Closing Time

This blog will be closing. 

If you wish to continue reading me and my ufo, literary and life encounters, please send me your e-mail and I will give you the new link. The blog will be closing on April 15, 2013.

The journey continues.

Scrappy: Two

Two

Eleanor Mae was born in Baltimore. An Aquarius.  Born twenty-two years into the millenium. The second child and the only daughter, to a British mother, Jennie and a father, Howard, who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Mounties before the United States had gotten into the first world war.  It was there that Grandaddy lost his arm.

Her dashing older brother was three years her senior.  There was another dashing  brother five years her junior.  A couple of siblings were born interspersed around them. Had they lived, there would have been seven children in the Hood family.

Mom married at eighteen.  She and my Dad joined the Army.  Mom was in the Women’s Auxillary Corps (WAC). My memory is that they were both in the military for two years.  After their service, they returned to Baltimore.

Somewhere along the line, Mom ran a lathe.  That was typical of most women during the war years after their spouses left for military service.  

Mom said her father was an alcoholic, that her mother always crying, always whining.  None of it was what I experienced except for my Grandaddy’s drinking.  He was often drunk.  I know that because he often fell off a barstool.  I would spend part of my summer vacation taking care of him while his six ribs healed from the fall. There were lots of jokes about his drinking.  One in particular was that he needed something to strap him upright to the bar stool.  That was long before seatbelts were invented in automobiles.

My memory of my Nana was that she was loving, wore colorful jewelry (costume, but who cares) and always had a hat on.  She also said, “to mat toes” for tomatoes.  It didn’t make sense she didn’t pronounced potatoes the same way. It always made me laugh.

Nana, a petite and warm woman, came to the United States in the early ‘20s from London, England.  Over time she lost most of her accent except when she would speak of tomatoes.  She pronounced them “toe matt toes.”  It always made me laugh.

Nana had eloped in her early twenties to marry her handsome boyfriend from Maryland. He then enlisted in the Canadian military long before the United States got into the first World War.  That is where he lost his left arm. Nana later learned his family owned the land on which Cape Canaveral is built.

Nana says that there were maids in her home when she was raising her children.  An upstairs maid and a downstairs maid.  There is also evidence the family was wealthy.

Grandaddy’s parents died when he was young.  Sent to work as an indentured servant essentially, a lawyer saved his life.  Not in a physical sense but more in an opportunity sense.  When Grandaddy was seventeen years old, a lawyer came to the house where he was working.  He’d been living in a barn and the attorney told him he came into a great deal of money.  He left both the barn and his employers immediately.  After he finished high school he went to college.

Rumor is that he was bitter from the abuse of his employers.  That and losing his arm in the war are the reasons our family believe he started drinking. It is hard to know for sure about that since he rarely spoke to any of us. 

Mom said he was often abusive to her, both physically and verbally.  That she couldn’t go to medical school and had to go to work to support the family because of his drinking and inability to work consistently left her both angry and bitter. She never spoke about her anger but was quick to identify it in others.

Aunt Phyliss, my mother’s childhood friend, called her “Scrappy.” My brother and I called all of my Mom’s family and friends “aunt.”  It was a southern endearment. Phyliss was my father’s second cousin.  She introduced my parents to one another.

Phyliss was one of the best people I knew.  And very aware of children, unlike my mother.  Phyliss always offered me a treat when Mom and I visited her in the next town.

Scrappy: One

One

My earliest memory was of wanting to be tethered to be big red balloon.  Balloons can go anywhere and I wanted to get as far away from here as I could. 

I didn’t want to be home.  No one was ever there.

For years I wished I had a warm and loving mother.  My earliest memories of my mother was that she was always absent.  Of course, it wasn’t just her body that was gone, she wasn’t there even when her body was present. 

She was always reading. Anything Agatha Christie.  George Bernard Shaw.  The Pink Panther. There were academic books, too. She even read when she cooked.

That is how we knew when dinner was ready.  My brother and I could see the smoke coming from around the corner.

“Dinner’s ready” she would say.

Maybe that is why I was always such a skinny kid.  Food was never appetizing in our home.  It was plain, English food.  No seasonings. 

Her cooking didn’t seem to embarrass her.  But she made a scrumptious pineapple upside down cake.  It was the only dessert she made except for birthday cakes.  My favorite birthday cake was angel food cake.  She iced it with chocolate and it just melted in my mouth.

Boycott!!!

Watch out for the health of your family and yourself.

Worried About North Korea?

 What is Going on With North Korea is Not What it Seems 

by Benjamin Fulford

(April 3rd, 2013) – The biggest eye opener for me in decades of reporting about North Korea came seven years ago when a top Chinese government agent in Japan told me China considered North Korea to be a US colony.

The recent so-called threats of war by North Korea being widely reported in the Western press are in fact cabal efforts to intimidate that country as it seeks independence from secret US rule. The North Korean moves are a part of an overall East Asian move away from cabal rule.

However, recent corporate media coverage of North Korea makes it obvious that very few members of the Western media have a clue about what is really going on there. That is why I have decided to write a basic primer for the benefit of interested readers and policy makers.

The first thing people need to understand when looking at North Korea is to realize the country was set up by remnants of the Japanese army that was stationed in China during and before World War 2.

The regime in North Korea thus closely resembles the war time government of Japan with the main difference being the God King is named Kim and not Hirohito. Remember, what is North Korea now was part of Japan or under Japanese influence from the late 19th century until the middle of the 20th century.

Roosevelt in very frail condition at Yalta

The next thing people need to understand is that part way through the post-war US occupation of Japan, a fundamental change in US policy took place.

Following the murder of President Roosevelt by Nazi sympathizers towards the end of World War 2, a large part of the US intelligence community was gradually taken over by Nazis.

In Japan this meant that during the first part of the US occupation strenuous efforts were made to turn Japan into a pacifist, socialist country.


This group has, to this day, exerted serious but hidden control over the Japanese political world in the post-war era. That is why it is no coincidence that the headquarters of the unofficial North Korean Embassy in Japan, the Chosen Soren (North Korean Citizens Association) is located next to the Yasukuni shrine honouring Japan’s war dead.

For much of the post-war era, the North Korean group in Japan was headed by Yasuhiro Nakasone and was closely allied to US power brokers like George Bush Sr. and David Rockefeller. For example, until recently the 20,000 strong Inagawa-kai yakuza gang prominently displayed a picture of George Bush Senior at its headquarters.

However, this cozy relationship started to change during the Bush Jr. regime when Asian secret societies found out that SARS was a race-specific Nazi bioweapon spread by the Bush regime with the aim of wiping out much of Asia’s population.

In Japan the result was large, but unreported midnight gang fights pitting supporters of the Nazis or Sabbatean Satanists against Asian secret societies and their Western allies.
As a part of this ongoing struggle, a regime change took place in North Korea after Kim Jong Il was assassinated with a stroke inducing poison administered by a Swedish prostitute.

Yokota Megumi

The new ruler, Kim Jong-un, is the son of Yokota Megumi, a girl of Japanese royal family lineage who was kidnapped from a beach in Niigata when she was 13.

The Kim regime is thus very pro-Japanese. The regime change in North Korea led to a severe split between the North Korean government and North Korean organizations in Japan.

 Source: Veterans Today

Knowing: Six

Six

 It was approximately fifteen foot tall and sixty foot wide tilted toward the right.  Five very slender and centered windows were dimly light, salmon-amber in color.  I looked hard to see if there were any people or beings inside.  I didn’t see any.

I checked the dashboard on my car.  Everything appeared to be functioning well. The Magnavox cell phone, recently purchased because of its excellent reception in a mountainous terrain was working well.  I longed to call someone.  A feeling told me not to.

Upon opening the windows, there was what appeared to be the sound of a jet plane in the distance.  As though it was chasing something. 

As I continued to travel closer to it, I felt uneasy but like I was supposed to be here, to have this experience.  A solitary experience. A range of feeling overwhelmed me. While I hoped I would not be abducted I was ecstatic to see one.  The tingling began to subside as I drove under it.

I drove under the UFO and kept looking back.  Total blackness.  The blackest sky I had ever seen. I couldn’t see a back to the UFO or any shape.  But where were the cars, where were the people on the busy highway?  

Leaving the highway for the small country road and bridge that would take me home, I slowed and waited for the two white sedans to pass by.  They never did.

My third thought after seeing this was the metallic looking 1950 structure.  It appeared corrugated but there were no rivets. There was also no sound from the spaceship whatsoever neither driving in front of it or underneath it.  I heard no sound as I drove away from it, either.

Knowing: Five

Five

It was long and narrow and unlike anything I had ever seen.  At first I thought it was a falling billboard.  Since I had taken flying lessons and know the area from the sky, the second thought that came to mind was an airplane was crashing.  But there were no wings.

On a closer look, I saw that it was hovering thirty-five feet over the highway. It was in a concave area in front of two peaks. My body began to tingle all over.   

I’d never seen a sky so dark. It was like being in a coal mine with only headlights.  My thinking stopped and my bodymind became especially sentient.  Time seemed to stop even though my clocks were still working. 

But why me?

Knowing: Four

Four

“Hey, are we still meeting for dinner tonight?”

“Sure, I can be there about 6 p.m.  Where do you want to go?”

“Not sure.  Let’s decide when you get here.”

“Okay, see you then, Carol.”

I’d met Carol at a local UFO Conference.  A slender, blond woman with a nicely coiffed bob from South Africa looking older than her fifty years.  Living in a country where apartheid was the main stay wasn’t easy for this free spirit. Her pasty white skin and angular facial features made her stunning with her model’s figure. 

She lived forty-five minutes over the mountains to the northeast in Cashiers (pronounced cash – ers).  Carol spoke about numerous encounters that night at the conference. Held in a state-of-the-art senior center, the conference was packed.  Many stood outside the doors hoping to hear something. 

An accident on the narrow road to Carol’s home meant not only would have to wait to use the restroom, but that I would be late for dinner.  There was no cell phone tower in this remote area.   

She greeted me instantly as I pulled into her driveway.  Her daughter was away for the night so it was a good opportunity to talk. There was so much I wanted to know about her encounter, her sightings.

Spending a few hours with this eclectic woman was like dining with a butterfly.  I kept wondering where and when she would land. If she would land.  I think it was her high energy that attracted UFOs to her home. There was much I wanted to know.

Almost immediately, I was whisked to her garden.

 She was bubbling with stories about seeing them land, only to take off again.

The garden was mystical, magical, Yoda-like. Eerie. She couldn’t wait to tell me about the waterless stream on her property.

“I dug the creek myself.  Some neighbors came by to help.  Look at it.  There was no water here and now it is abundant. After seeing the spaceship and setting my intention, the water appeared one morning.  A splashing brook."

She ushered me into her more than comfy home which doubles as a hair cutting salon for her day work and left to prepare our meal. We had discussed going out to a restaurant.  When I arrived, Carol said she preferred to make dinner.  I hadn't eaten all day.  Since I hadn't tasted South African food before, I was excited to eat. 

After a few minutes, she appeared from behind the tiny bar in her tiny closet sized kitchen.  A plate with four hind quartered chicken was served.  They had been roasting for some time. She didn't use spices.  That was the entire meal save for dry red wine. Not being much of a drinker, I took a sip and left the glass on her bistro table on the deck where we were eating.

“Do you live here alone?” I asked.

“Yes, I was married for a little while.  It didn’t work out but I got her” she said pointing to a ten year old child’s picture.

“She is lovely” I said.

“I saw it right there, through the slider” Carol said pointing toward the woods.

An hour later, her friend met us on the balcony. Her friend stayed while she spoke.  Carol softly retreated to the chaise. 

As the evening faded, I thanked my new friend for the tour,  for sharing her experience and I left to go home. I was starved. 

The evening sky was full of bright white lights everywhere I looked.  More activity than a planetarium. I was driving the Highlander slow, often pulling off to the side of the road in wonder so I wouldn’t miss anything. Taking astronomy in college helped; I wished I had my textbook next to me.

The lights leapfroged from east to west, then south to north. I had seen them before off my front porch in the same vicinity in the sky though the thick forest often made it difficult to follow. 

Then the sky lights vanished as I followed the circuitous road into the forest canopy.  Reaching the bottom of the basin, I turned left to Webster Road which followed the Tuckaseegee River to the highway.  I was the lone car on the road. For the entire trip.

I hadn’t gone more than a couple hundred feet before I saw it. Almost immediately, I turned my head looking all around me. Where was everyone?

There wasn’t a car in sight until I made a u-turn to turn south.  With my speed deliberately slowed  ensuring my safety, I was able rubber neck everywhere.  Suddenly there were two medium sized white sedans behind me.  One was in the fast lane behind me, the other white car was one-third of a mile behind me in the slow lane.  Despite my slower speed, neither white vehicle appeared to get closer to me. 

Something made me look up.  And there it was!  I didn’t want to take my eyes of it, afraid it might disappear.  But I turned around to check the location of the white sedans.  It was uncanny that we were the only vehicles on the road for miles.

Knowing: Three

Three

It was like that when I moved to the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina the spring of 2001.  

My home was atop a knoll in the Nantahala National Forest, known for its ragged mountain tops, dense forest, abundant rivers and lakes, some of whom are man made. Surrounded by white pines, oaks, and hemlocks, the area is also home to abundant rhododendron, mountain laurel, flaming azalea and myrtle. Alongside the road flowered Solomon’s seal, red elderberry and black eyed Susans, black bear, white-tailed deer, wild boar and turkey are rich in number. This is Davy Crockett country.

The Great Smoky Mountains were everything my Dad said they would be. In the mornings and evenings you could often see beautiful blue mist he had long spoken of in this diverse biosphere. Even the sunset was surreal.  Purple clouds with plucky orange interspersed and scalloped mountain ranges, one after another.

Knowing; Two

Two

I think to know God is to be open to all kinds of possibilities.  

In primitive cultures it is said people who have never seen a ship are not able to see one even though others can.  Even when it is pointed out through through eyes of a culture who knows what a ship looks like still deny its presence.  They did not know what a ship was so how could they know one even existed, much less be able to see it?  

Belief systems play a huge part in what we believe possible.

Knowing: One

One

Have you ever seen God?  I mean really see him?  Or her. 

I feel God every day.  Not in the Judeo-Christian way but in a knowing.  In the azure sky, and sunlight dancing off the ocean.  The mother fox feeding her kits in the thicket. In my heart.

Studying at Cornell and later public health in a medical school taught me to quantify everything.  Replicate every experiment.  Stratified random sampling is the ticket. My professors promised that. But why?

            Not everything can be measured by the scientific method.  When my mother came to me in a dream telling that cold January morning that she was dying didn’t come with a measurement tool. My mother was healthy. Even when my brother called that morning to tell me she passed I knew there was more to knowing God than what we could reproduce under a controlled experiment.  She did have a broken heart has her husband had passed a number of years before her.  Missing him overwhelmed her.

I knew I was pregnant before the laboratory tests confirmed it.  Tuning in to the body mind is like that.  Working in concert, listening, feeling.  It was helpful to have a scientific evaluation.  But most assuredly in the months to come, my knowing would have been confirmed with a huge belly and lots of activity.

...Seven

Seven

Not too long after July 20, 2010, my head began to have pulling sensations. Like something was moving inside.  The pulling was localized mostly on my left side.  They would occur for about fifteen seconds and dissipate. When I spoke to my physician, she had no clue what was happening.  I had hoped there was a medical rationale for it. 

I began to wonder if this was some sort of download. At first, I wouldn’t notice anything too different. I felt the pulling sensation, and then began to notice a bit of difficulty sequencing things. None of my friends saw any of this despite me telling them about it.  Maybe that is a good thing.

It is important to mention at this point that I have a most excellent memory for detail.  I can remember where things are on a page, a kind of photogenic memory.  My Dad also had this.  Mine is much less developed I think.

After the pulling sensations, I notice that my sense of acuity is more developed.  I get knowings that things are about to happen.  It could be that someone is pregnant, or having difficulty with their pregnancy, that someone is losing their job, that someone is unhappy in their marriage and about to divorce.  My ability to feel their pain has always been present but again, more so now.  And it doesn’t come from my brain like I think it did in the past.  It comes from my bodymind working together.  The knowings come from within.

They don’t present themselves in way one might expect. I experience them much like flowers experience the sun.  Small incremental changes.  They come out when I first awaken, sometimes during the day or when someone prompts me in conversation. Something will pop up that I know and I want to share it.  Sometimes I have to be careful with whom I share these knowings.  Not everyone wants or can handle them.  Then the knowings manifests into an earth plane reality.

Often I feel the presence of sky ships.  While I can’t always see them thirty-five feet over my head now, I see them in the distance. They move fast!  They leap frog, zip straight up like they are following a straight edge ruler.  They disappear and rearrange their patterns.  They are more in abundance than ever.  I have watched them for years. 

I feel they are more than frustrated with us.  With our destruction of the environment for profit, the self-serving Congress, that we are so complacent.  We weren’t always that way.  They wonder when we will love one another and our planet enough to stand up for a healthier lifestyle and stop the madness.  They think we are a bunch of followers.  I can not disagree with them.  It frustrates me as well.

They saw us come together on 9/11 for two weeks.  They saw us stand up for civil rights on the March on Washington in the 1960s.  They are embarrassed.

Last November, my ears began to ring.  Consulting an otolaryngologist, she had no explanation.

“A percentage of the population gets this.  It isn’t anything to worry about.  It may go away.”

Sometimes it does abate for a few seconds, only to return.  The last time it stopped was about six weeks.

Too many coincidences. Or not?

You Dreamed A Dream

http://comehometothemountains.com/?mls_number=47610&content=expanded&this_format=0

You're nestled in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina.  The way life should be.

Sitting on your front porch.  Fresh crisp, air. Hummingbirds.


It's winter and your home awaits the burst of spring bulbs.

 You see this from your sunroom.

Light, fresh, cozy.

Family and friends love being here. 

http://comehometothemountains.com/?mls_number=47610&content=expanded&this_format=0

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Six

Six

I thought about the relationship I had gotten into the year before.  Maybe it was the years of a poor role model in my father who walked out when I was sixteen.  Never available, always hours late.  Even leaving me outside my school when everyone else had gone home and it was dark. At ten it is pretty frightening.

I did what I knew.  I married an emotionally unavailable man at twenty-two. The marriage completed after twenty-eight years.  Through lots of reading and study I learned that only when I was emotionally available to myself would I meet a healthy, worthy man. 

The first man I dated after my divorce became my roommate.  I had known him for years. We traveled the world in our six years together.  But there became more and more outbursts of anger on his part.  Anger had no place in any relationship I could be in. I had worked too hard to allow that. I wasn’t afraid to end it with him.   And there were others I dated after him.  All emotionally unavailable as I was to myself.  There was one I met while volunteering for Habitat for Humanity that was probably the most sad of all of them.  Just three weeks before my sighting, I ended that.  I finally saw my part in what I helped create. 

The world turned more and more ugly.  So many institutions were collapsing because of their greed and self-absorption. Post the Enron scandal, there were Wall Street bailouts, environmental disasters, collapsed economies, HAARP induced megastorms sparing few. I felt Mother Nature's pain.  Clearly, they were here to warn us. They come to check on us.  To tap in.  I was on high alert.

They say most of the learning in life takes place outside of college.  That was definitely true of the UFO experience. I continued to receive more knowings.  Like things were about to happen.  Like the electrical current going through my legs discharging to wherever my feet were placed.  Never having had this before, my intuition told me to record the precise moment I felt these sensations.  I began looking at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) map checking out the time, finding the place where it had occurred.  I wondered what I had missed in the past, if I had missed something intuitive.  I don't think so.

The week prior to the tsunami in Japan, my joints through my petite body ached.  Hurt.  I was more than miserable.  Two days before the tsunami, the pain abated.  But that morning, much like the morning my mother passed away, I knew something had happened.  Something directed me to look at my Doctors Without Borders map on the wall in the mint green study.  Standing motionless I went to the computer.  I pulled up the USGS map on the internet and there it was!

A tsunami had occurred precisely the moment I was bolted out of the quiet of my sleep.  I couldn't turn the television on fast enough.

         The electrical current, or piezo-electric effect continued. It is the same effect animals have when an earthquake is about to erupt.  They get agitated and move to higher ground, to safety.  This is also the case with the animals in the National Zoo in Washington D.C. when the 6.9 ‘earthquake’ was experienced in Virginia.

I began to feel many earthquakes. There were hundreds.  Even one on a road trip near the epicenter when I was visiting New Hampshire.  Again, I jotted the time down.  When I reached my home, I opened up the Mac and a quake had occurred in the area where I was.  This continues to this day as does my intuition on events that are happening.

Friends suggested I talk to a seasoned psychic about it.  I spoke with several of them.  Each one told me I was intensely psychic as though I needed confirmation.  They told me I had powerful healing energy.  That I need to work in this field.  My Reiki Master, some eight years before my UFO encounter told me when I received my certification.  That I didn't need to go beyond the first attunement.

“There is nothing we could offer you that you don't already have.  Very powerful energy.  Are you aware of this?" she said.

Even the other students in the class felt my energy when we traded treatments. I was humbled.  Responsible.

Now it is like a veil has been lifted.  I see things before they happen.  I saw my Mother's death and heard her say goodbye to me even before the UFO encounter. Recently, I saw my uncle's death, that is was peaceful, that his long time female companion would be at his bedside. 

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Five

Five

I wondered why it was so dark when I awakened.  The L.L.Bean Moonbeam clock revealed two seconds to one o'clock in the morning.  But I was totally refreshed. Two hours of sleep?  Wait.  Something was different.  I was different.  My awakening body felt different. I wondered if I had been abducted. I felt lighter.   There were no marks anywhere on my body for my eyes scoured myself deftly. 

But what happened when I was sleeping?  With only two hours of sleep, had the energy of a teenager.

But there was more.  Thoughts and information didn’t come from my brain anymore.  They came from my body-mind, working in concert together.  Maybe it was what the Yogis strived for.  The Quetzalcoatl.  Everything was as thought it was for the first time. 

There were lots of knowings.  A puzzle piece here, a puzzle piece there.  Each morning revealed something new but none of it made sense.  Not at first. 

More than patient with all of this, I let things be as they are.  Not so easy when you have had a lifetime of Type A behavior.  Maybe this was the Type B aspect surfacing more?  The Type B always came out in my artwork, my creative side.  The side that paints watercolors, becomes inmeshed in music, lives to go to the symphony at age thirteen, wants…needs to create.  It wasn’t in my head anymore.  More sentient than I have known, there were so many unanswered questions. Almost like the space before the epiphany – it all comes together for you. 

             I thought about my aging Mother. Alone by choice in a Florida retirement community.  She was fading fast.  Living in a senior community isolating herself from family and friends did that. I wondered how other galaxies handled their older folks.  I sure didn’t like how ours did.

As the daughter of a Mother whose background was both in geology and physics, I wished she were near. That “they” could help her. 

But our socialized science wouldn’t prepare my Mother to handle this, though her understanding of possibilities would. Even though I tried to share the experience with her, her mind was gone. I hoped she knew.

The early morning awakenings continued for nine consecutive nights.  Again I was aroused at exactly two seconds before one o'clock.  I was full awake, fully refreshed. Alert.  The clock with its batteries hadn't lost time. But had I?

After ten consecutive nights, the puzzle pieces became clear.  I was told to spread the word that we need to be sustainable immediately. Both economically and environmentally.   The hourglass was nearly emptied.  Failure to become sustainable would bring catastrophe.

In a world where much is hidden, what do you do with all of this knowledge?  How would I get the collective heads out of the sand. 

“Just talk I was told.  Some will listen.”

Where does this solitary experience go?

Over that summer, I spoke to a few groups, and the local media picked up the story. People wanted to know, understand. The ones who were prepared to see things as they are.  It felt good to be among other intuitives.  I longed to know another experiencer. I was more than grateful to be the conduit. 

More Lies Brought To You By Your Government

http://www.upworthy.com/i-dont-like-being-lied-to-neither-did-this-documentary-crew?c=to3

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Four

Four

         I was more than tired.  Weeding the cliffside garden meant I wore my son's high school navy plaid flannel shirt. Sure there were a few paint marks around the cuff.  That happens with a twenty year old shirt.  Besides it was the only shirt big enough to go over my work clothes.  I didn't want to wear dark pants, but yoga pants were the only things old enough to do garden work.  Sitting on the soil with my knee pad.  Rubber bands nearly closed off my circulation at the cuffs and ankles.

No-seeums seemed to enjoy my oliver skin.  Like the time four summers ago when they zoomed in for the attack.  Across my untanned midriff.  Like dots in Morse code.  Only larger. It took three months of non-stop pain and itching for the welts to heal.  That I didn't scratch once was a miracle. That I was still raw for the wedding says a lot about their determination.

A basket weaved sombrero provided much needed shelter for my face in the intense southern sun. Mosquito netting around my face would have helped.  None was to be found. It wasn't just the no-seeums.  Gnats and mosquitos also made a beeline toward raw flesh.  Bzzzz. Ouch! Six dots that grew in the week to come.

           The air was thick with moisture.  Buggy.  Oppressive. With the nut grass removed and composted over the hill, it was time to get ready to meet my new friend.

I’d met  Carol at a local UFO Conference.  A slender, blond woman with a nicely coiffed bob from South Africa looking older than her fifty years.  Living in a country where apartheid was the main stay wasn’t easy for this free spirit. Her pasty white skin and angular facial features made her stunning with her model’s figure. 

Carol lived  some forty-five minutes over the mountains to the northeast.  I'd met her at a local UFO Conference.  She spoke about numerous encounters that night in town.  The conference center was packing.  Many stood even outside the doors.  Meeting this eclectic woman was like dining with a butterfly.  I kept wondering where and when she would land.

Almost immediately, I was whisked to her garden.  Mystical, magical, Yoda-like.  She told me about the waterless stream on her property.

“I dug the creek myself.  Some neighbors came by to help.  Look at it.  There was no water here and now it is abundant. After seeing the spaceship and setting my intention, the water appeared one morning.  A splashing brook."

She ushered me into her more than comfy home and left to prepare our meal. Carol said she preferred to make dinner.  I hadn't eaten all day.  Since I hadn't tasted South African food before, I was excited to eat.    After a few minutes, Carol appeared from behind the tiny bar in her tiny closet sized kitchen.  A plate with four hind quartered chicken was served.  They had been roasting for some time.  I learned that evening she didn't use spiced.  That was the meal save for dry red wine.  An hour later, her friend met us on the balcony. Her friend stayed while she spoke.  Carol softly retreated to the chaise.

As the evening faded, I left to go home to eat.  Foreshadowing was everywhere. The air was still and silent. Once I left the gravel road and densely covered woods, bright lights appeared in the sky.  They seemed to leapfrog.  I was glad to know the winding road.  The lights followed me until the road became more circuitous and my eyes were firmly planted on the road.  The Highlander followed the road down toward the basin.

It was only when I made the u-turn from the Webster Road, that the sky seemed to darken.  I couldn't find the lights in the sky as the canopy opened. Coming off the mountain felt like being in the zone. Something beckoned me to look up. There it was hovering over the road as I crested the innocuous hill. At first I thought it was crashing.  On a closer look I could see it was tilted to the right, stopped in midair.  Motionless.  Quiet.  This metallic-looking structure was about fifteen to twenty feet tall, about sixty feet wide.  It looked very 1950. As I turned my head to the right, I could see two white sedans in the distance.  One was further back than the other.  The one in the fast lane behind me was closer, some one quarter to a half mile away.  The other vehicle at least half a mile away.  There speed was constant for a while.

My body tingled gently.  I was more aware than I ever imagined.  The five narrow dimly lit salmon-rose windows on the spaceship revealed no beings.  As my eyes scanned the ship some thirty-five feet over the ground, I heard a jet in the distance somewhere to the right and behind the ship.  I never saw the jet.

Fully sentient, I felt the presence of something evil lurking.  Perhaps it was just over the ridge at Cowee Mountain.

The clock in my silver Highlander read 9:40 p.m.  The road was empty of traffic from the south on an otherwise busy highway for a July 20, 2010 summer evening.  Even my new Magnavox cell phone, purchased for its excellent reception in the southern Appalachians was working.  Nothing on the dashboard dimmed.

There just below the twin peaks it hovered. It never moved. 

Looking backward in the darkness of the night, I could see nothing.  But like I said, I knew I would see this that evening.

There is something uncanny about being in the zone.  Everything is possible.  Like the athlete who is one with the football.  Just getting it over the goal post is a matter of the next step.  Everything is possible.  An easy focus.

I remembered the feeling of the evil presence of the jet sounds in the distance.  A pilot later told me the sound was the hydraulics coming from the jet just over the mountain range. 

My whole body felt I was not to have this experience without sharing the moment.  To be fully present. I wanted to call a friend, to have other ears hear the sounds in the distance for their were very loud.  But I was told that it was not necessary to use the cell phone sitting on the seat next to me.  This was to be a singular experience.  I alone was meant to see this.  A conduit.

I kept looking behind me at the two seemingly identical cars in the distance.  One in the fast lane behind me some half a mile and the other similar white vehicle in the slower lane further away than a quarter of a mile.

Even driving under the UFO the sky was totally black.  As I drove out from behind it, I couldn't see anything as I turned my head again looking back.  A void. But as I left this highway, crossing the bridge under Savannah Creek, it felt okay to make a phone call.  I telephoned a photojournalist friend.  He would more than understand.  I recounted my experience as I was glad to be home.  Safe inside.  At least on an earth plane level.  I continued to talk to my friend for a while that evening.

Being home felt like an illusion. I knew any being with this level of technology accesses what they want.  They probably read, know...my thoughts.  I wasn't kidding myself.  I had been exposed.  And more than tired.  My organic, ivory sheets awaited me.  Bed was more than welcomed.

Smoky Mountain Suprise: Chapter Three

Three

            My marriage completed the end of the last millennium.  Even though I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t… grow coupled with him, I didn’t know life without him.  Thirty years together is a long time, especially when you meet at nineteen.  More than anything, I hoped for a loving parting.  But it wasn’t what happened. 

            “Puppy dogs, that’s what we were.”

            Over time I longed for that deep, spiritual connection.  Someone who had lots of time for their relationship.  Someone who wanted a heart like mine.  But he was self-involved and not interested in people.  I knew, despite years of tears…it was time to go.

            A friend once wrote,

            “Watching her from a distance this was a high functioning woman.  She got things done.  She took care of her family.  But you had to wonder how her heart that had been breaking for years was coping now. She didn’t even know.  Not back then.”

            But write is what I knew.  One book. Then two.  I didn’t know it then; I was writing myself home. 

           

I had just arrived in the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina when I realized there was a reason for relocating there.  The flora and fauna were more than I ever imagined.  But it was the southern Appalachian culture along with its simplicity of word that opens the senses revealing a biosphere beyond anything imaginable. But more than that, a connection to one’s own senses. One’s self.

At once, I was puzzled local writers only wrote about the culture in the era.  I was more than glad to have a university close by.  I hoped it would help to balance local groupthink.

            Frustrated, angry I had to do something with this energy.  Writing a letter to the editor in a local newspapers helped me breathe.

“English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871 wrote,” Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds.”

Appalachian culture is ongoing. It is not a period frozen in time.  Heritage is ever changing like the people who comprise it.  And there are many interpretations of Appalachia. Aren’t we, after all, the experts in our own Appalachian experience? Who is to say who is acculturated or not?

No where have I ever lived where just about everyone asks, “Are you from here?” as if a Jackson County birth is a guarantee of entitlement or a means to divide people or maybe a starting point for a wonderful long term friendship. It doesn’t matter how or when we arrived, it does matter that we include one another.”  

            I was like the culture in which I lived.  Ever changing and

definitely not fixed in time.  It is hard to know at precisely what time I

found my voice.  In a different way. 

            “That’s not who we are!  We’ve changed, evolved.  Just because we weren’t born here doesn’t mean this isn’t home.  You don’t own this land, no one does.  We’re really just passing through,” I said to a progressive southern writer.

            It was the little and not so little things that called this place home.  Creating a safe place, a preserve, hidden from all, where animals would know they were safe.  Before long, there were kits birthing on the land.  The red wolf in the garden.  But it was burning inside me, perhaps for all the years I kept so much inside, I was about to explode. 

            “Wanting, yearning for a spiritual connection.  Ultimately, it was in the letting go that you fell upward,” said a photojournalist friend.