Liz Baumann

Last night on the Forbidden Planet: complete blur.

The 80/20 rule was followed
The 20 as acquaintances came first
Interesting
Still so many I did not see
I saw life passing me by once again when I said ‘hi’ to 5th Element
I said I was one of her 4
But I really rather like the idea of being the 6th
Randomness invited me over to the Otherside
I did not get a chance to find out Weather I could see my reflection in the Mirrorman
I got caught in a Bizarre Liz Triangle!!
I was happy to see the Southern Sun again
And, too, the woman who started it all
Or at least started my absurd relationship with the Whether
Pennycat told me that maybe my idea is not too crazy after all
I had too much to drink
There was a bunch of ice
And we all agreed that time passed too quickly
But it’s quality, not quantity
For me, at least.
Or I should remember that.

Not nearly enough pictures: Flickr

I was at this party in a series of parking lots. There was a white figure that produced green fire from its hands. I met a cheshire cat and a woman with flashing LED antennas made of organ wire. A bunch of people flitted about with wings. Someone was wearing their heart on their back, it was blue and pulsing. I was hypnotized by a green, blue and white ring. A yellow submarine kept running around on the ground.

The music was good and for a while all I wanted to do was dance on a lighted box. So I did, but my fur kept falling down and I was nearly tripping on it. Everyone else was busy watching fireflies and dancing flames.

In another tent I met a beautiful woman who had the voice of a man; she had a lucky charm with her which talked with me for a spell. A little while later there was a lighted flower whose petals flashed with color. A crowd had gathered to worship it and the music was beating in time to its petals.

I went outside again and someone was playing with a bright and colorful yo-yo made from two martini glasses stuck together. There was an orb within a rigid geometric structure that had landed in the parking lot, it was flashing red, green and blue.

Later on, just before I woke up, I walked back into the flower tent and went downstairs to have a conversation with a rainbow man about pick-up lines. Then I tried to make friends with a dog but it snarled at me.

Wow, that was some dream.

More photos on flickr

There was a term I came across in a book I read called “premembering”. It’s like remembering, only with an element of precognition involved: you “remember” an event before it actually happens.

Recently I noticed a connection between something that happened in real life and something that had been written a month before the event actually took place. It’s possible a lot of it is only coincidence, but there was a certain phrase that came up out of context, and it’s really got me wondering if the moment was somehow premembered. There were a couple other interesting things about it:

• It wasn’t just me who contributed to the written part of it, I had a little help from my friends
• There were two chances for the moment to happen, and I didn’t realize I had passed on the first chance until much later. It reminds me of a movie from a decade ago called Final Destination, where some kids cheated death only to realize it would happen anyway, just later.

I can’t see any way that the real-life event could have been predicted from the written information, and the only other person who might understand probably wouldn’t remember and wouldn’t care. I feel like I’ve been out in the woods alone and seen a UFO: I could tell people, but I can’t reasonably expect anyone to believe me.

Maybe none of that is important. I can’t be sure but I think all it tells me is this: It’s like there was a sign out there in the field of doubt we all wander through which couldn’t be read from the direction I was heading. But once I’d passed it and had the sense to look back, it told me that I had taken the right path, that I had made all the right wrong turns.

I wonder if things like this happen a lot but that most of us are so busy or otherwise tuned-out to notice. And I also wonder whether some of the other things I say or read will come to pass.

. . .

P.S. Well, that’s one way I look at it all. I also think it’s just wonderfully intriguing and every time I think about it it puts a smile on my face!

When I was in high school, a good friend of mine was Native American and lived on the nearby Lac Courte Oreilles reservation. She claimed her house had been built on an American Indian burial ground and was haunted. She had some stories of physical manifestations of these spirits, but I don’t remember all the details. While this sort of thing has always interested me, I don’t recall really thinking much of it, until one night. I was staying at her house, and we had just settled in in her room. I think I was on the floor, and she was in her bed. We were chatting on and off about things, not yet tired enough to sleep.

All of a sudden I had a very strange feeling, like someone else had just entered the room. But the door was closed and had not been opened. Before I really had any time to think about what it might be, Jennifer exclaimed: “Oh my God, they’re BACK!!”

Nothing manifested itself physically, and the strange feeling departed, but Jen did confirm that it was sensing the spirits or ghosts that caused her to make that remark.

If this was not a case of spiritual activity, the only other explanation that fits is that one of us read the other’s mind. Either of those things are unbelievable to most skeptics. I wonder what a skeptic would say if he/she experienced something like that.

I will always remember that moment as one of the most awesome experiences of my life. Not really very dramatic, I know; something like that would never make it into a TV show or movie. But it was very real and personal to me.

At other times in my life I’ve tried seeing if I could send or receive psychic energy (telepathy). With another childhood friend we tried a crude type of concentration exercise on each other using a deck of playing cards. I could not receive at all, getting almost none right, but she did get more than a few cards right when I tried sending / her receiving. I also took a class once when I lived in Greensboro, covering various phenomenon including past life regression, clairvoyance, etc. We did the card thing there too. Again, I was lousy. The instructor was very good though, getting most of the cards right. I suppose he could have found a way to “stack the deck”, so to speak, but, it seemed genuine.

Some things have happened to me lately, making me question whether I am sending and/or receiving telepathically. Maybe I spent too much time playing Spider solitaire this past summer and that had some sort of strange hypnotic effect. Or maybe I simply spent too much time in Boulder (maybe it’s good I moved to Lafayette, out on the plains a dozen miles away from that wonderful hippie town). But at least twice I think I have received. Maybe once I sent. I was trying not to; I was really just trying to be observant, thinking maybe I’d find an answer to a question, not influence anything. I’m not real sure, and I may never know.

In physics there is something called quantum entanglement (Einstein mockingly called it “spooky action at a distance”), and I wonder about whether it has anything to do with otherworldly phenomenon. (Actually… I just realized I’m not alone in thinking that.) In college I minored in physics but I only did well in it because I could do the math; I didn’t really care about or grasp what the theories were. Now, I can’t do the math, but I want to know more about the theories, because there’s actually some really intriguing stuff there. Around Halloween I picked up a book called Quantum Reality and read a few chapters, but I’m a procrastinating reader so it is now just gathering dust on my headboard. I’ll probably get back to it someday though, and give a report here.