The Diamond Island

Now that I understand I’m not the host of this show, I’m confident that the search will come to its conclusion. I’ve said my one line, in a manner of speaking, and done whatever it was my mirage couldn’t or wouldn’t do. About all I have to do is be prepared for the inevitable meeting with UFO girl.

I think about what might be useful for an encounter with an ultra-terrestrial being about a contact encounter with a mirage. Being a real world guy, I need to accommodate a non-real world request for a hookup with two imaginary beings that I consider no less true just because they don’t occupy space and time as any physicist would describe it.

I’ve been trained in the old school of fifties science fiction films as to what to expect as far as outcomes. The last thing I want to do is end up a helpless victim of an ultra-terrestrial being. At least, if I have a say in things. Somebody has to be the victim or there’s no pathos, and one never knows one’s role in any new encounter until the whip comes down.

So, against death rays, I’m packing a sign that says “Don’t Shoot I Am A Human”, which identifies me as a person not to be atomized. In case of abduction, I carry a Black Sabbath tape. No UFO can take off for butt probe land when you are equipped with sounds so heavy they’re iron, dude.

I read rumors that UFO girl has interchangeable heads. She’s been known to lose her rational head and have it replaced with a monstrous maw of titanium teeth and high fructose acid spittle. For that, I’m taking a plastic bag with some poppers in sawdust. Nothing confuses alien monsters with force fields more than random noises or clouds of thrown crud. Hey, all I need is a diversion so I can book.

Finally, in case of alien possession and injection of nasty DNA, I gots me a used handkerchief of my recent flu virus days. Just hold that puppy up and it’s like a crucifix to vampires. As we all well know, alien beings with advanced technology are helpless against the common earthling diseases.

I gather my goods, not knowing if they will be of help. Hey, maybe I’ll get lucky. I need to stay alive long enough to pass along my mirage’s offer and escape to safety so I can make a report. My pass’s life clock is blinking, yo.

I’ve got a dream for a clue, a hall pass that’s feeling close to the due date, and a whole lot of personal drama driving me crazy. Ordinary life and its chores are hard enough without battle cruisers patrolling the streets for human heads.

Spontaneously, I get out some of my illustration materials and tools. I continue work on one of my personal enrichment projects. I have four blank certificates of accomplishment on ditto paper from the fourth grade that I’ve been copying and adapting onto poster board. So far I’ve only done the first one.

I like giving artistic creations to people, where time and energy allow. These modified certificates are something different and neat I can give people to pump them up. It’s nice to get a bonus round every now and then.

In no time at all, I’ve got my second certificate done, and I’m satisfied to have a new goodie at my disposal. I wonder where the motivation to do this came from, since I haven’t been at full power for a few months now. I imagine it must have come as a token of kindness, as after all that’s what it’s supposed to be used for. What might I have done that was noteworthy, I wonder?

I recall my dream, and how I saved Important Woman from the snipers. Maybe the motivation comes from her as a form of recognition. Perhaps that’s where a lot of artistic inspiration comes from. It’s granted us through our dreams, and the figures of our dreams are the messengers. Sometimes we remember the dream where that inspiration springs, and sometimes we don’t. I think this sort of thing must be going on all the time, asleep or not.

K makes me a nice, delicious, hot cup of tea from her special recipe. She can tell I need a boost. A rooibus peach/blueberry bliss combo with fresh crushed blackberries and a big spoonful of honey in the raw (that unprocessed stuff with the pollen on top). It must work, because not only do I recover health points, but I have a Mr. Spock moment.

If I assume this inner dialogue is always going on, then I have to admit I’m not always participating overtly and that it’s not always about me. Things could be going on that are moving this search forward that I’m not aware of, and perhaps all I need to do is wait for my turn to do something. That, to me, seems to be the crux of the matter – the need for patience and for the various other storylines to catch up – whatever they may be. My brain is a secondary organ after all!

Nobody wants to discover they are a supporting character. Such an admission wounds one’s pride. I’ve put out the message, and I’m just being egotistic in thinking there’s more to it than that.

Suddenly, a light bulb in the chandelier above burns out with a flash and a snap. I take that as an agreement.

My big hope to meet the UFO girl rests on a crummy sound file attached to the Internet probability antenna. All I get in the way of clues is a dream.

In the dream I’m in a museum/international center. There’s this important woman moving from one location to another. She’s got about a dozen bodyguards about her for protection, plus a personal assistant and two administrative assistants. There’s a small amount of pedestrians milling about. Nobody recognizes the woman and her entourage. They just give her searching glances as they go about their business. I’m there too, part of the crowd and probably there for the art, but for some reason I get the feeling everyone knows who I am.

A bunch of snipers appear on the second floor balconies and aim for the woman. I jump to her side and somehow by waving my arms and moving in front of her at strategically important moments the snipers are only able to hit the bodyguards, and a few of the passers-by. I pull out this weird plastic submachine gun and blow away a few of the snipers. The rest take cover and I try to get the woman and her shrinking entourage to a waiting car.

The woman takes a grazing shot to the head, and I have to stop shooting so I can carry her the rest of the way to the car. The bodyguards are totally useless, and I know somehow that I’m the only one who can do the job and keep her alive. I have to put her down, shoot at the snipers some more to make them dive for cover, and open the car door. The driver, the personal assistant, and the two administrative assistants just stand there gawking at me, ducking bullets and doing nothing helpful.

I get the woman into the car and we all leave the scene of carnage behind. I perform emergency first aid, and for a moment it’s close, but I stabilize the woman. I notice the driver making the telltale suspicious glance at us. I pick up on something fishy about the personal assistant’s behavior, and the way the two administrative assistants look guilty. I realize they’re all working for the snipers and the woman’s been totally betrayed.

The driver gets wise to my suspicions. He locks the doors and puts up the privacy window. I know he’s driving us into a trap, so I start smashing the privacy window between us with a battering ram glass breaker I happen to be carrying around. Before I can shoot the driver he books and leaves us behind. I take over the car and drive away, just in time to dodge a rocket attack lock-on.

Keeping an eye on the remaining traitors, who do nothing because anyone with a battering ram in their pocket is clearly out of their mind, I drive to an underground parking lot. Waiting for me is a limousine being driven by Lurch from the Addams Family. In the back seat is a sexy nurse with mad doctor skills. I park the car and make the three assistants back off and turn around. I warn them that if they try to see where we go, or look at our license plate, I’ll blow them away.

I carry the woman to the back seat and the nurse takes over. I know she’ll be okay now. I cover the three traitors from the window of the limo with my plastic gun. Lurch shakes his head and makes his distinctive “I don’t believe this” groan before he gets in the car and drives us away. We drive off through downtown to a secret hideaway.

The cats wake me up with demands for food, and I return to the real world with a clue that makes no sense to me. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left on my haunted house pass, but I’m getting the growing feeling that my library books are coming due soon, and the ghosts there collect late fees in something other than cash, check or charge.

Okay, so I’m fiddling with my old Star Trek walkie-talkie communicator from 1976. Anything to get a bead on that UFO girl’s program. I can’t call in the request line if I’m not getting the program. And I’ve got a hall pass that expires when it’ll be least convenient if I don’t get the lead out.

I go through my tape collection for inspiration. There’s this one tape I have from way back in the day when I was listening to meditative exercises. The idea was the tape would guide me through some new age ritual to improve my life. I would read from a book of rituals and record my own voice so I could follow the directions at a later time after having first “trained” myself. The tape is noteworthy because somehow I managed to not only record my voice, but some radio station playing somewhere. The tape has this sixties music radio track going on in the background while I’m going on about relaxing and going to my happy place.

The relevance is that as I contemplate this odd tape of mine, the UFO girl show must be a similar kind of thing. A transmission capable of being recorded second-hand and listened to afterwards. All I’ve got to do is find a way to transmit the request so that it gets on UFO girl’s programming.

The Star Trek walkie-talkie isn’t working, even with a new double-a battery. So I pull out my ghetto blaster and hit record. I move the tape recording onto my computer courtesy of a good connection and the recording power of Audacity. I spice up the audio with some crummy sound effects so UFO girl will know I’m not just any old mutant or plain joe. I gots a request! I figure putting it out there on the internets, as a copy of a tape recording advanced technology will get me hooked up in no time.

Hey UFO girl, play some Skynard.

My quest for UFO girl has been going nowhere.  Other than the one initial sighting report, I’ve been coming up zeroes.  The one-eight-hundred line has been a complete bust.  Not surprising really, as where does one look consciously for what is dwelling in the dark shadows of human consciousness?

Since I’ve been trying to think and nothing’s happening, I had to call up my old friend the Dark Goddess and see if she might not have an angle.  Had to leave a message, which was no surprise.  She can be hard to get a hold of.

I go through my piles of papers, as I’m looking for material I can use for my posts.  I really need to throw some of these boxes away.  I’ve been fishing in the seas of the unconscious for a long time and it’s a little daunting to see all this flotsam collected for purposes that I might not see fulfilled in my lifetime.

A newspaper comes out of the pile, with a note in invisible ink attached to it.  I use my decoder, and it’s a message from the Dark Goddess.  I freak out a little, as it’s not out of the question that she didn’t get back to me because she’d already done so.  I imagine she was sitting by the phone, listening to me leave my message and giggling to herself.

So, message tells me I should check the newspaper out because it’s got a clue.  I read the newspaper, and it’s a program schedule from my college days, for the local college radio station I did shows for.  Back when I was a DJ.  The title of the schedule is “Beyond the gottamned living end”.  Here are some excerpts from my show blocks:

Friday 11:00 – 12:00 Reverend Paul – Wacky Fun, Room tooty.
To help crazy inbred maggots

Friday 5:00 – 7:00 Extra Confession With The Reverend – Crazy Uncool
To appease the Chaos Gods.  Only this station supplies them with the rock and roll that will fill their hunger.

Saturday 12:00 – 1:30 More Redemption With Reverend Paul – Mega Mother
Hard core, heavy metal, Punk, Thrash, Death, and will take your requests.  Motorhead, Ozzie and Meatmen to help you digest.  When asked to comment on this year, Reverend Paul said, “Let’s just hit the toilets and start flushing.”

Maybe UFO girl has a radio or television program, where she transmits across the airwaves her show of doom.  Okay, then all I have to do is get me a device capable of picking up her show and tune in.  Maybe I can call in on the request line and get her to make a landing.  My mirage friend still needs a date, after all.  And my hall pass expires at some point.  Gulp, zoinks Scoob!

You need some light to see your shadow, though too much will make it disappear.  Too little light and all becomes darkness, and you can’t tell the shadow from the night.  Become disassociated from your shadow, and it might take off on its own.  Getting it back would require you to sew it back on, like in Peter Pan.  I’m thinking the shadow might feel safer coming out to play with the lights out.

I get the creeps so bad I experience a minor hallucination.  That’s when I feel the clutch of the dark and terrible figure responsible for all my night fears and anxiety.  I’m in the presence of a stupid, nasty figure of despicable character and rotten luck.

His first words are incriminations. Why did I take so long in coming? Don’t I know how lonely and miserable he’s been, skulking about waiting for me to pay my respects?

What’s the matter, I ask this bird-brained grail king of poor taste?

If I hadn’t been so bleeping self-important, he wouldn’t have had to resort to giving me the “phantasmagoria” treatment to get my attention.  He wants me to help him get a date with UFO girl.

Say that again?

My host starts telling me about this extraterrestrial “broad” he’s got a grotesque fascination for, and he wants me to help him find her so he can score.  He’s acquired an unhealthy collection of sighting information and pictures from the internets, and a used book store he skulks about in on Sundays, because he thinks “babes with books” are hawt.

I can’t believe I’m in the basement talking to myself in the dark with an imaginary psychic entity, but there it is.  This is turning out to be a weird night.

I catch a whiff of a cold earthy smell and am reminded of my garden (which is in winter pre-spring prep mode right now).  My host notices my interest and I listen to him expound about his one human passion, the growing of plants and the enjoyment of their cultivation.  This is an interest we have in common, and I tell him so.

He rudely scoffs at my amateurish “interest”, calling my efforts pathetic and feeble.  Well, he’s right.  So I ask him what might make me less worthless.  My host says its a waste of time to train the incompetent, but watching me gawk like a rube at his astounding knowledge might be amusing.

I get a brief mental tour of his night garden.  He shows me the process he uses to encourage plants to grow, in which one uses touch and voice to transmit a common spirit.  The stuff he shows me kind of freaks me out, and I can’t get it out of my head.

I promise to grow something night-related, specifically a moonflower, or two, for my host. I think it’s only appropriate that there be some physical representation between us that manifests our conversation.

He recalls an audio tape I made ten years back, of music that expressed a desire to know the devilish side of my personality. I’d forgotten all about The Crumb Star.  My host thought it was a jangling mix of mostly horrible music, but at least I made an attempt at talking to him.

My thought is that I need to contact the Dark Goddess and ask if she has any clues about where to find this UFO girl.  This sort of thing seems to be her sort of specialty.

With that clue, my host says I’ll find what I need when I return to the normal world.  I don’t know what he means, but I’m perfectly pleased to be of service.  I open my eyes and I turn the light back on.

I take it that for now I have the shadow’s permission.  I can walk the depths of the unconscious with reasonable confidence.   There’s still a haunted house party to arrange.

For now, I got me a hall pass.

You aren’t supposed to look in the scary room. Even if nothing is supposed to be there, what might happen if there was something there the one time someone looks? Well, flashlight in hand, kicking boxes aside, I had to look. Even with a doll two feet from me that might develop satanic glowing red eyes right out of Baba Yaga’s skull fence.

I’m scared out of my wits, but I also know what the crucifix of my darkness is – getting a date. I’m scared and annoyed that this has to be me. There’s danger and a good laugh at the same time. The suspense is driving me crazy.

I shine my flashlight into the room, and I spot a rectangular cardboard box. The coffin analogy is not lost on me. I use a broom to pull it towards me, afraid of what may or may not be in the cardboard box with dangly packing tape ends. If it’s empty, does that mean the doll-sized dweller is about to jump on my neck and suck my blood from behind? The doll is behind me, mind you, and I am most vulnerable.

I pry open the box, and I find a rolled length of blue-gray, cut carpet remnant inside. I struggle to figure out the meaning. After some nervous sweating in a cold room, I pull the carpet out and unroll it onto the floor. I’m thinking I need a magic carpet ride.

I stand on the carpet and wait for something to happen. It’s nice to stand on a soft carpet instead of a cold concrete floor. I experience spooky feelings of trouble, and a sense of conflict. I’ve got to worry and not worry. There’s work to be done, but I’m clueless.

I turn out the lights and close my eyes.

Every ghost has a secret wish they need fulfilled in order to be laid to rest. And I think every one of us is followed by ghosts that need laying to rest. The quest is always to uncover the secret and satisfy the need in a meaningful way.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m living in a haunted house? I know ghosts got to have their own living quarters while they poke and moulder about. But sheesh, I never get used to the chill blasts of air while I’m looking through my still-packed boxes for that wildebeast map I thought I knew the location of.

I notice the apparitions grow calm and content as I come across my “naughty bits” coloring book. Lands sakes, the things I collected when I was living on the west coast. But since I’m listening to the dialogue of this spooky, terrifying haunted house experience, I’m not putting it up to coincidence. Zoinks, Scoob, we have a clue.

I start to imagine that what the UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Amityville Horror really want are hot babes. Mars needs women. Bigfoot needs a heroine to carry off like in Donkey Kong. The Amityville Horror needs some love backstory to make the drama more urgent. Crumbs, is this really what it all comes down to, the unknown forces of doom want me to be their dating service?

Oh, for crying out loud.

I have to remind myself of both the seriousness and the humor in this situation. What would Gomez Addams be without Morticia? What would the monster be without their victim? The monster has always been a symbol of lustful desire embodied in a form and a story we can relate to. Love is both a blessing and a torment, a uniting force and a destructive one – what is Romeo and Juliet but the story of two enemies falling for one another? The divine force of love overrides all human requirements and tosses aside whatever towers of Babel we have built for ourselves.

Being the living being in this arrangement, of course it falls to me for the physical accommodation of this dialogue. I have to hire the musicians who will play the Monster Mash, and I have to set up the monsters with their willing victims or lost love compatriots. While I might be the living facilitator, I’m going to need a host for this haunted house party.

That’s where I have to own up to my terror and explore what lies beyond that. The source of the psychic disturbance which apparently needs me to lay something to rest, by getting it a date.

Out of nowhere, I remember my first crush. A native American dancer who stunned me with her looks and her moves. I’ve never forgotten her, and it appears that neither has the unknown. For some reason, I think of a Count Dracula like figure, watching events unfold from his musty castle. While I may have seen this dancer from my perspective, so too might have the vampire. I put this thought away for now.  It’s time to change the cat box.

I firmly believe that even a creature of unrepentant evil is fair game for Cupid’s bow, at least in principle. In reality, what do I know? I don’t make monkeys, I just train them. Who knows the depths of darkness in the breast of a heart of stone that has been overridden by providence?

Time to go into the basement, and find out what’s really there in the seemingly empty “mysterious room”.

I’m in a haunted house that I can’t stand living in. The problem is, the more I meditate on the matter the more I see that this misfortune struck me because it was necessary. I have to spend a night and a day in the haunted house to know the secret.

When I was a little monster, there was a record I used to listen to all the time. “Night in a haunted house.” The first side of the record is taken up by a spooky talking dude who guides you into and out of a haunted house with commentary. All sorts of scary sounds and occurrences happen in the background until your adventure is over.

I had several such records. There’s one I remember quite vividly, which I no longer have because it was melted.  I left it too close to a heating unit. The story was a more mature and scary night in a haunted house, which I would listen to over and over.

I scare up the In Search Of episode on the Amityville Horror and study it intensely. Something the priest says about exorcisms strikes me as meaningful. You don’t exorcise objects (or houses) because they can’t become possessed (according to the Catholic church, or so he says). Well, I’m not sure if I buy that.

However, I do buy the clue-in that follows my brain stem process. I’ve read my Carl Jung, and very often a psychic disturbance has at its root some imbalance in the unconscious that needs to be brought to light. The possession starts in a person and flows outward. In my more modern form of reasoning, I couldn’t help but question whether the family in the Amityville Horror carried baggage with them that culminated in their psychic experience (hoax or not).

Hey, if something’s going on, you have to own up to your part in the affair, no matter how slight. Jung says nothing can plague you that which can find no space to secure its hooks in. I’m thinking I have to face facts that the haunted house is in some measure my fault. Or, even if it is somebody else’s bad coffee brewing, I have to pay my small tab in participating in it.

Active imagination time. I’m scared out of my skin, but I’m quite committed to this Scooby Doo mystery, wherever it leads. I know there are times when someone should just bogue out and call it even. Not every monster can, or should be confronted. As the protagonist says in Night of the Demon, “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

If you pass through the Daathian doorway, you might encounter something that turns to dust in the light of day, or a hostile force that can cause you physical harm. Life is one of those funny things where you always have to make decisions as to what situation you find yourself in. You can’t hide all the time, any more than you can always go out chasing dragons.

I’ve been in situations where you had to run away many times. Goodness knows I’m a cringer at heart! Unfortunately, my intuition keeps telling me this is one of those unpleasant things you just have to cowboy up on. I never thought I’d have to really spend a night in a haunted house for real. It was something that always had a nice green “Exit” sign in view every hundred feet.

I contemplate my situation over a ceramic cup of my newly discovered draft cider (something I’ll mention in another post). Outer reality is reflecting a process going on inside my head. Considering the change in my life given my commitment to writing, a lot of unconscious contents are being stirred up at the deepest levels.

My dream journal confirms that sea creatures are being driven to the surface. The other night I dreamt I was on the edge of a cliff looking down at a sandy beach and a lagoon. A gigantic eye looked up from the surface of the water, and then a colossal (as opposed to a giant) squid swam around the lagoon.

I was scared to see such big creatures, but I also felt grateful to know there were still creatures of mystery in the unknown.

I believe now that my fears are my own, and the spooky stuff is my own fault. If I’m being scared out of my wits, it’s because it’s time for me to see it and to feel it. I know there are transcendent functions out there. The time has come for me to captain up and confront my fears and my feelings. It has to be a conscious decision.

So, you wish to spend a night in a haunted house? Well then. Follow me.

K and I were living in a great townhouse a year ago, in a perfect neighborhood for our purposes. The cats were happy, and the parental units were just down the street. If either of us needed a cup of sugar, an onion, or a spare bottle of pinot cheep-io, it was a hat trick.

For various reasons beyond our control, the landlord was forced to move into their townhouse again and we were forced out. It was a month of total panic and stress as we needed to find an affordable new home, and move all our well-settled things.

It was traumatic. Michael, one of our kitties, developed bladder stones and had to have surgery. The window on my pa’s car got broken in the moving about. K nearly suffered a nervous breakdown at having to leave her well-tended front and back yard gardens behind.

We got along well with our landlord. It was in many respects a prefect arrangement for the both of us. He was not pleased at having to move and force us out. There was naught any of us could do but accept this blow as that sort of occurrence that life throws at you. You make the best of it.

Here we are, a year later, and we still haven’t recovered from the torture of the move. And we aren’t exactly ready to make the jump to another abode yet. It would be hard to find a better living arrangement than the one we had.

The house blows. Even though, logically, it’s as convenient as the old one, and had more space. There are a number of things wrong with it, such as doors that don’t lock or close properly, and we are stuck with neighbors who are for the most part inferior to the wonderful people who lived next to us before.

Our relationship with the new landlords leaves something to be desired.

Now mind you, not all is woe. There are many other avenues of our life that are getting on quite nicely. Thank goodness! Rather than call our situation a disaster, I would say it’s a trying time of the soul, where every day you make one more yard. The waiting is the hardest part.

So, back to the present. Sometimes the faucet turns itself on a little during the night. K and I hear little noises that make us nervous at times. The cats, save for Blink (who is neurotic and doesn’t stand for any nonsense when she’s resting in her current choice of pad), are unsettled by the apparitions.

My appearance for a while had indicated dementia. Thank goodness for my brand new electric razor blades. K was keeping my back on that one. Our front door has a slight dent in it, with boot scuff marks. And our door handle is barely staying in place (the screws pop out at inopportune times). I feel like someone tried to break in the place by kicking the door down in the past.

We have a flapping side board near the roof, that we finally got the landlords to have repaired. The handyman will be by on the afternoon of the full moon. The tap-tap-tapping when it gets windy has been keeping us awake at night.

The upstairs toilet makes a loud slamming noise when used, so we just haven’t used it. I’d forgotten about it because we put it on the back burner last year and added it to our list of problems. But I’m starting to think its one more indication that this haunted house is a reality.

Oh yes, last week, probably because of the warm weather, we had to set free several insects. A stinkbug, several mosquito eaters, and some earwigs. Even with the heat on, the cold seems to seep into the house. Yeah, you know where I’m going with this.

It’s only just now that K and I put all these pieces together. My problems with sleep, and the stirred up feelings I dealt with earlier were just the wave of the thing under the water swimming over to the boat, so to speak. I knew I’d have to deal with things again, and that my good night’s sleep was just a rest period between rounds.

Here we are, renewing our lease for an untenable situation, and all we haven’t gotten is the scary voice telling us to “get out”. I recall Eddie Murphy using the Amityville Horror as part of his comedy routine, saying if he ever got that voice, he’d be out the door immediately. Yeah, easy to say buddy.

I’m doing laundry in the basement. There’s a shelf that was here when we moved in. There’s a bunch of junk there that I took no notice of until now. I see that there is a doll on a stand on one of the shelves, and I feel my spine start to tingle. Clenching my teeth, I turn the doll’s face towards me to make sure there are no red eyes staring back at me. I turn to the right, and I realize the space between the wall and the downstairs bathroom almost qualifies as a “mysterious room”.

It’s game time.