Creepy Hallowen Stories

 “Be afraid... be very afraid.” – The Fly

It is the scary season. Polls say most people are walking around right now with anxiety about the upcoming election. But I am worried about the rest of them. There was a bumper sticker a few years ago, “if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” But the attention is just tension now. The outrage is all used up. It has burned to ash.

There is a scary old crone at my house. I caught a glimpse of her at the zoom call to the doctor. She looks like she might be two hundred and forty four years old, at least. She is missing one front tooth, and the other one hurts. She has fallen. Now she lurches about the house with an irregular, halting gait. 

The right leg is weak and painful. The left one is blocked, maybe clotted.

You cannot walk unless your legs, both left and right, cooperate. No progress will happen.

Out front, the pumpkins from the garden are pale, the result of mixing with the seeds from last year’s white pumpkin.

This year’s  jack o’ lanterns will be yellow, like the smoke damaged sky. 

The Concord grapes never quite got blue this year. The birds began to pick them off when they were still a reddish purple, so we had to bring them in.

Night comes too early these days. Every evening of late, Jupiter and Saturn, paired in this October’s skies, peer down over the treetops, into our bathtub, like peeping eyes. 

A heavy, overbearing, hotheaded, red Mars hovers each night, presiding over a heavily damaged moon. An angry red monster stalks the internet. He has been hit; he has been wounded. This is the dangerous kind. The red color is bleeding out of his hair and down into his face. Lies are flying all around him; or maybe those are bats.

Zombies with headphones stagger about the streets, mumbling to themselves. Almost everyone I see seems to be wearing a mask. This year, Halloween just goes on and on.

Notes From The Climate Front

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, 

but by those who watch them without doing anything.”– Albert Einstein

Notes From The Climate Front

Sometime in September; Somewhere on the Left Coast; Somewhere in the Smoke Clouds

As the fires from climate catastrophe swirl around us, I become particularly aware of the flood of refugees. More numerous than in recent years, they are apparently flying in from elsewhere. 

Luckily, our house did not burn down last week in the firestorm, so at the moment we are in a little island of safety, despite the worst smoke I have ever seen.

People around us report that cougars, bears, foxes, and coyotes have been displaced and are helping themselves to any local cats and dogs they can catch for lunch.

But our refugees are of the feathered kind. This year they seem more present and close to our watered island and pond in the forest clearing. We have never used any poisons here, and have long ago stopped trying to grow anything but what the forest itself plants here, so it is bit of a refuge. 

So all day we watch through the filtered smoke as more than a few local birds, plus a lot of new ones, hang around, stop in, and move on. I have seen quite a few new visitors and species that I have never noted in this location before.  Whole flocks of species I have never seen. 

No one is outside or driving around in this pandemic combined with toxic smoke event. It is so quiet! Maybe the birds are just glad the humans are all indoors as they cower in houses to escape the smoke. 

Fall migrations are underway now, and surely this is disrupted. The entire west coast of north America is smoky from the fires that are sprinkled over the landscape. Each successive year seems to be record breaking over the previous one.

Each successive year, until now, there are fewer, not more birds, overall. But this year feels poignant and pathetic. The birds are more numerous, apparently, only because they are refugees from habitat they are losing elsewhere, so even more of net loss, overall.

Still, when I look out my window, I wish that I too, could fly away to a better place. As soon as I figure out where that is. Some other planet?

Looking for Peace in the Garden

From The Flower Child’s Garden Planet:

Everyone knows who the flower children were. The iconic photo of the girl putting a daisy in the gun barrel of the trooper at the peace demonstration says it all. Peace and love sums it up nicely. 

That girl has probably grown up and has grandchildren, if not great grand children by now, but the message is as fresh as this seasons’ daisies.

Around the same time as the iconic flower child photo appears, the humans from Earth first see an actual photograph of the whole Earth from space, another moment marking photo. It is the beginning of an era.

We are all globalists now. The time of taking sides is passing because you can’t take sides when you know the world is round.

And what goes around, comes around. And around. Everything is not just connected now, as it always was, really. We are connected visibly, in real time. Causes and effects are accelerating. Images, each said to be worth a thousand words, now fly around the world by the billions daily. 

A single meme, story, event, or image that once produced a wave of reaction and response, now is just another blip in the roaring tide. The cacophony is now a constant storm on a choppy sea. Even the big waves come one after another, without time to recover or process the impact.

I once nearly drowned. I got stuck while swimming in the surf off the coast of Mexico, in the place where the waves repeatedly broke over me and pounded me into the rocks. Each time I stood up, I was hit again. The water was not deep, but the waves were big, and I was little.  If not for the big strong Mexican man who noticed my plight and pulled me out of that zone, I would not be here writing this now.

The world feels like that to me now, as I sit here, in the eye of an enormous human caused climate change storm, as the waves of global pandemic crash over us, and the flames of firestorms across the West lick at the door of my town. We are in the stage in this drama now of realizing that things have seriously gone awry and we must do something. 

We need help. We have got to get ourselves back to the garden. All one planet garden. If there is not rescue, things will not get better. We gotta stop the way we’re going, or we just might arrive. We long for peace. The answer is still love.

“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.” -Michael Pollan

Getting Woke

Global warming gets real when it comes to your house. The whole left coast is on fire, from the bottom of California to the top of Washington, skies are orange. The sun is vermillion even at high noon, that is, when you can see it at all on this otherwise sunny and theoretically cloudless day. The air quality is toxic for all.  

That’s it, I say to myself. I’m moving. I’m so outa here. I’m moving to...

Um...

Another planet? 

There is no place left to run. I’m out here on the wet side of the left coast in the most progressive neighborhood on the planet practically.

Fires are burning all around us. There is no landline phone service, the power is down, so no internet, and no water because that’s powered by electricity. 

If a fire came up through the forest where we are, we might not know it, because visibility is so poor. No one would be able to come to help put out the firestorm anyway, they are triaging and only able to warn and evacuate people right now, if that. All of the firefighting crews are overwhelmed. Whole towns are burning to ashes in an hour or two, just upwind from here. Ashes of these towns are falling like snow on our portable folding solar panels, which are just barely and intermittently charging our phones, to keep a connection with loved ones.

The radio is our main source of news, with disturbing noises alerting us to announcements of evacuation areas and routes. This is a level three alert, they warn of a nearby area. “Do not stop and gather your things. Leave now!”

We hear of friends who barely make it out because they evacuate too late. As they run away, they turn to see their cars blow up.

These things happen fast. The forest has been drying out in a half continent sized mega drought going on decades now, a result of climate change. 

Actually it is dying out. These trees burning now will be changed out by nature for more dry climate trees, the kind that live south and east of the wet coast, pines for firs. New animals will come to replace the ones who have lived here because the habitat will be different.

But when the hot east wind came up a few days ago, the sky turned brown and the air turned smoky. A balmy blue sky on a quiet afternoon became a hell world in minutes. All night we hunker down with the radio left on, half sleeping while the howling hot wind slams tree bits onto the house.

It’s funny what you think of putting in the car and the go-bag at such a time, if you have the luxury of having time to do that, which we do, so far..

The dog and cat carriers sit by the front door, of course. Then you wander around the house in the dim amber light of mid day, rating the objects you may never see again. Oddly dispassionate, I pack a few bits of clothes, all of them blue, from my overflowing closet, some daily body care items like toothbrush and so on, and move on to my studio with my art and tools of my art. 

Many years of my artwork is here. Many carloads. Much of my life’s work. I can fit only a tiny fraction of it in a car. I end up putting only a few of the projects I’m actually working on, right now, into the car. I feel I have to finish them! That is where my heart is with them. A few of the materials and tools I will need to do so as well. 

The rest, well I already finished them. Funny logic, if that is what it is.

Later I sleep. In my nightmares, I dream of my packed car rolling into a lake. All is lost. Then I cry. 

I wake up, with my head throbbing from smoke inhalation, glad to see I’m still at home, with the strange orange light in the sky and the red sun again, coming in the window. 

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope, but I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.” 

 

Greta Thunberg, 16 year-old Swedish Activist

Reminders

Sacred Reminders

Recently I began receiving ten or more unwanted spam calls per day. They were irritating! I needed peace of mind, because they were interrupting my flow, and I was getting mad. I tend to want to fight back.

There are various strategies I have employed with them, since my phone company and congressperson have, so far, failed to fix the problem. 

One way is to waste their time by playing along and keeping them on the phone a long time. There are even apps you can get with robots that will do it for you. “Huh? I can’t hear you...just a sec....wait, I’ll be right back... could you repeat that?” Does not work for robo calls, however.

Then there is shaming. “psychiatric helpline, what is your problem? Why are you trying to make a living by bothering other people? Are you some kind of sadist creep?”

How about silly? (Breathing into phone) in high pitched voice: “um, mommy is sweeping. (More breathing) Do you want to pway?”

Or threatening. “Cybercrime hotline. You block em, we stalk em! Would you like us to trace a call for you?”

You can take your own voice out of the equation, and let your radio or tv answer, till they figure out it’s not a live person and hang up.

Unfortunately, all of these take a lot of energy. Whew! Maybe I need to meditate more. They say the best thing to do is just to not answer.

But suddenly I hear gunfire in my neighborhood. And I know what to do. There are many places out in the country where it is legal to just shoot off your guns, whenever you like, any time of the day or night. When I first moved here, from the city, I was shocked! 

But it was fine when I figured out how to handle it. Now, whenever I hear gunfire, I imagine it is Shiva, destroyer of illusions, doing his work. Making the world a better place. Hey, it works for me.

Years ago, before there were apps and cell phones, I looked for some kind of randomly occurring reminder to stop whatever I was doing, take a deep breath, and center. There were watches with multiple alarms, but you had to preset them, so not really random. Finally I got a random meditation alarm app. Maybe alarm is not the word. Reminder. But I just never use it. Maybe it is too contrived.

Now I have a random reminder that is working in more than one way. When I get my daily ten or more spam calls, it cues me to take a moment and meditate. No more irritation, just a lovely real time call from the universe. I changed my ringer to a pleasant meditative chime, and I just let it ring. All good.

Unitics Treasure

Unitics Treasure Found Hidden in Plain Sight on the Interweb

Not long ago, a treasure chest, filled with gold, precious jewels, ancient artifacts, and worth a pretty good sum of money, was found somewhere in the rugged west of North America.

It had been hidden years earlier by a collector of such items, who had then advertised of its existence online. You got to keep it for yourself if you discovered it. He gave cryptic hints of where he had buried it in the form of a poem. He had said that everything you would need to know to find it was contained the the poem.

But when the when the treasure box was found, the finder chose to remain anonymous, and the hider as well as the watchers of the story were left unsatisfied. Perhaps this is a fitting end to the story, illustrating the difference between a physical treasure and a spiritual treasure.

One wonders if he felt guilty for ending the fun of the hunt. Maybe he was afraid someone would come and take the treasure away from him. Or maybe he was ashamed because he perhaps got hints from the stories of those who actually died looking for it.

Like that treasure chest, I too have hidden a gift for people to find, and it is hidden in plain sight on the cloud. It is the book I have written called Unitics. 

You will find within, pearls of ancient wisdom, Golden nuggets of truth, and the modern crypto currency of our evolutionary spirit. You will find a newly minted coin with politics on one side, and Unitics on the other. 

Unlike a physical treasure, this one can be found and enjoyed by an undetermined number of readers, as many as find it. Unlike a material treasure, you can share it, give it away, and still have it. You get to keep the treasure, and no one can take it away from you. This is the difference between a worldly and a spiritual treasure.

It is a short read, filled with full color pictures on nearly every page.

To read Unitics, the pdf, the entire book, for free, click on this:

Unitics

The Beginning of Sex and Gender

“Nowadays, we are assigning gender even before birth. We have become socially conditioned to participate in the gendering of children at the earliest possible moment - whenever a sonogram can identify its genitalia. Gender-reveal parties have become a trendy way to celebrate the child’s fate, steering them down a life of masculine or feminine ideals before ever meeting them.” -George Matthew Johnson

My friend Saturn became a grandmother four years ago. But she just found out that she has a granddaughter. 

Oh, she’s been playing with all four of the grandchildren regularly since their births, and there has never been any question that three of them were born male and one was born female, as far as their sex at birth goes. But the parents want to respect the choice of each child of what, if any, gender they want to identify with.

When asked at age two if they were a boy or a girl, the two year old female child replied, “probably a girl”. Saturn did not ask very often. Once a year or so. The second time, at age three, the answer was also casually noncommittal.

So everyone around “them” learns to use the pronouns they/them. It is an education for all. People start to become aware of how deep seated their thinking, and concomitant projecting, of sex and gender is. Friends of the family begin to say stereotypical things to them like “oh what a pretty outfit you have on today” as soon as they figure out which set of genitals is actually in the diapers. 

The box we put people into very early in life is very set and strong. Even family members often slip up, catch themselves, correct their pronouns, and notice their internal assumptions. It is a real consciousness raiser.

“Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space.” -Katrina Karkazis, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience

Some extended relatives freak out. They warn that the children will grow up confused. They will not be able to “fit in”!

But soon it begins to dawn on everyone that if a child can not fit in, maybe it is because the problem is with the sexist society. So, some choose to extend their new habit of calling the children by the gender neutral pronouns to calling everyone by them. We begin to realize that to have a well adjusted child, we will have to adjust the world to fit the children, not the other way around. To force a child to adjust to a sick society is simply child abuse.

I consider all of these issues and conclude that henceforth I shall refer to all as they/them unless I have a specific contextual reason to do otherwise, much like the policy that news organizations have on not mentioning the race of a person in a news report.

Why are we so obsessed with children’s sex? Why do we need to refer to every persons’ genitals every time we speak of them? If that is such an important identifier, why don’t we also say, call them, for instance, the “short, fat, pink, brown haired, male” person? Or the “dark skinned, bald, skinny, wheelchair bound male” person? What is so important about the knowledge of, and constant reference to, just the gender?

Other languages gender everything. Studies have shown that this does in fact change the way we think about those arbitrarily gendered things. In some languages the sun or moon is male or female, and in others, it is vice versa. We say in English, the “mother” Earth. Why does the Earth have to be a mother? Is it not more like a tiny male sperm in a solar system dominated by a huge mother ovum sun?

“Let's stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient.” -Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

At the age of four, Saturn’s granddaughter finally announces she is, in fact, a girl. 

Saturn is overjoyed. In the meantime, since the birth of grandchild number one, three more grandchildren have arrived, all with male physical reproductive apparatus. They are being dressed and reared with free choice as well. 

But their parents are acutely aware that their own feelings about this include the knowledge of the different cultural status and prospects of boys and men. It can be postponed, but not ignored. They notice they have different impulses around the issue than they did with the female child. The cultural biases are deeply grooved, not only into the culture, but also our own unconscious feelings and attitudes.

“Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it.” -Pierre Bourdieu

Yesterday, the four year old granddaughter says brightly of their sibling: “We use they/them for (her one year old male sibling). When they get old enough, they will tell us what they want to be called. They might want to be a girl, or a boy, or neither one.”

“The last dragon was apparently still too young to have made up its mind which sex it wanted to be; it didn't have any horns at all.” 

― Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons