Or is that two?

For more pictures click here.

Though I’m still following the election process, now that the choices have narrowed down considerably, and I’m not nearly as enthused about the remaining candidates, the blog won’t focus so much on the election.

I’m sure this news will relieve some of you no end, if you’re even still following the blog. But be warned, I will now and then post some politics, just as I have in the past. It’s too important to ignore completely.

I moved the dates forward on the previous two posts to help redirect the blog again to a primary focus on poetry, art, creativity, and alternative spirituality. I know, cheating. She’s too lazy to even write a new post.

Update 02-15-2008:

A belated

HAPPY LOSAR

to everyone. Februrary 7th was the Tibetan New Year, the start of year 2135 Male Earth Mouse. For more information about Losar, visit Wikipedia’s Losar page or this site.

For more information about Tibet and China, you might want to read TWELVE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TIBET AND CHINA.

Mt. Palomar has four inches or so of new snow. I’m sure you get sick and tired of snow in other parts of the country, but here in San Diego County it’s a novelty we get every few years and then only at the higher elevations.

Whatever and however you celebrate this time of year, Happy Holidays to you and yours. While it lasts, we’re celebrating our lovely view of snow.

. . .

This is an abbreviated version of a post with more photos at Mystery of a Shrinking Violet. If you haven’t read my romantic mystery, Snow Angels, it’s available as a free ebook, here.

I’m finally shopping my novel around, so I have more time to take care of the rest of my life. There’s something about a book-length writing project that shuts out too much else from the range of my attention, so I’ve decided that unless I sell this novel it’s going to be smaller creative projects for a while, like poetry, short stories, and some needlework and painting. I’m interested in art journals, at the moment, and in playing my guitar more. I’m a rank beginner, but I find music puts my brain into a completely different frequency or something, and I like it there.

While it would be easy (for some people perhaps, not me) to set a list of goals to accomplish, and stick to that set list, I’m more of a drifter. I look forward to browsing my creative urges for a while to see where they lead me. Hopefully they’ll lead into a little more organization and housecleaning. Writing a novel can really upset your housecleaning routine — if you even have one to start with, which I don’t.

The local birds seem to think our yard is a good place to visit while the last bits of fire and smoke die down, and they’ve come through in flocks as well as individually. At one moment this morning they seemed to be throwing a bird party in our side yard. I stepped outside and saw four or five hummingbirds, a flock of common bushtits (which don’t normally show themselves in the open), a sparrow, something else I couldn’t identify hopping around in the bougainvillea, and a mockingbird displaying the white of its wings and singing its heart out. All this in the space of a minute while I just watched, mesmerized by their activity. We normally don’t get so many at once, though we feed hummingbirds and scrub jays regularly. I suppose some may have been displaced by the fires.

There’s still a lot of smoke in the air, but it’s great to be home. I keep wanting to post some of my thoughts and even a little critique regarding the evacuations and information channels, but it feels so good just to be home after being away for four days last week, and I’m thrilled with how much was saved. I don’t want to seem in any way critical of the people responsible for that. Suffice to say, if you’re a local government official, the more information you can feed evacuees (in as many languages as needed please, for everyone’s safety), and the faster you can get them home after the danger is past, the more willing people will be to evacuate in the future. It may seem that some people are hard cases about evacuating, but I think most who seem that way have their reasons. We have a natural homing instinct that makes it very difficult, particularly added to the stress of a disaster, to be away from one’s home, to feel that one can possibly know enough about what’s happening there. One wants to do something, and it’s difficult to relinquish control.

My husband, dog, and I were blessed to be able to stay with loving family members who put up with our stressed-out state of mind, and we were blessed again to come home and find our house still standing, in fact our entire neighborhood and downtown area untouched except by smoke. There’d been no looting — not that anyone would want my old things anyway — and the power hadn’t even gone out, so our minor fear that we’d have to restock our freezer turned out to be unfounded. Today the smoke still lingers, and the dry weather and heat keep everyone on alert, in the knowledge the fires are contained but not necessarily out. We’re cautious yet immensely grateful.

Many thanks to all our firefighters, and to all the visiting firefighters, including those from out of state and Canada, who came through to help save lives and homes, as well as to all the other officials and support people who worked so hard to ensure things went smoothly here in San Diego County.

This has been a good summer for butterflies in my little corner of the world. I’ve seen a lot more variety this year than in past years, and yesterday I sighted a Western Tiger Swallowtail in a pepper tree in the yard behind ours. It surprised me, and at first glance I thought I was seeing an oriole making like a butterfly, it was so large. I haven’t seen many swallowtails since I was a kid, and then I usually saw darker, smaller ones, maybe the Anise Swallowtail, which looks more familiar to me. I think the most common butterfly of my childhood was the Mourning Cloak, but I rarely see those now.

We had to say goodbye to our little gray cat Emily today. We think she was about 20 years old, but we’re not sure, because she adopted us just over nine years ago, appearing in our back yard to steal our puppy’s food. She had a lot of problems, resulting from having nearly starved on her own without front claws, and having possibly been abused. She was missing half her teeth when she found us, and we think she suffered the cat version of PTSD. But over time she warmed up to all of us and became an integral part of our family. We like to think we were able to give her a nice retirement here, after all her troubles. She helped us say goodbye to another dear cat friend, Merlin, in 2000, and today we said goodbye to her.

I’ll miss her purrs, her silky, silver-gray fur, and the gentle tap of her paw when she wakened me in the mornings.

Just a few nights ago, The Lord of the Rings trilogy played on television again. We didn’t watch, because I intended to watch our DVDs again soon, but we caught the tail end of Return of the King, and the final song.

For days that song has stayed in my mind, popping into consciousness at odd moments. Today it did again, and I wondered about it, because I couldn’t recall the singer’s name, the name of the song, or the lyrics. The music just kept haunting me. So I looked it up, and remembered as soon as I sat down to do a search that it was Into the West. Annie Lennox sang it for the film. I love this song. Right now it’s helping me say goodbye to Emily. I learned that it was partially inspired by the death of young New Zealand filmmaker, Cameron Duncan, and first performed in public at his funeral. That makes it seem even more appropriate as Emily’s song of passage.

Safe journey, little friend.

The song is available as part of the soundtrack from the film: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [SOUNDTRACK]

While I mulled over various blog topics, including the essay I planned on honeybees, my husband sent me a link to an environmental article about pollinators and the recent scares regarding disappearing bees, Are the Bees Dying off Because They’re Too Busy? The article offers a slightly different answer to the puzzle than that of GM crops, but one every bit as indicative of our artificial modern food production methods. It surmises that bee colony exhaustion, due to overuse as pollinators on factory farms, is the cause of disappearing bees. Small beekeepers who let their bees live a more natural life cycle don’t seem to have the same problems as commercial beekeepers who lease hives to one large monoculture farm after another, almost year round.

That made a nice segue into another topic I’ve planned to write about, the importance of family stories. A few weeks ago I came across a brief memoir my mom wrote of her childhood in San Diego during the Depression. When food luxuries were tough for my grandmother to come by, she would sometimes visit her father’s ranch in Potrero, just this side of the border from Tecate. She’d bring home fresh eggs and honey, and presumably milk and butter, since he also kept dairy cows. The trip took a vehicle and gasoline that were often scarce, so there were times that those trips didn’t happen as often as she would’ve liked.

The honey came from my great-grandfather’s bees. My mom recorded no details of the process, but mentioned watching her grandfather extract honey from his hives. My grandmother wrote that at one time he had “90 stands of honey bees” in his apiary. No doubt the bees kept his orchard and garden well pollinated, as well as those of his neighbors. My great-grandfather was from the Danish island of Læsø, famous for its Northern brown bees, among other things. I don’t know whether he learned about beekeeping as a boy. I know he used to herd geese, and he left home at fourteen to sail the seas for ten years, made three trips around Cape Horn, and once almost got stranded in Antwerp. I also remember Grandma telling how he’d hitch a team to a wagon and make the trip from Potrero down to the shore in San Diego, two days there, and two days back. He’d load up with kelp to use as mulch in his garden after washing the salt out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he learned that use of kelp back on his island home.

What should’ve remained a pleasant excursion into my family’s past is blighted by recent news. The tiny community of Potrero, with its valley’s quiet agricultural history (Potrero is Spanish for “pasturing place”) was once home to Kumeyaay tribes, who subsisted on acorns and game from its oak woods, and carved metates into the nearby granite hills to grind meal. Potrero’s pastoral peace remained intact even when Pancho Villa’s rebellion took place just across the border. But the valley’s serenity may be about to change.

Blackwater USA wants to build an 824 acre training facility in Potrero, called Blackwater West. People in the community, the county, and the entire state who know of this plan are horrified.

There’s already fierce debate in Illinois regarding Blackwater North, an 80-acre facility there, as well as troubling reports of its response to wrongful death suits by families of its employees who fell in Iraq.

One has to wonder what the impact would be of such a facility, near environmentally fragile oak tree stands already threatened by Sudden Oak Death, and to the golden eagles that nest there. What about the fire hazards and the noise? The quiet little communities and single outlying residences near Potrero are some of the last true countryside settings left in San Diego County. Will they soon be shaken by the sound of weapons fire and helicopters resonating off nearby granite boulders?

Blackwater in Potrero is a bad idea.

I found a couple of videos about Blackwater at YouTube (warning, these are disturbing):

Blackwater, America’s Private Army

Blackwater: Shadow Army

Here’s another video, Blackwater Invades Illinois, with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

I’m on Internet overload at the moment. Does that happen to you? I kept this (my Internet computer) turned off for a while and only checked email once a day. I wanted to focus inward a little more. Now I’m back, and it’s like drinking a lot of coffee when you haven’t had any in a while. It’s easy to get carried in many different directions and have trouble settling on one thing. There is so much here! Blogs I like to visit, books to research for my reading list, and lots of reading material right here online, not to mention artwork, people, and news. We are incredibly busy people, and it shows online more than anywhere, I think, because it all bottlenecks right at our screens. Once I settle down again I’ll write a real post for this blog.

What I’m thinking about, and may write about:

• Honeybees (interesting social structure)
• Abstract versus Concrete (in thought, artwork, and writing)
• Making Pearls: Living the Creative Life, a book on creativity by watercolor artist Jeanne Carbonetti (I’ve read this before and just reread it, and I’m doing the painting exercises this time, having lots of fun with it.)
• The importance of family stories
• Some interesting people I’ve learned about online
• Our shadows
• More poetry (I have a lot started but nothing new finished at the moment)

But it’s hot right now, and that’s just one more excuse not to be at this computer very much.

Today I did something I never did before. I asked a stranger to turn down his music. I didn’t want to do this, but there’s a threshold beyond which desire, reason, and tolerance clash and all inhibitions fall away. Action must be taken before the senses are taken leave of.

I’ve put up with loud noise before. I’ve made some loud noises myself. But I don’t think I’ve ever had another’s noise assail my senses in quite this way. Not without being paid to endure it, and even then protection or escape was provided.

It was so loud the walls vibrated with each bass pulse. This went on for a while, and I tried to ignore it, put it out of mind, thinking any minute it would stop. I finally went out and shouted to the person to turn it down. I was four feet away and he didn’t hear me until I waved my arm and he turned and saw me.

All day I’ve contemplated why anyone wants to listen to music at that volume. A volume beyond which nothing else can be heard. A volume at which it seems to me hearing loss isn’t just a threat but a certainty. With the bass turned up so high that anything but that part of the sound is lost beside the assault on every cell in one’s body.

The reason I thought so much about it is that I like to live and let live. I don’t like to ask that anyone change how they live, be it appearance, behavior, or tastes. And it appears loud music is a taste. But I was given no choice. Sound doesn’t stay on a leash like a dog. It crosses boundaries. I wasn’t able to go about my business without him changing his. I couldn’t keep my hearing healthy and intact, keep my blood pressure down, while putting up with his choice of loss and overexcitement, the price for his immersion in explosive sound.

Why do some people like their music so loud? Or anything so loud? Are some ears, some sensibilities, more sensitive to this? Or have the less easy with loudness simply not lost as much, are we less impaired as yet, so we hear it more acutely? I too want to hear all the notes, but I didn’t hear all his notes. I didn’t hear any notes, only noise. It wasn’t music to my ears. I wonder if mine would be music to his, or if they’re already deadened to it.

I have no answer. But in searching for one I came across a Stephen Dobyns poem online, on this very topic, Loud Music, in which he examines the difference between his favored volume for music (loud) and that of his four-year-old stepdaughter. Some compensation, at least. I got a good poetry fix out of it.

There’s a quality of light just after a rain, when the sun first shines through gray and turns every green thing several shades brighter. The birds are subdued, but sound hopeful. The light sparkles in drops of water suspended on pine needles. It dims, then grows, in a pulsing kind of dance, from gray to green to gray again. Cars take on a different sound, driving a little faster, tires stirring up the water as it drains away.

It’s a liminal time, like dusk or dawn, or the beginning or end of the world. We stand inside the metamorphosis. Wet to dry, dry to wet. A moment suspended in time. Peace, for just a second, while the future resolves itself and prepares to unfold. More rain? Or not? Then a patch of blue appears.

From my journal, 1974.

This poem brings back memories. I recall typing it out as a homemade card for my dad for either his birthday or Father’s Day, weeks or months after I wrote it. Today I think a lot differently about perfection. Back then I secretly wanted perfect — perfect roses, perfect looks, perfect prospects, perfect romance. I envisioned a perfect future as an adult. A perfect home, a perfect family.

I’ve come to appreciate flaws, in nature and in people — in all the surprising ways things turn out. A perfect rose doesn’t exist, except in a hothouse, and I don’t want to live in a hothouse. No one has a perfect life. Such a life only exists in that trite phrase, happily ever after. Does anyone know what that means? Beauty? There are lots of unhappy beautiful people. Wealth? There are lots of unhappy wealthy people. A fairytale romance? We’ve seen where that got some real life princesses.

Today I find lopsided roses endearing. They’re more like me. I can identify. They’re more like everyone.

As for perfection in my work, in my actions, I’ve learned there are tradeoffs of time and energy and expected outcomes. I can negotiate with myself and decide when to stop and be content. There are points at which I know certain things are done. Maybe they’re perfect, maybe they’re not — but there’s no more to fix, adjust, edit, or tweak. It’s time to move along to the next thing. At that point the next thing becomes the now thing, and that’s most important.

But the sentiment expressed in the poem still applies, and I think a lot now, as I did when I struggled to decide what to do with my life, about one’s calling. We each have one, some purpose for being here. The thing is, it may remain a mystery all our lives, even as we fulfill it. Sometimes the really important things aren’t what we planned, sometimes we don’t even remember them, they’re just the after effects of our passage through others’ lives. The important things are more likely to happen behind us in positive ways if we’re kind than if we aren’t, if we appreciate others than if we don’t, if we’re forgiving rather than not. But we still may not know in this life what they were, how we made someone feel, or inspired them, or taught them.

I think we’re very lucky if we find a purpose we recognize and can be happy with, even if it doesn’t mean being a star, or rich, or having perfect teeth, or keeping one’s hair free of gray, or one’s hair altogether. I remember my mom once saying it would’ve been nice to have more money, but the most important thing one needed in abundance while raising kids was love. She left a lot of love in her wake.

Today I think that with all our flaws we’re glorious, spectacular. We shine, especially if we can accept our imperfections, even love them, and especially if we can love, forgive, and accept the flaws in others, and go on living each day as thoroughly, vibrantly, and full of wonder as possible.

Considering the peace that time has brought me, I wouldn’t be 18 again for anything.

But . . . if I had the body today that I was so dissatisfied with then, I’d be ecstatic. It’s true youth is wasted on the young. At least youthful bodies are. Damn it. (wink)

Copyright © 1974, 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

Turtleheart asks in Journaling Stuff:

“Do you regularly keep any kind of personal journal, online or off? What works best for you?”

I started out journaling on looseleaf notebook paper, as a girl. Sometimes I bought colored paper or a spiral notebook for a change. Later I collected bound blank books to journal in, but I feel freer handwriting on plain lined yellow pads, because I don’t care if I scratch out or mess them up.

Handwriting seems to connect me with my inner self more effectively than typing, so I write at least my initial pages of the day on notepads — sometimes all my pages of the day. Later I may transcribe what I want to keep onto the laptop. But I keep my older handwritten journal pages in folders in a file cabinet, filed by year. The years I write more fiction, I write fewer journal pages. That isn’t a conscious decision, just how it seems to work out.

For years I’ve done a full three pages of morning pages, if not more, in the manner of Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Sometimes I miss a day or maybe a few. Recently I took a planned break of a few weeks from all my journal writing, just to see how it felt, to feel how the pressure built in me to begin again. In a recent fit of frugality I save paper by limiting myself to two pages, the front and back of one sheet, whenever I can. For my fiction writing and blogging, once I get a flow started on paper I’m happy to switch to typing, which is a lot faster.

For many years I’ve kept dream journals, which I usually write as soon as I waken, before the dream slips out of my memory. This can be a frantic dance as I juggle my own need to jot down a few details to jog my memory later, with the dog’s need to get outside now. As I have time, I’m transcribing those to a digital format, so I can search through them easily. I’ve found so many patterns in my dreams, that I’m glad I’ve tracked them for so long. There are repeating themes, important personal insights, and even a few precognitive dreams.

I used to write more poetry, and I just came across the folder full of poems I wrote during my late teens and early twenties, some of which I’ll post here soon. Some of those years’ journals were lost, when a storage shed I kept them in leaked during a heavy rain. Now I wonder, why don’t I write much poetry anymore? I still do, but so seldom. Reading through that folder made me itch to write something fresh. But I also noticed how much poetry I wrote, as a girl, about whatever boy I was infatuated with at the time, and how flowery some of it was. I know I’ve always been a romantic, but . . . sheesh. You’ll have to be gentle with me if I post any of that here. I was so young, even for my chronological age at the time. Reading it to myself makes me feel as shy as I felt back then. Never fear, I’ll be picky about what I post, and I do intend to edit first.

I like to draw and paint, so I’ve experimented now and then with visual journaling, most recently with colored pencils on black paper, after reading The Mandala Healing Kit Workbook by Judith Cornell, Ph.D. Strictly amateur stuff. Uh, my mandalas I mean, not her book.

I still have some of those pretty blank books, so not to waste them I use them to record special events, or as gratitude journals, which I’ve found especially healing to keep when I get into a period of sadness. I’m using one to track my mantra practice, and I may hand copy some of my favorite older poems into one, as a personal keepsake. Perhaps some of the more memorable dreams as well.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my greed recently, my attachment to the material world that pulls me in and makes me desire something.

We live in a world where one is considered just a little insane if one doesn’t value the material, the necessity for money that we call practicality. There are degrees of practicality, though. There’s survival. We do need to ensure we have what we need, and if we love our family and friends, we want to see their needs met as well. We value responsibility, honesty, the abililty to take on debt responsibly and pay what we owe.

But there’s a point beyond survival, making ends meet, and responsibility — even beyond having a pleasant, reasonably comfortable existence. There’s a point at which what one person desires and thinks he’s entitled to is more important to him than what others need. That’s the greed zone. It’s alarmingly easy to slide into.

I’ve always been one of those impractical types, an artsy, dreamy, non-money-oriented kind of person. Adult necessity forced me to seek money. It was simply a gross requirement forced on me by growing up. I never saw myself as greedy. Thrifty, perhaps, because my mom tended to consider waste of food or things or money a near-capital offense.

But I have other forms of greed besides a desire for money. I still want the things money can buy. A larger house, nicer clothes, a new car, a vacation, a new sofa, and so on and so forth. It’s just that the business world never appealed to me that much, even when I was part of it, so I tended to reject the notion of money. But things, oh how I love my things, and those things I don’t have that I’d like to have. This easily becomes an obsession, wanting things I don’t have and, once I have them, a kind of ennui or boredom sets in that leads to wanting the next things on my list. It’s a kind of hunger, never satisfied, and the more I feed it the more it grows.

But I’ve been recently working on distancing myself a little so I can look at this more objectively. I’m attempting to be more aware of my greed quotient these days, to find a balance between need and greed, and to turn those more lustful greedy desires into self-love, compassion, and creative action.

In this I feel like an infant. I have a long ways to go.

But think about it. Where do you draw the line between your need and your greed? And when you think you must have some thing, what is it you really long for? Will that thing really provide it? Do you need it, or do you want it, or is your desire for it a sign of a deeper hunger, maybe even a deeper boredom? Once you have it, will you grow tired of it and set it aside, or wish you hadn’t wasted hard-earned money or effort on obtaining it? Will it disappoint you with its unfulfilled promise? This applies to food, too, I’ve found. Will I wish I hadn’t eaten it?

My new, yet ancient, watch words: Be careful what you wish for.

I think there is a certain amount of unavoidable grief in every life that we simply have to learn to find ways to live with and still function. Not every illness is treatable, some of us have to put up with pain, and we inevitably lose some people we love. The older we get the more of this we endure. For me, a certain amount of spiritual and philosophical focus is the answer. A faith and surrender that allows me to see that this is simply how things are, and to make the best of it. I’m much more selective, as I near 50, about what I allow myself to dwell on. If I can’t change it, I refuse to worry about it. If I can do something, but not enough, I do what I can and leave the rest to a higher power. If I can do so intelligently, I write or talk about the things we can change and encourage others to do something. That communication increases my range as far as ability to do something. But it’s important to let go of the outcome, leave it to God/dess, and not be arrogrant enough to think that I can ever change everything, or even that I should be allowed to if I could.

We can respect others’ differences, and accept them, even love them unconditionally, without thinking we have to make everyone a bosom buddy. I believe we’re here to learn, and each is a work in progress, so I tend not to expect too much perfection of others. But I’m choosy about my close relationships. I have to feel that I can be absolutely myself and not be judged or have others try to mould and shape me to their ideals — mainly because I tend to be impressionable and want to please everyone, so I find myself in pretzel shapes trying to do so instead of taking care of my true needs. Limiting my close ties helps me avoid that.

A little blonde girl has shown up in my dreams repeatedly for years. I never connected all her appearances until recently when I began to read back through some dream journals and realized she’s been present in my dreams, off and on, for a such long time. I’m not even sure how far back, because my dream journals aren’t continuous but rather sporadic. Every now and then she shows up, always the same, a little blonde about four years old. Sometimes she takes an active part in the dream. Others she’s more of a bystander looking on, or a mysterious figure in the dream that I’m curious about. Some of the dreams she’s shown up in were premonitions. (I’ll have to share more about those in another post, another time.) I’ve wondered in the past if she were a child I’d have one day, or a project or concern that I needed to nurture along, maybe a more vulnerable aspect of myself, or perhaps even a spirit guide. Since I’m now past childbearing age, I know she’s not my own child-to-be

I got to thinking about her again this morning, and I decided to use the Faeries Oracle, by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth, to read about her. I drew three cards:

34 Sylvanius
13 Solus
19 The Sage

Then one more from the bottom as something hidden:

52 The Rarr

1) A part of me, the childlike, eager part always excited by new prospects, curious, dreaming how things will turn out. A part that often feels intimidated, a need to hide, sits behind the adult facade or mask the world sees.

2) A new development or turn in my life, something to nurture along and give my energy, imagination, attention, and effort.

3) A need to not control too tightly (the way adults do) but to allow something to mature at its own rate, to be patient rather than urgent, not to worry or force, but to nudge and contemplate it into something beautiful—through simplicity rather than complexity.

4) Energy—an energy that is quick, raw, sparkling, that arouses easily and is as soon dissipated. I need to earth myself, and take advantage of any wild energy burst while it’s here.

With the debate over a cut in estate taxes for the wealthy in the news, I’ve gotten to thinking about inheritance.

Is inheritance, as it applies to money or real property, an obsolete notion?

For me it’s an irrelevant notion, as I think it is for most Americans. (more…)

I’ve been wondering lately if I should keep this blog going, because I post a lot more frequently on my other one (though not much there lately either), and I originally intended this one for Tarot and spirit-related topics, both of which mean a great deal to me, and both of which I’m more likely to think about than write about—at least publicly. I do a lot of personal journal writing about both. I don’t feel that I have that much to offer others on these two topics in which I’m basically only a student, striving for more wisdom than I have.

If you are someone who’s gravitated toward this blog in the past, and found yourself returning, I’m interested in knowing what drew you here, and what you might like to see more of in the future. (If it’s something besides Tarot or spirituality, that’s fine too.) If you don’t wish to comment publicly, feel free to use the Contact page.

“I’ll think about it.” Then think about it.