Category: Blogs

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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It Matters Not

It matters not if we come late to wisdom

Have we come early to joy.

As children we are content with puzzles

Which may become a confusion

Of intemperance beyond their expiration date.

If we outlive our productivity, we can still

Rest in that glow; warming to remembrance,

Its fainting profusion

Now a single blossom

Become ash.

It is only that we have lived at some time

To capacity.

Our stillness is given to action

At levels now awash in Time’s changing tides.

Even when there are no pictures,

There are memories yet alive & aglow.

Our beaches laid bare in detritus

Still own the perfect shell

That one white pearl where we were treasured

Only for being who we are.

These moments sustain & re-root.

A new leaf on a seemingly dead stalk

Is still vital & attractive.

We still contribute to life’s ledgers

For the sake of the positive.

We underline life with a curve of laughter

A smile at rain, a thrill of wind

A moment alone later shared in hive-mind.

If I have had one thought others may learn from:

One idea which, drawn across the match cover of here & now

Sparks a candle or a forest fire.

I thank you, Life, for choosing your manifestation

In me, of me, around me, about me, even in lieu of me.

Where would I be had I not chosen to be here?

Carol B

2/23/23

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We gotta go home –

Well, she will be gone from authority soon. Her influence has been positive, in the overall. I’m done, tho, with tantrums & repetitive commentary. If this is the seventh time telling me the story, at least make up a different ending, yeh?

Regular hours! Letting the air out of the shields I stay behind, working in a kinder, gentler place. I’m not going to invest emotion into many of the events I now do. It is time to let all of that go.

I want to build a vision of a church that works for all… What do I want my workplace to be? I want collegiality, companionability, the freedom to think my thoughts on my face rather than guard the game, hunching over the cards. I want to work in a safe place. I want to set a higher tone in my demeanor, comportment, attitude & tenor. I need to forgive foibles – they’ll catch up the the fools committing them soon & undo them.

My Mom was a screamer. She was a repeater. It wore me out as a child & I’m not going back there. I get buried in my work & time is the only resolution for accomplishment. I have no time for repetition when it can be spent on new & valuable solutions.

I’m not as powerful as some, but I do wield power. My boundaries surround me daily. I try not to settle if there’s a truer resolution to problems. I want to do my job to my personal best.

I want to stay alight in Zeal & stay resolute in accomplishment. I consciously let go of drama for the hot potato entertainment it is – immediate & irresponsible. I don’t need to magnify it with awareness.

One of our great tenets is “let go, let God.” I can bring my plaints to the altar but I need practice leaving them there. (“Them” & “there” are fence words, tall & inconvenient, restrictive & misleading if not clearly defined.)

So how may I improve, now knowing what I know?

Soften.

Be happier outwardly with all.

Relax about the non-contributors. They are not my problem.

I must become:

necessary, accomplishing, eager, helpful, forward-thinking, in motion even when in stillness, balanced, rooted, impervious, transparent, impetuous & amusing.

Mellowing out is a great way to level the playing field.

Figure it out & forgive it. Or just forgive.

I live a circumscribed life by choice. Happiness is mostly solitary. I bring my toys to the table & behold, they become treasures!

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No More Gurus

The time is here when we must find our own truths & what served (serves) others be laid gently down to rest back in their timeline. My recent foray into an event of teaching with a Lakota elder who uses the I-Ching for divination brings forth only that his own tradition offers no grounds for wisdom for him. Sad, I say, when your elements fail you so far.

The weekend is billed as one in which to find your way according to his runway lights, obviously more brilliant than yours might ever be.

However, when his “divination” led him to say he would be working with fear for the entire weekend, I shut down. Why would I ever want to do that? Why would I emphasize or allow reality to a teaching around that which has no pertinence for me? I have “worked” with – worked over – worked around – fear to the point where I trust my own divinity with lifting this from me.

For me, fear means I don’t trust Source. I do. My life is a tribute & reflection of the positivity brought into my life by a solid grip on faith which has towed me through many a swampy locale.

He said four times, he hoped he had not “scared us off.” Nope, sure didn’t do that for me! His “teaching” about overcoming fear while wearing a mask tugged down around his own neck is a sadly “oxymoronic.” He’s bought into a system of fear for its own sake, based neither on logic nor “science” but on a common wield that a cyclone fence will stop a mosquito attack.

For me, this seems an exercise & an emphasis I find of no value. Too many times have I brought fear up close, sniffed its sour smell & rejected it for the open air of discovery & freedom of living without it.

I am in service to this event, this workshop so poorly organized as to offer little wisdom or knowledge but an opportunity for hero worship alone & tossing money to an old man billed as a be-all font of knowledge simply because he is a tribal elder whose understanding – no matter how poorly conveyed – will serve the dabbler from another culture entirely.

Today I’ll be there for the beginning, middle & end since I need to open & close the doors. I’ll bring a novel to read which is wrapped in an excellent tale excellently told & one which I reserved months ago.

I have a solid basis of my own ideas around how I interact with my fear, how I wrestle that particular angel down to refuse it tender at my table.

To you, it may seem as if I’m in denial – but I’m not your guru either, so think what you wish. I’m the one putting my words into the public ear & I speak clearly for all to grasp what I say.

Go forth & cast about in your own wilderness, Mr. Guru. Hope you remember your brown bag lunch!

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Welcome, It’s Another Year

Time for another wander in my mind? For some while now focused elsewhere, I invite the Muse to revisit & stir the stilled waters. I invite a new year in & escort the old one out, but politely, cuz you never know when a year might come in handy to revisit. Hey, I’ll only save the best to savor from it, though.

The best: driving cross-country after years of in-place life. Finding a companion to sleep on my cane-back chair in T or C. Eating what I will, working when I will, sharing everything but living like a hermit crab with no surface from the shell. Friends I know well, each one a show-&-tell. Being a leader in a small community where the born-there did not welcome “immigrants” but we were the ones pushing movement onward, holding committees. Having a lover for awhile before removing myself from even that since love is not enough if it isn’t what’s expected & the habits of being alone overwhelm it.

Of course there was so much more! But I usher it out because there is so much new & more lively to replace it & I’ve barely touched the surface here yet. There are museums & beaches & new unmet friends & fulfillment of so many other needs. But I nibble at a smorgasbord, yeh?

I keep my split-shift life, awake at odd hours but now I work during these, writing notes I’ve taken on the job, checking emails for to-do lists, keeping in touch with many via cards & letters. I am less alone & reveling in that. I serve others with my work & this feels so worthwhile I tend to snuggle up close to that & experience less outward living online.

But I’ve been & gone before here.

I write of what disturbs me, of what moves me, of crazed-funny things that happen. I am more reserved about it now since I’m living it out loud, not testing it in the sound chamber here. I know there is so much more for me to do, to have, to be & I anticipate it all on this Christmas Day as I watch 2023 loom. My calendars are bought & on the desks getting marked up as I annotate my future.

Thank heaven the tinny Hallmark carols will stop & the simplistic plots morph to other characters who might have some reality-based story, tho my wishes on this may not come true. It would be far worse to have to overhear CNN all day.

Thank heavens I can live more fully as my body reaches a slow-down time & I push harder despite that every day. Thank all I can work out my mini-gym routines & eat fresh salmon & soon visit the beach & haunt the library & look for a place of my own come Spring. I tried the roommate bit & found I’m still not all there with it & I do better closed up in one room alone.

I’ve ordered new pens. I have a plethora of paper left over from overproduction of all kinds. I am still mostly focused on finding the humor in it all & have a March invitation to do stand-up where I work. I’m re-learning web design in a major way. I’m no longer hungry for stuff tho I love yard sales, garage sales, flea markets…but now I collect only some few items if anything at all. A blouse that doesn’t fit, a book I donate right off elsewhere. I’ve learned it’s not about possessions for me & sparsity works best.

I look forward to this new life in different-from-ever-before surroundings.

My split shift ends: time for what my dear friend calls “second sleep.” It’s Christmas Day 2022, 1:51 a.m. o’the clock. The heater blows strangely cool-feeling air & my eyes want to see what dreams live behind them when closed.

Good night, good morning, good God. Amen 2022. The blessings of the New Year attend.

Love,

Carol

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A Birthday of Blessing

Being fully human: I am fully divine.

I am based in blessing

Rooted in divinity

Wrought in the free will of Self

Ablaze at times with the incandescence of a life well-lived

My joys are a playground of opportunities

The games they engender

Call through my windows

The call to prayer is also the call to play.

We are celebrants to Mystery

Dabblers in proven technology of partnership with God

Wanderers across trackless land

   Wrinkled sea

Our journeys return us, as always, to Heaven

The God Who sent me sends this storm

Spending me as profligate coin

Emotions discovered / recovered to Thee return

On that investment.

Bring me forth again, O Lord?

Take me into the marketplace of Your love

Use me to indulge Your desires

Circulate me in Your world: I wear Your fingerprints

I invest all wisdoms saved up from Love

Treasures indeed of a holy gathering

Help, health, insight & interest…

Pocket me with pleasure, God,

The shining copper penny, the one among the many

Allow my return over & over

As the bearing of Your spiritual tender

I am Yours alone until I rejoin the All

Here I am, Lord of Love

   Ka-ching!

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“When Possible, Make a U-Turn”

I’ve read that even when we are lost, maybe turned around in direction, the place we are lost in needed our energy to pass through it. I am intrigued by this as it gives a validation to dithering. My Garmin unit has fallen heavily into like with Rt 75 here – Florida’s answer to 95 in Philly or 25 in New Mexico. I have it programmed for the fastest way & although I can see where I want to go across the “freeway”, the Garmin insists on getting onto that & going one exit north or three south in order to double back. This is how it achieves the “fastest” way – must go hammer down to match the traffic to exit a mile away when my landing was across the street.

The next direction it has bonded most sincerely with titles this blog. Now I’m the queen of u-turns. How many times I’ve been on the inside lane watching my exit sign off to the right whip by…well, let’s just agree I don’t want to say. But I don’t get excited about that anymore.

In thinking this over I find I must make a “you-turn”. Now, doesn’t that sound a bit better? I look again to see if inward shapes up with outward. I breathe away the annoyance or feeling of being stupid when I do. I understand there was some reason, perhaps unfathomable in the moment, but some causative that set me [literally] off from a target.

Now I get that when this happens, when Garmin says, “in one mile, be in the right lane to take 75 South” I can bypass that, pull off onto another street & cancel the route. When I reprogram, I am readily guided more gently on the surface streets as the unit ‘repents’ (rethinks) best route. It helps if I don’t steam up or get into a lather about it. It’s as though I’m on a retractable leash & just reached the end of it where it gets interesting when “click!” the brake device locks me down. By the neck.

English is full of words beginning with ‘re’. It always means some kind of do-over. I have often walked right through the safe space, climbing out of the bomb shelter as the planes drone over, carefully edging over or under the barrier of go no farther in peril of continuing. Limitations are temporary. I will get there from here.

I can be my own hero. It’s all that is left for me to do. I have been my own example & it sure is easier without the drama of agonizing each instant of it, but keeping an eye on where I want to be & knowing no matter how fast I travel past it, I can return. Accepting that English itself is the Trickster here, I move along steadily; we go hand in hand. It’s quieter without the quibbling.

If I can do it with a laugh, I’m in the overcoming lane. If I can do it with grace, I’ve benefited the territory by not leaving a trail of frustrated syllables behind, like a smelly bus.

I can read up all I want about how it works. I can preach it from on high (or on nigh) but the sure knowledge my goal is attainable as it is for my good, is astounding.

Soon I will no longer need the directions to be recited from the tiny screen replicating the exact place I am… how many times must I get there before the sure understanding that I can broadcasts a sunrise, illuminating all? Quite a few, it seems. I say to that, “Let’s go!”

Now, as I sort through endings, I keep finding beginnings I’ve set aside among these. They are shiny, eye-catching, attention-getting. And achievable!

When possible, live your best life!

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Before the Cat Died

PREPONDERANCE

Tisanes of my own making:

I still say coming forward for others

Is more than my own reality

The vague blur of expired lenses

Less keen than real perceptions

The radiation of my Chernobyl life

Pulsing in the machinery.

My heart decides its own measure

Diverging from the body’s hosting.

Finding that  hidden doorway,

I sit shivering in shiva for myself.

Once held so closely to my chest

Now put aside in contemplation

Of The Other.

Yet this is current reality

My clickbait body

To which I return each morning

While sliding down the ropes of immortality.

I land with a jar of bones & teeth

In the town of not-enough & nevermore

The boundaries of why bother

Tightening their borderline personalities.

Will I mist to shadow

Transmogrify to barbered edges?

Shredding & shedding humanity for the Divine

The nature at central core

Patiently emergent.

Shall I pick my way through minefields

Fraught with memory, unbounded, unleashed, unremembered?

Does it matter?

As one among many

Unmanned by the sheer topography –

Of this experiential life,

Once glossed by heaven

This blank page

Forever scribbled now

Crossed out

A mess of blots & misspellings

A dictionary of what not to do.

My mind off to the side

While heart seeks another drummer.

Of all the doorways along the

Corridor of Eternity

Of all the tiger or the lady decisions

Shall I find forgiveness only in salvation’s selection?

MOVEMENT TOWARD

The channels of perception

Sharpening

Repelling static for clarity

I fight free of the physical

For the liminal of heaven

Washed by words

Scarred by sayings

I glisten at tidal edges

Will love refashion & reconstitute

Who I shall be?

Will crass materialism win over

Incandescent immortality?

I wander fields of inquiry

When answers are only found

Along the horizon.

Like babies

Cats keep their own timelines

Pulled to the watered-silk moon

An insistence upon awakening

Shedding sleep like virgin’s tears

Of awakening to a man sleeping alongside;

To single digits on the clock

From sleep to not-sleep

A bleary coming-to

I cross & recross that boundary

Between morphia & the mangle.

Her plumed tail floats last out the door

Her existential nature of query

Draws no worry in the night

She only wants to walk about in it.

I’m hardly awake & worry catches

Me up in headlong rush

Enough! These thoughts need brighter light to think

I drift upon the couch, ticking time

In decisions.

Pain is a slowed-down travel companion

A discernment rushed into decision

A refocus upon the means to journey

Through to the promise of arrivals.

Darkness to light

The words ride a tunnel into the light.

The night

Picks its way among gardens & highways

Taking cities by storm

Bringing the brace of salt & bitters

To a candy life

Too sweet to manage alone

I reach to friends who break taffy edges

I savor them as only perceptions

Of spice to be stirred into the stew.

Broken Like Mercury

The pieces of my life forever flow

In reuniting

Yet every bubble reflective of itself

Toxic

A balm to unhealed wounds.

I put my hands into the word-soup of life

Pulling out the same-same over & over

Putting them to a picture

Moving along sure edges,

Fitted to an

Other-where of perception.

Indentured abandon

Not yet an adventure

But simply a promise

That all will be new:

That all will be well.

Finished: the Night

Apace with poems

A toe-thorned cat asleep nearby

She purrs to hear me wake

Welcomed to morning

By her expectations.

The numbers on the clock-face

Are liquids soon abandoned

For the solid day

Soon abandoned by the sun’s

Hearty sibilance for the stutter of rain

My erratic heart abandons rhythm

In errata of timing: I am asymmetrical

Wondering will it also abandon me?

I have left off the lid on fear

Once contained

I pull the braided measure

To watch it unravel.

There is none but this now

I have survived to this hour

This night

Only me speaking

One hand clapping

The applause of a universe

Knowing no appendages

But only self-regard.

Will I close one eye to eternity

Or decide to have no body

But only a wing & wonder?

Unexplored, lost joy recovered

That relay of open gates

A call to angels to attend me

A sustenance of grace attendant

To continuing on

Bodiless as a naked soul.

None to greet me in dystopian Paradise

A chair in a corner

A pen & pad

To rewrite me into another life.

Death Is An Invisibility Cloak

Life recedes behind me

A memory before a dream:

A place where God looks up from His desk

Adjusting His glasses

Laying down the Book of Life He writes

To say, “Oh, there you are!

How was it?

Again, why did I create you?

When  you passed, a thousand drums went dumb.

Come here, my girl, tell me all & that you wrote what you lived:

The banal & the miraculous…

Do you remember all the times you touched My face in passing?”

I will cross the room in laughter,

“Father! I made it! It was extraordinary!

However did You think of it all?”

I will be whispering for all eternity

Now penned in heaven

Awaiting Your words.

There Were No Clocks

As I drew my last breath

Released in a rattle: there

Was no time left to record,

Only words scattered on the floor

Of my mind.

It was all for You, after all

And I’m not sorry for the mistakes

Or falling from grace to land on my face

In the mangle of years.

Searching only for the

Exit, the entrance,

Knowing neither right nor wrong

Would enter anywhere beyond this realm

The physical of living too well

While overdressed & compliant with survival.

I bought life, spending all that I had

I hand You my purse, empty of only Love’s royal return.

(3/22/22)

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Arrival

Five days later, 1900 miles on car trip counter – no signs for Sarasota until 7 miles out of town.

First impressions: commercial sprawl; old trying to look new with spiffy add-ons; traffic sincere about getting to the next red light as quickly as possible. Hope my NM plate saves me some harassment. Beautiful birdsongs, many water birds about. Pastel is the State Color.

In search of: Sprouts, library, MVD info & all stuff like that. Won’t take long. Must find storage baskets for little stuff I put into boxes, like 15 bottles of essential oils, etc.

Lined up: Volunteer position at literacy council, service at Unity this Sunday.

House is spacious & full of light. Warmish for me, but I’ve been isolated in air conditioned spaces some while now. I’ll adjust. Development is lookalike homes, better know your street or have a turquoise chair out front!

Everyone has been so generous with me. My turn to offer this to others.

Thanks for following along – a short one today & no photo. Couldn’t get them all to load yesterday either.

Thank you times eleven.

Love,

C

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Day 5 Journey Journal

I can tell Florida is a real tourist state – not just a pass-through. It’s apparent in the quality of even the less expensive places I’m staying. The Baymont last night was so solidly constructed I heard nothing & I was across from the elevator by the breezeway. The a/c unit was quiet, unlike the industrial hum of the others, the coffee excellent & plentiful in the room & the TV did not come on by itself.

Today’s unit is in a Super8 in Lake City, my last stop before Finding Georgi tomorrow! Another 300 miles to Sarasota &  my new home!

Here, my room is on a lovely courtyard with a pool & palm trees. Breakfast is at 6:30 & a free dinner is served at 5. Tonight is pork loin. Free dinner? Free dinner!! And I bet they even offer it with silverware!

I’m getting good at trundling what I want in the room atop my $5 wheelie bag which has been slowly losing pieces, a strap here, a handle there. Is this a signal to stop traveling awhile?

The trip was uneventful. The Weeble-People in buzzcars gave way to misanthropes in bus-sized SUV’s. Well, these do require their own lane plus the half-lane Sparkle occupies. They also were still twisted enough to want to sift her tailpipe emissions far too closely until we finished passing & moved over. I waited at the motel for about an hour as I was early on arrival, today being my short travel day. Turns out I was waiting for the pet room. When I told them I’d given the kitty away, I got a room immediately & a lot of sad looks & “awwww’s.” I cannot bring myself to tell strangers what happened to my Dream. Why create more heartache in the world?

I did think of trying to actually find Lake City & buy a postcard or a dolphin keychain … for about five minutes. I’d rather sip weak coffee in the Super8 lobby than go exploring. Maybe another time. I’ll have Sarasota to explore soon. This room is quite large & I’ve lived in much tinier studios in T/C. I could prob’ly get a decent Cotton-Eyed Joe going along the hall to the bath. The bedspreads & carpets in these motels are awarded to the Ugliest Possible Color Choices available on the market today. Bedspreads of olive & lime atop carpets of brown/brown, tan, beige & gray stripes being the most popular. The bathtubs are slick as goose ____ with no handholds. Cold water is tepid, the walls a cross between hospital green & hospital yellow. But they are all squeaky-clean & the towels folded to pass muster on a Marine base.

I am down to one book to read, good thing I’m almost arrived! I doubt there’s WIFI in the house where I’ll be so likely I’ll head to the library for that every once in awhile. Time to be a friend & hang out & plan days together. And I think I’ll get a flip phone instead of the android with its unreliable-to-impossible services.

I’ve passed the point of no return many miles ago. I am launched well &  truly into a new phase of my life. My friends have proven super-supportive of this exciting endeavor & I am filled with gratitude of the highest measure!

Come visit me!

Carol

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