2/16/04--What the monks did to me. I don't know if it was the sun or the monks. I had been cold 3 weeks-Tucson was really cold there for a while- and I was warm after. And something opened up, changed in me. I've always had experiences like that, and they just don't go away. Below the diagram is text from a couple emails I wrote, one before, one after.



I met a guy who knew everything in a dream the other night. A happy guy. He was warm, very reassuring, confident, neither here nor there, i.e. not wanting anything from me or to invade my space. He was in my house, though, with another knarly guy, who transformed from a nebulous mass to a kind of big biker guy.

It was one of those dreams where I wake up & know something is going on, something I need to see. I get up, thinking it's real, turn on various lights and they never work. I'm usually in the dark in these dreams, in my own house, up trying to feel my way around, wondering what is going on, wondering who else is in the house.

The scariest one was where I bumped into something in the kitchen, looked down to see a strange child standing there.

Lately that type of dream has been different, with me feeling bold, sensing it's a dream, going "ah-HA," storming around, screwing in light bulbs, reaching for my flashlight, a match, stuff like that.

This dream was different, as I found myself involved in an amicable conversation with this guy I found sitting at my kitchen table, who shone with a light of his own.

I remember chatting. He seemed to know the secret to a lot of things, a lot of things I didn't know there was to know, but which had been puzzling me for a while somehow nevertheless.

I remember going, "I'm in this state of altered reality and I don't know if anything's going to work."

His name was al-LA. I remember saying, "now, your name is what, 'al LAA?'"

"Ya, that's right, al- la."

...Ya, so this dream was really something, and I was thinking what if in the dream I actually met the prophet Allah? I believe in god, but my beliefs are waaaay different that what they feed people in church. Different enough to see a prophet as a nice, easygoing guy w/ a sense of humor, fun and easy to talk to and very unpretentious. Somehow the dream stirred something in me.

All my life I've had experiences that stirred something in me, shook up my world.

Like yesterday on the Mall. These monks were so unpretentious. They were just very unassuming guys, not self conscious at all, but there they were w/ these pipes about ten feet long, blasting away on them, ringing bells, chanting, and they had a big chimenea burning incense like crazy!

You should have heard these horns. They were beautiful, and you could hear them all the way down by the Library. I left for lunch, heard this blasting, voluminous sound from a quarter mile away. I thought, "now, that's MY sound...must be a tractor w/ a malfunctioning hydraulic system, but still...that's my sound."

Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be Tibetan monks, who I almost passed by, thinking "oh, let them be, look at all the white people standing around staring at the poor guys," blah blah. But then I thought, "hey man, I'M a fucking Buddhist, so I'm stopping to listen. Then, I'm going right up to them, and I'm going to sit in the sun on that bench over there and listen some more."

That was when I looked up and saw Kimberly making a beeline for the monks, front and center.

That part was weird too, Friday the 13th, the day before Valentines day, exactly crossing paths w/ her, exactly in the middle of where the monk's energy, I guess, must've been concentrated. I'll have to make a diagram of that. Bear with me here, Bill.

Ya we both agreed Valentines day sucks. She sure looked pretty. Just Kimberly, nothing more, nothing less. My Mom likes her, and asks about her still. Chatted a bit, said goodbye. I went and sat on the bench to the north of where the monks were gathered.

So I really had been cold for 3 weeks. Freezing. I have never seen such a cold winter here, it's been frosty each morning for quite some time. But there on the mall the sun blazed, the breeze quit, the monks made their music and chanted-- quietly, mind you. Their horns were loud, but the rest was like Hot Tuna's sound setup, gentle, quiet, audible, forceful.

And so I was warm. I took off my jacket and sweater. And it was so bright I could barely see. And something changed in me, opened up, or something like that. I could sure feel it. This kind of thing has been happening to me for years, and it never goes away. Like when you take acid and learn something, or you're in the woods, and the woods speak to you. Later you casually say, "ya, that's MY church, out there in the desert," but it's true eh?
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