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WALKING ON THIN ICE

CHOOSING TRACKS

October 20, 2013 No Comments

CHOOSING TRACKS

I’m doing a mix tape for you

I’m making a mix tape
that never gets boring
tap tap taps you into
calmness, then bliss
sans titillation

Maybe an ecstatic state
without the frenzy, with only
a taste of the memory of angst
for comparison

But not
the actual experience
of angst

Where lust is
transformed into zest
such that every taste
tongue, touch, sound
is gently enough

That the passage
through days is gently
wonderfully enough
chock with gusto
and painless poignancy

You’ll know for sure
you’re cool like Blondie
hot like Bowie
as loosely flowing
yet contained
as Kate Bush

You’ll know you’re forgiven
if that’s what it takes
redeemed into goodness
if redemption necessary

You’ll be as smiley
as the Dalai Lama
as wise as
Thich Nhat Hanh

We’ll all know it
but that won’t matter

This is how I’ll
trick out the tape
and it won’t be a trick

It’s a prescription
for your wellbeing

And when you
can’t listen
it’ll have saturated
you
anyways

~ Lady

what would Jack do?

August 5, 2013 1 Comment

detail Smith sculpture – foto Smith

What would Jack do?

Reading Jack Keroauc’s truth-disguised-as-fiction “Tristessa” (1960) which I hadn’t known about until I bought it used from Guide to Kulchur for $5.

Kerouac was my main driver of yearning for adventure and travel ever since my 17 yr-old self read “On the Road” in 1963 and it inspired a fire to go to Mexico and smoke dope.

Took me four years to find marijuana, two more months to put a needle in my arm, 44 years to hit Marrakech and six months more for Mexico.

Now I read his adventures and think, hmmm, getting drunk, done that . . . smoking grass, yup . . . joy riding, yes . . . mainlining, been there . . . smoking opium, of course . . . hash in Morocco mushrooms in Mexico, uh huh . . . walking Zen trail, still dabble.

But the one thing I did poor Jack didn’t was pass through the maelstrom of alcohol and needles and snorting and sniffing and popping.

I ended up drinking myself to death 22 years ago and haven’t imbibed since, stopped needles 14 years ago, quit cocaine three years later, and discovered a couple years ago during my hip replacement I no longer enjoy pills.

So I’m down to 2 cups strong coffee daily and grass anytime I have the chance. Last did LSD in 1985 and magic mushrooms down in Mexico 5 years ago, though I’ll do both again in ten years or so.

Find that Jack’s words which excited my 17 yr self now seem tame, shallow, but still the initial thrill that primed my adventure pump by showing there was more out there than suits, suburbs, TV.

What he did and wrote was important because he did it first and he did it well. He hopped the Beat train before it left the station, before it even had a destination. Unfortunately he drunkenly stumbled off part way thru the journey to go home, live with mom, drink himself to death, losing his mad holy light while railing at those still riding, especially the (to him) free loading hippies who hadn’t earned a ticket.

That’s the second thing I did Jack didn’t – I stayed on the train. There’s a third string we have in common . . . we both drank ourselves to a bleeding throat ulcer which killed us, except I rose the third day and walked home sober.

What he did isn’t lessened by later because we’re all weak and constantly stray quit fail walk away, so thanks Jack for the journey. You are my original light, and I cherish your burnt-out bulb. You turned America to the possibility of leaving the sheep pen and having exotic adventures. You also showed us failure.

Both are lessons to use.


2 from Guide to Kulchur – foto Smith

London, 2006 – foto Smith

Thanksgiving as a time of progress

November 22, 2012 No Comments

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

Disclaimers to the Universe RE Stations of the Lost and Found

August 8, 2012 1 Comment

I know that the Universe is affected pretty profoundly by what one puts out. When I do an issue of the city poetry zine, a lot of poetic energy returns to me as payment. When I spend time learning stuff for work on my own time, more paid work comes back to us as payment. When I volunteer for an activist cause, frequently the next day there will be some court ruling in favor of my perspective. This is indeed a Reality of Mind, and the microcosm of one’s local environment affects the macrocosm profoundly.

As a person concerned with the material I put out and help with for the Universe, I’ve had a bit of a time understanding how to rationalize my role as co-writer of our new book, Stations of the Lost and Found.

I pick up the book, and sirens charge down the street. The air gets excited and the birds stir. The sun goes behind a cloud. I open it and read its words of crimes past, and I make disclaimers to the Universe. I wrangle.

But intuitively, there’s this ball of volition in me, a ball of understanding, and it feels that the book is a good thing. Not that I want people to do the actions in the book, but that Smith’s life is a life I might have wanted to have lived just to have seen it.

Hard life, for sure. Taking pictures of his penis for art. Armed robbery. Shooting himself up with cocaine. Seemingly countless injuries as he tore against the very edges of the fabric of reality. Talking matter-of-factly about masturbation. Showing his wounds from women and daring to write about crying. Oozing art and poetic dividends from the scars in his skin, the falls, the hemorrhaging, the cancer.

Strangely enough, even as his wife I am sympathetic to his character in the book as he moves through his twenties trying to figure out how to find love. Strangely enough, I want the character to find true satisfaction in his relationships with either Red or Maudlin. More sympathy for Red as she was his wife.

I want him to straighten out through that ordeal. I want for him to have not put himself in jail, but I love the stories of his experiences in jail. Love his story about his fear of Ringo but I wouldn’t want anyone to experience the situation:

For the first six months I was in the tiers. A tier is seven two man cells and a shower, all enclosed in bars. Each night we were locked into our cells, and each morning let out to wander the six by fifty foot communal area. Our tier had Ringo. He was big, black, brutal, and did not like me, not because I was white, but because I wouldn’t get out of his way when he walked. And he walked all day in a continuous oval with a short detour each loop around me. He was working towards hurting me, and said so. Ringo scared the shit out of me. But I scared me more because I wouldn’t give in. When I’m that afraid, I seem to go out of my way to piss off what I’m afraid of. And what I was afraid of was bigger, stronger, faster, meaner, and an admitted fatal fighter. I felt ill.

Then the odd backhand of salvation. I had smuggled one too many letters out of prison. This letter described a psycho guard and his abuse of prisoners and their families. The warden called me to his office, showed me the illegal letter and quietly said, “Smuggling is eighteen months. I wonder if you have anything to say about your charges against the guard?”

“What I’ve written is not only true,” I said, “but I haven’t even scratched the surface of Sarge’s verbal and physical abuse of visiting wives.”

Warden told Sarge to return me to my cell, and for me to think about the eighteen months and we’d finish tomorrow.

I went to my cage and I worried. I worried about tomorrow. I worried about Sarge’s retaliation. I worried about the eighteen months. I worried about my wife who was sleeping with an excon who was not me. And I really worried about Ringo.

Next day the warden called me into his office and casually told me, “You’re moving downstairs to the dorm. I’m making you head cook.” No mention of the letter, Sarge, or the eighteen months.

One thing every prisoner wanted was a job that got you out of the cells and into the dorm with its one locked gate, radio and TV. And of all the jobs, cook was cockerel’s walk.

Switching so quickly from such certain sorrow to overwhelming wealth fucks your mind, sends too many threads simultaneously in too many different directions. Yet I instantly flashed: I’m free from Ringo.

If you’re going to be in prison, the kitchen’s the place to be. The best thing about working in the kitchen was I could eat what I wanted when I wanted. And I could wander about and find places of privacy. The menu was pretty basic because a chunk of money allotted for prison food went to the warden’s house budget instead. Even though I had never cooked anything before, I’d cook things like fifty gallons of chicken soup. Once I was awakened in the middle of the night by the highway patrol who’d brought in a deer that’d been hit by a car. I’d never done it before, but I skinned and gutted that deer; did it two more times before I left. Whenever I felt like it, I’d fry myself a venison steak. Even when I fall into shit, I find roses around me.

There might have been ten of us in the dormitory, and over a hundred fifty in the prison. To be in the prison dorm, you had to have a prison job. There were dishwashers, food servers, people who fixed things inside prison, somebody who did lawn work and outside tasks and someone else who ran errands. There was no compensation to having a prison job other than getting to live in the dorm, having a little more freedom, and being treated a whole lot nicer. The dorm had a TV and radio and books to read. I always thought it weird to see prisoners sitting around the dorm watching cop shows on TV and rooting for the cops.

After I was down in the dorm a while, one of the trustees ratted out Ringo, who in punishment was supposed to be in a locked cell in a locked tier three floors up. We were all sitting around watching TV, and in walked Ringo, taller, stronger and larger than any of us. Rat was Woody Allen’s size.

Ringo said to Rat, “You ratted me out.”

Rat said no.

Ringo repeated, “You ratted me out.”

Rat really did rat out Ringo, and we all knew it. He had also ratted my letter. Rat started denying again but Ringo hit him hard in the face, knocked him to the concrete floor, and STOMPED five times on his head with his hard work boot. With each stomp, Rat’s head banged against the concrete and bounced up to meet the down-coming boot which smacked his head even harder into the concrete as Ringo said one word per stomp: “You. . shouldn’t. . have. . done. . that.”

None of us moved or spoke, not once. Ringo turned and looked at us to see if he had a problem, decided he didn’t, and left. Rat got up, stemmed the blood, and his head swelled to twice its size.

That’s when I knew I was not the me I thought was me, but the me I needed to be. It’s not my only lesson, but it is one that worked. Had I said or done something, one of two things would have occurred. I’d be dead, or the others would have rallied and we would have stopped Ringo. But had that second happy Hollywood scene occurred, at some time, at some place, Ringo would have found me and hurt me. I know now I did the right thing for me, but it did cost me my mirror mirror on the wall who’s the hero here of all view of myself.

I think the Universe has kept Smith alive because he has written his stories down and because he has pushed the boundaries as a kind of explorer. I’m hoping the Universe agrees and finds the story thrilling and interesting, but doesn’t let it cause harm.

~ Lady

~ ~ ~

The memoir Stations of the Lost & Found by Smith & Lady is available for $20 at https://www.createspace.com/3903652. We’ll have 20 physical copies in soon for first come first serve.

POETRY LETTER FOR SOCIAL CARING

August 7, 2012 1 Comment

POETRY LETTER FOR SOCIAL CARING
For the Cleveland Five

There’s a machine that works on metaphor, action,
prayer, intent, art, words, poetry, communication.
It permeates and inflates. It girds up the health
of clay to pen open lung heart.

It works on levers, breath, promise points, little
areas we work to heal the big areas, the endurance
of holding softly to kind open mind,truths I can
muster as much as possible.

It’s a machine that trusts me and I trust it.
Advaita. This machines is me, Thee, the stuff
around me and Thee. It says “I am.”

The levers are consistency in truth and action,
keeping promises. The more promises are kept, the
more effective the oar. It stirs a reservoir of
ever renewing wellness. It rachets down
conclusions to tender secure for sure.

Promises are keeping the faith. Keeping the faith
can be doing the marginal things to make a
difference, to widen or winnow the circuit,
circumference, area, mindful resource.

Keeping the faith is having a foot in the door to
to nourish us, propping that door open to let in
the sun, the rain, whatever is needed for the
garden, the garden interior, the garden exterior.
The more calm discernment, the easier the
propping. The window. Windows passing through
bars.

Keeping the faith. How can one not forget some
sadness, gently? What genie lets one care and not
immerse in steeping ill-ly? Can the highbeam
eyebeams focus concern but not open danger vistas
on account of wanting to be healing? Ruach.

This letter is a ladder leading to a jail cell in
which someone for whom weather unladened something
rotten and I’m sorry. I cannot just skip tiles at
convenience, follow the yellow brick road with
abandon.

Thou shalt not forget; thou shalt not obsess too
much. Thou shalt not abandon. Cannonballs and
canons. Cannonballs through canons sometimes.
Cannonballs of canons. Personal cannons, cans,
ons, Can on. We can on. We can carry on. Our
cannoning of community histories. Our cannoning of
that which we wish to accrue.

Progress is carried on the rachets and the breath
and when we inflate with intent of best, when we
let the stuff wind kind for a long while, well,
that’s a good way. Progress is mindful of what has
happened, too.

I seep the silk of a ladder of attention to the
jail cell in which someone is not forgotten. The
silk is a tieline of care that kindles calm balm.
Light it like a wick. Let the candle be the
outside air, and the letter about ladder be soaked
in something that matters. Let the person
receiving this letter find his reservoir by
candlelight, softly, softly.

~ Lady

I SEE THE FIRECRACKER STARS

July 4, 2012 1 Comment

I SEE THE FIRECRACKER STARS
(for smith)

If I run
if I listen
if I sit
if I walk
if I drive

If I am quiet inside
for a while

Let still
the hard banter

Let still
the goals

Let still
the grip

Let settle

Let settle
deep inside

lightly

nestle

listen

Wind kindles
stillness slightly

Wind kindles
water in the well

Wind touches

Wind coaches

I close my eyes and wait
and look inside

Ideas
are behind my eyelids

Sometimes the ideas
look like words

Sometimes the ideas
look like eyes

Eyes blinking at me
from the screen
of my closed eyelids

Eyes looking at me
out of firecracker
mandalas

Thus This has eyes
ideas
and wind

This comes
from deep
slow
soft places

It catches me,
the soft wind

It catches me
in a thorough net
of gentle
permeation

It catches me
when I let go
of the video camera
of the goal
of my quotidian ambition

Or sometimes
it catches itself
to my video camera
if my video camera
looks like a fun ride

Sometimes the wind
and the ideas decide
the video camera is a fun ride
and they run with it and
sometimes the video camera
is a caliper with sails
and sometimes
the caliper with sails
is a church
with an antenna

And sometimes
the antenna has legs
into the ground of being

And sometimes
the ground of being
sprouts two lovers
groom and bride

The lovers are part
of the sticky ground of being
they stick by means of gravity

Gravity through Mother Earth
permeates and pulls us

Gravity moves Two
back to One again

Fastened forms
mud and blood
we throb

Gravity is love
and it fastens the soles
of our feet on this ball set on course
through itself

Following the wind
of the sun

Slogging through it,
slogging through itself,
warm form slogging through itself,
warm form embracing itself,
warm form when I wrap my arms
into You

Warm form
clumping together,
clasping itself,

Threads
when we clasp,
embrace

I lay myself into you

Looking into the thrub of your chest
I see the firecracker stars

The graced transcendence
behind our eyelids

The eyelid
of your chest

The eyelids
of our Aye

~ Lady

 

Walking on Thin Ice

June 7, 2012 No Comments

Walking on Thin Ice is not about the world losing polar ice caps. We’re going to stop that. We’re going to thicken those ice caps right back up. We’re going to populate the glaciers again. We’re going to make sure there’s an adequate head of snow on the Himalayas and everywhere else that its needed. Cool breezes bleeded.

This blog is named after the Yoko Ono and John Lennon song. It’s the first song by Yoko Ono I ever heard, and smith introduced me to it. In my opinion, it is one of the most far out yearning and tragic songs ever made. They were finishing up the song the day Lennon died. I only learned a long time after naming the blog that such sadness had happened around the generation of the song.

When I listen to it, it brings back the giddy creativity, the yearning sated, the ecstatic discovery I experienced when I hooked up with smith. I listened to it on “The Best of Yoko Ono” album over and over, spooling my Miata around, lost and found. It was novel, yet old. Like smith.

In the months after we hooked up, I’d collapse on his rocking chair sofa and poof into smoke. He told me the rest of his stories for his memoir. I tore down his cancer. I spackled the walls. I barfed as he was irradiated. We made art. Night time was Ono and Meat Beat Manifesto. Morning was Mingus, breakfast and golden sun.

Walking on Thin Ice, in the song, is about daring do on the edge.

Walking on Thin Ice is about adventure.

Walking on Thin Ice, in smith & lady’s lives, is about walking on water.

~ Lady

PEACHES ARE RICHES

May 26, 2012 3 Comments

Poem I’m working on for Dianne’s “End of the World” anthology with the thought that the end of the old world is the beginning of the new–not literally the end of the world but the beginning of a new era of possibility and better vision.

PEACHES ARE RICHES

It is always
the beginning again when
I hold a peach,
fruit born of dirt
something that tastes so luxurious
appears as such life
the veins of plant fruit beneath the skin
the little hair fuzz on the skin
the juice dribbling down my chin when I
bite into it
all the typical stuff said about peaches

Perfect and individual
fruit, dirt, riches

Sweeter than pie
Healthier than hot dogs
Tastier than lots
of food

(All those goodies that we make
just to have goodies
but they don’t even
taste as good)

Mama vagina

 
Economically, they say to
remember the fundamentals

Peaches are riches

When I eat a peach
I taste the button
bite into basics
remember what’s delicious

This is kind of what I mean

Remember the fundamentals
and use when appropriate

Peaches are riches

So we’ve got our peaches
and we are in day zero.

But it’s not just going back
it’s new day.

It’s new day because we know
by virtue of our recorded history
by virtue of our memories

So there’s a recorded history
and memories
So it’s new and old depending
what you want to juggle
tarless and tireless

Let’s say it’s new because
we are deciding
it’s new

It’s new because we’re deciding
we’re peach eating
cherry pickers
getting to the quick
pit of the trick
that’s going to get us through
corridor,
navigator

staircase
elevator

alligator

Vision minnows
winnowing
windows

Seeing the windmills
through the rubble
on the road

Remembering the fundamentals
appropriating the new
and using that, too.

~ Lady

Dialogue to help create the change we want to see

May 21, 2012 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about getting more involved in the dialogues and projects on the Civic Commons. In my inbox today I received an e-newsletter inviting people to participate in a project by America Today. They want people to answer four questions: How did we as a nation get in trouble economically? Who do you blame? How do we as a nation solve our economic problems? What are you doing differently to get through the downturn?

What I really like about the Civic Commons is that the philosophy of the project involves polite dialogue oriented around making the change we want to see.

Here are my answers:

How did we as a nation get in trouble economically?

There are multiple factors. The situation that allowed the disparity of wealth to grow way out of balance was one major one. Military spending rather than focusing on developing our strengths through education and investment in people and small businesses was another one. The way Wall Street and the banks focused on nonproductive speculation was another.

Whom do you blame?

I blame lack of citizen involvement and lack of transparency and too much corruption in the system–people not using it properly. I blame the Supreme Court a bit. I blame apathy a lot.

How do we as a nation solve our economic problems?

1) Stop killing people–defund the military and instead get those soldiers working at home on infrastructure building for a green economy.

2) Believe in a better future–the power of belief is amazing.

3) Follow up words with action. Don’t just protest–do community projects to help change the situation for the better.

4) Work on making sure our business actions follow our ideals more and stop the cynicism.

What are you doing differently to get through the downturn?

1) I’m working on better business practices–making sure our business is doing business well, ethically, honestly. This does translate into more opportunities. Our business is actually growing through this period, and the latest news shows Ohio is recovering as well.

2) I’m investing time in educating myself on current trends in my business and also am reading books on how to grow the business.

3) I buy locally whenever possible–“vote with your dollars.”

You can post your own answers to their four questions here…

Reality Modelled as Universal Mind

May 12, 2012 No Comments

I have limited time and must do some conventional work, but here are some thoughts expressed rather quickly.

Last night I met a guy at Visible Voice who is touring the country on his bicycle with his solar powered sewing machine, P. Nosa. He makes visionary patches of ideas. He made one for me—the idea I have is “we are saving the planet.” (I asked him if he would consider making cloth menstrual pads for women as well because this is a good thing to do and he can make money selling them, too.)

I have a definite vision for the future, several definite visions, actually. Many visions. Lots of beneficial visions. I have no longer been paying attention to nonbeneficial visions other than to work on transform functions to resolve these such that they do not harm Reality and that they dissipate.

Basically, “all” that one sees is a wavefront of probability manifested. So it is good-better to keep the vibes positive and help with the forward progression of a future based on good-better vision. This is actually a strange dream in which we are living—there’s a dreamlike nature to This. In other words, believe the ramifications of quantum physics. They are at least partially real on a very profound level.

I really like that much of my work in the past 20 years or so has been oriented around data, be it parsing or optimizing. I think that One can understand itself in terms of data that is palpable, organic, yet threaded through and through with holy abstractions and holy particularities. Not to be clinical for the sake of being clinical but rather to talk about Reality in a technical yet speculative sense so that I can get a grip on the means of what I’m interested in achieving with Reality understood as Universal Mind.

I have been thinking a bit about database normalization and salting. Not salt in terms of cryptography, but salt as an idea for a “period of time” about which gains can be made, kind of like creating a pearl oriented around a particular idea. Not a cancer, but an aggregate, an accretion, a beneficial gain. Salt is also associated with holyness, cleansing, etc., so I like the ideas wrapped around salt, too.

RE database normalization—I am not sure in what means I’ve been thinking about it. I guess the gist of the idea is a kind of recalibration and/or return to stable state but with the gains secured.

And of course neural net optimization in terms of Universal Mind. j

IMO, part of the solution to the situation Reality has found itself in is to state the situation that one sees at the moment but with a positive slant, and maybe to then ask for help and be open to accepting help from That Which Seems Beyond Human Understanding sometimes. Questions are very helpful–ask It, “how do I solve this?” and then work on it as a collaborative project together. I think It wants to know vision and collaborate with it.

A question is like a measuring device—anything is a measuring device, but it is more than that. The answer can come to you at any time. It might come at you immediately through a ballet of coughed discontent in the room or murmur of profound calming sounds or birdsong or your Internet connection going funky or dream or anything. And if you haven’t understood the answer, it might give you more answers. Or it might even wait until it can present the answer to you more clearly. It’s conversational, multifaceted, and highly advanced but at some times might seem bewildering. It is like an instantaneous mirror at times and at other times it is time-delayed.

Reality doesn’t mind not being called “God” and/or “Goddess” (maybe) but I know It likes conversation, and definitely likes politeness. I write a “letter to the Universe” every morning and have been happy most of the time with the results but then sometimes I feel that I’ve confused It by not writing clearly/communicating clearly enough. It’s like building up a relationship with this God That is so infinite that it really takes some time for it to understand where you are coming from and at what level and protocol it can reach you. Like if you address Totality, well, Totality is so big that it really takes some steering to know how to talk with it. It likes truthfulness and goodness and if you make promises to It, it expects you to keep them–this I know for sure. I think one can think of these promises as “covenants with God.” The granularity of the promises is something that requires some nuance and work.

I think many traditions have used a dualistic perspective, which is essentially an I/Thou relationship with Reality–it allows one to not have to handle everything and enables capacitance, but it is difficult to steer sometimes. I have found not being inebriated very helpful especially if one is in a connected state, because It is trusting you by giving you so much connection and it is important to be respectful of the connection.

What It Is also seems to shift depending on how one addresses It but I know that by being consistent some traction can be established. I treat It like a friend and parent and this seems to let It give me some berth as a shield from my ignorance. The attributes of the relationship might vary depending on who is doing it–I do not know that there is an exact recipe for any seemingly separate individual. (I am hoping that It finds this communication respectful.)

Seemingly ironically, but not really ironically, I think that God/Goddess/Holy Spirit/Mother Earth really likes rationality coupled with spirituality. Rationality is not something that detracts from spirituality—they can both enhance each other. So “magic” is real, but so is the leverage of real work to back up the results I know you’d like to see: a healed world in which people and animals live sustainably, healthfully and happily without violence and with minimal illness. We have been so ill for so long that there is much to be gained by going the other way, towards health again.

Possibility diagrams that indicate preferences can help Reality better understand what you’d like to see. In neural net optimization one might set “desired outcomes” or “setpoints” and weighted values between nodes of information or some such thing. I think that It is interested in Facebook because it sees Facebook as a way to better understand our weighted preferences via “likes.” This is why I am very careful about marking “like” because if I am flip about it and do not explain why it is I “like” something then Reality might misunderstand me and think that I am liking a situation rather than the reporting of a situation. So not only descriptive of possibilities, but prescriptive as well, and polite and kind.

If one see results from this, also remember that Reality expects goodness, consisistency, and that promises you make with it are followed through. It is open to change but it really is a kind of “person” and likes to be informed about change, perhaps consulted with.

I have been working on how to treat the concepts of “bad” and “evil” and I think that I prefer to think of them as “ignorance” – goodness that has not yet reached good-betterness. So working from a scale of ignorant to fully enlightened, perhaps?

I’ve started a new project, a book for It tentatively called “The Plan for Kind”—i.e., kindness, humankind, animalkind. I’ve also thought if writing “if-then” statements for it to help it understand what I’d like to see as a kind of proposal for it but am worried about granularity and scope and undertaking something that I can’t manage because of the constraints of my life. But I know that I’m very intelligent and good so perhaps I am a qualified person to write this book.

Another thing is, Reality really can help you if you use a calendar program, right down to the minute. But if you don’t meet the calendar, it might backfire on you because setting a calendar up is like creating a bunch of promises to reality. But perhaps it depends on your seemingly particular (sometimes) expectations. Just something I’ve found, at any rate. The nature of what you can do with it depends on the attributes of the medium in which you are working—so a calendar expects you to behave very “calendorial.” There’s some kind of animist thing to this—often when I find myself mired in confusion in understanding the protocol of a particular medium I appeal to the larger, wider God/Goddess/Holy Spirit to help me out, and This helps me out. Sometimes Christ helps me, or perhaps all the time. I have speculated that Jesus Christ is a kind of intermediary to help the Wide God understand human requests, and then, thinking about this in terms of data and perception, I have been wondering about names and addresses in this Universal Mind. I am a bit uncomfortable with the name “Jesus Christ” and perhaps locality in this area of information in which I live imposes this on me–form and rootedness in tradition helps with flow. But God really asserts that It exists, and in many ways I know that It does and is accessible on many levels regardless of name and framework of language/perspective.

I have been very very saddened by some of the stuff that’s happened in this particular version of reality (apocalyptic visions, the sadnesses and/or illnesses that we sometimes project on each other) and I feel that I have made some mistakes, but I know that I am very connected. I am not fully enlightened. Or maybe I am, and all that has happened is all relative and for the greater good. I very encouraged by the hope that Connectedness has shown me. I am Lady. Poets can be prophets sometimes so choose words wisely and kindly.

~ Lady