Return To Magdala: new musings

It was all brand new to me, horrifying, and, as far as I'm concerned, feelings of dread and doom that must have been the result of outside "interference." When I was a sufferer of panic attacks, it was not because of anything I was doing. Or wanted to do. It is illogical for an organism, or a set of them, such as I am, suddenly to produce the feelings of fear if there is not a cause for the fear. In other words, if I'm at a card shop versus being in a foreign country engaged in an anxiety-producing set of circumstances, my body is going to do what it naturally should do in either circumstance; but especially where my browsing a card shop is concerned, with all the humor and pretty colors, it would otherwise occur to me that I was about to have a panic attack.

Anyone who has ever suffered an anxiety attack, one which doesn't involve three days of drinking and popping speed, and then trying to run a 100 yard dash without exploding, but involves simply being, breathing, minding your own business, with none of my own body engaged in assaulting me; in other words, if I am so sick because of what is going on with my pounding, rapid heart rate, then I should be dying ... but I was not dying, I was living/dying. Super high-powered fear that suddenly comes over a person involves ... well, it's maddening. So, not only did I have my sinuses pushed to one side of my face which doesn't show, by the way, and which was still causing me major problems until about five years ago. The polyps which formed in my sinuses and the scar tissue from the beating remained and grew, so that certain points of my sinus, cartilidge, brain, skull, whatever you want to call it, hit a particular nerve when it swelled due to changes in the weather. Usually in winter when a high pressure system was blowing out a low pressure system of high precipitation sinuses jumped for joy. Those little polyp monsters could and did turn a 225 pound athletically built guy, which I am not so much anymore, into a wimpering bowl of jelly. I mean, that was maddening too. I used to have headaches so bad that it was not worth living, because I'd get a headache, and it would go for three days, or at least a whole day, and the next day I would still be wiped out, largely because of the Advil I would have been popping like M&M's (which, by the way, though a household word, is the dumbest name for candy in my life. The English call their version Smarties. And that ain't much better. I have a dear English friend, who I believe is working for some spy outfit call Kirklees, because he can't take email from me, or a call, because it's always bounced back, that is when he's at work. I would normally call him at home ... but Mr. Kirklees or whomever if I could get through the bloody impenetrable wall of fire long enough to ask David what his bloody home phone number is, I would never have to try again to storm the Kirklees fortifications, complete with sand bags. So my guess is that David, as I suspected all along, is slipping on a tux at night and getting some action while he is on his way to deliver the microfilm or whatever.

And how do I know this? He works for a BLOODY PERSONNEL OFFICE. If I were them, of course, I would do the same thing, really. I mean after all, you can never be too sure. I would also place snipers on the roof in case any people who showed up for interviews misplaced their resumes, which is a sure sign, laughably certain, that your interviewee is at least a double agent. I've seen triples, believe me, or read about them, which always involves a decision made by the agent, which means one guy gets the girl, and one guy get the lead. So, Dave ... if you should ever come up for air, and if you haven't sided with the globalists and the fascists, please give us a shout. I'm sorry I lost your number, after calling you twice in two days after having not spoken to you for five years. And then the paper in my hand on which your number was listed, not being able to compute the law of averages, exploded into a burst of flames ... and that was that. But I have. If you are stuck with the choice between ignoring me or turning me over to an English assassination team, just say we were never really that good of friends and don't call out Scotland Yard or the Knights Templar, whichever is up on that particular week. I'm pulling for the Scots myself.

Anyway ... where was I, ah, yes ... and we need to start getting serious, because I'm about to share with you a dream, a recent dream, which tried to reach back into my past to reproduce the visions I saw as a lucidly-dreaming child. How's that for a hobby? And I don't think God thinks it's a good idea for me to pursue it any further, perhaps not yet. That is a call basically based on being just as wigged out as you might be about the whole thing. None of this makes any sense, or, at least, that was the case until just recently. The last piece to the puzzle I was looking for, I finally found ... or rather it found me. It's told me that such a thing as Purgatory exists, and the magical vision has returned. This is an interesting point, even though I don't know what it means ...

I not so long ago went to have my eyes tested by the wackiest professional I believe I have ever ... no, no, he's the one. He could do his job as an eye tech, and examine me, but he was highly, chronically insecure, but had overcome it apparently with constant talking, saying the most mildless, hard to understand things very rapidly, and then laughing at his own jokes ... like you had heard every garbled word. I was just in there for my eyes, but I have expected him to pull out a big wooden stake and mallet. He was normal enough looking, but he was the King of Bonkdom, hands down. I say all that to prepare you for what he did when he started looking with a tiny light into my eyes. And he became very, very serious. All I could make out, in truth, was Glaucoma ... and that I should be blind, because it was a chronic case. And it really shook him up, and he just sort of staggered out of the room when it was time for me to leave.

Just tell me, would that a rattling experience for you, or perhaps you live with someone like that, so I take what he said with a grain of salt or a whole heaping chunk of it, as much as I can eat without gagging, let me say that ... For all I know he was looking into his own brain from another dimension or something; but I presume he actually saw something and that it was in me. I mean he really freaked out, like, I studied this in college ... but I never thought I would actually see one. So anyway, a true story ... now where were we? Oh, the visions. Maybe I had that Glaucoma-like condition as a child, and maybe I still had it as an adult, but it had remained dormant until just recently, within the past three years. Whatever the case, I didn't tell the guy that I had a damaged sinus from my military days, because that might have pushed him over the edge. So, I don't know what caused what he saw and how long I have had it, but it may or may not have something to do with the headaches. Which brings me to a question: Do I believe that everything that is bad, including a common cold, is caused by an invasion of evil into our lives?

I have a rabbi of whom I became quite fond after spending several lunches with him. He has since moved on from Chattanooga to the Midwest, and I wonder about him often these days, because he and me had some weird stuff a'happen, and I don't know whether he was impressed or freaked out when certain things of a weather variety involving us occurred, but he was something. I had an unpersuadable urge to go and meet this rabbi, who had recently performed the funeral for one of my favorite bosses of all time ... and I've had a few ... too many. But Julius Parker took me under his wing as a newspaperman, and just told me to lay low and keep my mouth shut at the right times and open at the right times and just keep writing. I began to turn out some feature articles that drew the praise of most of the top guns at the daily newspapers where I worked, before I took off on a wild goose chase ... for what I did not know.

blah, blah, blah notes

. were and badly sprained and fracture my left arm catching my self or warding off blows, I can't recall, I broke my arm, or had it broken for me, , which is look at cards and not have any problems at all. Being anywhere and having a panic attack kick in is not logical. It doesn't follow a cause. To become suddenly anxious, in my view, is the allowance of that which has always produced fear to slip slightly into your life.

Can I get an amen?

It is unnatural for me suddenly to become

The feelings of panic returned as I stepped into a long, long corridor and began walking to find the room number 22.