From an Upper Floor

She lamented after birthing eight children. . . and in her last days, was sorry because she knew how difficult life had been for me.  I didn’t know how to love she said.  Nobody taught me.  And with the person who meant so much to her, her mother who did not rescue her, she never knew a mother’s hug nor a beating heart next to her cheek.

And it was another checkmark next to an emotion that has to be learned on this Earth planet.  With due respect to the counselor who ascribed to feelings are not facts, except in the process of learning to trust yourself and they are your feelings.  And trusting your feelings is a great step in learning to trust yourself.

When talking this over with my sister, she said she didn’t believe anyone cannot love a baby when they put that baby in your arms!  There’s a world of unloved babies who grow to be unloved adults who never had a mother’s arms around them with a hug.  Nor a breast against their cheek just to be loved close.

I had no clue when I cut a piece of sour cream coffee cake this morning, it would give rise to tears of memory.  Invited by a neighbor that snowy moving in March day with 3 children to dinner at their home, the first time coffee cake as dessert became special.

She gave me the recipe and another memory of her in tears at my door when she failed a son.  She did not know what to say when his baby died that she never met.  Though she cared for her son, the emotion was not real because the baby was not real.

When his mother died, we met and talked and overcome with emotion, the son was grateful  feelings were still hers.  He was afraid she had none though he was raw with them.  Evidence that those who are born to us sometimes come from different worlds than we do.

We are labeled needy, called drama ridden,  frequently shouted because Ma, she’s crying again!  We remember being loved, somewhere cherished and missing it sorely this time.  But too many neither know of love or close off the channel never wanting to know the pain again of not being loved.

On this Mother’s Day, to those bereft of arms, open yours, embrace those nearest and hold close the babies.  Let them be raised knowing the close presence of a beating heart next to their cheek.

It was an ancient belief that the Mother God would be the healing salve for reconciliation.  Be that Earth God to bring peace on this day.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey

Like Me. . . aged old friends. . . . . 

I had been asked what are my favorite books I go back to time and again.  Once there were friends and loves I phoned and chatted before my hearing deteriorated.  And rather than ask to repeat themselves, now my books become my old friends that I find just as refreshing as I did when first read. And without feeling guilt when I turn each phrase to catch their elusive meaning!

I reread and depend on eye sight and insight through lifetimes learned. Books now refresh thought and reveal themselves deeply as I too reveal myself.  There are contemporaries whose works are always timely.

The essays of Emerson and Thoreau speak to us all in varying degrees.  I say to him Waldo, I hardly knew ye. And Thoreau I admonish for the maxims told to those young who left their commitments to follow their dreams, their imaginations.

Accountability and shared work load was not yet in their lexicons. Authors and audience alike.  Yes, I know, I would spoil their fun.  I know.  Other shoulders carried the work while wild oats was sown; other backs were bent.  Forsooth!

Jane Roberts and the Seth books, whose talent was shared with those of her husband to produce controversial voluminous works causing protest lines around the publishing house.  Comfort zones were upset even then with new thought, yes.

While Doris Lessing and the Shikasta Series introduced those like me to evolution and learning throughout universes under the safe heading of science fiction so we did not have to explain why we danced with Spirits.

Susan Howatch with her Church of England  series told of earthy life and meanderings of those wearing birettas and long skirts  before the scandals of the churches both Catholic and Protestant and Frank Herbert with eloquent memory of his wife produced  the Dune books which my sons said Mother, these are your books.  Chapterhouse Dune was written I swear for me and they all are to this day.

These are my peer group I keep close to my chair.  These are old friends with whom I visit.  My newest visitor is Michael Talbot and his Holographic Universe which affirms for me my thinking since I came into this world without a putting place either for my memories or for myself. The others, the ones with worn out covers where I keep doing reference work, are my oldest friends,  my refuge. . . .along with my mentor. . .

• Refuge In Dreams . . .

In the beginning when I was young
and when I was very cold,
I took my mammoth skin
and drew it closer about me
and found refuge in dreams.                                                                                                           

Like a tourniquet,
it stopped the flow of life out of me.

Now I am old                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
and I huddle still deeper in my woolen wrap.
Closing my eyes, I discover
refuge again in my dreams.

And find it stops the flow of life out of me.  Again.                                                                                                          

More than a Hope. . . for earth. . .

I grabbed an old yellow tablet to write on and came across a note I had written when I was reading Return To Life by Dr. Jim Tucker.  The note read that observation determines the reality.  Measuring something, I wrote, creates a reality that did not exist before.

Now my  thoughts.  When I made note of that and forgot that I did, tonight (April 30, 2020) it triggered the following which made me find the book (right away!) Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. This undoes me because I have had no training in physics but in reading this in 2015,  I understood its meaning for me.

Subatomic particles once thought to manifest as waves.  Which for the following reasons they say should not be classified solely as  waves or particles.  But something (or stuffs) known as quanta.  Because the only time quanta manifest as particles is WHEN WE ARE LOOKING AT THEM!   (So when we measure a something and name it creates a reality it did not have before.  It opens a whole new world.

The comment in the book was not what we expect from the natural world but more from magic.   I am in awe that this was awakened in me, to make this connection the minute I saw my note. As I rummaged for the book I said in mind that this is what Michael Talbot said in Holographic Universe.  My knees go weak.

I have used this book as reference since first read.  It explains my world of me to me.  I knew where in the book this topic was.  In minutes I found it.  I have written that when we pray, think, converse in mind, we assume an Other.  This mind companion is our Divine Within, the highest and best we hold as our bar to match our lives to.  All actions, all thoughts, everything.)

I scribed. . .    ‘ We will ask of him how did you spend your days?  And man will say, I work at such and such and have accomplished great things.  But we will say, what did you think?  And what will man answer?  For the heavens know, do they not, what transpires in the mind of man.  

The heavens know.  To resolve issues which plague the heart is the work of man.  We pester the mind with that which has not been resolved and bring forward the issues until man feels possessed.  Try, we say, try.  Resolve them and bring some peace to your life.  But thought, that marvelous process which separates man from the unthinking and no vision creature,  when we see that man disparages this active tool which is his gift,  then heaven laments.

Thoughts will be the wings upon which man will fly.  It will be the culmination of a life’s work and there is nothing else.’

Please, I say, open the books and learn.  Peace will then be more than a hope for Earth.

Since I was a little person, I was conscious in an unconscious way that money was not available.  I remember once arguing with my mother  that it only costs a dime, whatever it was.  And the wise woman said when you don’t have a dime,  a dime is a lot of money.

So I wished for a doll with hair so my wonder was what could I do.  And we ate bread sometimes that came wrapped in yellow-orange cellophane.  So having experience in substitutions, I cut strips of the cellophane and curled it around a pencil and it stuck itself into curls.  I glued them on my bald doll and whoa!  I made curls.

I taught myself many things.  Some were primitive and still are with no innate talent. Some things I learned became quite good simply by practice. Never professional by any stretch of the imagination, but quite good.  Passable.  And they served me.

Like the small cupboard I made for my sweats by building a three shelf bookcase and then putting on shutters which served as doors.  Stained and sanded to complement other room items, it served well.

Some people are averse to substitutes.  Not the real thing they say, always reminding one that they are substitutes.  One can be patient for the real to come along,  but circumstances alter things,  friend Jan often said.  Priority was need and money unavailable.

When I began scribing, I learned that my night travels were welcome.  I visited other worlds and showed how I took what laid about and used in the making of something needed.  Ahhh yes, substitutes!  Whoda’ thunk it?  Except me because it was something I did.

In my Pewabic dream segment I appeared somewhere with a tile and showed the audience what could be done with things borrowed from a future source matched with things unused.  It is done all the time.

The wall quilt piece shown makes me pleased.  As my skills lessen in age I have used other muscles and organs as substitutes.  That word again!.  Fingers go numb because of nerves pressing uncushioned.  Hand and eye coordination is not swift.  Muscles atrophy.  I cannot hold a needle and thread and cannot bend easily anymore.

But like the little engine that could, yes I can, yes I can, my head sings new melodies.  And ideas blossom and keep me fed.  I cropped the quilt’s blue binding so as not to distract from the new materials I made with green scraps for the evergreens and blue for the home.

I am pleased with the free motion quilting background.  It took longer than formerly,  but as Governor Cuomo says all the time,  the new normal is now.  I did this, you can do your thing too.

As long as I breathe this rarified air of my blessed planet,  I will not be a kept woman, but still a contributor.  A small way to be sure,  but a big some thing for me!  Served with a crusty loaf of bread to make grown men cry. . . . .

The Greatest Love Affair. . .

If you are a front line worker, a miracle worker to all of us, and you are driving home at the end of the day, you begin to talk in the silence of your car.  You vent and cry with fatigue, with sadness, with curses and finally end your discourse as you turn down the street where you stay either with others or by your Self somewhere.

Or you are a worker, stocking shelves nearby your home or making change for the nitties that are crucial to the sanity of those who are in need and your mask is making your face itch and you wish for a shower away from lines of other itchy peoples.

But you are walking home in the rain and loudly talking.  You cry and the words are not elite nor sorted, just a wrench from a heart pressed for various reasons.  None of which speak to the fairness of anything.  No one notices your tears because in the rain everyone you pass seems to be crying.

But to whom are we talking?  For almost my 90 years I have held conversations in mind that were company for who I am.  And for only slightly more than 6 decades have seen my words of mind printed at first on paper and by self discipline on the monitors.  When did I become conscious of the argues of an Other and the solace of a companion mind in Conference?

It is what I call the greatest love affair ever we engage in.    

For when we reach the highest and best that we know,  that bar set for the highest mountain we can climb in our human skin, when we succumb to the intensity that has us roaring and venting, cursing and in great fatigue exposing our hearts in bas relief, that we are answered in like intensity by the Divine Within.

No respecter of social classes, but great respecter of caliber of effort,  of ethics, of belief that the Each is of supreme value regardless what is held to be the worth of the day.  The intensity of purpose will reveal the Who of who we are and we are assured to be more than the disheveled one we appear.

It is then we have knowledge born to be ours.  That we are companioned and never abandoned though this was lost to us.  The night embraces us but in the morning we take our posts to be accountable.  We never have the language to describe this affair of heart which only is alive in mind.

But we know now it is another pearl of great price.

Concordance. . .

The heart reaches out
in mute acceptance to that which is given.
It answers only that which
it perceives at its Source.

Its depth is mirrored by the very essence
of the soul’s reflections.

It wanders not among possibilities
but perceives also

the very essence of the mind’s abstractions. . . . .

(artwork by Claudia Hallissey)