Let it Rain

Scatter salad. Bomomo sketch by Kyla

It's a little too hot today, holding the laptop and reaching inside for some words. The machine is hot on my lap, and the outside temperature is edging 90. I'm inside, under a fan, in a room shaded from the sun, but small things count when it's this hot. We haven't turned on the AC yet; there's a consensus to avert that as long as we can stand it.

There was thunder about a half hour ago, but it was distant. Nothing much is moving except the blades of the fan and my fingers on the keys. The cat flicks an ear every now and then.

I've been reading magazines today. Magazines of local boosterism, I guess I could call them, one about the city and one about the state, all full of glossy fun, smiling natives, photos of fattening or slimming food and of destinations that promise experiences they likely don't deliver very reliably.

I'm seeing many examples, in these magazines, of cultural developments that in years past I would have greatly desired and seen as evidence of a sophistication that could make me feel more at home. Yet now, looking through these articles promoting performance poetry troupes, small literary gatherings, well-meaning and intelligently designed social outreach to less fortunate community members, environmentally sound transit options, smart stylish local food, I feel increasingly claustrophobic.

Claustrophobic enough that I have to stop and savor the odd nature of this reaction I have. I am not reacting to the content of what I am reading and viewing; it's something else, a layer of some kind of transmission woven into the promotion of these "good things", a transmission that feels extremely toxic.

I question whether I am reacting to old memories. It may be that I am. But in this moment I do not believe that is a significant factor. There is something riding on this type of promotion that my body recoils from.

I think I know what it is. I think I am having a physical revulsion to yet more selling of the outside world as all we need, as the repository of value source. You know, if you have these things, enough of them, enough of these experiences and flavors and little cozy bistro moments, seasoned with a few morsels of philosophical self-congratulation - why, then, you have all there is to have! You have it made! You are happy, successful, and all you need is more of what you already have, so, let's go! Go to the gym, pedal that new bike, get your gear on, check out the smartest spa, buy the tickets, take the ride, dinner and a show. Heh. Even read a book, now and then.

The cliche reaction is to imagine some of the modeled buff sleek groomed young people suddenly transported to different lives. Oh, say, let them have a week or two as shipbreakers in Bangladesh. For instance.

And I know this reaction is just part of the same program, and that in the real lives of any individual pictured in this way, in such magazine glossiness, there is the appropriate measure of struggle and challenge, that no one is really outside the reach of Life's Editor.

But it angers me that this amount of pretense is still being poured out in such quantity, and that it fills so much space in everyone's mental field. It fills the space, and it magnetizes the attention, demanding belief in plastic as nourishment, frivolity as passion, bathos as all the depth anyone might need.

Meanwhile most people are thirsty and starving.

Let it rain.

I wish you good nourishment.

Walking the Dogs

Stand. Photo by Kyla

If everything I see is a Word of God, then there is no difference worth noting between walking the dogs, and any other work I might put my hands to. No ranking can stand long in the Fire of that Reality.

But you and I know that even if everything in our manifest reality is a Word of God, even so, down here in the thick of it, we have major obstacles to living in harmony or even basic peacefulness, let alone the bliss some spiritual systems like to offer. (I have heard, and believe it is so, that the issue there is simply how one defines "bliss.")

In the levels of being where the Word of God is not noticeably recognized, where peace and unity are obliterated by chaos, fear, cruelty, or simple stupor, we have to acknowledge the brokenness, the twistedness, the discord, the reversals of what we all, in our bones, know damn well is rightful.

The mind, now, listen to it. It begins already with its arguments about politics and belief systems and "levels" and all that. Table that for a bit if you will please. Acknowledge, if only for the sake of argument, that down underneath that infernal endless discussing, you do know, your body at least does know when freedom and harmony hold sway.

Growing Wings: Deep Change Required

Happy landing.  Photo by Kyla

Big changes, rapid changes, changes that completely obliterate the comfort zone, don't we love to hate this kind of action!? I know I have resisted such change more often than I've embraced it. I also suspect it's required now, if I really want to grow some wings.

I mean, imagine if we were growing wings physically, out of a mature human body. Just feel into that for a moment. And remember, you don't have the luxury of a cocoon, not really. You have to undergo this process while maintaining some semblance of normal functioning, at least part of the time.

Whoa. This, no doubt, is why in primary cultures, shamans generally enter into their spiritual calling by means of grave illness and near death experiences. That provides them with a cocoon, while the body is developing its powers.

Shaman powers - the ability to see, to know, to directly affect subtle and causal layers of manifest reality and thus make changes to physical conditions - these powers could be a version of wings. Some of that ability is indeed needed in order to sustain real freedom: the ability to be aware of what freedom requires and what might be obstructing it.

My Heart is Full

Farewell.  Photo by Kyla

In less than 24 hours now I will leave this place for the last time. Having moved so often in the recent years I know I can't really predict much at all about my new life. Oh, I know some things, good things, but nothing really telling, nothing about how I will spend my time or what I will feel or encounter.

Forced into the present moment this way, I am feeling something amazing. My heart is full in a way it has never been. It is not happy or sad, but there is a flow of affection for this place and this moment, and this one, and this one.... It is all so rich it takes my breath. I can feel the land speaking to me.

Today I noticed spears of Gladiolus leaves have begun to emerge. I weeded around them, and put compost and mulch there, and felt as happy as if I were going to be here to see them bloom. After all, this is part of being a gardener at large: to care for the land and the life around me wherever I am, however brief a time I may be in any one spot.

There were goldfinches in the apple tree outside my window today, and the blossoms are pink. Two hummingbirds, at least two, are fighting over the feeder space as they always do. They zoom and buzz and play, dive bombing each other, and me if I am in their way. Today the sky was clear all day and there was quiet here on the property. There is nothing better than this, in my life.

Eye of the Beholder

Hello. Photo by Kyla

Without the eye, without the brain, beauty is an unknown thing. Our nervous systems are built to register beauty, it seems, since there is a long and common agreement about it, in the main. Given plenty of room for taste and for disagreement, there is still a general territory where we can more or less agree about what appears as beauty.

If you were to remove the way our eyes and brains parse light into image, nothing would be as it appears. For example, to the vision of a fly, or a bird, all would look quite other than it does to us, and what beauty would we find there? Where does beauty go, if you do that?

I want to say, beauty is a communication from spirit, a communication of some kind of harmony. But, is that so?

I do know I am capable of looking at the most trivial or chaotic images or scenes, and finding beauty there by intending to do so. I used to practice this. It's an exercise in appreciation and has some usefulness.

But what I was not noticing until much later was that I practiced that because I started by seeing what was not beautiful, and I wanted to change it. When I could not change it externally, I changed my perception instead.

I believe by doing that I missed the point.

On the Cusp of Change

Fly away home.  Photo by Kyla

Dear Readers,

I am going to be more sporadic in publishing new blog posts for a while. I've been posting new material on a regular schedule for a while and I've enjoyed doing that. Now, with my move across the country imminent, I feel the need to be much more flexible with the timing of everything I can release from any kind of schedule at all.

I may very well not post any less frequently, but new posts will no longer be on a regular rotation, at least for the present.

Today the weather here is warm and sunny - not at all a sure thing for this season in this geographical location. There are two eagles spending time in the tall fir trees across the yard. The fly in and land and then depart - no doubt looking for newly hatched ducklings. The cries of the eagles are beautiful and wild. I'll miss living with eagles.

There are surely many other things I will miss as well but overall I have to say I feel liberated by this move, this radical dismantling of my old timeline and the entry onto a new one.

Imagine Freedom

Imagine.  Photo by Kyla

I hope there will be many conversations about freedom in coming days. Along with all else that happened in the third week of April, it was also the anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution, on the 19th, and of the famous ride of Paul Revere which took place on the 18th. "Listen my children and you shall hear," says the first line of Longfellow's poem memorializing that stirring moment.

What is it we are hearing, now? Since we have just experienced an American city under armed occupation, with forced house-to-house searches and firefights in the neighborhood streets, it might be a good time for those conversations about freedom, as one of my favorite astrologers (who also happens to be an excellent journalist) suggests.

And, please. Do not take my words here as any kind of slur or criticism toward the brave first responders to emergencies, who genuinely give their all to protect citizens. I honor that commitment and courage.

Even so, I believe there are questions to ask, and conversations to hold.