watching Rodan

In addition to slavishly watching fire maps, power outage warnings, weather reports and evacuation listings, we found ourselves watching the movie Rodan the other evening. Yes, from when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and yes, from the era of Monster Movies Starring Godzilla and various other giant reptiles and moths menacing Japan.

The description of the movie went like this:

“A bug eating Pterodactyl flies out of a coal mine and wrecks Japan with sonic booms.”

At a news conference in the movie, a scientist is asked what he thought caused Rodan to hatch at this particular time. The Partner immediately spoke up. “The Electoral College“.

This did make me laugh in the moment but it also had a rather eerie and menacing ring of truth. I mean: bug eating, flies out of a coal mine, wrecks things with extra loud noises? I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to ponder.

Meanwhile, here we are in the Fire This Time. People are having to evacuate twice this time, for totals of up to five evacs for the past couple of fire years. The acreage is staggering, and we’re about 15 miles away from a real doozy of a blaze. Post traumatic stress is in your face here everywhere, we’re all in tears unexpectedly and nobody can breathe. The upside to it is that at last, most people are wearing masks. The dime finally dropped, given that counties up here are on various levels of lockdown because of the (big) jump in COVID cases. There’s even a bit of tut tutting and glaring at those individuals wearing MAGA hats or No Hablo Libtard shirts, pushing their way to the front of whatever line one might be in, maskless. (Really! A man did that to me a week ago, turned and glared at me, and I said, age before beauty, dude!) It’s harder to cope with the Valiant Mothers tugging their kids around, maskless- there’s really no response to, I’m a rebel! Not wearing a mask!

So. I’ve been thinking back to early Spring, which seems now like another geologic age. The flowers were extraordinary this year, profusely blooming and extravagantly colored. It got too hot too fast and the garden didn’t do all it might have but we’re still getting tomatoes and chilis so that’s a good thing! The animals around here have pretty much made this property their homes now, deer, turkey, who knows who else, and it’s actually really fun walking around seeing all the places various and sundry bed down. The birds are laying low in all the smoke but in the evenings they cover our front garden, and the squadron of lizards darts around among them. In spite of the fact that we haven’t seen the sky for more than three days in the past several weeks, and in spite of the fact that everything seems bound to burn to a crisp, AND in spite of the fact that it feels as though it may never rain here again….the natural world supplies the energy and sustenance for the heart and soul required to keep going these days. The Spring was almost saying: Look! don’t despair! What’s real IS real, and what isn’t, isn’t. Fear not. We CAN be peaceful and happy, here and now. We CAN believe in the power of actual truth, real beauty, love and understanding. And, of course: believing leads to manifesting. Surrounded as we are by the wild world here, it’s not impossible to believe that real change is coming. The earth itself is drawing it forth. All we have to do is BE. BEING links you to what IS, distances you from the pushes and pulls of the individual concerns, the ego, the fears that keep everything shut down. As a friend says, this ain’t for the faint of heart. But it IS for the HEART. There’s still a big huge beating one all around us and we can help it live. Fear not!

Also, if you’re in the benighted U.S.? PLEASE VOTE.

As always, blessings and thanks! Take care of yourselves and each other, as well as the random squirrels.

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Growth Opportunities

Life is full of those, isn’t it, Gentle Reader?  I get what seem to be perhaps More Than My Share .  The most recent thing of relative import? I’m allergic to goats.  This I learned when two baby ones leapt off my landlady’s porch (during another landmine evading trip to pay the rent),  on to me, wrapping their front and hind legs around, respectively, my neck and waist and my waist and ankles, and gave me goat kisses.  Which are interesting.  And produce sneezing.  And their hair is VERY scratchy. I did not fall down, to my credit, and all three of us eventually recovered our composure.   It also seems we have another Pope, the ice caps are indeed still melting apace, and Chico State University which is somewhat near us (and had given me a (faint) (unrealized) hope of perhaps a decent bookstore) has not yet made a decision on whether or not to hold required classes on Fridays.  This would be in an effort to stop the binge drinking that apparently begins Thursday afternoon and goes until Sunday.  A student was quoted as saying it would be “stupid” to have class on Friday.  Because no one would go.  Oh.  Kay.  A rousing afternoon yesterday of pulling weeds and removing hornworm pupae from our garden soil pile preparatory to Another Magnificent Planting Season distracted me from the challenges of going out in the world to some extent, which was a good thing.  There seems to be more cognitive dissonance than one can really handle all the time and pulling weeds is very restorative, after all.  Even the illusion of accomplishment is comforting and at times I think that’s all it is anyway.  I mean: the weeds WILL be back.

I also completed Online Traffic School, which was not without features of interest- the instructions for the course consisted largely of admonitions not to do the class in a bar or with a cocktail.  (I was sitting with two special needs ladies one of whom had an active tambourine- I figured that didn’t quite reach the level of cocktail exposure.)  There was a LOT of stuff about road rage and avoiding eye contact with enraged or seemingly insane fellow drivers (and how you figure THAT out, I do not know- insane or not, I mean).  Still, I did learn a lot about speed limits (!!) and also probably the real reason people still talk on their mobiles while driving here, even though it is in theory against the law.  It’s only a $50 ticket, and $20 for succeeding violations.   Not, as we see every time we’re driving, all that deterring.  Apparently for those who continue to use hand held sets and talk and text and all that while whizzing down the road at a speed that makes any collision more than equivalent to jumping out of a third story window (see? I learned ALOT), the possibility that you could kill or maim someone else, someone you don’t even know,  doesn’t matter at all either.  Certainly not $50 worth.  Ah, human life.  Precious, right?  I especially enjoy a feature of our roadways here, which is regularly being almost smashed to smithereens by a car covered with Jesus bumper stickers and Christian homilies while the person is chatting on the phone obliviously.  (Probably with their Pastor, but still.) This isn’t the do unto others I usually think about, let’s just say.

Meanwhile there are lovely trails leading back into the hills with flowering wild cherry trees lining their sides, and the buttercups are out.  The birds are coming back, hopping around in our garden like they’re all greeting old friends. There are new little lizards, and some of the splendid graphite-looking big ones, too.  One day instead of losing my mind altogether I took my magnifying glass up on the bluff and looked at all the tiny, tiny, new wild flowers and changing mosses, and the spectacular manzanita blossoms this year.  Today the morning sky was the same creamy pink shade as their flowers.  It was pretty amazing, and looked as though it went on forever.  Which, in a way, it does.