I started this blog with the intention of posting my deepest thoughts and sharing those with others, who may or may not be interested and reverberate to the words that I type down on this page. Along the way I lost my way and became convinced that anything I had to say was cheap and not worth posting them. I was an uneducated know nothing who could not possibly say anything that anyone else would ever listen to. A girl who loved to get her feet dirty.
I forgot the most important thing that a journal or a blog is all about. Learning to listen to yourself and learning about who you are inside. Taking all those thoughts swimming around in the endless stream of you and placing them here to look at. I was housecleaning my computer and came across several journal posts that never made it to this blog. But starting today they will and who cares if I can't put commas in the right spot or maybe use too many predicates, whatever the hell those are, I am writing to myself about myself to learn that inside me is someone I really love. And I should trust who I am and what I have to say.
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It ever was, and is, and shall be,
Ever-living Fire, in measures being
Kindled and in measures going out.
HERACLITUS
Been hunkered down here in the cold, frozen artic tundra of Chicago. Thinking and thinking some more.
Days of cold and special sadness. December 6th was the 3 year anniversary of Meagan’s death. And I sat in my gloominess when I should have called and extended my heart to my brother. I didn’t and I missed an opportunity to do some good.
Today, of course is Pearl Harbor Day. Bob and I stood on the USS Arizona. Stood crowded shoulder to shoulder next to many Japanese. It felt eerie, but calming. All those dead men under our feet and here we were now standing together, sharing the pain and utter uselessness of killing each other. I made eye contact with an older Japanese gentleman and he sent me a look of warmth and a questing look of brotherhood.
Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. I find it incredibly hard to believe that it has been 25 years. Seems like only yesterday.
I have retreated to my books. Ran across my old dog-eared copy of the works of Annie Dillard. Sinking in to her writing is like sinking in to a warm bath. I return to her words constantly and find myself, my thoughts mirrored with hers. She simply writes in a daily journal style and her thoughts on this fire – this “life”.
“ I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken. He’d stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for her milk. And some mornings I’d wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I’d been painted with roses.
It was hot, so hot the mirror felt warm. I washed before the mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp. What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth. The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain. I never knew as I washed, and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I’d purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the Passover. We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence…….”Seems like we’re just set down here,” said a woman to me recently, “and don’t nobody know why.”
The secret answer to it all is hidden in those few words. Life is thought. Life is all about how we perceive it. The simple secret answer is to be quiet and still and let the beauty come to you. You don’t need a preacher or a church, you only need yourself.
On my trips outside the past few days with the dogs, the hawk has been in one of the many trees in our yard. My eyes always find him. He is magnificent.
At night as I look up at the moon each night, it has been perfectly positioned on the top of our house with the two trees in the backyard silhouetting it. Off to the right is a big, buttery yellow star, that I think is Orion. To me it seems that it could be the Star of Bethelem. It twinkles and glows warmly at me. The moonshine shimmers over the snow, twinkling like a million other stars.
As Annie Dillard watched a mockingbird free fall thirty two stories to land with exact deliberate care and float onto the ground spreading his elegant wings with broad bands of white; the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest – and her thoughts which so mirror mine –
“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
The internet must have 2 billion conspiracy web sites. I bet that I have visited everyone of them. Thought is a precious thing, a miracle. Why waste it and live in the reality of despair and hatred that is found there.
Just be happy –
For John –
“I still belive in love, peace .. I still believe in positive thinking. While there’s life there’s hope. I always considered my work one piece, and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried, and I hope that’s a long, long time”
John Lennon 1980
We all Shine On
SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM is the belief that the universe and nature are divine. It fuses religion and science, and concern for humans with concern for nature. It provides the most realistic concept of life after death, and the most solid basis for environmental ethics. It is a religion that requires no faith other than common sense, no revelation other than open eyes and a mind open to evidence, no guru other than your own self.
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