More Friends to Meet: From the Family Photo Album

Cassie, Old Bob, Father Tim, and Maggie. Paying respects. Not a scene in A Friend You Haven't Met.

On the Road Again

Strange Visitors from Another World

Another scene from A Friend You Haven't Met.

This Idea Regularly Freaks Me Out

Socrates had his ‘genius’ or ‘daimon’, that he knew compelled his actions, no matter what he thought might be best for him. St. Paul talked about the dual nature of the will centuries ago. Edgar Allan Poe described ‘the Imp of the Perverse’ that impelled one to contrary actions. Alan Watts talked about our consciousness as being only a ‘flickering spotlight’ on the vast sea of ourselves. Colin Wilson posited what he called the ‘ladder of selves’; where we mostly operate on a lower rung as an automated responsory, or ‘robot’, only occasionally with effort becoming our higher selves. And, of course, we have Sigmund Freud and his mental trinity of the Ego, Superego, and Id, ‘the primitive, unconscious part of the human psyche that contains basic instincts, drives, and impulsive needs.’ It all implies that what I call ‘me’ may not be the sole or even largest component of myself, that there’s a largely hidden mind behind what I call my mind. That ‘I’ might simply be the avatar that the greater ‘me’ is using to interact with reality.

Several, I suppose anecdotal, pieces of evidence make me wonder if it may be so, and what are the possible implications of it if it is. One is the recorded fact that the brain seems to make a decision seven seconds before one is consciously aware of making it. And, more tenuously, there are the countless times I think my brain is trying to sabotage me by having me saying or doing something incredibly stupid before my ‘thinking self’ can react. Or my brain suddenly spits up a fact or a memory I could swear was nowhere in the files. Or a dream that astounds me with its insight and coherence.

But perhaps the greatest piece of evidence is when I’m operating creatively at ‘peak experience.’ That’s when my ‘thinking self’ seems to vanish, or at least become less aware of itself, subsumed, as it were, into a piece of working machinery in a greater whole. I emerge from that state sometimes marveling at what I’ve done. It’s not a state you can force. But you do have to build the altar, so the divine fire has a place to come down. What’s produced may not be perfect, but it is the unplanned, primal stuff you never guessed was there.

So the idea that regularly freaks me out is that I only know myself shallowly, that if I ever met my true self and realized that what I called me was just a useful persona, what I call me will “softly and silently vanish away … and the notion I cannot endure!” Probably anybody with real psychological or spiritual insight could knock these thoughts down in a minute, if I could ever explain it properly, which I’m not sure that I have even now.

Perhaps the Greater Brain is hindering me from expressing the idea clearly. You see? An insidious thought. What if the Monster from the Id is the real me, and I’m just a puppet, a scarecrow, a mask?

Laughter-Loving Dionysus

LAUGHTER-LOVING DIONYSUS

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus

In his mortal garment worn

Has eternal hold and leases,

In his temple nightly born.

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus

Before the first act drains a glass.

His fingertips he lightly kisses;

Winks at both the lad and lass.

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus

Attends a party for the cast

Where they serve white wine and cheese. This

Supper is this body's last.

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus

Prepares the mortal guise to doff:

Thread-bare at top and lined with creases,

It's time to take the garment off.

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus’

As he leaves the backstage door.

Lovingly is torn to pieces

By manic Maenads by the score.

 

Laughter-loving Dionysus

Finds a garment bright and new:

Tries it on, finds it pleases,

And starts the cycle all anew!

Bob Speaks

Bob Bellamy (b. 1798?): "I have found that, after you have aged a certain amount, barring some illness or other or, God forbid, death, you really don't look any older. You might say I discovered the Fountain of Age to keep me going." - June 11, 2026.

Bob Bellamy Through The Ages

Bob as he appeared in my book, A Grave on Deacon's Peak. Bob as he was as an apprentice in the Bureau of Shadows, from the unfinished Bob's Book 2.  Bob as he was in Slavery's Ghost. Bob during the heyday of his career. Bob in retirement in Walnut Springs, as seen in Remember the Bellamy. And last as the incredibly Old Bob, as he appeared in A Friend You Haven't Met. Most titles available on this blog.