notforprophet

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As a young adolescent, I was quite an introvert. As an introvert, I was a loner, spent much time at home reading books, exploring the workings of the mind. By brute force of such habit, I became something of a genius. Or at least peculiar enough to be worthy, by some frank folk, of such a consideration. Well, that peculiar sense of self has been too long neglected. Changes ahead.

It is true that I have led many of you here through the gates and onto the grounds of Dreamland. I have led you where I have gone: to hallowed grounds, to an expanse of sacred doom, to the land of the dead. I connected up philosophically with Death at a very young age—at 2, I think, I had my first premonition that nothing in life lasts. Still a child, there were subsequent deaths in the family—of course sad but not shocking, heartbreaking but not insurmountable for the surviving. Death visited again most tragically when, as a freshman in college , I was driving my mother to work (so that I could then take the car to school) and another driver ran a red light, crashed into us, and killed her. Not instantly, but painfully. Yet ultimately she died with dignity in the company of the children she loved. After her death, something in me changed. I became more fearless, sometimes reckless. I firmly believed I’d not myself live until the age of 30. Yet I resolved never to surrender to Death—it would have to come and drag me battling to my grave. Death did come to claim me a few years later. But it was a mistake. A Death angel, literally, hovered over me and queried me wordlessly (hence, mentally or psychically—or more aptly described: directly ) as to whether I was the Pope: Are you the Pope? I was shocked by the mere vision of that above-my-bed swirling Angel. Yet more shocked by the realization that it had mistaken me somehow for the Pope and needed my affirmation to continue its mission. In response, I directly indicated no, I am not the Pope. It departed and I fell back to sleep. I awoke to discover that the Pope had in the meanwhile died. After that fiasco of near mistaken identity, Death and its angels seemed to avoid annoying me like I was the plague. Many years of mindful adventures followed, with fine uninterrupted health, and a sense of life embracing an endless path to eternity. The confluence of those three factors washed away my adolescent impression that I was destined to be good—in the sense that only the good die young.

There is an intention of space as a proxy for time between this sentence and the last. Much has transpired in that space. Most darkly, somewhere in that space just before the beginning of this sentence—Death decided it had neglected me long enough. Perhaps it finally got over its embarrassment in nearly mistaking me for the Pope. (More likely: I had screwed up once too often in flirting with danger <<details here omitted>> and drew its unkind attention back upon myself.) Increasingly so for the past month, but most acutely over just this past week, Death has been hacking at me. Yes, hacking. Like a hacker does a web server. The good news is that it hasn’t (yet) found me vulnerable. The other news is that my psyche is getting battered by a seemingly endless barrage of reminders of hammered mortality.

Changes ahead. Death has reminded me that it’s time for me to stop neglecting myself.