A phantasmagoria including the past and present, visions, dreams, bits of reality, psychic seers and the sea, hairstyles, nature walks, talismans, seasons and wonder. When I was a kid I could see that spirit was announcing itself through the floor tiles, sometimes the wallpaper or clouds, and other things. The problem later, for a mystic that is,- is a liberal arts or even worse, science education, and growing up in general. This takes the ghosts away and then you fit in but fit into what?- to a mediocre and a blasé reality devoid of electric and eclectic realms. The spirits were there, are there, and not as a projection but rather a protection. Sometimes though, they themselves are lost souls as are we, and they are crying out for help or to at least be seen. There are such things, such strange mellow and sometimes startling phenomenon.

The diviner said that one of the people listening was wearing a whale necklace. And I was. And she said the letter B as an initial. This was true. This was me. And yet in another instance, she said also, about green iguanas and the country of Aruba, of the name ‘Brian,’ as she put it. This interested me and I resonated with it. I had just gotten back from Aruba and seen and photographed the green iguanas. Then I saw the whale design on the pet store floor also. I wondered if someone drew it or it was a marking by accident. It was in a way slightly vague that I just could not exactly tell. I wasn’t sure what it all meant but it meant something. 

I thought back to the past then. Working in the shelter I had to help a most beautiful woman from The Caspian Sea who was assigned to be a co-worker but was bullied by the other woman workers. It was because of her hair mostly. She had balayage hair and to her waist. It was real hair. And she was full of mystery and wonderful strange exotic eclectic auras and atmospheres. Then other women, especially during trainings when everyone had to sit together, whispered loudly and cruelly about her saying she didn’t belong there and that her hair was not real. She began to ask me long before trainings if I would get coffee with her when it was break. I realized it was not because she liked me in any even platonic or other way, but because it wasn’t too far off from being bullied in the school yard and she knew I’d be an ally. And to think, these people were assigned to helping and advocating for the marginalized. What a world we live in. She was hurt and overall sensitive. And amidst several regular souls trying to make their way, to navigate life, two known drug dealers were walking up the driveway one evening and one was really heavy-set. She said, ‘Here comes a whale,’ and it broke my idea of her as she now had a capacity for meanness. She had that capability somewhere inside her. I just kept it to myself. English was not her first language. But she managed the insult ‘well,’ though I didn’t like it. 

I kept listening to the canon of near-death experiences because I studied much in my spare time about spirituality, psychology, that whole realm of topics. It often said how people didn’t want to come back,- such was how it felt at home in heaven or the other side. That was hopeful for the sick, the terminally ill, for the ones who have passed and for all of us one day…when our time and circumstance of demise arrive…

I eventually left the world as much as I could and just walked the forests and by small streams of water. There I saw what I deemed to be spirits in the tree bark, cumulus clouds, or in swaying winter reeds cold and freezing. I felt them amidst spring raindrops where I waited solitary in the world for what I don’t know. Summer spirits everywhere too,- by sumac leaves and the abandoned tractor, in the flickering light through the tree canopy or the stones by the lee, the protective lee made of sand and dirt and root systems. Autumnal times had the most, HAVE the most,- spectres, phantoms, and angels. They live everywhere. Sometimes during those times an energy can be felt, like an electric surge in the air but one more akin to containing a spiritual sensibility. Maybe it was the kundalini energy, I would think. I had seen several snakes in the early days and wondered if they were an outward manifestation of the inward kundalini rising or having risen. 

It had been a long day. I lay down to sleep. I suddenly and finally saw the light, an other-worldly light,- golden and white mixed together. It was unmistakable. Then again, and a third time to be sure. I was growing spiritually after a lifetime of practice. I was grateful. I prayed to see it more. I did a bit. Then I must have fallen asleep and finally had good dreams again. I dreamt I was by the old shore and the saltwater sea. The one of my youth. It was overcast. Atlantic coastline. I was alone but felt so good about it. I glanced back at my building, then up and down the shoreline and finally out to the horizon. I felt the energy of the world, like in the forest but times a hundred or more, and it seemed it was another world,- an electric heaven. I could see distant verdant palm fronds dancing awkwardly for the pre-storm winds. I went in the water up to my neck and sometimes went intentionally under and let the ocean go a bit into my mouth and my eyes. That way it could enter my soul. I was unafraid. I was just unafraid of absolutely anything. I didn’t know if I was on earth or in heaven, experiencing this world or the next, immersed in a dream or kissed by providence and fortune and therefore there in real life. 

But I wasn’t lost anymore.

I was home.