The Hunt for Mysteries and Medicine

Identity is necessary, I suppose but sometimes causes us to trip over our own feet. It’s about self-definition and definitions create limitations. I was just browsing through one of my old journals. The journals are my therapy and I noticed how definitions put flesh on the bones of anything vague. These stories, because that’s what they are, are my therapy. I dig deeper and deeper into the dark. I try on many sub-selves: victim, healer, lover, dreamer, teacher, and above all else, storyteller.

I read books as a reminder of the places I’ve been and as inspiration to move beyond where I’ve been. However, I am still hungry for something I haven’t seen before from the hidden underside of my familiar world. There is a mystery that teases with fleeting peeks and then disappears. Therefore, I go on a search and once with the help of the Dewy Decimal System, and now Google, I find many fascinating resources. The experience however is a bit disappointing. Although I often find seductive titles for pieces of wisdom here and there among hundreds of pages, I find they usually loop back to the head of a path I have already walked. Did I miss some fork in the trail that leads to new landscapes?

I used to go to workshops, conferences and even schools back in the days when I could afford it. It was reassuring to mix with other seekers. I met a few inspiring teachers as well. Yet there again, I found elusive promises of life transmuting knowledge vanishing into ether just at the moment I thought I might catch hold of something important

Dreaming the Universe by Marti Fenton White Deer Song

In the early 70’s a friend invited me to a party held at a warehouse located in an old part of downtown Denver and transformed into a loft. I thought it was otherworldly and magical. The space contained an impromptu theater and dance studio and modern paintings adorned the walls. The couple hosting the party who lived there had divided it into rooms with drapes of tie-dye and lace. I’m sure there was a lot of pot in the air, but I didn’t tune into that, nor did I pay much attention to the food. The whole event seemed other dimensional, but the best part was an old man reading Tarot cards for the guests. I knew very little about esoteric traditions then. He read with amazing insight and depth. I spoke to him later although I was shy and a bit reticent about talking to someone I had so quickly placed on a pedestal. Whatever he had, I wanted to know about it. He mentioned a number of esoteric teachers whose names were new to me, although I came upon those names again a few years later. Life guides appear unanticipated with just enough information to lure us further along a path because a real guide doesn’t speak to our known identity.

It may be that I’m not supposed to keep searching in the outside world. Perhaps this continuous hope to find the great connection to wisdom and the secret teachings of the ages is another form of avoidance. My own life history forced me to explore the highs and lows and unmapped regions of life so intensively that the information I now seek elsewhere is actually more a confirmation than a revelation. How much verification do I need? Perhaps what I consider to be humility is actually cowardice or habit.

A number of years ago I had a dream that finally makes sense in the current context, its meaning obscured so long possibly because it is so obvious. The setting though exotic at the time, seemed very familiar. There was a building of many rooms with arched doorways leading from one room to another. I couldn’t say whether the time was now or two thousand years ago, or whether it was located somewhere in the Middle East, central Asia or the American Southwest. The building was adobe of an ageless but modest design. I recall that I somehow knew that it was an ancient mystery school. The floor was rammed earth and the walls were undecorated clay. As I entered the front doorway, I could see a scholar vanishing through an arched doorway to the right. He wore soft slippers with gold embroidery and a long silk robe but I could only see one foot and the hem of his robe disappearing through the door. I hurried in to see who he was but I couldn’t catch up. He was always a few steps ahead of me walking through one doorway and then another and another, and I could never see more than a vanishing foot and the border of his robe.

The teacher of mysteries and wisdom is always just beyond reach and keeps his identity hidden. When I was young, I had secret fantasies about meeting a flesh and blood master of some ancient concealed knowledge who would recognize that I was a sincere seeker and show me where and how to recover important wisdom. That was a long time ago and now I understand that such teachers exist nowadays on another dimension and demand payment in alchemical gold transmuted from our lifeblood. Such a guide gradually moves in and grows more powerful within the inner world as we seek sincerely to learn the way through each impasse (think door). This isn’t an ego search, but soul retrieval that never ends. This all happens in a Mystery School that presents a very plain facade, is made of earth, exists outside of time and never exposes its core mystery. The pursuit of just the right awareness for this interval is like searching for a lost trail through the densest of forests, but survival depends on it.

WHAT A MONTH!

The deepest depression I’ve experienced in a number of years foreshadowed my Birthday. There was no detectable reason to be any more depressed than usual. It could have been about a number of things but I knew that it wasn’t. Although I could feel depressed about PQ’s illness, my disappointment with myself for not doing more with my 72 years, our arrival at this time in our lives without resources to have our fix of Arizona, take a vacation or even get the windshield on the car fixed, it wasn’t about any of these things. It went much deeper and didn’t feel truly personal. All of a sudden, the cloudy veil was  removed from all the things I know are not right but nevertheless have to live with from the current state of world affairs, the human mistreatment of the earth and its creatures, and not least the way we humans mistreat each other.  Doom and gloom seemed to be setting in for a long stay, and yet I recognize from past experience that moods don’t last (at least not for Gemini’s with Cancer rising) and that something important was trying to move into consciousness while something else was trying to divert it. There was an inner war going on and all I could do was observe. It even dimmed my eyesight and slowed my reactions. Heavy grey smog had descended on the world. 

Hummingbird Moth, taken with the dead iPhone

There was a trickster element to this experience as well. The worse I felt, the more things went wrong, as if the gods teasing me. The climax was the day two checks bounced when my SS check came in three days late and my iPhone died. I replaced the iPhone but it was three months beyond its insurance expiration date.  The Verizon Store didn’t have any iPhone 4’s so I had to upgrade to the new 5s. For a couple of hours and several hundred dollars more on the groaning credit card, I felt as if nothing would ever be good again. Then my mood unexpectadly shifted sideways. At first, I thought it was denial because the downward speed of our financial situation had just picked up considerably and it would be easy to move into an “everything is going to hell anyway, why not enjoy riding out the storm till our boat capsizes and we all drown,” state of mind. However, I saw a dim light coming up on the other side of my mountain of woes. It shown a light on something long hidden that was completely outside my conscious experience and conditioned expectations.

Certainly, I could blame misfortune on the planets. There are some challenging transits at this time, but the planets only tell us about certain energies that are more intense than other energies and in what part of our life they may apply pressure.  Would it change the life of a mouse, or a stone? Maybe, but changes are always possible. If you have a wall of bricks that are carelessly stacked, it will go down first if an earthquake hits. Challenging transits tend to expose the weak places in our psychic, social and even physical structure.

When PQ came back from errands this morning he told me that one of our headlights had burned out. Thus, another expense arises, although this time it’s a moderate one. Everything is relative. I didn’t get more depressed with this one. Now, I’m beginning to catch on that there is a message.  I can’t put my finger on the exact point that begs insight but there is something very important hidden in this seeming chain of crisis. I think this one goes very deep and into one of my oldest deepest layers. It seems to be time to rebuild starting with the foundation.

Circumstantially, cast away to the outer edges of family, school, church and later the conventional adult world of nine to five, I eventually identified myself as an outcast. At fifteen, I quit school in a state of nervous collapse and found myself falling into an endless hole of impenetrable blackness. To borrow a quote from Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” The best part was discovering an entirely new empowering world of amazing explosive insights bursting through the heavy darkness like a fabulous display of creative pyrotechnics.  On the other side was a lonely colorless cramped world of drudge and grunge, a continuous cloudy day. There was a wise invisible guide who showed me the places I needed to go and books I needed to read, guided me to study art history, anthropology, theology, psychology, classical music, history, sacred geometry, and much more, all topics I had never heard of just a year or two earlier. My skills of observation suddenly bloomed. Although my heroes were eclectic, it began with the discovery of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. After that, I followed a very strange path for a teenage girl in the late 50’s one strewn with sharp but gorgeous jewels, and one I took alone.

While one side of my life was heady, the other side was the barefoot gardener and a burgeoning cook exploring the exotic world of French cuisine, of herbs and wine. If I made a soup, I needed only to run out to our large garden with mud squishing between my bare toes to take carrots, onions, green beans or peas. My poor parents must have been terrified and nonplussed. The daughter they had known was gone. We lived in the same house on different schedules. I read, painted and brooded deep into the night long after they were asleep and woke up long after they’d gone to work. During the first years I went barefoot winter and summer. I wore one pair of jeans until they began to fall apart. I glued them together and covered the holes with duct tape.  

Part of being an outcast and yet free to think and feel as spirit lead me was staying away from conventional routes. To make up for lack of flesh and blood teachers, I followed the discipline learned from my favorite authors and developed a strong critical aptitude. Yet, the disadvantage of being an recluse was that  I did not know how to navigate that world from which I’d escaped. When I finally ventured out to the job market, I learned how to pretend I knew what I was doing until I did, but always felt like a fake in a  world I didn’t fit and dependent on a job that I sometimes didn’t approve of.  

Believing that monetary success requires a life enslaved to golden chains, or in my case silver-plated plastic chains was a constant downer. I literally felt like a slave or indentured servant. Now it’s emerging that I still live with the unconscious assumption that being an outcast automatically means living on the outer edge in seclusion and poverty. I was often a helpful alien willing to do what was needed while never officially joining the system or benefiting from its perks.

Squeaky thinks he's the new king.

While writing the previous paragraph,I'm reminded of my relationship with men and cats.  Cats are marginal members of our civilized human world with two paws in and the other two out. I often have dreams about rescuing a cat lost and terrified in some urban setting. I have to protect it from its instinctive wild reaction to an alien system. As for men, I have a history of being with someone who is far from conventional but who handles himself with chutzpa. This is a person who gets away with what I don’t believe I can get away with.  Also, my men generally like to live somewhat indulgently. Given a choice, they opt for the top brand and the gourmet menu.

The big picture is that I don’t have confidence in my right to be as I am. My nerve fails when confronting that big world that seems so unforgiving and menacing.  And that friends, is the big insight. It could be that when I truly honor my right to participate in human society the money situation will reflect the change.  It’s time to be reborn, or more likely simply believe that I really was born in this world. 

To be continued. This is just the beginning.

                                                                       

Crazy Wisdom

I will start with a warning that I’m using a lot of astro-talk in this blog. That in itself is curious because I haven’t been seriously following the planets for quite a while.  I used to be pretty good at it. Then a gradual loss of interest came with years of numbing routine and my window on both the world and sky dimmed with accumulated haze.

We see a lot of the Rez,beautiful even through a dirty windshield.

The week started off OK, despite being cold and windy in the morning, and then went south. Even Microsoft Word is misbehaving and so is this computer. At Walmart, there were no jeans my size, and  the pair I have is wearing out. It was the third store I’d tried in two days, lite on cash; I’ve avoided a regular department store, which we don’t have in Taos anyway. The message from all four directions is, “don’t try to move in any direction or acquire anything just stay put.” Although we rented out the Rez  house and now have a bit more income, we are still walking backward, just slower. I feel the presence of Saturn breathing down my neck, I have lessons on endurance and frugality to learn and there will be no leniency. Family members needing a boost to get back on track, and minor repairs that the rented house has needed for a long time, took another bite out of the proceeds. An invisible vexation buzzes like a hungry mosquito, just out of swatting range, waiting to suck our blood.

Saturn that grim taskmaster of the zodiac just won’t be satisfied and to my surprise, has a trickster side. Just when we have pruned our excesses and balanced income and outgo, a new hole in our cash bucket appears.

Meanwhile the weather is being erratic, although so far we haven’t had the wind and hail that eastern New Mexico experienced over the past few days, nevertheless it’s possibly a sign not to expect normal right now. It’s dawning on me that I’m supposed to be still, wait for further instructions, and quit flopping around like a stranded fish trying to jump back into the old stream. Maybe it isn’t flowing in the direction I’m supposed to be going.

I’ve been immensely sad for no identifiable reason and life seems like a handful of jewels slipping through my uncoordinated fingers while nostalgia gives me an emotionally laden tour of lost times both good and bad. My birthday is coming up and that might account for some of this mawkishness. 

Astrologically, the sun is passing through my solar 12^th house, home of the hidden and blocked aspects of life and a threshold between the manifest and unmanifest worlds. This regularly occurs in that month preceding one’s Birthday. Since I was born with the Sun, Mercury, Moon and Jupiter all in my natal 12^th house, I live there much of the time anyhow. 

This guy came in and made himself at home.
I'm afraid he's homeless and plans to stay.

Now and then, I binge on awful possibilities, perhaps a Cancer Moon rising trait, but then I get it out of my system and life goes on. PQ sometimes takes my mood swings too much to heart and I’m sure it doesn’t look good from the sidelines but I’ve learned that I get some of my best insights while trudging through deep psychic sludge. While life is flowing, I tend dance along the surface.

Once in a while I have a genuine aha moment, yet when reading old journal entries, I see the same insight discovered and rediscovered. It’s disheartening to find that I’ve been chasing my tail for so long. However, while meditating on this 12^th house thing a few days ago something entirely fresh came in.  The 12^th house is about unconscious and unfulfilled possibilities and their repression in the outer world. A person with heavy 12^th house energy may carry the denied and unrecognized possibilities both good and bad of an entire family and culture. This in turn brings recollection of something I read years ago about the Old Hebrew prophets and how the very circumstances of their lives and deaths embodied the prophesy they came to deliver. The Lakota Heyoka or Contrary medicine men had a similar role, as does the Crazy Wisdom personified by some Tibetan Buddhist monks.

From Wikipedia:

  In Lakota mythology, Heyókȟa is also a spirit of thunder and lightning. He is said to use the wind as sticks to beat the drum of thunder. His emotions are portrayed opposite the norm; he laughs when he is sad and cries when he is happy, cold makes him sweat and heat makes him shiver. In art, he is depicted as having two horns, which marks him as a hunting spirit.

    When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm... you have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping... as lightning illuminates the dark, for it is the power of lightning that heyokas have.

    —Black Elk

And, what does the Heyoka hunt? Perhaps, it’s the chance to down those demons who program us humans to scurry about like confused ants.  We 12^th house people notoriously have one foot in each of two worlds. It’s as I imagine being half-born would be. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never learned which reality to acknowledge.  I was waiting at the gate, ready to enter and the gate only opened halfway.  It’s beginning to awaken that my troubles dealing with the material world are the result of confusion about which side of the gate, I should take for real. Of course, they both are as real as we live them.  

Something different is about to happen. I can feel it coming, it isn’t in my thought repertoire, not even in my repertoire of dreads, and that’s a good thing.   

HOMESICK FOR--------?

I feel strangely bereft and sad. There is a fire in Oak Creek Canyon the beloved place we delight in viewing each time we descend that winding road from Flagstaff to Sedona on our way to Cottonwood. It is never going to be the same. It has been our own happy road to Shangri-La. The things stored in the past that I hoped would someday be used in the future are burning up all around us, blowing away, as softly as white ash.  Yesterday, on the way home from the post office, I had an attack of nostalgia for the 80’s and 90’s. It was a “you can never go home,” feeling. Taos was then so alive with spirit, creativity and the anticipation of even greater things.

“For everything there is a season,” and we are on the edge of a seasonal change. For now, the spirit of life seems to be retreating. The earth itself is changing perceptibly. The beautiful green places are going brown while the oceans come ashore. After years of warnings, climate changes are now approaching the front door, and fire, water, or air may overtake your dream home, even the earth may buck us off like a wild horse. Thank God or Mother Nature for each mercy. Taos is finally getting some rain after a very dry winter.

Shadow loves rainwater, and it is finally raining in Taos!

 I used to wonder how people such as my English grandfather felt when they came to the American West in their youth knowing they would probably never see their homeland again. My dad told me that his mother once asked her husband if he would like to visit England or more specifically Lincolnshire again before he died and he said, “I wouldn’t dare because I don’t know if I could ever leave again.” Of course, the changes one makes in one’s 20’s don’t have an exit clause. The possibility of undoing a major decision is always beyond the horizon in an inconceivable future.

These thoughts may be encroaching because PQ and I are wedged in place right now. I’m still hoping that this is a short-term circumstance but options keep wafting away. I suspect this yearning for a previous time comes from an interrupted life of unfulfilled hopes. It seems all wrong, the way the death of a young person seems wrong. It may be just a personal mood, but it sure seems that Taos has left on vacation and we feel deserted. The old pizazz just isn’t there anymore, although such a strong spirit never completely disappears. Getting away feels like a needed chance to gain perspective and regroup.

Although the spirit of Taos seems to be taking a negative turn, there was always a fierce aspect. Domestic violence, drug trafficking, gang murders, criminal politicians and general surliness are not a new development. However, the creative power, closeness to earth and the inspiring interaction of many kinds of people who follow their creative passion are waning. Then, perhaps other Taosenos are also staying home as we are waiting for something to change.  Change can’t be forced; Taos has never allowed willful interference and only a humble ear laid close to the sacred earth can detect approaching change.

 Perhaps I’m jaded. The things that were new exciting and liberating then are ho hum now. Maybe it’s not the 80’s and 90’s that I miss but the intellectually and emotionally adventurous person I was then. Probably it’s some of both. However, so much of life back then was flat out traumatic and I was much less secure about who I am.  Perhaps it’s the wish that the things I anticipated back then would  be fulfilled by now and that hope has gone south. In that case, being a bit nonplussed and disoriented would be natural. Is it possible this only an intermission in the play while God is changing the set for the next act? I hope this is the case. Meanwhile, the garage is full of stuff from our time in Arizona waiting for another chance.  In case that never happens, I’m exploring ways to deal with now from a new perspective, now is all I have.

There is nothing wrong with being stuck in Taos except that PQ does better at the lower altitude of Cottonwood, and we are merely treading air. In the meantime, there is a lot to do around the house, although attempting to save money seems doomed.  Whenever our income promises to improve, an unexpected expense pops up or a family member or friend needs help over a rough spot because they live here too. I fear that we may never go back to finish what began a few years ago in Arizona but that may not be the point. Life streams forward over the banks of expectation and we don’t control where it flows. Nature sometimes insists that we take the challenging road home.

We prayed, for abundance, creative stimulation, and progress on the spiritual path, but change can be a bitch with a mind of its own. Sometimes it doesn’t come the way we imagined.  Actually, I’ve never known it to come the way I imagined which is probably a good thing.

ICE AGE THOUGHTS

Finally, it seems like spring! Coffee on the patio (small sandstone space behind the house) while soaking in sunshine. The Starlings that usually nest in our bathroom air vent didn’t stay after a brief visit in March but another couple has moved in, possibly one of the kids from last season and its mate. Starlings have an incredible vocabulary and PQ is trying to learn it. He copies their chirps, throaty trills, clicks and various other sounds that I won’t strain to describe. They answer back and now and then stop in silence for a while as if trying to figure out what this odd bird is trying to say.

Shadow loves it. The door is finally open and she can come and go as she pleases. She’s been sampling her entire territory both on the ground and above on our skeleton porch that lacks a roof. It’s better suited to cats than to people. Although It looks good it's no help in the rain.

This winter seemed interminable. Wind and drought since January, it probably wasn’t worse than most, but the colors were only shades of gray. Now we have the Reservation house rented and green is gradually breaking through the gloom. 

Human life moves through time by creating meaning from mysteries but even the need for meaning is a mystery and each life story is akin to mapping the territory of a new continent or discovering a new planet. Naming it and measuring it by a system we all agree on is comforting and assures us that we are and it is and all is in order. We now belong in the universe to a particular planet, place, species and culture. A sense of being seems to rely on the belief of knowing something. Yet do we really know anything with certainty, except that we desire to know. Desire spawns emotion and it seems that it is emotion that truly directs our lives. I find it very odd that we so often leave emotion out of our reality equation.  We value and measure intellect and attempt to develop it with education while leaving emotional development to chance. Perhaps emotion is like the air we breathe, invisible but the necessary engine of everything else. It is emotion that drives us.

Sometimes, on a cool night, just after crawling under the covers I indulge in a comforting fantasy. Usually this happens when the crickets are chirping and I can clearly see the stars through an open window. It may be in either winter or summer, but it is my substitute for counting sheep when it takes a while to get sleepy. I am in the opening of a large cave facing east, curled up in either a bear or bison skin; I’m not sure which it is but it is satisfying to wrap up in the thick brown fur. I feel absolutely at home, comfortable and at peace.  There are usually other people in this cave also though I don’t think about who they are, or perhaps they change depending on the particular night, but I’m by myself in the furry robe and serene.

After my night in the brown fur robe, I follow the fantasy to morning where I can see a vast plain interrupted only by islands of shrubbery and trees. It may be in Paleolithic Europe, Mid Asia or right here along the Rockies. There are herds of bison, stocky dun colored horses, mammoth and various other extinct Paleolithic creatures. The remarkable thing about this vision is that it appears as a sharper high definition holographic and tactile image than say a memory from 20 years ago. Somehow, I can jump 20,000 years as if it was a few days ago while the images of early childhood and even adolescence have gone fuzzy.

Curiously, or possibly because of that 20,000-year gap, this vision also brings up reflections on the Atlantis story. I don’t have a fixed belief about the saga of Atlantis. Perhaps it has a basis in real prehistory or perhaps it is purely mythic. What I really question is whether it’s value as a story is about what once happened to a civilization that was out of balance with too much technical knowledge, pride and greed and too little emotional balance and spiritual wisdom or if it is actually a warning premonition of our future. Either way, it is a story of nature violently intervening to bring back the balance.  

It’s possible that the fate of Atlantis is an impetus behind my pre-historic fantasy, the urge to erase 20,000 years of cacophony and start over with a simple pentatonic scale. Yes, I’m aware that humans 20,000 years ago probably already had plenty of corrupt practices, but I suspect that karma was much quicker on a small tribal scale with little padding between a tribe and its earthly support system. There is no way to return to a beginning we can’t know for sure but it may be possible to follow the twists and turns of our journey back to their source.

Could there be a suppressed death wish or blinding denial beneath our collective indifference around the absurdity of the profit fetish that threatens to destroy our world and us with it? This disembodied cash crazed mentality charges toward destruction like the downhill surge of an 18-wheeler with failed brakes mowing down everything in its path. But, maybe we don’t know how to stop this lumbering monster and its descending fury and are more or less passively awaiting the crash at the bottom. There is a beginning, middle and end to everything within time but the universe transcends time and perhaps a few will begin again at some other point of the timeless circle, survivors of an experiment that failed.

We are wanderers; star children seeded from father sky.  That can be a metaphoric image, if you like, or quite literal if you are under the influence of an indigenous memory of our beginning. Now we are building ships to take us back into space. Is it future thinking or nostalgia by ungrateful adoptees with the intention of abandoning our poor Mother Earth after draining off her life force? 

I believe my nostalgic Neolithic cave fantasy arises from the desire to recall the essence of being human, to wipe away the last 20,000 years of experiences and misadventures, and attempt to understand better, how we came to be here at this now.    

The wind just came up blowing clouds between us and the sun. A reminder that we aren't in the warm embrace of summer just yet and we have one more utility bill from the rez house between now and a clear road ahead. This is tolerable, its a relief to be on the good side of gravity.

GETTING A SPRING BITE ON THE FUTURE

An abscessed tooth dominated my past weekend. The evening before the pain started, PQ and I were discussing his need for a new bridge. It’s been over 25 years since he got the present one and it’s almost worn to the gum.  I was aware that my bad tooth needed attention too although there is another worse looking tooth that I expected to act up first. I was hoping that our financial situation would improve sometime soon and then I could get both teeth fixed. We hope to have our other house rented in May. Then we can quit feeding the credit card dragon before it gets out of hand and decides to eat us alive. 
I'm including photos of two drums we would like to sell if anyone might be interested.

Side One of PQ's  Double Sided Powwow Drum

The said tooth became so painful that all I could do was alternate double doses of Advil and Tylenol   After that, it was tolerable. until they weren’t effective anymore. While I paced around the house, PQ called a dentist who

Side Two: Double Sided Powwow Drum, "32 X "6-1/2, (sold)

advertised that he took emergencies but I guess that didn’t include Saturday evenings. I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait until Monday. While thinking about pliers, I decided to do some probing with a pointed plastic toothpick. This isn’t pretty, but I managed to break through the surface and drain the abscess. By then I’d acknowledged there was no way to avoid a visit to a dentist. I made an appointment on Monday. The dentist said in emergency he would have done the same as I did for immediate relief and gave a prescription for an antibiotic. then scheduled an appointment for the main work.

For Sale: Hand Drum, Vanishing People (Buffalo) "17, $350

Health wise, I’ve been very lucky, only one doctor visit in 22-1/2 years in Taos. That first year I had a serious abscess and the doc compassionately lanced it in his office to spare the expense of a hospital visit. The rest of the time, I’ve been able to treat myself. About ten years ago, I had two crowns done in Santa Fe and the dentist took payments. They don’t seem to do that anymore.  Back then, I could get some help from my folks but it still took months to pay off. Insurance has been out of reach for most of my working life. I trusted luck out of necessity. Astonishingly, it usually worked but age or karma catches up with us eventually. I hope this tooth situation is an indication that the need for such a high degree of luck is on the way out.

Actually, I began the Taos lifestyle before I moved here. I depended exclusively on luck or if you prefer synchronicity. The magic was that I could live fairly well although without any padding from month to month. Whenever I met a wall, it seemed that a solution would appear just in time. I would get a commission or sometimes something less orthodox. My first income in Taos was for shoveling snow, then a bookstore, next was part time in a bead store, unemployment, and finally the gallery job I had for 16 years. If I slipped backwards, it seemed that an opportunity to sell a painting or do a website would manifest. Regrettably, Taos has changed and so
 have I. 

 

The old Taos magic has dimmed. Taos is becoming more normal (not a compliment) except that jobs are still limited and don’t pay much, domestic violence and DWI’s are normal and reading the Taos News Police Blotter is still both tragic and hilarious. Realtors are in denial about current property values; otherwise, it seems like any other third world country. Of course, this could be a jaded perception.

Yesterday was a warm spring day, perfect for flinging tumbleweeds over the fence and raking wind borne trash out of the yard. I love my trees, bushes and flowers like family pets and I worry about them when we are gone. I suppose they sense a vibe and so it's a favorite for local cats and dogs, and I think that’s ‘cause they feel the love’. I’ve heard and seen a few spring birds and any day now, it will be nice enough for coffee on the patio. Our connection with Taos is nowadays concentrated on our little patch rather than the whole town. Last night the coyotes were out with their young’uns learning the lingo of yips barks and howls. Of course, PQ visits friends at the Pueblo now and then. Like his great grandfather Tony Lujan, he needs to be among his tribal members speaking Tiwa.  It keeps the native spirit happy. 

Mark Gordon, PQ, and Carol Baker in front of Mabel's House

We had a nice visit with Mark Gordon, Producer and Carol Baker, Social Media Director for "Awakening in Taos", on Saturday morning, and ended up at the Mabel Dodge Lujan House. Touching into that part of Taos history always brings back a reminder of why I love Taos. I suspect that the real magic of Taos has retreated to that timeless space behind the Pueblo for rejuvenation and perhaps, to rekindle the genuine spirit of the place. I can accept that, nevertheless I’m growing restless to move about in the larger world again. I hope that we will find a way to go to Arizona soon. Taos is sweeter when there is an option. Perhaps it’s a spring thing but I’m getting an urge to organize my books, dig through old boxes (did I really say that?) and start painting again. Taking inventory and reorganizing is a sign that I’m getting ready for the next step, whatever that means. I’m excited about getting my improved teeth into something fresh.

Flowing Water is Good, a Flood not so Much

I came across this blog entry by by Kyva Holman a few days ago while surfing the net . I thought it was  well said:

  

Alternate Realism & the Death of New Age ;

What is real is that humankind desperately needs to adapt an alternative to what Ken Wilber calls the “flatland” view pervasive in postmodern society. Far greater minds than mine have noted that tremendous economic, political, planetary, cosmic and karmic forces are coming to bear upon this time in the human saga. They require of us a monumental increase in the speed of accessing, processing and integrating seemingly incompatible phenomena into a whole which is synthetic and organic. The sheer volume of information available has outstripped our ability to use it effectively and appropriately. What is also real is that by some method – I will not attempt to name it here – humankind is in fact undergoing a spontaneous rise in consciousness. In every corner of the globe people are probing non-material realms and becoming deliberate co-creators of reality. I think it could be said then, without exaggeration, that the story of our era is a race between the forces of evolution and the forces of self-annihilation. ( I disagree somewhat with the last two sentences. Only a minority of us are taking the route of co-creators.)

Information is surging toward us at such a rate that we are not able to ingest it let alone digest it. The internet makes information of all kinds available literally at our fingertips. Considering how limited our access to real news is on the media, perhaps this flood of information is one way to control an internet that began as a government network but got out of government control before anyone saw it coming. Too much information too fast is the same as very little information.

I remember when I first began the serious project of reading cognizance-transforming literature.  I read  materials that raised my awareness and sometimes were so challenging they made chaos of my habitual mental arrangement. Then I would search until I found a particular way of arranging new information that would reconstruct me on another level, a level that would put the apparent contradictions to creative usage.

There is always a thrill when entering an intellectual venture into the unknown, both the danger and rapid ascension . This was as much a punch in the solar plexus as free falling down a mountain. In fact, mountains and the need to scale them are my favorite analogy. However, now there is so much material bombarding us at such an overwhelming speed that it can’t be assimilated, truly, too much of a good thing.  The same could be said of technology. The proliferation of media distribution via TV, computer and mobile devices is indigestible.  It comes barreling at us too fast to filter. We swallow a lot of flotsam and tide born garbage forced down our throats by the power of the surge.

Yet, back on land, there are cobblestone alleys where quality cafes of information can be found. However, for those raised on intellectual junk food they are located too far off the electronic freeway to notice from a speeding network. From the main highway, they are invisible.

The techno-world is like an addicting drug and it progresses for profit rather than for what it can do to improve life. Sometimes a new phone or computer comes out before you have time to acquaint yourself with all the mazelike complexities of the previous model. If you learned all the bells and whistles, you probably didn’t have time to do anything else. But perhaps you are a techi genius and if so, what a waste of talent.

I love computers, smart phones and cameras (four planets in Gemini). Electronics tug me in like a magnet. I find myself drifting to the electronic section of stores just to stroke, poke and caress new gadgets. Even old gadgets pull me in, the way paleontology pulls me back to my love of time travelling. But it is easy to forget the purpose behind the seduction, if there is one.

I still buy paper books and order several each month since the discovery of used books on Amazon.

Shadow on my Green Rocker

There is no doubt that electronic markets have changed buying especially in small towns.  Sitting in the upholstered green rocker each morning with a book a cup of coffee and a pen is my meditation. I read and write comments and insights on the margins. If I get really excited, I write in my paper journal as well. There is a sensual intimacy about this reading time that I can’t find on a tablet or keyboard. The cat feels it and jumps on top of the rocker above my head purring in accord. Early morning quiet time with electronics just doesn’t feel right.

After I first moved to Taos, I abandoned the 20^th century (not the 21^st, as this was a long time ago). I desperately needed to be near lots of red earth, junipers, pinons and buffalo grass.  It was vital to regenerate a connection with earth. Yet, after balance was achieved I needed to re-confront the world I left behind. For me a change in place was also a change in time/space,  although truthfully I never identified with that world. However, I brought my old computer with me though it was pre-internet and only useful for word-processing and my astrology program. Then in ’98 I sold some paintings, bought a Windows ‘98 computer and was stunned by the power to look up anything I wanted to explore. Back then, the internet was full of free information it was truly like a global village. I was in Gemini heaven. It was installed with Microsoft Office and the WinStar Astrology program. I was setup for magic. Later after upgrading, a friend gave me his previous edition of Photo Shop.Life seemed complete.

Nevertheless, the resources to acquire information are only the first step and with so much information available at such speed, we are often lost at that first step. Information is like food, it is worth only what you can assimilate. In-form-ation by definition must be integrated, and beyond that, it should transform you in some way. Not only that, but information needs an organic essence to be nurturing. This may explain the popularity of social media. People need to feel connected. The aspect that disturbs me is the sheer banality of most social media contents. Too much information becomes the same as too little. Another way to say it is, too much information is in effect, disinformation. Too much change too fast is much like too much water too fast, it rages over the surface creating chaos without soaking in.

All of the violent destruction portrayed in movies and on TV, broken only by commercials seducing us to buy, buy, buy makes us insensitive to the qualities of that island of real earth that we live on. Perhaps the controllers behind the scene having lost control of the internet so near its foundation are making up for it by encouraging useless mental junk food that numbs us to the taste of emptiness. In a sense, this false ethos is attempting to make disconnected sociopaths out of all of us. If they succeed, we will routinely blame somebody else for all evil, have no empathy for suffering and aim only for immediate gratification. Those years of living very simply in Taos allowed me to time travel to an earlier time and assimilate the world outside at a digestible rate. That’s one of the good things about living in a third world country. But of course, now there is the internet and Amazon.com so a healthy diet is entirely up to me.