Tuesday, July 28, 2009

"The Ghoulest and the Coolest: A Real Hitch-hiking Adventure" Jeff Phillips (2004)

(People always ask me if anything “bad” ever happened…?)

The experience described in this story is singularly the wickedest and most intensely cryo of my entire life.

I would estimate that I’ve hitch-hiked well over 300,000 kilometers (roughly the distance to the moon) since 1981, in 47 states in America, several provinces of Canada (including Newfoundland), in Ireland, and comprehensively all over New Zealand, as well as in eastern, southern and central Australia, including Tasmania.

I’ve had many thousands of rides with as many thousands of people over more than 20 years “on the road”, and if there’s one conclusion I’ve reached, it’s that the REAL world truly is a very friendly place, filled with nice people who don’t mind going out of their way to help you. I have learned first-hand that the violence-soaked, venom-spewing mind-raping atrocity which contemporary America is portrayed as exists only on TV. Maybe on the radio and in the papers, but mainly on TV. You know…television…the ultimate instrument of psychological warfare and the biggest weapon in use by far. The boob tube. The glass teate. The idiot box. And most importantly…the modern technology which brings us Amerika, Inc. and the puppet-regime serial killers in the Blight House! OK, enough already…I’ve graduated from America and on my way to becoming a planetary citizen.
Back to the story. I’ve hitched quite a bit – supposedly pretty risky these days, or so I’m told. It’s funny – somehow people seem to expect the worst. I don’t know if it’s just mind conditioning or cognitional inbreeding from watching the evening news for generations, or if it’s an expression of a deep-seated desire for direness. I still haven’t figured it out. I just find it amusing…and perhaps a little sad…that quite often, when I meet someone new and I tell them that I hitch-hike everywhere, they say something like “Hey, did anything BAD ever happen to you?” This always bugs me. Why the fuck don’t they want to know about the millions of GOOD things that continually occur? If people are always expecting BAD stuff, they can help it to materialize, right? Are their lives so shitty and miserable that they can’t conceive of someone successfully hitching all around for fun, meeting cool people and having a blast?

Well, I don’t know about all that, but what I always do when people ask me this is tell them the story I am about to relate. This story is absolutely true and is verifiable by any number of people. Was this something BAD that happened to me? You be the judge.

On the evening of July 13, 2001 (a Friday) I took the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania. This was my first visit to Tassie and even though it was mid-winter I was looking forward to getting there. After living in Colorado for several years, and hitching all through the Rockies in temperatures as low as minus 5 degrees Farenheit (with no wind), I wasn’t likely to be uncomfortable there.
I spent several weeks hitching around, meeting people, learning about Tasmania as the unique gem she it – a Gondwanaland remnant island with a very unique geology as well as indigenous vegetation that is the culmination of 65 million years of “evolution”, for example, the Dr. Seuss-looking pandanus trees and the old-growth stands of eucalyptus regnans (the world’s tallest hardwood tree and flowering plant), particularly in the Tarkine region, which at this moment in time are being rapidly decimated by the Gunns Timber Corporation, who are chopping these ancient giants as fast as they can, then grinding them up into wood chips and exporting them to Asia, primarily to Nippon Paper Industries of Japan. This is one of the absolute worst things happening in all of Australia now ( I would say second only to the brutal and on-going low-intensity genocide being waged against indigenous populations all over the continent).

I learned that Tasmania used to be connected to Tierra del Fuego in the days of Gondwanaland. I traveled to south Bruny Island and met some hallucinogenic fluorescent orange lichens. I went to Freycinet Peninsula and photographed Wineglass Bay. Just like in the post cards. I learned about the “hydro” company and how they dammed up Lake Pedder. I fell in love with the photography of Peter Dombrovskii and saw some “devils” at a petting zoo. I frolicked in 6 inches of snow on Mount Wellington – still the only snow I’ve been in since I left America.

I was having a great time exploring a new place, while at the same time absorbing the down side: the indiscriminate logging and damming, the residual vibrations from the slaughter of thousands of aboriginal peoples…which wasn’t all that long ago, and worst of all…the almost complete indifference to all this of the people in general.

Overall, though, I was meeting heaps of cool folks, seeing a lot of “little Tassie” and having a lot of fun.

I was about ready to return to “Australia”, as they refer to the mainland down there. I figured I’d take one more week and head over to the west coast to check out the scene there. I knew it was very rocky and inaccessible but I wanted to check it out.

Jason and Naomi, a couple I’d met in Maydena, dropped me off in New Norfolk, on their way to a logging protest event in Hobart. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was in a very happy mood. Now here’s where the story really starts. I’d been standing there maybe 20 minutes or so, completely unstressed, as it wasn’t late in the day – maybe one or two pm, beautiful weather. The date was August 9 – second anniversary of the day I first met Sarah McLachlan in Columbus, Ohio! I kind of wanted to get over to the coast – probably a 3-4 hour drive – as there was nowhere of interest in between. Except for Ouse (pronounced “ooze”) – the town where people told me all the “six-fingers” live! See, Tassie is like the Appalachia of Australia – the mainlanders all think it’s inhabited by inbred hillbillies feuding and distilling white lightning!

All of a sudden this Holden Jackaroo pulls up. By Jove, it was being driven by the first person to give me a ride in Tasmania, Michael J. Broadneck. He had given me a ride from Devonport to New Norfolk several weeks before. He even had his little painted rock I’d given him hanging from his rear-view mirror!

I was sincerely happy to see him. What luck – to get picked up a second time by the same person! This had only happened to me once before in all of my hitch-hiking, around Atlanta.
“Bro, what’s up? Good to see ya, mate…”

“Hey, I saw your sign that said ‘Queenstown’ so I went had a word with the missus. She said I could have the afternoon off so I figured if you could kick down some money for petrol I’d carry you all the way across the island.”

“Excellent. Let’s do it.”

We went to the petrol station and I gave him $20 for fuel. And off we went, out of town and into the green Tasmanian country-side, reknowned for its resemblance to parts of England.

Let me give you a little background on Michael J. This is what I remembered from our first journey together. He was a pretty good sized dude, maybe six feet and 200 pounds (90 kgs). He seemed a little dodgy, maybe. Especially when he told me about his uncle whose ‘ultimate fantasy’ was to shoot a fawn…a little Bambi…but he had never been able to find one because the mothers were too good at hiding them! Or when he was boasting that his “30 cousins in Tasmania” would help him take care of the guy who his girlfriend had been fooling around with. Or when he showed me a new video camera he had. He said that someone had left it at a rest-stop, and even though he tried to locate the owner, he couldn’t, so he took it. I even looked at some of the footage on there – it was of a young woman doing gymnastics. I felt bad that she or whomever had lost their camera, and was trying to think of ways to find out who she was…so he could get it back to her!

Or when he insisted that I NOT video-tape him, when I got my camera out to film some scenery. “I’m a member of the Tasmanian Defence Force and we aren’t allowed to be photographed.” OK. Rodger-dodger. Or…now get this…even when we stopped to get a coffee, and he went out to his vehicle (which was out of my view) “to have a smoke”…and was taking a long time to come back in…so long that I went to make sure he hadn’t split with all my gear! See, I was safe because he had left his new video camera with me in the coffee shop! Right!

Enough. The point is, he was somewhat of a shady-seeming individual. But, on that trip we did have some intelligent conversation about stuff. He informed me, for example, that if anyone was out in the wilderness in Tasmania and “something happened to them”…like I’m not sure what?…there’d never be any proof they ever existed, because the “devils” would eat them all up, bones and hair included. If there was a metal belt-buckle that might be left uneaten. Interesting stuff like that. And, he was heavily into raptors…birds of prey…and even gave me a couple of raptor books to read when he dropped me off.

Nonetheless, I considered him a mate. So it was with genuine sincerity and appreciation that I greeted him the second time we met. He had my little rock hanging there.

OK, so we’re off down the road through the countryside near Ouse.

“Hey, Jeff, I was just thinking…there’s this really cool spot over the hill there where I used to go hunting when I was a kid. I bet you could get some great photos there.”

Now, I’m sure there’s heaps of tucked-away beauty spots in Tassie, but my goal now was to get across the island, as it would be getting dark around the time we would arrive.

“Thanks anyway, bro. I think I’ll pass. I want to get on down the road. Is that cool?”

But he persisted in insisting. “It’s really pretty there, mate. You’d be sorry you almost
passed it up if we check it out. Whaddaya say?”

After about fifteen minutes of this, I said, “Hey, so you’re taking me all the way across, right?”

“No worries.”

“OK, let’s do it.” I basically agreed to go just shut him up. But I figured, I’m there…what’s a little longer going to mean?

Instantly we slowed down and pulled a u-ey. We then stopped by the roadside. Michael looked at me and said “Hey, the back door is loose…do you mind getting out to check it?”

Much to my credit-that-didn’t-matter, I responded, “Why don’t you do it?”

“I’m the driver. I’m having a smoke” he replied, slightly nervously.


I thought, “What the fuck?” so I jumped out and stepped back to re-close the door. Little did I know that he had more than likely left the door ajar at the servo intentionally, just so he could legitimately ask me, unsuspiciously, at this exact moment in time, to get out and check it for him. While he…the driver…had a smoke. I didn’t pause to reflect on why having a cigarette could in any way present an impediment to getting out of a vehicle and walking a few meters. I mean, if he had been paraplegic or something, it would have made sense. But no, it didn’t matter. It was a beautiful day and I was hitching in an unknown but wonderful place. I had just been picked up by a dude who had given me a ride before, and who had offered to take me all the way to where I was going! What excellent luck!
Now, he seemed insistent on showing me this place where used to go hunting. I didn’t really want to go, but in order to shut him up about it…in other words, to mollify the ride-provider (this means going along with stuff they want to do that isn’t part of your plan. The reason hitch-hiking works is because driver and hitcher are both going the same way. When desynchronizations from this itinerary occur, it’s either time…in the words of Fleetwood Mac…”Go your own way…” or renavigate the plan. Usually this would be something like, for example, someone who is giving me a ride wants to stop off and see a friend of theirs for a while. If I am invited, which I usually am, I can either come with and hang, or get dropped off to continue hitching, possibly even to get re-picked up by the same person. It’s not a drama…not usually!)…I did it.

Now, think about it. There I was, hitching in the middle of a quasi-remote area of Tasmania – just about as far away as it’s possible to get from America (and still be on Earth) – and getting out of the vehicle to check the rear door. All of my gear was in the vehicle – the sum total of everything I traveled with. If you know me, you know that this is at least one full heap not much short of my own body weight.

What would you have done? Well, I’m guessing that most of you would never even consider hitch-hiking anywhere, much less in Tasmania, and even less with almost everything you owned.
But there I was. On purpose. Voluntarily. By choice. No one made me. After all, I was riding with someone who had given me a ride before. He even had my little hand-painted rock hanging from his rear-view mirror. I trusted him. My usual highly-sensitive vibe detectors were off, or at least turned way down. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening to them. I had been happy to see Mr. Broadneck, and my guard was down. But I was about to have a rude awakening to the fact that I was now in the grips of an insidious MASTER PLAN.

No sooner than I had gotten out, Michael J. floored the accelerator. The vehicle was still running and probably already in gear. As he sped away, he waved “bye-bye” to me over his shoulder. I stood there watching as his Holden Jackaroo (1985, dark blue) disappeared over the ridge. At first I thought he was joking around and was going to come back. Rednecks like to do that kind of thing. But no…he was gone with the wind. And there stood I, all alone, to wonder why.

I have to tell you, as I sit here writing this now, that I’ve told this story at various levels of resolution dozens of times. But as I write this now, for the first time, it’s quite intense. It’s finally making me re-live this thing. Freaky.

Imagine what it was like. Standing in the road in rural Tasmania, having just watched the vehicle you were riding in disappear over the hill, with all your gear.

My first thought was, “Wow, this is really happening.” As the severity of the situation gradually dawned on me, I started to feel really upset, in a way I’d never felt before in my life. I felt totally betrayed, sold out, up the creek without a paddle [footnote: they made a film in Tassie recently, a piss-take version of Deliverance called Without a Paddle]. But I also felt an immensely powerful aura of intense positive energy all around me, more powerful than I’d ever experienced before. It was as if I was surrounded by an army of guardian angels, holding me up. This was quite literally real, as real as my stuff having been stolen.

I started to cry. Very rapidly, in my mind, I wondered if I was being punished for something, if this was some kind of karmic experience. But then I realized, after intense reflection and evaluation of my whole life, that I live my life on very positive wavelengths, and that the current of my life had always invariably been that impossibly good stuff always happened to me.

Then at that moment, I knew that one of two things was true: that, if I was at the point in my life where I didn’t need my gear any more, I was ready. But as I stood there, I started to realize that the sun was going down and that it was getting cold. At that moment I knew that I was going to get all my stuff back. With absolute certainty I knew this. I was emotionally distraught, rocked to the core. But when I was watching him disappear, I remember thinking, “He’s got all my stuff. But THIS is me.” All my stuff is just that. It was empowering in a way, to be completely alone with nothing except the clothes I was wearing, in the middle of nowhere at sunset, and know deep down that somehow this was all good. I realized that I am not attached to my possessions, that what I own is cool and useful stuff, for living and doing all the things that I have been blessed with the abilities to do. I NEED my gear to do my life, and I was going to get it all back. This whole thing made no rational sense. I was completely freaked out. Well, not completely. But I was upset.

I flagged down a passing vehicle and explained what happened and asked if they would take me in pursuit of him. This was only about 10 minutes or less since he took off. They wouldn’t do it. There was bound to be sport of some sort on the tube at their house.

So I ran to the nearest house. I can’t remember their names, but they were very nice people. They let me use the phone to call the police, made me a cup of tea and even gave me a really nice wool sweater to keep warm. This was Ouse – the “six-finger” area I had been warned about!

In about 45 minutes a policeman arrived. Now, if this was going to be the horror-story version, when I told him the guy’s name who ripped me off, he would’ve said “My cousin Michael would NEVER do something like that…”

But no, this was not to be. I was greeted by the happy smiling face of Doug Graham, a very nice person from England originally who had been a policeman in Tasmania for about ten years. When I met Doug I somehow knew I was in good hands. He had a very bright, clear aura. He seemed like someone who was already a friend of mine!

I explained what had happened. He told me that this was highly unusual for Tasmania, that not a lot of crime occurs at all, outside of domestic disputes and the occasional drunk driver. He had never seen anything like this in his ten years in Tasmania.

As we rode through the now-darkening countryside, we took a route that Doug reckoned Broadneck might have taken – a back way. At this point we didn’t know where he was going, only the direction he was heading when he disappeared from my view. I explained exactly what had happened, that I had ridden with him before, that I knew his name. Doug was so good that he even correctly predicted the neighborhood where Broadneck lived.

We got to the police station at Shrubby View and looked him up on the computer. There he was. “Michael J. Broadneck, 1985 Holden Jackaroo, dark blue.” He had a few minor offenses but nothing serious. They immediately dispatched an officer from New Norfolk to go to his house.

Doug was giving me a ride back to where I’d been staying in Maydena when we get a call saying that Broadneck had dropped off my gear at the police station! Doug said that this was turning into the craziest thing he’d ever seen!

What happened is that the officer went to Broadneck’s house. He wasn’t there, but the old lady who claimed she wasn’t his mother must HAVE been, and she must’ve informed Michael J. that we were onto him.

Doug again accurately predicted that Broadneck would say something like “Hey, I picked up this hitch-hiker and he touched me on the leg, so I put him out. And here’s his stuff…I don’t want it…” That’s exactly what he said!

When we arrived I saw my gear there. It had obviously been all rifled through. Everything was there…except my cameras and a case containing around 40 really valuable cd’s and cd player. Several thousand dollars worth of easily-marketable hot goods.

The cops go “Jeff, we know you’re telling us the truth. But we’re only going to give you maybe a 5% chance of ever seeing that stuff again. See, now it’s your word against his that the missing stuff even exists. Our hands are tied. The law is actually written in favor of the criminal. He’s probably already sold it all to his drug-dealer or someone. We can question him, we can charge him…but we can’t actually DO anything unless we find him with the stolen property. It’s fucked but that’s how it is.”

At least I had my most essential stuff back, like my clothes and passport. But deep down inside I knew that I was going to get it ALL back. I have my cameras for a reason; they aren’t just idle possessions. I use them all the time, to share what I see and do with my friends who aren’t there with me. And my cd’s – I had another hundred or so down in my pack that he didn’t find, but the ones he had were my most often listened to! Many were very rare and would have been very difficult to replace.

You see, when Broadneck saw me hitching that day, he hatched himself a plan. He knew I had the cameras and cd’s from our first ride together. Remember, he wouldn’t let me photograph him! Wanting to be the “predator” he loved so much (but failing to realize that true predators hunt only what they need for food), he had wanted to get me off the road so that…I would become “devil food”? Who knows what had lurked in his mind? But looking back on it, it all made sense. Before we did the u-turn, I noticed he kept looking at his watch. He supposedly wasn’t in a hurry! And his insistence on going “way back yonder” to get some photos! Then asking me to check the door, when he could easily have done so.

Was I being stupid? No…it’s just that I somehow trusted him. Even though he was somewhat sketchy, he had given me a ride and had picked me up again. He had his little “good luck” rock! But even though my guard was down, I distinctly remember that my gut instinct was telling me all along that something was fishy! My trust over-rode this feeling.

Over the next few days I put out the word on what had happened. I put together a list of the stolen stuff and disseminated it to pawn shops in the area. I told people I’d met. Jason and Naomi, who had dropped me off that day to hitch, invited me to come and stay with them near Launceston. They lived on a hilltop overlooking a really nice valley. I hung out, tending the fire, listening to music and painting rocks. In the evenings we’d drink some wine and watch videos. I’d go for walks in the countryside that reminded me a lot of my native North Carolina. I was being well-taken care of and meeting lots of nice people.

One day I was hitching from Hobart back to Launceston when…guess who? came slowly driving by…Michael J. Broadneck. He hung his head out the window and said to me, in a most sarcastic voice, “So…you’re missing your cameras, mate?” It was as if I was actually seeing this person for the first time; his eyes looked completely black, as if he’d been dead for days. His aura was gray-to-absent. He looked like a flesh-eating ghoul!

But I laughed to myself. Doug the cop had commented that this guy was pretty smart; he knew the law and he knew he was sweet as, as long as they never found him with my stolen gear. He was pretty smart, alright. Too smart! Little did he know what was getting ready to transpire.

Back in Maydena, when this first happened, I happened to speak with the mother of another guy who gave me a ride hitching in Tasmania, Matt Eastwood. He was a very cool dude. We had stopped by a river and he helped me gather up some rocks to paint. I went to his house and helped him unload a truck-load of wood, and went in and met his girlfriend and his son, and played him some of a cd I did with a drummer, because he was a drummer, too! It was a good-vibe connection.

Matt’s mom said, “You know, Matt is somebody that would like to know this happened.” He was a good dude, and had told me his dream was to have a “hobby farm” there in Tasmania. I called up to tell him, but he was gone, so I told my story to his girlfriend.

Now, here’s where the story gets really good. Matt happened to be the postman of Michael J. Broadneck. He already knew the house!

As well, Matt was a hard-core kick-boxer studying moo thai, who was in top condition and doing regular competitions. Kick-boxing is like regular boxing, but even more full-on, if you can imagine that.

Before I could even talk to him myself, Matt and his mate had gone to Broadneck’s house. Matt told me later that he wished I had been there to see what happened. Being bikers, they rocked up to Broadneck’s on their Harley’s. He comes to the door and says “What do you want?” They casually said, “We hear you’ve been having a little fun with our mate Jeff…” When they mentioned my name they said he turned white and started shaking, then went and hid behind his girlfriend and kid! Too funny…especially for such a smart guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was all they said. They didn’t threaten him. They didn’t need to. We’ll never know exactly what he was seeing or experiencing when they dropped my name, but I’m quite certain that the experience of having two bad-ass shaven-head Harley-riding bikers showing up on your door-step questioning you about someone whose entire load of gear you had just stolen and then left him standing in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere…I’m sure this spoke to him in a deeply fundamental way.

Two days later Matt told me that Broadneck had returned all my stuff. He had been giving it out to his “thirty cousins”; when they found out what happened, they made him come and get it immediately! My friends Bruce and Louise gave me a ride over to pick it up. Matt told me that he had asked Broadneck why he did it. “He was too happy”, he responded, referring to my state of mind on that fateful day.

To top it all off, I was looking through all my stuff, and everything was there, all the cd’s, everything. I opened one of the film cans and inside was a little note from Broadneck. It said “Jeff, drop hex and charges. You got your cameras back. You are an easy target. Keep your cameras close.” Torn off was the corner where he had signed his name!!!! (he’s smart, remember?)

Apparently what he was experiencing or expecting was so diabolical that he actually believed I had put a hex on him! I’m not into that kind of thing. All through this thing I did my best NOT to wish bad stuff on this person…this was one of the biggest lessons in it for me. I kept repeating the golden rule over and over again. But if there was a hex on him, it was being created by his own guilt-driven fear and the knowledge of goddess-knows what other atrocities he may have committed.

He never knew this, but if he hadn’t brought my stuff back in a couple days, he would have had more tangible reasons for believing in a hex. Matt had said that if my stuff wasn’t returned in a day or two, that he and his brother, also a biker, were going to go and get him, put a sign on him that said “thief”, and drag him through town with their Harleys! I told this to the cops and they said “Well, we’d make sure we were on the other side of town that day!” The police applauded what went down as “old-school community justice”, the way things used to get done before their hands were tied by the law.

So there you have it. Was this something BAD that happened to me while I was hitch-hiking? It was intense, to say the least. It was by far the most multi-dimensionally full-on thing that’s ever happened to me. But it was all GOOD. It was a profound lesson in trusting chaos, in non-attachment to possessions, in knowing that I AM surrounded by an army of guardian angels, and that the highest guidance is operating at all times. I made friends and became bonded with several really wonderful people; Matt and his mate got to flex a little muscle (I don’t think Broadneck ever DID learn about Matt’s kick-boxing!), and one of the scummiest elements in Tasmania was identified and exposed to the light.

I returned to Melbourne a few days after I got my stuff back, in late August of 2001, where I began work on a unique piece of art entitled “The Ultimate Technology” (which is what we each are!) and vj-ed for New Zealand band Salmonella Dub in early September. I seemed to be fully on-line in a big way. Which was good, because…

The week after that, the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, which was a major “wake-up” call event for the whole world, especially America. Only then did I learn that in the Great Pyramid in Egypt is a time-scale on which a month corresponding to September 2001 is indicated as the date of a major “initiation event for humanity.” I was ahead of the game.

I can fully say that this episode was indeed a life-time spiritual initiation event for me. It made me see that a higher divine consciousness is fully in control, and that the solutions exist before the question or problem appears, as long as we are wide awake, on our toes, staying centered in our hearts and doing our absolute best to live the highest knowledge we already have. That is what I did throughout this time, and it ended up being supernaturally wonderful, improbably amazing, intensely empowering, and good for everyone involved…especially Michael J. Broadneck. After that I felt like I was ready for anything.

The next year I returned to Tasmania and caught up with everyone who had been so nice to me. Doug invited me over, and I listened to some of the music he had recorded at his home studio, and turned me onto some DVD’s by his favorite muso, Mike Oldfield. Bruce got me to do a large mandala painting for his meditation center in Hobart, and Louise had me over to the lodge where she grew up in Bronte, near Lake Sinclair. Matt had split up with his girlfriend; he said that when his friends heard about what had happened, some of them tried to enlist his “vigilante” services, unsuccessfully. And as for Michael J. Broadneck, no one had seen hide nor hair from him in over a year. We figured he had to relocate after all that. Or perhaps he, through inexplicable synchronicities, had entered the local food chain, courtesy of those hungry little ‘devils.

Speaking of the “devil”, when Doug was going to interrogate Broadneck the first time, I asked if I could write him a note that Doug would let him read but not keep. He said sure.

In the note I said something like, “Michael, I don’t know what you think you’re doing but it ain’t going to work. I trusted you bro. I even gave you one of my painted stones. I will stay in Tasmania as long as it takes. See you in court. And justice will be done. By the way, sometimes the Great Spirit uses demons to do his work.”

I thought of this as a “psychological implant” at the time, a sort of Djedi mind tactic. But looking back on it, I think this might actually be true. Broadneck seemed like a demon to me, at first, anyway; no doubt Matt and his mate looked like demons to Broadneck as they stood in his front door the day they paid him a neighborly visit.

And since September 2001 America appears to be under attack by…demons? Who knows? Regardless of the true nature of “terrorism” – which is in reality far more of a state-sponsored and media-based psychological activity than it is a product of who we are told is behind it. The “all-purpose bogey” of Al-Qaeda is really just an apparatus of the White House, the CIA and the New World Order. If a demonic spirit is at work, it is only working through people; it is probably nothing more than a manifestation of collective fear and dominant tendencies.

I think the solution to the problems besetting America now can be resolved and come to be seen as somehow ALL GOOD eventually, just like it did with me…but only if a majority of the people wake up to who and what we really are…spiritual co-creators…and actually LIVE the highest knowledge we already possess.

And this experience only increased my enthusiasm for hitch-hiking. Since September of 2001 I’ve hitched several tens of thousands of kilometers more…and to this date, nothing “bad” has ever happened to me. Just in case anyone asks! See ya on the road.

JEFF PHILLIPS
AUGUST 2004
DARWIN NT

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