Great Brainwashing EEE Gads it's effective

I had a friend tell me recently of the following story. It was some years ago, she was at a big concert, one of those dusty arena-style festivals with several bands lots of sun dirt and expensive beer. The kind that makes you want to almost believe that you are free and can go go go in this eternal moment and that indeed, this eternal moment is one of which you do not have to let go….Or maybe it was all the acid, which by the way was an essential part of her story….so anyhow here she was, tripping, and they—her and her guests in tow—had just settled down into their spot to start to indulge when the giant tower of sound in the middle of the arena before them suddenly cast on in a dismantled if not harrowing glow. A cartoon was being broadcasted on a screen that was part of the soundwall’s several-storied side. What astounded my friend, as she watched in glued seduction, was the way the crowd simultaneously reacted: heightened in senses as she was, she and her buddies slackjawed in awe watched as the entire mass of thousands in the field below literally all turned slow-motion style and as one, as if inextricably linked to the television sound, surrendered for just a moment all consciousness and motion and ability to let go.

It was a South Park episode on the screen, one of the first, and Jesus was standing there in his million-pixilated animated glory. The crowd was aghast and as One….worshipping that which brought them all surrendered, to a Pause, just for a moment. So powerfull was that great giant wall of sound.

It gets me to thinking. I don’t have TV of any kind, and haven’t for some time(ok at Anngar we did have three channels). It’s always funny to me to see the subtle reality-manipulation people willingly and daily submit themselves to when for example, like today, I end up in a place that’s under the influence of the giant dancing blue screen. I am writing right now from the car dealership where CNN is on go go go.

“Nothing that has been substantiated,” says this woman all grimfaced and poor-souled. She is talking about reports that a terrorist threat had come to NY’s subway in September of this year. Nothing has been substantiated. Nothing except a great giant dose of subconscious fear now, thanks Lady to you! And on the busiest travel day of the year!

Seriously!?!? Seriously do people give their power away to a freaking metal mechanism like this? To these pitiful spirit hungry talking heads? Awwww people, don’t you get it? What you focus on you create. And what you resist, especially, persists.

Awww, so be it than, Poor Americans. Poor poor consumers. No wonder we are so, in these moments, down-trodden. So be it then, I say. Maybe looking at the floor, looking so grim, will be what it takes to get you all to finally look within.

I shake my head.

Then say, Amen. If this is life, so be it. I, on the other hand, shall choose great-full exception.
Or, if done as choice, it's not exception, is it? Awareness, maybe. Or just luckiness I suppose?

Great List of Things to Be Grateful for cont.
23. My health, my perspective... Hands up outstretched heart open at the sun Thank you so much for the fine health of my spirit, for my creative health, my creative heart, my emotional health, my emotional peace, my mental health, my mental joy, my physical health, my physical blessings, my spirit full of clarity and all the gifts in this moment.....
24. The World which by virtue of its very existence (infinity people, remember infinity? so long as there's infinity there's absolute unlimited potential...your choice, how's it gonna be) is a world of gifts and miracles to me...Thank you so much for the gifts of this day, the gifts in this world, the many gifts and blessings of joy I experience this and everyday. Thank you so much for my harmony, my safety, my guidance, clarity and security. For my blessings and my worth and my heart and my soul I give thanks, I am thank-full-ness walking.....

More Great-full stuff for the list

Okay, add to the list of Great Things to be Grateful for:



22. The book Simple Abundance. Which reminded me this morning of affirmations. For example, the following: Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. This was my morning meditation.
23. The fact that I know from experience that affirmations, when made in the warm light heartspace, work. Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....
24. Crazy old friends from Annapolis who always seem to know just when to call...



Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....

List 3 or Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for

So, here's the thing. My living circumstances have changed. At least temporarily. And there is no internet service out here in the boonies on the Choptank river in Caroline County aka my new home. And, my computer is frozen on Windows Media after evidently not taking the movie I was watching out correctly or something. Blah blah blah. So I am on my work computer, thank-full thank-full thank-full for it, picking up wireless for the first time here at Choptank--so thank-full for that! And stoked bc I am in touch w so many great old smiles from the past on Facebook and the likes. I wanted to, have for several weeks now, post pics on here of various friends. But as said my computer is on the fritz sos no pics...

Instead, I am thinking...The timing is right...

I am going to start a list of things that I have gratitude for in my life right now. And i dont just mean areas that i am aware of my blessings. I mean, these are the things that move me to light and a warmth and overflow feeling of joy in my chest when I bow my head, reflect a moment, and give thanks with a smiling heart.

And, for you dear reader, a challenge--

Make your own list this week. Live them. LIve the light in your chest. Learn about it's reflexiveness, how it grows when you share it, how it automatically comes back at you, too, to double. Comment to me some of your gratitude list. Let me know about your warm heart full of joy, too...

Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for:
1. Cuzin slumber parties! woooooo hooooo for my cousins, who define and delight me, who are always there for me, who keep me crazy and keep me sane, who remind me about love--the unconditional kind--and who will no doubt keep me up with dumb movies and whispers and stories all nite on Friday.
2. Teena! Who fed me and listened to me that first awful week. Who got home from work last night and rode a stuffed animal horse in to my bedroom whinnying and naying all the while. Really! Who then told me since a guy laughed at her for dancing in middle school she hasn't danced in public in 45 years. How is that possible? If you are open enough to ride a stuffed horse around then dancing like no one is watching's got to be the next plunge!
3. The River. How she breathes and sooths me.
4. Amy my baby, Madonna in concert, and growing so closely with someone that 7 years feels like no time at all. that sort of says it all
5. Fresh food. so you can still taste the light in it
6. Artists friends making new records and finding life again. Ldubb that means you.
Sisters.
7. Eddie's Place reunions. hell freaking yeah can you believe it, the man the myth the legend, my old dad Ed may he rest in peace and the motley crew of family he gathered in the kitchen of (and out back!) his pizza joint back in the early nineties are all coming together to re-unite. Holy holy 6 degrees to insanity, anybody?
8. Brandon who is warmth, and light
9. Katie who is a goddess angel and keeps reminding me to be the same. and who can make out my words through lots of sobs and tears now, who's had lots of practice at it...
10. Gretchen who i trust beyond all
11. My Quiet Space. my sacred sacred quiet spot in my new room and how lucky i am to know that, day after day, it is something that works again and again
12. Tim and the other people i dont know but do through their words who read and comment on my blog. it makes me feel so good. and that is what we are here on earth to help each other do...
13. Mom dad and Sean. god i love you and love you and love you
14. Grandma, Papaw, the Englars and McMullens Amen for tribes and again, i love you i love you i love you
15. Facebook and all the old heads....
16. Josh who knows me. And helps me know me better
17. The Eastern Shore of Maryland which is my home. wow it feels so good to be connected to a place
18. My poet instincts
19. Being clean and sober for 8 whole years.
20. My job, for getting to touch people the way i do
21. Grandma's cooking woooo hooo here i come!

and the list goes on and on....and if i am able, i will this week, in the spirit of Thanks-Giving, add more and more

May you be moved to do the same.....

Mourning Moon @ New Year

It has been a long year. It has been a long year and one that’s gone by way too quick.
Always, right?

This time last year I’d just started waiting tables at a white linen in town and was devoting most of my days to writing. I was finishing/editing my first collection of poetry and sending it off to different contests for unpublished poets.

And the conference for young people recovering from substance abuse—that was just getting underway, too.

A long, long year.

Last night’s full moon was a doozy, no? Emotional, a tugging, with some sorrows sprung deep. This is normal, as it should have been—and if you are reading this and nodding your head or having an aha moment: stop denying and understand your tribe…!

Us artists and soul-learners, us instinct-led craving a deeper experience of life, we dip and rise together, and I have found at least for myself that the old moons and earth holidays that folklore kept are good to grow and to learn better my own deep tune…

Yesterday was Lunar New Year, to that affect. Mourning Moon. Agricultural societies of old new it well: the final crops are down, time to take full count of your lot. And in that, inside of that knowledge of assessing your harvest, comes too the sight of that which you lost. Or maybe has yet to come to fruit at all. It is now that the seeds for next years bounty most especially stir there quiet just below in your soul. Same as the seeds for the spring now are planted, this last week or so gives you peek at what in the coming year you would like to grow. Look well, be kind and easy on your soul in whatever language it uses to communicate this to you. For soon the seeds too will slumber, take their rest and gather strength in the landscape of the underground. And it could be long, and dark that sleep, maybe disorienting or scary.

But so too will the spring, the roots, the new blossoms come again—

Now is the time for quiet and thanks-giving…

So this is what Patriotism feels like...

Amen. Amen amen oh god, amen.

The Avian Front for Democracy

photo by Walsh

To a Guy I'll Name Owl or WHY I'M VOTING TOMORROW

Okay. I've held out long and hard on this one--I mean really, for someone wordy as I, I've really managed to stay away. But...

Tomorrow, of course, is election day. And I've gotta say, there are lots of reasons I've purposefully stayed uninvolved this year. The main one is that I think we are a nation of corruption and dishonesty, in a system that's broken, and I prefer to work on the grass-roots level in the local municipalities to put change that I can see in to action. I am disheartened, and have been, at the greed and shameless self-interest that masquerades in the Western world as the American Dream; at the excess of consumerism that we value under the label of Freedom, at the mindless circle that this system has created and at the personal powerless that strikes me whenever I look bluntly at the truth: that I, too, live as part of this lifestyle. That I can't not.

We as a people for the first time ever have the economic, intellectual and technological resources to feed every person the world over, to cloth every one, to see children educated and housed. And yet we don't. This is astounding to me. Simply, quite bone-baring common-sensical dumbfoundedly simple: why don't we, as a basic human species, take care of each other? Period. There is absolutely no excuse not to. This is just common sense people. Ethical evolution, it's the final frontier, it's the only one that truly matters. It's what will save us. Or, if continued to lack, will finally break us.

The rest of it is just pundit powwow and bullshit.

This leads me to my opinion on tomorrow, and to why I am voting, even though I think it's all broken and the whole sick "free"-market pillaging that we call "free-trade" backed as it is by bought politicians backed by corporate-funded lobbyists is nothing but a big, eye-rolling joke and not worth my energy. (There is no such thing as limitless anything. It does not exist. It is a scientifically impossible principle. Right down to the atom: equal parts negative and positive charges are what fire life. Everything has its balance. Capless "wealth" comes at the expense then of it's opposite, insatiable ravaging that quite literally sucks opportunity from the lowest classes in the most bottom of places, making millions of human lives, that is valuing humanity at a literally less than even average status quo--setting the standard of what is livable--what is HUMAN--at ten cents a day in the factories overseas that finance our vainglory. It sucks, it is disgusting, and that I am a living part of it, if I think too much about it, MAKES ME SICK.) So yeah, though I think that operating within this heartless system is pointless, here is why I am going to vote tomorrow:

Martin Luther King. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and his death almost single-handedly stopped in its tracks the momentous roll of the Civil Rights Movement, on the public front. Here's the deal gang. We hear these phrases in this country, like "Black" History or The "Women's" Rights Movement and we take for granted that special interests or movements have all but taken care of themselves, that they are polarized subsets and exist in isolated bans that are far away from us. And so long as we think that, it is true. But the truth is this: Black History, Women's History, this is OUR history. If you are alive and a citizen of the US today then the history of black slavery and subjugation and of the slow and powerful rise of an entire community of Americans from this degraded state is a part of YOUR history too, as an American. If you are an American than the story of the suffragettes and the Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees women the same rights as men and that HAS NOT BEEN PASSED even though it has come up in every congress since 1920!! is a part OF YOUR HISTORY. Period. And if you believe in change, if you believe you can be the change, as King did, as his hero Ghandi taught, or as Lucretia Mott did, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Sarah Palin, each of whom are changing the myth of America by the action, judged good or bad who cares, that each of them are taking--then you are alive and there's hope, there's still a fighting chance out there. To be the change. And to continue to evolve this story of us Americans. Of how good we can be, one by one. These stories aren't over, black history or women's history or our history, all of us, as a Nation, divided but one because the very concept of equality inherently implies differences and thank god for that. I will vote because at the end of the day we all are very different. We all are varied and many in all our beliefs. But thank god we can fight to tell and continue to evolve our stories, our history. Thank god for the many of us still devoted to being the change and for the opportunity to talk about it, to try, if we choose, to live it a little out loud---

at least the hell I've still got the right to actively, and out loud, be that change. So I'll vote for the hope of it, for the power of it, for what I will continue in my heart to believe is right.