So for a while I lived next door to the Manson family. This was after Chuckles, Tex, and the wimmins, they went into the prison. These Mansonoids—the neighbors—they were the remnants. Those left behind. True believers. Bitter clingers. Dead-enders.

The family's pathetic patriarchy, it was still in place. With a little Manson mini-me, occupying the Chuckles position. In charge of the bloviating, and ordering the women to and fro. The women, they did all the work, both in and around the house, and out in the World, where they gathered in the coin, mostly through waitressing. Before they went on shift, they would heavily apply the makeup, to obscure the X carved into their foreheads. Carved in honor of Chuckles.

I listened to the mini-me's spiel a couple times. It was the usual revised standard version: Chuckles, he was innocent, he had killed no one, ordered no one killed, he was misunderstood, a prophet, without honor, in his own country, he was all about Love. Yes, it was true, soon would commence a race war—Big Darkness, Soon Come—but Chuckles, he didn't try to spark it or anything, he was just trying to get his people Clear.

Like Chuckles, like the people of The Hairball, the Manson mini-me—well, brown people, they gave him the vapors. A black man lived across the street, and the Manson mini-me, he really didn't like that. He especially didn't like that the black man, he had a white wife. And that, together, they had produced several lovely children, in various fine shades of brown. Sometimes, when these children would come out to play in the street (nobody really drove on this street), the Manson mini-me, he would get weak, and have to go inside, and lie down.

More interesting to me than the mini-me, were the various Manson family children. I especially vividly remember this one boy, who basically just wore these little shorts, all the time, rain or shine. He had a poochy little brown boy belly, and a big beaming smile. He had great memories, of living out in the desert; he made it sound like a kids' paradise. And, to him, it no doubt was. He found Sonoma County—which is where we then were—considerably less wild. Which it was. But he was okay with that. He seemed okay with pretty much everything. He never evinced any desire to, say, hang a pregnant woman, or stick a fork in some grocer's stomach. He was just a kid. And, when the mini-me was inside, lying down, having the vapors, this boy would play with the brown children, from across the street.

Out there in the desert, Chuckles, he had become obsessed with dune buggies. Chuckles had long been enamored of Schicklgruber, and all of his works (once back in the big house, after all that Tate business, Chuckles, he snuggled up close to the Aryan Brotherhood, and transformed the X on his forehead, into a swastika), and so he decided that he and his people, they should equip themselves with a mass fleet of dune buggies—emulating, in his Chuckles mind, Rommel's Afrika Korps. In these dune buggies, they could meet the threat, Chuckles was convinced, of the Big Darkness, Soon Come.

So they stole cars, like The Hairball steals from his subcontractors. And that is what brought them down. For the law jockeys, responding to complaints that these people were stealing all the cars in Inyo County, swooped in, and put some of the Mansonoids in the pokey. Where one of them blabbed to a cellmate. Who then snitched to the authorities. And: that, was that. Previously, the law jockeys, they'd had no idea, who it was, who'd made the big bloody messes, back there in Los Angeles. But, now, they did.

These dune buggies, and the humans who coveted them, they are recalled in this song:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uopmr4sBNM4]

Our house had a big back deck, and so did the house of our neighbors, the Manson family. These decks looked out upon a nice stretch of forest, as the hillside fell away steeply, to, eventually, the little river town, below. Sometimes, when I would be out on our deck, then, over there to my right, the little Manson mini-me, he would be on his deck. Where, he would turn to face my way, assume the lotus position, and commence to Stare.

Once I was out on the deck with P, when the mini-me, he commenced this weirdness.

P, he came with the house. He lived in one of the rooms on the lowest floor. He had, like, this wizard brain, and was going to become a titanic Science Man. But then he went to one of the earlier Grateful Dead shows, in some little dive, I think maybe right there in Sonoma County. There, the band managed to tweak things so that the sound began infinitely bouncing off the walls. P had a head full of a damn great load of Owlsey at the time. Amid this aural chaos, he went through the white light, and came out a bodhisattva. He gave up the Science Man thing, and went to work in the county welfare department, there to ensure that the maximum number of needy people, received the maximum amount of what they might need.

P, he had infinite patience, with everyone, and he had spent many an hour, smiling and nodding, listening to the mini-me, as he gassed on, about the mini-me Reality. P was even allowed, on occasion, by the mini-me, to speak to the Manson women—an honor not granted, many mere mortals. So, I figured that, if anyone would, P, he would know what was up, with the mini-me's lotusing, and Staring. So, I asked him.

"He's trying to vibe us out," P explained. "He wants the house."

For some reason, I found this amusing. Maybe it was the Medicine. "Should we be scared?" I asked.

"No," P scoffed.

And, so, we weren't.

When I was not in the house next door to the Manson family, I was down in the tiny town, running a little bookstore, where I was proving myself to be the most inept businessperson, in the entire history of business ineptitude (well, okay, except for The Hairball).

Next door was the little one-man post office. And, the one man, he had his own version. Of Big Darkness, Soon Come.

He had served as an MP in Vietnam. And, there, he had experienced humans, as, not okay. In order to Deal, he fell into the arms of Lord Jesus. He developed a severe Evangelical Christianity disability.

At the time I was working next door to him, something fraught involving brown people, was occurring overseas somewhere. I think maybe Iran. And, this man, smiling beatifically, he explained that this fraughtness, it was a Sign and Wonder, of the imminent arrival, of the End Times. It would, all, soon, be over now, said he. And, he advised me, in a friendly sort of way, to get right, while I still could—Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!—with Jesus.

But, I had already done that. Jesus, he was a fine fellow. He got some major clues. But then, alas, he gave in to that unfortunate impulse, to not only tell it on the mountain, but also to a bunch of random humans. Including some humans, whose business it was, to make sure that the humans, they don't get any clues.

Like all the evolved humans, Jesus, he gave no shits, for the politics. But, in time, the politics, it gave some shits for him. And so, he became dead. And rotted into the ground. Like any other dead meat.

But then that carny barker, Saul of Tarsus, got hold of him, transformed him into a Sun King, said he was open to everybody—"step right up! come on in! free Medicine for all!"—some really clever boots tossed into the mix that truly inspired lure about Heaven, where you could even meet up, again, and forever, with the dead dog, the burners went out across all the lands with the fire that time so that the best and truest inscribings about who he was and what he was survived but in cave-burrowed urns for some 1700 years, only now beginning to emerge, and, well: that, was that. And, here, we are.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9PzVtDJmbs]

I was only in the house next door to the Manson family because that one man in the post office, he had formerly been J, who had lived in that house. But he, and his lover K, they had determined that the USA, it was going all to hell, and pretty much right away—Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!—and so they were off on a scouting expedition to Costa Rica, to see if that might be a Right place to relocate. And I, and my lover, we were house-sitting, in the house next door to the Manson people. Until K and J, they got back.

When they got back, there was the earthquake experience.

Around that time, another Big Darkness, Soon Come, at least for California people, was earthquakes. See, a human named Curt Gentry, he had, some years before, written a book called The Late Great State Of California, in which he had, vividly, in great detail, envisioned an earthquake, that would basically sink most of the state, leaving the humans who live, where I live as of this writing, with a fine ocean view. Of where the Great Central Valley, once was Real. Humans bought that book like heroin, and plunged into Fear. Which is silly. Earthquakes, in California, they are like hurricanes, in Florida. Normal. Deal. California, it is restless. That is expressed in its people, and it is expressed in its land. Nothing, to get hung about.

So, J and K have returned, they're doing the downstairs (except the room occupied by the bodhissatva P), and I and my lover are living in the upstairs. One afternoon I am in the upstairs, cooking and listening to some Blues For Allah, and the house, it starts to rumble and hum. Earthquake? If so, sort of an odd one. K, she comes flapping up from the downstairs, says she and I are the only ones in the house, her bedroom, it is rumbling very violently, she thinks it is an earthquake, and she is very Scared. It might be, feared she, the Big Darkness. Soon Come. And, she needs, my Help.

We descend, together, the stairs. The house, it is still vibrating. We go into their bedroom. Yes. Here. The earthquake, it is shaking the place, and without surcease. The whole room. Shaking very violently. I locate the epicenter. It is their mattress. Which is on the floor. I lift up the mattress. And behold there a mammoth white vibrator. It is roughly the size of a bazooka. It looks like something Hagrid would use, to please his woman. K, she is small, smaller even than Chuckles Manson, who is but five-foot-two. But mine is not to reason why. Mine is to but shut off this insistently undulating mortar-tube of pleasure, which has somehow unaccountably switched itself on, and proceeded to run wild, trapped, there, between the mattress and the wood floor, thereby shaking the house to its very foundation—switching it off, thereby ending the earthquake—and then, say, to K: "It's okay, now. It's fine."

Shortly thereafter, K and J, they moved, for good, to Costa Rica. My lover and I, we moved to the mountaintop. I don't remember who got the house. I do remember it wasn't the Manson family. I think maybe it was the black man from across the street. And his family. But maybe I just made that up. Because it would have been so Right.

Some years before, in a different village, there in the Cellar House, in a room, between the rooms, of The Witch, and The Mad Scientist, we sheltered a woman, who was on the run. On the run, beecause she had gone to the bombs.

Her story, was that she had been at Kent State. And that what, she had seen there, she saw, as the Big Darkness, Soon Come. And so, as counterspell, she resolved, to kickstart Revolution. Which she then commenced to did. With the bombs.

Now, some years on, when I met her, she was no longer so sure. That it had been, truly, The Big Darkness, Soon Come. Or that the Revolution, it were, either, so imminent.

She, for sure, had by then decided, that the Revolution, when it comes, cannot come with bombs.

She felt, very badly, about the bombs. She saw them, now, as a Big Dumb. She was just very glad. That, with the Big Dumb bombs, she had harmed no human. Or any other living creature.

She made it—walking, all the way, to Tir Na Nog—to Canada. Where she lives. In peace. Unto this day.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQtozWKCyg]

In the 1980s, everywhere, there was Big Darkness, Soon Come.

For, in those days, the White House, there of the Americans, it was occupied by a doddering old diwmit, luluing along in a Reality in which the Soviet Union, it truly was an "evil empire," and one that had to be confronted, at all times, and all and everywhere.

And, if, as the US and the USSR, and their various minions and proxies and factotums and fools, went about aggressively stepping on one another's shoes, somebody got feisty enough to let rain the nuke bombs, well, the old dodderer believed, that would probably be alright.

For, in his worldtrack, the planet was anyway nearing an End Times: just like my man, there next door in the post office, Ronald "Where's The Brain Of Me?" Reagan, he truly believed that, any day, the great good Jesus, he would be coming back around, to hug to his bosom, all good Americans.

Would make no never mind, believed Ronnie-he, whether those Americans, were crispy-fried, or breathing free.

For, after, the Big Darkness, Soon Come, why, there would, fer sure, come, Hebbin.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP-pzC-qJU0]

Meanwhile, across the great water, there in the Kremlin, people were cranky and paranoid and pretty much convinced that when the old nutter "joked" into an open microphone: "my fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever; we begin bombing in five minutes," he wasn’t really joking at all: that such a thing was inevitable.

And so, the occasion of this "joke," it was but one, of numberless times, when the Red Army, it was placed on high alert, the doors swung open in the silos, and the tumbrils of mobile atomic weaponry, they were sent rumbling, across the land.

Compounding the sense of crippling Fear—of Big Darkness, Soon Come—there in the Kremlin, was the fact that the Soviet system was then suffering from a continuity problem. As premiers, then, went tumbling into the grave like dominoes. As soon as somebody was appointed Head Man, it was like a death knell; inevitable he'd go worm-food, in somewhere around 12-18 months, to be replaced by another doom-boy, similarly accursed: keening, keeling, into the grave.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv13ZnkpWos]

August 11, 1984. Yee-haw. Good times.

Could've been the End Times—the Big Darkness, Soon Come—then. In some worldtrack or other, probably was.

It was not safe, to go to bed, in those days. Because there was no telling. What that animatronic nimrod. There in the White House. He might get up to. While you slept.

That is why, during this period, there was, manifested, and in mass quantities, and across all the land, cocaine.

So that it was not necessary. To sleep.

Probably my favorite near-miss—Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!—from that era, was when a 37-cent computer-part failed, falsely informing the US serial killers, deep underground there, in the mountain in Colorado, that the Soviet Union, it had suddenly launched, and for No Known Reason, a massive first-strike, of nuclear ICBMs.

It said so. Right up there. On the Big Board. Hundreds. Of the motherfuckers. Coming in right now!

Fortunately for us, else we would not be conversing here today, the serial killers then on duty, down there in the mountain, they Refused, to Believe, what they were Seeing.

They determined to triple-check, this nuke-rain, apparent Reality, before acting on it.

This hesitancy, it was Totally Against The Rules—they were supposed to respond like fucking Pavlov's dog: immediately, unthinkingly, unhesitatingly, slingshotting to the USSR, nukes in return—but they said—fuck no!—anyway.

And, eventually, determined, that, in the Real, the supposed Soviet atomic-salvo, it was not Real, at all.

Here is a little Secret. The nuke bombs, they do not want to go off. They are really pretty embarrassed. About being nuke bombs. At all.

Another Secret. Is that my old-days companero, Mikkel Aaland, he was right there, in the very essential instruments, there, in the 1980s and '90s, ensuring, that the Big Darkness, would not, then, Soon Come.

As he relates in his book The Sword Of Heaven, Aaland, in the early 1980s, he was arest, at a dinner party, there in San Francisco, when he was introduced to the tale of a Shinto priest, who had received a vision, post-Hiroshima, that the world was in a truly bad place.

Atomic obliteration—Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!—was its fate. Unless Something could be Done. A second vision, it compelled the priest, to break an ancient Shinto relic, The Sword Of Heaven, into 108 pieces. Then encase, each piece, in a stone block. These blocks, then must needs be deposited, preferably into water, in various places around the globe.

Through girding the globe, with these relics, the priest believed, the nuclear fire, it might be snuffed, a-borning.

Problem was, Aaland was told, the project was snailing. Not many blocks had yet been placed. And time was ticking.

Aaland, a writer/photographer who journeys the world from time to time, impulsively told the storyteller, that he would get involved, in the priest's project. If he were so needed.

And then, thereafter, the dinner having passed away in time, he thought no more about it.

Until he was called upon. To, actually, Do it.

Aaland, as he baldly relates in his book, resisted for some years, full involvement in the project. As he rejected full involvement, in his own life.

Few people were so naturally imbued with the era's nuclear dread as was Mikkel Aaland. His father had worked for many years for Lawrence Livermore Labs: a worker bee, feeding, in the belly, of the beast. In the weeks preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis, his father had constructed a snug fallout shelter in the family's front yard. Later, this would become Aaland’s boyhood home: as a teenager, he lived there. And, as he approached more deeply the Sword Of Heaven project, this room would come to occupy his nightmares. Bringing it all back home.

People in Aaland's karass, they locked onto the project, before he did. After his impulsive offer of help at that San Francisco dinner party—Aaland is a nice guy; he not infrequently offers to help people—he pretty much forgot all about that Shinto priest, who wanted to gird the globe, with sword pieces, heaved into water.

Until he arrived to visit the family home in Norway. To which his father had retired. And learned that the village was abuzz with wonder, that a package had arrived, there for Aaland, and labeled: "One Shinto God."

A block containing a piece of the sword. For Aaland to cast upon the waters. Because Aaland had, after all, offered to help.

Aaland, he hesitated, to speak of this weirdness, to his host, his father: a rationalist, a man of science. A, uh, Science Man. When he did, his father remained silent, and for some days. Norwegians, they often do that. Go silent. And for many days.

But then, emerging from the silence, and speaking, matter-of-factly, Aaland's father, he related the Shinto project, to Norwegian folk beliefs, that had sustained their people for millennia. And guided his son, to the proper placement, out upon the waters, of that first, "One Shinto God."

Still, Aaland, he dragged his feet, for some years, in fulfilling his role in the project. Because dragging his feet, that was what his life, was about. A natural-born photographer, compulsively Aaland snapped pictures, of all and every arena of his life. But: not: really. As example: on one occasion, a lover noted that in a photo shot of her and Aaland's feet on a beach, both her feet were in the frame, while Aaland had held one foot back. Only one foot would he show. That, she decreed, was him. Always holding back.

Only after many experiences, through many years, through which one must follow in his book, could Aaland completely give himself over to this project. And, once he did, open himself wholly, it became easy. When he stopped putting up resistance; resistance disappeared. He ultimately deposited gods, on five continents. He was key, to the completion of the project.

And, in his life, once he opened himself wholly, he was rewarded, with the flower, that would complete his life. Shortly after casting his last Shinto block, Aaland met a woman in Belgium, who he understood was his Platonic complement. Rather than worrying over this, letting it fall away astray, he acted. No more the guy with but one foot in the frame. He more or less upturned his life, and fairly swiftly, to lock together the pieces of the puzzle. And, later, when difficulties arose, as difficulties inevitably do, he, of will and strength, persevered. Today, he is a happy man.

As above. So below. The very oldest. Of wisdoms.

Stuff that can legitimately be defined as magic, or at least oo-ee-oo, are contained in Aaland's story. Such as when he, through a series of events seemingly random, tossed a Shinto god into the waters off Reykjavik. Shortly before, for no reason that any Sane Person could divine at the time, Reagan and Gorbachev, they arrived there, to, and from seemingly nowhere, at least talk, the worldwide abolition, of nuclear weapons.

Towards the end of his tome, Aaland writes:

Did a Shinto priest save the world?

At moments, when I'm switched to Shinto channel, I think he did. I can clearly see gods all over the world battling in unison for world peace, making sure a missile isn't launched here, helping tear a wall down there. But then, my rational mind, strong as ever, changes the channel, and I think all of it was just a lucky coincidence.

Except: there are no coincidences. And, as Isaac Luria saw: everybody saves the world, all the time. Or should. 'Cause: that's: what we're here, for.

In the 1990s, of course, the Big Darkness, Soon Come, it actually did descend, and the world, it did, indeed, end.

I didn't learn this, until some years after it had actually happened. When my companera, she devoted herself to psychic school, worked her way into the very most advanced classes, and, was, then, gifted, with this, Reality:

The Potemkin Sun version of reality claims that some time early on in the Clinton administration—that is, in 1994—the sun went nova, and the Earth was burnt to a cinder. However, no one on this planet noticed this, because of the efforts of the "good aliens" (the thinnish creatures best known for their attempts to protect people from the "bad aliens," those no-good-'un grays prone to picking folks up off lonely interstates, playing with their gonads, implanting non-ordinary knickknacks in their brains, and then setting them back loose).

In this instance, the good aliens allowed human brains to believe that the Earth was still here. And so were the humans. The aliens kindly threw up into the sky a Potemkin Sun, so that humans could go on believing that everything was Normal. They did this, it is said, because during the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987 human beings apparently proved to be "worthy," and "almost ready for the next step." Which involves not needing bodies. The good aliens figured it would be a shame to allow everybody to burn off like bugs on a grill, just a few short years before they would no longer be bothered by such things as being confined to bodies prone to vaporization in roaring jets of molten flame.

The aliens will take down the Potemkin Sun, so goes the theory, when humans no longer need it. When, I guess, they will all sort of join together and swirl away as energy beings, a la the close of Childhood's End.

And, yet—yea, verily—despite the fact that the planet, it has been saved, from the Big Darkness, Soon Come, first by Mikkel's proper placement of the gods, and then by the fact it was crisped to shit, but retained anyway, Potemkin-like, still, all and everywhere, even unto these days, must I sludge, day after day after day after fucking day, through humans, larval, eyes wide shut, inisistent upon the Big Darkness, Soon Come. Just as, way back way, in the Chuckles, days.

The Hairball, he will nuke. The Mad Bomber, she will nuke. The climate, it will nuke. The nuke, it will nuke. The population, it will nuke. The meteor, it will nuke.

Blah-de-blah-de-blah.

What all this is. Is projection. Humans, every one, will die. They cannot conceive of this, or accept it. And, so, through all of human history, they have projected their own death, out onto the world. If you open a history book, you will soon find, that in every generation, everywhere on the globe, there has always been, those, saying, definitively, that in that generation, or soon after, there will be Big Darkness. Soon Come. The individual human, s/he, inevitably, dies. And so. S/he projects that. Onto all the planet. Rather than just me die. Let it all die. With me.

Now, Jesus wept, and so, now, do I, in that, these days, there is always, at least one client, in my life. Cleaving to a Reality of. Big Darkness. Soon Come.

There was the Mexican lad, come up here from Union City, determined to turn round his life. Which he did. Till he looked too long into the television tube. And saw a show—sure fucked me, that such a thing did exist—called American Preppers. Preaching the Big! Darkness! Soon! Come! And so, though a convicted felon, which meant he was forever ixnayed on owning guns, he had, through the wisdom of this show, been convinced to rush out, and get him some guns. Many guns. To Protect his Family! From the Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!

The man and wife, in their 50s, who peered, way too long, into way too many tubes, and learned there that all was melting; they passed first through the "my precious" gold Reality, then settled onto food: conceived a Potato Reality, in which hundreds of pounds of tubers, they must be grown and stored, against the Big! Darkness! Soon! Come!. With, meanwhile, some Chemicals, that should be tubularly Ordered . . . that caused Homeland Security, to come roaring in, thinking they was ter'rists, wanting those Chemicals, to make big Bombs.

These last two, the man and the wife, they came to us through one of the legendary crime families of this region. The man, he is brother, to a trio of wild sisters, who have never allowed themselves, to be controlled, by any law. As a result, they are recurrently run, in and out of the pokey. He, himself, had never before, run afoul of the Penal Code. The sisters, they were outraged, that little brother, was now up against the law, merely for being a Potato Reality, fucking dumbshit.

The queen of the sisters, she has this most amazing tattoo, that is an optical illusion: it is both a rose, and a woman's face. It shifts back and forth. Like if you're P. On the Owsley. Back at that infinitely pingponging Dead show. She is very proud of it. As well she should be.

In her various tours through the penal system, she has roomed, now and again, with the Manson women. And she says:

"They're great gals."

As I'm sure they are. Now.

Truth is: there is no Big Darkness. Much less, shall it Soon Come. There is, only, the light.

As Kenneth Patchen, who saw as far as did Mr. Jesus, once did say:

Don't you understand? I have arisen not from the dead but from the living. I am not a voice crying in the wilderness. There is no winter here. No dark. No despair. The lights are going on in my house. I shall not allow the President of the United States to enter here. There is no darkness anywhere. There are only sick little men who have turned away from the light. I have all my lights on. And it is my own face I see in the blazing windows of all the houses on earth.

Mikkel, at the end of his book, he wrote this:

As I write these last words, rays from the afternoon sun are striking my office window. The golden light is wonderful. I can hear my daughter and her friends talking in the room next to me.

I want to tell my daughter not to be afraid, but I know that she will have her own fears and her own unique solutions. Instead I'll tell her to be vigilant, and to look to her dreams and nightmares for clues and signs of progress. I’ll tell her to be open-minded about the spirit world, and if it feels right, to call upon the spirits for help. I'll also tell her to seek out communities embarked on meaningful and noble acts. The acts need not be as large as the Sword of Heaven, for any act that makes the world a better place is worthy. Above all, I'll tell her that all action, big or small, must always be accompanied by the opening of one's heart. As the Sword of Heaven taught me, ritual only takes one to the door. To get through to the other side, there must be love.

The afternoon light moves from the end of my desk and for a moment illuminates the letters on my keyboard. From my window, I can see a huge ship passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge on its way to dock. I lean back and take it all in. I wonder where the ship is going next. I wonder where the light will fall now.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0sd8lML-S8]