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...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Saturday, May 18th, 2013
Lately I keep thinking about the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” In the movie, they find out that in the future they are worshiped and the whole of future society is based on them. The motto of the society is “be excellent to each other.”
I love 80s expressions like “excellent” and “awesome.” I love thinking about the hearty innocence and doggie gusto of Keanu Reeves. Yeah, he’s kind of bland, but he’s still *excellent.*
I am on a quest. My quest is to be as excellent as I can be in all the little nooks and crannies of the Thomas’s english muffin of my life, the big, most excellent, vegan-butter-and-raw-honey-whole-wheat-toasted english muffin of my life, the english muffin of my life that is delectable yet leaves one wanting more life to live!
So for the past two years I’ve been beating myself over the head with activist efforts without letting myself have the teensiest toe-dip in the actual tangible parts of what it is I would affect positively with my activism.
That’s changed recently. I am working on tangible, immediate results in addition to abstract work.
There are two things we’re picking up: volunteering at the APL doing dog-walking and working on protecting the watershed. So rather than only sitting and talking, Smith and I are out there doing fun stuff and getting exercise and being with each other, helping save the world and being and feeling excellent.
Volunteering at the APL is such a joy–to be with the dogs in the field, being so happy, witnessing happiness. Their walks of temporary freedom also temporary respite for me. It is so nice for the dogs to have the walks–they are treated well and they get out quite a bit, but even so the majority of their time is in the little cages.
I have noticed, though, that some of the dogs who are more shy or who have some physical problems (like Dozer, a sweet, blind dog) have been there for probably quite some time. One dog doesn’t like a leash, so I don’t think she gets to go out very much at all unless someone really pushes her. I’ve been working on a relationship with her and have just sat in her cage to work on keeping her social but she won’t even let me pet her yet.
It makes me think that when I adopt a dog, if that happens in the future, I will adopt one that is shy or has some kind of physical issue, because it will help prevent animals with these problems from having to stay too long cooped up.
This morning we’re going for orientation on the new watershed volunteer gig. This is kind of neat because it’s a new project for the Cleveland Metroparks, a new watershed program in Parma. The more I read the more I read about new programs for reclaiming and restoring the health of land, and I am so enthusiastic about being a part of this, putting my hands into the loam of it, seeing stuff grow and be protected and secure.
~ Lady
Posted in activism, Being, couples, dreams, Environment, ethics, Family, Lady, ladymemoir, Letters to the Universe, Philosophy, Relationships, smith & Lady, spirituality | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Thich Nhat Hanh keeps coming to mind. I would like to write something fresh and encouraging and good and entertaining for my weekly walkingthinice.com blog. My state of mind is such that I am not sure if I am in the right or wrong by not doing a particular project. Sometimes I think that rightness depends partially on the process one goes through to do the particular thing that is being evaluated as being right or wrong. There’s a kind of hysteresis to many processes.
Another thing that comes to mind is that I am holding a bunch of concepts in my mental hands, my buffer, and sometimes the concepts slide in and around each other when I don’t mean for them to. At least sometimes it produces good and meaningful results anyways.
But I’m holding these concepts in my “hands” and I sigh. How do I explain it? I am a multi-threaded process?
Which reminds me of semaphores. I am not very familiar with the word but have used the concept in programming. The word “semaphore” keeps on occurring to my mind the past two weeks. Wikipedia says “In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type that provides a simple but useful abstraction for controlling access by multiple processes to a common resource in a parallel programming or multi user environment.”
Reality is providing me with clues–Thich Nhat Hanh and semaphores.
I have been thinking for a long time about my brain and the knowledge that is made available to me, and wondering how much of it is stored locally in my brain tissue versus how much is encoded on a quantum level elsewhere and can float in to me. I really don’t believe that I am limited by skin anymore.
How much is steeping, and how much can be compartmentalized, made distinct? When I sit in a room it is like steeping in the room, and the attributes of the room become available to me. When I invest in a group of smart people, I become smart in the topic of their specialty, although sometimes this takes time. Or if I watch a violent movie, the movie impresses itself on me and my subsequent reality in a way that I don’t like unless I somehow negotiate the situation well. Thich Nhat Hanh says to consume mindfully and that one benefits by not watching violent media.
I have a toolset, a mental toolset that I use to negotiate and navigate reality. It is still in development, but it works somewhat. I’ve got a mirror in my toolset–that’s for sure. I have my computer–my computer is a good tool for my toolset. And I have my notepad. Oh, I’ve got Spotify. And I’ve got praying, and I’ve got meditation. I have my word.
There’s what I already have, and there’s what I would like to add to the toolset or know that I already have anyways. I would like some capacitors and filters and transformers and transistors. I would like seeds, especially heirloom seeds–I’d like to be an aunt and I would like to make sure that my nieces and nephews and my family (everyone is my family) has good food to eat, and their descendants for as long as the Mother Earth will do it, and that Mother Earth will do this for quite a long time. I would like the future in my toolbox, the good future. I would like Nature and Civilization coexisting wonderfully forever. And the good present. And compassion towards the past.
I would like to plunk parts of the set onto the template with the understanding that the set is very large, and that what I plunk onto it might not always be pithy. I would like to plunk pieces of the puzzle onto it, the n-dimensional puzzle such that reality can interpolate gently, understand with compassion, extrapolate beautifully, and coat irritants in metaphorical pearl to remove any harm without harming that which has irritated. I would like language to be useful but for those who don’t have precise voices to not be limited by lack of technical know-how; I would like for every good impulse to be augmented and every not so good impulse to be transformed or damped.
I am not sure if this relates to your particular threads of reality or not, but it is some helpful stuff for me, and I share it with the caveat that I wish for you to explicitly wish to “do no harm,” but even if this seems silly, I wish for it to not cause harm regardless, and rather, to cause blessings.
~ Lady
Posted in Being, creativity, dreams, Environment, ethics, Lady, ladymemoir, Letters to the Universe, Peace, Philosophy, Relationships, spirituality, writing | No Comments »
Monday, November 26th, 2012

Smith, me and Mandycat are on a spaceship. Sometimes it’s just me, actually. But most of the time it’s the three of us. It’s our apartment. Our apartment is the spaceship cabin. And we are the passengers of the events that we read about. And sometimes we are the captains. We can always take the helm of the spaceship and help the events around us, too.
The other day I was cutting out our new insurance ID cards from Progressive and at the same time I decided to put together the spaceship model, OUR SPACESHIP EARTH. It struck me that we are going to be driving backed up by Progressive now in our big wide spaceship earth. And I also found a bunch of four leaf clovers that day. Very auspicious.
We have platinum membership on OUR SPACESHIP EARTH so I wonder what that means. Does that mean that we are VIPs? I think we are VIPs if we remember that other people are VIPs, too. But back in the apartment helm, we are definitely captains of this realm. And sometimes outside the realm, too, when we settle in and gel into the moment, listen to its sounds and understand what is going on with the flow.
Several years ago I asked the aliens to beam us aboard. I think they are telling me that we are already on-board.
The meaning of OUR SPACESHIP EARTH is to realize that although Earth is a big wonderful place, it seems to be finite at least in the everyday grasping of it and understanding how to utilize it properly, and that this spaceship is to be respected and maintained, especially the garden part of it. We are still in Eden; we were never expelled.
I do not think we will need to use our ID cards other than to have good assurance that we are covered, the Precautionary Principle. And I like the idea of it being with Progressive. Does that mean that we’re driving our spaceship in a progressive direction now? I like to think so. Progressive with all the good connotations.
~ Lady
Tags: Mandy, Our Spaceship Earth, Progressive Posted in Being, couples, Creative Writing, creativity, dreams, Environment, Family, Humor, Lady, ladymemoir, Letters to the Universe, life, Philosophy, Relationships, smith & Lady, spirituality, Stories, Tremont | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 22nd, 2012
At Thanksgiving I think about the abundance that will be on the table, interacting with family members and the bustle of preparation. I think about pleasing people and pleasing my stomach. I think about symbolism and pleasing tradition while making progress.
I remember Thanksgivings past, the huge table and commotion at Grandma and Grandpa Ireland’s house. I imagine my Grandparents looking in on these words and looking in on us and helping when they can. I’m looking at a photo of them as young adults and I wonder what it was like for them–they must have been almost as responsible as they were when I knew them. I imagine them being much like my brother Jonathan and new sister Dedra setting up business. My grandparents were industrious.
And the holiday’s about giving thanks for the harvest. We have so very much abundance here that it’s a concern that we do not overeat. How fortunate we are. Even very poor people here quite often have enough to eat, although there is much to do to make sure that healthy food is affordable and accessible to everyone.
How can we work our harvest better? By making the healthy stuff more prevalent, by being more ethical in how we grow it and what we consume. By being kinder to Mother Earth so she can provide harvests for us in good health.
Reaching into the gist of the moment, putting my hand into the gist of the moment, what I’d like to do is really make stronger connections. Not to be poignant for poignancy’s sake, but to make progress.
Progress in our relationships–fulfilling the promise of how we thought we were going to be as capable adults now that we are older. Progress in my relationships. So Thanksgiving is not just a time to give thanks, but to show action concerning our thanks. To work on relationships. To use the dividends of our continuing maturity. To be what we can be.
I remember a family meal Smith & I were invited to in Mexico by a serious young man who practiced English with us. He addressed everyone around the table individually and thanked them for how they contributed to his life. This was during a dinner he put together because he was leaving Mexico to be a student in Canada.
I would like to do this at our gatherings, foster this kind of serious joy in recognizing each other’s importance. Perhaps some formality or format helps, even a game? We can foster this.
At Thanksgivings at my Aunt Jan’s and Uncle Jim’s, we have gone around the table and individually articulated what we are thankful for… can we take this opportunity today?
~ Lady
Tags: Thanksgiving Posted in activism, Being, Conversations, couples, dreams, Environment, ethics, Events, Family, Food, Lady, ladymemoir, Letters to the Universe, life, Mexico, On Writing, Peace, Philosophy, Poetry, Relationships, smith & Lady, spirituality | No Comments »
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