Honestly I don't know the last time I wished for anything. I don't even know what I'd make the wish to. Like, really, to whom do you wish? Or am I asking the wrong question? Isn't it more that you wish upon something, like the Jiminy Cricket song?
It's really been a long time since I've spoken to something or someone up there. Or out there. Or elsewhere. Which is a shame, because for the better part of my childhood, I really, really wanted to believe there was that kind of magic in the world. Imagine finding a bottle, with a genie in it, & getting three wishes!
Instead, it seems life has spent most of its lessons on me disabusing me of the believe in anything supernatural. I have two stories that demonstrate that point, one of which I'm sure I've told before. But I can't find it in the blog's archives.
When Star Wars came out, I, like most boys who were ten years old the first time they saw it, was obsessed with it. Specifically the idea of "the force." I read lots of comics & science fiction & truly believed there was something out there that held it all together. All I needed to do was "trust my feelings." One day, I decided to do just that. I would close my eyes as I walked along the front area of a shopping center we lived next door to, & I'd let the force guide me safely from one end to the other. This was on the sidewalk, not the parking area. I was a dumb kid, but not that dumb. & of course I almost immediately walked straight into a pillar. I didn't break my nose, but I did get some cuts on it & bled a little. Ben Kenobi would tell me I lacked faith, & it was true - my faith in the "force" left me the minute my face got bloodied.
Years later I borrowed a book of magic spells from my friend Gary, about whom I've talked before here & here. He swore to me that the spells really worked. One of them I was fascinated by was astral projecting.
Oh, I read & reread the instructions & took it fucking seriously. I fasted for an entire day - I did it the first time on a Friday. I waited till sundown & lay on a north-south axis in my bedroom. I tried to visualize the room I was in & imagined myself touching things in it: my bed, doorknobs, closet doors, my things. When I felt like I was going to go to sleep, I was supposed to sit up - but my astral self would emerge from my body.
As you might imagine, the first night I just feel asleep. I was hungry & tired from a day at school. The next time I tried it, I managed to stay awake, but I just kept jerking up in a dark room. (I must've been left alone a lot as a kid - I don't recall my mother or little brother bothering me any of these times.) The third time I made sure to fast at least 24 hours - which was very difficult for me - I was like fifteen! - & of course nothing happened but me sitting up in my room in the dark.
My friend Gary Anderson told me lots of his adventures on the astral plane, but at this point I was convinced it was bullshit. I had followed all the instructions correctly. To the letter. I checked & double-checked. He was sure I was doing something wrong.
So I asked him, "When you're on the astral plane, so you sometimes fly into my room?"
"Oh I do it all the time!" he said.
Ignoring how creepy that was, I said, "Okay to prove to me you, I'm going to write a note a piece of paper..."
"It's hard to see in the astral realm!" he protested.
"It'll be just one or two words, written very big, just tell me what it is, I'll believe you," I told him.
He never guessed, of course, because he was lying about astrally projecting himself, & soon enough he stopped talking about the whole thing entirely because I would tell him I don't believe you.
& the note I wrote? On a big legal pad in big black marker, I had written "FUCK YOU."
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