1078 – Home With Pen Pals | Spice Friends 12

Notable Language:

• Untundras
• Codename: Dirge Mirth
• Delusion Belt

Notable Culture:

• Jeff Goldblum
• Tyvek
• Home Alone
  •  

Notable Talking Points:

• I’ve always wanted a sash
• Hibernation sounds great on paper
• Every day I get to take part in an action that nourishes someone else and lets my feelings live through me

Episode 1078 – Home With Pen Pals | Spice Friends 12

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I can do the rest.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake.  It could be thoughts on your mind, things you’re thinking about, so anything…yeah, thoughts, anything you’re feeling about the past, present, or the future, or physically coming up for you or emotionally.  Whatever is keeping you up, I’m here to take your mind off of it and keep you company so that you could fall asleep.

 

I’m here to be your friend in the deep, dark night, and the way I propose to do that is I’m gonna send my voice across the deep, dark night.  I’m gonna use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, so my tones are not traditionally soothing, I think is what I’ve settled on.  Now, they’re not tones you settle for, ‘cause no one would say I settled for creaky, dulcet tones.  You say no, they’re more than settle…they settle me.  Yeah, creaky, dulcet, tones; you don’t settle for them, they settle you.  Oh boys, let’s saddle up for a meander.  Hopefully we’ll come back to that.  I’ll try to cross my fingers, but I don’t know if I’ll remember.  But whatever’s on your mind, whatever’s been coming up for you, I’m here to keep you company and take your mind off of stuff.

 

So, I’m gonna use lulling, soothing tones, lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents, all to take your mind off of stuff so that you could fall asleep.  What does that mean, right?  If you’re new, you’re probably naturally skeptical, doubtful, ambivalent, wondering what is this grinding voice?  What is this guy doing?  What does he want?  How is this gonna help me?  Very normal questions.  I don’t even know if I like the way this sounds.  Very, very normal questions, believe me.  It’s questions that have been asked millions of times about this show.  So, I want to give you more information.

 

So, if you’re doubtful, if you’ve tried a lot of stuff like I have to fall asleep, and not everything has worked and some of it’s gotten on your nerves or it’s worked once, then it never worked again, that’s why I made this show, because that was my experience.  I said well, how come there’s not something like a friend talking to you, a silly, goofy friend in the deep, dark night?  So, the show is very different, so much so…here’s the thing; I never thought about this ‘til just right now.  Rarely do we make friends instantly, right?  We develop a friendship.  So, I’m not asking you…and is it most listeners’ experience…like, we have a lot of regular listeners, but we developed a relationship, a friendship, a bore-friendship over time.

 

So, most listeners, regular listeners that support the show on Patreon that keep coming back, they didn’t like the show at first or they were unsure about it, because that’s normal.  You say well, this person’s interesting but I’m not sure I want to…are we gonna be friends?  Well, let’s see.  So, give the podcast two or three tries before you give up, and I only say that it doesn’t benefit me.  I just hope the show can benefit you.  So it’s like, just see how it goes and see if it works out.  Eventually a lot of people say oh, okay, there…at the first few times, right, I had to kinda develop some trust with this person so they could lose my trust in a sense so that I could stop paying attention to them.  It’s like I’m applying for friendship.  But in a loose way you say okay, let me just see how it goes.

 

Like, at a distance, I’m gonna see how you behave with your pointless meanders.  But let me give you even more info, but if you’re already like no, this is not for me, we have a website.  Sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou has a list of other sleep podcasts and sleepy audio on there, so check that out if you’re already like nah, you’re not my style.  I don’t need two or three tries.  Totally cool.  Like I said, all of us here have tried a lot of different stuff to fall asleep or at bedtime, so try out that list of stuff.  Oh, so what else?  Give us some more good news.  It’s gonna take two or three tries for this to work?  Well, not exactly, because…or let me tell you why I make the show, ‘cause I kinda led into that.  Trouble getting…I have trouble sleeping and I’ve had trouble sleeping my whole life.

 

Sometimes it’s falling asleep and sometimes it’s getting to sleep, sometimes it’s staying asleep, sometimes it’s related to my thoughts, sometimes it’s related to my feelings, sometimes it’s related to my physical sensations, sometimes it’s other stuff.  But whatever it is, I know how it feels.  To me, most of the time it feels like the deep, dark night, even when I was in a room with a…my siblings, it felt very lonely.  So, I know how it feels in the deep, dark night, and I know that it comes with some P-A-I-N sometimes, or some D-R-E-A-D when you’re thinking about bedtime.  So, it’s important to me to be able to help anybody I can deflate those balloons, maybe.

 

The reason it’s so important is not only do I know how it feels, I also know on the other side, if you’re getting the sleep you need and deserve…because you do deserve a place you can rest, and this is bothering you because you found your way to the show, and some people might want to dismiss that stuff, but it is important, and it’s important to me and the other listeners because we understand how it feels.  So if I can help with that, I know on the other side, because I have a bedtime routine now and some consistency, and that works for me not all the time but most of the time, that when I get the rest I need, my life is more manageable and I don’t…when I have a nice bedtime routine, I don’t dread bedtime.  I look forward to it or I feel neutral about it, at least.

 

I don’t necessarily like having to have a bedtime routine and all that, but it works and when it works, and why I want it to work for you or this podcast to be a part of it or help start to provide that for you…right, because you’re important and your sleep is important.  But if your life is more manageable, your life is better and you can be in a place where you’re moving towards flourishing.  You live in the same world I do; that means our world’s a better place to live in.  People want to dismiss that, but it is factually…I guess you can’t say factually true, right, but it’s both factual and true.  If your life is more manageable and you’re flourishing and living your life, the world we all live in is better, period.  Also you can’t say…and full-stop period doesn’t make sense either, so there we go.

 

I did manage to do a double-double…I did some entendres.  So, where were we?  Okay, so that’s why I make the show.  A few other things to know about the podcast; it does…oh, it doesn’t work for everybody, I told you that.  It’s also a podcast you don’t really listen to.  That’s one of the first hurdles to get over, is this is a show…you kinda listen to it, just like the friend example; if I was to call you and say hey, I’m gonna talk to you but you don’t have to listen to me…I’m here to talk for your benefit, not mine.  I’m here to talk and to barely be heard.  Not many people start a speech out that way or a podcast, even.  But yeah, you can just…you can use me as background noise or as just a friendly voice.  I know a lot of people have done this over the years, like listened to TV or played something.

 

Yeah, I’m just supposed to be a friendly voice in the deep, dark night to keep you company.  Now, if you can’t sleep, the other thing and the other reason the show works, I believe, is I am here to keep you company even though you don’t have to listen to me and you don’t need to listen to me, and a lot of times I’m gonna go off-topic and tell…talk about stuff in a very circular way.  I’m still here to keep you company whether you’re awake or asleep.  So if you can’t sleep or you need a break during the day or something, I’m here and I’m here ‘cause I know how it feels to be lonely and want somebody to keep you company or take your mind off of that feeling.  That’s what I’m here to do, to kinda misdirect things.

 

Believe me, misdirection has more than one meaning in my life and probably…they say where are you going?  Misdirection.  They say, that doesn’t make any sense.  I say, exactly where I’m headed; misdirection.  Oh boy, I never thought about this.  You say Scoots, what would you be if you were…what would your sash say?  I’d say, Miss Direction.  Also, I just realized that there’s actually…if you say it fast, yeah, there’s other things to giggle about in there.  I’m Miss Direction.  Oh boy, are we having a…I didn’t…that wasn’t even planned, but that…my sash would say Miss space Direction, okay?  I don’t even know if the spelling…don’t move the D anywhere, please.  Let’s just say that.  I’m Miss Direction.  So, okay…wow, how did we get here?

 

I’ve always wanted a sash, and then even moreso when I watched The Good Place.  Okay, so…oh, you don’t really listen to me.  This podcast also doesn’t put you to sleep.  I’m here to keep you company while you fall asleep.  That’s why I’m here; I’m here to keep you company as your bore-friend, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-bestie, your bore-bor, your neigh-bore, your bore-bor…I think I said that already.  Whatever it is, I’m here to be your friend in the deep, dark night and take your mind off stuff so you can fall asleep.  That’s what Miss Direction does.  That’s how I won this sash, until 80,000 magicians and film makers and TV show people said…and I said well yeah, you can buy the sash, too.  It’s for sale in my imagination.

 

So if you could put…if you have an account in my…you probably do; you’re probably taking up space in there somewhere.  You could have your own imaginary sash.  All of…everybody can.  You get a sash, you get a sash, you get a sash.  Mine says Misdirection.  No, it does not; it says Miss Direction.  No, it says Miss, longer pause, Direction.  Still doesn’t sound right.  So, I’m here to keep you company, to take your mind off stuff.  The other thing that can throw new people off naturally is the structure of the show.  This podcast is designed in a very deliberate way, to work but also be flexible.  But again, it’s just the way it’s distributed; it’s a podcast.  Yeah, it has some flexibility, but the…it’s structured in a way specifically…specifically.  I think I…I just misdirectioned myself.  Har-har.

 

So, it starts off with a greeting; friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, then I say something silly so hopefully you feel seen, you feel welcome, and you say this is a place I could go check out if I’m…if you’re new, or you feel welcomed back again and again and again if you’re a regular listener.  Both those things are very important to me.  So, that’s why that starts out.  Then it’s also important to me that if you want to listen to the podcast for free on any free podcast app, you have that option.  So, the next thing that happens is sponsorship and listener support so the show could be free, like paying for it is optional.  That’s what the sponsors and the listener support enable us to do.

 

Then there’s support for listeners and support for the communities around the show, because that’s also important in making a sleep podcast, is…that the deep, dark night is pretty…you know what I’m saying.  Then there’s the intro, and the intro…a lot of times if you’re having trouble with the show, people lump the intro and the sponsorships together.  But the intro is actually separate from that, and it’s a show within a show, so it goes from like, minute six or minute eight to minute twenty or so.  It’s where I go on and on and on explaining what the podcast is, which definitely doesn’t make sense to reasonable people, like, if you were listening to something during the day or something, and it definitely is different than maybe what you expected, but the intro is also a wind-down.

 

Now, 2% of people skip it, a few thousand people listen to story-only episodes on Patreon, but for the most part, it helps you wind down.  It’s part of regular listeners’ wind-down routine or getting them ready for bed, or easing you into sleep instead of just expecting this to work fast.  It doesn’t for me and for a lot of listeners.  It’s a slow process, easing you into bedtime.  So, it’s like the twilight portion or if you want to listen during your bedtime routine or whatever.  Then there’s more sponsor and listener support again ‘cause the show is…I want it to be free, come out twice a week, and we have over 450 episodes for free in the archives.  Believe it or not, a lot of work goes into the podcast, not just my work, so it’s like…to make it sound free and easy.

 

I mean, the strange thoughts are…those come for free, all the strange thoughts that pop into my head, but all the work to deliver them is what enables that, but that you could listen for free wherever you want.  Then there’s the story.  Tonight will be our episodically modular story Spice Friends, which you can listen to in any order.  It’ll be a nice little bedtime story about fuzzy friends and stuff like that, and then there’s some thank-yous at the end of the show.  So, that’s the structure of the show, that’s the reason I make the show, and I really hope I can help.  I really appreciate you checking it out, and I really…I yearn and I strive.  I really want to help you fall asleep, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do it for you for free twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, welcome to the final…well, the final episode of the…our series, even though there will be a recap episode.  It’ll be our final episodically modular episode of our series, Spice Friends.  It’s episodically modular with some seriality.  I don’t know what I…if I said it in the wrong order there, but it means that you can listen to it in any order.  Even if this is your first episode, don’t worry; I’m gonna catch you up on everything you need to know, and then you can go back and listen to the rest, fall asleep to them, listen to them during…when you need a break.  Whatever works for you.  You’ll find it.  All will be well.  But so, this is a series you could listen to in any order.  I think we covered that.  It’s about Spice Friends.

 

It happens in a world just like ours, a world…a version of our world that is very similar to ours.  You’ve seen it in popular media, movies, anime, other thing…stuff you read or look at or listen to, where around the time we discovered using things with a half-life for energy and then purposes other than energy, expansion, we’ll say, or influence that these giant beings, some cold-blooded, some warm-blooded appeared, and started wandering the earth, right, and biting neon signs, stepping on cars.  If they had tails, usually their tails would run into a dam or two.  Possibly sometimes they’d be sleeping inside mountains.  Some would have high-powered wings, then people would say how do we cope?  How do we deal with these giant beings?

 

Sometimes they would deal with one another; a whole…you know, whole nine yards.  Some were heroic, some weren’t, but usually chaos followed.  I don’t know if it was Ian Malcolm’s brand of chaos, but it was…it could…when you got a giant being…even if they’re…they have the best intentions, they don’t have eyes on their toenails that I know of to see everything they’re gonna step on, you know?  So even a [inaudible] or paramecium might be like, what’s going on up there?  I’m trying to subdivide and there’s a lot of ruckus up there.  So, speaking from single organisms I learned about and then forgot everything I learned, I don’t know if it’s mitosis or me…I say oh, meiosis, if I was doing an intro, but I’m doing an episode now.  So, they were wandering the world, right?  Of course we tried to do different things.

 

Just like in the movies, they say okay, let’s get lasers, electric lasers, Tesla coils, other stuff, conventional stuff.  Nothing worked.  They would go and they would come, and eventually we realized oh, it’s tied to this stuff with a half-life, particularly when we use it in a strong manner.  So, they put all this…they put…eventually they put all this stuff on a island to try to attract the Big Ones there, then they still came back, particularly this big…really Big One called the Grandiller, the most famous Big One of all.  Eventually the president at the time and his daughter who was vice president, the Smiths, President Smith and Vice President Smith, President Smith dealt with the Big One by turning into a Big One, and everybody thought wow, what a tough, heroic choice.

 

But it turned out it was only a miss…it was only to get the Grandiller and all the Big Ones back on this atoll because there had been a secret…some sort of secret pact made with another world, Planet Zipper, and Planet Zipper’s a world of collective beings or a collective being, but it does bud off from time to time, and it’s not…it’s a collective being; doesn’t mean it’s in harmony at all moments.  But they knew about…they had experienced the Big Ones because they were the last collective being planet left of their kind.  All the other ones had been done in by the Big Ones, been big farmed.  So, they wanted to help.  They said we could…they…if you get the Big Ones all in one place, we’ll put the whole Earth in hibernation.

 

You send some astronauts to our planet and then we’ll work on a longer-term solution while everybody’s in hibernation.  Our story ended right after…not that long after the hibernation ended.  Now, because the Big Ones were so much bigger, their metabolism was different.  They were gonna be the last ones to wake up.  By this time, world…the organization of world leadership had changed.  So, we were all living in…under something called the CN, Collective Nations, I think.  Vice President Smith, now, she had become President of the World, of the Collective Nations while there was…but there was still…just like in all Sleep With Me stories, there’s other ways of…forms of leadership other than the main…the one that we’re talking about.  She was waiting for the astronauts to return.

 

Only one astronaut returned, and she was expecting some sort of device, some sort of tangible measure to take against the Big Ones when they woke up.  What the astronaut said is that well, here’s what I got; the joys…if we teach…they had already sent the plans, which they’d kinda followed through is, which is establishing a network of children’s toys and programming that was empowering.  But they also said that they…I don’t know if they thought…they just thought okay, we’ll follow this.  It also came with funding, I think.  But the astronaut said yeah, that was the starting point of the solution, which is expressing our feelings, particularly teaching children, but even adults, expressing our feelings through the joy of song and…through song and dance, whether you’re feeling joy or not joy.

 

You can dance and express yourself physically through song about mirth or whatever.  I’m not sure if mirth’s just something…my middle name is Mirth.  You could call me Mr. Mirth.  I’m not 100% sure what it means, but I know how it feels.  I don’t even need a definition.  I would say if you’re listening to a dirge, you’re feeling…dirge mirth.  Somebody remind me; that’s my new code name, Dirge Mirth.  Mirth Dirge.  I don’t know, Mirth Dirge isn’t bad though, either.  So, okay, DJ Dirge…DJ Mirth…DJ Dirge Mirth, there you go.  Okay, so, of course the president said what do you mean, that’s the solution?  The astronaut said that’s all I know.  Now, the astronaut did not mention initially all the chaos that was going on on Planet Zipper or the fact that they were pretty…they were…I would say they were really into Earth.

 

They loved observing Earth, they…somehow they were projecting their feelings onto Earth, and they kinda needed Earth.  Somehow, it was some sort of balance.  I wouldn’t say it was a good balance, a healthy balance, but somehow they were dealing with their feelings as a collective being, which is much more powerful than ours as a single being or whatever.  So, the…but this was interesting; eventually what they realized…I can’t fill you in on everything, but they realized oh, wait a second, it’s not the stuff with half-life; it’s the knowledge that these offensive half-life things exist and our feelings about that that are deep inside us that are making these Big Ones run around.  Maybe each of these Big Ones is a different kind of feeling.

 

Then we discovered that we could…that there was other beings out there or that would appear that had more positive feelings.  They had launched this thing called the Spice Friends, so these feelings would appear…like, instead of a Big, Hairy Ape or Fur Fish Face or whatever, these beings were more giant-spice-beings-big; Cinnamon Stick or the Cumin Cuties.  So yeah, they…what was my point there?  I don’t know.  Oh, so they would…at first we thought obviously…even I was like okay, so they’ll just have dance-offs and Cinnamon Stick will deal with Moth Breath and all will be well, or Garlic Stalk or whatever.  We’ll deal with this person.  But it didn’t really work out that way.  Sometimes they fused into a new being and sometimes they…it was like, very confusing, I guess just like feelings are.

 

At the same time, everybody in…on Earth, we want solutions now.  I don’t know if you could relate to that, but I can.  So, they decided the president couldn’t lead anymore, then Zipper tried to run the show.  At first, humans were fine to go along with that, but it ended up it repressed our feelings too much, so then people got some resentments at Planet Zipper because they said I don’t want to repress my feelings for another planet of beings I don’t even know.  So, that didn’t work.  So then Zipper said you know what?  We’re just gonna put Earth in permanent hibernation with some breaks, because they were the last planet and they said these Big Ones are still coming up and people are…on our planet are…I don’t know how they refer to them.  Again, I haven’t been to Planet Zipper.

 

It’s only a tertiary…unfortunately, sorry Planet Zipper; you’re only a tertiary part of this story, if I’m using the word correctly.  So they said, that’s what we’re gonna do because it’s the only way we know we can guarantee…we’ll have the Big Ones running around Earth, Earth…but then we’ll put you to sleep, then you’ll wake back up, then we’ll give you some time to kinda get to know one another with hugs and kisses, so there’s more people, and then we’ll put you back in hibernation.  Of course Earth was like, no way; I like…well, hibernation sounds great on paper.  I got stuff to do and a life…I don’t want to live my life sleeping in hibernation, especially at the behest of a outside world.  I mean, I guess…yeah, if it’s proposed like that, 9 out of 10 people are gonna say no way, right?

 

You say, maybe if it was your…someone you had a crush on or something.  You say okay, I’ll think about it, but you say wait, you’re another world of a collective being I’ve never even met?  Just human nature.  Then we said okay, what…we’re gonna have to take measures against Zipper.  We tried doing an Olympic-style event where it’s the Spice Friends versus the Big Ones.  That didn’t work.  We tried getting different stuff, and then finally Zipper’s like, we’re just gonna do this.  Then Earth, we figured out a few ways that we could deal with Zipper.  We were at this big standoff where it was like, this is where…we wanted to…we weren’t even actually trying…if you already listened to the last episode, but I’ll tell you.  We weren’t negotiating in good faith; neither were they.

 

We were only negotiating to get what we wanted, and they were only negotiating…so we couldn’t build consensus ‘cause we were too…our…understandably, everybody’s instinctual needs were getting in the way.  What happened was President Smith figured…then…oh, then Grandiller…I think that was at the end of the episode, maybe.  But so, Planet…there was one other…all the Big Ones and the Spice Friends were together.  They seemed agitated but not chaotic.  We’re out on this plane, trying to figure out a solution.  A lot of times, the last few episodes of Sleep With Me happen on giant planes.  Not airplanes, but planes like…like the great Salton Sea is where I’d imagine this one’s happening, though I’ve never been there, so…just from what I’ve seen in movies that I barely remember.

 

So, we were working on this solution.  President Smith had a device her father left behind.  She thought it was gonna be a super serum and she was gonna turn into a Big One.  Turns out it was not a super serum.  Then the astronaut, Astro, was like, I’ll turn into a Big One and go to Zipper somehow.  But it ended up the device was just a beacon which called the Grandiller out of things, and that’s kinda where we’re left off.  So, we’ve got all these Big Ones and Spice Friends, a giant Grandiller, but bigger than before, covered in clouds and mist.  So, we didn’t have a good look at it, but it’s giant.  It’s also appearing on Planet Zipper.  So, we’re all kinda stuck because we’re like okay, what do we do here, right?  What is the way forward?

 

In this story, I mean, it’s…I don’t know how…why it worked out this way, but every step forward really…each episode has involved ten steps back.  But it’s all working out tonight because I can…I could tell you all will be well; don’t worry.  So, without further ado, our Hollywood announcer’s here, mister…to set everything up, mister…he drove here.  I got to spend some time with him briefly in an imaginary place called La La Land; Los Angeles, California.  We virtually hung with…in my mind, Mr. Antonio Banderas.  The ladies, the gentlemen, the boys, the girls, the friends beyond the binary, it’s time for the Spice Friends.  It’s spicy, yeah.  Yes, Scooter; Scooter came to Los Angeles and I gave him a Tyvek suit, a hairnet, booties, gloves that were silent with felt, silent felt gloves, and I said…I left him in my driveway and I said could you please put these on?

 

He refused.  It’s typical of Scooter.  He said one day I’ll see you again.  Well, he said he refused, but I know he was just…I said come over for coffee.  He said well, I’m having trouble planning it out, I’m afraid.  Antonio…so, he’s a difficult man to get together with, but I had hoped I would see him in my home in a Tyvek suit.  It wasn’t Ty…I like Tyvek suits.  But he is the Tyvek to my suit, so thank you for having me once again for another season of the show.  Goodnight.  Thanks, Antonio.  Yeah, what happened was…very generous…yeah, once again, I just…yeah, F-E-A-R, it’s my middle name.  I said I don’t know, what am I gonna talk to Antonio about?  What if he smiles?  How am I gonna look in his eyes and what if he’s really as nice as he seems?  What if he sees right through me to my soul and he says it’s too…your soul is too spicy?  It was just…I mean, those thoughts actually…and it’s bubbled to the surface; I had to follow Spice Friends protocol and dance it out.  But yeah, I was nervous.  But yeah, this is Spice Friends and yeah, welcome back, everybody.

 

Alright Astro, this is Madam President and yeah, we have…let’s see, I guess I’ll just update you on what’s happened.  So, the Grandiller appeared and that was what we somehow…I guess lost track of is probably the wrong way to describe it, but we weren’t as aware as we should have been that the Grandiller was appearing.  Also another thing we kind of were paying less attention to…I mean, again, we were aware of it but we were focused on a lot of other things is the lesser Spice Friends that we had kind of…that had appeared, that had not grown as big as some of the other ones, which is interesting; Salt and Pepper, I guess ‘cause they just hadn’t had a big…I don’t know.  We had done a few segments about them and other Spice Friends that were just not the mainstays of the show.

 

They were out there, some of them we didn’t even know about or some of them we had pitched and…but they had appeared in the world and we had stopped tracking…we had just shifted all of our focus on…gone from taking a step back to being in the middle of everything.  Looking back, I don’t think we could have done it any other way, but what happened was…so, the Grandiller is appearing in both worlds somehow and causing grand not-goodness.  We still haven’t even got a good look at what’s going on.  It’s not pleasant, I guess.  So, the Grandiller, as we had kinda seen other behavior, but in a different way, made the lesser Spice Friends…used the lesser Spice Friends as spice and spice on a meal that was a meal of itself and has grown even more in power.

 

It’s not good because there’s…and unfortunately the Grandiller seems to be…we have a little bit of time, but I feel bad for the lesser Spice Friends ‘cause they’re kinda running around Planet Earth, and apparently something else is happening on Zipper.  I think it’s the budding-off effect of the collective being that is Planet Zipper…is being…the individualized versions of that collective being that budded off, which again…now Astro’s saying well, maybe that’s what the Spice Friends and the Big Ones are, too.  But those raw emotion…emotional beings or whatever are being chased around on Zipper.  Of course, that causes chaos for other things…like, a lot of chaos on Earth that is unacceptable.  So, it’s not going good.

 

Now, we do have a plan, because we’re deducing on both planets that…with this new theory, somewhat; for Planet Zipper moreso is that maybe the budding-off Zipparians…and then here on Earth, the Big Ones and the Spice Friends…because they see what’s happening, they sense what’s happening.  It’s like Grandiller is all of…there’s a palpable energy here on Earth and in our communications with Zipper that it’s like these…those…so, if we…so, let’s see, where was I?  I got…so, the palpable energy, it’s like these base-level feelings.  Not chaos, but you know what I mean, and that Zipper’s…or that the Iller’s just raw…or, well, it’s not raw, though.  Well, it has raw energy, but it’s getting more.  We’re trying to find a way…well, I’ll let Astro explain because Astro’s gonna go through everything.

 

Astro’s in…along with team…so many teams of Earth.  We’ve really been working together as a planet and with Zipper.  So, on Zipper we look a little bit different, but we’re not there; but what we’re imagining is that the budded-off Zipparians that are kind of individual…I haven’t been there, so it’s so hard for me to understand.  Astro doesn’t have a lot of visual…I don’t know.  But so, that they’ll do the helping on Zipper, but that the Spice Friends together…I mean, ‘cause really, we’re in a sink-or-swim situation for everybody; Spice Friends, Big Ones, Earth, and Zipper versus Iller, Grandiller.  So, our goal is to work together and to get through this, and I think we can.

 

We’re gonna do some planning, and I don’t want to…so, I’m looking forward to seeing the planning and the training, and I know all’s gonna be well, so I just…I think…and I think this is the way.  We’re working together and we’re trying to work together where…and we need one another, I guess at this point.  Before that, maybe we…that was what was holding us back.  But at this point it’s sink or swim.  So, a lot of stuff has been put to the side and a lot of creative people and a creative, collective being, and budded-off individual beings from a collective being, ‘cause we only got…they have one Zipper; we got one Earth at this point, so we’ll be back, or I’ll be…yeah, Astro maybe will fill in on what the training is and everything.  Okay, this is Astro here, Madam President and whoever else is listening.

 

Wow; so, we had thought…so, the lesser Big Ones and some of the Zipparians served as…to buy us time, and we worked with the Big Ones and the Spice Friends.  Here on Earth, I guess I can’t communicate as clearly of what was going on on Zipper, but we…there’s one change that I’ll get to, but that was only after…but so, we thought we could do this kinda Home Alone-type situation, from that famous film Home Alone.  So, we had every planner on Earth and then every trainer, and we started working with the Big Ones and the Spice Friends through song and dance and working with Zipper to try to train them, to say okay, when Iller comes, we’ll use Home Alone-type tactics.  You’ll be the weenie to invite Iller in, and we’ll even use illusion so that the Iller might go to the wrong place.

 

We’ll spread you out, but then…a lot of different tactics.  Brilliant, brilliant minds working on this…and different things Iller wouldn’t expect, ‘cause we don’t think Iller’s some sort of all-knowing being, though Iller has quite proven that…is quite capable in many, many different situations.  So, we did a lot of prep besides the Big Ones and the Spice Friends, but they didn’t just…they just don’t seem to be…they’ve…I guess to put it simply, they seem to have rejected all of our planning, and now we’re working with communications experts, everybody that’s observed them, everybody on the planet that has an idea, and the one idea that came out of it, which was with Zipper, was…that I mentioned is trying something new, again, to get more time and more time for Planet Zipper.

 

So, this is interesting ‘cause we had that cloud of delusion idea, right, and…that we were gonna use to deal with Zipper.  Somewhere between…we didn’t even realize this, but we said what about these…Zipper brought it up; they said what if we project our feelings and even send some of the budding-off ones to the individual…to one of our former planets, which is actually between Zipper and Earth, which is actually along the line of their device that we were gonna use to create this delusion belt or interference belt between Zipper and us?  They said, what if we…what just happens if we send Zipparians there, or former…I don’t know, individual ones there and project the entire feelings of their planet there?  Because that’s gonna be more powerful.

 

It seems to have confused Iller, and they said that Iller on Planet Zipper is also trying to figure out how to get there.  I guess wherever…however trans…space stuff works for them is different.  They’re different beings with different technology, again, that we don’t understand.  Even this system they’ve put in place, built out, it’s not just as simple as some sort of beacon amplifier.  So, they’re working on that, and what’s happened for us is that…what we’ve learned is we made a big mistake.  We’ve been focused on getting the Big Ones and the Spice Friends to do what we…solve the problem.  So, this…we went through this whole thing, and the president…Madam President was just brilliant with all of this.  She won’t take credit, probably.

 

But what happened was that we…what we found is that through a bunch of experiments and trying things and communicating and talking and observing and just spending time close to every…all the Big Ones and Spice Friends, it finally dawned on us…well, it finally dawned on us that one, all along during this, since I’ve returned and since we’ve been actively dealing with the Big Ones and the Spice Friends, every single time, things have worked out, even when we didn’t think they were gonna work out.  The thing that took us the furthest from the solution or getting to what we needed…that it was, one, process-based.  We keep going over that again and again and again, making the same mistake, that we always ended up where we needed to be, and that we spend way too much time trying to fix stuff and force solutions and find a permanent fix, and control, control, control.

 

A lot of that is just the way we’re used to doing stuff, right?  Even the president, as brilliant as she is, it’s…we realized we had to zoom back, especially once Zipper came up with their idea of projecting onto this other planet…it was like, their activity of zooming out…and then, I don’t know if the president…we’ll share about this, but I will give her space.  There was one other thing that happened that caused a zoom-out.  But the idea of training the Big Ones and using human ingenuity combined with the power of the Big Ones and the Spice Friends to stop Zipper or…yeah, to…well, so, then we thought okay, we’ll do it with human ingenuity and Zipparian ingenuity.

 

We haven’t figured out a way, again, but it’s like okay, well, the Spice Friends and the Big Ones aren’t gonna do anything maybe, but maybe we could still find a way to get…’cause Zipper really thinks that their version of Iller’s being enticed to go to this other planet maybe fully, but that Earth, we’re just different; our…we got gravity and stuff like that.  So, if they really do get their part of Zip…Iller onto this other planet, what if then we use the cloud of delusion, once we get our Iller…if we can get our Iller onto the planet…we don’t know how…that’s the part we don’t know how we’re gonna do, but it’s a process.  We say wait a second, that might just work.  If it doesn’t work, if it…if they can get their Iller on there, maybe it’ll just work for them.  I don’t know, and then maybe it’ll affect here.

 

Zipper, I guess, is willing to accept that they’ll never…they’ll be cut off, more or less, from Earth forever, but that their planet will move on, move on from Earth and move on without having to deal with the Big Ones anymore, maybe.  We don’t quite see how it’s gonna work out, but we trust we’re heading that way.  So, I’m gonna turn it over to Madam President.  Oh, thanks, Astro.  I guess I just listened to your thing and I’m just gonna record.  There hasn’t been much time.  But yeah, what happened was as Iller got closer to where we are, and…a few things have happened that Astro didn’t make clear.  One, it became clear that whatever had happened as my father had become a Big One, that Iller had…Iller was taking on…take…took on characteristics of my father.

 

At first, initially it was very difficult for me…physical characteristics.  But I guess I’d get…gotten some of the tools over this process…that I felt those feelings; is this my father?  Is this partially my father?  Is my father a part of Iller?  I grounded myself and felt my feelings and expressed my feelings, and I realized…well also, I got…and I got a clear confirmation, but I was already there, that no, this is something else entirely.  If it is my father, something will become clear, but we still have to deal with this.  Then it ended up that that was…that was just a shell, because some of our ingenuity actually did work, and the shell that was around Iller that was causing the clouds and the mist…and that kinda had my father’s charisma, broke apart, and now is Iller again.

 

It was like a…you know, like some sort of hard shell you’d see on a…you’d find in a summer field that a being left behind as it moved on or molted.  So, my father isn’t there, and I said okay, so that was just something else.  I think that was part of it for me and for us and Zipper and the same thing, was taking a step back.  Then we realized that the Big Ones and the Spice Friends didn’t…one, they don’t want to go toe-to-toe with Iller, but not out of F-E-A-R, but other reasons, and that they want our help.  They don’t want us to fix things or to tell…control them or to set up the solution.  This actually…once we realized and let go, everything just became clear.  All of our communication blocks with the Big Ones and the Spice Friends, they started dancing and expressing themselves, and they probably already were, but we were unaware of it, or they were trying.

 

But it’s like when you’re trying to talk to someone that’s not listening.  How does that influence your communication, right?  That it just…you’re not communicating clearly; it’s not working.  We were kinda operating from what we needed them to do for us, right, instead of what we could do for them.  What happened was…and it really was…I daresay a miracle; as soon as…again, we started letting go and surrendering, again, to the process, we realized that we didn’t have…we just had to listen and then figure out from there how we could help.  It was…again, it’s hard for me to…I guess I’m very happy even though we’re not there yet.

 

They want a home of their own, and they don’t…they want Iller to be…they don’t see the Grandiller as something, again, just like the other thing; there’s a difference between the Big Ones and the Spice Friends and the Grandiller in their appearance, in their behavior, and maybe what raw…what feelings or whatever, what vibe…whatever…what they are, how they’re express…I don’t know.  There’s things beyond our understanding about them.  But to put it simply and risking being inaccurate, what if Iller is all these base feelings, and then the Spice Friends are warmth and joy, and some of the Big Ones are frowny face or other things like different feelings?  Iller comes…was the first…now we think Iller was the first Big One, because it came from those strong, strong, strong feelings.

 

Even Iller’s behavior now reflects playing those feelings out, and that that was also happening on another planet, to say well, if you’re gonna break all your toys, I’ll just break them for you.  Once you know you’re capable of doing it, something like that.  I don’t know.  This is, again, simplifying things just to explain them.  So, we almost have…we almost have everything.  We’re just dancing and figuring out a few more things.  I guess I’ll be back, because I think we’re going to get there.  I mean, I…yeah, and I’m sure Astro, you’ll know more soon.  Alright Madam President, yeah, it’s me.  I’m back, I’m excited, and yeah, we’re implementing things and the Big Ones understand.

 

Again, I guess I’m not 100%, but I am like, 70% that this is gonna work out, or maybe 60% if I’m honest with myself, or 58, 50, because it’s…now it is…so, it worked on Zipper, that…now Zipper is back to being a single collective being and all the individuals…individual versions of Zipparians that had decided to bud off are on this new planet.  Their version…100%, they suspect, is on this planet.  We’re calling it Big Spice, the planet.  That’s what we’ve been calling it, Big…so, they’re all on Big Spice, and Zipper has already started manufacturing this cloud of delusion and separating itself.  Then eventually when we get our part…so, they’ll be safe no matter what.

 

They’ll be separated now from that planet, but that the cloud of delusion will eventually envelope Big Spice and then eventually separate Earth from Big Spice, like a big asteroid belt or a big block.  We could go around it or they could…they can’t…I guess they need line of sight to keep an eye on us, but I don’t know.  I don’t…some of this technology stuff is beyond me.  But there’s still one piece missing, ‘cause even Iller has calmed down, ‘cause the Big Ones have dealt with…danced…once Iller got close and the Big Ones and the Spice Friends have been continuing to dance, there’s just one piece we’re not understanding.  But I think we’re gonna understand it soon, ‘cause Long Feather left the planet, and then they’ve been testing the…some of the other flying…the combination Moth Breath and…has been trying to lift Iller.

 

There’s some other…there’s other stuff happening, so it’s like…that they want to go, but there’s still something missing.  They’re waiting and we can’t quite get our fingers on it.  It’s like they’re pleading for us to understand them.  The president said okay, we gotta…we keep…gotta…we keep…have to put ourselves in their shoes even though we’re different and we don’t even totally understand them.  Don’t try to fix, don’t try to solve; just try and understand.  We came up with this idea…it was actually partially my idea of dancing from that perspective and singing and doing art from that perspective, of…we’re totally out of control.  Things are out of our control and we’re trying to figure out what we’re gonna do.  It seems like…and then we saw from the Big Ones, once we started doing that, they would do something like that, and then they would pause.

 

Then we would pause, and that was…seemed to be soothing Iller, these expressions and then pauses, and then pausing.  So, I…well, talking about it now, I’m more confident, Madam President, that we’ll find this final piece of what we’re gonna do.  Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.  I just…yeah.  Well, Astro, well, I guess, yeah, to go back to Iller, my father and Iller kinda being this…you know, the foggy feelings, things we try to forget, things we try to fix with S-H-A-M-E, things we push away or say I…repulse or unacceptable, that we deny a home to, was where things really shifted, where we really understood all the…all of them need a home.  We cannot deny a home to them, but we still only understood one part of it, right?  Oh, get…put them all on another planet.

 

But it was also…then it was like, led us to our refusal to…there was just something missing in there, and it was like oh, wait a second, that…when we do that, not with ourselves, it kind of creates this cycle where everything’s feeding on itself, right?  When you get caught in that, it keeps sustaining.  It’s like chasing its own tail.  Maybe it was something about Long Feather returning, and it was clear from observations that Long Feather had gone to the planet and deemed it acceptable, except for one thing that was missing, and that was that; it was…so, we got the process.  We knew they needed a home where…a home for everyone.  We can’t deny anyone a home, a home for their feelings, and that’s when we realized wait a second, okay, we’re looking at all this…now, we don’t know anything about Zipper.

 

Is Zipper a part of us or not?  But the Big Ones, the Spice Friends, and Iller are.  Maybe they…the theory is now that they’re part of us and they’re part of Zipper, and that our energies combined to create them, budded-off, powerful collective energy, and then our feelings that we haven’t fully expressed.  Somehow, those two…again, just…this is a theory.  We don’t know.  But so, the way things look now is much, much different.  So, the Big Ones have a home, Big Spice.  Their home will soon be surrounded in a cloud of delusion that separates us from them and separates us from Zipper, but mostly separates us from traveling, or Zipper…to keep Zipper temptations from coming back to Earth.  So, the planet is in-between us and the cloud of delusion is in-between us.

 

The beings, the residents of Big Spice now will live there, but the missing piece was the emotional energy from both our worlds, right?  That is where we came up with this idea…of course a child came up with the idea.  It was so simple and absolutely correct.  When we were talking and making it clear that we had…that they were gonna go live off-world…but we couldn’t figure out why they weren’t ready.  Or again, we fell into the fixing thing, what we could do to make them go.  It was a child that said pen pals, but said it in a way…well, am I gonna be able to send a letter to Cinnamon Spice?  Because I love Cinnamon Spice.  Then another child said well, I want to send a letter to Long Feather ‘cause I’m gonna miss petting Long Feather’s tail and I haven’t even got a chance to pet Long Feather.

 

That’s where it came together, that both our worlds could express our feelings in letters, or whatever that means, but it had to be a letter with emotional substance to it.  The rules we’ve kind of come up with on Earth are that…and again, this is gonna be an informed practice, and…but is…they could be about anything, about anything you’re feeling or thinking, and you can send it to any one of the Spice Friends or the Big Ones.  The residents of Big Spice, even Grandiller, needs a home and can be fed by our feelings, by expressing our feelings or our thoughts, you know?  So, it’s really that simple.

 

The device that Zipper had is actually the final piece, because we can run things straight into the cloud of delusion via that device, and leave them there not that far from the planet, where Long Feather or some of the other beings can go get them.  We tried this out to see Long…if Long Feather left and then came back.  Then they…with one of the snacks, so they all snacked on some of the letters.  Then Zipper tried it.  So, it run…we send these letters now along this thing, and drone ships that Zipper taught us how to make.  It’s not that complicated at all.  Some of it is…it’s their food, really, or whatever sustains them or partially sustains them.  But it’s be kind…and it’s like, they’re there on their planet and we see…we’ve seen them dancing.

 

Once we figured all this out, they were expressing themselves with joy and dance that we were helping them, and they were going to be…it’s not like they…our feelings helped them; it sustains them.  Like, our…expressing our feelings and letting them go is now essential to everything, right?  Because this is a process.  It isn’t…and I mean, that’s what’s just amazing, is by letting…feeling our feelings…and that’s not just…it’s not that simple.  I realize it, but this is part of a process here on Earth and on Zipper now, that taking our strong feelings and moving them or letting them move through us and then taking some time…because not only do people send letters; they send art, they send messages, they send everything they’ve created, because they’re having feelings about being a human or a Zipparian.

 

I can tell you what; every day here on Earth, life has gotten a little bit better through this process.  Every day has had a…every day I have my feelings.  I’m not president anymore.  I’m trying to be a partner in a partnership now and start a new life away from the limelight.  Each day, I get to take part in something.  I get to take action that nourishes someone else and that’s outside of me, and that takes my feelings outside of me.  It’s pretty good, and now I know most of the time when I’m doing this, that all will be well.  So, from your president and Astro, goodnight.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(Transcribed by Leah Hervoly)