Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Is there a difference between faith and trust? You tell me. I've been thinking about it. I think there is a difference though the words to describe that difference are eluding me.

I've also been thinking about "blind trust" and "blind faith," which are - in the Reyaverse, exactly the same thing - blindness. Both have to do with betrayal of one's heart of hearts, it's the act of ignoring that soulful depth some people call intuition. Dazzled by external or internal fireworks and special effects, it's hard to remember that in every individual, cause, or ideal, there is a little man behind the curtain. Nothing is perfect.

We want to believe in the spectacle, I guess. We as a species are quite gullible, quite suggestible in the presence of perceived glamour. It's sobering to think about.

Blind trust and blind faith occur when people won't, can't and just don't continually question what is "real." I admit it is exhausting to continually wonder, good lord it certainly is. Of course it's tempting to let someone else decide what we should trust, what to believe in. Some of us who find the contemplative life unappealing turn to celebrities to guide us, or religious figures. We also turn to our leaders. Blind faith seems like it could be such a blissful state. After all, ignorance is ... but what I notice is that the blindly faithful are almost always fearful and suspicious. It doesn't really work.

Faith and trust come have to come from within. Right?

Turning over our inheritance of insight so as to blindly follow others is not the only way trust and faith are obscured. Something I write about often is the unhealthy, wasteful practice of blaming others. I find the blame game so discouraging!


President Obama has beautiful hands.

Blame obscures the clear sight and clean insight needed to access trust and faith. Pointing the finger at each other, also at ourselves, is a colossal waste of energy that serves no purpose except to get people riled up. It is not empowering. It chips away at faith and trust, hardens and embitters the human heart. Bloody hell.

When leaders are very charismatic, it's easy to fall into a swoon that leads to the blind belief that they are really "together," they know what they're doing and we should turn 100% of our decision making power over to them. This happened in Germany in the thirties. That sure didn't work!

I'm reading a book right now about the world prior to the Second World War, written by a pacifist. It's called "Human Smoke," by Nicholson Baker. Whoa, or should I say wow? It is an eye opener! Good lord. The book is motivating me to re-examine all my assumptions. Again. Yes, again.

I'm compelled to question my assumptions continually. It's strenuous but this is the path that leads (maybe) to the clear eyed faith and clear eyed trust I seek. It is my path.

Shalom.

They're here

iphone picture of yesterday's boiling sky

Shalom from haunted DC.

Every year right about now I begin to notice the spirits, the ghosts, the wandering dead. It feels like they are newly arrived, but my guess is that they're always hanging around, though not as palpable as in October.

The leaves fall, at which time huge chunks of sky, obscured by the leaf canopy in summer, are suddenly revealed. Similarly, or it goes in the Reyaverse, in October the veil thins. The ghosts become apparent. Their presence is so strong at this time of year, they are nearly visible to the "naked eye," (whatever that means).

People say they don't sense the ghosts, but I think they do, and I am entitled to my opinion. Ever had that creepy feeling that someone is right behind you, but when you turn around, no one is there? Yep, that's what I'm talking about. Rational people immediately discount the mystery of moments like that by creating a plausible story: it was the wind, or the leaves blowing on the sidewalk, something clanking around in the backpack or bag, etc.

Autumn is a great time to commune with the Dead. No doubt I'll make my way over to Arlington one day in the next couple of weeks, hang out with the soldiers. I also have been aware of a lot of horse ghosts this year, shuffling up and down the streets, through carriage house walls and such.

Halloween is the only night I will not speak to the spirits. It's the night when all the creepy, mean, angry dead come out to have fun at our expense. The kids look cute in their outfits, I suppose. It does seem to be later in the evening when the chaotic, let's-do-some-damage atmosphere takes hold. Those ghosts are the bullies and petty criminals of the spirit world. That's why we give out candy, to appease the angry spirits.

What do I mean "we?" I won't hand out a single piece of candy to that crew. I'm not afraid of them and I won't be bullied. As usual I will seek refuge under the roof of the house on Tennessee Avenue, with the dogs and my ex housemates.

Until Halloween, though, I am enjoying the contact. Most of the spirits in DC mean no harm. They're just hanging out.

The Happy Hour of Life

Shalom and happy Sunday.

The phrase Life is short was, once upon a time, meaningless. I tried to take it in when I was young, but time moves so slowly then. I thought it referred to the possibility of being killed or acquiring a fatal illness. The natural lifespan of homo sapiens, somewhere between 70 and 90, seemed, from the vantage point of my 20s and 30s, luxuriously long, hence the phrase, Life is short, frightened me. It was like a threat, that my lengthy life might be cut short.

Yeah, well that was then and this is now. Closing in on age 60 it is clear as a bell what the phrase means. Time flies at my age, literally flies. It's kind of cool - seriously - to be capable of appreciating the reality, the idea of how long the world lives, how quickly we humans pass through incarnation. At 60, one can not take life for granted any longer. At least I can't, and I consider this a great gift.


The Tidal Basin, up close.

Daylight is precious now in the northern hemisphere; this solar year is waning quickly. In the same way that these days I appreciate the shortness of human life, in autumn I'm capable of appreciating the light in ways I can't during the summer.

Yesterday I walked for hours, wandering, gazing, taking pictures, soaking in the crystal pure autumn sunshine. It was a particularly beautiful day, with temps in the 60s F. The sky was a shocking blue. I love the cloud people, but there was something so pure about the clear sky yesterday. I felt light, as if the sky was lifting me up, out of swampy Washington DC. It was glorious.

Especially gorgeous was the Tidal Basin. There was just enough of a breeze to break up the surface of the water. The reflected sunlight was dazzling. A million diamonds could never be so beautiful.

If morning is analogous with youth, and afternoon can be compared with adulthood, and if old age is the evening of life, then right now, poised between adulthood and old age, I am in the happy hour of life. So true! Especially on a gorgeous day like yesterday.

L'chaim, y'all.


That's the Washington Monument reflected in the Tidal Basin.

Godzilla

How do you say shalom in Japanese?

There are lots of iconic photos from the Cold War. I think of Kruschev's "We will bury you!" pose, the angry face, the clenched fist in the air. Whoa.

Of course there are thousands, maybe even millions of pictures of the Berlin Wall, though perhaps the most well known icons of that era are fictional, like James Bond. All those spy movies from the 1950s and 1960s - they were all about the Cold War.

Ellen reminded me that along with learning to duck and cover, we were afraid of mutants, the result of nuclear fallout. Everyone's favorite mutant, Godzilla, is a powerful and enduring icon of the Cold War.

I loved the Godzilla movies. I've seen a lot of them, mostly during the 1970s, almost always when stoned. The first Godzilla movies are meant to be terrifying, as is right and proper. Oh what we did to Japan, oh man. We were ready to do anything to end the war, but who knew it would be as bad as it turned out to be? Who could have imagined?

It's interesting that as time went on, Godzilla became less terrifying, almost cute in some of the films. Godzilla even became a hero, fighting for Japan against other mutants, in a few of the later movies. I don't know what to think about that!

As I remember it, in the U.S. as the years passed, the post-WWII paranoia faded. I didn't think a lot about the Soviets or the Chinese, I didn't worry about nuclear annihilation after about the age of 7 or 8. We had enough to contend with here in America, what with the assassination of a president, his brother, and the great Martin Luther King, Jr. When the sixties arrived, we were watching the Vietnam War on television, also the marches for Civil Rights and we were reading about what we called "women's liberation."

The Cold War ended, for me, somewhere around 1965, which is one reason it was such a shock in 1979 to visit Berlin, to see how real it still was. One of Reagan's legacies is the end of the Cold War. By then it was ancient history for me.

It's interesting to think about.

It was so long ago, wasn't it?

Shalom.

Do good fences make good neighbors? They can, certainly, but of course there are many situations in which it doesn't work that way, such as with gated communities, for instance. Feudalism in the 21st century. Good lord.

I was thinking about the Iron Curtain last night, remembering the one time I was in Berlin, during the winter of 1979. I remember vividly the drive across East Germany from Hannover, and how nervous our Hannoverian friend Claus was as he drove the autobahn from west to east. He told us that if we stopped for any reason, even a flat tire, we could be shot. 

The border guards were severe, indeed. They really looked at our passport pictures, then at our faces, then back at the pictures. They searched the trunk of the car, confiscated some newspapers Claus had forgotten to remove. They even took a John Irving book I was reading at the time. It was like being in a spy movie. I wonder what could have been seen as subversive in that book? I will never know.

I loved West Berlin. Every island city has a special energy, the result of being separated from what surrounds it. San Francisco is such a city, as is New York, each of them surrounded by water on three sides. West Berlin was a man-made island set inside, and completely surrounded by, East Germany. The energy was like an internal combustion engine. I hardly slept a wink for the few days we were there. 

One day we went into East Berlin, just to see. The difference was shocking. No cars, no shops, no pubs, no restaurants. We saw very few people. It was stark. We drove around awhile, silent and sober. In East Berlin I could feel how exhausted I was. Coming back into West Berlin was like entering Oz. Wow.

I read on the internet somewhere that it's possible now to follow what they call the Iron Curtain trail, a kind of political ley line indicating where east and west collided during the Cold War. I wonder if the energy is still palpable, or if it's now just a story, a part of history. 

All this brings to mind what an old cohort of mine used to say, that she had "razor sharp" boundaries. I am a big believer in strong, clear, healthy and resilient personal boundaries (something I continue to work on, year after year). I'm not sure "razor sharp" is healthy or resilient, though I'll concede sometimes necessary, or at least that's what the people in charge decided during the Cold War.

Was it necessary? It's interesting to think about.

A nice day for a walk

Shalom from crisp, autumnal DC.

I've been slammed at work, a good thing, mind you, and especially nice since it has been overcast and chilly. Dark, chilly days are great days to receive massage. Ahhhh.

Today I will go see the Sufi acupuncturist, after which I'm free until a late afternoon client. As if to dance in blissful shamanic alignment with me, the weather gods have produced what I think of as a perfect fall day - cool but not chilly, with abundant sunshine. I am so lucky!

While I'm walking home from my appointment this morning, I'm going to be thinking more about the world the baby boomers grew up within, a world that has, for all intents and purposes, passed away.

A mystic whose opinion I trust suggested to me once that after WWII, the sixty million souls that were killed decided to reincarnate straightaway, hence the baby boom. I've been thinking about that notion for a couple of years. Fascinating. It resonates for me, indeed. I have a lot to say about it but not today. Today it's too gorgeous to sit around on the sofa in serious contemplation. Hell yeah!

I will say this: life is good and I am grateful.


This is the fall weather as it approached Eastern Market last weekend. It was still warm at the market when I took this picture. Within an hour, the front had arrived. The temperature plunged by 20 F. Exciting!

Early on, we were very afraid

Shalom.

I decided yesterday that the best way to understand any particular period of history is to study what happened right before it, which of course requires studying what came right before that, etc.

What I was thinking about in particular is the Cold War. After World War II, especially considering how many people were killed (sixty million, I read somewhere. 60,000,000!), also because it must have come as a nasty shock to realize the Nazis really had systematically killed millions of people - to learn the rumors weren't war propaganda, and after seeing graphic photos of the damage done by the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - well - paranoia is an absolutely logical reaction. Ergo: the Cold War.

Nature abhors a vacuum, hence the push after the war, in the U.S. (at least), for women to have babies, lots and lots of babies. Here we came, born high on ether or whatever anesthetic they gave our mothers, slapped on our little baby boomer butts straight out of the womb, after which we were placed in
play pens so as to amuse ourselves, surrounded by a haze of second hand cigarette smoke. It was a lot like what they call crate training, only that is for dogs.

As soon as we could walk, we were taught to "duck and cover." I learned how to allegedly protect myself in case of a nuclear attack by the time I was in kindergarten. Five years old, and already worried about Soviet bombers dropping the big one. What a way to begin a life! Wow. Or should I say whoa?

I heard an interview with Mark Helprin on Studio 360 Saturday afternoon. Mr. Helprin was promoting a novel he wrote, set just after WWII. He said people didn't really talk about the Holocaust in the 40s, that the first books about it were published in 1953 or 1954. I think people couldn't really take it in for a few years. It was just too much to understand.

The U.S. as well as the Soviets, in spite of the damage done in Japan, continued testing what we called "A bombs." It was as if the military actually thought nuclear warfare was an option. After WWII, people were a mess. How could they have suddenly gone back to "normal" life once the war was over? They were in shock.

After WWII, western culture was frozen, for a number of years, in a state of severe PTSD. People went about their daily lives, and things looked ok on the surface, but oh my, all was not well.

This is the world into which we baby boomers arrived. Good lord. It explains a lot.