Mahteighja Miller-Gill

You don't change worldviews overnight, and it's not like changing your outfit, and putting on a new guise and shouting to the world, "Voilà, I'm brand new!" No, at fifty-four you're pretty set in your ways, and this was going to take time and help, not only from Alinda, but from a new friend I'm about to meet, but first. I have to move and get out of that drafty, money guzzling apartment, and my faithful caseworker will find the place I'm still in today, fourteen years later. People, I'm moving up in the world from a two-room apartment with a bath, to a three-room apartment with a bath. Yea! Believe it or not have a just a bedroom will help me, I don't need anything more. I now have an efficient apartment I can use as a studio/writer's den, and the living quarters, perfectly sized for me, are tiny. I'm two blocks from the grocery store so I can get cigarettes when I need them, and I'm a block from the local city recreational center, where I will here Joe Biden speak, when he is running with Obama for Vice President of the US, but I'm downstairs, and with my COPD it was difficult to get up and down the stairs with my groceries; however, I have a north light for painting, if I'd ever take it up again. I moved August 20th 2007, and I signed my rental agreement.

Alinda was still with me, but I don't see her in the flesh. I see her as a vision when I meditate, or when I'm in the state of hypnopompia. I recommend every one meditate, and I'm not talking about prayer as in Christian prayer, I'm talking about slowing your brain down by concentrating on your breathing, it is called mindful meditation by most, and you become mindful not mindless. Some say meditate on nothingness, well shit, what is nothingness, and if you find nothingness to think about, doesn't that by definition make it something? I can reach a state of "not thinking" but first I have to concentrate on something, i.e., my breathing. Before, in life counting backwards was a way to relax and go to sleep, so the anesthesiologist taught me in 1971 to do this before surgery. Now, I was taught by my guide to focus on my breathing as I count backwards. Instead of adding things like sheep, I'm subtracting things to get to unconsciousness, and the state of hypnagogia is the realm of neither asleep nor awake. You're drifting. Everyone goes through this as they go to sleep. You're lying there in bed and suddenly you feel your head sink into the pillow, and you'll jerk awake. That jerk is called a "hypnagogic jerk." Or you might be drifting to sleep and you feel a cat jumping on your bed, except you don't have a cat, or someone sits on your bed except you're living alone, etc.

The idea in mindfulness meditation is to stay in that realm, whether in sitting up and meditating or when you are going to sleep, you don't want to actually sleep, you want to stay in this nether-realm. Here you will have visions, and they will play like movies on the back of your eyelid. What are organ are you using to seeing with? You're seeing with your third eye, an actual eye deep in your reptile brain that was used to tell you when to hibernate, and it had an optic nerve and cone cells to see with. It is this eye you're using, because you're not in REM sleep. The images will move rapidly at first like a movie sped up, but with practice you can control them. Don't worry, this is not evil, it is quite natural and up to twenty percent of humans have them.

At that time, I was still learning to live alone, and it wasn't easy, and I slid back into a dark place, so I sought help. At the center I met, on Valentine's Day, my human atheist angel, Mahteighja (ma-TEA-ja), and we are still friends, although a couple of years ago she moved to be near her family. When we first met we don't see each other often, once a month, or more often. She drove and I didn't so I left it up to her to come over when she wanted, and it was purely platonic, thank you Ava for teaching me how to have a platonic relationship with women, or else I'm sure Mahteighja and I wouldn't still be friends. We played cards, and when we were younger we did some fishing together. We just enjoyed each other's company, and had a blast. By March of 2008, I get very sick, deathly ill, and it's the type of illness where you have a very high fever, and you're vomiting at the same time. It was the lead up to an epidemic of the reoccurrence of the 1919 flu, H1N1, in the US. I called the ER and I am dehydrated. My oxygen was down to ninety-four percent, and I have a fever. They keep me in the ER for six hours running test after test, and then they tell me I have the flu and to go home, but after three days, I'm not better, I'm getting worse. In my hypnopompia cycle of sleep Alinda brings me doctor after doctor to run test, after three weeks she tells me I have a tick borne illness and to go to my general doctor, and I do. It takes another week to get into the office to see him. He tells me the same thing: I have the flu. I said to him, "Run a test for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever."

He replied, "Do you know how rare that is?"

I said, "Yes, do it anyway."

He runs the test, and the next day his nurse called me and with her sad voice she said, "Olan, you've tested positive for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and the doctor has prescribed Doxycycline and bedrest from six months." It was mono all over again, but worse, this could've killed me.

I asked, "What if that doesn't work?"

"Well that's the only medicine available." I know what that means, if it doesn't work, I will die. Doxycycline was used to help save malaria patients, and I'm in big trouble. I'm exhausted all the time, so I sleep up to 20 hours a day. The fever leaves, but I am drained of energy. I don't do much. I meet with my caseworker, and I shop for food, and I fix meals and rest in bed, and that was it, until October. Suddenly, I feel great. The first thing I did was join an online poetry site, "Original Poetry." I have a handful of poems to my credit, and I started publishing them. It was my guides that encouraged me to write. One even wants me to paint, but I'm not ready, because I was manic when I last painted and I had a bad taste in my mouth for that experience.

My first follower in Original Poetry was a young man who calls himself "Helios," and the second fan to follow me was "Wordslinger," John Wordslinger is a close poet friend to this day. They like what I write, it was a shock to me that anyone would like my poetry, and they demand more, but there are no more...I will have to compose new poems, and I start winning contests, several of them, and it was more encouragement. At the same time, I'm on a medical group site and a woman in Arizona seemed particularly saddened. She had just attempted suicide, and I've been through that. We became friends and she was begging me for help. I stop everything, and I get on the bus to see her. I tell everyone where I'm going, Mahteighja, the landlord and my caseworker. I always loved Arizona when I passed through it while I traveled, and my cousins lived in the neighboring state of New Mexico, so I thought I might move there permanently. I don't plan to stay there more than a few weeks, but weeks turn to months. I met the lady at the bus station, and it was an exhausting three day trip for me. I wrote a short story on the way down for my new friend who told me about another friend who was a bit weird; she would love it. When I got there, she seemed frightened, not of me, but of life. She was alive, but there was no life behind her eyes. She did a bang up job of killing herself, and if it hadn't been for her son checking on her she'd be dead. I would spend from February to May before I returned home. She begged me to stay, but I was allergic to Phoenix, literally, I was allergic to everything that bloomed in the bloomin' desert. I had to return to Missouri. I told her to return to Canada where she had family and a support system. That is where she is today, and she calls me her angel, and that I saved her life. Really, I didn't do much, but keep her company, and I broke a few of my ribs after falls that were caused by seizures. When I leave, I tell her to go back home to Canada. Her life was difficult, and she clung to me too much. I wasn't what she needed, but I was a crutch from her journey from death to life. I'm proud of her. She is remarried and doing well the last time I checked, but I'm always ready to take her call day or night.

Mahteighja and I playing cards.

*I quit smoking on November 22nd 2013

**The third eye is also called the mind's eye. You are also told to see with you inner eye, and etc.