A friend of mine in the support group has just lost her loved one. He was there a minute ago, and then he was not there. He left behind a broken body and a grieving woman. I'm sure he didn't mean to, in a way, but there was no other path for him to follow. He left behind a trail to follow, and it leads to a spot just behind her, slightly behind her eyes. If she could just move her vision a bit she'd see him and she could stop crying, but it takes a while to master this. Most of us die first and it becomes a moot point. I tried to at least let her know how much he is with her still and how happy he is to be able to move anywhere he wants, to see anything he wants. It's very easy to say that he is out of pain now, but that's not the half of it. Releasing one's hold on the here and now and the physical is a bit like sliding into a see of joy, of ecstasy, where vision is complete and understanding advances past words and barely manages concepts. It takes awhile to filter out the words and just let the universe flow through you. Every dead guy I've spoken with has had to struggle to finite down their concepts to deliver their messages. I can see why shamans find it a lot easier to ascend to the Planes to communicate with the All, rather than like the prophets, try to understand what that burning bush is trying to say. How to see a painting done in all the colors of the spectrum, right down to matter and on up to ether?

Yesterday I had a bit of a grasp of a concept that I thought I would try to turn into words. If you really understand a god, you first have to really understand where you are in relation to that god. So if you seek a relationship with an infinite deity, you have to come to grips with your finite existence. This is hard for us to do. We are so confined in the body of ours that you tend to think of your mind as somehow bigger. But when you talk to a god you see how small finite is and most of us turn away in fright. It's a normal reaction for a great ape to run from a nuclear explosion, but a nuclear explosion is so tiny when compared with the sun.

Another aspect to relating to a god is that as we recognize and define within our souls the parameters of this god, what we accept and what we leave behind, we define ourselves as well. Those who see a small god with beard and anger, jealousy and even lust, we define ourselves as aspiring to those atributes. Difficult indeed recognizing within ourselves the ability to murder small children when you have accepted a god who demands their hearts on an altar. But defining a god as an amorphous energy field with no parameters doesn't do us much good in that we need some defining limits for ourselves. Those who refuse to think about that diety and rely on meditation to expand their consciousness beyond this field of dreams are sometimes ambivalent about the rest of us. That's why they tend to go to the hills away from us all. The monkey relates to the human hand grabbing a peanut. If you don't want to be a monkey anymore it's best not to be around a human, but I think it might be a good idea to also leave behind the peanut.

We're going to buy a new car, a new used car to replace the ailing Inga. She doesn't always wake up in time to drive my sweety-pie to the bus. I have found another Volvo, a V70 t5 and it looks great, but at a time like this I always ask Larry what he thinks andhe always was able to give me a whole lot of information in a small email or phone call. Now it's more problematic. Now that he is infinite, a car issue is moot or at least not as interesting. When you can ride a galaxy why bother thinking about a Volvo? Well, Larry, you can ride the galaxy all you want, but I need to know if a 1998 Volvo with 113,000 miles is okay to buy or should I be looking at a cheaper truck with cap? Bad timing. It's always a matter of bad timing when we see things going wrong, or difficult. So I have to trust not only my own judgement but my ability to convince anyone else that I have good judgement. I don't have a lot of success at that. It might be my choice of hats, or my ability to wear dirty jeans to meet an important person, but I don't have a lot of credibility with the folks close to me. Part of the Casandra thing.

Well, Larry, meet Glenn. Teddy, meet Glenn. I'm sure you all have a lot to talk about, but if in the middle of it all if any of you have any thoughts to share about a 1998 V70 Volvo with relatively high milage, I'd apprecite it if you might dip down here and give me a dream, a vision or some insight.

I haven't seen Jon but once since October thanks to cars and my back degenerating more. The meds I'm on make some of my reaction times get just too problematic. And they make me forget things, like directions, time, stop lights. People who read my postings on the support group say I should publish, not realizing how hard it is to organize a bunch of online postings into a book. One guy has offered to edit and convert into pdf and that's tempting. I could have a web site dedicated to my musings and funny stories about my critters. But, still, I would have to be able to find and copy my writings into a common place. Not sure I can handle that.

Tuesday I got a speeding ticket. The car has electrical problems, like suddenly stopping at a corner. I was trying to see the fading instruments and go as fast as the tailgaters behind me when a trooper turned on his lights and pulled me over. I'm hoping to convince a judge with the receipt from the mechanic that it was an accident and I will never do it again. It was an accident and what with Jon in his state from a car accident, you KNOW I am careful about driving. But they may not care, it means money for the town, less money for my meds.

Mom and dad are filing bankruptcy because the bank was not auto-paying their rent for several months and now they owe many thousands of dollars. Phone scammers also did their bit to destroy the old folks. They were getting 15 magazines. Mom can't read because of her memory problems... she has none.. and dad is blind. They thought that the mags and the gold coins in the mail were free. Dad apparently gave out his credit card number to some nice guy on the phone. Probably got mom to read it to him and mom promptly forgot it so nobody told my sister what had happened. It was a mystery to them.

There's a line in the "Highlander" movie where the bad guy says "It's better to burn out than to fade away..." Stupid immortal. You don't have a two pronged choice. Sometimes it goes in leaps and bounds, sometimes there are grey areas, like Jon in his wheelchair. Is he gone or not? Did the accident take him out and leave a new Jon with no voice? Not much different than dad except dad can talk, like tell some asshole what his credit card number is. And then there's me. I'm not fading away. It's more like a sword fight in which the one guy gets nicked repeatedly. Or that guy in "Little Big Man" where the gent loses an eye, a hand, a leg....But like my totem animal, the badger, I just dig in and get madder and fight harder. Ya know, if they think they can take me out just be taking all my parts away, they are sadly mistaken! Like the Black Knight in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" I will bite their legs and spit in their eyes.

The Pieta always shows Mariam holding young Joshua bin Joseph after he dies on the cross. I'd like to see a sculpture of young Christ being held by his ankles and spanked after emerging from Mariam's womb. Don't know what you'd call it but think of the effect on Christianity. S&M folks would have a new acceptance and wouldn't that be good. Or maybe a painting of young Joshua badgering one of the old rabbi's at the temple. They'd be explaing things to him and he's standing there saying "You old fart, things are different now!" Think about a New Testament with JC preaching "Up the Liberation, down with the old ways!" or "Eat your oatmeal, God wnats you to be healthy!" "Beware the military industrial complex!" Things would be diferent now.

I'm carving walking sticks for my goddess-children to encourage them to walk in the woods. I'm thinking about carving power runes on them so at some point they will be able to change weather patterns or dismiss some mugger. I think there aren't enough magical items fully charged just laying around for some Harry Potter to find. I always wanted one growing up and now that I have a good idea how to create them, I figger maybe I'll make a few and leave them about the planet. In the 60's there was an upsurge in interest in magick and maybe now we need those middle aged magicians to get off their asses and do something. Take their lights from beneath their baskets. Forget levitating the Pentagon, heal the rich of their disease of money worshipping.

Well, time to check the hens and see what is going on in the yard. Tomorrow there should be about a foot of new snow out there. She may be close to waking up, but for the most part She is still sleeping, happy in her warm bed, waiting for the sun to do it's thing. I think I would like to sleep for a few weeks, but who would gather the eggs and who would teach old Red to pronounce "water" when the supply runs low?

I just returned from NYC. That's a funny place, filled with opinions and yet strangely tolerant of others. The fences are screaming "Down with Facism" and "Vote Bush and Cheney". Personally I find the tags and other graffitti to be interesting bits of art. I know there are those who photo the walls and keep some records, but there are so many walls. Future archeologists will wonder at the religious meaing behind the drawings, as they do with all obscure material. Did I ever tell you about the chicken pits? There's a place in Denmark where they built a neolithic village and populate it with university students who live the life of the neolithic farmer, herdsman, potter and shepherd. One day the university brought some researchers for a tour and they were all excited about the authenticness of the place. One professor had recently written a paper on religion of the neolithic communities and he excitedly pointed to the shallow depressions beside each home near the front doorway. They had a small amount of grain in each pit and he said, "I've just written a paper on the Goddess of the Threshold! That's amazing!" and one of the inhabitants replied, "That's where we feed the chickens."
On the way home I decided to pull up my old delights and think about poetry. Since finding out that my bad chloresterol is way too elevated (taking Lipitor now) I determined that I need to get my head straight. I need to find my bliss again. So here's some of my latest poetry, written on the train from NY to home:

Confused V of geese
are pulled behind
by Amtrak's
forward thrust.
Beside the
fractured
Hudson
the grey-etched
trees
occasional islands
and the
soft moan
as we
cross over.
The Holy Sycamore
and
muted pine
accompany my
northward
rail.

Gulls stand
on
ice flows.
Underneath
flows
cold water-
while
down
below-
the
dark frozen mud.

The ice boats
no longer sail
the shattered ice
the celadon water
the turk coy sky.

The holes we dig
in our life
we fill
with our life.

Sad taxi stand
at Hudson station
the trees
devoid
of
passengers
await
another ride
the stone walls
like Mayan
cities
in
some distant
mountain
pass
await
another
eye
the train
trembles
I'm in
a greyscaled
landscape.

Well, it's been a long time since I wrote that much and I hope it pleases. I used to try to be published and I try to think of this blog as being published. I took two rolls of film to be developed before I went to NYC. One was filled with pictures of the desert outside of Phoenix from when I took Larry's ashes down to his family. The other was blank. I wonder what was in that blankness? My thoughts, my deeds, my future? or was it just that I had broken a roll of film and then rewound it back, forgetting my error?

I was reading Deuteronomy this morning. So full of blood and intolerance. That crazy god of the Isrealites. Cut off their penises, not once but whenever I feel like more blood from innocent young men. Rape the little girls, but stone the Isrealite girl that gets raped. I am trying to figure out the name or the image of the god of fire, the god of volcanoes that first was worshipped by those who became known as the Jews. He was a trickster god for sure, but also a terrible one. I never thought before about the other volcanoes. I never knew that central Europe had them, but now that I know, I need to explore the very early remains of that faith. There isn't much to go on. It makes sense, though, that they ran their sheep and goats up on the fertile mountainsides and occasionally the god would speak to them in fire, brimstone and deep, booming voice. The innocent died and they trembled with fear. Curious that they would worship a mountain fart.
I wonder if it's possible that other volcano gods would give us a clue as to the nature of that beast? Human sacrifices are common, great fear and jealousy is common, but what about the name? Is it possible that the Norse would provide a clue? Was Thor ever a mountain god, or Woden? Was Loki ever associated with mountains or fire? There was a god of fire mentioned in a tale of Thor and Loki, but briefly. There's a book on the Gods of the Ancient Northmen, by Dumezil and that has many obscure stories from central Europe that will help out. If I find out who that bastard was I'll let you know. Once you have a clue as to who they worship, sometimes you can negotiate a back-door deal. I just want him to stop them from killing so much. The neo-Christians are clearly ignoring all the teachings of the Christ and taking all of thier cues from the Old Testament. I don't think, somehow, that the American crew are worchipping the same aspect of Trickster as the Jewish government, but I could be wrong. Deuteronomy clearly tells them to rape, plunder, pillage and then occupy and that is what both groups are doing. The Isreali government is taking over lands as fast as they can and the neo-cons here are occupying Afganistan and Iraq, as well as looking into other small, easy to conquer places. I wonder why they haven't taken over Cuba yet? I suppose it's because they have no oil. That would indicate Nigeria is on the short list. For the sake of "security" I expect that in the next 5-10 years they'll have to place a security zone into Mexico and Canada. Maybe a 50 mile wide strip we patrol and occupy but never officially own. We'll just call it a place of needed security and force the Mexican government to sign a document declaring that they want us there. Canada will be ore difficult but with a paper in hand we can do anything. Do you suppose somewhere there's a god of both volcanoes and law? Those lists of things in the Books of Joshua and Deuteronomy sure sound like a cosmic lawyer.