I was born in a log cabin in Barton Vermont.  I never owned toys as a child, preferring to draw at my father’s drafting table.  In high school I was first given the chance to use oil paints and haven’t stopped since.  I attended Lake Region Union High School in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and graduated in 1995.  That fall I went to the University of Vermont, where I took every painting and drawing class they had to offer as a studio art major, with a minor in philosophy.  I loved to read growing up, and took a lot of English classes as well.  I’d begun writing poetry around the same time as puberty.  During the fall of my junior year of high school I was struck by a drunk driver traveling at 50 mph as I was walking down the road.  I broke the windshield with my head, flew over some telephone wires, and came to rest in a field.  I had a near death experience, or a very coincidental firing of neurons, during which my soul was freed from this slow mind and experienced instantaneous enlightenment.  Afterwards, poetry just seemed to pour out of me unplanned, like some higher power was just using my hand to communicate truth.  My paintings were likewise changed by the strange and mysterious that began emerging from my subconscious.  Changing so rapidly meant I lost touch with many friends.  I began contemplating and thinking about things that most never contemplate at all, or at least not until they are dying. 

I contracted Lyme disease shortly before that accident, but did not know for nine years.  My symptoms accumulated and worsened over the years.  I became allergic to alcohol within two years, and so I could no longer drink to ignore the truth I’d experienced.  The pain was always worse than the year before, and although I just dealt with it for years, it was wearing my soul down.  Painkillers gave me a brief relief from the physical pain, as well as helping me deal with the spiritual pain I felt having been freed from this existence, then choosing to return so I could share what I’d experienced with this world, in the hopes it would change the behavior of the human race.  Sadly, I thought if people knew the truth they would change.  Greed versus truth, and greed seems to be winning.  I was just young and full of foolish optimism. All the pain and tragedies of the world aside, I now also had my own physical pain, which drained my energy and made fighting against the greedy tyrants of this world seem evermore a fruitless endeavor.   I still hope, and perhaps as things gradually worsen, more people will feel the frustration I’ve felt for years, and eventually revolt.  I just hope it is in time so that we may ride this planet until our sun turns in a Red Giant and swallows the earth.