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Currently Reading:
M’Entendre

Posted in Blogs, ET/UFO, M'Entendre, Ongoing Blogs, Uncategorized, Urban Farmstead | January 23rd, 2011 by Ann

Note: I tried to finish this post yesterday in time to post it on January 22, when giant Jupiter entered fast Aries, but just wasn’t fast enough. Reality keeps slipping behind . . .

This story begins January 4^th, with the first New Moon and solar eclipse of 2011. January 4^th also happened to fall within the aura of the third and final Jupiter/Uranus conjunction of its 13-year cycle, a fact significant to me, as you will see.

So, to begin.

After two full years of not doing ceremony, when I woke up on January 4^th I was surprised to find myself strongly impelled to dust off my tiny, handmade Peruvian rug, unfold and center it on the living room floor, and carefully arrange upon it candle, crystals and other sacred objects. Then, bowing to my impromptu altar, I sat on the floor to meditate.

Nearly three weeks have gone by since that little ceremony.

And now, today, January 22, after one full year during which Jupiter and Uranus both slogged their way through watery Pisces, Jupiter enters Aries.

Jupiter will race through Aries in less than five months, igniting both chaos and high, high creativity. Then Jupiter will settle down in June to ground the new initiatives in Taurus for one full year .

Meanwhile, in March, Promethean Uranus will also slam into fiery Aries, just as the Mayan Calendar enters its final, culminating cycle. What took billions of years, then millions of years, then thousands, hundreds, decades, mere years, will compress into just 260 days — in a yet again 20-fold time acceleration.

Can we do it? Are we prepared internally to process experience so quickly it will be as if we must pivot from one paradigm-shattering event to the next, on and on, and on? Are we resilient? Have we moved into equanimity no matter what the shock that shudders through, with no let up, no breaks, and no time to leisurely assess import?

Way back in the summer of 2010, the first conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus paralleled the Gulf Oil catastrophe and we were confronted with our sudden, drastic, empathic communion with all of life — plant, animal, and human — in, on, and around the Gulf of Mexico, its air and water currents spiraling out to contaminate the globe.

During the third and final Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, again in watery Pisces early this month of January 2011, we were confronted and confounded by the start of still ongoing bird, fish, and now even large animal kills in various locations around the globe.

Pisces symbolizes (among other things) the fluid media within which all creatures on earth are immersed. Jupiter (large) and Uranus (sudden change) together in Pisces: sudden, drastic changes of state in fluids, whether that be water, or air, or our feelings. Who knows, maybe even the composition of our blood and lymph and spinal fluids are altering . . .

(Various theories try to account for the ongoing kills. I intuitively favor the theory that an gradual pole shift is causing Earth’s magnetics to create sudden, powerful disturbances in seemingly random telluric and atmospheric pockets.)

Besides its larger, collective import, the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in late Pisces squared (occurred 90° from) my 27° Sagittarian Sun. So I knew that I needed to expect the unexpected in my own life.

During the meditation part of my January 4, New Moon/New Year 2011 ceremony, I cleared my mind into spaciousness and waited for a message. Within a very short while an inner voice whispered a single word: respond. That’s it! Just “respond,” soft, strong, and clear.

I had to admit that I was “expecting” more, even something profound. But, no. Respond? Huh?

Yet I must have unconsciously absorbed the message, because on January 12, only eight days later, I noticed that the creator of a website that I deeply admire was inviting people with writing skills and interest in the topic of extra- and interdimensional phenomena relating to the 2012 Ascension Process to join him. Instantly, with no hesitation, I responded.

His call and my response then launched a short, intense cycle of experience with this man which then, suddenly and unexpectedly, closed! — on the day of the Full Moon! — thus fulfilling the promise of the ritual.

Our partnership had seemed full of high promise. Both of us “expected” it to continue. I felt excited about the prospect of co-creating with this new partner for his website’s audience on a subject dear to my heart.

Instead, to our surprise, within one week our partnership was over.

Did I feel shocked? Yes. Surprised? Yes. Disappointed? Not really. Instead, it felt as if I had learned to pivot precisely around a single point and emerge, not only intact, but refreshed.

I had gone through that experience with enthusiasm, and apparently no attachment. Had I not gotten excited, had I remained “detached” to protect myself  “in case it didn’t work out,” I wouldn’t have experienced shock; nor would I have undergone the transformation that the shock ignited.

That short cycle felt like my 2011 initiation, into a series of who knows how many other shocks, unexpected surprises, about-face reversals, during what soothsayers of all kinds predict will be a year of massive, unsettling change. The ocean of humanity’s collective unconscious is roiling with gigantic, colliding currents, and we must learn how to surf.

It helps to view experiences in terms of their cycles — and consciously appreciate each one throughout its entire process — beginning, middle and end. Usually the length of the cycle is not known beforehand. I have learned to commit to each cycle on trust, to immerse myself fully for the duration — be it three minutes, three days, three weeks, three lifetimes — who knows? It’s all good. It’s all alive.

For I have learned that only when a cycle has closed can I stop to breathe in the full flavor. For its gestalt or pattern does not click into place until the circle closes. And even then, of course, as time goes on any experiential cycle embeds within larger and larger experiential cycles, all of which continuously morph in meaning. Nothing stays still. The frameworks that we use to order experiences pop, and pop again.

During that one very engaging week I learned that I am to help forge a conscious bridge between certain individuals and groups, both of whom are at the leading edge of human consciousness, but whose fields of awareness have, so far, been polarized. Let’s call these fields, for short, “above” and “below.”

The above: I include here those who are aware that we are not alone, that Earth is being constantly visited by extra-terrestrial and interdimensional visitors, most of whom are waiting an invitation to help, and in fact are already helping to ameliorate the damage we have done, and to ultimately transform this planet into a veritable Garden of Eden.

The below: I include here those who work to understand and practice the principles of permaculture as applied to both earth and human communities (including the Transition movement), and who assume that we humans are alone in a mighty and valiant struggle for survival on a planet that we have ruined.

Many of the “above” people, with their heads in the clouds, want to think that ETs will save us, if we can just be patient and trusting, and hold out until formal disclosure of their presence.

Many of the permaculture people “below” keep their noses to the ground, while focusing with unusual energy and creativity in concert with nature to ensure that at least a remnant of humanity survives.

Both “above” people and “below” people realize our planetary situation is drastic, and both experience fear. Those who are aware of their own inner processes (and that includes the more evolved in both “above” and “below” groups) work to transform this fear internally, lest they become part of the problem. They know that fear constricts, and that when fear recedes, love abides. They know that the alternatives are stark: separation, or oneness.

To create a bridge between the “above” and the “below” in this context is to shift from separation to oneness.

The “above” people see Earth in her cosmic context, and long to commune with the stars and our galactic visitors (or to observe and hear about others doing so), all while waiting for Ascension that supposedly arrives in either October 2011 or December 2012. The “below” people don’t have time for such absurd nonsense; they argue that only hard, unrelenting, creative, intelligent work, on the ground and in our communities, might turn the situation around — if its not already too late!

For years now, I’ve focused in both directions, feeling internally split. On the one hand, I was attending UFO congresses and devouring channeled and ET material on the internet; on the other hand I was busy doing, organizing, and promoting permaculture.

Though my inner work — especially via daily tai chi and yogic practices — has resulted in a sense of my body/mind/spirit as an antenna linking heaven and earth, I had yet to translate that vertical hook-up into “real world” activities. Instead, while talking out loud about permaculture, I have been privately preoccupied with the cosmos.

So now, all that changes. Thanks to a week-long cycle with a wonderful fellow to whom I responded, I became highly aware of this split within myself, and vowed to bridge it, heal it.

Jupiter entered Aries today, January 22, to be joined by Uranus in that sign on March 13, four days past the beginning of the final 20-times-faster, only 260-day Mayan cycle on March 9 that ends in October 28, this year. These shifts ultimately auger the brilliant ignition of a creative fire that will fuel humanity until Uranus leaves Aries, in 2018.

Many new initiatives begin roll out. Here’s one:

www.exopermaculture.com. Stay tuned.

Currently Reading:
M’Entendre

Posted in M'Entendre | November 24th, 2010 by Ann

Just when did it begin? Here’s a fragment, from my December 2000 Celestial Navigations newsletter, discussing that year’s unnerving, and still reverberating, presidential election.

It was as if the god Pluto, lord of the underworld, erupted out of his/her dark lair, picked up a mighty cleaver and, in one surgical strike, sliced the American people and the governmental infrastructure that we take for granted in half. Indeed, what else but divine intervention can account for the exact or near-exact splits during this just past presidential election: in the popular vote; in the electoral collage; in the U.S. House and Senate, in the Florida Supreme Court, in the U.S. Supreme Court? In mathematical terms, no matter who won, the margin of victory was much smaller than the margin of error. This stalemate in an election game where one side must “win” was uncannily precise, and guaranteed to engender a merciless stripping of illusions. With Gore and Bush operatives reduced to dogs fighting over a bone, our election process triggered nuclear fission, as various warring elements within this “one undivided nation” split, split again, and yet again.

For five weeks we found ourselves transfixed, as the ground of “ fact,” “certainty” and any remaining vestiges of “objectivity” dissolved into chaos. What we had ignorantly assumed to be our sacred right, the democratic principle of “one person, one vote,” was rudely revealed to be just one more political tool for insidious racial and class divisions. Emotionally, we were jerked around, as first one side, then the other, seemed to be winning the legal and political wrangling. We experienced horror and dismay, and even, strangely enough, exhilaration — the pace was so fast, the revelations so huge, it was as if the tops of our heads were blown off time and time again. One might even say there came to be a sense of inexorability, inevitability during this protracted, confusing and detail-obsessed process of trying to decide how, how much, by what standards, and, of course, whether to count the vote in Florida. Like a slow-moving inferno, one after another institutional bastion of our powerful American way melted before our astonished eyes.

Any residual belief in the sanctity of the infrastructure our so-called “democratic” government painfully disintegrated, as all three branches were brutally stripped of legitimacy, to be revealed as a system played like a violin by those who would “win” by any means necessary.

There is no disguising it. We cannot help but realize that politics, like a rampant virus, now infects all the structures that were designed to shield us from those who would put personal gain above the national interest. And there is no way out of this quagmire except to face it. Current appeals to “reconciliation,” “healing” and “national unity” are sheer cant. We must face and embrace the discovery of this seamy underworld of our political system if we are to have any hope of transforming it.

For this did not just “happen.” The universe is a hologram. As above, so below. We got the election we deserved, and we now have the “leaders” we deserve. They act out for us our own lack of ethical grounding as a people. It is we who are split — our personas from our souls, and our personas are therefore riddled with selfishness, huypocrisy, bombast, manipulation, ideological conflicts, downright lies. We have become “talking heads,” our hearts camouflaged by a thicket of small-minded opinions designed to curry favor with some faction or other and bolster an identity that has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with who we really are, where we came from, where we are going — as individuals, and therefore, as a people.

Like many of us, I also sense that at the very core of our current difficulties is a structural problem. That this election shows the limitations, not only of the electoral college, but of our two-party system. For when there is a tie vote with only one winner, and with so much at stake, the usual tendency of both candidates to exalt the self and demonize the other becomes exaggerated to the point where nothing either side says can be believed.

As Daniel Schorr, of NPR, said, “The country is flying apart. This is a subterranean crisis. It’s as if we are doomed to fighting each other.”

And David Broder, Washington Post columnist, observed: “In this era of rapid communication, we have somehow stopped talking with each other.”

Through the media and through our conversations with family, friends and strangers, we have been collectively initiated into a prolonged unraveling of assumptions as to the real nature of our government. This unraveling has cost us dearly, and left us feeling uneasy, even queasy. Not only did we experience dueling candidates, dueling political parties, but dueling courts! The Supreme Court, that court of last resort, where in the absence of a god in heaven, we look for objectivity and justice here on earth, revealed its own bitter divisions, its own entrenched ideological wars.

There is no bottom line. Each time we get to a new one, it dissolves into what seems to be an infinite regress of assumptions which have lost their power to keep us thinking that “someone up there knows how to decide what truth and goodness are, what is fair and just.”

Hobbes’s cynical notion that governments are created to curb the worst excesses of human nature, the “war of all against all,” is turned on its ear. In this protracted battle the worst excesses of greed for power within our governmental institutions surfaced; none were left unsullied by what some are calling a “civil war between the ruling classes.”

Those who look to government to save them from the worst excesses of human nature had better look again. We have to take back the responsibility for our lives, to put our talking heads back on our own shoulders. The power of the presidency has been undermined to the point where its legitimacy is in question. We are about to crown a pretender to the throne. The outer king is dead.

Currently Reading:
M’Entendre

Posted in GANG Garden 2010, Green Acres Neighborhood Garden (GANG), M'Entendre, Ongoing Blogs, Urban Farmstead | November 8th, 2010 by Ann

. . . of both me and tomatoes. To wit:

I thought that green tomatoes had to be in the sun to ripen. That shows the extent of my ignorance. Last summer, I carefully placed all even slightly green tomatoes on window and porch sills. (Ignorance is time-consuming!) Then my neighbor Aggie asked, offhand, “What’s going on, a tomato parade?” And that’s when I found out that they ripen on their own (even in the dark).

So . . . a few days ago when it looked as if a hard freeze would do in all the green tomatoes still on GANG vines, I put them in buckets and brought them inside.

Here’s a series of photos of the same bowl of ripening tomatoes, taken over a three day period (lighting conditions not consistent, unfortunately).

Day one:

Day two:

Day three:I find this tiny example of a natural process, proceeding without my awareness, unless I’m very very observant, fascinating.

BTW: we had a wonderful afternoon workshop/work party/potluck/celebration yesterday, and Put the Garden to Bed. I’ll blog that next. So good to finally come home to gardening and community, as one!

Currently Reading:
M’Entendre

Posted in M'Entendre | November 4th, 2010 by Ann

From the beginning our few days together felt as if divinely choreographed. Mary and I were plunged into a realm of mystery that spanned the extremes — from heart stopping to heart opening, from easy fun, to sudden horror, to astonished gratitude. But how to begin? With the easy part or the hard part? With the former while tonally foreshadowing the latter? Plunge into the hard part and then look back? With my attempts to sleep the night after the attack when I found my heart expanding to embrace both extremes of the entire episode? With the equally shocking and thrilling denouement?

Since the experience cleaves decidedly into three parts, I’ll tell it that way, chronologically.

PART I: FUN

We knew we were going to be in for a treat. Mary, the fourth of six sisters (I’m the oldest), had decided to fly in from Seattle with her little white dog for a visit. And from almost the first moment, we felt as if the two cotons, my Emma and her Sparky, were also sisters.

At first Emma’s enthusiasm and dominance overwhelmed Sparky, who seemed somewhat fearful and frail, and of course, stiff-legged from riding in a carrier under a plane seat. Emma would try to mount Sparky, who would freak out, furious — and then, as Mary pointed out, in the very next instant turn and touch noses with Emma.  As if to say, “It’s okay. I still love you. But DON’T do that!” Within an hour the two of them had morphed into equality, Emma’s slightly larger and heavier self and loving fiery spirit attuned to a newly spunky Sparky whose direct, forceful, and yet subtle way of teaching Emma what was and was not acceptable still fills me with awe.

At one point I furled a large sheet over both of them. What fun! “Where’s Sparky? Where’s Emma?” Mary and I would cry, laughing, tickling each in turn . . .

Emergence!

Time to stop?

Nope!

On our second day we went for a walk around the IU campus. Here we investigate the nearly dry stream.

Then back home for another round.

We discovered during our forays out that Sparky had a lot more spunk than she had realized in her two years on this earth. When off-leash in the woods she morphed into leader and explorer, leaping logs like a gazelle, eclipsing even Emma.

PART II: HORROR

On the third and final day, I decided to let Mary sleep in, and take the dogs for one more run at the dam end of Griffy lake, a local, and unofficial, off-leash dog run. We were going to take the trail into the woods by the lake, something I’d done with Emma hundreds of times.

As we were going up the dam’s wooden stairs, three giant dogs with broad pit-bull type heads materialized out of the surrounding forest, and immediately went for Sparky, nearest at hand. Instinctively, shrieking and kicking wildly, I lunged too, and yanked her out of their midst. Holding Sparky in my arms, I continued to kick and yell like a banshee. Where was their owner? God knows how long this went on, as they circled me, trying to get at Sparky who was frantically turning round and round in my arms, squealing and panicked.

Finally the owner, a slight man about my age, appeared, obviously horrified at what was happening. While trying to call off the dogs, he yelled weakly that he thought he was having a heart attack. Meanwhile, Sparky somehow escaped, and ran away, though I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that I looked up and saw that the pack had now turned on Emma, with the jaws of one of them plunging into her hind end. Once again, I dove into their swirling mass and pulled her out. The owner, moving in slow motion, kept trying to call them off, to no avail. Somehow I managed to keep squealing, frantic Emma in my arms, while continuing to screech and kick like a banshee. There was no fear. Just sheer fury and determination to keep her safe as the three beasts kept circling and lunging, trying to get in close enough to grab her.

I don’t know how long the attack lasted, but at some point I noticed that the owner and two of the dogs had disappeared, leaving Emma and me with the third dog who kept circling and snapping, still as determined to grab her as I was to prevent it. There we were, the three of us alone on the edge of the forest, locked into mortal standoff. After many minutes the owner reappeared, and was finally able to grab the third dog. Then he doubled over and started to vomit, again muttering that he thought he was having a heart attack.

Of course, the owner kept mumbling apologies, saying that two of the dogs were his and had never acted like this before, and that the third dog was one that he was keeping while its owner was away. He said it was all his fault, and he was so sorry, so sorry . . . meanwhile, when I got back to the parking lot (a good 1000 feet away), two cars had arrived in the meantime. The driver of the first said he had noticed a small white dog racing up Dunn Street towards town, at least a half mile away. After hearing what happened, he went back to see if he could find her. The other man said he knew the owner of the dogs, and could vouch for him, and that his two dogs — now in the front seat of the owner’s pickup, snapping and rushing the window at the sight of Emma (so that’s where he had gone when he disappeared) — were “good dogs, gentle and well behaved.”

I got the owner’s name and phone number, placed injured Emma gently on the right front seat, and climbed in the car. Triage. What was the most important thing to do next and how to do it  in a state of shock? Somehow, I managed. First, I would drive Emma to the vet and drop her off. Next, pick up Mary from my house. Third, get emergency care for my own wounds. Then, and only then, would we look for Sparky. Hopefully she had already been found.

While being bandaged myself, I asked Mary, still in the initial throes of trying to absorb the entire situation, to call the animal control center and report a missing dog. On the way to the vet I had alerted Zilia, a good friend who lives in the neighborhood next to Dunn Road, and she started looking for Sparky right then. Within an hour she called to say that someone had just seen a little white dog running up a hill in the neighborhood. Mary, my son Colin, and I raced over there and spent most of the afternoon fanning out to walk the streets and call her, alerting as many people as we could to the likely presence of an injured, traumatized, and somewhat shy little white dog.

As time went on, surprised that we hadn’t found her, we grew discouraged, and kept talking among ourselves as to why not. Was she hiding? Had someone already brought her into their house? If so, why weren’t we hearing either them or the animal control people, since Sparky had both Mary’s home and cell phone numbers on her collar? Had she left the neighborhood? Had she been killed on highway 37, abutting the neighborhood on the west? Or was she in the woods to the east of Dunn Street, the scent of her blood attractive to coyote or hawk? We tried not to think about the more dire possibilities.

Meanwhile, Mary, naturally disconsolate and confused, had to decide whether or not to leave that afternoon as planned. I tried to convince her to stay, wanting to think that we would find Sparky within the next few days. After going back and forth for hours, she finally decided that she would leave as scheduled, at 4 p.m. It was hard for both of us to understand why she had made that decision. She did say at some point that she thought Sparky was dead, and that she couldn’t prolong the agony. That she needed to try to distract herself. Later, I realized that she is like me, and needs to do her grieving in privacy, alone. She thought Sparky was gone, and had instinctively veered into self-protective behavior.

That night, as you can imagine, was difficult. The attack was my fault. In the interests of helping Sparky explore her nature, I had taken the dogs to an off-leash area, where anything can happen.

In the morning, bleary-eyed with the afteraffects of shock, guilt, and lack of sleep, I opened the outside door to get the newspaper’s results of the mid-term elections. A flood of cold air took my breath away, reminded me. A sinking feeling: I doubted Sparky could have survived the night in this kind of cold, given her injuries and no food or water for nearly 24 hours.

All night, I had been beset with flashbacks of the attack and its aftermath. That moment when I snatched Emma out of the jaws of the giant dog just then starting to clamp on to her hind end kept alternating with a vision of poor little Sparky, injured, cold, hungry, thirsty, abandoned, trying to burrow under leaves for warmth and not brave enough to ask for help. Over and over again, I prayed for Sparky to psychically crawl into my arms for comfort.

The fact that the out-of-control pit-bull type dogs had not gone after me, and that Emma and I were still alive, felt like a miracle. The vet had showed me each of her puncture wounds, the worst, under her right front leg, came within three millimeters of puncturing her lung. Another minute or two, and she would have been dead.

And here’s what amazes me most: overall, the entire experience, despite its shocking nature, was even then assuming the coloration of a half-lit dream, with endlessly swirling forms dancing in a mysterious, all-encompassing mist.

PART III: GRATITUDE

Just as I walked back into the house from the cold air of the porch and my sinking feeling that Sparky must be dead, as if on cue, the animal control officer called. Sparky had been at the pound since noon yesterday. The police had brought her in. Since it had been election day, the pound had been closed. The skeletal staff there had tried to call the one number on the collar, a Seattle number, but no one answered. Mary’s cell phone number had not been on the collar.

You can imagine my joy as I dialed to leave a message on Mary’s cell. Sparky had been found. What we had been dreaming of every time her phone rang the day before, only to collapse in disappointment to hear the voice of a family member frantically asking whether Sparky had been found, had come to pass. This was the phone call that mattered, the one that turned the situation around, morphing it from horror to gratitude. We were all safe and alive.

To my astonishment, Sparky had not been injured.

Emma’s wounds pulled her out of playtime with Emma, and Emma, somehow, knows it. Sparky is still here, and they spend most of their time in their respective chairs, lying down, recuperating emotionally. Emma in the chair in which I usually sit, with her on my lap:

Sparky across the room in the red chair.

Emma’s wounds are serious:

Mine not so much, though wounds to the face are always scary. Also on my neck, wrist and hands, but all shallow, incurred during the attack by the two little dogs as I was trying to hold them safe in my arms.

The experience was harrowing, yes, and I imagine we will all be processing it for some time. But one thing feels blindingly clear: when the chips were down, my protective instinct was intact, and so was the protective aura that I’ve always noticed envelops me, and that has spared me from death, countless times.

We are not alone. Nor are we separate. Humans, dogs, cars, neighborhoods, forests, all of us swirling forms, dancing in harmony to the sometimes shockingly complex rhythms of mystery.

For me, this experience feels like one more rock in a foundation of trust in the protective aura of the cosmic field of Love that floods and fuels the continuous recreation of the universe.

Currently Reading:
M’Entendre

Posted in M'Entendre | October 27th, 2010 by Ann

Here’s a second fragment concerning acceleration, also from the astrology newsletter “Celestial Navigations” in 2000. BTW: my two sons and I are now deeply connected. One of my sons, Colin, a year ago, moved from Massachusetts to live next door to me.

Our culture has shifted dramatically since this was written. Materialism is no longer glamorous, and, especially since last summer’s electrifying cardinal cross, the efficacy of guilt as a social glue has drastically thinned. Yet how many of us are still stuck in our stuff, whether inner or outer?

On Clearing Old Stuck Stuff

A few days ago, I realized that I still harbor, in the deep recesses of my being, a feeling of guilt for having left my children in the custody of their father when they were small. This realization forced me to look again at my desire/decision to live near them. Is this desire based solely or mainly on my need to expiate that guilty feeling, to gain forgiveness. Do I still need forgiveness? If so, from whom? I marveled to realize that after the wonderful coming back together with my two “boys” (now in their mid-30s) over the past 14 years, after all the ways we have looked at what happened and why, and how much we always loved each other through it all, I still feel guilty? Yes! I do! This icky, yucky, sticky feeling still holds me in its grip.

The rip is not obvious, but subtle. It colors my perceptions of myself and the world around me. As long as I feel guilty, I feel unworthy; I aim to please, and I need forgiveness.

But from whom!?!

From myself, I now realize. And though I can say, by fiat, with my mind: “I forgive myself for abandoning my children,” that mental statement will take time to percolate down through my emotional and physical bodies. My Moon is in fixed earthy Taurus: I subconsciously hold on to emotional stuff.

Probing further, I realize that all my life I have needed to feel guilty. Guilt was such a familiar feeling in early childhood that there was never a time when I didn’t feel guilty (except right after confession. But then I always worried I didn’t remember all my sins.)

Later, when I grew up, I started to look closely at my Taurus Moon and realized that this particular moon sign is so stubborn and so oriented to the status quo that it “prefers a known bad to an unknown good.” This is the psychology of the victim who seeks comfort from what is most familiar. The battered wife refuses to press charges, and returns to live with the husband. Families, tribes, nations, continue feuding and warring because they know no other way. In the twisted logic of victimization, horror feels like home.

For most of us, our early family conditioning as well as our brainwashing into the larger social order requires “perfection,” something to which we can never measure up. Hence, the feeling of guilt for continually falling short of an imagined ideal.

Guilt is something imposed from the outside. We are taught to “obey the rules,” and our motivation to obey them is to avoid feeling guilty. The threat of guilt is thus an extremely effective way of ensuring the social order. Yet we never know what all the rules are, and “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” and besides, most of the laws require us to be “perfect” in one way or another — so we can’t avoid guilt. Guilt permeates the very air we breathe. Guilt becomes the glue that holds our society together. In the absence of love, the stickiness of guilt makes us cohere, no matter how much we despise each other or want to get away. I think of guilt as the mucous soup we are all immersed in. Especially in our families. Everybody feels guilty about something, and often it is that feeling which leads us to overeat, drink too much, smoke cigarettes and marijuana, crave sex, work too hard, buy more and more stuff, and so on. We seek to distract ourselves from that icky, yucky feeling, and our addictions, whatever form they take, begin as aborted efforts to cover-up that feeling, to escape it for awhile. But like anything we see to hide, guilt always returns, either subtly or obviously, and makes us run again — after something or someone that we think will do the trick, make us happy, make us feel good about ourselves, make us forget. But it never works. As soon as one “high” wears off, we crave another.

If you think the picture I paint is too bleak, pelase realize I am describing the underbelly of our glamouous, glittering culture of material prosperity. And this underbelly will continue to drag us down, no matter how lofty our ideals, until we come to terms with it. Each of us in our own way, delving into our own particular memories — those which are frozen into some kind of self-justification, or so painful that we deny them into oblivion.

The point here is that in order to enter and engage with accelerated mental and spiritual energies in a healthy and vibrant manner, we will need to be aware of our underbelly. How full it is of old stuck stuff. Stuff which distorts our perceptions and drives us to keep on making the same choices even though the world is changing. So that we run in repeating circles of personality, rather than spiral as evolving souls.

We need to come to terms with old stuck stuff not just so that we can free ourselves of it, but so that we can remember what our underbellies are naturally for, their original function in ouir lives. Animals, especially wild animals, rely on their underbellies; through them they sense, in their gut, what is going on, and take action accordingly.

When our solar plexus is clear, and not caught up with victim/victimizer/savior power games, then we move spontaneously from our hearts, our gut, towards that which attracts us most. Our power comes from within. Our sensing is based on reality, the reality of our own body’s natural sensing of what is good fos us. When our solar plexus is clear, we make choices based on what we love rather than on what we fear and want to avoid.

We can only “follow our bliss” when we are clear enough to do so. When wehave eliminated the old stuff stuff, whatever it is. Then we can easily ignore the morass of superfluous and gaudy distracting information that is of no personal concern. Following our noses, we pick and choose what matters, what has heart and meaning, for us. In this way, we can enjoy the fruits of acceleration without being driven insane from trying to keep up with it all.

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Posted in M'Entendre | October 26th, 2010 by Ann

I’ve been going through old writing and pulling certain sections out to collect into a “Fragmentary.” This June 2000 fragment, from a monthly astrology update I used to send through the mail to subscribers of “Celestial Navigations,” appears even more relevant now, ten years later. At the time I was living in a yurt in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I still learn from cats.

Stress and Acceleration

Our capacity to process increasing acceleration mentally and spiritually — to stay in tune with (not “on top of”) events — depends on our capacity and willingness to embody huge changes. This means that we will need to recognize and feel natural laws as they operate within our own personal bodies. For our bodies are Earth’s antennae. Our personal health and the health of Earth are linked. There is no such thing as healing ourselves alone. Whatever we do or say or think or feel or experience in any way bleeds into the larger collective human and creaturely context, perturbing the Earth’s atmosphere.

Each of us is the canary in the coal mine. No one is exempt from the stresses of continuous acceleration. Nor is anyone exempt from the responsibility we have to each other and this planet. In order to balance the stomach-thudding Aquarius acceleration it is essential to honor and accept periodic Taurean retreats during which we re-member ourselves, and what our bodies value: nutrition, exercise, sensitivity, sensuality, sexuality; Nature, the Wild. All are aspects of creaturely experiences on Earth as she spins seemingly suspended in her heavenly home amongst the whirling planets, stars and galaxies.

My Cat Lukas

For the past year I have been descending deeper into my own body, settling into the natural world as never before. I thank my teacher for this, who arrived at our doorstep in late September. He was a tiny kitten then, and now he is an alert, sleek, graceful hunter and explorer of his wild territory. Through his eyes and ears and nose and skin I have been initiated into the wonders of this tiny plot of land around our yurt. He has led me to appreciate weeds as they brush against bare legs; to marvel at water skippers as they scamper across the current, each delicate leg’s placement subtly disturbing water’s surface tension. Lukas has guided me to see which trees have branches close to the ground and which do not; which ones are close enough to leap from one to the other. I too now quiver to the choirs of birds, the slight rustle of mice, the dark spot of spider, of buzzing bee or fly.

Everything that moves is his delight and mine, the subject of intense concentration. His body and mind are one, centered deeply into the moment, moving according to internal rhythms rather than external controls. He teaches me to expand and contract in the present, and to still myself into the dreamtime where I hear my name being called. Above all, he teaches me to center into my own body as a sovereign being, beholden to no one, sensitive to my entire environment, expressive of all that is in my nature as it pulses into creation.

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Posted in M'Entendre | September 4th, 2010 by Ann

Yesterday was Emma’s third birthday, so we took to the woods.

Wow, pawpaws!

Wow again . . . first signs of autumn!

And one more wow! . . . this greeting, as we left the woods. Chem trails? Or the Hand of God.

P.S. Emma’s full name: “Emma Joy Princess, Guardian of the Present Moment.”

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Posted in M'Entendre | August 19th, 2010 by Ann

To Mayor Kruzan and concerned city council members,

I walk my dog in the morning from my home in Green Acres. Sometimes we cross 10th at the Bypass on the way to the large tree-shaded front lawn of the Tulip Tree apartments. So I had seen the imposing “Construction Ahead” signs on 10th and Eastgate; I had seen the pink-flagged markers at the intersections showing just how drastic the increase in pavement would be; I had seen how the markers cut into the front lawns of the homes facing the Bypass on Eastgate. I was trying to get used to what I was seeing, trying to internally prepare myself for the inevitable.

Then I left the INDOT nightmare behind, for a week in the still pristine Sawtooth mountains of central Idaho. Even there, visions of giant, roaring machines mowing down beautiful, protective, cooling trees buzzed in, tensed me into knots. I’d force myself to forget. Forget the unrolling nightmare that would ultmately increase traffic congestion and global warming, ruin neighborhoods, endanger pedestrians and cyclists, contaminate earth, air, and water, and degrade the quality of life of plants, animals, and humans.

I’d force myself to forget the May hearing where INDOT showed us, through intimidating, unreadable engineering designs tacked unto our City Council chamber walls, its about-to-be executed 20-year-old plan for the Bypass that would cut Bloomington in two pieces with an interstate-type 2.5 mile asphalt monument to the personal automobile — thus making a mockery of the sustainability, liveability, context-sensitive local values treasured by this community as responsive and responsible adaptations to a future of peak oil and climate change. There was no provision made during that hearing for truly public comment. The last occasion for public comment was ten years ago.

I had walked out of that May meeting stunned. INDOT had set the agenda and the tone, and we, good citizens of Bloomington, accustomed to genuine, ongoing dialogue with our public officials, had fallen into its trap.

And then, when INDOT almost immediately started its steamrolling operation, felling the trees, ruining in one stroke what takes 50 years to grow, I tried to make my peace with it. Tried my damndest — with no success. That’s when I went on vacation.

When I returned, August 10th, I couldn’t bring myself to drive down the Bypass from 10th to Walnut for four days. It was all too horrible to contemplate. A movie kept running through my mind. We are the Na’avi and we are being run over by empire.

“And it’s too late to do anything about it,” everywhere, I was hearing that unconscious, collective refrain of a dispirited opposition that finds it hard to believe that this outdated, massively expensive, dehumanizing, and environmentally disastrous superhighway is actually going to be built, despite our decades-long attempts to get INDOT to revise it to harmonize with local conditions. Instead, running roughshod over a vastly changed city context, INDOT, and the state of Indiana, and a governor with designs on the presidency, having “won” its 20-year battle to get this damned road built, roared in like a blitzkrieg, stunning a shocked citizenry with heavy machinery tearing down trees, exposing close-by homes, swing-sets, apartment buildings . . . The very worst aspect of the project, designed to be accomplished first. A brilliant psychological move to mass condition us into paralyzed surrender.

And it almost worked.

“Yes, nothing to be done about it. Get used to it.” That refrain, again.

On that same Friday I heard about the peaceful protest on the Bypass that IU doctoral student Zilia Estrada, and her mother, along with long-time environmental activist Lucille Bertuccio, had held during rush hour on Friday afternoon, August 7; and that the second one was to be held at rush hour that same afternoon! Instantly I knew I had to participate. I didn’t want to die thinking that I hadn’t done all I could do to stop this travesty.

Afterwards, I felt unaccountably light-hearted. Omigod, I’m not the only one. There were six of us; that means at least five other people (and my dog) willing to stand up and be counted. And that’s just on the ground. Traction is being gained at other levels as well. We can make a difference.

We can still still stop this horror show from completing its devastation of the forested areas between Fee and 3rd Street, if enough of us care, and shake off that pernicious, narcoleptic thought that we can’t change it now, that it’s a done deal. It’s NOT a done deal.

I ask you, I beg you, and other public officials in Bloomington, to remember and utilize your power as a leader by whatever means necessary to revise this INDOT plan now, before it completely overwhelms us.

Sooner or later we will realize that we did have the power to take back local control over state-mandated orders. Wouldn’t we rather do it sooner, when we can still make a difference? Or would we rather go to our graves realizing that we did not have the courage to stand up for what we know, but instead, allowed a bloated, out-of-touch, rigid bureaucracy to dictate our lives and ruin our environment?

It’s simple. We can narrow the lanes — and thus the road, saving most of the rest of the trees. This single small alteration reduces that speed limit, the noise, and the price tag, smooths traffic, and increases safety and quality of life for pedestrians and vehicles.

Other measures proposed by B-Top in its well-thought-out study, “Bypassing Good Judgment,” could be taken by the state to alter old outdated plans to current “road diet” configuration that utilizes the smartest ways to smoothly move people and bikes and cars on roads.

Local control is the underlying issue here. It’s time we recognize that. In an era of peak oil and climate change, both the knowledge and the power to prepare for energy descent is in our hands. The further up the chain of command, the more unwieldly and stuck the hierarchy, the less the capacity to respond quickly to rapidly changing conditions on the ground.

This is our road. Let’s claim it.

Please join us at Fee and the Bypass, tomorrow, Friday, August 20, 4-6 p.m., for the third, and quickly growing, peaceful protest.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Ann Kreilkamp

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Posted in GANG Garden 2010, Green Acres Neighborhood Garden (GANG), M'Entendre, Urban Farmstead | August 18th, 2010 by Ann

Today I’m reminded of a story I wrote when I was a child, about Flicka, Ricka and Dicka, female triplets who — I just googled them — still live on in a series of children’s books. In my story, I am one of the triplets. We live in a tiny cottage that fronts onto a dirt country road where people clop by on weary horses; there is a famine in the land, and it’s coming our way. Our mother is desperately trying to put away enough food for when the dreaded famine blows through like an ill wind.

Was this story originally a dream? Is it a past life? Is it also prophetic? In any case, does it still haunt me? Because, it’s true, I feel like the mother, “desperately trying to put enough food away.” Or maybe it’s just that once I start a project my natal intensity (double fire sign Sagittarius, Mars/Uranus in Sagittarius/Gemini) gears down and in and I don’t stop ’til done. Certainly true, no matter what the project.

Well, this morning, it was several kinds of kale, and collards, and cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower leaves. All leaves. The broccoli and cauliflower heads mostly failed to develop. The cabbage was eaten by cabbage moths, especially the young tender shoots. So I was working with the big, old, broad leaves that came out earlier. Why not? It’s still food, and makes wonderful winter soups.

Then of course, there were tomatoes, today only one tray’s worth (yippee!) for the dehydrator. I filled four more trays with some of the cut-up aforementioned leaves, and set it to 105° (low heat) so that the food would remain alive while drying.

Then came the rest of the morning, what I didn’t anticipate about myself: that I would indeed spend the whole morning on food preservation, including seven trips total out to the GANG garden with my basket, and then cleaning, removing stems from, cutting up, dipping for two minutes in boiling water, then cold water; then putting in plastic bags, and finally, sealing, with the last few puffs of air inside expelled with a trusty straw. Label and put in freezer.

BTW: a tip I just last week learned from my old friend Ellen: when freezing: put the food in wax paper first, to avoid the dreaded chemicals touching the food and leaching into it. So I did! For each batch I made a pocket of sorts of waxed paper and gently stuffed inside the bag before putting in the briefly boiled leaves, like this:

The rest of the story? The remains (leaf spines, dead leaves, and white sticky clusters of cabbage moth larvae) go to the worm compost heap we made early this week.

And the not-quite-ripe tomatoes from today ripen until tomorrow.

Whew!

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Posted in GANG Garden 2010, Green Acres Neighborhood Garden (GANG), M'Entendre, Urban Farmstead | August 15th, 2010 by Ann

Believe it or not, this photo shows my typical daily haul of tomatoes from the GANG garden. A few others are also harvesting. How many tomato plants? 30? 40?

(And remember, I don’t even like tomatoes, unless in sauces or dried.)

In early July, when I saw how these plants were beginning to produce, I shuddered. What would August be like? Well, now I know. Every morning, harvesting, freezing and drying tomatoes, and whenever possible, giving them away. Today Lucille took some (in payment for the worms, she said); yesterday, the mother of the new student moving in across the street; the day before that, Aggie, next door to me who also gave some to Jean and Mary, across the street from her.

Aggie asked me: “What are you doing, having a tomato parade?” The question dumbfounded me. What was she talking about?

“You needn’t put tomatoes that aren’t quite ready in the sun” (I was lining them on the shelves of my screened porch), she said, “because they’ll ripen whether or not they get sun!” Ah. . . . learn something every day! Thank you, Aggie!

I bet we’ve harvested at least 300 pounds so far, with the season far from over. Very exciting, such abundance with so little investment of time and energy — until it comes harvest and preservation time.

As I stand there, weary on my feet, washing and slicing tomatoes for the dehydrator, I imagine myself in training for possible rapid energy descent via the sudden advent of peak oil. How it will make transporting tomatoes 2000 miles from California in winter way too expensive.

After this morning’s stint, I sat down, put my feet up, and I called my folks, now 92 and 94 years old. I told them about harvesting tomatoes, and about how much I respect the old ones who had to work so hard just to get by. How they did everything themselves and didn’t depend on others or fancy gadgets or centralized systems. “Yes,” my Dad responded, “My mother would take an old suit of my father’s and make several little suits out of it for me and my brothers.”

Here’s a shot of Mom, Dad, me in middle behind them, with my son Sean, daughter-in-law Sue, and grandkids, Kiera and Drew. Three years ago. Before the garden. Before it changed me.

Funny how — as he winds up his life and I wind back into my body via earth’s overwhelming abundance from a life spinning in the mind — he and I, so far apart for so long, wind back to each other, finally see eye to eye.

Our hearts reconnected about ten years ago. Now even our minds join. A miracle!

This is the first post that could be published in the both the M’Entendre blog and this one. That blog documents life in the mind; this blog, life in the body. Now they join. Spirit and matter together, thanks to Gaia’s subtle wisdom.

I feel so full, so grateful.