In Milwaukee, Melchizedek!

It’s good to revisit things I enjoyed when I was younger, they mean different things to me now as an old creature. I’ve been listening to a book I’ve read (I believe) twice before. Near the start of it, a boy is given two stones, one black and one white. Urim and Thummim, yes and no, the only form

of divination allowed by god, at least so says the abrahamics. So I decided, on the way home, to look for two stones, one black and one white, I found several, but they were never quite right. Too jagged, too small, too broken etc. As I approached the front gate of my apartment building I remembered, I already have two perfect stones, one black and one white, smooth and worn by the sea. I grabbed them when I went to Winnetka, they were intended as gifts for my friend Andrew and I, we’d always listened to this band called Winnetka Bowling League, and always talked about visiting Winnetka itself. I hadn’t known that Winnetka is very close to Chicago, but when I found out, I went. I’d convinced Zoe to meet me there for a date. She’s wonderful, she’s incredible, I’ve come to regret casting her away twice. Anyway, I walked into my apartment, and rushed into the room where I stored the rocks in a cardboard box, rooted around a bit, and there they were, Urim and Thummim. I carry them with me now for divination. Yesterday I asked them what kind of soup I should get, we settled on palm nut soup.

In the way of the story, you’re not really supposed to use the stones to make decisions, you’re supposed to make your decisions yourself, being guided by omens, I believe the taoists describe something similar as Wu Wei. If a stone is to say, fall out of your pocket, then you must read them as an omen.

I’m here again, I find myself looking for omens and magical signs from God. My therapists would say magical thinking or mania, I believe I am prone to this sort of thing. Maybe it’s predisposition, maybe it’s a result of the trials and tribulations of my childhood, maybe it’s my upbringing, maybe it’s real.

My mother believes very much in my magical sight at least. She says once when I was much too young to remember, I had exclaimed at some point that I saw Jesus and some saints riding by in a chariot of some sort. Another time, a pastor in some church we visited declared that I would go to America and become a great computer scientist, and also, that I would have power of life and death over small animals. Some of you know this story already. Some days later I was on some playground or cement lot, memory fails me. I touched a lizard and it froze, I touched it again and it would move, I touched it and it would freeze again. Imagine the feeling that filled me as I started to believe in this sort of thing.

I look back and ask myself, was I already crazy at the time? am I crazy now? perhaps there’s never been a stable baseline of reality for me, perhaps I’ve been forever whirling through space, trying to make sense of being anything at all.

Now I am here again, I needed black and white stones and I already had them, is that a sign? a coincidence? am I just crazy? yes.

But you know what they say about crazy people, they say “their minds are with God”

I refuse to serve God in any way clusters of man do. How could any semblance of a righteous God be amongst the church, where the worst sinners exist in a concentrated space at any given time. I always felt a sort of righteous indignation at the people around me when I was forced to go to church, I knew they were hypocrites as I was. But maybe something does speak to me. When I buy a one way ticket across the country or the sea with no plans, things take their course, rarely work out how I want but sometimes that’s for the best and I always land on my feet as opposed to being dead or destitute, perhaps something is indeed watching over me. It’s a nice thought, a good band aid against darker nihilism. If I am crazy, I can’t do anything about it, I keep running these cycles, I keep ending up back at some idea of God talking to me, I keep ending up with black and white rocks, incredible luck and uncanny coincidences.

One of my greatest fears was going mad. When you fear a thing you suffer greater than the thing could ever have affected you. I will no longer fight my madness. Maybe one day they’ll look back and say psychosis, or schizophrenia, bipolar, etc etc.

But today I will say I am free, Melchizedek speaks to me once more, I have my stones, my mind is with God, and I don’t fear death.

Sinclair you’re manic, sinclair you’ve spent more money than you have, sinclair you’ve been filing your teeth sharp and you’re telling yourself it’s ancestral will, it’s a common practice of your people but really isn’t this just all tell tale signs of the insanity? . Yes yes yes yes, but I am free.

I am free.

I must go to the sahara, and the ocean.

Everything you’re looking for, can be found where you started. But you must go and come back, that is simply the way of things.

Inside the box is pain, but you mustn’t remove your hand. That is also the way of things.