Timelessness

Today is rather timeless, a deep contentment has settled in. D had a thing taken off his scalp this morning, and I stopped by work to pick up S's chickens' eggs. After, we went up the canyon to Ruth's Diner for brunch. Full and warm, despite the grey-white skies. Doing very little. Wicked sore throat yesterday, vaguely achy, so I hunkered down with the red wool blanket* and let myself heal - which seems to have worked quite well. D's head aching today, not too badly.

Talking last night about the emotional effect of having everything we have gathered over the decades on display all at one go. There is rather a lot, and despite being good, it's rather potent magic for us. Conjuring up all our ghosts at once.

As mentioned, three items from Gulf War I.

The brownish scarf, under the cat, (who has hogged all the woolyness, the red wool blanket once put on me as a child when I was ill. And the sheepskin.)


The tablecloth, now serving as a curtain.


And the earrings, that I cannot imagine wearing in my ears. But they jingle pleasantly.


Years ago, Elizabeth my cousin assured me that life begins at 50. She is happy, surrounded by love and friends, how could I not just believe her? This sense of acceptance and peace has been coming over me. It is a big number, an irrelevant one. Eternal now is a tangible idea, I can palpate it in my palm, feel it pulsing in my heart. A great turning has completed, and I move forward in all directions.



*Has anyone else ever heard of red wool to heal as a folk belief? Or did I just decide that when I was small, and this blanket was mine whenever I had a bad cold?

Paranormal

Long ago, when I was going through some rough times, I was approached by a tarot card reader at a local fair. I don't remember what she said to me, but it resonated, and she gave me her card. I went to see her. Not because I even considered that she could tell me my future, but because I wanted a cold reading. Nothing I was trying seemed to help, and the last thing I needed was a counselor asking me what I thought. I wanted to be given advice, that I could take or ignore. I needed a fresh voice, a different perspective. And I could not afford to shop around for real therapy.

She provided me over an hour of solid attention, for far less than I would have paid for professional counseling, or even a massage. It was all a little bit silly, but she did pick up on my not taking care of my health. Within a few weeks, I had a bad boil lanced, and an abscessed tooth cleared out. She didn't know what she was picking up, nor did I, but I was prompted to investigate. Most of what she told me was certainly bullshit, but I don't remember. Just the conversation, guiltlessly all about me, was healing.

I've had my own tarot cards for over two decades. I never considered them predictive, but a randomized study of my own thoughts, based on old human archetypes. That I remember the accurate predictions is not a surprize. When I played the Tower, I thought deeply about ending the first marriage. Our minds react to the right stimulus. Nothing magical or fabulous about it, more like seeing mug shots, and reacting to the right face. "That's it, that's the problem." Finding words, finding the right image, identifying the problem that had been squirming away from me, is the mechanism. If magic is a trick, then it's magic.

Just as a good placebo can work, getting my head in the right place, by whatever means, helps. A subtle sidestep to recalcitrant thoughts. When stuck, use anything at hand. Mental lubricant.

No need to glorify it, though. It really isn't mystical.

Reading Paranormal America, whose authors study not the validity or lack thereof of other-than-rational convictions. Rather, they researched the people who hold these beliefs. And found no easy answers. Not just nutters, although there are some of those. Some of it is education, income, power, or often - lack of these. But not all. A very different set of people set out to find Sasquatch through fieldwork, than those who see demons in the eyes of every non-Christian, or the casual astrology user. I'm not quite done, but I can't see how they could come to any single conclusion. It's too big a question, like finding a cure for cancer, when there are so many different kinds. Or the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, much depends on the actual question.

I do suspect, though, that mainstream science's queasiness about the whole subject to be a huge detriment to understanding the human mind, and how we deal with being social beings and individuals, each strangers in strange lands. Dismissing the manifestation as ridiculous misses the point.

Knowing

Watching one of those animal planet shows about extraordinary animals. Yes, I know, doesn't narrow it down much. The nursing home dog who knew when people were going to die. The animal psychic with all her cockeyed confidence, made me want to throw something at her. The more scientific approach of the animal behaviorist who was sure it was a scent given off didn't impress me terribly either. Not that the latter is necessarily wrong, so much as the explanation isn't based on any real evidence. Just as much a guess as the psychic, however much given with hedging.

I've worked with the dying. I'm sure something happens when someone dies. As hospice nurses on a floor, we knew when to start watching, and knew when the aide called to us it was because of death. Just as people know when they get the call, and don't need to be told the actual words "she's dead." When I had to call a family, I never had to be more specific, only giving the time- if anything. Odd circumstances happened nearly every time, often not obviously related.

I will not try to guess the mechanism. But the best anecdotes of non-local communication seem to be very real crises, with strong emotional components, between people with a bond. Which is why putting it in a lab cannot recreate the circumstances. Not ethically, anyway. Because it inherently cannot be real peril, is not done with people closely attached, and getting the emotional circumstances right is no end of tricky. Not to mention that the response, the message as received, is not quantifiable. Proof isn't going to come in a neat package.

As for what a dog senses? Problematic.

I do think we are capable of more than just the obvious senses, but I' not about to go all wooo wooo! about it. It's not magical, it's just difficult to qualify. The damned data isn't all hoax, not all foolishness. The exceptions have often been the keys to unlocking understanding. The abnormal informs the normal.

Bones

When a bone breaks, it heals, reforms, remodels for years after. But it's never as strong again. Surgery shows- in the way the connective tissue reforms. It's never as smooth and orderly as they way it was originally laid down. The pain will ease, function will return, but the disruption is permanent.

My own little irrational belief, and a theory to explain some elements of stigmata, is that of any wound that heals, can at any age reopen. As can all our life's wounds, given enough distress. If you tell me this is not supported by evidence, nonsensical, I will concede you are right, but, I still nurse the idea as seeming right. I don't mind being wrong. But come here and let me know you think me stupid, or mock me, here, in my home, on this odd theory, and you get the boot.

My father broke me emotionally. Wild, illogical accusations, baffling feats of incorrect mind reading, all escape routes blocked. Then I went and married a smart version of him, thinking it was just the stupidity causing all that misery. I had no defenses against an abusive manipulator who could talk sensibly. After he hit me, he would always apologize, and say all the right, insightful phrases to keep me strung along, leaving the implication that it was all my fault, really.

I have grown and healed, but any kind of irrational challenge is far more painful than it should be. So condescending, accusing assertions, in this, my safe place to speak my own mind, rattle me far more than seems appropriate.

The troll who struck me three times, did, after I packed my bags to leave, offer a sweet apology, which I believe as much as I do those of the ex after he slapped me.

I will never be any kind of a manager because of this deficit. I can be extremely accommodating with people, even if they are upset, up to a point. But when the nudge becomes a shove, I simply have to stop myself from killing them. I have no middle ground, no place from which to gauge a reasoned response. I tried to write several posts to warn, to set rules. When that didn't work, I fell apart rather than finding those people, and torching their homes. I hate confrontation, so I prefer people to see me as dangerous. Deep beneath is a well of rage, which horrifies and reassures me.

Have I ever mentioned I know how to shoot an M16? And, I'm a good shot? Had to for the Army. Just, you know, stray thought.

I have learned real calm with D, and with Moby. The pain is less, it is not gone.

Thank you with all my heart for all those who comforted me, and kept me from throwing away the work of five years. I could have just gone to the new blog, but I would have deeply grieved this one. I am not ready to leave here.

I won't be chased off.

I will be far less cautious in deleting posts, without explanation. I will consider the invite only blog option, but that seems so cold. It's just that I had three trolls in rapid succession, one of them a personal acquaintance that I need to stay on some kind of civil terms with, on top of the Inspection at work, and impending move. Skin thinner than usual.

I will never go to anyone else's blog to question their beliefs in gods, astrology, makeup, Disney, creationism, Republicans or ferrets. I may well rake them over the coals, in general, here. They are free to rebut on their own blog, but not here. Unless they offer a kind, reasonable, respectful, response. Maybe not even that, this week, please.

Watching (Photos)

The snow come down.

I was once told the only person she knew for whom weather was not small talk. Indeed, although I know "Hot enough for you?" and "How's the weather up there?" and "Raining cats and dogs out there" are trite stock comments of no earthly value, weather is not trivial. I have always experienced it as elemental, powerful, a matter of vital and emotional interest. I cried when it rained and I wanted to be outside. Thunderstorms thrill me, the green wash of sky that send down tornados, walking through deep, pristine snow still makes me feel like and intrepid explorer.

I get very irritated by the tossing about of the term Global Warming by the media, eager for an easy catchall. So many idiots on cold days try to wittily retort "So much for their Global Warming!" For years, we and our friends have tried to promote GCFU, Global Climatological Fuck Up. I would follow up with that whole bucket of environmental worry worms, but I need to sleep tonight, and get up in the morning. Thinking about it too much prevents both.

I remain fascinated by the individual cases, the floods and fires, landslides and tsunami, blizzards and tornados. I have NOAAon my menu bar, and I check it every morning before work. Not just the temp and forecast, but the dewpoint, and I look at the overnight readings, locally, and where our friends live. If I'd been better at math when I was young, I would certainly have been a meteorologist. All because of Mr. Novak and his morning blackboard forecasts, drawing sweeping cold fronts and describing pressure systems, his contagious enthusiasm feeding my particular interest.

I also love stories of escape from cataclysm. My own grandmother, terrified of thunderstorms, nearly died when the fireplace she'd been sitting near a moment before, was hit by lightening. The chimney collapsed and crushed her chair. And in nearly every rash of tornados, a baby is found in a tree, unharmed, far from home. A last survivor is rescued long after hope is gone, nearly crushed under debris after an earthquake, drinking rainwater that has trickled through.

The earth reminds us we are not entitled to our lives, nature gives not a damn whether we live or die, no precautions are sufficient in all cases. But there are loopholes, rogue waves, unprayable miracles.

Temptation

Carolyn Hax is an advice columnist for the Washington Post, today wrote the most beautifully wise, zen, piece, putting deeply philosophical concepts into the most down to earth language. The WP require registration, but I have never gotten spam because of them, so please, I believe it worthwhile.

The heart of her column? "Why we aren't more motivated to be wise in the face of temptation?"

I succumbed to my darkest thoughts today, lost hope and impetus. D joined me. It's been a rough month, emotionally and psychically, physically and financially. I used to think I got twisted by February because I record advancement of years this month. Perhaps it's just February itself.

I have a peek into the kinds of people who choose strange ways to kill themselves. Who leave the door unlocked, coffee pot going, note on the table, tarps to catch the mess. Strange death draws me in. The woman who drowned in a salsa making machine. The bungee jumper who measured the bungee from drop to ground, not allowing for any stretch, or his own height. The people who follow each other, trying to rescue the preceding person, into vats, toilet pits, wells, each succumbing to fumes in turn. Sexual antics in private planes leading to embarrassing death. I understand the fey mood, the reckless disregard, even if I always catch myself and pull back.

Cult

The younger of my two brothers, Bill, made me laugh. He comforted me when our parents fought once, playing a game in the basement, ignoring our father shouting at our mother. He read to me, and took me for the Easter egg hunt at Patton Park. I loved him fiercely. When he spent evenings away, then moved away to college, he left me bereft. At eight, I didn't understand why he wouldn't want to stay with his little sister. Abandoned to my fate, I had terribly mixed feelings of longing and abandonment.

During his second year in college, after having changed his major from chemistry to English to theater, mom even made him a black cape with red lining for the flair of it all, he disappeared. Then announced that he had joined the Children of God. He would fall out of communication for long periods of time, to send a letter from Pennsylvania, then England, then Portugal, Japan. This caused much praying and anxiety from our very Catholic mother, and a plunge into belligerent drinking from our dad. I struggled though childhood with this dark cloud, accused and pronounced guilty before making a single independent choice, while grieving for my lost brother.

In the midst of the early shock, the Jonestown Massacre flooded the news, and we imagined the worst. My young, impressionable brother would wind up dead in a brainwashing suicide cult. But he didn't, he tramped around Europe, had a grand time, and never considered the frantic and ate-up excuse for the family left behind. He escaped, and now I commend him. Then, I yearned for him, and talked to him constantly, argued with him, until he slowly faded from my memory.

He would be fine, living his own Christian life in what he described as a loose chain of communes, teaching children, and doing God's work, with no idea of the fevered imaginings of his mother, the raging of his father, or his small sister left to take the blame. To his credit, about ten years ago, we met, and he apologized to me, a deeply healing gesture.

But my fascination, my connection to stories of religious cults, Jonestown being the first, but Waco and Heaven's Gate and Aum Shinrikyo, all pound me in the chest like heavy artillery at close range. A reflex of fear and thrill, personally felt. Of a master manipulator gathering the lost and gullible to boost a gluttonous ego, and a sadistic mass suicide for the finale.

I feel this personally, and this is what I needed most to write about. This dark story is just beneath the surface, threatening to explode. I have written it clearly, I have tried to keep it secret, as it sits like a lump, refusing to be revealed, or hidden.

Pixies

Pixilation is not a phenomenon I have definitely experienced. The losing of an item, a thorough search, then a request for it's return to the spirits of place, with a return of the object where I had most definitely looked, not really. Losing, looking and finding, yes, but usually I can rationalize why I did not spot my glasses on the dresser, but D did, where I looked several times. Just the wrong angle, he's a bit taller, I didn't have my glasses on, after all.

I tend to think that this is a quirk in the human brain, the inability to see whatever is in front of our eyes, then a slight change, and it becomes visible again. Interesting enough as insight into how we perceive. I have little enough faith in my own memory and perception to think my keys are being hidden from me by a mischievous entity. There are times when it would be less personally insulting to blame the brownies. And there have been lost earrings showing up in highly unlikely places, long after I'd given them up for gone.

When I was eight, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a little pearl ring. I thought it was a real pearl at the time. Rather quickly, it disappeared. Desperate, I did as taught, prayed to God, and St. Anthony, even St. Jude as finding it seemed hopeless. I threatened that I would stop believing in God if He didn't help me find it. Six months or so later, I found it near the baseboard beside my bed. I reluctantly had to start believing again, sort of. The fake pearl had started to peel, and the metal tarnished. If a pagan guardian angel had hidden it from me, to point me to doubt, it could hardly have been done more effectively.

Pixies don't prank me, I suspect merely my own mind does. But I am willing to concede that others have a better case for external interference. If I had less clutter, this might all be clearer.

How would a unique gold ring, coincidentally engraved with the names of mother, sister, girl, thought to be buried, would wind up miles away, then inside a teleporting alligator, only to be found by the only surviving child of a doomsday cult?

Puma

ABC's. Alien Big Cats show up all over Britain, as well as all over the world, stealthily avoiding clear photography, leaving DNA samples, or heaven forbid being captured. Sadly, the chances I will witness a large black feline in the early hours of the morning in the English wild woods or hedgerows (as I imagine from Wind in the Willows) are vanishingly slim. There is a whole field for the unknown and out of place creatures, Cryptozoology. A rich vein these days, as new species are found, most notably in the DMZ between North and South Korea. The shadow leopard of Sumatra is a recent discovery. Yeti and lake monsters, chupacabras and mothmen all inhabit the liminal space between reality and myth. The big cats seem to me the most plausible as real.

Cats are elusive and mysterious when they live in one's home, able to vanish into a crack in the wall of reality for hours at a time. Panthers out of place could have more elusive skills. Domestic cats find their way across country to the humans they claim, even in new places. Or away to their own territory when the humans that claim them move away. Large cats could well be following ancestral paths, if they exist factually. Apart from people, but aware of us.

There are stories of cats who take busses, or who round neighborhoods, waiting miles away to be picked up by their humans every day. Cats who survive in moving vans and shipping containers. There was a cat who lived at the Mt. Washington Observatory, a spot in the White Mountains renowned for it's severe weather, at the weather station. Cats appear everywhere but the Antarctic. Where humans go, cats hitch a lift, to see what's there. They don't really need us, but we seem to fascinate them.

Then there are the cats in the walls of old homes, mummified. Put there, presumably intentionally - as magical protection, I wonder if the idea started when a cat just got stuck of it's own accord. Because for all their grace and speed, they do wind up in untenable positions at times. Up trees, in cactus, down sewers, possessing a certain whathehellgiveitago attitude.

And there is a part of us as humans that feels a fierce protectiveness for the young of our own predators. Apes have been eaten by lions, yet Koko had a kitten. The human psyche, probably from before we were human, has absorbed catness into ourselves. A strange mix of affection and fear, the feline is part of who we are. As we see human faces in rocks and trees, we also see huge cats (& dogs) in the shadows. Large, black, terrifying cats.

Smelt

I had a recurrent nightmare of wading in shallow water, and tiny fish nibbling away my toes, unable to pull my feet out of the lake. Too many nature shows about pirana. These dreams faded by the time I started school, but I still have a strange preoccupation with fish, without actually liking them. Except to eat. When I first heard stories of fish falling from the sky, I thought about the story of Moses and Manna from Heaven, a miraculous rain.

Instead of miracles, falls of fish, whether of a single species or a variety, near water or fairly far inland are dismissed as the result of waterspouts and whirlwinds. Although in a few cases, this is probably accurate, it's rather like the stab victim - who was "just standing around minding my own business." Such a blanket excuse, a comfort, not in any way analytical or thoughtful.

Living creatures from out of the blue. Jan DeBlieu's Wind:How the Flow of Air has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land, suggests that whirlwinds could explain some falls, but adding in the amazing insight that jet streams could easily move birds long distances, and so, I thought, why not fish? Charles Fort may have believed in teleportation of some sort. I much prefer a natural, if mysterious and unlikely explanation. A rare, unpredictable, but given just the right series of peculiar circumstances, and a small area will be up to their knees in anomalous frogs or smelt. Why not wind, which throws straws into trees and changes rocks?

Occam's razor cuts both ways. The simple does not always take into account all the circumstances, when the facts are bizarre.

What, I thought, would happen if a people are faced with regular falls of fish? What if they live by the best precepts of scientific method, observing and gathering data, not theorizing ahead of the facts? On the edge, in need of protein, as most human civilization always has been? I imagine them both logging the sizes and species, times, conditions, and then having a fish fry. What would this do to their worldview, their beliefs? Especially given the human capacity to normalize the extraordinary.

I will likely never experience a fish rain. But I would hope I would have the presence of mind to turn my umbrella up to catch as many as I can.

Times

All my life, I have watched for the oddness. The maple seed spinner that had a bump, the double yolk, the bread slice with the air hole, the M&N candy. I saw the Tooth Fairy, once. My mother loved tales of Seafaring disasters, Flying Dutchmen, as well as saintly miracles. Proof of the unique and inexplicable delights me.


If I have a faith today, it is that life is stranger than we can know. I think scientific method is the best human process, but that it is incomplete. The strangeness will not sit still for a good double blind study, which does not make it invalid. I know scientists themselves are prone to all that human ego is err to, from fudging the numbers to willful blindness for whatever does not fit their comfortable frame of reference, greed and lack of imagination. Which doesn't make them bad, it simply makes them Not Gods. There are Skeptics who worship them. There are Atheists who worship the idea of No God with the passion of the Orthodox. Such Atheists and Skeptics (the one note Believers in Anti-Belief, not the thoughtful well-let's sees) are just as rigid in their assumptions as the credulous believers, closing their minds and jumping to the conclusion they most want.

D got a copy of the Fortean Times, many years ago. It took me a while, but once I started reading it, I converted. Found my true faith. Douglas Adams was a prophet A mobile point, always watching, never accepting any explanation as eternal writ. For what is there to write upon? Stone erodes, cracks, melts, what words would survive even there? People will believe anything, much of it just screwy, our own ability to conceive of the way life works woefully inadequate to encompass the infinite variety.

When I came to write a novel, how could I do other than dig into this rich source? Putting the story here could be an issue, since I do dream of publishing, one day. But the ideas that inspire me? Ah ha! That I can write about. I will reveal to you my secrets, all the Forteana that drives and populates my meagre attempt at fiction.

I change again, from long convoluted essays, to my explorations of Boston, to daily struggles and worries, and now, the far edges that have always fired my mind. Let's see where this one goes...

Furday

And glad I am of it. Did not write last night. Read the December Fortean Times which miraculously appeared in the mail.

So, ten things I read about in the Fortean Times.

1. UFO abductees and lightening strike targets have a lot of common symptoms.
2. There is an elephant who speaks a few words in Korean. Apparently.
3. Charles Fort was going for some kind of unified theory, long before the physicists focused there.
4. The Olmec may have had writing.
5. The Romans had a toothpaste named after Messalina.
6. A researcher looking into woodpecker's lack of headaches won an Ignoble prize.
7. There is a lake of sulfuric mud in Java, swamping villages. Triggered, perhaps, by oil drilling.
8. Nichola Tesla could have been both a mad scientist AND a misunderstood genius.
9. Bruce Lee ate hash. Maybe.
10.Three minnows were found in a duck egg.