Autumnal Mood

21.10.202410.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

Heron

Serigraph

13.25 x 34.50 Inches

Artist Proof

Provenance: The da Brgha Collection

_______________________________________________________

The first dream that I had of Merlin, occurred four years prior to meeting him in the waking state. In that dream, there was the most beautiful heron which flew close by; it blinked and when its lid reopened, the eye had become liquid eventually transforming to the most intense white light. Forty-two years ago, after a four-year wait, Merlin sexily slipped into my life at my Hell’s Kitchen walkup. For the next seven years our dance together was truly sublime.

**Heron at Cowichan Estuary, Vancouver Island, B.C.**

The last time I saw Joop, whom I had met five years prior to Merlin, I stayed at this lovely home in Victoria B. C. for a couple of weeks. We drove up the TransCanada Highway to the northern tip of the island one weekend, stopping off at the Cowichan Estuary and Cathedral Grove. On the drive back, we were followed by a lone heron as we drove southward through Cowichan Estuary a local nature preserve for herons. I was reminded of Merlin whilst holding hands with Joop. Joop was the oldest and most sensual of my lovers; too, he has been the oldest soul of my lovers. It was sad to say so long to him last summer.

van der Pelster, Joop 12/1948 <O> 8/2023

The fragment who was Joop was a fifth level old artisan – second incarnation at this level – in the observation mode, with a goal of stagnation, a pragmatist, in the emotional part of intellectual centre.

This fragment had a Saturn/Lunar body type.

Joop’s primary chief feature was stubbornness with a weak secondary of self-deprecation.

Joop is sixth cast in his cadence and his cadence is fourth in the second greater cadence. He is a member of entity one, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod/node 414.

Joop has a discarnate artisan essence twin whom he did know in childhood and an incarnate priest task companion, with whom no plans were made to meet in this lifetime.

This was a resting life for this fragment, whose three primary needs were: security, communion and exchange.

He was a sculptor in Russia – at the time of the 1917 revolution, took a stand with the communists and was killed in a riot in St. Petersburg. He chose not to be reborn during the Second World War, in Western Europe, but in an old soul country (Netherlands), rather than a mixed young/mature society.

At that time, the Soviet government was very early-young soul repressive, while the general population was mid-cycle mature and even though he was only 30 when he died, in that previous life, he chose not to be reborn in the Soviet Union and took a resting life in the Netherlands.

Arvin felt a connectedness with Joop because they are in the same cadre, and Joop had a great deal of service in his casting as does Arvin. Here is a priest-cast artisan who is a member of an entity one, so he has needs to serve both the higher ideal and the common good.

There was a great deal of the “Visionary” here, which is one of the seven aspects of the artisan. He was also a “walker” in that he could pierce the veil between the planes at will, even though he did not call this phenomenon by name.

He and Arvin have known each other in many previous lives. They have been lovers of both sexes and of both hetero and homoerotic orientation. Joop has filled the mentor position in Arvin’s support group three times.

Perhaps the most notable life that this fragment had was in the late sixteenth century-early seventeenth century, when he was the Flemish portrait painter and depicter of religious themes, Anthony van Dyck. Anthony was later knighted and is known historically as, Sir Anthony van Dyck.

**Massacre of the Innocents, Oil on Canvas. Peter Paul Rubens 1611-1612**

He was a good friend, sometimes-lover and collaborator of Peter Paul Rubens – during that lifetime, I was then briefly a lover of Peter Paul Rubens, female and a muse; the relationship was not long-lived. Both of these men, Anthony and Paul, were bisexual and lusty and enjoyed the company of both men and women, even though they pretended to be very good Catholic boys.

Interestingly enough, the fragment who was Peter Paul was in the immediate past life, the imminent American photographer, Ansel Adams – same great artistic ability, different medium.

Joop did have great ability to make his lovers feel loved; this is something that generally goes along with the latter part of the old soul cycle.

They are no longer so concerned about their own sexual pleasure, mainly because it is easier for them and rather commonplace but they do generally enjoy bringing others to the heights of ecstasy.

Every mature soul should have a late old soul lover at least once, just as the opposite is true. The mature soul brings to the sex act the passion and the fire, while the very old soul brings to it the skill and patience of so many lives.

All told, Joop to date has had 18 past lives with Arvin and 12 with his task companion – who was recently – Merlin Ben-Daniel.

__________________________________________________

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane: In a Sentimental Mood

____________________________________________________

Cover Photo: Portrait of Cornelis van der Geest

Oil on canvas

1620 Sir Anthony van Dyck

Provenance: National Gallery, London UK

_______________

Self-Portrait

Oil on Canvas

1640 Sir Anthony van Dyck

Provenance: National Portrait Gallery, London UK

______________

Massacre of the Innocents

Oil on Canvas

1611-1612 Sir Anthony van Dyck

Provenance: The Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

___________________________________________________

You are to Jazz what wings are to an ostrich; what the fuck do eagles care that queer, unaware ostriches have wings?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Ensouled Proboscis Simian Humans

25.10.202210.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

These utterly stunning dream experiences occurred on Thursday, February 16, 1989, whilst the Moon transited both Cancer and my second house.

_____________________________

I was on a street and just beyond the other side of the street was the edge of a cliff; it looked down into a distant valley. It was very sunny out. I was seated in front of a house. On my right was a man who had come home from work in a car. He looked very Italian except that he seemed to be very hirsute – as though he had quite dark skin. However, on closer inspection, he turned out to be rather hirsute. A little later on, he came outside again. His neighbours were looking at him, kind of strangely, like they weren’t already accustomed to looking or reacting to him in a strange manner.

He sat down next to me outside, on the neighbouring bench to my right, both of us with backs to the neighbours. He turned and looked at me and his face was rather ape-like. It was the colour black and his hair was quite different. This man had a long widow’s peak and his face was literally the colour black. It was quite ape-like. He said nothing. More than that, he seemed rather friendly and nice. Along that street, there were kids when a car had pulled up. They were very teenage kids – all boys. A boy came out further along and returned to join one of his companions.

Then it turned out that his companion was in a car that was black and seemed to move, as it were, on air-cushioned rubber wheels. This black car of his was rather aerodynamic. After his friend took off, he then – this is the little blond timid guy – went over towards the cliff. Directly in front of the hirsute ape-like man, who was seated to my right, the blond guy went into the bushes. The young guy turned out to have been his brother – that guy who looked like a twin of his or resembled a brother. They hung out together and then he went moving on.

As he passed me, going from right to left, a friend of his was coming down the road. The road had a curve in it and went steeply up a hill. The hill, in fact, looked like the hill at Toronto’s Prospect Cemetery on the south side of Kitchener Street. His friend came down and he was wearing a helmet because he had been on some sort of vehicle. He removed the helmet, carrying it in his right hand, as they greeted each other. Strangely, they greeted by grabbing each other around the hips and rubbed their crotches together, joked and laughed. In essence, they engaged in clothed frottage.

I thought it interesting that two males would engage in open sexual play, however, this seemed the natural standard way of greeting in this culture. Clearly, this was a sign that this was not exactly Kansas. I had the distinct impression that the twin blonds had gone into the gorge to do drugs. As they were blissing out, only the crown of their golden mops was visible. They were using the very intense lushness of the rolling hills, in the valley way below, as a stimulant. Everything here was so pronouncedly healthy, even the star that shined seemed more intense and pure than Sol. I carefully looked at some of the trees and realised that they were bonsai, furry, mossy centuries-old plants that seemed to hum at a frequency higher than their arboreal counterparts on Earth.

I was able to zoom into the plants in the valley way below and experience them in intimate close-up. Of course, this I accomplished whilst remaining seated on the bench where to my right on another sat the über-poilu, intensely warm, handsome ape-like man. The helmet was the same black, light, metal-plastic alloy material as the car. It seemed to have the ability to absorb the intense sunlight, which was not scorching, and cool the interior. The blond who greeted his Italian-looking helmeted friend – they were all, incidentally, the same hirsute ape-like stock as the jet-black man seated to my right – had patted the car as he moved around its rear into the road to meet his dark-haired friend. He had patted the car much like one would a trusted horse. At that, the car had hissed and lurched to the road from its hovering stationary position a foot off the ground.

Later on, in the second dream, I was still on the same street. There were all these little kids. They were on skateboards. They came down about four, five, six, of them – little guys. One of them was Black. He was quite light-skinned. They were from a high social class. They were very friendly and nice and I warmly interacted with them. However, they were quite reserved and it wasn’t as though they weren’t friendly. As I was a stranger, for that reason, they kept me at bay. On the lower part of the street, where I was with them, it was clearly a cemetery. As far as cemeteries go, it was quite different an arrangement. It had quite large tombstones in it – monuments.

There was one woman there in black who was seemingly Italian. She was carrying on; she was grieving by this one monument. It had on it a very interesting design and some of the graves were fresh. I explained to them, the little boys, that this was where one went. However, then one came back from there and was able to live a life again like they were now living. I explained to them in those terms, however, I did not force them to look at funerals. People’s focus on funerals as the end and fear of death was the trap, I explained to them.

In this the third dream, I was under these hugely tall trees and was working at the time. Clearly, I had been working for someone like Pete Wilkens or someone like him. I had left a shovel around. The shovel had been left about and from a long, long time ago. This was on the grounds of a park-like setting where there were lots of skeletons about. The skeletons were covered with a whole bunch of ants. It was strange because it seemed as though the bones were the remnants of lunch and had just been eaten. They seemed like the skeletons for fish except that the head bone of the fish – skull – was quite flat.

The head had three sides to it and the skeleton was again a narrow filament that had two identical spines that trailed the unusual-looking skull. The skeletons were quite white and were flexible like the white cartilage of a chicken breast. There was a bunch of ants all over them. I might also add that these flexible, double-spined, fish-like skeletons were covered with ants that were quite feathery and lumpy. These ants were almost like miniature tarantulas because they were so bulky, dark, rich and, in a way, nice to look at.

There was a shovel sitting about and I realised that I had left it there, when I worked last time which was some time ago, last season. However, nobody had actually moved it because it meant that it was my responsibility to have moved it. So I ended up moving a couple of rakes – they were, in fact, more like pole saws. When trying to clear the space, I took them from one area to the next. I must say that I was quite struck by the face of that particular man that I did see, whilst he sat on the neighbouring bench to my right, in the initial dream. Even here in another dream entirely, I kept seeing him in my mind’s eye.

The fourth dream found me going back to an apartment where Merlin and I were living together. There were ants all about the apartment. I told him, “You have to get out and go away for a while so I can clean away the ants.” I then went about disinfecting the place and got rid of the ants. I was even disinfecting beneath the floorboards… everywhere. Owing to his being full-blown with AIDS, I did not want Merlin being exposed to the harmful chemicals in the disinfectants. That, certainly, could have resulted in horrific consequences on his vastly compromised immune system.

With the fifth dream, I was in a large department store. There, I saw Isis da Braga who was there to buy a scarf. At the time, I was with two males; it was a Gay situation. Owen Hawksmoor was talking to someone who had a very large nose. The man to whom Owen spoke was Black. He seemed like we vaguely knew each other. He seemed, in fact, like Don Baxter. However, the face on this man was black and had hues of red in it. Not the colour black but as Black people look. More than that, such that it looked like the nose of an animal’s would like an aardvark or some such, the nose on this man was more like a snout. He wore white; both he and Owen did. There was some function, that one had to go to, for which Owen had complimentary tickets.

These two people, whom Owen and I had encountered, were saying that they did not know where their complimentary tickets were. I said that I knew I had mine. Anyway, Owen left them and went back up a flight of steps. It was quite light out, up the staircase, as though there was a skylight hung high overhead. Owen moved on and I went in search of Isis who had passed by. She was quite embarrassed, in fact, at seeing me with my arm about a Gay person. She went in and picked up a scarf and the scarf was worth 52$, I think, because she was putting down the balance of the money – the other half – 26$. She was there shopping. It was a black scarf and it had beautiful… the borders were red and green designs. It really was quite nice. I came and leaned on the counter and said hello to my sister.

She was reserved, cool and detached. She turned to me and was beautifully made up and looked very young with beautiful, flawless, flawless skin. She spoke about the fact that she did not go shopping with me anymore. She insisted that my accusation that she did not go shopping with me anymore because I was with men was not true. She was wearing a beautiful mustard-coloured jacket and a scarf about her neck. Indeed, she was quite well-off.

*The thing about these unusually droopy noses is that they looked as though this was a race of extra-humans (extra-terrestrials) which had evolved from simian mammals who were descended from proboscis monkey stock rather than not. It is a race of primates native to Borneo and the faces of those simians are rather human. This is how this man and others in this dream would appear. However, it was more than that look. END.

In the sixth dream, I was in an office that was like an indoor greenhouse. If you like, it was a mausoleum rather than greenhouse. It was sky-lit and there were a lot of caskets about. Some of them had flowers and some of them did not. When you came in, you went down some stairs and into a more open area. There you saw a burial crypt. It was an indoor burial crypt. There was a man about as well as a grand piano. Whenever the employees of the place came in, there was a woman standing about and she would excitedly say, “We have to go out, we have to go out.” I was with those little children, from the earlier dream, who were skateboarding and whom I had instructed earlier about the whole idea of reincarnation. These children were mostly White. We were also being hustled out of the place.

The woman then said, “What is he doing? There is not another service. Why is he trying to start up that piano?” The man at the piano was large and bent over and he looked somewhat out of place being there. Before we could be ushered out of the place, I managed to run up and put some flowers – some yellow flowers, on one of the brown caskets that was there.

*He was inordinately tall and hence drooped over a lot. Whilst seated at the grand piano, his towering height made it look as though an adult seated at a dollhouse piano. Too, he was inordinately pale… END.

As we were going out, the procession was coming in and people were being hustled in. It was quite a fast procession. I stuck around and tried to see the place and see why there was so much hustling. There and then, it turned out that I saw the casket. It was very flat and plain and I thought, ‘Well why is it being hustled out? If it’s a funeral why would the relations be so ecstatic?’ However, it turned out that because the burial box was so flat I thought it was going to be cremated. It turned out, however, that it was for the office. There was going to be a surprise party.

It was actually a cake. It was covered up in wonderful, colourful wrapping paper. There was going to be a celebration and those were all the workers from the company. The atmosphere was quite nice and friendly.

In this the seventh dream, I was in a very, very large and busy restaurant where I ordered myself a bowl of soup. I was going to go upstairs to the bathroom but I had my bowl of soup in my hand. It was very Gothic-styled. It seemed, in fact, like the inside of a château. It was in the Gothic style except that the walls were rose granite – rose-coloured granite. It was, however, rather smooth-surfaced. I then accidentally spilled my bowl of soup. The waitress who had come to my aid was dark-haired – short, dark hair. She looked like a dancer who danced with the Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers when I was living in Winnipeg – the one who was Lebanese and had had a back injury.

Anyway, this waitress went off and I was waiting there being quite embarrassed. I was trying to rush to the toilet. I asked someone where the toilet was and they said, “No, no, not upstairs.” It turned out that the washrooms were, in fact, to the rear. So off I went to the bathroom and I was quite embarrassed. I tidied up myself and I came back out and my white cotton pants – nice, beautiful trousers; they were baggy but they came in tight and folded in a pleat at the end at the hem – were quite stained by the soup. It was a dark sort of pea soup. A dark brownish fare, like a lentil soup, it was. However, it was not like a lentil soup because it was red.

I was trying to ask this man to move, in order to get by him, en route to the washrooms. There was a couple behind a man and they were very lovey-dovey. The man had to ask them to get up to let me get to the bathroom. He did not want to get up or anything like that but he finally realised he had to get up. So he basically moved and he was quite unusually blond. Everybody in this place was very unusual-looking. They had extraordinary features about them. They were excessively good-looking but they had an outstanding feature that made them seem Thothesque. Again, noses here were very long, droopy and bent over. Their noses were almost beaklike in that sense. That was the extraordinary thing about that jet-black skinned man, in the initial dream, as well as this blond man who had the same feature.

**Humanoid with exact nose as this Proboscis Simian**

These persons were all exceptionally tall. They were each on the other side of seven-plus feet. Also, they were so über-poilu, it made it look like they were either jet-black when Black or yellow-white for being blond. Finally, he did move and when I was leaving, I looked at him. He was looking down at me because I was out of sorts, out of place, being there. Standing before him, he really did tower over me. Clearly, these persons were EHs – extra-humans or ETs. Another person had come by and tidied me up. He busily got me back to where I was seated. Then he had mumbled something like, “Why don’t you get out of here real fast?”

So I went out into the vestibule and I was waiting and waiting for the waitress to come by because I wanted to pay her for my bowl of soup. I think it was going to be $3 or something like that. Isis just said, “Why don’t we just get out of here?” We were waiting out front and it was busy so I finally got out. However, I was arguing and said, “That’s not the point of it.” I strongly felt that I should be paying my way. So I thought to just go back and put down my money on a table somewhere – I would feel better. However, I did finally leave, after having been more or less harassed by Isis without having paid. She was asking, “If you can save the money, why not save it?” that was her attitude.

When we were leaving there was a tall, enormously tall, man. He was White. Again, he had the same beaklike nose and there was something about his face that I found immediately sexual. His face was intensely sexualised. I was going to indulge and not leave because I so wanted to explore this man. However, Isis hustled me out of there.

Dream eight found me in the streets. I was walking with a baby – a little Black baby who was light-skinned. I carried the baby on my shoulders. It was rather nice. This time, out on the street, it was dark out and it was night time. This place we went to, that was quite busy, was bustling with lots of wonderful, wonderful people. It was very cosmopolitan here. A brief dream it was too.

I next found myself in a ninth dream experience that had a great deal of uproar and tumult to it. There were figures in black who were part of some sort of religious sect. These persons were just alarmingly fanatical. They were terrorists and they wore black. They had some sort of insignia on their bodies. As a matter of fact, they were looking for me; there was no mistaking that fact. I was in what would be Catherine Angelica Montpelier’s yard. I was trying to hide out there. There were, somehow, attempts to get me out. Then there was this truck which the people who were like security guards used. I was told where to find them and where they weren’t.

So I went into this yard and it seemed like part of Catherine Angelica Montpelier’s property and the neighbourhood in Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts. However, it was differently set up here. There was an Indian-looking girl – Amerindian-looking and not Dravidian. She, too, had a beaklike nose and I tried to explain to her, “Well look, you know I’m being pursued…”

“Oh yes!” further, she made reference to the fact, “Oh yes, you’re the one who killed Bob… or somebody.” Up on the roof was like Bob’s brother, whoever Bob was, but it wasn’t a name that I recognised. His name was Bob, however; it was Patrice Wellesley, of all people, who was keeping a lookout. He was supposed to notify the guard-like people. I intuitively knew that on the far side of the wall, of the place where I was hiding out, was a guy and a girl. She had very long black hair and was quite militant. They were looking out for me and talking.

I was telling the Amerindian-looking girl with the Thothesque nose, who was talking to me and dropping pieces of information, to just shut up and calm down, “You don’t need to say everything and carry on and on.” However, she still kept on blabbing away. I then managed to go around the side of the house. She was with her sister and they were playing some sort of game. So I thought to actually go around, to the front of the house, to ask her who her sister was. I then went around to the front of the house and there was her sister who seemed like Diana Nottingham – with whom I modelled at OCAD and did that pose with her at OCAD that Olaf Nordstrom had painted.

Anyway, she was quite wonderfully made up in whiteface. As though she were a Kabuki actor/actress, she wore white pancake makeup. She was, in fact, an actress. She was waiting to go on and perform a role of hers. It was quite interesting because she was, in fact, filling me in on what was going on, “In point of fact Arvin, you know, basically someone died because in self-defence in a rumble with them… it was just a lazy man about town, an idler and a drifter.” He apparently ended up dying because, during some sort of attack on me, as I was defending myself he was accidentally killed. As a result, I was on the run and there was a plot – the militant group was out to get me.

**Immanuel Methodist Church, Sandy Point, St. Kitts**

She told me that what I could do was go behind the Methodist Church in Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts. The place, however, was set out as if a mélange of Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts and elsewhere. So she told me to go across the railroad tracks. On coming around, I would be able to come home free to my home in Crab Hill. However, she pointed out that all along the route there were the same guards – militant fanatics. However, I just had to play it safe. She confidently assured me that they could be headed off. I was grateful for her advice and took her directives to heart. Well, low and behold, the girl – the militant sibling – came around the yard and caught me. When she caught me, I fled in escape. I went and hid behind the wall. I am not referring to Diana or one of the two sisters who had been around the backyard but there were two other sisters. These other two sisters were part of the militant group that was on the hunt for me.

The girl pulled out a weapon and it had a little blade on it. It was quite deadly and I kept hiding myself trying to extricate myself out of the place. I did so by holding up one of the sisters, in front of me, as a hostage. Someone got spliced in the left hand. I don’t recall that it was me or if it was me, I simply did not feel any pain when attacked. The vicious-looking wound had self-healed right away. I had focussed my light energies on the wound and caused it to instantaneously self-heal. Anyway, I was able to push the sister onto them. I then made my way around to the back of the house. By this time, the brother was coming around the house from the other direction.

When I say I went around to the back of the house, it was where I had originally encountered the two militant sisters. By that point, she had already called for help from the guardsman. He was somewhat ecstatic as he came around. However, this was my chance to flee. So I climbed over the fence and immediately there was a lot of plastic on and all over everything. When I climbed over the wall it was, clearly, what in the waking state would be the very back end of the Methodist Church estate. It was covered with a heavy plastic and there was a lot of wood. There was scaffolding everywhere. I climbed along the wood and the sister – the white-faced, actor of the two sisters – had told me that I could get immunity by saying that I was coming to work on the grounds or some such.

Next, I crawled along the scaffolding and looked to my left. However, this being a dream, it had semblances to being Sandy Point but it wasn’t really Sandy Point either. I realised that there were apartments, tiny apartments, which were glass-enclosed. They were all quite in disarray. People lived there but nobody seemed to be home. Here I was trying to make my escape and if anybody had seen me, of course, I would be squealed on. Then I finally jumped down, out of the ceiling-like area, because there were crates and boxes and a straw-stuffed bed under me directly below the window. I came down to an open area and there I saw a much darker version of Artemis da Braga, my niece. She was sitting wrapped with a telephone cord about her as she played with the phone. I greeted her but I did not want to get her excited because I wanted to flee the area.

Next, in dream ten, I came out of this beautiful house and came out into a wonderful backyard. Immediately, whilst there, I saw another of those vans. There had also been a van in the earlier dream that showed how these people, the militant people, worked. They had a van and it had another little van on the inside when it opened up claw-like. It appeared that the top and the bottom, the back rather, could open up. Inside it revealed another vehicle that was covered in a brownish greasy goop. The most interesting feature of this entire affair was that, although they looked human enough, the militiamen were not human. They were extra-human. So too was the machine which, from its goopy fluids, was sentient. It was an EH species which they were using to capture and feed one to. It seemed that the machine-like EHs were, in fact, in control of the militia-type EHs rather than the reverse.

It seemed more creature than a vehicle and, somehow, this was what I was supposed to be put in when captured. These two Black men, who were guarding the house and who let me know that they were guarding the house, were saying, “Aha! Now we’ve caught you.” You know, I thought about it and there was just no way that I was going to let them capture me. ‘I’ve got to get away,’ I thought. At the time, one of them was taking a pee – both these men were Black. They were quite casual about having caught me. They apparently were going to get their supervisor who would take care of me.

The supervisor came and he looked like the guy from Trinidad who had worked as a chef at the Underground Railroad Restaurant when, long ago, I worked there. He did, at least, seem like that man. This man, who was their supervisor, was also Black. He had the semblance, the air about him, of that chef but he did not so much look a great deal like him. He was rotund and fairly light-complected. He lived in the house. Rather, he did not live in the house but he was staying in the house as a caretaker. I thought, ‘I’m not going to be captured. I’m not going to be caught. I can disguise myself.’

**Rendering Self Invisible by Increasing Light Vibration**

I immediately started accelerating my energies and, as a result, I was able to transform myself. As I upped my frequency, I heard an increase in the universal hum. I looked down at the backs of both my outstretched hands, keenly observing the intense sunlight react to my skin in a glowing sizzling manner, until my aura intensified and became visible about my body. My aura’s light grew brighter as my skin actually glowed with increasing intensity. It continued until the skin, throughout my entire body, was indistinguishable from the rest of the intense morning sunlight. When they went down the hill and came back with the guy, I was standing there right in front of the house. It was this particular, large wooden house.

It wasn’t large, for being a bungalow, but the door was large. This house was definitely not part of the landscape in Sandy Point, St. Kitts. As I looked on, the guards came bearing the portly gentleman. I was aware from the way he – the supervisor, Zen sage – was talking that he was aware that I was there. Perhaps, he could see me but the other two – the militant guardsmen – couldn’t see me. I realised what I had done: I had made myself light so that I blended in with the landscape and couldn’t be seen. I had rendered myself invisible!

I then decided that I could further transform myself. Next, I made myself into this little white piece of what seemed like string. However, it was more like nylon. It was like shiny waxed dental floss. Such that half way there was a loop in it, it was tied in a knot. It was doubled on itself so that it was, I would guess, three to five inches long at the most. I obviously was astrally projected to another world where, rather lucidly, I was dreaming and interacting with extra-humans. The dental floss-like string was the cord of light which keeps one’s astral body connected, to the waking state body, when astral-projected during sleep.

**The Light Umbilical Cord Connected to Astral Body**

Immediately, the caretaker guy took the cord – the wax-like cord – which was my transformed-dreamer self in his hand. It was my astral body’s cord which was left rendered visible whilst I remained invisible. He began giving the two guardsmen a walk-through of the house in which only he should have been. It was a house that was no longer lived in. It was wooden all about and very organic. It was a house that allowed for natural light to pour in. There was a skylight. The house was low in the sense that it was dug in. The house was built such that it was somewhat half-buried below the surface. In that way, it was kept cool because it was partly below-ground. All about, on either side, as you walked in every part of this beautiful, sprawling bungalow were every manner of cactus.

These were cacti that were shaped like trees that had leaves. Absolutely stunning and incredible, they enlivened the house throughout. He gave me a tour of the place with the two guardsmen, who could not see me, in tow. As he walked them back to the front door he said, “So you see, he really couldn’t be here. You go off and look for him.” He tossed me or what was my representation – the wax-looking string or my astral body’s umbilical-like cord of light – from his right hand sending it through a doorway of the house. He then went about his business and showed them to the door and got rid of them. At this point, I rematerialised back to my regular dreamer self in this dream and I was able to let on to him that I knew that he knew of my being invisible. So I called him, on another phone in the house, and I remained absolutely silent. I then telepathically shared my thoughts with him. I inferred that I knew that he was aware that I was present in the house though invisible to most. Of course, he knew that I was there but he was just not going to acknowledge my being friendly with him. The fact is that he knew that I was in trouble. He was just trying, out of the goodness of his heart, to help me out. However, he wasn’t going to befriend me or anything like that.

**Sprawling Partially Submerged Bungalow**

So anyway, on my own I began exploring this beautiful, beautiful labyrinth-like bungalow. The walls of it were wooden. It was a reddish wood like redwoods normally look. It had a shiny hue to it because it was polished. I was talking about it to someone, later on in the dream, and it was in fact the same guy – the caretaker – who had accompanied me at one point. I said it seemed like it was built by Frank Lloyd Wright and he said, “No. Not really…” It seemed like it but it was a different style altogether; however, it was more or less like Frank Lloyd Wright. Seriously though, it was a totally different style. So I went about exploring the place. I went in this one room that was clearly a bedroom. I opened the door and went in – it was a glass door. I went in and on the left were shelves.

There were tiny, tiny, little cacti in pots and some of them were large and some of them were blooming. They were heliotropically craning over to one side. This place had been abandoned for quite some time. However, all the cacti in the place had managed to grow quite large. They were big, bulbous, beautiful and wonderfully lifelike. The spread to the bed was turned down and discarded. It had been left just as when last used by the owner. There was a bulldog; it was not a live one but a statue of a bulldog. This person had a great deal of style and was quite successful. I realised that the owner, the former occupant, was Black. I saw the face and I can’t say that I can recall the face but, somehow, I got the impression that the face was a face of mine if you like.

It was interesting because when I saw the face that is basically the information that I got from looking at the face in the photo. There was a tiny time-faded photograph of a face. It was of a Black man. This was the sense that I got from it, that it was me, in fact. There were beautiful trousers about. As well, there was a large armoire with tons and tons of beautiful, silk robes that I had worn in that life. They were worn around the house by the former occupant. There were, on the bed, some clothes. Too, there was a table beside the bed. Everything in this bungalow was very organic: the bed was very organic, the desk was and even the fixtures were very organic. As well, the cloth was very organic – by organic, I mean that it wasn’t inanimate.

It was organic because it was lifelike. More than that, it was organic because it was breathing. That’s why it had lived so long because it was quite some time since last occupied by the owner. However, it was very much so still alive. The sheet and bedding, on the bed, were woollen and greyish-coloured. The only reason why I had entered the room, in the first place, was I wanted to roam – to see if there were any signs of underwear… there was. There was tons of underwear on the shelves behind me. I wanted to check and sniff his underwear, to see if he had masturbated.

Anyway, when I got into the room, that little adventure had totally evaporated. For having seen the photograph, if you like I was quite interested in exploring the place and getting to refamiliarise myself with the place. The bedroom was just absolutely beautiful. Off to the left, rather behind the shelves and straight ahead, was the closet and the bed was to the right of the door.

Down this long hallway that was sky-lit were the tables and tables of clothing. There was a door past the shelves, on the left, and it looked into more and more clothes. I then came out of there and I went about exploring all over. This time, I went to explore all the cacti in the place. There were tons and tons of them. Shortly thereafter, I was joined by Carl Leroiderien, Merlin and someone else who seemed like Mario of Paris – Mario D’Agostino, however, it wasn’t him. I had a sense of Maxime Gascoigne-de Montigny being about and Carl Leroiderien had seemed like a custodian of the place. Carl was a caretaker or curator of the sprawling bungalow which now seemed like an historic site. When he was excitedly walking everyone through the place, to show them the place, he was referring to the owner. I was there but, again, none of these people had any awareness that I was there – not even Merlin.

He was sort of filling them in on who the owner was. From what I could see, Carl was doing a good job of it. There were cacti that were tall. There were also red ones. There was one cactus that was tall and it had needles on it. It had large, large leaves and two or three leaves like those of a royal palm’s. Most of it was like a palm tree but it was like a breadfruit leaf or some sort of leaf like a maple leaf – albeit an extra large maple leaf. It was, however, cactus. Everywhere there were plants on either side of the skylight hallways. The bungalow was a series of long halls that were all connected and veered off in different directions.

However, it was a house that had basically become a living garden such that it was organic. The cacti truly were the lungs of the house. The air was really nice and it was cool. The humans were able to live with the cacti because it was a totally self-sustainable dwelling. As the light came in heliotropically sustaining the various cacti species, it added breath, depth and dimension to the space thereby making it equally organic. Too, because it was partially submerged belowground, there was a lot of moisture from underground that kept these plants alive. The cacti were quite happy and they had grown so beautifully. It was as if they were bonsai cacti. It was quite incredible how they were all over the place throughout the house.

Then I went down some steps to another open area of the bungalow. Again, there were more cacti. We moved off and came to an area where Carl said, “Oh let’s go downstairs, I can show you the basement. You can see all these wonderful things.” When you looked out the skylight area, it was of the street, the pathway into what would seem Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts. So I immediately was afraid to be seen yet I was assured by Carl as he stilled my nerves telepathically saying, ‘Oh, it’s okay… it’s okay.’ I was concerned about the people, who lived across the street, reporting me to the militia-types. There was bamboo, organic bamboo if you like, that was made into a fence. It seemed like the backyard of what was the neighbour’s house and they weren’t there. I was told it was quite safe that it was okay. The neighbours weren’t there to squeal on me.

Before you went down the steps, into this other area, there were all these beautiful, beautiful organic works that are quite common in the Orient. For example there were many objets d’art. These were objets d’art which were beautiful temples and totems. They were all made from the ivory of elephants’ tusks. It was all beautifully detailed and in miniature – all the miniature designs were made of ivory. That was the sort of stuff. This particular objet d’art was large. It was square-shaped so that it wasn’t like an elephant’s tusk. More like an obelisk, if you like, it was. They were more so little temples. They were shrines and Greek temples if you like. What was truly fascinating was how incredibly detailed they were though scaled down versions of the real architectural gems.

We moved on and now we came to an area that had nothing but wares. There were lots of baskets everywhere because this was where the ornaments were kept. They were all stored therein. Carl was the caretaker of these things. He was quite familiar with every item and, again, there were bamboo basket-like wares and objets d’art. I was told that this was, in fact, like a wine cooler. It was so delicately and intricately made. Also, the item was collapsible. It could open. The objet d’art was like a valise and it could open up. Merlin went and opened it and was prying into it. It had two African skulls or heads on it and it was quite beautifully detailed as a matter of fact.

We then moved on and came into the downstairs area. This place was like a cellar. Somehow, copious rays of sunlight made it to this part of the sprawling, multi-levelled bungalow. Even though we were further underground yet, somehow, the sunlight came in. However, I soon realised that it wasn’t sunlight. It was just this light that was white and somewhat diffuse. It was quite soft and nice to the touch. Among the many stored wares, there was something that had a white bamboo-like coil. This thing had a piece of string attached to it with two yellow sticks or shoots like chopsticks.

You could insert it and it was, in fact, quite sexual. The Mario D’Agostino character immediately grabbed it up. Whilst simulating sexual play, he was playing around with it. He was making noises filled with sexual innuendo and then said, “Umm, get undressed and put it on your cock because that’s what it’s made for.” Oh he was so happy to perform and went off to try on the item.

*Here now, some further comments set in the dream in the beautiful house. Here, the atmosphere in this house was one of serenity and it was a reflection of that particular life that one had led whence the proprietor was Black. Tall and very erudite, he seemed a man of the world. He was well-travelled. He loved beautiful music and he had a collection of things in his bedroom that were totems from his travels. He was obviously tall because there were lots of khaki and white summer pants which all gave a sense of his height. When I had first entered into the room, there was also a rack that I had bumped into. I hadn’t noticed it because it was suspended from the ceiling. It was racked with leather suspenders and an enormous collection of belts: broad belts, narrow belts, as well, skinny belts.

There were all kinds of beautiful belts. They were very expensive and they were also very organic and ancient. They weren’t brand new any of them. It was all a reflection of the person’s spirit. You never met the person but you knew the person through the house. It was beautiful and wonderfully planned out. The sprawling, organic bungalow was so multidimensional; it went off in all these directions and avenues because that was who this person was in that lifetime. In a box to call home, he was not contained or restrained. The organic house constantly veered off. It had many apartments and veered off and had many cul de sacs. There were areas where he could go and be removed from all the other areas yet be surrounded by plants.

At all times, he was surrounded by life itself and it was healthy… quite nice. Whilst at the restaurant having the lentil-looking soup, the reason for the extra-tall, obvious extra-human being impatient with me was more subtle than one may assume. With their sophisticated proboscis, it is safe to assume that smell was the most developed of this extra-human race’s senses rather than sight as is the case for we humans. Likely, there was something very off-putting to my pheromone makeup which left the seated extra-human uncomfortable. I don’t think that it was a matter of my race, Black, but my species, Earthly human, which made the über-poilu, blond extra-human uncomfortable.

As I was in his home world, he naturally felt put upon for having the unfavourable aspects of my pheromones anywhere near him. At the end of the day, he was an incarnate ensouled fragment who is one of seven soul types and with the same selection of overleaves as any Earthly human. Any Earthly human would have similarly responded to having someone of outré pheromone and species in their midst.

A very serene dream it remarkably was. END.

______________________________

Groovin’ High, Dizzy Gillespie 1955

__________________________________________________________________________________________

As ever, Life is like a flying dream; if you look down, you’re fucked. Enjoy the ride and fear no one!

__________________________________________________________________________________

See You Soon… 30 Years On, Merlin’s Magical Departure.

16.11.201909.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

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.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

As ever, thanks for your ongoing support but if you really want to make me levitate then do buy my books!

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Lesson In Older Soul Lovemaking.

14.08.201909.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

So, on Friday, November 3, 1995, as the gibbous Moon waxed in Pisces – measurably drifting across my tenth house – I would dream this dream which concerned the dynamic between both Merlin and Oleg.

*For the record, Oleg in a previous incarnation was the English writer, Charlotte Bronte. END.

______________________________________________________________

A house that much reminded me of the one in Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts proved the setting for this most potent dream. There were five of us here; although, one person’s identity now eludes me. There in the living room, seated on the blue sofa of our Crab Hill home, was Merlin with his back to the north. Directly behind him was the five-foot oblong mirror; it was hung against the living room’s wall. On the other side of that wall, in the waking sate, was Harella’s bedroom.

Here in the dreamtime, which was definitely astral plane in focus, the living room was elongated; it was more oblong-shaped, along a north-south axis. Merlin’s right side was closer to the veranda and the main road with the McHughs across the road. Across the room from me, with her back to the street and facing due east, was Gita Gurucharan – Oberon Samuelson’s lovely wife and mother to miracle worker extraordinaire, Vijayalakshmi Gurucharan. Oleg de Brontë was seated directly opposite Merlin. There was a man, to my immediate left, who sat directly opposite Gita. Whilst I was closer to Merlin than anyone in the room, I was not however sharing the sofa with him.

Abruptly, Merlin got up and took his leave of us. He went into Harella’s bedroom. The others had dropped by to visit. It was clear, early on, that Merlin simply wasn’t into it. There was strain to the social dynamic which Merlin put an end to – he rudely took his leave of us. This was so unlike his former self during his recently-concluded incarnation. Yet, I fully understood where he was coming from. Whilst being in the soul state, he was now more so his true self. This gathering of persons represented the past to him, which at this point, clearly served no interest for him.

I then got up and stood next to Gita who was on my right. After Merlin rudely took his leave of us, we had all silently gotten up. To say the least, it was awkward. As we faced towards the dining room, our backs were now to the veranda. Filling the void that Merlin’s departure had created, Gita and I began making conversation. To say the least, it was a strained, canned affair. Here, I was keenly aware of how much I am dismissed as a social misfit. I was aware that these were persons who had long ago decided that I was not the swiftest of souls – I don’t indulge in clever repartee and such plastic aggressiveness when socialising.

The Black man then came over; he was tall and handsome with a gorgeously mesomorphic body. He stood to my left, directly facing Gita, and began talking. There were a lot of pauses here; they were trying to get me to shove off by firmly excluding me. Finally, I dryly said, “Well, I’m going to go and see how my man is doing.”

I then walked between the chairs, on which Oleg and the Black man sat, as though heading for the boys’ bedroom rather than Harella’s to which Merlin had retreated. I then, however, made an abrupt turn left going instead through the door from the living room to Harella’s bedroom. On entering the bedroom, I saw that Merlin was lying in the girls’ bedroom next-door. Merlin seemed as though asleep. He did look as though ill with full-blown AIDS. It was not, however, distressing to have seen him thus; I was lucidly awakened here.

Initially, when out in the living room, Merlin looked robust and even leaned towards a robust, mesomorphic body type. It was clear though that having to visit with these persons, from the past, had very much so enervated his spirits. Rather than sit there interminably, enduring what was an unpleasant situation for him, he thankfully had taken refuge when he had. On drawing closer to him, I gently caressed his face – all the while thinking of how difficult this was for him. I wanted to share some of my energies with him; I wanted to restore his. The vibrations from the living room, however, were distracting.

After excusing myself from Merlin, I returned to the living room. Immediately, I dramatically shifted personae and became rude. I told them to sit down, at which point, we all did. Oleg then got up after awhile; he was holding a long-necked, brown beer bottle. There were three empty identical ones on the floor and next to his chair. There was no mistaking the fact that he was drunk.

‘Who the hell gets drunk on the astral plane anyway?’

Oleg wore a woollen jacket that was dark and nondescript. Incidentally, on my return, the Black man was no longer present. In his place was a White man with the same physical description; he came over trying to save face. The unfamiliar man charmingly suggested that it was time that they pushed off. Oleg had gotten very drunk indeed; he was not at all being belligerent. It turned out that Oleg had gotten emotionally distraught – about Merlin’s condition; he was upset at the way that things had turned out between them. The fact that things were unresolved between them, at the end of Merlin’s last life, caused Oleg a great deal of distress.

He did not know how else to deal with it; thus, Oleg got miserably drunk. I wanted to be of solace to Oleg, however, since my energies were already committed to being with Merlin that option proved a nonstarter. Clearly, Gita and the other man had been there to try and broker some sort of peace between Oleg and Merlin. Obviously, Merlin was not up to it. At one point, I had actually headed to the dining room and called back to Oleg. My voice rang out as I asked Oleg if he wanted another beer.

This was the point at which the unfamiliar White man had interrupted and declined the offer; instead, he suggested that they take their leave of Merlin and me. Oleg, of course, was inclined to take another drink. I did not like my role here – that of keeping Oleg grounded by drink. Certainly, it did give the impression that I was trying to block any resolution or any communion between both him and Merlin. Although, to be honest, Oleg had begun drinking after Merlin had left the room. It was quite embarrassing really. Oleg could hardly get up – let alone stand on his own.

The man had had to rush to Oleg’s aid. Like Merlin in the bedroom, Oleg was completely enervated though he had used alcohol to drown his pain. Oleg was devastated that Merlin was not going to return. More importantly, Oleg knew that Merlin had positively no intentions of suffering him for a minute. The man threw his arms about Oleg and braced him up. More than that, he was fortifying his very spirit.

Again, I took my leave of them in the living room and headed back for Merlin. However, I did not spend time visiting with Merlin. On returning to the bedroom, I got a long, black, woollen evening coat. It was rather expensive and cut close to the body. Bearing the coat, I returned to the living room where I insisted that Oleg take it to stay warm. For not realising that he had been drinking to excess, I had felt badly. He was truly distraught; nothing pained me more than seeing this truly beautiful man’s spirit in disrepair.

Whilst his White friend got him into the coat, I stood in back of a disjointed Oleg and held the evening coat open. Interestingly enough, Oleg’s handsome, Black friend earlier was the same handsome Black man, with the striking resemblance to Maxwell Bowleson – he had appeared with him in that august-energied dream, on Friday, July 21, 1995. Eventually, they all took their leave of the house; they were rather low-key when doing so. When I had returned to the living room, after having visited with Merlin in the girls’ bedroom, Gita had not said anything further.

No sooner than had they all left the house that Merlin came out to the living room to join me. I was surprised to see that he was again looking so healthy. Directly opposite Merlin, I now sat alone. Merlin silently sat there. Whilst consciously sending him loving energies, I held my back erect. Much to my surprise and amusement, Merlin carried a large, clear plastic bag with about 1.5 pounds, likely more, of marijuana. Merlin meticulously rolled a large thick joint with all the Zen focus as he had when incarnate.

I sat there being truly blown away at the sight. I had completely forgotten the sublime, almost Zen, sight of Merlin rolling a joint. Moments like this were when Merlin really turned up the hues of his magus nature. It was a groove into which he slipped, in order to conceptualise – to non-linearly think. These ganja joints were so thick that they looked like short white cigars; they certainly smoked profusely like a cigar does. I was mildly humoured by Merlin’s realness. It was grounding.

On looking up, Merlin paused before lighting up and turned up the sensual hues in his large brown – which they were not when incarnate – eyes. Coolly, Merlin intoned, “I have no intentions of seeing these people…”

He then pursed the fat joint in his rosy lips and lit up. Casually, Merlin blew on a long even breath that readily perfumed the air with its pungent aroma. Up to that point, the room was sillaged by that most glorious of scents patchouli – it was Merlin’s favourite fragrance. As an afterthought, Merlin added that Oleg had intended to come back tomorrow and join him for lunch. There was supposed to be some woman or other present then.

Apparently, it was not going to be either Morag O’Hoare or Gita Gurucharan. I don’t know who she was supposed to be but it was also definitely not Elektra Skanczchowicz – and definitely not Hélène Plotte-Visage. Merlin took his time and drew on another breath. He then announced that the luncheon had been arranged by none other than Maxime Gascoigne-de Montigny. Merlin, however, was not into it. “Are you sure that you’re going to be up to it?” I asked obviously concerned.

As I looked across the room at Merlin, I spent a great deal of time being spiritually focussed and sent him energy. What was really interesting in this process was that with his long even breaths, when dragging on the ganja joint, I used his breathing rhythm to become harmonised with his vibration. The focussed process of sharing my energy with him was very potent – real. The energy flowed with great ease. For being intensely lucid, I thought of elevating my vibration’s frequency. I had hoped to thus cycle off a ton of my energy into Merlin. I accomplished this by envisioning us both encircled by spheres of intense blue-white light. Soon, I saw my energy body cycling off a coil of white light.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This light originated both from the top and bottom of the sphere of light which completely enveloped my seated body. The light travelled the distance between us, across the room, some seven feet away at most. It made contact with both poles of his energy body’s identical sphere’s integrity. Together, we were truly in communion soul-to-soul. The interesting thing here was that we both continued casually visiting though I knew that Merlin was keenly aware of the energy work that was being accomplished between us. As he continued his detached Zen-like smoking, I knew that it served as a backdrop to his being receptive of the energy work that I was doing on his behalf. Our breathing was completely synchronised.

I used each inhalation to draw off the negative vibrations. It was this energy that had caused him to become completely enervated when seated opposite Oleg whom he clearly had no desire to have encountered. Merlin then chose to abruptly retire, whilst the others visited, to the girls’ bedroom to crash. With each exhalation, I sent him intense, white-light energy that was being liquidly drunk by his energy body. The marvellous thing about this entire experience was how utterly feminine Merlin’s modalities were. This was in marked contrast to my very masculine, martial, warrior-energied focus.

It was truly a validation of the creative principle, Merlin being yin to my yang. Together we were becoming whole. Together our energies were perfectly harmonised. As a result, Merlin’s energies were thusly realigned. Too, for being in this very expansive state, I caught brief glimpses of the outlines of the light energies that were being manifested between us. During the moments when he would exhale potent puffs of smoke, I observed the manifested spheres of light each time. The smells of the patchouli and ganja, combined with the ganja’s smoke, created the effect. I was so grounded for being here in this astral plane reanimation of the Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts house. It was a truly sublime shamanic experience.

It was clear that Merlin had no desire to experience unpleasant aspects of the past. As he sat there, Merlin waited for the air to clear; he waited for the ganja to wane and the strobe of the light spheres to fade out before replying, “No, no. It’s okay. I’ll be okay…” As Merlin spoke for the first time, he looked healthier than he had looked at any point before during our astral plane dream encounter. Earlier, he was lying on his stomach with his left cheek on the pillow; his face looked out the door that led to the room from Harella’s bedroom. There was a cool sheen of sweat then that covered his brow and body; he laid there looking truly wasted.

Even his breathing was loud then. As I patted his cool brow, I could hear the crackling in his lungs that suggested that he was again suffering from a bout of pneumocystis. On soothing his spirit, I had brushed the wet strands of his shoulder-length hair from his brow. It was so very good to have seen Merlin. The most exquisite pleasure of being in his presence was the great sense of peace that I felt for seeing him whole again. The simple act of his rolling a joint was, for me, on the order of bliss; he was transcendent. Of course, as was the case during our relationship in the waking state, he did not offer me a toke of the cigar-like joint.

I do know that I found the second-hand smoke pleasurable. It was sweet; it did much to relax me, along with the focussed deep breathing that I independently did – that we did in unison and which had been triggered by his breaths when smoking the joint. Feeling the need to come down from the intense energy work that I had accomplished with Merlin, I got up and walked slowly over to Merlin. I asked him if he was going to be okay on his own. He assured me that I had nothing to worry about; he would be fine. I knew it too. So with that, I took my leave of him. In a bid to move back into my regular-dream body, I went out to get some air on the veranda.

He assured me that I did not need to come back, later on, and join him. He would be quite okay to handle things on his own, he assured me. I believed him. Merlin simply glowed throughout; his cheeks were flushed and fleshy even. Merlin looked centred and genuinely contented. I then found some ice cream, beneath one of the living room chairs, which earlier I had been eating. Naturally, it was not all that great as it had melted down and lost its flavour.

______________________________________________________________________

Yeah groovy people, you know the score, just plié, push off and fly like when you have just had the greatest sex and dance as if this gorgeous planet ain’t nobody’s property but yours. I love you more.

______________________________________________________________________

Won’t Take The A Train

20.07.201909.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

As I slipped into sleep, on Friday, July 9, 1993, the Moon transited both Pisces and my tenth house – though not the least bit focussed on Merlin prior to sleep – the dream shaman would manifest and weave the most sublime magic yet. As will become fast evident, the first three dreams that day were about process. I was during those dreams, divesting myself of the baggage that affects one’s waking consciousness/persona. These are waking state survival mechanisms which would be disposed of, in each successive dream, so that I could be elevated enough in spirit to have moved on to the truly noble experiences of the later dreams.

Whilst yet another stood beside me, I was looking into a full-length mirror. At the time, I was with Sjaak van der Velde – friend, current lover and Manhattan cabaret singer. As I stood there, in the near-darkened bathroom getting cleansed, I keenly looked at my face. On looking down, I noticed that my entire body was nude; it was completely depilated. This, of course, presented a big challenge because I am so vain – big hair and all. I was mildly horrified that my gorgeous pencil-thin moustache was no more.

To say the least, as intended, the moustache and big hair do nothing but scream vain solipsism. As I try warping self to stay with the ageist, lookist gang, vanity ends up making things that much more superficial. I spent a great deal of time really scrutinising the lack of facial hair. After assessing things, I finally came to like the naked look of my exposed upper lip. ‘What the hell,’ I thought. I began laughing aloud by grinning down my self-consciousness and vanity. Soon, I grew to like my smile a lot. It was truly wonderful.

Then who should appear in the mirror to my left, though never next to me in the dreamtime, but Len Morse. He, too, had recently shaved his moustache in the waking state. I was surprised to see him. I guess that there is some soul connection that we share which was clearly being alluded to. He has been present in a few dreams of late. He was warmly looking out at me as if to say, “Oh really now? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to be self-conscious of…”

Frankly, I rather liked the nudeness of my face and head minus the moustache and big hair. The whole thing was a true revelation. I genuinely looked handsome because I wasn’t trying to run from or hide behind anything. It was truly uplifting. What was so empowering about the revelation, too, was the fact that the moment at which I became relaxed with myself – unconditionally accepting myself – my eyes awakened more completely. It was as though they had never shone so brilliantly, indeed, shone so beautifully before – absolutely revolutionary!

All this maya only caused me to hysterically laugh enjoying the absurdity of trying to get caught up and lost in lookism. ‘Who frigging cares?’ That was the essence of the wisdom being disseminated here by my higher self. This new perspective was truly a rare and treasured gift. It was quite the uplifting experience and one not soon forgotten.

______________________________________________________

Next, in the second dream, I was outdoors in the daytime. I was in this heavily trafficked, overpopulated metropolis. It did feel as though I was at Seventh Avenue and 23^rd Street. Whilst, crossing 23^rd Street, I was on the west side of Seventh Avenue going north in Manhattan. I wore a knapsack which was much like the one in the waking state. Close to my chest, my arms were crossed and folded. They clutched a book that I was currently reading. As I passed a young, White couple, they made socially aggressive, racist remarks about me.

‘I don’t want this kind of energy, at all, in the dream state,’ I thought impatiently deflecting their ignorance. When I got to the other side of the road, I felt unresolved about the whole thing. So, with that, I turned to look after them. They veered off, on seeing me eyeing them but I knew that they had wanted to cross Seventh Avenue – on the north side of 23^rd Street. They headed off going east, to the right, on the north side of 23^rd Street.

Impatiently I purposefully and heavily strode on my heels, back towards them, soon overtaking them. On catching up to them, I walked alongside. The woman was closer to me and him closer to the traffic. He was considerably taller than her. They were a very waking-state-focussed, hard-edged, racially aggressive, pinched couple. Big-boned and Yuppified – they were the epitome of North American, aggressive, merchant class greed. In a rapid-fire, ballistic staccato, I began aggressively repaying their racist bile bit for bit. I repaid their aggressive verbal abuse bit for bit.

They were stunned by my response. As with the codified behaviours of the racist paradigms in the waking state, which keep racially preyed on Blacks fearful of defending themselves against such actions, I was not expected to retaliate. I had no intentions of sublimating any aspect of self, either here or elsewhere, to suffer anyone and their bullshit. Yet what could they have done?

They simply turned glacial and remained petrified acting as though one were, all of a sudden, not there. I had no intentions of having them dump this kind of psychic garbage onto me. I slapped the racial animus back in their direction and was able to divest myself of such negative energies. Perhaps, though likely not, my response gave them pause for thought.

_______________________________________________________________

The third dream then found me going down into the belly of the underground. I proceeded to take, what would prove, an extensive series of train rides. I had been down in this particular sprawling subway station. There were no pillars in between the tracks. The station was not unlike London’s Liverpool Station and though similarly dimensioned, however, it was completely below-ground. Whilst waiting for the train to arrive, I had gone and stood close to one of the ends of the platform. Raising my leg, I had placed my right foot on an orange-coloured railing whilst waiting. Close by were two White women standing and speaking.

Long, flowing, drop-waisted dresses, that were light summer fare, they both wore. For being close to them, they fell silent and projected that cool steely edge that was informed by their racist perceptions. This was not the kind of energy that I wanted to be around. I strongly resented having this hideous grey light, of waking state racially-tinged maya, flooding and destabilising the Chi of the dreamtime. Since this was not my scene, I chose to tune out their invasive, racially predatory, psychic aggression altogether. Pretty soon, they came to realise how utterly ridiculous what they were doing was.

Immediately, they stopped their bullshit and resumed being human. The WST (waking state transference), in which they indulged, towards me evaporated. The air became noticeably clear… less dense-energied. Soon thereafter, the train rolled into the station and we boarded together. Unusually large, most impressively, there was also a dizzying amount of persons on board this train. It took the longest while, for us to get on board, as throngs flooded out from the train at our station. Even when finally we boarded, the bloody thing was still overgrown with humanity.

I eventually arrived at this particular stop where, again, it was densely populated. Wherever you looked, it was lushly overgrown here with incredibly large arboreal giants.

_______________________________________________________________________

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Not surprisingly, in this the fourth dream, it was impressively landscaped here. There was a dizzying array of flora and most of them were not readily familiar. I was up on a winding road that rose up a high hilltop. Along the way, I encountered an old Black woman. Goodness was she ever ancient. Hers was a face that was on the plus side of ten millennia. To match every lifetime-filled millennium that she had outlived, boy did she have a lot of life and personality. This was clearly her astral body, which I was encountering, whoever this well-travelled, marvellous old soul was. This sprawling metropolis was distinctly French.

This place did remind me of being at Montmartre when looking down into Paris. This metropolis, however, was several times larger than Paris. So many eons older than Paris, was this metropolis, it even seemed vastly older than the old woman. Her lovely dark-complected body, reminding me so of some West Indian women’s, she was so readily familiar. This metropolis was easily twenty millennia older than Paris. A truly august-souled metropolis this was.

The woman, along the road on the side of the hill, much reminded me of Clarice Jack who lived in The Alley, Sandy Point, St. Kitts. Of course, Clarice lived next-door to the church that Harella built. She was a big-boned, large-bosomed, full-figured lively gal. She was turning about, busying herself, doing some landscaping repairs along the side of the road. On approaching her, I asked how to get to a concert hall. I had been en route to some destination which, presently, I could scarcely recall.

“Oh no, no, no, my dear… You have to go all de way back down into town. It’s not at Palais Royale, in fact. Don’t even think of there. You have to go and get some other trains, to get you someplace else…” Her tongue darted back and forth, over her ever-moist lips, as her lively rapid-fire French gave directions.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

She had pointed, off in the distance, to what seemed like Grand Palais. It, too, had a companion like Petit Palais in Paris. Here, however, these stately buildings were easily four times more colossal than their waking state counterparts. To anything in the waking state, the scale of architecture here was beyond compare. Gargantuan doesn’t, even remotely, convey the towering scales of the proportions here. Everything here was grown over. The metropolis, centred in this fantastic locale, was layered with each rise and fall of the civilisation readily discernible. In that sense, this metropolis was much like Rome is.

Everywhere, there were visible signs of crumbling architectural masterpieces. Still, other long-abandoned structures became the outer shell for more recent revivals of themselves. The latest additions, to an old ruin, could have occurred four millennia later and still have been easily a dozen millennia old – truly ancient. There were so many different strata of architectural styles layered one atop the other. This truly was a living museum of architectural giants. It was impressive, to say the least. One felt so utterly nouveau, for being of waking state Earth, as none of Earth’s civilisations can architecturally boast any such richness of character.

Great epochs of civilisations grew on top, through, about and around themselves in this impressive astral plane metropolis. This place was quite beautifully landscaped. Everywhere there were mound-like hills, like the one that I was on, which were forested areas of lush growth. They looked like some of the better-gardened neighbourhoods of Naples.

__________________________________________________________________________

Next, the fifth dream had me taking my leave of her. I went down the hill, into the metropolis, where I entered one of the city’s many termini. This one much reminded of Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. Here, too, this terminus was easily seven times more colossal. I began my marvellous adventure by taking a number of trains. There would be a few transfers at other, just as massive, termini along the journey. Here, at all times, I travelled with a silent astral guide who remained just to my rear. He seemed to be younger and was definitely White.

There was a staggering amount of people in transit here. People here were also very quiet. The majority of communication was telepathically engaged. There were so many tracks all of which were being used by trains. This was clearly a metropolis on a planet whose population easily soared beyond 17 billion (I meant to say 70 billion). With lots of transfer points converging all at the same terminus, this particular station was a major hub. This travel that I was doing, the vehicular transports I was using, merely proved secondary to what was really at play here.

I was going through different planes, travelling through different dimensions, and realities. I was in transit – for the ease of waking consciousness, much of this has been perceptually transliterated as being modes of travel comparable to waking state paradigms. The trains were capable of transporting one, to various locales, at protected faster-than-usual speeds. However, the travel was definitely destined. We travelled along a set, guided course. It was, if you like, a willed form of travel. It was not as though one were aimlessly wandering about a wilderness or city.

For being buried below-ground, it suggested that this was travel that was deeply rooted in the domains of the soul itself. There was a definite route, a purposeful intent, and a clear objective for undertaking the journey. Although for much of the time, especially when I was on the terraced hilltop with the old Black woman, I couldn’t quite recall why I was trying to make a definite rendezvous. All that I knew was that I simply had to get there. As it were, I had a destined appointment. For following along certain experientially mapped out routes, one could interdimensionally travel whilst on board these trains.

Whilst I was on one of the trains, when in transit, I sensed that I was not alone. Looking around, in search of someone’s familiar energetic signature, there on this utterly crowded train I found Merlin! I was so blown away. So that the dream wouldn’t be aborted, by my whiting out and prematurely awakening, I had to contain myself. I can’t say here how utterly arresting it was to have seen him.

Not since he had walked into the salon, in that dream on Saturday, July 25, 1992, had Merlin’s beauty so moved me. Merlin here was as real and as focussed as ever he was, the seven years that I had known him, on the other side of the dreamtime’s pandimensionality. I was so thrilled. I became overwhelmed with genuine happiness. I simply couldn’t believe that this was happening. I was acutely aware that I was dreaming. Oh my goodness – this was enlightenment and then some. Seeing him was akin, to having been away and upon my return opening the door, to have Whoopi come rushing towards me – her familiar pigeon-toed sweetness being the most treasured gift in my life at present.

One glimpse and you fall in love all over again. Seeing him, I felt all the quiet rapture that I felt – on Friday, October 1, 1982 – when he ambled into my life. On slipping in through the glass-paned door of a Hell’s Kitchen walkup, Merlin began weaving the most sustained, sublimed magic. Merlin, to look at him, was such an encapsulation of health and inner beauty. Goodness, I was completely blown away. Merlin wore a light, gauze-fabricked shirt that was very much so from the Indian Subcontinent. Caramel-coloured and ancient-looking, it was reminiscent of many of the ones he so favoured – ones which were perpetually sillaged with patchouli’s grounding signature.

The shirt was covered throughout with tiny rosebuds and other petals – exquisite. This was so Merlin in every refreshing detail. A long-sleeved shirt that was buttoned at the wrists, he wore, but with a bit of ballooning just aft the wrists. So thin and loose a fabric was it that it seemed diaphanous. Merlin was the picture of health, so much so that, his skin actually glowed near-imperceptibly. The light was the faint glow, which was the subtle undulating glow, of his aura.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This was much the effect that one would observe, if photographing someone, through a soft-focussed lens. Yet it was more than that, there was a definite hum to his aura’s vibration. There was so much flesh and vitality to his face and the rest of his still-rakish body that I was left overjoyed at the sight of him. His mane was beautifully coiffed in a long, leonine, gentle fall. Interestingly, it was not at all grey or greying. For that matter, Merlin’s hair was not greying as it was at the time of his passing.

Additionally, Merlin’s beard was not white. He looked like a much healthier version of himself, as he was at age thirty-five, when we met. It was so fuck-all fabulous to have seen him. It was great to have experienced him. Seated there, languorously looking into the forever of his familiar eyes, my spirit simply danced for joy. I vibrationally zinged at a higher frequency, on seeing him, to have experienced him yet again. To have drunk of his familiar spirit was that longed for elixir that my wandering soul so quenched.

Merlin silently looked over, validating that he recognised me, with the most intimate of smiles. A smile it was by which, for too long now, I had not been warmed. We communed, though our communication was telepathic, at the level of spirit. Our communication was not only mentally accomplished but it was emotionally complex and thorough. We immediately connected, more to the point, we did intimately connect. There was no getting around the fact of this having been why I had felt so compelled to quest, to journey, in search of this concert.

On finally having a rendez-vous with Merlin, what stellar music of souls this was. I knew, there and then, why I had been in transit making all these connections and travelling at such great speeds. I was in an astral plane metropolis, one which clearly served as a resting and inspirational space, for souls in transit – quite wonderful indeed. There I sat, on the fast-moving train, flying without moving. How utterly rapturous a living dream postcard this dream was – especially after our last profound encounter, a year ago. Sure, there had been other dream encounters during that interval.

This, however, was a dream of high order. This was a dream which existed at the same heights of spirit as that, on Saturday, July 25, 1992. Merlin’s eyes were so large, clear and focussed. Merlin here was so serene. He was transcendent. It blew my mind just to look at him. For resonating with him, I felt myself quivering with rapture. To feel the quiet purr of his spirit so close, and so familiar a spirit, was more than even I could have hoped for during pre-sleep meditations.

There was no getting around the fact that Merlin was now considerably more elevated than, when we last kissed in that dream, on Saturday, July 25, 1992. Merlin was now more in control. He had greater mastered his astral body since then. Back then, he wore a cloak that had a cowl. Merlin looked every bit the magus that he was. It was just like the cowled cloak that he had worn in our initial dream encounter, July 1978, four years before finally meeting on the physical plane.

Merlin here was so much more elevated than ever he had been in life or since his passing. Now, he was casually dressed but still looked every bit the magus. Indeed, Merlin here was the dream magus ascended. This dream was so very healing for my spirit. Then, on Saturday, July 25, 1992, Merlin was tying up loose – as he was experienced in that sublime dream. In that dream, Merlin thanked me for having served him nobly and in a healing capacity.

Thanks to his life task, Merlin had awakened the magus within me as I served him during his illness. This shared task of ours enabled me to become more spiritually focussed. As a result, as mentor to me, Merlin initiated my accelerated spiritual growth. In this dream, Merlin was simply saying hello. No postcard, across the seas of time and dimensions, could have been more beautiful a gift received. I could not believe that I was seeing Merlin. He did not, after having set out and sent me that one momentous dream on Saturday, July 25, 1992, have to send me yet another momentous dream. Yet here he was, by express transit no less, sending me a most magus, evolved and uplifting dream postcard.

Thank goodness my mind was fully aligned with spirit and the soul, as validated by my Venus-Uranus conjunction, enabling me to assimilate the potency and depth of this most sublime of gifts from Merlin. At that moment, when I found Merlin, the train was speedily travelling above-ground. The glow of his aura was further highlighted by the swells of sunlight, whose crests broke and oceanically flooded into the train, from the sunny outdoors. The merry sunlight added to the intensity of the encounter’s sensuality. I was so captivated by Merlin’s sublime beauty that I had not caught the conductor’s announcement.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A little dark-haired boy then announced that we would have to change trains. The boy had stepped up to a round circle, in the middle of the aisle, before the doors. In a vertical shaft of light, there the young, male astral guide stood perfectly still. He then announced to us the different transfer points – all of which he telepathically did.

____________________________________________________________________

Next, the sixth dream found all three of us – Merlin, the youthful astral guide and me – seated on a bunk in a rustic, near-dark, high-ceilinged bedroom. There were marvellous, dark wooden beams, high overhead in the ceiling, which created that familiar astral plane look. Whilst seated on the edge of the bunk, our legs dangled over the side. Merlin was on my immediate right as we visited side-by-side. His energies were so very warm and familiar. The house was unmistakably large, like everything else in this dimension. Incidentally, the ceilings here were vaulted. There was no mistaking that this dream was set on the astral plane.

*The key signature of the astral plane is its phenomenal architecture. The astral plane seems to serve as incubator and one from which great thinkers and movers, from time to time, come along and manifest their impressions thereof into the waking state. These great thinkers being architects such as: Antoni Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright and others. In these dreams, set on the astral plane, architecture is marked by the rustic, the aged, the organic – the fully concretised and usually in proportions that are not of this world. Everything seems much larger and more solid than even in the waking state.

There is nothing ephemeral about the architecture of the astral plane. The most impressive thing, about architecture on the astral plane, is the staggering amount of details that are worked into these true works of art. Structured and sound, one always immediately feels secure, is architecture on the astral plane. END.

The young, astral guide was on my left, silently holding the large book of photographs, as Merlin guided me through its pages. One series of photographs was of a guy who was water-skiing. The guy reminded me, as a matter of fact, of Maddox Pool. We looked at the photos which were taken, from the perspective of someone, at the rear of the boat to which he was tethered whilst skiing.

In one of the photos he had taken away his right hand, from the grip, to energetically grin and wave. The photos in the book were not static. They were holographic yet, somehow, they never extended beyond the page. They were three-dimensional but you were not looking at a film. Instead, you were looking down into a three-dimensional holographic image which was within the borders of each photo. It was in these shots that the waterskiing young man looked so much like Maddox.

He was dark-haired and the picture of health. The water was crystalline and eye-scorching blue. He was about twenty-two to twenty-three years of age – exactly the same age that I was when Merlin and I met in New York City. Merlin telepathically explained to me, as we looked at the photographs, that this photo was representative of himself after his first bout of pneumocystis with full-blown AIDS. Merlin told me that this was the nature of the work that he was presently doing.

Astral plane habitués, such as Merlin, after they had done work on themselves could elect to assist persons still incarnate and moving through the illness. The crisis of AIDS was so impactful, on humanity at this point, that those who were discarnate had to direct a great deal of energy planetside to those incarnates who were moving through the experience. When persons went from being advanced with HIV, all the way to being sick with full-blown AIDS, then they on the astral plane would work with them after their first bout of major illness.

Merlin explained that they were seen to have a resurgence of vitality because of the energy work, being directed to the incarnate full-blown persons, by astral plane habitués in his position. This is precisely as had been the case with Merlin, in the spring, summer and early autumn of 1988, after his first bout of pneumocystis – all of which abruptly atrophied when he was betrayed by that stupid drunken woman, Morag O’Hoare.

Merlin also intimated that the energy work came not only from persons such as him, between lives on the astral plane, as well as from souls above and beyond the astral plane. This was energy that they were sharing, with afflicted physical plane habitués, which they could then use to sustain their lives for a year or two or even a decade plus. Merlin further shared that they could indefinitely live on, to the full course of their lives, if they so chose.

Though they were fully capable of surviving long-term with the virus, which allegedly led to AIDS, people planetside had not yet made the realisation that they did not have to atrophy and die because they had tested positive for the HIV virus or for going full-blown with AIDS. This ability, of afflicted incarnates, to live on had to do with willpower. Choice was the issue in this situation. They must have wanted to remain incarnate.

They must have wanted to live and to accomplish certain tasks. The nature of the support system, that one surrounded oneself with, was crucial to being able to become long-term survivors. Persons really did not have to pass on so soon, Merlin intimated, after discovering that they were HIV positive or full-blown with AIDS. Humanity presently had such stultifying fear of death that afflicted persons ended up, literally, terrifying themselves to death. It did not help much that there were so many stigmas associated with AIDS. At present humanity, for the most part, did not yet realise that death was merely but a refocussing of one’s energies.

“Death…” said Merlin “…was no big deal. Come on, look at me. I’m here, aren’t I? How different am I?” he intoned in a quiet whisper rather than telepathically. ‘Can’t argue that one,’ I thought.

Merlin was as human and as real as, he had ever been every day of our being together, during our glorious seven-year relationship. Even though I could see him, and indeed touch him, he was so much more evolved and frankly better off for being in that dimension of purified vibration. This was definitely not the normal domains of the dreamtime. From the regular confines of the dreamtime, I had travelled – to this conduit space within the astral plane – to be able to experience Merlin from his regions of the astral plane which are exclusively inhabited by the discarnate.

We met in a dimension wherein persons, both discarnate and incarnate, could meet and interact. It was quite solid here and rarefied too. To be able to have experienced Merlin left me so immensely happy. Merlin further explained that people tended to die so soon, after having become full-blown with AIDS, because the spectre of dying became a vortex of fears – enervating energies – that literally depleted their reserves of willpower and caused them to die sooner rather than later.

By becoming so obsessed, with fear of death and the stigma of dying of AIDS, those subjects simply became victims of their own fears. Merlin said that they had to turn that vortex into a white hole rather than an imploding, enervating, gnawing black hole of fear. Such a vortex proved a vacuum that sucked the very life out of the afflicted and caused them to die what was clearly a premature death. Once transmuted, this vortex could be used to assist one to go on to live a very productive life.

This energy could simply be used to fuel oneself and serve as a conduit to channel pure, life-sustaining energies from discarnate souls, such as him, on the astral plane. This would ultimately enable one to stay focussed, in the afflicted life, for considerably longer. The thing to remember was that the mind did not have to become afflicted with fears because the body had become impaired by disease. All over the world, Merlin assured me, the afflicted could choose to triumph over fear of imminent death and it was being done with increasing success.

This vortex of transformed fears could, according to Merlin, become a catalyst for undertaking a great deal of spiritual work. The amount of growth that could be pulled off for becoming thus focussed, Merlin assured me, was no light matter. As Merlin imparted this wisdom, I was being illumined to this revolutionary approach to life and death which heretofore, I had not before thought of the paradigm in this manner. It, however, made perfect sense.

What was really impressive, about all this, was having Merlin return now as a teacher. He was so wise and magus. I felt absolutely proud of him. He was a guide to me, sharing of the wisdom that he has gained in his trans-dimensional sojourn thus far, as the realised dream magus who had long set out ahead of his much-loved adept and companion magus. I can’t say enough how very pleased that I was to have seen him. I was so moved by Merlin. It was simply profound.

I was so incredibly happy to see Merlin. The windows to the large hall, in which we visited, were all closed. This caused the place to be dimly and intimately lit. Here, it was very womb-like and nurturing.

__________________________________________________________________________

After that intimate visit together, followed by journeying on some more, we arrived at this the seventh dream. On returning to the large terminus, we had to take yet another series of trains. We arrived after much high-speed travel at another terminus. This one was far larger than any before which I had visited. Here, the terminus was above-ground and wide-open at both ends. Multiple tracks were everywhere and veered off in all directions. After we got on board the train, as before he had, the little dark-haired boy who served as astral guide came up and stood in the centre of the aisle.

Here, there were many people with kids and several persons were travelling with a ton of baggage. They were carting around all this baggage which they really did not need. This baggage merely served to weigh them down and impeded their forward advancement. They did not yet realise that they did not need it. Neither Merlin nor I had any baggage. Similarly, the young astral guide had no baggage. Somehow, because of the travelling requirements here, I couldn’t ride in the same car as Merlin. Instead I rode one car behind him on the same train.

On pulling up into the large station, there was a PA notice that indicated that the train we were on would not go any further. We would apparently have to transfer at the next station on disembarking. The announcer said that one would be able to find one’s appropriate ride by following the colour-coded lines on the platform. When I got off onto the platform, I began running ahead to the front of the platform in search of Merlin. Not for anything did I want to lose him now.

A couple had impeded my progress as they wobbled along with a ridiculous amount of baggage. The luggage was so much dream symbolism – inasmuch as there is such a thing. These persons represented newcomers to the astral plane. More importantly, they represented persons who had recently died and returned to the astral plane but who also happened to be fairly young-souled. They were dead yet not already fully aware. Just as they were spiritually blind, when incarnate, they now progressed. They were now hobbling about, carting around all this baggage, as if they could truly ‘take it’ with them.

With them was all this Maya, the baggage of their perceptions and the worldviews, which had held them hostage whilst incarnate. Here they were, on the astral plane, arrivés habitués carting around mindsets that were totally redundant. What I found unique here was that no one interfered with anyone. No one came to their aid telling them that it was not necessary for them to be carting around all this baggage. Furthermore, they were repressed such that they appeared these Boteroesque persons – bloated in the style of Fernando Botero sculptures.

Their little merchant class worldviews had had them well-preserved, and puffed up, with pompous self-aggrandising notions of their greatness. They did look truly South American in that pretentious sense. They looked not unlike some of the parvenu-looking subjects of Fernando Botero’s paintings and sculptures. They were truly lost souls both here and when previously incarnate.

I, on the other hand, was nimbly walking whilst bounding down the platform. I had hoped to reconnect with Merlin whom I knew had also gotten off at the same stop. Here, too, in this station all the railings were orange and sturdy-looking. Rushing ahead of the Boteroesque couple, who vibrationally felt as if made of the heaviest metals in the universe, I noticed something truly spectacular.

High up in the walls of this terminus the wall would simply open up, much as a camera lens’s aperture would, then from the gaping hole would stream out a train at full speeds. The train was, as it were, intersecting dimensions. This fantastical train was, along with several others that I had noticed, simply splicing through our pocket of the astral plane en route to heaven-only-knows-where. At the far side of the terminus another aperture-like portal would gapingly open to accommodate the approaching airborne train.

Soon after, the train would be lost into the black void which moments earlier had opened up. Those trains, like the others, were massive and looked as though the stateliest trains from the late nineteenth-to-early twentieth centuries. More than that, they barrelled through the air without travelling on any overhead tracks. What’s more, they progressed as if along well-mapped out routes.

Some were higher than others. Others intersected our little cul-de-sac of the astral plane, in a diagonal manner, cutting perfectly across the immense width of the terminus. These trains, just like all the others, seemed so imposing for being as massive and as multi-carriaged as they were. Despite the fantastical spectre of these trains, the matter of Merlin’s whereabouts was of paramount concern. On noticing the initial train, I peripherally recalled that there had been a similar such train piercing through the earlier terminus. However, its outréness had remained peripheral or not readily assimilated.

Just as described over the PA system, there was a series of colour-coded lines on the platform. These colour-coded lines indicated where one had to venture, in order to make the appropriate connections, back to one’s final destination. As could be expected, the trains were all very massive. What’s more, they were distinctively leaden and stylistically looked as if straight out of the 1930s. They were very art deco trains indeed.

One of the trains was silver and black. It was a tone of black that was truly austere. The silver was used for most of the detailing. Its silverwork was so opulent that, by comparison, it made Erté’s deco sensibilities seem bland. Somehow, I knew that it was the one that I was expected to take. In all, there were two trains that I was supposed to have transferred to. This black and silver train was energetically the densest-feeling one of all the trains that I had seen.

This, I think, was the case because it travelled between this locale and the density of the physical plane – the waking state. Nonetheless, all that I could think of was Merlin. I did not want to lose contact with him. As ever, he had done in the waking state, I had initially seen him leaving the train then gone energetically bounding down the platform. With so many people everywhere, and for having been impeded by the Boteroesque couple, I had lost sight of him. My mind busily raced as I thought of the horror of possibly having to lose him here.

I did not want our encounter to end just like that. Besides, we were supposed to have gone off somewhere. I came down off the platform, desperate to find him again, by using a narrow flight of stone stairs. From there, I crossed the tracks ahead of the austere-looking train that I was supposed to have taken. No sooner than had I crossed its track that I saw, off in the far end of the terminus, an unusual-looking train.

It was stationed beneath a sunlight-flooded awning. It was a most unique mode of transportation. A series of long horizontal slabs, hovering off the ground, they lined one after the other. They were, basically, the floors of boxcars that had no wheels, no sidings and no roofs to them. They were, if you like, just a series of hovering rectangular slabs à la magic carpets. The awning, beneath which it was stationed, gave a sense of how truly massive this hangar-like terminus was. It was then, too, that I saw Merlin.

I had recognised him by the brown tweed cap that he always wore in the waking state. To look at his body, he was the sexiest human imaginable. Merlin still could work his magic on me. Merlin wore a faded pair of blue bell-bottomed cotton slacks. A pair of well-worn, doe-skinned shoes was familiarly upturned at the toes.

He was so true to form – realistic. This was so very Merlin and so like the Merlin, whom I had known so very intimately, but for the fact that he was not smoking a ganja joint. Also unlike the sublime dream encounter, on Saturday, July 25, 1992, he was not wearing his gold-rimmed round glasses. Naturally, he did not need those things anymore. It was so very good to see Merlin. Here, he was my astral guru – indeed, the transcendent dream magus had returned to impart his magical wisdom.

Merlin was so phenomenally alive and real. I was moved beyond belief to see him. So excited was I, to have found him again, that I went rushing up to greet him where he hung out on one of the slabs. Thrilled and delighted, I let out an excited squeal. Soon enough, I grew immediately self-conscious of the fact that no one here verbally communicated. In one graceful balletic leap, I went rushing up onto the platform broadly grinning. My love for him welled up from the very bosom of my soul. As soon as I got there, I realised that everyone else was seated in these circular groupings.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

They sat in lotus position and faced inwards towards each other. Merlin was part of a circle of men, seven deeply meditative men, all of whom looked just as transcendent and centred as did he. They seemed to be so deeply engaged, at the level of spirit, as if a part of a coven of magi who were engaged in group energy work. Their silence was impactful – there was so much being said and done in its weighty stillness.

Merlin’s eyes were so brilliant and clear yet there was a fecund agedness to them. The clarity came from the intense focus of his energies, where he presently is, in his transition through the discarnate progression. They were older-souled eyes; there was no way to get around that fact. I realised, there and then, that I wasn’t supposed to have been there at all. So pleased was I to be with him, too eager to telepathically communicate, I began chatting aloud. It was a way to wrestle his full attention as there was no way that I could have competed with the union of spirits and minds that they shared.

They were simply too deeply telepathic, “Look Merlin, why can’t you come on this train with me? I don’t want to be here on this one. When we start moving, it’s only going to aggravate my allergies which are acute right now in the waking state. It’ll be too much wind, too much exposure to pollen. It’s just going to affect my allergies too much. There’ll be too much wind blowing in my face. Look, I really don’t know if I want to do this. Why can’t we go on the other one?”

The moment at which I paused, after having posed my questions, Merlin seized control of the dynamic. Very firmly, he entered my mind and said, “Be still. Be quiet. Don’t rush. Don’t you understand? I don’t care to go there. I don’t care what you want… what you desire. I’m going to stay on this one. Besides, it’s what I have to do. I’m going this way…”

When he intoned that last phrase, from the inflection and weight he telepathically used, I realised that there was no way that I could leave this place but on board that austere-looking silver and black deco train. Merlin implied, by his intonation, that the conventional old train was the one that I had to use to safely ferry me back to the waking state. Clearly, he couldn’t take that train because it was too mechanical.

It represented the past and the density, when incarnate, of his former physically ensouled state. He was now in a dimension of existence which was vibrationally infinitely less dense. Even the mode of transportation, for his dimension, was more advanced. There was no denying that these levitating slabs were being kept aloft by their focussed, united wills – Merlin and his kindred spirits’.

To have entered their midst, the air and the Chi were intensely purified. On entering the vibrational sphere of their midst, I instantaneously felt lighter in my body. Their seating formations only intensified their energies and focussed their thoughts and wills. It is safe to say that in these formations, they became a unit. They were a shared consciousness of sorts. They did though each still possess a will of their own. This was clearly the case with Merlin who was able, independent of his circle mates, to exert his own will when asking me not to be an intrusive presence.

He was never hostile but he simply asked that I not be so inconsiderate of their need for privacy. Meanwhile, the six others patiently waited for him. You cannot imagine how mentally powerful these seven men were – individually and as a shared consciousness. They patiently waited for me to either calm down or simply take my leave of them. What was really intriguing, in all of this, was the fact that they did not have a preference whether I should stay or leave. That choice was exclusively up to me.

It was truly insightful – they simply had no emotional engagement and were totally objective. This was so much like the Merlin I had always known. It was so good to see him that I really did not want to leave. There was no way that I would pass up on this most rare of treasures found. On calming my nerves, I directly looked Merlin in the eye and said, “Okay, I accept… I accept…. I accept. I realise that I was being so selfish. Do forgive me. I know how selfish I can get at times.”

Yet there sat Merlin supremely long-suffering and patient. I would not, nor could I, deny myself the elixir of those eyes. Impishly, I added, “Okay, please, let me come some of the way with you, at least. I don’t know. I don’t care…” For breaking protocol and wanting to leave this place by going in his direction, I was more or less quieting my own fears. I would gladly have given up the ghost, as it were, just to go on journeying with him.

As his eyes warmly smiled into me, a discernible smile drifted across his large, lucidly focussed face. I was thrilled. He telepathically suggested that I take a seat, which I did, just outside of the circle. Two of them shifted their positions signalling that I join the circle rather than not. The moment that I entered the circle of beings, which included Merlin, the procession of levitating greyish slabs began moving. They had been hovering, just above a groove that sat, between two knolls. These rolling mounds were covered by the most verdant cropped grass that zinged with a whisper of misty dew.

Instantaneously, we were moving at faster-than-sound through to faster-than-light speeds. It was immensely thrilling an experience for me. Merlin sat with his back always to the front of the procession of slabs. In that sense, he was in a powerful position. We were seated towards the end of the third or fourth platform. Each platform-like slab contained several clusters of seven asexual-looking men – even Merlin looked asexual.

Even more interesting, along the lines of the Michael Teachings, was that there were six or seven clusters of six to eight individuals in the tight circular formations. Here everyone was in lotus position. There were never any doubts in my mind that Merlin and every last one of these discarnate individuals were the ones whose focussed wills were directing the travel of this light trip. This was so right up Merlin’s alley – unabashed magic.

Each levitating slab measured roughly ten feet across by close to fifty feet at least. They were linear and, though wafer-thin, had the most softly plush comfortable surface. They were just as soft as if we were seated on satin throw cushions. The speeds with which we travelled were phenomenal. I did not experience any discomfiture for moving at such great speeds. There was simply a whizzing blur of everything, outside the confines of our progressing procession of levitating slabs.

We travelled some four feet off the ground as we jetted away from the hub terminus. The winds never affected us, nor did my body experience the increased G-forces, for travelling at such great speeds. The landscape sped past, even more rapidly than when on board the trains. Of course, when on board the trains, we were then in an enclosed environment. Yet here, as there, we were not at all affected by the winds. As a matter of fact, this proved an infinitely smoother ride than when travelling on the conventional trains.

There weren’t any of the chattering minds, for one, as experienced when on the conventional trains. So deeply internalised was this place that there was nothing but Zen order. No wonder Merlin so loved Johann Sebastian Bach’s artistry because it was so wonderfully suited to the ambience of this place.

*It was as though, this place was the grove to which he gravitated between lives. It gave him the sense of serenity, of order and of peace, which was so readily discerned to the core of his being. At such times, Merlin would become lost – grow intimate and private with his very spirit – for listening to Glenn Gould’s mastery of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Merlin’s intellect, at such times, would become expansive. Each time, his spirit and intellect were sensed, he would be spatially experienced. Quite simply, for experiencing him at such times, there is no other way to articulate how one would feel. END.

All around us were wonderful, rolling green plains situated in a vast expansive vista. Everything was so thrillingly filled with life. For travelling at such intense speeds, we were left in a heightened state of sensitivity – or at least I definitely was. Perhaps, this was par for the course with Merlin and his kindred spirits. I, on the other hand, found this so new and exciting for my dreamer self. Everything zinged with more abundant negative ions, at concentrations that were more pronounced, than in the waking state.

This dimension was a harmonious mélange of pure thought and pure emotion. It was so invigorating and completely centring. Pure emotion, minus the trappings of ego, it gave the sense of Merlin and his kindred spirits’ transcendent nature. There was an audible drone discerned here, to our splicing progress through space, which seemed as if their combined breaths held in a sustained meditative hum. Truly serene a spiritually uplifting experience this was. How transcendent they each were, too.

This sound was so intense and pure that it can best be described as being audible light. The sensations and emotions I experienced were so thrilling that I couldn’t believe such intensity of joy could be experienced whilst incarnate. At that moment, the experience was heightened when Merlin and I both directly looked into each other’s eyes. In that moment of connectivity, mere words could never do justice to what I experienced. We were truly intimate soul-to-soul.

Looking off to his right, impregnating me with this most beauteous gift, Merlin oceanically poured his very soul into me. This was the most sublime postcard yet, that he had sent across the seas of time, from his journey up ahead. I couldn’t ever have imagined that any gift could be so profound, beautiful and cherished. Looking to the left, I had done so as he had telepathically entered my mind, saying a warm and intimately familiar hello.

Slipping into my moist, expanded intellect, I felt the familiar purr of Merlin’s soul as he edged closer and squinged up next to me soul-to-soul. How many nights had we gotten this close when he was incarnate… Yet none of that – physical intimacy – could have compared to the exquisite ticklish touch of his soul deep within me. This was such a massiveness of spirit that I experienced. I couldn’t believe that I was feeling the intensity of sensations and insights as I was experiencing. This was such a massive experience that to look at Merlin the giddy ecstasy that I felt caused me to whiteout.

This had been fostered, too, by the enriching stimuli that bombarded my totality as the levitating slabs sped on. The feel of experiencing nature, as we so rapidly sped by, only made the vibrations of everything that much more pronounced. As I moved without moving, my body quivered throughout. Looking to my left into the most intimate pair of eyes that I have known thus far in this lifetime, I thrillingly flew whilst seated there in lotus position. Merlin’s eyes being the pair that has been more intimate than any other… This moment of Zen bliss caused me to quickly draw on a sharp breath.

As though I were nodding off, my body had bobbed a tad. With that I lucidly awoke – my body quivered as I remained in bed on my back looking up into and beyond the off-white ceiling. Merlin alas quite cleverly had hypnotised me, back into wakefulness, with one sensual look.

By far, those dreams were among the most truly uplifting dreams of this incarnation. There is not a year that passes since then that I don’t recall these dreams with the greatest fondness and humility. So, alas, dream your dreams of wonder – for having been so richly inspired by mine. Sweet dreams, you!

________________________________________________________________________________

Always, I Will Remember & Celebrate!

18.11.201707.12.2024 Arvin da Brgha1 Comment

Merlin 21/7/1947<O>18/11/1989

Always I will remember and celebrate the greatest explosion of light, love, joy and intellect encountered in many lifetimes. The One. The Man. The Shaman. The Lover.

Merlin, I love you… and of this there can never be any doubt.

These memoirs are the story of Merlin and I as mandated by Merlin within days of his passing 28 years ago, this day. The first two of six volumes are now available, along with their accompanying Michael Overleaves Appendices. Available everywhere books are online.. get yours and as ever, thanks so much for your support!

______________________________________________________________________________________

In Celebration of Merlin!

19.11.201607.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

Earlier this week, in celebration of the anniversary today of Merlin’s passing, I attended two performances of the Berliner Philharmoniker at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. On Tuesday evening, the mixed programme concluded with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, E Minor – a truly glorious experience. Moreover, it was good to have experienced Sir Simon Rattle at the helm of an orchestral performance.

__________

The following night, this past Wednesday, November 16, 2016, I returned to Roy Thomson Hall for night two of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s tour of performances. Always a favourite, the mixed programme concluded with Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. D Major, Op 73. In no way was Brahms’ symphony comparable to Mahler’s symphony of the night before, nonetheless, it was a rousing way to have finished off the week of celebration which began at the weekend prior with a quick trip to Montréal.

I went there for two reasons, firstly to fortify my body, spirit and mind at the glorious Spa Ovarium: www.ovariumspa.com – as ever the experience was transcendent. Previously, I had spent the morning into afternoon at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal on rue Sherbrooke to take in the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition. The show was spectacular.

Back in early 1983 whilst Merlin was in Toronto working with Jim Henson on Fraggle Rock, I was staying at the Trocadero Loft which Merlin had sublet whilst the dynamic duo who headed Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo were on tour. Most evenings, Attila Isaksen would drop by and we would hang out, have great sex, watch TV or crawl about Chelsea and get up to no end of trouble. Merlin had sublet the loft which sat across the street from the block long grand building at 684 Sixth Avenue between 20^th and 21^st Streets West. The floor above was owned by a Gay professional couple who were heavily into S&M. One evening after we had been out crawling the clubs – Attila who had transitioned from a life as a dancer was now painting and showing in galleries in Soho and elsewhere – we came home with someone that he had picked up.

That someone turned out to have been Robert Mapplethorpe who proved a very intense bottom and a very memorable fuck. He was intense and as equally ravenous a bottom as was Attila. Attila was acquainted with him through the art world and picked him up at the bar we were hanging out in a couple of blocks south of my place at the Trockadero loft late one Thursday evening. We came back to the loft and they smoked ganja, a cigar, did a ton of poppers which I never found remotely appealing, then cigarettes after our wild fuck. I do though recall Robert’s arse being a rather loose affair. I might also add as both he and Attila took turns bottoming for me that he was an especially good kisser.

I quite enjoyed the show and Montréal was a great blast. Wonderful it was to have been there and seen so many Blacks as here in Toronto Blacks seem to have been eradicated, marginalised, replaced by the White tribe’s buffer races – those who did so nicely for themselves and saw nothing remotely wrong with Apartheid whilst it profited them – who in this town are now the darlings of obsessive Canadians with Black culture as their latest agendum is pushing that most absurd notion, Indo-Jazz. You know if you are never going to respect Blacks, you certainly can’t be hogging the culture as you so hideously do.

This brings me to the matter of the recent American elections; I am so glad that Donald Trump was elected because he will be the shot of adrenalin that Black Americans have so sorely needed. I would not be the least bit surprised if President Trump does not turn around and have President Obama arrested and imprisoned for being an alien, not an American but of foreign birth and a Muslim to boot.

Regardless what happens, the election of President Barack H. Obama has deftly illustrated that we Blacks are not paranoid, not sensitive; racism is real and the White tribal obsession with hating Blacks is at feverish mass extinction levels. Truly phenomenal it has been to watch these past 8 years evolve. Amazingly, it is uncanny how some Whites can fabricate lies and for hatefully perpetuating lies as they did with President Obama, these lies soon become accepted as gospel truth.

Alas, people always get what they deserve and Trump with his wall, I rather suspect, will prove more of a monster than far too many Whites and non-Blacks perceived President Obama to have been. Racially predatory grudge of Blacks is truly the biggest cancer on human civilisation as it is not exclusively the obsession of Whites. The entire election boiled down to the perpetuation of the five deadly isms being allow to riotously flower: lookism, ageism, classism, racism and sexism.

Speaking of racially predatory behaviour, one of the dreams herein involved Damita Soud with whom I worked in the early 90s. She was the most vile and hideous displacement of the human spirit; frankly, I knew her then because coming off my relationship with Merlin many were the persons like Damita whom I had encountered in the showbiz crowd.

I do believe that Damita served to have reminded me and to have prompted me to have put persons like this well behind me where they damn well belong. Also, as it is the anniversary of Merlin’s passing, there was a beautiful dream with a delightful Eurasian boy in London, England whom I assumed was my task companion Merlin reincarnated. Of course, since this dream which was dreamt in early-August, 1991, Merlin has reincarnated in December, 2006 and is female in Holland.

Also since that dream, my essence twin, whom I never met during this lifetime, was reborn in the mid-to-late 1990s into Germany is of Japanese/German ethnicity and will likely be a writer in this lifetime. The Eurasian in the dream was likely an astral plane encounter with my essence twin as my reincarnated essence twin is not only Eurasian but is also male in this lifetime.

Thanks so much for your continued patronage and ever, I implore you, always remember to push off and start flying because you’ve earned it. Sweet dreams as ever.

________________________________

Whilst focussed in this the first dream, I got aboard a bus and intuitively knew that I was in London, England. I headed somewhere of which I am not certain. Racily, I had jumped onto the bus whilst it was travelling and it was quite fun. The double-decker London bus was painted violet. I went to one of the circuses. Getting there, I got off and began walking behind a teenaged punk rocker. She had her hairdo done with it sticking out in clumps that were pointy. She was blonde but it had spots on it like a leopard’s and it was definitely not a wig.

Her hair stuck out like a porcupine’s quills and was very long like about eight inches each. The spikes of hair conically came in to a fine point. She wore a black mini, black stockings and black Bull Dog boots. She had fat, flat non-extant calves. She wore a cream-coloured merino which had no sleeves. She was quite long-limbed; both her legs and arms were beautifully proportioned. I admiringly walked after her as she had a very strong forceful stride. People were conservatively looking at her; they were being judgmental of her.

I quite enjoyed her energies as I walked after her. She was a true Demolition Man. The bus that I was on was getting ready to take off again. There was one girl who had come out of a building with some long pieces of wood and steel rods. The building from whence she came clearly was being repaired. I thought to hustle back to get aboard the bus; as I did so, other people were doing the same thing but through the rear doors. We were soon enough travelling again. As we went past, I noticed an Oriental man outside the bus who was asking me how to get somewhere.

He was tall, very handsome and very erudite. He had two children one on either side of him. The boy on his left was Oriental but he was mixed; he was Eurasian with freckles and had natural brown hues to his hair. I assumed that his White parent was the mother from the fairness of his complexion. Goodness, was this boy incredibly handsome? I never did see his eyes because I was on the bus as it was passing them on the street. Afterwards, when I had gotten off the bus, I had seen them again. However, once again, he had never made eye contact with me.

His lids were deliberately inclined downwards because he knew that I knew who he was and wanted to verify it by seeing his eyes. I can bet you anything that these would have been Merlin’s, if he had once looked up at mine. Regardless, his little shy act, I knew those energies; they were more familiar than any energies that I had ever reincarnationally encountered. The other boy to the man’s right was purely Oriental and older than the reincarnated Merlin. Goodness, it was so very wonderful to have encountered their energies. As they walked on a female Londoner had given them directions and had long black hair. She was a very, very handsome woman with a very spiritually noble quality to her; this woman could even have been the Eurasian son’s mother. She had directed them to this museum to which they were trying to get.

_________________________________

Antinous Brilman and I were alone, in what proved the third dream, intimate and talking. We were talking about all these trees that were around us. For some strange reason, there were all these London Plane trees which were diseased. They were all dying out as a genus. I was stunned really and could not think of any disease that they could possibly have. “They were quite healthy and alive in both Paris and London, when I visited,” that had been a comment that I made. I could not quite conceive of them going extinct; this, though, certainly seemed to have been the case here in this dream. At the time, it was quite sunny out and the trees that were healthy were quite nice; those trees zinged with great vitality.

They beautifully reflected the light off their leaves. Being in their presence was rather nice and uplifting.

___________________________________

Here, in the sixth dream, there was a Black woman singing and boy she had a voice on her. She had a beautiful, beautiful voice; hers was a very soulful voice. She was an up and coming singer, like Oleta Adams^†, but it was not Oleta. She came and stood by a microphone that was from the 1930s; the mic was very Deco. In particular, the mic is that one that is called a zephyr or a zeppelin – zephyr is correct. She sang away with her beautiful African head tied up in a turban. When she sang, she was in a medium that was bluish and slow-moving; in point of fact, the medium was not unlike water. When she swayed her arms about her, the aqueous medium visibly also swirled about her.

This woman opened her mouth and hit some high notes that were electrifyingly astral. I shouted, “You go girl. Go ‘head! Sing it!” I truly was ecstatic. What she could do with this otherworldly music quite simply was incredible. In that sense, it was not unlike a music video; except, it was as if holographic to the extent that one was inside the experience. In the true sense, it was a virtual reality that I was experienced.

How she appeared was interesting because it was as though simultaneously otherworldly. I had been singing and there had been these Whites about; naturally, they began throwing shade, “Yeah, yeah, great voice but not the look.” “Oh shut up and sit down,” these were the sorts of crass remarks that they were making.

*It is always amazing to me how, for being so racially obsessed with Blacks, Whites will feel themselves possessed of some absurd right – which certainly does not exist – to go opening their fucking hideous-spirited mouths and spewing their venomous hatefulness in Blacks’ direction. END.

I was totally impervious of their bullshit because it was nothing more than small-minded jealousy. I saw these people who were coming and going. As well, there were these young Whites who were as if models or model wannabes. There was a very young-souled approach to their energies. In any event, there was a party going on across the street and goodness, it was jumping. There were a ton of people queued to get in. I was there singing whilst playing a piano when my voice started carrying to the party across the street. I was technically soaring very high.

Then everyone began clapping in unison. Antinous was with me and getting ready to go across the street to check out the party. Though, he had no invitation that did not deter him. We were going to go crash it but it seemed very much so to be a wedding party. The party was quite nice and the energies were riotously on. Here, the atmosphere was great; it was wonderful. This was the point that the young Black singer had appeared. She was short and stouter than Oleta Adams.

She was very dark-skinned with very rich teeth. She had very large teeth that were compacted just like Oleta Adams’. Perhaps, it was Ms. Adams. I do not, though, suspect that it was her. When she sang, she could hold a note whilst adding cadence and timbre to it that was not humanly possible; at least this was only possible on this side of the waking state. She quite moved me because as she sang, the water appeared and as if created and exuded by her. Pretty much, it was as though one were seeing her aura as it gushed outwards. One was being tuned into her vibration; except, this was an aura that was clearly aqueous and simultaneously filled with light.

Her unusual aura was heavy gelatinous water. As she made the notes go higher, the water kept on changing. Initially, the aqueous aura started out being light blue but it then shifted to a Kelly green. Also, as the notes got higher, it became a yellowish-orange whilst transforming into red. Below her at her feet, the water was still swirling with rich bubbles of varying sizes that rose up and above her head. She slowly turned around on herself; this was so that she could have affected even greater acoustic depth. My goodness, it is hard to relate here how incredibly elevated this music was. I was greatly inspired by it.

________________________________

I was upstairs in the kitchen, in what proved the eight dream, of an apartment with Damita Soud. We were preparing a meal and washing some dishes. In any event, she was talking and I just did not like her energies and did not want to be with her at all. I then heard Whoopi cry out and I went running to look out the second floor window. She was on her back and being gnawed in her neck area by another cat that reminded of Damita’s cat Spooky; Spooky, of course, is a little black cat which for being Damita’s would have a name like that. This so mirrored the kind of unhealthy relationship that knowing this woman has developed into. This dream interlude so reflected the constant non-too-veiled negativity from Damita towards me; it is an approach that I do not in any way appreciate. I shrieked out the window at them whilst calling out to Whoopi truly horrified, “Whoopi use your hind legs and beat her up… beat her off you.

“Fight back, fight back!” I could not get down because, somehow, I had this tether which was an orange-coloured coil. The coil was wrapped around my waist. More to the point, this coil was coming away from my umbilical area. Furthermore, it was so hard to break the bonds to and from this thing. Such an incredible graphic metaphor this dream’s every symbol. I was most upset really. I decided that this just could not go on for very much longer.

Somehow, Whoopi had gotten up and ran away towards an opening in the backyard’s fence; nonetheless, the cat was still on her. I kept on yelling at Whoopi to fight back. If only there was something that I could pick up at hand and throw out the window to strike Spooky. Needless to say, throughout all this Damita remained perfectly mute. Clearly, the animals, our animas, were engaged thanks to Damita’s decidedly negative focussed will.

*Damita is the perfect White female racial predator. She is a so hideously perpetually racist; she is perpetually uttering some sotto voce racist remark. These White racial predators forever live their every day consumed with racially predatory thoughts on which they do not fail to act, truth be told, towards and on Blacks. END.

I got this heavy thing but did not want to use it. Obviously, it was quite likely to end up striking Whoopi in the process. As it was, she was in enough shock. Then and there, I decided that the time had long passed for me to put an end to knowing Damita. Moreover, it personally was too callous a reminder of knowing Elektra Munk-Ejoohoè’s dysfunctional pernicious energies. This was just not a healthy relationship and I did not want to know this person at all. Indeed, it was high time that I put an end to knowing her.

_______________________________________

I was in this place, whilst focussed in the ninth dream, where there was an airplane on an airfield. I reminded me of the Recreations Grounds in Sandy Point, St. Kitts for being focussed in this dream. The plane was parked in front of the pavilion. These planes could come in and land on a field as small as the Recreation Grounds without having to do much taxiing. Much like a Harrier jet, they had the ability to vertically land and take off. However, this was a passenger jetliner. Its colour schemata were like that presently of Canadian Airlines international: silver and blue. However, it could just as easily have been a British airways jetliner.

The bodies of the jets were sleek and black and this airplane was one of the new Boeing 737-300 series. Then again, it may not have been because I was looking at the single engine on the tail like a DC-10 or a Boeing 727. Much like a Concorde, the jet was also unusually elevated off the ground. Unusually, it had large windows like a Greyhound coach bus does; its windows were not the standard singular oval-shaped ones. So, on looking inside each window, you would see three, sometimes four window seats at a time. This jet had only two such windows and then you got to the tail of the craft. There was a door by the tail and one just back of the cockpit. So, it was a very small plane which had six to eight rows of seats.

There was a small window that did cover two seats in between the two larger windows. A much wider-bodied plane than a Boeing 757, it also was elevated off the ground much like the Boeing 757. I could not, though, quite figure out what was going down. I wondered what exactly could this all mean? Soon enough, I saw airplanes passing in the sky whilst coming into land. They descended very slowly, away from the terminal, then on landing slowly taxied up to their designated gate. There were persons on the plane waiting who had not gotten off because this stop was not their destination. Some had, of course, gotten off.

I then noticed that there was a large road; this road was close to where the sea is in Sandy Point, St. Kitts. There were all these beautiful Mercedes-Benzes which were coming into the airport. One of them was very large, heavy-looking and black and in it rode a woman. There was so much window space to the car that it seemed more like a rather stately Bentley. She was East Indian and wore shades and much reminded me of Benazir Bhutto^†. She was very proud, sitting very straight-backed and had a strong, prominent nose. Her head was covered in a fine scarf which, of course, was part of her saree. A white saree it had horizontal blue stripes.

She was immensely regal-looking. As she got from the car, I kept looking at her from the area in which I waited; I was being very observant of her actions. There were tons of East Indians about. This locale was close to a shoreline. The persons here were as if the untouchables – the lower caste people. They were just lying there and many were coupled off. There was a lone man lying there who was wrapped in his sleeping gear which presently covered his head. He was close to the plane on the tarmac.

Up approached the woman to the man and bent down to him. She was very animated greeting him, “Oh I’m so happy to see you.” They were kissing and she was very genuinely affectionate towards him. He was a wise old creature. I could not, though, figure out why she was with such a lower caste person; it just did not make sense. She was, definitely, the cardinal member of their relationship. He was very soft-spoken. The couple next to them began making love because this was their life; they had no home and privacy was not a luxury they even fantasised about.

They were kissing very deeply then he took out his cock and pushed it inside her wet and hungry pussy. Quite rapidly they made love; it was a very hungry, rushed affair. They were on their sides and quite tightly embraced. Then when it was his turn to enter this woman, who was a great deal like Benazir Bhutto and still wore her shades throughout their tryst, he kept on masturbating before entering her. She was quite hungry for his cock which was very unusually long and soft-looking though hard. Interestingly enough, his cock had tapered to a pencil-like head. There were about six or eight couples and all these men had the same classical Dravidian long slender schlong. All of them on awakening got right down to the business of making love.

He entered her but was not going in all the way. She was getting impatient with him because of his delaying tactics. This then triggered what was an obvious recurrent argument between them. Seems that he had studied to be a doctor but was not practicing. He did not want to; he wanted only to live next to nature. He was quite disenfranchised with civilisation. He said that he had no desire to get caught up in Maya… with materialism. She fervently argued nonetheless, saying, “But you have to be strong.

“If you are going to be my partner and be in my life, you’ll just have to do better than this.” They were having this sort of argument. Basically, he could not participate in the game because he was frankly too old a soul; he just did not find the rat race remotely interesting. Materialism had no appeal for him. Though it was clear that the ardent sensualist and lover did so love her, and passionately too, he had no desire to play at the game. So, at that, I decided to move along and leave them there on the shore. Here in this place, it was very futuristic. Even though it seemed in parts the Indian Subcontinent and there was still the abject poverty of the caste system, it was as if set in the late 22^nd to early 23^rd centuries.

_________________________________________

In early-August, 1991, I awoke from these dreams at my Queen Street East, Beaches apartment and was rather inspired. After having audiocassette-recorded the dreams with a loudly purring Whoopi next to me in bed, I got about the task of letting her outside to play. I then got about the business of flowering my life with music to begin in earnest the waking state part of my life. Thus it was that I began playing Oleta Adams’ 1990 studio album, Circle of One. Naturally, the choice song that day was her hit single, Get Here, which was an especial favourite of Penina da Braga’s. Standing in the middle of my living room, I kept my lids shut and swirled my arms about reminiscent of Ms. Adams’ shamanic turn as she weaved her beautiful magic in the dreams just had.

___________________________________________

Photo Credit: Merlin 1970s in Montréal

Programmes Nov 15 & 16 2016 Berliner Philharmoniker at Roy Thomson Hall

Spa Ovarium at Beaubien & St. Denis in Montréal

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal

Paloma Picasso Gelatin Silver Print 1980 Robert Mapplethorpe

Ken Moody & Robert Sherman 1984 Robert Mapplethorpe

Louise Nevelson Gelatin Silver Print 1990 Robert Mapplethorpe

Gong 96 Acrylic on Canvas 1966 Claude Tousignant

Piccadilly Circus, London, England

London Plane Trees in Paris, France

Oleta Adams – singer

Black cat domesticated short hair

Headscarf and sareed Indian beauty.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Merlin.

17.11.201404.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

Merlin.

July 21, 1947 <O> November 18, 1989

_________________________________________________

I could never have imagined surviving Merlin by 25 years. More than that, I could never have fathomed how immensely enriched I would grow for having known and loved Merlin. Certainly, I would never have imagined that our relationship would continue, merely otherly focussed, beyond his passing. However, as many dreams herein have attested that we most definitely did and have.

I offer the links to three dreams had after Merlin’s passing – all of which are to be found in the ‘Dreams of Merlin’ category. The first dream occurred as Merlin passed, the other two dreams three and four years after his passing. Do enjoy and I trust that for your own loved ones, these dreams will inspire you to remain open and focussed on being attuned and ever in love with loved ones when they transition to merely being at a different vibration as astral plane habitués.

Incidentally, Merlin was reincarnated on December 2, 2006 as a first level old scholar in an old soul northern European country’s capital city. Merlin’s soul has chosen in this lifetime to be female and yes, I have dreamt of this beautiful-eyed young woman. Love ever endures.

These dreams, without a doubt, attest to Merlin and I having shared a most remarkable love affair. All is choice. Sweet dreams and love you and your loved ones even more!

________________________________

Photo: Merlin 1977 in Montréal.

__________________________________________________________________________

Astral Plane Life Review.

10.03.201323.10.2024 Arvin da Brgha3 Comments

As if a testament to the bucolic splendour that we shared, this next dream occurred on Thursday, January 13, 1994. At the time, the Moon transited Aquarius and my ninth house. There were so many of our personal truths being validated in this dream.

Here in this quiet moment, Merlin and I found each other. Magically, we were able to squinge up and become lost in intimacy soul-to-soul.

Certainly being thus engaged with another human being, always afforded one the ability to escape the ubiquitous dreck of racial animus, which is never far off when one happens to be a Black male.

So very good it was to have found, from within the dreamtime, the magus Merlin. Though he seemed in that initial dream – in 1978 – to be of points unknown, Merlin would prove my elfin-dream magus extraordinaire.

_____________________________________

I found myself in a house at night time. Who should I be there with me but Merlin? On seeing each other we lit up; we both greeted the other quite warmly.

He looked up at me and winked, at which point, I went and joined him as he sat on a large sofa-bed. Sublime… A very comfortable seat it was, too.

This was a beautifully crowded home with lots of furniture everywhere. This was also a work area. I had been busily writing at the time.

On joining him – he had called me over – I went over and cuddled up in his arms. Merlin’s arms were protectively wrapped about my enraptured body.

Then Merlin did the most sensual thing, he began kissing me in my left ear. Instantaneously his wet, soft, warm tongue made quivering labia of my lobe. I can’t now recall having experienced such quiet intimacy in ages.

In what was so obviously a study, all about the room were shelves crammed with books, books and more books. In the foreground was a large writing desk. There, I had been doing a great deal of research pouring through several books.

Pulling away, I had looked directly in the eyes at him and was so very aware that this was a dream with the dream magus and said,

“Merlin, I’m so glad that we had that time together – those seven years together…”

This was one of the most real and intense dreams that I have ever had, to date, in this lifetime. Until having this dream encounter with Merlin, I would have argued that this degree of realism and intensity of focus in the dreamtime were not possible.

Clearly, this was a very potent astral plane encounter between Merlin and me at the level of soul. This is also the one dream, since Merlin’s passing, in which both he and I have been so directly communicative on several levels.

Never before had we done so much speaking, one to the other, by actually using words. We were deeply conversational. Our eye contact, as well, was more intense and unwavering than before it has ever been.

As a matter of fact, I would even go so far as to say that our eye contact, during this rather lucid dream, was more intense and sustained than at any point whilst he was incarnate. It was truly sublime.

Though we did not have sex – which rarely we ever did in the waking state – there was a great deal of physical intimacy between us. Goodness, I could smell the warm familiarity of Merlin, as though he had just returned from a theatre gig that had kept us apart by some six or more weeks.

Rather than jeans, Merlin wore a white pair of cotton slacks. His favourite maroon-coloured pullover, he wore. To feel the familiarity of his sexy elfin body was more poetic than had we been together in the waking state.

As Merlin made love to my left ear, the feel of his beard was more ticklishly orgasmic than if I were female-sexed and he were deep inside my warm, moist, surrendered depths – so utterly sublime was our intimacy here.

As he held me, lovingly rubbing my body, I told him over and over how very beautiful it was to have known him,

“I’m so glad that we had those seven years together…” I repeated.

“…We did so much… accomplished so much together…”

“Oh, I know my darling. I know…” said Merlin hugging me even more tightly as he whispered almost absently deep into me,

“…And you don’t realise how much it is…”

“Of course, I know. It really does do a great deal of work, for all time. I mean, had we not had it and gone through what you did at the end with me having abandoned you, everything would have turned out so differently…”

“Oh I know, my dear. And don’t you worry. Everything is going to turn out right in the end. Don’t worry. I know that…”

Merlin was very reassuring, soothing, calming and confident. After we rested a while, I said to him in passing,

“You know, I really ought to get up and get back to my work here…”

“No, no, no. You mean you’re still into all that clap-trap…”

I couldn’t believe what he had just said and became convulsive with laughter, all the while stomping my feet, my hands lazily clapping for joy. He then began tickling me.

Merlin was so very playful, at which point, he allowed me to recover and I said to him,

“You know Merlin, it’s only the other day that I was thinking to myself that I’ve almost forgotten so many of the little things that you used to say…”

I told him that, in the waking state, I had been reading through some notes and my diaries from the time of his illness and death. I was amazed at what a clear sketch they painted of his idiosyncrasies.

Now so many years later, I had completely forgotten many of these gems but for the fact that they exist as notes, here and there, recorded at the time.

He told me that he knew what I meant but then dismissed it all as not being the important thing, adding,

“…however, you still have the essence though…”

“Yet it’s so important. All those little things keep the portrait in focus. Until you just said that, and I was reminded of how teasing and playful you were, I’d have been totally at a lost to have remembered something like that.

“That you were so teasing and perpetually made fun of my spiritual approach, does bring back how much it used to hurt…”

“Oh I know. However, you know that I was only ever just kidding?”

“Of course, I did, at least now I do but at the time it was part of the fun and rivalry of the dynamic. It was so good what we had…”

“Yes, I know…” He absently said this as if an afterthought to himself.

With that, we fell silent whilst I collapsed more liquidly into his arms. There was nothing but stillness of the greatest order. There was nothing but intimacy as we touched soul-to-soul.

From those rare moments, I now have no recall of what transpired afterwards between us. I have no idea to where the dream matured from that point.

For, at the time, I was ecstatic, enraptured, in love. Truth be told, I was flying without moving. Truly no poetry more sublime could our souls have woven than the beauty which was this dream.

____________________________

Photo: Stately study.

______________________________________________________________________

Ghosts of Future-Past.

10.03.201323.10.2024 Arvin da Brgha1 Comment

I found myself hovering over Times Square. I was intently looking at a hotel in Times Square – the one that has the large oxidised globe on it. I thought – this may be the Drake Hotel.

The building, at its upper storeys, had aspects of a pyramid or a ziggurat to it. This was one of those monolithic sandstone buildings that were built in the 1930s – a decade when there was a real architectural renaissance in Manhattan.

It had a very large base that culminated in a stepped formation near the top. The building sat on the west side of Eight Avenue, if I correctly remember.

Perhaps, it is not even a hotel – I thought, maybe, it is the headquarters for one of the city’s newspapers – with the globe at its zenith. So, perhaps, it formerly housed or still does The New York Times. After all, it is in Times Square – hence the name of the square.

After having hovered for awhile, I began to move very slowly; I was high up – several storeys high up. I watched as the ubiquitous yellow vehicles of the city’s taxi fleet, way below, negotiated the congested traffic. I was able to see beyond the usual as well.

I saw Carl Leroiderien† going to pick up tickets for a Broadway show. He was walking past the stage door; he was going towards the front of house.

There was something about this man which I found rather sagely. Soon, he passed out of view; he went off to see someone. He stood out like a sore thumb.

I knew well enough not to come down. Carl has never had any interest in me, save to be aggressive and socially hostile, so why bother? He was off to be in his element because basking in the glow of the klieg lights was what his soul craved at the moment.

However, when Carl was leaving his Chelsea apartment, I saw him talking to Merlin. I still hovered in the air outside a front window that faced Carl’s fire-escape.

“No, no. I sent those manuscripts for you and you can just go over them,” he was saying to Merlin as he returned some of Merlin’s writings.

Carl, arrogant prick that he is, was insensitively dismissing Merlin’s writing by returning it. Of course, he did so under the guise of being too occupied to read the manuscripts.

I could tell from Merlin’s tone that he was really hurt for having his creativity dismissed. Merlin felt rejected. Carl was a disingenuous schmuck.

Carl’s offhandedness with Merlin was obnoxious. Clearly, he did not think that Merlin’s writing was worth his time but – platinum-tongued palaverist that he is – he also did not give an opinion of what he thought.

Carl had cleverly placed the writing into a small trunk, which had languished in the Bourbon Street basement of his tiny cottage, abandoned there for over a decade. The manuscripts were water-damaged.

In presenting Merlin with the trunk, he would minimise the rejection by making it look like he had been intent on returning the trunk and its damaged contents. The snub was not lost on either Merlin or me.

I was, at the time, just down the hall; it was a short distance from where Carl had been talking to Merlin. Wounded as he was, Merlin never did come out from the apartment.

Whilst standing by two apartment doors, I kept watch. People were coming and someone said,

“I think that there is someone by the door; I can just tell…”

Since I did not want Carl or Merlin to know that I was about, I hid in back of both doors to the landing. In that way, I avoided being seen by Carl’s neighbours; I averted the kind of trouble that I did not need.

I then went down the hall. The door on the right was the apartment where Merlin had been. I went to the door and knocked.

On opening the door to answer, Merlin looked totally different. Though the eyes were unmistakably Merlin’s, he was considerably taller.

Merlin was very light-skinned and unmistakably Black. He had off-blond hair that was naturally curly which he wore in a loose, soft Afro hairdo. He was casually dressed.

He pleasantly smiled, on recognising me, though he was wearing a different body. He familiarly, warmly said,

“Come in…”

Oh to hear his voice embrace me. Such sweet, sustained magic!

I entered. It was obvious that he was making one of his spectacular meals. I, almost immediately, noticed that he had bought a cake. It was a wonderful loaf. Obviously, from the look of things, he had spent a great deal of time working on the other dishes.

There was a baked squash dish which was flavoured with a sweet liqueur. A veal loaf was surrounded by a sea of sliced onions. It presently was atop the stove, though, it was supposed to be returned to the oven.

There were marvellous vegetables that were all at various stages of preparation. He stood at a sturdy, wooden-topped, central cutting board table. He was cutting up an assortment of the vegetables.

My mind relaxed, as the pungent aroma of all the different herbs and spices being liberally used proved satiating and filled me up.

It was wonderful to again be in Merlin’s presence. I had the impression that he was Straight or, perhaps, Bisexual.

At the entrance of the apartment, on the left, there was a little alcove. The kitchen began there but it also opened up into a larger room. This actually was part of the living room; it was L-shaped and hugged the kitchen area.

There, in the apartment, was a young woman with Merlin. There was also a woman who seemed infirmed; she was lying on a cot. She was close to the kitchen area where Merlin was. They kept each other company whilst Merlin chopped up the vegetables.

Merlin and I were affectionate but there wasn’t any physicality to it. We did not hug each other when the door opened even though we recognised the revealing, shockingly displacing sight of each other.

Merlin had immediately recognised my eyes, on opening the door, just as I had his. However, there was now a dimensional void between us. Merlin was a ghost from the future for me whilst I was a, vaguely familiar, ghost from the past for him. He was warm towards me.

Merlin was a very decent human being, I must say.

He was, now, easily 6 feet 3 inches tall. Though not mesomorphic, he was also not the classic ectomorph that he had been in his immediate past life.

He was angular but not in the same way as I remembered him. Merlin here did not wear glasses. His eyes were large and even more soulful than they had been in his last incarnation.

It was so beautiful to see him.

The seasoning was so… spot-on. It actually made my mouth water.

The woman then asked him, from the cot where she reclined, if he had put onions with the veal loaf. When he said that he had, she told him that this was not right.

“Let me show you how to do the onion rings,” she called to him in a familiar, intimate tone.

Merlin then asked me to give him a hand and help him carry the things to her, just inside the larger room, on the cot. I helped him get the veal loaf onto a large tray with some other things. For whatever reason, at the last minute, I got some bananas and also put them on the tray.

We then came out, into the other room, where the younger woman was. She seemed like a nurse or a caretaker for the older woman. She was sitting there very silently observing us.

The older infirmed woman was very detailed with her directions for the preparation of the dishes and the garnishes. Some party umbrella garnishes, which are often used to decorate foods and cocktails, were also on the tray with the food.

Merlin had sliced the bananas – actually, they were plantains. The older woman had her arms clasped at her chest like an Egyptian mummy’s. Merlin then bound her body with blue-striped gauze. The blue stripes were like those of the Israeli flag.

She laid there immobile with her head raised on a cushion which had been strategically placed beneath the cot’s mattress. She looked at Merlin and wearily said,

“Please, will you give me my last rites? I want to hear you say that prayer.”

At that, Merlin began saying the Lord’s Prayer except that it was not at all the traditional Christian prayer of Christ. Instead, this prayer seemed to hearken back to Egyptian times. When he was finished the prayer, she uttered a soulful breath; it was the equivalent of Amen.

“Avuum…”

It is simply impossible to convey the sound she made. It sounded like a three-syllable word. Quite simply, the breath went out of her when she intoned the arcane breath. Perhaps, at the end of each lifetime, this was the call the soul made when exiting the body.

Together, Merlin and I had said the word with her but not as she had soulfully done. It was the chant of the dying which only a departing soul, accepting of the inevitable, could properly invoke.

When Merlin and I said it, in my mind’s eye, I instantaneously saw the word written out in bold letters of blue light.

Merlin got up and slowly, silently, walked away. I got up after him and thought about the potency of the word. I looked into Merlin’s face and saw that he was no longer the youthful man who had greeted me at the door.

Instead, he truly looked drained as though he had been channelling for too many hours. He was truly exhausted for having performed the rite on her.

Merlin returned to the kitchen area. I followed after him. I began eyeing the cake thinking that it would make a nice snack.

‘Hmmm, doesn’t that look nice,’ I thought, although, it needed to be warmed up.

It was a wonderful, fat lumpy cake with sweets in it – rather pleasing to look at.

“My, my, won’t I be glad to get some of this come dessert time.” I said in a quiet whisper.

On Tuesday, March 24, 1992 as the Moon transited Sagittarius and my seventh house, whilst in dream flight, I projected myself into the future.

Whilst there, I dreamt the preceding dreams which proved the most sublime encounter with Merlin. It was not just a glimpse into the future but proved to be illuminating, inspiring even.

_______________________

Ran into an old dancer friend from eons past… we sat about chewing the fat – and god was there much to chew at… I riotously laughed out loud when he said, “My god who knew you had this rich inner life going down back when I knew you… you just seemed so removed, remote even, from it all…” Indeed, sometimes it seems – at least back then – it is best to just keep quiet and not engage in the Maya. As there are never lies in dreams, it seemed an utter waste of time to bother engaging far too many persons met along the way back there. It was a surprise to me in late teens when I discovered that not everyone dreamt with the same élan as do I. Then again, who wants to be burnt at the stake – at least socially. Too, persons can be so terribly insensitive and quick to judge… Either way, it was good to hang out and meet up with an old friend. Funny though how things turned out for many, ultimately it proved no surprise. Then again who gives a rat’s arse and as Sweet Brown so succinctly stated, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

______________________________

Photo: Merlin in Montréal opening night play he directed at Centaur Theatre, late 1970s.

_________________________________________________________________________

Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul.

Category: Dreams of Task Companion

Autumnal Mood

Ensouled Proboscis Simian Humans

See You Soon… 30 Years On, Merlin’s Magical Departure.

Lesson In Older Soul Lovemaking.

Won’t Take The A Train

Always, I Will Remember & Celebrate!

In Celebration of Merlin!

Merlin.

Astral Plane Life Review.

Ghosts of Future-Past.