Strength Through Joy

Amsterdam Diary - The Search For Narnia & Home

2011-12-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

I haven't flown over every city in the world - just a few in several countries - USA, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, Israel and Turkey. At night, they all look the same, no matter how hard you look out from the window of a plane. By day, you can pick out the contours of the Irish coast and the English coast, east and west, and I was sure I reconised the landmarks, wadi's and mountains when I passed over Israel on my way to Turkey. Holland is easy - I know the landmarks now, but I was amazed how many other countries had windmills you could see on a clear day from 30-38k feet up in the sky. I reckon Portugal has as many windmills as Holland, though I never did an accurate headcount!

I left Dublin last week flying out to Amsterdam (Schiphol) and admired how beautiful my city of birth looked with its orange lights against the blackness. The weather for the trip was poor, and for most of the way, the cloud cover hung low, so it wasn't until we approached our final descent that we broke through the cloud and saw the lights of Amsterdam for the final few minutes of the flight. It looked like Dublin again, only someone just rearranged some of the lights on the Christmas tree. All I know is that there is a lot more steep, right, rights into Schiphol, Amsterdam than there is with Dublin. Schiphol is a big airport and the pilot seems to have to do more a ring of the Amsterdam area as he approaches than the pilot who approaches Dublin who coming in off the North coast of Dublin over Howth/Portmarnock.

It's only when you get below a thousand feet of landing at Schiphol do you appreciate how much more developed the infrastructure of the city of Amsterdam is. From the Ajax Stadium to all the other places. I pointed out the Ajax Stadium to one person on a previous trip, and they corrected me by saying it was actually the stadium of a second of a second division team, and pointed out the real Arena and three other stadiums as we passed over the city to land. There's no way Richmond Park or Dalymount Park would stand out like the Aviva (Landsdown Road). I reckon had we headed back home, the Aviva lights would have been switched off anyway due to the recession.

Structurally the Dutch transports system is laid out the way the Germans want everything to look and work. It looks and works perfectly as long as we operate in a perfect world. Most people don't live like the Germans. Shit happens. And it did on Friday night when we got the train to Amsterdam Central. Looking for an onward train to Zaandam, like lemmings we scurried from platform to platform listening to the announcements alerting us to the problems on the local track into Zaandam. Dutch transport scares me because it changes by the minute. You can go to a platform and wait for a train, but then the Sprinter can get usurped by the lone International train, or a cat or leaf on the track and you are in a spin from one platform to another. The PA announcers know as little as your iPhone can tell you.

After 45 minutes on Friday evening, it was late, we were both tired, but still we dodged platforms. The PA announcers declared trains at platforms that didn't exist, and announced ghost trains at other platforms no one dared to get on. It became clear after 45 minutes that Zaandam was a city of the damned, and all of Holland had forsaken it. Municipal city clerks were probably already wiping all records the city ever existed and the people in it. Several platform clerks began to wheel out wooden wardrobes on wheels appealing to the 'Harry Potter' in all of us. I suggested we could consider Hogwarts as an alternative, but Erica was adamant that we were heading home one way or the other. It was only when the attendants said it wasn't Hogwards but Narnia that in desperation, I broke loose from the crowd and charged toward the assembled wooden wardrobes lined up on the platform. As I went for it, I heard a voice scream, "It's a waste of time without the wand." That was it. I wasn't doing Potterland. I could deal with Narnia!

Eventually, we took a risk. We half believed what the PA announcer was saying, and stepped on another train with all the other passengers who hoped it would take them home. We were united on one platform for a while. Dutch people who did the journey every evening and who where lost, and casual travelers like me, who just crossed their fingers and hoped we were on the right train. We whispered as we got on, "Zandam?"

We got home. It scares me when you are in a foreign city, but no more than it scares me when I was at home in the centre of Dublin and someone decides that Narnia and Hogwarths should be in a different place for a change. Its like when you get stupidly drunk. Silly, almost childish, but somehow you get home. Someone takes your hand so you might learn the steps home.

Happy Christmas to all

2010-12-24T15:54:00.001-08:00

Our journey this year takes us to Christmas Eve, a time for cheer, joy and happiness, as well as reflection on those who left this world. May you all have a wonderful holiday with your loved ones, family and friends. Thank you for your visits, your support, your comments, your friendship and inspiration.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, may we all go forward together safely into 2011.

Strength through joy...

Things That Happen (7)

2010-10-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

Today blazed colours we dream of. Only the mountains and the sea—the sky anew, the earth anew—conduct the orchestra of music in our lives. We choose to let our hearts dance steps—giddily—or simply lie silent in mystery; unheard. We dare to step out in the rain and end up drenched in sunshine. We dare to step out in the sunshine and end up drenched by showers from the sky weeping uncontrollably above us.

She must have wanted him to know...

He must have wanted her to know...

...and now... no one knows.

As we passed through all those paths in life—me holding your hand—I had to close my eyes, as fields of fire blazed when we passed so many memories. The gardens of our hearts outstretched with blossom and summer chores to be done and enjoyed.

I saw him snatching a glance as I leaned over to his world. My hand in his—gripped—wishing I didn’t have to go. Knowing I wanted to haunt him for the rest of the days of his life. Fields of fire blazed when he spoke about a colour in the rainbow of my world.

She must have wanted him to know...

He must have wanted her to know...

...and now... no one knows.

Things that happen—just happen. I never planned to miss the lips that would kiss. I never planned to find myself on a ship and not know where to point it. I never wanted to find my heart bursting out, but never having a place to call home.

Things that happen—just happen. Once fell in. He fell through me—wounding my heart. I had a choice, and finally made it. Now—when I do fall—I fall slowly.

She must have wanted him to know...

He must have wanted her to know...

...and now... no one knows.

Things just happen.

The echo of her footsteps away will carry his heart home.

David Icke, Wales, 1996 - recognise the world he was describing then? - David Icke Website

2010-10-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

What David Icke said in 1996 - recognise the world he was describing then? - David Icke Website

Things That Happen (6)

2010-09-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

I could go on through my twenties and my early thirties and talk about the things that happened, but for the most part, my spiritual journey simply became the accumulation of information, rather, the absorbing of it, like a body of a hibernating animal storing up fat and energy for the long winter, or a tree’s leaves absorbing the light and sunshine of the day for the cool evening.

Around 2002, after a few barren years of writing, and in the throes of a stumbling marriage, I began to reach for the pen again. Odd, because I was becoming very comfortable with my move from a desktop computer to a laptop, and I had committed myself to writing and completing my novel, Trees. I knew Trees had a deep personal and spiritual meaning to me, and that it was as much my own renewed journey, as it was the novel’s main character, Carlos. I struggled for a while to work directly on the laptop, and soon found myself scribbling away with a pen in journals and kid’s copy books I found around the house.

When it comes to writing fiction, the hand, the pen, the ink, the page, is the most honest and powerful mirror on the soul a writer can have. I had no idea what I was re-awakening, or what was about to reveal itself to me. But I’m glad what happened, happened. I would not be who I am today without it and the better for it.

I first came upon automatic writing while reading a lot of surrealist authors like Andre Breton when I was younger, though, I had never considered the practice as an actual method of creative output. (Hubert A Silaa, actually gives his own view on this here - something I happened to stumble on this evening while writing this piece) For a short time, I did experiment with ‘cut up writing’ after reading some essays on William S. Burroughs and other experimental novelists. I am also a little uncomfortable with such labels and the movements and connotations they seem to force upon the interpretation of a work which should always stand on its own two feet. How dare I associate my own experience of writing with a process of writing both maligned and celebrated?

In part seven of this series ‘Things That Happen’, I’d like to talk about my own experiences and what did happen.

Eggshells

2010-08-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Every person’s heart is surrounded by the shell of an egg. And though the shell of an egg may seem beautiful, but fragile, it is the symbol of all births and beginnings. Every woman wants to nurture the eggshell surrounding a man’s heart, but she must also want to nurture the eggshell surrounding her own heart even more, because there always comes a time for two lovers when only one eggshell remains intact. It is usually the woman’s eggshell that survives and grows stronger because a man is sometimes reckless with beautiful and fragile things. When a man is reckless, his judgement suffers, and when a man’s judgement suffers, he feels he is nothing, and he is sad, and his sadness continues to eat away at what is left of the eggshell surrounding his heart.

A man judges the world with his eyes and he believes his vision is always straight and true. A woman judges the world with her mind’s eye, as well as her eyes, and so her judgement is more tempered and true. A man must know the value of the love he feels and is prepared to share, because this is what strengthens the eggshell surrounding his heart.

A man must also accept that he is not whole of himself alone. When a man loves a woman, he shares his love of her, with her. He must learn to share his pains as well as his triumphs, and though happiness is inside all men and women, a man is sometimes afraid to seek, afraid to experience, and so he cannot live happily. And because all happiness must end for a time, a man alone is sometimes content to be just a little happy all the time, rather than being very happy only some of the time. In so doing, he risks never seeking the greater eternal happiness inside him.

From, Trees, by Mick Rooney.

Things That Happen (5): Remote Viewing

2010-03-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

I am not sure where I first heard or came across Remote Viewing (RV). It could have been on TV when I was a child, but I believe it is more likely I came across it in my mid-teens (1981 - 1984) at a time when I was reading a great deal of books on astronomy and UFO investigation. I am sure I read about it in a book by writer, researcher and paranormal investigator Jenny Randels during the 1980’s about how the US government had dabbled for a time with it in their investigations into UFO’s and the abduction phenomena, before finally ditching the RV program after a brief affair with it during the grand search for Saddam Hussein’s scud missile launchers during the first Gulf War.

Remote Viewing (RV) is the ability to gather information about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means or extra-sensory perception (ESP). I don’t strictly consider RV a field of extra-sensory perception—simply because it is too easy to lump it in with casual hokum like psychics, fortune-tellers, palm readers, card-readers and many P. T. Barnum-styled performers.

A Remote Viewer provides information about an object hidden from physical view, separated sometimes by a great distance. Usually the process of full controlled RV session is conducted by a Viewer and a Monitor. The Monitor provides the Viewer with very basic information about what is needed, avoiding prompts or leading questions. Often, the Monitor can simply request of the Viewer to describe basic geometrics, colour, and in highly advanced sessions, the RV can virtually ‘place themselves in the area’ and describe shape, colour, context and smell of the area they are remotely existing in—slowly, but surely, building up a full and accurate picture of the place or object they are viewing and where they are.

The description of Remote Viewing was officially coined by parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in 1974, but I believe the practice of a Monitor observing a Viewer remotely moving and observing a place or object and retrieving information dates back many, many hundreds of years. I don’t believe people really became familiar with the term Remote Viewing until after the first Gulf War when a multi-million dollar research program conducted by the US Military entered the public arena through the declassification of US Government documents. There is no doubt in my mind that this unusual disclosure resulted not from a liberal pro-Clinton administration, but the acknowledgement of the US Military that they had finally developed sophisticated detection and weaponry technology finally matching the true capability of the human mind.

The root of these technological developments span back to the early 1980’s and Ronald Reagan’s lapdog acceptance of the US Military’s insistence on pursuing billion-dollar investment in programs like the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). The reality was the public perception backed a popular president and we remained a few years away from the disintegration of the Soviet Block of Republics and the collapse of the symbolic Berlin Wall. In so many ways, we were not quite ready for the inexact science of what had been learned about Remote Viewing, and short on conviction and a viable use with the recent technological advances delivered to the military, the RV program was put to pasture.

Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the early 1970’s and began their research into quantum mechanics and laser physics. Their work led them into areas of the paranormal. The focus of their paranormal work was to study psychics by using defined technological controls to prove or disprove the existence of extra-sensory perceptions in human beings.

Just like the acceleration in the space race of the 1960’s, when the US Government learned that the Soviets and China were researching the uses of ESP during the 1970’s, they too developed their own research centres, which included facilities investigating the use of Remote Viewing. Puthoff began a series of tests on Remote Viewer Ingo Swann in Germany and his tests came under the scrutiny of CIA personnel leading to them setting up their own sponsored program. Following the Watergate Crisis, and a scientific media scrutiny of all things governmental in the US by the late 1970’s, official backing of such research projects ceased.

The US Remote Viewing program did not lie low for too long. The US Air Force picked up the gauntlet for a while and began sponsoring projects for Stanford Research Institute (SRI). At SRI, Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff developed a Remote Reviewing training program to enable any suitable people with a studied background of ESP skills to produce useful data for the government. Following the second Gulf War, senior US Military personnel believed that the intelligence garnered from RV sessions was just as accurate as anything they were getting from other lines of intelligence and that it had a serious part to play. By 2005, after the departure of Clinton and the arrival of Bush, together with considerable technological advances, little has been heard of the RV program at SRI, with the belief that the programs there have long lost any federal backing.

The most critical part of the Remote Viewer session is the subjective relationship between Viewer and Monitor. The process must never allow influence, stimuli or impurity to cross between Monitor and Viewer in an effort to rule out randomness during tests. The results of RV sessions can be viewed often as vague, introducing the possibility that the results are no more accurate than any performed act of popular ESP performed in magic tricks or modern proclaimed psychics. What is clear is that RV has come under more scientific scrutiny than any self-proclaimed or definitive psychic practice.

Whether Remote Viewing is a science of influence and randomness or a travelling plain for the human mind to discover and explore what is not in the physical realm of the body—it remains a fascinating area of human and spiritual exploration. The fact is I believe we all experience brief moments in our lives when we can and do know, perceive and experience things which we cannot touch, see or taste, but as God is our witness, we believe it was there, and we existed there with it—no matter we are told it was a thousand miles away at the time.

Things That Happen (4)

2010-01-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

People come into our lives all the time. Even on this earth—the physical people we know—they identify and understand us only when they share part of our journey and travel along the same path. Eventually, we may part company and all explore more distinctive paths, but still find a few souls to accompany us from time to time. But when we part company with someone we have previously shared so much; we still travel parallel to that person for a while, despite never meeting or knowing them ever again. We naturally become oblivious to the emotional existence they experience after parting. We are only left with our thoughts and memories of that part of the road we shared for a while. In many ways, they become our own ghosts. They are the people we knew—still remembered—always living physically on outside of our consciousness, even long after their possible demise. We have a much defined idea of spirits, created out of an historical culture of stories, myths and legends passed on by the human voice through the ages. This has led to a structure of learned beliefs and predeterminations of a part of our existence that we do not know or understand. The reality is we are haunted by spirits living and dead every day of our lives.

I grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s and was open to the same structure of learned beliefs and predeterminations. Despite this conditioning, I was not perturbed by the idea of ghost, ghoul, werewolf or any menoalent force. The only spirit I understood and acknowledged was through the indoctrination of the Catholic Church. I loved Roald Dalh’s Tales of the Unexpected, a season of ITV’s Beasts, or a late BBC Saturday double-bill of horror, be it Peter Cushing, Peter Lorre or Christopher Plummer. I just knew there was something, and I’d experienced it. When I had to go to the toilet at night, I ran upstairs with the lights out! I had a preconception of how you meet a ghost when I was young, and I pursued it, little knowing of the true realities that lay ahead in my life. It just doesn’t work that way.

I think, for the most part, you lose spiritual perspective in your twenties. There is far too great a battle going on in all of us during our teenage years as our true individual character matures, and that is if we even dared to come to terms with the inner self. Right, then, you are alive, independent, and less willing to compromise with anything fundamental, always testing what you have learned and the validity of it. In your twenties, each year brings new experience, good and bad, of the world we are trying to find our place in. We are often furthest away from the true person we will one day become. You don’t know it, and better still, you don’t care. Your ghosts are as close, and yet, as far away as they have ever been to your spirit and soul. Your thirties become the age of reaching out and grasping at something of value, be it material, romantic, moral or spiritual. The thing is, right then, we are least equipped to grasp anything but the falling rubble at our feet. We realise life is actually an angled climb toward something indistinct, but a necessary trek we seem to lumber and stumble through for much of the way. In our thirties, getting back up and onto the saddle is a daily occurrence we perform as if it were automatic, hardly for a moment pausing to dust ourselves off. This is the least time in our lives when we are connected with our body and soul.

After the appearance of the wretched poor girl in my bedroom when I was 19 years of age, I think I wanted to let go of any form of self-examination or questioning of what I had experienced. I believed if I turned the light of human curiosity out and drove forward into my twenties with a less emotional outlook; it would all stop and be forgotten. For a long, long time it was, but I had no idea my cold rationale would lead to the doors of my heart closing firmly and shutting out all that was good around me. I’ll never know the opportunities, wonder and goodness that were lost to me.

In my twenties, and for much of my thirties, I think I thought little of my spirit or soul, and yet, I wrote intently and deliberately many books which dealt with human existence; the strength of the spirit and the search for the soul. They were just not my spirit or soul. Somewhere in the mix of life, functionality took over, and any self-discoveries and moments of revelation were lived through the spectral nameless characters on their journeys through the landscape of my books. I did not have to take the risks they took, make the sacrifices they made or endure their poverty, but in so doing, I also never experienced their wealth and spirit in life itself. In many ways, I became the living dead and I was the sole protagonist in my own story.

I’m not sure when exactly I emerged from my self-imposed emotional stupor. When I found my first real loving relationship, I settled down, married and children arrived. Sometime in my early thirties, I think the long, slow thaw of winter in my life finally gave way to a spring of sorts. The presence of a woman in a man’s life brings great perspective and only then can you see the point you are on your journey. But the journey is only just beginning...

Things That Happen 3
Things That Happen 2
Things That Happen 1

Happy Christmas To All

2009-12-24T16:11:00.001-08:00

Our journey this year takes us to Christmas, a time for cheer, joy and happiness. May you all have a wonderful holiday with your loved ones, family and friends. Thank you for your visits, your comments, your support and inspiration.

Strength through joy...

Things That Happen (3)

2009-12-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

My experiences of physical remoteness pretty much ended in my mid-teens. In a curious way, as an adult, I could deal with another spell; even understand better what physically and mentally happens a person when they occur. I do believe that many people experience this in their early lives, but like me, it eventually stops and later takes a different form, or a young person simply becomes less attuned, and naturally more distracted by what goes on around their world than inside it.

My later everyday teenage years appeared to take on the normality of anyone. In some ways they were. Thought, I did develop a fascination with the odd—that is, with things outside of my practical learning and sphere of knowledge as a teenager—the extreme and the unexplained. I read extensively and avidly from fifteen, right through to my early twenties. I was drawn to particular subjects like UFO’s, Alien abduction, Philosophy, Criminology, Pornography, Eroticism, Classic Art, Paranormal, Futurism and Technology. Whatever at a given time I was into became a dedication, a compulsion and a passion. I learned quickly, that in stages, one thing could become primary in your life for a significant period, and all else in it could be consigned to a perfunctory and secondary role. It is both a blessing and a curse I still live with today.

My childhood had at least thought me that we did not live on one linear plane. Things crossed over and somehow could get messed up in our lives. Our lives were not sealed containers and open to any physical, emotional and spiritual vagrancy. I knew there was something more—I just hadn’t figured out what it was back then. I was to learn. I was becoming a man, and though everything was new to me, I also understood I carried with me an innate perspective and awareness few others of my age seem to have.

In 1987, aged 19, I had two experiences, one could have ended my life, the other, had greater lasting effects on my life than I ever cared to imagine.

My father had got me a job in a milk distribution company. I worked on milk delivery trucks as a helper from the early hours of the morning. Depending on which route I was on, I could be up as early as 3.30am or as late as 5am. My father did an early morning shift in the company and would pick me up or organise a lift with one of the workmen as best he could. Often, I’d walk the hour journey from my home to the milk depot. I preferred the earlier start. These were the rural runs outside of the cities, a handful of delivery drops, a chance to admire the beauty of the sky and the advent of morning sunrise, and better still, you finished your day’s work just when everyone else was setting out on their morning journey to work.

One route took me to the wilds of County Wicklow, and Blessington, south of Dublin, the other, deep into the midlands of Ireland. On a very wet February afternoon, we were about to load a smaller truck from our articulated container. Each of the six drops usually meant a smaller truck would back up alongside us and we would off-load glass milk crates. Whatever happened that day, I lost my footing as I tried to climb up onto our container. The driver in the other truck was oblivious to me being sandwiched in between the two trucks as he reversed close up to the container. I remember my helper mate reaching down to pull me free, but he was off balance and was leaning too far down to keep hold of my hand and haul me up. I could feel both trucks wedging my hips as I looked forlornly up at my mate on the container, fearing he was about to see my body sliced in half. He managed to reach a hand out between the two trucks with just enough room and hammered on the side of the truck, screaming in a loud wail for ‘Dessie’ to stop reversing. Dessie, being a rural man, was used to load roars at him, and he slammed the brakes immediately. Like a snake, I slithered and contorted my body through the narrow gap between the trucks, pulled myself up onto the container, and both panted and fascinated at how I had cheated death. In the 1980’s, jobs were scarce—you said nothing, and reported nothing. I was happy enough just being alive.

I still cannot remember how long after Christmas it was. I would have been just nineteen that January. So, I know it was late January or early February. I had an extraordinary dream one night – what I believed was a dream, and yet, seemed to play out in the reality of my bedroom. I remember hearing very heavy rain most of the night on the roof of the house long after I went to bed. I did sleep and dream, but woke regularly. It was the dream which most disturbed me, not the fact that each time I awoke; I again found my door ajar and the light in the bedroom on again. Dutifully, I turned the light off and tried to get back to sleep.

In the dream, my friend and I were out in a nightclub, yet, it seemed more like a restaurant. Dimly lit, where you strained to see anyone beyond where you were seated. The wooden table and chairs were fixed and designed like old wooden carriage compartments with heavy curtains by the windows. Each table had a double pew on either side of the table and you felt enclosed. My friend sat on the inside near the window, and I, on the outside. A girl emerged from the shadows of the large room we were in. Music played, and she asked me to get up and dance with her. I was shy and nervous and shifted uneasily in my seat – half making an attempt to get up and half wanting her to return into the shadows and leave me. I looked at her dark brown hair and thin the features of her cheeks and nose. She turned abruptly to leave when I didn’t answer immediately. I saw the other side of her perfect face. I mumbled a defiant no and almost in response, she turned fully around to reveal the most hideous deformities on the other side of her face. My friend was appalled. ‘You didn’t have to do that. She must feel terrible.’ I protested to him that I had said no before I saw the other side of her face. The dream ended like a taunt to me – replaying the moment she turned her head and I saw the other side of her face.

I awoke with a dreadful feeling. Before I opened my eyes, I knew what was there for me to see. I knew the light would be back on again in the bedroom and she would be there. And she was with her head lying upon my pillow, and I, staring directly at her disfigured face. I sat bolt upright, jumped to the end of the bed and pulled the duvet with me, wrapping it around me as if it would provide some protection. I knew that feeling again. It was like the old woman in my sitting room, creeping through it – through my life as if they should belong there. I lay awake for an hour until about 4.30am. And though I could no longer see her – she never left me. Never could I have known until years later how much influence she would have on my life.

I walked the long journey to work. Like a stranger walking down a dark alleyway in the early hours of a cold winter morning, I kept looking back behind me. The road was empty and silent, but I knew she was with me. I felt her presence like she was still upon my shoulder. For all of that day at work, and for several days, it felt like someone was staring at me, but up so close, I swore I could feel her cool breath on my cheek sometimes. She did eventually draw back, and whether it was because, once again, I refused to acknowledge her presence in my physical world—just as I had done in my dream—she remained there for many, many years, like a back-seat driver in the journey of my life. Yes, the truth is, I too, distanced myself from that dream and her presence and influence on my life. I forgot her as if she really did become a casual one-night dancer with me—even my girlfriend—ultimately cast into my young history like a lover I never loved, nor could truly know or love in this earthly world. And like a spurned lover, who could not let go, she was not so carefree and benevolent in spirit. God rest her now, but I had no idea quite what had just entered my life. It would be a very long time before I knew and fully understood what had really happened to me and this wretched girl.

Carl Sagan - Cosmos & Remembrance

2009-11-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

In the early 1980’s I spent many late evening’s watching the BBC’s Sky At Night, presented by British astronomer, Patrick Moore, and Cosmos, presented by US scientist and broadcaster, Carl Sagan. Moore was practical, but gregarious, Sagan was sincere and introspective and made you believe and dream of what could be. It came as no surprise when I discovered that Sagan played a prominent role in the US scientific program, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). It did come as a surprise when I discovered that Contact, the film starring Jody Foster, was based his novel of the same name.

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934. His father, Sam Sagan, was a Russian immigrant garment worker and his mother was Rachel Molly Gruber. Sagan graduated from the University of Chicago with diplomas in physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. He went on to work at the famous Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and lectured at Harvard University. He worked as an adviser to NASA. There, as part of his work with astronauts and space exploration, Sagan put together the first physical message that was sent into space. He became a critic of the US Space Shuttle and Space Station missions at the expense of further robotic missions.

At heart, Sagan was a true scientific sceptic when he applied his work and learning to unexplained phenomena, particularly UFO’s and the growing number of abduction experiences. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon. I find it hard to argue Sagan’s opinion whatever anyone’s path of belief takes.

Sagan understood the inherent relationship that our world has with religion over science. He challenged the conventional view of God in our world.

Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.

Carl Sagan was a humanist, devoutly against nuclear weapons, and in the last ten years of his life became particularly active politically in his opinions and views on many global issues. He fought a long battle with myelodysplasia, which included three bone marrow transplants. Carl Sagan died of pneumonia, aged 62, in 1996. On that day, a wonderful bright light went out in the Cosmos.

Things That Happen (2)

2009-11-11T18:15:00.000-08:00

From the age of seven, I began to have spells of what I would describe as moments of physical remoteness. My instinct tells me that somehow my experience of the old woman appearing in my house unlocked and opened a doorway. When the doorway opened, I was at once introduced to a different and altered form of consciousness. It started as a thin thread of connection to a world of spiritual existence. I believe my early experiences of these moments of physical remoteness are not exclusive to me and many other people experience something of a kind at some point in their lives. Certainly the mind of a child is more open but not exclusive to an altered experience or embracing the unknown. When you are a child, much is unknown. How a person relates to these experiences and positively uses them is an entirely different matter. The world of spiritual existence is as much inside me as it is outside of me in the physical world. As much as I took the first tentative steps to connect with this spiritual existence—I knew it did not normally belong in the physical realm. It was only many, many years later in life that I realised I had also taken the first steps towards my own soul.

The first spells of physical remoteness were extremely brief and were often over before I was fully aware the episodes had happened. Sometimes it could be as brief as a few seconds or half a minute. Over the next few years, right up till the age of about fifteen, the duration of physical remoteness grew longer. I usually sensed it start with my eyes. The best way of describing it is when someone stares ahead at a fixed point of interest, and for some unknown reason, they continue to stare beyond a period of time that is necessary or natural. But unlike someone simply staring blankly at something random when their mind drifts off on a deep train of thought—the moments of physical remoteness were incredibly intense and all my senses seemed heightened. Sounds, even distant ones, were clear and distinct. I started to learn that I could filter one sound out against another, no matter how distant it was. Likewise, visually, colours and shapes took on an extraordinary vivid definition and sharpness. More oddly, I noticed without turning my head, I could see definable objects at the extreme edges of my peripheral vision. I saw these objects as if they were straight in front of me. In spite of my heightened senses, paradoxically, the whole experience generated an intense feeling of disconnection from the world around me and even my own body. Outwardly, I appeared to be functioning normally when these moments of physical remoteness occurred. I might appear fixed or concentrated, but still able to carry out a task; getting dressed, walking to school, cycling a bicycle, and more often I started to realised they tended to occur when I was doing something automated or requiring little deliberate thought.

Between the ages of twelve to fifteen, the spells of physical remoteness became far more regular, sometimes two to three times a day, and they could last anything from a couple of minutes to fifteen minutes. I didn’t have to walk across a room to see if a magazine or book was on a shelf or behind the sofa. I knew it was there because I could see it from where I was. The novelty value of this experience long wore off by twelve years of age and I began to become depressed and troubled because I didn’t feel in control of it any more. I became more aware of an internal struggle as my conscious mind wrestled to take back control of what appeared to be subconscious and out of my control and choice. I stopped hanging around with my friends and remained close with just one. I feared the spells would continue to get even longer and I might one day never snap out of one. I feared walking under a bus on the way home from school or loosing time on school study. In June 1982, things came to an abrupt head.

My parents and I were spending two weeks holidaying in New York and Florida. The evening before we travelled to the USA, I was over at my friend’s house. He sensed I was anxious about the flight and he gave me a single white table he said he found in the house that would help ease my nerves. To this day, I have no idea what the table was, whether it was a prescribed drug or entirely illegal. The following morning, before we travelled to the airport, I stupidly swallowed the table with some milk. What followed were the most terrifying two days I have ever experienced.

At the airport check-in desk I was already feeling weak, but not sick. The weaker I became, the more aware I was becoming of a spell of physical remoteness. I had over some months come up with various ways of staving off a spell. I would engage in deliberate conversations with anyone or recite poems to myself that I had learned at school. I discovered the best method to avoid a sudden and prolonged spell was to look at numbers on signs, numbers on the clock, numbers on the chalkboard at school, numbers on car registration plates, and try, by a series of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, to make answer be my favourite number – seven. It worked for a while with the flight numbers on the overhead monitors for a while until we boarded the flight to New York.

I finally succumbed to it shortly after take-off, and so began five and a half horrifying hours on that plane. My parents presumed I was just nervous and particularly quite. I just couldn’t force my eyes to close and break the initial stare. Once in, I thought I would never ever come out of it. It was the first time the physical remoteness resulted in an entire out-of-the-body experience. I could see myself sitting in the seat of the aircraft as if I were looking at myself in a mirror. I moved uncontrollably around the plane as if I were caught in the violent current of a wild river. I remember seeing myself taking the passenger flight program leaflet out of the seat pocket in front of me. I must have held that program in my hands for more than two hours, in the same position, on the same page, just staring blankly ahead. Wherever I was, my feelings of my panic and upset seemed to show no outward signs of distress on the face of my body. I just sat there in my seat – almost appearing not to care that the most important part of me – my soul and my spirit – were somewhere else on that plane and I had no way of getting back. Years later, my mother has no recollection of me speaking much on the flight or at any time sleeping. I had long fallen out at fourteen years of age with mainstream Catholicism, but I prayed to God that day to help me try and get back to my own body. I felt helpless, vulnerable and exposed to anything happening to my spirit and soul. I felt I couldn’t protect them and they were exposed to elements and influences they should not be open to.

I have no recollection of how I got back to my body before we landed. I was terrified I would get lost and be left behind. I can only say that something guided me back. Some power beyond me. Whether my body simply became so weak and I managed to close my eyes, I will never know fully. But somehow I got back and I knew I was utterly shattered. The intense heat of that New York summer day pushed the temperature into the high nineties even at five in the late afternoon. I remember my Dad arguing with cab drivers as he insisted he wanted one with air conditioning. He thought he got one, but the driver’s idea of air conditioning was rolling down the windows. I think I went unconscious three or four times in the cab as my parents tried everything from slapping me on the face, dowsing me with water, and sticking small bottles of aftershave under my nose to rouse me. The traffic across New York City was particularly bad that day and the driver just wanted to get the crazy sick kid out of his cab for good. We stopped outside a hospital for about ten minutes with my parents debating whether they should take me in. I couldn’t even stand up under my own weight and sat on the sidewalk. My mind and my body were numb and lifeless. They put me back in the cab and gave me a whole lemon to bite on. I gnawed at it for a while until my stomach heaved and I shoved the lemon back into my mother’s hand.

I remember little more of the next thirty-six hours of our stay at the Milton Plaza Hotel in New York. I slept through those hours, but most of them were still filled with the most appalling nightmares I have ever had. I think I experienced every fear a child could have in those thirty-six hours of nightmares. When I awoke finally and properly, I was glad to be whole again. Though the spells of physical remoteness did continue for about another year, they dramatically declined in frequency and intensity. I had no real idea what I had experienced, or its greater meaning back then, but I learned there is meaning, purpose and reason in all our lives. I was simply growing older and moving on to another stage of experience and awakening on my journey towards my own soul.

Things That Happen (1)

2009-11-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

My life was as ordinary as any ordinary life could be up to the age of about seven. I had an experience I neither had the understanding nor concept of that would unknowingly change the entire direction, motivation and course of my life. It was late summer, 1975, and I was home alone on an overcast afternoon.

In 1975, the world was a very different place. Kids played for hours outside on the street. It was a playing field of innocence and adventure and the only thoughts of returning home was when you got hungry or you were looking for a few pence to go to the shop. My older sister was a thoroughly social child and she spent every waking hour on the streets with her gang of friends. I was a more introspective kid, and while I had my circle of friends, I was going through one of my I need to be on my own phases. They could last a couple of days, less often, entire weeks. I think I may have been in week two of one of those phases. My mother had headed out to the shop for a little while. It must have been about three o’clock in the afternoon. The TV was off and I was sitting on the couch in our living room. Back then, TV was black and white and we lived in a world of about five stations, BBC1, BBC2, UTV, HTV, and RTE. I had obviously checked to see if Michael Bentine’s Potty Time was on UTV. It might have been out of season because of the summer holidays, but clearly I was happy to sit there with the TV off and probably muse on my next Lego project with a thousand pieces scattered across the floor of the front parlour room. Each one, a building block in the life I was going to live.

I heard footsteps on the stairs in the hall. It wasn’t my sister. She had no front door key. My Dad was at work. I hadn’t heard the front door open, so I didn’t think it was my mother returning back from the shops. The footsteps were slow and deliberate and seemed to be descending the stairs. I wasn’t scared, just anxious and puzzled. Finally, a hand pressed down on the handle of the door into the living room where I sat. An elderly woman made her way into the living room, made sure to close the door behind her, as if she knew the house rules and it shouldn’t be left ajar, and walked slowly toward the door into the kitchen. She was dressed in a heavy, dark, long dress. She looked around the room, and although I looked at her, she never once seemed to acknowledge me there in the room with her, nor did she say a single word. It is always difficult for kids to judge an adult’s age – they always think adults are much older than they actually are. I’m not sure what age I thought her then, certainly old, but I’d say she was in her early seventies, maybe a little more. I know this woman wasn’t a city-dweller, not only did she not belong in my childhood home, but she did not belong in a city, or for that matter, the contemporary 1970’s. This was more like a rural Irish woman, with a reddened and hardened face exposed to the elements of country life. She was stern and not a woman I would have like to cross swords with in whatever life she lived. This was the first time I experienced the inner coldness that seizes your body when you are in the presence of something which is not meant to be there and has no physical sustainability in the world you are living in.

She opened the door into the kitchen, but this time, she chose to leave it ajar. I remember thinking that there was no way on this earth I was going to follow her into the kitchen. I sat rigid for a minute or two, and then tried to see if I could lean over from where I was sitting on the living room couch and catch sight of her through the double glass panes of the door. She remained out of view and I must have sat on the couch for about five to ten minutes before the cold feeling inside me passed. I got up, went to the kitchen door, and peered in. She was gone, but when I took a few steps into the kitchen, I could feel the temperature was unusually cold, as if something of the old woman still lingered.

My mother found me where she left me when she returned. The TV was still off, and as she rushed in her normal deliberate way through to the kitchen, she stopped and looked at me.

“Are you ok, Michael?”

“Yes. But someone called to see you while you were out.”

“One of the neighbours?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t know them.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll call back.”

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I revealed the full details of the experience to my mother. By then, much had happened, and I could no longer confine this curious experience at age seven to being a simple childhood illusion of imagination and isolation. There were more than just physical doors which had opened of their own accord on that late, overcast, summer day in 1975.

Within weeks of the experience, I had my first moment of physical remoteness.

Buzzy Friends Gettin' Jiggy

2009-10-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

The Kansas Entomological Society released a study paper in their January journal of this year about some very curious activity of worker bees in Thailand. There are three species of bees, (Lisotrigona cacciae, L. furva and Pariotrigona klossi) who have all taken to the activity of imbibing on human tears. Is it me or odd that the species, klossi, also rearranged spells KISS LO! There is something sweet about bees, kisses and tears, or am I being Freudian in some kind of weird way. I mean bees having it on with humans and somehow trying to relate to us on some emotional level.

It seems our buzzy friends haven taken to landing on the bottom eyelid of unsuspecting park sleepers, sun snoozers and tourists to get their daily dose of protein, or at least that is why the experts think the bees have taken to this curious exploit. Unknown to us, the eyes secrete tears from our eye ducts and our buzzy friends are on to this free nutritious meal.

Our buzzy friends have actually made quite a lot of the high brow news in the past two years with talk of bees playing a very fundamental role in the environmental balance of life in general on planet earth. The gist being, if our buzzy friends start showing signs of changes in habitat or behavior - be afraid - be very afraid. Our buzzy friends are in fact one of the critical building and social blocks in the planet's ecological system.

So if you are in Thailand or anywhere else for that matter, and one of our buzzy friends appears on your bottom eye lid as you are engaging in a deep, tired and emotional moment with your partner in the park, (or if you are a man and it's just that there's something in your eye!), then, fear not, take these careful steps.

1. Tell the bee, you like Al Gore, but you're just not sure about the whole 'Inconvenient Truth' thing.

2. You've never sat through a whole Discovery TV documentary on bees or wasps because 'she' wanted to watch X-Factor or Desperate Housewives on another channel.

3. Encourage the buzzy friend to step away from your eye lid, return to the lovely yellow and pink flowers that God created for them, or else you'll start charging him rent if he takes up residence and keeps sucking on the sweet stuff.

My appreciation to BoingBoing for this news article.

The Bilderberg Group - Truth or Modern Conspiracy Theory Myth?

2009-07-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

"I don't quite know why I'm on a flight to Athens, except that it seems like the right thing to do. I'm flying out on a last minute whim to hang around outside a conference which may, or may not, be happening and to which I've not been invited. None of you has…
…Unless, of course, the rumours are true. Unless, as a handful of people are saying, this weekend is Bilderberg. The yearly alignment of the distant stars that shape our destiny. A long weekend at a luxury hotel, where the world's elite get to shake hands, clink glasses, fine-tune their global agenda and squabble over who gets the best sun loungers. I'm guessing that Henry Kissinger brings his own, has it helicoptered in and guarded 24/7 by a CIA special ops team."

This is an extract from Charlie Skelton’s daily reports filed for The Guardian newspaper in May of this year. He is speaking about the infamous and clandestine global group Bilderberg and their annual meeting of the world’s illuminati this year in Greece. In fact the Bilderberg name comes from the hotel used by the group for their first meeting in 1954 - Hotel de Bilderberg, Oosterbeek, the Netherlands.

The group was founded by several people, including Denis Healey and Józef Retinger, who were concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe. The initial aims of the group were to further the understanding, growth and cultures of the United States of America and Europe. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from eleven countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with eleven American invitees.

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Jozef Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.

A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

The secrecy which the Bilderberg Group conduct the meetings and lack of reporters in attendance has spawned critics and conspiracy theories alike. According to the investigative journalist Chip Berlet, the origins of Bilderberger conspiracy theories can be traced to activist Phyllis Schlafly. In his 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:

"The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest."

Police detained guardian reporter, Charlie Skelton on three occasions while attempting to photograph attending guests at the meeting in Greece this year.

"I arrived last night, under cover of darkness. I told the cab driver to stop 50 metres from the hotel. He asked why. I couldn't tell him that it was so I could case the entrance for FBI lenses. I simply muttered that I couldn't explain. His eyes lit up. "Aha! I see! I know!" What did he know? And who is that following us? A man in a BMW. Definite spook."

According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt ‘mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.’

The initial aims of the group during the 1950’s may seem perfectly laudable in a time when the ghost of the second world war still stood at the shoulders of mankind and the battles of Korea and Vietnam were still to be fought. But now it reads like something off the pages of a Dan Brown novel. The real argument about conspiracy theories of ‘New World Orders’ and a clandestine ‘Masonic-styled’ global group of the world’s leading illuminati influencing world decision making begs the question – which came first? The conspiracy or the truth?

What is most unsettling is there is a global group of politicians, businessmen, religious leaders intelligencia influencing world decisions and policy making in many countries who are not elected representatives of those countries are instead driving their own hidden agenda.

You can read Charlie Skelton’s Bilderberg Files ar the link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/charlie-skeltons-bilderberg-files

Tara Hill And Its Lights In The Sky

2009-07-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

I think I visited the Hill of Tara when I was in my early teens. It meant nothing significant to me, no more than New Grange or Glendalough, and other significant sites in Ireland that our school took us to visit.

http://www.glendalough.ie/

The Hill of Tara in Irish is ‘Teamhair na Rí’, meaning, ‘Hill of the Kings’. It is located near the River Boyne and is an archaeological complex running between the towns of Navan and Dunshaughlin in County Meath, Ireland. It contains a number of ancient monuments, and according to tradition was the seat of the High King of Ireland. Tara’s true identity is that of a site of sacredness rather than true central Irish power.

The focus of Tara hill is a small hilltop enclosure, measuring 318 metres (1,043 ft) north-south by 264 metres (866 ft) east-west and enclosed by an internal ditch and external bank, known as ‘Ráith na Ríogh’, meaning, (the Fort of the Kings, also known as the Royal Enclosure). The most prominent earthworks within are the two linked enclosures, a bivallate ring fort and a bivallete ring barrow known as ‘Teach Chormaic’, Cormac’s House, and the ‘Forradh’ or Royal Seat. In the middle of the ‘Forradh’ is a standing stone, which is believed to be the the ‘Stone of Destiny’ at which all High Kings were crowned. According to legend, the stone would scream if a series of challenges were met by the would-be king. At his touch the stone would let out a screech that could be heard all over Ireland. To the north of the ring-forts is a small tomb known as ‘Dumha na nGiall’, meaning ‘Mound of the Hostages’, constructed around 3,400 (cal.) BC.

In May of this year Tara took on a new significance for me. My partner lives in West Meath, only a few miles from Tara, and her back garden overlooks the Hills of Tara, County Meath, and further north, all the way across to County Monaghan. For the past two months we have, on many occasion, sat out on a warm evening and ‘watched the lights’ to the north. The show is both free and quite spectacular.

We have had friends over. Some of the locals have grown used to these lights and see them no more than as a nightly distraction to their routine of getting their children, their children’s children to bed, checking on grazing animals, or simply putting their feet up to watch X-Factor or the nightly news and weather, or whatever else is on. They may pass a window, look out, see them, and see nothing out of the ordinary, but for me, a man from the city, these lights are nothing deserving of just a casual glance.

They dance, move oddly, but without actual reason or purpose about the sky, left to right, up and down, sometimes we see four, maybe five, like parents, they have less bright lights around them, ‘feeders’ we call them, learning or mimicking the father or mother light until they too, glow brilliantly in the dark sky like the approaching of the headlight of an on-coming car. We don’t live anywhere near an airport or large town, never mind a city, yet, most unclouded nights, they are there.

We checked out the ‘balloon’ and ‘strobe light’ theory, but West Meath just isn’t that ‘rockin’ kind of place. They have talked about these lights on national radio, Today FM, with reports of them from Monaghan to Limerick, but to no avail. We’re happy with them, baffled, but entertained, their ours, for now, at least.

David Icke - Voice in The Wilderness?

2009-07-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

I remember following the footballing career of David Icke as goalkeeper for Coventry City before he moved into sports TV presentation with the BBC. He departed the BBC to investigate and develop his own spiritual journey to the echoes of considerable ridicule. We all had a chuckle at David throwing himself to the media lions, appearing in shiny tracksuits and espousing about great world conspiracies and reptiles in suits. Yet, ten or more years on and the diminutive Icke seems less the eccentric crackpot we first viewed him as.

In an age when people are steadily turning to alternative methods of living and see personal spirituality and growth as much a part of their lives as working out in the gym or reading a good book, today, David Icke is less the 'doomsayer' and more the voice come in from the wilderness.

Filmed in 2008, David Icke speaks candidly to Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot. You will find Icke, at worst, intriguing and perhaps having a the bones of a foreboding on the 'New World Order' and at best, a voice few may once have listened to, but now offers insight and revelation.

David Icke Biography.

David Vaughan Icke (pronounced /ˈaɪk/; born 29 April 1952) is a British writer and public speaker who has devoted himself since 1990 to researching "who and what is really controlling the world." A former professional football player, reporter, television sports presenter, and spokesman for the Green Party, he is the author of 20 books explaining his views.

Icke argues that he has developed a moral and political worldview that combines spiritualism with a passionate denunciation of what he sees as totalitarian trends in the modern world, a position that has been described as "New Age conspiracism."

At the heart of Icke's theories is the view that the world is ruled by a secret group called the "Global Elite" or "Illuminati," which he has linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax. In 1999, he published The Biggest Secret, in which he wrote that the Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

According to Political Research Associates, Icke's speaking engagements can draw a substantial audience in Canada. During an October 1999 speaking tour there, he received a standing ovation from students after a four-hour speech at the University of Toronto, while his books were removed from the shelves of Indigo Books after protests from the Canadian Jewish Congress. Icke and the Canadian tour become the focus of a British Channel 4 documentary by Jon Ronson, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews.

Pandora's Cave: Step Inside

2009-07-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

I started this site specifically because there are often many subjects I feel like writing about but my two other sites, POD, Self Publishing & Independent Publishing and Mick Rooney - Author, simply don't allow me expand too far beyond the bounds of what these sites were set up for. In fact, originally, the two sites were one, but as the publishing site is very much about the publishing industry, I felt as it developed it only right to separate out my own author experiences and discussions about my books.

Just like those two sites, I expect Pandora's Cave to slowly find its own identity over the coming months. I have broad intentions and ideas for this site, but as with the others, it will with time shape its own character and direction.

So, what exactly is Pandora's Cave and what might a visitor find in there?

Pandora's Cave: A cornucopia of musings, opinions and personal passions that pique my interest in the popular, political, mysterious and wonderful world we live in. If it were a radio show, it might be Allister Cook's 'Letter From America'. If it were a Discovery Channel documentary, it might be 'Air Crash Investigations'. If it were a day out, it might be a walk in the beautiful hills of Howth in North Co. Dublin, Ireland. If it were a meal, it might be a Lamb Madras curry washed down with some beers. If it were a sports event, it might be the Republic of Ireland soccer team playing Italy in the San Siro, Rome. If it were a piece of music, it might be Harold Budd and Brian Eno.

When you step inside Pandora's Cave, you just don't know what you might find, but you will be happy, stimulated and challenged that you did.

Welcome to the cave...

Strength Through Joy

Amsterdam Diary - The Search For Narnia & Home

Related articles

Happy Christmas to all

Things That Happen (7)

David Icke, Wales, 1996 - recognise the world he was describing then? - David Icke Website

Things That Happen (6)

Eggshells

Things That Happen (5): Remote Viewing

Things That Happen (4)

Happy Christmas To All

Things That Happen (3)

Carl Sagan - Cosmos & Remembrance

Things That Happen (2)

Things That Happen (1)

Buzzy Friends Gettin' Jiggy

The Bilderberg Group - Truth or Modern Conspiracy Theory Myth?

Tara Hill And Its Lights In The Sky

David Icke - Voice in The Wilderness?

Pandora's Cave: Step Inside