Category: Life lessons

Heaven in Hell

I will be accused of being hyperbolic. Melodramatic. Perhaps I complain too much. Might my standards be too high?

It’s not that bad, they will say, or think. You still have a house and a husband and a relatively stable life. Just think of those miserable folks in . . . And all those who . . . And don’t forget the starving children in . . .

All over the place. Like, seriously, all over the god-damned place, and still everywhere, also, simultaneously, I hear such minimizing, avoidance, redirecting, marginalizing ‘advice’ from those high on their horses.

So if my experience, this time, is not as hellish as the last time, or as his or her or their experiences, on our vast continuum of hellishness, I should just move on. Get over it.

No matter how hard it gets, the social contract requires you stay positive, hopeful, forever gazing over the rainbow at the future potential for success, and perpetually focused on the life lesson.

It’s not hard, it’s challenging. It’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity. It’s not theft, it’s redistribution. It’s not a real lie, it’s a lie of omission. It’s not a failure, it’s a stepping stone. You’re not beat, you’re regrouping.

I still get counseled from others, unwanted advice (well-meaning I’m sure in their own minds) on how to see the bright side.

As if I don’t know how to do it! I was born and raised painting a silver lining on every cloud. I’m American, we’ve written nearly every script on this bullshit.

But, I grew up and got over it.

I was also a teacher for 20 years and sometimes I was actually a good one. Ok, maybe only occasionally, but that counts.

When I was good it was because I was tough, but fair. Not nice. Not compromising. Not lenient or understanding. Not painting rosy pictures or being sweet and kind.

And in such moments of lucidity it became very obvious to me that most students fail due to one thing: unrealistic expectations.

Our culture is saturated with them. Because it’s really, really good for business.

Lots of students sincerely wanted to learn the foreign language I was trying to teach them, and certainly had the smarts to do so because it’s not difficult, even a child can do it. And almost always does!

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

But they bought the hype of some advertisement or second hand story from a braggart who swears anyone can learn a language in three months by listening to tapes on their work commute. They bought the expectation the process would be smooth sailing all the way.

They are a lot like these types who are constantly insisting everyone see the bright side of every situation. They’re all like mood police. Like moms who make kids ‘kiss and make up’ while they’re still seething inside. Emotional bullying based on unreasonable expectations. It reminds me of an awful photo I once saw of a child model posing for the camera with a forced smile on her face though her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

So, with all that out of the way, this summer has SUCKED for me.

There, I’ve said it. I haven’t written a Homestead Happenings in months in order to avoid having to try to make it palatable for readers. I know how to paint the silver lining on it. But, it also irritates me that those are the only kinds of stories we’re allowed to tell in mixed company. If there’s not some triumph over adversity, keep it to yourself.

If there’s not gratitude somewhere for the gift of life, no one wants to hear it. Stop whining. Get over it. Make lemonade.

I know. I can hear it.

The Angel Made Me Do It

Dare to dream!

If there’s a will there’s a way!

These used to be my favorite clichés growing up. I miss that sometimes now that I’m growing old and cynical. I miss that crazy big picture dreaming like we do as kids with seemingly the expanse of the world and infinite days ahead of us. My mom really did often repeat that we could do or be anything we wanted.

Prima ballerina even though you’re short and curvy? Sure, why not!

I never really believed it, but I do agree that to dream big is a good thing, and not just for kids. The older we get though, the more that critic steps in even before his queue, the inner voice of impossibility. A necessary ally, no doubt, in his strict adherence to the practical and well-tested norms.

Let’s call him Jack, from another of the well-worn clichés, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

What if we put Jack in the box for now, where he prefers to be anyway, and we enjoyed some precious time without him?

It seems like a lot of folks have dreams they would call big that center around money. They want a new house, for example. And that’s true for me, too, I would like a new house.

But I think of that as a small dream. When we first moved here we didn’t expect we’d stay in this house. It’s not where we would choose to have a house on this property, and it’s not the kind of house we would choose as far as style either. We thought we could make this one into a ‘project house’ where we did all our work and hobbies, then we could have another small one more suited to us, off the road, on a more picturesque part of the property with views all around.

Then after making so many improvements over the years and spending so much time, money, energy on the surroundings, we downsized that dream. Jack won that one, as usual.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll always win, right? Back in the box he goes!

Dream BIG! It’s not that easy. I used to have lots of big dreams and many of them I wrote down and some of them have come to pass. At least partially.

Like, I always said I wanted a small house on a big piece of land. I just had no idea that would be in rural Texas, or there would be the whole menagerie attached. I was thinking more like an acre in Corsica or Guadeloupe overlooking the sea.

Guadeloupe, French West Indies 1997

Sometimes I dream we could still do that if we really wanted. But, Jack doesn’t have to bother getting out of his box for that one, that’s how little chance of it there is.

But, what if we could bring some of what I love about that dream into this dream we’re already creating?

A spring-fed pond, that would be a good start. No, make that a lake!

There are properties all around us that may soon be for sale. We’d buy them all!

And then what? (Back in the box, Jack!)

I heard a friend talk behind my back once a few years ago when she first visited here. Directed at her hubby, as we were driving them in the tractor to their lodging in the still-unfinished cabin we built, she said, “Why would anyone need so much property?”

I didn’t, but wanted to say, “But, you see, but we would have, could have, SO much more!” Why not?!

Hubby used to joke about our paltry 50 acres, “In Texas, 50 acres buys you a front yard.”

It’s not a matter of need, obviously. How much land does the Queen of England own?

It’s not even about what one might accomplish with a few hundred (or a few thousand) acres. I don’t imagine we’d aim to accomplish much at all. Jack would want to put a name on it of course—a nature preserve, or a dude ranch, or a future botanical garden, or a (God forbid!) another of the popular ATV parks.

I think in my biggest dream I’d invite some cherished friends to our rural sanctuary, with the spring fed pond (lake!) and wooded paths strewn with pine needles, and secret herb gardens, where we’d enjoy some homemade wine on a fine pergola made of bamboo watching the birds . . .

And the chemtrails.

Fuck you, Jack!

Hard Lessons

Sometimes it takes 20+ years to learn the lesson of one moment.

“Jste zdrava?!”

“Are you quite well?!” (Lost in translation.)

It was not a friendly inquiry. So naturally, I was immediately put off. My Czech was mediocre and I was confused, I took it more literally.

Am I healthy? Why on earth is she asking me that? Why is she shouting and waving her arm?

I understand now she meant that facetiously. Like an Old Southern Belle might drawl from her wraparound porch, “You from around here, Darlin’?” Right before she pulled a shotgun from behind her skirts.

Maybe I should consider myself lucky she couldn’t possibly have a shotgun when and where she was living in Prague.

Her home looked very much like an antebellum plantation home, not so different from the one above, but only a quarter of one, and with just two pillars. With a large front and back yard, and beautiful fruit trees full of plums, which stuck out even in this neighborhood of nicer homes compared to the typical panelock housing found just a block away.

Soviet era ‘panelock’ housing

That I’d be inclined to take a photo should be logical, at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time.

Should I have told her I was perfectly healthy, 25, in my prime, one might say.

Me, always curious, at a pub in Jihlava, Moravia, current day Czech Republic, 1994

“No taking pictures here!” More hollering and waving.

Now that time I did understand without any additional effort. I put down my camera, I apologized, and I moved on to the next house, where I took more pictures unencumbered by any screaming women.

Prague in 1999 was already transformed from that of 1992, at least I could see it clearly.

Of course it’s different if you live there, even rapid change can seem incremental when one is concerned with the quotidian. Foreigners have a different perspective.

I looked like a spy to her, I get that now. It’s not that I wasn’t used to paranoia, it was permeating the place, always.

It’s just I didn’t recognize what paranoia like that would feel like until decades later, in my own country.

Yes, the United States, where we are told we are free. Of course you can take a photo of my beautiful house, I take great pride in it!

Adjusting to insanity. That’s what that woman had done. The more one is required to adjust to insanity, the more paranoid one becomes.

She saw me as a spy, not as a clueless and curious American interested in architecture.

“Are you quite well?” Was most likely a candid and covert admission that she was in possession of illegally inherited property. Or if not illegally obtained, then certainly not conforming to the current and always shifting proper codes.

Under Soviet governance no one was allowed a large house without subdividing, everywhere, not just in the large cities. There was a housing crisis. Everywhere. Even country estates and cottages had to be confiscated. Collectivized, euphemistically speaking. Then, Privatized, once again. The hand that washes the back . . .

Repatriated? Potato-Potato. Musical chairs?

You really think it’s different here now? Don’t dig too deep.

In fact, you’re not allowed to be a curious American in America either. Little did I realize. Try talking about the weather. Ask a few questions. Don’t stop when you get the first rebuff of redirection and discomfort. Press on.

You want to see how much America TODAY is like the Soviet Union?

Why is it 99 degrees in mid October in East Texas? Why hasn’t it rained for 2 months?

Climate Change is a scam? I agree.

Why are there hurricanes in the mountains of Southern Appalachia? Climate change is a scam? I agree.

Why are there so-called Northern Lights in the south?

Climate change is a scam. I know.

Where do you think this is going? What do you think they are up to? Why don’t you ask some questions? What are you so afraid of?

Press on. I dare you. Do we own our air space? Who has taken over our atmosphere? Who is complicit?

No taking photos here curious American spies!

Predators and Passivity

I wish I could say I was not guilty of it. I watched on two different days last week as a coyote trotted off contentedly first with a duck, then a chicken. The latter time I was outside, with our very large Dane-Mastiff guarding, reading on the deck as the coyote pranced by 200 feet from us, without any chicken ever making a sound to alert our attention.

I did shoot at it, far too late, but I was so slow and stunned I hardly had a chance. I asked on social media whether, had they been faster than me, if they would have choosen to shoot the thieving coyote with their cameras or their guns. Most chose cameras, which demonstrates a double-bind, I believe.

We have lost sight of the predator/prey relationship. In fact, when we look closely into New Age groups and the major push in education currently, the prey has been deluded into believing they can transform the predator into something ‘better’ or “safer” or at least less scary.

The prey goes into school and later even therapy so as to come out better adapted at the game and to his role as prey. The predators understand perfectly this relationship can be best described by the old parable of ‘the frog and the scorpion.’  Since at least Biblical times, it has always been the same game.  The predator/prey relationship is easily paralleled to our more civilized equivalent of Master/slave, which can be extended further to our current neo-serf system of Parent/child and State/citizen.

I fancy myself aware, self-reliant, pro-active, resourceful. Yet, in my ‘truth quest,’ which a great many of us have been on for many years now, I’ve demonstrated my talent at pointing fingers, shifting responsibility, projecting, and most grievous and destructive of all, further nurturing an identification complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_%28psychology%29

An identification complex is plaguing seemingly all of society right now so I have plenty of company. We are all pointing our fingers at the 1%, or in the case of “truthers” or “conspiracy theorists” the .001%, as the core problem with the world. We criticize from one side of our mouths and go along with the other. We go along in hundreds of different ways every day. We fall for their fashion and entertainment, we sit in their schools and on their boards and in their governments. On the surface there seems to be little other choice. When someone opens their eyes wide enough to see this is the same master/slave relationship indoctrinated and institutionalized at ever level of the system that has existed since the beginning of history, we are then met with the next inconvenient truth:  We are only looking at the gameboard, we are not understanding the game.

We the slaves both despise and envy the master, and the master knows this and uses it against us.  Obedience is the price and the master sets the terms.  Our role is to remain passive and uncomplaining against the unspoken contract.   When the noose tightens, some slaves become restless and resentful, while others adapt by learning to breathe more shallowly.  Livestock breeders use identical methods.  This is how the system perpetuates and exacerbates to such an imbalance that an excess of predators disrupt the natural order until collapse is inevitable.

Of course the game is rigged!  And if you had your way, it would be rigged in your favor.  Your preference might be: I want it to be fair and safe for everyone, for there to be no predators or prey, no masters or slaves, and many might support you, to the point they’d be willing to become the predators in order to preserve your collective safe-space.

What we see politically we are also allowing in our personal and professional lives. We feel the boot, there are fewer in denial everyday. We know we are being surveilled and minimized and made obsolete. We know we are victims and we react in one of the many ways they know we will, as prey always will: Fight, Flight, Fawn, or Freeze. If one can find another courageous enough to rebel, he is also lost eventually, because to rebel is to remain still inside the game. They have plenty of room for rebellion, they count on it, they thrive on it.

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Jay Gould

Obedience is the prey’s cost in the master/slave, State/citizen relationship, making the passive society become increasingly easy prey; little more than a flock of smiling depressives. These easiest of prey develop a quintessential need for their one-season world, for un-natural order, until passivity replaces fear and we all become the woman watching the coyote trot by with one of her ducks, too slow and maladapted and untrained to stop him.

When one is lucky enough to find another who has the courage to change the game, or at least give it a go, one has met the Fool soon to replace the Father. The game changes when we ourselves change, it’s an inside-out process, not an outside-in. We choose en masse, to not be prey or predator.  We choose to have no rulers. We choose Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-government.

The ones who understand you must stop the predator or soon all your poultry will perish are the ones rebelling, which the masters then flaunt in front of the more passive prey to get them focused toward each other. The fawns point fingers at the fights, the freezes blame the flights, and around and around we go.

Where will we stop? Does somebody know?

When the most passive meets the predator en face they realize their only hope is one they’ve been trying to avoid all along.  Because the most unpleasant truth of the human condition from the mindset of the frog is that not every frog has to become aware of the nature of the scorpion, they just have to become aware faster than the last frog.

Here’s some research links I know could really benefit some of my fellow frogs.

For your personal life and relationships: Ollie Mathews, an ingenious entrepreneur helping victims of narcissistic abuse by reading their often painful letters on Youtube.  Understanding this co-dependent dysfunctional relationship is crucial to understanding how it’s playing out in the Big Game:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFJBbBcV6akw8M1YuDo-Yg

To dig into the Big Game, prepare yourself for the most complex, multi-faceted work of your life.

https://www.unslaved.com/

https://tragedyandhope.com/

https://www.corbettreport.com/