Retro Manifestation

 

I had just graduated from high school when I agreed to attend a young adult function at our church. My family had been inactive for years, but the opportunity to expand my social circle arose as I was contemplating my future as a grown up. Get a job, my own apartment, eventually a car (I had yet to get my driver’s license), and start contributing to society. Oh—and find a mate. A husband for sure, but I’d be happy with a steady boyfriend. Or even a first date. I’d had boy friends in school, but never a boyfriend. I guess I’d had other priorities ... or the boys had. In any case, once I was free of the Class of ’79, the field widened considerably.

It sounds appallingly old-fashioned, but I clearly remember thinking the invitation, extended by a missionary couple who was hosting the group, might be the gateway to finding Mr Right. So I accepted.

He wasn’t there that week, or the next week, or the week after that. I attended a bunch of those gatherings, meeting people my own age but no one who asked me out. Even after I was eventually baptized, the fabled future husband did not appear. I was neither impressed by nor impressive to the slender field of potential patriarchs for a family of my own, though I did have a blast on the social scene in general. At least I can say I had as much fun in my twenties as other girls had in theirs, only without the bars, clubs, discos and alcoholic accelerants. Best of all, I met my Ter. Inseparable for more than a year before my dad suggested we get our own place, what began as a temporary arrangement is still going strong almost forty years later.

Only now do I see the magical manifestation of my original intention. It’s taken me almost forty years to realize that when I accepted the invitation to that young adult gathering, I was going to meet my life partner. I simply lacked the imagination to envision something—someone—who would punt the standard from the park. In fact, who I got was so marvellously unexpected that I am in a perpetual state of gratitude for my incredible good fortune. This lifetime relationship has worked out far better than I had anticipated, and probably better than I deserve.

I like to think that Ter feels similarly about me, though the one thing I am sure of is that, in 1980, the Universe read my intention to find my soulmate ... and smiled.

All in Good Time

 

This happens to me a lot.

The alarm wakes me up at crap o’clock. I lie half-asleep, thinking dark thoughts until muscle memory animates my body and I find myself sitting upright in bed. From there I shuffle into the bathroom and bumble through my morning ablutions, then stare at my closet until some sort of business casual ensemble jumps out at me. It’s a struggle getting into my pants one leg at a time, but I make it. Bling is then coordinated—earrings and pendant, maybe a nifty scarf to complement the fake gems in my studs. Pulled together and starting to wake up, I go to the bedroom door, open it—

—and the alarm wakes me up. It’s crap o’clock and I’m still lying in bed. I’ve dreamed the whole thing, and the first word to mind is a naughty one.

Sound familiar?

Years ago during coffee at the Wall, Boy Sister announced that he’d had a idea but couldn’t remember it. Then he wondered where ideas go when you forget them. My wee sister suggested that, in a parallel Universe, a light bulb had just gone on above his alternate self’s head so it wasn’t really gone, it had just skipped dimensions. Pretty heavy talk for my wee sister, by the way, but maybe she was on to something. Quantum mechanics, you know.

A thought is made up of energy. When a thought is acted upon, the energy of the thought becomes matter and therefore subject to the rules of time and space in this dimension. In my imagination, I’m already up and dressed. In reality, I have to haul myself out of bed and go through the motions, which takes time and (monumental) effort. Still, it’s the price of admission to this estate. Nothing happens instantly in the third dimension. Thoughts do, of course. Thoughts are easy. They pop into being without, well, a second thought. Wishes, dreams, intentions—they’re all energy. Each may be made manifest given physical time and space.

Or not. What we envision isn’t always what’s best for us, and the Universe only coughs up what we need to gain experience. It doesn’t always look like what we intended, though in retrospect it can often be seen to fit the original idea. It may take years before you realize that something happening now is actually something you thought of way back when. And then there are times when something you think becomes real within days, maybe hours, of you thinking it.

The point of all this, you ask? Patience, Grasshopper. All in good time ...

The Best You Can Be

Could you have done more? Could you have said it differently? Been kinder? Been more generous? More forgiving? Tried harder? On another day, maybe.

Just not today.

Each day comes with a unique set of experiences and challenges, and we live each day to the best of our ability. That ability, however, is as unique as the day itself. You might think later that you didn’t do enough or say the right thing, but you did the best you could at the time.

I struggle with my shortcomings. I’m human; I have a lot of them. My intention is always to “do no harm”, but I can’t control how word or deed is received—and I admit, there are days when I don’t particularly care. On some days, I’m golden. On others, I goof up. The fact remains that, on all days, I always do the best I can.

So do you. The trick is to recognize, accept and forgive that whatever you did or didn’t do would have been done differently on another day. Let’s face it, sometimes, you just don’t feel well. You’re sick. You’re in pain. Stressed at work. Stressed at home. Sleep deprived. Over medicated. Under medicated. It’s easy to be less enthusiastic about interacting with your fellow man when you feel less divine and more human.

Tomorrow will be different and so will you. Do your best (and don’t fool yourself—you know when you’re cutting corners); that’s all the Universe asks of you because the Universe knows all you ever are is the best you can be in any given moment, period.

Against Our Nature

When did Man decide that he is separate from Nature? Was it when he ceased to exist as a hunter/gatherer and began to farm the land rather than accept what was offered? At some point, it obviously occurred to his burgeoning ego that if he could choose what to grow, then he must be in control of and thus separate from—perhaps even superior to—Nature.

He mistook the earth’s willingness to work with him as something less than cooperation and more like mindless servitude. He lost his respect for the natural world and began to exert his formidable will over it, flooding arable valleys and redirecting rivers, overplanting the soil, overfishing the oceans, and sucking out the oil buried beneath the planet’s skin. He perceived flaws in the fields and orchards and began to tinker in the name of perfection, and now we have genetically modified Frankenveggies designed to… what? Last longer on the supermarket shelves? It can’t be for our nutritional benefit, else fish genes would have been evident in prehistoric tomatoes.

And don’t get me started on the biological misconceptions; that because we can think analytically we must be smarter, thus better, than the other animals. Have you ever watched a crow crack into a discarded Starbucks cup? That takes some ingenuity.

You know what makes us different? Our ego. Our arrogance. Our intellect. In fact, the most unpleasant facets of humanity are pretty well responsible for the present discord between Man and Nature. Of course the planet exists to serve, but so do we, and in believing ourselves separate from it, we have failed to nurture the resources meant to nurture us.

Abuse can only be endured for so long before the tables turn on the abuser. A planet once eager to embrace us is now fighting to save itself, and if we’re caught in the upheaval … oh, well.

We are not separate from Nature. We never have been. We are born of the same stuff as the rocks and trees and birds and rain and stars. We are a vital part of a greater whole comprised of other vital parts, each subject to the same law as the others. We are all alive. Living, breathing, adapting, we are all beings responding to the energy of intention. To cut ourselves off from this wondrous collaboration of particles is truly the means to our end.

The tide is turning, slowly. More and more people—the unlucky inheritors of a world we’ll leave to them—are reawakening to the relationship we have with the rest of creation. Many of us are trying to mend the broken ties and reconnect to the wonders of the world around us. Nature may lack the intellect, but forgiveness and compassion are universal traits. It might be too late … but it’s never too late.

With love,

Take the Day

The cough medicine commercial is right: a sick day is misnamed. It’s actually a “getting well” day—and I’m taking one. Admitting this may cost me a day’s pay should my boss happen upon this post (a billion to one shot, I’m sure) but it’s worth it to point out that I am not physically ill. I needed a mental health day; a day for self-care and to nurture a spirit that’s been flaring hard against a smothering global darkness and finally conceded defeat last night.

I’m down, but not out.

I may be a little drained from the daily lineup of coworkers who stop by my office to tell me their woes, but on a deeper level, I think I am royally pissed. Not with my colleagues, not with my family, not at home, and not even at life. Life is good. It’s a challenge in contrast, but life is a gift. No one has the right to rob someone else of it.

I digress.

I think that I’m pissed at the folks who sit online and berate the good intentions of others. When Paris happened, I witnessed an explosion of French flags popping up in social media as horrified humans rose to their higher natures and rallied in solidarity with France. Shortly after this surge of collective compassion, a second explosion occurred—of outraged reproach for this show of “selective support”. Beirut had been similarly assaulted on the same day. The same number of deaths and equal amount of terror were suffered there, only few in the western world had risen in that country’s support, hence those who had done so for Paris were called out as hypocrites.

They are not hypocrites. They are uninformed. Is it their fault that the western news outlets did not report the attack on Beirut? I knew nothing of it. I was still reeling from the stupidity of the Starbucks Red Cup Controversy, which got more airtime on my newsfeed than anything out of the Middle East, when I stumbled onto CNN’s coverage of Paris.

The public doesn’t decide what makes the news. Advertisers and programmers decide what we are told and, to some extent, what we’re to do about it. Then they sit back and watch the masses squabble about it all.

So I crashed. The negativity has been overwhelming, and while I believe implicitly in the power of one solitary candle, I also believe that the flame requires tending, else it will burn out completely.

Balance. Contrast. Achieving and maintaining one in the face of the other requires an awareness of your own needs as well as the needs of others. If I am guilty of anything, it’s of assuming that I have superpowers of endurance, resistance, and acceptance. Actually, I do have them, but they are not limitless. A single day should get me back on my feet. A day of green tea, quiet meditation, and gratitude.

A “get well” day.

With love,

Mature Content

Google has made available a “mature content” setting for bloggers who post on their server. I noticed the prompt on my dashboard one day, with further information indicating that, if Google gets any complaints about graphic content, the company will automatically flip the switch on the site. If enough complaints are received, Google may then shut down the site. It seems a step in the right direction, of the big cahunas on the internet attempting to regulate themselves before the government intervenes, and I’m fine with that. I just wonder how they define “graphic content”.

I’m all for censoring myself—I do that before I hit the “publish” button on a post. Then I promptly contradict myself by stating a firm belief in the artist’s right to express him/herself in whatever form he/she chooses. But then the question arises: What is art? And I admit, I’m a little confused about my own work.

I don’t write porn … I don’t think. I dunno; maybe some folks would say that I do. It depends on the setting, the situation, the characters and the relationship. I try to be tasteful about any physical intimacy—even the rough stuff—and if you write about vampires and warriors, at some point you’ll be writing scenes of blood and violence. The skill involved in writing fiction through a filter is no small thing. I do my best, with some success, might I add, but in the end, it’s a little scary to know that my opinion of my work may matter less than that of a reader who has issues.

I considered whether or not to flip the switch and have the site automatically warn visitors that mature content awaits. At this point, I’ve decided against censoring myself that severely. My intention is always good, to send out a positive vibe, tell a compelling story, share a laugh or rant about my hockey team, but as for graphic content residing on this blog, I really must protest.

Blethering

Now that Christmas is over, I have a solid chunk of time in which to write.

It’s also time to rethink the blog.

My original purpose was to share my creative journey with posts of process, progress, inspiration, and a little hockey talk tossed in for fun. I meant to offer food for thought, and perhaps some discussion, but recently the posts have been pure fluff.

There is nothing wrong with fluff. It’s light, it’s entertaining, it’s easy to digest and even easier to write, but it also takes time to compose and my true love has suffered for it. Momentum has stalled, assuming that momentum was ever achieved, on my meatier creative works. I have lately given myself permission to focus on completing a longer project rather than placating the bloggy voice that tells me a post is past due. Having to grant this permission was my first hint.

Somewhere along the line, Comfortable Rebellion became Uncomfortable Responsibility. The director of quality assurance has issued a warning: keep it upbeat, keep it creative, and keep it meaningful.

I will continue my writing exercises. I will post updates on my progress with the project du jour. I may also “publish” the occasional story in a series of Saturdays, since I fully intend to finish more short stories in the coming year. And there will always be room for gushing about heroes and icons and all good things. I do admit, reluctantly, that life makes means to kill our joy with stress, and I have been more stressed than I realized of late, but I’m aware of it now and am looking the monster straight in the eye. Toss in my Ter, my angels, and access to a universe full of opportunity, and you have a winner in Ramblin’ Ru.

Did I say “ramblin’?” No more of that. We’re going back to the egg, you and I. Back to the realm of dreamers and artists, magicians and vampires, poets and philosophers. Back to my happy place. The Rebellion is comfortable once more, so pull up a chair and I’m brew us some tea.

There are stories to be told.

With love,