YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK:

Part One:

A few nights ago I was lying awake while scenes from the past paraded by.  One scene hit a sensitive nostalgic nerve and I followed its tingle back to Denver visiting old haunts and remembering the more pleasant details of my life before Taos.  It wasn’t that I wanted to move back to Denver, probably more a need to overhaul the bridge from my previous life to the present. What was worth revisiting from that life?  Was there something important that I left behind? Triggering these thoughts was the impending need for us to decide about a location for PQ’s eventual lung transplant. Would it be Denver or Tucson? I thought if it was Denver, I could visit Cherry Creek, 16^th Street Mall, the Library, and Denver Art Museum and perhaps I could get my old Job back at Tattered Cover, since in either location we would need income.

The next day Miles and Gail called and said that after their summer in Europe they would be arriving in Denver by Amtrak from Chicago and wanted us to fetch their jeep in Santa Fe, drive it to Denver and meet them at the train station Wednesday morning. Then they would drive it to Washington State and a reunion with an old friend who held concert tickets for them.  In turn, they would pay for the gas and rent a motel room for us.  We would have a chance to visit old haunts, dear friends and good restaurants, a pleasant combination of nostalgia plus a taste of the big city. I must add that the nostalgia was only mine, PQ isn’t fond of Denver.

We picked the Jeep up in Santa Fe on Tuesday, had a nice lunch at Harry’s Roadhouse before getting on the freeway back to Taos in anticipation of a mini vacation. We started early the next morning.  I made note of a smoky haze in all directions. It had been clear the day before. This haze continued for the rest of the trip. Our drive to Denver on Wednesday was pleasant although it felt strange to be travelling in different cars and the haziness shrouded the usually beautiful landscape. In Denver, I was proud of myself for immediately finding the hotel where Miles had arranged our reservation. Although it was in a rather obscure area, I drove right to it with PQ following in the Jeep.  This was encouraging. Maybe I still have a sense of how to navigate Denver.  PQ informed me that the Jeep’s air conditioner went out on the way up and said, “It probably needs fluid, but let Miles know when he calls.”  Miles and Gail were scheduled to arrive at 7:30 the next morning, and I knew Lodo (nickname for Lower Downtown) was a blurred memory. To be safe, I printed out Google maps of the area before starting out.

Part Two:

After checking into the hotel, I immediately called longtime friend Rachel.  She gave us a report on interesting restaurants, as she always does, and I was dumbfounded when she mentioned Racine’s.  This restaurant closed and a high rise went up in its place many years ago.  It was one of my favorites and now it has reincarnated, awesome!  When we walked in the door, the layout was the same as the original only larger and more contemporary. The food was even better. Ah, nostalgia!

After dinner, Rachel took us down town. She had graciously volunteered to give us a tour of downtown so that we wouldn’t get lost the next morning, but suddenly we were caught in a maze of dead end streets, all one-way, and fenced off construction sites. There were several new street names and new blocks with old street names going new places. The huge Coor’s Field sat like a mangled Darth Vader in the center and we never did figure out how to get around it and still come out in the same place we started. Several times, we passed under an overpass with a train on it but couldn’t find a way to the source. Tension got higher and higher as we began to suspect we’d been witched, eternally caught in a malicious vortex. It was a real life M.C. Escher staircase, or at least a maze enhanced with by trick mirrors.

In a state of confounded exhaustion, we gave up and retreated to Rachel’s apartment on the other side of town.  There we researched more options on Google maps and none of them resembled anything that we had just witnessed.  There were streets we hadn’t seen and some that were not on the maps. Finally, Rachel called Amtrak and the woman who answered said that the station was in a temporary location too new to appear on GPS or Google Maps.  This blessed woman gave us some new instructions that sounded simple enough and we said goodnight to Rachel and headed back to the motel.  There we received a phone call from Miles and Gail saying that the train would be very late because of false news of an accident and some other delays the details of which I no longer remember. This was bad news for them but good news for us. I had a bad feeling that we would need all the extra time we could get just to find the station.

Part Three:

The next morning we showered, discussed our strategy and went downstairs for the free breakfast promised by the motel.  When we got there, the closed sign had just gone up. We missed our chance for a much-needed cup of coffee and Danish by 10 minutes. Oh well! This gave us time to look for a garage that could service the Jeep’s air-conditioner.  We took it up the road, way up the road, and found one almost on the county line. In the office, they told us they could service it right away but we were looking at two-hour process. Two hours was out of the question so we decided instead to resume our search for the Amtrak station.

Once on the freeway I watched for the 213 exit but the exits were getting smaller, 110, 109, etc. so I pulled off as soon as I could safely do so in the rush of morning traffic. Miraculously I found myself on an old familiar part of town and pulled off at a rest stop.  PQ did an outstanding job of following as I wove this way and that way through traffic. Finally, it dawned on me that the Amtrak lady gave us directions for an approach from the south.  PQ comforted me through a minor meltdown and brain freeze. Then we launched off again.

With renewed determination, I turned around, had a joyful reunion with a familiar viaduct and got on I-25 going north. The rest was easy; get off on 213, south to Wewatta, right over an overpass, right to 21^st street and there was the station. I still don’t believe it. We parked both cars, then PQ said, “look, the train is here.”  Next, we see Miles and Gail walking toward the station as we stand quietly anticipating their arrival as if we knew just what we were doing.

 Part Four:

After listening to Miles and Gail describe the insanity of their Amtrak experience, we described the problem with the Jeep’s failed air conditioning. They got online and located a service station on the south end of town. Fortunately, I was familiar with this area. By this time, they had resigned themselves to driving most of the night and we found a nearby Denny’s for a 2pm breakfast. The job was going to take two or three hours so there was time to kill.  PQ and I didn’t want to leave them stranded in this ugly garage in an ugly part of town for two hours so we decided to drive around and catch up on each other’s lives.  My intention was to take us to the Tattered Cover on Colfax where we could browse books and magazines and visit in a quiet environment.  Besides, at this point I needed at least one pleasant nostalgic experience. 

Somehow, I mangled the approach.  I couldn’t remember the cross street and then we became entrapped in some major road work. I couldn’t get in the proper lane in time to turn back and ended up on Colorado Blvd. Since we were in the neighborhood, I decided to drive by my old house. Yup, another pitiful attack of nostalgia.  There was a traffic jam when I tried to turn back onto Colorado Blvd. so we turned around in City Park and then I made the mistake of turning onto 13^th Street instead of Colfax.  After meandering here and there through several blocks, Gail offered to look our destination up on her iPhone and read the directions to me.  PQ had bad stomach cramps from the stress and we had to pick up some Tums at the first drugstore in range.  Finally, we found the Tattered Cover like a quiet island in a sea of chaos. Gratefully, we enjoyed a few minutes of calm to chat and browse. They had great coffee, too!

 When we got back to the garage the Jeep was ready to go and Miles and Gail headed north on I-25, now resigned to driving most of the night, and we headed south toward Home.  Of course, we missed the I-25 ramp south and had to drive down Santa Fe Blvd. all the way to Littleton, about fifteen miles, but it wasn’t so bad.  Maybe it was actually better than the going- home traffic on I-25. There was one more hurdle, how to recognize the turnoff to E-470, our last chance to get on I-25 south. By now, I’m getting smarter and I expect it to look totally different than the last time I’d taken this route.  I saw a new overpass looming in the distance and made sure that I got to the right side to take it.  The rest was easy.  The Denver curse finally lifted. Or, did it?

There’s no place like home. However, the experience of home can be multidimensional. When I think of home, it is of both a time and place. If we rearrange our living room furniture, we may trip over something in the middle of the night because it isn’t in its familiar place. Eventually we get used to the new arrangement but that isn’t fixed either. So much of our personal identity has to do with how well we navigate the space and time we occupy.  The Denver I knew before moving to Taos is gone but so is the person I was then.  Time and circumstance will tell how much I can take on the next trip down memory lane, but I think I just learned to travel lighter.

                                                                                                                                                                   

COFFEE ON THE PATIO AT 10:00 AM

Two ravens are playing with the wind currents this morning. We haven’t had wind this early for some time. Maybe it will actually rain here today, but I doubt it.  Every afternoon huge ominous thunderclouds assemble over us and the wind picks up, strips a few hanging branches from the neighbors weeping willow and flings them into our yard, then moves out to unload somewhere across the gorge. Yesterday and the day before several huge raindrops fell out of the sky, but only enough moisture to dapple the flagstone walk.

We were in Arizona for over a month and each day I checked the weather in Taos to see if my flowers had any chance of survival.  We have been back for three weeks now and the promised rains never came. There are plenty of magnificent clouds but they are all looks and no performance. Nevertheless, I appreciate their magnificent towering display against the clearest blue sky you will ever find.  Taos has the most amazing sky I’ve ever seen.  I can’t figure out what makes it so unique.  It’s as if there is nothing between you and the sky whereas other skies can be quite beautiful and even dramatic but there is a definite separation between observer and observed that doesn’t exist here.

Taos is always wild and living here is a bit like having a pet cougar.   On one side of my house I am picking up the sound of the town trash collector driving into our cull de sac as he does every Thursday morning, (well almost every Thursday, even trash collectors have their feral days in this town) and on the other side is pure Taos wild. 

The wildness that doesn’t yield to human agendas is what I love about this place. It’s also the reason I have to get away now and then.  It can drive you crazy because the wildness seeps into what should be completely human concerns.  I’m talking about more than land and sky, wildness even gets into the plumbing the wiring, and certainly into anything mechanical or electronic.  Your water heater can turn on you just like the pet cougar.

Our water heater just turned on us to the tune of $900.  We were already counting pennies trying to figure out how to augment our quickly dwindling resources to include time in Arizona all the way to PQ’s looming lung surgery, and recovery time after surgery. For the first time since I’ve lived here I decided that I would sell or rent this house if I could get permission from Habitat for Humanity, and then see if I could get a job to supplement our SS. But I made the dangerous mistake of thinking that we had control over our future.  I really should know better by now. Every time I try to be responsible and practical, I end up on my butt.

It’s not that there is something wrong with being responsible it’s just that there is a higher level of responsibility that recognizes that there are forces inside as well as outside (probably these are the same) that are bigger than what your daddy taught you about being grown up and responsible.  Planning is fine as long as you stay loose and acknowledge that there are forces you can’t control and Taos is full of forces that you can’t control. 

People are attracted to places with this kind of fresh wildness but then try to change it to coordinate with the living room drapes.  I guarantee that won’t work here. Spirits, if that’s what we are talking about, can be tricky and unforgiving just as often as helpful.  If you have a karmic appointment with the Taos demons you will never get out of this place. I use the word demons in the ancient sense of being neither good nor bad, just hailing from a place beyond human influence.  Sometimes I long for an environment that doesn’t confront me constantly with unresolved karma. Maybe it would be nice to live in Denver again for a while and work at the Tattered Cover. We would both love to have a little place in Cottonwood Arizona where PQ could enjoy the higher oxygen level and be free of family dramas, and not regularly have fist in the stomach surprises.  However, I know from experience that no one who is engaged with the Taos demons ever gets completely free of this place. It will go with you if you try to escape. Recently, we were in Cottonwood having dinner with several of our friends and then it dawned on me that all but one of us had spent a number of years in Taos. No, we didn’t pick out Arizona friends because we knew they were ex-patriots, it just happened. 

PQ and I have to find a way to bring in money. It was fun while it lasted and gave us time to catch our breath, but my inheritance is almost gone. It’s a delicate issue in Taos because there isn’t very much money to be had here. I’m totally burnt out on the idea of standing on my feet all day selling Indian jewelry and pottery to tourists, even though I’m pretty sure I could get my old job back.  But 16 years of that did some permanent damage to my soul, not to mention the soles of my feet.  I love to write, to paint and to work with people but it’s not easy to turn what I love into income, especially since I wasn’t raised around the kind of people I like to hang with and don’t know the ropes.  PQ is charismatic and gregarious so his mojo helps us out here and there.  Right now, he is watching a shoot-um-up on TV, but being a couch potato isn’t helping his self-esteem or making good use of his considerable talents. This seems to be a waiting time. Waiting for what?  

These uneventful times on the edge of the unknown are perfect fodder for that tricky Mountain.  I sense big change coming. It’s  kind of scary to have no idea what the next step on this tricky trail will take us, not to mention where we will find it, but that now- you- see-it, now-you-don’t trail is how I found Taos in the first place.

Have you noticed how Ravens love wind?  All the other birds find a hiding place to wait it out but the Ravens are doing the avian equivalent of skateboarding on the wind. I knew they were trying to tell me something.

TIGER ESCAPES FROM JAIL!

Watering the garden a few days ago my mind drifted to a mysterious ambivalence I always experience when remembering my place of emergence.  Enhancing this was a sudden insight that “watering the garden” is a perfect metaphor for the mental state that resulted in an important insight. Standing barefoot on the earth watering plants in late afternoon brought back memories of the most traumatic and definitive time of my life. To borrow a quote from Dickens, “it was the best, and the worst of times.” 

My question has long been what made this time so dark, lonely, and horrific and simultaneously a rebirth into an entirely new and awesome reality? Then it was as if I was suddenly in the body of a big cat frustrated, confused and angry, pacing back and forth behind bars, back and forth between apathy and rage. The enigma faded out as this image came in.  Finally, I’ve discovered the best fitting analogy for my role in the family dynamics that held me captive far to long.

Tiger in a Cage

I am a tiger in a cage
Pacing up and down
Trying hard to stem my rage
Growling with a scowl and frown

I am a tiger in a cage
Here by my honour bound
Doing my very best to gauge
Just when they will come ‘round

Although my weekly pay is nil
And my hours hard to manage
Because I am their friend I will
Remain the tiger in the cage

by Russel Tanner

To my parents I resembled a tiger caged in the back yard, hidden out of sight but with a haunting presence. They were somewhat fascinated with me but more embarrassed.  There was a twinge of wonder; some fear mixed with disgust and beneath it all a deeply repressed pride.  What would you do if your only child seemed like an alien species? Should this child be pitied, tamed, ignored or reformed? They tried it all. My mother once confessed only a few years before she passed that she always hoped I would eventually get over it, “it” being the way I am.

I tried to avoid scaring anyone but I never got it right no matter how clever I thought I was as an amateur people whisperer.  Now I recognize that I was not the real source of their ambivalence. It was their own disowned repressed life force shaking the cage bars in hidden terror and rage. 

FOLLOWING THE PATH

Follow that barely visible path overgrown with weeds. Perhaps someone with authority warned you never to put foot on it. It may lead to a haunted house full of skeletons. If it is your karma to learn about unspeakable family history, you must do this. There will always be an unsettled vacant space in the family soul until someone takes this path. Nevertheless, I must warn you that it isn’t safe to do so. 

Watch your dreams.  Mine were of floodwater raging down an irrigation ditch, crumbling the soft clay banks faster than I could run to solid ground. In many dreams, someone or something dangerous was chasing me. The only safety was on the far bank of a river or ditch but too wide to jump.  However, I had to jump and I always succeeded even while clinging and clawing up the far bank frantically with bleeding fingernails and scraped knees. I would wake up with heart pounding and stomach muscles still tense from the extreme effort.

I had religious dreams also.  I was terrified of the second coming that Christians hope will be just around the corner.  I remember deciding on baptism at the age of six.  I knew it was very important to my parents and protecting my parents from their own doubts was my most important job. Even at that early age, I had mixed feelings. There was guilt because I knew I wasn’t being genuine but thought I had to follow this path that my family believed would save my soul, and more importantly their fragile world. For years, there was a repetitive dream of Jesus appearing on a menacing storm cloud to sweep us up to heaven.  I dreaded this second coming more than eternal fire.

 We were told in Sunday School that it would happen in the blink of an eye. Jesus was only taking baptized Christians, and that included me.  I was terrified with this sentence and resisted it with every fiber of my being. In one dream/nightmare, the power of Jesus ripped me inside out and sucked me into tumultuous black clouds surrounded by a back-light of fire while I desperately clung to earth. As you may have noticed, Heaven became my hell. As I grew older, it was even worse. The beautiful, courageous, creative, movers and shakers of the world were all going to hell and the naïve, judgmental and gullible sheep were going to heaven.  Heaven seemed too barren and lonely with only big daddy and his boringly perfect son and followers for company. 

Our family motto was “keep a low profile, avoid criticism and never seek attention.” I hated the role I was dealt but fell into it as a member of a long karmic line. Honestly, though there was more to it than that. I’ve never been able to leave a problem unsolved. That is the real reason I never killed myself or went insane to escape a seemingly impossible challenge. 

That leads to the next insight. While writing this peace it occurred to me that this inability to leave a problem unsolved was the most important aspect of my role in our family.  I pursue intentions like a tiger stalks prey. What was that prey that I was supposed to catch? It was being itself, and I was supposed to catch it for all of us, not just myself. Of course, it isn’t easy to catch anything inside a cage and so my purpose was to find a life beyond the cage. In this process, I’ve learned that even when the tiger is out of the cage it may take a long time before the cage is out of the tiger.

This blog has been a powerful tool in coming out of the cage. As I look back over a fluctuating lifetime, I am amazed at how weakness and strength, positive and negative forces, generate the energy of creation. So many seeming contradictions have morphed into a new level of knowledge. I remember a quote from C. G. Jung to the effect that the dilemma between two opposing forces finds resolution not in the triumph of one over the other but in an invisible third force that accomplishes the resolution at a higher level of consciousness. ( I’ve been trying to find the exact quote without success!)

I see that creative changes in consciousness move out in all directions from a center.  That center may be you and I or any cosmos. It is past, present and future.  We are all operating on many dimensions. When a change occurs for one being on one dimension it rolls out into the multiverse like waves in the sea.  There are many waves, created by many actions, and many of them are invisible changes in the vibration of consciousness. As I work toward my own becoming it also alters the past by changing the effects of that past from destruction to creation.

There is Rumbling Beneath My Feet--

I can’t feel it so much as know it through some indefinable sense that I’ve never before tried to describe in words.  Bear with me it may take more than one try, but here goes.

Our world is changing! That's a truism. Everybody knows that but it’s getting too fast to feel.  I took many changes both in stride and unconsciously until recently then I woke up from a hypnotic spell to notice that malls are going extinct, newspapers printed on paper are going extinct, as are books and magazines, big clunky low resolution TV’s are waiting in Good Will stores for someone to adopt them before they are euthanized. Landline phones are hiding in neglected corners hoping to escape detection before their owners decide to cut costs, and only a few years ago when I was still working on Taos plaza, some shoppers (usually from Texas) were keeping track of family members with walky- talkies.

 Last year we were still renting DVD’s and I remembered far back to the 90’s how exciting it was when we got a VCR player.  While here in Arizona housesitting, we are downloading  Netflix from my iPhone to the TV.  It is in recent memory that Wal-Mart had a well-stocked bin of Kodak film. Only ten years ago and less, all of these things were doing just fine. Now in the post-historic blink of an eye we can wake up to a different world and you know what surprises me the most. Everyone goes on as if it’s always been this way. I think constant bombardment with new things causes brain overload that leads to overflow. We have more and more but it doesn’t seem like much. It’s as if we have so much coming in that there’s no place left to put it. 

With a mild electronic addiction, I have three computers; one is a Toshiba Laptop now on indefinite loan to the grandkids. I remember the excitement of purchasing it.  At that time, I was doing websites and wanted the ability to work anywhere.  It was light and powerful for its time way back in 2005. I was in Denver just after the sale of our family home, helping mom clear out 59 years of accumulation and move into her new apartment. She had money from the sale and gave me enough to buy a fine laptop with a nice case and wireless mouse, etc. Another is the eight-year-old Dell XP Media Edition desktop that has a wonderful sound system, but I seldom use it anymore. Nevertheless, it has some of the software I use that isn’t compatible with my new computer. I remember the excitement of buying this one also. I’d just sold several paintings and had the money to buy the computer and pay off my credit card; a heady euphoric experience that felt like winning the lottery.

Right now, I’m using a six-month-old Dell XPS running Windows 7 and thinking of upgrading to Windows 8.  I wanted a Mac Book Pro but it was too expensive, especially since I’d have to buy all kinds of new software.  This one is great though, very fast, with some great new features and most surprising for a PC it integrates perfectly with my iPhone. Nevertheless, I can seldom pass a store with seductive electronic gadgets. I have to hold them, caress them with my eyes and fantasize about the fun we could have together.

I used to imagine what a thrill it would be to create and edit movies that grabbed people’s emotions with moveable story art.  Then when I discovered the World Wide Web, I thought heaven had been smuggled to earth. I could find any information I wanted, and travel to many worlds with that little machine on my desk. Sci-Fi stuff for sure. I dreamed of owning Adobe Photoshop and then with the Big Dell I got it. But I haven’t upgraded from the original CS edition. Somehow the importance of having the latest of everything waned. I no longer create new websites because the technology is changing too fast to keep up with for someone living in Taos, New Mexico far from sources of web-tech knowledge.  

 Until recently, I had slow speed dial-up internet, which made it impossible to take online classes, and now I just don’t care. I think the time has come to move in a different direction. Some changes are not real changes just shuk’n and jive’n on a creaky floor thus the rumbling beneath the feet.   It’s all maya in the Hindu sense of mistaking shape shifting for reality.  Although fun, there is an imminent threat to the supply of all those fun things.  After all, they are products of non-renewable resources being used up faster and faster as excitement mounts. And isn’t excitement really what everybody is marketing right now? Smart phones, Big Screen TV’s, self-navigating vehicles, tablet PC’s, and cosmetic surgery are all about a happy fix, just as much as weed, cocaine, crystal meth and more traditional feel goods like chocolate, sugar and alcohol. I’m not saying it is bad to use these fixes with the possible exception of cocaine and crystal meth, it’s just that nobody seems to know what they are fixing or why it doesn’t last.

A long time ago, I learned that substitute indulgences don’t satisfy. Getting a new toy for Christmas when you want a pony never works. Ever fancier cars and mobile phones so full of features and apps that it takes months to learn them by which time they are outdated don’t fulfill anything. But they aren’t supposed to fulfill anything.  They are golden carrots held out to make eternally unfulfilled asses of us all.  It keeps us moving in the direction our masters wish us to go. 

Everyone knows, even if it not stated, that this can’t last and it seems that as oil peaks the showdown with reality advances. Mother Earth is stirring under her uncomfortable coat of asphalt, concrete and housing developments. I think she’s almost ready to shake it off.  What will happen to us then? There are many doomsayers out there trying to scare us, but nobody knows how it will really come down.

I don’t believe that we are alien invaders, although some do, and even if we are there are certain principles of survival extending to the cosmos. It may be that an entirely different set of human abilities will develop. Evolution has come to mean the advancement of the rational mind and conquest of nature.  Perhaps a changing world will result in the development of a more holistic blend of feeling, intuition and reason. Humans don’t usually change unless they have to do so.  Belief that we are above nature, our planet and our fellow beings is an illusion whose time is rapidly deteriorating. We will survive because it’s not entirely up to us, but we won’t be the same.

CATCHING TIME

Coming or going, where is the present?

 The experts of soul say we should live in the present. 

I can’t find a present just the going back and forth between past and future. 

 Not even a nano-second can hold such a thin slice of time.

 It’s like the fly weaving frantically around the kitchen too fast for my flyswatter. 

 Maybe I’ll stick with what can catch me, the past and future.

  

I’ve reached a phase of life where time shatters and it’s hard to remember what pieces go where. Did that pot of marigolds sit in the same corner of the patio last year? Is it already July? But it seems like Sunday, are you sure it’s really Thursday?  When did we last change oil in the car? Damn, I thought our appointment was next Thursday! 

Ok, I’m getting old, I know that but I really think there is more going on than a lack of schedule plus memory loss.  This is a new universe and it’s intriguing. It’s a shame I have to be pinned to a board with all those practical earth-bound notes trying vainly to hold me to a present that doesn’t exist.  As soon as clock and calendar lose their authority, anything can happen. Bring it on!

WHAT’S IN A NAME

Today, PQ and I were on our way to the grocery store in Sedona and he brought up my name again. He knows that I don’t identify with my given name. The issue comes up often because I still haven’t changed my name since we got married.  Sometimes it really bothers him that my accounts still have my ex-husbands last name on them. I certainly understand his displeasure but I’m stuck.  I want to change my name but feel strange being Marti Standing Deer because Marti is short for Martha a name I’ve never liked. Marti isn't bad but should I make it permanent.  I keep putting a name change off because I don’t know what I want my name to be and I don’t want to keep changing it trying to find out. Now and then, He and I go through lists of names and I just can’t identify with any of them. Sometimes I think I’ll take back my maiden name but it feels like defeat.

I need a real name! My name is a constant bother. The name has never belonged on me.  It feels like an alias tagged on after a bout of amnesia. I’ve always know that my birth name was a compromise based on my Mother’s desire to please, not her preference.  She believed that there was great honor in being self-deprecating. In truth, it dominated her life and consequently my life as well. Earning admiration for her excessive modesty came with a constant struggle.  She tried very hard to avoid any action that might appear selfish or attention seeking and this troublesome concern actually ended up working in reverse (as the Leo nature intended). 

Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement
in a synagogue incorporates Greek-Byzantine elements
Beit Alpha, Israel

 Mom was born with the Sun in Leo conjunct Neptune and opposing Uranus. I’ll never know for sure, but I suspect she had Virgo rising, she tried so hard to match a fantasy standard of perfection. Since she was number five among seven children the time of her birth lay buried at the bottom of family events, and I became interested in astrology long after there was anyone left to remember. 

Here is a little basic astrology to bring the previous paragraph out of the clouds. Leo is the ultimate sign of self-importance and personal power and the Sun is its ruler.  Just as the Sun is the center of our Solar System and the other planets revolve around it so Leos feel most fulfilled when others revolve around them. Being highly regarded in the tribe is essential. Self-deprecation darkens and kills the life force in a child of the Sun. Neptune is such a different energy that only insanity or spiritual transcendence could bring them into cooperation. Neptune is selfless, cosmic, and easily attracted to a life of imagination, and spiritual sacrifice. On the down side, it has little tolerance for harsh realities, is prone to addictions and easily consumed by fantasy.  Uranus opposing the Sun is embarrassing. Leos want to be magnificent not weird.  Uranus loves to horrify authorities, is eons ahead of boring social conventions, and is definitely different.  Uranus is the only planet that spins vertically rather than horizontally. Uranians fraternize with ET’s.

Since she demonstrated many Virgo characteristics, I’ll also give my take on Virgo.  Virgo has very high standards. They want to be perfect and have little tolerance for people who don’t have the same goal. However, they sometimes become so frustrated in their pursuit of perfection that they decide, “to hell with it, if I can’t do it the right way, I’ll make a perfect mess of it.” Also, they may become obsessed by little things while neglecting the big ones. While pursuing one pesky mouse all day they may not see that a gang of rats are having their way. In addition, they are attracted to healing because they need to fix things. They are necessary in this world, but not easy.

Now back to the name. Mom wanted to name me Ruth Ann but my father wanted me named for his mother Lillian Martha. As usual, mom wanted, needed, absolutely had to make everyone happy except herself and me.  Especially she wanted to make Dad happy, after all, I was a girl not a boy, and she was guiltily pleased about that knowing that he would have liked to have a boy. So she felt obligated but she wanted to be fair and balanced. (Her Moon was in Libra, the sign of balance compromise and judgment) Her mother’s name was Kate Ruth.  Since she didn’t like the name Lillian, she decided to name me Martha Ruth, thus measuring the balance half and half for both grandmothers by giving me their middle names.  I could have been proud to carry their middle names but perhaps the element of compromise motivated by self-effacement turned into shame on my part.

When I was a child, I automatically disowned my name except for practical purposes. I would have preferred no name.  When a teacher called my name, it frequently took a few seconds to put the name and me together before responding. I was never Martha Ruth inside.  When I was in my early thirties, one of my best friends started calling me Marti, and I was relieved that someone cared enough to rescue me from my dorky fate. Before that, I assumed it would hurt my mother’s feelings and upset the delicate arrangement of our psychic cords.  With that simple act of friendship, I felt initiated into the world beyond my family.  

Words focus the light of our consciousness.  Without words to point here or there, we blindly stumble through an immense psychic forest .  Maybe I need more than one name, or maybe I haven’t taken the initiation that will reveal my true name.  While PQ and I were on the road, he said, “Maybe your name is an ancient name from your original people. Maybe that’s why all the Christian and popular names that we try don’t work.”  That felt right. But am I ready to take it on?

Names have the power to seize our essence.  That’s why the old Testament priests were not allowed to speak the name of God. When a shaman conjures a spirit he/she calls it’s name.   My name doesn't touch me because it alien to my essence. It's a key that doesn't fit the lock.

I don’t mean to bore anyone with technical astrology symbolism, but in my birth chart the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter and the Moon are in the 12^th house.  People of the 12^th house often are born with the key to the family stronghold in their hand.  From the beginning, I experienced my given name as I experienced the clothes forced on me as a child, an ill-fitting costume designed to hide my true nature from the world lest I blow our cover.  Maybe the key doesn’t fit the lock, I’m still trying to open the closet door, or maybe there never was anything to hide in the closet and all that cover up was in vain.

Heading into the Next Decade from the High Desert

 Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
Lao Tsu― 

 My husband, Pba-Quen-nee-e has been a bit concerned for me lately.  I'm just recovering from a cold/flu that took a month to come on and is taking just as long to leave. I recognize the symptoms of a big change in inner landscape. For those of you who have some astrology background, I have transiting Pluto in the 6th house apposing the Moon and Jupiter in the 12th house, and also my Cancer ascendent . There are some other things going on as well but this one is amounts to psychic and possibly physical meat grinder machinery. However, just writing about it is helping to move into it with fresh faith. As a Cancer rising person I process life changes with emotional and physical upheavals. My poor husband is very sensitive  and often reacts to my changes before I do.  I just can't have a private crisis anymore.

I’ve been haunted by images of the past lately. I tell myself that it is an indulgence that  doesn’t make sense and probably isn’t healthy but it won’t go away.  Last night when I crawled into bed, the moonlight and the sound of crickets suddenly brought up a 3D surround sound vision of a moonlit night at our old family cabin in the Black Forest southeast of Denver.  It is gone forever, a time and place I will never experience again. When that place was still a part of my world it never occurred to me that the time would come when it would exist only as a memory. 

Right now, a big hummingbird moth just flew in the front door. I remember that my cat Joe thought they were delicious but he is also a part of the past. This one is too fast and erratic for me to catch (strictly catch and release, in my case) but brings up memories of some other hard to catch light as air beings. Right now, I am desperate to catch those Holy Ghosts flying around my head.  The great teachers from my past and near present are seductively teasing me. They must know that I want so much to renew familiarity with them again but they are diving in and out of inner space too fast to catch.  I’ve been longing to sit again in their secret ashrams. Yet another wished for journey to the past.

These reflections are bringing back the wonder and loneliness of my strange adolescence and beyond to those passionate searches for a wisdom that would load unresolvable paradoxes on an inter-dimensional space ship headed to that place where the wise ones gather on the Astral Plain to mingle and discuss the mysteries of the universe.  Not just this physical universe, but also the one encompassing all dimensions and times. I hunger desperately to time travel again because the present seems suffocatingly tight. 

I no longer remember all their names but feel their personages, master Lao Tzu was one of the first I met.  During the most lost and desperate of times, around age 16 I was wandering through a second hand bookshop on 15^th street in Denver.  There isn’t such a neighborhood anymore and I’m sorry for those who will never experience it. I love the internet, it is delicious magic and appeals totally to my mercurial Gemini self, but these old second hand shops were an entirely different level of magic with a touch of the Harry Potter ambiance. I can remember two particularly whose owners were definitely fey and a bit shadowy.  These places were dusty and dark with books piled on the floor and in the corners as there was never enough space to shelve them all. I stumbled (literally) on “The Story of Oriental Philosophy,” first copyrighted by L. Adams Beck in 1928. This was one of my introductory first steps through the enchanted door to a larger, cosmic mind.  I was hooked on mysticism and the arcane. 

This was true treasure hunting, a search for the elixir of life and an antidote to the poisoned teachings of my childhood.  In those bookstores, I found a world sequestered in secrecy lifetimes ago, and the path to my real identity. My life depended on these excursions into forbidden magic. I’m not using the term “magic” metaphorically. Frequently I would venture downtown, always alone, attempting to be invisible while searching for something that might guide me to the next step through my fascinating adolescent existential horror show. Whether in the library or one of my favorite used bookstores, I would pace back and forth in front of the shelves until a particular volume said, “it’s me you’re looking for.” Thus I was unerringly guided to the next step, and a path revealed through the current impasse. My very life depended on it. I've come to believe that emotional intensity and focus are the elixir of magic.  In other words, it helps to be desperate.

Today I’m watering my garden, yet between sentences and hope that the big cumulous clouds above will take pity and lend a hand, I find myself time traveling to another important memory. With bare feet squishing through mud and wet grass, I’m transported to an entirely different dimension of the same past or so it seems. I am now searching through a book possibly on comparative religion, mysticism, philosophy, anthropology, history, psychology, etc., while sitting under the shade of our family’s biggest apple tree, working the irrigation ditches between paragraphs through the strawberry rows, and vegetable garden. I still have these two dominant personalities, one-half, is nature girl and the other half gets quite heady. After dropping out of school to pursue the things I really needed to know, (actually I think I had some very wise spirit guides) I also decided I should learn to cook and sew.  I didn’t have enough money to buy clothes, so sewing came in handy, and I was home while my parents were at work so it seemed natural to take up cooking and gardening. On my first two years off the grid, I went barefoot winter and summer except for my forays downtown. Apart from the meat, soup or stew came directly from the garden and I loved pulling carrots and onions out of the earth and picking beans or peas off their vines. One year I made 50 apple pies and froze them, apples donated by that dear friend who generously sheltered my dual selves’, seeker of the keys to life and gardener.

I was much better back then at everything except living.  The books I read were way more scholarly and arcane than those I read now. I became a gourmet cook, and could even make my own coats and jeans. At one point I learned how to tie dye African and Asian patterns, took up classical piano, learned music theory and ethno-musicology, and finally took ballet lessons since dance was one of the activities forbidden by our narrow spirited religion when I was a child. School was a concentration camp in my experience, so I drew my fantasy world on ruled papter in class, and studied what I wanted to know instead of the curriculum. Of course, I got very bad grades and frequent punishment, but I didn’t really care. School wasn’t leading to any world I wanted to live in, and after my disappointment with the first grade, I decided that the system wasn’t interested in teaching us anything worthwhile. But when I finally cut myself adrift I developed a passion for art, especially abstract art, as well as the more arcane fields.  Now I’m a good cook but not so fancy, and I’m not really a scholar anymore but I have a much better relationship with life. My art isn’t as sophisticated or driven now but comes from the heart. Life gets simpler as I take off one pack after another along this mysterious winding trail called life. And another thing, I have no idea where the trail is headed.  It’s just that I’m curious by nature and will always wonder what’s around the next bend.

Maybe the past has been hanging close lately because I’m going to move into another decade on June 14^th and its recap time. I don’t recall going through this the last time I started a new decade but I sense this one is going to be a big crossing to a country I haven’t seen advertized in the psychic travel literature.  It doesn’t feel like a step forward, or backward but maybe off the trail entirely. I suspect my review of past times and places is a way of taking stock and prepping for whatever is out there waiting to surprise me. 

A powerful clap of thunder just shook the house, and now rain is pouring down after a long dry spell. I Take this as a sign that nature's power and abundance are unleashed on all dimensions. Yes! I believe in signs.