Welcome to Gaia! ::

Man, it's been a long time, where have you been? It's very nice to see you again! Same old thing for me. xp

Oh my word so much has happened and yet nothing at all. Well, I suppose one major aspect of the past few years was my battle with alcohol. I suppose when we beca,e acquainted I had just turned 21 and was having a blast meeting people at bars, finding refuge in them and learning to socialize better and get comfortable in my skin - it worked. However, over time I developed some destructive behaviors, became a socially labeled, although not medically so, alcoholic, and worked up all sorts of trouble for myself. Fortunately nothing permanent, just some weekends in jail and temporary loss of driving privileges... Well learned now that an officer can bust you for whatever the heck he feels like, and so I will now steer clear of all such possible confrontations (going to bars, driving, vodka [hah!])

And thus I have returned to the old days of just having some beer now and then. I had a good run but had enough. Oh, I always acquired a taste for Johnnie Walker scotch... Green Label, Swing, or ideally Gold Label. Expensive stuff, but it isn't something I drink for the sake of intoxication, but the taste and smell combinations. Mm mm!

I got laid off from my Telecom job I had for three years, and then they rehired me basically as a glorified trench digger. THAT lasted until a few months ago, but due to how often I was working, and the total physical and mental exhaustion therein, I could hardly to my laundry, much less hear myself and stay on my path. So I threw a lot of things away to start over, to hear my inner whispers.

I also began reading often again, thankfully. I went through the whole Dostoevksy phase, of personifying his protagonists in my own life, going so far as to get arrested on purpose for what Crime and Punishment did to me. However my favorites are Notes from Underground, and the Brothers Karamazov. Recently I did some Vonnegut. I need to walk myself to the library and decide what to read next.

I requested some metaphysical books for Christmas, recommended by my old lawyer friend, and look forward to seeing what those are about.

I have made great leaps and strides in a more intimate relationship with my ollllllllld female friend Ja'ela, and will likely physically be together for good near the beginning of the year. This could be hurried if I find any sort of work whatsoever. But I live in upper middle class suburbs, so most people around here pay companies to mow their yards and do their roofs and car work, and also they all drive cars (not something I can do) and so the bus system does not come out this way. I've been having a hell of a time with that.

Also, around February/March I'll be following a friend up to Louisville to plant my roots somewhere else for the time being - I have had enough of Florida, having lived here 18 years now. I look forward to deepening my spiritual prowess, something I have failed to play any significant attention to since... probably around the time I last spoke to you. Also I want to try my hand at creating art again. I also want to get back into shape, as my cardivascular health has suffered tremendously, result of picking up heavy smoking from my barhopping days. I don't even smoke a pack a week anymore; nevertheless, I think the state of my lungs and heart is tragic, despite technically being what a MD would call healthy. Also I look forward to cooking again.

I went to Key West earlier in the year, and did nothing at all concerning the ocean. I haggled a ridiculously low price for the top two floors of a hotel, and let all the doors and windows open to allow the breeze through. Oh, that was Labor Day weekend, matter of fact, and the weather was superb.

In the summer of 2008, I went on a roadtrip on the eastern seaboard for two weeks, and had one of the best times of my life.

My favorite beers and cigarettes were discontinued during all this time, which makes the control of both easy. I do not believe I will ever quit either for purely romantic notions, but then again I may get some sense in my head or start worrying about my liver, who knows.

I grew a fearsome lumberjack beard by not shaving in 2009, but that is gone now. I must maintain something though to not look 16.

I have had many friends and acquaintances come and go during this time, the most ever, and most likely ever will. (in terms both of parting ways, and in loss to death)

For the most part, the friends I have now are the ones I had before I started drinking, and just about all I have made in that time, I no longer correspond with.

I finally found some Larry Chesky for sale, it took me years! Now all I have to do is trick someone into buying me polka music... Speaking of which, I believe my music taste has not changed at all. So it goes with stubborn old men... Although I was on a Doors kick for a while.

Oh wait, I do still have one friend I made during the past few years, who I met and trained at work. He and I are not on good terms now because I accidently burned down his couch... but we'll resolve that in time. It's his own fault for telling me I couldn't drink a gallon of merlot. Never again... He bought his first house too, at age 26, and I did most of the remodeling and repair of it, because he had no knowledge of plumbing or wiring or painting and the like. I am glad he is finally happy.

I became a mechanic on my own for the first time when my car blew a head gasket. It probably took me a month to do because it was so damn cold outside and I didn't have the slightest idea what I was doing. But I wound up doing everything right, thank goodness for that.

I also managed to miss all the astronomical events of the year, including what was supposed to be a very good show two nights ago with the Geimind meteor shower. There is one more minor shower on the 29th and something about the Pleides cluster I didn't yet read about. I believe there are two full moons this month also.

Well I gave you a little something to read at least.

the books I requested are:

Morning of the Magicians, by Pauwels and Bergier

Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, by PD Ouspensky

and my own Dostoy short story collection book which must include

Notes from Underground

and

White Nights.

So just two new books, I already know that compilation well but the libraries and bookstores don't have it. so internet ordered it'll be. too lazy to underline titles but I don't think I left it confusing.

Did you ever finish the book I recomened to you, the seven laws of spirtual success? I remember you buying it and sitting down in a park and starting to read it. It is a good spring board book, thats why I recomended it to you.

The most recent book I have read, despite a number of essays that I have come to reading through online research, is "the third christ, the one we can't ignore." I have been studying the basis roots of keltic, greek, eyptian, summarian, hebrew, and christian lore quite intensely. When I mean the base roots, I mean the seeds of the myths. I am still obssessed with gnosticism, quabalism, but I have slacked off some on my eastern studdies accept how they influcned the religions forementioned.

I have aquired in some form, most of the gnostic scriptures available, indcluding the giospal of judas. My prophetic tendencies have been full fledge with me again, and I have had some quote inspiring visions. I have done quite a bit of family genelogical studdy, tracing my german roots to the knights templar threw the Von Thuelan clan, the stedderings, threw the steadings, and on my irish side, persecution by the catholic church again.

I am brining it all together, slowly, through a sea of angst to make sense of it, and I am getting ready for the nasty days to come. You guys can check out the first rough of the first third of the first chapter of my book, from which I have a loose commitment for publishging through a realtive who is an editor in beyond the sunset. I am open to intense discussion about it, I am fusing all of my past stories into a polotical and spiritual statement of vivid imagerfy, and I am calling on all of my fictional influnces, from steinbeck, to faulkner, orwell, dante, huxley, bradbury, tolkien, and stoker to try and creat something new...each chapter will lay layer upon layer of a different style of writing, points of views, dictions, methods of descriptions, it is meant to transfer from a post appocalyptic fusion of the grapes of wrath in style, yet 1984 and the divine comedy, to a huxely, bradbury, and orwell, and even stoker style distopian future of tyranny, ruin, witch craft, and spiritualism. It is ambitious and tyring, but rewarding, I have finished about 11 pages....it's going to be somewhere between 100-15o I think.

as for philosophy, there is noone at his point in history that had more insight on human nature the neitzchse...not to say that I believe of all of his observations of spirtualism, I mean, for the material world.

As always, it is incedibly influnced by tolkien as well...I am still working on cracking his code, you should really find the band books about king solomen, I forget their names now, but I will get them, and compare them to tolkiens work, and the masonic imagery, along with the gnostic imagery in tolkiens work, along with some of his least known serect letters and eassays about prophetic dreaming. I should really spend more time on typo's, since I type so fast it always tells me I can't post again so soon...but I like the free flow of thought..it's honest. Some old cultural things I have been getting into, really got back into some old school anime, and george r remero's work.

Sure, I have read that Seven Spiritual several times; it is a pillar of stability for me. What I like best about it, or at least what struck me at the time, was that it still allows my "supernatural-denying scientist" to exist and breathe easily. See, but at that point I took up the drug and made no more progress in discovering spirituality, but am back at it again. Although what I gained through Seven Spiritual stuck through the whole time of course.

Yes..he has writtten many books that have touched me, you should read the third christ, he did a great job with that. I find your journy intresting, as I do with that of all travelers...seekers, what ever we all are.