I left New Hampshire on June 29, 2007. My course took me slowly southward, first to the inevitable collision with my father. It is a collision marked by our inability to grasp each other's perceptions of one's course in life. I've often concluded that the right side of my father's brain does not function, nor does the left side of mine.

From there to my brother's, where he lives in a certain kind of exile resulting from living in the same house as his mother-in-law, with his wife and two sons, the eldest of which is autistic and needs constant supervision. It is there that my position as the wingnut of the family becomes more apparent. It is also there that my distaste for the "normalcy" of an average life goes beyond a distaste and instead manifests itself in a kind of fear of it.

That evening I arrived in Connecticut, at the home of my good friend and creative partner, Mark Gale, actor, comedian and puppeteer. This is the man who has often in the past brought my words to life. As it was for many years in Florida, our friendship was forged by my writing for him and his illustrious performance of my words. We discussed current projects and potential projects that would finally bring our creative endeavors to bear fruit on the larger stage. I left him on the following Monday morning feeling once again emboldened by the combination of our talents and abilities and how well they fit together. Perhaps it only makes sense that his cousin is the last remaining queen in my life after the pattern of the three queens was broken earlier this year in New Hampshire.

The longest leg of my journey took me to the home of IWhoSawTheFace in Virginia, and then on to Ohio for the HD5 activities. Admittedly I am still in phoenix mode, still putting myself back together after the most destructive cycle of my life, a far more devastating period that that of the cycle leading up to my suicide or the collapse of 1999. At times I must remind myself that surviving the manipulations and betrayal of the excommunicated muse is what I must remember and not the things I did in order to make survival possible. It is sometimes difficult for me to accept that I stooped to the level of lies and manipulations in order to escape what was happening to me, and sometimes there is a certain image of horror from that time which continues to haunt me. It flashes in my mind's eye from time to time and catches me off guard. It is the image of the former muse standing in a bathtub filled with water, naked and having sliced her body to shreds with a razor blade, the water of the tub filled with blood and the walls covered with smeared blood. It would be easier if this image was from a dream, but it was not.

These days I require a great deal of time alone, to assist in my healing and in regaining my strength. Although I am much healed and much resurrected from the events of earlier this year, I am still incomplete within myself. My angel tells me I must return to Orlando and continue my mission there, but as always, she refuses to tell me what that mission is. She just insists that she guided me there ten years ago, I left to go north in order to resolve something she told me would be far more painful and difficult than I could possibly imagine, and now I must now accept that I was guided to Florida for reasons beyond my comprehension and returning will be far more difficult than my first arrival. This time there is no fanfare or red carpet. This time I must learn how to crawl.

And now I am in North Carolina, out of money and energy, seeking work so that I may fund the last leg of my journey back to my own personal Jerusalem. I thank all of you here who were a part in making my transition easier and more rewarding. Especially one person...

At HD5 I wrote the following for karma debt... in some ways I think it reveals something I don't yet understand. She challenged me to write my thoughts of her down in ten minutes or less. This is what resulted...

They took everything. They only left the hooks in the walls. They weren't very good hooks. Some of them were rusty.

She sometimes hung her coat there.

In the end it did not matter. The ocean was still there.

And then it was no longer there.

Landlocked. Industrious.

Forever.

So, I read in the news the other day that the Iraqi Parliament has decided to take a recess for the entire month of August. Given the state of affairs and the slow rate of progress over there, many Americans are questioning the timing of said recess. This is especially true when you consider that September is a key month when General David Petraeus is scheduled to give his progress report on the troop surge that began earlier this year and to further elaborate on what specific benchmarks the Iraqi's have achieved during that time and what they still have left to accomplish. When pressed on the matter of the recess, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow offered up the following:

"It's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August"

As if our troops on the ground wearing a full compliment of combat gear facing death in the form of snipers, IED's and car bombings on an almost daily basis don't already know that.

Did you ever hear the one about the Congressman who walks into a bar with a handful of shit and tells the bartender "Would you look at what I stepped in?"

I died.

Unfortunately, I forget the details. My luck, it was probably me falling asleep at the wheel, since it seems like I've been sleep deprived for weeks and weeks. But in any case, I woke up in the afterlife — and not the good one.

Thankfully, it isn't all fire and brimstone and demons raping powerless victims whose heads are turned around backward. In fact — and this is probably where I should have figured out that it was a dream — Hell is something like a car wash. I'm standing in front of the facade of a gate decked with skulls spraying water, the warning written in Comic Sans: "Abandon hope, ye who enter here."

It's really much less threatening in Comic Sans.

So I walked inside. I'm standing in a huge line of people of all different types and genders, from all walks of life, getting washed and scrubbed on a huge moving sidewalk. Nobody seems to be resisting it; you know, for being hell it doesn't feel half bad.

So I'm moving down the sidewalk when I start to realize that it is tilted. The curvature increases ever so slightly. It occurs to me that this thing is on a spiral track. And then I look to the side, and through a plastic window I see Dis, a city of burning crosses covered in a perpetual smoky haze.

Fearing my eternal soul for perhaps the first time, I fight my way past the flight attendants, men in three-piece suits, toddlers, and very scary looking football players clad only in bubble wrap until I reach the gate again. And at the gate, outside of the queue to Hell, I see the stars again.

The next thing I know I become transparent, transported back on Earth. A ghost. And I think to myself for the longest time, who should I go to? Who could possibly help me now? One name comes to mind, but it's a long shot. As a ghost, it seemed that distance was no longer a problem; I started out in some Midwestern cornfield and made it to Florida in about three minutes.

So I find this guy, the only one I know that would possibly know anything about death, in a truck stop, in the queue for the showers. And I almost tackle him, but instead of making contact I seep through him. It's a very unsettling feeling. So I call out to him, but of course he can't hear me.

Finally I grab hold of his arm, and shout his name, and he turns suddenly, shocked but not surprised. He leaves the line and leads me to the male restroom. It's quite dirty. He washes his face in the sink, and then looks at me.

— I'm dead, I say.

— Yeah, I know. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be living it up in Heaven?

— I needed to ask you something.

— What?

— Is there redemption after death?

He is silent for a moment, and I take a step closer to him.

— Well, is there? I say again.

Thinking he can't see me anymore, I grab him and start shaking him. I'm screaming now, on the verge of tears.

Crying himself, he finally responds: "I don't know."

Then I woke up.