MY FRIEND CAME OVER AND HE LET ME SPEAK WHILE I COOKED FOR HIM.

I am speaking freely today, but in society that isn’t really allowed, at least from what I’ve noticed, one has to be politically correct. Today, I am refusing to walk along that road. No more, I am tired of toeing the line and stifling my thoughts. These are not new thoughts or ideas. The song of the world has been played a million times over by humans that came before me; by those that are with me, and those that will go on long after me. I am trying to imagine what long after me will be like. It is impossible I believe to imagine anything after your tour of life’s duty. The minute you die nothing will be or can be the same, except that you will be gone, so long, goodbye. You won’t be able to care. I am going to live on the edge, because if I am not living on the edge, I am taking up too much space.

We all do the same things and have similar experiences though we all like to think that we are supremely different from the man next door, but that isn’t the case, we are all the same intrinsically, regardless of your skin color, or so called education. Come sit with me a while, you can have that Brown Cow and I will have, uhm, heck, I will have one as well. By the way, I thank you for coming on such short notice. I am sorry you thought that I was ill. I didn’t say that I was, I said that I needed your help. You should never suppose. I once called a friend in Kingston Jamaica and said the same thing to her, “I need your help”, and she responded, “what, have you fallen and can’t get up?” Tsk! I am fond of her, the clever duck.

As far as I can see when I lean over the edge, I have noticed that there are three headings, and only three, that contemplate or cover the world we live in. The activities of other folk’s bedroom are the primary fixation for the entire world, race and the color of one’s skin is the second contemplation, and the rancid antics of politics, is the third fixation. Under these three headings there are subsets that undergird their parental heads. As an example, subsets of bedroom activities are religion and morality. Under race and color, those subsets are class and possessions, and under politics is a subset called society, the worst. I don’t think we are going to discuss these headings in that order, but if we talk long enough everything might come out in our discussions.

“Your laughter is refreshing like the smell of scones baking and the neighbors’ puppy yapping, yap, yap yap, yapyapyap.”(lmh. 6/30/2013)

In my reasoning and observations I have realized that religion is not quite what it is supposed to be. At times it seems not worth the effort and can be an albatross around all our necks. I know. For myself at times it hangs like a yoke and confuses the heck out of me. Strong words coming from the mouth of an avowed Christian; you must allow me to explain. I am not speaking out of malice, nor will I feign ignorance. My words are strong I admit, because I have come to find that there is not an abundance of goodness at the core of organized religion, and that folks have long forgotten, if ever they  knew, what goodness is. Collecting money for this and that, making needless moral pronouncements (that are innately recognizable to all), in the express effort to control the minds of the masses with fear and false promises of Heaven, is not in my view orthodox religion. It is impossible for any human to violate a law of nature and not be aware that they stepped outside of what is hard-wired in us as a human being.

I say impossible again to make my point. Of course there are mutations among us. We call them serial killers and psychopaths, but if we separate them from the group and natural order of things, how many of us can say that we wouldn’t know innately that killing another is abnormal, and that the idea would not find favor within the self? We innately know, and we can choose to do otherwise, but because of other factors. As an example, a lack of self-control fueled by anger, and the master known as greed. We make up laws to allow those of us who murder, the option of not making amends; we acquit them of their violations against mankind. We have become our own gods; gods gone wild. The Greeks and Romans did it and Olympus fell to Christianity.  Is this the season of the Christians, and will we fall prey to our self-appointment and pride? I say this somewhat tongue in cheek because it is patently obvious that humans never listen to the inner voice. That’s a voice we have outlawed in favor of personal likes and dislikes, if it feels good then do it, is the new mantra That sort of thing completely undermines the rule of do unto others as you would to yourself.

“Can a god bleed? Can a god be cast down to the ground, is a god too weak to carry a tree, Jesus, King Jesus, what god are you? If you are god, tell me, and let me help you” ( lmh. extract from ‘Remembrance’. 1992.)

Which brings up “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is one God,” is it correct to say that against such a backdrop?

“I hear you Lord though I never see you; instead I see your glorious sunrise and the trees bent over as you pass through each day. I taste you though I never touch you, but I touch your wounds each time I lift my neighbor up. Your voice my God is merciful in the poet’s sweet verses and the prophet’s lamentations. My lips confess you in all my daily sayings and when dark shadows fall and I am faint and weary, my faults before me, Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi. Help my condition. On wings of song I fly to you, receive me lest I truly die”. (lmh. “Surely the Lord is “circa 1999).

Under race and class I note the profound hypocrisy of mankind. Sleep with the Negress or the Negro, or the Chinese man or woman, and oh yes, the beautiful Mid- Eastern, male and female, yet, according to white America, you cannot bring them home, or dare acknowledge children you might have caused in your walk- about. All of these fall under the great banner of politics. This is the heading that is decisively the bane of all of our existences. Imagine politicians who make laws to ban oral sex[i], whose business is that? Why is that a topic of discussion, or even a thought with respect to your neighbor?

A ban on abortions even after a rape is another one of our daily concern. Maps created to redistrict whites differently from black communities for the express purpose of how the votes will add up after an election. Closing women clinics to prevent errant females who would get abortions. Closed clinics would also prevent women from getting obstetric and gynecological care, mammograms etc. As long as there isn’t a woman aborting a fetus, it is of no concern if some women, quite a lot actually, die from breast cancer and other female maladies, a bit of which is the direct result of careless male philandering. I am so confused by the rhetoric, at times I wish that I could leave, but where would I go?

“My love, I scarce can look, take my hand and help me up, a god should never wallow. Climb up on my heart’s wings. Come dream with me come fly with me. I will show you how I could love thee, if only in a dream”. (“Ode to love”. Circa 2001, lmh)

 

 

I have no immediate answers to any of the above I should quickly declare. So why am I talking about it, you ask me. Well, for starters all of those things offend and frustrate me and I speak about them because I can speak, and because I have an opinion that you may not want, but one that I wasn’t giving to you, I feel the need to speak out aloud, therefore you are free to walk away from the range of my voice. No hard feelings, because I in turn do not care one bit what you may think of me or my opinions. There are more of my kind than you imagine. It is like that, the way I see things. It has been like that for a very long time. I can remember not caring what my little six-year old friends thought when I wouldn’t go under the cellar because I did not like the idea of getting cobweb in my hair, or dirt on my shoes, and in between my toes.

Yes, I wore shoes even though I lived in a third world country. I always had to wear shoes; my mother was very middle class and married to the merchant class which was not considered substantial status. She was vilified by her family. What was the daughter of a Nautical Engineer and an educated Mulatto doing slumming with a half-breed Chinese merchant in a garage who wore greasy khaki overalls?  These merchants might have had money but they were only shop-keepers, and a lack of status was not going to get them accepted, and then there was the Chinese factor. That is a subject matter that requires its own essay. Dirt in my toes was what was important to me, not what Lloyd or Sonia or Earl thought of my scornful refusals. Going under the bottom of the house was repulsive, and that repulsion informed my position. I could not do it and be sane afterwards. It was like that in high school when I choose to hideout in the school’s library instead of going to stone mango trees in the boiling sun with my classmates. I loved mangoes, but the heat was intolerable and God forbid that I became sweaty.

I still deplore the boiling sun although I am from the Sunbelt. I do not have a tolerance for heat, and I cannot keep cool or be comfortable in temperatures over 75 degrees Fahrenheit or prevent my skin from itching. I could always do whatever I wanted, but I exercised my options in favor of my comfort level. Staying cool always trumped having a bunch of friends, a face streaked with dirt and mango juice, and the possibility of self-implosion. My body cannot be overheated. I don’t know why this is so, but I am painfully aware of the consequences if I become too hot, therefore I graciously and eagerly comply with what my body demanded.

My reading and comprehension skills were always above average and the librarian did not mind talking to me, although she constantly urged me to go outside, after I shelved the books I had removed. That was what she would have liked to do; she was Caucasian and adored the burning hot sun. I always refused as I beamed my most beatific smile; she let me be, and shared her mint balls with me and told me all about her Cornish sea coast and I fell in love with Cornwall. It was like that when Barry said he would stop being my boyfriend if I did not have sex with him. He was the most beautiful boy in the neighborhood, a Syrian. So be it, he had to go at the risk of getting his Latin declensions all wrong, I would miss his kisses that released ten thousand Monarch Butterflies into my stomach and left me utterly unraveled and almost non compos mentis, but, I was not interested in having sex at 16. I never understood why kissing me was not enough?

The girl he had the sex with got pregnant and her father forced a shotgun wedding. His mother called me to their house and asked me how I could have let that happen. I gaped at her. The question puzzled me. I took a deep breath and I told her that I wasn’t willing to have sex with her son and that I had no idea that he had gone off to seek higher grounds. She cried openly before me, as I learnt then, that she had ear-marked me as a daughter-in-law. Whoever told her that I was planning to marry her son? I liked him a lot I will admit, but marriage was not in my playbook.

I beat a hasty retreat from her house. I ran all the way home and locked myself in the bathroom. I remember weeping and not knowing why. I wanted to go to the University more than I wanted to have sex. Was that a crime? The unfortunate girl’s father was of the ruling class with values high- as- the- sky plantation pride. He marched his daughter down the aisle at barely seventeen. As young as I was, I remember thinking that was a stupid thing to do. My father, on the other hand, a humble mechanic, would have committed a memorable murder. I was his pride and joy. Instead, I went off to college the following year, and Father’s machete remained in the tool shed sans blood stains. I am no longer a virgin, but it was on my terms when I relinquished my chastity. It wasn’t all that as I recalled after the fact. I have since discovered otherwise. Thankfully.

 

Jared’s Lament: How could I leave you so suddenly? So alone and so miserable, my beloved queen, my companion and my friend. Who would bring you sweet tasting flowers and ambrosia at noontime? And who would read you rhymes written expressly for you? And who would tease me without mercy until I laughed or throw my hands in despair? Your nighttime delights in the pools of Maristar, I would watch you frolic like a playful Dolphin, as I sat land bound guarding you, oh for the simple things, the divine pleasures of a lifetime between us. Oh sad horsemen, bear with me awhile. I cannot ride with you yet, Elysium is for eternity; grant me this fleeting moment. Sad horsemen, travel no further for me, Stop! Stop! Turn away in love for loves sake. See my sad queen, limp and despairing, feel her pain and help me free her. Sad horsemen three take counsel among you and favor her instead. She is without me, she is without me. Oh rage, north winds oh rage south winds, oh rage east and west winds. Spill your fury, fuel your funnel avenge my Kenjilen, Kenjilen my ambrosia, see me one last time. Sad horsemen three, have pity on me”. (Circa 2001, “How I became a Godman”, lmh).

The point I am making is that I do things on my terms. Of course I factor people into my actions because I am not cruel or insensitive, you shouldn’t think otherwise, but I do not enter into covens that will compromise my sensibilities, or long term existence for the sake of being popular or liked. I was born not knowing how to do that. I never had a problem saying no to anything. I enjoy keeping my own council and figuring out this or that based on empirical data or scientific findings. Though I read and enjoy reading, I am very mindful of what I read. I discovered that not all things written are truthful.

Yesterday I told my almost seven-year old granddaughter that, some things are for dramatic effects to impress and coerce, while others are written to deliberately deceive the reader, and that sometimes in a whole book of 300 pages, there could be only 3 lines or a paragraph of truthfulness. Read with a third eye I told her. Yes Grandma, she said and went back to reading Amelia Bedelia. If I live long enough I will make sure she understands the differences between dark and light. The written world has a chiaroscuric temperament and is profoundly turned to severely mislead, so she needs to develop a grey eye to look into the shadows.

“Can I miss what I know not? Could I crave what I never felt? My heart remembers well. Gentle being dropt from heavens hallowed halls, gossamer wings bright eyes, lips as sweet as Napa grapes; spare this soul a passing thought, a tender look, a smile perhaps. More than you know my hope expands my dreams awaken, could I? Quickly I fly to the great sacred halls to hide, complain to the gods: my mind I have lost, I fear the feelings that occupy my very self. I have no tools, no skills, no words, I will be destroyed and surely get a madness rare! Oh gods of Valhalla O potent Valkyries Vikings brave hear me, help me or hide me. Save me. Thor he spoke to me. Tools you have words you know your skills abound, tis courage you lack. Here you walk these halls in kingly style, lesser gods revere your difference, mighty soul, you fear a love so tender? Fingering his hammer he eyed me warily, this thing so mortal you fear? Wandering goddess, he thundered and rose to face me, retreat these halls, fly back to earth, look love in its purest eye, claim it. My head aches, my breast expands as if my heart would cease its beating; can I do this thing? Kicked from Valhalla I fell to earth mere mortal weeping and afraid wringing my hands, rued the day I said hello, now I lay dying”.( lmh, /29/2003, Ode to love).

 

Your mood seems distant today despite the Omelet and my Ambrosia-like coffee. Even Zeus would sign off on it. Don’t worry, I will ignore you and press on because I know that you are a good listener. My past is no longer separated from my present; the past has joined me and is informing my day to day in a way that I cannot express. I am perpetually in the present. Could I have been who I would be from back then? Is who I am now older, and as they say, ought to be wiser? At thirteen I began searching for my purpose, I became exhausted with the quest at twenty-one, and gave up the search. At thirty I imagined that I had found it, but today, at sixty-six I am back to asking, ‘is this all there is?’ What did I do to make a difference in this life?

There is a pressure and an expectation that we all need to make a mark on the world before we die. Why is that a social mandate? Nature already made all the necessary and needed marks, so what marks do I now need to make. I speak tongue –in-cheek when I ask such a question. I cannot best nature so what is my role here if not to contemplate. I am not making excuses for the fact that I am not industrious, or brilliant at any particular thing, but to contemplate and tend seems the thing to do. If the Biblical words are to be taken seriously, one of the first notable things in Genesis is the command from the Creator to tend the earth (Eden) and mind the animals. Electricity and cell phones would make their way in time and through no creation of my own or yours. Electricity is a wonderful invention. Don’t you think? For me it’s one of the best efforts of mankind. Imagine your world without it. What’s to imagine, as I have never known complete darkness except when I had to walk from Manhattan during the black-out after 911. Do you remember the Eastern Sea-board grid failure and the whole Wall Street debacle? Wow!! That is all the remark I can make at this time.

Getting back to the creation contemplation, you may have noticed that millions of the animals we knew or heard about since creation have been destroyed and that the garden/earth burst a hole in her dome and nature is reacting vigorously. I would say that super storm Sandy was pretty vigorous. Yes sir, we are under a dome, but do not interrupt me now. You shouldn’t say that nature is being cruel; nature is being nature and is working with a different play book to accommodate the hole in the dome. God, what of God? Nature is God and can only be God. Stop praying and make changes like putting out your cigarette this minute and stop using plastic and foam items.

Prayer has its place, which we may discuss, but there must be input from you and me to make things happen because not one thing is without a cause or will appear at the sound of our voices. Cause engenders change. You seem puzzled with my rhetoric, yes? Don’t walk away, let me explain, and I am not a heretic. Here is the thing, if we wish to make a cake we must gather the ingredients we know will make a tasty cake. We know this from past experiences of trial and error. These ingredients are in different places, the eggs are on a farm, so is the milk, the flour is at a mill and so on. My point is this, the elements are all available but they must be collected and brought together, blended in a certain way and baked. Then when you pray, give thanks for the wisdom you received and for the pleasure of a full stomach.

All of the activities that go together to get the end result of a cake, and all of the energies expended by you in putting it together, inclusive of the Farmer, the chickens the cows, the wheat, all are the causes that created the cake. You cannot wish a cake into existence, there must be effort, cake baking rules to be followed and knowledge of where to obtain these elements. If there is a God of creation, this God is not going to bake you or me a lovely tasty cake. That is not going to happen. In recent times a selfish human who just happens to be a Pastor told a man afflicted with HIV virus that he need not take his HIV cocktail of drugs because all he needs is prayer and that God will hear him from His high place and heal him. The man desperate and unaware of how nature applies herself to mankind took the Preacher’s advice and is as we speak so much further along the way toward his demise than he would be had he continued with his medications. Nature by way of God has provided and we must apply ourselves willingly so. That is how God works. Isn’t anyone going to arrest this pastor for attempted murder? He ought to be arrested and charged on several accounts, the first one being a lack of wisdom by his false identification of a God that he does not know or understand, the second for being a pompous arrogant ass.

Am I an atheist? Let me think on what your question means to me, and not get mad at your cloudiness. The accepted word for Atheist is one who does not believe there is a God of all creation, or some supreme being that is responsible for all that we see. These folk do not abide by the Christian outlook of an invisible all-encompassing God. With that said, I cannot totally subscribe to that philosophy because I believe that there is a singular cause which animates many other causes to maintain and support life. This first inexplicable cause, I take to be God, if it has to have a name. Humans name everything. This cause is responsible for my being here and that I am able to type these lines which will no doubt earn me some harsh comments and a draught from my already diminished friendship bank. So, no I am not an atheist but I do struggle with the concept of God, although I am nothing without this concept.

Nevertheless, my great cause [God] has no gender, God cannot be gendered, because if God is, then it’s just like the two of us and therefore could not be the great cause [God] god cannot have parts and bound by time and space or have a personality. How can God be jealous? Isn’t that a human emotion intricately bound up with short-comings and other human maladies? Can this be the God I am to serve who is no different from me in his ways? If he is jealous, then it follows that he will be spiteful and mean spirited as well as vindictive. God for me must be separate from all else (see Aristotle), my great cause does not hover over me like a helicopter parent nudging me every step of the way. No, my great cause does not see me as an individual to punish. My great cause equipped me through time and the evolutionary process to be intimately aware of the power of nature, to be innately conscious that I did not create a single thing; that the elements of nature are for my use to further my condition, while my main job is to tend and protect all that comes into my view. I am rich. I am thoroughly metaphysical and evolving. I look at you and see the manifestations of a supreme being. God works through my daily life.

That is my God of the science and nature. My metaphysical God of theology, emotion and otherness, is dictated under organized religion and there-in lay the problem. Religion and theology should be separated or one of them discarded, and I am opting for religion. Organized religion does not lock step with empirical facts, nor does it subscribe to logic. While religion is largely local and domestic, Theology in nature is a better mix, if the theological truths are not twisted and reinterpreted by zealous religious blowhards. So where do I stand?

I came into the world of my Anglican parents, and without question was locked into the ways and beliefs of the Church of England. That was anthropology 101 at work. That’s how religion is perpetuated in the society from the local level upward. You inherit it like a gene, bad or good. Sunday services, baptisms, first communions, confirmations, church involvement, all took their turn on my psychology and curved my beliefs toward an invisible god that grant favours and performed miracles and promised me that if I lived a certain way I would, without a doubt go to heaven when I die and be with this god. “Him”. I realize that I haven’t yet answered your question of what I believe but I would like to set aside my answer for a moment. Let me go on to the matters that are most urgent.

I do not consider myself an atheist and if you are going to label me then I suppose you are only left with agnostic which would not be entirely true because I have had intimate brushes with ‘the other’. Some other time I will tell you about that encounter. Will philosopher-agnostic do? Labels, names, so much of our problems are within these two things. What my belief is, won’t determine where I go when I die, if I cannot get living right. I will digress to tell you that today I am cooking Chilean Bass, mashed potatoes and baby bok Choy. I hope I can entreat you to join me.

That statement did not come out of my religious teaching. Ambiguous, yes I know, but you will sort it out. [Philo-Agnostic Pilgrim.] Theology for the most part is an outgrowth of ancient philosophy and empirical rhetoric. A hybrid feeder line which is now twisted and corrupted hopelessly. Nothing is for certain or traceable, that can be documented to prove beyond any doubt that there is a three part God. All of what we call God-speak dwells in uncertainty or half-truths. A very perplexing position to be in. What my ancestors and family says, as opposed to what I have contemplated and recorded as fact are no longer compatible, another perplexing position indeed. I have had personal moments of the Holy, and the numinous, yes, I have, and because they are personal and I have no documented proof, I cannot be persuasive when I tell anyone that I have had an encounter with the God of my theology, yet I know what I experienced wide awake and within a state of reasonableness. I do not drink alcohol, though I am fond of wines, nor would I allow myself to get drunk on any substance that would impair my cognition.

How then would I speak of these experiences? Truthfully, I will speak of them as they presented themselves, for those moments cannot be spoken of in any other way, and yes, I will run the risk of being labeled as a crackpot. Still, it is what it is, a personal experience that I cannot put into the context of time and space to say that God exist or not. My personal and truthful experiences are not proofs of a common God. Shall we then say that God could be a personal matter, to be experienced in the context of our personal experiences with our bodies, our surroundings, our relationships, our inventions, and so on? And if we do say that then we are admitting that God is how we encounter nature, making nature into” Nature.”

How am I doing so far? I see that you are still seated and that your eyes still seem interested in the rest of my discourse even though your nostrils are flared, your fingers drum on the arm of the chair.  You do understand that this is not coming easy or without a cost, for if any other than yourself should read or hear of what I have said, I am certain as the heavens appear blue that a cross made from lignum vitae wood will be my new resting place, with a brisk fire at my feet. Should that happen then I have a simple request for sandal wood firewood. The aroma ought to help me transcend the discomfort. But seriously, I am well aware of the distress that I may cause my family who are stuck with me as well as any loyal friends I may still have. There is always the man-made escape of pleading the fifth. God works in each of us through each of us. We are all God’s Agents.

I have a muse and she is in her youthful thirties. She is young, but once she was seventeen and I was her mentor, now she has outstripped my intellect and I chuckle when I step back and she bests me. She keeps me on my toes and gives me the pleasure of speaking from any angle and I know that she will follow along as easy as a hawk on the hunt, no worries, simply focused. She does not need me anymore and I am not saddened because everything changes. Everything must change for the good. Because my friend, there is no evil to change into, nothing can harm you if you have a goal and keep working toward it. Time and good fortune have given me a new protégé, she is very young and I hope that I will live long enough to have her best me also. Next week she celebrates her seventh birthday.

Let me tell you about the number seven. We can, and will return to the God factor. I have a personal opinion of seven. When I turned twenty-one I had a strong urge to examine my life up to that point. During the looking back I realized that every seventh year I had ended a tour of life. My first seven years of life heralded me into my teen years, the second seven moved me completely over into the teen years and carried me to young adult at twenty-one. I looked at the three sets of sevens and noted the important changes during each tour of seven. What was pleasing I carried with me with a will to improve on it, and those things that were useless or nondescript I jettisoned. I have continued that practice all throughout my existence. I look at myself in increments of seven.

I have completed nine full tours of sevens. I knew you were going to ask me for the significance of this exercise. I don’t have a mystical explanation, it’s just how I measure my steps and review my position in life. I don’t know why I do it, I have no back story, and I just was moved to do so when I turned fourteen. Just before the end of my eighth tour I had a very dark experience, my first. The 9/11 event found me at work in the world trade center at 8am sharp and an hour or so later I was scrambling to get out of a building which would later collapse in a fiery heap. That day I was witness to many ugly pictures going on all at the same time. I ended the eighth tour on my birthday in the New Rochelle hospital dehydrated and in post-traumatic stress. 9/11 was some day, and October 3^rd was no less awesome. The start of my ninth tour found me enrolling at Fordham University to embark on philosophical studies. This came with concerns from friends and family who had not captured my vision, did not care and did not find it necessary to enquire of me, I was simply judged to be foolish. I am still at Fordham and in my ninth tour of life.

Let me tell you a story about change though you may not see any relevance to our present discourse. This is my story that I designed out of my own understanding. A couple of Turkeys were flying over a pond late one afternoon. Shots rang out when the birds were mid-way over the water. The shots were in quick succession. Three urgent rounds, blam, blam, blam! One turkey fell heavily into the water. The bird was dead before the ripples smoothed themselves out. Looking around, the single Turkey realized her calamity and started flying around in a crazed manner then dove headlong into the pond. She hit the water very hard, cutting the darkness of the pond open with her body. She sank for a while then surfaced dazed and out of form. She gasped and died. The hunter plunged into the pond thrashing and tearing at the water lilies that hindered his passage. He reached the floating bodies. It was quite apparent where his bullet hit the bird. The empty neck stared at him. The head bobbed quietly beside the limp body of the second bird. Six eggs were lying uncovered that night in danger and not being warmed. That thought the mongoose was just peachy as he ate greedily. The hunter ate greedily that night also. There is no telling how a day could end. Some changes are sudden and drastic.

Why Fordham? As a youth in the ninth grade in a Jesuit school, Fordham was the first university I ever heard of in such detail although the University of the West Indies was only miles away from me. Influenced very heavily by the Jesuit Priests, I felt the draw to walk those hallowed halls and read those books scholars before me wrote, and the ones they read. Life however takes many necessary twists and turns and my first foray into a university was at the University of the West Indies. Columbia University opened its doors to me but I was unable to attend because I needed an American sponsor. That was denied me. No, I would not like to tell you about that in as much as I that started out by saying I was going to speak on everything that bothered me. Some things after a while are no longer worthy of discussion especially if you have overcome the dread or bitterness of each situation. Crush the memories in your hands like dried bread and scatter the crumbs for the birds to eat. On wings they will carry our tales to the stars and let the stars discuss our lives. I believe they will make more sense of it and make a better judgment regarding. So let Columbia alone.

Like the Turkey who lost her mate so suddenly, once on a bright Tuesday morning a sudden change came to my life. It was drastic and absolutely mind-blowing. September 11, 2001 happened with some of the biggest sounds I ever heard as I minded my business in the World Trade Center. Shock and awe, lots of body parts, and absolute confusion, that was how that day began. Pandemonium was an understatement. More anon.

Darn it today is so bloody hot! Are you a fan of the summer months? I should have known from the way you admire the sweat on your skin. I am not a fan and I don’t like to glisten while I scratch and burn. But I do love the floral arrangements that summer offers, but my God, I despise the heat. Look at me! I sit here sticky and miserable with three fans going directly at me. This talk won’t last much longer; I am not built for this. I said this already. This heat, seriously!! I really hope there isn’t a place called Hell. Imagine!!

Today is going to be somewhat difficult as I try to escape the outside intrusions. I must be ready to meet with you. Early telephone calls regarding anything always leaves me jumpy. Why call me before 8am with a matter that can be addressed at 10? Can you can wake up from sleep and be bushy-tailed almost immediately? That is impressive for the rest of the world, and in my books outrageous. I can’t and don’t care how it looks to you. To have the world come at me so suddenly sets me in a panic and I react as if I was being attacked. I know how I feel. I must ease into the day. You see it’s like this. I come awake, an agenda opens in my mind, and I read it and look at each item one by one. Yea, the agenda open in order of priority. I rarely ever have only one item to tackle.

After I review these items I sit up and dangle my legs, I check my legs and arms for range of motion and I focus on my head and chest trying to sense if they feel normal, or what I would consider to be normal. At times I startle myself when I discover a bump on my body that wasn’t there the day before. Lately it is taking my eyes a while to focus, the light from the window seem to be the problem. I analyze my lumps and move on. Coffee and my brewing ritual followed through with my bathroom constitutions. I may or may not read a book; there are always books on the floor by my bed or on my bed. Marked pages, I pick up anyone of them and read a few pages. Ideally this is my best time of day and jarring telephones are a bloody nuisance and absolutely discordant. I never wish to speak before 10 am, and though I once had a 9-5 life, I would reluctantly begin to speak at 9am. To make up for the intrusions I made every effort to lunch alone, though it wasn’t always possible. One and a half hour on the train in silence was like landing on a cloud that was floating toward heaven. Sometimes strangers’ made remarks to me and forced a conversation.

When I pray is really not your business, or open for discussion, but since you say it’s important to you, don’t know why, I will try to explain how I do. Don’t forget I told you that I am no longer mainstream programmed. I give thanks that I can still think. I am joyful that I can sit up and swing my legs. I am eternally grateful that I have comfortable surroundings and a family, albeit that they can be irritating. I am currently cued to my granddaughter’s voice and needs. That I will explain perhaps later. That is how I like to come awake. Being grateful and voicing my thanks to a receptive silence.

I pray with a hope and trust that somewhere, somehow my essence is being connected to the divine frequency and that I will be the beneficiary of an out flow of new energy. I am always attuned to nature and whatever is surrounding me. I live in the present tense. I am not concerned with such things like heaven and the afterlife. The latter I have to discuss at times in a philosophical setting, and sometimes I try to write about the pointlessness of angsting over the matter. My prayers are as active as my showers, my writing letters, helping a friend, cooking a meal, having dinner guests, talking through a problem with a friend or stranger, giving alms, and being quiet as often as I can. That is active prayer. I am in constant dialogue with the elements, with God, and all that I am. If that isn’t prayer then I am out of the loop completely.

I am able to face the world when my mind is sorted and my will is engaged. After that there is nothing that can come at me that will floor me or ruffle my mood. I must think about what I plan to do beforehand. I have to see it through in my mind’s eye, and then execute the task in a swift decisive manner. This is why I am not a fan of group activities when there is a task at hand. Lag and discord trouble me greatly. (Laughter), yes I am a huge procrastinator, you know something of me. Here is the thing, some things bore me and those are the things that I drag around like an albatross, but eventually I do them just before they become a real problem. I don’t like hurting people. I will however physically and verbally defend myself, make no mistake.

Sometimes even after scanning my agenda I will give way to my senses and allow them to carry my soul. There was a time when I wouldn’t write a single sentence without feeling that I had to do it a certain way as so much was governed by what others might think. Aging took care of that. Times like now I prefer to wander off alone, but never lonely, to contemplate. Being insular is almost religious, because within these walls I make my own rules, make my best moves, write my own lines, climb every mountain and best of all I can love whom I dam well please. Yes, one never knows how a day will begin or end after the agenda has been read. You have got mail, that familiar sentence in that recognizable voice tone. “You have got mail” it reads

Email is the new god, the golden calf, and though you are championing the IPhone I must insist that you look carefully as to what email means to us. Every other of your tools is an extension of the email. They are all children of the god of cyber-space. Like Nephelin they have peopled earth and have built a new Babel.

“Is thine eye still shrouded with sleep or are you reposed in languid fashion like royalty in your chamber ochre? Say a word perhaps, a minstrel waits within your gates in anxious expectation, incline your head if not your heart and take me from my state of sorry discontent. Roll the vision screen awake and make your mark, I pray thee” (8/1/03, lmh)

Nelson Mandela is on his death bed and his family fights about burial spots. How dim-witted? Are these people seriously thinking about the man or just self-aggrandizement? This is a prime example of what I always knew, not all humans are leaders. Not all humans are enlightened. There is no best place to bury a body. The dead has no concern where any carcass is interred. Granted that we are sentimental beings and would not just throw a beloveds body over the edge into the city dump, but what does it matter in which cemetery the remains are interred? We are constrained to bury our dead. Our history of the world has informed us of the sacredness. The legacy of Nelson Mandela is what is of importance. That and only that. Of course it is a good idea to secure his remains in a tomb as a reminder of his once existence, but it is surely not a reason to start world war three.

Because of our sentimentality, when I buried my mother, we chose a spot that cost a bit of money in a cemetery that charges a lot of money. They say the cemetery is historical and houses a lot of famous people. I chose it because it is in walking distance from where I live and my mother used to live. It would be very easy to get to, and back when we were both younger, we used to admire the property and its beautiful cut stone buildings and the huge fir that soared skyward and served as a Christmas tree every year.

I visited the gravesite regularly in the first two years then I found myself cleaving more to her memory and her sayings and the lessons she taught me. I have lost interest in the grave site.it seems like such, a pointless act in the face of the exorbitant costs of the entire funeral, the tombstone etc. But it is a necessary act. We must bury our dead. I am also no longer fond of going to my mom’s bedroom. I can’t bear it and I don’t know why. Perhaps my psychoses are bigger than my logic. A grave has neither future nor present or any meaning to the dead. Nelson Mandela, if he could respond would express his disapproval about the ‘nothing’ they have learned despite his examples. This is society at its worst and there is more.

 

“You seem not to care old man, don’t you know or do you? Have you been seeing him lately as you stumble ungainly around the garden? Old man, the warm brown earth awaits your recently warm brown body. To have and to hold you in sickness and in death this earth will enfold you. Old man why do you do it? Why do you smile your empty-mouth smile, do you know something new old man? Old man they are digging your grave and you must know it for the wind has brought the warm brown scent to cajole and caress you. Old man will you go silently sans grief? Or will you steal away like a thief? Old man do not leave me to join the old woman you love. Old man, who will tell me of my past? And ask me to repeat, old man don’t make me move up a notch, old man, I don’t want to be head of this batch. Old man don’t leave me”. (lmh. 8/11/09)

My niece told me recently that a few months back she applied for a job at a Catholic school and when it was revealed that as a Roman Catholic she did not get married in the Catholic tradition in a church or by a Roman Priest, she was told that the job possibility might be slender, despite the fact that her credentials were worthy. She argued, naturally, I raised her. If there is something to be said, then say it and then shut up. My husband, she told the Priest did not wish to convert to Roman Catholicism and the Priest who counseled us said he could not marry us in the church so we married in the Nazarene church, which by the way is Christian. You look shocked; tell me what the role of the church is in this regard? As far as I see, the Priest over stepped his boundaries by saying that she is not married in the eyes of God, but since she is getting a divorce, that is good news as now she is back to being a good Catholic girl who can now marry in the Catholic Church and get a job in a Catholic school. This is where I ought to say, by Jove!

The rug is once again dragged from beneath my feet. Religion must be replaced with an understanding of who God is. We need to know the history of God and how we relate to God.. There ought to be a Theological uprising sponsored by philosophy and all its schools. Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel said that “it is customary to blame secular science and its anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. He said religion did not decline because it was refuted, “but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid” this was because he continued, “faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit”; and “when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when a religion speaks only in name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion-its message becomes meaningless.” I totally endorse the Rabbi’s observations regarding the pointlessness of religion and all the fringe benefit groups that teach a belief in God but no knowledge of God. It is not serving much good. I wouldn’t go all the way to say, no good, though I am so tempted. And I may never return to organized religion in the standard way, because I no longer fit. My guilt is receding. I once felt the need to be a part of a community of fellow worshipers because of my very early conditioning. I have since lost the desire, fueled by a particular event which shall remain as nameless as the Columbia affair.

“The plans of the mind belong to mortals” (proverbs 16)

Have you ever had the desire to go back to a time before fire was discovered, when humanity was totally in awe of nature? A time when clouds hung low enough that anyone could climb on and soar to the verdant peaks of high mountains to commune with the numinous. I discovered such a time and place at the foot of the Hileakala mountain in Maui. Before now fire was true religion and nature was intact. No one questioned how or why the clouds were so low and why when you sat upon them they bore your solid mass, or why when you reached the mountain top the burning fires did not sear your skin or the green that thrived upon the mountain, instead there was comfort and connection with something other. The other that no one questioned, that other that each one experienced personally, and there was no need to compare experiences because it caused all the peoples actions to be the same. Spiritual connectivity was cohesive, yet separate, but not different. Religion knew God in nature.

I am painfully aware that my conversation with you is rambling and even random, but so much is fighting for space at the top. So many ideas and thoughts to bring out into the open; you must forgive me if I seem to be dragging your attention all over the place. The news items are overwhelming and we the people seem to be without a rudder between the seven billion of us. Is the dead better off? Society has run amok and no one seems to notice and seem to have accepted the chaos. Is the world at another melt down point? I hope not because I am still very much alive and do not wish to be a part of anything that extreme; it’s complicated how I view the world sometimes.

I look at the world through different lens given the situation. Maybe I am selfish but it is how I feel. Our experiences inform our opinions all the time. No action is spontaneous, not even the act of picking your nose. There was an urge or stimulus and your brain indicated and dictated the action, no doubt with results. Am I just taking from the earth while I pompously imagine that I am making a contribution? I don’t have answers that would be accepted or are helpful. Nothing that I read or muse on seems to breed anything fruitful that I can contribute to my fellow humans or even to calm my disposition. I have heard that menopause can cause dilemmas; I don’t suppose you would have an answer for that given your gender, yet feel free to offer anything. Your enigmatic smile is comforting as I consider what my life would be without reading. That I think would be hell without any consolations or a prison without light, a violin without a bow, do you see where I am going?

In January 2006 I wrote some lines that indicated that youth is frivolous, careless and devoid of plans. I said that it is the sweetest part of life’s journey except the young is unaware of this fact and does not enjoy the absolute joy of being young. My granddaughter who has since turned seven recently pronounced that she was in the good part of her life because her teen years will be the old part and then the really old part will come after that. I am still trying to figure out her point of view. Maybe she is on to something which would indicate that I have been old for a very long time. For me the youth is still very loud, fearless, muscle-bound, distractingly beautiful and foolish, without a scrap of wisdom to save their lives if challenged, and yet they stubbornly refuse advice. Don’t they know that without warning life will begin and they need to be prepared to swim. Life begins suddenly when with youthful feet you step into the stream of life and is carried along. You learn to swim as you begin your experiences and as the water get wider and deeper youth may flounder, but there is no escaping and parents may not be willing or able to help.

With simplicity, is truly how a life ought to be lived, yet nothing is simple about the world we currently occupy. The river of life flows swiftly and we are required to swim the whole length of it without stopping. If you stop, make sure you can tread water or you will drown, or get water logged and float around aimlessly like a water lily till you rot.   There is something I refer to as banking life, and that is when you think it’s okay to come out of the river to stay a bit along the river bank. That is quite a mistake, because once you get out of the river, it is a most difficult thing to get back into the swim of things, there is no running away from life or going on pause because the present is not pleasing. Banking life is never recommended. Despair can trigger the urge to bank life, but always remember that things naturally right themselves, your one task is to keep going since life does not need the approval of humans. Life goes on regardless of our efforts.

“In order to successfully advance on our Truth Quest, there is no need to reveal the body. There is however, every need to reveal the spirit within us” (author unknown)

We are but bits of a complete universal order, an order that we actually do not make any meaningful contribution to. What I mean is that it does not matter if we do a good or bad deed, we won’t stop the earth from spinning on its axis. Doing bad or good affects only the doer who in time will come to rue his actions when nature comes calling to extract its pound of flesh in lieu of the misdeeds. Every experience should bring some learning or enlightenment. Our roles in life are to enjoy living; we need not create the earth again, because that would be like making yourself by yourself. Where would you start? And what would be your initial cause? How did you come about before you came about? Paradox or confusion? If your eyes had a flaw and you took them from the sockets and held them in your hands to see the problem, tell me what do you see? Pointless and useless such an exercise would be. We can’t create one single thing and we can’t improve on anything because everything is perfectly set forth from the first imagined bang. All we do is rearrange the furniture like industrious home-makers on the pretext of making things prettier or better. O the vanity of it all.

The world we occupy seems imperfect by man’s opinion and the first things we single out are diseases and suffering. Why those things? Roll back the scrolls and we would discover that there was a time when the only things that killed us was bad weather and poisonous berries; we took up fighting and liked it. We made weapons and are still improving on them with noxious fumes et al. No wonder we suffer and die. Now don’t tell me that God is responsible for all that. I know no such God and do not acknowledge any such existing deity. Is this where you tell me that I am a heathen?

Surely you don’t believe that your God could be so omnipotent and yet so cruel? If that is the case, why worship such a God whose only consideration is to make you suffer? As it stands we need to admit that all suffering and disease and discomforts are our doing, because we have converted goodness for evil and every action has a consequence. This causes that and that causes something else. Be reasonable and stop asking God to do miracles and cure you. How can God do that when God wasn’t even aware when you created this disease, yet, in God’s infinite wisdom a solution is already created, the answers are all there and all we need to do is to find it and make our own miracles. Miracles belong in this domain if we can connect the dots that will engender the miraculous outcome. Again I tell you, God enters our lives through each other. We are His Agents. Yes, the Incarnation. I see that you are catching on. OMG! He rolled his eyes.

Be conscious and realize that we are all living in the best of times that is possible, given the way things have turned out because of us. What other possible world is there that we could exist in and be the same being. I know of none so far and don’t know of any way to prove or disprove such a consideration. This world is simply the best that we have been given to exist in.  Nature is carrying on despite our interference and making all the needed adjustments e.g. Climate change.  If you can understand that concept then you will have taken a quantum leap into the divine. Universally nature repeats itself and no moment is finite, it will come again, when these moments reappear I don’t know, but I will assure you that they must because infinity does not run in one direction.

To be sure, our thoughts are our real selves, and the world outside us, animate and inanimate is dressed in the clothing our thoughts put on the self. You are aware of random thoughts[i] right? I will return to those thoughts later. Those can be hilarious as well as bizarre. We have strayed miserably from where we began but I never really set an agenda for discussion. I am talking to you about some of the things that held my attention and curiosity throughout my life to this point. Your point of view is how you see and deal with a situation. Having a point of view is very important to whether you succeed or fail. It shapes your actions which ultimately produces outcomes. The fact that certain circumstances can produce harmful results for some individuals and good results for others lay in the way they were perceived in the individual minds. The law of cause and effect never fails to act in the only way that they can, what you send out is what you will get back perfectly packaged.

With the passing of every experience you should note the powerlessness of outward things in the face of a self-governing soul or inner self. This self that is closely related to the otherness we spoke about earlier. That natural part of all that is “Nature” and Divine. To be reasonable is not by chance and there isn’t any progress, prosperity or peace except by the orderly advancement in knowledge and wisdom. These two are separate because having knowledge does not automatically mean that you are wise. There are many examples of this in the political arena.   For an example of the latter, let’s just say that Rachael Maddow, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton is knowledgeable as well as wise, and that all Mayoral candidates are knowledgeable but not all Mayoral candidates are wise. I take it you have been paying attention.

 

The inner life must be addressed for there is where the remedy for all misconceptions lay. No opportunity can be overlooked in preference for something bigger. We learn the alphabet in a certain order before we begin to shape them into words and sentences. We learn the meanings of words before we use them so that we don’t risk calling our parents asses. It is during this learning curve which is continuous, that we realize that we make our own destiny. It is not as ominous as it sounds and neither are you blaspheming. I must return to the earlier comment that it is you and I that cause things to happen by the choices we make. It isn’t a coincidence that you are a medical doctor or a doctor of letters, hours of dedicated study was put into place to gain the end results.

It is important to remain in the present at all times for the good of the soul. Always we succumb to physical hunger as we are doing now. Hunger distracts me and changes my mood completely. I think it’s because I have set myself particular times to eat and on the approach of the times my body starts a wild dance for attention. Without self-discipline imagine what would happen when my body has the urge for sexual intercourse? The horror! I imagine that there was a time when I could run through the bushes and grab the first man I encounter, sate my desires, pick a few berries with him afterward then run back to my clan. No questions asked and no expectations of any kind. In today’s world my name would be “any time any place.” I try to remember the rules. You do know that there are double standards for men and women, the men still go about sex as they have done historically, yet we women are relegated to rules that control and govern our vaginas. There I said it. My Vagina belongs to the Senate, a national treasure it would seem, and as for my uterus, it is to be used with permission and all my menstrual cycles carefully documented for historical references, just in case I had a lapse in judgment and visit a certain clinic.

Virtue is your true wealth, and how you utilize these virtues is your power and character. I once contemplated the differences between a savior and a sinner and I was rewarded with the following answer. One has perfect control of all the inner forces within the self and uses these forces to rule the world; the other is perfectly controlled by the forces and is totally dominated by their surroundings. There is a very big difference in this equation.

“Woe is woman, your troubles are many. You are equal to a cow and six goats. Be ashamed of childless. Dance woman dance, move your ass, the man will take his pleasure, and if you remain your body until you are told to dance for the gods. Please the gods, sans condoms, but be outside of the choreography how could you be pregnant? Woe is Wo- man, Woe.”

I need to make a huge segue and I hope that you will be accepting of my shift. On June 30^th 2012 my dog died. I was on my way back from Jamaica and was praying that I would return to find him alive. I knew when I was leaving that he was very ill but I hoped that he would wait until I returned. He died five hours before I came back home. His name was Theodore but we nicknamed him Teddy. A black and white Terrier. Seventeen years of unadulterated pleasure, was what I experienced with that dog. Baths, trips to the Vet, toenail clipping and all the other good stuff one does with a dog. Teddy and I developed a language of our own and he was bi-lingual, meaning he spoke Spanish and English fluently. It’s a long story and I won’t share it with such a skeptic as yourself, because already your eyebrows are raised to high heavens at the thought of a talking dog. But believe it or not my Theodore could talk. My mother believed it. I am mentioning his existence because of the active role he played in my life. A constant companion, he always sat at my feet as I typed, always listened to my talks and faithfully waited up for me every night no matter the hour. Sitting on the top of the stairs facing the front door, he would stand and wag his tail furiously when I came in. The wagging became most vigorous as I climbed the stairs and drew nearer to him. I’d ruffle his head and ask him about his day. Then I would say good night and only then he’d go lay on his bed. My dog Teddy loved me just the way I am. I miss him.

“When trees say nothing that’s when I will leave, when the wind blows nowhere, I will stop thinking of you, and if the sea should not ebb its tides, that’s when I’ll stop loving you”.(lmh. 7/29/2003).

Love can attend you from any place or from the least expected individual. Love never asks to enter; she comes in full skirted and blousy and without a by-your-leave. That is love, and by the time you realize your state of affairs there is a thin web-like veil over your demeanor that is inextricably connected to your heart. Your breaths come out in staccato formation and your once fluent conversations turn to sighs and nervous pronouncements. My advice should this phantom happen upon you, is that you refuse to struggle, give in to the dance, as there is something to learn from all of life’s experiences. Naturally you should shun love with an axe murder or known hater of books. Your love interest should own some books and should be able to say what these books are all about. This is going to be the source of your discourses when you find your tongue and able to look love in the eye. Hours of sheer bliss lay ahead if you read. I own almost 5000 books, do you see how fortunate my love will be, or is this why all my loves went one by one? Mmmhhh!! I need to look into this. How you can laugh at me as you eat my food.    

“I imagined you there sitting with me in the bookstore. We sat by the huge windows with the wooden bay seat perfectly sized for you. I imagined you sitting before me as the sun streamed in blinding me and making me blink as I admired you. Your hair flamed in the sunlight and I caught my breath and quickly turned my head so you wouldn’t see the look on my face. My heart had taken a direct hit. Simple folk milled about outside and I watched them abstractedly. Do they know what I am thinking? I imagined you speaking and when you parted your lips I saw just the tip of your tongue as I remembered it. Soft pink and ruthless. It made me tingle. What words you spoke I do not know but I heard the timbre of your voice that melodious tone so confident, soothing and so perfectly pitched for my ears only. You murmured something that sounded like a brook splashing its way over smooth stones and fallen branches. Sweet and cold enough to titillate my senses. I imagined you sitting there sipping mocha and laughing at the antics of the pigeons outside the window. We were in perfect timing in the right place, you and me forever”. (lmh. 12/27/2003). Love once attended me and left me the richer.

You will realize that all-encompassing love is truly the negation of self and will put you in harmony with the divine music or universal song. One should love freely and without coercion. Do you realize that a mother’s love is suffocating to the mother? You naturally want to love the child but you are not free not to love the child. At some point you become resentful but you are stuck with a kind of love that you never signed up for and it’s no use trying to rid yourself of it. It is impossible to negate that feeling no matter how obnoxious the child becomes. You could not have known that having a baby would cause you to lose control of yourself and sensibilities to another human being who for the most part could not care less about you when they are happy. Let’s scream together…”Who needs children”. There, that was so good.

Yet, you are trapped in a maelstrom of emotions whip-lashing you for twenty-one years and thereafter until you die, because even if the heartless child dies, that’s when your love for it blooms more fragrant. What is that about? Was Eve really cursed, and is motherhood the curse. Women crave babies and the motherhood role. We are told that is what we were made to do. Go forth and replenish the earth. To whom was God speaking? And exactly what did God truly mean with that remark, if ever it was said. My job is not to replenish the earth. The earth has all it needs and will continue to do so after we have all gone. Having babies is one of the natural progressions of causes and consequences and we can control the flow or not. If God truly spoke those words perhaps it was meant to be “go forth and multiply when needed and only when you are capable of sustaining these children which as you will note have different needs from the other animals. They will need continuous maintenance for lots of years and the task will be encumbering your wanderings etc. do it only if you have the regard for it, otherwise continue to farm and build stuff.”

Emotional love is a whole other discipline and that also requires work, with the difference being you can nip that in the bud without any bad feelings or guilt. With this kind of love one can pick who to love or not, set parameters, maintain standards or not, but best of all, if after all your hard work you lose the feeling of breathlessness and wonder, you can take your tooth brush and make-up bag and drive away in your chocolate Bentley, such a lovely ride. There isn’t anything hard about that. It’s the better love to encourage if you can get it to last a natural lifetime, for heaven knows the children are going to leave you gob smacked and destroyed. They will suck you dry, turn around and write distasteful books about ‘Life with my mommy dearest” or some such ungrateful title, and you won’t be able to sue or stake the little Vampires because you love them indelibly unconditionally. That is a curse if ever there was one.

I have come a very long way before today. There was a time when I really did think that I was facing a final battle. When I reflect I realize that I was only just getting ready to enter the real fray of life. There I stood in 1995 just outside the gates of Valhalla looking across at the bridge to Earth. I was being sent out to face the world of man. I was being sent to prove myself worthy of my place in heaven among the gods. It was a most melodramatic moment. I said all kind of things that upon recall were quite stupid and over reactionary.

Refusing to walk the bridge, as if I had the option to refuse such divine orders, I stood there lamenting as the gate-keeper no doubt chuckled at my distress. Him I knew well and so I opened dialogue with him: “I fear the end is near, the end of dreams, a wonderful life, luxuries, the end of hopes and expectations. The spirits are lurking at my doors begging me to stand firm. Snap out of it, they tell me”. The gate-keeper stood there with his enigmatic smile gazing tenderly at me. There wasn’t a thing that he could do but to usher me through the gates of Valhalla, lower the bridge and point the way. My heart knew this well, but my mortality struggled. I had to go to Earth because I could not stay in heaven sheltered and unproven. I had to go discover my god self.

“No day to die, my tears are frozen I cannot cry. For you whom the bell is tolling, this is no day to die, the river Styx is frozen. Boatman, your craggy arms are open but no one will cross to your beholden. Why? This is no day to die, nary a dog would bark or a cat’s meow to spark the elements that are raging, storm in storm the pundits cry. Black hawkers drone in the sky my squinting eyes spy your shadowy helpers darting happy and spry. Their mouths agape and vacuum dry, the dust of eons of errant souls gone dry, within their bellies lie. Aback! Begone! My sword unsheathed, heaven’s jeweled cross flash fierce fire, Begone, I pray, Begone, Vandals of life fold back your capes and fly. This is no day to die. No day to die”. (lmh. Feb,26,2010).

I fell from grace it seemed when I was attacked by the beginnings of early menopause and was unemployed. If that wasn’t the second curse or early madness it surely was the universe abandoning me. What do you think about sexual harassment? It can be so subtle that only the harassed is aware and the individual would have great difficulty describing it to the public. Take for example; I once knew a man when I was around 28 or there about who thought that, as he put it, my “beautiful bow-shaped lips” were erotic. He could not have a meaningful conversation with me as he would fix his gaze on my mouth as I spoke and therefore did not hear much of what I was saying. I was always so uncomfortable whenever I had to speak in a meeting that he attended. He told his best friend who ironically was the Human Resources manager of the firm that we were both employed. He told her of his desire to kiss me and SHE had the gall to tell this to me. This was also a married man. Now then, what would I have done with a complaint of sexual harassment? Where would I have taken this complaint?   I had to do my own battle with the man by subtle avoidance.

Which begs the next question, why would any woman enter into a relationship with a man that she knows is married. Where could it lead? I have a litmus test for entering into a relationship with either male or female. If you kiss a man and he turns out to be a very poor kisser why would you go to bed with him? If he can’t deliver a stirring kiss chances are that he will be a very poor lover. That’s the same thing as buying a lame dog. Would you buy a lame dog? Now you think I am cruel!! I don’t see how cruelty comes into this playbook. One purchases a dog for its ability to run, jump and bark. A dog without a bark is not a dog; it may be a Chinchilla, a very big one. I am not unkind, what is making you say that? For heaven’s sake, you did say that you would talk with me, but I also said before we got this far, that you are by no means obliged to tolerate what I have to say, so you may take your leave at this time but I am not rescinding the Chinchilla comment. Dogs barks, Chinchillas don’t do crap, they just are furry and I don’t know what else.

Feminism in its totality went by me in quite a bit of a blur, and I only got the tail end, but the feminists did try to bring about change at the price of being dubbed as Lesbians. Being a Lesbian is overrated to the maximum, which is my opinion. What is the distress? It’s like saying that your mom is a dressmaker and that she is dating a man from Peru. Is that a crime? My verdict is still out regarding this issue because I honestly think that the label is highlighted to create fear, control, and division among the masses, for you do know that dogs will bark at what they do not understand. I am with the dogs today. But look outside; it is quite a dog-day out there isn’t it?  “ We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog days, but only if we have it in winter. If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature. Even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which would come to be and are by nature”[ii] (Aristotle).

You see then that my references to the dogs have a point. Dog-days are sticky and so is the subject concerning the female sex, no pun intended, and like dogs, the woman finds herself collared and muzzled by a male social order. In times past women were dubbed Witches and burnt at the stake. The fire next time for women might be the firing squad. It is therefore fitting that we speak about female sex on a hot sticky day when nary a dog would dare walk about. Nature has decreed that August must be like this, it isn’t by chance. We need a strong leader. We may have to revisit this, there are loose ends. But Aristotle popped into my thinking when I used the phrase dog-days.

“In chaos I formed you, then dotted your form in blinding light, setting the constellation in second place. I am mistress of light and dark, don’t call me god, don’t call me, follow my breath out of the foam for you are created of me by me for me. Come glide the Nile’s sweet blue in your Lapis Lazuli covering your nakedness, my pleasure, number the times number your cries of pleasure; sip your ambrosia, rest. I will come back, again and again, come with me”. (lmh,)

Dreams, do you have dreams to be? I mean grandiose dreams. The psychotherapist says that your dreams are an indication of your state of mind and what you are wishing for. If that is the case how come my dreams are still in dreamscape? Who lied again? Why does it seem that all the deception and lies stem from religious doctrine?   Inasmuch that Christianity forced me to develop a conscience where morality is concerned, I often wondered if that did not come with a price. In 1995 when my mistress Menopause was wreaking havoc on my mind and body and had contrived to have me kicked out of heaven, I asked the question: “How do you step out of the role you practiced for almost 40 years into the unknown in the hope that you will be improving yourself by mastering the self?” I felt as if I had been occupied by something other than my soul. Don’t look at me like that, there was that time when I wasn’t quite myself and did not know how to reclaim my independence. It was very tempting to stay in that mode but this would be a prime example of banking life[iii]. I knew that I couldn’t sever connections with life. It’s not what you do after you have been given life and a task. The incubus had to go; I needed to climb to higher ground. That was what I did and prevented myself from drowning. Wouldn’t it be horrible if I had drowned spiritually? Why? Because I am not physically able to swim and would not place myself in jeopardy of drowning, yet I went ahead and died spiritually by drowning.

Back then I was quite bored with my existence and wondered if that was all there is to life. Of course I received no answer to any of those questions. I was mystified as to how I got fat, had to start using reading glasses, saw an uproar of silver on my head, and became most reclusive to the point of avoiding company or leaving company when my mind shifted gears. I was at that time attending church regularly and even had duties within the administration. I was an Usher and a part of the Women’s group. I did not like the latter that much. I became involved because I ran out of excuses as to why I could not come to the meetings. Instead of getting revelations into the mysteries of life and how to live to the fullest, I kept getting tested as a warrior should. Imagine at the end of a particularly interesting worship service I go out to my car and find a long scratch from door to door. Of course I immediately thought of murder or at the minimum a bloody nose.

The very next day before I contacted the body shop, I had occasion to visit the dry cleaners and upon returning with my things I noted that my car had no front bumper and it looked as if the car had spat out her dentures along with a few of the back teeth with it. The kid on the pavement told me that it was the Snapple truck that had done me wrong.   I knew then that it was not any work of the Almighty, and that I was going to go on a crime spree with a box cutter and would not spare a single tire on Snapple trucks in the Bronx or Manhattan. Sadly these dreams never materialized because I did not have the guts for crime. I was whipped and dying a sorry death, I could not even commit to a joust with a mechanical horse[iv]. A box cutter is not a Lance. I was ill equipped for battle. I needed real weapons.

“Dreamscape: I have shut myself out of my own head. Horrors! Prying the doors open I cut my hands and bleed profusely. As I lay dying I remembered the river Nile and Egypt. I remembered giant cats and great wonderful birds. I knew a people, a time, a place of great beauty. I was a great ruler and you were a queen. I have died before but this new death is premature. I must get back inside my head and remember myself. I must come back to you my love, my only love; I must awaken from this nightmare and live.” (lmh. Feb. 25. 2004 )

Free will or freewill? Both things create problems for the modern man. The latter is the end result of a gross misunderstanding of the former. Having free will does not mean a person can run about willy- nilly doing whatever pleases the senses and not live to regret every bit of the freewill. Making choices without constraint is the usual accepted definition of operating with free will, but before making a move, one ought to look back empirically and use past results that influenced a situation similar or exact to help make the choice. Having the will to act freely does not give anyone the right of passage to act without thought of the greater good. There is no such thing as free will as far as I am concerned. The desire to act responsibly should be the catalyst that drives the will, given what you already know to be proved by experience. Using the will freely is selfish and encumbers the result that is best. This best result does not have a single thing to do with you or I, it’s not about either of us, but rather of the others around us.

That attitude as you and I know is refuted and not employed much, yet it is the correct way to go. Somehow this part of our dialogue leads me onto the subject of advertisement seen on the television. Now I know that capitalism is the king of the castle and crime and immorality flanks this king and protects him valiantly. It is how things are currently, but there ought to be some modicum of taste and sensitivity that is still within the soul of the community that would not find it necessary to blast ads about tampons, feminine itch, and yeast infections across a 45 inch TV screen shortly after you ask your male companion to take tea with you. There is something absolutely discomforting about that. The greater good has not been met in this situation. It’s no use pretending to ignore the ad which goes on and on to the last yeast spore attacking the underwear strung on a line in some female backyard. One lump or two, or would you prefer honey?

What drives this sort of thing? It is without merit. What is the point being made when every woman in the entire world knows where, when and how to take care of her feminine needs, her lady parts, and where all the tools and trapping are to be found. We, and I speak categorically, do not need any arrows pointing the directions, or sky writings to tells us which tampon to use when the flow is heaviest or what has wings or not. We know, because its instinctive, we talk to each other, and by Jove, we go to the gynecologist. It is in that office we get our updates as well as from the community clinics (what’s left of them)[v]. We have been doing this for ages and still manage to evolve with our uteri and vaginas in their original nature- made versions. We have not gone kangaroo as yet and I pray that the government won’t soon make it a requirement that we display our uteri where it can be seen at all times, some place like our bellies. This would cause a redirection of the fashion industry. I told you that causes brings change. A uterine bag.

“Wind rattling my windows, stark trees bending without protest, women in fur push hurriedly by. Flying past my window garbage pails complain, they miss their stations. I am the North wind, I will prevail. Bend and bow down in sweet oblation. I am the wind of change”. (lmh.1/3/2010).

Observation is critical for survival. So much is going on at great speeds that it is impossible to take note of everything even just standing on a corner watching things flow. I tried a couple months ago to connect with the sights and sounds outside Lincoln Center at West 60^th Street. So much meets the eye that you cannot stick with any one thing too long or you’d miss the rest. I witnessed things like a two eyed-fly. I cannot say that I want to have five eyes like the fly because seeing things require processing and I am not sure that the human brain could process all the information five eyes would collect and allow me to act accordingly. I just know that the two that I have is not capable of coping with all the detail that is going on around me at once.

I stood for five minutes sipping my Latte while trying not to look idle. Here is a sample of what I saw. A girl hailing a Taxi Cab, a cell phone rings and a woman speaking about baby formula, man with guitar on his back combing his beard, FedEx deliver a package to Starbucks, SUV yellow cab honking like it has the last horn, Taxi speeds through red light, a man on a bench eating a sandwich I saw him take from the garbage bin, here I toss my Latte; a youngster sweeping the pavement, Cab dispatching a passenger while urgently receiving another, Cab lurches to a stop and the newly received passenger runs out and frantically shouts at the last passenger, he left his telephone. His face crumbles in disbelief when he realizes the misfortune that was averted by the girl with a conscience.

She runs back to cab that sped off before she could safely shut the yellow door. Along came an older woman in a dress much too short for her, exposing her old knees. She minces careful along the pavement.   Fireman walking with his gear and no fire truck in view, woman eating Chinese food, messenger riding carelessly through traffic, obese woman lumbering in the cross walk, older couple creeping along, and it continued. My neck did not swivel once as all this happened firmly before my view. I couldn’t afford to swivel my head or I would risk not seeing some things, yet, I missed so much by not swiveling. I need five eyes to cope in this very busy world. What does any of the above mean to me if we were to break down the information?

To gain any understanding I believe I would need to look at each bit of the puzzle on its own and ask myself what does this mean to me, what does it tell me? The man eating the sandwich from the garbage bin bothered me terribly. There I was in such an affluent section of town and someone is hungry. Is he desperately hungry or has he lost all his inhibitions as well. The dialogue surrounding this man could last a day or so if every aspect of the activity is exposed. I think about disease and death.

“Paper paper everywhere, garbage garbage fill the air. Hawk it up and then, PTWAAH! By gosh he missed me by this much. PTWAAH! PTWAAH! PTTWAAH! Gobs and gobs, beware it’s here! You will pay the price and drop like flies. Ker plop! Ker plop! Ker plop!” (lmh, 5/30/2003)

Does this mean that we observe more than we act? Or are we incapable of putting things on pause so that we can act accordingly, or the minute we fix one thing and move along it morphs into another thing and create another set of circumstances. The substance of life as the universe grows is more than human effort, perhaps we should step back or sit back and enjoy the boat ride of life, and experience the view with our two eyes and wonderful soul.

“Sometimes you are sulking and gray, sometimes silver and serene, oftentimes reckless and rolling, thrashing and dipping. I ride you with caution, at first, then I grow accustomed to your urgings, your slipping and sliding, I have to hold on. I hear your breathing in a rush like a soft gurgling sound, your exquisite murmurings, what is your name? You never answer me! I ride on breathlessly for seven glorious minutes; wind in my face splashed by your waters I am wet, then my bow hits the jetty. I am done for now. I think of our next time skipping over the foam you spit up, you lashing at my body urging me onward, once again I bang my bow on the dock, what is your name?” (lmh. 5/30/2003).

Is it safe to say that the Hudson has a lover and I, lover of life, everyday climb aboard for the ride of my life? I love life.

Is the lack of clean baby formula the catalyst that will force women to return to breast feeding their children? China has a problem obtaining milk formulas that are not poisonous or at best will just give the babies diahorrea. The slogan Breast is Best might well prove true after all. Finally breasts might return to their original purposes. Ever since we started to walk upright they became objects of art and entertainment. They are best when ogled or pinched, squeezed and rolled like dough. Poor breasts. Don’t blanch, I won’t say anymore, I will leave breast alone. I have no portable oxygen here and I have no idea why you are hyperventilating. I can’t figure if it’s the rolling and squeezing or you are alarmed by my casual approach to breasts.

If it’s the latter, then you do realize that I can speak volumes on the subject because I have had a pair since I was fourteen or there about. Prior to that I was a mannequin. I love my breasts a lot but I don’t worship them, nor do I consider them the gateway to any ones pleasure. I have been told that they are nice, my primary physician treats them with indifference, as does my gynecologist, but the men in the subway stations find it very necessary to probe my bosoms with all of their five eyes. They scan me like an X-ray machine. I sigh and bury my head in my book. I may as well be naked so all who wish might touch, knead and squeeze. I hate the role my breasts play, but I love my breasts. My only escape is my early morning dreams when I am naked and vulnerable, I have some control there, albeit brief, then I come awake.

“Slowly my eyes adjusted to the new light, a new day has come, I turn toward my mecca it blinded me awhile. Then they came, first like a susurrus, then a grumble, my dreams came crashing forward, my night revealed in bits and pieces, in black and white and gray, again you were there. I watched my dream in a dream, knowingly. Only in dreamscape I can see myself outside myself, then there are two. Stop! Don’t move, listen. I know from whence you came, I only, know where you will go.   Tell me truly, do you want me? Can I touch your caramel smooth skin that glistens like dew? No, I heard myself reply, I do not know you, though I want you to touch me. Voices, early morning voices that tease me, and then I wake”. (lmh, June 27^th 2010. 9:17am)

It’s very warming to see you return day after day. Is it the food I have been cooking? Or are you amused by my sometimes rant, or intrigued by my revelations? I don’t really wish to know; that you have come back is enough for me. I am a very patient woman and can outlast the devil if I am determined to have or do a thing. I will await your return each day, but you must tell me ahead if you are not able to do so. Speaking of the devil, will you tell me who invented him? Isn’t the devil the dark sides of all of us? Isn’t he all the negative actions that we encourage? I don’t hold that there is a singular devil who rules supremely from his fiery realm. That for me is a myth. A big fat conniving myth. Human beings create their own devils and demons by their actions and non-actions and when these energies overrun our control we are backed into the corners we painted ourselves in and there we die of fear. Killed by the devil; that actually is quite an ugly picture as I see it. Let me propose today to posit the premise that greed is the first cause of evil, which is one and the same as the devil. Greed has little minions like envy and jealousy and these two spare no expense at becoming popular.

So who tempted Jesus on the Mount? I knew you were going to ask such a question. Standing by what I just said, as per Christianity, kindly remember that Jesus was also man as well as God. It was the human aspect of his duality that was being tempted, but His God –self was able to dispatch the temptations and He made it safely out of the desert. Still working within the Christian premise, like Jesus, man has a dual nature, a black and a white if you will, and when the black is allowed, by the use of your will to triumph, then evil is a winner and so the devil takes the reign. It is up to you and me to keep the positive going as much as we can. This is how we control evil or devil. We have to be committed to goodness at all times is my philosophy. Goodness for the greater good. Why waste time fighting the devil and trying to get into heaven? Take care of the earth and its contents which include your neighbor and, if there is such a place, then you will be sure to get there. The effort is needed while you are alive and capable. How can you worry over the unknown? Why worry? You are bound to die it is clear, because the way we are made is not recyclable, instead corruptible. Therefore, since that is a given then concern yourself in how to live well.[vi]

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”(Meditations, Marcus Aurelius)

I thought we’d dialogue more about politics but you are determined to wax religion, and while I am a part of religion, I much prefer theological discourses. I find religion complex and contriving and at times not bear any resemblance to the divine or the holy. I am a traditionalist and will die so. Since my theological tradition was developed out of Judaism then I must be a Jew emotionally, for my theological ideologies regarding a God of humanity comes from that branch of the anthropological tree. Sue me.

My dear father will make 94 years in October. How blessed is that? fifteen years ago he began to worship at a church nearby our home and was very devout about it his worship. A very passionate man, he threw himself into the Biblical teachings and lived the life of a Christian in the works. Then one day news came to me that the Pastor of the church he attended was arrested for having sex with a minor and had made her pregnant. If one wasn’t enough, another minor came forward and yet another. To add insult to injury, it was disclosed that he did not have a Theological degree as he claimed and did not in truth attend any Bible school. Rooted on the spot, I read the ghastly details which had now reached the newspapers. I took three months to inform my father about his beloved Pastor which would explain the reason that I was refusing to let him go on the church bus on Sundays.

I struggled with love for my father and the need to protect his trusting ancient traditional heart. I struggled with the desire to confront the pastor and show him some hell, there was enough bubbling in me that would roast him into eternity. What a colossal fraud this man is!! To think I once sat in dialogue with him as he outlined his plans toward helping the community. I cannot tell you this and not tell you how well the women’s group treated my dad. They took such good care of him during his time as a member and I was so moved, that I took it upon myself to attend a worship service that I could meet the members. Suffice it to say; this so called gerrymandering Pastor did not possess one redeeming virtue akin to the divine or holy. He ought to be shot twice in the foot. I said foot? I meant hooves. Religion has many bad roots, attracts charlatans who are not seeking redemption, rather they are seeking to plunder for personal gains. I won’t discuss the mega churches here. I won’t discuss them at all. They make me bang my head on my desk.

Today will not be a great day for our discussion, because I have become increasingly insomniac and I am totally disgruntled this morning. We can try anyway because I have had worse days and overcame the trials to smile again. But you must tell me if I become tedious or brutish more than I have been already. Sometimes my manners become subject to my frame of mind and my fangs descend. I glimpsed your Mona Lisa smile. Ha! You agree that I have fangs and it’s now my turn to laugh. Be careful for at times I don’t discriminate from where I draw the blood. In truth I ought to go back to bed but there is too much light.

“Sleep, she has no conscience, she claims you even though you grieve. Sleep and forget but do not dream, dreams don’t care”. (lmh. 3/18/2011).

Speak of dying and every one pushes back their chairs and run for the hills, I am left open-mouthed wondering what just happened. What is so dreadful about that topic? If there are parallel spaces then we don’t really die, we just shift our substances for better accommodations, those that are not corruptible. You already know that there is only the present[vii], that past and future are only names we have given to the alternate spaces that we do not understand. In these three spaces we are in one of two states; either we are in the flesh and corruptible or we are free of matter and more divine. I say divine because I do not have another descriptive. But in that incorruptible state we are able to be in all places at the same time and this makes past and future void. The problem though is that to exist in the divine and be in the present at the same time is rather awkward for us who are still in a state of corruptibility because it is at best a difficult concept to appreciate, and the present world as we have organized it cannot accommodate the concept of a divine being. The flesh, it seems is a deterrent into divine progress.

Well what is the point of the flesh? We have to think this out together because I am grappling with it myself. You say it’s a cage where we stay to work out our kinks and then we move on to a place you do not know. I say it’s one phase of our existence enroute to getting closer to divinity. Why? I posit that we came from a thing larger than life itself and if we are outshoots for whatever the reason, and if we chose to return to that state, we must contrive to regain our original nature. Existing in the corruptible state we get an opportunity to understand the basics of nature and how we stack up in the equation. In this state we experience everything all at once though we do not understand that we are doing so. There is a myth which says that we are not capable of utilizing all of our brain power and that we only use 10 to 20 percent. The Neurologist are indignant about this, they say that every part of the brain is utilized. I can’t weigh in on this definitively since I did not pursue neuroscience in my youthful years.

Is my position whacky to you? Maybe, but I see no other reason for this part of the journey back to first cause except as practice, and why in the first place we became offshoots. Was it an accident? And if it was, then may I be the first to tell you that your God is not even aware that one of the universal crumbs fell away like chaff and morphed. You and I are therefore nothing in the universe except as universal chaff. Now how do you like them apples? We are on our own, free of all cares. How do we know that we were intentional? Of course the lay of the land looks intelligently done, but who said that mankind was an original part of the creation? Genesis supports two creations so do not open that dialogue unless you are willing to wade into the deep with me. God made us deliberately and with thought.

If I go the evolutionary route, then I say mankind could be a byproduct of nature and not a creation of a particular moment in time. As a byproduct we must follow the natural patterns and natural rules of nature, for outside of that we will without a doubt bank ourselves and wither. Nature is God, and to go against that is pointless. As an example, put a match against gun powder and there will be a fire. I am being kind to say just a fire. The rules of nature cannot be bent or inverted without consequences. Hence there is no changing in God, not one bit of God’s laws will fade away or go into obscurity. Was it through science that you made those statements?

Operating outside of your creation theory we must go in search and find out for ourselves and not wait with our mouths open like young birds to receive food from a silent unseen god. I think we should stop thinking of god along those lines and find the god within one’s self, and discover what is required of us to live in the present, and in the presence of nature and her patterns for life. I can see a clear set of instructions throughout scientific results, history et al, within the evolutionary state, but when I look to the creationist model, it is there that I get all muddled and confused and ask all kinds of questions like why I cannot interact tangibly with the All-Powerful creator. I am able to do so within the realms of nature. There I can see things happen, touch what happens, hear what moves as it happens, and I am assured of all the sequential causes as they carry on infinitely. God is in all things.

It’s no mystery as to causes, except when we go back to first cause and at that point, I pause because personally I don’t care to know how the first cause came about. It’s enough that I can be past present and future for I do believe that I was also a part of the beginning. I was there as something other than what you see now. Isn’t that a great feeling for you to contemplate? Stop looking to the heavens, there won’t be any lightning bolts coming to destroy me, why is your god so vengeful? Didn’t I get free will? Well, I am free to think and speak. If your god of creation is a just god, then he ought to be humble enough to let me exercise the gifts he bestowed. You know I despise referring to god with pronouns. It is contraindicated. It makes me crazy to think that the god of creation could be a person. It does not add up. A god outside of the universal order must be outside of my human imagination and not have any reference to us. This perhaps is why the Jewish people refuse to neither call god by name nor even write the word god as I do. How could we be in the same breath space with God? We are not equal to God.

My neighbor has taken to his drill once more and I am obliged to go remind him that today is Sunday and that the law dictates that he and no other may power an industrial drill outside my window while I am having a quiet morning. To end his mastery of the machine, perhaps I should invite him over to sit and eat with us. Alas his wife!! How concerned would she be? She need not worry as the idea was short-lived, yet I must beseech him to quit while he still can be with his head. Yes, the fangs, I mentioned them earlier.

Today is worse than yesterday. For starters I am sleepy at mid-morning. This does not bode well for my goal of 2000 words. Am I drowsy? You say that you cannot be with me all day? I think that I may have to hold you hostage with some off-the-wall rambling. Let me tell you about a time when I walked along the board walk of the Harborside Financial Center and watched a cruise ship sailing down the Hudson. It hit me that I have never been on a cruise, even my parents went on one although their memory of it is vague. How troubling is that? That you go on a cruise and then turn around and forget the details. When my parents returned from that cruise my father’s belly was ahead of him, and a month later it was gone. Was that my belly I am certain that I would still have it. So where did I get the one I am carrying now. Food for thought. My mother said the reason his belly was so big was because he focused on the food while she focused on the ambience of the ship especially since the captain had his eye on her.

Am I amusing you yet? Aging is a waste of a good life one could argue. Think about it. You spend your life doing wonderful things. You build bridges, raise children, invent meaningful things, stomp out disease, then by the time you turn eighty you can’t recall cockadoodle in a straight line. What was the point, what is there to sit and talk about and embellish for the young? Do you think that is hanging over our heads? I would like to keep my memories because I do have some lovely ones and even the unlovely served a purpose. What if I lose the bitter and the sweet, what would have been the point of the life we lived? What was served?

I think it would be lovely to have someone read my musings and find them useful even if it is after I have changed my spatial dimension. According to the pundits who seem to be sure of everything, I only have twelve more years to say anything before my mind clogs up and then after that I just sit around and wait for my cloud to descend. Ever since I decided to say it out loud the voices came to ask, “And where shall you get material from”. One of the voices replied, “From the same place you always took them silly, think, look around, can you recall some of the nonsense that you have read in the past. I am sure you can, and they were published, therefore go ahead and put something down on the paper.”

You watch me hand wringing like a nervous Woody Allen in his movies. Don’t judge me or him, I love him. He has talent. I once saw an acquaintance use a book as a door stop. What the hell was that! I wanted to whip her. She did not appreciate my scolding and looking back I should have whipped her. She never spoke to me again. I should have whipped her. Great, I still owe her one, the heathen. I am now a full blown ranter and I thank you for your reception. Let’s try this later, and as my favorite writer would always say, “Ting a ling”. If am to tell you who that is then you don’t know me, but I will give you a nice hint. He is modern, he is now dead a few years, he has a son who thinks he can write like his daddy and he was in a war. Go figure. And if you say Hemmingway you may not return this afternoon. A last clue, he is a tad off-the-wall delicious. Ernest Hemmingway was not, is not the only successful writer who was involved in a war. And it’s only recently that I am favoring Hemmingway. I finally read “A moveable Feast” and brought him over onto my admiration pile. His other books did not take me in, but I absolutely adore Scott Fitzgerald and the others from that period. Now come forward and find my Johnny…Ting a ling.

On our return, before the sun comes down its fiery path to bed, I really would like to return to a topic we opened. We started on death and the concept of dying and it fizzed out. I have seen a lot of people die and I have seen a lot of dead bodies. Your attempt at humor is worse than mine, how am I a serial killer? I see dead people do not mean that I killed them, nor does wearing a Kimono make me Japanese. It’s just how some things are, and you have to accept the reality. Living things go through a change called dying, I shrug because that is the reality, I am not being callous, it is a natural transition I am trying to get accustomed to while I work on the fear that has been stamped on my heart since the day of my birth. We all have a morbid fear of death. You struggle with my word use. Morbid and death, that’s just it, it doesn’t get any worse.

I have seen many dead people in a very strict professional setting when I practiced as an RN and I had the privilege of watching most of them breathe their last breath. It was a privilege only for me because the dying is not interested in your opinion in the least bit. Hospital deaths are sterile and almost controlled compared to the few street deaths that I have encountered. Those ones rattle me and leave me completely unraveled.

A body lying on a well-made bed present no discord, and you will lie down beside it, hug it and weep softly, kiss the face of the dead and even whisper regret or undying love, but a body dismembered or twisted grotesquely on the street create a panic and bring up ghastly screams from a part of your body you never knew existed. That is a fearful ugly frightening thing to witness and I hope that I may never witness another person lying dead and in disarray on a public street. It does not look right.

All the dignity that a human being possessed in life is discredited and the humanness has fled the body leaving it looking like flesh discarded and without a domain. It is a blank slate of lifeless dead flesh, and the living recoil in disbelief and dread. You have difficulty identifying with it. All the holy has been flung or dragged out of it; there is nothing tender or loveable about a body lying on the street. There is not one desire to hug or kiss a face with one eye dangling from the head and gray matter pressed out the back of a head matted with hair. I am so very sorry to present these matters for your attention but it’s just how some things are and we cannot feign reality.

Maybe I am purging my sensibilities by voicing what I have kept locked up such a long time. However, we are on the subject of death. Another kind of death are those in the home setting, and while I found the hospital deaths mystical and extremely notable given the impact they all had on me, my one home death to date was the one that left me speechless and brought me to my knees in a very literal way. I knew she was going to die, I watched her body diminish over time, I even planned her final repose, yet, when she made the transition my shock was palpable. I dropped to my knees in disbelief and such physical pain for I was now without her, who I have known for 60 years. My pains were all about me in that moment. How could I go on without her, who would I speak to, me me, me, every question that ravaged my mind centered on me. Kneeling by the bedside I placed her still warm hand on top of my head and willed it to pat me comfortingly.

The selfishness of humanity is singularly horrible. It underlies all our issues from the cradle to the grave. The initial reaction to my loss was not to contemplate where she had gone, assuming that there was a soul, and instead, I worried about myself. I said I loved her and that I still do, yet I was not angsting over the fact that maybe the afterlife myth is just that, and that she had come undone forever. I did not gaze in contemplation as to where a soul really go, if there really was a new place, or did she discover most disturbingly with the last bit of wisdom available to her, that there is no such place, that she was undone, and how shocking that must have been. I did not contemplate immediately if the rending of a soul from the intricate seams of the flesh is further pain. No, I contemplated none of those things; all I wanted was to have my mother come back to me, the mewling weak person that I suddenly became as I faced the space within the space that I knew not. My present was real because I could not follow her into a future that did not exist and I could not embrace the spatial shift because I was physically encumbered. How pointless it is to worry over health care, we will all die in a moment and need not have to buy it.

Morose, I know, and painfully true, but I see how I have horrified you with my notes from the morgue therefore I will place a stop at this juncture. If the part of time we have dubbed tomorrow comes, then we will peruse more palatable topics.   I raise a toast to the Japanese Tsunami victims and to life.

“Amidst the rubble you sit and tremble, your face creased in grief, mother is gone, so is the house. Together they have become tangled twisted bits of this and that. Yoshikatsu Hiratsuka, weep, weep, it’s snowing, does it matter? You don’t live here anymore they put your body in a truck wrapped in a soft green blanket. Today you moved to Elysium, but wait, your coins, you must pay the boatman, sweet dreams, my darling lover, my wife, my child, my friend, my neighbor, my enemy, my student, my teacher, my dogs, my cats, go into the mist. You don’t live here anymore.”(lmh. 3/18/2011.).

If there is any truth to reincarnation then I used to be Spanish born and bred in Mexico. Mexican music incites and excites me to fever pitch. Whenever I listen, the pathos in the songs and the singers voice twists and turn my insides so much that at times I am forced to cry as my mind takes flight to all the places the words tell of. I cry for the beauty and sadness that the pictures paint all at the same time. Bitter sweet pain speaks of suffering and longing, of peace and war, they speak of passion of love gone wrong, of love requited and everlasting. It’s tormenting to listen to Mexican love songs and hear Mariachi singers thrill on their notes. I get mental pictures of doves flying, of a prisoner escaping on horseback only to be shot down and die in his lover’s arms as she weeps with her face buried in his hair and his blood soaking her lily-white peasant dress, “No me queda mas, no vale la peña mi Corazon[viii]”, she murmurs as her soul dries up never to love again.

Let me leave Mexico alone for now at least as it will be my undoing and yours too if venture to play a single note. If I leave Mexico and approach Spain all I want is Flamenco which leads me Argentina and the Tango. I have no explanation for my natal affection for things Spanish, I just know what my soul needs and very regularly I feed it, and feed it until I leak at my seams and I pass out like a spent lover with my heart beats in syncopated patterns, and my breaths barely visible. My invisible lover is Spanish and only when my lover comes that I am whole, what am I without my love? “Hasta que te conoci[ix]”. I was nothing before you, your shoes crack the pavement like a canon and then like a gypsy you dance for me all the while your guitar strings strangle my sobs, I cry helplessly and hopelessly. I do not wish to be rescued from your passion, “Te sigo Amando[x]”, even if I die tonight, bury me with roses and poems; its only my body, my soul will be merged with you because Mexico, Mexico, my Spanish lover I knew you before time was named.

You seem shocked at my outburst or confession, but yes that is one of my secrets that I carry around within my heart. There are things that people never speak about to no one. Things that fester, things that are pampered, and those things that are generated spontaneously. The spontaneous ones are the worst kind of thoughts that a person could manifest. These are the random thoughts that will pop up without warning and will create alarm even to the thinker. As a hypothetical example; you are sitting on the train supposedly reading a book, suddenly a sound causes you to look up from the book you are reading and you stare directly at a man whose teeth are all jutting forward so far out that his lips are peeled back and his nostrils are stretched wide. You see very far up into his nose; without warning the thought produces itself, “would you have sex with him?” Immediately you feel nauseated that you could even imagine such a thing without a single thought about the person’s discomfort. Do you think sex is on his mind? With the entire cabin looking at him, don’t you know that he must be in emotional pain? What is wrong with you? Random thoughts such as this are the worst, and they do exist if you choose to be honest. Did you not tell me once that you went to the dentist and as she leaned over to look closely at your teeth, that you wondered what her breast would feel like on your heavy cocaine filled lips. A natural sexist pig, or a natural primal man, take your pick.

Why do we get these random thoughts? Is the soul diseased to some degree? Or is the random thought a red flag of a kind.   In the case of the dentist, what stopped you from pressing your face to her bosom? Did you think of a law suit first or the fact that she might stab you in the eye with her dental curette, or be kind enough to suffocate you with excess cotton. Something brought reason and the greater good into the picture. This reasonableness made you smirk inwardly and you satisfied your desire in the confines of your mind for the greater good. This is the difference between man and animal. A goat would not care if the female before him had one horn, she had another body part that is viable, and only a baby goat would be interested in its mother’s breasts.

At what point do we ignore the reasoning and allow rape or murder or both to come to fruition; can we do that reasonably so? When does the greater good no longer matter and should take back stage? Perhaps I should take a stab at this answer. Excuse the pun please. Once I attempted to kill my friend’s friend. I was a house guest and the friend of my host attempted to rape me. At the time I barely weighed 110lbs wet while he was a solid 250 lbs. wet or dry. I struggled valiantly and when I saw the shadows closing in on me I went into survival mode and reached for a hammer I glimpsed from my side eye as he pressed me mercilessly to the edge of the bed. I raised the hammer above my head and swung it purposefully toward his head for I meant to kill him then and there. I knew I could not let him defile me, I knew murder was wrong, I also knew that he could kill me afterwards because I could identify him without a doubt. He saw my hand on its way down and jumped back in the nick of time. He recoiled and called me a bitch and expressed rage that I tried to kill him.

In my rage I went after him with the hammer because as far as my reason would allow me he was still alive and insulting me further. He escaped by slamming the door in my face and drove away hastily. I cried for days on end, packed my bags and went back to New York. I no longer cared much for the job interview that I had secured for the following week. How the greater was good served, and did my reason fail me, or was I thrust into my primal state and survived for the greater good? Think about your answer, I was thirty-one years old and worth a glance or two, but I thought that I valued so much more than to become dumpster material. That’s what I thought, and that is what I was protecting. My good self. Lunch is served.

“911, I love you, you love me black and blue, black and blue and scarlet, my eyes close to shun the light reflected from your black and blue love. Scarlet rivers course my forehead, it pounds love, love, love, you say you love me, 911, yes I do love you, 911. Blue black and red love paints my lips full and tender from your recent ministrations. 911, how could I leave you, I love how you run your fingers through my hair and take some, jig jag jag your scissors take the rest, I love you, in sepia tones, in black then blue, then scarlet fade to mahogany; I am a puddle at your feet, embrace me, 911, I love you. (lmh. 911 I love you, circa 2011).

This is only the third time that I have recalled this ugly event and with each recollection I find the details still clear and intact. I thought that the 911 catastrophe was my overarching misery but together they give me bragging rights to what the human will is capable of surmounting and remain in the present without bitterness. The episode with the Pastor was in a class of its own and will remain so; I only know that he is dead to me. Him I am certain have no soul and therefore could hardly be considered reasonable. I chuckle when I consider him and the misery he ought to be in now that he is of great age. They say that when life serves up lemons one should make lemonade. Frankly I prefer to make a lemon merengue pie. Bitter sweet and memorable. Nothing is lost nor covered up by too much sugar. Enough of the bitter to keep the valiant focused.

Religion is dominating our conversations; can fifty-two dollars monthly buy prosperity? The Televangelist was asking me to contribute that amount each month to “see how God will prosper me”. That is a direct quote. I loathe doing such a thing and would never consider sending one cent of my money that I worked so hard for to such a charlatan. I contribute to the Cleft Palate and Hare Lip foundation because that is what I need to do as a responsible person. This foundation contracts with doctors and nurses who volunteer their time to travel to cities the world over where there is a high incidence of this condition. The children’s lives are helped immensely by a simple operation that restructures their palates and hare lips, giving them the confidence to feel a part of their community.

No longer will they be a source of ridicule and shame, nor will their parents cry endlessly over the way nature has malfunctioned and distorted the faces of their children. This to me is prosperity at work. My donation to this mission is a part of the prosperity that hundreds of young children will gain as they take their places in the world. My prosperity is the joy and satisfaction I feel when I see the child’s smile when he or she looks in a mirror and see a whole face and not the grotesque gargoyle that once stared back.

That is my idea of prosperity which I can repeat infinitely. I need not send fifty-two dollars to a Mack-Daddy preacher to buy his Mercedes Benz or four hundred dollar suits so that he can grace the podium of some Mega Church buffed and manicured while the kids in Brazil and the Sudan drink fetid water and die. There isn’t a God anyplace in this universe that need or require money. Such a disgraceful request. How did the words sound when they ricocheted back on his ears? Did he find favor with the request, because it made me angry when I heard it. How does this good fellow justify stealing in the name of God. The money request does not help me or anyone else to survive poverty or disease. And God does not exchange favors for money so how is this Christian in any sense of the word? I thought this went out with the Middle Ages when the church sold favors in return for a way into heaven, or maybe we never stopped, the ruse was repackaged for modernity.

I fail to see the connection to anything good or holy. I am aware that we are not in Utopia and Unicorns have not been seen since the last Fairy swept through the Irish under growth, but maybe we ought not to take extra bread from the table when we eat. There is enough for all except that some of us eat way too much or hoard excess for no particular reason and then if it pleases us we throw away perfectly good food calling it excess. How could a nation grow too much corn or tomatoes? Why not give what we don’t need to the folks next door instead of having tomato smashing contests and egg throwing contests.

And when we sell seeds to a nation so that they can grow their own crops, why give them seeds that are engineered to produce only one crop because the super powers have made the newly produced seeds barren. How cruel is that. The poor must come back again and again to buy from the excessive bastards, because they will always need fertile seeds. Imagine those poor hapless countries giving the fifty-two dollars every month to the church to see what God can do for them. Do you think that God will make the engineered seeds fertile so that they will reproduce new fertile seeds? No, a resounding no to such an idiotic sentiment.

There will be no prosperity to be had until the super powers stop the crap and do what is right. Sell fertile seeds for God’s sake! Then there will be abundance and prosperity as the act is paid forward. Always pay it forward, always. Church and State is supposed to be separated but they are not. The politics of the land is intricately entwined with religion and every horrible contrivance that affects the daily lives of man comes to us through one of these venues and sadly in the name of God. If there is a God in a place called Heaven, then we are due another flood because the name of God is mud here on earth and God should find this quite unholy.

I am not writing against the church, on the contrary, I am writing on its behalf. The Church that I thought existed before I turned some pages is at present in a state of flux with respect to its philosophies and absolute purpose. The respectability and accountability that common man had for the institution no longer exists. It has lost its awe and mysticism. No longer do we feel the need to listen to what the Pastors or Priests have to say because their public sins are numerous and as gross as the vilest of sinner. When Priest and Pastors break every commandment of the Cannon and are not set apart from the common man, above reproach, when they do not seem any closer to the numinous, who then can go into the Holy of Holies to mediate for the people.

The church has become a market place for thieves and smart aleck politicians. Mankind has lost the way to Paradise and it seems to me, I speak for myself alone here, that we have instead found Dante’s Hell. I was hoping that there was no such place but with what I am seeing around me, we are on a road disguised with meaningless favors dusted with the gold leaf; the road to Hell is paved in singular beauty with a substance we so adore. Give generously.

“Hell is a place. Drop your bag atop my feet, jabber jabber to my right, coughing coughing to my left, popping gum across the aisle daring me to say a word. Clap clap clap, clap clap clap clap, until her hands are sore while others read and some do snore. Suddenly like a crazed cuckoo head reared back she screech like a wounded hound; please-stand-clear- of the closing- doors, shades of Hades beneath the ground. The music blare its tinny whine from a box for personal time, a rush of bodies fill the place her stare is fixed upon a space. No no no you cannot fit, be reasonable my eyes insist. Dis-Regarding my unspoken wish my furrowed brow and anguished look, squash! She is in, I groan and press against the rail, oh dam! Shades of Amistad, my spirit pales. Stand clear of the closing doors. Next stop is wall street”. (lmh. Hell is a place, 5/30/2003).

 

I know a man who puts people to sleep and then awakens them. It’s not a sport to him by any means, but it could be a hobby of a sort because he enjoys doing it. He is a doctor of anesthesia at a large metropolitan hospital. He is an important person in the lives of many people; he is extremely intelligent, wise and exhibits common sense in all things. He is a humanist, like me a frustrated politician, he is witty, well read and has a finger on the pulse of the global nation. This man loves people in a meaningful way. He has some children and a wife. This man loves his family without apology and works diligently to maintain them with dignity and class. His wife sacrificed her career to raise the children while this man earns. The children are responding to the love and sacrifice that the man and his wife are infusing in their lives. Eventually I believe that he will end up with children that become good citizens and take their places to pay it forward. They have been schooled to know what their purposes in the world ought to be. They know that life isn’t about them.

I am speaking about this man because he has been my friend for a good many years and we share some very special interests. We talk extensively on many of the things that I have been burdening you with, we have a deep regard for books and their contents and share reading material. We argue about political and critical world issues in very long conversations moving from one topic to the next without being random. We can run a thread endlessly and seamlessly without falter, and were it not for family and other responsibilities we could talk for days and not notice the hour. I like this man a lot and respect his philosophy on life and the way he lives his life accordingly, and as an end note, he has a great sense of fashion, unlike me who can be bohemian or random. I admire clothes on a mannequin and fashionistas on the catwalk but am bored with dressing myself to the nines. Once in a while, perhaps. My friend is always sartorially elegant, and oh, he is coal black with beautiful white teeth. This man is amazing.

With that background on the good doctor it is safe to say that he dabbles in death and dying, yet is acutely aware of how to live and what it means to live well. I have long had a curiosity about dying and the aftermath as it concerns people looking on, as well as the so called life after dying. With my medical background I have had the privilege to encounter death in a variety of presentations. I have looked at the event from almost every possible point of view and still could not write a conclusion which would put the matter at rest. It is becoming abundantly clear to me that perhaps there is no death, instead life as we know it just shifts into a new or parallel space to continue extensively on a more intelligent way.

With regard to anesthesia and what the good doctor does, anesthesia is in a way another form of death. It is a controlled way to die, and then to live again without recall or pain. In the shade of death is where anesthesia places the individual for a controlled state of dying for a controlled length of time. Without leaving any permanent scars on either the psyche or physical neuro-pathway. The brain remains unscathed, but unable to say where it has been for a particular span of time. The victim of this quiet sleep has no memory of the event during the suspension of its life and I wonder if the soul pauses with the body, or if only the body has been rendered helpless.

What is the state of the soul in this controlled setting? Does it sit in fear that its host could be rendered corruptible before the soul has completed its journey through the course of human nature? This is worth a great deal of consideration I think although I also believe that it is futile because we are blocked by the corruptible aspect of the self from seeing beyond anything except with our eyes open. With our eyes open we cannot see beyond our death beds. How frustrating is this to contemplate.   I try to think about what my soul was doing when I was placed in a controlled state of death to remove my gall stones. I had an encounter with Pancreatitis and Gall Bladder issues. The combination almost proved deadly but as you can see I am still here blathering profusely. To be frank, even the sojourn in the ICU seemed to be a blur, because I believe more so now after the experience, that the mind recedes from the crime scene when the body is severely injured so that it can go on low power to rest and redeem itself. In modern parlance, the soul recedes to allow the body to reboot, and it can only do so at low ebb where nothing concerns the individual, not even intense pain.

Of the stay in ICU I recall that there was immense physical pain and that it got to a point where I was weary of the pain and allowed myself to follow the soul to the place of least effort. I didn’t realize at the time that it was what I was doing, I was simple tired and wanted a respite. All I recall is that early one morning when I was struggling to cope I got fed up with the battle and experienced a sagging of my entire body and the strongest desire to let go. I stopped expending my physical energy and sank back into the semi-darkness. I heard the nurse offering me a shot and I honestly did not care what the hell she was saying. She perhaps gave it to me. I was already elsewhere in a state of uncaring. I opted for that state for quite some time and I suppose that is why so much of the ICU journey seems blurred.

My soul rescued us and took me close to death and paused among the shades until we were able to continue with the physical self. The body had its own obligations to follow and respond to preprogrammed cues. It knew what to do without instructions because of the way Nature set it to respond. Of course the doctors gave me medication to help some of the programmes that had jammed so to speak. They had to be rewired and washed of their impurities and when this was happening the body could not accommodate my mind and soul. Besides, with me conscious and speculating all day long, was only holding back any possible progress. My body did not need my help; besides what help could I have given it? I merely occupied it and if I was clueless as to how I became so ill so suddenly, what wisdom would I have to offer toward my wellness in this crisis. Speculation is a blind man’s tool.

We both waited, my soul and I, waiting for the word to come; up or down, live or leave. The word came and it was live. I lived to sit here with you and converse because I moved back from the shadows back into the light. I posit that there should be new light in the alternate space we eventually shift into but unless we go through the shadows we won’t see that light. I don’t recall much of my waiting in the shadows, I was only conscious enough to obey commands given by the hospital staff, and to observe the gravity of my situation etched on the faces of the five doctors who attended me. My Primary was a study in concern I actually felt sorry for him, but it was the Surgeon’s angelically beautiful face that I found intriguing as I lay there in the mist. There was a woman inside me that loved Art, and here was Michelangelo’s David prodding my abdomen. Dying had become attractive.

“Eyes on me. Smoky. Beautiful. Lips ruby, soft, in endless pleasure. Seeking fingers caress my languid body curved in angles and sweet abandon.” (lmh. “A lover’s Haiku”, 8/7/09).

Hedging and gambling and not concerned about friends or family, they too were shadowy, the only person I constantly thought about was my granddaughter. Her face was hung like a Mao Ttse-tung poster, and wherever I turned my head the poster followed. Like sips of Ambrosia I tasted her love and slowly recovered enough to face part two of the illness. There would be surgery as soon as the sepsis lowered its ugly head. The pain post-surgery made new inroads  into my psyche but the courage I took from the edge of Elysium sustained my sanity. The nurses comforted my ravaged body with soothing bed baths, daily grooming and sometimes they indulged my fantasy with talk of grand meals which I knew would remain in my fantasy.  The assortment of fluids calibrated and pumped into me was my gastronomical delight. I marveled at the weight loss and my body’s inability to support me in an upright position when I tried to walk around the room. Corruptible indeed and ungrateful, yet, this was my body, my cage, I should care.

Facing death is not death, and I still cannot tell you conclusively what dying is all about until I encounter a full death, and as of today I am of the opinion that when I do take that leap, I still won’t be able, even if I remain intact as a reasonable soul; I still won’t be able to tell you about it. There seems not to be a press and record button for reference. Why then are we so concerned about death and dying? Why don’t we put our efforts into living well in the now since it is all we know and to some extent can control some of the factors that surround life. Like the good doctor who uses drugs to control and seemingly master death, he still remain a man and even with his medicine bag of magical props could never be elevated to god-status.

He is just a man with magic wands that he does not fully understand in their fullness. He knows what one drug will cause and how much of another will reverse the effect of the first but he cannot tell you the true state of the individual as he lay in an induced coma. He cannot have a running conversation with the individual during the sleep; he can only watch his dials and knobs, take note of breaths and systemic pulsing, while the soul hangs in suspension. He too is in suspension waiting to hear the surgeon say, “closing up”, and then he waves his most powerful wand and reverses the spell. Like the gate-keeper in Valhalla he can only open and close the gates, he knows not where the citizens go when he sends them off, or from whence in the city they had come from. He, like Charon the ferryman who plies the river Styx but never leaving the boat to accompany the passengers, he knows nothing of where they go and what fate they will encounter.

“Immortal Beloved: I heard the wind and my soul rejoiced for your name came upon it. It whispered and cajoled me, upon my skin it lingered to caress me, I cried because that’s all I could do when I saw you. I cannot cover your pain, but I can hold you, what’s the use of saying I love you from a place inside me that now lay brittle as I watch you shaking, your shoulders hunched. Tell it to the wind and rain, give them your pain for I am useless, afterwards I’ll sweep the ash and bathe you. I’ll dress you in lights and scent you with frangipani petals. Look at me, look long and hard, let your gaze penetrate infra-red and see me. Your scented bath waters still warm and floating Frangipani petals ripple in synch with your heart. I love you comes to mind, I smile inwardly and stroke water beads from your nape, I won’t let you see me for I am naked with desire, half a crescent moon, I hide. Unfortunate heart in shadowy corners dart quickly in and out, do not notice me nor the sticky red liquid that trails behind, the rasp you hear in the howling north wind should not disturb you. I ride hard for silver wolves chase after me a dying Valkyrie, Asgard Castle throw your doors open, rescue me, who told me I could love you? My head roared like the fire within the great hall, all the while my heart stood still; will you seek after me? The gods ignore me limp by the fireside, I melt down heaving and alarmed at my confusion, then, without warning the dark swoop was upon me, sleep, sleep foolish Valkyrie no mortal can love you, no mortal shall love you”. (lmh. ‘Immortal Beloved’, 12/31/2009, 9:31pm.).

Death it seems is a private event known only to the invited that are forbidden, or have no desire, because of the new spatial enchantment, to retrace their steps to inform us. I cannot imagine wanting to retrace such a seemingly perilous journey, depending on how disturbing or painful the physical death was.   Imagine someone being dismembered and gutted by an eighteen wheeler truck. In that moment of pain however fleeting or prolonged, that distress cannot be measured and words cannot entertain, imagine that; now why would that individual want to retrace their tracks? Don’t you realize that perhaps they would have to retrace the pain and mess again because we can’t skip time? Who does that? Living well among our fellowmen is the very best that we can do and should do.

It is based on this premise I have decided to spend my life and pay attention to how I live it. Perchance there is another space that I can occupy in a more enlightened way; ergo if I live well I shall be all the better to appreciate the enchantment. It therefore comes back to living life as a faith-based exercise instead of trying to prove Heaven, Hell or God. It does not and cannot matter now that we have turned over all the stones of our existence and looked at the blueprint that is labeled life as we know it. If we can appreciate the neighbor and the foul smelling man or woman on the train then you have lived a day looking at God.

Our days together seem to be getting shorter and shorter and that heralds my favorite season. The winter of my contentment is approaching, but first we will creep through fall and count her many gold leaves and watch her birds pack up and leave. Did you notice that after all the leaves have sacrificed themselves for the good of the trees that the places around us seem quieter? Did you ever stop to listen to the wind pass by and watch it lifts fall’s gold leafed cloak and make the clouds curl up and blush? Nature is the absolute lover who will whisper to a lover, male or female with the same cadence and timbre. It would not surprise me if there is a September Song which eager lovers sing each year as they await fall and her furious passions.

“Sitting in a corner I tremble at your memory, my breath is shallow and my brow damp. I did not expect you in such a hurricane, an eddy of passions and unspoken words. What could you know I was thinking? What would you know, so young, so inexperienced like first rain on new soil. But you came to me in a volley of touch, of words and overwhelming passions. I could hardly breathe at first sight of you, your hair loose this way and that, your garment shying from your lush form teasing my eyes to lean that way and this, you parted your windy lips and whispered my name, I heard you say Ven, Venga, as you lifted your soft leafy arms opened wide and crushed me to your heaving warm bosom. I should have succumbed to death then continue after life in your sweet embrace, but I would have missed the performance of my life, your dramatic prance across my soul. How your words entranced me. Your kisses, they threw me across time and space, you mastered me. I grew hot then cold then burst into flames that could not be doused. I burned endlessly as you poured your potions on my supplicant body. Play me, oh my love, play your sweet song, don’t pity me. Rummage my heart, my soul, and take what you want, leave nothing; leave naught for any other, who could there be after you? You are the hymn the ages sing about eternally, the muses revere you in verse and the cities adore you with their festivals and dances in your name. I want to say I love you, but such simple words do not seem adequate, yet it is a simple love I bear you beloved. A love I have kept within me for a lifetime that I now pour in one sweet flush at your feet, how I adore you my love, Ven, ven aqui, slay me, this is my September song to you.”(lmh. ‘September Song’9/2/04)

The seasons come and go and we take them for granted it would seem. I don’t imagine that they care one whit about whether we like or appreciate them; they know what purpose each season must fulfill and they, like clockwork repeatedly give command performances year after year. Winter never comes in June inasmuch as the effect of global warming is suggesting that such is a possibility. I am compelled to say that those freakish events that we have been witness to lately are just that, freakish events because some natural elements have been compromised. Winter will always appear in her assigned portion of the year, summer in hers, spring also, it is fall that captures my suspicion. In the winter months, like the anesthetist, the earth is put to sleep by the magic of winter. While she hangs in suspension, the trees rest and repair themselves and feed deeply from the reservoirs of the earth. Winter gathers the water in the form of snow and holds it also in frozen suspension.

Everything goes to sleep or ebbs for a while. Spring is the drug that reverses the dark sleep of winter and summer brings life’s’ ambrosia and everything that can breed does so. There is enormous flourishing at summertime. What is left for fall to do? I have a suspicion about fall’s role in the four seasons; fall is the lone male in the group, it seems the sisters have outranked him in the arrangements, therefore like the grim reaper; fall comes calling and with a scythe wreaks beautiful havoc on the flowering earth which he admires immensely. He demands that they all must prepare to die at a single command, he does not tell the earth why, yet she is obedient because she is curious to see what her peeved progeny will do.

The earth watches in awe as he takes his stand, first like a gentle cooling zephyr that escalates into the coldest of winds blinding the trees and ripping the leaves to make a grand golden cloak which he dons and rushes to the first unfrozen brook to gaze at his beauty. He is a blaze of gold, brown, yellow, dusky red hues, vermillion, reds that scream romance and passion. Fall is glorious. His three sisters gaze with gentle humor at his antics, they titter and leave him to elder sister winter.

Winter holds the key to all the earth’s activities, she bides her time while fall preens and gloats, soon her drug will take its effect on him, and he too will fade into the mist and sleep. Everything must sleep eventually so that the cycle remains intact. Earth never changes its song; it is heard throughout the universe over time. Scientists often mistake her songs for other voices reaching out, when will they learn to recognize their own voices repeating, repeating as we all cycle through eternity singing earth’s wonderful song of the ages.

“Do you remember me, when I speak of things old, of things present or past you seem to understand. Where did you come from? So brash so devastatingly beautiful like falls’ gold leaves to unravel and unsettle my thoughts. From a time before when I knew you then dressed in another hue. You tell me to finish it, the rhyme called life, finish what we started or finish what we know. Can you recall the walks at midnight when gulls are asleep and unicorns gently snore? Your hand tucked warm in mine our steps in tune and heart entwined. We never spoke after midnight for the stars played softly making our skin tingle capturing our imaginings, they played our song sublime. I knew your brown eyes long lashed, your sepia toned skin, strong teeth, soft hands that pleasured my temples when I hurt. I knew your tender heart so kind, so true, and so valiant. Then there was your ample leafy bosom, nipples brown and erect like sweet naseberries to enjoy at my every whim. Ah, how well I knew you then your mind a treasure trove of intellectual treats, do you remember me? Our wedding day, you said you were reborn, flowers in your hair I swayed to sweet ukulele music the wind in my face as you pressed up against me with endless promises. I laughed when you cried because your flowers fell apart; I told you that I have seen things fall apart before.  You laughed when I cried because I misplaced your gifts; we laughed a lot back then. You can’t remember me now because your eyes are younger but can you sense a feeling? An otherness? A suggestion of us? No, don’t try; it is enough that I still know you now, let me sing my song for I am the earth,” (lmh. Do you remember me”, 7/29/03)

I know another man; his name is Lester the Alligator. He lives in a marshy area in a metropolitan city. The public was not aware that this man walked among them. Even though they interacted with him daily, they did not know that he was Lester the Alligator who examined them from the underbelly and who saw their sins and short comings with a third wise eye. Lester was clever and he avoided entrapment. One day he decided not to wear his invisible cloak and went freely among the people of the city.

He picked some mangoes and he ate a small baby creature. I won’t say the specie. The village folks went ballistic with rage. They ranted and demanded blood from the government minister they had elected. They wanted Lester to be trapped and killed; he had no right to enter the community for he was scum. Not for a moment did they ever think that Lester could have been hungry considering that they had expanded the village so far into Lester’s wild domain taking away almost all of his natural food and leaving him desperate. The government minister pondered the request and then declared that Lester was entitled to eat like everyone else and that there will not be any posses formed to hunt the poor man-thing, also that going forward Lester would be considered a Sage and that people should consider taking his advice because Lester was a man for all seasons and had an eye for detecting the truth about things that puzzled.

In his wanderings throughout the village Lester gleaned much, he saw for himself what the people were all about and why they did what they did. He did not offer excuses for them because like me he believed that there is an innate watchman who rings a bell whenever we are approaching immorality or physical danger. We can choose to heed the bell or not. One of the later Philosophers, Thomas Hobbes said that the life of man is “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. That is quite a mouthful and a rather dark description of our specie. According to Lester, despite our evolution, despite our improvement in civility and education, we are still carrying those genes Hobbes described, we are still brutes who do not heed our inner warning bells and will need another 1000 years to evolve satisfactorily.

Wading through the swamp Lester encountered a man who made stealing his daily exercise. He stole everything. If it was fixed, he would rip the object from its base, as an example complete bathroom fixtures, zinc from the roofs of houses, cattle, provisions from the fields and so on. He did not rely on his conscience and by the time he came out of his teens his conscience had shrunk to the size of a pea and quite helpless to be of any use to him. This man Lester said had evolved into a full brute, a brute that terrorized the community; he even killed the community members. He killed their animals by poisoning them, he poisoned their fields, he set fire to their homes and he evaded the police by staying submerged in a river for over an hour. Who can do that except a brute? This was a brute the named Godfrey the harmful, a brute akin to Grendel.

Godfrey the Harmful that was how he was known to the people. In all his years on this earth never once did Godfrey make a warm or meaningful contribution to society, to the earth or to a single other human being. What was his purpose Lester pondered, is he to serve as a warning to the rest of us, or can this creature be reformed even now in his great age. Godfrey is no longer a harm to the community because time has taken care of him, all his strength is gone, and he bends at an angle facing the earth that he spent his life disrespecting. With his spine curved at such a disfiguring angle he is no longer upright but is bent forward as if in extreme supplication. No longer is he able to look into the eyes of another human unless he is lying down and that is not a possibility because no one wishes to be near him. He must travel the earth for the rest of his remaining life in a penitent posture, with luck his heart and kidneys are in good condition so he may live for a very long time because he has much to tell the earth. There will be atonement to complete the cycle.

Lester is aggrieved and continues his reflections back to Panama during the time the canal was being built. During that period, mankind, Lester said, was nasty and without conscience in the way the common man dealt with each other during the cholera outbreak in 1904-1914. A man for all seasons, Lester relates from the under belly how the disease ran wantonly through the site taking so many lives that the medical authorities might have lost count. The thing that struck Lester to his core was how the dead was piled up with the dying and carted off to be buried. He recalls the tale of one dying man who was lying in the putrid cesspool of his filth, vomit and urine, his skin drawn tightly over his visible skeleton and his eyes sunk back into their sockets looked wild and hopeless. Wracked in excruciating pain praying for the dark sleep to come, his very dry lips moved with his last request.

The man Lester said prayed and begged the watchman to open Valhalla’s gates and let him wash and come in. He heard a voice approaching him, and he felt hands lifting him roughly by his feet. Glancing at the scene he realized that it wasn’t the watchman, but instead those that collected the dead for burial.   They dragged the man and bumped his head as they dragged his almost dead yet still tender body. He cried out, “Please, I am not dead as yet you cannot bury me”, and the common man replied, “Yes but you will be dead soon, load him up.” They flung the still pulsing brittle body on top of a pile of bodies some dead and others like him, still pulsing. This collector of the dead, Lester said was a man in communion with evil, a man who has discarded his natural goodness for the searing numbness of darkness. He too must atone before he is thrown overboard during rough seas when he travels back to Kingston Jamaica. The earth always collects her wages, always. Will there be a second chance?

“And yet I wonder, what have I done to gain the favor of time? Did I take care of the days and years, did I heed the clouds and noted the winds directions? Did my footsteps fall carefully over small things, did ‘myself’ become ‘us’, are we responsible for all that is, and if so, I am grateful for a new day to love to care, to weep when Angels sing once more at my rebirth.”(lmh, ‘On the occasion of my birth’10/3/10).

Lester continues to grieve for mankind, it is what he does, a man for all seasons that he is, he stands apart and gives comfort to the ones who will listen. Lester is kind, but he still must eat and will waste away if he refuses to kill and eat. It is the natural order that dictates that Alligators should eat meat and not fruits. Lester must eat, the government minister said so. The woman is unsuspecting, she is engrossed with her phone, Lester dons his cloak and become invisible, it was quick. The villagers found only her shoes and ironically her Alligator skin handbag. They did not mourn her because they felt that she had atoned for poisoning her last five husbands. A suspicion the villagers harbored for years but just could not find credible proof. She left a fortune in jewelry and the daughter of her last husband who never bought her a dress enjoyed every diamond. This was her step- daughter whom she refused to aid when she tried to escape her abusive husband.

The day is ending and my agenda is still long. I am concerned over this because I know that in theory there is no tomorrow and I must endeavor to do all that I can today, but my mortality whispers urgently and my body is wining this battle. I too must eat and drink or perish. Hunger is a huge distraction for me. I can ignore so many other encumbrances but this one comes at me like a rabid dog attacking a perceived enemy. At the top of the hour I turn my mind away and banish the desire, quarter hour down the road I am again aware of those inner warning bells gently chiming and by the thirty minute curve my mortality beats a tempo in my skull and if I do not make a dash for it my mood changes and I exchange places with the rabid dog and pose a danger to those around me. I am no good when I am hungry or tired. I feel badly about my weaknesses but I have not mastered faking my emotions.

Life has spoiled me for I have never truly been hungry so I have no will against the urge. I was not always rich but I have never experienced desolation, I was always able to afford food. Yes, I said rich. Your reaction to that statement was priceless. Neither of us is poor, we are both rich and have taken our status for granted. I was richer and was it not for the bankruptcy I could claim to be wealthy. But rich is good. I am debt free and my needs are very few. Coffee, books, two meals per day, the occasional chocolate bar, nice shoes, exquisite restaurants, and a working computer, and air conditioning, will suffice me into eternity. That is my idea of rich. I forgot to say I have an automobile that needs to be driven more frequently.

I consider us to be rich because we have lived for such a good and long period of time, and we are fairly unscathed physically and emotionally. To live long is an abundant blessing. We can afford bread and cheese and our medications. I sincerely hope that I transition before the two tablets that I need to take daily become any more costly than they are now. I don’t want to be forced to choose between purchasing them and dining out, or buying books. Such an ugly predicament to face, but a gathering storm seems to be heading things in that direction.

Given all the things we have previously spoken about, these ones we have now touched on are the most trivial. Food and frippery. There is more to life than eating and going to the toilet. That is what I am always telling my son. Hopefully he will take the statement into consideration before he turns forty. How the years run up on you without warning. In much the same way that life begins by thrusting the youth into the river of life and he must sink or swim without coming out of the river. Life is a straight run toward our destiny; it ought to be done purposefully. I cannot explain what I mean by that without descending into nit picking and other obscure explanations. Why don’t you know what I mean, or are you only being a nuisance? We will end today with good will. Bella!

 

It is a great day for a wedding, it’s the end of summer and folks run helter skelter lighting grills and spreading picnic blankets. Weddings captivate my imagination. I like the ceremony, but only if it’s traditional and is at least an hour long. Why dress up for fifteen minutes in the church, which by the way is the wedding. No fancy insipid vows written by sex induced longings. Tradition is good, for better or for worse should be said and meant, otherwise what is the point of loving me long till death us do part? Surely things will get complicated during the course of life and will require devotion and a good spine. I once attended a wedding that cost in excess of fifty thousand dollars when the dust had settled. I spent thirteen hundred dollars on a dress and an additional sum on other trappings to adorn myself. After two years the couple called it quits. I am not happy about these developments, so now I only attend funerals, they don’t cost me a thing, except my deepest emotions.

The deceased cannot and will not call it quits after the very expensive funeral, and my one little black dress is quite a trouper. With all the crying and veiled faces, who will notice the fashion repeat, besides, nowadays no one cares how they dress for a funeral. I may well be the only one wearing a dress below my knees with my bosom covered. Society has gone mad regarding how they appear in public. Who can appear the most naked seem to be the challenge and magazines dedicate pages of journalistic fawning by referring to these bands of cloth draping the body parts as fashion. Who is the fool in the picture and who is the miscreant penning the article. Funerals are more introspective whereas weddings invite fantasia and insincerity.

Having just said that vows ought to be kept, I am also wondering if we should bother have any vows whatsoever. We do not keep vows sacred. Why would a perfect model of society try on a daily basis to inveigle his female friend to engage in a relationship with him? She knows he is married, he knows that she knows, yet he is almost dragging her into the nearest hotel. Perhaps if there were no expectations regarding fidelity the divorce rates would be almost negligible. Do rules create impiety? And, apropos of nothing, should a beggar have a bank account?

My friend’s mother died recently and he is quietly absorbing the idea that his mother of so many precious years is no longer available to him for conversations and laughter. As a male, I am sure the dynamics between him and his mother was quite intense and very visceral.   Maternal bonding is more than genes and giving birth. So many women give birth as a matter of being female, while others give birth and experience the grace of creation and being a part of the universal chain of life. My friend grieves for his siblings as well, he grieves for the loss his children suffered losing their grandmother. Like me he will master his emotions soon enough and become more accepting of his condition now that he is an orphan. I don’t yet know the feel of being without both parents because I still have one, yet in time it will be my destiny.

We haven’t met in a while and so much has come and gone. Two days ago I celebrated a birthday. I hoped that we would have met before or even on the day for a chat and some tea. Your smile of amusement did not escape me and I know your exact thought. I have been drinking more tea and that for you signify a change of some kind. Maybe, I wouldn’t rule out that consideration. That’s what I think. I can’t meet long today because I am completely unsettled. I woke up knowing that it was going to be a day when, if I may take the liberty, my demons have gathered me close and it is no use to wriggle as I won’t escape. What to do but sit back and learn from their activities. My concern is the essay that I need to write. I can’t struggle or I will make them notice me and hold me closer. Yes, I know I am being cryptic but it’s the way things are today. Let’s call it a day. Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Pg. 28. Para 4

[ii] Aristotle physics: 199a

[iii] See pg. 11, para. 3.

[iv] Mechanical horse. A Snapple truck.

[v] Pg. 1. Para 3.

[vi] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

[vii] Pg. 4, paragraph 1.

[viii] There is nothing left for me, it’s not worth my heart. (loosely translated)

[ix] “I was nothing till I met you”

[x] “I still love you”

 

 

 

 

1. The following poetic pieces used in this work by Lana M. Ho-Shing are all the property of Lana M. Ho-Shing written at various times. They are as follows:

 

Your laughter is like

Remembrance

Surely the Lord is

Ode to love

Jared’s Lament

Ode to love

In Daylight I Sought Thee.

Old man

Proverbs 16

Author unknown

Woe is Woman

When Trees Say Nothing

I imagined You

No Day To Die

Aristotle

My Creation

Dreamscape

Musings on a cold Sunday Morning

SARS in your Stars

Love on the Hudson (Ferrymania)

Early morning Voices When I am Naked and Vulnerable

Meditations- Marcus Aurelius

Sleep don’t care

Japan is a Phoenix

911, I love you

Hell Is a Place

A lover’s Haiku.

Immortal Beloved.

September Song.

Do you remember me?

On the occasion of my birth.

 

 

Proverbs 16, Aristotle, Author unknown, and Meditations- Marcus Aurelius, are not mine and those authors speak for themselves.