mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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As Above, so Below-the Border
December 24, 2012
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How irresistible is untaxed profit? So magnetic that a Border Patrol agent just was stupid enough to load a large shipment of dirt weed into to his migramobile for transport right next to the border recently. I live in Tucson, in the slipstream of untaxed profit provided by the border. It feels to me like the economy that transpires outside the law, under the table, is much greater than legal business in my state. We are so damn fast, furious, heavily armed, and racist that anything can and does happen. South of the border, down Mexico way, kingpins of crime created a much stronger economy than the local legal economy. They now have their own saint which is a sure sign that they are in control. The border itself offers them the risk reward system of illegal commerce that increases their power and wealth. Sure, they have guns (supplied by us), but they only enforce their special jurisdiction with guns. If they had no economy based on smuggling they would have no power in Mexico or the US, thus no need for a saint.
- The closer to the border, the higher the risk/reward.
- The closer to the border, the more violent the scene
- The closer to the border, the higher the pay for crime
- The closer to the border, the higher the bribes
At the border everything is exponentially magnified and all the cops are criminals, all the sinners saints. Stakes are high and the dominant criminal precedent has been set in place forever. Smuggling pays well, and pays law enforcement the highest salaries, one would imagine. The fence that was built to solve our bizzillion border issues has magnetized them. The pay is now higher to break laws at the border, and the violence much greater. Every pendejo who loves lawlessness is attracted to the Arizona/Sonora border. Why? It is simple. The pinche-punk criminals flock to both sides of the border because the border itself is pura pendejada. The migra doesn’t even have a saint. How pathetic is that?
What Would My Ancestors Do?
December 23, 2012
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Sears Cemetery, Barnstable
You do not need to hold a seance to contact the spirits of the dead. You can use a few facts, or many facts if you have them, to query your ancestors. These are not fictional characters of history, but your DNA connection to the past. The novels you have read in your life can not possibly match the drama of the story of your particular historical survival. Your ancestors handed down to you an ethical will. Those who left no written document have nonetheless passed values to the future, with less precision. You are now actively creating the history and the ethics you want to survive in the world.
I started to study my ancestry to learn about the ethical will of my people, whoever they were. My mother had never described her family in any racial terms. I was taught that the Taylors were, in no uncertain terms, Confederate Rebels. My mother, Ruby Taylor’s very large family all lived in Texas. They were involved in religion to a much greater degree than our family living in Pittsburgh. The went to church at least three times a week, including Wednesday. They did a bit of holy rolling and other practices foreign to me. Indeed, my great grandfather Taylor fought in the civil war and received a Confederate pension in Texas in his old age. He was a farmer and preacher in the Church of Christ. This story was the known history of the Taylor tribe, and even this information was never retold to the Taylors of the 1960’s.
What nobody knew at the Taylor family reunion in Houston on the 4th of July each year in the 1960’s was that our Taylor forefather and his wife’s uncle had been burned at the stake as Protestant martyrs in England. Now that is what I call a Rebel. The roots of each family feed the ethical expression (also known as fruit) of the family spirit. The tongue speaking, chicken frying Taylors of Humble/Houston all shared a particular extreme view of the Bible that freaked me out when I was young. The Pentecostal experience, when I was exposed to it, frightened me. Now that I know about the stake burning it all makes perfect sense.
My forefathers and mothers in the grave yard pictured above lived in Holland, then sailed to Plymouth to build a shining city on a hill, creating a strong, complex ethical will. They had a lot to say about the way they thought all cosmology worked in harmony with government. They had strong convictions by which they lived and died. Now that I know more about the lives of these elders in my tribe I have a greater responsibility. I can no longer look at Thanksgiving as a bunch of stuffing. I need to discover the meaning of the Puritan Ethic they created. The values they held are more significant than the physical goods they once owned in old Cape Cod.
On the surface they all seem to use the Bible as an excuse for their own human folly. Just under the surface is the fact that humans have always indulged in folly to learn the folly of our ways. What did they learn? How can we acquire wisdom from their knowledge?
Drugs, Guns, and Risk
December 22, 2012
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If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.-Nurse Ratched
The shadow America does not want to face is our mental health system. Mental health treatment has been a barbaric system of emergency drug administration with no hope for cure. My parents could afford the best available when they needed help in their last years. The problem was finding any ethical and effective treatment for them. Everyone was ready to charge big bucks, but nobody had any real therapy (or even care) for the patient. They had unlimited access to all drugs, but no access to careful diagnosis or medical ethics. When I volunteered for the VA my Vet was long-term suicidal, and there was no available help for him either. I am sure there are some quality programs somewhere, but before going out and spending twice as much money giving people twice as many drugs, why not evaluate the efficacy of the treatments used now? I am going out on a limb and say our neighborhood system of mental health treatment is damaging to all concerned. Random pharmaceutical drug use is not healthy, mentally or physically.
In my neighborhood, here in central Tucson, where you can virtually buy drugs in the middle of the street and there is probably a weapons concierge who will bring a selection of guns to your house for purchase, a 6-year-old was found with a loaded gun in has backpack at school. His dad was arrested for an old felony charge so the kid who said he did not know how the gun got into his backpack is now probably a foster kid while his father serves time. This is the reality for the youth here, and they may or may not know how the gun got there, but they know it will not be the last gun they will see. This deep, sociological, complex problem will be resolved by government programs with an arsenal of pills. Is that, in any way, believable?
We also have a very large mental health center available to the public and funded by Medicare. It is close to a public bus stop with a convenience store on the corner. People from all over the city can come, buy enough alcohol to be over the limit, and be admitted for the night to the mental health clinic. If they are not at the limit, they simply walk back to the store and buy another pint of liquor. They will be given prescription drugs as a result of the entry to the clinic which they can sell right there in my neighborhood. The clinic is supposed to make sure that the patients leave the area, but of course there is no way to enforce that rule. So the patients are released to repeat the cycle. Spending twice as much money on this will create at least twice the insanity and grow creepy petty crime around here. It is a risk to continue to pretend we are treating mental illness or Vet suicide. Money spent on this denial while asking for more funding is running from the reality that systems profit from status quo, and not from change. We need fundamental change, comprehensive. Stopping the madness will involve stopping the flow of drugs as a substitute for therapy. This is a war on drugs worth fighting and well within our power.
Much Ado About Satan
December 21, 2012
I believe that the South Park gay Satan may be the strongest projection of our collective image of evil outside of ourselves. While Rocky’s Fearless Leader worked for the cold war, gay Satan breaking up with Saddam Hussein is the right farce for now (ridiculous). Of course the U S Marines were grateful to have the footage to force gay Saddam to watch his South Park episodes. (Semper Fi). If somehow you were captured by Marines in your dreams, which episode of South Park would they force you to watch?
I admire the ability to use irony as torture. John McCain has data that proves torture by old fashioned methods did not yield useful information. John McCain is my own state’s expert on torture, as he ably demonstrated with his own ironic choice of running mates. Our intelligence community, as they are known, often think outside the intelligence. If you meet them please have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste.
Super Sandra Day O’Satya, Defender of the Highest Law
December 16, 2012
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Supreme Daily Show
I idealize and adore Sandra Day O’Connor, so it was not really a surprise to find her as a super hero in my dream last night. She was a super judge, which of course she is, but her super powers had expanded beyond the regular earthy ones. My visual recall of my dreams is still pretty crumby, but the ability to hold on the the basic story and characters is improving. She could swoop in like Mighty Mouse or Batman. She wore fashionable street clothes, not the robe, but did have one of the little collar thingys they wear. She had those same piercing baby blue eyes that had a spectrum of vision that showed her where the rule of law was being abused by the cranky pants people.
The cranky group was diverse and included cops and judges along with regular angry bird citizens (the one’s we think might shoot somebody). The judge archetype seeks to balance justice and compassion. The shadow judge manifests as destructive criticism, judging without compassion, as misuse of legal authority, or threatening others through association with the law. Sandra Day was angelic and gave darshan and peace to the cranky panted ones. She had a clarity about her, as one might expect from cross between a real life Supreme and my dream judge/ justice avenger. She restored order like Jesus healed the sick. She had no props, no wand, no sleigh, just the truth. She was so brilliant that she enlightened the darkness in all the hearts she touched. What she did have in common with Santa was a need to keep moving because there was so much clarity, justice, and compassion to be distributed to all the good little girls and boys. By applying exactly the same fair and equal treatment to all the bad little girls and boys she proved that she was so beyond Supreme.
In real life Sandra Day and I are both Arizona hotties, although she is a Phoenician. She is co chair of an institute to foster civility in Tucson at the U of A. Her reputation for civility is epic, not that unlike my dream Super Supreme Sandra. Her favorite poem in real life tells her secret to Supremehood ( and SuperSupremehood):
Sometime when you’re feeling important;
Sometime when your ego’s in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,
Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;
Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you’ll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.
The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There’s no indispensable man.
[Saxon N. White Kessinger, There is No Indispensable Man (1959).]
How simple. These instructions, followed regularly can easily lead to civil discourse. This Supreme’s got SOUL. Let us all wish her luck on her nocturnal flights through the universe. Hi- Ho, SuperSandra, away. Let’s assume that this poem is the gift she wants us all to use while she is busy fighting injustice.
You better not
Intuition, Archetypes, Ancestors
December 15, 2012
Historical enemies, sagas of war, and the tragic impact violent thoughts have on society today are harsh reminders of human disorder. We can not look back to find a perfect time in history or a completely noble story of our ancestors’ survival. The mixed bag has always existed, known and unknown, true and false. When evil rocks the world we are all quick to isolate culprits and round up perps in our own minds. It does not matter which demon we blame, even if we never mention it out loud. The very act of deciding who is to blame will be a process to eliminate knowledge of one’s own part in building a more hateful world. The question of the moment is “Who started this?”, but we all know intuitively the answer to that eternal question.
The prostitute archetype in each of our dramas will test and be tested to discover ethics and limits. The question will be answered in this lifetime about how blind you are to others in order to enhance your own comfort. This story will star your prostitute archetype. Your storyboard will be repeated in different costumes and sets until the line has been firmly established between your soul and what you are willing to do for physical comfort. You may find it is an opera one time and a comedy the next, but if you look back you can identify the segments like vignettes on the Twilight Zone. You created and produced these stories to find your limits. Your own unconscious mind has written, directed, and been in charge of casting the stars. There are sometimes entire decades of reruns. I feel that our nation has been rerunning an unfortunate version of our best selves with less than admirable results.
One meaningful action we all can take is prayer and meditation, to the best of our training and ability. Palestrina’s Requiem for 5 Voices may be helpful. Pax vobiscum.
Requiem by Palestrina
December 14, 2012
— 3 Comments
Navigating Backwards
December 9, 2012
— 4 Comments
sunken treasure of dreamsStudying one’s ancestry one learns history once and for all. Any abstracts become clear when you chart your own pedigree. Any dates memorized come to life when you find out what your own ancestors were doing at those times. I am always a big proponent of being present in the moment, but historical knowledge helps me appreciate the present. The belief in intuition is enhanced when the timeless soul is given room to move. Calendars and clocks are maps of time that match the heavens in a very precise way. The full meaning of the heavens is impossible to capture in a clock. If you can view your life from a higher place time is less relevant than it appears to be in your rear view mirror. Meditation is the path to truth beyond time.
I am all the way a navigator. I have flown many miles in private planes navigating from the air, do very well with driving, or public transportation. Reading maps and finding different kinds of maps has always been a fascination for me. Historical maps and charts of the heavens are of particular interest. I am learning with precision how to navigate backwards by means of the family tree. My study of Sacred Contracts teaches me to align with time in a much broader spiritual sense.
Memory and dreams reconstruct time as well as facts. Often by repeating a story that is highly revised and edited for the ego’s best light we create a strong reality that never existed or has a chance of being true in real time. Our poetic dreamy visions of ourselves and others are the pageant we produce in order to learn our life lessons. Each one of us produces and directs the archetypal dramas in which we live. We act in the dramas of others, as do they in ours, but we only witness tiny segments of other people’s story. In dreams we only see faces we have seen in our waking lives. In dreams we deconstruct and revise the archetypes and their roles in our own big picture.
Looking at the symbolic as well as the scientific meaning of the past I see above and below are forever linked just as the past and the future. They have no meaning without their partners, like the border crossers and the migra. Our lessons are repeated in time, but are not done in a logical worldly sequence. If we believe in divine order it would be wise to honor and make some contact with it. In this way we can avoid swimming against the current , struggling to arrive in a place we have already been. Deep meaning is found by reading the treasure maps in our dreams.
Governor Lost and Found
December 6, 2012
— 2 Comments
Gov. Jan Brewer of my home state put on her high-heeled sneakers, and that ever-present wig hat on her head to sneak out to Afghanistan. This was done presumably to brighten the holidays for AZ National Guard troops stationed there…..as IF…..her presence was so exciting it is worth it to all to export it. Troops used to get Bob Hope, Raquel Welch,and lots of A list stars to light up their holidays.
I am politically torn on this one. Although I loathe the Barry Goldwater style move that this seems to be, and as a true conservative deplore the expenditure of public money, I do so want to export her to someplace far from here. I am also fully in favor of her putting herself more in harm’s way than even Phoenix can offer. If she had paid for it herself and used her vacation days I would say, “Vaya con Dios. Stay for a while.” In Spanish la gobernadora is luz de la calle, oscuridad de la casa (light of the street, darkness of the home). We had a lovely Gov Jan Napolitano who was imported to DC for the security of the homeland while we replaced her with a shadow governor.
In this woman’s mind it makes sense to deny hispanic youth dreamers the right to obtain drivers licenses. If they have the nerve to drive they will be doing so without insurance, a very unappealing idea for anyone driving through the state. If we gave them drivers licenses we would not only acknowledge them with some dignity, we would enhance the chances that they might find employment. In Arizona we graduate only 25% of English learner high school students in the state. We have few legal jobs but an abundance of easy fast (read instant) careers in crime that will have a rapid turnover. That turnover feeds our for profit prison system, a big player in the new normal economy of Arizona. It is easy to see how granting the right to legally drive to the dreamer is a slippery slope that could be disruptive to the current crime for profit model we have for growing our economy.
Consumption as Culture
December 3, 2012
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Who is in charge of the decisions you make about consumption? Do your values ever influence what you buy?
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