I know, I know...

A new post is coming. It will probably be a doozy, glooming over how July should be wiped from the annals of history forever. Or at least mine. 'Twas a sad, painful, difficult month. September brings a whirlwind of planning. October brings a road trip with my brother and father; half-way 'cross the country to deliver a particular gramma to a granddaughter she's never met.

Wait a minute...just a note to say a post is coming soon doesn't look like this. I've been hijacked by my muse who is clamoring for my attention on another writing project. Auf Weider Bye-Bye.

Help! I'm being oppressed!

I have had two Christian friends both lash out at my beliefs in the past week. I have respected their dogmatic system of beliefs that, while they seem to work for the people if they truly live by their faith, are definitely not true for me. The respect isn't a reciprocal thing, however. Because of what I believe, my two friends pray hard for my soul which they know is doomed to Hell if I don't see the error of my ways. I humbly thank them for their prayers; we could all use the good energy. :)

Dude...I've been to Hell. And back. And now I'm in Heaven. Why? How? Because I choose to create the heavenly reality I want to experience. I do. Not a God in the sky who can only be proven by the Bible, a book written, censored, hidden, controlled, and manipulated by Man. All I wanna do is walk this here path...the one that still has Jesus' footprints on it. Okay?

I notice I lost a follower or two after my last post, too. My apologies if I accidentally offended anyone, but such is life. My philosophy, my faith in what I believe is just as strong and true for me as yours is for you. If I can accept and respect the differences in what we believe, why can't [a theoretical] you?

"Blinders, blinders everywhere, but not a thought to think." ~Tee King

I am Buddha, I am Jesus, I am Gandhi

...or was, a little while ago. I was on the phone with someone very special to my heart who is presently suffering. I was so connected to him across the miles that there was no distance. In the moment, I realized that the advice I gave...the teachings I have learned from Buddha and Jesus and Gandhi...put me on the same path that they walked while teaching their truths. In that light, I am Buddha. I am Jesus. I am Gandhi. I say this with the utmost humility and the highest regard for your beliefs if they truly work for you.

I told this love in my life a very lot of things, and even mentioned that I wish I were writing it down, as the words were flowing fast and furiously. Deep, philosophical stuff that I hope he grokked; stuff I've learned that has made what was once a very miserable life at times (there are always glimpses of happiness between the dark spots) an amazingly grateful, content life (with an infrequent shower of sadness...usually self pity).

I don't want to push my beliefs on anyone in the way I've seen "religious" people/groups. I think religion is dangerous thing, but I won't go into that here. I just wish I'd had a chance to write down the loving suggestions flowing from me so freely into him; he was distracted by his suffering, I know, and this time of despair, immediately after a heart got bwoked, no words will make sense, unless you stay with them in every moment. In this manner, the present sad experience will eventually become a non-judgmental memory.

For example, I used a metaphor of a child with a broken toy (I'm being literary here, people, so I won't say "bwoked" which is one way I express myself differently). He curses the toy for breaking and calls it names. All of the blame of how the toy was broken was transferred to a thing that has no soul, no will, no ability to consciously break apart. The child transferred the blame of breaking an inanimate object.

When the child becomes an adult and thinks back on the toy, chances are that he will say, oh! how he loved it and how sad he was when it broke (rarely, "not when I broke it", if you follow my train of consciousness). But still, the anger is gone, there's no real animosity, just a fond memory of an illusion of a story you created long ago, then picked back up years later. No longer is he upset about it...the experience is nothing more than one of looking back in a storybook with mental snapshots scattered throughout.

Now, imagine how much easier life would be if you could let go of all those thoughts of cursing someone, or blaming someone, or just being angry needlessly. As soon as a complaint or bitchy thought arises, watch it as it falls without giving it any attention. Just leave it alone. Eventually, the thought won't arise as often, and in time, you may even think back on it fondly. The experience has turned into a memory. Maybe even a happy memory.

I hope you find some truth here. I love you, Kiddo. Come see me.

What color is your funk?

My funk, my manner of living, is usually a nice cheery pink hue. Not neon or hot pink, not so pale a pink you can barely see it, but just a nice rosy, blushing shade of pink. Usually. For the past week, though, my palette has been replaced with one of hues of blue. Dark blue. Moody blue.

Getting out to ride my lovely bicycle should help with that, right? Well, yes...it should. Except, over the course of this past winter and these days of spring blooming around me, I have been having more and more difficulty maintaining the energy to ride. I get so very winded and my heart sometimes feels as if it is going to explode, it beats so fast and furiously, even on an easier ride. It's not as if I'm getting more and more out of shape by not riding more often, either; in fact, I've been dropping weight too quickly without exercising.

I went to the doctor last week to get the results of some tests he had ordered a few weeks prior. I was expecting the usual: an abnormally high clotting factor amongst the other niggling medical issues with which Lupus has gifted me. I was neither expecting nor ready for the news I received, news which explained the fatigue and shortness of breath, the increased arrhythmia and pounding heartbeep. Though I won't have a diagnosis until I have more tests run next month, my doctor and I now know that the right side of my heart just isn't keeping up.

Lupus has affected so many of my organs. I won't go into all the details, but I guess I really shouldn't be as surprised as I am that something like this is going on. I've known there were slight problems for years...sporadic issues that have come and gone, but have basically been either ignored by my medical team because I couldn't produce the symptoms in their presence, or I just never followed through because of my extreme hesitancy to get caught in that net of seeing one doctor after another and taking this pill to counter the side effects of that pill, etc. again.

In the back of my mind, I have filed away the worry that, someday, I won't be able to ride again. My adult body wasn't built for a bicycle, with the surgeried leg bones and bum organs, but my spirit soars when I ride, so I make the necessary compromise. And normally, my body shuts up when my spirit takes the lead. However comma...lately, riding has been such a physical challenge that I can hear the squeaks and wheezes and creaks and snaps and rattles my body makes as it pedals so fiercely to go just a few miles. And I realize, I'm not ready to stop riding. The distance between myself and my one time goal of riding a century (100 miles) is increasing day by day. Bicycle touring, something I still hope to do this summer (like my friends Sven and Doro, cyclists from Germany who are pedaling from South America to Alaska), is going to be considerably more formidable than I first thought, and the extended trips I dreamed of taking are most likely nothing more than a sweet dream now.

I haven't forgotten all that I teach, the lessons of choosing happiness, of accepting and letting go...but I am having trouble letting go of this one. Not only did the news of a broken heart hit me where it hurts, but it came at a time when I've been hoping to fall in love again...hoping to fill my heart with love of a different kind this time 'round. Not a "White Knight" kind of adoration, but a connection to someone who wants to share a journey of the spirit, something I've never looked for before. I'll say it...I wanna be in love. I miss it terribly, and somehow, I think I'm supposed to fall in love right about now. Not that I'm counting on it, but wouldn't it be something if the right fella came along and, just like that, my broken heart would mend? Love can be a magical, mysterious thing, a healing thing. And if my heart can't be fixed, well...I wouldn't mind skipping a heartbeep for the right reasons... like a tender word or an unexpected kiss full of passion.

In any case, between the news of the heart and being lonely, I hit a wall. Hard. I quit riding except to get my mail, if I left my flat at all. I quit writing. I quit reading Facebook, where my friends live. I'd find myself just sitting, not thinking and not doing, but not in the beneficial non-thinking, non-doing manner of meditation. Just a numb, "What the hell do I do now, and how long do I wait before someone shows me the way out of this suck-fest?"

However comma...I heard my Voice today, the one that Ego has been covering up with deafeningly silent cries of "woe is me" and "why me?" I say silent, because, other than a very few people, I haven't told anyone my news. I just disappeared because I don't know what to say, and I don't want to sound like a hypocrite because I haven't been following the advice I so often give. And I do NOT want to be a medical statistic as opposed to my true Self. I am trying my damndest to be positive, to accept that this is just a part of that great wheel turning. Today, while I am still lonely, at least the sun shone where it hadn't for a week...into my bwoked heart. And it didn't hurt quite so badly as it did yesterday.

I did ride yesterday and today. Not far, and it wasn't easy, and I got really wet in the rain, and riding against the wind had my heart beeping to beat the band...but one of those wheels is gonna spin regardless of whether I choose to take a ride on it or not. I think I'll go for the ride and see where it takes me. After all, the views of the past few years have been utterly amazing...

I'm slowly getting back to me. In the meantime, does anyone know what color to mix with blue to get pink?

Tim Tam Slam...or meditation on a cookie

For best results, start the video below and let it completely buffer before you start reading. If things of an erotic nature disturb you, please close this tab/window now. While probably completely safe for most work environments, some may find the content of this post objectionable. My apologies, but I've given fair warning. Forewarned is fore-armed. With love and daisies. For those of you still here, start the video when it's buffered. It will probably end before you finish reading. Yeah...I tried to pare it back, but the words wouldn't stop and wouldn't be edited out.
I turn off the lights and light a single scented candle, the one that is reminiscent of a burning fireplace. Cuppa hot tea? Check. Tim Tam biscuit (cookie)? Check. The good headphones instead of the earbuds that won't stay in my itsy-bitsy ears? Check. E.S Posthumus' "Arise" (from their new Makara album) cued and ready to go? Check. I think I'm ready. I click play.

I slide off my socks and stretch my bare feet, wiggling my toes. Ooooh, that does feel nice. I sit back in the papasan nest, carefully holding the cup in one hand as it warms my cool fingertips and a bickie (cookie; yes, my vocabulary is eclectic, culturally diverse, and sometimes, even, very made up, like my world) in the other hand. Stretching out my legs feels good; I rest them on a pillow on the ancient steamer trunk I use as a desk/table/storage for subversive civil disobedience fliers for a peace protest (just making sure you're paying attention). As my eyes trace my candle-shadowed surroundings and I begin to well and truly groove with the magical, celestial music, I sink into the chair, very relaxed and comfortable. Am I ready to turn One?

I take the wee smallest nibble of an upper corner of my Tim Tam biscuit. Chocolate-covered chocolate biscuit with...{unexpected anticipatory pause with fancy brackets}...creamy chocolate filling. Mmm...this is tasty. Then, I flip it top to bottom and bite off the diagonal corner. Nice, if not delectable. I have the attention of my taste buds, which are beginning to ping and spark, wondering if mayhaps there's more coming, and mayhaps it's even better stuff. Ya never know, it's happened before.

Slowly, carefully, I raise my cup to meet my bickie, and use it as a straw. I suck the tea slowly and steadily into my mouth until I begin to feel the bickie begin to cave and give in under the pressure of the gentle grasp of my thumb and fingers. At this point, I lower my cup and shove the whole Tim Tam into my eagerly-waiting mouth. As soon as I slide my lips closed around this concoction that is ever-so-quickly having its molecules melted, it literally just explodes. It instantly transforms from the solid it was into these gooey, triple-chocolatey waves that just kind of swell and roll around in my mouth, teasing my tongue and caressing my palate. Simultaneously, the music also swells into this magnificently tense pause before going orgasmic, turning mercuric, finding even the hidden-away hidey-holes of my Being. There are fireworks shooting almost violently into a sky so dark, even with the brightest-ever stars twinkling my wonder. I am melting into this sweet pool of stickiness. My taste buds are now changing the frequency of their vibration and are indistinguishable from the atoms, those nearly-empty containers of g*d, with whoom they are dancing and mingling and intertwining and becoming yummily and foreverly quantumly entangled. I am spinning and twirling, grooving and celebrating my divine Amness, naked and true.

And now these tastes and sounds and feelings and sensations swirl and dance around and into me before gobbling me up and swallowing me and separating my soul from my body while its toes begin to curl, its fingers clutch tightly the quilt on the papasan, and its back lightly arches.

I'm gone. I don't exist. There's no chocolate. There's no Tim Tam. There's no music. There's no tea. There's no sleepy, purring cat curled up next to me. There are no thoughts from me. There is no me. There is only this One perception of everything being so completely perfect at this moment that it truly doesn't matter what happened in the last moment nor what may happen in the next because this moment is perfect and why the hell would I want to go anywhere else? This is all there is. This perfect nothingness that contains an empty everything.

Singularity. In this very moment, I am One.

I am abandonedly lost and lost with abandon and time does not exist and I believe that because my bicycle buddy, Einstein, said so, so there is no time and nothing is wrong and I want this to last forever. Wait..."I want"? Who said that? And who is thinking "How long is forever?" The height of the orgasmic musical note decreases, and I hear the next note so gently whisper into the room to try and sustain me here just an iota longer. But the next musical notes are already on the stage, gently playing me back into my empty body lying down there in the papasan.

All of a sudden, I am gently aware of my curled toes and fingers and of my heart beating and my chest moving as I breathe. The shadowed surroundings come into focus again and I hear the almost-liturgical strains of the next track, "Saint Matthew Passionate". No wonder it sounds monk-tested and giant cathedral-approved. But passionate? Oooh...ladles and jellyspoons, you have no idea. Methinks Matthew was peeking through the window.

Oh.My.g*d.That.Was.So.Awesome.I.Almost.Want.A.Cigarette.And.Now.I.Need.A.Snuggle.