Category: Musings

The Recovering Psychedelic

Just when I thought events could not become more tangled at work – which is my main proving ground at this time of my life – they rewrap the Maypole with a swoop. After all, I did not think I’d be working at this age. Just days shy of the third-quarter-century mark, I thought I’d be reclining with a large-print book in a hammock, sipping chilled lemonade. I seem to be left with a bowl of lemons instead.

So much of the story I was told is so patently untrue! No wonder I reject nonfiction, favoring the flavors of myth. The tenets of truth have snaked back upon themselves. I am looped in lost causes: the world is not what it was meant to be & nothing like I am supposed to be convinced it is. At this time, I should be well-marinated in fear of all kinds. In truth, I’ve adopted a kind of “Well, it is enough to be what it is.” I swing the spotlight of focus to fall upon the study of love instead.

But love’s a hard sell today. Love’s the used car salesman with the toothy smile, the circus barker shouting wonders to be seen just inside this tent right here, Little Lady, the priest slicing a tomahawk hand to separate body & soul, ostensibly in blessing. Love, like truth, has become unrecognizable except in parody & mushy sentiment. Yes, my eyes still prick with tears at photos of kittens. But love is more the tears in reaction when the sun rises over an edge to the East, huge, quivering, brilliant, scintillant. One sunrise is so much more than my entire life will ever be, yeh?

I do not know if these words will capture fame, but they have encompassed my fate. I wonder who understands them. I get few comments & faint praise. Neither of these decides me in any other direction other than to continue on with them. I am building my own structure in my own time with my own hands, my own materials. The wind whistles through; pages flip & tear; bytes devour meaning.

I have come to understand there is no insurance policy for Stupid, no shield for accusations of others telling me I’m less than I am. I understand their need perhaps better than many when I get their rightness bears them up more strongly than mine lifts me. But I have withered from a shining mare on the hillside, satin & thin-skinned, to a burro (or an ass) with a wrinkled muzzle sprouting strong black hairs.

I’ve done my share of walking in circles. I’ve borne the curses of others & found self unresentful, if stung. I am quick to educate but students do not always care for the diploma I confer.

In the long run, my truth means more to me than that of others. Is this not the way it is supposed to be? I have changed from inattention, unconcern, bullish insistence & sheer perversity to a half-paid attention with overtones of belief bobbing about. I know my truth; it’s only yours I doubtfully accept.

A friend likened me recently to a dragon & I have one as my spirit totem, so this is not a totally fabricated tale. Dragons are aloof, she said – I thought it was sheer neglect of humans. I don’t know anyone like me & I hardly “know myself” in the classical sense of the admonition.

For me, it has not been about that although it’s bruited as the Meaning of Life. Mine is the role of observer, not the participant, in most encounters. If these point up where others “went wrong,” this is my marvel, not my blame, my preference, not my alignment. Because in the end of my time, when I roll out of that swaddling cloth & tip the lemons to the ground, I will find myself at a beginning once more.

Let me in, God, I will say. Could You just let me in?

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Doing Homework on the Boardwalk

I was editing a book this afternoon at my favorite Library branch, Fruitville. I commandeered a table with great light & plenty of room to move around the puzzle pieces of the job. I muttered & exclaimed & made faces at typos, verbs, dashes vs. hyphens. I followed the clear & emphatic almost engraved lead of a crazed editor who drew circles, lines, exclamation points, in red, blue & finally, invisible black in blazoning letters.

Most of the time I agreed & cleaned up after her suggestions. But I found an equal number of errors in tense, pronoun usage & the like to belie her expensive corrections for my homespun hyphenations. And Google made great suggestions, I’m not happy to say cuz I want to be the heroine here. No AI, just I.

The day was an amalgam of emotions & feelings. I sat mid-aisle; all around me women tiptoed, gazing down aisles to ascertain what could be good on these before crouching down to read the titles. I just took books from the return racks. Somebody thought it was good enough to take out & read. l’ll try it next. I found five books & a CD on Flat Earth.

Tomorrow it begins again, another week of traction & balance-finding. Riding a calendar & a desk chair to efficiency & follow-through. After Sunday’s frenetic activity, Mondays are a day off. One thing only to prepare & that may take all day of itself. I never know.

I am waiting for a different life to begin. I am waiting for “my own kitchen” where I can change up my diet from the exotica of whatever I want cuz I’m eating out again. I want different & steadier foods – the kind of stuff I’ve lived on in NM & know well how to prep. More rice, though, and more vegetables. I’ll be living with a Vegan. I want to learn.

Last night I attended a Shamanic Meditation Journey with which I was too tired to raise up the energy needed to have it be more than it was to me. I worked a long week. I had just finished up at 5 when I wanted to be done by noon & then review. I ate more hyper food & sat in a hard chair for two hours after being upright for a week. It was too much for my tired body. I only hope I didn’t snore.

So I end today on the computer where I’ve mostly been. My new boss said don’t be sending emails about work at 3 a.m., if I have to be up, write my own stuff.

Love,

Carol

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Existence & Essence

My final days in T or C.

Existence & Essence

In a class recently, we circled the room with the question, “where is your safest space?” And as others answered, “with my grandmother,” or in my yard,” I murmured almost inaudibly as I realized it incoming: “in my car.”

They nodded & repeated it: they heard me.

It is two days since I said it, & I just now realize implications. I love to be alone. I love to be going someplace, and I love to be in control. What a trinity!

When I lived in T/C, a friend suggested I read Power & Force for myself. It seemed to him I was tilted into force for the sake of power. I kind of skimmed it & decided I like both. I pursed my lips & nodded. I even wrote a blog on it; you can search on-site here. 

I do feel in control more & more. This is happening as I continually let go. Those philosophers were right; I was just too young to know it.  Now I have emerged from the mirror. Here I am.

The more I embrace whatever & what-all I have, the more comes to me. This is the definition of Abundance. The best part is, of course, once you have become such a target, the less it matters if all things go South cuz whatever moved down & off the spiral is in the same moment entering & rising up.

I feel the chemistry changing. I was on my way to a Burlington Outlet & walked into Sprouts. Only I did not walk in there, I found myself looking at a row of soap bottlers. I always find stuff I really need in Sprouts, & today was the same. I won’t bore you with the parenthetical route, but I found just what I didn’t know I was looking for. +

Recently I heard a great talk on castor oil. I determined to get some for a sore spot. Well, Sprout’s is an ideal store to have this memory pop up, so I find a castor oil bottled like the old hair color bottles with those pointed nozzles. It’s castor oil for hair.

No way I can use this for my poofty, Jersey Girl/Mall hair! Castor oil is one of the heaviest & I’d have a grease-fried look. But no other product pulls my hand to it & I already dropped the bottle into the basket. Then I get the ‘real’ castor oil to use on my boo-boo spot.

I get home & try a bit on my hair – it says for scalp – so I rub it in & take my fingers into the hair I’m trying to weigh down – it looks like a pillow up there – & I get exactly the look I’m aiming for.

I love finding real solutions. Especially when they involve vanity. At least from the head up I will look “my look.”

Then I need to pay attention to the rest of me.

I walk past the fresh produce aisle – grabbing carrots, broccoli, greens. I stroll past the coconut oil & remember how good it tasted when I did Oil Pulling Therapy before (is it again time for this?) I grab a jar from the shelf. I am going to be pretty slippery soon, I think.

Is this a Spring need? To renew self & recover some moisture? How can I have dry skin in Florida more so than I had in New Mexico? The simultaneous thing is flaying sun, but out there I walked in it at will, never wore a hat, sat outside while no sweat poured from me; the air & I were that dry.

The salad will work the inners, the rest, this outer shell about which I care so much. I am ready for renewal & surely ‘tis the season!

I came home & slathered, found a cool spot to bliss & got that insight about being in control. I guess it’s still a fit, that Power I leisurely wielded. For years I have recited a twofold ambition: I want to be in a space where I have nothing left to lose and nothing left to prove.

I’m already there.

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The Space Between

There is a gap between loneliness & solitude. I used to spend a lot of time in the former & now find myself firmly ensconced in the latter. Yet I am only now noticing the difference.

When I was a child, I cherished being alone because the only person to be with was Mom & she was demanding at best… “Did you do the list? Ironing? Vacuuming? Polishing?” All I’d done with the list was find a hiding place I thought she’d never look for it. This didn’t work as Mother had a memory beyond normal & was quite willing to review every chore left undone, every sin committed against hearth & home in that category. And she always started with the very first time I’d missed something & worked into the present. So being alone meant I could do just what I wanted & only that.

It became loneliness when I didn’t want to be the only person in the mirror. This was a position I occupied for many years, an Occupation worthy of the name torture.

There came a time when I began to appreciate (tho did not really recognize) that doing these little jobs earned me personal rewards of satisfaction, of fresh environs & clean clothes. I liked keeping up with the house & the sense of accomplishment it brought.

There are many who cannot handle their own company: they cry their missing persons as tho their tears will draw them back. I sure don’t. When you’re gone from my life, especially if I’m the one who’s chosen to put you out of bounds, you’re gone. I say goodbye, erase the contact information anywhere it occurs & pay it no more mind.

Um, this is probably not normal. But I’ve never laid claims to that term personally. I seldom look back & if I do, it is to find something I left behind, not because I’m into remaking the contact.

Others lament relationships gone dry, squandered money & the gaps in life they perceive from these. I move ahead, working around any holes in the emotional landscape until I fill them in. I’m more likely to miss some activity done together than the person I did it with.

There has always been a set-aside for this in me: I don’t feel it should be this easy. But it is. I don’t linger in it, I don’t doubt myself anymore for being the way I am.

I figure I’ve achieved two goals set long ago in my life: nothing left to lose & nothing left to prove. This provides stress relief immeasurable! If I haven’t proven my worth, probably never will. If I have lost because of an encounter, not much I say or do in that newer reality will resolve or bind it back.

I know others feel I’m faking this, but, no, it is real enough. I’ll hang a hat on it & await tomorrow in peace & comfort. I figure I’m made this way, for better or worse, so I may as well get on with life in the new paradigm thus created.

I claim my power & presence in this way. I don’t have to tell my stories anymore – if I don’t care for others’, how much less will they care for mine? I keep the funny ones only & repeat them for best effect.

Could this mean a constant revamping of selfhood? That’s one result of being thus. So many spend life with a crick in their neck from looking behind. I’ve always felt I cannot get ahead gazing over my shoulder.

Less than perfect I stand. Happy in this condition I walk forward. Blessed to the uttermost, I am.

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A Realization

Readings no longer provide me with much information. All paths are now open to me. With none contraindicated, I am able to make good on any one of these. I recognize & organize all powers to my good.

The incoming storm pulled me into the reading at which I realized this. I always hope for good guidance & now understand all I’m doing is sorting through street signs when I already know where I am & the way to go. These only await the doing to achieve the imprimatur of reality. My reality is no one else’s: imagine this! In a world of billions, no one else lives my life with my emotional signature or ideas! No one speaks my words nor understands in the same way as I do.

My taste receptors have changed, that tells me to eat less. I used to eat with a kind of desperation, with the idea my best satisfaction came from that activity. What was I attempting to recapture? Where else can I achieve satiety? It is the memory of another me – the former me – the distractive & unknowing me of yesterday. (I notice I largely remember to whom I’ve told my stories, while listening to those of others ad infinitum. It’s pushing a button: one word releases their tape to recite the speech I have heard before. I realize I am given what I asked for – New Thoughts! I am not shackled to my stories anymore. I can discriminate as to what needs to be heard so I know what is to be shared. If every word makes an impression, why dig the groove that takes me back to that nonproductive mindset from which I repeat the fight to be free?

This recent reading does tell me it is time to enact. There’s the place where my energy will grow into that in which others wish to participate. Each written word is a presage to speaking it.

It’s close. I can feel it. I can taste it in the Now.

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Ordinary Wisdom

WHO NEEDS BEGINNINGS?

I am getting into continuation more & more these days. I keep finding wisdoms which, I told a friend, bring me up so short, I leave mental skid marks. I know these are trite as cracks in sidewalks to others, but maybe you can share where I am if I share these:

[from The Midnight Library by Matt Haig]

“Sometimes the only way to learn is to live.”

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things.”

“Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. She always had a sense she wasn’t enough. She imagined now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. Just another sentient animal trying its best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.”

These thoughts appear as I imagine my life as one long, tubular existence. Passing through corridors of “getting to where I want to be” which open into ballrooms or bedrooms or dappled forest clearings. The corridors have windows where I can see where I think I want to be. Arrival is one thing. Getting there a second. Accepting & staying there yet a third. That’s how possibilities become endless. Getting these sorted in my soul is like separating a dish of cooked spaghetti into individual strands. Just pour on the sauce & enjoy the meal!

Where’s your focus today? What are you doing for yourself or others? One morning on an early walk in T or C, I helped a woman using a walker to get a package from her mailbox. I thought how great it was to get my good deed for the day out of the way early on. I don’t think I’ve gotten all my good deeds out of the way yet…tho some came on early & were accomplished without fuss. Or even anyone noticing. Hey! I look at it as a reminder for self & others. It doesn’t look like I can do it alone anytime soon. If I reach out for help, I need to be prepared, indeed eager, to help those others.

The St. Francis Serenity Prayer comes to mind. There wouldn’t be so many quotes like that, nor would these be so popular – bookmarks, signs, bumper stickers, slogan posters – if they were estranged from practice or consciousness. That recognition tweaks a smile that we already knew that! The real smile comes with its accomplishment in daily life.

Leaving off here with one more quote, this one from Fall Out Boy:

“You are what you love & not who loves you.”

And you don’t have to quote me on that.

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Road Trip

Irony has a predictive element that’s disconcerting. It loops around to preen & rub, trailing a tail across my knees. The Dodge Ram Van I bought with mother’s estate money brought this great vehicle into my life but it had a flaw in a cracked battery somehow unseen by the inspector. I left Pennsylvania as a camper with a puppy & found my first stop was to a dealer for its replacement. A new battery & I was “OMW” across the country, returning to New Mexico’s Truth or Consequences, which had taken me in & tossed me out years before.this

I departed T or C this past Saturday morning, heading to stay at a friend’s place in Las Cruces. This short hop provided a chance to do some shopping for travel supplies – “road food” I called it, plus giving me 75 miles on a trip of 350 planned to start Sunday.

Sunday morning brought me a dead battery with its spectacular sunrise & the two tubs I had reduced my life to from a two-bedroom two-story apartment. AAA replaced this & I left ‘Cruces for El Paso & points east in a nervous frame of mind. Once the buttons don’t work, there is a bit of suspicion about pushing them again, a frisson of ‘will this work?’ Fortunately, mechanical problems are so much easier to resolve than others & after a couple of stops & starts to tank up, my confidence returned & I pressed on, mulling over history’s repetition. Like Hollywood movie plots, there is just as much same-same.

I recognize the situation for what it is: resolvable. I also accept I am on my own, on the road & many angels are sharing the space. I am not afraid. The future doesn’t frighten me as the past once did. While not repeating mistakes, I search for what will serve me now. As then, I am unsure what this might be or even where; I am only certain it is worth the search. And it is all I have to do, after all.

As an old woman, I am also an old friend, but these ties do not bind. Travel is its own true love. I could speculate on many why’s but truth tells me I find validation in movement & seeing fresh vistas, landscapes and faces. Two days on the road show me the faces today are determined & not a little harried. People seem pressed for time; the road is full of speeding cars while speed limits sprout orange flag-ears warning: “We mean it! Don’t speed!” For me, Texas’ limit of 80 is over my comfort zone & I hover at 75. Which actually is by no means a hover! I seem to have a dim memory of watching the sway of Conestoga wagons with the same intensity.

I have not seen enough to say with any authority what has changed but there is a sense of rushing about similar to anthills. I’m not decrying it here, just commenting. I’m sure I seem like another ant to fellow travelers. I sense people are trying to make up for lost years, masked by the effort to turn the great ship of state from its seeming port of no return. While some see a golden calf on its horizon, others search for a way to reverse the course.

There is no returning to a past which was not really as satisfactory as its memory. But the travel forward must be understood as an attempt to recapture an idealized “what was.” I do not have that expectation even understanding. I’m on the same loop as everyone out here driving with me. Of course we all want to believe we’re on a unique passage which will bring us to a personal Eden. I’m happy for a clean road stop & a friendly face.

The unknown is interesting & gathers my attention. I know my passage adds at tease of energy to the mix already enriched by hopes, desires, dreams, ideas, feelings. I drive without expectation other than to accomplish the goal of reaching an unexplored area for me: the southeast U.S.

For now, the driving is all there is. A road trip is a suspension of both belief & disbelief. The miles ensure change but truly, is there real change? Yet I am still discovering America & myself, rooting out old emotions & beliefs to be replaced with a mysterious new. Might be I will simply stay the course already set & on repeat mode.

But what else is there for me except pursuing the dream?

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Halfway to Wholeness

Moving. Need I say another word? Top of the list for stressors. Moving at this stage seems frivolous in so many ways. I have it “all” here: a place in community, friends of all description, walkers, foodies, familiar volunteer activities, close-ups of a tolerable reality. Yet something is missing from this situation which I am seeking out.

My cat has her own dreams of sameness. She likes her chair in a certain spot, the sun coming at a specific angle, having a variety of “venues” to perch upon. Now even the cinderblock wall she rushed to outside every morning is disassembled. She liked the higher perch. I moved the chair to that place, but the chair is for sitting on later in the morning, not first run at 3:30 a.m. So now she comes back indoors & sits at the front door before curling up on her office chair, palpably bored.

In this halfway place odd noises occur. An investigation shows a picture has slipped from its hook. I remember the last time relocating & how the pictures removed themselves like this. Now that I’ve packed the spare bulbs & given them away as fragile, my favorite lamp starts to flicker & two of its 3-way lumens are gone. A top I gave away to a rummage sale jumped up off the pile when I attended, so I brought it back home. My red shirt: really?

My mind is halfway to wherever too. I nibble at the idea of home being totally empty then waiting for the change to happen, the green light to depart to shine. I look at things & think, “I have to pack that.” But it’s something very tiny that I don’t want lost in the mush of prepping a yard sale.

I have met a boy-man who says he wants to spend time with me but more wants to stay at home & chill. I talk with the other men I know who are intent on wearing me down on my chauvinistic political views (which I do not bring up for discussion.) I give food to a friend who denies having my containers – not even a “Hey, let me go look” just a “No, I don’t have any of your stuff.” (I see myself dropping stuff off on his porch & believe you me, the food stew was not dropped from a ladle thereupon.) Another dances with proving a Trump son more evil than a Biden son, but I cannot equate money with harm & that seems to be the cutting edge making my heart bleed. Perhaps its time to pack up something small & fragile to occupy myself.

I pray a lot these days. I tap on Heaven’s windowpanes when the doorbell doesn’t work. I know help seems farther away cuz my Heaven is also repositioning itself in a comfy new spot.

I stop “looking local” in order to keep eyes to the horizon. I daydream about new vistas, about movie theatres with a real sound system, about being able to buy shoes & clothing without driving 75 miles. I dream of “different” – faces, places, spaces, bases. I think about the cat rushing to my new roommate & how happy we are to share her. I think of not having to deal with all the stuff I have now, but translating it into gas money to replace it elsewhere.

I smile.

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How High That Moon?

Even the news seems void of course – a Newsprint Retrograde that never goes positive. Oh, it can go gleeful at times, but usually about items that have a “Hmmmm” trailing after. What has happened to “information” is criminal. The language barrier has become insurmountable & the tech is not yet outwardly invented to translate that to humans at the level where it engages our truth meters. (This can be done, but only by the heart-brain after exposure to a more resonant Truth; an opening, as it were.)

In that larger space this Truth is interpreted by discernment. I could add every adjective there is before that word & be accurate with each. Truth is, for us each, our perception only. There’s no way for me to function with someone else’s since my discernment is individual to me. To the media, I am what is known as a lost cause – but it was they who lost me first.)

I hope to be one of those Truth translators. I hope to develop my fantastic personalities out there in the ether: my superpowers. It’s my vocation to be a voice for Truth & have mine be adaptable/acceptable/accountable to & for others, for the positive.

It’s not my way to take over the world, but I wouldn’t mind being allowed to drive sometimes.

For Heaven’s sake, where would I take the world? Well, on my Journey, of course. For each of us, there is really only our Journey. Most travel in the same direction but the ones determinedly traveling backwards upend the entire flow in a fluttering super-babble of mis-directives.

I understand there’s no understanding anymore to fight or flight the System. Where I choose to not submit is not mainstream, but no less imprinted on the Akashic. I’m making my mark & it’s atop all the ones I’ve already made. There’s a cliche for that, “carving out a life.”

Wait’ll we find out it’s an illusion we all made up, a long story with a nasty character who curses & never gets written out until the very end … That one to whose name you react to along the way; (names being triggers.) I’ll bet it will happen in tiers: some will casually walk off the stage for a coffee, some will break in ways which are not as much wounds as triplicate repair tickets (body/mind/spirit). For many, the intensity will be too much to unwrap our heads from for a time. And then we’ll find out there’s no such thing as time.

It’s an anti-Eternity to live here like this, tapped on till we’re tapped out, flapping the pages of the script with all those red-inked, last-minute-change marks.

I believe once we discover the joy or our real divinity, we’ll sheepishly laugh, clatter off the boards, thumping each other on the back as we exit stage left.

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Foolish Monk

Seems I’ve held this shape forever now, but that’s because I don’t really remember what forever was, just mainly what this shape is. I don’t mean shape as in body only, here.

Even the wind knows boundaries are to fly from & fly over. Change invokes a resounding chord, yet I pluck a single harp string. I am happier when change is gentle, making friends first before taking over completely.

Lately I don’t mind being led down the Garden Path. It gives me time to look around, a change from faithfully watching what my feet are going to land upon. It gives me time to smell the flowers.

While sauntering, I remember all the orders to “Sit up straight!”, “Feet on the floor!” & on. I’m not sure now’s the time to drag this out of the Pensieve to examine, but I’ve been off the mark before. My body has these favorite postures & always has. Lately it’s a longer time preparing to stand up than the act. It feels good & right to take it slow.

Heart is the ultimate Editor in Chief, sometimes her wheels grind very fine indeed.  

You must be honest with love to the point where no fabrications may occupy it. (Tho many haven’t wanted truth for a longish time.)

The cadence to which I marched set early & is now the cadence to which I am at rest.

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