A new year greeting, a letter to Michael Joyce.

Mika:

After midnight, day’s shift done. I work at the new book every day now. It is pretty much my sole waking escape from circling reality. So much aggressive distraction to ignore. The menu of things and events that interest me has shrunken drastically. Yesterday I tried and failed to watch a football game. I have the feeling I’m searching for something, but it’s not out there. Is it hidden in the words? Like a puzzle-lock–seven common words arranged in such an order that a hole is ripped in the scrim of illusions to reveal the glowing truth beyond.

I need some mushrooms. I need to go back there. That’s the right neighborhood. The simplicity of unity. Ran across a word today–entheogenic, “God-enabling,” as in an entheogenic experience. I once had those–in the redwoods, the Nevada desert, on a Marin ocean bluff where I knew I was the Golden Eagle I’d been watching all day, coming back to our nest. All thanks to the Fungod.

Just Jim Bean and ganja tonight, some barbecue chips. Time was never mine to waste. You can’t own time, rather vice-versa. There was a truth at the center of everything, just as in all dimensions, before the big bang. We all are particles of it, racing outwards. There is a truth too big to understand, but we will know it when it meets us.

Oh, and happy out-of-sync-solstice holiday. I have several times employed your Uppsala solstice celebrations account to remind people that they are still mammals first, only later one of the faithful.

Your ancient pal,
Ioane