Tag: London

Remembering Merlin.

Arvin da Brgha1 Comment

Merlin passed 24 years ago on November 18, 1989.

As a celebration of Merlin’s inordinately ennobled life, I have created a new category entitled: Dreams of Merlin. The dreams in that category centrally feature Merlin – a most magical elfin fellow.

Merlin and I met, four years after I first dreamt of him, on Friday, October 1, 1982 in New York City.

Merlin was the godson of the actor, Lorne Greene, he loved: parrots, Glenn Gould, J. S. Bach, bandannas, musicals, magic, patchouli, reading several books simultaneously; one of which he concluded each night at bedtime at which point, he would share the book’s contents. Merlin was a great raconteur, a devastatingly funny mimic which most persons who knew him did not know as he only ever engaged this aspect of his persona at bedtime, after reading, he loved cats, wore a cowl whilst smoking weed and conceptualising how to direct a new play and pacing about our home at 20 Amelia Street, Toronto – which alas you can now see on Google street view – incidentally the black wrought iron fencing in the photo was begun by the neighbour at 18 Amelia Street – a fashion designer of note who was a snob and bore who took to sending us registered letters complaining about our ‘wild’ cats using his maple tree as a scratching post. Though Merlin’s registered responses were wickedly funny and penned by Julio, the only male of our four cats, as my bullshit threshold is readily engaged, I went one better and instead of mailing off the fourth registered response from Julio – hysterical though it was – got a five-pound bag of catnip from the Menagerie Pet Store around the Corner on Parliament Street – it is still there – and proceeded to sprinkle it on said snobbish bore’s lawn over several days… as intended, our then three cats and several in the neighbourhood fast-descended on his lawn wigging out, however, sure enough, they began pooping in the garden and on the lawn… soon the sprinkler system of said snobbish bore’s lawn and garden was kept on all hours of the day to ward off this sudden descent of cats to the prized lawn… alas, the sod was eventually replaced and a silly little fence erected, as though that could ever deter cats… of course, over time, the neighbours along the block would get matching black wrought iron fencing because, well, that’s what genteel burghers will do.

Merlin died on his mother’s birthday and she, in turn, would die on the anniversary of the day we met – 22 years after his passing.

Merlin was/is a seven level mature scholar soul; and the life when we were lovers for seven years in fin-de-siècle New York City and Toronto was his sixth life at 7 level mature and our 43rd life together.  That high incidence of lives passed together was because Merlin and I were/are Task Companions; it also explains why the dreams shared herein of Merlin and me are possessed of such heightened telepathy, love, communion and lucid realism.

Of course, our disparate races meant that some persons in Merlin’s life thought it unacceptable that Merlin should be with me; indeed, one such person – nothing more than a lost village idiot and a clown to boot – as Merlin privately referred to her – made it her campaign to evict me from Merlin’s life…  indeed, those who know nothing of love can act no better and they certainly know nothing of dreams; for dreams are the fruits that a great love affair bears, which is readily validated by the dreams of Merlin and me herein, long after his passing.

Of course, as disparate as Merlin and I may have seemed we were more bonded than was readily discernible.  Apart from the essence bond of being task companions – à la Michael Teachings – Merlin and I were also bonded in a way which he had hinted at.  It was a year prior to his passing and I had been to my father, Isadore’s, for dinner.  On my return home that evening, I brought a copy of a famous family portrait of my mother, Harella, and her family.  Merlin was quite taken by my maternal grandfather’s bushy browed, moustachioed handsomeness and declared, “Are you sure about that Portuguese blood?  He looks just like a darker version of Yitzhak Shamir.”

Long years after Merlin’s passing and just after Isadore’s, in 2008, I would learn that the Portuguese blood to which my family is connected is by way of both Harella’s paternal grandparents having been of Sephardi heritage, along with her maternal grandmother.  Nevis, on which I was born, grew one staple, cotton, during colonial times.  That cotton was prized and the Sephardi were a small colony from not Portugal but Brazil.  Harella’s paternal grandmother was a Levine though it was mispronounced over time as Lavigne, after all, St. Kitts next-door was both French and English with some French families still present, and the tiny Sephardi community were referred to as the Portuguese.  Harella’s paternal grandfather, Claude Sr., was of mixed blood his paternal grandfather having been Sephardi who parented children with a freed slave of African descent… one peculiarity of Nevis – which Canadians are wont to mispronounce as nay-vis or névis it is more appropriately knee-vis – is that it is the only Island in the Caribbean where slaves were allowed to own land and will it to their descendants thus making them freed slaves – odd peculiarity that – and it was a condition of the ‘Portuguese’ electing to relocate there and trade the prized Nevis cotton to both London and New York City.  So, Merlin’s suspicions and intuition, as ever, proved spot-on.

Here’s to life.  Here’s to lovers.  Here’s to Merlin, a lover like no other: magical, charming, witty, sexy as all hell with the largest most hypnotically beautiful eyes, dream shaman, dream companion, über-sapiosexual…

**Since this post was created on the eve of Merlin’s passing’s anniversary in 2013, I have learnt that Merlin’s reincarnated.  He was reborn female in a Northern European city on December 2, 2006.  Merlin also is living the first lifetime as a first level old soul.

Clearly, Merlin was able to grow from 7th level mature to 1st level old thanks to the spiritual work we undertook as task companions after his passing through the conduit of the dreamtime.  All of this is, of course, readily validated by many of the dreams shared in this blog of Merlin and me after his passing.

2/12/2006 = 2.3.2 = 7.  Great numerology for the reincarnated Merlin and that twoness – like my current incarnation assures her a life of being creatively focussed and a definite intellectual.  Marvellous.

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Photo: Merlin in the 1970s.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

A Most Noble Shaman, Sarah!

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These next dreams are a wonderful journey into the rarefied world of Black musical genius.  The dreams were had on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, also a time, when America was about to unleash its warring might on Iraq – a campaign which would span some two-plus decades. 

The dreams were some of the most lucidly awakened.  Most of all, the dream with Sarah Vaughan was one of the most glorious dream experiences imaginable. 

A bit of leap off here but after all these dreams shared herein, it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve not done something as natural as having shared the Michael Overleaves of persons herein.  Merlin and I were/are Task Companions and that was his sixth life at 7th level mature, artisan-cast Scholar in acceptance (yeah!)  I am, of course, also 7th level mature, bluntly combative sceptic third life thereat in 6th position (hello the dreams!) of third cadence of third greater cadence, growth and passion. 

I became a Michael Student, on discovering the Quinn-Yabro Michael books, when Merlin was sick with full-blown AIDS in summer 1988 and it was the most arrestingly humbling experience to have met original group member SC 9 years later, herein referred to as Mathilde Duchenne – the pseudonym is a nod to a life in Barbados wherein she was a madam and I was her most prized worker – statuesque, stunning and entertained the seafarers, one of whom was a reincarnated king soul – who in an earlier famous incarnation was then sixth young, passion, dominance, idealism – Saladin, at whose court I danced with a cadence mate in fifth position (known in this life) and our respective Essence Twins whilst my then soldier TC (Merlin) whilst part of Richard Coeur de Lion’s crusading troops saw me dance and was blown away. 

This most recent get-together with my TC, then Merlin, was our 43rd and seven glorious years they were which continued long after both, of course, indulging in moments of sublime essence contact and energy transference as betrayed in the very lucid astral plane dreams herein…  For me, having been brought up by a musically gifted mother – whose love was sadly not readily forthcoming, she was though innately stylish and possessed of inordinate intellect.  She was also for long decades the only West Indian to have had her hymns published in the hymnal of the American Wesleyan church’s West Indian branch the Pilgrim Church – all that young-souled religiosity did wonders to hone my scepticism.  Harella was fourth mature Scholar… I’ve an obvious soft spot for scholars and 33 years after her passing my opinions and love for her have matured favourably rather than not. 

In any event, Harella was always singing and I have always loved Sarah Vaughan because something about her always reminds me of Harella, the complexion, the look, the round shoulders, the almost non-extant neck but the voice: warm, nurturing, maternal and stellar.  Though I’ve always been fanatical about Betty Carter – weeee! – I grew to love Sarah Vaughan when Merlin and his mentor, John Hirsch, grew even closer for both being full-blown with AIDS and we having spent so much time together; just the four of us, Merlin and me, and John – fifth mature warrior and his artisan task companion, Montréalais artist, Bryan Trottier, who proved a vile piece of work on Merlin’s passing which was months after John’s…

Bryan was repression mode, cynic, moving part of emotional centre, rejection goal and slid tremendously into acceptance and the negative pole thereof thus making him rather ingratiating and proving himself one phuch-all lugubrious sycophant with secondary CF of self-destruction, hence the bottle as pacifier in later life.  Bryan was then in the thrall of über-shit disturber, cum lost village idiot clown – with no discernible talent save being able to scheme and con her way from one nanosecond to the next, Elektra Skanczchowicz – fifth young slave in power mode with penchant for leather and for interfering in others’ lives and wanting to phuch with someone… anyone…  I am so glad to be rid of that ludicrous no-talent clown!  What is it about slaves and me in this lifetime? If it is not an old slave, I am loathe to have to interact with such fragments overlong – they really do present my impatience with a thorough challenge what with being 6/3/3 on a third life – vituperatively and with the greatest panache, ‘Go take your $hit elsewhere!’ 

These are things that are good to know.  I think one validates being a serious Michael Student as when in that dream recently shared of the female First Nation’s artist’s daughter that I speculated to self that she was likely in dominance – A couple of exquisite, old-souled gems.  For me, this is good work because it is so good to transcend the obvious pitfalls of waking state Maya.  Trust you me, most people in the waking state simply project their labels automatically.  It is no end of tedium to have some somnambulant lost soul start aggressively projecting onto you their embarrassingly myopic views when encountering me for seeing someone Black and god forbid male.  Don’t you realise that I am you in a past and future life, get over your tunnelled little perspective? 

Obviously, names were changed but I would be damned if I was not going to have some delicious fun assigning appropriate pseudonyms in the process – this incidentally was something at which Merlin excelled…  Although, since I have a fondness for Dravidian names, there are times when such names are used rather than cutting pseudonyms like Elektra’s, for example Mathilde Duchenne’s adept, V, is known where herein encountered as, Kritika Bhatt. 

To date, I’ve charted some 200 plus Michael Overleaves and it would well have been more, were it not for my protracted slow dance with starving artistdom. 

Whilst the Moon transited both Sagittarius and my seventh house, on Wednesday, August 1, 1990, I would awaken into these most luscious of dreams. 

<O>

Very intense and very involved these dreams and again there was a great deal of travel here.  I was in a city which was very moisture-heavy.

It was dark out; it seemed as though the light, though at daytime, was blocked out because there was a mist or there were a lot of moisture-heavy clouds which left the place really grey out.

It was a very ancient city and very much so like London, England.  In parts, it also seemed like Paris.  However, it was a mélange of London, England and, too, Bangkok.

It was at night-time and I was in a place where I saw the river.  This river was very much like the River Thames.

It was just as wide as the River Thames is and the river was very black and swollen.  It was fast-flowing and very ripe with a great sense of moisture.

As I was standing in this area, it was like standing in a circus.  It was a place much like Trafalgar Square.  This place, however, was not as large.  There was a central monument that had steps going up to it.

I was on the steps and looking off over the embankment.  The predominant stone of the architecture here was the same tone of limestone as was used in the Pont Neuf, as well as many buildings in Paris and in certain parts of London, England.

I was trying to look over the embankment because Arne Naess, who is Diana Ross’s husband, was talking.  I could see him and he had his back turned to me.

He was giving a tour and talking about how much he really does like his two sons and how happy he is to be a father again.

The first son, he said, was like Michael and I suppose that he meant like Michael Jackson.  Perhaps, he does have another son named Michael.  If not it would, I suppose, mean that Ross was quite a performer.

“Ross is very much so like his mother…” he was saying, “…and very much so a night creature.”

“An exhibitionist, there is no way that he’s not going to be a performer,” Arne was saying with resignation.

“Then Evan Ross” (Naess) he said, laughing at the mention of his last son’s name, “Evan is so much like me.

“If I turn in at eight o’clock or ten o’clock, whenever I turn in, Evan does too.  We’re very close and he always sleeps right through.

“He’s not a problem; a very silent and very, very contented child.  Not a problem at all.  I’m very, very pleased that I’m close with him.”

He then pointed out the bridge which had a terrace, like the terrace Tuileries along the banks of the Rive Seine, where you could walk by the water’s edge.  He said that he had bought this bridge for Diana Ross, as a result, it was now private property.

It was part of his vast real estate holdings in London, England.  It was, he shared, a present for Diana Ross.  As he said that, I then saw Diana Ross walking – her left profile and back visible from my vantage point.

She wore a London Fog or Burberry coat that went down to just below her knees with her bare legs visible.  It was beige, creamish-coloured as were the matching high heels that she wore.

Her hair was pulled back off her face and gathered in a loose curly puff in the back.  It was shoulder length hair.  I noticed as she walked that the belt around her waist was tied very tightly.

As if to protect herself from the chill of the dank air, Ms. Ross had her arms wrapped around her waist.  She was walking along the bridge alone and there was no traffic at all on this now private bridge.

He had said that he had bought it because,

“She has always loved walking on this bridge.  It means a lot to her and where she’d always go to when she returned to London… to think and meditate.

“It was one of the few places where she could really escape, not just in London but the world.”

Apparently, when he bought it for her, she was in Paris and called to let her know.

“She immediately got on her plane, dropping all her engagements, and flew here.  She was so ecstatic, screaming with delight.

“She was genuinely happy,” he said.

“It’s her own little retreat and she can walk on it whenever she desires,” he said.

It was very nice to watch her walk whilst totally self-absorbed.

I was trying to think of which bridge it was because it very much so reminded me of the Pont Neuf.  However, I know that it wasn’t that bridge because I got a strong sense that it was in London and not Paris.

It was on the St. James Park side of the Mall and going towards the Admiralty Arch.  On your left, you were actually able to see Admiralty Arch.

It was very, very black with age but also because of the ton of moisture-soaked moss.  It was covered here with a ton of ivy.

This was interesting because when I had dreamt of Francesca, for the first time, there was a great deal of the same large-leafed ivy on the building.  It was a very small circus – pedestrian and not for traffic.

I thought that it felt a great deal like London so decided to take a little walk and went up to cross the mall and go up towards Admiralty Arch.

I wanted to go in that direction, to check to see if I would happen on Trafalgar Square, thereby validating that it was London.

I headed off and soon noticed that there were many people in the city and a bustling city it was too.  Everybody was very quietly introspective.

Not too much noise and confusion or clutter.  I was zinging with energy for being in this very august city walking very rapidly.

As I was going, I saw a very modern complex.  It sat way across, like on the distant side of Trafalgar Square, to the north.

It was very large, very modern and of a very unusual design.  A lot of glass, steel and green chrome and very polished brass and not gold.

*Incidentally, in time, London, England would know just such a building.  It is the egg-shaped London City Hall.  However, here in the dream as it laid incubating in the architect’s creative imagination, it was lots of dark, soulful, green chrome and brass.  The latter is, however, not part of the actualised schema.  END.

**The building is actually the Swiss Re or Gherkin Tower not the London City Hall.  END.

When I was leaving the pedestrian place, I had turned around and looked in the direction of Buckingham Palace.  There, I saw a perfect, perfect, tiny chapel like Sainte Chapelle in Paris.  However, this one was even smaller.

As was like Sainte Chapelle, it was as if for the exclusive use of royalty.  It was in the Gothic style and with a very tall spire.  It was so squat to the ground that it almost seemed like it was a hut more than a cathedral.  Nonetheless, it was very Gothic.

In fact, it more so resembled those gold-spired Buddhist temples in Bangkok that are very dome-shaped with very, very tall spires.  This chapel’s spire was way taller than the chapel was.  This chapel was also white limestone – more appropriately, it was white marble.

I was going along the street and looking up at the buildings to try and make them out as I went.  Sometimes I would even have to step off the curb, briefly going into the street, to get a good look at the buildings.

It was so cluttered here that it reminded me of the crowdedness of the environs of the Hippodrome.  As I was going along, I noticed up ahead a tall, modern building that was blue.

It was as tall as the post office tower in London but bluer, even skinnier and easily taller.  Behind that in the distance, in all that fog, I could then make out what seemed the CN tower.

I thought then and there,

‘What city is this anyway, London?  Bangkok?  Toronto?  After all Toronto can’t be that close to London.’

I knew that it clearly couldn’t have been London, England.  It was so very modern on the other side of the road and looked very North American.

As I had earlier, I then looked off to the left.  This time I was way on the other side of the Mall, well beyond heading into Soho and past Trafalgar Square, heading as if up towards Piccadilly Circus.

There, I saw a very interesting sight.  What I now saw was a duplicate cathedral of the Gothic spired shrine that lorded where Buckingham Palace ought to have been.  This one was made of white gold and was glimmering in the light even though it was foggy.

It was therefore not a blinding reflection of the Sun.  It was zinging with a life all its own.  It was absolutely magnetic.  I thought,

‘Well, darlings, you’re definitely not in Kansas.’

I then decided that I would go off.  I really wanted to go explore the other side of the river.  I wanted to be able to see Diana Ross.  If not, I thought that I could go into the mall close by to try and find out what city this was.

I just wanted to explore the place.  Even more, what place was this where the predominant signature here architecturally was deco?  However, all was very modern with very deco lines to everything.

I went off and when I went into the mall, there was a restaurant that I went into.  It was green on the inside with depictions of plants everywhere and a lot of white.  There were as well waiters in green and white uniforms.

It was like a fast-food joint.  I recalled this man saying that he was a vegetarian and he wanted to know if they did not have anything that he could have.  He was stout and White.

There were these doors that led out into a beautiful, little, enclosed garden which was too Zen for words.  I decided to go out to drink up its beauty.

I also wanted to know if I couldn’t use it as a shortcut to wherever the bridge was.  I wanted to get to Diana Ross’s private bridge.  Finally, it was all that I wanted to see.  I was, however, having problems getting the door to open.

Finally, when someone was coming in, I went out the door.  I had not made an effort to buy anything.  It was a burger joint and a very posh upscale one at that.

When you left the eatery, by going through the back, it was in a park that was off from the street.  It was very, very beautiful here.  I wandered my way through it enjoying its large sycamores and other trees.

There were lots of heavy, old-wooded trees.  It was very expansive and healthy here.  I went around and came upon this very huge building.  It was a very, very exclusive and expensive hotel.

There was another tiny, little private street.  It was one which celebrities used to access the hotel when staying there.  The entrance was for celebrities and, of course, royalty.

This was so that they could not be bothered out front, on the busy thoroughfare, and have to deal with the nuisance of the paparazzi.

It was a white hotel of the same stone and looked as the buildings in Whitehall, London.  A very, very big and colossal building it was.

I went around and all you saw were well-healed people coming and going from the hotel.  They were all Black and very, very wealthy.

They looked very much so like Black Americans rather than Black Africans or Black Europeans or West Indians.  They were also in the entertainment business.  They were very much so musicians in the Jazz genre.

There was a very tall, High-Yellow woman.  She looked a lot like Stephanie Dabney – former prima ballerina with the Dance Theatre of Harlem.  She was older and had an entourage with her.

She had a whole load of suitcases and equipment as she awaited her ride.  There was a beautiful, black, convertible Porsche that was seated there.

Diana Ross’s son was in a yellow shirt and shorts.  The shirt was very bright yellow with a little floral design on it.  He was standing there looking much older than he is in real life.

He was looking at the car admiringly smiling at it and you knew that he wanted one.  You could tell that he just wanted to get into it and drive it.  It was Ross and you could see the definite resemblance to both her and him – his parents – in his face.

There were tons of security people as well as porters in navy-blue uniforms.  The porters’ was almost like a cadet’s uniform with gold stripes around the sleeves and gold buttons.  They wore hats; it was all very soigné and posh.

The musicians were very soulful, well-travelled, Black American, Jazz musicians.  They were very tall with distinctive features.  Theirs were faces that looked more iconically like African masks than anything else.

I then got going along not wanting to be seen gawking at anyone.  That was when I noticed another woman who turned out, in fact, to have been a much younger version of Betty Carter.

It was her and she also had an entourage of her own though one not as big as the other woman’s.  I saw her with a man.  Studying her right profile as she was talking, I intently looked at her.

However, I declined going over and interacting with her.  She was very well-fortified spiritually and did not want to be a celebrity.  She wanted to be left alone.  That much was obvious.

I went along and you could hear the river which was off to the right and the hotel was on the left of the tiny, little, private road.  To the right were all these heavy, big trees on this private road.

It basically was on the embankment of the river where there was a terrace with steps that led down to the River Thames with these huge, colossal trees that lined the top of the cliff.

You had to meander down the old, stone staircase which was, of course, dank and mossy.  There were different, little landings on the way down to the dark, fast-flowing and swollen river far below.

The further down you went, the greater the vista as more of the overhanging trees were out of distracting view and gave a better view of the very, very wide and commanding river.  It was noisy but very soothingly so.

When I got down to the first landing who should I see, off to the left in a corner, but Tina Turner.  She wore high heels, a skirt and a suit.

It was supposedly an Azzadine Alaïa.  It was a powder-grey, pinstriped suit and so powder-grey, in fact, that it was almost silver.  She was, indeed, looking fine.

It matched the exact colour of her hair which here was grey.  She had it pulled back off her face and wore a blue band from ear-to-ear that kept her mane back in place.

It was a beautiful, soothing, blue colour with tons of jewels throughout it.  It was not a mandarin collar.  Rather, it was a small-lapelled suit which was buttoned high up almost to the neck.

She was searching through her bag and was with a couple of men.  These men were a part of her entourage.

She was standing there having just left the hotel where she had been received, along with the other luminaries, by Diana Ross who was holding court.

This beautiful place was where Diana Ross was staying now.  She had had Tina Turner and the others by for tea – very formal.  Tina Turner had come out to wait for her ride but had slipped down onto the landing on the terrace to talk with these men.

When I saw her my spirits soared and I graciously said,

“Hello Tina…”

I clasped my hands in the Buddhist prayer manner and added,

“…How are you?  Kuon Ganjo…” at that I bowed to her as I walked by.

She was on my left and I did not want to stop and interrupt her.  By not stopping, I wanted her to be at ease and not feel her space being invaded by a proprietary fan.

She was in conversation, however, warmly smiled at me being very polite and appreciative.  I was pleased that here was another celebrity and she was not being rude.

She was being reverential in return and appreciative by way of the reference that I made to our both being Buddhists.  She smiled acknowledging me, to which I awkwardly added, as I was so stunned that she would acknowledge me let alone be so warm,

“And god bless…”

She thanked me.

I then went and looked over the edge.  The view from the terrace was so breathtakingly gorgeous.

Listening to the music of the ripened river was like the same resonant rapture I experienced when, on the embankment in London, England, I saw the River Thames for the first time in this life.  It was quite incredible.

I decided to proceed down and came down to another landing.  There were two of the musicians who are presently in Betty Carter’s band – the piano player and the bassist.  They were alone together.

I suppose that the man, to whom Betty Carter was talking upstairs on the private road, was the drummer.  I thought that it made perfect sense because here were the other two members of the quartet.

They were talking of Tina Turner saying,

“And did you notice that her blouse is a definite Ruth or Louise Browne of Los Angeles.”

This was obviously a very au courrant, very expensive designer.  They were very impressed with it.  I thought it funny because here were these wonderful, elevated musicians yet they were quite impressed by celebrities.

Then again, they were very young and were just starting out in their very august careers in the business.  So, of course, it made a great deal of sense that they should be star-struck.

I admiringly stood there and shyly said hello to them.  They warmly, gentlemanly responded.

I then moved off and went to stand facing the mighty river.  I was being made high, by all this beauty, having seen all these stellar musicians – these icons of Black culture.

Diana Ross.  I saw Betty Carter in this dream.  I saw Tina Turner in this dream.  These are three very elevated, Jazz singers in their own spheres with all these Jazz musicians.

It was quite a dream indeed and very, very, soulful.  It was very definitely on the astral plane because of the feel of it and the nature of it.

The intensity of the dream and the way in which I was so at peace with both nature and persons encountered, for being in this high-astral plane place which was possessed of such harmony, spoke to this being a dream of high moment for me.

When I stood there on the terrace, drinking in the thunderous roar and the healingly soothing, symphony of the River Thames rushing by below, I felt that sense of home and oneness.

It proved to be the end of that particular and very, very intense, involved and most multilayered of dreams.

<O>

It was night time, in the second dream this day.  I was in the streets of a place which I did not recognise.  There was a woman who was trying to park a very light blue, beautiful, beautiful car.  It was more like a station wagon in design.

It turned out to have been Sarah Vaughan – driving the station wagon – who, of course, is now passed on.

It was in a locale that I did not quite recognise at all.  Again, the feel here was of being still on the astral plane – not surprising, considering that Sarah Vaughan is now an astral plane habituée.

There were some other cars parked, as well, along that side of the street.  It was a very fine car, very heavy-looking.  It was almost like a Sherman tank and not a flimsy, little, computer-turned out car.  A very sturdy automobile it was.

She was quite meticulously trying to parallel-park the car.  She was quite obviously not accustomed to driving herself nor, for that matter, was she particularly comfortable driving.

However, all this was secondary to what was going on because she was singing.  She was warming up and by doing so, what she was doing, was singing an aria.

She was singing a male – tenor’s aria from an opera.  She was singing away.  She had such an incredible voice.  Ms. Vaughan’s voice proved a superbly stellar instrument.

I was astounded because here I was standing off to the side watching her try to park the car.  I was intently looking at her left profile studying her face, her round shoulders and almost nonexistent neck.

In that sense, she was so much like Harella.

She would sing very heavy-sounding bass and sounded just like a man.  Then she would do her vocalesing and slip into a very high-pitched and very complex dimension.

She was hitting high Cs that were just the warm up for where she would take you.  I really was transported by her singing.  It would be just this wonderful, wonderful vista onto which she would soar taking me along.

Such beautiful, beautiful feats musically that you can’t possibly share here in the waking state – it could only be experienced or articulated in the dreamtime’s pandimensionality.  It simply made me soar within.  It was quite incredible.

After she had parked the car, it opened.  Yvette Morehead came out and went and sat down.  She went and sat on a park bench and seemed as if a bag lady or confused.

I never did see Sarah Vaughan come out of the car.

I then moved on… it was just time to move on.  I don’t recall, in the least, having interacted with Yvette.

<O>

Art: Africa on her mind.

Graphite on Paper

11 x 14 Inches

© 2013 Orlando J. Black

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Past-Life Dream Set In Intrigue-Filled Dynastic Egypt.

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This dream, set in dynastic Egypt, deftly betrays what a powerfully focussed and strong woman Harella was.  The dream was first that day.  

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I was seated on a wonderful divan in a beautifully opulent place.  Instinctively, I knew that this was in Egypt.  It was during the height of pharaonic Egypt.

There were two stout women here with me who were light-skinned.  Hard to tell whether they were Mitanni or light-skinned Blacks.  They were cooks and were fussing over me asking me to eat up.

I ate from a plate which had these different shoots on it.  One of them was papyrus shoots, some bamboo shoots and a wild Nile delta mushroom.  It was strictly vegetarian fare.

As well, there was a purplish tuber like baby eggplants.  I ate with a fork which was very heavy-looking.  Clearly, I did possess some rank at birth.  I would point out the items I wanted to eat next and would then have it fed to me by either woman.

At one point, I was told by one of the women,

“Yes, you even remember what your favourites were last time.”

At this point, into the room walked a tall Black woman of Ethiopian features and complexion but who was not too dark.  Definitely, she was from the Upper Nile region.

I can’t quite do justice here as to how supremely regal this woman was.  She was quite simply the most regal and powerful creature imaginable.

The two eyes that this woman wore were large, brown and soulful.  You felt her soul itself looking out and into you.

I did not think of her as having been Merlin in a past life.  However, it is quite possible that this woman’s soul I knew quite recently as Merlin during its last incarnation.

When she entered the room, the women looked at each other and one of them said in a sotto voce,

“Ah yes, she’s brought him with her.”

There was a Black man, who was a little darker-complected, there with her.  Seemingly a relation or priest, perhaps, he might even have been a eunuch.

He remained in an outer room.  She was quite simply the Queen, the Pharaoh’s wife.

On entering, she began walking around us and speaking.  She was very stylised in her movements.  She wore a tunic of gold thread and strips of gold filigree.

In places, her dress looked metallic.  In its sparse, linear, understated opulence, it seemed not unlike something that Cynthia McFadden would design.

The dress throughout was festooned with the designs, all in gold, of open papyrus leaves.  They were very tiny and sat inside of little squares.

In one square there would be a papyrus applied, such that it would be very iridescent, whilst on the next square it was very dull with a matte finish look to it.  The resulting effect was one of row after row, square after square, of papyruses.

Each square was exactly half an inch square.  The detail on this dress was absolutely golden.  It was supported by half-inch-wide straps which, of course, had the same square papyrus design.

Next to her flawless complexion, she was simply statuesque.  Her neck was easily six to ten inches longer than the infamously long neck of Ann Cokossi, Princess of Togo – the regal lady’s neck was longer than Iman’s.  Iman was clearly descended from the same stock.

It was not Iman.  She did have long hair that was finely braided in the fashion of a Maasai male’s.  The hair was swept up off her face and into a very intricate arrangement.

There were several beads throughout her stylised hair and some of them were cowrie beads.  There were other shells and some precious stones as well.

Her makeup was exquisitely applied and clearly was a several-hour affair.  The eyes, of course, were the most detailed.

I really did not get a sense of it being the famous Nefertiti Akhenaten.  However, the man that she was with was undesirable and totally untrustworthy.

I got the sense that it was someone related to me, as in myself, in a past life.  He never did enter the room.

Whilst speaking with the woman who sat there on the chair feeding me, the queen kept on slowly gliding about the room.  This woman was like the Queen Mother or, perhaps, the dowager.

Whilst she spoke, I was beginning to become refamiliarised with the palace intrigue.

Throughout the salon, where we sat, there were a whole series of spies.  Soon enough, I could discern the holes throughout the walls so that the spies could get a good command of what was going down.

There was a great deal of subterfuge here.  There was a whole caste of spies.  There were spies who were in the service of the priesthood.  Spies of the Queen’s and still there were spies of the Pharaoh’s.

Still there were spies of the harem among which were a subclass and more powerful caste of spies for the eunuchs.  In addition, all the different levels of the royals had their own battery of spies.

All about the room, every one of those holes had a designated spy who reported back to his dynastic figurehead in the hierarchy.

This was a very brief dream, I must add here.  However, it was very lucid, real and totally lived-in a dream.

I had a sense of being there in time.  It was not just an observer dream.  I was really in the body of that royal child who could have been no more than six years old.

This occurred at nighttime and it was somewhat damp in the room though simultaneously briny from the arid desert air.  The whole language was about intonation and innuendo.

As a matter of fact, the whole language was so ritualised and stylised that it was more slow and subtle than is movement in the Noh theatre of Japan.  This was all about gestures and the myriad gestures that could be implied from the relations of one gesture juxtapose to another.

It took me awhile to get the knack of it.  However, I became totally lucid as to what was going down.

It all came back to me.  Indeed, even at the age of six, I was already quite proficient in the nuances of this very complex court language.

As she spoke, the Queen’s arms and other parts of her body would be perpetually in motion.  It was danced – this language.  The whole language was codified and layered beyond anything wildly imaginable in this day and age of superficiality.

This was deception on the order of high art.  What was spoken was mere camouflage.  The spoken word was not even an nth of the layered language.

Along with it, what her body was doing and the subtlety of movements indicated what was really implied by what was said.  More to the point, it was what was not implied by what was not said.

By comparison, the most sophisticated Parisienne would be considered a primitive communicator.

This was all very complex court politics, indeed.  Then, at one point, the Queen went and stood thereby freezing her movement and this is what one had to try and discern.

This was because the every placement of every limb and muscle, on her body, carried great impact by way of what was being communicated.  This was very much so an African tongue being spoken here.

At times, it was slow whilst at other times dizzyingly sped up and rapid fire.

*It seemed more closely to resemble Jazz vocalesing à la Betty Carter sophistication though, truth be told, even Betty Carter’s skills were primitive by comparison.  I can’t impress enough how truly complex was this language and mode of communicating.  END.

Yet I got the complete picture of what she was communicating.  The Queen was speaking of the child – my six-year-old former self.  I feigned ignorance at the time though it was obvious that I was the subject of discussion.

This had to do with the care of the child.

“How was the child coming along?” she had inquired.

I could very well have been her child.  It was obviously the custom for royal children to be separated, from their mothers at birth, the higher placed they were at birth.

I was here in this dream, of a past life experience, in the care of two women who were as if wet-nurses/governesses to me.

At another point, the Queen had produced this papyrus fan from beneath the delicate folds of the heavy-looking dress.

It was a plain fan made of papyrus.  However, it was covered in hieroglyphs.  This was also a very ancient fan which she had inherited.

The fan was being strategically used, as part of the deceptive code, to foil the spies all about the room.  When coming closer to us, the Queen had smiled a very bland smile in my direction.

This was, of course, so that nothing whatsoever could be read into it by any of the spying factions.  The Queen slowly leaned in to look at the food that I ate.

Inspecting it, she offered the gesture of showing her trust in the cooks by taking a piece of shoot from the plate to eat.

This was all theatre for as she had slipped the food to her mouth she waved the fan over her mouth whilst saying, in rapid-fire sotto voce, a couple of very strategic sentences.  It was absolutely sublime.

It was directed at the dowager Queen Mother who, for being more practised in the art, feigned utter ignorance of anything so paranoid as subterfuge.  It was priceless!

This was clearly the height of late young soul to early mature soul intrigue.  Though she could never have been overheard in saying what she had, the fan was placed to prevent the visiting Queen being lip-read.

These spies, after all, were very expert.  I do recall one man having been seated across from me earlier.  He was a spy and basically he was visiting to learn the every minutia of my mouth mechanics during speech.

It was all very subtle, though very archly shrewd and deadly, the way in which he came to do his job and record my mouth’s every idiosyncrasy during speech.

The queen had performed, in that one gesture, such a winning sleight of hand.  She was letting the Queen Mother know that she trusted her by actually tasting the food that she was feeding the child – me, in that past life.

It seemed, after all, to be an impromptu visit which means that the food could well have been laced with poison for unsuspecting me.  I suppose that if it were necessary, I could have been eliminated by the dowager Queen Mother or the Queen herself.

When she had directly stood in the centre of the room, earlier, the Queen had picked up her right foot off the floor.  She had very subtly managed not to have shifted her weight or allowed for any movement whatsoever in her upper body.

The Queen then began doing what seemed a predecessor of the frappé and began horizontally waving her foot from the ankle.  The movement betrayed a gesture akin to ‘no’.  This, of course, did not in the least betray everything that was going on elsewhere in her body.

As there were so many items of furniture about the room, it was obvious that from where the holes were placed in the walls that one could not make out the codified foot movements.

This was so mind-bogglingly delicious.  The foot being incorporated, in the language, was a most clever invention.

The moment at which she picked up her foot, it was as though I had sat up awake in bed.  It was that vividly recalled from past life experience.

‘Yes!’ I thought to myself and laughed a small breath which the dowager Queen Mother, to my side, immediately stifled with a sharp intake of breath.

One clearly did not laugh in the Queen’s presence.  The subtleties of the language here, in this point in dynastic Egypt, were phenomenally stratospheric.

This was communication taken to heights unheard of since, in any court life, on this planet.

There were times as she slowly moved about the room that the Queen had ritually placed the fan to her beguiling face, to fan herself, whilst letting out little phrases for us to hear.

On one occasion, her back was to us and her arm in back made a series of quick gestures that were not unlike sign language.  Meanwhile, the fan was to her face giving us a double stream of code to simultaneously decipher.

To the point of being frightening, the Queen was very deceptive.  It was hard to ever see her eyes.  The Queen used language such that the eyes could never have been seen.

More could be read from her eyes adding to what she was saying.  For this reason, she almost exclusively kept her lids such that it kept her gaze cast out and down to the floor.

Her head, of course, was never lowered and the rapid eye movements which she employed were also very strategic.  When she spoke, one was never to make eye contact with her.

It would imply too much simply because we were being spied on.  This was indeed a very restrictive existence.

There we were, in a fish bowl of sorts, being spied on by sharks who completely surrounded us waiting their turn to hungrily make prey of us.  Since she was the Queen, one could never look at her eyes.

However, I was possessed of more than my six-year-old self making me a very probing and curious soul.  The Queen picked up on this and was acutely made uncomfortable by it.

It was as though there was now some new development in my maturation which spelt trouble.  Naturally, you just knew that there was any number of long discussions to come as to what to do with this ‘one’ meaning my poor, possessed self.

It was as though, for having stepped into my former self’s six-year-old body, I could have spelt his very untimely and not accidental death.  Regardless, this woman and I were deeply connected.

I could sense from her a real familial, maternal even, bond.  The Queen was very much so in tune with me.  There was an element of this communication which was low-level telepathic.

Indeed, there were times when she had thusly engaged me.  It was chiefly done for putting me at ease.  It was also how she had to stay bonded to me for having had me taken from her, of custom, at birth.

What was really interesting here was that the concept of reincarnation was definitely fully accepted and religiously incorporated in the schemata of dynastic life.  The dowager Queen Mother and governess, too, were both convinced that I was someone in the royal family who had reincarnated.

My choice of food favourites were validation enough for them.  I was very much so favoured by the Queen.  She was warm towards me.

However, she never physically expressed this.  There was always, however, a very strong psychic fusion between us with most of the energies coming from her to me.

She was connected to me – this much was unmistakable.  I never did see the eunuch who had accompanied her, however, he was very powerful an influence in their lives.

For this reason, more so than the placement of the spies, the Queen never once was demonstrative of her feelings towards me.  She did let up on reaching towards the plate of food.

One had the sense, of the eunuch who had accompanied her, that he was the one person who had connections to all the spying factions within the inner royal circle.  He waited outside in the antechamber and his presence was more closely being paid attention to, than even the Queen’s, at times.

There had also been musicians about the room playing music.  This was simply to drown out the conversation being heard by the battery of spies.

The musicians were placed along all four walls to really drown out the conversation.  This then precluded conversation from making it to the periphery of the room and the spies just beyond its walls.

This was a very palatial suite.  It was dimly lit and sparsely decorated yet in the finest style.  A very comfortable and socially elevated milieu it was.  A most elevated dream experience.

*As it is the forty-fifth anniversary of Merlin’s birth, I had asked prior to sleep in a lengthy meditation, to become opened up to experiencing aspects of a past life experience between Merlin and me.

I asked only that it be of a positive nature and that it be in no way an unpleasant experience.  The last thing that I wanted was to have some dream which mirrored the less pleasant aspects of Merlin’s end-of-life experience.

Voilà, there it was – a most vivid, awakened dream experience.  I have no idea which person here could have been Merlin.

I fully identified with the six-year-old and, indeed, I was experiencing the dream inside his body and, at times, from a detached perspective.  Then, too, I did identify with the much-feared eunuch outside the door.

So I don’t know if he was me or, perhaps, even Merlin.  The very loving energies of the Queen Mother could more easily have been Merlin, in a past life, than the Queen herself.

**The musicians about the room, against the far walls, were all distinctly Nubian.  They were exquisitely beautiful and the quirk that they each had was that they were, for obvious reasons, each of them both blind and deaf.

This, of course, did not detract from their stellar musicianship; at times they did sing.  However, for being both blind and deaf they could not be expected to be picking up on any of the codified language and body signals that formed this most layered of spied-on, palace intrigues in dynastic Egypt.

I should think, too, that this was at the heights of the Middle Kingdom before the advent of Akhenaten’s ascension.  This sort of intrigue, and frankly rut, is precisely what he was likely sick of and seeking to escape when initiating his monotheistic religion.

Of course, with so much centuries-old intrigue, clearly he would have been seen as the ultimate obstruction – a heretic who had to be annihilated at all costs and things righted in his demise.  This, of course, is precisely what did take place.

Again, despite the vogue since the nineteenth century to make a truly African civilisation anything but, everyone one and everything here was distinctly African: the music, the looks, the sense of fashion, styles and hair styles.

The Queen’s eyes were not only phenomenally powerful but her head had that distinctly African/Black high-foreheaded look.  The Queen’s neck was almost giraffe-like.

She made Iman look no-necked by comparison.  END.

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Photo: Supermodel Iman.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.