This Week, I Protested Again and Dreamed of My Own Death

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.