Dancin’ with my shadow

Dancing with my shadow

Down the middle of the street

With my headphones as antennae

And that Pentatonix beat

Tagged by madness, yes, and music

And my shadow twelve foot tall

All the drivers checking mirrors

Other walkers at a crawl

But I just can’t help it, darlin!

Wish that you could hear it too!

Cuz if this beat all grabbed your feet

Your arms would feel it, too…

So, if you see me on the corner

To the left or to the right

I’m just dancin’ with my shadow

N I may be here all night!

Friends No More: A Parting

Disparate Heart

Made of thorns & parry

I thought you better than this

Moved to pity & then Toledo steel

Bladed with desire

Cutting through love

Looking for yourself in the openings

But this you are already too full of!

You understand so little

Stopped short of full tide

Withholding the forward of completion

Gentle heart, will I take you in compassion?

Shall I find you a nest of ordinary love

Wherein to rest? And, then, will you so?

We have parted a year ago

Your proud blade & I

We have discovered many centers

Many sendings.

We yearn to be the ocean

Covering a high-tided beach

Once more…

 

It Wasn’t A Dream

I moved one small thing

and the world of dust behind it

came to light.

So it is in life:

I peered behind one thought

Into a world of teeth & claws.

How many times to clear this?

As many as it may take, perhaps?

 

Barrier Reef

Protecting the tender lagoon of love

Tidal & green inside

Brimming with schools of thought

Flashing in a silver unison of silence.

I will no predator among them,

Coral & Carol interchanged

My bones all unseen

And as beautiful.

 

Briefly Then

I’ll tell you the story of my life:

I Am. That’s about it for now.

Oh, you want details?

I have been advised to not follow advice

I have been told to sing, but practice silence

To run, but now, to sit-stay

To love “in cautious abandon.”

Whom shall I believe?

Who shows me the reality of hard-packed dirt

Advising me to see only stars?

Allow me just a momentary hug

Heart-to-heart,

An angel wrapping wings around a tree.

I have lived so long on so little love

I am beyond existence.

 

Parallels

I have news for you

These double lines that merge in the distant vision

Don’t merge.

I assure you – it’s a mirage.

For as long as they go together

Somewhere they part

They encounter division

Become singular of purpose

Each no longer the other’s destination

 

It Is Time

Oh, I have clung to you

Like a child her child’s blanket

It is now to set you down

A dried pen I’ve shaken hard for ink.

I’ve run downhill on our friendship

Now out of fuel, spent completely

Yes, time & past time, months of days

We were to have together

You swept from the calendar

And folded your arms.

Our years are dry as kindling

Our friendship lost in conflagration

A wildfire of no know etiology

One careless match-word

All is now ash.

I’ve poked & prodded with my mind

For reasons for reasonableness

Yet there are none hidden here

None to be had

So let’s say not farewell

but say goodbye.

I brush my hands of loving  you

I did all I thought right

While being only wrong.

 

No Light

Bring on the unlit darkness

the moveless tide

the ink all fades in loveletters anyway.

This burden of relief a wonder.

Once emptiness to fill, now fallow space

This ravished ground

 

Stupid

It was a turnkey operation

Our being friends

Immediately, I offered entry

Together, we closed the door to others

And tho I wondered where, at times, you went

We found each other at need.

Your many truths were also false

Perhaps mine, only returned?

Your final insult wormed around my edges

Not quite belonging, yet taken in…

The door flung open, invited exit.

I prowled outside, peering in windows

Rattling doorknobs.

I’ve salvaged from the shed,

Made myself a hobo bag I shall not carry long

I leave you to your limping life.

Striding through the white picket fence,

I close & latch the gate.

 

So Long

This is the last of you

Out of my heart, I say

Your scruff & hind in my hands

One more time

I toss you from the environs of my heart

Your compass after – find me no more!

I clap my hands

And watch you disappear!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

llll

Solar Flares, CMEs, EMPs

I keep hearing one of these is going to happen. While humanity could use a dynamic, mobilizing shot in its energetic arm, the mildest result of one of these events could “set us back 20 years.” Well, that sure beats sending us back to the Stone Age! (I might mention here Stone Age in New Mexico is relative…I say this as I’m attempting to lay a mini-labyrinth in my backyard & a bit overwhelmed with the thought of moving even more stones into what seems already to be a bona fide Rock Sanctuary. Can you say “redundancy?”)

What was happening 20 years ago? I used some “today tech” to look it up. Twenty years ago, Apple was introducing the iMAC, inflation was 13.58% & a new house cost $68,700. Gas cost $1.19/gallon & a new car to put it into around $7,200. Men’s suits cost $ 89.95 & had slim lapels. Mr. Potato Head ($4.99) was considered a good kid’s toy & Cabbage Patch dolls were gaining popularity.

The U.S. defeated the Soviets in hockey. Post-It Notes were introduced – do you remember paperclips? CNN was launched, along with the Rubik’s Cube.

There were bad happenings as well. Iran-Iraq went to war; John Lennon was assassinated, & the Mariel Boat Lift was our most worrisome immigration problem.

The national question was “Who shot J.R.?” Olivia Newton-John top-listed audio charts with “Magic” & Pink Floyd ruled the toker population. “Nine to Five” & “The Empire Strikes Back” brought long lines to the movies. (I remember driving from Cherry Hill to New York City to see the former upon its release! Really?)

So, 20 years back sounds incredibly mellow. I hear a rewind tape whirring, a loud click to stop it & another to start the pinwheels rolling forward again. We might or not re-elect Ron Reagan. We might have made a note of Kosygin’s name as leader of the Soviet Union…or not. For me, Soviet leader names didn’t stick between Kruschev of the handheld shoe &  Gorbachev with that strange mark on his head, but a great smile.

Carl Sagan wrote Cosmos. Stephen King wrote Firestarter. Roald Dahl wrote The Twits. Aliens were still a problem for the future while actively hovering over military bases, turning off nukes. Today, you can see on YouTube people like Captain Robert Salas “coming out” from under their 20-year NDA’s to tell us about the discs in the sky flipping switches in hardened silos.

All of this sounds so mild compared to stressors of today, no?

What were we preparing for then, that’s happening now? In Arizona, the Hopi say God gave them First & Second Mesas to farm because He didn’t want life to be so easy the people forgot to pray. Even in the places where the living has been easy, we’ve needed prayer to get us through each day. Situations escalated, shortages developed, plans failed & dreams were silenced by circumstances beyond control. In leveraging a balance, babies were born, more dreams fulfilled, happiness acquired, goals generated & achieved. All of this in the name of progress.

If there’s an EMP event, we’ll have mammoth changes overnight. I have enormous faith in human nature & creativity. We might see exercise bikes wired to toaster ovens. We’ll be determinedly searching through all the stuff in the shed for an old campstove, maybe Mom’s afghans, once-tacky wind-up toys & anything that can be bartered for something more useful. I see people coming together as we do in the face of any emergency. Yes, there will be harm done; but I believe our development level to be upward. Our mindsets must expand to overcome obstacles & bring the children forward. Some fraying will occur in the seams of the social fabric with seniors & babies eased from the picture, but many were out along its fringes anyway.

What I’d rather see is thorium balls nested in a living room basket to provide the household’s energy needs. The wires obstructing our view of clear skies will all be dismantled, the telephone poles used for romantic fireside fuel, & those ugly metal towers made over into roadside sculpture.

I refuse fear on general principle. Fear forces chi downward, & I’ve said before I’ll take to my knees for no one. Living rightly means being prepared for a future that is variable. I read many dystopian novels, yet I stubbornly believe improvement will occur under any circumstances, once the initial shock of the event notches into practical responses to it. Again, mankind is endlessly adaptable to change; however, we must channel this positively. No make-do stuff – pure-D, certain improvement must become the order of the day.

All the websites say to prepare: have water, dry food, keep cash on hand. I’ve got news – it’s the barter available in those sagging storage cardboard boxes that’ll keep the worst at bay. I have some great books to read in reserve on my shelf & standing in line is a decent place to peruse these. I’ll be that Rod Serling character who moves into the city library when the rest of the population rides out of town looking for something else.

I love how the establishment gives us impossible standards while polishing their collective, elected nails to a fine gloss. Why aren’t they preparing? Why aren’t they hardening communications, stocking up comestibles the public will need? Hell, why aren’t they even stacking cigar boxes in the much-lauded back rooms to use for cash registers? Could it be because they’ve already skimmed the best parts off both top & bottom for themselves, while pointing our minds in the opposite direction from sane, responsible survival?

I don’t want to be facing the other way when the world ends. I want to see it coming square on, standing up as tall as my 5’2” allow, ready to adapt, to help, to live as well as I can in a different way. Pretty much what I do daily, actually. Some of those unread books are on prayer…maybe I need to put these atop the read pile for my own edification, education & improvement. What I’ve already done is put aside the angst about what the future will bring. I figure if mine’s not shining like a new city on the hill, it may be time to let the mortal coil go, springing like a Slinky down the stairs & out the physical door.

It takes so much effort to engender positive change. It takes pulling our heads out from all the mainstream programming – flat screen tv’s aren’t even decorative, let alone useful in Dystopia. To be prepared isn’t a slogan. To be mentally fit by using our hearts in place of our brains is the new world order. We know society is going to change. What shape do we wish it to assume? Where will our dreams (and what will our dreams) be when the time comes to live them?

I have this feeling that change will sweep over us from above rather than seep into us from below, but either way, it’s unstoppable. But, then, so are we!

Lost In A Song

Music has always, always, always been my mainstay. My idea of hell would be a place inaccessible to music, although then I’d likely subject people to my voice (which might be their version of hell, but ya never know.)

From my teen years on, I’ve followed music through so many incarnations. All teens did, so far as I knew. Love lost & found, dreams won & vacated, moves voluntary & not so much. I danced, not well, with an eye to how others would see me…which isn’t the way to dance at all. Cuz if you can’t abandon your body to the music, it isn’t very satisfying dancing.

Later in life, as a married woman, a “working jerk” in offices, an obedient soul paying taxes to The Man, for years I listened to classical music. Once I read that this genre is really limited – after all, it was stiffly specific to its timeline & there were only so many composers. The radicals of classical music sound rigidly controlled today. Music is art for the ears & what aficionados these are!

Now rock just burgeoned into so many branches from its hip-twitching bluesy roots, like folk, grunge, head-banger, stadium, Brit Invasion, death metal, hard, progressive, psychedelic, rockabilly, southern, surf, & more.

I never had an 8-track, but for a long period, my reel-to-reel was a great weekend’s occupation, taping hours of music, putting together mixes, selecting records, cueing them up, adjusting a sequence, headphones snugged on, crooning along. If I started naming the individuals & bands that dressed me up, I’d add about two dozen pages to this blog, so let’s leave that & move on.

Of course, music that inspires me is always a leading thread. Some Broadway shows have music which pulled me up from my seat to march or crushed me down to weep. “Funny Honey” from Chicago, and “Bound To You” from Burlesque were two of this latter. And then there’s “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman. But my truest favorites rest with songs with beefy drums laying a road I simply MUST dance down.  

In the past three days, after discovering ‘The Greatest Showman,’ I have been listening repetitively (or more accurately, obsessively) to the soundtrack. If you haven’t heard it, check the web to find a rendition, check out the movie, but don’t miss it. I defy you to stay seated once it starts!

So many songs rip out my heart & return it, raggedly, unapologetically, bleeding to my hands (“Who Wants to Live Forever”, Freddie Mercury), (“Comfortably Numb”, Pink Floyd). “Here,” they seem to convey,” you deal with it, I’m done for now.” And the next track begins while I’m contemplating whether my healthcare will cover this fresh wound. But I have to say for all the drip, I love these kinds of songs. I love having my emotions stirred as though someone has put a blender fork into my psyche, turning both to high.

I love that people are visual, that there is art to look at. I enjoy food a great deal – nothing like a South Philly Cheese Steak to set the taste buds dripping. I enjoy silence so deep that the chirp of a bird sounds as though a cannon has gone off in the next yard. But, ah! Music! “This Is Me,” “This Is The Greatest Show” – what anthems for a life bestirred from meditation to a blown-apart, scintillate conversation with your own soul about who you are & why you’re here.

Today is another opportunity to dance my way through, to be uplifted into blessing, as in “I’m Changed” sung by Angel Travis at Agape Church, or almost anything by Peter Mayer, or “The Cape” by Guy Clark, “I Dreamed of Rain” by Jan Garrett & JD Martin – all of these I’ve mentioned are available via internet. Check some out when you’re ready to go “splorin’” the dusty corners of your soul. They’ll chase off the blues like dry leaves pursued by a leaf-blower. Find music which’ll lift off the top of your head & screw it down differently, that’ll get your hips rockin’, to shake your shoulders, semaphore your arms, stop crash-landing short of whiplash nodding your head.

Live on! Sing on! Dance on! Be inspired. As Peter M sings, “Everything Is Holy Now!”

Love to all –

Carol

The Journey of No Arrival

SLEEPING INTO AWAKENING

I was far away this morning

Understanding inevitability.

In the dream, two men were each my beloved

Of intellect & individuated thought

Each held mighty concepts easily

In both mind & sinew.

They welcomed me upon my approach

I traveled with them, offering

My sable-brushed ideas,

Fearful of being trite

Yet moved by the power to put together

Theirs & mine

For the wholeness this offered.

We came upon my car, trunk open, battery exposed

I knew this necessary. I knew if I left it, it would not stay.

I even recognized where I was

My dwelling behind a building

Where the vista opened

To reflective rivers, unhesitating

From which I’d learned the same.

I returned to my sleeping body

Puzzling to awaken in it

Felt the net of Ordinary descend.

I opened the door & stepped into darkness,

Where all the streetlamps were haloed

Soft, somnolent, unawake.

Even drinking my coffee

I could not tell which reality was mine.

 

NEXT

We are seldom ready for the unmaking of our worlds

Imagine the shout of surprise to find earth flat

As an underlying conspiracy!

But wake, we must, indubitably

If the future is dystopian, we will accustom to canned foods.

If we create our new reality,

Let’s opt for fields & fruit trees, for fertile grain

Let us see the clean bright shining

Even in the bowels of carven buildings

There’s no time for moving rearward

We all stare into this brave new world

When only by moving forward we bring it.

 

THE SITTING MUSE

I wake with poetry before commonsense

I seem to have fallen asleep on her shoulder

Listening to nursery rhymes spun of philosophy

Turning routine to raw talent

We share her vistas

Our inside eyes are staring

Even as my baby browns are fogged.

Coffee is not the usual scalpel of habit

Cleaving the mysteries of dreams.

I settle against her once more

She replaces her arms about me

She sings.

 

NO GUARDRAILS

Why are edges so seductive?

These places where worlds end & air begins

Where elements switch up reality & realty

The sky pushes against the land

Pressing down upon the water below.

My mind has become a wildlife sanctuary

Flashing brilliant feathers among branches

Lifted & lowered in a dance

Blow-through winds are dusted with dreams,

I breathe your breath, World,

I take part as I partake.

 

THE JOURNEY OF NO ARRIVAL

(a/k/a The Flow)

If I were done, I’d be there,

If I declare “mission accomplished”

Before I arrive

I reveal my ignorance

Of impending law.

I didn’t make a vow to bring closure

Only to carry it forward awhile.

I do, at times, believe in the world

Carried forward on the back of a turtle

Ponderous, amphibian, patterned in an eternal mandala

The land seems such slow going

Then we enter the water –

All grace & blessing

All ease with little effort

Until Eternity grows more shallow

Joining carefully with the land.

 

NEVERBEEN & NEVERWAS

I could use some new rituals

To replace these old habits

Help me peel away this tough exterior

To the tenderness within

To the succulence of loving all I see

Married to all I am

Seamlessly enjoining all I do.

Let the world, as such, infect me

Believe in me as I do her

Take provenance in my revelation:

The heart unveils the center

Expansion nourishes.

And if this is different, O Knowing Ones,

Let me silently decompose

One more absorption.

I dream of ascension

When the truth is I can hardly jump for joy

One step forward at a time…

I prefer to run down mountains

When success is achieved climbing them

Ah, human’s nature is a beloved backwoods

Overgrown & overblown with “what’s worst will happen”

Let’s turn this thing around!

Retrace our path as we re-turn to Love.

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Carol’s Carousel

I don’t know what to think anymore. I barely know how to think. Anymore.

I have had to research bump stocks & look up Nikki Haley & John Bolton. I spend time poring over reports about McCabe & Comey to try to understand the current “political scene” when I want to scream at everyone in DC, “Will you just behave?”

I am one of a generation which may die off before the changes so looked forward to may even occur (NOTE TO SELF: climb aboard the good ship Hope & stay afloat.) I don’t claim to understand transgender issues, being certain that I am a woman who has never wanted to be a man. Having a penis would really get in my way. I don’t want to leave my stem cells for implants into AI computers simply because someone knows how to do that & thinks it might be a good idea. Hooah!

I don’t get violence. Having been in & around the medical profession for most of my earth-years, I understand physical damage from savagery of any kind: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. I predict for myself a gradual fade from life after accomplishing as much as I can towards healing on all levels. I’m weary of fighting for the money to buy food for my fridge. I could understand paying taxes if the pothole at the end of the driveway ever got filled; but knowing my money disappears into fitting a fin onto a bomb is distressing. But tax evasion isn’t an option I’ll readily pursue – I don’t look great in stripes. I’m feeling some nervousness about making the monthly payments needed to assure some quality of life, although I have the strength & power within me to work the odd jobs I encounter to earn my way into fresh veggies.

After years of plugging along, pinning slogans like “Be calm & don’t worry”, of framing thoughts like “following my bliss”, or “doing things for the joy of doing them”, I’m slowing down. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet ET’s with golden triangle heads or blue feathers. I have stopped listening to my formerly intensely-followed gurus. I’m cautious about signing up for Starfleet Academy or manning bridges of any kind. Once anticipated, I no longer eagerly await what may emerge from the future to surprise me. I’m really happy to sit in the sun right now, to stay out of the unreasonable desert wind, to watch my little green tomatoes turn into little red tomatoes. Someone once mocked me for “watching the clothes dry on the line” but at this point, that’s quite a satisfying pastime. It indicates the privilege to be clean in a world where so many are not given this option.

I’m happiest when teaching…helping someone figure out something: how to use their cellphone, for example. I live in a town where everyone’s grandkids have recommended they have the latest tech when the “grands” only want to be able to call the kids on Sunday night. “What’s an app?” they ask me, “Can I get the words to come up when I watch videos?” “How do I stop all these advertisements?”

I’m planning to teach a class called “About Email” on Mayday, & the more I research carriers, the more I figure I’ll sound like some paranoid nut when I tell them what I understand about the collection of biometrics by nefarious one-world-government scions, the retention of data by people who are totally not entitled to know that I wrote my friend about how I feel, whether political or pleasurable. How do I help learners to preserve their privacy or get them to understand there is even a need for this in a world where the providers are all-pervasive about control & have the morals of cats in heat when it comes to selling us out? The State does not need to monitor our computers. Seriously, nothing on them is that interesting. For myself, I don’t expect anybody at the State Department to grok my poetry or wordplay. I only have one way to expand into the universe & it is with expression of my personal experience as such. And it comes out through language. If “they” consider RIDING THE LIGHT subversive, my tax dollars are totally wasted.

I know old ladies are disposable as rain puddles. It doesn’t stop me from working towards what I call The Good. It doesn’t hinder me from offering time & effort toward helping others learn how to function at the basic levels of courtesy, kindness, care & understanding, of actively paying it forward. I know at any time some doofus with a God complex can take control of my car & send me over the side of a cliff where others will be endangered trying to retrieve the detritus left by that push-button destructo-mentality.

I guess I can’t explain where I am in the present moment. I had a reaction today at our quite wonderful book club discussion where a totally innocuous book sent me into a red-rimmed rage for no reason I can discern. Reading the book chapters aloud brought me to the boiling point wherein I rushed home & stared wildly about for an hour. It isn’t even a book I admire, but a reaction of this magnitude of anger is totally foreign to me and/or what it should have engendered. WTH? Is it the sugary snack before bedtime that has me so reactive?

At the same time, I am tired of being a spectator; I want to participate in life. I want to travel to see wonders of geography, I want to sit at the feet of a master & take notes on keeping my mind in discovery mode. I want to pay my debts off so the nervousness can re-settle into a joy of life so daily I take no notice of want of any kind. Bread & circuses haven’t interested me in years. It is time for me to expand my thinking to encompass God & the Youniverse to a mystical, uplifting, soul-thrilling vibration. I want to thread that needle spoken about in Scripture, so I can pass through it into either the grace of comprehension or Comprehensive Grace. Isn’t that my birthright?

I am so over Darwin & his purloined theorem about survival. I once read that the word “love” was mentioned 96 times in The Origin of Species, while the phrase “survival of the fittest” appeared thrice.

I once felt I could get closer to the answers of Life’s Questions as I aged. I foolishly thought the world would become more logical, the weather more habitable, my life more accommodating to happiness. I thought I would have friends, if not family, who looked at me with love shining from their hearts through their eyes. But now I rely on the comments of strangers to lift me through the nights. Now I have no ties to what is considered Reality. I opt for helping some with cleaning their houses, offering a class now & then to aid others in understanding the new tools available & coping with their use.

I often tell people I’m allergic to TV, but I still find myself drawn to videos on the computer which show the exotic Cirque du Soleil acts, dancers who can move their bodies as I no longer am able, political commentaries which contradict each other one after the next.

I am as confused as any teenager about my current identity. Who will I be tomorrow? What will my achievements count for…or against? This life made of chapters cleanly divided by time & (at times) geography, by the borders of marriages, the maps of spiritual pathways, the fulfillment of dreams. I’m acutely aware too many of the paragraphs in this blog start with my most personal pronoun. I need to be led into divinity somehow & overcome this tendency to consider myself only human. I used to be able to do that better. How come I’m losing the knack?

The last frontier is never that. Horizons rise & fall regularly. I’m alive so long as I keep moving – even if it is in a circle while the calliope plays corny music. Cuz I don’t know anything, anymore.

Labels

I derive from a generation which kept its labels tucked away from sight.

Not so today. Levis puts their labels along the seams, so they protrude like the tabs on pinafores for those old stick-the-clothes-on cardboard dress-up dolls. Reebok simply prints them over your left breast. Nike swooshes everything, from farmlands to billboards. As though they didn’t make enough after sweatshop profits! These manufacturers are what the nuns used to sneeringly call “brazen articles.”

What if people wore labels? “Wash in warm water only.” “Dry clean, do not iron,” And the worst would be the size tag jutting out from your neck, like a shark fin: “Size 16!” Mine would prob’ly just say “fatty, fatty, boombalatty” in the interests of exactitude & accuracy.

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When we speak of transparency, I’ll lead the line on many topics. Actually, my face is of itself an LED display; everything I think flits across it. This can be dangerous in mixed company – I stay home a lot. If I flew a personal flag, it’d likely be the Andy Warhol soup can for “over-salted.” Still, I’m not attempting any Human Barbie look. Too many old dolls wind up headless / armless / legless, riding dust bunnies in odd corners. Oh, yeah, & naked.

My other labels, I hope, would read “funny,” “bright,” “sensitive.” Although I have the feeling they would read “sarcastic,” “smart-mouthed,” “ticklish feet.” The one on the back of my head would read “Does she really mean that?” And, um, yeah, I really do.

This is an age when secrets keep like milk left out in July sun. Of course, there’s a valid argument to be had that they never really did. Remember that old saw about a secret being kept only if one of the holders is dead? But it is different now. Egregiously so. Our vitals are sold off without even being bid upon. I recently read Google makes $12 for just having my stats. Do the math, everyone.

Does it ever run a chilly frisson of up your spine when the form you’ve just called up on the screen self-populates with your address, age, car make & favorite dinner? Mine even note I wear sweatbands doing massage, with the notes:

  • Wannabe human
  • May not have another book in her
  • Would rather be a cat smirking atop the bookcase

It can be handy when the speller suggests how to spell vinaigrette correctly. But other than that, I’m not as much into “arty-ficial” intelligence algorithms for the price of a vowel.

I want you to take a minute to think over your labels – your body language, your obvious attitudes, your words, all the niches you fit into by appearances, ideals & lifestyles.

Above all, don’t worry about any of ‘em. They’re self-populating, comprised of artificial stupidity & usually not at all what you see in your mirrors.

We are far too complex to be trivialized. It’s comfortable for everyone else to label us. Just like it is for us to label them.