The Voices I Hear When I Write

     One rainy Sunday afternoon when I was working on my novel The Altered Boys Club, one of my characters, Sebastian Stephens, commented on the exterior of the townhouse owned by his friend, Detective Cliff Nolte, exclaiming it to be decidedly French. I typed the scene and then stopped. 'I can't write that,' I said out loud, 'unless it's true.' Sebastian's voice replied in my ear, 'It's true.'     

     I turned off my computer, grabbed an umbrella and headed for the subway to Brooklyn. Like a film maker, I had previously scouted locations that would play in the story, so I knew approximately where Cliff lived. I had not, however, ever seen such a townhouse.

     When I arrived in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn, I first looked for the hospital which would come into the story later and found it adjacent to the park where Cliff goes for his morning run. There was a coincidence, since I hadn't written about that yet! This gave me a clue to the location to his home. I commenced walking up and down every street. Part of me kept chiding me as a fool to roam around like this in the rain. Sebastian kept telling me to continue walking.

     The a few streets over proved Sebastian right. In the middle of the block, among the typical red brick townhouses was one with a mansard roof! This one was a story taller than the rest which led me to believe this was the result of an add-on. Nonetheless, here it was. A single French-styled structure just as Sebastian had described it.

     While I was in the neighborhood, I decided to search out the place where Ajit's body had been found. This also held true to Sebastian's description. The church used by Monsignor Flint was also only blocks away. 

     On the subway home, I thought about all of this. I knew for certain this wasn't my story. Sebastian was filing his report of events through me. When I arrived back at my home in Manhattan, I sat down to the computer once again and typed well into the evening.

In My Grandmother's House

     One night I dreamed I was in my Grandmother's house. I was alone in her house. I didn't know where my Grandmother could have gone, but I knew not to go looking for her. I walked through the house very slowly. Here were all her things. Items she had purchased or been given as gifts from various family members. Souvenirs of her life she had collected and put on display. My hand caressed her furniture as I passed each piece. Memory was absorbing all of this. If I were an artist, even today I could sketch her rooms and their contents.

     All of the rooms were sunlit. Strong breezes began to billow her curtains, the valances of which as a child I had often watched her starch and iron. The house became suddenly cold so I walked over to a window to close it. When the window was closed, I woke. I recalled the dream in vivid detail and knew in my heart I would never be in her house again. The phone rang.

     My mother, the daughter of the Grandmother whose house I had visited in my dream, was calling to tell me my Grandmother had just died. I told her I already knew. I had just said good-bye to her house.

Awake In Someone's Dream, My Own

     A legend says, "When you can't sleep you're awake in someone else's dream." Perhaps the person is awake within his/her own dream. Perhaps there is an occasional glitch, if you will, in the continuum of being. Are we here dreaming about the past, or are we there dreaming about the future? Isn't it possible we exist in more than one dimension?
     I believe we lead multiple lives in multiple levels of consciousness. Haven't you ever experienced such vivid dreams that you awake exhausted? I have many times. Here is how it happens: as I fall asleep in my bed I start to dream that I am awakening and it's time to rise. I go through a normal day with people I know doing things we would all do. Yet, the surroundings are different than when I went to bed but familiar just the same. When I begin to fall asleep from that day, I awake again in what I consider my own bed, in my own room, in my own life. Every thing was just a dream. The same thought I had on the other side of sleep.
     Consider the times people go to bed with a nagging problem on their minds and awake the next day with the solution. Is it not possible life experience from another level was able to linger to solve the problem here? I believe such eureka moments come from remembered lessons. We just aren't able to recall where and when we learned them. Deja vu! These experiences might not be from past lives, but from concurrent lives.
     The spirits some see and the voices some hear may not be the phantoms we think they are. They might be the community of saints or souls who are able to move between the veils of consciousness to remind us of what we know. We are never alone. We are never beyond help.
     

Spirits Of Comfort

     After my Grandfather crossed over, I would see him whenever I relocated or changed jobs. The first example of this occurred when I moved to Dallas and went to work at a department store. I noticed a group of people waiting their turn at the up escalator across the department from my work station. Granddad stood in the midst of them. I made my way over there as quickly as I could, but my Grandfather was already ascending. He turned to face me, smiled and waved. I saw him a few times after that. His appearances assured me that the new location or venture had been the right decision. By the same token, when he didn't appear it wasn't long before I realized I had made a mistake.
     Another spirit who pops in every once in a while is my friend Fran. She was one of my most unforgettable characters when we both lived in Dallas. Flamboyant and funny! I swear the woman invented both qualities! Before she crossed over, she took a trip to Thailand to visit a friend of hers. I received a postcard after several weeks which I have kept. She wrote, "Well, Kid, after not hearing from me for so long, I bet you think I've taken the deep six. I want you to know I'm still here." I can be cleaning or looking for a book and that postcard will fall to the floor. It's her way of reminding me she is still here. Her main role in my life has been to advise me away from wooing men who aren't "on the up and up."
     Now let me tell you a story I once heard. The last time I saw my father, he told me he wouldn't be there the next time I went home for a visit. He had a heart condition and had told me this on several occasions, as I reminded him. He countered that this time he knew for certain his time to cross over was coming. His mother who passed when I was a child, had been visiting him at night. "She sits on the edge of the bed and holds my hand. I think she is coming to get me." I was in New York, but I am told Dad had a peaceful crossing.
   
   

Working For The BBC

     While I was in school in Lincolnshire, I had the opportunity to work as an extra on the BBC/Time Life series The Fall of Eagles. I played a Prussian officer in a ballroom scene. More specifically a Prussian officer in the ballroom scene who danced.
     I have two left feet. I spent days with an older girl in my neighborhood as a teenager learning to dance for my first high school mixer. My senior year of high school I spent an afternoon with two girls who tried to teach me to two-step for our school's production of Carousel. I met with such success that my featured dance bit was cut at the next full cast rehearsal.
     Yet when I put on the officer's uniform, I waltzed perfectly with my partner who wore a hoop skirt, no less. The scene took place in England at around the time of the American Civil War. I have felt a magnetism for the 19th century ever sense. It's as though something awakened in me.
     Some of my favorite books are from the period, such as Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, to name a few. My favorite composers also worked during this time: Chopin, Berlioz, Verdi, Tchaikovsky.
   This other life bubbles to the surface periodically, especially when I hold some object from the time. There are flashes of light and glimmers of gold, as the song says. Partially formed memories rise to my consciousness and I know I have held the thing before.
     So when I was in school in Lincolnshire, living in a manor house built in the mid-1800's I was at home. I had come home to a time and place I somehow knew.

Out of the Past, Synchronicity Resurrected

     I am starting to hear a bit of a story as I write my next book with my character Sebastian Stephens that comes from a memory that still chills me to think of it.
     While at college in Lincolnshire, I happened to visit an old cemetery with a classmate, okay, she was my girlfriend at the time, sort of. Anyway, we were strolling along reading the epitaphs on headstones, when we came upon a very special one: a headstone with my name on it!
     The last name was spelled differently, n-i-c-h-o-l-l, the first name was also a spelling variation of my own, but Daniel was the same middle name. As if this were not creepy enough, this man had died on my birthday 200 years before!
    I was standing on the grave in order to read the inscription on the stone, but I jumped off in a single backward leap. I nearly fell down. My imagination immediately conjured an image of a skeletal hand pushing up through the grass to grab me and pull me under; a true Twilight Zone moment.
     I never returned to that cemetery.
     This time around, I will be cremated and my ashes scattered somewhere. I don't want to risk giving my future self a shock like that one.

Reaching Out & Flipping The Switch

     I was a good Catholic boy. I was a good Catholic boy with some strange ideas that instinct told me to keep to myself. For instance, my Dad was the youngest of nine children. This meant that as a child I attended a lot of Catholic wakes and funerals. I didn't really have a grasp of what was happening other than people were really sad.
     My kindergarten teacher, Sister Clara, showed the class where Kansas was on a globe one day. She also showed us where China was. Sister said that if we were to dig a hole deep enough we would end up in China. I thought that was something exciting to do someday. So when I went to the next funeral and we stood around the open grave, I naturally thought this person was going to China to live. It was sad to think we wouldn't see the person probably for a long time, but not the end of the world. I didn't think people were dead-dead, just resting for their trip to China. I also believed if I touched the people in the caskets they would wake up and the family wouldn't have to be so sad. I suppose this was my first inkling of reincarnation.
     Time progressed. I went to a lot of funerals without ever touching anyone until my maternal Grandfather. Granddad passed over the year I was to graduate college. I truly loved him and grieved his loss. At the funeral home I stood next to one of my aunts who was caressing my Granddad's forehead. I must have looked shocked because my aunt gave me a weak smile. "It's all right. This isn't him. His forehead feels like stone. You can touch him."
     I hesitated. Encouraged by my childhood believe that I could wake him and spare my family their grief, I placed my hand carefully on the old man's forehead. My aunt was right. This isn't how my Granddad felt. This wasn't him. He didn't wake up. However, I could now hear him talking to me. In fact, he talked all through his service as though he were sitting in the row of seats behind me and leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
     Somehow in that single moment, I flipped a switch and I hear my loved ones, as well as others, speaking to me from some place just over my shoulder. One touch opened me up to the stories I write down so that I can tell you a story I once heard.

Relationships, Relocation, and Synchronicity

     My partner and I had been together for just under three years when friends of ours moved to Dallas, TX. We were invited down for a visit. My partner couldn't go, so plans were made for me to go on my own.
     At the time I was working as a Charles of the Ritz beauty adviser. At the semi-annual training seminar, Barbara, the regional training director announced that if any of us happened to be going to the Dallas area on vacation, to be sure to let her know. She lived in a Dallas suburb and would be happy to show us around. Of course, my hand went up. We later made plans to meet one day of my visit.
     Barbara and I met  for lunch and she drove me around to a few of the key Charles of the Ritz accounts. The last store we visited happened to have an opening for a Counter Manager. "This is where I'd like for you to come work," she told me. She introduced me to the various managers and I ended up in the Human Resource office with a job offer. I accepted the position and spent the 550-mile drive back home rehearsing what I would say to my partner. A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was telling me synchronicity was getting me into trouble.
     The Easter before this we had traveled to Atlanta to visit a college friend of his and fell in love with the city. We had also met some people we both really liked and planned to remain in contact with them. We knew my partner's work in Kansas City might be ending soon and that Atlanta might be a possible re-location destination. Now I had a new job beginning in a few weeks in Dallas, not exactly in the plan.
     I arrived at our apartment before he got home from work. I needed more rehearsal so of course he came home early. "We need to talk," we said simultaneously. "Okay," he said. "You go first."
     "No, you go. How was work today?"
     "Well, that's what we need to talk about. You know the office here is being closed, but we have a couple of options. First, tell me how you liked Dallas."
     "Dallas was great! I loved it, even though you weren't there."
     "Did you like it as well as Atlanta?"
     "I think so. Why?"
     "That's one of the options. I was offered a choice today between transferring to Atlanta or to Dallas. So where do you think we should move?"
     "Dallas," I quickly answered with relief.
     "Okay. That's fine, but tell me why when you were so enthralled with Atlanta."
     "Because I was offered a job there."
     "Really? And you accepted it without discussing it with me? What would you have done if this hadn't worked out like this?"
     "You know, honey, I have really missed you this week so I think we should take ourselves to another room, don't you? I need to get out of these clothes and into a shower. Besides, everything has worked out so we don't need to worry about any what-ifs."
     We lived in Dallas for fourteen years. In that time I learned a lot of local colloquialisms  As a result, I can tell you here and now that in moment synchronicity saved my bacon!
     Fourteen years later, we traveled to New York for an extended Easter weekend. That's another story for another time. Suffice it to say, there was more bacon in the Big Apple waiting on my plate.

In Stillness A Voice

     I once was introduced to a man by mutual friends who seemed to be interesting ... at first. Each time I encountered him, more discrepancies in his story came to light. So much about him simply didn't fit and my inner warning system activated.

     Around this time someone suggested I sign up for the National Novel Writing Month, shortened as NaNoWriMo, a creative writing program wherein the goal was to write a 50,000 word novel (novella) in thirty days. I often thought I would write a novel someday. I had been following The Artist's Way, so I decided to give this a try. What would I write? I headed to the river and my new acquaintance came to mind.

     Before there were the television shows Once Upon A Time and Grimm, my guiding voice suggested, "Re-write a fairy tale." My next stop was the Strand Bookstore on Broadway at 12th Street.

     Whenever I visit the Strand to find something to read, I always start with the bargain shelves on the sidewalk. The prices of these books range from one dollar to three for second-hand great books. On this particular visit I went straight to the only book to catch my eye, a copy of The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature edited by Margaret Martignoni, published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1955 for one dollar. I began reading it on the subway home. All the stories from my childhood were here. Rumpelstiltskin stood out as the basis of the Faustian tale I would write as The Dashing Mister R. 

     Here was the story of a mysterious man whom no one truly knew who did whatever he could to ingratiate himself to people. He later demanded a price for those favors.

    So discovering and purchasing the book was the synchronicity. The paranormal part came into play when I heard a new voice, that of a young man. "Something like this happened to me. Let me tell you my story." And so I met Sebastian Stephens. Every morning and sometimes in the middle of the night after dreaming, I would sit at my computer and record Sebastian's experience with the mysterious Mister R. I finished the first draft in three weeks. I didn't have to think, plan, or outline. I only had to be still and listen. I entered on a printed page a story I heard once.

   

Synchronicity To The Rescue!

     This weekend my roommate went out of town to visit friends. A creature of habit, I still closed my bedroom door when I went to bed. Sometime in the night, I heard the door open and I felt a presence, gender undetected, sitting on the edge of the bed. This spirit, for lack of a better word, caressed my face and spoke in soft whispers. All I can remember of what was said is that everything is working out for me and that I will not consciously remember the rest of what I was told. I remember exactly two things: everything is working out in my favor and it was time to wake up.
     I did awake at that point and looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was the time I usually rise. My bedroom door was standing wide open. I am not one to worry or fret ever, but an extra sense of serenity followed me throughout the day.
     So here's where synchronicity comes into play. I have begun research for a new novel, a historically based novel, and not really finding the main ingredient I need to find. As such, I don't yet have a handle on the story. Later that morning when I checked my email I found that a very good friend of mine in Dallas, TX emailed an article to me from the London Daily Mail. Without knowing anything about my proposed project,she suggested in her note that this might item in the news might be something on which to either build a story, or at least an idea to incorporate into one. Her email provides me with an important key to unlock this world I want to explore. This is just the beginning. I'm sure there will be other clues coming forth. This has happened before.

The 6th Principle for Manifesting Your Desires

"Never ignore a coincidence." That's synchronicity!

Introducing The Writer As A Medium

     One of my favorite radio personalities as a kid was Paul Harvey. His famous tag line "And now you know the rest of the story" left an enduring impression on me. Investigating the other side of a story has often led to me consider the so-called villain's version of events.

     I did this with a one actor show I wrote entitled 'Divine Intervention.' In it Lucifer was allowed to relate what he considers to be the contrary truth of familiar scriptures. The idea came from something Joseph Campbell said to Bill Moyers during The Power of Myth  series of interviews. Mr. Campbell stated that Hell was not a place where Lucifer was sent when he was kicked out of Heaven, but rather an emotional state of being. Lucifer was the great lover of God. He had indeed been God's favorite and most beautiful angel. So when God created Man and set him above the angels, Lucifer was consumed by jealousy. He declared that the infallible God was making a mistake. Separation from his beloved was/is his Hell.
     As time passed I found more articles written by scholars and theologians who shared Campbell's view. I discovered that Lucifer made it his mission to prove to God Man's inferiority. His goal was/is to get himself back into God's favor by showing his poor opinion of human beings to be correct.

     One new idea led to other similar ideas until I felt I had to do something with what I had learned. At that point, I didn't sit down to write. Rather I began walking and listening.

      Living on the West Side of New York City gives me easy access to the Hudson River and Riverside Park on its bank. This where I spend my alone time. Watching the waves and the gracefulness of the sailboats, the steady movement of the barges mesmerizes me. This is where I heard the voice I was to give Lucifer for the play. Once he began talking I couldn't get him to stop. He had a lot to say! We would walk along the river and then I returned home and began to type. My name appears on my plays and novels, but I am actually only the typist. 

     Let's plan to meet here. You are welcome any time. Get comfortable as we explore the question of Synchronicity or Paranormal. Let me tell you a story I once heard.