the unknown.  The doors creak closed behind me.  Trapped like a rat!  My Mirage has been waiting for me to reach this point in our dialogue.  I thought I was dealing with my shadow, and perhaps I am a little.  Now, I’m not so sure.  He’s the dark king of the underworld waiting for me to arrive, and it’s turning me for a loop how this has turned out.

I’m awake and now the nightmare must end.  The clarion calls of the dawn are calling me so very fudging hard.  The night in the haunted house is over, in the deep me of me.  My Mirage is there before me in this large, empty house with nothing in it but him.  He is ready for this moment, preparing for it for years.

I can hardly believe how empty the place is.  It’s not what I expected at all.  Zippo.  The whole place looks ready to crumble.  He tells me things I can hardly hear because there’s this din in my mind’s ear.  I liked having a Mirage that was scary and cool.  He reassures me and says this is how it happens.  One day you’re done, and you have to let go.

I’m told everything has been accounted for, and transferred to me for the duration (of what?).  Okay, whatever.  So what do I do now?  How do I slay myself?

He says I slew him years ago.  This is only a recording.  His last request is that I draw a picture and reflect fondly on him now and then.  I’ve been afraid of myself, talking to myself all along.  It was all a shadow of the imagination that has passed in the night.  Oh god how I miss him already, a hole in my heart the size of a person who no longer is.

Good Lord, Count Gore De Vol is a prophet.  The end of Captain 20’s ship, the last night party of Creature Feature.  Channel 20 is canceled all over again, and now it’s just me, with no super creature horror filler hour anymore.  I’ve got to be my own horror host from now on; no one will do it for me.

I understand.  I’ve heard those words before from someone else.  “I am not coming back.  It’s up to you now.”

That’s when I notice the pen on the floor.  There’s the door to the basement, courtesy of revelations from my old friend Craig, who helped me interpret a dream once.  All I got to do is pry the boards loose and start digging through the stale poop.

But first, that picture.  Rest in peace, hero.

Possible spoilers for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, so ahroo!

Standing before the doors to the haunted house, My Mirage whispers to myself.  “Before you can be granted admittance, you must uncover the identity of the wicked magician.”

I think about what kind of items I might need should I manage to get inside.  The haunted house could be hazardous!

The goddess Athena once said to me in a dream, “You must take up a sword.”  I thought that was preposterous, since I don’t do swords.  A year later, in a waking dream, the unknowable explained to me she meant a pen.  I was just too dense to understand her.

I’ve been writing and drawing all my life, but I begin to get it, faintly.  I need to take up the pen and write and draw with intent.  I must take action. It is no longer enough for me to do it unconsciously.  I have been doing it more consciously the last two years.  However, I need to know this as well as do it with intention.

I try to decipher the symbolism behind the slapstick, the torch, the wand.  I’m carrying not so much a stick as a feminine spirit lent to me by the Dark Goddess.  I’m performing not so much the part of Punch as a generic dum-dum on a ridiculous adventure.

While thinking about the past, Xtine pulls free another stone to reveal more me (without consciously realizing it).  In a way, in another time and place, I had a puffed up image of myself as the Grand Magician.  I thought I knew what I was doing.  Much as Koura the wicked magician in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Alas, as Xtine points out this guy is so way not eating with both hands.

I wonder about the man in black who follows Koura around.  We are meant to think of him as the sensible apprentice to Koura.  He certainly knows what is what.  “If you continue on this way master, you will die.”  Then I think of the oracle’s words about an evil son and wonder who the oracle is talking about – Koura or the “apprentice?”  We are supposed to think Koura, of course, but when you are on a ridiculous adventure, layered meanings can spring from anywhere.

I’m thinking about an old Batman and Robin comic, where they fight Benedict Arnold.  The old traitor comes back from the dead to break the soul of the country by defeating two of its greatest heroes.  A weird dude follows him around the whole time, granting Benedict Arnold powers.  Only at the end when the traitor is defeated does the weird dude reveal himself to be Old Scratch (the Devil).

So is that “apprentice” dude really an ordinary guy hoping to advance himself by serving the bad guy, or is he symbolic of the possession of Koura by an evil force?  Thinking about it, I decide that on a symbolic level he must represent what is left of Koura’s conscience.  He is always the “sane” bad guy, trying to get Koura to be more reasonable, more down to earth.

It is telling that the apprentice is ordered away near the end of the film – Koura has the upper hand (or so he believes) and he no longer needs his “conscience” to keep him alive – indeed, soon after he goes off on his own, Koura starts to die rapidly as the dark magics finally catch up with him!

But me?  No way, not no how.  Couldn’t happen to me!  Like Koura, I thought I was getting the forces of the world to move at my whim.  Kali gettin’ down for me?  Har!  That’s Shiva, dumb-butt, and your face is about to be used as reactor shielding.

Then I get it.  Koura was the sultan (read: king).  He “killed the sultan” (who always seems to be referred to in a present sense, as if he were still alive somehow), in the sense that he killed himself with his pursuit of dark magic.  Much as Saruman in Lord of the Rings.  The desire for knowledge can lead too far.  Always remember to practice don’t-know-mind!

SNACK!

Koura lived in the castle next to the city because he was the king who had gone bad. The fiery accident that burned the good vizier (read:  the apprentice king) happened during Koura’s fall from grace as the true king.

This is a blow to me.  I always wondered why “the demons of darkness” (read: the forces of nature) moved to Koura’s command.  That’s because he was still manifesting the king energy, even though it was for wicked purposes.

Thanks to Xtine, I realize now how little grasp Koura has on reality.  Before, I thought he was just some power monger meddling and paying the price to accomplish his evil goals.  But whoa, that’s just what he wants people to think.  Total illusion pose for the crowd.  In truth, he is out to lunch big time. All lines are busy, no groove, don’t play.  Not even on the same page.

That’s incredibly tragic.  His quest then becomes not a mad scramble for power, but a compelling desire to reach the Fountain of Destiny and recover what was lost. He “obtains”, to use his own phrase, but only two out of three – the energy of youth and a shield of darkness.  The crown of ultimate riches goes to someone else.  You can never return to what you once were.

Koura isn’t thinking of the people of his kingdom, or his poor vizier’s suffering.  He’s thinking of himself and not in a good way.  Sinbad, who represents the transcendent function (he says, “I am the most foolhardy”), comes along to restore the balance and heal the wounds of the earth.  He kills Koura in the fountain, and it is only then that the third golden tablet reveals the crown.  The king is dead, long live the king.

A phrase comes back to me.  “The hero who does not crucify himself today becomes the villain of tomorrow.”  I’ve also read that the hero is an immature energy function, that it has a purpose (to take action against the stagnation of life) and once that purpose is fulfilled, the hero must “die” and be reborn as a responsible adult.

I think that must have been what I didn’t do a long while ago.  Part of me has been skulking about like a ghost in dark moors and drinking of wretched waters.  Joseph Campbell once said, “And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.”  The four corners fall into place.

I grow afraid.  My Mirage is waiting for me in the haunted house.  The last thing I want to do is dispatch the vampire, defeat the villain, neutralize the monster.  It’s the very worst thing in the world to slay yourself.  Psychologically or otherwise.

The doors to the house open.  I’m expected.