Feeling damn snarky and imagine it may be a hitchhiking entity from the motorhead. Something strange in me and its looking for trouble. What to call that phantom? A leering old man, scrawny and hungry for something, an ungodly thing that I quickly look away from. He showed up this morning, mischievous and malevolent and most unwelcome.
First time the spectre appeared was in the woods at the campground. A voice in my head clearly said, Get thee behind me Satan. And I gave it nothing. That is what we were taught. Give it nothing, anything that appeared that wasnt golden and pure and true, give it nothing.
The second time I saw him was inside the golden aura of My Teacher. My awareness was locked on to the motorheads form and his eyes were locked on mine. The familiar glow that shimmered all around him opened up and standing in his heart was that very same lecherous old man, a tiny little bit more bearable to see, standing within a golden halo all around him, a hungry ghost looking at me from the centre of my teachers auric heart. I looked away or closed my eyes. Im not remembering now. It was horrible.
Next night at a campfire sitting in a circle with the pot smokers, I spoke up about what I had seen and someone else said oh! I saw tall figures robed in red walking across the lake. And someone else said, I only saw stillness. And someone else picked up a guitar and played a song we all knew, so we sang and there was no more conversation that night.
There was never conversation about what we were experiencing. We could report it but any dialogue about it would be suspicious or invalid without the motorhead to decode the real meaning. Without his overlording presence it always went like that. Someone sharing what they saw but no one could give any response to it. There was nothing to take from it. Without the teacher to confirm or dismiss, conversation languished in limbo or indifference.
There was never much inquiry into the weird things that happened around the motorhead. If anyone took something unusual to the dialogue box, sitting at a distance in a plastic chair and looking up at him— Make sure he can see your eyes says Mother Superior— the inevitable response from the man sitting on that old animal hide was always about visions and dreams you might have, all coming from your inferior self, not to be believed. They only make your superior self inaccessible.
Its not wrong, he would say, its just not it.
Is that a double negative? Is that a negative affirmation? Is that gaslighting? It was impossible to ever get it right with him. There were love bombs now and again, but only with someone being groomed.
Anything weird or scary or out of synch with a Love Bath narrative was quickly sidelined.
Once I was alone with him. Have I told this before? It, like that hungry ghost, haunts me at times and I can lose my bearings. Its only a tiny little bit of what the complainants have been through—blessings on their brave hearts! I have nothing to take to court.
To dovetail with the cult at large, its confusing to know what is happening and what is real when the Big Lie sounds so true and inclusive, like a love bath of virtue, and then Reality is blatantly dishonest and artificial. How can we live honest lives in a culture that is devolving and crushed under secrecy, deception, greed and delusions of grandeur? If people have an appetite for truth, how will they ever find it to recognize it in a world of tiktok drama and twitter violence?
I guess it depends on whats in your feed. A friend has been feeding too long on perceptions of evil he sees in the motorhead. He cant keep anything down now. Its all coming up and entirely at odds with his peace loving heart, his wish for reconciliation and reunion between those he loves and the others he loves, two loves on two different sides of the magicians wall. That wall is another edifice of wrong doing— its just not it.
Sometimes we were meant to face evil and become hell proof. Gaining traction as a daredevil in hell was a lofty ideal in his teachings. He told an ex-wife he was preparing to fight Satan himself but in my estimation he only projected Satan on to us, especially any men who were particularly interesting. They came to him with longing and love and he only saw his own shadow. They carried his cross and were nailed to his cross and it is still happening out there in the vast prairie where he cannot own enough land, and women, and their interesting men.
One bright and enthusiastic student said, Look around this room. We are all a resonate ray of him. We are all parts of him. We reflect parts of him, each one of us uniquely and individually revealing him to himself. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke. Her voice was like ringing bells. She left in a rush without a word a short time later after a co-worker on her job-site asked if she had a photo of her teacher. Of course we all had photos of him everywhere. She pulled a glossy from her purse and her co-worker said,
I know him. He picked me up in a bar one night. I slept with him.
Any phantoms we might experience while existing in his kingdom were our own and had nothing at all to do with him.
Im gone now. I dont see phantoms anymore. Not new ones anyway. Just sometimes that hell realm creature returns, leering and licking his lips, like he did from the woods. Its a bad day when he shows up. I forsake my vows. I drink a beer. I feel suspicious of everyone. Its a bad seed in me. Maybe this essay can weed it out.
Once I was alone with him. First he looked around the room to see no one else was there. Then he stretched his tongue long out of his mouth and curled it up to touch his lip. It was weird. I saw two separate things at once. I saw a gesture of pure lasciviousness and a tongue ghastly pale, deficient of blood.
As a girl I traveled in Germany with a church group. I was precocious. I read Lady Chatterlys Lover on the plane so not many kids in that pious group warmed up to me. Actually none of them and the chaperones kept me apart much as they could. A night out in a seaside town I met an Italian street vendor who began following me and loudly laying claim to an undying love for me. It was embarrassing. I couldnt lose him. All the church kids were standing around watching and waiting for me to leave with them. Finally I said if ever we meet again, impossible I thought, we can marry. He let me go.
Two weeks later on the streets of Berlin I looked up from the wares of a street vendor and its him. He sees me. I turn and run with all my strength until he catches me, turns me around into a doorway, looks into my eyes and starkly says, Oh, youre not who I thought you were.
I think the look in my eyes at the sight of My Teachers Tongue must have been the same look the Italian saw because the Tongue turned and walked out.
Anyone I spoke to about it said nothing. My husband only believed me years later after two young women spoke out about their bizarre sexual experiences with The Tongue. No one believed me, or if they did the swell of secrecy crashed onto the conversation and washed it all out to sea.
It returns in my memory when the hungry ghost shows up. It haunts me with unsettling intimations of the darkness I was in. It wells up and then nothing is right.
Its not wrong. Its just not it.
My friend Mary and I used to read poetry in cafes in Silver Lake long ago. One of her brilliant poems started with Just when I thought Id buried that thing it raised its ugly head. Maybe if she sees this she will put the whole of it in the comments. Anyway, its like that. I think Im over it all and then an old ghost appears.
I loved Sigmund’s comment about turning away from the ungodly. There sure is some awfully epic ungodliness in these times. When I turn away from it, I can see how very right things are with our world. The light in showers of water. Forgiveness in someones eyes. Kindness for no reason. I wonder if that is the best way forward now? Like an I Ching hexagram I once memorized about the best way to fight evil.
The best way to fight evil is to make conscientious progress in the good.
Well, just thought I'd mention that the newest news on the 'block' (as in head or motor) is, more charges have come forward and that both perpetrator and accomplice are back in court June 21st.