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.

I was dancing/working out at Jazzercise the other day,


when I thought about how almost everyone yearns to experience natural grace and flow.  We want to move beautifully.  We know that when we do, there's a quality that goes with that, and others can see it.  Viscerally, a person feels it.  And we--at least I --want that to be the quality of my movements. 

Excellence of movement happens on so many levels.  There's the oratory of Barack Obama, the cooking of Julia Child, the dancing of Michael Jackson.  They are all very cool.  There is an excellence that comes into its own.  It's when we are very clearly who we are, and we are operating totally in sync with the excellence of what we do.

I do think all of us want to be cool.  And as we know from our adventures in middle school (ok, well MY adventures there, anyway) one can't be cool by trying to "be cool."  Or not for very long, anyway.  Cool is an unconscious byproduct of authenticity and excellence, and that's why it's so-  cool.

And then I was thinking that coolness is part of our evolution.  If we go to 'incarnation school' long enough to meet and become this thing we call "enlightenment," we also will somehow be very "cool." 

I thought desert landscaping would be less work, but it's MORE work, especially during the first year.  This is what I get for having no relatives.  Nobody hangs out and tells you these things. 

There is good stuff, too, though.  There are the flowers that emerge brilliantly, optimistically, and against all odds just days after being newly planted.

And then the doggone weird stuff.  Before, I could just barely keep my lawn alive.  NOW, because I'm watering the landscape plants, SUDDENLY--and I mean in just, like, TWO days, there's all this damn grass! 

And I'm like, "Where were YOU when I needed you???"

And they're like, "We don't know, we're just the damn grass.  Aren't we pretty?"



And I'm like, "No!  You're NOT pretty.  You grow like little green monkeys all over the place and you're rotten little guys and I just want you to GO AWAY!"

And so I go to Home Depot, and I get RoundUp, and I poison them.  My mantra is "Kill, kill, kill!"  I am a heartless, ruthless killing machine that sprays DEATH!  I'm serious.  Those feckless, amoral, stinking weeds have GOT to go!

But they stay.  I find out that I haven't purchased a grass and weed killer toxic enough to do the job.  Geeeeeeeeeez. 




Some of the parts of the yard are like they're "supposed" to be, and some are coated with the stupid green grass that last year I would have done just about anything to foster. 

Now I have to decide whether I'm willing to be an even more toxic Death Goddess.  How do other people get such nice, functional landscaping?  They pay someone to come and Kill Kill Kill. 

The magic of nature is perverse. 

If you can lose it, you didn't really own it in the first place.

Of course it's darned inconvenient to lose those things which we assume are ours, at least on "permanent loan" this time around.  Losing those things, I suggest as others have, that letting go and allowing other stuff to come along is the best approach.

But what is it to lose "everything"?  The ability to walk, to write, to read, to think rationally, to love...  how far does this go? 

Living in the moment with gratitiude helps me realize how much I have always, and how rich I am.  I'm so glad that I can realize this, and I hope always to be able to do so.