Nightmares

Sometimes I have nightmares and the memories keep me up long past the next night, too afraid to sleep again.

I see soldiers marching down my street, helmets on their heads, guns in their hands, hatred in their frightened eyes and I know they could turn at any moment, shoot me, or drag my daughter into the street. I see the smiling faces of children in a candy store shattered by the clown who drives by and honks before exploding.

I see beakless chickens run screaming down blood soaked streets trying to save their chicks and cows in agony on waterboards in dimly lighted arsenals.

On these nights it is better to seek the silence and listen for the light that carries me away with love.

And that's the truth

Dealing with life takes many forms. One way of dealing is not to deal. One way of not dealing is convincing myself that I have no choice, that I am a victim.

A victim of what, my lack of intelligence, or understanding, or money? Perhaps it is simply my fear of the unknown? Failure can be less threatening than the unknown. Believing I am a victim might appear easier, but the truth will eventually point out others in this same position who did better.

Guilt and self doubt destroy more lives than actual failure, so I try to ask myself what will happen if I fail? It is surprising how little it often is.

L'Elisir D'Amore

I watched L'Elisir D'Amore again tonight. As always I watch it because I love to see Pavarotti playing Nemorino and hear the dulcet tones of his perfect tenor. It is a sweet opera with a lovely Adina that I have to love even when she is being so coquettish she could be annoying. The scenery is imaginative and simple, and the chorus is full of life.

A tiny little red haired girl who cannot be more than five years old, plays her part perfectly, allowing me to forget she is even playing a part. Her tiny face is totally enrapt by Adina's story. Tonight, though, I was charmed by Dulcamara, a sort of charlatin doctor selling elixirs for everything, including a love potion to cure Nemorino's woes so that his Adina will love him.

Dulcamara reminds me of Walter Matthau with a great voice. He has that seriously droll smile and twinkling eye that are part of the perfect understated clown and his voice is amazing. I cannot believe people in the audience do not need to laugh out loud at his antics, but if they do, I do not hear them.

I think many people don't like opera because it is not in English and we Americans understand very little else. Now, though, subtitles are available and it would be a shame not to use them. These are great performances that I would hate to see lost.

Karmic Revenge

Not often does what comes around seem to go around when we are the one feeling put upon. Most of us have to focus on the fact that divine justice is not something we get to view, at least not in this world.

But sometimes....once in a while, in a very blessed life, it does!

My sister and I bought a car last week. We went to a nearby dealership where I had received less than stellar treatment several years ago when I took my car in for repairs. We told the salesman that we were just looking, but then asked him questions. He brushed us off time after time until we finally went to another town and another dealer and did the same thing.

This salesman, upon hearing the same spiel from us gave us the royal treatment. He waited on us hand and foot, did everything except kiss our feet and after some very civilized discussion sold us the same car the first man could have. We were very happy and so was he and his dealership.

However, when you are treated as poorly by someone as we were the by the first man, it leaves a sort of sour taste in the mouth, so imagine our joy when we went to dinner with a friend.

She noticed a man watching us show her the new car. He seemed very interested. My sister and I didn't recognize him, or really pay much attention until he introduced himself saying he was the salesman we met last week! I should have asked how it felt to know he could have sold us this same car, but I didn't. It seemed like poor dinner etiquette to bring up that sort of thing.

But as my sister danced across the parking lot later, she exclaimed with the glee, that it sure felt good to be driving this gorgeous new car with the other dealership's sticker on it.

And it did!

Blessings

What an amazing world this is! I can bring a concert pianist and the world's greatest tenor into my home at will! Whole symphony orchestras are at my fingertips and the haunting sound of a Native American flute can grace my life any time I wish.

It is a magic people in the past only dreamed of. No matter how poor I may appear to the world, I am richer than many kings will ever be. My world is filled with love and beauty, contentment and most of all peace.

Reprogram The World

I dreamed that I lived in a place where we had to have secrets. I learned that people caught bunnies and put them in metal boxes with holes and it brought them magical powers.

My friend and I decided to change things. He caught one of the rabbits and put it in a very large metal box, so it would have room until we needed it. We knew the box could be collapsed later on.

I wrote a symphony, a new world symphony, that would reprogram the world if we did it just right. My friend and I gathered together the musicians we trusted and made plans to meet in a sacred place where I would show them the way it must be choreographed. It was very dangerous to do this.

After many attempts, we finally got everyone together. I was the conductor and director. The handful of musicians sat very close together and my friend would march around all of us playing his tuba. We were all young and scared and eager.

The trouble was, we didn't know how long it would take, exactly when to release the bunny and how many times he had to march around us. If we were caught, the consequences would be horrible, but we began.

Respect

I am sometimes afraid that my standards are too low. I could ask for more, reach out and take more, do more, be more. But then other things come up and I am afraid that my standards are too high.

I realize that one does not necessarily negate the other, but I have never been good at settling for something less and I am not good at pretending to be satisfied when I am not. My earliest memories are of being expected to seek the best...answer, result, situation, whatever it is that I am involved with. Less than this is demeaning to me and all those I love and respect.

Let's Erase The Borders

I remember a child who always drew dark black outlines around everything she colored. It was a stark, beautiful way of making the colors stand out. It was a simple way of accenting what she saw and loved, creating borders that delineated the edges of her creations.

God creates the world and all the beautiful colors and all the beautiful people who add to the coloring. Religion draws the big black borders that simplify it for the people in their world.

The danger is in the understanding. A simple word like wind can be translated in so many different ways, depending on how it is said and used and understood. Imagine all the words of God and all the ways they are written and translated and re translated and understood and misunderstood.

Humanity is the perfectly imperfect reflection of our creator. Free will changes everything. Look at the story of Abraham, a tract that seems to encourage martyrdom, but is it God's will, or Abraham's misunderstanding that causes him to be willing to sacrifice his son? God's intervention certainly does not allow it to happen.

Look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, three times he prays as if truly believing there is a chance he will not be sacrificed, that there is a choice. In the end, it is man who sacrifices him.

Borders can highlight and borders can keep something from expanding and growing. Borders can even be used to manipulate understanding. Perhaps it is time to stop highlighting the borders and look at the entire picture.

Harmony

When the road is bumpy and filled with potholes I suppose it is telling me that I need to slow down and take inventory of my life. Something is out of whack.

I suspect it is my idea of frugal living. Eventually there is a point, beyond which, it is no longer called frugal. It becomes officially being poor, or stingy. There is a certain amount of up keep necessary for almost everything. Trying to put this off brings to mind all the old adages like, a stitch in time saves nine.

I am willing to put in the stitches, but when I have to pay someone else to do them, it becomes harder for me. Today's seamstresses sometimes exact exorbitant prices.

Life exacts its own tolls and they must be dealt with. Finding the balance between spiritual living and the world is something I need to work on.

I think they call it harmony.

The Conjunctio

The lotus blossom unfolds before me and she sits here with a babe in her arms. The mother, the compassionate one. Quiet, serene, listening to the cries of her children, the joys, the tears, the pleas, the prayers.

Her steps upon this earth are silence, her eyes look inward and she finds me riding on the breath of a dragon, carried into the realm of the faithful by the beloved, unmanifested, unearthly, un-being in the most ecstatic of situations.

I feel her breath, the rising and falling of her chest. The soft beating of her heart rocking me blissfully into peace until the lotus once more seeks the soft velvet eye of the unknown, closing its petals and sinking into the darkness. Sinking deep into the darkest parts of my being, burying itself in the center of my soul, waiting.

Waiting.....waiting.

Stress

I think I am dealing quite competently with the world and I know I am dealing with it sanely and carefully.

However I have to admit I am internalizing a great deal of the stress I am feeling. People in my life might say this stress is nothing compared to theirs and I am sure they are right. The truth is, though, that this stress is mine.

I own it. I am dealing with it the best way I know how and still it is manifesting in hives, sores in my mouth, stiff muscles and aches and pains that are wearing me out.

I am used to being alone a great deal of the time. I love people, but I do need a lot of free time that belongs just to me. With enough time, I can deal with the stress in my life.

Acting Out

I am not old by today's standards, but there are times when I am stretched about as tight as I can be. Times when the simple stress of every day living becomes a bit wearing.

Both my car and my sister's car are acting up. Whether these are growing pains, or simply some form of automobile acting out I don't know. I do know that my car will go for an indeterminate number of miles and then simply die. Then it does not start up again until the spirit moves it and no amount of praying, begging, or cursing changes that.

My sister's car sounds like a helicopter ready to fall out of the sky and smells like it is burning tires for fuel. Hers won. We took it in for repairs first. That means I have been driving new cars every day so she can do what she needs done and can get to work. I might add that my damaged rotator cuff makes driving any car painful and when the night is dark, the sky is raining and my arm is aching, these trips are a test.

Tonight I used my brother's car. Nothing like a midnight drive through a down pour in the countryside to remind me that I need to check out new cars before I get on the road and realize I do not know where the window buttons are, or the locks when I get into rough parts of other cities. Finally picking up my sister and coming home, I was just about to turn off the highway onto her street when she asked, "Are you taking me home?"

It was as if something suddenly sucked up all the remaining brain space I had left and I could not see the turn lane. For a minute second I was lost and because of this I had to drive down to the next stop light to get to her house.

This would not have happened twenty years ago.

Nano Creatures

Going into the Silence is an entirely different place. I think if I could breach the space in between I might be able to see the tiny quantum creatures who live here. The thoughts and nano thoughts that are created by the cold vacuum of non space, a place where my "brain" is more real than I am.

Here, creations interact instantly in more dimensions than I can even imagine. Here, time past and time present weave in and out of each other like currents in a river made without the rules that govern the rest of my life.

More real than a dream, more unbelievable than any mystery I have ever seen, reality takes on possibilities that stir both the soul and the imagination.

Just As I Am

I have made a huge, giant, extraordinary decision. Never again do I want to feel that I am not enough.

Being with people who do me the favor of spending time with me until someone else comes along is painful. Knowing that just being me was not enough for my husband was excrutiating. Understanding that I am loved, but not the one for years on end hurt very much.

It does not speak badly of these people in my life. I must have made the mistake of thinking I belonged with them when they knew differently. My mistake was thinking there was something wrong with me when there was only something wrong with the relationship.

It is a great comfort to be with people who want to be with me, people who feel I am enough just as I am, where I am.

Three In One

The sacred sage swirls around me and I am three women sitting together on a cold March night in the Heartland.

And I am three women sitting around a library oil lamp during the Civil War on a cold March night in the Heartland.

And I am three women sitting around a camp fire on a cold March night on the prairie.

And I am three women sitting in a cold dark cave waiting for morning.

Three old crones watching the cauldron toil and bubble...

Three wizened women sharing an eye between them...

Three glances in the eye of the creator...

Three thoughts born out of one on a cold winter's night in the beginning.

Happy Birthday

Twenty nine years ago I know exactly what I was doing in this moment. I was sitting on the far left end of the couch reading a book and thinking that Jennifer Gale would be born in just three more weeks.

She kicked the book so hard it fell off my lap and I went to bed that night thinking I could not remember the last time I was comfortable. A few hours later I woke up, went to the bathroom and my water broke. Our family is like that you know, very considerate and meticulous. Then I took a bath, drank a cup of tea, broke the rules and waited on the contractions that were supposed to follow.

You were already manifesting a lot of the characteristics you would have for the rest of your life. My first contraction was not until eight o'clock. I was fully dilated by eight thirty. You were eager and ready to be here, three weeks early and without any hesitation at all.

However, the world was not quite big enough for you, you did not emerge until eight hours later, but what a beautiful surprise you were! Not Jennifer Gale, but a big eight pound two ounce boy so full of life and vigor that you flipped over in the warming tray!

Your love for living and your indomitable spirit have never flagged. You are a sweet and patient father, a loving and very caring son, a good husband and a great believer in giving back to the world. No matter how little you have, there always seems to be enough for you to share.

I am so proud of you and I love you more than you may ever know.

Afternoon Musings

I went to see the Dana Thomas House yesterday and then I went to the Museum of Funeral Customs. Both were actually rather dark and dreary, but one was definitely more interesting than the other.

Frank Lloyd Wright built the house for Dana Thomas at the beginning of the last century and while I am an ardent admirer of his mind, some of his homes are too dark and stark for me. Perhaps, though, that is because it was during a transition period when electricity was not always reliable. There was enough wattage that dark inner sanctums could be created with artificial light and beautiful stained glass windows were not solely for lighting rooms, but the total effect is very subdued. To me his early work is often almost Shakerish in style, simple, very functional, but with that over sized opulence required for the very wealthy who hired him.

The funeral museum was mostly about the beginnings of embalming and Victorian funeral customs. It had a great deal about Abraham Lincoln's funeral since it is right outside the cemetery where his grave is. I had heard about most of these things, but to actually see some of it was interesting. My great grandfather was part of the Honor Guard that rode the train with President Lincon's body as it crossed the country. I thought I might see someone that I could identify as him, or find his name somewhere, but I didn't.

I enjoy Wright buildings. I wish I could design both the building and the furniture. I only had that opportunity once and I will never forget it.

The Simple Side

Elephants and turtles and cats and wolves...what strange creatures we humans are. We find this need to identify ourselves with other creatures while considering ourselves the highest sort of all.

On the other hand, we seldom seem to compare ourselves to paramecium, or amoeba, apparently feeling that they have gone a bit too much towards the simple side.

I also notice that we want to compare our "souls" and inner natures, not our egos. I assume that is because many people do not believe that other creatures have egos. I can't believe that when I see my dog looking at me out of the side of his eyes, obviously wondering how I am going to react. He has a terrible desire to be top dog.

Can you imagine an elephant commenting to another elephant, "I think an Illinoisian is my spirit human?"

Perhaps that is why we are so enamored with them.

Differences

I think there is a big difference between me and a dreamer. A dreamer thinks the dream will some day manifest. I am content to manifest myself in the dream.

Life experiences are so transitory in nature. From the moment of birth, I have been leaving one place behind for another. People come and go leaving a lingering scent around me that eventually seems to fade away. Yet, our love for each other tethers us in some beautiful and etheric way that is even stronger than our phsyical connection ever was.

I have a very strong sense that what is real cannot be held, or touched in any way except with the mind, or the soul. Anything else is only an illusion, a very real delusion. Like scooping up clouds with both hands and putting them in my pocket.

Once

Once I found god in every place, and each place was gilded with a glory so bright it took my breath away. God spoke to me in one voice disguised only as the occasional flurry of a flute and all words pointed to one finger and all eyes were God's eyes smiling out at me from under bushy eyebrows.

My soul rose like the lotus into the light that surrounded me. My breath trembled in the silence. My heart bloomed a million times a moment.

Living so close to the divine is a miracle, a blessing, a joy too great for human kind to bear. Soon my lips began to tremble with the fear of losing it. My soul began to wilt with the fear of forgetting it. My thoughts and body began to shrivel in the fear that what was mine was too beautiful to be.

Fear is a black hole feeding upon itself, it nearly ate me alive, but I have risen from this place and now I stand looking forward to what is past, a paradoxical place to be, but still, I am here and divinity is all around me.

Do Not Forget

He calls to me and I am entranced.

Others gather in groups, clamoring to be noticed, but he does not. It is his incredible dignity that first catches my attention. I watch him from a distance, standing in magnificent stillness, the light glancing off his back, his legs planted in stalwart determination.

Unwilling to be led astray by any of his baser instincts, he neither runs to, nor away, from the treasures handed out in this world . No one else appears to notice him. I cannot turn my mind away.

Blue eyes the color of a summer sky staring into mine, noble head on an elegant neck, muscles rippling under a mantle of white feathers, he speaks to me in a deep baritone voice I do not understand.

I cannot understand the nuances and the words, but I understand the thought.

We are soul mates, he and I. This stately snow goose comes to tell me we are soul mates from another time and another place and I should not forget this now that I am here.

Time To Re-tune

I cannot imagine living in a place that does not have changing seasons. Perhaps because I have lived my entire life in places that go from hundred degree summers to below freezing winters. My body seems to retune with the seasons.

Autumn always slips in with a sense of expectation, a feeling that life is cleaning its slate and waiting for me to start something new.

Winter makes me feel cozy and glad to be indoors where I can snuggle up and read, or write.

Spring's earthy, rain dampened scent awakens old memories of being young and playing with my siblings in a front yard plush with grass. It is a nostalgic time.

Summer is the strangest of all, starting out warm and fertile and full of plans, then ending in a steaming pile of overgrown and worn out flowers, petals, leaves, grass, weeds, and discarded ideas.

The venue changes, but the patterns stay the same. Perhaps it is time to write a new song.

Today

There is some sort of energy in the wind today. I feel it in the lack of pain in my bones, in the suppleness of my muscles.

For the first time in a very long time I have enough energy to do a few big jobs around the house, which is a very good thing for the house.

It is almost like I use to feel when I was in my twenties. Sunshine breaks forth in song and even rain sparkles with beauty and hope.

It takes much longer than it used to, but I am learning to pace myself, grateful for being able to take the walk and not needing to run or prove myself in any other way.

Chauncey stares at me with his little head tipped to one side then wags his tail and skips along behind me. He doesn't know who this woman singing at the top of her lungs is, but he likes her!

Tiny Morsels

The mountain is tall and it is filled with nooks and crannies. There are beautiful deep ponds and crystal clear creeks everywhere. Roots run deep and there are unexpected bits of color blooming in both the shadows and the light.

Deer trails and bear paths, small roads and super highways wind in and out among themselves, hidden from the view of those who believe they are alone. We’re all here, somewhere.

Sometimes there is just one rock too many and that way is abandoned by a weary traveler for what may be a slightly different path, but the heart and the soul do not change.

I have lived long enough to notice that real things don’t change much and I have read enough to understand that history repeats itself over and over. The biggest difference is that when it happens to me it just feels larger and more important.

Joy still hides in the light, tears still fall deep into the earth, and in the end, all those breadcrumbs leading us home are simply tiny morsels of love reminding us that we are not lost.

Dinner

I was eating dinner tonight when the oddest thought flashed through my mind. I was totally enjoying myself and I was totally alone. Well, if you don't count the dog, which I don't. He doesn't carry on much of a conversation yet.

Why is it that eating alone is supposed to be so sad and depressing? I know I used to think I needed to seek out someone to be with, or it was a waste of time. Somewhere in the intervening space I have changed and it is a comfortable feeling.

Me

I am a woman whose curls are escaping to the back of my lovesesat. Separated from me by a million things, not the least of which is stress that I don't want.

It seems I am always measuring myself by someone else's yardstick, which is truly ridiculous, I know. Like measuring how far a turtle goes in miles per second, or waiting to hear the sonic booms before I decide how worthy this turtle is.

I have lived fifty eight years trying to make other people happy with only random success. I'm still really not sure what they want, but I am learning what I want.

I want to wake up at peace with myself. I want to get out of bed slowly, not worrying about how my hair looks, or how many pounds are on this body. I want to read books I love and write about things that are important to me even if no one else agrees. And I don't want any of this to make me feel like I am less because of it.

If I am going to be with someone else, I want them to like me just the way I am. If I can't have this, I want to live alone.

Life is too short to waste another minute on things that are not important to me.

Thawing In The Light

I look at the lake today and it is only half frozen. It has been so long I had forgotten how beautiful the water is when it is free, how wonderfully it reflects the world around it, how perfectly it speaks to me in this free flowing state.

I think how like my soul this lake is. It is as if my soul being, my spirit self speaks to me through it. Locked up, cold and frozen, only the surface can be touched.

Unfrozen, it becomes a mirror for all that surrounds it, both the wonderful and the terrible things and I can choose which one I want to focus on. I can gaze upon it, reach deeply into it, even immerse myself in its waters when it is like this.

Parts of me are still frozen, but I can feel them slowly melting. Slowly warming to the heart that beats so fiercely within my chest. Little by little I free myself to be who I truly am. Then my creativity emerges from the depths and, like the lotus, it opens to the light in simple beauty.

My world is light centered now. I no longer need icebergs to run interference for me. Sometimes those frozen pieces still warn me away from the unknown, float between me and those who are close to me. They are solid, strong parts of me that I once needed to survive, but I have outgrown them now.

As the ice melts, let me blow away the fog, focus on the path directly before me and, one step at a time, walk into the wholeness of living my life the way it is meant to be.

The Great Turtle

He comes to greet me, his head huge, his eyes wide open, all seeing, all knowing. I have seen him before and he is a fearsome looking creature, but only for his size. Who would believe that a turtle could be so large? But he is and rightly so. He has had centuries to grow, eons to learn and he lives in the silence. His only sound that of my breath as I gaze quietly at him.

And then it is time to go. Always it is time to go when he comes. I climb upon his back, place my hands on the shell right behind his head and we are off. Once I was frightened. Sometimes I still feel that fear creep up on me, but I know that I am safe. The Great Turtle never leaves me. He is always here.

I wonder where we are going in this muddy little Illinois river. Usually, he comes to me in the ocean, deep under the rolling waves of a universe that is moving quicker and quicker, but lately he has come inland and today we travel under the Mackinaw. I see great catfish lying on the bottom, their gelatinous bodies barely moving. I see the leftover dregs of humanity tumbled up among the rocks, and the winter skeletons of plants. Then we dip down and enter a cave!

Inside there is light, a shimmering that pulls my eyes upward. The air vibrates with an energy I cannot name. It pulses through me in invisible waves, stirring the atoms in my soul and then I see them. Above me, nearly three hundred feet above me, are roots! Long tenuous roots, thick solid roots, all hanging down into this cave where I am standing on the back of the Great Turtle. Roots that belong to even greater trees.

And then I know it is their connection I feel, as if it were their life blood, the flowing of their life force throughout the world. Each one only an extension of the whole. Each one the only one, with shared memories, shared thoughts, shared love.

They know me, remember me climbing into their arms to hide as a little girl. Reaching into my heart they know my love. They have seen me in the mountains and in the fields. They have watched me through my windows and as I passed them by in cars. Yet, this is the first time they have allowed me in, let me share their sacred space. These old ones will never leave the earth. They grow old and as they fall apart, their essence is simply absorbed into those nearby. Who would have ever thought!

I am exhausted. I lay my head against the Great Turtle's head and he brings me back, gently allows me to return to that which is familiar to me and slowly sinks back into the waters. I am at peace. I have felt the heartbeat of the earth, heard the lullaby of the universe as she soothes this gargantuan child that will always be attached to her womb. And I have ridden on the back of a Great Turtle to feel the love of One manifested as all.

Listening

I walk along the pathways deep within myself. The place where all things happen, where dreams are a fact and illusion nonexistent. I listen to the songs you will play tomorrow, the songs you have played for me for all eternity.

Like a butterfly I weave and wander throughout time. Searching for that flower, that essence that calls me to come and bring my essence to it. Each time I find it, it blooms brighter and more beautiful. Each time I find it, I must let it go.

Fading, dying, disappearing into eternity, we lose each other in the savoring of the moment and are no longer two, but one.

Once again, sooner than I ever understand, I am a butterfly gently wafting over the pathways of some distant field, listening for those songs that call me back. Straining to find that one whose breath is my breath, whose heart is my heart. I beat myself against the mirror until I fall senseless into the darkness. At last, blinded by my blessings, I finally hear what comes in the silence, finally touch what is not here, finally recognize what cannot be seen.

There are no pictures of those things most precious to us, because we would not recognize them.