Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:02.386)
Welcome friends. I am the Reverend Joaquin David Matthews and we are really looking forward today to our conversation with Michael Tallon. Michael is a writer and educator from the United States who has since 2004 found fertile soil for the soul in Antigua, Guatemala.

Annalouiza (00:22.894)
And I am the Reverend Mother Ana Luisa Dmendres. Recently, a good friend of mine introduced me to Michael because we had something in common, death and dying. That was, you know, she's like, you need to be, you need to talk. And so here we are. Michael in 2015, previously had an undetected genetic condition known as hereditary hemochromochromatosis.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:36.552)
He

Annalouiza (00:49.218)
which caused Michael to fall into rapid simultaneous multi organ failure, a crisis from which he is not was not expected to recover yet through good medicine, better luck and great love. Michael managed to both survive and recover. That story is retold and is soon to be published memoir incompatible with life. We'll be including a social media information and where you can find out more about this. But again, Michael, nice to meet you. Great to have you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:16.977)
Yeah, so good.

Michael Tallon (01:18.254)
It's wonderful to meet you as well. One of the best things about still being compatible with life is that you get to meet new good friends. And what a blessing, what a blessing that is.

Annalouiza (01:26.062)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:27.569)
You

Yeah, yeah, was so glad to have you. We usually try to start with just kind of finding out about people's first experience they had understanding what death was. So do you remember what happened when you first were aware of death?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:48.008)
I mean, maybe the, good pizza.

Michael Tallon (01:48.196)
It meant meant it meant good pizza. Actually, my probably my first recollection of death long, long, long before I became ill myself was when I was a little boy. I was probably in kindergarten or first grade and my father's father, my paternal grandfather passed. And it was.

you know, it was almost the, you know, scripted by Hollywood moment of my parents sitting me down and trying to explain to a five-year-old boy that we weren't going to see Pop Pop again and not really understanding that. But the moment that I do remember, it's all kind of, you know,

quantized memories of this moment, that moment. But the one that I come to as like a moment when I knew something was wrong was standing and after the wake, we had returned to my family's home and all the neighbors had come over and put food out. And I remember waiting in line by the break front in the dining room thinking that I was never gonna see my grandfather again. And then Mrs. Casella, who lived a couple of blocks

I brought a homemade pizza and it was delicious. I, it's almost like, you know, being, and it really is kind of funny because like I'm a five-year-old boy and I'm, you know, in the middle of having a wrestle with the infinite about never seeing my pop pop again. And then I was really, really, really thankful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:09.297)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:18.248)
All right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:30.376)
Right?

Michael Tallon (03:30.882)
at pizza. like, you know, and also, I was, I also remember that my friend was Mrs. Gosella's son, David. He was a classmate of mine, and he was really sweet, but he was always kind of quiet, and he had come over too. And so, I guess, like, my initial relationship with death was shock, awe, and then

But you know, my buddy Dave is here and there's really good pizza and people are together. And so that may have set the template very, very young for a rather casual relationship with the Reaper. He's going to show up to do delivery at some point, but he might bring good pizza.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:55.72)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:01.009)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:04.616)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (04:12.182)
Yeah, I love that relationship.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:12.2)
Yeah, yeah, associate, yeah, associate good food and good friends. That's a good association,

Michael Tallon (04:18.374)
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (04:18.454)
Mm-hmm. So, Michael, tell us about this template and how the Reaper has shown up sporadically through your life and where has that brought you?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:25.544)
You

Annalouiza (04:33.676)
I guess my main question is how has death impacted the story of your life?

Michael Tallon (04:39.176)
it as the as the as the central fulcrum and pivot point, and my You know

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:43.399)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (04:49.244)
There were the early experiences as my grandparents passed. And then of course, as everyone else who gets to have the blessed opportunity of being an aperture of awareness in this universe, you start to see the different stars blink out. But.

to drive this to the point of that fulcrum moment. It wasn't until I was in the hospital in 2015 and going from feeling kind of crappy in February of 2015 and then in early March of 2015, having it made very, very clear to me that I had come to the end.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:38.673)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (05:39.017)
the title of the book, which which you graciously mentioned earlier, Incompatible with Life, is how the doctors described me. When I, when I, when I was rushed to the hospital, my, we found all of this out. We didn't know anything about the underlying genetic condition, the hereditary hemochromatosis, which, to get this out of the way for the viewers, it is an iron processing disorder. And one, wonderfully for it from a narrative structure,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:45.766)
Wow.

Michael Tallon (06:08.444)
that I inherited from a Neanderthal ancestor. The first individual, the first person who had the mutation that led to hereditary hemochromatosis was a Neanderthal woman about 40,000 years ago. And I am her direct lineal descendant, as are my father and mother, and as are literally billions of people who have lived in the last 40,000 years.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:14.341)
my.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:30.426)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (06:37.884)
many of whom died from this condition and others who were eaten by saber-toothed before they ever knew they had it. And so for me, well, that's the disease. It's this iron processing disorder that prevents my body from eliminating dietary iron. So where most adult human beings

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:46.022)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (07:01.56)
have between two and four grams of iron in their body at any given time, and it is dispersed largely through the hemoglobin, through the... it's stored in the spleen, it's stored in the bone marrow. But for me, I couldn't get rid of any of it, and so my body started to place it in other areas of my body, which included my heart.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:18.172)
Huh?

Michael Tallon (07:24.804)
which gave me heart disease, my pancreas which gave me diabetes, my liver which gave me liver cirrhosis, my joints which gave me joint disorders, and my glandular system which has, which is the primary impact of the glandular disorders for me has been an elimination of my ability to produce testosterone. And so one of the treatments for this condition to deal with the, with all of the complexities of it is that I'm on hormone replacement therapy and have been for 11 years.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:42.984)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (07:54.685)
So that's the way the disease works. And when I was rushed to the hospital, we had already determined that I had diabetes. That was the first thing that I diagnosed when I went to a doctor in Guatemala. I then went home to the United States and was further diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. The liver cirrhosis was so bad that my hepatologist, who I had just met at that time, said the first thing we need to do is make sure that we lower

the blood pressure in your liver because you were in danger of having a rupture in something called your portal vein. So without knowing anything about the glandular disorder or the heart disease or the genetic condition of the heart, he just knew that my portal vein might rupture. So he gave me a beta blocker to lower my blood pressure, not knowing I was already in heart failure. And so...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:32.402)
Cheers.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:47.785)
jeez.

Annalouiza (08:47.886)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (08:50.042)
He said, he literally was, you know, take this pill before you go to bed tonight and let us know how it goes. And I took the pill and five minutes later, I collapsed onto the bed and felt for the first time my life leaving, my life leaving my body or my body leaving this world or my spirit. mean, it was, was, and fortunately my mom, through the magic of moms and sons,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:20.104)
Hehehe.

Michael Tallon (09:20.124)
I was staying at my parents' apartment at the time in New York, and though they were asleep across the apartment, my mom sensed that something was wrong, and she had been a nurse in her career. so she came into the guest room where I was staying. I had returned to the States to receive treatment and to try and figure out what was wrong. And she and my father then did initial first aid, lifting my feet up onto a pile of blankets and...

Annalouiza (09:31.394)
Wow.

Michael Tallon (09:47.825)
you know, trying to encourage blood to my brain and my heart called the EMTs. And I was rushed to the hospital. And when I arrived in the hospital, they did, I think it was an echocardiogram and determined that something called my ejection fraction, which is the amount of blood that leaves your heart on any given beat, which should be 55 to 60 % of the total amount of volume of blood that's in your heart.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:02.664)
Hmph.

Michael Tallon (10:16.988)
I was down to 10%, which is also known as cardiogenic shock. what I, months later, when I talked to my cardiologist about this stuff, she said, yeah, when we met, your heart wasn't really beating. It was, in her words, just sort of quivering. And so, so it was right around then that, that I had that, my first experiences.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:34.856)
Wow.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:39.676)
Ha

Michael Tallon (10:44.764)
with understanding that living was a terminal process, and undeniably so. And actually in the book, there's a chapter that I wrote about that relies on my not imperfect understanding of Spanish, but the chapter is called saber a conocer. And saber y conocer are verbs that both mean to know.

And yet they have very, different contextual meanings. And to know in the saber construction is to know informationally. And to know in the conocer construction is more of an intimate knowledge. And when I was in the hospital over the month or so that I was there in 2015, my understanding of my mortality transitioned.

from the one that we're all given just by being around in this universe, like yeah, things die, to being a conocer understanding, which is I am not getting out of this alive. And that is with me quite literally now. It is never, it has never gone from my mind.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:55.526)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:07.046)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Tallon (12:07.868)
The memento mori has become an integral part of my understanding, which is why I say it's kind of the pivot point around which all of my understanding of my existence turns.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:19.952)
Yeah, yeah, great. Well, and then maybe you could talk a little more about the book itself or your work now that you're, you know, what that has engendered in your life as far as what you're doing with that pivot point that said, I mean, wow, you learned a lot more about medical terms than people normally would like to learn, right? So you learned a lot about what was going on in your body and probably more than you ever wanted to know. But then, you know, from that.

Annalouiza (12:40.738)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (12:45.063)
I sure did.

Annalouiza (12:47.651)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:49.532)
What has, yeah, what has grown from it?

Michael Tallon (12:51.6)
You know, it's a couple of interesting questions and I'll try and parse them out a little bit and separate them coming back to the work itself. But I want to start with the learning of more medical terms because in a way it's deeply interwoven with all of the rest of it. When I was in the hospital and was coming to terms with the fact that this was

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:08.328)
Okay.

Michael Tallon (13:20.954)
probably not a place I was going to be leaving alive. I mean...

Michael Tallon (13:32.387)
When you know you're going, and you know you're going soon, I think that perhaps there are there are two paths that diverge in that yellowed wood, but they are very, very different paths, and one of them is, one of them is resentment, anger, fear, and the other is, holy shit, I've only got maybe another night.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:00.531)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (14:02.018)
or another week. And yet, my god, Dr. Nyup, my cardiologist, is a beautiful person and I want to get to know her. And my god, the nurse that comes in here in the evening who watches Korean dramas at night to ease her mind and who has problems with her boyfriend and wants to talk about that all the time, I really want to know about that stuff.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:11.708)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:22.792)
Thanks.

Michael Tallon (14:30.144)
And part of the way that I was able to both hold onto and embrace whatever was left is I needed to be able to talk to these people. And these people were, you these people had spent dozens of years becoming specialists in their field.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:44.699)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (14:51.612)
And I only had, you know, maybe a couple of days in which to cram, but cram I did. I mean, I did a deep dive into the genetics, the genetic history, and the medical history, and trying to understand all of the biochemistry, which, you know, I did with some success as a layman. But it was wanting to be able to have that conversation, or wanting to be able to have any conversation that drove that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:56.486)
Ha ha ha ha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:19.933)
Right.

Michael Tallon (15:21.724)
and the work itself, the, the writing that has come out of it is one, I, I'm a writer. That's, but it's it's the way that I, it's the way that I express myself artistically in this world. and as I've noted to many friends before, the absolute best thing about almost dying is the almost part. the, but the second best thing, if you're a writer, is it finally gives you a story.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:43.68)
Right?

Michael Tallon (15:51.777)
story to tell. And the structured nature of writing long form, it took me several years to write the memoir, which, and the memoir basically covers from the beginning of the crisis. It actually starts with me taking the Natalol, the beta blocker, and collapsing on the bed, and then it traverses over the course of one year of recovery, ending, to tease this a little bit, ending in a sensory deprivation tank on my birthday.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:53.298)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (16:21.788)
that year, at the end of that year, where I kind of was able to contextualize a lot of the things that had been happening internally and to understand what was going on in my mind as I was dying and discovering that it was very, very like transcendental meditation. So, but being able, the work itself developed in the years after I recovered as a full exploration or as full an exploration as I'm capable of doing,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:38.024)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (16:51.296)
of the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and psychological aspects of coming to terms with one's mortality.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:00.774)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense, of course. I love that.

Annalouiza (17:00.974)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And, it's such a gift too. I'm going to say like, you know, people who have these moments and have the time to, you know, stay compatible with life. It's such a gift. Like it's so like wonderful. Right. So what are the, some of the challenges that you are meeting these days as now compatible with life and writing the story and yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:14.578)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:26.257)
Thank

Yeah, or even in the creation of it in the first place.

Michael Tallon (17:30.653)
I okay, I'll tell you this. this is a, it's a quick story about something that happened shortly after I got into the hospital, but it really kind of resonates still to this day. So like, how does it, how is this all of this impacting me now? like, I remember I was walking home from the gym.

about two months after I got out of the hospital, I had just gotten strong enough again to like walk outside of the apartment. And the gym was a block away from my parents' apartment. And incidentally, for musicologists out there, the gym where I went is the McBurney Y, which is the YMCA from that song. And I was walking home and I don't know, a friend wasn't a...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:21.586)
You

Michael Tallon (18:26.3)
had trouble with a friend, they weren't going to be able to meet me for dinner, and it was really important this was going to happen and all of this. And I remember stopping as I was, had to stop on my walk home just to rest. I remember like looking up at the sky and saying, Jesus, why can't I catch a fucking break? And then I went, Oh, I did. I caught the biggest break that anyone can ever catch. I'm here. I'm here to be frustrated.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:41.65)
You

Annalouiza (18:44.835)
Ha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:45.766)
Hahaha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:51.432)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (18:51.576)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (18:54.286)
And so, and so, that, and that experience remains and resonates. It's like, I mean, I, it's gratitude. I'm here. Yes, I'm here. And, and more and more people that I know. one of my best friends died a couple of weeks ago. I just got a message from my best friend from high school that his daughter, 25 years old, died suddenly in her sleep a couple of weeks ago. And, you know.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:00.381)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:02.264)
Gratitude.

Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:07.1)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (19:23.58)
And well, this world can be very challenging. My father died in the past year and a half. It's also like...

I'm here. I get to experience the sadness, and the sadness is instructive, and the sadness and the grief gives you perhaps the most gentle of all places with which to interact with the other people in this world who are also always experiencing grief. And through that interweaving of souls and grief, the resultant product of that is, well, at least we're not alone.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:36.22)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:54.508)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:54.684)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (20:04.622)
And once you get to at least we're not alone, then you can still, you can start to reach again towards the light. And so that's.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:04.828)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:05.038)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:12.71)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's, yeah. And again, this is why, you know, what we're here for is to just make sure more people, more and more people can be comfortable with that and find that gift by being able to talk about this stuff. So thank you. That's a...

Annalouiza (20:14.69)
Yeah. What a gift.

Michael Tallon (20:30.534)
funny when I was when I was finally pretty sure that I was going to die of something else or at least if I was going to die from the many complications of hemochromatosis it wasn't going to happen by next Thursday. When you know when when I started to realize that I was actually gonna be okay

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:39.602)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (21:02.94)
It allowed for that gratitude to rise up, but also it indicated that there was some responsibility that you got to do something with this. And to me, that thing you have to do is always reaching out and connecting with other human beings. That's what it is. That's where the flame is.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:12.232)
Right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:23.494)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really right. Yeah, yeah, so important. That's what we have. That's our work every day. How do we reach out and touch each other? Is there anything as you've gone? Yeah, right. Is there anything as you've gone through this now, you've lived this from 2015 on and is there anything that still feels scary or frightens you about your own mortality?

Annalouiza (21:34.54)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (21:42.958)
I'll it there, hi.

Michael Tallon (21:55.756)
yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Michael Tallon (22:04.38)
There is... I ended up not using this chapter title in the book, but it's a useful metaphor. There's an anti-room to death. There's a foyer. And it's a place, at least my experience is of it the first time around, and I'm hoping my experience is of it the second, third, fourth, fifth, and fifteenth time around. If I'm so lucky, it's...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:30.088)
You

Michael Tallon (22:33.972)
that once once you are once you are led by fate accident or biochemistry to to the room from which there is only one exit unless you can get a reprieve it's a it's a calming place it's a it's a i mean i remember specifically this one

moment when I was sort of at my most abstracted point, also relevant to this as part of the treatment for the main treatment for hemochromatosis is bloodletting. And so while I was in the hospital, over the course of three days, they removed 40 % of the blood from my body, which, you know, if you've ever felt the exhaustion of giving

half a pile you know pint of blood or whatever 500 milliliters of blood in a blood donation you do that seven times in three days and you get pretty abstracted but when I was when I was in that when I was in that space the the interior world changes significantly and it's almost as if they're

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:32.232)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (23:52.701)
There is an antecedent ego death before a death of spirit. The self starts to, or at least my experience was the self starts to dissipate and you get to see, you get a very, very different perspective. And I remember specifically having this image that I was 48 years old at the time. I'm 58 now, I'll be 59 next week. I was 48 years old and I...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:57.309)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (24:22.396)
had this image in my mind of being in space, in space-time, and being on this incredibly long, almost infinitely long road, and looking back in one direction, I can see it now very clearly, I could see back to the Big Bang. And that was 13.7 billion years ago.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:46.056)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (24:51.004)
and turning around towards the eventual heat death of the universe is at least another 40 billion years in that direction. thinking to myself 48, 84, it's insignificant. It really doesn't matter. And to get this view and to get a sense of the long continuation of this existence

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:07.816)
Right.

Michael Tallon (25:20.092)
and the fact that, you know, my blip is 48 years, next to 84 doesn't really matter. And so that place in that antechamber of death where you start to get those perspectives on the totality is a very calming, welcoming place. And I remember having a conversation with my older brother as he visited me in the hospital and saying, like, you know, I

Annalouiza (25:36.429)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (25:48.709)
I know I'm probably not getting out of this. Make sure everybody knows I'm okay and that I'm not afraid. I've had a wonderful life and it doesn't mean I'm not but I feel an extraordinary amount of love which is something I'll come back to in a second. So that place is really comfortable but the question was what about the discomfort with death and mortality and that is most definitely still there. I know or I hope

Annalouiza (25:57.965)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:13.394)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (26:16.73)
My experience before suggests that eventually I will end up in that anti-room again. And it is one that I regretted leaving when I got better because it was such a nice place to be. But the process of falling from a state of health and vitality to that final step before you die.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:24.936)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (26:29.442)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (26:46.088)
is there will there I lament it already. I mean I know it will happen and I organize my life now around maintaining the health of my physical body. But it's with an understanding that you know I'm 58 years old. My VO2 max is over 50. I am you know riding I am riding my my bicycle at at speed

Annalouiza (26:58.222)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (27:14.374)
for at least an hour or two hours a day. I'm in the best damn shape of my life. And yet it's all done with an understanding that you gotta beat your wings to fly higher and higher and higher and higher, knowing that eventually you're going to lose the updraft. And the more that you struggle with joy in...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:18.728)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:32.68)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (27:40.509)
creating that lift means the longer your descent on the other side, depending upon what it is that's finally going to take you out. And also, I know that that is a process, the gaining of altitude is a process that is entirely filled with joy because it means that the more I work now,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:45.064)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:52.306)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (28:10.576)
the more I get to experience the fundamental truth of existence, which I could nutshell pretty easily for myself, but it is about human connection. I work hard so that I can love. And I hope that I'm going to be able, when ultimately that the top of the parabolic arch is reached and I start descending down,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:17.361)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (28:40.198)
Well, I know that I will lament getting weaker and I know that I will be pained to lose the strength that I have now to do the work that I do now. But ultimately, will lack the ability, if I don't get hit by a bus, if it is disease that takes me away, that I will lack the ability once again to stand and to bathe myself.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:04.72)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Tallon (29:09.704)
And hopefully the joy that is the joy and the feeling of interconnectedness that animates the process on the upswing will be there to lend it grace on the backside as well. I fear the dissent, but I also know it's unavoidable. And so I attempt to prepare for it by focusing on that, is most important, which again, I can nutshell, and I think I will right now, the fundamental truth.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:24.551)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:33.532)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (29:38.269)
that I learned through this whole process is that the only goddamn thing that matters is love and that the purpose of existence, I can't say everybody in the world feels the same, but this is what it means to me. I am here.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:38.408)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:46.77)
Thank you.

Michael Tallon (30:03.078)
to apprehend, create, and transmit love in its three fundamental wavelengths of truth, beauty, and light. And having had that insight granted to me by having the whole thing shaken so hard that all the bullshit falls out, that's what remains, is that we are here to apprehend, create, and transmit love.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:22.162)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Tallon (30:30.55)
in its three fundamental wavelengths of truth, beauty, and light, and that's the whole of the game. And you have the opportunity to do that. It's this is, can't remember if it's from the, if it's if it's Talmudic, but it's that, you know, on the first day of creation and the last day of Armageddon, the work remains the same. We're here, we're here to love. We're here to build community, we are here to love.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:35.088)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:53.67)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:58.344)
Yeah.

Michael Tallon (31:00.368)
Because ultimately, the thing that is alive, I no longer believe is me. The thing that is alive is the thing that it's like, go for the metaphor just of what it is that we are all using right now to have this conversation. There is an electrical storm going on in each of our brains and the brains of all of those people who are listening. But one neuron cannot think.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:06.6)
Right, yeah.

Michael Tallon (31:29.212)
one neuron needs another neuron in order to spark that gap. The thought, the existence, is the thing that exists between the neurons and is the thing that exists between the individuals who have the false perception that they are in fact separate from one another.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:32.2)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:45.457)
Yeah, yeah. It's funny that when you, the words you used to explain this concept of yours, reminded me of pretty, having been interfaith ministers, we've studied so many different faiths. And you can kind of boil down every faith in the world to that exact same understanding that it's love. It's all about finding a way to be, to share love and to be with each other and to find that connection. So thanks for

Annalouiza (32:06.414)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (32:13.018)
I want to share something with you then.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:15.259)
Okay.

Annalouiza (32:15.746)
I I think I'm just going to say that we are almost out of time and we have two questions left, so. Just consider that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:22.278)
Yeah, go ahead, share something.

Michael Tallon (32:23.548)
Okay, well I'm gonna I think I want to share with your readers where I think the I I think for me anyway, I have settled upon where biologically and evolutionarily that That That the why we feel impelled towards love and by love and I think it goes back

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:38.684)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:49.426)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (32:53.382)
to the beginning of life on the planet, if not the universe. When I was at my sickest, when they had taken all of that blood out of my body and I was abstracted as hell and was not expected to make it through the night of the week, I decided that I really wanted to meet that Neanderthal ancestor who was the founder of my hemochromatite line.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:57.576)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:16.668)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (33:20.4)
And I was already experiencing some pretty profound hallucinations just from the blood loss and from the fact that I was dying and the, what do they call them? Terminal delusions. I was experiencing those. And I decided that I was going to travel back in time and I was going to go meet my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great Neanderthal grandmother. And they did. And inside an interior space, I found her as she was

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:32.646)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (33:49.809)
walking through a storm when she was alive. Her hemochromatosis was in fact a positive adaptation because it allowed her and her descendants, me included, to store iron in times of protein scarcity, which is super important during an ice age. And I remember meeting her and encouraging her to fight through that storm because at that point she was

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:08.488)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (34:21.218)
If she died in that storm, it meant that none of her children would exist. And I was one of them, as was my father, as was my mother, as was my grandfather, as was my grandmother. All of us going back in line 40,000 years would be blown from the pages of the book of life in a single breath. And so I stayed with her in that storm, encouraging her to persevere.

And she did. And after that, I had a realization that, a minute, if I'm connected to her through this direct lineal connection, I can visit her, I'm connected to all of her ancestors as well. And so I, in this abstracted interior space, went back through the lines from Neanderthal to Homo habilis to, you know, little four-legged creatures to a fish.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:03.4)
Thank

Michael Tallon (35:17.764)
out of the water, walking back into the water, all the way back. And I had this orchestral image at the end of all of that of a prebiologic Earth. And I know enough from my studies to understand roughly what the Earth looked like nearly four billion years ago before the moment of abiogenesis. And if the Miller-Urey experiments are correct,

the way that that moment of abiogenesis happened on this planet was through the introduction of an incredible blast of energy, of a lightning strike or something massive that catalyzed these two little protein changes in the primordial soup into a few amino acids.

that are the proto building blocks of life. And I had this moment, this image in my mind of in this little pool of water, you know, just off a promontory, I pictured it sort of off of the coast of Ireland, where my people come from, in this pre-biologic earth and the lightning zaps and these two little amino acids arise in the primordial soup.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:34.269)
You

Michael Tallon (36:47.496)
and one of them with his little amino acid eyes or her little amino acid eyes looks at the other one and goes

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:56.904)
Come on.

Michael Tallon (37:00.408)
And they came together for what I perceived as an amino acid kiss. And that amino acid kiss laid the first structures that became the first link in a chain of DNA that is still existent today and of which you and I and all of the living creatures of the world are mutual and equal descendants.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:06.323)
Hahaha.

Michael Tallon (37:30.3)
And I think that human beings, over the course of the development of our psyches and our intellectual capacities, we still have that drive. We still have that natural drive to look at one another's and go, what do you think? And I think that what we perceive as love, that thing that unifies us, is actually just our evolutionary adaptation to that ancient biochemical

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:42.128)
Hmm.

Michael Tallon (37:59.997)
drive towards understanding that if this is going to be something more, it needs to be done together.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:07.058)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yep, yep. I like that. That's a great way of looking at it. I remember having something similar to that at one point where I felt like I went all the way back to floating around in space, right? And having this moment of the time, the thing that changed was fear and the need for each other. this fear of not having each other. Anyway.

Yeah, but thank you. I love that. I can sort of visualize that myself. Yeah, I think we've really covered most everything already anyway. is there anything else that... Well, I would like to know if there's anything you do specifically to keep yourself resourced when things get overwhelming. And then, you know, anything else you think that we should make sure we get to hear from you before we're done. And then we'd want to read your poem.

Haha.

Michael Tallon (39:09.2)
well, thank you. It's...

Michael Tallon (39:19.644)
Again, one of the best things about being in that anti-Room of Death when you know you're going is that all the other bullshit fades. Like, you really don't care anymore. The world is gonna have to deal with Donald Trump. You're no longer—you're out.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:32.104)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (39:43.877)
and the, you know, the unpaid bills and what's going to happen, all that stuff starts to, starts to fade away. But it, of course, when you get better, all that stuff comes back. And you do have to deal with, you know, the neighbor who's making too much noise or the friend who misunderstood a statement or the, all of that stuff. And I guess I...

I try and stay resourced, I try and stay ahead of that stuff simply by returning to being deeply grateful that I get a chance to be here to wrestle with this shit. And also understanding that like,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:25.926)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Tallon (40:31.052)
absolutely everyone, including the neighbor across the street who's making noise or the, you know, whatever it is that's like everybody else is struggling too. And they are all, they're all wrestling with whatever pains and miseries are going on in their life. And you're only here for a little bit of time and you can probably help to make that stuff better for them well.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:40.7)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:53.34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a choice, right? Yeah, it's a choice we can make to be upset about it or to take care of ourselves, take care of others, Well, thank you, that's a really good answer to that and one that I think really applies. Is there anything else, guess, before we go to the poem that you wish we'd asked?

Annalouiza (40:53.442)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Tallon (41:15.484)
No, mean, it's actually, mean, I think you guys are making good work and good art out of this by sharing it. And so you know that these conversations can in fact go on for far longer than there is the attention span of somebody who's in the middle of their commute listening to a podcast.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:35.622)
That's right, that's right. Yeah, and hopefully they will.

Michael Tallon (41:37.085)
And so the only thing I'd is that if you want to revisit these conversations again sometime in the future, I hopefully will still be here to have the conversation. more than happy to come back and dive into another part of this, because I think in reality, we've only, it's just the nature of this stuff, a 40 minute or an hour long conversation is only going to get you about 5 % of the way in.

Annalouiza (41:49.538)
Ha ha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:49.64)
Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (42:04.518)
Yeah, yeah, there's lots to talk about, which is what we encourage everybody to begin doing. Have these conversations with each other. Well, great. You sent us a poem. Do you want to read it yourself or you want one of us to read it?

Annalouiza (42:10.702)
That's right.

Michael Tallon (42:16.7)
I'll see if I can remember it. In fact, I could probably just pull it up to make sure I have it front of me in case of... Hold on a second. me just... I think it's probably right there. But I remember it mostly. I just don't want to screw it up in the... screw it up in the middle. So actually, yeah, sure, I'll read this poem, but I'll tell you a quick story about where it came from.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (42:22.534)
Yeah, we can also put it in the chat if you want.

Michael Tallon (42:42.094)
I wrote this poem a long, long, long, time ago. I had been driving cross country and I went to the Grand Canyon. And I went to the south rim of the Grand Canyon and I saw what everybody else sees. But I wanted to camp.

on the edge of the canyon. And there was no place to do that. So I drove around to the North Rim, which is a long damn drive. And I couldn't find any place there. And I was running out of gas. I stopped at this local gas station and I said to a local guy, I'm like, hey, is there any place that I could just throw a bedroll down on the edge of the cliff? And he went, yeah, there is. He says, you take that dirt road and you drive up there about five miles. And he kind of described it to me. And I followed the directions. And I ended up on a place just outside of the park, but on the canyon.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (43:07.334)
Thank

Michael Tallon (43:30.338)
looking out to the east over the plains. And I had a six pack of beer and my notebook and as the evening settled in, I decided to write a poem. And what's wonderful is on the little promontory where I was camped, there was this huge burn mark on the ground.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (43:34.056)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (43:40.424)
.

Michael Tallon (43:55.461)
And I thought someone must have had a campfire here before, but I didn't see any charred wood or anything. And then as the night went on, a storm started moving in across the plains with lightning strikes all over us. Like, well, that's what this is. That's the fortunately the fortunately the storm never made it to me, but it just gave me a wonderful light show. And I wrote this poem, which I have, which I've titled Heavenly Light, and it is.

Annalouiza (44:09.837)
Ha ha.

you

Michael Tallon (44:26.086)
Do campfires burn in heaven, Lord? Do ghosts pass whiskey round? Does grub and ground make bed and board? Can you hear the coyote sound? Do saints and holy men still dream while angels take their rest, lying quiet by a stream of rock as lovers breast? Does Jesus sing a lonesome song with Judas on the harp?

Can they forgive each other's wrongs together in the dark? Because if they can't, I'm sad to say I won't be stopping by. Death's no too high a price to pay for no fires in the sky. So if heaven's not a campsite, then any price too dear. So by my fires, I will abide and choose to bed down here. And as I face my last good night, I'll bank my embers deep. And then I'll go without a fight, for I'll never truly sleep.

I'll wake as soon as flowers shoot from my now empty head. And if a tree begins to root, could you truly think me dead? I might become the warming flame of a young man's campside fire. Admitted, that'd be fleeting fame. But is your heaven that much higher? And that's that poem.

Annalouiza (45:39.106)
Wow.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:39.196)
Nice.

Michael Tallon (45:39.386)
And the only edit I've made in that poem in the last 30 years since I wrote it is in the final stanza I reference an old man's camp-side fire because that's what I've become. When I wrote it, it was a young man's camp-side fire.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:50.697)
I saw that. Yeah, I did. I noticed that. Thank you. That's that's I love that I read it when you sent it and I just think about what a great, great way to both end this conversation and to just kind of leave that sense of Yeah, if there's no fire, I'm not I won't be there. So yeah. Yeah, sounds pretty nice to me.

Annalouiza (45:52.302)
You

Annalouiza (46:13.354)
I don't know. No outdoor bedrolls on the edge of a num.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:20.424)
Well, thank you again, Michael. I appreciate your time. And we will let you know when this is live and we'll be in touch. Thanks for spreading the word.

Annalouiza (46:22.402)
Thank you, Michael, and your story.

Michael Tallon (46:27.717)
Right on.

Michael Tallon (46:31.224)
I'll right on and thank you very much for the opportunity. And I look forward to any conversations that grow out of this on air or just in private or when y'all come down to Guatemala, say hello.

Annalouiza (46:31.384)
Yes.

Annalouiza (46:42.638)
You'll see me. Adios.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:43.088)
Alright, sounds good. Adios.

Michael Tallon (46:45.564)
Take care now. Bye bye.

I just have to figure out how to leave.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:52.838)
Yeah, so should be a little leave button. like a hang up.

Annalouiza (46:55.362)
or a little, yeah, a little phone hang up a red phone hang up at very bottom.

Michael Tallon (46:59.611)
Red phone hang up, red phone hang up. Bye bye.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:01.762)
Bye bye. Wow. Yeah, what an incredible story. Great stories.

Annalouiza (47:06.518)
What a story. It's, it's yeah. And when I, great stories, but I really appreciate the, like near death experiences from people and how they choose to wander in this world, you know, after this NDE, right? So, and he is all about love.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:21.436)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. discovered the, through, through that, he, was really as many, and many of the things we've heard at NDEs is where they actually were dead, you know, clinically dead and they were seeing the light, but he was in the foyer. I love that, that metaphor. You know, I hadn't really gone into that part yet, but I was in that kind of calm place where I was realizing that might be where I was headed and there's only one door out maybe. And, yeah, I love that, that idea that sense and that, that from that space, almost like a

Annalouiza (47:36.503)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (47:40.13)
That's right, right.

Annalouiza (47:47.532)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:56.134)
psychedelic immersion kind of thing, you know, from that place of letting go of the self, you see that really all there is is love. Yeah. Just like, yeah.

Annalouiza (47:58.094)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right. No, it really, it really like definitely cleansed him of all that ego stuff, right? That's like attachments and all. So fabulous story.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (48:10.95)
Yeah, yeah, that's our, yeah, that's what we all try to do with our mysticism. That's the work we're all doing. Yeah.

Annalouiza (48:18.424)
That's right. It's true. Right. And again, you know, to arrive at that moment, people take a lot of different roads. Like it's not just the one thing. So I really appreciate that. You're right. It's yeah. He's gotten there through this is anti-room experience.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (48:25.372)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (48:34.311)
Yeah, yeah. Well, another wonderful time. Much love to you. Adios.

Annalouiza (48:38.169)
Yes, much love. Thank you. Adios.