I managed to come through the scrub, although not completely unscathed. They have moved me into another department, to replace an imminent retiree. He will be a hard person to replace, as he currently works in that department as their “lead analyst” or the “go-to” guy. He can run any instrument in the department, and he is generally respected and well-liked. Big shoes to fill, and my feet feel very small.

For my initial training, they’ve paired me with another ‘left-of-center’ individual, who I get along with remarkably well anyway. You may want to head over to Blogspot dot com and check out “The Odd Angle” to get a sample of him. Go on, I’ll wait …..

Anyway, this fellow and I have been working together this past week to see if I can get up to scratch on the instrument *he* is currently running; so that he can get some more training on the other instruments in the department, as I believe he is slated for the team lead position that is coming open very soon. I don’t know how well I’m doing, but he’s not threatened me with a hand-crafted bullwhip yet, so maybe I’ll just manage.

Still, my thoughts go out to the people who have been let go, especially my friend who is newly married, and really didn’t need this headache right now. Although I appreciate that the company held onto these employees as long as they did, hoping that the workload would pick back up and dissipate the need to let them go; it still rankles that they did have to be let go. Losing your job at any time is bad, losing it right before Yule is worse; and although I don’t know the situations with the others, I know that times are tight for my friend.

So, for this new new beginning, I am looking back a little; and hoping that looking forward doesn’t turn out too bleak.

Tioraidh

I believe I shall post soon about serial dreams, “true” dreaming, and how I lost friends I hadn’t had a chance to make yet in New Orleans.

Until then, a day or so hence …
Tioraidh!

This is my own theory of reality-abstraction relativity. An impression isn’t merely strict, raw data . . . it’s malleable information that is balled into a shape which is pleasing to the impressee’s mind’s-eye, although not necessarily to the impressor. “Pleasing” might actually incorporate anti-aesthetics, being as the impressee might need to view us in a negative light. What’s more, an impression inevitably serves to poultice the impressee’s insecurity sores, so it rarely has much at all to do with the impressor, usually just setting them in a position of ethical or situational or decisional incompetence. Hence, there are many bad impressions tucked away in people’s heads….

I’m a pleaser-person; that’s my strongest personality trait. I came by it honestly, and my harsh rearing certainly didn’t undermine that tendency — it fed it. As a result of this, I am quite susceptible to the impressions of myself that people have manufactured. I feel some slight need to be appreciated — as does everyone — yet I want to please people, too, so… there’s a conflict. Because the person whom I want myself to be isn’t necessarily going to be the person someone else thinks ‘should be’ me. In fact, that’s hardly ever the case.

I knew my path had finally crossed the “maturity” orbit, the day I let someone carry away an impression of myself that I knew was negative and which I felt was probably inaccurate. I just let ‘em put it in their pocket and take it home to stroke and massage…. In fact, I reveled in their potential mistake a little. So what if they believe something concerning me that I don’t believe myself? Does the equitable world then end? NO. Who cares if his / her painting of me doesn’t jibe with my own self-portrait? Time still marches on, and I can’t let myself get bogged down in some other artist’s paint….

The act of taking or giving impressions isn’t reprehensible, in and of itself. It’s just something we silly ol’ humans do. Fuck it! But I think we can gauge a measure of our happiness on how much concern we have for those impressions. Whether that concern is termed “pride” or “vanity” or “self-absorption” or whatever sin you’d care to label it… the departure from it is a healthy one. As for myself, I learned to try to disregard the impressions people might be taking — when I realized that I couldn’t trust my own perceptions and that I’d been taking impressions that fit my standards rather than the other person’s….

So, go ye forth and look, with new eyes, upon the wonder that is the world. “Momma, take the coins from my eyes, ’cause I surely don’t believe what I am seeing!”  Try, just for a little while, to make a conscious effort to step out of *your* shoes, and into someone else’s.  Look at yourself through their eyes, instead of at them through yours.  You might be amazed at the impression you’re giving, instead of being so adrift in the impression you’re getting.
Tioraidh!

It’s an interesting life, being in the country. There are trade-offs, as with everything in life. For instance, I can’t just hop in the car and go get a quickie meal at a drive-thru. But, the up-side is, I can bury a corpse in solitude. You just can’t do that in the city! Also, out in the country, there aren’t a lot of neighborhood kids for our children to play with, but we do have rattlesnakes and groundhogs and dirt clods and abandoned farm implements to keep them occupied. In the city, there’s culture and sophistication and cosmopolitan people. We don’t have all that, but at least we’re able to grow our own pot.

We got folks by the name o’ Horace, Wilbur, Aunt Phyl (pronounced ain’t, not ant), Uncle Clete, Jasper Jenkins, Pa Noaks, Old Lady Durfee, and The Widow Hensley. In the country, there’s no such a thing as a new building… Everything’s old and beat up. And our livestock come right up in the yard. ( I think Myst posted about it once.)

We don’t lease no cars; we drive ‘em ‘til they’re 40 years old. We believe in God even if we don’t (or, at least, we give that appearance for the neighbors). We keep creases in our jeans. Animal feces isn’t considered something to shriek about, even when it’s all over our hands. We refer to things, not by their actual name, but by what they do or what they’re used for: wash rag, mud dobber, ne’er-do-well, sewin’ needle, rain cloud, bug zapper, weed trimmer…. “Rondell, Jr…. bring me my cannin’ stool, will ya?”

There’s brown, meandering stains running transverse along the sides of many pickups. If you live in the country, you know what this stain is, and you don’t think twicet about it. Old people wear checkered or plaid clothes; young’uns wear solids. Boys don’t wear short pants, but the girls do. We pour salt on slugs for after-dinner entertainment. Or just sit by the bug zapper. We know the man who checks our meter.

Okay, that there’s the stereotype…. It ain’t all such as that, though. Some of it is, some of it ain’t. You’ll just have to come visit to know if I’m pullin’ your leg.

In the real world of country livin’, Myst and I are working on the house and yard tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that.  We’ve got to get cleaned up and “presentable” for company coming over on Saturday. (I hope it don’t get out of hand.) We’re hosting a get-together/family business type of gathering, and we’re and we’re rarin’ to have a good time with kids running around lickspittle and scrounging for plastic eggs full o’ goodies.  So, this evening, we’ll work like mad, we’ll bathe and bottle and bed down the L’il Man (okay, we’ll sit him at the table and he can eat with actual implements of destruction – sheese, you people can sure ruin an analogy!), then we’ll concentrate on the bottle for grown-ups.  We’ve still got part of a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and three flavors of “Crush” to mix it with. So we’ll probably sit on the porch and talk one another’s ears off and just be plumb jittery. (I hope it don’t get out of hand.) There’ll be bugs to swat, and cigarettes to smoke, and worries to pull out of hiding and go over. It may not actually solve anything, but oft-times, it is the motions that you go through that comfort you sometimes, when you can’t do anything about the problem in the first place. We’ll get by, my Myst and I – we have each other, and the Pookster, and L’il Man,  the little blue house – and really, when it comes right down to it – what more do you need?

Have a super weekend ever’body, it will get here before you know it . . . . Remember: corn snakes don’t eat corn and horny toads ain’t horny, but a spit fish will get ya every time.

Tíoraídh!

It’s not God, that’s for sure. But that’s okay, because we don’t think it’s God in the first place; we believe it to be ourselves! We think humanity is the be-all / end-all of history and time; God is merely our facilitator. Despite our extreme arrogance, human beings are just incidental blips on the existential radar. Here today, gone tomorrow. You can wax dogmatic ‘til the cows come home, but this eventuality — the end of man — will not have been the end of time. Just an infinitesimal phonic caught in a syllable of a word of a sentence in a paragraph of a page within a chapter of the epic poem called IT.

We measure Life with ever-passing increments of time, even distance…. That’s not too wacky or abstruse… but Einsteinian theory tells us there exists nothingness — nothingness — which is so dense, it’ll alter time. Nothing — the opposite of something — is floatin’ around in the middle of nowhere (literally), and it can warp an abstraction like time…. Obviously, time is something more outstanding than us. That means nothingness is better than us…. Dude, this is metaphysical paper-rock-scissors!

And what about the elements…. That identifier is a misnomer, actually, because we keep learning that our building blocks are really made up of smaller items, so each subsequent building block is relegated to the compounds, ad nauseum. I’m not sure what science’s current fundamental thingamajig is theorized to be, maybe the lepton or the cruton…. But you know what? Whatever it is, it’s made only of some piss-ant kind of light-energy, motion — nothing!

Nothing plus nothing leaves nothing… you gotta have somethin’…. if you wanna dance with me!

What if dreams are concrete, but our asphalt and steel is made of air? What if something like love could break time, not just bend it, and nuclear explosions, heretofore dreaded as cataclysmic, are but sweet wisps of steam in a universal fart? And if time is malleable, and if the basic physical property of everything is absolute nothing, and if human duration is but a pin-point on a continuum that’s not even time, then what do I care?

I think nothing is the cosmic pièce de résistance. (I mean the thing Nothing, not no-thing.) Chaos has a purpose; the purpose is chaos. Nihilists are faith-based believers; the religious are agnostic. We all know that we fashion our own dream-reality, but do we build all of reality, too. Anything is possible in a bass-ackwards dimensionless void of nothingness. And everything is impossible.

All I know is this . . . . I’ll wear sandals with white socks if I damn well please!

Case in point…. It took me 30+ years to finally have kids. (I know you’d all like to joke that it took me that long to figure out how to have a baby, but believe me, I practiced that maneuver all by myself for years.) It took me so long because I just don’t do the things I’m not good at. I didn’t think I’d be good at parenting, so I didn’t give it a try. I suppose it’s a matter of confidence. Or a lack of trepidation, more likely! (Again, the most scintillating contrasts are subtle.)

My job as an “analyst”… It’s the same thing. I’m not a mechanic or a carpenter or a farm hand, avocations I’d prefer, because I ain’t worth a shit at any of it. In fact, I’m so veritably inept, I’ve been told I could break an anvil with a hammer — and that, believe it or not, was a ~pulled~ punch! I’m only an analyst because I inherited a gene or some such shit that enables my mind to perceive things in accordance with the virtues assigned to that particular endeavor, or lack thereof. Weird little inconsistencies just seem to stand out for me … I heed the mathematics of it…. Music, too. And writing, especially. My mind sees words like other brains see numbers. (Or how certain brains envision breasts.) So writing’s somethin’ I always done pretty good.

Please don’t think you must assuage my regret because, really, there is none. My point is not that I’m limited, just that I’ve *noticed*. Judgments and score-keeping are for all those gods I don’t believe in; I just want to *comprehend*. Noticing is the most exhilarating part of Life, in my opinion. Once you are able to see something, as it [most likely] exists, and you finally *understand* it, there’s a feeling of freedom that envelops you. My freedom has come with the objective, and surprise, observation that I do what I’m good at, not that I’m good at whatever I choose to do.

Now I can do whatever I want.

Of course, there are those paths less travelled, or travailled, as the case may be.  I took a job as a customer service representative for a while.  The poor people I had to deal with, idiots though they may have been, deserved far better than I gave them.  I realized rather quickly that I do not suffer fools, or perceived fools, gladly.  These people, who had some problem, and called their company trying to solve said problem, and got stuck with me — well, I’m sorry. To some of you, I’m sorry … to the true idiots who don’t know to check if a power plug is connected first; well, you deserved what you got.

Anyway, for this reason, I know also that I’m just not cut out for teaching.  For my family’s well-being, I hope my son is as quick on the uptake in school assignments as I was, or his mother will truly have her work cut out for her.  After the daughter having problems in third grade … well, she’s agreed to never ask me to help the kids with homework again. 

Other things that I’m aware of my ineptitude in exhaustive, excruciating detail:  fine-line detail work, in whatever medium … these big sausages connected to the end of my hands are really just not cut out for that kind of delicate operation … it isn’t pretty when I’m done.  I can sew a stitch, but I’ll only do it on my socks where no one can see it.

However, may you all turn your hands to things you are good at, and know the happiness that ensues!

Tioraidh!

Ky

Take me for example . . . . If you were to pass me on the sidewalk of your hometown, you’d most likely take me for a redneck. I have a Southern accent, and I drive a truck (well, not so much anymore – but I used to, and probably will again), and I wear work boots when I can, and I say “son of a bitch” a lot. By the same token, working class persons might view me as a sissy-man or a college boy or whatever.

Here in Tennessee, I would never be mistaken for a redneck! Mostly, I’m regarded as an unapproachable brainy guy.  Gods alone know where people get that idea!  Those of you in the void space wherein I throw my words probably think I’m alternately funny and contemplative. My family thinks I’m just plain weird.

Late-in-life parent. Artist/Writer. White guy. Recluse. Iconoclastic. Nonconformist.

None of these labels are bad, and I accept them comfortably. But if you happen to have some sort of problem with any category, then prejudices result. However, I’m just a person tryin’ to get by, with what I’ve been given, from where I’ve been given it. Like everybody else….

I’m merely using myself as an example. I don’t have a major problem with how I may be viewed. Hell, if I find out how someone views me, I will sometimes go out of my way, even do things that are somewhat out of character in order to reinforce their assumption.  I do, however, have a problem with how I’ve judged people for whom or what they appear to be. I’m not unlike anybody, I suppose, in that regard as well. Ironically, I’m most intolerant of those I presume to be intolerant themselves. I get them before they can get me!

I suppose these aversions to people-types come from insecurities on a social level. We want to fit in, and we disavow those groups to which we think we couldn’t belong, or wouldn’t want to belong. I suppose it’s a sort of sociological cognitive mapping, to discern our placement in this world. Regardless, we categorize folk, and we become intolerant and small-minded, in that process.

What I’m learning is that a smile and a good attitude will get you accepted above all other fitting-in attempts. For the most part, people are far more gracious than we give them credit, and they’ll like us if we like them. I’ve learned that some of the people that I thought judged me were actually quite fond of my independent lifestyle. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Then again, ever so ofen, it works out the other way.  I guess in a way that saddens me.  I don’t mind the fellow at work who remarks “Hello, ladies.” when I’m in the break room together with the rest of the early morning crowd.  I’m fairly certain that he doesn’t mean it negatively, as I am fairly certain that, my honorary ovaries aside, I’m not actually being mistaken for a lady with my rather unkempt facial hair.  Not really a problem, and he seems to get a kick out of it.  I’m not talking about him. 

I think sometimes we get an idea in our heads, from wherever it may come from, and we go with it.  Sometimes it is certainly easier to ‘go with it’ than to find the kernel the idea springs from, and root it out to see what plant it will grow into, and maybe sometimes it isn’t.  I don’t know.  In the end, I’ve made a lasting habit of not caring too much about it.  When I went through my first divorce, there was a lot of ‘sides-choosing’, and that is understandable.  It does let you know rather quickly who your friends are, and I am happy to say that there were several people who did not choose sides, who instead would simply not speak of the other of us when one of us was around.  That is great, that is a wonderful thing to be a witness to.

Anyway, I got a little sidetracked there on one of my personal soapboxes.  It happens, and since this is my blog, I’m allowed to let it happen.  It’s time is gone now though, so if I can remember my point, I’ll circle back around to it.  Well, suffice to say, I don’t really much care of the opinion I put forth, as the majority of my friends seem to like me for who I am, and even in spite of my seeming blindness to ‘the Line”.  You know “the Line”?  The one that people with a modicum of decency and/or common sense know not to cross?  Yeah, I never seem to see it until it is two, three quips behind me and I realize I am speaking into an awkward silence. 

Anyway, I don’t much worry about it, but sometimes it comes along an hits you, when you maybe realize you have a false impression of someone, or someone acts shocked at something you do, and you realize that they have built a false impression of you.  What you have to remember is that impressions happen, whether you want them to or not.  Nothing you can do about it, as you’re going to form impressions of people, and they are going to form them of you.  If you can’t be yourself, then try to be someone you like, look up to, or admire, and eventually the mirror becomes the truth.

Were I to concoct a metaphor — which I certainly shall — I might compare a thought process to the combustion system of a car…. The brain, obviously, is the engine; The synapses might be the firing of plugs or of pistons pistoning; Whether it were closed- or open-minded, or even weighty ponderance, might depend on the size of the cam; Inspiration or a muse could operate as the ignition; And something would need to act as fuel…..

For me, commentation is the fuel, not the end product of this metaphor — locomotion. Most people, I presume, will mull something over in rapt, silent absorption, deliberate over perceptions, belief, supposition — whatever — and then communicate their findings at the conclusion. Not me, though! My talking (or writing) is the fuel injector doing its job, getting the motor humming. It’s a part of my thought process, not a result. I talk things through, and that’s how I come closer to understanding them.

Unfortunately, I leave behind me a trail of exhaust fumes — in the form of statements, opinions, claims… and I often have to answer for that pollution….

My Myst will sometimes ask me, “what are you thinking?”
The answer of “nothing” usually hits a wall of incredulity, but that’s the honest truth.
If I were thinking about something, I’d be talking about it with her…. It’s when I’m silent that absolutely nothing is up there, believe me!

Here’s an example of what I mean: My Myst often inside-jokes with me, “it’s a decoy for pigeons.” That’s how she acknowledges that I’ve said something without knowing for certain that it is factual. The back-story is this: We were in the big city, on our way to a fancy restaurant, and we heard a hawk. At the time, we knew for certain there were no hawks downtown, and I thought/remarked simultaneously, “it’s a decoy for pigeons.”

It seems familiar, that I might have heard once of little plastic owls or hawks that you set in a belfry somewhere, that make shrieking noises to scarecrow pigeons away…. I wasn’t stating unequivocally that the decoy-pigeon explanation was outright truth; it was merely a theory, and when my mind considered it, my mouth helped the process along. Basically, my motor is noisy.

So, when I say to you that the past year’s worth of writing has been sub-par, I’m explaining that I haven’t been thinking during much of that time. And it’s true. I’ve been operating as if by rote. When I think, it’s something to the tune of, “What a fabulous window-treatment!” It won’t be significant, trust me on this! Occasionally, I’ll consider spirituality or something, and I’ll stenograph to you my thought process as that is happening, if it’s happening at the time I usually write out my post. Mostly, however, at that time I write whatever pops in my head, because I ain’t thinkin’ about nothin’ but haiku and yellow.

And, parenthetically, everything I have just written has been how I thought about it all, as I thought about it all…. Tomorrow, when I contradict myself, that’s just the car backfiring.

Now, in further fuel to the commentary fire.  There is a dreadful, pesky rumor going around that I am a ‘nice guy” — ~~Shudder~~ Perish the thought!  I have a reputation to live down to!  I’m like a cat, I look out after my own comfort, and if someone else happens to benefit from that, well … so much the better.   I’ve got a little boy that occasionally needs discipline, and I am the one looked to for that particular bit of parenting.  I can’t let him see me watch “Somersby” for that reason, because if he catches me developing a male mist midway through the movie, all bets are off.  He’ll ride roughshod over me like … well, like some roughshod riding hooligan, and the big ‘ol softie that I will have allowed evidence to be seen of will lose all behind-paddling credibility. 

So please, consider the effect of these rumors on me, and don’t go spreading around that I am less a curmudgeon than I espouse myself to be.  Beneath this crusty exterior may beat a kernel of soft chocolate/caramel nougat, but keep that tasty tidbit to yourself.  Please, for my child’s continued upbringing, I beg you!

Okay, I’ll take my tongue out of my cheek now –

~Tioraidh!

But I don’t actually want to talk about today. I want to talk about yesterday, not even yesterday, but a far-off yesterday.  About seven years ago.  I don’t know entirely what brought it to mind, partly nostalgia, partly some indefinable something that currently escapes me; yet there it is … on the drive home, a mental snapshot emerges, each sight and sound as clear as if it were there in front of me. 

It’s in the mid-70s, crisp, the sky yawning, blue, and mottled with cotton. Various animals are sounding their unique breakfast lyrics — owls, squirrels, dove, chipmunks, and cattle — as they vocally greet the day or scuttle around in the leaves. Apparently, ‘possum and raccoons had been prowling last night, leaving evidence at the scene — implanted heavily or frenetically in the soil at the big Rubbermaid ™ trash containers. My investigation leads me to believe these scoff-laws were after our garbage, and a moulage would probably indicate separate visitations, as the ‘coon prints appeared to overlap the ‘possum’s.

The scent of winnowed oak trees envelopes me, an almost palpable sensation that signifies Autumn. This odor is bitter and strident, yet it soothes me somehow, even as it assails my sinuses. Atop that is the sweeter pungency of manure, riding somewhere above, like the trill of a saxophone over a rhythm section. A lilting scent. Floating. Occasionally, I catch the waft of stale dirt as a breeze sweeps it to me, here, there, in a sort of cadence. This nasal rhythm is a fresh new music.

Perched on the sun-splashed roofs of barns and other buildings in the holler are dove, pigeons, swallows, and blackbirds. It looks warm up there. It’s a warmth from elevation that I can never experience naturally, but I can be thankful for the birds’ boastful reminder. Together, over a crop of maples, a few sparrows are mobbing a crow, finding strength in numbers. I wonder what that crow was after….

Daddy’s cattle are up in the his top pasture where it’s been recently bush-hogged. They’re only freckles on a green face, until I get close enough to see individuality. Two calves are frolicking with one another, and they kick and run and twist, illustrating the vibrancy of all youth. A young heifer stands nearby and watches, and I suspect she’s the proud new mother of one of these scoundrels. She seems to be smiling. But then again, cows are vapid creatures, and probably *are* always smiling, it’s a wonder their eyes aren’t blue – for the same reason that the sky is blue.

When you see these from a distance, the country seems magical. Peace and disorder somehow holding hands. But now I’m at the highway…. It winds through the valley like a tired gray snake, and I hop on its back. Here is where wonderment merges with routine, and I nod adieu to Pantherflight Demesne .. the “Little Blue House” that My Lady Mystique, The Pookie-Bear, and Myself call home.

I’ve had to get up this morning to go to the Post Office, and the utter banality of this exercise is not lost on me as I travel this mundane route. The sounds of chatter in the car from Pookie, the occasional question from Myst, the mellow sounds of the 80′s (mellow ?) on the radio .. all this soothes me, makes me feel in an odd sense, alive. Almost as if this is where I am supposed to be. But then the thought intrudes again – If I hadn’t of messed my truck up somehow (I have the _strangest_ luck with vehicles) – If I hadn’t messed up the truck, I wouldn’t have to make this trip to the post office now to retrieve a package that has been waiting nearly a week. The refrain goes something like; -mess up the truck, beg a ride to work, work until five, catch a ride home — post office already closed. School nights interject a timpani counterpoint on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as I catch an additional ride to and from school – leaving me even less time with my burgeoning family.

Still, we make it to the post office in own piece, despite the prevailing philosophy of a culture that prefers to make mountains out of molehills, and extends that philosophy into their driving. The mysterious package is a box of books, ordered nearly a month ago — I now have volumes one through nine of the “Lemony Snicket” set. The continued telling Pookie that she can’t read them has about driven her to that edge where she desperately wants to read them. Still, I have to read them first — even though they are children’s books, the subject matter (the ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ that befall the hapless children, and lend the set its sub-title) could be a bit much. I’m hoping not – I’m hoping the author is writing his imprecations very firmly tongue-in-cheek, but just in case…

From the post office, we head next in the direction of Wal-Mart, a discount store popularized into the sub-culture hereabout’s vernacular (f’rinstance, “Going to Wally-World” is heard near daily around the coffee machine, that last bastion of the workday slacker). We make it in, ostensibly to purchase a birthday gift for the girl across the street, Pookie’s Friend, and to return a software game that steadfastly refuses to install and play correctly on Myst’s computer. They don’t take the software back — it will have to go into the pile for McKay’s ( a buy-sell-trade used bookstore) with some other things at the house. We also get a few things we need for the house, and pick up some chips for a get-together later that evening. Oddly enough, we completely forget the birthday gift, and while I am putting the parcels into the car that had so recently been purchased, My Lady Myst and the Pookie brave the wild herds extant within the store again in search of the elusive prey that will constitute the ‘perfect gift’.

We get home and the Pookster wraps the gift and takes it across the street. My Lady and I start lunch, and discuss upcoming plans for the night’s gathering, and the lunar eclipse that is scheduled for the evening. The doorbell rings – we answer, and there are the two girls, giggling in that way that is peculiar to a brace of 8-year olds everywhere. Apparently the gift that was picked out was the ‘perfect gift’ and Pookie’s Friend has come over to personally give effusive thanks. Telling her goodbye, we bring the Pookie-Bear in to eat lunch, and then we are off.

We get to the gathering place, and strangely for us, we are the first ones there. Momentary panic sets in. The last time we had been the first to appear at a gathering, it turned out that the gathering was not even taking place at *that* person’s house. We trekked down the drive and knocked on the door — thankfully it was answered and we were reassured that there were others there already, and we were supposed to meet there today.

Over the next hour, the rest of the ‘family’ arrives. Although we aren’t related by blood, we feel like a family to each other. The family that we have chosen to be. And yes, there are occasional squabbles, and occasionally we have a ‘black sheep’ that wanders away — but the ties that bind the rest of us together are the stronger for it. I call us a tightly-knit group of loosely bound individuals. One of the group hasn’t shown up and we call and leave a raucous message on her home machine.

There is potato soup simmering on the stove – a scent that always makes me feel ‘warm and fuzzy’. There is also ham cooking in the oven, and another person has brought hard sourdough rolls. The warm fragrance of apples and cinnamon wafts lazily off a platter of fry-bread, and the pungent tang of sharp cheddar skirls around it. The food is finished, and the host pours a mixture into prepared pie crusts that will eventually, well-nigh magically transform into egg custard pies. The nutmeg shaken over the top merely accentuates the anticipation. The family currently in the kitchen begins eating. Either we are all very hungry (some of us are) or the food is very good (which it is), as there is nearly no other sound for several minutes of concentrated mastication.

Someone breaks the silence with, “Should we tell the others it’s ready?”. The answer quickly follows, “No, let’s all get our first bowl out of the way first”. Hearty laughter ensues, and we feel a moment of steam-wreathed camaraderie. Eventually, guilt overcomes us, and we call the others in to eat, and the cheerful kitchen becomes a bustling activity center. A choreographed dance of bowls, ladles, bread, cheese and people. Truly a thing of strange and terrible beauty.

After the food, the conglomeration breaks up, children running shrieking around the house, occasional shouts to “Put that down!” and “Don’t throw that!” echo back into the house. The smokers gather on the front porch, until the gathering chill pushes them back inside where there has been a fire laid in the hearth. The wood is well-seasoned, and burns quickly and hot, so we continue to poke it every so often, and put more wood on. Tonight’s leader goes out to greet the land and prepare the space for circle, and the rest of us gather to decide who is doing what and where for the full moons and/or new moons, and the seasonal holidays for the upcoming six months. As we are wont to do, we start talking and reminiscing and time slips away. One or another of us continues to say “It’s getting dark”, or “Okay, she’s ready to go” … and we finally wind down.

Then it is potty-break time, the ‘one-cigarette warning’ that lets us know it is time to begin. The night is clear. The blue skies of the earlier portion of the day carrying over, and holding true for the evening’s activities. The moon has been risen for some hours already, and the lunar eclipse is already half-way complete. The circle stands, shifting feet, and hands wrapped round themselves, even our ‘crunchy’ members who need chairs due to age or infirmity.

The quarters are called, clear voices ringing out the invocations to call protections and blessings to us for our working. The center speaker, unused to the position, and nervous, reads off of a prepared paper, and her voice occasionally cracks in her anxiety. The story of the first people, the animal people, and how Man forgot the speech of the animals, and forgot to give thanks to the animals for the lives he took to feed his family. How the animals got together and decided to curse man with disease every time he killed without giving thanks. How man finally noticed, and called out “Why?”. How the plant peoples gave of themselves to provide a cure for every disease the animal peoples could devise.

At this point, the narrative stops, and we all watch the moon, slowly darkening, until only a bright sliver remains. The Harmonic Concordance is also mentioned. This night, a Full Moon, yet with no moon, and the Harmonic Concordance, is a night of changes. We called down healing for a sick member, a friend and family member. Feeling ourselves becoming living conductors of the earth and sky, the energy slowly being pulled up our legs and into our body from the earth, even as the sky energy fell down upon us and soaked into our skin. A healing tea was passed around, and every member took it, and held it, and gave forth from the abundant energy that was in us, and of us, and around us that night, in that place.

The platter and the chalice were brought around, the fry bread, and cider — grounding us, giving us back a modicum of what we had expended, even as the earth and sky energy left us feeling full and fulsome. The quarters were dismissed, and someone cracked a joke. The easy laughter amongst us telling more than anything of the easy feelings between us.

Driving home, feeling the slow seep of tiredness along the journey. Lost in thought, lost in wonder that the beautiful woman beside me chose me to be with. Feeling that full feeling well up again within me, washing tiredness away. Even more than the family I had just left, here with me now was my family. Family –

It is enough to make me wonder, again, what I have done to deserve the wonderful people in my life.  I am continually at a loss, as I know my youth and childhood had long periods of rampany childhood shenanigans unleavened by the kind of good it would take to cause the rising in my familial fortunes.  As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, by teens, and twenties were unmarked by the abundance of ‘good works’ it would take to provide karmic returns of the magnitude I have experienced.  I guess it is just exceedingly lucky happenstance on my part that has brought such superb people into my life. 

It is odd that this particular memory chose today to visit, as I am no longer currently a part of the group aforementioned, my Pookie-Bear is bearing the cross of her own troubles in another city, and my father is gone westward this past year; yet there it is.  Maybe it was the full moon soaring majestically over the house as I came down the hill, passing the pastures mentioned earlier, maybe it was something else.  I may not ever figure it out entirely, but I will be thankful for it, in this time when I need a little levity, a little brevity  -  there it is, a memory stepping forth from days gone to keep me company for the drive home. It reinforces the cyclical nature of … well, of everything.  What goes around, comes around; and if I have been paying off karma at a vastly accelerated pace for the past year, maybe this is a turning point again for me. 

We’ll see.   ~Tioraidh all, until our moonlit paths wind together again.

My teenage years were about the same thing as most teenage lives – excess (excess squared, some might think). My twenties were about butting heads with consequence and experimenting with all the things that I wasn’t good at. My thirties were about realizing what’s important and how to walk away from what’s not. Here are some of the things I’ve found to be important…

The old adage “listen much, speak little” is about the truest thing I know.
I’m still working on that. I owe most of my story-telling ability to my father who regaled us all with stories at family dinner-table get-togethers. He’s gone now, and I can’t tell them like he can, but I do have some stories to share with my son, and hopefully with grandchildren one day … we’ll see. Lady knows I’m in **no rush** for grand-childer!

Good posture is highly underrated.

Being politically correct nearly always equals boring.

Never write or talk publicly about your problems – no one really wants to hear about it and the ones that do aren’t your real friends.

We should never let mistakes haunt us (I’m still working on that too — I’ve always said that the past is always with us) or shake hands with regret.

Almost all of the things that the medical industry tells you are wrong. At best, when working in their professions, doctors can only be said to be “practicing”.  Makes you wonder when they’ll ever get it right.

Everyone should spend at least one night of their lives alone in the woods.

If you really, truly want to know the meaning of life, have a child.

Simplifying your life may be one of the most difficult things initially, but it’s one of the most satisfying.

I found out that acupuncture really works.

Forget JFK’s assassination, Roswell and the Loch Ness Monster, the only real true mystery that faces us is this:: who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and how could he possibly have written music so perfect?

The people that seem lost in life are those that never set any goals – goals have a way of mutating and changing into the right path.

Apologize and forgive quickly and often. Another that I am still working on. Apologizing means saying, in some way “I was wrong.” — and I am just not good at that. I’m too arrogant by far to easily admit that I’m wrong in much of anything. I’m trying to work on this too. There is a woman I know, and she means the world to me, and she claims not to be able to see arrogance in me. For her, I want to not *be* arrogant. It’s a work in progress, and liable to continue to be for some time, but I’ll keep trying.

No matter how clearly you state your case, someone will always miss the point…entirely.

Time spent trying to find the truth is never wasted. The same goes for time spent in prayer or meditation.

There is little adventure in life that can match eating new and different food for the first time.

Most people carry far too much debt and too much hate.

We should all talk to children more; they have a way of turning your world on its ear.

Good music and dancing are never inappropriate, we should fill our lives and homes with both.

Many people should walk away from corporations and work for themselves.

Every year that I live, I realize how much my parents loved me, in one case it was almost too late; but I did reach the realization in time to appreciate it, and hard as it hurts, I am glad I let him know before he was gone that I was sorry for being such a silly, stubborn ass for so long. I also realize how right they were. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way I act — I guess I have more realization to go) I also realize that I’m living out my millionth second chance and I’m getting better all the time. I am, after all, just walking in grace. Aren’t we all?

Mother’s curses are terrible things.  “I hope you have a child who turns out just like you!” — these words are the knell of doom.  Tremble ye mortals, when you hear them.  I’m only able to keep up with my little one because a) he’s probably still a better child than I was, and b) I remember most of my ‘escapades’ and I don’t let the opportunities arise that could lead to him following in my footsteps.  Still, he’s managed a few things when my back was turned for a split second that only reinforce my resolve to keep my eye on him.

And there you have it. There is more, of course there is — isn’t there always?  However, that is all I feel compelled to regale you with at the moment.

Fare thee well, my friends in the lands beyond …

Tioraidh!