Drawn from the supernal to the infernal
Death and the spark of rebirth
The longest night
The bottom of the year
Roots are fed
in the quiet
of Solstice.

--Baruch, Yule 2014

It amazes me that it has been nearly a year since I last made an entry here. Facebook is to blame! I am the responsible one but it is true that I have put this kind of energy into FB posts. In truth I think FB is pretty lame but it is the latest iteration of addictive social media, like AOL was back in the 1990's. Like AOL, FB will wane. I mostly use it to play Scrabble.

Anyhow, enough with such mundane trivialities. Why blog today?

It is July 2014. The entity riding this local consciousness has a long view of existence, beyond the personal or the immediate. That's been with me my whole life; some awareness of before and after NOW.

It's also true that the ego "me" is present and has an effect.

Watching the world has been my main occupation in this life. I realized that my job was to be a witness when I was a teenager. Participant yes, but first and foremost, a witness. I have been developing those skills ever since.

I live in a little wooded canyon in the hills, just a mile from sprawled pavement, buildings, freeway and commuter rail. The canyon is quiet, cool, even though the creek has dried up for the summer, there is a lushness. It is the edge of the megalopolis. Beyond are hills covered with drought gold dry grass. I live in a green bubble surrounded by heat, dryness, people, cars, and buildings.

I am house sitting for friends whose home sits atop a mountain facing Elephant Mountain in Inverness, California. They have a piano. Yesterday and today I played music of my own creation for the first time on the piano. I remember my fingerings from childhood lessons, and I go slowly, but for the first time I "get' the instinctual quality of keyboard chords, the same way it has been happening on the guitar. I am able to choose what direction and what notes are dominant, which I never understood before. So, for the first time, there is an intentional musicality happening with me and the piano. It's an amazing feeling, especially since I had long ago given up on the piano as a means of expression.

My dog took off today. I have let him be collar and harness free this week...a naked dog is a happy dog...and today when I wasn't looking he went out the open back door. I spent the next hour or more yelling his name, driving up and down the mountain, walking around in the tick infested grass, yelling his name. I never got really upset though, partly because I thought he'd come back, partly because I thought if he didn't then that's life, and partly because I feel emotionally pretty tuckered out already. I got him announced on the local radio station and was just about to print out fliers when in he walks, big smile, breathing hard. Clearly he had a good time being a naked dog outside on his own on open land. I picked a few ticks and foxtails off him and now he's asleep.

The world of not-humans will not be easily tilled under by us. I hope we cannot do it.

If you do anything today, please call your congressional delegation and let them know that YOU know that the meltdown at Fukushima poses imminent danger to the world. If the fuel rods that are 100 feet up in a collapsing building are allowed to collapse, we could all be dead in a a matter of days from the radiation that would be released. No joke. There needs to be an international effort to address this NOW. TOP priority. http://fukushimaupdate.com/the-real-fukushima-danger-spent-fuel-pools/

Today is the ninth anniversary of my mother’s death. Two days ago was the ninth anniversary of my mother being struck down by an intruder, probably some poor recently released from prison schmuck come to rob her of her meager supplies and money. I remember, when I was small, my mother told me that after she died she would become part of everything. The memory has, for some reason, especially a feeling of the sky, so today I talked to my mother in the sky, in the trees, in everything. I’m listening to one of her favorite pieces of music as I write. Forest Flower, by Charles Lloyd. There’s a lot to say, and there’s nothing to say. I honor who she was by how I walk in this life, because I know that despite our generational and personal differences, both our lives are about honoring life and experiencing immanence. Onward Rita, who/what/where ever you are...