Category: Commentary

This One’s For You, Lover

So, I’m in & out of our relationship like playing “Go In & Out the Windows.” Each time I returned, it was more precarious, tentative, tenuous, & shorter than the last. Yes, just as it seemed I would settle into a routine, I bucked it off, backed out & wore out hinges closing the door.

I believe that you love me. But this is not permitted as evidence anymore. And I know you tried hard, but I’m a Contrarian when it comes to love & cannot do sex by appointment as such. I’m still stupid enough to believe love is holding hands in the car, but we never even went anyplace.

Being turned off in a relationship physically emerges from mental shutdown. We were dangerously abbreviated in conversation. You weren’t interested in looking into what I was talking about. I got boring in explaining my “out there” ideas every time. Research is so simple, conversation so elegant. But not happening on either level between us. After the first rush of teaching, it becomes tiresome to repeat instead of converse. And of course there is very little you can share about your life.

That there was little interest disappointed me deeply. With so little in common, it’s no wonder I felt pushed to where I did not want to respond. Turning on to a person is mostly between the ears & not the legs at this point, tho it surely started out thataway!

With no place to go, we wound up here.

Visions

Easter has been canceled for 2020

A day of renewal, in renunciation of the Dark, the Light Lord’s return. The old is easily left behind in times such as these. Does it need to be remembered or renewed? The new seems possible in the rebirth of all.

Last Easter I wrote a blog about my childhood holidays, about spirituality, family dinners, earthly ramifications of a returning Spring. All have been put into the polisher together to emerge free from rough edges.

In this year’s blog, the Easter Bunny coughs lightly & dons a mask before putting eggs in the basket. These are seriously different circumstances. The immediate & draconian effects of lockdown on population, the economy, the children…oh & so much else… is unknown.

What at first started as a “holiday” from routine became a forced time-out where our faces are hidden & we’re herded into lines & placed 6’ apart in order to stay alive. Now, with the problem tapering into an annually-returning possibility of death, these measures seem stupidly draconian.

Roseanne Bar says this virus is tailored to wipe out the Baby Boomers. I am one, so I listened up. But I still don’t believe it will take me along on its morbid cross-country path. Even Death would be arrested if he stepped out of line! Undoubtedly, this is a wicked scourge upon the land.

But I see it is as a coalition of fears. I am not sure why we fear death at all – not like you can put luggage racks on the hearse & drive to Bolivia to get away from it, yeh? But fear has compressed & compromised our vulnerability to naked exposures. We need to return to a quality of life unmarred by it.

How many today sit with their bucket lists in hand, mourning? Or adding items frantically till ink runs dry in their pens. My Bucket List is right now: no obligations, no restrictions, no lack in my life.

This present time revises my future. In planning that future so tenderly, I notice the sun shines right through it. It’s a glow of green on the horizon, growing in hope, faith, charity & knowing itself to be the most of these forevermore.

I get subliminals now, a montage of the past- this is what I’ve perceived as the life flashing before my eyes. Rumor has it this happens with dying. Little but love lasts forever.

I have known pirates who thought nothing of walking me to the edges of planks blindfolded & prodded by cutlass tips as though I might continue perambulating lazily on the water below. I look to the side & see Priest Lake in Nashville where I hiked. I do a massage & I’m in every spa room I’ve ever worked, with the northern light deepening to dusk. I walk a trail & am on the boardwalk in Ocean City, dolphins bobbing just beyond the waves.

While fun, it’s quite startling to suddenly plug into the past this way. I’m tasting Ledo’s thin crust Pizza, sitting in a sticky booth. I’m sipping coffee in one of a million diners, the cup thicker than my thumbs & heavy to lift. I buy bagels & devour them on a bench, watching strangers, early for an appointment. I walk North Park with its fireworks displays, I stand in the uniform of theatre usher with a smile. I smell Fisher’s Fries. I see the white bones of an island rising from ocean as I cross a desert bridge.

Where does this memory trip rise from? Are my cellular memories releasing, squeezing out my past to make room? In experiencing these, I am treated to the many places of my life where visions matter. I rub my eyes & look again.

Words to Write By

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Words need to be instantaneous as thought to be most effective. They insinuate themselves – one word can start someone off on their own [infinite] journey. There is a need for spiritually healing words, nouns, modifiers, verbs, etc.

These were where the first loopholes were made. Language. Recall the difficulty of “un-seeing” something. What about “un-hearing?”  What words whispered into your various systemic extremities, traveling via the spiritual meridians, even energetically? What magnetized us to point this way?  (We need to teach protecting ourselves as well as promoting ourselves. But that’s a class for a later school…)

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Some meanings need to be relegated as unnecessary, in that cyclical way that language has of hanging out for the next sound bite. Overall, a return to meaningfulness that makes sense might streamline some of the hyperbole.

In our eager push to popularity, we use “programmisms” – sayings by clever TV characters so out there we love ‘em. I can’t give you many examples, but maybe a memory? How many jingles could my generation tap right into & singalong tho we haven’t used Ipana in over fifty years? That’s programming, and we never even knew it.

The words have to be once again made over into a spiritual cast as we learn their power on psyche & the connections to self-mastery that we might reclaim & proclaim ours. Words serve as our way to assert being in the world & practicing that assertion whether timely or not.

Refinement & awareness redirect language – sorely needed right now! The good things seem so clichéd while evil seems so creative. As the balance shifts, we know this happens because the language has changed. My mission & focus is to refine the written word to uphold us every one.

With kind eyes,

Carol

Another Blog from Home Alone

A song is playing that I have always loved: “Walking In The Air.” I used to hear this on WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania Radio in Philadelphia. It was my late-late night listening & rare, therefore. A syndicated show called “ECHOES,” a stream of just-ahead-of-the-curve music. This song is a classic now, but then it was fresh with all the qualities that evolved the genre.

I feel really good – at balance somehow. It is amazing to keep up with everything in real-time. Spritz the plants, keep dishes done, walk outside, keep food carefully prepared & appreciatively consumed. This is what I think is Mindfulness. I feel more aware of EVERYTHING & am surprised to see the same scenery when I look out the windows. That’s how powerful the feeling of moving forward is for me.

… Feels like so much change is gathering speed just behind me …

 If I were fanciful, I’d say the dragons were awakening.

So I noticed this morning that I have replaced scarves all around since redoing the rooms & I now have about 4 inverted pyramids, kind of one in each room. I looked up from my breakfast taco (eggs, cheese, pesto, tortilla) at the whiteboard & realized it needs a star above it -a pentagram. So these shapes are taking place in the house are stargates opening in Sacred Geometry. (I think I’ll make a star on the computer & color it. And tape it up like I’m five years old. Making stuff for Future Self is fun!)

I am still impacted to walk around the house & note all that has changed. I am restless to change up the kitchen – get another table w/chairs & barter this bistro & the huge stools off. As soon as all hell gets fastened up again, I’ll find a way. Stuff’s easier to acquire these days with faster manifestation all the time.

I signed onto Netflix in these days of library privation. I watched a couple of period pieces for several shows before realizing the more complicated the clothes, the  simpler the plot. But I did summon up “Groundhog Day” just to watch this inadvertent masterpiece at this time in my history.

The clock’s the only thing making time around here. I am becoming mindful: I style my hair with appreciation, make up a bit of color on my face, I moisturize & don my clothes carefully, matching up & very comfortable to wear. I put on great walk-shoes. I come downstairs to wash the dishes & pick up the computer. What or whom am I readying myself for? I am seeing each of my rooms as a kind of diorama. I have rearranged the living room by putting the couch under the window. What fabulous reading light & how it has totally opened up the room!

I waited a couple of days to see what else might happen, & then rearranged the bedroom, also putting the bed under the window, opening up the room. I have lived here three years last January & am just now finding how to put together my apartment. The kitchen is next, but that waits for supply to accommodate my demand.

Patterns appear more; stripes change; plants shift & get comfortable; I am actually surprised the views are still the same from the windows all around!

The outside wind scours, preparing the land for spring. The clouds insist on puff status, so we here on the ground realize this is not all ours, but we’re at the tail spot of the universe’s Crack the Whip.

And we bought the tickets a long time ago. Never forget these were the Terms & Conditions of the ride back then.

Actually, since the lifetimes were tied off from each other like breakfast sausages, I won’t say I remember much. Some stuff just doesn’t stick to me & I can still be surprised by what does. Music does.

[Now playing Cristofori’s Dream, to which I wrote a poem once & which, months later someone said when I read that poem: “That sounds just like a song I know.”]

I keep having to learn the anticipation is usually far worse than the application.

I feel like the whole world is holding onto itself – but something’s changing about the grip.

Times of Change are rarely peaceful when humans are involved; yet we keep trying it on, checking to see how it fits. For the better part, humans have leaned into the wind of violence & had it surge around them. For the most part, people genuinely want the best for their neighbors on Earth. I can see where over the years the changes have taken less time to occur & lasted longer each time. This one will make it to the Finish Line – will breathe yet on the other side of that yellow ribbon set to break at our breath.

Let us onward & awa`

If we’ve wished others the wind at their backs, this is the wind to get started on for all of us. Come on, Eternity! What are you waiting around for on the sidelines?

We’re rolling out your parade, flags, batons, big horns & all. We’re warming up right here to either side of you, &

if you don’t show, we get to go ourselves.

We know the way back. It’s boring. Even though all the futures might look alike, there’s one just for me & mine, for me to bring forward all those characteristics, friends, pets, ideas, writings, montages of life I choose to keep & on-go with. And one for you! and you! and you!, a future for you!

(On a particularly downpouring  Nashville day, I could feel the rain pooling up overhead, starting from a disheartened sky. I entered “beaches” on the search engine & angled the screen into my cubicle. I found a beach cam! So I tuned in & watched the waves sigh & spend themselves on an Australian beach. Upon glancing at the time stamp, I checked my calendar, it was a tomorrow there, today here… I was enormously comforted by this: the idea of there being a tomorrow…there.)

For Want

I had to buy a needle today. The last time I saw a needle was, umm, while in Nashville (2010.) The pins n needles display hung, like an afterthought, off the narrow end of the remnant rack. I chose a package in a cool circular blue – which was made of inseparable cardboard/plastic symbiotes. I was relieved the needles were in another plastic container within. This one was obviously approved & child-safe; for the life of me it would not open. Of course, just as I thought, “but when it does,” the plastic case parted by about two needles’ worth of space & two needles flew out like projectiles. I have found one so far.

Here’s my latest Weirds:

I bought a pair of beautiful “crazy jasper” earrings at the flea market. Thrilled with the great price & beautiful stones, I lovingly placed the little black bag with them deeply inside my carryall. I went off to less frivolous tables. Arriving home, I felt the two earrings in that bag, yet unpacked one earring from it. I checked: the car, my purse, all pockets, the floor between in/out/up (with a flashlight) to sad avail. I surrendered & made a pendant out of the one I with a simple twist of wire. I found the earring within 27 hours. It was inside the washer, lying bright & clean after the “cottons, warm” cycle.

I decided not to think about it. Too hard. However, two days later, the other pair of earrings purchased at the Flea separated themselves between wearing them into the house & upstairs. I went to hands & knees to check under the bureau (under which I had just recently found a “missing” ring of at least a year’s absence.) I pulled out a brother to the little flashlight of downstairs. Four hours later, long after the search ended, I found the earring in front of the dryer.

(I now know where the vortex tunnels to in the house. The laundry room. If any galactics portal into my home, they will likely present in my laundry room, which is not an impressive first impression.)

Pre-dating the above by a week: I bought a set of tires, but just two, & immediately one of the remaining two objected to being put up front…begetting a feeling of “the front of the car feels like a washing machine” (is anyone else catching a meme here?) Well, I hadn’t intended to buy two more new tires quite yet, but considering the alternative could be a spectacular newspaper write-up of bits of car strewn over a canyon off-road, I figured who can lose? Especially since the ones scraping me off the rocks would be former neighbors & friends. Nix that. Filling the set of four tires for me covers a lot of other people, it turns out.

I feel like I should be leaving little treats for my angels who have been punching in & out on a quasi-military beat to watch over me & they are pretty aware what happens when they’re late to work. There are times they can’t quite get much more than a feather or two between myself & the “Fates”, but damn, they show up every time!

(I picked up a loose nail which led to the first tire set. Looking back, that nail saved my life. It brought to mind an old poem which I now read with brand-new respect.)

My angels have some other offerings: I hear “diet” & “walk more” & “yoga” & “qigong”, something about tye-dying their wings…I’m getting some hair with SpIKes in it tomorrow, my best response cuz I just got settled again. And I have to keep an eye on the laundry room for after-hours arrivals.

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost;
And all from the want of a horseshoe nail.

you are here

The forgiveness of morning is a cloak I wear every day. Indeed, I live on a prairie where night holds invisibility so I am always relieved with another morning in which to find a day to fill with loving acts, the blessing of words, the entirety of existence stretching out in front of me today.

The lists are prepared already (all ready), I do exist in a dance of preparedness & accomplishment. I feel the beam of Sourcelight fingering my crown. In this will I live & move & indulge my being this day.

The world is changing rapidly now. Even as the birds awaken Nature, I stretch into the potential of accomplishing all the worldly tasks to which I conspicuously bring my energetic potential. My friends are out there somewhere: some traveling or readying to travel; some laboring with the monotony of dull routine; some flipping anxiously through the Tarot deck of possibility. Me? I’m getting two new tires this morning, helping a good-hearted man organize his new phone system, recycling another’s cast-off computer, buying groceries in anticipation of a visitor returning to her home state. The list would be dull for you to read, but for me it is the tithe I pay in this 24-hour cycle allotted to the limit of its hours.

In background to my little life is a panoply of desire, hunger, satisfaction, blessing, growing…

I have been a traveler. I have reorganized my life to face each direction on the compass. I have tarried in sunlight, searched for meanings, permitted myself pleasures & I laughed with glee at the chance to stir the pots once again, picking & choosing the tenderest bits to enjoy.

The morning is chilly; a countering point to the summer of approaching days of which more than a few will reach triple digit temps. I am happy to be once more in woolly pajamas before clothing becomes a choice of the lightest fabrics & the least covering available. I am happy I left a couple of items out of the winter-put-away to see me through a New Mexico Spring which liberally mixes cool & hot – a sundae of many colors & flavors…strawberries & salad, stew & bread…a diet of days which leave me replete within these few hours as I adjust to all incoming stimulation.

Does this sound a bit patronizing? Impossible? Routine? It does not to me, but I claim this day for the impossibility of being my best self in it & the inevitability of tomorrow’s lists already looming on a clear white page.

Bring me into the mix of life with fervor & forgiveness, with practicality & purpose, with benefit & blessing. I live in a net of many strands. Some are ones I use to climb into completion while others I weave into the needs of others to alleviate & remedy.

I am already choosing the flowers which will provide the bouquet of experiences. I feel ready for challenges & chuckles at the acceleration of light bringing me forward. How lucky can I be to live the life I desire & had no idea how to accomplish – except it’s here, now.

Lords of light & air, friends of home & heart, benefits of health & realization surround me. Ladies of fulfillment, fruition, friendship to offer & enjoy put hands into mine & this May day becomes a pearl I nourish deeply inside.

There is nothing left but to love the each & every: music, food, breath, color, flavor, exchange. I’m diving into it whole-heartedly, lists in hand. It doesn’t get better than this. Good fortune is all ’round me & I intend to appropriate it with accomplishment, endeavor, search & reward.

How about you?

Dreaming Change (Happy 4th of July!)

Have I dreamed this sea-change boiling across America? It’s a kind of Stadium Wave happening across our country as one group stands up, thrashes about, & another sits down.

In Hawaii & other places, land forms & rearranges itself, heaving from unknown depths in an incredible brew of white heat & black rock. Mountains slide sideways & crush nascent dams. The sun seems to fracture its light or appear as a shadow behind itself. Shorebirds land far inland as their photos appear all over media. Bears move onto porches to reside next to the woodpile. Whales beach themselves in unprecedented numbers. I certainly am not dreaming this.

We are threatened with 5G technology, a weapons-grade “helper” which is proven to confuse minds, cause headache, scramble thinking, sadly being installed in schoolyards. No way I might have made that up. What have “the powers” got against us? Why do they hate us so, to spray Round-Up on our fresh foods before releasing these to market, to redesign vegetable cells & redraw gene structures? I don’t want drought resistance laddered into my tomatoes, or insecticides rendered into my smoothie strawberries. I would love for the corn I buy to be corn & not engineered fuel.

I read about MK-Ultra-driven shooters, each with his own therapist/handler to bring out the worst prior to setting him loose in the populace. I don’t want to meet any Montauk boys – or girls for that matter, during the course of my day.

Information bears many prefixes: mis-, dis-, non-…but all I want is the straight story of events, their causes, their outcomes & how they are being addressed. What happened in Las Vegas & why do we hear no more about it? Were the men in black Kevlar at Parkland School unworthy of notice or comment by mainstream media?

I see short-sightedness & stupidity visited upon my neighbors & friends as a form of friendly fire masquerading as guidance. The skies twist in places, braiding clouds to bruise the logical mind. Groundwater disappears overnight, while downpours loosen rocks, in turn eradicating roads.

Whole populations rise from what they perceive as stinging insult, but instead of simple rhetoric, they line up cannons. Today I saw a star-spangled top on a woman while her significant other wore a sage green tee with a black automatic weapon stenciled on it. I actually wondered which was more representative of America at present.

Huge lines of people are on the move elsewhere & then become the butt of argumentative behavior wherever they try to arrive. I’m well aware not everyone is who they seem to be in these groups…no vetting has been enacted, the children with them may not be theirs & the Four Horsemen often ride alongside them, witting or no. But while we may wish them to return to their roots; this is an impossibility since the divide & conquer mentality of politicos has rendered their homelands deplorable. We created the problem we complain no one can solve.

We close borders to them, while our own destabilize, the very land humps & shivers, children disappear, economy spirals into the gray on the dollar bills, downgrading the green. We’re in an interactive system & need to recognize it’s a closed loop – atmosphere, nation-building, health – all connected in an intimate dance of creation & flow.

We have indeed released the Kraken we were assured might be controlled if only this, that, or the other happened. It rides the crest of the sea-change we experience, tentacles lashing out in fury.

The lies need to be refuted & remedied from both sides. The power to exercise global change must first bear some resemblance to what we wish the change to be. We straddle worlds so divided we cannot conceive agreement & attempt to enforce transformation. This clear & present danger to our individual selves & souls must be brought into order. At last glance, the Kraken was gaining, making this difficult indeed. The whole setup never came with an instruction book, tho many agreed upon what they perceived to be one in the Bible. Unfortunately, rules no longer apply & oratory serves no purpose.

Dissolving each boundary that is set, whether personal, political or perceptual, is sorely needed. Certainly, the world itself seems bent upon dissolution. But ours as humans came first. When promised heaven, what can we do with being delivered to hell?

Indeed, the storm is upon us & before its rage, we race for safety. It takes interesting people to live in interesting times, to counter the curse & give birth to amendment so enormous it is soon obvious we took on too much too fast. I don’t know where life’s demarcation occurs between forgiveness & right action, but I walk that thin line of light every day, in every encounter.

We each need to be great again as individuals for the country to be so. We need to curb the absolute power each one of us thought it so easy to handle. We have worn out the rule of law by applying it with force. Let us now try to administer it with love. It can be done. It is so quiet when we stop screaming. Change becomes possible, when love is used as the unerring power source to stoke its engines. Love is the only leash the Kraken will bow its scaly head to, rest its whipping limbs within, close its bulging eyes to rest upon.

Dig up your individuality, dust off all cliché it has rested in. Move your heart to the forefront, stop trying to think through unthinkable times. We must stop the harm out there to stop the harm being visited upon us. Do it now, as it’s unlikely we will ever have the full story!

Give the impossible its due: our hearts are online now, networked, hooked up, tuned in. Put the children in the center of the circle for protection, remove them from harm. With your eyes open to the future, attend to the present. Declare nothing to be unbelievable, even Peace in Our Time.

 

It Rained All Night

Such a commonplace event, rain. Unless you live in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico’s southwest where we’ve had no real rain since February when we had a day of windy-wet weather.

What resulted from a faraway “tropical depression” caused exultation here. A mothering rain fell all night. I woke at 3:30 a.m. to the gentle pulsing flow, swinging my legs from bed & rising with an energy I haven’t felt so far this summer.

I had left the doors & windows open, hoping for a breeze from Turtleback to breathe through & dissipate the built-up heat. To my delight, the chimes slowly named their notes from the yard pole as the rain began. The soothing sound of its fall, the distinctive aromatherapy of a desert releasing heat & sponging in moisture brought me straight downstairs to sit by the door.

The sun is a force of nature here. I joke the heat from the Trinity site (Alamogordo’s first atomic bomb) has revisited us since exiting outside is slowed by a solid wall of heat that stops all progress. I’ve lived here for years-at-a-time twice before, but this third time is exacting quite a struggle to stay cool.

Since I came from Delaware most recently, my memories are of north-facing French doors being sluiced by nor’easters, days & nights of drumroll rain, pouring water, bouncing drops, gusty winds all contributing to zipping up my Maine rain jacket & tying the hood tightly. The rain tossed itself against windows like someone outside was flinging buckets one after the other. Umbrellas were fruitless, turned inside out after two steps.

In T or C this year, the sun is different, intensified into a kind of microwave heat, immediately igniting the skin & clutching the lungs. Sometimes, I want to ask it what I did, it seems a personal affront when temps rush to 107 or 110 of a day.

It’s heavenly to wake to this gentle sound & sit by the screen to inhale moisture. The form & force of recent weather here has been argumentative & I’m so not in the mood.

This steady drizzle is an arpeggio after the crashing cymbal clang of relentless, raw, unnaturally white light. It is grace, softly miraculous, growing my sense of joy in the breaking morning. It’s a prayer answered, one from the people & the land together.

My poor garden fell victim to the unyielding heat. My water bill soared; I brought the containers to the local community garden with a sign saying “Adopt Me’ stapled to each. Many this morning will be offering gratitude that they need not uncoil the hose today & stand outside to relieve the powerful daily thirst of anything green-growing.

An uncomplicated enough phenomenon, this rain. I bow my head & accept heart’s-ease to its simplicity.

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

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.