This morning, I woke up with enough inspiration to add seven pages to my novel in less than an hour, and the exercise has maneuvered me in a state where you guys and gals get the short end of the stick: I'm leaving website update to my other team members today, and will enjoy this day in total relaxation. As a bandaid, here are the pages I added today:

Thursday, October 30^th, 2003, 20:21

Somebody lied to me today, but both he and I Know it: Henk told me today his Thursday meetings are going to end, so I won't be able to continue visiting his psychic hour.

In case you hadn't guessed, Henk is a psychic. He is the guy who helped me realize about the vow I'd made at age eight, to figure out the Cosmos, and tell everyone who will hear about it. I'm glad he did, especially from the viewpoint of where I am now, finishing the novel that will be the culmination of this life's work.

Henk magically appeared as a friend of a friend of a colleague of my wife, in a moment where I desperately needed him. The first night he told me my soul was aligned someway half outside my body, but he wouldn't fix it. Instead, he had me fix it myself! Make-belief, hypnosis, name it what you want, but that night I felt better than I had in years!

Henk held what he called his Thursday meetings, and invited me to come. No entrance fees or anything, although some of us sometimes brought cookies to go with the ever abundant coffee. When one day I offered him fifty euros for his services, he looked at me and merely asked: “Why are you doing this?” in a non-incriminating manner.

Lying on the table, Henk taught me to recognize the flow of energy throughout my body, and he kept trying to teach me to breathe properly. In that, he seemed not to succeed, or did he: I've always been a shallow on-demand breather. Just couldn't stick to his program of deep, belly-based breathing.

And he asked me to write. Write manually, while in fact I dislike my own handwriting. I did it, but for serious writing like this novel I still stick to hammering it out on the keyboard. Maybe my disregard for his lessons is what eventually got him to call it “Class Dismissed!”, but I don't think so.....

One last experiment I remember around that time happened around that time, was an outing to the local kids farm with my family. I was very occupied with my being, and while the kids played, I was sitting on a bench in the Sun. A fly came up to me, and landed on my right leg, just above the knee. I figured, if my vibration was OK, I'd be able to approach it sincerely, without disturbing it.

I moved my left hand, index finger outstretched, to the vicinity of it's bulging faceted eyes, quite slowly. Do you know how hard it is to approach a common housefly from the front, to within one millimeter of it's head? I did succeed however, and we sat there for seconds, face to 'face'.

Finally, I broke the magic by becoming greedy, and carefully nudged its head. The fly got up, and landed just out of range of my hand, as if to say: “OK, I know your boundaries now....”

When I later told Henk about it, he applauded me for having made so much progress. And when he stopped seeing me on Thursdays, he offered his help for anything I might require later on. Well Henk, I'd love to send you this manuscript, but by now I think you will somehow magically get your hands on it when the time comes....

Saturday, April 17^th, 2010, 04:42

Today I am somewhat in conflict, but in a good way. I'm going to break my word in a manner of speaking, but only because I know Jolene will forgive me, in a way will even silently applaud me for it!

Just like I Knew Henk, the psychic that helped me at age 35 to remember my vow at age eight, was lying when he told me his Thursday meetings were ending, I just Know Jolene meant just about the complete opposite of what she told me: she asked me not to tell anyone about her life, but I'm sure she'll absolutely not mind that I tell this story anyway, with the proper precautions to achieve what the business end of the world would call 'Plausable Denyability', or in other words, a bit of white lying magic to protect the innocent.

I met Jolene on the train the other day, quite by incident, and very nicely. Somehow, I felt very, very connected to her, even though she turned out to be a person who had an uncanny ability to tell me exactly what kind of a person I am! Or maybe just because of that, because with her, my Know-indicator was on the blink.

But despite the obvious connect, she kept her distance. We did exchange addresses, and over the next few weeks, she phoned me a couple of times, just to hear about how I was doing, and what was up in my life. Jolene felt very awesome, kinda like Selina, even though with her there was this barrier, which both of us kept intact: externally, she was the kind of person I'm not really attracted to, which was aggravated by the fact she tried convince me that our relationship was purely business (which is kind of a dirty word to me).

She claimed she needed help with her computer, and one day, I was invited to provide said help. I traveled there at the appointed hour, and walked the last few hundred meters from the bus to her home, or at least the address she gave me. It was in a well to do neighborhood, all privately owned homes. I rang the bell, and was invited in, only to find myself in a pigsty! I mean, she'd warned me her place was a mess, but I figured it to be like mine sometimes is, for lack of futuristic domestic droids. This however looked far worse, and my first instinct, which I immediately followed, was to offer her to help clean things up a bit. She wouldn't hear of it however, claiming she'd gotten me in there to help her along where the computer was concerned.

So I sat down, amidst a flurry of newspaper clippings, partially opened mail, and other 'messy' things. Nothing really gross, just this consistent wrapping of disorder that I could easily ignore in order to get my work done. She wanted a general cleanup of her computer, like I've done dozens of times for myself and others. Defrag, cleanup, remove unused software, install basic stuff needed to do proper work, you know the drill. So did I, or so I thought...

I'd seen she used Outlook for her mail, but also observed that her Word and Excel where complaining about needing an installer CD to be usable. I usually resort to public domain software wherever possible, and so gave her the option of having OpenOffice installed, instead of those office applications. She agreed, not realising like I should have, that her Outlook was part of the Microsoft Office I was aiming to replace. We chatted on, while she made us something to eat in a kitchen that to me would have been barely unacceptable as starting point for cooking activities.

It was a home-brewn soup, as she called it, quite tasty, but too many unknown ingredients to be on my list of favorite dishes. I somewhat too ardently refused seconds, but we parted as friends. Then, after I'd gotten home, she called that her E-mail no longer worked. Realizing my colossal blunder I gladly took the blame, but was relieved she didn't expect me to get back on the train right that instance. I did offer to attempt a rescue using TeamViewer, so I could take over her system from home, but being a self-proclaimed digifobe, she declined that. She did get another friend to call me later, to dissolve the matter via phone.

But then there's the little incongruities that trigger you to the weirdness of the situation: though Jolene claimed she was afraid of computers, I counted no less than three systems in her home: the computer I needed to work on, an IBM Thinkpad carelessly lying around, and a Compaq DeskPro system in one of the bedrooms. Add to that the question she'd asked me about purchasing Val's old laptop, and I guessed myself in the twilight zone.

Speaking of zones: even though she and I were in the zone constantly, I was very near the edge of my comfort zone while in that place. To me, a home needs to be somewhat cleaner to be comfortable, but it was Jolene's home, so I kept abiding by her will, and tried not to disturb the flurry of newspaper clippings that so cozily surrounded me.

Yesterday, I mailed her to inquire if her friend's rescue operation had succeeded. I got back a mail, so it obviously had: she said she wasn't angry or disappointed, but told me not to mail, phone, or try to contact her otherwise.

Now I could mourn the loss of a friend, but this sounded way more like: “School's over, class dismissed!”

Final sync: I just found out Rush are on their “Time Machine Tour”! How very syncy that they are mentioned in various places in this Now Time Tale......