Monterrey Consul Nightmare

 

We walk by faith, not by sight

Sometimes I wonder if it is all made up.  The spirits, the light energy, the Higher Self, all that stuff.  How do I know that I am not just fooling myself?  Escaping in flights of fancy?

Once again, my passport was stolen.  Without a permit tag from the DMV, I parked in the handicapped spot at WalMart.  My surgery hasn’t been that long ago; it is still painful to walk with a cane.

Some righteous person who believes you must live by the rules must have taken offense at this.  S/he entered my car (was it locked?  I thought so, but maybe when I went back to persuade Junior to wait in the shade instead of the oven-car, I didn’t hit the button right}.  I had taken my wallet inside the store, and left the little shoulder pouch I use as a purse in the car. 

When I returned with my bag of groceries, I was only thinking of Junior and paying the ticket for the parking space.  I noticed the pouch, it was lying in the foot well.  I don’t usually carry my passport, so I wasn’t thinking of it, not perceiving that the lightness I noticed was because it was missing.

In due time, I made an appointment with the Consulate in Monterrey for a replacement.

I tried to persuade myself to go by bus, but in the end, I couldn’t do it.  I even bought a bus ticket, which disappeared.  Literally.  I tucked it carefully, intentionally,  into that same black pouch, but when I got home it wasn’t there.

The bus.  It is a nine-hour trip.  It is night when you arrive.  You must find a hotel.  In the morning, you must check out and take a taxi to the consulate.  Upon arrival at the consulate, you must divest yourself of everything, and enter the consulate with only the clothes on your back.  So where do you leave your overnight bag?  Your phone?  Your wallet? There is a small shack at the edge of the consulate grounds that sells coffee etc.  There are rows of folding chairs under a canvas. Are they traveling companions, or is this a queue with a signaling system to call them in when their appointment is up?  It does not appear to be large enough for a locker system, to check overnight bags for dozens of travelers.  And when the consulate is done with you, connect with a return bus that might get you into Durango in the wee hours.  Then there would still be the trip to Canatlan from there.

No.  That I lost the ticket and the cost of it was perhaps a relief, although it was dismaying.

My appointment was for Tuesday.  Monday I am preparing to leave on the six- to eight-hour drive.  I had just made the bold move into the ‘poor house’, that is, the St. Vincent de Paul house for the elderly and feeble. That was made necessary by my finding myself, at the third week of each month, out of money.  I have been living on my savings, which were little to begin with and dwindling monthly.  This seemed the only viable solution.

As I am preparing to leave for the trip, packing what clothes and food I would need, the mistress of the house urged me to take Gustavo along to do the driving.  She protested that since I was one of theirs now, she was responsible for me and my safety, and so Gustavo needed to accompany me.  Wow.  I was relieved.  I knew I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do that; it was a blessing that she was giving me that assistance.

Communication is the missing link in all of Canatlan society.  It is chronic; endemic, all pervading.

We arrive in Monterrey at dusk.  I check in, and am asked to pay 200 pesos extra for the second bed that is already in my room, paid for.  My car is small.  I cannot abide subjecting someone to sleep in it overnight.  Not to mention the sanitary considerations.

The appointment is for 8:30; they specify arriving 15 minutes prior.  There is always a queue.  All over the world, there are always massive numbers of people around a US Consulate/Embassy.  We leave at 7 fo a 7 km drive.  The road system in Monterrey is a nightmare.  There are roads crossing roads, curved roads, bending roads, bridges, railroad tracks, all covered in bumper-to-bumper cars.  At one point the GPS voice sent us off the highway to a narrow road of 100 feet, ending with a facing wall requiring a sharp right around a wooden light pole and requiring and another sharp right into the thick of traffic. 

We arrive at 8 a.m. sharp, according to my car clock.  But then I remember that this clock is ten minutes fast.  A relief.  Because I still have to dispose of my little black pouch holding my wallet and telephone.  I ask around and following the pointing hands until I find the shack, with its neat rows of folding chairs filled already with people.

Hobbling along with my cane, I cross a curbed driveway and realize that there are parking spaces under the consulate building.  No crass signs advertising the price.  Then up the curb onto the sidewalk, which is sculpted into many layers.  It is crawling with people.  There is a small army of uniformed soldiers labeled “private security” on their shirts.  The color of their uniforms is, apparently, semiotic.  There is gray, or blue, or white.  They are efficiently corralling the herd of people by the supplicants’ intentions.  I couldn’t even imagine.  It seems an impossible scene.  How can all these people be attended to by the limited numbers of workers inside this building?  I have been to many embassies and consulates throughout my lifetime of world traveling; it is always like this, except here in Mexico the numbers have exploded.  Hundreds of people: men, women, children, young, old, complete families, thickly lined in a cacophony of voices.

I say the right words to the rightly colored shirts, and find myself in the right queue.  I wait patiently.  This line seems slimmer, quieter.  We, the chosen few, the citizens.

At 8:15 we are thinned out further and sent to stand in front of a numbered door.  I chat nervously with the accented gentleman behind me.  He and his lover plan a trip abroad in a couple of months, and require a fresher date on their passport.

Finally, the door opens, and we pass through the screening machine, like the TSA at airports.  Men remove their belts.  No one wears watches.  Eyeglasses pass along the conveyor belt through the sensor box.  Another outside door opens, and I recognize the small cemented stone pathway to the next building.  After nearly ten years living here, I know this building.  We all take a flimsy seat in room.  There is the non-functioning clock on the wall.  No one has a time piece.  Better not to be reminded you have been waiting for exactly how many hours. There is the TV up high, with the volume set around 30, so only the guard at the desk below the TV can actually hear it.  A violent Vin Diesel movie of fighting slimy, long toothed monsters is playing.  What language is it set to?  English or Spanish? 

The bright yellow plastic chairs quickly fill up.  Inexplicably, a guard pulls one from the neatly box-formed rows and puts it down against the wall closer to the guard’s desk and the door, and indicates for me to sit in it.  Though the TV hanging in front is in the the space to the left of the rectangle of chairs, it is directly in front of me.  Better to see the mauled and bleeding bodies, the slimy drool of the narrow jawed, small pawed gray critters, the scantily clad bodies of the small band playing cat and mouse with them.

I stare in fascination.  I actually appreciate Vin Diesel’s body of work.  And his body.  Before long, I wake up and make a choice.  I close my eyes, and take myself to the perhaps imaginary space of light and energy.

I breath slowly, in and out.  A calm and lightness come over me.  I tilt my chin slightly down, to control the flow of saliva.  And soon I am at peace.  My body dissolves.  There is only my head where the Theta waves, the Delta waves, the whatever waves have no gravity.  I watch my breath.  I feel my body become a puddle of light. I am anchored.  I want for nothing.

No clocks.  How much time is passing?  The room full of people disappears.  There is only silence, occasionally broken by the sound of the microphone carrying a voice tossing out a name, and a person rising and walking to the interview window.

Yellow chairs, yellow sunlight flowing through the long windows.  Silence, calm.

Time passed, and I came out of it.  I opened my eyes.  Before long, movement and chattering returned.  But for that time, whether it was five minutes or fifty, that room was filled with light.  The light in me flowed out, and peace filled the room.  For that short period of time, I did not need faith to know a stillness that is beyond understanding. And for all my doubts, I had tangible proof that it is real. 

The rest of the day was a nightmare.  We started the day concentrating on arriving on time.  The ubiquitous OXXO never was positioned on our side of the road, through that long trip to the consulate.  I had an apple in the car, so I ate that.  In the end, I spent five hours in a chair in a room.  There was no clock, no coffee, no water fountain, no game-filled smart phone, no food at all.  No door opening to a courtyard, for a breath of fresh air.  No where to walk to except the toilet.  I got up and took a walk, a circuit around the large desk area and past the interview windows.  I could feel the nervousness of the officials at this stolen liberty. 

At long last, my name was called.  An American lady did my interview.  I took my oath and signed my name.  Then I continued to sit, while she scrolled through her computer, eyes glued to the screen, scrolling, pausing, scrolling, clicking her mouse.  What was taking so long?  At last she told me to return to me seat and wait.

The crowd was thinning out.  There were now many empty yellow chairs.  And still I waited.  The TV was now showing a cartoon, of violent square creatures cutting each other to pieces.

At last, my name was called.  This interview window was behind a door; a tiny cubicle.  A Hispanic looking man with a goatee began an interview.  He was asking me strange questions.  Like, did I know what happened to my lost passport, did I have contact with the passport, or something along that drift.  It became clear that he was trying to find out if I was selling my passports.  When I first arrived in Mexico in 2017, I took seriously the instruction that a foreigner must have their passport on them at all times, ready to identify themselves if stopped by a policeman or other official.  That this sticks in my brain may be a reflection of my age.  It ma well be that now a foreigner is told to keep their passport locked up in a secure place at all times. 

After I lost a few passports in a few years upon my arrival here, I learned the latter lesson…keep your passport at home locked up in a safe place at all times.  In 2021, during COVID, I could not get a ten-year passport to replace the most recent stolen one.  I was given a provisional one.  If I could go 18 months without losing a passport, I would be granted a full-term document.

And so I kept my passport locked up at all times.  Except the Mexican government passed a new level of paranoia, requiring that all people with telephone contracts, like with TELCEL, needed to prove who they were.  In my case, they required my passport.  I went to their office in Durango (there is none in Canatlan, an hour away) and tried to show them a photo of my current passport on my phone.  No, they needed to see it.  The very patient attendant at the large 22-counter center took the time to show me a handout that included a QR code.  She said that with this option, I could prove my identity from a distance.  Manny was with me, it was shortly after my hip surgery.  She spoke mostly to him, and he pocketed the little handout with instructions.  I never saw it again.  Nevertheless, at home I opened up the TELCEL website and tried to figure out how to register remotely.  One needed to put in a request for a code, and within a minute the code needed to be received and typed into the screen.  There was just a small problem.  The internet signal in El Pozole is slow.  Time and again, I would send off for a code, but the minut4e would expire before I could receive and feed it back in.

So I went down to Canatlan, to the internet café, and my friend Uriel who ran it.  I spent some time there, trying to complete this TELCEL requirement and another task or two.  I could not.  Inexplicably, the internet was blocked and unresponsive.  Junior and I gave up, and came back home.  The only recourse was to take the passport to Durango and go in person to show the TELCEL counter person my passport.

But first I stopped off at Walmart, to pick up just a couple of things.

And so, my passport was stolen.  TELCEL set a deadline to comply as September.  Whether I am granted a temporary or ten-year passport, it will not arrive before the end of September.  Will TELCEL have to cut off my telephone service?

This is how my passport was lost.

The goateed man grilling me in this tiny cubicle did not believe my story.  He continued to probe.  I had to tell him how I had become indigent, that stealing my passports was not enough punishment by the brave Mexican men, that the proceeds from the sale of my property was included.  Maybe he interpreted that to mean I was desperate enough to sell my passport, while I was only trying to show him the dangers of being a vulnerable single old foreign lady living in this glorious country.  He called in another man, to sit at his left slightly behind him in this tiny cubicle.  They brought me to tears.

Gustavo was waiting on the sidewalk when the five hours were up.  We had discussed this process as taking maybe an hour, so he was beside himself wondering where I was.  I did not see him at first, blinded by the rears, sucking up the snot pouring out of my nose.

We drove home.  He picked up a couple of burritos from a car parked outside an OXXO somewhere on the highway.  I was not hungry.

I put on a headset, cranked back my seat, and listened to an audiobook.

It was dark by the time we reached the outskirts of Durango.  I must have dozed.  I opened my eyes and glanced at the dashboard.  The gas gauge was on empty, the orange little tank was glowing.  We saw a sign of a gas tank at an exit ramp, and followed it.  We were on an empty, dark road.  I rather abruptly ordered him to slow down.  I wanted to have the car engine running at maximum fuel efficiency, if we had any hope of reaching a gas station in time.  I kept my eye there.  He speeded up.  I still had the headphones on; I am afraid I spoke more harshly than I intended.  I barked to slow it back down to 80/50.

After a few miles we saw the twinkle of lights above the trees; we would find gas there, finally. We made it, but that slowed us down even more.  It was 10 p.m. when we approached Canatlan.  As exhausted and depressed as I was, still I could not rest at the poor house overnight while Junior was waiting for me in Pozole.  And so we extended our final arrival by another half hour; we drove to Pozole for Junior.

Gustavo helped me carry my overnight bag and snacks into the St Vincent de Paul enclosure.  I handed him a 200 peso bill, as a gratuity.  The way he looked at it and hesitated, I realized this was a disappointment.  More drama awaited me, after an exhausted sleep.

I am still feeling raw after the rough emotional Tuesday in Monterrey.  Back at the poor house, I was having difficulty getting the attention of one of the three key-keepers, to get outside to walk Junior and for the various errands I had to run. 

I still did not have internet, to transfer money.  When I saw Gustavo, I asked him about it, and the large young lady in black at her siting.  I was told it was turned off, for failure to pay.

When breakfast was eventually served and the ensemble was at the table, I walked in.  I was told that nothing is free, that 200 pesos was far from adequate, and who did I think I was.  After a bit of gratuitous berating, I finally had a chance to ask how much Gustavo was actually owed.  I had still not had a chance to bring more money from the States, and exchange and withdraw it.  After doing that, I paid Gustavo another 1,500 pesos. 

I did not start my day with a big breakfast.  It was now 11:30, and I wanted a cup of coffee and homemade bran muffin.  As I am thinking this, I see the young woman locking the kitchen door.  They were all going somewhere, and would be back after a while.

Having nothing else to do, I went back to my room and packed.  I was hungry, and caffeine-deprived.  Although I would continue to try to work out an acceptable arrangement for my existence there, my hope was fading.

Back inside for lunch, I was called to the table for my meal.  I was given a plate of refried beans and one chili relleno.  I like chili relleno; I smiled.  The two elderly disabled people, both blind, were sitting at their table under the archway in the courtyard.  I was seated at the kitchen table.  Alone.  I finished, and moved on to my next task.  When next I approached that area, I found the four of them sitting at that same table, eating and chatting away.  Rosea, the mistress of the house; Gustavo; Jose, a general handiman and night watchman; and the large young woman, always dressed in tight-fitting black pants, whose task among others was to provide a key to the entrance when anyone needed to enter or leave.  Today a new face was there.  I do not know his role, nor his name.  I suspect he is family to someone of the other four.  He seems an intelligent upper teen.

As rough as Tuesday was, on Wednesday I was wishing for a quiet interlude in the zone of light

After trying my best to continue to clarify my standing at the poor house, my rights, privileges and duties, it became clear to me that I could not find the peace I needed at that place.  When I went back to finish packing, the large young lady came back and tried a few arguments in defense of my staying.  They were specious; promises the Mistress would not honor.  The pivotal point would be having my own key; that was not going to happen.

I had my things piled up at the front gate.  It was locked.  There were those within earshot who were official bearers of keys.  I asked that the door be unlocked, so I could leave.  Now, clearly, I was invisible.  I sat on a stack of old clothes, and waited.  Nothing happened.  Finally, I called Lupito, my friend the carpenter.  I asked him to come and rescue me.  He wasn’t too busy at the shop, and so he came.  Simultaneously, the mistress rounded the corner and entered the vesterbule.  He asked her to open the door so I could leave.  For ten minutes, she refused.  She regaled him of all the dangers that dance in her head, of all the awful things that people do to each other.  He found himself defending my right to open the door and leave.

And so, bruised and weary, Junior and eye swung by Lupe and Roseo’s house for a cup of coffee and debriefing, before finally reestablishing ourself at our pretty rened home in El Pozole, where I would continue life in the red, spending more money each month than I took in. 

I do not know if I will have a passport, after six weeks pass.  At least I should have a temporary one because, once again, my right as a citizen cannot be denied without just cause.  That doesn’t change the fact that I cannot afford to live in America.  The only real need I have for a passport is for the continued use of my TELCEL phone line.  It is unlikely to arrive before the September expiration date.  Who knows, perhaps my sister will die and I will need to attend a funeral, although if that occurs within the next six weeks, chances are I could not get an emergency passport in time for the burial; so why go.

On the bright side, the tiny village of Pozole has a tiny river.  I have the freedom every day and as often as I like, to walk and sit beside it.  In that space, my spirit is free to sour high among the 300-year-old Alamo trees, and flow with the river spirits, and feel the rising sun on my face.  There I am free to believe.  I am free to take flights of fancy with my higher selves, and imagine a better existence, one full of light and love.  I have to believe.

August update, transition

 

Passport

Rita just stopped by, Saturday evening, to catch up.  I am preparing to leave her house and move to the ‘poor house’, St. Vincent de Paul Society house, five miles away in Canatlan.  Although I will greatly miss the tranquility and natural beauty of El Pozole, my world will widen with other opportunities.

I should be able to save a few hundred dollars a month.  Then, I will have the car painted in a good shop in Durango, with an oven.  Then I will put it on the market, and try to sell it.  I can invest that money here, and gain 2% interest on it, instead of losing money on low value dollar exchange every month. 

I should be able to take classes at the historical society.  Maybe art?  Maybe music?  I can’t imagine what music classes they teach.  And I hope the art class is not just a chintzy arts and crafts exercise, with popsicle sticks and crepe paper.

I probably will no longer be able to put myself asleep with a toque of weed.  That is a pity.

Chat GPT is helping me line up an ESL teaching job online.  I should be able to earn $10/hr, and with ten hours a week it shouldn’t be a strain.  That’s $400/month!  In six months of this, low rent and an income, my situation should be much rosier.  Instead of trying to cajole and persuade a family member to house me for a few days while I try to get a knee replacement on Medicare’s dime (to whom I have paid $1,200/mo for twenty years with almost no return), I would have the cash to pay for independent housing, for as much as a week to as little as three days, depending on what the doctor will agree to.  Actually, using my medical emergency fund, I could do that right now, but now is not the time.  First, I must see about my ability to work.  For sitting at a computer, the condition of my knee should not be a factor.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I will bring a suitcase of clothing to the St. Vincent de Paul house.  Monday noon I leave for Monterrey.  Junior will stay with Puppichino at Rita’s house, for two days.  By Wednesday, I should have at least a temporary passport.  Unless, of course, they decide once again that I am risky, and issue me an 18 month document until I prove I can hold on to for the full ten years.  This happened to me in 2021, after having two passports stolen.

That still does not help my situation of legal status in Mexico.  I need my birth certificate in order to be able to sign up for senior assistance.  It isn’t much, but every bit helps.  And there are other little perks, too, like holding a SPIN card with OXXO.  Just a handy way to move money around Mexico, like to pay for Mercado Libre orders and such.  I covet one, just because I cannot have one.

Finally got rid of the pup.  A month or so ago, some smart-ass neighbor decided to toss seven puppies into my gated yard under the dark of night.  I threw them out next day, but one little guy hid out, and wound up staying.  Having such a rambunctious three-month old puppy was a bit much for me.  Everything goes in the mouth.  He learned to limit his bodily functions to the white adult diapers I placed on the floor, so that was something.  He still had accidents, though.  Eventually, as he seemed a little older and more independent, he was placed outside to sleep the night.  He really didn’t seem to mind.  He didn’t whine.  As payday rolled around this month, I splurged on a 20 kg bag of dog food for Junior.  I found a cool container on the premises, probably meant to contain ten kilos of kibble.  I filled the other kg containers I used indoors, emptying the bag as much as I could, and then delivered it and the pup to the Casa de Control de Animales. It was still around three kgs, so they accepted the pup and all were content.  I named him ‘lucky’, in French   Bon Chans. At least, I think that is what it means.  Good luck.  Not that it matters, the name ends with me.  (see earlier post for photo)

Actually, it would have been nice to raise him and train him.  He is of a unique local breed.  I would have liked to get to know his traits and qualities. 

 The cat, Samantha, will have to go.  Some neighbors passing by, some months ago, decided I wanted her, and happily handed her to me.  She is a whiny cat, not the sort I would have chosen for myself.  She is vocal, and not at all affectionate.  Far too young, she got raped and pregnant.  Three of the kittens are finally old enough to move around, and eat kibble.  I don't know what to do with her as I leave.  I may just leave them here.  They will fend for themselves.  I would normally want to neuter her.  On top of everything else, I can't deal with this.  It is a stretch too far.

The man who lives in the rubble next door used to have a bunch of cats.  One of those impregnated Sammy.  They all seem to have disappeared, though.  I keep meaning to ask him about that.  Maybe she can meet the same end.

 

 

Circling the drain

 

Fifty years ago, I was lost.  I had been led into life choices that were against my best interests, but at age 17 I had no self-empowerment.  I did as I was told, or as I imagined was expected of me. 

I broke free, and then stumbled around for a couple of years..now what?  As it so happens, the crowd I fell into vibrated with one answer.  Go to India, if you want your life to change.  You will never be the same.

Each of us is led by our circumstances.  Occasionally, we suss that things are awry and muster up courage to take a radical step, to make a radical change.

My job paid me once a month.  I gave notice, and with that one month’s paycheck in hand, I bought a cheap plane ticket to Amsterdam and began my journey.  There was little change left in my pocket.  That first night, I found a place to crash among shrubs.  The next day I wandered a bit around Amsterdam before hopping a train to Germany.  And so my odyssey began. 

I had prepared myself to see the Holyland, by converting to Judaism before leaving California.  This gave me an avenue to settle in Israel, a heart’s desire.  I was torn, between moving on to India where my life would supposedly change radically, and staying in the Holyland where I felt Christ’s presence, and where I discovered communal living in the form of Kibbutz.  While at my last job, at a University, I had kept an eye on publications that reported on the communal strain of lifestyle so popular at the time.  Here in Israel, I wanted to know what this ancient culture had to say about that lifestyle.  And so I took the necessary steps to become a kibbutz member, and experience it from the inside.  I liked it.  I liked it a lot.  It seemed to offer a safe harbor for my insecurities, my unresolved inner wounds.  I could daily sit in the communal dining hall, and in the crowd my loneliness and unworthiness were somehow soothed.

But eventually, after a couple of years of belonging to and in a kibbutz, I knew that I had not yet earned the freedom to settle.  There was that restlessness within.  While journeying across the Mediterranean and in the early months of kibbutz life, a random acquaintance with a woman, appearing as an other-worldly being, initiated me into meditation.  I had sat at an LA Zendo before, but through her spiritual energy and transmission, this time something profound began to happen.  Years later, in Kathmandu, I would run into her again and see she was very much not an apparition, but a flesh and blood person running a chai shop and being an anchor for the ex pat community in that city.

When I finally did arrive in India, to begin my search for that promised transformation, I had heard that the Dalai Lama was settled in the north Himalayan Mountains.  I was curious, and so upon my arrival in India I took what was meant to be a brief stop before exploring the Ashrams in the low lands.  I would not move on for another three years to come. 

Those years were spent in deep spiritual journeying, led by highly accomplished and authentic Tibetan high lamas.  The years passed, variously sitting in class listening to the ancient texts explained, and going into isolated retreats.  In truth, I would never be the same.  Here I seemed to come into my own.  All the years previously, I had been delving deeply into Christianity.  Not only the New Testament, but also studying the Old Testament, plumbing their depths.  This continued when I returned to the west, with my new mind, a new concept of reality and my place in it.

With mantra firmly in place, Om Mani Padme Hum, I stayed above the swampland of most emotions, harboring only the not-yet dislodged deepest rooted ego-centricity.

I went back for a refresher, in 2008.  I sat at the feet of an old friend, a lama, and, with his guidance, did ever-expanding meditations into the infinite fields of the inner and outer worlds.  I heard the tradition (from the Jataka Tales)  that, when Buddha Gautama was alive, a Being from a distant galaxy came on a beam of light and sat in his presence during his teachings.  That Being of light, purportedly, marveled at the teachings and wisdom of this Holy One.  This little anecdote taught me so much about reality beyond our tiny planet.  I grew to know deep things.  I absorbed them, and held them close throughout the following years.

And now, though in different garb, these teachings are becoming widespread.  There are so many people, many podcasting on YouTube, who are in communication with extra-terrestrial beings.  Their teachings are collectively reaching thousands and thousands of souls around the globe.

There seems to be no need to take baby steps.  The ancient and elemental teachings of the Four Noble Truths [Suffering, The Cause of Suffering, The Cessation of Suffering, the Path to the Cessation of Suffering] upon which we meditated, sitting at the feet of these high Lamas, the Geshes, seem archaic, outdated, superfluous.  For me, it was learning to crawl before I could walk.  These awakened me to the very essence of reality.  Now, I presume, those who are awakening have awareness of these elementals from previous lives.  They jump into the Ocean of Samsara and fly (pardon the mixed metaphor), soar, to find release at dizzying heights.

My solitary inner-monk’s life has brought me to a place where I seem to be living in isolation, among a population of people unaware and unprepared for the place my inner self inhabits.

Through the internet, I hear extraordinary messages and lessons coming from galactic beings.  These seem to be messages that I have been waiting to hear.  And yet, though other hearers seem to be riding the swelling waves of intergalactic societies and the wisdom beyond ours that they bring us, I seem to be circling the drain.  I hear, I understand, I have heard so much of it before, and yet as others harness these extraordinary spiritual tools meant to purify and elevate us, I seem to remain numb.  I cannot participate.  I hear, I know, but my consciousness can only dwell in an ocean of love, without activating these higher energies that are being transmitted, transferred, and which seem to transport the cohort, listening the same as I do.

What is wrong with me?  As I accept these energies graciously extended to us by Arcturians, Paladians, Sirians and such. my stubborn weaknesses become distilled, so clear in my mind’s eye, yet unmoving.  I see the generational karmic imprints.  I can isolate the times I felt rejected, uncared for, from age three all the way to just a few years ago by an ex lover.  I see, in the history of my recent progenitors, that same rejection being played out.  It is my ancestral inheritance, and that of my daughter.  I want to isolate it and surrender it up, as our teachers tell us we can and should do, if we so choose.  I choose!!!  It does not leave me.  Those same painful memories keep circling and circling, yet they will not be flushed.  What is wrong with me?

 Samantha

Kittens

 

He was going about his normal day in retirement.  The circle of life was not particularly on his mind.  Tracking down missing documents, exploring options for digitalizing boxes of old photos, when he noticed that his pet dog, Junior, was focused on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.

You know how birddogs do when they locate a bird…that attentive stillness.  That is what Junior was doing, sitting beside the chest of drawers.  It was clear, Junior had located the source of those tiny chirps we had been hearing all day.  The newborn swallows in the garage had begun flying lessons; perhaps one of them had stumbled into the house.

He picked up a corner of the chest of drawers so they could both look underneath.  Nothing.  He opened each drawer; a cursory check brought nothing. These things had a way of working themselves out, he thought, so he turned back to the business at hand and thought nothing more about it.

The next day, Junior was at it again.  This time he was pawing a particular drawer.  The boss pulled out the bottom two drawers, for inspection.  Sure enough, there was a tiny gray newborn kitten, barely noticeable next to a gray sweatshirt.  To his great surprise, because he thought that any newborn left without the warmth of his mother for 24 hours, would surely die, this little guy was moving his limbs.

Since there was only an hour until the weekly garbage pickup, the Boss tucked the cold kitten inside his shirt, close to his heart, and continued gathering up the garbage.  He was a little slow, limited to the left hand, the right hand clutching his cane.

Garbage finally corralled to a tidy heap on the street curb, he turned his attention back to finding where the kitten had come from.  By now the tiny form within his shirt was wiggling. He knew his outdoor cat, Sammy, was due towards the end of July.  The July 4^th celebrations had just passed, last weekend, so he expected there was still time.  The neighbor’s cat, however, was a couple weeks ahead of Sammy in her pregnancy.  He thought to check with the neighbor to see how that was going.  This kitten was tiger striped, like that pregnant one.  Sammy is black Calico.  The neighbor wasn’t home. 

His cleaning duties were interrupted by commotion on the colonnade.  All three dogs were barking at the clay pots, on stands.  He limped along to see what was going on.  There, inside the small mouthed planter, was dark Sammy, the lighter calico patches obscured in her tightly curled body.  Inside the curve were a small mass of squiggling things.  Four kittens, in all.  The fifth was grabbing warmth under his shirt.

All other plans for the day were quickly put aside.  First order of the day was to prepare a safe home for her, within his home.  With all the dogs and other cats in the neighborhood, she could not feel safe caring for her litter living out of doors.

First order of things, clear all the junk off the dresser top.

Second, bring the pet cage in from the garage.  Line it with a clean adult diaper laid flat.

Next, gather up the handful of kittens and carry them to the cage.  The Cat would surely follow behind her kittens.

Now the cat was ready to be introduced to her home for the next few weeks. 

While she was getting acquainted with it, the Boss took a blanket from Junior’s bed and laid it atop the cage, giving her the privacy of a cave-like environment. 

Next comes the water dispenser, and a bowl of food.  Kitten kibble is now on the shopping list, but until he could get into town, a scrambled egg would have to do to supplement the basic adult kibble.  She will need lots of additional protein over the next weeks.

He finally took a break from this hectic morning to make himself a little breakfast.  Whoops, that scrambled egg in Sammy’s dish was the last egg.  No eggs and bacon on a roll for this guy’s breakfast.  Bacon and peanut butter would have to do for this vegetarian’s breakfast.  Vege what?  Well, take a vote.  Bacon is the most popular adopted pseudo vegetable among his crowd.

Now Junior is walking back and forth, licking his lips, trying to tell him something. 

“Let me guess.  It is twelve o’clock and you think I have forgotten something.”

Putting his toasted roll to one side, he pulls out a packet of moist dog food and fills Junior’s dish. Fortunately, “By the grace of God,” he thinks, the other two dogs are still distracted with the garbage truck and other cul-de-sac goings on, to notice his juicy meal. 

Loki, the toy apricot poodle mix, gets his meals at night, at the home he grew up in nine years ago.  That home still thinks of him as a guard dog; he thinks of himself as an adorable cuddly pampered poodle.  He needed some time on the couch before he could reconcile this dissonance.  The lady who wielded the broom every time he tried to sneak into the house he thought was his place, passed away this year.  He went to church for her funeral, and was greeted warmly by all the relatives and friends he knew from the years of his struggles at that farm home.  In the midst of celebrating her departure, there was happiness in reuniting with old friends.  One by one, he would go up to an old friend and, tail wagging, jump up to say hello.  He was always warmly received.  The next day he returned to that original home, and was welcomed by the widowed husband.  Still, he was relegated to sleep outside, alongside the puppy retriever mix that maybe could fulfill that guard-dog role better than Loki.  That sweet poodle stayed sweet, getting along with everybody, but missing the guy who truly understood him.  Each night around 6, after a fun day with Junior and whatever foster dog was currently in residence, Boss would remind him that it was time to go home.  His ears would droop, the eyes grow sad, but he would turn tail and slowly walk out the gate.

Coquetta is a recent addition.  She is mostly Jack Russell.  Her longish coat, of a Champaigne color and Jack-Russell coarseness, is a ball of energy.  When the Boss, Junior and Loki would go for a walk at dawn, he would always stop at the closed-up gate behind which Coquetta lived.  She always looked forward to the treats he usually carried, and was still happy when all she got were scratches behind the ear. 

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, her master died.  He was an impoverished native Mexican of the Tepehuans tribe, whose adoptive brother settled him in this abandoned tiny triangular space of someone’s backyard.  He was of few—next to none—words, and remained a cipher to Boss.  His death, then, came as a surprise, though perhaps only so to Boss.  It is likely that he suffered with an ulcer that finally burst.  There was a flurry of activity, in that day or two, it all happened so quickly.  As soon as discretion allowed, Boss made inquiries about the disposition of Coquetta and the two puppies.  For a few days there was just not enough space to worry about the dog.  The Boss asked for permission to temporarily take care of her, until it could be decided.

What he found was a dog living in squalor, with two remaining puppies two months old and ready to be weaned.  The other two had already died.  She was infested, like the puppies.  The two who didn’t make it were, no doubt, victims of the infesting vermin.  After repeated baths, to kill off the vermin, the puppies found homes.  Everyone loves puppies; less popular are adults.

At least Coquetta was very much alive, and playful.  For the moment, she was vermin free and safe.  In a week or two, she would recover from the traumas, and bounce back to her playful self.  The fifth kitten was still not sure he wanted to stay.

Boss, in the spirit of last-ditch effort, tried to place the fifth kitten at Sammy’s breast.  Before long it was clear that this kitten would not make it. 

Next morning, Boss looked in the cage and saw the inevitable.  He picked up the limp, cold body and removed it from the litter.

And so we are reminded of the fragility of life, the inevitability of the Circle of Life.  Two puppies, one kitten, and one lonely bachelor gone, versus four wiggling lively kittens clinging to life.  And the Dance continues.

 1.  Loki     2.Samantha and her litter     3. Junior    4. Coquette   

Christ, Revelations and Fifth Density

 Light and Dark

Light can’t co-exist with darkness.  Flick the switch!  Walk into the light.

This is what I have been highlighting with my friends/acquaintances in the past few weeks/months.  But wait.  What is this?  Turns out, there are degrees of light!  It isn’t all or nothing, black or white. 

Ever since Atlas (3/I) entered our air space, I have been awakening my spiritual path.  Or should I say it more passively…my spiritual path has been awakening.  [And that is the crux of the premise of this essay]  Not that I ever left it, but seems like there it was at the center of things, until it disappeared.  Until now; something has jump-started this new age for me. 

I had followed a private, little-known channeler, Samual.  My oldest and dearest friend in the world introduced me to him, in the past decade, as I readjusted to ‘western society’.  Acknowledgement that we live in an era that quantifies invisible air waves.  I was able to follow Samual through the internet.  Specifically, Zoom meetings.  This one was a very well-guarded entity, permitting his followers--what I interpret to be--very little access.  I am comparing this scene to years of my training with the Tibetans in their home-in-exile, Dharmsala, India.  Their way of teaching feels much more interactive and personal.

Apparently, roughly 30 yeas ago the earth was swept through a particular wave field, that created an opening opening for spirit and galactic individuals to synthesize with humans.  More and more I am getting the picture that they are living amongst us in remarkable numbers, leading small groups having their private followers, very low key.  Only a few have reached the level of notoriety.  A few I have come across on YouTube are: Bashan, Lee Harris, Kelly Kolodney, and David Clemens.  There are many more having podcasts, too many for me to know about.  In fact, I do believe it is possible to take a course in becoming a channeler.  Would love to take it, I am curious, but too lazy. :-{

Samual’s teachings tend to be intellectual and at a semi-deep level.  More like a college course into dark secrets.  I was needing fuel to wake up my soul.  I need food.  These insights were nourishing guava; unripened sour guavas, but would have to do until the ripe sweet ones come along.

Samual alerted his group about the Atlas coming into our airspace.  Once, though I cannot place it as to time, he taught an exercise that he said was to prepare our bodies for the new energies coming, giving us an eighth strand to our DNA, or capacity for 8th density, or I don’t remember more than that he was trying to prepare us for what was to come.

Then, of course, I started doing more reading about this Atlas.  Step by step I was led to David Clemens.  And so my spirit led me back home, aligning the old path to this updated one, and I was flying.

I had crossed the veil, seen the light, could knowingly Let Go.  Suddenly, I was Holier than Thou!  I made it to the promised land.  I was floating on air. It was so easy!  Just let go; say yes to the warm ocean of light that flows in and unites you in an ocean of love, pure love and light.  One with the Source.  Know God.  Reunite to the Flame

Truth remains, as I discovered decades ago, once off the meditation cushion it can all disappear mighty quickly.

I thought, this time I had past the sputtering stage, and reached the Free Flowing stage, even if it were only my toes tickling the ocean.  My optimism was drowning out the Truth, again.    On the plus side, it is as if while I was dormant, I was still slowly cleaning out the muck that fought with the Light.  My impurities, egoism, judgmentalism, as well as the crippled but not dead:  self-deception, no longer relevant contracts and promises, desires; the dross that grows on us like barnacles, from birth.  Some even come along with us in birth.   It seems that they continued to grow weaker, their hold on me.  In the Tibetan years I had done many, many practices and rituals with the purpose of cleansing these more banal and negative impulses and habits.  I was glad that I got to do that during a focused period of my life.  Millions are now dealing with that, each to varying degrees, while living a householders life.  Work, family relationship, financial demands.  What a nightmare.  And now, on top of that, having to face and deal with our hidden self, the muck from deep within our souls. The cleansing work must be done, however, one way or another.  This work is done on the ‘energy ‘ level.  Our body vibrates at an energy level.  (Since the discover of the atom, which happened in my lifetime, we have known that our bodies are not as solid as we thought.  They are made up of atoms, a constant spinning around the nucleus; invisible to our naked eye, but now that we know, we cannot look away.)  The dross holds our body back from being able to vibrate at a higher, more refined energy level; a level that receives more Light, that Light of God, or Source.   I happen to prefer David Clemens path, because it gets to the core.  Not all the theorizing and philosophizing and schmoozing that others offer.  Other healers have to feed the ego while teaching their followers how to break it down; the young’ns are still fragile.

In the last few days, I could feel myself filling up again with the dross.  Why?  What’s going on?  But no, these are the wrong questions.  This is the old energy approach.  Let me introduce here, for ease of reference, 3D energy and 5D energy.  Some soothsayers, in efforts to wrap their heads around this new consciousness, say that the energetic earth is splitting into two time lines.  Those still functioning in third density (3D) vibration are living their lives as they always have, for millennium.  That is not too dramatic a time span, to give an idea of how drastic a change is coming upon us now.  That level of density is incompatible with the change in vibrational density that is now revolutionizing life on Earth, called fifth density (5D).  And so, being incompatible, our channelers are telling us that the 3D world  cannot and will not survive.  They and their societies will fade out and disappear.  They will not thrive.  When I toy with this concept in my mind, I see two highways.  One is rising, while the other is sinking into collisions and splits; the one is rising, dripping with those holding on by their fingertips, the slow pokes, the late bloomers, the procrastinators.  I am assured this is too literal.

But who decides? Millions of good Christians are trying their best to live out the life of our Christ figure, our Holy Brother, our God the Father.  They have no idea about a “New Earth”.  Of course, for those who study the New Testament they see a description that talks about a New Earth, but it is difficult to clearly see any connection between that description and what we see around us.  The traditional churches may not be doing anything to illuminate the connection, either.

Throughout the New Testament, especially in the Book of John, but in Acts as well and elsewhere, the teachings of Christ as captured by his followers seem to point at it; we see hints, if only we can  interpret them.

We are told not to let our hearts grow weary by working too hard, and worrying—being concerned.  After all, the beautiful wild flowers put on a show for us every year, but they require no fuss from us.  The birds, of which each and every feather is seen by the Eye of God, don’t worry unduly about building a nest and feeding their young.  You don’t see them organizing into unions to protect their rights.  What?  How is that instructional?  These bills don’t get paid by themselves.

The New Earth, the fifth dimension, works on different principles entirely.  There is a flowing, an alertness to this new awareness.  Usually I bring a list when I go food shopping.  I go into town for specific things.  Now I find that the list is almost not useful.  As I flow through the market, the things I need present themselves to my hand, the feet find the right aisles.  The car finds the right doorways, to pick up the little things, to pay the bills, to remember to say hi to a friend who is thinking of me.  I find the right amount of change in my purse, even if it was empty when I left the house.  The right person crosses my path, to address something I was thinking about.  To my old way of thinking, I would call these coincidences.  Accompanied by a smooth, calm and joyful mind space, I know it is me yielding to the higher intelligences, the spirits and galactic beings, that walk alongside me and flow within me.  We move in an ocean of Love, which connects us all at all times.  That being the case, I have to ask myself why in the world I would allow old memories, old habits, low-density energies to distract me from that bliss, to pull me down.

It is free will all the way.  My struggle is to maintain conscious awareness at all times, to not let these old bugaboos drag me down.  On days like this, I cannot see what muck is being stirred up.  I only know “I don’t feel like it.”  I don’t feel like meditating, I don’t feel like denying the negativity.  The chores that I ‘should’ do like cleaning house and washing dishes, are virtues totally not appealing to me today.  The concept of ‘tough love’ seems called for here.  The deeper-knowing parts of me (Me being not necessarily just my brain, but my spiritual awareness available to work together).  If I let these negativities rule the day, the stain of their dross carries over to the next day, and so and so it builds.  Then the ‘Holier than Thou’ energy rings hollow.  It doesn’t work.  It is up to me to change the dynamic. 

And so it is, the interplay of the assertive and passive, working together.  There is a momentum required when actualizing change.  How is it for you?  Can the momentum build through doing the ‘right thing’, the spiritual practices building that muscle until one day the switch is flicked and I am walking in the bountiful Light, buoyed in the Ocean of Love?   Or am I required to produce more of that forward momentum by focusing all day every day on maintaining that quiet mind, fighting off that ‘monkey’ mind? 

I know that the chaos and catastrophes that a man called Trump is subjecting the world to is tremendously destructive, and needs to end.  I would like someone to take a rifle to him and blow his brains out, with the goal to ending it all and beginning the healing.  But in fact I know that that one man is only a cog; just one particle of a greater dynamic , through whose godless machinations the old world will be destroyed, or certain essential parts of it, in order to make room for the New Earth.  This I know because of a deep awareness that there is a whole universe out there that I have been cut off from at my birth, and that I am now in the throes of being reunited with.  That is the foundation of my faith.  What is the foundation of yours?

 

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..