Go on, Celebrate Life.

When you are young, the winds of Fate can carry you to places you would never dream of traveling.  The young have an innocence, a joie de vie, that often has been put to rest in later years.   Undaunted, the young step bravely into the Unknown.

C and I were inseparable until a young man stopped at the bottom of the hill, a door opened, and we squeezed our bodies into a fire engine red MGA.  It was the literal opening of a door, a pathway to a new life. 

This was the 60s, when life was meant to be explored and enjoyed. C and I honestly weren't that keen on men, the odd species. In no time at all,  he fell madly in love with her, while she was madly in love with me.  Eventually, an amicable dissolution was reached and nearly a decade had past. Time had moved us all along.  He had decided … in his own words… to become a monk. Had I known monk meant cult member I might have chosen differently, but monk sounded noble, selfless. The concept itself hit my soft spot; I could only think of one appropriate farewell gift. Sex. 

Upon discovery of the small, yet powerful, enigma growing inside me, it became time to let Destiny once again have her say.  He cowered and ran for protection. I stood my ground, or rather "she" stood hers.  This little life inside me insisted on being born, insisted on truth.  In that moment of certitude, I swear the heavens rejoiced.  The mortals were about to get a run for their money.  She would take human form and choose to live among us. 

Today, we celebrate that life and light. 

Happy Birthday, Anisse.

God

We ask a lot from God. As One who is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient, our paltry requests – even those that include gut-wrenching and pathetic bargaining to spare a life or become cured of an incurable disease – are nothing for someone like God to grant. God can do anything God wants.

It is the same argument of old. If God is on our side, then the “favors” we ask are granted; God is pleased with us and acts accordingly. However, if we ask God to grant our request and God is not pleased with us, our requests are denied. We are shamed, shunned, and reminded that we are less than perfect. We are unimportant and dismissible. We are outside of the Light. Too much to bear, we turn it around to then believe that God is showing us a special kind of favoritism: God knows we need to suffer to grow in spirit. Father Knows Best. For this, we are supposed to be thankful. If we are thankful enough, we will end the circle of absurdity and maybe even rebirth. If we show signs of anger, resentment and heaven forbid, hostility toward God, we just may slip through the cracks to the bottomless abyss below.

When I was a young woman, I did something that would be considered a very significant sin in the eyes of the church (oops, I mean the Church). So grievous was my sin that, according to church doctrine, I would be forever be outside the love of God. God was not happy and crossed out my name from the Book of Life with a permanent marker. There were others. Here we were, a mismosh of evictees, victims of circumstance thrown into the ring with convicted felons, all to be fed to the lions of pomposity.

In that moment, on that day of sentencing, I was set free. Not by God, but by the absence of God. For if God would condemn me forever without reprieve, then I was free to live my life in any way I chose, good or bad, without fear of spiritual consequence.

What happens when we take God out of the equation? God has gone to the Bahamas without his cell phone. Drat. What happens when our intermediaries are gone as well? God-in-Christ-and-All-the-Saints-and-Buddhas have taken holiday en masse. The petitioner and the petitionees are incommunicado. Please leave a message after the tone.

Like my second daughter, I really want to believe in God. I want to believe in the God that others are convinced exists. I have looked for God as earnestly as anyone. I have boldly walked into the heart of all faith traditions and practices, attempting to leave no stone unturned. I did not find God. What I found was the freedom of not-finding, the wisdom that God can not be found. The best I can do is feel for the essence of life and witness the incomprehensible majesty and beauty of ordinary living. I can feel for what lives in you that lives in me, our common spirit that feels good and right and true.

My trinity is that of Wisdom, Compassion, and Beneficence. The three are inseparable and are in and of everything that exists. Now that I am free, I can take my them with me everywhere I go.

Fraudulent Authenticity

The purpose of this timely article is to educate and to stress the critical and urgent need to protect against a terrible virus known as FA. There is no known immunization or antidote once the infection has taken root. Once infected, the virus spreads rapidly to affect brain function, culminating in irreversible brain damage, save a few isolated cases.

This has been a major coup for those whose primary goal has been dumbing down the masses. Nearly everyone now carries the virus. Like other virulent pathogens that have reached epidemic proportion, efforts to arrest the spread of infection have been largely unsuccessful. Prevention efforts, such as this one, have been too small in number to effect any significant change, but I’m hoping with this blog post, things might change. Most people who carry the virus don’t even know they have it, as the auditory-brain connection is severed. Epidemiologically, it is the worst virus known to humankind to date.

Replicating at speeds beyond comprehension, FA is like a thief in the night, entering silently and unannounced, replacing healthy cells with a “cell-double.” Looking and acting like its predecessor cells, this cell double is virtually undetectable by modern medicine or microscopy. It takes up residence unnoticed, usurping and ultimately annihilating its former inhabitant: you.

It began over a decade ago as a fairly circumscribed virus, infecting only a small percentage of the population. The virus appears benign, subjecting its unsuspecting host to its toxin. Those who are newly infected exhibit the same symptoms with disturbing accuracy in a matter of months, thus spreading the disease to more immune-naïve individuals.

To perpetuate and grow the virus, however, took concerted and unified efforts on the part of businesses, corporations, governments, schools and other major players of society. Perhaps the most insidious and lethal disseminators of the virus have been, and continue to be, supermarkets and houses of worship. Ironically, the very places people feel safe are those where 100% infection is almost guaranteed. Their collective efforts have paid off: FA is has reached global proportions and to date there is no known treatment or cure.

“Have a nice day!” she said as I finished my transaction at the supermarket. No sooner did I pick up my bag when I heard, “Would you like some help out with your bags?” Earlier, someone said, “Are you finding everything you need?” At first, it sounded almost sincere. But now, I have heard those very same phrases over a hundred times, without alteration. It could be the cable or the phone company: “I’m sorry to hear you are having problems. Please know we are making every effort to resolve your issue.” You will be hard pressed to find any business or venue that is infection-free.

There are few places left that are safe. But I am well and sane enough to tell you this: there is still time to save yourself from this devastating disease that literally eats your brain alive! This is no joke!!!

Please, I caution you, take every safeguard to protect yourself. Signs and symptoms of those infected with the virus include unconsciously repeating rote phrases and responses the most common of which is “Have a nice day,” usually accompanied by a feigned smile. If you have been exposed, cover your ears immediately and leave the premises. There is no guarantee that airborne droplets have not entered your auditory canal and are enroute to the brain. Isolating yourself it is your best defense. Remaining aware that you are a separate and distinct entity can boost your immune system to ward off the disease.

If someone demands that you repeat certain phrases as part of your job, quit then and there and seek refuge. These people have reached the final stages of the illness. REMEMBER: there are no known treatments or interventions that have proven useful at this point.

Recognizing the symptoms of this devastating disease will save not only your life but also your rational mind. Ultimately, the future of our species is at stake. It’s up to you. Guard against FA. Spread the real word.

Falling in Love Again

Single or coupled, we can feel alone at times. Ours is species of connectedness, not isolation. When we connect to one another, particularly to those we love, we feel vital and expanded. When we are in a state of disconnection, we long to find our way home. Last night, over a chicken breast, I was warned not to recycle old pieces of writing. But are they old to one who never read them, or to one who had, but forgot the content? Here is one such resurrected piece.

Not a single log burned in the fireplace that winter. It felt like sacrilege to sit there alone, rather than curled up in the arms of a beloved. She tried the usual schemes of romancing herself, but even they grew old. It was in those moments that she came to terms with the pain of a solitary existence. No matter what she offered herself as appeasement, all proved to be a thin replacement for the love and intimacy she longed to express and receive. Simply put, she wanted to fall in love again.

It’s not that she minded being alone, but sometimes, she reflected back on the times in her life when the heartbeat and breath of another were more precious than her own. And as a woman who collected rare perfumes from all over the globe, she knew this: there is nothing more intoxicating than the scent of the one you love.

The idea of love is at best a rough sketch, a pencil drawing on a ragged piece of paper. With each fold and tear, the image mutates. She had all but thrown away the image, yet an impress was still left upon her. It would have to catch her by surprise, of course, when override had gone off on holiday. It was tough work to come this far in love, to keep her heart open. She wanted to go the distance. Would it matter in the very least who she loved? Or was love sufficient in its own right? Could she, a butterfly at the dusk of its life, open her wings one last time and soar? She had hoped so, she had believed so, but now, she was not so sure. Override sticks close to home.

It was hard to shed a skin that no longer fit her. She was emerging but resisted becoming something unfamiliar. It is always this way, until a love affair is consummated with the Unfamiliar itself.

There is no other way to be known than to open wide from the depth of one’s being. It will eat away at us, until we muster up enough courage, beyond our pain and limitation, to trust, to open, to explore, and to love with the full extent of our souls. I know this. We all know this.

And yet, we wait…

9/09/09

While getting fitted for my new eyeglasses at Costco, I mentioned to Tim, the optical guy, that today was 9/09/09. “Yes, I know!” he replied. He had thought the very same thing upon rising. I suggested it had mystical meaning, and he thought so as well. I felt today was going to be an auspicious day and I shared that with him. “I hope so,” was all he said.

It wasn’t an hour later when I realized all the money I had with me was gone, as well as the gift and merchandise credit cards from varying stores I had stored in my desk for years and decided to spend today. I deliberately placed the cash and cards in a separate cloth purse, which was placed inside the satchel I carried cross-breasted. In addition to the small cloth purse was a can of Macadamia nuts I intended to return. I had carried them into the store with me, stuffed into the satchel, as the return line was way too long when I arrived. I figured I’d do it on the way out.

When I discovered the small Guatemalan cloth purse, carrying some 300 dollars in cash and an indeterminate amount of money in merchandise credit, was missing, I backtracked. I went to the last place I had been: Costco. No luck. Had it fallen out of my satchel somewhere? Had it been on my lap in the car when I opened the door, falling to the ground unnoticed? Had it been pick-pocketed out of the top of the satchel while I was distracted shopping? Had it been swept up into a 4th dimension vortex? Given my vigilance and organization, misplacing it was out of the question. It had either fallen out of the satchel, been stolen, or dropped to the ground when I got out of the car. Which one was it? If it were stolen, would I wish the thief good or ill will? If it had dropped to the ground outside Costco, would the person who found it be a thief? After all, it was just money and money-equivalences. My credit cards, driver’s license, ATM cards or any sort of identification saying the contents were MINE were absent. Is it really stealing if you don’t know there’s a person attached to it? Is it like finding a hundred dollar bill in the gutter? Or is finding a purse with money on a counter, on the floor of a store, or next to someone’s car actually stealing because the inference is that the person is nearby and will come back to look for it?

Stealing is one thing. Finding a treasure another. How do we distinguish? On the one hand, stealing is morally and ethically wrong. On the other, finding a treasure is good luck. So which was it? I’ll never know. What I do know is that the recipient’s intention will determine the outcome, good or bad.

Maybe 9/9/09 is an auspicious day after all.

Wrong Number

This morning I received a call from a man whose voice I did not recognize. “Is this my lady friend?” he asked. “I don’t know…possibly,” I replied cautiously. I was hoping to tune in to the voice and identify the person behind it, but what was running through my mind was that a “suitor” was disguising his voice to pull one over on me. Others had tried, unsuccessfully. But maybe that just gives them incentive to try harder. “I’m thinking about shaving my head,” he said, “like a cue-ball.” I was still rummaging through my head to think who would have the audacity to call so early in the morning, not even nine o’clock for God’s sake. I drew a blank.

“So, whaddaya think?” he said. “I’m not sure you have the right person, who are you trying to reach?,” fishing for an answer to quench my puzzlement. Silence. And then, “May I ask who’s calling?” He glossed over my questions. “So whaddaya think? Would you like it? Will you boycott me when my shining head blinds you?” This was too much, it had to be a joke, but maybe it wasn’t. Then, he called me Jean. I was in over my head at this point and decided to play along, as he obviously didn’t care who he was talking to. Then, it dawned on me. He was both hard of hearing and had dementia. Perfect. If I was looking for some early morning entertainment, I got it. Better than Good Morning America any day.

“So, will you still like me if I shave my head like a cue-ball?” repeating the same question over and over again." It doesn’t matter if I will like it, it matters if you will like it. What do you want to do?," I said, throwing the ball back in his court. “I guess so. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it today. “I’ll see you at 11, then,” he said in parting, “but 11 is a long, long time away from now, isn’t it?”

Eleven, I thought to myself. I’d better get the house ready in case he shows up at 11. I’ll be Jean and invite him in for tea.

Remembering Lee

When your time comes, it just comes. In one instant, you will draw in your last breath, in another, you will “expire.” Everyone does this. Everyone who sees and knows and feels himself to exist, does this.

I have been keeping the death vigil for my dear friend Lee, armed with the knowledge of others who have gone this way. Still, there is no knowing ahead of time how it will unfold. We cannot orchestrate this event called death. The guru says, “You are very close.” Thus, the aspirant lives in anticipation of ultimate freedom and continues on. This is how I kept the death vigil for Lee.

The eyes tell us much about the inner state. When words and actions cease, the eyes whisper and tell us what is needed next. We are afraid but cannot speak. We are not even sure of what we are afraid of. We resist this passage, this inevitability called death. Who will tell us that it is okay? We, who have not yet approached the portal? Yes. We do just that. Death is as natural as birth. It is a laboring. It is a difficult effort besieged by uncertainty. Death is a mystery.

I am looking at her breath and counting. I am watching closely for what I know to be the signs of imminent death. I see them but I do not know the hour or the moment it will come. Death is not a thief in the night. Death is not the enemy. It is a sweet Wing of Light, slipping through mortal flesh and carrying the soul toward eternity.

I tell her, “The universe is infinite and inexplicably beautiful.” “You will fly free now.” I say all the things of love and worth and forgiveness and release. And realize I am all of those things come alive to be given away as gifts for the journey she must take.

I wait for the moment the Wing will come. I surround her with sacred chanting and the sounds of ocean waves breaking upon the shore. I sing to her and am taken in to the chamber of my own heart ~the One heart~ by the sweetness of it all. Now, there is only love. I hold her, and stroke her hair like her mother never did. I tell her I love her. I thank her for her life. I let her go and bow in gratitude, slipping away myself to let the Wing of Light come in and carry her toward eternity.

And She does.

Not THAT End You Idiot!

If anything, years of spiritual practice make you recognize injustice when you see it. They also promote equanimity. Equanimity, when put into daily life, tempers and hopefully overrides the instinct to go out and throttle people. This is a good thing.

Those who have been following my personal life know that I go off on rants every now and again. Writing is one of the ways I stay sane. As my fingers need to be near the keyboard, the rest of my body can’t be elsewhere. The end result is that the world and its inhabitants are safe, for the time being.

When I worked for the University, I had a great medical insurance plan. I rarely used it. If I had been smart, I would have had every non-essential organ removed, lined them up on a buffet table, and crawled on top of it to let them follow up with a lobotomy for dessert. There would have been family photos of me looking gloriously happy in my pre-corpse stupor. I know, it’s not the same image as that sexy naked woman laid out with sushi artistically placed on her perfect breasts and other inviting parts, but it’s an image nonetheless. Somewhere, probably in childhood, I got the notion that I should keep my bodily parts intact, save the one kidney that went by the wayside in 1974.

When I left my job to move near my mother who was dying of ovarian cancer, I left an entire life, including my job and its accompanying benefits. Little did I know that getting health insurance on my own would be prohibitively expensive for anything approximating what I had. I also quickly learned that the name of the health insurance game is exclusion. Question # 591: Have you ever had a nosebleed? If you see that question, lie. This could be used against you. Your prothombin levels could be low, or you might have a platelet problem. It could be serious and more importantly expensive. You will be turned down and shunned. I know this for a fact. Just lie.

There are certain things that I believe in. Health screening is one of them. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona (BCBS) claims to be a non-profit organization. I made it through underwriting after single-handedly lowering my total cholesterol 150 points. The plan looked adequate. Preventive services were covered without touching the deductible. It's what they don't tell you that matters.

Hooray! I get to have a screening colonoscopy! The bad news is that I find out it will cost me somewhere between 3,000-4,500 dollars. BCBS will pay 80% of the physician charges, which happen to be $860.00 for the privilege of sticking a tube up my rear orifice. That's it. I checked. Still can’t get a figure on the anesthesiology charges, as apparently no one can determine what they might be. Just to walk in the hospital and get naked is 2,500 dollars. If one or two polyps get squashed under a microscope ...... who knows? The health insurance worker bees are pretty much silent on the issue and have varying degrees of information over and above their brainwashing. At the high end of the spectrum, they are very good at telepathic communication. At least I can appreciate that. Even if they could, they are not allowed to think on their own. So here I am. The physician won’t administer the procedure without anesthesia, nor will he perform it along side a well-lit taco stand. No, they want to stick it to me on their terms. I will be rendered unconscious or consciously incognito. A cloak of invisibility will be cast upon me. Who then will tell them they’ve got it ass-backwards?

The good news is that the medical model, for the most part, is anti-health and some of us are out of the loop! Just look at the industry. (Hint: We call it an industry). How many people go in fine and come out compromised? Hospital acquired infections (HAI’s) are on the rise. Infection Control Today (9/2/09) states that "Healthcare-acquired infection rates are about 5 percent of all admissions at the moment and with bed days valued at $1,005 each, the total economic burden is close to $1 billion per annum." And this is just in Australia. The federal Centers for Disease Control estimated that in any given year 1.7 million patients will get a hospital-acquired infection during their hospital stay. Out of those 1.7 million, 99,000 people, or about 270 per day, will die. These were the findings in 2002. More recently, the CDC estimated the annual medical costs of healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals to be between $28 and $45 billion. Maybe that’s why my premiums are so high. Or maybe it’s because all those people who never paid into the system are now drawing from my investment (not to mention yours) to the tune of gazillions of dollars. Clearly, the factors are complex, maybe too complex for any of us to understand. It’s also just not right. Why is it the honest people who play by societal rules get penalized? This is the Era of Entitlement. Wake up America!

My fatality fantasy is being run over by a kosher meat truck, but that is unlikely in Arizona. I may need to modify it. In the unlikely case I'm not killed instantly, I hope to cost my insurance company so much money, they disappear from the face of the earth.

Blog Bog

I want to write about John the Shoe Shine Boy but it will have to wait. It's a story I hope is worth telling; there were volumes screaming out from his steel-blue eyes. And then, right around the corner, was Colonel Sanders. Trapped in a time warp, these two and others took us in. But that will be told another day, perhaps in the 'morrow. For now, I’m in a bog. A blog bog.

Caught up in a rapturous lucky streak of my own making, I was going full bore with the Zir Effect until ‘THEY” came. They, those people from a past still part of me. The children, grandchildren, lovers, friends. The sundry others that can’t or won’t let go. Admittedly, it’s a two-way street; the door swings both ways. I’ve always had an open door policy when it comes to my past and an open door policy when it comes to my future. That allows me, for the most part, to stay present in the now. But I do slip up. Like you, I get dragged into my past like an unwilling, blindfolded prisoner, shored up against the wall of her own self-execution. Spinning 180, the future appears nothing more than an embryonic abstraction, though I often paint it bleak and foreboding or idealistically simplistic and quaint depending on my mood. I let others speak for me when I tire of explaining the inexplicable; a dishwasher packed to the gill tells me all I need to know about my existence. And yet I yearn for those things that will crack my porcelained view of the world and open me further.

I am angry with those who take advantage of others yet I allow myself to be taken advantage of. If I can see the thread of perpetual bondage can I snip it and put an end to the madness? Or does that very thread hold me together?

My eyes are fine, the doctor reported. Early cataracts. I knew my vision was partially obscured so why did I pay to have this knowledge substantiated? Other than that, nothing has changed. Why do they not see that my left eye is appreciably different from my right? It’s blurry, for God’s sake! Are their assessment tools so archaic that they can’t detect the obvious? Because of this anomaly, everyone sneaks up on me from the left, like apparitions encroaching on my sanity. By the time I see them, they’ve already made themselves at home. I don't mind, they're my family after all.

Thoughts on Kindness

There are times when the insensitivities of others crush us to the core. Hurt as children and as adults, sometimes horrifically beyond imagination, we have become intolerant. We often forget that those who hurt us are themselves hurting. Even if we understand this, understanding is not enough to erase the memory of pain. How then do we emerge from our small prisons of pain to come back to kindness once again? Two ways: We wake up or we continue to suffer.

What happened to kindness, to the inherent generosity of spirit? It was once the first offering until we learned to suppress it, moderate it, save it up and carefully give it out to those we felt deserved it. Not to those who were unkind. Never.

If we want a kinder world, we have to be kinder to others first, without motive. Even small acts of kindness can have profound effects. I like to think that when I save a drowning bee from the swimming pool that I have saved the world. It takes fewer units of energy to be kind than to be hateful, jealous, or cruel.

The best thing about kindness is it changes us, from the inside out. We learn to forgive, even if we can’t forget, because we are being kind to ourselves. By simply being kind the whole would changes. It’s true.

Dog Fight

Today at 6 am, Ruby and I went to the Big Dog Park. It’s really a baseball diamond, but the elementary school lets us use it before and after school hours. It is our daily routine to go there most evenings, just before sunset. The dog park is our church. It is a holy place, complete with a congregation of harmonious and well-matched humans and dogs. God is with us and we are with God. No one ever asks for a donation and everyone brings their own chairs.

I came to quickly learn that God only went to the dog park in the evening. I know this for a fact, because this morning God was not there. It is entirely possible that God was just taking a day of rest. After all, it is Sunday and resting is in the Bible as something that's important to do. God was on hol-i-day.

As we approached the park, strange dogs began to bark as strange dogs will do when an intruder appears on the scene. Ruby began to bark too. “Woof, woof.” “Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!” We made our way into the dug out, opening the first gate, still one gate separating us from the strange new dogs. Upon opening the gate, the dogs rushed at once toward Ruby like red-bellied piranha swarming around fresh meat. Ruby, being super smart, turned her head to the side, then to the other side. She did not look one single dog in the eye, avoiding all contact. She took not a step forward, but remained solidly in place. I shooed the dogs back, stepped out of the dug out on into the park and summoned Ruby to come. She followed. Big mistake. Owner stupid. Dog smart. More barking. One dog attacked and grabbed her by the neck, pinning her down. The others jumped in as well; they were a pack Ruby was not part of. My 15 pound Min Pin under the weight of at least 3 large dogs! It did not sound good. It did not look good. I immediately grabbed the neck of the dog at Ruby’s throat and pulled him off, allthewhile screaming at the others. I was finally able to free her. The owners came strolling up to see what had happened, yelling at their dogs, apologies in hand. “Our dogs have never been aggressive before.”

Ruby tried to be brave, to be tough. Those who know her know she’s a pit bull in a little dog body but bluff can only take you so far in life. Assessing her for damage, I lifted her up in the air, the strange dogs still champing on the bit. I expected blood and gaping wounds, or maybe even a dead dog. Instead, she was alive and miraculously uninjured save a little fur removed.

I guess God wasn’t taking the day off after all.

Death Does Not Become Us

When I was young only old people died; babies and children didn’t die. At least that’s what I believed. Parakeets died, and sometimes our beloved pets died. That was really hard. The death of people seemed so surreal, maybe because of the way we depersonalized it, but when my dog died, it was the most real thing that had ever happened to me.

The day Lady was run over was the first day I really understood the finality of death and the depths sadness could reach. I was maybe 9 years old at the time. Prior to getting Lady, our miniature beagle, all we were allowed were goldfish, mice, rats, and an occasional bird, usually a finch or canary. They were okay, but you couldn’t snuggle up to them like you could a dog. Dogs listen, dogs care, dogs love you. They’re also really cute, particularly when you love them. And dogs are always happy to see you. I never could tell if my fish was happy to see me, its beady black eyes had the same steeled-glass stare 24/7. Plus, fish don’t have eyelids, which means they can’t wink at you, or even blink at you. Come to think of it, mice and rats don’t have eyelids either. Birds have eyelids, don’t they?

I remember the day Perry died. Perry was the parakeet of my best friend, Midge. His cage was in the laundry room, and we had to pass by him every time we went outside to play or swim in the pool. He was green and ordinary, and if memory serves me correctly, he could talk. Not much, but a little. One day we found Perry-the-Parakeet dead at the bottom of his cage. Right around that time, both of us had decided to become Episcopalians. Midge led the way and I followed right behind. St. Alban’s, in West LA, was where we were initiated into the mysteries of Christendom. We loved everything about it. It had just the right amount of ritual, incense, pomp and circumstance without going overboard. We needed God right about then for who knows what might have become of us without divine intervention. We had taken grand delight in hiding in the room beneath the stairs whereupon we would undress our Ken and Barbie dolls and make them do forbidden things, things our parents would have cringed at, not to speak of the church. Being Episcopalian was not only handy, but timely. We were well equipped to do just about anything priests could do because now, we had the instruction book. The Book of Common Prayer is essentially a compendium of cliff notes for priests and priestly wannabes. It’s also for people who just want to follow along. There are varying prayers and orders of worship for all the kinds of stuff that comes up in life, funerals among them. Who better than the two of us to perform a proper ceremony for Perry? We had plenty of practice on other dead things, animals we never knew for they lived in the wild. Everyone got a proper burial if we had anything to say about it.

We prepared a coffin out of a shoebox, shrouded the lifeless little bird in silk, and laid him gently within the confines of his permanent new home. We had dug a shallow grave at the end of a garden path, had a short meeting about the ceremony and what would need to be involved. Prayers were selected and personal words of remembrance were scratched out on paper. We gathered a few friends, for a processional of two was hardly worth having. The funeral march began. It was beautiful, personal, proper, and lovely. Perry was laid in the ground, flowers atop his grave. Should we all go out like Perry.

I never saw Lady’s body after her mortal meeting with the car. What happened to it? Was it in the trunk of my father’s car? Had he dug a shallow grave by the side of the road and buried her alone, without me there? Did he drive her to the vet and leave her there? I will never know. What I do know is that after the tragic news was delivered, we were told that we’d be going out for hamburgers, as if that would make everything okay again. Though still a child, I was consumed with grief. Face flushed, lungs raw from wailing, youthful cheeks temporarily scarred from dragging my fingernails down my face in angst. I bore the visible signs of grief like a stigmata from God almighty.

What has happened to us? Why do we turn away from the continuum of life by seeing death as abhorrent? How much courage does it take to reclaim our rightful place at the side of those we love, even after they have left their earthly vessels? Why have we given dominion over the body and souls of those we hold dear to perfect strangers? Why do we sterilize death as if death itself were a plague we hope will not infect us? It is time to reclaim what has always been ours. We, as people from the beginning of time, have cared for our dead. We have bathed, clothed, perfumed, and anointed them. We carry, in our DNA, the wisdom to deliver our dead right to the doorstep of the beyond. We do so as an honor and a sacred charge. When the lineage of spirit is broken, we all suffer the pain of disconnection to one another and to life itself. Death does not become us.

My Mother Once Called Them Her Mountains

The Santa Rita mountains are not just scenic, but sacred to some. The "snow-covered" mass just north of Madera Canyon and the mine tailings on the west side of Green Valley on up toward Tucson, are daily reminders of the fact we living in mining country. We breathe the air, we drink the water; we are at effect of what happens in our immediate environment, good or bad.

Juxtaposed to the majestic beauty of the Santa Ritas is the Freeport-McMoRan Sierrita facility, tucked deeply away at the end of Duval Mine Road behind “the swimming pool of the gods.” Though touted as one of the safest mines in the United States (having earned the federal government’s prestigious ‘Sentinels of Safety’ award), I have concerns that safety, in the case of open pit mining, is a relative term. Mining companies use toxic chemicals to extract all the goodies from the earth. The EPA has estimated that hard rock mining is the #1 source of pollution in the United States, contaminating some 40% of western watersheds. To their credit, Freeport-McMoRan has provided funding to clean up the excessive sulfates in our water supply. It supplies jobs and precious metals we consumers need to live the kind of lives we have grown accustomed to. And yes, it is the final resting place for the seemingly endless supply of dirt that has offered up the best it had to give. But at what price? It seems that Arizona’s mining rights trump human rights, most essentially, the right to preserve for future generations an environment and an ecosystem that once disrupted, can never be restored.

Enter Rosemont Copper: Arizona’s next major copper mine. Heaven help us. Busy mines, I mean minds, are at work. Augusta Resources (aka the Rosemont mine folks up in Canada) is issuing 25 million in stock to fund the mining operation. No problem for Canadians, most of them will never see the damage done. I wonder why it is that those who hold the pocketbook ultimately hold the power, for better or for worse. What about our reclamation plan? Can we reclaim, a priori, that which is slated for destruction? It’s just my opinion, but giving the green light to open-pit mining in areas that draw dollars through tourism and are home to humans, endangered animals, rare insects, birds, plants and myriad other life forms is short-sighted. We need to see past the end of the stick. Our mining laws are antiquated and changing them is a slow and arduous process. Arizona’s 135 year-old law allows mining operations right next to our national parks! Why few do anything about that may be a truer indicator of just how much we care about the planet and those who live on it.

Off a Cliff

I have disappeared, off a cliff, away from view and out of touch. You’re still trying to piece together what happened, as if applied logic after the fact might heal the festering wounds. Same behavior = same results. It’s not rocket science. So, I decided it’s mighty time I flew.

Climate change. Breathing room. Baptismal waters. I need fresh eyes to see with and long for fresh eyes to see me. Yours was a subtle form of bleeding me dry, those frequent staple gun wounds to the heart finally reached critical mass. You withheld everything in your power to withhold, as if scarcity was your most cherished commodity. Making sure to deliver alternating doses of pain and love, you discovered the intermittent reinforcement schedule worked like a charm. You got yourself a prisoner.

Love blinds but also binds. So how does a blind, bound woman untie the ropes? Slowly, with intent. It’s not as if you planned it this way. I know that. We are all only working with the tools we have. We robots, manufactured by the factory of life.

Is it wrong to want to be loved in ways that nurture instead of ways that destroy? Who would have guessed that loving yourself is the first recovery? The second is not allowing another’s plea for help rope you in so tightly, you can't escape. Oh, how we’re all been hardwired to do just the opposite: Love others first. Do not self aggrandize. Be humble. Be generous to those who are in need. And while you’re at it, disappear, why don’t you?

I have disappeared, off a cliff, away from view and out of touch. I decided it’s mighty time I flew.

Blind Faith

Trust me. I’m driving across the country to see a woman I know, someone I haven’t seen in a long time.

It’s not what you think, we’re just friends. I really want to stay in touch with you while I’m there, but she lives deep in the mountains and has no phone or Internet. My cell phone doesn’t work at her house, so I’ll call during the day when I come into town. I know, I know, you might be thinking it's going to be like the last time, but I'm different now. People change. Trust me.

Wake Me Gently

Wake me gently
Let the first slip of morning
Lure me back into life
I have woken too soon
Too abruptly and long before my time
Crushed and pierced at the doorstep of life
Silence waters the ground of a dust-boned self
Blowing the past right through me

Wake me gently
Let the first slip of morning
Lure me back into life
Only then can you touch me
Can you witness the miracle

The Abandoned House

Ever since I moved to the desert, the house directly behind me has been empty. I say empty, because no one is quite certain what the status is. All indicators lead to the conclusion that the house has not been occupied for a very, very long time. So "abandoned" does this house appear, that a certain neighbor decided to cull her cacti from the property, landscaping most of her acreage for a song. These mature and well-developed cacti would have cost oodles had she paid retail. In repayment for this self-appointed favor, she left a mountain of dirt and yard debris in their place. Who would know? The house was abandoned after all.

I knew the owner lived out of state, and it was rumored that it was part of an inheritance. I also knew that a certain tree on the property was thriving. Upon inspection, I found the water hose turned to a steady drip, providing its life-sustaining water supply. Other than that, there have been no signs of life. Zip.

That the house is abandoned and neglected is apparent. The garage is collapsing, and the house is looking pitiful. There’s a huge old-fashioned satellite dish on the property, circa 1970s, and a very cool, but dilapidated birdhouse.

My neighborhood has no HOA so you can pretty much do whatever you please here with impunity. An abandoned house is no big deal, even if it is rat infested. There is no health department within 1,000 miles who would give a rat’s ass, let alone conduct an inspection and actually do anything. So, even though thoughts of doing something myself have passed through on occasion, I have acted on none of them. Of course, this leaves room for others to operate, namely the cacti-culling neighbor and Suzy.

Suzy took it upon herself to write the owner, providing photos of the house in varying stages of decomposition, pointing out that it appeared neglected, and suggested the possibility of caretaking the property for a certain rent. Along with the letter and photos was her contact info. The outraged and livid owner called her promptly to read her the riot act. He fussed and fumed and accused her of trespassing on private property (which we all had done for varying reasons). He screamed and protested that the house was not abandoned; in fact, he said he checked up on it periodically and knew the neighbors. Well, he doesn’t know me. And I’m certain he doesn’t know the cacti-culling neighbor. Any person in their right mind would have apologized and hung up as quickly as possible. Not Suzy. She let him blow off steam and to his surprise, she didn’t hang up, nor did she interrupt him. What started out as a big mistake ended up as a 3-hour conversation about animal rights, a subject dear to the hearts of both of them. The owner, a trial attorney, Ph.D., Renaissance man, and now lover and guardian of pigeons, was a lot like us. People pissed him off. Animals didn’t. Animals had gotten a shitty deal, and humans had given it to them. That’s the short version.

The house is not for sale, nor is it for rent. It is one day to become a pigeon sanctuary, even though the Sonoran Desert has no pigeons. You may find a cropping of birds in Tucson, but they were undoubtedly smuggled in from San Francisco.

I’m certain the story has just begun.

Deep Thoughts

People teach us how to generate and hold concepts about ourselves and the world around us: humans are driven to understand and explain their world. They then form a club with other like-minded folks and rally to defend their ideas, even when those ideas are seriously bizarro. They’ve even been known to kill other people who don’t think like them. Can you believe it? So popular is the philosophy of “creating your reality,” that we have become a society who megadoses on the thinking intoxicant. It’s like an endorphin we can’t get enough of. We have run amok in a quagmire of ideas, affirmations, and meditations. Hey, just check out the NY Times today and see what I mean. See: Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich.

Allow me to assist you if you feel you’ve been left behind. It’s actually quite simple. Start with an idea, a concept. Now, apply focus and intention, and lots of repetition, until your ideas about the world become your reality. Why hasn’t anyone noticed this is scary stuff? Picture this: A can of that silly string that shoots out of a small nozzle like Redi-Whip, whipped cream. Everyone gets a can of a different color and fires away. Endless streams of color – some shot out in short, festive bursts, some strewn out in long sinewy lines – all mix together, creating what starts out looking beautiful but ends up as a big fat mess, not to mention an environmental hazard. We all are walking through gobs of metaphoric silly string, awash in thoughts that seem real, thoughts that result in action without prior contemplation as to their possible results. Why is it that when over-thinking a situation, we go away to come back with an emptier, fresher perspective? Do insights arise out of emptiness, without the armor of thought? Can’t have that now, can we? If there’s no one home to claim ownership of the insight, then that becomes really scary stuff. Or does it? Can we caged birds finally sing? And perhaps even harmonize???

Here’s the bad news: any idea you have is only and idea, it will never lead to or be an absolute truth, but remain in perpetuity a relative one. Give up thinking? Impossible. But put thinking where thinking belongs. Do not take your thoughts too seriously. But if you can cash in on them, I could be totally wrong.

Kaching

Adore you, adore me back

Slip, slap, slice, splat

Where’s my change?

Check the vending machine.

I Threw a Rock into the Sky

Out from the blackness of my soul
I threw a rock into the sky
It carried everything I was and would ever be
Into and beyond the veil of the Unknown
It sits there still
I sometimes watch it come and go
Like my breath
An intimate yet distant Friend

Pterosaur pterosaur where have you been?
I’ve been holding the keys to the universe within

Dogs and Us

 

“I am as convinced as the next delusional person that my dog is a living saint.  Hey, if the next Karmapa can be foretold, then my dog can be a saint.  My dog can be enlightened and a bodhisattva, even one with a capital B.  My dog can transform the world, one person at a time.  She can also do groups.  You know, because we need to speed up the process here, folks.  How do I know my dog is a saint?  I can tell.  She looks like one. She acts like one.  She feels like one.   Therefore, she is one.  She brings out the best in just about everyone.  She shows them their true nature in a flash.  It’s sometimes too much.  I’m living with a saint.  I’m sleeping with a saint! What did I do to deserve this?  Only a saint would be smart enough to be reborn as the best looking and smartest Min Pin in the history of the world. It’s in the cards.  It’s destiny, I tell you.” 

 

 

When we turn the heart of our attention and affection toward animals and away from human beings, we are singled out as outliers, as oddballs, as people who have “issues.” But what if this turning away is in actuality a tuning in?  What if our sensitivities have become sensibilities?  What if we are actually wise? What if we now understand that we learn more from deep silence and observation than from shouting opinions and beliefs from the podium of our egocentric lives? 

 

After decades of disappointment in the human realm, many of us have simply stopped reinvesting in people.  Reinvesting in human relationships is clearly a calculated risk.  As animal behaviorist Temple Grandin points out, dogs, for instance, don’t have the capacity to be deceptive, but people do.  There’s the rub!  And it’s not a tummy rub, my friend.  Lots of women and men I know prefer to cohabitate with animals.  Animals don’t do drama.  Animals won’t stab you in the back, unless we’re talking wild, undomesticated animals with tusks.  In that case, you’re on your own.

 

Human beings long for deep communion, for deep connection. So why are people ever-ready to cut the strings of connectivity, or threatening to do so?  We are on edge. The dance of human codependence is dysfunctional because its roots are fear and manipulation.  We are mortified of being cut off, of being shunned from our  “pack.”  So deeply is this need to belong engrained in our DNA, that we literally can shut off from our true natures, turn off the cosmic channel, as it were, and tune into a set of programmed ideas and mores that insidiously become who we think ourselves to be, or worse, what others insist we become.   In human-to-human relationships, we think ourselves into (and sometimes out of) existence.  In human-to-animal relationships, we feel ourselves into existence: this is a dramatic and essential difference.  Animals care not what we think of ourselves, they respond to our energy, our being, our field, our je ne sais quoi. I’m always amazed when a dog who knows a person well sees that person on a computer monitor, say on Skype.  The image is there, the voice is there, but the dog doesn’t make the connection.  The dog has a simple brain, one might argue, unable to extrapolate that the image and the sound is in fact a real person, one that it knows and loves.   But even if it could connect the dots, what would it do with that information?  Quell its fears? Hear about what’s for dinner later and then think about it until the owner gets home?  Dogs don’t do drama and they don’t do virtual reality.

 

I argue that our relationship with our pets is not codependent but rather interdependent (yes, I know that I’ve anthropomorphized my dog into a saint…but it COULD be true).  Our lives are richer and fuller because of our love for animals, and their lives are better when we “get” them and provide, with gratitude, the simple requirements they need to have a decent life.   In this environment, this communion with animals, a connection to all of life (yes, even to humans) is re-awakened. The opposition would argue that this is too simplistic: animals can be dominated and controlled by humans, and can become whatever we want them to be---dumb slaves to do our bidding, or enlightened beings ready to assist us.  Maybe so, but which do you choose?

 

Animals paradoxically teach us how to be fully human. We have come full circle.  We are awake, in touch, and alive. The time is always now to wake up, to reconnect, to love.  If you think you’ve lost your capacity to love, think again.  Our beloved pets are gurus of compassion in disguise.  They are perfect teachers.  They will take you home.  That is, if you let them.