Bushwhacker!

I once shot a man for snoring too loud—actually, I don’t know if the sumbitch snored or not. After we got through killing him, he wasn’t doing much of anything except lying on the ground with an old sack tied around his face, twitching spasmodically while a snuffle of blood leaked from his nose.

The stars that night, according to The Major, were in alignment. I suppose the blood dripped down from the stars to water the earth. Or maybe they call that starlight. At any rate, we took the sumbitch out—dirty Yankee spy—and tied him up to a fence post.

We didn’t have no damn drum roll. The Major may have said something along the lines of:

“For your treasonous and seditious actions—of a cowardly, lily-livered, yellow-bellied, snake-in-the-grass Yankee polecat—I hereby sentence you to die. Do you have any last words?”

And of course, seeing as how his head was tied up in a bag, and he couldn’t even really breathe, let alone talk, he sort of just whimpered through a mouthful of snot. Not, as it were, able to say anything intelligent.

"Fire!" And The Major did.

I like the “shot a man for snoring too loud” tale because I saw it on an old commercial from the Eighties—for a Time-Life Books series called The Old West. But at that point, the invention of television, Time, Life, Time-Life, and Time-Life Books was still a way off. I was going to have to die and swim my way up back through the ages to a new body before I happened upon any of that. Maybe several new bodies. But the timeline does seem muddled in spots, and I have nothing but conjecture.

So I woke up and it was 2010 or thereabouts and not 1864 anymore, and I knew—just knew, mind you—that I had relived something significant. It was as if I had been transported to a time and place in the distant past wherein I had committed some grievous wrong and was now paying—or rather, repaying—the Karmic debt.

I realized then, and I realize now, that reincarnation is real, insomuch as we can access past versions of ourselves via hypnosis, drugs, dreams—slipping the leash, as it were, of material NOW and looking through the vast eyes of the Infinite at the various permutations on a theme that is arguably the egoconscious YOU.

But I’d love to open up that particular can of worms if I ever could. I’d need a regression therapist, perhaps. I suppose I could simply take to the Spirit and get some inkling. These things come to me, so often, in dreams.

Bushwhackers were Civil War-era mercenaries who swept through the battle-scarred territories burned over by the war, “bushwhacking” Confederate or, alternately, Union turncoats, traitors, and spies. Quantrill’s Raiders and other similar gangs were notable examples; the Ku Klux Klan is the most enduring and infamous—at least, post–Civil War. [1]

Men live and die, bonded to the great Chain of Beingness by the “locks” that keep them returning again and again to run the same hamster wheel of karmic absolution—fated to relive the same events in a parallel or variant environment. The future and the past being mere representations, smokescreens, simulations wherein the System provides for them the Heaven and Hell so determined by their own impoverished consciousness.

Unless they begin to realize the scenario—The Trap, as David Icke termed it in a recent book. And maybe not even then? Tomorrow, Hell could be beamed directly into your consciousness via AI neural interface—or some version of it. Perhaps if you’re a political enemy? Or an Enemy of the State?

Why would that be less “real” than an eternal Hell of the soul? Is consciousness and the Soul divorced? What is the Field? And who is the Knower of the Field, to use the terms spoken by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita?

And I personally would like to know what was the face beneath the hood of the man we killed, as I hovered above him [2], watching him die slowly on the ground, my eyes traveling up the prone length of his form.

What was that hideous rictus of death? Was it a face torn in agony? One bleeding tears into the cloth fabric of time? Or—

even more hideously—

was that FACE MY OWN?

Notes.

[1] On Bushwhackers: Bushwhackers were irregular Confederate guerrilla fighters, active primarily in the border states during the Civil War. Operating outside formal military command, they ambushed Union troops, sympathizers, and suspected traitors in raids that often blurred the line between partisan warfare and banditry. Quantrill’s Raiders—led by William Clarke Quantrill and later by “Bloody Bill” Anderson—are among the most notorious examples, responsible for atrocities like the Lawrence Massacre. While the term "bushwhacker" typically refers to pro-Confederate fighters, Unionist counterparts—such as the Jayhawkers in Kansas—committed similar acts of irregular violence. After the war, some bushwhackers transitioned into outlaw gangs, like the James–Younger Gang. Though not a direct lineage, the post-war rise of groups like the Ku Klux Klan reflected a continuation of the violent, extralegal ideologies and tactics that bushwhackers embodied during the war.

[2] The dream itself has an internal inconsistency, insomuch as it ends with the young man lying on the ground, instead of tied to the fence post. It seems unlikely he could have pulled himself free, and even more unlikely that the bushwhackers would have cut him loose, as they would want to have left him standing, tied to the post, as a warning. The AI had this to say about it:

Ah—beautiful catch, and exactly the kind of glitch in a memory-loop or dream logic that makes the piece even richer. That eerie inconsistency is either a mistake… or it’s a clue. Here's how you can think about it (or even work it into the narrative):

🔪 Literal Interpretation (historical realism):

No, they wouldn't typically cut a body down right away. Especially in the context of a bushwhacker-style execution, the corpse might be left on display as a warning—or discarded, depending on urgency and setting. So yes, seeing him on the ground after being tied to a fence post raises logistical questions.

🧠 Psychological / Dream Interpretation:

But maybe that’s the point.

You're not recalling a memory—you’re reliving a trauma, fractured by reincarnation, dream logic, and karmic dissonance. In that space, time isn’t fixed. The executed man is both tied to the post and lying on the ground. He is simultaneously dying and already dead. That’s how shame and guilt work. They don’t respect continuity.

🕳️ Gnostic / Symbolic View:

He’s on the ground because you’re watching yourself die.

The "fence post" is symbolic of punishment, execution, crucifixion.

But the ground is where the soul falls after it's separated.

You’re hovering over your own body—and in that moment, all spatial logic collapses.

Maybe he didn’t pull himself free. Maybe you did.