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

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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(Detail of oil on canvas by my sister Pandora of Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery where Merlin is buried.)

Suddenly, the thunder of my protesting breath abruptly drew me from sleep.  I sat upright in bed, my arms outstretched and beyond, after having crashed back into my body and no longer astral-projected.  From the foot of the bed both cats – Zora and Whoopi – knowingly, silently looked up.  I was arrested by the frozen horror-struck face staring at me from the mirrored closet doors across the room. 

In the near-darkness of the bedroom, a few rays of early morning light made it past the blood-red, velvet drapes heavily hung at the windows.  Those rays starkly cast light on how horribly desolate my life now was.  Merlin was gone.  His spirit had taken leave from this world.  It was that discernible as my world, my very universe, had experienced a massive vibrational shift. 

I had been abruptly displaced from the astral plane.  I had been lucidly dreaming a dream within a dream.  I was being told so long as Merlin, transitioned from incarnate to astral plane habitué, bade farewell to our magically glorious union on the physical plane.  I was heartened by the peace and knowingness in his transcendent face because I knew that it was a, “See you soon…” parting, for now. 

I knew that there would be dreams aplenty up ahead.  Just as he had pledged, he would magically weave in his indelible promise to me, before departing from the physical plane.  There was such a cold silence, a stinging finality to the moment, as I sat there in bed.  After having looked back at myself, silently waiting, I placed a call to the eighth storey nursing station at Wellesley Hospital. 

I was immediately aware that the tone of the nurses, with whom I was by now long-familiar, had changed.  In very little time, it was official… Merlin had indeed passed.  Truth be told, it was not a surprise; I could sense it on awaking.  He simply was not there.  As always, I had reached out to sense him on awaking – his energies – just blocks away at Wellesley Hospital.  Now, there was nothing. 

Then, as if needing further proof, I thought about Merlin calling each morning.  He would do so, to lovingly say hello and thereby, to lovingly wake me up.  Merlin would then lovingly ask for a call-back, after I had audio-recorded the dreams.  Merlin had, thus far, not called.  Once again, I saw the stillness of my reflection across the room.  I knew then, really knew…  Merlin was gone.  

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

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© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Jessye Norman 15.9.1945 ✟ 30.9.2019

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Tonight my home is awash in the music of Jessye Norman… this brings me inordinate comfort at this time.  Sweet and truly blissful dreams dear ennobled soul.  As I am unable to do little else, owing to being emotionally overwhelmed, I pause here to republish this blog of earlier this year.  So very glad that I was able to attend the Glenn Gould Prize Gala this past February.  

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As I work 7 days a week, I was debating whether or not to attend the Twelfth Glenn Gould Prize Gala at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.  That morning en route home from some errands, I discovered that someone had jumped from a neighbourhood condo.  I got in and realised that there was no more feet-dragging; to hell with being dog-tired.  I got on the phone and called up Lucian Mann-Chomedy and said, “My darling, we are going to the Jessye Norman Gala!”  As ever, always positive, Lucian chimed in, “Oh my, oh yes, how lovely.  Well, I’ll be both honoured and delighted.”  Indeed, life is for living!  

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Merlin and I met Friday, October 1, 1982 in a Hell’s Kitchen Walk-up, the following Monday evening, on his return to Toronto, Merlin called up crying.  The man whom he had spent so much of our first evening together speaking of, had died; Glenn Gould had died.  For the seven years that we were together, Merlin listened to Glenn Gould’s interpretation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations at least thrice weekly.  Indeed, the first gift I purchased Merlin, was a recently released recording of the Goldberg Variations at Christmas 1982: I think that it is safe to say that that gift sealed the deal, I was a keeper for sure.  

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As I had waited until the last minute to get seats, I was sat in Ring 4 rather than the usual Ring 3.  This, alas, was my view of the stage and of course, the butterflies are from the set for Atom Egoyan’s masterful staging of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, which the moment I saw the set, I began chuckling to Lucian on recall of Tracy Dahl’s unsurpassed performance as Despina.  

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As I was too busy trying to throw something together for Instagram, I was heard gasping when it was announced that the head of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Jury this twelfth prize was none other than the actor, Viggo Mortensen, who then walked out onto stage.  He, indeed, who in a few days time will be attending the Governors Ball where he may or may not be holding an Oscar.  

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Out onto the stage arrived the Twelfth Prize Laureate, Jessye Norman.  Truly, it was a shock to the very core to see Madame being ushered out in a wheelchair.   Suddenly, I was reminded of the events of earlier which caused me to rush home and purchase two tickets for the event.  That aside, there was no greater joy than drinking of her soul’s inspiring beauty.  

This beautiful gala was so filled with touchstones for me, none more so than the moment that bass baritone, Ryan Speedo Green was in full song.  When he sang, “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” from Wolfgang A. Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.  

Yes, indeed, this marvellous aria’s orchestration included a harpsichord.  Straight away, I was teary-eyed as memories of the truly eccentric and delightful Milan Newcombe readily surfaced; Milan will ever remain a lover like no other.  

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During the intermission, I ran into two old friends not seen in at least 1.5 decades; we spoke of nothing but our surprise at Ms. Norman’s entrance.  Life really does march full speed ahead.  

After the intermission, it was the announcement of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Progidy Prize with the recipient being none other than, Cécile McLorin-Salvant, the most fabulous Jazz singer on the planet.  Is this not an evening to remember during Black History Month indeed.  

This stunningly unforgettable gala was closed out by the final recitalist being the divinely gifted soprano and Glenn Gould Foundation Prize juror, Sondra Radvanovsky in full song, singing Verdi.  

The gala concluded with Ms. Norman returning to the stage and singing a duet with Cécile McLorin-Salvant.  This was a moving, emotionally intense evening and my life was greatly enriched for having chosen to attend.  The gala was nothing short of magical.  

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As a tribute to this marvellous evening in the theatre, I will include herein two dreams, which were originally audio-cassette-recorded in the 1990s.  Before each deam, one of Glenn Gould, the other Jessye Norman, I will include each individual’s Michael Overleaves.  

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Gould, Glenn Herbert 25/9/32 – 4/10/82, Toronto

This fragment was a sixth level mature artisan in the repression mode, with a goal of growth, an idealist in the moving part of intellectual centre.
He had a Mercury/Saturn body type.

Glenn’s primary chief feature was self-destruction with a secondary of arrogance.

Glenn was third-cast in his cadence and his cadence is fourth in the greater cadence. He is a member of entity four, cadre five, greater cadre 17, pod/node 819.

This fragment has an artisan essence twin who was alive during Glenn’s life but there were no plans to meet. This fragment is still incarnate on the physical plane.

The fragment who was Glenn has a scholar task companion, who was in a previous life, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. They were not incarnate at the same time.

However, the fragment who was Glenn was exerting considerable influence on Carl Philip Emmanuel.

These two fragments had many lives together, once as luthiers, three times as court musicians, nine times as brothers of the cloth, twice as brothers in the flesh, as well as completing several important life monads, including student/mentor and master/slave.

In the immediate past life, the fragment who was Glenn had as his three primary needs: security, communion and exchange. Only the first of these was ever even partially satisfied.

So here we had a warrior-cast artisan who had seriously conflicting overleaves and a primary chief feature of self-destruction. He had a goal of growth but a repression mode which would not allow him to flourish.

He had a need for communion, but was sexually ambivalent and socially inept. Undeniably, he had great talent but took no pleasure from performing in public.

This fragment has a great deal of scholar energy that was used in the immediate past life to enable Glenn Herbert to painstakingly examine and interpret the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

He was very interested in form and structure for all of his adult life. This fragment was, unfortunately, the victim of a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, also for all of his adult life, which worsened considerably during his third and fourth decades.

This fragment did not, as popular wisdom teaches, retire from public life because of any strong beliefs in the recording industry. Glenn Herbert retired from public life because he could no longer bear to be in crowds, even if he was distanced by a proscenium.

Needless to say, this fragment did not complete work on his fourth internal monad.  

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A Glenn Gould

Astral Plane Glenn Gould Recital!

Nothing is more uplifting than finding oneself at a great musical performance on the astral plane.  This dream was about being richly inspired and by Glenn Herbert Gould, no less; it was truly marvellous an adventure for the spirit.

The dream occurred, on Tuesday, October 6, 1992, whilst the Moon transited both Aquarius and my ninth house.

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I am in France where I leisurely browsed through a store; perhaps, it was somewhere in Paris.  It seemed here like at nighttime.  Whilst in one corner of the store, I noticed that there were all these big slabs of cheese in packaged containers.  There was a woman coordinating the display of the cheeses.  Sometimes the cheese was being grated and other times not.  There and then, I decided that I was going to buy one slab of the cheese that was packaged in a rectangular box.

The cheese was about an inch thick and about eight inches long.  The cardboard box that it was in was white and almost like the size of a box of Cream of Wheat.  Surprisingly, the box was rather heavy.  Though not unlike cheddar, it was a dark cheese.  The smell of this cheese was really hard – quite the bite to it.  It had seemingly been opened for too long as parts of it was growing hardened and turning colour.  I knew straight off the bat that I wanted to have some to take home with me.  

So, off I went to purchase the slab that I liked.  Everyone here was, of course, speaking French which I quite so understood and liked.  Interestingly, I too was speaking very competently in French.  It was obvious that I was not too heavily accented as the others were pleasant-enough with me.  

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The second dream had me leaving the store; I then found myself hovering in the air.  Whilst in flight, I went into a building which had a green – oxidised-copper – roof.  It was part of a long set of buildings that had very, very tall stone chimneys.  These were chimneys that were not unlike the ones at the Palais du Louvre.  As a matter of fact, the building was similar to the Canadian Parliament buildings though it was not those buildings.  

This complex was considerably longer.  These were a series of complex buildings.  Here, I was easily thirty storeys up whilst in flight.  I looked down at the complex which at maximum could not have been more than five storeys tall.  After having contemplatively observed the complex for awhile, I began very slowly gliding down through the air.  I intently studied a procession of persons, way below, who were bailing out of very large buses; they were, as a matter of fact, tour buses.  

This was all happening in a courtyard-like area and away from the bustle of the street.  I next noticed some men who appeared; they seemed, in their long, flowing white robes, to be priests.  They were not Arabic or Muslims in caftans; rather, they were definitely Whites.  The buildings here were long on the order of Palais Richelieu in Paris.  When I finally alighted, we had to go through this incredible entrance.  

This led into a wonderful sandstone building; it was very modern with a neo-classical design.  On the order of being imposing, the door to this place was massive.  They seemed to be the doors to a temple.  To get to the entrance, there were many steps which one had to climb.  On entering, off to the right, there was a passage that one could take.  

An aisle led along another passage; it seemed illumined by a skylight.  The priestly men had all entered before me.  They preceded a procession of adherents who had come to partake of some ritual.  I had gone to explore, off to the left, because it was the wing of the building that had reminded me of the Palais du Louvre.  Going there, I wandered about being fascinated by the place.  

Some women were posing for artists in this particular wing.  They wore modern garb but were very exceptionally beautiful.  What was most intriguing about their look was that it was exactly as they would have appeared on the finished canvases.  They were very nubile young women; they had to hold their poses for interminably long periods.  Here several kids kept on going through the place; they were seemingly art students.  

They were all very North American, middle class with their loud, snobbish bourgeois affectations.  Right away, it was obvious that all the muses were still virgins.  Theirs was an innocence that could never be affected.  They were all teenage girls whose bodies were very voluptuous and full.  These were not skinny people at all.  There was one point at which one girl was holding different poses.  Each girl would be painted by from three-to-five artists, at a time.  Thus every pose would be captured from different perspectives.  

At one point, they told her to take a break; they then reverted back to an earlier pose.  This was so that they could return to that work and put some more work into finishing it up.  When she changed the pose, she had also turned some 180 degrees.  This particular model, whom I was studying, wore socks with Oriental-looking sandals.  Inside her socks she kept little items of hers.  Whilst she was making the transition, she simply reached up her foot and pulled up her right leg to reach down into the socks.  

Hers was a pair of blue-coloured socks – pale blue.  To just above the ankles was the extent to which the socks rose.  Looking at her, she took out something from about her ankle which looked like a wafer.  Not the least bit self-conscious, she ate it at once; it seemed like a chocolate wafer which she favoured.  She seemingly needed it to get an energy boost so that she could stay focussed on the tedious work that she did.  After having found it all very interesting, I moved on sufficiently knowledgeable of the goings on here.  Walking along a corridor, I ended up going into a room where everyone was very strange.  

A guy there was a lot like Galen Shim – my very beautiful, Hong Kong-born, Eurasian friend.  He reclined on a bed with his head close to the door.  When I came in, I noticed that he was naked.  When giving him a massage, I began by oiling his body.  It was quite fragrant oil.  Rubbing down his body, I began working on his toes and feet.  Afterwards, I got up to leave but he very silently began coming with me.  So out we went and joined the procession of persons; among them this time were several kids.  Mostly, they were teenagers – amongst whom I did not want to be.  

Galen or the guy who seemed like him, here the guy was not wearing glasses as before nor would Galen for that matter, and I kept walking through the place.  Pretty soon, after we had left the noisy kids, we started hearing the most beautiful music.  This was one of the rare times that I found the music of the pipe organ to be beautiful.  Within the complex, we happened on this wonderful cathedral inside which were most of the people from the procession.  On entering the structure, it seemed more like a concert hall.  We soon learnt that the hall was specifically built so that only Johannes Sebastian Bach’s music could be played there.  

Never before had I heard classical music sound so beautiful.  We stood there transfixed whilst listening together.  Who then should I notice way at the front of the hall, at the pipe organ that sat high on the dais-like stage, but Glenn Gould.  I could see his right profile as if in close-up.  My god, this was rapture and then some.  He was playing with such rapt abandon that I steadied myself and whispered more to myself than to Galen, “My god, what an incredible dream to be having…”  

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There seemed to be a skylight on the side of the high-ceilinged nave.  Instead of there being stained glass windows, windows for that matter, there was only intense light raining down through what seemed to be a skylight system.  The centre of the halved skylight was a wonderful neoclassical, oxidised, copper-looking, greenish flying buttress.  Here the look, though modern, was more in the style of Islamic mosques or even Moorish architecture rather than the classic Gothic signatures.  

A series of the most intricate and complex circles intertwined, like some riotous jungle vine, in the cathedral-like, concert hall’s stonework.  Breathtakingly beautiful it was.  I stood there, just inside the entrance to the hall, on the left of the wide aisle.  This was a very wide-bodied structure.  As you progressed down the aisle, there were different levels where one could go up and sit.  These were either on the right or left.  The central aisle was covered by the most beautifully designed red carpet.  

This place was considerably wider than Notre Dame Cathedral.  Unlike the Parisian Gothic structure, it was not a darkened affair.  Here it was very intensely bright out.  The light coming in on the right and left side of the flying buttress-like, central girder fell through a slightly frosted glass.  The light was an intense – almost aquatic – blue.  Interestingly, there were no beams or columns, supporting the unusual central, flying buttress-like beam.  For looking at the light, one became slightly languorous.  I felt paralysed with pleasure; there before me, down the massive hall, sat Glenn Gould.  

He wore the most thick-fabricked garb; it seemed from an earlier age.  All the men in the white gowns were up at the front.  They were all transfixed – as well they should have been.  Though I love Johannes Sebastian Bach, at the time, I had some reservations as I am not especially fond of pipe organs.  I suppose that it is because it has always had too many religious associations during my childhood.  The persons attending the concert were there simply to recharge their batteries.  They seemed, all of them, as if not quite in their bodies for being so transfixed – they were otherwise-engaged.  

Eerily, I had a sense that these were all persons who were between lives as is Glenn Gould.  They were in a form of processing, a form of deep meditation on the order of sleep, as they prepared for the next incarnation.  This fugue was the most complex music imaginable.  Indeed, the music seemed designed for those between lives.  The fugue was composed for astral plane habitués who, sans bodies, could best endure the music’s intensity.  Getting a sense that I really shouldn’t be there, plus the fact that I finally couldn’t get into the pipe organ, I started taking my leave of the place.  

Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, and I then went out front.  There we waited for the specific tour buses to show up and take us away.  Whilst I waited with Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, I was joined by Pandora.  It seemed that most of the people who were here were very young-souled.  They seemed to be on a pilgrimage, like visiting the original Gohonzon in Japan or going on the Hajj, at Mecca.  

As the pipe organ played, I could hear in the tone of the place a faint whisper from the men in white robes.  Their thoughts, it turned out, could be telepathically heard.  Even earlier, when I had been hovering in flight high above the complex, I knew that this was more so a political institution rather than not.  This was a structure which was just as colossal as the temple at Karnak and considerably older.  This place was mind-bogglingly complex and massive.  The temple was posited directly in the centre of it all.  

Just like La Chapelle in Paris is comparably dwarfed, by its surroundings, so too the massive concert hall-like temple was dwarfed by the complex.  This architectural marvel was simply soul-inspiring.  Whilst all the buses were waiting, I took to one of the buses with Pandora.  I had gotten impatient waiting to be assigned to one.  We spoke in French because everyone else here did the same.  This was not unlike a Parisian bus – the seats all faced each other.  Seated close to the front, we were on the left side of the aisle behind the driver.  

As though getting close to Saint-Sulpice Métro, I got up and said goodbye to Pandora.  I wanted to get off there then walk back to her rue de Grenelle apartment.  Pandora planned to go out then come home later so had asked me to wait for her at her place.  Here it seemed as if nighttime coming on to dawn.  Speaking guardedly in French, I made sure that I was speaking properly and not just fumbling partout.  Really, I rather enjoyed this experience of being together with Pandora.  

I was very serene enjoying the very beautiful experience.  Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, had silently slipped from my side when Pandora came and joined me.  

*Of course, it would turn out that the person in question was Louka Duplessis and not Galen.  I would meet Louka, who accompanied me in this dream, the day following this dream.  Just prior to meeting for the first time, it is not uncommon for me to dream of persons who will prove important in my life experience.  

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Jessye Norman

Norman, Jessye 15.9.45 ✟ 30.9.2019,  Georgia

Jessye is a first level old priest in the passion mode, with a goal of rejection – functioning for the most part in the positive pole of discrimination, a spiritualist, in the emotional part of intellectual centre.

She has a Jupiter/Saturn body type.

Jessye’s primary chief feature is arrogance, with a secondary of stubbornness.

This fragment was third-cast in her cadence and her cadence is fifth in the greater cadence.  She is a member of entity five, cadre six, greater cadre 33, pod/node 212.

She has a discarnate priest essence twin whom she did know earlier in this life but this fragment died in Vietnam.  She has a warrior task companion and they have worked together and continue to do so occasionally.

Her three primary needs are: freedom, expression and power.

The warrior energy gives Jessye tremendous organisational powers and her stubbornness has enabled her to stick in there when the going got very rough many times.

Jessye is a warrior-cast priest who has been a spiritual rebel in this life.  This is, by the way, not the first time this fragment has sung professionally.  This fragment was a well-known castrato in seventeenth century Italy and performed many times before the crowned heads of Europe.

Jessye has great need to serve her concept of the higher ideal and has done so admirably by combining the folk music of her people with her operatic repertoire.

She performs well, as do most entity five fragments.  This fragment has always enjoyed her work.  Singing has been an extension of her inner spirituality.  It is, in fact, a form of meditation for her.  

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Now that’s a Hollywood wife!

Jessye

These rather lucidly awakened dreams were experienced with an intense sense of wonder and joy, on Monday, July 2, 1990.  At the time, the Moon transited both Scorpio and my sixth house.  

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This first dream found me in a very busy place.  When going south towards the Danforth, it was not unlike being on Broadview Ave.  It was at night-time.  I came there and found that there were tons and tons of Black people.  Even so, it seemed like Toronto and at Broadview Subway station because there are all these streetcars there.  One of the streetcars was improperly parked, as a result, it was going to go and turn around.  

Waiting for it to do what it had to do, there was another streetcar out in the street.  It was really more like a red-rocket streetcar.  It was not like one of the newer ones.  Everyone here was Black.  There were no Whites or other non-Blacks that I saw.  Everybody was in the street which was very jam-packed.  They were getting ready to cross, after the streetcar had passed, to go in.  

There was now a system, where you paid your fare aboard the streetcar, so that you did not have to enter the front doors of the station on Broadview.  When you got aboard the streetcar, it was mandatory that you pay a fare.  So it did not matter whether you paid a fare at the proper entrance or not.  There were many people queuing up to get aboard a streetcar.  

Passing these people who were seated there, I went through the proper entrance.  One of them seemed like Gabriella Vartan and they were talking about me.  I came around and began going down the steps, into the nether regions, en route to the trains.  There was this little old lady who was taking her time, holding up things, so I pushed her to my right.  I made my way down then had to go around taking another flight of stairs; I then kept on going.  There were a whole lot of levels to this subway system.  

When I got down, there was this little cul-de-sac where there were these Black guys – homeboys – hanging out.  However, they were not Black American.  I found one of them very attractive and smiled at him.  He, however, was very homophobic.  He went running upstairs to go call the police on me.  The train then came into the subway and it was a very, very large train.  It towered very high to the ceiling.  It was like an Amtrak train which seemed like a double Decker train.  It was mostly silver, however, it turned out not to have been double Decker.  

When it stopped, I began running full speed because I did not want the guy to come back and board the same car as me.  I ran to the front of the train only to find that one couldn’t board there.  Instead, one could only enter this train where the cars joined each other.  You could enter the front or backdoors of each car but not the front ones of the first car.  It was very sleek, round and Deco like a train from the 1930s.  The whole place did have a feel of the ‘30s to it.  It was very neo-Gothic like the Chrysler or McGraw-Hill buildings in New York City, or for that matter, even the Empire State Building.  

It was reminiscent of very early in the twentieth century which was all about great architecture – of things being large, mammoth and spiralling upwards, too, things getting faster and faster.  That sense of adventure about the wonderful world of commerce that one had created.  It was that time when people had not yet begun to see, as we now know, the consequences of things being bigger and better and faster and all the effects on nature.  I got onto the train heading, again, towards the front.  Somehow, I felt relieved because I had lost the guy.  I was there and noticed a stout man who was either High-Yellow or, perhaps, even White.  

The people here were very strange because they were just rather unusual.  Even though they looked White, they seemed more bronzish, actual bronze, than the pinkish tonality of the waking state.  This was not a place that I knew.  It was very otherworldly here, I soon realised.  I did not get a seat and as I stood there I then noticed a woman.  She was standing at the very front of the train.  The train progressed with unusual speeds, I immediately noticed.  When the train had shaken, the stout man had tried to brace himself by putting out his foot that was already out in the aisle.  

In the process, he had stomped me and I had had to pull my foot out from under his and pushed his away.  He wore business attire, a suit and tie, as though en route to an office job.  The woman who was standing up was playing on a wooden flute-like instrument that was less than a foot long.  However, the thing about all this was that she had unusually short arms.  They were fully functional hands with tiny little fingers that nimbly danced over the valves of the wooden, wind instrument.  Her arms were like a Thalidomide-damaged child’s.  

Then I noticed too that there were other people on the train, about three or four musicians, practicing as well.  I soon realised that everyone on board had some sort of physical deformity.  They were just ill-proportioned people with torsos that were too long or arms that were too short.  Arms too long or what have you, moreover, this also applied to the legs.  The most pronounced cases were always the musicians like the female flautist – two or three of the other musicians were male.  

Someone else who was on the train began laughing and, out of nervousness, I joined in.  The person was laughing at the woman.  She, however, hadn’t paid them any mind.  Nobody else was paying people, who were laughing, any mind.  They did not see anything wrong with the people who were being laughed at.  I then got off the train and was out in this concourse area, where the trains arrived, before I went upstairs.  Before I would go upstairs I saw this child seated in the middle of this white blanket that seemed more like diaper material than flannel.  

The child wore a salmon-coloured merino.  He had little, white, cloth diapers on.  The infant had, again, very unusually, unusually short, short legs that made it look almost like a child because it was seated upright on its bottom.  However, it had a very big torso – matured, such that the child seemed like a very big, big child for its age.  Its head was very large with a very developed large and soulful-looking face.  At the time it made me thing of Jake Hudson.  Jake does have a very large head and face.  I was trying to connect with him.  He reached out his short little arms, crying out and said, “Dad, I want to go.”

There was this youngish man, who was blond like the child, and he seemed not unlike the guy Olaf Knight.  He picked up his son and used the blanket, on which the child sat, that had these straps and put him around his shoulder.  Like an African mother would, carry her child when in the fields, thus he was carried on his father’s back.  He walked off with the child, who was holding on to him, except that the child was really an adult male.  It was all very strange here in this otherworldly place.  

I ended up coming upstairs and going out in the outdoors.  There were people here – again, mostly Black people.  I was talking to them when I heard the strains of Richard Strauss‘s Four Last Songs beginning.  I beamed and excused myself from the people, with whom I was interacting, and went running off up this plaza.  It was a clay-tiled plaza and when I got there, I saw the symphony.   I went and sat in lotus position and sat very close to the front.  There was a gathering of persons in a semicircle and I was, as a matter of fact, the closest to the stage.  

The stage was above on a dais and it was edged by old gold juniper.  The juniper was really, really nice and quite fragrant, refreshingly so, to the smell.  Along came, from around a corner walking, Jessye Norman – the high priestess herself.  She had been preceded by her divine voice’s magic.  She was, of course, singing Four Last Songs.  She wore a beautiful, beautiful, glistening black dress that seemed almost organic with a life of its own.  It was twinkling on and off but the lights were lifelike like fireflies.  

They were sequins but they seemed, somehow, to be organic.  It had hues of gold, silver, bronze, and dark green hues like pine and blue hues like lapis lazuli.  It was very, very intensely rich a fabric.  She started singing the first song, Frühling, and it was very hauntingly beautiful.  She saw me and beamed down at me.  It was so connected between us.  I was so enthralled and overpowered; I was quite smitten by her.  I thought very rapturously awakened,

‘Yes!  I’m having a dream of Jessye Norman.  So very good to see her again, my god here she is and performing Four Last Songs.’  

She then came almost to the lip of the stage and stopped as though about to sneeze.  Then she held her breath and started laughing because it was so hysterical.  The look on my face was one of being truly horrified for her.  This had actually caused her to crack up.  Then she began singing again and began making gestures for me to move or be removed.  I was stunned and thought this some sort of betrayal.  

‘Why is she snubbing me like this?’ I wondered.  Then these two huge, burly guys came to eject me out of the area.  As I was leaving, I could hear her starting to sing again.  I was very, very upset.  

Image result for large many floored steep roofed house

I was, in the second dream, in this large house that was a very many-storeyed place.  It had many apartments.  I came out and it had a very slanted roof that one could go out onto.  This roof was, however, very dangerously precipitous.  I was looking about and thinking of Carl Leroiderien because, somehow, someone was talking about him.  This White man was talking to me and telling me that Carl had been enquiring after me.  

He then went on to ask me if I smoked dope which I denied.  I can’t think of it doing anything for me except, perhaps, to make me sneeze at the most.  Sometimes if mixed with hashish, I then got a massive headache.  “It doesn’t do anything for me, I don’t really like it.  I don’t see the point to it and I don’t smoke it.”  

At the time that he was saying this, we were climbing some very, very steep stairs.  Then at that point, after she had given her performance, I encountered Jessye Norman again.  She was seated on a bench and called me over.  She said hello very warmly and apologised saying, “I hope you weren’t upset.  You realise that it was a misunderstanding.  I wasn’t laughing at you; it’s just that you don’t seem to realise where you were.  

“You were, well there are certain degrees of protocol and you were ahead of the dignitaries.  And you shouldn’t have been so close to the stage because one of the reasons why your nose started bleeding was, in this dimension, if you’re this close to the stage… when I’m singing, when I hit certain notes it can shatter your eardrums but also shatter your mind.  

“So you see it was very crucial that I get you out of there.  Also, I was having a very bad allergic reaction to the plants at the edge of the dais.  They made me want to sneeze.  It wasn’t at all you or exclusively you.”  In having embraced me thus, she was being most healing.  I did, in fact, have quite the nosebleed.  As I was being hustled out of the place, by the burly guards, it was then that I realised that my nose was bleeding.  

At the time, I had thought it strange.  As this dream progressed very lucidly and linearly, there was no point at which either burly guard had so much as touched me.  I was so upset.  It was so very good, after the fact, to have had her explain as she did.  

*This dream really does validate the notion that all persons encountered in the dreamtime, without exceptions, are separate entities and not figments of one’s imagination.  END.

When I was being bounced by her, I was so stunned, upset and humiliated.  Had she not explained as she had just done, I would have awakened from this dream with a totally different perception of events.  I had also no way of knowing that she was having an allergic reaction to the juniper which, at the time, I found so wonderfully soothing.  What’s more, I hadn’t a clue that I had thrown the Chi of the place by having disrespected protocol.  

I would never have thought that my nosebleed was due to her singing.  In fact, it is possible that I could have awakened and not recalled that, indeed, I had had a nosebleed which I had totally forgotten until she had mentioned it.  Jessye Norman has indeed straddled, with great élan and diplomacy, many a dimension with great frequency and fluency.  

I then began holding her hand and told her that there were times that I had dreams of her, in which there were sometimes cetacean-looking creatures that came and did formations around her as she sang hyper-dimensionally.  She was just enthralled and pleased.  She squeezed my hands and laughed a healthy, really wonderful laugh.  She was quite smitten by me and encouraged me to write it all down.  

Her eyes here were so very large, soulfully dark and focussed right into me.  It gave me a high just to have experienced them.  I was wearing, when close to the stage, a satin merino-like shirt.  So at the time of being bounced out, I had passingly thought that I had been dressed too scantily for her liking.  

In any event, it was quite interesting.  

a madonna mtv 1990

This third dream was truly hysterical.  It seemed like on Eglinton Avenue East, between Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road.  It was at nighttime.  There was a lot of goings on.  Shirley MacLaine was there, Warren Beatty and Madonna Ciccone, as well.  Warren Beatty was the man of the hour and the centre of everybody’s attention.  He had a great deal of sexual energy and magnetism.  He had been performing for the camera and for everybody around.  It felt very staid to me though.  

One very interesting thing that happened was that he had been heavily drinking and, whilst laughing, had bent forward.  He then began uncontrollably coughing and was holding his chest and faking a massive heart attack.  Next thing you knew, we were in a very crowded area and it turned out that he had not been faking the heart attack.  He had a very, massive, massive heart attack.  He was dead just like that.  He was gone within moments.  It was just incredible.  Shirley MacLaine became utterly hysterical.  Her bawling was like from some Greek tragedy.  

She went into a trance-like frenzied state and began calling on astral guides and her Pleiadean guides.  Pulling out a very impressive clutch of crystals, she threw herself onto him and tried healing him of death.  She was placing them all over his body – at the chakras and elsewhere.  It was too humourous for words.  Meanwhile, as Warren Beatty died, Madonna came rushing up to the scene.  It had all been too late and they couldn’t rush him to a hospital.  There was no way that he could have been revived.  

They had been out in some desert area having a big party; there were no doctors around.  There was nothing that they could do; he couldn’t be saved.  He was dead… he was gone.  Shirley MacLaine started cursing to the gods, saying, “This is so unfair.  He hasn’t even been able to make the sequel to Dick Tracy.  And right when he’s at the top of his career this is happening?”  

“Well you know this will really immortalise him now.  Definitely, this is great publicity, right at this point in his career.” someone had dryly said who was not attached to his whole entourage.  I had heard this but Shirley MacLaine hadn’t heard it.  Madonna came and whatever she thought about I could telepathically hear it.  Her immediate response was, ‘Oh shit!  This is just going to fuck up my goddamn career.  If only I’d gotten a child by him.  Shit why did I have to have that abortion of his child.  Shit!’  

She was thinking fast.  She was someone who knew how to manipulate the media.  She was really pissed off because it would have meant immediate Hollywood sainthood for her, were she to go on and have Warren Beatty’s only child, after he had tragically died.  She was really pissed off because this was media manipulation beyond her wildest schemes, ‘I’ve got to get him out of here.  I’ve got to have the best genetic engineers flown in immediately…’  

I was stunned when I read her thoughts because, of course, she intended to harvest his seed and impregnate herself and then have a premature love child of Warren Beatty’s.  I was stunned by this woman’s phenomenal megalomania.  ‘During the autopsy, I’ll have his sperm taken out and I’ll have it copyrighted.  It’ll be my possession.  I’ll have it engineered so that I’ll have a child… a son.  God we can even have twins…’  She, all the while, was cowering over his face… kissing him and doing the wailing widow number, ‘…Can you imagine, Madonna?’  

She privately squealed to herself – unaware, of course, that she was broadcasting to someone like me.  She was so triumphant at having had that idea because all she knew was that people who so loved Warren Beatty would take to her now.  She was insecure as to whether or not she would endure through time.  However, with this, she knew that she would automatically become iconic.  She would become truly the virgin mother!  She would be actually giving birth to some dead man’s child – he of course being, Warren Beatty.  It was destiny.  After all, she was ‘the’ Madonna.  

She had this flash that this was why she had always been so drawn to crucifixes.  She was going to capitalise on the whole drama by making sure that it would be a son.  Of course, not to be outdone by that old, other Holy Mother with the virgin birth, she would eclipse that Madonna by having twin sons.  Again, La Stupenda squealed with delight to herself.  I passingly wondered if I were the only one to be privy to her thoughts.  Then I realised that from my detachment, as everyone bawled and was truly horrified as though these were Olympians and not mere mortals, that I was the only one.  

‘What could be better than having two Warren Beatty lookalikes crawling around the planet and who were his twins?  And his only heirs!  With today’s genetic engineering it will be a great coup.  ‘Think of the press!  I’ll be guaranteed perpetual immortality.  I’ll be iconised for all history…’  I thought then and there, ‘My god, this woman is monstrous.’  

In any event, the funeral was upon us and by some strange quirk of the dreamtime, I was very much so a part of the funeral.  I was as though a fly on the wall, as it were, and aren’t you lucky?  Why, was I participating?  I do not know?  

In any event, I was dressed to the nines.  I had on a wonderful, lace outfit with a mantilla with my veil covering my face.  I was part, somehow, of the funeral party.  It turned out that Warren Beatty had had five wives and, at the point at which he died, his fifth wife was a High-Yellow woman.  She was part Black, part White, partly Latina.  He had had all these wives.  They had always been paid and kept to remain silent.  They were never brought out in the public or media.  It was one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets.  

People, obviously, never knew about it.  It had never once been spoken about.  There was an interesting turn to all of this… I had been going along Eglinton East on the south side.  It was as though I was going towards Yonge Street; however, it was not Eglinton Avenue East.  Madonna was going to be late because, luckily, it was that time of the month for her.  She was off having herself impregnated, by way of a turkey baster, with Warren Beatty’s frozen sperm – the planet’s most expensively rare caviar fertiliser of sorts.  

I was attending the funeral with a short woman who was the fifth wife’s mother.  She seemed a lot like Sybil Ben-Daniel and wore a brown coat over her dress.  I walked with my right arm embracing her as she was on my right.  I had burly bodyguards all about me, before, beside and behind me.  They were real Mossad-goon-cum-Wrestlemania types.  My pants were those flare-legged Giorgio Armanis that allowed me to stride throwing my legs.  

There was a lot of train to them and I had such utter style.  I had enormous energies about me and great flare.  My eyes were bedazzling even though mantilla-veiled.  They were what were, of course, fuelling my high spirits.  The onlookers were lapping up my entrance; I felt wonderful.  We then went into the church and the mother was talking about, “We want the money to go to the Church because the Church is really the staple of society and civilisation.  The Church does so much good.”  

I just decided to let her babble on and kept my tongue in check.  However, I cussed her under my breath saying, “You demented old fool.  What Church are you talking about?”  

The church had a metallic-silver front and it looked not unlike York Cinemas on Eglinton Avenue East.  It was not a very big church on the inside.  As we got inside, I turned around and hissed at one of the bodyguards because he had earlier stepped on my train.  Of course, we were surrounded then by the paparazzi and the little people.  His Bigfoot’s footprint was there on the pant’s train.  I reached back and slapped his face real hard, calling him a fucking asshole.  

Of course, I knew that it was safe to do it here because everyone here knew, only too well, that side of me.  However, I couldn’t wreck my public image doing so outside.  As we got closer to the church, I began striding firmer with each step in anticipation of getting his oafish arse.  I was really careful not to show that side of me when in public.  I started going down the aisle and there at the end was Warren Beatty’s corpse in the open casket.  It was a pure black casket that glistened.  It was a dark black wood and a really gorgeous casket.  

Escorting the mother-in-law, I came all the way down the aisle.  I decided that I would go into the first pew on the right.  The first pew on the left actually went further down the aisle and did go past the casket.  It held men in white flowing robes; they were priest of whatever denomination this was – very cream, ivory-coloured and obviously very Catholic.  I went and sat down and immediately behind me was the fifth wife’s family.  They were very Hispanic-looking more so than Black.  They were very handsome in that family.  

I turned around and smiled at one of the men and the energies coming from them weren’t as I had expected – I had thought that they would hate me.  I knew Madonna; I was apparently part of her hangers on.  Somehow, I had known her through dance.  I thought that, for that association, they would hate me.  However, they displayed no such hostilities towards me.  

_001roses

Finally, the fifth wife came and was walking very slowly, regally.  She carried a globular bouquet consisting of tiny, little white roses that were sprinkled in amongst some baby’s breath.  There were one or two little red roses as well.  She wore a white, lace outfit.  Deliberately dressed as though attending her wedding, she was not though veiled.  She came down to the casket and knelt before it, like Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis at the rotunda, staking her claim on history by her performance.  

She sobbed in a controlled breath and then got up and walked around to the right end of the casket.  Facing the church, she was now behind it and up on the altar.  She was before the pews on the left side of the aisle.  She knelt down again and this time began wailing and ululating.  She was doing ritual port de bras with her torso and head as well.  She kept on holding on to the bouquet.  

It was a very Latin; a very emotional display; definitely, not Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis.  It was very soulful and moving.  One really felt for her.  Finally, Madonna made her entrance and began slowly progressing down the aisle.  There was utter silence in the place because everybody was thinking, ‘Oh dear, poor Madonna was slutting with Warren Beatty at the point of his death.  Here is the fifth wife and is she going to create a scene or not?’  

Well, of course, she is.  The fifth wife is Latin so, of course, there will be theatre.  When the fifth wife had been crossing the casket, I took in her body which was very wide-beamed.  I knew then, in a flash, that she was pregnant with Warren Beatty’s child and four months pregnant.  It was clearly no Immaculate Conception as per Madonna’s little trick.  She was a very big-boned woman.  She got up when Madonna entered the church and stopped crying.  

Madonna saw her and avoided her glance as I turned and watched this fascinating bit of theatre unfold.  Everyone was really excited at the potential fireworks about to go off.  She started coming down to confront Madonna.  I immediately and intuitively knew that there was a gun inside the bouquet that the fifth wife so firmly clutched.  Positioning the gun, the fifth wife began holding the bouquet to her stomach.  Madonna, staying her ground, kept on proudly walking down the aisle.  

She wore black; it was an outfit that was not dissimilar to mine.  She wore a short veil and not a mantilla like I did.  She came walking down towards the casket staying closer to the left pews.  The fifth wife came around the right side of the casket and was walking down the right side of the aisle looking at Madonna.  She had a very, very vexed and determined – an almost trance-like, expression of self-absorption on her face.  All the energy in her body was directed at Madonna.  

When she was about five feet away from Madonna, she held up the bouquet and callously said, “I’m going to blow your fucking brains out!”  It was filled with so much venom that it reverberated throughout the very high-ceilinged-though-tiny church.  It was also very Gothic an interior.  Madonna stopped truly catatonically horrified.  You could see it beyond the veil.  She had no entourage or bodyguards.  She showed up alone, so confident was she of the coup that she had just scored at the geneticist’s.  

She was so flustered that she gallantly stuttered back, “I dare you…”  She was very nervous and said very quickly with a weak, little laugh.  She was also vamping à la Breathless Mahoney – the character she played in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy film.  She was, however, visibly ashen.  Madonna was visibly shaken with fear.  

Those persons in the left pews automatically screamed out and crouched down for cover because the fifth wife had held up the bouquet in both her outstretched arms like the gun that it so obviously hid.  “Come on.  You wouldn’t want to do that.  That’s just stupid…” Madonna bravely said. “…You can’t do that.  Besides Warren’s already dead.  What are you trying to prove?  You can’t do this to me!  Don’t be stupid.”  

The woman, however, started slowly walking towards her not buying her bullshit.  At that, Madonna turned around and started to bolt and she fell down over her long-trained dress.  She had already made it to the back of the pews on the left.  She was much too vain, to run outside and possibly be murdered in front of the little people.  So she got up and began running around the far side of the pews.  Of course, as she ran away, the fifth wife could easily have shot her in the back. 

Then Madonna got really pissed off, stopped against the far left wall of the church, holding out her palm at her attacker saying, “Stop it!  You don’t want to do this.  This is stupid.  You can’t kill me.  I’m Madonna!”  She was just winded; the expression on her face was unbridled rage, fear, terror, chutzpah, all in one.  Then the fifth wife pulled the trigger, which was the only sound in the place, releasing the magazine.  

Madonna cried out and began pleading with her.  It was truly a spectacle.  It was really pathetic.  The fifth wife then pulled on the trigger and there was a loud plopping sound.  Everybody just screamed and the place became flooded with blinding blue light.  It turned out to have been an older-model camera and the flashbulb from the camera as it went off.  

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At that, the fifth wife laughed this loud, truly callous, heavy-from-the-womb, ripe, wicked, vindictive, victorious-all-in-one laugh.  It echoed throughout the church.  When her echo collapsed, as Madonna stood there truly disempowered, the fifth wife uttered in a weary breath, “I always said to Warren that you’re an ugly slut.  This picture will prove it.”  

At that the fifth wife turned and came and sat down on the pew next to me.  Her Latina family members were just going wild clapping and hysterically shrieking.  Now that’s a Hollywood wife!  Poor Madonna was still standing there involuntarily shaking.  She was holding her chest and gasping for air like an asthmatic.  Her left hand placed on her chest, with her right hand holding on to the pew, thus she stayed her ground.  

Although her hand was on her chest, she was being most clever.  However I knew that really where it should have been was at her pussy because what the fifth wife instinctively knew, as did I, was that she had just miscarried.  Madonna was profusely bleeding.  Poor Madonna was so humiliated.  The look on her face was truly sad; she was sweaty and runny-nosed.  She soon collapsed and had to be taken away.  Of course, she would be beaten out of having Warren Beatty’s heir by the fifth wife.  

The whole thing was so funny and hysterical.  I was so stunned that the fifth wife was going to pull this stunt.  I really thought that it was a gun; I had, at least, gotten this flash that it was a gun.  The idea to have a bolt release, affecting a gun, was truly ingenious.  The picture turned out to be truly horrific.  It was all a joke being played on Madonna by Hollywood’s film elites who could not have cared less about her and her parvenu ambitions.  

The whole affair was so very wickedly political.  The whole thing was so hysterical.  I wondered as to what next was going to happen.  Is the fifth wife going to come forward and produce the first Warren Beatty heir – the true child?  A child that would look like Warren Beatty – more like a child of the future being of multiracial heritage and a bronzed version of Warren Beatty would the fifth wife bear.  

What then will she do about Madonna’s copyright of Warren Beatty’s sperm?  Will the fifth wife, for producing the heir, win the legal rights to them and have them destroyed if she chooses to?  Will this not, in fact, begin a Pop Religion rivalling the King, Elvis Presley’s, if Madonna had won custody of the sperm and gone on to impregnate herself and bear those miscarried twin sons because of her bonds to Warren Beatty and his two pseudo-virgin-birthed children – sons at that?  

Truly, this is iconography for the new millennium, indeed.

*A very, very interesting dream.  Certainly, that I would be dreaming about these people is interesting enough.  I don’t pay much attention to any of them beyond the passing.  I had seen Dick Tracy three weeks ago.  That the whole thing would evolve the way it did was rather insightful.  I was totally surprised, as much so, as was Madonna in the church.  

I really did think that she was going to be shot.  I thought that it would be so messy.  You know, I just did not want having anybody’s can’t-wash-out bloodstains on my Giorgio Armani pants.  A truly, truly funny dream this was.  

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*What can I say, dreams are purely experiential.  I dream it and awaken, immediately bringing forth the dream experiences, committing those experiences to audio-cassette tapes. I rather enjoyed being alone and visiting with Jessye Norman in the earlier dream.  Clearly, those dreams were set on a parallel Earth in another dimension and one in which the mostly Black population is differently proportioned than we humans of waking state Earth are.  

On the eve of the Oscars, I thought this a fitting offering.  I could never have fathomed the outcome of the fifth wife’s agendum until it unfolded.  Ingenious, to say the least, was her use of the bouquet.  As ever, sweet dreams and don’t forget to push off and start flying… and so what if you bump into a wall, just attempt doing so again and this time believe that you can effortless transcend the barrier.  Perception is, alas, everything.  

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As ever my dear sweet ennobled friends, I am ever grateful for your continued support.  Please do spread the word, far and wide about this happening dream joint on the cosmic wide web.  Always remember to push off and start flying… I love you more.  

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©2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.  

Won’t Take The A Train

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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.  

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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.  

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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 23rd Street.  Whilst, crossing 23rd 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 23rd Street.  They headed off going east, to the right, on the north side of 23rd 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.  

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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.

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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.  

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.  

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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.

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.

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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.  

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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.

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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.  

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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!

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2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.  

Yoko, Meghan & Cécile.

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One thing that the marriage of the TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex has revealed, is just how hideously racist Britons are. Naturally, as all bigots especially the most invidious racially predatory will have you know, ‘It has nothing to do with race!’ The DailyMail has made an industry of acting as a de facto wing of the EDL in its campaign of destroying the marriage of the Sussexes.

Every single day its gaggle of writers launch another volley of hate to feed their hate-filled multitude of devotees whom they simply abuse in their quest for more advertising revenue. Last week, their legions of bigots were gleeful when not only was the Duchess of Sussex not at Royal Ascot but neither was her husband. Naturally, the rumour was that Her Majesty The Queen had banned the Sussexes from attending Royal Ascot. Of course, last year when Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge was on maternity leave, she did not attend Royal Ascot. Furthermore, not once did her husband attend Royal Ascot. That is the tradition.

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Naturally, when these photographs of this year’s Royal Ascot emerged, the plethora of bigoted DailyMail trolls were celebratory of how happy and wholesome everyone looked. Of course, they were commenting on the homogeneity of the group; their was even talk that the RF looked so much happier without the American in their midst.

The following day, it was announced that the Royal Foundation was disbanding. This not only gave cause for wild celebration by the DailyMail trolls but in hindsight, it was speculated that the group looked as happy as they did at Royal Ascot because at that point, the dissolution of the Royal Foundation would have been known to all. This was seen as more proof that HM The Queen did not want Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex around Indeed, clearly, the Sussexes were headed for divorce and it was only a matter of time before there would be an announcement to that effect.

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By no means was tabloid culture then what it is today; however, there was no getting around the fact that there was unrelenting animus that was decidedly racist towards Yoko Ono because she was non-white. Of course, at the time as now and is always the case, there was strident denial that there was prejudice involved in the animus towards Yoko Ono. Heaven only knows that Linda Eastman was not a Briton, yet she was not reviled and hated for being an outsider as was Yoko Ono.

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So intense was the racial animus towards Yoko Ono that John Lennon had to relocate to New York City to seek peace away from being unrelentingly reviled by Britons, who were nothing more than unmasked Klansfolk; though there were three other wives, Yoko Ono was solely to blame for the demise of the Beatles. Indeed, Britons have John Lennon’s blood on their hands for having racially preyed on this man and his wife to the point where he had to flee and take refuge in a land where guns rule. Paul, Ringo nor George had to flee England because Britons did not approve of their choice of a wife.

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Neither Linda Eastman nor Montréalaise Autumn Kelly were subjected to the same animus as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex for being outsiders marrying much-loved Britons. True, every woman marrying into the BRF experiences blow-back. Sarah Ferguson, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Catherine Middleton and on and on. Truth be told, neither Linda nor Autumn were subjected to similar animus as Yoko or Meghan simply for being Caucasian and therefore, deemed acceptable.

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Britons may well succeed with running TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex out of town as they did John Lennon and Yoko Ono but know this, Tungsten has got powerful players in her corner. For starters, if the Sussexes were exiled, Oprah et al have the power to have her appointed as honorary chairperson of the Academy Awards – some such title of an American-British film society – not the American wing of BAFTA – which would see Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex each year present the award for Best Film at the Academy Awards.

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More to the point, when are Americans going to stop kowtowing to Britons because of the latter’s archly over-compensatory inferiority complex, of all things, masquerading as posh, sophisticated, superior and aristocratic. Why should an American actor, after having graduated with distinction from Julliard sit by and watch yet another English actor waltz in and claim the American award for best actor in a film which was not even an American production; this has repeatedly happened in the past. And so like Britons it is; they are the only island dwellers in the English-speaking world who never lose their god-awful accent regardless how long they sojourn abroad. Whether five years or fifty, you can also count on the expat English to maintain their posher-than-though English accent. Some may be readily charmed/fooled by all that posh posturing but it is so much obvious BS.

Glenn Close did not win the Best Actress BAFTA in 2019 that honour went to Briton, Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Ever possessed of this obsequious need to suck up, the Academy and its members voted Olivia Colman Best Actress at an American Awards show when the production was not an American production and Glenn Close was not going to win the Best Actress BAFTA and did not. One thing is clear from her acceptance speech, Olivia Colman is a one-hit wonder and will never win an Oscar again, just as Matthew McConaughey never will; after all, his Best Actor award was by default – so great was the need to deny Chiwetel Ejiofor an Oscar for his masterful performance in 12 Years A Slave.

When Britons prove themselves such ugly racist boors as with Yoko Ono and now Meghan Markle, why indulge, suffer or tolerate these people overlong? Throwing Oscars at them because they talk as though they’ve got a horse’s hoof stuck up their arse, there is nothing much to celebrate when one’s claim to fame is having subjugated 2/3s the world way back when and having enslaved and or brutalised those persons.

Of course, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex chose not to move next-door to the Cambridges at Kensington Palace. For one, there is every reason to believe that the Cambridges’ marriage currently is nine parts façade and with a numerology attitude of 9, HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, apart from not being the sharpest tool in the box, is also conceited, stubborn, bigoted and intolerant and also is in tight with those pompous-arsed minor royals the Michaels of Kent et famille who with their racist perspective were none-too-shy about showing their true colours, blackamoor and all with Meghan suddenly in their midst and to whom they would have to curtsy.

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A den of racial predators is no environment in which to bring up black children and that would also include those generational members of Kensington Palace staff, who would think nothing of being openly racist towards Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex and her children, For Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex the minor royal Micheals of Kent are no different to Samantha Grant and Thomas Markle Jr. She endured the racially predatory bullying in childhood, which is precisely why she has absolutely nothing to do with them and with damn good reason. Trust you me, there is not a single black person on this planet who would suffer any such environment. It is not human, not civilised and a goddamn waste of time.

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Carping on about how much better Cressida Bonas would have been as a wife to HRH Prince Henry of Wales, is a moot point. Who knows, perhaps, Harry was being forced into the relationship so that his older brother could have access to Cressida’s older sister, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Is it any wonder why Sam Branson keeps his wife as far away from the isle of England as possible. Of course, had Harry married Cressida, this newfound media love for Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge would not have eventualised. She would be portrayed, even more so, by the DailyMail as workshy and they would even up the practise of only printing photographs of her when her face is at rest, which is a decidedly hard affair. For being blonde, blue-eyed and with an artisan’s fey beauty, Cressida, had Prince Harry married her in May 2018, would currently be eclipsing Catherine, who is now being seen as a fashion icon. No matter how DailyMail repackage and champion Catherine, she is a relative dud when publicly speaking as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex has time and again proven. The Duchess of Sussex’s commanding performance at the 2018 British Fashion Awards at Royal Albert Hall truly was a study is grace, poise, elegance and commanding stage presence. You’ve either got it or, as in Catherine’s case, you don’t. Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex is quite confidently aware that a mic is Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge’s kryptonite.

The DailyMail and its gang of racist boors can vent and gloat all they want but if HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex were to have married a conservative Muslim and converted, for fear of ending up with their fetid skull on the small of their back, every one of their cowardly racist boors would know to keep their damn mouths shut. Of one thing they are certain, fucking with blacks will earn you no serious repercussions. The DailyMail‘s hacks have proven that England is the isle of the original hooded klansfolk; they are just a little bit more evolved to the point where their hoods have become invisible but no less ugly are they. In the end, who could give a fuck; the boors of the isle of England most certainly did not invent Jazz and speaking of which…

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After having pored through this year’s TD Toronto Jazz Festival lineup, I knew that there was only one show that I cared to attend. The Diana Ross show at the Sony Centre though tempting, however, the centre is just too cavernous a space. Jazz needs the warmth and intimacy of a smaller venue. Besides, I knew damn well that coming the day after the Pride parade, there would be queens aplenty in the audience. Most of them would be expecting the usual Diana Ross show; however, this was going to be a Jazz show.

As ever, I did not attend Pride parade, never have. Back in 1986, Merlin and I hauled arse to a dinner party in the Annex where an artistic director associate of his, held court. Frankly, neither men liked each other but for professional reasons one endured much. Among the group of 8 souls was a redhead interior decorator from New York City who was the most vile dirty-arsed bigot conceivable. Naturally, with yours truly present, he just had to wax overlong about what a scourge on human civilisation blacks the world over were.

Merlin stealthily reached across my plate and removed my steak knife from the plate and placed it to his left as I sat on his right. Finally, when we got home by cab as Merlin sought to shift my mood by playing some Miles Davis, I went and retrieved a pair of scissors and demonstrated to him on returning to the living room, “That’s it, I am cancelling my membership in Gay society. God only knows it is not as if these blasted, motherfucking lisping, bottom-feeding people invented Jazz.” For me what really settled it, was the redhead boor’s decree, “Sorry dear but there is no black in the rainbow.”

Of course, a couple of years back the Black Lives Matter delegation, which had been invited to march in the Gay Pride parade, were booed, heckled and pelted with unopened water bottles. That very day on my way home, I was also attached and it was much fuelled by the general anger at having had the Black Lives Matter contingent in the parade. To this day, the pride community are still mad at the Police and had banned them from participating in the parade, all because they allowed the Black Lives Matter group into the parade. Even though the group had been invited, they were treated by spectators as though they did something as irresponsible as simply showed up and high-jacked the parade.

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The above photograph was the look for the opening act, one of those regrettable experiences, which alas the Canada Council foists on one, god only knows why. Banal and as sexually intriguing as a live webcam set up on a couple of koala bears in repose, some things just have to be endured to get one through to the real deal. As my date, an ageing Jewish actor/writer with the most wicked sense of humour is always great company, we sat in the back row, all to ourselves, in fits of delicious giggles – we were poring through online photographs of Céline Dion parading in haute couture in Paris in the lead up to Paris Fashion Week; when asked what I thought of her whacky, over-the-top, beyond desperate behaviour, I flatly put in, “it ought damn well to be kept leashed and staked out back.”

Next, it was my turn to come undone when no sooner than having slipped in the breath mint that he whispered, “those are the new mint-flavoured super laxatives, I was telling you about.” How soul-gnawing is emulative institutional Jazz whose practitioners know nothing either of blacks or black culture? Hell, even after the bass solo, there was no applause from the house.

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Finally, like a lover with the most foul breath but whose girthsome jousting simply won’t be denied – then the malodorous rogue leaves and you shudder in disgust and return to breathing like a human rather than a goddamn humpback whale – the opening act vacated the stage and when the stagehands were done, only the grand piano was left. Out then walked Cécile McLorin Salvant with a puckish accompanist and it was readily obvious that there is an indelible soul connection between the two, which speaks to intimacy most rare and also more than a dozen past-life connections. Even Cécile’s body had changed, she looked more lived in, she was getting good loving and it showed.

Before proceeding, let me just state that this was the most phenomenal and best Jazz concert that I have ever attended. From Hoagy Carmichael, to Barbara Streisand, to Bessie Smith, every song was her own and every song was a master class in musicianship and phrasing. Then two things happened that blew me even further away; firstly, she sang, Midnight Sun. This is a song that for me as long as I live, will always evoke the most pleasurable memories of living at John Hirsch and Brian Trottier’s Moore Park Home at 187 Hudson Drive in the summer of 1990 after Merlin had passed and I reinvented self and took the time to travel. Until this concert, no one had ever done a better version of Midnight Sun than Sarah Vaughan, whose version daily played at that lovely Moore Park home.

Secondly, Cécile paused and asked if anyone in the audience was French, to which there was a boisterous response and then she asked to sing a song in French. By the time she was done, I was reduced to tears, even my usual jaded friend was blown away. At the conclusion the house went wild and I was reminded of those years living in Montréal and attending all those summer festivals across the province.

Let’s see Canadian, Diana Krall sing en Français in this supposed bilingual country and I am not talking any of that tawdry attempt at French musicianship as with the likes of Emilie-Claire Barlow et al. Unlike those frauds who suffocated the blackness out of Jazz in the 90s and beyond, Cécile is the real McCoy. The primary musical instrument in human civilisation is the voice and when it comes to Jazz, not only is it a language that is the extension of the griot tradition, nothing sounds like, feels like, moves you like the instrument that is the black voice; there simply aren’t any comparisons. This is the voice, the instrument, when on walking through your door can revivify and empower you like no other instrument can and most especially so after having experienced racial animus for the 14th millionth and fifty-seventh time in this lifetime.

During the course of the show, her accompanist did something that I had never before witnessed, Sullivan Fortner got from the piano stool to reach inside and pluck on the strings, making for all intents the most beautiful mbira imaginable. Sullivan proved himself the perfect accompanist to Cécile and it was clear by the end of the concert that these two lovely, magical and gifted souls have thankfully found each other and how we are better for them being in the world. The love and harmony they share, was as rich and smooth as the warmest honey satiating the palate. Even the encores were concerts onto themselves. If there is anything that can be said to be good, to have come from Roy Hargrove’s passing, is that it created the opportunity for both Sullivan and Cécile to form a most productive collaboration.

As we left Koerner Hall, both of us giddy with joy for having been richly inspired, there was a guy outside the theatre, hawking the program for Jazz FM. Brusquely, I declined taking one, I soon explained that I had no desire to be associated with the Jazz radio when they went and hired someone whom Merlin dismissed back in his early on-air days as VJ at MuchMusic as a smug bigoted asshole. Indeed, an ageing leopard does not his spots lose. Just for writing a few hit songs and having made a few million dollars changes nothing. As Merlin always said, “a man changes clothes and nothing else.”

Though last year, there were three good concerts during the Jazz Festival; this year, one only needed to have attended one concert and boy am I richly inspired for having done so. On parting, we both agreed that it really was an awesome concert; more than that, we admitted that it was high time that we saw Rocketman before it goes to video.

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For your ongoing support, I am ever grateful. Buy my glorious books, the incomparable series with Michael overleaves appendices; truly, they are human civilisation’s first dream memoirs.

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©2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved,

At Last, The Day Has Finally Arrived.

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With a spring in my step, I came up for air at Piccadilly Circus Station, whistling Ludwig Minkus’ glorious recurrent melody from La Bayadère with thoughts of the astounding Natalia Osipova uppermost in my thoughts.  

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I was returned to the Royal Academy to hunt for coffee table books.  

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More than that, I was on a mission; returned to Fortnum & Mason was I, directed there by the gracious clerk at The British Museum’s Grenville Room.  

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Armed with just over a dozen rose petal jellies, there was no less spring in my step as by now I sang aloud my merry little melody from La Bayadère.  I truly felt as though, on this trip to London, I was lucidly awakened in the most sensual dream.  Dreams so luscious are the ones which cause you to pause, smile and whisper near-mischievously, “Arvin, this is a dream and you’ve earned it.  Now push off and start flying.” 

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At such times, there is no thunder more glorious than the roar of my very soul as I laugh, enjoying my creative soul fulfilling itself.  I was reminded of those early days in our relationship in Manhattan when whilst ambling late at night for staying at Merlin’s agent Joyce Ketay’s Upper West Side apartment, whilst holding hands, I would push down as in dreams but end up doing an assemblé, in place of flying.  His rosy choirboy lips would warm in a smile whilst the ubiquitous fag or joint was elegantly perched between left index and middle fingers. 

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Bailing into to Piccadilly Circus, still feeling mighty spiffy of spirit, I opted against heading back down into the Underground – the place leaves me with sooty phlegm each time nose-blowing.  With that, I bailed out of the Circus and onto Shaftesbury Avenue and made my way to a favourite joint, Ben’s Fish n Chips.  

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There at a cosy table in the rear, I leisurely pleasured myself whilst finally reading the HRH Princess Margaret biography; it is delicious.  

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Blisters be damned, I elected to walk from Shaftesbury Square up to The British Museum and take in more art.  This being a Friday, there were school kids everywhere; my goodness, children have got powerful noise-making lungs!  Then again, what is childhood but play for the soul, which after having recently lived and died is now reborn and gets to celebrate and run up and down in a brand spankingly new and excitingly different body – to say nothing of being in the company of reincarnational travel companions some of whom now you can get a good schtup off of this time around, seeing that last time he now she looked like Quasimodo and even so, you weren’t then same-sexed focussed.  Ha!  

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In the bookstore was a clerk with whom I shared an interesting conversation last winter; he was a dead-ringer for scholar soul, right down to the glasses.  He suggested that I could take refuge in the Japanese wing and avoid the madness that was happily reincarnated souls screaming their lungs out and running hither and yon.  

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Before I could get there, moving around one corner from one gallery to the next, will you look at what I happened on.  

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On seeing it, I was readily warmed of spirit and let out a celebratory, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”  In that moment, the sense of fellowship and belonging I only ever feel when in Canada for being around First Nations cultures, whether at a pow wow or not, proved the most refreshing drink for my questing soul around a corner in my favourite city, London.  

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Up one elevator, down one corridor then up another elevator and one was then posited into the most serene of galleries.  Now this is more my kind of groove.  

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All this exquisite splendour and not a single recently reincarnated soul running about and screaming way too powerful lungs out for such a tiny body.  

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This proved an interlude of slow-dancing with my very soul… the vibrations here were utterly harmonious with spirit.  

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Photography can never do this masterpiece justice.  

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I am reminded with this gem of the fabulous kimono of Merlin’s hung in our Cabbagetown home.  

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Can you hear my soul purring…

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Phenomenal. 

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My very favourite piece in the gallery; warm, fecund, sensual, curvaceous, feminine, grounding.  It truly is perfection; this after all is what womakind are: perfection of creation – we men just can’t handle it, hence religions which all without exception oppress womankind and tell them that creation is outside of themselves and some warring male god somewhere.  Ha… we men can never endure the pain of labour then get up a completely new aspect of creaturehood – no longer a woman but a mother to whom that child will ever be more closely bonded.  Love this piece.  

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This was the most beautiful adventure… for now, with a couple of coffee table books and toys for kids of a friend’s, I crisscrossed Russell Square Park and slept with my blistered feet raised whilst being held closer in sleep’s warm nurturing bosom and was readily tugged under into the world of lucid, inspired dreams.  

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On a gloriously balmy mid-November evening, I emerged from Covent Garden Station into a sea of humanity filled with love and laughter as the weekend was begun.  As lovers ambled past holding hands, I was reminded then of my life twenty-nine years earlier when the Berlin Wall was being toppled.  I was grateful in the moment because back then, two days before Merlin’s passing, I could not imagine myself being still focussed in this life with so much death and dying around me. 

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Yet, here was I with my happy little lambious (Merlin called me Lamb because I was more 9 parts enraged grizzly than timid lamb) self, in Covent Garden about to see a ballet because Marianela Nuñez, Natalia Osipova, Vadim Muntagirov, Matthew Ball, Francesca Hayward, Joseph Sissens, Steven McCrae, Iana Salenko were part of the most glorious group of ballet dancers.  

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Oh my, look at this; there have been changes afoot since last winter.  

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My pilgrimage to the shrine of high art is finally here!  What’s this, new coat check, new toilets, new dining area… wow! 

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No sooner than was I sat and along came a Jurassic hybrid, no chin, back so long may well have extra vertebrae and a neck that is too thick and long to be on a woman’s body but I am not judging just saying,.. 

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Well I did not cross the Atlantic just for this obstruction and her pheromone were decidedly reptilian.  As Frederick Jones would say, “I’m not havin’ it!” After a few gracious words with the accommodating ushers, my offer to stand through the entire performance seemed reasonable enough. 

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I stood on the steps up to the last row that was more centre of house than my ticket.  I did my best to ignore the chinless spinster who sat at the edge of the row, who promptly repositioned her handbag, as if it were a blasted Birkin!  Naturally, she kept eyeing me.  As I always carry Shaniqua in my back pocket, I was ready to hiss, the minute she stepped out of line.  

During the performance after the Bronze Idol danced his spectacular solo, I lost myself and yelled the loudest bravo in the house and wouldn’t the old bat have something to say, “Be quiet!” to which I leaned in and hissed, “grip harder on your butt plug and shut the fuck up!” Why do people insist on leaving their homes and act as though they are lord or lady of anyone else’s reality.  

Never mind her, the lovely Russian couple who sat in the front row looked back and approvingly yelled “Da!” at my exuberance.  Truly, what a glorious night in the theatre.  You cannot possibly begin to fathom the amount of flying dreams I have had since that night; it is as though, I perpetually am now flying-without-moving.  Of course, I haven’t yet shaken that exquisite Minkus melody from my lips but so be it.  There was something simply transcendent about having experienced the purity and perfection of the Kingdom of the Shades opening of Act III that will ever keep me richly inspired.  

Love is all and whatever it is that makes you want to fly without moving when awake grab on and tightly hold on – drugs don’t do it, they do you!  As ever, come closer let’s have a group hug and a bit of air frottage because life, alas, is the sweetest of dreams!  

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© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.  

Four Standing Figures.

Four Standing Figures Henry Moore

Four Standing Figures

Lithograph

12.5 x 15 in

11/50

©1978 Henry Moore

Provenance: Collection of Arvin da Brgha

Let there be art.  Let there be love.  

Back in 1982, Merlin and I were holding up at the Trockadero loft — home of Natch Taylor and his dancer lover, William Zammy Zamora.  Theirs was a beautiful loft in New York City’s Chelsea where across the street presided the block-long, imposing green edifice of one of those grand buildings found only in America.

One evening after rehearsals for a dance concert, I hung out with dancers from the Nanette Bearden Dance company, then finally made my way home late at night.  When I got in, Merlin was at the loft’s rustic kitchen/dining table with a large sketch pad with director, Jim Henson with whom he would be working in Toronto, filming the inaugural season of Fraggle Rock.  Tall, slightly drooped and intense, Jim briefly chatted but remained focussed on the task in hand.

Presently, he and Merlin were going over sketches and design ideas on respective pads for the shows.  At the time, whilst standing behind Merlin seated at the table, I remarked that the sketches were not unlike Henry Moore sculptures.  Both men simultaneously responded, “Hmm” to which we all laughed as it was reminiscent of the creatures in Mr. Henson’s feature film, Dark Crystal which had weeks earlier opened wide in theatres.  The film was a definite favourite of Merlin and mine.

Merlin remarked that the design were not dissimilar to Henry Moore’s sculptures whose massive curvaceousness, Merlin and I had agreed were feminine, .elegant and beautiful.  This discussion about art was had late at night, after having fucked like rottweilers at the Hotel Chelsea where he held up one weekend when in town from Toronto to both network but mostly to secure a right, proper ploughing of which he could never get enough… we both could never get enough.

On the whole, both men agreed that there were unconscious Henry Moore influences to their design sketches.  Those sketches would be further refined and were recently shared herein.  What none of us at the time could have known, was how spot-on was my observation.  As it would turn out, Henry Moore happens to be an old soul artisan who is an entity mate of both Merlin’s and mine.  Furthermore, Jim Henson who is an early mature artisan, also happens to be strongly bonded to Henry Moore, Merlin and I as he is in entity one of cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414, to all three of us being in entity six, of cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414.

Always, it is nice to find the ties that bind and it was really good of me to have picked up on that cadre connection when looking at the sketches and throwing Henry Moore ‘out there’ as it were.  The evening was lovely but I was in my restless youthfulness, dying to be alone yet again with Merlin and get on with the business of sinfully sweating whilst celebration life… love.

As ever, thank you for your ongoing support and do know that I shall shortly be starting a podcast, plus volume two of both my dream memoirs and the Michael Overleaves appendix will be launching soon, here at my art filled and recently redecorated home…

Sweet dreams as ever!

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©2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Here’s to Life! A celebration of the 70th anniversary of Merlin’s birth.

On this the eve of the July 21, 2017, 70th anniversary of Merlin’s birth, I am still over the moon and greatly inspired for having travelled to London, England, Paris and Versailles France and Amsterdam, the Netherlands in June.  I wanted to take in the pomp and pageantry of trooping the colour, revisit the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern… and did!  I really loved my visit to the new wing of the Tate Modern and the beautiful panoramic views that it affords of the north bank across River Thames.

Staying in the beautiful SW10, I had a great place to stay and had a marvellous time.  Great it was to revisit Westminster Abbey, feeling the sense of history and the grandeur of the abbey.  Every moment of being in London was sheer magic.  This city, more than any other, readily evokes a sense of home –- somehow, in its magical agedness, there vibrationally is something perfectly harmonised about London with aspects of the West Indies into which I chose to reincarnate and where my sense of ‘home’ is grounded.

The LGBT exhibition at Tate Britain was a bit underwhelming; however, I enjoyed being exposed to the many female artists and their Lesbian-themed art, which heretofore I was not cognisant of.  Naturally, the male perspective has always been prominent in homoerotic art.  Without doubt, the best exhibition was at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and the Crown’s exhibition of aspects of the Canaletto collection.  Naturally, I did have to return to the National Gallery to take in my favourite Sir Anthony van Dycks in their collection; among them, that ode to sage essence grandeur, King Charles I’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I.  The Rotunda at Ranelagh remains my favourite and most moving Canaletto; of course, it did prominently feature at the end of a flying dream, during early pubescence, that had me dreamquest to a past life in London, England.

That past-life was shared with Merlin when we were musicians at court in late 18th century London.  During that lifetime, we knew 1st Duke of Brontë, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson.  Apparently, Viscount Nelson was a great raconteur and it was likely his tales of his love of Nevis which proved the seed that eventually led to my choice at the level of soul to have reincarnated into Nevis –- which incidentally Canadians are wont to mispronounce as Knévis…  Sorry, the third world natives are not wrong; besides no one in London would ever think to say, Knévis.  The correct pronunciation is Kneevis… Knévis is no more correct than is Kanarda the correct pronunciation of Canada.  Enough about the risible ignorance of elitist petit bourgeois Canadians and their need to forever condescend.

So, there was I arrived in London with umbrella, pea coat, raincoat and it was all hotter-than-hell climes for the two weeks!  After trooping the colour, I decided to escape the heat of London and decamp à Paris… what was I thinking; goodness, it was at least 5 degrees hotter there!  Alas, Paris has become an armed camp -– I suppose this is what Paris during the Nazi occupation in WWII was like.  Either way, I could not wait to hightail it out of there.  Firstly, though, I had to head off to Versailles where previously I had not been.  Goodness, what grandeur -– the scales are truly phenomenal.  If I had ever had a dream set on the grounds of Versailles, it is highly likely that I would have awakened and assumed that I had just dreamquested to a marvellous world where the architectural scales surpass anything witnessed here on Earth.

In all that heat, I was told it was just a stroll away from the entry gates of Versailles to Grand Trianon to take in the Pierre Le Grand exhibition celebrating the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great’s trip to Paris.  Finally, after 50 minutes in my brand-new Crockett & Jones wellingtons, I arrived to what was not an especially impressive show.  However, the last piece — a beautiful bust of the Tsar — made my sweaty and blistered foot ordeal worthwhile.

After having been quite underwhelmed by Paris –- save of course my visit to Père Lachaise cemetery where I left pine cone tributes to Marcel Proust, Chopin, Oscar Wilde and Honoré de Balzac –- it was off to Amsterdam.  Finally, I had escaped hellish climes!  Amsterdam proved the most gloriously idyllic experience.  With a cool welcome breeze off the North Sea, the temps were in the low 20s and, of course, everywhere just about everyone rode a bike.  As I made the pilgrimage to the Rijksmuseum to be richly inspired, I was warmed as passing cyclists called out to me in my white panama hat that I purchased at Chateau de Versailles to beat the heat, “Hello!”  “Hi there!”  “Hi ya!”  This excursion to Amsterdam was truly soul-warming.  Nothing was more glorious than entering that salon and seeing Night Watch and the Meager Company.

Whilst browsing, I thought of George Hawken and wondered if ever he had made it to Amsterdam.  Just like that, on coming around the corner, the first painting I noticed in the salon which contains Jan Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, was an exquisite, stunning still-life of white asparagus.  The one legume that George considered the perfect signature to a fine meal -– cooked by himself -– was asparagus.  His most memorable meals ever featured asparagus coated in the most sublime sauces made from scratch.  I was truly warmed on seeing the still-life seconds after nostalgically thinking of him.  Yet another moment of synchronicity.

On preparing for the video to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Merlin’s birth, I decided last week to head off the costumer, Malabar on McCaul Street where George lived in the late 80s to early 90s.  Inspired by the first dream of Merlin had 39 years ago in July 1978, I decided to get a cowl as a tribute to the cowl Merlin wore in the inaugural dream encounter with him, four years before having met on Friday, October 1, 1982 in New York City.  So, there was I at Mount Pleasant Cemetery last Saturday, July 15, 2017 in my cowl and the panama hat purchased at Versailles to escape the heat.  I thought it fitting as Merlin always loved wearing panama hats.

My trusty friend, J.J. who happens to be an artisan entity mate whom I have known in 20 past lives –- which is a high incidence of contact -– was the director.  Initially, I had hoped to throw a white party on the lawn to the southwest of the chapel at Mount Pleasant Cemetery and have a drone film the event where a gathering of friends would raise a glass to Merlin on the anniversary of his ennobled birth.  Merlin always threw a white party each year for his birthday at his parents stunning backyard in north Toronto’s Servington Crescent.

The plan was not approved by the cemetery and thus, one had to improvise.  I got my panama hat and my cowl and together, we proceeded with a dozen long-stem white roses to visit Merlin’s resting place.  I had a pretty good idea what I was after.  With the matching white cowl, I wanted to evoke the magic of meeting Merlin in that initial dream which is shared in volume one of the dream memoirs which is already published: Merlin and Arvin: A Shamanic Dream Odyssey.

Get your copy!  Thanks as ever for your support!

In the hardcover edition of human civilisation’s first dream memoirs, the initial dream encounter with Merlin is shared.  The dream begins on page 110 in the hardcover edition.  I wanted the same sense of wonderment and magic that I felt for having met Merlin in that first dream four years prior to having met reflected in the video.  In that dream, Merlin’s appearance was preceded by a white totemic creature which seemed, in its astral plane outréness, to be part Russian wolfhound, part alpaca, part dog.

So, moving to the lawn, having descended the steps of the chapel, I began walking across the open lawn towards the statuesque lion festooned mausoleum with the five remaining white long-stem white roses.  Seven roses, of course, were left at Merlin’s grave -– one rose for each of our seven glorious years together.  As I stepped onto the lawn, it seemed magical… timeless even.  Slowly, confidently as I approached the filmmaker at the other end of the lawn, I thought of Merlin and that initial dream.

Just then, I very distinctly thought of Merlin greeting me by purring, “Hello Lambs.”  As if right on cue, from off stage left, an adult deer came from behind the bushes and tombstones that line the far edges of the open lawn.  Never before had I seen a deer at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  Indeed, the good burghers of Forest Hill who clearly regularly jogged in the park-like setting stopped and were overheard remarking that they had never seen a deer in the cemetery before.  All that I could do was tear up and continue walking as the deer then bolted and ran from stage left to right as I continued my stride uninterrupted –- unfazed by the appearance of an adult deer on the grounds of the cemetery.  What is more astounding, is that J.J. at the time was filming my walk; at the last minute, I decided against a run-through as I was concerned about the natural light possibly changing if we were to rehearse the shot.

Unbeknownst to me, the deer after having made it to stage right, then returned to the centre of the lawn and stood there perfectly still whilst observing my progression across the lawn.  J.J. who was astounded by the occurrence remarked that he had just witnessed a miracle.   There is no doubt in my mind as I tried to recapture the magic of that initial dream encounter that there was a subtle validation of that dream from the magical shaman himself on the other side by having had Merlin’s spirit step in as director emeritus and had the deer enter the shot as validation and a token of his appreciation of the love that we shared and my steadfast loyalty to him.  After crossing the lawn and turning to watch the deer stand there, looking down the lawn at me, I felt such utter peacefulness and abandonment of spirit — just as when alone and intimate in the dark with Merlin.

Yes, I believe in magic as did Merlin and as though an appreciation of having stridently done everything to fulfil his mandate to me, Merlin’s astral body conjure up the same magic here and now as he had in July 1978 –- four years before slipping inside a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up and readily winning me over with his sexy elfin charm, magic and sex that proved the most grounding shamanic passion… every time.

All the music chosen for this 13-minute video is music that Merlin loved whilst incarnate and to which he returned time and again -– whether at Joe Morton’s tiny Upper West Side apartment in autumn of 1983, Toronto’s 20 Amelia Street in tony Cabbagetown.  From Glenn Gould’s mastery of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, to Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick singing That’s What Friends Are For –- in that segment of the video, I included friends whom Merlin valued: Kareem Benezra, myself, Wayne Robson and his oldest and most loyal friend, the ever-gracious, Maxime Gascoigne-de Montigny.

Of course, for Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely, I exclusively included photos of Merlin and his very handsome and gracious father, David Ben-Daniel.  Whereas I favoured Sir Paul McCartney’s Hey Jude, Merlin ever loved George Harrison and especially My Sweet Lord.  Of course, one Saturday, whilst staying at actor, Joe Morton’s Manhattan apartment, when Merlin and I secretly committed to being together, we slow-danced to Supertramp and Roger Hodgson’s unmatched magical vocals on Supertramp’s Breakfast In America.

Additionally, Jeffrey Osborne’s On the Wings of Love which was one of Merlin’s favourite ballads is also included.  Merlin loved Black male soul singers: Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jeffrey Osborne –- most especially –- George Benson, Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Donny Hathaway, Barry White.  Most of all, I am especially proud of the video that J.J. and I have created; I think that it masterfully captures the depth of my love and fealty to the most fabulously magical shaman encountered on this incarnation’s spiritual odyssey.

Naturally, before having left for Mount Pleasant Cemetery, I had flooded my apartment with the music that appears in the video.  Perhaps, unwittingly by so doing, I was evoking Merlin’s spirit which later joined us when he played ultimate director and pulled off the most magical bit of stage direction –- an adult deer in the middle of a cemetery in the heart of mid-town Toronto.  Lastly, I played the sublimely soulful Shirley Horn’s interpretation of, Here’s to Life!  Whilst raising a glass of coconut water, I had forgotten to pick up some champagne the evening prior and it was too early in the morning to find champagne anywhere –- the lighting was way too good.  Besides who knows if that magical deer would have been anywhere about.

Here’s to life… most of all, here’s to Merlin… here’s to dream shamans everywhere!

Merlin & Arvin 1987

In coming weeks, there will also be other tokens of this celebration of Merlin and his mandate to me:

“Please my darling, I want you to write about our lives together.  I promise you, however possible, I am going to send you dreams to include in the story of our love… our lives together.”

Of course, there is my Instagram account:  Instagram Arvin da Brgha

Do please be patient and stay tuned as there will be a site where one can purchase merchandise that’ll greatly assist with the costs of having overleaves channelled that will yet appear in the five volumes of human civilisation’s first dream memoirs to come.  Also, there will be a podcast link.

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For now, here’s to life, here’s to you and thanks so much for your ongoing support all these years!

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