Looking in the mirror, he noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, reminding him of a river journey with a friend, laughing for days and seeing white wrinkles amid the tan lines.  Today, my face is tan and rounded somewhat, perhaps from the beard, going gray around the edges.  There is that combination of youth and age that defies our usual indication of time in a body.  A smile is often present and there is something about brown eyes that can tighten into a focus when speaking directly to someone.  My niece was at a family reunion that I did not attend and she told me my grandmother’s last name meant bent willow, which I find interesting.  There is a northern European look about me, heavy set and I think short, or stout might fit.  Am I pleasant to look at?  Only when I am fun to be around. But my portrait is not that, it is in my song:

I’m a child of the desert, hot burning sand
And a friend to the buzzard circling the bleaching bones of a man
I spent my contemplation under a pinyon tree
And a nut fell down and hit me and that’s what set me free

I can feel you at a distance, your thoughts confuse the view
Raven’s caw,”Come” beckoning, but its the coyote’s point of view

I’m a child of the desert climbing up these hills
It feeds me with its shapes and smells, but never pays my bills
A child of the sandstone rock, reaching for the sky
The wind whispers in my ear, capturing a sigh………bouzouki

Bouzouki wrote this for Leslie White, the artist, who was curious how a writer would paint a self portrait with words.

It is night here. I had a dream that I was listening to music at a concert and the music finished. It had been instrumental music with drums and percussion and other sounds that I can’t remember. A musician spoke, saying the concert was over and that he had not said much with words because the music spoke for them.
It has been over an hour since that experience and I am awake, still. My mind is overactive, running through a range of thoughts that I can usually avoid in daylight. i think about being unemployed until I can “officially” retire. I think about my part in what we have done to our environment and our world. I think of the worry and fear that permeates our existence, and how much of that is our own doing, our own actions, that we followed so easily. I think of the anger and rage that I see in so many places in the different media, and how easy it is to step into that state of mind. I think that Loving Kindness is a means to overcome all that I find to be negative in my world.
In my dreams, I have met Spiritual Masters that have given me instruction, directing me toward my destination. In my dreams, I have seen alternate histories of a place where I lived and is now no more. I have had absurd dreams, sexual dreams, dreams that mimic my waking life and dreams that inspire me to continue in my journey, in spite of what my “real life” experience has been.
Yesterday, I was at my Mother’s house, cleaning old cans of paint and other toxic items. I went into my old room and saw a book, “Cosmic Consciousness”, I didn’t pick it up, yet, but I will. Looking into my past, I see the quest that has been directing my life for decades. Looking at my present, this constant search for confirmation has been my saving grace, through the varieties of my experience, positive, negative or neutral.
This journey continues, with the added realm of the internet, where I have met you, and you meet me. I can say that it would be hard to say what I write, here, if we were to meet in person. Perhaps we will meet in our dreams.

….by bouzouki

Bouzouki asked me if I could find “Spirit is the Journey” by Sam Bush.

I listened to the lyrics and enjoyed the music. It was performed in a “church” similar to the ones I have attended many a time in my life.

Enjoy….

I accept this as a natural concurrence, between people that need to come together.  Sometimes I wonder how it happens, but most of the time, I just accept it as it happens.  I needed to speak to a person, and I saw him this morning.  He asked me if I wanted what he had to give, which I did.  A natural occurrence, but I have not seen him for months, and certainly not in a public setting, which neither of us could have assumed the other would be there.

Think of this as a way for like minded people to meet.  think of the odds that this connection does exist, and will happen, just because.  It is like believing in the impossible.

My Kindergarden year, the principal was Native American, the Navaho families would come to the general store on the weekend and buy food and goods, wearing silver and turquoise necklaces and bracelets, the women wearing colorful skirts, the men with silver belt buckles and cowboy hats.

During my elementary school years, I heard predictions of a future presented as fact, in which we would have unlimited energy at such a low cost as to be virtually free, with flying cars, and unlimited wealth.  How easy to believe, as a child.  Why did it not occur?

In the 1950′s,in a company town, most of the wives did not work.  Think of moving to a community fifteen miles to the nearest towns, in a canyon of red sandstone, hot in the summer, with a general store, a pharmacy, a swimming pool for the summer, full of kids, and a tiny library.  I wonder what those women did while their children went to school?

Now I find me trying to create the beginning of the conversation.  it was easy with meeting the man that lives a few houses down the street.  Our first conversation was about his four dogs loose in my yard.  I asked him to do something about them being loose and his response was that he would kill them if I wanted.  A great way to initiate a conversation.  I had to tell him four or five times, “just keep your dogs in your yard.”  I haven’t spoken to him for three or four years.  He has a puppy that was loose and came over to my house.  We were cordial, talking about the neighborhood, the traffic on the road, and the fact that his neighbor wants to sell his house for $325,000, and it is on a railroad tie foundation.

We live in a strange world where some people are out of work, houses are foreclosed, debts are unpaid, and yet there are optimists that are trying to act like nothing happened in 2008.  The value of houses is a wonderful example of the wide range of perceptions that populate our world.

While I helped a friend build his house, his neighbor tried to sell their house that they bought for $500,000. They wanted $750,000, but no takers.  They moved out and left the house.  The bank asked for $425,000, with no one buying the house.  The bank tried to auction the house but the initial bids were below their asking price.  The last time I talked to someone looking at the house, the man told me that $300,000 was too much for the house, I think that had become the asking price.

The financial problems that began when the housing market faltered are not over, at least where I live.

I spent the long weekend with people that were enjoying themselves. Many of us were happy most of the time.  It is fun to be with a lot of people having a wonderful time, being able to trust others, talk to people I never saw before or may never see again, and have that be correct behavior.
I sense that liberty is usually within a political framework, but I think of internal freedom to be something else.
I felt happy and free over the long weekend. I indulged in music, friendship, fine food, and was given a snowstorm this morning as we took down tents and drove home
I think the Tao teaches that governments may control our liberty, but the control of my internal freedom is my own limitation.  My happiness is my own, as well.
The most interesting thing to me is that I concerned myself with many of the things you wrote about while I enjoyed my experience.  I think it is a mistake to equate internal states with external circumstances.  I think of people talking about liberty and freedom, but would be terrified if they were to be set free.  Part of being free is to know limitations,   Maybe part of liberty is to refuse to be a slave, but most of us would reject that because being a slave negates responsibility, and many don’t accept the responsibility for their own plight.  If we don’t take responsibility, we may not be free, and I will continue to think about that.
I felt happy, being in the mountains, listening to music, and I felt free.

I had similar thoughts while looking at information online and reading a book.  The different sources held some conflicting information and I was struck by my responses when I disagreed with the information.  When I realized that these ideas are all projections of futures that could or won’t happen.  I had the thought that we really don’t know what will happen.  the book is 2050  and the writer takes demographics, environment, economics, and the effects of globalization.  There are parts where I agree and where I disagree, but we really don’t know, any of it.  We are full of our petty opinions, about everything, and we embellish what we know.
I doubt that I will be present in forty years, so why should I care?  It is that element of the ethic of reciprocity;  if I am concerned how others treat me and how I treat others, I am also concerned about what all befalls us.  I watch the events of the world, and I know I am not an active participant, but of all the players, how many are concerned with their dogma, how many want their worldview to be right?
I consider my thoughtless acts, not all of them, because I don’t have a remote idea how many there are.  I think of that compounded by billions.
We have an amazing capacity for learning.  It takes years to fill our brains with a limited amount of the knowledge amassed by humanity over the centuries.  During those same years, we try to understand our emotional nature (those of us that recognize our emotional nature), while many of us deny we have an emotional nature, getting angry at those that disagree with us.
Our social needs, our physical wants and needs, our emotional needs, and our spiritual needs are entwined with the ecological health of our planet.  When we neglect our basic needs, we may appear to be fools to others, but we appear to be fools for other reasons as well.  When we indulge our wants, we appear to be fools, and often we are.
To bring ourselves into balance, be centered within our needs, breathe, observe our opinions as temporary as our desires, this would be a great accomplishment, maybe it would be our life’s work.