Wherein I become my truest nature since it’s such a burden to hide, to lie, to obfuscate. But #1: keeping the wild woman tamed is unnatural, #2: it is also mostly impossible, and #3, it doesn’t pay well. What happens when a lie twists upon itself isn’t nearly the same as when the truth does. Truth leads to more of the same & holds together while deception instinctively loosens, aims for the loophole to escape. It makes the breakthrough shallower. The places where I do my best thinking aren’t always popular with the paparazzi.

I am more honest than I even want to be: everything shows on my face. Yes, I’m one of those. Perhaps I once was sly & put-upon. No more of that, fair kindred, no more. In no way can I keep up with deception. Rather than entertain it, I will leave the room. I will fight for others far more readily than for self – an oxymoron. God’s truth, I need fight no more. I am dizzy from the deepening breaths I need to pray & I ride that spiral to heaven. I see myself joyriding on faith propelled by all I cannot be & remain sane. I allow the sluice to open fully where I once dammed it up with whatever washed to shore.

If you build a house with driftwood you will always smell salt inside.

My heart decides its own rhythm, its own resurrection. It plays horseshoes with life where nearby can be enough for a point when the point is, what? To play the game? I keep water for just enough of one bath a day. I try to trust others but can barely do that being such a flawed beast I no longer trust at all. I stand in the crossroads looking both ways, called upon for a decision I shall not make today. Putting it off means another chance to change.

The light moves unexpectedly, dimming & brightening on a rhythm. Continuing along in the dark is only until my eyes adjust to the opening way. I hurry into the unknown just to see what is there. There is no danger in this, only initiative. Growing old is merely growing. I will stop when I do.

I have been robbed of what I no longer even want. Why recriminate? The rancor has drifted away, a bad smell passing. The anger is gone & the fear diminishes each passing day since there is nothing to hold it here. There is no regaining spent coin but there is pretending, imagination, forward movement, blessing.

Where I used to “ow” I now “Om.” I now Am. Tomorrow I will be beautiful. Today I am only me in the mirror looking over my shoulder.

My roommate dictated her message to Siri: “Thank Heaven you’re safe.” she said to a client in a low-lying area as Florida searches for the tub plug to let some of the water drain. Siri translated to: “Thank Kevin!”

Well, I was so happy to finally learn the name of God! After centuries of study & exploration, uncovering scrolls in the desert, digging through temple mounds. church basement files, of prayers racing upward begging, pleading…

Kevin.

Definitely not the name I would have thought to make an offering to. I would have thought something melodic, many-syllabled, maybe with lots of vowels a definitive consonant at the end, something to click the tongue on. (No offense to the Kevins of the world here, folks. Only talking about what’s in my head after all. And I will admit to some overcrowding there.)

I sent one up whilst speeding home yesterday, creating my own wake on Washington Street, surfing those of the other cars. I arrived home & sent up another one, but since I didn’t have the right name, God may not have heard me, yeh? I guess I never got the outgoing message: “Hi! This is Kevin. I’m not in right now but leave your offering & I’ll get right back to you. Ciao.” I’m sure I passed Noah on that ride, checking his GPS for a Cracker Barrel or a Waffle House where they served bacon with breakfast. I know I saw Moses, on the corner of 17th with his staff, waiting to part the waters to let a few cars through.

My friends are Fed-Exing oars & inflatable dinghies my way, texting me for the zip code. They say, “Stay safe!” but it’s not up to me. Kevin is on the job!

The frogs outside in our new Drain Lake are singing to High Kevin, having fun with all this, contemplating world takeover, singing hopping songs.

I dreamed of a blue cat with a tan kitten named ‘Clown’. I dreamed of joining my neighbors in song outside between the houses. This had to be divine messaging as my friends just say “Be dry!” — as if I have a choice when the 40′ wave rolls in from the coast driven by 100 mph winds. Which may not be of import since the east wall of the apartment is already so waterlogged, it’s seeping thru the carpet. Fortunately the kitchen is on the west side and I have lots of food in-house. The good stuff one gets for possible camp-outs, not quite beef jerky, but flatbread pizza galore since the toaster oven works.

Well, time to light a candle & om my way into Kevin’s good graces, to pray the water follows the ditch path & not puddles the parking lot. Time to say thank you for all the grace in my life. Time to look at photos of national parks with entry signs saying “11,640′ above sea level.” But then it might be something else I’d have to watch out for, like diving UFO’s, teen pilots playing chicken through the gorges.

Sufficient to the day the plaints thereof. Oh, and thank Kevin for that!

I am changing my ordinary life, exchanging it for more satisfaction on different levels. In the parlance of the day, I am shifting timelines.

I am deciding this ordinary life isn’t enough; it must become extraordinary. I’m bored. I have a boss who says “think positive” but is full of phrases like, “You made a mistake here (pointing an index finger at something I did & then at my nose) Why did you do that?”

Sadly she is right. Why indeed? It’s because I have a kind of innate, well, contempt is too strong word but if you can lever two degrees off it — disrespect? And why that? Because my inner child (think your own description here, but I was a weird kid from inception) is on a pout. As soon as I see the raised finger – traumatized remains of the nuns, the priests, the neighbors, Mom & so many more that I am… I blend in my own catholic guilt, feeling so inadequate that I did not get it right. A mistake is bad enough but being made to examine the reasons I made it can be intolerable in the moment.

Little Carol yearns for that smile that says, “you did this right” at the same time she fiercely resents it because she no longer trusts it. (Not that the boss is going to go there anytime soon anyway. Praise is not in her vocabulary, thank you running a close second to invisible.)

Where am I left? Why am I bereft? I am so much older, wiser than that inner child. But there’s this scriptural advice of achieving the mindset of a child to pass into the kingdom – a word which a child loves best. Until I do ‘perfect’, it isn’t done. This must happen a lot more.

I can do better than I do. It’s an unconscious choice somehow, to choose the road that lands me in emo-pain. What sympathy/empathy exists for me I don’t lay a claim to anyway. I do what I do & it’s obvious. I don’t expect commentary. I can’t handle criticism either tho. Critical commentary curdles my brain.

Having shared all this, I move on. It seems daily I shed one thing or another, wittingly or no.

I have made a bold decision this morning. I’m reading a book about a woman warrior whose specialty is ridding the world of gods, traveling with a young girl who hosts a god. Of course they are forced into unhappy alliance: this works out the best plot. So goes my life.

I’m all the characters at once. I often speak of carrying a sword (a damned nuisance). I know I carry my own gods inside & out, privy to strange divinity & ordinary whims; I am a god of my own nature which is what it is to be human. I am the noble’s child, forced to commonality by circumstance & intrigue.

I have had my bites of adventure. I’ve driven into the dawn on journeys spanning the tamed remains of wilderness. I’ve made strangers laugh. I’ve experienced & practice kindness. None of this is over & some of it must be re-adapted to current circumstances. Well, all of it.

I have decided to be a swashbuckler. I have decided to dive into every day as though I make the biggest difference possible. I will do my job as well as I can do it & stop letting details roll off the table. Even if it fans this tinny spark (sic) of separation I seem to cultivate when wanting the most closeness. (I am too short to hug.) I find other ways. I advance my individuality with a lick of the surly which (must?) be eliminated. I no longer have the energy to sustain accusation. I’ll take off into every day like I’m boarding the ship for a continent of legend. I will learn to look at even more than I see by widening horizons of perception & paying more attention. My experience carries me only so far – after which it becomes effort.

I appreciate the clarity. I will to refine my focus. Defusing means decelerating, going for the universe in every moment, treating every encounter as it it’s my favorite one ever.

May the good Lord mercy me, I walk on by the grace of God.

Listening: The life review is underway. I look at what I see & know this is an illusion. There is no fear – I’m either here or there (I’ve said it many times.) I’d prefer the transition not hurt. That’s as it may be.

I lived on Sunlight Lane once in Berlin, Maryland. I remember first time calling up the address on my Garmin early on & the picture shrank to show a global route reflecting thousands of miles…obviously to the original Berlin in Germany.

This is happening now: I feel like I set the compass to one town over but am being shunted a million miles into Infinity instead. Somehow, this is familiar. I am re-learning. I am re-enforcing (reinforcing?) my raison d’etre. The engines are firing up, a bit erratic, a couple of backfires in the mix & soon reaching for capacity: true creation.

What do you see? Where’s your head? More importantly, where’s your heart? What are you being shown & are you ignoring any of it in hopes of returning to a normal which no longer exists? It is all new now. The old systems will not stand as we extract the pertinent lessons – the permanent lessons – only Truth remains true. “Not documentation, but verification” as one wisdom teacher said. We’re left with shreds of whole cloth we once covered up with.

The imprimatur of the heart will take down lies.

The heart is everywhere now. Hearts grow everywhere here. They host on trees, flow down fences, spill from clay pots. They vest themselves onto other trees & cascade about with all the other greenery, shapely reminders from Youniverse.

My heart continues to open. It turns sometimes, twisting to follow the plot but always returning to center, finding the Pollyanna thread to grow to, humming a tiny tune of its own. The steps aren’t the normal 8″ or whatever apart. These steps cost me a hamstring or a quad, a straining of breath, to get there. Sometimes, though, I simply float above. I love those moments. I awaken with a new view: I hear someone’s thought & am there with them. I love “like minds” in whose company I feel graced & worthy. I love the celebration of self-love I experience when I am loved. Bring it on brothers & sisters, here I am, heart open…

The ones against beliefs stand against, period. They clone in the corner, muttering, shuffling booted feet. I no longer wish to fight tho I can puff up my chest & mean it in the moment.

Time keeps on slipping (slipping) … into the future.

I take this phrase one step inward. I pin this thought to top of mind where it broadcasts outward from.

In my morning rituals, I put on cosmetics – a dark line over & under the eyes (I know these cosmetics are unhealthy, but the feeling I have from thus improving my appearance counteracts the nasty stuff put into the eye pencils, IMHO.)

I sponge on a bit of color to the cheekbones. I always forget lipstick until I remember it just long enough to apply it, forget it & live with a tiny dot of color here & there.

I made up my mind to be this or that for my whole life. I put on the glowing mask of being “in love” for many years – tho now I joke my car loan lasted longer than any of my marriages. I put on “competency” & “superior intellectual skills”. Now I wear the knowledge of what is behind the scenes I see & how useless principles really are when not carried through. Decisions are less than fulfilling when they are not enacted. (Decisions are like crossroads, new directions & new town names are enticing until realized, when that attraction may change or wane – but aren’t we here to try on the new? To exchange ideas like colors? To watch the look reflecting in our own mirrors?)

I add a blush of feeling things will be better elsewhere, a kohl line of fulfillment I think I’ll find on arrival. A careful application of lip color is really an idea I enhance with, but do not follow on so at the end of the situation, I have a dot or two remaining, but the luster is faded away.

At night, I come home & wash my face, use a toner, add soothing lotion. One mask off, another on: the resting, un-made-up me, wrinkly and tired-eyed.

I am learning to love this honest face, this faced-the-facts face: collagen has collapsed from grapes to raisins. I see that the only time I’m really beautiful is when I smile, my face lights & lifts & only needs to wear that as I make up my world.

I see from several levels at once & I get unhappy with the need for politesse. I notice there is no unity at Unity. There is little enough carry-on of the principles we preach: about enough for a backpack but I need a cedar trunk. I edge my way around when I should march, brazenly forward with a blade in hand. No prisoner of negatives, I see now where emotion rises from & I no longer need to own whatever arises – I can sift thru the mix, pan for the gold flakes on that river.

So once again I find my soul has accelerated on, pulling ahead to test the path for what brings it satisfaction. Then it waits for the rest of me to reach the crossroads it has set up to see which way I’ll go, what decision I’ll make. A kind of chant or mudra rises from limbic brain panting, “Change! Change! Change!” If I don’t go willingly into that good morning, I’ll be doing so into that good night.

I am always in teaching mode but I’m the only learner present.

While it used to mean just beyond the halfway, where there was not enough fuel to return to origination, this means something different to me now. It means the place at which I realize my excitement is unwarranted, my low feelings undeserved. Life keeps offering & I keep sorting thru, muttering over the offers.

I really do keep trying. Sometimes my brain runs out of ideas; I put it back dry – like replacing an empty water bottle into fridge. I get tired of thinking. Other people’s ideas are tiresome as they are offered every time I venture an opinion. A comment on a topic brings back four ways I “could have / should have” resolved the situation. But these are not my solutions & if I didn’t think of them, what good does it to know now? Most of the time, they are not things I can do or get done anyway. Um, why do I pay attention? Well, the offerer is standing in front of me, so how can I get out of it? I smile tightly & am learning to say, well, that’s a good idea instead of screaming. Progress of a sort, yeh?

I have yet to meet someone who just “allows” a thought without return so I often do that, just back away from a statement with a therapeutic “hmmmmm” or a nod of agreement but the not saying something I feel is appreciated. Just shutting up is appreciated. My solution wouldn’t have worked for the sufferer anyway. If I offer, I make it a question, “Well, would it work to …” which is immediately & roundly slammed into the trashbin with their denial cuz they have no qualms about hitting my ideas back over the plate at my face. Isn’t it a funny world?

The learning comes when I can set the comments aside with no reaction, no personal uptake, no denial… I did what I did, it likely cannot be undone. I am allowed to comment without their version of something better being offered. All to be done is live with results or modify them as possible. No comments needed. I have learned to mostly not say anything, realizing everything I say is subject to another’s ideas, insistence, workarounds…

When I say my area of work – I work in a lobby rather than an office – is hugely interrupted every day, someone says, go work at so & so’s desk. I can’t leave my desk unattended – it’s in the lobby. The suggested desk is occupied already for one thing & in an area I don’t care to work in. Next comment is to “just get a volunteer to help.” If we had one of those to put at my desk, I might could find another spot but this is moot as we have no office vols to step in & answer phones, etc. And there’s this learning curve – sharply angled & not always smooth … everyone piles off the cliff sooner or later. I rather like avoiding that lemminglike rush.

I once wrote I couldn’t get out of my own damned way. It still applies. But I do try for the blessing in it now. I ignore suggestions while overtly agreeing cuz they are not doable in the moment. The ‘suggestor’ feels heard & appreciated. I settle my gut from the return argument I’d otherwise offer if not on best behavior. I shed the feeling I was inadequate for not resolving to perfection. In other words, I resettle into my imperfection of humanity & shut up.

Working for a church is still fraught with all the drama of the corporate world … all the water-cooler whispering swells & swirls & travels through the walls. I’ll say it’s nothing like I pictured the job would be…I should have known from the churches I’ve joined before it’s kind of a hotbed. It’s a political organization just like so many others – just the intent is other – as the end result should also be. Just like a corporate body, it has a Gemini quality: one face out, one face in. A church is the most human of places.

I declared I would not do the FB page by pleading conscientious objector to the program. I told the minister I’m as likely to organize & promote a FB page as she is to celebrate High Mass. I will never understand this non-privacy trend (in my mother’s house it was known as “airing dirty laundry.”) But mirror/mirror: I’m writing this on a blog I’ve made public. I put my stuff out deliberately & after thought, hopeful of the idea sharing will help us all. So, I’m doing just what I’m railing on about. Mirrors are great engines of balance.

Loss of privacy can be loss of freedom. If ‘they’ declare hamburgers illegal – as they’ve declared chicken with genocidal poultry slaughters lately – they will make the law retroactive & come after you for every bun crust in the picture of your plate. Americans are so slow to wake up. And that’s my deal: I simmer a lot about this stuff & perhaps that is what is exhausting me. But I keep track: I remember: I write it down!

It strikes me funny too, how people decide you’re an ally with just an acknowledgement. An um-hm can beget another level of deeper personal objection about the topic (read ‘the descent into rant’ ) … Um, I”m only saying I see your point, not that I agree! But arguing the point is argument, yeh? No one does classical argument anymore – debate team style argument. It all goes off-topic, personal & into feelings way fast. They whip out a gun or a Ka-Bar & make short work of individuality. Whoever said “life is funny” needed to be more specific.

I do try to shut up about a lot – go to my inner room & admire the view. For some, power is that masturbatory pleasure where they revved on the punchline without realizing its punch. It’s all in the momentary delivery of the line, not the long-lasting effects of having said whatever. But somewhere, someone is writing it down, I godamguarantee it. My generation sucked it up while it’s more fashionable now to blow it out there for all. That’s Just Different. For me, at times it’s incomprehensible. And I like to complain as much as all – but am conscious of it & consciously bite back stuff. It’s a moral exercise & it isn’t easy! When stuff goes beyond its expiration date, someone needs to let the ones not noticing that know. At those times, I need to shut up, sit down, whistle Dixie, twiddle me thumbs … 

Basta! Enough! Please consider this commentary, not negativity. I sure do understand the appeal of living on a mountaintop & going commando under the robes. What’s the point? If I’m all this “spirit in a meatsuit” I must have had a reason to incarnate. I put my trust in I wanted to be human & go through/get through all this. It’s actually my definition of funny. I’m lining up with the one who said “one day at a time” a lot more cuz it all can get tiring & tiresome at the same time it exalts.

The point is sharing life. I write it up!

Whilst being on Earth seems to be full of random occurrences it is in fact well-organised … ~ Mike Quinsey’s Higher Self

I love to read channeled messages from familiar names. Each entity or set of entities has a signature – I know one from another when I see the reading. Are these Imaginary Friends? No more so than those with famous sayings.

I know these channels & the wisdom of their perspectives have been Alchemical Friends for me.

If I am thinking up what I do next & if that thought becomes familiar, in fact “a familiar” it accompanies my day. (Some thoughts should be like sticky notes – put them up where they catch the eye. But these cannot be all you see.) When the roads disappear, we tend to create them if our thrust is to move forward. The old, the past, becomes a rear-view & less than a nanosecond in our real-time of Now. Why have it stick to you? You are new each moment.

Now is the eternity of all worlds & the reason behind them. ~ Carol of Sarasota

I feel myself coming back into balance after a kind of mad-time, a fey time, a time where thinking did not get so far as action. I was a pendulum in a well.

I went for an acupuncture treatment on my First Day Off in months. “My fire element is out of control,” I said, “I spend all day at top ratchet, moving physically around the church & always at top speed mentally, 100 mph. I need to calm myself down for all else to.”

She put me in needles, a dark room, strange music with deep tones. I drifted away, kinda beta, kinda aware as you are in a different place. Then there was a deep nothing as energy redirected itself, taking mental offline for a few. I felt safe.

I am now less reactive which was a specific reaction I am looking to calm. I was too quick to emotions of all kinds & tending to defensiveness & anger. (It was hard to write that word; but I have been too quick to anger as a go-to. It gets me through the situation, however, it is a lower reaction on the Abraham Hicks Scale.)

I needed this treatment – grounded in thousands of years of tradition yet new as energy itself.

First Friday off in over a year was good to me. There is so much to experiencing nothingness when it brings on everything in its wake. My shoulders are down for the first time in a very long one.

So you see life is not really as complicated as you may think and if anything it is human beings who make it so. ~ Mike Quinsey’s Higher Self

Bring Out Your Dead

 I need to love

To love myself no matter what my shape or where my stars

I love myself openly, unabashedly, I laugh out loud

I enjoy my life right now

I have found the elusive moment & somehow can

Catch it once in awhile

Ride it woo hoo!

I can return it & say thank you

I need another life –

You can have this one back.

I thought it my forever job – the one where

All the people just pour thru the door

They ask questions, they leave stuff behind

I don’t guard it unless I know them –

I just put it in the lostnfound.

The weeks roll by like spokes in the wheeling month

My bespoke time of excited change

All deflated – the balloon already cut up

Shreds gathered into cans.

No communication. I holler down the well

It echoes back – “Nothing new here either!”

Cutting loose busily, tongue caught

In the corner of my mouth

I saw away. Thought these were better scissors!

But it doesn’t matter. The right is coming toward me.

The movement into light & love is just before me

I am free from hindrance or unlove.

I do this because I love you enough to let you go

With a blessing instead of a kick.

You want to pick it apart,

Figure out my life & what I do you want so much.

You want my job? Here you are. You have it!

I’ll find my way without it for a bit.

Oh, good luck. I had my own kinda logic

But it’s like my handwriting; nobody but me understands.

You can’ understand how far ‘in’ is

When I say you’re in for it.

Time moves too fast along the things we want – the

Shoreline changes & we enjoy a moment.

The Doldrums hit, time slows down, the clock-hands

Take forever for one rotation.

We are dizzy with how it starts to smell rotten.

This is a familiar pattern: I ride it well

Accustomed to the ups & downs

I tell myself I like it – & in a way, I do.

I find my boundaries again, my spark returns

I start something new, that wants me to be around.

This where I am is judgmental: exactly what it is not to be.

But I hang onto the thorns until I cut myself down.