Intermezzo October 12, 2015

My Maiden Voyage lasted six days. I have now been home for twelve and wow… what a lot has happened during this time. Thus, though there are still a couple of episodes of my debut adventure yet to be posted, I thought it would be good to chronicle what’s been happening on my homefront.

Starting with the here and now, eldest son Adam posted something on Facebook this morning:  How sound (resonance, frequency, amplitude) levitates a droplet of water.

Of course the fact that sound-waves have a direct and observable influence on matter is really old news, ie: singing notes of a certain pitch and volume shatter glass. But I mean, wow… some of the scientists among us learned how to LEVITATE one form of matter (water) with sound. And the implications are tremendous… especially when considering that the human body is about 55% H2O…

Anyway, a lot of the last twelve days has gone to catching-up on all the stuff that didn’t get done for several weeks, respective the sudden and long-awaited opportunity to take my Maiden Voyage. Yesterday, I began autumn clean-up in the back yard.

My backyard, April 2015.

This is what ALL of my several raised-beds looked like as of yesterday.

By yesterday, the scene was not so bucolic as above.

For one thing, my recovery from death last January definitely put a hitch in my slow but steady giddy-up. For another, the whole death experience provoked me to reflect and introspect on what I (me, myself) really and truly want to do (see, experience, enjoy) with the here-in-now moments of my life, now that all five of my darling grown-up children are charting courses of their own.

And I realized that, while gardening and landscaping has always been a passion of mine, it has also been a family (many hands make light work) activity. And now, as more and more of the physical labor is mine alone to do, no matter how much I enjoy the doing of it, I do not wish to do it ALL of the time.

Eldest son Adam and me at the airport the day he flew-out for orientation with his new employer.

Which brings us to what has taken up much of my time these past twelve days… That my darling eldest son Adam has accepted employment out of state… In Austin, Texas, to be exact.

About which we are all elated, thrilled and overjoyed for him to be exploring this tremendous opportunity… and have been busy sorting out how things are going to work around here after he moves.

One bed (of many) weeded, planted with bulb-sets, mulched and watered.

All of which and many other details of daily life have filled all of my days so far this month… but I gotta tell you, it sure did feel good to get my work-gloves dirty yesterday. (((hugs))) ’til next time…  ~Christine

Maiden Voyage: Camelot October 6, 2015

The second leg of my debut as a solo RVer had initially envisioned a visit to Lexington, Kentucky, but plans changed and on Monday, the morning of September 28^th, Louise and I headed south.

As we did, I thought (just as I am thinking right now) that I feel somehow awkward – kookie-strange and weird – anthropomorphizing a mechanical vehicular means of transportation (ie: an ‘inanimate object’) as if it were human.

Growing up with a FoMoCo engineer as my dad, such tomfoolery was not warmly embraced… although neither were we a dull sort, but none of our several vehicles had names beyond manufacturer, make and model.

Thus my grandfather (my mom’s dad) drove a ’49 Ford Sedan and called it , simply. the Ford.

1949 Ford Sedan: My grandpa and grandma bought one of these new the year that I was born, and it was the first car I ever “drove,” sitting on grandpa’s lap, when I was 4 or 5.  Photo courtesy AlfvanBeem – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Commons

My dad’s auto of choice was a ’57 Thunderbird.

I remember riding in my dad’s 1957 T-Bird. Wow… would I love to have a ride in it now…!!! ~Image courtesy Auto Trader Classics

But neither of these automobiles ever had any people-flavored nicknames, and growing up with this (unspoken, inculcated, memetic) predisposition tends to amplify it as ‘the norm’ – which of course it is neither normal nor abnormal for one to give a pet-name to a car, toaster, poodle, pony or computer… <smile>, but simply a mannerism of expressing a dimension of one’s own personal countenance.

And in the ‘why & wherefore’ of all-things-considered, boiling it all down to one (spectacular <smile>) reason for doing the dance I’ve begun, it is to explore those dimensions of ‘me’ that I intuitively know to exist but that have, for the past half-century, played second-fiddle to doing certain — like being a mom and having a career — and that now there are some other things that I would like to do.

Thus in the hopes of inspiring this ‘new and improved’ state of creativity in myself, I am purposefully doing things that are NOT ‘normal’ for me… like dubbing my 2002 Great West Van as Louise -and- giving myself permission to totally ‘go with the flow’, change plans mid-stream and even tell someone off without feeling even a teeny niggle of second-guessing guilt…!!!

Because the circumstances that culminated as my revised route could have caused me anguish. For one thing, I put a lot of thoughtful energy into formulating any plans I make, and this trip certainly was no exception. And there were others who were half-counting on me to be in Lexington for a day or two. So when events went counter to what I’d envisioned, it was unsettling to have to re-make plans midstream… Especially when, from my perspective, there was no ‘good’ reason that the change had to happen and was simply the result of a professional colleague doing something quite mean-spirited.

And usually, when I encounter stuff like this I tend to just let it go.. brush the dust from my sandals and move on.  This time, however, as my friend Vicki (with whom I was backyard boondocking)  became aware of what had transpired being a forthright advocate of justice for all, she said to me: “So… did you call her on it…???”

Thus I shed my political-correctness and told the unpleasant woman to go bag it… and bottom line, it felt good <smile>, kinda like I started resonating in harmony with a new frequency <smile> as I re-thought travel plans for the balance of my first roadtrip.

Bidding Vicki a fond fare-thee-well mid-Monday-morning, the drive from St. Louis to Poplar Bluff seemed a reasonable distance (150 miles) to travel in one day and I wanted to get comfortably settled into a site before dark so I could just kick-back, relax and the enjoy comforts of my roving home.

As I got closer to Poplar Bluff I googled RV parks, looking for one with WIFI and full hook-ups, and a place called Camelot RV Campground was right on my path

And I must say, I believe that King Arthur himself would have appreciated the comfortable accommodations I found there. I mean, the woman at the front desk was friendly and attentive. Registration was quick, instructions on how to connect with campground WIFI were explicit, and directions to my site, #17, and how to exit in the morning were drawn-out for me on a map.

Settling in to a site takes a bit of doing. First, you park as level as possible. Then you go around the vehicle unlocking the lockers that have the stuff you need to hook-up. All of which, really, is pretty simple – once you know how. And it is not a steep learning curve <grin>.

But it does take some thinking and developing a process that works to make sure certain things get done, like plugging in to shore power, turning the propane on, connecting the tank-dump (sewage and gray water) line to the in-ground receptacle and opening the valves to let stuff flow.

Also, if the campground has cable TV, you hook-up your coaxial. And Camelot did indeed offer this free amenity, but I was coaxial-less <smile>… and even if I had thought to bring one along, probably wouldn’t have taken the time to figure out how it works… because there are a lot of various coaxial connector boxes and disconnected cables inside one of the aft cabinets which I know somehow relate to the TV installed overhead in the cab of the van, but at the moment I have nary a clue about what is supposed to connect where in order to get the TV to work…!!!

Which is not a big deal for me really, as I have no television (cable, satellite, public air waves) at home. Paid subscriptions just got too expensive for my pension-budget, and once the public airwaves went digital, my entertainment and news have all come through the Internet. Thus my keen interest to overnight at a campground with WIFI… (aka: I LOVE Netflix) and this proved to be my only disappointment.

Connectivity was intermittent and slow., making it impossible to watch even a 3-min Youtube, although I was able to get some email sent — but even that was touch and go. Had I planned on staying more than overnight at the park, I would have had to ask if this was the norm, or if something was amiss. But since I was ready for an early beddtime, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

What did seem worth the effort — and resulted in one of the most sublime moments of pure indulgence – was waking-up from an evening nap and cooking brown rice at midnight without thought or concern to whether my late-night movements were disruptive to my sleeping son or daughter who rise early to go to work…

Thus I listened to the radio, turned lights on and off, washed dishes and did whatever I wished in the privacy of my own little gypsy cabana… and abiding the principle that “my liberty to swing my arm freely ends where your nose begins” with respect for others camped nearby, I could just simply be myself….

Wow… What a hoot…!!!

7am breakfast of brown rice, scrambled egg and fruit juice kicked-off my departure routine. Then, after the kitchen was tidied and my bed made (all of which took maybe 10-min.) the 3-way refrig which had been running on shore power since I checked in, had to be switched off because I have not yet had the ‘coach battery recharge while driving’ issue redressed. Thus on this trip, while in transit I used a standard ice-chest when shore power was not available… which was most of the time.

Then the roof a/c and/or exhaust fan(s)  are shut down, turned off, curtains are un-snapped from front and side windows, decorative items (like my Mickey & Minnie Mouse Chinese Lantern that hangs above my aft table when I’m not tooling down the road)) and various electronics are stowed with items essential to navigating the day’s journey provisioned for easy access from the driver’s seat.

Outside, as electricity and sewer lines are disconnected, cleaned and stowed, lockers must be closed and locked, tire pressure and fluid levels checked, and a walk-around of the vehicle, making sure to bend over and look underneath and cast an eye to what’s going on up-top, confirms that everything looks the way it should.

Most time consuming of my exit protocol was flushing the black-water tank… which had (as I am told many RVs do) a bit of a nasty odor which we first noticed when the kids and I drove Louise home after purchase.

Son Adam substantially mitigated this problem en-route by pouring a bag of ice down the commode. And then, after we got home, daughter Shawna and I took Louise to a local park for a picnic, and while we were there we dumped the tanks… which I hoped would completely resolved the issue.

Alas, it did not. The annoying odor, though less intense, persisted. And so this time I was determined to give the tank a really thorough flush, pouring whole buckets of water into the toilet with the trap propped open, so that any residual sludge would gush through the system and out the drain. And for all of the rest of my journey home, the offensive odor ceased to exist…!!!!

And so you have the highlights of my first solo night in an RV park… 72 hours into my debut adventure with several more days yet to go. Thanks for the pleasure of your virtual ride-along company… and if you’d like to know more about what I do beyond roving in Louise, I am proud to share the happy news that I am again in print with The Municipal… in the October 2015 edition, find me on pages 24-26.

Until next time and the story of the third leg of my first adventure as a Home Ranger…… (((hugs))) and happy travels to all… ~Christine

Casting out demons… June 20, 2014

Sometimes, to empower peace, we have to evict demon-people from our lives.

It takes a lot for me to arrive at such a decision. ‘Slow to anger’ is my routine life.

Still, in the course of human events it sometimes becomes necessary for one person to renounce all affiliation with another. To impel such a decision, decency and respect requires a declaration.

Such is not an easy thing to do because the self-evident truth is that all of us are created equal with a magnificent duty to walk in compassion and behave with grace… to eschew calamity, forgive, forget and to be an ever abounding energy of love and peace.

So how does one lovingly, with humility, dignity, respect and understanding, formalize such a disassociation without doing unto this other what one does not want done by another to self?

Is it enough to simply say ‘over and out’ and move on…???

Though my experience is blissfully limited in this arena, I have (sadly) stood at this crossroad a couple of times. And in my book of life, being bullied by someone is not an option. Beyond the fact that it pains me personally, the gravitational flux of this self-induced psychogenic (psychotic) resonance hurts the whole of humanity… always and most adamantly in the namesake of ‘doing good’.

So how do we — aka: those of us who (supposedly) ‘know better’ — put a permanent end to such (covert) brutality…??? Because I assure you, my friend, that peace will only reign supreme in the material world when it lives and breathes in our hearts.

So what can we or should we do when we encounter (narcissistic, myopic, irrational, adversarial, arrogant) people who are possessed of a demon to terrorize, manipulate, back-stab and stir shit…???

As nations, we declare war on them. But I have truck with this approach as it flys in the face of doing unto others what we would want done to us, aka: we become the pot calling the kettle black.

So if I was being a bully and claiming that my terrorizing aggrandizement was somehow justified because of the ‘evil’ being done by someone else, I would want someone to respectfully inform me that my (bullying) actions were inappropriate and counter-productive. I would want them to (politely yet emphatically) point out that there is no justification for nastyness… None… Not ever… zero, zip, zilch….

And if subsequent to this honest and open dialog my (alleged) bullying continued, then I would want the irate accuser to disassociate from me and hope that he or she would purposefully shun me and leave me in peace to experience the joys or woes of my own ‘what comes around goes around’ karma as I brushed the dust from my sandals and moved on.

Thus I do hereby officially, formally and forevermore renounce affiliation with and banish from my life a particular person who knows who he is and whose name I shall nevermore speak.

Peace be unto you and me… (((hugs))) ~Christine

Note to guys June 14, 2012

It is not okay, in terms of ‘guy talk’, to accuse someone you (supposedly) care about of ‘bitching at you’…. unless she actually did, in which case you would be well advised to abandon the relationship because, to be brutally honest, the only ‘relationship’ that exists is a disabling co-dependency.

People who have respect for each other — which is the only bedrock upon which true affection may be built — do not say things like this to or about each other, especially not behind each other’s backs. And yes, dear ladies, this goes for you too. 

People who have respect for each other do not accuse each other of being ‘insane’, because people who have true affection for each other actually listen to what the other person is saying and hear it with an intent to plainly understand and a heart-felt desire to get to know what makes the other person tick; what ‘lights their fire’ (intellectually speaking); what rankles them -and- what they enjoy, ie: how they wish to be treated; what they adore.

People who have respect for each other do not accuse, infer, imply or proclaim to uninvolved ‘third parties’ that the person they (supposedly) love is a liar or a failure or is somehow the sole and perpetual fault of every problem that has ever befallen the accuser.

People who have respect for each other don’t shift blame or point fingers but look first to re-mediate their own personal shortcomings at no one’s expense save their own, and then to reach out with affection to explore how differences may be amicably, collaborative, cooperatively and beneficially resolved.

And people who have respect for themselves, who do truly love others, who strive to bring honor, grace and dignity to all that they touch and every life that shares reality with them, when they encounter people who routinely violate the covenants set-forth above, are not worth bothering about and deserve to be told plainly that such conduct is intolerable and thus hence forth you will be ignoring them out of the space-time continuum known as your life… (((hugs)))

cosmic burp May 10, 2012

Be careful what you ask for; you may will get it.

The concept of measured time is a human device. The universe has no need for time measurement: The ‘here and now’ simply “is.”

Still, we humans are taught — conditioned by immersion — to percieve nearly all that we do as time-dependent. Work, family, vacation… Daily duties, weekly routines, special occassions. All are calendared and clock-related. Even the beat of our hearts and breathing in and out are measured with ‘per second’ or ‘per minute’ units of time.

However, to the creative intelligence (aka: God) that runs the universe, time simply does not exist except through the lens of the material realm (aka: our Solar Universe), thus it is a stretch for us (being immersed in time) to wrap our thinking around various concepts about ‘how life works’ because, at the essential core, such precepts ‘flow forth from’ a ”timeless’ (eternal) dimension of space.

To glimmer understanding and glimpse how things work in an ‘unknown’ realm we have to ‘imagine’.  And to imagine (anything) we must (first) willfully suspend our own disbelief, which is really rather easy but can feel quite challenging because we it requires close scrutiny of what we ‘do’ believe in, first. ur own predispositions… which in turn necessitates us ‘measuring’ the value of our (inculcated) ‘predispositions’ as standards for enhancing our overall quality of and capacity for living life.

In this spirit, consider the Akashic Record — aka: God’s Book of Life; aka: the memetic morphogenetic un-sub-conscious resonance delineated by Freud, Jung, and Sheldrake —  wherein every jot and tittle of humankind’s thought, word and deed is permanently preserved forevermore in minute holographic detail… kind of like a huge ‘digital video vault’ encoded in the aggregate electro-magnetic ‘aura’ of all living beings… much the same way that data is electro-magnetically encoded to the hard-drive of a computer.

Now imagine that on (what we humans would think of as) ‘a daily basis’, the creative (divine) intelligence that spawned us and this whole universal scheme of things scrolls through this imutable archive much the same way that any of us watch a high-def video with surround sound.

Remember that time means nothing in this (divine) dimension of life. Also remember that, because ‘free will’ is absolute, this divine power does not ‘decide’ (the good or the bad) of any ‘request’, does not judge the merit of any ‘need’, and does not contemplate the virtue (or evil) of any ‘want’… but simply making sure that all the (material) connections are made to ‘make it so’… No matter what the ‘it’ is.  

And the only real challenge to grasping just how wonderfully well things work this way is coming to grips with the comprehension that all the *shit* that seems to rule their life has been done to themselves, by themselves, and totally at their own request… even (and most especially) when they didn’t know they were asking for having it (whatever it is) done unto them.

In part, it is our culturally indentured servitude to ‘the experts” — be they teachers, physicians, politicians, pastors or parents — which gaits our eons-long lock-step with pain and misery. All around us we see how much easier (because it is ‘socially acceptable’) to blame and bully than to take ownership of our (self-inflicted) misery; simpler to cite ‘the devil’ (the ‘mean’ neighbor, the ‘terrorist’, the ‘enemy’) for malevolently dumping garbage on us and credit benificient divine intervention for the ‘blessings’.

Much less work to feel sorry for ‘poor-victim-me’ and moan about (aka” ‘protest’) the (alleged) injustice that to pull one’s self up by one’s own bootstraps and do what it takes to make things right….

But it only ‘feels’ like ‘the right way’ because we have not THOUGHT about it. We have not examined these pervasively disingenious permutations of culturally induced social dynamics from the ‘meta-level’ where time does not exist and from which the material realm flows.

Karma: A cosmic burp of synchronicity between cause and effect.

Live long and prosper…

enemies February 23, 2012

 The following came to my Inbox compliments of Simon Black, author of Soverign Man, who (if you take what he says at face value) makes a good living out of telling people what’s wrong with government, the economy, health care, the media, banking and finance, foreign policy, etc., etc., and so on… and then selling them his version of ‘the answer’.

Please, do observe:

The war you won’t hear about in the media

There’s a war going on that you’ll never hear about on the nightly news.

This war poses, by far, the largest immediate threat to you, your family and your future well-being.

And provided you take no action to protect yourself, this war could very well alter the quality of your life forever.

But this war is not being fought against some unseen enemy on the far side of the globe.

This war, dear reader, is being fought against you.

You are the enemy.

Your way of life is the enemy. And your belief in your freedom to live that life as you see fit is in the cross hairs of a government desperate to maintain the status quo.

Your freedom is being destroyed. But it’s happening slowly so as not to stir the masses hypnotized by their TV and video game lifestyle.

During the collapse of an empire, freedom doesn’t disappear in a blink. As we can all see by the events around us, it disappears very slowly. Little by little, laws are enacted that remove it.

One day, there’s nothing left.

That’s the point at which people will wake up and start to freak out.

The goal of this message is to make sure YOU are not one of those people.

[sales pitch removed]

To your sovereign freedom,

Simon Black

Word-crafted rhetoric, homed to an invisibly transparent purpose, parsed with precision pronouncements all pitching to do one job: Sell a product.

Simon has something he wants you (anybody, somebody) to purchase. He wants to trade something he has for something you’ve got. 

His singularity is motivating you to ‘buy’ and he is using every manner of logic and persuasive (gravitational) cunning to pull you across his event horizon, punctuating each participle to stress every adverb that will help close the deal. 

Such is the distilled essence of all that we call ‘capitolism’, which — some would say — is the backbone of healthy free-market economies and the bedrock of global prosperity and peace. So, we wonder, why does Simon chronically tell us ‘how bad things are’ and blast us with info about why things are not working, and then offer to ‘sell’ us his ready-made solution for precluding such woes lest they befall us, ‘the enemy’, ourselves. 

That is, if Simon really does have a solution — a better way of doing things than free-market exchange — why isn’t he giving (yes giving) all of us a free lesson in the subject-matter. Why isn’t he — having (supposedly) found ‘the way to a better life’ — explaining this passage, step-by-step; handing out ‘maps’ out of the goodness of his heart? 

Does it matter…???

What do you think… Lemme know. 

“America: Love it or fix it…”

(((hugs)))

consequences January 28, 2012

Tthe men in my life — from youngest son to eldest chum and everyone in-between — are entertaining.

So much, it seems to me (as I have supposedly ‘matured’), of the strife and discontent we (and especially the male of the specie) endure is the cataclysmic consequence of (what a long-ago lover called) ‘old cows in the ditch’.

Ghosts of memories of experiences invisibly forgotten, yet emotionally resonant throughout every nano-second of life, provoking life-quaking vibrations which ‘autonomically’ compell self-destructive, reactionary ‘out of control’ 4-F behavioral mechanisms.

And that the only way out of this ‘feedback loop’ is by self-inflicted epiphany, involving a total, soul-searching and brutally honest assessment of personal accountability as the major contributing factor to the immediate circumstances of one’s own life.

Yet this, it seems, is the bridge to the other side of the looking glass that folks are ‘afraid’ to cross, because even in their ‘unknowing’ they still somehow intuit that once they start living life through this new lens, things will never be the same….

Things will change…

And they have so little reason to ‘trust’ in themselves and so much shored-up ‘distrust’ of others that the only change they are capable to envision is (always and redundantly) for the worst, and so they cleave unto the ‘known’, self-imposing abstinance from making any change at all and, in so doing, self-perpetuate all the ‘problems’ which have forever and persistently plagued them.

And there is no ‘magic pill’ to cure his dis-ease, just the trusim that “to get what we’ve never had, we must do what we’ve never done.”

Abuse October 13, 2011

Been too long since I’ve taken time to reflect, assimilate and digest. Contrary to profuse and numberous distractions, however, life is good — at least in the grander sense and bumps in the road aside.

For reasons related to a lot of things I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ‘abuse’…. what it is… that is, what defines it… where is the line crossed? what are the objective dimensions of that line and where does subjective experience enter in…?

What I’ve arrived at: it seems that we — society as a whole, that is — have developed a type of cognitive dissonance about what we classify (or not) as ‘abusive’… and how we deal with it. Take for example the actions taken by officials in Topeka, Kansas, to unadopt a local law on domestic violence due to a budget crunch… A sane person who has studied the facts would be hard put not to wonder why ‘domestic violence’ (which typically victimizes women and children) was targeted and not, let’s say, the prosecution of cannabis (marijuana) crimes where there is no victim involved?

What does this say about ‘us’ — the Great American Society? 

 And if actions really do speak louder than words, how do we turn this into a win/win/win….???

The Power June 2, 2011

First, for the record, life in my blissful meadow (see: BirthDays, below) has been glorious, invigorating and busy these past three months. A variety of household projects that had forever been on the ‘to-do’ list (with ‘no time’ to do them) are steadily being completed. And I derive a great sense of satisfied pleasure from doing such things as painting a ceiling or cleaning a cupboard. For one thing, the finished result is gratifying. For another, the time spent doing the work grants space of mind for reflection, contemplation and assimilation and, in light of all of this, all I can say is ‘life is good’.

Still in this context, I find myself day-by-day more deeply troubled by what I observe in the ‘real world’ that surrounds my personal realm, grieved by many stark contrasts. Within this past week, for example:

<> A Marine was gunned-down in a hail of bullets, in front of his wife and children, during a ‘legal’ home-invasion by a SWAT firing squad.

<> A seven-year-old child was shot in cold blood and died in her grandmother’s arms at the hands of another SWAT execution squad on another ‘routine’ home-invasion mission.

<> An elementary school teacher (in an eloquent demonstration of bravery, compassion and courage) led her class in playful song and gave out candy as they all lay prone to the floor so the barrage of drug-warrior bullets that blazed through schoolroom windows would pass over their heads.

<> A group of civic activists, bent on exercising the Constitutionally guaranteed right to ‘peaceably assemble’, chose to ‘dance’ (quietly and politely) at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. in protest of what seems clearly to be an unconsititutional policy that makes it a crime to ‘dance’ on certain federally managed ‘public lands’. Resultant of this, a number of the dancers were (voraciously) arrested and least one of the dancers was (abusively) body-slammed to the marble floor for failing to comply with this unconstitutional (and thus ‘illegal’) ‘order’.

And of these atrocities, I personally find the last most horrifying… though I understand that many may think of it as the most trivial. Yet it is illustrative of how insidious and sublime the ‘police state’ mentality has become; how routinely we accept it as ‘natural and normal’ that WE (the people) could permit and enable and support and endorse ANY ‘public official’ who would have the audacity to make a law against ANY OF US DANCING on OUR OWN PROPERTY…!!!!

All of which brings me to that which prompted me to post an update here today, from something I wrote to a discussion group I randomly participate in, which follows:

re: “The power the people give the government is beyond the scope of governing the country, in most places.” — precisely and potently put. Is that an original thought, or the wisdom of some erudite sociopolitical philosopher with whom I am unacquainted?

And yet ‘the people’ (in most places) seem not to comprehend this simple truth, preferring (it seems to me) to ‘take orders’ and ‘be directed’ by ‘those who are superior’… ie: an ‘authority figurehead’. And this is something that none of us can ‘change’ in others… each person must, it seems to me, come into this ‘consciousness’ (maturity) entirely alone, as an act of self-determination… as discussed in Brodie’s “Virus of the Mind.”

As to philosophical views being reused, of course <smile>. Endlessly recycled with ‘new and improved’ generational spin. There is, we are told, nothing new under the sun <smile>. And still, we (society) have so far miserably failed to arrive at ‘nirvana’, in direct opposition to what we say we want… ie: the ‘good life’ (heaven on earth, sanctuary, peaceful prosperity; environmental, ecologic and economic health) for everyone. Thus it would seem self-evident that there must be a ‘missing link’ or ‘key element’ that we are (innocently or ignorantly) overlooking.

For example, in context of freedom, each person’s ‘working definition’ of and expectation about what it means to be free is inculcated during the most formative years of life. Social ‘norms’ are inherited by osmosis from generations of ancestors. Failure to participate in this standardized cultural ‘group think’ generally gets one professionally ostracized, socially shunned, criminally interdicted -or- celebrated as a movie star… And still, in terms of overall (societal) well-being this does not seem like ‘freedom’ to me but more like a covertly self-inflicted form of indenture… Anyway, good chatting with you… (((hugs)))  ~Christine

BirthDays March 2, 2011

If I had gone to our state capitol today, in the hopes of addressing the membership of one of the various legislative committees who are considering bills which — in my self-esteemed wisdom — deserve critical attention, then I would not have shared breakfast and conversation with my daughter. Reason enough, it could rightly be said, for not going. But the issue to me is bigger than that.

Today, I am 62.

Thus, in my self-esteemed wisdom applied to me, I have arrived at a new benchmark. The beginning of a time in space where I get to more freely choose those things that will fill my present moments. And, with my children now predominately at the helms fo their own lives, my business obligations all satisfied, a comfortable roof over my head, a reliable vehicle to drive and the benevolence of a tidy Social Security pension, the expanses of what I may if I wish to do with my time are, perhaps for the first real time since I was twelve, seemingly limitless.

This is an odd and wonderous place to be, the liberating sensations of which wash over me like warm effervescent tides of sunshine and smiles.  It is a lovely place of mind to simply be. No ‘pressure’ of any great magnitude to ‘get things done’. Not that there isn’t a ‘to-do’ list — which I know is a double negative, but serves the point well. Because there is and will always be a to-do list. Its rigors, whether consciously chosen or memetically engendered, are assigned from our first breath of life.

Knowing this, when posed with a meaningful and substantive equation to resolve — such as ‘what do I want to do with the rest of my life?’ — my solution is simple. I ask myself “What will I be doing the day after all the ‘problems’ are resolved?” And of course the operative ‘problems’, generally speaking, constiute a whole lot of different things and are usually respective of the circumstances immersing my moment-to-moment reality.

At one time in my life, for about ten years, the ‘problem’ was how to steward our family resources to make sure all the bills got paid, that we had a comfortable home, reliable transportation, nutritious food and suitable clothing while homeschooling four children and being the (hopefully) loving spouse of a disabled person.  That decade resounded with a series of life-quaking problems, such as arriving home from work one day to find all four of our children (then ages 9, 7, 5 and 3) ‘missing’ from our home and yard while their dad slept on the couch and, when awakened, had no idea where they were.

It was a revelation for me to come to grips at that moment with the inhibiting constraints of my husband’s disablilty.  The ‘problem’ was real and huge. That instant of cognition added a heaping of ‘new tasks’ to my to-do list, some immediate and many long-term.

Thankfully, the children were quickly found playing at a neighbor’s. And I resolved in that moment for everyone’s sake that my husband — whose dysfunction is predominantly cognitive — must never be left alone with reponsibility for our children ever again. Thus, until we divorced some years later (by that time our eldest was 18 and our youngest was 12) I was effectively a single-parent ‘head of household’ for a family of six. And trust me, there were many problems.

But always there was this vision of what life would be like ‘after’ all the problems were resolved, and a yearning for some sort of blissful meadow of contentment to prevail in my life and, to whatever degree it is in my power to affect it, in the lives of all others… all of which comes with its own set of problems. Such as, for example, the crossroads I am camped at now: Taking stock. Inventorying my ‘to do’ list. Assessing what is (and what is not) truly important to me… Asking myself, somewhat obsessively, ‘what do I want to do with my time now that I am more free than I have ever been as an adult to make the choice…??? 

And the truth of the matter is that I just don’t know yet…

What I do know is that I don’t want the rest of my life to be a recurring processional of things I have already done, which brings me back to the legislative hearings I did not attend. For better or worse I have been doing my bit as a ‘good citizen’ to uphold my civic duties for over forty years. And, respectfully, over the passage of time I have done this with increasing vigor. But now I have arrived at a break-point and before I take another step forward I need to assimilate, digest and ponder which direction I really want to go…

Which is exactly what I am doing and, as with the choice I made this morning, this path of ‘not’ doing is feeling pretty good…. except for the part of me that still feels a duty to share what I’ve learned about all of this stuff over the course of the last 62 years, in the hopes of making life better, easier, simpler and more satisfying for everyone, every day.  So I’ll have to see what I can do about that… (((hugs)))