Take #9

And thus it was in blinding fog, mist, icy temps and the occasional downpour, life became unglued from its routines, its simplicity, its familiarity and warmth in a swiftly moving beam reach, heeling port towards an unchartable course in uncharted waters.  We can, when called, gather an invisible interior crew together for the heavy lifting, just follow the light.  The problem came when the headlights went out and I followed close behind a truck ahead, using its light, certain the Force would not let me down, which it has not, not when you are guided by the Force to start with and do not deviate from its intuited direction.  It is when we move around ignoring the voice we get into trouble, hassles, meet with unpleasant circumstance which has a way of tying us up for sometimes months, even years, decades, expensively, foolishly, so much time wasted on the disappointing, increasingly disastrous outcomes interacting with Wetiko complexities, intersecting with the cubic corners in the shadowy recesses of the poisoned hybrid mind, that could have been so easily avoided had we paid attention. They enjoy making it impossible to pay attention.

I don't exactly know anymore what to call the Force.  Some speak of the Divine, the Ineffable, the Creator or God, but beyond doubt, there is something there, greater and more of everything we will ever be.  This Force I am speaking of has it over Everything and we can only work to allow ourselves to be a willing vessel filled with this Force, hopefully receive direction, insight, answers, connections, talents and send it freely outwards as close to what we receive as possible, although it is completely impossible to recreate that which flows through the human vessle.  We will never be pure enough in this journey, in these bodies, clumsy with shabby excuses and justification.  If we purified everything about ourselves, we wouldn't even come close.  To accept our failing is to accept the guidance of the Force knowing we will never know anything absolute until the Force has chosen to accept us into the Human Realm. Always, in the process of ignoring the higher spirits, we end up in circles going nowhere.  This is why people fear the unknown, taking leaps at all, preferring to re-chart the old familiar easy courses, arriving at the same isolated destination repeatedly, lifetime after lifetime, hiding behind patterns that never worked in the first go-round, deluding themselves that somehow the ship can right itself while the great Sea of Humanity swallows whole the mast.

There has never been a single time I feared the leap.  Early on, likely during Chess, I asked my Father about his experiences at sea. The game paused as I was awed by stories that would make a nonbeliever's hair stand on end.  The Square Circle is appropriate today.  His Hellcat left the carrier in bad weather, not much time passed before he was lost high above an ink black ocean and mentally reviewed his flight manual.  He said he flew in a square circle for hours lowering and raising altitude as darkness blocked out his view.  Just before his fuel was exhausted, he spotted a pinpoint of light far in the distance and made it back to the flight deck safely.  He never panicked, never doubted, always sure with himself and his craft, guided to a safe harbor by a higher Force.

One technique that helps us survive whatever harm comes into our path is to pre-condition yourself for the experience.  I used to imagine in heavy weather during long cruises out of sight of land, without charts, bum radio, exactly what might occur if I lost my first mate overboard.  Mentally take all the steps required for a safe rescue during the worst possible circumstances.  As if you were blind, feeling your way as you went along, reaching for the helm because you memorized every navigation aid aboard and activated all the correct steps insuring safety leaving nothing to chance.  Heh, so I insisted on our adorning harnesses roped to the foredeck, forged onward under bare poles, preventing having to execute the Square Circle under the duress of darkness, overwhelmed in the noise of angry seas, or suffering a broken mast from a mainsail ripping jibe. 

Our photos today are general purpose, some California unseens and some Arizona unseens.  They have meaning to our essay as you desire, or not.  You should be able to enlarge with a right click to open link in a new tab.  Each of them is a part of an unfinished document -  from January to the present, Twenty Twelve, a sort of digital diary of highlights, when I remembered to take the camera, because the camera lives with my art supplies and the photos were not the only highlights.  The most consistent highlights I keep meeting are acts of human compassion, the number one emotion separating good from evil and its disease-compromised followers.  It does exist, its alive and well, you get the feeling in this town real fast that everybody knows and no one has any idea what to do about it.  That's because the mob was once KING here.  Long time residents know the drill. Extreme Wal*Mart cheap technology and undersized underwear appears to have dulled overt awareness however.  The illegal family man with toddler on shoulders was losing his pants showing full crack and red silk knickers weaving into Wal*mart's Ballroom Joblot as I pretended not to look.  I take that back, it was Wal*Marts Stadium NASCAR triple blowout joblot.  Their veneer plastic lawn funishings Halloween costumed as Teak @ $15.00 US gives you a clear view into the lifestyles of people whose awareness is, let's say, not keen. Nor should it be after the harrowing leaps all of them have taken for ... for what?  Keep it to yourself.  There are two sides to every story is the saying which we can rework to say each person comes at it from a unique perspective.  My father's words "Everybody has a story."

There is a block of text in the lower left margin on this page worth reading and reading often, especially when you are considering leaps and tying harnesses to yourself.   May you listen clearly to the Force whispering in your ear and guiding you through every hour, every day and night.  We are in full-on crazy time now.   We knew it was coming and we could not pin point the visual although omens often showed themselves.  Once again, we have all the answers within us, we must learn to recognize them and act appropriately.  Second chances in this journey have already been taken, third, maybe fourth, fifth and sixth chances, but that is all in the past.  This time is here and now, and you know the ropes as well as the crowd in this city knows the drill.  Our country and its idealistic ideals, the base, our lives upended, as an entire civilization disintegrates before our eyes, it seemed impossible to continue such an extremely dangerous, unhealthy, threatening course, every decision the wrong decision against all forms of life in existence on the Living Planet.  But roll on it does, exactly as the giant rubberhog tires on the 'Cat garbage compactor roll and grind, a two-story tall, massive death machine, pressing into miles of hills and valleys of the LA city dump, twice as high as myself ... I was driven to stare at it.  The Security guard asked me if I wanted to ride on it which I did and climbed into the front, squeezing against the inside window while the operator in back of me pressed hard into the continuously renewing sea of styrofoam, hairpins, toothpaste tubes, plastic shopping bags, half-eaten, loose and maggoty McDonald's kiddy meals, high chairs, mattresses, TVs, saran wrap, plastic bottles, crushed milk cartons with sideways straws, broken carseats, cheerios boxes, socks, cartoons scraps and gnarled  logos of the trash legal Personhoods litter over the planet in glee oozing though the dark spaces between each recognizable item in rivers of bubbling dung.  I apologize for not owning a digital then, much less a cell phone video cam.  Doomers would appreciate how fortunate I felt for the experience.  The highlight, of course, being sworn witness to the carnage in real time and fully explanatory, an undeniable truth in 3-D, flesh and blood in-your-face.  Few things on our journeys are so well defined. 

See lower left margin T'ao Ch'ien. "... ever away into this hundred-year life and beyond, my story and I vanish together like this."