#so there’s no guy with a beard. probably no heaven or hell in the culturally christian sense. but there is Something

[ohmerricat]

i would spiritualise anything

[redglassesgirl-maruma]

JosMura: Who do you think developed feelings first? Did they accept these feelings or deny them at first?

Oh, well, all my Joken headcanons are just out of my imagination because we don’t really have too much canon development? haha. What I’m going to say here is based mostly on canon stuff but it’s also mix of my own ideas and interpretations. I clarify this because I’m not going to exactly quote what’s literal canon and what’s just assumptions/theories.

When I think about them, both Josak and Mura had a previous crushes to deal with first. And they’re similar kind of crushes in my opinion.

Josak seems to like Gwendal at first sight, then it developed because Gwne is actually a cinnamon roll and the best person ever, a good role model and an excellent boss. He did so many things for Josak and other soldiers, all the minorities, like half humans and the transvestite/trans community in Shinma. It’s pretty clear why would Josak love him. But the chosen one is Anissina, a match made in… hell? haha, poor Gwen.

Mura’s case is kind of similar, except he thought Yuuri was the one because it’s the first person he can share his Daikenja secret with. Their path crosses since kindergarten, but they don’t develop a friendship until middle/high school. But Muraken started feeling something weird about him, aka noticing they have this predestined bond, way before Yuuri even knew who he was. So, Yuuri’s also a cinnamon roll and the best guy ever, who seems to be a gay in the closet who doesn’t have the guts to come out to him but Muraken clearly noticed. So far, Mura probably thought he had good chances, then he travels to Shinma and meets Wolfram. Oficial fiancé and clearly really close to Yuuri, he notices right away Yuuri has feelings for this guy and he ends supporting that relationship because Yuuri’s happy. He’s the one, the match made in heaven, what can you do about that?

In the present timeline, it looks like both Josak and Mura still enjoy spending time with or teasing their old crushes, but they already got over them.

We know Murata and Josak meet the first time during Caloria arc. Josak is going around following them in disguises, and Murata is not stupid and notices he’s always the same person following Yuuri, so he confronts him seriously and accepts he’s there to help. But they actually talk for real when Mura is imprisoned in Flynn’s mansion, this is extra content in Drama CD 25 The other MA side Deluxe!

So, the first thing Murata comments about Josak when he sees his real appearance is he’s handsome, and that he looked good with a beard as an old person or even as a lady with makeup, but he prefers the plain real Josak. Murata accepts all sides of Josak, and that’s just SO good.

Then they both have to reveal who they really are to each other, but they do it in a vague way at first. Josak knows exactly who Mura is for some reason, but it seems he’s kind of confused or joking about some stuff so I can just assume he had very little information to start with and he just keep assuming things by his own. My theory is he got the intel from Gwendal, who got it from Ulrike, because there’s no other person who can notice the Daikenja traveling along with Yuuri besides her… and Shinou, who is of course the one who told her , the stalker XD

So, Josak also compliments Muraken because his black eyes are just gorgeous. It’s funny because he scripted what to say and he was planning the whole scene about “your beautiful eyes like the night” and Murata goes and ruins it putting his contact lenses by himself haha. Josak is just messing around, but the point is they found each other attractive since moment cero and their personalities are very compatible.

Also, Murata is not like Yuuri, at all. He knows how to give orders, make plans, use his subordinates power. So starting at that moment it seems he’s been ordering Josak around to do many things in secret to protect and help Yuuri, and he trusts him a lot being him the only person who knows who he is and even addresses him by Your Excellency title. Murata even takes advantage of Josak hobbie as carpenter, making him prepare the a fake box and all.

For me, Josak starts being what Conrart was for Yuuri, the first closer subordinate and body guard. But it’s kind of different, because Muraken is way more independent and intelligent than Yuuri haha, he even compares that “putting on contact lenses on” scene with Yuuri letting Conrart do it and considering that being too defenseless and not normal. Like, I can do it myself, or only the staff at the pharmacy or a doctor will do it xD So, it’s a close master and bodyguard/subordinate relationship, but it’s also very different. Anyways, for me, Josak is the official Muraken subordinate and I would love if that idea is developed more in the present canon.

So, who liked who first, I’m not sure, both of them liked each other at first sight. But you need more time to deepen a romantic possibility. I think Josak will have way more troubles accepting to have real deep feeling for Murata than the other way around. This is because he’s the subordinate, he’s very low ranked compared with Murata who’s second to Yuuri in power. He already shows he has some doubts about Gwendal being a noble and a lord, so imagine the difference with Murata, it would be a mindblow to actually consider being in a relationship with this guy. He’ll probably think he could only be a secret lover or something like that, never something really serious. Also, Josak he’s very intelligent and perceptive so he must know all about Mura having/had feelings for Yuuri, which will need some clarification later.

The thing is, cultural differences, right? Murata is aware of his status in Shin Makoku thank’s to his memories, but he’s also just a teenager from Earth, contemporary times. And he’s really open minded, so he’ll probably not cares about the age difference, status, titles, genderfluidness of Josak haha. Nothing like that would be a problem, and he’ll probably educate Josak explaining some philosophical ideas from Earth. I don’t think Murata would deny his feelings at all but be the one who’ll have to push for the relationship to happen. Being Josak like he is, Murata is the best partner he could ever dream having and he could learn so much from him.

So in the end that joke Josak said about marring rich can become true haha, and he’ll gain a life of commodities and use whatever power he gains to keep growing and helping the other soldier from the drag/trans association. Happy, progressive, ending ♥

[doberbutts]

fydbac replied to your post “Now that I’ve (re)outed myself as growing up really fucking Mennonite,...”

Very very interesting! I do remember you mentioning what kinda school you went to, but I swear, everytime I see "mennonite", it's like the first time I'm seeing it. So there is new world and old world of mennonite and amish? so 4different cultures? (i could google, but more fun to ask :) )

There are some Amish and Mennonites in Texas, but there’s also a few even more conservative sects down there that are basically extremist Amish-Morman blends in which they don’t use technology, they practice communism, they’re polygamous, and they believe it’s okay to have grown ass men marry 14yo girls. Might be who you saw, it’s hard to say for sure.

There is a New World (New Order) and Old World (Old Order) for both Mennonite and Amish. It’s sort of hard to describe to someone who didn’t grow up there but basically, they’re all fundamentally the same with a few key differences. Both Amish and Mennonites are from followers of Menno Simons, who took Martin Luther’s ideals from his “here’s 95 Reasons Why the Catholic Church sucks” and radicalized them among early Protestants (ie- non-Catholics).

The followers of Menno Simons, ie the Mennonites, were “Anabaptists”- meaning they believed that baptism and becoming a fully fledged member of the Christian church should be a decision made in adulthood, not shortly after birth like in the Catholic church, based on Jesus’ teachings that becoming a follower of God should be a decision made of one’s own free will, and children are inherently pure, and a parent may pressure a child into religion and thus take away that child’s ability to choose. This was a pretty radical idea way back when, and garnered the label of heresy from the Catholic church, which in turn lead to the Mennonites being hunted and tortured and forced to recant.

This brought to light the second key teaching of Menno Simons: Jesus scorned violence and said that violence and bloodshed was unGodly and equivalent to murder, even going as far as saying that to hate someone in your heart and treat them as though they were dead to you is murder in all but deed and carries the same weight as the sin of actually killing a person. Mennonites were hideously pacifistic- it is an actual teaching of the Mennonite church to this day that even if someone came into your house and started killing everyone in your family, you must not bear violence or hatred against that person, and if that means that everyone dies, then God will welcome you into heaven all the more gladly without the sin of blood on your hands. So oldschool Mennonites became martyrs as the Catholic church tried to eradicate them, and many had to flee to other countries where the way of life was very different from the simple farming life many of them knew.

This brings the third important part of his teachings: in order to live a Godly life, Jesus professed a love of honest work (a “man’s work”, such as work you do with your hands, such as idk carpentry like the guy was before he was known as Messiah) and a simple lifestyle (refusing gifts of riches and saying that rich people are all inherently sinners who have shunned God and are probably going to hell). He also says that you should share everything you have, even with those who would be considered less than you, because all men are equal under God and humility is key. So when they moved to these other countries, they began to form little pocket communities that had their own governments and their own laws rejecting things that would promote laziness and things that would feel like they’re flaunting status quo. This translates in the modern era to a rejection of technology (because it makes work too easy, and because some tech is a marker of status) and other “fancy” things such as non-homemade clothing, lace, tattoos, colored hair, etc. You are expected to conform to those around you and be indistinguishable from your fellow man, because we are all equals.

Mennonites (and Amish) also do not pay taxes or perform any patriotic displays (they believe that the only kingdom Christians belong to is the Kingdom of Heaven, so if they fly a flag it’s the Christian flag and if they sing an anthem it’s the Christian Anthem followed by the Lord’s Prayer), they don’t dance (dancing is apparently an old euphemism for sex and you can’t have premarital sex and so you can’t dance with anyone that’s not your spouse and you can’t have sex in public so no dancing!!!!), they dress very modestly (varying vs Old and New but basically at least your typical wrists, ankles, collarbones must be covered, headcoverings for men and women both are a requirement, and men must grow a beard and women aren’t allowed to cut their hair short), and they all speak or recognize Pennsylvania Dutch as it’s a dialect of German, which is the country they were chased out of by the Catholic church.

Jakob Ammann disagreed on rejoining the world as industry brought about many changes very quickly and split from the larger Mennonite church, bringing about the Amish (his followers) who still dress and use tech only from that time and prior. Basically he pressed pause on time for them and they won’t move forward. Those are Old Order or Old World Amish, and they are the stereotypical Amish you’ll see today.

New World or New Order Amish are basically discount Old Order Mennonites, who will vary on what technology they will use and what clothes/hair they allow depending on how convenient it is for them to live without such things. As the world becomes more and more reliant on technology, New World Amish are becoming more common. These are the people who, while they don’t own a car, they might be okay carpooling with someone who isn’t Amish. Or, they may buy some processed foods at Walmart because it’s too difficult to get ahold of certain basic goods any other way, but they’ll still ride their horse-and-buggy there. Or, they may have a landline phone to take certain emergency calls, but it’s located in the barn or workshop or shed and not in the house.

Old Order Mennonites will still do the whole shun and excommunicate thing, but they have more or less joined the world at large unless it’s still convenient for them to not partake in certain things. So they may or may not have horse-and-buggy, but they probably don’t have a cell phone and whether they have an electric washer/dryer really depends on the individual family.

New Order Mennonites have a wide range and are the most common that you’ll see, but they are almost indistinguishable from other conservative Protestants out there unless you talk to them about philosophy or unless you catch the German influence in the accent. Other Christians, for instance, can usually pick up on someone being Mennonite, but non-Christians would have a pretty hard time pointing it out unless they grew up around the culture. They are, for the most part, still farmers and wood workers and masons etc and most do still rely on farming and hunting as a staple, but you’ll get that from any rural sect of Christianity.

...I never thought I’d use my required Christian History classes in my adult life, but look at that. I’m doing all sorts of things I never thought I’d do today.

[notskeletonrants]

The Problem of Identity

No, I don’t mean Identity as in voter fraud (a fake thing that republicans tout when they lose). I mean identity as in who you are, deep inside your skeleton. Where the sub-skeletal soul lives.

I’m talking about who you are.

I recently had a really trying and somewhat emotional talk with a person that keeps me really well grounded. It’s because the idea of non-binaries came up after I told her my ignorant and dumb reasons that I struggle with the label feminism, see previous rant about labels.

But, anyway. I came to the conclusion that functionally, and perhaps in a performative manner I am a male. But there’s nothing really deep inside the psyche, inside the head space that I would consider my identity that necessarily ties me to what I would consider the more social constructs of what modern people and especially the previous generation calls masculinity. This whole idea of what a real man does, what a real man likes. And you can replace man with woman at any time and you might find the same issues.

I can grow a beard. I look good with a beard and short hair.

But sometimes I want my hair to be long and flowing and to have a clean cut face and not have to worry about being told “you look like a girl.” Not that being called that insults me, it’s rather the intention that does so. The guy saying these things is not necessarily comparing me with someone of a different gender so much as saying that I’m not conforming to what he thinks I should be and that he is disappointed in me for that. He’s trying to shame me for what I feel and do.

Look, I get it. The world is easier to process and deal with when things are reduced down to very basic simplistic ideals. But the binary is something that doesn’t necessarily fit all people, isn’t descriptive from genetics and is probably not something that would be considered of great tradition, seeing how several cultures accept that gender roles aren’t strictly two different things. There’s also the idea that even the binary has changed massively. Like think of the most pink, like powdery pink onesie you can think of with frilly things that look like doilies, right?

Well, back in the 1900’s that was generally the color you wanted to dress your son in. Pink was a male color for small, young, human things (read: babies).

But there’s not just that that really strikes me with grief over who I am as a person. There’s two further ideas that really fuck me up hard. And it’s that masculinity, the more contemporary form up til about the end of the millennial generation is that men are hard, emotionless stones that you can rely on to be strong in every situation. But I am a huge fucking crybaby when slated against that. I don’t like Five Finger Death Punch, but I humored a friend of mine and saw a video called The Wrong Side of Heaven and I could not finish it because I did not have enough tissues. That shit fucked me up so hard. And then another day I was listening to some Amanda Palmer and one of her newer projects, Grand Theft Orchestra came on with a song called The Bed Song and it reminded me of how alone I am and how much my ex wife and I had sort of grown apart in a really short time even though this was about a decades long relationship that just keeps getting colder and more distant. It felt really deeply personal when I heard it and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes were as leaky as hell. Well my eye sockets, anyway. The truth is, I feel deep emotions like that all the goddamn time. It’s not a burden for me, either. It helps me logically to know who I am emotionally and I would say that this is a better trait of masculinity than all the wood-cutting, beard-having, flannel-wearing, shark-punching cartoonish, manly men you think of when you hear the term masculinity.

But that’s not how society sees it, so I get to the other further idea that fucks me up hard.

I’ve been going through my whole life on auto-pilot, just doing what my body and mind want without ever considering the further meanings behind everything. The gender roles that I fit into. The times that I don’t want to be called “weirdo” or “freak” for not being into sports or really being into performance so much so that I will painstakingly put on ghoul makeup whenever I know I’m going to perform on a special occasion. And when I look at how I’ve lived my life, and all the hats that I wear as a definitely probably male dude, I get onto the idea that I don’t fit into these performative roles most of the time. I’ve never worn flannel. I hate sitting and watching football. I’d rather watch a suspense or drama than an action movie most of the time. All of these things. And yet, I say, “yup I’m a man,” and I totally fit right in with how I’m saying it. But when I think about it, what if that ‘manliness’ is the linchpin of my entire identity and it’ll all unravel if I pull that up and look at it and find that it’s just this big facade I was fed as a youth and subsequently believed? What if I’ve never really took an honest look into my identity and without that graceful ‘truth’ that my gender identity is on the binary is what holds all of my securities together and without it I’m just a messy ball of anxiety and insecurity?

Do all people think this?

Like, I write fiction with a lot of truth based philosophical remarks peppered in and I sometimes really have to stop for a while because it’s really something that bothers me how much it reflects on this insecure mess that I am as a person.

Like, the only thing I’m really that secure in is the fact that I’m this incorrigible flirt. It doesn’t matter, if I’m in the mood to flirt I will flirt.

I will flirt with anyone.

I will scare people that are supposedly secure in their sexualities by flirting with them.

I’m only really physically into women, but goddamn do I flirt.

What I’m basically trying to say here is that

Gender identity isn’t as clear cut as some of ya’ll make it out to seem.

Like, for example, Ben Shapiro likes to say “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings” after snorting a bunch of coke and not knowing how to slow his speech patterns down so that the layperson can understand what he’s saying without much trouble.

It’s true. And the fact is that medically, there is no correlation between the binary front he puts up, and how genetically “man man, woman woman, no ifs or buts” because ‘shes’ and ‘hes’ are totally social constructs and it is mostly an aesthetic place from which those descriptions come from.

What it all boils down to is that Ben Shapiro is a real sumbitch and if you do listen to him, you should stop because he’s an idiot trying to propagate false ideas. The other thing it all boils down to is that I’m going to go cry now, okay thanks, bye. Footnote: This is not a scientific paper. This blog is and always has been solely for rants.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 70

I quickly grew accustomed to living at Maria's, and for the most part, even though I had been psychologically enslaved, I managed to grow and develop as a person at Maria's. Perhaps slave is a bit strong. Slave implies physical restraint. There was technically no physical restraint. But that household would have fallen to bits without me, and it was hard to say no considering there was nothing else for me to turn to. Going to either parent's house seemed like a terrible chance to take at the moment. I had a little bit of freedom at Maria's in the off chance that I was not babysitting, which was seldom. Maria had me feeling pure guilt over anything I did wrong. It was funny, because she herself was not a perfect housekeeper, but she made sure that I did a perfect job. I was the one who cooked, did the dishes, scrubbed the floors and toilets, do the laundry, and anything else that needed doing. Any sort of sense of structure or discipline came from me. Maria worked or slept or watched romantic comedies, and if she was home her children acted atrociously, breaking things, attacking one another, making it impossible for anything to go smoothly. And I just tried to ignore them when Maria and her kids were being toxic. It was hard sometimes, but I had to hold back.

This had been the first time in my life that I adhered to a structure. I've often been known to be terribly lazy for one and for two I think generally, excluding specific situations, it's more important for people to keep in touch with their own wants and inner workings than it is to follow some societal clock. But at Maria's, I just sort of fell into it. Perhaps having been out of school for so many years with nothing meaningful to take up my time, I needed that structure. I had few belongings, three shirts, two pairs of pants, and about forty paperbacks that I read through vigorously. I woke up each morning and did a certain range of chores. By around noon I would sit down and play Innocent Life Harvest Moon for three hours and then I would get up and start dinner. The kids were picky, so I essentially had to cook two-four separate dinners for each of them. After dinner I mopped the floors and did the dishes and got the kids ready for bed. Then I would read until I was tired.

Some days the Mormons would come and talk to the kids. They talked to me a bit – but they looked taken aback and hurt when they discovered I didn't really believe in a conceivable knowable benevolent God with a human essence, so they mostly left me alone, hoping I might catch their drift second hand.

Kurt Vonnegut became my new favorite. His ideas were easy for me to grasp, easy for me to relate to and he was/is probably the funniest writer I know of. I feel like I owed Kurt Vonnegut direct thanks for helping me cope with a difficult life with a smile on my face. He taught me how to laugh at my own expense, and to avoid the temptation of taking myself too seriously, and that life is fleeting. His wrote about dark things at this sociological perspective of seeing society for the first time, and finding great humor in it all. And he didn't intentionally write in a way that was difficult to understand like many writers do – which is ultimately why I think he became so popular. This isn't to say that a word-heavy book isn't worthy of getting through, but I often times feel like there are writers who intentionally try to make their novel seem deep by being wordy to make up for hollow characters that represent very little. If Kurt Vonnegut's characters were hollow, they represented something and had a clear – if not bizarre purpose. Everyone in his book lead you to some perfect representative of ideas from life. I feel like writers who try too hard to be obscure and impersonal, and yet wordy, end up failing to convey a real feeling to most of their audience. I feel like it makes for very detached reading and causes people to lose interest. Of course, there are exceptions. Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' was a great example of a novel that was pain-stakingly thorough and articulate to every minute detail and at the very same time succeeded in pulling you very deeply in.

I would sometimes make Maria read one  of Kurt Vonnegut's humorous short stories from Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, only to watch her face contort in confusion. She had no idea what she was reading.

I eventually discovered that the apartment units that I was now living in had a computer lab that anyone could use. It was in a very weird side building. I found it extremely satisfying to sneak in late at night and have the empty lab all to myself. I certainly spent a lot of time in the computer labs, which were almost always empty and had an eerie vibe to them at times, the way empty buildings with long government building lights and carpeting can sometimes have. There was a table in the middle, with a stack of Jehovah's Witness Watchtower magazines, which I began collecting for fun. I liked looking at the depictions of heaven on earth, of families of different races all walking among African carnivores affectionately – the men all wearing Hawaiian or polo shirts. I couldn't  help but wonder if the artist or whoever's idea this was harbored a secret wish to snuggle with lions and feel safe – Jesus coming back being the only way for their dream to come true, not that I could blame someone – I wish lions were snugly and safe, but it seemed to be such a common theme in the art that I felt this key element of heaven on earth was centering itself around.

Zack joined a MySpace. I would often times go there to listen to it and to listen to a few of his personal demos on his page. But lately I noticed when I snuck over to his MySpace to spy, he for some reason had decided to grow a beard – a very dirty looking one. And that former twinkle in his eyes that I remembered so well, it wasn't there in the pictures. I couldn't help but notice that he really seemed to be somewhat transformed into someone else – very hillbilly whereas before he had been very Sonic Youth. He quoted Kid Rock, and he made a comment in all caps that pertained to Jesus and Hell – and dare I say it, it made absolutely no sense to me in any way and had I not suspended my judgment for his sake I would have admitted to myself that it was incredibly dumb. Surely the Zack I knew was still there somewhere. I really didn't understand. I was confused, and besides myself. I even wondered if he had somehow made those statements and grew that dirty beard as a joke? But I let it go. Obviously, I knew that there was a lot more to Zack as a person then a few pictures on MySpace and people were allowed to go through stages. Who was I to judge him, looking at my own self? It was shallow and silly for me to expect someone else to not change, someone I never even talked to no less. I guess I had just harbored this fantasy that Zack would be different. He would become more driven intellectually, and by his poetry and a certain ere of individualism more like me I guess. I had hoped he wouldn't culturally conform to the hillbilly culture of the town we both grew up in. I was becoming more comfortable with a more lucid understanding of gender as well. Of course, this isn't to say that I wanted to see Zack embrace being highly effeminate, which he wasn't. But there is a sort of complexity and openness that I always hope men will do more to embrace, but often times won't because they are afraid they would be seen as feminine. I had become more accustomed to the idea of men being vulnerable and complex, but perhaps it was due to the sort of music I liked, like Bright Eyes. I was hoping Zack, more than anything would be swayed by my thinking about him, and as crazy as it sounds, I would search his page to see some minute indication that he cared about me till, or that I had left some kind of mark of my existence etched into his soul in some way that could be seen. But there never was much.

One day in the computer lab, this young guy about my age came in and sat down two computers away, which instantly made me absurdly nervous. He instantly struck up a conversation with me in this incredibly cordial upbeat manner. He didn't seem to judge me at all, or see me a someone who shouldn't be talked to which I found strange. He was very nice, and I wasn't used to that obviously. So as soon as he started speaking to me, I started having extreme inner conflict. He immediately asked me if I liked music, and I reluctantly told him I did. I felt like there had to be some sort of joke revolving around him talking to me. He wanted to tell me about how much he had come to love Van Morrison, which at the time I didn't know too much about. He started telling me that he had a band and they were continuously getting warnings from the landlord for practicing and they were just in the next building over. He told me about how much he loved The Stooges, as well as a bunch of other older bands. Obviously I loved The Stooges as well, but I was afraid to tell him so for some reason. In self defense I guess, I painted him in my mind that he was a creep, and I wanted to mock him for his interests and ambitions and his appearance, which there was nothing wrong with. Mind you, I didn't actually utter anything mean to him or about him to anyone else. It was just this wave of anxious frustration that suddenly came upon me. Eventually I sort of shut down emotionally and the conversation died. I think he printed out some sheets of tablature and left.

Later that night, I heard his band playing a few units down in the distance, or at least I am fairly certain it was his band. It had that eerie far away vibe to it. They were actually extremely good. I would have listened to them if I had a cd. They sounded a bit like The Kinks, had elements of The Stooges and elements of The Velvet Underground. It was late at night when I heard them play, and listening to them play reminded me that I had once had goals not unlike him. I felt this strange longing to go where the music was coming from, and this sadness and knowing that something very cool was happening, and I was on the other side of that thing. Perhaps what I resented about this nice young stranger was that he was ambitious and vulnerable and passionate about what he loved, and I had become everything opposite to that. It's hard to look back and blame myself at all, I mean, look where I was? But I had let my ambitions die because I was too afraid to take steps, both due to an underlying extremely low sense of self worth, an innate shyness and fear of being misunderstood, which would have been inevitable for me obviously – but it would have been failure that I would have had to push myself through anyway to succeed, and the underlying knowing that even if I did try to do something cool or stand out, my family would knock me down to size immediately. Besides, my function was mostly to babysit. I couldn't even think about doing things that I had no money for. And in order to just get by I had to turn myself to stone. If I let myself feel things now, I was afraid it would have sent me over the edge.

If I was then who I am now, I would have carried out the conversation to see where it would lead, as awkwardly as it made me feel or however long I stumbled in my words. I would have befriended this person, at least initially until I found a good reason to not be friends. It would have been fun if nothing else, an adventure of sorts, and possibly I could have made long lasting new friends that way. This person with very similar interests in me who seemed caring enough to want to make a connection with me, a complete and total stranger had just walked up to me and talked to me, and it felt to some degree that I may have disregarded an opportunity that the universe had somehow provided. But I just wasn't capable of speaking up or feeling comfortable enough in my own skin then. And it all happened too quick for me to reach that conclusion in that moment had I been able to process it. I really questioned myself for the next few months about how and why I became so mean in my thoughts when he had been so friendly towards me. It struck me that perhaps I had been so saturated in the casually judgmental and discourteous chaotic environment of my own family for several years by then, that it was beginning to seep through my castle walls a bit and I was beginning to embody that ugliness even as I did everything I could to see myself as an orphan excluded from the influence of my family and upbringing. The thought of that was quite disturbing to me.

Maria's house could pick up about four channels. I would sometimes watch them just for the sake of it, or listen to the television from the other room when I was doing the dishes. I remember hearing this very clear and charismatic voice one evening coming from the television in the other room. It was Barack Obama, campaigning for presidency. I didn't know that this was necessarily political. For the few years I had been out of school, my thoughts had been more about self preservation and self analysis, and fantasy. I did feel a very strong sense that I liked this guy coming from a place of having zero political agenda or knowledge. I had no idea who he was or even what he looked like. He didn't talk with the same rhetoric and empty sanitized voice that you might typically hear from one of the Bush's.

I would sometimes try to write to Sarah about bigger things beyond our life, mostly my ideas about how I thought the world should run. Sarah had taken a job as a cook in a very busy and very rudimentary kitchen in a restaurant called The Red Rooster. They didn't have a professional flattop of anything like that. They had the same kind of kitchen stove you would use in a household and some of the burners were broken. Which, if you have ever worked in a kitchen you will know is akin to abuse towards your workers in the restaurant industry. She would have to fill forty orders herself, and she worked six days out of the week. It was interesting to hear how hard Sarah was getting beaten up by her job, mostly because Sarah had never been a fast-paced person, she hadn't enjoyed holding positions of responsibility either in her personal life or professional. She didn't enjoy any kind of pain or sacrifice. And she had essentially been thrust into a work environment that was hell on earth for her, and it was changing her a lot, much like the military changes people. Certain weaknesses and avoidant attributes in Sarah were being chiseled away. She was becoming far more leaderly than I could have imagined, and far more bold. She didn't have as much time to write or to question why she was working, or what her living in Texas had even been for. She was just working or sleeping, and was constantly overheated and sweaty. I would try to write her my ideas about class warfare and the type of slavery that we both lived in and suppressed technology and any other ideas I had, many of them being a somewhat well meaning and idealistic, albeit confused version and mixture of socialism and libertarianism. Sarah didn't really want to think about this stuff though. She was so caught up in working and not emotionally letting herself think about why she was doing anything anymore that me trying to put things into some sociological perspective was not well received.

Allison came to visit me for much of the time that I stayed in Moscow. Allison had sort of woken up into a stage of early adulthood where we could suddenly relate with one another again. She and I became even better friends that summer. I felt less and less like her older sister and more like her good friend, though we were clearly still very much sisters. Being as we came from the same place and had the same genetics, it was actually very easy for us to relate to one another. Allison was very much fresh air to me. She was generally enthusiastic, very optimistic and excited about studying the interrelatedness between people and their dramatic encounters. Allison's favorite things were InuYasha and Naruto, and she had started creating her own manga story, much like I had at her age. We spent a long time talking about anime characters and with my knowledge of character building in books and movies, I was able to give her insight on how to create a more original story for her characters who I helped her develop into having more depth, while still giving her room to put her own spin on her own inner universe. When she came to visit, her and Jasmine would go into the computer lab and watch InuYasha until the sun rose again. I never watched it with them, but I became very accustomed to the dubbed American voices crying out during battle scenes for some sliver of a jewel shard or demon related thing, and I can still hear the faint cries of 'KIKIO! When I think about it.

What I couldn't quite grasp was why she loved Twilight so much. It was trying to be supportive, but it seemed like every young girl or woman and their mother had read these books, which seemed even on the surface, totally banal. Allison would talk on and on about the characters from this book series and their relations with one another. I tried asking questions about aspects that didn't add up to me. For one, the main character seemed to have no defining personality characteristics. Bella just seemed really vacant. I didn't really get it. I had the same criticism of the series that a million and a half other people had so a great deal of my ideas about Twilight aren't exactly original content. And honestly, I didn't like Harry Potter either, and many people adored the Harry Potter series so I took into account that I might have been too harsh in my criticisms. Most of the times, I just shut my brain off while Allison went on and on about Twilight. Allison would talk on and on in support of team Jacob, and I just knew when to insert the right 'mmmhmm's. She didn't seem to think I was ignoring her and I know that the Allison of today would endorse my decision to ignore most of what she talked about repeatedly. I even tried to read the books myself. I got through thirty percent of the first book, but the moment that the vampires all started to play baseball, I just couldn't.

Sometimes Maria would randomly pay me. Once a fifty, another a one hundred and once when she got her taxes back two-hundred dollars. I blew this money to enjoy my time with Allison. I would tread in the summer with Allison up this several mile meandering bike path to Hastings to buy books and hang out there drinking the coffee. It was all day walk to and back and it left me breathless. I sometimes would walk by the old alternative school, not to be a creep exactly but to see myself in a different perspective of being on the outside of that school, where somewhere in that building Mike was tutoring on the finer points of southern gothic fiction, or teaching his students about the rise of the Mongols. On the outside there was me, basically looking and feeling like a street person who was worlds now separated from that other world. People who saw me walking around looked at me like I was a bum. The girls my age always seemed so much prettier than me, so much more well kept. I wondered what I even was sometimes. I didn't feel like I demographically belonged anywhere.

I read Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck, which I really appreciated the complex characters who seemingly seemed simplistic. What I appreciated about that short novel was the fact that high quality drama can and does take place with every walk of life, and at the same time, I was all very funny. The characters were simultaneously simplistic and would sometimes contemplate philosophy in a very real way without realizing. And I thought this was a beautiful notion and holds more truth to it. Complex ideas are not isolated to only the educated and rich. This stuff effects the poor just as much, even more so in some ways. Cinematic operas and romances of a lifetime take place in dingy bars in run down parts of town, in poorhouses, in trailer parks and huts and villages. Hollywood would have you believe that certain feelings and ideas are only explored in middle to upper class society. I read the book to Allison and sometimes just for fun, we would walk around with a jug of diet green tea in a big jug (the Arizona kind with the geisha on the front). And we would pretend that we were drinking the wine they drank all the time in Tortilla Flat. We would occasionally visit all-night gas stations and buy big liters of soda and talk until the sun came up.

I also read Lady Chatterley's lover. What drew me to this book was the front cover of this particular copy they were selling at Hastings that was a bit more expensive but the front cover was like a comic book sort of with the main characters lying in bed and from what I remember, discussing how their forbidden sexual meet ups were very interrelated to class warfare and the bourgeois. It was hilarious as it was intriguing and worth throwing a twenty dollar bill at. The books itself is a bit dry, but overall, when you get into the thick of it, it was actually pretty good. I think books in general are very interesting on how they reflect, narrate and follow the main characters and how they base the books. Sometimes you live deeply inside the narrator's mind. Sometimes you hear their recollections in a shallow way, and sometimes it's like they aren't really attached to their body at all, and they tell you only bits and pieces of what is happening around them and how they are feeling. D.H. Lawrence was likely a misogynistic ass (so many male writers of his time were), but at the same time he reflected on his main female character, Constance, in a way that expressed her as having a certain needs and desires and feelings about herself and the world around her individual from what men perceived her and her role in society. I thought it was very interesting that this book gave Constance some individuality, though in the end she did just switch from one man to the next. As for the things about the books that caused it to be banned. It was mostly softcore porn scenes where they intertwined flowers in one another's pubic hair and other rather innocent gestures that I am sure the people of the time thought was beyond vile.

When Roxanne and Jeremy received their tax money that year, they decided to of course spend it on all the meth and coke and pills and alcohol they could get their hands on, but also go on a camping trip with their drugs on hand. They bought a bunch of camping gear as well, and told Allison and David to come with, that it would be a lot of fun. Not realizing what this was going to look like for them, they went along. The trip would take about three days, and the camp grounds were about ten miles out of town. The offer had been extended to me as well, but I had to babysit. Initially I felt left out a little bit, though later I was incredibly relieved I didn't have to go. This is how the trip went, according to how I remember it. Of course, it's second hand so some of the events and specific details might be slightly off.

This trip soon became a nightmare to everyone minus Roxanne and Jeremy. Roxanne and Jeremy took all the blankets and had their own tent and kept Meliah who was a toddler by now, with them. Everybody else had to share a tent. This meant Roxanne's four kids and Allison and David had to somehow stuff themselves into a tent and sleep in it, which of course nobody fit. There wasn't enough blankets to go around. Jeremy and Roxanne were mostly interested in drinking and doing drugs. Most of the snacks and drinks they did buy went for Roxanne and Jeremy. There were no rules anymore, save what Jeremy had to say. By day one, all of the kids were starving and thirsty, Allison and David being included. Jeremy had Sagen and Roxanne massaging his feet in his hair at all times, and he tried to force Allison to fan him. There was clearly something very sexually inappropriate about the way he made his stepdaughter and tried to force Allison to do this for him.

Allison is a much more forward person than me, and she never did get enough credit for her depth. People have always seen her as chatty and sometimes superficial in her interests and didn't care to see her hardcore leadership potential or her ability to read the situations she was in. David, having no rules began to instantly take to a very Lord of the Flies approach and started acting horrendous, randomly deciding to side with Roxanne and Jeremy. He started calling Allison a slut, a cunt, and a bitch whenever he could. He had this look of stressed confusion on his face. I think attacking Allison was his way of feeling like he was in control. Jeremy and Roxanne were completely out of it drunk for much of the time, and would come back to the tent screaming hysterically at one another in a frightening manner. At one point another camper punched Jeremy in the face. By day two there was no more water for the kids, and Jeremy refused to go into town to buy anymore or share any of the supply that he had. Allison was very headstrong in this situation. She shared what she had with the kids, and demanded that Jeremy do something, but he wouldn't of course. Jeremy started making comments about how he was going to fuck Allison. It was beyond disgusting and had I been there I would have lost it. He said it in front of Roxanne who did nothing, and the kids. Allison called him a disgusting ugly pervert and that she couldn't wait till he went back to prison. Which enraged him and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to beat her to death. Allison is a very brave person.

David was desperate too, but given the situation he had pretty much lost his mind completely, either because he felt he was free to act out as he wanted, or because he too was starving and thirsty. In any case, the entire camp by the end of day two was totally hostile to Allison, as though she was now the cause of sleeping cold at night, and the shortage of basic food and water. Everyone was mosquito bitten and sunburned. There was no way for my siblings to get a hold of our father. It was far too out in the middle of nowhere for reception to work, and besides nobody had a cellphone anyway. Some neighboring campers who were also sort of lousy human beings, but at least willing to act like human beings, gave Allison and the kids what they could for water. They looked very concerned about the camp and though didn't quite want to ruin their own camping experience by calling the police or at least getting a hold of my father, they did seem to be considering it. It felt like something really bad was going to happen even to people who weren't directly involved.

David started acting out aggressively to Allison. They were by the lake, and when Allison refused to listen to him about something or other, and he decided to attack her. He started screaming in psychotic rage that he was going to murder Allison, and he began to chase her. Visions of Lord of the Flies come to mind so hard. Allison had to run for her life exhausted starved and thirsty. She ran for miles until David didn't chase her anymore, and she was exhausted. She decided she had to get out of there. Jeremy and Roxanne were acting as though they were going to tie her up or something, and David promised to bludgeon Allison to death or drown her. Eventually, she saw their van coming down the road, and she hid behind some bushes. They were screaming her name, and they looked raving mad. When she could, she started heading to the small store again. She had about three dollars, and when she eventually got there she asked to use their phone, but they refused. So she bought something to drink and she siphoned it down in one setting. She sat down, so exhausted she couldn't move anymore.

Jeremy and Roxanne eventually drove up to her, and when she refused to get into the van, they grabbed her by her arms and legs and shoved her back in against her will, David being a key helper. Everyone was telling Allison she was crazy and that she had ran away for nothing and that they had all been very nice to her. Jeremy seemed to still be fuming about how she had called him a gross pervert. He wanted some kind of revenge. But my father was supposed to pick Allison up that very same day, in fact they could have left Allison there to wait for him. They dragged her back to the camp and forced her to stay put. Jeremy acted as though he didn't now want to let Allison go back to our dad, as though he wanted to extract some additional revenge upon her. She started getting the feeling that he wanted to rape her.

In the end though, they delivered Allison and David back to my father at the appointed time and place. Allison was shaking and delusionally frustrated by this time and fatigued, and as soon as she saw my father she ran up to him crying and held onto him like a small child. Roxanne gave some half ass remark about how there had been problems and then drove away. David looked confused and frightened, so much like the boys at the end of Lord of the Flies once they had gotten themselves into that fervor. He made some mental pact with himself that the entire thing had never happened. Allison told my father about all of it. He believed it and though he knew he would never be letting Roxanne take any of his children again, he at the same time was up to his eyeballs stressed about trying to set up the pedicure shop with Trish, who was already losing interest in their relationship and was making notions that he should now just give her the shop.

When I heard about Allison's nightmare camping trip and heard about the extent that everyone had basically gotten to, I decided I never wanted to see Jeremy Frye again. I would never visit. It was too much. I would still talk to Roxanne and her kids, but if Jeremy was present I didn't want to be around. I started thinking it might be best if Roxanne lost her kids. I hated to think that, but given just how horrific things had gone to, I didn't know that there was any way I could see it differently. I wanted Roxanne to get clean and leave Jeremy, but if she wasn't going to do that immediately, I thought it would be for the best if she lost her kids. Jody was a shitty father and not my favorite person, but I didn't really worry about him killing anyone. I began talking to my mom about calling CPS on Roxanne and Jeremy. My mother is not a great person, but somewhere in her chaotic little brain, she had boundaries. She certainly didn't want to see any of her grandchildren violently murdered, or Roxanne for that matter. Roxanne and Jeremy had recently gotten into another low income apartment, and we both agreed to see what happened next.

As for David, I just didn't feel like I could trust him anymore. I felt like there were two David's. One of them I knew and the other I didn't at all. When things were good with David, they were very good. He was considerate, thoughtful careful about being fair, and smiling and happy. And then he wasn't any of those things. He was violent and wanted to really hurt you. He must have been tackling some intense emotional issues. He went farther than I ever went when I had been messed up at his age. But I did see the comparisons between him and I and I had to take it into consideration. Cruel and sadistic human behavior gets a little more confusing when you exclude the notion that someone is a sociopath. But as for day to day living, I no longer trusted David. I believed that he was capable of extreme violence and believing his own lies. I wanted him to get help, but as I have mentioned, neither one of my parents were willing to face what was happening to him to get him the help he needed. This left me in a state where I had to distance myself from him and stop seeing him as someone I could trust. I feared for Allison whenever she was alone with him. You never knew when he might snap. And once at Maria's house, he ended up shoving Allison down and trying to choke her in front of Maria's kids when I happened to not be there one day. When Allison told me stuff like this, I could feel these chills of instant rage go across my skin.

I was very attached to Maria's kids. I could tell that the kids really needed me. And yet, I felt like I had to go. I didn't feel very free and the fact that I was so relied upon was making me feel even more trapped. I tried to talk to Maria about it, but she started screaming and crying when I did that. I asked her to ask the Mormon church if they knew someone who could help. It was difficult, but they found a woman who was willing to stay at Maria's house overnight to watch the kids. She had a license and was trained by the state to babysit, so it would have been relatively cheap for Maria to pay this woman. But Maria said no. The reason that Maria refused this woman's rare and generous position to help Maria and be employed in the process was because this woman was black, and Maria is a racist and she didn't want her children to be 'exposed'. Which soured things for me, and my compassion for Maria's situation went south. Maria was in no position to be choosy, but apparently she would rather lose her home and let her life fall apart than have a black person working in her home with her kids. I fucking hate racism, and a part of me didn't want to see Maria at all after that. If her kids hadn't have been involved, I might have quit then and there.

I tried once again to tell her I was done. I had worked for about four or five months at her place. She refused to acknowledge my resignation however and pretended that it never had occurred, and I felt weird about just leaving the kids. I had brought so much stability to their lives. Ian wasn't getting any better, but I never suspected he really would. I loved little Chantelle. Jasmine and I had always been close. During my summer at Maria's, I had watched just about every episode of Little House on the Prairie, the theme song blasting in my psyche as I write this. JT was kind of an odd little boy, but I liked him well enough and had to be treated a special way as he seemed to be having some developmental issues. But Maria was taking advantage of me, like she does everyone around her. Eventually, my father agreed to tell her for me. I knew she would see my father as a position of authority, and since she didn't respect the authority I had over myself, I had him do it. Maria got the picture then. I told her I would babysit for one more month for her, just to give her some extra time. She'd already had plenty of time, and hadn't had any problems turning someone away already, so I wasn't going to be any easier on her than I had to be. Naturally, she lost her mind on me. She told me I was the reason her dreams never would come true, that I had ruined her life. She then walked to the window, and looked out forlorn, and lamented her future in a way that I coyly noted was contrived and meant to convey some theatrical sadness.

Over that last month, Maria stopped buying me food as punishment for my departure, and I lost twelve pounds. Allison would come to visit, and I would share one small box of riceroni with her a day, which I didn't mind doing because I truly enjoyed her company. I didn't know what life would bring me next. I guess I just felt this sense that none of this stuff could last forever. One evening, after Maria had taken part in this very immature back and forth with Ian in which they all threw shoes at one another (it was embarrassing seeing Maria getting drawn into this childish exchange), Maria told me she didn't want her kids anymore and she was going to find a way to get rid of them. I didn't know if she was to be taken seriously or not. I just listened and said nothing. But it really stuck with me.

Eventually, I got out of Maria's. My father helped me move out of there. Roxanne was gone from the house now, so I figured I could resume my life at my mother's for whatever that was worth. I was told however, that David kind of ran the show now, and if I lived there I would have to steer clear of him. My mother told me that, and so did Allison. It seemed strange to me that a twelve year old boy 'ran the show', and I mostly dismissed it, though I knew it was definitely true. As for steering clear of him, I already did that.

I stayed in Kendrick for a few days at my father's that late summer/early fall. I decided to take an evening stroll downtown for some exercise. Just as I was turning the corner of the sidewalk below my house I bumped into Jason. For those who don't know or remember, Jason had been one of my friends in high school. He had gotten kicked out for drugs and theft. And when I had been a lot younger, Jason had meant a lot to me. I had seen him around off and on since high school, as he occasionally did work for Sarah's mom in her garden area. I also happened to know that he has stolen my father's kayak from his property the year before, which ended up being found down the creak somewhere downstream. Jason had probably stolen it while drunk in an attempt to have some kind of fun boating experience that went terribly no doubt once he got in the boat and found it was not capable of getting through shallow rapids and he just abandoned it and waded out.

I had known Jason had been doing drugs like meth. But from what I had heard, he had been doing a lot better. He was on probation again and his girlfriend helped him stay relatively clean – minus marijuana of course. The moment Jason saw me he came up to me and gave me a warm heartfelt hug. His eyes were gleeful, and he was so genuinely stoked and very glad to see me. It was strange being in the presence of someone who was that happy to see me. He laughed at everything I said, and wanted me to tell him all about what I had been up to. He told me I looked happier than I had in school. This might have been in part because I was now blonde rather than dark haired, but even with all the fatalistic depression I felt, I guess nothing really had compared to the misery of being fourteen in the Kendrick high school, when I had been too young to reflect on what I was feeling and why. I had learned to smile more, perhaps even in self defense against what life threw at me. We talked for about ten minutes before Jason told me he had a bowl of weed he couldn't wait to smoke with his girlfriend, and he went on up the hill.

I never saw Jason again. He blew his brains out four months later. Nobody knew if it was a suicide or not. On one hand, he had been at times morbidly depressed, even in the times I knew him he had acted out and said very suicidal thoughts that he had. Everyone knew he was a risk. And he had just gotten in a fight with his girlfriend. On the other hand, it didn't seem like it was done on purpose entirely. He was in the yard messing with his rifle, drunk, and perhaps it had been loaded and he had not realized it as he made the fatal error of pulling the trigger. Either story seems equally plausible, but considering he was in front of both his girlfriend and Tammy (my father's local ex)'s now ten year old son Troy out in the front yard, it seems to me like it might have been more of an accident.

In any case, after Sarah called me up with the bad news, I cried myself to sleep. Jason had once been a friend that I valued very much. It seemed weird to me that he had died. I didn't end up going to his funeral. His funeral was filled with a lot of locals who had always hated him and whom he had always hated. It seemed really phony and put on because he died when he was twenty-two so everyone felt incensed to see themselves in the story somehow. I didn't want to go to something like that. Instead I took a walk.

PART 69 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7d8van

PART 68 - https://tinyurl.com/y8faedzp

PART 67 - https://tinyurl.com/y9lfdsop

PART 66 - https://tinyurl.com/y87dzx7z

PART 65 - https://tinyurl.com/yb22o6rv

PART 64 - https://tinyurl.com/y98zxljs

PART 63 - https://tinyurl.com/ybosu235

PART 62 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjrvccn

PART 61 - https://tinyurl.com/ybm99k8o

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-60     

[spirit-science-blog]

Imagine you’re on the operating table, you’ve been put into a state of deep sleep and have some kind of surgery. All of a sudden, there are some strange singing bowl-like sounds. You become aware of vibrations, and suddenly you’re up and about, standing in the room.  Looking around, everything seems brighter...more vibrant, and full of life.  You turn around to get a better look, and the next thing you know, you see yourself right in front of you, lying on the table. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Near-Death Experiences!

NDE’s are one of the more curious phenomena of our life experiences here on earth, much like psychedelics, they take us out of the mundane world and into something mystical. People who have survived encounters nearing death, or even those who have technically died and been revived, seem to share similar lucid experiences that relate to going beyond their physical body, into another world, a world of light. The whole “light at the end of the tunnel” and ‘life flashing before your eyes’ originated from psychiatric research on the subject way back in the 70s, but the truth is, there’s a tremendous mystery here, one that today… hasn’t been solved.

Stories of strange and mystical experiences surrounding NDE's are not anything new. As far back as the sixth century, A.D. people were fascinated by similar stories in Pope Gregory’s “Dialogues” of Jesters and businessmen visiting the Christian Hell after having accidents.  Why the hell and not heaven? Maybe the Jesters told terrible jokes or the businessman made shady deals. Idk.

Either way, individuals who come back from these early NDEs report similar experiences to what is currently being studied today, such as meeting other-dimensional beings or lost loved ones, along with a feeling of permanent transformation.

If people were writing about this kind of stuff in the 6th Century, it seems that our interest in NDEs has stayed pretty constant. However, as usual, the scientific community had largely written off the events as hallucinations until the late last century. One of the enormous icebreakers for this shift in mindset was the experiences of a woman named Barbara Harris in 1975. Nowadays, Barbara is a therapist specializing in the study of NDEs, a successful author, and was on the faculty of Rutgers University's Institute on Alcohol and Drug Studies for 12 years.  Now Barbara certainly had more than her fair share in terms of experience, having not one, but two, profound NDE in a SINGLE week.

In a nutshell, she was born with a bad case of scoliosis -a crooked spine that she struggled with throughout her life. But in 1975, it became too much for her, and she was admitted for surgery to correct it. After a 5 hour operation, she was left in a full-body cast, unable to move on her own. Two days after surgery, her life support system began to fail, and she found it difficult to breathe, she lost consciousness as the support staff ran in to help her. I imagine it probably happened in slo-mo as well.

So that night, Barbara woke up in the middle of the night, standing in the hallway. After worrying, the nurses would be mad at her for standing up....(yeah, STANDING up...) she made her way back to her room and noticed she was floating level with a speaker that she remembered to be mounted on the ceiling.

She looked down and saw herself lying on the circle bed, and as she looked at the woman in the bed, she was overcome with a profound “knowing” that the person there wasn’t the real her. As if her soul was identifying her ego and understanding this, she was overcome with a deep sense of peace.

Then, Barabara felt this connection with her deceased Grandmother and began to be transported away. She became overwhelmed with a feeling that what was happening to her was more real than anything she had experienced in her life up to that point. She said that as she gave in to this belief, she felt a tremendous toxic energy release from her, and simultaneously was beginning to relive every moment she had had with her grandmother in the 19 years they shared on Earth.

Barbara emphasizes that she didn’t just remember stuff - she was reliving each moment of her life she spent with her grandmother. At a talk she gave in 2015, she recalls spending dinner with her grandmother when she was only three years old, with stunning detail. Play clip. It’s like they were sharing memories! After this journey through her past, she witnessed what she could only describe as a tunnel, and saw a light glowing. She felt herself expanding, and moved towards a droning noise -sounding kind of like a singing bowl until suddenly she was back in her physical body again.

Now, we won’t go into the details here, but about a week later, it happened again. A complication with her bed left her unable to breathe, and she entered another NDE. Ironically, despite being an atheist her whole life, Barbara’s complete inability to describe this energy she felt led her to later refer to it only as God. She often still says that “It wasn’t an old man with a long white beard. And it took me a long time to use the word, God.”

She describes that she experienced her past at breakneck speed, and with all of this information coming to her about her life, it allowed her to transform her experiences of herself and her life from self-judgment into love. As she understood her life through the lens of love, a mantra appeared in her head, “no wonder.” No wonder she was the way she was. She understood entirely now the impact her mother’s drug addiction and her father’s absence had on her childhood and how it shaped who she was today so strongly. She understood profoundly how her own mother’s pain and neglect from her childhood shaped her into someone who didn’t know how to love. The full story is moving and profound, and we’ll link her writings in the description below.

Now, there is one more exciting thing here. Before she returned to her body, she found herself behind the nurse’s station, talking about her. She overheard them talk about the nurse on duty who had to be sent home after feeling responsible for Barbara’s incident. She also taught that they were planning on lying to her about how long she would have to spend in a body cast so that she wouldn’t be even more stressed out.

So naturally, when she returned to her body, she explained that she was in the halls during that conversation, and they, of course, didn’t believe her. Amused and slightly irritated, she told them to call her nurse, let her know she was okay, and not lie to her about how long she would be in the body cast. The nurses were well how you would react? *play reaction scene from Airbender*

Now you may be wondering why we spent so long going on about one woman’s case, Especially since NDEs are surprisingly common. But the truth is, Barbara Harris’s experiences invigorated public interest in the subject of near-death experiences. All of a sudden, people started becoming more interested in the stories of others who underwent NDE. What intrigued people aside from the prospect of life after death was similar themes in all the accounts. Leaving one's unconscious body, entering a beautiful, eternal glowing light or relaxing darkness seemed to be universal aspects of the experience. People commonly described the presence of an all-loving being or consciousness, giving them insights into their own lives.

Now, of course, this is humanity we’re talking about, and scientists are often rigidly skeptical, so formal research. Still, continually denying the entire idea, finally got the funding required nearly twenty years after Barbara’s experiences to produce collaborative research on the phenomenon and make some scientific insights. They couldn’t ignore the sheer number of claims without looking into it at least a little. So they hired this guy named the hap who kidnapped some people, killed them, and then revived them repeatedly in a secret basement and recorded their experiences… wait… hold on… Our hidden spirituality of the OA episode script must have gotten mixed up in here… Oops! Instead, this initial wave of research *that wasn’t illegal* was shared in a Psychology Today article entitled, Bright Lights, Big Mystery, and as always, you can find links to this in the sources of this video.

From this wave of research, it was discovered that 95% of the world’s cultures mentioned an NDE in some form… A crazy number to think about! Further, nearly seventeen percent of critically ill patients across nine countries are reported to have undergone an NDE. So NDE’s aren’t extremely rare; they are quite common. However, I suppose that it’s also quite paradigm-shattering, for if we globally took this seriously, Atheism might disappear entirely, and the fields of Science would never be the same…

One contributor to that research, Doctor Melvin Morse, examined thousands of NDEs' reports to learn more about them. What’s curious about Dr. Morse’s analysis is that despite having no way of proving anything that happened from people’s news, the reports he studied were so similar that he painted a picture of what a typical NDE might look like. From Independent reports, Morse found that “full-blown” NDEs share the nine following features:

A sense of being dead: the sudden awareness that one has had a 'fatal" accident or not survived an operation.

Peace and painlessness: a feeling that the ties that bind one to the world have been cut.

An out-of-body experience: the sensation peering down on one's body and perhaps seeing the doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate them.

Tunnel experience: the sense of moving up or through a narrow passageway.

Encountering beings of light or ‘glowing ones’ at the end of the tunnel.

The presence of a God-like or omnipotent figure or force of some kind.

Life review: being shown one's life by the being of light.

Reluctance to return: the feeling of being comfortable and surrounded by the Light often described as "pure love."

Personality transformation: a psychological change involving loss of the fear of death, higher spiritualism, a sense of "connectedness" with the Earth, and greater zest for life.

This was painting an exciting picture for scientists, but there was still some skepticism, and some questions: Was the cultural significance of an NDE shaping what experiences people were having? How do we know that people are actually having an NDE and not just exaggerating a dream or other dissociative experience? Is being near death necessary to undergo what is being reported as NDE?

If being near death wasn’t necessary to undergo the phenomenon, patients should report them even when they were never in mortal danger. A researcher named Dr. Stevenson located the medical records of forty patients who reported an NDE and found that more than half of them were never actually close to dying. This was starting to support the idea that the fear of death was sparking a purely psychological response.

But Stevenson wasn’t satisfied, and so he found a group of 58 people who reported NDEs, and like last time, 30 of whom had not been near death. He interviewed them and discovered something they couldn’t ignore: “A significantly greater number of patients who were actually near death reported elements of the core experience--including the bright light--than those who were not.” It seems that genuinely being near death IS necessary to encounter the established phenomena. Ironically, in the scientists' attempts to show the experience purely as an experience of the mind, they ended up showing the opposite….. At this point, someone probably got a raise… orrrrr was fired.

By this point, science has failed to do what it so often excels at: simplifying the world and squashing questions. In that failure lies so much wonder and curiosity that has paradigm-shattering consequences for all of us. Think about it; if this experience is universal across almost all of the cultures of the world, it breaks down religious ideas like “my heaven or God is the only one,” revealing a more unified understanding of what is quite possibly the afterlife, shared by all.

But it’s more than just a culture shock. Recall Barbara Harris’s story earlier, at one point, she was transported to the physical world but outside of her body, and heard information that was otherwise secret to her, bewildering the nurses with her knowledge when she awoke. This is so far out there, and Barbara’s story is not an isolated event.

Back in 2008, something known as the Awareness during Resuscitation Program, AWARE for short, followed 2,000 heart attack patients across the globe and studied the amount of NDE’s that occurred among survivors. Some of these survivors reported an out of body awareness, and for one of them, the perception was confirmed to be accurate by hospital staff. A similar study in 2001 looked at the same patient’s experience. The researchers stated that  "it didn’t appear consistent with hallucinatory or illusory experiences, as the recollections were compatible with real and verifiable rather than imagined events." In a nutshell...somehow, these people are aware of the world around them, even sometimes past the range of their physical body, despite showing all the signs of being clinically dead. Now, we’re way past our time limit here, but this stuff is just so impressive. Before we wrap things up, there’s one more important thing I must share with you! Despite the recent studies seemingly acknowledging some kind of experience, helping to affirm their existence, ancient Buddhist Texts refer to the ability to enter a near-death experience without physical threat to the body through…..you guessed it….. meditation!

Of course, in learning this, people at the Journal of Mindfulness went on a 3-year study with monks from different Buddhist Schools and monitored them during meditations. Amazingly, the monks were seemingly able to plan ahead of time and even how the NDE would manifest. Researchers confirmed that meditation-induced NDEs produced the same long term mystical enhancement in a person’s life. If you want to read the studies, you’ll find a link to them on our website!

So… what do you think is going on? Even today, mainstream science believes that an NDE is simply a psychological phenomenon where the brain is reliving its memories. It’s a convenient explanation, but it does not explain the commonness of descriptive experiences or the knowledge of events that are so far removed from someone going through the experience. It also conveniently ignores the correct skills of the Monks.

Honestly, I feel the day that we, as a society, accept NDE’s, is the day that we make leaps forward in our understanding of life, death, and the nature of consciousness. But in the meantime, if you are someone who wants to make leaps ahead in your journey, consider checking out our Seven-Day Transformation - nearly guaranteed to help you radically transform your life in only one week! You’ll find links below, and I hope to see you there!