Thou

“The best things can’t be told—because they transcend thought.” –Joseph Campbell

Although I have always been a nature lover, I am becoming even more appreciative as time goes by.

Every blade of grass is sacred, the leaves, the flowers that are so abundant here in the spring and summer –all of it. It can suck up your breath and bring sparklers to your eyes.

Joseph Campell speaks of viewing the world as thou, instead of it.

Thou, meaning we are a part of it all, no better, no worse. Many native cultures view the world as he described—as thou. Not it. The animals were even superior to him, not something to be taken from and discarded. The animal meant life. They had powers he didn’t have. He hunted, yes, but out of necessity. He killed, yes, out of necessity, and archeologists have found burial sites where the animal’s bones were buried in a ceremonial fashion, as though preparing it for its next life, the same as they did with their fellow humans. They planned that the animal, as the human, would keep on living.

Buffalo slaughters saw the animals as it, to be used, destroyed and decimated, not honored. It was a sacrilege.

I grew up in The Dalles Oregon, on the other side of the rain shadow of Oregon, and although the springs were beautiful, in the summer all areas not irrigated became quite barren and dry. The dominant color being that of straw.

Perhaps that set me up for loving green so much. When my family and I visited the Western side of the  Cascade range,  where the rains come, and I saw green dripping from every available surface, I was in heaven. Heaven, to me, always has to be green.

As a young person of twelve or thirteen, I discovered heaven one particular spring day outside my home town of The Dalles, before the straw had descended.

I had ridden my horse down an unknown road and came to a gate. I opened the gate and almost lost my horse while closing the gate. He was so eager to enter heaven he took off.  He was used to living on a hill, so an open space meant time for a good run. But he stopped and waited for me, and together we traveled down a road through an open prairie. Later in the year this area would become dry, but this was spring and water had collected in shallow pools, and the area was green, and ablaze with wildflowers.  A pair of ducks sprang from the water as I came upon them unexpectedly.

As you approach The Dalles via the freeway, and look not at the Columbia River, but to the other side, you will see bluffs from the road. The top of these bluffs is flat,  a mesa, and at the very top of the bluff are caves you can see from the road. They are called Eagle's caves, and the area I found was behind those caves and across the expanse of flat land atop the hill. I didn’t know where I was that day as I had entered from way behind the caves, from a country road. 

It was a one-time event, never to be witnessed again.

One of those moments of childhood you experience only with your horse.

Spark

This morning I beat the heat out of the house so my little dog Sweetpea could go with me.

We drove to Coburg Oregon (a quaint little town, known for its antiques), but I wasn’t there for its antiques, I was there for plants. Johnson’s Nursery, one of the largest in the vicinity, exists right outside the town. A couple of weeks ago I had, with my grandson, seen a half dozen evergreen Clematis vines, and thought that one would look good on the arbor that with a little luck will, sometime in the future, exist in our front yard.

Only one of the large evergreen Chemantis that I wanted, was left. I debated. It cost the price of a half dozen plants, so I moved on down the line and stopped at male Kiwi plant. It was lovely. They vine, it would go over the arbor--but male, “For pollinating use only,” it said. So I looked for a female Kiwi companion. 

And found one. 

I  put her aside and then questioned if she was the best one and pulled out another.

 I felt a deep sadness coming from the first.  

 I felt so bad I had rejected the one who chose me, that I set back the second plant, and bought the first--along with her pollinating companion, of course.

I’ve been doing a lot of communing with plants this summer, planting, talking to them, watching the garden grow, sitting under the tree in the backyard. I'm sure your have noticed how every single leaf arranges itself to make maximum use of the sunlight. Yes, but isn't it magnificent? One day I watched the leaves of the tree sway with the breeze. All swayed but one single leaf. That leaf that was doing a Sufi dance—spinning like a child’s windmill —dancing to the tune of the wind.

Last night I listened to Joseph Campbell—the real Hero with a Thousand Faces guy interviewed by Bill Moyers on Netflix. 

Campbell described what scientists would describe as phototropism where a plant turns its head to follow the sun. 

He described that as having consciousness.

In college, they had a long lengthy explanation that describes that phenomenon of the plant turning toward the sun. Chemicals called auxims, cause cells to elongate on the side farthest from the light—they create proton pumps which decrease the PH in the cells on the dark side of the plant, then there are enzymes that break down the cell wall structure so the plant can turn. Or some say there are motor cells that shrink or enlarge as they absorb water. 

Whew! 

Someone, somewhere, could describe almost every aspect of our lives, too, as a chemical reaction,  enzymes, hormones, stimulus-response, built in DNA coding, those sorts of physical, chemical processes. 

However, we aren’t  limited by the descriptions placed on us. 

We have a consciousness, and according to Campbell, so do plants.

No one has yet to determine the “Spark of Life.” 

P.S. I love you guys. Care to tell how you found me?

Look at This Picture

Let’s all jump on buses, party hardy all the way to Mexico, thousands of buses, school buses, greyhounds, private vehicles—might have to throw some trains in the mix, that’s how I envision it. Take your backpacks, this is like #The Amazing Race.
 

When we get there, there will be no stopping us., we’re jazzed. We’re ready to take no prisoners. We’re citizens and we aren’t going to allow this action anymore. No child will be separated from their parents on our watch.

 

Yes and save your tickets, and your gas stubs, and send them to the White House. They won’t pay them, of course, but it will create a mess for them to clean up the way we need to clean up theirs.

 

Hey, we’re trying to run our lives here, clean up our act, become successful, happy individuals, and you keep throwing a monkey wrench into the mix. Shame on you.

 

On the day after Trump’s inauguration, almost three million people marched in protest of his election. It was triple the size of his inauguration crowd. 

 

A lot of good it did.

 

Protests do work. But boy, they takes guts and tenacity by many people.

 

Since the 60”s, I’ve had the privilege to see this:

• ·        Civil Rights/integration fought for an won.

• ·        The war in Vietnam—gone.

• ·        Dress codes in schools—gone.

• ·        Men with hair on their faces and jewelry –wherever--Here.

(A kid in our home was expelled from high school for growing a beard. They should have applauded him.)

• ·        The appearance of food co-ops bringing organic food to the people. (Now grocery stores, seeing that people will pay more for it, are stocking organic food. And farmers are growing it.)

• ·        The grass-roots appearance of Natural Childbirth. (Now available in major hospitals, and with birthing rooms, not delivery tables. And giving men the courage  to be with their wives—and not fainting as previously thought.)

I get teary-eyed remembering this event:

 

May 25, 1986

 

 

Our family jumped on a bus with a load of other lively souls, and were driven out to the desert of Southern California where we joined hands with millions of other Americans to form a chain across America. 

 

 Credit Hands Across America.

 

“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving.”

 

Hell's Angels and nuns, Elvis Impersonators, Abraham Lincoln Impersonators all stood together as one. And I read that to fill some of the gaps; farmers had their cattle stand hoof-to-hoof.

WE ARE A GOOD GROUP OF PEOPLE!

Hands Across America, 1986

The Island of Fire and Ice

“In the middle of the ocean where East meets West is the Island of Fire and Ice, home of the volcano and doorway to another dimension and a different reality. Here magic lives, where the Earth itself liquefies and nothing is quite as it seems.” –Pila of Hawaii

That’s the Big Island of Hawaii.

I think I'll turn around.

“It sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could. You could just smell sulfur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff,” resident Jeremiah Osuna told Honolulu television station KHON.

What challenges the people Hawaii are facing. And what about the Coqui frogs, the fishes in the bay, the tide pools, the mongoose, and the wild pigs? And, too, the gorgeous vegetation that is abundant on the rainy side of the Island is suffering from gaseous fumes.

Have you read that enough lava has poured over the surface of the Big Island to bury Manhattan 15 feet deep? A clear water lake has evaporated, and the Vacation village in the Puna district is gone, along with beautiful Kapoho bay that filled in during one night, and is now .8 miles of new land.

Oozing lava is fairly easy to sidestep, but now Pele, the goddess of the volcano, is upping the ante, squirting lava 1500 feet into the air and chasing it with hydrochloric acid and tiny glass particles. (Hydrochloric acid forms when the hot lava hits the cool ocean.)

While living in Hawaii, I continually wondered why I felt the way I did; feeling ill at ease, asking about the dark energy both my daughter felt. Despite the Island’s beauty, we felt unsafe. Pele whispers her message. She gives it to you, and then leaves you to decide what to do with it. 

I’m sure that some of the inhabitants of the Island feel stuck without funds or knowledge to leave the Island. And it is home to them.

Some say, thank heavens for the lava. Otherwise, we would be inundated with immigrants.

Yes, a little oozing, but this is ridiculous.


And yes, the earth is liquefying there on the Big Island, and while Hawaii is expanding its shores, my book The Frog’s Song that tells of our experience there, shrank. Half ended up on the cutting room floor.

I’m not complaining. 

I’m happy to be off the Island. 

And if my publisher is willing to publish a tiny book, then so be it.  I guess, with your indulgence, my metaphysical wanderings that have been expunged from its original form, could end up here.

Information regarding the lost land of Mu--gone
Ley lines--gone
Tales of UFO's--gone
Find flow in one's life--gone.
Husband dear's trip to the hospital that gave us another reason to leave the Island--gone.
And the dramatic departure that I will tell you about later. I though was funny--gone.


When we lived on the Island we could see only puffs of white vapor and plumbs of sulfur gas emitting from the two-mile-wide Kilauea Caldera's floor. Now it is a sea of lava and the floor has dropped 220 meters.

Then

Now

However, the crater isn’t the worst of the trouble. Eight fissures have opened on the Hilo side of the island and are pouring forth their fiery rivers.

Hot lava has incinerated some 700 homes.

My husband read to me this morning that the Sacred Heart Catholic Church that has about 15 acres, is providing space for  20 tiny homes to be shelters for the refugees. 

“Three contractors came into HPM Building Supply with questions about how they could quickly build some kind of emergency housing for lava evacuees on the grounds of the different churches they worshipped at, Oliveira, the former fire chief, said.

“After connecting with Hope Serv­ices Hawaii, it went from a couple of buildings on church property to something bigger.

 “Things are moving pretty quick right now,” Oliveira said Friday. “If only the weather will cooperate. Things are so wet and more rain is coming.”

Last December, lava threatened the little town of Pahoa where we shopped and got our mail, but it stopped short of destroying the town. It didn’t cover the highway, the route out of town, as they feared it would, but went underground. Eight fissures have opened further on east burning up the Puna district.

 Still there a few miles from Kona

“On the Big Island, you are on special ground. You are at standing at a doorway where even the Earth itself liquefies and nothing is as it may seem. Many feel that to experience this energy will help them find direction in their lives.” –Pila of Hawaii.

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June is Bustin' Out all Over

“I never thought I would live this long,” June says.

Two days ago June celebrated her 95^th birthday.

 

I say “It’s because you appreciate life.”

But does she listen to me?

 No.

“I did all the things wrong,” she says. “I drank too much, smoked too much.”

But that was then.  Not now.

June’s mother died at age 26 leaving June and her brother with a father who couldn’t manage two children, and so he shuffled them off to relatives.

June suspects that her mother died of an insulin shock as June developed diabetes at around the age her mother died. She has never taken insulin, however, but has managed it with diet. Her mother had gone to the movies, came home, lie down and died.

When June ended up with a fanatical Christian Aunt who thought that a girl who “saw things” was demented, June petitioned the court, “Your honor,” she said, “ I can choose where I live can’t I?”

With a nod from the judge, June ended up in a girl’s school.

Once grown, June joined the WACS--The WWII Women's Army Corps–where she met Howie, the pilot of her dreams.

When he proposed she said, “But I can’t marry you, I won’t live long. (Thinking she would follow her in her mother’s footsteps.

“So?” he says.

“We have insanity in the family.”

“Yeah, so does mine.”

“We have alcoholics.”

“Mine too.”

They married.

That was it, a life partner. They went to college together; she practiced her art—for she had always wanted to be an artist, and now she was happily married to a man who said, “Your job is to paint, not to clean the house.”

Eight years later his plane went down on a routine maneuver. Another pilot from an accompanying plane testified that he saw Howie slumped over and that he didn’t respond to radio signals. The plane crashed.

When two men in official uniform appeared at June’s door she knew why they were there, and they had to run her down to tell her .

Thus began June’s downward spiral of drinking.

But she got over it.

She studied art on hillsides with famous painters, she traveled, she had many loves, but none stuck until last year she entered a retirement facility—a place she said she would never go. By a stroke of serendipity she fell in love with a widower named Christian. She and Christian were blissfully happy. He even said that after the first of the year they were getting “hitched,”

Except, he peacefully passed away the end of December.

Did June have a life without struggles?

No

But you would be hard-pressed to find a more upbeat person then June.

When I set off for her birthday party, my daughter said, “Have fun with June.”

“I said, “One always has fun with June.”

When I hear Abraham talk about one’s true self, I think of June. She knows who she is. Abraham says that when we feel that disconnect , when we have been angry or out of sorts, when we have been critical, and we feel less-than-honorable, less than a loving individual; we are disconnected from Source.

We came here to be on the leading edge, to create, to dream, to find the juice of life. Shit does happen, but you rally, as did June. She genuinely likes people, and tells herself, “I am friendly,” and people respond in kind.

Think about a baby smiling that pure joy in being alive. That was you once.

What  I mean by Food for the Soul (aka Brunch) is feeding the spirit within. Find that moment of joy. Be grateful. Look out there at our beautiful world.  

You have probably heard the story of two Native American braves that saw two dogs fighting.

“Which dog will win?” asks one.

“The one we feed,” says the other.

Painting by June Walton

Bad photo by me.

Tweaks

"I may not be Wonder Woman, 

but you haven't seen both of us in the same room have you?"*

“What in the crap am I doing?” I set out to write “Brunch for the Soul ,”and woke up wondering what I was doing.
 
Sure I’ve attended seminars, workshops, gone to gurus and read self-help books until the grass has reached ceiling height. I ought to have some wisdom on the subject.  I believe in spiritual things. I believe we are spiritual beings. I think the Law of Attraction works but has so many codicils we don’t trust it.   Like if you have two conflicting thoughts, one cancels out the other.
 
When you are working with the subconscious mind, it can drive you nuts.
 
The subconscious has no judgment. It doesn’t hear “I want,” or “I don’t want.”  It only hears “Ice Cream,” or whatever you said you wanted or didn’t want.  
 
See how it can tweak your mind.
 
It’s like the child who wants that ten-liter bottle of Soda. It’s bad for them, they can’t have that much, but they ask again and again and again to the 100th power. they only heard "Soda."

Yep, like the subconscious mind.
 
I believe on a cosmic level we all vibrate since we are made up of atoms, and each atom has an Electromagnetic field, as does our nervous system, so, on that level, we can say we vibrate, which is a clip phrase right now.
 
How does this knowledge help when we are locked in old patterns of behavior that we didn’t choose, don’t want, and that we inherited. As did our parents and their parents, and so on. We have limiting beliefs from childhood that we aren’t lovable, and that we aren’t good enough.
 
I know we are programmable. For heaven's sake, my daughter told me about a reality program where suggestible people could be manipulated to kill someone if they thought it would save them from not death, but from trouble.

That ain't right!
.
“Don’t make waves,” we've heard. “Sit down and shut up.” “Money is hard to come by.” “Artists starve.”  “Obey authority.” And, “I love you and want you to be happy.”
 
Now, run with that.
 
Duh. I’m running but where? Is this it? Is this what I came here for?
 
People talk endlessly about living our dream. "You can do it," we hear.  And so you try and try and end up splattered with the mud your wheels slung on you as they spun in the mire.
 
I hear so much talk of love that I want to throw up.
 
It’s hard to feel love when you’re pissed off.
 
The trick is  #1 to realize you’re pissed off, and #2, to ask why?
 
That was me until I sat down this morning and meditated, and suddenly my mood shifted. I saw the thrill of the journey, the sunshine outside, the glorious day.
 
“If I can save one person from ever having to take their inner child on a play date, I have done my job.” wrote Jen Sincero in her book, You Are a Badass, How to Stop Doubting your Greatness and Start Living An Awesome Life, 

I laughed out loud. 
 
Remember when the “New Age” movement hit the scene? Shirley MacLaine became a New Age rock star, and we gobbled it up.  Many of us said, “Shirley, that’s not new, but we praise you for saying it. Thank you. It’s about time someone did.”
 
But now I think many of us are tired of “New Age” processes, like hugging when we don’t want to hug, screaming when we don’t feel angry, and high-fiving strangers we don’t even like.
 
I think the  “New Age” trend has become stale. People are still hurting, still, following old patterns of behavior that no longer serve them and that make them depressed.
 
I have for a long time railed at writers who spend pages and pages trying to convince me to have an open mind, when I am yelling, “Just tell me! Why the hell do you think I bought your book, I want to read what you have to say.”
 
And then along comes some straight talking folk like Jen Sincero who writes, “You have to have an open mind, then on second thought, I want to yell in your face STAY OPEN OR ELSE YOU ARE SCREWED.”
 
I love it.
 
 “We need people to feel happy and fulfilled and loved so they don’t take their shit out on themselves, and other people and the planet and our animal friends.”—Jen Sincero.
 
Yep, my kind of a woman.

* Wonder Woman quote copied from somebody 

P.S.  There is some new content on http:www.plottwist747.com Namely, Life on the Farm, "Let's talk About Poop."
Over and out, remember I love you.