In the blogstreams I follow, this word appears often, preceded by so many others: abundance consciousness, gratitude consciousness, unity consciousness…I could go on & I’m sure you could add your own words there as well. Yes, these all work for people in their ways.

My vote is on regular old consciousness – the one that the nuns drilled into me as 2×2=4. three branches of functioning government, Alaska not being connected to the contiguous USA.

I went to Walmart yesterday & now will Go There No More. The entire place is third world mercado. I asked ten people about where to find pie shells. I was directed (silently as none spoke English & after deep consultation with cell phones – one clerk handing the unit to me indicating the “search” box) to yogurt, walked to breakfast meats with a flourish, taken to the bakery, to frozen pizza & to the pasta shelves. My single English-speaking helper (#11) said “no place but the ice cream freezer.”

After awhile, even tho it was the end of the day & “my dogs were barkin,'” & I was pushing a cart the size of a VW, it became a kind of Where’s Waldo Quest: how many people does it take to find a pie shell to make quiche? Walmart is now officially not the place to go if you need to ask a question, unless you’re collecting answers for grins & giggles & willing to go walkabout for goods.

I stopped at Publix across the street & got a couple. Come by later for a slice.

Hello my loyal readers, my new readers, my online world… Hello!

I guess I have to get in line to echo “What a year!” with all of you – an echo heard round our worlds. My first blog of 2024 was titled “Decisions”. It ends with the line “Am I there yet?” Well, guess not even yet a whole year later.

What happened to 2024? I “lost” my job in the midst of a great shuffle from semi-organized to the Witch from Miami’s takeover of the church & driving out most of the congregation I started the year with. It may have been Biblical, but only in the sense that she enacted that driving the moneylenders out of the temple part… only they weren’t such.

But I was lucky – I at least got a luncheon with friends & supporters before walking out of my own accord – unlike earlier & later employees, one of whom was threatened with a police escort by the Board President. What lies heavier on a church…financial or spiritual debt?

I got a new car & we tiptoe around town still discovering conversation. I settled more into the apartment where I live. I made many resolutions & kept about 65% of ’em. I burned candles, sage, poems, bridges… I moved heaven & earth only to find the same under the Big Blue Marble as atop it. Where once I approached change eagerly, I now drag my sore feet, tucking in my head like a turtle to survey the lay of the land before venturing forward. I learned there are no safe spaces needed; I am in the hands of Universe all & every. Just need to make sure the shoelaces are tied.

For the last day of this year, I pulled out all my oracles. They pretty much say the same thing. All the arrows point in the same directions: health, self-care-taking, some stargazing, much release, more adventure. I got the words: Confidence, Kindness, Evolving, Radical (rootedness), Generous. I got the angels of abundance, adventure, release, vision, strength. I drew the cards for contemplation, huge change, vision, strength. I drew from the Motherpeace deck: vision, self-solidity, wariness/awareness, contemplation, [again] change. My Southwest Oracle deck rendered tortoise, starry skies, yucca, mullein, tumbleweed, desert moon – all indicators of what is listed just above. Louise Hay advised centering, new life to be whole, release, being part of Everything by just being me.

I can’t decide if the message is repetitive or insistent. Actually, it’s both!

I start as I ended & vice-versa, no?

What did I learn this year? I learned my heart is more resilient than my brain. I learned my liver & spleen can renew & change their emotional charges more easily than my feet which drag when they should dance. I learned living up to my promises is hard only when they’re made to myself. I keep the outer ones way more easily. I learned I am often the last in my own line to learn & to love. There’s no emotion tied to it all – just learning.

I learned all of this in many renditions, each situation earning another notch on the climbing ladder, each rung bringing a loftier view into range. I learned perhaps more than I wanted about teeth, betrayal, sanctions, the effects of change & the need for peaceful acceptance. All’s I can really do is straighten the tablecloth the cards are dealt on.

Outside, the first firecrackers pop in the distance. Night blankets the land. I run the usual questions: did I lock the car (go push the remote til it honks), did I remember to do everything I wanted to do today? Yeh, pretty much I did. I changed the cat litter, brought out the trash & recycle. I vacuumed & washed down my favorite chair. I checked the brand-new phone for messages as I now check my head for the same. I’m out of books to read – the library was closed at 2 when I popped by. All I have left are the books I promised to read at the beginning of 2024 & now, the time to read these.

I wish for you whatever it is you most wish for yourself! It won’t get any better than that.

More later.

Love now.

Carol

So when my friend could not make breakfast, I took myself to The Breakfast Cottage in Venice. I gazed at the awning next door thinking how little one hears of ukuleles & how interesting a word it is, not often used in conversation.

The Breakfast Cottage had no Hawaiian motif, more Bee Gee oldies playing. There’s always something to write about, tho. This tiny journal alone starts in 2015 with a riff on moving to the Delaware beach, wet towels slung over railings, single flipflops on the beach, sandpiper races along the tidal edge. I am ten years older than when I started it.

Time capsules litter my landscape, an upended medicine bottle of life. Years of massage now packed into one. Office work reopened & spilled out, granular fear playing a whack-a-mole with Rescue Remedy & Hyland’s Calm along the way. Invisibility revisited: I hang my cape in an old phone booth & walk on. I lost my taste buds to Covid, my Volt to an attack of acute metrics, my eyes to the 2-fer $89 glasses special, my hair to diminished vanity & so much more. I gained faith, trust, health, friends & a cool new restaurant as of today.

I get my new teeth next Tuesday!

I’ve written a lot of that which delights me. Today I am accosted by sadness, by all the projects undone or not started, by the way my foot hurts from being stepped on in the dance.

Obtaining a job online – it’s like computer dating – the chances of finding tall dark n handsome offset by the stupids: list every job you ever had, dates & times, titles, locations & reasons for leaving. Well, my job history is pretty long. I might could tell you my first job was as a dishwasher was with Fitzgerald’s Drugstore in Wildwood & I left in September 1962 for high school. Best of luck getting a reference.

They want too much information & not enough of the right stuff, like I enjoy working. I am good at it. I get stuff done. I’m good with people. I’m a problem-solver.

Unity is the second job I voluntarily quit in my life & I have worked since getting my “papers” & my social security number at 16. But today I feel as though I will never be worthy to work again. It’s like love, I’ll never be worthy again. Just to show you how twisted I am, work was my choice over love my whole life.

Today is a loss day. I’m walking the dripping woods with a hobgoblin on my shoulder whispering what a loser I turned out to be.

I hear that work is now a “hurricane” since I left. I get cryptic texts about “what is/where is/how do I” on my phone. I see the place upended like the butt end of the Titanic going down in all those old movies. The band members have already slid into the sea. One friend cries as she tells me I need to be there. Except I don’t anymore.

I cannot work with a narcissist extraordinaire who makes accusation her #1 motivator & who insists on privacy while discussing my errors with peeps at lunch. She had a month to possibly rectify the situation, but chose instead to bring in a contractor (at twice my hourly rate) for 25 hours per week. She did this five days before my departure & told me to teach her everything she needed to know. That’s how little the “boss” – a card-carrying Unity Minister – thought of my work.

There’s a little girl inside boo-hooing & snotty-nosed. She’s getting loose. Time to get the plunger & stuff her back. Or time to let her out & heal? My choice.

My self-image has always been tied up with my work ethic. It didn’t matter if I’d forgotten to bleach my moustache if I got the report done on time. Or if I had an unnoticed stain on my blouse if I showed up & answered every question anyone asked me with a solid solution. I chose my work over my daughter, over my husbands & relationships.

I’m worn out with stuffing things back. I have found it comes out in other ways.

This time alone, not working, is to heal. It is time to allow the sadness of “failure” to out itself. Time now to root out fault-finding, to leave things behind, to understand that no one’s future, let alone mine, is assured or geared to success as all the markers have changed. The life I lived is no longer available for review or notation. Only the feelings remain – like all the self-help books say. “How does that make you feel?”

No snack food will help here, no rubbing my eyes, no self-examination which seems to turn up scars when I cannot recall the wounds that left them.

Today I stick my hand out from the pile of rubble. The other one is holding onto that child.

Dear Carol,

Well, you DID it, Girl! You went & done QUIT! Your! Job! Woo f’n hooo! We were getting tired of pushing you toward the door! We’re sitting back, enjoying a Tall One. To you, Darlin’! To you!

Do angels cuss?

We do.

Is this a dialog?

It can be. Whatcha wanna know? And don’t you dare ask, What’s next! Just let that come to you. We were there yesterday at your party. We listened in to all the conversations – mainly they said how the place won’t be the same without you. But nowhere ever is once you leave.

And By the Way, we don’t mind when you don’t greet us everyday. We know you know. Maybe now it can be different.

Time went away with the Covid Scam. Part of it was to erase & upend time as you knew it. Time never caught up quite to its old standard of before that. Thus you’re neither late nor early in your life right [dare we sat it?] Now.

Even tomorrow time slips a notch once more. Daylight Savings Time – Pshaw! What savings? Your world is lit up with so much artificiality, it’s ludicrous!

So what do you wish to ask?

Well, I was going to start with my future, but that doesn’t seem to be on the table,

Nope

Next?

Have I achieved my purpose?

Depends. What was it?

Oh. I thought you’d know…

And just how would that aspect of Free Will work, Carol? We’re here to observe & support. We’re not dictators.

So, all the time I’ve asked you for inspiration, what’s been happening?

Hey, we relay from the Big Tent, sometimes by megaphone, sometimes in a whisper down the alleyway. You made a bunch of decisions, thinking them divinely inspired, but think on that: You are your own Divinity!

Oh yeh, that’s what all the books say.

The very ones you no longer study since you realize you need to do this on your own. You’ve laid the track, set the barriers, striped the car parks. You’ve set the speed limits & chosen the destinations, too.  We roam ahead & behind, scoping out the routes & making sure the litter gets picked up.

Leave only footprints, remember?

Sometimes you get clear directions, sometimes you’re hearing echoes thinking these original & subscribed to you. But we’ll say at times it WAS us, hoping you’d heart-heed & heal.

It’s been easier with you – this rendition – than with the other you’s. You’re pretty quick on the uptake, mostly ready for change. Pretty sharp until you dig in your heels & holler…

When you block or try to stop the flow, things happen control & contrariwise. You’re learning.

Be the screen door wishin’ on the breeze. Be the laid-back self we know you can be. You’ve SO got this, girl.

We love you, CB, through & through.

~ R, C, D, A & M.

I am here.

The beach.

I left the apartment climbing a racheting of worry: I didn’t bring a …

Whatever & all my civilized mind believes I need for an elemental day.

Driving, I revisit one of the many conversations I could/would/should have had

Yesterday.

I open the car windows: blow the words away.

That

Is

No

More.

 = = = = =

The sandpipers only may run back & forth

Circling one another as my thoughts

The parking places are 9’ high with hurricane sand

I pull into one of the last seven left

I carefully scan the meter structure:

Oh good! I am clear until 10 and it is 8:12.

I keep my sandals on to walk to the waterline,

Distinctive sounds of crunch/slide walking

I eye the knotted trash bag, hoping for a conch

But conchs don’t bear logos.

There are few shells, many fragments.

My breath becomes as deep as the beach

My shadow grows as the sun takes heed, uncovering itself in light

I put my old lady jacket on the back of the chair as I sit.

 = = = = =

I momentarily have no words, but I’ve come here to write

Higher Self prepares to scrawl a renewed prescription for this life.

Yesterday I left my job to a rousing sendoff of friends at a luncheon.

My boss says “I never intended to let you go” & runs thru her too-familiar

Litany of my faults

My heart shrank, my stomach heaved…

This time I could walk out the door.

 = = = =

People asked, “Where are you going?”

I shrugged, I’ve not thought that far

Only knowing I would be at the beach today.

 = = = = =

Growing up on an island means I return to my roots

Ironically in the place where none will ever take

I am movable as the sea, like the sea.

 =  = = = =

I wear no makeup: I took no shower

I wear ocean colors, cloud colors

I am invisible

 = = = = =

I am awake

 = = = = =

I dreamt a dog climbed onto my bed

My throat too clogged with words to say them

I accepted its warmth & quieted.

 = = = = =

I will find a bakery when I leave

(Why must plans intervene?

Why follow a path in front of the biggest mystery I’ll ever know?

Why not be random, erratic? More aware of shadows than what creates them?)

 = = = = =

On this day, I begin a journey unfathomable to many, my plans

For far more than a bakery

 = = = = =

I have been here before

But usually this feeling aligns with making 350 miles before dinner.

My dead vie for control of the pen begging, “Write me immortal! Re-create me

Anew in three dimensions!”

I thank them & write on.

 = = = = =

Tomorrow is November: Tonight Halloween

Church bells ring: An omen?

The waves chase each other

Churning sand to drag back in their retreat

Nowhere else to go, they tag the shore, melting.

The sun decodes me, pushing my personal shadow to one side

”Let me look at you,” she says

“Hey! I like those earrings!”

“Hmmm, no makeup today?”

“Good to see you, Carol, been awhile, but I remember.

I’ve watched you every day & while you think your life is long,

I know that body as a blink on my horizon.”

“I see you like one of those sandpipers,

To & fro & back again, snatching at the ground for nourishment

Flickering wings catching breeze,

A black & white life you lead,

Stark with words.”

Well, my sarcasm meter has embedded itself in the red. The crimes against humanity out there in the world are echoed in the small crimes committed by those who “should” know better. Take my job, for example. Take my job, please.

I know the paradigm shift is the background against which all this is being played out. I know I am divinely protected & fulfilled on the broadest measures even as others suffer madly at the supposed randomness of weather & money fluctuations. Governments can’t help in this suffering. They cannot render justice to balance any scales – to expect them to do so is just plain silly. Besides, by the time they’re involved/invoked, the suffering has been maxed.

Human nature is indefatigable. We rise. And still we rise. For many who are beaten down, there are more waiting to take an upper arm & lift them back to their feet. The stories I can tell have all been told in Greek, in Latin, in Aramaic, in all languages & time perpetuations. The emotions fit a spectrum fading off into the ultra on either side – all the way from & to the zones beyond our hearing & sight. The repercussions echo faintly from the hidden places above, below & to either side. Where does this leave the regular humans? Smack dab in the middle of each individual strand: in joy, in sorrow, in the “meh” factor, cuz we are burnt out or in, burnt up or down.

I hear so much – a symphony of lives playing out the background. My cynicism enlarges as does my laughter as, overall, this is so far from where we should be, it’s laughable. I am not the most balanced individual – had two bowls of ice cream for dinner last night. But I’m not the most un/imbalanced measure on the cosmic scales either. Ever note that cosmic minus one letter = comic?

What is happening at my job is not to be believed if you count upon sanity as a rule. It is based so totally on emotion, on perception, on cosmetics that there’s no recognition of what will happen when the truth is gold (a telling typo made twice there.)

This song struck me years ago & has just resurfaced in my life with deeper resonance. What do we expect outwardly in the world when our inner realms are so out of true?

As to my work, it’s Local Gossip. Our former minister – I work at a church – mentioned the property is built on a native cemetery. Now that’s a mentionable cliche, yeh? But let me tell you, Sons of the Pioneers, the inexplicable & illogical & irredeemable happens there every day. The caretakers dither in the wings as the main production tanks. Afraid of nay-saying themselves, they propose a no comment policy which will ultimately unbalance the entire effort: buildings, grounds, Sunday population, current staff. All will suffer – but only if they choose to accept it as suffering. Is this the big-school lesson always talked about? That Earth-Is-A-School Meme carried to fruition? Or is it just a series of egregious errors compounded by the Board & exaggerated by their choice of ministerial leadership?

Aw, hell. I’m skewed on it. I work there. But only til the 30th. By Samhain, I’m into the New & the void looks mighty attractive at this point. I’ll be someplace else soon with a laundry list of the same things but a chance of doing them with a measure of fun & fulfillment, not negation & nihility. I put in to remove my name from the website as of that date & the webmaster (who is purportedly taking over my job) has already erased me. Did I say I work at a church? She’ll fit right in!

Am I upset? Nah. Surprised? Yeh. Some propriety needs to be kept, I feel. It’s probably an honest mistake of not reading the end of the sentence, the part that says as of 10/30, after the remove me from the website. And this isn’t about that particular item, in fact (fact=truth?) Is jumping the gun the same as jumping the shark? I always say when the series runs out of good story-telling, they bring in the dinosaur threat. There’s a velociraptor in the back ministry office & a t-rex in Fellowship Hall. Truth be told. But truth is way subjective & develops a quick rime of mold when exposed to the air.

The fun part will balance the heavies here (one letter short of ‘heaves’) & do so soon. I can’t stay down that long & it’ll take a longer time to assert balance here than I have time for.

I might be a Cassandra, “cursed” with foreknowledge only to be expressed in cynicism. But as Mammy Yokum always said: “Ah has spoken!”

good morning, Muse.

Stopping by before the storm?

paying a visit?

slapping down your hand on the table asking for some of that cooked-ahead-of-time flounder, and burger, and panko-zucchini, that tuna steak chunk…that beef fajitas strip-meat?

you love the fried food as I do & we grin, cleaning up the kitchen together.

will you help me pack the bugout bag?

will you watch the videos of North Carolina over my shoulder with me?

Will you put your hand across my mouth when I shout my truth out loud …

that truth few seem to wanna hear?

you & I know I can’t keep it to myself.

come with me, let’s open the door

to the peace of the held-in breath

soon the world will crack open

with rain, with wind, with trees bending to the will of fury

ginned up by the ill will of darkness.

Grab a chair, Lady, let’s stare down the storm.

= = = =

this is a Florida morning, not a mountain in sight

insight

this is a day like no other

unique in a dawn promising way more to come in terms of

the adventure of life.

no idea how I got here

it was just an idea: this life

it was diving into the body that would (heh heh) expand with use

grow outward with caloric intake, enlarge even as my mind slims lean

simmering

with thinking about love, with leaning into Love.

i have sat at every table.

i have partaken only some of this & some of that.

sometimes dyspeptic but mostly dipping it into oil & frying it with spices

i can taste.

(seems an irony too big to bear to be unable to taste anymore)

but hell, I know what’s under the Masterpiece is a masterpiece of cellular

structure becoming part of me

exchanging Grace out loud before digging in!

= = = = =

Rescue me, retrieve me

i’ve seen the world from a wall of water before,

from the top of the wave

watching the ship go down

watching the once upon a time spear of the mast

sink below the blue surge

i’ve breathed the water

breathing out of my body

escaping the sluggish movement

of swimming limbs in cold/cold/colder

to fly over the sea

to find an island

to sit on a limb

to preen my feathers

my soul hitches a ride

to heaven’s before & after

i join hands with All That Is

as we laugh about everything that just happened

saying, “can you believe that?!?”

= = = = =

I’m no braver than you

my soul will never get this life together

like yours n yours n yours

my truth will not live to your standards

but even under this burden of perceiving disappointment

this little poem rises

a bubble in the swamp

a burst of iridescence

fragile as a baby’s laugh

fraught with joy wreaked from a poet’s life

seeing the seeking as the only truth

not the arrival but only the journey

pacing down the world

across the spheres

bending a knee to none

even the backpack slung under a tree

to travel free.

= = = = = =

The recklessness of love

choosing me as the object of its affection!

my voice scrapes across the spheres

to find a way to say how much love there is

in this world, to know only love to chant

under the breath of my mother

putting me to breast

to feel that love

as the warm palm of my father

patting my bottom: I sit upon his arm

giggling in the miracle of being held

the song rose then & stayed with me:

that one moment raised me into a heaven

too seldom experienced, yet known

somehow familiar

there was only that hallelujah of a moment

imprinted on a tender heart.

no matter a future of ashes & pain

no matter the darkness rising again

there’s always that music alive in me

vanquishing fear underfoot

my enemies are astounded

i can summon it up

breaking through their snarl

to live so alive & on & on & on…

= = = = =

skipping on the lightning

aiming for my feet

i laugh aloud at the wreckage

the detritus

i bless the mess

i’ve made; i see the next choice

coming up – i grab that golden ring,

holding it a moment to my chest

before flinging it to the crowd

the galloping carousel

will bring me here again

a grumble of machinery

the painted horses sing

i have only to reach

to have that golden ring!

= = = = =

I am free again –

have i said those words before?

have i died again to a life

of no nourishment

no breath?

yes, in deed, indeed

i walk away in an exaltation

of light, restored

to my self: to the greatness God intended me to be!

i bathe in the mercy of light

i move the mountain along with me

just to have a view.

= = = = =