Pinheaded

Last Thanksgiving or some where in there, one of my favorite cousins asked me why I'm still single. I have been largely single for most of my life and I assumed, incorrectly, that this line of questioning would have commenced deep in my 20's, let a lone my 30's. My mom has started to hint a bit but she's remained un-political about it. My Dad razzes me then, leans in and gives me a cloaked thumbs up.

I responded with what I consider to be the truth. I'm kind of a weird guy. I then flubbed it by stumbling across some sort of example about how I'm kinda a geek and "you know, burning man is a weird place" but actually, judging from all the anecdotal evidence around me, being a Geeky Burner is a great way to not be single.

I recently went to dinner with a very good, but kind of new, friend. They recounted a social relationship stretching back many years. In a nut shell ex and her dated substantially and have remained friends. They did lots of adventuring together.  The ex has since dated my friend's friend quite seriously. They are now on an off, and have a baby together. That sounds like a lot of drama, but it's really pretty copacetic from what I can tell, all things considered. I was recounting this to my self when something occurred to me.  If I was in a long term relationship with a person, then we split up and they started dating someone else, I fully expect to immediately like their new bae.  I guess that's weird. Is that weird? It seems a little unheard of to me.

Any way, what does it say about you if the good people you surround your self with don't surround them selves with good people? How good could they possibly be? It seriously limits ones own ability to be good, if you think about it. So yes, I vet a couple branches down the tree and I expect strong bonds between Eskimo brothers.  It is this kind of thinking, that pervades all walks of my logic, that so drastically reduces the number of fish in my sea. And this is fine, I like a challenge. The thing that worry's me is that even in an otherwise dark room, even a very large one, a pin hole of light is easy to spot.

If you know how bad it was you'd feel better

I like many of you have become quite convinced that it's pretty bad. Most the time you are just trying to convince people that it's worse than they think it is because admitting it's worse is the first step to making it better. As we try and take this first step it's easy to get caught up in how bad it is. The worst part, for me, is this kind of hopeless feeling of what do we do. "What are we going to do? I mean... It's sooo bad." I want to take a moment to remember how good it already is as we take an aditional step to making it better...by admitting it's worse. I want to remember all the good people in my life and that good people make up the overwhelming majority of this life. I don't know what we are going to do when the time comes but I want you to know that when it does I'm not worried because we are all good people and that is what this is all about. Getting back to being good people as a whole. As one.

Where weed brought me

Yes. I believe we have extremely similar visions of where we need to be but I think we have very different viewpoints on where we are.






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I wrote that almost immediately after you emailed me, that and a few more sentences which I deleted. The thing is, trying to start this conversation with you has proven very difficult for me. When I look out at the world I see something very different than most people. I tend not to involve my self in conversation most of the time, not because I disagree with people conclusions but because I reject the unspoken assumptions that are included in most arguments. This is not something that is easy to explain, and it comes with risks to admit. With that in mind I have contemplated how best to proceed with this line of inquiry I have for you. If I am right and we do have the same destination in mind, but we have differing opinions on where we are, I think I should tell you where I am, or rather how I got here. May be it would be more accurate to say that something brought me here. That thing is marijuana.






The first time I was ever exposed to weed, a co-worker at the firehouse restaurant in windsor pulled it out of his sock. It was rolled up in a sandwich bag. He didn't unroll the bag so all I got from that was that there was something green down underneath those many layers. I don't remember what I thought really. I didn't do anything about it or say anything to anyone. A couple years later, 3/4 of the way through my freshman year at CU my new best friend Bruce decided I needed to be properly introduced. He had started smoking as a high school student, was very much a fan and assumed that I would be too.






My first real shock came when he showed it to me and I was able to examine it up close. It was a plant. I believe the first words out of my mouth were "It's a fucking plant!?!?!" I had no idea it was a plant. Many years of anti-drug education and no where in any material had anyone mentioned to me it was a plant. I had some how missed images of DEA agents chopping them down and tossing them on a fire. Probably most of those images were of bales of the stuff but either way, that fact had skipped me entirely.






I have always been pretty cautious so I made it clear to Bruce that I would not be proceeding with out feeling fully informed. Over the next couple weeks I asked a lot of questions, and did a little research and was surprised to find that weed was nothing like how it was publicly perceived. Shortly there after I did have some and was quite surprised to find that it indeed seemed relatively harmless. It certainly was not literally harmless but relative to other things, including alcohol I found my self a little confused as to why it was being billed as enemy number 1.






This is where the questions started. What is it that's so bad about weed? Why such stringent prohibition? Why the lies? Why, alternatively, is alcohol so readily available?






Early on I remember starting to think, well no wonder it's illegal, using it starts to introduce an anti government angle in one's mind. I don't think that is so much true these days. There is an element to weed that is independent because you can grow it your self and governments are reliant on dependents, but what emerged was a picture that weed was extremely useful both as an intoxicant and as industrial crop in the form of hemp. A little research quickly turned up that much of the marijuana prohibition was funded by industrial companies who stood to lose a lot of profit if we ever switched over to hemp. It's a lot cheaper to produce which sounds like a good thing but the fact is that companies rely on profit which is a percentage of cost. The less the cost, the less the profit. Hemp grows more per acre, takes less chemicals to reach the end user and lasts a lot longer. A pair of socks that last twice as long is half the profit to a company like Fruit of the Loom. I suppose this was the seed that was planted that eventually led me to the conclusion that market place is striving to deliver the least efficient product to the market in the most efficient manner. I've seen a couple light bulbs last for years and I've seen thousands blow out after 50% of their rated life, but that's a whole other paper.






There is no point in getting into any detail with regard to 4 or 5 years that passes between my initial impression of weed and my next big revelation but notably, every time I came across a piece of information during that time I then wondered "well, they lied about the weed, how do I know they aren't lying about this?" This mindset created a backdrop for what eventually made me realize that I could see no downside to getting into the business.






When I started smoking weed pretty regularly, and making friends that did the same, it was a common occurrence to have conversations with regard to who was going shopping and when. It didn't take very much time before it occurred to me that if I purchased 7 bags, the 8th was free and upon experimenting I found that my 7 friends used theirs up a little faster than I used up mine and thus my smoking became free. This continued for a year or two with only minor growth. Before things really took off I was probably selling 15 and smoking one which meant I put $50 bucks in my pocket every other week. It was at this point Talmage moved in. Talmage had some long standing customers, a little higher volume, and was not as good with money and was struggling with the costs of moving. I temporarily took over his client base while he got caught up on bills and consequently I made an extra paycheck that month. All of my "customers" were personal friends who were highly intelligent and interesting and I pretty much just got to kick back and wait for people to come over and hang out. Most days they left with a little weed and I was left with a little cash and I was doing it in one of the most weed friendly places in the world, Boulder Colorado. The combination of that and my day job quickly turned in to comfortable situation. When the tech company I was working for crashed because the CEO was more concerned about his credit line than his products, I decided I was going to get a restaurant job, work 25 hours a week and sell weed to everyone that works there, including the owners. I did. Around the same time I decided to try my hand at growing it. It took a little practice but before long it was obivous I was good at that too. I stuck to simple little hobby operations. A small bedroom was all you need to have a sustainable option that would pay for the whole house. For a couple years there I was making 50k and only paying taxes on 20k. My life was relatively simple and I had a good deal of free time. Free time I spent reading everything I could get my hands on.






In 2005 I moved into a house closer to work. A house I picked specifically because I felt comfortable having a little hobby grow in the basement. In the lease signing I got a good handshake from the Landlord ensuring me that he had no plans to sell his house and I could live there for quite awhile. I reminded him of this a year later when he called me to say he was selling the house. He gave me another 6 months because I practically begged him but in the end, moving out of that house was the beginning of the end.A friend of mine was renting a big house on a golf course in Westminster and he had the entire place to him self. I offered to pay the rent on one bedroom and he would get a very good deal on his daily habit, and he could sell what he didn't smoke. I learned an important lesson about business partners leading up to and during my move away from the previous house and so this time I was aiming to go completely solo. I had gotten pretty good at the whole thing, and I had a really good idea for a redundant system using one bedroom and one person working only about 20 hours a week. The room I built there was superb and I finished it right about the time medical marijuana was approved. I had as good a resume as any one in the business, and the business was about to boom. I was seriously thinking about starting the paperwork to go legal but I had a few more details to nail down. I had taken over the lease of the entire house, was only 2 weeks away from recovering my entire investment in one payment and I had already doubled my investors money so I just needed a few more weeks. That's when I got busted.






Suspicions at the local police department had been raised by someone. It's tough to know for sure. I suppose I should go back and read the discovery and see if it's there but there were lots of options. Honestly when it comes to running a business like this I was making a couple mistakes by not enforcing a couple key and well known rules. The first time my friend hit hard times he had a down grade in pay and was thus forced to take on a roommate. The roommate also sold a little weed and I insisted that he not deal in the house, he ignored my advice. When it all started it had the appearance of successful single-father enjoying his nice house. But the combination of his sex addiction and the new roommates selling weed out of the house was probably too much for some neighbor not to notice. Golf course people don't tend to tolerate flop houses. There was also this possibly that the woman who had been my roommate and had decided to divorce her husband during that time ratted on me when I didn't take her side. She verbally threatened to do so in a room full of lawyers. I wasn't there, but I was told she did.






The cops sent a car over to investigate a domestic disturbance one night and the couple living in the house had been prepped for this kind of thing. There was nothing anywhere on the ground floor to suggest that any cop had any reason to search the place and they had to leave empty handed. The smart thing would have been to tear everything down and relocated but I felt reassured the cops left empty handed and I hoped that would be the end of things. Unfortunately that was not the case. They had put together enough suspicion to get the water records which were high. This justified them staking us out and one snowy night a car that left this house with a fresh bag lost enough traction to warrant being pulled over. The driver promptly squealed on the whole deal. He would have gotten a ticket for $50 if he had said nothing. Instead entire police SWAT team closed down the street and blew down the door and stormed the house with tear gas grenades. I was informed of this by a friendly neighbor as he watch the renters escorted out in handcuffs.






The two main detectives who came to question me were undercover and one actually looked like Neil with blond hair. They looked like 40 year olds who smoked pot and listened to Led Zeppelin except they had badges on chains around their necks. I was brought in for questioning. At first it was pretty obvious they thought they were busting some big time grower but after a while they figured out I was just a kid with a hobby. They even apologized to me. "You know this isn't really our beat. We are supposed to be out busting coke dealers and major grow operations." In hindsight, if I had said nothing I would have walked away clean because I just visited the house and they had no actual proof I did anything. The paper's said that I was suspected of "building the room". I felt bad for the kid and his girlfriend who lived there and I wanted to take the entire rap if I could. I couldn't.






It took almost 4 months for the state to issue an arrest for my warrant. I was picked up at 9 am on Friday and because of how the courts work I couldn't get out till Tuesday after I saw a judge. Something about Judges not working on Mondays. Bye the way you don't actually see a judge. You look at one on a TV and he looks back at you on a TV in his conference room many miles away. I only spent 4 days in jail and I could talk for hours about all the stuff I saw in there but that's a different story. I used the added stress of my impending legal situation as fuel to my research. I spent countless hours pouring over the internet reading everything I could find about court and the law and by the time I was due in court I had developed, or may be I should say found, some interesting theories. I decided to test those theories in court and spent a full year defending my self with no legal representation. I'm not sure how much of that you know but that's a whole different story as well. The bullet points are three. I saw some things in court that proved, to me at least, that court is not what it claims to be, I ran out of time and money to defend my self, and by the time I was pleading guilty for felony possession of marijuana (6 years ago this month) I had already known for four months that marijuana kills cancer.






http://naturalsociety.com/marijuana-kills-cancer-cells-admits-the-u-s-national-cancer-institute/





At the time, the mechanism was even well understood. I was watching podcasts that broke down the chemistry by one of the leading researchers in the world and he was researching only a mile from my house. In fact a researcher in Madrid had found that marijuana killed 3 types of cancer in mice in 2000. Even more interesting, in 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found that it cured cancer and it was this study that had provided the inspiration for the Madrid study.






http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-armentano/what-your-government-know_b_108712.html






2 years later in 1976 Marijuana was rescheduled to a Schedule 1 drug, deemed to dangerous to even study.






I have a felony conviction for position of a substance that which cures cancer, and I knew that to be true 6 years ago when I pled guilty to the charge. The conviction still prevents me from having a job in that now legal industry, soon to be one of the largest industries on the planet, with the ability to replace a large percentage of the fossil fuel demand including plastic. It's also one of the most nutritious things on the planet.






I wrote the following on February, 15th 2010






when the truth about the wolds most beneficial plant starts to hit the main stream the "justice system" is going to be forced to look inward and start asking the important questions. Not to mention my family. I come from a very conservative family and I 'm sure the most of them were discouraged to hear about my arrest but soon they are going to have to start examining the ideals they have come to understand as truth





I recently went on a date with a woman who had recently left the justice system to seek an alternate career. She was an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, she smoked, and she looked for every possible excuse to get people out of marijuana cases even though she was the prosecutor. Don't tell anyone I told you that.






This is serious business. Weed is serious business and in order to admit that to your self you also have to admit that the prohibition of weed is serious business. It's time to take a stern look at everything you have been told and you should start with marijuana because it could save you life one day, it will definitely make the end more comfortable and affordable. And extrapolating from this fact you have to wonder why was it illegal. The free market should have embraced it. Marijuana solves an incredible amount of problems, it's impossible to vilify when exposed to the light of truth. So why didn't it?






Again, I postulate that we don't have a free market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrOw0biG5eM

Holding Pond

The view was breathtaking, but I suppose I wasn't actually breathing. It was like waiting in line at the DMV except that everything was made of what could only described as some sort of etheric glass, it was semi-transparent and lightly glowing. In fact as I looked around I realized that everyone was glowing to some extent, some more than others. Rather than some sort of "look at that", this realization came on more like walking into a bright room and having to wait for you eyes to adjust. And as my 'eyes' adjusted I quickly realized that there was a lot more to look at. I was indeed in some sort of waiting room queued in a stanchion. There was a person helping someone a few people up at a counter and there were now a few people behind me. Well, may be they weren't people. Most would pass for people but there was this gradient, or sliding scale from people to, well, beings I guess. They got less substantial and a select few were just glowing figures. I noted that I was not just seeing them but feeling them. One was a pulsating glowing orb that radiated pure warmth of joy and smelled like play doh.  This being skipped the line just proceeded toward the counter, upon reaching it they winked out.

This seemed to be the natural order of the things, approach the counter, have a conversation of indeterminate length and then wink out. I had this thought along the lines of "that's odd" but I was immediate corrected by my self that it was not, in fact, odd. I was forced to agree with my self. This was reassuring because when I actually looked around It got really odd. Looking to the right and left the room went on forever with infinite counters and infinite helpers and infinite stanchions. It wasn't just straight either. It curved away and seemed to fold in upon it's self. Looking up or down through the transparent glass I was in it was apparent there was an infinite number of additional DMV's spiraling away and through each other in every direction in a breath taking structure that might as well have been some temple dedicated to higher and as of yet undiscovered math.

I stood there, my mind floored and my mouth agape as whiteness. Everywhere I looked was infinite menagerie of unique  beings waiting in line at an infinite number of identical stations. People were winking in the back, moving forward to stand in line, waiting, moving up and winking back out after they had been served. The process was quite quick and by the time it was my turn I was still quite dumbstruck and did not notice immediately notice being beckoned to the counter.

I took my step forward and was greeted by my helper.

"Greetings, how was your trip?"
"My trip?"
"Oh you have not explained things to your self yet."
"I haven't?" Again I was sure this was odd but was reassured that indeed it was not.
"Try asking your self a question."
"Oh," I said aloud "What question should I ask"

Immediately my mind grew a tree and from it a million leaves sprouted, each a question and one detached and fell from the tree down into the part of me that was thinking and upon it was written "Where Am I?" Upon the asking a similar tree sprouted, this time each leave was an answer. Autum set in and the leaves began to turn and fall each answer arriving at the forefront of my mind as an answer and I was filled with understanding. All of this happened in an instant and at the conclusion of this deciduous brain storm I spoke.

"I am recently deceased. "I was a man by the name of Jeff Conway nearing my 32nd birthday in Canton Ohio. I was killed in an auto accident that was not really any one person's fault. The majority of my adult life was filled by my occupation as a liquor store owner. I never had kids because I never met anyone I wanted to have kids with. My sister did and I loved them but it just never worked out that way for me. In fact I never really connected with anyone. I had a near miss with a women who then was known as Susan. I of course didn't know that at the time but now it's very clear.  She is currently standing in line over there." With no internal prompting I pointed off into the great abyss of fractal nothing that was infinitely filled with waiting and the image of a being standing in line at the end of my now infinitely long finger filled my mind. She was a very pleasant purple and smelled like marshmallows. She immediately understood that she was being gazed upon, despite the infinite distance between us, turned and lookedstraight at me. She glowed with a purple brilliance that you might as well interpret as smile and waved joyously.

I waved back and returned to my monologue. "I was a good person, I chose to be happy and I was, In spite of many hardships I never found any fault with any of it. I had a tremendous love of Jazz music and reading. All my time tending the counter of my store there was always music playing, mostly Jazz, and more often than not I had a book in my hand which I only put down to ring up the next customer. I was often annoyed at the busy days where I did not get more reading done but the fact that I was my own boss, and more importantly, in charge of the radio, I was very content."

I continued "This place is best described as post body processing. You will use the information from my past life to choose a councilor for me though it will likely be someone who has counseled me before. This councilor and I will decided what I am going to do next. Before that, however, I will spend some time in what I would have, only moments ago, called heaven. There I will integrate my past life. When I am ready I will appear in front of my councilor and the decisions for my 1,345,242nd trip to the physical plane will be made." I paused "I am a reasonably old soul." I again thought that this was odd but was again assured by the tree of knowledge that it was not.

"Very good" said my counter person. "The tree thing is nice.  A few things,  all of which you already know, none of which are actually necessary for me to say but I find speed things up a bit. One. you don't need to move your mouth." With that it was immediately apparent that she was right, I did know that, additionally she wasn't, nor had she ever, used her mouth. She had been communicating directly. "Two. You seem to be handling this quite expertly but should you find some discomfort, especially as your body image begins to fade, remember that fear is an invention of the physical plane and is rooted in the unknown. You know everything you need to know so in the event that you feel some level of concern just ask your self a question. Similarly the tree metaphor for knowledge uptake will similarly fade as you continue to remember things as they really are "

"Of course" I thought. And then something strange happened. Tree informed me that it was and then sort of took temporary control of me "Speaking of how things really are, the usual set of events does not apply here and my councilor will not be needed."  The tree held out my hand and relinquished control back to me.  I looked down and to find I was holding pencil. It was sharpened. "Why am I holding a pencil?" I asked my self. Nothing happened. No tree, no leaves, no answers. I looked at my helper. They had a very strange look on their face.

"It's rare for a being to hold on to something but not unheard of. However I have no recollection of this ever happening." She paused for a moment.  "Often the thing is not actually that thing but a metaphor for something else. Try asking a more specific question."

I looked back down at the pencil. "What does this pencil mean?" Nothing happened. I'll try again, just in case I thought. "What does this pencil represent?" Again the question was followed by a cavern of nothing, not even an echo of the question. I thought this was odd and I was immediately informed that it was.  Apparently my helper got the same memo because she had a very strange look on her face and her color had shifted from a very vibrant green to something still green but with and added rustiness.

"This is indeed odd." She said. "Let me see it." I held it up to her, to which she reached for it but instead of grabbing it her fingers found no hold, they simply passed through. The look on her face strained further and her color morphed with it. "huh? Hang on." She kind of spaced out and I wondered what she was doing.  I was informed she had contacted an entity of a higher order in this sorting facility of sorts. Immediately this entity joined us at the counter.

"Hi" this beings voice said cheerfully, "that's an interesting pencil you have there, may I try?" I never brought the pencil down and it was obvious the moment he asked that he could so he was practically touching it before he was even done asking. Just like last time his hand made no purchase upon the pencil. "Look at that" he beamed. "I've never seen one of these."

"One of what?" I asked. A single leaf answered in chorus with the manager

"I don't know." He didn't. "But fortunately for us there is nothing to worry about. Everything is for a reason and will be explained in due time. But it is very odd for something like this. The vast majority of all information is available to everyone here and what little isn't should be available to me and the other beings overseeing this process. I guess God has bigger plans."

"You believe in God?" I asked.

"Of course, so do you"

I did, of course.  In fact I had a meeting with him 38 life times from now. This life would occur on a small planet many light years from earth and millions of years in the past, relative to my most recent life.  I very much enjoyed golf, I played it in most of my lives where it was available. Along with this knowledge I was filled with a few little tidbits about golf I had forgotten. It was in fact invented on earth, but contrary to the beliefs of  earth scholars it was not invented by a human but by a crow, who in the midst of stockpiling some nuts had a moment of boredom and thought up the game. It's also why people who don't play the game view people who do as nuts. This was witnessed by a human who did nothing with the information but it was stored in her genes and many generations later a number of her decedents, who were now greatly dispersed, simultaneously  expressed this gene by "inventing" the game. I was informed that I was in fact related to great number of these being by soul group which explained my penchant for the game. The game is universally popular and given the nature of reality it quickly spread not just through space but through time. Most people assume this is because our particular incarnations are playful and love a challenge but the reality of it is that God loves golf and most people play with hopes of bumping into him. This is exactly what would happen to me 38 lifetimes from now, when I would be struck by lighting nearing the ninth green. God would then join me for the back nine. He would beat me soundly because I didn't need to win for any particular reason relating to growth or karma. God would explain that this made me one of the "lucky ones". This was probably just an ironic joke because the experience would lead me to create a religion based on golf proving that the entire "religious experience" was mostly lost on my physical conscience self. Shortly after the religion became popular I would be killed by an errant golf club loosed from an accountant who could not keep his hands off his mistress. He was trying to teach her golf but she was much more interested in maintaining an even application of body lotion.

I pointed off into arbitrarily in to the abyss of soul sorting only this time I was not pointing a finger but just my attention and I was pointing to where this woman's souls was waiting patiently at a similar counter. She acknowledged my attention, shrugged and pursed her mouth mimicking the feeling and playfully mouthing the word we were all thinking which was "oops". She smiled and the 13 of us laughed. Her, me, the two helpers and 9 other beings who's attention had been drawn to me by my mysterious pencil.

"So what to do with you?" My helpers had returned their attention to my plight and the manager was speaking. "Let's just scan you and see what pops up, It's likely your councilor will be of some help." A beam of warm light flashed and I looked at them quizzically. Had I thought about it I would have realized that reason I didn't know the results of the scan was because they didn't either. "He doesn't have a councilor? That can't be right, how would that even be possible?"

"I have a councilor" I joined in. "The last time I was here I met with them it was..." I had no idea. I couldn't remember them, any of them.

"Well, we are clearly in over our heads here, we are going to have to get you a temporary container while we try and get this sorted out."

"Temporary container?" I said. They looked at me. I sighed "what's a temporary container?" Nothing happened.

"Oh this is interesting" said the helper. "He doesn't even get to know that. "A temporary container is a body that has no soul in it.  Since your most recent life was on earth you will likely return there. On earth the most common cases of empty body's are found in teenagers. Often the when the body hits  puberty the ensuing roller coaster of hormones proves too much for a young soul and it bails out. This leaves the body to navigate on what information it's gathered so far. They tend to navigate life quite easily because they aren't carrying any karma but for the same reason they is no real purpose to their life and any search for a greater meaning is fruitless.  It's not uncommon for a container to have multiple souls pass through it. Sometimes the soul will just bail out for a minute to take a breather. This explains the manic tendencies common in the teens."

"Along with the countless notebooks filled with terrible poetry, and suicide rates" I said

"Quite" Said the manager. "We'll get you stuffed into one while we get this all sorted out and we will come back to get you when we are ready."

"Wait, I'm going to come back to life... correction, I'm going to go back to life as a teen? I'm not sure I like what I'm hearing here. Most of the time you get to know where you are going at least. How often does this happen?"

"Well the temporary container thing is quite common. Most beings will know where they are going and for how long, which only makes your case even stranger because, for what ever reason you don't. I have never heard of this happening, but fortunately as we breached the subject my terminal informed me a body is waiting. Unfortunately I know as much as you do.

We answered in concert "nothing" as a single leaf chimed in with "lol".

 This gave the Manager infinite pause that took no time at all and continued, "I'm sure everything will work out, it always does. I'll just send you on your way and..."

"Wait." I interrupted. Can't I just stay here? How do you even know I'll end up in a container?"

"I don't, but since one appears ready I see no reason to delay. Besides, you definitely can't stay here. Souls were created to have purpose, staying here is a breech of that mandate. You couldn't stay here even if you tried. Attempts to do so always fail in the most spectacular way which is never singular or pleasant. It's a breech of your original contract, your purpose."

"What purpose is that?" I found the fact that my internal google tree of eternal knowledge was missing odd. It returned momentarily to inform me that it was.

"To have a purpose" My helper answered.

"Yah, but what purpose?" I probed.

"The purpose is not of any real matter only that it has one and that is serves the long term goals you and god have set for your self. Being here in the sorting facility is not purposeful, only moving through it is. You will have a temporary purpose by being in a temporary container."

"So there is something I should do while I'm there?" This statement appeared true to me but the notion was apparently not loud enough to be observed by anyone else."

"It's only necessary that you exist. Don't worry it's painless and you won't remember anything until you return. You will see it always works out."

"Wait I still have...." But it was too late. The manger had pushed what ever button it is they press  and the room I was in twisted and collapsed in on it's self and I was left in darkness only momentarily. A small pin point of light appeared in front of me. From the light a million other points of light poured out and expanded and multiplied fractally. Each of these lights grew larger and a million copies of the same picture of a ceiling in some room formed in each. These images spun and twisted together until I was no longer sensing a world around me but seeing a world in front of me. As the light of the room became my reality I heard someone say "I think he's waking up"

My vision cleared and I was indeed laying on the ground looking up at the ceiling.  It was at this point I realized or may be remembered where I was.  I was in Jeremy's bedroom, he Adam and I had just tried mushrooms for the first time. My perception was still highly altered. I was witnessing every surface turn, twist and fold. Objects were oscillating between the familiar and explainable to the unfamiliar and mysterious.

"Dude are you ok?" Jeremy asked.

I thought about it. "Yah, I think so" As the words clumsily fell from my mouth I felt like I was remembering how to speak. I was also remembering a lot more. My name was Derek Treehorn, I was 17, and a senior in high school. The best I could tell I was fine but two things were very wrong. One. I remembered everything about the sorting facility, my past life as a liquor store owner, my death and even the bit about the golf, all of it. The tree of knowledge was clearly gone but I remembered everything from post body processing and I had a feeling of me inside Derek rather than actually being Derek.  Two. I was holding a pencil.


Chapter 2

The next week was a bit of a blur. Jeremy and I had only a few conversations about our trips. We recounted our versions and made no attempt to hide the DMV since it seemed to be true for me and for Derek. On the surface this was a pretty ordinary experince for a couple of kids tripping for the first time. My first trip was  I took a back seat and watched as Derek, apparently running on some sort of auto pilot, worked his way through what appeared to be a rather typical week. It was kind of like being stuffed in a small room with  a couple of viewing screens, some speakers and the necessary inputs to get the feed of all 5 senses from outside, out there in Derek's world. I dubbed this the control room.  My old self sat and watched from behind the eyes of a seventeen year old in high school kid and it was often more disorienting than my recent death.

At first I might as well have been dropped in a foreign country. The topics of conversation where completely foreign and the subject of said conversations where unintelligible gibberish. Names, sounds, memories and activities turned into what amounted to a crash course in the way's of the modern high school student.  TV show plots were recounted, youtube videos shared, homework was loathed, pop icons were regaled, parents were doubted, teachers both admired and loathed and most of all anxiety reigned supreme in a comedy of errors painted in slang. Oh good the slang. Wednesday during a break a story was recounted where another student had made his attraction to his crush known, and had subsequently been rejected much to the enjoyment of the onlookers. In my day we might have said that  'Mark took a shot on his betty but she gave him the cold shoulder and everyone who saw gave him a rough time.' The video of this made quick rounds at the school, which wasn't even possible in my day. The popular jargon rendered the sentence as such..." Yo, mark stepped to this snack yesterday and talk'n bout she was valid and he was trying to make her is real one. She straight says this dude is extra and that he should dead ass walk. Everybody pointing and loling so now he's the punchline. Somebody snatched the video and put it on blast." The video was then shared with our group and most found it so amusing that "they were dead".  My original and significantly older self spent the week watching as these children ran around with emotional charged cans of hormonal gasoline and pockets full of Knee Jerk Brand matches.  The culture shock in conjunction with my amazement of this kept my 'adult persona' at bay. Derek's autopilot was enough to prevent anyone from catching on to the very foreign entity lurking in their mist. This was temporary.

In my control room, I had access to a terminal of sorts which was a very quick way of catching up on the things that Derek knew. Kind of like a hard line to his short and long term memory. It was not literally like that but there is no point in trying to describe something that wasn't really there, it's just a way to get the point across. The Terminal contained a rich and detailed history of Derek but was divided up by how often the information was used. The less often the information was used the more concentration and more time it took to retrieve. I think the best way to describe this is that common notion of who you are compared to how you portray your self. The best example of this was the myriad of cuss words in Dereks vocabulary which were in constant use among our crew but instantly disappeared in the presence of authority. Not only were there parts of derek that he was hiding from certain people but there were things he was hiding from him self. I could, in a matter of sorts fact check Derek on his life, and interestingly he was kinda wrong a decent amount of the time. My intuition informed my self that my former incarnation was no different at his age and at the time of my demise made minimal progress in this department. It was pretty clear he was not doing anything out of the ordinary.

That's a weird thing to say, "he", but it's not really how it felt, he was me, I was him, there was not such a succinct line between us but there was no doubt a difference in the information that defined us, the 32 year old liquor store owner who loved jazz and books, and a somewhat dull 17 year old high school boy who was probably par for the course. I had some inclination of a 3rd me, or potentially my intuition, or a even an unknown who seemed to be watching from the wings, the part of me that had visited the DMV. The whole things was quite confounding and initially the experience was fully engaging by it's self.  I processed my new perspective and as the situation became increasingly 'normal' the line between us quietly began to blur. The first instance of this was the first big discrepancy that appeared between Derek's past as is was told, vs how it actually happened.

At lunch on Wednesday, Derek's friends sat chatting away. Rodney was  re-telling, for the hundredth time, the weekend that they all had gone camping and  they decided to play a prank on Adam, a social out cast of sorts one tier below us. His slightly lower status made him the target of things like this. In this case they had tied his shoes together and when he attempted to get up to relieve him self he tripped and in a harrowing moment almost fell in the fire, instead landing face down next to it. His narrow miss, however, included landing on a stick which was protruding from the fire circle. It was launched into the air and landed, ember side down on his lower left back burning a hole through his jacked which, luckily only resulted in a light burn. While it could have gone very badly the resulting injury was mild and there fore the whole episode had remained a repeated source of humor.

I listened to the story get told while simultaneously watching as Derek's memories played the scene in concert.  Out of curiosity, I looked this incident up in file cabinet. Surprised with what I found I reviewed the file aloud to my self. That was not what had happened. It was Adam who decided to to play the prank. Garret was the target and when he got up he tripped and fell and instantly became the subject of our laughter and jeers. In a fit of anger brought about his embarrassment, Garret grabbed a burning ember from the fire and jabbed it at Adam, burning him. In the aftermath, Garret's inclusion in our group was cemented and Adam's social status was lowered. The injury resulted in a conspiracy to cover up the truth with the fabricated version in order to protect Garret and still have an explanation for Adam's mom.  A pact was made to never speak the true events and Adam was coerced into compliance with the scheme at his own expense.  The story had been shared and parental finger shaking with regard to fire was abundant. Since then we had told the story so many times now the fictitious version had become the truth.

My attention redirected back to "here and now" a where the entire group was staring at me in horror. I was immediately aware that my review of the events of that particular night had been orated aloud to the group.  As I scanned the lunch table I was acutely aware that most of the group, much like Derek, had completely replaced the truth in their own minds and were reeling at the re-emergent truth. A few nervously glanced over at the table where Adam was sitting.  Layered above this was the universal look of betrayal from everyone present as I had just broken the pact, by mentioning it. The first rule of Don't Tell Mom Club, was Don't Tell Anyone Ever. No one said anything for a few moments until the subject was awkwardly, and thankfully, changed by Drew who wanted to know if anyone was as excited as he was for this weekends release of the 4th installment of the very popular PG Sci-Fi romp, Space Ace. I (Derek) joined the enthusiastic chorus. The second time I found my self more integrated with Derek happened Friday night.

Derek and all his friends were pretty deep into a video game called Death's Door and we often gathered in James' basement to play. It's a beautiful and immersive world with very little in the way of on screen cues to guide you. The objective was to wander around trying things until you found something interesting and then much like a game of memory you just had to remember where you saw that thing because at some point another plot point would seem related and you would try the two in conjunction, which if correct, would open a door or add a useful item to your inventory. If incorrect, which was very common, you found your self no longer alive. This resulted in the screen wriggling and twisting into distorted vision of your resting place which faded out and then back in to your most recent save point.  The first time this happened I had a very visceral reaction which brought back memories of my most recent demise, and resurrection. Apparently I fainted and when I came too I was more my previous self than I was anything else.

In the confusion and faced with a room of unfamiliar youth I said
"who the fuck are you?" I looked around "where the fuck am I, how the fuck did I get here?
A very frightened teen stared at me wide eyed and quickly turned to the other teen.

"Dude! What the fuck are we gonna do? I think his brain is broken."
 The second hastily replied. "Don't even say that! I told you he's been weird since we tripped. What if it fucked him up? What if it fucked us all up?" This gave them both pause and they looked at each other as if the other was a ghost.
The first began again. "Not even going there, I'm fine, you're fine, Derek is the problem." He pointed at me.
That name sounded kind of familiar.
He continued. "Dude we have to wait this out. We can't just march up stairs and tell your parents we ruined Derek with drugs"
"We agreed not to use the word drugs."
"Lot of good it did us, what if we all get video game seizures leading to amnesia? We will be the poster children for what not to do. They'll probably make an after school special about us."
"Or do a segment on Nightline! My mom would literally die."
"Not before she killed me though. We need to think this..."
"Oye! I bellowed. "What the fuck is going here? Who is this Derek person?"
"YOU!" they yelled back at me.

At the moment the basement door cracked and a female voice called down the stairs "Are you all right down there?"
Both lunged at me and clasped their hands over my mouth staring me dead in the eye with that 'STFU' look and called in perfect unison. "We're fine".
The second continued. "We got a little disagreement about which dungeon to pick"
"Ok" the woman called back "I don't think your video game should include any yelling. Do I need to pause the game for you?"

You could hear this was not a question but a stern warning. "It's fine mom, we are fine, thank you for checking" The door closed with no further protest. They breathed a sigh of relief and returned to their stern eye contact that no doubt was intended to keep me quiet. I shook my head that I was compliant and they removed their hands.

"What mushroom trip are you talking about?" I asked "I've done mushrooms like a hundred times and it was all good. Shit I found some at the store the other day that fell out of some dreddy kids pocket and popped 'em on the spot. Barely even noticed."

The blood drained from their faces and they sat back seeming to indicate they were now well aware that they were in over their heads. Fortunately for us all Derek's reboot concluded. It was a very odd sensation to say the least. In a way it was like death all over again. As everything came flooding back I became distracted and Derek did the autopilot thing. Our body did a little waver thing and then kinda snapped back to attention. "Holy crap guys, what happened. Did I pass out?"

Jeremy and Adam still doing the deer in headlights thing.

"Jeremy, Adam, are you guys ok?" Derek Snapped his fingers at them inquisitively

"Are we ok?" Jeremy quipped "Suddenly he remembers us"

I was doing the deer in headlights thing too apparently because I suddenly realized I needed to get on damage control.

"Dude you didn't know who were were and you started talking about some dreddy kid and doing a bunch of mushrooms"

I though quickly "Oh, did I... I thought that was a dream" I decided to make it easy and just tap my former reality. "It was so strange, I was some old hippy guy in a store and there was jazz music playing, I think I just remembered a part of my trip. That scene in the video game made it really real."
This seemed to placate them a bit. "I'm ok, I feel good" I said. Still tentative they just peered back at me. "Do I look ok?"

"Ummmm" I guess so said Adam
"Yah, I suppose you look fine" added Jeremy

"That was pretty intense." I paused. "I guess it probably was for you too. It's probably best if I take a break from the game."

"Yah" said Adam cautiously. "You sure your good?"

"Yah, I should head home though." I stood grabbing my coat and heading for the stairs.

"Yah" they both said clearly relieved that no parents were frantically dialing anyone else parents, or 911 for that matter. "Is it cool if we keep playing with out you" Adam asked raising his eyebrows hopefully."

"Oh yah for sure." I replied already two steps up "Little shake ups like this, I'm better off easing into my chair with a joint and a cold beer. I'll probably put some Dave Brubeck on and just chill you know?" I looked at them and realized what had just happened. "Ha ah, J/K. It's straight to bed for me." Remembering my still untouched homework I put Derek back on auto "Well not before I finish our math homework."

Jeremy and Adam were relieved to see me say something normal for once and also dismayed at mention of homework. "See you guys!" I said cheerily, bounding up the stairs and slamming the basement door on the way out re instilling the notion that I was a "normal" teen. As I walked home I indeed wish for any combination of a cold beer, well rolled joint, or Dave Brubeck. Not wanting to take anymore chances with mistaken identity I decided to table the idea of finding a beer or weed and the jazz would be streamed from the internet. I made a note to find the nearest music store selling vinyl and smell some when no one was looking.

Chapter 3

Meet the teacher/crush, she likes Jazz. Remember the Jazz stash in the liquor store. Hatch a plan to get it back. There are a few records in in the stash that can down payment the loan. Need to convince someone to front the money, or find an ally to get a job at the liquor store to help recover them. Track down the previous best friend and try and convince him this is real? Also do some internet searches for people with similar experiences. 

tongue and brain twisting

Is it possible I had not thought of what was possible because I was taught what is possible, rather than what possible is?

Is it inconceivable or unbelievable that things like that can come from a head like his and  if so, do you suppose my condition is treatable.

I'd like to pay you compliment and perhaps you could pay me back by paying attentions when I do
Pay away if it contents, but know that no means no when I say it and I often do.

so this cop killed this guy... again.

The cross we bear as a society is an invisible wall that does not exist. If we are not fighting about who is on what side of what wall... we are fighting whether or not the wall exists. The wall is a distraction. Stop talking about racism and start talking about humanism. A black man is not dead... a MAN is dead. It doesn't matter the color of the shooter or the color of the victim, what matters is that we are divided and we should all stop and take notice of the fact that the only issuing facing the human race today is the wall that separates the people who know that we are one, and the people who seek to convince us otherwise.

reconcile

It makes me happy that a women of your caliber would come find me at the bar. I'm not sure what im supposed to think about that. I want you ( and all women) to feel comfortable around me and I have not gotten to a point where I know how to balance my attraction for a woman and how to express that with out fading into the back ground of the daily chaos beating down your bedroom door. Im lucky to call you friend. And thats enough for me but dont for one second think that I dont think you are incredibly sexy and just as intelligent.