Dear Claire:

When I was in the grocery store the other day at the treadmill-counter, where you are surrounded with self-improvement magazines and rag press, I read that someone had been impregnated by Steve McQueen's ghost, and I thought, "I hope it wasn't Claire!' (And I hope that somewhere in the afterlife, our high school English teacher-tyrant has to diagram that sentence.) I don't know about this Heavenly Partners thing. Every time I think about a Heavenly Partner, all the cards come up reversed. I have two tables for reading cards that ought to attract the spirits. One is a cherry Federal tilt top and the other one is a 1920's black wood card table that some forger decoupaged onto a Maxfield Parrish print--The Waterfall--­which is neat, even if it is a fake. I just got up and waxed that cherry table because Wade gave it to me when he knew he was going to die and he would nag me if I let it get dirty. And at least my cards are going to like lying on this gorgeous, shiny old table. The only recently departed suitable spirit I know is Wade. And although he was great fun and I miss him more than I can say, and although he would just love this sort of thing, given his bent for pageantry and love of dressing up, I don't know if I could trust him. He'd be pretty apt to tell anybody who inquired that he was sitting there having coffee with Abbie Hoffman and Attila the Hun, whether he was or not. "Come on, Carol, I'll introduce you to Oscar Wilde."

Oh, the Mundane is sad today about the Great Dane! The animal control man just came and put my Dane, Harlow, to sleep. She was the last of my five Danes. I kept them all when their mother China died giving birth to them and from that moment on I was their mother. They were Harlow, Scarla O'Horror, Wizzy, Panzer, and Tai, their daddy. I raised them as if they were my very own little children. They never did understand why the school bus didn't stop to pick them up. And they behaved like spoiled dog-siblings would behave. Do you remember the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The Danes got along like the Hudson sisters.

Harlow was 13 and eaten up with cancer. I've cried off and on for two months and steady for the last two weeks. For ten bucks they'll come out to your house so you won't have to take the dog somewhere that's strange to the dog, so the dog won't be scared. The man who did the job was black, and so nice, with seven dogs of his own and a real understanding that the urge to jump in the grave behind the dog runs high in a south Georgia girl. He said they always sent him to people's houses to put dogs to sleep. He said a lot of animal control people couldn't stand to put down a dog with the owner watching, but that he didn't feel that way. He said that he felt like when a dog had been as loyal as a dog could be for 10 or 12 years that the owner owed it to the dog to be with them. That was just respect. He told me that when you took the dog off from the owner and gave it the medicine (Sodium Pentothal), the dog was scared and it ran and it twitched and it whined while it was going under. And he said that when somebody who loved it was rubbing it and talking sweet to it, that it just went on off to sleep. And it wasn't thinking nothing but good thoughts. And I guess that's what happened to my old dog. I hope so, anyway.

I had some half-baked idea that I should get the medicine from the vet and give it to Harlow myself. I can be such a fool sometimes. For some reason, nursing transforms people so that they think they can do things that they have no business doing, like brain surgery. What made me think I would ever be able to stick a vein while squalling like a baby? Anyway, I got up this morning and drank a pot of coffee and read the cards. They told me, "No, Debbie Allen was not going to sell me the sodium pen," even though she has sold me almost every other drug I have ever asked for, whether she has seen the animal it was for or not. The more I look at the cards, the more I can see, but I can also see that I should have been reading them all my life if I was ever going to be any good at it.

To help assuage my grief, I bought myself a Resistol hat. They aren't very pretty, but the other kinds of hats fly off while you are cantering or while the horse is in the process of trying to throw you. The wide brim also hides how scared you are if the horse does something bizarre, which Moore enjoys doing frequently. I also want some chaps.

I forgot to tell you in my last letter that we are the proud, newly gifted owners of a black calf named Sarah. We have fattened Sarah up considerably so that she looks like a midget cow instead of a calf. She is so fat that her little cloven hooves are very cloved apart in an effort to support her weight, and my friend Tony keeps making unnatural remarks about how delicious she would be and how long she would last in the freezer. (A long time, I point out to him, since Jessie and I would not eat her, and I would not cook her.) Do not despair for her safety, however. Tony says it is a good idea for me to eat my chickens and sell the extra ones to the Viet Cong, but he is mistaken about that, too.

Jessie and I are watching The Wescuers Down Unner again. George C. Scott (McLeach the Poacher) is singing "Home, home on the range/Where the bears are tied up in chains./I cut through their sides/And I rip off their hides/And the next day I do it again." Sheesh. Talk about going from the sublime to the obscene. I guess it's supposed to program into the minds of the little children an innate objection to the slaughter of animals for their hides. I don't know.

When we are not watching Wescuers, we are in a flurry of activity getting ready for the fair. Jessie is entering a dish garden, which I had to plant because she did not want to get dirt on her hands. (She did put in the lava rocks and the dinosaurs.) She's entering a macaroni necklace and a hand-painted tee shirt. And perhaps a couple of chickens. I don't know whether Roy Rooster wants to go to the fair but I would guess not. He is however a very beautiful Rhode Island Red with feathers that just glisten. I'm changing his name to Stretch because of the way he stretches his head up and down when he wants to show his hen harem, who follow him everywhere, the wonderful bugs he has found for them to eat.

Kris brought me some eggs that her Silky hen had quit setting, which may (or may not) hatch in about a week. Silkies are neat; they have down instead of feathers and they have it on their feet. They are built real low to the ground, like some of those Japanese pick-up trucks. Did I mention that they have blue skin?

I am trying to limit Jessie to one band-aid a day, and it is a hard task. She tried Mickey Mouse band-aids but she didn't like them because they stick too tight. Now I have to wear them. She has moved on to Neons, which is a real happening kind of band-aid in bright pink and bright yellow and bright orange. And she is steadily searching her body for a hint of a boo boo which might need bandaging.

The new biddies are hatching and it is pouring down rain. Oh, well. A beautiful day with a brilliant sun would just be too much to bear. I guess I had better close. I have to go change the paper in the brooder, again. And check on the eggs in the incubator, again. And I can't think of a single illness that would prevent me from cleaning the rock shrimp, and I am a nurse. I told Wade once that I was scared to death the whole time I was around anybody sick when I was a nurse. Wade said it was because I was potentially the Stephen King of nursing. Write soon.

Dear Carol:

Things are happening so fast, now, that I hardly know where to begin or how to tell you what is going on! I am beginning to meet the individual spirits who were in Susan's hallway during the seance. Not only are they making sounds all around me but they are appearing to me in dreams and talking with me, telling me things and introducing themselves to me. A few nights ago I had the most amazing dream. It began when I flew through my spirit tunnel. The walls were all glittering with tiny, white stars. The light in the distance was brighter and closer, but I fell asleep before I could reach it. When I came awake in the dream, I was sitting on the passenger side of a pick-up truck that was parked in front of a house. A man came out of the house, got in the truck on the driver's side, smiled at me and said, "Hello." It seemed I knew him well but didn't recognize him. I called him Bobby. I couldn't see his face very well, but I could see he was good-looking. And modern looking, too. He wore jeans, tennis shoes and a long-sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows. (I finally identified him as I saw him so often in many variations, but always recognizable to me as Bobby. He said his name was Baba but in the dreamstate, when your ears might not hear so well, I thought he said Bobby. Here is a picture of him as Babaji, the young man on the right, when he was physical.)

As we drove along in the truck, he told me he had been living in Mexico. He said that a group of his friends was staying there. More of his friends wanted to go stay there, he said, but they all had to take turns, one at a time. I told him, "Well, why don't you all just go together and rent your own place?" He looked at me and said it was a good idea, one he hadn't thought of. I asked him, "Where are we going?" He smiled and said, "Mexico."

We chatted as we drove along. He told me he had made love to 400 women. I laughed and said, "Oh, right! Nobody has made love to 400 women." He said, suavely and with a smile, "I have." He drove the truck along a mountain range and through a portal, which was a big semicircular Roman arch. It didn't have any physical arches but just the idea of arches. When we drove through it I heard a sizzling sound like the sound old TV's make when they're just turned on.

On the other side of the portal was downtown Mexico City. I have never been there physically but I recognized it right away. Also, even though I was dreaming at night, in my dream it was bright daylight. We drove along a busy street during rush hour and we got stuck in traffic. How beautiful and colorful and real it all was! And there was so much to see! People were walking along the street shopping. I could even see inside the windows of the shops. I saw all the merchandise, the salespeople and the customers. It was a happening world! I turned to Bobby and, this time, I could see him fairly clearly. Oh, he was handsome all right, and for some embarrassing reason, I just reached myself over and put my hand right in the crotch of his pants! And I did not come up empty-handed, either. We started kissing and caressing right in that pick-up truck, stuck in a traffic jam, in downtown Mexico City. What a dream! In all the excitement, I awoke. I guess all lovers are not standard issue, especially if you call for them with Tarot cards! He wasn't physical, although he felt totally physical. But he definitely was real. I guess I'm gonna be number 401.

The next night I went to Mexico again, only this time I didn't go in a truck, I walked through a portal out in the jungle and along a sidewalk. I materialized myself into the home of a family of well to do South American Indians. Not that they had a big house or a lot of furniture, but that they seemed like royalty. There were 4 young sons, and I was to marry one of them. His mother showed me his picture, like a driver's license picture, and he was definitely an Indian. But he was too young, only 9, and I told her I didn't want to marry a kid. The boys were strong and physical. They had just come in from playing ball. Their mother was encouraging their ball game competition. I really liked her, too. Then, with someone beside me and a little behind me, I walked through another one of those portals and I saw a great man in an amphitheater. Several hundred Indians were milling around and talking, and thousands were in the hills behind me.

With all these Indians everywhere I felt lucky to have a place to sit. I was barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the ground in an upper level area. I was sitting with some people who were strangers to me. When the great person came out, the crowd stood up and roared and cheered and yelled in honor of him. He was like a god to them. He walked through the parting crowd and everyone got back! No one dared touch him! He walked through the bleachers up to my level. He walked through one of those portals and came straight towards me like he knew me. He stood in front of me and held out his hand to me.

I thought he was going to help me stand up, so I held out my hand to him. When I did, he pushed aside his loincloth and he put his hard dick right in my hand! Holy Erections! I flipped out inwardly, but outwardly I was very cool about it! It's a miracle I didn't wake up. I didn't get angry or offended, like you would in "real" life, or threaten to whack his pecker off if he ever did that again. (Karate really does give one skills for emergencies like this.) And, I'm proud to say I didn't snatch it off his body either, which I might have perservely done, and waved it in the air, saying, "Check your loincloth, dream dude, I've got your dick in my hand!" The truth was, I was fascinated by how real it felt. I mean, I knew it was a dream dick, I just couldn't get over how real it felt. Plus, I had the impression he was bragging to me, like he was saying, "See. I can be your new lover. I've got one of these to prove it!" Was that Bobby putting the moves on me like he might in a dream to make me number 401?

Then I thought, "Maybe he's really an Indian chief and this is how he chooses who he will sleep with. Mr. Real Important Indian, whoever he is. And these confused Indians think he's conferring some kind of honor on them when he selects one of their daughters this way. What a jerk!" I politely withdrew my hand from his private parts, and he lost interest and continued on his way.

But then, something extraordinary happened. As he walked away, I just stood up and magically called out to him, "Pacal!" He turned around and looked at me, and when he did I gave him a signal. With the fist of my right hand against the center of my chest, I pushed my fist straight out in front of me to arm's length and I moved my arm forward in three circles, like casting a fishing rod three times. I asked him, in a loud voice, just like I knew what I was saying, "Don't you remember me?" As I was doing these weird things, I was wondering why in the world I was making those circles. I felt silly and I offered a lame explanation of my actions. I said, "We used to go fishing together." I couldn't imagine any other reason why I was doing this fishing signal and talking to this man as if I knew him or something.

But it didn't matter what I was thinking, because when he saw me give the signal, he was so surprised he stumbled back a couple of steps. Then, he walked toward me and studied me closely like he was making sure I was who he thought I was. He took me by the hand and led me gently down the stone steps. His eyes never left mine, as though he thought that by staring into my eyes he could hold me there and that I wouldn't suddenly disappear. Just as he was leading me down the steps, I looked around me and I saw that I was surrounded by hundreds of South American Indians. Were they Inca or Aztec or Maya? I didn't know, and they did not appear to be "after" me but I panicked, anyway.

The next instant and poof! I was standing outside my apartment at the flower embankment. I looked at the sidewalk, at the lighted street and at the parked cars. Then, poof! I woke up in my bed. I went straight to the bathroom to look at the portal and to see if my ponytail bands were on the floor. They were not. But I stood there for a while and marveled that on the other side of that bathroom portal was Mexico. I wondered where else I might go by walking through that portal.

The next day, I went straight to the library to look up anything on Central and South American Indians, to see if I could figure out where I had been. I looked through several books until I saw it: The Sarcophagus of Lord Pacal. This 5-ton stone slab covers the coffin of the great Mayan king who died in 683 CE and whose sarcophagus has yet to be deciphered. At the center of this carving is the man I called "Pacal," the man I made the signal to, the man I asked, "Don't you remember me?" He has been dead now for 1,310 years, but I can say without doubt that he is not very dead. Not only that, but I had the definite impression I was going to marry him.

I decided to trace the sarcophagus to get a better idea of it, like maybe tracing it I could understand it somehow. So I xeroxed the page in the book and brought it home and got out the prismacolor pencils my Mom gave me that I have never used before. You know, it's not a bad idea to do something like this when you are trying to open yourself up spiritually. There's no telling how the color helps and just tracing the lines of something might open up a portal in the subconscious mind.

Reading further, I learned that he was a Mayan king who lived in Palenque, Mexico. He has a nice palace with a tower, and opposite his palace he built a 75-foot high Temple of Inscriptions, where he was buried in 683 CE. In 1952, after 3 years of work removing the rubble and boulders that had been pushed down the tunnel, archeologists found his sarcophagus in a 30 x 13-foot burial chamber at the bottom of the tunnel. Inside the vaulted tomb was a "fantastic, ethereal sight, a huge magic grotto carved out of ice, the walls sparkling and glistening like snow crystals. Stalactites hung like tassels of a curtain, and the stalagmites on the floor looked like the dripping from a great candle." These visual effects were created by the lime dripping from the walls and ceiling. When archeologists lifted the slab from the coffin, they saw his body covered with a thousand pieces of jade.

"The great man--he was probably a priest--had no gold ornaments, but here were quantities of jade objects--beads, rings on every finger, bracelets, ear ornaments, and exquisitely carved figurines. These were in the form of flowers, little gourds, bats, snake heads, and human figures with the characteristics of certain Mayan gods. The buried man had a jade ornament in each hand and another in his mouth; his neck and shoulders were covered with a huge collar and breast ornament of jade beads. On his face were the remnants of a mask of jade mosaic."

Also found were the bodies of a woman and 4 men, apparent sacrificial victims. Plaster portraits of Lord Pacal were found in the chamber, along with one of his son Chan Bahlum, who became the king when his father died at age 80.

You know what? I think I know what some of the inscriptions mean on the sarcophagus. For example, the first thing I noticed is that Pacal, who is at the center of the lid, is holding his hands in the shape of the lemniscate! Wings of Love. Oh, got to run. I hear my landlady knocking at my door. Wonder what she wants? Write soon.