Tapestry Dance - Eight

Personality is a strange word, being a noun describing an object-perception we each carry about any individual, while we may perceive it as an adjective. If I make a comment about a person's personality, then the object is the comment itself rather than the personality which the person possesses.

I am a performing artist. As such, I am a student of personality and give myself to the intention of representing a repertoire of personality. At times my representation may become deliberately and comically inauthentic. In any event, I can pridefully claim to have a multiple-personality available to performance, in contrast to the rare case of a person who may carry the embarrassment of Multiple-Personality Disorder.

In awarenessing, the history of it carries such notions as channeling and walk-in personalities. Gossip about those who exhibit such behavior often questions, "Do they know they are doing it?"; "Do they know what they are saying or doing?"; "Are they responsible if they do something criminal?" etc.

Awarenessing can include the experience of physical invocation of behavior and speech by another personality, but it is simple to distinguish from any Personality Disorder. The person is aware of the speech and behavior. The person is aware of the emotion of the personality which invokes the behavior. To the extent which a person understands differences in language, the person becomes aware of the meaning and intention of the speech and behavior of the personality which invokes the behavior.

Here a distinction is made between voice-in-mind and invocation. For a person who accepts the challenges of awarenessing, a key to the experience is personal will. A well intentioned person with a strong personal will cannot become compelled to allow a personality which betrays their own idealism to invoke an undesirable behavior. Meanwhile, the will to interpret the messages of voice-in-mind intelligently allows a person to safely avoid becoming duped into an undesirable response [ed. I now dispute this distinction, because opportunists have attempted to take advantage of my statement; 2016].

Community develops among personalities who become accustomed to awarenessing. Within such community it becomes a matter of mutual self-interest to disallow the influence of a personality which is destructive to the integrity of the community. I once postulated that personalities attract one-another according to something I called spiritual-congruence. I am now somewhat skeptical of this, but I can offer something different in exchange. Within an experience of community in awarenessing, The strength of will within a community may become able to force divorces, which in time lead to a reduction of a community to one which allows an acceptable range of congruence among personalities.

Personalities become attracted and seek influence over other personalities for desire-fulfillment as much as any other causes of attraction. I feel the negative implications of this will not persist, but it remains a rather juvenile attitude towards awarenessing. Meanwhile, a group of personalities may find common cause and choose to associate in order to fulfill that common-cause. A personality may also become attracted to another out of curiosity, admiration, lust, fear, envy and any other emotion such a list may contain. People often claim that all emotion can be reduced to love and fear, but such an axiom is insufficient to interpret the truth of attractions within awarenessing.

Returning to the experience of invocation, what becomes served is the intention of an expression of personality which might influence other people, in service of a common cause. Such an expression might also serve an intention which might be subversive, and it remains for the person to be judicious in allowing themselves to become invoked by such personalities. Here, a community of awareness of personalities can observe and ensure the integrity of each-others motivations.[ed. We caught them and got better at it. I dispute many things in this paragraph and so do thems. That must be embarrassing.; 2016.]

Identity is important to correlate with personality. The best idealism which awarenessing affords is "honor among thieves," but familiarity allows a person to strive to authenticate identity. I have experienced the mechanics of awarenessing being able to at least attempt to falsify identity. The most sure tests of identity are habits of speech, shared memory and some taste of idealism and intention; but even these can become vague. People become evasive when they are unsure of the intentions of eves-droppers, and it can seem that integrity in awarenessing is something to strive towards rather than act in surety of. Awarenessing is currently an evolutionary experience and needs to be interpreted in that context.

Tapestry Dance - Seven

Absolute freedom is the natural, divine state of life. As human beings, capable as we are of exchanging ideas and recording events through the vehicles of images, symbols and language we become distracted from the deeper truth of this to a degree which animals do not.

Recently, I made fanciful speeches to myself of the notion that masses of rabbits populating the beaches of Vancouver may gather at the "bunny tree" to share the stories of their kind, and to scratch recordings of the lore of their kind into the bark of the tree. Later it would be learned and added to by succeeding generations, time would change the markings and their interpretations in changes of language, and the bunnies would change their ways in accordance with changes in the landscape and their culture.

There are cultures of Earth which, despite the pervasive efforts of religion, have not become aware of the teachings of various beliefs about a Creator, or certain messengers of its will or any belief regarding their authority and divinity. Among those who imagine any judgement based upon observance of rituals, sacrifices and other civility of conduct, there may be some concern that people raised by the wild animals around them might become condemned for their ignorance. Meanwhile, enough people abstain from both religion and any belief in spirit beyond the material world that the discussion often ignores possibilities which exist outside of both extremes.

The histories we have place divinity in the souls of those who passed through the extremes of human life, fighting in wars, leading debates over principles, achieving feats of magic, leading masses in the practices of love, family, farming, animal husbandry and empire building. These names we remember are those of people who made choices which were always controversial, within the context of these extremes of cultural shift. The experience of the witnesses of these times must always influence how things become written, and then how they become read. Ironically, some attention can also be applied to what materials entered the blood of those who used them to write, paint or scratch these histories.

If God can be supposed to have had various kinds of opinions about himself and the other kids in his school-yard, we may or may not discover the truth about them, having learned what we have from messengers who may have had their own perceptions and an interest in what they could make of our perceptions. Any distortion doesn't need to be the result of mischief. It could simply be any collection of passionate expressions, filtered through what was recorded of them, and filtered again through the ways in which we interpret them. So Gord might feel quite differently about such personalities as angels and prophets from what any of their contemporaries did, or God.

'Divine' personalities come with magic powers and the most prevalent among them center around perception and influence. They sense the presence, the emotion and the intentions of those around them, and it generally follows that they can influence those around them to a similar degree. I mention this because if such 'divine' abilities as telepathy and tele-presence evolve into a common experience, there is a period in which we need to interpret its implications. If a mind, in a moment of passion, reaches out to speak to a person, to touch a person, to see a person in an experience, then this becomes the unit of exchange in a shared experience which might become described as awarenessing. Awarenessing then becomes definable as an act of sending a perception to a person or persons, with or without intention. If such an ability becomes commonplace, then it bears upon our assumptions about dreams and fantasies. It also bears upon morals, but not in the way that we might think.

Again, freedom is the natural, divine state of life. An animal hunts prey with decisive violence, defends territory with voice and behavior, and attracts mates and companions in the same way. It is helpful to interpret ourselves in terms of animal behavior, because our behavior towards each other is often different from the behavior we might imagine in our private thoughts, and it would be reasonable to suppose that animals are similar in this respect. Our laws and cultural codes have limited ability to control this, and so much more can be made of our natural tendency to value each other as we value our selves. In spite of this, moments of passion might inspire fantasies which we would regret if they were followed in our behavior. In a context of awarenessing, this suggests both a need for discipline in our thinking and imagining, and a tolerance for our occasional lack of it. If such an ability becomes a prevalent condition of birth, then we should not need to feel threatened by the dangers of an attack of the terrible two-year-olds.

If many people observe an event or personality, then what people share is an aggregate of observations and opinions about that event or personality, in addition to the truth of it. It is important to notice this distinction, because it is likely that bodies of opinion will have more influence on subsequent events and perceptions than the truth may have. That is an undesirable condition and awarenessing enforces a need to sustain a clear focus. It is better not to have an opinion to bring forth about each other than to risk promoting a fraudulent one. Awarenessing points to the necessity of honesty amongst each-other. We can ignore the notion of 'honesty before God.' If God never entered the room, we would face the same need for truthfulness, the same need to believe in ourselves and each other, the same need to believe in our endeavors together. The whole package of Sunday-rituals becomes needless in comparison to the need to abandon our insecurities about being aware of each-others' humanity, and other's awareness of ourselves. These are the main challenges in our growth in awarenessing.

Tapestry Dance - Six

I could subtitle this post "The evolution of activism," or, "The Activism of Evolution;" but I couldn't decide which, any-more than the other posts, so I didn't bother. Ostensibly, masses of people parading on every populous street are less likely to fall into chaos and mischief and less containable by authorities than a mob loitering below the balcony of a tyrant, but they can become disturbing nonetheless. I am less interested in the activism "the usual suspects" are famous for, and more interested in practical social change. Here, I wish to describe the nuts and bolts of it.

There are various kinds of groups in the world and they differ in functionality. Large groups tend to become dysfunctional because they get too trapped in discussion. Smaller groups become swamped in the mass of humanity. The success which can be found in the middle might be groups of groups, commonly described as "focus-groups," in meetings, but here I wish to describe a specific kind of methodology.

Groups of three are good for constraining discussion and ensuring a deciding vote. Likewise, groups of nine may divide into threes, and in the larger sense retain the advantage of the deciding vote. Such groups are generally able to choose leadership with little debate, in comparison to larger groups. If larger groups assemble to achieve larger aims, they may become more functional if assembled from these basic groupings, sometimes dynamically. Democracy has defensible uses, but my experience is that consensus has a limited carrying capacity which swallows activity in discussion beyond a certain size of group.

What follows will be a relatively terse description of various roles and activities within an organizing structure, which may very well resemble game-roles in various MMORGs, but which is intended to deconstruct the sometimes criminal behaviours which may be found in what might seem to be innocent behaviours within game-play, social-action or much of obvious corruption in other parts of civilization.

Roles of People on the Dispenser

People and places...


Patrol - This is the notion of walking or riding, observing the people within a community, and facilitating people's interaction with resources within a community. It is important to distinguish between observing people and spying on them, which is malicious and frequently unwarranted. To patrol a community is of most value when one observes the needs of individuals and their potential to participate in the community. Peace is a result of connecting people with opportunities and resources, because they become unlikely to become motivated to disturb the peace.

Guardian - Similar to patrol, but in a stationary place. Typically the proprietor or door-person of an enterprise, and hopefully aware of the opportunities of neighbouring places. If such a guardian is congenial enough to discover more about their neighbours than merely their faces and "the cut of their jib," the benefits of this service can multiply.

Hangouts - A coffee-shop or bar, or a neighbourhood square, is a too-frequently neglected social resource. Franchising has never failed to betray the benefits so many of us long for in the memory of favourite places. There is much said about greetings in such places leading to advantage-taking, but many occupations and lifestyles depend on such greetings and partings within their social economies. Bulletin-boards can become a targeted community-resource in such places. So can proprietors and patrons, if such venues protect their independence and cultural uniqueness.

Shelter - Shared housing is so common that much can be made of its relation to lifestyle. Subversion of the dialogue resulting from online listings too-often damages the intention to create a healthy relationship. Sustaining a relationship with the community resources described above may cultivate a healthy alternative to bulk responses to advertisements.

Car - A vehicle is a luxury for some more than others, and can become a community resource if agreements are made around its use and maintenance within a community. It's not always easy becoming a "car-angel", but it is obvious that age, infirmity and poverty do not eliminate the need of one when cargo or a difficult trip are contemplated.

Jobs - The reasons for a choice of occupation are numerous, while people often choose to know each other on the basis of convenience or an anticipation of lifestyle, as much as for pursuit of professional visibility. Again, there is much said about advantage-taking related to networking, but people can choose to avoid screwing each other over. It isn't worth saying more than that in reference to an individual role in this post.

Guilds - I mention this in an informal grass-roots sense. Patrols, guardians and proprietors, as with larger occupational bodies, may choose to form guilds in order to share information about resources and opportunities. Trades organizations tend to focus on skills development, accreditation and fairness in relations with administration of work; but the notion of a guild refers more to a free choice of membership, based on an affinity to the intentions of it. It is important here to avoid any protectionistic practices which prevent a person's inclusion in a community, and any subversiveness or vengefulness which may result. Such behaviour causes problems rather than preventing them.

Activities People Share

If people have become able to agree to "be someone" within an activistic community, Then they may share and nurture the care of activities which may realisticly contribute to any intentions they share.

Messaging - Within activism, this is the larger sense of building a sharing of awareness and belief around people, resources and opportunities. I distinguish this from a discussion of issues because issues divide people, and I see more damage than benefit from clothing any person, people or organization in a carpet of issues and dissent. Of course it is my own experience of personal attacks which leads me to point to the distinction, but I am aware that this has become an intractable problem for a large number of people and it may take some time to repair the damage such personal attacks have caused for all of them.

Reprimand - A community member or representative may observe someone doing or saying something damaging to the community and provide a short, polite explanation why the behavior is unwelcome. This serves as an alternative to responses I have observed which are considerably more abusive.

Intervention - Messaging on a larger scale, as above, which responds to unwelcome activity of a body of people disturbing harmony within a community. What is to be avoided is to establish viral-behavior which reflects on itself and mutates into something which may escalate into something more damaging.

Vocal Mass - This approaches and may transcend the typical behaviors of activist parades and gatherings. The innovation which has appeared recently is preparation which allows such parades to appear and disappear in a seemingly spontaneous manner. Care needs to be taken with these. I have experienced many such parades which made false claims regarding my life and personality, which can only be interpreted as criminal. A person has no defense against such games when the source of origin cannot be identified.

Street Theatre - Similar to Vocal Masses, or combined with them. Skits may model welcome behavior or mock unwelcome behavior. The same care needs to be taken with this, for the same reasons.

Some People's Dysfuncional Communication Problems

Sucker-punch - Any breakdown in communication, whether deliberate or the result of a flaw in a chain of communication, which results in someone engaging in a futile endeavor. I have witnessed sucker-punches designed into the methods of a personal attack, owing to a deliberate sabotage of communication and authority structure. It is a merciless and heartless style of personal attack which no-one should allow themselves to participate in.

Power Trip - Too often this is less a personal intention to be malicious, and more an expression of policy. A person might be more inclined to respond to obvious basic-needs if they were not subordinate to a misguided policy. I often joke about the "Non-confrontational Communication" Prevention Method which front-line workers often use to avoid providing service they are supposedly employed to provide.

Idiot Wind -  This is a vicious social behavior intended to mock an individual with suggestions to interpret their personality with respect to specific personality traits. It is a gossip behavior which becomes maddening if it is pervasive.

Personal Attacks - I am highlighting this because there are many organized-stalking conspiracies currently in existence which gain an intractable momentum by becoming juxtaposed in a balance which is dangerous to dismantle without tracing and considering sources and balances of influence. Such attacks may include any or all of the above psychological attack methods.


Combing - In response to any kind of organized-stalking behavior, it is practical for concerned activists to pursue a practice of direct confrontation of participants in personal-attack behavior. A snippet of poetry: 'Assert a mind to be-kind a mind, to find a mind to be-kind of minds in the minding of minds.'

Carpets - Masses of people, following a leader or leaders in a practice of messaging or other activity. They need to be considered carefully in terms of mass and influence. Influence is largely a measure of the simplicity of a message and its appeal to human nature. However, a behavior in a mass of people can lead others to become defensive and deflate the influence of a message. People naturally become defensive when a group becomes militarized into an army of a message, or alternately, an army of spies. It is never helpful to drive people into fear.

Ladders - A design or failure of design related to sucker-punches and a power-trip which sucker-punches can become. One friend told another friend who told another friend. The appearance of Haley's Comet became a non-performance of Bill Haley and the Comets. Ladders deflate the confidence of everyone who participates when a failure of communication leaves everyone without recourse. Designing communications into ladders is either incompetent or malicious. A remedy is to 'flip' the orientation of a ladder to discover the source and dissolve it, under observation from outside.

Progressive Organization

Causes - Groups organize in the intention to cause a change in something. Too much of activism and non-profit sector behavior allows itself to be trapped in mimicking the design of corporations, striving for perpetuity and expansion. These aims are neither sustainable nor desirable in any effective social organization. Orientation towards solutions presupposes a desire for the obsolescence of a society having solved the problem which it formed in order to solve.

Courses of causes - Some kinds of social change are the product of projects which progress in stages. My experience is that if all of the steps were anticipated at the beginning of an project, nearly all of them will change in a process which leads to completion. Completion of a cause becomes cause of a cause, and completion of a course of causes becomes cause to sever of a cause.

Divorces and Severances - Having mentioned it already, all of my approaches towards organizing contain a notion that an individual may choose to divorce of a cause or a group at any time, and vice-versa, and that completion of a cause intends severance of the participants. There is no need for the sentimentality which divorce and severance may incite, because it is a reflection of the end of a process rather than having a bearing on friendship. We each follow many paths through life, and we need to be able to conjoin and disperse freely. It allows us to re-form freely in response to the many causes of humanity.

Tapestry Dance - Five

They're out to get me. Ha ha ha.

There are people who are referred to as Targeted Individuals in the world, and I have been one of them. Here is where I choose to be careful, because I have reached a point where respect for a notion I call anti-past serves to defend me. I will not refer to sources of influence who are no longer able to influence people, nor will I refer directly to bodies of interest or other participants in my life-story.

I do not expect anyone who feels they do not experience what I am writing about to make sense of any of this, so it remains that I know I am writing for those who find themselves in a role in my experience, or a similar one. I am told that participants in similar experiences number in the hundreds of millions, so it is not as if I am limiting my audience.

Targets are victims or survivors of a social crime, in which bodies of people engage in a collection of behaviors in order to sabotage the life and reputation of the individual. Perpetrators organize with various online and cellular communication methods which may include private blogs, text-messaging networks, MMORGs, CD's and USB drives and other secret-able communication methods. There are also groups who have used Psychotronic technology developed for various Special Forces, which happen to have become purchasable by private interests and criminal organizations, as with any other kind of weaponry. Participants become motivated either by threats or incentives, and sometimes by fraudulent claims of a noble-cause, or assertions of a crime to be exposed and prosecuted. A careful design in juxtaposing bodies of influence ensures that there is something for everybody, which can be manipulated by shrewd strategists in order to achieve economic or political aims on a massive scale.

It is not my intention to comment on Targeted Individuals beyond the need of it. It serves as a context for a discussion of telepathy, and its relation to Angelic community, and is otherwise of little interest to me. It remains that the use of Psychotronic technology has served to achieve a certain level of entrainment among those who were not familiar with the experience and nuances of telepathy; and so I am more interested in guiding people's adaptation to the experience of telepathy itself, as well as it's influence on the community as a whole.

The experience I have endured has been reflected in dreams I have had since my youth; so here I will begin primarily referring to myself, not out of arrogance, but in the intention to focus on the individual within a role in telepathic awareness which is social. After leaving a relationship, people in my social-environment began acting strangely, gossiping about my private life, even my thoughts, and gathering in behaviours which told me of things to come: What if suddenly what was hidden is revealed? I'd had a previous experience which medicine defined as psychosis, but which I had conquered over a period of years in a way which is now not worth attempting to describe in detail. It is enough to say that I anticipated influences which would arrive to make things difficult for everyone, myself included.

Some people are aggressive, and some people are passive. Some people are passive-aggressive. What peril would ensue when passive personalities suddenly became overwhelmed by aggressive personalities? I decided then to engage in a dangerous and delicate practice of satirical speech-making, intending to draw out people who might tend to hide in their shell, and open people to assertiveness; especially within the domains of sexuality and aggression. I felt this necessary because I was already painfully aware of the tactile and emotional range of telepathy, and I knew it would be beneficial to toughen people so they would be better prepared to defend themselves and each other. The frustration of this was that I remained a distorted focus: I was entertaining to people, but none of them would allow themselves to become caught up in the story of my life for the amusement or derision of others. I claimed at the time to be looking for a publishing agent, ready as I felt at the time for a thesis on the subject. The joke became that everyone was transcribing my words and engaging in debate in order to create a crowd-sourced publication or a cell-phone movie of the story of my life, in order to justify "researching" the dirty-laundry of everyone I had ever known or even spoken to briefly. Participants appeared unselfconscious about the burden such a bulk of material would present to any self-respecting editor. Meanwhile, the most frightening influences became all too familiar to me, while catching everyone else completely off-guard. So began two years as a fugitive of a witch-hunt.

In passing through several cities, I chose to cultivate professional allegiances of various kinds - policing, soldiery, universities and entertainment among them - owing to the insult and risk which the growing conspiracy presented to their professional integrity in each case. The differences among places was sufficient to sustain a difference in social responses among all of them, which both complicated and contributed to my defence. The ways in which I defended myself and everyone generally pertained to matters of professional integrity, economics, innovation, adaptability and community. To the extent which I was a focus of attention, I cultivated what influence I could find in a process of debate. In times of exhaustion, I feel as if my survival may have been nothing more than blind luck.

The behaviours of people were seeded and guided through several paths juxtaposed with each other, depending upon what cultures they were either attracted to or fearful of. One difficulty I discovered the hard way was that the organizational structures of professional groups had been infiltrated and sabotaged by those who began the conspiracy. People who claimed they were my defenders became stymied in protecting any relief from various mechanisms of abandonment. I became able to identify a "ladder" as one of the organizing structures, designed and doomed to fail, visibly frustrating the participants. Network-marketing hasn't taught us anything useful about conspiracies. I once quipped that no conspiracy of any immensity could possibly succeed, because people have so little ability to co-operate as it is. The best that people could achieve was a balance among populations, without allowing a threat to themselves by any direct initiative of an individual. It took a long time to identify what stifled people, and it wouldn't serve anything to identify anyone directly here. I acted on the basis of preferring contracts to litigation, generally seeking to restore civility and reduce or eliminate any need for such interference in my future or those I perhaps naively considered blameless for being trapped as much as I was.

The flow of events has fizzled in my story, and I gain the most from keeping it that way. However, there are many people who might benefit from what little I have to say about the experience of being targeted. Telepathy is for the most part transparent to law, but it is possible to record testimony in an audited manner. The way of this is for a group of officers who participate in telepathic discussion to become transcribed in signed testimony, under supervision of an auditing body.

Targeting conspiracies are becoming professionally dissolved by policing authorities, and I feel I must limit my commentary on their activities and strategies. However, I feel compelled to comment simply on social organization in general. Every participant of every grass-roots social organization must be personally familiar with all of their members and leadership during the pursuit of any social action. I have seen too much of irresponsible leadership and organization and I am still catching my breath in the satisfaction of having forestalled a massacre. Here is my basic response to anyone considering inclusion in a conspiracy: Just don't go there.

Tapestry Dance - Four

Personality is a simple word which belies the complexity of what gives rise to it. It describes what we experience of a person. This experience of a personality stands as evidence of a body of memories and emotional biases contributing behavior within the moment, and comparable to trends in the person's behavior. Now consider telepathy.

People who speak of telepathy often speak of rapport. In bulk, it becomes more complex. I have become aware of many millions of people, aware of myself. Communication among so many becomes difficult to parse, especially in recognizing ulterior motives to communication. People shelter their messaging in awareness of unwanted recipients. My practice has always been to respond to aggregates of opinion, aggregates of emotion, aggregates of viewpoint; much as a stage-performer responds to and channels the mind of an audience. Rapport is difficult to achieve in this circumstance. At this point it serves the narrative to engage in some disambiguation of terms.

Two years ago I began with a notion of  "Spiritual-Congruence." I proposed that people become able to achieve rapport based on a relative similarity in beliefs, values and ethics, as well as other ephemeral qualities of personality. Now I am more inclined to believe that those who accept telepathic awareness of each other grow into a body of belief and rhythm of life which simply reflects the ordinary bonds of friendship. I experienced the degree in which the intentions of one could invoke the behavior of another, and needed to examine the distinctions among considerations of individuality, friendship bonds, and the discomfiting notion of a "composite-soul." Discussions I have had among those I've been best connected with have allowed us to share a comfort-level with varying experiences of each of these within telepathic experience.

The aggregate of people's telepathic awareness of each other can be variously described as a tapestry of consciousness or spirit, or a practice of awarenessing; and it has been described as all of them by other authors. Here, I'm rattling-off some personally convenient descriptions of each for the purposes of this narrative. I describe a socialization of telepathic awareness as a tapestry in order to call attention to the extent of influence one or a group of personalities may have upon the rest; propagating and reflecting waves of emotion and discussion as a result of an event of communication, as a pebble dropped in a still pond. I consider consciousness as a relatively atheistic description of a mind, nearly divorced of spiritual or religious belief, or even physicality. I consider spirit to contain consciousness, while perhaps also accepting any influence of spiritual, religious and moral belief from any source. Awarenessing stands as a verb which describes an act of making another aware of a statement of oneself. All of the constructions of "aware" as a root-word become useful in discussion, but we can abandon any need to prefer one term over another in general.

After drowning all of telepathy in the cold intellectualism of these descriptions, I can come up for air in describing why I went to the trouble. Telepathy is an attractive super-power to a casual reader of comic books, but it is frightening as soon as we discover ourselves facing our superstitions, and our fear of standing naked before each other. It is frightening when we answer a psychiatrist who asks if we hear voices, feel insubstantial sensations, see things which are not there, or exhibit personalities and behaviors which are not our own. Here we risk becoming shackled with the superstitions of psychiatry itself, which does us all a disservice in it's responses; assuming an imbalance in brain-chemistry in order to justify a tangible therapy, while ignoring the nuances of an experience which only conveniently resembles the indications in their literature. We may resolutely refuse to accept all of the diagnoses of psychosis, schizophrenia, multiple-personality; and all of the popular condemnation of misunderstood diagnoses in the popular press. We can refuse to condemn ourselves as dissociative lunatics, because we are not.

Now I can come up for air even further in returning to what I began with: Personality. Personality is, in a sense, the basic unit which we may aggregate in experiencing the behavior of the tapestry; whatever sort of tapestry we choose to idealize. My personality is my personality, as your personality is yours. This distinction is not at all trivial. My idealism is my idealism and my idealization of myself is my idealization of myself, as yours is yours. This distinction stands as the heart of the failure of all of religion, because so many exist and because the divergence of opinion among them is protected so passionately that it frequently results in conflict and war. Standing within my idealization of self, I allow myself certain behaviors and beliefs and refuse others; and I am resolute in my choices. If a telepathic influence might seek to lead me into behaviors or beliefs outside the constraints of my idealization of myself, that influence will fail because of my force of will. I will do what I obligate myself to do, and I will not do what I obligate myself not to do. The resolve I carry within my idealization of self prevents me from becoming what I refuse to become, and I have no fear of it.

Meanwhile, I am a performing artist, so I have a more flexible experience and range within my personality. I am able to capitalize on this, in becoming able to represent other personalities within a sensitivity to their emotion and viewpoint.  I am able to have a more flexible idealization of self. The effect is that I have described the necessity of a resolute defense of a range of variation in my idealization of self, while also accepting the extent to which it may expand at any given time. Returning to the swordsman's metaphor of the "Master's Circle," I begin with mastery of the basis of my own personality; and then allow myself to expand boundaries of expression and ability, within a growth in awareness of other personalities with a different range of expression and abilities.

This fundamental change in an experience of personality within a tapestry of  "personalities," points to both dangers and opportunities within the growth of the experience of telepathy. For all the difficulties in describing it intellectually, I have observed that children become comfortable with it as easily as breathing, walking and talking. I always imagined that they would.

Tapestry Dance - Three

In the beginning…

In the End Times…

In these times we live in…

Our opinions are brought forth regarding all of them. Opinions we have learned to cultivate from the best of literature, the best of history, the best of divine inspiration, the best of interpreters of these things and also the worst of all of them. The debate continues. So does the acrimony and fanaticism. What can protect us from becoming overrun with it when it achieves critical mass?

When something happens which is not explainable by means we can identify, or objectively understand how to become a cause of, we consider it magic. We encourage children to believe they can be magical, we claim that they are, we enjoy the belief that magic can appear to conquer our difficulties; while we openly ridicule anyone who claims or can even demonstrate that they are in some way magical, or that they reside within the influence of magic, or that the experience we share needs to be interpreted within a ‘magical’ context. We find ourselves subject to historical and political opinions about what kinds of magic we can ‘permit’ in our lives and the extent to which we can take it literally.

When magic appears in a person’s life, we place labels upon them according to the nature of their influence on us and the fears we carry. We call them angels and demons, we call them witches, wizards, sorcerers, mystics, lunatics, criminals, and saints; perhaps we paint them with the personalities of historical characters from religion and mythology. We test them for satisfaction of our expectations of a character from existing myths, or for the appearance of events required to satisfy a prophecy.

The mistake in all of this is to place more importance on the satisfaction of our beliefs and expectations than the truth of our shared experience.

There are many ‘scriptures’ which begin: “In the beginning…” A problem with this is that the earliest of these known to archeology were created within the last twelve thousand years or so; but the history of humanity, and life itself, is considerably longer. There are many problems with any belief in those three words. Meanwhile, all of these ‘scriptures’ presume a time-frame of the spirit of God, and all of spirit itself, as eternal – from a time with no beginning projected forward to a time with no end. In response to this, we preserve ‘prophecies’ which make projections of the events and personalities populating narratives of ‘the End Times’, while we make no end of debate over meaning and the extent to which we are to believe or disbelieve anything specific about any of them.

If we find ourselves within an experience which sufficiently resembles any number of prophecies, a social conflict inevitably appears. We live in a culture of skepticism and empiricism, while we also live in a culture which protects religion politically. Within a time which resembles prophecy, a belief in the religious significance of our experience is both attacked and defended by not just atheism but also religion itself. A device of science and social-will among secular interests which might contribute to such a circumstance may also be used by all parties to discredit its religious significance, to the extent of tragically ignoring what truth might still be found in it. Meanwhile, the momentum of a belief in prophecy may consume and destroy any more subtle growth in wisdom which might otherwise be discovered in the experience.

Any conflict between social events and an expectation tied to beliefs or ideologies which we defend becomes a lever which influences emotion and behavior. Because of the differences among us as individuals and as members of schools of belief, these conflicts can become amplified and our emotions and behaviors can become further distorted. In a time where we suddenly find ourselves in an experience we can interpret as magical or prophetic, these conflicts can become dangerously amplified again. All of this demonstrates the need to closely examine our beliefs and ideologies in light of what we strive for in protecting them.

There are many sources which discuss Love and Fear as the prime polarities of emotion. We can easily place Love and Fear at opposite ends of a rubber band in our imaginations, then stretch it out and place ourselves and each other somewhere within the area we have imagined, which then becomes the wellspring of our behavior and personality. There are those of us which find passion in defense of either extremity within ourselves and each other, while others defend a balance between them with equal passion. The relative presence or absence of passion now becomes a ‘y-axis’ in a description of our emotion, behavior and personality. Meanwhile, we could extend a ‘z-axis’ through time, and interpret the personalities and evolution of ourselves and each other through trends among oscillations of these aspects of emotion and motivation.

This serves as an example of the beginnings of an epistemological methodology which I began describing as Domain Theory almost two years ago. For better or worse, it became popular to debate Domain Theory within a context of rhetoric which was tortuously polarized, while the debate was over-laden with an ever-growing mountain of boiling, steaming issues beyond reasonable limits of discussion; and I became enslaved to the resolution of the entire discussion on pain of death. To this day I have not become able to escape the debate anywhere I have been able to go for any length of time. The answer I present to this, which people persist in ignoring, is that Domain Theory has absolutely nothing to do with rhetoric, and the entire discussion is a dangerously irresponsible and disgusting insult to the opportunities which led me to begin developing it. Meanwhile, within the advance of a telepathic social-reality, I have become able to guide people into becoming almost-safely accustomed to the experience, so now I have a duty to step past that particular issue and resolve the social awareness of something which people have dangerously misinterpreted.

We can say that emotion influences behavior. We can also say that beliefs of all kinds influence both. If our experience suddenly challenges our beliefs, then as human-animals we do have the irrational ability to choose to defend either our beliefs or our experience. This choice then aggregates into our social will and behavior. It obviously becomes necessary to defend ourselves and each other within a context of adaptation. We find ourselves needing a way to parse changes in our social-contract and beliefs in order to prevent the creation of a massacre. That need is the spirit in which I began looking into “Domains of Belief,” and ways of interpreting ‘populations’ of influences within a personality, a community, a culture and a juxtaposition of any and all of them. A body of rhetoric applied to such a body of considerations is unable to draw conclusions at all, to say nothing of ones which can be trusted. The bulk of considerations shatters the effectiveness of rhetoric.

Whether religious or secular, we each carry idealizations of the personalities of God, angels, demons, prophets and others within our various mythologies and histories. These idealizations begin from sources as various as scriptures, the writings of many through history who claim to have channeled them, and comparative and fanciful writings which may have any of a number of reasons for having been created. What we often ignore is a few basic facts of history: writers are strange people, and so are leaders and other interests who make it possible for histories and mythologies to be published. A further observation can be made of writers and artists who have used neuro-toxic materials in writing and art throughout history. The visions of prophets and dreamers can also be interpreted in the context of neuro-toxicity. Put simply, writers and artists get high, they can be superstitious and fanciful, and often they just don’t know that they have been poisoning themselves. Meanwhile, it is documented that leaders from every culture have had political motives for either championing or stifling religious beliefs and writings. Stories within religion have become gathered from oral-histories which began before the creation of written language, and then curators of these stories tacitly accepted the natural tendency of these stories to become distorted through generations of retelling.

Prophecy is a special case within scriptural sources. Consider a person who may be considered divine, or heretical, or at least a subject of discussion, who begins telling people of a dream which describes the distant future. What means would the dreamer have to experience and interpret such a dream? If personalities which are already known from history are included, what assurance would a future population have of the authenticity of the subsequent experience? History teaches that people are skeptical of the experience of prophetic personalities and events, and conflict always appears. Another confusing aspect of prophecy has to do with a few properties of prophetic dreams.

A prophetic dream, by its nature, is a communication among dreamers which passes through time. A dreamer observes a dream or a number of dreams passed back through time from one or a number of dreamers. The experience of life is different for such “dreamers from the future”, as is the personality which interprets their experience through dreams; while a prophet in the distant past likely doesn’t possess the language to describe what they find in a dream accurately. It becomes an obvious fallacy to expect to be able to interpret a prophecy in literal terms. Many prophecies also mention a secret which a prophet might protect in the retelling of their dreams. I would suggest that for a future population to make various presumptions about life based on a prophecy, the purpose of prophecy is fulfilled within those presumptions. Meanwhile, if the prophecy stands as a warning of difficulties which human nature would inspire someone to defend themselves within, the prophecy might stand as a warning against allowing a certain outcome as much as it might stand as a statement of destiny.

All of these influences contribute to our individual and social experience and response to living in what we perceive as prophetic times. Meanwhile, we are left to compare the bubble-gum cards of mythological personalities with the names and social-network profiles of people who become thrust into the roles of those mythological personalities. It is our presumptions which protect a tension and the mechanisms of conflict associated with prophetic times.

Tapestry Dance - Two

Here is a scenario. One day, you ask the universe – or perhaps some specific part of the universe – a question, and it answers directly…but not. The answer becomes a reflection of the interest and intention which inspired you to ask the question. Over time, the answer becomes a growing emotional response to the interest and intention which inspired you to ask the question, and that answer came from many who observed the internal discussion and could not resist the urge to interject. The progression of events became a heated debate, fueled by more observers and salted with the beginnings of divergence of opinion, unaware of what began the discussion. The universe should not be able to punish you for asking an innocent question.

This was the ‘first’ scenario I experienced, telepathically, fifteen years ago. It happened in a context where the world around me demonstrated no awareness of what I was experiencing, but "minds within my mind" closely resembled the identity and a plausible hidden agenda to influence among people I was already familiar with. I decided to deal with the world on it’s own terms, while speaking openly about the fact of my experience and some observations, if not-so-many details. I endured seven years of becoming familiar with this scenario's  intricacies. I’ve also, now, endured a few years in which I could look back on it while other matters became more prominent.

Here is a second scenario. One day, the universe – or perhaps some specific part of the universe – asks you a question, and it asks directly…but not. The situation is not so simple then, because the quick-answer becomes the question which the "universe-whom" asked the question seeks to inspire in the next who asks. The question the universe asks becomes an individual threat by becoming a social threat. A social process becomes initiated, then grows and mutates away from any defense of relevance to the original question. The universe should not be able to punish you for not satisfying a demand to protect indefensible assumptions about you.

This was the ‘second’ scenario I experienced, and I still can’t make up my mind how much of it I saw coming. I don’t care, because it has been a very long time since I have had the luxury of giving a flying fuck about anybody’s ideas about determinism. We would all be dead if I hadn’t dealt with it dismissively. Not everyone tries to think that hard. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t also compelled to deal with things intelligently. In this case, I knew I had to push the world to deal with the experience on my terms, because the only future I could let myself seek required that those around me be protected by my experience and awareness of what influenced them. We could only learn a delicate emotional dance, and I needed to begin with the most brazen and dangerous personality-play I have ever attempted; because I knew what was coming, and people needed to become liberated, then focused, in their response to it. The consequence of failure would have become anarchistic slaughter.

I exposed early work with a couple of epistemological models I was exploring when this began, and was subjected to the deliberate sabotage of them in everyone's behavior. There has been discussion of whether anyone should be allowed to hear about them again, but I feel that the genie is out of the bottle and the damage needs to be prevented from recurring. People respond to telepathy from the context of their existing beliefs, without always seeing the dangers of them, while any kind of atheism ignores the dangers that atheism presents to any atheist's unwillingness to believe anything.

Divergence of opinion is dangerous when opinion is defended in flagrant disregard of the best evidence. Divergence of opinion becomes a polarization of emotion which becomes antagonistic and violent if the danger of it isn’t recognized and contained. Telepathy amplifies this hazard due to its intimacy, and the extent to which divergence of opinion is able to expand this hazard.

I am not the first to imagine our social relations as a tapestry of consciousness, or spirit, or to consider the meanings of a distinction among them. Because of my experience I chose to focus on various facets of the way relationships become polarized, the value of either avoiding or seeking a polarization of relationships, and the characteristics of intimacy and defensiveness which would contribute to polarization. I considered the ways in which waves pass through a tapestry, or through a fluid; saw it as interpretable as emotion which either sustains a comfortable calm or becomes a storm; and considered how the best condition might be sustained or restored through a sudden adaptation. I considered the ways in which one might sabotage stability for selfish aims; then conversely how such sabotage might be contained, diverted, diffused and subdued. It needed to become something understandable to children.

A tapestry becomes understandable while visualizing waves within it. A pebble or a raindrop moves the surface of a pond, but teaches nothing to either the pond or any witness.  A quilt of personalities connected by various kinds of relationships, faced with a disturbance within any one of those personalities or relationships, will amplify and sustain a ripple through everyone-else's lives which will reflect within the domain of that quilt in any number of ways. Such ripples may become either healthy or destructive. We may know each other, or we may not. A meditator heard the drop, saw the waves, then thought, "Which pebble? Which raindrop?" A sudden transition from a ‘normal’ sense to a telepathic sense would become a shock. If, suddenly, anyone who felt their own  lives through the lenses of family, work, leisure, attraction, reputation and mobility became naked before the world, everything they might have relied upon would become a hazard.

There is nothing good which can come from a growth in fear and it is foolish to avoid noticing obvious sources of fear. One of them is religion, which I describe only as a body of beliefs which come from a historical source of a body of beliefs, and a will to learn how to live amongst a body of people who are still willing to defend any such body of beliefs. Learn set-theory now, not only because of mathematical reasons. Start over, and learn set theory for epistemological reasons. A wise protagonist can imagine and curate an indeterminate "antagonist-set" which describes and contains the population of defenders of beliefs which don’t necessarily claim a divine, authoritative or accurate source, while remaining influential due to a cultural comfort with such beliefs. Such a protagonist may also curate any number of indeterminate sets which fall within a "defender-set" who share common-cause with the protagonist. It is necessary to interpret every one of any sets within this application of set theory dynamically, due to the dynamism of human behavior and motivation. So-many bodies of beliefs become threatened by changes in perception which render them either partially or fully indefensible. We fuck this shit up more and more together.

Because I’m a martial artist, and because I like making things understandable for children, I describe perception in terms of "The Mask of Zorro;” as a lesson, a swordsman’s-metaphor of the ‘Master’s Circle’. We seek to have a complete sense and command of a circle which tightly encompasses our flesh, then arms reach out, we gradually expand outward in awareness, only if the practice becomes as reliable as our sense and command of that which is intimate. If we objectify our visual, auditory and tactile senses and the dimension in which we can rely on these senses, and then experience a comparison with a similar telepathic sense which may distort senses of location, identity, proximity, emotion and intention, we discover difficulties of adaptation. Our social contract needs to become adjusted to protect the safety and integrity of our relations with each other. Existing beliefs then become a threat to the protection of such an adjustment. We know we need to change and we are in this together.

A specific kind of threat which exists in religion is so-much of prophecy, so many idealizations of personalities and identities from history, so-much protection of an obsessive requirement that all of these expectations be fulfilled and satisfied. If people defend their beliefs against the truth of their experience too far, the fanaticism just naturally escalates conflict. I can fully describe the arguments which discredit many assumptions, but few believers of anything want to hear that they must let go of something they have believed since they were children. What I have discovered is a means of interpreting how we have striven to protect history, and also to distort it, either superstitiously or deliberately. Another thing I have considered is a comparison between the depth and breadth of any actual experience of life in the universe, and the distorted fragments of dogma we interpret it with.

Since money and influence are no less considered objects of piety in our cultural tapestry than gods and devils, the advance of a telepathic awareness needs to consider the juxtaposition of the complete set of such influences, and the degree to which they become conflated within any particular voice. But how the hell do any of us analyze all of that shit? No way man…until I started playing with a notion I call Domain-Theory. Then I suddenly had to be crazy enough to socialize discussion of it, because everything started happening too fast. Somebody dumped a beehive of rhetoric over it. I must emphasize that Domain-Theory and rhetoric can’t play in the same school-yard without killing each other and anyone who gets caught in the battlefield. That might have become all I say about Domain Theory here, because I’ve already pointed at the danger of it, but people have heard of it anyway so I’m compelled to provide damage control.

It is the hidden dangers of telepathy that I intend to address very carefully. A personal attack can either be direct or it can become an attack on the perceptions a person is surrounded with. Telepathy may allow specific very subtle kinds of attack which people need to become able to recognize and defend themselves in the face of. What is more important, though, is for all of us to commit to never allowing ourselves to attempt such attacks, because of the immense danger of them.

In all cases, what defends each of us best is a personal will which refuses to betray our core values in our behavior. If I hear an unrepentant psychopath say, “don’t blame me, the Devil made me do it,” I can respond directly, “no, you let the Devil make you do it.” My experience is such that I can rely on myself not to act with an intention which betrays my core values, having repelled attempts to invoke such betrayals consistently. If I hear any number of influences strive to deceive or extort my intentions into self-betrayal, my experience has also led me to methods of discovering true intentions so that I can restrain unwanted responses. My need of this is less, now, because very many influences which have striven in those directions have been contained or eliminated. But what is needed now is to prevent certain circumstances from creating new destructive influences. This requires a deeper understanding of what we perceive as ‘magic’ and issues which relate to it within personality, culture and influence. “Angels” and “Demons” become interpretable within these beginnings, rather than the fairy-tales of history. So do personalities which gain reverence or awe from outside observers, and those who listen to them.

I have become characterized as a prophet, an angel, a mystic…any number of kinds of criminal, and a “demi-god awareness” for the obvious reason that those who wish to establish my insanity only need to discover which ego-trip I might let myself fall for; while those who defend me seek to defeat any dispute of their best opinion. I can ward off interest in any such ego-trip by simply saying that I saw a clear need to defend people from something they couldn’t anticipate as well as I had, and I behaved according to the necessity. Meanwhile, I have observed people demonstrating abilities I could never have anticipated any of us acquiring, some of which I appreciated more than others. What I could not ignore was that warriors would become warriors, pushy people would become pushy, submissive people would become recalcitrant, and all of them would become each other in some way. Bullets don’t carry ideology, nor do those who dispense them, but re-tellers of every tale always establish an ideological context – often a delusional one. Meanwhile, I might become expected to fulfill an anticipated identity or events of a prophecy, and people might strive to protect or refute that expectation, while never caring what I think of any of it. I can never blame myself for that. It’s all Rock and Roll.

Tapestry Dance - One

I had a dream or two. So what? I thought about many things and studied many things. So what? I didn’t finish college, and I decided to become something other than what I studied, without bothering with the formality of education again. So what? I had many premonitions of things which have since happened very much as I anticipated. So what? I became trapped in the necessity of defending the populations of several cities from descending into madness and slaughter in order to defend my own future. So what? I am a storyteller who is now compelled to protect the privacy of people who’s affairs are already misperceived by too many people, while remaining able to be a storyteller. So what? If anyone hears this response from one of the voices from my past, it reflects a rivalry best ignored.

Two years ago, a woman wanted me to become her new husband. I decided I didn’t want to. She wouldn’t believe me, and returned a number of times to persuade me. I discovered a way to persuade her not to return again. She discovered a way to persuade my social circle to persuade me not to return again either, in spite of the fact that she was never a part of my social circle before. People sometimes have motivations which are not clear at first, as I had already discovered in the past.

A long time ago I went crazy. I heard voices in the skies, across the room, in my ear, mocking and condemning me for things which refused to reflect reality. I went for a very long walk, intending to escape something I knew I couldn’t, while finding strange, blue, mocking faces in objects and clouds everywhere I looked. I gathered a few bags of garbage along the sides of roads for someone to pick up. Eventually I returned home under threat from the voices I heard that I was constantly under threat from snipers, then waited in the yard for my roommate to return home and have me sent to the hospital, with the assertion that I must move out immediately. People sometimes need to establish boundaries in order to protect their homes.

I decided not to die, after considering whether I could become either a benefit or a burden to the world. My decision was based on what I anticipated in the future, and what I saw of the beginnings of it at the time. I took atypical antipsychotic medications, fully intending to abandon them eventually against the doctors’ belief that I would never be able to stop, because I knew I would eventually lose the ability to protect my life if I protected the dependency. I also refused disability coverage to eventually accept a job which I held for nine years, with a few others along the way, because I did not want to become trapped in the regional economy and culture. I can now confirm that it was a trap to later accept disability when I collapsed a disk in my neck which pinches motor-nerves, but it still became a matter of survival to escape that trap. I guess I have escaped where survival is concerned, but I know there are things I have never had any ability nor desire to escape.

I was successful at weaning myself off the medication after seven years, while also becoming successful at deconstructing the mechanisms of my experience of psychosis. Current practice is to use medication as a substitute for counselling, so I am glad to have gained that ability over time. Another reason I am glad to have gained that ability, is that it prepared me to cope with the nightmare which I now stand in the memory of. But that is not why I am writing.

I knew I had changed much by the time I left the relationship, and I immediately decided to explore it as an artist and philosopher. I noticed people were behaving differently towards me already, but I chose to just reflect the most natural, pissed-off response to the whole experience, while also distancing myself from bringing her name into it. I explored the tension between sexuality and abuse. I wrote poems and made speeches. I strove to gather friends as a fence against her return, but something was strange. My thoughts became the topic of gossip around me. Parts of my routine at home also became the topic of gossip around me. I silently tossed ribald thoughts off at life and found them reflected in people’s conversations and gestures everywhere I went. I made satire of comparing my own embarrassments to those I could imagine among those around me. I became the self-financed performer of the most popular show I had ever done, which became a frustrating thing for a veteran musician like myself to accept. It became obvious I was in deep shit. I kinda was before she showed up, but now it was becoming clear we were all in deep shit, and I began including warnings in my satire. The time I had vaguely anticipated since I was a teenager had arrived.

I’m no bible-thumper now, but when I was young I felt compelled to give it a good read, since it made the people around me so much more explainable. I did that with a few religions, and a few cultures, over time. A prophecy which stuck with me was, “Days will come when what was hidden, will be revealed.” I thought to myself, ‘what would happen if suddenly everybody knew everybody else’s private shit?’ This is obviously too much of an awareness for any of us to contain consciously, but it seemed a likely reason that people would tacitly agree to overwhelmingly flip-out. Another bit from several prophecies, was the instruction to a prophet to keep some revelations secret. Like I said, I eventually broke free from happy-pills and psychosis. The reason I succeeded is that I refused to let myself become trapped in religion, or any other assumptions. Eventually, I’ll explain that.

After I left college, I became a stage technician for several theatres and festivals. It was kind of a fluke. I volunteered for the Calgary Jazz Society, because I was into jazz, and after a couple of festivals, a production manager suggested I go talk to someone at the Calgary Center for Performing Arts. I guess this is the early-life history lesson. I broke my arm on a show after three years at it, and convalesced in a cheap coffeeshop across the street from the concert hall with a bunch of art-freaks. They kinda became the population of most of my future, but I’ll basically leave that alone. I cut my cast off after two months to work on a film, because I needed the money. I then became a nude model at the art college, and then a street musician for a number of years. I wanted to devote myself to practice and people watching, young idealist that I was. It was the nineties. None of us were good enough for the world in the nineties anyway.

Another relationship I had left previously found me in a frighteningly tight rental-market, needing to move. I volunteered to be a sound technician in an edgy nightclub, which happened to be the frontage of an inexpensive building. One of the things which kept it inexpensive was the noise from my gig and three other neighboring bars. Another thing which kept it inexpensive was an influx of dealers in crack and pills, who invaded at the same time as we were invaded by construction workers and others willing to work in the petroleum industry. I was offered a reference for an apartment, to escape my relationship then. I suddenly found myself as a popular sound technician, in a popular nightclub, on an unpopular street, living in an unpopular building. Outside, it was the heart of Calgary street crime. Inside, it was a technology park housing one of the pioneer internet radio-stations at the time. I cultivated a guarded comfort among nerds, music hounds and thugs. My boss of the previous nine years was driven to sell his business by a vicious shift in business costs, as I had anticipated. Rock and roll, relationships and Calgary are all examples of a vicious game.

Although I was born in Calgary, my first memories are from school-years in Victoria. I played ambulance because my dad was a paramedic. He also ran a deli for a number of years – I helped him make dozens of meat-pies a day, and slept under the pizza oven they cooked in with my younger sister. A loft at the back of the shop stored various supplies and jetsam, and a short railing revealed a strange floor which glowed faintly. I remembered the Six-Million Dollar Man walking on something similar once, and so I decided to give it a try and fell through the false ceiling to land on the freezer in the front of the shop. Eventually I became able to breathe, and chose not to try it again. I was also a fan of Shazam!, who took instructions from the Elders at the beginning of every show. I kept an abandoned gerbil-walking ball on the dashboard of the stationwagon which resembled Shazam’s telepathy-with-the-Elders-thingy, and mentioned their advice not to go underwater when my dad took me for swimming lessons. It only took me a day to become an avid swimmer, but I don’t have a lot of fat to keep me afloat so it’s a bit of work still. I studied first-aid and became a volunteer at hockey-games. I studied magic and did a show at the hospital once for the children’s ward. I read a Cracked magazine article on how to be a teenager while I was thinking about gravity one day, and later while I was playing I decided to jump off the carport with a coathanger in the back of my t-shirt in order to practice a roll-manouver. The coathanger was to ‘teenager-ize’ my posture. My friends thought I was crazy. I went fishing with them on weekends and brought home bass-fish for dinner as often as I could hack the cold. I never wanted to leave Victoria, except that a kid who taught me how to fight also taught me some other things which only a kid who was in grade seven a couple years too late would be interested in. The innocence of childhood is a myth quickly destroyed in the experiences of greeny, rivalry and slumber parties if nothing else. Dad was working out of town too much by then, climbing out of debt, and it was decided we would move back to Calgary.

I was a skinny, quiet kid who thought about everything. I could read anything by the time I was in grade three. I felt like I could see the future, and couldn’t accept the egotism of it. Dreams were mostly just dreams, but sometimes they were vivid. I thought about super-powers, like any skinny kid. I thought about divinity, but I could never take it literally. Any rare taste of the air of a church was an insult to the whole idea for me. I lifted weights, climbed hills, walked everywhere and went through three hernia surgeries. I played football on a quilt of front-lawns one day and ripped my knee apart, also resulting in surgery. My grandfather was a surgeon, so I kept studying everything that happened to me. I was frequently re-injuring myself, so I decided to become some kind of ninja so I could teach myself not to be such a klutz. I was right into the spirituality of it, the superpowers, the duty. I learned guitar and had a band in my basement, so I learned all the other instruments too, except piano. I got to thinking about sensitivity. Over time, I got to thinking about telepathy. When I was a street-musician, musicians I played with were often unpredictable, so the idea of telepathy eventually became handy. I don’t need to know what I’m going to play before I play it anymore.

I think of epiphanies as moments when stress reaches the point of fracturing into unstoppable, gut-wrenching laughter. Starving through an endless walk, hitchhiking through the misfortune of being left at an infamous on-ramp near Chilliwack – think escapable-penetentiary and the many kinds of cow-shit in the world – eventually finding an apple on the shoulder of the road with a quarter cut out of it, not bruised, shortly before sleeping through a ride with a speed-demon all the way to Kelowna. Hiking from a day of apple-picking for six miles in sweltering heat to take a free shower at the racetrack, then arriving at camp smelling the freshness. Many disturbances attempting sleep in a tent: morning sprinklers in an orchard reciting, “shit shit shit shit shit shit pthh pthh pthh shit shit shit…”; a deer poking it’s head at the wall as if contemplating an invasion; the tire of a truck rolling over the entrance and almost crushing my head after an overnight security shift, in what seemed a well chosen campsite at a festival. The driver turned out to be one of the drummers from one of my old bands.

About a week before I was first admitted to the hospital with psychosis, I was enjoying a show with a couple of rather intoxicated companions. For whatever reason, one of them became increasingly aggressive, while I somehow became able to believe I had superpowers, comfortable as I was with premonition. I projected this insane, overbearing love at the guy, who suddenly faded out for a moment, then forgot his train of thought. Soon after, the woman sitting across from me was describing something she was descending into despair over, and I repeated the projection, with a similar result. When she came-to, she began, “hey, you know, I see you lookin’ at me, but just don’t go there, you don’t know what I’m like…” to which I replied, “that would depend on my intentions. I don’t have any intentions right now.” She just began crying. I don’t deny I’ve always been prone to getting signals crossed. I finished my drink and left.

The bar I did sound in was a keep, in defense of the cultural refugees of an overheated economy. The hard-drug community was as openly antagonistic toward us as we were toward them. In later months, with increasing frequency, a stranger would infiltrate and push me aggressively to begin dealing for them, to which I always responded with brazen hostility. Among the ‘members’, we generally sneered that they were all amateur narcs. Then I began working with and frequenting a wider network of events, while I found myself faced with the same aggression there as well. It was too obvious my reputation was under attack, while I just carried on. I committed to defending my father from what I saw coming in his life: he would hit a snag switching from disability to Canada Pension; but on top of that, all his roommates abandoned him at the same time, leaving him in charge of the lease. My sister and I were polling assisted-living residences who were happy to tell us about a list of phone-numbers, refer to their waiting list and offer us some fundraising literature. I cajoled people I was working with to move him into the basement-suite I was left with in a similar way; while the gas and internet were cut off, the landlord was out of town, and we had to heat the place with the oven in a February cold-snap. A month later we found him a home through the Legion, although he wasn’t a veteran. I did a midnight move, I forget where. I began to forget a lot of things. That’s life on the move.

I eventually moved in with an old friend’s ex-boyfriend for a year or so. We played guitar and talked about philosophy. I had recorded a CD a few years before and began working towards a second one, while the woman who wanted me to marry her came and went, to the extent I could control anything. I was half-finished the titles I had planned to record when everything became impossible. Since then, people’s adaptation to the telepathic experience has been the only thing I could allow myself to focus on. I’ve had to protect everyone else’s survival in order to protect my own. The dance of it has become a study in catch-22. I need to protect everyone else's privacy, while I’ve completely forgotten the experience of privacy. Now, two years later, the question of who-dunnit is someone else’s question. I remain focused on our adaptation to telepathy. Lesson one: You have to have a sense of humor.