2/3/24 – POCKETS

2/3/24

POCKETS

(What hasss it got in its pocketsssss? ~ Gollum)

I enter the date like tossing an anchor. I wake at 4 AM give or take … but it’s the wakefulness that causes a bladder to yawn & stretch & there is no drifting back off after up & around. If I must re-enter this body, I will have at it then. I have never finished being a bit surprised by how this has turned out so far.

What do you think when memories start to crowd around? When the pokes & nudges get serious & knowledge enters, un-entertained, how do you react? I guess when I am “here,” I’ll be me.

My “stuff” has become mostly about aging & sorting out my chores. Task lists have become bucket lists. I am amused by this – tickled.

I am of a heart now to sit/stay. I have done the year of discovery & passed the month of, “Gotta get some scenery drama here or ‘git on out.’ Something has shifted & settled again. I pay attention to the whys of things & answers come but I may have had a kind of hiss-fit at how things were. The seers tell me look behind & search all the pockets. The fuzz I find is familiar & I curl my fingers & re-live lives picking & choosing what I wish to include in this one which is so unutterably altered from the last.

My friend is revisiting Truth or Consequences, NM & I am sharing a virtual re-visit. I have always blurred on how many times I lived there – it’s like the memory has been tampered with. When you live over or near a Vortex, you expect & allow for this. But my whole life is a kind of family mythology. No one thought enough to write a family history. So now I understand it was that no matter how ardently they lived their lives, theirs replicated mine. Anyway, I believe I lived in T/C three times, years apart, but I find the middle one won’t take shape.

Memories? Dust Heat My first job in massage through a dear friend – the always & forever Ed. Growing knowledge “I can succeed at this!” So many geographies – I order a credit report when I can’t remember.

My Hero’s Journey

You get it. I see a progression of steps when I look back. A holographic spiral staircase. The glass walls rotating around my step-by-step lead into my prior lives. I ask at ACIM class, “Is THIS our life review?” This inclines me to lean more toward observation. I wonder, though, at where the emotion around this/these losses siphons. Either way, I incline to the phrase “life review” right about now. It comes up. I see current events against what, to me, is a vast backdrop. I hold the stair rail, staring.

I do feel life is moving up & away somehow & a new floor level comes into view, so to speak. If I dare to live from my future, I can plan the present better. If we’re lucky, we realize at least one thing each day & mine today comes from a book where the protagonist has discovered all of his sports interviews reveal some kind of bodily injury like his when he suffered in isolation.

Get it? I belong to several societies & not all of these are 3-dimensional. (You, too, my dear reader.)

I find my wit sharpened at just the moment I am expected to be a diplomat. I am at the point where, when I see the reactions I bring about, I find Silence my best tool. I let people spin their own story. This is Observer. This is Recorder.

My wit doesn’t stretch any distance when it shows up on my face. I sure hope that’s what people like about me! I’ve seen some surprised looks, y’know?

My human reactions often derive from written words, Immersion into words, not personalities. I must realize when I look at personalities, I am reading programs. I must practice humanity to be one & in a time of such flux, I might need a camp.

And who do I think I AM?

February 3, 2024 0

Misfits, Anon.

That would be me. That would be this Fool mincing along the edge of the precipice. When things are beginning, that is all one can see – that beginning leading to another & so on. There comes a time when I realize I am re-remembering things; I am repetitive? Am I then redundant?

Does it matter when no one acknowledges the pull of the moon, too?

I live as close to the ledge of make-believe as I can. Dreams come true. Tiny wishes are generously granted, often unprompted. I have one cause for Thanksgiving. I am investigating myself more in an effort to find out how & why I am here, I came to be, etc.

I feel as though I’m in a playground after an extended spate of serious trekking. That over-the-Alps-Trail led to some plastic ballooned exaggerations of a slide or swing set. I have walked down an Alpine lane which led me to another ending, then? This happens & more than once in this life.

Why do I look to history & not consult my own?

It is trying out some things new, over which I breathe in twice before I tackle. I have always tackled writing it & feel practiced at this. I want to take a lead & share that which is helping me now. It’s a moue to that which has kept me sane in background, an arrow in my quiver to be deployed as useful.

I need practice in, like “Where exactly is it I go?”

I step in & out of lives like I recall playing “Go in & Out the Windows” or “Umbrella Steps.” The games I played were all about hurry up & wait. Early grooming? No wonder it can feel repetitive, dancing in the same footsteps. (Traveling this with someone who has witnessed it for you before is most helpful & I finally have Forever Friends, just none are local.) But I enjoy this reality as it works & grows in power & effect for me.

Traveling holidays alone is a repeat of Times Before & made tolerable by these. Early angst loses steam in favor or just get some tinfoil turkey so long as there’s mashed. Who can get excited? Later I will break bread with others.

Yet, the meaning of Thanksgiving has softened somehow as has its messages to individuals. It’s meant to be a time of looking at life – counting acorns if you will.

November 23, 2023 0

“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!

September 14, 2022 1

Rooms

My upstairs large bedroom has been in turn, a massage treatment room, a bedroom, a reading room/den. The smaller back room has been all three as well. That front room served until my neighbor with a penchant for war movies mounted his TV on the party wall to play all day.

I was thinking I occupied my body in the same way: when younger, I lived in different regions from those I live in now. Now I recognize the only place I should dwell is my heart, that secret interior where Spirit resides. I think I have finally arrived.

Wow! This needs a good cleaning! I scrub with sponges dipped in Belief. I scrape at stains revealing cracks where Selfishness settled in, thinking itself safe. I pour Hope into Light to get bubbling Joy. I pile the muddy rags with all else going into the fire of renewal.

Putting on music, I dig out drop cloths, paint, rollers, brushes. I set to work plastering the cracks with Assurance & Grace, driving new nails of Plain Truth, mounting tapestries displaying fresh ideas to ripple on the fresh walls. I add a soft rug in a Tree of Life design. I place salt-glow lamps, sturdy chairs, comfy pillows & retreat to the doorway to look it over.

An acquaintance once described fiercely cleaning his just bought row house. He said at midnight he heard murmurs in the backyard & came downstairs to the door to find the gentle ghosts who’d resided there before. They stared at him, finally whispering, “We have no place else to go.” He let them back in.

I must be careful now. Do I let the old back in? Do I allow it to reclaim the space? Do I set kibble for the feral thoughts slinking by my ankles in a cold rush? Let these settle in the new cushions?

Oh, I will keep after my refurbished heart. I will set alarms & tripwires to foist attempted entries. I know for certain my strengths yet feel also there is elasticity there to firm up.

If I allow entry to my old ghosts I must insist they leave at dawn.

August 8, 2022 1

Tintinnabulation

I was reading a book recently which took place in medieval England. The character lived near a church & it seemed the bells were always chiming.

I thought for a few moments how many bells I’ve lived by. I thought for a longer time how it must have been for those people living under a tyranny of bells – there were many reasons to despise religious factions. Bells ringing at all hours 24/7.

The sounds of bells carry on down alleys, on cobblestones, around right-angled corners, over the fantasias of rooftops. Imagine:

You owe me five farthings say the bells of St. Martin’s

Or a bit farther along,

Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement’s

Head sharp north for

Bullseyes & targets say the bells of St. Margaret’s

Everywhere you walked, a GPS network of church bells oriented you, served up the time of day, remanded you to prayer & endless alms.

And there is much to be made of bells, of chimes, of the attention they bring to the mind: the quickening clarity as they ring. My attention would be easily mislaid in a ringing city!

Yet didn’t I spend my childhood under the tyranny of the “Bells of St. Ann’s”, my elementary school in Wildwood? Indeed! The bells rang us into transition, one classroom for another; one personality for another, one normality for another. My nuns were brilliant & quirky from here (60 years into a future where they no longer are) but back then they were simply terrifying. They say stress learning sticks with you.

Look up the bells of Old London sometime.

July 21, 2022 0