Tiny Bubbles

That’s sort of what the inner mind looks like right now: Bubbles swirling around, rising and bursting.  It’s constant movement, so unless one is Right On It, lotsa those brilliant bubbles just float…away…and one is left with the awareness that there was, yes! really!, a flash of understanding, a moment’s repose, and then….uh…….huh?

But at the moment,  the concept we’re getting the Intensive on is perception.  We see what we expect to see.  So, when we’ve misplaced something for example, it can take a long time to find it because we, perhaps unconsciously, keep looking at where we expect it to be instead of clearing our mind’s eye and scanning the whole area impartially.  Of course Attitude influences Perception.  So, on that last lengthy trip down the rabbit hole I couldn’t get right side up for a while because my attitude was…on a par with a squashed Dixie cup.    I do feel that the Stuff that’s Going On right now is affecting how everyone on earth feels, whether they know it consciously or not.  So many things are staring us all in the face at present we just can’t see it all.   And that can make it seem as though there are no options, not just for whatever we’re trying to figure out, but at all.  That, of course, does not help at all.

So, when my kind Gentle Reader mentioned that…well, basically tags have a purpose….it was a tiny bubble moment.  Because what I saw was that, essentially, tags are a way of describing something, in a specific sort of shorthand way.  The way *I* look at thing like tags is as a broad philosophical sweep that doesn’t include enough concrete definition.  To oversimplify.  And? This is an ongoing feature of my challenging engagement with The World.  Who knew?  So that was a really good piece of information and now? Now I get to learn how to do something new.  Analyze things in a totally different way.  I’d come to the conclusion, while sitting in a small and wonderful German cafe in Berkeley waiting for my mechanic, that I’d raked over the coals so much they all had parts in their hair and I was no closer to either question or answer than ever.  This meant that once again I had brilliantly replicated Einstein’s definition of insanity.  Something I’m really good at, as it happens.  So the idea of looking at things in a piece by piece way instead of an amorphous all overish way…well, it’s different.    I managed to pull myself together, mop my eyes, snag my notebook and write down the salient points, just as a start.  There was a bit of a distraction- or perhaps a clue- provided by two women sitting next to me eating lunch.  They were discussing how so very  many people they knew were out of work and desperate, needing to be “taken in” (in one case), and how they (the two women) weren’t going to do that.  “Something will happen” they said.  “He/She/They will be all right.”  And so they kind of tagged all that as managed.  Not their problem.

Seeing as how I felt some not small similarity to the Unemployed Individuals, and nothing in the following interactions of the afternoon  made me feel much better about Things as They Are, and I had actually starting writing some defining words down in that cafe (OMG, I thought.  Now I’m one of those people sitting at a cafe table writing! Holy Cats!), when I got home to the Tag Comment, it was like a big light went on.    My teacher used to say that true listening is healing.  And we all need a witness.  It’s just that sometimes that witness has to perform a describing function to complete the circle, as it were.  Things now are on a knife edge, and clarity is fundamental to the navigation of that edge.  I drove back up north, through the gathering dusk, purple clouds and rolling brown hills (now we’re in a drought, usually they’d be green) feeling all of us hurtling through space toward whatever destination there may be.  We may, and probably do, tell ourselves that “something will happen” implying a dramatic rescue, but I think we’re at a point now where Tags are, really, not just our friends but important ones.  We have to start calling things by their proper names.  Otherwise we won’t be able to see the whole picture.

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Conflicted Hour

Usually, of course, it’s Happy Hour.  I KNOW THAT.  Still, with the extra load of (self inflicted, I admit it) pain and injury and having once again looked at the news, it’s more of an alligator wrestle with the mind to get it to sit down and focus on the important things, like…dinner?

Speaking of which, last night we did indeed have chilis.  In a sauce that eventually required more heat than originally included.  So I put a small piece of habanero in, from an already cut specimen on the counter.  I always test them with my finger to see what to expect.  I touched the end of the chili, but being a bit dried it revealed nothing.  So, I, Genius, got my finger wet, touched the chili, put the finger in my mouth.  Then, in an extraordinary display, even for me, I put that same finger ( I’d rinsed it off by then while screaming) in my eye.  Yes.  There’s also a third degree burn on one hand and an injured thumb on the other.

So then.  This morning I learn that the Oakland P.D. shot an unarmed and nonviolent #occupy oakland protester.  In the head.  They haven’t commented, the OPD.  Why should they?  The video footage makes you want to scream.  Two IVAW and Veterans for Peace members are standing at the perimeter of the “protesters”, in front of the barriers behind which stand the Darth Vader’d Out aforementioned OPD.  These two men, one of whom is in a Navy uniform, the other of whom is in a camo jacket and booney hat, both well worn and obviously by him for a long time, are standing quietly and peacefully between the OPD and the crowd.  Suddenly you see a projectile and sparks and the man in the camo jacket, Scott Olsen, is on the ground.  People from the crowd quickly rush up to help him- remember this is in front of the barricade behind which stand people..uh, sworn to protect and serve and who see this man fall to the ground with a head wound (which I am pretty sure they witnessed as it happened.  Unless they were napping at the time.).  And then? Then the OPD contingent fires a tear gas/ flame thingy RIGHT NEXT TO OLSENS’ HEAD.  While he’s on the ground.  Filling the area with smoke so no one can see or do anything.  Except the Navy guy who had, after calling for help at first injury,  immediately walked right over to the OPD line, faced them, and presented the Vets for Peace flag: At Arms.  So, to continue getting this straight, this man lying on the ground bleeding from the head  in front of the OPD line has served, at age 24, two tours in Iraq. ( Which for OPD? is probably more often than not pronounced EYE RACK.)   No injuries or wounds except the ones you can’t see.  Until now, when he is exercising his supposed First Amendment rights, peacefully and non violently and documentedly to boot.  (oh, dear…) When he gets shot by civilian police.  With a tear gas cannister to the head.  For extra fun he gets to go to Highland Hospital, about which I have written before.  Because, see? The Partner is FROM Oakland, and I have lived in and around it for the bulk of my adult life.  Until we Came To The Yurt.  So we already know OPD.  This seems pretty raw even for them.   And they are renowned for raw.

It makes me think that back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the Black Panthers were a presence in the community, and people in East Oakland often took shots at the OPD helicopters buzzing their neighborhoods with bright lights at all hours of the night (ever had that happen? It is quite something, and a real test of your commitment to non violence)- maybe they weren’t wrong to do that, take that shot, say You Can’t Do This In My Neighborhood.  It’s just that it never gets anywhere, that sort of action.  Which seems to be something Mr. Olsen understood and felt strongly enough about ( perhaps naively but what the hell- he earned the right) to attempt to express the awareness that peace IS the way,  in a setting where it might be of service, the best way he could see at the time.  Perhaps, if this senseless act provokes some communication it will be of immeasurable service.  But I think about his mom and his friends.  And him.  And it took me a long time to stop crying today and although I still don’t know how to deal with all this? One thing is for sure.

I’m a person who has always voted, has always felt it was profoundly important.  Now I see we have a completely corruptible system, we know voting has been a sham and twisted to the purposes of those who meant to win no matter what. The people who are running for and in office are despicable more often than not, and also more like something straight out of the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual than is even palatable to think about.  It is very largely about how much money they can raise.  So I decided to register to vote up here- I hadn’t yet, being so disgusted and confused about it all- only to enter NONE OF THE ABOVE.  Some how, some way, Gentle Reader, fellow beings, we have to turn this thing around.  We are here on earth now, and really.  We need to remember that.  We have to have an alternative so that we can all move forward for the good of all, not just the few.