Are you feeling lucky, punk? My photo, all rights reserved.

There's another version of this letter that I'm sending to the Northside Family Practice Medical Center as a thank you for their excellent response to my very recent medical emergency. This is the real version.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a tiny scratchiness in the corner of my left eye. That's not unusual these days, because about three years ago, in the middle of the night, I somehow scraped my left thumbnail across my eye socket and damaged the tear duct. Ten minutes later I did it again, one of the worst repeated accidental self-inflicted injuries I've ever experienced. Took me a week of walking around with a bandanna over the eye to be able to see out of it again.

Since then, it sometimes dries out a bit at night, as though the lid doesn't close fully over the tear duct and the little ball of flesh there dries and hardens. I've learned to deal with this, using expert medical advice, eyedrops, and the other things you do when you're sick and don't have much money. Until yesterday, all had gone well.

Throughout the day, no matter what I did to ease the pain, the eye got worse. Towards evening it was so bad I couldn't function, but I still thought it would recover if I just kept using the hot compresses and rest time that had always worked before. By midnight it was clear I wouldn't be able to drive to work today, let alone get through a shift, and I laid awake the rest of the night just hoping to see some improvement as red waves of pain flourished around me in the blackness and my eye alternately burned as though scalded with acid and stabbed me as if trying to excrete shards of broken glass.

At four a.m. I called my shift manager to explain I wouldn't be in for work. Normally I'd try to talk my way out of having to go to town and see the doctor, because I'm an honest person and don't stay home sick if I'm not. I don't need a note to verify I'm ill, I'm ill if I say I'm ill and I usually get better faster if I stay home. Today I said, "I'm calling the doctor as soon as they open and I will try to drive myself to town." What I didn't say was that if I hadn't been able to see to drive, I'd have gone next door to my neighbor Louie's, who I hardly speak to at all, busted his door down and dragged him to his truck to drive me to town. Or I'd have blindfolded myself and walked in the direction of town, if I had accidentally killed Louie. This thing f______g hurts. It hurts so bad that now I understand how some of my ancestors back in the Plains nations thought that shoving an arrow down their own throats was a better deal than the smallpox. Yep, I get it now, mystery solved.

Do I look like I don't
want the medicine?

At seven a.m. my eye was swelled nearly shut, with alternate rings of purple and red swellings around a bright red socket and a disgusting scummy pink eyeball. Every time I leaned over, long strings of snot ran out my nose. At the rate this progressed I estimated my eyeball would explode at ten minutes past noon and the spores would be released to infest the rest of the world. I called the clinic to ask when they'd open and listened politely and calmly to their answering machine. I called them again a minute after they opened.

I've been to your clinic several times over the years, I said, but I haven't been sick for quite awhile and I think none of the doctors I know are there any more. I wonder if I could just come down and sit in the lobby and hope for some sympathy? The nurse laughed and gave me an appointment for 9:15. Suddenly she was the best person in the world to me, that literally sounded like the greatest thing ever.

Apparently not many people here are sick these days, it's been a mild winter without much illness and the lobby was empty except for me and somebody who looked like they were feeling lots better than me. I took the clipboard full of forms and sat down to fill them out, leaning forward until the weight of my eyeball shifted a little in its perch, and screamed twice. I kept writing, noting all the things my relatives died of and all the things that had tried to kill me over the years, as well as lying about most of my bad habits in order to save time and get to the root of the problem. Anywhere I could fit it in, I would write EYEBALL or INFLAMED EYEBALL. Father did not die of INFLAMED EYEBALL. Mother, 90, does not suffer from EYEBALL problems.

Before I could finish, the nurse came over to question me about my pain level. I was wearing a patch over my eye because that felt a tiny bit better than exposing it to horrible, brilliant searing light from the overcast gray morning sky and the dim recesses of the lobby. To explain my problem, I took the patch off and smiled in her direction. She said, Ewwww! and took three steps back. Smart lady.

"On a scale of one to ten, how would you -- "

"Nine!" I said. "Its a damn nine! I've had broken bones that didn't hurt like this hurts!" Try to tear your eyeball off a lamppost every time you look to right or left and you'll get the general idea. I'd have rated it ten except there's probably something worse, like the moment before four horses tear your body into four distinct pieces. To your brain, your eyeballs are the biggest things you have, and this f_____g hurts lots.

Give me the eyedrops, and I won't hurt you.

In the examining room, the doctor also pulled up short and looked like he'd rather keep some distance from this possibly contagious problem. As doctors all do these days, he was careful to make sure I understood that in spite of his many years of medical school and professional experience, he wasn't really certain what this was. He did write me a prescription for magical eyedrops and said that if it didn't help within a day I'd have to come back. Cripes, if it didn't work within a day, the medics would be dragging me in by the heels with my head bumping on the sidewalk. A day's good, I don't want to wait longer than a day. He was no Dr. Fowler, our family's country doctor when I was a kid in the Ozarks and you could get anything diagnosed with certainty for five bucks or an invitation to a good Sunday dinner, with chicken and pie. Now, no doctor can diagnose appendicitis without two CAT Scans. Oh well, you take what you can get, and I am grateful for the help.

All the medical people today think they have to apologize for the bill if you don't have insurance, and offer a way for you to delay payment and spend more money later. Lady, I have cash. If this works, it's worth the money. If not, the estate lawyers will be paying my bill.

Pharmacies are just the same. The young woman standing with a bored expression behind the pharmacy desk at Walmart eyed the bill for the tiny one-inch tall bottle of eyedrops, half filled, and then looked at me sadly.

"Are you sure you want this?" she asked. "It's $80."

The reason I am in not in prison or locked in an asylum somewhere is that about 12 years ago -- no, I guess it was eight -- I learned to answer stupid questions politely, with a yes or a no. In the old days, I would have said what I was thinking.

"Damn it, lady!" I would have said. "I'll pay cash! I'll pay credit! Hell, I'll wrassle you for it if I have to! Gimme the damn eyedrops or I'll take this eye patch off, I swear I'll do it!" Then she would have run screaming and as security swarmed me I'd have headed out the door with an armload of useful medications. Those were the old days. Today I just said, Yes. I give money. You give medicine. Deal. My people, friends to your people, always and forever.

Be warned! Keep the Arrows of Mercy at the ready!

In the car in the parking lot I desperately applied two drops of the elegant elixir, and immediately knew it would work. Sometimes you just know it will work. Sometimes you know it won't. This time they gave me the real medicine, something they called "Generic." I tried to read the name of it but the print's too small for me to read with one eye, through a blur of snotty tears. Applying those drops felt like deactivating the self-destruct mechanism on the starship Enterprise with only ten seconds to spare. Suddenly the klaxons stopped blaring and the corridors cleared of yellow flares of smoke and flame. "Countdown, is halted! Eyeball explosion, canceled!"

I can put aside the merciful swallowing arrows for now at least, the crisis is passing. The eye still hurts, but it's only an eight on the Richter Scale of Pain. I can't even remember what a nine feels like, now. I got half an hour of sleep, waking up to yank my eyeball loose twice from being pasted to the dying pustules on the inside of my eyelids, and that actually felt lots better. Whatever this is, you don't want it.

Like me, you should be grateful, and send a "Thank you!" to the Northside Family Practice Medical Center and the wonderful people there. Thank you! wonderful people! Thank you for not letting my eyeball explode.

Suppose George was lost here. I don't know that country, and even if I saw George I wouldn't know where he was. George will probably have to find his own way home. Photo by Alan Vernon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanvernon/6403009549/; CC 2.0 license.

Today I got an email from someone asking for my help in finding a missing person, lost in the Balkans somewhere, and when I tried to respond my email bounced back to me. Maybe they don't empty their inbox and wonder why no one talks to them. I disabled the comments feature here ages ago because of all the spam I get, so I'll just include my reply here, in more general terms, in the hopes that Gabi will see it. But the answer applies to nearly everyone who writes to me for psychic assistance or technical advice.

First, I don't charge for my services. My services usually don't turn out to be very useful, although quite a few people have affirmed they turn out to be real. If that's an odd answer, I can't help it. I doubt that anyone else, even if they have a professional service and high fees, does any better. I would definitely steer away from anyone who charges a fee for any of this. Remote work isn't a scientific process, even though some have tried to make it conform to those standards. Sometimes things happen and sometimes they don't, despite your best efforts and intentions.

I don't believe that in ordinary cases any of my abilities can cause predictable effects anywhere in the world or the universe. To do something miraculous there must be miraculous need for the work, and most ordinary tasks don't qualify. Rarely, as a heyoka, I do get calls for that kind of work, but it as yet has not come from other people. I think my effective range is limited to about 30 miles from home, for practical ordinary human purposes, because I know much more about the details of that 60 mile diameter area than I know about the topography and population of remote Guatemala, just for an example. I might visit Guatemala now and then, but I would find it very difficult to pinpoint my location except by major terrain features. Around here, I know roads and trees and rivers and communities. That helps a lot.

If somebody went missing locally, I might pick up some clues from visions and be able to go check them out. If somebody goes missing on the other side of the planet, I might pick up information that's totally useless because it isn't remarkable and I don't know that area and can't follow it up. There are practical limitations to the shamanic system, which seems designed to work well locally but to provide nothing more than interesting information about distant places. At least that's so in practical terms.

Gabi, if you're serious about hiring somebody, I suggest you visit the Ed Dames Remote Viewing Community at http://www.rvcommunity.net/viewforum.php?f=8 and look for free help first. They practice a more scientific method that I don't believe in any longer, but it might work.

I get interesting letters from people that often seem like an attempt to gather information that will make me look like a con man. People write to me for my opinion on ancient artifacts, for instructions on how to become heyoka, and on occasion for advice about time travel. I know about as much about ancient Indian artifacts as I know about the modern ones I make myself. You can't learn to become heyoka, it's something the spirits choose you to do. About all you can do to foster time travel is hang around places where it happens. That's the best I can do to answer those questions.

Somebody did write awhile back to ask me my opinion of whether an old axe was a Scottish war axe or a carpenter's axe. Being half Indian and half Scot I know that answer. It's at least both. If you're Scottish and somebody comes at you with violent intent you'll pick up whatever's handy and hit them with it. So that carpenter's axe is a Scottish war axe, and that rock over there, that's a Scottish war rock. Don't mess with a Scotsman.

Buddha's Lions:
The Lives of the
Eighty-Four Siddhas

It's kind of strange to spend your life in pursuit of something that can't be defined, but serious Buddhists do that. Although we're told it can't be known or logically understood, or even intentionally pursued, we've heard stories of enlightenment and either go after it tenaciously or stop believing in it and turn what we do into religion instead.

I don't look at enlightenment in the way most Buddhists see it or conceive it. To me the old meditations led to something which fits the descriptions of enlightenment, but did leave me unable to explain what it might be. It wasn't what I expected, and it wasn't exactly as scholastic Buddhists describe it.

To find examples of what I mean I have to go back in history fairly far, because in the beginnings of Buddhism the experience seems to have been different, with fewer rules and simpler approaches to the problem. In Buddha's Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, 84 examples of enlightened people show us this older side of things. Most would think the stories exaggerated or symbolic, but if you consider them literal descriptions of what happened you do get that older view of what enlightenment actually means.

One of my favorite stories from this book is the story of Manibhadra. This young girl came from a wealthy family and at 13 was already entrenched in ordinary life and engaged to be married. One day a guru stopped to ask for food and after a conversation with him, she asked to learn how to obtain liberation. They spent several days in the local cemetery as he taught her the different stages of the path, and then she went back to her family.

Her parents were very upset with her, thinking she was rebelling against the arranged marriage that was still pending, but even though they beat her she was calm about all of it. She explained that she'd been around so long that every living being had been her mother and father at some time, and she'd just accept the beatings as part of her path. Her parents thought her remarks were silly, and she continued her ordinary existence as before but practiced her meditations faithfully. She married, had children, and was a good wife to her husband.

Twelve years later while carrying a pot of water back to her house, she dropped the pot and stopped where she was, just staring at the broken vessel for the rest of the day. When people spoke to her she didn't respond, just kept staring at the pot.

At the end of the day she seemed to come out of her trance, but looked around her at the people who had gathered there and couldn't understand what they said, accusing them of being possessed.

At sundown she flew up into the air and hovered there for 21 days before heading out into the Outer Heavens to visit the Dakas. While hanging around, she gave instructions in the path to any who cared to listen.

Part of her speech:

"Living beings without beginning,
break the pot of the body.
Why should I return home?
My pot is now broken.
I will not return to my home in samsara;
now I will go to the great bliss.
Behold, O guru, a great wonder:
desiring great bliss, I have recourse to you."

Today not many believe such things actually happened, but this book records 84 unique examples in detail, with some hints about how and why it was done. There are stories of monks who ate pigeons, hunters who gained control of life and death, scholars who fell in love with young prostitutes, and beggars who lived on fish guts. They all succeeded in finding that undefinable miracle. Every rule modern Buddhists consider essential is at some point in one of these stories broken, and the outcome is something few people today even imagine might be true.

Illustration taken from Buddha's Lions, translated by James B. Robinson.

This photo of a silver disc over Hungary comes close to what we saw
from the ground at Shakamak, although the silhouette showed
no detail or perspective. Photo by Entity of Life under CC 2.0.

Over the years I've probably seen only a couple of dozen things that really qualified as Unidentified Flying Objects, and most of them were in a known testing range for the Air Force. So there's a good possibility that many of these unusual objects were ours -- either piloted aircraft or experimental drones. I don't know that what I saw a few days ago at Shakamak Park here in Indiana was anything from another planet but it certainly looked like unusual technology.

While walking through the park with a friend we were watching several planes in the area which seemed to be flying a grid pattern. That's probably coincidental but it is the kind of thing which brings up thoughts of weather control and that huge mess of worms. On this particular day the grid of exhaust didn't last very long but for about an hour filled the sky with that unusual checkerboard contrail pattern. All the planes in the area looked like planes, moved like planes, and showed clear silhouettes of plane shapes.

Then we saw something unusual off in the distance. This flying object appeared to be at about the same altitude as the jets, but didn't leave a contrail. It was moving faster than the planes had and following a slightly curved path. The color was bright silver and didn't change as the angle between the object and the sun changed. The shape was oblong and symmetrical and showed no visible wings or features. We heard no engine noise but of the several aircraft we saw only one was actually close enough for audible engine sound to reach us.

With no other information than this it's hard to be sure this wasn't an aircraft seen at an odd angle, but since the sihouette was so clear and the shape was so constant it does seem unusual to me. It certainly could be explained away as an ordinary aircraft, and probably would be if I reported it to MUFON and anyone cared enough to ask questions. But it's the sort of thing that leaves a person unconvinced. Enough about it was strange that it immediately drew our attention and our active criticism. Neither of us was convinced this was just a plane.

Possibly it could have been a flying disc seen on edge, but we didn't have the right angle to see more than an oblong with rounded ends. Possibly it was oblong in all dimensions. Whatever it was, it was the first aircraft I've seen up here that I've thought was odd enough to report.

Most photographic orbs depict dust motes close
to the camera lens, as has been demonstrated
by stereoscopic photographs (one shows the
orb, the other does not). This photo still
accurately represents some of the other types
of orbs I've seen. Photo by snowflakespice;
License CC 2.0

On an early summer afternoon in 1989 I happened to be sitting in my living room in the Ozarks looking out through the front door when something unusual happened. A silver orb of light moved through the clear sky in a descending curve towards the west. This globe glinted with metallic light but didn't appear to be solid. It moved faster than any airplane or balloon could move and seemed headed for an impact with the ground a few miles away. I jumped up and ran out, expecting to see a plume of smoke and a fireball over the west ridge, but I saw nothing. Throughout the afternoon and evening I scanned the local radio stations for news of what I thought must have been a large meteor, but no one ever reported anything at least that matched what I had seen. The few people I mentioned the sighting to thought that I was making it up or hallucinating.

That one sighting set me on an interesting personal journey which eventually put me in touch with many people in that area who were seeing similar events. Many sightings involved globes of light which moved in unusual ways, and most people thought of these objects or orbs as UFO's.

I didn't see just the one. Over the next few years I witnessed at least a dozen, and if I took the time to sort through my memories properly I'm sure I could come up with more. In the local newspaper occasional accounts of globes witnessed by dozens of local people surfaced. One large red globe was seen floating just over the treetops in a remote area, shortly before dawn, and appeared to move into the ground.

Brown Mountain, one of my favorite places to camp.

I became accustomed to these strange events, which at least where I lived were not rare. I saw them outside, or in the house, in daytime and at night, alone or in the company of other people. The orbs seemed real enough, but behaved as physical objects should not. The orbs emerged from walls, crossed rooms and passed out through solid objects. Sometimes the orbs stopped in midair and simply vanished. Outside I sometimes saw these odd lights hovering high in the sky, then abruptly moving away at impossibly high speeds or diving into the ground in an arcing or spiraling path.

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