Hitting the Wall (again)

This is the existential question: Why am I here? Only for me, for now, it is about geography. Why am in in Ashland, Oregon ? I really can't think of any reasonable answer. I feel like I am on the run. I fled the bugs and cold of New Hampshire. I fled the running around in small circles of Marblehead, MA. I fled the cold and isolation of Rockport, MA in the winter. I came to Ashland for many reasons. I had great friends here. I love the mountains. The climate is less horrible than New England. No bugs.

Now my friends are either moving away or away gallivanting most of the time. I live in the same house as my friend Greeley and we only see each other 20 nights a year. And the distances to civilization are huge. Six hours to San Francisco, eight hours to Seattle. I'm getting too old for this. And the winters are not so nice. Too much grey. I have talked about this before. So, I go Nicaragua. Why do I come back here? Why Nicaragua? Why don't I have anywhere I care about? I have talked about this before, but today I am feeling floaty. I have many places I love, but whenever I think about putting down roots, I cringe.

I start gardens everywhere I live, some big, some small. Almost all of them carry on. That is cool. But I never plant fruit trees and see them grow. I make friends (thank God!) but we are always visiting, coming and going.

This is distinctly starting to sound like a moan.

I think I have to make a decision. I think it would be healthy to call somewhere home even if it doesn't actually change a thing I do. I think I need this, therefore I will do it. After my kids left home and I sold my house in Marblehead, I called my parents' house "home". "I am going home to see my family and friends." My parents are dead and the house is sold. This has something to do with this moment in my life.

These feelings could also have to do with the fact that I don't have a commitment  to anyone or anything. Well, I do and I don't. I am committed to writing this blog. But that is completely at my discretion. As I lay this out, I am getting a clearer picture. Thank you for listening. The thing I feel is missing is a project, doing something fun and hopefully helpful for other people. I will meditate on this. The funny thing is that I really did figure this out a few weeks ago, without the agony, but then forgot I had done so. Gracias a Dios! Anybody on board?

The Stone I Love, new book of poems by Lisa Schumacher

From: THE STONE I LOVE by Lisa Schumacher

You who search for the love of your life
come to Me

I will meet you,
and I will give you what you seek.

You who wait in vain
for a lovers gentle hand,
touch Me
and your longing will find its home.

If you will only look at Me and be seen
you will know that you are Mine
and want no more.

Let Me have My way with you
in this eternal light of Love.
You will discover true intimacy,
and Love will unfold before you
and blind you to all else.

Thank you Lisa, and thank you for the Love you are sharing in Satsang the world over. ("Satsang=meeting together in the recognition of oneself as the source of living love.")
 See her schedule and meet this wonderful woman. www.satsangwithlisa.org

What Is Private and What Is Public?

My friend Jane, with whom I take very frequent walks, and I were talking the other day about how many people in politics self-sabotage by having affairs that are bound to become public and therefore, in these times, hurt or kill the careers of the politicians. You don't need to be reminded. There are people like sweet John Edwards. Well, he did appear sweet. You know the story. The whole world knows the story. A long time ago, it was Gary Hart's one photo that tanked his meteoric rise. I don't know if it was a one off, or if he was with bimbos daily. And, of course, Bill. From my point of view, what goes on in Vegas should stay in Vegas (or the bedroom, or wherever). But in the oval office? I don't know. I don't care whether a person is gay or straight. I care who that person is outside of his/her bedroom. But these people (mostly guys) who spend all their time and building up power and then blow it, so to speak....I don't get it. Is the problem the power and the false sense that they are untouchable? Is it the need for the adrenalin rush that comes from taking a chance? Is it about feeling like they can do whatever they want?

Maybe they just need to have more power, like Henry V111. Then they could just change the laws or the religion and do what they want. But, we the people, have to take some of the hit for this weird state of affairs. Who watches reality shows? Millions of us. Who can't get enough of the news when the shit hits the fan for an important person? We gossip about people we don't even know; Snookie, Brittany, Paris, Madonna: we all know their stories. We build up sympathy or antipathy about people and events that we really know nothing about.

But this trend  goes on even among those of us who have no visible power. People will tell total strangers as well as closest friends everything about their marriage, their finances, their kids! I am not talking about telling a professional therapist, I am talking about spilling your guts to someone you have just met.

My parents generation didn't do this. Was that better or  worse? Probably a bit of both. I have a few pet theories. One is that I think a lot of people are lonesome. I don't necessarily mean alone. I mean something like they feel someone is missing in their life. I think a lot of people don't feel 'heard'. Maybe if we broadcast our news someone will understand. And I know I am guilty of this: we gossip about other people if we 'feel' for them. I am pretty sure this is a bit twisted unless it results in a therapeutic plan of action. I also think I gossip about other people as of sorting my world and my thoughts. The Good Lama isn't for this kind of talk. I am trying to curb this tendency, but rest assured, dear reader, I will never, no never, gossip about you. It is bad for my karma.

Electricity For the New Millenium

I saw a picture in a magazine the other day of two boys, grinning from ear to ear. They were on a tandem bicycle with a pole on it with two 18 inch solar cells attached, much like an umbrella. They were in the countryside of India. They were making their livelihood driving around on the bike and letting people charge their cell phones for a penny or two. My smile matched theirs. I just love small entrepreneurial gigs.

It is all about the gap. If you can see a gap and figure a way to fill it, then you have a business. This, of course, applies to large and small gaps. Have you ever been walking in the streets of New York and gotten hit suddenly with a downpour? Instantly, in front of every store there is someone selling cheap umbrellas. I just love it that someone anticipates my gap in that instance. And if I have somewhere I am going and I don't want to be soaked for the rest of the day, I spend my $5 gratefully.

Of course, not everyone can anticipate my every gap. One Thanksgiving, my kids and I were in New York. I think it was the first year I was divorced and I didn't want to do the family thing. I wanted something different. We were near the Village, can't remember exactly, looking for an Indian restaurant. My son Charlie liked the formal, white tablecloth, male wait people, exotic atmosphere of Indian restaurants. Remember, we lived in oatmeal New Hampshire. We were hit by a downpour. I bought the cheap umbrella, but the rain came down so hard that the streets were flooding. The rushing water was over the curbs. So, covered by the new umbrella, we were still getting soaked from the bottom up.

Not much was open on Thanksgiving Day. We bolted across the street and dashed into a very fancy French restaurant, seeking shelter. We stood in the entrance, in front of the desk, in full view of all the patrons and noticed (my kids noticed) that everyone was staring at me, at my feet. I looked down at my pink flats (I loved pink or orange shoes) and saw that bubbles were coming out of them like a washing machine overflowing with suds. My kid were mortified. I was not so much. I had ODOR EATERS in the shoes. Apparently they have a lot in common with dish soap. When the water of the street was combined with the sweat of my feet. Oh well, no one could fill that gap for me.

One gap I see now in this country because of our lack of anything resembling public transportation in all but a few cities is the need for a cheap FUEL EFFICIENT car for poor folks. If you have a ton of $ you can buy an electric car or a hybrid. But the people who can least afford gas seem to be stuck driving the older, bigger cars that cost a fortune to run. Henry Ford, and later his friend, Hitler, both had the idea that they could build a car that everyone could afford. They built simple, smart, cheap cars. The Model A or T? and in Germany, years later, the Volkswagon. These were not charity deals. They were hugely successful businesses. Why can't we do that with an energy efficient car? Wouldn't it be one of those things that would benefit everyone?

I get big ideas that I am in no position to implement so forgive my rants, but I still smile the most at the little ideas like the kids on the bicycle with the solar panels. I also like to see kids selling lemonade in the summer. I think we used to sell something called Zarex. Was that it, you oldies out there?

Duopoly Politics Have Changed the Game

In a duopoly we no longer have a choice about who sets the debate. It used to be that the Republicans had an advantage over the Democrats in their ability to keep twisting the content of the debates to the subjects they could use to their advantage. Now, both parties want to avoid any talk on foreign policy, for instance. They are mostly in agreement on the subject. Both sides want to keep going on the track that we are on because it is greatly to the advantage of the corporations.  From all accounts, the American people are fed up with our wasteful wars. Therefore we go back to yelling about guns and abortions.

On the subject of guns and abortions we are headed for the dark ages. So be it. If we had universal free birth control readily available, maybe we would have less need for abortions. If no one had a gun, maybe there would be fewer shootings. I don't know. If we stopped occupying countries or at the least stopped terrorizing them, maybe we would have fewer enemies. If we had some kind of bottom line of survival below which we didn't allow our citizens to fall, maybe we would have less poverty. Oh my God! I sound like a socialist.

It must be time for a new McCarthy era. No one dares to speak of logical human things because then they will be called socialist. In the days of The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities or whatever it was called, they were witch hunting Communists. Now a politico can't even talk about feeding hungry children without being labeled a socialist. I wonder what that dread term means to most people.I expect it has come to mean that Chairman Mao will have us all in pajamas laboring in fields for 20 hours a day. It must be something awful, because it has obviated any calls for human dignity in this country. Un poulet por chaque pot, as was the cry of the peasants inciting the French Revolution in the 1700s. A chicken for every pot. The peasants were hungry and had to watch the obscene display of wealth by the aristocracy. They finally got royally pissed off.

Funny, that so far we think the obscenely wealthy deserve to have it all and the poor must deserve their miserable lives. The problem is that the system is rigged and it is unsustainable. Did you ever see Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht? There is a scene where a mother goes into a department store where the racks are overflowing with overcoats and her child is freezing to death. She kind of looses it. I would too.It just isn't right.

And in the  karmic picture, it is all wrong. If we are smart enough to consider just how unbelievably blessed we are in the world picture and we like it, the only way to keep the good karma coming in this life and the next is to be generous. This means in our thinking and speech as well as our pocketbooks. When the end comes we will be judged on who we are not what we have.

History Can Only Be Written From the Now Perspective

Earlier in this blog I spoke about the fact that we can and do rewrite our lives. The past is ever changing. For instance, if you wrote about your wonderful, perfect, enchanting marriage on your second anniversary, and then wrote about the very same marriage after an acrimonious divorce five years later, the facts might be the same, "We were married for seven years." But, the tone would certainly be different. The memories would be different. You would remember the things you ignored when everything was rosy. You might even say that it was a terrible marriage. You might include the first two years in that evaluation.

I think all history, all facts, are completely changing all the time because of our present values, state of mind, judgements and so on. When I was a kid, my brave parents took us kids on a history tour in Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C. and New York. It must have been an adjunct to visiting my paternal grandmother in Kutztown, PA. We went to Gettysburg, Annapolis, and some place where Teddy Roosevelt had lived and had mounted many stuffed heads of animals he had shot on his African safaris.

OK, that's a fact. As a kid I was shocked, but awed. The tour guide thought it was great. (He was paid to.) It showed a brave, adventurist President who would put himself in danger and conquer the wilds. Today, my view, garnered from my current perspective and more recent historical writings, is that he was a pretty cowardly spoiled brat who exalted in showing off.

Them's fighting words. So, it turns out that his safaris included up to 3,000 support people, (read 'servants') who carried everything for his comfort including him and his bath tub. It includes people who actually shot the animals he supposedly shot. The fighting words carry on to include the fact that he liked killing buffalo and Indians and Mexicans and Cubans as much as he liked killing elephants and tigers. If I were to write that history now, I would probably mention these things that bother me from my current perspective. If I had lived soon after him when the sins of American conquest might not have looked so blatant, I might have written a different history.

My dear friend, Lama Marut, suggests that if your are somehow compelled to write history from your current perspective, (the only one you have) you might as well be happy about your past. Like, "That shitty marriage taught me to be much more independent." instead of, "He ruined my life." He is not suggesting that we be ignorant or Pollyannaish. He is suggesting that we see things as they were and then appreciate that our past experiences made us who we are now and that any other attitude than gratitude will keep us unhappy.

I return to this point again and again because it is a tough one to put into practice. If we relive the past through memories or history books, the most hopeful thing we can hope to accomplish is to learn not to repeat our mistakes. If we learn from our past and improve ourselves and our actions then we can be thankful for everything that happened. God Bless Teddy Roosevelt. I'll never have my 'bearer' shoot another elephant for me. 

P.S. I really enjoyed the book about his South American trip, River of Doubt.

POVERTY AIN'T PRETTY

There are a lot of degrees of poverty, of course. Lately, here in rural Oregon, I have seen something new to me. It has been hot. Forest fires have raged around us. In the middle of this discomfort and fear, for the first time in my life, I have seen whole families walking down the road with all their possessions in garbage bags. Where are they going? I don't know.

When I was at the all organic Ashland Food Co-op last week, there was a family outside asking for help. I stopped and gave them some money. The young child looked at my grocery bag. I asked him if he wanted some grapes. His hand shot out to take them. I apologized that they were dirty. The mom who looked like she was going to faint, remarked that they were too.  They had nothing.

This is shocking stuff. This is an area with abundant resources. If you are near water and throw a seed at the ground it will grow. Food stores and restaurants throw away tons of food everyday. I spend my time worrying about contact lenses.

I think we are letting this problem get away from us, or have done. It is much harder to solve a problem after it has become a disaster than to stop it in its tracks before the massive crisis is full blown. Will the next stage here in the USA look like the famine relief or refugee relief pictures we see from other parts of the world? Will we need to have big trucks or planes throwing huge bags of rice off the backs of trucks and hungry people scrambling or fighting for the spoils? The people of New Orleans can tell us how that worked. Not very well. The people of Haiti can tell us how millions of aid dollars didn't really relieve anything.

I know that a lot of good people are doing everything they can to relieve the plight of the poor. It seems to me that Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty would be the righteous war for us to fight. We need jobs, we need education, we need hope.

Night after night on the news around here there are what sound like poverty related crimes. Crimes of resentment and despair. There is something amiss with the conflicting viewpoints that we are the best country in the world and the every man for himself ethic. When a person gets too far outside the system, it is very hard to get back in. I predict a wave of immigration from the USA to Mexico and points south. At the very least you don't have to pay for heat and there are abundant and cheap buses there.

My friend Louis tells me that he doesn't see many signs of the problem on the Northeast coastal US. It might be that the desperate poor have migrated west as they did in the dust bowl. It may be that the ghettos are better defined back there. It may be that any homeless and desperate person wouldn't even get a chance to walk through East Hampton, NY or Greenwich, CT. My refugee foster kids used to get stopped by the cops while walking home from school in Marblehead, MA. They were asked what they were doing there. Later, Marblehead bragged about its diversity. (which pretty much all came from my house and Shelly's house.)

I think any solution to this problem has to be both personal and collective. I am reminded of the time during our war on El Salvador when many people went down to help the poor there. At the same time, our government was pouring money into the systematic destruction of the country and the murder of the poor who objected to our policy. It didn't stop until congress stopped funding the conflict and individuals worked in solidarity. Both actions, national and individual are necessary.

I don't even remember how far the planning for the War on Poverty got before the Vietnam War derailed it. I think we should look at any planning that was done then and consider reviving and expanding it. We don't seem to have any problem funding wars. Maybe using the same language would get things jump started here.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Bad People?

If, as I believe, everything has a cause and everything has an effect, then how can we even ask the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The answer is exactly the same as if we were to ask "Why do bad things happen to bad people?"

Why are we even judging what is bad and what is good? Why are we even judging who is bad and who is good? Hasn't everyone had one of those experiences of horrible utter frustration when some great plan didn't work out only to find out much later that it was their saving grace. I have many such examples both little and huge. Like when I broke my hip and had to cancel my plans to walk the Camino     in Spain. Later, I knew that it really hadn't been the right time. I had probably had hints of that, but I was too committed to my plan to listen.

John Gardner used to say the old saw that when God wants to speak to you, first he whispers, then he yells, then he hits you over the head with a sledge hammer. Oops. At the same time it is utterly comforting to carry the thought that your angels, your god, your higher self will watch out for you. JG also mentioned that if you are a sincere person with good intentions and you merrily set out on the wrong path, your angels will find a way to get you back on the right path. Like a broken hip, for instance. That worked.

That life experience of John Gardner was predicated on the basis of having pure intention. That is, I expect, one of the requisites of transforming old bad karma. When something 'bad' happens to you, it is worth looking at. Can it be that there is a good reason for your flu? Maybe you needed to slow down. Maybe you needed to have more sympathy for ill people. Quien Sabe?  At the same time, take some quiet time to contemplate what might have been the cause of your discomfort. The karmic cause. If people are talking ill of you, have you defamed someone else? If $ isn't flowing to you, have you taken $ from someone else? If you can start to appreciate the causes then you can change them. You can only speak good about others.

Rudolf Steiner gave an example of this when he was suggesting that spiritual seekers do exercises to strengthen their spiritual muscles. He spoke of coming upon a dead dog on a walk. The animal was badly mangled and looked awful. Steiner, instead of saying the obvious and engaging in the ugliness, remarked on what beautiful teeth the animal had. Something like that, anyway. He made good karma for people speaking well of him. He strengthened his spiritual muscles.

Who are we to know why things happen to others? We can, however, learn why things happen to us and try to make the changes to create good karma . We all want this. Every major religion gives the stepping stones.

Aside from the timing thing of walking the Camino, the greatest gift to me was learning to be helpless and accept love from those who were piling it on me. It was a huge gift.

You Won't Believe This, Medical Tourism USA

I never shop at WalMart because not only am I a snob (previous blog) but I abhor their business practices, but today I went there to check out the price on contact lenses because they are really expensive at my local drug store. I had the boxes with all the information from my last pair. I had the prescription from my eye doctor in Nicaragua.

The woman behind the counter said that she couldn't be sure of the veracity of the signature from my eye doctor. (How do they prove any doctor's signiture?) Then she said I needed proof that I had an eye exam within the past year. There was a date from January 2012 on the prescription. She wasn't sure that that was when I had the exam or whether it was when he just wrote the prescription. Huh? Then I said I probably had more documentation at home if I got it, could I get a prescription?? She said that actually it was against federal law to fill CONTACT LENS prescriptions from other countries.

I was kind of in shock. She mentioned how very annoyed a customer from Switzerland had been the week previous when she had gotten the same news. (Ah, It wasn't just a Nicaragua thing.) This was getting interesting. So, I asked her "Why is that?". She, the WalMart eye doctor, then went to talk to the other doctor. They made a phone call and came back and told me that CONTACT LENSES are a controlled substance and the same regulations apply to them as to morphine or amphetamines. (I am going to overdose on CONTACT LENSES!

I asked if they were shitting me. They got very serious. Suddenly I pictured myself being led off in cuffs for trying to get hold of a controlled substance. I said I knew people bought these dangerous Johnson and Johnson products on line. They kind of whispered that if I got busted it would be bad.

I want to thank the careful lawmakers that are protecting my eyes from the dangers of a prescription from another country. I want to thank God that I have eye glasses that will serve me for the next few months until I return to Nica. I want you all to know how grateful I am to be saved from my own base instincts to put myself in danger. I will look over my shoulder hoping that having a 'foreign' prescription is not an act of terrorism.

My Medical Tourism, Part 11

Thinking about this over the weekend, I think I am a little mixed up about whether I am brave or reckless. Just like anywhere, if you are desperate and it is an emergency, you get whatever help you can where ever you can. But if you are planning to travel to find medical help, you probably have time to compare your options. For several reasons, I took my friend Louis' recommendation very seriously in looking for a dentist. He has nice teeth. He had been to Dr. Salinas a bunch of times. His dentist in the USA had seen his crowns and thought they were very good, although maybe a tiny bit large.

I called Dr. Salinas from the US and he said just call him when I was in Granada and he would see me. This is a bit different from home where you have to make appointments and somehow feel lucky if you can get one. It was also a bit sketchy. Would he really have time for me when I got there? This was not much of a deal for me because I was staying for a long time, but it might be unsettling for someone who had a tight schedule. Turned out that this wasn't a big deal in this case because often I saw Dr. Salinas work on Sundays and late at night and early morning to get people finished before they had to fly out. Crazy for his life, convenient for people on a budget.

In Granada, there are hotels you can stay at that are plenty nice for $22 per night. People at the hotels always have a friend or a cousin or someone with whom you can make a deal for chauffeuring and other kinds of help. At the hotels you also get maid service and breakfast. I chose to rent a house for about the same amount of money because I wanted a place where guests could stay with me and a bit more privacy without having to be in my room. Hooking up maid service and people to deliver food when I needed it was very simple. There are tons of underemployed people. I found that once I made a deal with anyone, I had a loyal and honest employee who would do anything for me. I always tried to pay a step up from whatever the going rate was. It was worth it for both sides.

Until I discovered that a bra was the best place to carry money, I was pretty nervous on the days when I had to pay the dentist or the landlord. Going through the market crunch with a pocketbook seemed folly. It is a cash economy there, but the ATM machines worked very well, although most accounts will only let you take $300 or $400 out per day. I paid Dr. Salinas 50% up front and 50% on completion.

Some expats chose other dentists who had more modern offices and charged a lot more. I was happy with the personal connection I had through Louis. So my day went along a pretty simple path. I joined a fantastic swimming pool at the Hotel Granada where for $50 a month I could use the pool everyday (and I did). The pool was gigantic, surrounded with palm trees. It is near the Lake and has a nice breeze. Many guests, especially the Europeans came for a long stay so I made friends. Many Nicaraguans came there, so it was lively full of families, always something going on. I swam, I went to the dentist, I enjoyed friends, I read, I walked. Nice.

When company came, we went to the ocean or visited more of Nica. My life was comfortable, gracious, fun, active, culturally satisfying, and all the while I was getting major dental help. It all cost less than 6 crowns would have cost in the US. I include my plane tickets, rent, food, everything. I stayed for more than 6 months because that is what felt good to me. I spread out the dental work because I had to keep it at a level I could tolerate and still have fun.

I met lots of people who came for other surgeries and other conditions. I also met people who freaked out and went back to their home countries when they got ill or when they were faced with actually going through some big procedures there. It has to depend on one's needs matching ones comfort level. Duh!

I actually looked at buying a huge house with the idea of making a place where people could come and have all the help set up, with on call doctors and nursing staff and great food. Who knows? Maybe I will do some such thing. Last year I was a little too self-involved to take on any more.

My Experience With Medical Tourism

Two thumbs up! But not without its bumps. For years I have known people who have gone away from the USA to get medical attention. It is an odd thing because people come to the USA to get medical help. You know, people like the Shah of Iran. Many citizens here don't have quite his resources, nor  his clout with the government here. Nothing but the best for our favorite dictators. For we the people who fall into the cracks (the ever widening cracks) we have to look elsewhere to get help.

My friend, Sarah Lee Sexton went many years ago to Goa, India for cancer treatment. Other friends have gone to Romania for radiation therapy. A host of friends have gone to Mexico for both dental and cancer help. There are usually several reasons. Firstly, there is $. Secondly, there is what I will call grace. Nice locations, gorgeous flowers, kind and attentive help . . .that kind of stuff. Thirdly, why not get a trip and help for less $ than the minimal treatment will cost here at home.

No matter how extravagant and wonderful our Medicare is and the great give away Medicaid (I am being sarcastic, listening to pols talk is bad for me) we have great huge giant gaps, especially now when the middle class has so many unemployed. HUGE GAPS.

The people I met in Nicaragua last year who were medical tourists were, obviously, not the rich nor the poor. The very poor can't go anywhere. Former felons can't get a passport, for instance. The people I met were mostly middle class folks who found themselves in a situation they never imagined.

I spoke with a bunch of Nicaraguans who want to streamline the process, find ways to support people coming for help. It is hard to plan this (many people are working on it) because the people seeking help  mostly can't afford much in the way of concierge service. But, if people are really sick they need to slip into a streamlined system of transportation, appointments, cooking, cleaning, entertainment, nursing and so on.

I'd say the dental care is less than a tenth of the cost at home. The eye doctors are about a fifth. Tests are really inexpensive. An endoscopy costs about $80, compared to thousands here. Other lab tests are very inexpensive. Food and rents are very reasonable.

I went for massive dental care and also because I love Granada, Nicaragua, and also because I had a friend who had been to the dentist I chose and liked his work and because I couldn't hack another winter in the cold climates. I had been to Nica before, spoke some Spanish and knew a hotel I liked (Hotel Con Corazon), so I had a place to land. I had briefly been there before with my handsome son. I got very good treatment because the staff flirted with him through me. I made friends there with hotel staff who were so kind. Months after my stay at the Hotel, when I was living in a rental house, they came to visit and check on me when I had my various dental surgeries. I even got invited to the wedding of Yvonne. (#.1 reason I love Nicaragua - the Nicaraguans; #2. - The climate; #3. My dentist,  Dr. Jaime Salinas.)

More tomorrow about how to go for medical help to Granada, Nicaragua. Adios amigos, hasta pronto.

A Gaged Animal - Moi

I am undergoing an interesting test of some sort. It is like I need patience, but that is not quite the right concept. I need to hang in there. Sit it out. Put up with my life just now and perhaps for a few more days. I am in Southern Oregon, in the mountains, well, really the valley part way up the mountains. Our weather is Northern California mountain weather. Magic Mt. Shasta is lording it over us. After a moderate spring and summer it is now hot. 107 degrees. And the surrounds are on fire. Many huge fires blaze to the north, south, and east. The valley is full of smoke. I am sooooo lucky to be in air conditioning. Outside my eyes burn and breathing hurts. I can't wear my contact lenses.

I am more than lucky. I am blessed. I have friends, food, air conditioning, and am not threatened immanently by the fires. Our house is full of people fleeing the Applegate Valley where they came for a vacation. They will abort their vacation. It is too dangerous there. I am at a friend's house where I can have some peace of mind and leave extra space in our house. Other friends who were camping near here have been here in the overflow house to shower and cool off today. Imagine camping with kids in 107 degrees in bad air.

What is making me crazy is that there is nothing I can do to help or to change the situation. We just wait and watch and sometimes get reports about how bad things are. I am way too choleric to be happy in a situation where there is no action I can take. When we had the big flood here years  ago and really couldn't get out of the valley for the weeks, living with no work, no running water, no flushing toilets, I ended up getting two tattoos. My friend's son was home and he was a tattoo artist. My oldest daughter was horrified. "You'll have these for the rest of your life." she said. "This is the rest of my life." I said.

Probably it is a good thing that Joel isn't here with his tatt stuff, but listening to the planes and helicoptors going overhead, desperately fighting the fires, I am sad that I am not young enough and trained enough to be actively working on the problem. I am not bored. I am not patient. I am restless and slightly frustratrated. Why am I not going to the ocean? I don't know. I don't know why I am staying here except that I feel connected for once.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be in a famine or in a deperately overcrowded refugee camp waiting for news from home. I am so blessed.

Change Yourself, Change the World . . . True or False?

From John F. Gardner, "Genius as the Goal of Education"

"If 'ordinary' people are to gain insight, feel courage, assume control, and thus find the happiness that seems so elusive, they will have to convince themselves that something in themselves is
of immeasurable significance and has unlimited capacity for bringing about the good. They can then understand why the paradoxical progress in modern society must become more and more outrageous until we can begin to make the free choice to live from  this higher source within ourselves. We are being taught by events that it takes genius simply to live ordinary life well."

Oh John, so much said in so few words.

I was watching Democracy Now!, the amazing news show with Amy Goodman and they were broadcasting interviews with the main players in the escalation of the Iran/Israel mess. And I got to musing about simple stuff like the Ten Commandments. It seems to me that whole battles have been fought in our country over whether it was religious freedom or religious oppression to even post these in public places. Wouldn't it be a moot point if anyone or everyone actually honored them?

How confusing is "Thou Shall Not Kill"? Just think about it. "Thou Shall Not Kill." I get it. I comprehend those words. I sometimes make exceptions for ticks and certain mosquitoes. So, maybe I don't get it.

And then there is the Christ thing." Love your neighbor as thyself." I get it. Mostly. Or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That kind of leads us back to Karma. I don't hear Christ or Moses saying "Don't kill unless it is in your financial interest." or "Don't kill unless you really need oil."

It is indeed a struggle for me to obey even the most child like interpretations of the basic rules. If one can kill with words, and one can, I am certainly guilty of that..though I am trying to improve myself. It ain't easy. The more we live out of our highest self the more chance we have of living an ordinary life well.

My Unsolicited Advice to Obama

Dear President Obama,

Seeing this VP nomination by Rommeany (sic) and, hardly conceivable, his turn to the the right, I, Julie Pierce, think you should follow his example....in reverse. I think this is the perfect time for you to take a drastic hard turn to the left.

He is serving up a good feast to the extreme right. You have been trying to appease and compromise for a long time. A lot of us lefties (and we are a force to be reckoned with) are existentially heart broken by your constant right turns. Give us someone to fight for! Make this an election that we can feel proud of. Throw down the gauntlet. Each time the Democrats try to appease the Republicans, the whole show moves more to the right. Go for the gold. Represent us! Go left, young man!

For more specific suggestions please ask in the comment section of my Blog juliefpierce.blogspot.com

The mind is primordially pure

"If we disturb the water of a lake it will become muddy, but the nature of water itself is not muddied. We only have to let the water grow calm again for the mud to settle at the bottom, and the water will regain its original purity. What can we do to restore our mind to its original purity? How can we eradicate the various factors in mental pollution? We cannot get rid of them through outside struggles, nor by ignoring them, but only by injecting powerful antidotes via the channel of meditation. If you are able to practice meditation a little every day, gathering your scattered mind by focusing on an internal object, that would be a great help. The stream of thoughts thinking of good things, bad things, and so on, will quieten down. You will find its like taking a short vacation, finding yourself beyond your thoughts and resting there."

The Spirit of Peace
His Holiness the Dalai Lama

RESPIRE

Respire. I actually like the word breathe better. I love the breath. I did my first aid courses back in the day when you had to do mouth-to-mouth. And I prayed that I would never have to do it for real. The practice dummy was bad enough. Then, this guy in front of us at Coventry Cathedral keeled over and I started to step up. Fortunately, a woman next to him gave him the old mouth-to-mouth until an ambulance came. Whew!

My next close call came when I was with my young kids at a swimming pool in Concord, New Hampshire, USA and the life guard went over backward crashing her head on the cement. The pool was full of kids. I yelled at everyone to get out of the pool. For some reason they did. I rushed to the life guard while yelling at one of the older kids to go home and call 911. Before cell phones it was.

Once again I was saved from performing CPR because she was having a seizure and  bleeding badly from where she cracked her head on the cement. The rescue people arrived quickly. I have never seen so many kids obey so well and so fast.

Then I ran into my moral quandary with the arrival of AIDS. Would I, could I, give mouth-to-mouth in the event that I could catch the AIDS virus? This thought must have come to a lot of people because soon medical workers got given those rubber dams that would protect us from blood and mucus. Really? But I carried those things around with me for years, having mild nightmares about my ability to help if there was vomit involved. I can't do vomit. I once threw up in a supermarket when I chanced upon a broken bottle of gifilta fish. (Bad visual)

Then miracle of miracle we find out that the mouth-to-mouth is no longer necessary, may never have been necessary. And I never had to use it! Thank God. But then it is still amazing to think that one possibly could breath life back into another person. I think we do this spiritually and psychologically and don't give ourselves enough credit. My friend Jane just did this for me this afternoon. Now I can breathe again.

(How the hell do you spell gifilta fish?)

We all have breathed courage into ourselves and others. We have breathed enthousiasm, given heart to those loosing hear

"Many Returns of the Day" . . . Blessing or Curse?

There are so many days that I wish I could experience over and over again. Others, oh well, I sort of wish they never happened. But if I think about it, both the bad and the good add up to who I am today. That's cool.

I guess, if truth be told, we do, in fact, have many "returns of the day" in our memory. The day I felt the happiest I ever remember feeling, I was in Cuba with my friend Randie and there was a massive celebration going on with people from hundreds of countries gathered. It was the thirtieth anniversary of Che Guevarra's death and his body was being returned to Cuban soil for burial...finally.

I assume it wasn't all of his body for it has been well documented than when the CIA assassins murdered him they cut off his hands and sent them to DC to prove that they got the right man. Sadly for the CIA, he was more inspirational dead than alive. He became a world wide hero to millions. His picture is recognized everywhere and honored.

When I knew I was experiencing a peak moment, I stopped and pulled the experience deeper into my being so that I could recall it at another time. I still can. It is like a drug flashback. It was not dependant on the time and place. The setting was wild. It was a stunning, hot summer day in Havana. There were supposedly more than a million people there. Fidel gave a huge speech - four hours or something. Who cared? We were walking around, went down to the ocean a few times, came back, met lots of people, felt sorry for the immense Chinese delegation in their pajamas and marching in step while all the hot Latinos were so amazingly sexy and gorgeous. Then as evening came there was the party. In a communist country where no one has much of anything, throwing a party is serious business. We were advised to bring cups. Shortage of cups was a problem. We brought cups and then saw the ginormous tanker trucks with great rum, pick up trucks of great cigars, and about thirty of the best bands in the world. We danced all night with everyone from little children to ancient grannies.

My euphoria came in the morning before all this. Gracias a Dios. Lama Marut says that if we appreciate it, "All lights are green on the highway of life." We have to  remember to notice. I think his expression has a lot in common with "everybody loves a lover." You know, when you are giving off the great vibe, everyone can't help but meet you up there.

I was going to go into some bad memories that can be relived in all their intensity. But I think right now it would be unhealthy for me to do so. We all have some bits of PTSD, and some have it very badly. It is the real deal. If you can control it enough to keep your eyes on the light, you are well on the way to health. So, today, for once, I will practice what I preach. Namaste dear friends.

I Will Not Give Up!

How does Noam Chompsky do it? He sees the world. He knows more about what is happening than almost anyone alive on the planet. He makes connections down to the date and time of things that happened in Latvia or Mongolia seventy five years ago, not to mention every other country on the planet, yet he still ends every talk with his view that things are getting better. His reasons that things are improving on this planet for most of humanity are real and well put together arguments. I can't do that. If I get into how messed up things are, I start to go down the tube.

I know from personal experience that addictions are tough business. Our collective addiction to power and money and stuff are really going to be hard to break. I hope that the climate change troubles will be our "rock bottom" and we can work together to make Chompsky's optimism come true.

Some of the non-scholarly interpretations of the 2012 end of the Mayan Calendar speak of the world population coming to a moment of choice in every aspect of our lives. Will we chose the healthy, loving, environmentally friendly, peaceful path, or we we self destruc? You know my vote.

Yes!

What is it like to say "yes" to life? Since I started to do this consciously, I have found myself in many remarkable situations. Remarkable to me that is. I don't presume to know what would be remarkable to you. I have some filters, of course. I am not saying "yes" to drugs. I am not saying "yes" to anything that would hurt someone else. But I am trying to put aside some of my patterns that have become pretty unconscious. For instance, I disliked bowling when I was young and then I think I got a little snobbish about it later on. On one birthday of mine, The Laughing Ladies needed another person for their bowling team. I was in the process of backing out. It was my birthday after all. I reversed myself and said "sure". "What should I wear?"

We had more fun than I would have thought possible. We laughed all night. And, after all, that was the purpose of the Laughing Ladies. That is the term my girls gave to us. My son called us, more derisively, "The Cackling Hens". We were friends. Instant friends. When I moved to Marblehead, MA, USA, a small sailing community on the water, and I took my daughter to enroll in her new school, these two women came over to me and introduced themselves as they observed how beautiful my daughter was. (What's not to like?) The fourth woman who joined us was a teacher whom it turned out I had met in New Hampshire when my neighbor had a Filipino faith healer visiting.

We were an unlikely mix. We all were having our struggles. Big struggles. Financial, marital, kids, old parents,career..you know the list. Each of us had a pretty challenging life. We discovered quickly that our experience of humor was mutually shared. We each pretty much thought we were extremely funny and somehow we thought the other people were very funny. This thing happened...we somehow came to an unspoken agreement that when we were together we would not get into the hard stuff of our lives. We would focus on laughter. We could start with any subject, for instance a description of our first kiss and end up rolling on the floor. As our time together built, we could laugh about how we had laughed in a previous conversation.

Soon we decided to go out to a bar or restaurant for our get togehters. Otherwise on of us had to get rid of the people at home and serve food and drinks and so on. That would cut ito our time badly. Somehow Tuesday night became our time. It was sacosanct. Fully. I would leave a meeting at my job with no apology. "I have a previous important committment." Life or death. And it kind of was. Of course, what we had started to attract other people. And sometime we invited others to come. It never worked out.

Things would be going along swimmingly and then the newby would say something like, "My father might have cancer." We would be forced to tell them that they were "out". Broke the rules. Don't think we didn't care and support each othr and other friends, BUT NOT ON TUESDAY NIGHT!

BC  had a baby on a Tuesday night. We went to the hospital with her and were kicked out by the nurse for laughing too much. She was laughing that baby out! So we went to the parking lot and continued on speaker phone until that baby came.

This went on for years and we became our own legends. I still can be almost anywhere and start to chuckle remembering what were were remembering.

I Love You. What am I saying and what are you hearing?

I was reading an article in the newspaper about a parent who used extreme punishment for her child "because she loved her".  The child was nine years old and had broken something by her carelessness. The parent sold all the kid's toys to pay for the breakage.  Reading that brought to mind  a Jews for Jesus family whom I knew in Idaho many years ago. In their seemingly garbled theology, they left behind their respective Jewish and Episcopalian backgrounds and became dunked in the river, born again, really strict evangelicals. When we visited them in their no art, no books, fridge the dug out space under the kitchen floor homestead on a beautiful lake, they had their three children sitting on a bench inside in the summer because it was a Sunday. Not to be too snobbish (see previous blog), but what God really would want the kids to sit all day between church services when it was God's earth outside? I would guess that the Puritans would have dug that.

They did this because they loved their kids. They wanted them to go to heaven. Later they would emigrate to Israel, give their kids Hebrew names, worship in hidden services so they might influence some Jews to become Christian. The kids were mighty confused by this. But it was not because the parents egos needed this mission but they did it because they loved their kids. I'm glad that my parents had a more ordinary way of showing their love, like going sledding together and drinking hot chocolate after.

Then there are the cases where a lover loves his woman so much that he will beat her up if she talks to another man. He tells her he loves her as he smashes in her pretty face. So sad.

Or, as a nation we love democracy so very much that we can use a slogan "Better Dead than Red" to justify war. Or its more subtle variations that must have worked the twisted Christian minds of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as they decimated Vietnam and Nicaragua respectively.

So what is this love stuff? How can we separate it from our personal egoistical agendas? Is it an attitude, a decision, a state of the spirit, an illusion? I would guess from my life's observation that it is all of these things and none of these things. Maybe it is an objective Being. I looked at that in a previous blog. "Kristen Comes Home-To Die".  I had that meeting with a being of Love. Maybe it is an attitude, an way of being romantic. I found that in the soul of Nicaragua. Every Nicaraguan seemed to have either a love of music or a love of poetry or a love of the Revolution...a romantic outlook which often included all of those modalities.

I am going to postulate that one component of love includes some kind of selflessness. Not a lost selflessness as in "If I give my heart to you, I'll have none and you'll have two." but rather the selflessness with which we love our child even if he/she is disagreeable or ugly. It also seems to be something that doesn't measure of count. If I were to say, I love you, but I cooked for you three times and you only cooked for me twice, how does that make sense on love scale? Immature we might say. But there is nothing 'mature' about the perfect love in the eyes of a nursing baby. It is innocent and total. Is that the ticket?

An Abject Apology - I Am a Snob

I am so sorry I have been a really bad snob. It came to me in the middle of the night, the full blown fact that some of what I have been writing and observing, while it might seem to be truthful or clever, doesn't reflect my truth. My truth is that I have experienced the effects of karma. It is the one world view that I can wrangle with and see in action and no matter how I test it, it still holds water.

My mea culpa comes from remembering that we are all, on many levels, exactly the same. Each of the billions of people on this planet is doing his/her best given the circumstances that they have earned with their previous karma. We have all been in every situation we can see around us. The Dalai Lama says that everyone we meet in this life has been our mother in a previous life.

My sister Sarah called to give me some feedback on my article about psychology. I had been a snob about dumb articles in dumb magazines. She pointed out that if an article helps even one person be better or feel better, it has done some good. I agree.

The Dalai Lama says that everyone you meet in this life was your mother in a previous life and should be treated with great respect. With loving kindness. He recently gave an interview to the national homeless magazine in which he urged people to keep hope alive. I can't even imagine how difficult that would be for people working in the mines of the Congo, the sweatshops of China, the streets of the USA. But with our every thought of the humanity of others, we are giving a little power to the cause of hope.

I want to be part of the building of a better world, not a snobby critic of what I see. Finding our common humanity and our common struggle and remembering the gifts of every moment of every day is a big piece of the puzzle.

Interruption - Random Thoughts, Related to Something

I just re-read The White Negro, Superficial reflections on the Hipster, by Norman Mailer. It really got me thinking. It really got me thinking about the prophets who predicted my whole life path starting at a time when I was only ten years old. Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, Allan Ginsberg!! Wow! They saw all the major influences of my life coming. In his article, Norman Mailer talks about a result of Hiroshima and the Holocaust being that certain people, intellectuals, artists, sensitive people feeling like they were under attack by forces they couldn't control, all the time. He compares this to the everyday, every moment experience of the Blacks in America. He nails this as the root cause of the Beats, the Bohemians, the Hippies, long before these movements were even noticeable. He does not see this as a bad or good thing. Just a thing.

The overwhelming  mood of the fifties was to be conformist, to make everyone middle class, to be June Cleaver. Underneath this was our apartheid, our cranking up of the Cold War, our pride(!) in the A-Bomb. At the same time the great creative underside of our society was pushing everything to its limits - drugs, booze, grammar, art, almost like two parallel societies becoming a psychotic side by side. When I look at this I kind of 'get' something that is  happening right now. I couldn't 'get' the preppy kids and even the country kids of today wearing their pants falling under their asses, buzz cuts, ugly tats on faces and everywhere. It looks to me that what Mailer was writing about in the White Negro has today become the suburban prisoner. Isn't that what the style is imitating? And the art that is generated for the suburban prisoner is Rap and a lot more I am probably unfamiliar with.

When I think of the early hippies and the late beats, and the people who brought spiritual practices from Asia, and the political wars we fought..feminism, racism, nuclear power,..and mostly lost, I miss the tribal feelings we enjoyed. We recognized our tribe where ever we were. And we had the experience of being White Negroes until we were sucked into the main stream. P. and I got shots fired at us when passing a bar in rural Oregon in 1965 when we were hitch hiking in our long hair and bell bottoms. It turns out we were a threat to the way of life and we were. Things would never be quite the same after the sixties, just as they could never be the same after Hiroshima.

A lot of the prophets who saw all this coming burned themselves out at a very young age. Bright lights burn hot. And this certainly was true with our beloved musicians in the sixties. (Jimmi, Janis, you know the names.)  And the drugs gave us the psycho experiences that separated us from the rest of society - sort of. And the wars fucked up anyone who wasn't inclined to do it for themselves. We lived out the dreams of the ground breakers delirium.

What is there to show for all this? We had fun. We won a few squabbles. We work hard to be more conscious. It is harder and harder to get out of the rat race. In fact, I think you might have to leave the country to get sane. What do you think?

I Would Never Have a Home, Part 3

If I told you I was unhappy, it would be a gross understatement. I was miserable. Life in England was hard for me. I was in a foreign country for sure. P. was in the program that went from early morning madrigal singing through an entire day and evening of lectures and activities. I was in a semi-detached house with fleas, an upstairs neighbor who was one of the only people in my life whom I have really despised. We had a coal burning fireplace that I couldn't get lighted (I had the wrong kind of coal) and a bathroom in the basement that had stone walls seeping with dripping freezing water. The tiny electric bar that was meant to heat the bathroom was cleverly positioned on the ceiling. Moan, groan, agony, pain. Shopping for food took all day. Everybody was telling me how to raise my kid..even twenty year old Germans who had no kids.

There were game rules that I didn't know and didn't understand. I tried to blend. I went to 'jumble sales' in the village. I didn't laugh out loud when Americans spoke as if English was their second language. "I am from, aaaaah, how do you say it....California.... you see." What? I took several drastic measures. I found a baby sitter and enrolled in the program. I discovered London! where people were actually living in modern times. I walked and walked through the countryside through the turn styles, in field after field. I whined enough that we were moved to rooms in Pixton Manor.

It was on one of my walks with Ariel that we ran across a deserted gypsy caravan at the edge of a field. It was about the size of a covered wagon from our prairie times. When I saw it I started to cry. I felt, saw, remembered, being part of the gypsy life. I saw inner pictures of the people who had moved through England and Europe occupying fields and trails, camping year after year.

When I was a kid, I spent almost a month making a  gypsy costume for Halloween. My mother helped me. I knew what it had to look like. We sewed yards and yards of ribbon around the very full, very long green skirt. The sash at the waist had to be maroon satin. The jewelry had to be exactly what I remembered. Even Mom got the impression that I was doing the costume from memory, only she thought the memory was from a picture in a book. It wasn't.

The crying I did at the caravan was connected with another very strong memory. When I was a child, even before I could read, I had dreams of being a gypsy girl, about nine years old, in  wooden barracks where everybody was unhappy and unhealthy. I was hiding behind a building watching as my mother was pulled out of the building. I was terrified and alone. Then everything went dark.  This was a dream that recurred for years. I think I was a gypsy child in a concentration camp who died very young under Herr Hitler.

The people at Emerson had great theories about re-incarnation. With rules. Too quick a turn around, they pontificated. I didn't need theories or rules. I was having a past life memory. When I had my dreams as a child I knew nothing about what was going on in Europe when I was born. (1944) This gypsy caravan in the field did make me cry. It also started a process of opening up that was outside of the strange cultish culture that we had dropped into at Emerson.

I Would Never Have a Home, Part 2

We flew from Oregon to Heathrow. In those days it was a long flight. I think we had a layover in Iceland. We arrived and got stopped at Immigration (the first of many stops in my lifetime). We told the guy that we were coming to Emerson College on student visas. We were all on the same passport. Can you imagine? I was "wife", Ariel, "daughter". God ! When I think of that from 2012 perspective it is inconceivable. It also was to cause great trouble during the year when I wanted to get out of England.

We were put in a detention room and questioned over and over again. We didn't find out the reason for a long time. As you can imagine we were pretty played out after a twenty hour trip with a two year old. The problem was that there was a Scientology center on the same road as Emerson and there had been a suspicious death there the previous week and we didn't have enough paperwork to prove that we were going to Emerson. The government of England had chosen to refuse entry to Scientologists. The upshot was that someone from the administration of Emerson had to come to London and vouch for us. That turned out to be just fine because we got  ride own to Sussex and didn't have to take the bus.

Pixton Manor was the estate in Sussex that the school had bought. It was straight out of Masterpiece Theater. It was a huge old country estate with a farm that had been farmed organically for thousands of years and was then producing veggies that rivaled those from Findhorn in Scotland. We did hitch hike a ride down to look at the Scientology place. It was also a mansion. But it had towers and turrets and huge brick walls all around and all the windows were covered by ivy. There were also armed guards at the gate house and on the walls. We booked it out of there as fast as we could.

But what we found at Emerson was pretty high on the 'strange' scale in its own right. Rudolf Steiner had died in the 1920s (about) and we came to a school of spiritual science were there was a bit of a reenactment happening. The people all looked like middle class farm folks from eighty years previous. And they talked funny and they smiled with their mouths but not their eyes. On the other hand, Emerson had had a nice smooth program running until we arrived. And actually, I perfectly understand how freaky we must have seemed to them when we arrived in the land that time forgot.

A whole bunch of families arrived with kids, having had the same reaction we did to the idea of "leave the wife and kids at home." Also the wildest bunch of fellow students were coming from all over. One guy had been in India eating raw carrots for three years. He had no shoes. People arrived from Ashrams all over. Kids who skipped the hippy movement and were supposed to be at the London School of Economics showed up. S. had  been with the Bader Meinhof group in Germany. Almost all of us had lived communally. Emerson pulled together and found accomodations for everyone. We ended up living in three different houses that year.. actually it was a good progression from nightmare to amusing.