Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: April 13, 2018 09:34PM
Here is what happened last time, to the very best of my recollection...
I (in my immediate past lifetime) was in an awful place, and in catastrophic circumstances which I was helpless to do anything about, and I had just done an unthinkable thing (I had no choice--it would have been worse for everyone if I had NOT done it), and after it was done, I (in a kind of surreal state...I realize now that I was probably already in the process of exiting my body) walked out of the building where I had been, into the night, and started walking "straight ahead," but aimlessly. I wasn't trying to "go" anyplace, and I wasn't trying to "do" anything, I was just walking because I was basically deranged at that moment, and I didn't know what else to do.
As I was walking, three soldiers came up behind me (I was breaking rules by being where I was), and they were speaking some language I didn't understand, and they were making bets about who was going to kill me (they were laughing with each other as they were making the bets, the rhythm of the back-and-forth was unmistakable)...and I just kept walking because I did not care.
The first guy (whoever he was) won the bet. One micro-second I was walking on the gravel-and-grass...and the next minute I was in the most wonderful place I can ever remember being EVER. It was totally without light (saying that it was "dark" doesn't get across the total absence of light which is what I was actually experiencing)...and it was WARM...and I was SAFE...and I was NOT where I had been a micro-second before. And I kind of just "floated" in that beautiful, wonderful, SAFE, WARM, supportive, SAFE space for I don't know how long...
...and the next thing I remember, I "woke up" in what I (later in my life) realized was a crib, and there was this strange-to-me-woman who was cheerily speaking abominable Dutch to me. (It was English.) It was in the house on Santa Barbara Avenue (now Martin Luther King Blvd.), near Western and USC, where I lived with my Mom (my father was in the Navy) until after the war was over (when we moved to the San Fernando Valley, on the GI Bill, after my Dad was released from the military).
This has been a superbly good life for me, and I am very grateful for all of the countless good things which have been, in this life, "there"--for me to take advantage of. I have been gifted with an enormous number of good things, and I have tried to live the very best life that I could at any given moment.
I've thought a lot about where I might like to go next, and the truth is, I really like where I am. I have traveled enough to experience a number of places (both on this continent, and also on other continents), and though there have been great trips of different kinds (sometimes with some really marvelous perks: like being, along with a large group of other Americans, one of a number of guests of Queen Beatrix in the Netherlands...or being able to go on location to CFTO-TV in Toronto for a TV production...or me being able to talk my way into a vastly reduced-rate, tour group of American Hebrew school teachers, to Israel)...
...but I have never been able to come up with anything I would like better, for a lifetime, than living the life I have now in the San Fernando Valley. There are lots of places I feel pretty much "at home" in (South Africa, for example), but I can't imagine a future life which is actually better than the life I have right now.
So I dunno. If I should die in the near-ish future, and if I have the chance, I will come back here, if I can, and report on not only where I landed for my next life, but how it is going wherever-that-may-be. I want access to good education and good books...living under a good legal system with healthy and life-affirming laws...a place where adventures that stretch me in enjoyable ways are available...and where I, personally, can make a positive difference (in a tikkun olam/"repair the world" way).
It's going to be interesting to learn where, after I die in this life, I find myself "waking up" next.
I am acutely and constantly aware that, in this life, I won the global lottery in the life I have right now.