falling into winter

Good Morning Relatives

it is fall here in Pipestone   the leaves are turning and letting go and the weather is in transition   this morning was spent separating the debris that was collected from the land and construction from the wood that is still usable   making two distinct piles away from the area where the snow cat works so that the driver has an easier time with pushing the snow in large piles without having to avoid too many things and also it makes the yard much tidier  

I built a wood rack outside the back door out of scraps of wood and steel  and am spending part of my new work money on wood for the winter  the stove is almost ready inside  we are waiting on the rubber boot for the metal chimney and then the last sections of chimney and the support will go on and it will be ready for firing and warming the house  

the wood I am buying from a family that takes care of two boys  their grandsons   their daughter had congenital kidney disease and passed away leaving the boys with no family  not sure where the dad was or is  it seems there are alot of single mothers and multiple single mothers in this town  and area  it is weird to not understand why this happens   what are the children learning ?   anyhow  the boys help the grandparents who take care of them cut and load wood  and I would rather my money goes to them than someone else who might have a nicer truck or do wood as a side line   it is important I think to make sure our resources go to those who benefit the most from them don't you think   ?     with this family like at my house every penny counts  and there are no frivolities with spending  the boys are respectful of their grandparents and listen and ask permission to branch out with thier actions which is respectful

it is nice to know that the small amount of money I can earn by working a little bit will go to heat not only my home but theirs  makes the work lighter

the grass is not growing any more  and the perennials are closing down and getting ready for the winter already the ground is tighter  it seems

the turkeys are back  they are making their rounds every day looking for water and food   it is nice to see them making their way around the property  

yesterday evening i heard the geese going over    

it will be a good winter for writing and beading and listening to the silence of the snow

best to you relatives as you ready yourselves for the season change

mb

on a clear day you can see

Good morning Relatives

it is so peaceful here this morning    

somehow I have arrived at the place of peacefullness inside my core   it is an extraordinary thing and non graspable   it showed up the other night in the middle of the night   it was the place between any past or future  for sure  it was the place between any projection of responsibility or evaluation of accomplishment   it was an extraordinary place of peace  

I wanted to wrtie to you about it right away and in the night when all things were resting I could see the post and wrote it out   then when i woke it was gone  sure as swallowed tea with toast  gone on to other  things and times

then this morning I woke so peaceful  so clear   in the place wehre all opportunity was open and free with no guilt or burden or fear  or expectatable joy     I can tell you it is like ice and fire all at once in side my chest  so lovely so unexpected

I cannot tell you how to get here  nor what path to take    but I can tell younow as sure as one who has come back from a place of myth discovered  that it is a real place   that it is a discoverable and habitable place  that it is a place that can come back and exist within you and exude from you  its not just a myth and it is repeatable

well I am delighted   I can tell you    and rested finally  

its not magical  my health is not perfect yet and my bills are not all paid nor my debts fulfilled   all my worngs are not righted and all my rights are surely at some point with the turning of time to fail yet again   love for me is not permenant fixed in one being or partner but seems to be like an endlessly needed to be seeded field that I keep walking through with long long rows that by the time I return the children are being born from the fruit that was planted when i got to glimpse its majesty in person    in other words my life is not perfect  but it is present  and for the time being will continue

somehow I have a fading memory of efforts to be perfect  thoughts that I was either in or out right or wrong black or white and that grey was unacceptable    it still is unacceptable grey  for me  somehow I forgot or didint yet remember or know in this time and place and body about clear

clear is all without becoming anything else
all present

somehow I got there and while I am sure that I will in myventureing out into the day amongst people and old habit and circumstance and decisions actions etc  somehow I am may let go of clear my prayer like the one given every night for the children of Lame Deer is to return to my origin of clarity and to BE it in my waking day until that day in me in all my breath and movement and eyese open meets me in the darkest dark of the night clarity  through and through  

it is my prayer my desire my work my pleasure to become this one living thing in my time in our time for all of us all together all at once

my best to you relatives

Princess Perlipat and the Nutcracker

Dearest Relatives

The Thunder Beings woke me today  we had a brief and strong beginning to the day  with lightning and rain and wind   perfect way to clean house after a night of dreams

I dreamed last night of my dog Perli  she was a blue baby  a little english bulldog who had a trachea the size of a pencil   she had from birth trouble oxygenating and I met her at the missouri state veterinary teaching hospital ICU when i was there on extern rotation from Uof M to learn about critical care  her owner called me after finding me through the system a month after I returned to Minnesota when my rotation ended   she wanted me to have Perli  because she felt I would take care of her   and I did

for years Perlipat was my dog and we had many adventures   then when I was a resident a the U Penn teaching hospital  I would take Perli and my other two dogs to the neighborhood dog park before and after school / rotations and on the days off that I had    we met a woman and her daughter who had lost their dog to illness and old age   they came to the dog park just to play with dogs and to heal their hearts and keep them light

well  long story short a few weeks later Perli went home with them and became their dog    it was a tough decision inone way andin another it was simple  they and she kind of made it for me and it was a great christmas gift to them     I think of my animal friends sometimes like foster kids  they have to grow up and move away and have their own families   it is hard and they are never forgotten but we all are richer when we are able to have more than just one set family love or relation I think  

last night perli came to visit me in the dreamtime   one thing that has been pretty steady for me is that when my loves  or my relatives or my relations leave their clay suits and move into the spirit world they come and visit me in the dreamtime   last night perli did and we cleaned her up and got all her scars and fears and pain and losses rinsed away and together with all the other loving souls who hang about the fort with me we restored her

I do not think for one moment that Perli went to a home that was hard or mean or bad to her  what I think fromw hat the spirits ahve told me and what I witnessed as a veterinarian is that our animals heal us as they stay with us   they choose to take on our pain and fear and loss  they take our illnesses and heal our hearts souls and bodies over and over until they just finally give out

god belss Perli for her love  her loyalty and for coming home to rest and to heal and now she is done her work and she is once again soft and laughable and free to play

I honor her and all the animals that save us every day  thank you Toast, Merlin, Booger Red, Little Cloud, Trout, StoryTeller, Spike, Mahkhata, Perli and all the others who have saved me and thus you Relatives over the years

love love love
Mary

cracking the defense of the offensive self

Good Morning Relatives

how are you?

Well all I can say is Eureka!  Eureka !  
for those of you whom have never come here in the body and seen the old nasty wood floors in the downstairs you will need to know that they at one time had some kind of ancient shag carpet that was orange and black and the carpet pad was black. I can tell because when I pulled up the quarter round from the baseboard remnants were underneath and there are chunks of the back pad stuck to the floor  anyhow in part areas downstairs it appears that corners of the dining room were used for urinals at one point   whether by human or animal is unknown to me  having been a veterinarian and smelled my share of animal urine it was not my first thought that this was due to an animals waste  anyhow long has the urine and the bacteria been chemically mixing and creating a noxious subtle persistent odor that is one of the most challenging things to remove from a porous surface and substrate. the wood floors

there is, like any penetrating thing that becomes imbedded in an organic body, more than one element to the tenacity of its hold on its host.

take the reaction of gut clinching fear that comes in response to various stimuli. one first has to find offensive the reactionary loud voice, harsh words, physical abruptness, violence, or energetic force that erupts out of the fearful when the stimuli occur.  one has to first see these emanating organic learned and practiced if not refined to a t behaviors as not wanted   not okay   not appropriate  damaging  debilitating  self destroying ; one must find one's self offensive, and not the self  itself, but the behaviors emanating  in order to find one's way to a non noxious life

do you want a non noxious life?  is it ok to live in a house that is permeated with old piss? HMMMMM

first one must find the odor of the behavior offensive   so offensive that it creates a persistent unshakable undeniable unalterable willing dedicated committed uswervejable course of pursuit of oneself within the self towards the end goal of the total elimination of said odor in ones life, aura, presence, environment, tool kit, bag of tricks, repertoire, leave taking, wake, waking, or eventual wake.

like the floors here at the house  the odor for me was undeniably present  there was no masking it  no wishing it away no moving the house away from it

I dont know about those of you who have no parts inside that make their way outside when you thought those parts were gone, removed, covered over, forgiven, therapized, yoga-ed, intellectualized, silenced, or simply moved away from or divorced from your organic neurons and cellular response team  but I have those parts

I have them and all my life for as long as I can remember from at least junior high when I finally cracked and acted out in a rage I have had inside of me a urine stain, an organically embedded stain that was not inactive in my life, nor was it cleaned up by those who pissed all over me long ago emotionally, physically, sexually, vibrationally, verbally, and energetically pissed all over me  and into the corners of my heart and mind and body and my own little trusting absorbent organic self

one thing that I have discovered in my life in my attempts to remove urine stains  or at least to inactivate their odor producing life force is that if they are old or not cleaned up immediately and eliminated early  they actually grow in potency and in entrenchment  and they eventually affect the whole house
I have also learned that they are complex  they are relationship be tween different parts
parts that are bound together

and like any other problem or puzzle  or knotted ball of thread sometimes it takes time to get to the core to see all the cogs and find out what put them awry  sometimes it is just one thing out of place  but sometimes it is more than one thing and the nature of that thing being activated in a relationship or way that it will rather than produce life or breathable air produces death and ammonia gas  the parts are the parts they are just stuck in the wrong place

like you and me  and roger rabbits girl,  she wasn't bad, just drawn that way.  so can she be re-drawn?  can we get down to our parts and stop the reactions that are inappropriate and re-appropriate them?  do you want to?  do you care?  do you like living in a house that has old urine in the corners?

so years of trying to figure out about the damn urine in the wood  it finally occurred to me that it was a sum of parts and I had to address the parts that meant that it would take more than one ingredient more than one skill more than one process to get the results I so desperately want
if you look on the internet and research urine stain and odor it is amazing what you will find   like the plethora of self help gurus   in that sea of information I found someone willing to share clearly what worked for her to eliminate urine from her life   ha !  cool

it began with acceptance of what was what it was

organics bind to organics  
sometimes appropriately like water in an apple  sometimes inappropriately like piss on wood

think about it  our bodies know that urine needs to be eliminated so that we can live in balance   in organ-ic harmony   that means that in living, ingesting, drinking our lives up and doing we produce waste  living produces waste  filters out what is not in balance    when we remove and recycle that waste appropriately then we don't end up with piss in the corner  

that means inexperience and learning curves will produce mistakes? practice makes perfect but also produces compost  and it matters that we learn early on and understand about ourselves and each other that we will produce debris, detritus, lactic acid, urine, steam, thoughtlessness, sometimes until we can learn to do differently like tripping on laces till we learn to tie them well, or cutting our finger when chopping and peeling, or eating too much, or taking the wrong turn on our first journey to grandmothers house in the woods.  we will produce urine  

and if we do not learn early on where and how to properly safely thoughtfully direct that stream into the toilet bowl and not on the rim or into the corner or down our leg or someone else's  then it is inevitable that there will be urine somewhere in the house in a place where it will stink up our lives and the lives of any and all who venture into our living space

urine binds to wood and bacteria is present in and on all organic things and the bacteria stimulated by the ph and the sugars and the food of the urine, wood, bacteria become a cycle that perpetually produces an odor  unmistakable in its origin  unshakable in its process

the easy way to end this cycle is to cut out the wood  the plaster the subfloor the joists that all this leaked on over time and got into in its persistent force of natural progression, to cut it out and burn it  to eliminate it totally from the structure  

and I have done so many times in me  in my habits, responses, beliefs, social skills, private thoughts, word strings, hand gestures etc  simply cut out the urine and its stain in my life   and burned it

but like this old house  which has been stripped of all that could be done so and still have it standing  that has had its guts ripped out and scraped off and cut away like a surgeon debriding a gangrenous wound this old house  like myself and my own heart and my own mind and my own organic skeleton eventually came down to the bone  down to the unmovable unremovable un-replaceable place where the gross removal of the structure was not possible and still be able to live  to still have a life  a full life
a life that is clear in its forward ness

I dont want to put the new floor and the overlaid heat system over active odor emanating urine stains.  why build on death, why build over organic compost as if it is not there

I am sure that many of us have tried and still live as someone said "on the river de-nile"  If I smoked cigarettes non stop in the house I might not be able to smell or have the capacity to smell the urine, if I was somehow wasted and or absent from the house I would not need to acknowledge its persistent presence  if I had some sort of life killing denial and ignored my own knowledge I could block out that stain with pure self will and going ahead as if it did not exist pretending if I threw this house away and kept running or bought a new one and covered it with plastic or had no living thing in it that might make a urine mistake ever

pretending that it was not there   pretending that I was not living in constant response to its presence and thus never ever ever not stained myself by that ugly odiferous life altering stain  if I lived that way myself  and if I set the foundation of the floors of the house and its heat system over that rotting buried cesspool it would kill this house and the life that I am and the work and the joy and the beauty that comes from a clear and unbridled heart

whether that heart be the organic heart of a house or the one that beats in my chest
it would kill it

so I paid attention to the inappropriate action and reactions in my life and skill set and pursued the triggers that set them off,  sound, energy, desire from others felt most often even more strongly than mine own, training towards perfectionism, training towards responsibility and religion, training training training

I watched and I endured  and I cut off and burned when I could and separated myself to a singular being whose life became so small and so cellular that when eventually ( and it will come like the odor from the urine and the wood and the bacteria, a batch that cooks and finally wafts into the present) the organic present of that ugly life killing combination of the urine I absorbed unknowingly, unwittingly, innocently as a child or young adult, and the wood with which I build my life, and the motion of my own emotion driven by stain-covering forces born of years of the unseen combination of the forces that were put in me by my makers both eternal and temporal and my own chi my own willpower, fear of failure, dedication to please others, fear of pain, quick as a bunny get it over and move on control the situation lightning grasp on all concerned and shake them with voice or hands or sound to restore the set point, exhaustion, frustration, fear of loss of love

I held myself in the midst of that odiferous morass and watched looking for the tie that binds  looking for in me the nidus of the fear  so that by voicing it  by calling its name and bringing it to the air and choosing clearly at its core to stop its action and reaction in my life   by admitting by exposing by adding air by adding oxygen by doing the work I stopped it  I changed it I had already decided what to replace it with and practiced painstakingly something else  

I told my organics that I was no longer available for dependance,  for loss, for lovelessness, for pleasing others at the cost of my own conscious knowing of right and wrong, that physical pain is not as bad as the loss of self integrity, that failure happens, dogs jump up, bowls drop from hands and break, decisions are made badly, skills are imperfect until perfected, paw prints will be muddy, and dishes pile up in the sink.  why?

why because life happens. because life is organic because we do not grow up amongst people who do not ad or inadvertently piss on us when we are children or naive youngsters, or newly weds, or new doctors, or coworkers  

and when that happens the piss seeps into our organic cracks and mixes with the bacteria  and the sugar of life and begins to stink  and we begin to stink  and then we find out who and how we truly are after all

we find out if we are pissers, moaners, deniers, com posters, sulkers, blamers, gamers, wannabes, abusers, explorers, discoverers, pragmatists, doers, changers, shakers and movers, or remodelers.

we begin the life long pursuit of choosing how we are going to clean up the mess or not   who are we  who do you want to be?

that is the thing I came down to   I found out that things trigger me  buttons therapists call it  I think of it  or them as my guard dogs   sharp sounds, sudden emotion changes when others around me are pushing, or desiring, or venting or vomiting or pissing LOL.  fear that creeps up like a rising tide, gut clenching, accidents, choices that seem to bear the weight of the world, responsibility and what it really means
all these who used to be the wolves that hunted me haunted me  are now the guards at my gate of opportunity  guards that alert me that a choice in me is present and depending on what wagon I hitch my horse to will make all the difference as to whether the barn will catch fire or not

I cannot tell you what or who your wolves are relatives   nor can i give you a magic wand to tame them
but  I can tell you that it can be done    just like the woman who posted how she got rid of urine stain and smell   just like others who have tried and won in the rearrangement of their own molecules so that their relationships with themselves and others are not toxic  it can be done

it can be done

so why does it matter to find this   and why spend so much pencil and paper writing it out and why put it on a public space  because it already is public my dears  if it is in my life it is in yours  if I pissing the corner of my house i have pissed in yours and if I try to live with it covered over it will permeate other corner and free air space that we live in and a house is supposed to be a home isn't it?  it is supposed to be safe and come with good skills and kindness and roofs that shelter and the clink of dishes that served nutritiousness and the laughter and joy and soft voices that acknowledge there are monsters under the bed but that also persevere in the skill of the enduring heart and mind that lives not to profit or retribute but to love  

the heart and hands and breath that is willing to do the work

it matters that we do it openly and in full knowledge of each other  is that not what the light is?

I used to think this old house would not be very useful until it was done  until it was ready  until it was perfect or at least sans urine stains and smell   now I understand that like me, the house and I are useful to ourselves and each other and perhaps to you also relatives both as we are and as we change   as we suss out our damage and repair and restore ourselves to a good living space  is that not what it will take to make this world different?  does it not simply mean after all figuring out truly how to stop pissing in inappropriate places and concurrently learn how to clean up the mess that we were born into, inherited, or unwittingly purchased?  isn't that better than losing my life or the life of this house all together

which would you rather?  the great flood or fire? the cleansing sweep that resets everything back to zero?  or the work that finally will bring about a clean opportunity for that old wood in the corner ?

it took many experiments  and much perseverance and finding the right teachers  and it was nasty relatives  trust me really really nasty work  but I got it  finally    we got it   I think if I had more money I would not have had the patience to work it out    there is nothing like poverty and the persistent soul to produce results  ask JK Rowling, she gave us Harry Potter, a true treasure born out if poverty and persistence. not only her willingness to follow her nose, but to keep it to the grindstone and follow through until Harry and his friends were safe and the evil pissing eliminated from the foreseeable future for themselves and their children's children.  quite the doing

so hydrogen peroxide 3%, mixed with dawn dish soap ( a good squirt ) poured over the area after sifting baking soda (thoroughly covering the affected area with baking soda like powdered sugar on french toast) thickly on the wood,  then scrubbing it with a brush so that it mixes and bubbles really well, then letting that sit and boil and bubble till it stops bubbling perhaps an hour or so , then wiping it up , wiping and picking it up (nasty trust me)  then repeat the process,  then the third time just the hydrogen peroxide and dawn  and let it sit and then wipe it all up  

nasty nasty nasty stuff  

but   !
Eureka !!  viola!  miracle!    no more odor     ha!!!!

reclamation!!  

so its doable    to save the house  

shall we relatives?

love love love
mary

the Gordion knot

Good Morning Relatives

how are you today?  I am super grateful for you today of all days   it is my birthday today at least it is the day that my little growing clay and flesh and memory catching molecular mobile emotional physically, sensually, and ethereally feeling container finally came out of my mom's oven.   super cool huh !

I asked the Spirits for rain for my birthday and as the sun was setting yesterday the clouds moved in they were amazing  and in the east-south east we had a continuous lightning storm for an hour  then it rained   what a wonderful gift !  afterwards me and the kitty went outside and went walking in the air

it was a peaceful night with deep sleeping and immediate wakefulness

this morning everything is resting  the plants the trees the grass the tomatoes are all enjoying their drink and the energetic shot of lightning in the night  

it has been an amazing year   when has it not been!?

one of the best gifts that I have been given this year is that of the finally found the core of my carried anxiety inside my own gut and the gentle and open handed release of it in my life  

stress  anxiety guardedness expectation fear   fear  is what was at the core of it  fear  and all the things it brings

whew!!! brrrrr   just writing about it makes my gut want to clench  makes my ears a bit ringy and the muscles in my throat at the base of my neck and behind my jaw tighten

so I breathe  I laugh and don't turn away from it  I accept that it is an option and I gently do not choose it but I don't hide or turn away or deny I hold and I breathe and I don't let my mind wander down the path of what if?  what about or any other story that was made up to tell inside or outside of me that maintains defensiveness fear anger or any sort of tightness in my body   my beautiful birthday suit

many years I have been accomplished social strong steady and many many good things and many active productive things  but always since i was small and first or second or may fiftieth time hit or screamed at or grabbed or had my things destroyed or my dog shot or whatever it was that those around me who had no skill  no discipline no strength to hold back their own fear  their own self miscommunication their own cracking go of their day  they did not spend time learning practicing persevering to search for the state of fearlessness the state of kindness the state of peace between themselves and what they effect   I dont know if they couldn't get to the edge of their fear or if they didn't try.  or if they tried and feeling they failed sunk back into the depths of action and inaction that kills through anxiety and fear  cant you just feel it ?

I dont know  all I know is that I did not grow up in a world or amongst people who had the skill to not create fear in their wake    I grew up amongst people who had come to understand somewhere along the way that fear and pain and aggression and the demand for perfection whether through the bribery of praise and reward or threat of violence would give them a sense of control   and control  power was important to them   and continues to be important to them  to those for whom it is more important to keep that grip on life

its that grip that has had a hold of my gut since I was small    that grip    and it had so many layers  so many many pieces to its unravelling  so long it has had a hold of me

an old friend of mine and I visited this week and she said that she never knew that I suffered from that all these years.  she said I was so confidant so not what she thought a person who had fear embedded inside them would be  she said she never knew    and I suppose that is true I never told her or anyone else really what I have been working on for so long   it is nice to know that I have continued to go forward to function to work and do all I can and play when I can even though I was unresolved in all that needed to be undone or unmade in me

I am glad I kept going  despite not being perfect or perfected  

I remember collecting that grip of fear  I remember not having it   I remember encountering again and again things that made me fearful  things that were intended by others to harm or degrade or control or smear or laugh at or undermine or simply to make use of and then discard  things that to me were and are violent  

the world and many who are in it are violent     and it has taken me most of the 54 years this time of being here to work out how to accept that I will encounter violence without predicting its presence  

to accept that there are many who use violence in one form or another and that those people are or can be at one and the same time people whom I care about  people who I want to laugh with to hold or embrace with the openness and clarity and kindness and trust that human beings are capable of    yet they have this violence this harmfulness  

and I am afraid of violence  

so it took a long time for me to come to the bottom of the grip of fear in my belly   one of my other old friends when i tried to visit with her about it made a snide remark about me finally taking a dump  violence again  violence  why ?  why choose to be snide or to harm ?  does it really satisfy? or only heap on the head of the one who releases it more and more stones more and more hardness?

finding the underlying ability to not have fear or hold it I had to decide what to hold instead  what to hold?  what would you hold?  what is the most enduring thing about me?   it is wonder and kindness  it is seeing beauty and I know what that feels like   I know it so well and it was in me an original thought an original impetus  so it is underneath the violence the fear the grip   and has been all along   I just had to get to to  to reach it  to touch it and connect

and then i had to honestly and clearly hold on to it  maintain it in motion  in sound in movement in physical mobility  

and that has taken more practice   more practice  in figuring out how to do it while in motion or while hearing sound or fending off judgement

I remember my father teaching me that in the bible are the words train up a child in the way it should go and when it is old it will not depart from it   but what if I do want to depart from what I was trained in relatives?  what if how we trained our children or each other was not good for us or them?  what if that training was flawed or full of ignorance or greed or fear?   how do I redo all the cells and the cellular memories I carry?  how do I replace my skill set ?

by one and then one more and then one again and yet again one and one and one choice

I have a friend who is an archeologist   she works primarily on a dig that is between Turkey and Iran on a project that has at its center the story of the Gordion Knot   for those who are not familiar with the story it is worth reading   I believe that when Alexander the Great cut the knot instead of learning the skill of untangling or accepting it he like pandora released into the world or mankind womankind the temptation or lure of cheating of power and result that is the temptation of the temporal world rather than the cycle of the eternal and its living balance in this place in which we live  it is to me like releasing a virus into and amongst human beings   a virus that plagues us and our children one of which I am and was    I think that like the choice that was made by the two humans in the story of the white buffalo calf woman  one of indulging selfish intent one of holding back and allowing the presence of more than what is temporal to exist.  each of us has in our life over and over again that choice  the choice of alexander to learn the skill of the knot or to cut it   one is the illusion of power and one is true power  which relatives is which?  which is the one that you want or value or choose?  it is that knot that I have carried around in me most of my life   at my core  in my belly  and now finally on my 54th birthday I see not that I will undo it or release it but that I will live with it and through it without hodling or cutting or needing it to be straight and perfect and undone  

pretty cool huh?

the Buddhists I think said that being still in a peaceful place is not being still   being still in the hurricane is being still    I am not sure who said that if you think you are enlightened go and be with your family LOL  these and other things I have kept as thoughts guides teachers to help me suss out the center of this knot of fear and pain that has gripped me for so very long and because it was there and I had to move around it and carried it it colored  it tainted what I did what I thought what I said how I was even if I had the ability to keep it out of my doing it was by definition of having to be avoided ever present

how to be without fear  how to hold kindness in the midst of pain how to accept sound and movement but not be lost ?   how to peel away that shell of fear inside my belly  to accept but not live in or recreate it's pain or allow it to reseed itself in me  

I had to distance myself from people so that I could learn to be connected to them without ingesting who they choose to be   I had to accept the presence of the dark or negative in order to understand and make a conscious choice about the light or the positive I had to come to understand that denial doesnt make something not exist  I had to understand that it takes discipline  work effort to stand in the middle to stand in the choice of kindness surrounded by fear  I had to come to understand that even if someone intends or reaches out or ?? to harm me that I will not be harmed no matter what it is that they do

and why is that?  how is that possible?  how is it possible to love someone and not waver in that even when they are striking at me to control to manage to reduce?  how do you love someone when they insist on keeping between you and them something painful something horrible something deadly?

well   it's tough isn't it relatives?   to stand still and to move all at the same time   to love and  be loved without being dependent on action or thought or word or any other thing which is temporal   can love be untouchable  can it be a Thing that is indestructible?  is it a human thing?  is it something that was created like my birthday suit was created?  was it born can it die?  can love be affected by the temporal?

because what I am talking about is love  it is the presence of love  the strength of love  the evanescence of love the thing that is at the core of the spark of life is forward motion inertia cohesiveness presence reproduction growth enduring energetics that have the ability to recycle reuse reorder repurpose

no matter what is done said built torn down given taken away shared withheld promised threatened or acted or inacted on  

somehow after all this time I stopped pretending I was born on a different planet amongst different kind of beings and should have would have could have had the perfect childhood or life that did not include negativity  somehow I came to the full face acceptance that I currently reside in a body that can feel pain wether emotional physical or mental and that pain is part of the deck of cards that gets handed out here

somehow I accept that my body  my emotion my presence in this present is intertwined with a suit that is full of attachment  bathed in emotion  soaked in the sensitivity   I just have to remember who I AM  and in doing so who I AM NOT   and make sure that I stand in the NOT not the KNOT

LOL

I dont know if my body will ever get over its past or if I will ever have non violence in the life that moves around me  I would like that  not in a mindless way like falling into and floating on the water of a hot summer days jaunt to the lake or the pool  but in the way that a clear cool clean glass of water is drunk without looking back and so enjoyed as it splashes into the body and streaks to the cells that are delighted by its presence

there is work in this post for you relatives   there is effort and illusion and laughter   it is my birthday  the day I stepped out into this world physically encased in what has turned out to be a great challenge

be kind relatives  if kindness is valuable to you  do not lay it down for a second  for any reason  and if in a moment or two you find you do not know yet how to be kind  stand still  be silent  dont run or create just to move or say or do  just hold    and stay separate or back or whatever it takes to keep yourself intact do not be carried away by the thought or impetus of anything or any wind or any desire that may tug at you or push at you from within or without

hold

stand until you for sure know dont worry about the knot  it will take care of itself  just remember that while everything else is moving around and through you  your are also moving you are also all things and there is no reason to be one thing or another with or without because the knot exists there is balance  because there is balance you dont have to grasp or work   you may need to learn some new skills  LOL but at the core of the knot of what is not is what is   be there


love
mb

Rushmore or Rushless?

Good afternoon Relatives

its raining  its a soft quiet steady rain  one in which I can sit on the porch and hold my feet out into and only my feet get washed  its the kind of rain where the ground says yea! thanx for showing up and the little plants say drink! drink! drink!  

I am grateful for the rain

this morning getting out of bed was hard  so hard in fact that once I had gotten up and done the feeding and cleaning chores for the beautiful animals that I went back to bed   I was painful  terribly so  my wrists and shoulders my head and lungs and body were painful   I was hot so hot infact that I felt cold all over  

part of me wanted to stay in bed and rest  part of me said stay in bed and sleep the entire day  and part of me wanted me to push through  to keep going and to hurry up and finish the living room even though I felt like I was on the tip top of the tipping point dangling over the abyss of pain and headed the wrong way  my brain had plenty of examples for me of others who had worked through pain  myself included  but my tired hot head just swept them all aside and i brought in the Sticky Wicket and Marshall Valentine to watch over me while i rested and I went back to bed  it was comforting to have their silence under the bed  it was comforting to be held in the love they so freely share with me  I love them also

so we slept and slept and finally this afternoon I woke up with a start and thought Oh! I feel better  
not finished yet though healing  and repairing but much better

it was amazing to work on the living room this week  each day I did a little more  than the day before  each day ripping out plaster and lathe and old sheet rock and wallpaper  sweeping up as I went   on wednesday the menards guy brought two pieces of fire board to go behind the steel in the corner where the woodstove will be installed  in case there was rain or a heavy dew I cut them in half so I could carry them and brought them inside to protect their $13.00 value  its funny how some things are costing more than others   8x4 fire board 6.50 each  its very dense like rock and very heavy  it prevents any heat from penetrating into the depth of the wall and thus decreases the likely hood of a fire from the stove  how cool is that    for about the cost of a hot chocolate and a biscuit that board will hold that corner for 100 years   cool huh?

the next day i put up the board and finished taking out the lath and plaster that I could get without a major rearrangement of the room  then the final day on friday i dragged the canisters of insulating spray foam out into the sun to heat up  and measured cut and installed the steel in the corner over the fire board  then sprayed the foam  then trimmed some of it till my hands just said enough

it was last night that I realized I had forgotten to wear my respirator when spraying the foam  my lungs were very unhappy and i think that is part of why I was so painful this morning  i breathed in the fumes of the foam   and I think I was bit over ambitious in doing so much the last day  it is exciting to actually redo this room   it is like a magnet of change drawing me out beyond the borders of my ability

I took some pictures for you   although the camera is wonderful to have and easy to transfer they do not capture the sense of joy or of change or of beauty that the house is once again moving into  bit by bit

but not today   today we are all resting and the rain is supporting that choice to be gentle and to take a break  

its not so much the cause and effect of actions as it is the internal impetus that I learn to listen to or not  

its not so much overdoing as underlistening  perhaps thinking that hurry will bring what I believe I will be pleased by  

rushing more or rushing less hurrying down the road with never a glance left or right or a picnic on a rock or a venture into the meadow  because when i was young my set point was set  to rush more   to the end  to the goal to the accomplishement which more often than not felt empty once reached until i would find a new rushing
now that I am older and have decided that taking a look at who and how and why I am matters  like the bones of this old house exposed and debrided the original intentions and care and work which was magnificently done and best available at its time 1910,  it was good for then but not so much for now, along the way of it doing its work it also collected all the dirt and debris and smoke that passed through the walls  through the house now we have better ways to insulate  to prevent dirt from accumulating in the walls to hold back and out the moisture and the sound  now like me looking at what it is that brought me to today I am able to debride what was put in early on and change it
but I had to learn what to change it to   I had to learn that replacing rushing more with rushing less is not change at all

it has at times been painful to make the transition from the old to the now differently and sometimes it has not been pretty or easy for me or those who are around me I look at the great pile of rubble that covers the slope of the mountain under the faces of the monument in South Dakota and I wonder why we are so surprised that there is rubble and risk of injury when we look inside ourselves to bring out of our rock the monument that we will leave behind us
one thing I will try and remember and one thing perhaps you might is that rather than seeing the negative of the work to be amazed that it is being done at all
how many people carved the mountain?  why not more

the rain encourages me to be pleased by the foam  and the change  the bones of the house because once they are covered over they will fade into the whole of the accomplishment without the anymore singular opportunity to be standing fully present in their presence in the gift of their being ness

perhaps today is a thought about the joy of me as I am  the letting go of how I was before I wasn't and the letting go of who I will be when this was is wasn't


best to you my friends best to me best to the board and the foam and the beautiful dogs who are so good at sleeping

mb

Hehaka Pejuta

Good morning relatives

It is a fortunate day. I am in South Dakota this morning. I was given the opportunity to make a short trip out to Wyoming and the Black Hills   It was very good for my heart and body to come here for this short visit.  It is a good reminder to remember that no matter how much I love my home it is healthful to go and see the medicine places that make up this great country that we live in.

Traveling through the hills on motorcycle right now is like being in the boundary waters right before fishing opener.  The motorcyclists are gathering and riding everywhere. I met an older man from Toronto. He was so enjoying Custer national park and the beauty of the hills. He said he was going to come back. It cheered me.  In all the midst of the terrible things people from our realms of power and priveledge have done to make us as a people so unpalatable to other countries here was a man from Grandmothers Land happy to be here.  All around the roads and trails where I was graeful to travel there were very healthy crops of Hekaka Pejuta / Elks Medicine growing. It was wonderful to chew some of this medicine that was growing ont eh mountain where Black Elk had his great vision. Elks medicine is about love. The Elk brings love and stamina to its people there was massive amounts of it blossoming here which tells me relatives that the Elk, the Earth Mother, the Wind, the Water all hear our cry for love our. Cry for healing and care amongst each other and with ourselves. It is a blessing straight out of the earth.
The sage is also crazy fragrant this year it is growing everywhere. Sage is for clearing. Cleaning the heart space

I am thinking this am that it is important to clean our heart space and our mind space of the negativity the failures the fears that we have and perhaps carry around inside of us.  Even having been taught this by my elders and good teachers every morning relatives I struggle with my own tears and my own fear  every morning I must let them out.  I get up and prepare for the beginning of the day and I make cedar smoke, sage, and tobacco prayer. Sometimes with the pipe some times just a pinch in my hand and if I can let my heart go I cry. Always there are tears as I release what was or what pushes at me into what I call the "get along with yourself now" space.  There is so much judgement in our lives. In my own cellular habits that I feel it trying to get me to hold onto that pain and fear. Why? So that I hold myself back from blossoming in the day. So that that old inertia of negativity that eventually culminates and rolls over the children at Lame Deer like a blanket of death dose not have to be caught up in our willing hands carried outside into the dawn and shaken snapped out like a sail to free those children to free that man from Toronto to free me and you.

Go out and shake your heart in the wind relatives. Give it a snap like an clean white, purple, green, mauve, or slate colored sheet fresh from scrubbing and airing. Shake it into the wind. She can accept and dissipate your fear as she has mine own.

Here in the Black Hills the smallest of the small is enduring in love and in joy.  I read that at the end of his life Black Elk said that he felt he was given a great vision and that he did not do all he can to make it true in this reality. Today here in the land where he stood so long ago amongst a time of transition, death, rebirth, confusion and spiritual glory in a time that is exactly like this time now. He stood and did all he could. Today I offer cedar, sage, tobacco and elks medicine for Black Elk. I ask him to snap his soul in the wind and to let go of that fear and negativity. I invite him to live his vision now and I say it is never to late Grandfather. Today I see your medicine all over those hills in the rose quartz that runs under them I see the love from which you were made blossoming through the medicine that grows and I ask you to let go as we all must each day of what was or was not and be be with me Grandfather be with yourself

With love from one Elk to another  be with love

Best to you this day relatives
Love love love
Heyhaka WinWicakpi Zi