The Works of our Hearts and Hands.

There are a lot of things I don’t talk about here. In some cases it isn’t my place to talk about them and sometimes they have to do with things I shouldn’t talk about because it might involve arcane applications of personal power upon the plastic landscape of existence and... I’m not about personal power or applying it. All those highways lead to the same dead end and worse, as Saturn comes to rule the empty environment that one’s folly has isolated them in.

Over the course of the last several months people are increasingly unable to post at Smoking Mirrors and other blogs and they are being hit in various ways that have reduced traffic and comments. My reaction is, “So what?” These things aren’t my concern. I’ve attracted the attention of certain forces who don’t like what I have to say and they are also in league with the people who provide the platform for the blogs that I write. Am I dismayed? My traffic is being wacked; comments are becoming impossible for many people and maybe I’m floating in the Brazilian ocean with various other doomed realities... metaphorically speaking. It’s not my concern. Complaining isn’t my concern. Changing my message is not my concern.

I’ve come to love many of the people who visit these sites. Some of them I don’t even hear from any more. At first I thought it was me. Maybe I had changed in the wrong way over time and it escaped my notice. I now have convincing proof that this is not what has caused what is happening. To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a part of the problem but I expect my readers would tell me in that case and nothing has changed there. I still get the same amount of occasional, random complaints and the more general praise and support. I’ll take responsibility for the former. The rest belongs to whatever has authored the author of these blogs.

So... what’s my point? There are tireless little demons working in the background and they may, at some point, partially or completely shut me down within the present interface. You have my email if that ever happens and if that goes too, you have the light within you. You don’t need me. By this time, if I had anything of value to say I have said it already.

These forces are arrayed against any and everyone who are not down on their knees as accomplices to their own destruction at the hands of those who support the vanity parades of those who have chosen lies as the medium of advancement at the expense their humanity and the greater potential they will now no longer see. You know the routine. It is as ancient as the hills to which we look for our help; paraphrasing a Biblical quote here. I’m not a Christian in any contemporary sense but I do seem to refer to it with some frequency.

In certain ways, things have gotten very hard for me. It started toward the end of last year and it continues. Now and then it backs off for a few days only to reappear from a new direction. It’s sort of like being underneath a constantly surfacing boot heel making contact with an ever changing road surface.

I had a party yesterday to thank various local people and acquaintances for their help in certain professions or just being my neighbors. I labored the whole day before making all sorts of dishes that I am fond of from different cultures. Only half of the people showed up because they were already required to be somewhere else- or it was something else- but it was successful in all the right ways... even if I do now have all the food I’m going to need for the rest of the week (grin).

Once again, I noticed that even though I share various things in common with the rest of this human circus, I really am a stranger in a strange land. It’s going on ten years since I had to leave everything and everyone I knew and I’ve been pretty much alone except for those few who share my life. There hasn’t been much in the way of social contact and I haven’t seen most of my long time friends in many a year. My life has ceased to exist in the ordinary ways and though I know some large changes are on the horizon, I don’t know what they are.

People got drunk and loquacious... maudlin and emotional. I’m gone from here for awhile and that was a part of why I had the party. Toward the end a very large, very green grasshopper appeared and climbed out on to one of my fingers and stayed there for a very long time. Today he was still sitting on the table where I left him. We put out some water and green leaves. I don’t know what grasshoppers eat. He’s the only one I’ve seen here... some kind of a message but I don’t know what that is either.

I got a little hammered too. I didn’t have any of my personal comestibles and I have to say that alcohol is a poor replacement with unpleasant attrition. All in all though, I’m okay today. Now I’ve got to pack it up and head for the summer, main residence as life goes on.

I can’t complain. Even though I lack so many of the things that we all find so important in what fulfills us in this life... I’ve got some version of that grasshopper that follows me wherever I go but who changes shape and temperament in the same way that the seasons tend to adjust our relationship to the works of our hearts and our hands.

Maybe I haven’t told you how much I appreciate what all of you have done for me. I don’t have a home in the sense that most people understand that sort of thing and you have allowed me to live in your hearts and minds according to my poor efforts to say something meaningful whenever I have been alert enough to get out of the way in order for it to get said. Let me thank you now and irrespective of what is soon to follow, let me tell you that I have enjoyed and appreciated this more than I am capable of telling you now... or ever.

Lately I have been unable to answer my emails and this has gone on now so that it doesn’t look good at all. I apologize for this. I know I’m going to answer them. I just don’t know when. I would appreciate that you would extend me some amount of patience in this. I just don’t know what to say right now but that will sort itself shortly I think.

I have never seen times as dreadful as these. I have been in much greater extremity and faced with the possibilities of death and very long states of imprisonment. However, even in these cases the world never looked as grim as it does. Sometimes it feels like I did die and woke up in prison, all in one seamless procession. I realize how this sounds but it isn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m just writing what comes as a formula for being truthful. It doesn’t mean I’m sitting on a gray cot somewhere with a bottle of pills in my hand (sincere grin).

In any case, I’ve no idea why I wrote this or what it means. I will continue to focus on what is in front of me and- since some indefinable grace has given me the freedom to do what I like in respect of the application of my heart and my hands- expect that this will continue until I run out of things to say.

In summation, it seems I wrote this out of empathy with all of you who are possibly experiencing some version of what I have presented today. Don’t let it get you down. One of the reasons that certain efforts are so rare is because the price is so high in terms of the ordinary human situation. If we didn’t know this going in, we know it now. We never intended to stay here forever so... leave good footprints and I will see you up the road.

Visible sings: ♫ The Tangled Woods ♫