joe.

Is this it? Here? Is this OK? Right here on this spot? Can you hear me? (Probably anywhere is fine, no matter where it is. I mean, the guy dying in a mining cave-in can’t really worry much about venue, or placement, can he? Likewise, the traffic accident victim, trapped under his car in a muddy gully with a broken back–he can’t adjust his location, or for that matter his posture.) No, right here will be fine.

Ahem. Cough. Erhm.

Where to begin… Well, let me say I am glad you are there. More than glad. In fact, in this isolated existence, I am literally ecstatic you are there.

You see, I don’t tolerate companions well, much to my disappointment. I wish I carried their company …well, carried it at all. And if I did, then I further wish I could carry it lightly, like a bird carries a feather, like a breeze carries a falling leaf to the ground. Like I once carried the breath of a lover within my own lungs.

Enough of that. Companionship is not my forte—neither giving nor receiving it. Every attempt—and believe me, there were some very promising ones—failed. And every time, tender parts of my soul—of both our souls—were torn out.

So, except for a few who, at a distance, stay in touch with this hermitage, I am alone. Except for them, and you, of course.

I am glad you are here.

I have nothing in particular to say; my soul has had too many chunks ripped out, too many lovers have reclaimed their breaths from me too soon, before I was done breathing them. And too many of my most sweet and innocent hopes lay trampled like tulips in the war.

There is more to this life. Almost more than can be imagined. Almost.

The sun, it’s in early summer, or even in spring when I notice how it just barely slips behind the Northwestern horizon, reluctant to go, and eagerly returns after a short trip just below the not completely dark Northern sky, rising again only a few hours later just north of east. Its light and warmth is like a poltice, pulling toward the surface of me the darkness-deepened infections of my fear and isolation, they rise in hot inflammations, and threaten to erupt with unthinkable agony. Poke me in the eye with a stick. Drive a nail into my ear. But do not let these poisons burst out of me. I cannot bear to see the hidden damage they have wrought, all the dead flesh and rotted dreams spewed out upon the carpet, and the rot-feeding parasitic creatures squirming in the middle of it all.

I cry a lot in Spring. It’s the winter that brings the peace, and in the darkness and the cold, some kind of comfort.

But the endless ache is here, and the unfixable brokenness that causes it. Drain the deathly rot, wash out the putrid abscesses, flush the inside out. But then what will be left? Can you say I will not be a hollow shell? Can you say for sure that there will, in the bleachy emptiness left inside, still remain a soul?

The Pleiadians are not helping me. No, that’s not fair. They just aren’t doing everything for me. That must be the impasse, that they cannot help me with certain things. A comparison might be one person trying to feel another person’s emotions. Yeah, emotions, nasty things sometimes. But trying to pay a therapist to cry my tears for me, instead of doing it for myself, well, that has never worked.

My point is that there are a lot of ways in which the Pleiadians probably are helping me. It’s just that I am not doing my part. I want them to do my part for me.

My friend told me that reading Bringers of the Dawn, a book of teachings from the Pleiadians, caused her to have a schizophrenic break. When I first read the book, I only let it skim my surface, then I set it away in a safe place for a long time. It does not merely shift some paradigms, it sets them all afloat, like so many castiron stoves on roller skates, on the dance floor of a pitching and heaving ship. Their teachings are presented in a subtle enough way that one can read them superficially without being forced into any calamity. Though my friend, it seems, went in too deep too fast. My first reading of the book was like being told about the Grand Canyon; that it existed, that it was big, and that it was in the Southwest. My current reading is like being there, on the rim of the canyon, with the imperative that I must hike across it. Immediately.

Time is, for the purposes of these tasks, very ‘real’, very limited, and frankly, running out. Time is, finally, an illusion, but we have chosen to enter into this existence within time, and I suspect our intention was to confront certain tasks—and either do them, or not do them—while within this temporal realm.

And so, that’s it really. What do I want to do? The thing that really disturbs me is that it is entirely my choice. I can do nothing, make no decision. I have some experience with that. I can tell myself that I am just postponing the carnival ride, that I will overcome my anxiety and buy a ticket… later. But one day the carnival, and all its opportunities, will be gone, packed up and moved on to another empty lot in some other state. Never deciding is a kind of purgatory that keeps you stuck in the past. And it ensures that your no-good friend, regret, will always be close at hand.

I can just keep postponing, and this task will never be done by me. That’s a little scary, that what I decide (or avoid deciding) will have a definite outcome.

The challenge to me is not so much what follows the decision as it is the decision itself. The events after I choose to move ahead—after I say ‘yes’—will certainly be of monumental significance. But this must come first; I must drill down, deeply, and find out what I really want to do. Sounds simple, but it is almost the hardest thing I have ever done, because I have always avoided it. I never rode the roller-coaster. Regret has been my constant companion. And that regret was because I had never dug down deep enough to find out what I really wanted. It’s probably, at root, a self-respect issue, as in ‘what I want really doesn’t matter’. So, the bottom line which the Pleiadian teachings have brought me to is this: Does it really matter what I want?

Is what I want important to me?

That is an easily misunderstood question in a consumer-oriented society. But, when handled existentially, it reveals for me the underpinnings of my bondage. If what I want is not important to me, then that removes a huge amount of potential for conflict from all that I do. Unfortunately, it also effectively removes all of my free will because, if there is nowhere I want to go, then the freedom to go there is superfluous.

I can answer that question, ‘no’. At least that is true of the past; what I want has not been important to me. So, how does one change? By wanting to change? But if what I want is unimportant, then it follows that making the change is unimportant. So how does it happen?

It happens with help. It doesn’t matter where that help comes from, whether from the Pleiadians, or from some inner spark long dormant, or from somewhere else entirely. It comes. More accurately, I believe such help is always present, like a stream always flowing which we encounter only occasionally, and sometimes fall into accidentally. The help comes as a call from outside our sleep, giving us the chance to wake up if we choose. And, to carry the metaphor too far, once awake, whether we choose to get out of bed and to stay awake is our problem.

It is 2008, and soon to be summer, with all the enticing airs, and clandestine possibilities that summer brings. I did not expect to be here, still. And I don’t know if I will be ready before it is time to go, but I know it is up to me to get ready. Once, when I was on a plane in 1980, above the clouds, I decided to ask for help becasue I didn’t think I was getting any, I wanted a sign that …I don’t know, a sign that someone was there helping me. They must find these constant requests for reassurance rather tedious, but they are patient with me nonetheless. They were with me then, and they told me so. And they are here now. All the rest is up to me.

Hello, …hello. Hello?

Oh, there you are. Been a while. What does one say after so long? I suppose we could reminisce, (or I could), but that is regressive in a way. Listening to oldies, remembering passed sentiments, finding lost feelings that were left unfinished, it’s all just an effort to avoid this moment—or finish the other moment from a safe distance. And that of course is impossible. It’s like, “You can never go home.” Except you can never go back. You can only pretend to. And that’s a photograph, not the present. Tear it up. Throw it away.

On the other hand, is there really a value to the sentiments gone-by? Do we gain a sense of realism from the moments remembered? Are sentiments the substance of time?

I think that is just the problem. Time. It is an illusion, like motion is an illusion. It’s relative to something else which may or may not also be in motion. And if you are in motion, and I am in similar motion, then relative to each other we are together, still.

There is a moment that is not passing. There is a ‘time’, if you will, which is not within time. We have a place which is not perishable—an eternity which can never be left behind. The challenge for me is to find it, amid all the empty coffee cups and unpaid bills; to tear up all the photos, to abandon sentiment-dwelling, to come back from all the reminiscences of youthful beaches and summer nights gone by, to resist the fond lament of past familiarity. My calling is to find what I am looking for where I have never looked before.

And it will be new. The place of no place, in the time of no-time, is. Simply is.