“What are U IN2?".

I suppose I write this post by way of introduction, by way of warning, that the leap into imagination will most decidedly be trippy (no psychedelics required). And that trippy will be the way of things for the next few years at least.

Welcome aboard the rollercoaster. You must be willing to be daring & looney to the point of frisson. (Synonyms: shiver, chill, quiver, shudder, thrill, tingle). Yes, a rollercoaster can be exhilarating.

"The children who swallow the star are the poets - like Yeats or Tolkien - who become wanderers between two worlds." - Colin Wilson

Things slowly started getting a heck of a lot weirder for me last year when a book started writing me on May 2. Weird to the point that this sentence makes 100% absolute sense: "My life is science fiction," my friend assures me.

For forty days straight I wrote about what was vividly occuring within my life, and within my mind. 'Reality', fantasies and flashbacks were all weaved into the unfolding story.

This experience crystallized for me in an unshakeable, visceral, kinetic way that what was going on inside my mind is as tangibly real as what is going on 'out there'.(Hmmm, one day they may start to inextricably blend together.)

I'd tiptoe down the stairs each morning at dawn and open the sliding glass doors to the garden (the sheer spoken word 'garden' transformed the backyard into something much more magically imbued with numinosity) as the earl grey tea with bergamot was seeping and the bread was toasting.

In the beginning, the fantasies that wove into my mind were quite innocent, near normal. They encountered the everyday nature that was on display that beatific April: perhaps I'd see animals and goddesses lounging in the morning clouds and faeries exploring the morning glories climbing the fence.

Nearly simultaneously I'd begun a new romantic relationship with a dear old friend, and sometimes the fantasies would slip into the erotic (in my mind, the beloved and Beloved are fluid). And the erotic spoke of innocence too.

Each day the writing of its own volition started to challenge the conventions of the black-and-white mundane and fantastical categories (not too mention innocent and erotic). Hanging the laundry outdoors one day, I recalled Jack Kornfield's title "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry and immediately the idea popped in, Oh yeah? Hmmph! Laundry can too be ecstastic!!)

Over time fantasies and waking dreams would visit me during the day, not sit patient for dawn and dusk writing time. Symbols in the real world unsheathed their cloaks. It was later I'd learn via the 21st delphic oracle that many of these dreams and symbols were quite ancient and legendary and mythic.

Although well-read because of my insatiable curiousity, the actual fact is my education doesn't have much breadth (alas, Institute of Technical Education). So I had no way of knowing apriori that the things I was independently imagining weren't new at all but dwelt in the universal archetypal Well.

Weirder stuff happened still. And I only mean weird in the sense that if you have a certain fixation of what reality is and how reality should operate and what perception is.

By the time I got to day 40, I was all too ready to set the pen down. Too wild an adventure, even for me. I don't feel that way any longer, yet I forceably turned my back on imagination for months and months afterward.

Though, if you have a shaman's soul, well, it's only a matter of time before it feels familiar.(You can only turn away for so long. She's a charmer, she is.

And gifts aren't meant to be kept. Gifts are meant to be given.)

The urge of suspense gets stronger. . .