New(s) to Me!

Human Design, this terrific descriptive (a’ la’ astrology) program for the body/soul has been around since, oh, say 1992. Actually it’s been hidden in the matrix forever but surfaced in the channeled information of Ra Uru Hu around then. I’m told in my first class Ra lived in a tree for eight months, or eight years or maybe eight days. I like eights, myself.

It’s a combination of the I Ching, overlaid by astrological symbols, & five other such systems both “energetic” & “proven.” I’ve studied a bunch of them individually, some thoroughly, some by running my eyes over a page or two, or my fingers over their book spines in bookstore self-help sections.  

If the universe was sending timely information all along, I wasn’t ready to hear it. Who knew I could do anything in the world just cuz I wanted to & if I put all my energy into it? Who knew that my imitation of a bounding kangaroo-like existence this lifetime could have its pawprints tracked & even predicted as to outcome 35 years ago? I certainly did not & so fumbled about being luckier in my choice of cars than husbands, jobs, living places & so many other life events. (In fact, cars have been a one-true-love deal all along. I’m fond of saying my car loans lasted longer than my wedding vows – on every occasion.)

What does it say about the ephemeral me that I was better at choosing cars than jobs or men? Ra knew that! Had I known, I might have tapped on the bark of his tree a long time ago…dare I say going out on a limb?

And where would I be now? Living my best life (an anagram for “file,” yeh?) All this time I’ve been living in the “H” drawer under a real name beginning with “B.” Shoot!

However, I must ask if it’s ever too late to do this, even when the energy to start again needs a full-body face lift, an energy drink I can mainline by IV & possibly an energy patch of two on my ass.

That’s a rhetorical question, before you answer. Only my Human Design teacher knows for sure & she’s covering it all in three more classes, having missed one out sick.

It’s been an ant on a patchwork quilt kind of life sometimes, complete with distractions, much mileage, encroaching wrinkle patterns & a sore left hip right now. Where are those medbeds anyway? Guys, I’m waiting here, right? Languishing, in fact.

And even as I settle under the covers for another night of broken sleep punctuated by wakey-wake time I’ll spend on the computer, checking for updates, or writing, writing, writing – any activity not requiring volume since my hard-working roommate is sleeping next door.

The cat seems to have made better life choices: she gets fresh water 2-3 times each day, a spoon of Tuna every three, her litter cleaned daily. She gets all the sleep she wants albeit in the odd places cats can choose to sleep – like the glass coffee table that wobbles like a surfboard on the incoming tide. Oh yes, did I mention she gets brushed 2-3 times a day too & has her choice of sticking around for this or hopping off the table four brushstrokes in? As well as her choice of brushes? If she had any better of a life, I’d say she was a dog.

So, let me tell you a typical story in my life:

Driving along a narrow street – many streets in Sarasota have “traffic calming” features like lovely mini-garden medians bisecting their centera & narrowing the driving area already pinched by oblique parking patterns, or “rotaries,” or speed tables, I noticed my seat was sitting too closely to the pedals. I decided to disobey Rule Number One in the driving manual – the one saying  Never adjust your seat while you’re driving. I contorted my left arm to brush the top of the adjuster which released with the immediacy of a greased trapdoor in a haunted house.

My squeal of “no!” was cut off as I pitched forward into the steering wheel. My boobs crashed into the horn which makes a respectable noise at 7 a.m. on a sleepy little street replete with traffic calming devices to prevent pull-overs. I was in mid-breath & held there, afraid to expel what was in my lungs, but giggling kind of doesn’t help one to hold their breath… I got no farther than that: I was pinned against the wheel, mid-lip-smooch to it, having just applied “Barely Beige” to draw off attention from the wrinkles, um, the laugh lines, on my pursed lips. (I am not a multi-tasker anymore, let me add here.) My right knee had lodged beneath my chin as I lifted it trying to stay my foot from pressing the gas pedal.

The horn blared, my breath halted, my boobs were crushed. I had noplace to pull over for the nonce & I realized this is serious but I could not stop laughing. My fingers vaguely brushed the bar but because my shoulder was pinned into immobility, I could not manipulate a finger under it. I finally found a shallow spot to pull into, opened the car door & extricated myself, popping off a button on my blouse.

Thank God for quiet! Lights were coming on in the townhomes to either side. My phone (call 911?) had rocketed from the passenger seat onto the floor… but I did it! I got loose!

If I had done my chart properly, would this have shown up in the Daily Predictions? Does Human Design DO daily predictions? Not sure on either count.

This is the kind of event that adds reasonable doubt to the thought that any system is going to help me at this point.

My only predictive programming seems to be “pretty much anything can happen at any given time.” It’s a fortune cookie life I Iive here. And I won’t even try to tell the story of the blank fortune cookie I once received.

Proof to one & all I need to simply go with the flow, all power to Ra.

Obeying the driver manual now runs a close second…

1

Someday, My One Day Will Come

Haven’t I affirmed & had it affirmed for me lifelong… One day you will … One day I know I’ll be able to …

Well, hey, I’m past ready & one day has turned into 27,890 of them, give or take 50-60. Ok, Great Universe, I’m waiting! Yes, I have, too! I HAVE tried, I have declared… I claimed, I demanded, I surrendered, I laughed, I cried, I stamped my right foot & then my left one even harder. I swept the altar & scraped off the wax drippings, I’ve burned wagonloads of sage, palo santo, practically mainlined Rescue Remedy, I smoked sacred substances, I’ve entered the many mansions in my mind moving swiftly thru doorways, shouting “Clear” at every one as I rounded it with a lit candle & a crucifix.

I’ve learned very little is sacred when it comes to humans & for all my fly-in-the-jar buzzing, I am so. And I’ll say it again, I’m ready!

I know so few of those who believe they know me would even take a flying leap into what I’m about discussing this with the universe. I know this is because they are each on their own path, the drums repeating behind them.

Each day it comes clearer. The world isn’t going to admit to anything. It will say, ‘Haven’t I made you happy? Haven’t I been clear & blue & scarlet & fragrant & flowered & butterflied enough for you yet?’

No.

You don’t understand either!

And what will it accomplish to declare what I want now? Aren’t I doing some sweaty little dance off in the corner keeping time to my own heart?

My life hides in the wrinkles now. I get a little desperate now & then. I’m watching down the road for the bus that isn’t coming, that may have changed routes a decade ago while I balanced on the curb. Did the announcement come the one time I took my eyes away?

This world isn’t made to satisfy what I believe my desires to be. This world is a paean to dissatisfaction, to falling short in the moment. I no sooner say yes than someone nearby begins singing no no no no no. Those two letters trip over in eagerness to assert their negating power.

When I was a child, my mother had to go to a meeting when a nor’easter was coming in. The sky was dark, the wind whipping itself into a real blow, the rain becoming a personal affront to whatever one wore. The Atlantic crossed the four blocks of our tiny peninsular neighborhood. The bay crested over the bulwark traveling one block to meet it. They formed a widow’s peak in the parking lot next door, gleeful & super-charged, a discovery of elements & forces against which few had any control & certainly not my 4’5″ Mom breasting the current to Come Home. My brother & I watched her out the window, cheering her on – “Come on , MOM!” We stripped up the bathroom towels & raced to the second floor porch door as she tiredly emerged from the flood, both hands on the wooden railing. “Mom! Where’s the car?” we stupidly asked – she’d have needed a motorboat at that point. She pulled the towels from us, wiping her hands, her face, wrapping one around her soaked hair.

“How did you do at the meeting?” we chorused, “Mom! What happened?”

“He said no,” she tiredly replied. So her mission to reclaim the Grail of my brother’s reputation had failed & he would not be allowed to return to school for the three months before graduation, but would always bear the diploma of the known-to-be-inferior public school. The entire senior class would graduate with him from there.

Knowing what I know now, I would have known: The church existed to condemn, to pinch off mercy at any source, to draw a woman out into a force of nature to be admonished in person by a man in black, his Roman collar declaring his loyalty. Mom had no tithes to offer. no way to stay the storm.

She went into her bedroom; we hung up the towels. The storm blasted us all night & left a shambled neighborhood in its wake.

My life is only one of so many, all deadlocked in a “no.”

But here it is, Universe, I’m going to keep singing yes until I die & quite probably for some time afterward. I WILL find my way to Some Day. It may be the one before they bury me, but I will have mine.

I will sit in a shaft of winter sun, cozy & warmed clear through. I will write all my tomorrows & hide the book in the cedar chest in the attic where I will know them to be. I will watch for storms from the windows, a supernatural self in the fore, a preternatural force of the pen. I will write all day & my hand shall not grow tired. Food will appear nearby, & only my favorites & I’ll ignore it all to get what I have to say, said.

That Some Day is this One Day I have now!

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Worth Repeating – 4/15/15

This is a transplant from a Weebly Blog I kept during 2015. The words ring truer to me now than they did then & at the time, I considered this a rant.

Anyway, read it & let me know what you think in the comments.

Haven’t you had enough of the divisiveness? Isn’t there a way around this disconnection of truth which skips over itself, like flat stones skipping across a river? These create ripples wherever they touch, all the circles eventually push over and around each other, everything touches back upon itself. 

But we are tired of this now. We have grown weary of deceit, of ugliness, of never having enough, never being enough, never doing enough. All of that is artificial since we are and always have been enough. Our future was stolen, the past mislaid, the present deceived. And when they say this was done with our free will, I stutter in anger. I never! But somewhere in the past I must have and the filth lingers in my aura since this still is affecting my light, splintering it, reducing it, minimizing it.

Many of us just want out. We got caught; we were so close to scuttling out the door and someone stepped on our tails, picked up our squirming bodies and threw us back into the milieu of time. Time was frayed, circular, looped, caught up in itself, on itself, by itself. I know more than a few people who have said, no matter, they simply don’t want to return again. Me? I haven’t seen enough of this world, nor will I ever do so; every day is a miracle of light, life, beauty, spirit and breath. But I would appreciate it more if others took the time to do so and if we all could simply love what’s in front of our eyes. I don’t like disorder, I don’t react well to someone who litters, whose trash lines my roads. 

Here’s a story: I picked up trash along a walk one day and put it into an empty trashcan at the end of a driveway. Next morning all six or so pieces of trash I had put into the can were dumped at the end of the driveway. What does that mean? My trashcan is only for my trash? But in dumping it at the foot of the driveway where you live, hasn’t it become yours in a more personal way? I do not understand. These are the kind of folk I’d like to see removed from my planet. Yet the Texts tell me this person is also me. Oh Lord!

I find it wearying to blame them, or even to hold it against them. They are entitled to a private trash can if this is a manifestation of their sovereign free will; however, it seems easier to not redistribute it to the road. That’s my easier…not theirs. Stay calm, carry on.

There’s no need to rub my eyeteeth against the container, trying to scrape off whatever I can to prove my point. My past isn’t the most shining example it might be and future will surely become if I keep up with my soul’s opening to the Light. I’d like to think none of this is my fault, but f we are all one, it’s all my fault. I’d sure like it, though, if you stoppped blaming me!

When will people find out how much we have been manipulated? That’ll be a tipping point of major proportion. There’s good and bad in everything, if not necessarily in everyone. Situations can always go more than one way. It is up to the individual I AM to parse the event into its components, decide which to keep, which to push away. Like stripping cellulose strings off celery, are there any you would hold onto? For sure we don’t need the roughage – we have had enough of that and in spades. 

There is always a vision of the best thing in the world calling us forward, asking us to forget the past, forgive it, lay it aside, yet I know few who are willing to do this. Even I balk, at times, with just letting of that which has been done to me in the name of my life, my progress, my reaching set goals. Each is a chance at letting go…each is an end run made easier by all the times I’ve set myself toward the prize before. I’ve worn down the path, stomped all the weeds, made myself a crop circle that bears my fruit when others look at it. Since I’ve made the way easier, why not just follow along and marvel at this efficiency. I could use the praise and you could use the simplification. 

Here’s the catch: we all have to do it for ourselves. Yet I follow along in the tracks made by others’ words. Few think for themselves anymore; TV and mass media have removed us from the need, the current state of stupefying education has removed from us the means. Google has relieved us of the responsibility of research. We can gather opinions and ideas like wildflowers to make a bouquet, never noticing the locoweed settled among the daisies. It’s just another source of greenery. 

What makes you scream? What frustrates you to gnashing teeth? How much disorder is needed to make you move your world back into order? When someone pulls the rug out from under you by telling you everything you know to be truth is a lie – from your religion to your financial state, to the nutritional content of your foods and how this relates to your ability to reason, what is your next step? Not only have they pulled that rug, they’ve shaken every single thing off of it and laid it down bare. Now’s the time to rebuild, repair, replace, resource your life. Don’t let others do it for you. Don’t let anyone else mess with your brain. Edward Snowden has pointed out so clearly just how much we have been messed with. 

We are both consumer and consumed in the way of today’s world. I can’t say it gently: there are entities that have fed off of us like those in the worst of our horror movies. We are their feed lot and they don’t really care if we befoul our living space because it gives them more nourishment when we wax into complaint. The spider deliberately snares the fly. The fly has enough facets on its eyes to see its way, yet it enters the web: how is this so? We have all the tools and intelligence we need to step away from Ground Zero and instead plant a tree. However we have a powerful tendency to stand restlessly in place, gesticulating, moaning and generally carrying on about the destruction.

Declare who you are. Become all you can be! You are your own and only advocate. Live your life and taste what it brings you. Imagine synesthesia: “hearing a color” or “scenting a musical note.” Imagine if Beethoven came through in your eyes in greens and yellows, Wagner in deep browns and grays. Imagine if your garden simply sang to you, its melody both haunting and delicate. Each composition of this world should lead us to another way to say what needs to be said. 

Let go with vigor. Toss stuff away that no longer serves. Clean out the garages in your minds, muck out the stables in your gut…find a way to move off dead center (it’s called that for a reason, mind) and go to the peripheries and the edges. Whether the earth is round or flat, we are made to live in it. It is ours. It’s a bit stupid to wait for rescue from the motherships when we can’t even get our heads out of the refrigerators, our hands out of the snack cabinets. Stop devouring chemicals like they are good for you, demand whole-grown food, healthy life, clean water, beautiful skies, temperate weather, cooperative children, intelligence-gathering leaders, well-paid teachers and an education model that models…even moderate government which takes an actual interest in its constituency. Imagine these to be so. To believe otherwise is to place your hands firmly under your buttocks and only wave your mouth about. 

Still your tongue for a day; watch how the world assumes a different shape when you’re not hacking away at it verbally. See, consider, construct mindfully. Grow a plant, plant a tree, hold someone’s hand and walk with them awhile. 

Understand the world is on the cusp of change as it has never been before. Decide who to back and let it be the good guys – enough of the nastier alternatives. Hold them in anxious regard no longer and watch them melt back into the primordial soup. Enjoin your heart with the sun, mind the world with your third eye, bury your own dead after a final washing with careful soap and your salted tears. Catch your own food, feed your own children, and become aware of your world as you never have before. The world is just that different and far more deserving. Treat it like your best friend; write it love notes…we’re celestial sonnets here to create beauty, love, peace, grace and joy. Huh? If this is too much for you, find something you can begin with. It is too small for you, discover free energy and get the word out to everyone.

All of this, all of these, are activities you can accomplish. Making the effort brings the light to us. We become visible to others and to our gods as we perceive them. when we all take an interest in becoming our best selves, our children go no longer hungry, our adults no longer under-nourished on so many levels. Our wild pets become our dear friends. Life abounds in blameless movement and joy. Become a part of that dance, enter the elemental, allow the heavenly, abhor the unnecessary, avoid that which makes you feel badly, feel unhappy or lost or victimized.

The water remembers everything. This is why the bad guys want to kill the water. They have tried in slow ways, pollution, poison, discoloration; they lay waste to the water on the land, the water in the sky, the water in our bodies. It seems like they have us just the same, if they desire, because the water cannot harm them no matter how their manipulation of it destroys us or our lives.

It’s all about the I AM you are!

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The Stalking Horse

The Stalking Horse

So, this phrase came to mind & I Googled it. “A concept to mount a challenge to a third party.” Sounds gobbledygook to me. I prefer my idea of a horse emerging from the mist, a moment ago only a sound of hooves hitting dry ground, vaguely menacing, altogether alerting…

I feel like I’m on some sliding board & when I reach bottom, the playground will be entirely changed. What was real will no longer be so. What was mine to do will have slipped from my shoulders, a forgotten coat of many colors, found by another & exclaimed over with joy.

I finally had a Human Design chart which I’ve carried around for at least a decade analyzed. I didn’t understand it & now have a nodding acquaintance to with a definition. This system is touted as one which gives you your entire life just beyond 3D – the coulda, woulda, shoulda’s of it all. It provides a panorama of where life dried up or watered down, a glimpse of roads not taken but still kind of available.

OH! This is what  happened! The upper area designating the head is unfinished – even after all these years, thoughts fleet on after touching down. But this is what’s made me who I am – a chronicler of life & times, a note-taker, an observer from the edges of the page, where it curls & wears out, where the ink runs down & off, where no tape can repair the fringe: paper quietly curls onto itself, any earth-shaking formulas of life faint & blurring. A new, white-write page emerges.

At first, I was dismayed. But in having no, or few “fixed thoughts,” I realize there’s a whole Universe to be fingered through & decided upon. All my decisions were windblown & changeable, all my relationships subject to abrupt endings…I pursued until I did no longer. Then I discovered I couldn’t even remember why I’d done that. Here I thought it was a flaw as I watched others cling to poor decisions & illogic in the face of proof. Hubris or humanity? What I now perceive as a flaw in them, I pursued earnestly & simply could not anchor into. And I tried.

I have no memories I much care to hold closely anymore, even the humorous ones.

I read years ago after the official business of life – school, kids, houses, relationships – are past tense, the looking glass becomes transparent & the future holds next steps: a Good Death. I am idly packing stuff into the suitcase of TakeAlong – an experience, an expression, a talent to preserve, for later study & development.

I let go of ideas & relationships like breadcrumbs in the forest thinking I’ll find my way back. But you & I know about what happens to those. My memories are devoured by dragons looking for gems to hoard & belched out aflame later on. I am a zephyr on the winds of change, savored for a moment – what’s that sweet-sweet smell? Then forgotten or bemused over as life moves on.

It’s too late or too early to get into Carol’s Theory of Life here. I only know that which it’s been for me. I watch friends stop along the way & become mired or fixed in expectations not coming into being. I tug a bit, “Come on,” I say, “Just look at it this way! See how easy it is to change?”  But their heads are full. Their Stalking Horses have walked into the barn & await grooming.

“Bye,” I say over my shoulder, pursuing the next thought eagerly. Time to study something else. Time to poke around in this corner & see what’s in the boxes. Time to unpack the unfamiliar, the divine, & explore the next life when I won’t be this corporeal.

What will it be like to be air? Nothing holds onto this me, it could be a ton of fun to just fly off! I’m onto the Next Best Thing. “Move along,” as they say, “nothing to see here.”

1

Quietudes

I walk alongside a running stream

Never still

Of one volition – continuous light.

I want to be the uncontainable force

Moved by Youniverse into the places I fit best

I want that me: she awaits

Of two minds about it all

Such is the fate of the Libra…

Handed off to Saturn return & the incoming

Tsunami of Love.

=====

Something shifts in my balance as I sleep

Mornings are early with “let’s get to it”

Married to “am I living this?”

=====

NOTE TO SELF

Don’t  you go living tomorrow today

And especially that tendency to drag up the past for another sniff!

Never give up the present for anything other than what it is

No matter how ….

           Oh! Something shiny!

=====

PRAY IN YOUR SPARE TIME

Not in the grave, tho grave it may be

Not to the deaf tho none really hear

Pray in the between of words

Said/unsaid

In the sore potential

Kinetic/active

======

QUINTESSENCE OF SILENCE

The clock stops ticking

The hum retreats

Whatever is believed in gets tidied up & put away

Light a few candles

Hum the holy hymns

While some dream, some drown

QUIETUDE OF SILENCE

Underwater

Where fish are still

I listen, hearing nothing

~ Listen harder

Stratospheric

Where clouds amass rain

I hear humming:

Rain by morning

My breath fits perfectly

Into my lungs.

0

The Dream Sequence

The morning is a deal from the Gambler’s deck

A constant shuffling sound, the slap of cards to play.

I think back at the cat

Lounging on the corner of the bed

In her sloe-eyed silent blink

=====

Where has the when gone?

When I grow up

When I fall in love

Nightfall is a doorway of stars

The price of its freedom paid

With the fee of simply closing my eyes.

=====

Who knew even books would float off my little island of life

To other shores?

I pull my hands from storybook heroes

To fold them in my lap.

Simply staring down the night

Distilling into dreams

As antidote to the push n pull of living out loud.

In the logic of the impossible

I am it all:  beginning, middle, ending

Surrendered into breath.

=====

The mom & pop of selfing

Now unimportant.

I owe nothing, being no one

Anymore.

=====

Dreams brush up against me in a way other bodies never will

An intimacy unmatched with humans

Here is a language spoken that I understand

No matter its accent or words.

I coalesce into Carol on Friday night

Convinced all will change by tomorrow.

=====

A cat named Drift rides a horse named Moon

Through a night of satin & coal.

I’m known for my words, not the dreams of my sleep

Nor the rotund shape of my soul

All the nonsense of life

Washed up by tide to my door

Bringing light at its end:

From sacrum to sternum

A human once more.

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Closures & Cooking

I’m not sure “Etc.” is a good closing for a letter, but it should be. I’m gearing up to teach a writing class & tho I won’t be including the seven  parts of a letter, but how to gather your topic into sentences, paragraphs & chapters… So this has made me sensitive to such topics.

Woke from my nap feeling hungry, so enjoyed a bagel with ghee for my non-nutritious dinner. Sometimes ya just gotta – but probably not every night. I used to cook. There was a time when I prepared enough for a football team every night with a super-social first husband & a dishwasher in the apartment. Over years of meal prep incentive dwindling, I am inclined to bread & a cup of coffee at this point. I remember the days of roasts, vegetables, pasta in its various manifestations… I remember Sara Lee cakes for dessert.

A more pleasant memory, it would seem than reality at this time of life. My nutritional intake meter is pretty close to a “none” on any metric scale. Crackers & avocado, check. Peanut butter, check. Pot roast with carrots, potatoes, pearl onions & a side veg, no check.

Food itself has changed. That which I once remember being tasty & satisfying doesn’t cut the mustard when your sense of taste is at about 34% of normal. The nicotine patches are helping, but sometimes instead of flavor or smell, I get odd reactions: the coffee tastes like it has lemon in it, or the food being cooked runs me out of the kitchen with the smell.

I now have two boxes of couscous – which I have not eaten voluntarily ever, – two boxes of rice, two cans of chili beans, 3 chicken tenders (frozen) & a bucket of salad which will likely wind up in soup before the trash, tho that’s not a given, given my current state of gustatory non-electives & a strong failure-to-cook routine running.

What happened here? I need to get Nancy Drew on this one. Maybe I could pay her off in corn muffins (87 cents for the Jiffy boxes at current on-sale market rates.)

Oh, and the alligator? The Linger Lodge serves alligator bites as an appetizer, maybe I …

1

Rosemary Remembrance

Abandoned as an old religion,

The devil has my elbow, whispering innocences required

To enter heaven.

I move to the center of the wall I must climb over to exit

Escape is fluid & still evolutionary.

=======

DRUMS

Get UP! Get OUT!

The drums are starting again

All illusions of freedom become illusory

When anthems fill the air

When men choose their spears

Over women who want to dance.

The affronted ancestors rise up, chanting

Eerie voices staccato for conquest,

Plucking at the carts we

Break our backs to pull, babies tucked along the sides,

Rise UP! Get you gone

There is no remedy here for the wars

Brewing in the forests,

Stick to the paths, avoid the demons

Plucking at possessions.

Only one narrow corridor of escape

From the village, already flaming behind.

=======

Regrets rise like bubbles in a glass of tears.

I had enough of you before,

Let alone you invade me now

Begone from my beaten breast

In breaths expelled with sounds of tearing!

=======

I no longer believe the sacred, I do not look

For God anymore, or mothers, or husbands.

All the aggrieved virgin saints in ragged, raped glory

Flank me now, escort me

Since erasing sin

Is worthwhile for the holy.

=======

Being done with liars

I purvey the truth

While stuffing aces up my sleeves…

In a world victimized, weaponized,

I cannot choose the window or the door

I freeze between the kitchen & the bed

While darkness dims the lights of any yes.

It slides across a no like water across a road

Drowning out any maybe –

And cognitive dissonance reigns like truth

Rescheduled for a better time.

=======

You have become a contagious denial

Front & center, a denial in a matter of thinking

Shivering before me now

No longer golden, nor free, but

A bitter gourd of regret. A lost soul turning, turning.

I cannot scrape you off of me, no fingernails gain hold,

The black remains:

Your future marked with bloody handprints

The rivals of a 12-year-old’s heart in biting, feckless lies.

=======

Hail the Grail of my guilt

Shared unevenly

This life will suit no more

I don old shoes

And take to the roads

To meet a pilgrimage of ghosts.

=======

The angels themselves

Put feathers in my pockets

Wrapping me in wings of rosemary remembrance.

They stroke my wrists & kiss my forehead

Passing through my heart now clean,

Rise up, O wondrous one, believe in no one

But yourself, the all of Creation

The One they speak of in whispers

Pointing long fingers away from the paths

Over fields of grandeur

Under clouds of glory,

Move away from the serially unholy

Choosing one above the other

And burying the rest.

1

Ayahuasca by Starbucks

I recently gathered my anticipations into one container & it reinforced my understanding about that ancient adage on not putting all eggs into one basket. Big time!

I have been on Shamanic Journeys. These were meditative, quiet events, filled with deep breathing & visions, with tiny wispy thoughts – almost inklings – things to understand or study, do & say. They were a bit magical, like unicorns walking delicately through my imaginary meadow.

I signed up for one such Journey with a couple of minstrels advertised by a church. They were excellent entertainers & that should have been my first clue. Like, Buddha didn’t come out in a hat & cane, skirting his robes about, twirling a top hat.

I settled onto a hard floor with a thin yoga mat below & a good neck pillow. The gal explained for a longish time what to expect while my mind drifted outside into the beautiful Sarasota Garden Club setting; the foliage in balanced array, delightful bloom, the breeze teasing greens into a dance, birds flitting & probably singing out there in the overcasting afternoon. She finally shut up & her husband began to play guitar.

He was still plugged into his amp so the music hit like a flash mob of chords & words & really good lyrics. I flinched as the floor instantly became harder & more brittle. I closed my eyes to the landscape & tried very hard to follow the wife who was loudly (also on mic) directing me to head “down, down, down.” Um, it’s Florida. One cannot go too far down without hitting much mud & the occasional reptile.

Indeed, the first spirit helper up – described in incandescent detail – was Serpent. And while, yes, Serpent is wise, she’s not cuddly or reassuring to meet first up in the swamp (not much forest beng accessible here). She hardly got to flicker a forked tongue at me before we were off to another place. Husband hit a few more power chords, got settled into the chorus & began to rhymically breathe. Well, if you can call breathing blowing into the mic at four second intervals supposedly leading our breath. Was Serpent to accompany me? Can I have another Totem, please? Reliability over wisdom seeming the wisest choice…

Husband lit into the guitar. His rhythm induced a charging breath; it is difficult to go into meditation when one is breathing in/out/in/out/in/out loudly & forcefully. It rather mimics a storm coming in & the immediate response of my body was shelter! Get off the floor & under a chair or something! That would have worked under other circumstances, but I was supposed to be “sinking into the floor” instead. Alas, I stayed quite atop the surface, not even nestling into the neck pillow. I was tensed & heading into adrenaline rush as we ran, not walked, towards the woods, Serpent forgotten mid-hiss, wisdom unheard. There were places to be! There were visions to be had! There was breath to be force-marched out of the lungs!

“Find someplace dark & intimate,” she suggested at the top of the speaker’s range. You are heading into a hole you see on the forest floor! You are over the hole & it is Time To Enter Within! 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

Jump? On these legs? With these hips? How about ‘float’? Ok, are you at the bottom of the hole? What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything in the cave with you? [Hold on, lady, there was Serpent here a minute ago, is that the rustling I hear?] My eyes were still adjusting to the imaginary dark as we leaped in: 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

Ok, earth element dismissed, we headed for the next which was air. See those clouds? 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP! Now wait just a damn minute here – but in retrospect, that was all we got in between the elements. What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything on the cloud with you?

Husband kept strumming, singing over her voice, suggesting all kinds of nature stuff to experience…feel the breeze on your skin, etc. Blowing into the mic every 4.5 seconds with nary an idea about taking oxygen in.

Feeling a bit ridiculous, I opened my eyes to see if anyone else was (dare I say it) falling for this. It was like marching off to Africa in full bombast & camo gear, canteens clanking. Off that cloud pronto – 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

I was feeling peckish at this point. I sat up to make sure I could get to the exit if I needed to without disturbing too many bodies. People were shifting on their yoga mats, eyes darting under closed lids. Too vulnerable, I thought, a bit embarrassed. I rearranged myself & laid back down.

We approached a body of water & I braced for entry as he sang about frolicking with dolphins. What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything in the water with you? Wait, didn’t you just tell me I was in a dolphin pod? Yes! There are dolphins here. Did I bring my bathing suit? Is it my “God I’m so fat in this” white one or the slimming but utterly faded-from-the-sun black? Is the water cold? Who knows, we’re marching up the beach blowing, blowing. Off to the desert, hurrah, hurrah.

I am finished with this. I scrabble to my feet, now quite glad of the closed eyes cuz rising from the floor is no longer graceful or elegant anymore for me. I tiptoe to a chair, slip on my shoes, silently roll up the mat, grab my carryall, sling my purse onto my shoulder & turn away from the gathering to see my roommate beating feet out the silently closing door.

The walk back to my car was silent, meditative. The sound of sliding the credit card back into its wallet sleeve, the crunch of the solid door, the sip of cold chai left in the cupholder, the dingdingding of ignition & a quick drive home wondering what just happened here.

Check your intentions at the door. Chuck your visions into the Butterfly Garden. Pull your expectations of finding Totem browsing in a sunny meadow waiting to commune, cold-nosed & delighting.

What’s for dinner? Oh, salad. More greenery? Reached for the popcorn instead.

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Flubbered

 Jan. 2026  Rent  Car  Food  Dining  Grooming  Household  Misc.  Spending  Clothes  Utilities   INCOME      

Life is where you find it. My life is in words but sometimes my words are not where I left them. There’s this thing called “One Drive” on my computer & it resides somewhere in the atmosphere, I’m told – the ‘cloud’. I’d rather have it in a kitchen drawer where I can get to it.

Specifically, I keep a spreadsheet of expenses. It’s more decorative than all else as I don’t really follow how much I’ve spent on food or gas or getting breakfast at Millie’s. I just log in the receipts in case I ever want to check these. However, I’m quite compulsive on this data entry so I keep up with it. Now that it’s January, I want a summary of what went where in 2025. Guess where it went? Into the cloud.

So I pulled up the old/old one ending with June & just copied off the headers. Why didn’t June go into the stupid cloud? I don’t need the one that ends in June & perhaps that is why. I started one for 2026 & put it on the desktop. I see a year ahead of filling up the desktop like I sneer at others for doing. “Why don’t you put these into files?” I ask with a slight curl to my lip.

I can’t stand when universe catches up to me – like my Mom not having a sense of smell & making me smell hamburger thru my entire childhood just as I was getting to Chapter 5 of some Black Stallion book. “Carol!” she’d call in that Command Voice which only mothers possess & maybe 4-star generals, I’m not sure, never having served.

My heart would seize. I would slam the book shut, (losing my place) & dash into the kitchen, certain I’d left something on fire. “Smell this for me?” she’d demand, holding out a brown-paper-wrapped package of bloody meat. I wanted to just back away, but would dutifully take a sniff & say, “I don’t smell anything, Mom.” She’d whip the package into the sink to rinse the meat & I was dismissed with the gesture. That is, until she realized I must have been doing something like reading in my room as the Voice would again snag me mid-stride, “Why are  you in the house anyway Go outside & play!? You have the whole beach, go play!”

Beach? The beach is empty except for the cold wind sweeping across it, tugging the trash out of the wire baskets. The sky is gray as a prisoner’s underwear. The boardwalk is shivering, the railing forming a rime of ice. “Mooooommmmm” would rise the whine within; the one never spoken aloud. Trudging to my bedroom to put on my Keds, I’d grab a jacket & mumble down the cellar stairs to wrest my bike from the wall as tho it was all the bike’s fault I had a mom who believed one could never get enough Fresh Air. I’d head to the playground & dispiritedly climb on the cold swing, grabbing the clanking chains & launch. Then I’d think about why I allowed her to upset me so much I even forgot my book! Reading can be done on a winter beach & can even be entertaining if the story’s good enough.

Well, all that to say that I do not have a sense of smell anymore thanks to Government Covid & I buy chicken tenders to cook right away when I get home. With onions.

What was I on about? Oh yeah, people not filing their stuff ‘correctly.’ My righteousness about that topic.

So, I called up my spreadsheet & the computer said, effectively, you can’t get there from here. What it really said was “make sure you have access to One Drive & try again.” How did it get to One Drive anyway? Who moved my cheese? And, like the nasty blue screen of death I never understood, I’m flubbered. I can’t recreate six months of recycled receipts. I have no idea what I spent except about a third of it went for something besides hamburger & the rest for rent & the car lease.

2026. Rent / car / household / miscellaneous / entertainment / clothes / grooming. 

Sigh.     

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