Cherrybomb Squad pictures in the photogallery here:
www.usoul.com

I read this book years ago, I think it was "The Magical Child" by Joseph Hilton Pierce. I may be wrong, I was reading voraciously at the time, having dropped out of university but still ravenous for knowledge, actually because I was ravenous for knowledge and university was a far cry from what I had dreamed it would satisfy. When I went back I changed from arts to sciences. My most satisfying courses though were comparative religion. In them I found the participation of the students so rewarding. People hold their religious ideals with fervor and the classes were always conversations of passion. Coming from no particular background it was perfect for me. I digress...
the book was about the abilities of the childhood brain beyond "normal" development topics. The author maintained that a child's brain, unfettered with knowledge and experience was open to all sorts of paranormal activity and that nurtured a human could maintain a very open mind. He put forth research regarding children and esp and such. A child peaks at age nine in this category. He maintained through his studies and research that at age 9 a human basically understands the stage set for his/her entire life and has previews of it apparent to the conscious brain. My room-mate at the time could identify. When he was a kid his grandmother was heavy into the paranormal. She would arrive to visit him with a treat in a brown paper bag and he would always know what was in it. My mother told my sister and I not to fear the "sight" as we grew older. She said that the common bond between the women in her family and my father's was the "sight" where births and deaths in the family would always be known ahead of time. My father died for 2 and a half minutes in 1994 while in an ambulance on his from Cape Breton to Halifax. For those 2 and a half minutes I sat in his kitchen freezing cold though it was warm spring, crying uncontrollably for his life. The ambulance was by some wondrous gift close enough to screech into the New Glasgow hospital where his life was retrieved. Recently, my lover and in talking discovered that he knew the doctor who retrieved my dad and knew all of the story at the time. It had been the talk of the town. "Seconds to Spare" was the unofficial title of the small town tale of my dad's rescue. At the moment he was retrieved the phone was ringing and his sister was saying to me "everything is okay afterall" though neither of us knew yet and wouldn't know about it at all until that evening.
When I was 9 I had an image of a boy and knew he had a deep sorrow over a loss. He was about 7 in my feeling. I would think about him and tell him things in my heart. Pretty freaked out I was when my love brought his family photo album over from his Mom's and I gazed into the eyes of a little him in one certain picture because I already knew that boy. I had met him while I laid in the grass next to my mom's perennial garden under the bake apple tree, smelling the lupins and apple blossoms and the dirt under the grass, daydreaming about my life and this imaginary boy. I liked it best when he smiled and I would daydream about making him smile and feel better for missing whatever it was that made him sad. When I was 9 I was predisposed to the dirt under the grass. It was my favorite year, my best time. All of life was grand. It was an independent year, much of it spent thinking under the apple tree smelling the dirt. It seemed all was right and correct with time and space. My grandmother taught me things about the world at large from her big collection of books and about gardening. I was a very good listener that year. My brothers began to deal with me for the first time, actually letting me hang in their room and sometimes even traipse out to their smoking cabin in the woods past the crab apple orchard. The orchard was heavy with deer that year and we sat in the apple trees watching them for hours. My sister let me in some too, explaining all about make-up and the thrill of boys at her school. But mostly, it was the smell of the dirt under the grass under the bake apple tree next to my mom's perennial garden. Our old dog Yogi would lay with me and watch me like I was the curiosity. All that time we spent together no wonder the day he died he came to lay across my lap. I felt he could hear my thoughts those days. Why else would he watch me so intently other than to be polite to the conversation? I think on that time with such purity. No harm done no harm accepted. All was right with the world. There is no more sentimentality for a time and space I could ever have, and no influence of any other human. No needs, wants or desires. Perfect being. They call it Zen these days. But it was a time before the knowledge of zen or any other excuse to know anything about the self. Last time I was home to say goodbye to carlo's life I stood in two important places. On his front lawn and on that spot which is still my mother's perennial garden next to the bake apple tree. The apples were strewn all about the ground. You let them fall to use them because it makes better jelly. As I was about to get down to lay and smell the dirt I realized the folly. You can't go back. Whether time is linear or arbitrary it still goes forward and not back. And I grieved there. Not Carlo, not the dead apples lying on the ground, not even Yogi the beloved dog. I grieved the sweetness and clarity of unfettered thought. The lightness that was before the experience and knowledge came. The perfect beauty of the smell of the dirt that represented only the experience of being alive.

I get it after days of struggling with it. I delved into it when faced with it and paid my two cents. I had been thinking that karma was biting me in the ass but that's not it. For all of the naive pain I had previously held for it I didn't have firsthand knowledge of it and that's what I'm being delivered now. Knowing it from the inside out, looking at it from all sides. It's a challenge of knowledge offered to me. Understanding the unfairness and isolation of it from inside, from the receiving end. Oh I get it now. I don't think it's what she meant to do, no I don't think she's that crisp of forethought. But the universe, ah the universe.... unfolding as it should. Later when I have to deliver the information regarding it I will be speaking as a knower and not an assumer. There are better meanings to things if you bother to look into them, once the emotions have settled.