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Not one more death.

If the release of the torture photos causes even one death, that is one death too many.

It is my fervent hope that insanity of the Bush/Cheney years doesn’t cause any one else to die.

It is a fervent, wishful, unrealistic hope.

I don’t think my thoughts on these issues are all that earth-shaking, but there are many, many people who are consistent with their efforts to bring awareness to these events, events which, to me, are all part of the insanity of war.

JimStaro is one. Please read his work.  Thanks.

Not one more death.

If the release of the torture photos causes even one death, that is one death too many.

It is my fervent hope that insanity of the Bush/Cheney years doesn’t cause any one else to die.

It is a fervent, wishful, unrealistic hope.

I don’t think my thoughts on these issues are all that earth-shaking, but there are many, many people who are consistent with their efforts to bring awareness to these events, events which, to me, are all part of the insanity of war.

JimStaro is one. Please toss a pony into his tip jars, which appear here every week.

“And the Cat…

is named Yusuf.”  ðŸ™‚

And the Cat Came Back, (now that’s a headline!) By Lorraine Ali  

Big news, right?  Breaking.

Not even.  @;-)

I don’t care.  ðŸ™‚

It’s news that makes me very, very happy.

A man of peace, an artist of life, returns to give the part of himself that I can receive, his music.  

In this time.

Via his own choice.

I am floored by the decision.

And more grateful than I can find words to explain.

Artists of life, rejoice!  We have an unique, tested, treasured Voice back among us!  ðŸ™‚

Enjoy!  We will be Encouraged!

Heart Chakra

The main thing about traveling is this… “things” get jettisoned- quick.  Amazingly fast, in fact.  

At first, the lack of baggage feels weird.

The other day I became so lightheaded I landed in an emergency room, convinced my heart had slipped

its moors.  It (my heart) was usually settled heavy and firm on top of my solar plexus.

But that day it was up in my throat and in the very next minute, out the third eye.  Like a fucking balloon, gone, that fast.  I panicked.

The oxygen the nurse gave me helped.  (Sweet girl, she said she liked my earrings, and I am so very,

very vain and attached to my earrings – it’s one of the reasons I know I could never become a nun.)

(Well, one of the reasons.)

So, I don’t know if it was the oxygen, or the radioactive dye they put in my veins, or the amusement of hearing Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” blaring over the PA while the gamma camera moved this way and that, but all of a sudden I knew everything was okay.  

That this wasn’t, after all, a good day to die.

That despite certain residue and the possibility of glowing in the dark; my heart was fine.

It (my heart), was, in fact, supposed to roam freely through the chakras, one minute in the pelvis, the next in the center of my forehead and then, you know, out and about in the world. (Yogi’s have a name for that, me, I’m a Midwesterner (although some of the sea has crept in).

An old poem, multiple times rejected and unpublished, yet a favorite (and one of the other reasons for not becoming a nun):

Funky Friday

Since Budhy has abdicated his responsibility to provide:

Friday Funk for His Friends

it looks like i’m going to have to start things off with Cat.

Election Day Stories

So, JBK and I are up before dawn, stumbling around trying not to trip over the cat, who can’t figure out why we’re up so early and can she please have some espresso, too?  

We head off to the polling place, still dark, that is packed with cars and trucks and people. We hop the jeep up over the curb, park, and dash off to join the line.

It’s a long line.

The doors finally open.

And, a really cool thing happens.

A couple of three youngens behind us yell, “Hey Dr. JBK!”  JBK turns around and there are three of his ex-students from that gawd-awful university in that gawd-awful place in rural red that we’d hoped we left miles behind in the dust, well, except for moments like this.   🙂   So they chat, and the lines are crazy snaked, everyone opting for the paper ballot v electronic, and nobody quite knowing where the lines are, since we’re sort of all jammed in the middle of the room.  JKB is  a gregarious fellow, loud even, and utterly unaware he and his ex-students are now “the” entertainment in the polling station.  They talk math, and physics, and doctoral programs, and masters degrees, and teaching.  (Robyn, I think there was some number theory talk, I couldn’t understand them.)

An elderly black women chimed in that she forgot her glasses and couldn’t read her Bible. She smiles.

I realize at this point that I’m in the middle of party central, so I started chatting to the Bible-toting women and others who are muttering emphatically about wanting to be in the paper ballot line. There are some words about the ability to hack the machines.  There’s a lot of chaos.   It was damn fun.

We voted.  Did you?   🙂

10,000 *DharmaManiacs

* updated 1x to add another word added to title

** updated 2x to point out typo in first update.  free music video dedicated to whoever spots the typo, which isn’t really a classic typo, more along the lines of a mistake in grammar.

She Had Some Horses

I am not a perfect person, in fact, my flaws continue to groove deeply into my being despite a nearly lifelong attempt to smooth the edges, soften the edge of the blade.

My life story is only mildly interesting to me, and I live it.  There is no way I will attempt to sum up who or why I am such a prickly character, despite a ready quip and grin.  I survive, like we all do; half-in-consciousness, half-out-of-consciousness. I stumble, I fall, I wake up… late.

I have played a major role in the events on this blog these past few months.  In the process, I have wounded people.

I am sorry for the very real pain and annoyance I have caused by being a giant pain in the ass, by being a prickly character, for not shutting up when the good sense angels suggested a breather.

The poem below is posted without permission from the author.  I would hope someone, maybe two people, would purchase either a book from the author or the cd to offset my thievery of the artist’s work.  The poem is written by an ageless woman poet who is alive in our time.  She has long been an inspiration and her words a goalpost for my own work.  And this poem, well, it’s me.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

~~Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Kokopelli

Me mum left this earth decades ago and me babies chose not to be born. Seems to me I’m the last person to write an essay on mother’s day. So I’ll throw this out thought out there, and ask for your stories.

The creation energy isn’t limited to our bodies; it isn’t limited to our gender. We– all sexes, all ages– experience the process of conception, gestation, birth and mothering through our projects, our gardens, our loves, our lives.  We experience still birth, early death, abortion. We know the power of a two-year-old’s “No!” and rambunctious thoughts that won’t behave. Most of us have colored outside the lines. And we’ve all rocked ourselves, or someone else, to sleep at night.

So, what are your stories of love and creation?  Of sunny days in the park and late nights in darkness?  Who is your favorite mother?  Who is your most troublesome child? What project just wouldn’t take despite the best sex in the world to make it so? And what joy has been just too enormous for a single heart to contain?  “I wanna story!”  ðŸ˜‰

Because Kokopelli, that rascal, was a mom, too, I’m sure of it!

Prima Materia

 “All things transitory are meant for us as symbols.”

~~Goethe

I look for you

at the back of the wind

in the red thread of dawn

by the Star of the Sea

but you remain hidden

cached between stars

dust of my dust

the old moon wrapped

in the new moon’s arms.

~~kj

Buddha Cat

There was once a little kitty. She was black with a crooked tail. She was quite neurotic all by herself and her neurosis should in no way be attributed to the person who fed her and napped with her and petted her on demand.  Not at all!  They shared a life and so maybe some neurosis spilled over but her fear of cars and traveling was all her own.

This kitty traveled half-way across the country, twice. She really hated highways. She never offered to drive and when the car stopped she’d howl like a banshee. She once tried to escape to an Amish village.  She was fiercely opposed to modern methods of transportation and thought the Amish might be her people and a good place to find a home. She was captured and kept from that life and never quite forgave her capturers for not allowing her to fulfill her destiny as a Cat of the Amish.

She really didn’t like tornadoes, either and took thunder and lightening sort of personally; fireworks, too. She had a special shoebox she’d go to whenever the gods of the sky made themselves known. She did like SciFi however and was a big fan of Mystery Science Theatre.

The kitty had many stories to tell.  There are many stories to tell about the kitty.

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