Riding the Light –

Blog

  • We gotta go home –

    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!

  • 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!

  • 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

  • Stream of Consciousness During Peter Kater Concert

    Stream of Consciousness During Peter Kater Concert

    I am as much as any fabled queen

    or reigning Monarch

    (even a butterfly)

    I am moved beyond caring

    What others think

    If they are tiresome enough to dislike my I Am

    I am enough for having touched the hem of the garment.

    I only tell my story to one ear at a time

    I am worn out of those who only have their lives

    Who interrupt, who interfere

    My tolerance is narrowed to nothing of their spectrum

    I am reaching back

    I pull the past up over me

    To shake its discovery & settle it about me

    Only if I find it saves the now

    Which it never will

    No longer being in existence

    This is how I know I will fade too

    When Time catches up to shake me out

    In remembrance.

    We are all spectacular

    A sea of fireworks

    A crackling voice

    Summoned from inside

    The mind of God

    The intelligence of divinity

    We are sparklers

    In a Child’s hands (our Creator)

    To be gazed upon in wonder

    To share as a signal burning

    In brief being, a heart stilling at our approach

    The less I declare, the more I bare

    Suspended upon a glissando of time

    Fallen about me

    Stripping me of thought, idea-free

    I simply Am

    with no identity at all, Divine.

    An exaltation of moments

    I have no time for those who do not believe

    I’m right here, mirroring your movements

    With a dance of my own to explore / implore

    Seized by that same Time, shaken in its jaws, immortal

    These words will walk before me

    Forever: I follow

    I am no longer a writer

    That has passed…

    I await the new, the next, the beyond

    At one time, I’d have been anxious

    There would be no bottom,

    I would fall forever without words

    But this was never so, I see.

    I am as timeless as you

    When the stories fling themselves farther than I can find them

    Still, I will walk the earth

    Until I walk into my wings & fly.

    My records are no longer kept

    There will be no memory:

    I will be erased as winds upon the seas

    As the faraway rumble of an unheard poet

    A blessing unsaid

    Beleaguered by all it has not done

    While these look from windows

    To skies that do not bend

    But rather continue into blue forever

    I have not lost so much

    The this I thought

    I have rather laid it down

    And wandered off, wandered on.

    I have let the breath I held so long

    Breathe out

    I am empty & careless

    With little to say

    And Eternity just ahead.

    A lady-in-waiting

    So fulfilled there is nothing more to gain       

    So emptied out, the carelessness of life gives way

    To benefit in only the absurd

    In the thought of one more day

    Which defies the blank clocks

    This is what happens

    When focus narrows

    One at a time each thought

    Melts to the next

    The containers become nets

    Centers do not hold

    Banks have no tender

    When earth is in full function,

    The next must move along

    The darkness must light

    Or become what it is & give way.

    The hands must flicker, reaching into

    That needing to be carried

    What to take

    To bring

    And why

    And where.

    The finding & the losing are equal,

    Tho some will tell you no

    the students will push the professors aside

    to forge ahead into knowledge

    The conservatives here murdered the “professoria”

    There:

    This thing about change?

    It happens in between

    Reality & that place between breath.

    The packages are all opened

    Their box flaps gape,

    I have reached the place where I no longer

    Know who I am, or why

    And little in between moves me

    Or can slow me down

    Tho I pace the snail,

     & the turtle feels immortal nearby

    The holy is no more

    Nor ever was

    My beliefs, as I said,

    Have never been.

    The solid ground has become insubstantial

    The national and the local

    Have merged inharmoniously even so.

    My days of small satisfactions

    Matter to me

    The air I breathe

    The food I eat

    Are all I need

    I move away

    Into obscurity

    Carrying out

    Some mandate unwrit

    Askance

    Never breached by immortality

    Tho believed in by anyone else

    I am rendered null & void

    The blankest of checks

    In wealth unimagined

    Bestirred & limitless

    Indeed

    Across the trackless desert

    The cemented city

    The brainless sky

    My thoughts streak beyond

    And below

    There are no surfaces anymore

    I am brought finally

    To standstill

    In front of me a mirror

    I can no longer pray

    Having become prayer entirely

    I recognize my limits

    But pay no attention

    I have gone.

    Experience

    Ethical

    So lost in the ending I missed the beginning entirely

    Or was it off-way round?

    It never mattered anyway

    Since the continuum overtook

    The answer & the question both.
    in being lost in myself

    I lost the self

    The point of the exercise

    Broke off

    The pencil dulled to charcoal

    As I realized any act I create

    Is only a momentary level of cognition

    For an out-of-body experience

    I have busied myself so long

    I think I matter

    And it’s time to let go of all that

    To be the final void.

    Chord echoing the space

    In between the worlds

    I surrender

    I am no more

    I am no

    I am

    I.

  • “I Always Want A Tomorrow”

    “I Always Want A Tomorrow”

    tho there will come a day when tomorrow comes no more

    and all life goes far away in this three dimensional way

    of having hands & feet, a mouth to kiss, hair to comb

    a life to help others & put things away

    all the ordinary events of the day

    spent like coins of the Old Realm

    to buy dreams in the New.

    Do you think I should have refused?

    was there a way to do things otherwise?

    I came here to do this: to live as I have

    alone & halfway water

    belonging nowhere but where I am

    and that only scantily.

    it was a way to pay it off early

    any debt I owed, any fault repaired

    so I slipped between the bars & the barriers

    to awaken here, my eyes wise with birth

    soon clouded with living in so small a space

    as a body – enlarged now tho it may be…

    I complain no more

    I tuck myself into a ball & keep rolling

    I move because I can & because there is no other way to live.

    And in the unexpected, ordinary morning

    I catch myself looking up at a ragged sky

    edged & egged in blue with the hoarse clouds ballooning

    higher than life itself, the fragile bridges to a firm & total God

    the creation in which I am as secure as individuality can make me.

    I live now after dying to myself in so many spaces

    And who I am is all I am, the wild paths fraught with winds

    snatching my words & my blinking my eyes.

    this is what counts: the here & now of forever

    at which I stare, an idiot believing in sanity

    not to be had here or now but only imagined.

    With No Time to Consider Her Life

    she did so anyway, the thoughts slowing her more

    tangling her feet & tugging her ears

    those old songs of faraway

    no closer than before.

    the now crowded about her

    spilling into the future, disparaging the past

    yet still she clung to what have you, to what might have been

    as she clings to this now, knowing nothing else.

    “I Was Alone, But That’s Not the Same as Being Lonely“

    They spoke of families to visit, of grandchildren & sons,

    nieces & daughters, of turkeys waiting to be carved

    by the man of the house

    while all the women know exactly how to use a knife.

    a best-kept secret, that of life & death

    where-over the women rule, washing the dead,

    touching the wounds with aching fingers

    mourning is the same as rejoicing

    when death chooses another & calls out its hooting cry.

    we women shudder & move aside for we are not the targets

    we are only life symbolic & whole, uncommonly bested by life or time or tide

    until we say “Basta!” Enough! Until we hold up a right hand to stop the tide no man can ever claim

    the secrets all live inside of us & even cutting us open will not these reveal

    their seclusion is their elation

    their joy is that of all of nature resplendent in the sun.

  • The Space Between

    The Space Between

    There is a gap between loneliness & solitude. I used to spend a lot of time in the former & now find myself firmly ensconced in the latter. Yet I am only now noticing the difference.

    When I was a child, I cherished being alone because the only person to be with was Mom & she was demanding at best… “Did you do the list? Ironing? Vacuuming? Polishing?” All I’d done with the list was find a hiding place I thought she’d never look for it. This didn’t work as Mother had a memory beyond normal & was quite willing to review every chore left undone, every sin committed against hearth & home in that category. And she always started with the very first time I’d missed something & worked into the present. So being alone meant I could do just what I wanted & only that.

    It became loneliness when I didn’t want to be the only person in the mirror. This was a position I occupied for many years, an Occupation worthy of the name torture.

    There came a time when I began to appreciate (tho did not really recognize) that doing these little jobs earned me personal rewards of satisfaction, of fresh environs & clean clothes. I liked keeping up with the house & the sense of accomplishment it brought.

    There are many who cannot handle their own company: they cry their missing persons as tho their tears will draw them back. I sure don’t. When you’re gone from my life, especially if I’m the one who’s chosen to put you out of bounds, you’re gone. I say goodbye, erase the contact information anywhere it occurs & pay it no more mind.

    Um, this is probably not normal. But I’ve never laid claims to that term personally. I seldom look back & if I do, it is to find something I left behind, not because I’m into remaking the contact.

    Others lament relationships gone dry, squandered money & the gaps in life they perceive from these. I move ahead, working around any holes in the emotional landscape until I fill them in. I’m more likely to miss some activity done together than the person I did it with.

    There has always been a set-aside for this in me: I don’t feel it should be this easy. But it is. I don’t linger in it, I don’t doubt myself anymore for being the way I am.

    I figure I’ve achieved two goals set long ago in my life: nothing left to lose & nothing left to prove. This provides stress relief immeasurable! If I haven’t proven my worth, probably never will. If I have lost because of an encounter, not much I say or do in that newer reality will resolve or bind it back.

    I know others feel I’m faking this, but, no, it is real enough. I’ll hang a hat on it & await tomorrow in peace & comfort. I figure I’m made this way, for better or worse, so I may as well get on with life in the new paradigm thus created.

    I claim my power & presence in this way. I don’t have to tell my stories anymore – if I don’t care for others’, how much less will they care for mine? I keep the funny ones only & repeat them for best effect.

    Could this mean a constant revamping of selfhood? That’s one result of being thus. So many spend life with a crick in their neck from looking behind. I’ve always felt I cannot get ahead gazing over my shoulder.

    Less than perfect I stand. Happy in this condition I walk forward. Blessed to the uttermost, I am.

  • The Words Themselves, Au Naturel

    The Words Themselves, Au Naturel

    Got a threesome that’s awesome & just needed someone to write them, I think, somehow they chose me for the word juggle. I read these with fish-lips, open & moist. Where? Who? So raw a fork would not stand up in them. 

    It’s hot again. Back in my bathing suit flower coverup with the fan white noising. 

    This morning the blog entry caught me by the shoulder & spun me around tho I told it I didn’t have time for this, I had to be out & away soon & still with a shower to take & a forelock to tug to Powers but it pushed me back down & I wrote, putting on this song to write by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk     Seems it needed a specific sound track. I still made it in time to unlock the door correctly & put up the coffee. 

    Tonight I wrote the following – another lashing with the lonesome whip but again, just the words climbing up & oozing out from some deep well I thought covered, locked down, inaccessible. No longer needed as a proof of life. So I lay no claim to these: they are kitewords pushing past everything else to fly & I have found the strings in my hands. 

    Something is breaking loose here, I run about picking up pieces with no way of putting anything together. 

    It gets no better… 

    I DIDN’T KNOW

    I would live my life alone

    Becoming existential

    Hovering on non-existent

    How could I

    Why would I?

    How do I not pass a razor over my wrists

    Being so?

    Were I truly alive

    I might be made of memories,

    I might have a love or, God be praised!, a lover

    I might have been a woman someone could take by the hand

    To an altar or a bedroom

    To be made holy.

    I am not stupid

    These words will say it so.

    I am too wise over time & experience.

    But I sit in the middle of a road

    Going both ways

    To wonder at direction.

    I did not know life could be this way

    Or that mine would.

    That my hands would be the only caress

    Of time over me, that

    My words would be my mirror

    My reflection growing old with me

    Mapping new arcs, new trails to play.

    I did not know life could become a lump in the throat

    A deceased cat, wounds that never heal

    I would not have laid good money across the table

    For a deal so rank as this.

    For the numinous moments

    I have paid. For the wonder of miracles

    Experienced on beaches or in backyards

    For love dancing always beyond reach

    Always an admiration with the space in between

    An uncrossable moat, an inaccessible moment

    Where someone would love me in return.

    Ah yes, I know about God & angels & I have

    Talked with the elementals who grew roots on cuttings

    For me, on plants I gave away to accommodate

    That which walked alive around my life.

    This has been the place where I’ve learned independence

    From all else, over all else, above all.

    This is the location I have reached

    Where the familiar & the strange

    Suffer each other in a silence broad & unbroken.

    Here, of the here & now, this place

    Where a heart breaks once again, but there is no blood

    Only a sound unuttered.

    The Gift Refused

    Still trembles, being laid down

    Walked away from.

    Still holds its own elbows

    Twice broken & crooked.

    Weak with incomplete repairs

    For some wholeness is never achieved.

    The trick is to make it not matter

    To find that sweet place where it no longer matters:

    This imperfection, where a cup never reaches the lips

    Held in that hand, where a blessing given from it

    Is still whole, still love, from which light

    May emanate, inexorable.

    And of course, it does

    Of course, this hand passes through the walls

    I have built with it, the crooked holds with just

    A rhyme of leaking.

    I have grown into my imperfections,

    My incompletions.

    I have lost the idea of flawlessness

    I think I tripped over it in darkness, an absence of light.

    I did not turn it off myself,

    Nor did I protest its dimming-out.

    It does not matter to no longer be strong

    To not care when my sins turn inside out & show to all

    Faint, devoid of grace.

    I have none of this & all of that & still am clean

    As my God made me.

    FAME WALKS AWAY

    Fading like wallpaper in the sun

    Dim & unremembered; it never was

    Let alone did it crowd my doors

    No paparazzi smoke outside the house

    Awaiting my emergence

    They are long away on wings of molten fame

    Where everything happens to anything

    Just like they were told it would.

    It’s okay, I’m still friendly

    I haven’t bitten any hands offering me food

    Nor snarled at those who forget & forgive

    With whom I’d be more comfortable should they now.

    The old feelings do not abate

    Nor fade

    They just distance.

    But when brought ‘round again

    Show up my imitation absolution

    For what it is: I am still that

    Creature of sin & imperfect reparation

    Bewildered separation

    Losing light as if it never was.

    And that’s okay, after all.

    This was never supposed to be the ultimate 24/7

    But it was good as it gets

    Up to here & that will return.

    The ineffable joy of my being

    Will refill on the next high tide

    At some point, I will no longer notice

    What never was.

  • Prayer & the CommonWoman

    Prayer & the CommonWoman

    Prayer is not necessarily a comfort zone. Prayer is where you go toe to toe with God. Human perceptions do not always apply here. How many have defined God to a perception? Is your God big enough to forgive that which you yourself cannot – atrocity, harm, pain, disability, disinformation? And if your God IS big enough, are you? Can you forgive a God Who forgives these?

    Does your God only dwell in that which you consider positive – the newest of life, the best of life, the “god-given” of life? It is among the largest of minds only where God dwells within the most life-denying. That’s my boundary: if it is a denial of life, there is no God there. But the definitions here slim into invisibility, boundaries slip & waver. Yes, the devils are here among us & hide behind brittle facades of good works while undoing these very efforts, binding them with red tape & a powerful taint of “you’re not good enough to succeed.”

    How do we overcome this? I love the thought of an unlimited God, but the boundaries I have set for myself rub up against that perception since I live in a limited body. God can fly, I can’t. God needs no physical food, I border on gluttony at times. God allows all I find distasteful or to be of an excess beyond reasonable, I bark & howl at the leash I’ve set upon my own neck by not enlarging my vision so. However, my “only human” status has encased my power-full, enormously loving, capable, miraculous being into a tiny membrane subject to gravity, to a need for energy replacement, to all to which God seems so much larger & more magnificent as to exempt Itself from.

    And still.

    I come up against / go up against myself in a brutal mirror when I pray. I admit to what I do not believe I am while knowing I am that. Somehow I balance it out to feeling better from prayer rather than finding myself lacking. I know this is because the confrontation that takes place makes me better for simply having walked up to it. It follows me out of the room whispering & guiding me into zones where I wish to remain since they seem to keep my “better side” more accessible to me & available to everyone else.

    Prayer tells me “nothing” is not. Prayer tells me demons can be cast out, the unlife seeming manifest all over can be diminished into nonexistence – which is from whence it springs anyway. Prayer is in-form-ing me to be a more successful, huger, force of energy which only creates a betterment of everything touched. Prayer flies me when I my feet are laced in gravity  boots, prayer shuts down my physical hunger for spiritual sustenance, prayer allows humanity to show off in all the ways I find too loud or too noisesome. Prayer tells me being an everyday heroine is my happy place & tells me this is not the hardest place in the world to live from.

    Prayer hurts, heals, has. Prayer is an energetic moving me forward when I just want to stay where I am in my own funk, fugue, fog, fear.

    Communication is the only function of humanity. Prayer is that with my God, so fiercely personal & inhumanly possible that this me barely tolerates being in meditation.

    Where do I go from here?

  • Petite Large or Fitting In

    Petite Large or Fitting In

    While discovery, uncovering & some strange music playing over the speakers of life, I remained silent. I wondered if the muse had gone back to NM after experiencing Florida humidity. But it turns out she can get into the passenger seat, or actually drive our vehicle, but it’s simpler when the fit is good these days. She used to be so available in times of turmoil but I have gotten away from these – whether it’s the Hyland’s Calm I now carry instead of breath mints, or the ideas settling like sugar in the bottom of the cup for that last sweet sip, it’s a change for the better & a huge relief to psyche & physical.

    I have found a job I can love & participate in to the betterment of all concerned.

    I had decided on doing only something new – being a store stocker in a huge chain of expensive, gorgeous acquisitions, import buys & layouts by top interior decorators. I interviewed, was accepted, was then put into a maelstrom of orientation videos, still shots, ideas about how to work balers & large equipment (very carefully, it seems). I was made to try to get my Android phone to do iPhone activities & rolled eyes at when it just would not do that. I was tested beyond my age limits just to open boxes & stack stuff – my idea of simplicity in today’s complex hi-tek world.

    Well, I’m not a shopper. The videos showed me oceans of merchandise I normally put my hands behind my back to see after securing my purse to neutral… the kind of stuff I shake my head at & say, “does someone really need this?” where price tags are oversize to accommodate the prices.

    I have not had money enough or access either to any stores other than thrifts of recycle/reuse/redone or cobbles from Farmer’s Market crafters still beyond my budget. My last great buy was a faux-vinyl purse at the World’s Attic Store on half-off day. And I had anxiety about overspending then! I’m not on any social media – even Twitter which rejected me handily over a Trump comment has totally closed its anal sphincter to my handle – so I’m at level of country bumpkin in the city at this point of life & happy to watch paint dry on a cool day. (I have the feeling using the term ‘country bumpkin’ pretty much shows current status, yeh?)

    So here I was, in a gorgeous store worthy of 5th Avenue New York, pristine & clean-smelling, thinking wowsa, kiddo, you’ve arrived. Then they brought me into the room where I’d be working: dim, crowded, unfinished warehouse space with a diesel-emitting truck chugging outside the portal, cardboard in layers beyond a monkey’s climb & an assault of what I call “stank” immediate & stomach-turning. “And THIS is where you’ll work!” they crowed as if ushering me onstage for America’s Got Talent. “O Lord, how will I ever?” was my immediate thought but I could not back up: management stood behind me gesturing grandly.

    Once again divine grace came into play, a Tinkerbell of love not bothering with a doorbell, but coming right through the walls. I am offered & hired instead to a job for which I’d volunteered at my Unity: a part-time position paying more & with better hours, a space in an office overlooking a park campus (the spot the mailmen park to have a break for lunch & the Opera Guild choose to meet.) I was literally plucked from Dante’s Third Circle & given executive parking privileges outside pearled gates.

    My new job does not involve razor blades, conveyor belts, standing on a rubber mat or STANK. It will be familiar, comfortable & a return to early confidence gained by competence & practice from many years of office environmental experience. It involves no social media, no passwords, one alarm system & ball point pens rather than huge carry carts of delicate porcelain. There are no gold-footed ceramic elephants to relocate, nor 8′ rolled rugs imported from countries with exotic germs & scary embedded creatures in the creases.

    I need to find a Rolodex somewhere to simplify things even more. And those plastic sheets that hold business cards, a few 3-ring binders & maybe even bookends (for $11 at Staples). I need to dress business casual & wear a nametag & a smile rather than an apron…

    What I need is to offer my joy up in thanks for the rescue & the wand-wave Tink popped up with to work this magic in my life.

    Thank you to all the saints! Gone from Isaac Asimov to Maeve Binchy in a stroke!

  • Exit Ian: Buh-Bye!

    The list of shelters & transports lie twisted in the trash. The windows are open for the gorgeous fresh air blowing through. The outside shrubs scratch on the windows instead of bang. Ian has scuffled off to make thrashing entry emands elsewhere. The eyewall no longer peers overhead. Palms return to their usual majestic heights after being furiously wrestled for 24 hours. All heaves a collective ”Whew!”

    There’s cleanup & catch-up & celebrations to be planned but we are spared the hovering storm stirring up havoc outside. That bunny last seen running frantically past the bushes out back might go home today once his burrow drains. My visions of the car tumbling down the street dissipate.

    The windows & doors are open: beautiful cooler air gentles through the house. Have jeans on for the first time since June! And a shirt with sleeves! The fabric feels good. The potatoes I cooked up in advance will go well with breakfast.

    There’s no internet yet. (I write this at 6:46 EST.) Our neighborhood never lost electric power tho it did some crazy Morse Code blink-dancing all day. This morning’s shower felt grand – I was able to let the tub drain out. For the first time in months, I dialed up warm water! I mean, it’s Florida, even a couple of Fall temperature days are to be totally appreciated.  Everything will likely stay closed as tentative explorations are made & cleanup crews power up buzzsaws, landscape trucks let fall their back gates to unpack tools & machinery.

    Thank you to everyone who prayed this storm away, whose forces of grace & lack of fear bore it off land & out to sea. We are scrubbed & drubbed & squeaky clean once more if a bit exfoliated.

    My shiniest personal thanks go to everyone who called, texted, emailed & told me what was going on since I choose to live in a Cave of Unknowing, avoiding media as much as I can. All good wishes are most truly appreciated & held close to heart!

    Time to put plans into action & drum up a new life.