Duval Street addict

From my distant in-law Ron yesterday, who loves and used to vacation a lot in Key West with his beloved wife, before she passed away:

SLOAN – My first thought is, there but for the grace of God go I. My second thought is, the homeless communities have rights. My third thought is, the regular hard working tax paying communities have rights. My fourth thought is, I am glad I don’t have to decide where those two rights bump into each other.

You know what I am trying to say. You have the right to pee. You don’t have the right to pee on my shoes.

The working taxpayers, their customers and vacationers have the right to the quite enjoyment of their communities. The homeless communities have the right to co-exist. It is going to take some really smart dudes and dudesses to meet the goals of both communities in both the human sense and the legal sense.

Regards, Ron

Hi, Ron. There despite, or with, the Grace of God, went I. What a jolt that was. I was in total shock. I figured all along God was going to do a last-minute rescue, since God knew I was not able to do it. God did not do a last-minute rescue. I could write a book about the funny looks, comments, I got from people after they learned where I had come from before they met me. I sometimes still get the funny looks, comments.

I suppose I really should not claim to have been homeless in the sense everyone else but one person I met on the street was homeless. I knew it was a spiritual work assignment, as did that one person I met in on Higgs Beach one morning know his being on the street was a spiritual work assignment. We understood the program, and both were refreshed to find someone else on it, amidst a sea of people who knew nothing about the program. Homeless people who knew nothing about it, mainstream people who knew nothing about it.

That fellow was not on the same assignment I was on, though. He was just passing through living on the street, headed elsewhere. I was marinating in living on the street, acquiring the experience required to speak with knowledge to the issues in public forums. I did not realize that at first, but before a year of living on the street mostly had passed, I saw the plan and how it was starting to play out.

In March 2001, I started showing up mornings at the Key West library with a missive ready to fall out of me. I got there a few minutes before opening time, so I could get right on a computer and type the missive as it fell out of me onto the monitor screen. Back then, patrons were allowed an hour on a computer each day, and the library was open six days a week. I had six missives a week fall out of me, and with what little money I had, I printed out 10 or 12 copies each, and then got on my Bicycle Bob-donated second bicycle and pedaled around distributing that day’s edition. Mayor Jimmy Weekly always got one at City Hall. A few homeless people I knew always got one. And a few other people got one.

At the top of each missive was this theme:

The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen.

My recollection is, I published the missives anonymously.

I remember a sort of funny, in hindsight, misadventure with a deputy sheriff after 911, which was when the city’s mood toward homeless people shifted to oppressive. The library didn’t let you nap in the library, and I was in there one day reading, and started feeling that “pass out” sensation coming on. Back in those days, and still, I passed out twice a day usually. It looked like taking a nap, probably was that, too. But I knew it heralded something from the Spirit coming in, for after I awoke, I would see something new to do, or ponder. It happened in church services, public meetings, and just whenever.

Usually when I was outside and felt it coming on, I would head for a park bench somewhere and let it have me, and after maybe 45 minutes it would be over. This time, though, I went outside and walked the short distance to the little pocket park next to the library and sat on one of the benches in the shade. I often had a sandwich for lunch in that little park, and maybe I had one that time, too. I also nodded off, sitting straight up, and when I snapped out of it suddenly, a deputy sheriff was standing over me. The deputy I had seen on duty in the library that day.

He said I wasn’t supposed to sleep in the park, since it was part of the library. I said I knew that, but it came over me. I passed out. Oh, did I have a medical problem? No, it was a God thing. It happened a lot. A what? A God thing. The deputy was a bit agitated. I got up to leave, he followed, nagging me. I stupidly asked if he didn’t have anything better to be doing, some criminals to catch? Bad move.

He whipped out his citation pad and started writing me up. He asked for my ID. I gave him my Alabama driver’s license. He asked where I lived? I said I had no place to live. “At large,” he said, wrote that on the ticket. He said I could not come back to the library. I said, What? “Yeah, you’re banned from the library.” I said I was in the library every day. Everyone working in there knew me. He went inside and got the older fellow who worked in the back room. I did not know him, because he worked in the back room. The older fellow said he had to side with the deputy, I could not come back.

Then, the deputy ordered me off the sidewalk. I said it was a public sidewalk, he could not order me off the sidewalk, I was not breaking any laws. He put his hand on his Glock, I guess it was. I said we should be doing something else. He said he looked forward to his day off, so he could go fishing. Get off the sidewalk meanwhile. I said I didn’t have to get off the sidewalk. He whipped out his two-way and called for backup. I said why did he do that, he had the gun? All the while, the older man stood watching, saying nothing.

I walked over and unlocked my my bicycle off the rack and pedaled off. It was over a year before I went back into the library, and there was no problem. Today, they carry copies of Heavy Wait. They have had me present at the monthly book club. I am always welcome.

One other library story, which was in the spring of 2001, when I was putting out the one-page missives.

Shorty after arriving at the library, I was overwhelmed with the urged to do a number 2. I went to the men’s bathroom. A homeless man was in the toilet stall. I waited outside a while, about to burst. No movement inside. Homeless men frequently stayed in that stall a while, shaving, washing, etc. I couldn’t hold out any longer and went into the women’s restroom adjacent, which I knew was empty. I locked the deadbolt behind me, so nobody could come in. I started doing my emergency business, and somebody started knocking on the door. Then, somebody started pounding.

I finished the emergency and flushed the toilet and opened the door, to be greeted by a deputy with hands on hips, not happy look on face. He said men were not allowed in the women’s restroom. I said I knew that, but it was either that, the men’s room was full, or I went outside and did it on the sidewalk, or in the parking lot or in the bushes. There was no other alternative, other than doing it in my pants, which I was not inclined to do. It was like 10:15 in the morning. There was no store nearby. No nothing nearby, which had public bathrooms.

A Mexican standoff developed. Finally, the deputy told me not to do it again. Maybe he’d had an emergency pit stop himself in the past. Some time later, I learned of another bathroom in the library, which very few patrons knew was there. Men and women used it. I started using it because it almost always was available. The men’s room continued to be a crapshoot, if you needed to do #2, because the toilet stall was a hangout for homeless men.

I could tell lots of bathroom stories from when I was homeless, some you would like reading better than others. Stories at the public bathrooms at Higgs Beach and at Mallory Pier, on opposite sides of the island. There was a public bathroom at the end of the bayside of Simonton Street, and there were public bathrooms at the Martin-Luther King Center in Bahama Village, and at Smathers Beach near the airport, and at Bayview Park next to Truman Avenue. I think I probably contracted the MRSA infection off a toilet seat at Higgs Beach.

But those aren’t the other bathroom stories I could tell, some of which you might not like to read. When you have to go, you go. You know that. I know that. Every person breathing knows that.

So how about a hilarious cop story. A wet, windy, chilly night in November 2003, I am sleeping on a bench in the misting rain under a thin blanket under the large Higgs Beach pavilion closest to Casa Marina. It is a rough night, the bench is uncomfortable, I keep waking up and having to turn over, pull the wet bank back up over me. Before dawn, my by then good friend, Police Chief Buz Dillon, comes to me in a dream, says, “It didn’t work out.” I wake up, hearing lots of voices and laughing.

I look around, two KW police cruisers parked beside Salute. Oh, shit. I’m going to jail. The park is closed from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. I’m not supposed to be there. Then, I hear women laughing. One comes by from the water side wearing about nothing. Then another comes by wearing her hand over her you know what. Lots of laughing between the women and the cops, all about same age, early-to-mid 20s. Another cruiser shows up, lots of chatter and laughing from inside that cruiser with the other cops and women. The third cruiser leaves.

I get a chance to speak with the woman who was butt nekkid but now somewhat clothed. “How do you get away with being on the beach without getting arrested for being on the beach and not having any clothes on?” She says, “I fuck the cops.” She laughs. I laugh. She goes over and gets into the back of one of the cruisers with two of the boys in blue, and they leave in somewhat of a haste, it seems. I hear laughter out of the windows as they head off to what I suspect is a fun time together. Am darn jealous, and figure I’m not going to get arrested with the goods I have on the cops.

When I put that into my missive later that day at the library, and sent it to my now fairly large email contacts list, Buz Dillon darn nearly had a coronary, probably because it was so hilarious, and probably because it was so conduct unbecoming. I don’t think it came anywhere close, though, to stopping Buz’s heart, as when I ran for mayor earlier that year and the bright idea came to me about half hour before a televised candidate forum at Comcast near the homeless showers at the police station (no longer, alas) to promote dressing Key West’s police up like pirates, as a publicity stunt.

When I ran for mayor the next time, 2007, I suggested offering homeless people jobs as litter cops and dressing them up like pirates and giving them fake swords, daggers and pistols to swashbuckle around Duval Street avasting and growling at litter bugs, threatening them with walking the plank and so forth and so on, if they didn’t pick up their trash. Got me interviewed on a nationally syndicated radio show in the Big Apple, and other radio shows around the country, including a station in Hawaii. Didn’t get me elected, thankfully.

Then was the time back in the early spring of 2001, when this drop dead beautiful topless blond on Higgs Beach, sitting on her blanket, she’d been there all morning, and the day before, all by her lonesome, asked me if I had the time? I rummaged around in my daypack and found the alarm clock I’d bought in Mumbai, India, and told her the time. She thanked me. I left.

I found myself thinking last week about that. I found myself thinking, surely she was in Key West to let her hair down. Why in the hell didn’t I ask her if she would like to let it down with a homeless lawyer, who sometimes had gotten along pretty well with women in the sack when we liked each each other, and he didn’t have any strange disease to worry about, and when she went back to where she came from, nobody would be the wiser. Hell, maybe she would have taken me home with her.

Sloan

Sloan – I know you are telling the truth about your adventures on the street… because, you can’t make that stuff up.

Key West really could have used you as a mayor, but you are right, your life would have been a living hell.

Regards, Ron

Higgs Beach homeless summit

Duval Street capitalist

escape from Margaritaville

Duval Street palmist

I give up

dangerous characters

free enterprise

job search

library tethering post

Outward Bound, Higgs Beach outpost

getting his bearings on White Street Pier sundial

Higgs Beach native

gypsy art

homeless Santa

undercover CIA operative

caught red-handed

squatter’s rights

tres hombres

illegal immigrants

homeless vet

Father Stephen Braddock, the guiding force of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition and father to many men down on their luck in Key West

Not pictured, because I cannot find a photo of her, St. Dorothy Sherman, Key West homeless people’s Patron Saint, who started the soup kitchen and devoted her life and her money, with much help from her husband George, both my dear friends, to serving, feeding, clothing, taking to doctors, buying medicines, etc. etc. etc. homeless people in Key West. Here are some of her soup kitchen’s patrons.

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Sometimes something comes my way that just brings out the devil in me:

From Cindy someone yesterday, unknown to me: Fwd: Good Morning Florida Keys » God’s poet

http://goodmorningfloridakeys.com/?cat=3

Does he know GOOOH.com

if we believe something to be true and have faith even when evidence is contrary, then it is true – there is so so much that we do not understand…….

IF YOU VOTED FOR GEORGE W. BUSH OR BARACK OBAMA, OR IF YOU SUPPORTED THE WARS IN IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN, YOU ACCELERATED THE STAMPEDE.

Ninety percent of Americans say they would like to fire Congress, but are we too busy to actually make it happen? GO is a simple, non-partisan plan to challenge every incumbent in the U.S. House with citizen representatives in the primaries. We respectfully request you visit the GOOOH web site to learn about our plan, and then join the effortto make it happen.

AS I WROTE TO CINDY EARLIER TODAY, WHY FIRE CONGRESS WHEN NUKING CONGRESS IN SESSION IS SO MUCH QUICKER, CHEAPER, EFFECTIVE?

Politicians are destroying our nation. Here is a plan to replace them. The only question is will you take a few minutes, join, and help make it happen?

PROBABLY NOT, BUT I’LL SLEEP ON IT, SEE WHAT THE JOINT CHIEFS WHO BOSS ME AROUND HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT. I’M OLD, TIRED, WORN OUT. I DON’T GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT LOOKING FORWARD TO WAKING UP AGAIN. I ACHE. I DON’T SEE ANY CURE TO WHAT ALREADY DIED BUT DOESN’T KNOW IT YET. I WOULD WORRY ABOUT MY CHILDREN AND FRIENDS, IF I THOUGHT IT WOULD DO ANY GOOD. I AM NOT A GREENHORN TO POLITICS, HAVING RUN FOR LOCAL OFFICE SEVEN TIMES WITH TREMENDOUS SUCCESS, DEFEAT, SAVING ME FROM HAVING TO KILL MYSELF IF THE RECOUNT FAILED TO UNSEAT ME. I DETEST POLITICS AND POLITICIANS. I RUN FOR OFFICE ONLY BECAUSE THE JOINT CHIEFS TELL ME TO RUN. THIS YEAR THEY GAVE ME A FREE PASS. MAYBE BECAUSE THEY KNEW YOU WOULD WRITE TO ME. THE ONLY ELECTED OFFICE THAT EVER INTERESTED ME WAS PRESIDENT OF USA. I FIGURE I WOULD LIVE MAYBE A WEEK, IF I WAS LUCKY, AFTER BEING SWORN IN. SNIPER BULLET MOST LIKELY EXIT STRATEGY, BUT PERHAPS ONE OF MY BODYGUARDS’ HANDGUN, OR A GARROTE, OR A BOWIE KNIFE, OR POISON, OR ALIENS NOT OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED BY THE GOVERNMENT SWOOP IN AND DEMATERIALIZE ME BEFORE I SCREW UP THEIR FARMING OPERATION – FARMING HUMANS. RIGHT, YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING HOW MUCH OF THIS IS SERIOUS, HOW MUCH SPOOF? IT’S ALL REAL, FAR AS I KNOW. I HAVE A COLLEGE EDUCATION, TWO LAW DEGREES. I HAVE WORKED IN THE CORPORATE SECTOR AND HAVE PRACTICED LAW. I HAVE WRITTEN LOTS OF BOOKS. I HAVE HAD LOTS OF WIVES AND KNOW LOTS ABOUT WOMEN AND FOR SURE KNOW THE WEAKER SEX IS MEN. I HAVE LIVED ON THE STREET, SLEPT ON CARDBOARD BOXES AND OTHER COMFY BEDDING. I HAVE NEARLY DIED A FEW TIMES AND REGRET THOSE SNATCHES OUT OF THE JAWS OF VICTORY. I CAN’T BE BOUGHT, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT ANYONE THINKS OF ME, BUT I CARE A GREAT DEAL WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME, ALTHOUGH I HAVE NO CLUE HOW GOD VIEWS ME. I BELONG TO NO POLITICAL PARTY AND THINK JUST BELONGING TO A POLITICAL PARTY SHOULD BE A CAPITAL OFFENSE WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW. SARAH PALIN SCARES THE BEJESUS OUT OF ME, BUT I FIGURE IF SHE GOT ELECTED ELLE PRESIDENTE, SHE WOULD TAKE USA WHERE IT NEEDS TO GO FASTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE IN THE POLITICO SEWER. FELT THE SAME WAY ABOUT G..W. BUSH AND BARACK OBAMA. OH, I MAJORED IN ECONOMICS IN COLLEGE, MINORED IN BUSINESS, AND HAD ENOUGH ENGLISH CREDITS ALMOST FOR AN UNDECLARED MAJOR. I AM A FATHER, WHOSE CHILDREN ABANDONED HIM, ONE BY HAVING PERHAPS THE GOOD FORTUNE TO DIE IN INFANCY, THE OTHER TWO FOR REASONS YET TO BE EXPLAINED TO ME, ALTHOUGH I CAN LIST SOME GUESSES, WHICH MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT BE MORE THAN GUESSES. I HAVE LOTS OF FRIENDS WHO KNOW I’M CRAZY AND SOMEHOW LIVE WITH IT, AND I HAVE LOTS OF ENEMIES WHO KNOW I’M CRAZY AND SAY THE DEVIL IS BEHIND IT, OR I OUGHT TO BE LOCKED UP FOR MY (TRANSLATES – THEIR) OWN GOOD. I AM ENSLAVED TO A BAND OF ANGELS YOU MAY HAVE THOUGHT YOU READ ABOUT IN THE BIBLE BUT THEY DON’T SEEM NEARLY AS CONSTRAINED AND CIVIL AS DESCRIBED THERE. THEY OWN ME, TELL ME WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT, AND HOW NOT TO DO IT. THEY MAY CLOBBER ME FOR WRITING THIS TO YOU TODAY WITHOUT MY FIRST SLEEPING ON IT AND GETTING THEIR INPUT IN DREAMS AND SOMETIMES DIRECT TALK. WAY THE DAY’S BEEN GOING SO FAR, TOSS IN THE WEEK AND MONTH AND YEAR AND DECADE, TOO, AND THE REST OF MY LIFE, I’M ALMOST TO THE POINT OF TELLING THE WINGED ONES SOMETHING LIKE WHAT RHETT BUTLER TOLD SCARLET O’HARA: “FRANKLY, MY DEARS, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN.” I DO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT BIRTH AND BABIES, BUT NOT MUCH, AS ONLY A WOMAN CAN REALLY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THAT. I’M LOADS OF FUN AT COCKTAIL PARTIES, RECEPTIONS, GRADUATIONS, BABY KISSINGS, CHURCH PICNICS, AND SOCIAL GATHERINGS GENERALLY. I LOVE TALKING ABOUT SHIT THAT DOESN’T MATTER AND THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT IF IT DOES MATTER. I WISH YOU THE BEST IN YOUR ENDEAVOR AND HOPE THE TEA PARTY DOESN’T SEND A HIT TEAM TO RUB YOU OUT FOR TREADING TOO CLOSE TO THEIR TURF. I CAME TO PREFER THE WRITE-IN METHOD OF ELECTING CANDIDATES, PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T FILE TO RUN OR EVEN WANT THE JOB, BUT I DON’T SEE HOW THAT CAN WORK IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS, GIVEN THE WAY THE FOUNDING FATHERS SET UP THE REPUBLIC SO WE HAVE AN ELECTORAL COLLEGE INSTEAD OF A DEMOCRACY. MAYBE SOMETHING ELSE WILL COME TO ME LATER. IF SO, MAYBE I WILL HAVE THE ENERGY TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT. I TRIED TO RUN THIS DIATRIBE THROUGH MY SPELLCHECKER, BUT IT SEEMS TO BE ON BREAK A LOT SINCE MY LAPTOP VOTED IN THE UNION. NOT SURE WHAT IS BETTER OR WORSE, UNIONS OR CORPORATIONS. BOTH PRETTY SCARY, BUT UNCLE SAM HAS A BIT OF A LEG UP THERE. CIAO. NOTICE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DROP THE O FROM CIAO. JUST NOW NOTICED THAT MYSELF. SLOAN BASHINSKY

Help us tell the politicians to Get Out Of Our House! National site is www.goooh.com and our regional site is www.gooohswfl.com.

Call or email if you are interested in learning more.

Keith

239-250-3320

Hi Sloan. Everyone has to make his own decision. For me, God, our Founders and many previous generations have given use Freedom under the greatest experiment the world has seen. Is it perfect, of course not. But we have a responsibility to restore and preserve it peacefully for our future generations. I am too stupid or stubborn to give up.

Good reply, Keith. I definitely agree with peacefully, starting with ending America’s war lust Jesus Christ would never sanction. Thought you folks wuz looking for potential candidates who are not politicians, so I sent you a resume. Sloan

============================

As President, my first offcial act would be to order the immediate, safe withdrawal from and return to America of all American military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, the immediate cessation of all US Government military and economic aid to Israel, and the withdrawal of and return to America of all American military personnel from the Middle East. My next official act, if I wuz still breathing, would be to order the immediate withdrawal of and return to America of all American military personnel on all foreign soil. The purpose of these two official acts would be to eliminate the external American causes of America’s foreign wars, and to provide the military presence needed inside America to discourage Americans from killing Americans when the tests God has arranged for America start happening. As American Christians don’t hear nearly enough of in their churches, “Hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” I hear a lot of talk from conservative American Christians about America being a Christian country. But I don’t hear any talk from conservative Christians about America being a Jesus country. I don’t hear conservative American Christians talking about the Jesus I see in the Gospels.

Ciao

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water.
The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored
scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact
that the dolphins are identical, a person under
stress would find differences in the two dolphins.
The more differences a person finds between the
dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.
Look at the photograph and if you find more than one
or two differences you need to go on vacation…. 


No need to Reply, I’ll be on vacation.

So, today’s installment in the deepening mystical plot that started hatching a few days ago takes us on another road trip of sorts, to north Georgia. This road trip is a bit steeper and and deeper than the hitchhiking trip from Birmingham to Seattle and what followed after I returned to Birmingham. With trepidation, I proceed.

In early March 2005, through a series of truty bizarre events, I found myself in the Greyhound bus depot in north Georgia. I thought I had been sent there to try to reconnect with people I knew from summering a few times in Helen, about a hour’s drive away. But after phone calls left that cubbard bare, I found myself wondering if I was crazy and asked the lady behind the ticket counter if I she could give me a phone number for a local cab company. I knew there was a cab company there because I had seen a cab leaving the bus depot as I arrived on the bus. The lady called the cab company for me, and pretty soon a cab showed up. Turned out to be the came cab I had seen pulling off, I later would learn from the driver.

I had been out of touch with the world for a few days, perhaps another time for that peculiar segment of this strange story to be told. I asked the lady cab driver if she could take me to the local library so I could get online and check my emails. She said okay. We started talking. She seemed maybe in her late thirties, maybe a little older. Very country in speech, not educated it didn’t seem, but smart it also seemed. After checking my emails, don’t remember what they were, I rejoined her in her taxi and I sat there wondering what to do next? Something caused me to say I sensed she had spirit dealings. She said she had spirit dealings. That led to more conversation, then I asked if she could drive me to the Greyhound station in Atlanta, to save me waiting several hours for the next bus out of there to Atlanta? She said okay, told me what it would cost. I said okay.

We had a serious conversation during the next hour and a half or so down to the Atlanta bus station. Somewhere in there I told her, if she got mixed up with me, the day would come when she wished she had never met me. I got her cell phone number. She let me out at the station, I paid the agreed fare and went inisde and learned a bus was just about to depart for Miami. I had a ticket to Miami, which I had put off using when I went through Atlanta the day before, because I was told to go to Gainesville when I reached Atlanta from that other thing I had been doing, which I’m not going to tell today, other than to say I didn’t do anything illegal or immoral, as far as I know. I got onto the Miami bus just as it was leaving, and called the taxi driver and let her know how perfect the timing was, as if it had been arranged, which is exactly what had happened, and I didn’t have to explain it to her.

When I arrived in Helen that summer, I called Annie, and we resumed our dialogue. Sometimes she would drive her taxi to Helen to visit with me. It was not a man-woman thing. It was a spirit thing. She was very very-spirit gifted and very unschooled in spirit ways, and very tangled up in backwoods fundamental religion way of looking at spirit workings and the devil, and very mixed up and wounded in her soul. She also was struggling financially, and I started helping her out from what little I had. In August my father died, and that meant soon I would have an inheritance. I moved to Birmingham, and continued to talk with and help Annie financially. After I received the inheritance, I helped her a lot more financially, for by now, she was pretty much disabled by spirit workings, soon to become too volatile to work anywhere. That was in the early part of 2006.

What happened after that is a long, involved story. A sad story. A frustrating story. Annie fragmented into at least three people. One Annie detested me. One loved me. The other I can’t say how she felt about me. I never felt attracted to her, but she wanted us to be together. It wasn’t in me, and I kept telling her that and finally she quit pushing for it. She continued to deteriorate. I continued to support her, as instructed all along by the angels. I gave her a lot of money. She spent a lot of it on stuff that she didn’t need to spend it on. Not wild living, but on things she didn’t need. I did everything I knew to help her get through it, come out the other side. It didn’t happen, and finally I didn’t feel I could give her any more money. Nor did I feel I could talk with her anymore, as she was flying off the handle with me a lot.

About a month ago, after months of begging for clear direction, I had a dream that showed me Annie was in Jesus’ hands and was being roasted alive, purified, the baptism in fire, and she didn’t like it and I was to stay out of it, not try to make it easier for her, as in, give her more money, as that was all she wanted from me by then. She was destitute, close to living on the street. Next time she called, I told her about the dream. She was quiet, but the next day that other her called giving me bloody hell. My voicemail took the call, I listened to it after I saw I had a message.

Eventually, a community outreach nurse called me. I already knew from later text messages from Annie that she now was living in a shelter and had to sell her car and was hopeful of getting a job. I told the nurse the history in greater detail than you have just read. She said most of it Annie had told her, and she was amazed I had given Annie so much money. I said angels of the Lord had told me to give Annie the money, and I do what I’m told to do.

I said Annie was in the flames, did she (the outreach nurse) know what I meant by that? She asked if I meant hell fire? I asked if she attended church? Yes. Did she know about the baptism in fire? No. I described the dream I’d had about Annie, and tried to explain the baptism in fire Jesus said in the Gospels was his to live and administer, not a baptism in water. I felt the nurse was not getting it, but it was a level conversation. I said, yes, she could call me again, but I could not give Annie more money unless the angels told me to do it.

The next day, the first symptoms of Bell palsy appeared. My right jaw wasn’t working right. By the next day, the symptoms were so advanced that I emailed the doctor I knew in Key West, and he called me and told me it looked like Bell’s palsy to him. That was two days ago. Yesterday, the sympotms seemed to have slowed in their advance. When I spoke with the doctor again yesterday afternoon, he said that might mean it won’t progress much farther. Maybe I won’t get to the drooling stage. He said to keep him updated on further symptoms developing and perhaps I would start seeing improvement in 5 or 6 days, but not to expect a fast recovery, months probably. As for the cancer lesion, he said maybe the angels will heal it and I won’t have to see a doctor about it. Sneaky little fuckers, angels, he said. And he really enjoys reading my posts, which he has been receiving for about two years, as I recall.

Last night, after seeing missed calls from Annie and the outreach nurse, I wondered if the Bell’s palsy was somehow caused by the situation with Annie. She reached me this morning by phone, we talked a while. Mostly okay conversation. She got the job, production line hand work, minimum wage, 7 days a week. She is getting time and a half for overtime, and has to pay someone to take her to work every day. She is tired, has blisters on her fingers. I said it sounded awful, I could not do it, I felt terrible for her. I wondered if I had screwed up by not giving her enough at least to pay her car insurance, so she could keep the car? Yet the dream had been clear, let her have the experience in the flames.

It was level until she started sounding like she was going to rev up after I told her it looked I had taken a big hit for her, maybe because I had to help her but could not do it with money anymore, so I took on a spirit load for her. I did not say it might be a demonic attack. That would have been too much to say. I told Annie I needed to stop talking. If you want to read about someone who took body hits from demonic spirits for years on end sometimes, and seemed to actually enjoy it, Google St. Anthony of the Desert.

Annie became like a daughter to me. I feel responsibility for her, but there is nothing I can do for her in a human way that will help her. We discovered that together. So perhaps this is how I help her now. Bell’s palsy. And cancer on my arm. And perhaps demonic attack. And very difficult digestive congestion. And other symptoms you might not want to read about. Symptoms caused by spirit stuff coming off of Brenda, or spirit stuff constellated in the spirit around her. And maybe even coming off off of her family, which treated her very badly all of her life.

The Bell’s palsy may still be progressing. It has gotten into the left side of my face, mostly left nostril, left middle part of upper and lower lips. Maybe 10 percent impairment left side. Right side maybe 80 percent impaired. my tongue seems unaffected, I can still chew pretty well. Drinking fluids is sloppy, even though a straw. Hard to eat a bowl of collard greens without drooling. Hope it stops progressing. I’m loaded to the gills. Did I write about Moose Drool a few days ago, and here I now am wondering if I’m going to start drooling full time? I have had much worse loaded up on me.

I have learned the angels can do anything to me they want to do to me, so I do my darndest to do what they tell me to do, in the way they tell me to do it.

Ciao

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

About a week ago, I returned to a method of spirit journaling I stopped using when I moved back to Little Torch Key on the Spring Equinox of last year. I write what’s on my mind, then I wait for something to come back, which I record in capital letters. Then I write what is on my mind, then I wait on something to come back in capital letters. I learned this method from my fourth wife, who wrote her thoughts on the left side of her journal, and recorded what came back on the right side of the page. It was some years later, though, that I started using that method. Perhaps it only worked for her and for me. Over the years, it seemed pretty reliable.

Anyway, here’s a journal exchange from yesterday:

this is really rough going

YEP. MUCH AFOOT. QUIT WORRYING ABOUT THE THING ON YOUR ARM. THERE ARE BIGGER THINGS IN PLAY AS YOU WILL SEE SOON ENOUGH.

Not sure I trust that advice.

UNDERSTANDABLE. SO KEEP WORRYING ABOUT IT, IF THAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER. SURGERY DID NOT CURE THE MRSA INFECTION. ANTIBIOTICS DID NOT CURE IT AFTER THE SURGERY. YOU GET THE PICTURE. AS YOU WERE THINKING EARLIER, MRSA USUALLY KILLS FASTER THAN CANCER, IF IT GETS INSIDE OF YOU. AIN’T SPIRITUAL GROWTH WONDERFUL?

Thanks a heap.

Here’s something I emailed last night to a Key West doctor.

Hi, Doc.

Something started up yesterday in right side of my head. First symptom, it was harder to move my right jaw, open mouth and chew on right side. Then, noticed weakness in right eye, burning, and intermittent pain in right occipital juncture [maybe I meant to say right parietal juncture], I think, just behind and perhaps two inches above right ear. Thought maybe glasses stem might be causing that, but too much else going on for it to be that, I finally concluded. Tonight, noticed hard to wink with my right eye or close it without closing both eyes, and then right eyes seems to want to try to open. Right jaw and chewing more restricted, numbness showing in right side of my face, especially in right cheek. Harder to eat on right side, get chewed food from teeth to middle of my mouth so I can swallow it. Missing teeth on lower left side, mostly chew on right side therefore. More burning and watering in right eye than earlier. Now notice numbness now in right side of nose. Seems to be advancing on all fronts.

Landline best to call me, as cell reception sometimes weak signal inside and I have to go outside and and feed the mosquitoes to talk.

landline 305-

cell as back up 305-

thanks

Sloan

Then, I did more spirit journaling:

Well, shit. You weren’t joking about something coming.

YOU NEED TO TRY TO BE LEVEL ABOUT THIS. IT IS VERY BIG. IT IS NOT ENTIRELY WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE, AND IT IS WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE.

I should go to the hospital?

NO.

Why not?

THEY WILL INTERFERE.

I hope I am getting clear transmission on this.

YOU ARE. WE TOLD YOU IT WAS COMING, DIDN’T WE?

Yes.

WE NUDGED YOU TO RETURN TO THIS FORM OF CONVERSATION, DIDN’T WE?

Yes.

IBUPROFEN IS OKAY.

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY SEE INTO THIS SO JUST LET IT RUN AND ACCEPT ANYTHING THAT COMES TO LIGHT. THIS IS NOT PUNISHMENT RE MAYOR’S RACE, IT SUPERSEDED THE MAYOR’S RACE, WHICH IS WHY YOU DID NOT ENTER IT THIS YEAR. WE DON’T SEE EVERYTHING COMING, AS YOU KNOW. WE GET ORDERS, TOO.

I understand that is so.

BE LEVEL AS YOU CAN. ENOUGH FOR NOW.

Not long after that happened, Doc called me. He said I had described what looked like onset of Bell’s palsy. He’d had it himself and had recovered, he’d seen twenty or thirty patients with it. He said to take aspirin to thin the blood and to use Visine or Vaseline in my right eye and tape the eyelid shut with Scotch tape when I slept, so it would not be open while I slept and injure the eye by drying it out. He said I might lose control over the right side of my face, start drooling, but if it was Bell’s palsy, I eventually should recover. He suggested I see a neurologist he named in Key West, just to make sure it was not something else than Bell’s palsy. When I asked about the cancer lesion on my arm, he said to set that aside, first deal with this for which I had called him. He would get me a doctor for the lesion, instead of the dermatologist I had seen about it. I said I had seen a surgeon, not a dermatologist. What surgeon? I named the surgeon. Doc said I didn’t want to use that doctor, he would get me someone to handle it.

During our conversation, I told Doc I had gone to Looe Key Tiki Bar earlier to have dinner and listen to music, and that was when I noticed the numbness in the right side of my face and not being able to wink my right eye, and I wondered if it was a stroke coming on, then I wondered if it was palsy? As if palsy had been put into my thoughts, but I did not say that to Doc, although I imagine he got my drift.

I have a way of inducing visions that provide information. Simply, I close my eyes, ask for anything available to me on something concerning me. I wait. Usually something comes, usually an image, or images. Then meaning or perhaps words come with it. I have induced many visions this way re the cancer lesion on my left forearm. Many times the surgeon came in the visions and told me to wait. Other doctors I have known came and told me to wait. Jesus came and told me to wait. My black mammy, Cha, came and told me to wait. I waited. Perhaps I found out last night why I waited? And perhaps there is more reason than that? Perhaps I am to remember the experience with MRSA? Perhaps I get the cancer lesion removed and more cancer lesions come? Perhaps instead of skin cancer is liver cancer, or pancreatic cancer, or testicular cancer, or brain cancer? The angels healed the MRSA infection after medicine failed to cure it. In my line of work, such thinking is required.

As for the Bells’ palsy symptoms. I do not feel led to go to the neurologist. The advancing symptoms have slowed down, although there now is some numbness in the left nostril and upper left lip. It’s reminiscent of taking novocain for dental work on the right side, but there are more symptoms than numbness. And there are new symptoms seemingly having nothing to do with Bell’s palsy. I am being hammered spiritually.

Ironic, a Christian intercessor in Birmingham has been praying hard for me to feel better, be rid of any Satanic binding. Since she started praying, the difficulty seems to have increased inside of me. Perhaps she accelerated something and I will feel better further along. Perhaps she is being taught a new way to look at things. I have had people pray for me before, without noticeable improvement and sometimes the trial increased. I remain of the view that the only safe prayer is “God’s will be done, whatever it is.”

I wrote not long ago that I figured when I was given a pass on running for Mayor of Key West this year, that the angels would find something to replace that, to keep me loaded up. Looks like I figured correctly. Maybe the angles saw the Bell’s palsey coming, and they didn’t see any reason for me to attend candidate forums with half of my face not working and my speach slurred and drool coming out of my mouth. It hasn’t gotten that far along, and I sure hope it doesn’t get that far along. But given how its gone for me in the past, I don’t expect it ever to be easy.

I was invited to go fishing Saturday. Can’t see spending a day on a boat, even with an air-conditioned cabin, feeling like I’ve been feeling inside. Now the Bell’s palsy symptoms on top of that, and other symptoms. Maybe I should hope nobody prays for me to feel better. Maybe the angels on my case don’t like having to deal with prayers that conflict with the path the angels have me on. Maybe the angels send their sentiments back through me, for me to pass along to the people who pray for me to feel better. A hell of a thing to say, but then, I’m living it.

When someone asks me to pray for him or her, or for someone else, I get quiet, go inside of myself, allow my heart to open, if it wants to open, which nearly always it does. Then, I pray, “Let whatever needs to happen for this person happen.” That’s the total prayer.

If God tells me how to pray for someone, I make that prayer, verbatim.

When asked in my sleep three nights before 911, “Will you make a prayer for a divine intervention for the species?”, I awoke, said, “I ask for a divine intervention for the species.” That was the total prayer. Am still looking for evidence of the divine intervention, which I know was implemented, but I do not yet see in what way.

Maybe more later.

Ciao, meanwhile

Later, after a longish nap filled with dreams on various subjects. In one dream, I was criticized for how I’m dealing with the cancer lesion by somebody I knew in the dream but not otherwise. In the next dream, the lesion was gone and only a pinkish skin was left of it. Other dreams about other matters. In the last dream, it seems I was chided for not posting this above already. Yet if I had posted it already, I would not have had in it the brief explanation of how I induce visisions, which I added after waking up. Otherwise, it’s the same as before I took the nap. The Bell’s palsy seems to be about the same as before I took the nap. I hope this is as far as it’s going to go.

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

The original tar baby story, not the one told by Walt Disney in Song of the South, ends with the rabbit still stuck in the tar baby and the fox firing up his cookpot to have the rabbit for dinner.

Morticia of Locust Fork replies to yesterday’s live like I wuz rich   post. I’m beginning to wonder if she might be a close relation of Eve, curious, adventuresome, not inclined, like Adam, to sit around like a bump on a log doing mindless things. She raises good questions about important parts of the Bible, and being as she is female, and the Bible was written by men, except in couple of places, she deserves for what they are worth answers she probably won’t get in any churches around Locust Fork, or anywhere else.

Good morning, Sloan.

Really deep today.. And as for Paul being gay. Is he the one that was always leaning against Jesus in that picture of the last supper and always having his head in somebody’s lap in the scriptures and I do not mean anything sexual about that. I have always thought that about him being gay. Jesus and MM being married. YEP always thought that also. Or thought maybe they were a couple. I don’t understand why God would be so much on marriage and not let him marry or be with someone. I guess it is up to what the individual gets out of the scriptures. That is one reason I never say anything against anyone’s religion or beliefs. Everybody has a different relationship with God and we all see things in a different light.

You know my take on Eve. Sex in the garden with Satan and then with her husband. Cain belonged to Satan and Abel to Adam.

Otherwise why would God put childbearing pains on women???? Why would he just have said he was going to rot out our teeth or some punishment that fit the crime of “eating an apple.”

I guess it is one of those things that will be revealed to us when we get to where he is. Hopefully it is like it says by his grace because if it is by the way most of us live.. We don’t have a chance. No one is perfect.

ENJOYED THE “CHAPTER” TODAY VERY MUCH.

Morning, Morticia.

Many gears to this here 18 wheeler what I got put on to tour the galaxy in, so to speak. Yes, today’s post is deep. Deep always lurks nearby, even when I’m cutting up. Like the tides, sometimes I’m in shallow water, sometimes I’m in deep water, sometimes in between water. Ever shifting, I never know what’s coming next until I see it, although I nearly always feel its approach in my soul and body.

Paul is not in the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As far as is seen in the New Testament, Paul never met the man Jesus in the flesh, but was confronted by him in a vision on the road to Dasmascus and was asked, “Why do you persecute me, Saul?” Or something like that. Saul was Paul’s name then. He was struck blind, it says, and the account of him becoming Paul and a vigorous “second generation” disciple is provided in Acts of the Apostles, which is the fifth book in the New Testament. Also in Acts, is a good description of Peter’s life and the community that gathered around him.

I think maybe it is in Paul’s letter to the Romans that he explains the pecking order: Christ is to the head of a man, as a man is to the head of his wife, and only through her husband can a woman know Christ. In that or another letter, Paul tells his followers he wishes they are like him, celibate, and maybe in that letter, or in another, he tells his followers they should stop having sex because Christ is returning soon and there is no point in producing more children. I recall nowhere in the New Testament mention of Paul being married or having children, although he had been a Pharisee when he was Saul, and it was a Jewish man’s solemn duty, especially if he was a Pharisee, I suppose, to marry and propagate the chosen people. Being Jewish, being a man, being a rabbi, it was Jesus’ solemn duty to God to do the same, don’t you think?

While I enjoy reading about Paul in Acts of the Apostles, I often have grumbled to the angels and to people, and have written in posts, that Paul did a great deal of harm to Christendom with his male supremacy and anti-sex teachings. So far, the angels have not called me to task on any of that. Nor on my oft saying Paul was homosexual, probably not active, probably he really was celibate, but perhaps not all of his life. Perhaps that was the thorn in his flesh he wrote of in one of his letters. Perhaps that was why, in one of his letters, Paul said homosexuality was an abomination. Perhaps his drive to establish churches and grow large congregations was a displacement for his never having married or had children – his churches and congregations were his children.

I do not criticize Paul for being gay. In fact, that he was tells me how God feels about people being gay, in as much as Saul clearly was stopped in his tracks and turned around, and retooled, and then sent forth to speak for God about Jesus. I have no doubt that happened, and I have no doubt God had no prejudice against Paul being homosexual. In fact, it bears some humor, divine wit, that God would select a self-righteous homosexual persecuter of Christians, who caused many of them to be killed by the Romans, when they did not recant Jesus, to be a bearer of Jesus’ tidings to many people.

Paul was literate, was a Roman citizen, probably spoke Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew. He was clearly spiritually gifted, but he clearly was prejudiced against sex and against women, neither of which prejudices Jesus demonstrated in the Gospels. Au contraire, Jesus extolled marriage and man-woman relations and having children. And, let us not forget, Jesus first appeared outside the tomb to three women after he returned, and he told one of them, Mary Magdalene, to go to the men disciples and tell them she had seen him and he had said he would be with them shortly.

Jesus did nothing by happenstance. He meant to send a loud and clear message, which Peter clearly did not care to receive. Quite bewildered and angry was Peter, that Jesus had sent a woman with such news. If Jesus would send a woman, why not also later send a homosexual? I bet the ranch every woman who knew Paul personally, knew he was homosexual. And I bet they did not keep that to themselves. How the Catholic church has kept Paul’s sexual orientation suppressed, and also has kept suppressed the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus, tells me, at least, that the Catholic church is Paul’s church, not Peter’s.

Not just a few times have I told Christians to lay off reading and talking about Paul, and pour on the coals reading and talking about and living Jesus. Most Christians I have known seem to have elevated Paul to Jesus status, which never occurred to me to do. Paul was a great apostle, but he was not Jesus, and he caused, my opinon, more harm than good. I still wish the New Testament had not included his letters, but had left in his story in Acts of the Apostles.

Peter’s story in Acts is equally important, for it describes the dream he had repeatedly in one night, which prepared him to take Jesus to the Gentiles, which Peter, a devout Jew, would not otherwise have done, for devout Jews had no dealings with Gentiles. Also very important in Acts is the description of the communal way Peter and his community lived. With one exception, they put what they had, little or great, into a common pot, and all were given back what they needed to get by. The one exception is quite interesting, and I leave that for you to pull out a bible and read for yourself. It’s a right up your alley story, Morticia.

I imagine the only disciple’s lap Jesus lay his head on belonged to Mary Magdalene.

I had not thought of Cain perhaps having a different father than Adam. What also intrigues me, Adam and Even were the only two people, according to Genesis. But later in Genesis, Cain goes off to the Land of Nod to find himself a wife. There is a take in The Urantia Book on who Eve had sex with, which is closer to your theory than anything I have heard said in Christendom. Maybe it wasn’t the devil but was another man Eve had sex with, instead of Adam. Maybe a disciple of the devil encouraged it, without the other man and Eve realizing what was going on; maybe they thought they were doing what God wanted them to do? That’s what The Urantia Book sez happened, and that Eve was not supposed to do that just yet, and that was why it caused such a big commotion. Adam and Eve both were supposed to seed the evolutionary human population, but only after other things were accomplished. Eve jumped the gun. Then Adam, realizing what would befall her, went out and spread his seeds around, so he could stay with her, so much did he love her. Thus, the super man and the super woman, who had been imported from another world, where super men and super women were the norm, fell together on this world. According to The Urantia Book anyway. The Urantia Book also says monogomy was a human invention on this world, and that marriage also was a human invention. Don’t expect I’ll ever hear The Urantia Book’s version of Adam and Eve, and of lots of other things, told in a church. Google Urantia Book, plenty there to read. Lot more than what’s in the Bible. But nothing “heretical” I write here today about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Paul is in The Urantia Book.

Sloan

Morticia’s reply:

I cant answer back right now… I am about to get off the computer.. But I remember reading something about Adam’s daughters. They were never mentioned name wise just said Daughters of Adam.. So evidentially those two boys were not the only ones they have. I will tell you when I can what I think about some things.. Crazy as they seem… Sometimes I think too much …. Dont we all.. And I will find the scripture about one about the person laying his head in Jesus lap.. I think it was John that was always up against him… Maybe Cain took one of his sisters as a wife. Never know. M

My rejoinder:

Well, if it was one of Adam and Eve’s daughters what Cain married, why does Genesis say Cain went off to the Land of Nod to find a wife, when his sisters lived right next door, or in the next tree house over, or in the next cave down the ravine, or whatever?

When I put that question to a Keys fellow, who was making a big commotion about the Bible and his righteousness, he said what you said, Cain married a sister, that’s how it was done back in those days, since there were so few people. I had to give him credit for seeing the problem, but he did not explain why Cain had to go to the Land of Nod to find one of his own sisters to marry. More important, this fellow did not explain how come all-knowing God, who knew all there was to know about human genetics – right?- set it up so brothers would marry sisters and turn the entire seed race into Appalachian inbreeds? Just don’t make no sense to me that all-knowing God would do something like that. Makes lots more sense that there were other people, but Adam and Eve were special kind of people, which is how The Urantia Book explains it.

In fact, that book says there were people on this planet a very long time before Adam and Eve were installed here. Lots of different kinds of people, and some wuz primitives and a few were super people, but not doing all that well cause of a Fall before the one Adam and Eve did. Part of their installation on this planet, as its eventual civic rulers, so to speak, was to try to correct the previous Fall, as well as educate the people geographically near them in better/higher ways to live, and eventually to breed with them, producing hybrid children superior to the local folk and more like Adam and Eve. Upgrading the race in that way, with those children turning around and doing the same, and their children turning around and doing the same. Got all screwed up, but still there was some upgrade from Adam and Eve inbreeding with the locals. You might find the history of human beings in The Urantia Book interesting. It’s easy to Google online.

Ciao

Sloan

Post-script:

In Genesis, it says plain as day that man, the species, was created in God’s image, male and female alike. In the face of that, how do I argue God is HE, MALE?

Then, Genesis seems back up and start over, and the Adam and Eve story is told. As if there were two human origin stories, and Adam and Eve was the second in time.

How do you s’pose the Bible would read if women had written it?

What do you s’pose might happen if Christ comes back as a she? 

Looks to me the reason childbirth is painful is because the baby is somewhat bigger than the delivery channel.

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

From Morticia out in Locust Fork, Alabama yesterday, responding to yesterday’s “diary of a redneck mystic” exposition.

Here’s ya one!

Here’s another one.

Couldn’t decide if this angel was flipping off something/someone or rocking out.

Ciao

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

Yesterday brought in a romp through the backroads of the recesses of the memories of what’s still left of my obviously seriously demented mind, to believe my critics, which sometimes I do, although not for the reasons they hold forth. Just because stuff goes on between my ears don’t always mean it comes out of my mouth or pen or computer. Never know when another Nurse Rachet will show up with all her cuckoo relations.

The wild-man photo above was taken by Josie Koler, Key West Bureau Chief of The Weekly Newspapers, on Smathers Beach in Key West, during the 2009 city races. We met there at Josie’s suggestion because I was promoting a nude beach in my mayoral platform, to viagra up the limp Key West economy without having to spend any taxpayers’ money promoting it, because word of mouth and the Internet would have promoted it instantaneously world wide. Alas, two alases, actually. The Puritans killed the idea, and Josie didn’t seem to want to join me in the buff for the interview and photo shoot. If you ever saw Josie, you’d know she would stop the music, if she showed up anywhere in the buff. I would stop the music, too, but not in the same way. I got over getting nekkid outside on Maui. I was only into a nekkid beach for the money it would bring to Key West.

This wild man campaign ad was invented by amiga Sandy Downs, only the face belonged to me, sadly.

Back on planet earth, a general comment yesterday to goodmorningbirmingham.com:

Dear Bash,
I have so enjoyed reading about you. You are a wonderful man, and very much,a man of God.
I too have dreams, and angels, and totally understand what you are talking about.
The holy spirit is a wonderful thing to have, and I don’t know what I would do without it. I would be afraid to walk out of my home without knowing that it is around me, as well as the angels.
I am from Birmingham and enjoy all your stories.
I look forward to reading you daily and pray that God keeps you under his wings, and that you will be feeling good very soon.
Remember, I keep you in my prayers daily.
Best wishes to you,
Marilyn

Hi, Marilyn, thanks. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like not to have the Holy Spirit’s agents on my case day and night, then I remember who I was before she sent them swooping in, in early 1987, and I shudder to think what I would be today if I had been left unattended. Thanks for your prayer, too. Feeling good would be nice, I think. Do I know you from one of my past lives in Birmingham? How did you find this webiste?, is another way of asking that question. Bash

Sancho Panza replies to yesteday’s 27 virgins and stuff  post:

From a proud member of the fringe brigade… sooooooo…. drum rolllllllll:

since feeling is first
e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis

Ah, so. Indeed, Sancho, a member of the fringe you are. Irrascible, irreverent, skeptical, cheeky, mischievous you, one must wonder how a scientist such as yourself escaped being totally nailed shut in a little wooden box, then I ponder super brains like Einstein and Hawking speaking of God and I have hope some day science will discover God, or enough of it that enough circumstantial evidence exists that reasonable doubt doesn’t – probably, the evidence already is found but isn’t yet seen by the seekers for what it is. Meanwhile, have you checked your wind guage today? Is there enough breeze to move windmills to turn and more sagas to roust us onto our steeds to sally forth? Don Q

Amiga Patti replies to Sloan grammar slam in yesterday’s “27 virgins and stuff” post:

 
Some of our best authors start their sentences with words similar to AND and SO. Can’t recall the author right now, but I distinctly remember AND being the first word of one respected author’s novel. Writing is about communication and the appropriate format and style changes depending on whether the intent is formal or casual. The need to point out other’s errors tells me more about the nitpicker than the person committing the grammatical offense. More than once I’ve seen a person online pointing out the mistake of another ending the rant by name calling. Shouting MORAN!!!

My reply:

It did occur to me to flip Paul a bird when he started in on me. Iffens the truff be told, I starts off lots of sentences with AND, and use patois words like WUZ and AIN’T, and make up words and spell them different just because I feels like it, or just because it seems to say it better. And I ain’t got no problem with ending sentences with prepositions when that sounds like how I, or someone else, would talk who don’t have a long broomstick stuck way up de ass. Cussin often demands a premium. Despite the determined incursion of grammar school, high school and college English courses, some pretty advanced, and law school and practicing law English, I still speak three languages pretty well: American English, Redneck and Dialect, en sumtimes I mixes dems ups with pidgen French en Spanish en Latin. I always tries to write in res ipsa loquitur so’s Americans can understand it with having to run to a dictionary or their mamas, even if they don’t like the way I wrote it, or what I wrote about it, or about them. I figure if I ain’t getting slammed, I ain’t doing something write.

Maybe what broke the lock wuz a poem dat what fell outta me in the spring of 1994, in the middle of a bunch of other poems dat what fell out of me round about dat time, after I went to a Sunday gathering of lost people, not in a church, and somebody said maybe we all should close our eyes and ask God what we could do to best serve God?, and when I closed my eyes, into my inner sight came a beautiful white quill writing pen, I felt the brush of angels wings on my back and I got teary-eyed and I got up and left where I wuz cause I didn’t want nothing to go and happen there that might have messed it up. That night stuff started falling out of me into my writing journal that had me weeping and shaking for a good while, like weeks, and toward the tail hind end of it came the poem I menshuned above that maybe broke de lock. Sometimes I recite it in school book American English, sometimes I tells it in other ways:

–Who, yes, please tell me who invented the rule that poetry must rhyme, have pentameter, or be cast into verse? Yes, please tell me who, just who, invented that really silly rule? Surely it warn’t de maka ob de furst stone – udderwiz der’d be no stones to brake all dem slavin rules!!!–

Now iffens some folks think dat ain’t a poem cause it ain’t laid out in no verses, they never got the drift of Dead Poet’s Society, and like the folks in that super duper important tail twister who didn’t get the drift, they need a brain transplant, but furst, maybe a heart transplant would be required to help their new brain get to working better than de old one. In fact, if they don’t think dis here entire post is poetry, they need the same emergency medical help. From all I can see, all of life is poetry but the mind makes it into something unintelligible.

Maybe I got sidelaned and went and left off the trail to telling about some things that didn’t get wrote down in a book I didn’t write.

In late August, 1999, I was told in my sleep to take a vacation from my work, which at the time was trying to be married to a woman I was head over heels with, who attended St. Luke’s Episcopal in Crestline in The Tiny Kingdom, about whom I wrote a bit a while back. Now, she was not all that terribly excited about my saying the vacation would be to get away from her and I would hitchhike from Birmingham to Seattle or Canada, or maybe Alaska. But by then, she knew I sometimes did really weird shit because I was told to do really weird shit, and so she took me to the intersection of Finley Avenue and I-65 in north Birmingham and let me out at the northbound ramp. Before she was a block away, I was in a pickup truck headed north.

That ride got me about half way to Cullman, and pretty quick I was in another pickup truck headed to Cullman. That ride got me to the south end of Cullman, and pretty soon I was in another pickup that got me to an intersection on I-65 on the other side of the big hill on the north side of Cullman. I was let off at a little truck stop in the middle of nowwhere, and after hanging there a while, I left and walked over to the northbound ramp. I was wearing a baseball cap, a T-shirt, shorts, socks and Merrill rough-terrain walking shoes, and I had a small backpack. And polaroid sunglasses like I used to wear when I bonefished in the Florida Keys. And, I had a water bottle and some trail mix and probably some seaweed.

It was a seriously hot day, and I was roasting and sweating in the maybe 5 pm 100 degree sun for about an hour, when I saw this 18 wheeler with what looked like a flatbed loaded up with something headed down off the next mountain over toward my now dry roasted carcass. The rig slowed and turned up the northbound ramp and stopped and picked me up. The driver, about 35ish, asked where I was headed? Seattle, Canada, Alaska, didn’t have that part figured out yet. He said he had a friend over in the Tri-cities, who was going to come over and meet him, and he could give me a ride to the Huntsville Highway (US 72, as I recall, goes all the way to Memphis across north Mississippi). I said I knew the road, had driven it a few times; that was a busy intersection, I could get a ride north there, thank you.

We got to talking, then he made a cell phone call, and after he was done with that, we got to talking again. Before I realized it, we were passing by that rocket ship in the median up above Athens, he had not let me out at the Huntsville Highway. When I asked about that, he said that was his friend he had called, and he couldn’t make it over, so I was going to get to go a little farther with him. I asked were he was headed, he said Fargo, North Dakota, to deliver a load from a mill near Culman. I asked did that mean I got to ride with him to Fargo? He said he didn’t know that just yet. I said no problem, although Fargo was on I-90, which went straight to Seattle.

We talked some more. He said he really should not even have met me, because he had already loaded up to go somewhere else, but soon after leaving the yard, he realized his load was loose and he went back to get that straightened out, and then was told to drop that trailer and hitch to a trailer with a dead-end load for a company in Fargo. So he hitched to the new trailer and headed out, and that’s how he met me instead of going somewhere else entirely.

He was smoking cigarettes and reefers in rotation, non-stop. When he offered me a toke, I said no thanks, the stuff gave me migraine headaches the next day. He said he didn’t think his homegrown would do that. I said lots of homegrown had done that in the past, so I had to give it up, since I didn’t like migraine headaches. He said okay.

Then, he told me the narcs had spotted his weed patch from a helicopter and he got busted and had to do the legal redemption thing. After that cooled off, he grew another weed patch, but this time he staked the plants down on the ground so they ran like squash and cucumber, and when the helicopter flew over, it didn’t recognize what it was. I laughed hard.

He also told of getting religion almost, but when he and his wife attended a church that was courting them, and after getting there they were offered proper clothes to wear the next time they came, they decided they didn’t ought to be getting religion, and I laughed hard, said they had decided good.

That’s when the idea hatched that I wuz field researching a book I would call Diary of a Redneck Mystic, and when I told him that, he laughed hard and started telling me more stories, and I was writing hard and fast into my writing journal, as he chain-smoked cigarettes and reefers and I gasped for breath, never having smoked a cigarette in my life and having given up weed many years before.

Somewhere in Indiana, I fell asleep, somehow, the shotgun seat was not comfortable for snoozing, and I kept dozing off and my head kept falling over and my neck kept snapping my head back up, but finally I went out. When we neared a place he wanted to stop for the night, I woke up.

He asked if I had seen what had happened? No. A car driving south on I-65 had lost control, crossed the median and our northbound lane just in front of an 18 wheeler right in front of us; then the car came to a stop upright on the shoulder, nobody got hurt. I chuckled, said I bet the driver of that vehicle and the driver of the 18 wheeler in front of us gave serious thanks to God. My host said, probably so. Then, I said it was God’s way of letting me know I was being looked after on this adventure. No response to that.

We reached a truck stop where he liked to lay over, and he fueled up and said he was going to call it a night. I said I would go into the truck stop and try to get a motel room nearby. Alas, there was a big car race of some kind around there, and all the motel rooms were taken. But the ladies keeping the store said there was a couch upstairs I could sleep on. I went back to the truck and told my ride this, and asked if I was traveling with him in the morning? He said he didn’t know yet. I said thanks for the ride so far and maybe I would see him in the morning. His motel was the sleeper in the back of his cab.

I was up before he was moving around the next morning, and went downstairs and ordered breakfast and started talking with the women. When they asked what I was doing hitchhinking, I told them some of what you already read and about the book I was researching, and they started telling me stories and said they couldn’t wait to read it. The fellow from near Cullman came in, had breakfast as I continued to cut up with the ladies. Then, he said let’s go, so we left.

We drove only stopping for fuel. Maybe 100 miles east of Fargo, maybe 7 p.m., he brought up the near bad wreck on I-65, after some other discussion about “demonstrations” I probably had started. He said he didn’t believe that near bad wreck was a demonstration, but was just one of those things that happens. I said I knew a demonstration when I saw one, and that was a demonstration for everyone involved: the driver of the car that lost control, and any passengers passengers in that car and their families and friends; the truck driver ahead of us on the northbound side of I-65, and his family and friends; my host and his family and friends; and me and my relatives and friends. My host grew quiet again.

After we reached Fargo and he was letting me out at an intersection where there was a motel and restaurant, he looked at me, said, “You aren’t what you appear to be.” I said, “That’s right, but you never had anything to worry about from me.” For all I knew, he thought I was an ET, I didn’t ask what he meant precisely. I was darn glad to have gotten a 1300 mile ride, and darn glad not to have gotten into a bad accident.

No, I never took LSD, mushrooms, peyote, mescaline, or anything like that. Although when I was at Vanderbilt, where I eventually took enough English and Literature courses to have a major I never claimed, me and some of my friends were convinced we were keeping Busweiser out of bankruptcy court. Then were the later times aliens abuducted me and after a few earth days they decided they had screwed up real bad again and brought me back to where they had snatched me. I’m seriously starting to freak out that maybe the mother ship what dumped me here ain’t never coming back.

Maybe another installment later, in this poem disguised as a story.

Hasta la vista and au revoir meanswhile.

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

 Honky tonk angels

Yesterday from Paul, a Birmingham amigo, mostly responding to yesterday’s perhaps a farewell to arms (Key West politics) post.

So, today is the filing deadline for the Key West mayor’s race, and here I sit writing in the chair I have sat writing in at Walden since moving back here during the Spring Equinox of 2010. No place to live in Key West, I cannot file to run for mayor there. A relief to me. I’m tired. I ache. I don’t like politics. While there was some rush in playing the clown, fool, or whatever at candidate forums, there never was any rush in thinking about actually serving in office. To the contrary, it was a seriously scary thought, not only because I never felt up to it physically, but also because I never felt emotionally suited to all the social and official requirements of the job, and I very much do not like working in committees, which city commission meetings are. Perhaps more determinative of my mood than anything else, I never saw any idea I floated to help the city used, and I don’t see that would change, if I were elected, even if the angels lifted all the other off of me, so I felt physically and emotionally suited for the position. Yes, I bring the angels into this yet again, because it was they who had me run for mayor three times in the past. But for them, I would not have run even once for mayor, nor for the county commission, for which I also ran three times, with the same sentiments and results. I caught a great deal of flack for speaking of being told by angles what to do, which I knew would happen before let that cat out of the bag. I would have been insane to believe saying angels told me to run for office would be well received. I also would have been insane to have acted as if I was coming up with what some people thought were really good ideas and suggestions, which the truth was, I was being fed the ideas and suggestions by angels. Taking credit for something I did not myself come up with is a seriously bad idea in my neighborhood. I wish Key West and whoever ends up in office this year all the best. I enjoy coming down for a visit, I might even enjoy living there again, but right now I’m wondering if I’m even going to be kept in the Keys. For all I know, I’m going to be relocated, perhaps back to Birmingham, Alabama. Or perhaps I will split my time between there and Walden. Never know what the angels have up their sleeves, until they roll up their sleeves and show me. Even as late as the day before yesterday, I figured they would somehow manage to get me into the Key West mayor’s race, but they didn’t, so I take that as their way of saying not this year, and I hope not again. I never wanted to get into politics in the first place, which the angels well knew. They also knew I would do what they told me to do because they had let me learn the consequences of not doing what they told me to do.

So, let’s put that aside and let me share something that came my way yesterday from out of the blue, because it addresses the very first social political issue I was asked by the angels to address in Key West.

______________________________

Sloan

Been watching your struggle to get people to understand your point of view on homelessness in your area. Would like to share my own experience being homeless, on purpose, somewhere else in America. But first, let me say I am a licensed clinical social worker, and before I obtained that credential and put it into practice, I was an ordained minister. Seminary trained, not mail order. I pastored two churches before going back to college to obtain clinical social worker credentials. In both areas of work, I had extensive dealings with homeless people through outreach efforts. Eventually, I felt moved by God to become homeless myself. I went to a different city in a different state from where I lived and worked, and I lived on the street for close to fifteen months, at which time I was told by God to go home and return to the work I was doing before I went into the field.

I will not recount my experiences living on the street. Suffice to say, it was not easy for me and it was eye-opening. I came away from it with the same view you express about people who have been homeless for a long time. It has become their way of life. It is not possible to talk them out of it. As you write, only God can change homeless people such as these. I did not believe this before I went onto the street myself. I did not believe it after I had been on the street for a while. But along about the fifth month, I started to believe it. I started to see homelessness to this degree, chronic, intractable, like I had come to view psychological disorders. I came to view homelessness as a symptom of a spiritual disorder that defied conventional perspective and values.

Yes, even before this field training, I had come to view psychological disorders as symptoms of spiritual unrest, trauma and, in some cases, it seemed demonic influence. I am not trained in deliverance or exorcism, and I did not attempt it. What I did do was observe people who were treated with prescribed drugs for different psychological disorders. In most cases, I saw a change in behavior and affect, but I also saw new behavior and affect that seemed to be a product of the drugs these people were taking, and not a product of their own individual expression. And I saw side effects, often very bad side effects. And I saw more drugs prescribed to treat the side effects, and these drugs caused even more side effects. I did not see one person healed, and I saw quite a few people seem to get worse than they were before they started taking drugs for their psychological disorder.

I also worked with people trying to recover from chemical addiction, alcohol, street drugs, prescription narcotics. I formed the same opinon of them. Their addiction was not the disease, but was just a symptom of the disease. The disease was much deeper, in the soul. I saw no reaching the disease through conventional methods. I did not see 12 step programs reaching the disease. I did not see going to church and reading the Bible reaching the disease. What I saw was treating the symptoms of the disease, while the disease escaped treatment and often even notice.

I also observed people who were not so outwardly troubled, but inwardly a tension, an unease, a wobble was evident, if I was open to seeing or hearing or feeling or sensing it. I observed how these people coped with their own discomfort. I concluded I knew no one, including myself, who was not suffering from the disease, which had many ways of expressing itself. I concluded that people who coped better had stronger psyches, stronger coping methods, but deep down inside were just as troubled as people who drew all the attention to themselves and became unacceptable to conventional viewpoint and behavior requirements.

It took a while longer for me to conclude the reason conventional thinking reacts the way it does to symptoms of the disease that violate the boundaries conventional thinking accepts is because, at some level, conventional thinking knows it not only has the disease itself, but also it knows it is the cause of the disease. So, yes, what is the disease? The disease, no clinical trial will ever prove this, is a fractured relationship with God. Yes, you and I arrived at the same conclusion, even though you have none of my conventional training. But clearly you had training in this area, for you to come to the conclusions you have reached.

That’s your problem. Your training has no letters behind it to put on a diploma or whatever. You are field trained and credentialed. You received no authorization from conventional thinking and institutions. Therefore, you have no credibility, even though you have superior credentials. I cannot imagine what pressure you could bring to bear on someone, if you really set your mind to it. You seem able to read people far better than they read themselves. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be married to you, which fortunately is not possible, as we both are men who like being with women.

My advice to you, which, of course, you can only consider in the light of what your spiritual guidance says to you: You are wasting your breath trying to convince the city officials in Key West that they are wasting their time and taxpayer money in any effort to change long-term homeless people. They will never believe you. Just like mental health professionals, just like ministers, the city officials believe, if they try hard enough, if they throw enough effort and money and different ideas and methods at it, they will prevail. They will not prevail, and you will not persuade them that they will not prevail.

If I were you, I would put my time and effort elsewhere. You seem supremely gifted, but my sense is you only can help people who have given up on conventional thinking and methods. You can provide help to people who have given up hope and view you as their last hope. They are so desperate they will risk turning to you for help and risk the criticism they surely will receive from other people, if it is found out they are using you to try to help them.

My sense from what I have read that you have written, you promise no cures. You promise only spiritual progress, as long as people who come to you are willing to endure the changes they are going to have to make to keep changing, keep moving away from where they were to where they can go. You promise nothing beyond that, and, as I understand it, you do it pro bono. My understanding also is, you don’t put up with smoke and mirrors, and you have no problem telling someone to go away, it isn’t working.

All of that is so contrary to conventional mental health and pastoral counseling methods that it could be viewed as heresy. However, it is in keeping with how Jesus ministered to people. He had time for those who wanted to change, and he showed the rest the way to the door.

Feel free to publish this, if you wish. You likely will not hear from me again. Well, not if I have any say in it. I already stuck my neck way out. I now have a family to support and social and professional relations I would like to keep. Perhaps by the time I reach your age, I will not feel so constrained.

Namaste

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I told Todd German and my distant in-law Ron yesterday, if I wrote something like what you just read and nobody knew I had written it, mental health professionals and ministers who read it would agree with it, as it pertained to the diagnoses of homelessness and other outward expressions of the disease. I agree, and have felt for some time, it is time for me to move on to something else.

Ciao

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com