Oct 1^st, 2003  Venezia—a true sea city, complete with waterways, canals, gondolas, narrow streets connected by many bridges. Fortunately we never get lost for Steve’s brain has more magnetite than the average human. Yeshua teases (Steve rolls his eyes) that it is as if the creator consulted with Steve on the four directions! Yeshua’s always with me if I should ask, frequently initiating contact, I need not even be in serious meditation.  It is as if my vibration is significantly raised to make audio contact, if I raise it further still, I’ll also perceive video contact, sensory contact is a given-that is just me. It was seven years after my grandfather died before Poppop came to me first in a dream. Then I would smell his old spice aftershave and feel the oiled leather of the back of his hand caressing my cheek as he whispered reassurance “It’ll be alright, poppy.” Once when the children were very little, I was driving them to see my family and had a flash of a car crash. Immediately Poppop came to me and they looked up from their books to ask what smelled so good.Sipping cappuccinos in an open air café with Steve—who’s not so keen with my casual communications with Yeshua—I must be more judicious. Can I help it if there is no silence, only music? My sense of smell even more acute, very sensitive to the European odors of cigarettes, sewage, and produce. Dank castle smells, eerily familiar, old tapestries on Catholic altars permeated with the dusty odor of worship and tears, the sharp odor of fear oozing from ancient walls, the cool smell of stone impregnated by many humans living in such close contact—it reminds me of back east.     

Oct 4^th, 2003 In the middle of the night, I began to bleed profusely. Nothing I did would staunch the flow. When Steve found me in the bathroom, he was horrified by the hemorrhage but made the connection. “This is too early for your period. What part of the story are you on?” While he drove us through Ambruzio to the Amalfi coast, I wrote the birthing of Mary’s first child. “Does she die?” I shook my head—no. “Then, for G-D’s sake, finish it!” Sitting me on thick towels before my laptop, Steve wrung his hands as the delivery poured through me. And once I wrote that Mary awoke safe and sound—the bleeding stopped.