Do I smell gunpowder? Notes on the book "Messages" by Stan Romanek (with J. Allan Danelek)

I just finished reading Stan Romanek's book, Messages (written with co-author J. Allan Danelek). In a word, I loved it. It was probably one of the cleanest, most concise and at the same time, most extensive narration of the abductee experience I have read. The book is written in a plain style, the narration of an ordinary person undergoing extraordinary experiences. And yet, the experiences that the book contains are anything but typical if for only one reason, the intensity of the message. In addition Romanek claims to have captured evidence - both material samples and photographs - from his experiences.

Like most experiencers I have met, Romanek's awareness of the phenomenon began with some key event - in his case, a significant UFO sighting. This began a cascade of experiences, explorations and mysteries. Eventually, after a number of hypnotic regressions, the scenario of this one person's interactions with the phenomenon took shape with increasing clarity.

Romanek's narrative generally follows his unfolding awareness of the phenomenon, beginning with the times before he had knowledge of the phenomenon. He describes himself as initially a skeptic, yet also indicates that he had experienced a number of childhood mysteries. Among these were his encounters with what he called, "The Pretty Lady." His description of this event sounds nearly identical to those of many other experiencers, describing human-looking beings appearing to them early in their lives. The beings often look angelic, yet have the large, dark slanting eyes - something which seems to suggest an "alien" nature.

Additionally, the "pretty lady" event occurred at the approximate time of a series of close UFO sightings around the Air Force base at Grand Forks North Dakota. Having personally investigated several sightings in that area, I can concur that this area has historically been a common location for high-strangeness encounters.

Romanek them moves ahead to his sightings in Colorado, especially those at Red Rocks, near Denver. Living in the Denver area at that time, he describes a trip to Red Rocks with the intent to shoot some home video. At that point he observed a craft hovering in plain sight, clearly intending for him to observe it. He took a considerable amount of video of the craft as it paced his van and appeared to react to his presence in several ways. In addition to what I can only describe as a game of "cat and mouse" between Romanek and the object, he described a feeling of electrical intensity [my term, CL]. Then the object sped away to be lost in the sky - but definitely not forgotten.

later, Romanek replayed the video and found that he had clearly captured the object on film. In addition, he describes how he subsequently developed electrical sensitivity; street lights would blink out and electronics would malfunction in his presence. This leads me to suspect that there was far more to the UFO event than a sighting and video-recording of a distant object as many experiencers have described the same thing.

Like most experiencers, Romanek describes feeling torn between worlds - the unknown and the known, the human and the extraordinary, etc. Events continued, intensifying in his life, until he finally decided to get to the bottom of things. He decided to pursue hypnosis as a means to discern what had happened to him 'behind the veil' [my term, CL]. During several sessions with Deborah Lindemann, a hypnotherapist in Fort Collins, Colorado, a classic account of UFO abduction emerged. In the course of several regressions, increasing detail emerged.

Classic among the events during the alien abduction experience is the receipt of a message or vision. Many experiencers describe apocalyptic warnings, along with a torrent of spiritual and/or scientific images cascading into their mind - and Romanek was no exception. One powerful aspect of Romanek's message was a series of equations and diagrams, which he produced during the regressions. They describe increasingly complex equations in physics - including aspects of electromagnetic theory, general relativity, nuclear chemistry, etc. Another aspect was the prediction of a coming apocalypse along with a planetary alignment, apparently intended to give the predicted date of the event - September of 2012.

Subsequently, Romanek had hypnotic work done with Dr. Leo Sprinkle, a former professor of psychology at the University of Wyoming. Romanek states that Dr. Sprinkle was more focused on UFO abduction work, whereas Deborah Lindemann did more general hypnotherapy work. Thus, Romanek felt that Sprinkle would be the ideal choice to continue his regression work.

Indeed, for whatever reason, the level of trance seems to be far deeper and the results were considerably different. While the events and the messages were similar to what emerged in earlier regressions, several additional phenomena occurred; among them was the channeling of the main entity itself. The result was an even deeper message. The entity, which they ultimately referred to as "Grandpa," stated that humanity is at a crossroads. We are being watched and guided - and judged. Additionally, there is a movement toward enlightenment among us and it is imperative that this movement take hold before it is too late.

The channeling experience, the messages, drawings, etc. - all of these actually emerge relatively frequently in hypnotic regression work with experiencers. I often hear new-age-sounding messages from experiencers - many of whom have no prior background or interest in such topics. Yet what makes Romanek's book unique is the intensity of the message, the claims of physical evidence and the degree of investigation.

Romanek claims that his experiences have corroboration, including physical evidence exceeding that of any case to date. He describes taking material with him from inside the UFO - material which was subsequently analyzed in scientific laboratories with profound results. He refers to this as his smoking gun. Is this true or not? I believe the jury is out. We have heard many of these claims before and few if any of them have survived the light of skepticism. Yet if true, it is indeed a smoking gun.

Several researchers have claimed that Romanek's book has some dubious aspects to it. I am not familiar with controversy(ies) surrounding it, but I was a bit skeptical of his claims. Synchronistically, while writing this article, I received an e-mail entitled "The Smoking Gun that Shoots Blanks" - indicating that the e-mail's authors see far less to the book than Romanek states.

I have only scratched the surface of this case in this article. The book goes into considerable detail about his interactions with the government, military harassment, encounters with apparent human-aliens and men in black, etc. It is a veritable cross-section of the UFO abduction experience. And ultimately, whether it is true or not, it gives an excellent glimpse into what it is like to be an abductee.

If the claims in the book bear out, the case might well be the smoking gun. There are all the right elements in it - a combination of details providing a cross section of the UFO/CE4 phenomenon. Furthermore it is similar to what many other abductees tell me. Thus, either the authors have done a whole lot of homework on the case, or the experiences are real. Are there bullets or blanks in the smoking gun? Whichever turns out to be true, my nose definitely detects the faint whiff of gunpowder in the air.

Notes from Mars and shifts in reality...

Greetings from Mars(con). It's early saturday afternoon and I'm sitting at my table at the MarsCon SF convention in Bloomington (Minneapolis), MN. Saturday is a bit slow - I think people are still a bit hung over from the evening before. The evening before (loosely defined) lasted until about 2 AM, and for several people I talked with today, until about 4.

I did my talk (similar to past years) on close encounters last night at about 11PM. It ran until midnight and actually finished on time. Most of the people in the talk had heard a similar talk in the past, but also, most of the people in the room were experiencers. So I hurried through the material in the talk and focused upon discussion among those in the room.

Several people there, I knew for years. One is actually in The Cosmic Bridge (part of an aggregate case where I describe screen memories of childhood encounters). A couple of other experiencers in the room, I knew had had encounters but I had not talked with them extensively. It turned out that most of the people in the room had had similar experiences, however. Of the four of us who hung on until about 2AM, two of them described some very interesting reality anomalies. Both described events comprising what I could only call a parallel reality.

In The Cosmic Bridge, I talk about a number of reality anomalies, including several involving Evelyn, the abductee in the northwestern Wisconsin experiencer case. In that case, she noted several cases in which the nature of her house - specifically the window opening outward were different from what the were in normal reality (in normal reality, the window doesn't open).

In our discussions last night, I learned a couple of similar accounts. In one case, the experiencer and her husband found upon arriving home that their house was different. Somehow, that night, the hot and cold water faucets were reversed. This lasted that night, then in the morning they found that they were back in normal order once more.

Another involved a case in which an experiencer described as a child, travelling on a field trip with a youth group. While there, he visited the home of an authoer whom he followed quite closely (details sketchy as I only learned this in passing at about 1AM). Later on in life, he again met the person and and in conversation referred to his visit many years before - the result being a mystified stare. Apparently, at least in this reality, there was no memory of the visit.

Curious, he checked back with the youth group he had been involved with. To his surprise, he found that there was no such trip in their records, or in anybody's memory. It was as if the trip had never happened, at least in this reality. Only he remembered it. This particular person described a number of other such anomalies in his family, a history of anomalous events and shifted reality.

I have heard a number of other descriptions of apparent parallel reality events, time shifts and other anomalous shifts in the personal experiences of events. In one such case, an experiencer and his girlfriend described driving back into Saint Paul from Wisconsin, suddenly finding themselves on a different (and strange-looking) highway. Thinking they were lost, they exited on the nearest exit. As they did, he noticed that the "world looked unfinished - like an unfinished stage set." He decided to turn around by going over the bridge and getting back on the freeway going the other direction. As he crossed the bridge, he found that the car conked out. His next memory is being back on I94, back on track as they were entring Saint Paul.

The UFO researcher Jenny Randles coined the term, 'Oz Factor' to describe such anomalous 'twilight-zone' effects. While in some cases, it seems to involve a 'quieting' of the surroudings - no frogs, crickets, wind in the trees, etc. - in other cases it appars to be a deeper shift in the reality of the experiencer's world itself.

What is going on here? Is there a plasticity to reality itself? Are the experiencers actually shifting into some form of parallel reality? Is there an overlay of realities present? Or is there another explanation - perhaps 'merely' perceptual in nature? I suspect that the answer to this question will tell us more about both the UFO/CE4 phenomenon and about the nature of reality, itself. My own belief is that we really understand far less than we think about the actual nature of reality. Furthermore, the anomalies associated with the UFO/CE4 phenomenon provide us with some 'in your face' clues about the answers the question. Like so many scientific breakthroughs, often the clues to the mystery are hidden in plain sight.

As I write this, another experiencer I talked with last night, stopped by the table and gave me more details on a sighting I had written up on the MUFON Case Management System a few years ago. It was another classic CE1 (at least I think it was a '1'), with the classic 'oz factor' silence. She also describes being very psychic and a deep psychic relationship with both her son and her daughter.

One of the reasons I do talks at SF cons like MarsCon is that many experiencers seem to gravitate toward SF as a way to handle the ubiquitous encounter influences in their life. And on this weekend I was certainly not disappointed.

An interesting experience while writing...

A few very brief notes as I watch the Olympics and waste a bit of time idly surfing on-line.
I spent the whole day plinking away on Children of the Stars - writing a lot of little pieces of the story: scenes and sideplots that will eventually weave into the main story.

An interesting thing happened as I was writing. One of the characters suddenly "decided" she was going to do something different. Suddenly as I was writing a piece of action drama, I found her doing something completely unanticipated. It was almost as if she had come up with the idea on her own. As I read back what I had written, I was "surprised" by how she had gotten through the particular challenge in the story.

Several experienced writers have told me that this happens, but I hadn't experienced it before now. It's an interesting experience.

In the last couple of days I've been getting into the story. Looking forward to getting into it tomorrow, too...

Twists and Turns, perspectives and a few days of hindsight

This week has started out rough. We have upcoming performance reviews at work (the day job). They say that in a well-run company, there should never be a surprise on your review. However, in our company, nearly everyone I know has had something appear on their review from somewhere out in left field. Many times, it's a surprise. But enough of that. And - oh yes - I almost forgot - they're going to have a layoff some time in late March - but still - keep up the good work...

I am also eagerly waiting to see whether my proposal to the National Guild of Hypnotists to teach a class at the 2010 convention has been accepted. That info is supposed to come back this week.
Furthermore, I have sent about a baker's dozen new query letters out to literary agents - the next round in my endeavor to get The Fifth Key published. So recent times have had a lot of things up in the air - lots of questions and lots of ways that the Universe has presented me with unknown future outcomes.

In many ways, the future is a roll of the dice - at least at the moment. So this week has been a true study in living in the present. It is one of those never-ending lessons about how important it is to focus on intentions, which you can control - rather than on outcomes, which you cannot.

Perspective is important, and nothing teaches that more than some of the events of the last few weeks. One of these is that a friend of our family recently learned that her cancer has returned. Another perspective changer is learning that at work, some folks in our building (possibly including me) are going to lose their jobs. All of these are simply reminders of how tenuous life can be. They reminds us that we are souls living a human existence and at any moment, that existence can change abruptly - or even come to an end.

Still another perspective shaker occurred when I received a set of e-mail diatribes against another UFO researcher - quite serious accusations. I know the researcher but am unfamiliar with the particulars of the case, so I won't go into detail on it . Yet I have found the whole matter to be disconcerting. Suffice it to say that it is another illustration of how tenuous our world can be. At any moment, something out of the blue can happen - something we don't expect - be it an interpersonal falling-out or something else.

On Saturday I attended a talk that I wish I had skipped. It was part of the regular MN MUFON meeting and at the time, I found myself feeling quite annoyed about it. To me the topic seemed (and still seems) like a waste of time. I wrote about this whole affair in an earlier post when I talked about the 'Moon Hoax' theory - that we didn't go to the moon, and all of the history of the Apollo project was faked.

The presentation supposedly showed that the radiation within the Van Allen radiation belts is too intense to permit human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit. I may talk about this presentation in more detail in a different post, but for now, suffice it to say that I found the whole argument bogus. Yet it was presented in an annoyingly credible way. Rather than the emperor having no clothes, in this case, a rather impressive set of clothes had no emperor within them. The talk was well done, presented professionally and made to look very credible - while all of the time, the content of that talk was worthless.

I have seen this same thing on a number of other occasions and it is really spooky how something completely off the wall can sound quite believable. This is how cults get going, how dictators like Hitler come to power, how scams succeed, and how world history has become checkered with economic, political and military fiascoes.

Both joys and disasters have dotted our past and our present - and certainly lay in our future. Some times things work out well; outcomes are positive. Yet at other times we see just how easily things can go wrong. If it is that easy to convince a significant segment of our population that events they lived through - Apollo 11, for example - never occurred, or that one particular ethnic group is responsible for all of the world's troubles, then the peril is real, indeed...

So once again, I am reminded how fragile life can be. It may be the day-to-day existence of each of us - threatened by job loss, sickness, or worse. It may be the fate of whole peoples and nations as seen in some current events. Or it may be the talk I attended on Saturday and the idea that some people actually believed it. In short, the twists and turns of the last few days, coupled with a few days of hindsight, have provided tremendous food for thought - and powerful lessons about perspective on life in an uncertain world.

Can we understand both sides?

Recently, I have had several experiencer clients describe events (apparently) involving military-related abduction encounters. While I certainly can't say that I understand the nature of their encounters, it does give me pause to think. What might be going on? We hear so much over the years about the cover-up, the shadow government, and how the powers-that-be know far more than they are letting on about the visitor phenomenon. So I often wonder, what are the motivations behind the actions of these human authorities? What drives them and what might their objectives be.

In The Cosmic Bridge, I talk about possible motivations of the Visitors described by so many UFO witnesses and encounter experiencers. From the perspective of the Visitors, humans are probably a wild card in our part of the cosmos. From their point of view:

• The biggest single human endeavor (by far) is war. We spend far more on killing eachother than we do on any other activity (except for sex).
• We have developed the capability to destroy an entire planet, deliberately or otherwise. At the moment this capability is limited to our own world, but one could imagine our massive nuclear arsenal - plus a few hundred years of development - applied to another world in the cosmos.
• We are probably within one to two hundred years of a working stardrive. As I point out in The Cosmic Bridge, little known advances in electrogravitics, gravity modification and zero-point physics suggest that we are near a breakthrough, perhaps enabling starflight far sooner than most of us imagine.

For the visitors, the spectre of a warlike humanity spilling out into the cosmos represents an urgent challenge - perhaps motivating a massive-but-stealthy intervention in the evolution of our world. Thus, from this point of view, the motivation of the visitors would be something like self-interest-driven benevolence - somehow 'civilizing' we 'barbarian' humans of this tiny blue world.

So what are the intentions of our visitors? If some such as Dr. Steven Greer are to be believed, all of the visitors are both civilized and benevolent. On the other hand, if Dr. David Jacobs is correct in his book, The Threat, the entire purpose of the alien abduction phenomenon is to eventually overtake Earth and somehow subjugate or replace humanity with a hybrid human-alien race. Most likely, in my view, the motivation(s) of whomever/whatever are visiting our world must be many. If there is one group of visitors, then there are most likely many of them; thus there are probably many motivations, some benevolent, others less so. Thus, we are confronted with unpredictable visitors with advanced technology far beyond our own.

There are many actions humans could take in response to the visitor presence. We could either join them - as suggested by some contactees and others with a positive view of the visitors. We can accept their teachings, assume they are benevolent and follow their lead, etc. Alternatively, we can resist them, somehow trying to maintain human sovereignty over our world using some form of either technological or spiritual/paranormal means. Indeed, there are many variations of each of these views, with far more variety than I have even begun to suggest here.

The history of our own world is replete with examples of how a lower technology civilization fares when faced with one of higher technology and military might. Suffice it to say that these lessons are most likely not lost upon our own planetary authorities. While the visitors might be worried about warlike humans spilling out into the galaxy, our own collective leaders may well be worried about less benevolent beings from the stars overtaking our own world. The spectre of visitors bringing to humanity the same fate that indigenous peoples all over the world have suffered at the hands of westerners probably brings nightmares to those in the know.

I often wonder what kind of debates must go on behind closed doors in the halls of power. Behind the walls of the pentagon, I can well imagine questions, debates and more; how are we to proceed against superior technology from beyond Earth. If even one of the accounts of military encounters with unexplained aerial objects are to be believed, then our military - and probably that of every other major power - has been confronted with capabilities far beyond its own.

The 1980 Bentwaters encounter, the numerous nuclear facility encounters in both the USA and the USSR punctuating the nuclear faceoff of the cold war are just a few examples of how the visitors seem to act at will in our airspace. In addition, several witnesses in Minnesota MUFON sighting/encounter cases, particularly several with military aviation experience, have described how UFOs played cat and mouse with our finest aviation technology - with the UFOs clearly having the edge. The message is clear - if it were to come to a military confrontation between one or more of the Earth militaries and our visitors, the visitors would be the winners. Thus, the obvious challenge to the Military leaders of Earth:

• Maintain the illusion of control over the human population of Earth in the face of visitors' extraordinary capabilities
• Enhance our own capability to the point where humans could credibly maintain their own sovereignty in the face of whoever might come here from out there. This would involve capturing and reverse-engineering alien technology, understanding alien physics, etc.
• Deal with whomever is visiting us while keeping the lid on overall contact between humans and the visitors - presumably to prevent cataclysmic destabilization of our own social (and power) structures.

In short, the question is how to somehow engage the visitors from the cosmos while preventing unpredictable damage to our own social fabric - the kind of damage experienced by the Aztecs, the Incas, the Chinese, and so many others peoples of the non-western world. While there is most likely a high degree of self-interest in maintaining the current structures of power in Earth society, I suspect that our various human authorities take their (self?)appointed responsibilities seriously - to protect and defend the sovereignty of our world - or more specifically, their particlar nation(s) and power structures within our world.

So meanwhile the visitors seem to be contacting us from the bottom up, one experiencer at a time. At the same time, our leaders (those overtly elected and perhaps others with their hands on more deeply hidden levers of power) seem to be trying to build our capability to assert our own sovereignty.

I am certainly not sympathetic with any usurpation of the democratic process, constitutional checks and balances, and/or individual human rights. We often hear allegations of these very problems as we learn more about the UFO coverup. There seem to be many excesses and miscues in this human effort. At the same time, we can also understand those who wish to see humanity expand our collective consciousness and join the Cosmic Community, embracing the very presence that so frightens our leaders. Yet, in light of our own history, I wonder if we can imagine the nightmares of those leaders, facing the possibility of humanity at the mercy of beings from out there.

In every issue there are two sides. In this case, while some embrace the presence of the visitors, others fear the effects of open contact and disclosure of the visitor presence. Who is right? Maybe both. I don't condone the alleged actions of the authorities (both the overt and the shadow governments), but maybe we can begin to understand why such might be occurring. I wonder if, given the prescedents of our own history and the vast disparity in capabilities between the visitors and ourselves, we can understand both sides of this complex question.

a few more glimpses of the extraordinary

The last few days, I've done a number of hypnosis sessions that turned out much differently than expected. In a number of cases, I hadn't planned for them to be close encounter regressions, but in several, they turned out to be just that. In all of these cases, I knew that the person was interested in UFOs, as that's the context in which they found and hired me. So it's entirely unsurprising that there would be CE4 material lurking underneath the surface. Yet in most cases, the person had little or no overt indication of CE4 activity.

In more than one such case over the last little while, quite plainly put, the person has turned out to be an extensive experiencer. They have had a lifetime of encounters buried beneath the surface of their awareness and appear to have been a focus of the phenomenon. In most cases, they were largely unaware of this.

In at least one case, the person involved had had only a couple of events in their life. In each case like this, it appears someone they knew was an experiencer and apparently, they were what I would call "collateral" experiencers.

In a third category, the person turned out to have seen entities, apparently doing something not involving the witness. In many cases like this, the witness tends to be at least somewhat of a psychic/sensitive, and thus, they may be able to see through the veil. I wonder if in cases like this, the witness was able to see the Visitors nearby, possibly a glimpse of someone else's encounter.

In each of these cases, of course, there is only the anecdotal account of the event. Most of these events happened many years ago and any potential evidence has long since been lost or degraded by time. In addition, the people involved were interested in UFOs and thus had had many years of exposure to material on abduction in the media. Yet in each case, I asked some of the 'check' questions which CE4 researchers keep in their hip pockets. And in each case, the person passed the test. If they were making it up, they did a damn good job of it.

Of course, the other possible hypothesis is more metaphysical; perhaps there is a field-consciousness or psychic group-think effect associated with any given group social group or thought movement. The more people think and feel in a similar way, the more the members experience this group mind-field, eventually resulting in a critical mass of like-minds linking together. The mind-field, in turn might reinforce the person's own consciousness, showing up as archetypal thoughts, metaphors, ideas, etc. And during hypnotic regression, perhaps they show up as experiences. This is one possible null hypothesis for the spate of abduction events, though it makes them no less real to the experiencer. In each case, fear can be just as deeply felt and in such cases healing is needed just as much as if the beings were physical aliens in physical spacecraft.

The Jungian paradigm simply makes them even more extraordinary. In fact, such a Jungian archetypal or mind-field effect might even be more interesting than a nuts-and-bolts alien presence. It would teach us far more about the reality of the world we live in. And further, it does not mean that the Visitors are not real - it only means that the effect of a critical mass of close encounters might just take a parapsychological life of its own.

On a related note, I recently read the book, The Alien Abduction Survival Guide by Michelle LaVigne-Wedel. The book has some very interesting points. However in it, she pretty much tends to 'side with' the aliens. The author describes how she actually consults with her alien 'teacher,' a being named Hatar - of which I was a bit skeptical. However in a larger sense, what she suggests tends to be a relatively healthy approach to the Visitor phenomenon. In short, it is one of acceptance and cooperation, forgiveness and healing. Many experiencers (though certainly not all) have found this to be a useful approach.

Though she does not specifically say so, Wedel appears to take the viewpoint that these are physical events, and they are largely benevolent. Even though they certainly don't seem very benevolent to experiencers at many times during their abductee 'careers,' in the end they are somehow 'for our own good'. This is definitely one school of thought, though there are many other points of view that are far less positive. When I read the reviews of her book on Amazon, I found that there were two distinct reviews - the 5-star reviews, very supportive, and the 1-star reviews, harshly critical of her ideas. In short, I think that nearly any viewpoint on the phenomenon will probably have a host of experiencers identifying with it.

Another thing Wedel describes is the different classes of experiencers - the collateral experiencers [my term, CL], the 'in and out' experiencers who have 'quick' medical procedures done than are returned to their homes, and the 'extensive' experiencers who are deeply involved in the phenomenon. These groupings do not include the contactees and other groups who are involved in the phenomenon in very different ways. For the moment, I'm only talking about abduction events. Still, the resemblance between what Wedel described, and what I noticed in the last several encounter narratives were striking. In these cases, the 'collateral' or 'single event' encounter, the 'quickie' and the 'extensive' experiences seemed to be quite clearly defined, pretty much as Wedel described.

In many cases, I think the literature is reinforcing what I have found, or vice-versa. Yet in other cases, what I have found is very different indeed. As I describe in The Cosmic Bridge, there are a large number of 'nonstandard' cases that don't seem to fit any mold, while there are others with varying degrees of conformance to what I call the 'standard model' of close encounters. And in the case of the events surfacing in the last few weeks, I think I have again seen this spectrum of conformity. Many appear to be closely conforming, falling into the categories I described above. Yet others, like the 'ten-tentacled creature from Andromeda' that I described in The Cosmic Bridge, some seem to fly in the face of the standard alien-abduction model.

Each case gives me pause for reflection. Each case is another data point, another pixel in our picture of the phenomenon. Like always, I find that picture confusing - lately perhaps more confusing than ever. Yet distinct, if shifting, patterns seem to emerge. Whether they are illusory clumps in what is really random data, or whether they truly represent a pattern, I think we still need to sort out. Still, the large number of people that appear to be remembering their encounters gives me encouragement.

Hypnotic regression will probably never tell us how the alien warp drive works, and it will probably never even tell us whether the events are physical, metaphysical or something else entirely. But I believe they will tell us increasingly more about the nature of the phenomenon that lurks in the shadows of our experience. Each encounter narrative brings us closer to some form of understanding, each providing us with a few more glimpses of the extraordinary.

An evening of synchronicity, apocalypse, and dog toys

The ending hours of a day in the life of - well, this week, I'm not sure what of...

In part, I have a strong impression of what a single parent feels like. While Gwyn is away for a few days, it's just me - and our two "wild" shelti-poo puppies. And I once again realize that whoever told me about dogs being high maintenance was truly spot-on.

Originally I had the fantasy that, while Gwyn was away visiting her mother for a few days, I would be free to get a bunch of writing done. No television, none of the general domestic background activity that keeps one's attention occupied throughout the evening; I envisioned several days of uninterrupted concentration as I (hopefully) begin a new stretch of creativity. I have slowly and grudgingly gotten going on Children of the Stars, having plugged away at it for several months. At times I feel like great progress has been made. Other times, well, the feeling is different. So I the last two evenings, I greatly looked forward to a few days of uninterrupted writing. Time to get to work and make some great literary progress.

Wrong....

As I write this, I have to pause to pick up a dog toy and throw it down the front hall. Libby (our smaller sheltie-poo) has dropped the small rag bone at my feet. She has been yipping for the last minute, as I have been hashing through the previous paragraph. This is her less than subtle way of demanding that I do my duty as a human and throw the toy so she can fetch it. Such "help" has been plentiful all evening - and as a result, I have gotten next to nothing done on Children of the Stars.

Excuse me for a moment, while I toss the dog toy again...

As I was driving home from work this evening - in the midle of a light snowfall and a resulting traffic jam - a fragment of an idea came to me. Possibly as a result of several crises, disasters, etc., throughout the world, many people I have talked to describe a feeling of impending apocalypse. I hve to remind myself that this sense is nothign new. We've been getting prophecies of doom for tha last several thousand years, and l'm sure this trend will only accelerate, at least until some time after 12/22/2012. However, the sword-of-Damoclese feeling is palpable, and I have to admit, I often feel the same feeling - something is about to happen - somewhere out there.

When I got home, I started to concentrate on the thought. Whether true or not it does make a fantastic scenario in Children of the Stars. As I was sitting there munching on some supper and starting to put my thoughts into words (at that point only mentally), I suddenly got an e-mail from the person who is one of the models for one of the characters in my novel series - the psychic in my previous book named Andrea. The basic idea - without giving too much away - is that Andrea senses something catastrophic in the near future. And sure enough, only an hour or two after the thought popped into my mind, I received an e-mail from my friend. In it, she said that she senses something major about to happen. She indicated that she had heard this from several other psychics as well. They say there are no coincidences. Hmmm.

What this means, I certainly don't know. Recent history has been replete with predictions of events that never came to pass. Whether the predictions were wrong, or whether they were merely relating an increased probability of such an event is a topic of great debate among parapsychologists. But suffice it to say that we've heard such predictions many times before, seldom with enough detail to be useful. So for now, the best we can do is to keep our eyes and ears open for confirmation or refutation of - well, of whatever we're being warned about.

Meanwhile, Libby is yipping at me again. It's time to throw the dog toy once more.

As I sit down and plink away on this article, the contrast strikes me as both amazing and amusing. Synchronicity, apocalypse and dog toys; what a wide spectrum of experiences in the span of a few minutes. What a diverse and fascinating world we live in? And so far, thank God, of the three, only the synchronicities and the dog toys have turned out to be real. Let's hope it stays that way...