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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Crime Scene

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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human, justice, rant, TC, Universe, victim

Is that all? The whole world, this magic wet blue orb will be remembered as just one big crime scene? After the Y incision, all those sporty, artistic, philosophic fluids drained away; the meat of our intellect, science, curiousity, courageousness; the connective tissues of love, family, hope, benevolence all extracted, examined, weighed, as Maat once did, only now there’s no one left to cross over. No one left to view the body and claim it “Mine,” and grieve. We’ll be documented and printed for eternity, a planet of possibility, now just bloodstain and ash. We silenced ourselves with every gunshot, every act of omerta, each time we shrugged off violence as the norm, or laughed it off because we stopped teaching our young how to touch “animus,” the wonder of it, the holiness of the spirit inside themselves and each other. Decency extinct because we allowed it. Could we all have been just that tired or unable to stand up and not take it anymore?

I will not pray for world peace because those are words with vague concepts and less action, exhalations that feed my houseplants with carbon dioxide, so perhaps not entirely a waste. I could light a candle and burn oxygen, study the flicker and wish that humanity would just stop killing itself. I will shed tears again and feel despair again. But then I will take part of some random act of kindness, or witness one and try to share the news. Again. I will not give up trying because I believe every crime scene should have justice, just like every victim has a name. Let justice be kindness, somehow, and know that you are so much more than a name. I don’t want to believe this beautiful Earth will be just another victim.

I Hope to Hear Bells

31 Monday Oct 2016

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dream, father, Samhain, son

The veil grows thin. Perhaps that is the reason for the dreams.

The winds are high. They began last night. White caps and cold feet, two sweaters.

A grieving friend. She lost her bestie at a Halloween party, a candle that had only just begun to burn. Her grief touched me, which surprised me at first. But then, I am not exempt from feeling heartbreak for someone I did not know, because I am human.

My father walked in my dreams last night in his old bathrobe, the one that made him look like a medieval monk. His back was to me, but I knew it was him. He said nothing and then he was gone.  Another dream in some other corner of night. The tornado is coming, there are children I do not recognize in my house, three cats, and my son. He is so young.  We are trying to hold the door closed against the purple and black spinning monster.  The door blows away. We watch the storm pass by, and the sky becomes magenta.  We emerge from the basement apartment. My neighbor is standing in a great field. His left arm is gashed, he is grimy and bleeding, he is staggering. We run to him, but he acts as if he does not know why we are concerned.  The tornado has dissipated in the blue gray horizon. Fiery sunlight is trying to pierce the clouds.  In the great field there is a lake. A crowd of people have come and they are fighting, and now we are trying to decide if we should go and stop them.  When I awake I feel drained because I feel like my father is warning me, or that something is not right. My fingers are cold as I type, and this needs to be a day of examination.

The neighborhood is buzzing with activity.  The veteran lady is moving herself out, one box at a time. I will miss her strong, quiet presence.  The maintenance man is quite up there in years, but he is built like Bruce Lee. Muscular bull dog feisty blonde spikey. He dresses in young men’s clothes. He never walks: his Chucks only hustle.  He was holding his stomach in front of my door and confided that it’s just the chemo, been in remission for 13 years, then he hustled down the hall, back to his never-ending projects.   Jesus Christ, woman, you think you have down days, just look at what this man accomplishes before you even get up in the morning!

There are no excuses in this world. There are plenty of grievances, and I let them get me down.  The veil grows thin.  What will I stitch upon it to let the souls and my dreams know I was there for them?

Grown, Flown, Gone.

22 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Reposting this one for my dad, because I lost him on this day last year. I miss him. But he’s in every corner of this place.

Indigo Vales

My apartment complex is two squat rectangles, two floors a piece, painted pretty yellow and accented in teal, separated by two tall, beautiful pine trees in a courtyard.  When I first arrived I could see the beach if I put my head up against the bedroom window, or more easily if I walked out the front door. I like to check on the tide, see if there are whitecaps, is it foggy before I step outside for my morning walk.   The giant flagpole in the marina back there tells me which way the wind is going. When I first arrived it was cold and quiet. Mourning doves were in the trees, and I watched their behaviors, their cooings and comings and goings. I heard the wind when I first arrived, wind in the pines, there is no sound like it. Well.. maybe the sound of “I love you Mom” compares…

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Stand Up For The Nameless Holy Ones

22 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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evolving, faith, Henry Rollins, history, politics, refugee

The fate of the world rests in what my father believed and passed down to me.  In what his father and fathers before passed down to him.  All father’s everywhere in the world are responsible for the mess we are in right now.  But what about our mothers? It is said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. What did she, the universal Mother, pass down to us through the ages?  Is her voice and actions responsible for the mess we are in?

Those are blanket statements, overgeneralized, narrow and fearful in view.  I come here today to chew on the savory stew brewing in the world’s cauldron, yes, even the blood and gristle that come boiling up to the top. Today I am sorting to see what needs to be done.

In the beginning there was the Word, it is said. Every culture has one. All our fingers are printed with ancient soot we told our stories in. We record them because we need to remember, and perhaps more importantly, we want others to. Sometimes the words become holy, and what is holy for you is not so much for me. When I was an infant I was baptized Catholic, an action I could not consent to.  I withdrew my faith as a teenager and my parents discontinued their push to get me Confirmed, to continue my life’s journey through Christianity. Strange that I would study the bible and torah looking for answers when I no longer believed them holy.  What about the rest of the world? Shift your eyes to the greater world, other cultures and faiths. I wonder how many still believe the faith of their fathers in the same way?  How and when does their faith shift, if ever? The poorest among us still share what they have, and I ask is it out of basic human decency, or is it faith?  So many of us do not have the time (or inclination) to sit down and sort through verses and quotations to establish their truth via translation, or study the men who composed them to attain a deeper understanding of what they really meant. “How can I believe anything Paul said when he was once Saul, why should I care, and what bearing does that have on just another workaday in this soul-sucking life,” is what I believe so many people must feel.  Conversely, so many people adhere to their faith without question. They don’t feel the need to do a background check on Paul. They get through their working two jobs with no car, no daycare, no healthcare because they are living their faith. It heals and upholds them, and that is a beautiful thing.

The Constitution of the United States was written by men who owned other human beings. We learned about them all throughout school, memorizing certain facts from textbooks in order to pass tests. Henry Rollins, once a rock star, can quote amendments, Jefferson, and Mandela because he wants to, not because he has to pass a test, and it makes my pea brain want to implode. So many of us do not have the time (or inclination) to sit down and sort through the Constitution, the amendments, to do background checks on the framers, Supreme Court justices, hell, even local official, to get to the bottom of things. To become informed about our country or the world.  I believe most of us just don’t have time or the need for that, so we take the worms our parents fed us, assimilate their biases into our own, grow up into good little birds, leave the nest and start the whole thing all over again. (Yes, we assimilate their good deeds, too.)  Even if we were their clones, we would still make our own mistakes in the process of being our individual selves. Wouldn’t we? We just take it all on faith making our way through life best we can. I can feel the weariness from here, and it makes my soul tired.

There are some who are delving down into faith, into our history.  The best-seller list indicates as much, but what are we doing with what we learn?  Time to break the cycle of “I am the product of my father and mother’s faith, teachings, and what I observed of them.” Time for us to stop being the product of our parents faith, their history, their biases, the product of our schooling, our jobs, or being somebody’s lamb.  Time to give a shit about that guy down the street, our neighbor, those strangers who are a family,  instead of some guy on the squawk box or the pulpit.  A “radical” idea from a pro-choice privileged elite feminist hell-bent on destroying religion and by tearing up the political and moral fabric of our nation?  Or just a small idea from a person who believes that making a better world comes from the bottom up, not the top down. From my hands into yours. Who believes a smile, a hello, a hug, speaking kindly, speaking someone’s name can make a difference.  You are the majority, the weary ones with your hands in the soil, giving the last of your bread to your neighbor. You are the nameless holy ones missing from our table.

Everything Stops

15 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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evolving, ocean, woman

Everything stops when I walk on the beach.  I arise because somehow my body knows it’s time to wake up in the dark. Sometimes it’s nature and sometimes it’s insomnia. Remnants of the past cling to me, but they are grains of sand now instead of rocks in my pocket or on my back.  I rise and drink water and say a little prayer of thanks for clean water, a roof and a dry floor where I will pace later.  I dress in the dark and choose to leave my phone behind, even though I know I will see a photo-worthy sunrise and will not be able to record it.  Is it really necessary now?  Not really.  Rumor has it there will be another one tomorrow.  I recall bits of dreams and will record them when I return.  So I pull on flannel pants and two more layers of shirts, slip my feet into sandals and walk on the cold sand inspecting last night’s high tide leavings, and everything stops without my bidding. It just *does.*   All the noise in my head from the time I woke to the time I heard the ocean breathing on the shore, it all just stops. I walked a long way and turned around before Werner’s* place.  You know Werner, the person who erected the fence from his backyard all the way down into the waterline, the one whose property you used to be able to cross at low tide, never at high tide unless you wanted to swim, who rebuilds his no-trespassing fences and signs after every storm.  I’m not mad at him for blocking access to a longer walk whenever I choose, but I am sad because he’s so fearful and angry that people might trod his sand on their way to a sunrise and nothing more.  Anger stops in the presence of waves.  Rational thinking arrives on the backs of casual dolphins feeding as they pass behind the breakwaters. Seems like Werner missed the memo.

Our new neighbor was drawn here.  I try not to disturb her morning meditations, but sometimes you just have to walk by and say “good morning.”  Yesterday as I walked down the balcony I saw dolphins loping and I ran down to the beach and was ready to start hollering “Dolphins! Dolphins!” to no one but seagulls but she was there, sitting  quietly with her hood up.  I stopped short and watched them go by in silence then took my walk.  On the way back I said hello and we spoke just a bit and when I got home I asked, “How is it, Universe, that you put a woman on the beach who was born in my neighborhood, a contemporary, in front of me? How can this happen? What does it mean?”  She came down here to celebrate her birthday and the dolphins obliged.  How is it that I got to witness a small part of this woman’s moment? Nobody lives at the beach and hates it.  We are drawn to water, to this sound, to this reckoning, and what a blessing, I just don’t have the words to describe it.  She celebrated her birthday with waves and dolphins, and I carry her vibe, still.

Everything stops, then everything begins in each and every wave. Some of us are knowing participants in the dance of the universe, of stars, fingers in the loam, toes in the foam, Huskies left alone in their crates who cry for their mothers, spiders who hear us, snakes who avoid us, those who dance in the sunset with nets and share their bounty. Some of us stand on dry land, resolute in facts and No Trespassing signs.  My cauldron embraces you all.

*name changed for privacy

My Nightmare*

11 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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help, human, politics, rant, woman

It’s time to take a stand and more of us are standing but the word isn’t getting out enough because the media is too PC to print the facts, the truth, and the Word from the other side.  We are no longer the silent majority. So I am writing and sending this letter to every “news” place.  I wonder which ones will take the time to really hear us, to learn the truth and put it on the air.  I want you to put your porn and your Pokémon down long enough to take a look at our American history and by the end you will know we were right.

Our poor country went to hell after WWII.  Our brave soldiers sent off to fight come home to women suddenly wanting something “else,” as if it was better than what they had right here in the comfort of their homes. They wanted to keep working. Then they wanted to go to school where they learned about “equality” from liberals, people who told them it was okay to not want to be women but men in disguise.  Who encouraged the men to burn their draft cards, burn bras, burn flags, but the women?  Who stuck up for the coloreds when they wanted equality, like they didn’t have it already, to provoke the men into marching? That it’s okay for boys to kiss. And that we can’t be America anymore but a “global” community.  What’s wrong with just being America and let the rest of the world take care of their own mess?

Our poor country went to hell when we let women think they can decide for themselves what’s right for them, but even THEY don’t know what’s right, and we have to help them.   That’s why Roe must be overturned.  But somebody let women on the “Supreme” Court and now our country is paying for it.  They’re not practicing the law, they’re playing with politics, playing God, like they know what’s best for us?  Tearing babies out of a woman’s body is inhuman, and only an insane woman would want do such a thing. We need to put women back in the home, ask them to tend to their babies instead of killing them and calling them mistakes.

You think women are angry? What about all the men who want to work but they can’t find a job? You know why? Because the women and non-Americans have them all!  And don’t give me this crap about “immigrants” cleaning our hotel toilets and pulling tomatoes when no American wants the job–plenty of people will take the job, ask anyone!  There’d be more jobs for us if illegals and women would stay where they belong.  You think women are angry because nobody wants them in the service, but I’ll tell you the MEN are angry because we cannot fire back on our enemies in the Gulf even though we’re being missiled!  How about telling our men that we trained you to fight but it’s better if you just walk around the desert and fix schools for terrorists?  It’s NOT okay and our men must have the chance to fight the evil and make our country safe.

You know, a long time ago Charles Manson said he did what he did to show the coloreds what to do. He wanted to start a civil war between the races, so he murdered to show them how to do it.  Well guess what? Our civil war is coming and there is only one person who can help us make this country amazing again.  I will say what no one else will say because the media and liberals have taught everyone that it’s not nice to say what we feel because it might hurt somebody’s feelings.  One person will stand up to the PC garbage. One person will get this country back on top again, with help from the rest of us God-fearing men who DO know better. He may not speak the best way, but he knows deep down how much trouble we’re in and he knows how to get the job done.  Make way for the man who provides for his family, who works hard to earn his living, and cares more for this country instead of all the others.

We are the shepherds of this amazing country.  We will hold our heads high. We will hold back the flood tide of illegals and terrorists from coming here. We will hold our families, true families, together and they will never have to worry.   We will get rid of the criminals, the enemy, put them back down into the dirt below the serpents bellies where they belong. They will fear us and our country will stand strong and be ready for any enemy!  There is no such thing as equality because that implies there are unequal parts.  There is no equality, as God intended, and we will stand on the strength of that message.

God Bless,

X

*to be clear, the views expressed in this nightmarish letter are not my own*

10/13/16 Update:  Is this my country?  #Defendthe19th

10/14/16 Update: No, this, and this,  is my country:  Class and Decency  #Humanity

Preparing for Matthew, Tentatively

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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hurricane, ocean, sleepless, USMC

Restless.  Sleepless.  Blame it on the wind? A restless mind?

It’s four in the morning and I cannot sleep. I drank water.  Took a shower.  Listened to the wind and can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming.  And it is.  It’s a strange place to be in on a Wednesday morning trying to decide what’s the best way to prepare for what has not happened yet, for what may or may not come. We have technology now that tells us what’s brewing and where, and I need all my tools to get focused, not stress out, and be ready. What can I do with the energy that must be flowing this way?

The Atlantic is a monster to the tiny people in its way, a swirling, churning beast. Our Marines are on the way to help those in the Caribbean with disaster relief, and I am proud that we are going to help.  But what about my neighbors, the young couple who don’t have enough money for a hotel room in case we have to evacuate? Take them, their baby, ferret, and cat with me? Oh no, her husband won’t go for that. Pride lives three doors down from me while indecision lives three doors down from them.

The desert island question arises. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only bring three books (or CDs), what would they be? I look at my books sitting quietly on soft mocha shelves and interestingly, surprisingly, they’re the last thing on my mind. Strange feeling, looking at rooms full of special things, knowing I’ll leave them behind in favor of water, food I can eat out of a can, and a hand-crank radio. Where is higher ground, how far will I need to go? Will my “things” be dry when I get home?

But I wanted to stay and “see.”  I wanted to stand on the balcony and hear the roar and see the pine needles get hurled through the air, how far will the water rise up and storm the land?  Will the Atlantic ask for Willoughby Spit back?  No, not this time, I am sure. How much longer will I remain here, preparing (or not) for what is mostly intangible at this moment?  The higher tides and higher wind gusts tell me something’s brewing.  And I can’t sleep.

This Music Must Destroy, and you will build

01 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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change, Equality, Henry Rollins, oneworld, Ruts DC

Ask yourself in what ways you can y0u reach across the table and make a difference.   Stand up and say you see the Man and you don’t want to take it anymore.  Want to make a difference in the street, across the hall? Because you chose not to keep drinking the Kool Aid?   And what part you can play in making the music destroy, and the WORLD a better place. Our leaders can’t make it happen, but you can.   Think about it. I want to feel your fingers entwined with mine. I stand with you if you want peace and equality, through peaceful change.  Meanwhile…

I AM NOT YOUR PROPERTY! I AM NOT YOUR PROPERTY! I AM NOT YOUR PROPERTY!

Find Your Ember Of Rage

 

 

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