Demented Stories.

(midnight. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

All of these stories are true.

All of these stories can be taken as parables if you wish.

The recent story cannot be proven, yet the others all have witnesses or physical evidence. I fixed someone lately, someone who didn’t even know he (i think) was sick; that part I cannot prove.

I’m going with the most extreme one first, because these stories have brewed up in my head and need purging, and it will give my readers the opportunity to walk away before suffering through the rest.

I don’t think that will happen. Too many of my friends have spoke their own tales privately to me; too many have quietly admitted the knowledge of the force within themselves; even if they were taught to disregard it at a young age.

I am fascinated by connections, the lines of the World, lines I saw long before I read Castenada.

Read on if you dare.

The Healer.

Western Wayne Conservation Club was across the street, more or less, from the little 700 sq foot home my husband (then boyfriend)  and I shared for 12 years. Napier Road, in Salem Township was an idyllic time for us. I was young, idealistic, and he was my wise world-traveled soulmate. There’s another story about that later. This story is when I was 23.

Directly across the street were a family of 12 kids, mostly young 15-30’s that became fun allies of ours. They introduced us to the Gun Club community. I was never into guns, we didn’t own one, but I discovered I was a natural on the range. Like so good, they wanted me to put in time and go to the Nationals with the other girl who made the Olympics the year prior. Again, as often in my life, I just didn’t have the commitment to do so. I had work, and college, a band, and a man to adore. I was busy, dig?

So, a walk across the street, we came to visit there at least weekly. We bonded with the community, despite how many were neo-cons before the word was invented. I really got active when they started having fish fry/spaghetti dinners to raise money for charity. I COOKED. I waitressed. They complained when I didn’t cook. “Give them the recipe, your spaghetti rocks, tell them how to make the Caesars Salad….” Dudes, I don’t use recipes, I throw in handfuls.

Anyway, there was one guy, a Black Powder shooter, who loved doing all that Civil War reenactment and the Rendezvous Weekends, who had lost his wife a few years prior. He was really, really, quiet. His wife had been deathly ill for almost 20 years, and he had little social skills. He was, ahem, not good looking. I liked him.  There was this bartender, she was a shy thing who had never been married, in her late 40’s. More than once, I walked over after work on a Friday night, and the President of the club would slip me a twenty and ask me to bail her out behind the bar, and I’d work pretty much for tips. I usually just left them in her jar. I had already made my money, and the tips were weak there. She was struggling, badly.

We became friends. She had a heart of absolute gold. Her esteem was so low, from her perceived lack of looks, and her life story; that she had almost no belief in anything.

I did what I do.  Held up a clean mirror, unmarred by preconceived notions and baggage, and her esteem in herself grew. The story is average: Boy met girl, I encouraged them both to be braver, lightly.  Remember, I was not around all that much.

I got busy, and didn’t stop in for a month or two.  Much to my utter joy, next time I pooped in, they were engaged.  But it was summer, and jams were happening, drugs and rock and roll, and much sex with my beloved….

So it was late August when I next stopped in to the Gun Club.

She had terminal brain cancer. She was scheduled to go into the hospital the next day. It was totally last ditch effort, a surgery expected to fail. She and her man were in the bar, though she wasn’t drinking.

These two unhappy people had finally found eachother.  I had seen them dance, seen the light in their eyes, and despite what others would say about their looks, they were absolutely beautiful.  I could not abide this end to the story.

There were 10 people at the bar, all who knew me.  I said to them: “No.  It will be gone tomorrow. I will fix this. I have to fix this.”

They all hugged me and poo-poo’ed it, for my young good intentions and will.

Before sunrise, I had a bonfire going, my sage and sweetgrass (things I kept around then) and sat there. I pulled on the lines of the world. I offered to take it on for her. Sincerely.

I cannot tell you what I did, exactly. I can tell you that my focus, my intent never wavered.  I eradicated all there was of me, and drew the forces of the everything THROUGH me.  My neighbor said she saw me stand up and call the winds, and that each direction I faced… the wind blew hard in my face.  It freaked her out. I just got empty and pleaded with all that is to channel through me. I was young, I believed.

I never moved from that place until someone came and shook me at 5 PM.  They had been calling my phone for an hour. It was 87 degrees, I hadn’t moved, and I didn’t even have a sunburn.  I remember little of it. They came and had to shake me, and tell me about the so-called miracle.

I’m pale by nature, Irish. I stepped out of time. 12 hours. No burn?

This metastasized cancer, with its web of lines into many lobes of her brain was gone.

GONE.

They are married still. I didn’t go to the wedding, in fact I stopped going to the Gun Club. I didn’t DO anything. I channeled it. I could not abide the fuss, the attention. It was okay for her to talk to me, but not the barrage.

Too many people bugged me about it.  The rule is, you never speak about it. I don’t know why that is. I just have that rule.  

Never speak of it to anyone. Its the rule.

***************

Scoff, nervously laugh at my lines of the world, but every one of you has inexplicable pasts, versions of your own memories of godhood, or whateverthefuck you want to call it.

You’ve been here in one way or another, or you wouldn’t be reading me.

I have a weird idea of FATE.

Everyone who hits my life, hits my radar, happens for a reason. I have had people lift me, or lifted people, and then they are gone. I have had some share paths for a lifetime. Fate isn’t predetermination. It is using your allies to grow and learn, man.

**************

The Oracle

Let’s talk random.

Go figure. I was in a bar (see a pattern of my misspent youth?) and ended up yakking with a a cousin of people I knew. They were Ojibwa, so I always felt kindred to them.

Let me tell you about Steve.

He was legend in Plymouth. He went 425 lbs, mostly muscle, the rest pissed of Indian on a bad drunk.  He held off 15 cops on a Sunday morning at Taco Bell… standing in a corner and tossing all comers like rag dolls, until the police chief came.  “Whats the problem, Steve?” He said, “I said I’d go in, but they won’t let me walk there.”

The police chief, knowing him, and knowing he would not fit in the back of a squad car, admonished his employees.  “How many times have i told you? Steve walks in, and never gives us a problem!”

So, I knew his cousins better, but ran into him one night at the bar.  Some guy was ebeing a douche and Steve was ready to kick his ass. I pulled him aside. I talked him out of it. I thought nothing of it.

I ran into him 10 years later.  I guess I must have said profound things, about his heritage, his abilities, his dissatisfaction with what is, and how nothing he had done so far had assuaged that unrest in his soul.  He told me, that night, he drove back to Minnesota to the Rez, got sober, got his wife and son back; and credits me with saving his life. He kept telling me that. “You saved my life.”  That conversation barely hit my radar after it happened. But you do leave ripples. But really, if you speak truth, always; it you cut through the average bullshit people spew at each other and take the chance of being bone honest, results happen.

Not even a friend, someone I met once.  But he’s one of mine.  You meet people for reason, and you ALWAYS have to take care what you put out there. You never know if people will take you serious, or if you have met them at a crossroads.

But everything happens for a reason.

Truth, honesty; rare, but priceless.

If you dress truth, or veil it or dance around it, you may make a difference, yes.  Real, naked truths, unabashed, are the only real change makers.

Humans are so afraid of being real.

***********

The lines of the World

I could tell you the story of the night 25 years ago when I woke Michael from dead sleep from 15 miles away, warned him.  We still both have the paper we scribbled the message on, with the time written on it.  My husband is so tuned to me, we barely need to speak, when we are in the mode. We don’t need a phone. He is one of us on a level so elevated, it amazes. We are one.  But I have many kindreds, as does he, and that detracts not, in fact it deepens it. (no, we don’t cheat or swing, get your mind out of the gutter, this is spiritual)

I could tell you of the myriad times I rode, or drove, and said “Turn here!” or “Stop” seconds before an accident unfolded. My friends always take my  driving advice, though many of them are uncomfortable with the why’s.

“Which way should we go (or do you want to go) tonight, Diane?”  Its as close as they can get to admitting it to themselves.

But all of them have their own stories.

As do you.

Either that, or I am really lying in a bed somewhere in a straight-jacket and this all my dream.

Heh.

Its out there, and those of us who can tap it, will transform everything.

Trust yourselves.

I trust me.

You can laugh, try to think me a freak, or demented.

I know better. I know you do too.