All About Creating A Room For My Views

Last night's sleep was riddled by nightmares of nomadic wanderings in all manner of dark places:  Caves, underground tunnels serving full-scale trains rather than the expected subway cars, and above ground places with a covering sky, dark and thick like a sooty, inverted Mason jar.

I was a watcher surrounded by hundreds of thousands of others I did not know,  yet at the same time I experienced an undeniable emotional accord with everyone and had a visceral understanding of all that occurred, all that was felt, all that was missing and all that could never be in this nocturnal confederation of the damned.

This was not my first visit to this place.  I'm taken there regularly by whatever force it is that corrals all those unspoken thoughts and caches of denial and compels me to reckon with them deep in the unconscious night when all pretense and contrivance sleep soundly.  They are the shadows I ascribe to inappropriate or to selfish behavior in my waking moments.   

When I was a kid I had these All About books:  All About Mammals, All About Birds, All About Reptiles, All About Dogs.

I wish they had not stopped there.  What I wouldn't give for a book,  All About Nightmares or All About Where To Go From Here or  All About Building A Righteous Life.

 My conscious walk through the world at the moment feels not terribly unlike those stained, sepia-colored containers of non-being my soul travels to at night and its giving the stoic in me a pretty rigorous workout.    

These nightmarish landscapes of bruised realities that settle over a good part of my mornings like an ill-fitting coat are not always easy to comprehend,  yet I feel compelled to take the time to probe the All About  and the connection between the imagery of my dark dreams and the liberal indulgence of conscience in the wake of my long days.

Many years ago we had our driveway asphalted by this buoyant and wise character named Delacey.  He could neither read nor write and for a time my husband, who is a reading specialist, tutored him.  One day after watching all the traffic clogging a local road, he said something that put it all into perspective:  

"Nobody knows where the hell they goin', but they all goin' like Hell to get there!"

I'm not what you'd consider a 'type A' personality, but there have definitely been periods in my life when I felt that way; that I had no clue where I was going or why but that I was getting there on a souped-up bullet train of discontinuities.  

That is not the case anymore.  Life has slowed, but at the same time I am keenly aware that in order to move forward in this game, it will require a heavy investment of my best intentions and deepest thought.  I've used up all of my get out of jail free-cards and cannot pass Go without one so the game has reached a stalemate.

But as I sit waiting for the bail bondsman of enlightenment to return me to the world of productivity and purpose, I am not idle.  My brain is working overtime and taking me to a non-linear zone where thought all but obliterates despair, as well as keeping reality enough at bay that it loses it's immediate relevance.  

I suppose that if you're stuck in jail, its better that it is the one of your own making.  At least you know your way around the grounds and are on friendly terms with a couple of the guards.

It is not about escape.  It is all about building.

I'm confident that at some point form will again be apparent in my life and around me a structure of clear perspectives and sturdy objectives will once more provide shelter for all these quaking doubts to put them at ease.

 Yet I realize that the process of building a whole new exterior attitude on a house without any walls is going to be challenging.  What will this new building resemble if it appropriately reflects my thoughts?

One thing I do know is that it must have loads of windows and doors without any locks.

I've had enough doors slam on me to recognize the value of open windows and the need for fire escapes.  I want to ensure that plenty of air will be circulating my opinions and ideas from the intersection outside Myopia at the corners of Conventional and Dissenting.

In the meantime I've got a foundation to put down, which could take quite a while to set given the importance of making certain that it is a solid one.

And if I remember correctly, the first step before laying any foundation is to start digging and to whistle while you work.  Good builders are happy builders.

If I had a hammer....

.....and a shovel and some nails, some two by fours, a rotary drill, reciprocating saw, some self-leveling concrete....

Twelve Random Facts About Me of Mild Concern:

1.  There isn't a day that falls to dusk when I don't wish I had done a better job while it was still light. Okay.  Enough of the altruism.

2.  Captain Kangaroo made me really nervous as a kid.  Why would a sea captain make a best friend of a farmer named Mr. Greenjeans and how come Captain Kangaroo looked so much like Mr. McFeely?  I think Mr. Rogers worked for the secret government.  Why did he always have to wear that sweater?

3.  My math skills are so under par I was exempt from all math courses in high school.  The last math textbook I used contained little cartoon figures named 'Alpha' and 'Beta'  introducing each lesson.  They walked me through the treacherous minefield that was multiplication.  I still know my times tables only up to five and am suspect of all cartoons, which can probably also be blamed on Captain Kangaroo.

4.  I would give anything to be flat chested and go braless.  Jogging and running free have been theoretical since I was twelve.

5.  The Rainbow Connection as sung by Kermit the Frog always makes me cry.  I feel a keen sense of competition towards Miss Piggy.

6.  My ideal man looks like Humphrey Bogart or Todd Rundgren.  I married my first husband based on his strong resemblance to them and parted company eight months later with a visceral understanding that looks are not everything.  However, if anyone knows Billy Bob Thornton, please give him my number.

7.  I have A.D.D. and dyslexia, so if I hastily write DOG instead of GOD, don't take offense.  Spellcheck can only help so much.

8.  I can read Tarot Cards, have studied and practiced astrology, numerology, Chinese Face Reading and Graphology (handwriting analysis) for years. I've attended mystery schools and studied the teachings of the Ascended Masters, meditation, yoga, theosophy and Catholic theology.  I was raised Catholic, taught catechism classes when my kids were growing up and still attend mass.   I'm an equal-opportunity seeker believing that truth is within the person not the practice but that the practice makes the truth easier to find.  Saying 'I love you' is a theoretical application of the highest spiritual principle.  Demonstrating that love is the highest expression of divinity on this earth.  To practice what we preach is the most daunting challenge we will ever be faced with.

9.  I spend most of my days in the company of my three dogs while I work in my studio.  Sometimes I go twelve hours without saying one word.

10.  My favorite days are cloudy and windy.  I resonate with Wuthering Heights and wish I were Cathy to somebody's Heathcliff.  Fully realizing this will never be, I have settled on Mr. and Mrs. Bridges; coincidentally, even to the point of moving to Kansas City.

11.  In my best fantasy, life has a sound track and we each have our own theme song that plays whenever we want to make a splash.  I call dibs on To Dream The Impossible Dream with a second choice of Call Me Irresponsible.

12.  I sometimes wish I'd finished college.  As it now stands I am under-educated and overly-sensitive with a high I.Q. and low self-esteem.  If Alpha and Beta were here, they'd round that out to a moderately functioning example of the logistic equation of Chaos whose sum is greater than her parts with a common denominator of wishful thinking divided by tenacity and squared to the power of there ain't no where to go from here multiplied by tomorrow.

AS THEY LEAVE HOME

The things that I would say before you go

Is always hit the hight notes when you can

And never disappear behind a closing door

Remember every gain is hand to hand

Dismiss beguiling notions of despair

that hold you hostage to your sense of loss

Your worth is measured every time you stand

regardless of which battlefield you’ve crossed

Recover all the highest thoughts you own

and fan them out before you as you walk.

Be mindful that forgiveness has a plan.

Refrain from prideful banter when you talk.

And if a day seems heavy with regret,

recall that shadows only dance in light

Then purposefully begin the waltz you know

It’s best to live with honor than by might

FRACTALS AND FOOTBALL

As Gregg Braden writes in his book Fractal Time, The Secret to 2012 and a New World Age,  "The fractal view of the universe implies that everything from a single atom to the entire cosmos is made of just a few natural patterns." 

These evidences of fractals are also found within time and can be calculated using the mathematical principle of phi or .618.  Using this formula it is possible to anticipate the recurrent patterns in one's life based on the seed event.    

Right now I am trying to understand the existent pattern of fanaticism as it continually plays out within my marriage to a certifiable sports lunatic.  

How this pattern escaped my earlier notice and was able to embed itself in the better part of my life through the seed event of a matrimonial oversight is still a mystery to me.

Nothing is random in the universe and although we each have free will and the ability to turn left instead of right, we are also operating within a larger system of patterns and hierarchies that generally try to steer us in the right direction, if we would only pay attention.

Clearly, I was distracted up until the moment I said, "I do."

But these universal laws and conditions also imply that we are going to learn whatever lessons are specific to each one of us no matter which direction we ultimately take and that the only variable will likely be the circumstances surrounding the ways in which we learn them.

For instance, now that football season has commenced I could choose to exterminate my husband rather than continue my lessons in patience and cooperation over the disruption of all schedules, as they are now based around key games. There is now a complete disconnect between his body and his mind, which will last well beyond Super Bowl Sunday along with the declivitous mood swings resulting from favored teams failing to win the big game.  *The Big Game* I have come to understand, means *every game*. 

Certainly murder would take care of my immediate problem.  

Rather than learning how to endure the protracted broadcast of cheering throngs, over-zealous sports casters, cacophonous expletives and witnessing the inexplicable high jumps off the living room sofa;  I could be learning instead how to construct a shank from toilet paper rolls and calcified bed linens and to coexist peaceably with the other violent offenders in my cell block.

Unfortunately, either way I would still be given the lessons endemic to living among those who confound me.

I must understand that by learning how to see the larger picture and by working my way to a place of acceptance once the patterns within that picture become evident, I stand a better than average chance of transforming these outwardly murderous urges into inwardly rewarding epiphanies, which will ultimately bring me that much closer to who and what I really am.

At the moment my options hover somewhere between the dispositions of Joan d'Arc and Lizzie Borden.

It all does seem rather simplistic - this concept of fractals informing us that everything in the universe can be reduced down to a few basic, natural patterns and forms.

Yet I suppose that much like the outwardly simplistic doctrine of *non-judgement and unconditional love*, abiding by the clear cosmic principle against spousal extermination is more challenging than it first appears.

At the moment I am really struggling against my inclination to render my husband unconscious and deposit his limp body at the local sports bar where he can sit out the duration of the season.  

This ought to be a good indication of just how much further I have to go.

Right now, he is in no danger.

However, he might want to pack an overnight bag just in case.