The only reason I'm not writing, really, is because I don't feel to. And part of the lovely, mundane magic is that it's okay not to write. There's nothing that has to be done. Only what I feel to do, based on what Life is bringing me. Right now, I need to work and sleep and eat. Not much else. There are a few things I feel to do simply because I feel to, things like be with kitties, and do yoga, and watch tv shows, and eat pie, so I do those too. Some make me feel better, some worse. But it all feels true. And it's all Whatever.
There are a couple of things I feel to share with you.
The first happened on my way to work a couple of weeks ago, when I was deep inside a state of misery so profound it was like being eaten alive. There was nothing wrong occurring. It's still a good job, a good life. And yet the bonfire of Human Torch inside has kicked it up a few notches in the past two months, so the truths being revealed of What's Really Going On have been profoundly hide chapping. Yet again.
And so I drove down the road, hands gripping the wheel, trying to get my head molded into a shape that would allow me to show up at work calm and ready to get things done. Then I saw something that caused a few moments to extend into one of those time expansions where everything slows down. And heart mind and body blew open wide with recognition, acknowledgment, knowing.
It was a turtle. In the middle of four lanes of pre-9 a.m. rush hour traffic. His head was raised, his legs pumping. But he didn't seem afraid, just focused, moving in a straight line, oblivious to the corridor of death he walked through.
I almost slammed on my breaks, pulled over to the side so I could leap from the car and lift him to the other side of the road. But in that expanded moment in time, I understood that I had no role in what was happening. I actually heard: do you really think his life or death is up to you? That if you get him to the grass on other side of the road a hawk isn't waiting for him?
And in that expanded moment, I saw how a hundred thousand things were happening - the wind was at his back, then from the side, impacting his speed; cars were going at different speeds and these hundreds of cars would either miss him or hit him depending on a hundred other things, whether people were talking on their cell phones, or swerving trying to avoid him or even aiming for him. But this intersection of these thousands of individual threads of action were occurring out of a dance of Life, and this turtle's life or death was up to something much larger than him, or me.
Of course there were also several pieces of my own bullsh*t racing through my mind - around how if I get out of the car and enter into that traffic I risk dying, etc. - but I also felt this anguish, this acknowledgment of how this wasn't my fight, and how leaping in to make it my fight was an option, I could do it, but was it true?
And I got that who I was even a year ago would have found the leaping true, but the person I was now, the person I've become, knew that it wasn't. Life let me enter into that expanded moment, to see this ordinary turtle, simply going about the business of his living, just like me, just like you. When we are being brave because we have a corridor of death to cross, and we feel to cross it, this what we do, even knowing we might die in the middle of it. Because this is being alive. This is being here, on this planet, at this time.
After work, I looked for the turtle, or his body, but I didn't see it. Maybe he lived, maybe he died and became crow food. And that too is perfect. All of it.
The second thing I feel to tell you is about Sons of Anarchy. Movies and television and books and blogs - all the ways we humans have evolved to use to tell our stories - have been a direct way, all my life, that Life uses to teach me, to move me, to show me deep aspects of precise angles of living.
From April through mid-July, it helped me wrap my head around scientists and the scientific way of looking at the world through the Stargate series - some 325+ episodes. Sure, it's entertaining, and fantastic, but at its core, it's about people who encounter "magic"- religion, belief, myth - and then look for how it's based in fact, and truth, not denaturing it, not denigrating it, but simply looking for the moving parts, the practicality of the truth of it. And then, once I was able to integrate it into my living, using it to help me walk and talk in this new land of science and academia my new work is in, it moved me on to the next: society and how we are part of a whole.
Specifically? Anarchy.
Before Sons of Anarchy, I had no understanding of right use of violence, or true outlaws, or anarchists in general. I still barely barely have a grip on the side of this roiling volcano top of perspective - a feeling of how this is another aspect of how The Matrix is actually true. Over the past few weeks, I watched all three SOA seasons, then went back to begin watching them all over again, letting the information go in at an even deeper level as I read the works of Emma Goldman, John Zerzan, Cleckley and Fromm and Tarpley.
We all feel so sh*tty for reasons that go far beyond our will and ability to control our thoughts and feelings. If mustard gas were released into your home right now, would you be able to control your physical reaction to it? What I'm waking up to and seeing is that there is mental, emotional, environmental poisonous gas being released.
Of course, I've had an intellectual knowledge of this for years. But now, to truly see it, is a whole new level. Like the difference between thinking your mate is cheating on you, even knowing it in your bones, and then walking in them on them nekkid with your best friend. The sh*t changes you in a way that you don't get to pretend your way out of.
I don't know if I can do anything about any of it, either for myself or for others. I barely understand it yet. What anarchy is, what it means. What freedom really is, what it costs. But it's all there. Another layer of this reality we live in. And it's shocking on a level that I know is changing me for the duration of this life I'm in. Hidden inside this finely crafted television series is a revealing, a tool for Waking Up, just as subversive as The Matrix, and if you let it, as effective as having your own zen master, your own personal Jed McKenna.
Or maybe, for you, it'll just be a great ride, a fun tv show about SAM CROW, full of bang shoot em up and hot biker dudes and tough smart strong women. It's all good. It's all Whatever. Life brings us exactly what we need when we need it. We just have to have the courage to look it in the eye, let it do it's work in our heart, body, mind.
Because seriously, what the f*ck else better do we have to do?
Much love to you all . . . til we meet again here on this screen . . . maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, or next year. Leave your comments, send your emails . . . you know I feel you, as I know you feel me . . .
