Looking at Chaos in the Rear-view Mirror (a tribute to 2012)…

 

Looking back over 2012…there were many shifts, both seismic and metaphysical. Emerging from our traumatized environment after living as if the entire world might fall down around us at any moment day after day, from September 2010 until now, finally, we are beginning to feel like we might live again…

How long we shall live is open to debate and wagered

against and/or for us because of vices and/or virtues

perceived by those of us with little else to do and/or

too little consciousness—and so we criticize and/or

judge.

How often  I am aware of it in myself  is not easily weighed.  I am told that becoming more aware is part of self-realization. One can only hope, until they decide to do something.

Christchurch has no time for worrying about what it cannot reshape. It’s time to throw a new pot and it’s time to shut up and carry on— It doesn’t do any good to yell during the noise of crisis—it’s  best to conserve energy for the trekking, dodging and running because:

Freaky natural events happen all over the place…

it’s only different, unique, unseemly, unfair, horrible and unacceptable when it happens to you. If it’s not happening to you, it really isn’t happening to the degree that reality dictates to a real body, otherwise, it is all pictures in your head, awesome photos, someone else’s stories.

Surely, this experiential necessity to evoke reality is recognized by everyone over whatever historical and/or untimely events necessitates an invisible meridian line from childhood to maturity. The course of this planet navigating the same ship with so much technology advanced beyond a cannon, well, the network for interconnected mayhem and hems mended is palpable.

Elton John can be heard singing ‘Rocket Man’ in some places in the world at no particular time and date, like a twinkling, now you hear it, now you don’t. Magic or mayhem, are two sides of the same coin.

I am, I said, not even the chair heard me anyway, and a diamond can be a girl’s best friend in verse to break the curse of being alone. The earth has settled down now, our imaginations restructured and the ‘real bad guys and gals’ have revealed themselves from our mis-conceptualized guise of believing that because we are paying them to protect us, they will in return protect us. hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I won’t discuss insurance companies and the bureaucratic nightmare they create to withhold payment to tens of thousands of befuddled Kiwi residents in Canterbury—it is a can of worms for better fishers of ‘bad men and women’ than I can be.  My style is more of going around the objects blocking the road rather than through and/or over them. I have watched wildlife in their natural surroundings curve away from, rather than confront impending disaster.  It feels like an appropriate time to do that.

So in rear-view of that, it is summer in Christchurch and earthquakes are old news and there is a much needed reprieve for the folks of Canterbury…I’m curving away from the cracks in the road…

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Christmas Day 2012

Destiny, Clark and I had a wonderful ‘easy peas-y’ day, filled with Clark’s traditional potato salad with savoury and sweet mixtures of dates, cranberries, olives, capers and of course a few potatoes, yum!  The beetroot mould was made with the beetroot we canned last summer and a blackberry jelly (or jello for my American audience)…The small slice of watermelon suggests how expensive it is here.  There are no large watermelons to be had within New Zealand and a small one can cost up to $25.00.  Herein lies the vegan portion of my story…

The Christmas Day tradition in this portion of the world has become a date with Destiny and the barbeque… the one built by my brother John, and so, he is forever here in spirit.  Destiny is one of those patient, unpretentious, meticulous cooks where everything is gently brought to perfection!  The kebabs were unbelievable to look at and consume with many thanks cast about to one another and the produce available…we had a splendid meal together as Destiny’s picture of Clark and I captured what she said, ‘Ah, you look happy for a change’…

And then, the music came on and we were all whisked away by the sounds of George Harrison to begin with, Helmut Zacharias playing the violin, and then Destiny picked Joe Cocker because he looked like a ‘freaky dude’ and she fell in love and proclaimed that Clark’s and my generation’s music was so much better than her own.  And yet, one of Destiny’s friends, Sam, got caught on Youtube singing a pretty mean Halleluiah http://youtu.be/0lwfeKZueHk

I think in view of how well these young New Zealanders do this song…we have a lot more Merry Christmases to come…With this we send our love and good wishes for a fabulous New Year.

 

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My Politically Incorrect Christmas

This is Christmas Eve in Christchurch, New Zealand, my adopted home for the past ten years.  Originally, I am from Oklahoma, ‘the place of the Red Man,’ and that is what we all are when we open ourselves up from the inside.  This is what writing is for me, an opening up of my conscious self for my family and friends.  And sitting before me as I write this are the symbolic representations of my past, present and future ghosts of Christmas…

This is the whole table, nothing is hidden or tidied, it is what it is…a red hand-painted tin can my grandmother was famous for recycling into usable objects.  This one I now use as a brush holder fifty years on.  Inside this tin can are a small collection of my grandmother’s, my father’s, my mother’s and my own brushes…a legacy of artistic tradition passed down through the generations….particularly at Christmas, when hand-made or hand-painted gifts use to be abundant, I reflect on the many objects embellished with these brushes over time, before my attention is attracted to the next object on the table…

                    

Here sits a plant renamed ‘Cylindrica’ by the person who lured my husband to purchase this for me.  It turns out that it is an appropriate symbolic representation of much of what he hears me talk about these days—the interweaving of our lives, separate, but connected—sporadic intermittent patterns sometimes dutifully controlled and cared for and sometimes touching and then darting off into seemingly chaotic directions…like the patterns I found myself drawing while reflecting on ‘cylindrica’…

I was thinking about how we communicate and create patterns that form our lives. Patterns that come in the form of creative actions and interactions sometimes by accident, sometimes by intention, often leaving us feeling the synchronistic or chaotic expressions that amplify these patterns.   We begin to see patterns if we live long enough, or consciously enough to see what our actions and reactions create into our experiences.  Caught in ‘cylindrica’ is where I long to remain, but alas, this is a utopian model to merely try to replicate.  These days, there are those trying to dissolve some replications that I inherited from my family that also sits on this table, like the enjoyment of a good cup of coffee and a cigarette…

 

…with my paints not far from reach.  I am not here to paint and promote my ‘vices’—but, to state that coffee and cigarettes are still a part of my daily rituals wherein I contemplate deeply whilst not drinking alcohol or making or supporting wars anywhere.   I have noticed that outlawing, ridiculing and banning is not actually the best choice we can make.  I often feel like a criminal in my own world…whilst watching others perform acceptable activities I abhor, there is no ‘cylindrica’ to that, but something more like the patterns I drew on my page…making me dislike connecting with those who shake their finger at me and comment each time ‘so, you are still smoking’ and I have yet to reply, ‘so, you still support war?’  LOL…you have to laugh, otherwise…

There is a bowl of chalk on my table I leave readily available for the grandkids, as well as my own consciousness.  Chalk is easy to wipe away and needs no hard rules from any audience.  My grandchildren are very young and need to write and experiment on different surfaces without intervention—I tend to think chalk is a more appropriate tool to create with in this rapidly changing universe we all have to share with our various vices that no one is exempt from.  Mine are just more obvious and better accounted for by the mediation that surrounds us, thereby alleviating some from having to think about their own.

So, what does any of this have to do with Christmas?  Well, it precedes my Christmas wish for all my family and friends at such a great distance…please write my faults with chalk and I shall do the same for you…and, leave the painting for our legacies of love…I love a good cup of coffee and a cigarette, but…I love you more and that will just have to be good enough for now as I am still learning how to draw…

 

 

 

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Kali

This week started off in one hell of a hurry. No holds barred, we were off!

Defying every type of government and Santa Claus, this week lasted a millennium in some ways—in others just a second.

Duality personified in seven deadly days, this week is almost over if you count the working week, and just beginning if you count ‘time off’ for good behavior.

That’s what my young ones are looking for, ‘time off for good behavior’—but, it ain’t over yet. Karma is time in the wind vacating the shelter belt.

Step into the winds of change—this goddess was raised from keeping watch too long…

to creating exactly what is needed…

… and those who do not desire to participate can just get out of the way…Om, ma!

We don’t aim to harm you, just burn you up with the desire to be creative without limits…chum, chum.

See her streaming toward you, shreeming at the top of her voice? Of course not, sum… sum kleem to the surfaces of an onion and shri…….eek! Ma namaha.

Feels Like Home

Source: paintingsalley.com via Andrea on Pinterest

This painting reminds me of my life growing up. We were (and still are) a family of bird lovers, fascinated by patterns and at home under trees. My grandmother was a very good decorative painter, my mother still is and I was handed the tradition by them both at a time when they worried for my sanity. That time still exists, but I always get to paint my way through my less than stable moments thanks to their influence. My father was an artist and one of the first artists to throw his brushes down and take up painting with light on the computer. I have yet to master that aspect, but it 'ain't over' and I've learned to try to remember to not say 'never,' though I doubt my love for painting in light could ever match my enjoyment of getting paint everywhere and all over me simultaneously. I have a wardrobe that proves it, I am no stranger to 'getting wet' and letting it dry right where it landed. All my children inherited a strong dispostition to express themselves, too. However, one exchanged a brush for boxing gloves, another for the art of healing, another with a gift for words that makes me warn her to keep the rocks out of her pockets, and another sings like a bird. Yes, we are all artists here, and this bird thinks everyone is an artist in one way or another.

Post Apocalypse

I want to thank all my family and friends that allowed me to talk ‘earthquakes’ for over the past two years. It is only in the past few months that I could think, feel or experience life again without EARTHQUAKES being my median line. Phew! Glad that is over!!! And, maybe it’s not, but I do believe that even if the rocking and rolling starts again, my new median is simply LOVE and the motivation to seek and extend COMFORT.

It is hard to think in terms of another apocalypse, when you have been living one day in and day out for so long now, the flip side is…this girl has come out of her own hell, Facebook be damned and loved, because it takes away the social interaction I once was use to and puts me into a new one that needs to be mined for the COMFORT it alone can bring.

I can peek in on all of you no matter what time of day it is and no matter how far away you are. The nearly two months I went off FB left me feeling personally empowered, but wondering, what the heck are they all up to? And, coming back is easy now because I learned how to turn the damned thing off and THAT ALONE brought me the relief I was seeking. Yep, I can do it or not, and for now…I’m doing it instead of it doing me…lol. So, Facebook is better than earthquakes and that is a good enough comparison (or opening) for now.

So...

So, this is the dawning of what many have been pointing to during my life as some kind of hugely important date, December 21, 2012. Apparently, it marks the end of the Mayan calendar, and for some, the potential end of the world.

When I was a teenager, this date sounded so far away and the mention of it could bring about interesting conversations, to which, I have now been exposed to prolifically, ad nauseam, and whose conversational thread no longer holds me spellbound or quivering, ‘the end of the world?!’—well, for some things I certainly hope so, but for many things—well, it depends.

Perhaps this date has been one huge pacifier hanging over our collective heads—if you don’t like what’s going on in this world, well here is a date in the foreseeable future when it’s all going to change! No worries mate, we’re almost there now!

And, I now have children of my own who have lived with this promise all the more importantly because it is coming at a time in their lives when they have yet to live long enough to see the predictions of all societies and their religions, even the historically venerated ones like (fill in the blanks here with any society or religion you particularly resonate with)—that make predictions that don’t apply to anything or anyone. So, what will we all be doing on December 22, 2012? The day after one of the most pointed to dates of hysterical historical imaginatively anticipated culmination?

Well—hopefully… I will be here and you will be there and the world will still be rotating on its axis, or so they tell us, and the sun will still be appearing to come up even though we will be turning toward it, or so they tell us, and the time will be measured five hours ahead and a day behind some of my loved ones in other parts of the world, or so they tell us, and there will be no more and no less water on the planet, or so they tell us, and there will be rates of birth and rates of death, or so they tell us, disasters, or so they tell us, acts of heroism, or so they tell us, plagues, disparate acts by mankind and nature, or so they tell us… So, when will we stop listening, and start creating? Maybe on December 22, 2012, those of us still fortunate or unfortunate to still be here (as it is a subjective worldview for sure), maybe, we will become the new Mayans and create a calendar of our own which designates a time for thinking, and thereby creating how our own worlds (notice the plurality as this is paramount to this conversation with more than one of us) should carry on…instead of listening to ‘others’ about how it is already.

How? Well, if I am still here, I intend to turn off the radio, the television, the computer, the cell phone, the ‘noise’ and bask in the silence of my own mind and meditate on what it is that I can do, think about and focus on to help my world be one I would like to see continue. From that date forward I shall begin to write my own ‘ecosophy’ and take a ‘deep ecological look’ into my own interior space to see what might be lurking. I did not say I would think about what I ‘believe’…as belief is a seriously dangerous thing in an ever changing world and is especially detrimental if you are hoping to locate new possibilities that are paramount to creating anything new. So, to begin with, I will throw out all beliefs and simply start over and replace ‘I believe’ with ‘I think.’ Beliefs are almost always based on ‘what they tell us’ and seldom on what ‘we as creative actors’ might begin to ‘think about’ that can birth heretofore unseen (and, thereby a new) positive action in my world view. I am committed to this action. December 22, 2012 is a Saturday, which might be something of a new Sabbath to be one day out of seven when we devote our lives to ‘simply thinking’ and actively ‘not listening’ to the rest of the world…and, for those who can will it even further…go for it…when you reach seven out of seven…I do believe you will have achieved ENLIGHTENMENT and help bring about ‘the world’ everyone intuits might be a better place than this one. It’s inside all of us; we’ve just been distracted with ‘what they tell us.’ To ask the question my birth father always asked me, ‘Who are they, anyway?’ Okay, Pops, it’s time to think about it! Meanwhile,I don't believe I love you, I KNOW I do.

Okay, I am Back--But, Only to Share My Garden

The following is a letter written to my youngest daughter, who is a long way from home right now--she asked me to share it with my professors, I thought I would go one better, and share it with the world... Garden notes for Kasey

(This story is inspired by the memory of a 92 year old woman we bought our home from and whose rosebush I call by her name. Since my daughter is not here to see this year's blossoms, and is meanwhile blossoming from a distance, I wrote her this to let her know that she, like Mrs. Langley, is never far away from my heart, which heart she painted for me many years ago and now sits on a sacred space next to an owl done by Austin (the sculptor, same name as my son)that represents my father and grandfather and a crystal candle holder that represents my mother and grandmother, and inside of the crystal is a lite candle I light every day for every one in hope they will receive the same love my Kasey so freely gives.

I’ve really enjoyed Mrs Langley flowering in our garden this spring. Prolific and outstanding displays of yellow, morphed into orange, then red, as if…growing into some volcanic leftover of a woman who lived here many years, I honour her spirit, and, ours. I feel you blossoming from afar; it is sometimes a tortuous unfurling of life’s deepest mysteries, only to go all dark and undiscovered each new day. Such is life, kissing consciousness, returning unto unconsciousness, then erupting at the sight of metaphorical snakes or being stabbed by archetypes deep within the circle and possibly never even known by us, but witnessed by others in their own conscious, then unconscious, reacting or erupting selves. What a pattern it is, continuously rounded, coinciding, colliding or circuitously avoiding, repelling, propelling intentionally or not. I honour what I cannot change, but sometimes that which I can, I protect too ferociously. Unchaining one’s self from dependency upon others is wherein we learn the most about our kindnesses and our ability to create chaos. Many days I create kindness, but how suddenly that is forgotten by the ‘other’ when chaos comes at my beckoning—as it must. There is a time to stir the pot and a time to take it off the fire, a time to clean it and a time to put it away completely. Sometimes, the pot needs replacing, but if you buy it right, it will last the duration providing the house does not burn down entirely. Keep the extinguisher close to your heart! Guard the pot you cook with to feed your soul, your-self, your body—adore it, as much as I do you—it is your garden. I just now recognized the ownership from Mr to Mrs, how subtle it is to have avoided my conscious gaze before now. In these understandings you are so far ahead of me into a future I hope you will take me with you and hold me with your loving memory, always, with the ‘stability of mobility’ that returns, like Karma (the name my grandchildren call me). I shall be like these flowers of Mrs Langley’s to you one day, in your face, shouting all my loveliness as if it never went away, as it will not, thanks to the garden in your own mind I see every time I see you, Thank you!

Kasey, you are a bright spot in my garden, and you are here in displays of paintings you have rendered just for me, objects of artistic affection, and plainly rendered with your mind loving me, how divine is that? It is amazing! Swans hovering over my garden seat as well as my bath tub

whilst I sit with Birdling’s Flat rocks and do energy work on a nation, no on a world full of people swooning from crazy aches and pains not worth mentioning. I laugh my Buddha laugh and the neighbours are all excited again, to live, the death cycle is broken momentarily, but shall come again, and then, life persists. Wow, such a simple cycle, life/death/life. I like the sandwich and have faith I shall eat all of it. I am so voracious! What a strong feminine rising archetype, I am, and yet, a gentle wind on your face, enjoy it all, and you do, you goddess, you are blessed with the ability to navigate duality with grace. This is what it means to be holy, nothing less, nothing more, but the acceptance of all things without tearing down the structures in front of your face, soft gazes, with icy blue understanding behind layers of bliss, watery, bliss, life/death/life, it is the trinity of conscious thought that leads us safely through the unconscious navigation toward the next event.

And, whatever that is—I shall be inside the garden waiting, watering, and waiting, Mrs. Langley and me, erupting through the life/death/life cycle of the seasons in anticipation of our spring together, over and over, round and round, as it shall be, because we live and love one another and as many others as allow it.

Goodbye Facebook--Hello Reality

I finally pushed delete this week. I thought about it for over two years and tried several times and failed because I am not the most technologically savvy grandmother on the block. However, spurred on by an anger I thought I had left for dust, I finally figured it out and pushed delete— the relief was immediate.

So, why was I so angry?

I have always and forever been a letter writer, a consummate communicator that not only loved to write and share all manner of things with family and friends, but even more, I relished the time someone might give back by keeping me personally informed about their own lives. It was something I cherished, but alas, no longer exists.

I have been on a diet for too long, my family and friendships feel too skinny, too mass manufactured, too mass consumed, there is no intimacy left. To put it bluntly, I feel like I have been participating in a free-for-all orgy. I am sick of being fed advertisements for or against Jesus, Obama, climate change, oil production, spirituality, right and left politics, and then, for the positive I get to consume with the rest of the world at my table family and friends’ gatherings I can only cannibalize from such a great distance. I am stuffed! And, I am terribly disappointed that not one of you has enough time to write a simple letter that only has to be electronically delivered to New Zealand, as one friend or family member to another.

The reality is…my dismissal of Facebook will probably not make one little difference in the ‘free for all’ conversation ‘you all’ hold with one another, describing what you might want for breakfast, lamenting the nightly news in unison whilst posting regurgitated slogans that you picked up somewhere else on the net and plaster all over your walls to show your dismal preferences and allegiances to something or someone besides your own precious words and thoughts…but, I will rest easier knowing I had the guts to send ‘you all’ off with the punch of a single button—delete.

Delete is the new form of non-violent resistance.

But, if any one of you decides that you might still desire to be a part of my life—all it takes is a phone call or an e-mail, or a response to my Blog with enough of YOU in it for me to respond to, and I think all of you who know me, knows this, I will respond. But, if you send me a Forward, be prepared to talk to the screen, or perhaps better, you can Facebook it for the rest of the minions, because I am completely over the whole mass manufactured way of communicating and I am not participating anymore.

A Spiritual Center of the Universe

It was a terrible grey day in post-quake Christchurch, New Zealand. Close to the calender end of winter That threatens to permeate our cores, Clark and I struck out for 'Castle Hill'. It is only an hour's drive from our home to reach what was proclaimed in 2002 as a "Spiritual Center of the Universe".

When down and out...do go to the spiritual center...the drive there looked like this:

I had been told by a very knowledgable colleague, that when the weather was funky in Christchurch, often, it would be the opposite toward 'Castle Hill'. True to his words,just look at the light we drove into. Ahhh, said the shriveled core inside us. And when we arrived, it was hard for me to take a picture of the signpost because of the friendly people milling around and talking about what a beautiful time they had just had, so excuse the poor shot, but this is the beginning, follow us, please, you won't be disappointed.

From this signpost, what you see is a long meandering path toward the limestone outcrop in the distsnce. Don't give up yet, this is a preliminary rehersal, the road does lead to Oz...

But, along the way, man always has something more to say...

And, then again, we must not proceed without the usual warnings, complete with dearly departed sheep...

But, now an entrance is spotted...

Let the spirit of my center revive...

You are getting the picture, I am sure, and I was profoundly knocked off my feet:

And, the shadows inside were stretched out and elongated...while I signaled the peace sign to my shadow, hiking through cracks and trying to find where Clark had gotten off to...

Clark was being led to the edge...

And the core of us both, grew white, with only a small hole left, to breathe through...Ahhhhhhhh

DANGER: You have just been exposed to my spiritual center.
PEACE is here.
PS: Thank you Roland!