After Satori, the laundry

It really is a never ending world of wonders, Gentle Reader.

So, I’m a bit hurried today and pressed for time, but I think any time a person has good news to report, it’s probably worth just doing it.

The thing of it is we are, indeed, as Plotinus noted, walking through a world thronged with gods and demons.  Picking our way through all this can be hard, and if we (as many do) pretend that what we’re seeing isn’t there, it probably just gets harder.  Then there’s denial.  Which is not, as we know, a river in Egypt.  It was, apparently,  a place I spent WAY too much time in though, so when at this somewhat late date the lights went on, it was pretty challenging for this bear.  But a sequence of events unfolded this past week that can only be explained as an outpouring of grace.  Love in action, in short.  I finally understood all the way through that fear keeps us in prison.  Limiting beliefs stunt our growth.  There is magic everywhere for us, but we have to be able to accept it and also understand it in the context of our own finite lives.  This understanding was given to me in the form of a few days that went from sheer hell to feeling as though I were bathed in Light and….even though everything is a mix of everything, light and dark, up and down, all of that- we are moving toward what I’ll call…hmmm…..what WILL I call it? The ineffable, ever present, Truth.  We can be distracted by what could be seen as “false” light, thinking that the world we create around us with machines and buildings and how we fit everyone around us into a format is ultimate reality.  But the real thing is beyond our understanding in a way- we can be it, we can feel it, but we can’t know it.  Once one gets a real lungful of that air?  Even though you know the road is full of obstacles and the difficulties are still there somehow it is a whole new ball game.  We can move toward being in harmony with that ball game, instead of being in competition inside it.

Now I have to decide about the laundry.  To do? or not to do?  And, also, give a thank you to those who comment and read here.  I really do believe that, no matter how dark the situation, we can move forward, and we can little by little befriend all our fellow creatures and thus make a better world. I’m more certain now that we really can do this than ever.  It just means we have to put down our weapons and breathe for a while.  A lot of times all it takes is a deep breath and a willingness to compromise.  In some instances of course it takes more but even then?  If we stick to Love instead of Hate, I’m sure we can do it.  We really do know what to do, after all.

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What to do, what to do….

Things continue excitingly out here in the sticks.  We have another Planned Power Outage coming up, and the heat is not abating to all appearances. We do have a new crop of baby lizards and frogs- in fact, the other night when I picked up a cup to have a last drink of water before bed, there was a frog attached to the inside top, looking up at me. ( One thing I have learned here is:  LOOK FIRST.  WHATEVER IT IS.)  We had, essentially, two flat tires in one day.  Just things like that, Gentle Reader.  Things like that.

But what perturbs me today is that ever lingering question, what is to be done?  You hear how much money the REAL evil empire donates to political candidates, obscenely huge amounts with no oversight or provenance except that some of it is probably OUR money when you think of it, carrying on its life cycle without us after the kidnap of it all by the banks…closely followed by a story about the fact that 25% of the children in the U.S. live in poverty.  And go hungry.    Then, global hunger.  Then…well.  I’m finding balance beyond elusive on the whole.

As a human being I would, really, like to be of service to others and make a difference for the better for all of us.  My work is directed in  that way.   People say things to me like, wow, you’re great at this…but the world isn’t ready for you.  So it’s interesting.  So much need, so many things to be done, and so many obstacles.  I have spent years working on being the change I wish to see in the world and in this moment, I’m not seeing that it made any impression or impact or effect on anything.  Whatsoever.  In fact it is almost as though the total opposite is true, and EVEN THOUGH living simply and consciously is clearly indicated at this point, the levels of addiction to- well, bread and circuses, seem unbeatable.  So I tell myself that the world may THINK it isn’t ready for me and others like me, organic food producers and non-fossil fuel long term planners, people who teach others to maintain their health instead of simply handing them expensive prescriptions which mask the original problem and often create new ones, but it has to be pretty soon.  People are suffering and dying for the benefit of a capitalist system, in which benefit is reserved for the few and the many? Well, uh….let them eat cake?  What, exactly, is it going to take for people to get their heads out of their rear ends and think at ALL, much less responsibly?  Climate degradation, the truly sinister progress of Monsanto, agribusiness, privatization of natural resources like land and water…..I don’t know.  Some days I have great hope.  Others, like today- is it even possible that we earth dwellers will stand up, reach out to each other, and do the right thing instead of the habitual, constricted reactive acting out we see everyplace?  I really do hope so.

Shift Happens, We Hope

I realized today that it has been quite some time since paw went to keyboard.  Another massive realignment, another passel of Growth Opportunities, and basic reassessment were in the forefront- putting words together was too far away to see.  It isn’t that I didn’t write anything.  More that I just wondered what my purpose in doing it was, is,  might be.  Especially because, as happens more often than not, the words come out on their own (or not) and THEY pick the topics and the sweeps of psychological terrain.

Somehow the recent events around here which have, at the very least, revealed more to our sight than the usual three percent (eclipses, strange black clouds, personality upheavals and multiples thereof) have also induced a staggeringly longer view- actually, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.  A shift in the kaleidoscope. Including a renewed sense of everything being possible at the same time as it is impossible.  As though there is, indeed, another level of Being and Awareness that we can see and reach at times, and the going back and forth between can give a person the bends if they’re not careful.  Still, the experiencing of it is a whole different ball game.  Suddenly everything seems at once somehow orchestrated and somehow also totally random.  Connections and events and everything in life rests on the pinpoint meeting of energies in a field so vast and quiet and eternal yet full of motion,  it has to be meant to be.  Or else it is a splendid accidental confluence.  Clearly there’s more going on here than we imagine.  Healing is just one aspect of all this, of course, although to us it seems so paramount.  Amazing things are possible, healing can happen- cure is something farther off, and maybe not even something meant for us.  The difficulties and illnesses we face are schools, but it is an education that never ends.  Each wind and rewind, ribboning in and out path shows us more than we can actually take in- so we are never finished.  By the same token, everything is constantly new- everything is moving and the key is to keep it all going in the same general direction.

An offshoot of all this is suddenly finding myself totally out of patience with Explanations.  Like, religion is a big Explanation.  Politics is a big Explanation.  These Explanations are from the brain pans of creatures no different than you or me, Gentle Reader, and the Commandment-type unquestioning reception of same that seems to be expected is not something we can do here, any more.  Nobody really knows what is going on, how we got here, where we’re going, why we aren’t actually as happy as kings when the world is  so full of wonderful things.  And also awful ones and people who just refuse to open their eyes, wake up, and smell the coffee.  While there are explanations for the temporal things that are going on all around us, the real explanation of why so much is powered by limitation is still waiting for the reveal.    So, I think, why pretend this Absolute Certainty?  Why not just be quiet and watch what’s going on?

It makes it easier in a way because really.  Opinions?  Judgments? Not really necessary.  Still being in a human body of course one finds oneself on a collision track with events and emotions and all the vagaries of being alive, and the negotiating of all that gets gnarly for sure.  But as the water gets hotter and the noise level rises, I’m trying diligently to crawl out of this pot on this stove and see what the rest of the universe is like.  There must be some place where….where….hmmm.  Where, let’s say, truth is the coin of the realm and not dissimulation.  Where openness is of value, and honor counts.  Honor being based on the truth and on acting with respect for all of creation.  Which then leads to perhaps the main thing we need on this journey: Trust.  It’s all really quite interesting, or as my Aunt used to say, it’s a great life if you don’t weaken.

 

Mr. Rabbit gets a workout

I have a supporting phalanx of (stuffed) animals, bears mostly, a couple of frogs, a bat, an elephant, and, naturally, RABBITS.  Mr. Rabbit, who does night patrol, has been getting the daylights squeezed out of his paws of late given the unbridled wild and wooly nature of unfolding events.  As it turns out, he gives wise counsel and we’ve made it safely to shore through some Scylla and Charibdis-like moments/hours/eternities.  I give Mr. Rabbit much of the credit for this:  In those darkest hours before dawn where he probably wondered why his paws were in something like a death grip, every darn night, calm still prevailed ultimately.  More or less.

Which led us to some astonishing revelations and learning of new things.  In that irritating way of blogs, where people say, I really can’t write about this…I really can’t write about this, largely because the particulars involve others.  But I can write about this:  The nature of time and our existence became so much clearer over the aforementioned period I feel like I popped into a new Universe.

When I started doing the work I do, I was over the moon skeptical about many things I heard from people about the nature of time, the nature of reincarnation, the nature of how our pasts and presents intertwine, along with the nature of how intuition works.  Along with a few other things.  Plowing through Alice Bailey a paragraph a month has been helpful, because one thing she says (or the Tibetan says, in the crystal clear inscrutable way that is the hallmark of her tomes) is that people who do healing work, be they alternative or mainstream, really have to be tuned up themselves and aligned or else harm can actually be caused.  This is, I think, because it isn’t the egoic, personal you who does the work- it’s the You that is part of the All that does it.  It’s a direct flow of energy that gets tapped into and guides what gets done.  When you are teaching what you need to know, nobody is really being helped, because you aren’t dipping into the vast ocean of knowledge and awareness but rather approaching the whole thing in a very western way of control, domination, personal power; this doesn’t stop alot of people from doing it, of course.  Healing work and service is, if it is what you are and thus what you do, not easy. Then again it isn’t hard, either.   You see all kinds of things, all kinds of pain and suffering, all kinds of obstinacy and brilliance, love and bravery, while running alongside doing what, essentially, the Universe, tells you to do.

It has been a long period of learning, in short.  The learning involves not just learning as we think of it, as in what plant does what and where do you put your hand when someone’s body is in a particular condition.  It involves letting go of what you “think” and your “opinions” and the instilled concepts of Right/Wrong as they are understood culturally.  Since that right and wrong are usually about the balance of power and maintenance of control and domination.  It involves letting go and taking instruction all the time.

The recent paw squeezing events revealed, among other things, that there is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a sequence of re-creation, reincarnation, and weaving time.  We do indeed live many times and in many ways.  There are lives in our pasts that reach into our lives in the present.  That stardust that becomes US, that holds the work of our souls or whatever word you might like to use, continues spiraling through time, shifting shape.  There is, really, no doubt in my mind about all this now.  Which to me is pretty amazing.

This has also given me an additional slant on diagnosis.  Older cultures had the concept of “soul sickness”; we have lost that to some extent.  Soul sickness is not the same as mental illness, either, and there is some frequency in that confusion.  Soul sickness involves pieces of time that have become improperly lodged in the wrong place, parts of our stardust (if you will) that got left where they shouldn’t when that particular iteration ended.  It is a real phenomenon, Gentle Reader.  And even though I myself used to think, oh, yeah, SURE! I now know that this is real, and something that has to be considered in any healing work.  It’s a complex constellation of things to look at when considering what might be going on with a person.  What time frame is this really from?  What caused the propensity for this situation? What is the meaning of it developmentally and emotionally?  In addition to the more generalized, necessary, investigation of diet, habits, personal history, and all of that.  A person can be mentally ill with a causation in the soul sickness area, but also not.  Mental illness can be very specific to this particular body, because of chemistry, life history, things like that.  The two things, mental and soul illness, (as physical and soul illness as well) can not be mixed up with each other and treated successfully because the approaches to each are quite different.  So essentially, you can never, ever, assume.  And you can also never, ever, deny that the always moving river of time is having an impact from way back on where we are in this moment. It’s a question of degree. These impacts are very real, and while attention must be paid on the physical level, the treatment also must take place on a deeper and wider scale.  You really, really have to pay attention and listen.  If you do listen, the answers will reveal themselves right about the time you can understand them.

So, there’s more but that’s the rough outline for now.  And? There is a brand spanking new absolutely heavenly little silver gray donkey in the neighborhood now.   Also we saw thousands of geese going north over the weekend and it was breathtaking.  As though a giant hand were pointing and saying, see? This is what it is all about.  Chill out and do the right thing!

 

 

Finding the thread

Ah, momentum, Gentle Reader.  After last weekend’s adventures and, incredibly, even poorer internet than I have here at Chez Rudimentary, it’s time to get back on the Word Horse, which seemed to have meandered off somewhere leaving me with a ball point pen and notebook for company.

It was an amazing two days at the fair, especially given that Friday and Saturday involved about four hours of sleep what with packing and anxiety and dishwashing.  But, we did see the eclipse.  Did we ever.  We drove (for the last time. The tattered nerve endings deserve at least that much of a break.) over Highway 36 which runs between I5 and 101 here in the wilds of Northern California.  This road is sheer hell although it is mind bogglingly beautiful, which I am sure I mentioned last summer when we made this trek.  Your maximum speed is about 35 mph, on the good spots, given that it rises up through two mountain ranges, up up up up, and hairpin turns don’t even begin to cover it.  Plus there are a few spots where it just DROPS with no real warning and your stomach is on the ceiling.  Did I mention there is a paucity of guard railing?  Well, there is.  I had been hoping we’d miss seeing the sheer cliff drops in the dark but no such luck.  In any event.   We left in the magnificent profound blackness of dawn, with the eclipse starting.  The few lights and Christmas decorations visible were like strange beacons. There was ice on the road and snow sparkling in the headlights on the sides.  The moon became a moving and undulating gray cloud, and would intermittently disappear as we wound through the mountains, reappearing in its mysterious not-thereness.  You could see batches of stars far, far out, and mist-like swathes of constellations as well.  The sunrise began as an intense tomato red line across the horizon behind us and gradually filled the sky with golden clouds and ethereal blueness.  The snow now sparkled in the sun and we were suddenly driving through a field of diamonds.  There was also fog (THE JOY OF IT ALL) and in some meadows we passed it wreathed the ground and the trees, everything sparkling in the rising sun light, like some ancient story.  Which I suppose it was, really.  It felt like being in something that had happened forever and would continue to happen forever, whether or not it was seen through any eyes.

So, net net, four and a half hours later we’d gone slightly under 200 miles and arrived at our destination with a fabulous four minutes to spare before the starting gate opened.  Where we unloaded in a mad dash, I set up the booth, and the festivities began.  Concerning which, more to come.

11:59:59

This was the time a friend and I used to think things generally resolved in life.  In short, one second before detonation.

I still pretty much think this, and the firing squad motif hasn’t changed all that much, either.  However, night is once again falling and the mountains have a faint outline of rose above their deep slate blue silhouette and under a cloudy blue expansive sky.  The conifers against the mountains are an incredible deep velvety, bottle green. The oak trees have dropped their leaves and the branches are to be seen in their twisting and curling magnificence, black and reminding me of an Arthur Rackham drawing.

This morning? I really was ready to give up.  Things were so overwhelming, so impossible.  So much anxiety and no saliva, in short.  However.  Yet another series of deep breaths.  Alot of kicking of rocks and a tee tiny bit of screaming way up on the other side of the bluff.  And then some really nice, good news came later in the afternoon, reminding me that of course, you never know.  When I was out getting wood, there was more.  Copper and Sierra were running around their corral with tails up and manes flying.  I watched them for a minute and realized they were playing a game.  With a plastic bag- one would get it gently in their teeth, run around gracefully and in zigzags, the other would nip and retrieve, and it would go on from there.  I was mesmerized.

So.  I read today that the function of our mind is simply to create our reality.  While I’m watching the evening sky turn slightly green above the pink and the blue above that turn to lavender, I wonder why it is so hard to shake off the bonds of the negative conditioning, the negative reality, and to inhabit the true expansive beauty of the moment.  Even if it IS painful.  Everything is moving and shifting, us too.  Sometimes when those dark thoughts come up, one feels totally separated from everything, Gentle Reader.  And we know that is not the true state of affairs.  The Partner, who has some hideous virus and accompanying mindset, sternly informed me today that I can’t change the world.  But maybe I don’t have to.  Everything is changing, with or without our conscious participation,  and perhaps it is our task to flow with it and open our hearts and minds to  that movement upward, toward the light rather than continuing on in the fetid darkness that seems to be descending on us all, economically, socially, politically, all ways, really.  Align ourselves with that flow, that really does contain cooperation, curiosity, and common goals and basic unity.  However that flow manifests itself, whatever it requires.  A challenging assignment, to be sure.  Today, I think I can do it.

 

In which we keep breathing

I’m always amazed to see that my….epistles get read, and happy, really, once I get over the shock.  I write more or less because it turns out I must and although writing in a notebook is a time honored Good Thing, my handwriting is sometimes…unreliable, hence the perfect thing for the pen-challenged, the blog.  I was able for a long time to completely forget that the blog gets sent off into the world!  So first off I’ll say thank you to those who read this and find something of worth and interest, and take the time to say so.  This is the sort of thing that makes a difference, even though people may not think it.   The small things add up to big things, in short.

SO.  Then, there’s this morning, another morning where we wake up and fight off the gorilla on our chests, thinking well, live in the present!!! Who knows what can happen!!!! It can too all work out!!!!!  I’ve found that breathing and saying thank you is really helpful, even and especially when things look extraordinarily bleak.  So, already being a bit glum and all, The Partner decided to put in a DVD- A Better Life.  I don’t know if seeing this movie would have much impact on people who do not wish to understand.  But it is a tremendously well done, real, moving film and by the end of it we were both in tears. I recommend it highly.

It did have the effect, however, of strengthening my resolve.   All beings do want to be happy, as the Buddha correctly noted.  I am going to continue  lending my energies toward that end, however daunting the task may seem.  I keep mulling over the idea that since, generally speaking, you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it, this is a stellar opportunity to Change One’s Mind.  I’m thinking that Athol Fugard’s remark that love is the best subversion is not only really true, but maybe at last I’m ready to do it.  We’ll see.

 

Gravelled

It’s raining and cold. The sky is still streaked pink over toward the coast.  The frog likes it and is singing his special rain song.  That’s a high point, really.

We’re listening to the news about Occupy Oakland today; it’s interesting to note that Oakland is the place where battle lines got physically drawn in a seemingly stark way.  The Partner, in his cheery way, reminded me of when the first, and last, Oakland Police Department helicopter got shot out of the sky in the 70’s.  Another first for Oakland, the City of No Bullshit.  It landed in a parking lot by a taco truck; the man in it survived but OPD didn’t put any more choppers in the sky for a long, long time.  Now, OPD doesn’t respond to burglary calls and other “minor” crimes because they’re afraid they’re really ambushes.  The Alameda County Sheriffs don’t seem to have learned much from the last forty years, either.  Even though policing the world as it isn’t a pretty job, you still have to decide which side you’re on and stick to it.   Either you serve the public, or you don’t, and in the position a Police Officer occupies, it can’t be both ways.  It seemed extraordinarily reckless for them, then, to be so ham handed and violent with the protesters last month when Scott Olsen got critically injured.  Just as they were during the Berkeley riots Way Back When, and in Santa Barbara too.  You can’t shoot at people with real bullets (then) or rubber ones either (now), beat them, tie their wrists behind their backs with plastic cuff ties and let the hands swell up so that in many individuals permanent damage was sustained, and expect to earn respect and cooperation.  Oh, well.  We live in a world that is so highly politicized and stupidly complicated it makes one’s head spin.

Which is why I decided to put a moratorium on listening to news.  I’m hitting the mute button for a few weeks because I just can’t take it anymore.  The obvious tells in the politicians’ speeches and the stock market and the numerous scares and alarums.  A friend remarked to me that since we already know that horrible things are happening all the time, we really don’t need to have the rehash of it on the news.  Even if it IS NPR.  So the new experiment is to focus on, maybe, what amounts to an ongoing prayer, for the highest good of all.  That seems like a good project.

 

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

After many a tussle of  late, it has become glaringly apparent that to-do lists have to be created with a long time line in mind.  The corollary to that is that one really can not divulge too much of what is on any given to-do list to anyone, perhaps even to oneself, lest other Pressingly Important Things insert themselves as they please.  Which contributes to the faltering to-do list utility.

Today, for example.  I woke up having triumphed over Bilious Attack only to be dismayed at the remembrance of last night’s news which contained some disturbing elements.  About which, more later.  But in any event, the dishes had been washed and the soup made and today was another day,  and visions of coffee cake sort of things were flying around BECAUSE our neighbors have brought us lots of things to eat and I must reciprocate.  That is, really, one of the great things about being here, the sharing and support between (some of the) neighbors.  We traded cucumbers for squash all summer, and I’m in the process of wangling a sourdough bread trade for our friend’s cabbages.  Anyway, something sweet is called for at this juncture.  I have probably made one coffee cake in my entire baking career so it has been something of a poser.  However, while writing this I may just have had a brilliant idea which will also use up our bumper crop of native wild California grapes.  The question is, should I put that on the to-do list?

In any event, today turned into a constant stream of people coming up here, which in and of itself is rather strange.  The man we get our wood from called early and came up with our wood.  His wife just died so we kept him a while to talk and remind him he’s always welcome for dinner.  There were certain crises in the garden that had to be attended to, then another round of neighbors, after a long and fruitless search for my hair dryer which I fear has disappeared.   Since this radical change in life style it has been a constant series of finding out that I did, indeed, get rid of things that I couldn’t imagine I’d do that with.  All for the best but when you need a hair dryer you need a hair dryer.  Meanwhile other chores piled up and I’m wondering how a day could get so completely out of control.  Because, of course, also, all the time I was thinking: You big dummy yousaidyou’dposteveryday.   And, really, when I woke up I had all kinds of ideas to write about which of course evaporated in the course of a day in which it now appears I got absolutely nothing accomplished.  At the moment, it seems I am opposed by the Universe in almost every endeavor that involves anything even close to involving the word “progress”.

However, there was a moment of serendipity (which does happen quite often) in which I picked up a book by William Elliott, TYING ROCKS TO CLOUDS.  I love this book.  It is composed of interviews Elliott did with people like the Dalai Lama, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Pir Vilayat Khan- in short, people to whom he refers  as wise and spiritual .  It flipped open to the interview with Stephen Levine, and the question was What makes you angry? happy? and his response was that one does experience anger, fear, doubt, all those things, but that they do not last.  The latent tendencies we have as human beings are still there, but we can abide with them and open to them.  He said that identification with the hindrances is what keeps us stuck, thoughtless, dark.  I had been thinking about some situations arising in our life at this point, and realizing that we can’t, as the saying goes, solve the problem with the same mind that created it (even though we ourselves didn’t exactly create it and it’s pretty hard to read the so-called mind of the powers that be, but…).  So, essentially the same thing.  I was clinging to the feelings of fear and anger that arose in me in this circumstance.  As I looked at it, it seemed to me that this is almost the very essence of what we are struggling with society wide.  Things are done, said, promoted all over the place, that do nothing but provoke fear, separation, blame, feelings of powerlessness.  This leads to a state of inanition, which then pretty much means that the elements producing the fear theme are able to proceed unhindered.  This is the crux, somehow.  That we finally let go, open up, and step away from the fear and constriction and say, uh, you know? We’re not playing this way anymore.  Let’s figure this out.  Instead of just blindly going on and doing it all the same old way all over again.  Regardless of how it all may turn out which is beyond our ken most of the time SO WHY NOT GIVE SOMETHING NEW A WHIRL?  Seen in that light? The total flame out of today’s to-do list might actually be a good thing.

We Break for Squirrels

Also, we brake.  They are out in full force this summer, the gray squirrels are.  Our resident behind the yurt has gotten to be the size of a VW Bug, and is totally splendid.  Creamy chest and stomach, eloquent gray fur and FABULOUS TAIL.  Seriously, he is incredibly handsome.  Of course he knows it but what of that?  Meanwhile on what turned out to be a perilous trip to town, I encountered a pair of gray squirrels having some kind of interaction in the middle of the road, slowed down and bit my lip since they almost always decide to run right under the car wheels.  These two, however, simply stopped what they were doing, turned around and looked at me in a Can You Just Wait A Minute????HUNH? CAN YOU?? sort of way.  Of course I stopped and uttered a short prayer that no speed freak yahoo zoomed across the culvert right then because we three were in a bit of a blind spot.  The squirrels finished their whatever it was, and with a tiny head toss, were off to either side of the road.  I decided not to think about it any further.

So, when I got out on the main road and work was being done in the Usual Spot- which is to say it is often blocked off with lots of official looking trucks but always and ever looks the same after they’re gone- and i saw a stop sign, I just thought, well it’s that sort of day isn’t it.  GOOD THING I’M NOT IN A HURRY.  This was one of those deals where the road is reduced to one lane and each direction takes turns.  So, OK, it was my turn and the enjacketed, betowelled and hatted (it was about 105 that day) woman holding the stop sign for my lane puts it down.  So, OK!  Dimwit that I am, thinking it was my actual turn to go, I go past her, slightly around, into the oncoming lane because it was the only clear path  (no traffic, remember?) and on my merry way.  Whereupon she goes completely ballistic.  Apparently the little labyrinth she’d constructed out of traffic cones and was moving around in what, to me, was a kabbalistic manner, was the real, actual ROADBLOCK.  That stop sign she was holding was just a teaser.  And Gentle Reader? I was supposed to sit and wait for her to move each one of those cones before proceeding on the narrow path she eventually revealed.  For me, it was weird but I noticed I felt awful about ruining her plan.  I mean, happy to help and all.  Later on in the trip I saw a coyote which made me feel somewhat better, reminding me as it did that nothing is exactly the way it seems all the time.

Anyway, right now I’m reading WRITING DOWN THE BONES, Natalie Goldberg’s famous book about writing.  I’m bemused by the writing tool part, because I used to write with fountain pens (her recommendation) but I can’t find them any more. How things change, right?   But anyway it is about crossing through the resistance and fear and just being in the present moment, where you write.  And, it is to be hoped, connect with the life we all share, swim in, course through.  And thus, make it easier for each other to live because we can see that others experience things as we do and also the world is full of a lot of stuff to experience, perhaps we ought to get to it and get past our own roadblocks.  So even though I need a new box of baking soda for the refrigerator apparently (garlic? cantaloupe? yipes.) and other quotidian things press in like eager fans waiting for an autograph (as in, pay the bills! hah!) and everything else seems as though I’m on the good ship Crazy sailing away from the Land of Sanity, which seems more and more like it maybe never really…was….the colors are bright and I at times remember that only we can free our minds and when we do that even the fearsome stuff becomes less so.  Onward.