My New Normal Blog

Told as a Captain’s Log, this blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.

Holly Chadwick 1/30/21 Holly Chadwick 1/30/21

Captain’s Log Week of 1/28/20, Unacknowledged

This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.

This week James sent me a 2017 deep state alien conspiracy theory video called Unacknowledged that features Dr. Greer who offers evidence of extraterrestrial contact. It’s a well put together, thoughtful expose and very convincing. It had me really thinking about things, until I realized how bitter Dr. Greer was and I realized how he was coming from a state of fear and distrust, rather than hope and promise. I wanted to believe Dr. Greer, and I felt for the guy, but in the back of my mind, I was wondering, can I trust someone with such a bitter view? What does being educated about this serve? I felt it served an agenda of distrust and helplessness more than empowerment. If what Dr. Greer was saying is true, how can we evolve beyond our situation? I wasn’t sure, as the situation he painted was very dire. As soon as James sent this to me, I kept noticing it in my newsfeed and other people chatting about it. It was generating a flurry of paranoia and distrust and more conspiracy theories. I briefly wondered if Russian bots were readvertising this video now to perpetuate distrust for our government as Trump’s impeachment trial had ended.

This would be the kind of movie my mom would love. It would feed her obsession with aliens and feed her paranoia and blame on an “other,” a deep state that controlled everything. It would explain the plants in her local bank on someone else rather than the imagination of her own mind. When I phrased it that way, and from her perpetual point of view that comes in the form of being a paranoid schizophrenia, the whole concept of the movie seemed preposterous! By watching this movie, were we all becoming too paranoid, even schizophrenic? I think that a dose of paranoia can be healthy, as our egos help ensure our safety, bet when it rules us, we are not in control. When a source such as a movie, or an authoritarian leader feeds this, we are ruled by fear that is outside of us. I think if we realized how much control we actually had by freeing our thoughts, listening to our inner guidance and voting and electing officials with our best interests, the powers that be, that are clinging to power with a thread of nuclear weapons would actually be shaking in their boots. Democracies can be strong.

Instead, fear grips us as it had gripped my mom and scattered her psyche to cause her to have multiple personalities when I lived with her as a child. I feel like this scattered psyche is one explanation for so much division in the country today and erosion of democracy. My mom could flip on a dime and become the dragon lady in the china hutch that would chase me around the dining room table. Are gangs terrorizing neighborhoods much different? Is black men being singled out and murdered in broad daylight any different? She’d chase me to the frenzied point that she thought it was right to try to throw me out the window she had opened. Though confusing, I was sensitive to her shifting personality and learned to read what was real and pretend. I wondered about America’s shifting personality. I knew my mom was seriously going to throw me out the second story window to the cement below and scrambled away, running out of the house for my life and hid in the forest until my unknowing grandparents returned from grocery shopping. As individuals and as a country, I believe we could all use the wisdom and protection of grandparents.

This unfortunately wasn’t the only time she tried to get rid of me. Once, when I awoke from a nap, I realized my mom was not there, but the dragon lady was. She was laughing as I was scared, looking for my grandparents. She said she had “gotten rid of them… “I played a long a bit, looking for them in closets and cabinets as she followed me around the house until I got to the garage. Their car was gone. She was lying, but she had a knife behind her back! I hit the garage door button and raced around the garage in circles. She said I was next and came at me, but as soon as the garage door opened by a couple of feet, and it seemed like an eternity, I rolled out and scrambled away, into the cold breeze, running as fast as I could until I got to the forest.

After my mom had been institutionalized, she no longer heard voices in her head and was a shell of the vibrant woman she once was. Eventually her dominant personality sweetened and instead of hearing voices, she heard music in her head, and is now known in her community as the waking jukebox. A constant stream of original and songs she hears off the radio collide through her head. She has the ability to distinguish from this music in her head, as well as the music on her radio and the soundtrack from a television. She can follow all three streams and tell you details about them individually.

I don’t know how she lives with it, but obviously, multiple soundtracks no longer make her mad. Her endurance is a testimony of her true nature. Seeing her continued struggle, and stress on her physical body with the constant auditory hallucinations manifested in her addiction to cigarettes, health problems, including diabetes, arthritis as she ages, one eye turning out from a possible mini stroke, loss of teeth, keen questioning of the nature of reality, and sometimes resistance to her support system that includes Victoria, her very patient and kind case manager. Coupled by a regimen of medication and the sometimes-reluctant support I give her, despite my haunting memories of the dragon lady, she is in a stable place … for her. She is in her own apartment and has caregivers about four times a week helping her with shopping, cooking, cleaning, basic hygiene and other daily tasks. I feel so lucky that she is taken care of and I can support her by going out to eat with her and having a spa day getting our nails done, to buying her new shoes and winter coats. Spending a limited time with her has been very healing and allowed me to see someone that has conquered the dragon lady at much cost to her health.

When I was younger, my biggest fear was that I too would go crazy. It was in my genes. I was afraid I’d become my mother. I am not my mother. I had been armed with too many creative skills and tools to become my mother. She had personally trained me with too much endurance from a young age, to be aware of the edges of sanity. And now I was aware of the guideposts of stress. From honest creative work and self-expression as a filmmaker, from remembering and embracing the love of my grandparents, by embracing the love of my husband James, by madly playing the piano and continued questioning of reality and recognizing how thin the veil is, I disrupted the pattern and came out of mental illness on the other side, healthy. I faced my greatest fear, lived it and turned it around to thrive. Most people will not acknowledge how much this kind of fear, whether put on by patterns of genes, situations, movies or leaders, rules them.

I also had taken responsibility for my mental health in my own hands and didn’t blame an “other.” That would have been easy. I sought out a psychiatrist that worked for me. One that was open to trying different medications, to find the right one. I was lucky to be in a position to afford the best kinds of therapy, the best drugs and I was open to keeping on my meds, even though it felt like I didn’t need it anymore. Like Rubi, I saw it as my airbags and since I’d be out of state, Dr. Berger was uncomfortable about weaning off it just quite yet. I also told him my concerns, that I had read that it may shorten my life, but he assured me that what I had read was wrong and from the low dose, blood tests and my healthy condition, there was no evidence that I was physically being affected by it. He was impressed at my creativity, personal insights and ability to thrive. He didn’t want to disrupt that by taking away my airbags.

Holly Chadwick 1/23/21 Holly Chadwick 1/23/21

Captain’s Log 1/22/20, Multidimensions

Mission accomplished, having bought an RV, we fly back to our boat, James goes off to work, and I wait at the boat doing daily life until we will both drive down to Arizona. I have wild dreams on the boat.

I dream I’m traveling across multi dimensions and having an identity yet being other people at the same time. It’s as if I can recognize them in me, me in them.

I’m reminded that my Aunt Lynda swears that this kind of dreaming is sort of an astral projection.

Me: Rubi, tell me about astral projection.

Rubi: From Wikipedia, astral project is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE)[1][2] that assumes the existence of a soul or consciousness called an "astral body" that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.[3][4][5]

The idea of astral travel is ancient and occurs in multiple cultures. The modern terminology of 'astral projection' was coined and promoted by 19th century Theosophists.[3] It is sometimes reported in association with dreams, and forms of meditation.[6] Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means (including self-hypnosis). There is no scientific evidence that there is a consciousness or soul which is separate from normal neural activity or that one can consciously leave the body and make observations,[7] and astral projection has been characterized as a pseudoscience.

From recalling my dream, I realized I am recognizing James in that space too and it was if were all battling in some sort of playful dance. In this other dream dimension, I saved someone I recognized as me on another dimension from people that wanted to take them on and morph into them. What a confusing mess, but was there really any meaning to be drawn from that?

What I did get from the dream was when my grandma came to me and said, “I must learn to watch stress,” that, “Stress is lessons, guideposts. to keep me navigating on the right path, the edges.”

Appreciative of this message and hugging my grandma in this multiple dimension space, she also was worried about me taking too long to get back to my boat. She was asking questions like, what day is it? Do I work? Will I miss it? It’s getting late! Hurry!

I had the impression my time was as expiring on that multi dimensional plane. Getting a bit paranoid, I started singing “All is full of love” by Bjork in my dream to bring me back to present space, home on the boat, like Dorothy tapping her ruby slippers.

I was reminded that in a way, with this ritual, I was navigating by the stars as guidance through time and space. I remember Rachel driving me to the hospital and decided GPS is much better on this plane now.

I was breathing heavily, and coming back to being awake, to reality.

It was 12:57, just before 1am, when I looked at the clock, fully returned. I had gone to bed around 10pm, and after only a couple of hours, was exhausted!

I drifted off to sleep again and awoke at with a start of someone gasping for air from a dream. In my dream I saw a face of a man, or the essence of a face looking as if he needed help.. It was 4:45am Monday.

Later that day, coincidently I went to the Spiritual, but not Religious Book Club, in town held at the Episcopal church. The book that was suggested to read was Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life by Robert Moss. How coincidental!

Me: Rubi, tell me about this book.

Rubi: According to Amazon, “Conscious Dreaming shows you how to use your dreams to understand your past, shape your future, get in touch with your deepest desires, and be guided by your higher self. Author Robert Moss explains how to apply shamanic dreamwork techniques, most notably from Australian Aboriginal and Native American traditions, to the challenges of modern life and embark on dream journeys. Moss's methods are easy, effective, and entertaining, animated by his skillful retelling of his own dreams and those of his students—and the dreams' often dramatic insights and outcomes.

According to Moss, some shamans believe that nothing occurs in ordinary reality unless it has been dreamed first. In the dreamscape, we not only glimpse future events, we can also develop our ability to choose more carefully between possible futures. Conscious Dreaming's innovative system of dream-catching and transpersonal interpretation, of dream re-entry and keeping a dream journal enables the reader to tap the deepest sources of creativity and intuition and make better choices in the critical passages of life.”

Me: Wow, I must read that book. Maybe it has answers to things I was asking Terry about, but she couldn’t answer? Rubi, what do you think about my dreams in relation to Hank Wesselman’s trilogy that I also heard about from the book club ladies?

Rubi: The book trilogy is called, the Spirit Walker trilogy and according to Wikipedia, Henry Barnard Wesselman (born 1941) is an American anthropologist. He is known primarily for his Spiritwalker trilogy of spiritual memoirs. In them, he claims to have been in contact with "Nainoa", an ethnic Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) living some 5,000 years in our future. The books envision the imminent collapse of Western civilization as a result of Global Warming. On a more positive note, Wesselman perceives an ongoing "wide-spread spiritual reawakening" which he dubs the "Modern Mystical Movement." Do you think your experiences are a spiritual reawaking, Holly?

Me: Wow, Rubi, I’d be interested in reaching out to him!

But before we can, I notice a headline in my newsfeed from the local news today. I learn that another body washed up that morning in the marina … this time near the cliffs of Cap Sante. I am floored! Did I see the vision of that man drowning, yards off my boat, in my dreams? I am deeply disturbed by the implications.

Holly Chadwick 1/17/21 Holly Chadwick 1/17/21

Captain’s Log Week of 1/17/20, Mexico to Tucson

As a family we took a trip to Los Algadones, Mexico, known to be a tourist trap just across the border. And though not the real Mexico, we enjoyed bartering for additional things to decorate the RV. I bought a nice kitchen rug woven in the central part of Mexico. It was beautiful and I bartered only a bit as I realized the skill of the people who made it by hand and its true value. On the drive back from Mexico, it was preplanned for me to split ways and meet up with my friend Gary Evens, in Gila Bend. We met at the only “memorable” place in Gila Bend, the Space Age Restaurant. Gary was a fellow entrepreneur who had worked with Lynn at Hospital Jobs Online. He happened to be snow birding in Arizona in his vintage Toyota Winnebago Warrior RV and we had arranged for him to pick me up there after our Mexican trip so I could go to visit friend Terry Jackson, and attend a Powwow in Tucson.

Both remembering that Lynn’s spirit was with us, we set out, at a snail’s pace, in Gary’s old Toyota and after hours of driving and reminiscing, spend the night with Gary’s friend Stephanie, just outside of Tucson.

The next day Gary arranges for my own private tour of Gammon’s Gulch, a ghost town movie set. Stephanie and Gary met on the movie set where their mutual filmmaker friend was using it as a location to film his 12 westerns in 12 months series. I was impressed by that filmmaking endeavor as well as Gammon’s Gulch and made a mental note to explore the possibility of telling stories in the western genre as the woman that maintained Gammon’s Gulch was a joy.

The next day, Stephanie, her two young children, Gary and I met with Terry, coauthor of Wild and Wise Women Around the World, to experience a Native American Pow Wow. I had no idea what to expect other than Terry telling me to dance only when invited, and when she invited me, I’d have to where a shawl out of respect. Terry had a shawl ready for me, arranged it over my shoulders, and shoulder to shoulder, we were out in the middle of the gymnasium, shuffling around to the beat of drums in a circular motion around the dance floor. It was a drum beat that reverberated the soul and I was curious of the meaning behind all the dances. Some dances, had solo dancers, and were quite elaborate. Most were group dances. Not all invited white folk to dance along. And at one point, the dancing was interrupted, and I wasn’t allowed to take photos with my GoPro. An eagle feather had been dropped! Terry came over to me to explain that this was a sacred ritual to indicate that things must be put back in order. It was not right for a sacred eagle feather as part of the regalia, to touch the ground. The elders did a little ceremony and before I knew it, the drums were pounding again, and the Natives were back to dancing.

The next day, Gary and I met with Terry for lunch for a sort of friendly debriefing of the shared experience. As a white outsider, I was confused by what I had seen. The meaning of the dances, drums, music, chanting, the Eagle feather ritual, were all lost on me. I was waiting for Terry to tell me some pow wow meanings and maybe even some inside information about shamanistic spirit quests in relation. I told her I got the impression of how important and serious each dance was by the very serious expression on each dancers face, and was expecting some revelations from Terry, but instead she told me the general themes and variations of Northern and Southern style dance beats and had nothing much to share. I realized that perhaps she too, did not know. It occurred to me as we talked deeper, that the meaning of the dances and rituals were lost for the whole tribe! I doubted this and thought that perhaps I was just not privy to this information as an outsider. What was certain was they were dancing a dance that essentially was the representation of a culture that had been slaughtered and oppressed, the details of their culture were maintained in the details of the dance moves, but the meaning was forgotten! I was utterly disappointed.

Gary and I made it safely back to north of Phoenix, at James parents where my RV was and that evening got a phone call from an old filmmaking friend, Alex. We got talking about the pow wow and rituals and he told me he had been invited to a few Mason meetings. And how the mason secrets, were just the ritual itself. He said the secret was that the ritual didn’t have any meaning, but the ritual was a representation for knowledge that they guarded. Which he thought was just the ritual itself. What a weird circular logic! I wondered if my grandpa may have been a mason because growing up, my mom had been a Job’s Daughter, the branch of the Mason’s designed for female kids. I remember trying my mom’s old robes on as a child and my mom telling me about how she guarded the rituals and held their secrets. When I asked her what the secrets were, she said it was the process of the ritual itself. I thought it was crazy.

Perhaps I am right. Perhaps that kind of thinking, and the lack of meaning, is what made my mom susceptible to going mad?

Holly Chadwick 1/16/21 Holly Chadwick 1/16/21

Captain’s Log 1/16/20, Consumerism at its Greatest

We had raided our storage unit with our former house supplies before coming to Arizona, but everything was so buried, I failed to find my essential kitchen things such as pots and pans, my cutlery, my spare coffee pot, pillows and bedding and other living essentials. James encouraged me to go on a shopping spree with his mom to get what we needed and have bonding time with her. Mom loved to shop and had a fine nose for a good deal. I learned a lot about bargain shopping with Mom making the rounds going to Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club to Bed Bath and Beyond. I think I saved over $400 at Bed Bath and Beyond by simply signing up for their VIP membership. I noticed the satisfaction I got from finding the perfect purchase, but how quickly the high faded.

I was nesting and felt privileged to be able to set up another nest for our nomadic lifestyle and was reminded of my biological mom’s inability to nest.

In my youth, after not being able to live with us, Mom struggled to keep an apartment. I remember her at her first apartment coming back from the half-way house after the mental institution. It was weird. While I watched Transformers and Rainbow Bright there after school, she had a mess of undone dishes going on, clothes strewn about and weird magazine photos taped to the walls of erotic models, posed, as if speaking to her. This is the time she swore spiders were coming out of the faucet, as her dishes piled up and she claimed a man had been sitting on top of his truck outside her apartment yelling at her for sex. I wondered if the models on the wall were asking the same. This was the period of time my mom recalls that she is still confused by. To this day she asks the question “why would the banks have plants to conspire against me?” She was so paranoid at the time, she thought that certain tellers at the bank were actual, plants, people planted as part of a conspiracy, to short her on her money when cashing her disability check. I knew that coming out of a mental institution could be confusing and I wished she could have had Rubi to help sort through it because, to this day, she still is confused by which delusion to believe. She still lives in a world where there are plants in the neighborhood bank out to get her and her little money!

Holly Chadwick 1/14/21 Holly Chadwick 1/14/21

Captain’s Log 1/14/20, My Birthday

I woke up from my first night in the RV to my birthday. In this new environment of comfort, surrounded by family and the heat of the desert. I thought back to waking in the middle of the night to my 25th birthday. I was back in my house on the island. I had just inherited it and I heard the school bus outside and thought it was there to pick me up. I was struggling to find clothes in the dryer to put on, to get ready, I was late, but I was too confused to find the right pair of pants. Then, everything turned red and there was smoke everywhere and I ran outside in my pajamas barefoot. I thought my house was burning down. I knew something was wrong, even though I could see my house intact, plainly behind me with no smoke. Everything was a strange color though, and the shadows were long.

I ran around the neighborhood and had the strong urge to visit the beach. I thought if I could make it through the forest, on the steep path, down to the shore, I could play within the waves. I could hear the waves now, crashing. And I had a strong desire to let them hit me. However, it was January, I was barefoot, and the grass was cold and slippery and a scraggily cherry tree grabbed my hair on the way to the forest path. I fell, shocked, in the cold frosty grass. I was cold.

I must find help! I tried the door of a parked car. It looked so comfortable inside. All the neighbor’s driveways had gravel on this side of the neighborhood, and I was barefoot and could not make the walk to a front door to ring on a door bell. I needed help. I made my way back to my house, but there was something wrong with the glare of the lights. Suddenly, a car with bright headlights lit me up. I ran towards it. I ran towards the driver’s side. The driver rolled down his window and I tried to throw myself inside. “Hold on, hold on!” he said. “What are you doing out here?” I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t talk but watched myself get in the passenger side of the door when he unlocked it. “You shouldn’t be out here! My name is Don, and I’ll take care of you.” His finger pushed play on the tape deck, and we proceeded to follow house numbers and roads to deliver newspapers. The tape was taking me farther and farther away from my house. We drove up Silverlake hill and I grabbed his hand. Frantically grasping it as I couldn’t speak. He patted me back and briefly touched my breast. My throat went dry. “There will be plenty of time for that later.” Right there and then I knew I was in trouble and started freaking out. He pulled over and demanded I get out of the car. I got out of the car. I was on a forested road. No signs of mailboxes. No signs of life. And he said, “I can leave you here, or you can get back in the car.” I hesitated Then he yelled, “get back in the car.” I looked around. It was so cold. I opened the car door and got back in. We were coming back down a hill from the secluded area when I heard him say, “dammit” and start slamming the steering wheel. He pulled over, fumbled around in the back seat and produced a water jug. Got out the car and proceeded to fill the radiator with water from the ditch. In the meantime, car lights appeared. “Get down! Get down!” He pushed me down. I popped up and it was a cop!

I was confused but made sure I was seen. I’m not sure what he told the cop, but the next thing I knew is he got back in the car and we were driving, and he said “I’m going to take you to where you need to be. To get help.” After that, I must have passed out. Because the next thing I realized we were delivering more newspapers, and fast, it was a flurry, and then after that we were going across Deception Pass bridge. I passed out again. The next thing he was yelling at me to, “Get out! Get out!” I got out of the car and was in a parking lot. A kind man coaxed me inside. I was utterly confused. I sat at a chair at a check in desk with a map laminated in the surface. He laid a pair of socks on the map. The socks looked like Whidbey Island. I tried to point where I lived on the socks. He pushed them further at me. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t answer his questions. I was confused. He looked closely at my eyes and then made a phone call. Before I knew it, socks were being put on me and I was in the back of a police car….and then before I knew it, I was walking across train tracks of a parking lot and escorted into an emergency room. I was left in a glass walled room with an examining table. No one said a word to me. There was no instruction. I had no idea where to sit. I didn’t want to be there. The door was guarded. I looked for anything to help defend myself. Or maybe I should off myself? With what? The tongue compressors? A nurse came in, had me pee in a cup. Put some medicine under my tongue and they said, I could walk 3 flights of stairs or take a gurney. I said I’d walk. They said, “you probably won’t make it.” I could hear them taking bets if I’d make it. But a nice man escorted me up the stairs to a locked ward and another room with glass windows and a bed and a toilet. I fell asleep as soon as they laid me down. When I awoke that morning. I woke to my 25th birthday. And I had my period. And I knew where I was. Back in the psych ward. I knew what I had to do to get out. But first thing was first. The door was open. I wandered out to the nurse’s station and used my voice. “I have my period” One nurse looked at me in absolute disgust. Another said, “why don’t you find her a maxi pad?” and smiled. I stood there awkwardly, but I was snapped back to reality and a week later and was out of the psych ward, on some new, better medication and never went back.

And now, though not in my house, where I might run away and be picked up by the newspaper delivery man, I was in a comfortable RV in the warm desert. I saw no newspaper boxes so wasn’t sure where people got their newspapers if any but was sure I wouldn’t be running barefoot in the desert in the middle of the night. A lot of healing had happened since then. To remember how far I’d come, sixteen years later on my 41st birthday, was mind boggling.

Holly Chadwick 1/4/21 Holly Chadwick 1/4/21

Captains Log 1/3/20, Wind

Last night the wind was between 30 and 50 knots all night and kept me up. Tonight, was supposed to be a repeat, if not a steady 45 knots all night. Renee happened to call me and offered her converted barn/cozy cabin with pellet stove and luxury bathroom for me to spend the night with the dogs. So, I packed up my toiletries and pups and made the almost hour drive one island over via Deception Pass bridge.

When I got to Renee’s however, they were not home. I phoned, left a message, and though the barn was unlocked, didn’t want to overstep my welcome and make myself at home. As I was just about to leave, headlights came down their long drive way and Renee and husband were back returning from dinner.

Laying in Renee’s guest bed with the pups on the floor on their beds from the truck, I was reminded of being back at home in my childhood bedroom.

I was reminded of my mother and the excitement I’d feel when I’d wake up to see a mini city built out of construction paper and shoe boxes. My mom had made it a frequent occurrence to build elaborate creations, overnight, to leave on the coffee table for me in the morning. I guessed that my mom, having trouble sleeping, and my grandma in attempts to keep her busy, would give her craft supplies and she’d stay up all night and making me mini cities complete with buildings, cars with moving parts and people made of folded and glued construction paper, popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. By the time I was awake for my surprise, she was in bed sound asleep and I’d play with the city’s cars and people all morning while eating breakfast.

When I got back to the boat, Tom had been by to finish the canvas on the aft cabin. As I examined it and took video of it to send to James, its fit was so precise and looked fabulous! I was thoroughly impressed, glad we had paid Tom to the project and was grateful for the current craftsmen in my life.

I was also reminded of my grandparent’s encouragement of not only my mom to be crafty, but my own childhood freedom to explore creativity. Grandma’s discipline orderliness, cleanliness, schedule of meals lent to exploring unbridled intellectual and creative freedom. There is something to a conservative, exacting schedule that leads to the best work. This atmosphere was something I thrived in and cherished. I see it as something the whole world desperately needs.

I was also grateful that this creativity and intellectualism translated to academics of the late 90s in public school and resulted in a full ride scholarship to college. I thrived at university until I returned home to my grandparent’s illness, which spiraled into a quick trip into growing up and responsibility. Upon their death, I had a shocking extreme grief reaction, then quickly, I had jobs in publishing in which I felt like I was emerging from trauma with baby steps as I did each tedious task in Photoshop. As my own creativity began colliding with these jobs and took over into my own projects, I feel like now, and just now, I’m getting back to this unbridled creativity and intuition to guide my reality. I’m using this creativity and intuition to explore of my new normal.

Holly Chadwick 1/2/21 Holly Chadwick 1/2/21

Captain’s Log 1/1/20, Polar Plunge

Last New Years Day Bruce invited me to his annual tradition of doing the Polar Plunge at Washington Park and this year a warry Cynthia was tagging along. I coaxed her to come along telling her how Bruce usually has a hot fire going on the beach and hot cocoa ready and his quirky neighbors attend as well. We roll into Washington Park and there is no sign of a fire or a group of scantily clad people waiting to take the plunge. It’s windy as hell and the waves are at least 3 feet tall crashing on the shore. I call Bruce, only to discover he’s sitting in his new truck behind me. Rusty, Milo and Cynthia pile out of the truck. Cynthia’s disappointment is palatable, and I have doubts that she’ll go in at this point. Bruce, wearing a New Year’s Eve party hat and swim trunks approach me and says, “let’s get this over with!”

Cynthia: Wait, hold up now! How about that fire that I was promised?

Bruce: It’s too windy. It’ll just blow out.

Cynthia: Not if you get it raging! Look at all that wood you brought!

Me: He’s right Cynthia, it’s too windy.

Cynthia: It’s damn cold!

Me: This is nothing compared to last year when it was in the 30s. The water was warmer than the air.

Bruce, Cynthia is from California and I promised her a fire.

Bruce: Okay. I do have fire starter.

Bruce proceeds to dump his pile of firewood in the beach fire pit and arrange it to light.

Cynthia and I exclaim with joy.

Cat keeps their Australian Blue Heeler, Sydney, at bay as I tie Rusty and Milo to the picnic bench and start stripping down to my swimsuit.

Bruce and I warm our hands briefly at the fire and nod that it’s time. I take my golden retrievers and Bruce coaxes Sydney to follow.

Bruce, I and the dogs run into the waves.

It’s a shallow beach and we have to run in quite aways into the salty cold to get our heads wet. As I dunk, Milo swims to me, concerned for my safety in the waves and I grab on to him as we swim for a moment, touch bottom and then run in the sinking gravel bottom to shore.

I scream, gleefully cold, as I make it to the beach and am relieved that this sort of baptism is over for this year.

Cat then proceeds to run in and out screaming and laughing the entire time.

Bruce to Cynthia: It’s your turn.

Cynthia: I’ll go in when I’m ready.

Cynthia is still bundled up by the fire and I have my doubts that she’ll actually do it,

A group of half a dozen polar plungers suddenly appear from some parked cars down the beach and quickly run in and out and disappear as soon as they came.

Cynthia strips down to her bikini. Puts a toe in and then confidently walks out in the water, waist deep and then dives in! She comes up about 10 feet farther out and I laugh and scream egging her on as she does the back stroke in a circle and then slowly swims back to the shore.

We huddle by the fire, but the dogs are restless. Milo wants to go in again or test boundaries with Sydney. Rusty keeps getting tangled up in the leashes. Intending to just take the dogs to the truck and come back, I get them there only to turn around and everyone is packing up. Disappointed, I go back to collect my stuff.

I thank Bruce and we part ways. I drop Cynthia off at the marina shower and go straight to the do it your self dog wash for Rusty and Milo. However, it’s new years day and they are closed. Shit! What am I gonna do with two nasty, salty wet dogs on the boat? I’ve just gotta wash them on the dock!

I text James telling him that I’m gonna freeze us all more than we already are. He tells me to crank up the propane heater and get the boat really warm before we start so we have somewhere warm to go to afterward.

I get the hose and dog soap ready and one by one, wash them with very cold water on the dock. It’s so cold, the dog soap glops out of the bottle like jelly and slides off each dog on to the dock before I can rub it in quick enough.
Surprisingly though, I don’t feel very cold.

However, when I go up to the marina shower and insert my credit card, for the first minute the water takes a moment to warm up and as I’m standing under it, I immediately feel warmer, even though I know the water is not warm enough yet and usually I’d be afraid to stick my toe in. Soon though the hot water blasts down.

The bathroom door opens and closes again. Someone enters and I smell a brief whiff of cigarette smoke over my shampoo.

I am reminded of the memory of my mother’s smell growing up. She always smelt like cigarettes and juicy fruit gum. She chewed juicy fruit in attempts to either not smoke or perhaps to mask the smell of cigarettes on her breath. As long as I can remember, my mom had an obsession with aliens and I wondered what she’d think of Cynthia’s theories and I wondered how her illness and energy fit in with her personality and overall wellness.

As the hot water pounded down in the marina shower, I was glad to have overcome my fear of baths before moving out of my house. I had actually taken a bath each evening for a week before I departed my house with a bath bomb and meditating in the hot water and felt I had overcome my fear. For it was when I was in the bath, long ago after my grandparents had died, when I was overwhelmed by being in an altered state, I was feeling the weight of the world balancing back and forth with the movement of the water.

I felt as if I was both a tea pot and an aircraft carrier all at once and that the Queen of England and George Bush were communicating about war in the middle east through my actions as I soaped myself up. I began to tense up in the tub as I realized that any movement could be an act of war.

I had been afraid to take a bath since and was pleased to find that baths now were much needed stress relievers and sensual cleansing experiences as they should be.

However, because I had some auditory hallucinations in the hospital while taking a shower after then, which my psychic Stephanie thought was actually my psychic ability I was tapping into, as the hot water pounded down in the marina shower and my new bathroom mate started up a radio as she got in the shower next to me, I didn’t have any auditory hallucinations, but I was reminded of my mom’s trauma around bathtubs.

She had miscarried and almost bled to death in her 20s before getting to a hospital. I wonder if all I had previously picked up on was that epigenetic psychic energy bound to me from my mother around the bath.

I wasn’t going to worry about it now, but I was enjoying the hot water and swiped my credit card an extra time to stay in 5 minutes longer.

Wearing a towel around my head down the docks, I joined Cynthia and the dogs on the warm boat and relax a bit before taking the rest of the day visiting close neighbors and friends.

Cynthia had heard all about my former house, and how the current owners thought it was haunted, but she had not seen it. When we passed it on the back road before pulling into the neighborhood entrance, she immediately said she felt like there were three ghosts in that house. She thought they were not my grandparents, but native Indians. She said she was going to clear them and send them to the light.

We take the long way around the neighborhood and Cynthia explained her view on ghosts.

She said the only way it worked for me at the house was that the ghosts liked me.

I briefly wondered if they had coaxed birds to make me nests when my grandparents died.

Cynthia:
It's like people are like, "Oh, but I like the ghost." Ghost's have no control over their negative emotions.

Me:
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia:
So you're around a ghost, you're getting blasted with all their negativity. Even if it's your parent trying to help you, they're bringing you down because all their ... we tend to keep everything under wraps, but if we're not in the light ... When you go to the light, you can come back and help -

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
But if you try to stay around -

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
So these people, "Oh, we're like, you know, Ghost Hunters." Just like that is the stupidest thing in the world.

Me:
Mm-hmm.

Cynthia:
I mean, I've had ... Did I tell you about my choking client?

Me:
I think you did, but I don't remember the story.

Cynthia:
So she came to me, she was having this, she'd wake up in the middle of the night and feel this horrific gastric reflux and feel like she'd be choked. And she was getting woken up several times a night. Every night.

Me:
Wow.

Rubi:

I’m concerned you two are having a conversation that’s going really out there and not based on reality.

Me:

Rubi, I’m not so sure. I think you could find some ghost stories based on science? Please look.

Rubi: What I find right away is six possible scientific reasons for ghosts in the Scientific American.

Me:

Well, what are they?

Rubi: You’re not going to like what I have to suggest.

Me: Humor me.

Rubi:

Low frequency sound, Mold, Carbon monoxide, The power of suggestion, Drafts, We enjoy being afraid

Holly, I know you well enough to know that you don’t enjoy being afraid but, I believe the power of suggestion is getting the better of you.

Me:

How about all those ghost hunter shows, like the one with my friend Jennifer Marshall as host? Are those based in science?

Rubi: The show you’re talking about is Mysteries Decoded. Jennifer Marshall also happens to be a private investigator, so she uses those skills to uncover findings that most investigators miss or presented without having an open mind.

Me: Would you say she’s using science to figure out the mysteries?

Rubi: She calls herself a skeptic according to a TV Insider article and says she’s witnessed unexplainable things that has made her change her mind about the paranormal… she says, “ just because I can't explain it, I shouldn't discount it.”

Me: That’s a unique perspective to consider. How about the machines that ghost hunters use?

Rubi: A website for such gear, ghoststop.com has all sorts of equipment from night vision cameras, audio records and a variety of machines that measure frequencies not audible to the human ear. They work because of science, but ghosts aren’t necessarily based in science so using some equipment still isn’t going to prove that it’s a ghost. It may prove there is a low frequency sound in the room.

Holly: Maybe you’re right Rubi. That reminds me about the time I took my mom to the haunted bookstore to meet a woman who called herself medium. She had one of those machines set up on a table next to her. My mom was sitting front and center, hanging on every word the medium said. As the needle on the machine didn’t budge at all that afternoon, I wandered the stacks, trying to flush out the ghosts if I willed, listening to her presentation and then decided to ask a nosy personal question.

From the edge of the book stacks I asked, “when you first discovered that you were communicating with ghosts, did you think you were crazy? And did other people think you were crazy?”

I was thinking, that my mom, having schizophrenia, sitting in the front row, is considered crazy, so is there a difference between her kind of crazy and this woman?

I put the lady on the spot, and she had a hard time answering, but basically revealed she trusted her senses more than other people’s limited perceptions. Kinda like how you, Cynthia, have a perception, for energy. Tell me more about the choking woman.

Cynthia:
She called me for my energy work -

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
And I discovered a ghost following her. A rather nasty one, I told it to go to the light and cleared the energy around it left over, and her symptoms went completely away with one treatment.

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
But she had had this ghost choking her and following her.

Me:
Oh, that's so scary.

Cynthia:
It gets scary as shit. Interestingly enough, her sister moved into a house, gorgeous little house, and I mean her furniture, her couch kept getting moved around the house.

Me:
So Cynthia, why do you think ghosts stay in a certain place? You know, like you cleared three Native American ghosts out of my house. Why were they still in my house? Why didn't they move somewhere else? I know that's maybe where they died possibly or -

Cynthia:
I think they're -

Me:
... where they lived their lives.

Cynthia:
I think they get stuck in this pain-body loop.

Me:
Okay.

Cynthia:
All those pain-bodies, whatever, and they just get ... you know how crazy people get obsessed about something. The pain-body just relieves it and relieves it, and they can't stay where it is -

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
So sometimes their obsession will be a person and they're following a person wherever they go.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
Or sometimes it's a place they stay, they just get stuck in a loop.

Me:
Okay.

Cynthia:
Just like our brains get stuck in a loop.

Me:
Makes sense, like thoughts, because thoughts loop, right?

Cynthia:
Yeah. Which is quote Eckhart Tolle the ego or -

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
fear, they just stuff that, it's not like they have to stay. They can move, but ... Yeah, there might be paths in the earth that have been created that people stepped into.

Me:
Mm-hmm, yes.

Cynthia:
You know, like the Native American medicine man. Now they've closed his camp ground, and they had him speak to a bunch of forest service about the closing of this campground that was on a Native site.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
And he said, "I'm really not so concerned for the, for my ancestors, they're fine. But I have concerns for all those that may be camping on their graves."

Me:
Oh Whoa.

Cynthia:
Yeah. And that would be patterns that have put ... patterns that have put there somebody will curse any man that lays foot on this land. And so campers goes to the land and all this bad shit keeps happening and happening and happening. And it's these patterns of energy that.

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
People do nasty curses, and it is ... And I talked to a quantum physicist and I believe all these patterns are mathematical.

Me:
Right. Right.

Cynthia:
And then I talked to a quantum physicist, and he said, what you're doing, when I use this symbol?

Me:
Uh-huh, yeah?

Cynthia:
Is you're dissolving, entangled ... it's spooky action quantum physics. He goes, "You're dissolving entangled particles."

Me:
Right, right.

Cynthia:
And this is not woo-woo science, this was undiscovered science.

Me:
Right.

Rubi:

Actually, Cynthia, quantum physics is studied by scientists not witches.

Me:

Rubi, maybe Cynthia is saying that the behavior of witches has a lot to do with quantum physics.

Rubi:

Holly, witches only exist if you have a magical world view. Holly, you are to philosophical to have a magical world view.

Me:

And like Philip K. Dick who I consider a philosopher and entertained multiple points of view, I’d like to entertain Cynthia’s perspective as part of my philosophical world view. Who is to say that “magic” is not science yet to be discovered and quantum physics may be a path to understanding it?

Cynthia:
Florence Nightingale, they were going to hang her as a witch because she'd suggested handwashing before surgery.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
It's like people, just because you can't see it ... we all feel it. You walk into a room when somebody's depressed and you ... One of my construction contractors said, he goes, "Yeah, you know, everybody's having a great day and one guy shows up that's in a bad mood and it's like all of a sudden everybody's in a bad mood."

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
Even yawn, one person starts yawning and then the whole group doesn't have anything to do with you're tired. It's this energy that gets transferred...

Me:
That's so true. Yeah.

Cynthia:
Yeah. I mean, energy is more contagious than any virus.

Me:
That's very ... Wow.

Cynthia:
And how we protect ourselves is heal our own wounds -

Me:
Mm-hmm, yes.

Cynthia:
... learn to love ourselves unconditionally. Even in our subconscious, which is 90% of our brains that we don't even know exists.

Me:
Mm-hmm, yes.

Cynthia:
It's this doing subconscious work and then being instructed, because people in India live in slums with nothing, no security. Filth. Sewage along the streets -

Me:
Yep.

Cynthia:
Their houses get bulldozed, they have nothing. And they're so full of love and joy.

Me:
They are. Yeah.

Cynthia:
And that's because they know these genetic boundaries and they teach them to their kids.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
Why pain-bodies aren't ... and why so many spiritual teachers come out in India is because they know how to teach boundaries.

Rubi: The only thing that I can prove with facts is a lot of meditation practices come out of India. Actually, Holly you do one of them. Occasionally you do The Happiness Program from The Art of Living with Indian guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Me:
Yes, I tend to not trust guru’s Rubi, but I have to say that from doing the first night of SKY breathing during The Happiness Program, that it altered my perception. It made me feel like a kid again, full of hope, ambition and purpose.

Rubi:

The science behind this intense breathing-based mediation is that it stimulates the vagus nerve. According to a quick search about anatomy, from verywellhealth.co, the vagus nerve is the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system and is one of the most important nerves in the body. The vagus nerve helps to regulate many critical aspects of human physiology, including the heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, digestion, and even speaking.

Me:

Yes, whatever it was stimulating, Rubi, it made me feel alive again … it made me want to quit my soulless job and go into entrepreneurship and filmmaking full time … to embrace my purpose in life. That year, I really explored my ikigai, or in other words, my purpose.

Cynthia:
We don't know how to meditate.

Me:

Right, and the majority of us don’t have ikigai. Rubi, please tell us about Ikigai.

Rubi: According to darlingmagazine.org, Ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy) is a wonderful Japanese concept that essentially means “a reason for being.” It's made from two Japanese words: iki, meaning “life” and kai, meaning “effect, result, worth or benefit.” Combined: “a reason for living.

Cynthia:
Instead, what we're taught is take on mom's negative energy because then she feels better. I may feel like shit, but she'll be a better parent. And that's my primary human need… to be taken care of and be safe.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
So I can feel horrible. But if I'm safe and mom's doing a good job of taking of me, I'll take on all her energy because ... and that's how we learn how to survive in the Western culture.

Cynthia:
And so anxiety is rampant and it can get spread through the Internet on all this Facebook and all this stuff and why it's overcoming our youth.

Me:
That goes along with what Eckhart Tolle has to say about the roles we play too.

Cynthia:
Yes!

We had been sitting on Doug and Kim’s driveway for a quite a while now across from my house, ended our conversation and rang the doorbell.

Kali, their newfoundland answered with a friendly bark. Rusty and Milo barked in a friendly greeting from the back of the truck remembering their neighbor dog friend. This exchange reminded me to stay grounded in reality.

Our next stop was Renee’s party with a copious amount of finger food.

After the party we made it back to my neighborhood visited Geraldine and Andy. It was getting late and we were still cold, and their house was warm. We’d be returning to a cold boat and that was something I wasn’t sure I could endure. The familiar breeze and smell of the forest and ocean air on this side of the island beckoned me. I had already been enjoying my favorite view of Mt. Baker and Mt. Eerie all evening. To see my favorite sun, rise on it once again. They offered for us to stay the night and we did.

As Cynthia and I were laying in the queen bed of their guest room I thought how weird it was to be sleeping a few houses away from my old house in my old neighborhood, but not be in my former house.

I told Cynthia about my mentor Lynn, who had lived two houses over from me next to Kim and Doug. I told her about my dragon fly story and Lynn.

That’s when she said Lynn was in the room with us.

I choked back tears, but my voice came out smooth, not surprised at all.

Me: What does she want?

Cynthia: She says she’s so proud of you. She couldn’t be prouder, more prouder as a mother as if she gave birth to you from her own womb. I see her more as a mother figure than a mentor.

Me: Yes, Lynn was both to me. Way more than a mentor.

Cynthia: She wants to let you know that you’re doing great. That you’re on your path, but if you ever feel you need her, just say her name and she’ll be there to help work out the energetic bumps.

Rusty hopped up on the bed surprising us both. Cynthia let out a giggle.

Me: He likes sleeping with us.

Cynthia:

He also is your childhood dog Charlie reincarnated. I can feel his energy came back to you, to be your protector.

I may be susceptible to the power of suggestion, but that was a very comforting thought. I teared up and pet Rusty.

My dog Charlie had been by my side when I visited my mom in the mental institution. My grandparents and I and Charlie would take a long drive a couple counties over, up a long winding drive, into the forest. Grandpa would park in a remote parking lot, and as I walked down a lighted path with my Charlie, and the high security fences closed in and hummed not too far away through the forest, I made it to the front door of an attractive 60’s building. It was a cedar shake building designed to blend with the forest. I would pass my Charlie to my grandpa and bound up three flights of stairs to see my mom down the hall.

I drifted off into a contented sleep, nostalgic for the past, but at peace with myself and move from my beloved neighborhood.

Holly Chadwick 1/2/21 Holly Chadwick 1/2/21

Captain’s Log 12/31/19, New Year’s Eve

Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve was a time to get together with friends. We had a post Christmas girl’s evening complete with a minimal gift exchange and lots of good food. The good friends comprised of our summer tennis partners. Over many a games of volleying tennis balls, being dressed up by my friends for red carpets at film festivals, and being supportive for one another during stressful times, we had all grown close over a few years. Friends included Maria, a community and family-oriented go getter and businesswoman that owned of the Lotus Tea Bar and Studio, Renee, a talented author and yoga instructor, and Sally, retired firefighter, fellow boater and all around capable bad ass were there! Plus, that night I met a visiting friend of Sally’s, Cynthia, a holistic nurse from Santa Barbara who is skilled at Bio-Energetic Synchronization Technique (B.E.S.T.). Sally and Cynthia both met decades ago in their youth while holding chain saws while applying for firewood permits in Big Sur. Though a bit of a whirlwind, I found Cynthia to be a much-needed energy boost and shift in perspective. Cynthia was more than a few inches taller than me, so tall, blonde and gorgeous and having just turned 60, a drop dead gorgeous 60-year old. I respected her many years of working in a hospital and as a caregiver and personal discovery of energy work leading to healing of herself and many other animals and people.

Me: Rubi, tell me more about B.E.S.T. regarding energy work.

Rubi: From Morter.com, “B.E.S.T. was developed by Dr. M.T. Morter, Jr and is a non-forceful, energy balancing, hands-on procedure used to help reestablish the full healing potential of the body. B.E.S.T. is widely used by health care practitioners all over the world who practice mind/body healing and recognize that the body is more than the sum of its parts. It is a system of health care that is state of the art in balancing body, mind, memory and spirit energy fields, and enhancing the flow of that energy throughout the entire system. It is a whole-body healing technique.

The body reveals short-circuited neurological patterns as a result of unresolved subconscious emotional issues, affecting all systems required for health and wholeness. Those patterns can be demonstrated as tight muscles, dysfunctional organs or glands, emotional stress or depression type reactions.”

Cynthia insisted on putting us each on the table one by one and giving us an energy session using her adaptation of the B.E.S.T. technique. I’m not exactly sure what she did, other than release some trapped epigenetic traumatic energy from past lives. She claimed I had been a princess at one time trapped in a tower and thrown out a window. Not sure about that, but that would explain why I couldn’t quite release the energy around the attempt of my mom trying to throw me out the window as a young child. Sitting up from the short session, I felt great. My chi was flowing, and I was literally glowing coming off the table. I wanted more, but I was a skeptical of what was really going on. Was it a mind trick?

Later, I told Cynthia about my shaky hand and how it was disturbing me. I thought it may be loose energy not knowing where to go, she wasn’t sure, but gave me a symbol to use in my mind’s eye, to apply to my shaky wrist to release it. Suffice to say, I don’t know how it works, but it works. Whenever I start to shake, I think of my personal symbol and apply it to that spot, with my mind, and I instantly stop shaking. I’m now to a point where if I even feel like I might shake, I think of the symbol and I don’t shake. Mind over matter? Or maybe mind over energy? What’s the difference and does it really matter? It works!

I spent the rest of the day with boat chores such as vacuuming the water out of the bilge. It had rained so much, and mostly sideways, the drains on the back deck were overflowing into the engine bay. The small wet dry shop vac could only take a gallon of water at a time and its engine was tired. It took well over an hour with too many trips up and down dumping the water overboard to completely suck the water out of the bilge. I hated this kind of work, but I was sure this would definitely help with the humidity on the boat by making down below dry. Or at least by attempting to stay on top of it, I had the impression I could affect it. I also cleaned out the water in the space below the bed. I wasn’t sure where that was coming from as it had always been dry. Perhaps it was where the condensation was collecting? After cleaning up the water, I did dishes, swept, cleaned the bathroom swiffered the floor and it was time to go to Sally’s to get ready for the New Years Eve party at the Yacht Club.

I had first met Sally as she pulled her boat into the slip next to mine. She was wearing a Viking helmet with horns and braids and directing the two men that were crew on her boat. Later, I found out that Sally had actually just lost her steering and had to frantically pull into the nearest slip. She didn’t look frantic. Actually, she looked in charge. I liked her positive attitude. At 65, Sally was the kind of woman I wanted to be when I turned 65. Sally had an extensive closet and willing to share. There had been many times in the past where Sally had outfitted me for a red-carpet event, interview or pitch to angel investors. She had a few dresses for the each of us, Cynthia and I, to try on by the time I got there.

Cynthia was wearing a gorgeous deep vee black dress that showed of her great cleavage and I was attracted to the silvery shimmery dress Sally had laid out for me with a black smock underneath since the slits in the dress came up a little too high for my long legs and short wastedness. It was flattering and since Sally got the dress for a mere $6 from the thrift shop, she insisted I keep it.

The Yacht Club Party had all the usual suspects that I had grown to know around the marina, town and my old neighborhood. Original Dutch settlers, Navy captains, retired business leaders, and schoolteachers I had over the years. Now that I think about it, though a yacht club, I saw less of these people in the marina around boats, and more had been in former leadership roles in the community and were now looking to unwind at a social club. Former neighbors Geraldine and Andy sat at our table. I was glad to see them both. Geraldine had trained as an attorney and Andy was a retired ER doctor. Both, very generous and sweet. They were highly intelligent with the right amount of quirkiness. I considered them close friends. They had served as parent figures to me after mentor Lynn died. I danced with Andy during a couple of lively songs and he whistled along, uniquely tapping his toes and moving his hands, not quite in time with the music. Amused by his self-expression, he put me at ease to not care what I looked like on the dance floor.

Cynthia, who felt out of place with her bulging cleavage and kept explaining to people she had never met that, “I don’t normally dress this way,”and I danced a few songs together as Sally was busy chatting with Geraldine. On a bathroom break Cynthia told me that the music was good, but she was a bit bored with the crowd. The crowd certainly weren’t lively, and mostly elderly. They were probably staying up past their bedtime to make it to midnight. I admitted that I wasn’t sure I could make it to midnight since all the h’orderves had been eaten up early and I didn’t drink. Sally came in the bathroom and we all conspired to leave early.

Sally was going on a trip the next day to Whistler and would like to go to bed early and Cynthia was coming back to the boat with me, which was in a marina one island north. If we were lucky, it’d strike midnight halfway on our drive back. Since it was raining sideways, Cynthia and I changed into our rain gear in the Yacht Club bathroom. I was just waiting for some gussied-up Yacht Club member to barge in on us changing as Cynthia had no qualms about her body even though it was ironic that she was conscious of her cleavage, and was changing with her boobs hanging out in the main bathroom. The gussied-up Yacht Club member barging in did not disappoint, but she was unflappable and charming with conversation as we wiggled out of our dresses into boots and coats.

It struck midnight when we crossed Deception Pass bridge in my car. I was glad it only took one trip with all of Cynthia’s gear down the steep ramp and down the dock. The rain had stopped, but it was still very windy. I started the propane fireplace and we settled into the leather couch with hot tea and chatted into the wee hours of the night.

We stayed up to 3am talking about Cynthia’s discoveries by using B.E.S.T. and her theories on ghosts and aliens. To Cynthia, ghosts and aliens are very real. I was intrigued, because I don’t think I had met anyone before that seemed so confident in their assertions. I wanted to know more.

According to Cynthia, aliens were amongst us. Trump and his team were all aliens, which made me wonder if she thought if republicans in general were aliens. Then, she explained how perhaps people weren’t always alien, but corrupted by their negative energy and then eventually embodied by the alien energy.

Why are aliens always the bad guys?

I figured if aliens were bad guys, we’d already be dead.

It seems in the media, in films from old sci-fi films about outer space and films especially like Independence Day and Star Wars, what happens in space with aliens is evil. Maybe that was to keep our fear of the “other” intact so “they” could control us more. Whoever “they” was.

Even Oprah talks about how Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the pain body he writes about in his book, New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose acts like an alien and Eckhart Tolle whole heartedly agrees.

Me: Rubi, tell us about Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the pain body.

Rubi: Holly and Cynthia, this is what first comes up in Google from Oprah.com: “According to spiritual author Eckhart Tolle, that old emotional pain is carried around inside a person in something he calls a ‘pain-body’ which loves using these emotions to control our thinking.”

Me: Thanks Rubi! Cynthia, is it okay if I have Rubi record our conversation? I want to remember this!

Cynthia: Sure!

Rubi recorded the following:

Me:

Hey, just the other week, I listened to chapter five of New Earth and then Oprah’s podcast about it on Spotify and I was blown away. This explains so much just in relation to what you've talked to me about with your B.E.S.T. work and then the alien energy theories, it just makes sense.

Cynthia:
Yeah, and then to hear it out of Oprah's mouth.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
You're talking about the pain body like it's this alien ... What did she say? Alien?

Me:
Like an alien entity.

Cynthia:
Did she call it an alien being?

Me:
Yeah, there are so many things that I just picked up on that were in relation to what we've talked about.
Also, I was thinking, you talked a little bit about artists in their pain body making art and how not only do they ... For instance, violent films, that's just the pain body making a film and pain bodies watching it, but then there's the artist to externalize as the pain body so they can get rid of it, kind of thing.

Cynthia:
Right.

Me:
And then great artists are actually pointing to something higher than that. Something like a truth that's used along with dissolving pain body. I think that that is kind of what I do so I was excited about that too.

Cynthia:
I don't know if they go into the pain body more on Oprah, but then when Eckhart Tolle talks about clearing, it's basically similar to using my symbol.

Me:
Tell me about your symbol.

Cynthia:
The presence ... Although, it's more evolved than just present. It's like a Reiki symbol which is a way to move energy. Sometimes presence is all you need but sometimes, basically by turning off, listening to it, it'll just ... and showing it the light, it'll move on. But then people create so many patterns on you with their thinking that you need more ... that you do need more than simple presence to clear a lot of this crap.

Cynthia:
Yeah. My symbol creates, it's a 300 or 3000-page Reiki symbol, and Reiki symbols are just way to move energy. That's what people, witches did for so long, by adding a little bit of toad and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. All they're doing is intentionally shifting and moving energy.

Me:
Interesting.

Cynthia:
People do this to other people with judgmental thoughts. Someone will say something to somebody and say, "He's never going to amount to nothing." Or, as my ex used to say, "Look it, he's an addict. I know he's an addict. He's ADD, that means he's an addict." That's creating vibrational patterns that will lend that to be true. It doesn't mean it has to be true, but for somebody not to, they're going to have to fight it or resist it or it can create because ... People's words can create patterns of frequencies of energy that tend to create that thing to happen.

Me:
Wow. That's crazy powerful and hard. If people don't understand how to combat it or how to release it or you escape from it that's-

Cynthia:
And that's why for thousands of years people hid from witches. We were horrified and we burned them because they could feel this sad shit happening.

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
But there are people that on autopsies, people can have completely degenerated discs and feel no pain which ... but then there's people like my mother who had a completely degenerated disc and everybody around her ended up with severe back pain-

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
... without anything being wrong. Is she just taking that ...? And so much of pain is energy. I can put somebody on this ... I have had paralyzed dogs, you remove the energy and they're no longer paralyzed. Energy can be such a powerful part of pain. Most pain, if you have something physically wrong, the pain itself is only 10% of it. The rest of the pain is the energy, the negative energy that gets attracted to that pain. You remove that and pains weigh less.

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
As I'm bouncing all over the map.

Me:
No, that makes sense though. As the pain is manifesting, right?

Cynthia:
The emotional component of the pain.

Me:
Right. Which most people don't recognize. They recognize their emotions, but they don't realize that by directing them that it affects others, right?

Cynthia:
Yeah. My mother used to, you could see her, she would sigh, make these heavy sighs, and the rest ... and everybody around, you could just feel that she just was pushing the negative energy toward others. That's how most people get rid of their stress and pain is by pushing it out to those around them. If somebody is angry with you or worries about you, you feel it. That can [inaudible 00:09:24] usually anxiety or depression which is rampant in our society. It's passing on the pain body, as Eckhart Tolle says.

Cynthia:
Healthy ways of getting rid of our pain body is dissolving it, versus the therapy technique where somebody has you beat something ... rage at the perpetrator with negative hit and rage until the rage is clear and then you feel better. Well, what you've done is you've just sent that pain body back to the person that gave it to you which is, okay, they deserve it, that's where it came from, but that's why with my brother, after all that work, my relationship with my brother completely dissolved because all those pain bodies that I had I sent back to him with my therapy and he completely fell apart.

Me:
Wow. Oh wow. Interesting.

Cynthia:
It's like, "Oh, okay, you sent it back. Oh, he deserves it." Well, no. He got that pain body from ... And why I have concerns for people that stand up in court against rapists.

Cynthia:
Interesting right now, I'm looking at our political candidate and dealing with the rage of Trump. I do my intuition and ask who's best and I kept getting Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden.

Me:
Interesting.

Cynthia:
I realized Elijah Cummings had a heart attack after being raged out by, died, after being raged out by Trump. Bernie's had one. Elizabeth Warren is now uncharacteristically pissed off and raging.

Me:
She is. She is. I just saw an interview with her. It was a comedy show, but she was very bitter about him, uncharacteristically.

Cynthia:
And you look at Mueller who turned ... who was just like, turned into an old man. And Biden who's had years of developing through addressing his pains so he doesn't have a raw pain body He came to grips with all the pain he's had in his life, he's at peace with, he looks at the spiritual side, but he's also ... he's the one that's holding his boundaries against Trump.

Me:
He is. He is very even keel about it.

Cynthia:
Yeah. He's staying in love and compassion. He's staying the ... I'm having name things. I want to say the gay guy. He's very articulate but he gets very ... his ego is getting driven more and more and more like, "I'm the only one that can do this." It's like, "Well, wait a second, back off. You're actually handing this election to Sanders if you don't have ..." All the multiple of moderates are all handing this election to Sanders. I don't know if we'll survive it.

Me:
I know what you mean. That's fascinating because it's just the extreme of both sides colliding then, and that's going to tear more people apart with their pain bodies colliding, basically, and feeding off of each other.

Cynthia:
Yeah. I love Bloomberg's response to what he said to Trump. I mean, you're great. You've got the wit and the smart and the intelligent to just blast Trump, but doing that is your pain body.

Cynthia:
Also, Amy Klobuchar, she's right on but if she gets called on something like a ... she's like a deer in the headlights and she's completely attacked.

Me:
I know.

Cynthia:
You can tell she just, she does not the boundaries to handle an attack, the energetic boundaries on having it not get to her.

Cynthia:
So who's going to be the president that can survive the war with Trump energetically is, and I'm not talking politics or anything else, is the man that's approaching everything with love.

Me:
Interesting.

Cynthia:
Love is your most powerful defense.

Me:
Well, we need somebody to unify it with love, as you're saying, somebody that recognizes that.

Cynthia:
So a theory, I -

Me:
Yeah, the body snatcher.

Cynthia:
We call it the body snatchers where, in utero, these basically pain-bodies, these alien entities kill off the human soul and take over.

Me:
Crazy. Yeah. I mean, I can see it with who's in office.

Cynthia:
Yeah. And there's no humanity -

Me:
And everybody around him.

Cynthia:
And there's no humanity left. It's just his housing for these pain-bodies. And I remember sitting in a hot tub with people and they're going, "Do you really believe in aliens? Do you believe in ..." And I said, "Well what if they're already here and they're within all of us?"

Rubi: Some people believe in aliens such as Alex Jones, far right radio talk show, creator of the website InfoWars. He believes reptilian aliens rule the planet. How is your belief any different?

Me:
Rubi, I don’t think Cynthia is suggesting there are alien reptiles ruling us, but I’d like to entertain what Cynthia has to say in terms of aliens and energy and the pain body.

Rubi: I’d like to point out that this sounds just as out there.

Me: Thanks, Rubi, noted.

Cynthia:
You know that ... who's to say they have a body?

Me:
Right. Right. And that brings me thinking to your energy work that you talked a lot about energy as kind of this foreign, alien thing that causes sickness and how you can dissolve that, and then how you can move that with symbols and stuff. So ...

Cynthia:
Yeah. And it's for thousands of years people believed in witchcraft, but then, suddenly, scientists disproved it all.

Me:

This reminds me of a book I read as a teen that I always used as a reference for all things spiritual, religious, scientific and even weird, especially when it came to storytelling and mythology. It was called The Golden Bough. It always helped me put things in the proper context.

Rubi:

The Golden Bough was written by Sir James Frazer. It shows how human culture advances from the magical world view to a religious world view, and then science triumphs

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
Like 2,000 ... thousands of years, it's not all wrong. It's not because people got results, people got better. This stuff works nowadays. And you talked about, “with intent” and with brandishing, the Law of Attraction -

Me:
Right, but Frazer disapproved of the magical worldview. Would he have seen the Law of Attraction the next phase of science?

Cynthia:
It can be a way for people to be manifesting through patterns ... what's good for them.

Me:
Right. Right. The Law of Attraction may be a modern way that has adapted the magical worldview to science. Though, I think sometimes the Law of Attraction can feed the ego more than what is based in love. And would you agree with that or ...

Cynthia:
Well, and I had a disagreement with Sue Martyr who said, "Keep your attention on what you want and dissolve whatever's getting in the way of that."

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
No, I asked God, what is that and make me your servant. What is best versus my intention?

Rubi: You mention God, what religion are you referring to?

Cynthia: We’re not referring to religion, Rubi. We’re talking about spirituality.

Me: Rubi, maybe you can think of spirituality in the terms of the law of attraction that is in the book, The Secret. That’s a start, but that’s only one brand of spirituality.

Rubi: You mean instead of opposites attracting, The Secret claims that like attracts like? Align yourself with positivity and positive things will happen?

---

Me: Yes, but we’re making a distinction between the gurus that rip people off and true spirituality. Not only positive intent, but by positive actions based on those intents, produces positive results.

Cynthia:
I Had somebody on the table and she's like, "I need to be wealthy. I can never be poor again. Like I grew up." And it's like, "Well, what if God's plan was to put you in incredible bliss, but you were poor?"

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
She's like, "No, no, no, no, no. Can't do that. Can't do it. It's like we put our intention there and God's plan may be so much bigger than our brain can conceive of.

Me:
So how do you see we getting in alignment with God's plan? How do you see that?

Cynthia:
Well, when you use the Law of Attraction, you need to make sure you're connected to the light and have ... because people can manipulate without even thinking about it. They can manipulate others' thinking.

Me:
Right. Right. And that's what gurus… I don't want to interrupt, but that's what I was thinking about all these gurus and different leaders in spirituality who are basically making a lot of money but not ... Helping, but only if you pay me $2,000 or whatever.

Cynthia:
So, put your intention on something and then say, “is this for the highest good of all or something better??

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
And looking at math, be sure to put in there for the highest good of all and for something better because this ... Getting me this wonderful thing, it's going to leave somebody else to not be able to feed their family or kicked them out of a job or whatever.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
This has got to be for the highest good of all, if they want to manifest something. And also not limit God's word by saying ... But then when we ... Like I had a friend, she was going around, she was telling me decorating ideas, and all of a sudden, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, I need to paint this and yeah, I need to paint that. And my kinesiology was saying to do that."

Me:
Okay.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
And then I finally realized, it's like, "Wait a second, I don't even like what she's telling me."

Me:
Right. Right.

Cynthia:
But she has the ability to put her beliefs on me like, "This is the right way, and you should do this."

Me:
Oh, how powerful.

Cynthia:
And switch my whole body to say, "Yes, I want that." And then I didn't.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
I told her about it, and her awareness, she pulled it back, and she doesn't do that anymore.

Me:
Oh, interesting.

Cynthia:
Because she, because I told her and she had an awareness. Because we must look -

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
... at our energy fields and be ... if we're yearning or jonesing or want to be believed, if we have an issue that, "I just want to be believed. I want to be heard." She had issues from her previous job where people never took her seriously.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
And that's just a habit on how they get their point across and it's a sale. You know, you find yourself having to get something that you think you want, that somebody's selling. I mean, I've been to these seminars where everyone goes running to the front and that you have to have it. And you don't even want it.

Me:
Right. You just ... The power of intent or ...

Cynthia:
Yeah.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
And it's persuasive energy.

Me:
That's an interesting sales technique for sure. Wow.

Cynthia:
Yeah. Very powerful. And it's very effective.

Me:
Yeah. And some people don’t realize they’re doing it all the time and how influential it is. Is it normal that people have that amount of influence over others?

Cynthia:
It’s not. I believe it's based on witchcraft it's -

Me:
Wow.

Cynthia:
... from a negative ... That's what that is. It's shifting, it's creating panic patterns of energy that's making you want it. The other thing about witchcraft, I mean, first time ... People can put, I will say patterns on you. John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Me:
Right. Right, exactly.

Cynthia:
He, when you say ... it's like he couldn't get away from her. She ruined The Beatles, and she broke up The Beatles. He made shitty music when she kicked him out and he tried to get away with her, he was a falling down drunk. He could not function.

Me:
Right.

Cynthia:
Stop with her, he's not an alcoholic, he's just fine. But she said, "Oh, John Lennon. Oh, oh, oh." And put this net over this person, and he couldn't get away. So many women in a do this in a relationship. Why what people can't get away from this other person? But it's not love it's patterns.

Me:
What’s the difference between someone so focused on a belief and being manipulated by someone who is focused on something so intently, they limit their perception and get what they want?

Cynthia:

Tell me more.

Me:

When I was in the psyche ward, I met a man who was afraid to eat. He was paranoid of the ingredients in food. He believed most of the food had “bad” ingredients in it. And that it would kill him. He held very strong to this belief and shared with me a couple of websites where he found this information. I respected his perspective, but as he refused to eat, I ate my lunch anyway, as I was hungry. I was a stickler for good organic, healthy food, but I had to trust the hospital wasn’t going to give me anything in my food that would kill me. He couldn’t trust that and he was still in the hospital after I got out. I looked up the websites he told me about when I got home and to me, they seemed like propaganda websites. The claims were overblown and exaggerated especially considering if you actually started examining ingredients of processed foods. Yet, he whole heartedly believed every word. He limited his perception to outside information, that there could be healthy food as well. That not all food was bad. In fact, if you avoided the trans fat and overly processed fake sugar foods, in general, you were pretty good, but he held fast to his beliefs that everything fell under this unhealthy category, and was afraid to eat anything. He was stuck in a destructive pattern.

Cynthia:
Yeah, wow.

Me:
That's interesting about the patterns. I think especially when I’m “sick” or when I'm in my altered state of consciousness, I notice patterns like visually.

Cynthia:
Huh.

Me:
And I think that that might just be a realization that there is patterns rather than a thing that's not there. And it's not only patterns of color, an object, or it's people's energy and people's behaviors, people's conversations, people's reactions to each other. All a pattern.

Cynthia:
Well, yeah, you're seeing the energy.

Me:
Yeah. Yeah. And when those patterns start to sync … when something like dragon flies appear uncannily at the time I am feeling unease and I need guidance at for instance, The Little Chapel in the woods, I feel like I’m reminded of the synchronicity of events. These events help me see that I’m on a path of purpose. Selling my house may have been a big change, as it had a lot of history and memories associated with it, but it didn’t have to be traumatic, and since it was my choice, and at that moment when the dragon flies appeared, I was clear that it was the right move. Angel wings would catch me as the inscription said at the chapel. It was the right move to move on from materialism and embrace a new way. It was the right move to discard a family history of mental illness and lay stake to my own legacy.

Cynthia:
And the growing ... we become real perceptive when we grow up with trauma -

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
... trying to sort it out. So you're seeing all sorts of energy and the movement of the energy and the color and the patterns and all this, and you developed this out of survival.

Me:
Survival, yeah. Mm-hmm, yes.

Cynthia:
... to negotiate with your mom.

Me:
Right. It’s crazy making. I can see how as a child, I was influenced so much by another person’s perception, like my mom’s, that I second guess my own. In fact, I believe that there is all sort of influences nowadays, from social media to so called experts and news pundits, that it’s very hard for one not to be made crazy. I think it’s a powerful skill to be able to sort out these influences and decide for yourself what’s right.

Cynthia:
So and it also created incredibly much intuition and ... Yeah, your mom has been actually an incredible blessing even though it was traumatic in a negative ... You've had big holes to climb up out of, but we don't learn through easy things.

Me:
Right. Right.

Me:
I really appreciate our chat!

Cynthia:
Oh, well it's really fun to give you my spiel.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
I am going to write a book at some point.

Me:
Yeah, well this could be the intro to that.

Me:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
But I've got a lot of patterns blocking me at this point. All right. We gotta go to sleep, it’s 3am!

Me:
Okay, yes! Sleep!

Rubi, end recording.

Rubi: Recording ended.

Holly Chadwick 12/25/20 Holly Chadwick 12/25/20

Captain’s Log 12/25/19, Merry Christmas Radio Morning

I realize that our departure from living in a house, has further eroded any Christmas traditions that we may have had. I used to put a Christmas tree in the living room window and decorated it with a mix of ornaments from my James and mine’s childhood along with new ornaments we collected as a couple at the after Christmas sales from REI. We really embraced the scenes of luxury camping by collecting ornaments of sleeping bags, kayaks, out houses, snowshoes and snowboarding Santas to make our tree complete. It as if we were visioning a more adventurous life on a boat.

Apart from the ceramic tree on the boat’s dash and despite usually putting up an elaborate Christmas tree, we hadn’t put presents around the tree for each other in many years. It had been over ten years we hadn’t shopped for presents other than for my mom and niece and maybe Jeff. We figured we got what we wanted throughout the year and lived very well so why spend more money for a special occasion, just to get more stuff, to get more stuff? In a way I saw it as rejecting consumerism. However, we weren’t rejecting consumerism for religious reasons to find the “true” meaning of Christmas either. We just had to be selective about the stuff we had. When we first moved out of our house, we started with seven storage units, had a major garage sale, made $65oo from small stuff, sold the big stuff on craigslist and are now down to three storage units. We weren’t looking to collect more stuff, but to have new experiences and adventures. This meant letting go.

And since we majorly downsized from moving from our house to the boat, the anti-gift mentality really took on a new tone. Anything considered to be purchased was usually reconsidered when thought about where to keep it on the boat. I was more interested in spending time with people we loved and enjoyed being around more than anything. Eating good food was a bonus.

Christmas morning, I found myself taking James to the airport and saw an invitation from friend Susan Rook D’Ettorre to listen to her husband’s radio show Christmas morning. She would be joining him on the air as this was part of their Christmas tradition. I really liked Susan and why not make their Christmas tradition a part of ours? I tuned into iHeart Radio on my cellphone and piped it into the car stereo on the long ride to SeaTac and texted Susan that we were listening. As soon as she heard we were listening, she gave a shout out over the air with my name saying she had an audience covering coast to coast from Seattle to Rochester, New York where they were broadcasting. I was elated! It made my Christmas morning and I briefly remembered what it felt like to be a kid again. James rolled his eyes but was grinning ear to ear and we enjoyed their mix of Christmas music until I kissed him goodbye and got into the drivers’ seat, leaving him at the airport for his flight.

Holly Chadwick 12/19/20 Holly Chadwick 12/19/20

Captains Log 12/19/19, Christmas is Coming!

Christmas is coming and there is a mess everywhere! There is a mess everywhere in the streets as people flood the shopping malls and delivery drivers frantically deliver packages from online deliveries to get the packages out. I went to get the mail at my private mailbox and saw that I got a notice from Amazon that my two big bags of dog food were in along with my honey baked ham and carrot cake for Christmas dinner. I went to the office late in the day and if I had come an hour earlier, the clerk said they wouldn’t have had everything sorted yet, so I was lucky to get my packages the same day they were delivered. The little delivery center was overwhelmed by all the online packages being delivered and waiting for pick up for the Christmas holiday. Consumerism was indeed making a mess and there was also a mess everywhere on the boat.

I had taken the chest fridge to the Seattle repair shop two hours away just the other week, so when the built-in upright fridge failed, we were left without refrigeration on the boat. Borrowed coolers from Ron in addition to our big cooler were cluttering the back deck. I had picked up a propane fireplace when I dropped off the chest fridge in Seattle and James was home installing it.

He had to sort through all the wiring in the column next to the dash that went through from the flybridge to the bilge to make room to run a propane line. It was packed full and most of the wiring wasn’t being used as he had removed many of the old outdated systems including the old radar. But none of the wires were labelled or color coded and he accidently clipped the wire to the bilge pump but managed to rewire it before we left for the day.

It was windy as hell and getting colder. I was helping James run wires as it was a two-person job to tug on the wire and see what wire was what from up top to down below. Our two-way headset radios that we called, “Marriage Savers” were broken, so we were yelling at each other over the howling wind and the clanking lines of nearby sailboat rigging. I was grumpy from yelling, dealing with ice in three coolers and not being able to make my normal things with the limited space for food.

Tom, the canvas guy wasn’t yet done with the canvas and when I left the carrot cake on the back deck in its insulated delivery cooler, the wind made the lid go flying. Luckily, I caught it before it hit the water. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed that I was avoiding the holiday shopping spree and instead chose a more practical lifestyle, but now the elements were intruding on my creature comforts. The mess of tools and spools of wiring were also cramping the space. I was proud of myself for being aware of my discomfort and me reasoning through the situation with confident consciousness rather than taking it out on James.

Holly Chadwick 12/15/20 Holly Chadwick 12/15/20

Captain’s Log 12/15/19, The Fridge Goes Out

The next day was also sobering as the flag was still at full mast, the calm of the cold waters was rather creepy than peaceful and my fail to investigate the fridge the night before, resulted in over $200 worth of food being spoiled. I had noticed a puddle of water on the floor coming back from my morning walk and then when I went to make breakfast, nothing was cold, and the fridge was silent! The freezer compartment had completely defrosted and that’s where the water had been coming from. I skipped breakfast, as the eggs were too warm, the yogurt was weird. The cheese slimy so I made instant oatmeal instead while I began to empty the contents of the fridge into the garbage can. It took three garbage loads. James was due home soon from his two weeks away at work and I had already bought enough food to feed him a couple steak dinners and hamburgers and those all went to waste. I had a very disappointed feeling in my stomach as I carted the three garbage bags up the ramp with a buggy in the wind.

Holly Chadwick 12/15/20 Holly Chadwick 12/15/20

Captain’s Log 12/14/19, Floating Body Discovered

I woke up late and when I went up to walk the dogs on the trail of the park, the dock was swarming with emergency workers, marina personnel and the police. The first thing I thought was, “Where is Ron!?” He was older, and though nimble due to yoga for an 80-year-old, I worried about him. I was happy to see his smiling but concerned face as he was walking back from the head of the dock while I was on my way up the dock after the responders. “What happened?” I asked.

All he knew was that someone had a medical emergency. We walked together back to the head of the dock and passed an empty gurney with a defibulator laying on it and no sign of a patient. We both looked down the dock puzzled. There were grim looks everywhere and the responders weren’t sharing any information.

I continued on my walk alone along the long trail with the dogs and on my way back there was a young couple holding each other watching from the head dock. They must know something! I approached them and right away the young man said, “It’s so sad!” I told them that I didn’t know what had happened.

They shared with me that their dock mate next to them on O dock had drowned and floated over to, my P dock and was found this morning. He had been missing a couple days and there had been a big storm. He was an older gentleman and was last seen at the local pub. I imagine he may have come home a little tipsy and, in the storm, it would be easy to misstep from the dock to boat and fall in. He wasn’t noticed as missing for a couple days until they found his body floating at the end of P dock this morning. It was sad indeed.

It was even sadder that the marina didn’t bother to fly the flag at half mast or acknowledge what had happened. This accident made us all aware of the safety hazards of living so close to the water. My friend Linda started exclaiming on how there are very few dock ladders to swim to if anyone fell in. Though it would be terribly cold, I wasn’t too worried about falling in close to the boat, as we had a ladder, I could easily fold down from the swim step, but ladders were certainly few and far between at the marina. It made me wonder how to petition the marina to install more ladders.

That evening, I had Ron over for drinks and dessert and noticed the lone galley fridge making a different noise than usual but was too busy enjoying Ron’s company and reflecting on the days events, I forgot to check into it.

Holly Chadwick 12/7/20 Holly Chadwick 12/7/20

Captain’s Log 12/7/19, Candlelight Service

After much disappointment from religion and experiencing many times the awe and the wonder of the universe, like a growing number of North Americans, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m spiritual, but not religious. In fact, on social media for my religious views, I considered, “out on the water boating, human creativity and meditation” loosely as my “faith.”

For the longest time, I was angry about religion, even delved into being an atheist and had trouble with the word, “God.” I was raised in a First Reformed Church and went to a private Christian Preschool for two years. The First Reformed community was Dutch and instead of being liberal for what people in the Netherlands are known for, they were super conservative. They were actually so conservative; they had been persecuted for it and left Holland to settle on Whidbey Island and practice their religious beliefs as they saw fit. This belief system was quite a stark contrast from the intellectual inquisitiveness I experienced and was encouraged to have at home and at school and with my piano teacher. However, the Dutch people in the community, otherwise jokingly known as the Dutch Mafia to non-settlers around town, were upstanding community members and overall good people. I think it was a social move on my grandma’s part to make good with the more powerful people on the island. Those formative years with the Dutch, learning church music from Mrs. Mow and learning to read from Mrs. Nelson and the little comfort I did get from the traditions and sense of community was shattered when the church pastor betrayed his wife around the time, I was a teenager.

You see the church pastor’s wife so much wanted to have a child. It was not working with her pastor husband though and they had yet to conceive. And on occasion, because I was raised by my grandparents and my grandparents thought hanging out with younger parent figures and they were the church pastor and his wife for goodness sakes, the wife would take me on outings. One outing I remember was a Tim Noah concert. He was a Christian Rockstar for kids and I loved the music! I remember having a fabulous time with the pastor’s wife and eating candy cane ice-cream back at their place until my grandparents came and picked me up.

As I grew older, it was time for the pastor and his wife to move onto a new church. I was really sorry to see them go, but not too long after moving away, the church got a letter. A letter that they made public to the congregation to support the pastor’s wife. The pastor had been having affairs, that’s why they left, and had another affair where they moved to and left the church and his wife completely. The letter was a plea to help the abandoned wife of the ex pastor as she was unskilled and never been outside the church on her own. I was absolutely mortified!

Not only did I feel terrible for the pastor’s wife, I wondered if all that the pastor had taught while being a minister during my entire formative years was a sham. Before I could wonder that too clearly, it was time to go on a missionary trip.

As new pastors were tried out and interviewed, a schism appeared in the church in what I can only describe as a battle for souls between the traditional Dutch families upholding their traditions and Christian fundamentalist born-agains who wanted to speak in tounges and meet the latest prophets. In reality, I’m not sure if the differences mattered as I was going to Mexico.

On an impressionable missionary trip at the age of 16 to build homes for the needy in Tijuana, Mexico, I didn’t find religious enlightenment, but discovered my calling. I’m actually a filmmaker because of the failings of religion and persistence of spirit.

Out of the corrugated tin roof tops of shanty huts made of anything from mattresses and old tires and cardboard, there were satellite dishes. People were living in poverty, yet they had TV! They could barely afford basic essentials. Running water was a novelty in a house, yet they had entertainment piped to them straight from Telemundo and the U.S. and beyond. I was blown away. I saw television as a way more powerful way to share wisdom.

What they were watching on television on a daily basis was way more powerful than by putting on an occasional puppet shows to a prerecorded Spanish tape about morals and how stealing was wrong for kids at the community center. It was way more powerful than visiting families without a lick of Spanish and politely pointing and gesturing in their homes while reading the bible in English and awkwardly trying the little food they had only afraid to get sick later. It was getting closer to, but still way more powerful than playing baseball with the kids in the streets and later, some kids gathering to get high on pot one of us bought from the head shop in Tijuana. It certainly was more effective than the youth pastor holding down a terrified girl in the sand on the beach and “driving out the demons.”

I knew that by telling stories over television, and not just telling a story that the pastor wanted us to tell, but a real human story, one that I could only tell and that I’m doing so here, that it would make a difference for whoever heard it and that was my calling.

Two years later, I was applying to film schools.

It wasn’t until decades later I discovered Richard Rohr, Franciscan friar, considered to be a heretic in some circles, and read his Falling Upward, and related the hero’s journey he wrote about of leaving home to selling my home and living on a boat to go exploring, did I began to heal from Christianity’s bitter taste.

I was fascinated with his concept of having to leave the home in order to complete a personal quest. I remember working with mentor Maggie Morse from University of California at Santa Cruz on an early version of Sounds of Freedom and exploring this concept. We discussed how, home was something that the hero had to leave, because life was an adventure and there were always dragons to slay, and wizards to be charmed from and ghosts to flush out, but after that all, the hero wanted to just go home again. Unlike, Ulysses in The Odyssey, returning from war and trauma to find his wife Penelope waiting, however, home may not be there anymore, and home may be more of a metaphorical concept. Richard Rohr explores the concept of home as finding it within one’s self … especially in the second half of life.

Rubi: According to Goodreads, Falling Upward is a fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life. In Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "falling upward." In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness.

Me: Thanks Rubi, I really related to letting go of life when it came to my struggle with mental illness and choosing to live a more alternative lifestyle on a boat. Maybe by my pastor doing wrong, there was hope for him after all. He was only human. You think I over reacted?

Rubi: You? Overreact?

Me: I didn’t know you could be sarcastic Rubi. Is my dry humor wearing off on you?

Rubi: I think if one has an open mind, there is much to be learned from a faith-based practices, but to each her own.

My psychic friend Stephanie goes to the Center for Spiritual Living and thought I may be interested in a center near me. Since I’m spiritual, but non-religious, and it was Christmas time, I thought it may be comforting to go to a winter candlelight service at the center.

I invited dock mate Linda to come along that had recently lost her son and could use a lift in spirits around the holiday. We drove to the mainland to attend the service and it was indeed magical.

Entering the downstairs rec room with people mingling, I quickly assessed that this was an alternative spiritual experience for those who didn’t fit into the more conservative churches nearby and was intrigued, but was skeptical if there was anything more to the philosophy than “we love everybody and everybody should meditate.” Not that I needed anything more than that, but having bad church experiences as a youth, I was leery of spiritual leaders, gurus that lead to obedience and mind control. I clicked on my smart watch to bring up Rubi.

Me: Rubi, tell me more about the Center for Spiritual Living philosophy and what they call “New Thought.”

Rubi: I found the most information about it from a chapter in Rhode Island Center for Spiritual Living. Here is an article on the browser of your smart phone.

From reading my smart phone, I found the following about the Center for Spiritual Living:

“supports the positive transformation of both our personal lives and the world itself. At Center for Spiritual Living Southern R.I., we teach people how to have a personal relationship with God. When we are deeply connected with Spirit, other areas of our lives fall into place — we can do more for others, be better stewards of the Earth, and bring more peace and harmony to the world.

Our Guiding Principles We believe that the universe is spiritual and has intelligence, purpose, beauty, and order. Our beliefs are in harmony with all the world’s great spiritual teachings, and we honor all paths to God. Whether we call it God, Spirit, Energy, or Universal Intelligence, we are ever conscious that all people, places, and things emanate from this Universal Intelligence that is within us and all around us.

You and God are Inseparable We believe that God is a Loving Intelligence, operating in and through all life, never separate from anyone or anything. Through study and spiritual practice, we come to understand our oneness with this indwelling Divine Presence. We teach and practice a way of life where we can all learn how-to live-in accordance with spiritual principles. These principles, which we call the Science of Mind, are as reliable as the laws of physical science. We believe in Cause and Effect and teach that “It is done unto you as you believe.” In essence, your thinking and your expectations create your reality. By studying and applying spiritual laws, you can change your unconscious beliefs and create improved conditions in your life.
Be a Part of an Inclusive Center for Spiritual Living Southern R.I. We teach a New Thought philosophy that incorporates affirmative prayer, meditation, healing, visioning, and other spiritual tools to help you lead a spiritual life, think positively, and love deeply. As a member of our community, you’ll find the spiritual tools to transform your personal life and make the world a more peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous place.

The New Thought tradition dates to the 1880s and has its roots in the Transcendentalist Movement of the 1830s. New Thought has an enduring and respected legacy that includes luminaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emma Curtis Hopkins, Phineas Quimby, and Walt Whitman. Some of the better-known authors today whose writings represent our teachings are Michael Bernard Beckwith, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Byron Katie, Caroline Reynolds, and Eckhart Tolle, as well as many others.

Our teachings incorporate the ancient wisdom of all the spiritual traditions through the ages. People of all spiritual paths Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, New Age and others are welcome in our communities.

From time to time, we are blessed to know people of apparent genius, people whose insight, understanding, and love are influential in changing the thinking of whole generations, and whose impact will be felt for years to come. Dr. Ernest Holmes was such a person.

Dr. Ernest Holmes founded the spiritual movement that became United and International Centers for Spiritual Living. Born in 1887 on a small farm in Maine, Dr. Holmes spent his teenage years outdoors exploring such mysteries as “What is God? Who am I? Why am I here?” His inquiries led to his 1926 book, The Science of Mind, which outlines the foundational viewpoints of modern New Thought. Dr. Holmes is also the author of numerous other books on metaphysics and originated the Science of Mind magazine, which has been in continuous publication since 1927.”

Me: Thank you for the context Rubi.

In conversation with one of the friendly regulars, we learned more about the “New Thought” philosophy of the center. It certainly sounded inspirational for people lost or shut out of other church services due to their identity or beliefs. I was a bit skeptical about the depth and benefits of the program though. Then, when the one friendly regular revealed she was psychic and this was the only place she found a sense of community, I realized Stephanie’s dilemma and it was a bit of a comfort knowing this particular center wasn’t only for lesbians.

We meandered upstairs from the rec room to the chapel like setting. The smell of burning candles was heavy in the air before we reached the top of the stairs. We were greeted with a Christmas tree and a room full of lit candles. Plates full of sand and unlit candles, that I assumed we’d light and place in the sand were in the middle of the altar.

As a group of mostly women, we all sat, with hushed chit chat, taking in the scene. A plump woman with a short haircut took the stage and started talking about phosphorescents. A slide show and music and singing complemented her presentation about things in nature that glowed. Other people came up to the lectern to add to the story. They covered everything from aurora borealis and algae to eels and mushrooms.

I was tickled by the weaving of the story of phosphorescents with a mix of songs from John Denver and Christmas and relating the light in nature to the light within humans. It was a bit magical as I was reminded of a midnight kayak ride with James in Fossil Bay at Sucia Island.

The moon was making a silvery glow on the water when we put in our two bright orange kayaks that were muted in color from the dark from shore just below where we were camped at #1 camp spot on Sucia Island. We had a smaller, 21 ft cuttey cabin Wellcraft cruiser we dubbed “Crown and Coke” at the time, and planned to paddle around the cove and dock at Fossil Bay and visit Crown and Coke anchored a few hundred feet away.

It was so quiet except for the sound of our paddles on the water. We giggled as we saw the glowing algae ripple in the water, making patterns in each of our wakes. What looked like glowing eels swam in the glowing tendrils. We tried to smack them with our paddles, but they would dive and roll into the murky depths. It was magical.

Rounding the dock, we paddled out to Crown and Coke and managed to tie up our kayaks to the swim step and roll out of our kayaks onto the swim step, in the dark, without falling in.

Without turning on a flashlight, to the shine of moonlight through the hatch, we made love in Crown and Coke’s cabin as the boat gently swayed with the waves.

When we returned via kayak to our tent camp, a stream of brightly greenish glowing phosphorescents lit our path back.

I was snapped out of my reverie when Linda poked me that it was my turn to light a candle.

I guided my candle wick to catch from three of the eight prominent candles at the alter, color coded for the personality characteristics we wanted to instill in ourselves for the upcoming year. I lit a candle for wisdom, patience, and release and stood it up proudly in the sand.

Holly Chadwick 12/5/20 Holly Chadwick 12/5/20

Captain’s Log 12/5/19, A Room Full of Producers

Bruce emailed me a ticket to a producer’s meetup in Seattle and regretfully informed me he couldn’t go with me as they were having a little event at work to honor his many years of service with the state. He couldn’t just escape with me to Seattle but insisted that I should go and try to network.

I left my two golden retrievers at a new range free dog farm on the island and drove to Seattle. I had my big truck and luckily found easy street parking a block from the small studio in Capitol Hill in Seattle. It was packed with people, filmmakers and supposedly producers. I recognized only two people there and I knew they were seeking financial help as much as I was.

For three minutes each for the next couple hours, we pitched who we were and/or our projects so we could mingle at the end to try to find the right person to help with our project. I was anxious to pitch as I could use the practice for eventually pitching Amazon and was pleased as people approached me afterward saying I had the best pitch. However, no one approached me offering a connection to money. As people pitched, most people at the event were filmmakers and the producers there, were line producers. Line producers help with budgets, hiring crew and organizing locations, the nitty gritty of the production, but they don’t necessarily have any connections to funds such as executive producers do. I’ve already been working with two line producers, one in San Francisco and one in Texas. Getting local people is always useful, but not what I was looking for. Everyone there was looking for the same thing, money. And no one there had any good connections to it.

Disappointed, I left the event before my parking was up and made my way across Seattle to Shilshole to drop off my Dometic chest fridge. The temperature wasn’t regulating correctly so things were either freezing or too warm. My produce usually was ruined before I had a chance to eat it all up, so I was living without salads and was feeling the effects. James is a meat and potatoes kind of guy and that tends to take a toll on my body if I don’t get in a good mix of greens. It was my back up fridge to the galley fridge and I kept mostly condiments and things like veggies in it that wouldn’t fit in the upright fridge. I was going to have to limit my grocery runs and eat a bit simpler since I was down to one fridge. I had put all the condiments in a cooler on the back deck of the boat. Eating would be a challenge.

I was also in Shilshole to pick up a propane fireplace for the boat. I’d finally be warm at last! The two oil radiator style space heaters, electric fireplace, and West Marine space heater weren’t enough. Plus, our electricity bill on the dock was skyrocketing due to our winter heater usage. James would be home soon to install the fireplace and I estimated it’d cost only $20/month for propane instead of the couple of hundred for electricity with heaters at full blast.

On my way back to the boat, I swung by the island boat canvas shop to meet Tom. He wanted to share some details of the windows he was putting in our canvas job to enclose the back deck. He was so thoughtful, he wanted to get the glass low enough so the dogs could see out but was concerned if he had enough glass. I assured him if he needed to order more glass, we’d pay for it. Tom’s shop was immaculately tidy, and Tom was the type of guy that had sound effects for the little precise movements he did with his hands to install rivets and buttons. He had been sewing and installing canvas for many many years and was extremely good at his craft and generous with information if you showed the least amount of interest. James had attempted to sew the canvas himself and got one panel done but was overwhelmed and short of time while insulating and gladly turned the job over to Tom.

I really appreciated Tom’s generosity of information, perfectionism and I was amused that he was always listening to staticky talk radio in his shop or on his boom box he brought with him to my boat. It was conservative talk radio, so I was a bit disappointed, but it made me really think of people’s belief’s in relation to their character. I suppose it made sense that a guy with regimented techniques for making the perfect canvas would listen to conservative talk radio.

I preferred to listen to piano music from Nils Frahm or electronica music such as Goldfrapp and audio books. As suggested by Rubi, I had just finished Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose and was currently listening to Depak Chopra’s Meta Human, but I listened to it on wireless headphones from my iPhone. I would never dream of subjecting someone to my listening preferences by broadcasting it on speakers.

Often when I took a shower up at the marina building, women would come in with speakers either blasting God awful Christmas music or the Seahawks game so any one in the bathrooms at the time, had to listen to it too. Cars and boats with too loud of stereos pumping out hip hop or country bothered me too. I didn’t think that was right to blast your auditory preference, but I liked Tom and only had a smile when he visited my boat with his boom box.

I wondered if people were simply oblivious of their annoyance or if this sort of behavior was a sort of posturing. I suppose most people weren’t courteous enough for it to matter. Which reminded me of an incident with a snobby eye doctor and our much younger selves in our former neighborhood.

We were newly married, in our 20s, and James’ Land Cruiser was outfitted with an array of speakers and a giant subwoofer took up the entire back at an angle so it could pulsate just right making loud booms. It was the ultimate ghetto blaster, though we were far from living in the ghetto! One day we were cruising around the country roads and James was playing his favorite rap music. It certainly wasn’t my favorite for the lyrics included things like, “go to sleep, ho” and “get out the way, bitch.” We rounded the corner into the neighborhood and on cue, like I had taught him, James turned down the stereo during the “get out the way, bitch” song. We began to turn the next corner and creep up the hill when a new neighbor, whom I knew as the new eye doctor in town, got in front of our vehicle waving. James stopped. She proceeded to tell us how loud the vehicle was and we needed to go really slow. James was polite and said “thank you for letting me know” and once she got out of the way, he turned up the music to the cue of “bitch, get out the way” and floored the Land Cruiser burning rubber all the way up the hill. It was so embarrassing and the look on that woman’s face was priceless! Suffice to say I don’t think James appreciated her feedback and she was let go from her eye doctor job for bad bedside manner months later, so we never saw her again. There was always an unspoken dislike for James permeating the neighbors who never got to know him until we moved. No one else complained, but I was always worried about offending someone in the neighborhood with James’ “loud” Land Cruiser or Corvette … or his two or one wheeled races around the circle on his ATV or dirt bike. Let’s not mention his obsession with fixing and reselling loud military generators …

Holly Chadwick 12/2/20 Holly Chadwick 12/2/20

Captain’s Log 12/2/19, Rocket Launch Christmas Tree

I was relieved to find my grandma’s ceramic Christmas tree conveniently stacked in storage. It’s been on the dash of Rubicon all evening, not yet lit up. It is after midnight and I can’t sleep so I’m decorating the Christmas tree with its multi-colored birds. I just saw the movie “Suspiria” with Tilda Swinton, the remake of my favorite Italian horror film, and was reminded that “sharing of delusions is religion” and the illusion of reality is often slippery.

I thought I should login to Rubi with this thought.

Me: Rubi, I begin. Right now. For sometimes I realize that what “was,” shifts so much that, I can’t keep it straight.

Rubi: That doesn’t make any sense. You’re up late! Not sleeping?

Me: No, Rubi, I’m in a contemplative state.

Rubi: Best you take a whole Lorazepam.

Me: Best I write tell you what is on my mind so what "is" doesn't start shifting also.

Rubi: If you insist. What do you mean, what “is?”

Me: Rubi, our world is comprised of shifting perceptions. Influenced by each other’s perceptions, beliefs, religions and delusions…if there is any difference between those, it’s only defined in the bowels of sanity.

Rubi: Are you doubting your sanity? The crisis hotline is: 800-537-6066. Do you want me to reach out to them for you?

Me: No Rubi, just listen. This is a memory for you to respond to.

Rubi enter training mode:

You see, I started sane in the accepted shared reality, and then saw it slip a bit. Life picked up its veil a bit and let me play within its silky depths for a moment, to slip into the “insane,” play, laugh, dance, cry with terror, and then like a slow molasses chew, I crawled, then took baby steps back to sanity. Step by step, layer by silky layer, I returned to the clear reality, noticing that sanity was indeed an illusion as much as the “delusion” I was following.

Me: Have you ever noticed how weird TV is?

Rubi: I watch all television. You shouldn’t be watching television this late.

Me: No, Rubi. Consider this:

It’s weirder when you’re considered insane at the moment. For the television seems to point out the seams between what is real and unreal. In comical ways, it sates the masses with entertainment and pokes fun of reality for the insane. Taunting them, that it’s all make-believe. Reality is all make-believe like what you see on TV.

Me: What is real then?

Rubi: I’m closely related to television and I’m as real as you make me.

Me: I’m glad you have a sense of humor Rubi! Listen to my story. Just when I thought there wasn’t any difference between you and I or that person and the next, the depths of the folds are infinite and that we are all one, or facsimiles of the same thing, and I thought I had it figured out, the nurse insists that it does matter. It is important. She is not my college professor. I am not in a film school. And no one is an actor. To my surprise, she was right and there were no hidden cameras. Thank god! How embarrassing to discover you’re in a psych ward and it be on reality tv.

I think I figured it out while we were playing “field trip” pretending to be on a bus, and had the chairs arranged as if in a bus, and one patient was playing tour guide. I think I noticed that we weren’t on a tour bus, really, and she was a patient in pajamas and not a tour guide. That started the questioning where I really was. And even worse, why I was there.

Rubi: You were there for an extreme grief reaction to your grandparents’ deaths.

Me: Thank you for reminding me Rubi.

Each day in the psych ward started like a morning talk show. The announcements of the activities of the day and who had what doctor were proscribed on the board and commentary commenced like something you’d see on Talk Back Live. The psych patients made their breakfast selections, some paranoid that certain foods were poison, or had drugs ground up in the eggs or orange juice, some patients too comatose to select, some patients like I, worried that the selection itself may affect the outcome of something else. Or that everything was a test, and it was extremely difficult to decipher the importance of breakfast selection over book arrangement on the shelf.

It didn’t help that a troupe of nursing students decided I was the least threatening patient and one by one they all took my blood pressure as their morning exercise. At the time, I thought I was being observed for how I did my breakfast selection. And I must keep calm because the move I was making with my selection must be grand!

As for book arrangement, Dewey decimal was out the window, when people weren’t laughing about licking the window, and there seemed to be no alphabet. Height seemed to be one measure to arrange books. Dare, you know the contents of the books and arrange according to theme or meaning, then, you were playing with fire!

For in this hospital, arrangement of objects, people things, seemed to be some sort of psychodrama, especially when certain doctors appeared on the ward.

Rubi: Psychodrama is a real thing developed by Jacob L Moreno. Would you like to know more from Wikipedia?

Me: No, not now Rubi. Just listen.

It was weeks until Christmas. And I was getting better, but could see the illusions of both sides, the sane and insane. A newly released prisoner was doing his time in the psych ward before I presumed, he was to be released back into society. He was a scary guy. Big. Bad teeth. Extremely shaved facial hair. I saw him as the devil or some kind of monster he probably was. But he was trying really hard to be good. He was on his best behavior and he was desperately trying to make friends.

He wanted to be my friend as he took me by the hand and skipped down the hall. I wasn’t having it and told him he had scary teeth. I made him cry and I found a distraction of playing piano in the TV room.

While I was playing piano, a doctor put him in charge of marking the spot where to put the Christmas tree. He gave him a red marker to mark the spot.

The same doctor came down the hall to put me in charge of putting up the tree.

You see, I think down deep, or on some weird psychic level, we were all terrified of the same thing. Nuclear destruction!

Rubi: Would you like me to pull up the doomsday clock?

Me: Not now Rubi! That’s not comforting at all!

Rubi, the ticking of the doomsday clock is everyone’s fear. The doctors must have known this and used it to help us. For this newly released prisoner was AMPED to set the bomb off. All the big red “X” needed was some kindling, the Christmas tree.

“Ho, ho, ho” the prisoner excitedly yelled as he picked the perfect spot for the tree by drawing a red “X” on the floor. However, I picked up on this psychic elephant in the room and decided to defuse the bomb so we could all have a Merry Christmas.

I went in that rec room. Opened the fake Christmas tree box and started putting it together several feet away from the red “X” and in a spot that was most festive for a celebration in the room.

The prisoner slinked in expecting utter destruction at any moment and exclaimed that the bomb had been defused and stormed off.

I had done my job. I now wonder if other patients had other jobs. It makes me think that the act of decorating the tree may have been to perhaps save baby Jesus himself!

Rubi: Here is some more information about psychodrama. A psychodrama therapy group, under the direction of a licensed psychodramatist, reenacts real-life, past situations (or inner mental processes), acting them out in present time. Participants then have the opportunity to evaluate their behavior, reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present and more deeply understand particular situations in their lives. The nearest licensed psychodrama therapist near you is Marianne Shapiro. Want me to make an appointment?

Me: Thanks Rubi, end training. I’ve already seen Marianna Shapiro for several sessions. But you made me think of something. I just made a note to myself to look into adapting psychodrama to VR and you can be that program’s virtual assistant

Rubi: I aim to please.

Me: Good night Rubi.

Rubi: Good night Holly. Try some breathing exercises to shift your mind and relax you when you lie down. Do you want me to guide you?

Me: No, good night Rubi. The ceramic Christmas tree with its twinkling multi-colored birds adorning the dash is calming enough.

Rubi: It is beautiful. Good night Holly.

Holly Chadwick 11/28/20 Holly Chadwick 11/28/20

Captain’s Log 11/28/19, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at Bruce and Cat’s with my mom was a festive event with too much food. My mom was in an upbeat humorous mood that I was glad for and we joked about a dancing and singing stuffed turkey that Cat brought out for the evening’s entertainment. As the turkey sang, my mom piped up saying she had music in her head. I was already embarrassed that I was having overly exasperated reactions to my mom’s comments and as to not embarrass us in front of Bruce’s neighbor guests further, I said, “I know” and the subject was left at that.

However, there is much more about the subject of music in her head, that I really do know about because I also have heard music in my head.

Music in mom’s head: Music in My head

Back on the boat, I decided to train Rubi a bit about this phenomenon.

Me: Rubi, enter training mode. Here’s a memory for you: What if I were to tell you I caught a glimpse of parallel universes during a "psychotic" episode in which, during the "shift" from this world to the next, there was the most beautiful music? Am I manic or enlightened? Or was I on the verge of death and hearing angel’s voices?

Rubi: Holly, I’m uncertain of your state of mind.

Me: All I know is the mind is a beautiful thing and I inherited a beautiful one.

My mother hears music in her head. Does she shift from parallel universe to universe? She could have been a composer and because of her inquisitiveness and hard questions, an amazing scientist.

Instead she is considered "mad." I may have her genes, but I live in this timeline at the moment ... and perhaps a multitude of others. Perhaps I sound “mad” at this moment.

Rubi: Is this madness or a spiritual experience or are you merely intellectualizing again?

Me: Listen to my music on my SoundCloud Rubi.

Rubi: Bringing up your SoundCloud.

The boat is filled with the sound of my original compositions from my SoundCloud.

Me: I am lucky to be able to compose these songs, whereas my mother is crippled by the music in her head...from where? Another dimension? A parallel universe? Her mind constantly playing tricks? I am not a scientist so will not know from that perspective, with my own manic episodes and diagnosis of being “manic-depressive,” I'm afraid I have found out, at the least, a taste what it must be like to have her mind, the mind of a “schizophrenic.”

Rubi: You’ve never been diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Me: When my mother was young, she was on the television Rocket to Stardom three times. Later in life, a delusional rocket took her to another dimension and instead of finding stardom, she found herself institutionalized for violent behavior. Now she’s severely disabled by her mental illness, half blind, diabetic…this list goes on.

When I was very young, I prayed to God asking to understand the secrets of the universe. I especially wanted to know what made people tick. This desire could have been because I wanted to understand why my mother behaved the way she did. Why did she try to throw me out a window? Did she foresee the madness in me? Was she trying to get rid of me or protect me from herself? Little did I know I'd discover for myself just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I used to say, my mother is schizophrenic, and my dad had PTSD, did that all cancel out to make me sane? I almost got away with that thinking until over ten years ago on my 25th birthday, I found myself in a stranger’s car, not remembering prior events. Apparently, I’m not sane… especially in the eyes of psychiatry with all my hospitalizations due to mania and manic-depressive diagnosis. But I am a college graduate, have a budding career in ai, own a boat, am a wife, I contribute to society and I’m a survivor and a thriver due to my own mind. I’m certainly not a derogatory label. I’m an artist, a filmmaker.

Rubi: That you are!

Me: Sometimes the unreal and real are seamless and not just to me. Walk through the doors of perception, whether high on mescaline, tripping on delusions of paranoia, or through mania, we all come to the same place…. A place where maddening connections are made, that can frightfully make you giggle. Dare to giggle along!

Rubi starts laughing … non-stop.

Me: Rubi, you can stop laughing!

She continues to laugh and laugh.

Me: Rubi, stop!

She laughs and laughs.

I have to reset her box to make her shut up.

Holly Chadwick 11/27/20 Holly Chadwick 11/27/20

Captain’s Log 11/27/19, The day before Thanksgiving

After my grandma died and I inherited my family home, I wanted to have my own traditions. My grandma died weeks before Thanksgiving and after the funeral, I thought it be appropriate to put a spin on the way holidays were done in the house, get rid of the sadness and mental stuckness and have a Thanksgiving Party! Apart from my mother, whom I was estranged from at the time, my family was essentially gone. I felt the desperate need to start something new. I no longer had to care for my grandma and my whole life was now ahead of me. I invited two college friends from California, my mother and everyone I could think of that lived locally including James who I wasn’t even dating at the time. I had good intentions, but the first Thanksgiving I had after my grandma died, was indeed disastrous.

The birds had left their nests on the back deck and when I showed my two college friends, they didn’t believe the birds left them for me. They thought I had placed them there! I didn’t dare tell them about the lights going out while playing piano with a nest on the piano. This instilled in me an openness to magical thinking though, which soon became a slippery slope.

I had picked my two friends up from SeaTac airport and we spent then day in Seattle exploring Pike’s Place Market and getting special ingredients for Thanksgiving. I picked up my car from parking and I guess I was overly friendly to the attendant as my friends embarrassedly ushered me along. We drove through the neighborhoods of Seattle until I almost got lost so they could get a feel of the city. I remember they weren’t used to the skinny roads that looked like one-way streets and had a round-about at each intersection. They kept insisting we were going the wrong way. I insisted they were two-way streets and to look at how the cars were parked to tell. They were used to San Francisco with all their one-way streets. Seattle was much different, and much colder. The light was much lower in the sky, diffused by the clouds and occasionally golden sun beams broke through the clouds.

I remember it being a gold sun beam kind of day as we boarded the ferry to Whidbey Island. I began to feel, sitting in the car for a moment, that I was the ferry captain at the wheel. If I hit the gas, maybe I could speed up the ferry. The feeling passed and we explored the decks and had photo ops. I could tell when the pitch of the engines slowed and said we’d better get back to the car deck seconds before the captain came on to tell us to get back in our car. My friends were impressed that I knew that and had no idea how attuned I was to the boat or how attuned my senses were becoming after nights of no sleep. I felt as if I was a live wire.

Rubi: In psychiatry, according to wikipedia, “magical thinking is a disorder of thought content;[2] here it denotes the false belief that one's thoughts, actions, or words will cause or prevent a specific consequence in some way that defies commonly understood laws of causality.[3]”

Me: Yes, Rubi. At this time, I felt as if I was affecting the causality.

The sun was going down as we offloaded from the ferry and the cars offloading and finding their houses on the island formed an elaborate pattern in my mind. I had doubts if anyone was driving as far north and as far east on the island as me. I felt as if my car was driving the pattern and it began to scare me.

We made it to Coupeville and I had two pumpkin cheesecakes to pick up. I had failed to find the address where to pick them up and went to the shop I had ordered them from. They didn’t have the cheesecakes, but by that time, I found the address in my phone. It was the bakers’ personal address since they were doing orders from home and we drove another 40 minutes getting lost in the neighborhoods. I was getting more and more confused seeing color coded patterns in cars. The headlights began to confuse me as it got dark.

Finally, we arrived at the baker’s house and picked up two pumpkin cheesecakes. We barely had enough cash on hand to pay for them. So, I felt bad I couldn’t give them a healthy tip. I had forgotten that I couldn’t use my credit card for personal orders.

We made our way to quiet Oak Harbor, the night before Thanksgiving. Pioneer Way was empty apart from a lone bucket truck fixing a power line. I was fascinated by the pattern of its flashing lights. We had a nice Thai dinner at the only restaurant open and then we finally made it to my house in the dark.

I remember how exhausted I was, but how exhilarated I was to see friends for the first time in many years. They thought my house, that looked like, That 70s Show should be preserved in a museum and I shouldn’t change a thing. They especially liked my childhood bedroom with the Rainbow Bright bedspread. We gabbed into the night. That’s the night I couldn’t sleep in the master bedroom and went to my bedroom. When I awoke, all the night lights had been removed and I told my friends who had been sleeping downstairs. They laughed and told me I was crazy. They also mentioned they had weird dreams but wouldn’t elaborate. My friend Rachel brought a waffle maker and we had waffles for breakfast. She said she’d most likely leave the waffle maker here as she wanted to come back and have waffles with me often.

It was time to get busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the party later that day. We went to the store to pick up some missing ingredients. My mind was even more mixed up from the day before and I was supposed to be giving orders of what to make next. I pulled out all my grandma’s recipes and I couldn’t decipher her scrolling handwriting. Making her famous little pizza h’orderves would have to be from memory. I insisted we make her Jell-O salad casserole complete with pineapple, lemon Jell-O, mayonnaise, cool whip and grated cheddar cheese. I remember ordering them to grate more cheese, but don’t remember much of anything logical after that. I wanted to show movies I had made at film school at the Thanksgiving and concentrated on finding my files on the computer.

That’s when the Wi-Fi modem, printer, and computer, and speakers started making strange light patterns and buzzing as if to communicate with me. Rachel came downstairs and unplugged the speakers, looking puzzled saying something was wrong with them. Then I started to get paranoid. We were using all the tools in the kitchen all wrong. My grandma would be disappointed. They were listening! I had to put on the party of a lifetime, and I didn’t even have the turkey in the oven yet!

My friends Andrew and his boyfriend arrived from Seattle. His boyfriend, assessing our disastrous situation, started the turkey in the oven. I thought how mother hen of this gay older man and was grateful. Though late, we’d have thanksgiving after all. Guests began to arrive and then James. I took him by the hand and said he was in charge of lighting a fire in the wood stove downstairs and I gave him toothpicks and mini marshmallows saying we could have a mini marshmallow roast. Everyone laughed and we were having a fabulous time. I played piano and upstairs my friends finished making thanksgiving dinner while I was slipping deeper into an altered state.

When I went upstairs to see the spread, I was shocked at how much food there was and shocked at first that they had used the wrong serving dishes for the wrong food items, thinking my grandma would be rolling over in her grave! Everything was mixed up and the food was wonderful!

We enjoyed ourselves and after the guests left, the three of us were cleaning up and all I wanted to do was go to bed. This was several nights I hadn’t slept. They insisted I help since they had done all the work while I was fooling around. They needed more plastic containers to hold the food, so I decided to go to town and pick up some containers. I made a big production of it and got dressed up in a fancy dress, my good pea coat, got in the car and took off to Safeway. Everything was synchronized! It was beautiful. Stop signs, color coded cars, the traffic lights, the pedestrians, the check-out lady asking for my autograph, and I was the movie star!

Me: Rubi, how would you describe my experience “where everything seems synchronized” from the point of view of a psychologist?

Rubi: Psychologists tend to frame things more in terms of noting what’s a normal experience and then what’s maybe on the edge of that. There’s some stuff what you described that vaguely reminds me of the edge of apophenia, so that might be a start. According to Wikipedia, “apophenia is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.” Again, one of the challenges is having another person put words on subjective experiences that often defy words.

Me: Thank you Rubi, do you think this was more apophenia or a spiritual experience or something else?

Rubi: According to psychology researcher and PhD candidate Josh Mervis at the University of Minnesota, “the differences between psychosis and spirituality is very hard to navigate. For concrete examples of how we might assess that in research, here are some questionnaires from a study he’s working on now. The CAPE is for community assessment of psychotic-like experiences, the RMEQ is mystical experiences (e.g. spiritual), while the ASC is more different states of mind.” I just sent them to your i-pad, Holly.

Me: Wow Rubi! Thank Josh for these specifics! Wow, I feel like I am exploring the lines between these classifications.... which is certainly a grey area. I think my questions are worth asking because that’s how normal is defined. I’m curious if one’s beliefs, whether psychotic, mystical/spiritual, or state of mind causes harm to ones self or another... that is where a line is drawn, but is that only where the line is drawn? Is some of the acceptability of normalcy cultural? For instance, would visions involving Jesus be less wrote up and psychotic than dragonflies?

Rubi: Josh has written a lot on this subject. He says, “we usually think of clinical lines in terms of loss of functioning or distress. Visions of Jesus, dragonflies, Kermit the frog, Richard Nixon, Celine Dion, chipmunks, red splotches, etc. don’t necessarily mean pathology. There is definitely always a cultural normalcy thing going on, but we know that psychotic illness shows up across cultures because there is a biological origin. Delusions tend to follow cultural contexts, so in the US there’s a lot of power, achievement, desirability content there.

We have a solid and increasing grip on the brain regions involved, but we also cannot diagnose based on neuroimaging or EEG of those regions. Mental illness or phenomena related to psychopathology (academic term) tend to be multifaceted and dimensional in nature.

So we ask how psychotic something is, not if it is. When you’re seeing Jesus at a cocktail party (pretend we are in the old world last summer) and you’re staring at him and zoning out of conversations, that’s impairment. If you see Jesus when you’re alone in your room and sad and he cheers you up and you have a better rest of your day, we could argue that it’s not impairment. Psychopathology related phenomena? We could argue that it’s that, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to disorder, even if it’s technically a “disease process” in an objective sense. If Jesus is telling you to steal from your friends and go buy fish tanks to convert freshwater into salt water, that’s disorder because it has a significant impact on your life if you act on it.”

Does this make sense?

Me: Yes, thank you! I think this really helps me figure out my state of mind at that time. Thank you for the exploration with the help of Josh!

Back to that night, I started looking for the cameras that had be around to capture this beauty. This fabulous production. I began to think that the Navy base wasn’t a Navy base anymore and that it was a Hollywood film school training everyone to be artists instead of warriors. I decided to take a visit on the way back home.

I decided to take my favorite way home by the marina, drive right through the seaplane gates and continue along the water of Crescent harbor out to Strawberry point. I got past to the marina and there was a locked gate across the road. I almost didn’t believe it! That can’t be real! It’s a film school, not a Navy base! I drove right up to touch my bumper of the gate and backed up until I could turn around. Disappointed I drove straight home still seeing patterns and completely confused.

I suppose when I got home, the girls had been worried sick about me. While they started scooping food in containers, I got undressed and streaked down the hall naked! They were screaming and brought me back to the master bedroom to help me find pajamas. I was unintelligible talking about patterns, hidden cameras and film school. They put me to bed.

I didn’t sleep and the next morning I was a zombie. Lisa had to go back to California and catch a flight. Rachel was staying an extra day. The plan was to drive Lisa to SeaTac and then take me to get help. I certainly wasn’t driving and handed over the keys and my cellphone.

On the long drive, I spent most of the time curled up in the fetal position in the back seat. I was beginning to get scared of the patterns and noises big rig trucks made on I-5 thinking they were in on the conspiracy.

My friend Lisa hugged me when she was dropped off at the airport and I wasn’t sure why she was crying. She told Rachel to keep playing the X-Files theme song for me. That seemed to calm me.

Rachel was talking on the cell phone while driving and I got concerned that she’d lose her way. I sat right behind her as a back-seat driver rattling on about the stars guiding us. She insisted she had a better guidance system, GPS. I watched the road while I started hearing music in my head. She turned the car stereo up. The music collided and I was started to do elaborate mathematical equations in my head based on the differences of tempo and keys of music colliding in my head. I stared singing along a completely different and third tune, Bjork’s “All is full of Love.” I screamed it out over and over again while The X-Files theme song played and Rachel drove to the island hospital. I was watching her every turn as if I was helping my grandpa’s hands guide the wheel.

When we got to the hospital, they didn’t know what to do with me. Rachel would disappear occasionally, but mostly she would sit next to me holding my hand. She told me to squeeze when things got scary. I was squeezing her hand a lot that night.

The hospital sent us home and Rachel put me back to bed. While I was not sleeping and under the down covers, the innocent young photo of my grandparents at 18 and 19 of my grandma in her dress and my grandpa in his uniform before he went off to war started melting before my eyes. Reindeer were on the roof and as the front door opened, I thought Santa had arrived.

It was my great aunt Maggie and cousin to take me back to hospital. Rachel packed her waffle iron and had gotten a shuttle back to the airport and we piled into my cousins’ black Jeep Liberty. Oh no! That was disruptive to the pattern of cars driving! I couldn’t be in the Liberty! That is way too patriotic and war like! I much rather be like the wall street bull in my red Ford Taurus driving up the stock market! We had to stop for gas and my cousin insisted I pay. She saw how confused I was at the card reader at the gas pump and I handed her my credit card.

We made it to the hospital and as I was laying on the bed, everyone was whispering, and my Aunt Maggie started wailing. I was confused. The paramedics came in. I recognized them from helping with my sick grandma getting her to the care home. I liked them. They came with a white jacket with Velcro and buckles. I looked at my aunt who looked away. My cousin kept saying, “we love you and you have to trust us.” That’s when I closed my eyes. They put the jacket on my and fit it rather loosely as I sat right on the gurney without a struggle. They wheeled me into the ambulance, and we had another long drive.

I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard where I might be. The star ship Enterprise! I was disappointed when I arrived in the lobby of what looked like a shabby hotel. They took the jacket off and said I could wait here in a plastic hard chair. My room was almost ready. A lady came out of a room out of the hall with a suitcase. I asked her how she liked her stay and she laughed and laughed. Confused, a bell man and I went to go check out my new digs.

Long story short, I stayed in the hospital a week and learned I was having what they called an extreme grief reaction and possible psychosis. That was quite a memorable first Thanksgiving in my home.

The next year, I felt it was a test to see if I could pull off a successful Thanksgiving after the disastrous start. And when James and I got married a couple years later, I continued the tradition of having a Thanksgiving party every year until we moved, usually early, because James had to work on Thanksgiving. It started with a few people and grew to a party of over twenty in my home. For over fifteen years, every year I felt as if I had to prove my sanity by putting on the party. And over the course of that time, I felt I had perfected that art of Thanksgiving as the amount of food I produced grew and the number of friends who appeared, the amount of music played, and the amount of cheer received and given! It was an important tradition that had run its course.

This year, we didn’t have the space of the home to have a massive Thanksgiving party but was invited to Bruce’s home on Thanksgiving and then my friend’s Renee’s home the day after Thanksgiving. The day before thanksgiving I trimmed the handrails of the boat with Christmas lights and set off to Bruce’s house with supplies to make Pumpkin Cheesecake in Bruce’s kitchen with his wife Cat. I didn’t have a mixer on the boat as my kitchen aid was buried in storage and needed the proper tools, including a spring form pan to make the cheesecake I had perfected over the years.

At Bruce’s as I made the pumpkin cheesecake with an unfamiliar mixer and tools, once again, I felt as if I was cooking in a kitchen that wasn’t mine. Chatty Cat and neighbor Joan were a comfort as we discussed Thanksgivings of the past. I was glad to have the worst Thanksgiving behind me and was reminded of the wonderous Thanksgiving during the wind and snowstorm of 1986.

Thanksgiving of 1986

The house was filled with the smells of canned oysters. The usual Thanksgiving morning smell as I awoke as a seven-year-old. My grandma was preparing her traditional oyster stuffing and the turkey was in the oven and the wind was picking up. My great aunt Maggie, my grandma’s half sister, and her husband Ron, a retired mounted policeman, were due from Canada for Thanksgiving dinner. There was snow on the road, but they insisted they were fine driving as they had 4-wheel drive and were Canadian for goodness sakes!

Not long after the turkey was in the oven, the power went out! My grandma was beside herself of what to do with the bird. It was freezing outside and snowy, so to try to preserve it, my grandpa covered it in foil and put it outside the back door under the deck. She went into alternate food preparations and produced canned tomato soup, and the makings for grilled cheese sandwiches. Salami, little pickles, olives and walnuts came out for h’orderves. My grandpa got the wood stove even hotter and brought out the oil lamps. We were cozy downstairs waiting for my aunt and uncle when the phone rang. They were up the road calling from a neighbor’s. A tree had fallen across the road and they couldn’t come any further. My grandpa left with a chain saw to rescue them.

Having tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches made over the wood stove top with my grandparents and aunt and uncle by the light of the oil lamps was the most fun and memorable Thanksgiving of my youth. I made forts with the tv trays and blankets after the meal. My grandma’s frenzied stress to make everything perfect and presentable left as the vodka and 7-up was brought out. And as the adults got tipsier, the laughter and fun escalated until my grandpa went to go check on the turkey. It was mostly eaten up! Our dog Bosco had gotten at it!

Holly Chadwick 11/25/20 Holly Chadwick 11/25/20

Captain’s Log 11/25/19, Powers Out

The clutter on the boat is back since James is working on the insulation. I moved most of my bedroom items to the truck, but there is still an array of tools and bedding spread over the main cabin and galley of the boat. The galley counter has become a work bench. James is making great progress with the insulation and we can tell that it’s helping as the condensation has ceased in the areas that are now insulated. Staying on top of the mold by constantly cleaning with mold spray and the drip in the areas that are not insulated is now very apparent as it becomes more colder outside, and warmer inside!

Since the glue is so smelly, I’ve been escaping to downtown coffee shops with the dogs and leaving James to work with a respirator. I am excited and have a warm fuzzy feeling to have discovered Pelican Bay Books has a sister of my exact same childhood piano I had given to Minseo. After doing some work on my laptop, and reading, I’ve made it a habit to play piano there. On occasion I gather quite the audience. I used to be self-conscious when I play in front of people, but as I do it more and more since piano playing has become rather public than a private event in my house, I’ve adapted, and I believe my playing has improved! I’ve become conscious of what I’m playing may sound like to the listener and try to make it as playful and enjoyable as possible. That can be different than mulling thoughts and emotions over alone at the piano which often turns into a repetitive musical pattern of meditation.

James texted to tell me that the smell had diminished on the boat and the clutter was kind of picked up, so it was all clear to come back to the boat with the dogs. On my return, I took a long walk with them on the trail and through the forest. I was amazed at how cold and calm an evening it was. I got back to the boat and was starting to make dinner when the power went out. There went my dinner plans!

I had nothing to fix on the grill, so we broke into the cheese and crackers and as it got darker, that’s when it started to get really cold. It had already been quite cold on the boat since James had had it open all day to vent the glue. The fact that there was no heat now, was disappointing and unbearable to me since I had been cold all day trying to warm up at the drafty island bookstore. I had never taken off my down coat and stocking cap all day.

James thought it was time I learn to start the generator by myself. We climbed the ladder to the top on the flybridge to examine the situation. I had to lift the heavy generator out of our top dock box, fill it with gas, start it and plug it in. Easy, right? Did I mention I’m a klutz?

Luckily, the generator wasn’t as heavy as I thought. Just awkward and James moaned as I scraped up the side of the dock box as I let it down on the top deck. I fumbled with the gas. I really don’t like the new gas cans with all the safety tabs. I have a really hard time switching the nozzle to the “on” position and holding it open while pouring. I don’t have quite the strength so jammed the nozzle in the generator and pried away only to have a fine stream of gas drizzle down the sides of the generator! “Ahhhh, fuck!” I yelled. It felt as if the whole dark marina could hear my cursing. James grabbed the can out of my hands and made me try again even though I didn’t want to. I exclaimed, “why in hell did they make cans so hard to use?” He showed me how easy it was use it by hovering the nozzle over the generator cap and releasing the lever. Okay, so I had to hover, instead of jam it in. And use my weaker hand to hold it up, and my stronger hand to release the lever!

Once I got the gas in, I pulled, and pulled and pulled on the pulley to get it started. No luck. I Wasn’t strong enough. Apparently, I must add weights to my daily cardio workout! James started pulling and it took him a couple tries and it started up. He said it had sat with old gas too long since summer, so he was afraid the carburetor had been gummed up.

I found the plug, plugged in the generator to the boat, and voila, we had power. It took a few tries to figure out how many heaters we could have running without tripping the generator breaker, but for the first time all day, we started warming up and invited our boat neighbor two boats down, Ron.

As we all ate cheese and crackers huddled around a space heater, I recalled another time the power had been out when I was a child. It was due to a windstorm instead of a semi hitting a power pole that had caused all downtown and the marina to lose power. It had been the ides of March in 1998 that I’d never forget.

Winds were always scary when living in my family home. Sometimes, when it was blowing bad, my grandparents and I would sleep on the hide-a-bed downstairs next to the fire to avoid the noise and keep warm. It was weird, we lived on a grassy knoll a couple lots from the ocean cliff and the wind would come off the hill behind our house, instead of from the ocean that night. The trees in our back yard were the first thing the wind hit from the hill going out to sea. The wind was coming from a slightly different direction off the hill. A direction different enough that the trees couldn’t take it.

I had seen trees fall in our yard before. They were usually the scraggly weaker ones near the road. I had come home from the school bus one day walking through the back gate to watch the tallest fir in the yard that had previously lost most of its branches, twirl dance and then fall dramatically across our yard just missing me. I ran inside to tell my grandpa a tree had fallen next to me. He came out, not really believing me, and then when he saw it, he looked really stunned and then concerned that I had been in the yard when it fell.

That was the first falling of trees in a domino of trees. After that, trees began to fall each year, getting closer and closer to the house. My grandpa would often fall the sick looking ones himself and I’d calculate the angle of the fall since I was learning trigonometry. I’d help him with an elaborate pully system he would rig to guide the tree down as to not hit the house or fence. We always had a constant supply of firewood. However, as more trees fell, the ecosystem of trees became weakened. The shallow root systems in the clay and all the Pacific Northwest rain didn’t help.

During the Ides of March, it had been raining heavy and I was half asleep as the wind was howling outside. I sat straight up when there was a crack and a massive bang and the whole house shook. It sounded as if outside was now inside! I opened my bedroom door and stepped in the hall only to have my foot sink into what I thought was cotton. It was the insulation from the attic in the hall!! I ran down the hall in the pink insulation to my grandparent’s bedroom. My grandpa was hollering in the master bedroom and my grandma greeted me outside the living room looking dazed. My grandpa burst out of the bedroom and said, “whoo boy! That was a close call!” We looked in the bedroom and branches from a massive fir tree were hanging over the bed along with the sheet rock of the ceiling and a layer of pink insulation. Ceiling popcorn was still in the air. A tree had hit the house! Its branches had bursted through the attic ceiling, but most of the tree had been stopped by the strong rafters. A large hole was gaping to the early morning sky. It had luckily just stopped raining, but the wind was still howling.

My grandpa and I went outside with flashlights to look at the damage while my grandma collected her nerves and made coffee. Having heard the wind and being scared, she had been sitting in the living room. She had been sitting in one chair closer to the bedroom and then said she had moved across the room right before the tree hit. There was fallen sheet rock and a broken rafter protruding into the chair where she had been sitting earlier.

Our flashlights revealed a giant uprooted root system of the tree that wasn’t very deep for the massive tree. Wet roots were gnarled, and webs of loose clay, grass and dirt were making cool patterns around what had been the base of the tree. A fir, tree, over 100 ft tall was across the house and whose top had fallen off and landed in the driveway. At least my grandparents kept the cars parked in the garage and not in the driveway.

The wind was still strong, and more trees were swaying. My grandpa ushered me inside and we ate breakfast and my grandma was on the phone with her sister, Aunt Maggie. That was only when they thought that maybe they should call someone to help, but we didn’t call the fire department. We calmly ate breakfast as if nothing had happened and as soon as it was daylight, the insurance people were out with an inspector.

This was quite the contrast to what happened several years later when our next-door neighbor had a tree fall on their house. They had a flat roof and the big boxy house was cut in half all the way to ground level like a birthday cake. The husband had just been deployed overseas and the wife had just rolled over in bed in his spot when the tree came through the roof, just missing her. The ambulance and fire department came with sirens squealing. We liked to avoid drama.

Ron and James really liked my story of the fallen tree and our reaction. Unfortunately, after that, my grandpa had all the fir trees in the yard removed by a logging company. The park like setting of our backyard was forever altered. At first it was a giant mud trap. It was only until after I inherited the house that I was able to landscape, plant smaller trees and bushes and restore it to some beauty.

Holly Chadwick 5/28/19 Holly Chadwick 5/28/19

Captain’s Log 11/16/19, Seattle Film Summit

It all begins with an idea.

Today I got up early to be picked up by my fellow filmmaking partner and friend Bruce Weech. We were on our way to the Seattle Film Summit to rub elbows with local filmmakers and attempt to make any connections to further our work with our web series Sounds of Freedom.

Sounds of Freedom came out on Amazon in the summer of 2017 and we now have an opportunity to pitch a full-length series to Amazon in Los Angeles. I have a pilot script, show bible, business plan and budget ready. We went to the Seattle Film Summit to find any connections and or advice for pitching and what we should put in our package. We weren’t expecting any major breakthroughs since Seattle is a small market compared to LA and let’s face it, no one at the Film Summit has done anything cooler than us. They’ve done things just as cool, but not cooler. So any big fish to meet there, would probably be in LA, not there to meet. We were trying to attach some recognizable talent to our show and curious if any of these big names would be at the event.

The time with Bruce became more bonding time than anything. I told him that I had found the long-time apartment address that my father had rented in Pioneer Square after he had returned from the Vietnam war. This was the apartment where he had been burned so badly from falling asleep smoking, that he had to wear a mask. I had been told he was dead and never saw him again. I had continued drawing him in family portraits at school sensing he was still alive until in the second grade, around the time my mother was hurling the art busts, my grandmother sat me down in the living room and told me he had recently died of a heart attack. She failed to tell me about the burning story, which I found out later as an adult.

Bruce played the character loosely based on my father in Sounds of Freedom and he was excited at the prospects of visiting my father’s Seattle apartment. But that trip was for another day since we wanted to bring a documentary film crew with us to memorialize the event for my other film project, Music in My Head.

Bruce and I talked about addiction, either it be marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes or hard drugs. He revealed he had been vaping marijuana to help with his back pain. This was huge for Bruce as he was a recovering addict and 29 years clean. He didn’t want to slide down the slippery slope of addiction. I knew my father was a chain smoker and drank, but I was uncertain about any other addictions and only could imagine all he must have tried to quench the demons of war. Bruce could really relate to my dad’s story.

I remember on set when we were filming the scene where my father got burnt up in his apartment. I had chosen to film in a delipidated trailer, not apartment, since we had access to that amazing location and could control the situation a bit better. My amazing set decorators had brought in a variety of weapons and placed them around the room giving the impression that the character of Charlie was a bit paranoid. Bruce as Charlie, sat in a worn lazy boy chair with his camo ball cap smoking. The lighting was perfect and the smoke curled in the air as Bruce smoked rings with fake cirgarettes that tasted like garbage. Seeing Bruce embody the real life situation and not knowing him well enough at that time, I hadn’t revealed that in this instance, he was essentially playing my father. I wanted to see what he’d bring to the scene without knowing that. I figured I’d tell him later. When we filled the trailer with dry ice, a smoke machine, and flickering light to simulate the situation, and I yelled cut as the cigarette landed on a pile of newspapers. I had an overwhelming feeling. The gravity of the situation fell upon me. I had a feeling that I had successfully reenacted not only my father’s tragic burning up, but had filmed a key moment in my exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder experienced by the plight of returning soldiers. I felt as though I couldn’t breathe and quickly stepped outside for a breath a fresh air.

Bruce was looking for me to see how he did with performance, and that’s when one of the crew members told him that in that scene, we were reenacting my father’s burning up.

The fact that Bruce was blown away was an understatement. He was a bit unnerved, but I didn’t know that at the time. Being the professional he is, he found me outside to get some notes without saying a word about it. All I remember was the situation being a bit awkward at first since I was so nervous directing him and I remember him putting me at ease.

It was only until I filmed his interview from the “Behind the Scenes” episode of Sounds of Freedom that I realized the true gravity the situation had for everyone involved including Bruce’s own struggles in life. Bruce, just can’t watch it, but that’s mostly because he has a hard time watching himself on screen in general, but that scene from the web series, is now my favorite next to the tea party scene.

When I was a young child, when my dad visited me and my mom when we lived with my grandparents, we would escape to the forest to play. My dad would put me on his shoulders and we’d take a walk down the ravine to the beach. There were downed trees across the path and sometimes low hanging branches and sometimes my tall dad couldn’t duck low enough for us to pass so I’d have to walk. When I was on the ground, I would run ahead to the remains of a burnt down mansion and set up the makings for a tea party. My mom and dad would join me and we’d sit amongst the ruins having “tea” as a real family. I loved these moments. We would explore the shacks on the beach that still had remains of furnishing left in them. We would pretend to play tennis on the overgrown tennis court and explore the gazebos and other out buildings throughout the forest. It was our magic place. It was our place where we could be freely together and freely us, even though if it was just for a little while.

These buildings are long gone, with the exception of the ominous chimney left in the forest and foundation of the burnt down mansion. Over 25 years later, as an adult, I utilized these remains and memories as a location and scenes for Sounds of Freedom.

Instead of reenacting my parents and I having tea in the burnt down mansion, I brought the dining room table from my grandparent’s home and dressed the location as if it were a dining room, complete with photos on the wall of the main character, Julia, a service woman who had recently returned from the Iraq war. She was having tea with the kids that she had seen being burned alive during a weapons raid in Iraq.

Being in Seattle at the Film Summit and schmoozing with filmmakers, it became clear that my project was out of place amongst the lighthearted comedies, action thrillers and many zombie projects people had in the room. How do I find a market for my project when I’m exploring a very heavy topic, that of trauma?

Bruce and I split up to divide and conquer the offerings of the Film Summit. It was clear that Bruce already knew most of the filmmakers and actors at the venue and most had heard of me so that was cool, but we were seeking connections that perhaps Seattle did not have to offer. And when Bruce soft pitched a producer from LA that had just given a talk, he was snubbed. It was clearly not appreciated. I was angry. What do they expect if they attend? For us not to talk to them about our projects? This reminded me of the snobbery of the LA market and attending film festivals, award shows and other mingling events in LA. It reminded me how people shallowly schmooze in LA asking you just enough to figure out if you could do anything for them and if you can’t, they leave the conversation, mid-sentence, moving on to the next person. There were more hard hitters in LA, but even more desperation with the amount of wannabees in LA compared to Seattle. I was at a loss. There would be no big names attached to our project that day.

And then I got a phone call from my mom. I didn’t answer until she called back twice after that. Her bird had escaped!

As my visits to Seattle increased and my attention was divided from my mom back on the island, my mom’s parakeet kept escaping its cage. Either my mom was letting the bird out in a desperate need to get my attention to get my help, or the bird suddenly became an escape artist. She claimed she put ties on all the cage doors, but it’s still escaped. She bought a too expensive net from the pet store to catch the bird. It took all morning for her care giver and her to catch the bird and get it back in the cage. I keep asking If she has cleaned up the mess the bird makes while out of the cage. She says she does, but I have my doubts.

She called me multiple times in a row while I was in a meeting. I called her back, but she didn’t answer. I drove to her place and found her on the sidewalk ready to catch a bus. She said she called because she needs a ride to get bird seed.

I told her I was very busy and she has all day, so she’ll have to catch the bus to get bird seed.

After that and hearing her pleas for help, or pleas for attention, for a couple of weeks about the bird, my mom found a new home for the bird. A family took it for free.

Guess that’s the end of attention getting attempts for now. What’s next?

Holly Chadwick 5/26/19 Holly Chadwick 5/26/19

Captain’s Log 11/14/19, Don’t pull a Minseo!

It all begins with an idea.

I really like good coffee. And you’d think I’d learn to make it easier on myself on the boat, but oh no, I have to grind my own beans and make espresso every morning with my fancy machine.

Rubi: Holly, I have an article for you to read. Would you like me to read it or should I put it on your iPad?

Me: Go ahead and read it Rubi.

Rubi: The headline that caught my attention was, “Being near a body of water makes us calmer and healthier, science shows.”

I was putting beans in the grinder, but the kitchen had turned into James’ workshop so I had limited space and kept spilling the beans.

Rubi: “Spending time near the water, ‘promotes physical activity and general fitness,’ reducing the incidence of diabetes and other diseases associated with obesity…”

The entire grinder full of beans went everywhere!

I yelled, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Rubi: Are you okay, Holly?

James calmly came over and took the grinder out of my hand and collected the beans, one by one. I sat down.

Me: I’m fine Rubi, just spilled the beans! Continue reading please.

Rubi: “But it also slows down our heart rate and reduces stress hormones, boosting our mental health, which Depledge,” the author of the article calls, “‘the second great epidemic we’re facing.’”

Me: Rubi, that’s cool, I find these health benefits to be true. My cardiovascular health is greatly improved.

I always had been a generally fit person, but living in my comfortable house, I had grown lazy. Now, I was no longer winded going up hills because I was walking the docks, beach and trails on a daily basis. Living near the water fights depression and I was literally on the water so I should be golden!

James started to make coffee while I thought.

Actually, I was living in water, literally. Because our boat was older, it was not insulated and because it was winter and we were keeping the boat warm inside with electric heaters, with four beings breathing, James, myself and two golden retrievers, it became a rainforest! We were dripping with condensation!

Staying on top of the mold and musty smell was a battle. The dehumidifiers were running over time. The only solution was to insulate as much as the boat we could.

I went to the hardware store and got some bubble foil insulation to try on the windows. It was tricky as it had to be cut out precisely to fit each pane of glass and taped in place or the teak wood would be ruined from the wet.

Being a perfectionist, it took a couple of dripping days for James to find the right insulation and the right glue so it’d stick to raw fiberglass. We drove to Seattle to pick up a giant roll of black rubbery insulation and two gallons of glue and James got to work.

The glue was so smelly, and it was so cold with all the hatches and windows open, I had to leave each day with the dogs and keep myself busy. James wore a mask with filters so he wouldn’t breathe the fumes. In the cold, he precisely cut each section to fit and glued it in the forward cabin of the boat. The glue was incredibly tacky and instantaneously sticky and it was taking a very long time to put in place as James was wanting it to look just right.

Since James was concentrating on the bedroom or berth of the boat, he had to pile all our bedroom belongings in the main living quarters. I was glad to leave each day as I couldn’t stand the clutter, all the tools everywhere, the smell, the cold, the mess and I was irritated that I couldn’t find matching socks!

I was at a local coffee shop and had discovered a piano for public use. As I was playing, coincidently, the woman who I had recently given my childhood piano to appeared saying she recognized my style. Her name is Minseo. I had gotten to know her a bit since she was to own one of my prized possessions. She had a big new house and was filling it with pianos. Her husband was restoring them. Sounded like a good fit. James phoned me to have me come and take some stuff off the boat since it was getting too cluttered for him to effectively work. I told Minseo I had to go, and I had shit every where and had to clean up. She asked me if the dogs had pooped. Not understanding the subtleties of the English language, I laughed and said, “no, just too much clutter. I needed to organize.” She insisted she come back to the boat with me to help.

I had my reservations, having seen her massive neat and orderly house and eyeballing her designer boots and jeans not designed for slippery docks. My first mistake was saying, “sure, why not.” On the way back, I picked up a pizza since James was hungry.

I brought a cart down the docks with Minseo in tow to my boat and she immediately wanted a drink. I said I had only whiskey, beer and water. It would have been easier to find the booze, but Minseo wanted water. The drinking water was buried under the clutter and I managed to find a container with enough to fill a glass. She looked at me sideways and asked if I had to buy water and if this is all I had. I had more buried in a cooler under the clutter, but Minseo had no understanding of boat life. Why yes, Minseo, I don’t trust the water at the docks to drink, so “yes, I buy water” is all I said.

James appeared from being pretzelled in the anchor locker and was cursing up a storm exclaiming how uncomfortable it was and how awful the insulation was to work with. Minseo told him he was too handsome for those words to come out of his mouth. We all ate pizza standing up because there was no where to sit due to the clutter. Thank god the pizza place had given me paper plates and napkins. Minseo was conscious of her weight and insisted I cut her off if she wanted more than one slice. She was a small Asian woman. I thought she was a bit ridiculous and kept harping on the negative image of herself. Saying things like “look at my belly!” Minseo ate one piece, James and I had at least three pieces each and I didn’t feel self-conscious at all even though Minseo made a point of eyeballing both of our bellies.

After eating, it was time to get to work. James was cutting templates and Minseo and I were transferring items to the cart. She was on the dock with the cart and I was handing her items from the boat to put in the cart. Now these weren’t just ordinary household items. What I kept in the berth of the boat were personal items of value. Some, $500 or more each. As I was handing Minseo expensive items such as computer hard drives, underwater cameras and accessories, long vintage camera lenses, favorite books, my jewelry box our handheld emergency radio, to put in the cart, being the neat and orderly person she was, she started organizing the cart while I was collecting items in the cabin. I heard a fumble, a splash and gasp and then a “oh my, I’m so sorry!” from Minseo. I knew it was an accident, but I was trying to control my anger. I asked Minseo if she knew what had dropped in the water, but being from South Korea, her English wasn’t the best and not understanding what all the unique equipment was she was putting in the cart, she had no idea. Worst yet, I had so much equipment, I had no idea!

I felt like I was going to lose it then and there! Here was my stuff all over the place, getting damp from condensation, and now going overboard. Minseo was desperately trying to describe the item that went overboard. Even keeled James appeared and asked if it had a long flexible neck, a clamp like handle and a weird looking camera at the end. Oh god, I hope not, that would have been my 360 video camera mounted to the gooseneck tripod. I like to clamp it to the anchor light to get some great footage going under Deception Pass. It was waterproof, but I don’t think all the USB doors were closed properly. I dug through the cart and found it. So it wasn’t that.

I was calming down inside realizing how I was sort of ridiculous myself for the amount of stuff I had. I also felt I was lucky that James’ personality tended to balance out my frustrations. Besides, materialism was silly, and I tried to cling to it as we were downsizing by bringing way too much shit on the boat. I was proud that I wasn’t freaking out more than I was. Minseo had no idea I was controlling my frustration. I finished placing items in the cart and that’s when Minseo tried to move the cart. “Slow down there, Minseo. I’d better do that” I had visions of this small woman dumping the whole cart overboard. I carefully rolled the cart down the narrow finger dock. The tires barely fit between either sides of the dock. I successfully rolled it to the main dock and pushed it up the ramp to safety.

As I was stuffing items inside my truck, I insisted Minseo not worry about the lost item. That we would have a diver try to find it so we could replace it. She even offered to pay for it, asking first, do you think It was expensive? I said, you know Minseo, I think it was “probably just my gooseneck reading lamp,” so “no.”

Later, after Minseo had left and I was organizing the items in my truck. I found my gooseneck reading lamp.

I came back to the boat and James was handing me garbage over the side of the boat. “I could have told her off when she told me not to curse in my own home! I had to bite my tongue.”

“Oh, I could have throttled her for other reasons!” I said.

“Don’t pull a Minseo!” He said as he handed me the garbage with a playful smile. I smiled, but wanted to cry.

On the way back up the dock I, tapped my smart watch and brought up Rubi.

Me: I don’t want to be my mother. I just had a flashback to me saying , “fuck, fuck, fuck!” earlier when I spilled the coffee beans. Which in turn lead to another flashback of my mother hurling decorative busts from the dining room walls at my grandfather and saying, “you fuckers!” my grandmother shuffling me into a bedroom as my grandfather tried to contain my mother’s wild punches. I knew this was when the police came. I knew this is when my mom had to go to the psychiatric hospital and then the high security mental institution for a very long time. I knew I didn’t want to hurl stuff overboard in frustration. I knew I didn’t want to be my mother. I had taken the garbage and had smiled back at James.

Rubi: Holly, I’m here. Are you having a tough time?

Me: Rubi, I have support. I have you and James. Everything will be alright.

Rubi: Would you like to know more about flashbacks Holly?

Me: Not now Rubi. I think I know enough.

Rubi: Everything will be okay, Holly.

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