Musings

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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?

That’s a Plan, Yeh?

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It’s ok to be just little me with a big dream, isn’t it? Okay to find my way one footstep at a time across a dark room where light shines from my heart & my eyes to bring along anyone who wants to accompany me to my “here,” right? I hope so, cuz that’s how I’m handling it now.

The palette of emotions drips from the wood; even Michelangelo would be hard-put to create from these colors. The beauty of what is out there is contrasted by the harshness of what is in there – from the macrocosm to the microcosm. And yet only by revealing the ugly can we persevere through the creation of a new world a-borning, bearing us along with it into a dimension where sound is color & senses reel at the promise being created before our very eyes.

I take in one world through all my outer senses while my inner senses vibrate to another. My reality is not real estate, but an imaginary realm of the real that forms up around me like an invisible filter through which I perceive.

Friends fall away if their motives do not bear scrutiny. I wave them off & turn to continue my way. Sometimes I will wonder what happened to them, where they went & why. Sometimes it will seem I did not have to give them up, but somehow, they gave themselves away. Sometimes my heart will open to a glimpse of them “through a glass darkly” … will they miss me?

I am finding out who & what truth is, what it means to me, how to perceive it from best presentation. I discover what I can afford in terms of being a friend. Being in service brings the most return…friendship assumes, with concomitant outcome. Friendship impinges, at times, costs me phone minutes, hours on the clock better used for self-development, little stings to my heart of which I once took no notice. Now, not only aware but sensitized, I understand the difference between the ley lines & the lay of the land. What do bells & whistles serve but to make noise? What do I crave but the silence of my own thoughts happening inside my own head?

I do crave the thoughts you think about me – but only if they’re good ones. Bullshit on constructive criticism: take me as I am or take yourself away. I have grown from a cuddly kitten (tho there are at least two husbands out there to argue that point, the third being dead.) Anyway, from a cuddly kitten to a scaly armadillo, a spiky porcupine, a blowfish thrilled to puff into a terrifying sight, but still vulnerable to protective custody.

Does that mean more than it says? Why do you think I’d know? I am doing a consciousness stream here, a flow of brainwaves washed up on your beach…a glisten of bubbles soon popped by sandpiper feet.  And as some drop away, others rise up cuz that vacuum thing just can’t happen here. Even when I’m sitting still there is something happening inside. My heart beats, my liver thinks, my kidneys filter … all in what I might perceive as silence, but which is actually a storm of perfect precision & hum.

In the mineral water hotbaths, I like putting my ears underwater where I can hear the swish-lub-dub of my heart. In this one organ, clamoring over all the others, I find an existence, a proof of life unavailable in the quiet buzz of adrenal gland, the static revisioning of the colon, the lost movement of muscles in stillness.

An ambiance of spacetime surrounds me. I am spackled with creative clay, which is fun to play with, but which, in my hands, shapes no masterpieces.  I am both starred & tarred with the brush of God’s love – pushing me into sure adventure in His name & tickling the belly of exactly where I am this moment.

Ok. I confess, I have no idea what I’m doing here. I live day to day & work it out as I go. I’ll never lead a country to a promised land, unless others want to follow me around on the off chance I’ll discover one. I intend to live it my way, try hard not to be a target, continue to improve my verbal & written skills, wind my way into your psyche & love all I can.

That’s a plan, yeh?

Letter to a Lover

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Feeling more coherent this morning, after sorting through all my thoughts & writing Gina our daily email exchange. I remember significant dreams, tho the details are sifted thru the dreamcatcher & gone. I feel like the untethered astronaut sailing thru space, limited on oxygen, but involved in the grandest experiment & rendition of All Time, my observations birthing stars of only nascent power, tentative glow. “Even a star doesn’t shine on its first day.”

I feel like a poem, short on words, long on powerful yet truncated description & all the more intense for this, fingers dextrous, pen tapping the paper…restless yet settled with the warm, charging computer on my lap.

There are so many things I wonder & will to happen. Yet I must needs stand in the hallways of love, never settling into the pink room, the green room, the red room, the beige room. I am ready to settle somewhere. Part-time love is not what I’m about right now in my life. I need & want to give myself fully into a relationship – Bring It On, Damnit! Yet this is not available. Future is nebulous on this. I am unsettled about the need to settle for what is.

Barking Mary next door is trying to clear her throat. I am trying to clear my heart. Noise & silence, the story-facts of living life.

I appreciate well that you tell me loving things; I am hard-put to respond since I cannot grasp the air they ride on into my lungs, nor take solid nourishment from them. I am ineligible to ask for anything more, only able to settle for less. And I am not a lesser woman withal. My conundrum, yeh?

So, I’ll say it for now: I love you. I’ve no idea where that beach ball will blow to. I do not go gently into any lightening morning. I track bees who are about being furry, winged, hungry for sweetness. Bees who want me to accompany them into dark hives where the honey is hard, compartmentalized, both execresence & food – the gold of life made palpable. Bees who ride stingers & who can tag the unattentive most severely – sometimes even with death.

For want of an epi pen…

I do not know where anything is going anymore. I think I know what I want but the paths I take keep shifting with my dreams, kalaidescopic & tantalizingly incomplete. I dwell in the present of you & hold that at arm’s length since I don’t even quite know what to do with it: put it down? put it away? set it on the bureau to glow under a lamp?

Physical need in the space of psychic want is unbalanced & I am a Libra.

This is the thin line poets have always examined minutely. One side of the hand holds on while the other is only capable of letting go. This duality of life frisks me with cold hands, searching for emotions & wallets both…neither of which are to be found with any level purchase.

I will take what you offer, but I am a dragon sitting on a lake of wealth, licking out tongues of flame, hatching eggs that promise far too much of greed & endeavor without true bonding. My wild nature may overtake the short blonde sitting in front of you at any time, like some celluloid morphing characterization. I cannot guarantee you either flight or burning…most likely both.

Love,
Carol

Dream On, It’s My Dime

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One of the ways I handle current tensions & strife is through laughter. You might say I’ve had a lot of titters in my life lately, if not outright guffaws. Fortunately, I have a lilting little chuckle which engages others into at least a smile.

Once again, I dreamed of being outdoors naked. From the waist up, this time. I was carrying an open paperback in front of me, so I didn’t immediately notice. A paperback didn’t quite cover this, tho – I needed a big ole “Look” Magazine (too obvious?) or a classic edition of “Life” – not that abbreviated, shrunken offering now available.

Sadly or strangely or whatever, the man I was walking alongside of didn’t notice either. But glancing down, I realized my situation, lilted a chuckle & turned around, heading back toward the upstairs apartment where I was staying with total strangers. I did mull over, along the way, if anyone was noticing my bare-naked, be-moled back & thinking: “that woman has nothing on from the waist up.” No one tapped me on the shoulder or leered an “O Miss!” or “O Ma’am” at me. I was just bemused & wondering why no one had said anything when I exited that apartment – after all, the residents were friendly, not relatives & had surely noticed my déshabillé. Non? I felt a bit better when I spotted a cyclist who also seemed naked from the waist up, until I saw she had large flesh-covered straps criss-crossing her back. Ok, so I was the only one on this street in this state (undressed, not of the union.)

I find the older I get the more focused I am on looking young. This oxymoron can rule a life  if not taken firmly in hand – since nothing else is affixed to one place anymore, at least I can allow my beliefs to be so. When a friend treated me to a cupping demonstration which delineated how to firm up the face once again by the use of an extremely small traffic-cone-shaped item, (which resembles a thimble for a giant who cannot get the hang of sewing) plus varied accessories made appropriately of smooth stone, I was eager & embarrassed to attend. It’s unexpectedly effective in a reverse kind of way, & I find that I now have a few more wrinkles under development than before. Perhaps I’m not using it correctly? This is one where I thought I didn’t need to read the instructions but maybe I’d better find the booklet before I become a historic road marker. Although I could achieve THAT anytime I just made my dream come true…

On the 19th this month, I have a hairdresser appointment. Which leads me to wonder at the vagaries of a language where we strip our clothes but dress our hair. Before the dream of walking downtown topless, I was dreaming of my hair & woke to a call of nature picturing a great add-on I need to share with my tolerant stylist. Since I plan to have the sides clipped in closely, I may get lightning bolts shaved out over my ears. This would refute the girlfriends who are dismayed by my idea of a perm at my age. Perhaps they are picturing a senior perm – wispy gray strands over a pink scalp, unevenly curled & wavering. This is not my hair, folks. My hair has an aspect of “OMG, is that a toupee?” about it. One could upend me & mop the floor with the growth I have. It’s not a complaint, but rather a brag that I say this. However, lifelong growth patterns dictate that my hair grows only out the top of my head in any comb-able fashion. The sides tend to bush out, so it looks like I’m wearing earmuffs, but not so nicely as Leia affected in “Star Wars.” I’m serious when I say earmuffs. Recall the fuzzy kind Mom used to buy in winter? Where your entire scalp froze painfully to the wire connector, but your ears stayed warm?

I am a firm contender in the argument that VANITY, not hearing, is the last sense to depart the body. If you dispute this unscientific finding, I remind you that one of the activities of the undertaker, after gluing your mouth shut, is to apply makeup. You’re dead! What need here? It might be the only opportunity you had in your life to be out in front of friends without a big fuss on how you look. Really, what do you care? You’re supposed to be signing up for harp lessons, or getting the folds in your robe right, or learning how to artfully arrange your wings upon sitting on small gold throne-stools. But, sigh, what do I know? For me, it may be my last chance to float in out of people’s heads, trying to understand them better than I do now.

Because if age has taught me anything, it is that I will never understand people no matter how much they & I agree or nod together, or tsk-tsk together about the neighbors.

So, let’s wander out of this delightful little ramble through my head & maybe rummage in the fridge for a breakfast egg, or a bacon slice to cook up. I’m supposed to be taking my walk right now, but I have a mysteriously sore foot. And it might be chilly out there to start, so that by the time I get home, (almost) all the layers I started out with will be tied around my waist with the pocket my keys are in dragging along the ground.

I wonder if I have any cheese left for an omelet.

 

 

Changeling

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Every day I am restored by the grace to begin again. Actually, every moment is such. All the large beginnings: leaving husbands, letting go of lives so carefully gathered & nervously lived, turning away from daughters & lovers whose love for me was as real as my love for them…

I am who I am because each relationship began & ended. I am free & unbound & if I had hair, it’d be blowing in the wind of my life now passing by.

I am here to start dreams – though this means my expertise rises from endings. For all passages require one closed door & one that’s opening. Doorways equal transitions (which is why we forget what it was we wanted in the other room as we pass through them.)

Walking from one door to another requires a special energy that gathers as desire rachets down tightly, curling upon itself until the tension binds into a release. All else is wished away. The “New” laps around me like a litter of puppies, soft, round, happy, panting & yipping in eagerness to be experienced.

Even from this, I remove myself at times. I wonder about me. Every month brings a new moon & a full, the bright rebalances the dark. I initiate by becoming an initiate following an initiative.

I have done harm, yes. The landscape is littered with what I probably should have done. But I picked my way carefully through the detritus I’d made of my relationships, through the hash made of my relationships by the others in them. I clawed out of the spoils to that bright new day of welcome opening for me, as though I was the only pure thing it would ever see.

I trust with a full heart. I unfold as though the sun will shine forever. I keep believing, as all the songs say I must do. And when the fear sends me scurrying for the coat pockets to check for lost, linty money, or shaking the piggy bank for funds to finish the month, I live with it. I recover my joy whether there are enough coins to rattle or one single jingle.

In coming this far, I have taken the journey home. There is no arrival for I am always where I am: at home. There is wisdom here, and courage. There is heart-mind, order & determination. “All the time I’ve wasted is given back to me”* I’ve learned it’s okay to draw a blank at first. Sometimes a close encounter with a rhino & subsequent clean-up is the best I can manage. Whatever.

I don’t flicker anymore. I burn. People are singed near me. I have gone Samurai, a world-warrior forged by life’s forgiveness. Each place I have halted, I have gathered more.

If I seem part of a crowd, it’s only because I’ve stood still & the others have caught up. I can wait for them to pass me. Living alone is not my fear. Alone is one letter off of God: All-One. And I am all-in-one now.

I’m accustomed to the unexpected; I accept the occasional maladroit gifts I offer. Things usually come up right though it may be by a longer route.

Dreams always come true (at least mine.) If it isn’t in my life, I haven’t dreamed of it. I have come to view this as choosing, not limiting. Days march past on the calendar like ants, purposeful, fulfilling, each carrying one burden to release at the end of the day as a pearl of sustenance. Every before becomes an after. I sleep in my dreams like silk pajamas.

The unexpected turns into synchronicity.

It’s taken some time, but I believe in me & that is only because I’m a fragment of my own imagination, burning candles kindled at both ends. The light’s better that way, when seeking blessings.

“It happened without a fight

Something is new about me

I feel it with each breath

There’s a majesty about me

A majesty about me…

I feel it in my self

A new heaven a new earth

Is all that I see” *

—————————

*lines from “I’m Changed” composed by Ricky Byars-Beckwith.

I’m Changed sung by Angel Travis

 

Solar Flares, CMEs, EMPs

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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!

Labels

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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.

  • Thinker?
  • OMG!
  • Leave Me Out Of It
  • Needy
  • Coffee Now Or Else
  • Donate below

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.