Home
Alone With Close Encounters The mystery I have been working intentionally on for the last fifteen or so years is that of dreams. I tackled dreams in order to try to get a handle on terrific mood swings I used to suffer from. I found that I saw things in my dreams that explained the mood swings--meaning, if I dreamt I was drowning one night and then woke up the next morning drowning in depression or some other emotion, I had to conclude that the dream and the emotional state were intimately connected. If a dream could have a profound, real effect upon my state of mind and being I was forced to conclude that the "dream world" was in some way as real as the physical-awake world, and that things happened there that . . . affected me.
From that small step into another world I have come to a place where I now believe I know part of the solution to the UFO problem. What has occurred in-between then and now are the contents of approximately 150, 120-page notebooks filled with dreams and visions. I found that when I entered the dream world (a very real world in its own way) in an effort to attempt to control my emotions in a conscious fashion I ran into a power structure that simply boggled my mind.
What I ran into is something poets have known about and artists have been aware of for centuries--the Mountain of Inspiration. Dante's entire Divine Comedy is one man's tour of this staggering metaphysical power structure built into our unconscious being. The Greeks new this system of control by Divine Government as Olympus, upon which the Olympian deities sat. Inspiration from those deities, whether benign (as in poetic inspiration) or malignant (as in arrows of madness or plague) was seen by the Greeks as issuing down from above from Apollo (God of light) via nine female powers known as the Muses. Every culture, from Christian to Hindu, from Native American to Buddhist, has their own version of this same Throne of the Deity from which inspiration flows down to mortals where, most often, it strikes them . . . in their sleep, as a dream or a vision or a . . . channeling.
When I naively entered the dream world in order to gain better control over my emotions I ran point blank into this towering metaphysical structure which goes right to the core of the galaxy and into the essence of the atom. In order to consciously control my emotions I was going to have to learn how this system worked! Even overthrow it if necessary!
This is when I began to run into opposition from the system in the form of UFO assaults and attempted abductions a la the ones Whitley Strieber describes in his book, Communion. And, it was when I began to experience this opposition that I began to conclude that . . . something I was doing was a threat to this system, perhaps particularly, to the ferociously well-guarded secret of the UFOs.
I am now at the point where I can sketch in how I think the whole UFO mystery operates. Operates to bamboozle us into its Quetzalcoatl-Cargo-Cult-eschewing of our defenses so that, like the Aztecs and Incas, we are easy to conquer, even offer ourselves as . . . slaves for the Great White Brothers from the skies. What follows is one trip into and back from a close encounter of the third kind--contact with aliens.
In the dream I am in some sort of social situation, a party, perhaps, in the front hallway of our old Biltmore house in Illinois. This is the house where a . . . court case was ongoing in many other dreams of mine concerning, I think, the abduction of Eros from the living room.
But in this case, I only make it into the front hall where I sit down . . . in my desk chair, the chair I sit at when I type my pieces based on dream testimony. As I sit on the chair I notice that my current notebook is open on the chair and that I will be sitting directly on it, as if . . . it were the book upon which I swore the testimony I was about to give was accurate (instead of the Bible--the book we are generally forced to swear upon in court). When I sit down this . . . appalling thing happens! My butt cracks! Cracks like it was made from cheap glass . . . and syrup, pancake syrup pours out! I think to myself "how can I possibly fix that! Glue myself together like a . . . piece of cracked china!"
This is when I wake up. Of course, I am relieved to find that I am not a piece of cracked china--at least not literally! It is at this point where most dreamers would turn over, push the nightmare out of mind, and go back to sleep. The next day they might or might not notice how they felt particularly rigid, or perhaps fragile, afraid of breaking and having something . . . horrifying pour out! If they did notice their feelings they might or might not connect them to this dream. If they did they might wonder at what it was that made them feel so fragile, and why it was so . . . terrible, frightening to have this "syrup" leak out. Few, if any (I would assert) would be able to solve the mystery of its meaning.
So, here is the same syrup . . leaking from me! Why? What does that mean?
That leads to the second connection. My butt "cracking like cheap glass" is precisely a line from a poem of mine I was just working on. Except, in the poem, it is the frozen eye of a doe, a dead doe, shot during hunting season, in the back of a pickup truck that has "cracked like cheap glass." In the poem I wrote the "eye of the dead doe has cracked like cheap glass, and the sorrow of Orpheus pours out." I then conclude by saying that the eye that has cracked with sorrow pouring out is the "I" of the poem, the "tragic I" of the poem. All this seems a long way from aliens, but it's not, I assure you. My dream is using elements from the film, "Fire in the Sky" along with elements of a myth (that of Orpheus) I have been exploring--in fact, I just testified at a poetry reading on that myth.
My public testimony at that reading was that the dismemberment of Orpheus by Maenads (worshippers of the Goddess) was and continues to be a murder, a capital crime for which the perpetrators, the maenads, have never been brought to justice. I also asserted in my public reading that this murder by the maenads was politically motivated, an assassination. The purpose of which was to take the magical power of Orpheus and his lyre, his ability to govern the elements/nature with song, with poetry, and give that power . . . to the Goddess. Orpheus is then the communion meal of power for the Goddess, as Whitley Strieber is the communion meal for the aliens. Orpheus is dismembered because, according to the myth, he despises women. This is the testimony of the maenads, the members of the cult. In fact, what Orpheus despises, is the practice of human sacrifice to feed the Goddess, or God. He is unwilling to sacrifice his power, the power of his lyre to the Goddess, so that she, Mother Nature, may rule instead of human creators, metaphysical technicians.
So, to sum up this dream, my role/self as "powerless poet" is cheap glass, is a fired karmic vessel, designed to contain, but not leak, the awful grief of the primary poet, Orpheus. I however, through my dream work, have cracked the mystery, the murder mystery of Orpheus, and am now testifying in the Court of Divine Judgement on the crime. I base my testimony, swear on the veracity of my own dream work, that it contains the true testimony on these matters, and that the myth we have received, which we read in our Edith Hamiltons, is false, is the version of events that the maenads have presented in court.
The reason why it is syrup that I leak is because I feel the accurate record or version of mythic events such as mine on Orpheus . . . will cause everyone who reads or hears them to recall . . . the truth, that they--like Travis in "Fire in the Sky," were abducted, raped, experimented upon, stabbed, murdered. And that these crimes have been renamed "communion," as was Strieber's book (originally titled Body Terror ), to protect the guilty.
If this reading of this dream is correct, then the metaphysical power system, which controls--or has controlled--the court, would likely do anything to stop me from testifying. And that is precisely what I will show that it does.
In this sentencing "I" #1 am in the living room of the Biltmore house speaking to a lawyer who is assuring me that my crime was minor, a misdemeanor. I am . . . terribly frightened of the court, the judge, punishment and this information that I am only being charged with a misdemeanor is an enormous relief. However, and curiously, I am also aware there is "me" #2 over in the same hallway where the cracked butt, syrup-leaking dream just occurred. That . . . person, or self is being accused of, how horrible!, the murder of . . . Mom! Not, just accused, he's been found guilty and has been sentenced to death! Strangely enough I feel . . . light about this, or relieved, like "he" was this really heavy twin weighing everything down. Mostly, however, my behavior, feelings here are controlled by my responses to the court, the judgments of the court at . . . Biltmore. Used to be this . . . towering mansion, now it's just a modest suburban colonial. Which rather precisely depicts the difference between Orpheus, the great poet of the myth, and what poets are now. Living in modest little houses colonized by the Muses.
What I am being judged for here is, in the court's terms, the murder of Mom. But that is ridiculous, right? My mother is alive, albeit ailing, in Florida right now--so, surely, I am not a matricide, mother killer! But, if I raise the truth about Orpheus, that he was murdered by Mother Nature Cults in order to create their Goddess, the Goddess Mother Nature, Gaia, then . . . establishing that truth, winning my case--that the power ascribed to Mother Nature, to Gaia, came in fact, from Orpheus, a human governor--then, the truth would "kill" MOM, Mother Nature, in the same fashion that democracy "kills" the divine right of kings to rule, or to tax a population without representation. That is the "crime" I am on trial for here which was initiated by my poetry reading. I am "killing mom" by asserting that poets would be better governors of the planet, its elemental powers, than a Mom over which we have utterly no control. In order for poets, other human creators to regain this power, their Orpheus power, the Sacred Realm of Sleep must be reconquered, the court in operation here, abolished or in human hands. But, it has been the fear of this court, its judgments, the supreme fear, which has kept the UFO mystery from being penetrated--as UFOs, visitations, abductions, etc., are a part of the apparatus of the court to keep the law . . . and the "peace," keeps us meek, cowering in our beds, scared out of our minds, fearful we'll be swallowed by demons or some sort of supreme angel.
After dinner Lydia and I have a fierce argument about money which . . . centers me more on the feelings here in a high fidelity way. My fear about "poverty," debt causes me to feel the judgement here more accurately. This is similar to feeling the myth of our primal being cut in half by the Gods in Plato's Symposium, that myth used to explain "love" between the sexes, a terribly incorrect interpretation of that myth used that way. You cannot "get" that myth unless you feel it--even remember it, allow the . . . syrup that leaks out from our mutilated being, our being chopped in half, remind you of . . . what you were before the "Gods" decided you were too big, too powerful, were a threat and hacked you in half to create "love." Because that is what this judgement which divides me in half does, it causes me to long for, pine for, wait for the . . . return of my other, wealthier half . . . from above. This is the "love" we feel for E.T., for the mighty Mother Ship in "Close Encounters," for the god-like aliens from the skies. I need now to attempt to prove that what we are actually pining for is our own . . . self of wealth which was cut away from us in a financial judgement against us such as the one I just depicted.
In order to follow that cut away self, see where it goes and what being cut like this means I need to dip my "pen," my typewriter in the syrup of memory which was flowing from the crack in the false self containment and write with that syrup. To do so will mean extreme detail of dream description plus allowing for the many layers of associations that a "syrup dream" inspires. First I will describe fishing in the Cut River.
Then, down into the water, waist deep in the current, where I am fishing. Here is where I need to allow my powers of association free rein--because this river location reminds me of many other places which are important to the meaning of the dream.
This river I am standing in is considerably smaller than the Niagara River. In fact it is more like the outlet stream from Snowbank Lake, a northern Minnesota, Boundary Waters Lake. In fact, it is a lot like the inlet into the first lake, Book Lake, down from Snowbank, where I did fish on a camping trip several years ago. The river-inlet is, perhaps, 50 yards wide, and no more than waist deep, with a moderate current. I have written about Book Lake before, about a second trip to this lake I took by myself, when I felt nearly overwhelming grief there. The point of my writing about that trip, about the feelings was to try to get at . . . the grief I felt there, to identify what it was for. In part, that is what I would say I was fishing for here, the . . . obscure object of that grief, that terrible sense of loss I felt there.
There are two more river associations which I will mention that will enrich this site, begin to indicate what this obscure object is, or was.
The river also reminds me of the Cut River which flows south in a steep gully into Lake Michigan on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. On a trip across that area I stopped with my family and descended into the valley through incredible swarms of mosquitoes into one of the most . . . beautiful places I have ever seen. The valley bottom was littered with blossoms from hundreds of apple trees, the river sang clear as white wine over stones and myriads of spider webs gemmed with dew shone in the morning light. My daughter said, "what a beautiful place for a wedding!" as we made our way along the bank toward the lake.
It was not until we began the steep climb up the other side of the ravine that I connected its name, Cut, to an article I had read up at Bay de Noc Motel the night previous. The article was about Elizabeth Claire Prophet, and her Church Universal and Triumphant, or CUT, as it is abbreviated, describing her new complex out in the Paradise Valley in Montana. From that point on in our trip east I saw the Cut River as the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and its potential as a marriage site as one between life and death, or heaven and earth, dream and waking consciousness. To further this vision quest connection, our eventual destination, Mackinac Island, in Lake Huron, was seen by various Indian Tribes as the "door into death," or "the other world."
And the other sinew of syrupy association here is to the Bell Fourche River, which flows through Devil's Tower National Monument in northeastern Wyoming. The river I am fishing in within the dream is more the size and depth of the Belle Fourche--which I should know as I waded across it with a woman in the early '70s before the site was made famous in Spielberg's "Close Encounters." We waded the river in order to break into the park without paying. This association, this memory should begin to suggest that I am now heading in . . . a UFO direction. This is what I mean when I say that I have come up "from behind" on the UFO dilemma. From the "other side" of "Close Encounters" in time.
So here I am in this dream, fishing in this enormously complex and rich area, with multi-valent meanings, associations for me. Down stream from me are some nice pools and I can see fish in them. As I fish I am reminded of my own poem which I wrote called "Fishing for Angels," angels being . . . heavenly entities. "higher beings." So . . . I may well be fishing in, the inspiration current for that poem, for that sort of feeling, desire. This is fitting in terms of the location because the outlet from Snowbank Lake flows basically north into the wilderness, the virgin wilderness of the Boundary Waters and then into the Crown Land "Heaven" of Canada's Quetico, a wilderness bigger than many whole countries. There is enormous desire to enter these areas on the part of job-bound, city-bound people. In the dream, however, I would say that this location, the fishing I am doing here on the "edge of the wilderness" is more . . metaphysical--I am standing on the edge of some great metaphysical wilderness, unknown, where one fishes for angels, the answers to mysteries, or to griefs, where one fishes for one's soul . . . or cut away part.
My mood here is . . not like it was the day I was down here by myself, feeling extraordinary, almost suicidal grief-in fact I am happy, up, looking forward "to the marriage," though I am no longer aware that was my purpose, when I landed.
Lydia, my wife, is behind me on shore. I cast my worm down into one of the golden-hued pools hoping for maybe a rainbow trout. I catch, almost immediately, a small fish, a lady fish--a salt water species, which puzzles me, which I then use as bait, hoping to catch one of the bigger fish I can see down in the pools.
This time a squid follows the bait, gloms onto it. Fine, I say, now I can use the squid for bait and throw it back into the same pool. As I reel the squid back in I can see about ten -quid! (I make a "slip" here and leave off the "s") following the one I have on the hook. Just then I start to wake up and . . . hear, behind me, this horrendous, sound of scissors slicing behind me--a sound like the surgical shears made in "Exorcist III" when used by the zombie old people to murder other patients. Then I am . . . floating in this dark and turbulent water, no bottom beneath me at all. I expect to look down and see that my body has been sliced in half, but it seems more . . . I, as a self, have been sliced away. As I float along in the freezing, cold water a piece of my writing floats by which I grab, look at. It is a piece on angels, but more my ideas about angels, lists of things about angels . . flowing north, "up" into Crown Land.
What you have just witnessed, seen, is the abduction, theft of most of the metaphysical wealth of human being.
Niagara - "point of land cut in two."
American Place Names,
George R. Stewart, p. 327
quid - a pound sterling.
quiddity - the real nature of a thing, essence.
The American Heritage Dictionary, p. 1071
I would assert these word meanings go a long way toward clarifying the meaning of this dream. I am fishing for why the marriage was cut in two, why their was or is a divorce--although I am not conscious of that in the dream. I am fishing for wealth, weight, and essence--the soul of the thing, the true essence of something. As this river is flowing . . . up into Crown Land it could well be seen as the capital, the wealth and weight which makes Heaven have the appeal that it has-which fills the coffers of the God Bank with essence, which is its essential appeal to us poor folk down on earth.
However, we have seen where this wealth is coming from in the previous dreams--from financial, essence, knowledge and power judgments made against us in the court of Divine Justice which operates in that realm on the other side of the eye of the needle, where we cannot see it!
If, I am correct in my analysis of what I am seeing here then the metaphysical powers which depend upon this source of their wealth and power remaining secret would want to . . . stop me from reporting what it is I have see, right? Yes, and that is the reason for the horrible cutting sound which I hear and correctly associate with "Exorcist III." It is I who am being "exorcised" here, cut loose into the current of this upflowing stream or current of wealth.
The plot of "Cats," if there is one, concerns a Holy Day for cats. when Old Deuteronomy, the magical prophet of cats, chooses one especially deserving cat, for a new life, when said chosen cat, will be sent, "raised" on an old tire, then a UFO of glittering lights, to the "Heavenside Layer." Grizzabella, the Glamour Cat is chosen for this privilege, much as Roy, the music-hearing, Devil's Tower-building electrician is "chosen" to ascend to the Heavenside Layer in Close Encounters. No one, to my knowledge, has noted the similarity between these two pieces of culture, modern religious belief, and the ancient Aztec practice of sacrificing a "chosen one" to satisfy, propitiate the heavens.
The performance of "Cats" is enthusiastic, powerfully professional, which does not--for me--hide the poverty of its ideas or that it is disguised human sacrifice, as is the offering of Roy to the maw of the Mother Ship docked atop the technological pyramid in "Close Encounters." I do not share the enthusiasm of either the audience or my family for this extravaganza. The only positive feelings I derive from the performance are associated with finding a cat my son, Jonah, dreamt about in our garage more than a year ago, which we named Grizzabella, long before we had seen the play.
The drive home is long, and as we make our way through Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic, I have an . . . attack of numbness in hands and feet, chest pain and fatigue that about overwhelms me. It is not until the next day that I have a chance to view this attack in my vision states and connect it to "Cats" and "Close Encounters."
What I see when I lie down, make it into conscious vision space immediately helps me to understand the panic.
In the first vision I am in the car again, driving south through Rochester. There are these positively dizzying, pyramidal hills we have to climb in the car. The hills are so steep . . . and are . . . moving! like immense waves, that they have a physical effect, impact, that is so severe that I am finding it difficult to drive. There are no such hills in Rochester! Adding to the nausea-vertigo are . . . the "trucks" coming down from the pyramid tops of these hills on the other side of the freeway. I only assume they are trucks because it is a road we are on--assume, because what they actually look like are the smaller UFOs with brilliant headlights which whoosh and hover around the landing site for the Mother Ship behind Devil's Tower in "Close Encounters." A whole row of these, truck-ships is coming down from the Jacob's Ladder summit of the immense, dizzying pyramid we are on. To make matters even worse I know what "pyramid," this is I am on and what these "trucks" of the Buddhist bardo realms are bringing back down. This pyramid here is . . . the sacred pilgrimage site of Medjugore in Yugoslavia, Bosnia I think, where millions of Catholics have climbed to . . . offer their metaphysical wealth, swear obedience to the . . . Mother, the Virgin Mary who appeared to some children and warned them that monstrous bloodshed, the Third World War, would begin here unless great offerings of obedience to the Church were made. And that is, precisely what I know is atop this pyramid, what is being sent down in these UFO "trucks," the inspiration, the emotional pollution, the demonic juice sufficient to carry out this threat--begin a Third World War here. No wonder I feel my heart is about to be lifted beating from my chest!
I get up then and write these visions down as well as more carefully describe the poetry reading--power act in La Crosse on February 3. I do this because of the intensity of the opposition I have felt ever since, including the awful panic attack beginning on the trip back from "Cats." Here is how I described my poetry reading.
"In effect, I reversed the myth of Orpheus. I described his dismemberment as murder, as a politically motivated murder by members of the Cult of the Goddess, to eliminate all serious opposition to the rule of Mother Nature.
I described the condition of poetry ever since as essentially "insane," poets required to deny the truth about the death of Orpheus, that it was a murder, the wealth and power of "O." going to, offered to the Goddess, the Heavenside Layer, to the Mothership. Poets ever since have been forced to deny their feelings, to call murder "communion," to call powerlessness, a "blessed condition," etc. The "self" poets have had to assume is that of "cheap glass" in which is stored the horrendous grief over the loss of their true self and power, the wealth. the "quid" of which is flowing "up to the Heavenside Layer" of Crown Land ever since. Any, like me, who dare to fish in the upflowing stream of wealth which is invisible will be, like I was, cut off, cut away, exorcised.
I described this as the received condition of poetry in the modern world, poets cut off from the essential Word level of their craft, which it is claimed belongs solely to God. I expanded this description of enforced poverty to include most of the population of the planet, the religions of which, are but cargo cults awaiting the return of those powers which have stolen from them.
I then made a power circle with my sacred objects from the Lake Superior Museum which I found at the bottom of the lake in a dream. A Stonehenge, in effect. Into that circle I summoned, raised the full power and self of Orpheus, not "Orpheus," the castrated singer of modern poetry, or "Orpheus," the sacrifice willing, glad to be dismembered, from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. Glad to have his strong force, his gyre dismembered so that "God" can possess it, so the best we can hope for are castrating losses to bigger and bigger angels.
I then read, wyrded a poem, from that new center saying that I had found the point, the spring of new world or creation emergence, and had the "gold ball" of it lost by the princess, delivered to me by the "frog" of my dream self. I see now that the "gold ball" is the solar orb, presumably connoting solar rule, ability to govern the influence of the musical spheres, the planets--meaning that the act of doing this, preparing this landing site for this power is how it was called, or summoned, which would explain the towering amount of energy I saw coming down to the reading site from . . . Jupiter, or more accurately, Prometheus. This "gold ball" is also the "round self" of the original human beings on this planet who were such a threat to the rule of the Gods, that the Olympians chopped them in half, a la the story from Plato's Symposium, where this little lesson in brutal dismemberment, is a lesson in . . . "love." The "love" we are supposed to feel for the Gods who did this to us! Same story as Orpheus, where the awful, endless pain of having your entire metaphysical being of power and knowledge cut away, stolen, in a financial judgement against you is suppressed inside a "cheap glass" container of fake self. Because that is what this unkindest cut really is about--not the division into sexes. The brutal hacking of the original human beings in half, of Orpheus, Prometheus, Atlas, Medusa, Arachne, etc., in half means the cutting away of our entire metaphysical being, which is then offered to the Gods, the heavens--who can then return it to us in a . . . changed form so that we don't recognize it . . . even though it vaguely fills that terrible, sucking black hole of loss in us. I mean . . . doesn't E.T. sort of fill that . . . horrendous cargo cult longing you felt when you went to see the movie?
I also read from this wyrding site, "Stone Ax" which chops down the Wasteland, fixes the genital wound, and liberates the creation spring for all who wish to drink from it. And I read "White Light of the Weight lifter" which is a wyrding poem supreme, about lifting the weight of curse, sin and death off the Soviet Union, the Russian people for their Promethean attempt to create an 'atheist state'--which since I have been reading this poem seems partially accomplished."
That, more or less, describes the reading in its power act aspect. On the night following it I spoke to Ezra Pound, who-apparently--"heard" it somewhere or way. He said that my reading of "White Light" has helped the situation in Northern Ireland, and that some of the developments there leading to negotiations between warring factions were caused by my reading of this poem.
What I see as I very carefully describe my conscious intentions at the
reading, what sort of power act it was--is that it was . . . a declaration
of war, wyrding or fate war, upon those powers that would imprison us in
cheap glass selves so we're not a threat to the Company. There is a marriage
here, between a conscious, intentional act of creation or Orpheus power
and the developments I am seeing from the summit of it
in the vision, or metaphysical world.
But there is also a connection or marriage between the dream or metaphysical world d the conscious world in the other direction--meaning that we almost never see what is occurring beneath our daily lives in a metaphysical way. And this used to be true of me in the past as well, before I developed my ability to see there to the degree I have. In effect, I was cut off from my metaphysical self, entirely, as are most of us by the cutting in two of our primal human being, as mentioned in the above myth. We have no control over that metaphysical realm at all, if we acknowledge that it even exists. And this is where I would like to take my investigation now because I now see what was cut away from me in the past that I could not have seen then, but can, now.
As it was a low budget trip we discovered we could not afford the daily visitor fee into the monument, so snuck into the park by wading across the Belle Fourche River which flows through it on the east side. We then climbed the steep, pine covered hill immediately below the tower. When we reached the base of the tower we found the going too steep and quit, satisfied with our view.
We pushed on to the Big Horn Mountains, famous for the Medicine Wheel--a wheel made of stones by Native Americans high up in a Cloud Peak meadow. We hiked up a steep trail to a small lake where we camped for several days.
The trip was . . . a kind of pilgrimage up into the Holy Mountains--seeking union with those spiritual forces associated with the heights. On our return home, to Cambridge, Mass., I wrote a series of poems about the trip which, when I look at them now, are singularly . . . violent, fearful--full of fear of rape, of "smoking spirit holes buggered through thought, through denial," of spiritual revelation much more like electrocution, of . . . a profound sense of an absence that is or was stronger than our human presence. And, of course, grizzly bear fear! Fear of being dismembered by a bear--torn limb from limb.
This fear, close to metaphysical panic, hit me the hardest on a solo walk up the creek flowing into our lake to a beaver dam where I watched dragon fly nymphs commute between surface and bottom like some form of primeval prophet about to transcend into even more terrifying ultra-Rilkean angelic eating machines. As I crouched near the shore a big, buck beaver cruised past in the pond, rather like a priest asserting I was trespassing upon holy ground. The size and primordial rightness of the beaver was intimidating and I backed away from the shore . . . this terrible bear fear flooding in.
I would now say . . . I was Orpheus here, sensing, "remembering" the maenads, his-my dismemberment which was accomplished to produce precisely this . . . sense of split-offness from nature, this absence of the human which is stronger than the human presence, this fear of "Holy Ground."
As I say, I felt these things then with no way of seeing what they were about except as "bear fear, " fear of the "Holy," the "nothing" upon which our human meaning is but some words, like graffiti, scrawled on the mountain majesty of . . . It. But I want to tell you now what I have seen that happened there at the beaver dam, on the other side of it, that caused me to feel these terrible fears, to experience a camping trip that was outwardly beautiful, successful as violent, as rape-much as Travis Walton described his abduction following the spill of the syrup of memory onto his face.
tune in next week for Part Two : the conclusion of Home Alone with Close Encounters
