The Land of Roundabouts

York's cathedral

It's difficult to switch mindsets from months of dealing with plans and emails and phone calls to actually lugging an extremely heavy carry-on through real-life, present-day RDU.

Just as it was interesting to consider that the next gate over was the Delta flight to Paris, scheduled to leave four minutes after us. Hm. Do you think anyone would notice if…?

Wondering turned to boredom, though, when one found oneself inside a plane sitting for 2 1/2 hours on the tarmac because wave after wave of thunderstorms were coming through. If we'd just left fifteen minutes earlier…

Ah well. One twisted pretzel of a body later (see the last post on American Airlines' seating arrangements), and we landed at Heathrow! Along with three other major flights. Which meant about 1500 people standing in line at Customs, staring at the large "UK BORDER" signs between us and… the UK. British and EU people got to zip through lanes that had zero people in queue. They kept looking at us quizzically, obviously wondering if they were in the wrong line.

The Hilton Kensington was able to release a room to me, even though it was mid-morning. I hit the sack, not knowing that at least one other person in my tour had to sit downstairs for hours before she got a room. Got up to wander out to try to find dinner/lunch, and wound up at a place that had the last salad I'd see for over a week. It was a WONDERFUL salad. WONDERFUL (hot) tea. Stinky service and so-so entree.

This was a bus tour, which meant bags by the door before we went down to breakfast. Actually, a half-hour before we breakfasted, because on this first day we only had a half hour (theoretically) to get breakfast. Because two other tours were leaving at the same time, this meant that EVERYONE was in line for the dining room at the same time. Names had to be looked up, checked off, and then someone found to escort the person in to a table. Some people weren't on the tours, and so they had to pay up front while the host conferred with others about this anomaly. Upshot: Five minutes for breakfast! Inhale your food!

Riding on the wrong side of the road didn't seem that strange. What WAS strange was that the driver was on the wrong side, and you got on and off the bus on the wrong side. (Side note: I found the pedestrian crossings in London that had been hand-painted with "LOOK LEFT!" and "LOOK RIGHT!" on the street to be extremely helpful. Very likely life-saving. I heard MANY stories of people who weren't used to this wrong-side driving and almost got brained when they automatically looked the "wrong" way.)

But what was strangest of all were all the roundabouts. Everywhere was a roundabout! Big ones, medium-sized ones, little ones that had painted circles instead of a constructed center island. Compound ones. Ziiip! Around you went! On one series, I thought I was getting a tad seasick. Some roundabouts had 3 or 4 lanes, and each lane was labelled with what road you'd be on when you got out. If you got out. Handy.

Drivers seemed to be very polite. If someone was even thinking of entering a roundabout within 100 degrees on your right, you did not enter the circle. Though most streets were two-way, people had a tendency to park along both sides (partially on sidewalks), and there were no parking spaces provided, so the road was effectively a one-way street. Someone up ahead? Both cars pull to the side of the road. Whoever blinks their lights yields to the other.

So civilized. Well, except for London, but even at rush hour, it wasn't that bad. Not too many horns blared.

Shakespeare's birthplace

Our first stop was Stratford-on-Avon. We got off the bus to have a group photo taken across the street from Anne Hathaway's house. That done, our guide, Hillary, told us to enjoy the house -- and then hurried us past it! (Ah, bus tours.) I had time to hold up my camera and shoot some quick shots over the wall before we reboarded the bus.

Then it was deeper downtown, where we disembarked again, this time to hit Shakespeare's birthplace. That's actually fairly interesting, as they have it set up with furniture, household items, fake fires, etc. and the guides know what they're talking about. There are also some nice gardens in back and a great selection of souvenirs.

We were on our own for lunch and I tried a pasty, which is a calzone with a non-runny beef stew as the stuffing instead of pizza fixings. The cafe I went to had no seating, so I asked a couple who were seated at a table a few shops down if I could grab an extra chair and sit off a ways. They insisted I eat with them.

They lived in the area, and said how great it was. They told me the pasty I was eating was not a proper, tasty pasty at all. (It was mostly white-hot with little flavor.) We had a great conversation and then it was time to head back to the bus. Decided to hit the public loo but couldn't figure out what a 20 pence coin looked like in order to get in. A passerby took pity on me and gave me one gratis, whew! I got to the bus with about three minutes to spare.

But we waited. And waited. Robert hadn't returned. He was traveling on his own from Roanoke, VA. Some guys went out to search for 10 minutes, but they returned without him. We then discovered that, according to Trafalgar (the company running the tour) rules, a bus waits 1 hour for people and then takes off. We waited that hour, then Hillary called the town's tourist center, then the police. No sign of Robert. His bag with meds was still in the bus.

About 45 minutes after the hour mark, we took off in a slow circle of downtown with everyone peering out the windows for Robert. Everyone had their own idea of what he looked like. Just as we were finishing up the loop, the cops called Hillary and said he was at the tourist center. No, the tourist center never bothered to call. Yes, the tourist center knew where all the different Trafalgar buses parked, but they'd pointed Robert at another Trafalgar bus in their own lot, which was similarly unhelpful (!) in getting him back to the proper spot.

He'd gone out for toothpaste and such and had been directed to a certain store. There, the people had pointed him toward another store. And another. Until he'd wound up at the tourist center.

We discovered that he'd also gotten lost when he went to Milan.

But by now we all knew what Robert looked like. Everyone tried to keep at least half an eye on him as we traveled, and despite constant warnings, he was almost always off somewhere far away when it was nearing time to return to the bus. (He seemed a little on the slow side, though everyone gave him serious props for being a world traveler on his own. Hey, now I'm one of those, too!) One Australian lady in particular razzed him unmercifully all through the trip, pretending to care about his welfare but really getting a kick out of how embarrassed she could make him in public. Ever see Shirley Valentine? The buck-toothed British lady. That was her to a T.

The Shambles

So we were very late getting to York. All the stores were closed so we couldn't buy souvenirs. (I saw a solar powered, hula-ing Queen Elizabeth that I was mad for. Finally got her in London.) If we thought Stratford had been very Tudor-ish, York was that to the tenth power! After bypassing the drunk outside our hotel (he was waiting for the cops to pick him up and had created quite the entertaining scene), we strolled down "the Shambles," a place that reflects that really old history England has. It's mentioned in the Domesday Book. (It was also voted "Most Picturesque Street in Britain, 2010.") It was a narrow street that is a tourist mecca. It looks SO INCREDIBLY ENGLISH HISTORY!!! with the half-timbered places and such. At the end, the sun finally came out to send a burst of light upon the local cathedral (top of page).

Athena guarded a Shambles bookstore.

L'Ouse River, I think. York definitely.

There was a bridge. We kept passing over it as the sun set, but the guide gave us practically no warning and it came up suddenly. But it was sunset and there were houseboats and… oh man, it was GORGEOUS!!! My camera wouldn't fire quick enough to get a shot. The next morning I got some because I asked Hillary to warn us as she could. Paul the driver slowed down as much as possible so I could get some shots. I'll rig up a sunset scene when I do paintings from these.

We had a ho-hum dinner at a pub (I had tasteless fish and chips. Apparently it's supposed not to have any taste. Imho, England & etc. could use with a few useful condiments in every pub.) and returned to the hotel, where we couldn't deadbolt our rooms for safety reasons. "What if there was an emergency and we had to get in?" I was told. That plus the drunk in the lobby made me feel really safe. At least my room was on the 3rd floor, so crooks would have a difficult (but not impossible) time crawling into the windows I had to keep open because most British hotels have no air conditioning.

Trying to keep this in order. Hm. We drove past Nottingham and Sherwood Forest, and then stopped in Durham. The heck with the cathedral -- I wanted a "Durham, UK" tee shirt I could wear back in Durham, NC! There was a "Durham University" (not Dook!) in the town and a shop that was the official DU paraphernalia store. Unfortunately, graduation had just taken place and they were out of all tees except white ones. As a woman, I don't wear white tees. I also don't wear black ones, as I always wear black pants but am not goth. I settled for having a tee made in a little craft shop on the town square. As I waited, I listened to a lovely singer warbling away to the crowd in front of the local statue. The tee was finished, I found my requisite magnet (for the fridge) and postcard (for Mom in the nursing home), and toddled back to the bus, a cup of tea in hand. Nice town, if a bit touristy for what you saw.

We were riding through Northumberland, which is northeast Britain and was mentioned a lot in that British History for Dummies book I read before the trip (thank goodness). We used country roads whenever possible (otherwise on the, ah, whatever the term is for "interstate" over there the trip would have taken maybe 3 days and been boring as all get-out). The land was rolling farmland. Lots of sheep. (There'd be even more sheep in Scotland.) Farms were broken into parcels by hedges and stone walls, so the landscape looked like a huge game board. Things began to get a bit hillier as we approached Scotland.

The wall that kept the English out of Scotland! The circular
part is a kitchen, I think.

Hillary warned us not to get our hopes up about Hadrian's Wall. At this point, most of the stones have been taken for use by, well, everyone else in the country. The buildings were all made of the same stone. (And looked SO cute! I kept thinking, "I want a stone house!" I took millions of pictures of all the quaintness, and lots of reference pics of the stone walls every house seems to have out front. Wonder if I can get the same look from brick?)

We went to a pub for a fairly prepackaged lunch which was actually probably the tastiest group meal we had, though we had to pay for it. (Why? It was the only place in that village [Heddon-on-the-Wall] to eat. Still, the tour had gotten us an excellent price of 6 pounds per meal not including drink, and you couldn't beat that.) We saw the local church, checked out the local graveyard with two adorable elderly guides, and then walked a block or two to see the wall. Interesting to see its width. There are many other places that show it off better, but this was convenient for the bus tour.

Next: SCOTLAND!

General thoughts about traveling to Britain

Before I get into a real trip report of my Trafalgar tour of England and Scotland, I'd like to bring up a few points that might be of interest to people thinking about traveling in that direction.

First of all: plane ticket classifications

I signed up for economy class, of course. Imagine a city bus seat with higher seat back. Now make those seats about two inches closer together, front to back. If you're on American and have an aisle seat, imagine the foot room under the seat in front of you: half of it is now taken up by a wooden box. This is for future electronic connections that will allow TV screens on the back of each seat. As of now, there are no screens, other than the two or three that hang from the cabin ceiling. What this box also means is that, if you have two feet, there is only room to place one of them.

You will be forced to twist your body into the shape of a pretzel if you want to sleep during the 8 hours it takes to fly from NC to the UK. Or 10 and a half if there are thunderstorms in NC that prevent the plane from taking off. Because of the position, don't expect much sleep. It will take your body approximately 2 days afterward to straighten back to normal.

Two hours before landing, you're silently screaming, "Lord, take me now!" You don't even want to think about the return trip.

So when the screen at the airport greets you on that return trip and asks you if you want to upgrade, you dare to ask, "How much will it cost?" You stagger backward from the response but sign up anyway. "It's an experiment," you tell yourself. "I need to do this just once in my life to know what it entails." You are now Business Class Preferred, I think the designation is. This means that not only do you get to board first, but you can go to Lounge H in Heathrow to wait. Of course, Lounge H is about a mile from your boarding gate, but…

Your seat can recline without bothering the person behind you. You can recline all the way to a flat position to sleep with cozy quilt and pillow to coddle you. Your row mate will never hear you snore. Your seat has a tablet on which you can watch movies, TV, play games, etc. You have TWO arm rests that are yours alone, as well as a wide tray. You can stretch out your legs and then some.

(Note: I had bought a TRTL neck rest for this trip, and it worked out fairly well, especially on the return trip. The nicest thing is that you can slip the material up to just under your nose so that if you drool and/or hang your mouth open when you sleep, no one will notice.)

Instead of the (surprisingly okay) economy-class meal-on-a-dispenser-tray, you get tasty three-course meals presented on real plates. Your attendant comes around every 20 minutes or so to ask how things are going and would you like some more champagne? Maybe cheese and fruit? Did I mention those Bose earphones that blank out ALL cabin noise?

You feel loved. You feel pampered. Ahh. I am NEVER going economy class again on a flight that lasts more than four hours at a time.

More travel info

Let's go back to that Heathrow mention. In the entire American Airlines section, there are only TWO sets of bathrooms. One is behind a gated door which was not open when I looked, and the other was approximately a quarter-mile from my gate, and downstairs to boot. It held four stalls. Back at RDU, there are bathrooms about every 200 feet or so, filled with stalls. And yes, Heathrow's handicapped stall is on the same level as its gates so there are no stairs. But when your ticket says the plane starts to board at 9:10, and the plane's not set to lift off until 10:30, you hit that bathroom hard while you can. Then you discover that no, the gate opens at 9:10 (actually more like 9:15), and you go through all kinds of security crap and then you sit in the waiting room. Need to go once more before boarding? You are Out Of Luck.

Back to the original trip across: After a long delay and being pretzel-fied, you arrive in London! At the same time as three other major flights, which means there are approximately 1500 people in line at Customs who slowly shuffle forward. Finally! Through! You are to meet your driver, whom your travel agency has assured you has checked your arrival time and will be there waiting.

But he didn't, and he wasn't. He'd waited 2 hours from the original scheduled landing time, which eight hours before had been upgraded to include the delay. Luckily, there's someone at the desk who says, "No prob!" and packs you into a lush car to take you to the hotel. That car has proximity alarms and they go off every ten seconds or so as the driver weaves through London traffic. He's a hoot, though, and points out the local sights, of which none are historic.

Hotels in Britain

A few hotels are much like their American counterparts. When I say "a few," I mean the Hilton Kensington in London. The others we went to… weren't. Well, there was that one golf resort that was luscious, but even that had no A/C.

Air conditioning seems to be a luxury in GB. I went during a heat wave, and the nights were QUITE warm. Without A/C, you had to open windows (often over a busy street or at ground level, etc.), beg the front desk for a fan -- if they had any left -- and ask for a top sheet.

One thing that has really gotten me in recent years of travel is that hotels now only dress their beds with sheets and duvets. Duvets are fine if you're in a blizzard and the heat's not working well. But there should be something in between. Some hotels have a blanket in the closet, and that's great.

But GB hotels don't even seem to go in for top sheets. When you crawl into bed, you have a bottom sheet and then on top of you is the duvet. What's up with that? Are you going to tell me they launder a full duvet every time they change guests?

So you call down for a top sheet, and if they can get over their shock at that, it works well. As for the windows, they come with chains so that (theoretically) no one can break in from outside. If you're housed across the street from, say, Edinburgh's train station, you are also treated to loudspeaker announcements every few minutes as well as traffic noises and shouts from drunks passing below.

The windows also have no screens. I was assured that England has no mosquitos or rabid bats. So far I have resisted Googling the veracity of this.

The second night in England I couldn't understand why none of my lights worked. It seems that when you're issued a room key (in this case I'd been issued two), you immediately put one in a box next to the door. This turns on the electricity for the room to keep costs down. If you only have one key, this means that if you're recharging your electronics, they will not be recharging while you're away from the room with your key in hand. Some hotels will give you an extra key to avoid this situation.

Rooms also have minimal wall outlets. You have to unplug, say, your TV in order to plug in your iPad for recharging. Then your power adapter won't work. After buying a new set of adapters, I finally worked out a method of wedging the hair dryer (and sometimes the room phone as well) on top of the adapter that allowed it to hang OUT of the outlet far enough that connections were finally properly made. Some hotels I didn't have to do this, but in the majority I did.

British hotels have electric tea kettles. Hooray! These are not those nasty things they have in the US where people put in a thing of coffee on top and it brews and spits out (ugh) coffee, and if you want a cup of tea even though you ask the desk for a CLEAN pot, it still makes your tea taste like (ugh) coffee. These are pots that take water and water only, and your room is provided with lots of tea bags, packets of powdered coffee, sealed dollops of milk, and various sweeteners. There's usually a couple of shortbread cookies as well. (Shortbread is EVERYWHERE.)

Only the Hilton had washcloths. I am told this is the new thing: no washcloths. "Oh, but you don't know where they've been!" one of my fellow travelers told me with a wink. If hotels aren't washing everything in scalding bleach water, why am I trusting myself to sleep on their sheets? She told me that since she travels first class, she steals a washcloth (which are provided free to her) from the airlines and has quite a collection, which she uses in hotels. Other travelers told me just to use my hands, which provide all the abrasion I need to get the job done, right?

You may or may not find bar soap. Don't count on it. Now there's a tendency to use push-top bottles in both shower and by the bathroom sink. One hotel didn't even have separate bottles for body wash and shampoo/conditioner; it was all combined into one soapy concoction.

At the golf resort my luxury room had both a tub on one side of the large bathroom and a spacious shower on the other side. At another place we had circular showers (no tub) in our teeny bathrooms that were about 3/4 the diameter of a transporter pad on Star Trek. One guy said he dropped the bar soap while showering and had to give up. I know I couldn't bend over to attend to my lower legs.

Think like a hotel owner: How cheap can I make this and still advertise on the Internet? That's the idea behind many British hotels, or at least those the bus tours use.

Hotel bank machines

At the Hilton Kensington early one Monday morning, I used their ATM to get some money. Did I want a receipt? I said yes, and it said that the printer wasn't working and then… nothing. Wha? I tried again, this time saying no receipt, and again… nothing. The concierge said that likely the machine was out of money and my account hadn't been charged.

"Likely."

I broke my own rule of never checking my bank balance when on hotel wifi. Sure enough, the machine had charged me, both times. Luckily, neither had gone through. Why? BECAUSE SOME JERK HAD HACKED MY BANK CARD in Florida two days before, and now my account was frozen!

So because my bank card had the international phone number in 2-point type on it, I spent about 40 minutes calling regular internationally to get things straightened out. Six days later, my new card arrived. Unfortunately, I can't use it in a machine because my new PIN is being sent separately, and no, the bank can't tell me what my new PIN is.

Argh.

Food

It's true about British food. For the most part it's tasteless. (I'll discuss the exceptions later.) If you're a diabetic, you are S.O.L. because everything is white bread. Even Yorkshire pudding is a big hunk of white bread. Meals are usually: protein, starch, bread, potatoes, starch, sugar, five peas, starchy sugar, bread with cheese, sugar.

I had a shrimp dish one night that the menu warned was extra spicy. It was shrimp and diced tomatoes. That was it. As far as I could tell, salt and pepper had not been involved, much less any other spices.

Another night I dined with a group of friends, eating at a tapas-kind of restaurant with non-tapas kinds of food. All I really wanted was a salad (see below). They actually had a nice tuna salad with some greens, but instead of keeping it to myself (mine! mine!) I had to share it with everyone else because that's what kind of dinner it was. Come to think of it, only one person reached over to grab a tomato.

At that same meal they served a bowl of melted cheese that supposedly had eggplant in it (there was a tiny sliver at the very bottom), and also another dish that consisted of unseasoned boiled potato cubes with a large garnish of mayo. (Mayo is very popular in the UK. Like shortbread, it is everywhere.) Me, I wanted to gag just looking at it. (Keep in mind this was near the very end of my vacation and my body was in full rebellion mode. For everyone else, this was a one-up affair; for me, it was just Day 11 of the Great British Non-Nutritional Baking Show.)

Vegetables? In England? Everyone assured me that they did indeed have veg: potatoes. Peas. An occasional tomato. Maybe a green leaf for garnish. I did see a few green beans here and there. But that was it. My final night in London at Jamie Oliver's place, I had to special order a "market salad" so it would be an actual salad. The waiter looked at me like I was nuts. And oh yes, my first night in London at a Moroccan place, I had a lovely, lovely salad with mint and stuff. Very nice. Thank you, Moroccans!

We'll cover this later...

We had "bus tour" buffet breakfasts every day that always had scrambled eggs, ham (which they referred to as "bacon"), grainy black pudding, grilled mushy tomatoes, beans, juice, tea/coffee, different kinds of bread… Sometimes there is fresh fruit and sausage links. Sometimes there is oatmeal. Sometimes, yogurt ("yoghurt").

So do take your fiber pills and vitamins along!

Drinks

I don't like alcohol unless it's a wine sauce. Therefore I had probs in the UK.

You have tea. Hot tea. That's standard enough. Sometimes there's coffee (ugh). And water, still or fizzy, which will cost $$ and isn't free. There's the entire gamut of alcoholic drinks available in most spots. "Soft drinks" usually consist of Coke and Diet Coke. Sometimes there is Sprite and sometimes something called ginger beer. "Is it like ginger ale? Or root beer?" "Oh yes." It's not. Ugh.

And then there is lemonade. Lemonade to me means either chemicals or sugar on top of sugar with a dash of lemon juice. In England there's sugar stuff being pushed on you from every direction already. The idea of more sugar…

But sometimes you get tired of water. Okay, gimme lemonade. It's either: (1) watered-down Sprite. Or, when you ask if it's watered-down Sprite and they vehemently tell you no, it's (2) watered-down Sprite with some gakky herb aftertaste.

You ask for iced tea. "Oh no," they laugh. "Iced tea? The idea!" One place assured me they'd make me some iced tea. It took 20-plus minutes to get the drink, and then it was about 4 ounces, served with a packet of sugar. "Sugar doesn't dissolve in cold water," I grumbled under my breath. But I drank it.

Starbucks pointed out that their new menu contains iced tea. I just never found a branch that actually served that item so I could try it.

When you don't drink alcohol and you're out with a group, someone(s) will often DEMAND, "Why don't you drink alcohol???!" like it was some kind of crime or something. Once a group I was with knew that one of us was a Muslim, so they didn't give me any flak about my drink choices. But every other time: "Why don't you drink alcohol???" Once when we were at a dinner that was included in our tour, we were allowed two drinks before we had to pay for ourselves. The gentleman to my right went through his first two wines like water and then pointed at me. "She's not drinking," he declared. "I'll take her two drinks!" And yes, he was QUITE serious, just as he'd been serious about not giving up his front seat on the bus when it was clearly explained at all points of the tour that we rotated seats daily. He was just a jerk.

At another group dinner, again I was the only one not drinking and it had been a strenuous day. After the servers saw I wasn't having alcohol, they left me alone. I had to flag one down and beg them for water. "COLD water!" I pleaded. Soon a bottle of ice-cold water appeared and I grabbed it... only to have my fellow table mates take it from me, and with a great deal of laughing, serve themselves. I was left with (and I had to again flag someone for it) tepid water for the rest of the meal, or at least half the meal, as I ran out quickly and couldn't get another server to stop by. Ugh.

Next time: The good stuff:

England. Scotland.

I have the POWERRRRRR!!!!

Back in the 80s I attended psychic school in Durham. I didn't have much money -- or at least I didn't after paying for classes. The instructor told me she'd give me a tiny bit of a discount if I transcribed her lectures.

Whew! This was a JOB because she mumbled and went off on long, obtuse tangents, etc. After typing for weeks on end, I was supposed to edit everything. Since this was the dinosaur age of personal computers, she had to print out what I had typed before I could edit by using a pen/pencil. She couldn't afford new ink for her printer, so the type was, well, picture the difference between Carolina Blue and Dook Blue. The difference between her dying ink and Carolina Blue was about the same proportion of intensity.

Carolina Blue vs Dookie Blue

A person could go blind working with type like that. Needless to say, I never really got a bunch done on that job. (Besides, Sue was no help in communicating exactly what she wanted as an end product.) But Sue, I mean, the instructor did say for the work I'd done she'd imbue me with Reiki power, or unlock me to be able to function with Reiki energy… something. She put her hand on my head and blew at my forehead. There might have been a drop of oil involved. Ta da. It was over.

"So what do I do with it?" I asked. She shrugged. As years went by, I glanced at Reiki stuff now and then but never got up the energy (so to speak) to really try it out.

But now I had a chance to take real, official Reiki I from Carolyn Sheehan, the therapist who'd guided me through a past-life regression a few weeks ago. (To make the deal sweeter, I could sign up for Reiki II at the same time and get a discount. You know me; I signed up!)

Last Saturday I showed up at Carolyn's beautiful home in northern Raleigh, along with two other students. Two more were supposed to have joined us, but they couldn't make it.

Reiki is a Japanese energy healing technique, supposedly based on Sanskrit records, and even MORE supposedly (someone channeled info) on etheric records from the ancient, legendary and very likely mythical civilization of Mu. Riiight. I mean, what's wrong with it being Japanese? Or Indian? Is that not exotic enough?

Lately I've noticed quite legitimate medical facilities that list Reiki among services offered. Okay then. I've been interested in learning various energy healing systems.

So Carolyn gave us the history of Reiki and described the hand positions we'd be using with the technique as energy came down through our crown chakras, to our hearts, and out through our hands.

Then we had a ceremony to be imbued with the power or have ourselves unlocked or whatever. We were to meditate and then Carolyn came around to us, made gestures, air-wrote symbols around us, and blew energy into us. But before and during this, we meditated.

I saw things. I was directed through a cave that ran the gamut of the spectrum, soaking in each color. Then inside a cavern I sat on a quartz crystal throne as various guides gathered. One would be my special Reiki guide/mentor. This was the only purely feminine energy in the room, and I asked her name. She replied "Galadriel," which puzzled me. I mean, really? I kept hearing "Melchizedek" as well in the background. I'm a priest of Melchizedek. (Got it done when I was in psychic school.) But neither really rang true to me.

When I got home to think about it, I came up with Mel(k)(isandra) for the guide. Unlike the others in the room, she was energy, with fumes of energy rising from her on all sides. I had a vision of myself in the same state, pure energy.

Yesterday I spotted Mel, our head IT person, eating lunch, and I went over to tell her that I'd had Reiki training this past weekend, and my guide was also named Mel. "Oh yeah, I know her," she replied. "She goes to the Unitarian church over in Chapel Hill." I had to explain that we were talking about two different Mels, on two different planes of existence. Mel was kind enough not to roll her eyes.

A cubist figure.

The other beings in the room were cubist figures that came in all colors of the rainbow. They were all watching and supporting me. The Archangel Michael (not cubist) stood there on my right. He's often a Dook Blue (sorry, Michael) and he was now.

I'd been reading The Energy Cure, and there the author talks about energy coming in your left hand and leaving through your right. Reiki has energy coming in through your head and leaving through both hands. Now in the cavern the figures made room for a fountain base to the front and right of me. All of a sudden, vibrant blue light zapped down into it. This was a constant stream of energy, and it was coming IN.

Then on my left and in front, appeared another base, and orange light streamed straight UP from it. Together the two fountains created some kind of circuit, though the streams never touched each other that I could see. They were parallel.

After a few moments of "Well, what do I do now?" I turned into a bird, or something with wings, and took off into the sky, which had turned the color of the spectrum. That was universal energy, right up ahead of me, and it extended… well, maybe forever. I flew into it.

And then the ceremony was over.

We started to practice the positions on ourselves and then we moved into another room where a massage table had been set up. One person got on the table. The other two worked on him simultaneously while being supervised.

I was the second to get done. The female student stopped at my throat chakra and said something was off. Carolyn came over to check, and sure enough, soon she was working hard on my throat. She called some angels to help -- Michael and Rafael (Raf's in charge of healing; Michael is protection) in particular. Carolyn said that something was wound about my chakra like a string, compressing it.

I was doing my own part lying there but working on the chakra like I'd been taught back in psychic school, cleaning it out. Finally Carolyn announced that I was done. She thanked the angels and told them they could leave. I informed her that Rafael was hanging around. (Michael of course was near because, if you recall, I'm one of Michael's people.)

We soon discovered why. The two students got to my toes. They called Carolyn over. "My god, your toes are like ice! There's no circulation!"

I assured her I'd had them checked, as I'm borderline diabetic and toes are a big potential problem for diabetics. They've been tingling lately and I've been worried. Carolyn called upon the angels once more, and the three people plus angels plus whoever took FOREVER working on my toes.

"Look here," Rafael told me, and suddenly I saw red spots -- energy -- in my toes. At that moment Carolyn announced that they were done. Whew!

I am to keep up healing myself as practice, and when I do so, I'll spend a little extra time on my toes and throat. Oh-- Carolyn said the throat chakra thing was from a HUGE argument in a past life. I told her yeah, it was my African life and my wife had been a real nagging bitch. We'd had that argument, I'd been fed up -- "I'll show HER!" -- and I stomped off into the forest to get rid of that big cat creature that had been threatening us. Of course it killed me. These things happen. But the argument, it appears, lingered on.

We proceeded to do our thang on the third student, then back to the first, who needed more help with a pulled muscle. On the first student, I didn't really notice any energy coming from my hands. Maybe a tad, once. I had to rely on my guides to tell me when to move from position to position. On the third student, I could definitely feel the ebb and flow of energy, and a couple of times my hands really heated up. (With The Energy Cure technique the energy is a steady flow, coming into the left hand and leaving through the right.)

In three months I'll get to take Reiki II, and I'm looking forward to it. We'll discover more about symbols and distance healing and whatnot.

Contrast and compare to The Energy Cure, by William Bengston, Ph.D. (and Sylvia Fraser). This is a fascinating look at energy healing from both a practical and scientific point of view. I'm always surprised to discover just how many corners of the psychic universe have been under scientific evaluation -- and have held up -- for so very long.

Dr. Bengston is not only a practitioner of using energy to cure, but has also pioneered scientific investigation into the process. He's discovered that IT WORKS. And it works consistently, under experimental conditions as well as practical ones. He utilizes "cycling," which is a VERY quick series of visualizations, to let the ego step aside and the universal energy come through for healing.

He tells of how he got involved with this as a high school graduate, wondering what he'd do for the rest of his life. Dr. Bengston went through many disappointments in trying to get the scientific community to listen to the results of his experiments. I'm glad there are now SOME outlets out there willing to spread the word and elaborate on his findings.

Reiki has a lot more frou-frou associated with it than this method. Is it really needed? Dr. Bengston says his technique won't work on people who've been through radiation and chemo (he also says that that might only apply to himself; that others who utilize it might be able to work with those conditions). Carolyn said that radiation and chemo are no problem. Years ago I took Kolaimni (don't know why I didn't keep it up. I have the instruction books somewhere) and recall that method as also not having Reiki's ceremonial/symbolic frou-frou, but it had a different way of approaching the healing, by reminding the etheric body of its structure and working one's way carefully through the physical body (like Reiki does, only Reiki concentrates on chakras. Kolaimni charges up chakras in one phase of its healing process).

I was also interested to see how much Reiki stresses that one must charge for Reiki work, an energy for energy kind of exchange. Dr. Bengston keeps a donation jar present, but does not require payment.

The only thing I wish the book would do is to be more clear exactly how one does the process. I want a step-by-step guide. So I got the audio followup, and hope that that has more detail. Dr. Bengston's website shows that in-person workshops are available.

I'm surprised to see ordinary medical practices are now beginning to incorporate Reiki. I think the same will hold true for Dr. Bengston's Energy Cure. It is a technique anyone can use, though skill level will vary. You'll get a lot out of reading the book.

Now get out there and find the energy healing method that works for you!

Time Traveling from a Couch (conclusion)

On June 3 I had a 3-hour hypnotic session with Carolyn Sheehan, who took me to the life I had lived as William Monroe, just before this one. I talked about that life here. After we got through discussing William, Carolyn concentrated on having me discuss various issues with my guides. (She'd given me instructional sheets beforehand, and had me write down questions I wanted to ask. She also has her own way of conducting these things and questions she likes to include.)

I'd already set up a conference room-type of arrangement in my mind, with a large, oval table that had a transparent dome set in its center, through whose cloudy interior we'd observed some aspects of William's life in overview. Think of it as the Strategy Room from the West Wing, except that instead of computer/TV monitors, there was that viewing half-globe. The main guide (higher self?) was a lovely Carolina blue in color, and there were two other (conjoined) guides, one orangey and the other perhaps green. These all had no facial features, but were just humanoid shapes. All guides stayed on the opposite side of the table from me.

We'd occasionally speak of William. Why had he chosen that life? "It was a place-filler." Now, I'd recently been discussing the possibility of place-filler lives with others at the Rhine Center Book Club. We were wondering why people would come into intentionally difficult times and places. I postulated that perhaps they were place holders, to bring about or assist in some kind of movement that that part of the world needed to progress, and not accomplish much more than that at least along personal lines. William was a part of World War II and the effort to advance certain positive social movements. When I was at that club meeting, was I looking ahead to hearing what William had to say, or was I now projecting my opinions onto William?

In the observation room I learned that my soul color is pink, and my soul name is Lolinda, not so far from the "Lina" I'd considered when Mid-Life Crisis hit me. (Don't laugh; MLC is a very hard-hitting thing!)

Carolyn and I posed the question: How was I (current me) progressing in my life?
A: This is an important life. I am becoming more spiritual. I need to relax more. Colors. [Here was that answer AGAIN. Don't know exactly what it means.] I'm into art because I see the colors and it's really the psychic light that interests me more. It's all tied together.

A: I should learn to play with the colors.

A:I need to learn how to deal with people. (Okay, I got that Dale Carnegie book and will read it soon.)

A: I'll be taking lots of psychic/spiritual realm classes. (Just the other day I was thinking about getting another past-life session and wondering if I should remain with Carolyn or experiment with others, and my guide told me, "We'll send someone for you." Okay then. Also, Raleigh has a psychic fair that comes around twice a year. I'll check some of those people out for classes.) (And today I found an online Aura course that had excellent reviews. Oh boy!)

A: I need to hang around weird people, and by "weird," they meant like the folks I've met at the Rhine. A lot of them can do Strange Things. Most have read Weird and Crazy stuff that will blow your mind. And they talk about so many wonderful new ideas! They are the foundation for the new direction mankind is trying to take. "It's time for mankind to make the jump — to start really moving ahead."

A: Realize that what I see around me isn't necessarily real.

A: I have to keep up with the "weird" pack and help others.

Q: What should I be preparing for and concentrating on (with upcoming retirement in mind, but also the rest of my life in general)?
A: PAINTING. I'm supposed to read the book I got a few years ago about spiritual painting. It looks weird in an ugh-y way, but I'll do that.

(Tired of all the A:'s)  Writing will also help. Writing is something I enjoy. Even though the guides stressed painting, it is FINE for me to write.

I saw myself as an old woman seated at a table, discussing spiritual stuff with others. Everyone in the room was learning from everyone else.

Q: How can I become more intuitive?
A: Meditate with focus

Now is the time to return to taking classes and building up psychic skills. Reiki (I'm taking my first official course tomorrow) is just a start. The Rhine Research Center holds class possibilities, as do people associated with the Rhine. The universe will arrange meetings for me, and I'll be meeting people who come from all different directions in the psychic world. Cool!

As I set my focus, the universe arranges for me to get what I need.

You set focus by making serious goals. Stick to them. Be an adult! HAVE FUN ALONG THE WAY. BE GRATEFUL.

Q: re: body health. A new crowd joins the guides, a BUNCH of white folks, just swarming in, over the folks who were there already, like a wave. No features. They laughed when I said they reminded me of the Pillsbury Doughboy, only in much better shape. "We're not dough!"

Remember my energy body and keep it strong and brightly shining.

Chakras

Rev up the energy in my energy body. Get the energy really flowing through. VISUALIZE OFTEN. It will put me in the mood to exercise/move around, but it's not really necessary to exercise because nothing is real. But as the energy body is, the physical body will follow.

Take just one of these, have it facing you, and then make it transparent. That's the base image I got.

Here's what I saw: My body -- any body -- as, well, let me put it this way. Imagine a cubist figure, done transparently. Shining in back as if behind a veil are the various chakras, providing a basis to it all. Then in clear focus, toss a bunch of, oh, 1 1/2" glass rods upon the scene, caught LOOSELY together a little below the waist. They run from feet to crown of the head, and aren't in any kind of perfect order except that they do seem to be crossing each other at about hip level. They're not straight up and down; they are positioned at angles to the body.

Make these clear glass and as tall as you are. They were about 1.5" in diameter. This is the relaxed kind of posture they had.

Inside these rods are a spectrum of bubbling, nuclear energy. I tried and tried to force the colors to be brighter on the top -- heat rises -- but instead the white energy was more around the knees. From there upward (and downward) you went through yellows and reds, until suddenly you were in dark purples at the top of the tubes. Even the dark purples were pulsing with crazy, concentrated energy.

When you focus on these and THINK about the energy, things got even brighter if that were possible, and a foamy sort of fizz of white bubbles came off the top of the tubes. They're like enclosed geysers.

Energy, energy, UNLIMITED energy! It moves up and down, up and down, all the time.

It's JOYFUL energy. It all ties together. You always know you're connecting with the upper planes when you feel the joy.

They all laugh: That's right, that's right. They all have a good sense of humor, because the universe has a good sense of humor. You knew that, right?

That humor is what they like about my writing.

There's a bit of personal stuff here that I'll summarize by saying that my guides (actually just one new guy who strode over to tower over me. He wore a surgeon's mask) told me to be an adult when it comes to something I REALLY don't like. Do it a few times and then it won't be so bad. Take tranquilizers if I need to get through the first couple times. Don't worry; the process will never find anything bad. Whew!

What should I do after I retire?

These are astronauts. Close enough.

Palm trees pop up in the room. Suddenly all the guides -- EVERYONE -- is wearing Hawaiian shirts and sipping colorful drinks through bendy straws. They wear straw hats. Cue the Jamaican music, mon.

"Relax." I'm painting and traveling. There are ships involved. I'm also writing and doing psychic stuff.

I bring out a map. They point at NC's Research Triangle, Montreal, and Baltimore-ish area. What, no Portland, OR? I've been starting to investigate that place; was planning to visit next year with an eye on moving.

"You can visit Portland; that's fine."

I'll be having a lot of fun with everything. I'll have people around me if I do that.

Don't worry about money. "You're happy. You're doing all this stuff and have people around."

Lots of travel. Caribbean.

I ask about the unpublished Wonder Woman novel I have sitting in my office. My main guide firmly slaps it on the table. It is a mass-market paperback. "You should do it!" [ask permission to publish it] He's insistent! Focus my energy on it! He adds that the book is a a lot of fun. (The same thing that HarperCollins editor told me a few years ago.) (They didn't have a marketing niche in which to put it, they told me.)

FOCUS IS THE KEY

Make goals and FOCUS. Take small steps to achieve the larger steps.

Carolyn had them assign me a symbol to remind me to focus. "Not Prince!" I told her, and she laughed.

What then appeared to me was a Wonder Woman-style 5-pointed star with a lightning bolt coming off the lower left side, making it look like a comet. There was all this elegant double-outlining, with some variant outlining like the movie WW has on her logo. Very complicated. But cool. I need to take some serious time and draw this thing out correctly.

They reiterate a picture of me being on a panel at a comics convention. Maybe I'm talking about the book? Books? (Hey, I have more WW novels in me!)

I'm to keep myself balanced and focused: painting • writing • psychic

"You are a star," they told me. My guide waved his arms over me, and I began to glow brightly, white-yellow. I was sheer energy. "Don't forget that." I am as important as everyone else. I am MORE important than everyone else in the way that everybody is more important than anyone else.

I am me. Nobody else is like me. I AM A STAR. The words to the Desiderata come back to me, or at least as much as I can recall.

They all laugh agreeably and settle back in their chairs. (Before they'd been floating around.) They pass around beer and have a general good time. There are a LOT of people in the room. It's a party! Someone said, "Watch Star Wars [ch. 7] tonight." I'd been putting that off. Okay, I didn't get around to it for another week, but at least I got it done, and had a very good time doing so.

Carolyn asked if they had a message for her. They did, and I passed it along.

She had me thank various people. Some had comments to make.

Mom replied, "I've got a lot to work on, you know." Lately I've realized that. More power to her!

William said, "Make an effort to feel joy."

My guides said, "You've realized the universe is leading you. Don't be afraid to follow. It's going to be a grand adventure. You'll like it. And you'll have a long life if you keep a healthy body. Even now, it's still quite possible to get healthy. Stop being so fearful. Trust in the universe."

My cats and dogs: "Don't be afraid to love."

I see GREEN. (healing?)

Archangel Michael, laughing, steps in. "You know you're one of mine," he says.

"Yes, sir."

Thanks, everyone!

Wonder Woman: Rebirth 1

I have pretty much despised the nu52 that DC has saddled us with since September of 2011. It was bad enough (a catastrophe! The end of the world!) that DC eliminated the concept of Wonder Woman in June of 2010, keeping just the name and bits of costume going, but now they REALLY massacred the concept. Diana now had not only a father, but a patriarchal father who was the king of the patriarchal gods.

She was stupid, often used as a tool, and hated by her fellow Amazons, who were now as evil as it gets. She was lied to by just about everyone. She was defined by the men around her, not by herself. She hauled about a sword and shield, and never hesitated to institute some bloody bit of work. She owed her skills to a man. She, who had once been the embodiment of the search for peace and positive empowerment above all else, became the god of war.

There were a few bright spots, but they didn't occur in WW's own title. Forgive me, but I haven't been able to stomach extended periods of reading nu52 material, or I could specify exactly where these bright spots occurred and their extent. I will make it a goal to get this stuff read by 2017. (And reported upon, of course. Oh, how I need to update my website!)

But anyway, DC had instituted this nu52 because apparently TPTB hate the idea of superheroes. Instead, they strove for Dark and Corrupt. In particular and to judge from what they did to her in the past six years, they (cough*Dan DiDio*cough) seem to hate the very idea of Wonder Woman. On the whole, company sales plummeted. DC instituted "DC You" or something like that, and sales fell even farther. So yet ANOTHER company-wide, even more convoluted reboot was scheduled.

Actually, it's not a re-boot. No, DC can't do things cleanly. If they'd done so with the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, they might not be in this position today or at least they'd be in a more stable one. "Rebirth" (some call this "Afterbirth") is a kinda-sorta reboot, with elements from the nu52 and elements from more classic versions of the characters and new elements thrown in to confuse everyone. The changeover is supposed to take two year$$ to complete (most titles will come out twice a month and cost $2.99. You do the math.), so everything's going to be in a confusing uproar for some time.

This run of Wonder Woman is written by Greg Rucka. Art duties on this issue are split between Matthew Clark (pencils) and Sean Parsons (inks), and Liam Sharp (full art). Even the colors have to have two artists to handle everything. Editors are Chris Conroy and Mark Doyle.

Now, Rucka had a run of WW back from 2003-2006, ushering in what I called her "Dark Age." Though I liked his first issue, I didn't like what came afterward. Diana and her stories were imho pretentious, a far cry from the human stories her fans loved. For the very first time, Diana used her lasso as a WEAPON (for no good reason). Positive previous continuity was done away with, much of it by having Hera kick Paradise Island. To me this signaled contempt for the basic mythos and/or certain creators of such. Established characters were gone; new ones, including the biggest Mary Sue I've ever seen, were introduced. Yet another Amazon massacre took place. Diana was master of everything she surveyed (except she received no respect from others), her Silver Platter powers souped up so she never had to hesitate or doubt in her perfection.

But I loved Rucka's run for a few things. He introduced an efficient Amazon embassy. (Okay, there were no Amazons employed there, and Diana was the ambassador, which makes no sense…) (And if you want to get technical, he introduced it in Hikkie and not in the actual WW book.) He gave us a Magic Mirror to Paradise Island, and I've always been ca-razy about magic mirrors (!!!), of which the WW mythos has had a few. He did introduce the bull-man Chef Ferdinand, who had his moments though he was cast as Diana's Alfred. (FYI: Eric Luke also tried to give Diana an Alfred.)

So I braced myself for this issue. It's confusing. It's supposed to be confusing, but how much confusion can we take, twice a month for two years? The story will alternate between the past and the present as well.

The cover -- both versions -- that advertise what a reader will find inside the issue depicts Wonder Woman with a sword. Thankfully, there is no sword to be found inside the book.

Universes are merging or somethinging, apparently, and Diana recalls both her more classic (not classic per se) self as well as her nu52 version. We are inside her head the ENTIRE ISSUE -- no humans for Diana to bounce ideas off of, no one to befriend or defend (except in the silent opening fight), not even a villain to talk to. And what's inside her head is pretentious stuff indeed.

In the opening fight sequence, for example, she saves a young-looking woman in a building that is labelled "XXX" (I checked it to see that my company's logo was nowhere on it, whew) from a man threatening her. Though Diana does take a moment to help the cowering victim up off the floor, that is all the humanity we see from her. At no time does she take the hysterical woman into her arms to comfort her. Though other victims are seen later wearing blankets, likely provided by the police, Diana's victim is left to stand in the street in her underwear and have a breakdown. Hey, there's no time for Wonder Woman to be a sissy!

Wouldn't it have been nice if WW had turned back to the victim, as if she were having a change of heart, or recalling a change of continuity, to comfort her? Wonder Woman should be the kindest, most human and likable of all the superheroes. She shouldn't be the creature I once termed "Rucka Woman."

And yes, she uses the lasso as a weapon again. The artist highlights the blood it spills as Rucka utilizes it as a whip. Diana's costume shifts and shifts some more before she decides on the new Rebirth version, which she apparently had packed in her closet all along. (Fans of the Mod Diana Prince know that she kept superhero costumes on the back rack of her store. Does this hold true for modern-day Diana?)

Her lasso becomes an oracle as well. It directs her to talk (since it has no mouth) and reveal some of what is going on. It makes her speak of herself in the second person, as if the lasso were sentient. Instead of revealing Diana's truth, it reveals the universe's truth.

What is truth? We are reminded of an old JLA tale concerning the lasso -- a story that infuriated me because we were told there was only one truth ever, and the lasso couldn't stand handling two truths concerning the same situation. How simplistic. The supreme truth holds itself together in facets. What is true for one is not necessarily true for another. What is true at one point in time is not necessarily true at another.

And apparently when Diana completely smashes a mirror, it can regroup into an only cracked mirror on the page following. Diana can somehow teleport herself straight to Olympus -- something to do with her war helmet? It's unclear -- only to find "automatones." With an "e," like Rucka's previous run had placed an extra vowel in Medusa's name. Yeah yeah, I know that this is technically a correct spelling for this specific situation, but in comics it is unneeded pretention. So Diana gets to end this issue with a boring fight that seems to have no purpose or consequences, just as she began it with a fight in a different venue.

Okay, it's supposed to be confusing. I'd rather it be confusing and star someone I could like, who gives me a reason to root for her. Didn't find that in this ish, sorry.

CHARACTER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PLOT.

I can live with just about any art style as long as that style is consistent. Since we had two different artists this issue the art grated on me, though in general it was fine. Anatomy skills had occasional glitches that I wish some editor had pointed out and had corrected. Quite often we got some great action shots, but then we'd see Diana with boobs that were much too large (and no hips), or with a giraffe neck. A little more care in the rendering, please. Monsters were drawn quite nicely, but were so dark we really couldn't appreciate them. The colors turned blinding, distracting dark red during the Olympus scenes, but were of complex hues complementary to the tale in the rest.

If I'd been a newcomer to Wonder Woman, I don't think I'd have been intrigued or interested enough to pick up another issue. Like I said, the character was not that likable.

And let me just say for the record: I DESPISE the idea of Wondie having a brother.

Not only a brother, but a twin brother. We've seen Diana with a twin twice before. Didn't work those times. She is her own hero; she isn't even a legacy hero (though some runs have insisted she was). SHE IS HER OWN LEGEND. She shouldn't have someone stealing her thunder.

It is NOT the "Golden Perfect." It is the Magic Lasso, the Lasso of Truth. Sheesh. Pretentious much?

I'll give the series another chance because I always have hope for Wondie. I was wrong about the first Rucka run, in that I liked the first issue of that. Perhaps this will be the opposite: bad first ish, great or at least acceptable following issues. I've seen her bounce back time after time. When will she again become the character she was meant to be?

For another, more positive view of this issue, see Martin Gray's review here.

Of course you're invited to write your own opinions here as well. While you're here, how about picking up one of my books? Thanks!

Time Traveling from a Couch (Part 1)

A lot of you have asked me how my past-life regression went. I think this is because I went around the week before it telling everyone I could corner, "I'm going to have a past-life regression! I'm going to have a past-life regression!!!"

Think I'll break this into two parts so it doesn't go on forever. This first part will discuss the past life I explored, and the second will be the part after that past life, when I met with my guardian angels/guides.

FYI: Years and years ago I attended a past-life workshop in which participants learned how to take people back in their memories to experience, well, past lives. We split into smaller groups and did each other several times. There I met a few of my former selves, and I've always wanted to know more.

Scientific investigation into past lives comes up well in their favor. Reincarnation was the one thing in psi that noted skeptic Carl Sagan said "deserves serious study." Want to read more about the subject? My favorite books are Reliving Past Lives and Life Before Life, by Dr. Helen Wambach. Not sure if they're still in print or not. If not, there are a lot of other well-researched books out there. Mr. Google is your friend.

I think reincarnation makes sense, so I was looking forward to having a professional hypnotherapist do what she could to get me to remember my other lives.

She darkened a quiet office, turned on soft new age music, and had me lie on a massage bed and relax. She asked me if it was okay to touch me on the shoulder when needed and to refer to angels. I have nothing against angels; they're swell folks. It's religion I can't stand.

She took me through the usual hypnotic soothing routines and then had me remember a happy scene (I warned her there wasn't much happy from my childhood) from when I was in high school, then one from when I was about five years old. The high school one was fuzzy, with only my dog and comic books really in focus, and the 5 YO one was one of the few memories I consciously have from childhood. This time, though, I recalled that I had a toy fishing pole. (And I thought at the time that it was really cheesy, because it was.)

Then came something that confused me. When we talked about it afterward, she kept the same phrasing. After having taken some time to make sure that I was letting loose of my logical mind so it wouldn't interfere with things, she asked me to tell her, on a scale of 1 to 100 (and citing percentages), with 1 being wide awake and 100 being asleep, where I thought I was in the process. My first thought was: arithmetic? I thought I was supposed to turn off that side of my brain!

After awkwardly shifting gears, I thought I was at about 30 but I wanted to be kind and said 40. Yeah, mea culpa. But afterward, she explained that if someone gave her a number over 50 she'd try to take them down deeper. To me that was the opposite of what she'd instructed. If she'd just said, "Tell me how deep you think you're under. Lightly? Medium? About to fall asleep?" it would have been a lot clearer and less distracting.

So I believe I was in a very light trance, if you can even apply that term to the situation. However after a while I just told myself to consider it a prolonged psychic session -- it had been too long since I'd had one with myself -- and enjoy whatever I could see. In the future I'll let the therapist know that I need more work to go deeper and not be so literal or complaisant.

Anywayz, she turned on her recorder and had me recall being in the womb. Hey, I actually got a picture of it! It was like being in a dark, spherical room where one side is draped but you can tell there's light behind it. It was a very warm light (in color) and I could hear booma boom, booma boom. Hey, that's Mom's heart, I thought just before the therapist asked if I could hear my mother's heart.

I was lying there, a big, fat lump I thought (in fact I groaned, "I'm fat!"), and I could see a reddish glow from above and to my left that I knew was Mom's heart. I was comfortable but low in energy. I was firmly in the body, not passing in and out, because this was toward the end of the pregnancy. (Souls don't enter the body until the third trimester, unless they wait until after birth. Some even wait a LONG time after the birth.) (Even so, I think I blinked out during the actual birth. I mean, who wants to experience that?)

I could feel Mom's emotions: fear, worry, anxiety over lack of money. My dad had been working at a podunk job after he left the Air Force, and the family had moved in with my mom's parents. That couldn't have been too fun, and now they had another kid on the way?

The therapist (think I'll just call her TH to shorten that) asked what my mother thought of having a child. I could tell her: It was her duty, a part of being married. There was no excitement or loving emotions involved. TH asked if these negative emotions were affecting me and I said, "Heck, yes!" so she suggested I put some kind of curtain between me and her. I put a vibrating, golden Star Trek forcefield there to protect me! Shields up!

From there we went farther back, immediately into a past life. I'd been trained to have past-life subjects walk down a staircase with doors (often labelled) leading off it, enter a beautiful garden with archways, etc. etc., but here we were without all that, boom. I recognized it as being the life just before this one. The year was 1939, and I was a lanky, buck-toothed teen boy in rolled-up pants, a brown and red plaid shirt, belt with a metal buckle, straw hat with a frayed edge, and bare feet. I was standing in the family corn (looked like wheat, actually) field, smoking. I was in Illinois. I could see the barn, a tractor, a 1940s-era car, a farmhouse, chickens. Later on I added a horse and for-sure cornfield to that picture.

My name was Willy or Billy Monroe. There might be a "Mason" in there somewhere, and someone whispered "Webster" to me, but I've been doing some family history lately and the Websters are there on my mother's side. (They are from Illinois/Indiana. I was born in IL.) William might be a cousin; I don't know. Past lives don't need to be relatives.

I had a definite picture of William in my mind, and later that night it came to me: it was the kid from Hee Haw! When I got home I Googled and discovered that the logo has a donkey on it, not a kid. But I kept seeing this guy, except he had straw-like hair, cut straight across in bangs. He also resembled the country hick from Hey, Arnold! Try to imagine him via these pictures. (I changed the hair for the donkey. You're welcome.)

I kept referring to William as "not the brightest bulb in the bunch," and between that and the Hee Haw hillbilly hick, I felt guilty to diss him. But that was the impression I had. William didn't have any hobbies or skills to speak of. He didn't have a girlfriend at any point. And no, he wasn't gay. I think.

Let me try to combine some things, as TH had me checking back on William at different times in his life, though I really only saw three distinct ages.

When he was 10 I got a picture of him and his extended family in their home. There was some kind of party going on with music, and William was clog-dancing (or the 10 YO equivalent) up a storm, having the time of his life. Woo hoo! He was precocious and described himself as "an obedient son." There was a brother or friend there about his age, along with a very young sister who had a doll. His parents were there along with some other folks. None of them were very focused in my mind. None of them rang a bell for my current life.

When I went to look closer at the little sister, I thought there was a bit of karma there. (TH was guiding me to ask about karmic connections.) I think she'd been my wife in a previous life, and I hadn't treated her well. Not beaten her up or anything that bad; just not treated her well.

The father was interesting in that when I looked at him I saw him rushing forward (frozen in the moment like a statue), dressed in complete military gear for WWII. I thought, "Can't be WWII," and though the rifle looked very modern, the father now wore one of those metal hats the WWI people wore when they were in the trenches. Looking back now, I think he might have been wearing a gas mask.

At this point TH was still talking karmic debts, and I was trying to figure out a birthdate for William to see if he could have been in WWI in a previous life and still made it into his life, and so had some kind of karmic something going on with his dad. (I forgot that there are cases on record of TWO lives being lived at once, that your lives can actually overlap in time.) (Yeah, you just think about that one for a while.) But anyway, from here a week-plus later, I think that his dad was in WWI. (Hope I'm not being influenced by that lengthy WWI chapter in the British history book I just read.)

But there was no Big Dramatic Karmic Debt to be paid here. The next spot in William's life I saw was him in the fields again in his later teens, smoking his cigarettes (ew!) and then stomping them out. He was really frustrated. Often he'd just sit on piles of hay and stare off in the distance, thinking about how he wanted to get out into the world. Instead he was cooped up on this boring farm.

One day he got some kind of letter or draft notice in the mail and he joined the Navy. Not sure where he trained. I knew he'd serve in the Pacific and was trying to find someplace in California for him. I was attracted to San Francisco, but that might be due to Star Trek and the fact that I've been there. I asked, "San Diego?" because it was another oceanside city and got "San Marina." Actually, there was a Navy training center in San Diego. Whatevs. For all I know he trained on the east coast and then transferred.

Anyway, we next see him at age 24 in the Navy in the Pacific on a submarine. He'd joined the Navy because everyone was expecting him to go into the military, and it got him off the farm -- and to see the world. And then he got stuck on a tiny submarine. Inside a tiny submarine. He didn't even get to do interesting stuff, since he wasn't the brightest bulb. He was left to clean and swab decks and such. Blech.

Just a shot of a sub I got off the Internet. Not necessarily William's sub.

We got to the part I'd seen before and I zoomed upward to get a birds eye view because I didn't want to be down there with William for this. He said he'd been in the Navy for 3+ years. Now his sub was surrendering to the Japanese. (Both ships were a lot smaller than I'd expect them to be.) I think the other sailors, with whom William had made moderate friendships (especially over cards), had been fear-mongering. (Who could blame them?) Who knew what would happen now? To them, the Japanese were savages. And now the enemy had boarded their surfaced boat.

With the American flag flying overhead, William grabbed the railing and hurled himself overboard rather than be taken to the Japanese ship. I could hear other "plunks" as others jumped in too. TH asked what his final thoughts were, and all I could come up with was, "Oh well." He was ready to go.

All his life he had had a horrible fear of the unknown.

TH had the archangel Michael cut the cord on the concept of "fear of the unknown" from this and all other lives. Instead of his usual sword, I imagined Michael using a blue lightsabre, and he got a kick out of that. (Michael's cool.) TH said she heard him say, "It's about time," about the cutting the concept thing. Michael cleaned up the mess and archangel Raphael spread a deep green light that filled me up and healed me, making sure that all problem cords from various lives were broken.

After that I met with our spirit guides. The main one was a light blue (higher self?), and there was one other one, perhaps two: orange and green. They seemed joined together. We floated around a table with a large half-sphere viewing tank set in its center to study William's life.

"He didn't accomplish much," someone said. William was a drifter through his life, but he was okay with that. He spent much of his time being frustrated, and thus didn't do anything. He thought he was in the wrong place.

He learned how to be alone. When William came out of that life, he was told, "You have one more lonely life to live." That's the current one. But none of our other lives seem to be particularly crowded that I've seen. There've been spouses and kids, but none really close except for the Egyptian general, who lost his dear boys when they were still quite young.

"[William] could handle what life threw at him," yet there was that fear of the unknown. And he didn't do it with any joy.  "He's got to learn to handle what life throws at him with joy, and that way he can face the unknown without fear. Rather, he'll face it with joyous expectation." He needs to change his attitude!

Someone whispered, "Money," but William wasn't poor. He had enough to get along, and so did his family. At least out there on the farm, if they were poor, he didn't realize it. They'd had a good farm, though they'd just been through the Depression. I'd like to say that people on farms weathered the Depression better than others, but my mother's family lost their farm during that event, and it was pretty traumatic for all.

What could William have done better? Paid attention and focused. He let life go on around him. He should have focused on people and what he was doing. He should have taken advantage of the opportunity of being alive.

What would William tell me? "What are you going to do with your life? Focus. Colors. [This would come up again. ??] Take charge." He showed me a picture of holding the reins on a horse-drawn wagon that was really charging down the road of life. It was TH who laughed at my ?? on this bit and said, "He's telling you to take the reins." Oh! That made sense.

"Try to laugh and enjoy more." William gave up joyful craziness as he grew up. He was emotionless because it was all so boring!

I wonder if my penchant for traveling comes from William's being cooped up.

So that was my visit with William Monroe. When I got home I tried to find a free site to search for him (ha!), but the closest I got was this, a possible:

If you can't read that, here's the interesting part:

Estaline, aged 6 in 1930, would have been the right age to be that karma-connected sister we saw when William was 10.

This winter I'll buy membership in a couple family-search sites, since I'll be working on the family tree. Let's see if I can find William then, and maybe confirm the above entry. Wouldn't that be a time-saver if this were him!

Next time: A Wonder Woman review! But that'll be later this week. Next week I'll have part 2 of this, which deals with me and a roomful of spirit guides. See you then!

Abstracting abstracts

Once again, I've fallen behind on ye blog, but I've been toodling about doing this and that. Finally finished some landscapes in mid-January—hooray! I was a month late in changing out the display at a downtown restaurant.

Anyway, I looked around the house. I have a lot of paintings out from where I'd been storing them, waiting to be updated and/or moved to a storage building. Next to be looked at were a couple of abstracts that I wanted to fiddle with. When I got going with those, I got out some blank canvases to see what I could do along the same lines.

I've been trying to concentrate on color palette and intensity and value patterns. The re-dos are definitely better than they were, and I've gotten some new ideas I'll try to get around to working on. It's tough when one has so many things going on. (Yes, my guides keep saying, "Focus! Focus!" But hey— Squirrel!)

"Asterisk" 18x24, acrylic

"Downburst" 24x24", acrylic

"Genesis 24181" 18x24", acrylic

"Morning Glade," 24x30", acrylic

"Photon Shield," 18x24, acrylic

Also need to work on consistency of style, but the recent ones done from scratch ARE consistent. I just don't know if they're the particular style I want. Hm. I may revisit these shots in the coming days to make sure they're true to the paintings' colors. But they're close, and I'm tired. Good night, everyone!