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. 

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

Dolphin House Pets and Glimmers of El Greco’s Muse (Redux)

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On the cusp of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Georgia O’Keeffe Exhibition opening this month, I am repost this blog.  Do please enjoy.  

Whilst the Moon transited both Libra and my fifth house, these next dreams occurred on October 1, 1989.  Too, it was the seventh anniversary of that magical, and a bit cool, Friday evening in Hell’s Kitchen when Merlin and I would meet… yet again. 

Of course, at the time, he was rather ill with full-blown AIDS and horribly suffering from Candida.  However, as I have known more than 200 persons to have passed of AIDS, Merlin’s AIDS-related illnesses were mild manifestations of what can eventualise with AIDS.  I have always been grateful for that. 

These dreams – one a touchstone dream with Olaf Gamst’s old-souled son as he was during a life when he was an assistant, muse and lover of El Greco’s, the other a dream set remotely in the past on this planet or possibly on another world where the indigenous folks were decidedly extra-human though Sol III human-looking enough – were welcome inspiration. 

Too, the dreams were dreamt during the second sleep cycle that day.  Back then, I took naps as often as I could afford.  Merlin fainted several times each day and the sheer gravity of what we moved through was exhausting at times.  As he would have it, no one knew that Merlin fainted multiple times daily. 

At the time of these dreams, I had taken to the pyramid to meditate with crystals and eventually ended up privately crying at the share stark finality of what imminently loomed on the horizon.  Thus, sleep was a welcome refocussing of my energies – if only briefly.  Of course, sleep and its elixir, dreams, ever kept me focussed, inspired and aware of the macroscopic. 

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In this the first dream, I see Eleanor Bissell – my Canadian-History and English teacher at Harbord Collegiate Institute; she was doing some gardening in a blue dress that was floral-printed.  This garden had tall old trees in it.  There were hydrangea plants – large ones at that.

I went over and I greeted her and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bissell.”

I told her who I was and she had on her glasses and her breath was short.  She was just the same as when I knew her in the waking state.

This dream, the second, was set in another time and another place.  I was captured by this man in a castle-like dwelling.  A very Moorish setting, like in Spain, it was; it was not Moorish architecture like in Northern Africa but it was more so in southern Spain.  Perhaps, it was Andalusia or thereabouts.

It was brown stone which had been burnt by the Sun for years and years, tens of millennia, as a matter of fact.  I got captured and I was taken back into a room with a man; he was saying to me, “Of course you’re mine.  You’re 63%!”

This percentile was supposed to signify, if you like, being bad or evil.

He was describing things to me because he was the epitome of what one would consider evil.  I was saying, “No I’m not.”

I was saying that I didn’t want to be there and wanted to be let out.

The thing is, it was not me; rather, I was the son and he was a bronzed person; he was very swarthy but not Black.  I was his offspring; I was, in fact, his son.  Then some people came in and they were all there and I asked if I could get out with them.  They, however, said no that I couldn’t because they were alright.

They said that they were all 50% and that I was not.  I supposedly had to be 50% and therefore, as I was his son, I had to stay there with him.  I was really upset and somehow I managed to be stealthily taken away during the night, after the father left, by a woman.

She wore long flowing garb and she was again very Mediterranean or Middle Eastern-looking.  She had long limbs and café au lait complexion.  She told me how it all went that I was her son, by the same man, and that she was one of his many lovers.

However, he was never supposed to have a child by her; as a result, when she became pregnant because he so loved her, he broke with tradition and he had her put up in this particular part of the castle.

It was really fortified and very abandoned-looking but she held out there.  Nobody ever came to this part of the castle and it was very terraced and had a lot of inner walls in it.

The walls here were of a slight sandy colour and we were alone at nighttime.  As we were talking, there was battle going on behind us over in another part of the castle; the battle occurred in another part of the fortified town that supported the castle.

There were a lot of cries because there was battle going on.  You could hear a lot of horses neighing and cantering, as in the Crusades, if you like.  I don’t, however, recall having heard any gunfire.

She was telling me not to worry because he would never harm me.  Said she, I was quite well protected.  He did love me in spite of his cruelty and there was no way that he could hurt me because she was fiercely protective of me.

If he had done anything to me, she would be forced to expose him and he knew and feared that eventuality.  She told me to just go on outside and play.  So, I went out into the yard and it was a wonderful elaborate garden – very organic.

It had this pool and there inside were dolphins.  I went in to play with them.  It was a muddied pool but very large like a manmade lake.  They were playing with me as I frolicked in the water with them.

One of them had its fluke pressing down on my bum from above me.  Whilst sandwiched between them under the surface the other used it nose to push up against my breastbone and solar plexus; thus, they propelled me through the water at great exhilarating speeds.

It was a beautiful sense of motion because, of course, they travelled quite fast and they always stayed clear of going out too far.  There was a point at which they had jokingly made a fast turn and I hadn’t caught up.

So I went to stand up and it turned out that it was a very large pool and a rather deep, deep pool.  I panicked when I broke surface and they assisted me back to the shallow area.

When I came back indoors both the father and mother were there now – the swarthy humans, that is.  I said to them that there was something here in the pool a big opening, you could feel it.

I also sensed it from the dolphins as being something in the pool that they themselves feared.  The father figure was laughing and told me not to worry about that because he knew, of course, what it was.  The mother had remained quite silent and looked at me, all the time, because she was slightly to his left and behind him as he spoke.

All three of us were next in a room in the castle and, somehow, the dolphins were here as well.  There was a break in the floor, a wide open hole, and they came up and were swimming and churning up the same muddied-looking dark water.

A man then entered who looked like and was, in fact, the American actor who starred in the film, Paris, Texas.  I think that the actor’s name is, Harry Dean Stanton, but I am not certain of that; he is a scrawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped man.

He came in and had a gun and said, “I want to get paid.  I’m doing work in this building and I’m not getting paid.  I’m tired of being held up here.  Deliver!  Or else I’m going to take you out and shoot you.”

It was an interesting-looking silver gun.  I was standing up on a cabinet and he went to shoot me but I knew that he wouldn’t shoot me.  He had, in fact, turned the pistol so that the two shots rang off to my right.

What surprisingly came out, when he fired the shots, was water; however, it had light in it.  It was like lasered water and it shot out in a large chunky jet and went almost instantaneously to the wall and crashed there.

He shot rounds of it and both parents remained absolutely icy cool; they paid him very little mind.  Later on, the mother telepathically told me not to worry because he couldn’t harm me; too, she telepathically shared that I was not to move and give in to fear.  I was not to show any signs of panic.

*This was clearly a civilisation which was set here on Earth long millennia before the current ape-central, fear-ruled madness we now know.  This was a time long ago in human history when there was contact between both humans and cetaceans.  Telepathy was de rigueur; too, psychic abilities were more evolved then.

Perhaps, this was an Atlantean society or some other civilisation which predated the Atlantean.  The persons were seemingly of Mediterranean extraction and it was, however, definitely not Egyptian.

I would guess that it was post-Egyptian – the latter having occurred easily more than 60 thousand years ago; although, Europeans in their racist elitism – never having had anything to rival pyramids in Europe – reworked the agedness of Egyptian civilisation to their ends.

**I am now left to believe that this was in some way an Extra-Human civilisation where the humans closely resembled Earthly humans.  They were, however, swarthier and were archly telepathic.

Too, their foreheads were also considerably higher and had a slight concave look at the top.  Dolphins, it seems, were kept as indoor pets – just as cats and dogs are for humans.  Hence, there was the watering hole, which led to a vast underground network, where the animals could come and go from the fortified castle to the ocean, however far off.  END.

Almost instantaneously, in this the third dream, I was in another scene; it was one in which I was playing and my companion was Lars Gamst.  We were drawing, in fact, we were painting.

Lars said to the same actor, Harry Dean Stanton, who was now with me in this new dream – both the parents, incidentally, were no longer about.  Lars wanted the actor to assist him by editing.

The guy misunderstood him and didn’t know what was what.  What Lars was doing was covering the painting with a black wax and, later, he was then going to strip it off.  So he needed the actor to go and get the chemicals and equipment to go and strip off the wax.

He was somewhat impatient that the guy was so stupid and didn’t understand; Lars had had to spell out what he wanted.  I was trying to explain to the guy what to do and what Lars meant, as well as, the process involved.

When he did go away to get the things, I came over and approached Lars and assisted him in the painting of the work that he was doing.

*A rather insightful dream this one and the energies with Lars were, as ever, pleasant and sublime.  I find this a rather telling dream too because, in later years, on having Lars’s Michael Overleaves charted, I would learn that not only is he an old soul – first level old slave and entity mate to his equally old-souled father (Olaf Gamst) and sixth cast artisan like myself but he was the favoured muse of Doménicos (El Greco) Theotokópoulos and his chief assistant.

Naturally, for Lars to be so immersed creatively in a painterly fashion – in the dreamtime – was truly about revisiting a skill and time in the past which brought him great fulfillment both spiritually and creatively.  This was so clearly an astral plane encounter between us.

Being in Lars’s presence was quite expansive; you could actually feel his soul being deeply creative.  So fully dilated were his pupils, Lars’s eyes were almost pure black.  He was terribly eccentric and clearly there was much bleed-through from his having been greatly inspired in that lifetime by El Greco.  He worked feverishly with great attack.

He quite appreciated the fact that I was not a dolt and could be of able assistance to him.  This was such an astral plane encounter that it was as real and connected as that time we rode the subway together and the connectedness we shared blew my mind.

Incidentally, in that sixteenth century lifetime, Lars was much younger than the great artist and they did have a passionate relationship.  I have a distinct impression that there was a bleed through of what Lars looked like, in that lifetime, as his features were not as they are now; he was more Latin and darker, strong-nosed.

It was an aquiline nose.  Too, he was robust-energied and had massive hands like those of a sculptor’s.  Terribly expressive and passionate, too, were his hands.  END.

I was on the phone whilst speaking with Owen Hawksmoor, in this the fourth dream, and I could see about his apartment as we spoke.  I was calling him because I wanted to get laid and I was really raunchy and stir-crazy but he was not up to it.  I start calling him on it and I told him, “Oh yeah, why don’t you get up and go to the bathroom?  And drop your teeth in the glass of water, on your way, before you come back?”

In a very sarcastic manner, I had laced into him to which he responded by being coolly dismissive of me by broadly laughing at my desperation.

Somehow, Pandora da Braga was part of this dream and she had an awareness of my play for Owen and my resultant rejection.

*Featured art:  Santiago el mayor by El Greco.  At the time of the dream, Lars appeared as he did in a past life; his was a strong aquiline nose in the dream.  This look features prominently in many of El Greco’s works.  In that past life, Lars was a favoured muse, assistant and lover of El Greco’s who was in a recent incarnation the sublime American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. 

As Lars is a slave soul, the look of St. Francis and also the look of Christ carrying the cross are those of a slave soul; at least that’s my impression.  Since, Christ was a seventh level king soul on his last life, the El Greco Christ of the aquiline nose is decidedly not a king soul and more so a slave with priestly airs.  Perhaps, this is how Lars looked then. 

What I also love about this particular El Greco painting is that the green draping proves an evocative prelude of things to come, as it were, with regards Georgia O’Keeffe’s sublimely sexualised flower paintings. 

For that matter, I love how Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensual masterpiece, Jack in the pulpit No. IV is a reanimation of El Greco’s Christ on the cross which is in the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan.  END.  

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Art:  Santiago el Mayor

Oil on Canvas

97 x 77 cm

1610 El Greco

Provenance: Museo del Greco

Christ on the Cross

Oil on Canvas

95.5 x 61 cm

1600 El Greco

Provenance: National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan

Jack in the Pulpit IV

Oil on Canvas

40 x 30 Inches

1930 Georgia O’Keeffe

Provenance: National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.

Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow

Oil on Canvas

48 x 30 Inches

© 1923 Georgia O’Keeffe

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