the sweet places

As I roam about La Conner on my bicycle, I pass certain places that have a special meaning for me. They are my personal pocket parks and I happened on another one yesterday. I had bought a loaf of Brickbread from the grocery store. I like that bread because it is Honest Bread, dense as a neutron star, hefty like brass knuckles, good in a fight when thrown; leaves a lasting impression. Sometimes, I buy the fried chicken and have a pick-nick lunch. I bought the two piece lunch special and was on my way to buy some bedding plants when I happened upon another sweet spot at Mary Hedlins greenhouse. It features a vista of farm fields to the south, a couple of rustic swings, cool grass and welcome greetings from Mary. Underneath a row of five Black Locust trees, the two swings hang patiently from a long, heavy beam suspended between two trees. One Locust has a long and long-ago-split branch that leans into a gigantic Tulip tree, a lesson in friendship and community. If not for that tulip tree, the branch would have been a nuisance and then, firewood. You can swing on the swing and look up into the cathedral roof of the trees or wind-up the swing and let it unwind you or just gaze into the distance, with the distant sounds of traffic and near-by sounds of singing birds. Take more breaks!

An hour here and there

We have to steal time for ourselves, big chunks, little bits (take a deep breath right now), everything in between. God, if S/He judges, will judge us on our abilities as Time Pirates. ARRR, Mate, where's the rum and let's dance on the dead mans' coffin. We can spin out of control and give the appearance of being well-adjusted or we can pack our heavenly bank account with experiences. God loves experiences. Since God lives through us, eats life energy and life energy comes from doing new and exciting stuff, you are doing God a service by providing a vacation from the boring work of creating new viruses, biting flies and lawyers.

Summertime and the livin' is easy

Fish are jumping and the cotton is high. So are most of my friends. High on the weather, the light. Talking about going on the river with a cold six-pack and the sweet yearning for a cool breeze. Just drifting, aimless, talking easy, looking softly at the world, our wildness mirrored in the water, the world.
We burn more light before seven than we get in a whole winter month. It is a glut of light and it feels good to just waste it, let it stream into dark crevices; scatterit-willy-nilly about like easy money paydays. I wake to a bright morning pouring into my trailer door, lighting my couch like a movie star on stage. My door is open to the cool night and I am snuggled into my bed-cocoon awaiting the new day. The stars are out, the stars are out. The galaxies abound and drift endlessly. There is majesty in the air and it goes on forever. It is a feast of a hundred dishes and we say it's great, but where is the wonder bread.
Today I will butter a croisant and eat it slowly.

I lost last week

I have been trying to think about what happened to last week. Have you ever lost something that could not be lost in some particular way? Like, you put down a set of keys on the living room table as you do normally, but the keys are not there, they are ???? (in the freezer!?) I have had some of those experiences and they can be explained by forgetfullness or the intervention of another person, but there were some unexplainable "disappearances". I have wondered where those lost or dematerialized items go. I have speculated that they drop down onto a little plot of land, farmed by some Tibetan farmer, who adorns his rustic home with jangles of keys, single earings, socks and the morals of politicians. Or maybe they blink into another dimension where the recipients puzzle over the purpose for the items given by the Gods----.
Last week went into the twilight zone for me. My karate teacher, who knows me well enough by observing my transparent nature suggested that if I got my head out of the beer bottle, lost weeks would not happen. Ouch. The truth hurts. I mumbled something about "can't argue with the facts".
I like to think that I can distinguish between an alcoholic stupor and a strange weirdness. Maybe not. Perhaps the effect of long-term use of elixirs, is a melding of the reality boundary between daydreams and nightmares. This is all speculation and rates right up there with sport talk; interesting but useless.
Time is a stretchy affair. To illustrate: a minute sitting on a hot stove feels like a lifetime and a lifetime sitting, a minute. The weeks can blink by as the days are endlessly long. Fish fall out of a blue sky. Frogs rain.

Wednesday

Today is Wednesday. I know it is Wednesday because my next door neighbor,Jeanie, puts her garbage out early on Wednesday for the Thursday pick-up. Her dog, who I call "Barky" (guess why) was outside NOT doing what it normally would do, which is remind all passers-by that they are on Foxy street and they better behave. We don't really have a Foxy street in town, but the dog, a Pomerroodle, doesn't know that, nor does Foxy know that a Pomeranian should not have a Poodle haircut. Barky WAS outside but not barkying. Humm, odd, maybe Foxy is sick.
Friday is Bloomsday, the 16th of June. One month to go to the official start of Summer around here. No guarantee, of course, sometimes Summer don't arrive at all. Today we are back into Winter and I broke out my heavy quilted winter shirt. So Friday we will celebrate the famous author, his name slips my holy mind, who wrote a realy weird and inscrutable book and some other books. Now I remember his name, James Joyce. I guess the holes in my mind got sealed-up a bit.
Thursday, along with garbage pick-up, features a pot-luck and birthday party for Joe. That should be fun. Wonder what I will bring to eat.
Today I am slated for some heavy labor. I will help some neighbors down the street, Gem and Felicia, finish tearing down an old garage. I did about three hours of prying and cussing and it liked ta have kilt me. I even took a one hour break after the first two hours. I am only good for about two hours of hard work, these days.
I have been working on their place for about a month now, as the weather and my attitude allows. The weather has been inscrutable also.

the only spot on commercial street

Probably not the shortest street in the world, Commercial street is certainly the shortest in La Conner. Not only is it just one short block long, it has very little commerce going on. The only business is The Cafe, from where I am writing this heavenly Monday morning. It feels like summer and Sunday today. It is quiet, before eight a.m. and the town is waking up. The birds are chirping, the seagulls are hanging about around the fishing boats that can be seen from the front door of the cafe and I saw an eagle flying earlier. Commercial street is a hill and stuff naturally flows down to the channel. The garbage can lid will migrated down to the water when assisted by stiff winds. My eyes follow the hill down to admire the water, the fishing boats, the seagulls and the water traffic going by.
We have been confused by the weather lately. Yesterday it was foggy like fall if the morning. The day before was summer and today is summer. We have been cycling through the seasons, skipping winter, thank you verymuch. Now the clouds are moving in and it is reverting back to spring. Do Over!
Last wednesday's Open No Mike was quite good. Everybody agreed. It was a fine evening. There was guitar music by Bob and Ed and a visitor (another Bob) played a little. Nora brought strawberry shortcake, Tara brought wasabi potato chips. I told a cute joke and read some entries from this blog. Thursday we are having a potluck Birthday Party for Joe Capparella. That should be fun.

More on intuition

What good is Intuition? It lets you know when and what to do. Most important, when to leave stuff alone. It also gives you a big picture of a situation. That way, it is possible to better comprehend what the heck is really going on. I am out of the water on this, as I don't know a whole lot about the subject, but I suspect that when we get these complex feelings, it is kind of like getting Cliff notes about a book. Without having to analyse all the possible permutations in any given situation, over time and with unknowns, the intuitive gives a "flavor" of the situation.
What interferes with intuition are our personal beliefs and agendas. Therefore, it is the loss of what we have learned, becoming newborn-mind-like, that helps us to not taint the complexity of intuition with our own prejudices and expectations. That is one of the effects the Great Teachers seek to impart in their students. Voila, therefore all that work on the ego and the skill to use it like a tool, without it running the show and running off with the circus. Therefore the clearing of the body of any trauma (neurosis is stored in the musculature, not in the brain), as the body is intimately linked with emotions. Therefore all that meditation training to still the storm of monkeys that is the brain/body.
As individuals and as members of a community, we need the insight to act wisely in difficult situations. It is very easy to judge a situation completely wrong. Common sense counsels the apparent, uncommon sense cautions us to do something else.
Please excuse the preaching.........

thought police

I have noticed something about the group at the cafe and about myself, by extension. The Thought Police is among us and it is we. And we are just about oblivious to them. I observe the interactions between the men (themselves), between the women (themselves). I have noticed some interesting stuff.
First, a joke to set the stage: A young boy was sitting on a park bench eating candy bars. He was on his sixth candy bar when a man, sitting on an adjacent bench said:"If you eat that much candy, it will rot your teeth, make you fat and you will die young." The boy replied:"My grandfather was 107 years old when he died". "Did he eat six candy bars at a time?" asked the man. "I don't know, but he minded his own fucking business".
The men (in general) are repressed and real busy Thought-Policing each other. Any time somebody (even a woman) makes a gesture or a statement that threatens to elevate the group to a higher level of social or community functioning, somebody plays the role of Thought Police and stunts the emotional life of the group or the individual. Any sign of tenderness, compassion or caring is quickly put-down. It is incredibly threatening to some that SOMEBODY might be humane with somebody else.
Isolation is a dis-ease and has a pseudo-intelligence that fights to remain as part of the personality. It is not enough that the individual is isolated, others must be isolated also, as the pseudo-intelligence of Isolation is threatened by any display of emotional intimacy. The person becomes possed by the negative program (so to speak) and their mouth gets highjacked.
Though I have countless examples, I will relay one: I was watering a geranium I had brought to the cafe and placed it outside on the "smokers table". A guy then remarked that the Flower Girl had arrived. Of all the possible responses (as if a response was necessary), equating me with a Girl (defaming the good name of female youth) was an attempt to police my behavior.
And of course I do crap like that myself and if I could just remember one of the very many examples, then I would confess, but my blindness to the big effing beam in my eye, keeps me from seeing, fully, my own crap.

gut feelings

When we have a gut feeling (for the guys) or an intuition (for the gals), we may be tapping into a phenomenon called "the collective unconscious". This is not some woo-woo New Age hype, rather, it has been demonstrated through experimentation along with (of course) endless anecdotal evidence. The guy who is doing the cutting-edge research and is public about it, is Rupert Sheldrake, a British scientist. He has come up with some fascinating experiments and he is just HATED by conventional science. This is always the case when a totally new concept comes to light. In another fifty years, it will become common knowledge, but now it is ridiculed.
The use of intuition can be developed like any skill. I am a big believer in it and I try to sharpen my sensitivity. There are probably numerous How-To books on the subject and I am sure they are more-or less on target. Probably the first step is to get over the ingrained belief that we are stunted mental dwarfs and are incapable of more than blindly following the manipulations of culture, society and political henchmen.
Now, I will admitt I fall on the paranoid end of the skeptics scale. I don't wear a tin-foil hat, at least not in public, yet. I believe that there will come a time when we will need to develope our intuitional abilities just to survive in this increasingly controlled scociety. I use the word "survive" in reference to personal freedom, the freedom to think, believe and speak what we want and to live how we want (ethically, of course). These are not just human rights, they are survival needs and rank just behind air, sustenance and shelter in importance.
To becontinued------

leaving well enough alone

God help me, I have a big, big mouth. I can put my foot in there, both of my hands and still have room for a gala event. My mouth has done more harm than any particular tendency I can think of. None the less, I like my mouth. I am learning to disengage it most of the time and when I do spew forth something horrid, I more often than not catch it faily quickly; even apologize.
I have this grumpiness about the parking around here (the cafe). I have noticed it and have been observing without interfering. Something is going on and I am not quite up to speed on what it is. It must be very obvious, too close for me to see. Somewhere in my head I am stuck and the parking thing is the visible tip of some psychological iceberg. I am not even willing to think about it at depth, it is so convoluted. It is somewhat frightening.
So, keeping my mouth shut is the theme of the decade, of my life, really. When I can keep that quiet and the iniciator (my brain), then I will have done a good weeks' work.

Payat tention

The brain is an attention machine. Its' functioning is directed by the mind. What is the mind? I don't know. Who cares. The brain is like a car with dark windows. Somebody is in there driving. Often the cars are parked. Permanently. The motor is running, but the driver is in the 7-11. When on a hill, turn the wheels to the curb. Otherwise the brakes may fail and the car gets going on its' own. Some cars go better than other cars. The driver might have had racetrack training or souped-up the motor. Other drivers don't do good maintenance. Sometimes the driver falls asleep. You get the point, yes?
Attention is a form of money. We pay attention. We give attention, we trade it, we save it. Attention is the glue that holds friendship together. Attention heals. Negative attention hurts. It pays to attend.