Live In The Smokies

I saw this beautiful house for sale !  OMG!

http://activerain.com/blogsview/3679214/ready-to-move-in-210-rockfield-way-in-beechwood-sylva-nc

Savannah: Chapter One

One

                                    “Just kiss me!”

Austin did this deliciously. It was the first time we kissed.  Ever. 

   

His arms wrapped me like a blanket. I didn’t want to let go.  This was unlike anything I have ever known.  We weren’t kids anymore.  We weren’t in our twenties.  More seasoned.

I liked him long before we met. I wondered what kind of quirks he had.  I imagined they were funny ones. 

In my dreams, I imagined falling in love with someone who loved to write, who eloquently expressed his heart and love of the environment.  This would be someone who stood tall for all the things he valued. The land.  The people.  The traditions.  I would learn a lot from him.

This is a man fully involved with life.  He really got what few people get. A spiritual environmental connection that all of this was sacred and had to be told.  There was an enigma to this man and I wanted to know about it.

He was a man both public and private. Even early on, I understood that.

I remember the first time he kissed me in the parking lot on the forehead. Unexpected.  That he had the courage to kiss me in such a delicate way said so much. Gently. Respectfully.  This was a man who took his time.

It was night and we were walking out to our respective cars a few years back.  It was Open Mic Night and he said he would come.  This wasn’t the first time I invited him to things in our community.  I felt our community needed his presence, his statute.

He read some of his work that evening.  I was in awe in his presence.  Not like a groupie but more like someone who just loved the well written, heartfelt word. 

People sang songs.  Some read their stories.  His were funnier than mine.  He being more comfortable up there on the stage; I a novice at writing and for now being more comfortable behind the scenes, arranging Open Mic Night.

I had always been the organizer.  Slowly, I was moving to do the work, not just administer it.    Doing that meant I had to come out.  I was unsure of my media in which to do that. 

Watercolors had always been a favorite, though I am not particularly adept at drawing.  I am good at color. A few pictures I did are hung on the walls in my mountain home.

I like design; the relationship between space and a few well placed things.  I like books about anthropology, architecture, spirituality and people with whom I can share them. 

Fifteen years’ ago, I wrote a book that began with two crimes I exposed.  After blowing the whistle on the health care providers, I blew the whistle on my twenty-eight year marriage.  It had not been all that I had hoped. After I got over the expectations of a life and marriage that was stifling the person I was becoming, I saw my divorce as the opportunity for a simpler, more creative, sustainable life.

We never talked about how we felt toward one another or deep things of that ilk.  I genuinely liked him but there was no chemistry.  I had met him when I was a very young nineteen year old.  He was just finishing college and about to start law school.

We did a fine job of raising our children and I think we worked well together.  I wanted more than that.  I wanted to either be single or in an authentic relationship.  Single is where I am now.

The book tells quite a story and needs serious editing.  The manuscript still sits on the shelf below this computer desk.  It doesn’t matter so much anymore that others hear my story.  I am able to hear it now. 

I thought about my first experience of Austin. A writer for a local liberal newspapers, Austin McNamara was a wordsmith. I remember a friend told me about his column six years’ ago. I wanted to know who was this man who so deftly crafted words that took me on his journey.  I had been asking around town for him for some time. 

It had been a sunny fall day when I first put a name with the face.  I’d been having lunch with my friend Benjamin when he saw him across the street.

 “There he is, the one passing Killer Creek Furniture. He’s looking in the window.”

Killer Creek is known for hand made, rustic furniture, all locally grown, harvested and designed.  A canoe sits where an awning used to be.   Hand hewn planks covered the floor.  Painted sheet rock carefully torn off in a ragged scalloped way along the horizon of the wall exposed brick laid eighty years before.  It was an end building with windows only in the front or back.  That was because it had been heated by oil.  Windows would have ensured the space would have been cold.

I kept my eyes on Austin until he disappeared into Killer Creek. It would be a few months before he was pointed out to me again.

“Ah, so that’s the elusive one. I want to meet him,” I thought.   

It wasn’t until a group of environmentalists got together to save our community from the North Carolina Department of Transportation plans to construct a road nobody need through an area nobody wanted destroyed.

There were a handful of us.  Some were writers, shopkeepers and me.  I’d been working for a watershed then and was asked to attend.  For the most part, I just listened, took notes. I was in awe of all of them.

Coming from a suburban environment, where the woods were already destroyed, this was an opportunity to save this pristine environment.  I was just learning about riparian banks and aquatic life. And the endangered Elk toe mussel.

I felt as though this was a ground breaking group.  After this evening, I knew I was meant to come here. I felt ill-equipped, unknowledgeable, a novice.

One fellow with long gray peppered hair, and brown penetrating eyes scoped out his strategic plans to save the forest.  I had never experienced anyone like this before. In the past, I was just saving a school from destruction, or relocated a car barn for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority in the D.C. area about to be placed near my front yard.  

Interestingly enough, the planning board to whom I plead my case is now my son’s employer.  Life has its circuity.

Then the township in which I was living in New Jersey failed to place the berm between my community and a road got my attention. Working with my neighbors, we found the soil for the berm.  The community enjoys a more quiet existence now.

I was used to a room full of lawyers, each more eager than the other to be heard. Equally talented, this group was less about ego and more about cause. The ones who got things done for the writers.

Everyone introduced themselves in a circle sharing their names and why they were here. Then Austin spoke.  Immediately I could feel this unassuming man and his connection to the land.   After the meeting, I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Janel, Are you the writer of “The Sacred Mountain?” I asked.

His head was turned down, looking more shy than he had a right to be.

“Well, yea, I…” he said.

“I guess I am responsible for all this nonsense,” he said.

He seemed a bit formal but I knew instantly there was more to this story. 

A few months later, I saw him on the street and reintroduced myself. 

“You looked like you were in deep thought.  Am I interrupting anything?” I asked.

“No just getting some exercise,” he said.

We talked about this and that, mostly small stuff and nothing I remember as we walked down Main Street.

I came to the area where my car was parked.

“So long, thanks for the chat,” Austin said.

“Keep up the great work.  I love reading your column,” I said.

Over the next few months, we passed a few times in town and exchanged smiles and comings of the day.

I e-mailed him a few times about his column.  Then one day he gave me his private e-mail.

“Here, this one is easier,” he said.

I started sending him e-mails about environmental meetings that were going on.  I was glad that he attended a few.

The following year, I became a board member for a local grass roots organization whose mission was clean air.

On my way to see the executive director, I saw him standing in the lobby.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Hey back.  Whatcha  doing here?” he asked.

“Oh, I am here to see Benjamin.  And you”?

“I work here. Stop by when you finish with Benjamin.”

“Sure.”

Benjamin and I had a brief meeting and I continued down the hall to Austin’s office.

“So this is where the genius begins?”

“Not really.  I do keep the chair warm for them.”

...Seven

Seven

Not too long after July 20, 2010, my head began to have pulling sensations. Like something was moving inside.  The pulling was localized mostly on my left side.  They would occur for about fifteen seconds and dissipate. When I spoke to my physician, she had no clue what was happening.  I had hoped there was a medical rationale for it. 

I began to wonder if this was some sort of download. At first, I wouldn’t notice anything too different. I felt the pulling sensation, and then began to notice a bit of difficulty sequencing things. None of my friends saw any of this despite me telling them about it.  Maybe that is a good thing.

It is important to mention at this point that I have a most excellent memory for detail.  I can remember where things are on a page, a kind of photogenic memory.  My Dad also had this.  Mine is much less developed I think.

After the pulling sensations, I notice that my sense of acuity is more developed.  I get knowings that things are about to happen.  It could be that someone is pregnant, or having difficulty with their pregnancy, that someone is losing their job, that someone is unhappy in their marriage and about to divorce.  My ability to feel their pain has always been present but again, more so now.  And it doesn’t come from my brain like I think it did in the past.  It comes from my bodymind working together.  The knowings come from within.

They don’t present themselves in way one might expect. I experience them much like flowers experience the sun.  Small incremental changes.  They come out when I first awaken, sometimes during the day or when someone prompts me in conversation. Something will pop up that I know and I want to share it.  Sometimes I have to be careful with whom I share these knowings.  Not everyone wants or can handle them.  Then the knowings manifests into an earth plane reality.

Often I feel the presence of sky ships.  While I can’t always see them thirty-five feet over my head now, I see them in the distance. They move fast!  They leap frog, zip straight up like they are following a straight edge ruler.  They disappear and rearrange their patterns.  They are more in abundance than ever.  I have watched them for years. 

I feel they are more than frustrated with us.  With our destruction of the environment for profit, the self-serving Congress, that we are so complacent.  We weren’t always that way.  They wonder when we will love one another and our planet enough to stand up for a healthier lifestyle and stop the madness.  They think we are a bunch of followers.  I can not disagree with them.  It frustrates me as well.

They saw us come together on 9/11 for two weeks.  They saw us stand up for civil rights on the March on Washington in the 1960s.  They are embarrassed.

Last November, my ears began to ring.  Consulting an otolaryngologist, she had no explanation.

“A percentage of the population gets this.  It isn’t anything to worry about.  It may go away.”

Sometimes it does abate for a few seconds, only to return.  The last time it stopped was about six weeks.

Too many coincidences. Or not?

Wild Woman Sisterhood - We Have Come To Be Danced

♥ We have come to Be Danced

Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the Belly
Of the Sacred, Sensual Animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box Dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet Dance

We have come to Be Danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The Blow the chip off our shoulder Dance.
The slap the apology from our posture Dance

We have come to Be Danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two Dance like you
One two three, Dance like me Dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open Dance
The rub the Rhythm Raw against our Soul Dance

We have come to Be Danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, Voodoo Mama
Shaman Shakin’ Ancient Bones Dance
The strip us from our casings, Return our Wings
Sharpen our Claws and Tongues Dance
The Shed Dead Cells and slip into
The Luminous Skin of Love Dance.

We have Come to Be Danced
Not the hold our breath wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the Meeting of the Trinity, the Body Breath and Beat Dance
The Shout Hallelujah from the top of our Thighs Dance
The Mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant Leaps Dance
The olly olly oxen free free free Dance
The everyone can come to our Heaven Dance

We have come to Be Danced
Where the Kingdom’s Collide
In the Cathedral of Flesh
To Burn Back into the Light
To unravel, to Play, to Fly, to Pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to Be Danced

~ Jewel Mathieson

Photo: www.ladanseduserpent.com

 

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Life In The Smokies For Sale

 

http://comehometothemountains.com/?mls_number=47610&content=expanded&this_format=0

Picture this ~ from your front porch

And this preserve.

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Spring Sing

Spring beckons our prayer
Pray, meditate
Be one with all
You want

The clouds are dark
The wind rough
Snow melts
I am cold

Birds beckon
C'mon, c'mon
We are ready
To sing

Sing on
Sing on
Animal and human alike
Sing on

Dear Little Dickens

My eleven year old cocker spaniel just chewed a holiday wreath.  I didn't much like the wreath.  Sure it was nice to look at, it was too big for my front door, too big to store.  The latter started the problem in the first place.

Jessy is still a chewer.  She chews everything she finds in the street or lawn.  Cigarette butts, straws, paper is her specialty.  I have thought of muzzling her.  I may now.  But back to the story at hand.  I was in the other room sewing and hard a strange noise coming from my bedroom.  You see my bedroom closet has become the catch all place.  It is the only closet large enough to store my King Tut treasures.  For the great pyramid, you know.

This a.m. I put the wreath on the floor.  At first I thought it might be an issue for Jessy.  Jessy is like a child.  Then I thought she probably will leave it alone.  I called her and she did not come.  I ran into the living room, saw a few pieces from the wreath, into the bedroom, saw more berries, and into the hall where she did the deed.  The wreath was upside down and nearly stripped bare.

So now I am on a dog watch.  She just drank water, has nothing in the room lest she barf on her bed.  We will wait out the remnants.

I didn't want the wreath anyway.  I do want Jessy.  Dear little dickens that she is.

Ann Curry, Class Act

Matt Lauer's ousting of the warm, bright and sensitive Ann Curry last June ended any interest I could ever have in The Today Show.  I used to watch it for years.

Not one to waste too many words, I think it is well nigh time for Matt Lauer to go.  You've become too big for your britches.  Nuff said.

Shame on you.  Shame on NBC!

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter SIx

Six

I thought about the relationship I had gotten into the year before.  Maybe it was the years of a poor role model in my father who walked out when I was sixteen.  Never available, always hours late.  Even leaving me outside my school when everyone else had gone home and it was dark. At ten it is pretty frightening.

I did what I knew.  I married an emotionally unavailable man at twenty-two. The marriage completed after twenty-eight years.  Through lots of reading and study I learned that only when I was emotionally available to myself would I meet a healthy, worthy man. 

The first man I dated after my divorce became my roommate.  I had known him for years. We traveled the world in our six years together.  But there became more and more outbursts of anger on his part.  Anger had no place in any relationship I could be in. I had worked too hard to allow that. I wasn’t afraid to end it with him.   And there were others I dated after him.  All emotionally unavailable as I was to myself.  There was one I met while volunteering for Habitat for Humanity that was probably the most sad of all of them.  Just three weeks before my sighting, I ended that.  I finally saw my part in what I helped create. 

The world turned more and more ugly.  So many institutions were collapsing because of their greed and self-absorption. Post the Enron scandal, there were Wall Street bailouts, environmental disasters, collapsed economies, HAARP induced megastorms sparing few. I felt Mother Nature's pain.  Clearly, they were here to warn us. They come to check on us.  To tap in.  I was on high alert.

They say most of the learning in life takes place outside of college.  That was definitely true of the UFO experience. I continued to receive more knowings.  Like things were about to happen.  Like the electrical current going through my legs discharging to wherever my feet were placed.  Never having had this before, my intuition told me to record the precise moment I felt these sensations.  I began looking at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) map checking out the time, finding the place where it had occurred.  I wondered what I had missed in the past, if I had missed something intuitive.  I don't think so.

The week prior to the tsunami in Japan, my joints through my petite body ached.  Hurt.  I was more than miserable.  Two days before the tsunami, the pain abated.  But that morning, much like the morning my mother passed away, I knew something had happened.  Something directed me to look at my Doctors Without Borders map on the wall in the mint green study.  Standing motionless I went to the computer.  I pulled up the USGS map on the internet and there it was!

A tsunami had occurred precisely the moment I was bolted out of the quiet of my sleep.  I couldn't turn the television on fast enough.

         The electrical current, or piezo-electric effect continued. It is the same effect animals have when an earthquake is about to erupt.  They get agitated and move to higher ground, to safety.  This is also the case with the animals in the National Zoo in Washington D.C. when the 6.9 ‘earthquake’ was experienced in Virginia.

I began to feel many earthquakes. There were hundreds.  Even one on a road trip near the epicenter when I was visiting New Hampshire.  Again, I jotted the time down.  When I reached my home, I opened up the Mac and a quake had occurred in the area where I was.  This continues to this day as does my intuition on events that are happening.

Friends suggested I talk to a seasoned psychic about it.  I spoke with several of them.  Each one told me I was intensely psychic as though I needed confirmation.  They told me I had powerful healing energy.  That I need to work in this field.  My Reiki Master, some eight years before my UFO encounter told me when I received my certification.  That I didn't need to go beyond the first attunement.

“There is nothing we could offer you that you don't already have.  Very powerful energy.  Are you aware of this?" she said.

Even the other students in the class felt my energy when we traded treatments. I was humbled.  Responsible.

Now it is like a veil has been lifted.  I see things before they happen.  I saw my Mother's death and heard her say goodbye to me even before the UFO encounter. Recently, I saw my uncle's death, that is was peaceful, that his long time female companion would be at his bedside. 

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Five

Five

I wondered why it was so dark when I awakened.  The L.L.Bean Moonbeam clock revealed two seconds to one o'clock in the morning.  But I was totally refreshed. Two hours of sleep?  Wait.  Something was different.  I was different.  My awakening body felt different. I wondered if I had been abducted. I felt lighter.   There were no marks anywhere on my body for my eyes scoured myself deftly. 

But what happened when I was sleeping?  With only two hours of sleep, had the energy of a teenager.

But there was more.  Thoughts and information didn’t come from my brain anymore.  They came from my body-mind, working in concert together.  Maybe it was what the Yogis strived for.  The Quetzalcoatl.  Everything was as thought it was for the first time. 

There were lots of knowings.  A puzzle piece here, a puzzle piece there.  Each morning revealed something new but none of it made sense.  Not at first. 

More than patient with all of this, I let things be as they are.  Not so easy when you have had a lifetime of Type A behavior.  Maybe this was the Type B aspect surfacing more?  The Type B always came out in my artwork, my creative side.  The side that paints watercolors, becomes inmeshed in music, lives to go to the symphony at age thirteen, wants…needs to create.  It wasn’t in my head anymore.  More sentient than I have known, there were so many unanswered questions. Almost like the space before the epiphany – it all comes together for you. 

             I thought about my aging Mother. Alone by choice in a Florida retirement community.  She was fading fast.  Living in a senior community isolating herself from family and friends did that. I wondered how other galaxies handled their older folks.  I sure didn’t like how ours did.

As the daughter of a Mother whose background was both in geology and physics, I wished she were near. That “they” could help her. 

But our socialized science wouldn’t prepare my Mother to handle this, though her understanding of possibilities would. Even though I tried to share the experience with her, her mind was gone. I hoped she knew.

The early morning awakenings continued for nine consecutive nights.  Again I was aroused at exactly two seconds before one o'clock.  I was full awake, fully refreshed. Alert.  The clock with its batteries hadn't lost time. But had I?

After ten consecutive nights, the puzzle pieces became clear.  I was told to spread the word that we need to be sustainable immediately. Both economically and environmentally.   The hourglass was nearly emptied.  Failure to become sustainable would bring catastrophe.

In a world where much is hidden, what do you do with all of this knowledge?  How would I get the collective heads out of the sand. 

“Just talk I was told.  Some will listen.”

Where does this solitary experience go?

Over that summer, I spoke to a few groups, and the local media picked up the story. People wanted to know, understand. The ones who were prepared to see things as they are.  It felt good to be among other intuitives.  I longed to know another experiencer. I was more than grateful to be the conduit. 

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Four (Photos)

Four

         I was more than tired.  Weeding the cliffside garden meant I wore my son's high school navy plaid flannel shirt. Sure there were a few paint marks around the cuff.  That happens with a twenty year old shirt.  Besides it was the only shirt big enough to go over my work clothes.  I didn't want to wear dark pants, but yoga pants were the only things old enough to do garden work.  Sitting on the soil with my knee pad.  Rubber bands nearly closed off my circulation at the cuffs and ankles.

No-seeums seemed to enjoy my oliver skin.  Like the time four summers ago when they zoomed in for the attack.  Across my untanned midriff.  Like dots in Morse code.  Only larger. It took three months of non-stop pain and itching for the welts to heal.  That I didn't scratch once was a miracle. That I was still raw for the wedding says a lot about their determination.

A basket weaved sombrero provided much needed shelter for my face in the intense southern sun. Mosquito netting around my face would have helped.  None was to be found. It wasn't just the no-seeums.  Gnats and mosquitos also made a beeline toward raw flesh.  Bzzzz. Ouch! Six dots that grew in the week to come.

           The air was thick with moisture.  Buggy.  Oppressive. With the nut grass removed and composted over the hill, it was time to get ready to meet my new friend.

I’d met  Carol at a local UFO Conference.  A slender, blond woman with a nicely coiffed bob from South Africa looking older than her fifty years.  Living in a country where apartheid was the main stay wasn’t easy for this free spirit. Her pasty white skin and angular facial features made her stunning with her model’s figure. 

Carol lived  some forty-five minutes over the mountains to the northeast.  I'd met her at a local UFO Conference.  She spoke about numerous encounters that night in town.  The conference center was packing.  Many stood even outside the doors.  Meeting this eclectic woman was like dining with a butterfly.  I kept wondering where and when she would land.

Almost immediately, I was whisked to her garden.  Mystical, magical, Yoda-like.  She told me about the waterless stream on her property.

“I dug the creek myself.  Some neighbors came by to help.  Look at it.  There was no water here and now it is abundant. After seeing the spaceship and setting my intention, the water appeared one morning.  A splashing brook."

She ushered me into her more than comfy home and left to prepare our meal. Carol said she preferred to make dinner.  I hadn't eaten all day.  Since I hadn't tasted South African food before, I was excited to eat.    After a few minutes, Carol appeared from behind the tiny bar in her tiny closet sized kitchen.  A plate with four hind quartered chicken was served.  They had been roasting for some time.  I learned that evening she didn't use spiced.  That was the meal save for dry red wine.  An hour later, her friend met us on the balcony. Her friend stayed while she spoke.  Carol softly retreated to the chaise.

As the evening faded, I left to go home to eat.  Foreshadowing was everywhere. The air was still and silent. Once I left the gravel road and densely covered woods, bright lights appeared in the sky.  They seemed to leapfrog.  I was glad to know the winding road.  The lights followed me until the road became more circuitous and my eyes were firmly planted on the road.  The Highlander followed the road down toward the basin.

It was only when I made the u-turn from the Webster Road, that the sky seemed to darken.  I couldn't find the lights in the sky as the canopy opened. Coming off the mountain felt like being in the zone. Something beckoned me to look up. There it was hovering over the road as I crested the innocuous hill. At first I thought it was crashing.  On a closer look I could see it was tilted to the right, stopped in midair.  Motionless.  Quiet.  This metallic-looking structure was about fifteen to twenty feet tall, about sixty feet wide.  It looked very 1950. As I turned my head to the right, I could see two white sedans in the distance.  One was further back than the other.  The one in the fast lane behind me was closer, some one quarter to a half mile away.  The other vehicle at least half a mile away.  There speed was constant for a while.

My body tingled gently.  I was more aware than I ever imagined.  The five narrow dimly lit salmon-rose windows on the spaceship revealed no beings.  As my eyes scanned the ship some thirty-five feet over the ground, I heard a jet in the distance somewhere to the right and behind the ship.  I never saw the jet.

Fully sentient, I felt the presence of something evil lurking.  Perhaps it was just over the ridge at Cowee Mountain.

The clock in my silver Highlander read 9:40 p.m.  The road was empty of traffic from the south on an otherwise busy highway for a July 20, 2010 summer evening.  Even my new Magnavox cell phone, purchased for its excellent reception in the southern Appalachians was working.  Nothing on the dashboard dimmed.

There just below the twin peaks it hovered. It never moved. 

Looking backward in the darkness of the night, I could see nothing.  But like I said, I knew I would see this that evening.

There is something uncanny about being in the zone.  Everything is possible.  Like the athlete who is one with the football.  Just getting it over the goal post is a matter of the next step.  Everything is possible.  An easy focus.

I remembered the feeling of the evil presence of the jet sounds in the distance.  A pilot later told me the sound was the hydraulics coming from the jet just over the mountain range. 

My whole body felt I was not to have this experience without sharing the moment.  To be fully present. I wanted to call a friend, to have other ears hear the sounds in the distance for their were very loud.  But I was told that it was not necessary to use the cell phone sitting on the seat next to me.  This was to be a singular experience.  I alone was meant to see this.  A conduit.

I kept looking behind me at the two seemingly identical cars in the distance.  One in the fast lane behind me some half a mile and the other similar white vehicle in the slower lane further away than a quarter of a mile.

Even driving under the UFO the sky was totally black.  As I drove out from behind it, I couldn't see anything as I turned my head again looking back.  A void. But as I left this highway, crossing the bridge under Savannah Creek, it felt okay to make a phone call.  I telephoned a photojournalist friend.  He would more than understand.  I recounted my experience as I was glad to be home.  Safe inside.  At least on an earth plane level.  I continued to talk to my friend for a while that evening.

Being home felt like an illusion. I knew any being with this level of technology accesses what they want.  They probably read, know...my thoughts.  I wasn't kidding myself.  I had been exposed.  And more than tired.  My organic, ivory sheets awaited me.  Bed was more than welcomed.

Smoky Mountain Suprise: Chapter Three

Three

            My marriage completed the end of the last millennium.  Even though I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t… grow coupled with him, I didn’t know life without him.  Thirty years together is a long time, especially when you meet at nineteen.  More than anything, I hoped for a loving parting.  But it wasn’t what happened. 

            “Puppy dogs, that’s what we were.”

            Over time I longed for that deep, spiritual connection.  Someone who had lots of time for their relationship.  Someone who wanted a heart like mine.  But he was self-involved and not interested in people.  I knew, despite years of tears…it was time to go.

            A friend once wrote,

            “Watching her from a distance this was a high functioning woman.  She got things done.  She took care of her family.  But you had to wonder how her heart that had been breaking for years was coping now. She didn’t even know.  Not back then.”

            But write is what I knew.  One book. Then two.  I didn’t know it then; I was writing myself home. 

           

I had just arrived in the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina when I realized there was a reason for relocating there.  The flora and fauna were more than I ever imagined.  But it was the southern Appalachian culture along with its simplicity of word that opens the senses revealing a biosphere beyond anything imaginable. But more than that, a connection to one’s own senses. One’s self.

At once, I was puzzled local writers only wrote about the culture in the era.  I was more than glad to have a university close by.  I hoped it would help to balance local groupthink.

            Frustrated, angry I had to do something with this energy.  Writing a letter to the editor in a local newspapers helped me breathe.

“English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871 wrote,” Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds.”

Appalachian culture is ongoing. It is not a period frozen in time.  Heritage is ever changing like the people who comprise it.  And there are many interpretations of Appalachia. Aren’t we, after all, the experts in our own Appalachian experience? Who is to say who is acculturated or not?

No where have I ever lived where just about everyone asks, “Are you from here?” as if a Jackson County birth is a guarantee of entitlement or a means to divide people or maybe a starting point for a wonderful long term friendship. It doesn’t matter how or when we arrived, it does matter that we include one another.” 

            I was like the culture in which I lived.  Ever changing and

definitely not fixed in time.  It is hard to know at precisely what time I

found my voice.  In a different way.

            “That’s not who we are!  We’ve changed, evolved.  Just because we weren’t born here doesn’t mean this isn’t home.  You don’t own this land, no one does.  We’re really just passing through,” I said to a progressive southern writer.

            It was the little and not so little things that called this place home.  Creating a safe place, a preserve, hidden from all, where animals would know they were safe.  Before long, there were kits birthing on the land.  The red wolf in the garden.  But it was burning inside me, perhaps for all the years I kept so much inside, I was about to explode. 

            “Wanting, yearning for a spiritual connection.  Ultimately, it was in the letting go that you fell upward,” said a photojournalist friend.

Murder!

Today I am deviating a bit from my normal ramblings.  For a cause.  This poster infuriates me!  A commission was assembled in the mid 1970s to investigate the corruption in the Nixon White House.  Where is the commission today?  Where is the outrage - the protests on Pennsylvania Avenue?

Finding Richard Parker

In all of us, there is a Richard Parker.  Red mixes with yellow to become orange.  But it could continue as a red and/or a yellow.  Sometimes mixed together yields a eye-catching response as seen below. And more than the eye can behold.
 

Submerged in water, the colors, once separate like Richard Parker expand to reveal more complexity.  All the what if's.  Our deepest fears. Much like the effect water has on this watercolor as it meanders, finding its way downhill. What happens on the downward spiral offers a window into the world as it is.  Nature.

Richard Parker, like the lion in the Life of Pi, is the yin and yang, the polar opposites that are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world. Primary colors mixed for a painting offer a glimpse into all that is possible.It is in the natural world where we are left to our own devices.  A Lord of the Flies experience.  Chaos.  Beauty.  Adrift in the sea. India at its sensory overload bringing us back to ourselves or INDIA, I Am Not Doing It Again.  All the while taking away an appreciation of life rather than seeing it as a right. The color tells it all.  Mixed and meandered.

It is the natural world that shows our mettle. It is the light and dark, good and evil, passive and aggressive, male and female. Circuitous.

Finding Richard Parker was the ultimate gift of enlightment. Because in Richard Parker we learn to live fully in the moment with all of its senses, all of its colors. Ultimately bringing us back to the moment and to ourselves.

Senior Passenger Forced To Share Airline Seat

I was more than excited to visit my 3 year old grandson in Washington , D.C. this past weekend  However, the trip home St. Patrick's Day, Sunday, March 17, 2013 on USAirways EXPRESS-PSA AIRLINES flight # 2524 leaving from Washington National Airport (DCA) at 8:55 a.m. bound for Manchester, NH (MCT) was anything but pleasant.

Almost immediately, I noticed the passenger sitting next to me was obese spilling over into my seat.  I asked the passenger to exchange seats and the passenger agreed for which I was most appreciative. 

When I spoke to the flight attendant about the size of the passenger, I was told, "the plane is full."  I only asked to exchange my seat so that I would have full use of my seat. 

There are several issues here.  First, when a customer buys a ticket, it is contractually assumed that the customer has rented ONE (1) seat for the duration of the flight.  that is, the entire seat. I believe the legal community would call this, "theft of services."

Second, my safety was compromised as my seat was supposed to be by the window.  Had there been an emergency, in no way could I have escaped to safety. Most assuredly, I would have been trapped. The obese passenger, when asked, did exchange the aisle seat for me for which I was most appreciative.   Accommodations were so tight that I could not even put the central arm rest down.  The passenger also requested and got a seat belt extension. In a state of overwhelming government regulations in favor of the airlines, it is interesting that the U.S. Government, USAirways and TSA were not at all concerned about my safety on the airplane. 

Had the flight attendant been in the least bit interested in making the passenger comfortable instead of commenting, "the plane is full" this senior citizen could have enjoyed the flight.   

Being FORCED by the airline to share one's seat with an obese individual is anything but pleasant.  It was definitely a day of green.  Greenbacks, that is, for this airline. 

I contacted the airline.  The following is their response:

Thank you for writing to US. I’m happy to have the chance to respond to your concerns.

I’m sorry you were faced with an uncomfortable situation when you were seated next to a person whose size exceeded the width of their seat. As you may know, carriers are not required to provide two seats to a large individual if only one seat is purchased. A second seat may be purchased by our customers for their and your comfort. If such a situation should occur on a future flight, please speak with your Flight Attendant.

... we appreciate the time you took to contact us regarding this matter. Above all, we appreciate your business and look forward to serving you on a future US Airways flight.

Sincerely,


Tiffany Whitt
Representative, Customer Relations
US Airways Corporate Office

UFO Encounter!

Many have asked and I just located the radio talk show audio.  This is the story of my UFO encounter.

http://audio.wscafm.org/audio/2012/PARANORMAL/WSCA-Paranormal_10-07-2012.mp3

Suppress Your Access To The Possible

Our prime reality has been hacked!

You only know what the people who feed you your information want you to know.  Consider this.  Yoga and meditation are powerful.  They were once only for the ruling class.  To learn to meditate means you let go of that which no longer works for you.

Does the media teach you about meditation?  No.  They teach you about violence, more violence and more violence. Violence breeds fear.  Keep them in fear and you control the world.  Take a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y0ZtwUwqn48

Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Two

Two

            I grew up on Belmont Avenue in Baltimore near the Woodlawn section of town. My name, Janel, was a combination of my mother’s mother’s name, my Nana who was called Jennie and my father’s mother’s name, Nellie.  I preferred to spell it Jan el.  Janel.

            Our neighborhood  was typical of most tract communities lined with hundreds of white carbon copy Cape Cods, built in the ‘50s with scalloped shingles. Few people had more than one car per household. They were content to be a simple community and had the blessings and curses that come with it. A motley assortment of people, the blue collar and emerging white professionals, aspired to get out of the crab basket and seize the American dream.  One hundred sixty houses, lined up like desks in a schoolroom, only four streets, one street in front of another.  They were identical in size, not a Levitt tract home community, but on a smaller scale.

“We’re like a giant easel,” the neighbors would say. Stock houses, the homeowners added their special touch just enough to differentiate them from their neighbor.

Within these homogeneous Cape Cods lived a dutiful generation of people.

Nearly everyone belonged to the PTA or risked being shunned from the PTA President. Others volunteered in Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies or Girl Scouts and for the fire department.  And there were many other organizations as well.  It was a generation of volunteers.  Commitment meant something.  They were working to improve their world.

Neighbors helped one another complete their basement recreation rooms or pour concrete from the community concrete mixer that everyone pitched in to buy.  When I was young, I thought my family was special because we were chosen to store it.

The children in the neighborhood were raised by the community.  People knew what was going on in one another’s lives.  You didn’t dare get into trouble, lest everyone knew what you had done.  It was an instant guarantee your parents would know, too.

Behind my home was a very large and wooded area.   An escape.  I remember the short story about the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was James Thurber’s story about Walter Mitty, a timid person who had a two day daydreaming escapade. Walter Mitty fantasized about one exciting adventure after another.  It was in those woods that I became whatever the Walter Mitty in me would allow.  There were turtles, some snappers, crayfish in the creek, skunk, muskrat, and every kind of foliage you could imagine.  A large rock pile some several miles in diameter created a limitless playground for me and her friends. 

I’d would work all day sometimes to clear the foliage to create the special little ground fort only to come back the next day to do it again. 

“You start out early in the morning when the ground is soft to pull out the greenery.  With a slight squat, you bend toward the root of the shrubs and give it a firm yank.  If you are lucky, you won’t fall backward,” I remember telling a friend.

“There is so much work to be done.  If we do it together, we can finish early. Then we can sit back and enjoy it and we can eat our snacks.” 

They looked a long time to find the perfect spot.  Nirvana means you find a spot near the water where it is cool even if you are only a child.  A large, brown boulder with marble-like mica running through it became their throne.  Upon it we imagined they were bigger, that they were in charge. 

In the winter, the creek formed a glistening ice skating rink.  My friends and I would skate for hours under road bridges along the abutting psychiatric hospital.  No one ever worried about us.  Whether we walked along the railroad tracks, or swam in the nearby rivers, it felt safe.

We watched with admiration the shanty across the creek the teenage boys were building.  They even had a wood stove.  We longed for a peek in the shanty, but were too timid to snatch a glimpse.  It was only when the police finally tore down the fire hazard that they saw the Playboy magazines, Camel and Marlboro cigarettes and the tiny refrigerator.  A few years later, we would learn that two of the boys, both brothers, went to prison because they broke into a convenience store.

The woods were also next to the Meton Psychiatric Hospital.  Once in a while someone would escape.  The remains of a troubled man were found near my fort around my fourteenth birthday. He had shot himself in the head.  The Police and Medical Examiner brought his body through our her back yard on a stretcher.  I never returned to the woods after that.

It was in that community where everyone knew each other by name and although my street had some thirty houses, even as a child, I felt that I belonged.  I called mother’s friends Miss Tillie, Miss Mary, Miss Beanie and Miss Madeline, in keeping with Nana’s southern Maryland roots.

Nana, a petite and warm woman, came to the United States in the early ‘20s from London, England.  Over time she lost most of her accent except when she would speak of tomatoes.  She pronounced them “toe matt toes.”  It always made me laugh.

Nana had eloped in her early twenties to marry her handsome boyfriend from Maryland. He then enlisted in the Canadian military long before the United States got into the first World War.  That is where he lost his left arm. Nana later learned his family owned the land on which Cape Canaveral is built.

But in my tightly knit community, the neighborhood had a block party once a month rotating throughout the community.  My brother, Charles, and I relished the times when our parents hosted the event.  Even though they we were just eight and ten, I remember well the anticipation we had early each morning after our parents hosted the parties just waiting to check out the leftovers. 

“Charles, wake up.  There are some goodies left. C’mon down,” I would whisper in his ear.

Down we went into to the hickoy panelled recreation room.  Still in the heavy double cement sink, they would find Nehi, Grape Soda and Root Beer, and a few bottles of  Fresca.  The ice block purchased the day before had melted.

Dad’s family were originally from Wales although he was born in New Jersey.  Most of his family immigrated to the south.  They lived in Virginia and North Carolina.

It was Dad who was the social organizer for the community.  He started the first baseball league in Woodlawn, an honor for which he was long remembered. 

But Mom fostered traditions.  Like the Friday afternoon we went clothes shopping, picked up a few items at the local Acme grocery store in Woodlawn. The final destination was always a stop at the Rexall Pharmacy.  It had a long, 1950s soda fountain. Mom always took black coffee.  I always ordered Coca Cola, a small one and ate her standard pretzel stick with dipped on the end with a little dollop of mustard.  Sitting at the green counter, Mom continued with one of her Agatha Christie books while I revelled in her my wardrobe folded neatly in the Stewart’s bag on the black and white checkerboard tiled floor.

Mom was an original.  A more than determined spirit with a Margaret Mead orientation to life and a Phyliss Diller sense of humor. She could do anything  - tune a car, wire a room, sew a dress.  She was a middle school science and math teacher/supervisor with a masters degree in physics and was the daughter of a Londoner.  She was also one of Baltimore’s first sex educators.

Mom was a phenomenon in the 1960s, the first wave of feminists who were suddenly single. Although she wanted to be a physician, there was no money for that.  So she went to college while raising Charles and I.

Sewing was another tradition among the women in our family.  Often Mom, Nana and I sewed together.  Once we even made yellow and gray checkered blouses with matching skirts.  I loved when we wore them together. Nana, who taught Mom the art of needlecraft and how to sew.  Mom taught me sewing.  I learned needlecraft in my twenties.

At ten I was sewing simple crop tops.  Working on the unfinished side of the basement with its painted yellow cinder block walls, shelves lined with old newspaper upon which fossils were stored, the room warmth was everywhere.