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.

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?

WE NO LONGER LIVE IN LACK

but in the fullness of love & a loving presence within ourselves & hovering just beyond. Our Higher Self is plugged in, checking the connection, watching the feed.

Anything good coming up? Something I can toehold onto here, & lift us up more? Get a glimpse of what my Higher Self is up to?

(I see her doing the same as me, yeh? Only on a classier level, like in white rooms. In fact, the Higher Selves? They’re hooked in together all the way to Source (think of all the plugs coming out of that Throne! 😊)

They’re all listening in this open channel. It’s what’s shaking Over There right now, I hear.

Who among you remembers a Party Line? I do.

Joe Dispenza says a heart in coherence thinks in pictures. Have you read the last dozen blogs where I write of someone going through my memories? Of the vivid pictures appearing – these are almost 3D – just add the energy of attention: watch it expand to re-experience. Many other resolutions can present themselves for consideration, but you need to blow right by these & arrive at the conclusion which took place in the reality where you currently reside (body & soul) (Later, & if so inclined, you can peruse these in detail.)

Let me borrow your mind a moment:

We are walking through Mordor. Each of us carries & uses a Ring of Power.

Where did your mind just go?

Over what would I yield – or wield – power? Only over the realms I now ‘control.’ I’m careful about acquisitions right now.

(Even after years, this thought sets off a tiny chime that rings the universe and sets my brain alert – ‘Let go.’  That old cosmic tug of war between yield & wield with its one letter switched & its “I” moved about.)

Does this make me a dumbbell? I mean, just to stay in balance, something must give. What am I willing to give for balance? Isn’t homeostasis where it’s all happening anyway? It’s where I aim to get to & be.

I know this is all [distastefully?] egoic. But please consider I only am focused on this avatar – oops – even as I type that, I know it not to be true. Perhaps 80/20? And even that shifts. For the purposes of this blog, it’s this me working it.

For some (SoMe!?) the pen is a magical wand. Tho not found in a toolkit, how many minds has it charged, how many thrones overthrown? The power in the pen is in both its use & user because, like any good tool that morphs to the shape of the hand, the use of all muscles, so does this tiny WMD.

I need to let go of the pen & see the people I am speaking to by faces, by gestures, by the energy exchange of universe giving in to giving us ourselves because we are finally allowing & acknowledging it.

“Nothing but nothingness” a seer says.

“Nothing unreal lasts” ACIM says

“Maya” a cultural belief

If you have an idea where this might go, please share it!

Love,

Carol