It's definitely started, the descent. I see now that the last few months where I've learned about my own personal power have been a spiritual training of sorts to increase my strength before I embark on this journey. I hope that the end result is creative, cathartic and something that I am finally willing to show the world.

I was falling asleep last week and I saw my parents' house, the house I grew up in. I've always sworn up and down that the house was haunted, ever since we moved in back in 1986. My hometown was built upon Indian land, and growing up, we've heard plenty of stories about Indian burial grounds and people who have seen spirits in their homes, the legless ghosts being the ones that most intrigued me. I've never seen a manifestation of a ghost there, but there was always an energy...and you were constantly feeling like you weren't alone in any given room, or that there was someone or something watching you.

As I was falling asleep, I realized that over Labor Day weekend, the house would be empty with my dad in China and the rest of my family vacationing in Reno (sidenote: Reno is my least favorite city of all time). I realized that I've never spent a night alone in that house--there was always a nanny or relative, or if I was gonna be alone, I would spend the night elsewhere. I realized that maybe it was time to confront the house.

I had something to do on Saturday morning, but I drove up to Fremont without packing anything but my laptop, ipod and notebook. It was completely spontaneous. It was a great drive and plus, I was breaking in my new car. For the first time, I didn't speed outrageously, and I didn't race anyone. I like that I'm much more respectful of the value of my life these days despite being faced with prolonged boredom. (sidenote: this heatwave is killer. It was 121 degrees just south of Gilroy, and yet I saw people working the fields in jeans and long-sleeved shirts. Whatever your station in life, always be thankful because it could always be worse). On the way up, my mom called and she wanted to know what I was doing. I told her I was going to a secret place and she said that I should tell someone so it's not 100% a secret, in case anything happened to me. I thought about it and it made sense, so I told her I was going home. I told her I wanted to spend the night by myself to confront my fear of the house and to stand up to the ghosts and she laughed nervously. "Oh honey...the house isn't haunted." But she added quickly, "But even if it is, I think they're friendly, helpful ghosts." She said that she thought I perceived the house as haunted because of the bad relationship of my parents and all their negative energy, so that since the house was empty, it wouldn't feel bad. That was definitely a theory I wanted to keep in mind.

I got to Fremont around 7pm, and settled in. I walked through the house, announced my arrival but of course, the one room I just couldn't go into was the guest room (I've always felt that the energy centered around the guest room, which always feels drafty and heavy. Reggie once commented on the same thing and I told him that when we first moved in, that was supposed to be my room but I spent a few minutes in there and begged to be switched to another room). I turned on the jacuzzi, stripped, and went skinny dipping, which I've never done before.

Something that I really never fully appreciated about our house. We're up on a hill in the boonies overlooking the city and the bay, so when you look out, it's all city lights for as far as the eye can see. There's a lot of separation and trees between the houses, so there's only one house that borders us, but they can't see us because of the walls and tall redwood trees. Our pool is landscaped to look like a natural pond, with a wood deck, stone setting surrounded by trees and a waterfall. The sky was clear so the stars stood brilliantly against the navy sky. It felt like I was at a private hideaway, protected in complete isolation. I thought about life, and people and what I wanted of myself. I realized that my focus is so scattered, that I've never envisioned an ideal future for myself, to create a projected goal that I can work towards. That's definitely one of my biggest problems, how I scatter my energies. I thought about who I wanted to be, and imagined what I would look like, how I would feel, and who and what I would have in my life. I realized I needed to write all this down and envision this future every day. I need to focus. I also recognized that I'm on the verge of outputting something very important to me and that will require a lot of courage, but I'm having trouble starting it, so I've been working on it from the middle. All I know is that I'm determined to have it dominate me this fall. It's all I think about, it's all I want. I've said goodbye to a lot of people lately and let them know that I'm going underground, but that it's not personal but this is just something I have to do...to focus. I've just gotta board up my head, so the energy can only go in one direction. But I'll be back when I'm done. I felt good. I'm facing a huge unknown, I'm standing at the edge of the woods on the outskirt of my comfort zone, and I'm just waiting for the signal to begin the plunge. But I'm prepared. As I was treading water and staring at the sky thinking all these things, I saw movement in the water next to me. I look over and there is the most beautiful black snake with crisp white rings swimming through the water. If you've ever seen a snake swim, it's the most beautiful, graceful process. It was just a baby, but I was mesmerized. I swam after it for a bit, watching it carve the surface of the water until I realized, wait a minute. 1. I'm in a pool, not a pond, so this is strange that I'm swimming with a snake; 2. There are no water snakes where I am, so I don't know if this snake really wants to be in the water or can survive; 3. That's not a garter snake and it's too dark to see it's head for me to tell if it's poisonous. So suddenly I think it's a good idea to get out of the pool. I get out and I'm watching it, and it's going around and around the edge of the pool. I realize it's trying to get out. I follow it and I still can't see it's head, but I also knew that coral snakes have bands and couldn't remember the indigenous habitats for coral snakes (I used to read up on snakes as a kid, but suddenly, all this knowledge was failing me when I needed it). I kind of just wanted to leave, but then I worried that if a snake isn't a natural water snake, if it would eventually drown. And then it would be my fault. It also occurred to me that in a lot of mythology, gods and goddesses can turn themselves into creatures to teach or test you, and if you fail, you're in trouble. And if this was a test and I let this snake die, I'm seriously an asshole.

So I decided to rescue it. I didn't have the guts to pick it up, but I also figured I didn't want to take too much time, because it was circling around the edge of the pool and I was afraid it would get to the barrier between the pool and jacuzzi, which is lower, and boil itself. Keep in mind, I'm still naked. So I'm looking for the pool net, and I see some poles standing next to a tree in the middle of all these bushes. I'm thinking, okay, that's what I need, but we also have a lot of spiders and I have pretty intense arachnaphobia. Specifically, I'm terrified of black widows, which live outside around our house. So I'm naked and barefoot, and to save this snake, I've gotta crash through this heavy brush to get the pool net, and suddenly I'm thinking this is either a spiritual test from the universe to face my fears, or this is an opening to Six Feet Under where some dumbass dies in a random, weird way--specifically for me, my family returns from their vacation to find me naked, drowned and floating facedown in their pool with a black widow bite on one buttcheek and a snakebite on the other. I desperately don't want to be in the running for a Darwin Award. So I decide to face my fears and crash through the bushes, even though I can feel me breaking through spiderwebs. I get to the tree and examine the poles to find that they're 3 poles, but all with no nets attached. I see another pole lying on the ground that's a little hike away, so I crash through more bushes and spider webs to find that this one has a net attached, but it's filled to the brim with caked mud and leaves. DOES NO ONE CLEAN THIS POOL? Fuck.

I go back and I swear I feel things crawling on me, but I suppress the urge to jump into the pool with the maybe/maybe-not poisonous snake. I have an epiphany and go into the house, grabbing a garbage can from the office. I use it to scoop up the snake who's so anxious and timid, that it shies away every time I come near it so I'm convinced it's not poisonous. The poor little thing was terrified. I got him in the trashcan, then tossed him into the bushes. The whole thing took about 45 minutes, but I felt really good at having gotten him out of the pool, though not good enough to dump out the remaining pool water from the trash can, so I put it back in the office for my family to discover (sidenote: I'm a lazy tool.) I figured that if that was a spiritual test to show that I am willing to put doing good for other beings over my own personal fears, then I proved that not only am I not a slave to my fears, but that I obviously have no qualms about doing good while completely butt naked.

I went inside, had a beer, did some writing, re-experienced the greatest conscious trauma of my life and was able to make some new discoveries about it and how it has affected my desire and ability to let people come close to me. While I was writing, I kept hearing footsteps and what sounded like someone moving things around in the kitchen. But every time I went in there, there was no one there and everything was in the same place. But after I would go back into the living room, the noises and footsteps would start back up again. It sounded like someone would walk into the kitchen, snack, then leave. Then come back and snack, then leave. I showered and played piano for a while, but at randomly times, I would hear what sounded like a woman singing in the next room. After a while, I started to get a little creeped out so I went to bed.

In terms of the value of going home, it was what I needed. It turned out to be a little writer's retreat and I was able to confront some major fears and experiences. In terms of our house, maybe my mom was right. I always thought our house was haunted by very angry, disruptive energy, but I think that was what my parents fed the house. While it was empty, it felt very serene, almost maternally protective, but you never shake the feeling that you're being watched no matter where you are. Sometimes you would be in a room, and you'll see movement out of the corner of your eye, like someone just walked in through the doorway, but when you turn, there's no one there, yet it feels like there's someone there with you. And I've never been in a house before that had so many unaccounted for sounds. The singing and the footsteps were definitely unnerving. All in all, I never felt unsafe, if not the complete opposite.

When I left the next day, I stood in the center of the entryway and said goodbye and thank you.

I drove back, getting in really late at night and met up with Colin who had just flown in from a sailing trip in Washington. He was staying with us just for one night while he settles his living situation, so we had some tequila and good conversation. I told him that while the Sun was in Leo, I wore red every day to attract creativity and fire qualities and he said that the color red to an Aries is like waving a red flag at a bull...they just want to charge it. I said that made a lot of sense, because I definitely was meeting and interacting with a lot of Aries all of a sudden in August. But lately, my life has been crowded with Scorpios.

On Monday, the heat was killing me. I decided to not go to my usual spots and instead, I ran errands then ended up at a Barnes and Noble to do some writing. I walked in and the place was crowded because it's a new store that had just opened up. I was looking around for a place to sit when this guy drawing in a sketchbook asked me if I was looking for a place to sit, and if I wanted to, I could sit with him. I kind of didn't want to because I wasn't sure I wanted to be obligated into a conversation, so I said that it was okay, because I had a lot of stuff. But then I saw that he was drawing, so I asked him if he was an artist (I'm looking for an artist to collaborate with me on my book of poetry, a collaborative exploration of inspiration). He said he was and invited me to sit again, so I sat down and we chatted.

We talked about perspective and he wanted to show me his drawings. As I flipped through, I saw something about neurofeedback so I asked him about it. He said he has a friend who is really smart, but has a learning disability so he has trouble expressing his intelligence, like he can't get the thoughts out of his head when he needs to. So someone told him that neurofeedback might help him, so he took down the name of a book for his friend. I listened and I asked him if it's like his friend's mind is a hard drive that saves a file but forgets the location, so he has trouble retrieving files in his head, even though he knows they're there. He looked surprised and said, that's exactly it. So his friend has a hard time showing how smart he is because he can't arrange or grab the ideas or thoughts and express them in a way that people can understand. I told him that maybe his friend doesn't have a learning disability, but is actually really smart. That a lot of times, brilliant people get diagnosed with a learning disability because their thought processes are unique or wired differently, so their mind works outside of linear thought. How linear thought, linear time/space are all illusions, just constructs to give human perspective a point of reference, but sometimes, people who are smarter can see beyond it, but they also have to train their brain to work within linearity so that they can communicate with people who are bound by those constructs. He listened and he said that this was crazy because he understood exactly what I meant. But he asked me, how do you reorganize your mind so that you can function and communicate everything you see? I said a lot of it come down to focus. For example, say you want to paint this cup. So you decide on a perspective. But someone who can see everything, will simultaneously see all perspectives at once, and it gets overwhelming. It's like those security control centers where they have a huge grid of all these monitors showing perspectives from different security cameras at the same time. You're aware of all of the possibilities. But knowing that, you have to decide which perspective you want, or which thought line you want to express or pursue, then put aside all the other ones, follow that one through, and if it's not what you want or if you want to express something else, then you go back, pick another one, and follow it through. Sometimes people who are really smart, when they are posed a simple question or topic, they have all these thoughts and questions or points, that it's like having all these marbles in their hands. So even though they want to show you this one green one in their right hand, they're afraid if they have to drop all the other marbles to show you this one. And they don't want to lose the other marbles. But you have to figure out a way to find a safe place to put down the other marbles, so you can show people these marbles one by one.

He started drawing as I was talking, drawing out marbles and said that this made sense to him. I told him that he must be a great friend to help out his friend this way. He said that he would like to think that his friends would do the same for him. Secretly, I wondered if he was talking about himself.

We started talking about inspiration and where it comes from, about how art and expression involves a connection between the artist and the universe, and between the artist and the perceiver. And how something that is truthfully expressed may not be "liked" by everyone, but it will cause changes or doors opening inside the people who are open to certain ideas or messages.

We started talking about how we see things and people. He asked me if I was good at characters because I seemed to know a lot about people and I said that I can look at someone and read them, their hopes and dreams, their worries and fears, the way a doctor can feel your body and "read" you. But you read some people better than others because their more of a reflection of you or their reflections are in direct opposition to yours so it still is recognizable, or they are reflecting symbols that you've had personal experience with.

We started talking about interactions with people is often just people trying to understand themselves, so everyone is trying to find self-understanding by watching the person across from them, or by their own reaction to the relationship or chemistry between the other person. He asked me what I got from him, and he told me what he got from me. He noted that sometimes I seem anxious. I said it's because this is the type of conversation that, once it's open, it can consume me and pull me away from focusing it on one project at a time. I laughed and said, you know your friend that you were talking about? I have the same problem. He laughs and said, then why are you giving advice on how to deal with it? I said it's because I know how to overcome it, I just haven't been completely successful at it yet.

He asked me, is it a burden to be enlightened? I thought about it and I answered truthfully. "Sometimes you get unbelievably lonely...especially when people think you know too much or will find out too much about them, so they don't want you near them." He looked at me and I got nervous, so I said I was going to get a drink, and walked away.

I came back and he looked at his watch and said, do you know you've been sitting here and talking for 3 hours and you haven't done any work? I was surprised because I didn't think it had been more than 45 minutes. I was waiting for the table next to us to open up and was surprised that so much time had passed. I pulled out my notebook and started writing, but he kept talking me.

At one point, I was saying something and he squinted, like he was trying to look deep inside me. I said, "You just beamed me." He looked surprised and said, "What?" I said, "You just sent a beam inside me to see if what I said matches up with my insides." He's surprised and caught off guard. "Uh, yeah, I beamed you. Wow, I've never been called out like that before." I said, "It's okay, I do the same thing...I just never realized what it looks like. I guess that's why when people see me do it, sometimes they can get uncomfortable." He asked me, "Do you know what I saw?" I said, "No, I only know you did it...I can't read what information you took back with you." He laughed, but he didn't tell me what he saw, though every time I started getting uncomfortable because I got confused about what was happening here, he would read my expression. Honestly, it felt like I was learning what it feels like to be on the other side of me, how it must feel when other people have this type of connection or conversation with me.

I also found out that I couldn't stop myself and I was talking about things, but as I was saying them, I was listening to myself and learning. I told him how I'm working on this project that's very personal and important to me, but I was having a hard time because I wasn't sure of the tone yet. How I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk because I feel like mentally, our perspectives are similar, but sometimes he makes things harder for the reader, like it's a fuck you if you can't keep up or understand kind of stance. I'm not yet sure how I want to treat my readers yet...if I want to open up and allow them to understand so that those who are secretly hiding similar pain and histories can relate and use this story as guidance out of their own cages, or if I want to write from a more mental fuck-you stance where I completely ignore the emotional implications of the story and say to the reader, this is my mind, this is my story...you might find it interesting but in terms of how to deal with your shit...that's not my responsibility.

As I was listening to myself, realized that this was a struggle that I've been debating under the surface, but which wasn't conscious until now. But with a chance meeting of a stranger in a bookstore, I had now made a serious, much needed discovery and now it was helping me move forward.

I looked at him, and I wanted to know. "When's your birthday?" I asked him. No explanation. Just a very direct expectation of an honest answer.

"The 14th," he said.

"What month?"

"June."

I looked at him, an ironic smile on my face.

"You mean Flag Day?"

"Yeah," he said, surprised that I would know such a random bit of trivia.

"Let me show you something."

I take out my wallet and pull out my driver's license, handing it over, only realizing too late that my address was on there. Oh well.

He looked. We have the same birthday.

"Whoa, that's crazy," he said, examining my license.

I looked at this guy who I just completely lost track of time with talking about inspiration and perspective and human mirroring and connections...and suddenly felt overwhelmed that we shared the same birthday. Are we indeed natural mirrors for each other? Is this a generous sign from the universe that some things are not coincidences on an objective plane and I'm moving on the right track?

As you know 614 is my favorite number because it's my birthright. It breaks down to 11, which is the symbol of an innovative but humane leader who ushers the masses into higher awareness and growth. June 14th is one of the symbols that I hold as sacred.

I've only met 2 other people with my birthday, both significant meetings. And here was another one, started by chance that immediately launched into a significant conversation, particularly acknowledging that strangers sometimes "plug in" so that they reflect each other's image for each person to learn and grow.

I left quickly. I needed to retreat to process the experience.

Later that night, I told Brian about my weekend, including the conversation with this artist who turned out to have the same birthday. He said that this was definitely very unusual, that it's one thing to meet someone with your birthday, but another to have specifically the kind of conversation we sat down and had, then to find this out. I told him about my experience with the snake, and how I had felt this was a test. I asked him if he thought that since I had put aside my fears to do something that was karmically good and unselfish, if this was my reward, that I was given an encounter that gave me knowledge that moved me along. He said, both experiences are pretty unusual. Who knows, you know? But it's definitely interesting.

I think my senior quote in my high school yearbook was something random like, The road of life has many twists and turns. Whatever you do, don't forget to signal. I used to wonder what the fuck I meant by that. But now I think I was being defeatist and a little sarcastic, because I think the key is...DON'T SIGNAL.

I think the universe expects your routine. It's like The Truman Show. Everyone expects you to do certain things, but the day you turn left unexpectedly when everything is expecting you to turn right, something happens. It's like there's a sudden small tear in reality because you didn't go where you were supposed to, and something happens...you see outside of the illusion that is life.

I think that's why unique things happen during the holidays, during long weekends. The universe expects everyone to be at a certain place, doing a certain routine, but all of a sudden, we're not preparing for the week on Sunday nights...we're not at work on Monday morning. And then unexpected things happen.

I propose that we all go through the week like it's normal routine, but at least once a week, do something completely random. Do something that you didn't even plan that is completely out of the norm. Go someplace you've never been. Or show up somewhere you usually go, but on a different night. Trip up the universe that's expecting to you to go one way, but you suddenly fake and go the other. And suddenly, I think you'll get this quick glimpse behind the scenes.