THE FLAVOR IS GONE

Grandmother Edna Gordon went on to be among the stars. She was Haudenoshaunee,(Iroquois Nation) Hawk Clan for 93 years. Her message was very simple and thus authentic, because complexity is man made and engenders confusion. I am moved by how her message is such a universal truth and yet our modern world still lives in a hypnotic zombi spell, among the walking dead. I continue struggling to wake up from this spell myself, as we all must if we are to survive.  I'm not talking about merely physically surviving to a ripe age and then dying, but of surviving in spirit and soul, even the material form of earth was born and will die.  We have been brainwashed into believing that we are only a physical machine, but where did that spark come from that makes it obvious when we are alive and also obvious when that spark has left its physical form.




We are antagonists against our own nature merely by living within the Political Industrial system.  It can't be otherwise. We are taken away from our Mother Nature and taught that it is progress, and that we will be better off as orphans prostituted to a sugar daddy who will pamper us with many shiny things and  give us more than enough to compensate our loss.  But this sugar daddy's basket is almost empty of bling. Watching TV just before Christmas is very revealing.  There is a commercial frenzy to ignite a buying frenzy among we viewers. Meanwhile Mother Nature is showing her distress more and more dramatically.  She is breaking down and misses her errant children.

This false pseudo lifestyle came partially from a misunderstanding of the Christ and of a true Science. The Christ shows us the way to die to falsity and be born to reality beyond our perceived world. The winter solstice holds the seeds of what will be new life. The false way removes us from the naturally ordered life of our Mother Nature. The One World Order is not based on the laws of life.  It won't work in the True Order, and breaks down, as is happening right now. The small mind behind our false system comes up with cures to the problems it creates with more  solutions that are always complicated and "less than" the natural system.

Have you noticed how the flavor is gone from the food produced in corporate farms? Nature can't be fooled. We are the fools deceiving ourselves. And so it is with all natural systems that the human systems attempt to enslave or replace. Eventually nature turns against us the way the body turns against a diseased cell.

Nelson Mandela was world famous. Edna Gordon was famous within a smaller circle but both were spiritual warriors, visionaries and flame holders for their nations. I have noticed that great souls frequently depart this dimension at the end of an old year and before a new year. They delivered the message they came with and it is ours to carry it on in the New Year and new world.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

CONSTRICTED

There are six inches of snow outside. Up down and all around is white. It came during the night but it seems as if sky and earth made love and haven’t gone back to their conventional sky up, earth down position yet.  I opened the door to feel the temperature.  Shadow peered outside, sniffed the air in all directions turned back and jumped on her favorite chair. It’s hard to believe she made it entirely through last winter on her own as a feral cat. 

Through the Bedroom Window

Last week we took her on a small trip to Santa Fe, house sitting three days for friends.  She behaved surprisingly well and our relationship with her grew more trusting on all sides. I was surprised how she quietly lay on my lap all the way to our friend’s house. When we first arrived, she was terrified by such a large strange house and immediately looked for a place to hide. I shut her in the guest bedroom where we sleep. I figured a smaller space would give her less to fear and it worked. By the second day, she was ready to explore and would retreat under the bed only when it became overwhelming. By evening, she was on the sofa with us watching TV. Maybe we all need a bed to hide under when life brings sensory overload.  I like to travel but don’t genuinely enjoy staying in impersonal hotels. Maybe it’s my Cancer nature to want a familiar place to retreat to at the end of the day. What I really like is several familiar retreats in different locations that way my Gemini Sun gets along with my Cancer Moon. I apologize to those of you who aren’t into astro-speak.

This morning while reading about the mind/body/environment interplay in health (I’m still reading “The Turning Point” by Fritjof Capra with morning coffee) I suddenly realized that the central theme of my life is a conflict between restriction and expansion, so I started journalizing about restriction. Both restriction and expansion are fundamental aspects of existence; it’s the imbalance that is an issue. I am always struggling to expand to my potential size while living inside a small cement box. I grew up with people who think constriction is safety; small house, small income, small social group, small hopes and desires, small imagination, and small self-image. I could go on and on with the smalls but you get the idea. To think big was hubris and a challenge to the gods.  I wonder who high up there in my family tree learned to think constriction is safety and who are those gods we fear to challenge? Perhaps it is the compensatory reaction of someone in our past being a big red target for poison arrows. One extreme is often an attempt to conceal its opposite. 

PQ’s lung disease is another restriction. He has been struggling this past week with stomach cramps that seem related to lack of oxygen. I certainly wish we could get back to our lower altitude Arizona location so we must put our faith in unknown possibilities. I suspect that the constriction issue came up for a reason. It seems to apply on all levels. Nevertheless, I recently found two good websites devoted to chronic lung diseases and by joining a forum; I’ve learned that there is a wide diversity of policies among different hospitals concerning lung transplants. A hospital in Phoenix has done transplants on people as old as 75 as long as they were otherwise in good health. The upshot of the past two weeks is that a decision is looming and the challenge is to take our future out of the slow cooker.

   

The winter weather is good for introspection. We plan to have the Pueblo house open for The Christmas Eve bonfires again and we have enjoyed being in Taos since the October art show in Cottonwood but time is pressuring us to be more focused about what must change if there is to be a future. We have been very fortunate in selling enough art to cover utilities and groceries but if we are to go to the next level before time overtakes us, the constricted box must grow.

Now it's time to shovel snow off the sidewalk.

AUTUMN COMES AGAIN

Velarde Valley on Saturday

Autumn is coming full on and it’s shocking how fast the year has gone by. Life is like an unfolding TV series episode by episode but I’m not particularly in a hurry to find out how the story ends. I’m becoming patient and enjoy each segment on its own. The last two nights we have had rain and that must be due to global warming. PQ and I compare notes, and we agree that in the years of our youth by this time of year the leaves would be gone and any precipitation would probably be white. As a child, I went trick or treating a number of times in a blizzard but in those days life for children was different. The neighbors were trustworthy and we children went out on our own Halloween night. The neighborhood was semi-rural and we sometimes walked for miles. Being out in the dark and the weather was part of the fun. I enjoyed the costumes and often people would invite us into their homes so that everyone could see our costumes and try to guess who we were. I had a marvelous witch costume. The mask was very realistic and seemed like real skin. The only problem was with the eye holes. They weren’t big enough to see anything but straight ahead. I usually fell off at least one porch and tripped over a few bushes.


We went to the screening of a segment of Awakening in Taos, the film about Mabel Dodge Luhan and Tony Lujan a week ago. Then yesterday we took another drive to Santa Fe to buy a pressure cooker on sale at Bed Bath and Beyond. It was a good excuse to take a drive down the canyon and enjoy the brilliant cottonwoods lining the Rio Grande. We had a quiet dinner with Awakening in Taos producer and dear friend Mark Gordon and this morning we had coffee on the patio for the first time in several days. It was great fun but all the talking was hard on PQ’s oxygen level. He is sticking with the couch and TV today.

Shadow on Her Favorite Perch

We have a cat. We can't live in denial anymore. After being pet-free for a number of years this black furry creature has made it through all the pet filters. From being a feral feline, she is now quite at home and very affectionate. Even PQ is trying to think of ways we can travel with her. Watching her change has been a lesson in basic psychology. Not only was she afraid of people, she was afraid of all the other cats, and they beat her up whenever they got a chance. She lived by being alert and fast. Now she feels quite confident that this is her territory and yesterday she chased off the cat that injured her badly last month. This morning she chased off miss Fluffy Tail who tries to dominate all the other cats. They all start growling and hissing at this one whenever she saunters over whipping her magnificent tail back and forth like queen of the neighborhood. Her people put a collar with a bell on it. I suppose this is to protect the birds but it protects all of us. She is very pretty and has an innocent, “who me?” face but mischief is her game. Watching cats and birds is a good way to keep the human drama in perspective. Humans are inclined to think that they are what the world is all about. Everything else on the planet is just resources and decoration. Yet all the other beings are living out their own dramas, goals, successes, and failures.

WE ARE ALL RELATED - IT'S COSMIC

 Prehistoric cave paintings often display men with part animal bodies.  Was this a way of drawing the spirit of the animal closer or to bring the man’s spirit into the animal’s essence for purposes of hunting or medicine?  Like attracts like; the human and animal worlds were not separated the way they are now.  Perhaps we are slowly making our way back to accepting the reality of our common beingness.

The longer I live the more I’m convinced that we humans are still on a primitive level of development and like adolescents, we think our ancestors didn’t know very much. We make amazing instruments for convenience, healing (more accurately patching) and destruction, and yet we aren’t actually happier, healthier or more in synch with our environment. We pursue power and immortality without knowing what they are. The lesser mind is attempting to control its own source. With all the sophistication of our medical instruments, health seems to be declining. I recently read that cancer treatment is no more effective than it was sixty years ago, and cancer is more prevalent, perhaps because our lifestyles and values are not people friendly. Is this really about progress, or more to the point, why do we deify progress? 

A great separation of time and mentality divides nowadays from the time of the cave paintings of

This cave is a reproduction but the contrast is still huge.

Lascaux, images carved on stone in ancient Australia, Africa or pre-invasion America. However, nothing of the earth that once existed is truly lost but merely stacked one upon the other in the growing hoard of time. There is perhaps a place for psychic archaeology as much as that practiced by those equipped with shovels and scientific tools for illuminating the deeply buried past. Yet truly, the past never fundamentally separated us and now travels with us through the eons of ancestors imbedded in our cells.

Most ancient cultures viewed time as a circular or at least spiral process rather than the linear process by which our modern world abides. Personally, the more birthdays I collect, the stranger time seems.  An event last year may seem a few weeks ago while memory of an event last month is like the distant end of a long chain of whiles.  How much is our sense of time actually cultural conditioning?

How about balance? .It isn’t a fixed state but a constant tide between movement and stasis. The Tiwa people, my husband’s tribe, don’t trust the dominant culture of America, and keep their religious beliefs and the meanings of their ceremonies strictly to themselves. They even hold their language within the tribe. They base their distrust of the dominant culture and its ways on bad experiences in the history of their relationship with Spanish and Anglo subjugators. Even more to the point is the recognition that base values are so different that even with good intentions the cultures don’t mix harmoniously.  Of course, the modern global culture affects them, if culture is the right word.  They drive motor vehicles, eat fast food, shop at super markets and use TV’s, computers and smart phones. Some of the children don’t even speak Tiwa, but they are very aware of being an alternative viewpoint and believe they perform their ceremonies and hold their tribal identity for the good of the entire world. At the very least, it preserves something fundamentally organic about being human in the cosmos.

I am now thinking of time in the mode a plant or an animal begins and ends and the Sun and Moon divide their movement to give us an instinctive go by through our cosmic territory.  Without a beginning or end, there is no time and no existence on this dimension. Without the borders of time, there is no-thing. Our normal way of thinking is dependent upon an agreed upon canvas of space and time on which to paint our life’s portrait. Yet in this fractal universe, we are intricately patterned offshoots of Creator’s primal energy body. I’m getting lost and a little dizzy now. Why did I start this? It reminds me of a childhood game I once played. Staring at the night sky I would imagine what was beyond the stars and what was beyond that beyond until I fell down from dizziness. Light and darkness are opposites but they differ in that light exists and darkness is the background that reveals its existence.  There is a border between them that we recognize but can’t explain without destroying the thought of one or the other.

 Lascaux remained in darkness for ages just as most of who we are as beings exists locked in a dark vault waiting  for the need of a critical evolutionary key to arise, a call from the future. Is this desire part of the creative force? Now and then, I rediscover a book that was very important at one time in my life and was then lost to memory.  Is it really chance that it re-emerges just when I need a particular piece that will enlighten the present darkness? Amazingly, I would never have recognized the need for this key without perception acquired since the first encounter. The past and the future seem to be in constant communication at the juncture point of the present.

PQ and I enjoy watching a micro-world in the backyard over morning coffee. There are three cats (that was yesterday, now there are four), many birds, prairie dogs chirping over the fence, dogs barking on both sides and numerous insects from which to learn or at least notice as existential players in an ongoing creation story. A beautiful blue dragonfly dipping and swooping across the backyard disappears somewhere through the leaves of the cottonwood.  How could it once have been as large as the magpies perched on our neighbor’s globe willow? A prehistoric creature that existed long before our own species has changed only in size. There are flies and aunts imbedded in ancient amber that haven’t changed at all. Then I realized that we are held in space on a big ball that has existed for so long that the numbers of its years bounce off my overloaded brain and float away into the incomprehensible.

 Could it be that we humans are still in early dawn of our development?  I hope so. The shortsightedness of our species threatens the existence of everyone who shares this big ball.  We humans have a large brain, powerful reasoning ability and that deadly prehensile thumb, added to very little wisdom about how to use these instruments. We are still the Sorcerer’s Apprentice when it comes to a relationship with the Master Wizard and yet we hold onto our familiar beliefs as if they were the final word of truth.  Now it seems that the upstart religion of Scientific Materialism is going down the same road to intellectual taxidermy as it’s religious predecessors.   This may be due to a hardwired component of the human psyche. However, the greater problem is a lack of heart connection, that gravitational pull that binds our thoughts to the cycle of creation, exacerbated by fear of mortality. The ancients were right to correlate the heart with the solar center that magnetically powers our cosmic organism. The view looking out from inside our skin gives us the idea that we are isolated entities and everything outside of this thin and penetrable personal border with its minute lifespan is either a potential enemy or something exploitable. 

Yet all borders exist within still larger borders, and all edges disappear when viewed panoramically with a cosmic eye.Unless we acknowledge all our relations from the heart, nothing on heaven or earth will penetrate our isolation illusion and organize our passions like the spirit images on the walls of dark caves did for our ancestors.   The mystery of time reminds us, that the creation of the world is happening now as it always has. It has bothered me since early childhood that I can live only in one place at a time, whatever it happens to be. I sometimes envision a plane of grazing mammoths, prehistoric bison, lions, dire wolves and all the other plants and fauna of 20,000 years ago from where I sit for coffee each morning. Then, at other times, try to imagine life in pre-Roman Europe, Renaissance Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia and so on. Nevertheless, the focal point for all of that is now, and the sum of everything that was is now. It is an awesome bank of resources for now and the next moment and the next.

WHERE IS BLACKIE?

I’m feeling sad. The garden seems empty. Who would expect that a little stray cat could have such a big presence?  Four days ago, I closed the front door at about 11:00 PM as I usually do.  The neighborhood cats would wander in and out until I closed the door, especially Black Kitty.  She had taken to coming inside to lay under the table or alternately, the big flowerpot in front of the door where she could watch us on the couch.

On Wednesday, she had already gone about her night business when I closed the door. Usually she would be sleeping on PQ’s patio chair in the morning, or if the sun had already risen over the latia fence, she would be in the shade behind the barbeque. Thursday morning she wasn’t there. I had a twinge of concern but remembered that this happened now and then.  Cats have their own secret life and although creatures of habit, they sometimes have their attention on other things.  After all, the white cat disappeared for two weeks once.  I think his human kept him inside to fix in him where he lived. But, Blackie didn’t seem to have any other human family.

Blackie Watching from the Flower Pot

Whitey was becoming jealous of the black cat, and I wondered if he scared her off in the morning.  But, she never showed up, not that afternoon, not the next day or the next.  Both PQ and I suspected that something must have happened to her.  It could have been a coyote, a hawk, a dog or a car. We hadn’t heard anything but then there is a big field behind us, and beyond that the mountains. Maybe someone thought she was homeless and took her to the shelter. I would like to think that, but I doubt it.

Last fall, when I first saw her, she was small and skinny. I don’t know how old she was. I think she was older than her size indicated because her dull coat indicated that she was undernourished.  The hair on her ears was patchy, her left ear had the tip clipped off, and her tail seemed ragged.  She was so wary that she wouldn’t come out of hiding to eat unless you left the food out and then went indoors out of sight.  I don’t know if she was feral or abandoned, but she stayed away from humans. There were indications that her previous experience with our species had not been good.

The first time I got close enough to touch her, she jumped three feet off the ground. However, every week she became a bit more trusting. By last week, I could comb her pet and play with her.  She was still anxious about being picked up, but would allow me to hold her off the ground a few feet. We were working on that. She became so affectionate that sometimes I had to put her outside when working, she was always under foot.

We were concerned about leaving her on her own when we went to Arizona in May, but Amanda our daughter in law fed her and the others whenever they checked on our house. When we got home, Blackie peered cautiously around the corner of the house and on my greeting, “hi little girl,” she came bounding to meet me.

Right after I realized that she probably wasn’t coming back, I also recognized that I always had the sense that her life was precarious.  Every morning I was happy that she was still here. It was in her aura. She was much like certain humans I’ve known who began life on a narrow edge. The aura of a perilous hold on this dimension envelops them. You want to enjoy their presence while you can because it seems likely that they will fall through the dimensional floor into the unknown. Perhaps it’s because they always did have a dual residence between this world and wherever they came from and to where they will return. Even if they have a big hole in their aura, such creatures deliver a special blessing to the rest of us. I’m glad for the opportunity to make this little creature’s life better for as long as she stayed here. I can still feel her muscular little body vibrating with purrs. She was a medicine gift.

PQ who doesn’t want a pet to complicate our life or travel plans, said, “she was such a sweet cat, this is why I don’t want an animal, the loss is always hard.” Perhaps now, we are again free to travel without planning for anyone’s wellbeing in our absence. 

Last week I made a great shift in my attitude toward my life on Mother Earth. It’s been a new start in life. The original high is gone, and I knew it would dim, but now I am down to the Nitti gritty work of living my new insights in everyday reality.  I’ve noticed that a big breakthrough is often accompanied by a loss. I don’t understand the dynamics, but I wonder if this is somehow connected to the origins of sacrifice. In the religious use, the pump is primed, so to speak by offering the loss first in hope of the blessing.

Perhaps the alienated child in me, identified with this little creature. After all, I’ve had terrified and abandoned cats in my dreams for years. They are a species that never was completely domesticated, and often find the human world confusing and threatening. Did Blackie disappear as a mirror of my own social precariousness? Nevertheless, I’m still hoping she will show up.

UPDATE:

Last night we finally had a wonderful earth soaking rain. It is the first truly nourishing rain in months. I was enjoying this great blessing even while wondering if Blackie was alive and soaked or possibly lying lifeless in the refreshed but muddy field behind us. The other two cats have been especially friendly since she disappeared as if they were trying to compensate.  However, after writing about Blackie I was feeling much better, something was shifting.  This morning I was inexplicably OK. Yellow and White greeted me when I opened the door and we headed for their dishes behind the house. And then all three of us heard faint meows next door.  I looked through the fence but saw nothing, then the meows grew stronger. Finally, I saw something move behind my neighbors window screen. Yes! It was Blackie. I could see her jumping around trying to find a way through the screen. She was desperate to join us. What mixed feelings! I was greatly relieved but felt uneasy about her captivity.  I miss her, and she misses us, but it was confirmation that someone is trying to make a home for her and we don’t have to worry when we go out of town.

The Smoke from One of the Fires Viewed from The Bypass

I truly believe that this world is a boundless fractal pattern of broiling, morphing creative energy. Each event only seems isolated when we are micro focused on our own minuscule view inside the great design. Mother Nature swallows and digests us and there is an even bigger Mamma waiting to swallow ours in the vastness of the universe. On a local scale, the forest fires surrounding us have filled the air with smoke and last night’s rain, washed the sky clean. We are always vulnerable on this physical plane, but each relief is ecstatic.  And, the “Maybe” story has no end.

 

 “There were once two old farmers who had a fence between their property.  Every morning farmer A would meet farmer B at the fence and they would exchange news and gossip, as neighbors do.  One day farmer B’s best horse jumped the fence and ran away in pursuit of a band of wild horses. Upon hearing the news, farmer A came to visit. “Such bad luck,” he said sympathetically. “Maybe,” farmer B replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbor exclaimed, now you have four horses and they look young and strong.  “Maybe,” replied the old man. The following day, his son decided to train one of the untamed horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg.  Knowing that farmer B was getting old and needed his son’s help, the neighbor came to offer his sympathy on this misfortune. “I’m so sorry those wild horses were bad luck after all”, he exclaimed. “Maybe,” answered farmer B.  Very soon after this misfortune, two military officials came to the village looking for young men to draft into the army. Seeing that the old farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. Farmer A congratulated farmer B on how well things had turned out after all. “Your son would be drafted and you’d never have any help on your farm if his leg had not been broken,” said farmer A.  “Maybe,” said farmer B. An so the story continues…