Horror, Transformation, and Your Worst Nightmare

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Nightmares scare the hell out of us. Blues chase the blues away. Fright ushers us into realms we’d never enter if it weren’t for life pressures and the intensity of the moment. Reading metaphysical horror does this all for us in one grand fell swoop. It takes us into nightmares, lands us in the blues, and pressures us with irresistible intensity.

Doing psychotherapy has its own path into transformation, so does everyday life leaned into fully and deeply, as will metaphysical horror if given a chance. My novel, The Unholy, is a fright for readers to pick up. More than one commented that they took to a dark corner of a hidden-away closet, turned on their kindle, and read and read till they finished. They had to do it. They had to get to the take-you-by-surprise ending—just like nightmares.

Then comes Goddess of the Wild Thing as it hits the noir streets of downtown Aztlan del Sur (Albuquerque, New Mexico) running. It’s a supernatural thrill ride into the black magic world of love gone bad, its allure, and the dark side of all things supernatural and mystic. Oh, there’s a light side. And, it’s there in Goddess of the Wild Thing, but, as with all good things, it takes its sweet, sweet time about coming to the fore with the oracular mystery that love is a wild thing!

When I spun out Goddess of the Everything: A Blood-Curdling Tale of the Affection of One Mother for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love, readers say it is a “wild, crazy, edge-of-your-seat ride!” I remember how the story haunted my nightmares. Significant life stories are what your nightmares are about. They’re signaling something that needs your urgent attention. This story, the writing, and publishing of it needed mine. So, when nightmares jettison forward into your world of sleep and dreaming, take heed. Listen, learn, and you’ll be changed – transformed. (Hint: Goddess of Everything will touch off nightmares, it’s a trigger, some have said, so don’t go there if you can’t. But if you can, read on and delve deep into your dreams and nightmares and then forever change and transform you.

Okay, let’s wrap up this nightmare diddy. The good thing with nightmares is that they end. I’ll come clean; sometimes they don’t. When patients in therapy report repeated nightmares, I tell them, “Well, there’s something we’re not getting. So, let’s listen a little more, learn a little deeper, and see how the dreams go.” We always see what we need to see if we stay with it. Just like reading a story, we see and learn what we need to see and learn if we stay with it. So, read on, live on, dream on. And know that metaphysical horror and nasty nightmares always birth good change, transformation if we stay with it.

Happy dreams and fantastic nightmares to you, one and all!

~ Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Creative Pulsations of Special Moments

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Challenging Pulsations in the Moment

This morning I came across William Blake’s words about the creative pulsations of special moments. When I write, there’s a pulse, an energy that moves from my core to fingertips to the page. Words happen, scenes roll out, and characters guide my heart and hands to tell their journey. In my recently released, Goddess of Everything, the supernaturally charged thriller charged out of my unconscious mind. Dreams and nightmares inspired the creation of characters and scenes.

On Amazon this morning, I read this: 5.0 out of 5 stars Goddess of Everything review: “Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read. Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2021, ~ “What an unexpected surprise this book was. Dr. DeBlassie has one of the most interesting ways of telling a story that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s almost like sitting around a campfire listening to urban legends. This dark thriller with some supernatural aspects was yet again an excellent example of this man’s talents. He took the normal good vs. evil to a whole new level with exceptional world-building and character development. Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read.”
Amazement grabbed me throughout the creative pulsations of moment after moment driving this story forward to publication. The book’s subtitle reads A Blood-Curdling Tale of One Mother’s Affection for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love. Shock, the creative pulse of challenging mother love, runs through this novel like adrenaline infusions. You don’t go up against what everyone wants to believe, says convention. People want to believe what people want to believe.
Risk It!
Goddess of Everything gets to the heart of love. When mother love is challenged, everything is turned topsy turvy. Creative pulsations are birthed from challenging norms. What mainstream accepts and says must be, then has to be accepted, or we risk disapproval and rejection. Risk it, I say! Risk living the creative pulsations of special moments when out-of-the-ordinary ways of seeing things and being come knocking at the door of your mind. Answer the door, listen, follow, and grow.
To risk growth is to be alive. There’s no living without risking. In Goddess of Everything, Gabriél is torn between love for mother and wife, Consuela. Devotion to a widowed mother turned religious Mother Superior clouds his mind. Consuela ushers in reality. She helps Gabriél discover nighttime blood sacrifices of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. He’s run from risking truth facing throughout his adulthood. Risk it, see what you need to see. Risk the read and grow!
Special Moment
The moment of reckoning comes in the story. Spirits, light and dark, teem through the nighttime desert as Gabriél faces off with wickedness hidden behind what was supposed to be good. At the very least, this is a special moment. They come. Maybe, like for Gabriél, they’re hard. We don’t want them. We want to go on not being challenged to see, to stretch, to grow. It’s easier that way. But it’s not. Special moments are risky and come for special reasons—risk and grow reasons.
Risk reading one of the most thrilling novels of your life. Open Goddess of Everything, plunge into a supernatural world of mother love turned upside down and inside out. It’ll cause you to rethink what love’s all about. It’ll cause you to rethink your life, relationships, where you’re at, where you’re going. Getting on with the creative pulsations of special moments, no matter the cost, equals risk equals growth.
Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Destruction, Chaos, Surprises!

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2020 birthed a new metaphysical thriller—Goddess of Everything!

Synopsis:

In the mystic land of Aztlan del Norte, a realm of supernatural happenings and unexpected turns of fate, psychiatric healer Gabriél de LaTierra encounters appalling evil within the Orphanage of the Holy Innocents. Children disappear for reasons kept secret by Mother Juana de la Cruz, Superior of the Nunnery and the Orphanage.

Love for Mother Juana, Gabriél’s widowed mother turned religious superior, clouds her devoted son’s mind. Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, confronts his wall of denial. Torn between love for mother and wife, Gabriél turns inward.

It is Consuela who propels Gabriél’s discovery of the nighttime blood sacrifice of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. Gabriél is further enraged by Mother Juana’s vengeful attack on Consuela and her kidnapping of their four-year-old son, Cuauhtémoc. But his actions will determine whether Consuela and Cuauhtémoc live or die, and the fate of Mother Juana de la Cruz.

Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son’s struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Metaphysical Fiction Births Everyday Surprises

Reading stories about the unseen world sharpens our psychic senses. Goddess of Everything . We’re transported into realities behind day-to-day life. Spiritual dynamics operate behind the scene, whisper in our ear, tug at our heart, affect us for better or worse. If we pay heed, take care, and proceed carefully then inevitable surprises turn bad stuff into the stuff that refines us like iron shaped by the blacksmith.

Motherlove can be good or goes south when it’s devouring. Take a literary whirl into the dark side of one mother’s love and a son’s surprise at discovering the true identity of the Goddess of Everything. The story will forever change the way you see mothers, love, and decisions.

Be safe, be well during this time of worldwide crisis and remember . . .

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

 

 

 

Soul, Reading, and the Visionary World

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Soul and Inspiration

Inspiration happens from deep within the visionary world. While reading, sensing spontaneous intuitive flashes, and dreaming with vivid imagery, we experience the world of the spiritual imagination. CG Jung called the soul a vessel filled with grace or spirit, energy dramatized in literary images, intuitive flashes, and nightly visions known as dreams. Dramatic images encountered during reading and spirit-filled dreams while sleeping are inspirations from the visionary world’s wellspring known as soul.

We are soulful beings. When reading, we knock on the door of soul and quietly enter, words and story leading us to nourishment for the day. Daily reading nourishes the mind and heart as much as food does the body. I find that my soul, composed of both my intellectual mind and emotional heart, grows hungry to read. I can read myself full and satiate my literary appetite by taking an hour a day to open my books and savor words, story, and meaning.

Visions while Reading

As we settle into the beat and rhythm of reading, we enter a visionary state. It’s a trance state that ushers us into another world. That world is as real as the one in which we spend our waking hours. Regardless of the story, memories and unexpected images well up and sometimes bring us to tears or passionately convict us. Well-crafted stories open our minds and hearts to new perspectives on old problems or relax us into a sleep populated by spirits in various guises.

Spirits are archetypal, ancient energies that incarnate in the visionary/dream world. In soulful stories, ones birthed from a free flow of images from the unconscious mind, there is a world of spirits at work. They inhabit the images of the protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters. Reading suspends the ego mind so creative energies can make their way up from the shadowlands of the unconscious and touch our consciousness. Life is better for the time taken to tend the soul with heartfelt words and mysterious narratives.

Spirits Inspire and Transform

When reading and entering the spirit world of imagination, there is potential to feel changed. Sometimes it’s movement into relaxation. Other readings mean shock and necessary unsettledness about how we have seen the world. Soul growth unsettles entrenched states of mind that now need to be examined in a new light.

Inspiration means to be filled with spirit. I remember learning this understanding in my undergraduate days studying ancient Greek. Spirits of the visionary world, what shamans and mystics call the spirit realm, are at work during storytelling and reading. Savoring a story each day is a powerful opportunity to drink from the wellspring of literary life. The soul, a vessel filled with spirit, hungers to read and discover nourishment, inspiration, and transformation out of what has once been and is now gone by, and movement into what lies ahead.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Reality ~ Enough Already!

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Reality and Imagination

Reality ~ enough already! We need a break. So . . . where to go? There’s a story. It ushers into the imagination. After a tough day of seeing patients, I look forward to watching and reading stories that entrance and reset my mind.

As a psychologist, I know the imagination as a wellspring for healing and consciousness. Helping patients with troubling dreams is a lot like taking my readers on a soul journey through stories. The books I write are like dreams, a free-flow of imagination that bypasses outer reality and taps into hidden worlds that offer unthought secrets.

Clogged Emotions and Stories

Visionary stories take you into a different zone. I need to go there. You need to go there. It blows out what’s been clogging up your emotional and spiritual life.

Stuck emotions translate to a stuck life. We’re working harder and harder and getting nowhere. Everyday problems get blown out of proportion because we’re dealing with the small stuff. Soon, one small issue leads to another and our heads are crammed full of anxiety and weighed down by care.

Picking up a story gives your conscious mind a rest so your unconscious can enter reverie. Yeah, reverie. It’s a word that means “pleasantly lost in thoughts,” as one dictionary states. Without needing to know how it works, it’s enough to experience a good visionary thriller. Somehow, in a way mysterious to logic and linear thinking, it cuts to the quick. And, we feel better, our mind a little more unclogged and our disposition a little lighter.

Inspiration and Wisdom

Friday through Sunday I both read and write visionary stories. Folks who write and read visionary books are seekers. We sense a tug from the unconscious mind, the realm of spiritual inspiration, and old wisdom.

Daily challenges hit us one after another. They seem unending. In my stories—The Unholy, Goddess of the Wild Thing, and the soon to be released Goddess of Everything—there’s one fright and then a bigger one and then (you’d never guess it!) a seemingly insurmountable obstacle that threatens life and limb. There seems to be no way out.

When you lose yourself in reading a visionary thriller, your unconscious mind feels understood. People go through things, and the things they go through can leave them on edge. They’re dangling from a precipice, hanging between life and death. Admit it—you know the feeling.

Pick up a visionary read. Browse through your favorite online book retailer under visionary/metaphysical fiction if you don’t know where to start. Discover worlds where unthought wisdom comes to the aid of a sincere soul at a dead-end time of life. You’re in for a time of mind expansion and soul finding.

So . . . enough of reality! Let’s consider the inspiration of Albert Einstein who wrote that imagination is more important than knowledge. It births human evolution. Let’s do this! Let’s take time to take leave from outer reality, plunge into the imagination, and evolve.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

Dreams, Visionary Horror, and Covid-19

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Dreams and Covid-19

My literary research jettisons out of personal life experience, clinical psychotherapy, and dreams. Patients have suffered cruelties at the hand of the dark side of life. They hid their suffering, or they’d be shamed. Today, amid the Covid-19 crisis, people are shaming people. Patients report nightmares of rampant disregard for social distancing, mask-wearing, and avoiding nonessential activities. Low-minded individuals let down their guard and consciousness about human welfare and safety. Nightmares kick in in terms of actual infections soaring and the unconscious mind reeling against the darkness in human nature. People are scared. Dreams confirm their right to be scared— people want to disregard what is good and safe so they can do as they please. It’s scary.

Visionary Horror and Covid-19

Reading visionary horror resets the mind. My novels focus on the horror of the dark side of religion, but power is power. Whether in the realm of religion, politics, business, or family power is at work. It can be good or bad. The one that wins depends on the one fed. That’s the horrifying reality brought close up and personal in the reading of visionary horror.

There are scary things in life. Read, live, and get real about scary things. That includes Covid-19. Dreams and nightmares got your back. Be open and they’ll speak to you, confirm there is dark spiritual dimension behind bad things in life. The Covid-19 crisis, the crisis of religion gone bad, and the megalomaniac politicians’ crises are scary things in life. They spring from bad seeds of hatred, sown, and nurtured.

I’ve been criticized for writing visionary horror to teach psychological truths. Folks have said I should just write stories without having an agenda, a moral in mind. Hogwash! We all have agendas, and mine is to help us all see clearly and live as healthily and safely as possible. Visionary horror takes daily happenings, dream scenarios, and cold-sweat nightmares and charges them up into hyperreality. Then horror births visionary potential for consciousness and transformation.

Unseen Dimensions During Covid-19

William James, the father of American Psychology, wrote that an invisible dimension affects everything in life, daily happenings, decisions, and determines one’s destiny and fate. In everyday life, the supernatural is subtle. As for the Covid-19 crisis, bad politics, and the dark side of religion, they fundamentally spring from spiritual contagion. Our world, politics, economics, and religion are out of balance. Hateful attitudes have been loaded at toxic levels into our heads and psychic bloodstreams. If we close our eyes and pretend it’s not real, then we’re complicit.

Images and metaphors in visionary horror are powerful conveyances of truths. Truth loaded into visionary horror affects us whether we realize it or not. Images stream into our psychic bloodlines and make their way into our attitudes, perspectives, and emotions. Getting onboard a visionary thriller is a potent dose of psychological medicine to blow out mental pathways of denial. Bad things happen to innocent people. The right literary medicine lets us see clearly, so we stand a better chance of being good and decent human beings.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

 

Tap Into the Life Vibe

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Bad Contagion and the Vibe

In the midst of the creeper contagion of Covid-19 and any other bad creature inside or out that comes our way, we can tap into the life vibe. It’s there and in you and surrounding you. In visionary fiction and occult horror (good books one and the same), there’s a horrid contagion. It’s usually in the form of a person or people. If it’s people, then it’s a cult. A cult becomes occult when it’s kept secret. That’s what occult means – secret. A chosen few, think they have the truth, and pity those who stand in their way.

The Vibe Will See You Through

There’s a tension in thrillers. Real life has tension. Daily is packed with tension. If we try and live so that it’s tension-free, we’ve got one hell of a problem that will translate to our soul. What you try and escape will get you. It’ll bite you in the ass. Stories, occult thrillers, are visionary because they raise consciousness. That’s the vibe—heightened awareness that gets you through the hell that’s come your way and out the other side in one piece and a better person for it. You’ll learn to stop the running, face the issue, and get on with the decision that needs to be made.

We can’t outrun making decisions. They’re either bad or good, but they are ours to make. And, we live out the consequences. Hopefully, the reading of stories helps us become a little wiser about the choices we make. They are critical because they determine the course of our life.

Vibe Restored and Replenished

As a depth psychologist in private practice for forty years, I’ve seen people repeatedly choose the bad and suffer terribly. The vibe’s gotten dulled down. It’s barely pulsing, beating, breathing. Often, folks have gotten enmeshed in cults like dysfunctional families (yup, they qualify), oppressive religious groups, dogmatic professional associations, and a legion of other nasty entities. I’d rather my patients not have suffered. But, it was their road to take, their path to walk. I help them regroup, learn what they need to learn from the experience and how dreams have spoken to the pain. Then the vibe returns like the morning sun rising over the Sandia Mountains in my native New Mexico. There’s wisdom gained, vibe restored and replenished, from stories, the living out of our own, and the reading of cut-to-the-chase visionary fiction.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

 

Image: Moises Llerena and Alfredo Zacateca

How to Get it Together!

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Good Reading Helps

I couldn’t resist writing a How-to Article. It pops out of a piece I read in a high-brow online magazine about how-to books considered an embarrassing facet of the writing and publishing world. Oh . . . get real. All good reading helps us, it takes us into new thoughts, it inspires new ideas, it’s a way for us to get our life together.

My specialty has turned from books in inspirational psychology (starting thirty-five years ago) to essays in depth psychology and visionary fiction. There are no two ways around it. They, the essays and novels, are purposefully embedded with insights, life wisdom, culled from forty years of clinical experience, research, and painful living through life’s humdingers.

How-to Reads Help

How-to . . . is a literary voice, sometimes a whisper or flash, that makes a difference. We feel different after the words, sentence, paragraph, story. It changes the way we see a problem, feel about ourselves, relate to others. It’s a how-to that happens spontaneously and mysteriously.

We’re drawn to read what we read because something in us is hungry. I prefer stories oriented to consciousness and archetypal themes. They play out numinous dramas, the way the human psyche uses dreams, images, vital feeling states, and synchronicity to get through to us. The psyche is always at work helping us get it together.

Check out Soulful and Helpful Reads

I’ve been criticized (a couple of times – still stings) for not being more nuanced in my storytelling. Critics have said I should have left things understated, implied, maybe at the most slightly suggested. When we’re in crisis, the unconscious mind does not dawdle with nuance, far-off whispers, or subtleties. It speaks, shouts, if necessary. And, that’s how I write—good and evil squaring off, the crazies set loose, and then we see who survives and thrives.

So, shy not away from picking up the supernatural thriller you secretly want to read but have put off. Check into a work of soulful nonfiction and let the words seep in and nourish. It’s all about what books our innermost self is drawn to. It will speak the words we need to hear, it will feed our depths, it will help us get it together!

 

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Soulful Living – Peaceful Holiday

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A Soulful Holiday

Yuletide calls us to a sensitive, deliberate turning within to soul. It has been associated with divinities of the hunt, psychologically referring to the search for inner nourishment. In depth psychotherapy and visionary writing, natural shifts of energy are heeded. They align us with life, the nature of things for us that can be quite different than for others. In fact, as we age and grow we become increasingly defined. Our uniqueness is, hopefully, appreciated by us and those we love.

Troubles during the holiday come when folks are pressured to get together. It’s good for us to share time with those we enjoy, those of kindred soul. And, if it is not so with others, then let that be. We do not have to get along with everyone or everyone with us – be they kith or kin. Differences can be respected. A holiday can be enjoyed.

 

Live More Quietly and Deeply

Dreams of patients and protagonists in my novels urge balance. When the season grows dark and cold, dreams address the need to listen more deeply and live more quietly. As friends and family do the same, harmony prevails. If not, there is discord. Family fights, friends falling out, anxiety and dysfunction set in when personal and relational limits have been violated.

In The Unholy, the church demands everybody believe and live according to rigid dogmas. In Goddess of the Wild Thing, discord and bona fide evil hit the scene when people demand loyalty. In the end, each story unfolds as people make decisions that seem small but have big consequences. Little decisions during the holidays make the difference between soulful living and high-pressured craziness. Winter bids us relinquish a year worth of rigid buildups, dysfunctional ways of living and relating. The dark and cold draws us within, to the warmth of a quieter and deeper life.

 

Quietude Births Consciousness

The visionary story that is our life is an evolution of decisions made and lives affected. We stand the chance of making soulful choices that bring peace of mind as we take time for quietude and turning within. Let this Yuletide be one of quietly enjoying yourself and those of kindred soul. Let the holidays usher us into realms of the imagination and intimacy through reflective living, relating, and reading. Let the dark womb of a soulful interiority be our realm this season so that soon a new light of consciousness may be born.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Call the Alchemist

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Alchemical Books

We are all alchemists. In depth psychology and visionary books, alchemy is at work. Alchemist Awakening speaks to the amnesia within, sleepwalking through life until we psychically wake up. Everyday Enchantments lifts the veil from our eyes so we can see the magic in daily life. Daily alchemical magic transforms base, raw emotion into meaningful experiences. Love trauma in Goddess of the Wild Thing rips the mind apart and makes room for alchemy. The Unholy shocks us with religious horror then transports us into a realm of dreams and natural magic. Literally, everything that happens in life can transform us to the core.

Depth Therapy – Visionary Thrillers

When I do psychotherapy, write visionary thrillers, and live everyday life, I call on the alchemist within. This is a psychological dynamic that energizes experiences so daily happenings help and heal even as they can upfront hurt and sometimes shock.

We tend to this vitalizing force in the human psyche by raising our awareness. It’s a quiet and gentle knowing. Therapy assists patients in discovering this realm, reading ushers the attentive into imaginary states of mind, awareness then transforms dangerous and horrid experiences into meaning. That’s the luscious juice in the lemons life dishes out, the alchemical gold in the base metal of human suffering.

Alchemy and Unconscious Mind

When visionary writers write, they live out their characters and stories. Depth therapists have to descend into the unconscious mind and learn its ways before helping others make the inward descent and heal. Therapy is an alchemical awakening, and reading visionary fiction also wakens the alchemist within.

Awakening is a must lest we perish in a black hole of despair. We’ve all gone down the tube at one time or another. We’ve needed help. More times than I can count, I’ve opened a book randomly (to include novels) and found a paragraph that speaks to me. It’s uncanny, moving, and more than a wee bit mysterious. It’s the alchemist within spontaneously guiding us to awakening, however small or revolutionary.

Alchemy and Enlightenment

During the middle of my day in psychotherapy practice, I have lunch and read. Frequently, I turn to alchemical texts, let my eyes land where the text falls open. One noontime, the writing spoke to the therapist’s need to sit silently, act as a quiet container of practically unendurable pain until the patient sees for herself the meaning behind the crisis. Wisdom lies in not speaking what the patient cannot yet see or understand. They must, with the caring presence of a depth psychotherapist, feel all that must be explored and then and only then will the clouds part and enlightenment, perchance, dawn.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first session of the afternoon ushered the patient and me into a realm of nearly unendurable trauma. Listening without rushing into words allowed her to go through a dark emotional tunnel and, fortunately, by session’s end gain insight. It was soulful enlightenment regarding heart-rending pain birthing tearful insights and a release of pent-up emotions. I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the noontime reading that prepared me for the rough time ahead. It awakened the relational alchemist inherent in depth therapy and visionary/alchemical books

Reading Awakens Inner Alchemist

Visionary reading awakens the inner alchemist as we enter a dark emotional and spiritual tunnel through the challenges of the protagonist and the horrors of the antagonist. It’s a story like our story, the narrative that is our life replete with hopes and dreams gone south and turned sour. The inner alchemist awakens within our imagination as we delve into the feelings and the ensuing meaning of life experiences and visionary books.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com