......How may I summarize the last few years of my life?
...The day was cold and bright. Gableplunk's guitar hung from his shoulder. He walked through his apartment, considering the question.
......People use automatic writing to illumine sequences or patterns in their lives. I'll try automatic rhyming.
...Idly he strummed his guitar until he found comfortable changes for the moment. He hummed a melody until it became familiar and he no longer had to think about it. In a humorous tone, he sang

Gableplunk went thunk
Into the tree trunk
For Gableplunk was an arrow
Not a sparrow who lived in
The forest
And rose with the dawn
Come t' think a rose is pink
And Gableplunk's feathers
Are white with fright
From the thought of plunking
Into a rose
Hey Gableplunk what 'cha thunking?
Asked the basset hound
I've found the answer t' birth and death
It's love my dove fly away
And I'll never see you again
In the wee hours of the morning
Gableplunk thunked
And flunked his exam

"Quest For The Rose, Part I"

February 7th
...Gableplunk had the eerie sensation that he was being drawn by powerful forces towards something he knew little about. For weeks he'd kept many things within him and now he felt that he was disappearing. Each night he dreamed. His dreams were mysterious, compelling. He woke in frustration. What did his dreams mean? He knew that they had significance and each day he mulled over their contents.
...Gableplunk dreamed.
...He was escorted by a young girl to the home of her family. From the street, he looked up at the house and saw a long imposing stone building like a courthouse. The entrance was at the end nearest him. Hewn in the stone below the entrance was the word:

The girl said that it was her family name. He woke.
...He felt compelled to find the meaning of the expression. It was clear in the dream that it was an anagram. What was inside the building? He knew that it had to do with judgement and the dead, but didn't know how he knew. It came to him and he accepted it. He felt that it had to do with his disappearing. What part of him was disappearing?
...He woke from the dream when he saw the building. He knew that it would've been dangerous for him to enter. It was imperative that he realize the meaning of the anagram.
February 8th
...The source of dreams was able to act as a physician. Dreams could depict circumstances, actions and emotions that allowed the dreamer to relive a certain moment by reconstructing that moment as it could've been had the dreamer been devoid of that character that caused him to experience the original life situation as he had.
...At a party one evening when Gableplunk was thirteen years old, he was reclining on a lounge chair on the side of the room. C.F. came across the room and lay partially on top of him. She kissed him on his lips. Gableplunk was so naive and so surprised that he moved his head back. He didn't know what impression he created. Within, he was confused. At the time, he was so shy, so frightened of intimate affections, that the experience or lack of it was humiliating. Gableplunk could still taste and smell the toothpaste she was using.
...Gableplunk dreamed.
...He was kissing C.F. in the balcony of a movie theater. The people around them didn't notice what they were doing. When he was thirteen, Gableplunk thought that everyone knew what a fool he was. This time, in his dream, kissing C.F. was lovely and full of wonder and innocence and the freedom to be innocent. Their ages had changed. They were older, yet Gableplunk was full of wonder at the perfect unmarred eloquence and loveliness of that simple kiss.
...Gableplunk realized that the wounds left by his youthful encounter, repeated a hundred times in one way or another through the years, were to a great degree healed by his dream. In it he was able to be all he hadn't been. It had a remarkable effect. He felt smoother inside. The lesions and loose strands of his being torn apart during those years were healed. In effect, his dream was an essential part of his becoming whole. Healing had been done at a deeper level than the dream. The dream was the manifestation of the healing act; it was an act that remedied more than the single situation; it had a greater circle of consequence; it created a greater balm, a circle of healing that enabled him to make them fond memories rather than horrid recollections to be pushed from his thoughts as too harrowing to be re-lived. That transformation in itself was a further healing process. Gableplunk wondered at his capability to transform the embarrassing and humiliating into something beautiful.
...Remembering C.F., Gableplunk reminisced. He moved forward in time to his first fulfilled love, Sharon. His memory blurred, and he realized his images and feelings were different from the confusion and panic he'd experienced years before when Sharon cut him out of her life because of a tragic and mistaken assumption about a mutual friend. The contrast with the warmth of her memory jarred him; it passed and he felt warm again, tranquil and humble. Serene and gently smiling, he found his guitar and began to play. Fingerpicking softly in waltz time, he sang

"Sharon"

February 9th
...Gableplunk dreamed.
...In the first dream, he was blown off the face of the earth by a strong wind; in the second, he was blown off by a detonation of some kind from below.
...Gableplunk interpreted being blown off the earth in both dreams as a message of warning from within: "Beware of dissociation from your ground!" He took the earth to be the ground of his psychic existence, the base to which he must remain rooted during his composing or else suffer the consequences of dissociation: the alienation and despair of floating in space without a substantial identity and foundation for his sanity.
......My inquiry into the other darker world within me and the confrontation with its contents could literally blow me right off the face of the earth! In the second dream, the detonation from below was the unleashing of the mighty forces existing in the deeper levels of my being. Dreams may be messages and contain vital information necessary for my well-being. They may also be direct contact with dynamite.
February 10th
...That night, Gableplunk was standing in the lobby of a hotel with a fish in his hand. A woman walked by. They exchanged words. Gableplunk accompanied her to the elevator and up to her room. It was agreed that she'd prepare his fish. They'd make love.
...Gableplunk was reclining on a couch. The woman was in the kitchen. Gableplunk felt a strange presence. Someone was watching him. He looked around the room.
...Standing in a dark doorway was a shadowy figure, half man, half cat. Its presence pervaded the room. The figure seemed to blur. It was changing its form and moved out of the shadows towards Gableplunk. Emerging from the doorway, it took on a man's form, ran across the room and leaped into a perching position on Gableplunk's knees. He grasped Gableplunk's lapels, pulled him to his face, gangster style, and asked in a sinister tone, "Did you make it with her?" Gableplunk assumed that he was her lover and that he was in a ve r r r y serious situation yet the man seemed to be a caricature. Gableplunk thought that he was very funny and began to laugh. He answered, "No, I haven't... I'd intended to." The dream ended.
......The hotel was my psyche and the woman was an emissary from my unconscious sent to help prepare the way to a fuller understanding. The fish was the unconscious, usually mute but with proper preparation, a tasty morsel. The reference to love-making was obvious, unification, and the man who burst into the room was a personification of the darker side of my nature. I'm sure he would've interfered with the preparation of my fish and the love feast afterwards, but I wouldn't let him and transformed him into a comic figure.

......In this dream, his appearance may have had a positive function: a damper to the development of an orgy that might have resulted in the loss of my quasi-objective consciousness and thrown me into the hands of the more anarchic and subjective unconscious. This time his appearance may have been protection, though I could just as well argue for an undesirable appearance. How do I maintain proper balance?
...His second dream that night was of a more serious nature. In it, Gableplunk accompanied a young woman to her quarters. Their intentions were to make love. They entered and a second woman appeared, squelching the whole thing. This was really interference! The first girl said that they couldn't go through with it while the other girl was there, so they settled on the floor and played monopoly.
...Gableplunk became irritable and confused. The rules of the game changed with every move and the second girl was openly hostile. She became the voice of the rules, chiding him on every throw of the dice. The dream ended in confusion.
......The two girls were personifications of my unconscious. The first was a positive one. I was to merge with her in a union of the conscious and unconscious. The second girl was the other half, the negative half. She placed obstacles in my way to prevent the union from taking place. She was the voice of fragmentation and schism.
......The changing of the rules of the game seemed to indicate that I shouldn't expect to find that the unconscious obeys the rules of logic or rationality that I'm accustomed to within the framework of my conscious mind, my quasi-objective state or my ego structure.
......Since her hostility seemed to be of an entirely impersonal nature- she changed the rules haphazardly, randomly- I could only surmise that she meant me no personal harm; she was the Goddess of chaos and part of a pattern of harassment and interference, as well as an indication that my descent into the unconscious would meet with unusual and barely comprehensible forces which would require energetic concentration and analysis to reveal their meanings.
...Gableplunk queried whether the intended union between the conscious and the unconscious could ever be accomplished so long as such a being remained in existence. He wondered what spirits plagued men and women today, preventing them from accomplishing their unions. He wondered whether people were burned at the stake in the middle ages in the name of the purging of these interfering entities. Was the Inquisition psychological projection, politics or delusional madness?
......Too few people know of the existence of the gods and demons within. Forgetting their existence, a dissociation from our historic psychic ground, may be a reason for incompleteness and the confusion that follows. Know your own mind.
February 11th
...During the night, Gableplunk woke, feeling the need to place something heavy over his body. For the rest of the night, he slept beneath heavy quilts. He needed the weight to help fight feelings of losing himself, of beginning to float away from the ground. The blankets were an anchoring gesture. They enabled him to get a calm night's rest. He slept twelve hours.
...Gableplunk dreamed.
...He was a canary and lived in a house in a town whose streets were rivers, powerful currents, not meek like the softly flowing waterways of Venice. The house had only water for its floor. Gableplunk felt the need to fly. He left the house and began to coast on the surface of the river like a seaplane beginning its takeoff. He found it difficult to get into the air, as though something were holding him back. When he managed to fly, it was for only a short time. Although he wasn't tired, he felt a peculiar resistance within, as though his wings were mechanical and wanted to fall off. The dream faded.
......The water in my dream was a reference to my unconscious. My need to fly was my need to free myself from it. The resistance on takeoff and in flight was frightening; it was the pull of the unconscious calling me back to its surface. It was as though it had a hold on me and wanted me back. It also tried and failed to taunt me by making the canary bright yellow.
......In the dream, I wanted to get away from the watery world; in my bed, I wanted to anchor myself to the material world, to vitalize myself, to charge my depleted energies in a soft blank sleep.
......Can one lose himself and descend into madness? Is this the force surfacing that we attribute to Magi and Witch doctors, the compulsion used to draw men to their destructions by the ancient Sirens? If so, it's present in all men in one form or another. Unskillfully dealt with, it may lead to madness and ruin. Positively it may become the motivation to seek direction and knowledge.
...Gableplunk had other work to complete. He was revising and recording his songs in his apartment studio and considering how he could create a unique presentation: what instruments and rhythms to use, what vocal harmonies, what voices on his fretboard synth controller, what arrangements of verses, choruses and bridges to use, how he would mix his tracks and how he would give each track its own space and uniqueness in the big frequency picture. He also had to consider Mastering concepts like sound levels, compression and reverb. Very complex. He wasn't sure whether his psychic activities were interfering. He found it difficult. It was imperative that he work on his music at this time. His foray into the unconscious affected his thought process. Trying to write new lyrics, he found only images relating to the inner world. His resolve to remove himself from his inquiry, to temporarily suspend it, was strengthened. He continued his exercise in automatic rhyming, hoping that the images would direct him to the meaning of his journey and finally bring an end to his unconscious imperative to descend deeper.
...Gableplunk continued his 'Quest' song. He changed the music's structure to coincide with his feelings of vastness, his journey through the unknown spaces of his mind. Subtly as he strummed his guitar he altered the rhythms. The meter remained. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. He played and sang

"Quest For The Rose, Part II"

February 12th
...Although Gableplunk didn't try to remember his dreams that night, their violence forced through the veil of forgetfulness and lodged them in his consciousness.
...They were grotesque and filled with feline creatures: a lion-tiger half their sizes and twice their ferocity, hordes of otter-like black lynxes and dark intimations of feline monstrosities behind trees and in shadowy places. Two poisonous black panthers three inches long appeared. Gableplunk tried to help them get well after they'd suffered a week-long starvation.
...These creatures tore apart, devoured and poisoned Gableplunk and a number of his friends. They were frightening but fascinating and at times beautiful, graceful and powerful in a dark and mysterious way.
......I must associate the felines with the mysterious, with secrecy and profound gracefulness and fluidity of motion through the underworld. They may be expressions of my unconscious attempting to manifest my need to more fully integrate the instinctive elements of my nature. Appearing at a time when I've decided to temporarily suspend this integration, they may be unconscious directives rebuking my decision. Their violence is an indication of the urgency for a more natural balance between my highly structured conscious state and short-changed instinctive nature. The starvation that the panthers suffered was the loss of contact between the two worlds.
February 19th
...Over the preceding nights, Gableplunk's dreams were filled with violence, murders, psychic inflictions and assorted mayhem committed upon and by him. His sleep was poor. Dreams occurred during evenings when he was trying to rest, to leave everything behind. Revising his music required great energy. Coupled with restless sleep, he collapsed from emotional and physical exhaustion. He needed a week's rest to recuperate. Having blanked out his conscious concern with his dream world, he remembered only one of the violent dreams.
...He was entering a ranch house in a great desert with a girl of vague relation. As they entered, they were confronted by a second girl who was immediately hostile to him. They began to do violence to each other with thoughts and mental images that they could read by a paranormal psychic process.
......It seemed to be a repeat of the monopoly game dream of a week or two ago. With one difference, I lend it a similar interpretation. This time it was the hostile girl I related to. This gave me the knowledge that the unconscious, having conflicting elements, like myself, is also dualistic and needs recognition and/or appreciation.
...That night, Gableplunk resumed the observance of his dreams. All signs of violence disappeared.
...He had two. In the first, he was riding about town in a vintage, black English automobile. Stopping at various places housing philosophical or religious organizations, he read books and spoke to people about the organizations' aims and offerings. He left each and drove on to the next after having assimilated a few pieces of knowledge. Eventually he came to a place having no buildings in which to house the people. There were trees, green grass, picnic tables and people playing musical instruments. A man came to greet him. "Hello. You're welcome here. This is the place you'll learn what you've forgotten. If you wish to join us, we'll teach you to remember. Here you may learn that you've merely forgotten your oneness. Here we can teach you to return."
...Gableplunk knew that his search had ended. He entered the garden.
...It was busier than he'd expected. Men and women were writing and thinking. Many wore robes and had long white hair. Some were seated at benches and played music from scores written on parchment.
..."Here we're dedicated by choice to helping Man on his path towards truth and understanding his true nature."
...Gableplunk understood. He thought that he, too, would soon take that inner oath, not by choice but because his inner self decreed it. The dream ended.
......The dream was an allegory of my own life. I searched for knowledge and now know that knowledge isn't the goal but a tool which can empower me in comprehending my essence. The garden is my garden, the inner garden where I may find my true nature. The dedication was the expression of my need for unification.
......The black car was my hearse. We must die in many ways before we may see the truth, hence the many stops prior to finding the garden. The activity and music was a vision of my future.
...In his second dream, Gableplunk dreamed of a hermaphrodite.
...In Greek myth Hermes, messenger of the Gods, and Aphrodite, Goddess of love and beauty, had a child, a hermaphrodite who was a unified dual and bi-sexual being. Discovered by Alchemists, the hermaphrodite was used to symbolize the internal union of Man's androgyny.
...While it may be interpreted as being of a sexual nature, and this would be, at least to some degree, correct, Gableplunk chose to give it other significance- the union of opposing forces within him, consciousness and the unconscious, the real world with the dream or phantasmagoric world and the breaking down of barriers to self-realization.
...Gableplunk dreamed.
...He and a faceless man were driving in the rain in Gableplunk's black car. They offered a girl shelter and drove to a nearby house that Gableplunk owned. Inside they sat at a table. The room was murky. Light came from candles. The rain beat on the roof and washed across the windowpanes. They talked about whom Gableplunk would take home first. They concluded that it'd be best for Gableplunk to take the faceless man, yet they realized that the decision was pointless, nonsensical. Gableplunk was trying to get rid of the faceless man in order to be alone with the girl, so no one left at all. Instead they climbed into bed, the girl lying in the middle. A stillness came over the room.
...In his dream Gableplunk was puzzled. Who was the faceless man? Eerie sensations swept through him. He rose and walked through the house in order to compose himself and bolster his confidence. Even though sleeping, he knew that sexual references in dreams indicated strong emotional bonds. He returned, intending to initiate some kind of action. The faceless man was gone.
...Gableplunk asked where he was. The girl said that he'd dressed and walked out.
......Oh, how life can sometimes be perfect, he thought.
Gently he pulled the girl to him. He kissed her and began to take off her clothes.
...They wanted water. Gableplunk walked to the bathroom to fill glasses. He heard the girl's steps on the rug and looked up. Silhouetted in the light in the door frame stood the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was perfectly proportioned and had- he knew and didn't know how he knew- a personality that he liked best in a person: intelligent and a bit off-beat. She was naked except for her panties. Gableplunk knew that he was in love with her. She chose that moment to surprise him.
...She slid off her panties and revealed her penis and testicles. She was a hermaphrodite!
......Damn! I'm not going to let a little thing like this ruin everything for me!
...He thought about what could be done and asked her whether she'd consider changing herself in order to make herself into a complete woman. At first she answered that she'd consider it, but a few moments later, she changed her mind. She wasn't unhappy about the way she was; she felt perfectly natural. The dream ended.
......Hmmm. That's not my idea of a hermaphrodite. It's a classical image. A real hermaphrodite has both male and female sex organs. Maybe she did. I should have dream-peeked beneath her penis. It's the classical image, though, that comes built in to our culture so it's good enough for me to be my psychosocial symbol.
......Having always competed with men in the life and death struggles that society and nature force upon us, I've always felt torn apart in those situations, regardless of the outcome. Feeling torn between my competitive-aggressive desire to get rid of the faceless man and my desire to share, I arrived at the perfect solution- don't oppose him; include him.
......Creating the hermaphrodite is a symbolic gesture expressing the nature of my newly-found capability to relate on more personal levels as contrasted to my previous subject-object, self-not-self, we-they orientation that was often negative or destructive. The image of the hermaphrodite, occurring quite naturally in the progression of my dreams, is both the culmination of my subliminal development over years of study and introspection and my realization of the conditional aspects of instinct, illusion and socialization. Of course, these, too, are aspects of self-knowledge, unification and the tearing down of walls of opposition and fractionalism within me.
......I interpreted losing the girl to hermaphrodite form as the price for the birth of my new and more encompassing ways of relating to people and the world around me. Trying to recreate the original relationship was my initial reaction to the death of my old attitudes and behaviors. Birth and death are always a shock.
......The hermaphrodite's initial agreement to consider changing her form was also part of my initial reaction. It's I who created the dream and ultimately controlled it. I owned the house and the black car. However, after a moment passed, she as well as I found her new form to be 'perfectly natural,' indicating the acceptance and integration of my new outlook into my personality. The dream ended, having fulfilled its purpose- to reveal, represent and unite the oppositional sides of my nature, which are symbolized as the masculine and feminine essences of my true and entire being. In each are the essences of the other. In societies are individuals and in individuals are the makings of societies, the manifestations of which are difficult tasks, rife with contradictions, illusions, disappointments and glorious victories.
February 21st
......An old Hindu myth depicts a cosmic man called the Perusha inhaling and exhaling. When he exhales, the cosmos is born and expands as his breath; when he inhales, the cosmos contracts, dwindles and finally disappears back into.....where? Into emptiness, into the Void. This cosmic man has profound meaning for me. He's a symbol of the great union, the great reconciliation, the great singular essence of the universe that makes me a complete being. My attraction to and even creation of such symbols is a projection of my own desires. If I believe in it, it also fulfills my needs. I'd rather believe in a Cosmic Duck. I think the Duck would be more rational. LOL.
...Gableplunk found his guitar in hand. He returned to automatic rhyming and continued his 'Quest' song. He found that modulation was necessary, more expressive. He strummed changes, returned to familiarity and sang

"Quest For The Rose, Part III"

February 23rd
...Gableplunk couldn't stop now. He had an awareness of being very near. A man close to the end can't stop. Deep within he knows. When his moment is near, he grasps the first glimmerings of understanding; the light blossoms; he's consumed and finds his final resting ground.
......The working equation of the unconscious as an element of my soul seems to answer some of my needs. It's one aspect of my nature that helps me to see the universal totality. It also constitutes a source of profound unknowability of which I may catch an occasional glimpse. This is of great importance to me. If I couldn't have a glimpse now and then of a facet of the unknowable, I'd slide into that great abyss of despair. A man without faith must find other ways to fulfill his needs. Above all, if he has needs, he must find a way.
February 24th
......Reflections on illusions long after I've seriously concerned myself with them, their uses, mechanisms, contents of truth and falsity, even worth to myself and, forgive me, others: they exist; they may become transparent; they're neither good nor evil and are as true as false; there's no need to reject anything in the name of Maya: illusion; only understand. They seem to be elements of an intrinsic human function necessary for my psychic well-being. I don't take them seriously unless they begin to create confusion or slide into the realm of delusion. I enjoy them; I'm amused by them. Everything I think I am in self-definitive terms is illusion. My individuality is collective, conditioned, channeled by my heredity and environment. Personal identity isn't preserved at death, for there's none now. It's an illusion.
......Karma isn't a law, in so far as a law's a rule that we choose to follow. We don't accumulate it. In speaking of accumulation, we speak of memory and augury- knowledge of the future. While these are human functions and fact, that which they deal with is fact in the abstract, once removed from the singular presence of things. Karma may be considered a natural statement of the intimate relationship of everything to everything else. Karma's a description of the fundamental working of the universe.
......Reincarnation is rebirth. Each instant we die and are reborn. For me it has nothing to do with the illusion of personal identity. The silence and stillness of meditation is a selfless awareness of life as a constant motion of birth and death having no beginning and no ending. To understand this is to understand immortality.
February 26th
...Gableplunk thought
......How may I answer the question: what do I believe?
February 30th
......There's only life and timelessness. Birth and death are parts of life as time is part of timelessness.
......I believe in the molecule and the atoms that comprise the molecule and the energy that binds the atoms to the unit and I believe in the existence of the affinity that matter and energy have for each other and I believe in the motion and identity of man and the microcosm, the macrocosm and the mysterycosm of the mind.
......And I believe in the personification and the source from which it springs and I believe in the symbol and its creation and the source from which the symbol emanates. And I believe in the scheme of opposites, of yes and no, of conscious and unconscious, of masculine and feminine and self and meditation. And I believe in truth and the lie and I believe in illusion and the knowledge that makes illusion transparent. And I believe in the conception and the realization and the desire to bring freedom into the world and to ease suffering. And I believe in the existence of death as a changing of form and I believe in birth and I believe in sameness as well as difference and I believe in subject and I believe in object and I believe in their union from which springs oneness and the utter clarity of things. And I believe in the non-thing and the needs for attachment and non-attachment and I believe in the metaphysician and the laborer each sharing a bit of the other's pleasure and a bit of the other's pain. And I believe in more; I believe in all and all is life and life is love and love is the river and the answer is I believe.

...On second thought another word for faith is delusion.
...Do you see? This is my paradox.
...But this is the way.
...Ah! This is the sound of one hand clapping!

...Stay with it.

...Stay with it.

...My mind is my best toy.