By Nous

                            July 10, 2006

BY AND BY LORD

San Marcos. Me, D, and Roxie arrive not too late in the afternoon. James' big Irish roomate answered the
door when we got there and D asked, "Is James home?"
The big guy said, "Yeah," and led us through this awesome kitchen and living room, past this door that
led to the side of the house, into Clay's room. Clay was a weird guy, and I'll tell you why in a bit.
Now, I remember we were introduced to Clay, but I don't remember being introduced to the big guy. I have
a vague recollection of it happening but maybe that was a dream (I'll get into one of my dreams a little
later, too). Anyway, the Irish guy's name was 'Bo' or something. He was kind of cool and looked quite a
bit like Jim Gaffigan. Only I didn't know whether to call Bo's hair blond or red. His beard was red, and
so was his face. We went to the river to go swimming (I just went to be outside) and his chest hair was
really red, too. But yeah, his hair was kind of crazy-looking.
Anyway, we get to Clay's room and James is sitting there drinking Guinness and telling his other roomate,
Clay, who, I think, was Jewish. He sort of looked like Val Kilmer to me at first, stretched out on his
recliner, inserting his thoughts into the conversation now and again. But later I decided he looked
exactly like John Malkovich.
Anyway, we're listening to James' story, and the more I listen, the more I realize how much James really
misses being in Japan. It seemed like everything that would happen that day would end up tying in with
something that he experienced in Japan.
Pretty much the first thing we did when we got there was go out and eat at this pizza place called
Valentino's, which was fucking good, and right down the street. Everything in San Marcos is right down
the street. It's a small place.
As D is driving to Valentino's James starts talking about how different it is to drive in Japan. How you
drive in the opposite lane, and how there are no left turns on red (equivalent to no right turns on red
here in the US) and they yield to pedestrians and all of that. He was always commenting on the
differences between Japan and America, and how he preferred being in Japan.
We go inside and get a table, then we go up to the counter to order. I ended up having to pay for the
fucking pizza. Twenty-one dollars. I didn't eat anything the last day we were there except for a small
salad. Anyway, we sit down and we're eating pizza, and James starts talking about how he misses speaking
Japanese, and his experiences there, with the subway and drinking, and stuff like that. It was cool. He
did a lot of shit.
I told him about my favorite thing that he wrote on his lomohut he taught me some Japanese words. I
remember the gist of them, but I've pretty much forgotten them all. Except 'tabun.'
That means 'probably.' I used it like five times while at his house.
Anyway, we head back, I go pick up beer and wine. We all start drinking and smoking weed (even James) by
the side of the house. It just felt really natural. It was like being in a rut, in the sense that it was
comfortable. Everything just fell into place. D ended up making a reference to Family Guy in which Bono
from U2 says something like, "No, Peter. I'm saving this for the starving children."
He even did the Irish accent, and it was fucking hilarious. It was actually pretty good. I've never been
really good at doing one of those. We kept asking him to do it. At one point he said it while also doing
a robot voice. It was weird.
Anyway, that was the first day. And that night, while I was asleep on the couch, shivering because I
didn't have a blanket, I had some fucking weird dreams.
All I remember was that they were weird, and they almost all involved the house that I was staying at.
So I'm wondering, "Maybe it's something with this house. There's something weird about it." But I also
think, "Nah. It's just that it's my first night in this house, so I'm dreaming about it."
I put the dreams out of my mind, and I realized later that day that there was a certain dream that I
still remembered. That was the day where we went to the Blue Goat, a coffee shop, early in the day. I
ordered a ham and cheddar croissant. It was fucking good. The ham tasted awesome.
And that was also the day D, me, Roxie, Bo, and Bo's dog, Oscar Wilde, went to the river. James and Clay
(who had returned after being gone somewhere for a day) stayed to watch World Cup. Anyway, it was the
fourth of July so the river was fucking packed, and there was a sign that said 'no pets,' so we left.
Ended up driving through the middle of nowhere for a while to get to Wimberly, which is really nice. 
I didn't know if it was a town, or one of those apartment complexes that are designed to look like small
towns. Ever seen those? It kind of reminded me of the Catskill's Resort in Dirty Dancing. Only there were
streets and street signs in what apparently WAS a town.
I'd been there before, too. The youth group at church once took a trip there. We stayed for like a week
or two at this place called the 7A Ranch or something, which had this "old west" setup, claiming to be a
recreation of frontier times. There was a saloon and shoe-shining spot and all of that. Those boards with
paintings of peoples' bodies posing or performing some act, and places for a real person's head. D took
a picture of me and Roxie there.
At some point, what was once a busy river was empty. And Bo was like, "This place usually empties out
around the evenings." He was a really cool guy. Smart, sharp. But he had this sort of 'big dumb oaf'
personality, too. The way he laughed or smiled or even his voice.
He sounded like what Lenny from Of Mice and Men probably sounded like. He was cool.
He told me that Sagittarius is the sign that's supposed to be where old souls go. It's the last sign
before a soul reaches that zenith we call Heaven. He kind of smiled about it, and I knew he didn't
believe it. It was strange.
When we went back home, James was talking to Goma (I think that was his name) who was Japanese, and
staying with James and his roomates for a while. I was introduced to him the first day too. He'd been
in his room reading, and I found that that's pretty much all he did. Study, read, cook something to eat,
go to school.
He was cooking when we got back from Wimberly and he and James were talking, while James watched him
make noodles. So James says, "Let's go get something to eat guys." We were going to Thai Thai, but a
road was closed, so we went somewhere else (made sense at the time). We went to All-Niter's and that's
where I got my small salad. But D was kind enough to pay for my Kahlua Colada, which tasted like a
sno-cone and didn't really get me buzzed or anything.
When we got home, we ended up smoking more weed.
At some point we're talking about Elvis and Clay is there. And then for some reason or other, I was
reminded that I had a weird dream the previous night. And Clay stands up to go inside and says, "Maybe
I'll interpret it for you later."
I'm like, "What the fuck?"
Before I get to my dream, and what he said, I'll tell you what I thought about him later that night when
I was sobering up. The funny thing about me thinking that Clay looked like Val Kilmer to begin with is
that once I changed it to John Malkovich, I realized that he was exactly like the way Val Kilmer played
Jim Morrison on the Door's movie. Imagine if Jim Morrison were alive today, and the stuff he would talk
about, and the way he would talk about them. That's what Clay talked like. Had a similar voice and a
similar way of speaking. Intentionally poetic and all of that.
He was talking about how literary criticism interested him because THEN HE WENT ON A SPIEL. Seriously,
he would take something really simple like that and he started talking about how they discovered certain
things about language that were kind of weird, but nobody was studying it, and that the impacts that
these 'truths' would have was uncertain. And he said that studying that, and making comments on the
culture and the times were things nobody was really doing. And he found that interesting and worthwhile.
After I thought about it a while, I realized it sounded contrived to me. Like he was trying to be Jim
Morrison. But the way he talked about the stuff he talked about (which was usually stuff I agreed with)
made me think that IF IT WAS A SHAM, he probably lied to the point where he believed what he was saying.
And that's what threw me off. I still don't know if he believed the stuff he said or if was trying to be
"weird."
But he came back outside a little later when I had forgotten that he said he would interpret my dream.
And I'm just talking about something and then James said, "I would be interested to hear what Clay has
to say about your dream, Nous."
And I'm like, "Huh? Oh yeah."
So I told them.

OKAY, HERE GOES

In my dream, I was sleeping in Clay's room in his bed (the first room, where James was drinking Guiness).
And for some reason I wake up in the dream. Now Clay's room has a door to the porch outside. The porch
goes from the side of the house and curves around to the backyard. And that's where Clay's door is,
facing the backyard. So I get up and head to that door and open it, and there's a lion out on the porch.
Now he's huge, but it's a dream, so he fits on the porch. That's not important. What is important was
that the lion scared the fuck out of me. It was like I didn't expect it at all. Regardless, for some
reason this lion just scared me. I tried to close the door, but the lion just kind of nudged the door
and I couldn't close it. He stepped inside and I was too weak from fear to even stand up. I cover my
face, and I feel the lion bite my arm. I look and my arm is inside the lion's mouth, but it's not
actually biting me. His incisors are really long and it turns out he just can't clamp down on my arm,
because the rest of his teeth are regular size. My arm is between the incisors and the rest of the teeth
can't go down.
So he isn't biting me. But it feels like he is.

GOD

Clay asked something which I later thought was kind of arrogant. He asked, "Do you want to know what it
means?"
Anyway, I said sure, if he could tell me. And he said, "The lion is the spirit that has entrapped you."
"Entrapped?" I asked.
He nodded. "He's entrapped you, but he's powerless. And you're aware of his presence so he's trying to
scare you. He's trying to make it seem like he's more powerful than you. He's got you convinced that you
are him, and he is you. And over time, you'll live what you think is your life, but he will be living
through you."
Now what creeped me out about it was of course wondering if that was true. But also, as I explained to
him, that ever since I was young, I would receive a certain kind of compliment that I always thought was
weird. It came in various forms, usually Christian terms, but it meant the same thing.
There was a teacher who told me that the hand of God was upon me. And There was Jason's mom who said I
was an old soul here to talk about the truth. And I'd heard that so often from people that I wondered,
"Is there really a divine plan for me?"
Then when I was young (and I discovered that Clay had experienced something similar), I sort of underwent
an enormous change. A revelation, or "God twitching his finger." Anyway, my experience was that for two
years all I did was sit home and think about a divine plan, and God, and after a while I felt like I
understood everything I needed to understand. But it was still so much, that I had to shake it off after
a while. I couldn't contain all of that in my head and do the things I need to do here on earth.
But I couldn't shake it off. And after a while, it got shaken off for me and I felt like I could start
all over. Clay would say that was no accident.
Anyway, life continued in a rather tame manner. But I would still feel that mystery and magic behind
things once in a while. And I knew what I had to do. I had to follow those signs. Maybe, God was talking
to me. I don't know. The point is that after a while, things seemed the same. I was stuck. There was no
magic. It started earlier this year, and I wondered if maybe it wasn't so much that I had the hand of
God upon me, but that there was a demon inside of me. And that THAT'S why I always felt like I was being
led around. That's why the signs were so apparent to me. That's why my life had taken the turns that
always seemed to make sense. And yet there was an emptiness inside of me. Maybe that was a demon, not
God.
So I started thinking about that, and it kind of drove me a little nuts, but nothing too bad. I didn't
know whether to believe that idea or just keep going. If I believed that idea, I couldn't keep going. I
could say it wasn't true, and keep going, but then I'd never know if the idea was true or not.
I felt stuck. Stagnant.
So when Clay said a spirit had entrapped me, it wasn't weird. It wasn't just coincidental because I'd
been thinking the same thing. It was serious to me. It was "God." And he was letting me know that my
concerns were being heard.
As Clay said, "And it makes sense that you're here. Because God is merciful. Dreams can be messages. And
God will sometimes allow you to have a dream and tell it to someone who just so happens to have the gift
of dream-interpretation."
He was talking about himself. And I was listening. It made sense. And he started talking about me. He
said, "God has a plan for you. You're going to do many great things in your life. In the arts.
Intellectual. But the reason that you were put on this earth is to know the things of this world, so
that God may have a face in this world. That is your purpose."
He paused, and I was seriously considering the things he was saying. And I hope it doesn't sound crazy
when I say that it made complete sense to me.
"God has chosen a path for you. And it's going to be completely different from what your friends want
you to do. And what your family wants you to do. Especially your parents."
He was flipping his lighter in his hands, and after a long pause, he said, "And all of that stuff
floating around you isn't what you need."
I was kind of freaked out, but I managed to ask, "What stuff?"
"Junk. The games. The wearing of the mask." And after a moment, he said something which made me feel
really strange. Because the moment he said it, I started feeling something I can't really explain. But
at that moment, he said, "You're a son of God."
Well, needless to say it was a lot to take when I had been really confused before. I didn't know if
there was a demon or not inside of me. I didn't know if God existed anymore, though I believed in an
energy of some sort. Hope evaded me on so many levels. And then to hear something which I had actually
believed at one point, repeated to me by somebody else, somebody who didn't even know me. Well it was
strange.
But like I said, I started to wonder later if it wasn't a contrived persona. If it wasn't a psychological
game. And then I think of what he said, about how I satisfy myself with the idea that God is a mystery.
And that's all he'll ever be. That things are complex and there's no way I can understand them.
The world is flat, so I won't travel beyond those pillars over there, said the old man. And the young man
said, "Well I dont know the world is flat, so I'm going to see what happens."