Stories I tell

May 29, 2023

You all, 

I have mentioned I write continuously. I’ve rediscovered this handy little blogging spot and will now  begin saving some of the stories I tell here. There will be a lot of discontinuous time-hopping. This is the beauty of blogs. Nobody has to read everything there or in order, only what interests them.My mate and I live a rather isolated existence in the Rogue Valley. Especially since covid.  For my social life, I needed friends, so well…. I made up a few. I needed ways to express metaphorically what I see in the world around. I will begin posting these tales beginning with stories I began in 2012 - the last time this blog was active. I begin with Chuen and Oc, a story which began telling itself to me not long after I began day keeping the Mayan calendars in 2012. 

Next we will hear from Motu - the Mother of the Universe, who came to me by way of dear friend. A cloth artist, Wini McQueen, was headed to Africa and wanted to know if she could bring me anything back. I thought for a minute and then said very seriously, “you can bring me back the Mother of the Universe.”  Wini, being Wini, as she wandered the cloth markets of west Africa asked the merchants if they had the Mother of the Universe. The answer was always no. Then one day, someone beckoned her, telling her he had the mother of universe here, in this basket of old cloths. 

He pulled out a bent nail representation of an old woman, bucket on her head and the earth on her skirt. Wini brought her back and  Motu instantly became alive between the two of us and we were quick to realize she has her own stories.

She sits on an alter in the pet cemeter. At the beginning of each trecena, (a Mayan 13 day week) she is moved to the next direction. For the curious, this is a star shaped path - north to south to east to west and back to north. A never ending dance.

Sometimes I write about Elorac who is Carole through the looking glass, an enduring part of me, coming out in the  early 1980’s. It seemed I needed her to gain distance from Carole, and writing in third person seemed to do the trick.

In these entries you will also meet Wolf, Raven, my grandmothers and the grandmothers. You may hear from the grandmothers right away.  They don’t like being on the back burner. You know how insistent the ancestors can be! There is God L, who is not such a great guy. There are the Benefactors, great trees providing all that is needed. But God L took over the Cacao Tree which is the money tree. There are terrible things afoot. Motu, sits on the alter with Albert and Walt, as they try to steer Earth and the galaxies into something new that even Motu has never seen before.  

And then sometimes, Carole, me, the identity that goes out into the world, she has something to say - like right now. She will be interjecting, as if this is some kind of typical blog and you might be interested in her take in the world.  

Like I said when I began, this is not a linear blog. It is a container. A chalice if you will, of all things Carole. I am giving my friends, these characters and Elorac and myself a place to have a voice, to express ourselves, to have an opinion. Nobody is obligated to read all these words about these worlds and words inside of me, but I offer them to you. They seem to want to come off the six acres here and mingle with the rest of the world. I’m opening the floodgates. 
Enjoy what is meaningful and read what interests you. Thank you if you are reading. It is a conversation! Welcome in.

The Way of Oc and Chuen in Meso-Earth

 A dog and a monkey were walking down the path looking for the town of Eb where they would find food and shelter in this unfamiliar place. There had been high winds for the eleven days of this strange journey.  Their hopes waned as person after person told them they had yet to find the correct road. "Straighten up,” said one person “and you will find Eb.” “Dress better to find the way," said another. Oc, the dog, and Chuen, the monkey, were sore and discouraged. “Eb, the Way can not be found,”  said another. 

Oc and Chuen came to cross roads.. 

"Which way, which way?" Chuen wailed. 

Oc stood still and silent, big teardrops flowing down their old faithful face. 

"I don't know which way to go." Chuen was stuck in fear, exhausted from lack of refuge. They saw a small moving hump in the road  with a squawking bird sitting atop coming slowly towards them from the direction they came straight ahead. It was a turtle with a brown thrush squawking on its back. Oc looked at them inquiringly.. 

"Why are you so angry, Thrush?" Chuen asked. 

"The turtle is making me angry. He carries his home on his back and not interested in taking me back to my Eb home."

"You know where Eb is?" asked Chuen excitedly. 

"Yes," Said the turtle. "Eb is right here, where-ever we are.  Eb is my home, the path I travel. This is why I carry my home on my back because I am at home everywhere I go. There is no place that is not home to me."

"What about you," Chuen asked Thrush, clearly confused. "You said Eb was down the road where you live? We are looking for EB because we must find shelter from the mighty wind of Ik.   

"It is down the road," the Thrush insisted and laughed her beautiful laugh. "Eb is where-ever you go, just as turtle says. But my Eb is down the road where my nest and young are, and I must go back and care for them for this is my way."

"If everywhere is Eb," said Chuen, "than I am already here and yet there is no respite from Ik, the mighty wind."

"You must find your own way," said the enigmatic Thrush. "Take care which way you go. You have reminded me I can fly home on the mighty wings of Ik." She flew off. Turtle continued marching down the path they had just walked.

Chuen and Oc looked at Turtle. He headed towards where they had come from. "No, I am not going backwards," Oc proclaimed. "We must choose one of these paths and keep going. Let us go to the left," Oc suggested. "The wind will be behind us and maybe the way will not be as hard." 

After they had gone a ways Bobcat startled them by jumping from a tree. "I heard you two were looking for Eb." 

"Yes," they nodded. "Do you know the way?"

 

Bobcat laughed with a trill which ended with a purr. "Eb is here, just as Thrush told you. And you are in exactly in the right place to get respite from the wind. Come into my home for a fine meal and take shelter from Ik. Tomorrow the great council of Ben shall begin convening and you are in good time attend. You can tell in this great council how the road has been hard. Together we will put our heads together and find a way to get through such rough weather." 

"Thank you very much," Chuen said with great gratitude. 

"Thank you very much," said Oc with humbleness.  

Bobcat led them to his den, a great comfortable cavern nestled in the trunk of a gigantic water oak. Oc and Chuen began to feel better as they relaxed for the first time in this strange place. For eleven days now they had been on this road whose name they only now learned was Eb. Eb took you where ever your feet led you and finally their path took them somewhere comfortable, out of the howling wind. 

Ms Bobcat served Chuen some cabbage and Oc enjoyed lizard stew.  After Chuen finished their meal, they could wait no longer to ask Bobcat and Ms Bobcat what this council of Ben was about. 

"Everyone comes from far and wide,” Ms Bobcat explained. ”We  come from all directions and perspective. Locally we get together once a unial - that is every twenty days -  and discuss things.  This is a larger gathering taking place at the Solstice. All  of our tribes will attend. Our local tribe will be discussing Ik tomorrow because people are suffering during this wind. It is as if Ik is up to no good, but we know better than that. Something greater is at play, we are sure. The great solstice is coming. Once our meeting tomorrow takes place, we will being the journey to the Solstice Council. This is the last solstice of the Haab. On Caban everyone gathers, all the tribes, near and far. This is not why you are here?”

Chuen stared at her. They had no idea why they were here. Until recently they had been a young girl living in the United States of America.  Inexplicably they were now inside a tree talking to two bobcats.

Later when all were in bed, Bobcat looked at his mate. "I do not believe they know anything that is happening. They are ignorant of much, they kept asking everyone to take them to Eb while their feet walked Eb and always have. We are all put upon by the nastiness of this wind. I can't say that I blame them for wanting shelter. These solar flares are wreaking havoc with Meso-Earth. The winds are driven by all the magnetic change. I bet these two came from above. That hasn't happened in many batuuns, now has it?

“No it has not.” His wife looked alarmed.  “Do not fret, dear. This is now and the future has yet to become. We can only do now what we can do and make the road to where we want to be.”

“All is not good in the upper world,” his wife cried, and is leaking down from the upper Realm into our house. What are we to do?”

“You must stay calm, Ms Bobcat,” her mate exclaimed to her. He looked deep into her troubled eyes. “Do not dwell on these things. You are warm and dry with plenty of food in your stomach.  This panic and worry is a disease they have in the upper Realm. If we let it afflict us here, we will not survive the coming changes. You must banish your worry. You must stay in the here and now. Stay on the path we create daily. This worry-thought-poison is seeping into the air and the waters and even the living dirt. Now it has you all jittery. These are two souls lost from their own dimension. We must treat them kindly and find them help at the Great Council of Ben.  By Caban and the Solstice we will have set the path before the great passage commences.  But now we must get some sleep. Pay attention to your dreams tonight. They are important if we are to know how to address the rapid changes of reality happening here and in the upper realm.

Ms Bobcat never took her eyes off Bobcat. She drank the wisdom in his words as if they were  living water from sacred springs. “You are right, my love,” she whispered quietly. I must go and finish my day-keeping activities so I may retire into the dreams of this night.

Chuen and Oc listened closely as they lay snuggled with each other in a small round room whose floor was as soft and supportive as the fine bed, Chuen's mom and dad had at home. Their dad worked at a mattress store and their parents had the best mattress ever.  Yet this mossy enclosure was better than the best mattress they had ever lain on. Chuen could not stay awake any longer, once Ms Bobcat quit talking and went to finish up her day-keeping activities.

Oc, however, did not go to sleep. They turned over and over in their mind this strange place.  Just eleven days ago, they’d been at home by the creek with their two people. They were with Chuen, who had been known as Willow and she was his person’s great granddaughter in the "upper realm"  - as Bobcat had called where they once had been. 

They had been playing by the creek. Oc explored a delicious scent under a large root by the creek and Willow followed her. They lost their balance as the ground seemed to swell under them and a crack opened. Willow picked up Oc and was clutching her as they both fell down this crack opening in small steep creek bank . They rolled down into the crack  for what seemed forever. 

When they landed, Willow looked different. They had  short broken hair all over them and a tail. They were a monkey, Oc was quite sure of it. Oc seemed to be about the same, still only about six pounds with long black and white silky hair. 

Before the Crack there had not been words in Oc’s mind.. They’d known things alright, but now there were words. They were able to communicate with others, including Chuen, which was now Willow’s name. Oc  did not know how they knew this. They were no longer Scout, the small dog. They were Oc  in Meso-Earth. A terrible wind had buffeted them ever since they rolled to a stop, somewhere entirely different. Sleepiness overwhelmed Oc. This comfort exceeded their comfy existence at home. Everything smelled so wholesome, even though it was also strange and unsettling.

May 5, 2023

I’ll start here 
-in a  mini crisis of confidence, 
connection and cosmos.

I invite poetTess over, asking for her to bring a cupful of meaning for me, please dear friend. poetTess asks her friend Hecate, of the crossroads, to cross this threshold with us. Hecate motions for IxCuina to come on in. 

“It might as well be a party”, poetTess sighs. “Carole, you have always loved a party.” But we know it is no longer true. I dread a party, a good time, any opportunity to connect with others. 

“What is true,” I explain, forever explaining. “I invited you all here because I have lost meaning. Really it’s that I have lost meaningful connections to others.”

IxCuina acknowledges this. “You are always so naughty.” She inspects her nails. “It does make you interesting.” She raises her eyebrows and looks pointedly at me and sees me crumble a little more when she referenced to my choice decades ago to live an interesting life. 

Now I feel overwhelmed by it all. Ixchuina nods towards the gardens to remind me what I already know - “You are connected to the land and seasons, to birds and plants, the water and the .dirt - they all  tether you to this existence."

“At this time of lunar eclipse, it doesn’t feel enough,” I explain.

“Feeling existential, are you?” Chirps in that old hag, Hecate. I glare at Hecate because it is like looking in a mirror. Scrawny old woman, nobody thinks twice to see hanging around on the corner, under the tree, around the bend from the Crack in the Earth.

“Yes, Hecate, I am feeling quite existential. What’s to be done?” She looks bored, full of ennui, herself. I look at her a little harder. “What’s up, Hecate?” care creeping in.

“It’s you”, she says, suddenly energetic, “it’s me! It is being frozen in time that is being especially problematic lately. - Time itself is at a crossroads”, she explains. 

And here we go, Hecate and me, down into our hall of mirrors together. “Times are coming together and we are having a collective head explosion”, I ask?

Hecate nods slowly. “Yeah. Cosmic forces and human minds are at a meeting point. All that is really required is to stay in your meat suit, even though you and many others feel the need to explode into a new knowing. All you have to do is maintain. It is that full moon, you know. Add a dash of eclipse, throw in some seditious conspiracy and a world in a frenzy of news consumption and there are highly volatile  circumstances brewing.” 

I ask, all the while nodding like I’m wise which indeed I am not- “is it like the gases stuff above a fire - the air heavy with a gas, not the flame, but highly combustible?  Then I turn to poetTess, “can you summarize all of this?”

“Passing through time zones, 
heads ablaze,
We pass frequencies back and forth,
all doubting any of this is real.
We convene for a quick morning party
Because Carole was feeling 
irrelevant and out of sorts.
Convene
Discuss 
And make it all clear as mud. 
Then we will go about our day.
AND, at least,
We all feel like clearer mud
Clearer than we did,
Because we talked and connected.
So go forth into your realms
Inviting the day in.
Respond in kindness”

 

why publish

I have a mystical vibe, as an introduction to who is behind these words, and what we will discover as I hit the publish button, opening a window into my mind. I am leftie, in the sense of what hand and which side of the brain (right) I operate with and also a leftie in a deep riveting desire for social justice to emerge and for radical equality to come into its own in a peaceful collective understanding and consisting of diverse peoples everywhere.

I love to explore symbolism and cultural alphabets. I love divinatory practices. 

While gardening extensively, I also write, listen to books and podcasts, and live a life sequestered from crowds. I am married to a combat veteran of the Vietnam war, am his helpmate and his ill tempered (on occasion) assistant. Today is the anniversary of Carl being blown up by a Russian mortar wielded by a north Vietnamese in 1969, He reminded me just this morning who made the rocket and why he is adamant that Russia is not our friend.

I am a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, and friend. As I sit at what feels like the edge of all things civilized, I manifest being an ally of the environment, soil, creeks and rivers as best as I am able in my limited understanding and means.

There is a degree of anthropology in my long ago past which has colored my understanding of the world and guided it ever since. The world around me translates to belief systems and  cultural alphabets. I long to understand our ancient history and how the indigenous mind works.  These longings flavored a deep dive into the I Ching beginning in my twenties. I understood it as an alphabet, whole and complete of a world view that was coherent, holding directions, seasons, a creation story always beginning again. An escape from the western linear thinking I was desperately trying to shed in my bewildering life as a young housewife and mother, working full time, married to a lawyer, held in the bosom of southern, conformist, social norms.  

Decades later, I began studying the Mayan Calendars for the same reasons. These windows into ancient indigenous minds, coherent and whole, moored to the natural world have helped guide me, as mother, grandmother, wife to combat wounded vet,  in a complex racist society dominated by men, hierarchies and understated cruelties. 

These days I have accepted my own ancestors as who and what I have a right and duty to explore. I have paid scant attention to them in the past, those damned colonists, Indian killing, enslavers. I wanted to have nothing to do with them. And yet here I am, the product of long strands of DNA, miles and miles of it in my own body, creating the person typing on this keyboard. Time to look at my privileges, my own place in this mess of changing paradigms warring in this culture.

It is time to have the courage to begin expressing my values and understandings.

I now study tarot asa source for divination. Tarot has  symbols used in western understanding of reality from as as far back as Sumeria and Mesopotamia. It holds a patriarchal hierarchal world view that has been gaining strength on this planet for thousands of years. It also holds the directions,  seasons,  astrology (and thus astronomical understandings) of my ancestors. In this practice,  I hope to find a path through the archetypes making up western world views and expand our understanding of  the elements into larger concepts, once more woven in a web of nature and radical interdependence of all. I hope to have the language to bridge our understanding as members of a dominating/dominated society to the concepts born from nature stressing our collaborative and interdependent nature. 

Today the Strength card came up as I questioned the Tarot about why to write and allow others to read. What you have read is how I responded to this card as a writing prompt today.

strength - publish to find courage while giving voice to my values. 

Why Write?

Why write. To be honest, that is not the question, but I like the question for a title better than, Why Publish? I write all the time and doodle. I have journaled for most of my life. I have written for publications and with the right audience, I have been well received. I add right audience because I used to write columns for the weekly county organ in the small southern town I lived in. I wasn't exactly those people's cup of tea.

I am a little sour on publishing, on being seen. I am so southern - so aware of what people think, and at the same time, a person who is incapable of conforming. You have met my type, the non-conformist. Yet I try to conform - until I don't.

Why write, why publish, why open myself up to others opinions, sometimes hurtful? Why?  I had a career as graphic designer/artist/typesetter. I have grown quite used to being invisible. Nobody ever says, who did that beautiful ad?  How did the phone book get so many glorious pictures, what a fine layout.  

I think of myself as invisible. After all, I am 66 years old. I have been invisible since my thirties, when my cuteness turned to stress and lines. It was strange to begin with, this invisibility, but it has grown on me. I depend on it. Unseen, unnoticed, doing my own thing. 

Did I mention, I finally left the south? Eight years ago, moving to to the Rogue Valley, I became even more invisible. The norms around me are quite different. It is OK to be different, to wear a weird outfit or two, to show up as oneself. I have watched myself expand and then contract in this atmosphere.  As life does, it has thrown some curve balls at me. And lets not forget the pandemic that drove us all inward for two or more years... I embraced this on my farm, living with my husband Carl and our dogs. Poking my head out again is a trial.

So why write? Why let anyone know what goes on in my strange little head that has quite a few narratives going on? Maybe if I write, if I share, someone, somewhere will feel strengthened, will shift how they think for just a moment, allowing change to happen.

We are all afraid of change. The world is in hyper drive and damn our fears, it is full stream ahead in a world imagined by all the Sci-Fi writers the world over.  Awhile back, I listened to friends discussing AI. Each person held a different perspective how this sudden influx of artificial intelligence will influence our reality. I realized, in different books, I had seen many of these perspectives unfold. I find this comforting, we have had many people imagining alternate futures for us for awhile. 

Why publish? Why add my voice out there when there are so many voices screaming to be seen. I've grown comfortable with invisibility. Maybe too comfortable.

We are living  through interesting times. I am a southern voice dissenting with politics that flourish there. I left there for a place that had decriminalized marijuana. I am comfortably stoned now, why add my voice to discophany? Isn't it dangerous to disclose oneself, to let anyone know what is going on in that brain sitting behind the blue eyes?

Yes it surely it is. But a life without risks is boring. I pledged to myself at about age twenty to live an interesting life, not necessarily a good one. I was five or six when I learned to ride a bike. I immediately wanted to form a scary fun club - but I had not takers. I seemed to be the only one who enjoyed scaring the crap out of myself with adrenaline rushes. I rode down steep hills, wrecking, I even had a concussion after a fast glide down and the gravely turn at the bottom spinning me out of control. I still enjoy the thrill of swimming in a river (especially rivers in Oregon where there are no water moccasins. I can tromp near and in creeks without the burdensome worry that a venomous snake might bite. Oh, one might not believe what a relief that might be.

Do you want to know these things, dear reader? Do you want to know what I believe and value? What you like to peek into the stories I tell about MOTU (Mother of the Universe) or Wolf and Raven, or Elorac and her grandmothers?   Chuen and Oc, lost in Meso-World? Are you interested in another opinion about the world? 

My friend Karen, encourages me to put my words out here. She asks me this question as I open this blog and think about that seductive publish button. She wrote to me, " dig deep into why you hold back when you KNOW your writing is healing, revealing, insightful.

Bear with me as I explore this. What is written above is not digging deep. It is the initial chatter before I dig deep in this. 

I hold back precisely because I know and have seen how powerful words can be. I run away from power now. Finally the little girl who sped down steep driveways on her bike, plunges into the Rogue River for a swim and who used to swim with the snakes in the Ocmulgee in Georgia has become cautious. Why?

Oh life has bitten me in these last years. Some of my descendants live hard lives and typically I want to take the blame. What have I done to cause mental illness, domestic violence, this plunge into societal darkness. I can't quit blaming society's dark turns on my own self. How is that for an inflated sense of responsibility. Sure I do know I could have made different choices and lives would be different. But would they be better? Autism, mental illness homelessness have fallen on those I love. I am helpless with their addictions, their responses, if they seek help. I have come face to face with my own powerlessness. As a middle class educated white woman, I mistakenly thought I was a savior and I could help people fix their lives. I discovered not only could I not fix others, but they could break me. And during the pandemic, I stayed home with my broke self and got used to this new shape and it's contours. 

Nothing stays the same. I am not the only one suffering. I have resources, friends and place and methods to find healing. Maybe I hit the publish button so we all understand we are in this together - suffering and celebrating. We are all attempting to find footing in a world that is changing faster than we can handle. We are all looking for someone who might can articulate how to stay afloat when the cosmos is swirling around us chaotically. 

I have my stories. I can share. I have to be careful not share other people's stories when their stories touch mine. I have to give them the invisibility we all crave when our lives aren't shiny and happy. 

Blog entries should not be long. Should not contain more words than a person can handle on the screen at once. We are a world of soundbites. who need our answers to be short, easy to read, exciting and fast. If you are to read me, there may be more words than you can process, (there are so many words in the world, everyone, we all think our opinion is important (the why I don't hit the publish button story). My story as a middle class white woman who has had so many entitlements are not the words we need to feature these days. Yet my story isn't typical (whose is?). I search for ways to become irrelevant and allow the next generation, the other colors in the world to flow into their sunshine. 

Maybe that is what is needed. For a white woman to admit she shouldn't be the star, and to make room for the rest of the crowd to be seen, to have their days of visibility. Maybe if I write, I can help myself and others find this path of non-dominance. Maybe we can search for ways to allow the world to change and shift as it must and for us to find meaning, not in being the brightest star in the room, but being within a constellation of diverse and colorful stars, blinking and shining in our imperfect way.

I found this old blog spot....

It is 2023. It has been over 11 years since I posted here. I forgot this blog existed. Even if I had remembered it, I am still shocked to find I have an easy access blog spot that I can fill with entries about my days.

 

   

I am no longer in Middle Georgia. I transplanted myself out of there eight years ago and moved to SW Oregon where I am no longer a criminal for enjoying cannabis. I am a cannabis gardener now! 

Tomorrow is May 27th. It rolls around once a year and is the anniversary of Carl getting "blowed up" in the Vietnam war.  Previous posts seem to cover that thoroughly. Here we are Eleven Years (!) later and the day is here again.

There are times this date can be very uncomfortable. This year, we seem to be alright even as we notice it’s imminent visit. Carl has many friends here in Oregon, most of whom he met going to various Vet groups. He goes out to eat with them, goes to group with them and talks on the phone. He is connected to them in many ways.

I too, have grown connections in this area. It is a journey to grow up and practically old in one place and then move away in my late fifties. In a way, it is freeing. I found change difficult enough in a South that seems to never change . I am getting older and it nice to be in an area where old and faded is the fashion. We can tell tourists to the area. They are so shiny.  

Here the sun beats you to a pulp in the summer time - at least in years long drought the region is experiencing - the temps have reached 115 degrees in my experience. Summers can go by without a drop of rain. Fires can burn near my neighborhood for two weeks with the National Guard only allowing residents into the area (2018).  Winters have such terribly short days, and summers, indeterminably long days. We are pretty far north up here. I have adjusted to having snow in my life - the whole reason I thought I could never leave the south was snow.

It is a gardening haven where I live. People take it real seriously. I certainly do. It has become purpose for me, this gardening. There is so much wrong in the world but I can put a little carbon back in the ground. Learn to grow food and take care of the soil. I can feed the homeless with my extra produce - practically helpful when I have bumper crops of apples and pears. This year I expect to give squash and corn, tomatoes and beans to the food agencies as well.

 

In the eleven years since I last wrote here, the world went Tipsy Turvey. It is as if we are on another timeline all together. We are no longer on the brink of climate change, but brutally finding out just what the long denied term really means and how it manifests. Rain (a now grown grandchild) asks: would you rather die of water or fire? East or West Coast, she means. I have, for better or worse, chosen the fire. I like I have a new place to share. I like that maybe nobody will ever see it. Ha. i am the invisible writer, naturalist, gardener, priestess - who would like to live out loud - though I don't actually want people watching and hearing. In this place, on the edge of what wilderness is left, maybe I will visit this blog spot again and spill more thoughts, more who I am and what I think about. Become visible in small and meaningful ways.

light, Carole