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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First, the news…..

We’re watching FAVELA RISING at the moment, or the Partner is and I’m …multi-tasking.  It’s inspiring and dispiriting at the same time, of course, this film.  Incredibly, I think, worth seeing.  It kind of embodies everything in this post (more eloquently of course), plus there is SPECTACULAR drumming.  This post does not have any sound effects at all, since you, Gentle Reader, cannot hear either the intermittent gun shots nor the honking loud truck up on the ridge.

*sigh*.  Just when I was feeling a bit, tiny, tiny, tiny bit better about President Obama.  The Partner wanted to hear the State of the Union speech; he was surprised that I couldn’t have cared less.  We tried streaming it but our internet provider (who I now hate, thoroughly.  I can’t even update my software on this…”service”.) is not quite up to streaming, or much else.   So I read the speech out loud.  We both thought it had some good stuff, Maynard.  Along with the mention of the “small business owner in rural America who can’t sell HER (!) products abroad” (this was connected to an internet topic, but still…), it seemed to contain some common sense, cogent ideas.  So when I saw today that, yes you gullible kids, even though SOPA and PIPA went down, President Obama had already signed in on an agreement that required no Congressional or Judicial oversight or approval at all, LAST OCTOBER, that provides for the mandate of all (as in every single one) ISPs to maintain total information about everything you do on line, and terminate your connection and ability thereto if you violate their rules.  Which of course….are meant to protect the Intellectual Property…of….wait for it!…. all the people who were backing SOPA and PIPA.  Pharma, Entertainment.  Etcetera.   Many countries have already signed on, and apparently the EU and Mexico have indicated that they will sign.  Sometime.

More uplift? Not so much.   It made me a bit crazed for a minute, that revelation.  But then I remembered this.  One of the really big things the Internet has done is allow people all over the world to relate to each other on a peer level.  Share their concerns and realities.  Work toward solutions.  Realize, in short, that we are not alone- we are really all together.  I think about the indomitable spirit out there among all who struggle with the daily obstacles of poverty, injustice, who work toward a better world for all in whatever way they can.  So I decided to take the Dalai Lama’s advice: No reason for too much worry.   I think we will all do just fine, because we’re already doing the work.  Once the inner uproar subsides and the inner back relaxes back down, it can be seen that all this negative, let’s just say it: evil, stuff will sink under its own weight, as those who strive for the good keep moving in the right direction.   Not without cost, but without giving up on truth, and beauty, and love.  No matter what.

And here we are finally at the initial thinking of today.  The Partner is a carpenter, builds houses and all sorts of things.  He was talking about how wood has to be a certain percent dry before building in order for the house to be stable.  Too wet, it’s bad, too dry, also bad.  The resonance of the place is off because the parts are energetically, so to speak, out of synch, so things don’t fit together in the end.  Everything is moving after all, everything has magnetic and electrical currents.  So when a house isn’t in synch with itself, the materials are not really integrated with each other-  it probably won’t be with you either. It is like when you’re looking for a place to live and some places make you really comfortable, others make you want to run and hide.    Out of synch things don’t last as long or as well, either.  Recently I also read a study that discovered (amazing, but there it is that such a thing as this has to be “discovered”) far better health outcomes for poor people who were placed in attractive and harmonious surroundings.  I mean: it doesn’t take much to realize that someone is going to do a whole lot better with their asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes or whatever it might be if they’re living in a well maintained, reasonably safe, light, clean, pleasing to look at place.  Instead of being crammed into some apartment in a dangerous location.   What all this said to me was that we live in a society, a culture, that expects- demands, really- that you do whatever is in front of you whether it is in accord with you or not.  You do a beastly job and you’re thankful because you’re not starving, or on a somewhat higher level you dog paddle because you can buy things you think will make you happy.  You cross borders illegally to work, or you live apart from your family because that’s where your good job sent you.  Or the new one you got after being unemployed sent you.  You live wherever you can find a place, and this can range from awful squalor to simply a cramped place in a neighborhood you like if that’s the level you’re at on the monetized scale.  You may buy a house because of the staging or the prestige of the location, not because you are comfortable in it and really like it yourself.   But nothing is really in synch, in accord, moving in complementary directions.  To me it means that we have a society in which people  are deeply out of touch with themselves, their real goals and aspirations, their physical realities; the prevailing paradigm reinforces that to a big extent.  So we have people who are physically unwell, mentally unwell, all because while we may say that individual rights are important, they really aren’t.  The pressure to do what you “have to” is overwhelming for many and their individuality lessens and lessens as a result.  From my point of view in terms of health particularly, we really do need to be mindful of what is in resonance with us, and what is not.  This is the first step toward awareness, which is what leads toward action of any kind, whether it is toward better health or a better attitude or a better school district, or whatever.  Action taken in resonance is right action because it is action that is in connection, properly, with what is around it.   Right action is what we all need, all the time.  It really isn’t that hard, once you take the first step.  And remember, No need for too much worry!