path

"How's your spiritual path...what is your spiritual path, anyway? I don't know." He's a good friend, and we've covered a lot of conversational ground. I welcome his thoughtful queries into my life. But we've only skirted this subject. And even that's more than I've done with most anybody else, for a long time. I tell him, "I don't know what my path is". He's considerate toward my uneasy edges, and we move on to something else.

Later, I wish I would've said this: "It's the path that I'm on". But I don't want to be misunderstood, as obtuse or combative. It might've taken more time and mental energy than I had at that moment to explain what I mean by that.

But then, as many times before, Life offers a helpful series of visual aids. Covering the gaps that words won't stretch across. The next morning, still weighing this question, I pick up the Sufi Book of Life. I'm thinking, heavy-hearted, of the box of things I still need to gather up and return to my former companion. You know, that last odd, very tangible, box of stuff. The act that ensures you're really confronting your pain, and letting it go. The book falls open to this, in the list of the 99 Beautiful Names: Al-Afuw, "Blowing Away the Ashes". The short meditation describes a burning and clearing of accumulated impressions and energies, to return to what's truly needed. It quotes Rumi, "grief cleans you out/like a good fast" (I just asked my friend, the night before, about fasting practices). It suggests releasing "anything you don't need that is sitting on the surface of your heart". This confirms my intention to deliver the stuff, simple but symbolic, by the 31st. As I read these lines, a new CD is playing behind me: "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter", which I just got a chance to buy. Over this Sufi wisdom on clearing, on passing through the fire and becoming whole again, Josh sings, "Don't let me into this year with an empty heart..."

Also this morning, there's a phone message from my younger-older magical-oracle-Buddhist friend. We haven't spoken in a couple months, and I've been thinking of calling her but haven't yet. She says she's always open to talking. I call her that night. Here is one of her astonishing and completely offhand remarks, which I shamelessly transcribe: "I think that the next two decades are going to be completely occupied by love, and loving. The old system is cracking apart, and people are hard-pressed to find something that works...(so) they are having to look inside themselves..." She attributes a large share of humanity's current anxiety simply to this, the new and unfamiliar process of "looking inside" for strength, for ideas. For passion and compassion. Not everybody would buy it, but I think it's fair enough as a share of the explanation. Especially if you assume that, whatever aspect of reality they're working with - spiritual, political, material - this is uncharted territory for many. That'd be cause for some anxiety, right?

Then, before I know it, she is gifting me with her customary flood of affirmations. Spoken as by-the-way and habitual as are her jewels of insight. She has no doubt, she says, that I'll be ready for such transitions of thinking and being, since I'm such a "kind and loving and beautiful - and scholarly! - person." She concludes that "this kind of commitment to love is what will enable humanity's future..." How I'd like to believe that. In any case, what can it hurt to try? I'm humbled by her words. To tears, in fact. I've felt far and away from any of those things lately. But she reminds me, in most every conversation we have, that not only do I want to become such a being, I am capable.

Then, a rare night of sleep and dreams offers more sustenance. In a series of dreams, I try out the same scenario (a trip to a place of authority, with some unnamed request), in two very different episodes. One in which I'm disoriented, sluggish, and have to encounter my mother as one of the figures in uniform. The other with a recent immigrant as a travelling companion, whose joy and gratitude for the abundance he perceives all around is contagious, restorative, liberating. I wake again and reach for a another bit of insight: today, it's friend Brian's "Bite-Size Mantra" cards (http://www.qtnrg.org/BITE.HTML). The one I draw begins "Cleaning up old business makes room for new -- a process of sifting, sorting and releasing. Unburdened by the old, you are lighter and more able." Yes, I am. And I will be more so, after I deliver that box of stuff.

But, all of that to say: this is my path. I can't define it, more than to say that I have surrendered - yes! even when I have given up - to the One All Love that has known me. And it returns the giving, in every and any inexplicable gesture. I said I'd travel wherever the way led. And it sure enough led. And still does. Though it's not smooth or level ground much of the time. Or even visible. But it's there to be walked. I don't know how else to describe it. Except as it opens, again and again right in front of my barely-waking eyes.

lyric

Mother, can you hold me together
it's so dark and I'm losing my way
I took all of these detours to find love
but when I did, it just faded away

Now what do I do
with the sweet love of mine
do I give it away and
hope someday I'll find
someone half as awake
as the moon and the stars
Mother, teach me to love
with a paper-thin heart

Mother, your words are so healing
you speak of love and of light and of peace
but I've made it my course to avoid you
just to hide from these feelings of grief

Now what do I do...

-- Sheryl Crow, "Detours"

fellow traveller blessing

"The Sufi opens his hands to the universe and gives away each moment, free. Unlike someone who begs on the street for money to survive, a dervish begs to give you his life."
-- attributed to Rumi

One of my favorite places to sit at the Baking Co. in Santa Fe is also sometimes one of the least comfortable. It's a tall stool at a counter, which faces right up to a table for three. Being near a walkway, people often brush against me as they pass. And being immediately adjacent to the table - seated at it, practically - I sometimes end up unintentionally sharing a conversation with strangers. But I sit there because there's a skylight directly overhead, and the light's best for reading and writing. And, going there alone, I don't like to take up a whole window table. And sometimes, too, I like finding myself in conversation with strangers.

At this table today sit a man and woman, he 50ish, she 40ish. They seem to be old friends who haven't talked in a while. Their conversation is a swift current of honest and open-hearted sharing. They talk of travels, searches, synchronicities, blessings, relationships. The man speaks of what he's learned from the Sufi path, and from others walking it. The woman describes her relationship, challenging but precious to her, with a man who is Muslim (she says he's 'not at all fanatic, just full of prayer.') I'm trying to tune them out, not for lack of interest but because they're being so real with each other. And also because I'm interested in the book I happen to be reading, a gorgeously artistic presentation of Muslim prayer practice, from a Sufi perspective. Yeah really. Its text flows with the insights of ones who have known Love with a capital L. And the book itself - weaving in poetry, painting, photos, fractals - is a work of beauty. It's called The Illuminated Prayer, by Coleman Barks (prolific Rumi translator) and Michael Green.

We've all been there awhile, when the man looks up at me. Says pardon me, but I just had to say that the book you're reading is one of the most powerful things that I've come across. I agree with him, observing that it seems to be arranged so that its information reaches you via left brain, right brain, heart, each at just the right moment. The woman is intrigued, and asks to see the book. They remark on how funny that we're all on the same page here. "Look at this triangle!" the man exclaims, drawing a glowing line between the three of us. They both introduce themselves, shake my hand. He leaves a moment later, wishing me peace as he goes.

After a moment, the woman gathers her things as well. I tell her that, although I was really trying not to overhear, I have been blessed by what I caught of their conversation. Especially by its openness: to life, to ideas, to each other. Since we've already spoken like we have, I tell her simply that I've just suffered a loss, and am working to keep my heart open to Life and trust and provision. And because of that, to hear of her journey gives me hope. She responds with the same translucent joy and affirmation that I've been hearing from her over the past hour. She calls me "beautiful" and "sister". Gives me a hug and also wishes me peace. There's nothing gushy or sentimental about this whole exchange. We're all found in a bright shaft of light, recognizing each other as fellow travellers. No more, no less. "It's such a path...", she says, as she turns to leave, smiling.

grief

capricious wind direction shifts
cold spirit gusts inward
on soul fire embers sparking hope
so ready to warm and cheer yet
body flames up bright to burn so beautiful
to crumbling ash in a body shape
of weightless silver feathers
holding solidity because
for now there is neither fire nor wind
but maybe empty space is light enough
for flight to another mystery
or maybe ash sinks earthward, germinates
fuel for another's fire

pebble in the water

This is one of several visualizations offered by Reshad Feild at the end of his book which I just finished. I thought it was a great practice, simple and spacious, and wanted to share it. The last two sentences also expand into some wider mystery I don't fathom, but I like their drift. They seem to support what I get from various sources, and from the occasional gift of experience: if we can ever be truly present in the moment, we get free from time's weight, and also connected with all of its current, past-present-future, simultaneously.

"Close your eyes slowly and carefully, without withdrawing your senses from the outer world. Imagine that you are sitting by the side of a perfectly still lake. There is no wind to ruffle the surface of the water and everything is completely still and quiet. Chose a smooth, round pebble from the side of the lake. Feel it in your hands. Polish it with your fingers and your palms. Weigh it, know every portion of it. Become very fond of it.

The next thing you will be asked to do is to throw your pebble into the lake in such a way as to cause the least possible commotion. There should be scarcely the sound of a splash. Get yourself ready, poised and balanced. When the time is right, throw the pebble at the angle you choose, watch its flight as it arcs up and then down into the lake. Now sit quietly and follow the rings that emanate out from the centre until the lake is quite still again. You will see how they get wider and wider, yet the memory remains at the point where the pebble touched the water. The memory remains because you choose it to, otherwise it would be forgotten forever."

-- Reshad Feild, Here to Heal

((( )))

earnest luna moth ungrounded
battering this luminous pane
dreaming only oneness with the brilliance shut within
shattering off the shards of lightness that would let me fly
against reflection of you unreachable
come regenerating sun
rise behind my weary wings
release me into light unlimited

emptied salmon swimming rivermouth
battling outrushing waves
swept again again to vibrant depths already once abandoned
now only seek to sift myself in soft and silted home waters
and pass on to new being
come calm gravitating moon
reverse the drowning tide
admit me to primordial flow again

exhausted bird-imposter in precarious flight
begging fragile wings to lift
much more air than substance in my paper skeleton
yet more above me than below no matter how I climb
come everchanging two-life spirit
wind-jeweled one of feather and of earth
gatherer of the precious bones
journeyer to underworld's oblivion for our rebirth
and then to heavens for our morning starlight
Ipalnemohuani
rare birds have risen from your ashes
and even I in dreams have seen you
with the light above your head
and your feet on humble earth to battle darkness
now here to reincarnate as the dance
where I – if through my fall upheld -
will come at last to ground

*(Ipalnemohuani: Nahuatl title reserved for the anima directly involved in creation, translated "by whom we live")

---

Lyric Of The Day:

And you just don't get it
No you just don't get it
You just don't get it and you're vaguely proud of that...

-- Peter Mulvey ("29 Cent Head")

paying the syndicate. part 2

The Welfare Office was packed. Wall to wall people, crying babies, whole lotta pensive faces. There's a window where you check in first, to state your business. I tell the friendly young guy that I'm just there to submit one more piece of paper, for my pending application. Peering into the computer screen, he says, his face brightening, "I'm gonna cheat here...I'm gonna sneak you in. Have a seat and a woman will call you in just a minute." I can tell that most of these people are waiting more than just a minute. If this were my first visit I'd protest, of course. But since I already went through the interview last week, and since I'm here between working two jobs, I go along. Besides, it looks like it made his day to play with the system just a bit.

The woman who calls me into an office is Native American. She's quite nice, and professional. Gets the papers in order quick. I can't help having this thought, though: does she, somewhere, feel just a little satisfaction at me, a struggling white person, coming to ask the government, via her, for help? I hope it's not rude of me to wonder this. It actually seems kinda cool. My minute contribution to the national karmic/historic debt.

After a few minutes of paper-shuffling, she gives me a verdict. Using a complex system of points, percentages, income levels, algorithms, star charts, augury and divination, the Department of Human Services has decided that it can pay half my gas bill. And they wish me the best on plea-bargaining with the company for the other half. I thank her and say that I'm grateful for whatever assistance I can get.

paying off the gas syndicate

I'm going down before work today to finish applying for Welfare. Hah. How's that for an ironic sentence in the Land of Opportunity. Never done anything like this in my life. And it's only happening now thanks to the gas company and their little extortion game...(Please: we prefer to call it "Standard Policy"...)

$228.72 is what they want from me, to turn on the gas in my apartment. Not a penny of this is charges for gas, actual or imaginary, that I have used. It's all fees and deposits. The fees I won't attempt to fathom, and anyway they're incidental. But the deposits, which make up most of the bill, are calculated using these two factors: 1) the highest gas bill incurred by the previous tenant at my address (Please: we like to think of it as "insurance"), and 2) a quick look at my credit report. Which I thought was a nice blank page. But which turns out to have one terrible, irredeemable BLOT. And I can share this with you, readers, here from the safety of anonymity: six years ago, I was late with a credit card payment. Nevermind that I did pay the bill shortly. Or that the card itself, along with all my other worldly debts (okay, my financial debts) is now paid off entirely. That late payment makes me a Risk. And in a high-stakes game like providing utilities, we can't afford any risks. (Here's one more bit of information they gave me: should I choose, for some reason, to give up and just have it re-dis-connected, there will be a $63.00 Disconnect Fee. Cause if you can't pay 228 you can surely afford 63? Huh. "Disconnect" is right, I say.)

It wasn't that bad, the first time at the Welfare Office (c'mon, we like to refer to it as "Human Services"...) It was clean, well-lit, organized. There were people at every step to tell you where to go. The chairs were padded and less than 20 years old. People of all ages, races, and family structures waited quietly for their turn in line. My wait was only an hour. There was even free photocopying available for your documents. The document which they asked me to bring back this time is a letter from my boss at Domino's, stating that I do, in fact, work 13.5 hours a week for minimum wage plus the serendipitous generosity of my fellow workers who choose to tip. Hopefully this will be enough for them and they won't be sending Tony to break my legs (yeah, I know, you really like the term "Collections"...)

breath/quote

"Freedom lies at the exact point between the in-breath and the out-breath and at that moment, grace may enter."

-- Reshad Feild, Here to Heal

freedom/fight/or

Sources: an early, weary drive north on the interstate. An old song about a prisoner of war. A conversation with my sister, in which we agree that next time we get the question, "So, what do you do?" we're going to answer, "Freelance Freedom Fighter". And a dreamtime meeting with an old friend, now out of touch: a friendship which carried much ambivalence, and many unresolved questions. So.

So we meet again
with familiar calm good humor in yet
another undefined transition space
just like each untenable place
where we crossed paths before
I might've been your partner in a different lifetime
the one that I was raised for and rejected
the one of us and them
the one I met you in
and you might've asked me to
but for the war and the gulf between us

one true mountain man
almost archetype
still wandering free in the world's wild lands
for now in the storm of desert sands
but ready and able to
chop the wood
carry the water
defend the homeland
and still extend a hand my way
but what am I my friend to do with
my four years of leftist education
ten of blood sweat tears for Spanish
and a lifetime of subverted fire?

there's no such thing I hear
as an ex-Marine
probably less a former freedom fighter
in the land of shock and awe
but every soldier battles
against another's present freedom
don't they
and aren't we all some prisoner
wrestling this life
the weight of history
and conflicted possibilities
to make it home

how many times the futile wish
that one shot through with hidden brilliance
would rise up and transcend his leaden past
if not his repressing present

every man an empire
glorious expansive immaculately ruled
and one tenth the size of my existent holdings
at least the terrain that I'm allowed to see
every companion portal open
to fantastic undiscovered country
for which I will pack myself
into tiny and secure boxes
for supposed adventuring again

is there no path of mutual liberation
no common ground defended, sacred
no coexistent freedom left
to fight for?

seeds

"Plant some corn. It'll set you free."

-- Robert Mirabal, Taos Pueblo, on his latest CD

"I gotta get some new seeds!"

-- a wise friend in Santa Fe

Right now, in the sunny windows of my apartment, these things are growing: chard, chiles, Thai basil, Italian basil, oregano, thyme, fennel, parsley, mixed lettuces, spinach, kale, broccoli rabe, mizuma (a zigzaggy Japanese green). And, if the seeds are kind enough to sprout in November, cilantro from last summer in the Valley. Such luxury, to be able to eat in my own home, without paying or owing or asking anyone else.

Right now in the newly opened windows of my head, these things are growing: Stability. Simplicity. Presence. Patience. Containment. Security. Competence. Self-trust. Tuning in to growing processes. Being in agreement with Sun, Air, Water, and Timing. Knowing what gifts I have to offer, and giving them with awareness: no more, and no less.

The friend who made the second remark above was talking about her own search for stability. How for many years, she had only planted "groundcovers" with her choices, and then wondered why she never felt rooted. Me, I've been waiting all these years for land to grow a garden on. As well as for rootspace, in the psychological sense. In both cases, with such a tangle of sadness and hope. And am finding, in this moment, how easy it is to get free by putting down roots of any kind, however fine and fragile. And how the places those roots can go is not by any means confined to the smallness of their germinating space.

awake/quote

Life's little word to me this week..if anybody else happens to dig it that's cool too.

One note here: I read "independence" not as "separation" or "invincibility" but more like "being truly centered"...

"There is no way...that you can have a decent life...if you aren't awake and aware every moment...The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about consciousness, so honor that consciousness.

Revere your senses; don't degrade them with drugs, with depression, with willful oblivion. Try to notice something new every day...take care of all things, of every single thing there is - your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbors, and this planet...

Only through constant focus can you become independent. Only through independence can you know yourself. And only through knowing yourself will you be able to ask the key questions of your life: What is it that I am destined to accomplish, and how can I make it happen?"

-- Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

twice changing dream

In itself it is a chapter growing out of a much longer story, mostly hidden or already forgotten. The setting looks deep rural South: dirt roads, tall trees overhanging, paint-peeling wooden houses slowly degenerating to their origins. The house where I am belongs to a kind, peaceful man, around 65 years old. He is tall, mustached, pot-bellied, silver shoulder-length hair. Mellowed Chicano Hippie is how I'd describe him. He's sort of a friend, possibly a mentor. At the least, a pleasant host. He has a sadness about him, from his own stories untold. But we are content, in the moment, to work in quiet cooperation.

We have a project of some kind to do together, he and I. And we've come to a point where we need some help. A battered old truck rattles by, on the road which passes right in front of the house. There are three strong men inside, all 35-40ish. We signal, asking them to stop. They brake, stirring a small fog of dust, and put the truck (a 60's Ford or Chevy, blue or green) in reverse. We're apprehensive as they pull even with our roadside workspace. For one, we know that these men have great power, and we're not sure how they will use it: to help or to harm us. But the need is enough that we have to ask them, either way. We need assistance dealing with forces far beyond our abilities. I think these forces are in the house, but I'm not sure.

The other reason for our wariness is this: this scene has already happened once before. In a kind of rewind and instant-replay, there has already been the moment in which we flagged them down, their truck rolled back toward us, and they climbed out, ready to assist us, but humming with an undefined danger. In that other scene, they quickly donned costumes appropriate to the significance of the work: a sort of protecting or clearing ritual is what it seems we're asking of them. Or perhaps, instead of costumes, they enacted in a flash some essential transformation, that added to our awe and our wariness. Because in their changed state they were much more than three guys from the hood. They were at once clearer and more ambigious, but intensely full of purpose. They would not be stopped from their task, once we had engaged their help and allowed them entry.

But this time around, their presence is a little different. Only slightly less threatening, but it's enough that we can all sit down together, in our dilapidated wooden chairs near the cluttered workbench, and talk things over a bit. Not that there's that much to talk about: they already know our situation, and what has to be done. They get out their costumes and begin to put them on: slowly, carefully, deliberately this time. My host and I watch quietly, giving them our complete attention. At first I'm surprised, and a little disappointed: these costumes seem simple, even crude. Certainly handmade, and probably with found materials. But my suprise turns to elation as I begin to understand: this time, they're even more powerful than they were before. When they finish putting on their costumes, they will have become what they are dressed as, in all its strength. In total disregard of appearances.

The scene ends here. I won't write more about these three, because there are details here that ask for much reverence. They bring images that come from my time in la danza, and my astonishment at receiving such ones in my dreamwalk is matched only by my gratitude, for whatever they come to offer and teach. And that, within this repeated moment of watching power come to light, I was aware that whatever the intention of these three toward us, personally, it was certain that in the greater outcome we (and our work in this quiet place) would fare very well indeed, thanks to their help.

blue

It seems Life is asking me, right now, to go through a breaking. Of hope. Of wishes. Of heart. Of continuity. Of a sweetest fire and light relationship of 8 months' time. Yet another leaving, in the already incredible volume of transition, not-knowing, not-having. I'm not ready for this. About 93% of me is crying out against it. I am split into at least 5 facets right now, and each one reflects on a completely different reality. Pain. Denial. Shock. Anger. And a deep, inexplicable presence that is almost peace. Because at the same time as all my NO!s, I can say I think that this has its reasons for happening. I think I can say he has his reasons, as well. He was as kind as he could be. While I don't grasp, or even know, all of these - Life's reasons or his - I'm trying to let them be whatever they are. And not to move, or judge, or look, past the moment.

Needed a book, and picked up James Hillman again today. This guy, to me, is like a super-double espresso, with a shot of absinthe. And yes, I did try absinthe once, in a warm Portland house filled with Santa Clauses. But that's another story. Such a drink, if it existed (whether one needed it or not) would sure enough give a boost. The disclaimer about quoting Hillman: I do not for one moment claim to grasp what the hell this guy is talking about. I know he's drawing on psychotherapy, myth, alchemy, and dream analysis. My imagination and intuition have a time, at any rate, with the dreaming and the reaching his words initiate. Even on a blue, empty, open day like today. And the words the book opened to spoke right to this very here and now. I'm gonna quote them like I read them: starting off somewhat coherent, into a quick and lovely unravelling that I can only end up writing as found poetry.

Please hear this, then, as a little offering from the facet of me that needs always to go on learning and understanding. The other facets are shimmering out there in the blue for now, and may not be reachable for a while.

"The blue transit between black and white is like that sadness which emerges from despair as it proceeds toward reflection. Reflection here comes from or takes one into a blue distance, less a concentrated act that we do than something insinuating itself upon us as a cold, isolating inhibition. This vertical withdrawal is also like an emptying out, the creation of a negative capability, or a profound listening -- already an intimation of silver...

Sadness is not the whole of it. A turbulent dissolution...can also show us...anima fantasies...we can place them within the blue transition...
There are patterns of self-recognition forming
a new anima consciousness, a new psychic grounding
her depths of understanding
never cease to strike deep toward shadows
driven, images locked compulsively in behavior,
visibility zero, psyche trapped
in the inertia and extension of matter
a time of symptoms.
these inexplicable, utterly materialized tortures of psyche
can commence as a mournful regret
with the appearance of blue
feeling becomes more paramount and the paramount feeling
is the mournful
these laments hint of soul, of reflecting and distancing
necessary reduction

Believe it or not, there is more color in the alchemical desert than in the flood,
in less emotion than in more. Drying releases the soul
from personal subjectivism
Blue is singularly important here because it is
the color of imagination
calls the mythic imagination to its farthest reaches
no longer concerned with distinctions between
things and thought
appearance and reality
when the eye becomes blue, that is,
able to see through

-- James Hillman, A Blue Fire

poem

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.
Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
against the earth and sky,
the Beloved has bowed there.
Our Beloved has bowed there knowing
you were coming.
I could tell you a priceless secret about
your real worth dear pilgrim.
But any unkindness to yourself,
any confusion about others,
will keep one
from accepting the grace, the love!

-- Hafiz

forwarding

Okay. I know a lot of people will laugh at the tendency to find Messages From The Universe in simple, mundane experiences. But for those of you who can relate, I'll describe today's little puzzle, for your entertainment. Or maybe for any insights you can help me find, if you wanna get metaphorical with me here for just a minute.

I've been in my new apartment for just over a month now. The day after I moved in I took my little change-of-address card to the nearest post office, which happens to be one block away. Then I waited. And waited. Three weeks later, with not so much as a junk mail flier in the box, I called to inquire. Yes, we have your forward, they said. It should be on the way. What else can I do but wait some more. So I do. And now after almost two more weeks, it seems like it might be time to call again. This time they direct me to a different station. The guy there asks, "Are you sure you're using the right box? There's not a set of locking boxes on your block?" I haven't even considered this possibility, since there is a large, rusty, typical-looking mailbox immediately outside my door. Which I've been checking, hopefully, almost every day. But I go outside, and what d'ya know, there's a locked box a couple houses down. With my address on one of the little doors. The landlady (who lives next door) happens to be home, so I go and ask her if, by chance, I'm supposed to have a key to that box. "Oh yes," she says. "I told you all about it when you moved in. You have to take your lease to the post office near the airport - the one down the block is not our post office - and show it to them. And they'll give you the key."

Wow. I have no memory of this conversation, but I get directions from her and head to the airport. Have to call the station again en route for more help finding them. My new post office finally appears, behind the airport, past the rental car offices, in with the international freight movers. Next to where they park the planes when they're not using them. At least there is no one waiting in line. The friendly woman at the counter has me fill out a form, and tells me they'll go out and change the lock on my box, probably tomorrow. I was hoping to get my key right away, and go discover a month's worth of treasure (or at least unpaid bills) awaiting me. No, she says, they'll call me when the change is made, and then I can drive out behind the airport once again and pick up my new key. And, no, they don't hold unclaimed mail without a special written request. If I'm lucky, my mail from the last month will show up somewhere, out of whatever forwarding limbo it's been circulating in all this time.

Okay, any ideas? I think there's something here that applies to the life-class called Learn to Ask For What You Need, but I'm not sure...

free

Here is the beautiful and slightly imbalanced thing about working for tips: you can be totally broke and living in abundance, at the same time. And you can forget how to tell the difference. And, depending on the day, this can get you into trouble or it can save you.

Earlier, it got me into trouble. I'm living a little close to the edge right now, with 3 or 4 part-time/occasional/on-call jobs. So that for part of this week, my bank account had a negative balance. Okay, maybe that's more than close to the edge. But I tell it because I would like to commend Wells Fargo for their surprising humanness, in consenting to drop the fees-on-fees they were imposing on me. Crazy, to penalize someone for not having any money by charging them more money. But great to see that the people, now and then, are still better than their computers.

Right now, this freedom's kind of entertaining. I just put my last two dollars in the gas tank, headed to another night of work at Domino's, and felt nothing but gratitude that I'm one of the lucky ones who has some work at all. Before that, I enjoyed a fabulous free lunch, courtesy of Whole Foods Market. Their food samples today were particularly commendable. Pumpkin pate on flatbread. Brie on toast. Guacamole and chips. Lemon ginger snaps. Cheeses of every year, make and model. Of course this meal only consisted of one or two bites of each lovely item, but that's the sort of minimal elegance people pay high dollar for, in a town like this, right? They were even offering wine tastings, but I passed that one by since I'm on the way to work. With this rich gourmet food, you gotta draw the line somewhere.

There's so much that's free out there, right this minute. Music on the radio. Books, CDs and internet at the library. Sunlight, wind, treegold, birdsong, earthshine. Kindness, now and then, from a fellow human being. I could continue the list, if I had a little more time free. Tonight at work I'm asking for good tips, so the side of life that requires money can keep working. But I'm also engaging in the larger system in which ideas, help, little gifts, and friendly words are all forms of currency. And in which the things you have and the things you do without are two kinds of freedom.

2morequotes

"Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one..."

"There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?"

-- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

quote

This from a book I avoided at the first 2 or 3 meetings, as it seemed to rank too high on the Trendy Book List. But it's got some really nice insights. Here's just one of them.

"...responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond."

-- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

6 degrees of connection

There's a chilly grey sky out, hurrying to pull a thick cloudblanket over itself before Winter hits. Here at Winning Coffee, the regulars of the university district are crowded into two warm, friendly rooms. At the front table - the one with the plants and the tiki lamp - we're playing 6 degrees of separation. Or more like 6 degrees of connection: in this coffeeshop, as in this part of Albuquerque, the circles of acquaintance are likely to overlap, sooner or later, in a natural motion. Like the ripples that spread slowly, from rocks dropped in a lake at various points, eventually will wave across to each other.

Four of us who frequent this place, but aren't acquainted, have just rippled into each other's circles. In a spontaneous conversation that might result in a road trip. The woman sharing her table with me has overheard the other two talking, and politely offers a contribution. When they turn to include us, she tells them, "I know you medium-well, and you I don't know at all but I've seen you here." I, too, only know the tall blonde woman from sight. But her friend, the beautiful-word-weaver, has been linked to my world more than once over the last seven years. Via an ex and then two of my closest friends. (Finding one of those friends, in fact, was probably the only reason I met the ex in the first place.)

The blonde woman's thinking of moving to Silver City. My companion's always wanted to go there, but doesn't like to travel alone. I affirm that the Gila's beautiful, and it's been too long since I was down there. In the good cheer of the moment (maybe the cold outside helps), we all write down our phone numbers and give them to the woman who's moving. Maybe she'll call in a few weeks, and we'll share a ride. Maybe I'll have to pass, because of work. Either way, it's warmed the day to remember that connection can be this simple, and this possible.

quote and

"Life itself provides the substance to make spiritual practice a reality."

-- Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Sufi Book of Life

That's what the book of meditations opened up to this morning. Speaking straight to my here/now, as these magical books so often do. If anyone happened to read my moment of floundering on the subject of spirituality last week...thanks for your patience. And maybe for your silence as well. It wasn't the time for all that yet. Heartfelt thanks to the two good friends who offered me different sides of the coin with their perspectives, in the sweet currency of honest and respectful talk. For now, the room in my house that holds that particular and complicated subject is too disorganized to get into. Maybe someday I'll clean it out and invite people in. Maybe I'll write a book or something, that two or three people in the world will really really want to read. For now, the quote above gives voice to my gratitude for what the moment brings.

Here's a bit more from today's reading, though, because it's good for a laugh. And because I, for one, can relate to these suggestions on how not to meet a difficult situation. This comes from the store of wonderful Sufi stories on their clown/coyote icon, Mullah Nasruddin, which are quoted often in the book.

"One night Mullah Nasruddin awoke to hear a thief entering his house. Mullah went downstairs and began to help the thief load possessions into a bag.
'What are you doing?' asked the thief.
'It looks like I'm moving, so I'm helping you!' said Mullah.
Another time Mullah woke up to hear the thief breaking in again. This time Mullah hid in the closet and listened to the thief banging around, trying to find something to steal. Finally the thief came to the closet and opened it to find Mullah there.
'What? Have you been there all along?' said the thief, afraid that Mullah would call the police.
'Yes,' said Mullah. 'I was so embarrassed that I had nothing to steal that I thought I should hide.'"

asking

here in the time between
on cusp of day into darkness
where many say magic can happen
I am asking for another story
another telling of the possible
a affirmation of the actual giving
and a confirmation of what is taken away
before I confuse the two gifts
any further

now in the interim space
between seasons of light and heavy
of fire dance and earth rooting
midway from give to receive
unchosen the nature of connection
people or land
doing or knowing
speaking or silence
I pray for a choice
that doesn't exclude but resolves
and welcomes the paradox
of possible and otherwise
belonging and not
defined and unfinished
which I think is that magic's
open invitation

the memory unit 2

Back in Carlsbad again to see my sister and my grandmother. I've been getting myself psyched up to head over to the nursing home. The G-mom (as we call her) has been in for 4 months now, and not getting many visits from the outside world. Since I live several hours away, I'm one of these infrequent visitors. I hope her natural buoyancy is holding. I hope her health hasn't declined. I hope she's not ready to stop recognizing people just yet.

She recognizes me, no hesitation. Exclaims over the flowers I brought her. And then starts to ask me who all these other people in the room are. We're in the common dining area and dinner's coming up, so they're wheeling people in. "Sorry, I don't know any of these people," I tell her. "I don't know 'em either," she replies. I'm slowly realizing that, of the maybe a dozen residents in the unit on my last visit in July, only one besides my grandmother seems to be the same. The implications of this are almost too much to bear. But later, my sister and I will remark on another unsettling part of this change: while I guess the staff can't help this situation, they also can't expect the clarity of people whose memories are eroding to be helped much by a constantly changing set of faces and names. Wow.

The other familiar face here is the tall man who doesn't talk much. Today I learn that his name is George. He's parked in the corner, behind where we sit. After a while, he breaks his silence with a stream of words that is equal parts coherent and otherwise. "What's he saying?" my grandmother asks, just a bit irritably. "I don't know," I tell her. It sounds, at one point, like he's deep in the memory of building fence with a crew, out in the back forty. Her natural kindness and sympathy soon overcomes her frustration at his rambling. She looks over her shoulder at him and says, reassuringly, "I know what you mean!" A moment later, when he rejoins his invisible dialogue, she raises her voice a little more. "Oh, is that so!" she calls out, a bit too loudly. Then she turns back to me, smiling with the perfect gleefully-unrepentant-guilty-child expression. To my astonishment, she confides, "That oughta shut him up for a while!". That's what I get for making an angel of her...

My sister later confirms: "Yeah, I think those two have a unique sort of friendship." Tells me about another visit where George wanted to talk, and my grandmother was having trouble conversing over his rising and falling voice. How she loudly declared, "I don't like you! I wish you would just be quiet!" With a bit of that uncensored candor that is old age's beautiful and heart-wrenching privilege. There was a silence - a long one, actually - as he paused, looked her way, and began to move his wheelchair in their direction. It took him 4 or 5 careful minutes to cross the room and pull up even with the two of them. Then he stopped moving, and without looking up said, "But I like you..."

My grandmother agreed quickly that she liked him fine, as well, and just wanted to talk with her granddaughter a minute. The unconditionality necessary to their shared state returning them, perhaps, to the present moment. They're the only two survivors of the Memory Unit. They could reminisce like old war veterans do. I think they must know a final, elemental, human acceptance that most of us spend our lives learning -- or not learning -- only to be met by irrevocably, at the end of all our preferences and attachments. But anyway. I think my grandmother was cultivating this sort of acceptance long before she was required to. I watched her, in younger years, give it generously to many people, a standout in her small conservative town. And it sustains her now. "It's what's kept her going, all these years", my sister sums up later. "She loves people and she's never stopped wanting to show them kindness." If there's anything I know of my grandmother, throughout my own acquaintance with her, this is definitely it. Her love of life, of experiences, and most of all of people. That and her brilliant, distance-melting candor. Two things in which I hope to follow her well, should I have the privilege of living 87 years of life.

good day later

"It's gotta be nap time somewhere, right?" A guy just said that to me, in line for coffee. At 10 in the morning. Don't say it, man. I'm still trying to detach from another night's wishes for sufficient sleep. And I got English class in an hour. Hoping to make it a little less boring this week - that's the very simple goal of every week, lately. Maybe I'll add the new adjectives from the silly workbook to our non-magnetic poetry collection (a lot of small paper rectangles, each with one word, easy for building sentences from). Maybe I'll ask her to do some practice reading with the bilingual newspaper I picked up, even though its news is already a month old. Maybe we'll just do some too-easy dialogues, and the hour will fly by just like that. But that's what I want to avoid. That's exactly what my four years of Spanish classes did for me, which is the reason why, almost 20 years later (wow), I'm still struggling just to keep up with the good jokes in an everyday conversation with friends. I don't want M to be in that boat, if I can help it. Hope I can help it.

It's gonna be a good day later. Time to wander and play tourist, among the autumned leaves and slanting light that, to me, give Santa Fe its best face. Time to work on a couple of projects for la danza, sitting by the river. Time to meet up with a friend I haven't talked with in almost 7 years, and just met again recently. It's gonna be a lovely day, if I can only stay awake for it.

lost and found

So strange all the things that get lost and found, in a move. This time the lost items were a library card, a mixing bowl and a rolling pin. Who knows. And one of the finds was a 5x7” spiral notebook. It's one of many that have been riders next to me in my truck: aides to the short-term memory. Only since this one carries notes from 2004 it must be part of permanent storage now. Summer '04 was my first trial run living in Portland.

Of course, it's a silly practice to try and preserve too much memory – everything passes, everything finds its place, hopefully what's needed remains. But it's only as silly as observing beauty in the world -- in the moment -- which is a lot of what these little notebooks are about for me. Not so much holding onto time or thought as holding onto a sense of collective humanity. And also learning to see – to travel through life with the eyes more fully open. And maybe it's a way to give an admiring nod to all the fellow humans around me whose beauty is spontaneous, inexplicable and, as for far too many, completely unremembered. So, in that spirit, here are a few of the quotes that are maybe worth saving, from the '04 memory book.

****
(Context: I'm walking out of Mississippi Studios on a Saturday night, and two guys on the sidewalk start talking to me. They're unlocking their bikes, which are parked right next to my truck. They're not flirting – it's more like they were already engaged in animated talk and have decided, on sight, that I need to be included. They introduce themselves as Arthur and Liam. They're both 30ish, kind of geeky, but their candor and animation are contagious, and they strike me as two guys who are just really into Life. After a few minutes' conversation, we agree to go check out some other music across town. I load their bikes into my camper and we all crowd into the truck, talking like we've already been friends for some time. Arthur does most of the talking, and several of his surprising pronouncements are right on the mark. So much so that later I find a minute to write a few of them down in this notebook, which is in my truck already.)

“We travellers know each other.”
“I used to worry about overpopulation..now I think of the world as having more creative mass...”
“I don't want to be mis-an-throp-ic”...(he pronounces the word with extreme care, as if his elocutionary caution could safeguard against unwanted character developments)
“You liked to read and write about things when you were younger, didn't you?”

(We just hang out this one evening, then they take their bikes and go. But they're good entertainment. At one point, they're discussing a performance they recently saw somewhere.) Arthur: “That one woman had that audience in the palm of her hand...” Liam: “Yeah, and that part with the vegetables was completely Samuel Beckett.” Arthur (in a very disinterested voice): “Oh, was it? Okay...”


****
A local public radio DJ: “It's 5:22, and the day's...perfect! It's perfect, just as it is.”


****
In the Hollywood neighborhood, late afternoon: a man takes a break from his work, painting the business name on the front of a salon. He is 30something, shaved head, full mustache, dark coppery skin, confident bearing. He leans back against the stucco wall in a metal chair, talking on a cell phone, looking like he hasn't got a care in the world. Just above his head like a pronouncement is the bold lettering which he has almost finished: “HAIR STUD”.


****
(Song lyric, from a pop station)

She said in the days
when you were clumsy and poor
I only liked you more
and if you have five seconds to spare
I'll tell you the story of my life


****
(from an interview on the radio)
“But, Dr. Bob Goldman, doesn't it get to a point where it almost smacks of desperation? What's wrong with growing old gracefully – or even disgracefully?”


****
Two pizza deliveries:
A cheerful, middle-aged white guy answers his front door: “So they got a nice decent lady like you to deliver pizza to a nice decent ugly man like me...”

A charming, middle-aged black man in the Domino's parking lot tells me this: “You stay sweet, now. I become a millionaire I'ma come back and get you. This girl works hard.”

quote: Colonialism Day

"...Columbus didn't know where he was going, didn't know where he had been, and did it all on someone else's money. And the white man has been following Columbus ever since."
-- Vine Deloria,Jr., God is Red, 1994

Another quote via another friend, that bears repeating. I hope he won't mind. This just arrived, with other provocative thoughts, under the heading, "Happy Colonialism Day". Which I think would be a fascinating way to rename this particular date on the calendar. In a dimension where we actually stopped and pondered our intentions about things, that is. As it is, my calendar titles today, "Columbus Day, Observed". I translate that final word as something like "Apparently, This Is Our Mindless Duty", or perhaps "Or So They Say". Both phrases describe, for me, the seeming attitude toward the majority of the "holidays" that this country maintains on its calendar. (I'm not going to write "celebrates", because that word is too life-affirming, and too intentional, in my dictionary. There are indeed a few days that we still Celebrate.)

But yeah, I could dream of the day when we decided to do something different with this one. Rethink it, repeal it, or just retire it. But with an honest, humble public dialogue, properly translating past to future. Accompanied, of course, by appropriate action. Are there a few humans out there courageous enough to imagine such a thing? I could envision a future world where today was called something like "Post-Colonialism Day". Where children learned in school, not what words we can find to rhyme with "1492", but of the vanished institutions of our planet's past: the World Bank, the IMF, the corporations that once degraded the environment and devalued human labor and dignity, all in the name of money. Guess us idealists can keep hoping. While, perhaps, not losing too much sleep until it happens.

And on that note, this is my word to the world today: there are some deeply interesting and valuable conversations going on about paradigm shifting, right now. I am privileged to be a part of some of them. And I would like to share some of their ideas in the near future. But I ain't shifting my paradigm any further til I get enough SLEEP. That's all I have to say for today.

autumning

at last
all you over-lit days
overheated on hyper-real isms
slow down your frantic, your manic, exhale
and show us a numinous side
affirm that it's not all so simple and clear
quiet the trafficking noise
of bright ego commerce expansion
clarify this change that so many feel
as the natural continual turning of life
from days of burning abundance
into sure elemental transition
a return to essential ground

plunge fire into water and wait
for the cooling and sharpening focus

lead follow fallow me
let me rest silent for just a short space
trade branches for roots in a nurturing place
remind me the seed doesn't choose
what is admired harvested and consumed
it only grows green and bears flowers and fruit
let some others enjoy then
whatever is ripe on these low bending branches
and leave me the natural work of discarding
what's already served purpose
now dry and superfluous, rattling
a movement that diverts the attention to wind
that breathes change not as death
but an opening

quote

A friend passed this along. Too excellent not to pass further.

"Our bodies know that they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless." -John O'Donohue

sistervisit

Too many words inside to write any on this screen. In the past two days I've had the great privilege of about 8 hours of almost uninterrupted conversation with my sister, in town on her way home from a vacation. Good thing there was nobody else there with us - they wouldn't have been able to get a word in edgewise. I almost couldn't sleep last night, for the stream of consciousness still overflowing its banks. Hopefully soon I will be able to organize a few of the insights we covered, on travel, personal growth, family relations, and all facets of the search for meaning in life. For now, I just have to pass on my favorite line that she said yesterday: "I've finally realized that hopeless romantics only encounter hopeless romances! And that is not what I choose any more..."

belabored

He sits down across the wide table from me. Opens a very thick manila file. Shuffles through a stack of applications, and pulls mine out. Offers a few criticisms about the organization of my information, then begins: "So, what would your ideal work situation be?" He's not an employer, he's an employment counselor. And I'm about to get more counsel than I bargained for.

He waits, unspeaking, while I gather up scattered thoughts. I don't think he blinks. His neatly styled hair, sharp eyes, and no-wrinkle shirt are all steel grey. His jaw is square and he doesn't mince words. So I try not to, either. "If we're talking ideal, then I'd like to help people. Maybe to learn how to grow their own food, or to do something with holistic healing." These of course aren't the only answers to the question. Just two of the top ones that come to mind. He writes them down at the top of a blank page. "What action have you taken toward those goals?" he queries. I mention volunteering, reading, an occasional workshop if it doesn't cost too much. "What is your plan for getting to the work you want to do?" he continues. Okay, now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Now we're getting to the questions I really don't have answers for.

He continues, with a very predictable list of the actions he recommends. Devote serious time to job-hunting. Be optimistic. Get out there and "sell yourself". Be assertive: keep contacting the employer until you get a definite answer. All great advice, by the book, I know. And all concepts that I thoroughly don't relate to. Especially not when the jobs in question are menial, low-paying, drudge work. He asks why I didn't finish college. Wow, that's at least 3 different stories. He offers the feedback that I'm displaying a certain amount of "reluctance" toward his suggestions. Yeah, you got that right.

He tries another tactic. "I'm going to tell you about a few of the jobs that are available right now. Maybe something here will raise some interest." He leafs through the list. It's probably more than a dozen pages long. He reads, File Clerk. Auto Dealership Receptionist. Hospital Staff. Construction. Warehouse. Call Center Representative. Wow, how could I refuse? I gather up what I hope is a polite voice, out of growing discouragement. "I hope I haven't wasted your time," I say. "I do appreciate the information, but this has clarified something for me: making money is not nearly as important to me, at this point, as job satisfaction. As doing something I can relate to." It feels good to say this. It feels true. Even if it's irrational. Even if it means that I'd go on relying on the generosity of friends, or start sleeping in my truck if need be, if that's what it takes to keep my peace of mind. My sense of not "selling myself".

"I have to say," he remarks, "that you don't fit the demographic of my typical client. Most people are in here worried about feeding four kids, and willing to take any job they can find." He speculates that the difference here has to do with "education" and "affluence". I've been trying to be a polite listener, but this is too much. I tell him that I am grateful not to have a family to support. But that I'd like the record to show that I paid for every bit of my college myself, and have never had income above the poverty level. That I'm simply tired of meaningless labor.

We agree politely that maybe I'm not the ideal candidate for his program at this time. He gives me his card, and invites me to call anytime in the future. At the end of my ideas (having already read today's job ads), I drop by People's Flowers. Just to let them know I'm still available for work. They offer me a share of the afternoon's deliveries, on the spot, and another day of work tomorrow. Sure, flower delivery isn't saving the world. It's not empowering anybody - well, let me qualify that. I could tell some pretty cool stories about all the people who weren't expecting to get flowers. It's sharing a tiny bit of beauty. It's preserving personal autonomy - one of the biggest plusses of any driving gig. It's supporting a locally-owned business. It's reminding people of their sense of wonder (how many times that same response, "Ohhh...how beautiful!" But they really mean it.) I might put out a wish for this particular temp job to turn into something. Or at least to turn into more temp work. In the currently frantic game of musical chairs that is the job market, it wouldn't be too bad a place to land.

2 quotes

Current library find: one book that connects and contrasts the two countries that pique my interest the most right now. I did not know, before picking up this book, that Octavio Paz was Mexico's ambassador to India for most of the 60's. In just over 200 pages he's attempting to give a historical overview, a brief travel memoir, and a social-political-cultural-spiritual comparison with his own land, all at once. I won't even try to summarize this fascinating book, beyond that. These are just a couple quotes from a section exploring the roles of free will, spiritual worldviews and one's place in society: as usual, whatever I'm reading pitches in its two cents' worth (or more) on my current most relevant conversations with friends. An activist friend just tried, I think, to suggest some of these same things to me earlier this week. Love how that happens. (Paz begins here from the Hindu viewpoint, and some of these thoughts are specific to that, but I think his observations expand rapidly into some larger questions of existence. At least, they fired this Aquarian imagination in that direction.)

"He who seeks liberation does not see his body as an obstacle, but rather as an instrument. Ascetic practices, even the most severe, are a progressive mastering of the body. The yogi does not seek to separate his soul from the body, like the Platonic mystic; he wants to convert it into a weapon of liberation. Or, more exactly: into a trampoline that will spring him into the Absolute."

"...For us in the West, freedom has a political dimension. We are always asking ourselves what is the nature of our relations with the divinity or with the environment that surrounds us, whether biological or social. Are we truly free, or is our freedom conditional? Is it divine grace, or is it an act in which the mystery of the human person is revealed? These questions and others of their kind lead us to situate our freedom in the world. Freedom is not an ideal for abandoning the world but, rather, for making the world habitable."

-- Octavio Paz, In Light Of India

what you are doing

It's morning, and bluesky gorgeous. A perfect Equinoctical (would that be the word?) balance of summerfall. I'm making the familiar walk, from the free parking spots on Silver up to Winning Coffee. It takes about 10 minutes. The little gardens on the way - flowers, a few tomatoes, corn, herbs - are at their peak, and I greet them, grateful for their presence. Like my own nomadic plants, they remind how beauty continues to come to Light. By nature. Even in the midst of the concrete corruption and chaos.

A woman walks a little ahead of me. She's a few paces slower, and eventually I catch up to her. Since there's nobody on the other side of the street, and I'm going that way anyway, I cross over. Seems the easiest thing to do. A moment later, she crosses too, and steps onto the sidewalk right in front of me. I try not to get bugged at this -- what a silly thing to be bugged about, on such a beautiful day. And at the same moment, I become aware that my breathing is kind of shallow, my upper body tense, everything just a fraction more hurried than it needs to be. This is an old habit (could blame pizza delivery, but I was an impatient intense idealist way before that). So I start trying to correct it, in that moment. Just as the message moves from brain to body - slower, deeper, present/er - the woman beside me turns and speaks. Loudly. "Do you know what you are doing?" she asks. I stare blankly. "Your left shoulder is lower than your right," she continues. Her voice is strong, her words come out with confident emphasis. "You're tensing that whole side of your body, and it's affecting your breathing and your posture. You may think I'm strange for saying so, but I'm a yoga teacher, so I see these things. You might want to think about that!"

Thoughts aren't exactly confined to time, right? Surely others have had the experience of at least 5 distinct threads of thought unwinding, all complete, and all in the space of a second or less. This is what's happening in my mind, as this woman speaks. The thoughtthreads include:
-- Is she really talking to me?
-- OH NO. Not another middle-aged woman offering free "constructive criticism"...
-- She's right, of course. I always carry my book bag on the left shoulder, and that's a habit that has its effect over time.
-- How strange! If only she knew that I was already trying to improve my breathing and posture, and her words were interrupting that effort!
-- Who does she think she is, anyway?
-- Okay, she's a yoga teacher. She knows a lot on a certain subject. She has people's well-being in mind. She probably sees bad posture everywhere she goes. If I were in her position I'd probably want to share my wisdom with strangers on the street too. Or at least, I'd fight the urge to do that.
-- Wow, I know something about a few subjects too. What if I went around giving such candid feedback to random people, out of my observations? "Do you know what emotions you are beaming out to all of us? Do you realize what unacknowledged pain you're still holding onto, that you could do something different with? Do you have any idea of the striking similarities between you and the group you've been labelling? Do you not see the beautiful commonalities - and even common struggles - that you could empower each other with, if you could just get past your labels for a minute?
-- Or how about this: "Do you have any idea how lovely you are? Do you yourself get to feel the joy, the fearlessness, the acceptance, or the healing that you're beaming out to others around you? Do you have any idea how inspiring your word, or gesture, of encouragement was that one time? Do you realize what courage you re-membered me to, by speaking freely about your encounters with the Magic and the Mystery?"

All those thoughts were there, in the second it took me to respond. All of them, simultaneous. I couldn't speak because the thoughts were so thick. How many people recognize the already-flowing river into which they pour their own cup of words? Finally I said "Thank you...", although it probably sounded less than sincere. I guess I can appreciate her concern. I can surely appreciate her for reminding me of all I did - and didn't - want to share with people, myself. That last thought up there's the one I'd like to carry out into the world more. Maybe I will, soon. Maybe a little bit more at a time. While I keep improving my ability to breathe deep and stand up straight.

refuse the delusion

One more quote from this book that I finally finished:

"This delusion has now been presented to you in full. It consists of separation, fragmentation, the loss of wholeness. There must be a final "NO!" that refuses to participate in the delusion...
There are times when I want CNN to stop running endless crises in the crawl space at the bottom of the television screen and start running these words instead so that people can be reminded about what's real:

Whatever is in the mind is like a city in the clouds.
The emergence of this world is no more than thoughts coming into manifestation.
From the infinite consciousness we have created each other in our imagination.
As long as there is 'you' and an 'I', there is no liberation. Dear ones, we are all cosmic consciousness assuming individual form."

-- Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets

While I might find points to question, or at least to clarify, about some of his propositions, I love the thought of words such as these appearing suddenly on CNN. Or on some such channel of our collective mediasedation. Even better, maybe you'd like to join me in imagining what other words YOU would re-energize the fearmind with, if you could for one moment be in charge of the "news" bulletins being broadcast so urgently out to the world. (I love his term "crawl space" - the psychic implications, especially, of the claustrophobic corners to which this society limits itself, from which to try and perceive reality. We're all crawling, by some crazy choice, when we could be walking free. Or at least, those who buy into the fear, and the materialism, seem to be...).

The dreamtime altered my consciousness last night with a wonderful post-apocalyptic dream. There was some kind of worldwide plague or epidemic (not necessarily The Flu of which we are asked to live in fear, or maybe it was. It wasn't specified, really). It seemed to intensify and then diminish, in waves and by regions, over time. To keep us alerted, the government (a basically benevolent entity, in this world) would send out bulletins announcing the status and the recommended actions. On this day, the outlook was not so good, and they were recommending that we all lie low and stay indoors as much as possible. The friendly community in which I lived was ready for all contingencies - plenty of food, water, all the needed supplies - and we agreed that we didn't really have much to worry about. But later in the evening, a crowd of kids came to our door, with a bunch of cheap stuff that they wanted to barter (there seemed to be a disproportionate number of unattached children in this world, out fending for themselves in groups on the streets). The door guard and I had a short discussion about whether we should open up to the kids, and whether we risked contamination by trading with them. Again, we decided to be careful, but not to worry too much. Later on (apparently, after the alert was lifted), some of us went out into the city on the bus. I felt sad to see how many streets, plazas, buildings seemed abandoned and lifeless. But then we passed through the university, a grand old complex of brick buildings and open squares, and I cheered up at the sight of the barterer's market there, full of young people with tables of beautiful objects that they had made, found or gathered.

This dream should've been dark and oppressive throughout (there was even another segment where a few of us were captured for a while, for some unknown purpose, but even then we were upbeat, pragmatic, expecting a positive outcome). But it flowed all throughout with currents of optimism, empowerment, competence, warm community, and hope. I am thankful to all the voices within, and all accompanying spirits/Spirit, that affirmed my own wish, with this dream, to refuse the delusion for another day.

anything happening

Back up the mountain to work, maybe for the last week. Heave a ton or two of flagstone. Finish erosion controls (which appeared to hold up well under a rain this week). Nurture the possible garden: turnips, beets, and arugula are already sprouting like crazy. Like seeds. Like life.

Today's weather forecast for the internal landscape: fair to partly biased, winds out of the distant past but calming, chance of showers of blessing in the midday. Two healing conversations have already graced me since morning. They offered perhaps different affirmations than I had hoped, but which I can surely use.

Earlier, on leaving Albuquerque, I asked my beautiful companion, "Is anything happening around here this weekend that I want to be back for?" "LIFE is happening this weekend," was his excellent reply.

pushing back

gratitude for quieter waters
after crushing waves
and a pair of kind responses
blowing in out of the blue

yesterday was a funk, for sure
maybe a passing squall, but
try telling that to any boat
just holding out in the eye of the storm

an empathetic friend wrote that it's hard
not to get to such a state when you're pushing
and life doesn't push you back
there's either too little (work, service, activity)
to fill the picture, or too much space to fill
what happens when
that existential push comes to no shove
is of course falling down
levelled by the force of my own free will
released but not quite liberated
from attachement, agenda, expectation
you know the usual suspects
but also not yet freed
from wish to join in the creation of more life
and what's a living soul to do
if not desire continually that?

why

Come on, can't somebody help me out here? What's going on in this unreality? From where comes this sudden intensity? Why is life getting so much more challenging for the ones trying to be awake and alive and openhearted? And not, apparently, for the ones content or intent to stay complacent and eyes-closed? Why is there so much pain and struggle, and why do so few seem to feel it? And I need to know, for myself, why I am carrying so much of it. Not so much in proportion to the life of the world, surely. But far too much in proportion to my own life. Which, while unstable and inexplicable, is not threatening or harsh or unkind. Not at this point. And yet the pain comes back and back again - this week, both in body and in heartmind - in seeming disregard of how smoothly anything is flowing, around me. Am I responsible for all this pain? Did I create it somehow, through habit or lack of habit? Through intention or lack of intention? Am I channeling, possibly, some pain that is not mine? If so, where is it coming from, and what am I to do with it? This is surely too much to ask of just one person. If I knew of a place where I could go and join hearts with others who had this irrational, continuous experience of pain, and turn it to healing somehow, surely I would go...

Or maybe I wouldn't. There were two events this weekend that could be spoken of as healing. One directly so: local traditional healers offering to share their skills, for minimal donations. The other less direct but perhaps just as effective: a time of prayer and devotion to the spirit of what sustains, in the green growing life of the world. But I avoided both. Not for lack of interest, respect, or wish to connect. Because I'm so very tired. Tired of carrying this pain, heavier than I can walk upright with, into the presence of other people and asking them to understand. Or, asking myself to be present with them while they, and I, don't understand.

caffeine

Here is what a friend said to me last night: "Caffeine is a psychotropic drug. And not because it causes you to hallucinate another reality. Because it causes you to hallucinate this reality."

Wow. He's got me thinking there, for sure. But not quite ready to give up coffee. Maybe soon, but not yet. Not because I want my drug, my crutch - I don't. It's a hope in getting free, to be eventually caffeine-free, and to live with no crutches. But until something seems real for more than 5 minutes - which happens very seldom, lately - I'm sticking with my familiar hallucination. Which at least allows me to pretend that I have the energy, the motivation, the reason, to engage another day of unreality.

Mother Earth News rocks!

This comes from the January/February issue of 1977. It cheered my day just to know that somebody out there (Minnesota, in this case) carried this kind of collaborative spirit. This reminds me of something out of Ecotopia. Hope there are still people thinking like this. Or maybe more people that will start remembering to think like this.

****
"So here's my situation: I'm a commercial forager (that is, I'm trying to become one) who has a fantastic idea for processing and marketing a complete line of wild goodies. I know the articles will sell...I'm also convinced that careful planning will ensure repeated crops in the wild year after year.

Problem is, I need bodies to help me get this business endeavor off the ground. I'll throw in my $60,000 maple sugaring facility (which might be partially converted over to the other operation) if someone else will help out with technological know-how -- and maybe a little cash -- where I lack these attributes.

An enterprise like this might give a valuable boost to our nation's diminishing food supply."
****

free/fall gardening

The craziest thing I did this week: I dug up my entire garden, loaded it in the truck, and took it away from my old house. Along with all the other so-called earthly possessions. I was just too heavy-hearted watching it die along with my former housemates' vegetables, which were already past their prime. Mine were planted late, and still wanted to thrive. I got out two bags of topsoil, and put it all into some big plastic pots: two tomato plants (just ripening now), two fennel, two Thai basil, two stunted green chiles that probably won't produce anything but deserve a chance. One gorgeous chard, the only one I was able to grow from seed. And two surprising marigold plants, more than a foot tall, which came from seeds picked up at the Dia de los Muertos parade two years ago (the first occasion on which I saw la Danza Azteca). Fittingly, all of these plants have now found a welcome home at the place where two of the dancers live. Where I can visit them, and also share whatever they produce. Except for one marigold which went to the friend who gave me three of the best tomatoes in history, from his own acequia-watered garden. Hopefully there will be enough flowers, by November, to throw at the feet of the next procession. I'm starting more now from their seeds, just in case.

It's still a shock, being un-housed. It wasn't supposed to happen again so soon. And I really didn't want to uproot my summer growth - those struggling plants, that fragile sense of place and belonging no less. Both of them far too short on roots and nurture. But that's how it worked out. I won't say "homeless", because I've got places to stay. And because "home" is a word I treat with respect, already. But there's still a little vertigo left. Still a sense that more freefall could happen at any minute.

And as if transplanting in late August wasn't off-timing enough, I'm starting a fall garden, at the place where I've been working. Which sits at 6,300 feet, and has a short growing season anyway. But it's the next item on the work list, so I'm reading up on what grows on short notice. Online research found some 30-day greens and a 40-day broccoli, which I can get in Santa Fe. A file of old articles from Mother Earth News and xeroxes from ancient gardening books has offered tips on making the most of light, soil and warmth on shrinking days. I've just built two "cloches" - small, moveable greenhouses - covered with clear plastic and, for the moment, black landscaping fabric. Hopefully they'll channel sun's heat into the newly prepared earth, while I gather up some seeds and starts. Hopefully I can recognize all of these elements - the available wisdom, the mutable strength of life itself, the warmth of even temporary shelter - in my own not-quite fall.

waiting

for morning to come
for tide to turn
for strength to gather
for haze to clear
for work to make money
for money to (sigh) make trust
for trust to get free and just go
for a dream
for a sign
for a yes
for a no
for a hand reaching out
in accompaniment
for companions not like the last time
for autonomy and sweet interdependence
for new hearth skills to learn
old heart skills reinvited
and some center of fire rising up
out of lifetimes of earth air avoidance
ready to burn and converge with the Light

more silly phone metaphors

Took my ailing, 5-depleted cellphone in to the store yesterday. The friendly service guy is amazed that such an old phone is still working at all. He asks, "What do you use this phone for?" "Communication?" I want to reply. But, seeing my blank look, he clarifies: voice or texting? No, I don't do text, though I can see how that would be likely to do something weird like wear out the #5 button. I've just, once again, used the same old communication tool for too long, with no updates. He takes the back off of it, and several loose screws fall out. "Well, that could be the problem," he remarks. Yeah, that figures. Then he takes it in the back room and works on it for awhile. When he returns, everything's fine again, and he suggests that I just keep the pressure on the center of the 5 element rather than to the left. Well I am left-handed, after all, though not quite a leftist. It's just hard for us right-brained roaming types not to press for more adventure all the time. But I am, at least, able to retrieve my delayed messages from Life now. The first is from my sister: call me back, and we'll continue our envisioning conversations about how to get free of the system, and the labor, and learn to work together more. The second is from the traditional healers who I called two months ago for help with my back pain: no, we're not making appointments for paid treatments right now, but you can come to our free event in two weeks. Alright then. The last is from my fellow collaborator at Trinity House: just wanted to let you know, the back door will be open, if you come in late. Well, maybe that 5 Adventure energy's still functioning at some level after all. How not to stay connected, with such backing as this from all my channels of communication?

or, maybe not

So I wrapped up all my loose ends, finished my work, came down the mountain and back to the city, just in time to ask my friend if I could hit the road with her. And found that she had already left for Mexico last week. So. Back in Albuquerque once again. Now what? The closest words, perhaps, that I have to a prayer these days. When I can say them sincerely, that is, instead of with sarcasm and disbelief: "Now What?"

The week's most recent odd and maybe-meaningless occurrence: I cannot dial the number 5 on my phone. It seems to be some electronic malfunction (it is an old phone), where if I press any other number it works like it should, but the 5 key instead activates the volume control, louder-softer-louder all at once without a pause. This is not only a problem because my passcode for voicemail has a 5 in it (don't leave me any messages!), but so does the code that I use to pay the phone bill electronically. But 5 is also associated, in the numerology I remember, with travel and adventure. Ha ha. The number you have dialed is out of service, please try again at another time...

land(e)scaping

Landscaping: the process of moving every piece of organic material on a given site to a new and different spot on the site. What a perfect expression of "civilized" human nature...

This week's work: Added two new terraces in front of this house, with 20-foot-long rock walls to contain each one. Finished Erosion Control Sites #1-7 (the entire 2-acre property sits on a slope, with the house at its center). Replaced broken flagstones in front walks. Prepared beds for fall garden. Dismantled old wooden arbor, using only a socket wrench and a hammer. So satisfying, what the hands can do with only a few tools' help.

The Real work of this week: moving earth, in a more essential action. Engaging the Earth element, the sense of place or belonging - elusive but still present - in my rather un-grounded here and now. It's easier than I thought it would be, without a permanent job or a place to live. It's about reaching within, centering. But it's also about reaching out, to the welcome that each moment and each friend offers. Either way, it's an inside job.

A while ago, my Real Life Rob Brezny horoscope had some line about, instead of going to the mountain, bringing the mountains inside me. I thought he was being cute, as he's really good at doing. But no, it works. Those distracting place-essences that haunt me, out of all the nomad's journeys, are getting a little more cooperative all of a sudden. Consenting, even, to come and join my inner landscape once in a while, instead of looming as far-off memories of Oregon or Colorado or all points in between. Lending their mountain-strength, their valley-protection, their desert-vision to the needs of the view that looks out, from within. Letting me make my escape from the mundane moment into the greener world, while still keeping a sense of place, of center, where I am. I don't know if I can explain how suprising a development this is, or how welcome.

But Mexico is one journey that won't fit inside in this way. Not neatly, anyway. Not easily. Not without spiralling green vine-tails reaching out around the edges, refusing to be contained, still growing their dreams and visions. I tried not to think about travel this summer, really I did. Gave Albuquerque and the responsible steady life my best effort. But that current just doesn't stop flowing, and things that seemed lasting have proved impermanent once again. The job, the house, the learning opportunity have all said sorry, please keep looking. Everything I put so carefully in its place has uprooted itself, and moved to a new spot. So, I'm waiting for my friend to return my call - the one that's heading to Michoacan in just a few days. It's crazy, perhaps. But really, what viable offers is the "civilized" consensus reality making right now? And more important is how to answer what Life invites: Let go of your fear and your insecurity. And maybe your security as well, if it keeps you out of Love's reach. Start learning what your hands and your heart can do to give you a good living. Get grounded again, but get free while you're at it.

now quote/what now

"Your attention wants to go somewhere, so take it to the heart of experience. The heart of experience is the universe's breathing rhythm as it pours forth new situations, a rise and fall of energy...

"The present moment is naturally innocent. The now turns out to be the only experience that doesn't go anywhere."
-- Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets

YES, to the first of these. Life right now is nothing if not this, for me. A rise and fall of energy. A breathing rhythm. Depending on the moment, I am any part of it. One moment a strong lung cell, rejoicing to do its work in the breathing. Another, a speck of dust blown along on the winds of exhalation and release, and then inspiration and inviting in. One day there are no possibilities, the next anything is possible, but nothing is tangible. And on a day like today, five real, actual things might be about to show up all at once. Yesterday I looked at a fascinating live-work opportunity, which I won't get to choose but might choose me, in a week's time. Two or three very mutable work options hover around the verge, waiting to see if I will inquire into them. One living space nears the end of its time - I have to move this weekend - while another opens its friendly doors, but only for two weeks. After that it's living in the truck, or camping out with various friends who have offered their couch, their floor, or tent space in their back forty.

And here is what one of the never-predictable people in my circle told me this morning: "You're welcome to come along to Mexico with me, if you can be ready in a week..."

That second quote up there I could read in different ways, but I read it with hope. "The only experience that doesn't go anywhere" could be a dead end. It could be a blank wall, a cold shoulder. But it could also be a reality without attachments, without agendas. Free of hidden, ulterior motives: innocent. Life, present, with only itself to offer. Not that this isn't all going somewhere, too, because I think it is. Just that, maybe, Life is asking us to move at its pace, instead of our contrived and concerned rush, for a change? And to face a whole new wholeness along with it, a new range of choices.

Anybody else out there feel an entire new set of possibilities being offered, should we only be willing to be down with it, down on the surface of the moment?

movies at Chispas Farm

For the Locals del Valle de Atrisco:

"Fresh From The Farm: Film Nights at Chispas
229 Saavedra Road SW
Come at 8 pm, show begins at 8:30 pm
BYO outdoor movie watching setup (blankets, drinks, and snacks)

The Line Up:
Sat., Aug. 8: Asparagus! Stalking the American Life
Sat., Aug. 15: Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers
Sat., Aug. 22: King Corn
(Short films before each feature from Thenorthroom & Rotation films)

(Saavedra is a south turn off Bridge between Isleta and Sunset)

never fixed

Who are you this week? Come on, wanna get outside the box with me for a minute? If you're not already, that is. Science tells us the body regenerates all of its cells every 7 years, right? Psychology tells us we can change stuff as powerful as thought patterns, lifelong habits, choices. The dreamtime shows us, through vivid experience, how we are other selves, and are interwoven with others, much more than we give waking recognition to. Spiritual wisdom tells us, in so many varied voices, that we are beings of change, and growth, and also that it's All More than we think. Possibilities - for better and for worse - have us surrounded. We are constantly by all these things repaired, but yet we are never fixed.

So much talk lately of the tangible world changing. Many of the words, especially the fearful ones, seem to come from people living center-main-stream, who have been insulated somehow from the fact that the world is always in transition. By their jobs, by their money, by routine. By denial, surely, sometimes. By the mindnumbing nothingness of TV and the news. And then there's us who have never known much of anything but change. The main shift we hear these days, maybe, is the voice of others waking up to the fact that we all live in a dynamic reality. And, on the good days -- when we're not totally immersed in the current and the struggle -- we get just a little bit excited at the thought that, maybe one of these days soon, we'll find ourselves in a world where a few more of us are actually on the same page. Simplicity. Cooperation. Self-discipline. Hard work. Careful conserving. Creative resourcefulness. Celebrating the small things. But that, of course, is on the good days.

This week, I am a bricklayer. I make patios sloped to the land's angle, that won't trap the rain. I design lovely curving paths on sand, without mortar. When they are done I walk them in bare feet, to test whether they are level and smooth. I live in a simple room with one small table, two chairs, and a mattress on the floor. I get up early, work alone, and quit when I'm tired. I have no coworker banalities to distract me. I have only to cooperate with the weather. All the tools I need are available. Meals are provided in the evenings. There's not much else here to do but work, but toward sunset the most beautiful light washes over the rock faces across the river canyon, and I stop to pay attention, while hummingbirds and bats zoom overhead. Thunderheads build, plot takeovers of the valley, and then disperse behind the mountains, 50 miles away. After dark I read a quiet, inexplicable essay from Barry Lopez, and then go to bed very early. I'll wake again soon after sunrise.

It's a temporary gig, but in the moment, it's my life. And a pretty good one too. There's such satisfaction in working at your own pace, challenging your own strength, and seeing the results of your labor at day's end. In the last four days, I have laid 1,065 bricks. I just counted them because, as I said, there's not much else to do here. And I wanted to put a number on the weight that my shoulders tell me I have carried this week. With each brick weighing 3 pounds, this makes a total of 3,195 pounds: a little over a ton and a half. Not a bad week's workout. A little further progress in the Training. A little more preparation in the current Life Class, which is called, Anything Can Happen - And May, In Fact, Very Soon...

This week I am also a dancer. I don't dance all the time. I hadn't danced, with the circle, for almost a month. Body and heart were both too depleted. And I don't dance well, that's for sure. But this week I am a dancer, because I chose to show up. And, more important to me, because the circle welcomes me as one, whenever I choose to rejoin. On Sunday about 15 of us danced, under blazing sun on scalding sand (for a little while, in bare feet), for an hour or so. Without breaks, and without water. It was one of the most excruciating, exhausting things I've done in a long time. It was also one of the most beautiful, and empowering. It was an offering. A beginning of understanding what it means to offer oneself to an effort. There was nothing else, under the circumstances, that it could've been. And it wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't found a way to step outside of who the mind says I am, for a time. With the encouragement of a companion who inspires and incites me to get on my feet, out of the limitations of my "self", and to live. He doesn't just encourage me to celebrate life and change, but gives me many reasons to do so. And also with the help of a friendly and generous community who invite me to rejoin a world that was always changing, always alive, and is living still.

ha

Confirmation of the absolute pointlessness of the Evening News. The new electronic billboard downtown, the one that changes every 5 seconds, told me this in giant, dramatic letters as I waited at the red light: "Tonight on Channel 13: Larry Barker Investigates The Road To Nowhere."

quote

"You will need three or four days to follow it out. The last part will be on foot. Prepare for this. Prepare for the impact of nothing. Get on a regimen of tea and biscuits and dried fruit. On the third or fourth day, when you are ready to quit, you will know you are on your way. When your throat is so thick with dust that you cannot breathe you will be almost halfway there. When the soles of your feet go numb with the burning and you cannot walk you will know that you have made no wrong turns. When you can no longer laugh at all it is only a little further. Push on.

It will not be as easy as it sounds. When you have walked miles to the head of a box canyon and find yourself with no climbing rope, no pitons, no one to belay you, you are going to have to improvise. When the dust chews a hole in your canteen and sucks it dry without a sound you will have to sit down and study the land for a place to dig for water. When you wake in the morning and find that a rattlesnake has curled up on your chest to take advantage of your warmth you will have to move quickly or wait out the sun's heat.

You will always know this: others have made it."

-- Barry Lopez, "Directions", Desert Notes

what didn't happen

I couldn't make this up if I tried. I'm still trying to believe it all happened, even though I saw it happen. Even that is a question: I was sitting right there, I must've seen it happen. But the brain can't seem to find a visual record - the memory holds a moment of blindness, only full of sounds.

Back in Carlsbad again (another story). My sister and I are sitting on her porch. It's just about midnight. This is the best time to talk with her, as she gets ready for work on the night shift. The air is warm and humid, even now; the busy street she lives on is quiet for the moment. Suddenly there's a screech of tires - right in front of her house - and then a terrible CRASH! And CRASH! again, and AGAIN and AGAIN! I can't describe the volume - it fills the air. It sounds like a series of explosions are happening right in front of us, and then all the way down the block. They wrench the gut with the unmistakable crunch of metal twisting on metal. "Oh God," somebody yells (her? me?) "That was your jeep!" We can't see anything. There's the big tree in the yard, and all of our cars parked out front, and the noise itself overrides all the other senses. My sister's two friends burst out of the house. We're all running to the fence. Fully expecting to see flames, smoke, a whole block's worth of demolished vehicles. Please, no injured people...

But the block is mostly empty, suddenly quiet again. Although neighbors are starting to run out of their houses onto the street. "What happened?" comes from all sides. Sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the block is a Blazer with its smoking grill wrapped around a telephone pole. As we watch, a woman climbs out of the driver side, walks around the back of it, and disappears toward the alley. Everyone is too amazed, and too far away, to try and stop her.

"Your jeep..." everyone says. There's a crazy story here, and we all know it. My sister and jeeps go way back - 15 years or so. She's had almost half a dozen in her driving years. All older models, all well-loved, driven hard, kept up with sweat and grease and duct tape and baling wire. This one is unusual, and it represents her sudden return to freedom and choice, after 3 years with my grandmother. She happened onto it - just overhauled, spotless, great price - and took out a perhaps impulsive loan to bring it home. Four days ago. She's driven it twice. She just insured it yesterday. And followed an intuition, at the DMV, to lower her deductibles. And didn't follow an intuition, earlier this evening, to move it from the street into the driveway.

We creep around to its outer side, groaning. Imagining shards of glass, ripped metal. And it looks...almost normal. It has a flat tire. The bumper's disconnected, crooked. And though the drive shaft has been knocked loose by the impact, there's no body damage at all. We've called 911. Small town that this is, the police arrive in about 5 minutes. They're efficient, professional, helpful enough. We climb out of shock enough to survey the street. The other crashes, apparently, were a street sign being flattened, and the meeting with the telephone pole at the finale. And the jeep's tire blowing, as the Blazer clinked it right on one of its big, sturdy rims and then bounced off. Deflecting it from the neighbors' fence - and maybe, given the speed and trajectory, from their living room. Correcting the woman's progress on down to the end of the sidewalk where she has also, somehow, threaded between two mailboxes that are still standing.

Just inches behind the jeep sits my sister's friend's car, untouched. The normal guest parking spot is in front of the jeep (in the direction the Blazer was headed), but for some reason, she didn't park there when she arrived. She started to and changed her mind. I did the same, when I arrived here 8-10 minutes earlier from my brother's - I took the last space in the driveway. And the friend also didn't leave when she had thought about it, just a few minutes earlier. That's to say, either of us could easily have been right in that Blazer's path, with the shift of one offhand decision. Us, or our cars - and for either of us, a wreck right now would be a calamitous thing.

On closer inspection, it looks like the jeep might have suffered some frame damage. The next exciting installment, later today, will be when my sister calls her insurance company and learns whether she's just - unintentionally, unwillingly - made a double profit on her purchase. Which she will, if they deliver the kind of estimate they just might make on the damages.

What didn't happen. Just as important as everything that did. In how many other situations, just like in this one? That is my wondering drift of thought today...