The World Will Have To Go To Hell In A Handbasket Without Me Today

Whose Birthday Is It?

It's MY birthday!!!

I'm going to bathe and email and eat fried oysters with a friend. I'm going to visualize driving in Houston Tx with an abandoned ease, because really, children do it all the time, right, and they are texting. I'm going to practice me some sign so this fellow won't be thinking I'm too dumb:

I'm going to practice A Course in Miracles. I am going to make me a doll.

If Blockbuster has disc 4 of Life, I'm going to spend the evening on the couch with a redhead. Some way rich dessert from Veronica's bakery may be involved.

Today...no headlines, not one P word.



I might just do it all over again tomorrow.

Just Because

By the time my backyard cat population attrited, I had a young raccoon with long tits feeding regularly at the food bowls. Once I spotted her opening the door of my neighbor’s shed and going in, letting the door swing shut behind her.

Soon Little Mama was feeding at Wanna Café by night with three rollicking babies. My husband insists we continue with the free food. “You’re disturbing them,” he says when I switch on the light to see if I can spot them at the bowls, flipping in and out of the pans of water I’ve set out. It’s a pool party at Wanna Café every night, and since I’m the hostess, I think I have the right to enjoy it, too. I want to see their long back feet, their little nibblish hands. I want to see the babies fall into the water, leap out, spin the food bowls.

More than that I want to open the door of that shed and see their little eyes glowing in the dark. I want to share their secrets.

I know if I do that, they must leave if they still live there; they will no longer feel safe. It’s the same impulse to clap my hands to see the clattering blackbirds swirl into the air, to run into the field of a thousand snow geese and watch them rise and circle. The same impulse of a child who takes a stick to stir a hill of ants just to watch them scatter.

I know it’s egocentric to want disturb these creatures at the necessary labor of their survival just so they will dance for me. But still I want to.

Ritual

No matter how busy I am when I shop, when I buy eggs I open the carton and roll each one just a bit in its wee cup, making sure there are no broken ones. Every time I do this I feel connected with everyone who does it, who has ever done it and who ever will. In that small silent space in my nattering life, my finger gentle on the cool, thin shell, I feel as if I am participating in a universal domestic rite invoking the safety and prosperity of the family. My family. All familes. Amen.

Faith

Because I am not going to take time to look up exact quotes, you’re gonna have to take what has filtered through my brain.

A Course in Miracles says free will is choosing what you want to believe. Once you have chosen, you call your witnesses to testify to the truth of your beliefs, and the witnesses always come at your call. By the way, A Course says there are only two choises: heaven or hell.

An article I read a few months back said a certain location in person’s brain lights up when she thinks she’s been proven right (and it also works for he’s). When presented evidence that proves her belief, her brain releases one of those happiness chemicals, even if being proven right puts her in a worse position than if she were wrong. She will dismiss all evidence contrary to what she believes. Calling the witnesses, and we would rather be right than be happy.

Which reminds me of a radio skit of two boys at Christmas that I heard in New Orleans in the late seventies :


Boy #1: You know there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.

Boy #2: Yes there is.

Boy #1: No there’s not.

Boy #2: Yes there is.

Boy #1: Not there’s not. :

Silence.

Boy #1: So?

Boy #2: So what?

Boy #1: Aren’t you worried?

Boy #2: Why should I be? You’re the one who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.

You Hoo, Honey, I'm Back

This blog (along with Being in America) has been my paean to and exploration of my awakening to the Happiness of Being (Love, Peace, Joy), what I’ve been told over and over is my true nature. If you know me, or read much of my hippy dippy ommm-de-ada ommm-de-ada blogs, you know I born under an unhappy star. At some point in my search for a better way, I began to think that in addition to being raised by a young (when I was born) mother who loved us and was determined to turn us into decent worthwhile human beings even if she had to jerk us up by our hair roots to do so, I also was born with anxious wiring. Why else did my sister turn out like Teflon and I turned out a mess, still dancing for my mother (and gosh, I loved her…I just wanted her to be happy)? Newsweek recently published a report corroborating that not only was there a reason I was an anxious child anxiously tap-dancing to please my mother, it was the same reason I couldn’t spell, and though they didn’t say it, probably why my dad, my son and I perform a close-enough butchering of the English language—Ta Da: DNA. (hey…if you read the article, my sister wasn’t that kind of Teflon…she was the kind where she didn’t pay that much attention to the rage, and kept on trucking).

So my life has been a litany of instruction manuals of the ommm-de-ada kind for changing the way I react to the world. It has been suggested at times a wee bit of meds might help when I feel like this:

but that was just my self serving family, thank you very much.

But for them, I gave it a try. My first foray into anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals (you know, other than nicotine and fat-laden carbohydrates) had my family hiding in closets and barring the bedroom door. Apparently my anxiety was covering up a great deal of rage of my own, and even though I found out the drug I was using was only one molecule removed from the drug most named in rage-related homicides in Europe, and surely there were other, gentler drugs, I decided to stick with books and mental practice.

I begin to experience a brightening of a mood here, a golden moment there, though, in general, diffuse anxiety and the occasional depression remained my companions. It’s in my genes, don’t you know.

Then one of my distance teachers said that thoughts created neural patterns, forming and reinforcing connections for misery or happiness, and thus we taught ourselves what the world was like by our thoughts. Newsweek has a new article in which scientists agree with my teacher. I had realized for a long time that I really only focused on the flaws in the world (my flaws, the world being a mirror, my teachers would say), and there was much more to life than the flaws. So I began practicing, recognizing the critical thoughts, the sad thoughts, the painful thoughts, and substituting thoughts I would rather have.


It worked. Really, really worked. Several weeks ago I experienced happiness. Not a lessening of anxiety, not a golden moment of unspeakable love, but effervescent, loving lightness of being. For a day, then two, then three.

And then I began to notice the elections. And the politicians. I began checking Drudge and Google out everyday (every 10 minutes?), reading blogs, following sources. I didn’t read the blogs that I had enjoyed. Couldn’t even click on their links. I needed to know what was going on, I needed to make the right choice among people, all of whom would make choices for me that I didn’t agree with.

Zoom. Not anxiety, maybe, but crankiness, and addiction, a furious urge to know NOW.

Uh-uh.

So maybe I do need to blog my thoughts and beliefs about our political systems, and what I think freedom means and entails. What the candidates have to offer, and even if I can’t get what I want, try to know what I don’t want the most. But not here.

Then again, maybe I can’t serve two masters. If that’s true, I know the one I choose to choose, and this will be my only blog. I may not be able to save the world with love, peace and joy, but when we have that and share that, maybe we can find a way to say "yes, and" rather than "no, but--you idiot." It’s bound to turn out better than poking each other in the eye with our pointy views.

And a P.S. In the past couple of months my blog has been noted by two bloggers I admire. I have some gratitudes and recognitions to pass along—coming up.

painting: The Scream Edvark Munch, 1893

Talking More Trash

And hopefully the last of it:


Pieces of trash have reappeared in my neighborhood, but not to the extent we had before I became the anti-litter-lady. I’ve wondered about that. It occurred to me that when trash is lying about, I notice it. Every time. So it seems like always trash, even if it’s the same trash. And then another piece and another piece joins it, so it’s eternal trash, strewn around by cretins I can do nothing about. Trash upon trash upon trash, a mental mountain at least. But if I dislike the litter, and if I pick it up on a semi-regular basis, the original trash is gone. If I took it home, put it in the kitchen garbage, never took it out to be carried off by curbside service, my house would quickly fill up with other people's trash. But I do put it out to be hauled off, and the neighborhood is a bit cozier, and I’m a bit happier. I don’t like trash—but instead of having to change all the world’s litterers, I can simply change my bit of the world.

Gotta admit, I still have trouble with the social interaction trash…somebody says something unnecessarily mean or stupid or—Big Not Fair—something untrue, or I’m waiting in line at the big box store check-out while the clerk counts the cash she’s handing back fifteen times so she can finish her personal conversation with the customer in front of me like she’s doing official business and not just chit-chatting, while I have official business of my own to take care of just as soon as I can pay for my goods and get on my way. Instantaneously, the chemicals flash and I’m looking at some trashy feelings.

Nevada Barr in Seeking Enlightenment, Hat by Hat, her book on her spiritual evolution, said she went to a refresher course for park rangers. A guest speaker, a sheriff, asked the group what they did when somebody ‘talked back.’

One young man said, “I don’t take shit off anybody. They give me shit, I take action.”

The sheriff set him straight. “As a law-enforcement officer it’s your job to take shit. Punks smart mouth you, you take it. Drunks vomit on you, you take it. Ladies spit at your because you wrote ‘em a ticket, you take it. Taking shit is what we do. You damn well better get good at it.”

Though I still hate taking shit, I’ve come to realize the first thing I have to do is notice it’s there. If I’m living in a reactive trance and somebody gives me shit, what I’m feeling will seem real, and I’m just going to get madder and madder. I’ve got to claim the garbage first. That’s just the first step. Even if I realize what’s happening, if I cling to my own outraged righteousness, I’m going to be hauling that trash around, and collecting more to pile up on it. But if what I really want is peace, love, joy, I’ve got to share it with the cretin, um, fellow creature in front of me. I’m going to have to claim those outraged feelings as my own garbage, and then let them go.

Persuasion

I’ve written about becoming that old trash lady, picking up garbage along with my dog’s poop. It’s kind of embarrassing, in a way. But today I didn’t take my poop retrieval bags with me when I left the house (alrighty, it was early and I was dopey; the dogs didn’t poop in anybody’s walking path, I’ll pick it up later, okay? We don’t want this poop thing to be obsessive). The trash thing may well be on its way to a mental illness deal, because I was slightly nervous about not being able to clean up the neighborhood. Scheesish, I was thinking, what a fruitcake I am.

Then I discovered THERE WAS NO TRASH. Not a yellow napkin. Not one paper straw cover. Not even a plastic cup lid. Nada. Nothing.

This may be what is happening here: the law of attraction. If trash is lying about and people are passing in their cars, their little brains note it, the synapses flash, the car window lowers, out comes the detritus of their mobile lives. Trash collects trash.

But if the garbage isn’t there in the first place, the synapses don’t turn on. On some level the custom of the natives prevail.

I remember it being Krishnamurti who said, Be the change you wish to see.

You know we're not just talking trash here. Peace, love, joy, anyone?