The Diamond Island

For a long while I’ve been seeking an experience of The Diamond Island. That is, a mountain peak that exists within my inner world. Now I see that I’m already on the mountain. The things I was looking at were reflections of what was already there.

The black hole through space is a journey through the maelstrom of destruction, where what is true comes out the other side to a new existence. In the process many things are redeemed and made clear.

I’ve been fighting my ass off, struggling with opponents much stronger than I think I am. Both personal and collective engagements with the realities of my life, with different obstacle courses and challenges to pass through and overcome.

There are mysterious sources of power within myself I don’t fully understand. Yet somehow they come through for me, get me to the next pit stop and show me ways to push the limits of my being when I feel I haven’t any more to put into the work.

I’m listening to the personalities that help me run this psychic mechanism I use to get myself through the world. I have a lot of work to do there—people are unhappy with some of the stances I’ve taken and the way I go about things.

I don’t know where the UFO will land, other than home. Part of the stress I feel is in not knowing how things will end up, as the process is very much a push and pull in multiple directions at once. It will lead things to the right path, but it’s just one of those things you can’t predict until it happens.

Going over how to make things that are important to me now that I’m ready. Lucerna’s Mother-Mary-Personal-Helper training has given me something to focus on. Music helps me understand, but the practice is going to be a long one.

Out of the sea comes a nourishing goblet. Learning to drink from this source of refreshment, cultivate myself before I can encourage others.

I see that I do have an effect on the world around me. The places I find are brought out of myself. The things that move or are demolished are of a mind from me. Maybe they were messed up? Maybe things that reappear are okay now? The things I find will not be wrong.

The humming of bees, the helping of bees, the signs that bees are coming to the forefront of consciousness. This is important stuff.

The realization that the land inside me needs a brute conqueror king to bring the bounty out. My self image doesn’t like this figure, yet I manifest him anyway regardless of my hang-ups. To resist is only to become dishonest and incompetent.

A revelation of my personal destiny comes into view, right in front of me all this time. The signposts and helpers were there in abundance showing me the way: Imagination, family, and masculinity are the core of my being.

Movement and non-movement are also a part of this. I need to become more physical in my activity so that I can be at rest more wholly. A king needs a traveling the realm meditation to do his work properly. I must have been blind not to see this, yet again it happened with or without my knowledge. Better for me to see it now and make it a part of my conscious life.

I’m saying yes to many many things. I’m also learning to say fuck off to a lot of things I don’t need anymore.

Here is the PDX Gingerbread Witch Spider Cookie that I ate.

Sickly sweet with a hint of spice, but definitely not nice. I got a small stomach quese-out after eating her. You’d have to be on serious business to eat a cookie like this.

Looking at one of my old tarot card paintings, I see the word “haiaa” written randomly in the folds of the volcano. Searching for the word on the Internet, the first thing that comes up is that in India it’s a word for “become”.

There’s a great horned owl outside. He’s established a territory in the woods around the secret treehouse I’ve been hiding in. Identified him and what he was doing through the sounds he makes.

Lots of woodpeckers too. Pileated, Northern Flicker, and two others I can’t identify yet. They like the food put out for them, and the plants all around on the porch that make the feeding seem safe.

I obtained a Bee Adventure Kit for the mason bees and put it together. It sits outside amongst the plants waiting for arrivals. A friend of mine also donated a bee hive to a struggling family in my name. More beekeeper experience points.

Lunar full moon in Scorpio releasing so much supportive energy towards me that I felt extra-energzied. Frankie was an absolute terror, escaped the treehouse and had to be recaptured—her favorite game. She needed lots of attention and a walkies to finally settle her down to the OMG level.

Got some horoscope clues about my life destiny. Very strong indicators that what I want match up with the things I’m here for. Getting there is the part that’s unknown to me. Clear goals, not so clear path.

Wore my Shiva message bracelet in the wooded park today, as K and I made our rounds along the crowded trail. I don’t want to be destroyed, but I’m also feeling like the trap I’m still in is greater than my abilities to escape from.

I don’t know what comes next, exactly. Now that I’ve faced my fears and vanquished my dragon, regained myself—deliverance is coming. The form it will take, still unknown. Brontosaur, my trusty UFO, flies on towards home. Soon I’ll know what comes next!

I’ve mentioned the illustrious Pizza of Doom before. However, I don’t think I’ve actually ever posted any pictures of the magnificence that is summoning your own personal pizza to serve you good tasting satisfaction. Well, worry no more my illustrious 1d6 non-bot readers!

I have yet to try the recipe since moving out to the Pacific Northwest wildlands, where bigfoots roam and beers beg you to drink them. How will the water and climate affect the dough rise and ultimate consistency? The cooking, if you allow for an oven variance, how long will it take and how will the crust turn out? Questions galore that refuse to be put off any longer!

I must practice my kung fu in a new way and in anew time zone cooridnate, solar systems are go and wooo!

Luckily, I am able to assemble the ingredients in an appealing manner. Pepperoni and cheese are whatever you can scare up, but because there is the Tillamook cheese manufacturing power in this area, i am able to score a grated cheese combo attack of mozarella, provolone, and parmesan all in three! Yowza. Feel the power.

Oh, and bonus. The package has enough to cover the pizza. Those other cheese conglomerates, always short you cheese such that you can never quite cover the mega-mutha. May they roast in profits hell. You see, these little details matter! One must always have access to the proper goodies. Every small ingredient, physical or mental, affects the space time continuum of crafting.

Came out well too. I like it when the ingredients sink nicely and the rim forms a good crispy final bite to a slice. Sauce was iffy since I had to go with the tomatoes I could and the pre-cooking of the sauce is a random variable I have not compensated for in the phase variance. But still tasty. I ate it. K ate it. Our tummies thank us.

But wait, there’s more! We also went picking triple crown sweet blackberries and brought some back for pancake toppings, general snacking, and cobbler. Alas, I could not translate my cobbler recipe so I had to crib from the internet. More work is to be done, yes I need to meditate on my cooking powers. But the topping was cooked well, and the blackberry sauce was delicious.

This thing will not last the week, I tell you. Iron rations for dungeon adventures in the Cascade range!  Eeegah, prepare for doom.

I want to thank Birdman for taking over hosting duties for a while. As it turns out, I’ve been consciously occupied with outside events of personal importance that have allowed for very little in the way of inward journeys. So, thank you Birdman, you have been a true friend in keeping this haven for me while I was away.

What happened?

K and I moved to the Pacific Northwest. This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time.

I quit my job, we donated or recycled a bunch of our belongings, and declined to renew our lease. We packed up Gamera with some luggage and a pair of cat carriers (one medium and one small), and then anything that didn’t fit in Gamera went inside a huge POD.

Loading the POD and emptying out ten years of stuff from a three story townhouse was a supreme ordeal. You need mad Tetris skills and nerves of steel from having studied several episodes of the TV show “Hoarders.” It took 38 hours, 27 of which was straight-on-till-morning, without sleep.

After making sure the PODzilla transport arrived (they had tried to call us to confirm, but our phone was already disconnected), we loaded the three cats Michael, Frankie, and Blink into their carriers. K and I made sure they had plenty of water, litter, food, and comfy blankees to sleep or throw up on.

With star charts in the crevices of the seats and jammed to the gills with food, bedding, clothes and computers we left Reston Virginia behind and embarked on our galactic voyage across the country. We still hadn’t had any sleep, but we were determined to reach our first stop in Toledo, Ohio.

Sometimes a heroic effort is necessary to break free of the octopus of the past.

We got stuck in traffic. The DC Foundry has a strong gravity well that can be formidable—in this case we spent an hour going 2 miles before we managed to escape. The temperature was brutally hot, but the AC held and the cats managed not to freak out until we were actually out of the jam.

Blink needed some calming medicine and the others a little petting. This was an adventure they had never encountered before! Then we were off again.

I don’t know where I got the strength and the will to go on, but I drove through the night until we reached our goal.  Despite the hotel directions being incomprehensible we found the place.

The hotel staff allowed us to check in late and stay in past check out (bless their hearts) so we could get a few hours extra sleep. 44 hours is a long time to go without sleep, let alone move like a beast and then drive ten hours.

The cats rolled with it.

Then, every day the same: Get up, pack the stuff and then load the cats, check out, get breakfast, gas up, drive to the next stop. Des Moines (Iowa), Cheyenne (Wyoming), Ogden (Utah), Boise (Idaho), and then Portland (Oregon). Six days of travel and full of danger and hilarity.

I didn’t know if I could drive for such long periods of time. That was always something my father did, and did with great skill and stamina. So in a way I have made my contribution to the Drive Yourself Crazy Club of which Ferguses are said to be members.

There is something of a meditation in having to be alert and discerning for endless hours of monotony. The body adapts to the external demands that the mind serves to navigate.

If there is one insight I come away from, having been 2800 miles of distance through the United States, it is that the country is a huge resource extraction wealth grab for the rich.

Corn fields in Nebraska as far as the eye can see, making corn syrup. Beef fields in Wyoming making ground beef for the franchise wars. Refineries processing coal for energy. All connected by roads and truckstops, with a slight nod to tourism (if you can afford it). All fenced in and owned or dominated by big business, with no signs of civilization or individuality anywhere.

When the cheap oil runs out and the diesel begins to strangle the truck lines all of this will die, blow away, leaving ghost towns and blighted landscapes full of nitrates.

It’s already happening—I could hardly believe how much construction was going on with the roads. A third of the roads I drove were in a state of repair, traffic redirected to a single lane for 25 miles at a time, again and again. And the roads that were new were composites—where is the asphalt? The quality of the roads is going to cheap materials as it breaks down faster, talk about surreal.

We passed a lot of wind farms, and that’s great, but you aren’t going to be running trucks or building roads or making fertilizer out of wind power. To see this country propped up like a house of cards with all wealth going to rich institutions with no thought of what comes after is to witness the triumph of mindless evil over decent human life.

As K and I drove through this desolation of self-destruction we encountered the elements. A thundering torrential rainstorm in Iowa that would become a roaring hurricane a few days later sweeping the east coast in a fury, destroying phone and power for millions.

The smoke clouds from the south as we drove through Wyoming were the beginnings of the massive brush fires that would destroy countless homes in Colorado, of a size to stagger the imagination in its scope. We drove through areas where the fire had burned everything to one side of the highway and then gone out when it met the road.

Some fires still blazed in their enclosed firetraps. I thought we were passing through a strip mine, when I realized the black earth was cinders covering the landscape of boulders that remained after everything else had perished. This is the future—nature crushing us back into the savage garden from whence we sprang.

Just remember, global warming is only a liberal hoax!

The vision is a horrific one, and beyond my small power to affect—yet I still ask what it is for and I will to will Thy will in my transformation. I shall remember this and express my own personal potion when the time is right, for do I not also contain a small spark of fire inside me, a thunder being holding a candle alight?

Then we reached our destination. It was as if we had stepped through the protective mists of Lothlorien, where some small craft, healing, and knowledge is preserved.

We stayed at a Buddhist retreat run by one of my oldest and dearest of friends, allowing the cats to stretch their legs and us to remember a little of what it means to be human beings. Eat, drink, walk, recover—our journey done and the real work of building a new home begins.

Our apartment is small, but perfectly placed for us to begin again. Everywhere are trees, ferns, lichens, mosses, and birds. There are secret and hidden places for me to discover new ideas and form new substance in the world.

As I attended college here, I went to the reunion to witness and regard the connections to the past that still shape my life today. There are ceremonies of the soul that cannot be shared, but of which there is great sensation and emotion pouring out into one’s life.

My old life is gone, destroyed by a thunder-fire storm of psychic change. I am nothingness, out of which may come the dawn.

The Celtic new year has just gotten underway, and here I am a little dazed at the last year of activity. Never mind all the nuclear meltdowns spewing radiation from afar, east coast earthquakes that feel like a jackhammer wedging of earth, hurricanes of doom missing by a few hundred feet, and rainfall soaking the loch above levels I’ve not seen since I can remember. The external world has been an expression of an inner volcano clearing its throat for an eruption.

Building a UFO can seem a little like a Noah’s Ark project at times like these.

Internally, all my life energies have gone into deep, sweeping currents rushing through the earth. I’ve had to get by on emergency life support and reserve warp only. Right at a time when I’ve been fighting a lot of battles on the home front. Lucerna’s kung fu lessons have basically kept me alive long enough to adapt to the transformational energies going on. The last year has essentially been panic and fear, dialed way up for sustained periods of time. The blinking and beeping lights on the emergency panel have been loud and overwhelming.

Thank goodness for the life support music from UFO girl!

In other news, it ain’t just me. Hek-sistah X is off on a retreat to re-visit places of great meaning to her, Hexe the Incorrigible is recovering from illness, and Alexi is busy fighting for his dream in a new land. The Quest Station is full of notes and doodles galore, all around adventure is ON THE GHOD-DAM AIR.

The garden is in shut down procedure, cats are in snuggle mode, and the honeycomb hideout and killer bees are settling in for the long winter. And it’s going to be a doozy—ran into a wooly bear and it had no orange stripes, which means you better be stocked in the larder and armed with plenty of anti-ice-weasel traps. Ol’ winter wolf has reared up dramatically and her howl is driving away the last of the summer lifeforce. Batten down the hatches and brace for impact at your stations of the cross, icy depth charges ahoy.

I made sure to give out lots of candy to the monsters dressed as humans and the kids dressed as monsters, while I still have candy to sacrifice.

I helped the bees.

The killer bees who came to rock me been wintering over and building strength.  As the spring rains of radioactive doom spill out over the land, they been buzzing slowly into hot activity, like a magma swarm of super-charged sparks under intense pressure.

All they needed was a shelter from the mindlessness of humans caught in their repeating basic mantra of bad brains programming. The killer bees grow stronger in my mind; can’t help but feel a little like a king bee, if only in a small way.

I helped more bees.

Since I decided on becoming a beekeeper, I figured I ought to start at Level 0 somewhere.  K ordered this hang-able bunch of cut bamboo wrapped and stapled together, and I put it outside for mason bees to find a home.

Those bees are rover bees, wanderers and nomads without a hive. Heh, pretty cool. They’re all over the place, but you never notice them because they come in so many shapes and sizes not always resembling the humble honey bee.

K had her doubts, but I stubbornly insisted on getting started. Next thing I know, bees! Gathering their pollen for their little larvae and mud to seal up the little nursery capsules.

She was so excited by my success that she gathered up some bamboo and created a makeshift home bunch herself.  Next, she took a block of wood and drilled holes in it.  All these things were hung in a place so as to avoid the rain and get regular sunshine (warmth and dryness being key).

Okay, so it’s like six or seven sealed nurseries now. Very small results, but still so exciting!

Started looking up YouTube videos of beekeepers, and K tuned me into the top bar method of raising hives. This looks awesome. In particular, the video of the dude installing a queen without gear and only a pipe for smoke while his kids watch strikes me as incredibly brass.

It’s a preview to get me excited about one day being capable enough to help the bees. Yes, the honey is a benefit—I am thinking of myself at least a little. The satisfaction of exploration and experience, however, is what draws me. I must know more about bees!

And I will. Muah-ha-haaa!

So, what’s going on in doomsville? Been a while since I took a seat and rapped on the corner side here. The menagerie is alive and well, if at times it seems to have sprouted wheels and is sighted all about town.

I’m working on book two.  Book one is in a final stage of transformative elation text-wise; I promise to have the Gimmie Stuff page updated as soon as that is complete. Also working on a cover for the souvenir physical version.  Once that’s done I’ll look into converting for e-book files. My brain stem is acquiring all manner of new knowledge during this feisty process of refinement!

Seems like the planetary forces have been all stirred up.  Meteor showers, solar flares, floods and earthquakes.  Hek even on the metaphysical plane we got Cardinal Climaxes lined up, not to mention a heavy dose of psychic interference from all manner of weirdzo dimensions and denizens.  I’m having to expend a lot of mental energy keeping my health and my attention up to snuff.

The summer is a scorcher over here in the central wastes of indecision land. The garden is taking a lot of supply runs to keep going. Those bio-nutrient counteractants come at a high price in mosquito bites, sunburn and poison ivy, let me tell you! Onions, potatoes, basil, and tomatoes are bringing in the reinforcements in small amounts; hey whatever margin of survival we can manage we will. Corn, sunflowers, and peppers bringing up the rear.

The cats are in hyper reorganization mode, which is good. No news is good news as they say. As long as they are able to keep the hydroid bombers at bay with lazors, hey that’s good pattern.  Michael has a new nickname though: Tarball.  He’s big, he’s fat, and he needs to protect you from yourself by laying on you until you get the picture. Is this what Mad Max survival has been reduced to? No cool car chases here, just scavenging eroded out gas tanks on hulking wrecks, hoping to score some ten year expired dog food.

The crummy spaghetti and stir fry recipes we’ve been working on have been refined to our tastes. It’s helpful to have new fall backs we can hit the automatic switch with and get something to eat without panic. Have to say its a success. Though we still need more do-fers in our bag of tricks to make it more complete a meal plan. Still, anything that is cheap and easy and healthy is good. Keeps us out of the McFood troughs.

Long drawn out patrol while repair and reprogram procedures are refined and worked on. Lots going on in the furnace, just no heat yet in the hallways. The trans warp warm up takes a while.

My dear friend Kim-a-roo was working on a garden project this summer.  Part of that involved what is often referred to as “busting sod”, or digging up the earth and turning it over.  Mixing it up.  Break open the ground and serve it notice that you intend to practice a conscious relationship with it for a specific end (which itself is a push-and-pull process like the Chariot of the tarot).

There’s a cost involved.  It’s hard, back-breaking work if you want it done right.  The earth reserves the right to do the unexpected, and test your resolve.  Push and pull.  Sweat and toil.

Our planet has withstood comets, the rumble of it’s plate-like skin shifting, volcanic ejections of the turbulence deep below, radiation, asteroids, gravity and the solar wind.  Titanic, goddess-level stuff that obliterates us on a sublime level.

But down to the human level, in the earth are countless hidden things, ideas in the form of treasures or forgotten objects.  Thoughts and feelings stored for later, traveling through time to emerge down the line for an encounter with a human consciousness.

So Kim-a-roo starts digging up all sorts of crazy artifacts from the recent past in her yard.  The most striking to me is a red plastic goat, likely a toy part of a farm or animal set.  She takes a picture and I bug her to let me share it with you.  This is a little bit of a sideways thanks to Xtine, who’s hooked me up with the goat of the week.

I have a yellow version of this goat (many of my old toys from the ancient days are still intact), which like the picture of me as a young wiselet I promised Xtine is “somewhere” in my dimensional storage chambers.  At some point I’ll lead these things out into the light for all to see.  When the moment is there.

Kim-a-roo is breaking ground in her own life, building a family, starting a garden both inside and outside.  Doing the real deal, push-and-pull, sweat and toil, getting permission to know what the momma knows and discovering the earthpower secrets inside herself.  Hard core goat stuff, Saturn stuff, pan stuff.

Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr pulling the chariot.

Carl Sagan in the Cosmos series talks about life on earth as examples of matter becoming conscious.  Through us, perhaps, matter is witnessed in forms that might never reach a moment of experience.  The tyranny of objects is that they wish, through us, to be used and reckoned with.  We are the (perhaps unseen) agents of their object-existences.  And they provide for us a concrete fact with which to work out our projections.

Kim digs up a red goat because that’s where she is, doing the work.  She shares her experience online and I pick up on it because I love earth secrets.  I mull over the significance for several months and then it comes to me.  Red is passion, fire, innocence, trust.  Goats are a pure animal or a diabolic one, depending on belief, but they are a magnificent creature worthy of respect.  It occurs to me that Kim has dug up a Yule Goat.

The Yule Goat is associated with making sure all is well, that people are doing what they ought to live their lives.  This is similar to Santa Claus making a list and checking it twice.  How cool for her to find such a wonderful ornament, a toy from the past to delight us in the present!

An unexpected trickster goat out of the earth to be sacrificed and rise again, to ensure that we see another return of the sun.  A holiday season present from the earth reminding us we have work to do in the year ahead, that there is much healing, crafting, and learning to be done.  For we are in the Celtic New Year in one sense, about to experience the time of the year when this world and the unseen world have a party, disguises which unmask us.

Mehhh!

Tomato canning season is upon the clan once more.  We’ve been shifting strategies over time.  The most significant to date has been the staggering out of the bushels.  Rather than do 6 in one fell swoop, struggling to finish the tail end before they turn to mush we do them in rounds.  1 here, 2 there.  Takes longer, but we get to rest in between cycles of canning.

Well, now we’ve upgraded the process significantly, with the Norpro Sauce Master Foodstrainer.  Before, we had to boil the tomatoes, scoop ’em into a bowl, and while still hot skin and slice the little hot coals.  That’s all ancient history now.  Just dump in the hopper, crank twist, and the pulp and juice comes out into the bowl.

Skins and seeds are left behind, and the jar gets filled with puree.  No need to open a jar and dump it in the blender first.  This stuff is raw material nutrient plus, mutha-scratcha!  It’s a little disconcerting to see a major part of the equation completely removed.  No more need to develop asbestos hands, no more nicks and cuts on the fingers from handling a knife willy-nilly for days on end.

I’d say that easily we’ve cut our time requirements in half.  The boiling of the filled jars still has to take the time it does, but now we can move the loads along without any delay due to not having enough pulp on hand to do a load.

Oh, man, and the delicious wonder of having a tasty treat in storage in the winter.  It’s awesome, being able to open a jar of tomatoes as fresh as harvest day, popping the lid open with a snap.  This is what it means to do honor to the fruits of the earth.  And all those skins and seeds?  Oh yeah, compost baby, microbes will be getting busy to-night.  Down the line for next year’s garden, oh you know the earthworms will be eating good on next year’s menu Hek-yeah.

I wasn’t going to post this one. Sometimes what I cook up, trawl out of the nets for a glimpse and witness in the wild woods is a little too personal, somewhat disturbing, or not ready for prime time viewing. This one skirts the edges, perhaps in need of a twist and turn to the spoon, a light touch on the strands, or a respectful pretending not to see quite what one sees in the shadows.

I mean, maybe I make it look easy. This dancing through the darkness of the other world for fun and Hek of it, with a slight hope that what I find might be of use to the larger us of us. Sometimes you have to show mercy to the unknown, and throw back what you catch. Generosity is required when one is immersed in such matters. That quality requires a foundation of focus, else things turn to goblin gold (that is, sand and bones) in the light.

“Don’t turn around,” says the scary voice of our dragon enemy-forward slash-instrument of destiny, “there might be something behind you.” Can you dig the Behinder? It creeps up from the past and jack moves you. That horrific aspect of yourself that makes sure you don’t escape the sins of your past. But oh-ho, without sin there can be no redemption. Or so I heard from a wise man dressed in red and offering me a get-out-of-jail-free card if I would only confess.

I confessed for real, and got that card. But as surely as one can’t buy redemption for the price of one’s soul, knowing isn’t always the same as understanding. I still had work to do.

Like getting down with the psychic planting of community seeds. We do this thing—leave seeds in the psychic ground of the people we meet. When the time is right, those full bore crops call to us to complete the cycle. Maybe this is too complex for how life really is. I mean, who can keep track of most of the impressions we make on people?

Maybe the folks we make impressions on do it for us. It’s a complex, social-contract thing that might seem complex, but which is really easy. Because that’s how we’re made, how we’ve become made. And we don’t know what seeds people are carrying. It might not be for them at all, it might be for us, and handing it off helps them move forward in whatever strange winding pathway they choose to explore.

So what the Hek am I doing carrying all these seeds for other people? What kind of reality am I experiencing where I have ground for people to drop by and plant a few? Am I a peddler, wandering about with a huge backpack on my shoulders, plants galore growing out of it, my hands full of all-you-can-eat seeds?

I have a few secret entrances here, so I’m going to pry one open and meander through a while so I can make sense of this one.

It’s irrational, this watering and fertilizing of other people’s burdens in the deep tunnels of the sideshow life. What’s it got to do with me?

Everything. I want to scream EV-RY-THNG, but that’s just blowing off steam that isn’t mine. Hek, who says the plot I’m standing in is even mine? What if I’m just the lamp showing people where to try?

Past the wind-swept tunnels of hillside regurgitated youth I roam, until I find the flowering I’ve been seeking. I don’t know whose backyard plot I’m trespassing on, or even if I haven’t gone in a circle and ended up back on my own immediate brain-garden.

You always return to yourself. Where else would the fruits of your own soul come to light? I’m thinking you have to take care of your own business, with a mindful realization of the selfishness yet still able to be yourself. Hard stuff to take care of our business, when so many outside demands and inside eruptions distract us. It’s a balancing act.

I got gardening to do. So I head over to the plot. Where the weeds are driving miss daisy crazy and the ground is making me feel full effect. The big tomatoes are all huge and green, but still not turning, even after a ferocious, record rainfall yesterday.

Let’s see. There’s a gray, mole like rodent thing moving through the plants and over to the horseradish to hide. Until I water that area. See, I keep a section open for the weeds to run free, just because I’m crazy like that. Bermuda grass, thistles, morning glory spiral pests—they all get to play in that plot.

I spot a spider with an egg sac clutched below its abdomen, migrating to the next safe zone. Gotta stop at the intersection and let her pass. A carpenter bee takes some time to examine the weak spot of my wooden border. Yellow finches fly overhead looking for physical seeds to eat (physical hunger needs a physical food, spiritual hunger needs…you get the idea).

An elder ladybug of many spots shows up, hanging out on a thistle leaf. I move aside a wooden board to hand-scrabble some earth and find myself face to face with a blackish-crimson, squishy salamander. Whoops, that’s somebody’s home, gotta make course adjustments.

I leave the critters to their own devices and dig up some earth, coming across several rocks. The plot is far from having been cleared of obstacles. Rocks are like storage batteries. They hold minerals, particles, nutrients for us until we need them. Likewise, they hold truths for us until we need them. I feel bad putting them into a pile to be tossed into the woods when I’m done.

I pick a bunch of small cherry tomatoes that are definitely done. The smaller fruits are ready faster than the larger ones I suppose. As I pick these gifts I stare back at the plot where the weeds grow taller than me.

I remember last year, a woman working on the plot, trying to get her two sons to help her. She’s serious, striving, taking care of business. That year she got a lot of great peppers and pumpkins. The sons are all bored and squirming, as if this is the worst thing in their lives they have ever had to endure.

Funny thing is, I know what those kids are feeling. I remember when my mom dragged me over here and made me help her bust sod and fill water jugs. I was like, why do all this work when we could just buy it at the store? Complain, fuss, moan and resist. Yet, here I am decades later plunging head first into the struggle of my own free will to snatch a smidgen of something worthwhile.

Seeds planted, full bloom.

I talked like that plot was a graveyard of those who tried and failed. But for all I know, the two-second look of encouragement I gave those kids, the chitchat I had with the mother, placed seeds in a plot not visible. An appreciation of something difficult for its own sake. Or they might pass those seeds along to someone who needs to have that experience.

We’re pollinators of psychic flowers like dat.

My mom drops by and gives me a bunch of tomatoes from her plot. Overflow procedure, too much to use. Same here. I got my hands full of little tasty morsels. I’ll bring them into work, where I know a bunch of folks will revel in the gift. People need what we generate. Generosity, as we march along the weird road of understanding.

I mean, yeah, the seeds that are exploding in you right this very moment. They’re going to last a brief while or they’ll go dormant and come back next year, but it’s a cycle. Down into the dirt again. Is that any reason not to water yourself? What flowers, what fruits of your life are you hiding under a bushel because of the crows you grant power to?

Let yourself grow, to fill the mammoth form you inhabit. There’s a bursting forth right this moment, having been laid in the ground with care or scattered carelessly, but ready for you to connect the dots. And you have, you just don’t want to admit it.

You know about the special bonus plants right?

What if your harvest is the one that gives others the margin of survival?

Or gives you the margin of survival?

Some people deposit crops in you because it’s their quest. What, you thought it was just some fed-ex XP thing they had to do? Yeah it was, and who knows who designed their adventure. Look around your immediate psychic hang-out. Stuff is growing that you have no clue what it is. Some people dump a load on you, and it’s fertilizer man, you just got to roll with it. Other times you’re so messed up it’s God’s good humor and a wheel of fortune as to whether you let anything sprout.

One things for sure, yesterday is becoming today and tomorrow. It’s in yur plot growin yur foodz.