Today’s Words:
manipulate
feeble
ahead
oatmeal
involve
incidental
grace

Grace is this fundamental concept that was missing from my consciousness as a child. I’ve had to learn it, slowly, haltingly, with great effort. What is grace? It is that which is the nature of the Cosmos and life itself: a gift. Something freely given, but which you cannot contrive to receive. More abundant that you need if you relax and let it flow into your life, and frustratingly unavailable if you do not trust it.

As a child we traditionally learn this from our parents unconditional availability, but I didn’t have that luxury. And yet as an adult, I could learn that the field itself supports me.

I wonder about that. What was the wound, and what was the healing? Does any unmet need, if it is unmet long enough or deep enough to be very very painful, create a wound - around which scar tissue builds? If so, then healing would be necessary in order to let new love in - ie to let that need be met in present time. Because the scar tissue, the defenses, keep the pain in and the love out. What an odd reaction. What an odd way of protecting ourselves. I’d like to have a discussion with God about the schematics here.

It makes me wonder about something. Our body has a lot of self-healing mechanisms. But our mind’s self-healing mechanisms seem to need social interaction in a way that our bodies self-healing mechanisms don’t. I mean, it’s a scale of course, as our body and mind aren’t really separate. The mental part of healing also seems to require interaction. Which makes sense of course. But it’s amazing how our cultural myths about ourselves make it seem like we ought to be able to heal in a vacuum when that is actually not true at all. What a strange myth to evolve. It’s almost like the myth is one of those scar-built things, protecting some wound in the social fabric itself. Hmm.

Anyhoo.

Grace is like mercy; undeserved, unasked for, but there nonetheless.

This is what I miss in the “Law of Attraction” stuff. Abundance is not something you wrestle from the Universe through effort. Grace is what you experience when all else falls away. When you release the striving, the ego, the white-knight, the entrepreneur, and the advocate, grace is what remains. The rose does not visualize more light from the sun. The rose accepts what is given, and turns toward the light.

And yes, the rose eventually dies. And there are more roses that bloom. But knowing that it will eventually whither does not sour the rose for the light.

Yet we are not roses. We have capacities for manipulation. That is not wrong either, for aren’t we just another plant in the garden? Yet still, we are the only plants that seem to cut ourselves off from our own sources of nourishment, because we become attached to them. With knowledge of good and evil comes attachment to good and aversion to evil. The Tree contained not simple knowledge, but the ability to remember, to plan, to string events together and label them “good” and “evil”. The ability to abstract.

Or perhaps it’s just survival skills run amok. The evolutionary advantage of learning is clear. Perhaps all the myths we create to explain our existence are just a byproduct of the evolutionary gift of memory and imagination. Perhaps we’re just another species.

Who knows. I know that I enjoy ice cream and building websites and cuddling. My mind is growing feebler at justifying more than simple effort for simple things. Part of me wants to involve myself with grand schemes, and part of me wants to divest my thoughts of whatever lies ahead and curl up in the moment.

Today’s Words:
draconian
slither
pillage
yet
fraught
accolades
coalesce

Ah, fraught.  My favorite word.

Giving accolades is fraught. How to celebrate without elevating, how to honor without those betters and worses slithering in? In NVC you bring it all back to the specific, to the here and now I feel happy and gratitude. Not “you are so great”, not generalizing into an abstraction of better-ness that can be hard to climb out of, to break, to dissolve.

All to the good, but is it something in us that tends to generalize or is just our faulty education that we’ve not yet rescinded from our mind. Who knows, I guess the rescinding’s the thing. If we try, and we fail, then we can ask in what ways it might be in us to generalize and abstractify and why, seeking more clarity as to root causes. But only if we need to. Otherwise the whys and wherefores lead astray into more theories and less happiness. I posit.

Today’s Words:
laconic
paper
amorous
lacking
ineffective
get on with
bone

Get on with it! You’ve been lurking in the amorous section of the paper for weeks, cutting out ads, piecing together phrases. If you’re worried about an ineffective presentation you might as well experiment, you’re not lacking in imagination. For fucks sake, Mom!

Young man, go toss out the trash, the ham bone is rotten and stinking up the kitchen. If I wanted advice about the snapshot of prose I am concocting to entertain my theoretical suitors, I’d ask.

Well sooooorry, forgive my forward confession of frustration, I was attempting to catalyze some fornication for my dear mum who seems to extol its virtues daily with nary an indulgence in months.

Well dear, I appreciate your bottomless generosity in that respect.

Well, thank you for that acknowlegement. I apologize for losing my temper with flagrant disregard for your delicate ears. I’ll get on that trash removal request posthaste.

Sigh, what a dandy son I have. What folly have I for flirting with witless men, when I have such an lovely specimen in my own domicile.

Oh but mother, it hardly compares. You can’t fuck me you know.

Oh my heavens of course not. Forgive the comparison. I only meant in terms of attention spent, my cost/benefit analysis returns a high ROI ratio on time spent with you.

I’m flattered and glad. Come my dear mum, let’s have a picnic.

Splendid, let’s.

Today’s Words:
mullet
debutante
apply
ruddy
guest
bargain
muck

My dad’s response to advertising was “I’ll sell you some cowpies at a bargain price.” I guess he was saying that just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean it’s not shit.

I’m sure there are some life lessons to be drawn from this but just now I’m pulling a blank. People buy manure you know. On sale or not.

My dad also said you should never sell hay from your own fields. You should till it back into the soil, otherwise you’re selling the soil itself. See, the dirt makes grass, the cows eat the grass, they re-deposit the grass as shit on the field, which nourishes the dirt. It’s one big circle of life and nitrogen. You start selling off your hay, you gotta start buying fertilizer, which is really other people’s cowshit. It’s an endless cycle.

So we didn’t sell hay. But we bought hay, from the neighbors down the road. (about 6 miles down - in the country, “neighbors” is a looser term). I always wondered if we didn’t sell our hay because of the “cycle of life” or because we always ran out before winter was done and so we had no extra to sell anyway. Sure sounds better the first way though.

My dad read me Just-So stories when I was a kid. They’re all about explaining things by making up stories when you don’t know what’s really true. But you call it folklore, then it’s OK.

I’m not bitter (much). I just like the truth. I like the way it rings inside me, like the bells of an angry cathedral. It comforts me at night. I want to know that I stand on the ground, even if the ground is muck. At least it’s solid. Stories change, but there is always a ground to stand on. Things fall away.

Sometimes the truth is just the present moment, and the ruddy feelings of sadness that overtake you right before the light turns green. You know you feel it. There’s truth in there, somewhere. You can’t name it, you can’t explain it, but you can’t deny it either. It’s there, a pushy guest that won’t just shut up and let things be. Always has something to say.

So you listen, and wait, and things become clear, eventually.

It’s the clearness I crave. I want to wrap myself in it, the calm nothing of the night. Angry visitors come and go, but the night stays. The silence holds everything, even the aching to be held.

You always get what you need after you don’t need it anymore. It’s our human fate, to learn to let go and be content with what we have. It’s the only lesson that endures: that just this moment is enough. Whenever you forget, there is life to remind you. It comes along and steals away the promise of the night, until you remember that you don’t need promises.

You only need the night, and the ground, and the clearness of the air. It is there, in your lungs, holding you from the inside, filling your blood and caressing your cells. Time and space, truth and air, all turn into the breathe and the moment by moment dance of your heart with the world.

“This blatant effrontery will not stand!”

Margo rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. Whatever, Mom. As if I need your permission to fly. The very ability made her free in a way her mom could not comprehend. When her nubby winglets had finally unfurled, after weeks of agonizing yearning, her parents had been duly flummoxed. She was lucky it was summer and they were eating out on the patio - the dramatic opening of her shiny iridescent wings and subsequent flight would have been far less impactful if she’d had to get up from the dining room table and walk outside first, making sure they all followed. Instead she simply waited for the right moment, somewhere between asserting her independence and giving a withering diatribe on the impossibility of tbeir even attemting to curtail her freedom and then WHUMP she was wingful and then WHOOSH she was gone.

Now, of course, she had to deal with the fallout. Sigh.

Just her mom of course. Her dad was busy investigating the last uptick in the market, and her brothers had long since gotten over ther initial surprise. After all, wings were quite common alterations nowadays. It didn’t make her so special. Just because it wasn’t Orthodox didn’t mean it wasn’t done.

Just tell that to her mother.

“You know you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetary if you have genetic modifications!” her mom yelled after her.

As if she cared. Why would she care to be bound by a bunch of stilted old rules when she could soar through the sky? If God didn’t want her to have wings, He wouldn’t have invented Cosmetic Genetics.

Her wings were something between a bat and a dragonfly, and her bone structure and composition had been modified as well in order to make her lighter. She’d had to keep her wingnubs concealed for some time as they grew in. Man did they itch. But it had been worth it.

As long as her mom didn’t do something psycho and lock her in the cellar.

She wished she could pick her mom up and carry her with her as she flew, to show her the amazing feeling of being airborne. But she wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry a full human, even a skinny one like her mother. The supplements the cogen company gave her were filling out her shoulder muscles but it would still take time to grow that much muscle.

But someday, she would do it. She would show her mom what it feels like to fly.

She wasn’t naive enough to think that it would change anything. Her mom would still be anti-cogen and would harp on her everytime she came home and give her pamphlets about the Natural Humanity movement. But maybe, just maybe, the little girl that still lived in her mom would feel glee, soaring above the city, being carried by the wind–and that would make it worth it.

Today’s Words:
probation officer
plump oneself
dim
domicile
opiate
Post-purchase rationalization
groom

Jim hated being a probation officer. If he had ever imagined a career for himself as a child, he was sure it wasn’t this. Perhaps he had wanted to be a travelling carnival hand, or a backup musician for Sting. Perhaps he had wanted to go to the moon. He couldn’t remember on account of the bump to the head on this 15th birthday which erased all his childhood memories. But he wasn’t about to delude himself, like a  post-purchase rationalization, fancying that he might have wanted to grow up and be a cop and thus he had arrived. If he had any hope of self-respect, he couldn’t entertain the idea that he had been born with such meager dreams. If all had to plump himself was an imaginary childhood full of eager striving and grand aspirations, he would take it.

The perp sitting in front of him had been involved in a disturbance-of-the-peace which involved selling opiates out of her domicile - a cardboard box located (usually), just a few yards south of the intersection of 25th and Lincoln. She seemed wittier than his usual dim convicts, their brains smashed against the stone walls by other inmates one too many times in their incessent brawling. He supposed that inmates had nothing much else to occupy their time (unless they found God).

* * *

That’s all I have in me. A fragment of a story that I could groom on later occassion but probably won’t. Now needs must nap.

for the last year i have been going to petfinder.com to locate various dogs i might be interested in adopting.  i haven’t gotten too serious, except i did send an application in for a dog named cowboy, but he got adopted while my application was in transit.

he was very cool looking.  he had the holstein hide of a cow, with a corgi head stuck to the top of it and all of it was in the shape of a corgi body.  it was hysterical.

i was sad for a little while, but happy that cowboy had a home.  i was ambivalent about getting another dog while still in this upstairs apartment, with only a partially fenced yard out back.  i have really been waiting until i get my house and have a six foot wooden fence put  up.

so, since i’m almost there in terms of the house, i have been trolling the petfinder again.

only this time i decided to deviate from the corgi.

several years ago, when emily and i still lived in albuquerque, we dogsat for her mother’s dog for a few days.  this dog was rather small and white.  it was a mix of poodle and terrier. her name was “pooh” but we called her mrs. farnsworthy.  she and hamlet really hit it off. they played so much together that they were often found frothing at the mouth with delirious happiness.  if i knew how to post a photo on this site, i would post the one emily took.  it’s a classic shot of mrs. farnsworthy wrestling with hamlet, but actually it looks like she’s just laying on top of him.  my dog isn’t that big, but he looks huge with the tiny mrs. f.  spread out on top.  she probably doesn’t weigh more than 8 pounds.  hamlet was very gentle with her because of her size, but she was plenty feisty.  i’ve never seen him so happy.

i’m not a fan of poodles, but mrs. farnsworthy was special cause she was a mix, and her personality won me over.  i’m not going to look for a poodle but rather a bichon frise, which means curly-haired pet in french.  it’s a small white dog with a pleasant playful personality.  i’ve seen one on the website which is a mix with poodle.  that would be perfect.

it’s kinda sad, cause there are really a lot of them available.  many have been rescued from the puppy mills.  i’ll be adopting an adult female, since hamlet is now an older gentleman, and needs a girlfriend around his age.

i’ll have to wait until after i get the house and move into it.  wouldn’t want to traumatize the new family member.  but i really can’t wait.

Today’s Words:
rose-light
extremities
prophetess
palaver
elemental
perfect game
disambiguate

So I’m reading people’s GTD systems and I’m struck by this realization: these are people who work 8 hours a day. If I maintained a GTD list, I would be spending half of my work time updating it. I just don’t work that much. I work when I feel like it. Mostly I feel eh. =)

I feel spooky happy lately. Life is fine, and there’s nothing I have to do. I have a workshop coming up tomorrow, should be fun. It’s called Naka-Ima which means something profound I’m sure. It’s all about awakening in the now. I hear you sit in a chair and talk and then people reflect back to you about yourself or some such. I’m tickled. I love getting feedback lately. Um, in certain contexts.

You’d think my elemental precision would attract me to GTD, but no. Blah!

This is my GTD: I rely on the Universe to inspire me to do what it wants me to do next. Hee, yup. There it is. If the Universe wants a new blog post, I get inspired. If not, then I just chill and watch TV. Works for me!

I only have to disambiguate between what-is-alive and what-is-not. No @aliveness or @boredom. No point in keeping track of that, it all changes too quickly. I want to float like a leaf in a stream. =) A happy leaf in a happy stream. Whee!

what would you expect, since it’s only 5 a.m., of course it’s still dark.  i’m up earlier than usual so i took my dog out.  i’ve been succumbing somewhat to my winter laziness lately so the first outing of the day with dog consisted of a short trip to the backyard.  there i let loose of the leash and let hammy run around in circles for awhile.  he’s very much like a rocket ship.  he’s even shaped like one.  eventually he will pee, etc. and then we can go back inside for food.

this morning it was so dark and so cold.  the wind was howling from around distant corners, setting hamlet’s ears on edge.  the moon is almost perfectly half, and being scoured by winds is brilliantly clean and bright in the industrial sky.  all visible pollution is gone on a freezing day like today.  i’m not usually cold, but today the wind got through to me and i was truly wanting to get back inside for my coffee preparations.

so here i am, with the hot coffee.  no one’s been writing for awhile on this here website, so i’m giving it a try for old times sake.

even though i have a very important house hunt spinning inside.

this weekend i’m going out with a new real estate agent.  the old one went to florida and i didn’t appreciate that.  i felt dissed.  on sunday this new one is gonna show me a passel of stuff.  some of it i’m sure will be in wrecked condition.  that’s my price range, wrecked to marginal.  hopefully something will appear liveable, and i’ll buy it.  i just want to get this over and done with.  i hate moving again.  but this time hopefully it will be the last time.  because i am going to leave my crap in this one place, no matter where i may roam in the future.  i may live in other places, but the crap stays put.  no more schlepping the crap.  i’m also going to get rid of most of the crap, since my new house will probably be 500 square feet or less.  the key is in the yard.  a nice size yard with my gardens will do me fine.  who needs tons of living space.  not me.  i’m a two-room type of gal.  most people never use all the rooms they own in their giant houses.  what a waste to heat all of that space for nothin.

i’m just being a practical ecological gal.  i’m going to have well water.  later i might add some solar panels.  it depends on the location of the house.  if it’s vastly wooded, the solar prolly won’t work too good.  we’ll see.

i’ve got a handful of mortgage preapprovals now.  it’s time to shop for the best interest rate.  after i move i can find a new job.  i won’t have to do this job anymore.  i won’t even want to be commuting anyway.  not to mention i can’t stand the job.  i’ll get a new and pleasant job near my new house.  ya’ll can come visit me.  it’s right near a giant lake and we will take a boat and go rowing.  i’ll buy some life preservers and i’ll get one for my dog too.  then i’ll coax hammy to get in the boat.  we’ll go out sailing.

there will be waterskiers and we’ll try to stay out of the way.  there will be a lot of rippling of the waters.  hold on, don’t tip the boat.

it’s a huge lake, so maybe we’ll find a quiet cove.  and eat a picnic.  we’ll watch the water lillies as they toil not, but they do float.

hi, we got a buttload of snow.  it’s out there right now.  if i wanted to look out the window i could see it, in all its ugly urban glory.

but i’m pretending here inside.

i ain’t been writing cause i’ve been too excited this week.  i’ve had a one track mind, if you will.  it’s cause last week i found out i prequalified for a whole bunch of mortgages from all different banks.  so, i’m gonna buy a house.  and i’m like way too excited, all excited, and very excited.  i can’t think of much else, except when i’m at work and have to do actual work things.  then i can’t think of the house.

anyway, the only house i can afford in northern new jersey will be located about an hour west of here near the state’s largest lake.  that’s where all these tiny lake bungaloes were built back in the 1950’s.  that’s right up my alley.  a tiny house within commuting distance.  then later i can find a job closer to my house.  and i can buy a canoe and a rowboat and keep them on the lake so i can row.

but you see, i am feeling oh so thwarted today what with the snow and all.  i was hoping to look at houses this weekend with the real estate agent.  now with the storm, the area out there is gonna ice up and the real estate agents aren’t gonna clear all the driveways and steps and then it’ll be too dangerous for us to look at the houses.  see, it’s more mountainous and colder out there.  in the west.  in the west of jersey.  sure, girls from montana will find this hard to believe, but there is a slight elevation increase out by the lake.  and it stays colder longer.  so, more snow, more ice.  plus where i live now is closer to the ocean, which brings with it the warming waters of the gulf stream.  so our weather is a little balmier.  but today what difference does it make.  we have like four inches of snow out there with more falling.  i hope its winter’s last choking hurrah.

i was gonna write about patsy cline and pugs, but you see i can’t get another subject in my head for too long.