JOE AND MISSY 1989 – 2007

Today I feel sad and nostalgic but I’m not sure where it’s coming from. There was a rather intense full moon last night, maybe that was the trigger. Then this morning I read fellow blogger John Farr’s ode to his previous cat and realized that I’d never properly honored my life with Joe and Missy. It was a private thing. But it also framed a time of my most important rights of passage in the sense that new beginnings are usually heralded with a loss, or at least that’s how I’ve experienced them. My cats Joe and Missy represent a life lived within my larger life, one that is gone now but set the stage for what my life is becoming. They were the constant in a period of profound changes. Now and then I see something move from the corner of my eye across the left side of our living room, almost transparent, but movement nevertheless. Joe loved to lay in an intimate corner made by the TV stand and rocking chair. I haven’t seen Missy, but then she was less attached to me than to her brother. But perhaps they now move across the edge of my vision as one entity.

THE BEGINNING

Joe and Missy came into my life 22 years ago last September. My ex-husband and I had recently moved into a place I considered perfect (still do) although it turned out to be a short stay. I was happy there. It had three bedrooms, two baths, walk-in closets and a covered porch yawning onto an intimate Japanese style garden surrounded by a high wooden fence. It was only a few blocks from where I worked at the renowned Tattered Cover Bookstore which is still famous in the book world. There were coffee shops, galleries, a well stocked health food store, quaint cafes and a video store all within a few blocks. We could easily walk to everything we needed, plus the few remaining farm houses and pre-40’s bungalows added an intimate small town ambiance. The neighborhood was further enhanced by great old trees joined at their tops to make an arch over the narrow streets. It had been a semi-rural community when I was a child, then a Bohemian like art community and now was in transition toward Yuppyhood. One felt perfectly safe walking all over the neighborhood after dark, and since I worked until 10 pm that was important.

According to the lease agreement we were’nt allowed to have pets but my husband who was rapidly advancing toward another manic episode, (these occurred with increasing intensity each time with a regular rhythm of 6 months on and 6 months off with a few months of transition time in between) obstinately refused to be daunted by lease agreements and insisted that we had to have this cute black kitten born to our neighbors across the street. It was their cat’s first litter and there were just two babies; a long haired black female and a short-hair male tabby. When I saw them I immediately figured out who their fathers were having seen two suspicious culprits around the neighborhood. Eventually he wore me down and I reluctantly went with him to see these kittens. We ended up bringing both home. My ex wanted the black one but I said, “ if we ever get a cat it will be two so that they would have company when we were out of town.” And I said to myself, “we won’t be in anymore trouble with two than one, lets take them both.” He said, “but the other one’s just a plain tabby,”and I said, “I like tabbies.”

The next day we brought them across the street in a shoe box. I remember that the tabby was terrified and it took awhile to calm him down. The black one seemed more curious. We named them Joe Tiger (the tabby) and Bat Girl (the black one) because her ears were batlike when she was a kitten but before long they became just Joe and Missy.

Missy and Joe on the Sofa

The kittens ran up and down the hall every morning, attacked us from every dark corner and doorway, slept in the flower pots and buried potential prey under the carpet, things like wrist watches and Christmas ornaments. One day I captured Joe in a corner and our eyes locked. I have never experienced this before with any animal and with only one human when I say that we looked at each other with mutual recognition and even though I wasn’t sure about reincarnation in animals I was nevertheless sure that we knew each other to the core. He and I would always have a singular and powerful bond.

I forgot to mention that just after moving into this apartment, and a month before the kittens, we had visited Taos and Santa Fe for the first time. For many years I’d yearned to see Northern New Mexico and especially Taos, but had been too poor to travel. It was an unexplainable yearning, as if my ancestors had been exiled from the promised land and I wouldn’t be truly myself until I touched the holy soil. This is a ridiculously common story in Taos and generally underwhelms seasoned Taosenos, but nevertheless its real.

THINGS FALL APART

Since my then husband was crossing over the border of another psychotic adventure, I felt some unease about the trip but it was our first chance to get away in several years and off we went. The trip was a complex experience full to the brim with synchronistic encounters, instant infatuation with the place and terror about what would become of us as my husband’s mental state worsened and his ability to deal with people and everyday reality plummeted. Shortly after we returned home his demons took over and life became a living hell. Eventually with my mother as witness, I had to sneak off to a judges office and get a court order to have him taken in via police custody for evaluation and treatment after neighbors, landlord and co-workers told me they were terrified of him and what he might do next. I remember a three week period during which I didn’t sleep a single night because of the unpredictable 24 hours a day raucousness in our house. He swept frantically through encounters with cab drivers, restaurant owners, old and new friends, insisting to everyone that he was king David returned to save the world and other boundless extravagant claims until the time came that he could no longer put a sentence together to tell anyone anything. Word salad they call it in the psych books (tossed salad, no doubt). I walked to work every morning wondering how I kept on going without sleep while immersed up to my eyebrows with a full tilt boogie, unpredictable, high volume, blinding speed mania.

For awhile I had to leave the house because I wasn’t supposed to go near my husband due to the legal actions I’d innitiated. Although worried about leaving the kittens in such chaos I knew he wouldn’t intentionally harm them. When I was able to return they acted somewhat confused but recovered quickly and when they were a year old my parents who were helping us survive the financial disaster a severe manic eppisode creates, felt that we were paying too much rent and should own a home. Under their patronage I found a cute bungalo in a neighborhood I liked and my folks co-signed for it. It was a bit of a fix-er-upper but nothing serious. By then things had calmed down considerably and we were living in the same house again. Nevertheless, I cried all night when I received the news that our offer on the new house had been accepted. I now remember the little house fondly and I certainly put a lot of work into fixing it up but I never felt settled in, and was antsy and out of kilter all the time that we lived there. It was a trap to keep me from my life path.

THE PROMISED LAND

Around this time the bookstore started giving long term employees a paid one week vacation and of course I was off to New Mexico as soon as possible. We also made many three day weekend trips. On one such trip we had few funds but were lucky enough to get motel rooms that had something wrong with them, i.e., the air conditioning didn’t work or the TV was fried, cheap. I still remember it as the broken motel trip. Somehow there was always a way to go to New Mexico and especially Taos. The cats stayed with my parents when we left town. Then something strange happened. I suddenly became interested in the Native American world. A long dormant issue burst through a wall of lifelong ignorance and denial, breaking down layers of protective unconsciousness.

This wasn’t a real surprise to anyone except me. For years people had asked me if I was Native American or Native Hawaiian, but then they sometimes thought I was Italian or Spanish, as well. Of course I just attributed it to my long dark hair. At first when we went to New Mexico my interest was more in the Moorish/Spanish influence and history, the Native American part hadn't yet caught me. I was also totally uninterested in the artistic history of Taos even though art had been on and off a part of my life since I was five years old. I’ve since learned to look for those issues that people deny or neglect for a clue to their essence.

Synchronicticly we had arrived at the quincentenial year, 1992. It took awhile before this reality soaked through my unawareness. Now when we visited New Mexico I had an entirely different focus. I began reading everything I could about indigenous people not only from the Americas but around the world. I was also submerged in unexplainable grief that entire year. Although used to being depressed or sad, this was different. It was not personal and I couldn’t understand it. Suddenly I noticed Native People everywhere I looked; waiting at a bus stop, working on a construction project, moving next door to my parents, coming to our yard sale, in the book store and even among my fellow workers. I read up on AIM, native history in this country, and the horrendous history of all European encounters with the indigenous residents in places of their conquest.

My ex-husband had been bringing assorted “medicine men” and exploitative “apples” (red on the outside, white on the inside) purporting to be spiritual leaders and teachers into our life for several years and I wanted nothing to do with them. Now I recognized that there was a hidden theme. My ex-husband, though seriously damaged emotionally was specially attuned to my spiritual path (probably in self defense) and often intuited what was coming next in my life. I will always credit him with a genius for inspired accidents. I remember going to our first powwow. I stood near to a “drum” and the vibration  song and drumbeat surged through my body with awesome power and I was haunted by this experience for years.

THE INSPIRED ACCIDENT

One spring he called in a reservation to our favorite Taos motel.  It was inexpensive and walking distance to everything in town. The next morning the owner of the Adobe Inn called. She thought my husband may have called her Inn by mistake the evening before, since she had no reservation for us. They were listed close together in the phone book. He must have made a glitch. I assured her it was a mistake. But after talking to her for at least half and hour I agreed that we would love to meet her and also her dear friends a Medicine Man from Taos Pueblo and his wife.

We arrived in early afternoon and decided to stop by the Adobe Inn to meet owner Diane before checking in at the Adobe Wall. We never made it to the Adobe Wall. After talking to Diane until well after midnight she offered us her bedroom and she slept on the couch. The next day we met Joe J. and Frances her Taos Pueblo friends. Except for their oldest Son, Blue Spruce Standing Deer (Pba-Quen-nee-e) who was living in California, and after several more visits that summer, we’d met the entire family.

At the end of the summer I decided I had to move to Taos. My husband liked our Denver house and neighborhood but agreed that our life was in suspended animation. We decided to sell the house. I think in retrospect that he didn’t have an agenda of his own and just followed my direction. The house sold even before it was officially listed. We’d planned to list it in the fall because our real estate agent told us it might take until spring, and that was the most likely time for a sale. Hopefully, that would give us time to plan our move and find a place in Taos. But I thought to myself, “unless God wants us there sooner.”

MOVING TO THE PROMISED LAND

The house sold before it was listed and we had three weeks to find a new place and plan the move. And the move was frantic. I shut the cats in the bathroom until the movers were through taking our house apart. Everything was loaded by 2 pm except our personal items and the cats. It was mid-November and the ground was covered in ten inches of snow. After the moving truck left we put our suitcases in the car and spent the night at my parent’s home. The next morning we came back for the cats and their accessories. They were on their pillows in the basement. Joe desperately hung onto his pillow with the claws of all four feet, Missy came easier but complained verbally. I felt sad taking them out of a home that was so good to them. It was a sweet house but it was in the wrong state for the direction my soul was headed.

All the way to Taos we drove through blizzard conditions. We are each driving a car but I have both cat’s in their carriers. After a challenging trip over La Veda pass in a worsening blizzard we stop briefly in Fort Garland to let the cats out of their cages to use the litter box and have water. Then on to Taos. We arrive in the dark about 7pm and our new Land Lady has hot chocolate and our keys ready. The new house is next to hers. We put the cats and their accessories in the house and head to the Adobe Inn. The next morning after meeting with our moving truck driver we go to the house. I can’t find the cats anywhere which seems strange in a totally empty house. I spend several minutes looking in closets and behind appliances. Finally I find Missy under a raised shelf in a closet. But I can’t find Joe anywhere. Then I stop, tell myself not to panic but to think like a cat. Going straight to the kitchen I automatically open the cabinet door beneath the sink. There he is huddled in a corner and almost invisible. The cabinet door was not that easily opened. I ‘m impressed!

TAOS AS TRICKSTER

Again I put the cats in the bathroom while the mover unloads our things. However, I need to regress and explain that when we decided to move to Taos our lives changed so rapidly in that direction that our heads were still spinning. When we arrived in Taos, its famous trickster energy immediately overtook us. The driver of the moving truck, a Texan named Bo, had to rent a shuttle vehicle because the old bridges on Upper Ranchitos were too frail for an 18 wheeler. In the meantime he left his big truck at Hinds and Hinds Storage where we’d rented a space for items that didn’t fit in the new casita. After everything was unloaded at around 3:00 PM, Bo presented us with the bill and I started to write a check. Since I’d never before hired a mover I didn’t know that they don’t accept checks. Of course I didn't have the cash. Bo said he would have to load everything back on the truck and take it to Santa Fe until I got the cash or money order. We were working on a narrow slice of time because his big truck was at the storage place and would be locked up at 5:00 pm. I immediately decided to find a way that I could my bank to wire the money. We checked several possibilities but it turned out that the weather was so bad that our bank in Denver had closed early. I went back to the house and begged the mover to wait while I tried one more option. We went to a local bank and asked if they could find a way to get the money another way. Finally after dead ending with several ideas I called mom and she called her Credit Union. Fortunately they were not yet closed and managed to transfer some money to an account that we opened on the spot. We got in just under the wire and Bo was able to retrieve his big truck.

Our first meal in the new Casita was Thanksgiving. I still remember that shopping for the Turkey gave me a feeling of putting down roots. We were really living in Taos! The living room was still piled with boxes but I’d cleared the kitchen for action. All was well except for one memorable mistake. I couldn’t find my spices and tried to substitute sagebrush leaves for sage in the dressing. Not the same thing! The results were terrible. I ended up throwing it away. But the turkey pasole and atole cornbread I made with the leftovers were splendid.

The little Casita on Upper Ranchitos

Now we were in a new country, because Taos New Mexico is world apart from Denver. Without jobs or any clear idea about what to do next, I remember looking at the cats and thinking, “what have I done to you?” But it became a great adventure. We walked all over town, exploring the narrow winding lanes and shops, driving in the countryside to ancient villages that seemed caught forever in an earlier century, and also spending hours at the Taos Inn and Café Tazza meeting locals and journalizing. Almost every afternoon we went to the Adobe Inn to visit Diane and wait for Joe J. and Frances to come by. This usually resulted in a private powwow with Joe J. singing and drumming while the rest of us danced. And when we left into the total darkness of a Taos that didn’t yet have street lights, the air was laden with cedar and pinon smoke and I felt that I had finally arrived at where I’d always been in spirit.

Our marriage was rapidly becoming unworkable in Denver and although we enjoyed walks, trips of discovery in this new adventure, a practical foundation just wasn’t there. This new life I was discovering was a serious challenge to my husband's desired status in my life.  He resented that he wasn’t able to follow me into this new phase. Although there were many fondly shared memories plus the strange bond that comes from living through several disasters together, it was no longer a true marriage, and it wasn’t possible to integrate this relationship into what my life was becoming. I felt that I was walking with heavy chains on my ankles and yet felt an enormous sadness for what we’d once hoped for that could never be.

I’d begun working in a local bookstore, a job he proudly engineered for me, but I soon discovered that my bookstore days were over. On one day off I stopped at Diane’s house to see off my new friends Joe J. and Frances who were going to visit their daughter in South Dakota. Their son Pba-Quen-nee-e (Standing Deer) was also there. From the moment we’d first seen each other a few weeks earlier there was the most powerful sense of knowing and attraction that I've ever experienced. But at the time I considered my life much too dull and set in defeat and frustration to be of any interest to someone who seemed to get whomever and whatever he wanted. Beside that my dear friend Diane loved him and I thought they would someday be partners. I would later learn that he felt the same about me.

INITIATION

We both had a free afternoon and as we left Diane’s house PQ proposed that we get a cup of coffee. But before we got to the coffee shop we agreed it would be a good day to drive to Santa Fe. I will always remember the date. It was the 23rd of June, 1993. I called to tell my husband I’d be late but couldn’t get through. My husband’s whereabouts and schedule were erratic (is that an oxymoron?) and I decided to call again when we got to Santa Fe. To shorten the story, I will say that this little excursion became the turning point in my life. Nothing was ever the same from that point in time. When we got back to Taos, everyone we knew was aware that we had been in Santa Fe together and had already taken sides. I discovered that in Taos karma is instant. This created such tumult in our social group that I could never again live a compromised life hidden in the shadows. I who was used to being invisible was catapulted onto a very lonely stage under a glaring spotlight. Because of the turmoil and my husband’s constant interruptions, I lost my job. It was the first time I’d been fired. I remember thinking, “it serves you right for trying to live your old life in this new place.” A choice was demanded. My husband went into another manic episode and chaos reigned on uninhibited until I decided to move out. Joe and Missy lived with him until our divorce was final. My now ex-husband moved back to Denver and the cats and I lived in the casita for the next 12 years. This would be the womb then nursery for my difficult rebirth.

The three of us lived in the little house on Upper Ranchitos until we moved into our new Habitat for Humanity home in 2006. I don’t know how I managed it, but somehow during this time, I trained both cats to stay close to the house. I suspect that they intuited my concern and resolve to keep them safe. If I sensed that one or the other was thinking of venturing beyond my sight I called to them. But each had his/her close call before they believed me. For this reason they outlived all the other cats in a neighborhood where dogs ran loose and coyotes came out at night to prowl the neighborhood. Outwardly this was a relatively uneventful time, but internally I was quietly but radically being reconstructed from the inside out. Surprising myself, I also began painting again after a creative drought of 20 plus years. Although I knew that Taos was an artistic community that was not a serious attraction when I moved here. Instead I came to discover where I’d left my soul, and then began the process of psychically digging my way through dense layers of compromise. During this time PQ and I continued to grow closer even as he was working through his own demons, a number of relationships and two more marriages.

You Can't Take me if You Can't Find Me

Only twice did I leave Joe and Missy in a friend’s care while I took the only two vacations of my Taos years; a month in England when PQ was doing workshops in Glastonbury, and a seven day trip to Arizona to visit a dear friend and relocated Taosena. For most of our years in the casita the only times away from Taos, were buying trips to Gallup with my boss and trips to visit my parents in Denver. Generally I took Joe and Missy with me to Denver, although they were’nt fond of travelling. I always tried not to let them know we were going until the last minute by not packing until they were outside, but cats are psychic and I had to be careful not to think about the trip in their presence. However, inevitably Missy ended up under the bed clinging to her blanket while Joe crawled into a dark corner where his tabby coat made him almost invisible. When on the road they complained vociferously until we got past Questa and then would resign to reality and huddle on the floor, jumping up now and then to look out the window to see if we were getting close to their home away from home. On our way home, arriving at Questa was again the sign that we were almost home. Joe would jump on my lap and Missy moved to the front seat. For the first time during the trip they would both peer out the window to see where we were.

This pattern continued until a number of years after my father passed, when mom decided to sell the family home. Although I didn’t realize it at the time this event heralded the end of a major life phase and the beginning of another. Such passages have always been alchemical events both psychologically and spiritually. One would think I’d be aware of the signs by now, but they always manage to sneak in without detection or perhaps my attention becomes so diverted by the inevitable chaos that I’m only able to process these events in retrospect. The sometimes boring but quiet life at the Casita was coming to a close.

Now remembering mom’s sale of the house and the move to her new apartment I wonder how we all survived. Only two weeks to do what we needed at least six weeks to accomplish. There were fifty nine years of accumulated belongings to sell and disperse while involved in the house closing, setting up new accounts, and settling mom and her remaining belongings in the new place, and putting the leftovers in storage. Joe and Missy were terrified and spent as much time as circumstances allowed under my old bed. Chaos tornadoed around them and eventually I decided to leave that bed in the house so that they would have a place to hide while the old furniture and all they were familiar with in their home away from home came undone.

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

The day after moving mom into her new apartment, I received news that PQ’s father Joe J. (Medicine Mountain) was dying and that I needed to be back in Taos as soon as possible. We had all visited him at the hospital just before I left for Denver. I was concerned that I wouldn’t see him again and felt a helpless apprehension because I could do nothing about the timing. Now I was focused on getting back to Taos as quickly as possible. I arrived around 5:00 pm and learned that Joe J. had asked to be taken to his ancestral Pueblo house to die. We waited, family and friends for that time when there was no turning back. His brave wife signaled his son, Pba-quen-nee to turn off the oxygen and all went quiet. I walked out the familiar ancient door into a moonlit night leaving the family members to talk among themselves, making plans and preparations for his final ceremony. The Pueblo magic was powerful that night. I looked toward the sacred mountain and was sure that Joe J’s spirit was already there. The peace was as soft and smooth as velvet.

Life went on but not as usual. Missy never really recovered from the chaos in Denver. She began to lose weight and often peed on the carpet, something she’d never done before. I suspect she’d become diabetic. I took her to the vet and he gave me a special diet for her but she never really recovered. Joe always got through things easier than his sister but I noticed that he was beginning to limp and found it difficult to jump on the bed. Since he always jumped onto my bed about half way through the night this was a big change. The next summer, the Habitat for Humanity house I’d worked on and with for two years was finally ready. We moved in on August 6, 2006. Again I put the cats in the bathroom while movers took out all the big furniture. This was traumatic and profound for all of us. The old Casita had been our home for so long, it felt like who we were. On the other hand it was fun choosing colors and arranging rooms. In this new house, weeds wouldn’t be growing up through cracks in the wall, and it would be much more difficult for skunks to dig a home under the porch. The cats were now too old to bring snakes and prairie dogs into the kitchen but I would miss my hollyhocks. I took seeds from the many flowers I’d planted around the old house, just as I’d brought seeds from my garden in Denver when we moved to Taos.

New Casita

This new house was a fresh start. But it required that I loosen my grip on the past. I refreshed my skills with electric drill and hammer and enjoyed planting grass, laying down flagstones for a patio and seeding new flowers. I chose matching sheets and towels for the first time in my life. I anticipated that the cats would enjoy the wide adobe window sills but discovered that they were now too old to jump. Nevertheless they became used to their new digs faster than I expected. In a short time I felt I’d lived in this house a long time. Mom and my Denver friends came to visit and it was great to have more than one bedroom. PQ’s mom, Frances wasn't feeling well and we took her to her medicine man in Isletta, but I think we knew that she didn’t want to be here anymore. She and Joe J. were partners in every way and she felt her job was over. One evening he came to the house to tell me that she’d been diagnosed with cancer and only had a few months left. Frances appeared to be relieved, and though in pain, she looked out her kitchen window toward the big mountain and talked to her husband promising to join him as soon as possible. She left us during a blizzard the week after Thanksgiving.

Missy and Joe on the Porch of our Old Casita 

I lost Missy the following summer in late July. I’d just returned from a family reunion in Denver and PQ took care of Joe and Missy while I was gone. She was as usual when I returned but the next day she broke a tooth and went into toxic shock. It turned out that she’d been living with a serious gum disease for several years. Added to her diabetes it was too much for her weakened body. It was a personal loss but strengthened by the realization that an era of my life was ending. I consoled myself with the knowledge that she’d become comfortably at home in the new house but I wondered what Joe would do without his sister. They had been together since conception. He was losing weight and his arthritis caused him to limp when he first got up. He liked the space between the TV and rocking chair. It was protected dark and cozy. He was no longer able to jump on the sofa or my bed, although sometimes I lifted him up.

 Two days after Thanksgiving I had to make a choice. He was in pain and cried constantly. I couldn’t let him go on like this until Monday and talked the vet into making a space for us on Saturday morning. The ride to the vet seemed like driving through a dark tunnel. I couldn’t help thinking that when I came back my life would be forever different. The end was easy for Joe. After the shot he went to sleep quietly, but as I ran my hand over his soft coat for the last time, the impact of having stepped across a one way border in time was overwhelming. Our life together was in the past and with it went eighteen years and all the beginnings and endings that made this life what it had become. When I got home I took a photo of his last footprint in the snow.

MATURITY LIKE IT OR NOT

My mother passed away the following spring. Now both Pba-quen-nee-e and I are orphans and there is no generation ahead of us to pad the future. It’s a strange feeling; this knowing that in what seemed like an eye blink one is thrust into the role of family elder. Time takes on an entirely different meaning. Through 19 years of lives within lives, each story deserving of its own telling, we finally came together as life partners this past September. In reliving the events that brought us to this particular spot in eternity, I see how important it is to look at the past with awe and gratitude, and to grieve in honor of those that no longer share the journey with us for they have become the backdrop to our drama for the rest of this earthly performance. And my little feline markers of time have taken an honored role as time brackets in the most important story of this woman’s life.

Many Me’s

As the snow was coming down two nights ago, a long buried reality suddenly surfaced. Something about the cold dampness in the air, and that first dark of the evening evoked a new state that I recognized as an old identity. It was much more than a memory. Immediately I am experiencing the world as it is shortly before Christmas of 1949. It is actually another reality into which I have accidentally fallen. I feel the heavy wet snow, hear the chains on the tires of the cars moving down Morrison Road along which the snowplow has recently piled up a three foot bank of snow. Our old 1936 Dodge just brought us home from a visit to my grandparents and the snow is coming down hard. My dad is an excellent driver in any kind of weather and as a native Coloradoan; he has driven in snow since he was fourteen.

I love this time of year. Christmas is a time I can go beyond the ordinary without anyone objecting. My cousin Billy and I have two games we play to avoid boredom when we are on the road, one is identifying the model and year of the cars we pass on the road and at Christmas season it is counting the decorated houses and rating the decorations. I’m seeing Christmas decorations in the style of 1949. The big bulbs in red, green and blue with the heavy wires, pinned around windows and hung from eaves, I can see them perfectly just as I can feel the cold air. People with lights on their outdoor trees get extra points. And lighted nativities are awesome. These are usually on wealthy homes. My folks will drive us through these kinds of neighborhoods during Christmas season.

This particular year I finally get through to my parents that I don’t want dolls for Christmas and they give me a toy model of a 1950 Ford. I am both surprised and delighted. I still have that Ford even though it shows the wear of time and use with a bumper tied on with bailing wire. Ordinary memory tells me that next year I will get a dump truck. Wow!

I have fallen back to a previous identity many times, but with this occurrence, it dawned me that it is more than a curious anomaly and I decided to explore the phenomena. It usually happens when a sensory memory is triggered. The particular feeling of a breeze, a time of day, or the sight of a familiar object related to a time in the past. Suddenly I am in that world even though it may be buried under many layers of personal history and represent a self whose identity is long forgotten.

I was recently listening to an interview of Brugh Joy by Jeffrey Mishlove:

Brugh Joy is talking about what could be classified as multiple personality disorder by a traditional psychologist. However, he is saying that it’s something that everyone has. Is this being that is writing this page carrying an illusion of self? The good students of psycho-science will probably get upset with this thought and say that we are really just making a disorder sound cosmic. But my question is, why call it a disorder? Maybe we are just tapping into a bigger order than we usually care to deal with. Also it’s just plain confusing to think multidimensionally. We must trim experience down into chunks we can deal with every day on just one dimension at a time.

I suspect that even though our need to focus requires a trimmed down reality these other identities with their own time/space are necessary resources. But it goes both ways. They need our current time/space surface self as well. This on stage self in the so called here and now is unwittingly working for all of our selves.

You probably know that I don’t believe that creation occurred with a big bang billions of years ago, nor do I believe that a supreme being made it a few thousand years ago. I believe that creation is now, all of the nows; from the tiny now that I’m experiencing, to a place that time can’t touch. Time is convenient and probably necessary for physical existence but it only works on a narrow platform.

We usually think we know who and what we are unless we accidentally fall through a soft spot in the floor of our agreed upon existential stage. Brugh Joy talks about the phenomena that one of our selves can be fit and healthy while another one may succomb to a disease. It’s actually possible to save the physical body by putting the identity that is healthy on stage or transversely a sick self may be appeasing a demon that requires a toll for something from the past or is protecting us from something even worse. What seems tragic may have deeper roots into a dimension and reality that would only make sense if we had eyes like a cosmic eagle that saw the overall picture. This is the reason, of course, that Native Shamans cultivate eagle essence.

All of the different selves from different times in a single physical life are energetically connected with each other as well as with the self we currently claim. They can become a working community or they can lead to chaos. Most of the time (I get nervous anymore whenever I use the word time) we get by without any recognition that we are more than me. But usually the other people in our lives can attest to there being some surprises under our hood. Just as primitive people get a shock when they see themselves in a mirror for the first time, the recognition that I am not who I think I am is both unsettling and intriguing. Let’s see where it goes. There are Everest’s to climb in that other world just as in the one I'm peering from now.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN AND 2012

Money, Sex and Power—the Cleansing?

The planet (or dwarf) Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 and will stay until 2024. This hasn't happened in 248 years. At the same time we have been getting lots of speculation on the meaning of 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar. Whether you believe that Pluto is a planet or dwarf it has long been associated with drastic change both personally and historically. Capricorn is the sign of public institutions, authority, social accomplishment and tradition. On an individual level it is expressed as social ambition, responsibility, and love of tradition and is associated with the revered role of the father. On a social level it expresses as the patriarchal ideals and ambitions that have ruled western civilization for several thousand years. Lately the people and issues associated with Capricorn have been under siege. The economic and political arena is undergoing severe functional meltdown and public shame. Shame is the ultimate disaster for all that is ruled by the principles of Capricorn.

A recent example is the firing of Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. I sense that the Jerry Sandusky incident at Penn State is going to grow into something much larger. In fact “grow” may not be the correct term. It is more like the tip of a great stone long buried in the earth but recently tripped over. The timing of such discoveries is important. Pluto in Capricorn will eventually indicate the hidden sordidness underlying practically all of our institutions. Outwardly they claim to represent stability, sanity and truth but in reality it is a façade. Beneath the surface our most respected institutions are rotting and putrid.

Not only is the financial basis of our economies turning out to be a mismanaged sham but also the shadow side of all our respected institutions is being exposed again and again. One can only wonder where it will lead. I can think of two fairy tales that address our most pressing issues, “the Emperor’s New Clothes,” and “the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Of course both of these stories indicate that this isn’t a new problem but an ever-present aspect of the social facade of power.

Why are these issues coming out now? It isn’t new by any reckoning. But there is an emerging force at this time that wants to bring the closet doors off their hinges. The skeletons need some light. Politicians are also being swept off their shiny patent shoes to land up close and personal on a vengeful Mother Earth. But is it vengeance or an overriding need to sweep the bullshit off the stage of human drama. Could it be that 2012 is not about cosmic catastrophe as much as a cosmic shutdown on spin?

Losing the Box

We humans look through our cultural glasses in fearful expectation that the monsters of extraterrestrial invasion, natural disaster and out of control war and terrorism will rage on until all of our cultural structures are fatally besieged by some terrible cosmic force. Maybe it means that an asteroid will hit us, or all the fault lines around our planet will catastrophically act up. Or, perhaps the poles will turn us upside down and we will have a climactic catastrophe that will all but wipe us off the earth. But what about the familiar world we take for granted? What if we have been duped all along about the power and importance of human structures? What if they don’t need some cosmetic repairs as much as a total remake. Astrologically the planet Pluto represents destruction and reconstruction. Unfortunately you don’t get reconstruction without first getting destruction. Before we can get out of the box it has to be dismantled. Why? Because we don’t even know we are in it until it isn’t there anymore.

Before we humans are aware of the possibility of jumping out of our boxes, we first try to make them work better in any way we can. Capricorn concerns institutional boxes. It rules our social designs and systems of responsible authority. Modern scientific age humans attempt to find rational, legal and scientific ways to fix whatever is going wrong. This is inevitable. Simply put we first try to improve our box. But as Albert Einstein said, “it is impossible to solve a problem within the system of the problem,”

It seems to me that the greatest human mistake in times like these is to believe that our socially agreed on forms are a reality sanctified by God. Then we project any suspicion that this might not be entirely true onto foreign enemies or cosmic catastrophes. Even God will inevitably fail us because the word and concept is continuously created by we humans, a less than godlike species. God is a concept that must change from time to time to include a larger more high-definition image of the ultimate authority. Since we cannot but be less than our creator is it’s impossible to ever adequately define our “Ultimate Source.”

Pluto the Cleaner

Medieval Depiction of Pluto and Persephone

Pluto in mythology rules the underworld and protects earth’s treasures. Whatever Pluto fingers seem to turn first into shit and last into gold. It is about cleansing the form until its essence is revealed. Here are two quotes from astrologer/historian/mythologist Neil Giles:

Pluto in Capricorn will test the durability and regenerative resources of leaders and governments across the globe, as well as business and the corporate world. Old or staid structures will collapse or come apart at the seams if they cannot redefine their nature and cope with changing conditions and needs. The renewal or discarding of traditional practices or beliefs will play a part in this for Capricorn draws from inherited wisdom and practice. Those traditions that find new life will serve to guide modern leadership while those that are uprooted or outmoded will pass into oblivion. On the one hand, we will see the renewal of traditional power or thinking that can endure while on the other, we will see its displacement by the forces of the new, as leaders and systems find themselves under the pump. No doubt, Pluto in Capricorn will bring service where others will be ruthlessly ambitious and materialistic….

…In such a pressure-cooker as this coming cycle, it may eventually occur to us as a species that we cannot continue trying to solve our problems with a bullying thrust of violent intervention. Just as we will have to look to alternative energy sources, we must also realize that we cannot keep building roads to the future by blowing up everything that gets in the way of our intended path. Obstacles to our desires are there to teach us, not frustrate us. It is time we learned that salutary lesson from Pluto. The sign of Capricorn teaches the proper sense of organization and responsibility required for effective social contribution. With Pluto in Capricorn in the coming era, the imperative is to learn how to make one, how to put aside the power mongering and the drama and do something that works. The destiny that is written in the stars is also in our hands.

Mythologicaly, Pluto is also a caretaker of great treasures. What are the treasures that Pluto may have been protecting? Perhaps it is the cosmic power of evolution and deep healing. While we are getting a lot of attention focused on the meaning of 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar, I’m thinking how so often different sources of occult information support each other and these two seem to be synced. Death and birth continually follow each other in the reality we occupy. Generally we are more aware of what is dying than of what might be going through birth pangs. Energy never ceases to exist but the forms it takes do change.

Creation is continuous. Pluto and the astrological sign it rules, Scorpio is known for hidden power. In a sense they represent the shadow side of life. The part that is generally denied disowned and suppressed. With that suppressed power is the power of regeneration, historically and prehistorically the realm of the goddess. She is just beginning to rise from thousands of years of repression. When something of elemental significance is repressed it takes on an ugly, destructive humiliating form in society. Eventually it will bring us down. Only by recognizing in all humility that we are not gods and it is even more dangerous to pretend godliness will we ever hope to fulfill our divine purpose. Money, sex and power are all realms of Pluto but we must be willing to pay our due. The goddess energy symbolized as Mother Earth can turn it to gold if we don’t try to trick her or remove her from the creative process. It is now time for the God and Goddess to make peace with each other. That is the only way to move from destruction to reconstruction.

HOW TO FIND HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
------Rumi


Secret societies are not necessary for hiding advanced ancient knowledge considered too dangerous for naïve minds. In most cases if the recipient is not ready to

receive it there is no way it will stick in his/her mind. Most hidden knowledge is actually hiding in plain sight. It will simply slide “like water off a duck’s back,” as the saying goes. It seems to me that the only time secrecy is truly needed is when it is the evolutionary time for a revelation or major spiritual/social upgrade to emerge and those in power are threatened and consequently attempting to prevent it. It never works but they always try and the results are generally bloody.

Many advances in consciousness are completely lost to most of the public because they haven’t got their perceptive tools honed to receive it. They are still conceptually supporting an outdated paradigm. Habit is very powerful. As Einstein said, “it is impossible to solve a problem within the system of the problem.” Of course most of the time we are unaware of being within a conceptual system. Hidden ignorance is much more prevalent than hidden knowledge.

Nevertheless, I’m amazed at how quickly knowledge and social advancements can be forgotten after one generation. I’m sure it wouldn’t have vanished had it actually penetrated the outer layers of perception. I can’t help wondering if there is a formula for mass brainwashing. For those of you who can remember the enormous social and spiritual openings of the 70’s and 80’s of the 20th century it seems as if a magic spell of forgetfulness overtook the masses. I’m not saying this is a totally bad thing, however. Sometimes changes come too fast to integrate. Although many ideas and concepts that had been hidden for centuries came out in the open as if a long hidden door had suddenly become visible, many people where not emotionally or spiritually prepared to maintain these concepts or use them appropriately. The essence remained hidden.

The latest in communication technology is moving through our world faster than we can assimilate it. While the delivery system grows ever faster and more sophisticated the content seems to be more and more simplistic. Too much turns out to be the same as not enough if it is delivered faster than it can be processed. This may be the best way yet to control consciousness. Just deliver information so fast that it can’t be processed and it’s more effective, way more effective than censuring it.

I remember the power that a single idea in a single book had when I first began climbing outside the box I was born in. Now ideas come in so fast there is no time to integrate them. What if the real revolution comes as an entirely different way of processing information? What if we really do begin to look outside the box (sometimes literally a box shaped device such as TV, smart phone, or Computer). Maybe we will wake up and notice such contradictions as “fighting for peace,” and going to war to impose democracy by force on other countries. Although these terms are just rhetoric many people haven’t learned to recognize the contradictions because they choose to trust authority when it tells them their box is safe and righteous.

Most people on earth right now sense that major change is in the works with economic collapse, war, exposure of high level disfunction and deception, etc. But its very common to look for guidance and reassurance to ideas that are products of the very system that is failing. Nevertheless, there will always be a few people who fall out of a disintegrating box and find it liberating after the terror passes. It is for these individuals that genuine secret knowledge will become available. Not because they are on an ego trip, join a secret society, or are smarter than anyone else, but because the painted curtain covering the window of perception is torn and the world outside is revealed. It won’t come all at once because the curtain tears away bit by bit, but it will come.

If this knowledge fills you with the power of love and compassion it is truly hidden knowledge and it comes truly from the Creator. Authentic knowledge comes from the integration of head with heart and if the heart is missing you have been deceived again.

THE PATH BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR

By Marti Fenton White Deer Song

In the beginning we see in the other a reflective mirror of all we desire to be
And fall in love with the beauty of our own potential in another.
This sweetness lures us into the magic mirror and onto the path.
The spirit of love has a scheme for this sweet attraction
To mold our souls into a unique configuration of the divine,
Bringing differences into new recognition. Seducing us with hope
Of what gracious treasures lie along the road.


Then comes the fall from paradise, or so it seems, when the mirror shatters from
The shock of our imperfect reflection and this path seems dead-ended.
We see only weeds where flowers grew.
Many end their story here, tear up the memories and begin again
Always seeking the beautiful in anticipation of a new beginning.
Like a too high flying balloon, the dream bursts
Drifting to the dense earth in torn shreds.


Yes, we live in an imperfect world and when we feel the
Cruel hardness of the ground that breaks this fall and our dream
We feel deceived, betrayed by the one being we thought
Should free us from our fate and lead us to our dreams.
Torn apart, alone, betrayed, the dream shattered,
Each of us seemingly deceived by a false image of the other.
Many end their journey together at this harsh fork in the road.


But this isn’t a rightful ending for those with heart.
The trickster god of the crossroad, Hermes, Alchemist,
Magician of turning lead to gold is testing
Readiness for the next stage of this adventure,
But do we have the courage?


Love is not a game but a perilous journey.
Many souls die along the way deteriorating where they fell
While only their ghost drifts on lost in self-deceiving dreams.
If we survive this test we discover that we are able to walk through
Many broken mirrors, then meet in a new reality where we become
Co-creators in our shared future.


Those who survive into this unique partnership called marriage
Are as a pebble dropped in the sea of the world,
Waves spreading out in all directions as
Fractals of the human potential.


For in love lie all the dangers, challenges and powers of
Our human adventure on earth. We build this road to the future for those
Who continue the journey when our adventure has reached its final destination.
In true love, two into one have the strength of many.
And we are not lost to ourselves but recognized for who we are yet to be.

On September 24th Standing Deer and I were married. This turned out to be a greater step than I anticipated. Perhaps the degree and intensity of the event is in proportion to everything leading up to it. After all we’ve known each other for 19 years and been lovers much of that time. Our relationship has continued to develop through two marriages and many girlfriends and it has been beyond understanding for most of our friends.

I think the last phase began about two years ago but I’m not sure about the time. I had finally decided to give up on any future us. It wasn’t the first time but it was the best time. It came after another drifting out on his part. He had sworn undying love, said he would never hurt me again, apologized for what he put me through and then began to fade out. Before long he was dating someone else but didn’t say so. I just knew the signs by then. I couldn’t stand to see all that I put in his house being used by another woman so I removed my paintings and the small pieces from my mother’s house. We had worked together for weeks to clean decorate and paint his house. My mother had passed a few months before and it was comforting to have her furniture in the home of my love. Now I felt betrayed. He reacted by having me take everything out. I rented a large storage space at Hinds & Hinds next to Smith’s grocery. I met him there and we unloaded the furniture silently. The tension was as tight as a piano string.

Even through grief and disappointment I felt a surge of renewed energy. I moved all of the things in my garage to that storage space and every load I took lightened my soul and linked me to the person I was when I first came to Taos. My heart was both shattered and renewed at the same time. I remembered just how the air felt and saw the leaves in the trees become greener and the sky cleared. I was back to my beginning in Taos. My first husband and I used this storage space when we first arrived. Everything came back as if no time had passed. Excitement, grief, anticipation of the new adventure, as well as the people who became part of our new life, all were here again just as they had been. I looked at my mother’s furniture. The new furniture that she and I picked out when she moved to the senior apartment that was her last home. It was beautiful and truly her own in every way. I felt sad that this phase had already ended and yet she was complete in her own way. Now it belonged to me as well as the memories that went with it. The emotions were so big that I couldn’t contain them all at once and I came back again and again. I prayed, I cried, I remembered and remembered. I knew that my old life was over and though I didn’t know what was ahead I was finally ready to find out with no expectations of the future.

For the first time in years my life force was awakened and I was ready to move on. That same spring I went to Denver to see friends and family. My dear friend Rachel and I ate at our favorite Italian restaurant and I told her that I realized that Standing Deer simply couldn’t do a relationship and that I finally recognized that it was unfair of me to expect more than he was capable of. I could care for him as an old friend and important person in my Taos experience but I needed to move on and be well when he did the same.

On the way home my cell phone rang at the top of La Veda pass. My first instinct said that it was Standing Deer and it was. We had been on the same plan and he gave his phone back to me when we broke up so I knew he didn’t have a phone. I surmised that he was in a bar and borrowed someone’s phone. I soon lost connection because reception only works on the top of the pass. When I got to the bottom I called the number recorded on my phone but the man that answered didn’t know who or what I was talking about. So I let it go. When I arrived in Taos he called again and said he had another piece of my furniture that he wanted to return and asked me to meet him at the storage unit. I said I’d take my luggage home first and meet him in an hour. After unloading I remembered that I had the cell phone he’d returned to me in a drawer. Since I was responsible for the duration of the contract whether or not he used it I decided to take it along and offer it to him.

At the storage we were a bit stiff but after unloading the piece I offered him the phone to use for the rest of the contract. He seemed a bit reticent but decided to take it. I could feel something else on his mind. After several awkward seconds he asked if I would like to have a glass of wine before we went home. We considered a couple of places in town and then he suggested the Steak Out. This was a place where we used to watch the sunset over the entire valley from the patio. This was the beginning of a new chapter. Everything changed that evening.

I felt free for the first time. I no longer cared what he thought of me or what our past had been. I just felt comfortable listening to what he’d been doing and sharing my Denver trip with him. He said he wanted to do some travelling and felt he wanted to stay out of relationships until he was clearer. We drank way too much wine. There was an Indian man at the same bar from San Juan Pueblo and we discovered we had some friends in common. We talked to him and shared a couple more bottles. Finally it was dark and late. Neither of us said anything about it but he came home with me.

After that night we were together. There were a couple of minor glitches when he decided to live alone in his house for a few days. But it didn’t last and gradually those times went away. This was the first time we’d actually lived together on a daily basis. But always there was something between us that wouldn’t go away no matter what we intended or who we were with.

So much has changed since that day at the storage space that it’s not easy to remember how we used to be. He insists that it was that particular day at that particular place that everything in his life changed. He did exactly the opposite of what he’d intended to do because at that moment he realized he would regret it forever if he didn’t.

The next spring we visited Cottonwood and Sedona Arizona, scheduled a workshop for the following September and made several more trips. Because of Standing Deer’s lung problems we decided to move there for the rest of the year. We found a charming little cottage in Cottonwood. It was a blissful time. We enjoyed furnishing it, visiting friends, painting in the covered porch, hiking and getting used to living together. We grew very close because it was our home rather than his or mine.

We are in Taos again taking care of our homes here but we hope to be in Arizona this winter. It will be different this time. I find that we are so much freer together now. It is quite a surprise because I had a meltdown two days before the wedding. A dark cloud was hanging over me and I felt that all the demons of my previous lives were ganging up to create some disaster. Fortunately I’m old enough to recognize a panic attack. It’s not easy to accept the realization of one’s hopes and dreams. There is nothing left to anticipate and reality presents the possibility of disappointment. Standing Deer was so happy and full of joy that I felt guilty for these feelings but decided I had to share them with him or risk sabotaging everything we were about. After that crisis everything was smooth and the wedding itself was a beautiful experience. It became a wonderful gathering of friends. I must say there is a glow that is still sending energy to everyone within range.

Update: I’m finishing this piece in Cottonwood, Arizona. We are house-sitting for a dear friend, and hoping to find a place for the winter. Yesterday we weathered our first major crisis. Standing Deer had his melt-down post wedding. Later I realized how important it was. His oldest demons decided to put us to the test. We got through it together and came out better than before but it made me realize that “happily ever after” is shallow. This partnership is about transformation and the fulfillment of a contract made before we met in this world we now share as partners.

NATIONAL MEMORY: 9/11

After a week of media saturation around the tenth year anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center I’ve been aware that something didn’t feel right. As I thought about it, I recognized that actually several things were bothering me about the way the media was using this emotionally charged anniversary.

First, was the sense that reminders of this disaster were being used for propaganda by the media to re-open the wounds and direct the pain of Americans against “the enemy” that caused this pain. I remember having a very similar reaction at my Grandmother’s funeral. For years I’d been feeling swindled at funeral services but that was the first time it emerged to consciousness. The minister was using grandma’s funeral as a chance to sell his agenda to people who wouldn’t normally be his audience. It didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else, but then they were desensitized to this approach just as I’d been. Is the American public desensitized to efforts to stir up an intended reaction for an ulterior purpose or are we just naturally naïve?

One of the best ways to package propaganda is to wrap it in gold and present it as sacred and thus above question. The World Trade Center attack and the two planes that were involved in other attacks that same day were certainly victims of a terrible and tragic attack. Of that there is no question. The idea that it was not a military engagement but an attack on innocent civilians was at the core of the outrage. However, the preferred interpretation of and reaction to such an event is often slipped in secretly along with the facts. When people are emotional they are not analyzing the logic of an interpretation.

It could be argued that the war that ensued as a supposed act of revenge has killed many more innocent civilians than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. One can’t help but wonder about the motives in making a tragedy into a weapon of war. Who is it really serving?

Another issue concerns me. Is America so sacred and special that we should expect to be divinely protected from the tragedies that befall other nations? I’ve often suspected that such naivete would one day cause us to fall victim to reality. We are taught that we wear the white hats and those who don’t like us wear black hats. It’s a simplistic adolescent belief and the powers that be use it for their own ends. I’m suggesting that the victims of 9/11 were twice victimized. Once by the conspirators that crashed the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and second by those in power in their own country who use their tragedy as a political tool. Some, more cynical than I actually believe that the tragedy was secretly engineered within our own government. I’m more inclined to believe that it happened because the agencies that should have been protecting us were too smug to take mounting evidence seriously and that they were also victims of the belief that America is invincible.

America’s greatest weakness is to hide its weaknesses from itself. Group consciousness frequently seems more primitive than individual consciousness. Groups on the whole operate at a lower moral standard than individuals and often the individual members accept attitudes and behaviors on a national level that would be considered criminal on an individual level. Modern warfare is a good example. Dropping bombs on civilians is acceptable and at the same time we often go to great links to save a premature infant. Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said about the horror of his political purges, “the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of thousands is a statistic.” The euphemistic military terms intended to deliberately remove the emotional impact of destruction and death are effectively based on the same principle. Here is a list of common examples:

•  "Take Out" - Destroy
•  "Wet Work" - Assassination
•  "Area Denial Munitions" - Land Mines
•  "Physical Persuasion/Tough Questioning" - Torture
•  "Operational Exhaustion" - Shell Shock
•  "Department of Defense" - Department of War
•  "Neutralize" - Kill
•  "Collateral Damage" - Civilian Deaths
•  "Target of Opportunity" - Assassination
•  "Regime Change" - Overthrowing of a government
•  "Shock and Awe" - Blitzkrieg
•  "Surgical Strike" - The use of guided munitions
•  "Caught in cross-fire" - Innocents shot dead by soldiers
•  "Ethnic Cleansing" - Genocide
•  "Protective Custody" - Imprisonment without charge or trial
•  "Generous Offer" - Demand for Surrender
•  "Incursion" - Attacking with heavy metal
•  "Air Campaign" - Bombing
•  "Friendly Fire" - Death caused to one's own troops
•  "Prohibiting Transactions" - Economic embargo
•  "Soft targets" - humans
•  "All out strategic exchange" - Nuclear War
•  "Open up on" - Fire upon with all available weaponry
•  "Frag" - Kill a friendly soldier (now extended to enemies as well)
•  "Greenbacking" - Hiring mercenaries
•  "Monitoring" - Eavesdropping, spying
•  "Conventional weapon" - Non-nuclear weaponry
•  "Clean bomb" - Neutron bomb, only kills people leaving infrastructure intact
•  "Nerve agent" - Poison gas
•  "Strategic movement to the rear" - Retreat
•  "Pacify" - Lay waste to, destroy
•  "Pre-emptive strike" - Surprise attack
•  "Second strike capability" - Ability to retaliate with nuclear weaponry

It is emotion that motivates humans. To enhance the emotional impact of an event or remove its emotional impact is the most powerful of political tools.

LITTLE HOUSE, BIG PICTURE

Another challenging life event has presented itself. The little house in Cottonwood, Arizona that we lived in during the winter of 2009/10 is for sale. It is actually affordable if we should decide to buy it. However, then we would own three houses. I put three houses on my want list two years ago but felt a bit like a greedy profligate when I did so. I envisioned being able to move around from one home to another, and to rent out the ones we didn’t happen to be using. Since I also believed there was an energy flow between Sedona and Taos that I wanted to connect it seemed meaningful. But my old self thought that was humbug. Perhaps the primary lesson is about which values I’m going to represent publicly.

I never let go of the little house in my heart. It represented another layer of being. I felt excruciating sadness when I looked at the pictures we took while decorating it and remembered our morning coffee on the porch, watching the lizards and birds, the neighbors roosters crowing at 2:00 AM, the view of the mountains to the west and how close we became while living there. The loss of the furniture inherited from my mother and PQ’s mother still haunts me. We had everything we needed plus the things we found at Saddle Rock Barn and the second hand stores of Cottonwood. All were intensely infused with the joy of our first adventure as a couple. This was the place where our new life began. Although I loved my Taos house, this little house was not his, or mine it was ours. I see that it marked a significant life shift that began with great hope. But we ran into glitches early on such as the truck blowing a rod on one of our trips back to Taos and the failure of our plans to rent out our Taos houses to cover expenses in Cottonwood. Yet we had a wonderful time in that house making it our home base and exploring the area. When we had to leave it was heartbreaking and we knew we wanted to come back. We couldn’t find help to get our furniture out of the house and back to Taos and we both still regret selling and giving away everything. I feel guilt as though I'd committed a crime against the spirit who led us there and our parents who provided our furniture. How can this be healed?

So here is another life challenge. I actually put this whole arrangement on my secret want list some time ago. It has manifest as a possibility exactly as I desired. Not perfectly however, desired and perfectly are not the same thing. The house is under lease until January 2012 and the realtor says it is a short sale, for me a new real estate term that means it is being sold for less than is owed on it. However, it brings up one of my core issues. Do I deserve it and is it real, or a trickster’s tease? Or is it a phantom that belongs to a time that has now passed? Although it is of great interest, I realize that I must not plunge into a new commitment that is beyond our means, and at the same time it may not be possible to pick up where we left off. That sounds like two issues but they are welded together.

When I moved to Taos almost 20 years ago I manifest the whole situation exactly as it turned out. But this doesn’t mean it turned out perfectly. Some things blew up in my face. In retrospect I can see that the reason for this was that I was trying to make two opposing life agendas work together. This has been a lifelong pattern that I wish to be rid of. Taos does not permit that kind of nonsense. Less charged environments, like the one I'd come from, allowed such prolonged impasses and the ensuing stagnation and consequently I didn’t fully perceive the absurdity of trying to stop and go at the same time. Each confirmation or realization of a hope or dream comes loaded with karmic lessons. I’m not being negative when I say that. In fact I believe that one of the faults in the currently flouted teachings on manifestation is that it usually fails to acknowledge that everything has two sides and when we acquire something we seriously desire we also receive a lesson on the hidden motives for placing importance on this desired object or situation. In addition the universe operates on a higher level than individual desires. The good and the bad work in tandem and we don't have the perspective to see the big picture. Often these seemingly small issues are a doorway to a karmic healing.

In my case the karmic issue is, “do I deserve it,” and if I don’t will I be punished for manifesting it? I believe I need to break this down even more. I don’t generally believe that I deserve anything, because I don’t believe in my right to be here in the first place. Am I breaking some cosmic law by existing? I suspect that this is related to my baby sisters death and the events surrounding her death when I was three years old. This period of time marked the beginning of my alienation from the people around me. Her death also triggered the sicklyness my mother experienced for years after my sister’s death. I on the other hand was a perfectly healthy child, brimming with energy, curiosity and life force but I came to feel ashamed and even embarrassed about being who I was and for being alive. I’m sure in retrospect that I actually felt responsible for the death of my sister and the ensuing suffering of my mother. My mother dramatized her sicklyness in an attempt to activate some kind of compassionate response from my father and her friends. Instead they withdrew and left her feeling abandoned.

To enforce this situation my parents seemed to find most of my enthusiasms and passions totally unacceptable and inappropriate. It was comparable to making jokes and playing games at a funeral. I embarrassed them just by my childish existence. On the other hand I acquired some importance by being independent and helpful. My own needs and desires, however, didn’t fit into the arrangement. My central conflict is about what to do with the life force and if one can live correctly in a world with other people.

Is a good life, a creative, passionate and influential life possible when surrounded by the pain and failure of others? I set out to fail in my hopes and desires from the beginning to avoid the unbearable heaviness of guilt. Now I’m trying to sort the real from the neurotic. But I’m no longer a perfectionist. I’ve learned that there are many ways to get to the right place and its better not to become obsessed by just one.

FALLING INTO THE FUTURE

My constant and primary lesson in life is about taking responsibility for being myself out front in the full light, without pretending to fit somebody else' s needs and expectations but honestly taking on my own place in time. But this is about more than just me. A long line of ancestors hid in the safety of agreement and mediocrity. Not because they were socially or mentally challenged but because they believed it was safe and virtuous. We didn’t know it but we insulted the Creator by assuming he wanted yes men and women. I had to lose my faith before I realized that our so-called obedience was actually an insult to the Creator. What kind of God depends on followers to flatter his ego?

Stay Big,
Don’t Shrink.
Be in the Sun,
Avoid the dark.
Talk strong don’t whisper.
And above everything,
Honor your heart’s desires.
Speak and act what you believe,
Especially what you want to believe.
Make the dreams real and constantly
Lie this truth until it becomes real on Earth.

The first card in the Tarot.
Stepping into the unknown of life.

This poem came to me a number of years ago when it seemed that everything that I valued was losing its light and life. The world was shrinking to the size of my little adobe living room and each day was lost in the predictable monotony of the little shop where I worked. I didn’t have enough money to make a change and all of my loves were waiting for the space of time I never had. The world was closing in, and I was beginning to forget why I came to New Mexico, the vision and hope that caused me to take a leap of faith. Of course nothing worked out as I hoped it would but that isn’t the point. I didn’t know enough about the destiny of my world to hope in the right way. Taos is a harsh teacher with more than a little trickster energy. Dreams are never allowed to rest in peace, nor are they given form easily. And so the testing went on backing me into the corner until there was no room to hope and then one day I realized that waiting for someone to have faith in me was a lost cause. I was being shown the results of my safety tactics of keeping a low profile, being very modest, self effacing and avoiding trouble.

I also deceived myself by believing that taking that one risky step off the edge of my safety zone would last the rest of my life. But was it really a risk? The safety zone is the true risk and the lesson was that life and safety are not compatible. Life demands, and Creator demands that we step off the edge again and again. That is the engine of creation. Yes, sometimes its necessary to catch one’s breath, dust off the dirt and stand up before plunging over the next precipice but that is no place to stay. We must keep taking chances and facing the unknown or our license for residency will expire. Unfortunately we often don’t notice when this happens. Gradually everything begins to fade out and before we know it we are dust.

COSMIC TIE-DYE

I used to love the process of tie-dye.  I even went to the library and checked out books on African and Asian tie-dye patterns and techniques. It was a great medium because it combined planned design with interesting accident, or chaos, if you will.  This was the source of its fascination as far as I was concerned. I would dye layer one, sew and tie a pattern and then repeat this process several times layering many patterns and colors.  The part that made it so much fun was the unexpected and usually gorgeous outcome.  Although I planned the design and very carefully separated the various colors the final result was always a surprise and in my opinion an act of nature as much as it was a personal creation.  In that sense it reminded me of both a kaleidoscope and fractal geometry.  That is the visual result of a marriage of planned design and unforeseen consequences. But I find that it’s a good metaphor for my usual approach to life.

It seems to me that this is how life and creation really do unfold within the dimension of time.  Behind all of our plans there is an overriding fractal law that at first seems chaotic but is actually the matrix of all patterns and rhythms.  Lately I came to the realization that this special gift of surprise is what moves me artistically and in life.  Although both my life and art are inspired by the vision of a particular form there is always something beyond my own imagination that imposes a variation on the original theme. Frequently several variations come to mind and through my fingers before I sense that the design is complete for a particular project.  But I’m always aware of several other options that could have been. 

It’s true that we often impose our little intentions on something that is beyond our understanding such as dividing the heavenly bodies into constellations.  But might it also be that the greater patterning function of the universe works within us even if we are the small fry’s within the cosmic ocean.  True, it’s backwards, the small trying to design the great, but it’s also within the nature of all that is.

Perhaps we have a hard-wired desire to complete each design pattern and that each pattern in life is much like a phrase of music that will only be finished when a certain note is struck. The completion of a composition must end with a particular rhythm and tone that defines and fulfills its existence. Meaning itself seems to depend on certain sequences within time.  Even our life cycle has a pattern and rhythm.  For this reason I don’t believe that immortality could ever succeed.  That would destroy the very nature of life’s essence.  Without an end note, a frame, or the edge of the fabric there could be nothing that we define as life.  The beginning is defined by the ending.  Probably the universe itself and the Creator also have endings and beginnings and we as products, or more appropriately as holographic cells within the Big Body and its song and dance are one of those remote tips of an ongoing fractal phrase. Endings and beginnings are as much an aspect of creation as the endless universe that supports them.  What an amazing dance between something and nothing and it all depends on pattern and design. And pattern and design depend on nothing. Nothing at all! This is why I believe both the Theists and the Atheists are right.

LEARNING TO LIVE

PQ and I have been in Cottonwood, Arizona one month now. Finally the monsoon has arrived though late, and those huge cumulous clouds typical of the desert Southwest fill the sky. It started with a down pouring hail that knocked leaves off of trees, trimmed the flowers back and filled the patio with water but it was welcome nevertheless. Now it has settled into a shower each afternoon. I have a break from watering the garden and keeping the shades drawn against the sun. And nature is a much better gardener than I am.

PQ on Fay Canyon Trail

We sit each morning on the patio and watch the hummingbirds fight over the feeders, their sentry's perched on the top branch of a mesquite waiting to dive bomb rivals while lizards do pushups on the wall. Now and then we see one of the tiny striped snakes that live under the rocks. A falcon flew by very low and almost touched us with its wings. The Mourning Doves are shy. I watch them waiting in the neighbor’s yard for us to go inside so that they can drink from the birdbath. It’s all very simple, quiet and healing. I watch a drama unfolding. Two large black beetles collide in mid air. One falls to the ground and a lizard zooms in to attack it. They tumble around for awhile but the beetle is too big and finally limps away, but it is probably fatally wounded. Meanwhile a group of ants are struggling to get a crumb of toast torn into manageable sizes and then carry it across the rocky ground. It’s a formidable task but they never give up. Is this any less important than the workers across the street who have been downing a large pine this week, and loading it into their truck piece by piece? The world is very busy and it all seems like a fugue of motion, all sizes and species of beings playing their own part of the earth song and dance.

 In Beauty before me I walk

In Beauty behind me I walk,

In Beauty below me I walk,

In Beauty above me I walk,

In Beauty all around me I walk,

It is finished in Beauty,

It is finished in Beauty,

It is finished in beauty.

 Dine Beauty Way Chant

If I were to categorize this period of time I would say that it is a time of learning to live. I am separating myself from dis-empowering and alienating attitudes and beliefs. Its not about saying affirmations and thinking positive thoughts but instead its about seeing through false beliefs to a degree that I’ve never experienced before. This life is becoming a balanced circle in my perception and I am a part of it standing in the middle of my personal world. Whether I have high or low self-esteem doesn’t matter anymore. This doesn’t trouble the ants. Balance is comfortable like a dance where the dancer and the music are completely in synch. The world isn’t any better, in fact it may be getting worse but the futility and narcissism of fear, worry and despair has been exposed.

Things aren’t perfect. That’s not the point. Maybe there is no perfect. I don’t know how I’ll pay all the bills much longer; PQ has a potentially fatal disease and I haven’t had a decent place to paint for over a year but the moment seems perfect and that is all there is. And this may be spiritual dessert and when its gone bitter medicine may replace it but it’s a taste that becomes stronger and sweeter over time and now I know this sweet taste and use it as a guide. Perhaps this is the key to meaning and to co-creation in the universe. It’s not about struggle and duty but about harmonizing with the life force within and without. The rest must inevitably click into place.

I was brought up to believe that everything of value should be a struggle and that pain was purifying. The world was tainted by Adam's and Eve's fall from grace and we had to put up with it until God destroyed this evil world and took us away to a better one. Although I tried very hard to believe this it never took for me. I won’t go into it here but I now have a completely different way of interpreting the very teachings that were used to make life on earth so ugly.

I’m not fixing my life anymore, nor anyone else’s, for that matter, and I certainly don’t have the power to fix the world. I dance as I go, just as I duck under branches and climb over rocks on a hike. The body and mind adapt to the trail in a fluid and practical way. It’s good to work at the rhythm of season and environment, taking responsibility for what is mine to work with and leaving the rest to God and other beings better suited. Yes, I still have hopes and dreams but they are go-by patterns and I can alter them to fit a sharper view or a more complete understanding without feeling failure. I don’t know what the goal is anyway. It keeps changing and evolving and I like that.

I’ve come to believe that our real work is participation in the magic of incarnation. Creation is happening all around us and we are in the midst of its process. Pain is a sign that something isn’t in synch, and sometimes that our attention needs to be altered, refocused or a wrong turn is asking to be corrected.

. . You never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course... If you ask "what ought to be done" and "what ought not to be done" on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things. Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the "right' and the "wrong" at once become apparent all by themselves. Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing (wu wei), you will have both happiness and well-being.
Chuang Tzu (c.360 BC - c. 275 BC)