love liberates, words of Maya Angelou

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold—that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now, so I love you. Go.'” ~ Dr. Maya Angelou
True love liberates us to life. It liberates us all. It does, it really does. But only true love can do that…

I think love has power that is not always recognized. It is not always right to 'liberate' someone.  We are put into other's lives for reasons; sometimes love calls upon us to love past impediments, including the impediment that someone we love has shunned us. In some circumstances, 'liberating' a beloved so they might avoid a conflict as arisen might be the right choice. It might also be the more loving more right choice, to actively remind the other you love them and remind them you are open to working through the relationship.

Increasingly, I see much value in marriage commitment. I don't imagine I will ever marry again. I am not opposed to people living together as life partners without marriage.

Sometimes, a soul partner comes along with lessons for us. To liberate a beloved from their lessons is not loving. Yes we annot make someone interct with us but if we feel deeply bonded to that other being and feel a clear call to remain open to them, open to working through the relationship, I believe it is unloving to, as Angelous ays in the quote, 'liberate them'.

Besides, I don't think Angelous is writing about 'liberating' a loved oneo forever. A trip to China is not forever. Space to do something apart from a loved one is not permanent liberation.

I am noticing that I often read great quotes online. For a few moments, the quote might penetrate me and I will tell myself it is right.

There is no one right way of thinking about anything, not ben when the thinkerk is somoene as fine as Maya Angelou.

Hope

"Either we have hope in us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the Spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it's good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. . . It is also hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless. . ."

- Vaclav Havel (1986)

"my work here is done"

I said 'my work here is done'. My friend Richard said I did not use the whole quote. It goes like this:

"Chaos and anarchy reigns.  My work here is done."

I love the quote. I don't think I seed much chaos or anarchy.

hope is a dimension of the soul

"Either we have hope in us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the Spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it's good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. . . It is also hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless. . ."

- Vaclav Havel (1986)

how to be safe in this world

Stand in your truth
Trust your guidance
Invite supersensible beings into your life
Remind them you sometimes need blunt messages from them.
Trust what you sense.
Trust trust trust.

Above all, to thine own self be true
Be full yourself, reveal your full self to others
Do this fearlessly
The more deeply you trust others to receive your whole, real self
the safer you will be.

You safety rests entirely in your vulnerability,
your willingness to be exactly who you are.

hope never makes sense

This is the text of a speech by Christopher Hedges in 2010. I just bought a ticket to hear Hedges speak in Berkeley on June 9th.

Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope will not come in trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It will not be realized by chanting packaged campaign slogans or attempting to influence the democratic party. It will not come through our bankrupt liberal institutions-- from the press, to the withered stump that is the labor movement.

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state. All who resist, all who are here today, keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become an enemy of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice.

It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

If the enemies of hope are finally victorious in this nation, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.

Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness, the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on all of us. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope's power. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state which saturates our airwaves with lies seeks to obliterate. Hope is what this corporate state is determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don't resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the privileged and the weak. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress.

They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Kandahar or a child in the blighted urban pocket of our nation's capitol diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, enthralled by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics.

Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing. And this is because they kneel before the idols of greed and money.

If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish today is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war, that he or she is not alone, our act will be successful. But hope cannot be sustained if it cannot be seen.

Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

(from Auden)
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Housing and Justice

This commentary, written by friend Steve Martinot, sums up my views and reminds me of my fears. We have much to lose when the pursuit of profit is prioritized above human need.

Introduction

Three winds of social concern and discontent are sweeping through the streets of Bay Area cities with a force that is beginning to disrupt the flow of political traffic. The strongest of them is the need and demand for affordable housing. Against the prior plans of various city councils for the construction of fancy high-rise high-income towers (and two such towers, 12 and 18 stories tall, are planned for downtown Berkeley), neighborhoods are organizing, and recognizing themselves in a new way. In Oakland, people took over city council to stop such a tower on public land. In SF, there is a call for a moratorium on market rate housing. In Berkeley, neighbors gather in local townhall meetings to figure out means of defending their communities. Against what? Housing development? Or is it the fact that massive development has been planned by unelected political bodies, ABAG and the MTC, that will flood these cities with above market rate housing and condos. A year ago, when ABAG and the MTC finalized their “Plan Bay Area” in a convention hall in Oakland, and established the Priority Development Areas (PDA) of San Pablo Ave and Adeline (among other), it was against years of protest, and calls to put the Plan to a popular vote – which were ignored.
Now movements have organized around the knowledge that if these new buildings go up in downtown, other neighborhoods will be next. And like all floods, this one will wash away something very important. Even in downtown Berkeley, the 18 story tower will meaning closing a ten-screen multiplex movie theater which brings more people to downtown than any other attraction, and thus is crucial to most other businesses in the area (restaurants, bars, cafes, etc.). With diminished custom, these business will fall like dominos.
Those opposed to the Plan’s development have been called NIMBYs. But they themselves have long been clammoring for development, though for affordable housing instead, as well as justice for the unrich. Is justice a development issue? It is when there is no plan to prevent the coherence and cohesion of community and life-style from being swept into the bay by development that is planned.

Justice and development

Justice is at the core of the other two winds that are gaining in strength. And as we shall see, they are not politically unrelated, though they might seem to be. The second squall that is brewing is a growing popular response and objection to the petty harassment of the homeless that the city has fostered through new piddling regulations. They may seem innocuous, yet that is precisely their meaning and design. They concern the prohibition of small ignorable details of homeless daily existence, which only serve to expand the noticeability horizon of the police. An officer’s mere attention to someone can be escalated at his will to charges of disobedience, should his target merely hesitate or balk at a command, though the person would otherwise be minding his/her own business. The police now have mantras by which they disguise the fact that they have initiated a gratuitous yet aggressive interaction (such as “stop resisting”). Along with this, the city has taken it upon itself to cut budgetary funds for social services and non-profit organizations (particularly in South Berkeley) – organizations that provide benefits for the low income, the impoverished, the homeless, and those in medical and psychological need. It is a move designed to increase destitution and stress, whose ultimate effect will swell the ranks of those inhabiting the streets. Even the poor and the marginalized are showing up in numbers at council meetings to protest, like a wind rattling the windows.
There is a ghost lurking in the shadows, cloaked in euphemism, and trying to fend off the force of these winds with fancy slogans. Its name is "gentrification."
It is the mystical project to build upper income housing in the name of the affordable. Though the city has ordinances requiring that affordable units be included in any new buildings that exceed city size and density limits, it allows developers to buy their way out of that by paying a mitigation fee. And so eager has the city been to have high income development that it has lowered that fee, at the behest of the developers, from $28,000 per non-affordable unit in buildings where affordable units are required, to $20,000. And so malleable are the permit conditions the city requires of developers that they have gotten away with not paying the fee. Thus, many good intentions fade away into an unseen spirit world of political expediency.

Affordable housing

“Affordable housing” means that the rent a family pays is calculated on the basis of the family’s income, and not on the basis of the building’s worth, or the mortgage, or the market. The rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the new downtown buildings will be upwards of $3,000 a month. The concept of "affordable" pertains to those at or below the median income for the county, which is $90,000 a year. HUD defines "affordable" as rent that doesn’t exceed 30% of one’s income. For those at the median, that would be $2,250 a month. Since the median is the "middle," there are as many families earning less than the median as there are earning more. Low income means that which 50% of median income or less. For a family earning $45,000 a year, affordable rent would be $1,125 a month, hardly enough to pay for a small one-bedroom apartment at current rent levels. After taxes (e.g. 15%), which would reduce real income to just over $38,000, that one-bedroom rent would amount to almost 36% of real income. The lower one’s income, the worse these figures get. To house people and families affordably will take political will and political action. Only affordable housing will keep this city livable for half its population. In the PDAs, the opposite is the plan.

Gentrification

Development begins in one of two ways. A developer makes plans with the city, and then buys some land on which to do it. Or the developer buys the land (or buys an option on it), and then talks to city planning, holding its investment as a hole-card (a prior investment the city must protect). In the first case, once word gets around, real estate prices will rise in expectation. In the second case, the developer buys low priced properties, maximizing ultimate profit. Buy low, build, and sell high. The areas where real estate prices are low (and the most profit is to be made) are generally low-income neighborhoods – working class communities, communities of color. They become the primary targets, promising highest return.
Once the word gets out that an area (a PDA) is due for development, however, the disruptions start. Real estate values in the immediate vicinity go up. Speculators come in and buy rental properties, preparing only to sell them at a profit, perhaps evicting all the tenants to prepare for demolition. Among homeowners near the development zone (PDA), competition develops to get the best price from the speculators. As real estate value goes up, so do taxes. The competition to sell increases, and values drop. As more people sell, local residents start to leave the neighborhood.
As this process proceeds, landlords with commercial space raise their rent to open space for stores that cater to a higher income clientele. Local stores close. These are the businesses that local residents depend on for community participation and consumption within their budget. As stores and restaurants close, the community infrastructure decays. Real estate a block or two distant from the PDA falls in value. People start to sell in order not to lose the equity in their house, and to escape the disruptions of construction. Others end up under water, unable to refinance. Some will face foreclosure, defaulting on mortgage rates that are no longer supported by their own real estate values.
Thus, the PDA becomes a machine that chews up community, displaces tenants, contorts real estate values (driving some up and others down), all in order to build new upper income housing. And while it promises new affordable housing (in response to popular demand), it destroys already existing low income housing. Insofar as developers can buy their way out of including affordable housing, it is doubtful that what they build will balance or compensate for what is lost.
In short, new high-rise and high-cost apartments transform the property relations of the community, replacing people of modest means with an elite. Some landowners and landlords get very rich. But many more lose because the infrastructure of their neighborhood has been decimated.
This is what is called gentrification. It is an extreme form of loss of community to corporate displacement of residents and neighborhoods, a loss of community coherence to corporate control.
In the case of West Berkeley, manufacturing, which depends on low rent housing that workers can afford, will be hard hit. The area is the site of most non-high-tech employment outside the university (a state institution). Breweries, food processing, and food distribution companies, for instance, make up a sizable portion of its employment profile. The Berkeley Office of Economic Development has suggested that the employment base needs to be expanded. The San Pablo PDA, however, will replace working class people with upper class, and the jobs landscape will suffer. Along with low income housing, jobs too will be lost.

City budgets and land speculators

Though gentrification may be detrimental to most city residents, it enhances the careers of the political elite. For this reason, against the winds of resistance, the city will foster policies to assist the process, policies designed to move people out of their neighborhoods. It does this through budget cuts and harassment laws.
There are, in every city, a number of non-profits and neighborhood organizations that provide services for the needy – those fallen prey to substance abuse, to homelessness, to varying degrees of impoverishment (requiring rent subsidy or welfare), etc.
When funding for such services is cut, those dependent on them find themselves deprived of essential means of survival. Many turn to more desperate means. Destitution creates social disruption and crime. Policing becomes the first line of attack (requiring higher appropriations for the police). A burgeoning atmosphere of criminalization provides a rationale for evictions, and for generalized social hostility. Real estate values decline, and speculators move in. A general pressure toward exodus will ensue. Thus, budget cuts for a low income neighborhood lay the foundation for high income development. This is the implicit destiny of South Berkeley, for which such funding has been cut, and which is the target of a PDA. We have seen a similar process occurring in West Oakland.
Along with this, Berkeley has been passing various nuisance ordinances to permit greater harassment of the homeless by the police. This too will create greater social tension, providing opportunities for developers to purchase properties cheaply. It works because it occurs in the shadows, and plays on people’s patience through an accumulation of isolated incidents. Residents call on the city for security, and the city responds with proposals for development.
Destitution, homelessness, social chaos, and crime will inevitably lead to community conflict, police control, and an undermining of resident opposition to the onset of gentrification. More people accept their fate and leave the neighborhood.
If, according to international law and treaty obligation, housing is a human right, then, in these terms, the proposal for massive development and gentrification, such as is contained in Plan Bay Area, promises to become a massive violation of human rights, expelling people from their homes for private interest. Against this, the social movements that defend downtown against high-rise high income buildings and call for affordable housing development, the social movements for humane responsibility toward the homeless, and the social movements seeking to maintain city budget support for the alleviation of poverty, all come together.

This was published by my friend Becky O'Malley, who publishes berkeleydailyplanet.com yesterday.  Check out her great, independent news site.

I want a weirdo, I am one

This article came from this link:  http://elitedaily.com/dating/find-yourself-a-weirdo/1052393/

Are you dating someone utterly out of his or her mind? Do you find yourself thinking about how crazy and “all over the place” your significant other is?
Do you find yourself describing your girlfriend as weird or your boyfriend as absolutely insane?
Well, you don’t even know how lucky you are.
If you’ve found someone brave enough to be him or herself in this world of standardized proportions and fixed ideals, adore that person.
If you’ve found someone strong enough to hold on to his or her childlike sense of wonder, to be completely and utterly free and uninhibited, cherish that person.
If you’ve found someone liberated enough to be a complete and utter weirdo, never let that person go.
You’ll know when you’ve found a weirdo.
He or she will be like no one you’ve ever been with before, a breath of fresh air mixed with an electric pulse that shocks you into another dimension.
They’re magnetic, attracting and pulling you into them while at the same time, pulling you backwards, throwing things at you you’re not always ready for.
They’ll piss you off while at the same time show you something you can’t live without — their world.
Their world of wonder and awe, the way they see things you didn’t notice before, look at things you never understood and question everything you thought you knew.
They’ll change your whole life without thinking twice about it.
If you’re lucky enough to be with someone crazy enough to let you into his or her weird world, cherish him or her and make sure never to let that person go.
Because relationships with weirdos are always better than with anyone who’s trying to be “normal.”

The weirdo will never let the fight be the same one.

Weirdos have feelings and opinions that will clash with yours like any significant other.
With them, however, it’s never about the same sh*t.
Because your relationship isn’t the same sh*t. It’s new things, new tastes and definitely new points of view.

---

The weirdo will never expect the relationship to be a certain way.

They don’t have expectations of you or the relationship. Weirdos let the relationship coast the same way they coast through life — hoping for the best and going with the flow.
They don’t go into things with preconceived notions because for them, a relationship is as random and unknown as life.

---

The weirdo will introduce you to the freak inside you.

You think you know yourself, and then you meet someone who challenges every part of your being.
Weirdos make you rethink your life, your passions and what the hell you’ve been doing this whole time. You go from who you were to who you could be.

---

The weirdo will never be replaced.

You know you can’t let them go because everyone after them will never live up to the force your weirdo entered your life with.
No one will ever show you as much, teach you as much and challenge you as much.
Everyone will just make you wish you were with your weirdo again.

---

The weirdo will never question when you need to take time for your own adventure.

Not only do weirdos support your personal endeavors, they push them. They don’t just want to be there for you; they want to show you the way.
They believe in everyone as much as they believe in themselves, and that support will change your life.

---

The weirdo will make you forget about the outside world.

Until you’ve met a weirdo, you’ve never understood the only world you need to judge yourself by is the world you create for yourself.
You also never experienced what it’s like to live in your own world, to never have to enter society again. Weirdos bring the only world worth caring about into yours.

---

The weirdo will catalyze every single creative interest you have.

Any weird, obscure or crazy notion you pondered then let go of is now thrown back into your face. It’s molded and nurtured and praised.
Those tiny thoughts you never gave any light to are suddenly magnified and urged to be chased and expanded.
Those tiny dreams you never let yourself think about are all a weirdo wants to talk about.

---

The weirdo will never make you feel weird about your own weird self.

They want you to be weird. They long for you to open up that side you refuse to show the world.
They’re ready to explore your inner workings and most obscure neuroses.
They’ll thrive on your quirks and your idiosyncrasies… just make sure you don’t hide anything.

---

The weirdo is always worth the drama.

Yea, weirdos are not always the easiest people to deal with, but they’re always worth it.
They’re going to bring with them drama and intensity, but that’s what’s going to make your life worthwhile again.
Those days when you were just going to work, the gym and going to bed will seem like a fate worse than death after finding someone who won’t let you be bored ever again.

---

The weirdo will teach you to laugh everything off.

They’ll show you what it’s like to not take anything seriously, including yourself.
Life is too short and too weird to judge anything, and if you can’t get serious about it, you may as well laugh about it.
Embrace those who know how to embrace the moments that shouldn’t be anything but funny.

---

The weirdo is going to be the best sex you’ve ever had.

Weirdos are uninhibited, and their sex follows suit. They aren’t nervous or scared; they’re down to try anything.
They want their lives between the sheets to be as spontaneous and crazy as the one outside.
They’re not scared to show their true, naked selves.

without trust

Without trust, we can have no cohesive fields, no love, no friendship and no great shifts within humanity that can take us out of the way things are, then onto a new field.

love, listening and trust

Holding Spaces for Courage, Love, Listening. In early 2015, we asked the 10,000 plus participants in a global U.Lab (an MIT-sponsored MOOC), what it would take to realize their "highest future possibility." What would it take to bring it into reality "as it desires" (Martin Buber)? Their resounding answer was simple and clear: courage! Then we asked them what support they would need from others in order to actually make it happen, to make it work. Again their answers very clear: love, listening, and trust! These responses from a multi-cultural community of change makers are similar to the responses we've heard from others. Profound shifts in small groups tend to happen when the two following conditions are in place: (1) individual courage and vulnerability, and (2) a holding space of deep listening with unconditional love.

the-blind-spot-uncovering

This quote is from the article I have linked to. Otto Sharmer is doing great work, helping human understand how we create collective fields with the capacity to undergo leaps and great shifts.

Love, listening and trust are essential to creating wonderful fields grounded in courage, vulnerability, the great strength comes in vulnerability, deep listening and unconditional love.

The article linked to is well worth a read.

trees most trusting of all beings

Trees are the most trusting of all living creatures because they trust enough to put their roots down in one place, knowing they will be there for life.

-- author unknown

stop war on this living world

'In a society bombarded by advertising and driven by the growth imperative, pleasure is reduced to hedonism and hedonism is reduced to consumption. We use consumption as a cure for boredom, to fill the void that an affectless, grasping, atomised culture creates, to brighten the grey world we have created.' - George Monbiot

ad astra per aspera

Per aspera ad astra or Ad astra per aspera is a Latin Phrase which means any of the following: "Through hardships to the stars", "A rough road leads to the stars" or "To the stars through difficulties". The phrase is one of many Latin sayings which use the exxpressin ad astra. 

 A friend shared the phrase 'ad astra per aspera' to me today. He doesn't know that I have been moving through starry inner heavens these days, unhappy and struggling but I am always sure that I am more star matter, more starlight, than anything else.

Ad astra per aspera.

love, eros and sex

the-forces-of-love-eros-and-sex/

This is a transcribed lecture from a teacher I had not heard of until this morning. She gave this talk in 1959. A nonprofit holds the copyright but it is downloadable and can be heard on audio.

I found it useful, although not all of it applies to me.

the erotic principle, or eros requires fearlessness

The erotic principle, I now know, has been around as long ago as Aristotle.  At its most basic level, the erotic principle is that longing which draws mortal beings toward one another, according to Aristotle. It is not just people drawn to people. It is energy attracted to energy, subatomic particles drawn to subatomic particles, gaseous clusteres drawn to gasesous clusters, light drawn to light, light drawn to darkness, darkness drawn to light. The erotic principle is a principle of attraction.

Subatomic particles and the gaseous matter that were the very beginnings of this planet came together because of an attraction, because of the erotic principle.

I've only done a couple internet searches, only read about the erotic principle for a few hours. I don't think I understand it in terms of how someone, for example, sophisticated in philosophy might use it.
Still, I think I get the concept.

The erotic principle is a level of attraction that does not arise to love. A being has to be ready to do deep soul work, revealing one's truest self and entire soul to another, as best as able, to arise to the level of love. The attraction captured in the idea of the erotic principle can draw energy to energy, beings to beings, people to people. Ultimately, however, eroticism is not love. It is working together on soul work that is love. The erotic attraction can draw one to the right beings for one's work. Without deep, loving soul work, mere sexual attraction is just a physical release and not a reason to dive into sex. People can have unloving sex but it is outside the realm of moving the whole miracle of this earth, universe, galaxy and galaxy after galaxy towards love. Sex without love is not Eros in a good way. It's comparable to animals mating in a field. Or rutting.

And more.  I've got a busy day.  I am glad to know a bit about the erotic princple.

Carl Jung, and many thinkers, wrote about the erotic principle. In some spiritual traditions, there is much attention given to the attraction embedded in the erotic principle. A strong sexual attraction can be the cosmos' way of getting the right people attracted, and thus, connected to one another.  Some Asian spiritual give significant attention to the erotic principle but mostly to remind humans that erotic attractions are not love, that many humans never get to the energy of loving soul work. From my brief reading this morning, I came away with the maybe-mistaken understanding that one has to be evolved beyond the erotic attraction and be drawn to doing the hard, deep work of soul work that can only be done in emotionally intimate, loving relationships.  Sexual attraction can be the universe's way of pointing out good partners for us in our soul work. And sexual attraction can be great. I hope everyone has had the experience of being very physically attrcted to someone and then act upon it.

Love is a higher level than the erotic principle. The erotic principle can draw us to good soul work partners, but to reach love, we have to do our work, and ultimately together work. Eroticism should be a bridge between sex and love but it often fails to achieve love. Eros is often confused with love. Eros is the attraction, the draw of energy to energy, people to people (which is energy to energy).

Eros is the closest thing to love undeveloped beings can experirence.  Eros can lift us out of our ordinary live, prod our soul to surge. Eros empowers people to do things that lift us out of our isolation and call us to connect to specific other beings.  Eros helps a soul prepare to do the hard work of love. Eros is a bridge to love.

Without the erotic principle, many humans would never be ready for the more conscious work of love.

People afraid of their emotions and afraid of oneness with another will do anything in their power to avoid the great experience of loving unity.  A favorite way to avoid intimate soul work is to blame the other person for one's fear.

And I posted a quote from Carl Jung, perhaps within the past month, in which he says, with me extrapolating, that people will do anything to avoid looking at their own souls.

I am grateful that I have this new, embryonic insight into the distinction between erotic attraction and love. My brief search this morning suggests that people, like me, who do not have a relationship with a commitment to do deep soul work together is because something in my being pushes it away.

I have been spending way too much time and my life energy wanting an opportunity to do deep soul work, my work, mutual work and supporting another's work with someone who won't go thtere with me. Maybe its me that kept me and this man from coming together.

I block myself from what I want.  How to open up to the erotic and to the work of love and soul work? 

How indeed.  An undeveloped essay, I know. This is what I have.  I will see what souls turn up to participate in dialogue with me about this.

lie down in this grass

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

Rumi

 lie down in the grass beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. I'm in.

"the erotic principle"

The Erotic Principle precedes love. It theorizes that The Erotic Principle is the energy of attraction, not limited to sexual attraction but any impulses to draw nearer to another.

The Erotic Principle is on the pathway to love but it is not love. A lesser developed individual might limit their erotic energy to merely physical attrac

could a greater miracle take place

Could a greater miracle take place than

for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

-- Henry David Thoreau

talking to my baby

One of the many wonderful things about being a mom was all the language games I was able to play with my child. From the moment she was born, whenever we were alone and often when we were not, I talked to her about everything. I profferred never-ending color commentary on the world. One of my foundational premises was that everything was new to Rosie. I imagined that little baby Rosie was gazing on a world that, at first, had no meaning or context for her. This is a mirror. This is a pin. It seemed, to me and my eagerness to open up as much as I could for my infant, that everything required long, colorful explanations. Even if she did not 'understand' my nattering, I knew that she understood that I was giving her all my attention because I loved her. Giving someone our attention is a fine way to say to them "I want you to be".

Rosie had my undivided attention when she and I were together.

How to explain the sound of a telephone ringing? And, then, how to distinguish to a preverbal baby who trusts you completely, the difference between the telephone ring and the doorbell? How to explain electric lights? Laundry? Grass? Dirt?

I assumed everything was fascinating to Rosie and, along the way, everything became fascinating to me as well. The world changed the first moment I began to imagine how to introduce everything to my baby. Indoors. Outdoors. Cars. Music. Music from a radio. Music in the car. Live music.

When Rosie was three months old, we flew to Chicago for her christening. Her dad came for the baptism but he did not fly out with us. From the moment we were settled in our seat, with my prescious cargo in my arms, I talked to Rosie the entire flight. I talked about the sensations a body might feel as a plane moves: it would feel quite different, I imagined, than her everyday life. Did her ears pop? I wondered aloud. I explained to her a bit about why I thought we feel sensation in our ears when a plane takes off or lands. I explained the seatbelt. I explained clouds. I pointed out all the sounds I could articulate; plane engines, clattering of service carts, the noise of a plane full of humans. Well, not explain, I guess. I talked about them, whatever thoughts drifted through me, I verbalized.

Then, after devoting a large portion of our flight to the fascination of flying, I began to talk about our trip. I explained to Rosie that we were going to meet people who already loved her. Imagine the miracle of love, I told my dolly girl. My brothers and my sister, my parents. . . I listed them over and over and over by name. All these people love Rosie and they have not even met you. We are going to have such a fine time, my little kitty cat, I cooed,  loving and being loved this weekend by people that have loved me all my life and who have loved you all of yours.. Now let me tell you something about these people. And then I told her stories about my dolly David and my baby sister Margaret and my brother Tom. I explained to her that all these strangers were going to want to hold her and snuggle her and kiss her and she would have to do her best to cope with lots of new people holding here. Our family, I explained only had a few days with her so they would be drowning her in loving attention.

My infant was fussy at night when she had been at a social gathering at which many people asked to hold her, passing her around like a football. I knew being passed around to be held by many people, especially strangers, was stressful for her. I couldn't say no to folks asking to hold her. I understood people's longing to cradle young infants. I did, sometimes, limit how much and how many people got to hold my baby. For her wellbeing. I explained to her that for her christening weekend, we'd be with family the whole time and people were going to want to hold her a lot. I cooed soothingly about this, assuring her these baby holders loved her already.

I had such a fine time on that plane ride. I don't think I stopped talking for a single instant.

As I stood in the aisle to deplane, a woman tapped me on the shoulder.

"I was sitting directly behind you and your baby and I heard every word you said," she began. I was aghast. It had not occurred to me that anyone could hear me. I had imagined the plane engine noise prevented people seated in other rows from hearing me talk softly to my three-month-old. If it had occurred to me, I would have been silent. I never did this talking to Rosie in front of other people. I was embarrassed as this woman spoke. I wished the line would move and I could escape my shame.

"If I had known anyone could hear me, I would not have said a word," I said, deeply chagrined.

"I thought it was beautiful," she said. "I am ashamed of myself because I never talked to my babies like that and, listening to you, I realized that I should have. It made for a very special flight for me."

I was dumbstruck. Rosie's father had literally forbidden me to talk to her like I had spoken on that plane ride. He said only someone mentally unstable would try and talk to a baby about everything. He said I paid too much attention to the baby. I told him that our pediatrician, Dr. Murphy, had said that it was impossible to give an infant too much love or attention. Dr. Murphy said it was impossible to hold a baby too much. He-who-shall-not-be-named told me that if I thought he was going to fall for that crap, then it was proof that I was out of my mind. "No medical doctor would give such advice."

"I wish I were coming with you so I could meet all these people who already love your Rosie," the woman on the plane went on. "I am going to be watching you greet your father when we get in the terminal. I don't want this story to end."  I had explained to Rosie that her Grandpa would meet us at the gate. This was before airport security and people could meet loved ones at their arrival gates.

The hardest, the very hardest part, about having lost my Rosie as I have, was that in the beginning years of this heartache, I thought it meant that all my silly little memories like this were meaningless. I thought it meant that I wasn't a good mommy. I thought it meant that it had just been my imagination that I had ever done anything right for her. I had always felt that I had been my very best with her and, then, I told myself that if she could cut me out of her heart the way she has, well, then all my beliefs about what I had shared with her must be false. The real loss was thinking that I had lost this part of my being. It hurt so much to think I had not been doing what I thought I had been doing on that first plane ride with my baby.

Now, happily, I am finding that I was that person on the plane. That I am that person on the plane. I don't know why but, lately, I feel, once more like the woman who raked catalpa leaves and baked pies with my Rosie. She helped with the pies by sitting on the counter and sucking cinnamon sugar off the apple slices. She helped rake catalpa leaves by sitting in her walker and watching.

When Rosie and I got off that plane in Chicago, my whole family was there to meet her. A surprise for me and revealing their eagerness to meet the first member of her generation in our family. The first grandchild. The first niece. They had come in two cars because no one wanted to miss the first possible moment of knowing her. As we stood in a terminal at O'Hare, and I watched all the people I loved most in the world pass my darling delight from one doting relative to the next, I was silent but I was already preparing my next remarks for the next moment when I was alone with Rosie. "Your Uncle David dressed up just to come to the airport to meet you. Did you see that?" "I have never seen your grandpa look so happy or so proud as he did when he first looked at you, my dear."

Let me hold her. No let me. My turn. No, my turn.

David and Margaret both complained that I had not chosen them to be the godparents. They were right. I should have chosen them but he-who-shall-not-be-named refused to let children be Rosie's godparents. We has asked, instead, my brother Joe and his wife but I knew in my heart that David and Margaret were right to feel aggrieved. I knew that they would be the ones who would love her the most. And they have been.

I loved that flight and arrival.

screech out

At my daughter's Waldorf School, as at, I believe, virtually all Waldorf Schools, the children were expected to play a string instrument, have private lessons and be in the school's string ensemble.  On top of private school tuition, it was an added stretch to buy a cello and then pay for weekly cello lessons.

I tried to persuade my daughter to play the violin, because violins could be had for much less than cellos. I didn't try too hard. In Wally World, children are listened to. If she wanted to play a cello, she had to play a cello.



Our cello teacher, like most music teachers, held an annual recital.  At every recital, every one I attended for eight years, always includes a performance of Scotland's burning. Every child new at playing any string instrument, in our world, at least, learned to play Scotland's Burning, a song that might be beautiful when played by skilled string players.

If you don't know the tune or lyrics to Scotland's Burning, they go something like this, "Scotland's burning, Scotland's burning, reach out, reach out". When six and seven year olds, new to their instrument, play it, it goes more like this:  "Da dah, dah dah, screech out screech out."

Some parents of older children come late to miss the annual screech out and some of the other lower grades.  I thought it was wrong to miss any of the performance. It was as much about community and friendship as the music. Yes, hearing 'screech out' grated but if one looks beyond the struggling efforts to learn how to play beautiful music, one sees young beings leaning into music, leaning into acquiring new skills. One sees young children making willful choices. Human beings need to build their will capacity. Music lessons are a great way to build will, as well as learn how to play an instrument.

It is also good for the older children to hear the younger children play. This remind them of both their own early learning and how far they have come.

Each grade played the same song each year. I always felt the rythym of life in those string recitals, listening to each age group play the same thing each year, with each each group advancing from year to year.

As the children advanced as string players, the songs were more elaborate, better played and more pleasurable to hear.  I never tired of hearing the Scotland screech out piece played by very young musicians in their first year playing a string.

Some parents would duck out as soon as their children played. I thought those parents were wrong, to only show up for their child and then leave. If everyone did that, some children would have been playing to very small audiences.

It drove Rosie crazy when I insisted on arriving for the first piece and staying until the last. At first. She came to appreciate my reverence for seeing all the children at each phase of learning a string instrument.

I loved our cello recitals every spring.  I knew all the children from school, of any age. I loved them all. And I loved all the doting parents who thought their child playing songs like 'screech out' indicated musical genius. Some parents cringed along with each screechy wrong note. Some parents heard heavenly sound no matter how their child played.

I loved the whole spectacle but my favorite part was the doting parents. The children did not show a lot of loss as cello recitals. They were tense, the idea of performing a source of anxiety for most.


The parents, however, were all pride, love and happiness.

Unlike the parents who ducked in just for their child and then ducked out as soon as their child had performed, setting a poor example to their own children, I love it all.

deep down

But down deep, at the molecular heart of life,

the trees and we are essentially identical.

-- Carl Sagan

in the deepening silence

Stars once spoke to man.
It is world destiny that they are silent now
To become aware of this silence can be pain for earth humanity
But in the deepening silence
There grows and ripens what human beings speak to the stars
To become aware of this speaking
Can become strength for Spirit Man.

-- Rudolf Steiner, source material unknown to me

Keeping Quiet

KEEPING QUIET
by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

I did my undergrad senior thesis, required to graduate, on Neruda's prose poetry. I like the guy's work but I regret that it never once crossed my mind to study women writers, much less to have done my senior thesis, which was a big deal at my colege, on a female writer. Geez.

Gobbler's Knob, Georgia

I have discovered something many likely already knew. It is possible to use services, many of them free, to hide one's internet address, the identity of whatever device one uses to surf the net and to hide one's location in the world.

your love does not belong to another; it is you

What if nostalgia is not a fruitless dwelling on those irretrievable moments of the past, as we are taught, but an attempt by sweetness to reach you again?

What if nostalgia is really located in the present, like a scent or ambiance which is gathering around you, should you avail yourself to it.

As anyone who has been heartbroken knows, there comes a time when, long after loss has been well-lived with, a small melody of love always returns. And to your surprise, you may recognise the tone of that love as the very same love you believed you lost.
It’s then that you know your love never belonged to another. Your love was always your love. And if you let yourself be unguarded to it, nostalgia may find its way back into the generosity of your presence once again.

This short comment is from Toko-Pa's Facebook page. She writes lovely thoughts under the auspieces of "Dreamwork".

I feel empathy and compassion

I feel empathy and compassion for people who are of an adult age, have great educations and who have worked to become evoled but, ultimately, they have not yet learned that mature love does not reject people once loved simply because the beloved friend flashed some human imperfection.

Shakespeare said it so well in Sonnet 116: in a marriage of true minds, people love one another beyond their human imperfection.

It is our imperfections that make us perfectly human. It is in our imperfection that love takes on its transformative power. Shunning someone for being imperfect is not so different from shunning one's own imperfection living in projection and delusion that one is perfect and those around them who have the courage to be imperfect and seen in their imperfection are the truly advanced souls.

The person who flees someone they love in fear because that someone has let them down does not know how to love. Most people get how to love before their fifties. Not all.

I love people around their  imperfections. I have done it for decades. This is one aspect of myself that I am quite proud of.

I feel empathy and compassion for people who abruptly shun someone they have loved because their formerly loved friend showed them their darkness. That's when the work of love is only just beginning, and it is absolutely not the time to end loving relationships.

now

now
do it now
show up fully
show up now
this is it
this is all there is
now now now
show up now

if freedom means anything . . .

“If liberty means anything at all,” George Orwell wrote, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

now will never come again

A friend recommended a Star Trek episode from 1992, called "The Inner Light".  Captain Picard is taken over by a force that initially puzzles the crew of the Star Trek.

Picard finds himself a different man, on an unknown-to-him planet.

we are as holy now as we shall ever be

we are part of the earth

7:38 minutes. Listen carefully.

on being a fearless woman

"But then, the thing is, when you're afraid of something, face it, go for it. You become a better human being."
What's the cost?
"Ah, a big one. Lots of loneliness, my dear. If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they're fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave. So, lots of lonely hotel rooms, my dear."

marina-abramovic-on being a woman

This link takes you to an article in The Guardian from which I excerpted the above quote.


I wholeheartedly agree with what Abramovic is quoted as saying about the loneliness of being a fearless woman.  Men can be fascinated with my fearlessness but they eventually want to change me, crush me, tell me how to be. So, loneliness.

the tree of life = interconnectedness

This photo was downloaded from Evolver Movement's Facebook page.

Humans are a life form interconnected with all of life, including what I refer to the nonmaterial realm, or supersensible realm. The supersensible realm is full of spiritual beings.  As physical beings, some humans have lost about their ability to recognize the supersensible but we can develop our capacity to perceive it.  In my limited, imperfect humanity, I do not yet know if the supersensible realm is nonmaterial.

Rudolf Steiner said 'Matter is never without spirit and spirit is never without matter."  If Steiner was right in what he says in that quote, what I perceive as nonmaterial has matter. Isn't matter the root of material?

Musing aloud.

if you want to change the world

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.
~Lisa Citore

Hope

Hope
Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.
~ Czeslaw Milosz ~
(The World)

everything matters

Once when my sister, fourteen years young than me, was in college, I had written her a letter passionately voicing my concern about some issue that was up for me at the time. I do not remember the subject that aroused my energy.

My sister wrote back, dismissively, that 'you are stuck in the sixties, people like you think everything matters'.

I have never been stuck in the sixties. She was a toddler in the last few years of the sixties. I was in my girls' Catholic high school in dreamy oblivion. I read the news so I knew about hippies, protests, civil rights marches but I was not, and have never been, a hippie.

I did not address her denigration of hippies in my response.

I wrote back, simply, "everything does matter".

I remember feeling that the short sentence 'everything does matter' was powerful.

Today, more than ever, I know that everything matters, that everything is interconnected.

If everything is interconnected, I am connected to the greedy rich, to the reckless destruction of our planet for private profit and to everything.  Hummingbirds, starry nights, rustling sounds in a forest that hint of the animals that live there. The way sunlight causes redwood sorrel, which prefers shade, to fold to avoid too much sunlight. I am connected to the redwood sorrel.

Everything matters.

this is me on the inside

This is me on the inside these days. Always, in the big intergalactic sense, but sometimes I am not in this majestic kind of inner experience. I am right now and it is bliss.

we can avoid our own destruction

The more clearly we can focus our 

attenion on the wonders and realities

 of the universe about us,  the less taste

we shall have for destruction.

-- Rachel Carson

stars, comets, planets, rings, gases, light and dazzling things

don't weep

Don’t weep, insects,
Lovers, stars themselves,
Must part.
-- Issa

I'll take me some of this

I dream to have this imaginary, elusive man who sees me and loves me, passionately, coheartedly and in every way a person can love, without wanting me to change a thing. Not one ounce, not one hair on my head, not one clothing choice, no one cleaning choice. Nothing. Acceptance is love.

I will love this elusive, magical man, who I have not yet met, as far as I know, back. I will love him back better than he has ever imagined being loved.

Men can be interested in powerful women but they tend to choose more docile women than I am as mates. When I suggest I am a powerful woman, I do not refer to economic power or marketplace power or influence power. I am powerful in the sense that I love myself, just as I am and I make no effort to hide myself.

Wow. To be in a committed life partnership with someone also committed to loving himself completely and loving me as much as he loves himself. I'll take me some of that.

to be treated like a queen

When I was about 30, I was visiting my mom in Ohio. My parents had been divorced since I was 18 and, although they were cordial to one another when events in their children's lives put them in the same place, they did not talk to one another unless they ran into one another. They both came to my law school graduation. Dad did not come to my college graduation because mom came with her new husband and dad couldn't face it and I totally understood dad's resistance. He had not wanted the divorce and it broke his spirit. I don't believe he ever met mom's second husband, who stayed away from my law school graduation so dad would feel comfortable. Blah blah blah.

When I was 28, and I remember the age because my daughter was a small infant, my dad underwent a medical test conducted by a resident who made a mistake that left my dad paralyzed on his left side.  My dad sued and won $680,000 in a malpractice law suit. Not only that, but he got a prestigious law firm to represent him pro bono, so he did not have to pay the firm any of his award.

I get ahead of myself.

Dad's law suit had been going on a couple years, maybe longer. Maybe I was older than 30. How old I was doesn't matter. I was an adult, a mother, a wife, a lawyer and lived five states away from mom and three states away from dad. I mostly saw both of them to give my daughter a sense of family beyond me.

My dad did not talk to me about his lawsuit. One of my brothers tried to keep tight control on info about the law suit. This brother, as my dad once said to me, wanted it all. "He would be happy if I gave it all to him and forgot all of my other kids. He's greedy. It's like a sickness. He wants it all and always has.  He takes money from me but complains when my other kids do."  So this brother, who is so mean spirited that I won't write his name on a blog I am sure he has never seen. I am afraid of him. He went to law school only two years but that's all one needs to know how to use the legal system. He is not eligible to be a lawyer but this brother is a bona fide genius. Seriously smart.  Scary smart.

I believe he conducted most of the communication with my dad's lawyer, purring to dad about dad's vulnerability and assuring dad that he, with two years of law school, would do right. Dad might not have known when a settlement offer was imminent. And if my brother could have accepted the money and kept it entirely from my dad, I am sure he would have.

During this visit at my mom's, suddenly I knew my dad had gotten his settlement. I said I would leave Ohio early so dad didn't give all the money to the brother I have mentioned and another brother, my dad's favorite child. Both my parents had open favorites. It was painful to see how they favored some of their kids, painful to know I was never a favorite.

Mom asked me why I thought dad had settled his case and thus felt a need to go to Chicago.  I knew the money would be all gone quickly. If my dad were ever going to keep it, I would have totally supported that. In fact, I had suggested dad put the money in a living trust, available to him until he died. My brother the half lawyer was furious and that is probably why he went below the radar with info about the lawsuit. Goddess forbid dad listen to my licensed attorney concern that he use the money for his own needs.

My dad didn't need anything. He never cared about stuff or status. All he ever cared about was his kids, his sons, two of his sons mostly with my gay brother a weak third and my older asshole brother an even weaker fourth. His two daughters did not exactly rank at all.  Dad loved Dave, my gay bro, because Dave is so lovable but dad was uneasy with his homosexuality. And his favorite sons constantly harangued dad about their faggot brother. Shame on them.

Mom said "how could you possibly know your father has settled his lawsuit?" I said "I just know. I am sure I am right but if you want me to prove it, let's call him and ask." And I did call dad and, yes indeed, he had settled.

Then mom said "You have always been like this, ever since you were a very young child. You just knew things no one had told you. Sometimes it felt like you knew everything."  I can see her taking a drag on a cigarette, then tapping the cigarette as she spoke.

I have my longest-running therapist Jane to thank for learning I am a high impath. Once she said to me, when I was crying about how my parents had not treated me as well as my brothers (I was the only daughter until I was fourteen). Jane said "I understand why they treated you the way they did. They sound like weak, damaged people who probably shouldn't have been parents, people afraid of the world. A child like you would have frightened them. I bet you knew everything that was supposed to be a secret. That would be scary to two already fearful, damaged adults. I bet you knowing as much as you did would frighten many parents."

The people I tend to be drawn to for close friendship seem to also be high empaths. If they aren't high empaths, they are damaged and I am drawn to their damage, confuse their damage with my own and things can be painfully muddled.   It had been  hard work, after thirty+ years feeling all kinds of stuff  until I understood I felt a lot of gunk that wasn't mine.  It was such a relief to finally start identifying "oh, this is me, and this is not."

When I feel a person very strongly, I want to get close to them, to understand what it is that I am feeling. And maybe, just maybe, help them. I gradually improve the quality of life of people I am attracted to, as they improve mine but I still let very damaged humans slip under my radar, get inside me and let them offload their shit onto me.

I am reminded of my dad, who I miss lately, missing him a lot. My dad had many astringent sayings that I don't think he ever said to my sister. He always treated her more delicately than me. I took it as a compliment that he treated me like one of the guys, like his friend. In hindsight, my dad gone almost 30 years, I remember that it pinched to see my dad maintain a meticulous gallantry with my sister, never uttering profanity in front of her but always doing so in front of me as long as she was not present. I was also mildly pinched that my sister got to be the girly girl.  Actually, I didn't mind being a plain chick. I am a plain chick. What I minded was seeing my misogynsitic family of origin, my father, my mother, and my four brothers dote on my sister's brand of femininity and scoff at mine.

Once when I had used some profanity dad said "Why do you use the word fuck?  it is unfeminine. Do you think your sister-in-law Marilyn, a long-since divorced first wife of my one older brother, a sadistic pig -- both of them were sadist pigs, come to think of it, the ex-sister-in-law and my one older bro.  Anyway Dad said "you'd never heard Marilyn talking like that."

I said "Dad, no one would ever hear you or any of my four brothers talking like that in front of her. You all talk like that in front of me, that's why I talk the same way to you. You are being unfair."

And he was unfair about Marilyn because she really was a cold, mean, greedy woman. And a phony. She used profanity all the time ,just never in front of dad who she thought she conned. Maybe she did. He sure deferred to her femininity.

Anyway, one of my dad's favorite sayings was "He thinks his shit doesn't stink.  Lots of people in this world think their own shit doesn't stink. Fuck 'em, honey. Don't let them know they hurt you.  Just fuck 'em."  By 'fuck 'em' he meant let them go from your life, don't take shit from them and don't let their shit hurt you.

I miss my da.  If he had been around when a guy was projecting his own unworked shit onto me, my dad would have said 'Forget about this asshole. He treats you badly when you deserve to be treated like a queen.It breaks my heart to see you take his shit."

Nobody around telling me these days I deserve to be treated like a queen.  Just me. And I do.

be open to outcome

"Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. And don't be attached to the results." -- Angeles Arrien

I am an AHIM in my neighborhood

AHIMNeighborhood

Affordable Housing in My Neighborhood
Please be my neighbor, a good one please.

like training for the emotional olympics

The insensitive jerk I have been writing about once said to me that talking to me was like training for the emotional olympics. I am not entirely sure what he meant but when  I heard that, I wanted to say, but didn't, that interacting with him felt like training for the emotional olympics.

This guy is so unconscious. He beleives all problems he has interacting with others is the other person's fault. I know it takes two people to co-create any friendship but he seems to genuinely believe, even with his fancy PhD, years as a t-group facilitator, years as a process facilitator -- but no therapy, not him, he doesn't need any or believe in it, of course -- that he has superior relationship skills.

Once he said to me "You know, I know a lot of people known for their communication skills." like that magically made him a good communicator. Golly, I was facilitating intense process seminars in the eighties. I have worked, as a paid professional, with some of the biggest names in the consulting field (not lately). One of my main mentors is credited as one of the founders of the field of organization develoment but he is showing off because he knows a bunch of tgroup facilitators. News alert: I also know lots of tgroup facilitators and was trained as a tgroup facilitator by one of the founders of OD who also helped found the National Training Labs (NTL) and trained tgroup facilitators for at least 20 years every summer in Bethel Maine. But he brags to me about all the la di dah good communicators he knows, implying that means he is a good communicator.

I'll credit the guy with being charming. Most folks think he is very charming. And he is. Some of the time he is extremely charming. When he gess the least bit close to someone, and egos bump into one another, he angers as easily as anyone I have ever known and I come from a Black Irish family. At least in the way our family used the term Black Irish, Black Irish means bad tempered. It is not about skin and haira color. It is not about alcoholism, which the Irish seem to have a stronger weakness for booze than other ethnicities (well some others, certainly a few cultures are much more vulnerable to alcohol like Native Americans.). I know bad tempers. And I do not have a bad temper. This guy sees anger in everyone and in most of what they say, refusing to beleive me when I have said I am angry.

With him, like most predators, he confuses his prey with his gibberish, telling them black is white and down is up. And I let him treat me as he did and kept showing up for more.  I don't know who I am more angry with, him or myself.  I am so angry that I accepted so much emotional abuse from him, and even angrier that I didn't run away from interactions with him when he stated rojecting his stuff on to me and insisting his interpretation of what I had said or written was accurate.

He wrote one particularly absurd attack, focussing on one sentence I had written in an email. And this, I say with shame, was many years ago.  He actually wrote, and I have his crazy assertions in an email from him if anyone doubts me, that every word had auniversally agreed upon meaning. He wrote that language is a series of agreements and words have univerally accepted meaning.

I didn't say tis to him in resonse but I wanted to (note to self:  when you are afraid to say what you are thinking, run away as fast as you can, you are not safe), which was that I could tell he had not gone to law school. Much of law school is focussed on understanding basic legal concepts, the key codes or regulations such as tax code, uniform commercial code, etc. That's just knowledge. Most of the time in class in law school is spent with the law jocks sucking up to profs down in the front (I always sat in the last raw, as far away from the arguing and the professor as I could get). They argued about what words mean. REad a law school text of two buddy, and you would quickly see how absurd your assertion was that language is a series of universal agreements. That is his delusion. I know lots of people think words mean the same thing to everyone but that is delusion, fallacy.  It is quite rare for two people to give words the same meaning. Much arguing is rooted in miscommunication that stems from the simple truth that one person thinks words they hear from another mean something entirely different than the othe intended to convey.

With this guy, however, he always 'knew' what I had intended to say and when I tried to say no, that is not what I meant, he would say 'then you must have been unconscious' which must mean he is unconscious a lot. He sure accused me plenty of being unconscious when I am pretty darn sure I wasn't. Sure everyone does things unconsciously sometimes but now a rigid, black and white thinking borderline.  And not someone who grew up in an unsafe, predatory home. I learned very early to pay close attention to everything. I had to remain conscious to avoid being incested by my dad or abused in child labor abuse by my mother. And as my siblings grew, using me was just the way things were in our family. Even I thought using me was okay but I did wish to avoid being used or abused so I developed a close consciousness to what was going on.So I could anticipate abuse and misuse of me by 'going out to play' or hide in the basement. Heck, I learned, as I began to read novels (initially children's ones like Little House on the Prairie) that I could hide out by just being quiet and reading in my closet That trick worked for years. One day, my mom couldn't find me She thought I was over at my best friend's house next door and becmae concerned when I wasn't.She had all the kids on the block looking for me Aw, she cared! When she learned I was quietly reading, and hiding, in my closet with the light on and the door closed, she was furious. So was I:  my quiet reading hide out days were over.

When I first knew the insensitive jerk, and maybe narcissist (I can't really judge whether another person is a narcissist but it is fun mentally characterizing him as one -- he sure fits the criteria for one)

honor the in between

reviewing a valued perspective

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

In light of the above Rudolf Steiner quote, how can anyone practice adversarial law if one agrees with Steiner?

containing chaos

A growing number of Berkeley residents are becoming active in fighting city hall. I guess someone is always fighting all city halls about something. And Berkeley, in its past, has had a proud history of activism. Many in other parts of this country still think Berkeley is the very progressive place it was in the sixties. Berkeley has become a victim of political, conservative wolves posing in the guise of the progressive's sheeps clothing. Our mayor is conservative, querrulous and appears to only care about what the rich want. Our mayor seems to have swallowed the same kool aid many politicians in Congress have swallowed and politicians at all levels of governance.

I gotta give the hard right a bit of credit. Accustomed to being willing to take long-term financial positions, patiently waiting twenty, thirty, even fifty years, to get a huge return on an investment, the very rich elite have patiently but steadily invested in buying judges through campaign donations, buying state legislatures that they then order to gerrymander our congressional districts, then getting people to run for Congress who will obey the rich overlords. They have funded conservative universities to groom troops for the conservative advance. They have groomed and continue to groom judges, holding conservative playbook conferences to which our U.S. Supreme Court justices, some of them, attend, in direct violation of their duty to not only be non-partisan but to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

The appearance of impropriety has no meaning any more. Here in Berkeley, the lobbyist wolves, former city planning directors, guard the hen house full of opportunities to make hundreds of millions of dollars. Our mayor and his voting block on the council, along with planning staff who openly support developers above citizens' wishes seem, but no one can prove, to have made secretive agreements to give the lobbyist wolves what they want. And for what? What motivates a 75 year old man, who already receives a great state pension and who does not appear to be driven to accumulate accessive wealth for himself. He seems, to me, and what do I know, to be some kind of egomaniac. And a bully. Tommy Bates is such a bully.

And he has power, which a bully does not wear gracefully.

Gosh, griping about Berkeley corruptin is not my point at all.

I am interesting in thinking about, and I think better when I write, at least some of the time, the way people who oppose what's going on in Berkeley are coming together to join forces, hoping to create a grassroots coalition that will take Berkeley back from the conservatives on our city council.

It is astonishing to me how even in pseudo liberal Berkeley, a majority on our city council seems to have been given the same playbook as conservative sell outs everywhere. I don't think our city council is on the take, as in bribes.  I

my pay-it-forward gift

I got a small package with the line "today is your pay it forward day" in handwriting on the back. The package seemed to come from a business but it did not have a return address. The pay it forward note was written in pencil, in child-like block letters.

I waited until I had come up the elevator and entered my apartment to open the package because my hands were full. I wanted to tear that package open as soon as I pulled it out of my mailbox.

It was a bright, pretty, multi-stranded bracelet of green beads, with some gold ones. The strands came together in a magnetic clasp, and the strands kinda bubbled over a wrist, once placed on a wrist.

I have never cared to wear watches or bracelets. My being does not like having things on my wrists.  I bought a fit bit last summer and soon 'wore' it stuffed into my bra because it irritated me to have a band on a wrist.  I don't know why I am this way about things on my wrists but it is of no concern to me.

After seeing this pretty, shiny trinket which instantly represented magic, abundance, wishes granted, shine, light and happy mystery, my first thought was "I will wear this, even though it is green and I have never worn green, and even though I don't like to wear bracelets. This pretty thing arriving out of no where although I think I have remembered who offered pay-it-forward gifts to the first 10 or 20 folks who posted they wanted 'in' on their Facebook page. I think it was Diana Whitney. NB:  I am sure it was Diana Whitney, of Appreciative Inquiry renown.

In the next instant, I noted that the bracelet would only fit a child's wrist. It is a child's trinket.

I thought of a girl who lives on my floor with her single mom. I have friendly interactions with this woman and her daughter but not all that friendly. I don't know their names, nor which apartment they live in.  I don't see them often. Sometimes months will pass and I don't see the woman. I see the girl even less. But I thought "I will give it to that girl". I thought I might leave the bracelet with property management and ask them to give it to the girl. They aren't supposed to give out names or apartment numbers but I am sure they would have passed along the bracelet if I had asked.  When I gave a bike to another neighbor recently, the property manager broke the rules and told me the neighbor's apartment number before I remembered I had her email. I know this neighbor's name!

So, not having seen the mother in a few months, she came into my thoughts. A couple moments, I thought "I will hope to run into her soon and if I don't see her soon, I'll get help from property managers on Monday".

That day, yesterday, a couple hours later, I came into the building and found the woman at the elevator. I told her I had just received a gift bracelet, an anonymously mailed gift. I said 'it is a pretty trinket, bright and shiny bracelet, but it is too small for my wrist. I think it is for a child and I thought I'd give it to your daughter."

She came to my place, accepted the bracelet. And I still don't know her name.  In hindsight, I regret that I did not ask her name, tell her mine.   Sigh.

The best part of that very nice, unexpected gift bracelet:  the way I thought "I'd like to run into the woman on my floor with the young daughter" and the woman appeared. That is my takeaway gift, the power of my will capacity, the force of my being brought the woman to me so I could also pay it forward.

this brings back memories

 

For many years, my daughter and I took my great aunt Effie, my maternal grandmother's baby sister out to grocery shop and to have lunch. We also took Effie on outings, going to Como Park year round. Effie loved every inch of Como Park. She had lived a couple blocks off the park for sixty years. In winter, we would to to the Como Park Conservatory, shown in this photo here. The photo was taken by my friend Lana, who visited Como park today with her granddaughters.  Hat tip, Lana.

Effie loved the Como Park Zoo, which had many buildings we could tour even in winter. She loved walking along the lake, although she was no longer up to walking all around the lake. She loved it when we caught a concert on the lake. Most of all, she loved the Conservatory.

Our weekly visits were not a lot of fun for Rosie and me. I faithfully kept up visiting Effie because she came to rely on me to take her for weekly groceries, because my grandmother had asked me to help her baby sister and I had dearly loved my grandma and because, and this is a stinging joke now, I hoped that by caring for an elderly relative, I was showing my daughter to respect her elders. I thought that was an important life lesson.

It appears to be a lesson that my brainiac kid flunked.

Rosie moved to Chicago about ten years ago, with my mother still alive and three of my brothers living in Chicago, plus her cousins. She never once visited her grandmother, who made Waldorf possible for Rosie, among many generous gifts to Rosie from my mother. She has never, in all these years, reached out to her uncle, who doted on her as a child and spent far more time with Rosie than her father ever did.

I didn't imagine it. Rosie loved my brother Dave.  I am no longer sure that she ever loved me. I seriously wonder if she loved her mother. As I write it, I am incredulous over what I wrote but I do seirously wonder if my daughter ever loved the only parent who raised her.

I feel bitterness when I let myself reflect on my futile attempt to teach my child that humans have a duty to older generations. I never thought she needed to be taught to respect me as I aged, never thought i had to 'teach' her that I would still have some value, like love, for her as I age.  Nope. Rosie missed that lesson.

I can no longer write about my shared past with Rosie and make any claims about her experience. I know, now, that I never knew her. The child I had, the love I thought we shared, and my belief that she and I had an unbreakable bond, all these things are figments.

Heck, maybe my having a daughter was one long, hellish psychotic episode, maybe I imagined I had a daughter and that she loved me.

I didn't imagine Como Park. Here is is in the photo.

this is my inner world of late

I seem to see stars, constellations, comets, planets, outer space, more stars, gaseous clusters of staggering beauty all the time. In a way, and this sounds crazy to me but it also reflects how I am inhabiting the experience of being of late.  I am a part of the exquisite, magical beauty.