San Francisco  1984

I remember, quite clearly, the first time I saw the apparition I came to call The Little Girl.

I had just finished with psychology graduate school and I was working in a strip club in North Beach.

I was sitting in Vesuvio’s, having a drink before I arrived at my evening shift at the Lusty Lady Theater. I was happy. I loved Vesuvio’s. I loved the jazz, the turn of the century decorations, the Beat scrawls on the walls. I loved the warm yellow twinkle of the lights at Broadway & Columbus contrasting with the lavender  twilight. 

After finishing my M.A., I had rejected the practice of psychology. 

Now I sought the meaning of life through “Art”. 

In those days I did not haul a tiny laptop around. I still operated out of spiral notebooks, just like I had since the sixth grade. I was so relieved to be done with psycho grad school. I had developed a mysterious aversion to school and psychology both. I had no plans other than to mindlessly swivel my hips to Prince or Madonna. 

I sat in this bar a lot at this hour. I was writing about my past lives. I had always remembered a lot of my past lives. It was important to me, at that time, to chronicle them.

As I was writing I became aware of someone. This someone was not there physically. Yet she was very much present.  It is like switching on a channel on an internal TV. This is how I have done past life readings for close to forty years. I just turn to that channel and there they are. I see them, like lots of little movies going very fast. I never had to train myself how to read past lives. I had to train myself how not to.

So I turned to the left, and I looked, and I saw The Little Girl.

She had blond hair, shoulder length, with bangs. She was staring at me very intently. She was alone. She was completely silent. She did all of her communicating with her eyes. Of course I noticed that she looked just like my kindergarten picture. But I instantly dismissed this perception as irrelevant. 

So I dismissed her. 

However, I never forgot her. 

That was the first time I saw The Little Girl.

I was 26.

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