LAST WEEK OF THE YEAR

late rising at eight

to a morning dark as seven

guided by the light

like the chickens

who greet him

meet him at coop door

run between his feet

for feed mix in the yard

‘til chill chases him back to his pod,

his yellow and sunset orange submarine,

too toasty ‘til he acclimates

then not warm enough.

from the bridge above it all

he surveys her immediate position

along the never dry river of time

outside her surround-around port holes

blocked only to the south:

imac portal back

to the man-made world

saying news he fears to hear

paying dues left by his career

playing diversions still held dear

posting thoughts finally come clear

touching minds far and near

quality beyond the hit counter

variety of insight incited

tethers to the myth examined

patter on soft skin drum heads

looses rhythm in complexity

gains rain’s tapping attention

another frosty foray for feed

for the dry beneath the roost

to their cackle bitching delight

three more dashes during the day

through rain drops

to catch egg drops

beckoned by loud hen cops

today’s done deeds

entered as 169-171 in his egg book

times, dates and mom’s took

along with omelets eaten

friends who got treated

running cost of the feed

being happy where he is

friends know where to seek him

season of return

spontaneous reunion

catching up the years

yarns of daring do

sympathies of aging

venture wiser view

future all too new.

2009 in Review: END OF AN ERROR

The sanity defined by civilization seemed to find ways to reinterpret my maybe musings about the human condition to be personal attacks in most imaginative ways throughout the year. I was all too often lured into personal responses, as if their demonizing party line stereotypes or quoting the bible represented willingness, much less the ability of the offended to carry on a rational discussion

Coupled with my having stumbled onto the 10^th Daughter of Memory writing exercise, the foregoing dilemma suggested I change the direction of this blog from philosophical ponderings about my observations of the living universe, so easily taken offense to by faith’s delicate certainties, to one of strictly fiction based on such observations. I am beginning to see the rationale for originating fables and fiction throughout the ages as a way to get a message across indirectly to those able to apply Mary’s Little Lamb’s problems to their own life, thereby avoiding the more direct identification with the real population referred to as mindless, faithful sheep.

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For those more willing and able to discuss opposing views with the understanding that the essence of the duality is the win-win objective rather than a lose-lose contest of righteousness, I have moved my ponderings to a new blog available to all who find it in plain sight. You are welcome until offended — at which juncture I would hope you’d be so kind as to throw yourself out into the street. Watch out for cars … headed for the cliff.

I came across three new examples of folks who get the whole idea of a living universe: Sandy Krolic’s The Recovery of Ecstasy: Notebooks from Siberia, Richard Grossinger’s, Embryos, Galaxies and Sentient Beings: How the Universe Makes Life and James Cameron’s Avatar. It is gratifying to find others describing the same ongoing event so well as to bridge the differences of viewpoint while enhancing the scope of all.

This year found me a keeper of chickens and an eater of their delicious free-range eggs to supplement my less than desirable progress in growing my food in the garden through Texas summers. This year was a disaster, with only Serrano peppers coming back after the drought — watering every day cannot beat 100°+ for several months — trees began shedding leaves in mid June!

Having a quasi roomie and companion for stimulating conversation through six months of the worst heat was a more than compensatory distraction from discomfort though it left me missing her quite more than I expected and a never before indulged chocolate addiction – acne at seventy-one?

The UN climate summit succeeded in only resolving that people in suits consider people otherwise dressed or from below the equator to be unworthy of protecting from the ecological disaster by supplying them money to achieve the same standard of living that is causing it in the first place. Rather than dragging people out of the rain forest and selling them an air conditioner we should be planting trees and naturally ventilating our houses in their shade with the fresh air they regenerate symbiotically. Don’tcha jus’ love politics?

As 9/11/01 fades, 12/21/12 looms … “ these are the times” … "this is a record of the times" … “we’re all going down” … “together.”

Stragedy plots a way to side step inevitability.

Only carbon based life could generate so much irony.

TOP OF THE SEASONING TO ALL

ANOTHER "BLOG BUD" HITS IT OUT OF THE PARK

JUST GO HERE.

ONE OF THOSE INTERESTING TIMES

For no reason other than a comparison to my usually solitary musings to a generally indifferent population I find myself caught up in a maelstrom of social concerns. The first being an ongoing philosophical discussion with a friend that it seems has reached an impasse I am loath to let stand, thus the request of readers to register an opinion of the Marcus Arelius' Quotation two posts back. The second is Pisces Iscariot's pricise encapsulation of a giant portion of what my rants are directed at.

The third is Jeffscape's entry into the Tenth Daughter of Memory writing exercise both for its beauty and for a tangent too large for his comment box. It began there with …

I've always questioned red for love too. It's opposite is green, the ultimate feeling of being a ground for healthy growth, the realization of the possibilities of love. The red is the anger at finding oneself needing, thus expecting others to supply the water for the seed.

Love and happiness are the same thing to me. Happiness is as much the essence of our being as curiosity, arising from the core within each that connects all life despite our definitions. Love is a drawing the attention of our happiness to another that too shows the happiness of its own existence and therby expands ours. The dispair of the world, from broken hearts to wars, is essentially the chagrin at realizing how bereft of happiness we often feel upon discovery of how much we depend on our view of the world to supply and control it, like a painter expecting the canvas to put the right colors on the brush in just the right places and getting angry because it doesn't.

Pisces' piece exemplified civilization suddenly bereft of the props of the myth civilization weaves being thrown back to their atrophied personal responsibilities, just as heartbreak does every day to individuals. Life owes us nothing after giving us the happiness of existence, not even food. We have to love being alive to seek that which will sustain it. We breath involuntarily, but we have to do food. The rest of our doing is either the outpouring of our happiness or the searching for where we lost touch with it along the way.

"Man is riding a camel in search of a camel." - Nomad proverb?

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Addendum: The previous post, "There Comes a Time …" has been deleted upon Lilwave's convincing me it was a "dumb post". She also made me pretty sure it was dumb of me to try to appeal to her in any manner. I apologize for washing dirty family laundry in the small public who might have gotten splashed. I'm sure you weren't as offended as Lilwave claims to be. Ah, well, I live and sometimes learn, apparently nothing on that little venture. I can't imagine anyone to pray to so, I guess I'll have to wait for things to change, as they always do.

MY THOUGHTS , EXACTLY!

JUST GO HERE.

FEAR IN SHATTERED COLOR

Maybe if dad hadn’t gotten laid off in October he might have gotten to open the usual present before bed time that always took the edge off the season long anticipation of the wonderful rewards for his good behavior Santa put under the tree while he slept through the night that felt like eternity.

Maybe if mother and dad hadn’t been such good hosts, they might have done their little helper chores sooner and been in bed sooner.

Maybe if children understood all the words grownups use to cover the holes in their fabrications they would be less skeptical of the words they did understand.

Maybe if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass. He doesn’t so he does. Dad was, mother and dad didn’t, children don’t so they are and he couldn’t sleep for worrying that something besides the leering face in the glowing stars on his ceiling was afoot. By the time he got to the stairs he knew no one was afraid of being caught being naughty by Santa or his helpers. For each step crept his skepticism bloomed until he could see the whole lurid scene.

The implications were so vast he could only beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs before his discovery was discovered. In turning to go he snagged the garlands decorating the banister and loosed a hanging purple ball from the fir frond upon which it depended. Lunging for it he missed, deflecting it into the path of the paper loop chain, which caught its hook and stopped its surely shattering on the hardwood living room floor.

Maybe if the Christmas decoration had completed its journey on the winds of gravity his parents would have realized the jig was up and would have welcomed him into the fold of the first stage of adulthood like anyone who announces their discovery.

Maybe if the fear of being found out during the tedious chore of hauling the delicate pendulum of ball and chain back to safety hadn’t shocked him into a unique realm of realization for a five year old, he might have been one of those that spitefully announces his discovery to all those who are still fooled by the fable or still telling it.

Maybe if he’d blabbed his secret insight he’d have never learned to spot prevarication whenever it belies his own experience of nature or the body language of the teller of tales.

Maybe if science actually knew what it was talking about they could calculate that bumblebees can, in fact, fly. But they don’t so they can’t. The ball didn’t so he wasn’t, the fear did so he wasn’t, and he didn’t so he has never burdened anyone with his trust, belief, faith or himself with the bruises for which they’re always cruising. Maybe

IMAGING

Ally

Arouse

Arena

Adventure

Absolution

Ablution

Being

Burgeon

Beat

Belly

Borne

Born

Curl

Comatose

Comfy

Cramp

Conscious

Curious

Density

Different

Dabble

Defend

Depend

Delicious

Easy

Edgy

Eager

Earthling

Evolving

Eternal

Essence

Forms

Frames

Future

Flames

Find

Favorite

Games

Goings

Gettings

It is not our task to have the right answer before we die,

It is our gratitude to find more profound questions

throughout our naturally curious lives

however long that gift

may survive our

impatience for

conclusions.

Grockings

Groupings

Graphings

Happy

Hum

Handle

Hit

Hurt

Hesitate

Ideas

Ideals

Imagination

Iconoclast

Isolation

Individual

Journey

Justice

Jury

Jail

Journal

Joy

Karma:

Knots

Keep

Keen

Knowledge

Kosher

Lecture

Learn

Love

Lure

Leap

Loose

Mother

Meaning

Micro

Macro

Memory

Momentum

Naïve

Note

New.

Nurse,

“Not

Now.”

Open

Opiate

Obviate

Oblivious

Organism

Operation

Poem

Ponder

Pleasure

Pressure

Palpate

Penetrate

Quaint

Qualms

Quantify

Quisling’s

Quality

Quest

Ribosomes

Remember,

Romantic

Roaming

Riddles

“Reality”

Scenario

Setting

Story

Saga

Spontaneity

Silenced

Civilization is a stragedy of erroneous eras

we’re all too willing to ignore

because it’s all we know

how to be

told to

do

.

Tradition

Test

Trait

Talley

Truth

Tell

Unique

Umbrage

Until

Understand

Universal

Unity

Variety

Verify

Very

Vaporous

Vortex

Veil

Wander

Wonder

Wisdom

Wax

Wizard

Wane

Xanthippe’s

Xeric

Xenobiotic

Xenia,

Xenopus

X'ed

Youth

Yawn

Yin

Yang

Yearn

Yoga

Zazen

Zero

Zocalo

Zeal

Zoetrope

Zoo

MEMAGRAM FOR CINNAMON

So, here comes Cinnamon with an old meme for old me, so I'll reply with answers that haven't changed in the two years since I last got tagged with it.

1) I have not seen a doctor, nor needed to, since my hypochondriac, registered nurse wife went home to her mother thirty-seven years ago. Proper diet and homeopathy have succeeded where junk food and the AMA failed with regularity.

2) I have not owned or driven a car for thirty-three years, with two exceptions in emergency situations.

3) I have been celibate for the past twenty-two years in an ongoing experiment to learn if sex would arise without my initiation of the act, leaving me with the unavoidable impression that I am not sexually attractive or that I am attracted to women dedicated to the same experiment. Playing hard to get and succeeding too well.

4) I have lived nineteen months naked in a tipi in the wild, albeit owned lands.

5) I witnessed the night long labor of a friend’s natural childbirth resulting in a new life opening its eyes for the first time to see sun peek simultaneously over the horizon, followed momentarily by the shadow of a curious cow come to look in the window.

6) I have seen two different UFOs close enough to see silhouettes of beings inside moving across lighted panels and fell asleep watching a third dashing to and fro across distant mountains.

7) I survived being caught sailing from Pascagoula across the gulf to Tampa by a minor hurricane which, in the middle of pitch black chaos, caused me to leap to the conclusion that there might possibly be a god. When the thirty foot seas remained after the winds died to batter my boat like a pebble in a maraca, I let their namesake, Aeolus, have all the screaming insanity that emergency prolonged over two days can build with both blaspheming barrels.

There is an amazing corollary to the first three in the list above: with out a car, doctor or persuasive pursuit of wimmin I have lived quite luxuriously below the United States’ poverty level for twenty of the last thirty years. I have satisfied myself with the truth in the phrase, “The measure of a man’s true wealth is the things he can live without.” and the reality in the quote, “I can cover the earth in leather or wear my own shoes.”

I feel no obligation to pass this tag on, its having arrived here by accidental shenanigans and playful intrigue by an idle English idyller.

MESSAGE FROM THE FULCRUM

Silence.

Knock!

Awakening

“Was that a sound?”

Silence.

Knock!

The dream is over

“Is something happening?”

Silence.

Knock!

The dualities resume

“There it is again!”

The duality of silence and sound are the clothing with which the mind adorns experience as its best gesture to suggest one’s ineffable insights into an existence too everywhere to be pointed at. At the balance point of each and of all, that which can be dressed in expression fitting the fashion must neglect the rest of the ongoing reality to tell a snap shot story of the enormous variety of dualities contained in any instant, inspirational glimpse of the eternal present. Seeing the dynamic of dualities as a dance or a war seems to depend on the centeredness of one’s fulcrum.

If the essence of the living universe were not the fulcrum about which constant change occurs, we could not be aware of our existence in it. Duality, simultaneously recognized difference, is the trigger to our awareness and the limit to the range of our ability to describe the truth at the fulcrum upon which the instant of the present balances. Like a tight rope walker stabilizes herself by spreading her apparent physical presence over imaginary ground on either side of the rope with a balance bar, our memories and expectations stabilize our awareness of the reality of the only time or place we or anything else ever has or will walk, now.

My version of the yin yang symbol for duality above demonstrates how the variations produced by the living universe mix into the definitive duality of two complimentary, opposite colors which, rather than obscuring the polarity, show the dynamic mix of two elements whose existence depends on each other in the often ignored threshold between them, now.

Though I used a tight rope, now and the line dividing the yin yang as examples of this universal threshold just now, a deeper examination is needed of the ramifications of ignoring such a critical transition by allowing the distraction of the more stark contrast of stereotypical extremes by indolent minds insistent on viewing the world in black and white righteousness. For the civilized mind such examination is possible only by withdrawal from all cultural influence, found most purposefully in deep meditation or prayer and inadvertently in epiphanies called anything from religious to psychedelic experiences of the true connectedness of the living universe. During any such personal insight into the eternity of the present, one’s purpose for being there dissolves in significance when one realizes that the resolution of all dualities is this source from which we attempt to single out, follow and favor any number of its myriad variations over the rest.

Lao Tsu speaks of the threshold not as something to be limited by or crossed, but as a path to be wandered as the way of everything, the path of unattached balance. Upon such a path, habitual temptations and aversions acquired and indulged, in excess of the necessities of a healthy life, may be seen as so much baggage and examined for their push/pull connectedness across the threshold of pernicious preferences frustrating the already well off, like trying to use a long balance pole while walking along the flat ground in a row of a cornfield.

This turned out to be a bigger chunk of the constant ramble unwinding from this view from the fulcrum than I intended. Maybe.