“‘Jesus loves you and so do I, God Bless You—a republican reader from Wake County’ wrote.

‘We pray for you in the house of Allah. We need you. Get better,’ another card said.

Old friends and total strangers wanted to hear my voice, establish I was actually alive and assist my recovery. A beautiful Italian cast silver Virgin Mary pendant arrived. Then I saw again what I’d seen from the darkened house on the edge: wormlike jets of pure gold powder and powdered tourmaline arcing across the sky toward me, presumably from other people. Some sling-shotted around the planet and out into the cosmos. The first time one came rocketing toward me, I estimated acceleration and mass. Wherever the thing hit, it was going to have the power of an artillery shell. Just before it struck, it disintegrated into a cone-shaped explosion of prismatic refracted light amid a snap of high-tension static.

I understood that these never before observed (by me) phenomena were jets of transphysical unalloyed human connection—OK, love, whatever. I understood what I was seeing, but the origin point was ubiquitously universal. That was the part that honestly spooked me.”

—Peter Eichenberger, on his recovery from a near-fatal bicycle accident in Raleigh, North Carolina. Published in the weekly Independent, March 1st, 2006. I know Peter, and I love him too.