A gazillion on a scale of 1 - 10 is how tired I am of being told--by my students, my friends, political quizzes on web sites, comments from media pundits--that I am a "socialist" or a "communist" because I believe that compassion is an important part of my life's work, that we are interconnected, and that we have both needs to-- and obligations to-- help and support each other. 

Please hear this:  Communism--the central control of the means of production and most real property by the state in the name of the well-being of the masses--is a stupid system, and can quickly revert to brutish stupidity.  If YOU like it, that's fine.  I know we are free as humans to believe as we wish, because it takes great sensitivity to understand even a tiny bit of what goes on between the ears of another.  By Design, it's your private business.  The intent of this paragraph is not to "put down" communism (which does a real good job of doing that for itself), but to clarify my position. 

Socialism, which I take to mean a state-directed economy, to the extent that this takes place at the consent of the voters, is just something that per se, I'm not interested in.  But I don't think it should be linked in the mind of the average person to communism.  The two don't necessarily sleep together.  The key concept here is consent.  Some countries (take a look at those in Scandinavia)  implement "socialism" fairly well.  But my point is--are we sure it's "socialism" that they're doing?  Or have global corporate interests managed to exert a mind control so pervasive that we now feel obligated to label governments who help to implement social justice as "socialist" (and therefore vaguely dangerous and immoral and linked to communism)?

I prefer to think about my life in the terms of Ubuntu, the African philosophy that asserts "I am because you are."  (Or "I am because WE (the community) are."  Ubuntu is in dialectical conversation with "I think, therefore I am."  Rene Descartes famously liked to stay in bed writing until noon by himself.  Some say it was his introverted ways that led to his highly individual-level imagination about what it is, foundationally, to realize one's own humanity.  I can't say for sure.  But surely Rene would have been neither potty trained nor used language if someone hadn't taught him these things. 

Ah, what is the human person at all without the influence of others?  A pathetic piece of meat shivering in the bush.

Our worship of "individualism" has truly run amok.  It serves us not.  Global corporate interests are using the vestiges of Enlightenment thinking to play on our fears of domination so that they can dominate us.  This is not a "philosophical argument" and I don't want to "debate" anyone.  "Debate" is a concept emerging from the tired gospel of individualism.  Which individual can prove HIMself more right, and whose prick is larger?  I don't care at all.

However, if you can show me how there is a better way to think about us together on this planet than Ubuntu, I would deeply, from my heart, want to see it.  Zen?  To me it's still based on the concept of an individual detached from others inside an individual brain looking out of individual eyes looking for enlightenment.  It's wonderful if a person does it, but IF the next Buddha is a collective, then perhaps the practice of Ubuntu is how we sit:  Together.

And in the spirit of exactly how I sit with these thoughts, I won't really know what I think about them until, dear reader, I hear from you.

I went to see a good friend today, and by her invitation caught her just before she marched in a Veteran's Day observance (although four days late, no big deal).  This is in a 55 and over community in Mesa, Arizona.  The picture above is purloined from some place on the internet, but very similar to the get-together of today. 

I happened to walk in on the side by the choir, and they needed extra singers, so they asked me to sing.  One should always say Yes to that request, if possible.  So I stood there with them, and sang Rock of Ages and The Star Spangled Banner.  I watched my friend come in with the veterans who lived there.  We sang the Canadian anthem, too, because we were also honoring Remembrance Day. 

About 20 people from this senior community had died since the last Veteran's Day observance, so when their names were read, friends and family came up to light a candle in their memory, until the table in front of the podium was filled with burning candles.  I've always liked the metaphor of the burning candle to signify a person's soul.  I thought it was a beautiful ceremony.

The speaker who facilitated and lead the event was a minister of some type, and told us that the community is a battlefield.  What she meant by that was that we must join together to create a community of Life in the face of Death.  I thought that was a great idea, but I'm not sure that Battlefield is the metaphor I would choose.  Could we not be a field of light?  Or a growing vine with fruit?  Or something without a "fighting" thing going on?  I think it's useless to fight death, unless you are recovering from a disease, and then you are necessarily becoming whole and healthy more than "fighting", I guess.  Even though you are expending quite a bit of energy, it's the positive thing that we must focus on, to foster and nurture Life.

But, on the whole, the community has more positive going on with it than negative, and my friend was happy to enjoy her place.

This is hard to watch.  I cried.  It's so sad to see her life wasted.  I understand that it is possible for a person to be in a place where they basically have no moral compass.  I think at some points in my life I got close to that place myself.  I also hear a contradiction in her story she tells.  There's this and that.  Back and forth. 

A reverence for life includes a reverence for the life of each human being.  If we can't teach each other this-- if we can't learn this, then we must change the way we do things until we can teach and learn respect and compassion.  This is possible, so we should do it.

The only people condemned to life in prison should be hopeless psycho- or sociopaths, which are people who don't have a conscience.  The woman in this video may not be a spotless person, but I think she is showing some genuine and congruent emotions.  I think she is capable of learning to live as a heart-centered human being among others.  The way things are going, the only chance she will have to do that is to live as a heart-centered human being in a prison among other prisoners.  I hope that she will do that.  The heart of the universe is generous and loving.  I'm sending her some of mine.  And let's not forget to send our compassion to the pimp, the other girls, the johns, and the families of those involved. 

Maybe it's the cultural myths where we get to tell ourselves that we're "better" than those who aren't into prostitution and drugs that keep us blind to and tolerant toward the oozing sores that fester on the surface of our society.  What would we do about them if we really cared?

With thanks to Samme!  :)

Not to be judgmental, but I really thought I'd never do anything like that in public at work.  I was eating my lunch.  Eggplant and rice.  Minding my own business.  And then.  Someone was saying that a particular individual (with, unfortunately, much institutional power) told him that a certain committee among us was "weak" because they lacked the will to contend, to belly up and fight.  --Like a good donnybrook will be the proof of our pudding.  ...And I just lost it.  I woke up from my lunch to hear myself speaking with spite and fury.  I said that I'm tired of "leaders" pushing organizations to competition and combat when there exists the alternative choice of collaboration and servant leadership.  I said that I'm sick to death of decisions being made without our input, and of living with the expectation that sharing input is a contentious enterprise. 

Surprising myself, I continued, saying that if he wanted a f***ing fight so f***ing much, I would oblige and kick him in his f***ing nuts!  And now that I had everyone's attention, I decided to shut up and eat, but I couldn't eat, so I just sat there.

The words of Deborah Tannen and Thelma Shinn were running a ticker-tape loop in my inner ear:  "Little boys love to play fight.  They love to join teams and see who's best at whatever it is.  They create rules for this play, and even write "rules" for wars.  But over the millennia, when wars have come to women, it has been the last desperate stand.  The bodies of women and old men stood last and unto death to protect the children.  There were no "rules" for them, only rape and death.  Little girls don't "play fight" among themselves, although they do fight.  And when they do, it's a serious thing.  It's not fun.  There is no "game." 

And thus, I suppose I came by my impulse to kick the guy in the nuts for his trouble. 

Later, I decided that the committee DOES need to get stronger, and that's just how it is.  But anyway, I'm not on that committee. 

Evidently this book has been around for about 4 years, but I didn't know about it.  It was revised and republished this year.  Here are some excerpts.  I love it. 

"Objective:  To explore the secrets of becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss."


"Mythical Role Models:  Prometheus and Pronoia.  In Greek mythology, Pronoia was the consort of Prometheus, the Divine rebel who pilfered a glowing coal from his fellow gods so that he could slip the git of fire to humans."


"Top-secret Allies:  Sacred janitors, benevolent pranksters, apathy debunkers, lyrical logicians, ethical outlaws, aspiring masters of curiosity, homeless millionaires, humble megalomaniacs, hedonistic midwives, and socialist libertarians who possess inside information about the big bang."

2004.  That was the year Mark was killed in Iraq.  He had grown up to be an Army  surgeon, and went to Iraq to sew people back together.  He wore a U.S. flag do rag on his head when he operated.  He made friends with an Iraqi guy who owned a tobacco shop.  Yes, Mark the doctor smoked.  But they would both die in the same month for the same reason.  Pat Tillman died later that month in Afghanistan.  That was the 2nd to the last year that I spent time with my family.  Obviously it was a big year.  There were 3 funerals for Mark, and I ended up thinking more about him after he died than when he was alive, because he was ten years younger than me.  But believe me, I've thought about him a lot.  His mother, Roberta, was always so kind to me.  Roberta lost Mark's dad, too, the following year.  One could say without hesitation and without romanticizing it, that Mark's father died of a broken heart. 

After that, I remember the insides of classrooms and the warm, open fields of Nebraska in the summer.  We went to Lincoln, Nebraska, to study their neighborhood organization, and how people there worked together to improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods.  And you know how that is.  The whole time I was there, I would remember scenes about the family and about Mark.   There was a woman with us that we were sheilding.  I thought she would be my friend forever, but she decided in 2005 to move in with a taxi driver.  He was ok.  She was ok.  She has since left the taxi driver, but she is on her own now.  That much is good.  But the other thing that happened in 2005 was that I met nuclear physics guy, the person whose web site is always linked to my profile.  I had no idea that we would still be friends in the future, but indeed, we are.  You never know.

In the summer of 2006, I started to visit a website named Zaadz.  I had found out about it by reading an article in What Is Enlightenment magazine.  Zaadz is now called Gaia, and WIE is now called EnlightenNext magazine, but hey, we're all still around, more-or-less.  Being able to meet up with the amazing, outstanding, interesting, like-minded, creative people I met started major shifts and changes in my life. 

The entire time my husband was not a part of any of this.  He traveled at my side never.  He reflected with me never.  But he is a person of great LOVE in my life, the father of my children, and author of more wonderful things than I can count.  He was not well for a long time, and this took a toll.  So, when I found an outlet on Zaadz, where I could talk to like-minded, kind, smart, nonjudgmental people anytime about any silly idea, I tended to use this site as an outlet.  My first blog was in September, 2006, so I guess I've been blogging for 3 years, now.  Sometimes I feel like just "pulling the plug" and leaving the site, allowing all my blogs to be obliterated. 

In August of 2008, as some of you readers will remember, a bunch of us got together and rented two houses on the Oregon coast and got to know one another!  That was SO much fun, and I really do think of you all and miss you!  Oh, let's do that again!  That was the coolest thing!  Which is why I would never just leave.  But what I'm working on now is how to value all of this and reintegrate my life.  We are always building and unbuilding, weaving and unweaving.  We are like Penelope waiting for Odysseus.  We have FAITH.  We know there is meaning in life, and we are willing to wait for it.  We weave and unweave; our heart continues to burn true.  Perhaps we are waiting for our True Self to burst forth from within.  We await, as no doubt Penelope did, Jung's Hierosgamos, the sacred marriage, the union of opposites.  As far as I can tell, this union occurs in my life both through balance and by transcendence, and both are infinite processes.  And so we are companions along this endless journey, as we dance the yellow brick road.  Thank you dear heart, for dancing with me!

Now, since Michael has passed to another world, things are changing yet again.  I come here a lot less, now.  I suppose that's because I don't use this community as an "escape" anymore.  What I seek is my true connection with you.  I'm asking myself to create a time to be with you, to read your blogs, and to allow your beautiful spirits to stir my heart, to inspire and humble me, as before.  My love, I have strayed.  Can we drink May wine in October and talk about this?

at all?  Or, an alternative title for this blog might be "Modeling Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: Prancing Down the Runway in a Brand New Fashion!"  I had started to write about the Gaia/Facebook thing.  But none of this is about that. 

I ended up thinking about "place."  Lots of places.

I'm not really ever ON a runway*, but I COULD be on a runway, one could speak of the odds of my being on a runway**, ....which would make it all Very odd, indeed. 

And, as a model, I would be atomically correct.  Hanging out in all the proper orbits.  A bit player, a hanging out boob.  A nuclear family member, almost a sexagenarian. 

And energized, of course.  The energizer bunny.  (You knew that one was coming, right? When this blog took a weird turn, the only thing I knew I would write about was the bunny.)  Hopping from one state to another.  Hmm.  What would be a low energy state?  Kentucky?  A dear friend of mine contracted Hep C in Kentucky.  He can't stand the place now.  But we runway models don't stand anywhere.  Our little stiletto heels are aways going Click Click Click, like a Geiger counter.  So sensitive to the energies.  Radiating danger.  Radiating excitement, newness, and fucking frankly the Siren of Sirens, commercial success!   Ah, we will all make enough money  from this one to buy the type of meals in Chicago's best restaurants that Margo can tell stories about.  Those stories are like music. 




*(although I am on runways in airplanes, what I mean by "runway" here is a fashion runway)

**(or of YOUR being on a runway)

I am
grateful to breath
each inhale so good
exhale, so good.
I can see, too!
Oh what I see! 
Everything! Everything!
SUCH is LIVING!
Oh my!
I can feel
my mouth, the silava
my teeth
and they don't hurt,
Ah! How lucky.
I wish everyone's teeth felt so good
I smile a lot
I feel smiles.
I have two arms, I type words!
Grateful am I.
Planning my day,
Working for ways
That we all, all
could feel so good, so grateful
Take my hand
I know it will be warm.

"Blame" means it's your "fault." 

A "fault" is something wrong with you.

This bad thing has occurred because of something wrong with you.

How does assigning blame help to amend the problem?

A thought I heard today (or was it yesterday), maybe from Brian Johnson's philosopher's notes:

People need to stop the blame game.  Why put all that energy into blaming someone?  --Even if that person is yourself.