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The Eidolonica Papers Issue 01
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PAPERS
Vol. 1 Issue 1 October 31, 1995 Edited by and contributed to by Greg Webster
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Welcome to the first issue of The Eidolonica Papers.
First off, I'd like to tell you a bit about me, since I'm steering this
boat, and then I'll tell you about The Eidolonica Papers itself.
I'm just this guy, you know?
Just like everyone else, though it took me one hell of a long time to
realize it. I figured I was just strange, one time had some weird thoughts
that I wasn't actually from this planet. (Am I sure about this now? No.)
In the past couple years I've went on a journey of self-discovery that was
completely unintentional, as all the best are. I hitchhiked across the
continent simply because I was bored, I fell in love and got hurt, I got
over it as best I could in a far away place, came back to Vancouver
Canada, fell in love again (this time with a woman and her child), got
hurt again. All these experiences smacked me in the head hard enough to
tell me to look at who I am.
It was at this point that I finally decided enough was enough and that maybe it
was time to get my life started in a straighter path.
Right now, I'm deciding all sorts of things in my life, finding a focus
that I've never had, and working towards the hope that everything is going to
work out alright. I'm looking past the mistakes I made in the past, and
getting to the point where I can really be good to myself and others.
The Eidolonica Papers is my expression of relaxment, doing something I
really always enjoyed...asking questions of things in the world no one
has ever managed to explain. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something? :)
(actually, I think that's a guarantee)
The Eidolonica Papers are being put together as sort of an
experience-relation exercise. I'm picking a topic that hasn't been fully
understood by science or the common-sense, and asking others in my world
to relate some of their experiences on that topic. Not every issue will
have the sort of self-delving I have shown here, some will have none, some
issues will have a lot.
I believe that with the way this world works, I'll never run out of
topics.
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So, without much further ado...I'd like to present what I'm doing here for
my first issue.
The topic for the month of October, 1995 is:
"Coincidence...instances where it almost appears a guiding hand
has touched your life"
Thank you for you patience in reading through my little introduction here,
I wanted people to know where I was coming from in doing this.
.,-~"~-,. Dedicated to Patricia, whose wyldness works wonders .,-~"~-,.
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On to the first article:
Sanjay Singh is someone I have never met, but as much
as anyone can claim to know one they haven't spoke with,
I claim to at least get glimpses of who he is. I think
that perhaps I understand a little of where he comes
from because he is on the same sort of journey of
self-discovery that I am.
Sanjay writes an ezine called The Eternity Articles,
which, as much as I hate to think I plagiarized, was
most definitely one of the inspirations for what I'm
doing here. It took me days to realize even the name
I chose for this ezine is a bit of a copy of his.
I can just attribute that to the amount of respect
I have for what he has done in his, and the hope that
mine follows a respectful distance behind.
Sanjay hasn't given me a title, so I will add my own.
Sanjay may be contacted at:
eternity@cyberspace.org
for subscription to his own ezine.
Footsteps toward Eternity - Sanjay Singh
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I used to be happy. You know how kids are. There's always
something to do, and you have that strange feeling of immortality.
Nothing can hurt you, and if it wasn't for breaking a couple of the
neighbours windows, and rolling around in the mud after school,
there wouldn't be any cause for fear either. After all, how many
times have we heard, "ohhhh, you're gonna get it now," and then
watched the backs of our friends as they quickly ran home?
After the happiness, came the bitterness. So what was
responsible for my transformation, you may ask? Well, we could
just say that I lost my innocence. I thought that the worm at the
bottom of the bottle, was the light at the end of my tunnel, and
while trying to get closer to it, I managed to get farther away
from the happiness that I wanted to hold.
Then when things were at their worst, and I was as low as I
ever thought I could be, it happened. I became mortal, or at least
I was forced to accept my own mortality. That has a tendency to
happen when your best friend gets killed. But I digress, and this
introduction is getting a lot darker than could be necessary.
The gray cloud of darkness covered my vision, I couldn't see
the future anymore. I couldn't see the past. All I could see was
the present, but it was so gray, that I couldn't bear the sight of
it.
I tried to convince myself that things had to turn around,
that it didn't make sense for things to keep on getting worse, when
they had already gone below rock bottom, but then the clouds had
entered my brain, and had become cotton. My thoughts were dulled,
my senses were all but destroyed. I was without aim, without
purpose, and without salvation. And it lasted for five years, and
only once in those five years, did I experience the bliss of
clarity. For the briefest of moments, but I had it, and I spent
the next three years trying to get it back. I had found a purpose,
but it took a long time to regain what I had lost.
I'm not sure what it was that put me at the dome that night.
If you study the probabilities of what it would have taken to get
me there, then I'm sure you could say that it was impossible. But
I was there, and that's when it happened.
A friend asked me if I wanted to go to the baseball game that
night. He knew it was rhetorical, and so did I, but I played
along, and accepted his invitation, after all, how could I say no
to a baseball game? He had won the tickets from a golf tournament
that he had played in a couple of weeks before, and he was entered
into the tournament from his job that he got for the summer, which
came days before he was offered another job. Like I said, if you
want to measure probabilities, then I shouldn't have been at the
game, and more than that, I shouldn't have been sitting where I
was...
There were two girls in the seats behind me. At first they
were annoying me because they were constantly talking, and talking,
and talking. Well, one of them was talking. But at least she was
talking about baseball. She didn't go to the game to just say she
went to the game, she was actually into the game. She was just
telling her sister (I'm guessing, since they looked almost
identical) about the game. Explaining some of the details of the
game, and why they played certain songs when certain batters came
up. Now before you stop reading this, the fact that it looked like
we had another generation of baseball fans being formed right in
front of me (well, behind me) is not what this is even about. But
I'm getting there.
After the sixth inning the two girls come back from one of the
McDonalds inside the dome and this time the girl is talking about
saving the rest of her money so she can buy something that she
wants. Maybe I should mention that the girls couldn't have been
older than 10 years old, well maybe 13... This is why I couldn't
host one of those 'guess your age' booths. Anyway, so now we see
a bit of responsibility. This is a good thing. She probably might
save her money for a week or two before blowing it on something
else, but at least she was going to try. But that's not even what
impressed me. It was what she said next. Her sister asked her
something like "why'd you buy the popcorn then," but that's a
guess. I didn't hear the question, but her answer was beautiful.
She said that "sometimes you have to just treat yourself." In a
time when kids buy baseball cards and comics just so they can watch
them go up in value, and never sell them off, we have a girl that
believes in treating herself. She knows what she wants, and she
tries to make an effort to do it. Living for today instead of a
future that you won't even recognize when you get there. The full
impact of her saying that didn't even hit me until I was driving to
work, three days later. If I had noticed it at the game, I would
have turned around and thanked her. I had been asking for proof
that society had a fighting chance, that there would be something
to look forward to in the future. I found the answer to my
question.
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I asked for submissions on a newsgroup a while
back, just in the planning stages of this ezine.
I'm not complaining at all, but this is the only
one I received as of this writing, from someone
who is a regular poster on alt.zines, as well
as someone who has their own zine - Epitaph.
I left their zine advertisement at the bottom
of this story as a thank you for contributing
a weird and wonderful occurrence.
Just to let you know, before this begins, I've
ran into a few people through various media
with the name "Jim Morrison".
Every one of them refused to tell me whether they
were THE Jim Morrison.
From: epitaphjr@aol.com (Epitaphjr)
Date: 24 Sep 1995 20:32:24 -0400
I publish a zine about all sorts of death-related
subjects. I also review a lot of death-related media, including books.
Two nights ago, I picked up a very unsettling conspiracy-type anthology
called Secret and Suppressed (edited by Jim Keith). I don't normally fall
prey to crackpot conspiracy theories (one essay details the connection
between the JFK assassination, Shakespeare's MacBeth, secret Masonic
rites, and The Wizard of Oz!), but the stuff in this book was so "out
there" I just couldn't resist.
So that night - Friday - I settled in bed to read a piece on the murky
enigmas surrounding the death of the Doors' Jim Morrison. It was said
that there really was never _one_ JM, but that the JM we all knew was a
composite of several different lookalikes... one would do road shows, one
would give interviews, etc., and somehow they would all meet and "work
out" their appearances as the Lizard King.
I don't believe this, nor do I believe that the real JM faked his own
death, as is also claimed.
Anyway, there are men running around who still claim to be the real JM,
and use the name "James Douglas Morrison," which was JM's real name.
Cut to yesterday - Saturday. I grabbed all my new messages and sat down
to answer them offline. One new message in alt.true-crime bore the
subject line "FREE CHARLIE MANSON!" It was written by a completely
illiterate poster who - with a sorry lack of facts about the sick pig in
question - rambled on about how Manson was a political prisoner, not
responsible for the Tate-LaBianca-Hinman murders, etc., etc. I almost let
the post go by, thinking it wasn't worth my time, but then changed my mind
and decided to blast the jerk for his ignorance.
After I was through composing my response, I noticed that the poster was
one "James Douglas Morrison."
I added a postscript to my message, inquiring as to whether he was the
same JDM mentioned in the book, and then informed anybody else reading of
the source of the allusion I had made. And then I sent it off.
Today - Sunday - I grabbed my new messages and started to read them
offline. There was my response to JDM... but the last line, which
explained the reference to the book, was truncated. That's never happened
before.
Now, I don't believe for a second that anything "cosmic" is going on here.
It was just a truly, undeniably bizarre event, and I had to tell someone.
What do you think?
[end quote]
- JR
epitaphjr@aol.com - http://home.aol.com/epitaphjr
The Epitaph: The Journal of Fatal Statistics. It's not morbid. It's not
gloomy. And it's not just the obituaries.
Current issue: US $4.00 to: Joyce A. Rogers, P.O. Box 401, Los Altos, CA
94022
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And now for my own little contribution to
my own ezine.
I seem to be a magnet for coincidence, or
perhaps because of who I am, I just notice
it more.
But as I will explain here, sometimes
coincidence appears to be hunting me down.
The Theory of Relativity - Greg Webster
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The best I can do here is just relay incident by incident what has
happened to me, because unlike the two previous articles, it is not one
occurence that is spectacular, but the way a few of them string together.
These aren't in any sort of chronological order, because it wouldn't
matter to the concept if they were. I'll just relay them as they come to
me through my foggy memory.
As I wrote in my welcome message, I hitchhiked across the continent a
while back, more than two years ago. When I got there, I spent a few long
lonely months, having no one to talk to in the slightest, no job, no
contacts, and was falling back into the trap of too much independance. I
was literally becoming a recluse, coming out of my house long enough to
buy food and that's pretty well it. I tried a few things to get to know
some people, political parties, hanging out at the library, etc. But
nothing seemed to work.
After months of this, I decided to join a club at Ottawa University. It
was a role-playing game club. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the
term, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is the one you may have heard of on the
news - almost always in negative context. I've since stopped playing these
things, for the most part they are completely non-productive.
I made a few friends there, and eventually met a girl that kinda interested
me (if I went too far into this story, it could get messy...would fit better
into next month's "Nightmare" issue :) ).
After dating her for a while, we discovered that her uncle lives on a small
island over here on the west coast. Cortes Island - population approximately
300. No big deal, except for the fact that I have spent a lot of time there,
my best friend and closest confidant was born and raised there, and it is
one of the places I would seriously consider as my possible lifelong goal
to live at.
So there I go, hitchhike 3000 miles to meet a girl whose family leads back
to a small group of 300 people that has been the basis of a lot of my
life. My best friend's family knows her family intimately.
Okay, there's one. Now this girls other aunt and uncle also live on this
side of the continent, and I got to meet and speak with them. Turns out
her uncle is an old aquaintance of my father and brother. Another tenative
connection.
There's two.
Okie, one that isn't of me, but that I will throw in here. My best friend,
the one who lived on that island with 300 people out in the middle of
nowhere went with his family on vacation to Mexico. His family is the type
who like to explore the smaller less visited types of tourist
destinations. They went on their own on a week long trip through the
interior of Mexico, to a small town, the type which have one or two small
hotels and very good food. :) While walking through the marketplace of
this very small town, they turn a corner and pretty much stumble right
into another canadian family. One they know from the SAME SMALL ISLAND
WITH 300 PEOPLE!!!
A while ago I had a job as a telemarketer for a company supplying
"duct cleaning" for peoples homes. There were four of us working in a small
office, Serge, Nancy, Denise, and I.
Serge was an older man, in his 60's. He always had a joke and a smile and
a wink for those around him. I spent most of my lunch hours talking with
him as we walked around a nearby pond (something you need to do during
lunch hours if you are a telemarketer). We had somehow gotten onto the
subject of previous jobs. I detailed my limited experiences in the
security field (guarding that is, not stocks and bonds), and he started
talking about his previous career in banking before he became
semi-retired. While we were talking about this, I had said something about
the problems my family has always had with banks, from my father on down
to me. I told him the name of the business my father had owned "D & L
Trucking", and how it had gone belly-up when $10,000 went missing from the
bank account, resulting in my father's bankruptcy.
Serge suddenly realized he was one of the people who had dealt with my
father during this time. Not of course one of the people who had caused my
father problems in the banks. So there is the third "relating"
coincidence.
Serge sat on one side of me at this duct cleaning establishment, a girl
named Nancy sat on the other. She was really good at what she did, sounded
really sweet, but could act tough as nails when the need was there.
Now I'm not sure how it would be possible to come around to this
realization during the course of any normal conversation, but it turned out
that her boyfriend had a cousin named Randy who married a girl who had a
sister named Cathy who was married at that time to my brother Chris.
So this girl's boyfriend was my brother's wife's sister's husband's
cousin. And I just moved from my hometown to Vancouver 500 miles away to
run into her. I will never understand how this came about, or at least how
we ended up realizing it.
These are the main occurences that have happened in my life, and the ones
with the most concrete happenings. Ones that are easily verifiable. But
all my life I've been running into people who know other people who know
me, and finding out that people I run into have met me before in strange
places and ways.
Right now, I'm trying to figure out where I've met one of the computer
instructors at the school I am attending. I've ruled out a number of
things by talking to her, but I'm sure I'll happen upon it before too
long. Things just work out that way for me.
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Many thanks, folks. I'll get back to you in a month with:
"Nightmare symbolisms"
Until then, keep an eye open.
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Subscriptions may be relayed to: Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca
Submission go to the same place.
I'll be getting back to you on possible ftp addresses where I might be
stored. Seems likely that I will have a place for next month.
Submissions on next month's topic will be accepted until the 20th of that
month. I hold the right to edit things as I choose for any reason I feel
is appropriate, but keep in mind that I hate doing it, so your submissions
will probably be safe from my evil hands.
Everything here is (c) 1995 unless I say otherwise. You may feel free to
copy it for any non-profit use you wish, as long as it remains unedited.
If you wish to edit something for use, or wish to charge money in any way
for what you read here, then you MUST contact me for permission.
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