Words to Write By

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Words need to be instantaneous as thought to be most effective. They insinuate themselves – one word can start someone off on their own [infinite] journey. There is a need for spiritually healing words, nouns, modifiers, verbs, etc.

These were where the first loopholes were made. Language. Recall the difficulty of “un-seeing” something. What about “un-hearing?”  What words whispered into your various systemic extremities, traveling via the spiritual meridians, even energetically? What magnetized us to point this way?  (We need to teach protecting ourselves as well as promoting ourselves. But that’s a class for a later school…)

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Some meanings need to be relegated as unnecessary, in that cyclical way that language has of hanging out for the next sound bite. Overall, a return to meaningfulness that makes sense might streamline some of the hyperbole.

In our eager push to popularity, we use “programmisms” – sayings by clever TV characters so out there we love ‘em. I can’t give you many examples, but maybe a memory? How many jingles could my generation tap right into & singalong tho we haven’t used Ipana in over fifty years? That’s programming, and we never even knew it.

The words have to be once again made over into a spiritual cast as we learn their power on psyche & the connections to self-mastery that we might reclaim & proclaim ours. Words serve as our way to assert being in the world & practicing that assertion whether timely or not.

Refinement & awareness redirect language – sorely needed right now! The good things seem so clichéd while evil seems so creative. As the balance shifts, we know this happens because the language has changed. My mission & focus is to refine the written word to uphold us every one.

With kind eyes,

Carol

POWER, FORCE [& LOVE]

There’s a Ren & Stimpy song where they sing of too many candles on the cake for a birthday, of the fire department standing by. Were I to have a cake with candles, I’d need a sheet cake so as not to be a fire hazard & somebody who counts higher than I dare these days.

I wrote this back on my birthday which is already more than a half-year ago. Happy Birthday, Me! Indeed, happy birthday from my island in timespace, from the celebratory bundle of cells & thoughts that is my Be Here Now.

I was told recently I am quite immersed in power & force. Funny that this might be a fresh insight & not one anyone has heretofore shared to my face. Now I could go a bit irritated or even drippy with insult. On reflection, I see it as a good insight & depiction of my need to have it my way. But anybody out there who doesn’t want it their way can stand in a very short line, yeh?

I’ve described my own self as “imperious.” As a child, my Mom called me “Queenie” and meant it. No nobility of note here…just an American woman of Italian persuasion. I love laughter, good conversation, great food & the sensation of travel. And I’ve arrived here at 71 with limbs intact, a cheerful demeanor & a plethora of skin tags.

I know the Power & Force thing about me to be true, tho. It fit right into an open slot on the description board. It explains so much! Yet I started as an Independent in a nest of Catholics, a spirit malleable only to a point. It wasn’t easy, but they never penetrated all the way into my soul tho they knocked it about a bit.

I thought I was offering a bare-knuckle friendship. But more than once I was stirring a fishwife stew, hollering at him as though I had a relationship involving a ring.

So what’s the problem with Power & Force? Should I give in to the black pearl of life alone & despairing? There are times this terrible beauty is most attractive. Should I stop helping or offering the graces I also otherwise possess? No, not happening. And if my lifestyle of success, blessing & laughter doesn’t suit you, go dress somewhere else.

Yeh, I’m my own Cult. Yeh, I’m aggressive & righteous for my personal brand-name. Yes, I’ve dared the fields where angels feared to roam. I was loved into life, appreciated by others who dared to do so.

I’m a real woman, imperfect of sight & bearing. I do Tinkerbell as a nuclear device. I accomplish what is mine to do (once I figure it all out.) I learned early to dog-paddle & never surrendered it for swimming aloud. I can tuck Power & Force into my superpowers pack & move on.

Wish me tame trails & New Mexico skies, the suggestion of rivers at a distance, of life beneath the life on top. Your qualifications to handle power & force are your own; I won’t disturb these.

Come, my Kingdom, my mismatched blessings! Come lovers & liars, I will rock your world!

Another Blog from Home Alone

A song is playing that I have always loved: “Walking In The Air.” I used to hear this on WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania Radio in Philadelphia. It was my late-late night listening & rare, therefore. A syndicated show called “ECHOES,” a stream of just-ahead-of-the-curve music. This song is a classic now, but then it was fresh with all the qualities that evolved the genre.

I feel really good – at balance somehow. It is amazing to keep up with everything in real-time. Spritz the plants, keep dishes done, walk outside, keep food carefully prepared & appreciatively consumed. This is what I think is Mindfulness. I feel more aware of EVERYTHING & am surprised to see the same scenery when I look out the windows. That’s how powerful the feeling of moving forward is for me.

… Feels like so much change is gathering speed just behind me …

 If I were fanciful, I’d say the dragons were awakening.

So I noticed this morning that I have replaced scarves all around since redoing the rooms & I now have about 4 inverted pyramids, kind of one in each room. I looked up from my breakfast taco (eggs, cheese, pesto, tortilla) at the whiteboard & realized it needs a star above it -a pentagram. So these shapes are taking place in the house are stargates opening in Sacred Geometry. (I think I’ll make a star on the computer & color it. And tape it up like I’m five years old. Making stuff for Future Self is fun!)

I am still impacted to walk around the house & note all that has changed. I am restless to change up the kitchen – get another table w/chairs & barter this bistro & the huge stools off. As soon as all hell gets fastened up again, I’ll find a way. Stuff’s easier to acquire these days with faster manifestation all the time.

I signed onto Netflix in these days of library privation. I watched a couple of period pieces for several shows before realizing the more complicated the clothes, the  simpler the plot. But I did summon up “Groundhog Day” just to watch this inadvertent masterpiece at this time in my history.

The clock’s the only thing making time around here. I am becoming mindful: I style my hair with appreciation, make up a bit of color on my face, I moisturize & don my clothes carefully, matching up & very comfortable to wear. I put on great walk-shoes. I come downstairs to wash the dishes & pick up the computer. What or whom am I readying myself for? I am seeing each of my rooms as a kind of diorama. I have rearranged the living room by putting the couch under the window. What fabulous reading light & how it has totally opened up the room!

I waited a couple of days to see what else might happen, & then rearranged the bedroom, also putting the bed under the window, opening up the room. I have lived here three years last January & am just now finding how to put together my apartment. The kitchen is next, but that waits for supply to accommodate my demand.

Patterns appear more; stripes change; plants shift & get comfortable; I am actually surprised the views are still the same from the windows all around!

The outside wind scours, preparing the land for spring. The clouds insist on puff status, so we here on the ground realize this is not all ours, but we’re at the tail spot of the universe’s Crack the Whip.

And we bought the tickets a long time ago. Never forget these were the Terms & Conditions of the ride back then.

Actually, since the lifetimes were tied off from each other like breakfast sausages, I won’t say I remember much. Some stuff just doesn’t stick to me & I can still be surprised by what does. Music does.

[Now playing Cristofori’s Dream, to which I wrote a poem once & which, months later someone said when I read that poem: “That sounds just like a song I know.”]

I keep having to learn the anticipation is usually far worse than the application.

I feel like the whole world is holding onto itself – but something’s changing about the grip.

Times of Change are rarely peaceful when humans are involved; yet we keep trying it on, checking to see how it fits. For the better part, humans have leaned into the wind of violence & had it surge around them. For the most part, people genuinely want the best for their neighbors on Earth. I can see where over the years the changes have taken less time to occur & lasted longer each time. This one will make it to the Finish Line – will breathe yet on the other side of that yellow ribbon set to break at our breath.

Let us onward & awa`

If we’ve wished others the wind at their backs, this is the wind to get started on for all of us. Come on, Eternity! What are you waiting around for on the sidelines?

We’re rolling out your parade, flags, batons, big horns & all. We’re warming up right here to either side of you, &

if you don’t show, we get to go ourselves.

We know the way back. It’s boring. Even though all the futures might look alike, there’s one just for me & mine, for me to bring forward all those characteristics, friends, pets, ideas, writings, montages of life I choose to keep & on-go with. And one for you! and you! and you!, a future for you!

(On a particularly downpouring  Nashville day, I could feel the rain pooling up overhead, starting from a disheartened sky. I entered “beaches” on the search engine & angled the screen into my cubicle. I found a beach cam! So I tuned in & watched the waves sigh & spend themselves on an Australian beach. Upon glancing at the time stamp, I checked my calendar, it was a tomorrow there, today here… I was enormously comforted by this: the idea of there being a tomorrow…there.)

Cedar Chests

There is a word for loneliness tho I can’t think of it now. I am the last of my kind: the last of an odd-lot family that never quite matched up. We didn’t nest like Matryoshka dolls. We barely rotated around each other.

Mother watched over the place where we lived. I know nothing of what happened before I got there – obviously, yeh? I know little of what followed since I lived in my own skin with barely a thought for what was outside of me. I lived in books, in other people’s stories, with dogs & horses. The Black Stallion whinnied in my dreams, nuzzled me awake on dark mornings when all there was to anticipate was sitting in rooms with tall windows, in front of dark nuns & recite catechism. There was the beach to ride my bike on, the boardwalk to cruise. There were bushes to pick leaves from to fold & fold to green specks & toss like verdant spitballs.

There was homework & religion & church on Sundays, choir singing, being pulled from class to attend a funeral for a song. There was jump rope in the schoolyard but no invitations to join. There were kids making out in the coat closet, but I pushed back my glasses & walked by. There were sisters of St. Joseph, white-wimpled & less than charming, more like to rattle their beads at you like snakes, dull gold crucifixes hanging heavily at their knees. There were problems & penmanship & geography & “JMJ” on the papers for Jesus, Mary Joseph.

There were lunch bags to open although I couldn’t tell you now what was packed for a sandwich…but I remember loving the chocolate cupcakes far more than the Tastycake Junior cakes. And milk.

There were saddle shoes to tie, clothes to warm on the radiator before wearing. There were teeth to brush & that one sinking soul morning when I saw pinholes in every tooth since I never did.

My mom didn’t mean to be a non-Mom, I’m sure, now that I’ve been a lost-cause mom myself. A generation untaught in the ways of caring for children; a generation to whom a child was an inconvenience & expensive, an appetite needing feeding, a blouse needing ironing at the end of the day when all that should have been left was sleep. There was a child of me who wanted nothing more than to slip into a book & become invisible for to be noticed was to be yelled at for something.

There was a brother in the house, but no love lost or found between. There were absent sisters so much older I only knew their names & their husbands’. There was Everly Brothers music to memorize & act out…”Bye Bye Love”, “Wake Up Little Susie” – these delicious situations for which I would not be accused yet could happen in a song I could sing.

Once someone asked me about my family & I blurted: “The ocean was my mother.” How fortunate the child growing up by the sea! How unbelievably lucky to have Eternity always east of me, China securely buried underneath  – all’s you had to do was dig deeply enough. There was fog to hide in on the beach until the trash trucks rolled near & I realized how foolish this could be. There were seashells to glue fake pearls into & sell for fifty cents outside from the stoop.

There was sand to sweep, figs to ignore, clothespins in a ragged bag on a low-belly rope. There were nor’easters crying over the land, slashing an innocent sidewalk with rain making that short hop from bay to beach. There were fall-down times & climb-tree times & this is all I remember of any of it. My thoughts were filled with guilt – I was most assuredly a big sinner tho trips to confession never took more than a couple of minutes, there were hail marys to count for penance & a Pater Noster to say for stealing Hershey bars.

I had no father to speak of save the one who thought child support unnecessary so Mom would yell about that. But I could do nothing except add it to the shadow bag; somehow it was my fault he did not pay.

I don’t remember much. A Barbie taken from me, so I’d not spoil her wedding dress given by an aunt who first noticed when I needed a bra. There were too-big clothes delivered by the Sears truck. There were always glasses on my face, cat’s frame eyeglasses slipping down my nose.

I wear glasses still. I live in the desert. My mother died alone in her bed, happy not to be in hospital where she thought the Filipino nurses were talking about her in Tagalog. There was a wailing phone call from my  sister in-law when Joe died in Germany. But I already knew he had crossed over as my husband channeled him before the call. My sister Rita died after telling me not to write to her anymore. Sixteen years older than I, we had nothing in common except letters & I cannot recall what I said, but I was rather a melancholic. Teri just died 1/26 but I have heard nothing at all except that she is gone & not a word of closure. Perhaps more guilt attends that.

I sleep well & if I wake for nature, I have a coffee & return, warmed, to bed. I drive a nice car which I may yet pay off in this lifetime but may not. I know nothing still. I know everything always.

My heart hurts at times with all I want to say. I can move heaven & earth with words, but I can make no one listen. I can ask for understanding, but who will tell me they do?

Time contained an endless blue joy of life & a hollow gray empty just on the other side of that.

At the end of my life, I have possessions & nothing else. I have friends but they are spun into their own cocoons. I have stories few have time to hear.

I have words for wings so I fly.

Dividing The Light

So, you can’t be sure whether to take yourself seriously in the current political, personal, emotional & polarized tidal press. Just when we thought there was enough island left for our feet, we find ourselves walking on water … or treading it.

For me, it always returns to water tho I am an Air Sign by birth. There are births to ride out, contractions to control, pangs to deliver Truth which has not been an issue for some time. I am a proud Conspiracy Theorist & have never denied this – usually debunking those who tried to present me as being reasonable.

I don’t operate there much of the time, at least not so much as I pretend. When you start your blog with green comic sans font 14…can much be expected to follow? Yet here it is, greenly growing, one word emerging from another…that birth thing. We’ve paid a great deal to do this at speed now. it takes no years-long process to deliver any longer. What have we given up getting to here? Experience. Time.

I love using power words, like, “I never!” when, in fact, I’ve been slapped with “never” like a wet fish across my salty face any number of times. Vow has fewer letters than “love” but seemingly a more powerful forcefield around it that carries forward slicing into & through that which is love in life. And I’ve got this forming idea I made that vow to me.

How many people contribute to a life & claim it, then, adopting it & modifying around theirs for that – like the old oriental mandate that saving a life is thereafter ever-helping it to live?

How many minds can you change when you realize to fixate upon one mind-set is a limitation of itself? In the sudden snapping-free from the past, I am propelled into the future I didn’t really plan out. But I feel like I’ve written enough of these out to catch up quickly. This mind is familiar: it’s one I go into when Great Change occurs. My upper lip grows cold. Your hands have become ice pops. Indicators of change falling into step with us to later walk with us off the path; this li’l bit of being together & being beige.

This time I have no intended Intent to change. I’m not fixated on much except a Now that requires a differing phase ray of awareness. This “the 6 a.m. wall when only a street light shines in the window & the air is the freshest you’ve breathed in ever your life.” This Right Now.

This.

Right.

Now.

Somewhere there is a strain of Elvis singing “Walk on, walk on with your life.” My dreams have never walked alone, no matter how isolated I felt in them.

Even with no obvious physical change, I change. Here is where I live today:

I turned my living room entirely around. I faced it inward, closing out the world while enjoying its beautiful light & benefit more. Now the light pours over me instead of my facing into it. I did not know the room could look as it does & indeed, it was strange enough to me a manifestation that I could only sit outside of it & gaze at it after making the changes. I still sit on the edges of it, rather than settling into it. (It doesn’t matter what I think if the room has actually become animate & demands to turn around – which I now strongly suspect.)

Many changes are now replacing in my life. The energy itself is chasing a tail out the door to whirl in the general mayhem of a world which most of us here will honk about being separated from. Let’s see, a Libra Air Sign in a time of wind-driven Change, in a movable landscape filled with incense bowls – my house smells of ashes at times.

I monitor my own conversations. I listen to what I say to people or write stuff down. But the only real conversation is the one going on in my head. The song of balance … the computer next to the dowsing crystal, the phone next to the cards. Full court press, indeed.

Dear World of Carol Borsello

Thank you for being here, for continuing to turn in your inimitable & loving way,

The stars shine, imperious & grand. No dogs bark tonight, the breeze is still. Turtleback waits on the moon to reappear so impossibly high above him. All is mysterious night after the unbelievably energetic day.

The plants are happy to be out of Kitty Quarantine. They add to the peace & quiet depth of joy that I feel.

I am a judgmental human, I know. But I am self-contained & of small note in the schema of a world swollen with emotional life.

I feel “zenned” – uncontained. I am important in my little way: people express gratitude that I exist in many ways.

I do not feel sad about letting Fitz go, tho he brought love into the house. Have I once more traded love for convenience to self? It is easy to say life is full of strange disappointments, that it’s hard & lonesome, that our own selves are what we ultimately rely upon. What is lost in that admission is that life also is composed of ineffable joy in the moment surrounded with beauty & knowledge. I am grateful for all it brings me & more so to be able to return that joy in blessing, presence & sharing myself.

Peace is often hard-won at a steep emotional cost. But peace is what I strive for now. My heart is right tho adamantine in expression of what it feels to be “right.” But peace is my striving right now. I’ve never really been an easy person to live with – for myself or others. Yet these others accept me as I am; as I do them.

Thank you, Life, for lessons in love & life in health. My body moves more slowly but feelings overflow boundaries. I find I mourn less…”can’t lose what you never had” is how the cliche goes. Sometimes I do feel I’ve missed so much, yet I live so abundantly in comparison.

Change is always possible…certainly necessary…usually hard-won.

Others express a belief in me & I am happy to be both in community & isolated. Coexistence pays well!

What else, tho, is a human? All imperfect, mercurial, powerful & at times, godlike.

I hope to live to my own measure & to support & allow, to bring forward light from shadow. May my light ever express in divinity of intent.

Amen.

RENEWAL

I slept in tears – Loved against all my sorrows

Held & warmed by Someone who owes me nothing

(But a slap upside my head)

If the mourning is over, let the revels begin!

Let my hands hold secrets to universes

My eyes be kissed

Our tongues entwine

For all my shrilling fears tripping alarms

I will put away now

To let you bring them outside

For the wind to whistle away.

Thank you is never enough in true gratitude

Blessing lays thick with love, balm for the broken heart

I have Much to mend & more to make holy

In the doing of deeds.

My only gifts may be words to bridge the darkness

Yet these I do have & in plenty…

               ‘Come unto me when

               I breathe your name’

Last night too soon, too sad, too uncertain

Too full of truth that first clears the way

For us to part from parting.

I had to dissolve the wounds of dissection

Bring in the soothe of belief

Mop up the bloody departure.

Rediscover with new eyes

You will not disappear or disappoint

I would not be rushed the savor of forgiveness

Of your kisses, the tips of your fingers

Your offer of skin to skin too raw in that moment to accept.

You teach me to learn again

You are the place where yearning may rest awhile

Where “love me” dissolves in the mist of Holy Joy.

It is said the man chooses the woman – but, well,

I did steal that kiss for no reason other than your lips backstage

I did offer my perfumed presence in an unbuttoned shirt you could not refuse

I did fit myself too closely over coffee, cup after cup just so as not to part.

I love your energy, warm & welcome, the season of cold undone.

I love your christening touch, your murmurs which I do not hear

But always understand.

I surrender pretension of holding ground against

Of beating back your small demands:

Only gentle me with a kiss

Only take me with a touch

Let the sun measure our lengths on golden afternoons

Of heart-centered joy, hostaged to love.

Bonfires on a hill as angels overfly

Land not here! We are our own beloved divinity

But later, with the final moan of breath releasing love

Come then to laugh, to stroke our overheated bodies

With wings of balm & glory!

Midnight Maunderings

I never thought myself a leader

Yet I have always been skipping out ahead

Finding the way of the Wayshower.

I venture outside at 3 a.m.

To breathe night-ions

Garnering the darkness

In eager search of distant stars

I fly no flags of bedsheet measure

Only tiny banners of love

Protected on my windowsill

But these I fly proudly

Wings open to the heaviness of air

I am the mouse fascinated by the whiskers of the lion

Unobserved yet always overseen by gentle Divinity

Tweaking my tail, tickling my nose/

I paddled in ponds wearing shoes of adventure

I walked away from lifetimes

While laying no claims

Save those of memory & desire.

As to where this shall take me

I hardly imagine.

My face & my name ahead of me

I still search, scanning horizons

Calling myself forward.

#2

Unready to upstage the world,

I can only upstage myself

One accomplishment at a time.

I test the boundaries of constancy

Questing the North Star of God

I live behind no screens

Of televised content

Content I create my own world.

Where I am a hero on the Hero’s Journey of real life.

I boil carrots in the dark

To better see the day

I wipe my pens on my sleeves

Dotted with ink & drenched

With words about worlds yet undiscovered.

I would bestow my wisdoms

To children I shall never have

Applauding their creativity

Inspired by a tiny phrase.

Until I began these midnight maunderings

These densely-packed thoughts only to

Be experienced in single splendors…

It IS possible to love every tree in the forest

Every wave breaking in similar salty froth

‘pon strangely lit beaches

I watch the world lie down in death

Anticipating only resurrection.

#3

The incense burns

Fierce & hot

Devouring itself

In the grace of alluring scent

I burn to be so!

Never regretting the

Ashen remnant; each

Thought clinging to my nostrils

Breathing in & out.

Blessing all, even the unholy

Especially the unholy

My singular quest to bring

New thought to a mind

Steeped in the familiar.

I cry “Poverty!” while bathed

In the richness of a burgeoning world.

I follow growth in a hunger of appetite

Sentient in the awareness all of it has passed.

My life is a bowl of chocolate strawberries

Sweet upon sweet

Succulent & bursting with juices filling hunger

All is moisture tho more appreciated

In the deserts I choose to live in…

I burst with the treasure of living words

All spoken before me by minds so much greater

Yet what I know is sweet upon sweet

As one by one, I choose my earnest, surprising adventures

I am an oft-told story

With hope of teaching another.

#4

Inimitable, this world at the measure of ten tiny toes

I fight no dragons with my bamboo walking stick

Tho I smell them nearby

Feeling jeweled eyes fixed ‘pon my morsel self.

I pray on, an unlimited artesian well of self

Prevailing over their fiery breath

I pay no attention to mirrors

A rooster’s comb of misrule for a crown

I smile at reflecting shadows

There is nothing left behind but the journey forward.

My past is buried, a scratched-over self I claim not to know

How can I remember a name

Called before I became who I am?

Would it entice me even a moment to become that she?

There are bite-marks all over my past

I’ve chewed it to the bone & beyond

To nourish this future!

2/21/20

My Sister Died On Her Birthday

Which I thought preternaturally tidy. She always was a tidy woman. I wonder what will happen to her things, to those remainders of life left in drawers & desks, to shoes unworn at the end since she zipped about in a “mobility chair.” Another oxymoron.

My daughter was ready to go out to Arizona from Virginia when she heard Aunt Teri was in hospice care. But when she called with flight arrangements, my brother-in-law said, “She passed last night.” And we have heard nothing since.

For all her computer skills, either Teri left no plan, no will, no scrap of “here’s who you contact if” paper. But I’m not one to talk about it since I’ve nothing either except conversations with friends none of whom would know how to contact my kid. Guess I’d best get something in writing.

Hell, I’ve barely enough to live on, let alone save for term insurance. I keep telling people “just toss the body down some abandoned elevator shaft.” And I’ve moved into an apartment built over a former Jiffy Lube with my unit atop the pit – a simplification if I’ve ever heard one. I don’t want to be a burden, I don’t want to cost anyone anything, I don’t want to have my face on a jar next to the restaurant registers with “Help bury this woman!” crayoned atop it. Yet this may still come to pass.

Take this month for example – rent increase, insurance due, deferred car payment impossible tho the bank said I could do that in February. I wonder how people do it…same as me, on a fixed income but a floating tsunami of a bill lurking on the horizon. Yeh, sure, I’ve got $500 somewhere, let me check the sock drawer. I’m counting on Valentine’s Day business to float me up n over like some innertube on the vast swells of a cashiered life.

I’m running for office here in town. The other candidates have 4-5 4 x 8′ signs all over the street corners – vote for me!! I have a $20/week ad I’m running, cleverly changing the lines. I was gifted $166 for my campaign. No epic Trump battles of the wallet bulge here.

So, whatever. I move along, steady as a plough horse crossing the field to the barn. I have food to eat & enough to pay the regular bills. I’ll put the insurance on one of the credit cards, grit my teeth & make payments. Maybe I could send the other card to my daughter & say, just charge it, honey.

Hope St. Peter doesn’t run credit checks. Gives new meaning to that old song, “I owe my soul to the comp’ny sto…”

Sick

I’m coming to the end of so many things: activities, ideas, belongings…One by one these fall away; relationships, favorite sweatshirts subjected to too many adventures with dryers, foods that once hit the spot.

So much has already ended: there is so much more to go. Relationships fall away; others come forward to fit into place. Clothes just wear out or my body assumes a shape where they cannot be worn anymore. Shoes I wore on sidewalks in Delaware don’t work on the gravel out here. Ya know? Just when I thought I had it all set to smooth, it turns out to be set to stun. I appreciate all the change as growth. Often it’s in response to a vague prayer made more powerful far in background of origin.

Last Friday I had pork. Now I have enjoyed the occasional porkchop. I’ve read over & over pork is not the healthiest meat but hey, I’m not sure any meat is healthy today what with hormones & additives & all that jazz. (Sadly, I can’t even be sure of my vegetables anymore. T or C is at the last stop of the food trucks, whatever color things are when they get here, they remain until consumed.)

This single chop followed a week of lazing out on processed food – a Salisbury steak, frozen pizza, finishing a bag of pepperoni I’d bought for Christmas fare…& the excellent, transcendent bacon Mario serves at the Grapevine twice in this same week. My body called a complete, total, utter halt to all of it. My body complained vigorously & copiously to the upstairs john about tolerance levels, helpings, preservatives & much more than I thought I had in me,  which is always the way when one begins the process of reverse peristalsis. I cannot remember the last time I was sick, let alone so enthusiastically. Was it time for a purge? I couldn’t just get a regular cold & go through a couple Kleenex boxes?

I was knocked out the next day, I laid on the couch & snoozed. I held the cat & napped. I went to bed in my sweats since I was too chilled to change to pj’s. I remained semi-conscious & other than feeding Fitz, did not go into the kitchen except for water. Oh, and sugary juice that claimed to be natural. But a little sugar in these circumstances is not forbidden & the pretend-tartness provided flavor to my thirsty palate.

Very unusually, I had an event that Friday night. The only drink available was coffee & I had a cup of “Black Knight.” Shoulda known better, as they say. Something named for a dark star & my thunderous stomach made no good mix together.

After a bout like this, such physical upheaval (excuse the term), I know to watch for Change – capital letter “C”. Yes. I am “off” coffee. Made a cup this morning, had a sip, poured it out for lemon ginger tea. (I can hear my non-java friends cheering.) At another time in my life, my mind would’ve convinced body that I need coffee. Would have pushed me into the kitchen to make another cup. Where will I be without coffee? Don’t we need at least one addiction to function happily in this life? And last night, I went to bed hungry after a half-bowl of my own chili eaten in good company with a friend. As first meal was a scrambled egg Sunday morning, it went down easily. I don’t favor going to bed hungry. There were too many lifetimes when I starved to death. I wear extra pounds to accommodate any ideas of starvation. The first thing that happens when you’re sick is you lose weight, so I keep a bit extra on the skinsuit.

I think that’s over with now.

If I can tolerate hunger, it is time to be hungry.

I wonder if all of this is connected somehow to my running for office here in T or C as City Commissioner.  I have declared & the comments are coming my way: “Hey, saw your name in the paper; Hey, did I see your name on the list? Hey, Carol, good for you!”

Is this all indication of letting go of one way of thinking for another? I say I live to serve, but of course I am more accustomed to serving myself. I volunteer, but I think everyone should stand in where they can help move things along. I have a great service ethic, like a great work ethic. Once I start with a project, I don’t let go – I may delay – but I don’t let it go. Except recently for a cause I deemed hopelessly entrenched in its own process of Ourobouros. Where will this take me? It is a completely new idea. In fact, I almost swore I’d never…

Ah! “never say never” echoes in the back of my brainpan.

Wish me well on this new idea to pursue. Wish me to be the best service person you ever knew. Wish me strength to represent those who are so locked down with work & responsibility they have no time to help in any other areas of activity. My friend tells me be prepared for slings & arrows & mud & all sorts of stuff to be dug up & tossed at me. I don’t know how deep they intend to go, but there isn’t much I’ve done that’s out of line. I didn’t come into this life to be Butch Cassidy OR the Sundance Kid. It’s a snore if they start investigating me.

I pulled a credit report yesterday – $16 & less than a minute of computer time. I needed it to find out where I’ve lived recently – because I’ve lived so many places just seeing the addresses is a surprise of memory. Anyone who has my name in their address book has learned not to write it in ink. My daughter asks my address whenever a card-sending time comes up. But I don’t see myself going anywhere anytime soon.

Ah life. Ah death. Ah taxes. And then there comes one more way to serve in a way that makes me forget all three others. I have the health, the intelligence, the ethic & the time – most of all, the time – to help care for others. I have a tendency to stick through to the end unless I perceive real cupidity doing so.

It still hurts to cough. I have no idea what I’ll eat except I took something out of the freezer which will be identifiable in about an hour or so. Maybe I’ll go for a salad today. I’ve lost a day & am out of time with usual rhythms.

I put my desk calendar outside to dry after spilling a glass of water on it. I think it blew away. What’s that say?