Stand still. Let it find you.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner ~
(Riverbed)

It Is I Who Must Begin

It Is I Who Must Begin

 It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try —

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

— to live in harmony

with the “voice of Being,” as I

understand it within myself

— as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover,

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

upon that road.

Whether all is really lost

or not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

~ Václav Havel ~

The poem It Is I Who Must Begin, by Václav Havel

by separating nature from economics

By separating nature from economics, we are walking into avoidable tragedy. Great article in the Guardian from the UK. I get better coverage of U.S. issues in the Guardian than our corporate-owned media. The Guardian maybe be corporated owned, for all I know, but it covers US stories that US media either ignore or give short shrift.

separating nature from economics = tragedy

complicated grief

Complicated grief has been studied only when someone experiences the death of a loved one. I think complicated grief can apply to life losses besides death. Having my daughter cut me off completely fourteen years ago, and maintaining her refusal to have a relationship with me, sometimes seems like a harder loss than a child's death. She's out there actively, although probably not actually thinking about me at all, rejecting me, actively not participating in a family life with me.

Complicated grief is found most often when someone loses the love of their life. I have lost the friend of my life. And I am not getting over it. He's still in the world. I can't get past my longing to have his friendship.

The NYTimes Well column has an article on complicated grief today:
when-grief-wont-relent

As the article states, recommended treatment for complicated grief is a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy, not traditional psychoanalysis. I think only rich people can afford talk therapy these days. And I have participated in some cognitive behavioral therapy. I couldn't stand it.

If I had access to a sixteen week complicated grief treatment program, I'd participate but I doubt that I would be admitted.

Not many recognize that someone can experience enduring, complicated grief over the loss of a relationship, such as the loss of a relationship with my only child.

An acquaintance once responded to my expression of grief over the loss of my daughter with a stern, even angry lecture. He told me I should be grateful she is alive and to stop feeling sorry for myself.  People can be insensitive.

I don't care if I fit someo official criteria for complicated grief. I am experiencing complicated grief over two losses. And, as the article points out, I am experiencing physical and emotional health consequences that diminish my quality of life and probably are shortening my life. Shorten away.  I welcome death, welcome an escape from my complicated grief.

no intention or desire

He wrote, last fall, and I quote, "I have no intention or desire to communicate with you."

That's clear.

Unequivocal.

Black and white.

Rigid.

A hard line.

I have to accept his decision to shun me, to not even be willing to maintain a cordial, civil acquaintance. 

So how's come I can't?   How's come my being is so stubborn?

Stubborn. That word reminded me of a time when I was in college, and so was my Irish Twin, my brother Joe who is eleven months younger than me. We went to different colleges. Joe was accepted to Yale but he went to Eastern Illinois University because it was close to free for him, with scholarships.  Yale wouldn't have cost more, I think. I guess he was not ready to fly so far from Chicago.  I don't know.

When we had been very young, Joe used to protect me from our older brother, Chuck the Fuck.  Chuck loved to beat on his younger siblings.  Although younger than both me and Chuck, Joe grew to be a lot taller and more solid than Chuck by the time Joe was three. He told Chuck, for our parents never tried to stop their first born penis from anything he wanted to do, that if he ever hit me again, Joe would beat him. A three year old!  Joe and I were close in the early years but once he got to grade school, he discovered Billy Barrett, on the next block. He spent all his time at Billy's when he wasn't in school.  Chuck didn't beat me again. We had more siblings, little helpless ones, for Chuck to focus on.

Anyway.  One time in college, Joe became very angry with me. At the time, I did not understand what I had done to anger him. I still don't. While he angrily yelled at me, he shouted "You are the most stubborn person I know!".

Me, stubborn?

I guess Joe saw something in me I was unable to see in myself.

I see my stubbornness in my failure to accept "I have no intention or desire to communicate."  I don't call this guy. Even though he agreed to have a state of grace dialogue within a year after he rejected me, he refused to have it. The quote was his response to my last request that he speak to me for a state of grace conversation.  So on some level, I have accepted he's gone from my life. I can't make him be my friend.

And I don't want anyone in my life if I have to beg, plead, cajole or 'make' them spend time with me, even if I could make someone do something they don't want to do. But I can't make others do anything.

And I can't be kinder to myself and stop wishing, hoping, praying and dreaming.  I've never

remembering

Lately I have had to laugh at myself each time I recall, as I have been only very recently, my eighteen year old self as she started college.  For most of my college years, I believed that I could only consider myself educated when I would know all the references that all the writers/thinkers that I read for my courses mentioned. I didn't just read the reading assignment. I would spend almost all my non-class time in the library. Studying, of course, but also trying to read all the material mentioned in all bibliographies.  I don't think I have ever told this to anyone before, that I thought a well educated person would have been familiar with all the thinkers annotated in bibliographies. 

I slogged it out pretty well, actually.  During my late twenties, I socialized with a circle of married couples (I was married too) who got together to play games. Most often we played Trivia. Everyone wanted to team up with me because I knew more trivia than anyone else in our circle.  I remember one woman in that circle  being amazed when I knew the names  of so many artists. My mom had taken me to a world class art museum once a month, every month, until I left home for college. My mom had gone to college while I was in high school and I read all her texts. As my mom often remarked, I would read the dictionary if it was the only thing available to read. I also read all my brothers' books, throughout my childhood. I felt furtive reading boy books and my older brother forbid me so I read on the sneak.

My most intense reading was my first year of law school and, imho, law school is amazing training in reading philosophy. Many of our great jurists on the Supreme Court were great writers and the law is philosophy, after all is said and done. In the first year, most law students are expected to read 300 to 400 pages a night and since first year law students are not accustomed to legal jargon, legal philosophy or much of anything related to the law, reading all those pages well enough to report fluently on what one had read was time consuming. Things eased up in my second year. That first year, I would look up, it felt like, every other word in my fat Black's Law Dictionary and even after reading endless definitions of legal terminology, I wouldn't really comprehend it. But I summarized every single case, identifying the facts, the holding and a brief summary of the legal analysis used by the judge to arrive at his holding/decision. Law profs would make seating charts and you had to sit in the same spot daily so the prof could call on you out of the blue, know who you were and where you were and if you could not summarize any case in that day's assignment, it affected your grade.

I learned in law school that I had, and still do I believe, an amazing ability that not many people have. I could read the U.S. Tax Code when in a tax class. From my college habit of reading all the footnotes and following up on them, I read all the endless annotations in the U.S. Tax Code, the U.S. Bankruptcy Code when I took Bankruptcy Law and the Uniform Commercial Code, which is the driest of all these very dry areas of legal code. I would read these things and not really think I comprehended anything but when asked a question in class or on a test, it was like my brain had uploaded the 'software' of what I had read and I could run the program and spew out accurate answers.

What made me think of this weird aspect of me?  And why did I just all it weird. I am proud of my ability to inhale massive quantities of dry material and, somehow, retain what I read.

I liked the law prof who taught most of the tax courses, so I took a lot of tax courses. It was an opportunity to use my unusual skill. When he learned I could inhale tax code almost as easily as a computer uploads software these days, he urged me to go into tax law, or bankruptcy law or some area of the law that relies heavily on financial reliance on legal codes. Yech, such a career sounded so dull to me but I remember feeling some regret that I could not show off.

I have an unusual capacity of memory.

Emerson, mystical humanist

Did you know this about Emerson?   Please don't be put off when you see it is a discussion of Esalen and its presence in the final episodes of the tv show Mad Men.  The glimpses it gave me into Emerson's thoughts on spirituality might be familiar to you but they were new to me. 

"I once had the pleasure of teaching for a year at Harvard Divinity School. My office was on the same floor and just three doors down from the little chapel where the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his famous Divinity School Address on July 15, 1838. In this sermon, originally read to just six graduating students, their families, and faculty members, Emerson denied the unique divinity of Christ, affirmed the divinity of the "infinite Soul," and celebrated the inspiration, indeed revelation, of contemporary religious experience. He called on his listeners to “live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind" and to refuse the temptation of traditional authority: “Let me admonish you, first of all,” he exhorted the graduates, “to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.”

Emerson was inviting his listeners and readers to move beyond “historical Christianity,” an institution whose perverse mythologization of Jesus as the only divine human being and whose slavish reliance on the Bible as somehow final and complete he found particularly odious.

More positively, what he wanted was a democratic, individualized form of spirituality that is fundamentally open to present and future revelations, not just past ones. The goal of the religious life for Emerson was not Christianity. It was consciousness, or what he would later call the Over-Soul. “Man is a stream whose source is hidden,” he wrote in another essay. “Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.”

Despite charges of impious offense, atheism, and blasphemy following Emerson's speech, his mystical humanism and transgressive individualism were never effectively silenced, and they have since had a long run in American religious history: most immediately among Emerson’s own

Transcendentalist circles, but also among countless individuals who have lived under the broad, generous sky of what the historian Catherine Albanese has called “metaphysical religion,” that immense swath of mystical, gnostic, and esoteric traditions that encompasses everything from the early Swedenborgians, the Mesmerists, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, and Theosophists, to the contemporary human-potential and New Age movements. There is more, it turns out, to American religious history than evangelical fervor and denominations."

The above quote is from an article on the dailybeast. Here is the link. Don't be put off by the photo of Mad Men's Don Draper. It is an interesting article, with more about Emerson than Esalen or Mad Men.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/23/inside-don-draper-s-big-sur-nirvana-the-esalen-institute.html?via=desktop&source=facebook

A former friend wrote his doctoral dissertation on Emerson. At the time I first met him, other than his faculty committee, no one had read it. I read it. It was about Emerson's political thought. I don't remember much about Emerson's spiritual ideas, although I bet this former friend was, and is, aware of Emerson's untraditional spiritual views. Emerson was, after all, a renown Transcendentalist.

I think it is interesting. I think Emerson contributed to a discussion of cultural evolution related to spirituality.  Plus the guy was a beautiful writer, even a poet.

one hand one heart

I have found my coheart. He wants nothing to do with me.

How do I get past that?  I don't want to hang onto my certitude that he is a portal to my Self.  I can't believe I am so stubbornly certain he is my man. It is like an infection, one with no cure.  So is this my work now, sitting in the fire of grievous loss?

I was not looking for him. I never expected to find someone who got me. And I absolutely never imagined a man might exist that I could love like I love this guy. Being with him made me even happier than being with my newborn, and that is a powerful admission.

My heart, he is a piece of my heart, yet will have nothing to do with me.

The possibility that I could live decades longer and not have him at my side is so hard for me.  I waver. I have immersed myself in activity and socializing and activity with humans does distract me but it does nothing to dissipate my suffering, it is always waiting for me. Other times, I surrender to my suffering, not attempting to do anything but ride the painful waves of loss.  Accepting this loss might be harder than losing my daughter, although each loss is so vast, so girevous.  I cannot escape my suffering. Sometimes, and this would be a good day full of pain but with flickers of light, I tell myself this is my life now, sitting with the pain of unbearable loss. Then I think how nice it would be if I would hurry up and die so this part of my journey will end. But I don't. The sun comes up on my sundial every day.  My pain is fresh.  My isolation deep.

One glance from him completes something in me that I never realize is incomplete until he was at my side completing me. What sap. He completes me. He does. And this is energy I am writing of.  If I am able to feel his energy nearby, I am complete. Who wouldn't want that to stay? and how to accept such a loss?  people get over such loss.  I know myself. I will never get over it.

complaints are like second hand smoke

Jon Gordon, author of The No Complaining Rule says "The more we look at something that can hurt us and kill us, we are programmed to be on guard against that."  . . But all of that whining comes with a cost. When we complalin, our brains release stress hormones that harm neural connections in areas used for problem solving and other cognitive functions.  This also happens when we listen to someone else moan and groan.  "It's as bad as secondhand smoke," Gordon says.  "It's second hand complaining."  Just as smoking is banned in most offices, one entrepreneur says he has banned complaning among his team members. He gives them one chance and if he catches them complaning a second time, that's it for them.

This is excerpted from an article at fastcompany.com. I share the link to the whole article  but the above excerpt is the essence of the article for me.

Here's link to the whole article:  avoid second hand complaints

The Six Exercises of Rudolf Steiner

THE SIX EXERCISES of Rudolf Steiner
elaborated by Tom van Gelder
Here is a brief encapsulation of the 6 basic exercises that originate from Rudolf Steiner paraphrased by Michaela Glockler. These exercises are meant to provide a means of tuning our moral compass centered in the human heart which is of indispensable importance as health-sustaining guidance for anyone who chooses to embark upon a path of inner development. Ideally our social interactions could be informed by the human capacities and virtues that can be cultivated with the help of these exercises.

(1) Controlling our thoughts on the basis of truth.
(2) Becoming conscious of our will impulses.
(3) Controlling our feeling life that always has personal nuances.
(4) Cultivating positivity in dealing with others and with things.
(5) Being open to what life and destiny may bring.
(6) Developing an attitude in life that brings a balance to all these exercises.
For those who would like to immerse themselves more deeply into these Six Basic Excercises originally given by Rudolf Steiner the following link provides access to an elaboration written by Tom van Gelder
http://dynamisch.nu/feno/pdf/basic.pdf

anything to avoid facing our own souls

Snippet of this fine essay:  There is no living a soul-centered life without being authentic — without mustering the courage to do the excavating in the dark: the Shadow work.
Again, C. G. Jung: “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”  (emphasis added)



"AUTHENTICITY: INHABITING WILDLY TENDER REVOLUTION
by Melissa La Flamme
When you live from your intuitive core, your belly, your heart, let your soul lead and spirit guide you, your words and actions will be naturally subversive.
You will go to your edge. You will soften. Become wildly tender.
Question is, will you wholly inhabit your own revolution? In beauty? This inner revolution is a perpetual ceremony of the heart. It's what you are for.
When you are real, cooked down to essence, rather than half-baked to get approval, to look good, the projections from others may fly, seek you out and try to stick to you. Don't let them. Instead, let your authenticity support you in carrying on whole-hearted, vulnerable conversation to resolve whatever arises. It is hard work. Uncomfortable. Deeply human. Can be harrowing. And often downright delicious. Intimate. Naked. Courageous work marked by your solid presence. Here. Now.
I'd rather be whole than good, C. G. Jung said. And by whole, he meant real, messy, ensouled, deeply human, heart-broken open with compassion flowing first to ourselves, to resource and prepare to let it flow widely, to others.
Being too comfortable, amenable, pliable to the point of contorting yourself — is a ticket to selling your soul right up the river. Don't buy it. When you live from your own knowing-ness, from your gut and your wildly-rooted intelligence, you feel alive. Genuinely, madly, creatively alive.
Being real — true to your Self, your soul — is gritty. And grit causes friction, makes fire to clear the way for living a revolutionary act. This act is marked by action that the earth and the soul of the world are crying out for. And the cry is going to get louder, more pain-filled, and grievous before enough souls answer wholeheartedly.
When you get real, it is actually not about you. Your individual program is only the ground from which you step. From which you step and choose whether you will make this life of yours a walk of grit and beauty, or one of accommodation to the forces that insist you do it their way, be well-behaved, produce, consume, make nice, and as the poet, Mary Oliver says, "barely breathing and calling it a life."
Thing is we're not talking a self-improvement project; that's only the gateway. We are being used. By Spirit. One way or the other: we go consciously or we are abducted — individually and collectively, now. So it's a great time to dive in.
When we realize we have no choice but to offer ourselves up — like a sacrifice — to the mystery of Great Spirit's guidance, this guidance insists on shaping us as a soul-centered contributor. And we're in it! Soul's got us. And Spirit carries us along. We're goners to those egoic, mechanistic, competitive ways; the ways that have undone the earth and so many souls who walk the earth, swim her waters, send roots down into her and watch from the skies.
To inhabit your own core, your vital, knowing center and a soul-centered way of being, you need to do the inner excavation. What we call, in Jungian psychology-speak, Shadow work and in shamanic speak, Underworld soul work, including ego-dismemberment work to heal old wounds and retrieve parts of your soul you had otherwise disowned or split off. We need these pieces of our souls, as well as aspects of our bodies, and our connection with Spirit, and with the earth, along with the Other-than-human-ones and wild intelligent forms of life — to feel deliciously alive, ready to roll, to serve this crying earth and love 'em up.
This is real adult work, asking everything of you. And will alter your world completely, but before that happens you'll be met with severing old ways, dismemberment, metaphoric death, dreams, visions — both lovely and horrifically heart-pounding, yummy, gut-wrenching, Beauty, raging tears, sweet snot, broken open heart, blue-shimmering darkness, warm, comforting light. Rebirth. Love. Hope. A deep sense of connection with it all. And a palpable knowing of what you are for.
So it's a slow dive, a conscious descent into the depths of your soul, the dark ground of your being and your dreams: the Underworld of your psyche. This is vital work — no way around it — to discover what you've tucked away in the archetypal Shadow of your own psyche. If you're lucky you will unearth what you had otherwise disowned to adapt to the egoic, mechanistic, competitive, earth-ravaging ways of modern Western culture. And most often, these pieces of your otherwise whole psyche that you had disowned are what makes you utterly You. Beautifully. Creatively. Wildly alive. Authentically so. You. And you are needed here.
Your essential soul's powers — what you were born with before you lost track of them and they, you — are to be found there, in that excavation into your dark depths, awaiting you to carry them home, like mama leopard carries kitties. With a fierce tenderness, knowing that all life — yours, your beloveds, the earth, humans and other than humans — is at stake. The world needs you to be fully alive. Real. The world needs you to find, bring home and embody your soul's gifts and healing powers. It's messy work. It's what we are for.
When you are transparent, you will stand out as you are truly seen. When you are transparent, others can "see through" you into you as your heart and true essence shines. You are clear, direct and kind. You are not an enigma; you don't leave people scratching their heads wondering what you just said and did.
You do not hide. You are honest to the bone. You are courage enfleshed.
When you are congruent, you are wholistically aligned. What you think, say, feel in your heart, feel in your body and the actions you take line up to support and reflect each other. You know it in your body, often in your gut, when you put your attention there.
Congruent. Authenticity happens in the guts and bowels of your life. Being authentic is the grunt-work of the soul, of any deeply human, spiritual path. Being half here, half there, half-hearted, faking it to look good, strategizing to make things easier for your self -- that's the common way of the unconscious clotted middle, driven by our egoic, addicted culture. It's a way that lacks wholeheartedness. Lacks real courage to let the heart break. Shatter. Broken whole and holy open to finally know compassion for self, others, earth. To live and love — on-fire, fully alive, juiced and ready to serve.
Being authentic and soul-centered costs you your ticket to ride from the collective mainstream to the illusion of safe and secure. And opens the door to your bloody and glistening, broken whole heart -- reveals to you the honey of this wildly delicious, messy life. Leaves you and those you touch, feeling radically free. Without choice now. Solid and light. Authenticity strips away all that is NOT real. All that is not made from love, to love. All that is of enriched soul and in-spired Spirit remains. There is no living a soul-centered life without being authentic — without mustering the courage to do the excavating in the dark: the Shadow work.
Again, C. G. Jung: “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” (emphasis added)

What will you do?
© 2014 Melissa La Flamme
My new book, WHAT YOU ARE FOR: Inciting A Revolution In Your Soul, is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1478753250.

a memory of parenting my child

When my daughter was two years old, we still lived in Omaha. A Fuddruckers restaurant came to town.  Fuddruckers might still exist, but I haven't seen one in years.  I only patronized a place like Fuddfuckers, as I usually referred to the place, to please my daughter.  Fuddruckers mostly sells hamburgers, fries and drinks. Their special thing is the toppings bar for the burgers, and, in the mid-eighties in Omaha, anyway, games that cost money to play. The restaurant had a noisy game arcade.

For my daughter, the favorite feature was the way they announced your name when your burger was ready. "Rosie your burger is ready!"  Hearing her name called in the exotic environment thrilled her.
They took names for each burger so my name was called and her name was called. Thrill city. For a two year old.

She loved to hear her name, then rush to claim her food, and then carefully select her toppings.

My memories of Fuddfuckers are a little faint. I remember that I always called the place Fuddfuckers, pretending I didn't know I was saying it wrong.  I always used profanity in front of my child. I decided, while still pregnant, that I would not be a hypocrit in the way I talked to her, that I would talk to her like anyone else.  No baby talk and no edited profanity withheld. So I said Fuddfuckers, and every time I did, it titillated her a bit.

We loved Fuddfuckers. The clanging, pinging game machines, the endless announcement of ready burgers, background music. A blaring cacophony of suburban, middle class exotica, an escape from our very dull life in very dull Omaha.

At this time, Rosie was really into She-Ra, Princess of Power, which was a cartoon show. At the time, He-Man was a popular boys cartoon and She-Ra was an attempt to  cater to little girls, to sell them junk at commercial breaks, to appeal to the different market.  I didn't let Rosie watch it at home but she spent every weekend with her father during the two years of our custody battle. She watched it there. And she talked about She-Ra, I heard her, I tuned in.

My point about the visitation is that she spent a lot of time with different rules. Her father and his mother, who really took care of her during the visitations, let her watch a lot of crap on television. And Rosie was in love with She-Ra, Princess of Power.

At Fuddfuckers, the kids at the register, very young kids themselves, sixteen, seventeen, were happy to write down 'She-Ra, Princess of Power' on the burger order, and then to call out 'She-Ra, Princess of Power, your burger is ready".

I love all the easy, little ways you can make a kid happy.  It made me happy to make her happy.

I wonder if she remembers the simple but happy times we had at Fuddruckers.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

• A Ritual To Read To Each Other

   

  If you don't know the kind of person I am
  and I don't know the kind of person you are
  a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
  and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
  

  For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
  a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
  sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
  storming out to play through the broken dyke.
  And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
  but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
  I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
  to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
  And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
  a remote important region in all who talk:
  though we could fool each other, we should consider--
  lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
  For it is important that awake people be awake,
  or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
  the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
  should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
  ~ William Stafford ~
  (The Way It Is)

a loving being does not readily suspect unkindness

The suspicion that everyone wants to be nasty to them arises most often in egoistic natures

There are people who are perpetually complaining about other people and the awful things they do to them. They go as far as to say that other people persecute them. Everything of this kind is always connected with the other pole of human nature, you only have to observe life in the right way, which means according to spiritual science as properly understood. Of course there is good reason to complain about unkindness, but in spite of this you will always find, if you go through life with vision that has been made somewhat clairvoyant by spiritual science, that most of these complaints come from egoists, and that the suspicion that everyone wants to be nasty to them arises most often in egoistic natures, whereas a loving disposition will not readily suspect persecution, nor that people are trying to harm them in all kinds of ways, and so on.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 275 – Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom – Lecture 7 – Dornach, 3rd January 1915

what was I thinking?

Yesterday I went to Costco with a friend.  I didn't need anything. I am fascinated by Costco.

I have been craving dill pickles lately. Organic dill pickles are expensive.

Cruising aimlessly through the giant store, I saw $3.39 for a gallon of Vlasic dill pickles. Not organic but I like Vlasick pickles well enough.

As soon as I got the gallon glass jar full of pickles into my apartment, I realized my mistake.

Once I open the jar, I will have to refrigerate it. I don't have room in my small and always full fridge for a gallon jar.

a gallon of dill pickles

I accompanied a friend to Costco today. I have only been in Costco stores a few times. The stores fascinate me.  Since they sell mass quantities of most things, there's not much I want to buy.

Today I picked up a pound of baby organic spinach for $3.39. It's probably not local. I can buy local, organic baby spinach at the Monterey Market for $3.99 a pound. At MM, I get mostly local produce.

I scoped out all the melons at  Costco today. I did not see any organic ones. Between not being organic, the melons I did see being from Arizona and the prices no lower than they would be at MM, I passed on the cantaloupe and seedless watermelon. For Costco prices, I can usually get organic local melons during the prime melon season, which we are in right now. So pass on the melons. Well, almost.

I bought one melon, called a 'golden melon' that was a bright orange. I've never seen this melon before. It has no indication of where it came from. It was not labeled organic. I eat a lot of melons in the summer because they are lower in carbs, have low impact on my glucose, are low in calories and I love melons. At $2.69 for one 'golden melon', even though it was not organic and not likely to be locally sources, I could not resist. Since they were selling them singly, which is unusual at Costco, I indulged in one golden melon.

It was easy to resist the three-packs of cantaloupe. They were obviously picked too early so they would not bruise during shipping. Who knows how old they are? And how likely are picked-too-early and shipped-to-far melons likely to ever ripen properly?

Except for the exotic golden melon, I resisted melons.

I thought I would escape Costco with my pound of organic baby spinach and my one interesting new-to-me melon.

I went in search of my friend and passed one gallon jars of Vlasik dill pickles. Not organic, but organic pickles are very expensive anyway.

I've been craving pickles lately.

$3.99 for one gallon of nonorganic dill pickles was impossible to resist. Almost no carbs. And big fat dill pickles sate my craving for tartly delicious, low-call, low-carb snacks.  I will eat one a day until they are gone and then, I predict, begin to crave another Costco run.

My friend bought several pounds of raw nuts, mostly walnuts. I wished, at check out, that I had chosen a two pound bag of walnuts. I had passed on them because I had not realized they were raw.

I have been eating some raw walnuts most days lately. I eat a ripe banana and some walnuts as a treat.

Fruit is my sweet treat now. A banana is miraculous, in my opinion. I can make banana bread with almond and coconut flour, add walnuts (then they are no longer raw! but who cares, its banana bread) and no need to add a sweetener. Bananas are my sweetener.

Big score of the day: a gallon of dill picles for four bucks. Score!  Yeah, yeah, non-organic.

God(dess) saves humanity by . . .

"God saves humanity not by punishing it but by restoring it!" —Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know

give me fearlessness over mindfulness

Fearlessness, better than mindfulness. Mindfulness is sorta running its course, have you noticed?  People use the word but rarely give it serious reflection.

I know a lawyer trying to build a new branch of her career by teaching lawyers to use mindfulness in their law practices. She advises that six minutes of mindfulness, which she leaves vaguely and mutably undescribed -- or meaningless. Six minutes?

Fuck six minutes of mindfulness.  I meditate twice a day for an hour each time.

Pausing in silence for a couple minutes can have some mild benefit but it does not add up to the kind of mindfulness that can only be arrived at with years of deep meditation, years of silent reflections and years of serious study of the works of ascended masters.

Six minutes. PUHleaze.

fearless women: maybe they should be feared

A friend told me a short story about herself that I was happy to hear. She told the chair of one of Berkeley's puppet commissions* related to real estate development that she was fearless. This particular commission had decided, with no notice to the public, no notice to at least one of it's members but notice to the lobbyist for the proposed development, that the commission would not allow public comment at a public hearing.

My friend kicks ass. She told the chair she was prepare to get arrested that night because she was going to speak. The chair backed down after my friend told him "I am fearless".

I am grateful that fearless women keep entering my life.

I was inspired last week by another friend who has always been sweetly calm, cheerful and private. Yet, as she made comments at another public hearing, for another puppet city commission, she erupted with power. After wards, I complimented her on how powerfully she had spoken and she said "I am angry. I am not going to suppress my anger anynore. I'm angry."

For my whole life, essentially, I have been fearless. I don't edit in the way people pressure me to edit. My experience of cultural pressures for me to tamp down my powerful, fearless self is that people seek to diminish my power by talking about norms, telling me how I am wrong but such persons ignore the substance of what I said. When someone starts telling me I don't abide by cultural norms, I become both angrier and more fearless.

Cultural norms are never universal norms. Take any circle of people and ask them what they consider a norm in a given situation. Many people drift through life unconsciously assuming that what they consider normative is what everyone considers normative. Not. So not true. 

I let go of any attempt to abide by cultural norms when I realized norms are nothing more than a tool to suppress. And, far, far too often, it is men using putative norms to pressure women to tanp down their power.

Fuck that.

Life is a lot more fun when I can collaborate with other fearless women.

Come on in. Fearlessness is wonderful and powerful. It is just right. Like Goldilocks pursued the perfect bed, the perfect bowl of porridge, fearless women do what is 'just right'. "Just right" is whatever they want to do, and often involves speaking truth to power.

Fuck anyone who ever has told me, or ever will try to, that I should conform to nebulous norms. Fuck anyone who will only like and love me if I tamp myself down so much that I am suppressed, depressed, isolated and lost.

I've been hanging with a lot of powerful women lately and I fucking love it.

I have also been hanging with some fearless men. And of course I am biased. It seems to me a whole lot more women are fearless than men. I do know some awesome men who will also speak truth to power fearlessly.

I wouldn't be afraid

"Stand By Me"

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
All the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand now, stand by me
Stand by me

So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand now, stand by me, stand by me
Whenever you're in trouble won't you stand by me
Oh stand by me, oh won't you stand now, stand
Stand by me

This song written by Ben E. King.

didn't anyone tell you?

Back where I come from, the fly-over Midwest, public servants avoided even the appearance of impropriety. It was part of all lawyer's professional ethics in the states where I have been licensed to practice law.  Avoiding the appearance of impropriety was also the ethics of public servants.

This is not true in Berkeley or, as near as I can tell, anywhere in the country.  Now human culture seems to be driven by wealth and a drive for wealth. Even the very rich, with some exceptions, want more.

When my daughter was growing up and she would ask, even demand, things I did not want to buy her, so she would ask again and again, I would tell her she had the gimmees. Gimmee this, gimme that.  Nowadays politicans, public servants and, most corrupt of all, lobbyists all seem to have the gimmees. Gimme money for my campaign. Gimme your promise that you will order the city to give me the permits I want and, oh yes, here is your campaign donation.

Now I grew up in Chicago during the original Mayor Daly's regime.  My dad worked for the city and he dutifully volunteered as a precinct captain to deliver votes. Three of my four brothers and I all had jobs with the city. One brother still works for the city. None of us would have had those jobs if my dad had not had connections to insider city staff.

Nowadays, it seems to me, and, sadly, increasingly so, that politicians are only out for themselves and they see enabling the elite's greed for more money, more power and more privilege as a way to improve their own lot in life.

I was with a friend last night when I said, essentially, what I have just written. He intoned seriously, with no irony, "but Tree, dear, didn't anyone tell you? Democracy is dead."

Sigh.

I liked the 'Tree, dear". Last person who called me "Tree dear" was my grandma Joy. She died when I was in law school in the late seventies.

when the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindtranath Tagore

 I very much want to edit this verse to erase the male gender:
"Into that heaven of freedom, Goddess, let my country awake."
or
"Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake."

Anyone know how to pronounce Rabindtranath? ;-)

Every thought and every feeling is a reality

Every thought and every feeling is a reality.

 

In occultism there is a saying which can now be made known: In the astral world, every lie is a murder. The full significance of this saying can be appreciated only by someone who has knowledge of the higher worlds. How readily people say: “Oh, that is only a thought or a feeling; it exists only in the soul. To box someone’s ears is wrong, but a bad thought does no harm.” No proverb is more untrue than the one which says: “You don’t have to pay for your thoughts.” Every thought and every feeling is a reality, and if I let myself think that someone is a bad man or that I don’t like him, then for anyone who can see into the astral world the thought is like an arrow or thunderbolt hurled against the other’s astral body and injuring it as a gunshot would. I repeat: every thought and every feeling is a reality, and for anyone with astral vision it is often much worse to see someone harbouring bad thoughts about another than to see him inflicting physical harm. When we make this truth known we are not preaching morality but laying a solid foundation for it. If we speak the truth about our neighbour, we are creating a thought which the seer can recognise by its colour and form, and it will be a thought which gives strength to our neighbour. Any thought containing truth finds its way to the being whom it concerns and lends him strength and vigour. If I speak lies about him, I pour out a hostile force which destroys and may even kill him. In this way every lie is an act of murder. Every spoken truth creates a life-promoting element; every lie, an element hostile to life. Anyone who knows this will take much greater care to speak the truth and avoid lies than if he is merely preached at and told he must be nice and truthful.




Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 95 – At the Gates of Spiritual Science – Lecture II: The Three Worlds – Stuttgart, 23rd August 1906

I have lost my muse

I met someone, nine years ago, that I experienced in a way much like William Stafford evokes in his lovely poem, "When I Met My Muse". Here is that poem:

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing.
 They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased.
 Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent.
 I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched.
 "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said.
 "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.
" And I took her hand.

As the energy of my muse fades from my being, I am finding it hard to do my creative writing. The last several times I went to my writers' group, I'm not really writing.  I go to hang onto my identity as a writer, an identity still in development. I go with hope that my muse will return.  I go because my writer homies support me. I go because I love the writers. I go because I love me.

Is a muse a person?  Can a muse be a person? Or is a muse one's inspiration?  I don't know answers to my questions.  I only know that for many happy years, I wrote happily, pleasing myself greatly.

My muse is gone. Is this writer's block?  It could be.

I know what it is like to have every glance at the world be a kind of salvation. That describes the flow state when I am in my golden tunnel.  I still get glimpses of the golden tunnel but with a muse, I wrote more. I wrote better. I wrote happier. Every word I wrote was to my muse. I knew all along that the person who appeared in my sights in the golden tunnel was not really my muse. I was in a flow state before I met hum.

Still, I loved the infrequent times we got together. I was as happy as I was with my baby when I was with him. A mellow, glowing happiness that drew upon his radiance and, it seemed to me, deepened my golden tunnel light.

Sigh. Maybe she's not gone, my muse.  Lately, very lately, I have experience my power and my voice differently.  Working through.

a tale as old as time: corrupt public servants

I am watching, via Netflix, Chinatown. I loved it when it came out and have watched it a couple times since. It is about the complexly corrupt California water laws.  People built fortunes moving massive volumes of water around. Stealing water. Stealing elections. Corruption and water.

It seemed timely. Every thing I see about Berkeley public governance seems to have no more than a veneer of truly following the law that requires open government.  Our public servants make private deals with rich people and then railroad it with kabuki theater. I consider most of the public meetings held related to development in Berkeley to be based on a core of corrupt practices:  they pretty much see public meetings as a way to get activists off their backs.

Corrupt. Like in the movie Chinatown. And in this historic drought, the water corruption of Los Angeles' past seemed like a timely selection.

city hall caught red handed? lol

My friend Becky runs an online newspaper. She used to run a print newspaper but her bookkeepers absconded with the newspaper's federal tax withholdings, she could no longer afford to print news or pay writers. She still publishes online.

Last week, she published this story:
http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2015-05-08

If you go to the link I have just posted, you will see a lobbyist having a private, ex parte conversation in front of a sign that says "NO PUBLIC ALLOWED". A witness saw the lobbyist in the photo entering the private council space several times. A city staffer told me on Facebook, and I captured a screen shot of the comments in case the staffer would experience repercussions (altho I would not hesitate to urge s/he be suponea if it were to become necessary to our cause!), that this lobbyist in the photo and in the news story is in and out of private council chambers and city offices all the time, that he and another development lobbyist have free reign in city hall.

Tonight, in the same building to attend a zoning board meeting, I noted that the NO PUBLIC ALLOWED sign had been removed.

The power of the press. And thousands of hours of hard work by good citizens working to improve their community.

Community rocks. And I am helping to rock my community.

good confronting evil

I am weighed down by quality of evil that is usually attendant to human greed.

I am going to reread Goethe's Faust.  I want to remember what the great scientist, poet and mystic had to say about good confronting evil.

I have been rereading Johannes Walter Stein's "The Grail", which many consider to be the best book on the Parsifal Grail myth.  I am feeling a need to dive into darker depths. Faust might fit the bill.

like preaching to a stove

To preach morality is like preaching to a stove

The higher worlds convey to us the impulses and powers for living, and in this way we get a basis for morality. Schopenhauer once said: “To preach morality is easy, to find a foundation for it, difficult.” But without a true foundation we can never make morality our own. People often say: Why worry about the knowledge of higher worlds so long we are good men and have moral principles? In the long run no mere preaching of morality will be effective; but a knowledge of the truth gives morality a sound basis. To preach morality is like preaching to a stove about its duty to provide warmth and heat, while not giving it any coal. If we want a firm foundation for morality, we must supply the soul with fuel in the form of knowledge of the truth.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 95 – At the Gates of Spiritual Science – Lecture II: The Three Worlds – Stuttgart, 23rd August 1906

we can't have both

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
–Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)

like fine wine

"You're in my blood like holy wine, you taste so bitter and so sweet. I could drink a case of you, darling and I would still be on my feet."-- Joni Mitchell

someone is in my blood  like fine wine. He lingers. I cannot purge him from my being  . . but I will sober.  I am sobering!

Even

Even

After

All this time

The Sun never says

To the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look

What happens

With a love like that.
It lights the

Whole

Sky.

-- Hafiz

we don't see things as they are

We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.

-- Anaïs Nin

the cost of becoming real

the-rupture-of-the-mother-line-and-the-cost-of-becoming-real/

This link takes you to a great blog.

I may be unable to see the truth of my ruptured bond with my daughter but I don't think I have ever wanted her to be disempowered, to be as unactualized as I am.  In truth, I sincerely believe my mothering of my daughter was powerfully grounded in empowering her to be whoever she was destined to be.  I made many sacrifices, many she cannot even know of, to give her what I could to help her find and then actualize herself.

A rupture, sure, I get that. She had to individuate. A fourteen year breach?   I don't get that.

I want her to become real, of course. I also want to have a relationship with my daughter. It seems to me, and of course I am not objective, her self actualization comes at a very high cost. Perhaps it is just my ego that leads me to believe her choices regarding me can't serve her any better than they serve me.

It is not wrong for a mother to want a relationship with her children.

begin w/a grateful heart

This is the beginning: On Aristotle

On Aristotle by Billy Collins

This is the beginning
Almost anything can happen
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page,
Think of an egg, or the letter 'A;
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises
This is the very beginning
The first person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks
This is early ion, years before the Ark, dawn,
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the all of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl,
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her,
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teaming with people at cross purposes
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment  unshoulders  his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals
where the actions suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edwards child
Someone hides a letter under a pillow
Here the aria  arises to a pitch
a song of betrayal salted with revenge
and the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain
This is the bridge, the painful modulations
this is the thick of things
so much is crowded into the middle
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados
Russian uniforms, noisy parties
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through walls
too much to name too much to think about

And this is the end
the car running out of road
the river losing its name in an ocean
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electric line
this is the colophon, the last elephant  in the parade,
the empty wheelchair
and pigeons floating down in the evening
and the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book,
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck,
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining
a streak of light in the sky
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves

Language habits

"The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group."
--Edward Sapir (1949)

Language habits do not define, nor create, culture, being, life or anything. They are like ruts in a dirt road, ruts of thought, but not true creativity nor true relating.

I agree with this quote, that what most people think of as the real world is co-created by language habits but I don't agree with the practice.  All humans must get past thought habits, push through to clear, original and authenticate-for-each-individual thinking.

I've been thinking, in last few days, of the Vipassana concept of sankaras. If I understand sankaras in the context of Vipassana, sankaras are thought ruts. For example, when we allow ourselves to keep thinking about something, especially things that are not sources of happiness for us, such as dwelling on unhappiness, we carve sankaras deeper and deeper into our beings. Sankaras limit us, keep us focussed on unhappy things.

When I catch myself, these days, reverting to old thought habits that do not serve me, that remind me of unhappy or unsatisfying times in the past, I meditate. I do my best to get out of my thoughts and focus, as Vipassana teaches, on what my body is feeling. 

Sankaras can cut into our beings like running water slowly cuts into rocks. I  stop carving ruts of thought that do not serve me when I catch myself thinking thoughts that do not serve me and meditate.

I have noticed a lot of mindfulness teachers calling for brief periods of meditation.  I can, and have, benefited from quick meditations. A few days ago, a doctor kept me waiting a long time in the exam room. I meditated. In terms of a good practice, I like the Vipassana practice of meditationg two separate hours a day.  If that seems like more time than many too-busy people can imagine carving out of their days, I say that if a wrong perspective. The more I meditate, the more happy I am.

May all beings be happy. Maybe all language habits be good ones, rooted in clear thinking and free of rutted thought.

a gender ideal world would have . . .

In an ideal world, "masculinity" would mean PARTNERSHIP, just as "matriarchy" does. In other words, there would be no need for the terms: masculinity, femininity, matriarchy, patriarchy. There would simply be people collaborating equally for a healthy, thriving world.

I think this quote is from an article on HuffPost but I never look at Huffpost.  I like it.

high heeled shoes & revealing male packages

Feminism will only be a convincing, emergent energy in this world when no women wears high heels.

What is it with high heels? High heels in the back of human feet is goofy. It's stupid. And it throws the whole body out of alignment. And it hurts feet.

I understand that high heels can appear sexy. I know that many women are acculturated to endure high heels so they look more sexually appealing and that such woman have been, essentially, brainwashed to believe they 'have' to wear high heels to appear attractive. This is not true. I know plenty of plain chicks, including myself, women who don't wear fuck me shoes or eye make up can attract love, hot monkey love. Women who don't dress in a sexual way also attract good, attractive men.

The day men start wearing clothing that accentuates their 'package', or their penis and testicles, is the day I'll support cleavage baring, tight, sexy clothing for women.

Can anyone imagine all males walking around with their sexual package carefully protruded but covered with cloth, the way many women display their breasts, and also their asses.

Any time I mention my admittedly disingenuous proposal that all men wear tights with clinging lycra pockets in which to stuff their package. Men, should such a fashion ever become pervasive, could wear a cotton  lycra blend so their testicles and penis are more comfortable. And, as some women do, they could wear padded package display clothing to give the impression their package is larger than it is.

When such male clothing becomes ordinary, then I'll support women in high heels, sexually revealing clothing and make up.

Of course, men will also wear make up when they reveal their packages, protruded from their pelvis.

Women's bosoms and, sometimes, rearends, are displayed in clingy cloth. Why not men's private parts?!

tolerance requires complete freedom

Tolerance

To be tolerant means in the sense of Spiritual Science something quite different from what one understands usually about it. It means also to respect the freedom of thought in others. To push others away from their place is an insult, but if one does the same thing in thought nobody would say this is an injustice. We talk a lot about “regard for the other’s opinion,” but are not really willing to apply this principle ourselves.

The “Word” today has almost no meaning, one hears it and one has heard nothing. One has to learn to listen with one’s soul, to get hold of the most intimate things with our soul. What later manifests itself in physical life is always present in the spirit first. So we must suppress our opinion and really listen completely to the other, not only listen to the word but even to the feeling. Even then, if in us a feeling will stir that it is wrong what the other one says, it is much more powerful to be able to listen as long as the other one talks than to jump into their speech. This listening creates a completely different understanding — you feel as if the soul of the other starts to warm you through, to shine through you, if you confront “her” in this manner with absolute tolerance.

We shall not only grant the freedom of person but complete freedom. We shall even treasure the freedom of the other’s opinion. This stands only as an example for many things. If one cuts off someone’s speech one does something similar to kicking the other from the point of view of the spiritual world. If one brings oneself as far as to understand that it is much more destructive to cut somebody off than to give them a kick, only then one comes as far as to understand mutual help or community right into one’s soul. Then it becomes a reality.

-- Rudolf Steiner – GA 54 – Brotherhood and the Fight for Survival – Berlin, November 23, 1905

the pitchforks are coming

the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats

This billionaire says trickle-down gets things all wrong. It is not the wealthy elite that expands the economy, it is a middle class paid living wages who spend those wages that expands the economy.

He alludes to Henry Ford's insight that if he paid his autoworkers a fair, middle class wage, they could all afford to buy his cards. And buying cars grew the economy.

This billionaire also says that if the billionaires don't let loose their chokehold on our economic life, the pitchforks will come. He says the very wealthy won't know they are coming, it will happen suddenly.

The pitchforks will come and all will suffer, he says. He suggests that we address economic inequality before the pitchforks come.

my star finds me

The wishes of the soul are springing
The deeds of the will wax and grow
The fruits of life are ripening
I feel my fate
My fate finds me
I feel my star
My star finds me
I feel my goals
My goals find me.

My soul and the World are one
Life will be brighter around me
Life will be heavier within me
Will be abundant for me.
--Rudolf Steiner

The purpose of life: R.W.Emerson

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I am not sure I agree with Ralph.  Surely being useful, honorable, and compassionate will yield happiness. While being happy may not be the purpose of life, it is surely an outcome of a life well lived.

You, Darkness: Rilke

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything -
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people -
and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

on darkness

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings

-- Wendell Berry

wisdom embedded in darkness

"Often when we hear the word depression, we have a pathological view of it, do we not?  It's something to fear, to avoid, to run from, to hope like heck it never happens to me.  And yet depression is a worthy and essential (emphasis added) part of life that builds the capacity for depth. What enables you to carve out these deeper and deeper spaces through your own suffering is the capacity to embody more of the spiritual.  In this way the nervous system is the most spiritual part of the body because it is empty.  There's nothing in there; it's dark.

-- William Bento, PhD, p. 208, The Counselor as if soul and spirit matter, (Anthroposophic Press,April 2015)

civilization in thrall to ahriman

a glimpse of heaven

I am sad
flailing
unable to accept a loss
To have had a glimpse of heaven
then be denied access

I wish I had never had the glimpse.

a horse in striped pajamas: Muir Woods story

Today, I visited Muir Woods for the first time. It was hella crowded. A spring Saturday is not the optimal time to enjoy the cathedral of a redwood forest but I had a rental car and I was in Marin today.  I'm glad I went, of course. I've seen redwood trees before, but Muir Woods is special.

Remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz where some apple trees throw apples at Dorothy and her gang? Trees in movies talk back. And I felt like those redwood trees, some of the oldest anything on this planet, had a lot to say. To me, to all of us.

So the visit was joyful reverence for the holy forest. My visit was intermittently an experience of grief.  I felt all the many groves of ancient forest clear cut for greed.  I thought "well, people used wood for fuel and home building". Then I thought "If we had been mindfully reverent regarding every choice ever made to use the earth's bounty, we might not be overtaxing the earth."

Maybe humans could have made all kinds of other choices. They could have said "Nature is our home, our sacred land, we must protect it. Let's build stucco homes from mud and straw and save as many trees as possible."  You know, a fairy tale. Human civilization could have lived in harmony with fairy tale wisdom, lived in harmony with the supersensible realm.

if you are asking yourself 'what is the supersensible realm', go to the oldest forest you can, on a day when few others are in the woods and feel the earth, the trees, the plants, the creatures of the day and night. Listen to an old growth forest, if you are lucky enough to be near one. An old growth forest, and all the beings and plants and mushrooms, which are not plant or animal, will talk to you. Not in words. Redwood sorrel talks like redwood sorrel. Turkey tail mushrooms growing on a fallen, dead piece of redwood speak a language of their own. It is our responsibility to listen.

This is what indigenous cultures have done for millenia. In spite of the capitalist, dominator rapacious encroachment, indigenous cultures have hung on to some of their wisdom. And they possess the wisdom to restore culture and nature if capitalists would stop dominating.

Whatever. I'm running out of gas with the grief I felt for nature today, and for human civilization. We've fucked up.

I thought, in Muir Woods, of an old tv show broadcast in Chicago when I was a preschooler and my mom let her kids watch it because it was educational. My mom was pretty strict about exposing her kids to tv but she bought the marketing that "Captain Kangaroo" was education. Once Sesame Street came along, and the actor who played the Captain got very old, Captain Kangaroo was gone.  Sesame Street was not around for my childhood and that's not a great loss, imo. TV is never good for kids.  IMO.

I did like some bits of Captain Kangaroo. I actually thought the show boring. The captain talked down to kids, perhaps dumbing down with the belief that being less than brilliant would attract a larger audience. Who knows?  I do recall being bored by the captain but I watched him whenever mom let me because it was rre to watc tv in our house.

One of the captain's regular characteres on the show was Mr. Greenjeans. I loved Mr. Greenjeans. He grew food and taught kids about gardening and farming. And Mr. Greenjeans we much more animated than the Captain.

And the Captain occasionally talked to a regular on the show, maybe it was Greenjeans, maybe not, who would sing a song about zebras being horses in striped bananas.

Today in Muir Woods, I read that the small plants that thrived all over the ground in that redwood forrest look like large shamrocks. What I thought were shamrocks are called redwood sorrel.

And I thought, "I know a horse in striped pajamas when I see one and I know shamrocks when I see them." I also thought of my Celtic heritage and I thought 'shamrocks are part of the supersensible realm. They are likely magic. I know a shamerock when I see it. And I know a horse in striped pajamas when I see one.

another ramble.

can I really stop explaining myself? even to me?

I think these two quotes hold, jointly, a lesson I keep getting to work on.  I know in my head that I need to let go of what no longer serves me, like I let go of practicing law, but I haven't learned it fully because the lesson keeps coming up. Yesterday I had a brief interaction with a male friend. It might have been an argument; it certainly was a brief exchange full of conflict and misunderstanding.  When I realized this man was telling me he was very angry, then demanding I 'learn' what he insisted I needed to learn, yes, I had a fleeting impulse to defend myself, to explain he was angry because of his misinterpretation of what I had said. But then I decided, "Nah, we've danced this dance a few times. I'd say the same things I've said before, then he will, so I said "I'm out".  He was particularly angry because I had said that he was blaming me for how he felt. He vehemently denied that he was blaming me even tho in his denial, he reiterated how I had been wrong and 'made' him feel very angry.
It felt great to decide we had danced the same futile steps enough times, to disengage, not argue. I just let go of him. When I told him that was what I was going to do, he kinda huffed/pouted and said "Don't expect me to come after you, to ask you to work this out."  I felt no need to respond to that. Let him go, I thought.  I like this man. I love this man. He is, as the quote below suggests, not at my level of perception. He could be an ascended master and me at a low level of enlightenment.  I don't care.  I get to be me and I am perfectly good just as I am. And, I'll be honest, I am certain he is not up to my level of perception, that he has lots more personal work to do to get up here with me.

when you forgive . . .

love is only currency needed

Yesterday I gifted a 'like-new' but originally very inexpensive bike to a neighbor. She had mentioned, at a community event in the building, that she was hoping to save up to buy a bike. I instantly had the impulse to give her the bike I finally gave her yesterday. I only paid $20 for it. The sellers wanted $40 but money had fallen out of my packback as I walked over to their place to buy it. At first, the guy said he'd walk with me to a bank machine but then he said he'd just take $20 because, moving to Europe in two more days, he and his wife were busy and just wanted the bike gone.

I guess I wrote about my gifting of the bike, in one of my verbose, unedited rambles.

Today, the gift bike recipient emailed me to tell me my gift inspired her. She had been planning to sell her son's child bike, for he is now quite tall and has an "adult" sized bike but, inspired by my gift, she is going to give her son's old, now-too-small but still perfectly-good to another kid in our building.

She wrote "I am going to pay your generosity forward."

That's what I'm talking about. We can live in a gift economy now.

Love is the only energy we need to get all needs met. Reverence is good too.

Love isn't love until you give it away.

thought pictures

I have owned a book of some of Rudolf Steiner's drawings. He usually sketched on blackboards when he gave lectures. His followers put black paper on the blackboards so his drawings would not be lost. Here is a brief article about Steiner's drawings. It mentions that Steiner believed color was very significant in understanding the cosmos, and in thought pictures. His drawings were thought pictures, communication outside of language. Communication in images.

http://irenebrination.typepad.com/irenebrination_notes_on_a/2013/08/rudolf-steiner-blackboard-drawings.html

I've known about Steiner's blackboard illustrations that accompanied his many, many lectures for 25 years.  It is only today that I see a connection between Steiner's work and the, now, common practice of 'graphic faclitation', when people with drawing skills capture conversations in visual images quickly done as the conversation unfolds.

Steiner is so cool.  "Was" so cool? He's still cool, imo.

my deep catch and release program

I am systematically going through all the stuff in my apartment, placing things I have not used in the past year into my Versacart to haul one cartload after another to Out of the Closet, for donation. Ultimately, I believe I'll be able to fill it with stuff to release several times.

Today I gave away a bike to a neighbor who had mentioned, at a community meeting in our building, that she wanted a bike. Over a year ago, I bought a cheap but brand new Target in-house-brand bike for $20 from a Mexican woman whose husband, a German, got a job in Germany right after she paid $100 for the bike. They were asking $40 and I was going to pay $40 but when I got there, I realized some cash had fallen from my backpack. At first the guy said he'd walk to a bank with me and then he said "F- it, just give us $20. We're moving to Germany in 36 hours. I just want the bike gone." Right after that, my neighbor said "I want a bike but I never manage to save up the money, my son needs things." She is Ethiopian, fyi. I immediately decided to gift her my $20 brand new bike right after I bought it but I p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-e-d, with the bike in the way of my 510 square feet one bedroom.  I do not have an overly large living space. And I have let stuff pile up that I never use.

She was cute when I finally got it together to offer her a free bike. She wanted to pay for it. I told her I needed to gift it. Then she brings her son over to check out the bike because 'he knows a lot about bikes'. I had to suppress my strong impulses to say "what's to know about a new, free bike?" Out loud I say, "your son is welcome to check out my bike."

Whew! I made the sale. They took my free, new bike.

Why did I really give it away?  Because I am a bike snob. I'd rather have no bike than a cheaply made bike. It looks great. A high quality bike is, as bicyclists know,  much easier to ride, especially uphill.

Everywhere I look in my apartment, I see  stuff that does not fit in my cupboards or two small closets. I have just let stuff pile up. I am going through everything.

I attended a Unity church for a few years in late eighties. Our church, and, I believe, some other Unity churches, would have Circulation Day. Church members were asked to donate anything they had not used in the past year, to put it back in circulation. And then on Circulation Day, held in a large public h.s. gymnasium as part of the suburb's festival days (so we could use the gym for free), anyone could come and take whatever they wanted.  A few people used Circulation Day just to get ride of junk but, for the most part, all the stuff was good.

I spent all day every day for the week leading up to Circulation Day directing my volunteers. It is a ton of work to set up hundreds of clothing donations, hundreds of kitchen and houseware donations, etc. My kid was about five or six the year I organized Circulation Day so she was stuck, for it was summer vacation time (otherwise we couldn't use the gym, eh?!). She spotted the Big Wheel as soon as it was rolled into the gym. She rode that baby all day every day. Big Wheels, in case folks don't remember, have a clacking device on one of the rear wheels. One of my volunteers insisted on cutting off Rosie's clacker. He said he was happy to see her having fun riding that thing all over, in and out of the school halls and gym and outdoor sidewalks but he couldn't stand the noise. 

When I was going through my 'stuff' to find things to donate, I took our minister's advice dead seriously. He said to release anything we had not used within the past year.

At the time, I was sharing a home with a single mom who owned the house and her things furnished the kitchen.  My daughter and I had our furniture in our suite of rooms but we never used my microwave.  So I had not used my microwave in over a year.  I remember feeling torn about releasing the microwave. Then I caught myself fearfully thinking "I am not going to live with Mary Ellen much longer and when Rosie and I have our own place again, I will need a microwave." Then I caught myself, affirmed that if and when I needed a microwave, I'd have one. I ended up donating my microwave to the church itself, for our church kitchen had no microwave. And the one I had, selected by my ex, was gigantic. I had not wanted to own one. He gave it to me for Mother's Day the first Mother's Day after our daughter was born. I resented receiving a kitchen appliance as a gift for me.  I insisted I did not want a microwave. He insisted we have one. So okay, I argued back, but he ignored me and gave me a fucking jumbo microwave for my first mother's day. I pleaded for him to give me some flowers and just buy the microwave for the household, the family, but he overruled me, ignored my feelings.

And I'm rambling.

I have remembered those old Circulation days because when I pulled the microwave out of storage, I found a tea pot inside the microwave.  The teapot was a very cheap one that had come with a Mother's Day bouquet my mom sent me when I was a new single mom with a toddler too young to do anything for Mother's Day. It was a nice gesture from my mom. As soon as I saw that teapot, I decided to give it to Circulation Day. I had a strong instinct, however, to look inside the tea pot.

I resisted the instinct. I had never used the tea pot. Why look inside it? But my inner voice screamed her demand that I look inside. I found eight crisp $100 bills in the tea pot. My mom must have made some kind of arrangement with the florist. Or else fairies put that money in that tea pot. As a single mom, nearly always underemployed and nearly always skint, there's no way I put that $800 in a tea pot and forgot about it. $800 in the late eighties was a fortune. To me.

Yesterday, doing my private version of circulating stuff I don't actually use, I went through a bit of clutter on the surface of a small accessory table in my living room.  As I cleared away what was on that surface, and it was mostly junk mail, something shiny fell to the carpet.

I have a pair of simple, single tear drop, crystal earrings. I have owned them since the eighties.  I remember buying them. A year or more ago, I lost one. I have looked again and again to find the second one. I felt sure it would turn up. I didn't give up, I guess, for if I had given up, I would have let go of the remaining earring.  And I carefully checked on the remaining earring from time to time, almost as if to reassure the earring that its mate would be found.

I am amazed I found it.

And this is a little woo woo, but this is the second time I thought I had permanently lost one of these inexpensive earrings that I love. When I have both of them available, they are the only earrings I choose to wear. Once when I lived in Mountain View, I had lunch with a friend and a realtor she was interviewing to help her find a house down there.  Suddenly she noticed one of my earrings was missing. I stood up in the cafe, shook all my clothing, had my friend look all over my body. We all checked the floor, table top, dishes.  No earrings. A year or so later, that earrings turned up in my apartment. How did it get to my apartment if it had left my ear at that cafe downtown?  I actually showed the found earring, and its twin, to my swim friend Kay (the one hiring a realtor) and she was disbelieving that I had found it.

I love these simple earrings more and more. I think I paid $20 for them, a lot for the simple earrings that they are. $20 around 1985 was a lot for such simple earrings.  They are quality crystal but just one tear drop for each ear and a loop to dangle off my earlobe.  They are Swarovski (sp?) crystal, so nice tear drops but very simple.

Anyway, once again I have both earrings available to wear.  I missed them.

I am positive my current, private circulation drive will not yield $800. Gosh, I wish. I have need three grand for dental work that I don't have.

I am quite surprised by the deep shame I feel. I have felt very little shame in my whole life. I am ashamed, deeply deeply ashamed, that I am missing two adjacent molars, that I can't chew properly -- not at all.   I think the shame I am feeling is related to money shame.  I don't mind being poor. I don't mind not being able to buy new clothes, books, go to the theater or opera, etc.  I feel humiliated that I can't afford dental care.

Woe is me.

rambling. as i do.