(Typed before I had access to any news)
So, apparently, Occupy Wall Street is under attack. Or was. Even the media was first uninformed, then arrested when some reporters showed up, and the protestors have lost Zucotti Park. My cell phone, my only real source of news outside the camp except for my fellow Ninety-Niners, won't keep a decent charge in the cold, but the last text message I got from my PuppetMan (a dear friend in Chicago who is one of the artists of PuppetBike there) was that OWS was blowin' up. I went to bed knowing the police were there, but didn't know what would happen. And I still don't know what's happening, as the camp is particularly empty this morning. I won't know much until I go up the hill to charge my phone and hear the news, which is when I'll also post this notepad creation to Bicycles and Beansprouts. If I'm lucky, I'll have just enough charge on my laptop every day to formulate a post while I'm sitting in my warm sleeping bag, waiting for my day to start. And because there's so much uncertainty to what is happening to the peaceful occupation movement in New York, I'm feeling a bit more unsettled than the last 15 or 16 mornings I've woken up in my wee tent here.

What happens there affects us here, as we are their 99% and they are ours. I fear for them. And for all the movements that are peaceful. We are horribly misrepresented by the majority of the media. Any drug overdose you hear about in an encampment is one that could have and probably would have happened anywhere else. As for filth, this park is cleaner than it was before we occupied it. Sure, we each have our representatives that might not serve as well as others, but that's also true in any organization or family. The media, a tool for the very corporations guilty of the deeds that have wrecked our planet, will show you only what they're "allowed" to show you. Remember the twins in "Good Morning, Vietnam", the ones who censored the news feed feed before Robin Williams' character could read it on the air because "what we didn't know wouldn't hurt us"? If you don't believe that the media is controlling you just as it is being controlled, then you're probably not the right type of audience for me, quite frankly. No offense, but please...do some thinkering.

I digress. Occupy Wall Street. Without knowing what's going on, my mind has the potential to fear the worst: rubber bullets and fractured skulls, pepper spray and skin burns, tear gas and mass confusion, mayhem, and chaos...in another word, WAR. Why?!? Someone please make me understand how camping peacefully (if they're even allowed tents) and doing the necessary work to make things right in our government at long last is a crime. And even if it is, how is it feasible that it's so potentially dangerous to anyone but the 1% that the police need to go to such great lengths to hurt the peacemongers who don't have riot shields to hide behind? We're unarmed. No weapons allowed. As far as I know, the movement of non-violence is prevalent throughout every Occupy movement. So why are we battled out of the places we paid to build with violence and weapons? I can't fathom where treatment of people is acceptable in any country, but this is us...the good ol' USA. And just like in the wars where we send our young men and women to battle for reasons they're not told and lies they believe, we are at war with our own countrymen because of the same lies. Only we don't have bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, riot gear, and batons. Those of you still scratching your heads, saying, "You 99% camps...we still don't get it"? You may not understand, but the 1% does, and they're scared. And as always, they administer hate as a treatment for what they fear. They are sending our own countrymen after us. And not for the reasons you're being fed by the media.

I can't imagine being rousted out of my warm sleeping spot by someone behind a riot shield, wearing full protection, identity obscured by a mask. How scary. Are sleeping peacemongerers really that dangerous? Beside the point is that our First Amendment tells us we can peaceably assemble. And now we're having that right not only ignored, but raped away from us in the middle of the night by men with weapons. In what operating system is this right? What kind of mind would acquiesce to those kind of orders? Law enforcement officers are just as lucky as the rest of the country to have a job these days, but where is the line of integrity drawn?

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. War has NEVER worked. Isn't it time we tried peace? Speaking for my camp, we do an excellent job of that, and I'm fairly certain that we truly are the 99%...our camps are like those of the others. Peaceful. Non-violent. Not deserving to be evicted from the parks we paid for, but worse, we are being physically assaulted in the process. I say "we" in solidarity, as the police here have been most gracious. We would hope that their jobs have been maybe even a tad easier since we include the homeless in our community, helping them stay off the streets to some degree. I can't imagine a single reason that the police might be justified in tearing apart our camp, especially armed to the hilt against unarmed citizens who do well just to stay warm against the winter cold.

Have you not felt the great civil unrest? Have you not realized that every revolution has to start somewhere, and this is it? Even in places like Bellingham, "the City of Subdued Excitement", population 80,000ish, there is a shift occurring. People are waking up to the injustice we have experienced not only ourselves, but to the wrongs done to our friends and family, our communities and small merchants, the mom-n-pop shops and restaurants that I am coming to love more and more as I work on blog posts and research from the comfort of a place where I can get a cuppa and borrow some 'lectric juice for my phone (and now my laptop). There is no comparison to sitting in a building with a near-100-year history, writing about the revolution that is happening right in front of my nose and yours than, say, blogging from a McDonalds tucked away in a Wal-Mart. These small businesses are the 99%, as well, too often in competition with the big corporations...and losing. Shame, that. And now the police are attacking us because we're trying to defend their way of living. What is the world coming to when the very citizens who sometimes shop these independent establishments protect the country from the citizens who run them? With bullets. I don't get it. Never will. So I will stay on this side and fight with peace.

Some of these posts will be scattered, as I have only the resources to be sporadic; if a post doesn't flow, my apologies. I often have to abandon one train of thought because another one is coming in behind it so quickly that it shoves it off the track. And on that note, I have some books to read on yurts. I've always wanted one...I never thought I'd be building my own to winter a war. Blessings to the oppressors, may their eyes be opened. May they realize that they are one step away from being us. Om shanti.

I freakin' love this woman; the message on her shirt is one I fell in love with years ago, and bless her for allowing her kidlets to be a part of history.

Here's the doozy of a post...as promised over a year ago.

I dunno what happened; the year got away from me without a post. I hope that this one will make up for it.

If anyone ever told me that I'd be a spokesperson for anything, there was a time when quiet, shy, reserved me wouldn't even have the nerve to laugh in their face. Now, however, not only am I a spokesperson, I represent a revolution!

I am the 99%. I am what democracy looks like. I "twinkle" when I like something. In the cold and the rain and the wet and the wind of an early winter, I am living in a tent in a camp with electricity from a generator that is run for only a few hours a day. And I've never been happier. How could that possibly be?

It all started just over a month ago, when I was compelled to march with in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement in my local community of Bellingham, Washington. I was swept into something much bigger, meeting new best friends and friends I've had again and again in this wild, wacky, and mysterious cosmos. I've experienced magic in this little rag-tag camp of amazing young people and dynamic individuals who make up oh, so much more than the sum of their parts. We are changing things. Changing ourselves. Becoming the change we wish to see in the world. And it all seems to blossom and grow, flourishing with the nurturing of the Oneness of the camp.

That's not to say that living here is all Bavarian Bismarcks from Rocket Donuts and a lovely cuppa tea from Woods (where cold revolutionaries go to charge their cell phones and other 'lectronics). It's hard work to keep the Occupy movement going, as it is primarily double in scope for me; creating an awareness of the situation with the banks and corporations in order to bring about the necessary separation of the greed and corruption of the 1% from our democratic process, and to keep the camp running...to avoid losing valuable members of our community. To be sure my new family has enough to eat and dry socks and "austerity blankets", the blankets most of us wear about our shoulders as an additional layer against the cold that settled into camp as soon as we did. Layers are our friends. I am determined to make long johns (thermal underwear) a staple in every woman's winter wardrobe.

We do phenomenal things here. We are feeding, clothing, and sheltering the homeless. We are dealing with scary-ass situations with peace and love. Compassion and non-violence. The diversity in our camp is rainbows and thunderstorms and sunshine. Meadows and badlands. Oceans and deserts. And yet, somehow, with all the little niggly things you'll encounter in any and every family, we have come together to support one another completely as we, the Whole, support the other Occupy movements that are popping up all over the globe. Thank Cow! We're way past due for a decent revolution. And that is indeed what this is. Welcome to an inside seat to what it's like to be changing the government, just as our ancestors did when it became necessary to right the injustices of the corrupt.

Stay tuned as I blog what it's like to be on the front lines of a peaceful war against the lies, the greed, the slavery, the dumbing-down, the selfishness of those who perpetuate hate and fear. I am a love-based Being, determined to win this fight to create a better world for my granddaughter, for my Mother Earth, and for you. Doing that is the hard thing that requires the sacrifices I am honoured to make with my new comrades at our camp, Noisy Waters, in Bellingham. Namaste'.

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.