Mortality has its own pace & runs when we expect it to creep, creeps when we wish it would overtake & immortalize us in release. It begins early & continues late, we yearn for time to sleep & energy to avoid that. And life intrudes, interrupts, interferes with just every single thing we set out to do.

I am so good at blaming myself. Guilt is rarely comfortable & always unnecessary. I’m not a malicious person but I am territorial & almost scary in that. I have so much to be grateful about, yet find fault with myself for finding fault with others, especially when I don’t even know why.

Oh, I know all the answers to why but each cancels the other out. None of this world is my fault, but I made the construct. I live in my life as though it is mine, with no reality of a substantial nature. Each cell has its own intelligence & brain: I get involved in the discussion to rarely discover a conclusion.

I don’t even believe myself most of the time. I am not who I should be, but who I am. Scary thought, that. I am moving once again to another place with no assurance I will actually live there. Truly stepping into the unknown, with my bundle of sticks tied on my back in case I need fire.

Strength I pray for. Health I cherish. Love frightens me as I’ll likely not meet its conditions. I haven’t made it before but try I must & love isn’t easy but the simple way is not appealing if I can complicate, concatenate, camouflage the issues. Reality dreams a dream I do not share yet & my circumstances hold me under, yearning to burst free.

So one stroke at a time, I write my way to substance. Casting my life before me like a roll of dice searching the magic number, I walk on.

Love,

Carol

Perhaps An Original Thought Will Serve?

Thinking of you this morning…wanted to write before you start the majority of your day.

I am being amazed by how the yin/yang of continuity & new just rolls along & we never know which one will be on top & it doesn’t really matter, does it? Just the pleasure in the moment matters & the ability to balance whatever does roll into attention mode at any moment. I was going to get off early today – it’s my early day – but I am pretty sure moving our staff meeting will kibosh that; so I canceled an appointment I had. It is coming clear to me to have my poetry workshop at Unity rather than where I was planning, so not a big deal. 

I am watching Joan Didion’s quote “the center will not hold” come into play yet again. Tho I say it’s a circle, I think life has become more of a kaleidoscope with flashing patterns changing on a constant basis, refitting themselves together in varied & captivating patterns. I cannot look away.

Ideas keep expanding & diminishing. I look forward to sitting on the front porch of heaven, rocking & listening to the birds, but I know that’s not the way of it… I’ll get a few minutes there now & again. Just enough to catch the Divine Breath & plunge back into it once more. You know, once the fear of transition leaves, there’s nothing to be afraid of. We are in the midst of such a world change, nothing left to do but marvel, hold onto your hat & take no note if it flies off into the winds of change! Laughter is so important & provident – we are such ridiculous beings to be so serious! Our milestones are but pebbles in the paths of others & this is rightful indeed.

I am noticing my bids for sympathy & knowing I must give them up; I must simply deal with what is happening as honestly as I can & if it happens, not use it for a bidding whine, but a strengthening. At times, I like the whine cuz it gets me that sympathy… I’ve been isolate enough to get comfortable here. Letting go is an art to perfect in a world where holding on seems the right action, yeh?

I dreamed of walking through a walkway where people lived off it in rooms & if their doors were open, I walked into their rooms, begging pardon for not watching my way. People wanted to hear but refused to listen, pushing their problems & observations in front of mine. But of course what belonged to them would be more important! 

I find myself saying, “Where’s my head?” I think Mom used to say that – or maybe it was (& more likely), “Where’s your head?” It has become a more layered saying since the 60’s & the recreational drug levels increasing. 

This body keeps wanting to succumb to inertia & entropy. I wage a steady campaign against these, however, pushing hard when I must to keep from pulling a pillow over my head & shutting it out. I face it every time I walk out my bedroom door, come to think of it. 

So for today, think about where’s your head? Let’s put it in line with our heart & allow it a catbird seat to see how it’s done.

Love,

C

Prayer & the CommonWoman

Prayer is not necessarily a comfort zone. Prayer is where you go toe to toe with God. Human perceptions do not always apply here. How many have defined God to a perception? Is your God big enough to forgive that which you yourself cannot – atrocity, harm, pain, disability, disinformation? And if your God IS big enough, are you? Can you forgive a God Who forgives these?

Does your God only dwell in that which you consider positive – the newest of life, the best of life, the “god-given” of life? It is among the largest of minds only where God dwells within the most life-denying. That’s my boundary: if it is a denial of life, there is no God there. But the definitions here slim into invisibility, boundaries slip & waver. Yes, the devils are here among us & hide behind brittle facades of good works while undoing these very efforts, binding them with red tape & a powerful taint of “you’re not good enough to succeed.”

How do we overcome this? I love the thought of an unlimited God, but the boundaries I have set for myself rub up against that perception since I live in a limited body. God can fly, I can’t. God needs no physical food, I border on gluttony at times. God allows all I find distasteful or to be of an excess beyond reasonable, I bark & howl at the leash I’ve set upon my own neck by not enlarging my vision so. However, my “only human” status has encased my power-full, enormously loving, capable, miraculous being into a tiny membrane subject to gravity, to a need for energy replacement, to all to which God seems so much larger & more magnificent as to exempt Itself from.

And still.

I come up against / go up against myself in a brutal mirror when I pray. I admit to what I do not believe I am while knowing I am that. Somehow I balance it out to feeling better from prayer rather than finding myself lacking. I know this is because the confrontation that takes place makes me better for simply having walked up to it. It follows me out of the room whispering & guiding me into zones where I wish to remain since they seem to keep my “better side” more accessible to me & available to everyone else.

Prayer tells me “nothing” is not. Prayer tells me demons can be cast out, the unlife seeming manifest all over can be diminished into nonexistence – which is from whence it springs anyway. Prayer is in-form-ing me to be a more successful, huger, force of energy which only creates a betterment of everything touched. Prayer flies me when I my feet are laced in gravity  boots, prayer shuts down my physical hunger for spiritual sustenance, prayer allows humanity to show off in all the ways I find too loud or too noisesome. Prayer tells me being an everyday heroine is my happy place & tells me this is not the hardest place in the world to live from.

Prayer hurts, heals, has. Prayer is an energetic moving me forward when I just want to stay where I am in my own funk, fugue, fog, fear.

Communication is the only function of humanity. Prayer is that with my God, so fiercely personal & inhumanly possible that this me barely tolerates being in meditation.

Where do I go from here?

Exit Ian: Buh-Bye!

The list of shelters & transports lie twisted in the trash. The windows are open for the gorgeous fresh air blowing through. The outside shrubs scratch on the windows instead of bang. Ian has scuffled off to make thrashing entry emands elsewhere. The eyewall no longer peers overhead. Palms return to their usual majestic heights after being furiously wrestled for 24 hours. All heaves a collective ”Whew!”

There’s cleanup & catch-up & celebrations to be planned but we are spared the hovering storm stirring up havoc outside. That bunny last seen running frantically past the bushes out back might go home today once his burrow drains. My visions of the car tumbling down the street dissipate.

The windows & doors are open: beautiful cooler air gentles through the house. Have jeans on for the first time since June! And a shirt with sleeves! The fabric feels good. The potatoes I cooked up in advance will go well with breakfast.

There’s no internet yet. (I write this at 6:46 EST.) Our neighborhood never lost electric power tho it did some crazy Morse Code blink-dancing all day. This morning’s shower felt grand – I was able to let the tub drain out. For the first time in months, I dialed up warm water! I mean, it’s Florida, even a couple of Fall temperature days are to be totally appreciated.  Everything will likely stay closed as tentative explorations are made & cleanup crews power up buzzsaws, landscape trucks let fall their back gates to unpack tools & machinery.

Thank you to everyone who prayed this storm away, whose forces of grace & lack of fear bore it off land & out to sea. We are scrubbed & drubbed & squeaky clean once more if a bit exfoliated.

My shiniest personal thanks go to everyone who called, texted, emailed & told me what was going on since I choose to live in a Cave of Unknowing, avoiding media as much as I can. All good wishes are most truly appreciated & held close to heart!

Time to put plans into action & drum up a new life.

Quiche & Stonehenge Lamps

up at 3:30 – this time zone thing is interesting… I was sometimes an insomniac before the cat came into my life, but now I am accomplished in the single digit hours. I prefer these dark darlings before everyone else is up. I feel like I’ve got a secret which satisfies my inner child enormously. I know when the lights blink or a plane flies over & I imagine the pilot looking down on twinkling stars not in the sky.

Yesterday I stopped at Publix to buy $8 lightbulbs (ulp!) (3-way & LED but look-like-real-GE-bulbs). I know LED isn’t good for eyes but have magically spelled the lampshades to filter out all of whatever is unhealthy emanating from them. And now I can have 30 watts with my coffee instead of 100. The lamps both take 3-way speed & are made of granite. They could be stood as monuments in a field – marking 100 miles from Camden – & would be there 100 years later. To move one requires all my strength, including core & a clenched bottom. That would be to relocate it even an inch to the right to fit my glasses in a certain circumscribed place on the night table. God help me. Was I always this anal?

Anyway, Publix. My roommate adds “but they’re so expensive” every time I mention the name. Like “St. Mary’s By The Sea,” “Publix But They’re So Expensive.” Yes they are indeed. But they are ubiquitous, like churches in the Bible Belt & squeaky clean & will give  you flowers on your birthday if you give them your personal data which they can sell for far more than $10 a bunch, as well as your bank card info. Got two sweet potatoes, two bulbs, an orange pepper & a package of two quiche shells for $30. BUT the upside is it was all in one place & did not involve a u-turn.

Now the quiches are made, well, one done & one cooking. One for the Unity potluck Sunday & one for us. Loaded: pepper, onion, asparagus, tomato, cheddar, squash. I now see what G means about buying veg ahead – one squash was rotted from inside out. Felt a little soft but was mush inside. Tropical climes. For whatever reason, the cukes are staying firm so I must eat them Very Soon.

We have ghost ants. Ghost ants have black heads. Not that you’d know that since you’d need to follow them about with an electron microscope to see them at all. I see dots moving about the desk calendar, or across the computer screen. Forget about seeing them in the kitchen on a marbled granite surface. I’m not even guessing how many I’ve already consumed, but since the Deep State is pushing locust bars & cricket chips on schoolchildren (so far only in Australia, but they’re a daring bunch anyway). Klaus says we will have nothing but he’s wrong. We can have Insects for Dinner, sauteed, baked, fried. Um, let’s talk about something else.

I’m back at sea level. I am made of salt water as I find out when I sweat through everything like three times/day. Walking out to get the mail, opening the door to see if the clouds might mean it’s gotten cooler & pushing the remote to open the car locks. That’s all it takes, folks. Since I’m down to three small half-drawers of clothing after the relocation, it can be quite the challenge to find an “outfit” by Saturday. Also, since I no longer care if I wear checks & plaids together, life gets more clowny as I get to Thursday wear. I cannot commit a crime: people will remember me. “That lady with the purple & greeny tights & the black & white stripe top? Yeah, what about her?”

I have seen cactus here, but they look sad & possibly rotting from the inside out. I ordered a children’s picture book on palm trees to learn some species. The smallest number I’ve seen is 22 but the book has 32, with pictures. And I expect I will memorize these as I read it by my 50-watt setting. I do keep looking for coconuts, some dim memory of a lifetime in Hawaii, not that I’d shimmy up a 50′ smooth trunk for it when I can buy one at Sprouts, yeh?

I do love the garbage disposal! Too bad the water table in NM doesn’t permit ’em. This is one you could put car parts down & retrieve paper clips.

Spent time at the library yesterday trying to send pix to computer via phone in order to retrieve them for emails, but they did not send. Since no one calls me – like – e v e r – the phone has become a good weight to hold down my purse should there be a high wind or should I not have put the strap under one of the lamps for safekeeping. Thieves would get a hernia trying to make off with it. I did take a pic of the lamp with the computer but it is squirreled somewhere with the ghost ants.

Aaaand it’s only Friday. 

Being Again

I have changed up my luck & my life many times, not being one to stay in place & talk while change happened all around. I’m at that lever point again where each choice takes me to a more fulfilling place.

Mark, 5:36 says “Do not fear. Only believe.” Whew! Good advice there! I’ve taken it on as a mantra & with gratitude for the “holy backup.”

I had no expectations on coming to Florida, really not knowing what I’d discover here. My new roommate did not quiz me on wants or needs to bring attention, I did not put expectations out there, except for it to be different from what I was/had/did in T or C.

These differences are astronomical. Yesterday in a meeting about literacy, we played a game based on Jeopardy & one of the questions was which state has the lowest level of literacy in U.S. I mumbled “What is New Mexico.” I was correct. Ineffably sad to me when someone cannot read or write, I am remedying this by joining the Literacy Council & training as a tutor.

I genuflected on going into the library – more of a church to me than all else. The staffers here everywhere are positive, helpful, genuine & creative. I’ve been able to afford new glasses at an optometry store – a dream of years but since last pair cost $500, seemingly far out of reach. I have a wall of books available in the Community Center here. I have a church family now to make laugh since that’s my favorite thing. And people are so ready to laugh!

Seems like pretty much everything is readily available here which was more of a rumor in T or C. All kinds of community facilities & events, long walks by water, Time & more to recreate my life & offer my unique talents to a place & an appreciative populace. For me, service is the essential of my being, as needed as all else.

For the poverty I saw across the country, the empty storefronts & sagging signs, from the fast-food-only offerings to fresh greens & meats, for lawns without rusted hot water heaters & garages full of bulging, mottled boxes, for the well-tended pets & the lack of hungry cats crowding the yards… It is an unexpected lift to my life-spirits to be in a place where it all I see is organized & tended. Of course there are still many living in their iPhones or intent only on passing the next car on the road. But these seem echoes faint & faraway to my observations. Florida is a state of mind as well as method. I anticipate establishing myself in the community & moving forward to a much higher & more loving state of knowledge, aiming for enlightenment.

My loving nature is expressed by all the writing I do. I bring to light stories about myself which will place them in the heart of a wondrous, organized universe that makes butterflies in larvae, that grows mighty sequoias from one tiny hold-in-you-hand “seed.” I live in a place where my now is for the benefit of others & the betterment of self. My stories help others achieve their goals, release their fears, understand more of what happened. All my friends & lovers are in a place of sending me joy & delight when they think of my name, my face, my voice. I return these tenfold, understanding that Love is the nature of the universe in which I dwell & have my being. I reflect & release any event or thought which does not fit into this pattern of affection, unfoldment & endorsement of my understanding of God & Divinity which showers upon me unceasingly with a blink & a wink & a blessing of smiling energy. And so it is!

My poetry Muse has gone to the nearby beach but she’ll be back. In the meantime I write prose & praise & power as I grow into this now, this new. Late in life for it all, this is, but here & now counts for far more than lottery winnings if you’re happy.

Be in love, people. If you’re not, take any train, boat, plane or scooter you can to get there. Then turn around & show everyone else the way.

Love,

Carol

A World of Difference

You’d think I would know how unique T or C is when contrasted with the world. I hesitate to say the “real world” since I don’t know what that is for sure anymore. Surreality has replaced reality.

It’s the convenience & major hassles with the flip of a word, it’s ten-mile traffic backups on highways over water, it’s blinkers & stinkers & a constancy of watching my back, locking the car, mild panic attacks, inaccurately marked highways where the signs cover two lanes but really only are meant for one. It’s smiles, shuffling feet, air conditioning or the lack, it’s heat & sweat & outright lies. It’s nasty neighborhoods & untold stories bubbling up to be shared. It’s signs like “turn around, don’t drown” when the car is hydroplaning in a sudden shower bouncing off the road; it’s a wave I could have surfed on a beach coming over the concrete barrier as a truck rushes by with no regard to its wake in the same storm. A moment of blindness & prayer: I remain on the road.

There is danger in the everyday but glory too. I choose to see the latter. I keep my mouth shut & my eyes open unless I’m sure of my audience. I enjoy all I can & even the damp moments bring dry humor later.

I did the wash, forgetting I had put some spare money in the dirty laundry bag. Opening the dryer brought me $10 bills, wrinkled & warm & funny. I have stashed money all over the car & forgotten most of where I put it. There are some surprises coming when I clean it out at the other end!

There are no postcards to be had anymore so the stamps I bought remain in the address book, those I promised to send check mailboxes in vain.

It’s exchanging a scary situation for comfort & regard with courtesy as well. In other words, it’s all love flipping along heads to tails toss after toss.

The words are worn out. Thank you doesn’t cut it for the depth of my heart’s wholeness when in joy. It’s unexpected abundance when my daughter gifts me with road cash. It’s a cool bath after making the rounds of hotels full of workmen with no room for guests. America is hungry for dollars all over & profit edges out politeness too much. We have been living with a boot on our throats for so long any song is transcendent.

I live in this ineffable moment of Ek Ong Kar = One Creator Created This Creation.

The world I see of America today is no longer a prosperous one. Stores & restaurants are closed & when I set the finder for a restaurant, like as not it is no longer there. It’s hours of business set & not kept. It’s people sitting on corners with cardboard signs,

Now I know these have always been around. I’m not naive, but I am untutored in the 21st Century. My skills date from an earlier time which was not really easier but seemed that way. It’s the difference between hard water & that which I barely feel washing over me now. It’s deep drawls & unfamiliar accents which balk in my ears.

I’ll tell you what never goes out of style: Kindness, consideration, the holding of doors, greetings, smiles, having fun with strangers – like when I ask a group coming out of a restaurant if they’ve left any food for me & they laugh. It’s rainbow sneakers with matching socks. It’s in the delicate complexions of children flashing rose & pale in moments.

I feel like a bridge between the old & new. I am a cliche, early to bed & earlier still to rise. I haven’t much vim & too much vinegar for good sense. I have a deep love & appreciation for silly stuff: remembering that all the toothpaste is in the car as I stand in a bathroom with my supersonic brush. It’s bacon & tomatoes & a sneak of chocolate but now I buy a bag to eat just two. It’s secrets & uncovering thoughts with a meeting of eyes.

Ah! Life is the everything of all of itself. I can’t complain & hardly question anymore.

Love,

Carol

A Friend Loses Her Hearing

​​Dear One,

I heard you yesterday when you said your sense of hearing is diminishing. The sense of isolation comes with that, of distance as the world retreats to a hum of a murmur instead of a vibrant soundscape, tho likely you hear in ranges, maybe birdsong but not conversation. I am sure this is a severe life change. Yet all is somehow to be made to work to good in our worlds. And in this temporal, fleeting, strangely difficult & beautiful place, man flourishes & suffers both immense beauty with understanding & suffering without. I feel for you as tides shift & retreat & the gold coasts of full function come in & out of view. 

At older ages much comes clearer even when vision doesn’t physically allow this. Entropy, not syntropy, happens when we shift our attention. As children the vividness & clamor, the shooting stars of hope with the fading of heaven when worldly interventions push in between inner & outer layers comprise reality. Our imaginations are so central to function, even what others say is distorted when lined up against our childish reality where wishes come true, become those horses we ride on out upon despite the old rhymes of denial. Doubt becomes a debt; setting out upon that sea is to find self a long ways from shore almost immediately. And there, with no place to put down our questing roots, we float upon a surface so tenuous we cannot use feet or legs to carry us forward & arms only reach so far, only bear the strength to move half the body. We recognize no longer being whole when it would be worth our lives to be so. 

That’s where either Divinity kicks in or despair. Tho we dislike depending on others, we begin to understand that was the entire message: Love One Another, the corollary to which is Love Self.

Celebrate your understanding! There are more circumstances around clarity than we can handle in a loving way. Not quite comprehending our humanity we reach once again for the miracles so attendant upon youth which drifts far beyond reach. Life happened while we watched it in others rather than lived it ourselves. We settle into reduction with not quite the same fervor we welcomed earlier growth. Yet growth is the only forward motion so we struggle with the promise butting up against reality. Some retreat into promise. Most settle for what is, tho uncomfortably with much flailing against the “what is”. 

Yet life is always forward. When the leaps of bodily progress become limps of decline, we adjust our thinking which is always to be unlimited. We deny God’s love for us just a we are for the mortal world’s claim we will never be enough. Of course not! How can we be immortals in this all too mortal world?

I know you recognize this although the years of denial of decline fog the view. We’ve climbed many mountains both figurative & physical. We continue to believe in our reality despite a fair ‘proof” that there is no such thing, In spirit, we know we are the realist figure God ever created, the most unlimited expression of Self [im]possibly created, cobbled together from the love of spirit & the mud of man, 

Love yourself. Let go of what might have been for what is, but never release the knowing there is so much more to it all. These skinsuits wear out even as our divine essences move frontwise to lead. Continue to learn & give & open to possibility for that’s the Miracle sought so long, realized so little. Stay unlimited where it matters! Bring love to the fore & mount it as a figurehead to lead your voyage home.

Love,

Carol

Intermission

I am in a twilight, bardo state. One foot is in an old reality, the other searching for the new, tapping the linoleum. I listen for echoes which grow faint, distancing gently to silence.

The apartment is two-thirds packed but not properly so, as in boxed up to be sealed. All is in a temporary holding, odds & ends protrude from the cardboard flaps. I’ve arranged for a loan of tables, put an ad in the paper about the moving sale. Daily I check all the rooms, perhaps to see if any possessions have sneaked back upstairs, looking for pictures which may have leaped onto their old nails still on the walls. I open closets to ascertain if the clothing has multiplied & I understand this is the next step: the pinnacle of a final sort to bring me down to what will fit in my Volt once I have the cat “environment” set up – those parts arrive Tuesday. I envision a three-sort, the third being the final one.

I will be left with some clothing, the cat, the car, some cash, a long journey which may lead to a longer one once at destination. I am heading to a state where I’ve only ever skimmed the border on a church weekend many years ago.

And all of this as the world changes into a place just as unfamiliar as my arrival will be.

I experience a layer of stillness – not of a peace, but rather a drawing-back to take stock. Then I get to moving between the boxes, rearranging the surface levels. Ideas emerge in a whisper which I tug at to discern meaning. I am withdrawing from one world but have not achieved exit speed. One more lap, then another, until the door opens in finality & we depart.

I have a feeling on these days when the sun slips away to allow the unusual balm of afternoon rain. I wonder if I am escaping just before the tiny world of Truth or Consequences shrinks to a pinpoint light & pops with a spit-hiss to go out. When I lived here in 1998, the people talked about being amidst a 25-year drought. Townies still describe it that way, taking no notice that another 23 years have passed & we are still in that same drought. Lately it has started to rain almost every day. But the town is scraping the river bottom for water, the Rio Grande is reabsorbing itself & once the irrigation gates close, will dry to a soupy grass, literally a wet spot with brackish edges.

Attention spans are short: nature is as close to eternity as the foibles of men will allow. My neighbors shower for 30 minutes each. Some still water lawns returning with the afternoon moisture. A cloudburst produces giant puddles which will provide many birdbaths before evaporating. The familiar dusty streets immerse. The plumbing never did get fixed although much-discussed. Instead they spent a cool million on electric meters. shortly after which the City Manager left town.

The weather & I coincide. Both in a hush of indrawn breath, we gather strength & purpose & continue on our way. T or C would be an easy town to miss. Two sawhorses & some cones would close off our either-end-of-town exits. Our two markets serving 7,000 bodies can only provide as they are provided & that could change far too easily. Who would miss us? City services dwindle; the departed City Manager brought a number of expensive contracts to the City Commission for signature about which few questions were asked… why? We had the money! It sounded like a good idea (though only the City Commission thought so as they staunchly shuffled papers while alarmists predicted this scenario, assuring no one took more than three minutes so they could head into Executive Session to approve purchases.)

Endings for one & all line up. I wonder if the town can carry on. New people move in, the Californians & Texans finding inexpensive housing, cheap land & just enough amenities to get by. I am reminded of John Mayer’s song “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.”

My ending will not precipitate that of the town’s, but I wonder just how far behind that is.

It All Sounds Great

My neighbor walking a friend’s dog lost 43 pounds. I used to walk every morning, before not wearing a mask made me a criminal, before getting Covid left its strange symptoms like a dogpile in the front hall…can’t get past the forever smell. Shall I make this my defining event? Someone else can do what I said I would do & did not? Who’s more disappointed – my laboring heart or my shell-shocked brain?

Of course the disappointments I’ve caused myself are the most damning. I pass thru the same sin-detector every day: shoulda, coulda, woulda, if . . . the Four Horsemen of the English Language.

I understand why forgiveness is difficult – of course it is! I have often struck out across the Sahara of blame with no water & a too-short walking stick. I mutter & murmur & remind myself that without masks & lots of cameras on “record” & the fact I’m moving my mouth while talking to myself all remarks can be brought right back to those flapping lips.

I am inordinately fed up with the lack of civility, along with so many other losses in the society of my youth. We may have been brainwashed, narrow-minded, preoccupied with great guilt Catholics, but we said “thanks” when it was due even when grudged. We sat at the kitchen table whining, “Bur what should I say?” when told it was time to write bread & butter notes. Moms were enforcers as well as cooks & Mom’s standards were much higher, even if limited to one ethnic, cultural track. Why? She wanted me to be better than she, have more, define myself by enlarging, allowing standards.

I am an allowing person but I no longer deal with inefficiency, stupidity & downright prejudice. As a senior, I’m accustomed to keeping certain reactions muffled (except when muttering.) My brain is screaming like a siren a block away at times, but I can usually exempt myself from situations before it blows up & leaks out my ears. It used to be a validation to say something did not belong to me as I’d never do that…whatever it was. Now it sounds like a denial of guilt. How does the “innocent before proven guilty” assumption function here? Didn’t that used to be the standard?

I guess I didn’t consider I’d experience such societal devolution – the ability to drone people with accusations & misinterpretations from a world away. I don’t want to be bothered with trying to make the best of the situation – I just want it to be a good situation because it is, as it is.

I never thought to see blatant & rampant stupidity in print: men can get periods! men want to be women! What happened to the ultimate masculine insult: “you act like a girl!” Women, in turn, want to blare their denial of brave mortality on civil rights, wanting to be powerful, wanting to be the guy next door. I’ve no need to assume the lesser, baser qualities of either sex thinking it brings me power. Why can’t it be this simple? That we allow children to be children, babies to be born & beloved, men to open a door for us, ladies to be beautiful just as they are, men to be responsive & considerate. Instead I am looking at pics where I need to read the story just to see the teller – to figure out if they “identify as” man, woman, mineral or vegetable. Or animal.

If a guy came in the ladies room at school when I was a kid, it would have been about as horrifying as a monster movie from the first row… & the nuns would have marched them out to the flogging field behind the convent. But then guys I knew & grew up around would not have been caught on the feminine products aisle unless it was a hazing incident involving being blindfolded. I knew not one fella who’d march proudly down that aisle, snatching the last box of Tampons to brandish at check-out.

Well, I can’t tell you what happens next. I don’t think it will involve keeping my mouth still, so just point the camera somewhere else – maybe at the unicorn in the corner since the impossible is on 24/7 livestream, all news all the time, not so much reporting as attempting justification.

Never thought I’d be the last one in my family tho we were never close before we started dying off, so what’s the difference? Never thought so many things that every day is a journey into the macabre, victimized by spell-check. Guess I won’t be shutting up anytime soon tho selectivity of topics is narrowing more with passing time.

Letting go of victim mentality is something to bang your shoe on the table about.

Doing no harm is a potency to continue to cling to for recharge & new ideas to talk about.

Where’s love today? Time to pick up that journey-staff & go walkabout. I’ll keep you up on what I find, ok?

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