Good Morning Florida Keys

Last Sunday night, a woman living in Pueblo, Colorado, who is like a daughter to me, was told in her sleep, “God has stopped listening to people. Something will happen in three days.” I told Brenda that what she had heard sort of reminded me of what I was told in my sleep three nights before 911: “Will you make a prayer for a divine intervention for all of humanity?” I said I wondered if something equally jolting, or worse, was coming down?

Three days after Brenda heard that, the terrorist attacks occurred in Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay). Brenda said she felt the attacks all that day inside of her. Meaning, she felt like shit all that day. I said there had been other terrorist attacks in India, and this one seemed to me like just another. Therefore, I told Brenda, I did not feel moved to give it much consideration. However, I later myself wondering if the attacks heralded something bigger to follow, maybe even a world war. Then early this morning in a dream, Brenda came to me very upset that I was letting something big, dark and evil take me away from her. So I got out of bed at dark-thirty and started writing.

In the news, there is speculation that Pakistan aided the terrorists in the Mumbai attacks. As I recall my history reading, at one time Pakistan was part of India. After Gandhi was killed, the Indian Muslims demanded a separate nation and Pakistan was carved out of the northwest portion of India. Relations between Pakistan and India were never very good; there were ongoing border wars and saber rattling. So it wasn’t far-fetched to wonder if Pakistan had a hand in the Mumbai attacks.

However, it is not just Pakistan that India has been in border wars with from time to time. Of all countries in the world that China might truly fear, economically and militarily, it is India, whose population is second only to China’s. China could profit greatly from a major war between Pakistan and India. Collateral benefits to such a war, depending on the prevaling winds, might include nuclear fallout destroying al-Qaeda along the Paki-Afghan border, the American military forces in Afghanistan, and any American naval personnel in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

Beyond all of that, you might say a little birdie told me to write that India might wish to look to China as an outside instigator of the Mumbai attacks.

Perhaps somehow related, my sixth wife, Cathy, was traveling with me when my son-in-law found me in Costa Rica, as described in the two procceding posts. From Costa Rica, Cathy and I traveled to South Africa. While staying in Capetown, we booked air travel to Mumbai out of Durbin, via Mauritius lying east of Madagascar. We scheduled four days in Mauritius, a month in India

After two weeks in Capetown, we traveled over to Durbin, on the Indian Ocean side of South Africa. After settling into a backpackers (sort of like a hostel but in a private home), we went to the Indian Consulate and filled out the forms for visas. To commemorate going to India, we then went to an Indian restaurant near the backpackers. Cathy loved Indian food, once having been involved in and cooked for an ashram founded by an Indian yogi, Kirpal Singh, in Vermont, I think it was. However, after only a few bites, Cathy became violently ill and raced to the restroom and threw up. She came back to our table shaking, barely able to hold herself up. We left the restaurant with her leaning on me and went to the backpackers. She threw up and heaved for another hour, and was laid low and trembled the rest of that day.

Like Brenda today, Cathy was a shaman in training. As such, she absorbed the spiritual poison in what she was moving toward dealing with. She was told from the spirit that the sickness she was throwing up and heaving was India. Because of this, we rearranged our travel schedule, so that instead of spending four days in Mauritius and a month in India, we would spend a month in Mauritius and four days in Mumbai.

At the Mumbai airport, we caught a taxi into the city. We asked the driver if there was an inexpensive hotel near the waterfront, and he said yes. On the way to the waterfront we saw poverty that paled anything we had seen in the United States and South Africa. Looking out the taxi window, Cathy said all she saw in the air were serpents. She was like that, saw lots of stuff in spirit that I did not see. When I said they probably weren’t the nice playful kind of snakes kids watched on the Saturday morning cartoons, Cathy said, no, they were not those kind of snakes. Now we knew what had made her so violently ill in the Indian restaurant in Durbin.

Cathy and I spent a good bit of time strolling the waterfront in front of our hotel. The ocean was nasty looking. The only fish being caught were saltwater catfish. The air was filled with swarming flocks of aggressive black-and-white crows. They came to our table at the rooftop restaurant at our hotel, begging for and even trying to steal food off our plates. I saw a swarm of those crows in an online photo of the Taj Mahal Hotel smoking with fires from the recent terrorist attacks.

Cathy’s and my hotel was just a few blocks down the waterfront from the Taj. Our room cost us $50 per night. One day, we went into the Taj to look around. The receptionist at the front desk told us a room for two would cost us $1,500 a night. We saw quite a few Arabic men in sheik attire, guests.There was a bookstore in the hotel, and there I found a book about India, written by an Indian journalist then living in England. A woman with Hindu roots. While the author was upbeat about India’s future, Cathy and I were not. I wrote to the author and related Cathy’s experiences in Durbin and what she saw in the air from the taxi on the way to the waterfront in Mumbai. I said India’s future might not be so rosy as she imagined, and maybe the best course for India was introspection.

I don’t remember if I included in that letter a vision I’d had in Boulder, Colorado, in June 1995. If not, I should have, because it might have shown a way through what journalist did not seem prepared to face about her own country. Why the vision was given to me, I cannot say. I had never been to India. I had never had an Indian guru. But then, I had many visionary experiences in Boulder during the early and mid 1990s, which were far, far beyond my Alabama roots in this life.

THE GIFT

A man dreams of a young yogi meditating in the lotus position facing away from the sleeping man. Before the young yogi appear two cobras raised up, hoods flaired out. One cobra is white, the other black.

The white cobra says, “We came to you once before because you were innocent. You knew we brought a gift, but you thought you must choose between us and you chose me.”

The black cobra says, “We come before you again because you are wise.”

The yogi, now much older, weeps, chooses them both.

The sleeping man awakens, weeping.

While this vision might not mean anything to a non-Hindu, for an advanced Indian yogi the vision might mean a great deal. Advanced yogis view the cobra as the most sacred of all animals. To be bitten in a dream by a cobra is considered a huge blessing and a prophecy of good spiritual things to come. To have a black and a white cobra give themselves to you in a dream might be viewed by an advanced yogi as dying and going to heaven.

For me, not a yogi, not having had an Indian guru, having never been in India in this life, to have had that vision in Boulder, I can only imagine it was to prepare me for some future event I would be called to deal with. Otherwise, why would I later go to Mumbai and the Taj Mahal Hotel? I never go anywhere just to go there. Never.

Sloan Bashinsky, 30 November 2008

When I saw the new movie, “Australia,” the other night, I figured it heralded yet another spirit journey down under, that is, into the subconscious, spirit, etc. Such happens every time I have an “Australia” experience in dream or waking time. And indeed yesterday’s Med.School post was a walkabout in the subconscious, spirit, etc.

In the movie was a the evolution of a half-caste – creamy – boy’s relationship with his aborigine paternal grandfather, who was still completely tuned into the old ways far beyond the ken of white Australians, or for that matter, any white people. I related to that boy, who was inexorably drawn to going walkabout with and being initiated by his grandfather into the old ways, instead of the ways the white Australians were imposing on half-caste children to “civilize” them.

In November 1995, I was near Darwin, where “Australia” is set. I was in the back of a SUV, backpacking with several white Australians half my age, when two aborigines, a man and a woman, came out of dreamtime into the SUV with us. Only I saw them. I knew who the were, what the were, for I had read of them in Marlo Morgan’s book, MUTANT MESSAGE DOWNUNDER. I then was in the habit off asking spirits what they wanted from me when they came visiting. When I asked  these two what I had that they wanted, they laughed, said, “What could you have that we need? We are real people.” I apologized, felt like an idiot, because they were real people, who viewed modern people as mutants. So I asked why they had come? “To welcome you into our tribe,” they said. I wept, as they went back to where they had come from. Then I went back into civilization, to try to live there as the real people live in the bush. Live like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. I’m not kidding. Those two have been with me ever since. I can tell by the heaving in my heart as I write this.

A heaving heart seems to be part of becoming real. I wrote yesterday of having to struggle with the sins of the fathers that had passed down to me through my paternal grandfather, and what a struggle that has been. Business, making money, lots of money, was central to my grandfather and my father’s philosophy and lives. Shunning was used against those who did not toe the line. My father ended up shunning me, and his granddaughters through me followed suit.

The last time I saw and spoke with my daughters was at my father’s memorial service in Birmingham, in August 2005. I had not heard from them since early 2000, when my oldest daughter told me that her sister and her husband were having trouble. I wrote to them, said what I’d heard and pleaded with them to work it out. I reminded my daughter of her once asking me if I had any advice for her and I told her nothing was more important than her marriage and she should never let anything come between her and her husband, even if she had to kill it. I told them there would be consequences if they went apart, and that I loved them. I did not hear from either of my daughters after that.

About a month after I wrote that letter, my youngest daughter’s husband found me in Costa Rica, not having a clue I was there or that he was looking for me. He said his wife/my daughter had gotten angry over my letter, but he had seen what I was trying to do. I did not realize until last year that, after he saw how she reacted to my letter, he decided to leave her because she had made medical school more important than her marriage. After he and I said our goodbyes, I wrote to her, and to her mother and stepfather, about what had happened in Costa Rica. To that I heard nothing back.

Back to my father’s memorial service in August 2005. I was stunned by what seemed to be nothing beneath the surface when I hugged and spoke with my daughters. I had always felt them deep in my soul whenever we were together, or spoke on the phone, but there was nothing. It was as if they were empty, void. It was horrible. Much more horrible than them letting their mother override my attempt to see them again before they went back to where they lived, which told me what was really between them and me at that time.

I suppose it was freaky for my father to have a son, and for my daughters to have a father, who was given what he needed to know to navigate the travails of this world. Despite the shunning, they were unable to keep me out of their lives. What I did not learn in human ways, I learned in dreamtime. There is nothing I can do about it but cry my heart and guts out whenever something happens that takes me into how much I love and miss them. Something like the movie, “Australia,” which also wrenched me darn good about not having a woman to share my life with, who is having experiences comparable to my own.

Maybe it was true, what Jesus said about leaving family altogether, if you want to walk with God. Never in any church did I hear that taught. But it’s there in the Gospels, and not in just one place but in many places. Easy to say, not easy to do. Perhaps I am lucky to be forced into it. Perhaps if I still had a relationship on this world with my daughters, or with a woman, I would be the worse for it. Perhaps I would sell out to keep in their good graces. But I did not sell out. Not with my daughters, not with my father and grandfather, and not with any of my wives after I was abducted. I went where the Spirit took me, pretty well knowing how it would turn out, even as I hoped it would not turn out that way.

An internet buddy wrote to me yesterday, saying he hoped I had spent Thanksgiving Day with friends. I wrote back that I had Thanksgiving dinner with Sandy Downs’ family, and Sandy was my friend. I added that, as the afternoon progressed, I started feeling more and more poisoned, as the next writing assignment started coming into my soul before I understood what it was. I said I was not aware of anyone on this world I would be comfortable spending an entire day with. Only with someone having an experience similar to my own would I be comfortable spending a day; with anyone else it would too uncomfortable for us both.

Meaning, even if I had been included in my daughters’ Thanksgiving Day plans, after a few hours with them and their children and husbands and their mother and stepfather and whoever else might be included, I would have excused myself and gone to a sports bar to watch something mindless on television, or taken in a movie or read a novel or done a soul drawing, or just gone to sleep. What the angels and real people have done with and to me truly has made me a stranger in a strange land.

I have friends, make no mistake. People I enjoy seeing, who enjoy seeing me. But not for an entire day: it’s just too uncomfortable, because we simply are not in the same book, much less on the same page. How Jesus coped I cannot fathom. Maybe like I cope: moment to moment, looking forward to it all being over. Meanwhile, doing what comes next, not knowing what is coming next until it happens. I’ve been pining to go walkabout since the elections, but so far that has not been permitted. After much rough going, all in all “Australia” ended okay. Maybe I’m too pessimistic.

Sloan Bashinsky, 29 November 2008

In reply to yesterday’s The.Blade post, Rose Stump, mother of Tom Stump, asked me if Mary Beth Ward and our new State Attorney, Dennis Ward, are related? No, I replied, I had made a mistake. Mary Beth’s last name is Meyers. Her accounting partner’s last name is Ward. My sometimes dyslexia had mixed the two last names up.

Last night, Nick Downs called me to say he was back in the Keys and had read what I posted yesterday and he wanted to apologize. I said I had not written a lot of what I knew and that he had behaved horribly and it was not how Christians behave. I said that because he is Christian. He agreed with me. Then I spoke with Sandy, from whom I had not heard all day, and that is when I learned that Nick had gotten back to the Keys around the time I was rousted out of my sleep in the wee hours yesterday morning to write The.Blade.

I told Sandy that she needed to remain very careful with Nick. His apology was good, but he was prone to flip back and forth, and he may not have told her everything yet. Sandy described a conversation she and Nick had yesterday on speaker phone with Mary Beth, in which Nick questioned Mary Beth closely and she kept presenting herself as Snow White (my analogy) and saying Sandy was crazy and Nick had to help her because she could not afford to lose her accounting license.

Nick had already spoken to an independent eye witness, who had seen Mary Beth go into Tarzan’s Tree Care’s lot recently. When he told Mary Beth this, she danced all around it and kept trying to win him over to her side. She told Nick and Sandy that her friends wanted her to sue me, but she wanted to take the path of peace and would not sue me if I didn’t write about her again. Sandy told me that she had contacted the State of Florida yesterday and had received electronically the complaint form she needed to file a grievance against Mary Beth. I reminded Sandy that she needed to let the State deal with it and leave off filing a lawsuit, and I reiterated that I felt Dennis Ward needed to look into it after he was sworn in.

My dreams last night were of using the left-handed (Chalice) approach in today’s post, which caused me to rewrite much what I had tentatively written last night from the right-handed (Blade) perspective. I needed to make it softer and more introspective. In what I wrote last night I opined that maybe I should sue Mary Beth for costing me a good night’s sleep last night. I also wrote that it had been a long time since I got to cross-examine someone under oath, and maybe Mary Beth and her friends, and Mary Beth’s lawyer, might not like being put on the witness stand. Especially maybe Mary Beth would not like Sandy going on the stand and telling the judge and jury the whole story. If Mary Beth had attended a candidate forum and heard Sandy speak, she very definitely would not want Sandy testifying against her in court, I wrote last night.

After I was done writing it, Sandy called me back to say she had told Nick I might write about his and her phone conversation with Mary Beth yesterday. Sandy also said keylargokey.com (Sal Gutierrez’s website) was loaded up with interesting posts about the disappearance of Tom Stump. I told Sandy I would not have been put into that situation, if there was not something there. I asked if she would make me a copy of her copy of the transcript of Judge Perry Fowler’s determination that Tom had killed himself. Sandy said she would type it up verbatim and give it to me when we gather at her daughter’s home today for Thanksgiving dinner. I have felt for several days that the transcript needs to be published. Meanwhile . . .

Today Nick will cook at Glad Tiding’s Tabernacle Church in Key West, which feeds Thanksgiving dinner to homeless people. Maybe he will finish that in time to make it to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Sandy’s daughter. I have some thoughts to share with him, which I shared with Sandy a couple of weeks ago:

Shortly after Nick and Tarzan’s crew arrived in Texas, one of them was struck and killed by a motorcycle on Interstate 10, while trying to help abandoned dogs cowering in the median. I told Sandy that this tragedy dug right into the death of her son, Preston, who was electrocuted on a jobsite in Key West, while Nick was at a store buying soft drinks for Tarzan’s crew. Deep inside, Nick had always blamed himself for Preston’s death, in that, if he had not gone to the store, he would have been there with Preston and it would not have happened. Now Nick had brought a man to Texas from the Keys, who also was killed. If Nick had not gone to Texas, that man would still be alive, and that was what lay underneath him going haywire in Texas.

Sandy said Nick probably feared he would burn in hell for those two deaths, because his religious beliefs are either-or for the afterlife. I agreed and added that he probably wasn’t aware of any of this. Sandy then said she felt what had set Nick off was her son, Johnny, leaving them in Texas and coming back to the Keys. Until then, Nick had been okay. After that, he fell apart. I agreed with that. Sandy is the matriarch in that family, she holds it together. When Johnny left Texas, it was like Sandy left. Then it all fell apart.

However, neither Sandy nor I knew then that Nick and Mary Beth were already in collusion. That only started coming to light during the past two weeks and is why I told Sandy last night that she needs to be very careful, because there still may be more than what Nick has told her. Again, his apology is good, a step forward. But much more needs to happen to set this right, in the Keys and in Texas, where Nick needs to go and make amends also. Even so, Sandy was told three weeks ago in her sleep to get a divorce, and has been moving in that direction ever since.

As for Mary Beth, during her talk with Nick and Sandy yesterday, Mary Beth said Sandy had been around her house at night, stalking her, which never happened. Mary Beth said Sandy’s son, Danny, had been around her house at night, and she was terrified. When Nick told Mary Beth that Danny was in Indiana hunting deer, she danced around it. Danny has been up there for a while, and Johnny went up there a couple of week ago. They have done very well this deer season and will bring a lot of frozen venison back to the Keys.

Mary Beth needs a lot of help; she seems to suffer from what she keeps saying about Sandy. Maybe Mary Beth’s psychiatrist can help her, if she levels about what has happened. Maybe her friends can help her, if she levels with them. Maybe I can help her, if she tells me what she was involved in when she got that demon in her stomach. First, though, she has to take the same first step Nick took. She has to quit blaming Sandy. Then she needs to tell the truth.

Sloan Bashinsky, Thanksgiving Day, 2008

Yesterday’s Passion/Tea post was about the Chalice, the female side of the Grail journey. Today’s post is about the Blade.

Not long after Hurricane Ike slammed into Texas, Sandy Downs’ husband, Nick, took Tarzan’s Tree Care’s crew and operable equipment, and other Keys people, to east Texas, to get work with clean up and restoration of damage caused by Ike. Eventually Nick linked up with what would prove to be a very crooked company from Nevada, which was owned by foreign interests. This company’s Texas operatives got subcontractor companies to carry it on their insurance policy, because it had no insurance of its own. It got sub companies to do work and then did not pay them. When Sandy refused to add this company to Tarzan’s insurance policy, and when she started playing sheriff and asking questions, all hell broke loose. The company reported her to Texas and Monroe County law enforcement for stalking its employees by telephone. Nick became evasive and accusatory. He ran up debt on the corporate credit cards and stripped the corporate checking account. Sandy got a local Texas police officer involved, then a Texas Ranger, and finally, because of the insurance part of the scam, the F.B.I.

A large Texas corporation was involved in the clean up and apparently was unaware of what was going on, including much of the tree work it had subcontracted out being done incorrectly, according to Nick, a certified arborist, whom the Texas corporation had hired as a private consultant. Nick told the Texas company much of the tree cut work would have to be done again. The beneficiary, or one beneficiary, of doing it again was the crooked company which had hired Tarzan’s and other subcontractors. Sandy explained all of this to the Texas company. But for her, none of this would have been unearthed; the perpetrators would have gotten away with it.

The Blade.

Alas, this story does not stop here. Unknown to Sandy, some time before Nick went to Texas, Tarzan’s certified public accountant in Key West, Mary Beth Meyers, changed important corporate documents that removed Sandy and replaced her with Nick. Mary Beth then sent amended corporate documents, which essentially made Nick the corporation, to the State of Florida. After Sandy sniffed out the troubles in Texas, Mary Beth went to Tarzan’s Tree Care’s yard on Cudjoe Key with a key to the lock provided by Nick. Mary Beth stripped the corporate records from the office and removed the title to all Tarzan’s vehicles in Texas, and fast-mailed the titles to Nick. Keys Attorney Hal Shumaker spoke with Nick on the telephone and told him that he already had broken laws and would be guilty of felony theft if he sold the corporate vehicles and converted the funds to his own use. After being sniffed out and caught red-handed by Sandy, Mary Beth told Sandy that she was going to have a restraining order issued against her. Then Mary Beth and Nick started telling Sandy she was mentally ill and needed to see a psychiatrist. Then Mary Beth fired Sandy as a client and returned part of the corporate records, but not the records showing Sandy’s 90 percent ownership in Tarzan’s, or any of the changes to corporate documents Mary Beth had made behind Sandy’s back.

I spoke with Sandy throughout all of this. I watched these two miscreants try to drive her insane. I watched them try to manufacture their only defense: that Sandy was crazy and making everything up. All along, I encouraged Sandy to keep digging and not to trust anything she was hearing from Nick. After Sandy discovered Mary’s Beth’s complicity, I gave the same advice about Mary Beth. I told Sandy in the beginning to contact the Texas Attorney General and find out who in Texas had enforcement power. Sandy owned 90 percent of the stock in Tarzan’s Tree Care, which was started solely with her own funds that she brought into her marriage to Nick. Despite outward appearances, Sandy was Tarzan’s and I did not want her smeared with civil or criminal liability for what Nick had gotten involved in out in Texas. Eventually, I referred Sandy to Keys attorney Sam Kaufman, to initiate a divorce, soon to be filed.

From what I heard from Sandy, Mary Beth is under the care of a psychiatrist. Mary Beth and Nick were in collusion for quite a while before Nick went to Texas. Tarzan’s employees and subs in Texas were not fully paid for the work they did. Mary Beth appears to have been the prime instigator of the corporate plot against Sandy; Nick followed Mary Beth’s lead. Mary Beth herself told me the very first time she and I met in her office many months ago, with Sandy present, that once she had gotten demonically possessed in her stomach and had to go to a person to get the demon removed. Mary Beth said she wanted to discuss it further away from her office, but she never brought it up again when I visited her twice at her home with Sandy. Maybe the demon didn’t get removed. Or maybe, as Jesus said in the gospels would happen, it was replaced by seven worse demons.

After Sandy discovered Mary Beth’s duplicity, she spoke with her friend and Keys attorney Phil Mandina, who recently ran for sheriff. Phil said he wanted to sue Mary Beth for malpractice. I told Sandy to file a complaint against Mary Beth with the Florida agency that regulates accountants, instead, because I felt another civil lawsuit would cause her a great deal of trouble. Later I told Sandy to take this case to the State Attorney Office, after Dennis Ward was sworn in. I said Dennis got to know her plenty at candidate forums, when she ran for sheriff and he ran for state attorney, and he knows she is not crazy. Based on what I have seen and heard, Mary Beth needs to be in prison, and maybe Nick, too.

The Blade.

Sloan Bashinsky, 26 November 2008

Just before waking yesterday morning in Ocala, I dreamt of Nicki, aka, the Troll, a Key West living treasure who has been a fixture at Sippin Internet Cafe in Key West since I first started hanging out there in late 2000. Nicki loves to read novels and he had a warm, friendly smile.

Then I’m spin-fishing and hook something big that runs and runs and runs, as I wonder if whatever it is will strip the spool clean and break off. Finally, the run stops and she surfaces: the most beautiful, desireable woman, au naturale, I may have ever seen. She reminds me an awful lot of raven-haird beauty, Mary Lou Snow, the heroine in my first novel, Kundalina, Alabama. Then we are brow to brow, overwhelmed with feelings of love and passion. Then I hear “The Rose” being sung, which tell her, as the dream ends.

Earlier that night, I had heard in my sleep, “Colorado is the last chance.” I wrote Kundalina, or rather, she wrote me, in Boulder, circa 1982-83. Kundalina is a mythical village just down US 280 from Birmingham, divided by the Cahaba River. I chose to come back down to the Keys this time on 280 and passed right through Kundalina, which no one but me could see. I thought about Mary Lou, and her sidekick Riley Strange, the putative hero of that strange tale. I thought about their friends from another world, who were making do on this world.

Off and on I thought about the song, “The Rose.” I remembered a poem that fell out of me in Boulder in the spring of 2004, as I recall. Or maybe it was in 2005. I wondered if Mary Lou was a precursor for the woman in the poem, of if they were one and the. People who read Kundalina told me they fell in love with Mary Lou. One good friend asked my wife at that time where I had found Mary Lou to write about? My wife told him that Mary Lou was part of me. I discovered her when I wrote Kundalina. And I discovered her some more when the poem came in the spring of 2004, or maybe 2005. Her image was a black rose.

Rosa Mystica

Sweet Mystery

Bride of Christ

Living water

without which

There are no rainbows

and God is dead.

Living in Boulder, I learned that in the Grail tradition, Rosa Mystica is what all Grail aspirants seek to achieve in themselves: the pure, quickened holy female essence. For all these years, I have been turned this way and that, as she has been awakened in not only my dreams and writings, but also in my waking life. In the time of Jesus she manifested as Mary Magdalene.

Living in Boulder, I learned that the sacred Chartes Cathederal in France is dedicated to Rosa Mystica. In the basement is a labyrinth put there by the people who built the cathedral: Catholics who lived very differently from mainstream Catholics. Today, walking the labyrinth in Chartes Cathedral is frowned upon, viewed as pagan, or worse, as witchcraft. This writing would be viewed by the Vatican as heresy, doubly so were I to toss in that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were mating partners, and their relationship was the deeper work they were doing for God, which today is unknown in mainstream Christendom.

So I have somehow brought her to me. I can conjecture that what did it was the Blind.Justice appeal I filed in the High Court a few days ago. After that, my dreams told me to leave Birmingham, where I dreaded spending the winter. In route back to Key West, Mary Lou, Rosa Mystica, Mary Magdalene, some or all of the three, came to me in love and passion. When I walked into my apartment in Key West, where all of my soul drawings hang, I felt a sense of home. ”Abstract” drawings inspired by the holy female, which just jumped out of me. Like her poems and novels just jumped out of me. Like dreams and revelations just jump out of me. Like sudden changes in my life just jump out at me.

Last night’s dreams were horrible. As the night progressed, I wondered if I had made a mistake returning to Key West. Then I pondered what had happened while I was gone and when I was coming back. A very difficult phsycial trouble that had suddenly onset in 1969 seemed to be much ameleoriated. I pondered the directional dreams. I pondered how I felt when I walked into my apartment. No way was I not supposed to be in Key West. The dreams last night were testing me, or I was being demonically attacked. Then a man came in a dream just at dawn and said he had just taken a soap shower and he was remarkably clean. I lay pondering that, then got up and took a soap shower and felt remarkably clean.

As I walked to Sippin’ to write, threads of today’s post started forming in my thoughts. Reaching Sippin’, I saw it had not yet opened. Strange. So I went around the corner to my alternate writing place, Starbucks. While in Birmingham, I hung out mornings at the Starbucks in the Five Points South area of town. A bohemian neighborhood adjacent to the University of Alabama in Birmingham, it’s the only place there that reminds me of Key West. Funky people hang out at that Starbucks. And like that Starbuck’s, this Starbucks in Key West is the only place I can get herbal Passion Tea.

Maybe it’s time for me to get back to work on the third Mary Lou Snow novel, which I started writing several months ago, then it stopped coming. Much of it is set in Colorado, a stranger book than all before it, which is going a ways. Maybe that’s what Nicki the Troll was telling me. He read the second Mary Lou installment, Heavy Wait. Twice he said, to make sure he got what it was about. Maybe he will be able to explain to me what the third installment is about, for I am having no little difficulty grasping it. But then, Mystery appears to be God’s middle name, and passion seems to be her way.

What do I know? Maybe she brought me back to Key West to introduce and live the original Mary Lou Snow? Or maybe she brought me back to Key West to get her soul drawings, then we’re off to some place new? What do I know? I didn’t know I was coming to the Keys in late 2000, until I awoke on morning on Maui to a voice telling me, “Go to Big Pine Key.” Flat broke, no way could I go to Big Pine Key. Three days later, this and that had happened and I was en route. Reacing Big Pine on Greyhound, I was told to go on down to Key West. Several years later I met Capt. Conch, host of bigpinekey.com, and soon after that her writings were being splashed all over the Keys on that website and ongoodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which Capt. Conch set up for me.

Sloan Bashinsky, 25 November 2008

When somebody asked me yesterday if my last post, Blind.Justice, was addressed to God, I said yeah, it was addressed to the High Court on which sit judges appointed by God. A real court, I said. Just as real, if not more real, than any court on this world.

When this person, who is like a daughter to me, said she was feeling a lot of holy fire, I said yesterday’s post could have been named Holy.Fire, which is what God gives to us to purify us. I said I don’t experience it as feeling like I’m on fire, but as being poisoned and roughed up, and being given things to do that I don’t want to do, which other people don’t want me to do either, because they don’t like being put in the flames and try to do all they can to put the fire out. But I do it anway, because I’m told to do it.

This conversation occurred last night, as I was driving from Tallahassee toward Perry Florida, en route back to the Keys. En route back, because my dreams the night before told me to return to the Keys. Flustered about the sudden change of plans, I had this dialogue in my journal early yesterday morning with my dream maker. I’m in small case, my dream maker in large case.

Okay–I write Blind.Justice. It felt okay. Timely. Now I’m being told to return to Key West.

WE HAD TO CHANGE THE COMBINATION ON THE LOCK. YOU HAD TO BE GONE FOR US TO DO THAT.

Yeah, well, I could have stayed in a motel instead of renting the place (an apartment, for two weeks, plus a deposit).

FOR IT TO CHANGE YOU HAD TO BELIEVE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE AWAY. THIS EXPLAINS OTHER TRIPS THAT HAVE MADE NO SENSE.

If you are telling me this now, it means that will not be used again because I won’t believe being told to go somewhere. Even if I go, I won’t believe it’s for real. You really screw me around, and then you want me to sell this shit to other people? LOL.

An hour later, I was packed and out of the place I had rented, probably $1,200 lighter, because the rental contract I had signed said the rent was not refundable and I had to give two weeks’ notice to get the deposit back.

I’m writing this on the wireless of the motel where I’m saying just west of Ocala. It’s almost 5 a.m. I awoke maybe an hour ago out of a series of dreams the likes of which I’ve not before had. Dreams about stuff coming in, for me. Maybe I’ll write about some of it as it unfolds.

Today’s piece is part of it, in that there is one person I was told by Thomas Jefferson in one dream to try to teach the mysteries. This person is on my general email list and receives what I post generally. He has shown great interest in Thomas Jefferson, who was commissioned to write our nation’s Declaration of Independence. The Preamble mentioned God in four different ways, none of which were Christian ways, perhaps because Jefferson was not Christian.

Maybe I should say that I feel some mirth in this moment over the bashing I often receive for saying God/angels put me up to run for office and speak out in ways that often are not very well received. Many of my critics go to church, wave the America flag, support George Bush’s wars, say the Pledge of Allegiance (“One nation, under God), and they bash me for bringing God into a political campaign. Ironic, when the very nation they tell people to love or leave came into being in God’s name, in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

Maybe I also should say that when the founding fathers of our nation later passed the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, they did not mean to write God out of our national government. What they meant to write out was religion, which they understood was a human creation and had no place in government. Maybe I also should say that the “Jefferson Bible,” which Thomas Jefferson was moved to create by cutting and pasting various portions of the New Testament together, was slightly deficient, in that the finished product was devoid of God, which struck me as astounding, given how Jefferson began the Declaration of Independence. Astounding.

Your Honor,

I have been summoned by you to explain myself. What can I say that you will believe? Perhaps I simply should say nothing and let you do what you feel you must do with me. Or perhaps I should say read my heart, soul and spirit, if you are able to do that, and render your decision accordingly. Or perhaps I should ask you to render your decision in the way I myself would render it, if I were the man who used to practice law. But then, were I still that man, I would not stand before you today, accused. Instead, I might be the lawyer who brought this case before you, alleging I had done much to offend the laws of society. So perhaps I should say a few words in my defense after all, for what they might or might not be worth to this court or to anyone interested in these proceedings.

It would take a very long book for me to explain what all was done to me by forces beyond my comprehension to make me what I am today. So I will simply say that once those changes were well underway in me, I realized my life was no longer my own. I realized I was at the mercy of what had taken me over and was running me and arranging the experiences I was having on this world. Mine was to try to keep up and respond in the ways I had been trained and was being advised ongoing. I was a slave: a slave to the Unknowable; a slave to the people who were put before me to attempt to help. I say that with some irony because usually people did not view me as trying to help them. To the contrary, they viewed me as trying to hurt them. Which is why I now stand before this court accused of hurting people.

Certainly, I have done much that hurt people’s feelings, offended their minds. Were I to tell all of the times that happened, far more charges would not be filed against me than these few for which I now stand accused. Charges filed by my own family members, by spouses, by dear friends, by acquaintances, by passing strangers, and by people who only knew of me. In spirit, we had already met. In spirit, what passed between them and me was agreed in advance. Otherwise, it would not have happened; we would have been as ships passing in the night unaware. But we were not ships passing in the night unaware; we were aware of each other, but we were not aware in the same way.

Every person I meet, every interaction I have with someone else, I live in two entirely different ways. I live it in a human way, just as I would have lived it before the changes came. And I live in the spirit way, which I was taught to do as the changes came: I am the experience, and I am watching the experience at the same time, wondering what it really is about, even as I enjoy or don’t enjoy it in a human way. Not all experiences lead to anything beyond what they appear in a human way to be, but many experiences lead beyond that — often far, far beyond. It is those latter experiences that have me now standing accused before this court of doing harm to other people. Experiences those people themselves agreed in advance to have with me. For, you see, Your Honor, in spirit they knew me already. They knew what I would say or do. And they agreed to it, because they wanted their human part to experience it.

Preposterous that must sound, so let me bring it to this proceeding. My spirit knew I would stand before Your Honor in this way. It was arranged, although I did not know it was arranged. It would go a certain way, although I did not know it would go a certain way. My spirit knew. Your spirit knew. And it was agreed that it would happen. Although my human part is concerned how Your Honor will decide my fate, my spirit is not concerned. It already knows how this will go and wants me to have the experience regardless of how I feel about it. My spirit seldom takes my sentiments into account. It has its own course to run, to achieve its mission, and it takes me along for the ride, sometimes willingly but usually over my loud objections.

Which brings me to charges against me. I did not enjoy doing what I did. I did not sit down and plan it. I did not set out to hurt anyone. I was minding my own business and it came looking for me. Then came the understanding of how I was to respond. Even though I didn’t care for the response, I made it because not to make it would have caused me a great deal of grief and would have reneged on the agreement in the spirit that had been made. Always that dilemma, Your Honor: whether to offend a person’s ego, or to offend a person’s spirit. For the two seldom are in agreement, as my frequent discord with my own spirit clearly proves.

Perhaps borrowing from my religious upbringing, I could say, Your Honor, that God’s ways are not our ways, and that I learned the truly hard way that I had better do what I am told to do, instead of what I want to do. If that displeases Your Honor to hear, if that causes Your Honor to judge me guilty and deal with me harshly, then that is what was agreed in spirit and that is what I need to experience.

Sloan Bashinsky, 22 November 2009

Two days ago I awoke before the Key West wild chickens, knowing it was time to head up to Birmingham for a while. I got up and wrote a note to someone and then crawled back into bed, hoping to fall back asleep. After tossing and turning a while, I gave up and showered, dressed and started packing my car. I left Key West as the eastern sky was turning pink. I felt awful, poisoned: had felt that way for several days.

Passing where Sandy Downs lived on Cudjoe Key, I said, “God be with you Sandy,” and then I burst into tears and had myself a good cry. I felt a little better. Reaching Big Pine, I dropped the note off at the recipient’s place of business. Driving away, I told the recipient to go with God, then thought that might not be a kind thing to tell someone, seeing how rough God can be with people. Then the poison started leaving me.

When Bill Becker came on the air and mentioned the County Commission meeting and induction of the newly-elected commissioners that morning on Key Largo, I understood why the angels wouldn’t let me go back to sleep: I needed to be at that meeting. I reached the Key Largo Library 8:10 and took about a 20-minute nap. Then I went into the county commission meeting room and mingled with the early arrivals, saying temporary goodbyes to those I felt close to.

The meeting began sharply at 9:00, to a standing-room-only crowd. After awards were handed out to the Gang of Three by the Gang of Three, amidst much applause, and after Dixie and Mario spoke briefly, followed by much applause, Sonny spoke for a pretty good while. Mostly it was a compressed history of Sonny’s life, somewhat reminiscent of his remarks at candidate forums during the campaign.

Twice Sonny referred to the two incoming commissioners, Kim Wigington and Heather Carruthers, saying he liked them and knew they would make good county commissioners because they really wanted the job.

Amidst much applause, I found myself in two different places at the same time. In one place, I wondered how the county commissioners were going to be tough enough to do what needs to be done in the plummeting economy? In the other place, I wondered what really wanting to be county commissioners had to do with actually being good county commissioners?

After Sylvia Murphy was sworn back in, amidst much applause, and Kim and Heather were sworn in amidst much applause, the five commissioners chose George Neugent as the new county mayor and Sylvia as mayor pro temp, amidst much applause Feeling it was time to leave, I said a few more temporary goodbyes.

Outside, I saw John Hammerstrom and told him of a dream I’d had about him being President of the United States. When he said he wouldn’t be able to live up to that, I said the dream told me how high he, a retired Navy carrier pilot, stands with God for taking on the U.S. Navy over the Super Hornet and AICUZ on Stock Island.

On the mainland about a hour later, I received a phone call from Capt. Conch at bigpinekey.com, asking if I had a post for that day? No, I said, I was en route to Birmingham, might be there a couple of months. Didn’t know if I would be posting during that time and would let him know.

I described Sonny’s definition of what indicated a candidate would make a good county commissioner: the candidate really wanted the job. I said George Bush really wanted to be president. Capt. Conch laughed, we said out temporary goodbyes.

En route to Birmingham, I listened to many news reports on national public radio. Deflation. $700 billion bailout. Our auto makers face bankruptcy. Unemployment national unemployment rate jumping. Unemployment compensation benefits running out for many laid-off workers.

I found myself wondering again why awards were given to Dixie, Mario and Sonny? Why anyone applauded them and the new county commissioners and the new mayor and new pro temp? I didn’t applaud. What was to applaud? Our county goverment is in much the same shape as our national government.

I will applaud when I see our county leaders do something that actually helps the Keys and Keys people, when I see them do what I saw John Hammerstrom and Sandy Downs do.

Sloan Bashinsky, 21 November 2009

Below is an email from me to County Commissioner George Neugent, who lives in Marathon and whose county commission office is on Big Pine Key. More comment after the email, to which George has not yet had time to respond.
 

couple of questions?

From:	sloan bashinsky (sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com)
Sent:	Mon 11/17/08 7:54 AM
To:	county commissioner (boccdis2@monroecounty-fl.gov); george neugent (neugent-george@monroecounty-fl.gov)

Morning, George,
 
What does the Human Services Advisory Board do and what is David Paul Horan’s background contribute to him being on that Board?
 
 
I understand there is a minimum number of rooms for a hotel to be able to have a casino, if other requirements also are satisfied. Do you know the minimum number of rooms? (I was told by several people that Beachside in Key West meets the minimum and was built with a casino in mind, maybe across the street on that property also owned by the Spottswoods. And I have heard much talk about Safe Harbor really being about bringing in casinos there.)
 
Thanks,
 
Sloan

I asked George about David Paul Horan, an influential Key West/Keys lawyer, because David represents one of the major developer players in the Safe Harbor Marina (Stock Island) development changes to our Comprehensive Plan, which I recently read in Key West Citizen has been worked out between the various Safe Harbor developers, Monroe County and the US Navy, and now only needs the County Commission’s formal approval at the next Commission meeting in Key West. Then it will be sent to the Florida Department of Community Development (DCA) for its approval, which, from what I read in the Citizen, seems likely.

So far, what has been proposed, according to what I heard last week from one of the major promoters of this change in our Comprehensive Plan, will provide no public boat launches, even though the whole schemele is being touted as redevelopment of a working waterfront and marine industry. So far, what will go in first, according to what I’ve been reading in the newspaper and hearing from people in the know, is a 400 unit upscale hotel, and comparable smaller hotels, adding up to a total of 800 much-needed hotel units, due to our existing hotel stock suffering a 125 percent occupancy rate year-round. The comp plan change also calls for a mix of much-needed so-called affordable and unafforbable condominiums; much-needed due to our critical Keys-wide existing condominium and single family dwelling busting-at-the-seams occupancy. The comp plan change also calls for some plans for a ferry service and a yacht-class working waterfront and marine industry.

After writing to George, I learned from a Key West friend that the Human Services Board makes recommendations for charitable contributions out of money allocated by the County Commission for charitable projects. I told my friend that I didn’t feel anyone should be on any county board, who then might bring something before the County Commission that would, if approved, put money in the bringer’s own pocket. Someone like David Paul Horan. My friend agreed. This is not one of my crazy friends. This is a prominent mainstream Key West businessman. Maybe he will chuckle to read that maybe the Advisory Board will see fit to give money to a working waterfront/marine industry museum at Safe Harbor, to remind visitors in 2020 of what Keys working waterfronts and marine industries used to look like.

Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I have reason to be paranoid, when I hear all the talk about bringing gaming into the Keys, and I don’t mean hunting Key Deer, manatees, dolphins, wild chickens, American crocodiles and mermaids and the like. Maybe I have reason to be paranoid when I start getting weird dreams. When I see an image of someone bringing a proposal to the County Commission asking it to change the name of the Key West Airport to Vegas West Airport. When I see an image of the City of Marathon allowing a casino on Knight’s Key and a big Knight’s Key Gamblers Anonymous welcome booth in the Marathon Airport. When I see an image of a great big fox being put into a hen house. A great big fox. Like, bigger than a brontosauus. Like a lot bigger than a brontosaurus. But with big sharp teeth like a T-Rex.

Sloan Bashinsky, 17 November 2009