Tunesday : In A Gadda Da Vida

In A Gadda Da Vida

(Ingle, D) Performed by Iron Butterfly

In a gadda da vida, baby
(In the Garden of Eden)
In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand

In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
In a gadda da vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand

In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
In a gadda da vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand

In a gadda da vida, baby
(In the Garden of Eden)
In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand

I suspect it will take me a while to get to the point of this week's song selection, and as the journey there will involve a lot of weird digressions, I'll add the warning that there's no way this post can have universal appeal: anyone who doesn't actually know me should just enjoy the song then look away. (Which presupposes that anyone who doesn't actually know me might read this, which is probably unlikely, but not unwelcome: my warning is only to prevent boredom. And eye-rolling.)

I've mentioned before that I have suffered life-long solipsism and delusions of Magical Thinking, and no matter how self-aware I am of these quirks, there has always been too much synchronicity in my life for me to ignore; just what is the universe trying to tell me?  I want to note: I'm telling my story as I remember it and have no desire to fact check any of the details; it's how I remember these events that's important; I could have misremembered and misinterpreted everything throughout the years, but these are the facts as my brain collected them; the facts that later frightened me so badly. Where to start?

When I was a little girl, maybe around ten, I was given my first digital alarm clock (which was not yet common: my Dad's alarm clock had a digital display but the numbers clicked over on Rolodex-type cogs; it was always fascinating to watch it click over to a new hour as all the numbers would flip quickly down the line right to left; tick tick tick tick). As my mother came in to say goodnight to me late one night, she sat on the edge of my bed, looked over at my clock, and said, "Isn't that neat? It's eleven eleven." When I looked over at the red numbers, glowing in their slender alignment, it filled me with a kind of dread: it was neat, but also portentous; eleven eleven felt like a message, a code, and I wasn't sure if it was meant as a blessing or a warning. The fact that it was my mother who pointed it out to me felt like an initiation, an invitation to another way of thinking. I cannot overstate how impactful this was.

For many years following, eleven eleven plagued me. I'd go to bed at nine or whenever and suddenly awake, look over at the clock, and see those four ones glowing in the dark. I'd come home for lunch, look at a digital clock on the microwave as I walked into the kitchen, and note the double elevens on the display. I'd go to sleep, promising myself that tonight I wouldn't look at the clock, and when I'd jolt awake, I'd lay there with my eyes squeezed shut for what felt like hours, and when I'd finally look -- certain that it would have to be the middle of the night by now -- I'd turn cold at the sight of once again, eleven eleven. I'd leave a friend's house, get into my car, and shudder as the clock powered up to display that dreaded hour. I'd be on the phone to someone, think to ask if they knew the time, and wince when they'd inform me, "Eleven eleven. Neat." Nothing bad ever happened to me at eleven eleven, I did understand that some internal mechanism was probably prompting me to look at just the right time, and what was even weirder is that the phenomenon was contagious: I told both my little brother Kyler and my friend Curtis of my affliction with eleven eleven, and they both started experiencing it, too. And here's where the synchronicity comes in.

After I moved up to Edmonton, my reading interests veered to nonfiction (I guess I was trying to self-direct the education that I had abandoned when I left the U of L). Now, over the years, Curtis and I had countless philosophical discussions, and I had once posed the question, "I wonder why the alphabet is arranged the way it is? Like, why aren't the vowels grouped together, or at least evenly spaced throughout the consonants?"And one of the first books I took out from the Edmonton library was on the Kabbalah, and it explained about Jewish mysticism and numerology and how each letter of the alphabet is ranked according to its numeric value. I was pleased that the universe had sent me this answer (and I both mean that literally and mean it in the least New-Agey-space-cadet sense) and then was stunned to read that the Jewish alphabet has no eleventh letter as it's considered unlucky; it also has no twenty-second letter because eleven plus eleven is the most dreaded of all. Obviously, this shone a new and foreboding light on my experiences. And that's how my reading proceeded through my twenties: I would choose seemingly unrelated books that somehow would answer questions I had about life or reality, each supplying a piece of the puzzle that I didn't know my brain was assembling; pure synchronicity. (As an aside: When Dave and I got married, on June 29th of 1991, his friend Burqhardt's fiancée said to me, "I'm sure you know that in Numerology, you reduce two digit numbers to single digits by adding them together. But with '29', once you add them together to make 11, you don't reduce it further: '11' is a special number that means challenges, but not without rewards." I did not know this, but with my background, I nodded without surprise. But look at that date: if you could reduce the 11, you'd get 2+9=11, and then 1+1=2. With the 1991, 1+9+9+1=20, and then 2+0=2. Making the date '22', or 11+11. Of course, this only works if you ignore the month of June and its unhelpful 6. And of course all of what follows is about ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit in with the philosophy my mind was trying to work out.)

I became interested in quantum physics, and especially as it pertains to the insubstantiality of the physical world (the ideas that there is more space between the subatomic particles in an atom than there is actual stuff, that photons will behave as either a wave or a particle depending on what you're testing for, misunderstandings of Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Einstein). I loved books like Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics (discredited now as junk science, but at the time, they forged a strong link in my mind between Western science and Eastern mysticism). I read One by Richard Bach, and it explained how a knowledge of quantum physics could lead to astral projection; including a guide on how to engage in lucid dreaming, which I was afraid to try; what if I left my body and couldn't find my way back? I read Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism, in which the author describes the differences between psychedelic drug trips and mystical states, and although he laid out how to use drugs to achieve the mystical (what drugs, where to go [the mountains if I remember?], what music [Mozart?], what your sober guide should be doing to help you reach the state of bliss), I was never interested in drugs (as I've said before, Go Ask Alice and various After School Specials gave me a lifelong fear of future flashbacks). I read deeply of Carlos Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan and dabbled in everything from The Tao of Piglet and The Te of Pooh to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I hadn't quite arrived at a personal philosophy yet, but I was assembling pieces throughout the years. Eventually, two books that were gifted to me would change everything.

My inlaws always seemed to misunderstand my reading interests -- what I essentially thought of as sciencey, they considered "out there", and they were always giving me books on ghosts and Bigfoot and the like -- and after Kennedy was born, my father-in-law gave me the book Communion. In it, Whitley Strieber describes being abducted by aliens, which was a horrifying experience for him, and to stave off criticism from those unbelievers who would point out that it's a little rich for a man who wrote a bunch of horror novels to now pretend like this abduction tale is nonfiction, Strieber wrote that he now knew that he had been abducted throughout his life, memories of which were now slowly coming back to him, and that the horror novels he had written throughout the years were simply his subconscious mind trying to release the images that only it was aware of. I found this argument compelling, and although I didn't really believe in aliens, I got a shiver of dread just thinking about the possibility.

When I told my father-in-law that I had enjoyed that book, being a lovely and thoughtful man, he came home one day with Strieber's followup: Transformation. If I remember it right, it was in this book that Strieber wrote that, while he absolutely believed in his abduction experiences, what he meant by "aliens" wasn't necessarily "little green men from outer space". He explains that the "aliens" might be living on a parallel plane to ours, their atoms vibrating at a higher frequency like colours off the ends of the visible light spectrum that we humans can't see, and that the form they take when they visit our plane are always in line with what we might expect to see: this explains long ago visions of angels, jinn and sprites, and after we reached the space age, aliens. I found this book terrifying as Strieber insisted that more of us are abducted each night than will ever remember it, and that those who are open to it, can be transformed into a being on the higher plane. I honestly felt like I had been dabbling in dark magic and had opened a door. When my father-in-law asked me if I wanted the next book in the series, I had to admit that I was now too scared, and we laughed about it. (I might have read the third in the series and stopped there, but the point is that I got to this point in Strieber's story and couldn't continue.)

It was either my mother-in-law or sister-in-law who eventually gave me a Sylvia Browne book (either The Other Side and Back or Life on the Other Side), and her proposed world view dovetailed nicely with Whitley Strieber's: that there is indeed this higher plane of existence, but to Browne, the beings there aren't frightening; it's filled with angels and spirit guides, and after we die, that's where our own spirits go to live, review our earthly lives, and decide which lessons we still need to learn on our next journey through this plane; being a psychic simply meant that Browne had the ability to interact with this higher plane, and when I'd catch her on Montel Williams, I always found her psychic act to be plausible. I read quite a few more books by Browne, found her philosophy to be attractive (and have to admit that if we do, indeed, determine the challenges we'll face before we're even born, I am not a brave soul if this is all the struggle I selected for myself), but I was still afraid of being abducted by aliens. 

I read The Celestine Prophesies, and although I hadn't really known what to expect from it beforehand, was distressed to read that it is essentially a manual for how to consciously vibrate yourself to the higher plane. I had profound regrets that this knowledge was now in my brain: remember, I had been too nervous to attempt astral projection or drug-induced plane-exploring, and I now feared it could happen by accident.

Then I got a curious phone call. My sister-in-law Christine had been watching Larry King Live, and his guest was Sylvia Browne (Chrissy then asked if I knew who she was because she didn't know that I was already a devotee). Apparently, a woman from London, Ontario (coincidentally, where Dave grew up, where his parents still live, and where we got married) had called to ask Ms Browne what "eleven eleven" means because she had been encountering it all her life. Browne nodded knowingly and said that whenever you notice eleven eleven, it means that the universe is telling you to pay attention, and especially to coincidences; it means you're on the right path. (Although I always meant to look into Jung and his ideas on Synchronicity, I haven't yet, but think this is the same idea as what Browne was talking about here.) Chrissy was excited to share this with me (and especially because Kyler apparently never stopped encountering the phenomenon), but it filled me with a type of dread: there was a tightening of the noose, as though it was becoming inevitable that I would one day vibrate (with or without the assistance of what I would perceive to be aliens) out of existence. And even at the time I knew it was kooky, but I was becoming afraid to go to sleep at night, and I just got a message from the universe that I was "on the right path".

It was around this time that I watched an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about the disappearance of Philip Taylor Kramer; one time bassist for Iron Butterfly; the creators of this week's Tunesday song (I warned that it would be a long journey to the point). As I remember the show (I did try to google the episode, but while the straight facts are out there in various articles and blogs, the New Agey elements seem to have been dismissed from the record, so I'm going to tell the story as I remember it; how it affected me), Kramer left the band to finish his advanced degree in Engineering or Astrophysics or something like that. He worked for the government on top secret guidance systems for missiles, formed an early tech company with Michael Jackson's brother Randy, and spent his free time obsessing over disproving Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity; certain that he could find a way to travel faster than the speed of light. According to the show, it was after Kramer read The Celestine Prophecy that he believed he was finally on the right track, and he would work on his computer through the nights trying to find the intersection between Western science and Eastern mysticism. After working obsessively for some days straight, Kramer told his wife that he had finally found a way to break the light barrier, but that the knowledge was dangerous and that "they" would never let him reveal the truth. He left to pick up a friend from the airport, changed his mind about going, made a series of bizarre phone calls (including telling a friend that O.J. was framed), told 911 that he was going to kill himself, and he and his van disappeared; never to be seen again. The show concluded by saying that we'll probably never know if Kramer did commit suicide, if he was snuffed out by his own government (after all he had Top Secret clearance and now showed signs of mental instability), or maybe he had been abducted by aliens (something he feared) or simply vibrated off to a higher plane (something he claimed to have experimented with). I watched this show with wide-eyed horror.

I was now afraid to go to sleep at night: while I was intrigued by the notion that these pathways might be out there, I was by now a mother with two small children and I didn't want to be taken away from them. From my readings on Buddhism, I knew that sometimes, when an acolyte was on the brink of enlightenment, a Zen Master would take a bamboo stick and thwack them across the back (because only a frightening shock could force the soul to make the leap from this world to which it is too attached). I knew that I was being ridiculous, but I was horrified to imagine what frightening shock could be prepared for me; and I assumed (to stress: in my imagination, while always certain that it would never come to pass) that it would be a terrifying abduction experience by aliens that weren't really aliens, but merely beings from the higher plane. Like putting away a Ouija board that has given you a scare, I totally abandoned this decade-long reading path; attempted to stuff this "knowledge" into the back of my mental closet, hidden under old sweaters and mateless mittens. It took me a long time to get over my fear of the dark. 

Two factoids I later learned: after those girls in Cleveland were saved from their years-long captivity at the hands of psycho Ariel Castro, it came to light that Sylvia Browne had once informed the mother of one of the girls (on Montel Williams) that her daughter was dead; to give up hope of ever seeing her again and to get on with her life. What a horrible sham that was in retrospect (I also remember Browne saying repeatedly that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a cave during a bombing run in the early days of the second Iraq War and that his body would never be found), and this kind of thing really underscores the reality that TV psychics aren't always providing harmless entertainment. The second fact was that Philip Taylor Kramer's van and skeleton were eventually found by hikers and it's assumed that, after threatening suicide, he simply drove off a cliff. I wouldn't prefer to live in a world where I go to bed every night worried that I'm going to be confronted by aliens or vibrated off this plane, but it's sad to have to acknowledge that the world we live in is probably just what it seems to be: likely a random case of the evolution of conscious beings from protoplasmic goo; frail humans who fall for frauds and suffer mental anguish that could propel them off of cliffs. (One more thing: I later saw Whitley Strieber on some show [maybe Weird or What?] and he was talking about how he had proof of time travel and he sounded so whackadoodle that I wished I had seen him interviewed back in the 90s when I was buying into his nonsense.)

And another interesting coda: When Delight and I reconnected a few years ago, during one of our first face-to-face meetings in twenty years, she casually mentioned how she had been plagued her whole life by seeing eleven eleven, and she always wondered if it had meaning. I was dumbfounded. Delight had been my best friend during my Edmonton years, she knew of my kooky reading habits (she obsessed over Stephen King, which seems to support Whitley Strieber and his writings about horror novels revealing the truth of one's subconscious mind), but had we really never compared notes on eleven eleven? I tried to say that that was my thing -- perhaps I had passed the contagion on to her? -- but Delight insisted that it had always been her thing, too. She said she had tried to research the phenomenon online, and while there are websites devoted to those who experience it, no one has an answer for "why?". I told her my story about Sylvia Browne and being on the right path, and we agreed that that is probably what it means for our friendship anyway.

And to end on the  happiest of notes and to tie it all together. In two days, Dave and I will be going on our 25th anniversary trip to Peru. We'll be flying in a small plane over the Nazca Line Drawings, taking a glass-roofed train up the mountain to Machu Picchu, walking around on the reed islands of Lake Titicaca, exploring Lima, and Cuzco, and Urubamba. As a geek, I was trying to figure out what book I should bring to be photographed reading up at Machu Pichu (and it was thinking of the various books I've mentioned here today that prompted me to lay out the whole, nutty tale), and that's when I landed on the perfect one: Chariots of the Gods, in which Erich von Däniken started the whole ancient aliens mythos. When I reached for it and flipped the book open (because I have many, many "of the Gods" books on my shelves from these long ago days), I found pictures of Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines Drawings -- even a picture of Chichen Itza in Mexico where Dave and I have gone before -- and there's little doubt where my long held fascination with Peru and its artefects has come from. Perhaps the inlaws are right and my interests have always been "out there", and perhaps Burqhardt's fiancée had been right when she informed me that our wedding date promised "challenges, but not without rewards", but I'm still here, Dave and I are still here (while Burqhardt is on his third marriage), and whether or not I still see eleven eleven sometimes, I know in my heart that I'm on the right path.

In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
In a gadda da vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand