the pelican

once more with feeling

just this that and the other thing nothing really

and so it has been said that the world is pretty much as we see it. it is a reflection, a mirror of ourselves.

and this simple truth this naked honesty has led perhaps to the utterly mistaken misinterpretation of the “you create your own reality” thing, maybe.

or that is yes, you do. the perspective, the focus, the narrow or the open-minded view. that seems to be as conscious a decision as you choose to make it. oh there it much that goes into it yes. genetics, culture, background, family, education, all of it. absolutely. but the bottom line is all that stuff is more or less information. and the assimilation and manipulation and storage and usage of that information is basically up to you. and this is volition.

freedom.

oh but how free do we really want to be?

isn’t it so much easier to be cynical and sardonic? or afraid and fatalistic? or pious and self-righteous? isn’t it easier to just glom onto something bigger? nationalism maybe, or religion, or sarcasm? isn’t it easier to just blame it all on something else? don’t we seem to want to identity with a group -- a community -- a pack of like-minded individuals. safety in numbers. need someone to talk to. must assimilate. must conform. must stand out and be unique.

like-minded individuals. isn’t that an oxymoron?

but what about this idea of just figuring it out for yourself. examining the interior. looking within. checking out from whence there comes to be all these assumptions and assertions and beliefs and pronouncements and emotions and fears and worries and concerns?

where does this come from? isn’t it always changing? doesn’t it seem to shift constantly?

and what does it mean to have a gut feeling? to know it in your heart? to feel it in your bones?

and what to do with that oh what to do.

the most interesting and authentic people have always seemed to have some sort of sense of purpose. some lack of self-doubt. not to say they didn’t have their darker moments their soul-searching their dark nights of the soul. but somehow even if they did doubt, they just did the right thing anyway. they just up and did it, didn’t they?

because isn’t it really just that simple?

oh but we love to make it so hard. so complex. so enmeshed.

we want to be helpless. it’s all too big. i can’t cure the suffering of the world. i don’t want to hear the news. i don’t want to care about darfur. i don’t want to read about the war. i don’t care if an attorney general was destroying the very core of the ideal of law and order as a lackey to an unscrupulous political machine. i don’t want to know about anything other than my own immediate needs because believe me, they are not only very interesting and important for my survival but they are a complex set of variables and anything could just topple the whole reality over like a house of cards. one false move and that’s it. anything could happen. and we can’t have that.

this identity that we construct. this image of who we think we should be.

so much baggage. so much nonsense. so many attachments.

we grip each aspect and we say i am like this and i don’t like that no and i love this sort of thing and i can only be happy when i’m doing what i what which is this and i am a victim and i had so many things happen to me and these things these things these things made me who i am everything out there made the me that i am and i am nothing if i am not all these things which i do so embody or try to anyway.

we believe these histories of all the things that we have experienced as though they are the authors of our existence and we refer to them as our scars and our wounds and our merit badges and our preferences and our habits and our behaviors and we cling to them oh we cling we grip so tightly we squeeze the juice out of it yet we must hold on hold on to these shards of identity so tightly because without them, without these identifying scars and features, well who the heck are we?

we?

are we plural?

uh excuse me, i am unique. i am me. i was talking about me. all about me.

yep that’s right. i am the star of my show.

but am i so different am i just this so am i only me and why am i me and not somebody else and how did i come to get here and where am i going and i will die someday yes i will die and will i just end will i disappear i am so important i am all things i am all these likes and dislikes and preferences and appetites and i am just this and not that and i am afraid that i will die and i will be alone i will die and everyone will be living and i will die and will everything disappear when i die what will i miss and what will happen to me to
me to me me me me me me?

and i am so frightened. so alone. no one understands me. no one gets me. everyone hurts my feelings because they can’t possibly comprehend my perspective. oh i am so alone. an alien. an outcast. nobody has ever felt this way but me. oh how i suffer. oh how i struggle beneath my burdens. look at them. those others. they could be happier than me. they probably are. because they can not know what i feel. they can not possibly fathom the depth of my pain. oh but what if they do? are they laughing at me? oh what about me?

what about me? i’m supposed to be the star. i am the star. i feel pain and suffering. i must be real. i am important. i have emotions. strong emotions. i have deep feelings and convictions too. i believe in things. specific things. and i have an appearance to maintain. an image to keep up. an ideal to live up to.
but then here is there is here is this catch, see. there’s this tricky part . . . this detail this conundrum this je ne sais quoi this mystery this phenomenon this logical fallacy this tidbit of trivia . .

for if i am the star then who’s watching the show?

now give me that remote and stop changing the channels.

posted by: limine at 23:36 | link | comments (6) |

me me me me me

ok. yes i too have been tagged by coopergreen and thus have a writing assignment.

an assignment that i have been diligently working on as i did all my school papers. that is, i have been procrastinating, thinking of excuses, playing the colored bubble popping game, fiddling about with the cats, listening to the radio, writing email to friends and finally eventually under some amount of duress blurting something out up against a deadline at the last minute. you may picture me now, shamrock tie-dye t-shirt stained with splashes of olive oil and dill, casually sitting at the kitchen table on another unnaturally hot close to 100 degree evening with kokopelli cicada buggies buzzing loudly in the backyard.

meteor showers tonight.
 
yes. perhaps it is impossible. am i not just way too complex to simply list out the most private elements of my very soul in an eight bullet point memo? truth be told there are times i have feared too much of me has been revealed on my silly little bloggy as is. seems the going trend these days is to go private or delete or disappear altogether. and oh the magnificence of all that is me. how can i find something even remotely interesting to tell you? and while though ‘tis true that i can not really escape this particular subjective biological perspective, the fact is truth is the reality of it is “I” am just not all that fascinating. really.

and, easily distracted by pizza and monday night football as well.

well ok so i told cooper i’d post it today. i have been tagged and so. be that as it may and as it were and so on and so forth and that said and anyway . . . i shall now empty out as many crucial identifying scars, tattoos and features as are musterable by any other reasonably semi-responsible person under the same or similar circumstances.

but then i must ask, perhaps more importantly, do i have it in me to maintain this glib self-conscious expose resume glory of all that is me for eight paragraphs?

i think not.

but what the heck. i’ll just have to buck up and spew a little drivel. oh if i could stick a knife in my heart, and spill blood all over the stage? would it satisfy you? would it slide on by you? would you think this girl’s insane?

oh i know, it’s only rock ‘n roll.

(sorry.)

oh but i like it like it yes i do you know i like it. i like it.

ahem. just a little piece of undigested radio there. ok. getting a grip now.

1. so. i am a child of the 60’s. quite literally, actually. born in colorado on the earlier side of the decade. lived for a time as a child in idaho, and then the family moved back to colorado in the early 70’s when colorado was being invaded by the rest of the world and a massive influx of people started flooding into the eastern valley side of the mountains, creating the gigantic choked urban sprawl of vast plastic mcmansions that create what is now the front range today. during that time, there were a lot of people with “native” bumper stickers on their cars like sneetches with stars on their bellies. though i never had one of those stickers, since to the best of my knowledge, i wasn’t ute, arapahoe or cheyenne.

2. my first utterance, as recorded by my grandmother, was basically informational and involved hand signals. spoken before i was a year old, the recorded pearls of wisdom are reported to have been “pad-ah-wah.” loosely translated, as only grandmothers have the ability to do, to mean: “(there is a) spider on the wall.”

3. my father desperately wanted a son and as the oldest daughter, i was somehow elected heck i don’t know maybe i volunteered maybe i just felt obligated maybe i actually kind of enjoyed the privilege but somehow somehow i ended up attempting to fill that vacancy. and this is how i became blessed and cursed with all things motorcycle, from riding trail bikes and racing motocross before i was twelve, to being saddled with a road bike to take to college -- an old LA policeman’s bike, a ’72 moto guzzi 850 california. i also had to listen to a lot of jazz and blues as well as the clancey brothers. well, we all did. there was no escaping it, really. i also faithfully worked in the backshop at his newspaper stuffing papers every tuesday and thursday night from the time i was twelve until i graduated from high school. later home from college one summer i learned typesetting and ad paste-up and layout which came in handy much later when i dropped out of school the first time. also i cooperated with his CB fascination and dutifully called home to beaver base whenever i traveled far enough from the house into a other areas in the mountains that had not been tested for reception under specific weather conditions. failed at guns, however, much to his disappointment. just could not get the gun love thing down. never liked ‘em and didn’t want to shoot ‘em. too loud. too scary. too deadly. and so i got to chuck clay pigeons up into the air with stoppers in my ears but not too plugged so i could still be notified when to “pull!”

4. married a bloody computer nerd linux guru cat whisperer works for the government tea and biscuits englishman with five motorcycles, an unnatural obsession with the band Rush and a belief that he is a mechanic. there are quite a few semi-dismantled things around here on a regular basis. he and his father, a born in india englishman who has no knowledge of indian culture, language or history, but who does an incredibly offensive impersonation when eating out in indian restaurants, together have re-built an old ’69 triumph which they like to take out for rides on sundays to show off, leaving me home with the cats to make soup.

5. i like to make soup, though not everyone who ends up eating it will always agree that i am particularly good at it. to be truthful, no two batches are ever quite the same. i particularly like to make soup on sundays while listening to my favorite independent public radio station and reading the sunday paper with the back door open while the cats taking turns visiting me for affection. and it gives me a sort of prepared and well stocked-up feeling to package a load of soup. i like to put it all up in little individual serving containers stacked neatly in the freezer for an assortment from which choose for lunch during the work week. i do a lot of curries, a lot of chilis, a few chowders, some barleys but mostly sort of conglomeration farmer’s market specials. the last one was a basic classic lentil with carrots, corn, celery, onions and garlic. pleased to report it has been well received.

6. i also like to put tabasco on my popcorn and eat it one kernel at a time while watching movies, which i see way way too many of and therefore prefer to call them “films” which makes it sound as though i am doing something slightly more substantial. watch just about anything from old classics to oddball things to new blockbusters but only requirement is they have to be decent. some redeeming quality. foreign films are fine as long as i can read along with them, can’t stand anything dubbed and ruined. always looking for a good new independents but i like ‘em best when they attempt to redeem humanity in some manner, have some sort of message, move me emotionally, have heart. i have a dvd rental exchange deal going with my neighbors and in the workplace. some films are in the realm of regular re-watchings for me. jet li’s “fearless” is perhaps my new fave movie to re-watch these days, although have seen all the extended versions of lord of the rings so many times i can pretty much recite the dialogue and do the musical score in the background along with it. i’ve had to cut myself off of LOTR for a while. going cold turkey and planning to read the children of hurin in the mean time. i am however the proud owner of a much beloved copy of nacho libre which makes me giggle uncontrollably almost upon contact with the cover photo and have been forced to limit my exposure for emergency usage only in times of severe depression or else i would be tempted to over-use it’s magical powers of silliness thereby depleting its effect.

7. my favorite times of the day are the between times. the perspective changing light shifting phasing in and out of realities between the worlds of light and darkness. sunrise and sunset.

8. i find that the best part of the summer is the end of it, when the heat breaks, the shadows lengthen, the tomatoes ripen, the wind picks up, the hawks return, and baseball gets interesting.

phew. that’s eight. i think i made it. and that’s the glory of, that’s the story of, moi. plus my gum is all chewed out and lost its flavor. so that's about all she wrote. and thus we must conclude that this is the end. soon i will turn into a pumpkin.

meteor showers tonight.

insert smiley face here.

posted by: limine at 22:46 | link | comments (9) |

home

cowboys and indians. indians and cowboys.

and oh the wild west desert wasteland that is this sad messed up beautiful place that is my home.

well you can't study botany and not be utterly aware of evolution. from blue green algae to chloroplasts to simple plants to vascular tissue to flowering plants and the mushrooms and the liverworts and the slime molds and the fruiting bodies and no oh no but it is not some linear march towards some higher end oh no. it is an explosion that doubles back on itself and it is not merely the strongest or the fittest or the most complex and it is certainly not the wisest. no.

and this teeming brimming violent explosion of life it needs it feeds it grows towards the light.

what is it really to be territorial? protective? attached? what is home and what is mine and what is yours and what is ours and whose land is this anyway and where are we all and who are we all and how did we get to be so confused about it all. something so simple. we slice it and dice it and make it all so complex.

and what is race but genetic isolation? just different segments and groups breeding within an isolated gene pool until dominant traits emerge and everybody has curly hair or darker skin or blue eyes or crooked noses or thick eyelids or hairy chests or red hair or green eyes or long legs or buck teeth.

some time ago, my introduction to eastern religions professor woke me up from something i have never stopped awakening towards. told me about hinduism, buddhism, taoism, and a few other things like shinto, confucious and some other stuff. he was a kind old indian man. his big soft round wise brown eyes smiling out from behind his little wire framed glasses. the first day of class he told us about an astronaut who went into space and how he was approached by a priest who wanted to know what the heavens looked like and if he had seen god. oh yes, said the astronaut. i believe that i have. and tell me tell me said the priest. you have traveled to the heavens and you have seen god, tell me what does he look like? and the astronaut, he said sir, i have seen god. and i have news for you sir. i have seen god. and she is black.

oh yes she is black. black as night. as space. thick and dark.

the space set forth for the ground of consciousness, just as clear and bright as white as only light can be.

and thus perception requires a certain amount of duality. contrast and comparison. yet intuitively we know it all to be one flip-side of the same circle coin.

and what is this place this world this beautiful magic we experience this place this maya this illusion this reality this glorious blooming blue ball of life and death, light and darkness? see how it shines. oh how we cling to it. how we claim it. believe that we own it. make it shape it remake try to have our way with it. we think it is ours but do we take care of it?

and we continue to take and take and never give back just burn it up burn up its life essence its fossil fuels its energy its life consuming and spreading and taking. and is this all part of the explosion of evolution and if it is then why we do intuitively know  somehow that we are ruining it taking it changing it forever and doesn't it feel isn't it obvious can't we see don't we know it is all out of balance? or is it?

fear not?

oh shiva dance on.

home.

this place this land this piece of dirt these mountains this sky the way the way the sun shines through these trees. see how the old plants creep up to retake the strange transplanted green lawn carpet imposed upon it and turn it back into its old creek bed self with wild geranium and little heart shaped leaves and choke weed and tall grasses and skunk weed and dandelions and columbine and sage brush and yarrow and cactus and who the heck knows what all this stuff is. i don’t know but then somehow i do. somehow i know the stuff i pull out of my tomatoes and peppers and strawberries has just as much if not more of a right to belong here than this silly blue water intensive grass in a drought and yet still i yank it out and remake it over in a different image and i wonder.

still i brutally pull up these things classified as weeds these hardy wild strong happy natural brave souls. i yank them out and toss them and continue to spray water, precious water, while in this great and terrible drought, precious water into this dusty rocky sandy clay arid desert soil. and i buy chives and peaches and bokchoy and garlic scapes at the farmer's market. i cook brown rice and shitaki mushrooms and have bananas and peanut butter for breakfast.

and i watch the cars zip by at top speed on the highway. and i look to the mountains through the haze of the exhaust. and i think about the indians.

went to the rodeo a few days ago. yeah a rodeo. oh i did. i do so love a parade don’t you know. i truly do. though i have to say the parade for cheyenne frontier days just went on and on and had to wonder who was watching it for surely the entire town was in the darn thing. but oh the horses. so many gorgeous beautiful creatures. and cowboys. and lots of cowboys. and indians. oh i cheered for the indians. i cheered and waved and cheered.

and then to the rodeo in the ungodly heat of one hundred and one degrees. the dust and the crowd and the cold beer and lemonade. yep i wore my cowboy hat for the shade. and i cheered and hollered and marveled at the skill and the trick riding and the horse human magnificence. it is in me somehow this rodeo thing though it is a frightening and brutal thing too. for though the cowboys are strong and brave and the horses are smart and loyal and true sometimes well often well honestly i have to cheer for the bulls and the broncos how they buck and they buck to get those idiots off their backs.

and the steer wrestling and the roping and roping and you know it is so cool to watch the smart horses working with their buddies and how they step back and pull the rope tight on this poor calf lying in the dust struggling to get up and get the heck away from this cruel nonsense in the name of entertainment.

and then onto the indian village to rest in the shade near the tepees and look at jewelry and listen to the flute and eat some food and listen to the storyteller tell the stories of all the animals.

so yes i suppose i am of two minds about this whole thing. oh heck truth be told i am of many minds.

for my family homesteaded here in the late 1800’s. ranches in the mountains and horses and guns and all of that stuff. i grew up with it. i am of it. i am part of it, yes. part of the end of the wild. the frontier. the end of the earth. how the west was won or lost or stolen or borrowed or evolved or ruined or whatever has happened to this beautiful place that is so chocked full of plastic palaces with air conditioning spraying water on fake green carpets in a drought while the glaciers melt and the mountains stand naked and bare against a hazy sky filled with the smoke of forest fires and i know that not that long ago not very long ago only a few generations ago not long ago this place was wild it was free and there were wolves and bear and sheep and beaver and coyotes and tall grass and flowers and sage and prairies and there were indians. wild indians who loved and cared and fought for this place.

oh i know it in my heart and i feel them i can sense them i can smell them they are here they are with me they are with all of us they are still here they can see it all they know it all they guard it all they watch they wait they know they are in the wind and the trees and the rocks and the shade in the very earth in the sky and they fly in the sky as hawks and eagles and the tell me they know they see it they understand the impermanence the change the movement the shift the balance the great reckoning the time that is at hand.

for it is not hard to see this brutal rodeo of life imposed upon the wild, this carving out of what we believe to be oh so civilized and what we think of as ours what we believe we own what we claim what we cling to oh attachment and desire so endless they can never be satiated there is no end to the destruction and the waste and the blindness and the cruelty and the selfish need of all that is believed to be so important this us and them this cowboys and indians this indigenous spirit and this imperial conquering roman european conquistador cowboy imposition inquisition insurrection insurmountable insatiable insolence.

and so profit is made from waste. and from war. oh what is profit. who profits? who really profits? the haves and have-nots.

and the earth is bought and sold as property.

land rights water rights air quality farming and industry and highways.

and what is so real about real estate?

and here i am yes here i am i am born into this i am of this i am part of this i am what i am and i am a product of my ancestors and there is a great pull a stirring of the blood an awareness an affinity a calling a sense of home.

where i hang my cowboy hat park my car feed my cats weed my garden look to the moon in the sky through the trees at night.

and so where is tibet and is it in china or is china in tibet and how can this brutality exist when in our hearts in all our hearts there is this essence of such great peace this miracle of life so precious so brief so beautiful so amazing so necessary so important so basic so fundamental so human.

and my family homesteaded in colorado and there is wild celt in my blood oh yes there is a genetic resonance there is celt there is no question and there are other things other remnants and scraps and mysterious things and perhaps there is native american perhaps there are other things there is pennsylvania dutch there is german there is welsh and scots and there is much that is not known that came before and before and has been mixed in there is so much else there is genetic material there is ancestry there is diversity there is a great shuffling a mixing a psychedelic swirling in that strong wild celt perhaps there is some viking and in that german there is saxon and roman and pict and gypsy and in that gypsy there is romanian there is egyptian there is persian there is jew there is indian there is asian there is eskimo and there is everything.

there is everything for our mother our great mother our mitochondrial DNA is traceable to one woman one great african mother one great holy mother of us all.

and isn't it time isn't it now is the realization in process are we coming into being or going out in a ball of flames? birth and death and here and there and back again. oh we can hear her if we listen. and she is calling to us.

our mother. our one earth. our shared space. our rapidly rapidly changing warming spinning entropy reality home. our mother who provides for us who cares for us who gives us everything we need who teaches us if we listen to her who tells us who shows us who loves us who allows us to see to experience who gives us birth and life and breath. this earth this home this womb this gestation this possibility this pregnancy this life this soft damp dark earth in the light.

we must pay attention. we must take care. we must walk softly upon her.

maybe balance is still possible because there is compassion.

this great dark singularity composed of duality that gives birth to the multiplicity that is one great singularity.

for an astronaut has seen her and she is black.

posted by: limine at 09:00 | link | comments (4) |

Template by motime.com  |  header image credit: Markus Gann © www.begann.de