And the Various Journeys Continue . . .

Poetic Interlude

This weekend Lady Love Lynn attended a yoga workshop based on Shri, a tantric word meaning love force/energy-beauty.

On the crowded bus today I was filled with it as I witnessed this and resonated so much with all the bounteous blessings lovely Lady Lynn, full of Metta and Shri, brings me, as expressed in this poem:

Shri-Energy

the elder

75 at least if a day

with frizzy fringe of grey-white hair

and bright blue, loud patterned shirt

looked back out the crowded bus window

at the church along rush-hour

Galle Road

bowed his head, lips murmuring,

and made a sign of the cross

at the next horns-jarring bus stop

a Buddhist monk, forty years his junior entered

the elder got up, devoutly bowed to the monk

offered him his seat

and held on tight to a strap as the bus

swayed and blared through heavy traffic

if I could have kissed his bald head I would

so grateful for his quiet reverence and service

also that I was relieved

of caustic, critical judgment

as overflowing so slowly

one joyful tear glided

down my cheek

Whooo, Whooo -- NOT #5

                                                            U.S. Army

So I'm in the Army now at Basic Ordnance Officers Course at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. If you consider the Chesapeake Bay as the asshole of the world, then APG is 40 miles up it. As an officer and gentleman  by act of fucking congress, it wasn't too bad a life. The classes were mostly mickey mouse, and I had somewhat of a new lease on life. I even excelled, coming in 2nd out of a class of about 100. I had more money in my pocket than I ever had, and the Army provided three hots and a cot. The Class VI Store and O-Club meant I could drink, top-shelf even, quite cheaply, shots of Johnny Walker Black and/or any beer I wanted at 10 cents a slug-a-chug. Despite much of my current disdain for the past thirty-five years of all things military, I was in those years very gung-ho, very much committed to the Kennedy ideal of "Ask not what your country can do for you, yadda-di-dadda-da." I had my Southern heritage guiding me, plus my Father had been a Naval Officer. More on this in a bit.

Turns out I met the woman who became my first wife and the mother of my two daughters, K., while at APG. Here's what happened. One of our gang, can't remember his name, rather a stuff-shirt, high-brow scientist type from Harvard or Yale, maybe Brown, went to a sock-hop down at Goucher College in Towsen, Maryland, about a 45 minute drive down the then new JFK Expressway. He made a connection with a young thang who had four close friends. The next weekend he brought four of his friends down with him to go on a quintuplet date. Problem, how do you sort out four young damsels with four young swains? No problem, if you have a deck of cards. Hey this is America, of course there is a deck of cards available. So we cut cards to pair the matching quartets of damsels with swains. I ended up with K.; I've always been unlucky with at cards, learned early on that not only do I not have a poker face, my dyslexia prevents me from counting cards much less remembering whose played what, where or when. I don't really remember what we did earlier in the evening, but we ended up in a college pub, and she drank me under the table. That should have been a clue. I have a vague memory of us making out with heavy petting in the backseat of P.'s car, a semi-customized white, '55 Ford coupe.

The rest of the couples hit it off swimmingly, became steady freddies. She apparently was much more taken with me, wanted us to keep dating. I wasn't really that interested but peer pressure persuaded me to invite her to the Basic Ordance Officer's Course Ball a couple of weeks later. The five of us couples rented a room in the Quality Inn Motel of Aberdeen. We went to the ball, and I got drunk; we all kept drinking and went back to the motel room. One thing led to another. K. and I ended up alone in the bathroom naked in the bathtub behind a locked door. There I lost my virginity, finally at age 24, while G. was pounding on the door yelling something like, "C'mon, Brinson, hurry it up; I gotta take a huge dump." Tres romatique.

So, we started dating. I was not impressed with her, did not really have any energy for her, even though it was the easier first date leading to heavy petting I ever had. And then we were actually doing it, all the way. I had no  qualms about sinning with her, either for me or for her. If I still had any energy for a one and one only love, I certainly didn't connect it with her. We were polar opposites, she Republican blue collar from Connecticut who worked on Spiro Agnew's campaign; me a faux southern aristocratic member of the progressive intelligentia. It was not one of those opposites attract thangs -- it was pure, unadulterated lust. I was getting some, and she was readily giving it. At Thanksgiving we went with S. and P. to Atlantic City where Susie's parents ran a cheap motel before the Casinos wiped out all of that business. I had a mystical moment alone under a chilling full moon communing with the ocean for the first time.

During the Christmas holidays, P. who had an Aunt in Cincinnati and I drove there for the holiday break between Christmas Eve and January 2nd. Drunk in one of my old haunts, on impulse I decided to see if I could connect with Carole, the young actress love of my life during my Freshman year who dumped me when she was cast opposite someone else. She was home from Grad school in theatre at Ohio State, or was it University?, one of the two. We saw each other and instantly renewed our soulmate connection, at least in my eyes. We spent a delicious several days together. Since I respected her, I didn't push making love. She was with someone else at school; I was with K. in Maryland. It was very bittersweet in a star-crossed lover's kind of way. I knew I wanted to be with her. I had great energy for her, but back at APG with her back in grad school, we drifted apart. She went back with her boyfriend; I continued seeing K.

I mentioned I was very gungho, very strac, wanted to do the warrior gig to the max. I did not like being an Ordnance Officer, so I volunteered to switch to one of the combat arms, infrantry, armor or artillergy -- Nyet, choose again young trooper, your 20-200 vision requiring you to wear glasses disqualifies you from being in a combat branch. Okay, then I wanna go to Ft. Benning to jump school. Welp, young trooper unless you go Voluntary Indefinite in which you sign a one-way contract with Uncle Sam no can do. No Sir, I am a US two-year citizen soldier. No jump school. Okay, well can I go to Vietnam? Absolutely, young trooper we are glad to send you to Vietnam, a hostile, guerrilla war zone as your first duty station as a supply officer. Huh? That's not too cool. Yup, a REMF -- as in rear echelon mother fucker. Not too gungho or strace being a supply fucking officer even in a guerrilla war combat fucking zone. So whereas I was second in the class in basic officer's course I was probably near second from the bottom of the class for my four week Supply Officer's Course at Fort Lee down in Petersberg, Virginia, during February of 1967.

While I was at Fort Lee, K. would either come down to Petersburg, or I would go up to Maryland, and we continued to hit the sheets, making like bunnies, taking absolutely no precautions whatsoever. After I was done with Ft. Lee, while I was on my 30 day leave before deployment to Vietnam, we spent a week together in Cincinnati. During that time she was a couple of weeks overdue with her period.

She left to go back to Goucher College in Maryland, and I left to go to Mississsippi to visit with the family. On the third or fourth day I was in Mississippi I got a call from her in a mild panic state, informing me that the rabbit had died; she was preggers. I did what any self-effacing drunk would do. I bought a 5th of Inver House scotch, went over to Jo-Jo's house, in the same swimming pool where several years earlier I had been smitten by Barbara, got thoroughly shit-faced, and came to the only decision I could make: I would marry K., legitimize our child, save her honor, and prevent my from having a paternity suit slapped against me in Vietnam, which would not have been too cool for an officer and gentleman, etc. etc. etc.; besides it didn't make no never mind because in my head, in my heart, I was going to Vietnam to die, cuz in '67-68 Vietnam for a 2nd Lt. was a pretty safe place to die. So I did -- left Jackson, got to Cincinnati, and instead of going west to visit friends in Chicago and then on to San Rafael to try to connect up with R., I went east back to Baltimore. K. and I were married in the Baltimore City Hall by a JP on April 3, 1967, and on April 5, 1967 I flew a big Northwestern 707 to Sea-Tac airport manifested for Vietnam.

Whooo, Whooo -- NOT #4

                                                           Post Grad at Xavier

So, okay, to continue with the Prologue before THE Love Story -- patience dear denizens of the divine, this is important stuff if for noone else than for me to reflect on where I have been to further appreciate and grok where gloriously I am most blessed to be . . .

Also, I think that as we are coming closer, by a scooch or two, to present real time I shall start referring to folks with only their first initial to add some decorum of respecting their privacy.

So, where was I? Opps, not quite yet, I just have to sit here with you for awhile and revel in the incredible gratitude I feel listening to Billy Joel singing New York On My Mind. Yes, I am in a New York State of Mind, and I'm Coming Home to make a life with lovely Lady Lynn, and I am so incredibly blessed to the max !~!~!

Okay, I left this tale off in the motel room of the D.C. hotel on the night that would have been my wedding night to R. The next several days I made my first trip to New York City, which has always been the Mecca of my mind. I loved it, but I was love forlorn, so after three or four days I sent myself a telegram saying I was needed for some emergency or the other back in Cincinnati to explain to my parents why I needed to leave the family several days early. I bought another engagement ring and being mostly broke hitched hiked back to Cincy, because I had to get back with R. and fix it. Turned out I got back just before R. was leaving to drive to Chicago to visit a friend; I went with her and during the long miles between both coming and going we talked and talked and talked. She allowed that she still loved me, but that she was just getting over being devastated, and no she would not accept my new ring and become engaged again. We continued "dating", even sinning, occasionally but whatever we may have once had was mostly gone. I remembered several weeks after I moved out that I had left the ring hidden behind one of the bureaus in the last rented apartment I had before I left Cincy. On one of my visits back in the 80s/90s I spoke with her on the phone -- she wasn't interested in seeing me. She had never married, but had had several long time relationships while concentrating on her career as the manager/owner of a Montessori School.

I bumbled along mostly drinking and running the theatre at Xavier and teaching two sections of Freshman English Composition and flunking out of grad school, but in the Spring of '66 I had a most fateful almost-affair, well it was an affair of sorts, but it was never fully consumated. The Spring production that year was an adaptation of the Oresteia trilogy by Leo Brady of Catholic University. Each play of the trilogy was condensed into one-act. I was cast as Orestes. Opposite me playing my sister Electra, was cast an older actress, in her early 30s to my early 20s, by the name of R. We had incredible pheromic energy. I remember with clarity how strongly I felt a connection with her when I first saw her across the proverbial room on the first night of tryouts.  The director my dearly departed theatre mentor and friend, Otto, picked up on our energy and directed our scenes together with a palbable incestuous subtext. We gladly played it to the hilt, shortly becoming involved off-campus outside of rehearsal times. We were not onstage during the first act and would spend it downstairs in the basement of the theatre, making out, our preparation for the work on stage -- yeah, right!

She was a delight. She was beautiful. She was the new love of my life. She was married with two children --OPPS. That kind of put a major-time dent into my ability to spin "one and one only fantasies." In fact, it devastated one of the rapidly fading myths of childhood/adolescent innocence -- my belief in the sanctity of the true, one and only, forever and ever relationship. I mean she was married to a very successful young researcher and MD in Cincinnati. They had a lovely home, two beautiful children, travelled all over the globe to conferences her most attractive and intelligent husband was a featured speaker at. Why, I pondered, usually late at night deep in my cups of Pffiefer's Ale, was she risking all of her very blessed and good life to dally around with the likes of a kid like me? On opening night we were downstairs doing our prep work when her husband and a friend found us. They were bored with the first act and wanted to see her. Opps, that was a rather sloppy moment. We never consummated the affair, only having long talks and brief make-out sessions in her Volvo station wagon while her kids played in the playground. The one time we arranged to have a long period together for a tryst with the kids asleep was in her home one evening when her husband was at the University teaching a four-hour seminar class. Not to be, no doubt picking up on the energy, he came home three hours early; I literally was sneaking out the back door as he came in the front. Very sloppy. I later found out that I was not her first dalliance, that their relationship had been dogged by her infidelities.

As delightful as externally this dalliance with R. was, it shot to shit one of my most precious belief systems about finding someday a true love. Several weeks after the end of the production, she moved to San Rafael, California, where her husband took a new position with the University of California, and they had another child. We corresponded for awhile but I have no idea whatever happened to her, to them.  I had intended to visit her on my leave before shipping out to Vietnam, but my destiny stepped in and changed that part of the story, which shall be revealed in due time.

Later that summer I had another dalliance with another married actress at a local semi-pro theatre I was Company Stage Manager for. One night, both of us very drunk, mostly passed out, I was unable to consummate this relationship also -- that old Shakespeare line by the Porter from MacBeth about wine provoking the desire but taking away the ability. Whatever hopes/dreams I had in one and true love was becoming more than a tad bit tarnished. As well, during this time, I was sinking ever deeper into the nihilism and despair of my alcoholism.

This was during the summer of 1966, when I started two practices that have remained with me ever since, writing poetry and keeping a journal. My first poem was an unrequited love memory poem to the lady actress I couldn't lose my cherry to. My journal entries were late-night drunken scribblings, mostly illegible now, quasi-prose-poemy free association of drunked misperceptions. Nevertheless, I believe that both writing poetry and doing the journaling were my Higher Self manifesting It(Him)self so that I would survive my negative spiralling into addiction, despair and self-hate.

Having flunked out of grad school, there was not much else to do but to go serve out my obligation as a ROTC commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. I took a long Greyhound bus trip to Baltimore, Md. to enter active duty at Aberdeen Proving Ground. One of the more humiliating experiences of my still rather young life took place there on the once infamous Block of strip joints and whore houses for sailors visiting the Port of Baltimore. Very sloppily drunk, slurring, no doubt unshaven and stinking form the long bus-ride, I had a "tea-girl" inform me in the spiciest of language that if I were the last male on earth she would never be with me in any meaningful way, even for my hard-earned cash. I thought my life was hopeless; I couldn't get laid, much less find a true love.

Absolutely Incredible

Link: t r u t h o u t - Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) | What If (It Was All a Big Mistake)?.

That this most perceptive article, which most effectively points out the inconsistencies inherent in our current AmeriKan democracy and asks many  politically incorrect questions, is authored by a Republican Congressperson from Texas.

No doubt he has moved up near the top of whatever Enemies List is currently being maintained in the White House, and I send prayers of Light-filled safety and protection both for him and any family members who might come under the gun, literally and figuratively speaking, of the Bushwhacks.

Hopefully, I shall get back this weekend to a continuation of the long prologue to Lady Lynn's and my incredible love story . . .

Lessons

Sometimes I have been known to miss the obvious, so the Kosmos in its ineffable wisdom has to insure that lovingly I get tapped over the head with a gentle brickbat on occasion to get my attention.

First it was our first fight that lovely Lady Lynn and I had, quite a challenging ordeal across 12,000 miles of time and space. She was rightfully upset by my sometimes overarching demand to carve in Kosmic stone every scintilla of our life together for the next ten thousand or so lifetimes. She told me via email in no uncertain terms -- known in some circles I have traveled in as tough love, and I mean to tell you, the Lady knows how to play hardball -- that she would really appreciate it if I could try to restrain myself simply to the wonderful contemplation and appreciation of the miracle of the NOW, to live in this day, that has graciously been channeled through us, instead of piling beyond the full moon projections about what our life shall be. Now this is a vaguely familiar concept I have been blessed to practice a day at a time for the past 32 years plus of Recovery. 

She was really upset because a couple of days ago, I had shared with her a vision I had that we would run marathons together. Then falling back in to one of my tattered, old very-irrelevant-as-to-who-I-am-today roles, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, I reneged, telling her in a phone call yesterday morning that I would still do most of my running by myself. Welp, she let me know to a tee and an “h” and an “o” and an “m” and an “a” and an “s” that not only didn’t she appreciate this, but how much she wished I would such simply be content with our wonderful NOWs instead of striving so strenuously to shape-shift the Kosmos, like Superman did in one of the sequel movies after Lois died, according to my script, which cut out any opportunity for us to collaboratively co-create a tango together. 

So, then I went to do my spiritual reading time, since early yesterday morning I had to get on the road quick-like to do an Indy Jones run down to some of the most devastated Tsunami areas. BAM, metaphorically speaking, one of the first things I read was this excerpt from Gary Zukav, “Relax into the present moment.” Next, from my morning reading of Pema Chodron I came across these words, “Now. That’s the key. Now, now, now. Mindfulness trains you to be awake and alive, fully curious, about what? Well about now, right?”

So, thinking I had “got it,” grateful for the gifts from all my teachers, especially Lovely Lady Lynn, I went out to do a quick run before I had to get ready for an evening meeting with the local government agent. I was in my typical fashion, reveling in the dusk light pounding the pavement a step at a time in my head with the wonder of my solitary NOWness, when this crazy man dressed in a sarong, barefoot and shouting caught up with me. He was definitely feeling no pain from apparently a copious amount of arrack he had consumed most of the afternoon. Through pidgin English and his liquor-spewed breath as we jogged along, I gathered that he was a former Sri Lankan Marine, who wanted to run with me, “a good man” because he once had been in top shape, but lately he has let himself go. I listened to him as best I could, nodding my head, thinking any moment now he would tire and fall behind, so I could continue my solitary pursuits of Now my way. Not to be, he dogged my every step, staying right with me, shouting a gibberish of cadences and telling me what good men we were. Even when I steadily increased my pace to a heart-thumping sprint, he stayed right at my left shoulder, a Sri Lankan shadow to my Caucasian self. I stopped, totally winded, and walked a cool-down to the NP house/office entrance. He took my hand, pumping it, profusely thanking me for a good run, telling me he would wait for me at 6:00 o’clock sharp tomorrow night, so we could run again and become good friends. 

Looks like I’ve got a running partner for the next six months to get used to changing my ways for the true partner I’ve been blessed with, lovely Lady Lynn, in running and all else. Each Now and Again, I discover new ways of just how wondrous the Kosmos we manifest truly is . . .

First Poem of the New Year

Of course it is a love poem for Lady Lynn . . .

I have seen

an osprey clutch a fish from the  Connequot River and swoop it up riht in front of me,
tail flapping droplets of fresh water on my windshield,  to fill screeching babie' belies
in a huge-limbed nest high up on the top of a telephone pole along Montauk Highway

I have seen

two eacles clasp each other's claws together and do a dosado around and around
until the centrifugal force pulls them apart, not once but twice, over Trincomalee Bay

I have seen

cormorants dive underneath the surging Pacific from high off a Big Sur rock to eventually
wriggle-surface far out in a choppy grey-green sea, then right away plunge back under

I have seen

terns, tiny specks of fluttering white and black, stop mid-air and drop like a live-weight
into pink-frothed Atlantic waves at sunrise off the Fire Island Lighthouse nude beach

I have seen

skeins and wavering skeins of scattered starlings fly in tattered unison
across Long Island Sound under cover of dusk light to blend into Connecticut's horizon

I have seen

thousands of snow white Canadian geese swoop and swirl in a high spiral over the Sonoran
desert to gather in a squawking, wing-flapping blanket in the middle of an oasis lake

I have seen

in he utter silence after a mad-minute of man's hell-bent obsession with self-destruction
pigeons flock in whirling safety  over the South China Sea

I have seen

several flocks of Jonathan Livingston Seagulls dart and play among the ships
on the way to Elephanta Island in the crowded harbor of Mumbai

                                            *          *          *

But never, Darling Lady Lynn, full of Metta, could I have ever imagined the soaring flights of fancy
your beautiful smile stirs within me again and again from your digital visage across this space
of time and distance as in wonder and awe you surely beckon me H O M E

                    January 22, 2005
                    Big Ship Ferry, Trincomalee Bay,
                    Sri Lanka

A Quick Shot of My Baby’s Pulchritude

Whew -- YES !~!~!

That's my version of Al Pacino's "Whoa Ha," from his lovely little movie a few years back, Scent of a Woman. This is a shot of lovely Lady Lynn, full of Metta, taken last summer by Deb, her sister-in-law on their way to Fire Island. No doubt in 185 days, or so, we shall be traveling there. I AM SO PSYCHED !~!~! Cool it, Brinso, just breathe . . .

I love Blonde, and believe you me me, she ain't no dummy either. She is a bundle of positive energy, delight and activity, spreading peace and love and joy and harmony throughout her Kosmos, which I am so eternally grateful now includes me.

Whooo, Whoooo -- NOT #3

Some of you have deduced that what has been happening to me is that I have fallen in L O V E, and you are 100%, even totally beyond infinity, right. Pass Go and collect $200 smackeroos, you have successfully grasped the brass ring. I am in rapturous L U V beyond my wildest ever most fantastically dreamed imaginings with a lady, who is the Alpha and Omega of all I have ever sought – again and again and again and again and, yup, again and again and again.

My name for her is Lady Lynn, full of Metta, and I shan’t keep the curious among you waiting any longer with bated breath -- here she gloriously is like the wondrous suns of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, each with their most special and uniquely delightful Light:

Isn’t she absolutely gorgeous?

But before we get to the wonder of our story, we have to deal with some preliminaries.

Prologue to THE Love Story

Yeh, yeh, and all that yada-da-yada-da stuff, I know it may be a tad bit self-centered, if not downright narcissistic, to refer to our story as THE Love Story. Can’t help it. Deal with it, or click away, perhaps like droves of others whose earth-side skepticism, arching your eyebrows, mutter, “Soul mates. Quaint, how 80s. Yuck, I’m outta here!” But if some of you are tweaked by the idea that in truth the only reality that actually matters is that Love Is, then similar to McDuff, “Read On.”

This is the story about a little boy named Tommy, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 50s, during the lazy, hazy, halcyon days before Freedom Rides and Nuclear Brinksmanship and Assassinations and Protest Marches and the Tet Offensive. This little boy ever since Patricia Sloan in the third grade has been Searchin’, like the Coasters old song, for his one true and only love forever and ever. Favorite songs of the time were Elvis’ “Love Me Tender” and the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have To Do is Dream.”  A most favorite flick of his was Blue Denim.

There was Judy in the 6th grade, a devout Southern Baptist with whom nevertheless he won the Jitterbug Contest in their Arthur Murray’s dance class. By the way, the class was located in his long ago lost, old mansion with three story high Doric columns, of a family homestead on State Street. He didn’t even know it was part of his family legacy until after he was away at college. Judy by the way dumped him when he converted to Catholicism a couple of months after their victory on the dance floor, a first experience with unrequited love. I guess it was okay to sin dancing, but going out with a Catholic boy was really some serious shit. Then there was Bridget and Karen, with whom he discovered the wondrous delights of soul-kissing, while attending St. Richard’s Junior High School. Hmmm, don’t think he ever mentioned that to Monsignor Chatham.

High School spawned Phyllis in freshman year, whose Daddy, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, was killed during the Normandy invasion. Virginia was an older Junior Miss, when he was a sophomore and beginning to shine as a star both on the football field and in school dramatics. He got drunk and puked down Dora Louise’s low-cut dress evening gown, partially in self-deprecating guilt that he had been the cause to stain her immortal soul during the Junior-Senior Prom, when he copped a feel of a whale-bone corseted breast. Finally, there was Barbara, a delightful vixen of a freshwoman, whose Momma nearly had him arrested for statutory rape, during their short romance the summer after his senior year before he went far off Nawth to Cincinnati for college. Lost on MeMacMojo laptop is a short-story he wrote about it. It’s a good thing for anyone out in the blogiverse who like him is of the persuasion that “Instant gratification takes too long,” a favorite Carrie Fisher quote from her screenplay Postcards From the Edge. He did link it in this  here blog.

The pattern from Judy throughout high school was virtually the same. He would meet a gurl, gurl, gurl, Tommy’s got a gurl, who would initiate the relationship, around which he would evolve a multi-year plan: finish high school, finish college, get a job, get married and live forever and ever and ever happily in marital bliss, subtitled it would then be okay to fornicate like bunnies. Inevitably, something would happen with the new found love; each would leave, abandon him, and he would barely exist in unrequited despair of lost love until the next one appeared. The only difference in the plans was that with each succeeding year the plan was one year less.

Come college, no pun intended. In his freshman year he fell hopelessly in love with a method actress named Carol, when they acted as the young lovers, Anya and Trofimov, in Chechov’s The Cherry Orchard, but she dumped him in the next production, an original musical, when she was cast as the ingénue, playing opposite the lead actor. From then on he was a devoted technique actor in the spirit of Sir Lawrence Olivier. Like Harry Chapin, there is a sequel later to this story.

From sophomore year through the summer after graduation he went and got engaged to Roseann, a perfectly jolly and delightful young lady, who was rather plain. Much as he tried, while exploring all manners of carnal delight except IT -- the actual act of the ole In-Out, In-Out routine -- about which they would dutifully and shame-facedly confess to Fr. Von K. each week in Pre-Cana sessions , when push came to his daily drunken shove, he couldn’t envision being married to her forever and ever, etc. So, several weeks before their wedding, after all the invitations had been sent out and most of the arrangements made, he broke the engagement. Really tacky. He spent an awful August night in a motel in Washington, D.C. with his parents and four younger sisters on the night he was supposed to have lost his virginity all the way. He tossed and turned and dreadfully sweated the long night away slowly into a grey, cloud-covered dawn.

Dat’s it for this episode. Maybe another later tonight. Certainly one tomorrow.

Whooo, Whoooo -- NOT #2

Several days ago I did a post entitled Whooo Whooo – Not in which I made mention of Richard Bach. Well, for the past several weeks I have been living in real live, totally living color and sound and smell and taste and touch every one of his novels 24 times 7, that’s 604,800 seconds of an incredible experience of the surest reality that ever exists anytime, anywhere – that reality is that only LOVE IS . . . 

Here is a quote from Bach’s Illusions shared with me by the other person in this reality:

"you are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.” 

Ah yup, indubitably I know this to be gospel, veda, torah, koran, etc. Truth, that’s right Sister and Brother, Truth with a big capital T. What Bach, as she adroitly also points out, doesn’t share is just how incredibly hard sometimes you have to work in order to manifest that wish. For the past number of years I’ve been working overtime sixty ways to Sunday, often full of despair, doubt and helplessness, lots of the time barely hanging on, only able to “act-as-if” through screeching gritted teeth. Welp, those awful times have "come to pass." Another reality has blossomed throughout my whole Kosmos.

So, be patient dears, in due time, as we 12-steppers are known to say on occasion, “More shall be revealed.” It’s one heaven of a story . . .

Once A Beautiful Church

Took a ride today down to one of the most devastated areas along the Eastern Coast, Vakari, that prior to December 26th was a beautiful seaside village with a picture perfect Catholic Church built by an American Jesuit from New York City, Father Francis (I think) Mayer, S.J. I always wanted to get a picture of it, but I never had my camera, or if I did the batteries were out. I had my camera today and the batteries were just fine:

Here is the plaque, listing the donors of what once was Fr. FX Mayer's Church:

The local Catholic priest in Mutur gave a homily and said mass in the Church about a month before THE EVENT. Here he can't quite comprehend the devastation of the church, where only a few weeks ago he preached and celebrated Mass:

A few folks we spoke with said the wave was over 30 feet high when it hit the Church and the seaside village:

Across the main road about 150 yards from the church was this cabinet with several of the vestment garments:

We had given a fella a ride several clicks from the Welfare Center, where the homeless refugees are temporarily being housed in tents. He pointed to an area of rubble a couple of hundred feet away and through pidgin English and gestures communicated that his family had all died there. All I could do was just be there with him in that awful moment, the stark reality of him reliving that awful memory, and extend as deeply as I could as much compassion from my heart as I could. He was noticeably under the influence of alcohol -- even in my thirty-third year of recovery, I don't blame him one tiniest whit.