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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The Tuesday visit, I have to bring him supplies. Pop, candy bars, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, razors...
Get swabbed, wait for the test results, masked up, in for the visit.
These visits, they're to be in the room only, there's no visiting in the common areas, the plague, here, is ongoing.
Stormy doesn't listen. He tries to lure me into the halls, wants to show me off to his friends. I decline.
He persists. Eventually a friend of his - a "girlfriend" - comes by in a wheelchair, she assures me it's fine, and I step out of his room...
Only to be told by a passing nurse that I have to remain in his room.
Back into his room. Small, generic, ugly furnishings, it's a hospital, hospice, bleak beyond measure.
We chat. There's really, for him, nothing to chat about. He wants out. He wants me to wheel him outside for a cigarette. "I can't" I tell him. It's against the rules.
He's not taking no for an answer.
He wants me to steal a vehicle, take him downtown for the day. Nope, nope, nope.
- I don't understand what it's like here, to be here, all the time, it's a prison, when am I coming next, when are we going in to town?
And this. These visits, an hour, but with the bus, the shopping, the countless trifles, tests, etc, etc, they consume a full day. And I explain to him that he'd best now start settling in, we'll go to town once a week or every other week, but it's time face facts, we're not moving in together, I've sat in on the discussions with the nurses, caregivers, doctors, I'm not dealing with his incontinence, soiled laundry thrown in the corners of the room, time now to make friends here...
At this he looks stubbornly out the window and he tears up.
I apologize. This is horrible, but - there are people here he can talk to, there's a kindly old woman that has a crush on him, there are others, and - change is tough, but - friendship has it's limits. It kills me to see him cry, but being his full-time wheelchair pusher is not a career I wanted, and he doesn't respect the courtesy of it, takes it for granted, doesn't get that it's no pleasure for me to be the arms to his caprices...
And so this is where we are at the moment...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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While on the topic of "Reckoning" there is the matter of Epstein's Little Black Book.
Article via Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/
A well written indictment of the world we live in. And still there is no reckoning...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Finally, after 2 years of lockdowns an above-the-board honest-to-goodness rave.
Bloody hell these have been a long couple of years.
So - R. Jr. is in town, he wants to drink & party, me, drinking too much a habit, it's lost it's celebratory meaning. So I talk him into the rave.
A community hall.
A disclaimer here, typically a good rave wouldn't be at a community hall. They're outdoors, camping, in the forest under the stars, fairy lights lighting the paths...
But - we'll take it. This is as good as it gets for the moment.
300 + people, small community hall. And it's good. The DJ's, well, I've heard better - the theme of this one is "Masquerade" and so everyone is wearing a Venetian half-mask, which adds a little spice to the night's festivities. I'm a little bitter I could find none to my taste, especially as a mask so greatly improves to my appearance...
Of the crowd, perhaps 75-80% are women, as per Kootenay standards, largely beautiful, the remainder of the men, incapacitated, "Took-too-much", or dressed in pink Tu-Tu's, it's shooting fish in a barrel, really...
Outside, having a smoke, I'm accosted by a tall, apparently beautiful but masked blonde....
"Why are you lurking out here...?"
I indicate my cigarette.
"Where is your son?"
I'm flattered to be recognized, if only as his father. But with that comes the realization that whereas once I was - superficially only - regarded as not such a bad catch, my reign is over...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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One of the original's in Theosophy, or the "New Thought Movement", a brilliant, albeit overworked and stressed lawyer has a breakdown. It's approximately 1890, slightly before.
He consolidates a few spiritual teachings and from there begins a career as one of the most prolific authors ever, whose hundred(s?) of books are still in print (under a variety of pseudonyms), titles include:
- Mind Power: The Secret of Mental Magic
- Practical Mind-Reading
- Reincarnation and the Law of Karma
- The Subconscious and the Superconscious Planes of Mind
- Telepathy: Its Theory, Facts, and Proof
- The Seven Cosmic Laws
- The Science of Psychic Healing
- Ghosts of the Living, End of the Dead
- How to Develop Psychic Telepathy
- The Mystic Sixth Sense
- Mental Vibrations and Transmission
- Clairvoyance and Occult Powers
- The Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: The Secrets of Mental Fascination
His influence on contemporary spiritual teachings cannot be overestimated. He's "L. Ron Hubbard" gone mainstream, and his fingers can still be seen in every New Age chicanery - or ideal - today.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_Atkinson
I mean, I should have stumbled across him as a child, I would have lapped this all up...
Maybe better I didn't. Well, given where I'm living now, maybe I should have...
Nonetheless, I'll keep an eye peeled, if I come across any volumes I'll be sure to pass them along. I'm pretty sure you'd want to read them as well...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Now this, it was great. It's the bookstore of your dreams, filled with first editions, old books, oversized books - any of it's sections in itself bigger than most bookstores, a 16' high ceiling, shelves all the way to the top, great tottering stacks of books, overstuffed racks of books, books lining the floor roughly where they would fit on the shelf, if there was room.
Probably, not a word of a lie, a million books. Curated as well, customers coming in - at first glance there's no rhyme or reason - but everyone asks for their author and he steers them right to the section, knows if he has it in stock or not - books on Magic ("with a 'K'" I ask, and he reprimands me - "Tricks are in another section. There's many forms of magic...") and with just a few of the right questions puts the right book in their hand. Esoteric, Theosophical, there's no tripping him up, he knows it all.
I'd written about him-not-him, the ideal bookstore, proprietor, and now I've met him.
I am impressed.