just write

Well, Gentle Reader. OMG, WTF, and really, just WHY?????? It’s been weeks since I have been able to put paw to keyboard, partly because it’s all Enough Already and I just want to Lie Down, and partly because of the huge amount of Work it has been to stay equilibrated through all this, yes, crap. Words don’t come easily.

On one hand, the quarantine hasn’t changed our DAILY life since we’re out in the middle of nowhere and see no one for the most part. Now? I think I’d be happy living even farther out. But on the other hand, as the designated person to go “into enemy territory” aka grocery shopping, as the Partner puts it, the whole scene has gotten to the point where one can almost not bear it at all. It’s been a long time since going out around here didn’t mean being exposed to verbal assault and innumerable germs and pathogens from maskless sputum spraying individuals, and what with the events of the recent several weeks it’s all turning into a no fly zone before one’s very eyes. It’s so awful for the most part that I couldn’t even be as happy about the person who said to me last year “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat” now saying, “Well, (it) shot himself in the foot, for sure.” One day recently was an apex, wherein I found myself in that apparent epicenter of wack, the post office, backed up against a wall of mailboxes by three LARGE no mask people, all screaming at me that they weren’t sheeple and didn’t do what they were told and were rebels and no damn way were they wearing a mask. This was because I’d indicated where the line ended for the service counter, standing there in my little pink mask with bees on it. Then there was some jerk in a pickup who couldn’t understand why I didn’t drive into traffic on a red light to get away from an ambulance- behind HIM. Fortunately the ambulance driver was alert and yelled at this guy on his siren/megaphone thingy. Flatbed trucks drive around blaring unintelligible “music” with posters of #45 saying God will punish those who didn’t vote for him. NOT EVEN KIDDING. I had pondered writing the County Sheriff, which is what passes for “law enforcement” in this weird little town that spans two counties, asking what plans they had to enforce mask wearing in public places. But then? I went to the Sheriff’s website where I saw the following information. Not only are they not coming out for “calls” of any sort unless there’s an ocean of blood, they are also not wearing masks themselves…because? Some of the officers got claustrophobic. Not even kidding.

ON the other hand, of course, there is REALITY. Which in my opinion, is Nature and Life. We saw an expanse of oak trees the other day and saw that tell-tale hint of pink haze floating above them- the new leaf buds. Spring! Long walks with the Dog where we wind up just standing still in a meadow, watching all the life and energy around us. It’s breathtaking and a reminder that all this…quotidian stuff, as awful as it is (and it IS awful) is not really…REAL. It’s the thought forms, energies, attitudes, of some individuals and groups and even institutions, who are for some reason flying in the face of the immutable and trying to assert their puny little impulses of greed and power over and selfishness and hatefulness. It is to be risen above, of course, holding to Unity and the knowledge that even the most craptastic individual in these incidents is in pain and non-comprehension, and staying calm and neutral is almost the only rational response. We have varying degrees of success with this Project, let’s just say. The mask really helps in this endeavor, covering the mouth as it does and obscuring the periodic laughs of astonishment. (At things like, you’re going to HELL! and I’m thinking, Jeez, aren’t we already there? or, I’m not stupid you know, and I’m thinking, GOD. What a RELIEF).

Anyway, weird as it is, we are all in this together. For our part, we’re looking forward to the next garden, the fig pizzas and grape sherbet, cucumbers and beans, the peace that comes from doing what needs to be done on the most basic and essential levels. It’s interesting to see how much you get done when you’re not “doing it”. The Partner has been culling dead trees this winter and the land itself looks almost like it’s stretching and saying, thanks! this is a LOT better! The Dog minds about 96% of the time which shocks me, always. Until he looks at me and as much as says, I’m humoring you now, don’t let it go to your head. It’s hard to get things accomplished in terms of the worldly tasks (among which I count vacuuming) but then again, pushing against the river never gets you very far. Reading the Dalai Lama is much more effective, it turns out. I still have an apparently indomitable sense that all will be well and it always is, anyway. It’s a lot in how you look at it, as we all know. So: hugs and kisses, smiles and deep breaths. Blessings and thanks!

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walking the line

I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but I am not really looking forward to the eclipses barrelling toward us.  Regardless of your metaphysical perspective, it seems to me lately that almost everyone feels pulled, toward what they don’t know, pushed, and they don’t like that much, and generally frizzled.  Eclipses are like the giant reset button in the sky being hit on a lot of levels and….I think we’re all kind of tired.  Anyway, I know I am.

Still.  I read something this morning, again in Patanjali, that made a lot of sense.  Once you can stop looking at time, clock and western world defined time I mean, as a Real Thing, and accept it for the construct it is that actually lives, truly,  in your watch, it’s possible to have a different approach to past and future.  With some discipline and effort, you can (really!) keep them from bleeding into the present, which means that you actually have one.  The now really is quite roomy when left to itself.

Another really groovy thing about it is that when you are IN the present, you’re not having opinions about the past, or hopes and fears about the future.  You’re too busy attending to the what IS.  The longer you can maintain this at any given juncture, the better the what IS gets and that can mean great ideas, a calm mind, all kinds of things.

Not to say that this is easy.  How often do you find yourself ruminating about some long past Episode or even more fruitlessly WORRYING ABOUT SOMETHING?  I can speak with some authority on this because, given the solitude we live in, there’s plenty of time to rehash those non-witty non-ripostes, and also to worry about the ever looming and expanding list of WHAT IF’S.  Something happened yesterday and it plunged me into a quite moody abyss.  However, I thought, really not liking this feeling state.  Let’s see…..and of course I realized that I had in the twinkling of a bird’s eye placed all kinds of disaster scenarios on this one more than likely non-event.  Even if the worst DID happen? What was I accomplishing except ruining what could have been reasonable moments??? leading up to??  And of course in this particular moment (as usual) there really was nothing to worry, despair, or be perturbed about.  I have to say I was rather proud of myself for the five minute meditation retreat I took which allowed me to get back on the horse.  (I did burst into tears a bit later whilst picking up dog doody- which somewhat shockingly reminded me of the army one Greek hero sowed with dragon’s teeth- in 100+ degree heat but, well, chalk that up to short childish outbursts.  Nothing a glass of Fortified orange juice can’t handle.)

Net net what I think this means is that it IS possible to get through a day with minimal or no blood loss, no matter what kind it is.  If you are in the now, you are thinking of what works in that space.  Not about what didn’t work in another space or what might happen if pigs started flying around your bedroom.  Given that pigs ARE flying around a lot of places they shouldn’t be, it may mean that one’s thoughts go to how the droppings might be productively used.  Can a window be opened so they can fly out? sort of thing.  Maybe they’ll all fall asleep? How can this actually work overall?  Of course this means that you have taken yourself out of the position of Center of Everything and Most Important, and joined the rest of the universe in its giant circle dance.  Which also means that, since you’re dancing, aggression and frustration are sitting this one out. Again and again the message seems to be pay attention to what you are seeing and feeling NOW, not to the blunt instruments of yesterday’s “thinking”.

So I think there’s hope, giant reset button and all.  Have a good week, blessings and thanks!!

fearless leader

Of all the things I miss, Rocky and Bullwinkle is way up on the list.  Somehow, it was always so calming in its witty way.

When I got up today I REALLYREALLYREALLY wished Rocky and Bullwinkle was on tv.  But it wasn’t.  As often happens as we pull ourselves into daily reality, the Partner offered his morning thoughts, which happened today to be about the invention of watches.  (Yes.  And it is good for me to think about such things before my eyes are fully open.) We figured watches became necessary about the time that capital became the Ruling Thing here on earth.  Seriously.  Why would you need to know what time someone else decided it was when on some level it was simply a way to get you to do what they wanted?  Be here at 8 am, sort of thing.  Work all day for my benefit.  Good fun, and don’t be late.  Anyway, time and watches and clocks have always seemed a bit strange to me, dividing and marking something that is really ineffable and expands and shrinks as it sees fit, and also as a confinement to a tiny scale of what you can know when you look up at the sky.    In any event,  there’s something about my system that kills watches: Battery operated watches stop within 36 hours, routinely, and windup watches- well, it was interesting to see what THEY did.  I had a glittery one once, that was the best watch ever especially since it had no numbers and tiny hands on a face of crystals and it didn’t really matter what time it was.  In any event, not a watch person.

The Partner was marvelling at the logistics of simply making a watch at all in the 1600 or 1700’s.  Shaping and cutting metal, making gears, the optics needed to even see these things.  He said, they knew what this thing looked like inside before they knew how to make it.    It coincided with something I’ve been thinking about this week, oddly, which is this.  Everything we learn in life follows this pattern- we sense it, the shape and size and configuration of whatever it is, long before we know how to make it or maintain it or really understand what it is.

It became absolutely clear recently that, in fact, our thoughts really DO create the biggest part of our reality.  How we think colors what we observe, what we see, how we feel about all those things, what our expectations are (which in turn creates quite a bit of what actually happens).  Healing is about this very process.  What our core beliefs are, our deepest feelings and understandings, these things influence us profoundly and often are inaccessible to our conscious minds.  The work of getting to what a person really thinks and believes is the work of becoming whole.  So often, though, we cling to the very thoughts and conceptions that keep us prisoners and simply wishing things to be otherwise does not do the trick.  Even knowing that by keeping our thoughts in balance we improve our lives doesn’t mean we can really do it all the time.  So in essence, we know what the inside of the watch looks like- we just don’t know how to spark it into being or perhaps even what might happen if we did.

The other element to this is that as long as we are moving according to unconscious habit and motivation, it is hard to see that the successes we have in strengthening our awareness do not make everything different- and in fact, that isn’t necessary at all.  It is as it is; what changes is how we see it.  Our pattern shifts and different connections manifest.  This creates movement and change and elevates, in a sense, everyone’s game.   Once YOU feel better and more integrated, everyone around you finds they can breathe more easily too somehow.  No bossing around required.  Then the next lesson appears which is about letting go.

And what do we need to let go of?  The things that bind and constrict.  Expectations and resentments.  The effort to be something you are not because someone else wants that (watches anyone?).  The seeking outside oneself for answers and vesting our own authority and responsibility in someone else.  Then, of course, we can be upset when things don’t go as we wish and drama ensues, attention happens. But the basic structural defect, if we can call it that, is still there and our vehicle will just go in the same, ever smaller, circle.   Which often ends in a very deep hole.

That small circle serves a purpose, of course- it makes us feel we are not alone, gets some room between us and that existential sucky swamp of fear and dread.  Not in a lasting way, however, as I have found.  The longer you insist on staying in that small circumference, the harder it is going to be when the spring gets sprung and you are catapulted out of the life you knew one way or another.  What you resist persists, and there can be some real inter-brain trench warfare just getting out of the way.

The thing of it turns out to be maintaining a sense of awe, I think.  Those glimpses of understanding, of the movements of nature and time and curiosity and learning, are heady things indeed, and they have an energy and power to them that moves us along if we let it.  We don’t know, really, what’s going on here, or what is going to happen.  Really.  We don’t.  It seems, then, that a sensible open minded observant approach may be the best.   Things happen for good and for bad, and we really don’t have a whole lot of control over anything but our responses.  Paying attention to those responses and developing a respect for them, trusting them to work for us and developing faith (which has nothing to do with religion) that they will- a big challenge but it does get the job done over time.  We may not truly know what our “successes” and “failures” are in this life, and we certainly often don’t know when we’ve done some small thing that makes a big difference.  But these things happen, it’s not necessary to have every last detail, and I think it is true that Creator loves us when we sing.  Fewer watches, more songs- might be a plan.

The Press of Time

Things, as in all things and as in time itself,  do seem to be speeding up.  Everyone notices it,  and finds it to be challenging to a greater or lesser extent.  It’s like time is literally flying by us, and it all may look the same in the “real world”, but physical life knows it isn’t and there’s a bit of a push/pull, trying to make sense of things as they go past, of our feelings as they swirl and eddy.  How to make sense of what we’re doing, make plans when everything is in such flux if not outright chaos.  I’m watching people I know working through what needs to be done in their lives, making plans and decisions that change with dizzying and speedy regularity.  Usually, I just listen. My own decisions are marching around on their own, practicing how to get themselves in order, and are thus unreachable for comment.

However, and, but.  There do seem to be complementary tracks, even if we feel at times as though we’re following those tracks like dogs with their noses in the grass pursuing bugs.  On the one hand, there’s a LOT of information floating around everywhere in this technological world.  On the other hand? There seems to be an extraction of content from a fair amount of this information.  Where does this leave you?  In the continuing story of the pondering of business and other directions here in Yurt Central, it still seems to me that the inclusion of content and meaning is crucial.  All the well meaning admonitions one receives about paragraph length in a newsletter (or heck! in a blog), and that those paragraphs should all be short so that people can pay attention…..combined with a conversation where someone was talking about what constitutes organic growing and pretty much misrepresenting the basics in order to make a sale, made me stop and wring my paws.  My bias is toward inclusion.  Obviously.  And if we are to change the way things are, the way the world is, we are not going to accomplish that by becoming more stupid, more unconscious, more oriented to having all direction come from outside in specific patterns and sizes and lengths.    We’re looking for INCLUSION, Gentle Reader, and dare we say it, expansion of awareness.  Not contraction.

Combining all this with the (very) dismaying progress in Syria, as well as of politics here in the States, the deadlocked, diatribe ridden (but SHORT PARAGRAPHED!) and/or just downright limited and backward things happening, I come back to the same thing every time.  You have to think for yourself:  nobody else can do that for you.  Thinking for yourself may be frowned upon in some places but it is still essential. ( Just as freedom is, could we but remember that. ) And after thinking, you can explain what you saw and understood to others.  Then, those others can understand the same things, act on their own behalf (crucial in any sort of healing process), and create some dynamism, movement, and progress for everyone.  So, really.  We need those long paragraphs, Gentle Reader!  We need calm, some room to think and develop.  Some quiet and space.  Knowledge, as opposed to propaganda- which is what, of course, advertising is and quite often even the “news”.  We are not presented with the truth, but with an image of what someone else wants truth to look like.  And what that someone else also wants YOU to accept, buy, do.  This lemming- like hurtle toward what’s hot/what’s not and all the artificial constructs we accept as reality is not, ultimately, going to serve us well.  In fact it is looking more and more like The Great Leap Backward.  Especially for women.  So, that was today’s epic think-through. It’s like those fractal rough spots-  those spots reveal the shapes and beings of everything around them and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t fly.  So, finally, a decision.  We embrace long sentences and long paragraphs here.  Happen what may.  (Ahem.)(Scenes from Toiling In Obscurity?)

Meanwhile, for diversion nothing really surpasses the horses next door.  They’re by themselves most of the time, and thus have whole routines and things they do just in the course of their days, since they think nobody’s watching and we are, at this point, largely part of their herd so they don’t worry about US. ( Except to alert us to their need for carrots.)  For example, they’re in a sloping corral area.  They’ll take turns walking, one of them, up to the top of the corral with the other staying down in the bottom.   Then, they’ll “ignore” each other until one breaks down and begins to amble down to the other.  The ear movement during all this is sensational: up, down, swivel, front, side, wiggle.  Maybe a blow out the nose.  After some short time passes during which length of corral/time/distance are measured in equine terms, inevitably the horse on the lower area of the corral makes a break for the top area, and a fair amount of astonishing head and mane shaking ensues.  Then sometimes they chase each other around, or play tag with things they find on the ground.  Sierra, the white horse, absolutely loves to roll in the mud.  The other day she was doing just that, reveling in abandon, when she noticed The Partner walking past the fence.  She gave him a quick, appraising glance and went right back to the mud.  It’s a different story with the border collie, though.  The dog was out playing the dozens with Copper, The Guy Horse, and the head movements and shakes, the lunges and snaps and hoof gesturing were all clearly saying:

DOG- nyah nyah nyah

HORSE- come over here and say that, right here!

DOG- lunge and miss

HORSE- keep it up.  I can do this all day.  WITH PLEASURE.

But the really great thing is we can always walk over there and get showered with horse kisses now.  Which is the next plan, after, of course, we let the Conure Cabal out for their afternoon fly around.  Continuing reinvention can wait a bit.