Self-Portrait
Oil on Canvas
50 x 40 in
1962 Faith Ringgold
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©2013-2020. Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
Almost instantaneously, as the Moon transited Leo in my third house, my lungs besottedly drank the warm and dank, dark air. Thus I effortlessly drowned into sleep. Whilst wintry winds howled outside the window, this cold early Saturday morning – November 18, 1989 – my lucid focus seamlessly shifted into the dreamtime.
I readily knew that I was dreaming.
Here, just as moments earlier whilst awake and meditating, Merlin was uppermost in my thoughts. I could sense his presence. The shift from one dimension to the other was seamless. Lucidly self-aware, I was immediately come to in a dream that was set in the bedroom where I slept.
I was in bed with the artist Olaf Nordstrom – a source of loving support at present in the waking state. I was lying in bed, leaning on his bony chest, as he sat up in bed. It was obvious from his body language that he did not want to be in bed with me. I felt a still and quiet vibration to this dream. The moment was truly serene and peaceful. This was not a sexual or post-sexual interlude. We were both reflective. It was obvious that we were on the cusp of something momentous. It was the sort of vibration that signalled that something extraordinary was about to unfold.
Olaf behaved as if he was uncomfortable being there – it was a grave moment. He wanted to be there, however, to merely lend his support. It was obvious that he was wary of my clinging. Clinging, however, was not my intention. The moment together was brief – just a preparation for things to come. With that we parted. It was time to get up and participate in the events of whatever was to unfold.
This dream was possessed of inordinate lucidity; its every detail and nuance my faculties absorbed with acuity beyond the norm.
In the second dream, this cold Saturday morning, I found myself in the familiar territory of the Cabbagetown streets where we lived. I went into a store which does not exist in the waking state. It sat just south of the Pet Menagerie store, on the east side of Parliament Street, between Amelia and Winchester Streets.
It was a tailor’s shop that carried rather high-end fabrics. I was there to pick out some fabric because I had a definite idea of what I wanted to wear to Merlin’s funeral. I knew that the only way, to get the look that I wanted, was to make the outfit myself. The kindly, gracious salesman was trying to get me interested in a rather conservative plaid fabric but it simply was not to my liking. My aversion was not because it was plaid; rather, the tone was too sombre.
He was not insistent but let me know that it was appropriate. However, I would have none of it; I simply did not like the fabric or the colours. I simply was not going to have it. Unable to make up my mind and not wanting to make a decision about fabric, as there were so many ramifications to what it all meant, I left the store stepping into the light of day. It had been a very dimly lit, nicely wood-panelled, stately shop.
Once outside, I became acutely aware of Merlin. I was now returned to the yard of Cabbagetown’s 20 Amelia Street, where we lived, and Merlin was present with me. Thoughts of Merlin, on leaving the store, had me immediately posited in the front yard of 20 Amelia Street where I happily joined him. We were watering the lawn even though it was wintertime. Next door at 18 Amelia Street, where at this point Club Monaco designer Alfred Sung no longer lived, there were lots of potted plants hanging from the lone, purple-leaved, sugar maple tree.
Merlin was telling me to water the plants. He then began telling me, rather matter-of-factly, that I had to start taking care of the apartment – I had to make it a home again. Merlin asked me to start preparing things. He meant that this was not the time for procrastination. Of course, moments earlier in the prior dream, I had been procrastinating when down on Parliament Street to pick out fabrics to wear to his funeral. By avoiding the matter altogether, I had chosen instead to forego the purchase. As Merlin spoke to me, I became so aware of him that I completely became self-aware – both in the dream and in my sleep whilst in bed at 20 Amelia Street.
I was standing there very intently looking at Merlin. He, too, was very intently looking at me. Whilst we were unflinchingly looking into each other, I thought aloud with quiet resignation, ‘Merlin has died.’
I knew, too, that Merlin had heard my thoughts in the dream.
At that moment my sister Pandora da Braga, with whom Merlin enjoyed the best relations of anyone else in my life, suddenly became a presence in the dream. She never fully became physically manifested but her energies became overwhelmingly strong. Her energies were just to my rear as she played a loving and supportive role.
Suddenly, introspectively, I recalled a dream which I had had earlier in the week. With everything moving so quickly, in the waking state – with little time to collect my thoughts, let alone overlong time to record any dreams- it had slipped by unrecalled on awakening. However, now it was not merely being recalled, it was being relived in its entirety. I stood there and as I recalled the dream, rather seamlessly, I actually entered the dream which was being reanimated as it was being holographically recalled.
Within the reanimated dream being recalled and relived, I was again on the lawn at 20 Amelia Street in the warmth of the Sun’s rays. Just as in today’s dream, I was on the front lawn facing due north and the house with 18 Amelia Street on the left to the west. As Merlin and I were visiting in the outer dream of today, I had turned my body. Being in the same physical position had triggered the recall and reanimation of the dream from the past week.
To my left, I saw an incredibly ancient-looking, wise being who progressed across the lawn. The slowness of his progression was so measured that one’s experience of time, in the reanimated and recalled dream, progressed outside of time itself. It was simply magical to experience the progression of the very ancient and mystical being. The millennia-ancient figure progressed across the lawn, of 18 Amelia Street, heading towards our home at 20 Amelia Street. The being was male and small in stature; he was hobbit-like. His head was large, disproportionately large, compared to his tiny, frail-bodied frame.
He could not have been more than four feet tall. His head was absolutely massive. His forehead arched up and was high like an African’s. Too, his head was elongated in the back, reminiscent of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s skull. More striking than the majesty with which the august being progressed outdoors, towards our home at 20 Amelia Street, was the look of his face.
It was simply magical. From beneath the translucent skin, soft yellow-white light escaped revealing his very visible aura. Nothing but pure love, along with the same nonjudgmental look that ever peered back from Merlin’s eyes to mine, radiated from this being. The love radiating from the being towards me was awesome, immense – intense. The great being’s progress was purposeful. He was on a mission; he was unstoppable. The process had begun.
I was struck by the uncanny resemblance, which the face of this being bore, to the planet-being in the skies of Sandy Point, St. Kitts in a momentous dream during September 1983. It was a dream whose potency and beauty would lay unfathomable for years to come. The being progressed as though levitating mere millimetres above the rather zingy, extra-green grass of the lawns at both 18 and 20 Amelia Street. Though he did not pause as he progressed, the radiant being did turn and look at me. As though he was familiar with me, he acknowledged me by slightly nodding. However, he continued on towards our home.
He moved past me as I stood there, still and silent, drinking in the majesty of the experience. At soul-centre we were familiar to each other. I knew him. He knew me. I stood, alone and awestruck, in the front yard being refamiliarised by the vibration of his beauty as the effect of his potent powers spatially affected the dream. As he moved past, I was reminded of the film The Dark Crystal, by Jim Henson – with whom Merlin had worked, directing two episodes of the Fraggle Rock television series in its inaugural season. This movie would for several months, after we saw it together in New York City, be our favourite film.
Thereafter for several weeks, whenever we looked at each other – even when not being intimate, we had hummed at each other as the rival beings in the film did when communicating. The being here was much like the good beings in the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. The being progressed up the few stone steps, to the wooden veranda at 20 Amelia Street, and began making his way inside the house. As I watched him ascend, from the lawn to the veranda, it was clear to me that he was levitating. Though it was a dream and I too could have levitated and flown, he though had a power which surpassed mine.
This august-souled, mystical being clearly originated from a dimension which vibrationally and spiritually was of a higher plane than the astral, where the dream occurred, and the physical in which I am incarnate. Indeed, the same physical plane from which Merlin was rapidly taking his leave – it was that discernible. The moment the mystical being entered our home, being lost to view, I came to from the inner holographic dream which was a recall and reanimation of a dream that I had experienced within the last week. As I came to, I was about to go indoors to see what had become of the being that had clearly entered our home.
It was then, having returned to being fully focussed in the outer ‘shell’ dream of today November 18, 1989, that I saw Merlin anew. He was standing at the front door looking out at me. I stood there, in the front yard, transfixed whilst the bright daylight bathed my body throughout. The look on Merlin’s face was purely transcendent. He was perfectly still and perfectly radiant. Merlin stood in the midst of a nimbus of dazzling, blue-white light. As he lovingly glowed out at me, this splendid light only intensified.
Merlin was transformed and as his face lovingly lit up, at me, the light grew to more completely envelop his body. Whilst lovingly glowing at me with the warmest, most familiar knowing smile, Merlin slowly brought his right hand up with the palm facing me and more completely smiled. The radiance of his smile soon became lost in the glow of his aura’s light. The nimbus, enveloping his transformed body, radiated even more intensely at that point.
I was blown away. Arrested, I readily knew what I was experiencing; I could feel it. I knew that across dimensions, in the waking state, Merlin had just died.
However, as is my wont, I protested. I dropped the hose which was still bleeding its nurturing water onto the frozen, wintry lawn at my feet. I stood – paralysed. Determinedly, I then bolted for Merlin. I headed up to the veranda as my lover, as my mentor, as my friend stood transcendent in the doorway to what had been the most beautiful sense of home ever experienced. “Merlin!” shrieking in protest, I yelled out his name.
(Detail of oil on canvas by my sister Pandora of Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery where Merlin is buried.)
Suddenly, the thunder of my protesting breath abruptly drew me from sleep. I sat upright in bed, my arms outstretched and beyond, after having crashed back into my body and no longer astral-projected. From the foot of the bed both cats – Zora and Whoopi – knowingly, silently looked up. I was arrested by the frozen horror-struck face staring at me from the mirrored closet doors across the room.
In the near-darkness of the bedroom, a few rays of early morning light made it past the blood-red, velvet drapes heavily hung at the windows. Those rays starkly cast light on how horribly desolate my life now was. Merlin was gone. His spirit had taken leave from this world. It was that discernible as my world, my very universe, had experienced a massive vibrational shift.
I had been abruptly displaced from the astral plane. I had been lucidly dreaming a dream within a dream. I was being told so long as Merlin, transitioned from incarnate to astral plane habitué, bade farewell to our magically glorious union on the physical plane. I was heartened by the peace and knowingness in his transcendent face because I knew that it was a, “See you soon…” parting, for now.
I knew that there would be dreams aplenty up ahead. Just as he had pledged, he would magically weave in his indelible promise to me, before departing from the physical plane. There was such a cold silence, a stinging finality to the moment, as I sat there in bed. After having looked back at myself, silently waiting, I placed a call to the eighth storey nursing station at Wellesley Hospital.
I was immediately aware that the tone of the nurses, with whom I was by now long-familiar, had changed. In very little time, it was official… Merlin had indeed passed. Truth be told, it was not a surprise; I could sense it on awaking. He simply was not there. As always, I had reached out to sense him on awaking – his energies – just blocks away at Wellesley Hospital. Now, there was nothing.
Then, as if needing further proof, I thought about Merlin calling each morning. He would do so, to lovingly say hello and thereby, to lovingly wake me up. Merlin would then lovingly ask for a call-back, after I had audio-recorded the dreams. Merlin had, thus far, not called. Once again, I saw the stillness of my reflection across the room. I knew then, really knew… Merlin was gone.
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As ever thanks for your ongoing support but if you really want to make me levitate then do buy my books!
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© 2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
(L to R,) Yonge Street Mask (George Hawken Lithograph 1971), Pink Chair (George Hawken Lithograph 1990 of yours truly; there are only three copies in existence) Woman (George Hawken Lithograph 1980) Sockeye Salmon (Bill Reid Lithograph 1991), Four Standing Figures (Henry Moore Lithograph 1978)
Buster is a really keen familiar. Recently, someone of dubious intentions visited my home; needless to say, I had dreamt of the encounter days prior. As he spends long hours therein, Buster came from the pyramid and promptly hissed at the individual then returned to the pyramid where no doubt, he communed with his Egyptian ancestors. He only ever enters the pyramid at the eastern corner and when meditating will face one of the four corners in the sphinx position and remain thus for long hours.
Buster loves that duvet; therefore, year round I have to sleep with one. Now that it is summer, I avoid roasting beneath the down duvet by having the AC on high 24/7. Bad carbon footprint; then again, I don’t drive.
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©2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
On this the eve of what would have proven Merlin’s 72nd birthday, I share these rather totemic dreams. This November 18, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of Merlin’s passing of full-blown AIDS, on a cold November Saturday morning when icy snowflakes aimlessly drifted across the city streets. Whilst at dinner recently, a dear friend asked if I am never saddened at the loss of Merlin and if I ever do miss him. Of course, as I write this blog, I am warmed by the fact that on December 2, 2006 – almost 13 years ago, Merlin was reincarnated in a canalled northern European city. Merlin is now female and the third of three children – two older brothers.
What’s more, Merlin reborn has eyes that would now be even more phenomenal than when last I gazed besotted and rhapsodic into those large, soulful hazel eyes. Whereas Merlin was on his sixth life as a seventh level mature scholar soul, now reincarnated and female that soul is now living its first incarnation as a first level old scholar. These next dreams were dreamt in May, 1989 when Merlin was then still incarnate and at that point, he daily listened to the audiocassette recording of my dreams. This he did because they fascinated him; more than that, he did so because ever the director, he was keen to give insight and direction.
“Come on, Arvin, you have to be more descriptive. I have no idea if the car was blue, green, for that matter a convertible and was it a tan or white leather interior?”
Certainly, it can never be underestimated the pivotal role that Merlin played in the depth and thoroughness of the audiocassette recorded dreams. He was ever a loving but tough taskmaster and happy am I to have had his loving input and direction. After having listened to the recorded dream being now shared herein, Merlin came to dinner at our 20 Amelia Street home and declared, “Well, let’s not get too caught up in trying to interpret and figure out the symbolism of those dreams.” After, he winked, we softly kissed; his lips as ever warm and full as internally an unrelenting disease determinedly consumed his body… but never alas his spirit.
These were potent, lucid astral plane dreams. To say that they were totemic would be understating fact. The dreams were a glimpse beyond the veil as Merlin shamanically wound down another incarnation and got ready to put to rest another life. Ever focussed on my spiritual maturation, I am immensely proud to have survived so long after Merlin’s passing. Had anyone wagered that I would be still in the game 30 years later, I would have said, “You are reading the wrong tea leaves.”
Well, here I am still shaking arse and the Rathore to the core. These totemic dreams were dreamt on Monday, May 22, 1989, audiocassette recorded on tape IX of the 250 audiocassette recording of my dreams and yet to be found in Volume one the 25 Volume dream opus. Too, at the time, the Moon then transited both Sagittarius and my seventh house – wherein my natal Moon is posited. Truly few are they who are brave enough to drink from the chalice that is life.
Your support and choice to be focussed herein are both humbling and a source of inordinate pride. I am immensely grateful. Sweet dreams and as ever do remember, death is just a shift in focus; one is merely focussed at a different frequency. Besides, as one rather beguiling astral plane habituée put it, “Trust me, death is not wasted on the living.”
Dreams serve as the most expedient conduit for sustaining the bonds and communion of souls between persons who are no longer focussed in the physical plane but refocussed on the astral plane between lives as astral plane habitués whilst resting, reviewing and weaving the tapestry of future incarnations. So, drink and live in the moment. Take a deep breath, open your eyes within – don’t be afraid – and there within the silken folds of self is the massive beauty which is spirit.. go on explore and discover the true you. I love you more.
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The first dream found me posited on a hilltop looking down into a valley which then rose up into a lower hill. From the vantage of the mountains in Sandy Point, St. Kitts or Nevis, the view was of being down towards the ocean. Topographically, it seemed more like St. Kitts – however, this was definitely set in Nevis. I looked out and what did I see but a house on this hill; it was a very huge and lovely house.
Down from the sky, before the house on the rolling plains, fell a column of white light that shimmered. The manifesting light had the power of a tornado and it was a force that moved… it undulated. Truth be told, this was a liquefied white light – not unlike a waterspout. As compared to the left and right sides of the shaft, it was as though the centre of the light was faded. The centre of the column of light seemed invisible but it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, it was sort of greyish-coloured.
*A very fleeting dream this was but it was one that was potent. The sky overhead was ominously dark as though the cloud cover was simply to mask something else. There was no getting around the fact that the light was used as some sort of transport or conveyance. The light was being used for the relay of energies between the house’s occupants, if there were any, and whatever was beyond the clouds.
The dream seemed to have abruptly collapsed because I had happened on the scene. There was no one else about. Too, it was the only house on the landscape. I felt as though I had been ejected, from the dream, for having been there and witnessed what I wasn’t supposed to have been privy to. The dream collapsed around me; I was deprived any further knowledge of what was going on. In light of the dream that would follow, it became fairly obvious that the light column was channelling.
Eventually, the astra-human soul quality of Merlin’s would quite potently manifest. Of course, just as in the dream of Thursday, July 7, 1988VI, again, there was a lone house on the landscape. As will become evident, in later moments of the dreams, Merlin’s soul quality would manifest. END.
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The next dream immediately found me in bed with Merlin. He got up and he looked very old. Looking very tired and old, he turned around to me then went out into the hallway. He turned around and asked me, “When are you going to start moving on because I’d like to die by the end of this year? When are you going to go back to school? I’m really tired of this; I’m tired of this illness… I just want to move on.”
He was terribly impatient. Indeed, Merlin here was very forceful. That was when he began shapeshifting; Merlin underwent a metamorphosis before my eyes. He became, as he spoke, more impatient. I watched spellbound as his physiology morphed into the very astral-looking faun – though elfin-looking, he was taller than his known humanoid self; Merlin became the archetypal Chiron. I started crying sounding real childlike and said, “No… no! Please, please don’t!”
His face then became part of the pink walls, thus his transformed face was flesh-toned. Here his face looked faunlike; his eyes were on the sides. He had the face of a faun and I only ever saw the right eye. The eye was black-within-black. The eye looked down at me because the head – which was the only thing visible when mounted – was up on the wall. Shapeshifted, Merlin’s was a very hard-looking eye.
Merlin’s eye rapaciously looked right into the soul. An ancient eye it was. I caressed the softness of the fur-like skin and pleaded with him and said, “Please, I can’t live without you. I couldn’t go on. Please don’t lose your strength and get ill,” I pleaded with the shapeshifted Merlin and cried. I was aware of being here in bed asleep whilst dreaming and that my body was going through the motions of crying and being pained. Merlin did not hear me, although, I thought that as I slept that I was talking aloud in my sleep.
*This was an intensely upsetting dream because it dramatised how Merlin wished to be allowed to move on. He no longer cared to be focussed in the life. Though it was obvious that he could have soldiered on for months more, he simply lost the desire to go on being focussed. Clearly, this was owing to the bilious discord created by Tytanikka and Oleg’s betrayal.
Though he never physiologically resembled the classic centaur, Merlin’s face not only further morphed becoming like a fawn’s, more accurately, his head and face did have the eventual shape of a young bison’s – very Taurean, strong and potent.
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On preparing for the video to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Merlin’s birth back in 2017, I decided then to head off to the costumer, Malabar on McCaul Street where artist and lover George Hawken lived in the late 80s to early 90s. Inspired by the first dream of Merlin had 41 years ago in July 1978, I decided to get a cowl as a tribute to the cowl Merlin wore in the inaugural dream encounter with him, four years before having met on Friday, October 1, 1982 in New York City. So, there was I at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Saturday, July 15, 2017 in my cowl and the panama hat purchased at Versailles to escape the heat. I thought it fitting as Merlin always loved wearing panama hats.
My trusty friend, J.J. who happens to be an artisan entity mate whom I have known in 20 past lives –- which is a high incidence of contact -– was the director. Initially, I had hoped to throw a white party on the lawn to the southwest of the chapel at Mount Pleasant Cemetery and have a drone film the event where a gathering of friends would raise a glass to Merlin on the anniversary of his ennobled birth. Merlin always threw a white party each year for his birthday at his parents’ stunning backyard in north Toronto’s Servington Crescent.
The plan was not approved by the cemetery and thus, one had to improvise. I got my panama hat and my cowl and together, we proceeded with a dozen long-stem white roses to visit Merlin’s resting place. I had a pretty good idea what I was after. With the matching white cowl, I wanted to evoke the magic of meeting Merlin in that initial dream which is shared in volume one of the dream memoirs, which is already published: Merlin and Arvin: A Shamanic Dream Odyssey.
Get your copy! Thanks as ever for your support!
In the hardcover edition of human civilisation’s first dream memoirs, the initial dream encounter with Merlin is shared. The dream begins on page 110 in the hardcover edition. I wanted the same sense of wonderment and magic that I felt for having met Merlin in that first dream four years prior to having met reflected in the video. In that dream, Merlin’s appearance was preceded by a white totemic creature which seemed, in its astral plane outréness, to be part Russian wolfhound, part alpaca, part dog.
So, moving to the lawn, having descended the steps of the chapel, I began walking across the open lawn towards the statuesque lion-festooned mausoleum with the five remaining white long-stem white roses. Seven roses, of course, were left at Merlin’s grave -– one rose for each of our seven glorious years together. As I stepped onto the lawn, it seemed magical… timeless even. Slowly, confidently as I approached the filmmaker at the other end of the lawn, I thought of Merlin and that initial dream.
Just then, I very distinctly thought of Merlin greeting me by purring, “Hello Lambs.” As if right on cue, from off stage left, an adult deer came from behind the bushes and tombstones that line the far edges of the open lawn. Never before had I seen a deer at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Indeed, the good burghers of Forest Hill who clearly regularly jogged in the park-like setting stopped and were overheard remarking that they had never seen a deer in the cemetery before. All that I could do was tear up and continue walking as the deer then bolted and ran from stage left to right as I continued my stride uninterrupted –- unfazed by the appearance of an adult deer on the grounds of the cemetery. What is more astounding, is that J.J. at the time was filming my walk; at the last minute, I decided against a run-through as I was concerned about the natural light possibly changing if we were to rehearse the shot.
Unbeknownst to me, the deer after having made it to stage right, then returned to the centre of the lawn and stood there perfectly still whilst observing my progression across the lawn. J.J. who was astounded by the occurrence remarked that he had just witnessed a miracle. There is no doubt in my mind as I tried to recapture the magic of that initial dream encounter that there was a subtle validation of that dream from the magical shaman himself on the other side by having had Merlin’s spirit step in as director emeritus and had the deer enter the shot as validation and a token of his appreciation of the love that we shared and my steadfast loyalty to him. After crossing the lawn and turning to watch the deer stand there, looking down the lawn at me, I felt such utter peacefulness and abandonment of spirit — just as when alone and intimate in the dark with Merlin.
Yes, I believe in magic as did Merlin and as though an appreciation of having stridently done everything to fulfil his mandate to me, Merlin’s astral body conjure up the same magic here and now as he had in July 1978 –- four years before slipping inside a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up and readily winning me over with his sexy elfin charm, magic and sex that proved the most grounding shamanic passion… every time. Standing there, I was reminded, too, of that dream in 1989 before Merlin passed wherein he shape-shifted and became a fawn-like creature who morphed and became one with the wall in our Cabbagetown home.
All the music chosen for this 13-minute video is music that Merlin loved whilst incarnate and to which he returned time and again -– whether at Joe Morton’s tiny Upper West Side apartment in autumn of 1983, Toronto’s 20 Amelia Street in tony Cabbagetown. From Glenn Gould’s mastery of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, to Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick singing That’s What Friends Are For –- in that segment of the video, I included friends whom Merlin valued: Kareem Benezra, myself, Wayne Robson and his oldest and most loyal friend, the ever-gracious, Maxime Gascoigne-de Montigny.
Of course, for Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely, I exclusively included photos of Merlin and his very handsome and gracious father, David Ben-Daniel. Whereas I favoured Sir Paul McCartney’s Hey Jude, Merlin ever loved George Harrison and especially My Sweet Lord. Of course, one Saturday, whilst staying at actor, Joe Morton’s Manhattan apartment, when Merlin and I secretly committed to being together, we slow-danced to Supertramp and Roger Hodgson’s unmatched magical vocals on Supertramp’s Breakfast In America.
Additionally, Jeffrey Osborne’s On the Wings of Love which was one of Merlin’s favourite ballads is also included. Merlin loved Black male soul singers: Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jeffrey Osborne –- most especially –- George Benson, Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Donny Hathaway, Barry White. Most of all, I am especially proud of the video that J.J. and I have created; I think that it masterfully captures the depth of my love and fealty to the most fabulously magical shaman encountered on this incarnation’s spiritual odyssey.
Naturally, before having left for Mount Pleasant Cemetery, I had flooded my apartment with the music that appears in the video. Perhaps, unwittingly by so doing, I was invoking Merlin’s spirit, which later joined us when he played ultimate director and pulled off the most magical bit of stage direction –- an adult deer in the middle of a cemetery in the heart of mid-town Toronto. Lastly, I played the sublimely soulful Shirley Horn’s interpretation of, Here’s to Life! Whilst raising a glass of coconut water, I had forgotten to pick up some champagne the evening prior and it was too early in the morning to find champagne anywhere –- the lighting was way too good. Besides who knows if that magical deer would have been anywhere about.
Here’s to life… most of all, here’s to Merlin… here’s to dream shamans everywhere!
Merlin’s mandate to me ever remains:
“Please my darling, I want you to write about our lives together. I promise you, however possible, I am going to send you dreams to include in the story of our love… our lives together.”
Of course, there is my Instagram account: Instagram Arvin da Brgha
The YouTube channel is: Arvin da Brgha YouTube
For now, here’s to life, here’s to you and thanks so much for your ongoing support all these years!
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©2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
The dream was the first that day and occurred in the B sleep cycle, on Thursday, June 25, 1992, whilst the Moon transited both Aries and my eleventh house. As with all past life dreams, this was inordinately lucid, all my senses were piqued. Of course, there was the sense of being locked in – not being able to change the outcome of events as they unfolded.
A marvellous hall at nighttime where I was with a companion progressing through the place. I don’t quite know who it was that accompanied me. Then I wandered off and was with myself. I rather relished having done so. On the right side of the wall, it was rather dark and dimly lit by candlelight or torch flames. There were all these books everywhere. They were of brown-covered, time-faded colours. They were in the fantasy genre.
Immediately, I was intrigued and got excited when recognising some as the same ones that I had bought before. Sadly, I had never gotten around to reading them. Interest peaked in me because I wanted to see what the covers of the books were like. As a matter of fact, one of the books was opened. Almost every one of them was opened.
Somebody had been reading them but hadn’t finished doing so. Whoever had been reading these books would, as a matter of fact, then turn them upside down on the ledge of the fragile-looking bookcase. Each night before going to sleep, this was the habit which the reader employed with the books. I progressed down the length of the shelf leisurely perusing their covers.
There was one there which stood out and immediately appealed to me. It was brown-covered with a young, handsome man on it. Another had a man with a dragon in the image. It was in the fantasy genre and terribly scorpionic in tenure. Its sensibilities were terribly medieval. As I kept walking along, I came to this one image on one of the walls. It was of a very large tapestry. Immediately on seeing it, I stopped dead in my tracks because it was readily recognisable.
It was something for which every residual resonance harked back to a former lifetime. It was a stunning tapestry. It was, as a matter of fact, quite large. On the bottom of it, there was this writing in red that was very Gothic. Arcane writing it was. Though it seemed to be in Latin, I was more so of the impression that it was in arcane Welsh. There were lots of Ws in the very long words.
I tried my best to read and interpret what it was saying but couldn’t quite make it out. It did have something to do with a particular event which was depicted as having occurred in the year 1209 or earlier. The writing was at the base of a stump in the tapestry. It sat there, a stone outpost that appeared on closer scrutiny, more so like a crypt. Whilst facing the tapestry, I looked at it and keenly recorded every lush detail of the very real experience.
The head was of this very princely man who was bearded and luminously silver-haired. He wore a long, flowing, white robe and as one looked at the wall, which was on my right, so too was the tapestry’s actions in that direction. As he lay there on this large, stone slab, the head of the man was plainly visible. His head was to the left of the tapestry. The robe that he wore came and hung over the edge of the stone slab.
The fabric beautifully cascaded over the edge and down to the floor. It was a wonderful, beautiful, shiny, white robe. The threads in the tapestry were such that the light striking it, from the room, caught and imbued it with a handsome glow. There was a woman there in the hallway, where the tapestry hung, who was dressed in medieval garb. Her arm outstretched, she was looking up with great yearning. The left arm on her heart, the right stretched up over the head of the prostrate ruler.
Supplicating the gods as it were, she was arched backwards. She was mourning. Her mouth torn-open birthed her bloody pain. She was wailing. All of this left one feeling such gravity at the sad state of affairs. Behind her was a large, brawny, warrior-like man. Basically, her arm was outstretched to block him off. He carried an upraised sword. He wore gold chain-mail. Experiencing this tapestry was very painful. I just couldn’t bring myself to look at the face of the prostrate ruler. Immediately, as I looked away, I was instantaneously made aware that I was participating in the action being depicted in the tapestry.
I was caught up in a re-enactment of the tapestry. Rather, it was a reanimation such that I was reliving the events depicted in the tapestry. There I was, of all things, lying on the slab. I was, in fact, the princely leader. As I reclined there, I immediately became familiar with the body. Large, mid-aged and overweight, I immediately became fully synchronised with the princely body’s every nuance. Also, I was instantaneously reminded of that large body which I had ensouled in that dream recall of that past life in Roman times. In that past life dream, I was murdered at the baths by my very shrewd wife’s centurion guard-cum-starfucker-stud agent.
In between feigning wailing at my loss, the woman was now leaning over me and whispering to me. Straight away, I realised what was afoot. I was not yet dead and she knew it too. We were trying to affect a faux death. This is why I was covered in all that heavy material which would easily disguise my shallow breathing. I was supposed to be faking being dead. Lying there, there was a commotion outside the large, heavy, wooden doors to the damp, empty room in a stone, fortress-like dwelling. Where it was seemingly at nighttime, there was a great deal of light coming through the high-placed windows about the room.
The man outside the door, who had been shouting in a violent display of temper, barged in and commandingly approached the cold slab on which I laid. I remained catatonic truly overcome with fear. He was a very large-bodied, brawny, hirsute study of Sagittarian, Martian energies. There was a dense concentration of warrior-spirited drive in his body. On his waist he carried his sword and was one impatient, disgruntled soul. He wore a chainmail suit of dull gold or bronze. When he walked there was all this noisy clanking from his armour, chainmail and sword.
He was bearded and much younger than I. He was long-haired, handsome, like a fierce warrior, with jet-black, glossy hair. His mouth was youthful, full and beautiful. His was the intensity of unbridled fearlessness and sheer, brutish force. He was cool and deadly. On seeing him, I was immediately filled with fear. My pulse uncontrollably raced. All I wanted to do was get up and bolt. However, I could not have. Approaching, he began talking to the woman in this strange, archaic, Aryan tongue. Basically, he was refuting the news that I had died. In essence he was saying, “He isn’t dead. Are you trying to fool me?”
He had the most powerful, booming voice whose echo slapped the damp chill out of the room.
“Look at him! He should have been dead a long time ago!”
I guess that he was my heir and was quite upset and wanted to claim the title that I had which, of course, was his by birth. Although he was my son or heir, at the very least, I had a mortal and ultimately fatal fear of him.
“Damn you! You should have died a long time ago. Why aren’t you dead yet?”
Then he suddenly stopped as it dawned on him that I could be faking it. He barked a loud breath of impatience and immediately drew his sword. At that the woman cried out, tossing herself at him, asking,
“What do you think you’re doing?”
With the most ferocious force, he brought down the sword vengefully attacking my body. The sword entered my stomach like an intensely hot spear. Simultaneously, it had struck my left hip as they both stood to the left of me – as indeed, she was standing in the tapestry. When he smote me the blade came down and hit me on the hip but then he moved it by thrusting it into my stomach.
Turning and twitching, I rigidly nudged my head to the right in pain. As he triumphantly laughed, the loudest most vulgar laugh erupted in the hall. Naturally, had I been dead there is no way that I would have moved.
*As I slept here, I had a corresponding cramp in my stomach. It was of a sharp, stabbing pain. This correspondingly made me simultaneously turn away to the right in the waking state. This was a very, very, vivid dream. END.
My sense of smell was quite piqued and there was no way to get over my being alive in this experience. It was very damp with a foul odour of agedness in the air. My stomach was convulsing and there was a taste of blood in my mouth mixed with the loud smell of faeces in the air. The woman, my companion, cried trying to explain that I had only recently died thus it was a nervous twitch – a nervous reaction if you like.
She was not very convincing to which he shot back, “Ha, well then if he is dead…” he began walking around her forcefully approaching the head of my body, “…he won’t mind having his head removed!”
All that I could see, from beneath my quivering lids, was her reaching up and lunging as she bawled aloud, “Noooo!” She reached up her hand and I tried to throw open my lids terror-struck. However, when the sword crashed down into my neck severing my head at the spinal cord, I swiftly felt a loud thud.
At that there was this immediate abortive blank. It was abrupt and with great finality. Gone was the woman’s horrified scream in mid-breath. I could feel the contact of the sword on my spine at the point of decapitation. This was, in fact, rather traumatic because abruptly and with great force my life was ended.
*At that point, the moment of blank displacement, I was slapped back into my body instantaneously awaking. Finding myself fully awake, I was in the midst of raising my head off the pillow as I slept on my back. When I heard my infamous neck injury snap and being aggravated anew, I had not yet sat up in bed. I collapsed back into the pillow stunned and short of breath.
It was all so overwhelming that all that I could do was just relax. I dissolved in a silent, teary cry. It was the only way to address the tense rigidity that my body had become. As I laid there it was extremely hard to simultaneously cry and breathe. I had no desire to get up. I was simply resigned with sheer exhaustion and the weightiness of having re-lived a traumatic end-of-life experience. This was a past life which undoubtedly was in the early part of this millennium, in Wales.
This obviously was, from every richly detailed nuance of the very intensely lucid, progressional experience, a slice of a past life. What was really impactful, even more so than the beheading, was the moment at which I saw the tapestry. It was immediately familiar and infused with a certain validity which couldn’t be denied in any way. I wanted to run, to not see it, on first contact with it but was incapable of doing anything.
The tapestry depicted the slaying, of the aged leader, as being a pivotal moment in that realm’s history. I did not get the sense that the man was my son but rather my usurper. Regardless, I was rather afraid of this man. This dream was much like so many others that relate to matters of trauma which resonate to the level of soul itself.
I can remember thinking at the time of that dream of Francesca and of the one with Merlin, in which he collapsed a great deal in that life in Spain with the Ludnezes and I protested by saying, “I want out of this dream, now!”
It does go without saying that as Merlin is a scholar soul, the upturned, unread books – which were brown-covered and time-faded – were a residue of his true soul in essence and agedness of soul. After all, it was Merlin who nightly read several books, one of which he would conclude. Until he was prepared to return to one of them to conclude the following night, the others were kept upturned or down-turned about the apartment.
In the event that they were to be accidentally closed, there were even times when he would wedge a piece of pretzel in between the pages. Of course, I was in the habit of going around and closing the books when cleaning house. Merlin, time and again, expressed displeasure at what he saw as interference. I would never mischievously close the books that he had kept opened about our home. Alas, such is wedded bliss.
Every detail in these dreams was so richly realised and resonant. There was no way that Merlin could not have been instrumental in this past life revisit and reanimation. I am confident that Merlin was crucial to the invocation of this past life milieu which awaited my arrival. Of course, thanks to the jarring vividness of the decapitation, I abruptly awoke.
However, I still felt as though I needed to dream on. I knew that there was more yet to come. Despite Whoopi having leapt from the bed anticipating being fed, I chose not to get from bed and do anything. I would much later after this dream learn, from Mathilde Duchenne’s channelling, that Merlin and I are indeed task companions – he a seventh level mature scholar to my seventh mature artisan. This validation only made the dream of the library, of much loved books, that much more relevant.
Obviously, that dream set in late-twelfth, early-thirteenth century Wales involved both he and I. I don’t, however, know whether he was the large-bodied woman who pleaded for me not to be killed or whether he was the Sagittarian-Martian energied usurper/heir who came to make sure that the job was done and I was truly dead. It was all very lucid and like every reincarnational dream one was incapable of affecting change in the outcome of events. One was, as it were, simply along for the roller-coaster ride. END.
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As ever, straighten up and fly right, all the while singing, vocalesing and having a merry old time of it… because you are special and I say that you are damn well worth a flying dream. Thanks for your ongoing support.
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© 2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
At the intersections of Vision, Art & Commerce exists the most timeless Couture.
Iris van Herpen Paris Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2019/2020.
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2019/2020.
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© 2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved,
Diana, Princess of Wales & HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex.
On the eve of what would have been her 58th birthday, I share a dream encounter with Diana, Princess of Wales. At the time of the dream, July, 1996, Diana was then incarnate and would be dead less than 14 months later. The dream suggested Diana, parenting a male child of mixed race heritage. Naturally, at the time of the dream, she was not then yet involved with Dodi Al-Fayed. Years later, whilst living in Montréal and transcribing the 250 audiocassette recordings of my dreams which spanned a decade, I happened on the dream. By the time of the transcription, Diana was dead and so, on poring through the dream I thought that the male child in the dream to whom Diana seemed a mother, must have been a child of hers and Dodi’s.
Fast forward twenty-three years from the dream in question and I am beginning to think that this exceptional male royal child was actually a dream of tuning into a future in which Diana was serving as protector of her beloved son’s own baby boy, Archie Harrison. The skull of the baby boy in the dream who seemed like a son of Diana, Princess of Wales’, is exactly shaped like that of Archie, Diana’s grandson by way of her son, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex with his black wife, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex.
Alas, another dream encounter with Diana, Princess of Wales. This one would involve moving into a probable reality scenario which may well have eventualised had she not tragically died thirteen months after having had the dream.
*Then again, it may well have been tuning into a future which has now come to pass wherein, the interracial Sussexes have a male firstborn. END.
As with the dream of July 9, 1993, in which I would have a most rapturous astral plane encounter with task companion, Merlin, here too there would be lots of train travel. This means of transportation, I have come to realise is employed by the soul when one is questing and traversing the astral either to past, future or probable timelines.
In this case, I had clearly dreamquested to a probable and non-too-distant future for Diana, Princess of Wales. Sadly, it was not to be. Obviously, in this probable near-future astral plane dream, Diana, Princess of Wales was fulfilled and had gone on to start a second family and was mother to a rather precocious son; a son whom I might add was clearly at least fourth level old-souled.
At the time, it was Sunday, July 27, 1996 and the Moon then transited both Capricorn and my eighth house. The house of death wherein is posited my retrograde Saturn, gave interesting insights to things as they might have unfolded as others’ agendum precluded Diana, Princess of Wales’s life becoming more of an inconvenience.
*Then, too, as time has unfolded, this rather prophetic dream was actually tuning into a probable reality which has become the collective future of human civilisation and one which we enjoy today. Here’s to TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex and their incredible baby boy, Archie Harrison. END.
Of course, at the time of these dreams, I was then resident in Vancouver’s West End. The dreams were audiocassette-recorded on tape two hundred and seventeen and to be found in volume XXII of the dream opus.
There was much sturm und drang in parts of the dreams as it mirrored the vicious tectonics, long after Merlin’s passing, being played out legally and otherwise with persons whom I am so glad to be finally rid of. Chief among them that STD-riddled, dominatrix poseuse and fag-hag to boot, who quixotically saw herself cast into the world to play Merlin’s protector and saviour – the dreams of lost village idiots… indeed.
At the end of the day, Merlin never liked her and rightly so considered her a damn idiot. At his passing, he had nothing to do with her; hence the fool spent the next two-plus decades being bedpan-changer of Merlin’s betrayers – a poor play at atonement that.
Enough about knock-kneed caribou roadkill; the journey endures. Besides, the bond with Merlin could never have been successfully broadsided.
Come now my magical darlings, mischievously sport that wry smile known only to kindred spirits, slip into a luxurious plié, take my hand and let’s have ourselves a delicious group flying dream. We are better for sharing this journey together; for your support, I love you more.
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Whilst heading down a street in what was undoubtedly Toronto, in this the first dream, it was then daytime. The street seemed like the one just around the corner from the Underground Railroad Restaurant, on King Street West, to the west of Sherbourne Street – Frederick Street. Going down Frederick Street’s incline, I noticed along a back lane that there was a large building. Too, I noticed a great many persons from past workplaces. The building seemed to be an annex to the main workplace as I had known it.
One of the first persons whom I recognised was Milton Bloomfield. He was wearing a pair of dark blue slacks and powder-blue short-sleeved shirt. Excited to see him, I bounded over and went around to the back entrance. Immediately, I began seeing persons whom I had completely forgotten about. Indeed, some of these persons looked as though they were definitely astral plane habitués. In particular, one old White male had that outré habitué look to him. I was simply astounded to have seen some of these persons. Truth be told, I had not thought of so many of them long in ages.
‘How quickly we do forget,’ I thought.
Such a very pleasant discovery of things past, it turned out to have been. That aside, I resumed my search of Milton Bloomfield in earnest. Again, I saw him in the distance. This time he was walking away from me without having noticed that I was there. In the end, though it would have been nice to have interacted with him, I just didn’t see the point in going after him. On going around another corner, since I was amongst persons from the past, I had thought to go in search of Yaramé Snead. I went over by some machines which no longer exist, in the waking state, seeing that she would shortly have shown up at the start of her shift. I then saw her at a desk working away and hurried over to be with her.
Stooping down to her left and rear, I playfully called out hello to her. On turning and seeing me, her reaction had been low-key. I was surprised really as I thought that she would at least have been her usual boisterous self. Her hair was beautifully braided. Frankly, I felt putout as she seemed not the least bit pleased to have seen me. With that, not wanting to be more of a seeming bother, I wrapped up the visit. Since she had declined to have become engaged, I just couldn’t be bothered to have invested much energy in the encounter.
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Part of the focus of this the second dream, a man and I were together and seemingly were lovers. Tall, he was a redhead; as such, he represented one of my more choice sexual partners. Somehow, this man was in showbiz. We were definitely lovers. Whilst looking at TV Rosie O’Donnell had made remarks about him that were rather cutting. Initially, I had thought that her remarks had been about Xerxes Hamelin. The joke had been a crude remark wondering as, to which sex Xerxes Hamelin was.
This was in reference to her having breast reduction surgery. As I did not appreciate the crass put-down of Xerxes Hamelin, I would abruptly take my leave. I then went indoors of a house which, here, was like moving from the veranda indoors of the Crab Hill house. A few persons were inside the house as I ranted, vowing to get that fat ugly dyke, Rosie O’Donnell. There also was much laughter as I added,
“And we all know that I’m wicked enough, to do just as I say. But first we’re going to sue her frigging Mickey ass.” But my lover didn’t want to go through with it, he was a showbiz lawyer. Snapping at him, I said,
“I won’t hear of it. I will not be cutting him or her any slack. Get her fucking ass! There is no way that that no-classed fool is going to insult Xerxes Hamelin and get off lightly. End of fucking discussion. We sue! During the show’s rehearsal when that joke came up around the production meeting table, she could have had the decency to say, ‘no way, I’m not doing that kind of humour’. Obviously, she fucking well didn’t.
“It’s not about the fucking money; she will learn a thing or two, when I’m done with her fat-retaining, tired-looking ass.” What really amazed me was how lucid and lived-in, in the body, I was. I was really killer mad and out to do battle, “There is positively no way that she’d have gone out there and made disparaging remarks about Jews. And if you can’t knock the fucking Jews, you sure the fuck can’t haul your tired grey arse out on a stage to knock Blacks. Just stop and think about it. If a Jew would have her head in a nanosecond, then so the fuck will I.”
After that, we went off together. My lover was ever quiet and reserved whilst I did much of the talking. In that sense, he energetically was much like Merlin. However, it definitely was not Merlin.
As we walked about, we ran into Diana, Princess of Wales, who had a little child on her hip. One had the sense that, after having divorced HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, she had gone on to start another family. Definitely, this third child of hers was a son. Apparently, she had always wanted a little girl but here she was with a dark-haired bouncing boy. Obviously, from the looks of things here, Diana, Princess of Wales was going to have more than one family.
One interesting feature was that the boy was born with almost a full mouth of teeth. I mentioned in passing that I guess if you end up grinning as much as she does, it would not be surprising to have newborns appear grin-ready. Too, the child was already able to say some words at birth. The child was exceptionally intelligent. The young son’s most interesting feature was that even at less than six weeks, he was able to follow conversations.
The eyes on this child were exceptionally old-souled and wise. Not the feigned coyness of Prince William was his demeanour. We were in a huge stately Bentley whilst the child sat on his regal mother’s lap. Diana, Princess of Wales sat on my left with my lover, a showbiz lawyer-celebrity, seated next to me. My lover was of British birth; he was a well-placed Londoner and terribly well-off at that.
He was part of the few in whom Diana, Princess of Wales confided and had done so during her divorce proceedings with the Firm. From the Bentley, we got into another car. Although he really didn’t need it, the precocious son was travelling in a basket here. This child perceptively was quite advanced for his mere few months of life. He represented hands down a case for reincarnation.
Though he could talk, especially for someone less than a year old, he was still rather stubby and full of baby fat. I took the rather self-aware child from Diana, Princess of Wales and headed for the car. I then didn’t know whether she would be sitting in back of the car with us. Considerately, I had opened the front door for her but she told me that it wasn’t necessary.
She then went into the back of the car at which point I returned her son to her. In all of this, the precocious son hadn’t uttered a word of whiny protest for having been separated. He had simply looked me in the eye whilst studying me and not, god forbid, because of something as absurd as my being Black. This woman, his mother, was rather a genuinely sweet-personalitied soul. Not your typical animus-charged, parvenu, New World wealthy snob, like heaven only knows so many North Americans, was she. After we had taken off, I had mentioned that I had heard Prince William – who now was much taller than her – was very well-hung.
Furthermore, he loved roughing it with all the little willing boys at Eton. This supposedly was hot gossip in those circles and which both my lover and Diana, Princess of Wales thought hysterical. She expressed great pride in having produced such a fine stud for the Firm. She mentioned that he had to start his studding practice sometime and far better that it be at Eton than with too many willing little girls the world over. Clearly, Diana, Princess of Wales had no desire to turn grandmother just yet. She was a very funny person with a distinctive snort-like giggle.
We then went into a store that was called something like Mayfair & Browne or something along those lines. A small, high-end department store it was.
*The warm blues here would suggest that it was, in fact, Fortnum & Mason. END.
Afterwards, we had attended the opening of Parliament where Queen Elizabeth II had naturally been present. The Queen had asked the House of Lords to stand and, at that point, they had drawn some heavy red drapes. At this point, there were rituals of an occult nature which were being performed. This had been the custom for centuries and had been nobody’s business. The few priests, who performed the rituals, spoke in an ancient tongue; olde English and Gaelic it would seem.
As part of the ceremony, the queen adopted a raspy, adversarial and tyrannical tone. She snapped at them as they spoke to her. Of course, this was to validate her absolute power as monarch. She had spoken by using the same ancient tongue as they had. Quite illuminating was all this for me. From where we all sat, the monarch sat opposite us at the far end of the stately hall. On the right was the House of Lords.
On the left, was the House of Peers where things were even more arcane and secretive. Clearly, there was much more wealth possessed by the members of the House of Peers than those in the House of Lords; for one, they wore more expensive fur-lined robes. Queen Elizabeth II then stood and put an end to the rituals. When the priests retreated, the curtains rose again and at that point members of both houses of Parliament rose to bow to her majesty, the queen.
The Queen now looked her usual stoical self. Next, a loud debate rang out in the House of Lords; this was the point at which bills were being introduced. All in all, this was a very noisy affair. This was the point at which my London-born lover was expected to have introduced my suit against Rosie O’Donnell. However, he was blowing cold on the issue and tried to back out of it.
What caused him to have hung back was the raucous fight that had broken out between two Lords on some point or other. In point of fact, they had been quite vituperative. Soon after, we took our leave of Westminster Palace. Diana, Princess of Wales was not seated with the rest of the royals. Nor, for that matter, was the more royally scorned Sarah, Duchess of York seated with the royals.
The ride to the department store was no more than ten minutes. Once inside, we had gone some escalators which took us to a cosmetics counter. The look was pretty much like a Clinique counter, though, I really don’t think that it was such. On seeing an extended member of the House of Windsor coming down the aisle towards us, my lover had dropped behind. The focus of my lover’s attention was a rather princely gentleman. He was young with full red lips but not was horsey-looking.
*This princely gentleman was, in fact, James Ogilvy – grandson of the dashing Prince George, Duke of Kent. END.
They exchanged pleasantries and it was clear that my lover was rather smitten with him. I didn’t though get the sense of him, Mr. Ogilvy, that he was Gay. From there, we kept going further down in the complex below street level. Each time that we had come off an escalator, we had headed to the left to get the next. This in turn had taken us down another flight. Eventually, we arrived at a level which was clearly part of the city’s sprawling Underground.
As we walked, there were two little birdlike, old English women whose slow amble gait had gotten me fast impatient. Finally, we managed to have pushed past them and gotten the train just in time. Here we had travelled at fantastic speeds. The trip was for quite some time and, somehow, it seemed as though they used magnetic conductors here in this civilisation. There was a sense too that we had been travelling several miles, at least 100, below the surface.
When finally we had arrived at our destination, we had gotten out into a labyrinth of tunnels which had eventually led above-ground in a Japanese city. We spent not very much time in Japan as it proved a stopover where we changed trains. Moving on, we had travelled on a futuristic-looking train. On board were two stylish, East Indian young women. Both were clearly tired for having travelled a lot and having crossed several time zones. A loud American was on board; she was an overweight woman. As can be expected, she talked aloud for everyone to notice her. She moronically complained about the trains not being aboveground and whined,
“I want it to be aboveground. There’s nothing to see down here. It’s all black and dark.” She said the word ‘black’ with the same customary loathing as she had applied to African-Americans her whole life. “Don’t they realise that there’re lots of tourists and we want to see. It’s so boring being down here in all this blackness.”
‘Such a fucking acculturated bigoted asshole,’ I thought. The train was painted white on the outside with lots of chrome and walnut finishing on the inside. Very comfortable, red leather seats throughout the interior; this was a truly posh experience. We had boarded at the front of the train. We pulled into a station, though, only briefly; the train took off again never having opened its doors. This time it took off in the opposite direction. By now, my lover and I were no longer travelling together; however, I did have a travelling companion with me.
On this leg of the trip, we had moved above-ground at one point where we had passed the most glorious stand of ancient old trees. They were ginkgoes that looked millennia-old. Each was easily in excess of 200 feet. I quite liked it here. Though the vista was beautiful, it didn’t last very long as once again we were below-ground whilst ploughing through the lurching labyrinth of tunnels deep in the earth.
At the end of the trip, we had arrived at a swank hotel which seemed to be in either Switzerland or Austria. From the hotel, my lover and I were reunited and began trying to get in touch with Diana, Princess of Wales. He wanted to write to her instead of speaking so had sent her a fax. Here we were a bit in the future, where everyone was automatically assigned their personal phone number with cellphone/fax.
*Truth be told, rather than a fax, it was a text. Of course, at the point of the dream texting was well ahead of its time. END.
No matter where one was in the world, regardless of the borders, the same phone number managed to get you. Interestingly, they were not excessive amount of numbers. He had sent her a fax (text) with his private number and had asked Diana, Princess of Wales to call him; he had wanted to lend his support in her divorce proceedings.
At one point, when we had been driving, Diana, Princess of Wales opened up and spoke about her divorce from HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. She said that it had left her feeling truly awful. At the end of it, the one thing that she had taken away was the sense that she felt greater empathy for what Blacks suffer globally. Said she, she had gone to a couple of stores to shop, after having been divorced, where the mere salesclerks treated her with scorn.
Nobody wanted to serve her as if she had even been hostile to them. Diana, Princess of Wales said that it had been so overwhelming that in one case she had gone rushing back to her car in tears. For no longer being a part of the ‘Firm’, the public simply treated her as an unfortunate laughing stock. Some clerks had been outright rude to her. She said that she couldn’t believe that anything could have made her so mad.
To have been denied was the most painful experience. They were so mean-spirited and spiteful she claimed. Her voice here was high-pitched and almost feverish when she expressed her rage at the injustices she had experienced. She said that the idea of racial animus that she has heard Blacks speak of, she could finally understand. Diana, Princess of Wales said that she had experienced something pretty close to it in the lack of civility that she had gotten from everyone. Intently looking at her large clear eyes as she spoke, I was much impressed by her remarks. She was rather ravishing-looking and was so in her element for being mother to this exceptional child.
*Long after the dream and as things played out, the male child whom Diana, Princess of Wales had parented in this dream was clearly fathered by Dodi Fayed. Of course, at the time of the dream, I hadn’t a clue of Mr. Fayed’s existence. The precocious boy had his father’s nose and brows.
Clearly, this dream was tuning into a probable reality which finally was not to be. The child was clearly at least fourth level old-souled and may well have been a king or if not warrior soul.
**More thoughts on this dream. The fact that the lawyer who proved a lover of mine in this dream was a redhead, is at this time, I believe, a reference to HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex. As it is extremely rare that I would dream of the latter, it is not a surprise that he was translated here by my waking consciousness as anyone but Prince Harry. Also, in light of the fact that in marrying Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry can be said to be an advocate of sorts for racial reconciliation with regards to the ties that the BRF historically have to the enslavement of Africans. Interestingly, that Diana, Princess of Wales should talk about having empathy for the racism that Blacks experience on a daily basis, is a dead giveaway. The theme of race and racism is a prevalent one where her son, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex is concerned.
For having chosen to wed an entity mate of his (HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex) with whom he has a long reincarnational history and someone who has twice previously been a senior royal in the British Royal Family, is reason enough why the theme of race would be discussed and why Diana, Princess of Wales would be both empathetic and speak passionately about this issue. Naturally, throughout the dream she would be closely bonded with a firstborn male from another marriage; however, rather than being a firstborn of hers in a subsequent marriage, this older soul child would prove to be the firstborn mix-raced child of her son, Prince Harry, who was represented by the redhead lawyer/advocate who happened to be my lover. Indeed, Prince Harry can be seen to be an advocate for addressing and advancing racial dialogue and race relations. Similarly, that his firstborn son, Archie is a seventh-level mature priest soul would indicate someone whose focus in life will be about inspiring, uplift, healing and harmony… god only knows that is sorely needed at this time.
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Straighten up and fly right! I love you more than you know…
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©2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex announces the birth of his son.
Lips trembled and I came undone whilst watching this beautiful spirit revealing his sheer delight at becoming a father. As a last-born, I always more readily identified with this man rather than his brother.
Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor being introduced to his great-grandmother HM Queen Elizabeth II whilst his grandmother, Doria Ragland, his great-grandfather HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh by his enraptured parents, TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex.
Doria Ragland, grandmother of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Dumbarton. This woman has the most exquisitely beautiful papaya-seed succulent, ensouled eyes.
Meghan Markle en route to be wedded and pronounced, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex.
There is a reason why there was so much beauty and love overflowing at the marriage of TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex, for less than a year later they would give birth to a most remarkable older soul. Before getting to that, I still think that the best dressed woman at their nuptials was the dowager Duchess of Westminster who looked for all the world as though she were merely traipsing about her lair in her favourite muumuu. There was something so disarmingly unpretentious yet elegant about the look and air she projected.
At once delicate and vulnerable; it is so immensely satisfying to see this young man flower into the true essence of his being.
As Meghan possessed of a true sense of theatre, she who was formerly Margaret Beaufort, entered and strode the knave of St. George’s Chapel alone… a Queen returned, she joined her lover and invited us in to share in a love that was tangible, real and undeniable.
Less than a year later, the love blossomed into the most beautiful, magical flower.
There he is, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, of all the senior royals he would prove the oldest soul. This young man will prove a most uplifting member of the British Royal family.
Mountbatten-Windsor, Archie H. 6/5/2019
Michael: This young fragment is a seventh-level mature priest – second life thereat. Archie is in the perseveration mode with a goal of stagnation. A, realist Archie does not yet have a centre.
Archie’s, as can be expected, does not have chief features.
Archie’s body type is Venus/Mercury/Mars.
The fragment Archie is second-cast in the second cadence. Archie is a member of greater cadence four. Archie’s entity is five, cadre six, greater cadre 7 pod 418.
Archie’s essence twin is a priest and the slave task companion is likely to be known at a later date.
Archie’s three primary needs are: exchange, acceptance and communion.
There are 6 past-life associations with Arvin and 7 with Merlin.
This fragment does have a facilitating agreement with the father, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex to be his son; he also has one with the artisan, his mother Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex and it is that of parent/child. All three, along with HM, The Queen are of course cadre mates.
We would say that this inspirational fragment is likely to have some notoriety as would be expected and can serve to inspire others to cross perceived boundaries.
The higher ideal has to do with unification.
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HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales his paternal grandfather has to date been the oldest-souled senior royal. Like HRH Prince Charles, Archie is a seventh-level mature soul; however, whereas Charles a warrior soul is an ordinal fragment, his grandson, Archie is an exalted fragment for being a priest. Priests are the feel-good great souls. I rather suspect that this man will go on to have the same inspirational effect as have Barack H. Obama, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. all of whom are priest souls.
Of course, President Obama is a young-souled priest, whereas both Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela were both sixth mature priest souls. Archie is an older soul than the latter two mature-souled priests and like both, his role will prove rather uplifting and inspirational to blacks globally. Indeed, there is no happenstance that as TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex departed St. George’s Chapel in the Ascot landau, after their nuptials, the Kingdom Choir sang, This Little Light of Mine.
All priests have one thing in common; they have the most radiant, magnetic eyes. You never forget their eyes; indeed, their inner beauty of spirit is more readily reflected in their eyes than with any other role – at least, that has been my experience of priest souls. Priests constitute roughly eight percent of all souls in the cosmos. They are greatly motivated by a sense of justice and are in the world to both inspire and promote harmony. With his father’s double sixness, Archie, born a six day, is well equipped to inspire and empathise with the needs of many. He is, like his father, greatly gifted with the ability to inspire others. Archie also happens to be a cadre mate of both his parents TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex, plus his paternal great-grandmother, HM The Queen.
One thing is guaranteed, as the only priest soul who is a senior royal*, Archie is going to be a standout like no other. This is a family of slaves, scholars, warriors and artisans. I think that his parents’ open and abiding love speaks to them serving as parents to this rare soul being born into the BRF. In a way, he is the perfect maturation of the qualities that his paternal grandmother embodied; Diana, Princess of Wales with her inordinate empathy and compassion gave birth to a deeply empathetic warrior, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex, who in turn has fathered the very embodiment of all the higher ideals that both mother (Diana) and son (Harry) have represented.
*As I have not had channelled the Michael Overleaves of the three children of TRH Duke & Duchess – HRH Prince George of Cambridge, HRH Princess Charlotte of Cambridge and HRH Prince Louis of Cambridge, I do not know if any of them are older souled than HRH Prince Charles or Archie. I also do not know if any of them is an exalted role – King, Priest or Sage, though, none of them strike me as any of those three roles.
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On another note, what more proof does one need that Diana, Princess of Wales had greatly succeeded in being a parent.
Third royal wedding in twelve months, featured the handsome Lady Gabriella Windsor – look at that neck! As always, one looks for the notable sartorial moments.
Carole Middleton wearing the best hat and outfit that easily surpassed the Catherine Walker ensemble which she wore to her daughter, Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding and her outfit at the royal wedding of TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex last year.
Look, as we West Indians always say, ‘there is always a but’ her blackamoor brooch notwithstanding, I am always a sucker for a woman with a prominent forehead and HRH Princess Michael of Kent has always been a favourite of mine.
I definitely did not like her lilac outfit at the wedding; the mother of the bride looked infinitely more elegant in what she wore later to the reception.
HRH Princess Anne, The Princess Royal, Lady Frederick Windsor and HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex.
Hands down, Lady Frederick Windsor was the best-dressed lady at the recent royal wedding – that hat, those feathers that soothing blue… perfection.
HRH Princess Marina, HRH Prince George TRH Duke & Duchess of Kent.
Without doubt, the most handsome Windsor male of the past century. Of course, that tiara was worn this past weekend at the royal wedding of the Mr. & Mrs. Kingston.
HM The Queen at Lady Gabriella Winndsor’s wedding.
HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Lady Gabriella Windsor’s wedding.
James Middleton attending the recent royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Berkshire.
There is no stronger validation for the fact that all gap-toothed Caucasians having been black in their immediate past life than this photograph of James Middleton. James is a spitting image of a black Haitian former coworker in Montréal. Same vibe, same eyes and the exact same teeth. Jean-Yves was a pretty laid back man who loved fishing and riding donkeys in his native Haiti. One gets the same vibe of James; his is a look that I have seen many times throughout the West Indian community – laid back men with the same gap-toothed smile. Moreover, his smile is exactly like that of a voluptuous woman who lived in Sandy Point, St. Kitts when I was a child; who knows, perhaps, James is her reborn.
Here’s to love! Here’s to this beautiful dream called life. Here’s to HM The Queen. God Save the Queen!
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Most of all, thank you for your ongoing support, happy to have you vicariously along for this most lucid of flying dreams. Be well as ever, and don’t forget to push off and start flying for magic is the stuff of the sweetest dreams. I love you more.
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©2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
HRH Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, HRH Prince Henry Duke of Sussex, HM Queen Elizabeth II, Doria Ragland, Earl of Dumbarton (Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor), Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex.
I positively screamed and then began ululating at the news that TRH Duke & Duchess had been safely delivered of a healthy son. I broke into tears on watching the BBC statement made by the Duke of Sussex. Everything about this extraordinary human being inspires nothing but warmth, happiness and compassion from deep within me.
Watching HRH Prince Henry bursting with pride as he announced the birth of his son, Earl of Dumbarton, I welled up with tears and burst out crying. To me it was a healing moment after I fell to the floor of my Côte-des-Neiges, Montréal apartment crying as he walked behind his mother’s casket almost 22 years prior. He had made it through alright after all.
Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Dumbarton.
The night after the birth, at the end of La Boheme, I cried my eyes out; happy at the birth of this wonderful child but also because I had just witnessed one of the best opera performances in long ages.
Based on past-life histories of the three persons in this photograph, there is no coincidence with them presenting the Earl of Dumbarton in St. George’s Hall, Windsor Castle.
Diana, Princess of Wales’ greatest legacy will always be how handsomely she succeeded at being a great parent.
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As ever, thanks for your ongoing support. Thanks for your patronage in the past and do please continue buying my dream memoirs, available online partout!
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©2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
After having pored through an interesting OperaCanada article that featured the opera Otello‘s lead, Russell Thomas, and a predictably snide review in The Star – look there is no black lobby in Canada, so one can always be expected to be as curt and dismissive of blacks at every turn; this is after all the culture where the obsession with Jazz is almost as fever-pitched as the predatory late-night runs of Klansmen with nooses at the ready – I comfortably settled into my usual ring three seat, next to trusty Lucian Mann-Chomedy and warmly awaited the magic that is theatre to unfold.
After a month that was not soon revisited, my mind was at times distracted by the dreck that one must at times endure in order to get by. I thought of the heaviness in the air that the subject matter of the opera addressed; the quartet of retired ladies who usually chat about who has taken ill, moved to hospice or died since last they gathered, did a lot of coughing, sniffing and whispering. And as these things are as predictable as flies on shit, sure enough, I heard one of them whisper, “Meghan Markle.” Will these people ever just leave the damn woman alone and stop hunting her at every opportunity?
Otello, Verdi’s take on Shakespeare’s take on race relations did also from the row of retired and widowed ladies spirit the whisper of O. J. Simpson’s name. Some things just never change… alas. Indeed, at some moments as I looked at Otello onstage, I began to realise how we as a people are stigmatised and stereotypically projected onto. I soon got greater insight to why Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex is so reviled. Objectified, she as a black woman was only ever to have been nothing more than a bit of rough, a tryst.
Naturally, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex with his double sixness is seen as being readily taken advantage of and needed to be protected against the lascivious bit of rough who clearly conned her way into the royal family. Born September 15, 1984, Henry born in the year of the rat has quite beautifully empathetic, compassionate numbers and with his double sixness is given to OCD behaviour as displayed by his need to fidget with his clothing – right hand inside his jacket et al. Six people are awesome beings and Henry, a double six, is no exception. 15.9.1984 = 6.6.1 = 4.
With Otello, this projection of the black male as emotionally volatile, violent, easily manipulated has certainly proven an archetype that fits blind fools like Tiger Woods and O. J. Simpson to the letter. Either way, it was uncomfortable to watch this production in places as it so mirrored the warped perception of a people by persons who question our humanity and who never seem able to perceive us beyond their generationally custodial perception of a people.
Be that as it may, I so hungered to be removed from the morass through which I recently waded at the end of which, I dismissively remarked of yet another power-mad woman in the work place: “She certainly doesn’t look like a fucking horse for no good reason… Oh please, it’s just a matter of time before she rots the fuck in hell, eating every pope’s arse!” If you cannot take offence then don’t damn well give offence… Honest to god, some women in the work place are nothing but dickless faggots addicted to creating drama for the sheer sport of it and simply because they are just so drunk with power… to say nothing of being bored out of their frigging minds. Well, like a bowel movement, it did not take too long for me to sniff, flush and walk the fuck away from the BS,
This Desdemona was an earthy, warm, beautifully soulful portrayal of a wronged woman, a woman dominated by an insecure and deceived man. This production was a beautiful sweeping affair; I especially loved the dark broody look of the sets that captured the essence of the human condition portrayed. Indeed, it proved a good elixir after all the dross that I had recently endured in the work place.
During Otello‘s intermission, I received a forwarded Instagram post from an old dancer friend, which he labelled #everythingwasbeautifulattheballet. Of course, it was a direct response to my last blog, which highlighted the intense isolation and racial animus that I experienced for two god fuck-all maudlin years in Winnipeg. Yes, indeed, the world of art is saturated with lisping, bottom-feeding, small ‘b’ bigoted boors who see positively nothing remotely gauche about this sort of fare well into the 21st century.
On yet another too cold, rainy day, which proved all too reminiscent of Vancouver, I abandoned my art-filled lair in search of more inspiration the day after the opera. I cannot quite recall a season in recent memory that has proven both so cold and rainy as this protracted winter.
That’s right, the day before attending Otello, there was a break in the perpetual rains that gave way to snow and hail… truly, the dog days of summer cannot get here fast enough. As more of the city’s 19th century streetcar tracks were being ripped up and replaced so that the racket that is the TTC outdoor workers and the local constabulary can make a killing in overtime, it took close to 40 minutes on a bus for me and my fuck du jour to get from Yonge and Dundas to Dundas and McCaul.
My date, a lissom twenty-something with smoky hazel eyes, which were vaguely reminiscent of Merlin’s, was good company. I had for the past several hours pummelled his prostate as his daddy issues were satisfied and my angst from work place tensions were nicely dispensed with. We men when in our 20s can be so alarmingly insecure; I have often wondered how Merlin managed to stay with me during those angst-ridden and redundantly solipsistic years.
My date on exiting the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room expressed chagrin at not having done magic mushrooms before leaving my place where incense and Jazz magically perfumed the air, intoxicating our spirits as we riotously fucked our way out of winter’s gnawing frigidity.
Without question, no trip to the AGO is completely inspiring without a visit to the galleries where the stellar art of Inuit artists are housed. There are some real masterpieces in the AGO collection.
As it was the tail end of this exhibition and I still had not visited, I simply had to make it there. Whilst walking along the long corridor to the start of the exhibition my fey-eyed beauty suggested that we take a break and go make out in a stall in the washrooms. Fingers interlaced, I assured him that there was better intimacy to be had the sooner we got through the exhibition and hightailed it back to my place by Uber.
To my very discriminating eye, the moment I saw this verbose title, I fully expected to observe a show that was curated by too much extraneous fare and not enough impressionist art. Tumescent and impatient, I had no time for reading, reading and reading more yada yada, all of which was to compensate for the lack of genuine, to say nothing of quality, impressionist art. Just as well, I was growing achingly moist by the minute as both my energetic ectomorph and I hungered to be carnally consumed with each other… yet again.
This marvellous bronze fully captivated me; it would prove my favourite piece in the shoddily curated exhibition.
Highlights from a rather underwhelming show.
Detail featuring two of the most beautiful creatures. Their depiction is not the most masterfully executed but there is something rapturous about the look of the dogs as they ambled with their human companions on a journey which they had taken countless times before that made me stop and gaze overlong whilst being truly inspired.
Detail of what for me proved sheer magnificence… the lighting is phenomenally executed.
A masterpiece to be sure; however, where it was hung and the palette of the salon were decidedly inappropriate. This was all I needed to see to finally wink the left eye at my horny power bottom and to speed home by Uber in the rain for noisy, exhausting, passionate play.
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As ever, for your ongoing support I am both deeply grateful and indebted. Sweet dreams and don’t you ever forget to push off and start flying because life is a most beautiful drink. Cheers!
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© 2013-2020 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.
