Invictus: Part 2 - Facing The Crossroads

'The Bend in the Road'

We come to life's crossroads
And we view what we think is the end.
But God has a much wider vision
And He knows it's only a bend-

The road will go on and get smoother
And after we've stopped for a rest,
The path that lies hidden beyond us
Is often the path that is best

So rest and relax and grow stronger,
Let go and let God share your load
And have faith in a brighter tomorrow-
You've just come to a bend in the road

-- Helen Steiner Rice

 

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A stranger shared this with me a few days ago, who knew nothing of my current predicament.

 

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The Poison called Sugar

Sugar: The Bitter Truth
14,216,202 views

University of California Television (UCTV)
900K subscribers

con't....

 

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"This video should be shown in every school, every year. Shown in every institution, everywhere, every year." -- Dixie Wade, YouTube

 

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Adults always tell children how bad sugar is, but they very seldom tell them why it's bad, and they seldom are serious about trying to really limit it. It's so destructive for many reasons. I looked at the contents of a large pitcher of soda recently and it had something like 68 grams of sugar per cup. People are actually drinking what amounts to "liquid sugar!"

 The body receives more than enough sugar from carbohydrates alone. Sadly, treats such as ice cream or brownies could actually be made without sugar. Fast food chains put a lot of sugar in everything! Processed foods are commonly loaded with sugar as well. It's like a license to poison for profit!

I'm not going to be able to post much here for perhaps the next six months. Mainly due to the passing of my mother, there is a great upheaval in my life, and my future is very uncertain. There are financial and legal issues abound. Life impacts.

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The Roman Ritual, the dark side of life, & the redemption of spirit

During this challenging time in my life, being largely busy during the days, I find myself walking for about an hour and 20 minutes in an old industrial park at night. Sometimes it's late, and beyond the lights along those very wide outer streets, I can see the absolute blackness of the mountains and sky... probably appearing more so due to the mild glare of these lights on my eyes. These street lamps are maybe about thirty yards apart, but illuminate the streets fairly well. If they suddenly shut off, the area would be in near blackness with just a few lights emanating from the mostly very old one-story industrial structures; constructed from a time when materials would be brought in by train, as up until about fifteen years ago there were train tracks zig-zagging through the area. There's still the old tunnel which connected the these tracks to the rail line which is still over there and operational. Somehow these streets have a dated look to them, despite being well-maintained. However, there's a certain ominous look to that outer blackness from my current perspective.

Probably due to certain health problems in recent years, my mother has unexpectedly been befallen by something called 'rapidly progressive dementia'. Two months ago during a small heat wave here, she was sipping on a little glass of Lamarca wine on her deck along the hillside behind her home. She was fine at that point. In just weeks, she regressed mentally, and I kept thinking it was temporary. The condition moved so quickly that she was unable to take care of herself, and she just kept regressing, to the point of not always remembering me. It took about seven weeks from her sitting in the sun contently, and talking on that deck, to being taken to a assisted living facility. Yes, that quickly!

Strictly by chance, while walking those streets and listening to YouTube audio on my iPod, I have listened to just whatever the order of programs I downloaded onto it. There are 85 of them I racall; some long and some short. The past couple of weeks I was listening to many hours of old episodes of the 'Opie & Anthony' radio program, most of them with Joe Rogan. As I walked along the empty streets, although there is always at least some activity going on, I didn't think of them as ten or fifteen years old programs, but I somehow imagined them as current. I visualized the traffic or work days in NYC, Chicago, LA, or anywhere else where the popular radio program was aired, as I listened to the wild humorous conversations, filled with unexpected dialogue and opinions. It helped me get my mind off of things, and I even laughed some.

However, again strictly by the chance of how these programs were ordered, I began listening to the audiobook of the 1971 novel 'The Exorcist' by the late author William Peter Blatty, a Maronite Catholic from NYC. The book is very similar to the film, except it goes deeply into the internal psychological struggle of the protagonist Damien Karras, a young Greek-American Jesuit Priest. Despite being extremely open-minded and considering all remotely rational explanations, he struggled to comprehend the evil he was involved in. I don't even know exactly how far into the book I am now, but the early heated confrontations between the very learned Jesuit Priest and the ancient Sumerian demon Pazuzu have already occurred. Must of the book has revolved around the progression of the deep psychological struggle of the main protagonist.

The novel would be a bit tedious if not for me having such brisk and long walks trying to get my mind of off things. In this instance, it's actually relaxing for the most part. Still however, the ominous nature of the peril which has befallen my mother, and the ominous darkness of the terrain there (under the circumstances), makes the experience somewhat eerie as well. The streets being so empty and dark at that time--outside of an occasional truck, car, or loud noise from one of the distant loading docks--I sometimes see something dark move, or a light flash, that's mostly just a trick of light and shadow as I move along the streets. I do sometimes see a coyote or raccoon moving in the distance. In my current state of mind however, listening to the malignant Pazuzu speak--both deeply intellectually and with great malice--while walking in that location, is a legitimate reason to border on certain hallucinations. For the most part, the novel is relaxing, but this is not an experience that I would have expected or planned.

If there is any conflation between the novel and my mother's current misfortune, it's with me only. I mean, I could attach metaphors to it, I just choose not to except for the character of myself perhaps. So one could say that there's an eerie parallel in that way. Of course, the pandemic adds yet another ominous dimension to the current state of things here. Yesterday at 10:45 AM I arrived at the entrance of the barely par care facility, which officially opens at 11 AM. Usually there's a certain protocol for just entering, however the glass door was just wide open as the weather was probably close to 70 degrees at that point. I just walked in and made my way to her second story room. Being that the structure was once a sanitarium, the path up or down are not stairways but long ramps. It was very quiet, with only an occasional sound of activity.

As I got to the room, the door was open wide, my mother was on the bed, undressed on her stomach, half asleep, and largely unresponsive. Maybe she was to be bathed soon, I don't know. There were random visitors in the hallways as she just lay there with the door open. Even beyond that, some of the care workers are male, and they probably wouldn't even understand her if she could speak. That she would be in this situation, I know to her, would have been unfathomable only a short time ago. However, her body may be alive, but she's basically gone now, cared for by strangers who never knew her. A victim of a sudden horrific condition. Gone is any real communication, thought, or interests, and certainly none of the good energy and sense of humor that I remember so well; just a shell of her former self. Mentally, at least she isn't aware of her degradation as a person. At one point she looked up at me, and as her blue eyes focused slightly, I wanted to believe that she recognized me. She did speak to me on the previous visit a little, holding my hand, and asking if I would be back to visit her... and waving goodbye. That may have been, for all practical reasoning, her final goodbye.

As I listened to the audiobook yesterday evening, mentioned somewhat prominently was a text entitled 'The Roman Ritual', a very old writing which over the centuries has had many volumes added to it. "The Roman Ritual (Latin: Rituale Romanum) is one of the official ritual works of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. It contains all of the services which may be performed by a priest or deacon which are not contained within either the 'Missale Romanum' or the 'Breviarium Romanum'. The book also contains some of the rites which are contained in only one of these books for convenience." Apparently unusual rites such as exorcisms are only a part of these volumes. Curiously, the Milanese Rite of our culture from Lombardia has a similar ritual. The Ambrosian Rite has its own ritual (Rituale Ambrosianum, published by Giacomo Agnelli at the Archiepiscopal Press, Milan). Again, any parallels between our situation here and lets just say the audiobook is just with me and my own mental state; however, this is indeed my own real life horror. I suppose her death would be easier to accept.

 

 

I noticed last night a "Moon-Mars-Venus trifecta" in the sky. The moon had the slight appearance of a half-moon at about 75% fullness. Close over to its left side was Venus, and up aways over to it's right side was Mars... from my perspective. Perhaps the Moon was my mother, Venus was my late sister Katherine, and I was Mars; as the Moon and Venus were so close together in the sky. When my mother finally passes away in body, she will be reborn again in spirit, such as when she was the little girl with red-brown hair walking though the horse pastures back in Gogebic County. Her name, Janet, originates from "Little Joan" (also Jane or Jeanne) in Scottish, with the Italian equivalent being Gianetta... meaning "God is Gracious." There is always a plan..

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain." -- Rev 21:4

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The Sanctuary of Straw

A few evenings ago, I found myself in a location which I had never been before. You could live your whole life in a locale, and still find a place that has somehow escaped you. So much so that you need to integrate it into your internal mapping. This location was in an industrial area, mostly between a fairly steep mountain range and the warehouses along the streets. Along that area were once trains that carried goods to and from the manufacturing locations apparently. It may have been active at late as the 1950s. I was very familiar with that old railtrack system, but just not in this location which extended into some heavy wood and brush at the base of the mountain. The tracks were torn out about ten or fifteen years ago, and only a few heavy timbers alongside the trails are a reminder of what was once there.

Oddly, I had always seen one opening from the street where the tracks once crossed, but it was so overgrown that I never bothered with it. It was like a trail to nowhere, with a chain and reflectors in front of it. It was from a different entry point that I discovered this pathway though. At first it was twilight, and I stopped to take a water break in a parking lot. I noticed a trail in the distance, so I took a look. When I reached the opening to the trail behind a large warehouse, it was a sight to behold. Some lights from the industrial park illuminated the trail somewhat. The freshly cut dry grass of the trail seemed to almost glow in the darkness, and disappeared in the distance; into the trees, with the black mountain and the dark blue sky with a thin crescent moon in the backdrop.

As I looked at this almost too-good-to-be-true sight, somehow it occurred to me that my entire life was about "this place." Somehow everything made sense, and it grounded me. For some reason, ironically, I thought about what I have seen in myself and others in life; always searching for "something" along life's path. My mind was so clear that I was easily able to regress many interests and fads that I have had in my life. Some legitimate interests were never really explored, and had long disappeared among related and perhaps immature interests. Even before the information age, things just sort've came and went for a lot of people I think. Ultimately, especially for an obscure endeavor, it takes a person or people to breathe life into something to make it relevant. I think everyone has some regrets, and can think of some silly notions that they once held. Still, even in the maze of one's life--especially their youth--there are a few lost gems that can be brushed off and quickened.

I believe that you cannot force your mind to be this clear, even if you visit a special place. It will happen when it's ready to happen. The conflicts and troubles of the day usually prevent the mind from opening up. However, it does happen; and you should take advantage of it when it does. For some reason, this new sanctuary amid a location of which I was very familiar, somehow opened this door for me. You will know it because time will be compressed, meaning that something from long ago in your life will feel close. Time is suspended, and negativity is kept at bay. In other words, you can see the positive that existed; and the negative isn't allowed to get in the way of bringing it forward for reflection. That's what I experienced. Usually the mind blocks out negative periods in life, and it blocks out the interwoven positive aspects of them as well.

Needless to say, I was able to clearly see some old unique positive aspirations of mine which had long been buried in the darkness of some negative periods. I don't know if this place opened this doorway, and/or if some spirit guide led me there for some knowledge that I needed, or if it was all just mere chance? It is rather odd indeed that some positive endeavor in our lives--much like this pathway I found--can be lost in the dark corners our minds. When I say "dark," I mean the negative experiences that the mind blocks out; but is still in our memory. Not blocked out entirely, not the subconscious mind (although that can happen with trauma), but just enough of a block to repress it and the gems that may be within. It could be bad time periods, or just the common troubles of youth that the mind represses.

For some reason the city had the dry grasses and overgrowth cut along this trail, and the ground was very soft to the step, and looked like straw. It was so soft that you could comfortably roll around on it; and in a few parts you could practically sleep on it. Although there was no moonlight or urban cloudlight, the surrounding lights of the area were enough to illuminate the "straw" a bit. As I saw this glow-in-the-dark pathway disappear into the darkness, into the mountain, I felt that I had to explore it. After walking for a short while, the bright lights of a large trucking company parking lot broke through the trees. As its rays lightened the path for a stretch, I could faintly hear a few trucks and noises. My father was a truck driver for many years, and this particular spot reminded me of rural truck stops; as though his spirit was also present. Soon the trail turned dark again. The straw made it easy to see my way.

It's not a great idea to hike in a remote area at night by yourself, but I was so eager to see what was "just around the next bend." The darkness plays tricks on you sometimes. Natural features can appear to be a person or an animal. Sometimes, for brief instants, fear can overcome you. A flashlight is always a must, if for no other reason than to signal to a person that you might encounter. However, this sanctuary of straw was all mine on that night. When I got to a slightly higher elevation, there was a small break in the wood and brush, and I could see some dry grassy hillsides in the opposite direction. Amid the slightly illuminated ash-blonde hills was the freeway and some lights. At night, from this vantage point, nothing looked familiar. Just from that angle, it reminded me of rural parts of California Interstate 5; and from my location, it seemed like a lost highway, just as I was on a lost pathway.

I stopped to soak in this view of a familiar place that the night had made look so different. The dry grassy hills reminded me of the hills around the Concord Pavilion and concerts from years before, when I hanged around with a group of guys who were pretty much only interested in heavy metal music and drinking. I think sometimes people can long for the simplicity of their youth or young adulthood. It also reminded me of the grassy hills around the Shoreline Amphitheatre in the South Bay, and how we used to arrive early and wander into the thick nearby eucalyptus groves to hangout, talk, laugh, and drink. Now those groves are all gone, and police and security make certain that concertgoers park, attend, and leave in a proper manner. I could hear my old friends' voices and laughter as I gazed upon the night view.

Finally, I made it to the earlier mentioned ending point, the street. The tracks had once crossed at this point, only to continue behind another passageway of which I was familiar with. Indeed this stretch of road was also empty at night, and I walked into the wide, well-lighted, empty street for a moment. I had come full circle from one familiar location to another, like connecting the dots by finding out what is between them. Then I headed back to where I had started, with the glowing pathway of straw and the spirits as my guides through the darkness.

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