I'm sick.  I caught some kind of cold, the day the winds changed last week.  It felt like allergies at first, which would have made sense because a lot of pollen had blown in, and a lot of people around me were feeling it too.  Unfortunately, it laid me out over the weekend, and has since moved into my chest.  At one point I felt sinus pressure so intense it made my teeth hurt, like they were being compressed together.

my breath machine is broken
so I'm turning up the weather

I'm still sick.  I haven't been sleeping.  I'm not sure what's driving me away from rest and recuperation, but I've been encouraging myself to stay awake for long periods of time.  Tonight I'll submerge completely and evaporate into delta-wave consciousness.  Defragment my hard drive.  Integrate my recent experience into long-term memory.

Reunite with the Infinite
and by morning, I'll forget it.

I'm hoping for a lucid dream.  I've been reading about Stephen Laberge, a pioneer for lucidity research, and it's made me hungry for that sweet, familiar exhilaration.  It's probably been about two months since my last one.  There's nothing quite like realizing you're in a world of your own creation, and that you are capable of virtually anything.  During lucid dreams I've been able to fly, manifest and transform objects at will, and have intensely powerful sex.  Let me tell you from firsthand experience, if you've never fucked a figment of your own subconscious, you're missing out.  You don't even have to call the next day.  I jest.

Seriously though, for those of you that engage in some form of religious ritual or magickal work, try one during a state of lucidity and you will experience an authenticity that is most likely lacking from your current practice.  I once performed the LBRP in the basement of a lucid dream and actually saw my finger tracing lines of blue fire-light.  I'll never forget it. 

We're starving for some novelty
Looking at our wounds from different angles.
This modern drug culture is our modern spirituality:
Paranoid, and devoid of meaning.
It's an empty hallucination
of healing, the real thing.

I've been contemplating death a lot, during my illness.  I'm worried that the shock of stripping down to my soul will be too much for me to handle, and I'll vanish into the ether like a spark thrown from a fire.  I've been trying to prepare myself.  You never know when your shadow might tap you on the shoulder.  I've been considering the qualities of angelic consciousness, developing a magickal alphabet, and identifying with a wider definition of self; anything to feel my inner eye creaking open so I can get a glimpse of total transformation.  My whole life, I will be training for the transcendent experience of death.  I hope I am both accepting and awestruck.

This beautiful futility
This life will be the death of me
I'll shed my soul, erase my name
I'll stare in the face of my fate
And carry on my way.

Nothing will always remain.

Forever and ever,
Amen.