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Dreaming Change (Happy 4th of July!)
Have I dreamed this sea-change boiling across America? It’s a kind of Stadium Wave happening across our country as one group stands up, thrashes about, & another sits down.
In Hawaii & other places, land forms & rearranges itself, heaving from unknown depths in an incredible brew of white heat & black rock. Mountains slide sideways & crush nascent dams. The sun seems to fracture its light or appear as a shadow behind itself. Shorebirds land far inland as their photos appear all over media. Bears move onto porches to reside next to the woodpile. Whales beach themselves in unprecedented numbers. I certainly am not dreaming this.
We are threatened with 5G technology, a weapons-grade “helper” which is proven to confuse minds, cause headache, scramble thinking, sadly being installed in schoolyards. No way I might have made that up. What have “the powers” got against us? Why do they hate us so, to spray Round-Up on our fresh foods before releasing these to market, to redesign vegetable cells & redraw gene structures? I don’t want drought resistance laddered into my tomatoes, or insecticides rendered into my smoothie strawberries. I would love for the corn I buy to be corn & not engineered fuel.
I read about MK-Ultra-driven shooters, each with his own therapist/handler to bring out the worst prior to setting him loose in the populace. I don’t want to meet any Montauk boys – or girls for that matter, during the course of my day.
Information bears many prefixes: mis-, dis-, non-…but all I want is the straight story of events, their causes, their outcomes & how they are being addressed. What happened in Las Vegas & why do we hear no more about it? Were the men in black Kevlar at Parkland School unworthy of notice or comment by mainstream media?
I see short-sightedness & stupidity visited upon my neighbors & friends as a form of friendly fire masquerading as guidance. The skies twist in places, braiding clouds to bruise the logical mind. Groundwater disappears overnight, while downpours loosen rocks, in turn eradicating roads.
Whole populations rise from what they perceive as stinging insult, but instead of simple rhetoric, they line up cannons. Today I saw a star-spangled top on a woman while her significant other wore a sage green tee with a black automatic weapon stenciled on it. I actually wondered which was more representative of America at present.
Huge lines of people are on the move elsewhere & then become the butt of argumentative behavior wherever they try to arrive. I’m well aware not everyone is who they seem to be in these groups…no vetting has been enacted, the children with them may not be theirs & the Four Horsemen often ride alongside them, witting or no. But while we may wish them to return to their roots; this is an impossibility since the divide & conquer mentality of politicos has rendered their homelands deplorable. We created the problem we complain no one can solve.
We close borders to them, while our own destabilize, the very land humps & shivers, children disappear, economy spirals into the gray on the dollar bills, downgrading the green. We’re in an interactive system & need to recognize it’s a closed loop – atmosphere, nation-building, health – all connected in an intimate dance of creation & flow.
We have indeed released the Kraken we were assured might be controlled if only this, that, or the other happened. It rides the crest of the sea-change we experience, tentacles lashing out in fury.
The lies need to be refuted & remedied from both sides. The power to exercise global change must first bear some resemblance to what we wish the change to be. We straddle worlds so divided we cannot conceive agreement & attempt to enforce transformation. This clear & present danger to our individual selves & souls must be brought into order. At last glance, the Kraken was gaining, making this difficult indeed. The whole setup never came with an instruction book, tho many agreed upon what they perceived to be one in the Bible. Unfortunately, rules no longer apply & oratory serves no purpose.
Dissolving each boundary that is set, whether personal, political or perceptual, is sorely needed. Certainly, the world itself seems bent upon dissolution. But ours as humans came first. When promised heaven, what can we do with being delivered to hell?
Indeed, the storm is upon us & before its rage, we race for safety. It takes interesting people to live in interesting times, to counter the curse & give birth to amendment so enormous it is soon obvious we took on too much too fast. I don’t know where life’s demarcation occurs between forgiveness & right action, but I walk that thin line of light every day, in every encounter.
We each need to be great again as individuals for the country to be so. We need to curb the absolute power each one of us thought it so easy to handle. We have worn out the rule of law by applying it with force. Let us now try to administer it with love. It can be done. It is so quiet when we stop screaming. Change becomes possible, when love is used as the unerring power source to stoke its engines. Love is the only leash the Kraken will bow its scaly head to, rest its whipping limbs within, close its bulging eyes to rest upon.
Dig up your individuality, dust off all cliché it has rested in. Move your heart to the forefront, stop trying to think through unthinkable times. We must stop the harm out there to stop the harm being visited upon us. Do it now, as it’s unlikely we will ever have the full story!
Give the impossible its due: our hearts are online now, networked, hooked up, tuned in. Put the children in the center of the circle for protection, remove them from harm. With your eyes open to the future, attend to the present. Declare nothing to be unbelievable, even Peace in Our Time.
It Rained All Night
Such a commonplace event, rain. Unless you live in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico’s southwest where we’ve had no real rain since February when we had a day of windy-wet weather.
What resulted from a faraway “tropical depression” caused exultation here. A mothering rain fell all night. I woke at 3:30 a.m. to the gentle pulsing flow, swinging my legs from bed & rising with an energy I haven’t felt so far this summer.
I had left the doors & windows open, hoping for a breeze from Turtleback to breathe through & dissipate the built-up heat. To my delight, the chimes slowly named their notes from the yard pole as the rain began. The soothing sound of its fall, the distinctive aromatherapy of a desert releasing heat & sponging in moisture brought me straight downstairs to sit by the door.
The sun is a force of nature here. I joke the heat from the Trinity site (Alamogordo’s first atomic bomb) has revisited us since exiting outside is slowed by a solid wall of heat that stops all progress. I’ve lived here for years-at-a-time twice before, but this third time is exacting quite a struggle to stay cool.
Since I came from Delaware most recently, my memories are of north-facing French doors being sluiced by nor’easters, days & nights of drumroll rain, pouring water, bouncing drops, gusty winds all contributing to zipping up my Maine rain jacket & tying the hood tightly. The rain tossed itself against windows like someone outside was flinging buckets one after the other. Umbrellas were fruitless, turned inside out after two steps.
In T or C this year, the sun is different, intensified into a kind of microwave heat, immediately igniting the skin & clutching the lungs. Sometimes, I want to ask it what I did, it seems a personal affront when temps rush to 107 or 110 of a day.
It’s heavenly to wake to this gentle sound & sit by the screen to inhale moisture. The form & force of recent weather here has been argumentative & I’m so not in the mood.
This steady drizzle is an arpeggio after the crashing cymbal clang of relentless, raw, unnaturally white light. It is grace, softly miraculous, growing my sense of joy in the breaking morning. It’s a prayer answered, one from the people & the land together.
My poor garden fell victim to the unyielding heat. My water bill soared; I brought the containers to the local community garden with a sign saying “Adopt Me’ stapled to each. Many this morning will be offering gratitude that they need not uncoil the hose today & stand outside to relieve the powerful daily thirst of anything green-growing.
An uncomplicated enough phenomenon, this rain. I bow my head & accept heart’s-ease to its simplicity.
Carol’s Carousel
I don’t know what to think anymore. I barely know how to think. Anymore.
I have had to research bump stocks & look up Nikki Haley & John Bolton. I spend time poring over reports about McCabe & Comey to try to understand the current “political scene” when I want to scream at everyone in DC, “Will you just behave?”
I am one of a generation which may die off before the changes so looked forward to may even occur (NOTE TO SELF: climb aboard the good ship Hope & stay afloat.) I don’t claim to understand transgender issues, being certain that I am a woman who has never wanted to be a man. Having a penis would really get in my way. I don’t want to leave my stem cells for implants into AI computers simply because someone knows how to do that & thinks it might be a good idea. Hooah!
I don’t get violence. Having been in & around the medical profession for most of my earth-years, I understand physical damage from savagery of any kind: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. I predict for myself a gradual fade from life after accomplishing as much as I can towards healing on all levels. I’m weary of fighting for the money to buy food for my fridge. I could understand paying taxes if the pothole at the end of the driveway ever got filled; but knowing my money disappears into fitting a fin onto a bomb is distressing. But tax evasion isn’t an option I’ll readily pursue – I don’t look great in stripes. I’m feeling some nervousness about making the monthly payments needed to assure some quality of life, although I have the strength & power within me to work the odd jobs I encounter to earn my way into fresh veggies.
After years of plugging along, pinning slogans like “Be calm & don’t worry”, of framing thoughts like “following my bliss”, or “doing things for the joy of doing them”, I’m slowing down. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet ET’s with golden triangle heads or blue feathers. I have stopped listening to my formerly intensely-followed gurus. I’m cautious about signing up for Starfleet Academy or manning bridges of any kind. Once anticipated, I no longer eagerly await what may emerge from the future to surprise me. I’m really happy to sit in the sun right now, to stay out of the unreasonable desert wind, to watch my little green tomatoes turn into little red tomatoes. Someone once mocked me for “watching the clothes dry on the line” but at this point, that’s quite a satisfying pastime. It indicates the privilege to be clean in a world where so many are not given this option.
I’m happiest when teaching…helping someone figure out something: how to use their cellphone, for example. I live in a town where everyone’s grandkids have recommended they have the latest tech when the “grands” only want to be able to call the kids on Sunday night. “What’s an app?” they ask me, “Can I get the words to come up when I watch videos?” “How do I stop all these advertisements?”
I’m planning to teach a class called “About Email” on Mayday, & the more I research carriers, the more I figure I’ll sound like some paranoid nut when I tell them what I understand about the collection of biometrics by nefarious one-world-government scions, the retention of data by people who are totally not entitled to know that I wrote my friend about how I feel, whether political or pleasurable. How do I help learners to preserve their privacy or get them to understand there is even a need for this in a world where the providers are all-pervasive about control & have the morals of cats in heat when it comes to selling us out? The State does not need to monitor our computers. Seriously, nothing on them is that interesting. For myself, I don’t expect anybody at the State Department to grok my poetry or wordplay. I only have one way to expand into the universe & it is with expression of my personal experience as such. And it comes out through language. If “they” consider RIDING THE LIGHT subversive, my tax dollars are totally wasted.
I know old ladies are disposable as rain puddles. It doesn’t stop me from working towards what I call The Good. It doesn’t hinder me from offering time & effort toward helping others learn how to function at the basic levels of courtesy, kindness, care & understanding, of actively paying it forward. I know at any time some doofus with a God complex can take control of my car & send me over the side of a cliff where others will be endangered trying to retrieve the detritus left by that push-button destructo-mentality.
I guess I can’t explain where I am in the present moment. I had a reaction today at our quite wonderful book club discussion where a totally innocuous book sent me into a red-rimmed rage for no reason I can discern. Reading the book chapters aloud brought me to the boiling point wherein I rushed home & stared wildly about for an hour. It isn’t even a book I admire, but a reaction of this magnitude of anger is totally foreign to me and/or what it should have engendered. WTH? Is it the sugary snack before bedtime that has me so reactive?
At the same time, I am tired of being a spectator; I want to participate in life. I want to travel to see wonders of geography, I want to sit at the feet of a master & take notes on keeping my mind in discovery mode. I want to pay my debts off so the nervousness can re-settle into a joy of life so daily I take no notice of want of any kind. Bread & circuses haven’t interested me in years. It is time for me to expand my thinking to encompass God & the Youniverse to a mystical, uplifting, soul-thrilling vibration. I want to thread that needle spoken about in Scripture, so I can pass through it into either the grace of comprehension or Comprehensive Grace. Isn’t that my birthright?
I am so over Darwin & his purloined theorem about survival. I once read that the word “love” was mentioned 96 times in The Origin of Species, while the phrase “survival of the fittest” appeared thrice.
I once felt I could get closer to the answers of Life’s Questions as I aged. I foolishly thought the world would become more logical, the weather more habitable, my life more accommodating to happiness. I thought I would have friends, if not family, who looked at me with love shining from their hearts through their eyes. But now I rely on the comments of strangers to lift me through the nights. Now I have no ties to what is considered Reality. I opt for helping some with cleaning their houses, offering a class now & then to aid others in understanding the new tools available & coping with their use.
I often tell people I’m allergic to TV, but I still find myself drawn to videos on the computer which show the exotic Cirque du Soleil acts, dancers who can move their bodies as I no longer am able, political commentaries which contradict each other one after the next.
I am as confused as any teenager about my current identity. Who will I be tomorrow? What will my achievements count for…or against? This life made of chapters cleanly divided by time & (at times) geography, by the borders of marriages, the maps of spiritual pathways, the fulfillment of dreams. I’m acutely aware too many of the paragraphs in this blog start with my most personal pronoun. I need to be led into divinity somehow & overcome this tendency to consider myself only human. I used to be able to do that better. How come I’m losing the knack?
The last frontier is never that. Horizons rise & fall regularly. I’m alive so long as I keep moving – even if it is in a circle while the calliope plays corny music. Cuz I don’t know anything, anymore.
Murder Disincorporates
Something interesting happened yesterday as I observed. My friend giggled about a story her husband had “made her listen to” of a woman witnessing a blood sacrifice in the basement of the Vatican. The gang laughed it off with head shakes & grimaces. Everyone “knew” her husband well: he’s a town character. I opened my mouth to begin the long tale of Reptilians, Annunaki in mitre hats, Vatican alliances with evil, ritual sacrifice…& slowly closed it again. Across town, there’s a discussion group where this topic would’ve engaged animated, interested debate. But I was at this coffee, not that one.
I continued sipping my smoothie silently, nursing my own thoughts. I know what I believe. I am interested in hearing their beliefs. What’s the level of disclosure to be reached here? Can conspiracy flourish in a group of upstanding “Christian” believers who entertain discussion with Jehovah Witnesses at the front door while pressing their literature into the trash as they close it?
I’ve learned to choose my battles. I want to see where the line of “getting along” divides & where I might tiptoe over. I’ve defended ideas in this group before. It can take lots of energy to get past the double-sprinkle donuts & open, yet strangely exclusive mindsets. Global nightmare is possibly not to be addressed in a friend’s living room at 8 a.m. over banana bread. But the converse continued on to gun control & how, since we knew no one personally & tragedy has not happened intimately, might be a topic dismissed with a trite, “what’s this world coming to?” platitude.
But really, I see both sides as being of paramount conversational importance…we are not a diverse group, but we are all seniors who have seen war, peace, history & we follow the current news, though not avidly.
We all know on some level that situations mirror each other. I look for “teachable” moments where I can cross over the acceptable lines to engage in fencing ideas with others. We did get to talking about how society seems to be going “kablooey” with opiods (causing mental illness), lousy nutrition (causing physical problems resulting in the “need” for opoids), consuming adrenalized beef products (causing increased aggression), demonic influences (causing claims “the devil made me do it!”), Mercury Retrograde & more.
The only real item of note; however, is how the story ends. Death is a disincorporation – a removal of the physical as the energetic lives on, Too many claim the power of death over life because they own a gun with which they only plan to defend themselves. Violence begets more of itself when viewed in the long-range. Just as many here would attribute the power of handling firearms to only those authorized to bear them. These individuals are supposed to be wed to the idea of defending life through the capability to deal death. And there has been much of note recently as to how this power is brought forth in society, whether amok in demonstration or peacefully marching down Main Street. The results can be dismaying in their sameness when guns are in the extant crowd, no matter the hands or hip holsters in which they reside.
The boundaries become indistinguishable when subsumed into the power of dealing death with the crook of a finger.
There used to be a largely acknowledged absolute that said, “Thou shalt not kill.” But that already was weak in a society that slaughtered animals for food. And yes, there are any number of rabbit holes to travel down with a statement that general. But it does involve a death which comes under the topic of discussion here.
Killing of any kind will never be a viable response to continuing to live well – individually or as a society. Dealing in death doesn’t pay off in affirmative life. But I nibble at this gargantuan topic with a toothpick & a salad fork. It just gave me pause for where I engage life, how much I am given to do so, why I choose my belief systems & how each individual fits into an overall scheme fringed all about, ultimately, with death.
Nods of An Approaching Dream
My fears have left me, one by one
Waving farewell over sharp shoulders
Each attached to a dream instead
Rendering sleep the final exploration.
There are cats in my dreams now
And family
People walking carelessly by
As I point at their shoes.
Sometimes I am skyclad
Uncaring as I should have been awake
During daylight I dwell in my home
Neat as the proverbial pin
While my dreams stack in errant piles
Rising as my eyelids fall.
—————–
The me reflecting in you
Is not the one in my mirrors
Or my mind…
—————–
There are no borders, no barriers
To living this adventurous life
There is me upon the shoreline
Of an ever-shifting sea
Or me, blown before desert winds.
The news lays its crumbs into my blender
I have dusted these from sore fingers
I favor the surprise now, shedding
The peremptory of unknowns
For even the news is familiar from my dreams
Ever the known, unloosed & traveling by rail,
The windows scrubbed with sunshine
And the light behind my eyes.
—————–
Local journeys for a local girl
I only need hold the rails of life’s Ferris Wheel
To be lifted above perception
To be found by angels entertaining unaware.
Life circles ‘round, cycles seem uphill mostly…
On coasting down, the mileage varies
Everyone must master the Dances of Transition!
——————
It feels increasingly good
To close my eyes now
A moment of distance
Is a reverie by any other name.
The house responds to wind’s awakening
I no longer react,
Letting silence pool in my ears
Slipping through the backdoor of that dream
Just to look around.
——————–
The front door is left open
The tan-white face of an artificial Siamese
Stares unblinking, from directly across the room
(I named him Mitts.)
He has inquisitive ears, he tilts his head
As we each await the other to speak.
—————–
Blessed is the silence.
The hollow stairwell
Offers no fixed direction
The hats hang from hooks below
The single bed is still made above
All locks engaged, safe in the Gratitude
I sleep.
——————-
I said yes to the soup
Behind my fluttering eyes
To the dream that was that close…
I never noticed there was no spoon.
This page is spotted in dots
From my nodding pen, my nodding head
A tired hand holding itself up at end of day
Pecking at a poem.
Wishes (An Effort in Circular Thinking)
We all hope our wishes come true. Sometimes, tho, we don’t know how to handle it when they do. Recently, I told a friend I’d like to do a container garden in my arid backyard. Now that the light is changing, with the sun rearranging the shadows, I find there is enough light to do this. The best spot would be by the gate, but that won’t work since I need egress. It was a lovely bubble of a thought, but little more than that. An idle wish.
Of course, the entire idea is made more speculative since I know zero about container gardening in specific, & gardening in general. Everyone tells me, “Oh! It’s easy!”
My friend found a huge tub at Tractor Supply & happily gifted this to me. Now that I see the “container,” I’m even more tremulous. First, I’ll need about 60 pounds of soil. This means putting the tub where it will not need to be moved Ever Again (unless I buy a tractor from Tractor Supply & I don’t think the yard’s that big.)
So, choosing a spot comes first. Then the fill-er-up. Then seeds or plants. I checked ‘container gardening’ online & the search turned up beautiful flowerpots trailing pansies & vinca vine along patios upon which Home & Garden subscriptions have been lavished for decades. My yard is layered stone-on-dust & somewhat anti-lush while being dry to the point of acrimony, not to mention uneven. The desert sun cooks growings to the same effect as a microwave melts plastics. Besides, I want to grow edibles.
After these decisions…seeds or plants? I love the thought of a fresh salad, leaves moistly green, plucked from the backyard pot with a few cherry tomatoes & maybe sun-warmed stringbeans…but out here ants eat seeds, as do deer. They contain moisture.
T or C does have a community garden by the library. I’m not serious enough for this league of growing among experienced amateurs. Plus, we have one guy who spritzes his plot with what is suspected to be Round-Up, of recent cancer-producing fame. When confronted, he says, “It’s mostly water.” Before adding, with a scowl & a pointing finger, “You name me ONE person who died of Round-Up!”
I guess even if his plot is clear, he figures those nearby could use the public service of a spritz or two, including the rigorously organic patch farmers of T or C in the singular favor of his Rescue Efforts. I figure he’d be gardened to death & used for fertilizer if the participants found him out.
When your plants are in his Zone, although the consensual farmer’s agreement is never to use such chemicals, the finer points can be lost. It’s rather like Monsanto suing nearby ranches for growing the GMO crap they manufacture because the wind blew their seeds over the fence. One must ask, “Cui Bono?”
But, back to my tub. The expense & labor of toting all that soil, finding seeds/seedlings, plus the need to borrow an oil rig to put drainage holes in this heavy-duty plastic are beyond my budget in the moment. Now, I understand most wishes can be expensive – otherwise it’d be so much easier to make them happen, right?
I like little wishes that are simple enough to easily manifest: Here’s an example of one such happy ending. In the 80’s, I listened to a show called “Echoes.” It aired late at night on the university station & featured unknown, esoteric, mildly weird music (which I now refer to as “massage music”). I longed to buy the CD’s from the show, but at $25 + shipping, these wouldn’t fit my wallet. Recently, some local has been divesting himself of a collection of “Living Room Concerts” as they were called, at our local thrift. I have gotten Volumes 1-7 for twenty-five cents each. The music is just as good now as then, still unearthly, still eclectic.
So, you can see I am enamored of wishes coming true; however, timing has much to do with it. I wouldn’t, for example, too much appreciate getting a pony for Christmas anymore. Nor could I afford the gas it would take for a plum Challenger. A house is off the List: I’m not allowed any pets here. So, the Wish List is entering the Reader’s Digest Abridged Version in honor of practicality, space, time, effort & cost.
I can get $5 rebate on my Walmart bill, though, with one more credit card purchase before the end of this month. That’s at least one bag of soil. See? This is how my mind works. And after three husbands’ worth of pointing out illogic & inconsistency, it is still how my mind works.
So maybe I’ll just go check their stock today. Maybe I’ll bring home a couple of bags of seeds. Maybe the landlord will lend me his heavy-duty drill. Maybe I’ll even invest in a jar of poppy-seed salad dressing to keep the dream alive.
Fresh food will give me the energy I need to earn from my odd jobs to pay the credit card(s). As one hand washes the other, I’ll wind up with an immovable yard decoration full of dirt all winter. But rocks are free in the desert. And I’ve always wanted a really nice rock garden.
