The Visionary February 27, 2014

1. “Characterized by vision of foresight.”

2. Having the nature of fantasies  or dreams; illusory.

That’s from the American Dictionary of the English Language. Third Edition. It’s a thick book-weighs more than me. Full of words. An oldie but a goodie, it has 2,140 pages

That’s a lotta pages. A lotta words. Writers love words.  Once an Editor called me a ‘visionary’. Is that good or is that bad? Words are a writer’s stock in trade. Some people buy our wares, some don’t. But, I’m thinking, is it good to be a visionary?

I know the value of ‘being here now’.  Love to spend a lot of time in the now. To immerse myself in the present, feel a cool caressing wind on my face.  Taste it, touch it with my tongue. Listen to the birds. I live in old Hawaii-lucky me-and birds love it. My land is alive with the song of bird songs. Songs they have sung for a thousand years. They sing most of their songs sitting on a branch or a fence or a table top between munchings

But I also love to travel in the past and adventure into the future. It’s  a three dimensional world.

As one grows older, it’s a temptation to live in lhe past. Indulge in reverie. All the good stuff, like cream on the top of old milk bottles, it’s a treat to all the inner workings of humanity. I love human beings. I love all living things. I think that’s  a healthy endeavor. But I don’t think it’s healthy to dwell there.

One of my fondest memories is a country horse show. A horse named Joey. Dapple gray Anglo Arab. His mama was an Arab, his daddy was an American Saddlebred. Joey could walk with any Tennessee Walker he met  up with. His was the classic American Saddlebred rack. A four beat walk that moved. The event I remember, though,  was this: the ring was in a ‘sunken’ amphitheater.  Horse shows were big time events in California in those days. A hundred people must have been seated above and surrounding the arena. Joey and I were standing on level ground at the top and in the ring a costume event was taking place. A cowboy on a horse and two guys in a cow costume, one the front legs, the other the back legs, were cavorting. Joey shorted, lifted his tail, arched his neck, and pranced his way through the seated crowd. I just sat there enjoying the ride. My mother almost fainted.  It was a risky business threading our way through the chairs.  We stole the show and the cowboys loved it. When Joey got close enough to see what they really were, he said, for all to see and hear, “What a bunch of goofs.”

So what has this to do with visionary? Well, you can envision the past. Relive it. Write about it as I’m doing here and I think that’s a delightfully healthy visionary thing to do.

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Interview with a Breatharian February 22, 2014

The sun was shining all about, shining with all its might and I was whistling in the barn with a pitchfork in my right. I’d filled the wheelbarrow with straw and droppings from Ari’s stall and raked dry bedding away from the middle so wet spots could dry.  I wheeled the wheelbarrow to the compost heap and forked it inside. Ari and Boots, my grown up puppy,  love to watch this task, I don’t know why.

When the rapping came from the red gates, I was annoyed. I looked a mess, probably reeked of  a ladylike glow-some folk call it sweat-it’s healthy to break sweat- but it’s not a  good time to welcome company. When the rapping persisted, pitchfork in hand, I stomped, again in a ladylike fashion, to the gate. “Nobody’s home,” I said.

More rapping.

I  opened the gate a crack.  The sight that greeted  me took my breath away. A handsome golden Palomino with a gorgeous bare torso, shoulders arms and a handsome human head, smiled sweetly down. “You wanted to chat?”

“I did?”

“I’m a Breatharian,” his tenor charmed the birds.

“You look like a centaur.”

“I am. Call me Art.”

“Art. How appropriate.  Please come in. I’m cleaning the barn.” He nodded. I opened the gates wide, then closed them.  Boots and Ari went east as Art and I moved west.  ” Aristotle is my horse. He eats. Poops. I’ve a clean stall. Perhaps he won’t mind if we chat there.”

“He won’t.” He lay down in the fresh straw.  We were suddenly staring eyeball to eyeball.

“Where on earth did you come from?”

“From  Sirius. In the constellation Canis Major the brightest star in the winter sky.”

“Why are you here?”

“You called me.”

“No. I mean on planet earth?”

“I’m here to teach you how to clean up the mess you’ve made of this beautiful planet. ”

“If you could teach Aristotle not to eat and poop that’d help.   Tell me about yourself.”

“I live on light. Vibrations. Composite vibrational aspects can collectively be thought of as having one composite quality. ”

“Of course.”

“You’d  love my planet. The sea and the sky are pink. Vibrant froth that smells like Shalimar.We loved that scent. We took it home with us. Grass is blue and many trees are shimmering silver. We’ve kept our planet gloriously clean.’

“Are there lady centaurs?”

“Yes. But when they come to earth, they come as human ladies. They’re Avatars, Ascended spirits. Life loving maternal beings. They teach humans  to let go stress and greed and hate and depression and heart-ache and addiction to violence.”

“That sounds good. Healthy. I’m not surprised they come as women. I think I’ve met some. Many women on earth today seem so much wiser, kinder, stronger  than men.”

“These women naturally, spontaneously manifest  themselves emotionally and spiritually to a place that resonates peace and love…”

With that he  vanished.

I love fantasy. Kids should be taught to fantasize from the get go. It’s a healthy human condition.

FOOD February 17, 2014

Want to pursue one hot topic?  Try food for a subject.  Amazing how complicated the basic need to eat food has become,and we all need to eat I’ve heard of Breathtarians–believers who claim food and possibly water are not necessary-but as a devout non- believer I sincerely doubt their existence. Never met one in person.  If there’s one in the vicinity, I’d be happy to have a little chat.

I’m not one. I love a good hot bowl of soup as well as the next guy. Better than the next guy more than likely. All due to my faithful Vitamix.

When I was a little kid there was no such animal. Making soup has always been easy but it was a long process. Making broth to use in soup is still a long process, takes about three hours simmering broken bones in a pot of water, salt and vinegar.

Thinking about food in the past is a human indulgence  I sometimes love to wander about in.

I remember milkmen with milk bottle in milk trucks . The bottles had a narrow neck with a metal cap and the top two inches  was a yellow rich cream that sometimes my mother would let me skim off and add to a bowl of cereal and strawberries. Home grown strawberries raised  in a ceramic pot that looked, i imagined, like a miniature hanging garden of Babylon.   The cereal was usually Quick Quaker Oats-which can still be found on grocery shelves in round cardboard boxes with a picture of a  white-haired, white-scarfed  Quaker gentleman in a blue hat on the front-and brewed as it’s been brewed aromatically for generations. I still love the smell.

Then there were soda fountains  Milk shakes, all flavors, root beer floats. Chocolate cokes in coca cola glasses I drank too much of when my mother wasn’t looking.

Today, eating is so complicated. What to eat? Where to buy it? How to cook it?  So many questions, quizzes and debates a guy could go hungry trying to respond or answer all of them.

All kids drank milk. Loved vegetables ’cause their mothers knew how to cook them. Ate fresh laid eggs collected every morning. Shared food-fruit, vegetables, eggs- with neighbors, friends and animals. Dogs loved eggs and vegetables. Cats loved cream.  Hens  loved bugs and worms and no one complained about crowing roosters. Fertilized eggs were his contribution and his harem of hens proud members of the family. Sometimes we’d let the eggs hatch and give the young away.I never could tell what was a girl chick, what was a boy, but my father could. This was how people lived. Even those in the city bought produce from small and large farms, ranches, dairies

Today, it’s so complicated. Best not to ask question and-for goodness’ sake-don’t dare whisper the word ‘Franken’ lettuce. So what if it bred with a rat? Be tolerant.

Two easy questions. Do you eat to live? Or do you live to eat?

Yes or no?

A Dream come true February 7, 2014

As most things do, it started when I was a little kid. My father taught me to love and care for the land and the animals. We had dogs and cats and frequent crops of pups and kittens friends and neighbors stood in line to carry home. We had a small orchard: oranges, figs and avocados. A vegetable garden rich with healthy goodies: tomatoes, asparagus, squash and lettuce. We grew alfalfa to feed the horses.  Palled with free range hens  that spent the night in a sparkling  clean chicken coops-where they  fed, watered and laid eggs-and  the days cruising and eating bugs in the veggie patch, which, by the way, horse poop  fertilized.  We had one crowing rooster and a bee hive. My father  taught  me how to catch ‘false bees’ and not get stung in order to fool my city friends into thinking I was a bee charmer.

I swam in a girl friend’s large oak  high-rise rain barrel.

The air was fresh, the water clean and cold, and the food my mother cooked delicious. We often foraged in the woods to pick buckets of huckleberries which my mother turned into delicious home-made pies. Sometimes we met bears who stayed as clear of us as we them. Once we chanced upon a snake who coiled and rattled. The dogs barked. “Give him room,” my father commanded.  “We’re in his territory.

My father and I  built  a barn together. I fell off the roof one day, with a thump and a bump and a giggle, landing soft in a fat stack of green alfalfa hay. “When I grow up,” I said, “I want to live in a house with my horses.”

“Then it would be barn,” My father answered.

“Whatever.” I shrugged. I think I invented that retort. Don’t recall hearing it before but today you hear it everywhere.

So I grew up and married a sailor. A good sailor. He knew all about rogue waves, white squalls, and up-spinaker-downspinaker. We raced. I was the foredeck man. He was Captain Bligh with a coiled main sheet thumping.

When we finally acquired land on Kauai I designed a house the horses could live in. In secret I gave the plans to an architect and showed them to my husband in his office. Just in case.

“Is it a barn or a house?” he asked the architect.

“Whatever.” the architect said.

“A barn/house?”

“Wait until you see that ‘covered walk’, ” my husband said, glancing over the plans.

The barn/house was a hundred feet long-a nice round number, I thought-the horses lived at one end and  we lived at the other.

Bill and I built the house. I’ve lived here 27 years longer than he, and survived two hurricanes and a flood. Gone through two beloved horses and many precious dogs and cats.

Today, in the rain, with a leaky roof and a pitchfork in hand, I wonder how different my life would have been had my dream not come true.

Boring, I’ll bet.