Neutrogena sun block

Actual photo of the bottle refereed to in this posting

I spend a lot of time outside, and I get this irritated red face thing, and certain sun-blocks make it worse. Yes, life can be cruel. Alas, I am always on the search for a sun-block that does NOT effect my sensitive skin. During a recent outing with some folks I work with at an outdoor school, more than one of my comrades praised Neutrogena SPF-45. Hmmmm, maybe this would be the stuff that would finally end my search?

So, when I returned to my little home town, I went to the locally owned Health Food Store in the hopes of finding a bottle of Neutrogena-45. Alas, nothing. And not at the locally owned little drug store either. I left the main street, and began my drive home. I planned to see if the giant grocery store built on the edge of town (Broulims) had this stuff. I slowed down as I approached the turn, but I found that I couldn’t quite turn the steering wheel, I simply couldn't. The grim strip-mall of creepiness just seemed to repel me. So I continued home.

When I was driving, I saw big bulging bags of trash set along the roadside. This was the annual spring road side trash clean up. Each year an organized group of volunteers will pick up trash along the high way after the snow melts. I live right on the highway, and I always try and help out on these days. So, when I got home, I grabbed a few big plastic trash bag and went out along the road side. It’s actually pretty distressing to really see (and touch) a winters worth of trash along the road. Lots of cheap beer cans and cigarette butts. I had some time, so I figured I would just walk along the road collecting trash all the way to the stop sign on the next corner North, about a half a mile away.

There was a stop sign on this corner, this would be my target.

This way, I would scour all the trash on this side, cross the road, and do the half mile back to my cabin. That’s a full mile of trash pick up, and that seemed pretty decent.

As soon as I began, it started raining. And then the rain turned to snow. It was that crappy April kind of snow too, wet and cold. But I persevered, mostly because I was already soaked, and it felt like I was doing a nice thing. I thought about turning back but I just kept heading towards the stop sign.

There was something nice about this moment, I could feel the results in the weight of the big plastic bag and it seemed easy enough to keep walking.

And, when I got to my turn around point, that stop sign - literally at the base of the pole - I found a full bottle of Neutrogena SPF-45.

This simple story seems so silly, but at the same time, to me, it is absolutely intertwined with the other UFO events. But why?

How do I interpreter this? How would Leo Sprinkle look at this?

I was, at the time, 44 years old. The product was noted 45.

It was waiting for me - quite literally - at a sign post.

It was a STOP sign.

I can’t help to marvel at the altruistic angle in this story. It felt like the universe was rewarding me for a simple little good deed.

The story isn’t perfect. That bottle had been there for a while, potentially all winter. The contents had separated into this runny yellow oil, and gummy white glop. It was kinda gross, and completely useless as sun-block. A mystical lesson in cosmic duality?

I’ll add that I later got a new bottle, and it doesn’t irritate my skin. This is me role-modeling the use of sun-block in the mountains.

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owls at sunset

I went camping with a young woman that I hardly knew named Kristen. We went out for one night in the mountains near my home in the autumn of 2006.. What emerged was a flurry of weirdness.

We were out in a beautiful area, sitting in a meadow on a big rock. The sun was setting and it was warm and calm. I was preparing a warm dinner on a small camp stove and we talked while cooking. It was that magic twilight time and the moon was rising. As we ate our conversation reached a point where we were opening up about our spiritual beliefs and insights. As I listened to Kristy there was a moment when I realized that there was something truly impressive about her. She was perceptive in a way that inspired me.

At that moment an owl swooped over us, literally just a few feet above our heads. It was so cool and we were both delighted. Then there was another owl, and then a third!

All three were circling and swooping silently above us. It lasted for about an hour. During this time we set out our sleeping bags to sleep under the stars. As we lay there looking up at the sky the owls would swoop right above our faces, blotting out the sky for a brief instant. Owls have specialized feathers so they are amazingly quiet, adding to the strange quality of the experience.

It was so magical!

A little more about Kristy. She is sensitive and very smart, but at that point we actually didn't really know each other very well. We shared a meal on that big flat rock, surrounded by wildflowers and mountains. We talked about deep stuff as we ate. There came a point in our conversation when I felt a really strong and delightful connection to her. It was hugely life affirming. There came a point when I realized we were on exactly the same wavelength. It was exactly at that moment of realization about Kristy that the three owls appeared!

It was only later that I recognized the synchronous intensity of the moment when the owls appeared. It was over two years later when I called Kristen on the phone to ask if she remembered what we were talking about when the first swooped above us.

Without hesitating she said, “Oh yeah, I remember exactly what I was saying. I was trying to articulate my deepest beliefs about God. It was right then that the owls appeared.”

I was shocked at the intensity of what she just shared. Whatever is going on, that one detail adds a depth to the overall experience that tips it into the realm of the transcendent.

Back to that night in the mountains with Kristen. The next morning we hiked along a series of beautiful trails taking a different route back to the car. We were marveling about what had happened the night before. In the final mile of the hike we met an old girlfriend of mine on the trial. I’ll call her Carol (a pseudonym) and she was with her young daughter and son. She was now married and there had been and awkward tension between us in this small town.

I picked up her little boy and carried him while Kristen walked a little bit ahead of us with her daughter.

That morning Carol and I had the conversation I had been waiting over four years to have. It was calm and hugely reassuring. A short time Kristen and I said good by to Carol and her kids in the dusty parking lot. After we parted Kristen excitedly told me that the talking with the little girl was the most important thing that has ever happened in her life. I could quite grasp what she was saying but there was something about the little girl that reminded Kristen of herself when she was that age.

I should add that four years later in 2010 I had another chance meeting with Carol and a close up sighting of an owl in full daylight. This experience was all intertwined within a web of synchronicities.

Okay, there’s more. Less than a week later Kristen and I went out camping again. We were in a completely different area of the mountains.

Once again, it was just a single night of camping. In the evening just as the sun was setting we both felt a little bit cold. I suggested we walk up to a nearby hilltop to see the view. This would warm us up a little before going to sleep.

We did the short hike (maybe five minutes) up to the gentle rounded hill top. Within seconds of getting to the top we had the exact same experience. Three owls appeared and flew around us! They swooped close, landed on nearby branches and actually stood on the ground within a few yards of where we stood. The whole thing lasted about a half an hour and Kristen and I just stood there the whole time in in a tingly state of astonishment. I am pretty sure these were Barred Owls, a common species in these mountains. Now this may seem funny, but I’m pretty sure it was the same three owls.

Just like before, the experience was absolutely magical!

After all my years of compulsively reading UFO literature I was keenly aware of the reoccurrence of owls as a screen memory within the experiences reported by abductees. I was aware that this might be a possibility. Right in the moment I was super focused on these three owls as they swooped low over us, watched us from trees and landed on the ground right near us. I feel confident in declaring, those were real owls.

Seeing three owls once was pretty neat, but having the same experience just a few days later was positively bizarre.

In the days after this second event both Kristy and I were searching the internet for stuff on spirit animals and mystical insights surrounding owls. The results were curious. Two things kept coming up, one was that this is a sign to face your fears and Kristy seemed to feel that was a really important thing for her in her life.

The other was that owls are a sign to be patient, and this was important for me, mostly because Kristy was so hauntingly desirable on so many levels. She was young, smart and perfectly lovely. I was completely smitten by her. I’m 18 years older than her and that age difference created a lot of weirdness, but at the same time we were seeing each other almost every day, and we were constantly e-mailing and phoning. There was some sort of deep connection, and our time together was a swirling cloud of weird synchronicities. Kristy calls me a "kindred spirit" and that feels like an understatement. The intensity of the owl experiences created a weird urgency and a hungry emotion in me. It felt like I was getting swallowed up in a kind of fanatical madness, and boy did that make things awkward. So, patience was the perfect message from the great beyond.

I posted this story on my blog on March 4th 2009, it was the second day of the blog’s incarnation. The very first comment came from none other than Whitley Strieber. I suspect he read the essay and just zipped out a rapid fire reply. I don’t imagine he spent much time pondering what to say, that said I’m impressed at the outright divinity of his comment. He wrote:

The grays come in threes. The often appear as owls. Contrary to popular belief, they are profoundly surrendered to God. We find this frightening, because we are not. An experience like that is mostly outside of space and time. You need not look back on it. It is always happening for you both and all who know of it, forever. So, thank you!

I was kind of shocked to see his comment at a point when pretty much nobody could have known about my blog, it seems that my friend Mac Tonnies had send him a twitter link to the story. His references to God came before I realized that Kristen had been talking about God at the moment of our initial sighting.

I asked Kristen about her feelings on what our shared owl experience meant to her. Here is an excerpt from an email, in it she is responding to my question as well as Strieber’s comment. Here’s her thoughtful reply:

I am all about the divine aspect of this whole thing. Obviously. I like that he [Strieber] 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. And by God I mean the all-that-is.

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 follow up post with more from Kristen:

Kristy comments about owls, Whitley - and God!

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Text added Jan. 24th 2010

Over the last few years I have been seeing a LOT of owls, and I've been documenting more owl sightings in this blog. I know a lot of people who spend plenty of time outdoors, and I make it a point to ask if they have any similar owl experiences. So far, I haven't found anyone with any kind of similar experiences - except for Stacey (with an E).

If anyone out there has had any similar experiences PLEASE contact me, I would deeply appreciate hearing from you. My contact info is easy to find on this blog. Thank you!

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Text revise March 8th 2013

I just went thru and cleaned up this short essay. I revised it for clarity and grammar. It is essentially the same as it's 2009 incarnation. I added a few more details that seem relevant. I cleaned it up because I plan on using it for a longer format essay on owls.

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Also: 

This essay was originally posted in 2009 at 9:34 AM on March 4th. So, the date is '09/3/4 and that's the same set of numbers as the time, 9:34.

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Text added July 15th 2013

There is now a long format essay posted titled Owls and the UFO Abductee. In this essay I re-tell the events involving me and Kristen. I expand and explore the implications. Highly recommended.

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angel on the uptown E-train

Below is a story from over 20 years ago, and it still leaves me wondering.

I was living in New York City at the time. It was a lovely summer morning, probably 1984 or 85, I was about 22 years old. I got on the subway in lower manhattan on my way to an office job uptown. This was the E train, and I got on, as usual, at Spring Street.

The next stop was West 4th Street, and when the doors opened a very pretty young woman got on the train.

I don't understand why - but for some reason - I literally thought she was an angel. I'm not kidding. I was convinced she was somehow delivering me some mystical message. Maybe I died, and she was escorting me to the great beyond. Maybe this was the subway to heaven?

I was thunderstruck, and it was extremely strange.

I can vividly recall EXACTLY what she looked like and what she was wearing. She had short blond hair and she was reading the NY-Times (she folded the paper in the proper way that only the savvy new yorker knows). She had on a simple white summer sun dress. She wore white cotton "boating" shoes, low top and clean. No socks and un- shaven legs. She was smiling as she read the paper. She stood, and never sat down. And she never looked at me.

She got off at 34th street.

Now, at the time I was living with my girlfriend (Catherine) in a little apartment in SoHo downtown. When I got home that evening I told her about this weirdly profound event, alas - she didn't understand how intense it was. She actually got kind of angry at me - and that was typical of her. She simply saw it as me ogling, and immediately felt defensive.

Anyway - Now the story jumps a few months later, on a busy street in Greenwich Village (just east of Astor Place), I was walking on the sidewalk with Catherine on a cold wintery saturday morning. We had a rather tense relationship and clearly remember we were having a little squabble, typical of us. Then - she suddenly blurted out, "What are we doing? We shouldn't be together! I'm not your type, SHE'S your type!" and she pointed to this random woman on the sidewalk...

And it was her!

And - she was wearing the SAME shoes!

It was gray and blustery and she had on a heavy coat (a big green army coat).

Alas, right then, there wasn't any of that weird angelic shock to my psyche. She was with a guy, who had long hair and a beard. And - this is a funny impression from 20 plus years ago, I remember thinking this bearded guy was kind of a manipulative creep. I got a bad vibe from him.

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cat and string

The term UFO implies a lot, and by definition, it’s unknown. How can I wrap my head around something so utterly strange, something that, no matter how you look at it, remains unknowable.

Here’s something that helps me. I use a piece of string when I play with my cat, I stand in the kitchen and wiggle it around, and my cat just goes nuts. I never really let her “catch” the string, I try and keep it just an inch in front of her. Sometimes she’ll manage to get it in her claws, but I’ll snap it away and out of reach.

Does she think the string is alive?

I can’t help but think this is exactly what’s happening to us. To me, this phenomenon is similar to that piece of string. It wiggles out in front of us, but it’s simply impossible to catch. Does my cat have a way to perceive the string as a string? Maybe, but she doesn’t seem to be that insightful, her reality is that it’s a wonderful and special living thing that magically amplifies her very being. The string-game can get so overwhelming that she gets positively unhinged with excitement.

And the experiences described by the abductees may be impossible to accurately perceive. This bizarre experience is, like the string, capable of overwhelming and unhinging.

Do we say that the UFO occupants are visiting us in the same way my cat would say the string is alive?

One thing that draws me to this subject is that, at it’s core, it’s just such a intensely wonderful and scary story. I used to love spooky campfire stories as a child. Now as an adult, I still crave that mysterious thrill, and the UFO phenomenon fulfills that need. Is there something universal about our need for a scary story? Do “they” know about that need, and frame the experience in a way that will satisfy us on some deep level.

These stories are so elusive. We want to be able to “kick the tires” of this experience. But it just doesn’t happen. As soon as we get close to a clue or answer, it has a way of skittering away, just out of our reach, like the string on my kitchen floor.

My cat needs to play the string game to truly fulfill her cat-ness. Do we need the experience of trying to confront an elusive mystery, to truly fulfill our human-ness? A pragmatic scientist would say no, but what would a primitive shaman say?

My cat and I are connected to each other when we play the string game. So then, what are we connected to?

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This essay (above) was my VERY first posting on this blog. Look below, you'll see that Mac Tonnies left the VERY first comment. We have both written essays about cats as a metaphor for humanities interaction with UFOs.

These essays were the genesis for two more postings, HERE and HERE.

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AUDIO essay with Mac and me reading similar essays:

CLICK HERE

Posted Feb 11th 2010

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