Because I don't have the energy to write a really thoughtful post for the two people who will read it, here's a really cool podcast interview I watched this week. Besides giving me some new ideas, this smart guy reinforces a lot of the ideas I've already come to accept in my spiritual journey, which is always encouraging. I'll only quibble about a couple of points.

1. He warns against having beliefs because they close your mind to new information that contradicts them. Obviously that's true. I just don't see how it's possible to not have beliefs. I guess he makes a distinction between beliefs and opinions. I have a set of beliefs to make sense of the universe, and I'm comfortable with them, and of course my confirmation bias accounts for my pleasure in having my ideas reinforced by this smart guy, but I'm far more open to changing them than I was in my old religion. I used to say, "I know this church is true," and I had to either twist everything in the world to fit that assertion or just ignore it and assume someday it would make sense. I don't do that anymore. Perhaps because of my background in a high-demand exclusivist religion, I make a distinction between that kind of "belief" and the kind I have now.

​2. He doesn't think that transcendental experiences gained during drug trips can really help people grow and change. I get where he's coming from - people need to put in actual work and not just use drugs as a cheat code. But how would he know their limitations when, by his own admission, he's never used them? I only use Kush Kubes, very mild and legal drug gummies, but I feel like I find more joy in everyday life and have more compassion for stupid people who drive me insane. Not a lot more compassion, but enough that I make a conscious effort more often to not be overtly rude to them on social media even though I can't think of a single logical reason why I shouldn't, and recently I felt remoreseful enough to apologize when I was. A more tangible effect of the drugs, which I know is an effect of the drugs because it started while I was high, is that I laugh much more often. I almost never used to actually laugh while watching funny videos by myself. I needed other people's laughter to trigger mine, so I had to settle for appreciating the cleverness of the humor on an intellectual level. This is quite an improvement. Hopefully someday I'll graduate beyond drugs and be able to do all kinds of cool things with my unassisted brain, but I'm determined to try psylocibin and possibly ayahuasca first.

With those quibbles aside, which demonstrate that I still think for myself and don't uncritically except every cool spiritual thing I hear, this interview is far better than the clickbait titles might suggest.

Pope Francis coincidentally died the day after a meeting with the anti-Christ's vice president. Trump was upset that the funeral wasn't about him, and so was everyone else. The late Pope was one of the earliest cracks in my Mormon testimony because I found him far more inspiring than my "prophet," Thomas S. Monson. I was not very impressed with Monson's stories and platitudes. I think Francis revolutionized the culture of Catholicism in positive ways, if not the actual teachings, but I'm no expert on that. I have one hardcore Catholic Facebook friend. I added him years ago because he said he was trying to build bridges between Catholics and Mormons. It turned out he actually was trying to convert Mormons, so that was kind of a dick move. Anyway, I sometimes see him expressing strong opinions about points of Catholic liturgy or doctrine that I'm quite certain have as much eternal significance as whether Spider-Man could beat Superman, and it's weird, but I'm sure I sounded similar when I talked about Mormon theology that can be directly traced to a nineteenth-century treasure hunter plagiarizing other people's ideas.

I was a little more affected to learn of the death of Deserae Turner-Buck. I talked to her only briefly when I met her in a Mormon Institute of Religion class almost four years ago, but she was semi-famous for surviving attempted murder via gunshot to the head. She had health problems and a reduced life expectancy, but she wasn't supposed to die at age 22. She had stomach cancer and a lung infection. I have no idea whether those can somehow be traced to getting shot in the head or are just incredibly unlucky coincidences. In her final interview, she said she was tired, had chosen not to fight, and wanted to let her body go. "Death is scary, not gonna lie. Everybody is scared of death, and... yes, I guess I am scared a little bit, but I also just want it to come quick, come for me and be done." Damn.

Something I wrote about her in my recent book, Goodbye Mormonism, Hello World, has now been resolved:

That, I'm sure, is how any still believing Mormons who know about this blessing will rationalize its lack of results. If you think that sounds like a really lame copout, you are so right.

My dog, Milo, died over eight years ago. I wish I could have been with him at the time. On Tuesday morning I had a dream about him. I believe this dream was influenced by the spiritual things I study and by getting the best high of my life on an empty stomach on Sunday evening, so its real world significance is up for debate. I'd like to think his consciousness was literally visiting mine, but I won't know anytime soon. Basically, in the dream, I realized that Milo wasn't dead, he was right here. We were on beautiful forested hills above a lake. I stayed pretty stationary while he romped all over the place and peed on things. Some other guy (whom I want to believe was some kind of spirit guide) was there with a rabbit. I couldn't describe the guy if my life depended on it, but the rabbit was big and shaggy and the same colors as Milo (brown and black). I kept expecting Milo to chase it, but he left it alone. Then he pooped in the lake, and then he went right behind me to shake himself off. My first reaction was annoyance that he had all this space and chose to shake himself off on me, but it quickly gave way to amusement. And then I realized my back actually felt wet. The contrast of this real feeling with the unreality of the dream caught my attention and left an impression on me as I woke up. I was, fortunately, not wet in real life. But I want to believe that feeling proved it was a real experience and not just a random byproduct of firing neurons.

​but she also pushed me out of Mormonism, gave me an existential crisis that catalyzed my spiritual growth, and taught me patience that's coming in very handy right now, so that's fine. Thank you, Calise.

I'm trying again for what had damn well better be the last time one way or another, and while it may be premature to report on that effort now, I'd much rather talk about Mary than the fascist twats who run my country. I'm pretty sure she won't see this, but I don't much care if she does. I'll act embarrassed and she'll find it amusing. ​If my life were a work of fiction (which, I now realize, I can't prove that it isn't), ending up with her after all this time would be an ironic and satisfying twist because she's one of the first people I met in Utah when I moved here almost 14 years ago. I was 18, and she was 22. She went to a church activity with some friends from a different congregation, then talked to me because she made it her mission in life to talk to people who sat alone. "You were a chicken shit," she told me this past week as we reminisced about it. She invited me to go shopping with her and her friends, and I, being a loser, later wrote on Facebook, "Does three girls and me count as a date?" but then it didn't happen. If I hadn't met her then, I probably never would have. We didn't cross paths again until five months later, at which time she greeted me with enthusiasm, and I didn't recognize her.

Because Mary was older than me, seemed to have her shit together, and looked like a goddess, I never imagined being with her. That's not to say, of course, that I never imagined her. I remembered her and reached out occasionally after I stopped seeing her in person, partly because she was a good friend and partly because she was a 12 out of 10. With permission, I named a character after her in my comic strip that never came to fruition. Long story short, last year I decided for no particular reason to make an intentional effort to get closer to her, and as I learned that she isn't perfect or invincible after all, I accidentally fell in love. I should have seen that coming, but I wasn't thinking past the little dopamine rushes from her texting me back - which, for reasons she's repeatedly assured me have nothing to do with me, she was really bad at doing, hence the need for patience. I almost gave up over the perception that she didn't care. Over time she became more responsive, then texted me first once or twice, then called me when she had a bad day. The impetus for this post began when I texted her six times over nine days with no response. Then she apologized for her unresponsiveness and said she'd worked 70 hours last week. Then I asked about a situation at work she'd told me about a month prior, and she didn't know what I was talking about, so instead of texting me back, she called me and talked for nearly four hours.

At the start of our conversation, she got a text from another guy friend who said he would bring over some salmon. She said that was because he'd figured out that food was the way to her heart, and she said she would be too tired when he got off work at 10:30, so she said she told him that she had food and not to bother. Then she stayed on the phone with me until she fell asleep around 12:20 (local time) and I hung up. With condolences to the other guy, I was thrilled and honored that she chose me over him. How much to read into that, I don't know. She's well aware that I'm thoroughly smitten with her too. For one thing, I told her in February that I'm thoroughly smitten with her. For a couple of other things, I sent her a long heartfelt text while twice as high as usual and a poem about how I see her as a star shining through the darkness of the world. She has neither reciprocated nor rebuffed my affections. When I warned her that a love poem might be in the works, she said, "Haha nothing kind you say would ever scare me away. I’m not worried about it." This poem metaphorically expressed that she's one of the things - not the only thing, which would be unhealthy, but absolutely one of the things that makes my life worthwhile despite having to spend it in a country run by fascist twats. She liked it.

During this conversation, she alluded to some of the reasons she's a childless cat lady despite being so beautiful that strangers compliment her every day, which supported my hypothesis that she acts romantically neutral toward me because men suck. Of course that made me want to virtue signal all over the dang place. "I'm not like them, Mary. I respect women so much. Misogyny is easily in the top three reasons I left Mormonism. I push back against misogyny when I see it on social media, and women thank me while men accuse me of trying to get laid. They're all like, 'Hope she sees this bro,' but I know you won't because you don't use social media. I admire how strong and independent and outspoken you are. After you told me that you told your mom that you hated how the church had taught you to be submissive and she said, 'But Mary, you've never been submissive,' I got high and reflected on that and thought, I love that." But I don't think that would be as effective as taking the time to prove myself with my actions. Again, patience. She already trusts me a lot. She's told me things that I'm pretty sure she doesn't tell just anybody, and I'm not going to tell you what they are because I'm trustworthy.

​​Mary left Mormonism long before I did. Not coincidentally, she had a more negative experience in it than I did and has more negative feelings toward it than I do. Being taught as a teenager that she was responsible for what men would do to her if she showed too much skin had a lasting impact. (Any Mormon who says their church never taught that is either lying or too young to remember.) Years ago, I invited her to tell me why she'd left, which she did, at great length, while I responded without judgment or pushback. I did genuinely care about her, but I also thought I was planting a seed to help her return someday. I'd been plagued by my own doubts, but I couldn't relate to her mindset at all when she said, "I never had as much faith that the church was true as I have had that the church is not true." Surprise!

So during this more recent conversation, she told me she had a friend who recently wanted to convert. The friend felt really good from taking the sacrament and really loved by the congregation. Mary told her that's how cults get you. They had an argument. Mary told the friend to ask the missionaries how many wives Joseph Smith had and how old the youngest was, and apparently she did, and apparently she became enraged and that was the end of that. Mary lives in the same state as my parents, so I hope they read this and know that their church isn't growing in the developed world anymore because people can see that it was founded by a sexual predator. Anyway, she asked for my thoughts, and I tried to be nuanced and stuff. Anyone who considers converting to Mormonism deserves informed consent, and you'll never get that from the missionaries (who almost certainly don't have it themselves). But I'd try to not be argumentative about it or overtly tell them they shouldn't convert. That's a personal decision. I'm not sure I would have handled the situation exactly like she did, but it seems to have worked out fine.

Marvellous multitalented Mary sent me two of her artworks and a poem she wrote. Then she played guitar and piano and sang for me. Her voice was so beautiful that it should have been on the radio 10+ years ago before every mainstream female singer sounded the same. Granted, love is deaf. Years ago my roommate's wife sang to wake him up, and it sounded awful, but I realized that it probably sounded beautiful to him because he loved her, and I incorporated that idea into my novel Crusaders of the Chrono-Crystal. She convinced me to sing "Blackbird" along with her. I didn't sing very loud because I was embarrassed of my voice and wanted to hear hers. I thought there was nowhere in the world I'd rather be, but I realized I'd rather be in her apartment than mine. I thought that would be the highlight of the night. I was wrong.

When Mary calls me, she talks a lot. That's mostly fine. I don't talk a lot, and I love to hear anything she has to say. Sometimes I do want to say something and have a hard time getting it in, though. She seemed aware of that and occasionally remembered to pause and solicit my opinions. After at least three and a half hours, she asked me to tell her about what I'm doing with my life. I mentioned that I taught freshman English during graduate school and planned to continue on that career path, but it hasn't worked out since then, and I'm glad about that now because I don't have to deal with essays written by ChatGPT or all the bullshit from the fascist twats at both the state and federal levels who are gutting humanities programs, killing diversity initiatives, erasing queer people from public life, and forbidding universities from teaching accurate history or critical thinking. Mary interrupted to say that I must have seen some really good essays, and she reflected on a freshman English teacher who had a long-lasting influence on her, and she went on a rant about native English speakers who use poor grammar. Maybe I shouldn't have found that hot, but I did. I sent her "Word Crimes" by "Weird Al" Yankovic. She watched it, and I heard her laugh every few seconds, a sound every bit as lovely as her singing. I often make her laugh. She thinks I'm witty. She said so.

She asked if I could guess the one Weird Al song she had memorized. I half-jokingly guessed "Yoda." Close. It was "The Saga Begins." She sang half of it, then asked me to help her with the words, then asked me to just sing it with her. Of all the experiences I might have imagined sharing with her, this was not one. This was the highlight of the night. Dear God, I can still hardly believe it. I didn't know she knew anything about Weird Al or Star Wars. She said her brother used to play that CD on repeat. She asked me about my siblings, but while I described them, she fell asleep. I listened to her breathing for a minute to make sure she was okay because she may or may not have been drunk and high this whole time, and then I worked up the courage to say "I love you" before I hung up. So yeah, I hope this goes somewhere, specifically where I want it to go. Despite the agonizing wait, I feel that my patience is amply rewarded at times, and never more so than by this experience. I never would have had it if I'd given up. She's worth suffering for - but I hope she won't make me do that too much.

This was written by ChatGPT, a fact about which I was fully transparent. She asked if it expressed what I wanted to say, and when I said kind of and reiterated how I felt about her, she responded with the smile-with-hearts-swirling-around-it emoji. It's so good that it almost discouraged me from writing her one myself, which I eventually did, but I gave it to her yesterday, after the conversation I describe in this post took place.

​A Star in My Darkness
​
In a world weighed down by shadowed skies,
Where sorrow lingers, where silence cries,
You rise—a star, unwavering, bright,
A beacon of warmth in the coldest night.

Your kindness, a whisper soft and deep,
Turns restless storms into peaceful sleep.
Your thoughts, like rivers, steady and true,
Carve paths of light where none once grew.

No sculptor’s hand, no artist’s dream,
Could craft the beauty in you I’ve seen--
Your eyes, twin sparks that set me free,
Your lips, a song sung just for me.

Your hair, a cascade, golden or dark,
Glows like fire or midnight’s spark.
And oh, your legs—graceful, strong--
Each step you take feels like a song.

When the world feels heavy, cruel, and bare,
I find my refuge in your care.
You are the light that makes me see,
The love that breathes new life in me.

This is the one I wrote myself, with ChatGPT serving only an advisory role, which I didn't mention in the post for the reason that I just explained (see Appendix B). It's okay, I guess. She wrote back, "Holy shot that was so sweet and so well written" and followed up with, "Shit lol" 

Starstruck

My world is a pale blue dot within a pale blue dot
In an outer spiral arm of an outer spiral arm,
Swallowed by darkness that presses in as a tangible thing, a living thing, a thing more real than the mere absence of light,
Clawing,
Grasping,
Striving to eat me alive, om nom nom –
But it won’t
As long as I seek out the pinpricks of light, the celestial bodies that guide me to hope and the goodness that remains even here, even now.
I have a few, but my favorite is you.
The prettiest, brightest, and warmest is you.
I want to fall into your orbit and stay there for as long as the universe remains –
Complete surrender;
Always falling, never crashing (I hope).
I’m compelled to worship, like the ancient peoples who sacrificed to the sun because she gave them warm feelings, made their day, and lit up their world like nobody else.
That’s what you do to me, Mary –
Not because I think you’re perfect, according to the ideas of perfection that we impose on nature as if it ever asked for our opinions –
Or because I’m foolish enough to credit you with actual supernatural powers –
(After all, I haven’t stared long enough to go blind) –
But because you shine so brightly, daily and nightly,
Even when you can’t see it because no satellite is close enough to reflect you,
And even when you vanish behind the clouds for agonizing lengths of time,
My faith in your light remains.
 
(Interpolation: I don’t want to torture this metaphor past its breaking point, so let me take a break at this point to just say that I like your smile, your eyes, your hair, your facial structure, and the rest of you.)
 
Yes, even a star is “imperfect”
With her dark spots,
Her flares,
Her storms,
And her tendency to burn spacers who drift too close.
But maybe this controlled chaos is exactly what the universe needs her to be so she can shine,
So she can twinkle from a distance and only inspire more awe as one draws nearer to her power.
To see a star more closely is only to respect,
To admire,
And to love her even more –
And I would rather be burned by your touch than eaten by the darkness.
 
What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary. (That’s a cultural reference, not plagiarism.)

On Friday, I protested for veterans - you know, those people that conservatives only pretend to care about during Pride Month - and then protested in front of a Tesla dealership. The latter was a lot of fun because we had a smaller group and a lot of people honked their support at us. I estimate we got a dozen honks for every middle finger, and even the middle fingers made me happy because I enjoy upsetting bad people. Even though I'm bad at emotional regulation [Everyone reading this: "Whaaaaat??"] and have few qualms about yelling, swearing, or using my own middle finger, my instinctive response was to smile and wave as if they'd honked. It was a fun way of saying, "Ha ha, I got under your skin, but you failed to get under mine, so suck it."

We also had four MAGAt counterprotesters right next to us, so I felt like I was risking my life. Three of them left us alone most of the time, just standing there with their DOGE flag and their pathetic AI-generated image of Trump and Musk trying to look cool. One of them mocked and harassed us quite a bit. He had a Tesla shirt, a Tesla vehicle with a DOGE flag and a DOGE bumper sticker, and a sign that said, "My Tesla drove itself here to watch Dems cry." The sign kept falling over because he was too lazy to hold it himself and just propped it against his vehicle. He managed to talk quite a lot, though, for someone with his mouth so full of Elon Musk's dick. I don't understand why people like him exist. It's like they're from a different planet. But then, lo and behold, a bit of common ground! The person next to me had a sign with Luigi Mangione's face and the popular quote, "He who saves his country violates no law." The billionaire-worshipping simp came up to them and said, "I actually really like Luigi. I work in healthcare, and I think he did a good thing." That didn't change my mind about the guy being a brainless douchebag, but it showed me that he had some redeeming qualities and some nuance. Maybe someday he'll figure out that Elon Musk isn't a better person than Brian Thompson was.

One of the other counterprotesters also came to the pagan gathering on the Capitol steps the next day. He had a sign that said something like, "Jesus Already Won, America Belongs to Jesus," but then he swapped it out for a Pope costume, confirming my suspicion that he was a lunatic. He attempted to disrupt the singing and meditating portions by yelling into a bullhorn. I'm not sure what part of his douchebaggery was supposed to put Christianity in a positive light, but it just made me want to burn a Bible.

The main purpose of the gathering was a "Hex the Fascists" ceremony. As I said before, I don't believe in witchcraft, but it was worth a try. I'm open-minded. This ceremony was no weirder or crazier than the Christian or Mormon rituals that people around here take for granted. The woman leading the ceremony wrote down categories of people to hex - fascists, racists, transphobes, etc. - but no individual names. The idea is that the hex will bring discomfort into people's lives as long as they belong to any of these categories, so they can be released from it if they change their ways. The woman chose every category carefully to avoid collateral damage - for example, someone suggested "narcissists," but she wouldn't write that because narcissism is technically a mental disorder, and she didn't want to punish people for having a mental disorder. That approach felt weird to me because coming from my background, when I prayed for something, I would expect God to know what I meant and not be pedantic about my word choices. I guess the energy of the universe or whatever works differently, though.

After the event ended, I got a quick free energy healing from another woman. I didn't expect it to do anything, but again, worth a try. I'm sure her energy healings have a similar success rate to Mormon priesthood blessings. It also started to snow right after the event ended, and she said that was because she'd asked "the ladybugs" for good weather during it. I'm sure her requests to insects have a similar success rate to the prayers I used to say to Heavenly Father.

I hope to get back to writing about things besides protests. On Tuesday night, I dreamed that I died. It was clearly influenced by my Delta-9 trips and my studying of NDEs, but I've never had a dream like that before. My dreams rarely have any clear correlation with what I experience or think about while I'm awake. In this dream, I understood that I was either reliving my own past life or experiencing someone else's through their eyes. I understood that I was Jesus waiting to be beheaded. Then I remembered that Jesus wasn't beheaded, so I decided maybe I was John the Baptist. Also, the year was 1970. Jesus/John the Baptist was executed in 1970. I understood that to be a quirky bit of trivia, like the fact that samurai coexisted with Coca-Cola or the fact that Christopher Lee witnessed the last execution by guillotine in France.

I felt no fear as I waited to die. I wondered if my consciousness really would continue, as my studies have given me reason to believe, or just fade to nothing after all, but I figured my death would be over quickly in any case so I didn't need to worry about it. As my head was placed in position on the paper cutter thing, I kept myself calm by playing this song in my head and mouthing along to it.

I didn't notice the blade come down, and I didn't feel a thing in my neck, but I understood that I was dying or dead when I started to feel funny. This was the point where I would expect to leave my body and float into a dark tunnel, and I felt a bit of anxiety, but it was quickly drowned out by a warm, peaceful, pleasurable feeling in my chest. A series of outlines of people's faces flashed by, like one of those spinning lights that makes shadow pictures, and there might have also been a dog, but I might have added that later as I was going over the dream in my memory. Then a black-and-white image of a young kid with bushy black hair lingered for several seconds. I thought, Who is that? My daughter? I wanted her to be someone significant to me because if she was just some random kid, then all of this was probably just random nonsense and not as profound as it felt in the moment.

The pleasure in my chest was so intense that it woke me up. I thought I might actually be dead, so I checked for a heartbeat and couldn't find one. I checked several times. I told myself that I wasn't finding it because I didn't want to find it because I wanted to be dead. Eventually I realized that I probably wasn't dead because I had to pee. The feeling in my chest happened again later that night for no discernible reason. The next day I wondered if I'd had a heart attack, especially since my chest has occasionally felt tight or achy for a few months and I haven't talked to a doctor about it because I live in the United States, but I can find no indication that pleasurable heart attacks are a thing. It was more like a heart orgasm, frankly, but I don't think that's a thing either.

I don't know why this happened, and I wondered for a bit whether it was a spiritual experience or just a nonsensical dream. Then I thought, ¿Porqué no los dos? I don't think it was a message from God or the universe per se. I don't think there's any profound hidden meaning in me being Jesus/John the Baptist or seeing that kid. But the feeling was real, and it uplifted me and made me comfortable about dying, so does it really matter why? I'll take what I can get from what life gave me for whatever reason.

PSA: Here's a recent example I observed firsthand of how Russian trolls and bots manipulate millions of Americans who should have been declared mentally unfit to vote.

Reminder that my new memoir is out as an ebook on Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble. I want to talk some more about how much I love the cover. I was very disappointed with the cover for my first book. The artist ghosted me for weeks at a time and then turned in a half-assed job at the last minute. I can barely think about it, let alone look at it without getting depressed, and I'm not very sad about the possibility of AI crushing his dreams. This cover, on the other hand, is one that I'm actually excited to show people. It was created by my transgender ex-Mormon brother, the only member of my immediate family who won't be upset that this book exists. (On the other hand, my genderfluid ex-Mormon cousin was the first person who bought it.)

It's primarily based on a nightmare I had after reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos at the height of my existential crisis, which I describe in the book. It gave me an unsubtle visual representation of how much I didn't matter and almost brought me to tears. The Milky Way in the background is a touch I didn't request, yet it fortuitously happens to align with another bit that I mention in the book - namely, the time I was in Logan Canyon with friends looking at the Milky Way and thinking deep thoughts, and thanks to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, I was able to tell them that it's called the Milky Way because it came from the goddess Hera's breast.

We wouldn't have been able to put that on the cover anyway. The Milky Way looks, rather, like it's coming from Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, the exalted heterosexual couple that rules the universe in Mormonism. Heavenly Mother is cut off a little to subtly indicate her inferior status. She's not worshipped or prayed to, she's rarely talked about, and nothing is known about what she actually does. They're looking at me with disappointment, which is self-explanatory. It occurred to me just this week that they could also be considered a representation of my real parents. The latter respected my decision to apostatize (which I appreciate) and have never wanted to talk about it at all (which I don't appreciate), but I know they can't be happy about it because their lives revolve around Mormonism. I remember my dad's annoyance when his sister and brother-in-law left it, and I have no reason to think he's changed since then. "I thought they got it," he said. I feel the same way about my parents voting for a fascist with dementia who embodies the opposite of every virtue they ever taught me, so we're even.

The flying saucer is there because I wanted a flying saucer there. I have no real justification. I like science fiction. There's a chapter in the book about aliens, but it has little to do with anything else.