Splitting the Marble

 
It seems to me we are headed for some really big space war action.
 
I have been asked to do two things today.
 
One of those things is to tell you the story of the Little Miracle we call "Splitting the Marble", and the other is to offer the United States military an opportunity to disavow the torture-enslavement of me by the United States of America.
 
Do I think the military would do this?  It would seem the odds might be somewhat against it, but I was asked to offer this as a courtesy because the US military is about to be hit very hard; and to offer it with the suggestion that my before-the-fact intelligence is much better than my pointing to my advance documentation after the fact.
 
I repeat, this is only a courtesy, offered because the US military is approaching a huge disaster, and I have to at least try to prevent or mitigate it, and I can do nothing from this torture chamber.
 
Now let's return to the approaching defeat of the United States of America following shortly behind this US military disaster, and to the telling of the story of the Little Miracle called Splitting the Marble.
 
We have just about completed the second of the three attack patterns I have been telling you about.  I am making no attempt at all to track them, only telling you when they start and when they end.  Soon the good faith payment figure will go from 20 to 30, that being when the third of the three strikes of the swift and mighty sword begins.
 
It is interesting to me that I am asked to tell the story of the Little Miracle called Splitting the Marble just as we enter the final stage of the military maneuver called "High-Low Split".  The obvious metaphorical connection to "splitting the atom" is not missed by me, but I am repeatedly advised that it is metaphorical and we are not documenting a nuclear explosion in advance of its taking place.
 
I have recently told, or re-told, three Little Miracle stories, the one of a dollar bill coming out of thin air, the one of God telling me about a cave to take shelter in when I was caught in a sleet storm in the wilderness, and the third the cracking before my eyes of one of the huge stone blocks that make up the wall of old Jerusalem.
 
Little Miracles are rare.  If this were some great space war golf tournament, Little Miracles would be Holes in One.
 
The Little Miracle called Splitting the Marble is, as far as I can recall at the moment, the only Little Miracle witnessed by another human being.  It was witnessed by one of my friends in Laguna Beach, California, in about 1972.  His name was Tom Hume.  He would be about 60 now.
 
My wife and I and Tom and his old lady were at their rustic little rented home in Blue Bird Canyon one summer day, having dinner, drinking wine, and smoking pot.  It was one of my really golden memories of those days just before I lost all human and constitutional rights.
 
I do not know if I had already become audibly telepathic at this time, because there was a period at the start when knowledge of this incredible development was kept from me, my wife and friends going along with the gag.
 
Tom and I were in the front yard, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the mellowness of the day, and one of us suggested we play a game of marbles.
 
We drew a huge circle in the dirt, perhaps the size of the circle a shot-putter stands in, and in the middle of the circle we each placed a marble.
 
After some gentlemanly debate, you go first, no you go first, it was decided I would shoot first.
 
As I got down in position to shoot, the same position that had served me well when I was a boy of eight, I looked over to Tom and said, "Tom, this is what I am going to do to you in the great cosmic marble game."
 
I then shot my marble and hit Tom's and split his marble in half.   At the instant it happened there was a little white flash around the two marbles.
 
I looked at Tom and his surfer-brown faced was blanched white, like he had seen a ghost...or perhaps had got a glimpse of his future.
 
The look on Tom's face, which was pure fear, led me later to think I had already been betrayed by my wife and friends and country at that point.
 
That is, I think Tom became afraid because he had already played the Judas Game, and at that instant knew he had lost; otherwise he would have just said in the Hippie lingo of the day, "Far out!"
 
That is the story we call Splitting the Marble.