Out of the sea, down from the heavens, what shall we be?  If there is a sense of having walked through a broken up road of red clay, which presages a promised migration route, then who are we to make a final check along the way?

The wild gives way to our experiment, and it is good to see how much we can accomplish, as child like and ignorant as we are.  We all live in a house on the side of the road waiting for our turn to see what grand plans await us, even if our decisions were small and almost unnoticeable.

How long have we been just playing?  It seems like ages, but really in truth not very long at all.  Gigantic movements all around us and only a microscopic window in which to move, our crawling through to an end not even nature knows, but hopes of.

Time and space inevitably push us forward, move the entire scheme of things in all directions at once forever and after before.  The inevitable becomes evident and nobody knows who they won’t be any longer, putting on roles and carrying props in a vaudeville sideshow we suppose is called life.

The show must go on, the entirety of God and not-God is watching us, searching for a performance that will unlock another facet of the unwinding, winding formula.  If we are dolls and puppets, to be broken apart in tantrums, or cast aside when through, or kept in a glass case in times of fond remembrance to come, are we not something?

When another doll leaps out of the case to crack its head upon the tile, what can be said of the doll who leaps to save that doll at the risk of going over also?  All the puppets have a life and gathering of their own, though we do not see it unless we try.

Or, even if there were no dolls, no puppets, no artist behind the strings there would still be nothing, no one, no body.  Nothingness.  The vast emptiness of the night contains all the time and space there ever was.  Nothing is anything.

Costume, actor, props, stage, lines, script.  These are all changeable.  Audience, performers, behind the scenes labor, we are all of these in any combination, at the same time or one at a time.  What happens when we realize we are both?  That we are always in truth even in our so-called darkest moments.  The additional dimension beckons to us, any day now we shall see beyond and within without, our own means of production and witness.

“My God, its full of stars.”

Happening now.

Now that the Celtic New Year has started up, it appears that the seas have calmed for a while.  Into this spare time I’ve been practicing my physical routines and learning the recorder.  Got to keep up the psychic kung fu training for Mother Mary’s Personal Assistant.

She upped the ante last week and I felt it in my ankle (which made me think of Xtine’s current ankle recovery mode), plus I got smoked in recorder practice.  If I wasn’t dedicated this is where I’d be getting real discouraged about now.

But I’m committed to the routines.  I know from past experience you have to go for the long haul with these kinds of lessons.  And I’m learning a lot about undeveloped aspects of my mind and body.  This gets me from the blind side but it’s good training.

The activity has inspired K to try some new bread kung fu.  She’s been experimenting with sour dough batches.  Starting them, nourishing them until the generations of yeast get attuned to their environment, and drawing out of them various flavors.  Then having to bake loaves of bread out of the mix.

Side benefit—some of the tastiest pancakes I have ever had.  Dense and absorbent enough to handle syrup, but still light and fluffy enough to cut with a fork.  They practically leap into my mouth they are so darn good.

The killer bees have settled into the new honeycomb hideout nicely.  They’ve kept to themselves, mutating and self-directing their destiny in mysterious ways.  I got the bonus round too—Lucerna (that’s MMPA’s name) got me seriously hooked onto raw and rough honey now.  All the granules of pollen and other goodies on top make for some wicked honey-tea.  She said I’d been taking such good care of the bees, that this clue got unlocked as a special maneuver.

Plus, she helped me locate my beloved Portland-Oregon black with white trim alpaca sweater, which had been missing after the first year in the haunted house.  Just in time for winter, so warm and snuggly soft is this wonderful garment.  Whoo!  I guess I need all this training and recovery.  Got work to do after all.

The spread of microbreweries throughout the country has had a positive effect I take considerable delight in—the proliferation of draft ciders.

When I discovered the pleasures of draft cider consumption, it was as if I had run into an old childhood friend—and discovered we had only truly begun to enjoy each other’s company.

Having taken the time to appreciate various kinds of the stuff, I now pass onto you the knowledge of my explorations.  Many brands are not represented, for the reason that I either haven’t tried them or haven’t been able to get my hands on them enough to form an opinion.

For example, there are a number of French ciders that come in wine bottles that I’ve tried, but haven’t been able to do so more than a handful of times.

I’ve rated these ciders by a 1-100% number.  This represents the chance that every time I drink a pint of these ciders, I get a point of Oh Yeah.  Every point of Oh Yeah can be exchanged for a psychic coin toss to see if the scene you are in becomes Good Times—or you can get rid of a point of Jackup.

Because with every pint your body is dishing out a point of Jackup.  3 Jackups means You Lose.  The body takes over, hope you are insured!

Hornsby’s (Regular and Dark And Dry)—31%
I started out with this brand, and put it through the long haul.  Pretty bleh taste; slightly dry and tangy, a lot like a wine cooler. Once I found other brands, I left this one behind.

Hard Core—39%
A little sweeter than Hornsby’s, but something about the body felt a bit light.  Tried to get into it, and for a while this was my alternate when the common Hornsby Jackups got tiresome.

Woodchuck Regular—53%
Pretty reliable flavor and effect.  Very sweet, almost sickly so.  Clear taste, potent effect.  This became my staple for a long while.  Slightly cheaper than Hornsby’s at the time.  I felt the sulfites on this a lot less.

Woodchuck (Granny Smith, Dark And Dry, Pear)—63%
Switched to these when they became available.  While I like “sweet”, the Woodchuck Regular was too sweet.  The Granny mixed sweet with sour, and really felt like a quality cider.  Dark And Dry mixes sweet with smoky, making for a heartier cider flavor.  Not bad.  We’re finally getting somewhere!

Woodchuck Rasberry—27%
Woodchuck rules, right?  Not so fast!  This flavor was way too sweet, a real disappointment.  Like Hornsby’s, the flavor overwhelms the rest of the cider, only in this case it’s a little too strong.  I’d really like to see a drier version of this, with less sweet.

Ace—29%
Dry and bubbly, almost too tart.  I wanted to like this one, but Ace isn’t a cider you can really gulp.  It’s more of a sipping draft, something you’d serve at a picnic or casual dinner.

Scrumpy’s—47%
All natural organic and low sulfite cider.  Okay, this has got some good make-up.  Strong, tasty flavor and packing a bonus round punch.  Maybe too strong for me.  Part of my ritual is about spending time with people.  This takes me out a little too fast for my taste.

Original Sin—43%
Not bad.  A little too much of a Woodchuck clone, cashing in on the flavor and feel.  I found myself not handling these well after a while, perhaps due to a little less quality than Woodchuck.

Celtic—29%
Lacking much in the way of taste, or feel.  Not the worst, just simply nothing going on here.  This might work better for someone looking for a featureless cider.

Newton’s Folly (Granny Smith and Regular)—54%
Started hitting this at Trader Joe’s.  Basically a less expensive, less sweet version of Woodchuck, with a little less punch.  Have to say not bad at all!  Got used to this for a while, always delivering and very little payback.

Harpoon—38%
Strong, sour flavor but grows on you.  Doesn’t pack much of a punch though.  I felt like I had to keep going to keep up.  Not exactly my favorite.

Strongbow—64%
Maybe the English just know how to make real booze, I don’t know.  Dry, strong, satisfying, but with a slight hint of sweetness.  Packs a wallop up front, and follows up with a coup de grace if you aren’t careful.  I think I’m in love here.

Cider Jack—54%
Back in the day, I used to have six pack of this every once in a while.  Sweet, not very strong, and a little headachy.  Then this brand disappeared and I haven’t seen it in a while.  But now it’s come back several years later, and wow what a difference.  Dry, strong, still some aftereffects but much reduced.  I am impressed.

Godzilla isn’t the same for me anymore.  As a child I loved the destruction and the excitement.  But now, having been to Hiroshima, I also see the overwhelming, apocalyptic horror of the human experience crushed underfoot by the atomic unknown.

This is what is meant by the sublime.  The monstrous face we are seeing is humanity’s own hellish shadow, magnified many times over by enormous natural forces into a radioactive blast that annihilates the human completely.

I can’t know what it is like (I wasn’t there), or comprehend much of the significance—I’m just a tourist, a voyeur, a poser who caught a brief glimpse of an old claw-print.  But even having once seen evidence that Ancalagon is real, and we have the power to summon such enormous destruction against others, where can one hide?

I love the film deep and darkly, yet it is a heady draught I consume with caution and reserve.

This is the message the ghosts convey to me repeatedly for most of the night—that no one stands outside the shadow of humanity.  I lie in my bed, the other students fast asleep, and I hear the rumble of otherworldly clutches.  It might only be my conscience trying to open me up like a clam to the world, which I imagine to be the sounds of the dead.

I talk to them in my mind, twisting and turning hotly in bed unable to sleep.  I imagine myself helping them, being there with them (which is just fantasy guesswork), and suffering for them.  But these are all empty postures in the night.  I wear myself out wrestling with their noise and I finally sleep.

My dreams are of swimming in a vast underground ocean of red flame and muddy slime.  I am surrounded by people staring at me as they rot away into charred ooze.  Then I am struggling through the streets of a deserted, burning city that gives off a cloudy, shadowed heat.  I realize I’m asleep and I wake myself up, struggling to rouse my muscles and breathing out of the relaxation of slumber.  It’s daylight out.

The next stop for us is Itsukushima, which is known as Miyajima the Shrine Island.  One of the three holiest places in Japan.  No one is allowed to die here—you get shipped right off as soon as you start to croak.  People weren’t even allowed to live there until recently.  As a result, there is still a primordial virgin forest on the island.  Countless holy structures of all kinds shapes and sizes may be found throughout the island.  Plus lots of squeaking deer, and monkeys who are the messengers of the gods.

It feels good to escape the city for a while.  The sun is shining when we land, but the weather slowly changes as we meander through the streets.  A light rain begins, followed by a growing mist.  A few of us take the Miyajima Ropeway (a cable car system) to near the top of Mount Misen to snap some pictures, but by the time we get up there it’s useless.  The entire island and surrounding sea is shrouded in fog.

After a few minutes of taking things in, everyone decides to descend for some lunch, but I decline.  Taking my handy tourist map I figure I’m going to climb the summit and get some outdoor time to myself.  The map makes it look like a hop skip and a jump.  Scale, let me show you how not to use it.

I pass through a huge herd of monkeys and onto the fog-shrouded, forested mountain paths, which are well trod.  There’s no one about, and likely with good reason.  As I learned later, all tengu goblins in Japan gather in the forests of Mount Misen.  They scare away intruders by making loud noices like wooden blocks being banged together.

This is a scene only a crazy gaijin would find themselves in, ignorant of all the hazards of the spirit world.  Fools and little children protected by the purity of their motives, I suppose.

But I feel at peace, safe.  This a sacred place, whether or not I get the local meaning.  I know I’m an outsider, that I don’t belong, and yet I maintain a respectful thought at all times. I don’t hear anything but the wind and the rain.  Even the monkeys are quiet, and soon I don’t see them anymore (probably all hanging out close to the ropeway station for handouts).

I reach a small wayside shrine and make an offering of incense.  It takes considerable effort to light it in the light rain and wind, but I manage and place it in the proper place.  I struggle with my request of the gods, wanting very much to grant me some good fortune with my then-girlfriend at the time.  But all I can come up with is a request that my love for her be true, which seemed a cop-out, easy request to make in one’s prayers.

I ought to have prayed for the ghosts, or for an end to atomic weapons, yet all I can think of is my own needs at a time like this.  I spend a long time in the rain agonizing over whether I made the right request.  I tell myself that if the stick is still burning when I return this way, then I made the right decision.  I walk up the slope of the final approach to the top.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the shrine I visited is the Reikado (“Temple Which Protects Flame”).  There is a fire inside that is said to have been lit by a holy man and has been burning ever since.  This fire was used to light the Peace Flame in Hiroshima’s Peace Park, which will burn until all atomic weapons are destroyed and the world is free from their horror.

That holy man is Kobo Daishi, founder of one of the major branches of buddhism in Japan.  He’s one of the holiest holy men in Japanese culture, seriously big dude dinner stuff.  They say he’s still chilling out, hidden from our sight until the return of the biggest Buddha ever.  No messing around, seminal figure here.  Ka-boom.

I take the path where you have to bow down and walk under a stacked boulder to continue on the path.  It’s like a tunnel and a gateway at the same time.  The trees break away, the path twists one last time, and you find yourself with a 360 view of the surrounding area.  Boulders everywhere which the gods are said to rest upon and discuss/observe/contemplate the world.

Actually, I should mention that when I say “gods” I’m using it in the collectively neutral sense rather than say god/dess-s or divinities.  Shinto has a matriarchal pantheon, with all the major deities being female (for example, Amaterasu the sun goddess is no joke, takes care of her bizness, watch out).  The mother is everywhere in Japan, she’s what counts, but she’d insist harmony be maintained and everyone remain at the table, thus “gods”.

The actual summit holds an observation deck, which you climb a series of stairs to reach.  It’s a joke, actually.  You are standing on one of the most holy places you can in Japan, and there’s this ugly, cheeseball man-made structure to the side.  For some reason I didn’t mind though, it felt appropriate, like one last step into the heavens.  Taken on the stairway of ugliness, admitting our own human weakness.

This is the moment of enlightenment in the spiritual journey.  Hard climb, long travel, then revelation as the world opens up all around you.  At the top of the deck, I take in the four directions.  The spattering rain and crisp wind buffet my body, dousing my heat and strength.  Clouds and mist are rushing all around me.  The nearest shores and islands are hazy outlines.

I speak to the gods of Japan, ignorant of their names let alone their ranks and stations.  I tell them I don’t know what to say about what I’ve witnessed or how I feel.  I don’t know what to ask from them, or what to tell them.  I don’t even know if I should say anything at all.

It occurs to me I’m the only person up on this summit.  I am meant to be here, doused in the elements, shivering with the feeling of being alive.  A fragment of cultural relevance comes back to me from my studies, of how the Japanese consider themselves a “wet” people.  That is, they are a deeply feeling people who understand relatedness.  While outsiders, particularly westerners, are considered “dry”.  They have little awareness of the feelings of others.

I recognize how supremely purifying a moment this is.  Separated from the group and free to be myself, the gods are making me a “wet” outsider, if only for this moment.

Being blessed, I give thanks and take my leave, returning to the world of people with difficulty (harder to descend than ascend, and I’m low on energy).

The incense is still smoking as I shamble past the wayside shrine (if I can truly love, even after the mark of the ghosts, then the world grows). Marked, purified.  Departure, return.

At the bottom of the ropeway station, at a food stand, the group is waiting for me.  Waiting for the next ferry.  I have just enough time to scarf down a deep bowl of steamy hot udon noodle soup.

Slurp.

The bohemian, the barfly, and myself go wandering through the streets of Hiroshima.  No particular destination in mind, forgetting the sights and talking about nothing. We pass through a covered market street and end up in a cheap bar.

Before I know it, we’re all throwing back a few and talking about nothing while drunk.  Numbing our senses to what occurred earlier in the day.  I recall me and the bohemian sharing a few words about the horrors—she’s perceptive with those big bright eyes of hers.  My guess is she’s locked it away for detached thought later.  The barfly is on familiar ground—ride the experience on other peoples’ brain points until he achieves some manner of liftoff himself.  Addiction to alcohol has its advantages I suppose.

Having lost our way, we grab a taxi to take us back to our hostel—it’s time to return in time for the visit of the survivor.  This is where my two acquaintances do better than me, having logged more hours in the consume alcohol skill than me.  Up until my visit to Japan, where drinking is a pervasive part of the culture (particularly for males), I’d never actually had a drink.  I’ve only been doing this for maybe two months.  I overshoot my limits, and am clearly wasted while we sit in a room and are introduced to the survivor.

She’s dressed in a nice business-casual outfit, with kind features.  There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her.  When she speaks, her voice is calm and gentle.  Our interpreter doesn’t miss a beat, so I almost feel like I am hearing the survivor’s own voice, through a screen perhaps.  But, bless the social safety valves of Japanese culture, even though I am an embarrassment they make allowances.  I sit quietly and resolve to be as unobtrusive as my state allows.

I miss a lot of the groundwork of her story, her family and what she was doing on that day.  But gradually as I sober up by degrees her story becomes clearer to me.  The woman explains how she was turning a corner around a building when the bomb went off, burning half her body.  Then every detail starts to imprint itself on my brain and I begin to remember why I got drunk in the first place.  I’m trying to escape, I must escape this horror or I will break down in uncontrollable weeping.

She is rescued and taken to a care-taking station.  Really just a place to gather casualties, the first steps at response.  Her eye has been destroyed and is rotting in her skull.  Her caretakers have to remove the eye but they have no instruments.  A piece of shattered glass without anesthesia is all they have to offer, and her eye is removed.

I didn’t know the survivor had a glass eye.  Her skin on the burned side doesn’t look at all like the horrible mess she described.  You would never know by looking at her that she has been through hell on earth.  The Japanese are very good at maintaining appearances, and I wonder what deep emotions she might be restraining so that we get the point.

Even though it’s unbelievably disrespectful, I stand up and walk out of the room, out of the building, back into the street. I can’t take it anymore.  This is a nightmare from which there is no waking.  It really did happen with real people, and the desecration, the inhuman monstrosity of it is forever.  Ghosts, everywhere around me crying out for my attention.

I find an alleyway next to a drink machine and buy myself an orange juice.  Then I sit on the cold asphalt of the alleyway and zone out.  Then I start to talk to the ghosts, try and understand them.  But untangling the mass grave is impossible.  This dark shadow of what we have done to ourselves is too big, too immense for one person to find an answer to.

The bohemian and the barfly find me after about an hour—how far could I stagger?  The bohemian says everyone was worried about me, and I say I’m okay.  You know, just needed a breath of air and a little sobering up, which is I suppose a rational response.  Our go-between/chaperones are upset with me, which I try to dodge by acting sheepish.  How do I apologize for my own weakness?  How do I explain to them how shocked I am?  I am guilty, and I am also having exactly the kind of experience this visit to Hiroshima was made for.

Barfly looks strangely subdued, which I’m surprised at.  For once, he’s not the center of a drunken drama and I’m the one making the group look bad.  We’re all sent to bed early, with me not in good graces.

Lights off, buckwheat mattresses and pillows out.  If only I could sleep.

Since it’s very nearly Halloweenie, I cooked up an extra special treat for all of you in the cauldron of my brain-pan.  A story of madness and horror served up from a few tender morsels of my innocence I picked up from the scorched stone of the past.

Hiroshima.  I’m there with a dozen or so of overseas students, the married couple acting as our American go-betweens and chaperones, and one or two Japanese guides who for the life of me I can’t remember.  I think they might have been locals associated with our school, because I seem to recall us getting a new guide in each city we visited.

Time to see the sights, day one is an arranged tour.  Specifically, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and any nearby associated landmarks and exhibits.  Later that night, we return to the youth hostel to meet a survivor and listen to her stories.  At the time, I thought it was strange how the first part was given to us open-ended, without structure.  But now I see the wisdom in this approach.  We all have to come to knowledge of this sort of thing in our own way.

I had to admit I was looking forward to the whole thing, it seemed so compelling.  Here’s my chance to say I visited ground zero and had an unforgettable experience.  And wow, I figure the survivor will tell a pretty horrible tale and I’ll get the inside scoop on what it was like.  Godzilla was created by atomic tests, and Godzilla is awesome, so it’ll be cool right?

Leading with my chin.

We sort of separate into smaller groups along our usual lines of affinity and wander around.  There’s the monument to Sadako and the thousand paper cranes (called the Childrens’ Peace Monument), a girl who grew sick from the radiation of the explosion and tried to make a thousand paper cranes.  Legend has it if you can make a thousand, you are granted a wish.  She managed to make 644 before she died.

I dive into studying the monuments in the park, and we soon all split up.  There’s so much to take in visually, let alone reflect upon for meaning while still being alert to cultural references you are generally ignorant of.

I study a sculpture whose subject involves the ruined Industrial Promotion Hall across the river.  The hall is an iconic structure associated with the center of the blast, known as “the a-bomb dome” because of the framework on the roof which survived.  The sculpture is set up in such a way that when viewed you see an arch over the framework and a fire beneath the dome.

The icon, across the river, separated from us by time, yet plainly visible and still approachable.  An arch over the dome, a bow of promise and a bridge completing two sides.  A fire beneath, on the ground and beneath the ground, a hope and a light that what is dreamed will be.  That’s just scratching the surface of what’s before me, not even taking into account the text panels.

Everyone is quiet and respectful, there’s a strange sense of solemnity here even though it’s a clear sunny day.  Even the kids are subdued.  I try to stay focused, but every piece of art, every monument arrests you with the knowledge that this place is it, man.  This is where the deal went down.

I imagine that this might be the psychic after-effect hanging like a cloud over the place, and it’s just another interesting and cool part of the city.  I tell myself that I’m losing interest in the park, and the cultural nuances are beyond me anyway.  Time to have fun and leave this depressing park.  At least, that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

Don’t turn around.

So I cross the river using one of the many bridges to go visit the town hall.  I stand next to a plaque that says I’m standing at the spot where 500 feet above me the bomb exploded.  I didn’t know it at the time, but my best friend’s father designed a set of replacement doors that go with the hall, which is closed to the public.  I would have tried to muster up some pride for my best friend having a hand in things, however obliquely.

Looking up at the sky, I feel a weight pushing down on me.  That nervous feeling is coming back again.  I move along and make my way to the peace museum to meet up with the group.  I heard there’s a block of stone with the mark of a vaporized human burned onto it, cool!

For a moment, I’m actually glad to see the group again, even the barfly (as I called him).  The goal of waiting to get our tickets and move into the long line gives me something to distract the growing dread creeping up my spine.  No no no this is going to be cool, do you hear me, cool!  I don’t even notice how quiet my fellow students are.

The line is like a chain of souls entering hell, rising up stairs into the museum (we are no longer on earth), and then the facts begin to roll by.  Nothing garish or colorful like the dinosaurs at the Smithsonian.  A long winding series of interconnected display cases in the form of a timeline, winding back and forth through the museum, telling stories, showing artifacts.  I forget to take pictures, or maybe they aren’t allowed, I can’t remember.

What I do remember is the white wall stained by the black, radioactive rain that fell afterward.  Kelloids, strange tumors that had never been seen before, cut from bodies and placed in jars for display.  Charred pieces of masonry and iron twisted and transformed by incredible heat.  X-rays of glass embedded in human organs by explosive force.

The block of stone with the human imprint, a step taken from a bank entrance, is not there.  It’s been moved to another part of the museum cordoned off from the public.  But the pictures are there, along with others.  Two humans turned into a pair of shadowy streaks on the surface of a stone block of a bridge not unlike the one I crossed to reach the dome.

A couple?  Father and son?  Two best friends forever?  Take your pick and it probably happened.  These are just the ones they found.  The pictures and text are bad enough, maybe it’s good I didn’t see the real thing.  A human being reduced to a smear on stone.

There’s a guest book, which I sign, writing something enthusiastic in support of the museum’s purpose.  But I’m on automatic now, free of the line in the last section of the tour where you break free and begin to wander downstairs and back to earth.  Walking on a mass grave, a loud tumult in my ears.  I’m in shock, and it doesn’t matter.

I hook up with the barfly and the bohemian girl he likes, who hangs out with him because he’s not boring.  Probably the people I’m closest to in this group, which is pretty sad.  All three of us wander out of the park into the city.

We don’t care where we’re going.  The ghosts are everywhere.

053_threejewels1Whirlwind of changes to the new honeycomb hideout, while the ghosts and goblins run riot in the streets looking for juicy life forms to fill their empty gullets or just plain entertain them in boredom-town.  My psychic ovens can barely keep up with the new demands, even with the new transwarp drive.  Looks like I’ll have plenty of collops from timber-jack land for the pot.  Celtic New Year, here we come!

In preparation for my two parter halloweenie story of doom shortly to arrive, I’ve been contemplating the Buddha a little.  Bodhisatvas, to be precise, particularly the Jizo aspect of Ksitigarbha.  These are beings whose compassion for the suffering of others moves them to remain in the world and help all beings attain enlightenment.  The Jizo acts to empty the deepest hells of suffering souls, protecting and guiding those lost in ignorance and error.

So where did all this brain activity come from?  Well, I’ll tell yeh.  Been looking through my old GI Joe artifacts (as in Adventure Team, the seventies Kung Fu Grip version) and came across my old book-and-record of Search For The Stolen Idol.

The story goes like this:  A foreign country on the list of approved business partners has had it’s idol (a vaguely detailed Buddha) stolen by “not on our side” rebels.  Right before an important festival where the idol must be on display for the local tribes to accept the current leader.  Our illustrious “ordinary guy” secret agent type white-hat adventurer must recover the idol (and the leader’s authority) in time, or presumably those tribes will go on a rampage.

It’s a laughable story, with blunt edged stereotypes I’ll pass on deconstructing for now.  The important thing is that this is the first time I can remember seeing the image of Buddha.  Doubtless through a westernized lens, but seeds planted in the past bear fruit in the future.

My favorite part of the story is when the rebels dump the Buddha in the “poison pit”, and Joe has to enter this pit to retrieve the Buddha.  Guarding the Buddha is a giant cobra immune to bullets.  Joe has to use an electric rope to defeat the cobra.  It stood out because I don’t remember this rope being in the play-set I saw in the stores or mentioned in the story before—Joe pulls this deus ex machina out of nowhere.

Looking it up on the internet, I see the play-set did come with three ruby jewels.  I presume that treasure would have been kept by Joe as a reward for his heroism (the Buddha appears to be made of some kind of weathered bronze or similar material, if it’s not at least silver who cares right?).  But there’s a hidden meaning also in the three jewels, that perhaps there is a more subtle reward for bringing the Buddha out of the poison pit.

Cobras are considered divine manifestations in some cultures, and snakes can be associated with guardianship and the underworld.  The sacred serpent figure (known as an uraeus or ouraios) is an emblem of sovereignty.  Joe has to face a supernatural being (a cobra immune to bullets!) and defeat it with a crazy unexpected maneuver (electric rope!) to recover the goal.

It’s perfectly logical to find Buddha in the middle of places you would hardly expect to find such a being.  In skyscraper laden cityscapes, corporate boardrooms, in the midst of horrific crimes of immense scale, you name it.  Even a book for young readers loaded with disturbing portrayals and models of behavior.

I mean, if you buy the Buddha thing at all, then you start at a point of ignorance.  You’re going to be going on missions for hell with a jolly smile on your face, and everyone not on the Adventure Team is going to appear savage and get their well-deserved fist to the face.  A sacred image is going to be an object you have to move from point A to point B to keep the hell’s furnaces running.  That’s how I experienced it, I was projecting into the good guy, the hero for hell.  That’s what I learned.

Buddha knows!  He knows, and is silent.

Joe safely accomplishes his mission and goes onto the next job with a pat on the rump and a copy of the home game.  But that poison pit—that didn’t fit for me.  That’s where it’s just Joe, the (divine) cobra, and Buddha.  Where did Joe get that electric rope?  From Buddha, of course!  Joe doesn’t realize it, but because I’m the witness I register the missing panel.  Buddha has materialized into the illusion (Joe’s Adventure) to show me I’m in a fantasy world.  But I wouldn’t start to get that until much later.

Bullets don’t work against the supernatural.  You got to have vajra, man.  That Joe would be able to use this is a moment of enlightenment born, starting down the path.  For even if all he sees is some object he has to cart around, still it is Buddha!  He has seen even if he does not see, but he will.  Even in the propaganda toys rests the Buddha, waiting for the poison pit moment when ignorance, error and suffering run out of bullets.

One day we will find our light.  One day we will find out there was no rope, just three jewels.

052_seadiverBack in olden days, there was this toy called Sea Diver.  It was essentially an upside-down plastic bottle (maybe a half liter size) with a screw on cap and an aqua blue plastic base to keep it upright.  Included was a Sea Diver sub, a small packet of tiny rocks and a number of small plastic artifacts—a cannon, an anchor, a sextant, a lantern, and a flintlock pistol.

You filled the plastic bottle with water, tossed in all the accessories, and screwed on the cap.  The Sea Diver was a yellow and black, pressure sensitive capsule with a pincer on the bottom.  It always floated to the top of the bottle.  You squeezed the bottle to make it go down (and open the pincer), and released it to close the pincer and allow the Sea Diver to float back to the top.

The object was to maneuver the Sea Diver’s pincers to a suitable artifact and release the pressure at just the right moment to allow the capsule to return to the top with an artifact in it’s clutches.  Each of the artifacts had a closed hoop of some sort built into its structure to allow it to be captured.  Yeah, we’re talking short-term, simplistic fun here.  But the concept was still really cool for me at the time.

Both me and my cousin had Sea Divers, and so we had a common interest.  The cannon that came with his set had a slightly different base from mine, but otherwise our Sea Divers were the same.

I came to visit one time, and we stayed up late reading Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Scrooge McDuck comics in a micro format not too different from today’s manga.  Portable, easy to hold, and pass around.  We also stayed up reading copies of our The Witching Hour comics (standard size), then we checked out our Sea Divers and fooled around with capturing various artifacts, constructing stories behind each mission.

That’s when I discovered that my cousin’s Sea Diver had something extra in the rocks.  A small gold chain (well, plastic gumball machine phony gold anyway) in with the rest of the artifacts.  Whoa, it never occurred to me you could break the rules and put any kind of treasure you wanted in there.  I thought that was the coolest thing!

Needless to say, we spent the rest of the night trying to recover the gold chain.  It was heavy and slippery (being a chain and very flexible) so the capsule had a hard time capturing it and resting the whole thing from the rocks.  But at last we got a hold of it and there was a howl of triumph.  On to pop tarts for a midnight snack!

But I never forgot the lesson.  You could put any prizes you wanted into your game to find the treasure.  Days later, I bought a gumball machine fake gold ring with a fake emerald and placed it into the Sea Diver.  Some of the goodies I placed inside were too heavy or difficult to grasp with the pincers—it was obvious the artifacts that came with the toy were ideal—but they gave me stories I wouldn’t have thought of.

The Sea Diver pincers were fragile and easily broken.  My folks got me a second Sea Diver but its pincers soon broke also.  These toys, like many such strange gifts from the unconscious, were never meant to survive the rampages of childhood.  My cousin moved on to other toys, as I did.  But his idea struck a chord with me that remains to this day.

Make your own damn treasure hunt.

050_mrmopeA few days ago I was reading the Daily Duncer, a fake newspaper that serves several counties in imagi-nation and I saw an adverse-tisement.  Looks like that slippery scumbag weasel Mister Mope was up to his old tricks again:

Hi suckers.  Need a life?  I got ’em all, only 5 cents, 10 cents or 25 cents for gumball machines.  You get free ghost and everybody will look at them and not you. No junk.  Girlz get speshal offer–25 more cents you get paper.  Tells you what think and say so nobody get wize.  Send money box 99.

Nobody would fall for that, right?  Well Mister Mope is ripping off kids, not adults.  Never trust a gumball machine junkie!  They’ll hook you onto a fake identity for life, all for a piece of cheap bubblegum!  And whatever that ghost does, that’s what people will think is you.

Insidious, because kids love to play pretend.  They want to learn how things work and they want to be liked.  Long after that ghost has stopped being fun, it’s still hanging around showing people sides of you they want to see, not who you really are.

Addictive, because even though it dehumanizes, it is much easier to let a ready-made part do the work for you.  Just say your lines, think everything is puffy clouds, and you won’t even notice when your life starts to resemble a ghost’s.  Ghost gets your life, you slide on by.  Pretty good deal for the ghost, eh?

The ghosts of other people are playing you.  You might have a ghost of your own too.  So back it up, back it up.  Who you with?  The ghost, the real person, the real you?  It’s all pretend, and you can trick that Mister Mope right back.

See, being an untrustworthy fellow, he is remarkably vulnerable himself to trickery.  Once you know you’ve been ripped off, or that people have been ripped off as kids, you can start to look for the ghosts.  Oh!  That person really isn’t my soul mate, they’re just some person who wants to be left alone.  Yeow, am I really that person’s hero?  Don’t they know I burp and fart?

Be yourself.  Deceptively simple wisdom, but like an honor code it calls you to know yourself.

Stop, and watch the ghosts.  What those ghosts got to do with you?  Me, I’ve got some bridgefront property with the most awesome gumball machines, evar.  Just wait until Mister Mope gets the postcard directing him to the alligator farm.

049_sayraaAll the paperwork, inspections and minor work to get Gamera out on the field as a true monster car have been completed.  Me and the rest of the clan were in full on celebration mode, doing the wild rumpus in the cooler air with grillin’ and chillin’.  Though, whoa, wrasslin’ with the kaiju can be mighty wearyin’ on the brain stem.

Worked on the garden, clearing weeds and dead crops.  Still goodies coming in (like radishes and spinach), but its time to make way for winter.  Prepare the earth for the deep sleep.  Lots of bees pollinating the beautifully bright morning glories.  There was a huge box turtle in the garden munching on rotten tomatoes.  Yum!

Lots of different idea ores being mined and refined for this space.  As much as I like writing about various topic-alities, it’d be nice if I could kick it up a notch, now and then.  Of course, that crazy novel thing continues to spark and glow as I work it through the space-flames of creative interstellar cool-whip crystaline radiation.

Costume, costume, who’s got the costume?  It’s about that time of year to reach into the secret locker and pull out a rabbit, so to speak.  What side of me shall I show this year?  Might I even surprise myself?  Having done make-up based monsters the last two years, maybe this time I ought to go for a concept, like Rabid Potato Salad Man.  Raa!

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