Posthuman Blues

I emailed some illustrations, a bibliography, and a proposed sub-chapter insertion to my editor, who returns to work after a vacation tomorrow. I like to think I'm near the point where I can relax and let Pocket Books take over, but I really don't think a project like this will be fully out of my hands until it goes to press. Acquiring and cropping Mars Global Surveyor imagery (and matching up photos to their respective captions) promises to be the confusing part. Speaking of Mars: it's quite visible in the night sky, even in the city. I really wish I could view it with a good telescope, away from the light pollution. Tomorrow it will be as close to Earth as it's been in app. 60,000 years.





I've been immersed in "The Communion Letters," which is unexpectedly fascinating. I'm skeptical but very much sympathetic to the notion of contact with nonhuman beings, whether they're "extraterrestrial" in the popular sense or, more likely, something much stranger. Many of the first-person accounts in "The Communion Letters" describe trance-like sleep-states that could easily be sleep paralysis if not for the attendent weirdness. If "bedroom encounters" are neurological aberrations, then the definition of sleep paralysis needs to be expanded to include some truly bizarre special effects.

I've experienced sleep paralysis once or twice, fleetingly. It was very much as it's described in the popular literature: my mind was fully cognizant but my body was so much useless baggage. Accompanied by hallucinations or lingering nightmares, such an episode could be easily attributed to paranormal forces. Fortunately, I knew what I was experiencing as I experienced it (due in large part to my familiarity with "abduction" research).

Accounts of childhood encounters are uniquely interesting. If consciousness is as strange as modern physics suggests, then it seems weirdly reasonable to expect communication with nonhumans at a young age. Ever since encountering Strieber's books, I've idly fished for anomalous memories that might reflect a "buried" close-encounter episode but haven't surfaced with anything remotely conclusive. I recall some seemingly weird phenomena from a very young age, but the chances of any of it being other than memorable dreams or waking fantasies are preposterously slim.

I have a vague "memory" of playing with a diminutive helmeted figure in the woods. But as far as I know, I was never anywhere where this could have happened. Some die-hard theorists would insist that my memories were intentionally scrambled. But it's far more likely that an early childhood dream took on a life of its own, escaping my neurological filing system. After all, memory is not a reliable filmstrip; it's amorphic, malleable and, for all of its assistance, remarkably unreliable (hence my extreme skepticism toward "hypnotic regression" as a method of uncovering distant events).

Then again, the mostly unrecognized universal nature of the "visitor" experience makes me question the barrier Western ontology has set up between "dream" and "reality." My subconscious insists this delineation is too binary, like most intellectual constructs. Like David Bohm, I think reality is holographic in nature. Our brains are limited to peering at the universe's outermost skin. When we finally tunnel deeper, I predict we'll discovery a riot of nonhuman consciousness.

A few recommended books:

1.) "The Holographic Universe" (Michael Talbot)
2.) "Communion" (Whitley Strieber)
3.) "Passport to Magonia" (Jacques Vallee)
4.) "Equations of Eternity" (David Darlington)
5.) "The Abduction Enigma" (Kevin Randle, et al)

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