Lenin is not stuffed

So, this morning we were talking about Willie Nelson’s guitar, named Trigger.  The Partner, it being early and he being just the teensiest bit megadystopian, commented that now, Trigger was stuffed, in a museum, and you had to pay to see him.  *I* responded with words to the effect that this is the same thing that happened to Lenin. I was treated to that priceless look the Partner gets on his face at moments like these, which sadly are not rare.  Isn’t Lenin wax? he said.  Taxidermy, he said, is not done on PEOPLE.  I realized that I had actually been picturing Lenin….well, stuffed.  Hay! Horsehair! Good Lord.  My mind and welcome to it.

We’ve passed yet another milestone, which is to say, Thanksgiving.  It may be apparent to the careful Gentle Reader that Life in the Wilds is not without incident.  And, incidents on a 24/7 and seemingly unending basis.   Last week alone we had a flat tire (NUMBER TEN) (on the brand new tires.  I cried. Then I found Les Schwab, as previously described.), the roof leaked in a huge storm (dome shifted), and…oh something else went totally sideways which I now forget.  It’s rough out here, let’s just say.  Mercifully we were not in Sandy’s path but it often feels as if we are not far from it, either.  Then, Thanksgiving.

We had one of the worst set-to’s of our little lives, the Partner and I, on Wednesday.  I hiked up onto the bluff seriously thinking that now might be the time to just put myself down once and for all.  Enough is enough and my little nerves are shredded. What, I roared at myself, is the frigging POINT?! This is when I saw the bear scat.  Somehow that changed everything just enough, seeing that little berry-filled mound and knowing that once again a bear was really around, that a bear is afoot!, for me to pull myself together, wipe off my glasses, stump down to the yurt, and tell the Partner that if he was still speaking to me, I had some bear poo to show him.  Also, the tip of Mt. Shasta was glittering high above the clouds.  It all looked like Shangri-La.   Again, the humbling realization of the complete interconnection of all things and the necessity to quietly observe the patterns,  the knowing that however weird things may seem we are all in a flow, a huge flow of divinity really.  Clear your energy and carry on, in short.

We thus make it to Thursday, amazingly.  Usually we cook the turkey outside on the Weber.  This year that wound up not working and a third of the way through the turkey had to be rescued from said Weber, wiped down, and put in the oven.  Since a miracle had already happened and the turkey was smaller than usual, this worked splendidly- the roasting pan was the right size and the bird fit in, right next to the pie which was also being agonized over, since the oven temperature is not what the dial might make you think it is, if you know what I mean.  It all turned out, anyway and in the end, just like I knew what I was doing, and we had actually a wonderful, and grateful, dinner.  We were too full to eat pie til the next day, and even the pie seemed almost other worldly in its custardy, honeyed pumpkin spicy pie apotheosis.

If I ever get (another- there IS one already.  Of Winnie the Pooh) tattoo, I think it will say:

NEVER, EVER, GIVE UP.

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Winter’s Deep

Already here, it is.  The cows and horses are quite furry, already, and the polka dotted goat on the way to town is looking like he got a new set of thick spots.  The mountain lion paid us a visit too- right up to our front door in fact.  Those were, Gentle Reader, some BIG PAWMARKS.  There are so many animal trails and bedding down spots as I noticed on a walk last week, our spot on the hill is like Grand Central Station even though it all happens pretty quietly- barring the hysterical dog opera that ensues each time somebody passes by.

So as winter deepens and we hear the coyotes all night, I’m watching my life dissolve and change into something completely different.  As one of those people who was guilty of believing, apparently, that the lies we all got told were true and did for the most part what I was “told” to (like working, paying taxes, helping out in the community and all those other things), it is more than disconcerting to essentially be at cliff’s edge, wondering just how this is all going to work out.    I encountered someone yesterday who I had previously thought to be a sensible, grounded person- who commenced a diatribe about how if we’d only seen the President’s birth certificate everything would be different.

Still.  In the midst of it all, there is always the line of enquiry to pursue and revelations of our smallness and intrinsic connections at the same time.  Perhaps this is the point of it at least for now.  Everything is moving and shifting and perhaps there is no fixed point.  Perhaps the fixed point is something we delude ourselves with, like ideas of control and permanence.   All the things we let go of on this journey, all the things we pick up- it is, really, like that aphorism about making a proper cup of tea:  Realizing at one and the same time the imminence and immanence of death, and the brilliance of the sun as it rises and sets, and that those things are essentially the same, one can at last begin to make a proper cup of tea.  So I’m off- to make tea and a turkey.  Blessings, and see you after Thanksgiving!

Halloween in haste….

Dear Gentle Reader:

I know I’ve been MIA for a couple of days.  But we’ve been busy and The Partner has forbidden me telling the Story of the Cricket.  HE thinks no one will believe it.  Suffice it to say our mettle and fortitude have been mightily tested these past few …days? lifetimes? aeons?

But Halloween has always been a favorite of mine- not for the candy or multi billion dollar costume industry- but because it signals a shift in time, between the worlds, between what we can see and what we can’t.  Sadly, my orange witch’s hat is someplace I know not where so I’ll just have to go as myself this year, although this far out in the boondocks I doubt it will be necessary to wear it.  No trick or treaters and apparently everyone out here knows me by now, and THAT is a bit appropriately scary.

So, although the world is still so much with me I have to fight the urge to curl into a ball and even the questions I finally CAN formulate go unanswered, I bid you a wonderful Halloween, a rewarding jaunt between the worlds.

I Should Be…..

Washing the dishes.  Watering the garden. Any number of things.  Instead, I’m thinking about how Pedro Martinez reminded me of Yojimbo last night. ( One of my all time favorite movies, that and Sanjuro, of course.)  But:  That merest flick of a backward glance while walking off the mound.  And since Matsui was the only one who, initially at  least, seemed to figure out what was going on, the–er–motif got firmly fixed in my pliable little brain.  Oh, baseball.  As long as I can watch it, just watch the game, watch the people moving, and not think about all the money and owner weirdnesses and all, I am happy.  There is a kind of discipline to the game that is like a martial art, in the way one has to devote oneself to the skills and techniques until they become second nature.  And nature always has the last word: Luck, chance, weather, so many things enter into what happens in a baseball game.  It is really like life.  In that, you never know, sort of way.

And indeed, one never DOES know.  I went to see my client in the nursing home today and everyone was dressed for Halloween.  I didn’t recognize anybody, they’d costumed and switched up wheelchairs and all sorts of things.  Werewolves! Goddesses! Border Patrol Agents! And everyone was having a fantastic time of it as a result.  Slipping off their identities and entering into the spirit of the holiday- which, being about the bridge between the worlds of “life” and “death”, is actually appropriate for such a locale- with great humor and joy.  The ability to be anonymous lent everyone an energy and …an abandon.  A freedom.  Which is precisely the point of it all, really.  Entering into life with one’s heart.  No guarantee of a win or a good ERA or success OR failure.  It just IS and you might as well jump.  So it was pretty amazing to see all these people, who live lives many  would consider totally impossible, being collectively happy and, actually,  powerful, in a funny way.  The werewolf scared the hell out of me, to be honest.  It turned out he’s one of the people who don’t speak, but I finally recognized him from his particular laugh.  Oh, he thought it was hilarious sneaking up on me in that infernal wheelchair!  I of course, being the mature person I am, laughed so hard I got the hiccups, which made everyone else giggle even more.  Dude.  Always a source of entertainment, we are.  At least I didn’t fall down.

There is a kind of piercing, yet suspended, sense to things today.  Maybe it’s the weather- warm, actually, blindingly clear.  The intensity of the colors of things against the sky.  We’re on the Pacific Flyway so there is always something amazing flying around–I saw a flock of small birds wheeling through the air earlier, watched them in a clustered group, then a circle, then a long line, constantly forming and reforming.  Sometimes you could see them and sometimes the sun hit their wings and turned them so white they disappeared.  Finally they expanded from the clump to the long sinuous line and all of a sudden: They were gone.   It’s really all quite something, isn’t it.

Batty

Here, as heretofore alluded to and promised, is my Halloween picture.  

The monoprint is from Bridget Henry (www.bridgetmaryhenry.com) and Batty plus halo is just part of the crew here at Rancho Boozilla.  The pumpkin is destined to be a pie.  

Batty has a special place in my heart, as a bit of an alter ego really.  Lately I have been feeling ever more…lost in space.  Batty, as it were.  It seems challenging-er and challenging-er to keep everything together, and as a friend of mine remarked yesterday, things are becoming Chaotic.  Surely not, I murmured, narrowly missing a pedestrian who had decided to step out into the crosswalk when the light turned red.  Having waited, of course, through the green light.  We were driving to the hospital to straighten out yet another  life snafu, so there was some urgency to it all.   Then I went into my “Shipping Department” (garage) today to send out some products and thought: Oh dear.  Chaos indeed.  Still.  Lost shipments from last summer and non-stop solicitations notwithstanding, today I feel as though I and my Little Website have really arrived.  We are now receiving long, lingering visits from robots.  Yes.  Bots.  And Spiders.  Not, as I anxiously asked the Webhost, Dr. Evil?  No, no, he said.  Robots.  Ha, ha, he said.  Dr. Evil! You have quite the little sense of humor don’t you? he said.  Apparently, since I get hits from all over the world the robots think this means something.  Hits, mind you.  Sales, not so much.  Then again it is hard to ship reasonably to Arabia and Bolivia.  After all.  And it is especially hard to make sales when your credit card processing service decides to switch your shipping options from various and mostly free,  to express mail only with no notice.  Somehow people just don’t want to be pushed into that! Whoa. And, as shopping on my own website is not my habit, I Had No Idea.  After my head came back together after exploding upon receiving this wonderful piece of intelligence,  I was relieved to learn there is a new “slogan”, as it were, for this occasion.  When I  called this nest of vipers  Entity before with problems, they have said, Oh, no, no one else has that problem.  Right.  Right? Now, they said, Oh, no.  We never offered that service.  Never offered multiple shipping options for a web based business.  Never.  We’re just processing money. Oh.  Of course.  Sure, you’re right.  Just because you have all these effing programming options for just these very services on the site that programs my shopping cart? Meaningless.  Only a complete dolt would think that had any meaning at all.   So, Batty and I looked at each other for a while and then I cowboyed up and fixed the darn thing.  I hope.  Meanwhile.  Does anyone know what the Good Witch looked like?

Solar Storms

The Fourth of July is always quite the thing here.  We live right on the parade route.  Our next door neighbor has his major party of the year on the Fourth, too, complete with Enormous Professional Musician Sound System and lots of people and vodka.  This year, besides the extra fun of the Fire Arts people doing their explosion performance (where? Must you ask, Gentle Reader? WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY DID IT? ) in front of the Driveway From Hell, aka My Driveway,  we also had The Guy In Back deciding to put in his two cents about the decibel level by pointing HIS “sound system” directly at our fence and thus indirectly at Party Central, and cranking it all the way up.  Let me tell you, it was special.  But, once I did enough deep breathing to realize that there was indeed a spot on the driveway where I could stand and just be vibrated through by all the sound, it was really fine and actually a lot of fun. On with hearing loss.  The street is closed for the major part of the day so unless we want to leave at 5 a.m. which we always vow to do and then don’t,  we’re kind of stuck in wall to wall people and cacophony.  The two year old next door decided he didn’t care a fig about the parade either except the brief horse appearance, and spent most of his time pottering around our garden with the Partner, having discovered how to work our water hose and also the joys of watering cans.  He’s already mastered the garage door opener and we spent quite some time watching him open and close the door.  We assumed he was cackling with laughter as usual in these cases: It looked like it, but  since you couldn’t hear yourself think, there was no ability or need to talk.  It was oddly restful.

However, we did see two solar flares.  Split second huge brightness followed by a blast of blistering heat.  Nobody but us seemed to notice.  But I think there WAS something to it, as the day was oddly enervating and I didn’t see a single person without a sunburn, which is somewhat unusual among this sunblock conscious crowd.

I made couscous (nice! sweated shallots and bell peppers before adding the water to boil the couscous in) among other things for dinner that night, which…well.  I was quite happy with the unintentionally lovely shape the leftovers took on, unmolded the whole thing onto a plate last night to reheat in the microwave.  And? voila.  It exploded.  So that’s how I know a) there WERE solar flares and b) try as I might to improve myself, nothing has really changed.  Tootles.