Gosh That Was Fun!

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Thanks to World Ballet Day, there was positively nothing or no one that was going to dissuade me from hitting London town.  Armistice Day and La Bayadère, you say… ha!

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Naturally, I returned to London, in my ongoing research/quest for more connections to the past as it pertains to the six-volume dream memoirs.  Though I had hoped to publish volume three this year, 2018, ongoing research has meant its delay until Spring 2019.  

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After dropping luggage at the hotel in Russell Square, it was a quick dash on the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square Station where the 10-day London Pass with Oyster card was collected.  On this gloriously mild Saturday morning, I took a quick snap of St. Martin-in-the-Fields across Charing Cross, before slipping into the National Portrait Gallery.  

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Before having found what I went looking for, I first took a detour through the Tudor Gallery where, alas, there were no portraits of Margaret Beaufort.  That done, I moved down to the open space where the exhibition: Black is the new Black was housed.  

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Stunning portraits, I love the blue-blackened soulfulness of the portraits; these are all eyes that are thoroughly ensouled and lived-in.  Next, it was off to the salon where what I went looking for was handsomely displayed.  

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Enraptured, I passed long forevers fully engrossed by National Portrait Gallery’s recent acquisition of Wim Heldens’ oil masterpiece – portrait of the art collector and benefactor couple, Harry and Carol Ann Djanogly.  The oil on canvas is handsomely hung in salon 38 and was painted in 2017 by Wim.  Wim, I met in NYC at Manhattan cabaret singer, Frans Bloem’s West Village townhouse when we went out back in the early 1990s.  I had been in town visiting with Frans from Vancouver; we met when I then lived in Toronto and finally, the relationship ran its course on my relocation to the west coast and not to be overlooked but sex with Frans was as meh as warm, runny vanilla ice cream.  Of course, by the time that I was visiting Frans and he was out of town, I met Wim; the latter was sick in bed and I looked in on him between going to the theatre and galleries in the city.  Apart from godawful sex, Frans was a little too obsessed with Diana Ross for my liking – it all seemed too sissy-queer-boy, clichéd and banal. 

Distracted by Wim Heldens

Besides, by the visit where I met Wim, who was the warmest of souls – Wim is an old-souled scholar and it shows in spades in his works – I had long discovered the raunchy funk of hot sex deep into the woods of Vancouver’s Stanley Park where the world’s largest city park (1000 acres) is ever ten degrees warmer than elsewhere in the city during the sodden wintry months as the half millennium-aged sitkas keep the place comfortably warm.  There was no need for the ennui of sex with Frans after tying raunchy fuckers to a sitka and whipping them; besides, positively nothing beats fucking in nature – truly, it is the most empowering, grounding experience.  

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On leaving the National Portrait Gallery, I ambled down Charing Cross, took the time to admire the bronze springbok that lords over the entrance to the Republic of South Africa’s embassy with the maple leaf-festooned Canadian Embassy to the west across Trafalgar Square.  

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Down into the bowels of Charing Cross station, I then skipped and hopped the Bakerloo Line to Lambeth North Station.  There on a gloriously temperate and sunny Saturday afternoon, I made my way to the Imperial War Museum and was rather moved by the beauty of the metallic poppies that tearfully bled from a bathysphere-styled window at the museum’s domed rotunda.  This glorious display was part of the centenary celebrations of Armistice Day 100 years earlier which marked the close of World War I.  

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Standing in the atrium of the museum, I was reminded how geography does determine the scale of architecture.  Relative to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D. C., there is no way that the relative limitless wide-open spaces of America would find military gear in such close cramped quarters as at the Imperial War Museum’s atrium. 

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I was there to take in the exhibition, Mimesis, which honoured, on the 100th anniversary of the close of WWI, the contributions of blacks from across the Commonwealth.  Turns out, it was not a photographic exhibition; rather, it was a most evocative of films.  

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From South Bank, it was back to Embankment Station and onto the Circle Line to Tower Hill Station.  There, emerging into the sparkling and relatively warm daylight, one was readily reminded of Vancouver temperatures at this time of year.  Into the perpetual queues one headed for a chance to gaze on the Crown Jewels at Tower of London.  

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Going in, the ravens were keeping a watchful eye… as is their wont and the tourists here were predominantly East Asian.  

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Seeing these metallic simians, I was reminded how good London’s fortune is not to be inundated by predatory monkeys… as is the case in both St. Kitts and Nevis.  

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After having viewed the Crown Jewels, this photo of Tower Bridge, suggested that the fast-moving clouds, though stormy-looking, would not break just yet.  

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About half an hour later, the vista to the west looked dramatically foreboding.  I tried to negotiate and decided that these clouds did not look all that fast-moving, besides they were considerably to the west.  

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Into one of the city’s ubiquitous and thoroughly indispensable Pret A Manger joints I slipped.  There, I dined on a hearty sandwich and had one of way too many raspberry smoothies.  

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Each day, wherever I travelled, there was always one in each pocket.  

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This little rocket was the must-have.  Always, there was one handily tucked away deep inside my black Dorothy Grant messenger bag as I darted about my favourite town, on my favourite West Indian isle – it really does vibrationally feel as though in the West Indies, besotting my insatiable soul with culture, art and more high-end inspiring fare.  

After having interminably waited out the rains, along came 1700 and time for the second to last day of the torch light ceremony at the Tower of London in honour of the centenary of WWI’s conclusion.  And so, of deference one waited out the rains, which rolled through in waves – waves they were which seemed increasingly more monsoon.  Finally, the show was begun and after having been soaked sans parapluie and too many souls – I do not like crowds, I opted to make this short clip as I could not see a damn torch on the ground and headed for the warmth of a hotel suite in Bloomsbury.  

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After being soaked to the gills to get into Tower Hill Station, no sooner than being on the platform and headed towards King’s Cross St. Pancras, along came the announcement that the station was now closed as there were too many souls on the platform to assure everyone’s safety.  Back out into the torrential downpour, we all grumbled, huddled and shivered; this downpour was seriously fierce.  

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After much aimlessly darting about the crowded and flooded streets of the city, two-plus hours later, finally a cab was dispatched and into a very cool hotel suite I arrived.  Somehow, in spite being soaked to the bones and frigidly cold, I managed not to have come down with the sniffles, a cough or runny nose. 

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Soon, wakefulness gave way to sleep and I was readily awakened into a plethora of dreams, which are always thrillingly, lucidly awakened in this favourite city of my well-travelled soul.  A day filled with adventure lay ahead; it was Armistice Day 2018 and I would manage to be captured on ITV film of the ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.  

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As ever, thanks for your ongoing support and sweet dreams.  

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

Dropping In On An Old Favourite of Many Lives Ago.

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Whilst the Moon transited both Gemini and my first house, during the fourth and fifth dreams, I would experience the most rhapsodic sojourns to a past life.  It was lucidly experienced, on Sunday, April 25, 1993.  Rather than a past life of Merlin’s, it was a past life of mine.

It should be noted that these dreams occurred in the ‘A’ or first sleep cycle that day.  There obviously was a ‘B’ or second sleep cycle of dreams that day and they are subsequently shared herein.  

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On my arrival to this strange locale, the fourth dream was begun.  I intuitively knew that this was the scene of a past life experience.  Initially, I thought that I was in Sandy Point, St. Kitts as I had assumed that I was up at Brimstone Hill Fort.

It proved not to be.  I experienced it as it was way back when.  This structure had lots of canons and guns set up.  The artillery was, of course, fully functional.

The place was very sloped; it seemed to have definitely been on an island and preferably in the Caribbean.  The hill was very steep leaving part of the fort steeply graded.

It was intensely sunny out.  On looking down at the landscape below, I realised that this was not Sandy Point, St. Kitts at any time in history.  One section of the complex was a burial field for soldiers who had died during combat at the fort.

A large rose tree and some other trees had, over time, grown tall.  One tree presently was in bloom with a large red flower.  Its beauty was captivating.  Subsequently, this tree grabbed my attention for a long while.

Whilst looking down at the splendour of the grounds, I thought that there was nothing in the world that I would rather do than to work the grounds of a cemetery like this.

For one, it was an historical site worthy of much care.  In addition, it was very ancient – almost old-souled in nature.

‘There could be no job more rewarding and uplifting than this,’ I thought at the time.

Whilst on the grounds of the cemetery, I looked up to a higher level of the fort complex.  Beyond it was the most spectacular vista imaginable; it was a mighty, lush, forested peak.

The fort was definitely itself on a hill.  However, the fort was not situated on a mountainous area.  In that sense, it was much like Brimstone Hill Fort which does sit on a peak.  Just as the arrangement with Brimstone Hill Fort, this peak was to the east.

As a matter of fact, this was quite the imposing peak.  Every available square inch of it sported the most densely planted, lush tropical trees.  These arboreal giants imposingly towered into the tropical sky.

From where I stood, a long procession of brown legal-sized envelopes littered the ground.  They proceeded high up into the slope.  With me at the time was Milton Bloomfield except that he did not seem his usual self.

Though he looked as he presently does, I had the sense that there was an amalgam of him and a former aspect of self as he looked in a past life.  Perhaps, the resonances to a former life that bled through reflected a time in the past when we knew each other.

No doubt that would have been a past life which directly related to the one that I was presently revisiting.  I suggested that we go for a hike as I know that he likes outdoor activities and events.

We could get some backpacks and head out on a trek and go all the way to the top.  I pointed out to him, where there was much activity, a region to the right on the peak.

I suggested that we go there because it would be nice to go and study the colony of wild monkeys at play there.  He said that he could get into it.  He then joked, with a screwed up look on his face, just as long as I had no ulterior motives.

He snickered and I returned a deadpan blank expression to his denial.  There was no need for him to think like that.  I wanted to be with him – his spirit.  He was great company to be around… nothing more.

Whilst he went off, to possibly get ready for the trek or take off altogether, I began looking down into the town below.  In a sense, I suppose that Sandy Point could have looked this way back in the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries.

For the most part, the buildings were no more than two storeys; just as in Old Sandy Point, many of them were chimneyed.  This, however, distinctively was a Caribbean place if not in St. Kitts.

It could not have been Brimstone Hill Fort, however, as it was a very long sprawling fort.  Much of the fort here was built on the side of a steeply graded slope.

To the west was the sea; nonetheless, I never did look out to sea.  Strangely enough, from these altitudes, it was fairly cool out.  For the life of me, I could not quite figure out what churches these were.

They were off to the south and away from what would have been Sandy Point – if these were, in fact, the structures of Brimstone Hill Fort.  Certainly, in the case of the latter, there were no established sixteenth and seventeenth century stone dwellings to the immediate south of Brimstone Hill.

There was a round château-like structure which was being built way down the slope.  Here, there were several Blacks working on the construction site.  The whitewashed walls were exceptionally thick as one would expect to find in a European palace.

Rather than where I was, this was being built as part of the fort but close to the base of the slope.  The architecture was distinctly French and the roof was a steeple-like affair.

The round lines were reminiscent of Château de Chenonceau.  The roof was partially constructed and was black in colour.  There were easily, in excess of, seven hundred persons labouring away at the construction site.

A very driven group of workers they were.  The design of this structure was familiar to me.  An intensely close-cropped town, it was down at the base of the fort.

From the distinctive look of the architecture, I decided that this was probably on one of the French islands here in the Caribbean.  The mountainous terrain had me wondering if this were not, in fact, Haïti rather than Guadeloupe or Martinique.

Finally, I decided that I couldn’t resist the attraction so headed down to explore the town.  Moving down the slope, I came to a clearing.  There I discovered that, within the walls of the fort itself, there were a great many structures.

Apart from the town below, it was a complex administrative entity onto itself.  Everywhere, the fort was constructed using massive black stone.  The walls of the fort, as well as the many buildings on its grounds, were all made of the same stone.

This complex was quite well-fortified plus, on the grounds of which, they grew every possible foodstuff that they needed.  There were orchards.  Also, there were areas where livestock were reared on the grounds.  This was in addition to the vast holdings beyond the walls and on the outskirts of the town.

The streets, inside and outside the fort, were narrow cobblestone affairs in that decidedly European fashion.  When I got to the clearing, I happened on these two people who were aides to a very ancient man.

He wore a suit.  This man was clearly a shaman and of Amerindian descent rather than African.  Instantaneously, I identified with him and recognised that he was me.  This was a past life of mine that I had returned to visit.

Not only was he long-lived but he was deeply occult.  He was an accomplished master.  His task involved laying his hands on the injured soldiers.

Even though these people were there to overrun his civilisation, he chose to ignore the politics of the situation.  Since his people were already overtaken, he chose to go into service of the Europeans.

It was not so much that he had sold out.  However, he had to fulfill himself with regards to the community at large.  Stranger still, was the fact that he was being allowed to practice his shamanism.

Obviously, this was a very unconventional approach to healing/medicine.  It was remarkable that within a European Catholic institution he was welcome into their midst.

This man really couldn’t have cared less that his own traditions had been annihilated by this foreign culture.  They were human, as was he, and were in need.

Gladly, he used his powers to serve humanity in this capacity.  He was a man with a strong warrior-like face that was generously flared-nostriled.  Much as Pablo Picasso’s was, his was an intensely martial-energied face.

He was strong, warrior-energied and intensely, sexually magnetic.  The shaman wore a bodysuit that was made of thick fabric.  It was to protect him from being stung by insects and hurt by dangerous plants, when beyond the walls of the fort, moving through the wooded areas.

I think that part of his life he spent as a bit of a reclusive ‘wild man’, up in the mountains, beyond the heights of the fort.  At this age, he walked with a long staff.  He was a wrinkled, dear old soul.

When he got up to leave, I stood there being blown away by the sight of him.  In any event, in that lifetime, I was a much-revered elder in the community.

This man held a position in the community which was totally unique and unrivalled.  This past life of mine was one in which I was a spiritual leader within the community.

A short, hobbit of a man, he was incredibly dark-skinned.  Though not a tall man, he was robust.  There was nothing frail about him.  He had a great constitution in that lifetime.

In his youth, it was plain to see that this man had wandered far and wide.  He had worn his years well on that body of his.  As he got up and walked away, I was so blown away to have seen what I looked like in this particular past life, I sat down and started laughing for joy.

To say the least, the great pride that I felt in self was uplifting.

The canons all had balls piled up in pyramid formations besides them.  Everything was very current and clearly in use.

Some of the canons were rather tiny and had to be placed on stands to best reach up to their perches.  One of them was green as though made of long-ago oxidised copper.  There was clearly no war at the time.

Throughout this entire experience, I was always removed from everyone and generally hovering in the air.  Clearly, I had astral-projected to this place.  The only person who could have seen me was Milton Bloomfield.

I did though have the distinct impression that the old man had asked to get going because he had sensed me.  I think that he thought that my presence meant his imminent passing which was obviously not the case.

Also, there were very few persons here at the time and the ones whom I did see were not the least bit familiar to me.  Perhaps, in a former life, I was buried at that cemetery because it certainly was a place of great solace whilst I visited it.

It felt like a coming home of sorts.

There were no upright markers for the gravesites.  Instead, there were long slabs that outlined each burial plot.  It was a very Catholic-looking affair with most of the graves long-ago sealed.

Next, this being the fifth dream, I was in a house and thought about the mindset of the Europeans whom I encountered.  They were discussing the fact that their children kept domesticated monkeys from the mountains as children of their own.

Their attitude towards these animals was not only proprietary but there was an element of racism involved, too.  They saw the domesticated monkeys as their own special breed of ‘Negroes’ that were not wild and potentially dangerous.

*How utterly evolved!  END.

They had gotten attached to the animals because the old Amerindian shaman also cared for animals.  Part of his reason for going off into the mountains was so that he could care for the animals.  He took it upon himself to heal and nurse back to health, any unhealthy infant monkeys from the colony that had been abandoned to die by their mothers.

He had a deep loving rapport with these animals which the transplanted Europeans admired.  Naturally, their children desired having some of the cared for animals for themselves as pets.  Since he couldn’t exactly deny them the request either, he gladly indulged them.

For one, it was his nature to be caring and of service to all life.  For another, he was in no position to deny the demands of persons who ultimately did not see him as an equal.

Two of the monkeys, which he had nurtured back to health, were now the favourite playthings of this particular family’s children.  What struck me about these two creatures was the fact that they looked more like two-toed sloths rather than monkeys.

These creatures were so old-souled-looking with their slow-moving demeanour.  Their black-within-black soulful eyes were placed low on their sloped foreheads.

Interestingly, I was concerned at how small their heads were.  To me it suggested that their brains were too small, without the requisite capabilities, for ensoulment to have occurred.  Even in comparison to the rest of their bodies, their heads were exceptionally small.

Their arms, on the other hand, were entirely another matter.  Ridiculously long, they were also phenomenally strong.  Clearly, this was somewhere in Central to South America as the sloths are native to that part of the world.

*I would rather not corrupt the experience by attempting to describe the details of the encounter.  Since it is not good work to fabricate, especially with regards to the dream material, I would like to leave it at that.

I would also like to add here that a most magnetic electrical storm greatly inspired me before going to sleep.  I had gathered a couple of blankets and gone onto the balcony, 16 storeys up, facing due west.

There I looked at a gathering storm system.  With crystals in hand, I began taking long even breaths when the lightning show started.  It was so intense.  There was a microburst and Whoopi leapt onto my lap, high as a kite, looking at the storm transfixed.

I had never felt so connected with nature in long ages.  Directly pointing the crystals into the aperture of the break in the clouds, I took seven long, deep breaths whilst chanting ‘Om’.  At the end of the sixth breath, the skies broke open and the most powerful downpour started.

This was such a moving experience that, with Whoopi trembling and purring away next to me on the chair – she had leapt from my lap during one of the thunder claps but returned on my invitation – I began uncontrollably weeping.  It was so immensely beautiful.

So I thought then about my life and what a greatly enriching experience it has been.  Thought, too, of how marvellous it has been to have met and known Merlin and everyone else along the way who has added so much learning to my journey.

Naturally, I thought a great deal of Gustavo Vadim and me.  At the end of it all, I felt truly weary and looked forward to nothing more glorious than slipping into the dreamtime.

These dream experiences were inspired by the expansiveness of spirit that I experienced during the storm.  For having blissed out, on the energies of that incredible electrical storm, I was able to move into the lusciousness of the greenhouse and connect with the magus within.

For feeling oneness with nature, during the electrical storm, it affected resonance to the deeply spiritual life of the Amerindian shaman.  For being inspired during the storm, I readily astral-projected on slipping into sleep.

Like an eagle, I spanned spiral arms of time and was able to drink of the noble spirit of self in a former life.  The gift for having taken the time to commune with nature, during the storm, had me travel across time.  There I would just as marvellously bliss out when re-experiencing aspects of that past life as an Amerindian shaman.

However, I found it really strange to have encountered this distinctively French architecture.  I am convinced that the life was lived in what was clearly not the Caribbean but Central or South America which was only ever Spanish.

After all, there were never sloths in the Caribbean.  For that matter, was that particular Amerindian look ever native to the Caribs or Arawaks.  Perhaps, there was some person who favoured the French school of architecture and had his or her designs executed.

Certainly, there could be signs of French architecture in several of the Caribbean islands but hardly in the Americas – Central and South.

However, all of this leaves one to assume that perhaps it was in French Guyana.  Exceptionally, it is the only French-speaking country with French architectural influences in either Central or South America where sloths are exclusively to be found.  END.

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Photo: Big Head

c. 1905 Edward S. Curtis

Provenance: Library of Congress. U. S. A.

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