Some times in your life you spend grumbling about how you don’t deserve all the bad things that keep happening to you. Then at other times, you may find yourself on the floor crying before Jah-Allah-Elohim or WhoEver™ because you don’t feel like you really deserve all the good things that are suddenly happening to you. This second one is called humility. The first one is called being an irresponsible whiny bitch.

But you can take humility too far though. Or you can more likely mistake fear for humility. Because when good things start happening to you, you suddenly have a responsibility to carry them through into their fullest most beatific manifestation of reality. And that is a tall order and fucking scary. But it gets easier once you start owning up to it. Then you may reach a place of some kind of balance where you deserve what you get, but you also know that you must pay for it with your life.

Embrace me O Lord, that I might die by your hand and lay broken at your feet.

Walking back from 7-11 today where I bought beer, white candles for a ritual and a Choco-Taco, I found a folded and ripped scrap of paper with religious-sounding words scrawled onto it, next to what looks like Arabic writing. I don’t know what the Arabic says, but I assume it’s a translation of the keyword cluster contained on this fragment from some kind of modern day suppressed magic parchment:

Doth
Swear
While
Invest
Occupied
Muhammad
Word
Revealed
Consider
Exalt
Obedience
Humility
Fascination
Perusal
Unfold
Lord
Beloved
Contented
Eminent
Disciple
Captivity

Looking over those words, it seems impossible that I found that. Especially in light of what I wrote above, without even thinking of this note. But everything seems made up to me now. Simply because I am actively in the process of making up my life as I go along now. Everything seems like a beautiful fiction. But it is better than fictional beauty. Or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know what I am saying…. There are some other words on that paper I left out because I can’t read them, not because I want to withhold anything from you. Believe me, if I knew the magic words to help you out, I would just give them to you right now. I will keep trying, keep my ear to the safe as I turn the combination lock. Maybe something will fall into place for you. Good luck, gentle correspondent. We have so much to talk about. I don’t even know where to begin.

It’s a typical Monday afternoon here in the city, but something very unusual is happening in Stacey’s Bookstore on Market Street. Sha Zhi Gang, a licensed medical doctor and acupuncturist from China, is downloading a new lung into a Sacramento lawyer’s body.

The lawyer, Kevin Iams, had gone through three rounds of chemotherapy over the last two years, but the cancer is back again. He is getting desperate, he said, and turned to Sha for help.

Dr. Sha looks like any other Asian businessman in his dark blue suit and yellow tie, but he’s actually an eccentric spiritual healer who claims “the Divine” has given him the power to download “soul software” and heal a range of ailments.

I will have to take my time in telling you all of this. Otherwise you won’t believe me. Otherwise you won’t listen. Your attention will waver. I understand that. It’s okay. We’re here to help.