Looking for a book

American Elves: An Encyclopedia of Little People from the Lore of 380 Ethnic Groups of the Western Hemisphere

It is out of print and I would love to get a copy at a reasonable price.  If anyone has a copy they no longer want we could work out a fair price. :-)

The Last Dream Post

I am not positive that dreams fit in Machine Elf, but I thought I should explain that last post a bit.

In the the past 2 years I have lost both my sisters and my beloved 18 year old cat.  

Somewhere in my subconscious I somewhat blame myself for my sister Becky and my cat's death. 

My cat is easy, although she lived a good long life, I was her caretaker and therefore I can't help but feel (even though I know consciously it isn't true) that I didn't care for her well enough. When I am not in that in between state I can easily tell myself that she lived 18 years, so I can't be that bad of a caretaker.  She was old and died of natural causes for goodness sake!

My sister is slightly more complicated, but basically I feel that I should have realized how sick she was and somehow forced her to see a doctor.  Consciously I know that my sister knew how sick she was and that if she didn't see a doctor she would likely die and for whatever reason decided she would rather die.  I had no real way of knowing that because I didn't see her or know she had been swollen up with congestive heart failure and when I talked to her on the phone she merely said she wasn't feeling well because of a "bug" going around at the school she worked at.   I feel there were things I should have picked up on, like when I told her that I would love to drive down to Belen and see her new place and she put me off.  Still consciously I know that it was her fault and not mine.

That doesn't stop those sleeping/waking dreams that tell me it is entirely my fault.

Also, I think the fact that Becky seemed to want to die bothers me.  Maybe she didn't really want to die and honestly thought she could heal herself of her heart problems with cigarettes and alchohol.  I don't know what she thought.  Maybe my sister Debi's death had destroyed her far more than she let on.  After all, they were only a year apart in age and grew up together, I didn't come until 14 years after her.  I tried talking to her about Debi and got nil.  She didn't seem that upset.  Then again, I am normally good at hiding such things too.

So anyhow, all these little thoughts in the back of my mind sometimes haunt me when I can't fall into a deep sleep and turn into these weird sleeping/waking dreams.  All the things I think I should have realized and done something about.  Even though I know they aren't accurate they can totally fuck with me from time to time.

I think this is my last post about dreams here.  I am not sure it fits and honestly 99% of the time I don't even remember my dreams.   

Is there a name for this?

Sometimes if I wake up in the middle of my sleep cycle I can't fully fall back to sleep.  During this time I have what are kind of like dreams, but not entirely.  They are hard to explain, they are dreams, but they are also my thoughts -- whatever is bothering me at the time.  Mostly nightmares, but very different from nightmares or dreams in the REM state.

Whatever they are called -- I hate the damn things.  They are never of anything good and yesterday they forced me to actually get up before I had enough sleep.   

It is almost like they pick out your worries and then turn them into a worst case scenario.  Now during this you are not totally asleep and for the most part know it isn't real, but it effects you just the same.  It is like conscious thought mixed with dreaming. 

At this moment I am still frightened about sleeping again.  I have no choice but to sleep.  Damn waking/sleeping dreams! 

Pooka and Fairy Magic?

   

    A few years ago we had a strange experience with coincidence or synchronicity.  Maybe even a doppelganger
    We have a dog, named Pooka.  In a way named after the Irish fairy, but more so to pay homage to one of our favorite movies - Harvey.  We couldn’t name her Harvey because she is a girl, so we named her Pooka.
    Anyhow, we had Pooka with us at Starbucks out on the patio.  Along came a lady who started in about how her daughter has a dog that looks exactly like that.  She was amazed by how much they look alike and that their personalities seem very similar too.  She asks what our dog’s name is, we tell her Pooka.  
    Suddenly it is like all the color drained from her face and she looked very confused.  Did you say Pooka, she asked?  Yes.  She informed us that it was the same name her daughters dog had.  
    We thought that alone was an amazing coincidence.    
    She then went on to explain that he daughter had named it such because she loved the movie Harvey and it was a girl so she couldn’t name it Harvey.
    You are not going to believe this we told her, but that is exactly the same reason we named this one Pooka.
    Don’t tell me you found her out on route 66 and she gives a time frame of around the time Pooka adopted us.
    We explain we didn‘t find her on route 66, but we live just off route 66 and were pretty sure someone had dumped her there and she then found her way up to our house.  
    We decide that our Pooka and her daughter’s Pooka are probably sisters from a litter someone dumped off on 66.  One of my neighbors also has a dog that looks exactly like Pooka, though to my knowledge it’s name isn’t Pooka.  I would ask if I ever get a chance, it would be really strange if it were a boy named Harvey.
    By this time the lady actually looks kind of scared by the whole thing.  She makes her excuses and gets the hell out of there.
    Britton and I decided that it must be some sort of fairy magic at work.  


    According to most online sites, Pook means nature spirit.  
    Robert Anton Wilson had a bit of a different twist on the meaning -

    All over northern Europe traditional art shows the fairy-people and sorcerers surrounded by mushrooms, usually the “liberty cap” mushroom, now identified as psilocybin, the same used by Native American shamans for around 4000 years.  The Irish Gaelic name for this fabulous fungus, Pooken, means little god. (“Little fairy” in modern Gaelic, but Pook derives ultimately from bog, the Indo-European root for god.)

    I don’t claim to know the meaning of the Pooka synchronicity, nor for certain that it is fairy magic, but it seemed like a good story to share here.

Paranormal Dwarves

A great article by Scott Corrales, Paranormal Dwarves. 

Scott tells about Latin American elf/fairy like creatures that sound very much like European fairy creatures.  

I am sure there are tales of such creatures from every part of the world.