vada by cheyanne
I don't know if the answer is ignorance, or if it is far-seeing foresight, or if it is trained into us over centuries and millennia, or if it is from feeling powerless without a voice, or maybe from collective experience, but the question is why do we lay about and hope a benevolent force will come to us from outside to rescue us from ourselves? The hope that flying saucers would rescue us from hard-edged absence of caring has been with us since the Fifties. A website, paoweb, has "updates by Sheldon Niddle," purportedly channeled from galactic federation wise counsel. I've looked at it occasionally over the last several years to find over and over that "first contact," when a mass landing will announce we are being watched over by beings more intelligent than we; they're just around the corner, any day now, soon now, coming to set us up in an ideal society under the galactic federation. Whatever. A few years ago, a definite date was announced. The date came and went. Oh, well, no problem. Some things were not in place they thought were in place and it turned out the timing wasn't right. Sounds like Fundamentalists announcing the end of the world and then it doesn't happen. There was a bunch in southern California some years ago who poisoned themselves because a comet was passing by and it was here to collect their souls. Sometimes I need some input like this to remind self that our inept government is not the only dysfunction going around. It galls me to think the people in DC actually represent us. They do not represent our interests, but they do represent the greed, the I'd-rather-be-watching-tv mind, readiness to lie to get what we want, the way we look up the ladder not down, our style of looking the other way when we see somebody down and out, our self-centered focus that says all for me, screw everybody else. In that way, they are a mirror to American motivations.
vada by cheyanne
Sparta has been down and out since the year 2000. It was limping along before, but since 2000, businesses go away, new businesses start up and go away. For awhile the talk was tourism, get people to come in here from other places to save us because we can't save ourselves. And factories. Maybe a factory will come here and save us. How much of that mind that we cannot save ourselves comes from religion, a totally different kind of "salvation?" An old joke came to mind. A man fell overboard from a cruise ship. He's in the water praying to God to save him. Somebody threw him a floating ring, but he wouldn't touch it, God's going to save him. He drowned and went to heaven. He asked God why God didn't save him when he was calling for help. God said, I threw you a floating ring and you wouldn't have it. I take it to mean an element of self-help and accepting help is part of the deal. Seems like if we take care of ourselves, the desperate prayer to God to fix us may not have to be so desperate. I like to live my belief that God's counsel, scriptures, are here to help me make my own decisions more in line with the reality of the moment and not feel the need for the Unknown to hurry up and save me from the results of my own dim-witted decisions. I believe that in this time, historically in the evolution of consciousness, the mental exercise of making decisions is important in the soul's growth and the brain's development. I never learned about decision making until I was away from parents who permitted no decision making. I came out of the experience dreading, afraid of making decisions, not having experience. Right away I made some disastrous decisions for myself because I did not know how to decide, how to be impartial. Up to age 23 I was ruled from outside myself; parents, marriage, military. The next 5 years after leaving parents were taken up by forces outside myself making my decisions. I gave myself to them. By the time I left the Navy and marriage at the same time, I was suddenly able to start thinking about making my own decisions, and became jealous of making my decisions. Nobody makes my decisions without my permission. Anyway, that was the dream. In this time of the life, looking back, I was then, and am able now, to hang on to original purpose.
I can't say I've always made the best decisions or even rational decisions, even sensible decisions, but somehow I've made it to today. I started college on my own, making decisions for myself. I was not aware in that time of the importance of decision making. This is hindsight talking about the importance of decisions. Then, I dreaded having to make any decision. Didn't know what to do. I was on my own first time like a dog that had lived on a chain since a puppy set free. The dog runs heedlessly in any direction chosen at random. It just runs. Inevitably, like a bird that escapes a cage does not know defensive flying and gets nailed by a hawk first day, the dog runs across the road in front of a car first day. I was determined not to be heedless with my freedom, which allows me to be sitting here today writing about it; otherwise, I'd have gone the way of the bird and the dog. Made some decisions I would not make today, explaining why I have a little bit of peace of mind in this time of the life. For one thing, I tried to learn how to be social, how to be charming at a cocktail party, how to be seen with the right set, shit like that. It never took. Never found comfort in a cocktail party. Then, I knew people I would totally stay away from now. Also, the other side of the coin, found a handful of the best friends of my life unto death do us part. Knew some wonderful people, too, people I recollect with warm feeling in the heart. It doesn't do to get in touch with people I have not seen since that time. They've gone to careers, families and new cars, bought the package. I've gone hillbilly, live on a back road with a cat, two donkeys, and drive a twenty year old car with rust places. I'm really at an ideal place in the life. I've lived the ideal that I don't want to impress anybody. I'm there. Nobody going nowhere. I don't impress anybody who lives by the way of "the world," the human mind. I need the freedom to let go and let God, as they say, let things around me happen their own natural way with the least of my interference. It may not be good husbandry, but it is how I'm comfortable.
I have, I actually have held as a guiding light for self, to be somebody who does not impress anybody. I don't want people looking at me with the I'm-impressed look, or sucking up to me because I have power and influence, or wanting to rub elbows because I have more money than they do, or introducing me to people I don't want to meet, a great big expanse of expectations I don't want to pretend to live up to. I want the world of commerce and whatever else they do out there, that whole system of taking other people's money legally, I want them not even to know my name. I want them to see me the way they saw old man Sherman Scott who drove to town on his red-belly Ford tractor and wore his bib overalls and work boots to church. Just an old nuisance nobody much knows, he sees just a few people and stays to hisself, not looking for nothing but to live in harmony with neighbors, friends and the people he knows. Articulating it like this, in retrospect, I've made it. I spend my own time studying, learning, not in a structured, academic way. Like, for some reason I start wondering what is going on in China. What news we get about China is propaganda. So I start at zero. I know nothing about China. I found some contemporary Chinese films through netflix, found Chinese fiction and poetry through amazon, then wanted to read a history of China. Came upon the time of Genghis Khan. Two pages. All I knew about him was cliché stuff. He seemed awfully interesting in those two pages. I put the marker in the Chinese history and found a biography, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Found him much like King David; genocidal warlord, brilliant mind, a heart as big as Mongolia, became the Founding Father of the nation that formerly had been continually warring tribes. He really was a great man. This was a man who could jump on a wild horse and ride, only rode wild horses. This is how my study is done my way. A little bit at a time over several years, I'm familiar now with how people live in China. This just one of many veins I follow with no purpose but the guiding light of curiosity.
vada by cheyanne
I can't say I've always made the best decisions or even rational decisions, even sensible decisions, but somehow I've made it to today. I started college on my own, making decisions for myself. I was not aware in that time of the importance of decision making. This is hindsight talking about the importance of decisions. Then, I dreaded having to make any decision. Didn't know what to do. I was on my own first time like a dog that had lived on a chain since a puppy set free. The dog runs heedlessly in any direction chosen at random. It just runs. Inevitably, like a bird that escapes a cage does not know defensive flying and gets nailed by a hawk first day, the dog runs across the road in front of a car first day. I was determined not to be heedless with my freedom, which allows me to be sitting here today writing about it; otherwise, I'd have gone the way of the bird and the dog. Made some decisions I would not make today, explaining why I have a little bit of peace of mind in this time of the life. For one thing, I tried to learn how to be social, how to be charming at a cocktail party, how to be seen with the right set, shit like that. It never took. Never found comfort in a cocktail party. Then, I knew people I would totally stay away from now. Also, the other side of the coin, found a handful of the best friends of my life unto death do us part. Knew some wonderful people, too, people I recollect with warm feeling in the heart. It doesn't do to get in touch with people I have not seen since that time. They've gone to careers, families and new cars, bought the package. I've gone hillbilly, live on a back road with a cat, two donkeys, and drive a twenty year old car with rust places. I'm really at an ideal place in the life. I've lived the ideal that I don't want to impress anybody. I'm there. Nobody going nowhere. I don't impress anybody who lives by the way of "the world," the human mind. I need the freedom to let go and let God, as they say, let things around me happen their own natural way with the least of my interference. It may not be good husbandry, but it is how I'm comfortable.
vada by cheyanne
I have, I actually have held as a guiding light for self, to be somebody who does not impress anybody. I don't want people looking at me with the I'm-impressed look, or sucking up to me because I have power and influence, or wanting to rub elbows because I have more money than they do, or introducing me to people I don't want to meet, a great big expanse of expectations I don't want to pretend to live up to. I want the world of commerce and whatever else they do out there, that whole system of taking other people's money legally, I want them not even to know my name. I want them to see me the way they saw old man Sherman Scott who drove to town on his red-belly Ford tractor and wore his bib overalls and work boots to church. Just an old nuisance nobody much knows, he sees just a few people and stays to hisself, not looking for nothing but to live in harmony with neighbors, friends and the people he knows. Articulating it like this, in retrospect, I've made it. I spend my own time studying, learning, not in a structured, academic way. Like, for some reason I start wondering what is going on in China. What news we get about China is propaganda. So I start at zero. I know nothing about China. I found some contemporary Chinese films through netflix, found Chinese fiction and poetry through amazon, then wanted to read a history of China. Came upon the time of Genghis Khan. Two pages. All I knew about him was cliché stuff. He seemed awfully interesting in those two pages. I put the marker in the Chinese history and found a biography, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Found him much like King David; genocidal warlord, brilliant mind, a heart as big as Mongolia, became the Founding Father of the nation that formerly had been continually warring tribes. He really was a great man. This was a man who could jump on a wild horse and ride, only rode wild horses. This is how my study is done my way. A little bit at a time over several years, I'm familiar now with how people live in China. This just one of many veins I follow with no purpose but the guiding light of curiosity.
cheyanne selfie
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YES to the guiding light of curiosity! Adorable photos capturing the essence of child-like curiosity and fun.
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