A Durango Village

 At New Year I moved to a new home, down the street from a cramped and crumbling home from where I wrote my most recent blog posts. 

That was across the street from "Sparky" which I later changed to the more noble and nuanced "Spartacus". He was a noble beast locked in an ugly battle he could not win. Two days ago his owner poisoned him to death and unhooked the chain to let him run, so he would die down the road. It was dark. Perhaps he thought whoever found him in the morning would assume he had been struck by a car. I found him. I examined his body, which was unbroken. Only his jaw was clenched, and his last breaths blew bloody bubbles.

I suggest to the town's elected judge that a bully who would kill his 11 Year old daughter's beloved pet had it in him to murder a human. Does she feel safe with him as a neighbor?  Unlike all other residents of this tiny village {except me}, he is unrelated to anyone in the village; he rents his house.  He is a musician, in bars a lot, often drunk whether working or not. But it was she who made me turn over the Labrador to him after I had given the dog a couple night's respite in our home. I had warned her that this man was abusing the dog, but she has not yet elevated herself from this patriarchal society, where the man is always right.  This was a few weeks ago, where I promised her I would not make any more trouble. I would not 'interfere' between this man and his "beloved', supposedly, dog.

At 5 pm Tuesday, hours before he would die, we were standing in the road near the chained dog, the judge and I, talking about our Senior's club meeting that had just ended. Spartacus was barking furiously, eyes fixed on me, begging that I free him. I could not. Did he have a premonition?

[< I am typing on my phone. I cannot find a way to insert photos here. I will have to save the rest of this until I am on my computer, because it is meant to be a photo report of the cul de sac where we now live.   oops. I am at the internet cafe in town, where the computers dont have Windows 10.  The owner has lent me his laptop, with a Spanish keyboard that is a mystery to me>)

Here is our new neighborhood.  It is very old, and referred to as la plazuela. Any native Spanish speakers out there, if you can, please explain the nuances.  Here, la plaza is what in S Mexico we call the zocolo. La Placita is the Canatlan park where locals buy and sale their stuff on Mondays and Fridays.  

...Please overlook the technical glitches.  At internet cafe, strange computer keyboard, could not find cut and paste, hence the following is out of sequence...

Here is Spartacus as our house guest.  He dwarfs this  3 foot bed.

And this is how he spent his days and nights, 24  7.  This view is from the owners house looking to the street.  He is chained to that tree.  Ah, but not anymore.  

And here is the plazuela.  This tree must have been here first, and the adobe homes built around it.

To the left is one more adobe attached home, then the half circle comes back to the road there on that side.  Leaving the semi circle on that side, the next property is fenced with cyclone fencing, it houses a large apple orchard and sports about 16 free range beautiful panoply of chickens and roosters, none of which lay eggs.  Thats not the point..they are just beautiful.  That is the end of the road that dumps you into the plazuela...or  the road makes a sharp right and bypasses us to get to the river and the two lane highway.  We are at the other end of the semi-circle, a corner home aside the narrow road that leads out.

This is Manuels house.  He is the youngest brother of a large family of bullies and abusers.  His sensitive soul has never recovered.  He can be seen weaviing out of his door at 8 am, to join the other one or two alkies warming in the sun.

 

I have not yet been inside.  apparently the front room has no roof.  The adobe is very old, I am thinking 300 years, based on my acquaintance with the history of this county.  Hopefully his inner room with roof is large enough to turn around.  Zoom in and enjoy.  I am fascinated by the construction.  Why has adobe fallen out of favor --see question mark cause I cant find it on this keyboard.  The key thus marked yields other things, like - and _

The Tepehuanes had settled this region very nicely.  Lots of little settlements.  In the 17th century the King decided he wanted this region as his own, and sent a couple of Franciscan friars and their followers to claim it in his name.  A vicious battle ensued, the natives were driven out, and these European-looking people .. the 30 families.. established their large farms on land gifted by the King.  I have seen no modern records nor heard no stories beyond that snippet more remote than the 20th century, from the seniors still living.  Families had 17 and 18 children, routinely.  One of the matriarchies, Elena, passed at age 94.  Her middlish daughter who took care of her after retirement was murdered, run down by the pickup of a jealous brother.  I found that body, too, one Sunday morning on my way to town.   Sheesh.

My dear friend, Simona, was born about where Manuels house is, 96 years ago.  We share birthdays, a day and twelve years apart.  She is amazingly clear, no Alzheimers, although her short term memory is not great.  Her story deserves a post of its own.  Her husband, much older than she, belonged to Pancho Villas band.  These revolutionaries hid out here in this tiny village for a number of years.  Francisco Villa, born an hours drive down the road here in Durango State, is recorded in history as one of the main revolutionaries to bring independence to Mexico.  He was assassinated--I think in the 1930s--to give you some historical perspective.

And here is our front gate.  The red guy is Junior, the poodle mix is Loki.  In spite of being born in my home 5 years ago, Junior was not named by me.  I gifted him to a neighbor, who is very good to animals.  But this friends boss took possession of the dog.  There were also about 3 other huge dogs living in that large farm, making sport of Junior judging by the scars on his body.  At last he said ENOUGH and asked me to take him home.

Loki belonged to one of Elenas sons..  The wife died this past weekend.  Loki accompanied me to the funeral Mass at our little church.  They were a prominent family--they had a small herd of cows, and she made cheeses and sold milk.  She had had a stroke some ten years before I made her acquaintance.  In spite of half her body being useless, she still heated a huge tub of gallons of milk every day.  I give her credit for being a very strong, determined woman.  But something happened to her heart.  When I pick up a broom or mop today, Loki cringes and tries to slink away, eyes fearful, ears down.  What he must have endured at her hands to want so desparately to escape.  Today, nine years old, he is one fearful, timid, neurotic dog.  This family also had a mechanics shop in their small garage.  Now their youngest son has graduated with an engineering degree, and runs the shop.  So here we are at this church crowded to overflowing.  Loki is bouncing with joy, weaving through the crowd jumping and greeting, and being greeted, by more people than I even know.  The next day, after our breakfast, he disappeared for a few hours.  It is my belief that he returned to his childhood home to enjoy what visitors were still around.  But he returned at the end of the day.  I had hopes that he would feel welcomed and not want to return to me.  He is, after all, a neurotic handful.  Maybe some day, as the family recovers from their loss.

Enter by this front gate.  There is the driveway.  To the left, a rose garden, old and poorly maintained.  I amatuerishly pruned the six or eight rose bushes, we will see down the road how I did. Straight ahead, leaving the car, is the front door.  The house is very old.  It is retrofitting with a bathroom.  This en suite is up a steep ramp.  It had stairs, but the previous tenant, the mother of the woman who loves all those pretty chickens and who is renting me this house, could no longer maneuver them.

Everything leaks.  If I want a warm face wash at the bathroom sink, I need an electric kettle and a bowl.  I keep a pitcher under the dripping pipe in the shower.  It fills a couple of times a day, and that is the flush for my toilet.  If I keep the water on for the toilet tank to fill, the tile underfoot fills with water too.  I am too old to do the simple repair, and so I live with it.  With patience, I can get a hot shower once I have run the tiny electric portable heater in the bathroom about an hour, and passed my arm through a frigid stream to open the faucet and wait for the hot water to reach me from the rooftop solar boiler.  I am delighted with this new development.  I did not have even this option in the other house where I lived for the past six months.

The house is large, it meanders.  There are no more than 2 bedrooms, but across an enclosed patio there is a large storage room for all my remaining junk, which means I live with minimum clutter.  I have my own stove installed now, which means it is fully functioning.  One day I will get someone to install a marvelous faucet I bought for a previous ephemeral house.  That will signal the end of a semi-functioning kitchen sink, with a sodden base below the constantly dripping pipes.

I hope you enjoyed my meandering tales of my present homeplace.  Come visit whenever youre in the neighborhood.  I have an extra bedroom!

Morning walks with our pack

 

Nov 29  2025

Morning Walks

I call him Sparky, because Rocky has been taken, in our pack.  Hi lives across the street, in this tiny hamlet of 10 houses.

I cannot label his breed, but I describe it like this.  He is large, white, with floppy ears.  He loves bouncing in the river.  Judging by his affectionate and playful manner, I think he is still a puppy, under a year old.  I still don’t know the motives of his owner that has led to this travesty.  This is an unrolling story; one day I will know.  Meanwhile, cautiously working with the permission of the owner, we go for walks at dawn with our pack.

Sparky lives at the end of a rope about six feet long, tied to a tree with an enormous trunk.  He has neither water nor food in his small space.  It is in the front of the house, so he gets to see the activities and daily routines of the neighborhood.  There he sits, lonely, wanting to be a part of it all.  The rope is tied to his neck, tightly.  No collar.

Junior wakes me up every morning, with enthusiasm for a long walk.  Junior is a gift to me, to be my companion at this phase of a long and lonely path.  He was born six years ago in my living room.  He is about ten kilos, a long body on small legs, the color of almonds. My knees bother me, and sometimes my hip, so I used to ignore him and walk from my bed to the kitchen in my bathrobe to make coffee.  But no more.  Perhaps I am finally growing in my spirituality.  I listen to his tender spirit, and am doing better in living in harmony with it.  He is an old soul.

There is another dog living with us.  His owners gave him the name ‘Loki’.  I gauge him to be about nine years old.  He is small boned, curly haired.  Breeders of poodles would call him ‘apricot’ in color.  He is a damaged tender soul; perhaps he finds us soothing company.  Junior, so possessive of me, has grown to accept him, and has been known to intervene for him with me.

These three are our pack, plus Rocky.  Rocky also lives across the street from us.  The lady there has never found a way to say ‘no’ to any dog that chooses her company.  Most are small things, but Rocky is large.  He is black, fine boned like a doberman and as tall as Sparky.  I guess he must act out occasionally, because sometimes I see him tied up in her yard. 

Sylvia’s adult daughter, Perla, lives next door to Sparky, with Sylvia. She tells me of hearing him cry in the night, alone at the end of a rope.

I appreciate the fact that dogs, like horses and yaks, need a daily dose of exuberant running.  The little ones can tear up and down our dirt road to fill that need, and no one will mind.  But the big dogs terrify some people just by their size, and so live under restraint.  Rocky gets to walk often with his household pack and humans, but it is not the same.  These chihuahuas and other small blended breeds move at a much slower pace.

One day, while Junior, Loki and I were walking at early morning, I saw Sparky, legs planted wide, tongue hanging out as he grinned, rope still secure on his neck but loose trailing behind him, looking at me.  He stood on the grass verge of the dirt road, two doors down from his enclosure.  He wanted to join us, his intention was clear.  I unhooked his choking rope and let it fall; we three moved on.  And then suddenly, the black Rocky was bouncing alongside us.  His pack had once again worked a hole into Sylvia’s fence, and so he was free.  From then on, we were a pack of four.

Junior always tried to lead us along the two kilometer road to our former home, where he was born.  Two miles round trip might be doable on a smooth trail, but this was a rocky, rutted. dusty course putting extra stress on my knees.  Not to mention, during my eight years here the community has let grow wild the stream that crosses that road.  Weeds started growing up along its path.  What happened could have been prevented by a couple of men in rubber boots and hoes working for less than an hour.  Instead, the weeds grew across the path of the stream, so the stream meandered wide as it worked its way around the choking weeds.  Now that strip of road is always flooded, no longer the easy pass for motorcycles and low city cars.  In my walks I used to be able to hop the rocks where the water fell after crossing the street.  There is no longer such an easy crossing for pedestrians.  Junior didn’t mind the change. He has an intrepid love of water.

For these reasons, we could not follow Junior’s preferred walk.  We still, however, have many options.  Running parallel to our double row of houses on our dusty street, a river flows; the continuation of that same stream.  It is wild and untamed in terms of growth on the banks, but not of its force;  it flows gently.  There used to be walking paths along its banks, in the old days when people walked long distances.  But now the banks are overgrown, and in spots unpassable. 

Down a ways on our dusty street, between adobe walls, there is a path that leads to the river.  It rambles past abandoned shacks, houses and abandoned orchards.  In this town we are known for our apples, but there are also many pear orchards.  I have tried the pears, and find them unpalatable unless peeled and cooked for a long time in sugar water.  However, the other morning on our way to the river I dared to trespass into such an orchard.  It is autumn, and the trees are mostly bare.  But on closer inspection, I found an occasional hanging pear not rotted yet; I picked one and ate it on our walk.  It was crisp, juicy and sweet.  Again I was reminded of what we have lost in our modern era of transporting to the masses a large variety of foods not indigenous to the distant markets.  They are harvested before they are ripe, to endure the rigors of transportation.  Only farmers know the true mature flavor of many otherwise now popular produce.

The dogs are romping through the brush, noses to the earth.  They occasionally gather around a rock wall, snuffling and whining.  As I approach I hear the squeak of a small critter.  A squirrel, perhaps, a chipmunk, a rabbit.  I cannot tell. I shoo the dogs along.  We reach the river bank; we can go left, or right.  To the right, beyond a few paces, the bank becomes wild and unpassable.  We always go left, towards the flat bridge that spans the river and leads to the main street of our little hamlet, and to the farms beyond.

 We pass an old dug out pit, filled with leaves and debris.  I imagine filling it with firewood upon which we have lain well prepared lamb, gleaned from the local flock, and left to cook overnight. 

As a vegetarian, even I see that as plausible.  We would ask the permission of our animal to give us his life.  We would slaughter him as quickly and painlessly  as possible.  His hide would be cured, and used in service to the community.  As I savor the remembered taste in my mouth, delicious and nourishing, time melts away and I am in a different space entirely.

At last we reach our homes.  Sparky finds the bucket of water that Sylvia leaves in front of her gate, and drinks deeply.  He then heads for his yard, and allows me to hook him once again to his restraint.  I finally have bought him a halter, since the owner ignored my suggestion that he do that.  It pains me an inch less to hook him up, but it doesn’t lessen the pangs I feel for the rest of the day.  I go about my day listening to his high pitched whines, pleads that go ignored.  If he barks continuously, I check; he is thirsty, and sends me back home to carry a pitcher of water to him.

The other day I happened to be outside when this neighbor arrived.  We leaned against his car and talked.  Why must he always be tied up?  Why have you not finished the enclosure in your backyard? 

Apparently, this dog bit a man.  [this information starts an unraveling string of questions, unspoken.  What did the man do to aggravate the dog?  Who was this man?  Was it our ‘village idiot’—he is not an idiot, just rotted his brain on glue at an unfortunate age, and now as he wanders homeless he struggles with the local dogs-?  How is keeping him tied up going to change this behavior?].  Every inch of the conversation gets derailed with this theme.  But he bit a man!  I don’t want to be responsible for that happening again.  Such is the logic of this man, who owns an unwanted and abandoned dog.  As for the backyard, he insists that ‘people’ go back there and let the dog out.  This, too, triggers an inner dialogue that remains unspoken.  The man is clearly not operating on logic.  He has his mind set. 

If I can manage to have another opportunity with this man, I must ask:  why not give the dog away to a family that could love him and care for him?  Or perhaps bring about a change of heart; invite him to come with us at 7 a.m. and get to know a different side of this magnificent animal.

Meanwhile, I do what I can to alleviate the pain of another sensient being.  I have consulted with the videos of Cesar Millan on how to change his behavior of jumping on me.  I am small, and he bowls me over with his affection.  So we start there. 

Each day presents another opportunity to share the joy and exuberance of four delightful creatures.  Sparky is young.  His story is still developing.  We bring each other hope for a brighter tomorrow..

Christ, Catholics and Christians

 

Christ and Catholics

 

I was raised by good Catholic Italian parents.  I had a good, proper education through the tenth grade in Catholic schools.  Well, good if you don’t count the absence of science classes, art classes, and a proper athletics program.  Where might I be today had I been introduced to those subjects during my formative years.

Therefore I hold dear my memories of the rites and traditions of the Church.

It is not popular for Catholics to learn the history of the Church. My dear, devout sister is one who would vigorously defend the church against any of the facts I lay out here.

Simply put, formal religion was created, by Man not God, to form a scaffolding upon which amnesiac souls might find their way back Home.  Man put together selected writings, historical documents, best recollections of divinely channeled stories to create a handbook, or text book, to guide us through that process.  I refer, of course, to the Bible.  We are living in times of such spiritual darkness as has not been seen on earth for millions of years.  Simple methods used of old to awaken us and guide us Home are just not strong enough to help us to keep it together through this dark period.

My assertion that God did not create a church is true up to a point.  I trust that the initial impulses to organize the transference of Christ’s teachers and to establish guides or teachers, who probably chose incarnation at critical times with the express intention of furthering that process, were Divinely inspired.

Through the centuries the churches have brought amnesiac souls to realize their basic awakening, and to meet Christ.  The problem, as I see it, is that they enslaved those souls for their own purposes, and never handed them off to Christ’s direct hands to let them explore their awakened relationship with Christ.  Souls remain wrapped in a fog of forgetting, nurtured by their priests and ministers who themselves are entrapped in forgetting.

I decided to look up the root definition of the word arien.  This sent me down a rabbit hole of early Church history.  For the three hundred years after Christ’s death and resurrection, the church grew and expanded mostly by word of mouth as of old, according to ancient traditions. There were many, many people who received teachings directly from Christ and the descendents of his apostolates.

The culture of that age, very Jewish, were horrified by those family members who chose to break tradition.  If a son or daughter refused to marry in the Jewish or pagan faith of the time, they were denounced by the families, many banished, and had their lives turned upside down. Those who felt strong spiritual awakenings fled to the deserts and mountains.  Some gathered in small communities.  Many chose to live in isolated caves or huts.  Younger refugees sought the company and teachings of older hermits, who had been crossing the veil themselves in their isolation, and hearing directly from their own saints. 

An example of the truths held strongly in those days of organized catholicism. was that Christ was God.  Even in the New Testament, in a gospel Christ says, I am in God as you are in me.  I don’t have a Bible handy, but if you are a Bible thumper yourself you should have no trouble finding it.  Start in the gospel of John. 

A more accurate concept is found in the verse, I am the vine, you are the branches; I am in the Father as you are in Me.  This is interpreted by modern day mystics as a lineage, having God or the Source of all at its head, that could be called the Christ lineage.  Perhaps the Muslims have a similar lineage with their own Avatar.

Let us have a glimpse of India.  India is much more populated than the US, and of ancient history.  There is one archeological site that claims to have found traces of a sophisticated city state that has been dated to over 25,000 years ago.  I stumbled upon this remarkable study while editing an encyclopedia of India, while working at a university.  Unfortunately, the encyclopedia project became too large and unwieldy, and was abandoned.  There went the corroboration of that fact, outside the Universities of India.  This is a great pity.

The point of bringing up India is the myriad of gods and deities now kept alive by devotees and modern-day mystics who claim direct tutelage from his group’s ancestral teacher.  Christianity was nurtured in a very small geographic area, and of recent history.  The broader concept is that a One was spawned at the fountainhead, the Source.  The teachings, or guidelines for breaking through the veil of forgetting, held by the lineage of that One incubated many more avatars, each having their own thousand-year reign.  Some shorter, some longer.  Had Christianity a more fertile spawning ground, it too may have had more Avatars; proof of concept.

All things spawned on and of earth must eventually wither and die.  And so it is with humanity, some would say our very world.  Christ came at a pivotal time.  There was descending upon the earth a darkening, a forgetting.  Ancients tell us that when we are born, we forget where we came from and who we are.  This is referred to as 'the veil of forgetting'.  Christ came at such a time to provide us with tools specific to this Age to protect against this forgetting.

Then what happened in the Fourth Century A.D./CE?  That nascent gnarly darkness raised its head.  There were factions breeding out there in the desert, and in the city underground catacombs and caves.  Enough of the influential and wealthy benefactors were forming into political groups, claiming that their interpretations of the oral traditions were the only true inheritors directly from the words of Christ.  They gathered in Nicea, and over the course of time put their human stamp and biases onto a narrowly vetted collection of teachings, and declared them The One True Faith (my words).  Many precious teaches and traditions, divinely inspired and equally humanely interpreted, were forgotten and lost beyond the veil of history.  Those that have been unearthed in our recent century, still preserved in caves in the deserts, stab us with the truth.  The tent used to be so much wider.  Our hearts carry memories of our own.  A lively debate and sharing of different aspects of spiritualism awakens us to our own Truths.  Aren’t we all as unique as snowflakes?

Through studies in quantum physics there is a growing belief that a great spiritual awakening is about to happen.  My wish is that brainwashed Christians allow their inner Christ to speak to them, that they may partake in this awakening sooner rather than later, and with less angst.

Paul Simon: "Why Why Why"

 

Paul Simon: “Why Why Why”

The above quote from the album Graceland.

 

So, why do I write this blog? 

Almost no one reads it.  Certainly not even my best friend, unless I pointedly remind him, and then not always.

Maybe I am optimistic, thinking that my future incarnation would stumble across it early in life.  It would then jump start my remembering, which was blown out during the pain of rebirth.  How Cockeyes optimistic is this?  It would depend on

1.     I choose to reincarnate fairly quickly.

2.     The digital technology supporting this is still viable.

3.     The child has early access to digital tools

And then, reader, perhaps you believe reincarnation is hogwash.  In which case, I am spitting into the wind.

Synchronicity

 

How much do we really understand of the universe around us? 

I had my heart set on partaking of an Ayuhuasca Ceremony this month.  Since my sincere desire to leave this life two months ago, I have clung to the idea that this heaviness that burdens me would at last be healed and lifted by breaking outside the barriers of my brain through this particular psychodelic experience.  I was counting down the days until, about ten days before, through a brief flurry of correspondences between myself and the ritual’s host team in Monterrey, Mexico, told me they felt I was not a good fit for their team, and my invitation was rescinded.  I suppose the 1,000 pesos deposit was also refunded, although I have not investigated that.

I was devastated.

Oddly, over the weeks of waiting, in my mind the date shifted.  My mantra was, just hold on until the 28^th.  The burden will be lifted then.

The actual reservation, however, was for the 25^th.

Today is the 28^th.  In these recent weeks I have been less interested in watching Netflix fantasy, and more tuning in to the voices of the spirit world that I have discovered on YouTube channels.  Today I stumbled across a Steven Clements.  This led me to a downloadable file on YouTube through his podcast on Patreon.  This is a new digital world to me, I do not have depth of experience with them.

Clements talks about his ‘team’.  They informed him that in December there would be a strong wave coming to earth.  They offered him, and me by extension, and you, a powerful guided meditation whose purpose is to prepare we clay vessels (my term, not his) to handle these very heavy waves of energy bound for the earth.

After my afternoon weekly meeting today with a handful of other retired ladies here in this tiny Mexican village of El Pozole, we are called ‘the third age club’ (Club de Tercera Edad) and sponsored by the State’s Social Services Department, I came home to listen to this recording I had discovered around noon today.

It expanded me at my core.  My intention is to listen to it again, and often. The claim is that this guided meditation is like training wheels.  If I listen often, I will be more prepared to be a vessel for these waves of energy, assisting my fellow humans to receive this energy and make the most of it when it arrives in December.

I am still reeling.  My body feels so grossly heavy, after coursing through the expansive, limitless  Emptiness of boundless light and love.

Perhaps I will add to the file as the weeks proceed. 

https://www.patreon.com/cw/InfiniteSourceCreations

Insight of the day

 Insight of the day

Starting with an aside, I am fast getting blinder from old age.  My left eye has always been unreceptive to correction, so now it is relatively worse too.  I actually found ‘dime store’ reading glasses at a strength of +4, which makes things clearer for the right eye, but as a set, everything is blurrier.  It makes it so much harder to read the computer screen.  This is just an added distraction.

What I am actually realizing is more along the lines of preparation.  Looking back since I sold my farm, in 2023, I have been downsizing.  This is not by selection; I have been systematically robbed, generally.  Which means, that which is occurring in preparation for my future is not by conscious plan, but rather because I am blind to the spirit and unwilling to surrender.

I now am living in a borrowed house.  I have been complaining about it since I arrived here.  It is way too cluttered by a dead person’s things, along with the next door relative who borrowed the place for a few years and left more stuff.  The electricity is old and cannot power a fast cell phone recharge (using a cable with two C ends).  When I plug it in, nothing happens.  If I start cooking in the kitchen, using for example a water kettle and microwave at the same time, the fuse blows for the kitchen power.  The kitchen sink water has very little pressure, and no hot water.  In fact, the hot water faucet has no water at all except at selective scheduled times; I have trouble remembering the schedule.  And so forth; the list is long.

What turned the light switch on in my head was making a good spaghetti sauce.  The counter work space is quite small.  Storage for china and dry goods is almost none existent.  I did manage to bring one of my own cupboards here; it is at the opposite end of the house from the kitchen.  I walk the distance often, when food or drink is concerned; fortunately, the distance is not great.  The work counter is so limited, that when I prepare a complicated dish requiring more than for, say, beans and rice, I just don’t have anywhere to put things; I am tempted to put on the floor the dish with the chopped onions while I am grating, or mixing herbs, or chopping.  The curious dogs threaten the hygiene of the process.  To make things worse, I decided to water a dry tray of a seed starter kit, rather than throw it away when it turned up in my packed boxes, too late in the season.  Now it is October, the tomato plants have green balls struggling to survive inside the house, not to die of cold.  The basil plants, which belong in a sunny kitchen window box, are crowded against the tomato branches as close as possible to the tiny piece of sunshine that enters in the morning; that is on this same crowded counter top.

Here are the steps to the denouement.  First, I am blocked from obtaining Mexican citizenship.  If I had that, I could receive a small monthly pension to supplement my subsistence social security check.  I could get a card at the local convenience store; this card makes it possible to transfer money around, like for buying things on line, transferring money to and from personal loans; and myriad other conveniences that I would discover if I had it.  Not having it gives the feeling that I am still an outsider; after 8 years here, most of it with permanent residency status.

I thought I might like to live in Mazatlan.  Well, I knew I wouldn’t, but the trusted guy who has been robbing me systematically over a year, rented this apartment for me in Mazatlan, so I decided that maybe I was wrong, and I would give it a shot.  I survived there a few months before giving up. The landlord still owes me the initial month’s deposit, and supplies for agreed upon improvement.  I tried to change my drivers license from Durango to Sinaloa, where Mazatlan is, to comply with the law.  I could not, for lack of a certified copy of my birth certificate.

Mexican Federal and State laws use the Certified Copy of the birth certificate in many transactions.  I do not have a certified copy of my birth certificate.  I was born in New York State, but when I, over the past five years, have tried to get a copy of that document, using the established processes, I failed over an insurmountable technicality.  These requirements have been added to the process, paranoia lest some alien steal a native-born’s documents and use them for nefarious purposes.   I have gone through many steps.  First, following the on-line application with  instructions and forms.  Then going through the agency Vital Check.  Lastly, an Albany based lawyer.

When the Universe says ‘no’, it really is simpler to just hear it and accept it.  It saves time, energy and money.  And maybe this revelation to my destiny might have come sooner.

And in between my return from Mazatlan and my acceptance of this current tiny cluttered house, I trusted  yet another man here who, after looking at this house, said I would be more comfortable in an empty house he owns.  I believed him with little proof.  While he hired a worker to fix the house up a little, by remounting the water tank on the roof, and installing the solar boiler I had bought, I proceeded with the lengthy process of covering the crude and crumbling living room cement floor with granite, offered by such a nice man named Michael Angelo, right here in this same tiny village.  Granite does not come cheap.  The process took a month, and cost me USD$1,000.  By the end of the month, I would come to realize that the house was unlivable without thousands more invested in it.

By now all my savings are gone.  I am seriously contemplating selling the car I bought in Mazatlan.  A used car, I paid too much for it.  I do not think I could find a fool who will pay that much.  The car is five years old.  I do not know if the paint is the original, but it is terrible, and chips off easily.  In order to sell it, I will have to have it painted, which will probably cost $1,000 US.  I had a car, an SUV convenient for the life I lived on the farm, but now too big and beginning to need serious repairs.  I sold it to a nice man in Canatlan, who needed it for his family.  We made a deal, he would pay me 1500 pesos a month until it was paid off.  I don’t mind living like the other old ladies in this village, depending on younger neighbors with cars to help me get grocery shopping done.  Of course, these younger people are all related, and have a moral/social obligation to help these elders.  This is missing where I am concerned.  There is the bus, the schedule for which is unreliable as it is long-distance service, and a hefty walk back home from the bus stop with a loaded bag of groceries.  The money I gave to the orthopedist for a shot that he said would relieve my knee pain for a year was not well spent. 

Bless you for sticking with me through this depressing summary of my quixotic journey.

Here is my conclusion.  I am downsizing, and learning to live very efficiently, neat and tidy, preparing to move in with someone, or enter a community.  At last I will find a cohort.

I have been blocked from becoming a citizen.  My friendships have been ephemeral.  In spite of living in a house among a cluster of houses, I am still alone.  I try to get the reciprocal cycle of visits going, but no one comes to my door.  I am not included in community events, except when they need money.  These events often have a vague starting time.  Whether I contribute or not, no one ever follows up to make sure I attend.

I have not found suitable housing.  Aside from the clutter that prohibits my bringing in my own furniture, I am not being included in the communal society; I have lived among these people for eight years now.  In spite of my gifts, I have not found an area where I can be of service.  I feel excluded, shut out; I do not belong.

I do not accept that as what I had planned for the last part of my life.  I believe there is something more, a more fulfilling and engaged future.

Now I see the light, and I can with intent prepare for the future that awaits me. 

Let’s check back in six months, and see if this is just one more delusion. 

 

As above, so below

 

As above, so below.

 

They say it is a Chinee curse:  May you live in interesting times.

In which case, we are pretty much damned.

It is like, if you put tiny seeds in a glass of water, they float on the top until they are saturated and can’t take any more.  Then they drift down to the bottom.

Then the view changes.  From the bottom, you can see up to the top, all around,  and also see the water you are immersed in.

There is the outer world, the surface.  Emotionally turbulent, pulling and pushing us this way and that, precipitating us into this place or that, for and against, turning friends into enemies.  We long for peace, release.  Happiness and joy are found in a bottle, or in leaves, or in the senses.  For some, happiness is found in mashing others.  This world is a world of duality.  Good or bad. Yours or mine. Up or down. Brown or white.  Rich or poor.

 

Then there is the seed filled to capacity, fed up, heavy in its own fullness, dare I say sorrow, as if a seed knows it has changed and dropped out, and as if it could feel that it is now different,

But in its saturation, something in it--a germ, a kernel--is starting to awaken and expand.  When it is saturated, full up, heavy, there is no where to go but up.  Change is inevitable; it is time to grow or die.

 

For those trapped in the cyclone of duality, the soup of emotions is a bitter one.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We were never meant to be that way.  Our nature, in its baldest form, is spirit.  We have emotions, that is our unique gift as earth dwellers, but we are not meant to be locked into them.    There is another way of being.

The true nature of that spirit is Love.  Not transactional, or soppy unreliable romantic love, heck no.  In the core of our being, there is love.  It brings with it an infinite ability to forgive; to give; to know joy as a quiet expansive filling of light and contentment.

Why would anyone choose to swim in that bitter soup?  Insanity.

I wonder what it is that people fear to lose, that they hold on to, like clinging to a limb hanging over a cliff.  Bats.

These are turbulent times.  Some ancient spirits say it is the worst.  

Everyone has heard that there is a myth around Atlantis.  Some may even know the name Lemuria.  These words are accepted like polar ice or earthquake. Not so.  The ancients tell us, those who have ears to hear, that these were real places, were humanity’s earlier attempts at this experiment. 

If you have a curious mind, you might wonder about these myths.  To learn the truth about them, first you have to believe that you are more than your body.  See through the myth that you are no more than some meat that, when a certain essence leaves it, rots.

It amazes me, it is stunning, the kinds of fantasies that people create around that myth.  The atheists take it at face value.  Those who have been indoctrinated to any degree of religious belief have a graded sense of a ‘hereafter’.    Duality still exists there.  They might wind up in the hot (hell) or the cold (heaven).  And so forth

The truth is simpler, more beautiful, and infinitely difficult to understand.  The Bible has a simile.  ‘I am the potter, you are the clay”.  Really think on that a bit, and you have to come loose from some of your illusions.  How can a lump of clay know what hands are?  What the mind of a potter is?  What thought and intention are?

 

No, this is too scary.  “I am not a lump of clay; I have hands, I have thoughts and intentions”.  Yes, dummy, but ants have legs, too.  An ant has intentions.  Imagine you are as an ant to something in the universe that is infinitely greater than you.

And that being doesn’t have legs.  It doesn’t need legs.  Imagine that.

And so we have been here before.  Yes, even We.  It is not impossible that we participated in this experiment before, in Atlantis or Lemuria.  It may even be probable.  And what have you learned?  Oh! You forgot.

And that is the point.  The trauma of birth, of trapping our great spirit being into this clammy messy ball of flesh, has wiped all memory from us.

So we drop down onto the glass of water, a dried up seed.  We bob around; the glass is shaken, we are tossed about.  But we don’t come alive until we have had enough and we drop out, drift down, and in due time awaken the germ within and begin to grow.

 

The high volume of negative emotions, the hate, the avarice, jealousy and sheer brutality is thrashing the water in that little glass.  The dead seeds remain; the fertile seeds fall. 

I speak from a place of bifurcated vision.  I sit here on the bottom of the glass, awakened and growing, but also seeing what is happening on the surface with painful clarity.  It hurts my tender shoots to be thrashed about; to see both the victims and the perpetrators.  The victims **terrified victims of war, with no safe home nor food supply; the victims of a ‘democratic’ bureaucratic system who cannot live by fairness and reason, but must conform to artificial structures; the domestic animals that are beaten, abandoned; brother fighting with brother, each fiercely defending an illusion of their own choosing, blocking out the sunlight of the love that is in their hearts for each other.  The perpetrators **Warriors grabbing land from peaceful dwellers; producers inflating the value of their product to stuff their own coffers;  Leaders stealing money from their trusting victim followers;  siblings depriving the weaker of rightful inheritance.

It is a heavy burden, with the eyes of a tender shoot, to see these sharp objects (violent emotions) slashing about.  It hurts, because we are One.  Our tender spirits that live beyond time are actually of one cloth.  Love is at the center of the universe.  Just as a spider feels movement at a remote part of her web, so our brothers trashing love reverberates in our hearts.  It hurts.  It signals that there is disturbance somewhere in our world, and we want to scurry there to feed or repair. This desire is strong; our heats are still made of flesh and blood, and so it hurts.  One day we will lose the flesh, and we won’t be affected in the same way.  Our individual selves will exist in an ocean of Love, and won’t have flesh that can be wounded. 

I long for the day.

Towards the inevitable

 

Aug 13, 2025

World News is depressing, alarming and riveting.  A war goes on in Ukraine beyond expectation of endurance. Beleaguered President Zelensky clutches his rosary and turns a brave face to the world.  Mister Putin carries on his bullying unchallenged.  President Trump fawns over his old buddy Putin, impotently attempting peace talks. Putin demands that the Ukraine president be absent, remain on the sidelines, and Trump lets Putin dictate the terms.  The world looks on, pretending that something real is happening.  Or do we all know it is an illusion?

The Palestinians soldier on.  The world has forgotten the Palestine history.  Even more forgotten is the Ottoman Empire.  In my formative education, the name was barely mentioned.  Anyone who has spent any time in East Asia, in the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean, has seen the magnificent ruins of palaces and roads left from that era.  In spite of the vast reaches of the Palestinian people inherited from the Ottomans, a stubborn group clings to a tiny portion of that range of land, threatening to end the world-as-we-know-it with a savage war between great nations.  This small band of people ignore the reality of the Israel nation, who in modernity have been granted a strip of this land as their own home.  This, after these same Hebrews have been in hejira for centuries, chased, vilified and hounded.  Major art has been based on their story, Fiddler on the Roof telling the story of pogroms.  When pogroms came, the Hebrews packed up in the night and fled rather than being slaughtered.  But the modern band of Palestinians clinging to the land given to the modern Nation of Israel prefer to spit in the face of death.  They refuse removal.  Who wouldn’t?  The land they occupy is desirable seashore real estate.  Why should they lose this delightful spot, and trade it for a patch of desert elsewhere in the Land of Palestine?  No, pogrom is not for them.  Jordon, carved from that section of the Ottoman Empire briefly known as Palestine, already has a large community of Gazan relatives, but makes no effort to entice the dying to also migrate there.  And so their death spreads out across years of fighting, forcing our noses into the horrible stink of bodies under rubble, children dying of starvation, a narrow strip of land destroyed utterly rather than flight. Daily, for years now, news broadcasted into homes has harrowing effect on innocent people horrified and morally outraged.  Such horror requires answers.  How did this happen?  Why is this happening?  How can it stop?  Who should be stopping it?  The debates send people into political divisions. 

Netanyahu used to be a darling among many Americans.  He spent many years in America in his youth, and received his education there.  He felt like one of their own.  Along the way he lost some of his followers, by seeming to take a politically hard right stand.  Now he stands as a monster.  He is determined to end the Palestinian question by wiping out all who stubbornly cling to Gaza.  This tiny strip of land clinging to a 25-mile strip along the Mediterranean Sea and about 3  to 4 miles inland is being crushed to rubble.  It will be generations before any order and natural beauty can be restored there.  There is an active militant force, called Hammas, that holds up the opposing force of attacks and counter-attacks.  The mentality is, “If I can’t have it, no one can”. As long as that juvenile level of reasoning continues, the world creeps closer to a catastrophic war. 

There was a book written in the 1960’s by Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth. It is his interpretation of the last book of the Bible’s New Testament, a book of prophecy.  In it, a war in Israel escalates, and draws in all the great nations, including China and Russia.  It is as if the world were itching for a fight, and this seemed the perfect challenge for all.  Except for the United States, according to Lindsey, which sits on the sidelines scratching its proverbial head.

The United States, meanwhile, collapses.  This lovely dream that endured for nearly 250 years, of freedom and equality of man and spirit, has lost its patina and frays around the edges.  It never was all that, having at its root enslavement of peoples from the continent of Africa. Built on such a double standard, it was doomed to fail from the beginning.  It did offer history a brilliant model of freedom and independence of thought and spirit.  The framework it established in its constitution, in its structure of a balanced system of government and citizen representation was a new take on democracy and was a vital force in the creation of a spectacular era of modernity, innovation and progress.  Perhaps it was even productive of something entirely new on the earth.  In this same prophetic book of the Bible we are told that all of this progress will end when the world is flooded with information.  This is what we see now.  Information flows from one end of the globe to the other with the speed of light.  This information is unfiltered, and flawed.  Instead of raising the level of unity, intelligence and wisdom, it sows doubt, confusion and division.  The foundation crumbles, weakens and falls.

In parallel existence, the metaphysical world is being transformed.  A New Man is being formed on earth.  The notable Deepak Chopra even dares to put a date on it, saying this transformation will be manifest to all in twenty more years.  The dross of evil and negativity will fall away, drowned in an ocean of Love.  Those who have eyes, let them see.  Those who have ears, let them hear.  A new heaven and earth will reign.  Amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians_in_Jordan