Yesterday, David and I went to the Fortscape event in Baltimore. We are both part of the Fortean society and have been to many of these festivals before. Ah, you don't know it? It’s not as bad as it sounds. It is no cult of people in mauve wanting to castrate themselves and follow a large 14 legged cat (though David said he met someone there who claimed she actually was in contact with a 14 legged cat). It is named after Charles Fort, grand collector of anything odd -- raining frogs, ufos, Bigfoot, pyramids, 10-foot lizards, and so on. And so the festival is really a series of lecturers who lecture about anything. Some are clearly daft. Actually, whenever I go to these things, I guarantee you I’ll be either leaving the room on account of either laughter or boredom at some point. However, it’s worth sitting through the paranoid schizophrenics to just hear one brilliant person blow my mind. Here are my thoughts after listening to that one lecture.
The current average human is a moron. I include myself in this condemnation.
Yes, yes, we have roads, we have light bulbs, we have chocolate pudding pops; but, only a select few know how to make these.
The current humans are idiots.
We are helpless. We are totally dependent upon our society to provide for us. We cant make, we cant grow, we can’t eat. We are babies.
Go ahead, move to the wilderness and see what happens. Get electricity? Um, I suppose you must first need a generator-this means metal-guess you better go mine it somewhere and smelt it. Build a house? Nails…damn….same problem. Glass….hee hee. Plastic…ah plastic.. best drill an oil well. Ah, now what? Um…how do I build a house anyway? Plumbing?
The “average” person 1000 years ago knew how to manage these things (ok well not the electricity or plastic, but they figured out how to exist without it). I just saw a picture of a building built 5000 years ago. The roof was made of stones. They were stones laid upon stones just loose in a spiral, each somehow supporting each so that now the roof has stood for 5000 years. Go ahead, get any local builder to do that!
So odd, so strange, so foreign to think that rather than "evolving" we have de-evolved. Our brains are less strong. Where once we had to memorize stories from elders verbatim, now we have the web. Whereas once we had to calculate in our heads, now there is the calculator. Once we had to do all for ourselves, now we do nothing, our brains are nothing but sheep jelly. Baaaa......office world...cubicle world.."little house little houses and they're all made of ticky tacky."
Finally, after all this "evolution"-The nature-less people.
In sum, our "evolution" and "innovation" and discoveries has reduced us to the level of infant.
Our society as a whole has many things. As individuals though, we are babies. And babies are very very VERY vulnerable.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Heaven or Hell-it is our choice
I’m feeling like I should write something. I’ve been negligent, as always, in keeping up with writing. Somehow it seems like I never have time, though I know that is just an illusion.
We (my husband and I) watched Grey Gardens tonight. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth watching. The acting is astonishingly brilliant. It is about two women who shut off the world, shut off their surroundings, and continue in such fashion until they are living basically in one room of a mansion with no water, phone, or heat, and every room but the bedroom is piled high with cat food cans and trash. They are not depressed about this. Not even disturbed by it-or if so, only mildly.
Meanwhile, I grouse at my loving husband because he didn’t do the dishes the night before.
The mind is a powerful blessing or weapon. With it we can create a paradise out of a dung heap or a fiery hell out of a Shangri-La. In the Washington Post Magazine this weekend, there is an article about a man who decided to become a Hare Krishna. Now, he is revered as a saint, but when he first came into his beliefs he ran into trouble in Argentina. There, they didn’t look kindly on “cults” especially at that time, so he was imprisoned. The jailor, in an effort to humiliate him, demanded he clean up a floor smeared with human feces. At first he balked, and who wouldn’t? But he decided that it must be a test that Krishna had sent him. And so, he cleaned up the floor in joy (as he put it) and did so over again much to the amazement of the guard. Of course, it was not Krishna who gave him this joy, it was the decision he made within his own brain that resulted in the joy. He could have done it all for an eggplant, it would have made no difference (no offense to Krishna).
C.S. Lewis once said in his story, The Great Divorce, that those who end up in heaven will feel like they’ve always been there, while those who end up in hell will likewise seem like they’ve always been there. I see this around me all the time in the people I meet. I’m sure you do too. There are those individuals who seem just set on being miserable, victims, unhappy with everyone and everything. It doesn’t matter their circumstances. They could be rich or could be poor; status is irrelevant. They are settled in their state. Then, there are those who are always happy, content, smiling, hopeful, loving and again, the status is again irrelevant-they might be rich or they might be homeless. Somehow, they are just always happy and peaceful, no matter the circumstance.
Obviously it is the mindset that makes the life. Circumstances have nothing to do with it. Choices of how to react to circumstances have everything to do with it. True happiness comes from one’s own mind, not the swirl of the world and its happenings
The truly great thing about being human is having the power to choose. The truly tough part about being a human is that we have choices. In many ways, it’d be so much easier if we didn’t. Yet, the fact is we do. A person cuts me off in traffic and it is a multiple choice exam. Do I: A. honk at him and give him the finger B. Snarl and cuss and comment on his mother C. Laugh and sing D. Pray that he is okay, for something must be wrong for him to be so clueless. The options are endless. That is our great dilemma as humans. That is our great power as humans. We are never victims. We are choosers. We create. We either do this consciously or we just go into default mode and we do so unconsciously.
Let us embrace our humanity and consciously choose to create heaven here and now despite whatever gross and unfair circumstances have been flung at us. We do not need to be in denial of reality. We need only to smile in the face of it and choose peace and joy in full knowledge of it and despite it. When Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven is within you” maybe this is what he meant.
We (my husband and I) watched Grey Gardens tonight. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth watching. The acting is astonishingly brilliant. It is about two women who shut off the world, shut off their surroundings, and continue in such fashion until they are living basically in one room of a mansion with no water, phone, or heat, and every room but the bedroom is piled high with cat food cans and trash. They are not depressed about this. Not even disturbed by it-or if so, only mildly.
Meanwhile, I grouse at my loving husband because he didn’t do the dishes the night before.
The mind is a powerful blessing or weapon. With it we can create a paradise out of a dung heap or a fiery hell out of a Shangri-La. In the Washington Post Magazine this weekend, there is an article about a man who decided to become a Hare Krishna. Now, he is revered as a saint, but when he first came into his beliefs he ran into trouble in Argentina. There, they didn’t look kindly on “cults” especially at that time, so he was imprisoned. The jailor, in an effort to humiliate him, demanded he clean up a floor smeared with human feces. At first he balked, and who wouldn’t? But he decided that it must be a test that Krishna had sent him. And so, he cleaned up the floor in joy (as he put it) and did so over again much to the amazement of the guard. Of course, it was not Krishna who gave him this joy, it was the decision he made within his own brain that resulted in the joy. He could have done it all for an eggplant, it would have made no difference (no offense to Krishna).
C.S. Lewis once said in his story, The Great Divorce, that those who end up in heaven will feel like they’ve always been there, while those who end up in hell will likewise seem like they’ve always been there. I see this around me all the time in the people I meet. I’m sure you do too. There are those individuals who seem just set on being miserable, victims, unhappy with everyone and everything. It doesn’t matter their circumstances. They could be rich or could be poor; status is irrelevant. They are settled in their state. Then, there are those who are always happy, content, smiling, hopeful, loving and again, the status is again irrelevant-they might be rich or they might be homeless. Somehow, they are just always happy and peaceful, no matter the circumstance.
Obviously it is the mindset that makes the life. Circumstances have nothing to do with it. Choices of how to react to circumstances have everything to do with it. True happiness comes from one’s own mind, not the swirl of the world and its happenings
The truly great thing about being human is having the power to choose. The truly tough part about being a human is that we have choices. In many ways, it’d be so much easier if we didn’t. Yet, the fact is we do. A person cuts me off in traffic and it is a multiple choice exam. Do I: A. honk at him and give him the finger B. Snarl and cuss and comment on his mother C. Laugh and sing D. Pray that he is okay, for something must be wrong for him to be so clueless. The options are endless. That is our great dilemma as humans. That is our great power as humans. We are never victims. We are choosers. We create. We either do this consciously or we just go into default mode and we do so unconsciously.
Let us embrace our humanity and consciously choose to create heaven here and now despite whatever gross and unfair circumstances have been flung at us. We do not need to be in denial of reality. We need only to smile in the face of it and choose peace and joy in full knowledge of it and despite it. When Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven is within you” maybe this is what he meant.
Friday, January 8, 2010
beagles and humans
I’m not a very good blogger. I rarely do it. Tonight though, I feel like writing so here are my musings.
This morning at about 3:30 am I was awoken by my three dogs barking like crazy because they heard some other dogs outside. We live in the country with no other house to be seen and in the night coon hunters are nothing rare. So, after trudging sleepily downstairs and out onto the porch with a flashlight and seeing just a couple of beagles, I assumed hunters and went back to bed and quieted the dogs. I awoke about 7:30am to the same yelps and yips. Looking out my window, there were the same two beagles still that I had seen by flashlight four hours earlier. I knew then what had happened.
Snow boots on, forget the jacket, forget the bed-formed hair, in my Barney purple fuzzy bathrobe, a ragged blue nightgown, and long underwear, I stomped out onto the new snow and down the driveway. As I approached the dogs (of course) a car pulled up. Ok, nowhere to run in purple fuzzy shame, I met the woman who asked me if the dogs were mine. “Nope”
And so we together tried to catch them. It should have been easy. They were both obviously in distress, old, not very healthy, shivering, limping, had had way too many litters of pups so that their teats were almost brushing the ground. It was easy to capture the one, for she was rather fat and quite friendly. My husband David came out and actually picked her up and brought her into the house. The other though was small and very scared. My new friend and I tried to first entice then grab her but she scooted away into the woods. “Mary” said she had to go to work and drove off and so I, in my purple fuzzy glory, marched down the road hoping the skittish one could still be found. I feel honored to have given so much amusement to the various landscaping trucks and cubical bound hominids who drove past me. I wondered what story they might attach to this purple rumpled bathrobed women stomping about in a state park at 8 in the morning seemingly in the midst of nowhere. At some other time I would have been amused or horrified, but this morning, I was only worried for the other beagle as it was only twenty degrees here in Maryland this morning and tomorrow night it is going down to twelve. I couldn’t find her and was highly upset, imagining the worst. Thankfully, my husband found her later in the day. Tonight they are both downstairs curled up together fast asleep (the dogs that is; my husband is up here soon to be curled up with me).
I’m not sure what to write here. I want to write “WHAT SORT OF GODDAMNED SCUM WOULD DO THAT TO ANOTHER BEING?!!!!” I want to rant. I want to rage against my species! How can the most intelligent mammal be the cruelest and stupidest as well? How can the most humane also be the most inhumane? Surely we are the worst of all species! We torture our own- what other mammal even conceives of that? Surely, a cat has no feeling for the mouse it tosses, but then no cat sits about in committees conceiving of tortures for other cats, and no cat breeds the same female mice for years only to drop off the mothers in the local park to die when they are no longer useful!
So now, here is my rant.
We are oblivious to the species around us like no other creature on the planet. We’ve wiped out all our predators and shrink wrapped all our prey, what need do we have to think of them?
We have lost our trust, our balance, our beauty. We are the ultimate control freaks of Earth. We do not realize that control is the ultimate illusion. Change is the never-ending law of this universe. Yet, we think we can avoid it by mowing our grass, working a “good” job, investing, saving, having good insurance policies, getting religion, and helping our children do the same thing to “insure their future.” We are completely consumed with the control of our lives. Silliness. Illusion. Pathology.
And so, with such mentality, there is no wonder that a couple of old, over-bred beagles become “waste” and end up dumped after their long years of “use” in our driveway.
I find my species to be an embarrassment. I am ashamed at times to be called human. But now please, allow me to de-rant.
Other times, I feel proud, I feel enlightened. I feel more than what I think I am. For there are those among us who don’t use and throw out other beings. There are those who give hope to this great festering mass of control obsessed, frightened, desperate souls. I could list the obvious: Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., the usual suspects, but I’d rather not. They are not greater than those the closest to us. I think we all can say we have known one individual in our lives, though they never will get the same worldly recognition. It could have been a parent or a child, a teacher or a student, a neighbor or a stranger, but that one person made all the difference to you. Because of that one person you, or I, am now a better human. Because of that one person in my life, I cannot dump beagles off in the middle of the woods to die. There but for the grace of _______ go I.
This morning at about 3:30 am I was awoken by my three dogs barking like crazy because they heard some other dogs outside. We live in the country with no other house to be seen and in the night coon hunters are nothing rare. So, after trudging sleepily downstairs and out onto the porch with a flashlight and seeing just a couple of beagles, I assumed hunters and went back to bed and quieted the dogs. I awoke about 7:30am to the same yelps and yips. Looking out my window, there were the same two beagles still that I had seen by flashlight four hours earlier. I knew then what had happened.
Snow boots on, forget the jacket, forget the bed-formed hair, in my Barney purple fuzzy bathrobe, a ragged blue nightgown, and long underwear, I stomped out onto the new snow and down the driveway. As I approached the dogs (of course) a car pulled up. Ok, nowhere to run in purple fuzzy shame, I met the woman who asked me if the dogs were mine. “Nope”
And so we together tried to catch them. It should have been easy. They were both obviously in distress, old, not very healthy, shivering, limping, had had way too many litters of pups so that their teats were almost brushing the ground. It was easy to capture the one, for she was rather fat and quite friendly. My husband David came out and actually picked her up and brought her into the house. The other though was small and very scared. My new friend and I tried to first entice then grab her but she scooted away into the woods. “Mary” said she had to go to work and drove off and so I, in my purple fuzzy glory, marched down the road hoping the skittish one could still be found. I feel honored to have given so much amusement to the various landscaping trucks and cubical bound hominids who drove past me. I wondered what story they might attach to this purple rumpled bathrobed women stomping about in a state park at 8 in the morning seemingly in the midst of nowhere. At some other time I would have been amused or horrified, but this morning, I was only worried for the other beagle as it was only twenty degrees here in Maryland this morning and tomorrow night it is going down to twelve. I couldn’t find her and was highly upset, imagining the worst. Thankfully, my husband found her later in the day. Tonight they are both downstairs curled up together fast asleep (the dogs that is; my husband is up here soon to be curled up with me).
I’m not sure what to write here. I want to write “WHAT SORT OF GODDAMNED SCUM WOULD DO THAT TO ANOTHER BEING?!!!!” I want to rant. I want to rage against my species! How can the most intelligent mammal be the cruelest and stupidest as well? How can the most humane also be the most inhumane? Surely we are the worst of all species! We torture our own- what other mammal even conceives of that? Surely, a cat has no feeling for the mouse it tosses, but then no cat sits about in committees conceiving of tortures for other cats, and no cat breeds the same female mice for years only to drop off the mothers in the local park to die when they are no longer useful!
So now, here is my rant.
We are oblivious to the species around us like no other creature on the planet. We’ve wiped out all our predators and shrink wrapped all our prey, what need do we have to think of them?
We have lost our trust, our balance, our beauty. We are the ultimate control freaks of Earth. We do not realize that control is the ultimate illusion. Change is the never-ending law of this universe. Yet, we think we can avoid it by mowing our grass, working a “good” job, investing, saving, having good insurance policies, getting religion, and helping our children do the same thing to “insure their future.” We are completely consumed with the control of our lives. Silliness. Illusion. Pathology.
And so, with such mentality, there is no wonder that a couple of old, over-bred beagles become “waste” and end up dumped after their long years of “use” in our driveway.
I find my species to be an embarrassment. I am ashamed at times to be called human. But now please, allow me to de-rant.
Other times, I feel proud, I feel enlightened. I feel more than what I think I am. For there are those among us who don’t use and throw out other beings. There are those who give hope to this great festering mass of control obsessed, frightened, desperate souls. I could list the obvious: Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., the usual suspects, but I’d rather not. They are not greater than those the closest to us. I think we all can say we have known one individual in our lives, though they never will get the same worldly recognition. It could have been a parent or a child, a teacher or a student, a neighbor or a stranger, but that one person made all the difference to you. Because of that one person you, or I, am now a better human. Because of that one person in my life, I cannot dump beagles off in the middle of the woods to die. There but for the grace of _______ go I.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Death of Michael Jackson
I never liked pop, but I must admit, I loved Michael Jackson. He charmed me, he fascinated me. At least to a point. As a child and teen and early 20’s, he was magical. He glittered. He whirled and seemed the perfect mix of confidence and vulnerability. He had an incredibly beautiful voice, was a wonderful dancer, and seemed shy and sweet and good. The world was better for his presence.
As he aged, he got weird; we all know that. I suppose it was from having such a wacko childhood. He changed. He became a caricature. The real person disappeared. Chimpanzees, the Elephant Man's bones, pedophilia, endless plastic surgery, the sweet kid died. In fact, I think Michael Jackson died at least a decade and a half ago, just no one would admit it, including him.
Was it his fault? Did he give into fame? Did it go to his head?
Stupid questions. When one deposits a normal, sensitive, sweet, person, whatever their talent, into the fishbowl of craziness that he had to swim in, the only question that makes sense is why he didn’t die decades ago. He should have. Any normal person would have under such scrutiny.
What an odd society we now have. Never before has any individual be able to be under such scrutiny. Obama farts, and it’s on Twitter; one Jonas brother picks his nose and it is instantly seen on TMZ, or the like.
Having all awareness is not always good. It does not necessarily give insight, wisdom, or really, knowledge itself. It skews the truth as much as silence does. It enables quick judgment on an entire being by soundbites-or really visual bites. Go ahead, as an experiment, pick one sentence of this blog and define me by it. Examine it. Analyze it. Define me by that one sentence.
If you do so, you know nothing about me.
If someone were to do so to you, they’d know nothing about you.
What a useless exercise!!! Yet that is what the media does continually. It doesn’t matter if it is FOX, or ABC, or TMZ. All that matters is that the person’s name be known. That narrows it down to: politician, actor, musician, sports person.
This is exactly what is happening to Judge Sotomayor at present. Sure, take one sentence and define the person’s life. What idiocy! What arrogance and ignorance!
I didn’t intend this particular blog to become a rant against the media and technology. Obviously it has become so.
So here is my thought of the night. For all our technology, for all of our ability to immediately “know” things, we are no better off than we were 200 years ago. Sure, we hear more, but we really know less. And, our abilities now to “know” damage the very persons we want to “know” about to the point that such penetration into their existence warps and kills them one way or another.
And so, today Michael Jackson died. Why? I’ll let you answer.
As he aged, he got weird; we all know that. I suppose it was from having such a wacko childhood. He changed. He became a caricature. The real person disappeared. Chimpanzees, the Elephant Man's bones, pedophilia, endless plastic surgery, the sweet kid died. In fact, I think Michael Jackson died at least a decade and a half ago, just no one would admit it, including him.
Was it his fault? Did he give into fame? Did it go to his head?
Stupid questions. When one deposits a normal, sensitive, sweet, person, whatever their talent, into the fishbowl of craziness that he had to swim in, the only question that makes sense is why he didn’t die decades ago. He should have. Any normal person would have under such scrutiny.
What an odd society we now have. Never before has any individual be able to be under such scrutiny. Obama farts, and it’s on Twitter; one Jonas brother picks his nose and it is instantly seen on TMZ, or the like.
Having all awareness is not always good. It does not necessarily give insight, wisdom, or really, knowledge itself. It skews the truth as much as silence does. It enables quick judgment on an entire being by soundbites-or really visual bites. Go ahead, as an experiment, pick one sentence of this blog and define me by it. Examine it. Analyze it. Define me by that one sentence.
If you do so, you know nothing about me.
If someone were to do so to you, they’d know nothing about you.
What a useless exercise!!! Yet that is what the media does continually. It doesn’t matter if it is FOX, or ABC, or TMZ. All that matters is that the person’s name be known. That narrows it down to: politician, actor, musician, sports person.
This is exactly what is happening to Judge Sotomayor at present. Sure, take one sentence and define the person’s life. What idiocy! What arrogance and ignorance!
I didn’t intend this particular blog to become a rant against the media and technology. Obviously it has become so.
So here is my thought of the night. For all our technology, for all of our ability to immediately “know” things, we are no better off than we were 200 years ago. Sure, we hear more, but we really know less. And, our abilities now to “know” damage the very persons we want to “know” about to the point that such penetration into their existence warps and kills them one way or another.
And so, today Michael Jackson died. Why? I’ll let you answer.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Divorce and Marriage and the non-randomness of the universe
So, I got married again. I don't know though that the first marriage counts. We were only married about 10 months until he found another woman, the wife of a millionaire, and ran off with her. We had been together for 11 years before he asked me to marry him. That "marriage" just doesn't count. This marriage does count. For all of you out there wondering if, doubting if, your soul mate exists, the answer is yes. Or, at least, mine certainly does and he is lying down in the other room with a bad cold.
It's odd, to say the least, how this universe works. What seems to be the worst of things mutates into the best of things (and of course vice versa as well). My good friend Carin came by last night for dinner and we got to talking about this very subject. We both have a mutual friend (ok, so he's a mutual ex-boyfriend who is still good friends with us both) who is a firm believer in a person creating their own reality. According to his philosophy, what happens to you, the people in your life, the things you experience, are all there because you drew those things to yourself. You are to credit or to blame for your reality. There is for sure an amount of accuracy to this. Certainly, the way I am living my life and the people I have in it, I chose. It and they were not random. However, and this is where Carin and I depart from Steve's philosophy. There is also something beyond us that acts. We create, but other forces do too. Sometimes that is to our destruction via a tidal wave or a hurricane, sometimes that is too our benefit. When it is to our benefit, it is then that it seems to be quite personal.
For example, if Billy, my ex-husband, had not run off with the millionaire's wife, I would never have met David, my soul mate and twin. I would never have cheated on Billy or left him, even though he was a rather abusive manipulative person (this doesn't say much for me). I truly believe the universe (or god or creator or...) removed that toxic individual because I was just not getting it and I wasn't removing myself from that situation. Someone(s) was/were looking out for me despite myself. Because of that I am now with my beloved one.
This is probably the greatest mystery of life. We seem to be so very alone, as if all were up to us and so very not alone, as if nothing were up to us. Clearly it seems there are hands on the other side. Why they choose to come through when they do is a mystery that cannot be solved in this dimension. Just before I walked into the bar where I was to meet my beloved David I had the thought, which I've never had before or since, that said to me I was about to meet the beloved one of my life. I laughed inside my brain at the absurdity. It turned out to be true though. I can't explain it, but it happened.
I'd love to hear what others think on this. Randomness (a plane goes down, a flu epidemic, etc..) vs. non-randomness (a miraculous person to save the day, a serendipitous happening, etc..). Both seem equally weighted, equally true.
My thoughts, I'm glad it is not all up to me. Sometimes greater forces than me know much better.
It's odd, to say the least, how this universe works. What seems to be the worst of things mutates into the best of things (and of course vice versa as well). My good friend Carin came by last night for dinner and we got to talking about this very subject. We both have a mutual friend (ok, so he's a mutual ex-boyfriend who is still good friends with us both) who is a firm believer in a person creating their own reality. According to his philosophy, what happens to you, the people in your life, the things you experience, are all there because you drew those things to yourself. You are to credit or to blame for your reality. There is for sure an amount of accuracy to this. Certainly, the way I am living my life and the people I have in it, I chose. It and they were not random. However, and this is where Carin and I depart from Steve's philosophy. There is also something beyond us that acts. We create, but other forces do too. Sometimes that is to our destruction via a tidal wave or a hurricane, sometimes that is too our benefit. When it is to our benefit, it is then that it seems to be quite personal.
For example, if Billy, my ex-husband, had not run off with the millionaire's wife, I would never have met David, my soul mate and twin. I would never have cheated on Billy or left him, even though he was a rather abusive manipulative person (this doesn't say much for me). I truly believe the universe (or god or creator or...) removed that toxic individual because I was just not getting it and I wasn't removing myself from that situation. Someone(s) was/were looking out for me despite myself. Because of that I am now with my beloved one.
This is probably the greatest mystery of life. We seem to be so very alone, as if all were up to us and so very not alone, as if nothing were up to us. Clearly it seems there are hands on the other side. Why they choose to come through when they do is a mystery that cannot be solved in this dimension. Just before I walked into the bar where I was to meet my beloved David I had the thought, which I've never had before or since, that said to me I was about to meet the beloved one of my life. I laughed inside my brain at the absurdity. It turned out to be true though. I can't explain it, but it happened.
I'd love to hear what others think on this. Randomness (a plane goes down, a flu epidemic, etc..) vs. non-randomness (a miraculous person to save the day, a serendipitous happening, etc..). Both seem equally weighted, equally true.
My thoughts, I'm glad it is not all up to me. Sometimes greater forces than me know much better.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Death and the house finch
I’m sorry to have been so negligent in updating my blog. Much has transpired since my last entry. First, and foremost, my father died unexpectedly on November 7. It was the most peaceful of deaths. Enviable really. He had been cutting bushes during the day, ate some blueberry tart, drank a bit of sherry as he watched his favorite Sherlock Holmes on TV, then fell asleep. He never woke up. My mom called me around 7:30 am to tell me she thought he was dead. I live only 2 miles from her house and zoomed down there. Sure enough, he was gone. Before me, she had called 911 and the EMTs were walking out of the house not even wanting to make eye contact. I ran upstairs to the bedroom. There he lay dead with a half smile on his face. He hadn’t even woken up to say “ouch.” He was two days shy of his 80th birthday. It was the perfect death. I wondered what he had been dreaming.
We were all devastated yet weirdly happy he could go like that. Much crying ensued though. He was the perfect father to me and the perfect husband to my mom and her soul mate. We both cried and were grateful.
A week to the day later I was talking to my friend Sibyl on the phone. As I did, I opened the front porch door to let out the latest stray kitten who had appeared at my place the month earlier. Not one minute later I heard knocking on the side window. The new stray kittens have learned to leap up onto the window and somehow claw their way down the door as a signal to be let in. It was about 8pm and pitch black and I was amazed how quickly the kitten had gotten around to the side door. And so, as I talked on the phone, I opened up that door. There was no kitten. There was a house finch. It flew into the dining room. Now, I must say, never has a bird knocked on my door to be let in. I was stunned. Here it was, a daytime bird, flinging itself against the door to be let in. Birds are symbols of spirit. Even the dourest of skeptics could see this was no normal bird. And so if flew on in and circled the dining room then flew upstairs into my bedroom. It was not my father. Of that I’m sure, the poor thing was too frantic, too freaked. It was however, I am convinced to the core, sent by him. It was a “token” as they call it in some parts. It was a sign, and a very clear one.
In any case, I followed it up to my bedroom and closed the door. The kittens were way too interested and I do think it rather bad juju for one’s kitten to kill one’s token. I opened the window and turned off the lights leaving a lit candle in the window. It landed on a ceiling fan and I caught it in a towel and released it into the night.
When this was all done, I was beside myself. One friend called, then I called another, then I called my mom who started crying at the tale. “He always wanted to see what you did with the kitchen,” she said (I had begun remodeling that recently and had torn down a wall). 40 minutes later my boyfriend David came in. I told him the story. He said how sorry he was that he couldn’t have seen the little bird then went upstairs to do one thing or another.
Not five minutes later he called to me. "Christina! I think it is back!"
I ran upstairs and sure enough the little house finch was flinging itself against my bedroom window to be let in again. I opened the window and it flew again into the room. From that room it flew to my office where my altar is and so landed upon it. It then flew and landed on my alien mask hanging on the wall then back to the altar then onto a box of stuff my father had given me that belonged to his father. I’ve been absorbed with genealogy lately and it all related to that. And so, the little house finch landed on the box and looked at me for quite some time. At last, once again, I caught it and set it free.
And the rest of the night, I smiled.
We were all devastated yet weirdly happy he could go like that. Much crying ensued though. He was the perfect father to me and the perfect husband to my mom and her soul mate. We both cried and were grateful.
A week to the day later I was talking to my friend Sibyl on the phone. As I did, I opened the front porch door to let out the latest stray kitten who had appeared at my place the month earlier. Not one minute later I heard knocking on the side window. The new stray kittens have learned to leap up onto the window and somehow claw their way down the door as a signal to be let in. It was about 8pm and pitch black and I was amazed how quickly the kitten had gotten around to the side door. And so, as I talked on the phone, I opened up that door. There was no kitten. There was a house finch. It flew into the dining room. Now, I must say, never has a bird knocked on my door to be let in. I was stunned. Here it was, a daytime bird, flinging itself against the door to be let in. Birds are symbols of spirit. Even the dourest of skeptics could see this was no normal bird. And so if flew on in and circled the dining room then flew upstairs into my bedroom. It was not my father. Of that I’m sure, the poor thing was too frantic, too freaked. It was however, I am convinced to the core, sent by him. It was a “token” as they call it in some parts. It was a sign, and a very clear one.
In any case, I followed it up to my bedroom and closed the door. The kittens were way too interested and I do think it rather bad juju for one’s kitten to kill one’s token. I opened the window and turned off the lights leaving a lit candle in the window. It landed on a ceiling fan and I caught it in a towel and released it into the night.
When this was all done, I was beside myself. One friend called, then I called another, then I called my mom who started crying at the tale. “He always wanted to see what you did with the kitchen,” she said (I had begun remodeling that recently and had torn down a wall). 40 minutes later my boyfriend David came in. I told him the story. He said how sorry he was that he couldn’t have seen the little bird then went upstairs to do one thing or another.
Not five minutes later he called to me. "Christina! I think it is back!"
I ran upstairs and sure enough the little house finch was flinging itself against my bedroom window to be let in again. I opened the window and it flew again into the room. From that room it flew to my office where my altar is and so landed upon it. It then flew and landed on my alien mask hanging on the wall then back to the altar then onto a box of stuff my father had given me that belonged to his father. I’ve been absorbed with genealogy lately and it all related to that. And so, the little house finch landed on the box and looked at me for quite some time. At last, once again, I caught it and set it free.
And the rest of the night, I smiled.
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