Simplicity

I like this stage of my life.  My friends are more open now.  More vulnerable.  Happier.  And yes, many are losing their mobility.  Physical strength.  Some are losing their lives.  It is bittersweet. The turnstil has moved another notch.

We came to age in the Vietnam War years. An awful war.  Innocent people were taken out of the safety of their American homes.  Some enlisted. Some were drafted.  All were scared.  It reminded me of the book, Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. The night before battle.  Wondering what war would be like. Wanting to protect your countrymen.  Wanting to do your part.  Frightened for your life.  Would you come home?  In one piece?

A friend asked me to walk with her today.  It was especially warm and she was on break from teaching.  Both of us were dressed in long, hot pants coming from other duties.  Our walk was brief but we found a gazebo in town and enjoyed an hour long conversation.

A woolly caterpillar found its way under me.  Then there were wasps surrounding both of us.  After a while, the insects left and we could chat freely.

We spoke about thoughts, life,  passions.  Dissatisfaction.  Were we aging well?  Does it matter?  What are words anyway?

Two women in their sixties enjoying the moment. One another's company.  She returned to her wife.  I went home to clean and to caulk around my newly installed shower door.  It is the simple things.  Really.  Tomorrow I will paint a section under the newly installed on-demand hot water heater.  Maybe I will find someone to build a cabinet around it.

I do like this stage of life.

Too Many

The worst part about living in a small town is the loss.  You know just about everyone, at least by name, by association. They are members of this group or that.  You know how they feel about life.  That they are fully engaged with it.  You share similar friends.  Values.

They aren't in your 'inner circle' of friends always.  They are the periphery.  You might like to know them but it just never happened.

In the fifteen years since I moved south, I have lost too many friends.  Some close, some in the periphery.  You have moved fifteen steps up that ladder.  It is that place where you move on to another dimension.

Mornings come earlier and you don't feel like twenty anymore. You learn of people who are sick, some with terminal diseases, some with serious ones that have hope for survival.  I have been down that road too many times.  You learn there is hope for some and then there is none for others.

I can not count how many people I know who have cancer now.  Some had surgery, some are in varying stages of treatment, and some are now ready to receive tender loving care.  They are nearly at the top of the ladder.  They are all female in their late sixties and seventies.

Many of my friends are doing a Life Review now.  Looking back, many with smiles, some with disappointments, most enjoying the moment and their friends.  Life is so about stages in this culture and I just wish it weren't so.  It is less in a small town.

Many of my female friends admit they are invisible now.  Some don't much care, others have tears.  One recently told me she wasn't cute anymore.  She still wants to be cute in her seventies.  She knows she has to matter more to herself than her mirror.  The mirror only reflects what the advertising industry has sold.  She doesn't much admire corporations. She does admire eclectic people, people who stand up and don't spew corporate personhood.

Several of my close friends have serious, potentially terminal illnesses.  Ten years if we are lucky.  They have been my anchor in more ways than they know.  They would tell you this was opposite of how they see things.  So they we anchor one another and I am fine with that.  They know the history under which we grew.  Social pressures.  Expectations.  So many opportunities.  Far different than the upcoming generations.  We are the baby boomers.

And we are slowly going through the turnstile.  Too young. Too many.

September Surprise

An intuitive, psychic friend of mine posted this recently.  It deserves thought but should come as no surprise:

Two Predictions: 

1.  Something BIG is going to happen in September, likely having to do with disclosure and UFOs visiting our planet. 

2.  Also something with the elections that is very unexpected and surprises everyone - and everyone is talking about it.

St. Joseph

In 2012 or 13, a neighbor in the apartment complex where I was living gave me a St. Joseph statue.  He said it would aid in the selling of my home.  I mailed the statue to a friend in Sylva.  She drove to my home, some thirty minutes from hers.  She said she placed the statue at the entrance.

Just after I returned home in 2014, a handyman who worked for me found it in the soil when he was cleaning out a garden at the entry.  Somehow St. Joseph found his way into the shovel and loads of soil dumped over the hill on the right side of my home.  I call the area, The Point.

This morning, as I do every morning, I walked to the end of the driveway.  Smack center in the middle of it was St. Joseph lying face down.  Somehow last night, after the sun went down the statue was moved over ten feet from the right side of the entry to the left.

A filmmaker friend of mine is in post production of his film, Bigfoot.  I was reviewing the trailer he just released last night.  It is excellent and I look forward to its release sometime next spring.  But I am a bit perplexed.

This spring, especially the last month or so, I have begun to think about how long I can or will stay in my home.  Recent medical issues are making it difficult.  That the statue was placed where I could see it tells me something.

I hear lots of unusual noises at night.  Tapping outside my home.  Twigs and debris tossed at the house near my bedroom.  Rocks and stones placed along my driveway each morning.  Then there was the gift left at my door by a neighbor friend.  The gift fit nicely with all of the happenings here lately.

Is this Bigfoot?  Or is it the universe telling me to relocate - to make an easier life.  To this end, I changed some medications I was taking at my physician's suggestion.  Another week should tell me if this will improve.  If not, it may be time to go.  I don't want to.  It breaks my heart.

Then yesterday afternoon something weird happened.  I was outside watering flowers at the end of the driveway.

A few minutes before 3 p.m., two men in a late model truck (navy, I think) drive into my driveway. 

One of the men, tells me:

"You make great peanut butter sandwiches."

I stared him straight in the face. 

He says he is kidding.

Then he says he is with the Blue Ridge Company and has seafood, and has two boxes to give away. I decline because these people are sketchy.

They leave and go to the top of the road and make a left on to Hunter's Trail Road. They are gone 10 minutes. They come down to my road, waved to me and leave. The truck had no license plate.

A friend had called and needed to talk so I wasn't able to get a photo of the truck.  It was uncanny that she called just as the truck went down my hill.  She knows of the incident.

I wonder if this is in connection with the UFO encounter.  Or the mysterious man so many think was a Man in Black (MIB).  The lights in the house were left on last night.  I wasn't sure I would awaken.

St. Joseph, what are you telling me.

The Mirror Knows

I'm struggling.

Are we really that unique?  Since time immemorial, people have sought power and greed.  They need to be center stage, they have all the toys and goodies and they could care less about you.  But you already know that. If you have gotten beyond first grade, you know it well.

You also know about the bully on the playground.  Maybe you also know what lies beneath a bully - yes, the same thing that haunts you - lots of fear.  Bullies are anything but courageous.  And, it is sad. But no sadder than those who allow this person to be the bully.  The 1% of the playground bully garners all the privileges of the 99% percent who just stand there and take it.

It isn't my responsibility, or anyone elses for that matter to make the bully go away.  It is however, your responsibility.  That is what self-leadership is all about.  Standing up, speaking out.

I don't go on Facebook much these days.  And yes, I have deleted a few, unfollowed a lot and prefer to stay close to those who are near and dear to my heart.  They share, they stand tall, they speak out.  Well, most of them.

In a recent conversation with some folks I think a lot of, the talk came around to what is going on in the world.  I suggested that violence isn't new.  That it has been around since the bully on the playground.  Donald Trump is one.  He is here for a reason.

Most of the folks in the conversation said there are no leaders anymore.  I was taken aback, dropped my shoulders, softened my lips and asked why they didn't step forward.

"I am simply not a leader," but I will follow one.

"How would you know who was a leader," I asked.

"Oh, I would know," they said.

Paul Hawken in his book, Blessed Unrest, reminds us that there are no centralized leaders in the new way of being.  Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., writes in You Are The One You Have Been Waiting For, that the way in the new awareness is self-leadership.

I struggle with Facebook posters that whip out a few visual bites pointed toward the 1% that they are to blame for your lot in life.  The reality is, we need to look straight into the mirror to see our part.

Now we've all been around folks who get in touch only when they need us, we see right through them.  We don't put too much effort into them.  They are users.  The saddest of the sad.  They want us to do their work.

The past few years,  my time has been devoted to intense studying.  To do this meant to pare my social life down quite a bit.  To allow only a select few in, those that have a history with me.  Those who want more than a quick hit and run text.  The universe sees beyond all of that.  All of the Facebook posts that blame the republicans, the democrats, blame the 1%.  You wonder how the bully made it to the playground.  Look into the mirror.

Thumper

It's another foggy morning in the southern Appalachians.  The grass is soaked from last night's rain.  The eight lawn chairs weren't scattered this time so I won't need to hunt for them.

Before the rain, I watched for hours as four young rabbits enjoyed the clover on the lawn.  The grass is high.  The rabbits are delighted. There have been more this past year than in previous years.  I suppose not using fertilizer or chemicals make this patch a yummy treat for them.

When I discovered the adult whom I call Thumper,  sprawled out close to my studio window, I couldn't have been happier.  Apparently, Thumper has claimed this yard exclusively. Squatter's rights. At least for a time.

And, it is a regular and daily treat to walk around the house and gardens to see who has been visiting.  I can't be sure whether the visitor the other night was a fox or a coyote.  It may have been the latter since they are often seen in the cove.  Scat is also hard to discern.  Claw marks are not and they can be found high up on the side of my deck as well as on the new steps.  Could it be someone was interested in the fresh humming bird nectar recently filled?

That suggests a bear, perhaps a small one.  Maybe I will put the trail camera out again.  I am like a child on Christmas morning, waiting to see the gift.  The camera tells part of the story.  But sometimes it feels like an intrusion and I am left to guess all that may have transpired.

It is truly magic time!

Prisons

I've always been a visual person.  Even as a very young child.  I enjoyed placement in structures. Living rooms, offices, whatever.

Recently ,I thought about how we are always rearranging furniture in the prison of our minds.  Ode to Einstein and Ram Dass.  The novice is continually adding form until they are ready to do the work required within.  Until they are ready to release their egos.  And to stop running from themselves.

For several years now, I have had a purposeful solitude.  Limiting myself to only close friends, both in time and in thought.  Focusing more on letting others be where they are.  When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  It works better that way.

Mentoring is my calling.  Service to others.  In all of its forms.  While physical service has become more of a challenge, and my physicians remind me to be easier on my bodymind, I am slowly allowing that to happen.

This fall, I will be doing workshops again.  My services have already been requested.  They have been for years but the timing was off.  There were other things I was summoned to do.  Be.  It feels timely now.

Detachment. Release.  Now.