I will focus on the positive here, mostly, for the moment, and praise this 65 year old lady with all my might! BRAVO! You are my hero of the week!!
And shame on the cowards in line who don’t support her. And WOW, who raised that pathetic ‘officer of the law’? I’m totally disgusted by every person in this video who participated. And witnessing is participating!
I often feel sorry for men. And those boys who try to become men, few as they may be nowadays.
I remember when my dad started writing poetry in middle age, in order to potentially ward off another divorce. It was a phase that didn’t last long and I don’t remember if his poetry was any good, but I remember being impressed by that effort. First he converted for her, got baptized and everything, then he attempted to swim, via words, the seas of emotion, alone, at high tide, with no training.
Doesn’t surprise me much. He’s always been impressive that way. Exactly that sort of way, actually. While dismally unimpressive in other ways.
I do understand that’s called being human.
But it bugs me this isn’t something we’re allowed to talk about, the being human part. The warts and all part. Because the sugar coating gets nauseating after a while. Besides, it’s not healthy, in that where’s the broccoli sort of way.
This is not allowed in my FOO (family of origin) and I know for certain, it’s not just mine. Broccoli hits that table only soggy and drowning in artificial cheese sauce.
Somehow over the generations there’s been a great divide happening between many aspects of familial and societal life, and leaving all conspiracy theories aside for a moment as to how that’s come to pass, there are clear and present repercussions being felt by the glaring lack of healthy masculinity being demonstrated currently in our culture.
Dad’s poetry efforts didn’t pan out. Too little, too late, I suspect. That pesky human error thing—hindsight, tunnel vision, any one of the 7 deadly sins—or whatever.
As flawed as I’m able to paint him, which depending on my mood might go pretty dark, it’s the unwashable tones that I prefer, whether that spectrum proves dark or light.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill, or the distance, to paint him well, to do him justice, warts and all, not even in words. But, someday.
All I feel able to do now is to demonstrate those parts of him I admire, and always have and always will, which comes down to pointing out their antithesis.
Who is Dad not?
This matters enough for me to post about publicly because there are a whole lot of heroes out there, but you’ll never learn about them until you turn off the TV and really tune in to what higher minds are trying to tell us, because it is becoming increasingly less common knowledge than it should be.
Examples of positivity masculinity exist and were once diligently cultivated. For every accusation of power abuse there is a man who gifted power, maybe even a dozen of them.
For every accusation of narcissism there is a man who dispersed his glory voluntarily upon those close to him.
For every accusation of arrogance, selfishness, egoism, betrayal, there is a man who knew, above all else, that what it takes to be a man is as tough as it is simple: never accept arrested development.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt
Some of us are compelled by learning and therefore find ourselves comfortable in lifetime roles as teacher and student in tandem.
I left formal education with a Master’s degree in order to become a teacher, which I did do, for two decades. I’d probably still be teaching, but I became too disgusted by the system to continue in it. First, I witnessed as students became little more than commodities and teaching became not about learning, but about customer service. That was higher education, but once testing became the anchor of achievement in high school education, it’s the same thing in a different mask.
I used to encourage my students to challenge me, to “talk back” because I saw that was a serious lack in my own upbringing and education and vowed not to pay it forward. Students found me challenging, but fair, and I took that as the highest compliment that can be awarded to a teacher.
As the curriculum noose continued to tighten around our necks I watched as 99% of my colleagues went with the new and ever-tightening program for a few more years. Then I gave up. The system had sucked out everything I’d loved about teaching and was actively trying to turn me, and my students, into automatons, robots. When I lost the joy in it I was no longer good at it.
It was a blow to my ego and our bank account, but I knew I’d made the right choice for my soul. It’s been a few years now and surprisingly to myself, I don’t miss it. I embraced the student role fully again—on all things homesteading and conspiracy theory. An odd match, one might think, but to me it makes perfect sense.
Conspiracy theory is the study of power, that’s it in a nutshell. It’s not nearly as scary as the mainstream news, social engineers and politicians make it out to be. I was forced out of education for my own lack of power—it seems obvious to me then to restore my individual power I needed to understand much more about how power functions. I’ve been blown away by my own ignorance on that front.
To seriously study conspiracy theory one needs a firm grasp on two fundamental topics: psychology and social engineering. The essential sub-groups stem from there: history, religion, spirituality, politics, philosophy, linguistics, folklore, and more.
Like with homesteading, there’s FAR more to learn than can be done in a single lifetime or by a single individual. And for that, I find them both absolutely enthralling and a perfect marriage—the essentials of the practical and the esoteric bound together forever.
I know there will come a time I move once more from the student role to the teacher role in these endeavors. That time is not in my near future. I’m waiting for something, or someone, but I can’t tell you for what, or for whom.
But with leaving my formal, former student/teacher career came the most valuable lesson of my life, which I see now is becoming increasingly pertinent for loads of folks: When to walk away. Like the old song goes: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em . . . .“
For anyone truly dedicated to their roles, this is going to be seriously challenging. You’re going to create a huge, empty space in your life that you’ll then have to guard like a bulldog so that chicanery and nonsense are not then sucked into the gap.
Discernment will become your best friend. Attempts to manipulate your re-emerging Self with group-think or calls to obedience will become intolerable. You will lose friends at a rapid clip.
But you will become an expert student and the expert student needs to know only one thing: When to walk away.
Be brave.
The first two things you’ll hear in New Age Brainwashing school, in which we are all currently being systematically submerged are:
“There are no accidents.”
“Victimization is a choice.”
The so-called New Age, birthed from the Human Potential movement and begetting such popular offspring as Scientology and Christian Science, has been pushed for well over a century already and include schools and foundations like the Esalen Institute, Frankfurt School, Tavistock Institute and myriad others. These two fundamental beliefs work hand-in-glove to perpetuate the status quo, while pretending to help individuals and society at large.
“There are no accidents.”
“Victimization is a choice.”
In other words, everything that happens to you was meant to happen. This is a clever ruse to get the individual to perpetually deconstruct their own actions in order to align better with the world around them, no matter if that world is healthy or insane. Don’t question society. Don’t question tyranny. Question yourself. Look in the mirror and change yourself. In this way you will ‘alchemize’ the abuse or tragedy that occurred to you, against your will, and therefore not only be healed from it, but be stronger from it as well.
The proponents of this warped ideology will swear until the ends of the earth that this is the only way for victims to ‘gain traction’ and it’s the only place where ‘the rubber meets the road’.
It is an outgrowth of Biblical teachings where one is considered more spiritual, more enlightened, more ‘good’ if—as he makes meaning of the events in his life, which is a perfectly natural human thing to do—he never points a finger to the perpetrators of such accidents or abuse, only at his own role in them, no matter how minuscule that role might have been.
In this way your ‘personal growth’ can then be owed to those who victimized you in the first place. As the joke goes among the plebes in a brotherhood after they’ve been swatted with the fraternity paddle, “Thank you sir, may I have another!”
Because “God” only dishes out what you can handle, right? So if you’ve been granted disease at birth, sold into sex slavery by your parents, gang raped at your office Christmas party, lost limbs in war, ‘chosen’ by your priest as ‘special’ —well congratulations—you’ve been gifted at the highest level of spiritual development. What heroic life potential!
Revenge? That’s so petty. Trial by your peers? Good luck with that. Choose more wisely and by the way, you have one choice—get over it—for your own good.
In this way the tyrants and their collaborators can further muddy the waters by throwing into the mix everyone who thinks of himself as a victim, whether or not he truly is one.
Upset because your neighbor hasn’t been properly social distancing? Did your poor choices lead to 5 children from 5 different fathers? Has your cocaine addiction ruined your life? Did your business fail, your girlfriend cheat on you, your dog eat your homework?
Just hop in the victim bandwagon, where everyone is welcomed and no one knows how to use discernment, because all they really need is someone to cry with and listen to and share their pain with, in order to feel heard for five minutes over the cacophony of bullshit flying at them. It’s no wonder to me at all the victim groups just keep growing and growing. I suspect there’s no end in sight.
I know more folks who actually are victims, yet insist they are not. They’ve bought into this establishment farce completely. They march ‘empowered’ for other victims and repeat the nonsense they’ve heard to keep them out of the pathetic victim group.
You can be healed by your attitude! You must alchemize that cancer into “the best cancer ever! Really, you can do it!
And there’s about 2 million YouTube gurus to tell you exactly how.
No need to wonder what gave you cancer in the first place. No need to face down your abusers. No need to learn discernment. No need for justice. No need to understand the psychosis of our civilization or the lies of our history. No need to accuse or confront the tyrants by name at all. Just follow these simple steps and violà, you’ve turned the lead of your psyche into gold and all will rejoice with you. Yippie!
The ‘victim mentality’ is on overdrive now because it’s a very useful tool of the establishment. If everyone is #metoo, then no one is really #metoo—it’s just the culture, sit back, gaze into your eternal naval-mirror and repeat after me: “There are no accidents. Victim is a mindset. Find the silver lining. Turn the other cheek. Let bygones be bygones. Buck up, Buttercup.”
This year Hubby and I passed our 17th anniversary Test of Marital Bliss, more or less devoted, mostly minus the bliss.
While at first blush this post might read like something of a roast of us both, I mean it actually to be a tribute to us both, to our loving growth, as well as a bit of advice to newlyweds, who will most certainly ignore it, bless their young hearts.
“Never go to bed angry,” was my grandfather’s advice, at my first wedding. That marriage lasted just shy of five years. While I did learn some great life lessons from Grandpa, that particular one proved pretty useless.
I’d rewrite it now as something close to the exact opposite: Never try to resolve any issue while angry. What better way to overcome your anger? A good night’s sleep.
My second attempt at marital bliss showed far more potential immediately. I’ve told this story of Hubby and I many times before, because it’s a great story. When he first proposed to me, in a tent at Exit Glacier in Alaska, we had just high-tailed it out of a precarious and perhaps even dangerous situation in the wee hours of the morning from the tourist boat where he’d been working for nearly a decade previously and had invited me to join him that summer season.
My presence there and his devotion to me was apparently causing a serious rift between him and his good friend/employer.
We found ourselves sneaking off the boat pre-dawn, strategically, while everyone else was out, because Hubby had lost all confidence in his boss’ professionalism and maybe even his sanity after an extremely inappropriate altercation the night before.
It reads more like fiction than real life, I do realize. But, isn’t that often how life goes? As we pulled out of Prince William Sound in the compact rental car stuffed with the duffel bags of all his possessions, we drove straight into a glorious and totally unexpected rainbow. Cross my heart, no exaggeration at all, across the valley as the sun rose above the mountain pass was the most gorgeous rainbow I’d ever witnessed.
I barked and awed and carried on enthusiastically to a mostly apprehensive man trying to hold it together during this incredibly bold and unprecedented move.
How could it not be auspicious, a wonderful omen, I raved, on and on?! After all, it was the most exquisite rainbow I’d ever seen. How could that be totally by chance?!
That is, until a few days ago.
On my birthday, as Hubby was flying offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, as he’s been doing for about a decade now, he took this shot from his helicopter.
Gorgeous, auspicious, but, he didn’t even think to send it to me at the time. That’s the real point of this post.
He took this shot because he knew I’d love it, that’s for sure. He’s not the synchronicity believer that I am, he thinks celebrating birthdays is for kids and he’s not nearly as impressed with rainbows as I am, clearly. I doubt he shared this shot with his offshore crew, because I doubt there are any among them who are so eager to gush over rainbows in the Gulf.
I requested ages ago he take more photos while offshore, but I get it, he’s got a job to do out there, he’s not a tourist, and no one’s paying him to take photos.
But a couple of days ago when I asked if he had more good photos, he sent this one. I laughed out loud! I said, REAL photos please! NOT fake unicorn CGI gonna-fool-my-wife type photos! How dare you make fun of my rainbow love!
He swore up and down it’s real and totally un-retouched. And I gazed at it, truly amazed, stunned, in true AWE for at least a solid minute.
Then I said: “Oh My God! How on earth could you have not sent me this photo on my birthday, since it says right there that’s when you took it?!”
He looked at me like a deer in highlights for an extended moment, until I laughed. I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and laughed some more.
This was exactly the sort of thing, early in our marriage, that would’ve set me off. Proof, right there, front and center, of his thoughtlessness and insensitivity! Oh and how I felt that enticing tug of self-righteousness, don’t get me wrong!
But the wisdom of 19 years of loving this man, 17 years in wedlock-down, threw me, suddenly and unequivocally, into what I think is a State of Atlas Shrugs. She said, “So you got it a week late, and in a totally off-hand manner, but still, you got it. You really gonna cause a stink about that?”
And the still small voice of Wisdom replied, “No, ma’am!”
And the Reason of the middle-aged woman, now a Devoted Gardener for a decade, well accustomed to planting seeds three times before the right time strikes, realized the greater truth in that moment, beyond the banal ‘perfect’ timing desires of us mere mortals: Nature has a timetable that doesn’t match your Personal or Man-made calendar.
DUH!
And, better late than never!
The saying goes that where God closes the door, he opens the window. I used to think that expression was dumb. But then, I used to think God was just a dumb word invented by dumb folk.
Now I understand God a bit better and that expression seems apropos. Surely in these months of our Scamdemic we’ve seen a lot of closed doors. We could point at them all day, and I get the appeal of that, really.
Or, we could search for the windows. They are there, no doubt, dumb expression or not.
There are ones out there opening the windows, trying to make them easier for others to find them. I really believe that. Even if you told me with 100% scientific evidence that no one is out there trying to open any windows, maybe even because there aren’t any windows to open, I’d insist your science was wrong.
That means my belief is more powerful to me than anyone else’s science. Funniest thing about that is, it also means, if you can’t reason me out of it, you can’t shame me out of it either.
And that’s a window right there. Here’s another one:
I’m something of a stickler for words, but what can I say, when you teach foreign languages for two decades a fetish for ‘le mot juste’ just comes with the territory.
Furthermore, when you love being a student as much as I do, it’s expensive to disagree with your teachers. On the other hand, it’s far more expensive to not disagree when I think a disagreement is in order.
Which brings me back to a recent post where I disagree with my current favorite teacher, James True. I don’t think I was persuasive enough in my argument, because he tried to shame me with group-think in front of the whole class (by class I mean his YouTube audience). It didn’t work though, because my love of words is far stronger than my capacity for shame, or group-think.
I lie awake at night thinking about such things. In the wee hours, that is usually between 2 and 3 am, I often get inspiration in the form of annoying insomnia. It’s a fairly small price to pay for what occasionally turns out to be a spectacular insight.
So, I’m trying again, Professor True, to convince you to shift your expression ‘Compassion is not consent’ because I think it’s not accurate. Embedded in the word compassion is consent. Its etymology is ancient, unlike more modern words like empathy. But, I already mentioned that in my first failed attempt to persuade.
And, I don’t want to just negate the expression, because I think I understand what is meant and the sentiment behind it. Instead, I’d like to offer what I think is a more precise phrase in order to refine it.
Consider instead, if you please: “Compassion minus consent.”
Here’s why.
Understanding is based in intellect. Empathy/sympathy is emotionally-centered. But compassion comes from the core. I think so far the good professor would agree, because he talks often about the importance of being seated in one’s pelvis, though he uses more colorful expressions for that fact.
I believe these subtle differences in expression have considerable impact and can be used by nefarious powers against the greatest intentions and wills of man. A couple of examples:
“We are all One” or “We are all in this together” is a kind of bastardization of an absolute truth: Everything is connected. We live in a holistic system. I believe this means that in the mind of man is buried the ancestral wisdom of all ages. I believe this is true because I’ve experienced it personally. Someday I’ll have the skill to express it. But I don’t yet.
I believe this is also what NDE (near death experience) is about. There is an ‘extended consciousness’ realm and I do believe some folks are able to move between these realms (sometimes against their will or comprehension). We used to call it shamanism and try to cultivate it, now we call it schizophrenia and try to control it. Professor True has several excellent posts on this topic.
Another example: “All we need is love” or the myriad variations that have bombarded us for several generations through art, film, books, music. I’ve already said my piece on this a couple of times, so I won’t rehash it again.
I’m all for love and compassion. I just think to saturate the culture with it or suggest it’s the magic bullet to end our social woes is actually undermining it. True love and compassion should be earned and dished out sparingly. Empathy, sympathy, understanding should be extended as far and wide as humanly possible. Kindness, care and concern should be liberally applied, perhaps even where it’s not deserved.
And compassion, minus consent, is something awesome I could aspire to—I know it won’t be easy—but it seems to me a worthy goal of an enlightened social order.
In any case, these men are totally crushing in this best Apocalypse ever, and are so much more entertaining than this post. Do something both fun and healthy for yourself on Father’s Day and check them out!
The Wandering Jew & The Lucky Bamboo: A Fictional Conspiracy Theory
Do you understand the plants are made just like that? Compare them to the ones that were like, painstakingly crafted?
If you knew there was a difference, would you wonder who crafted it, and how, or even why?
Did you know the sandwhich, the olive, the vodka, were all crafted? Of course you did.
But did you know also was the potato, the tulip, the rose, even the honeybee?
That I hate going to the dentist is no mystery. But in some States, particularly in the South, it seems, sedation is an option. Now I hate going to the dentist slightly less than before, as in all my way too long functional memory. On the gas, there is some enlightenment, as you’ll see.
Twice now I’ve been to the dentist since the Plandemic, because I have dental issues since childhood, not to mention dental trauma, from the choking fluoride treatment molds that tormented me every six months for a decade. That I found these treatments horrific is considered a mental weakness on my part. That my mom paid for them from her hard-earned wages, and trusted them, breaks my heart to this day.
Now they’ve required me to sign a checklist that I have no symptoms of the Covid during these last two visits where only the gas, and lovely company of kind women, guard my fragile acquiescence .
At these days they’ve also insisted on taking my temperature via a digital thermometer directed precisely at my 3rd eye.
That is, the pineal gland. Little do they know, I’m sure, the conspiracy theories that surround that teeny-tiny gland. Right behind the directed laser pointed right there, to which they are given a number, as if that is the only signal that instrument is designed to relate. And as if they would know any other reason why this instrument is now being more normalized than the obscene body scanners at the airport.
I hate dentists, so much so that my latest dentist is my heroine. She gets what honest dentist-hate is like. She commends my stoicism in the chair, bless her heart. I honor her sacrificial hours and delicate sensitivity which I recognize as akin to artistry. She really is someone worthy of far more than her title. I like her, and I’m not being even remotely sarcastic. I can hardly imagine what it’s like to be a woman like that.
“Feelings are considered to be internal human structure and architecture. But what you imagine and create are far more important—and the creative process radically and naturally changes feelings in a positive way, as a side effect.” Jon Rappaport
On the gas, I reflect, and tears flow, beyond my knowing, how. They are so kind, they see, they don’t define. Are you ok? Yes, I am, right here, right now, I am ok. And I see how flimsy that is this sedated happy feeling in the here and now.
Are you? Are y’all? Is that enough? Is that ok? Do you load yourself with duty and then pray you’ll sleep and have enough still to spend another day?
Would you have enough pity, prana, love, care, energy, to say . . .
Would you really like to know what it was like for me, in the pit, today?
I did not get the impression s/he did. Bypassing is our only call of fame. From the pedestal the pit cannot be understood. There is no degree of compassion that might pacify the pit.
Because you see, in the pit, your compassion is where I most love to shit.
That you preach how I should feel makes it that much more worse
But you praise and anoint yourselves with kudos and more books
It is an annoying block to enlightenment for those who perpetually misunderstand. And are misunderstood.
“If I do not describe the details of our work it is because we were busied with things which lie beyond speech and which therefore elude the spell that words exert. But everyone will remember how his mind has labored in regions which he cannot portray, whether it were in dreams or in deep thought. It seemed as if he were groping for the right road in labyrinths or sought to unravel the figures among the patterns of an optical illusion. And often he awoke wonderfully strengthened. This is where our best work takes place, and so it seemed to us, too, that in our struggle speech was still inadequate, and that we must penetrate into the depths of the dream if we were to withstand the threat against us.”
The cynicism that regards all hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority.” Occulture: The Unseen Forces That Drive Culture Forward by Carl Abrahamsson
Websters Dictionary, 1905
Definition, Compassion: To suffer
A suffering with another; painful sympathy; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another, pity, commiseration. A mixed passion, compounded of love and sorrow; pain or regret, or is excited by it. Extreme distress of an enemy even changes enmity into at least temporary affection.
Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me. Our virtues are being played against us.
If you’re still believing what you see on TV, you’re addicted to the McDonald’s of the mind. If so, may I suggest some proper nourishment, in the form of my current favorite philosopher, James True.
I’ve already recommended him on this blog quite a few times. Now I’m going to attempt to do something he’s asked his subscribers for, which I really respect him for asking to do: “prune my lips.” Excellent expression and sentiment.
One of Jame’s big schticks is the idea that “compassion is not consent” —he repeats it often and it’s being adopted by others. It’s gaining traction, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.
I think it’s like throwing your precious pearls of prana at swine much of the time. I’m sure there’s a few exceptions, but compassion fatigue is a real thing.
I also think receiving compassion is the favorite sugar donut of tyrants, abusers, criminals and malcontents of all flavors.
Just look at the etymology of the word—to suffer together. If you are choosing to ‘suffer with’ anyone, you’re giving consent.
When I witness the suffering of another and extend compassion to that individual, or even group, it’s a visceral experience. I feel it in my gut, it twists in my stomach and moves up my spine and into my heart space, and if I extend it even further it goes right up my chest and lodges as a lump in my throat. If I extend it even further still, my eyes well up, my lips begin to quiver, and when the tears begin to fall for them, I know we are suffering together. I hope they are touched by this, that it makes them feel less alone in their suffering, that somehow energetically I’ve lessened their burden just a bit. It’s expensive, it takes a lot of calories.
John Stoessinger, in his compassionate bestseller, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (1976), demonstrates his consent of this man’s actions in every chapter. He makes excuses for him, shows how very ‘human’ he is, and calls this ‘speaking truth to power.’ He wrote the book because, he says: “I suspect that many of those who later attacked him without mercy might have done so out of their own frustration, bitterness, and disappointment. What has been sadly lacking, however, is a sense of reality and balance.”
As James and Owen Benjamin agree, the pedestal and the pit both suck, as does Stoessinger: “I have attempted to portray the human being and the statesman behind the myths of accolade and condemnation.”
I wonder, what if Stoessinger would have thrown his pearls of compassion at the millions, perhaps billions, who continue to suffer because of Kissinger’s lifetime of global influence? I wonder if Kissinger needed his compassion or valued it all that much. I wonder, by demonstrating how ‘human’ he is, how much compassion for the man moved through his readers like a contagion, building up compassion for the man decade after decade, so that all his misdeeds piled up like good manure in the barn, to be spread over the garden to grow and grow, so that he moves effortlessly between pedestal and pit, achieving his every tyrannical dream in this alchemical process of perpetual re-consenting.
Try this aperture on for size please, gentlemen. Imagine you are Kissinger, receiving the public’s compassion, what does it feel like for you? Does it look like dissent to you, or consent? Would you have the sense your work was approved of, or disapproved of?
Furthermore, would that change much, considering he has an agenda for your life, whether or not you show him compassion? Why would you extend your compassion to someone who has not demonstrated to you he is suffering? Do you assume he suffers? Might it be a common case of : We don’t see others how they really are, we see them how we are?
Do you think Jesus would’ve washed Kissinger’s feet before or after he stomped all over the world?
Handy Hubby claims he’s becoming a social distancing bully.
I think he’s becoming a perfect disciple of civil disobedience and further honing his already natural aptitudes in that essential discipline. He complied with Costco’s face mask dumbass police-y, but at least he makes it expensive for the collective in so doing.
The corporations will only respond to strong collective action, strong collective action can only be flamed by the torch of the strong individual.
So, of his own accord, he chose to crowd the bubble. He wore the mask, because we have a fetish for bulk shopping, and I hate shopping. He took another one for the team.
He just made a few of his own rules along the way. Like, once a shopper’s indecision caused him a moment’s annoyance, he broached the six-foot distancing zone, causing enough discomfort for the shopper to stop hemming and hawing and make a choice already, so he could move in for his kill.
I’ve already mentioned in many posts he’s nearly an expert marksman. He shops the same way he shoots, which was the same way he seduced me—move in quietly, have a concise agenda, work fast, take no prisoners.
As further recrimination, he repeatedly pulled down his mask. Why would he pull such a stunt? Oh, just because he couldn’t breath. Well, I guess breathing is considered the entire reason for social distancing these days, so mark that another winner!
For my part, I slowly, oh so slowly, basked in the empty aisles of my favorite antique store, touching everything of even remote interest. I filed longingly through several old books and bought a few, with cash. Then I put another few items on credit card, and watched as the clerk, who knows me now, because she knows I love it there, use hand sanitizer. I said, “You know, I know you’re following police-y, but that stuff is not good for you.” She confided, I know, I’m just trying to be cautious and accommodating. I said, with a wink, refill the bottle with lavender-scented water and aloe vera gel , no one will suspect a thing.

Recently, one of Hubby’s passengers was tested positive for the cornholio, now he’s lying in the hammock drinking beer for breakfast. This is what quarantine looks like here at Chez Shell, aka Kensho Homestead.
Thanks Corporatocracy! Greatest Apocalypse Ever!
I will end here and now blessed with a river of knowing in this song, passed along through the hands of one receptive woman, and in deep bows to those who are waving along the banks as I flow, have inspired me, challenged me, caused me the pain and chaos that sparks my flame, as an individual, passing, in wisdom.
And occasionally, with great and aching discernment, even very selective gratitude.
Kensho Homestead 