.:. WitNit .:.: My Life Archives

August 3, 2009

Taking a Working Break

y job has offered to pay for a Masters program in Organization and Management Development starting next month for 20 months. I'm already stretched, which means no time to blog. Heck, I've been unable even to get up pictures of Italy for the past two months. So please check in, say, later 2011...If I survive the work. Cheers to all.

Posted by witnit at 8:09 AM | Comments (8)

March 31, 2008

Past Life Workship in San Francisco

f you've read my past life stories and want to see me in person, I'll be giving a lecture in San Francisco on Saturday, April 26, at 1:00 pm at the New Living Expo.

See you there!

Posted by witnit at 4:10 PM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2008

My First Past Life

've been wondering how to write this. It's so easy for people to think such stuff is mere new-age nonsense or ramblings of non-scientific whackos. I'm neither. I hope what I've written so far has given me some intellectual credibility.

I've decided to just write this as an experience, straight on, without an attempt to prove of justify. It's impossible to prove anyway, and I gain nothing by telling this story other than risking responses by genuine whackos. This is just what happened to me and how I interpret it, the most reasonable interpretation in my opinion.

I can't talk about all aspects of it, because some things I'll simply have to keep to myself for various reasons. I'll tell as much as I can and leave it to the reader. I report, you decide.

Past lives (reincarnation) directly implies that some central identity in us is immortal. I was raised believing no such thing. Only through study did I come to believe in the possibility. It made sense to me that if there were anything resembling a divine plan, the Christian model was not it. One shot, judged forever. I don't think so.

So I embarked on a study and certain personal spiritual exercises to see if I could open that door. It didn't matter what I read or what my mind believed. I wanted direct experience. It took 10 years of work to get that experience.

And when it came it scared the hell out of me.

I was a graduate student in college, studying Classical Rhetoric. I was also a big Shakespeare buff. I read a lot of critical writings on Shakespeare and there was one writer in particular I really enjoyed. He wrote about Shakespeare in a way I could completely relate to. Whenever I studied a play, I would go back to his summary essay on that play and find it as enjoyable as the first time I read it.

I recommended him to fellow teaching assistants and Shakespeare buffs. A couple of years after first reading him, I was cruising the used bookstores in Berkeley with a friend. At one point he said, "Hey, here's a book by that guy you like."

He handed it to me. It was called Alphabet of the Imagination, a collection of essays by the same guy collected and published by his daughters over 20 years after his death. Mostly literary essays on writers like Chaucer, Chekov, Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, and the like. The book really didn't grab me right off, so I put it back on the shelf. But as I walked away, I just got a normal feeling that I would regret not buying it so I went ahead and bought it.

I really enjoyed those essays. The guy had an unusual style that was a pleasure for me to read. At this time I had a roommate, a good woman, somewhat bipolar but okay. Luckily she was not at home when this happened. I wouldn't know what to say to her.

I was reading the book, the essay on Walt Whitman. I remember reading a passage where the author articulated an idea that I had once thought but had never told anyone, and I had never heard anyone else articulate it. It really made me think, Wow, that's interesting.

I wondered about this guy's life, so right then I flipped to the back of the book to read his bio. It said that he had started out studying mathematics, getting his degree in it, before switching to language and literature and Shakespeare. He ended up heading the English Department at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania before his death.

I thought, Huh, that's interesting, he basically did the same thing I did. I had started off on the math/science side of things, even going so far as studying computer programming in college, before switching to language and literature and becoming a fan of Shakespeare.

I turned back to the essay and read a little more, and I remember thinking, Hey, this guy thinks just like me. The way we think about things, the way we structure our thoughts, was very similar. I looked at his bio again and noticed he had died in 1950 and I was born in 1956.

Now here comes the hard part to talk about. I don't quite know how to write this because what happened next is unique in my experience and never repeated itself in quite this way.

I had the thought, Hey, I wonder if this was me in a past life. I just had that thought kind of out of the blue, in the stream of my consciousness, it wasn't really a big deal.

And as I thought that, it was as if everything around me said, without words, and without me hearing an actual voice, IT IS YOU.

And it felt like I burst through a pane of glass shattering all around me, and the conscious awareness that this man had actually BEEN me in a past life suddenly poured into me like an ocean wave breaking through a sand castle barrier to swamp the castle.

And it scared the hell out of me!

I jumped up off the couch, and tossed that book away from me like a hot potato, and skittered across the room away from it. I was shaking in shock and literally in tears. My mind couldn't get my head around what had just happened. I felt like someone had blasted an emergency horn right behind my head.

It took my some minutes to recover. I crept back to the book, lifted it carefully, and began reading it with new eyes. My training in language and rhetoric and how sentence structure contains thought and reflects consciousness helped me see how the sentences I read in that book in fact DID follow some rather unusual characteristics I have in my thinking.

I suddenly made a lot of connections between my thoughts and ideas and interests with his thoughts and ideas and interests.

I went back and reread his other books and made more uncanny discoveries, the kind that could only relate to my mind and was absolutely unprovable to others.

Some years later, I had the opportunity to visit Swarthmore College. It was not familiar, and I found out that 50 years later, none of the original buildings survived that I would have frequented.

I did find a library archive, supported by Quakers, and they allowed my to make copies of a file of my old class notes and student testimonials at my retirement and an old photo of me when I was about 70 years old.

I still have those papers.

That recognition of that lifetime ultimately formed the foundation for a couple dozen other past lives I've come across. I've more or less pieced together my history for the past 2000 years. More often than not, the experience is discomforting and unsettling.

There's a good reason why we forget: The remembrance can play havoc with our current psyche. We like to think that the personality we possess is unique. When you start recalling other lives, other personalities, suddenly this personality is not unique anymore and feels threatened in certain ways. But more to the point, the pain of past lives is contained within our current circumstances, and reflected in our dreams and fears and anxieties. Recalling past lives will trigger and bring up a lot of stuff that's buried and, for the most part, we would prefer to remain buried.

There's more, and other ways I went about proving that this was truly me in my last lifetime. Those details aren't important to anyone but me.

Hey, if you think I'm a whack job, I can live with that. I've learned not to build my sense of self value on the opinions of others.

If you made it this far, thanks for indulging me. Maybe I'll work up the courage to tell another one, one that goes back to King Charles II's court, a past life that haunted my dreams for decades before I realized that what had been haunting me was simply . . . me.

Posted by witnit at 11:10 AM | Comments (3)

January 27, 2008

A Dark and Ugly Past Life - Reply

i Eric

Here is what I believe. This is probably much more than you’re asking for. (My Comments aren't working for me, so I'll post this.)

First, a story:

God had finished creating the earth and invited four angels to help him with the final detail: Where to hide the Truth so that it would require great effort for mankind to find It.

The first angel said, ‘Place Truth on the highest mountain.’ The second said, ‘Place Truth at the bottom of the ocean.’ The third said, ‘Place Truth deep in the earth.’

The fourth angel said, ‘Sooner than later humans will seek out the highest mountains, dive to the bottom of the oceans, and explore deep within the earth. Place Truth within man himself. It will be the last place he will ever think to find it.’

What follows is what I’ve been able to put together so far. Any part of it is subject to change without notice based on further personal experience. More of this than you would believe I know firsthand. I may be crazy, but at least you have to admit it is a pluralistic vision that validates pretty much everyone’s place in this world. Take it for what you will. Since I’m not of a proselytizing nature, I pretty much don’t care if you believe any of this or not. I have nothing to prove. All I know for sure is that you are unlikely to have heard it put this way before.

(If you have a strong reaction to what follows, just relax. Take it in as entertainment, as the ramblings of an unusual mind. I'm not dangerous to anyone. Really!)

So, onwards:

You are Soul, immortal and free.

Notice that I said you ARE Soul, not that you HAVE a Soul. That’s a big difference. You are not your body. As Soul you take on a body to play in this and other worlds.

As Soul you have always existed and always will exist. Death is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on humankind.

You have lived thousands and perhaps millions of lifetimes, on this world and many others, taking many different bodies and living an endless varieties of lifetimes.

Everything you can imagine actually exists somewhere. That’s why you can imagine it.

Even though reincarnation is true, it is not the caricature some make it out to be. Generally speaking, you do not go backwards. The bug you step on is not your dead grandmother.

This universe, and every other one, exists as a kind of playground and school for Soul. The main law is that you have to live with the consequences of everything that you think, do, and say. What you think, do, and say may come back to you instantly or more likely in other lifetimes. That’s why life may appear to be unfair.

Life is perfectly fair. There are no victims. Nothing can come to you or be kept away from you except in accordance with your state of consciousness.

You get to play in these worlds of matter, energy, space, and time as long as there is a role to play that interests you, and as long as you owe a debt; that is, as long as you still have something you thought, did, or say that is waiting to come back to you.

Every heaven (and hell) exists, and you don’t have to wait until you die to visit.

There is no sin, nor any spiritual value to fear, guilt, and shame, other than understanding that they can keep you from moving forward.

You get to play every role: male and female and everything in between, master and slave, rich and poor, black and white and every other color, race, ethnicity, and religious or non-religious background, the great leader and the bad leader, the great follower and the bad follower, the entertainer, the artist, the musician, the scientist, the inventor, the starship captain, and everything else you can imagine.

The higher worlds are available to you through Soul travel, dreams and other techniques. Like anything else, these are skills that require effort to learn and apply.

Your dreams are real. Many are symbolic, but some are you leaving your body and visiting actual places and actual people.

The closest ‘heaven’ to this world is popularly called the Astral plane. This is where you usually go when you dream. The heavens of Hinduism and yogas and many emotional based religions reside here. Paramahansa Yogananda’s book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ gives a fair description of this place. Also the Robin Williams movie ‘What Dreams May Come’ gives some interesting examples.

There are many other "planes." The Causal (past-life records), Mental (the heavens of Buddhism and Christianity reside here...also more Hinduism), Etheric (archetypes and symbols) ...And these don't include the Soul planes, where the real action is. The difficult thing about Soul planes is: they exist beyond language, image, time, and space. Thus, they are rather hard to talk about.

Most dream books are a waste of time. We each have our own symbols and places we go. You can begin to learn your own dream territory by keeping a dream journal. The more you work to record your dreams, the more you will remember, and the more you will be able to interpret your own dreams.

Past lives can be recalled, but it is not always a comfortable experience. Usually, it is better to have the experience naturally rather than rely on others to tell you. Charlatans are the rule in this world. Very few people have the ability to tell you your past lives. And those who do rarely will let you know it, or bother to set up shop.

Every religion, every faith and non-faith, has some truth to it. Every path that everyone is on is legitimate. We are all perfectly at this point where we are supposed to be. Nobody can honestly tell someone else they have their answers.

The spiritually experienced cannot always be recognized based on appearance. The drunk in the street can be more spiritually advanced than the priest in the pulpit.

The people who seem to be the most challenging to you in your life are often Souls who volunteered to take on that role so that you'd grow and learn the lesson.

Sometimes it can take several lifetimes to learn a single lesson.

No matter where you are in your life, there is a next step. You can always ask life directly to give you more direct hints as to what that next step is. It can come in the form of a Waking Dream; that is, like life is giving you symbols or a scenario to help you wake up to your next step.

Because your nature is eternal, there is no rush. You don’t have to believe anything right now. You can take it at your own rate. If you like your life as it is, fine. Then stay there. If you want something else, experiment. Maybe there is something here for you.

Life runs in cycles of Vision, Action, and Balance (Rest).

Traveling out of the body is a reality that can be learned. Usually it is best to have an experienced guide.

The best guide is as close to you as your heartbeat and has been with you since the beginning of your journeys into these worlds. You carry the Truth inside you, wherever you are, wherever you go. You are never alone, no matter how hard the lesson you're going through.

The easiest way to contact this inner teacher is to have a childlike trust in it and your ability to contact it. Just open your heart and ask.

Imagination is the spiritual key to unlock the higher worlds. Anything you put your attention on will eventually manifest. You are much more the creator of your life than you realize. You can be free. You only need to begin walking out of your self-constructed prisons, since none hold you there but yourself.

There is a spiritual exercise that you can do. It is based on the word HU. This word is not owned by any religion. In the Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘God’ you will find HU as one source. HU was the ancient name for the Sphinx in Egypt. It is sung by the Sufis. It is the name of an ancient Celtic God. It is known in many forms in many different teachings. It is the lost chord, the secret word that everyone seeks out.

HU is a kind of lovesong to God, however you think of God. HU is sung in long drawn-out breaths: HHHHUUUUUUUUUUUU. If you sing it tonight before you go to bed, you might be surprised at the experiences you have.

The good thing about HU is that you don’t have to go through any religion or any priest or any third-party authority to have direct contact with the spiritual guide and teacher that resides within you and has been your companion since the dawn of your journey.

Singing HU every day for even 5 minutes (20 minutes is better) will transform your life in incredible ways. (I've been doing it now for over 30 years.)

HU can relieve physical pain, and bring emotional stability. It can unlock and release mental fixations.

The only rule is that if you are smoking pot or using any other illegal psychoactive drug, do not sing HU. It will literally drive you crazy.

When you sing HU, you may experience Spirit or God (whatever IT is) as Sound and Light. You may see a blue light (or some other color) in your Spiritual Eye, between your eyebrows, or hear a tone or music or tuning fork in your ear. Spirit will communicate in a higher vibratory language. Pay attention when you see or hear these. You may find that you begin to acquire an understanding of things without being told.

HU also works as spiritual protection. If you are afraid, sing HU. If you are in a dream that scares you, if you remember to sing HU in the dream, you will find yourself immediately transported to a safe place. Incredible, but true. Try it.

The primary spiritual law of life is, You Gain All By Giving All. What that means will sooner or later come to you. Spiritual Laws are real and in operation whether you believe in them or not: Law of Karma, Law of Harmonics, Law of Economy, Law of Love.

You are here to learn how to give and receive Divine Love. You will have to first move through all the illusions of love to eventually discover the difference. But again, there is no rush. You have all the time in the universes.

Fairly pluralistic vision, huh? If you happen to try HU and have any interesting experiences you want to share, please let me know. I may someday share some of my experiences, dream experiences, waking dreams, out-of-body experiences, and other past lives.

You don’t have to believe any of this to experiment and find out firsthand for yourself. Nothing I say needs to be believed. It’s all waiting for your direct, personal experience. That’s more proof than I can ever offer.

By the way, I'm not really all that interested in talking publicly about the actual spiritual path I pursue. But if you try HU for a month and you're getting results, email me and I may talk to you about it. I'm not interested in conversion. Just sharing.

Let me know if you would like more. Although I understand if you think this is enough.

Happy trails.

Posted by witnit at 7:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 9, 2007

Needles

went to a Bodytalk specialist this morning to track down the source of some muscle kinks I had in my back that a Korean Shiatsu woman last week couldn't unlock (she walked all over me from neck to toes...) and I left with...

TEN ACUPUNCTURE NEEDLES TAPED INTO MY BACK THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO STAY THERE FOR SEVERAL DAYS.

Well, nothing like direct experience to find out if something works.

Posted by witnit at 3:18 PM | Comments (0)

Needles

TEN ACUPUNCTURE NEEDLES TAPED INTO MY BACK THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO STAY THERE FOR SEVERAL DAYS.

Well, nothing like direct experience to find out if something works.

Posted by witnit at 3:18 PM | Comments (0)

March 5, 2007

Just a Bit Distracted

kay, I've been neglecting my blog and reading other blogs for a while now. I have no excuse...

Other than the fact that I got a Playstation 3 and a new Macbook Pro laptop to play with. (No, I didn't get the Nintendo Wii because it's not HD.)

My plasma HDTV needed something, a friend, a companion, a buddy to hang out with. So I got it a Playstation 3. It was time for me to catch up with the Playstation universe. Nevermind that there are only about 20 new games for it and only one is rated 5 Stars. It can play all the Playstation 2 games as well, you see.

Right now I am playing two games:

Formula 1 Championship: A Playstation 3 HD game that just came out. Everyone needs at least one racing game. I like the Monte Carlo track, although there are about 2 dozen to choose from.

Okami: A beautiful, wondrous Playstation 2 game that I saw on XPLAY (on the G4 tv channel...very funny writing and great game reviews on all platforms). Okami is a pure Japanese consciousness game. You are the great sun goddess Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf who travels the Nippon countryside saving the land from dark curses, returning flowering life to nature by wielding the great caligraphic Celestial Brush to banish enemies and restore life. When you run, flowers are left in your trail, and when you succeed in restoring a Guardian Sapling you watch as petals and blossoms flow across the land bringing color and fructifying goodness to all.

The entire game is in a special ink-and-wash style kind of watercolor-like more than anime. It's quite a wonderful, odd non-western game. Check it out if you have Playstation 2.

On my new Mac I'm trying out Call of Duty. A friend in Tennessee got it for his dad. It's great. Shooting Nazis. Sometimes it's better than doing all those shoot-em-up space alien games.

Of course I have a few backups when I get around to them: Call of Duty 2 for Playstation 2. Halo for Mac. And Resistance: Fall of Man, the 5-star Playstation 3 game that challenges my ability to effectively use the controls. I'm not an experienced Playstation gamer, so my fingers have to learn the new way of playing.

So that's what I've been doing with my spare time. Can you blame me???

Posted by witnit at 2:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2007

Body Changes

joined a gym. Half-hour on the eliptical trainer and a half-hour on weight machines listening to my iPod. Monday is shoulders and arms, Wednesdy is legs and abs, and Friday is chest and back. 6 or 7 machines each day.

That, together with changing my breakfast from

- breakfast burritos with eggs, ham, cheese, potatoes and red peppers and onions to oatmeal and bran and shredded wheat cereal, and
- lunches limited to soup, salad, and occasional sandwhiches, and
- no transfats, chocolate, ice cream, non-alcoholic beer...

I'm actually losing weight and feeling my body rework itself. I got a doctor's appointment in April. If I lose 10 lbs and get me liver number right, I can get off these damn meds.

A few more weeks of exercise at 6:00 am in the morning and I'll have the habit. Maybe I can lose 30 lbs this year.

Then it's time to go shopping!

Posted by witnit at 12:19 PM | Comments (4)

February 7, 2007

Cranky

omorrow I have an appointment with a camerman and he has certain specific requirements and needs.

So today, no breakfast, no lunch, no dinner...at 5:00 pm I take the first does of Fleet's Phospher-Soda and at 11:00 pm the second, and I'm not allowed to be more than 10 feet from the nearest toilet.

And no breakfast tomorrow and no liquids after 7:00 am.

And the Comments function on my blog is still on the fritz...

I'm cranky...

Posted by witnit at 2:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

Weights and Measures

ad my annual physical. The doc didn't like my weight (250) or cholesterol number (215). So he's put me on Zocor, wants me to diet and exercise and come back in two months.

I hate the med. It makes me feel funny in the morning, like low blood sugar. I've started eating oatmeal for breakfast. "Please, suh. Can I have some more gruel, please?" I'm eating soup and salad for lunch. Dinners are normal. I've eliminated all transfats.

I joined a gym doing 3-4 days a week of 30 minutes on eliptical trainer (like a stairmaster) and 30 minutes machines, Monday chest and back, Wednesday abs and legs, Friday shoulders and arms. Weekends, whatever I want.

Also, since I am now 51, my doc said happy birthday, it's time to schedule a colonoscopy...camera up the butt.

Wheeeeeee!

He also doesn't like my liver number and says he will put me on another med if I don't get it down. I want off the meds. I'm motivated.

I'm also working with a Bodytalk specialist who is helping me track down and resolve any emotional reasons for holding on to weight. Don't laugh. After trying all kinds of mainstream and alternative people for some back pain I've had for several years, she resolved it in ONE session. Results speak.

Maybe later this year I can post a Before / After photo.

Posted by witnit at 10:27 AM | Comments (4)

January 11, 2007

Birthday Boy

omorrow's the day. January 12th. The same day as Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

I'll be 51. It's also the day my work automatically deposits a Performance Bonus, which should be a few thousand.

So what should I do about my upcoming mid-life crisis? I'm thinking...Playstation 3!

To go with my lonely plasma TV, of course...

Posted by witnit at 6:44 AM | Comments (0)

November 1, 2006

Sick Sick Sick

old, sneezes, coughing up a lung, no desire to focus or create.

Being sick sucks.

Posted by witnit at 7:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 10, 2006

Ramblin'

'm a ramblin' guy. I'm in Vancouver, WA, for a couple of days. This afternoon I fly to Boise. Wednesday night I fly to Dallas, then Friday night back to San Francisco, and then Monday back to Dallas for a couple of days.

I'm doing a bunch of interviews with engineers and management types to find out how our company's North America organzation is doing. At least the TVs in the hotel rooms have shows I recognize and can understand.

These are long days, so blogging is light this week. However, I have been getting some GOOD REVIEWS for my blog novel. Better than I had a right to expect. When you do complicated topics with a dash of cliffhanger, you don't know how people will respond. But at least for those who actually finished it, so far so good.

Posted by witnit at 8:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2006

Whew!

he service is over, the cremation finished, and most of the accounting completed. Death is an industry and there's nothing quite like a funeral director saying, "Sorry for your loss. The balance is $$$."

Okay, he didn't quite say it like that. In fact he was very nice and personable, which I guess it's good to be in that business. Other businesses may go in cycles, but the unstated Funeral Home motto is "Nobody is getting out of the world alive."

Work was kind enough to give me 5 days paid leave. The DVD I made of my mom's life in pictures went over extremely well. They were all in tears. Thank God for the Mac's free iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. Even though my wife's professional dual-processor G5 couldn't burn the DVD, her laptop was able to.

I strung about 140 photos over 5 songs: A Wink and a Smile, Unforgettable, Fly Me to the Moon, Over the Rainbow, and finally What a Wonderful World, with a fadeout on a too-cute picture of her at 12 to the strain of Louis singing, "oh, yeaaaaaah."

I gave copies to each family member and selected friends.

Now back to work and life. I fly out to Taiwan and China on Sunday for a week of coaching.

I'm so tired I may actually be able to sleep on the plane.

A special thanks to all of you who wrote with care. I greatly appreciate your thoughts. Now go read my blog novel, dammit, and write a review. (Thank you, Theresa!)

Posted by witnit at 1:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

Goodbye, Mom

fter years of battling massive cancer, my mom died today at age 75. I was with her at the time. They called me to say they thought she would not make it through the day. She was barely communicating over the weekend, so I was not surprised.

She was unable to talk today and was not outwardly aware of me, but I held her hand, stroked her hair and told her that it was okay to let go. Inwardly, she told me that she wanted to wait for my cousin Jeannie who was on her way. An hour later, Jeannie arrive. I told her of the inner communication I received. A few minutes later my mom passed.

The next few days will be very busy. She had a lot of friends.

I will see her in my dreams.

Posted by witnit at 10:27 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

August 28, 2006

On Death and Dying

y mom is finally on the decline. She's not eating. They're giving her pain patches and liquid pain medicine. She doesn't talk much and stares off into space. She can't answer the phone anymore. She can barely lift a dixie cup of fluid up to her lips. I hold it for her when I'm there and I dial phone numbers for her. But she is losing interest in all that. My guess is she'll choose to let go by the end of September.

I visit her on weekends. We've long ago finished out business. But I know fewer and fewer people visit her.

It's a nice nursing home, with staff that truly like her. But it's still a nursing home. I'm not a social-worker or hospice volunteer, and I really don't have it in me to be around the dying, but I make a point to spend time with her every week. I've been working on a DVD of her life in pictures set to music. I showed her a segment. I'll send it to family and selected friends.

It's all so tiring...

Posted by witnit at 12:47 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 4, 2006

Uuuhhaaagh!

he wife arranged for a new carpet, couch, dining table, and china cabinet. Of course, the old furniture had to be moved to the garage by you know who...

My back!!! My aching BAAAACCCKKK!!!

Separated rib, and the chiropractor made it worse...

Time to lay about and heal...

Posted by witnit at 5:28 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 20, 2006

Help!

'm working too hard and too much to blog! My brain is melting! My motivation is shriveled! My gonads are...well, let's leave them out of it for the time being, shall we?

Posted by witnit at 8:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 10, 2006

Computer Hell

'm in it. Probably all week. Old desktop acting up. Bought new one over the weekend. Norton Internet Security software screwed up. I didn't want it anyway. System Restore failed. Have to take it back to Best Buy for reinstall of system software.

AAARRRRGGHH!!!

Posted by witnit at 9:10 AM | Comments (5)

June 7, 2006

Mucous Factory

've been sick. It started as sinus pain. That REALLY sucks. And it wasn't just a regular sinus/headcold/runny nose thing. The mucous was really thick and dark. Not yellow, but brown, with chunky goodness.

Then it moved into my chest and I began excreting, collecting and coughing up bucketfulls of dark brown thick mucous.

That was last week. I'm better now. Just took me a while to write it up.

Posted by witnit at 8:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 24, 2006

A Surreal Day by the Creek

t was 1974. I was 18, just graduated from high school, working for Macdonald's, smoking pot, not quite into LSD yet, but experimenting with other things. The two drug-fiend sons of the wealthy owner of that Macdonald's set up an overnight campout with a select bunch of us employees--the select ones who got high. We were set to bring our sleeping bags up north of Sacramento on the way to Placerville and spend the night by a small creek, just a 1/4-mile walk from the bridge where we parked.

On the way up, we stopped at a gas station, and in the restroom I snorted some psilocybin spores.

We arrived, unloaded, hiked up the creak and stopped by a small sandy beach area surrounded by granite rocks encircling a small pool in the creak with a rope swing hanging from a tree. We were all in our shorts and tees basking in a hot summer day.

I lay out my sleeping bag and Coleman lantern and cooler with beer and food. The two Macdonald brothers started rolling big fat joints out of choice pot. The psilocybin was hitting nicely, not enough to smear reality, but a nice colorful high. I was inexperienced so I didn't know how to translate the experience other than knowing that everything looked kinda funny and strange, meant to be laughed at.

Some other guys came down and started skinny dipping in the pool. We got high and watched and laughed. Things then took a surreal turn.

I got it in my head to try to light the Coleman lantern (in broad daylight) just to make sure it worked. It was a liquid-fuel lantern with mantles and I tried pumping it and lighting it and began wondering what was the problem when I realized that I really couldn't see that well because of the psilocybin--there was light and patterns and colors in my eyes.

So I set the lamp down and smoked a joint with one of the brothers and then looked over at my sleeping bag and started delighting myself with all the rippling colors I saw dancing gently across my sleeping bag. It probably took a minute before the thought occurred to me that they looked just like little flames.

Sure enough--my sleeping bag was on fire and nobody noticed. I grabbed it, turned it over in the sand and stamped out the flames. And of course there wasn't anything to be done so we all laughed and I enjoyed being the stoned center of everyone's attention for about 50 seconds before other things drifted by...

Two sisters who must have weighed about 350 pounds each arrived, with attitude. They started mouthing off, and the skinny dippers started telling them to take off their clothes and swim. They seemed to be high too, egging each other on, when one said "What the hell" and took off her clothes and jumped in. Everyone was hootin'. Then she got out and pushed her big sister in. That pissed her off. She got out of her wet clothes and started yelling at her sister. One of the skinny dipping guys swam over, grabbed their clothes and swam back to the other side. When the sisters noticed their missing clothes, they blaming each other, grabbed their purses and started swinging them and slamming them into each other with loud wet-slurping WHAPS. One of the brothers rolled an over-sized joint and offered it to the winner, and we all stood around smoking and laughing and yelling and watching the spectacle of two 350-pound naked sisters whapping each other on the sandy beach while a bunch of guys stood around laughing and egging them on.

Drugs sure lead you into strange arenas of behavior.

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March 23, 2006

Where dem drugs may lead ya

was 18, working for Macdonald's, smoking pot, not quite into LSD yet, but experimenting with other things. The two drug-fiend sons of the wealthy owner of that Macdonald's set up an overnight campout with a select bunch of us employees--the select ones who got high. We were set to bring our sleeping bags up north of Sacramento on the way to Placerville and spend the night by a small creek, just a 1/4-mile walk from the bridge where we parked.

On the way up, we stopped at a gas station, and in the restroom I snorted some psilocybin spores

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February 7, 2006

100 Things About Me

ll about me (well, some of me.)

1. I was born January 12, 1956 in York, Nebraska.
2. Before my tenth birthday, I lived in three towns in Nebraska (York, Lincoln, McCook) and three in Kansas (Colby, Kansas City, Salina), not to mention sometimes in more than one house in the same town.
3. This pattern continued until I was 18, when my parents divorced and I stayed in the same town for about 20 years.
4. My father was a lost soul who thought moving to another location would solve his problems.
5. My father was a DJ who had tons of records that I would play all the time: classical, jazz, vocal.
6. In kindergarten, my father gave me and my little brother animal piggy banks to learn how to save money. Later, he took the money to buy Camel cigarettes and never paid us back.
7. In first grade, I wanted to give my entire class presents, so I took my smaller toys, some ripped paper bags and scotch tape, wrapped 25 of them, took them to school in a big shopping bag, and passed them out before class started. I really enjoyed that.
8. My teacher made everyone give them back to me. I really hated that.
9. In second grade, my mother bought a piano, because her mother was a piano teacher and my mother loved music. I sat down and learned a simple piece of music, then transposed it to another key. My mother decided I should have piano lesson.
10. I remember seeing The Beatles on their first Ed Sullivan show appearance and saying, "Look at that long hair."

11. I was an amateur magician.
12. I was a straight A student until high school.
13. In 5th grade a friend had a BB gun and we went behind my house and we spotted a sparrow and he aimed and fired and the bird dropped dead at our feet; I lost my taste for shooting animals for sport in that moment.
14. In Kansas we would routinely light cherry bombs and M-80s.
15. I moved to San Jose, California, in June 1966.
16. I was shocked that in California everyone would say "Shit" out loud.
17. I was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
18. I went to three different 6th-grade schools.
19. I had a sixth-grade friend in Salinas, California, whose father was a doctor and would get us Potassium Chlorate. We would get the charcoal and sulphur and the 100-feet of cherry bomb fuse you could buy from an ad in Popular Mechanics, and we would make our own little bombs in his back yard.
20. I still have all my fingers, eyes, and ears.

21. I lived for a few months with my grandparents in Palmdale, California, attending 6th grade and learning some Spanish. I only remember learning Bate bate el chocolate.
22. I went to 7th through 10th grade in Redding, California.
23. In 9th grade I went to an all Freshman high school, Nova High School.
24. The seniors and juniors made up for it when I became a sophomore at Shasta High School.
25. In 7th grade I got the nickname The Brain.
26. In 8th grade I had a girl go steady with me out of pity.
27. In 8th grade I composed my first piano piece and played it for a girl at a party, who was so touched she actually cried.
28. A girl finally taught me how to French kiss in 9th grade.
29. I started smoking my dad's Camels when I was 15.
30. I started stealing hard liquor and cigarettes from grocery stores when I was 15.

31. At 16 my parents left town for a few days leaving me in charge. I invited a few people to a party and several hundred showed up.
32. Including bikers.
33. I got so drunk I threw up with the bathroom door open and some guy yelling, "Strike one! Strike two! Strike three, you're out!"
34. I got caught shoplifting a 99 cent package of sliced turkey. Safeway had a policy of only prosecuting when the amount was $1.00 or more. Lucky me.
35. That same summer I would listen to Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick with speakers set on either side of my head.
36. I started smoking pot that summer, but never got high.
37. When I was 18, my best friend accidentally shoved a switchblade through my right hand.
38. It cut three sensory nerves and for the next 18 months, I couldn't feel half of my thumb and index finger.
39. It was fun going to school and watching the cheerleader who sat behind me in English class freak out at the huge ball of gauze on my hand.
40. I was student body vice-president as a senior in high school.

41. I was the only one running for that position.
42. Several of us guys once borrowed the songleaders' uniforms and wore them to an all-girl football game, using balloons for breasts.
43. I lost my virginity when I was 17. It was not a pleasant experience.
44. My first job at 16 was Macdonald's, where I was paid $1.65 per hour.
45. After I graduated high school, my mom sat me and my brother down and told us she was divorcing my dad. My first thought was, "YES! Freedom!"
46. I was fired from Macdonald's for selling LSD to a coworker.
47. I took LSD about 100 times between my 18th and 21st birthday.
48. I streaked several bowling alleys in Sacramento, California, with three friends during a bachelor party. I wore only a belt.
49. My second job was cutting metal with a cutting torch at an auto wrecking yard.
50. My third job was selling Cutco knives to single young working girls.

51. Yes, I had sex with one of them. Those were the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll years.
52. My fourth job was working at a 7-Eleven Store.
53. I did one of the stupidest things of my life while working there.
54. I spent my 21st birthday in the county jail. To celebrate, I lit a cigarette and said to myself Happy Birthday.
55. I was convicted of selling a substance and falsely claiming it was a controlled substance. Lucky me, because I had sold LSD to a minor, and the original charge was a felony that carried 10 to Life.
56. After I got out of jail I quit drugs, went to school and studied computer programming.
57. My only student loan was enough to purchase an Apple IIe personal computer. It had an awesome 32K of RAM.
58. I sold an article to a computer magazine and decided to change my major to English.
59. I transferred from American River College to California State University, Sacramento.
60. I was shocked when my university English professor gave me a C on a paper. Later I realized that he was the first teach I ever had that graded truly and fairly.

61. It took me several years and 4 graduate seminars to get a solid A from that guy.
62. He taught me how to read and write. His name was David Bell.
63. The most enlightening course I ever took was his graduate course in Classical Rhetoric, with a 2000-year-old text by Aristotle.
64. I also for the first time had a professor who lit up Shakespeare for me.
65. That teacher was an ex-Jesuit named Marc Bertonasco.
66. I taught Freshman English as a graduate student.
67. The reader I used for the last class I taught was Richard Mitchell's The Gift of Fire.
68. I graded Advanced Studies Papers at CSUS and found that the best written papers always came from the Music Department.
69. I played in a couple of rock bands in my youth. Our greatest gig was Soledad Prison.
70. I got a young woman pregnant who was using a Progesterone IUD. She had an abortion and after that I swore I'd never put a woman through that again. I had a vasectomy.

80. I taught at a Business College for four years.
81. I also taught Legal Writing to students studying to be paralegals.
82. I was invited to give a 1/2-hour lunchtime talk to lawyers on Rhetoric that was videotaped. I opened with a joke that didn't get a laugh. I still have the tape and have never watched it.
83. I have played piano and keyboard in front of thousands of people and am on several recordings, mostly without being named.
84. I worked as a freelance writer for a while, even getting a friend's truck into FOURWHEELER magazine and writing a monthly Computer column for Micro-Times.
85. I was the Founding Senior Editor for a literary magazine that only published one issue.
86. I fell in love, moved to Minnesota to be with her, got married, got divorced, and returned to California and stayed on a friend's couch, all in the space of 6 months.
87. I taught Latin and Journalism to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in a private schools.
88. I used to teach 4-hour Music Workshops around the San Francisco Bay Area.
89. My wife attended one and after she was terminated from working for Oracle and Larry Ellison, she left a phone message on my answering machine asking about healing music.
90. I could tell from the sound of her voice that a door was open so I arranged to drive over 2 hours to her house and spent the day with her buying music.

91. We moved in together 9 months later.
92. We are in our 9th heavenly year of marriage.
93. I bought a house in Silicon Valley, and I never dreamed in my life I would ever owe so much money.
94. We are now thinking about getting a couple of dogs.
95. A couple of years ago, I was listening to a person give me a kind of psychic report on my health and was told that something tramatic happened to my mother when she was three months pregnant with me, which affected me emotionally as a baby in the womb.
96. I asked my mother if anything tramatic happened when she was three months pregnant with me and she said, "Yes...That's when I found out that your father was having an affair with the woman living in the apartment upstairs."
97. I've learned that most people claiming extraordinary powers are crackpots, but on occasion there are a few who aren't out there making a big deal about it, just getting on with their work day by day.
98. Last year I had to hold my brother down for the cops for beating his girlfriend. They are now married and living in Oregon because a California warrant keeps him out.
99. I now work for a semiconductor company doing things I never dreamed I'd be doing and getting paid more money than I thought they'd ever pay me.
100. All my life, I've been a fairly happy and positive guy.

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January 8, 2005

Speaking of Merry Christmas...

or the friends who read this blog, and you voyeurs, here's me with my cute wife Bree for Christmas. (And no she is not a Desperate Housewife.)

*** One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.

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