If you are going to be hard headed about it

If you come here often, even after a long layoff by your ordinarily long-winded author, then more than likely you are seriously looking for the beastie.  You suspect I know something about the fellow, even though I've never seen him.

In truth, I don't know the first thing about Mr. Beastie -- and I think we can pretty much agree nobody does, and that goes for whatever particular beastie you care to put in the role of Mr. Beastie.

I have been telling you to stop looking for the beastie for this reason -- we have no real idea what we are getting into.

During my layoff, I wondered why I should continue blogging about these matters.  It seemed as if I'd put into print most of my thoughts, and if I'm not going to go out searching anymore, there's little that's new or original that I can add now.

Maybe there's one thing -- since you won't stop looking for the beastie, maybe I can advise you about how to protect yourself from the most obvious pitfalls -- chasms that at any rate I can see clearly but maybe they aren't so easy for you to see, because we are all looking in different places.

So here are a couple bits of advice I think could be useful.

1. Remember that you don't know the first thing about how the world really works.  You may have beliefs -- most of us do -- but to really do this job right, you have to put those aside.  You don't even know whether the world you see this morning is in fact the one you left when you went to sleep last night. (Have a look at Consistent Histories if you don't believe me.)  We get enough Fortean evidence that the world we live in is bizarre that we should carry with us supreme doubts about our ability to suss out the reality of it all.  The only thing we can really be sure of is that the world is weird.

2.  You can't control the beastie or whether or not he's going to appear when you go looking, but you can control your own thoughts.  One of the most common side effects of beastie interaction is extreme fear -- you need to know that it's going to happen and prepare yourself to, as much as you can, ignore it.  What is being exposed here is the extent of our own psychological limits -- we are all xenophobes of the highest (lowest?) order.  A fox crosses the road, and we say, "Ooo, a fox, how awesome!"  A monkey-man crosses the road and we go slack-kneed with terror, even though said monkey-man might be about as interested in us as the fox was -- which is not at all, except to see how fast he can get away from us.

If we were familiar with bigfoot, say, seeing one would probably provoke a reaction similar to seeing a large bear.  Yeah, fear is part of the reaction, but not mind-numbing fear.  Add to this the factor that it's possible bigfoot is as intelligent as you are and probably not interested in eating you or rending you limb from limb, and the fear quotient might drop even further.

The guys in the silvery craft zipping around and hovering over your back-yard are, maybe, out doing a job.  The ghost that taps your shoulder just might be a rather dull old fellow who you wouldn't think twice to ignore and pass by, after exchanging the barest of pleasantries, had he been living.

Or every one of these might be, and indeed probably are an intersection between your own consciousness and the strange way the universe parses out and processes information.

Or, hey, they could be demons from Hell.

The point is -- your preconceptions about them will get in the way of your noticing the very things that might help us to determine what they really are.  Don't believe that you know anything about them, and don't let the fact that they are enigma's scare you beyond reason.

Of course, there will be fear.  They are beasties after all.

If I were you, I'd avoid them.  But if you are going to be hard headed about it, at least come back with some useful information.  You'll go a long way toward doing that if you heed these two bits of advice.