deep feelings and blogging

This blog has been a very curious thing for me. It’s a nervy way to share some extremely personal stuff.

I recently had a psychic reading from a women named Marisa Ryan who claims to communicate with dead relatives, spirit guides and aliens. Yes, I know how goofy this sounds. The fact that I did this, and actually took it seriously, says a lot about my state of mind these days. This is exactly the kind of flighty thing I would have dismissed with contempt just a few years ago.

Am I really that needy, where I’ll seek out something as silly as a psychic, and an expensive one at that? Maybe I am, because I eagerly pursued this reading.

She told me a bunch of stuff, and a lot of it seemed to resonate with me as true.

Below is a (slightly edited) excerpt of her reading.


Marisa:

I’m being told that you are supposed to be journaling all the experiences . . .

(Mike laughs out loud)

. . . and if that means going back to the very first memory you have, you need to be journaling. It’s almost like, I feel like, it’s important for you to re-experience them . . . What was your mood that you can remember? And then what was your experience, and just completely describe every bit of it. And how did you feel at that time, meaning was there any communication, did you have anxiety, did you have fear, did you love it, did you feel at peace. Every little thing that you can sense, use all your senses. Did you smell anything? Did you see anything, did you hear anything? Write it all down. And then write down how do you feel about that now. And you are supposed to go through each experience.

I’m being told that you are going to write a book, if you haven’t started already.

(Mike laughs)

It’s not necessarily for education purposed, it’s just because there are more and more people waking up that have had these experiences, like you, and they feel like they are crazy, or like they are nuts, and even though there are millions of cases out there, there are still new people waking up that are saying I don’t believe in this, or why is this happening to me - and you will bring peace to them.

One of the first thing she said to me, and she repeated it over and over was: “you are supposed to be journaling.”

Right at that time, I was compulsivly writing, and posting things on this blog. She didn’t know anything about my weird commitment to journaling. There is a lot of stuff backlogged, and if I’m brave enough, those stories will make there way out into this very public forum.

A few days later I spoke with a close friend in Germany, and she had been reading my blog. She has shown herself to be quite a skilled intuitive and I trust her insights. I was proud of my boldness at posting my stories. I expected some praise, but she was very quick to point out that I was being too superficial. She told me my text was void of sentiment, that I wasn’t sharing enough about what I was feeling, about the deeper emotions. She told me, in essence, exactly what Marisa had told me (above).

I feel like I’ve taken a bold plunge into the deep end of the pool, and now the psychics are telling me to go deeper.

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trying to capture a memory with a pen

This image was drawn as a quick little sketch in about 1994. I added the grey tones, using a computer, in 2008. Click on the drawing for a hi-res view.


This drawing represents the same 1993 memory in the posting below.

Here's the story of this drawing. For obvious reasons, that faint memory out my window bugged me. And, maybe about a year after the 1993 night-time event (maybe more) I doodled this little drawing on a page with some other scribbles. I didn’t dwell on it, I just quickly sketched it, and I remember thinking, "Ewww, that's kinda creepy."

And, I promptly put the drawing away in a drawer and forgot about it.

About a year ago, I found it again. It had been well over ten years since I had drawn it. It was just a little sketch, merely black ink lines on a piece of white paper. The memory was of a dark room, and the drawing didn't capture that. So I scanned it onto my computer and added some B&W tones. Using photoshop to create the darker image, with the bight light outside, seemed to accurately capture my dim recollection. The memory was of five spindly entities, I am sure of that, but the drawing only shows only two.

The much more precise follow-up drawing (in the post below) was created last summer in a sort of compulsive flurry.

After coloring in the little sketch, I realized I simply had to finally draw up another more detailed picture. It had been bugging me, and I've avoided doing it. But I needed to do this drawing. So, I forced myself to sit at my desk and I finally drew this more detailed image. Please understand, this was not an easy process to draw, I felt anxious and obsessive as I put the ink on the paper.

The final illustration feels pretty close. I clearly remember five entities, and they were lined up in the snow. But this drawing seems a little TOO tidy, I don't think it was so orderly, they weren’t standing in such perfect sync. And, I feel like I saw them walking, but I can't be sure.

The back lighting is pretty much the way I remember it. It seemed to flood into the room.

* * *

I’ll add that there have been a series of comments from people who have read the post below. They (quite correctly) point out that this could be some sort of dream state that I am confusing with reality. Sleep apnea or a hypnogogic hallucination are appropriate terms. Please know, that I recognize that potential, and my logical mind would agree completely. But, the “metaphysical” side of my mind is quite conflicted. I simply can’t allow myself to declare this memory as real or imagined. It seems weirder than either.

I’ll also add that I never looked in the yard for any evidence. It would have been very easy to just walk outside and look at the snow. I didn’t do that, at the time I forthrightly dismissed it as a dream, so why would I?

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looking out my window at night

Drawn from memory. Click on the picture for a high resolution image.

I am attempting to recount a very short memory. The incident described in this post lasted, maybe, less than 20 seconds. The implications of this event has been difficult for me to integrate into my life. I’ve been terribly conflicted about the truth of this foggy incident. It could have been a dream, true enough. I cannot allow myself to discount that.

In January or February of 1993, I was living alone in a small house in rural Maine. I had been dealing with a hard break up, and I was in an fragile emotional state, and this is an important factor in this story.

The driveway of the house had one of those motion sensitive lights, and it was pretty common for the light to come on when a car drove by or a deer walked through the front yard at night. The bedroom window faced the driveway, and my bed was up against that window.

I was depressed during that chapter of my life, and sleeping poorly. But I woke up that night because a very bright light was shining in through the window above the bed. I sat up, propping myself up on my elbow, and looked out the window. I saw five spindly entities with skinny bodies and big black eyes. They were on the lawn walking toward the house. They were back-lit by a singular round bright shape. This light seemed oddly small.

My first drawing, done as a way to get my thoughts down on paper, and then hidden away in a drawer.

My response to this frightening image was to nonchalantly lay my head down on the pillow and promptly fall back asleep.

Shouldn't I have jumped out of bed screaming in terror? But instead I felt absolutely empty of emotion. It was almost as if I was somehow controlled. I calmly thought to myself, "Oh yes, they're here, let's just shut down and black out."

The illustration (above) seems to capture the memory as close as I possible.

Now, it’s important that I add this extra information. This memory is strangely vivid in a way that seems entirely different form a normal state of mind.

I saw something, but at the same time I truly do NOT think it happened in “this” reality. That may sound hard to grasp, but it is the only way I can honestly depict the experience.

It’s important to me that I try to describe this feeling.

Hmmm - how to use words - weirdly quiet - sort of a pressurized fish bowl - the deepest part of my psyche is displaced, and moved to the forefront - maybe the normal thought chatter in my head is turned off - maybe - kinda - sorta...

A distinct warping of my psyche, whatever that means.

This strange warped feeling shows up again a few years later as a key element in a funny dream involving a UFO.

Did it happen while sleeping, and I simply imagined everything? Was it just some sort of dream state? Maybe. That would be an easy way to sum it all up. I’ll add that, because of this strangely vivid state of mind was so weird, I do not fully trust this memory.

The next morning I had the image seared into my mind, and I could NOT imagine something so weird could be true. I simply dismissed it as some sort of dream. I will add that I don’t recall ever dreaming I was in my own bed. My dream imagery will always be somewhere else, never in surroundings that are exactly like my bedroom.

Could my fragile emotional state been a factor in this vivid image out my window? Was I simply so depressed that I created this scary delusion in my weakened mental condition? That night, was I somehow more susceptible to such a weird hallucination? Maybe.

This memory has a series of follow up stories. And each one is, for me, quite perplexing. I will continue to post more about this very curious event.

*     *    *

I try and articulate the process of doing two drawings of this event in this follow up post.

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Text added Oct 31, 2009

The night of this event I was reading Budd Hopkin's book INTRUDERS. It was right there on the bed, probably just inches from my pillow. This might subtract from the potential reality of the experience. I mean, this book is filled with scary descriptions of skinny gray aliens, and my fragile mind was obviously filled with that imagery as I fell asleep. Did these vivid images well up as some hypnogogic dream? I have no idea.

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Text added March 25th 2010

This is something that feels funny to try and articulate, and I didn’t add it when I posted this thing a little over a year ago.

I remember looking out my window, and looking past the five skinny beings, and being drawn to look at that light out in the small open field surrounded by tall trees along side my driveway.

I thought the light was unusually small, maybe the size of refrigerator. The bright light in the yard looked, to me, just like a movie light mounted on a very short stand, pointed right at me, and into my window.

I've drawn it (above) to match my memory. 

Now, here's where it gets weird. This matches a scene from the feature film COMMUNION, based on Whitley Streiber's book. There was a lot movie that bothered me, BUT, there was a scene where the actor Christopher Walken (playing Whitley) walks toward a bright light in a forest setting.

approx. 1:30:20 time count in the movie COMMUNION

In the film, it is supposed to be an alien craft, but if you look carefully, you can see it's just a big movie light pointed at the camera. When I saw this during the movie, I thought to myself: "Oh, that's a simple way to create this special effect."

I saw the movie sometime in the summer of 1992, and “seeing” the light out my window would have been early in 1993.

When I saw the bright light from my bed out the window, I literally saw that same kind of movie light, just like in the film, and I remember thinking, in those few seconds: "Oh, that's a simple way to create this special effect." I had a similar reaction when I saw the movie. I simply dismissed this as perfectly normal. There was nothing at all unusual about a movie light in my yard in the middle of the night, but at the same time - it was very odd.

Where do I go with this?

Is this just proof that it was nothing more than a dream? Or, did "they" somehow create a screen memory? It seems like “they”quickly scanned my brain, picked a screen image from the files in my memory banks, and implanted the image of the movie light. Okay, just typing that previous sentence was hard, what I wrote is a big leap, but it feels accurate.

Am I using this "movie light" image to reinforce my own belief that nothing happened, and it was just a dream. Or, is the overt sense of a screen memory telling me that something very strange actually happened?

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Here’s an email excerpt from Mac Tonnies:

“Sure, your recollections aren't as inexplicable or dramatic as some, but you've never claimed that they were. (I think I mentioned this in a comment on my blog, but I tend to think the episode with the five Grays really *was* a sort of waking dream, as I've experienced similar phenomena myself). But the point is that you're not making unsubstantiated claims and that your take on the UFO counterculture is articulate and worth hearing, even if one happens to disagree with it.”

I agree with Mac on some level, I think this didn’t literally happen, but I simply don’t know. That said, 18 years later, the memory still haunts me.

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Text added Oct. 2nd 2013
Presently, I feel that this event truly happened. I came to this conclusion because of that sensation I tried to describe in the essay above. I say this after some serious self examination of my own memories. That altered reality feeling has happened tome several more times, and each time it was very much part of a UFO memory. I wrote about these other experiences and how I reluctantly came to this conclusion, liked in a post titled Hyper-vivid Distorted Consciousness.

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slow news day

                       Mellow voiced newscaster Robert Siegel.

I have a soft spot for pithy little palindromes, like this: Do geese see god?

I even ended up on the radio because of it. For three minutes and thirty seconds, I got interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR's Morning Edition. He got some non-actors to play roles in a very short excerpt of my one-act theatrical work, THE PALINDROME DRAMA. This was a novelty play, with all dialog in palindromes. Below is a little bit of the interview that got edited out.

Robert Siegel:   Now mike, what is it that you find so fascinating about palindromes?

            (long awkward pause)

Mike Clelland:   Uhhhhm - I think they're funny?

This comes in at a tidy 3:33 time count

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reassuring dreams

My weird journey has brought me face to face with a lot of people who declare themselves to be psychic, intuitive or at a higher spiritual vibration. I’m deeply skeptical of these claims, but if it’s true, I might as well chat with them. They will all ask me what I do. Do I meditate, do I pray, do I use a Ouija board?

I don’t do any of that. I sleep under the stars.

Here’s what seems to work for me. I walk into the mountains alone with a dinky backpack holding just the bare essentials. I live in a beautiful place, so this is convenient. I check the weather before I go (this means looking to see if there are any clouds in the south) because I don’t want to be bothered with a tent.

I hike until it’s dark, set out a little pad and then lay myself down to sleep. The proper term is "open bivouac" but the accepted slang is astro-bivy.

If I'm inspired, I'll go thru a simple request. I'll ask, out-loud, "Okay universe, if you want to tell me anything that could help our troubled world. Or, if there is a lesson I need, please let me know. I'm receptive."

And then I fall asleep.

The results have positively bizarre. I will have the most weirdly vivid dreams. Some of them are richly mythic, with heavy-handed metaphors. But most of the time, they are curiously reassuring. So much so, that I call these my reassuring dreams.

I don’t know what it is about me, but my sychronicities have (for the most part) been playful and - well - sometimes downright silly. Why it’s unfolding for me like this, I have no idea. Maybe because I’m a cartoonist, it’s manifesting - well - sort of cartoony.

I've met a lot of people who claim the the UFO abduction phenomenon, and when I tell them I sleep outside alone they say, "I could NEVER do that." For me, it's just the opposite, I am deeply content alone in the mountains. I love sleeping under the stars.

(more vivid and reassuring dreams to come)

vivid dream

During the summer, I sleep outside a lot. I make a real-deal effort to spend a LOT of time camping in the mountains. If I can sleep under the stars, I'm happiest.

Sometimes if I'm inspired, I'll go through a simple request. As I lay down at night, I'll ask, out-loud, "Okay universe, if you wanna tell me anything that could help our troubled world, please let me know. I'm receptive."

And then I go to sleep. I did this last summer, and here's what I got.

The dream I received was amazingly overtly visual and wildly exaggerated. I was alone on an enormous metal roof, literally miles wide. The angle was shallow enough to walk around on, but still it plenty steep to be really scary. I looked up above me on the roof to see a huge canvas tarp tied off with ropes. When I say huge, I mean it, again - literally miles wide.

Behind the tarp was a chaotic conglomeration of all the world armaments, tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers - piled together in a massive jumble. Everything was crammed tightly behind this tarp. And the tarp was old, stained and rotten. The failing tarp as inadequately jury-rigged on the metal roof. This massive pile of weaponry looked so tenuous, it was obvious just a hair's breath away from failing and sliding down the roof.

I walked down to the edge of the roof, and the precipice was mind blowing.

I've spent a lot of time in places like Yosemite, so I know what it's like to stand at the edge of a huge cliff. But the edge of this roof was altogether more expansive and awe-inspiring - and down-right scary.

I'll add that the world below was a haunting vision of natural beauty, lush wet jungles and waterfalls.

Then I wake up. This was not a normal dream, it was something much more vivid.

Okay, I don't need a doctorate in comparative mythology to interpret that dream. The imagery was blatant and unconcealed. But - I mean, is it news that the world is on a precipice with looming military disaster threatening to ruin the natural world? It's not like I was given some secret knowledge. I already knew this, and (I hope) so does any thinking citizen of this planet.

I've had overtly weird experiences (see the rest of this blog) that point to some sort of unknown contact. And, I truly feel that these vivid dreams are part of the same phenomenon. This is somehow intertwined.

What am I supposed to DO with these not-so-subtle experiences? Am I over analyzing this?

(more vivid dreams to come)

Saint Patrick's Day (with 13 links)

Masha Telna (above) and Lily Cole (below), two super models, both with vaguely terrifying eyes.

This morning I recognized a pair of dueling blog posts.

The only two blogs I care about are from Mac Tonnies & and Christopher Knowles, and they are both pictured on my sidebar, with links (as is Whitley Strieber). They both write in their separate blogs about how weird certain super-models can look. They understandably ponder if they might (in fact) be alien hybrids. Or, as Budd Hopkins would correct me, transgenic beings.

Christopher's vote:
Lily Cole...or Indrid Cold?

Mac's vote:
Masha Telna: alien-human hybrid?

- And -

There's more. Just so you know, I had a long phone chat with Mac on Sunday night. We talked about sychronicities, Cindy Gail, Whitley, The Secret Sun, Indrid Cold, Aeolus Kephas and all the weirdness surrounding OWLS.

And - today is St. Patrick's Day. I'll add that the Christopher Knowles was caught off guard during a recent podcast interview with Aeolus Kephas. When Aeolus cautiously asked Chris if his very curious memories of a scary Leprechaun at the foot of his bed might imply some sort of contact experience, there was an audible pause - and Chris replied with a shaky: "No."

[LINK to the fascinating podcast]

And - Mac and I had a long talk about how the synaptic fiber of the internet may be a new set of neurons, allowing and encouraging a alternative web of synchronistic happenings. (like this post) - and this!

And - Mac sent me a link to an amazing article about Whitley Strieber - by Aeolus Kephas.

And - Chris compared Lily Cole to: "the owl-human hybrid-demon-goddess Lilith"

And - Lilith is the name of Whitley's heroine vampire in LILITH'S DREAM.

And - Whitley openly states that his vampire novels are metaphors for his "visitor" contact.

And - Whitley spoke out on my blog about MY owl story.

And - Cindy Gail sent me a cute LEPRECHAUN email today - and the magical synchronicity surrounding HER appearance in my life is the stuff of providence.

AND - today is Cindy Gail's birthday!


A list of this morning's synchronic WEIRDNESS:
Super Models
Hybrids
Blogs (in threes)
Owls (in threes)
Indrid Cold
Leprechauns
Whitley Stieber
Aeolus Kephas
St. Paddy's Day
and - Cindy Gail!

(Gee Wizz - Did I miss anything?)

orange flash and missing time

This is my old neighborhood as seen in a google-earth image. The yellow X marks the exact location of the event.

  This story requires reading this other story first.  

It was a pleasant and clear autumn night in Michigan, I was a boy living in a quiet suburb of Detroit. I was 12 years old and in 7th grade, it was 1974. It was Friday night after the local high school football game, and I was walking home after the game ended. It was normal for me to walk the half-mile back to my house. I was with my friend (also named Mike), who was walking the same way. We were close to my home in a neighborhood of small suburban houses on a well lit but quiet street. The scene was completely normal and calm. We were in front of a house where an elementary school pal named Cindy Gail's used to live.

A recent photo with the spot marked with a yellow "X"

I know exactly the spot on the sidewalk where we were when suddenly there was a bold and jarring flash that took up most of the sky. It was a giant blur, and everything up above us was lit bright orange. It felt like someone just flipped a switch and the sky lit up, and then went back to normal. As soon as it happened, it was gone. It was completely silent. We were surprised and both responded with, "What just happened?"

There was nothing to see, since the event was over instantly, but something unsettling had happened. Was it a meteor? Was it lightning? Why was it silent? I know that I saw something, but there's an odd skip in my memory.

The color seemed utterly bizarre, it was a very bright and very saturated orange. To this day, whenever I see a campfire, and look at that the way the coals can glow as a warm radiant orange, I say to myself, "That's how the sky looked above Cindy Gail's house."

We continued to my house, I said goodbye and Mike walked home. I was excited to get home and watch a television show I really loved (KOLCHAK, The Night Stalker) that started at ten o'clock. I remember leaving the football game in order to get home in plenty of time so I could watch this show. But when I walked in the door, my parents were angry that I was out so late. I was surprised because I had made certain to be home at about 9:30, but instead it was well after 11 o'clock. It seemed odd, but I was genuinely disappointed because I missed that cool TV show.

The next Monday a group of friends were all in the cafeteria at my junior high school, along with Mike, and I told everyone that we had seen a bizarre light on Friday night. Mike added, "Yeah, a UFO with lights and everything!" What? I hadn't seen anything with lights. Did he see something I didn't? Mike and I never mentioned that night again.

That was over 34 years ago, and I have no idea what has happened to him.

I've always had a memory of this event, but the pieces were disjointed. I clearly remember the orange light in the night sky. And, I’ve always had a definite memory of missing that TV show, and my parents being angry about me being out so late. I had no explanation for that missing time. It wasn't until the mid-1990's that I remembered both of these events together. It happened while watching an interview with Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files, he talked excitedly about how he loved the same TV show (KOLCHAK, The Night Stalker) when he was a kid. Instantly the memories resurfaced with an almost electric jolt, like somebody just flipped a switch in my head. These two events slammed together in my head.

I suddenly realized that this all happened on the same night, I jumped off the couch and paced around my cabin in anxious circles. I’ve read a lot of UFO books, and the implications of this story unnerved me to my core.

Note: I easily googled the TV show KOLCHAK and it was only on for one season. So, I can pinpoint this event to the fall of 1974. The show was on Friday nights at 10 o’clock, exactly as I remembered.
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A little more about the orange flash.

Now remember, this is over 35 years ago, so I can only say so much. I remember that it was a very pleasant night in autumn, there was nothing stormy about weather.

The actual color was a hot orange. Exactly the color of glowing coals when they "illuminate" as that deep rich orange. Quite a vivid color. Radiant.

The flash was abrupt. Normal night sky - ORANGE - normal night sky. Lasting maybe 1 second. Extremely jarring. Perfectly silent.

Imagine you took movie footage of a night-time street, a normal suburban street on a clear night. The film runs thru the projector at 24 frames per second. You take this film, and using some sort of post production computer effect you change the sky to a hot radiant orange, all of it, one uniform color. But only for 24 frames, meaning just one second. No fading up and no fading out. Just ON - and then OFF.

If I was to watch this film on a projector, with the effect inserted for one abrupt second, this would match (as much as I can remember) what I saw in Michigan in 1974.

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I've added this on Aug. 6th 2009.
If you've read this far, you simply must read about the curious reemergence (again, at an intensely synchronistic moment via facefook) of my friend from that night, Mike.

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And - I've added this on Sept 2nd 2009.

I just got off the phone with Cindy Gail. She still visits her old next door neighbors (the couple are now in their mid-80's). She said they told her a story that they saw a glowing green UFO over her house! This would have been before 1977 (when they moved).

I begged Cindy to play the role of investigative reporter and dig up more on this very curious puzzle piece.

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if only I could muster up my courage

Cindy Gail in 1967

I am trying to be brave, but it’s been oppressive and scary.

This blog was created in a flurry, and it was all about some deep need to share some of my nutty experiences to the world. Where this need is coming from? I wish I could answer that.

I know full well what my next post needs to be, and it requires bravery, or maybe the better way to say it, it requires abandonment.

I want to post a story about a 1974 UFO sighting. I saw something in my hometown in Michigan, but I’ve been stuck, unable to put it on this blog. Well, I didn’t really “see” anything beyond a very strange orange flash in the sky, but my friend told me he saw a UFO. It lasted just a second, it was silent and weirdly jarring. I arrived home almost two hours later than I should have, and the implications are disturbing. There is more to this story, but hopefully it’ll be the next post (above).

This event took place on a lovely autumn evening in the quiet suburbs of Detroit.

It was just a block from the house where I grew up, and I can point to the exact spot on the sidewalk. It was in front of a house I know well. This is where an elementary school class mate lived, and this home will forever be known as Cindy Gail's house. There is a sweet and emotional part of my childhood all wrapped up in this house. In 1967 I went to Mrs. Dunn’s kindergarten class and met Cindy Gail. I’ll add that she was my very first crush - ever. She had light red hair and freckles, and there was something so centered and calm about her. I remember her doing art projects, and they were always tidy and perfect, and I envied her sense of self.

Cindy moved away when we were both still in elementary school. We haven’t talked in close to 40 years, and I had no idea what happened to her.

Let’s fast forward to yesterday. I spent the day cross-country skiing in the foot hills of the Tetons. It was a glorious day, and I was with friends. But, the one thing that kept spinning in my mind was this oppressive need to post that story about the long-ago event on the sidewalk in front of Cindy Gail’s house. The implications of that night are a little bit scary, and I was wallowing in insecurities. Was I brave enough to share what happened? I didn’t know if I could go through with it.

As I skied I tried to visualize how I would post it on-line. I felt there needed to be some sort of visual graphic. Recently, I had used google-earth to pin point the exact spot in front of Cindy Gail's house. I obsessed over this image, with that little marker pin-pointing the spot on the sidewalk. I’ve spent a lot of time compulsively staring at that image, and all that it implied. I thought that this satellite view of my old neighborhood would work okay as a picture for this nerve-wracking post.

And I was planning to do it last night, if I could only muster up the courage.

After skiing I was tired and unmotivated. I stared at my computer, knowing what I needed to do, but it just felt so daunting. I can so clearly visualize that haunting spot in front of Cindy Gail house. I was stuck, unable to follow my heart.

My computer makes a quiet ping, and I check my e-mail, and two messages come in, side-by-side.

The first was - unbelievably - a facebook friend request from Cindy Gail.

What?

I stared at my computer in utter disbelief. Oh my God, was this really happening? I immediately replied to the request, and added this message:

Mike Clelland (March 12th, 2009) wrote at 10:29pm:
Cindy Gail? You did a "show & tell" in Mrs. Wyler’s first grade class showing how to fold a piece of paper, gently lick the fold, and then you could easily tare the paper in a nice straight line. Clean and perfect.

I still do this, and EVERY time I do - I think of you!

(NOTE: I realize now that this was actually Mrs. Zimmerman’s 2nd grade class)

At 10:33pm, this Message comes back:
Yes, that's me!! I think of you whenever I see cartoons! Are you still wearing Wonder Bread bags inside of your boots? I was so envious that your mom did that.

We talked back and forth via facebook - and I was absolutely overwhelmed. I even tried to tell her how utterly weird the coincidence was - that she contacted me - tonight of all nights.

It would be hard to describe how magical and wonderful this felt. It literally felt like there was sparkling “Disney Dust” (the cartoon stuff from Tinkerbell’s wand) swirling around me as I sat at the computer.

Okay, and to make things even weirder - the second e-mail right after Cindy’s, that came with the same little ping - was from the infamous UFO abductee Whitley Strieber. He was now following my updates on Twitter - and boy-o-boy, did I have something funny to share with him!

If my life is a path, and if I pay attention, I can sense it’s direction. This path is leading me somewhere. It feels like all the little clues that the universe is whispering to me are inching me toward one thing, that I share my extremely curious life events with the world. Yesterday, I was stuck on that path, unable to move forward, frozen and cowardly. Then at 10:27 PM, I was slapped in the head by a facebook friend request from the cutest girl in Mrs. Dunn’s kindergarten class!

Now I have the courage to post the next story.

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I’ve added this on Aug 6th, 2009.

Since we re-connected in March, I have been chatting (thru facebook) with Cindy Gail over the last few months. I talked with her last night, and a curious thing came up. It seems I remembered something wrong. I had assumed that Cindy had moved away from my hometown when she was in 2nd grade. She corrected me, she lived in that house on the corner (in the photo) until the end of 7th grade. That would have been the spring of 1975.

That means she was living right down the street from me when the orange flash event occurred. For some reason, this seems so strange. Maybe I just forgot, it was over 30 years ago. But we talked about the teachers in our elementary school, and it I remembered a lot of details, and as we talked I remembered some funny events involving her throughout my years in that neighborhood.

I realize now, that she may have been home, in her house just a short distance away from me on that autumn night in 1974.

- and -

If you've read this far, you simply must read about the curious reemergence (again, at a synchronistic moment via facefook) of Mike Lewis.

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And - I've added this on Sept 2nd 2009.

I just got off the phone with Cindy Gail. She still visits her old next door neighbors (the couple are now in their mid-80's). She said they told her a story that they saw a glowing green UFO over her house! This would have been before 1977 (when they moved).

I begged Cindy to play the role of investigative reporter and dig up more on this very curious puzzle piece.

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Note: the name Cindy Gail is a pseudonym.

Whitley Strieber reads this blog!

Whitley has a popular website [here's a link] and on wednesday evenings he participates in the on-line chat room. As a sort of lark - I log onto Whitley's chat room, and there are like 38 people, and there is a frantic inability to make out any conversation. Just a frenetic series of rapid fire posting.

I nervously type in "hello" in among the flurry of fans.

Whitley sees MIKEC, my forum name, and says: "Mike's blog is great!"

It was SO weird. It took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing. How did he know about my blog? I asked some questions on the forum, and slowly figured it out. Then I checked and found that Whitley had left a really insigtful comment after the owl story. Later I found out that Mac Tonnies [here's a link for his blog] sent Whitley a message on twitter directing him to my owl story. I heard from the chat-room visitors that Whitley began his chat room session with an invitation to his fans to visit my blog. The internet is a curious thing.

I've always been extremely impressed with Whitley Strieber. I even met him once, at a conference in Arizona, we had a really nice chat, and he was supportive when I told him about my anxieties. It was a funny feeling, this blog has been up for less than a week and it's being complimented by the big-guy himself.

I later found out that Mac Tonnies had "twittered" to Whitley about the owl story, and that's how he arrived at this site..
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Kristy talks about owls (and God)

This is Kristy (above) on the morning after the second owl event. I told her that none-other than Whitley Stieber had commented on our owl story. And, I asked her if I could add this picture to my blog.

Kristy wrote:

Sure! I like that picture. Strangely enough, spending a lot of time in my grandma's room as she was dying, I noticed that she had that picture on her dresser. I must have sent it to her at some point.

That is so cool about Whitley Strieber. I remember picking up his book from my parents' shelf when I was six or seven, and showing it to all my friends and us all being freaked out. I am all about the divine aspect of this whole thing. Obviously. I like that he said that, about being connected to God. Because that night I saw the owls and whenever I dream of them, that is the benevolent sort of "spirit guide" feeling I get. Not that they are otherworldly, but that they are..."in" worldly.

Because there's no way that I could explain any of this outside of the context of God. And, you know, not "God" in the "because the Bible tells me so" sense, but God in the real, eternal, "I know this much is true" sense. (please excuse the shitload of quotation marks, I just had a long night...) And by God you know what I mean...the all-that-is...etc. (she said, always remaining self-conscious of sounding Churchy and alienating...whoa, alienating people).

That's what I felt and that's what I feel...that if anything happened that night, it was definitely some sort of communion with the all-that-is. (As I was just writing that sentence, I remembered that Whitley Strieber's book was called Communion, right?)

Here's a quick link to our curious OWL STORY.

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And, Kristy's BLOG is wonderful. She is a much better writer than I'll ever be.

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out Kenny's window

The image above was drawn recently, and the event was over 30 years ago, so I no doubt that it's not quite exactly as it appeared - but it feels like it's close.

I was at my friend Kenny's house for a sleep over when I was about 12 years old and in 6th or 7th grade. It was around 1974. It was nighttime and we were in an upstairs room, and one of us pointed out the window and said, "What's that?"

The room was dark, and we both moved our faces right up to the window.

We clearly saw something, a craft of some sort. It was shaped like a coffee can with a pencil sticking out of the top. It was larger in the sky than a full moon, and we watched it for about a minute. It was descending near the horizon at a very controlled and slow speed. It was spinning slowly as it moved lower, traveling at an odd angle, and then—it was gone!

Accompanying the big "coffee can" was a tiny blinking light. It was easy to track this light in the night sky as it moved steadily toward the craft. It was when this little light "connected" to the big craft that it vanished. The little blinking light then flew off. This blinking light looked like nothing more than the running lights on an aircraft.

We were really excited. We decided not to talk about it, but instead we ran downstairs and went to the kitchen table where we knew there were paper and pencils. Kenny's Mom was at the table too, and she watched as we drew it. We both drew the same thing. I remember Ken corrected me and pointed out that the edges of the "coffee can" were slightly beveled.

Kenny also didn't see the blinking light as it approached the "coffee can"—he only noticed it after the thing vanished, and the blinking light trailed off in the night sky.

I still have the drawing. (see the post below)

This sighting left me with the very distinct impression that I was seeing something otherworldly, and this feeling is hard to describe - but it was overwhelming. And ever since then, whenever I read accounts of UFO sightings, I think, "Well, I've seen one."

This is the same drawing, but includes some descriptions and arrows to show the motions of the "coffee can" and the small blinking light.

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Text added December 10th 2010:

Recently, I had found a good analogy about how it felt to see that craft from Kenny's window.

I am old enough to remember an era before computer generated animation. Until a point in the early 80's there was simply no such thing, any animation would have been analog created using a camera and film. My eye, even at that young age, was attuned to visual and cinematic imagery. It was truly arresting when I saw the very first Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). As I recall, it was nothing more than a rotating cube, with simple videos on each panel (This short clip would be laughingly crude by today's standards). But there was a surreal smoothness about the motion, not the staccato movements of cell animation.

I was mesmerized, I was seeing something entirely outside of my reality. There was a paradigm leap, from clunky analog animation to something entirely different.

That is what it felt like seeing the coffee-can shaped object in the sky. I was seeing an entirely unknown form of imagery. It shook me to my core because it was so radically different than anything I had ever seen - or even imagined.

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This pencil image was used as reference for the newer drawing at the top of this post.

This was drawn, on Kenny's kitchen table in about 1974 in Northville Michigan, his Mom was sitting with us at table with both of us as we drew it. The details above show the blinking lights as they move toward the "coffee can" in the night sky. At first i drew the shape as a true cylinder, but Kenny corrected me, noting that the edges were beveled. If you look closely at the paper, you can see where I erased around the page and rounded the edges of the form.

I drew the blinking light in the original pencil sketch as if it were doing a sort of alternating "blink" and then a "double-blink." Presently, I can't remember exactly how it was blinking (and the updated drawing above shows just a single "blink" effect. I can state with absolute conviction that the small light looked perfectly ordinary, it was to my eye nothing more than running lights on an airplane in the night sky.

Also, when I would tell this story in my youth, I would say that when the blinking lights met the coffee can, the lights of the craft turned off. This was me trying to sound believable, but the way I remember it was that the coffee can shaped craft actually disappeared, the way it vanished was instantaneous. Just "blink" and then gone. It was only after I began to read UFO books (somewhat compulsively) in the early 90's that I shared the experience more truthfully, and I said that the craft disappeared.

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drawing from about 1974

This image was used as reference for the newer drawing that is posted above.

This was drawn, on Kenny's kitchen table in about 1974 in Northville Michigan. The details above show the blinking lights as they move toward the "coffee can" in the night sky. If you look closely at the paper, you can see where I erased the pencil and rounded the edges of the form. His Mom was in at table with us as we drew it.

I recently did an updated drawing of the same memory.

Two phone calls from my hospital bed

  Dopey cartoon from the 1994 book CLIP & GO by John Long

          

In 1993 I moved from New York City to a little town in rural Idaho. I had spent a decade in the the city doing illustrations for advertising agencies, and I needed a change. My occupation was unsatisfying, and I desperately wanted to take on new drawing work. I had been dreaming of doing book and magazine illustrations instead of the drudgery of the advertising work.

At the same time, I wanted to start working as an instructor for an outdoor school in Wyoming. I felt a very real pull to change careers. After a ten long years in the corporate world, it was a fantasy for me to play the role of an educator in the mountains.

In the winter of 1994 I was living in a little cabin in Idaho, still doing advertising agency illustrations thru the fax machine back to my clients in New York. I was yearning for other jobs. But, it felt impossible to break into a new avenue of work, I was pidgin holed in a very narrow style of drawing - and I felt stuck.

At the same time, I had applied, and been accepted, to take the instructor training for this prestigious outdoor school, I was due to start the 35-day course in May. This was a dream-come-true and enormously exciting.

Late in the winter of 1994 I felt a dull ache in my belly, and at the same time I had a high fever. I spent a sweaty day laid out on the couch lost in a spiraling dream state. The next day I called my doctor and went into his office. He was quite concerned, and suspected appendicitis. He withdrew some blood and did a white cell count, and then sent me immediately to the emergency room at the local hospital.

I spent the next 24 hours being poked, prodded and tested by a team of doctors, and they all seemed stumped. They all suspected appendicitis, but they weren’t sure. The next morning I went into surgery thinking that I would simply have my appendix removed, a normal procedure, and I would be fine after a few days.

When I came out of general anesthesia, the doctors were gravely seriousness as they spoke. The told me the surgery was much more complicated than they had expected. There was an infectious mass that was quite unusual in my abdomen. They were forced to remove approximately one third of my large intestine, and I was should expect a long recovery.

Two days earlier I was healthy and strong, but now I stuck in a bed with a creepy web of tubes going in and out of me, and a long scar that ran from groin almost to my ribs. I felt absolutely horrible, the pain was debilitating and the feeling of weakness just crushed me.

I lay there in that bed, and my only concern was the impending 35-day instructor’s course in May. I was due to start the training for a new career in less than two months, and my heart sank because that was obviously not going to happen. My dream had evaporated. I called the school and talked to my admissions contact, and told him I was in a hospital bed and I had no idea when I would be strong enough - if ever - to take on the training.

When I hung up my mood was horrendously low.

The very next call was to check my answering machine at home for messages. I lay in the hospital bed and heard this loud and boisterous voice in my ear.

“Mike Buddy. Largo here. Gimme a call. We got work to do!”

And he left a number and hung up.

Largo is the nickname of a famous rock climber in California, his real name is John Long, and I had no idea how he found my name or why he would call me. I dialed his number and he picked up the phone. He had this goofy way of talking, acting like we were lifelong pals, and went right into why he called. He was doing a instructional climbing book and he wanted me to do the illustrations, he loved my cartoon style, and he thought it was perfect for this book.

I asked how he even heard about me. He said he saw some samples from the editor at CLIMBING magazine. It took me a moment to figure out what this meant. Then I remembered about a year earlier I had sent a manila envelope with a handful of xeroxed pages to that magazine. There wasn’t much to it, just some samples of my cartoon style.

I told him I was in the hospital, and I had just come out of surgery that morning, and I had no idea when I would be back at my desk.

Largo grunted, “What? Well get the hell out of there, I don’t want any excuses--we’ve got a book to create!”

I had just had two phone calls, one involve me telling the school that I was too weak to work for them. This meant that a long time dream had simply vanished. Poof, gone.

But the next call had been with this funny guy telling me that I was going to illustrate his book.

One of my life dreams had disappeared, but another dream had arrived instead.

My recovery was excruciatingly slow, and I walked out of the hospital nine days later on shaky legs.

I spent the summer improving, and it was therapeutic time for me sitting at the desk drawing funny cartoons for Largo’s book. This lead to another book, and then a bunch more. I also got work doing illustrations for CLIMBING magazine. Presently, I’ve illustrated about 20 or so books, all in the playful and goofy style that began with that phone call from the hospital bed.

I’ll add, that later in August of 1994, I was strong enough to take that training course in Wyoming, and fifteen years later I’m in the role of senior instructor at the school. Now I train newer instructors in advanced winter camping skills and glacier rescue techniques.

On April 1st, 1994 (yes, April Fool’s Day) I had two phone calls, back to back, in a hospital bed while my head was still in the fog of general anesthesia. I had one dream evaporate, and then I had a new career, one that I desperately wanted, magically appear out of nowhere.

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Text added August 11th, 2013
I just saw the time count on this posting is 12:34. This number is a big deal for me and I am forced to pay attention when it appears.

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Teton crop circle

Teton Idaho, 2002

This is an event from the summer of 2002. This was the weekend that the movie SIGNS premiered, with crop circles as part of the plot.

It was mid-day and I was at my desk doing the mundane stuff of my everyday life, and I had this sudden flash. I thought to myself: We need a crop circle here, that would be so fun, and it would really shake things up.

This thought just emerged in my mind out of nowhere. And the idea seemed have a simple sort of playful tone. It was just a nice thought.

The next day, I saw a friend on the street here in Driggs. We chatted for a little while and then she offhandedly added, “You know that a crop circle appeared in Teton last night.”

What?

I was surprised, and I asked her for any details. She had actually just returned from visiting the circle. It was outside the little town of Teton Idaho just a few miles away. I realized that I needed to go visit this thing. And within minutes I bumped into another pal, a fellow named Jeff and told him about it. Without any hesitation, we both hopped in my little Subaru, and we drove to the area. Jeff has been a friend from my little town since I moved here, and he is a good sounding board for all things paranormal and conspiratorial. We are strangely similar in our fascination with this fringe stuff.

When we arrive a the circle, there were a lot of cars parked along side the little country road, and a lot of people milling around. We looked up onto a gentle little hill and we saw an obvious pattern of circles in the field of wheat. We hop out of the car and we immediately meet a very attractive woman. We start talking and she says she is doing research. She has a series of little plastic ziploc bags filled with soil samples and crop samples all labeled and organized.

Then, and this came out of nowhere, she announces that she is working on a book about UFO’s. I was a little surprised, because she sort of changed the subject - and it was a topic I was extremely interested in. I asked what it was about, and she went on to say that it was a collection of curious and funny stories associated with the UFO phenomenon.

Then she said something very interesting, “I am not sure of the title, but I know what I want the cover to look like. I want it to look just like a comic book cover from the 1950’s with exaggerated hand-lettering and drawings of people reacting to flying saucers in a cartoony sort of way.”

She went on, “I know exactly what I want, but I haven’t found an illustrator yet.”

With that, Jeff lets out a big belly laugh.

I pull out my wallet and hand her my business card. I say, “Well, you don’t have to look anymore, because I’m the guy.”

Now, I don’t know how much you (the reader) knows about me and my illustration style, but EVERYTHING that I draw seems to look like it’s stuck in a comic book from the 1950’s complete with exaggerated hand-lettering. So, this was more than a little bit coincidental.

Again, this synchronicity had a tone of playfulness.

I encourage you to follow up with another blog. Read a story about this same crop circle by the researcher noted above, she describes seeing a small disc shaped UFO above the formation as she was making measurements. [click here] The post is dated March 3rd, 2009.

And here's a link about this formation, [click here] for a write-up on the research from the UTAH UFO HUNTER'S website.

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angel at the grocery store

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  Audio reading of this essay HERE  

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I teach winter camping for an outdoor school in the Northern Rockies. After a two-week course, it’s nice to get the stink out of the down sleeping bag. This is no casual undertaking. A negative 40 degree winter bag is huge, and it only fits in the biggest washing machine at the Laundromat, and it takes forever to dry.

I was at the local Laundromat on the main street in my little town. Stuck there with that down bag in the dryer. I would open the door, feel the dampness and add another quarter.

It was a quiet day, and I was sharing the Laundromat with a family of Mexican immigrants. The young couple had a few kids running around, they didn’t seem to speak any English, so all I could do is periodically smile at them.

The set up of these big industrial dryers is a little bit awkwardly, one is on top of the other, and there are two sets of buttons that control the two units. I was using the bottom, and the Mexican family had the dryer on top. I added a quarter, and I realized it was the WRONG slot. I had just mistakenly given the family an extra seven minutes of time.

No biggie. But, I somehow manged to do this two more times. I just “gave” the Mexican family 75 cents. Why was I so confused about using a dryer?

I wasn’t interested in asking the family for my money, that seemed silly. At the same time, I went through all kinds of weird liberal guilt about what I had done. I played it out in my head, had I just altruistically helped these poor people? Wasn’t it a nice, that I - the privileged white American - could be so selfless. I immediately recognized how pathetic and useless that avenue of thinking was, and I just dismissed the whole thing.

Not too long later, the sleeping bag was dry, and I left.

From the Laundromat, I went directly to the local Grocery store. I got what I needed and stood in line at the check out with my few items.

As I inched forward in the line, I noticed the checkout girl. The strange thing was, in my head, I immediately announced to myself, “She’s an angel!”

I was awestruck.

She was young and extremely pretty. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and I assumed she was Mexican. As she helped the customers ahead of me in line, she was quiet and smiling. There was something so radiant and pleasant about her, and the silent way she went about her job, that it left me genuinely touched.

I get up to the cash register, she rings up the few things on the conveyor belt, and I pull out my wallet to pay.

But, I didn’t have enough cash. She shows me the total, and I realize I am exactly 75 cents short. I was embarrassed and said I would return an item to the shelf. She didn’t speak, she casually pantomimed to me not to worry. Then she reached under the counter separating us, and she pulled up her purse. She dug through it, pulled out a little change purse, and calmly counted out three quarters and put them in the cash register. She smiled, I thanked her, and walked away.

I have never seen her before or since.

As I review this event from a few years later, the thing that impresses me is the life lesson, that I needed in my life, right then.

I had been through a lot of difficult emotional stuff in the previous years, a lot of isolation and depression. It's sad to admit but something as normal as people being nice to me would induce anxiety, I felt like I wasn’t “worthy” to receive kindness. Even simple things would be challenging. I wouldn’t let friends buy me lunch, or if someone complimented some job I had done, I would awkwardly find a way to deny their praise.

But, on this day in the grocery store, the very lovely cashier did something nice, and the weird synchronicity seemed to disarm me to the point where I smiled (truly smiled!) said an honest thank you - and moved on.

Since that day, I feel like I’ve been really good at saying thank you. And that was a really important hurdle in my life.

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Added June 2011:

I recorded myself reading this post, it's short and sweet. It's under 4 minutes long, and it was the third thing I posted on this blog, and it one of the most heart-warming synchronicities I've ever experienced.

  Listen to this short little essay HERE  

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About that Mexican cashier in the story. She said nothing at all, to me or to the customers ahead of me in the line. She simply smiled and pantomimed everything.

In this essay I said that the Mexican cashier was pretty. Well, let me clarify that. You know who she looked like?

If you were doing a movie about the birth of Christ, and you needed to cast a beautiful young woman to play the role of the Virgin Mary, this girl would be who you would hire. Yes, she looked like the incarnation of Mary, mother of Jesus.

It is as if I had come face to face with an archetype of a mystical kind of purity and sweetness. This silent cashier was the embodiment of a subtle kind of perfect beauty. I had never seen anyone that radiated something so kind and calm—except this silent cashier. The Blessed Virgin/Angel/Cashier I saw looked very much like the actress Catalina Sandino Moreno. The girl I saw was barely 20. 

Catalina Sandino Moreno

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