It has been almost three months since we have spoken. I will always believe that our journey together was of a divine nature. I think of you nearly every day at least once. Its surprising to me what my mind chooses to remember and how well it holds onto that “remembering”. Most of our relationship resides back to the days of my youth. Flashbacks of memory have sustained my love for you. I am continuously curious as to how and why i hold onto you so strongly after all these years?? Who you are has been covered with layers upon layers of a changed life i know little about. Why does this love persist so pervasively inside my heart? Without effort i seem to cling to the lingering embers of an intense bond we created over 30 years ago. I have noticed there is a part of me that resents how the rest of the world got a piece of you and i did not. There is a magical fire inside you that remains dampered by the banalities of the culture around you. But who am i really to feel so free to have an opinion about your life? It felt so good to have you in my life all those years ago. When the world around us dove headfirst into distraction , we were swimming in a higher thought…or at least the yearning for higher understanding. It’s almost as if we let go of some things without thinking of it by reaching for new things. A deal we agree to from a higher dimension than this earthly place. If only my memory let go so easily. I have found myself questioning whether or not i created you in my mind as an illusion to propel myself forward during times of great tribulation and trials? My disappointment of an neverending longing to have you here in this life of mine is my only defense to the releasing of my grip on the stronghold of what we once shared together. Yet here you are in my everyday even now. Perhaps that was the deal we made? Your contract only guaranteed that you would remain in my world only to get me through those dark days? Maybe it is I who needs to accept that this part of the journey does not include you. apparently. You always hated to hear me say this but i surely “miss you so”. Love? Could there be a better word? Is that the best word? How can it be as there are no words to say it best how i feel? Will i ever share that again with anyone else? If only i could have a divine sign to guide me to a better understanding inorder to let you go. Something within me refuses to accept that you are gone from my path. More than anything, i wish to find peace in my heart that this stretch of the road requires you to journey with others. Will they ever open themselves up to realize how beautiful and magical and wise you are? Will you ever be loved better by anyone else? Surely there must be some explanation as to why our paths left such an etching on my very soul? I know you think of me. I feel it. I know you must feel me from where your heart beats. Will i ever see you again? It is not enough to have smoldering coals of the past…. I shall exercise greater patience and trust that our time will come around once again. Until then, i cannot help myself but to love you every day of my life. namaste.
Tag Archives: family
Adventures in the land of the muggles…..
Against my personal convictions, I recently enrolled my two youngest daughters in public school. They had been homeschooled by me the previous school year. I think i need to start back a little before this to better paint the picture. I used to live in a county an hour east of where i live now. But a new marriage brought my new home here to the city. My girls had been attending a school system since elementary school in this county. I was their momma and felt that they should come live with me fulltime (though we had equal custody..a whole other story)and go to school near my home. I had all girls and it had been a battle dealing with my ex in regards to the needs of three girls. Especially needs he saw of no importance. He is a highly critical and pessimistic individual. This made it hard for my girls to talk to him and get things they needed. Deodorant is a need in this culture we live in but it is heavily laden with chemicals(the big culprit of alzheimers disease is Alum, aluminum) and he and i both had strong opinions against that stuff for the girls. The all natural aluminum free kind is much more expensive and with three daughters and myself using (Bobo wasn’t old enough yet but soon would be)the product its outrageous to keep in stock let alone sanitary napkins and such. He wouldn’t get them any for a long time so i was left to buy extra to send with them. Stocking two homes takes nearly an extra income to just keep up with girly needs if you can only imagine. We go the all natural route as much as possible but the cost is enormous. I digress. With constant little battles about this stuff continuously going on its understandable why Bobo and Lala wanted to live with me. His intense efforts to avoid any child support costs kept him fervently antagonistic about them moving schools. Our eldest daughter was already graduated high school and working towards college. Where she lived was her choice. Lala was in high school and it was understood that a court would recognize her as old enough to decide where she wanted to live. She felt in the middle. I didn’t want her to feel like that so i tried my best to let her make the choice on her own feeling no anxiety about me regarding her decision. But being an hour away , i would not be able to see her very often. She hated that school and begged me to take her out but she felt like she was choosing between parents who she had spent equal time with most her life. She has a big heart and though she hated being around him most of the time also, she loved him and didn’t want him to be alone. Amelia being much younger was the final factor. Ultimately, we settled out of court in order to keep the courts from seperating me from my children (judge was giving ex favor for keeping kids in same county school system as they had been there for so long regardless of what my girls wanted)and i agreed that Bella could stay there fulltime and go to school there and Amelia would come with me and we would get them time to spend together when we could. The ex would not allow me to put them in public schools if i wanted to settle because he had his mind set that the school system was much more violent and badly managed because we lived in the city. Well the school system we were moving from made more teen moms and alcoholics than they made college students and its still booming epidemic. He knew the school had let us down where our daughter had been but he would stop at nothing to set up a lifestyle of total convenience for himself rather than hear the heart of our middle child and how unhappy she was in this school. So Lala stayed in the high school she started in and little bit was put in an overpriced Montessori school halfway between both our homes. I was far more emotional about it than anyone and i felt more unheard and misunderstood than i had in a long time. But i put my best foot forward and tried to approach it with strength and optimism. As time went by Lala realized she should have chosen to come with us. Daily her father would make rude inappropriate remarks about her substandard fitness level(in his eyes) or he would hurl harsh criticism at her when she tried to vent about her tough day. He lived much closer and had a better chance to go to the school and speak on Lala’s behalf but he continuously told her to take it like a man and buckup. The Montessori school was a good school but it was not without its faults as well. Very very expensives with constant fees for fieldtrips out of state and camping with the whole school etc etc. as well as a breeding ground for wealthier spoiled rotten kids who couldn’t be made to mind because their parents were paying customers. Bobo was hitting puberty full on and suddenly encountered acne and needed deodorant now also. Using the natural variety can require you reapply it once more in the middle of your day. Being little and new to this puberty thing Bobo didn’t always remember to reapply at lunch. One of the kids starting taunting her about it and making fun of her acne. Other kids had their issues also but again it seemed that the school would go to great lengths to massage everyone so as not to lose business. Ultimately, Bobo was made to just put up with it. I found out later their was this huge rumor by all the students that two of the teachers were having an affair together and using school fieldtrips to have their rendezvous time together. They were even caught by students alone together late at night in a hotel pool on one particular weeklong travel adventure. The female teacher was supposed to be the adult guardian in my daughters room and when she disappeared my daughter and her friends went looking for her. blah blah blah. The total bill for one years tuition minus fieldtrips and camp and stuff came to $13,000.00 and between both schools who were by law given the right to keep my children for 8 hours everyday yet doing a crappy job at truly educating them(other than the cruel and unjust side of things or people) I knew i could do at least a job good as or better than these schools and it wouldn’t cost me 13 grand to accomplish it. I had to think of something that would work so that i could advocate for Lala’s behalf regarding the issues with that rotten school as well as make it feasable for my ex to be open to it. He was easy to anger and once furled up i knew he wouldn’t be eager to work at a change at all. Bobo was up til midnight doing homework every single night and grew quickly disenchanted with such a heavy workload all year and wanted a change. She liked some aspects about the school and loved the unique things this private school offered but she wanted out. My new husband and I had been footing the entire bill on this school and with two daughters entering college the next fall , even with his decent income we didn’t know where the money would come from. Still sharing custody(lawyers fees became the deciding factor in our settling out of court though i wish i had been able to get primary with child support straight from the beginning) the best option i saw was homeschooling them(many new programs for online school and now TN has an online public school program) where we could split the time , the commute, everything right down the middle. Lala would be happy and Bobo could have a less aggressive approach to the homework load. I cannot remember how I managed to get this accomplished but somehow my ex felt it was a good idea too and agreed that we pull the girls and homeschool. Often, depending on his mood that day, he spoke of his disdain for much of the crazy priorities of this society as well as the poor morale and the poor examples of professionalism in the school my daughter did go to. HOWEVER, soon after we began teaching the girls at home he changed his mind and began tormenting them about how they will not amount to anything and will learn anything…..He was especially hard on Lala. She is built thick and voluptuous unlike my other two girls and myself who are petite and thin. She is absolutely beautiful. Her face, her eyes, her incredible spirit and sense of humor…even her name. She is highly artisistic and driven. Being a music man his whole life ,one would expect her Father to appreciate all her artistic qualities.she was in band and had a fantastic ability to draw, create nearly anything. She had a perfect 4.0 and perfect 100 percent track record until her last school (her art teacher bullied her and gave her a grade to ruin her perfect grades though we felt it was completely undeserved.) Nothing she could do would please her daddy because appearance were everything in his family and they also had issues with her regarding her solid physique and if they wouldnt completely accept her than he surely could not. He was still trying to gain their approval himself. she was more of a reason why he felt he couldn’t get the approval he desired from them. That is my guess anyway. I would try to talk to her as often as i could over the phone. What seemed to bother her most is missing her momma and being in our positive fun atmosphere. It was hard for her to hear that we would get snowed in and go tromping off on long hikes through our woods in the snow with boda bags filled with hot chocolate and returning half frozen to a toasty fire in the woodstove and homemade food and movies…or we would go out to dinner every now and then. Her little sister Bobo would get to go out with my friends for pizza and such or the friends of ours that Lala adored would visit regularly and she was never here to enjoy their company. His house had no life in it. He kept it cold and it was quiet and empty most of the time and he rarely had friends over. She LOVED homeschool and was excited about possibly getting snowed in and all the fun things we would do that fall. Even though he began a long school year of scathing remarks and negative comments , Lala was happy. Bobo was as well. The truth is noone supported us except a few of my friends who didnt come around the house real often. My new husband nor my exhusband could be bothered to help with homework . They both had math skills that soared above mine but never offered any assistance once. My husband would come home and ask me how much homeschool we did. My inlaws would visit and question me as if they were also concerned if my girls were getting a proper education. My life was so busy and i was burning the candle at both ends and tired of all the hurt feelings Lala had to work through (i was the only one that would listen to her) and just completely exhausted with the rest of the demands of my life so i relented. I devised a plan with Lala that if noone would help us or support us and everyone wanted to be this way then we would talk of public school only if Lala was given an awesome graduation party by her Daddy. She knew i would give her one. What she wanted more than anything was to travel the world. She wanted out. She was sick of her Daddy always saying how he may never get to see any of his children walk down the graduation aisle. He laid it on thick of his disappointment( our eldest got pregnant as a teen and graduated a semester early so they would let her walk the graduation ceremony) as if it didn’t hold as much value if she were to go through the exact same ceremony only through her homeschool based out of Chattanooga. He was there and saw the elaborate event our eldest daughter experienced when she graduated kindergarten through homeschool. The ceremony was held at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. I have never seen a high school graduation ceremony that glamorous. Anyway, the only way to quiet his mouth was to talk Lala into trying public school for her final year and graduation. Bobo had an increasingly hard time getting up during the day when homeschooled from staying up too late at night. Her studies were suffering and she made the choice to return to school as well because she felt if she were made to sit in a desk all day she would have no choice but to focus on her studies. She had deduced on her own that self motivation and a more lax school atmsophere were beyond her at that time. I told Lala that though she was going to a new school system in a new city that there was still good things waiting inside every challenge. With a positive attitude she could be anywhere and still be joyful. It was up to her. I let her know if she decided she could not take it any longer and wanted out that we would let her leave school. If everyone wanted to give us a hard time for this we would make them pay by throwing her a big party and by playing their game , Lala would be able to take her graduation money and go to Latvia or Sweden or where she wanted . Even if for a few weeks or the summer she could get out of the country . Enter: Lala /Senior Year/ public high school. omfg. What a headache. This is the part of my story where the adventure really begins. (in the next post though cause i have a client in an hour :)) (I swear though the way Lala tells her tales of each day would win contests if she were to blog about it. Hilarious.) til next time
Dearest Cath…
So I do not know if i told you about my friend J. A few months ago, i happen to call her because she was heavy on my heart. No i didn’t. I sent her a text message as it was morning and i wasn’t sure if she was off her shift yet. She called me a few minutes later and I was so surprised to get her call that i immediately answered it. I remember her saying ” I am sooo glad you answered.” She told me that she had been having some issues for a little while but kept them to herself. Until recently, she was having intense dizzy spells . I think she mentioned a blackout episode while driving once also. The details of the conversation are blurry to me. She had told me that she had been in the hospital all night and they ran some test and found a mass in her brain. I of course made plans to head over to her house within the hour. I know there was nothing i could do but i could be with her and sit with her and listen to anything she needed a listening ear for. she told me that she had not told anyone anything yet because there was nothing to tell yet. This made perfect sense to me. She did not wish to alarm her only child Tara(22 i think) when she had almost no information. She knew it had to be serious on some level because it alerted her to go to the emergency room. This is not a common thing for Janelle to do. She had a tough exterior. I say “had” because i think its softening now. She wouldn’t dare let anyone know about her not feeling well either. Much less express her feelings about it. I personally feel responsible for not sharing with her that i think bottling up your feelings is detrimental to ones health. I feared she would not take it well and i did not wish to ripple waters with my feisty friend. I should have. I know better now to stand up more and to be more assertive. It was medicine that would have really helped her and perhaps having the knowledge may have prevented the illness she is battling now. After a massive ordeal getting clearance to get a good surgeon to look at her scans from the hospital, J found out that indeed there was a walnut size tumor in her brain. She was going to have surgery the next week. It all seemed to happening so fast it literally made my sight take a dizzy spin. It was not happening to me . I can only imagine what might have been going through her mind ya know? She is a nurse herself and has seen a great deal of sickness in her career. She was a medic for the green side for about ten years also in the military. I have told you about her before. She is the beautiful Cherokee woman with gorgeous blue eyes i told you about in the past? She was my supervisor when i first met her. She did my intake when i was hired at Royal Care. She is very strong yet very stubborn and loves to live on the edge and to roll with cats who are edgy as well. A single mother of one daughter(she was a teen mom)she worked many long hours and extra shifts at work. She related to me even though i was married at the time. Soon after beginning my work there my marriage took a major nosedive for the umteenth time and before i knew it , I was seperated and moving out . Meeting her at that time proved to be a blessing in disguise. We became close very quickly. She was smart and witty and beautiful and badass. Still is 🙂 She is about a year and a half older than me. I thought about her being my age as soon as she told me they were gonna take the brain tumor out. My vivid imagination was not much of a blessing for me at this moment that is for sure. The day before she was to have the operation, she had to get tests done and certain preparations at the hospital. I did not find this out til she was in surgery the next day but they found more cancer in her lung, her kidney, her lymph nodes and her face. This is the closest anything like this has really hit home for me. I have never been to a funeral. I have never lost anyone i loved through death yet. I have lost and grieved much loss and the death of relationships i wanted but this was totally a different thought for me to concieve in my mind. I realize more now than ever that my journey here is temporary. I knew this before all the recent events unfolding in J’s life but it still was tripping me out like i can not even express. I cried when i knew she was in surgery. I begged all my friends to quit smoking and start taking better care of themselves. Almost all of my besties are fatties who smoke and eat like shit and do not get their heart rate up outside of sexual activity. I know there are no guarantees of longevity. But i truly feel Cath that we are designed and created to live strong vital lives. I do not buy into this “i’m getting old so i just have to expect to fall apart” mentality.I am not old. Even when i am one hundred i will still be younger than a wink in time of all eternity. I fully plan to be as fit and vital as Jack Lalaine when i am an old hen.What is time anyway? I love what Moorjani says about it being nothing what we perceive it to be. She says there is no such thing as time. It all happens at the same time. at once. That all life, all things, all time are one. For where i am now in my life , this idea she proposes feels right to me. I do find comfort when meditating on this idea. J has done alot of research and investigating and came to the conclusion that chemo and radiation are just money making scandals and she was not going to take this road. I believe she wants the Gersohn(sp?) treatment. Different friends have been having various fundraisers for her to help pay for the cost of fighting her cancer however she needs to, feels to. I bought her the book Dying to Be Me that you recommended for my reading pleasure. I have been trying to hangout with her and of course willing to drive to wherever she is and bring her this powerful and inspiring book. Its been a futile effort. I even requested an address to mail her the book and a few other things i bought for her. I heard she is flying out today to Mexico today to get treated. I think she has been avoiding me because she cannot give up smoking and feels like i might judge her for it. I surely wouldn’t but i feel its my duty as her friend and sister to tell her its poison and she needs to stop. i never badger her about such choices. I am not sure really what is going on. I imagine getting this grave diagnosis comes with a whole new book of rules. I am sure she is busy trying to figure everything out but im insecure about everyone getting to talk to her. I do feel guilty for not attending the fundraiser events. But my life has been full and busy and planned out. Driving four hours to someones fundraiser for her all day is a huge commitment.I tell myself this but is this my way of coping with the madness of it all? Surely she understands that the world must go on its course in spite of the glitch in her system? I would never overtly verbalize this to her for fear of it being received negatively. Please know my heart is about love not judgement. I would want my loved ones to be there for me but i would understand that folks cannot all stop their life for me. I poured another sweat lodge this past Saturday. I set that day specifically for J per her request. She was in my last sweatlodge. Merely days before she found out she had a brain tumor. The willow branches that hold my lodge together were taken from the willow trees on J’s property before the bank foreclosed on her home. I felt strongly connected to her as i was sitting in the lodge preparing to open my ceremony before my guests came inside with me. I recognized that full circle of the medicine wheel in relation to my path and J’s and how those branches still give of themselves in service for us. I will talk to you more about the sweat another time. I knew i was connected to J in that sweat though and i trust that we did great work in our prayerful lodge on that beautiful and magical harvest moon. I am curious about how much work went into me realizing how connected we all are over all the years of my life and yet i feel so seperate from J in this path unfolding before her.I am trying to maintain that recognition and awareness of the absolute connection of all things to one another. Yet how can i not feel myself connected to her now that she has been diagnosed with all this cancer all over her body? I feel helpless regarding J. It would seem if we are all one then we could by our own faith and recognition of that oneness take our own energy and heal each other as well as ourselves. i truly believe we can heal ourselves. Her tribe, the Cherokee has become lost since the trail of tears. I wonder if that didn’t play a role in all of this? DIS ease is an outside manifestation of the dis ease inside of our hearts and our emotions and our psyche. Anyway, thinking of J intensely these days . Pray for her as well if you feel moved to my beautiful Cath and take care of yourself too. all my love
Dearest Cath…
I miss you.
Dearest Cath…
I was reminded recently about our falling out. The running blog in my head felt sufficient to the expectation of you understanding my odd humor and poor choice of words. The intensely stubborn side of me said that it was as so because i felt punished already by not ever seeing you. I know i saw you at my wedding. It was such an honor to have you there with me. You represented all of my side of the family in attendance on so many levels that i felt anxious for you. I also realize i have not yet been married two years so it hasnt been forever . It just seems so. And when you reacted by disconnecting yourself from me then it felt almost like it was par for the course regarding the punishment i was already enduring by the distance between us. I do not really know what happened other than we both passed the test and came through with relatively minor denting. 😉 I am not getting enough sleep at night. I wake up a half a dozen times to slip off to the bathroom and refresh again with a drink of water. I end up staying up if it appears that i will not fall back to sleep. If there is light in the day then i will not sleep. I feel like i have accrued a rather large sleep debt. I wonder if we will feel more alive when we leave this place? When we leave our bodies? Will we remember each other? I wonder if we will remember more once the human form has been lifted from us? I hope i remember more than i do now. I am trying so hard to remember all that i was created to remember and i just seem at times like an exercise in futility as i constantly work so hard to destroy my ego leaving less room to peel back the layers to the heart of me and truly wake up. We are cooking food that i grew and harvested from my garden this evening. Butternut squash and zucchini saute’ed in veggie oil w some salt. Bella made homemade chocolate chip cookies and i cheated and had one. After i ate it the memory of how amazing it had tasted seemed to swiftly brisk away from me and i then wondered if i was gonna be enough sugar and stuff in that cookie to tear my digestive system up in the morning. I should have ate the cookie slower. Savored the experience more. Kind of like sex. It always seems to be sweeter when you extend the arousal longer and pull back right before you make the other person climax. haha. I know we do not ever talk about sex. Its actually a fascinating subject. A subject i for one am happy to be involved in on a regular basis now that i am happily married and can have all the unprotected sex i want and try whatever i want cuz we get to KEEP eachother.haha Seriously, if i were here in my head with you when i was with you then there would be no protective guard and casual conversation with us would include sex. Why do women never really talk about it? It doesnt have to always include extreme talk or whatever. I for one would love to know that i can expect some wisdom regarding the changes women go through as they get older. Unless you watch Oprah(which i havent in many many years) then where does one go? There used to be a closer sense of community among women as there were tribes and villages rather than large metropolises we call cities. There used to be so much more ceremony and honor shown towards natural changes and rights of passages celebrated for milestones long since died out. If i had my say, then we would live in a world where those customs were still regarded with honor and women would not be expected to operate as if it were any other day. When females first began their moon cycle then it would be a loving web of women embracing her entrance into womanhood. There would still be tribes. there would be NO WALMART. Everyone would have the same amount of everything. Men treated women with highest regard and recognized the importance of the yin and the yang. I am starting to sound like Alice in Wonderland. Dare i ask should you be surprised? I am forty now and my cycles are regular and i do not experience any obvious signs of menopause. But there is so much people could really share if they were not so addicted to distraction. There is so much improvement to be made and empowerment to inspire should we all see the value in moving to a more intimate and personal connection in our communities. I know i know . Opinions are like elbows…We did receive a small amount of rain here in our neighborhood that everyone seemed to get a bunch of today here in East TN.I need to get back into the shop for an hour or so then try to unwind before my brain wears out. On the chance that your open for it i have enclosed a bolus dose of love from my heart to yours. Even if you feel its warmth and light but are not aware of what just happened then i believe it still has a magical effect. May beauty and bliss surround you precious friend. truly.
Dearest Cath…….
Temperatures remained at 106 degrees at 8oclock last night. I feel bad for not walking Neo as he generally does not leave his little cove under the porch unless i summons him for our walk together. I try to walk him three times a day but that doesnt always happen. He loves being in the garden with me. I work so hard in the garden but it never seems like enough. I know you probably think i am crazy…i am not worried a bit if i am even. I have been studying about Planet X and Nibiru. I realize there are alot of things out there that speak of things to induce fear as perhaps even another means of creating a market for some product they are trying to push or capitalize. But its not what i read that bothers me the most. Its waking up in the God hour countless nights/mornings. Its the dreams that are being fed back to me from my own memory of things happening that are happening now. The stuff we never talk to anyone about. Its knowing the imminence of something big but not remembering in the trueness of ourselves is all knowiedge and there is knowledge of something impending yet i can only feel it.The environment is still a grand conviction of mine. There is filth EVERYWHERE. This society of people have become so desensitized by it that it has become unnoticeable by most. July 1st and its expected to be 104degrees today in Knoxville. I have been watering in my garden to try to soak it heavily to endure another day of intense heat. I was extremely nervous being out in the heat yesterday. We went to see a friends farm down the road and he was showing us his garden the fifteen minutes out in 106 degrees with nothing covering my skin i felt like i was in the middle of a desert. The Mayans and the Khogi and the HOpi prophecy are all the same. We must stop the madness of this constant bleeding the Earth of everything. I have outgrown my simple faith over the years and my understanding has led me to the idea of a truth far bigger than organized religion has ever offered me. Until we learn that we are ALL one and stop what we are doing and stand still for just one *ucking moment than we are going to ruin this place and life for all things on the planet. Man has created a cancer on the surface of the planet and is digging in to cannabalize the rest of her. This is not about fear. Its about vision and preparation and oneness. I feel like i have wasted soo much time. I am still baffled though that my heart has sought truth fervently since i was very small and vision has always come to me in my dreams. Yet something has blinded me their is a veil between what the dreams tell me and a fogginess to feel any sense of power , or clear understanding as to the dreams meaning.Yet they continue to come. I am lost to deal with a people who is sizing me up and down and stuck on appearances and judging me based upon simple first impressions rather than any substantial effort to find out who i am. People are stuck in how you can make it easier for them to talk to you about stupid shit. People do not truly say “Its so lovely to be with you!” Nowadays, it has become “Hey there, how are you ? Thats a pretty shirt your wearing!” I want to say “I think it is that is why i wore it.” But this is considered rude. I have found myself in Alice’s dream and i cannot figure out how to escape ya know? Even the environmentalists do not care to communicate about why we are all here. Its not to live to be 80 and be old and die. Why is noone talking about why we are here? What about all the predictions? It does not take a shaman to see that its just a matter of time before we tip the scales and global disaster will be here. What about the question”whether or not one believes in aliens or calculated meteor collision predictions or global warming or Hunab Ku What plan do we have in place should such an epic event occur?” EVEN IF WE NEVER USE IT. The best i know to do is to meditate and prepare myself and do all i know i can to help others awaken to the idea that our civilization is in trouble and WE CAN CHANGE IT. On a lighter note, i started reading Carlos Castenada again. Between working in the shop and kids and garden and walking the dog and trying to cook good food , blah blah blah my reading is at a snails pace. I take the girls once a week to the library and they all maintain a big love for books. I first heard of Carlos Castenada from you. These hot days would be perfect for sitting under those trees in your backyard on your swing and discussing great books you were always reading. I wonder what you are reading right now. A few days ago we were headed to a performance at the church that the girls were in. right in front of us as if time slowed down by some hacker from another dimension were playing with special effects, this king cab truck in front of us loses control and crashes into the hill aside of us. As it was flipping over, i could hardly believe it but instinct kicked in and i started racing to get my heels off and yelling at my husband to stop the truck and for one of the girls to call 911 and i flew out of that truck in my barefeet to the truck. though it seemed like seconds i was preparing my brain to see traumatic injuries and i was first on scene. We were on a blind sloping swerve and there was only one car behind me. I kept seeing a pileup and my kids getting squished while i tried to help these victims in the truck. There were three of them. Two huge guys and a tiny girl. All probably college kids or they were partying with the college kids at the condos where my stepdaughter lives(and we pay for…ugh) They were definately NOT sober because i was trying to see if they were all ok and one guy was telling the girl to back the truck up. A giant tree has totally smashed into the windshield and hes trying to get her to back up. He was bleeding from the head and about 6 foot 5 to my 5 feet 2 so it wasnt going to well. I left as soon as the ambulance got there to get the girls to the performance on time but i was again reminded of the brevity and fleeting of time. I was seeking my nagual and asking for it. Earlier this week i was woken up just after 6 in the morning by the call of a hawk. I went out by seven to walk Neo and the hawk soared above me making slow circular motions in the clearing at the bottom of our property. For days it has been with me all over the city it seems. I have been practicing second attention and imagining how awesome it would be to fly like a bird through the branches. Its as if i can see the hawk like i am sitting on the branch behind it as it cleans its wings. I see the leaves and all the branches and greenery below us. I can feel the breeze blowing through our feathers as we are perched up so high. I am still always left with the question…Whats it all mean? Do you journal anymore? Do you ever read your journals? I havent in years. I have journaled but not read old stuff. There is that dream i had of you years ago that keeps coming up in my mind at random times. I keep seeing you in a carriage as if the whole scene is from classical painting. I remember telling you of this dream. the part that keeps coming up is the carriage and the billowy clouds painted all around the sky. Now that i am thinking of it the dream was more about you being sick and losing alot of weight and I was coming to see you at the hospital and you at some point got in this carriage..its was euphoric being there but its crazy that it keeps coming up as if to remind me for some particular reason. You live too far away from me. I shall carry a lifelong selfishness to have more time with you. Noone even talks on the phone anymore. We try to do multiple things every day so texting is the new reality. I miss hearing your voice and the sharing of your thoughts on books your reading or that we have both read. And walking the dogs together. I talk here as if im 100 years old and on my death bed but i cannot help it. I envy all those lucky bastards who get to share so much time with you and waste it with banal shit. Or have grown accustomed. Every dog i have ever had has always had and uncontainable tail wagging joy when it saw me. for as long as i owned a dog or as long as it lived with me , this was something i could expect just as the sun rises and sets everyday. But people , we are selfish and spoiled and stubborn. We allow ourselves to grow numb of the things that once sent a charge through us. Like kissing. or Hugging or touching others or just being loving. We touch our children less once they grow from babies to big kids. My kids are still forced to put up with my affection but even i have become less hands on with my children and others. G and i are quite affectionate. but Its a vibe thing too. And the energy people foster within themselves by the food they eat, the thoughts they dwell on and the lifestyle they live ALL affect the connections between people. I miss the safe dome of protection around our connection when we were together as if it were just one world. You were always so very interesting to me. I wondered many times what it would be like to be friends with you when you were a teenager or even age ten. I dont dwell on the sorrow of the distance between us . Its just that i blinked and 26years has passed. I think on a occasion such as this that its ok to say i miss you. It should be allowed this one time. ti quiero mucho mi hermosa katarina.
Dearest Cath……
It seems strange as it always has writing letters to you because there has been an ongoing connection so strong since we first me that this letter seems far more for me and my simple understandings than a missive for you. 🙂 I last spoke with you via text message when Osa died. I still miss him. Strange things jog my memory of him. I was driving past a waffle house(we like to dub it the awful house)we visited the morning after he got hurt. We had to drive to Maryville to get him from the Emergency Care because they closed at 6a.m. and Osa was in too rough of shape and they didnt allow patients to stay. We had to take him from there to our vet in Seymour. I had not slept so this was quite an exhausting journey. We didnt know what to do after we left him and G and i were so emotional and in shock that we didnt want to go home just yet. So we went to the awful house. I am spoiled on organic range free eggs from our friends D and K (though i am vegan and rarely eat them anymore)that the eggs at the awful house taste truly awful. I drove past this new branch the other day and it made me miss him so bad as it reminded me of that morning. G took me home after we ate at the awful house then he left for work. I made a fire in the North all day for Osa( i guess for me too)I prayed hard that he would go so that i didnt have to make the choice to end his suffering. I guess that was his gift to me. To help me let go. The interesting turn of things had it set forth to bring upon a new dog soldier to our home. Neo. He is an Australian Shepard /huskey mix. Black with tan and white stockings on all four legs and tan and white cheeks. He has blue eyes with his lower right eye splashed with dark brown over half of it. I will have to tell you how he came to us another time. He is quite afraid of men. He is of strangers but he doesnt panic around females or kids like he does men. Isabella moved her toe on the footrest the other day and his whole body flinched. I keep coming up with these different stories in my mind as to who he was as a pup and where he may have come from. Everything about Neo is a mystery to me except that i know in less than one months time we have grown to love each other. G takes it personally at times that Neo is frightened of him but he’s patient with him. Neo teaches patience. Noone would dare lose their patience with him because you can tell it would make your own heart hurt worse than any mini panic Neo might experience. G and i had a fight recently after Neo had only been with us a few days. he ran and hid under our bed and when we yelled at each other he even growled for a second. I felt like a total failure of a human for feeding and ugly argumentative vibe and risking very fragile trust with my new dog soldier. There was a break in the rain this morning and so i decided to take Neo out on a walk as it was late and i usually walk him before eight in the morning. I let him off the leash last nite to enjoy being on our property. I had created a routine with Neo right away of taking him on a walk three times a day. We built up the distance so we could meander through the valley and wooded edge before heading back up the drive and around the small loop here on top of the hill where our house is. You could tell he was excited that i let him off his leash last nite. I was nervous to let him stay outside because in my selfishness i didnt want him to run off. I wanted him for my dog soldier/my friend…my pet. In the middle of the night the rainstorm welled up so loud that it woke me from a hard sleep. I yelled for Neo as if i was thinking of him even as i slept. I jumped out of bed and ran outside to call for him. In a few seconds he came bouncing out of the darkness towards the light i had just flipped on the porch. It took a few minutes of coaxing and a piece of turkey meat but i got him inside. He immediately ran under the kitchen table for safety but i was relieved to have him inside from the wild rain outside. That was somewhere around 4a.m. Pushing towards ten the next morning I was eager to get my body in that walk mode and to get Neo outside and one more day closer to being more comfortable around me and his new home. He loves to dart towards my bedroom and hide under the bed for twelve hours at a time …so though i felt like a bully keeping him from his hidingspot I thought it would help him avoid getting a big comfort zone noone could penetrate. I had the collar in my hand and of course he ran under the table again. Something inside of me spoke so audibly clear and knowingly that it was almost as if a message had been sent from my brain to my body and it obeyed even before i realized my idea. I put the leash on the table and propped open the door , stepped back to the edge of the porch and called for Neo. As i backed away he poked his head out to look for me as i called him. I decided that we had taken enough walks in this first month together that he has a good idea of where he is. Just as i had hoped he followed out of the house and off the porch. Our first walk side by side with NO LEASH! I was so happy that i bounced on our walk together and i even giggled out loud halfway through our route. he he . On our way back up from walking the front portion of our property we stopped in my garden and he hung out with me while i spent nearly an hour weeding the crops! We are building this connection and i think he trusts me better because i have learned to look straight into his eyes. This is hard to do with huskeys having two different color eyes. G has blue eyes and i have brown so i thought this to be especially sweet. I talk to him when we walk together. It helps me get out of my own head. I had to board him at our vets just two weeks after getting him and it was quite a challenge. I couldnt expect much support regarding my crazy feelings about it from G because he felt we should wait to get a new dog soldier until after a few of our festivals. I couldnt bear to have him put back in that disgusting cage(though a fabulous facility and program the animal shelter had) so i brought him home almost as if i had been hypnotized to do so. thats my story and im sticking to it. Seriously, he chose us just as much as we chose him. I am so excited to have him hang with me though. Of course he is at the moment back UNDER our bed fast asleep. 🙂 I have been thinking alot about you. When i feel overwhelmed as if the world is gonna swallow me whole i think how you may handle such a feeling. I wish i were near you because you make everything feel as if its gonna be ok when i am around you. Some things never change. I feel as if i am climbing an uphill battle of mindfulness in a world where mosts people are clueless to mindful awareness. I spend more time fending off the reactions and attitudes and behavior of others who do not reach beyond the banalities of this typical world we roam around in on a daily basis. its exhausting. I am not saying that i think i am better. We are all the same. Most do not realize this though. I am tired. If i were closer in proximity to you then perhaps i could bear this world a bit better with your sense of humor to keep me going.
I know i may seem self centered at times by not asking the typical questions most people ask in such correspondences like” how is the husband and grandchildren yada yada” , but my heart is stuck to what we have connected on. I do care how your life is going. I care that you are at peace and that you are joyful. I care mostly about what you have to teach me and how i can be better as a result of my exposure to you. I miss you. How perfectly suitable that the song” Waiting on a world to change ” just came on the satellite radio. Of all the mysteries in this world i am most baffled that i managed to survive to this ripe old age of 40 without totally losing track of all my basic senses and awareness. Thank you for all them prayers …haha. they are working so far. (many may dispute this statement but i prefer to selectively overlook such narrow minded individuals. 😉 Do you hear me? Can you feel the strong vibes i am sending you? I love you by the way . Beyond this galaxy.
saka chetan 