FLOW

goat rock, whitehead

Two months of snow on the ground, frozen solid, and more in the forecast. I understand why Sarah Palin left Alaska, after, of course, the money in her new role as the next Republican hopeful, getting the public appearance makeover they gave Paula Jones and Linda Tripp on the way to the trash heap of media suckers when their treachery was no longer needed. I don't understand somebody like Sarah Palin at all. Barbie for militia calendars, maybe? The world is full of all different kinds of people, and if I were to experience some of the really nutty ones, I'm certain she'd look like somebody I'd like to spend some time with. She's just of a mind that I'm not. That's all. So is everybody else on earth.

I finally saw why I've not given Patti Smith the affirming she deserves over the last several years. Just because her first album was one of the great albums of rock, and the second one right there on its heels, and from then on nothing as good as the beginning. I caught myself holding it against her for not making the greatest album in rock over and over every time she recorded something. That was retarded thinking on my part. Even when she's not as good as I want her to be, she's still good.

It told me I need to be watching my conclusions that spring up unconsciously and lock me down. A conclusion is an end. When I conclude something, it's signed, sealed, delivered. That's the end of it. No two ways about it. Then my mind locks down in that conclusion and I miss everything else around that context and changes since then. Concluding perhaps impedes inner flow, shuts down that which is in continuous motion like water in a stream, and blocks flow. Then my mind atrophies with a log jam of too many conclusions, I get a mind like Rush Limbaugh's and jump off the nearest cliff to end the noise.

This is something I've found with my own intunement since the passing of Jr. I've changed, I can feel it, but I'm not yet far enough into the changes to see manifestations enough to connect the dots. One thing I feel has changed inside, an awareness of the ongoing flow of the present. When I'm aware of the flow and seem to be going with it, I never do anything that needs undoing or inspires regret. It's when I'm out of my own flow that my decisions aren't necessarily on target. I'm in no hurry about anything anymore. Not much comes up that makes me anxious. I pay closer attention in the flow. But I do feel it is something to do with a greater awareness of the present moment.

I take it for Jr's gift. Like when he told me he regretted he couldn't pay me for all I'd done for him, I told him he'd paid in advance. What all I learned that is really worth knowing from Jr Maxwell is worth everything I did for him and more. Again, for me, it was the monk and the abbot, serving the master. From my way of seeing, just Jr's way of putting me in closer touch with the present moment was worth my efforts for his sake and more. All the time I stayed with him I was in the present moment only. No past, no future. Just now. I liked that. I liked getting into the habit, which evidently is what happened. I hear better, see better, think better, even walk better. I can't say I'm fully in the present, though closer than before.

TarBaby, the cat I have the closest mental connection with, suffered from so much absence, but loving him back to health has made us closer than before. We communicate very well now. In the morning, when he wants my attention the moment he hears my breathing change telling him I'm awake, he says , Mao, directly into my ear. One time, a couple weeks ago, when I didn't respond fast enough to suit him, he started gagging into my ear like he was about to puke. That one got my attention to his satisfaction. I had to laugh at the clever trick it was, thought up by a cat's mind, to set me in motion.

TarBaby's health has come back. He still has some issues, but it's looking more and more like 12 going on 13. Cat's becoming an old man. And he hasn't been outside in months. He likes to stalk mice. They keep the mouse population down in the house. The understanding going on between TarBaby and me now is a result of that absence. For one thing, I understood how closely connected we were. I find I tend not to believe another being could care so much for me that a period of absence would matter so much. I believe I've had a problem with that all my life. TarBaby is helping me see it aint necessarily so.