Chapter 12a - in which you the readers goblin me

I kind of suspected the Goblin story was going to ruffle a few feathers here and there. Here are a few of the hundreds of comments I’ve been sifting through today. Oh the joys of being online 24/7 or 27/4 as the Goblins have it.

“You’re off your rocker. Haven’t you got anything better to do than write a load of twaddle about goblins?” Mary Maddison

“I thought you shut down Faery and said you wanted nothing further to do with it, so what’s with all the evangelising. You can’t have your cake and eat it.” Martin Luther

“What right have you to claim you’re the one who’s working with Faery and reprogramming reality – it looks like you’re developing a nasty strain of the Jesus Christ complex.” Johnny Deep

“If you’re so happy being a house in Goblin why don’t you stay there and leave us biological humans alone.” Signor Alfredo Terentino

“You’re in league with the devil – you’re just trying to make evil acceptable. That’s the worst kind of evil I can think of.” Stack Mush

“Drop dead Josh. Only kidding – carry on living - you’re helping redefine the term “senseless drivel” which is a service to humanity.” Penny Jibble

“Put a sock in it if you know what’s good for you.” Blugspat104

To be honest I’m easily demoralised, and reading through pages and pages of this stuff made me doubt my mission – and whether I should continue sharing my experiences with you, dear readers. It wasn’t all bad – there were several beautiful letters of encouragement – some of them from old ladies who were obviously half-mad themselves but still, they made me feel special.

To answer some of your most frequent questions –

·        No – I don’t worship the devil, goblins, beetles or anything else for that matter.

·        Neither am I working in real estate in Florida, Detroit or West Hampton.

·        Being a house in Goblin is not about standing around doing nothing, though that’s understandably how you’d see it on this side of reality.

·        No, there’s no record of insanity in my family, surprisingly, which is why it’s all the more bizarre that I should have been selected for this mission.

·        Yes, I have every intention of continuing to lead a normal life, get married, have children and drive a car.

·        No, I don’t know anything much about crystals, Nostradamus, Madame Blavatsky, David Icke or Zoroaster. I’m not psychic and I don’t take drugs.

·        Nor do I have any phobias that I’m aware of – in fact I was the picture of mental health and dull middle class respectability before I had my encounter with Roger.

The worst of what’s happening is that a few of my most persistent detractors have got hold of my work details and have been messaging my employers with the obvious intention of harming my career at Boodle & Badwise Nobs, a highly respected bathroom fittings company. That, I consider, ungentlemanly conduct, but Aargen Darvurg told me to expect the worst, and he should know as he’s been a party to much of the world’s negativity over the last several thousand years or so.

You might wonder, given all the above, how I’m holding my head above water, being the unexceptional person that I am... To tell the truth, 27 days ago this would have reduced me to a pile of quivering frogspawn, but things have changed dramatically during the last month. I’ve got this completely different perspective ever since I reconnected with the inner Self courtesy of Gill’s flying circus acrobatics, and got myself well and truly grounded in time-space as the dwelling place, non-biological friend and confidante of Aargen Darvurg. Learning to use the nifty beetle mark to see through the glimmer-glamour of 3D material reality and its ENORMOUS and completely unconcealable contradictions has also played its part. Time has worked its magic, or magic has worked its time – as they say in Goblin, and the unripe fruit that was bitter is now full-bodied and sweet.

The void that Faery had opened up – that left me nowhere to hide, that seemed to be actively ingesting me, dissolving my ties to the real world, has not disappeared, but something’s holding me together and I don’t know what. Something’s making me feel a quiet assurance that basically all is well – that Story ain’t prefixed by words such as scary, or horror, senseless or meaningless. Story is more than any prefix or label – and now that I’m back in touch with Faery, barring dealing with insects, I feel this deeeeeeeeeep and waaaaaaaarm sense of yesssssssssssss (sorry if that sounds too snakelike for you – but yeeeeeeeeeees is not the right sound either).

YES... A vast, enormous, gimongous word that has the potential to start a chain reaction of limitless proportions. A Yesness of Is. A storyful life that matters – just because.

You might well object. You might say that “yes” is fundamentally no different from “no” – that it’s just one form of polarity – and that “yes” is therefore inherently divisive. We should all revert to the mean which is “definitely maybe”. And certainly, that’s logical enough – but logic in itself is a kind of machine, or a machine’s way of thinking. Ultimately we have to go beyond logic, or base our logic on LIFE. That’s the beauty of spending time in Goblin – for in doing so I have to traverse the life-matter curve – it’s become second nature – to feel the relationship between the two, for surely life experiences matter in the same way matter experiences life.

Just think about it for a moment or 27, if you will. The life-matter curve – sometimes referred to as the life-matters curve depending on whether you’re speaking as scientist or humanist.

So, here I am – a human as any other – getting to know the other side of Story – in a place where by all reckoning I should be nothing – or just inert matter – but what do I find in actual fact? What do I experience? Even as a non-biological “dwelling place” I’m still conscious, still in some respect of the word “alive” – still able to participate in the magic of story, regardless of the fact that I have no arms, legs, mouth or nose – because, all things being equal, 0=1 and that changes everything.