You didn’t think I was just gonna tell you jokes about the spectacular spiritual bombardment that is 2016, and then just wish you luck and bail, did you? Come onnnn, that’s not my style. There’s more behind everything.

Contained below are three entries in what could be considered the Wizard Captain’s Log of the Wizard Barge’s travels on dark and exuberant seas, written on the fly and in the moment, at key moments during this wild and volcanic spring. I offer them to you here humbly and in your service and with an eye toward the approaching solstice.

It occurs to me that I have an issue presenting something that isn’t either vast and epic in scope or immediately urgent while also being polished and vetted and doubted and rethought, which means – as you all have seen for quite some time – that I don’t post very much. Vast and epic is also less likely to ever be fully completed. Immediate urgency is often so time-sensitive that by the time I can address the desired efforts, the window of time has slammed and swirled away. And then, while I sometimes edit and polish properly and sometimes let that go, I always submit the work to a self-criticism that veers dangerously close to self-censorship. I’ll post Crazy and stand by it, but what if it’s too crazy? I love controversy, but I don’t wish to be scorned on any spiritual grounds. But more than anything else, I fear that what I’ve jotted down won’t make sense to anyone besides me. The cycle, at this stage, makes it even less likely that I’ll ever make sufficient progress on an epic or complete an urgent missive by the deadline.

It’s also ineffective. In actual practice, I seem to have no idea what will make sense to the other people. The posts I work hardest to craft, chiseling in every word with care, honing every argument so as to be foolproof, and presenting it all in a package designed to blow the mind and tug the heartstrings, sometimes just fall flat. They fail to resonate. On the other hand, sometimes I spend 20 minutes ranting into my keyboard and throw it up there and I get high fives for days. I really need to abandon a process like this, because it has no practical benefit or measurable positive effect at all.

In fact, the only real consequence is that I don’t post anything at all. When I do post, it’s so far separated from the piece before it and the piece to come that you, my readers, fellow seekers, and subjects of the mountain kingdom, are afforded absolutely no insight into my state of being and work as a Wizard. I surely seem wholly derelict, but I assure you without any real proof that I am not. The work of this journeyman Wizard continues apace, perpetually, even if I am failing to chronicle it in ways that I should be providing to everyone out there.

Silent no more. Contained below are three entries in what could be considered the Wizard Captain’s Log of the Wizard Barge’s travels on dark and exuberant seas, written on the fly and in the moment, at key moments during this wild and volcanic spring. I offer them to you here humbly and in your service and with an eye toward the approaching solstice. May we appreciate, respect, and understand this Spring before we leave it behind, and may we leave it behind with all proper decorum and sanctity.

Does anything below actually make sense? I’m not sure – remember, I need to stop asking myself that before I share something with you. It’s up to you to tell me whether it makes sense or not.

Log Entry 1

3/23/16 0251

Ever since it got warm for real, the animals seem to have made their move – they’ve seized the territory on the banks of both sides of the river. Every night, they’re just out there with impunity, just beyond the edge of my sight. And it’s not so much that I have a problem with them, it’s that I’m not sure they like me. I hope that doesn’t actually reflect poorly on something about me right now.

Even just the other day, there was a really kind of awkward encounter with a couple of slothlike badgers or something. One of them refused to see me despite all my loud human noises, and then when he did see me, he stopped in my path, frozen and deciding what to do.

So I asked him, “What are you doing?” but instead of answering or maybe as a sort of answer, the thing took off, slothing off as fast as it could waddle through the leaves.

Strange figures taking to the streets as well, strange humans, I mean. And the cops…

And now we’ve got that weird dog running sprints through the yard – yes, along the river – with no apparent place of origin or clear destination. He’s been all over the place, and I’d be sure of his status as a coyote or an apparition if not for the fact that he’s got a really temporal-world collar on. I don’t get it. Maybe he’s guarding the newly taken territory for the other animals. It’s about as likely as anything else.

Strange figures taking to the streets as well, strange humans, I mean. And the cops – the cops here at night, a man taking a walk outside his door feels as though he’s breaking curfew in a city under martial law. They are patrolling as though they fear some of their territory might be seized. I mean, as far as I can tell, nobody’s actually making a play for it – although I won’t rule it out in the long term – so I’m guessing they spend their nights chasing apparitions. Be nice if they did something helpful and told that dog to be somewhere authorized.

Ah, what am I saying, I’d never sic the cops on an innocent dog. He seems very nice, in fact, courteous to a fault, takes good care to not bother me, bother me in any way at all beyond the unexpected nature of his appearance running sprints along the river.

This is spring, the new life is here. We probably won’t ever really understand it, but what we can do is take it all in.

Log Entry 2

4/19/2016 0114

In some ways not possible to define, I feel more a Wizard than ever before. I cannot support, prove, or remotely back up the assertion.

And then again, what kind of wizard would I be if I would stoop to such activity.

Activity, activity. Things are really bursting this spring, erupting all over the countryside.

The juice is flowing, juice more so than water.

And if we’re being completely accurate, it’s been clear since the opening days of this year.

Things are happening in our world and, one might suspect if one were just so inclined, things may well be happening in the world we cannot see, or only very rarely.

Or, for some, as often as possible.

The prophecies of a year past are beginning to bubble forth to manifest fruition

And the Wise Man spit it, the plain real truth: This is gonna be a big year for all of us.

Let’s not forget the emergence of the Night White Dove, when all was quiet and from out of nowhere.

The hearer, a trickster, a wizard, he hears that. He doesn’t just believe it.

He himself already knew it to be true.

Let the energy continue to carry us forth.

The animal creatures have not ceased to make their feelings known, not by a wide stretch – let’s not forget the emergence of the Night White Dove, when all was quiet and from out of nowhere.

That dove! Being where it shouldn’t have been, all unsubtle symbolic imagery oozing all over the place, messing everything up.

Ah, but you know I don’t mean that.

I kid, I kid, mostly.

But who would get a visit from such an unearthly dove and then complain about it?

In dead of night, when on a Wizard’s walk of the town, at eye level and from a darkened driveway flew a bird, unmistakably a dove (or perhaps albino crow, which would frankly make the symbolism even weirder) alighting across the street on the electrical wire directly beneath the glowing street lamp.

It seemed at home in the spotlight. It was quite intentional about it.

I had to make sure it was real, of course.

I stopped and waited.

But the bird neither moved from its perch nor turned to stone nor vanished to vapor –

Nor even did it seem to care in the slightest about me!

It just sat there,  a bird just hangin’ where it wasn’t supposed to be.

I walked on, but there was no mistake to make.

It was clear what I’d seen.

So this is Spring of 2016?

Log Entry 3

5/2/2016 0300

And spring emerges, so grand but a tad suspicious,
And everything whirls all around,
And it’s easy to lose your sense of gratitude,
Easy to forget that you’re here.
It’s easy to lose that thing, that sense, that thing that’s at your center and up way above and also all around all at the same time.

And when you forget to go to that place and acknowledge what It Is,
You end up all misconfigured –
Ineffective at best, vulnerable to predators at worst.
I was seeing this yellow-eyed Jaguar kind of menacing me,
I tried to laugh, but I didn’t like it.

Then with the monks chanting in early morning non-light, quiet, I saw the mist,

The mist where I hadn’t been for a while and it cleared, and I saw that jungle,

That jungle I always know, the one I’ve always known even back before I possibly could have,

And there’s that deadly cat again…only it’s friendly now, and looking at me like a peer.

“Come on,” it beckons warmly. The magic castle hilly scenery behind was suddenly blossoming with all colors of flower and tree, blue sky and young sun and no clouds and just a hint of wind.

2016, a doozy, so far and likely for the duration.

Don’t forget how to relax.

I mean wouldn’t it be something if every leap year was actually a real Year of Jubilee?

Just think about what that’d be like.

Instead we’ll hang on, though, and try to punch up a little when we can get away with it.

It seems like when you really remember that you’re here,

When you really remember,

None of it seems quite as bad as it did a minute earlier.

The sun is making his play.

The chairs are lined up.

The song kicks off – it’s rousing.

What’s your game plan for when the music stops?