The Other World

2 p.m. All right. More? What else would you like to talk about?

Well, how about politics?

Sure. What about politics?

Well you know they say it took politics in the ’50s for Henry Thoreau to find out he had a country. That’s the kind of smart-aleck remark people make who don’t see behind the surface of things, or don’t want to be out of step with everybody else. The fact of the matter is that politics is mostly a waste of time, and always will be, except for one big thing: It keeps the machinery in being against an emergency. It’s like a standing army, mostly you don’t need it – in our time, at least – but if you do happen to need it, you need it, and what you spent on keeping it in being isn’t any too much, considering.

Now you know that the whole game of politics ain’t usually principles and statesmanship and high purposes. Usually it is offices, and government contracts, and everything we used to call “the courthouse crowd.” You could call ’em parasites and you wouldn’t be wrong. That’s why when the people finally have reason to pick up the machine and use it, it works so poor – they haven’t been maintaining it, they’ve been milking it. Continue reading 17 – Politics north and south

[Monday, December 26, 2005] 9 a.m. Well Joseph – James? – I know it is vastly easier for me to bring through values and attitudes and opinions than fact. So, what would you like to talk about?

Mr. Lincoln.

I can’t say that you folks appreciate Mr. Lincoln the way you ought to. There ain’t any use in putting him on a pedestal as if he weren’t just like you. He wasn’t, but he was. He was a man. The kind of man that don’t come twice in a thousand years. Perfectly placed, perfectly suited, perfectly willing – yet he didn’t get all full of himself, so he served without diversion.

Now, you take Napoleon by comparison. Ability in many lines – a genius, really. He was used by destiny to bring the middle ages to an end, and he more or less did that. (He died just a year before I was born, like Hitler and you.) Continue reading 16 – Appreciating Mr. Lincoln

Following up on Joseph’s suggestion, on the night of December 29, 2005 I did a telephone consultation with Karen Storsteen, a talented psychic who I had met at the International New Age Trade Show (INATS) while working the show for Hampton Roads.

I took notes at the time, but didn’t reconstruct them into a narrative at the time, which I regret now. The fragmentary nature of my notes almost resemble the notes of a remote viewing — which, come to think of it, is more or less what they are. The difficulty in reconstructing is that I made no note of my questions, only her answers. So looking at them now, from this distance, I can no longer remember which of her answers came from my specific questions and which were just perceptions that came to her. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes not.

As will soon become clear, much of the information that Karen got contradicted story that I had gotten directly from Joseph. As the saying goes, I didn’t know where I was, but I did know that I didn’t have a paddle. All I could do was continue – “sojer on” — and hope that at some point things would clarify.

Continue reading 15 – A Session with a psychic

[Christmas. 8:30 a.m. I have to laugh. For days I’ve had “Marching Through Georgia” running through my head pretty continuously. This morning I realize it’s Rudolph the Reindeer! It makes a change, anyway. But it’s ridiculous.]

Joseph, am I scaring you away – so to speak – by my own being scared about all this?

No. And you don’t have to be scared, just do it and have fun with it and when it turns out I’m not really here, tell yourself it was just having fun writing fiction.

Writers of fiction do research.

Sure, that’s so they don’t get caught making things up that the reader can check. That’s your public right now.

I know that. But maybe I’m making up this dialogue too!

And maybe you don’t really know one thing about the way things are, would that be so hard to imagine? So if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t even find out where to do your research – so just go with it, as you say.

Continue reading 14 – Perplexities

 

[December 24, 2005] Nearly 7 a.m. Now comes the need for divine intervention! I’m scared stiff to start writing about Joseph’s wartime experiences – because I do not have a clue what they were except a sense that he was at Gettysburg, injured by being clubbed in the lower spine – and the sure knowledge that he was federal and not rebel.

What if I get it wrong “in his voice” and find out not that there are no records, but that records exist and they prove he wasn’t where I have him saying he was? (What if he doesn’t exist, and all this is made up?) Nothing to do but find out, I guess, but I’d almost rather go into battle myself!

7:30 a.m. All right, Joseph.

If I’m really here, you mean. Well, that kind of caution does you credit, up to a point. But at some point you have got to jump, you know, and there ain’t any one last jump until you decide you’re done jumping. Maybe for a while, maybe for a lifetime. Doesn’t matter the length of the pause, it is always a pause, waiting on you – because there’s always another jump waiting. And wouldn’t it be dull if there wasn’t!

Continue reading 13 – So I was in the army!