VADA THE YOUNG GIRL

vada

photo by her mother

I feel less a part of this world, week by week. It is the reverse of watching baby Vada grow into the world toward her fourth birthday, a week at a time, seeing the family on Sundays every week since before Vada was born. Every time I see her, she is new. A month ago, I saw the absence of baby and the appearance of little girl. Her mother keeps her in beautiful dresses, shirts, girl pants, shoes. In one way it seems like indulgence, which it is not, rather that she has such a beautiful face, living eyes, the wavy blond hair of childhood, a child so beautiful she needs pretty clothes to complement her face and personality. She is so accustomed, at almost four, to wearing pretty and colorful clothes, they have already become her personal style. Vada will be a woman few men will know how to know. When she finds one, he will be just like daddy, and daddy will go straight up through the roof. Hope daddy packs a parachute. In high school she will be among the best looking and best dressed girls in her class, a jock magnet. And, by the time she's in her teens, she will have at least as many deer kills as the hunters among the guys. She will be hunting with a bow by then. She will be a dancer, she will be a martial artist, and primarily she will be a singer. Mom, dad and I have talked at length about the necessity of a young girl being able to take care of herself. Rape culture is in full bloom in the colleges and military now, as well as out here in the  world. Rape culture will be in the high schools when Vada goes there, like it is in the colleges today and the last several years, and will go on for several more years. We want our babydoll to go into high school with a reputation that any guy wanting to dominate Vada Smith would only dare at serious risk to himself. Her daddy knows what guys are like. He's a good teacher. She will be winning archery tournaments by the time she goes into high school. She's likely to play on the girls' baseball team better than the guys, her daddy her coach playing catch.

vada and daddy

photo by her mother

Vada has her daddy's drive and her mama's drive too. They are different drives.  Her daddy's drive is to do everything he does well. Anything he takes up he learns it well. Last year he shot a running coyote in the head and called the shot. The friend with him said, "You'll never do it." He can robinhood an arrow at will. Doesn't do it anymore. Arrows are expensive, anyway the kind he uses are. Doing carpentry, he pays close attention to detail. House painting, the same. He can paint a straight line on a corner where two colors meet that looks better than taping it would. He likes to drive a powerful pickup with a rumble in the exhaust pipes and a Confederate flag in the middle of the front bumper. It means he loves the South and whatever else you'd suppose it to mean. He likes the rebel attitude of it. It's a sharp stick in the eye to them that don't like it. It says, I am I -- no apologies. He gets his meditation time on a boat fishing in a lake or the river. He throws back. Doesn't like to eat fish. He's straight-up honest in money dealings. It fires him up if someone doubts his integrity. His integrity he worked out for himself, not a supposed-to or religion thing. It's his own. In himself, it's his identity. It has meaning for him. He understands karma, that what you give out comes back. He has seen enough examples in his life of people too self-centered to value integrity, blaming others, unable to see self accountable for one's own fate. He is an excellent teacher. He can explain something with such clarity I can see what he's talking about. I like to hear him talk about hunting. It's something I cannot do. I don't want to kill anything. I stop when a squirrel darts back and forth across the road in front of me. Squirrels don't have long lifespans, which may explain why they never seem to get it about cars. I don't want to run over a squirrel. I don't even want to kill snakes. I understand hunters are the predators the deer need to keep the herds healthy. I like to hear hunting stories, but can't pull the trigger.

vada and elsa

photo by her mother

Vada's daddy's drive is introverted, while her mother's drive is extroverted. Crystal likes to have a business and go around to different businesses drumming up business. She enjoys working with people, individually and in groups, gives herself wide-open who-she-is in the exchange, is self-taught in everything she does, seeking and finding opportunities to learn what she needs to do, whatever it is she wants to do. She wanted to be a wedding and portrait photographer, got her learning on the job, apprenticed while she was in high school, set up a business and hit the ground running. Characteristic of her portraits is living eyes. She has a good eye and a clever visual imagination. She pushes herself keeping two businesses going, a child, a husband, and a house to keep spic-n-span clean and neat. She's an example of the saying, a woman's work is never done. I admire her ability to do so much and still have a life. She doesn't leave her life when she works. She works for herself and makes two businesses work well for her. She is a mother fully engaged with her daughter, her friend. She explains things to Vada, and Vada understands her. Vada does not need to be threatened or punished when she has an understanding of the rules of growing up human on earth. The furniture in the house, Crystal has bought for very little and restored in the basement workshop where she and Justin make things she sells. Her mind is popping with new ideas. I see Crystal's drive in Vada, as well as Justin's. I see their unique qualities in Vada woven together. I see the unique Vada, who is herself. Seeing her through her process of individuation, I am in awe of Vada, who she, herself, is, a three-year-old with understanding beyond her age, an automatically loving spirit.

vada conehead

photo by her mother

 
I had a horoscope done on Vada the day she was born. Reading it, I saw she is half her mommy and half her daddy. Almost four, she is the child I saw in the horoscope. Seeing her grow up, I see her grow into her horoscope. Sun in Gemini. Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars in Taurus. Ascendant in Scorpio. She's out-going and private too. Being a Gemini, the twins, duality, she can handle the apparent clash of seeming opposites. All her inner planets in Taurus. She's already stubborn as a donkey. She comes by it honest, too. Her mommy and daddy have it in equal measure. There is also the creative aspect of Taurus her mommy and daddy have in equal measure. Vada is at home. Venus, the planet of love, is the ruling planet of Taurus. I look at this picture of Vada above, conehead Vada, and see her horoscope. She loves to make others laugh. Knowing Vada, I see somebody who will endure. If anything comes along to knock her down, she'll get up, pull herself together and keep on. She has tremendous depth, a fast, retentive mind, a heart full of love and a charming personality. A few minutes ago I was looking at Vada's eyes in this picture of Vada conehead, and thought, Who are you? Who were you? Answer: Who I was is who I am, Vada with another name. If she wants to be a singer, possibly on regional bluegrass stages, she won't need a last name. Like Sade she'll be Vada. She loves her name. She has charisma in her presence. She performs in dances, song, acting. A few weeks ago when we were talking and she was in her Elsa dress, she said, "Are you glad to see me?" A flash in my mind's eye saw Vada with her band onstage in Seattle between songs saying, "I LOVE YOU SEATTLE!" Audience Roars. "ARE YOU GLAD TO SEE ME?" Audience Roars.

vada and her mother

photo by her daddy

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LOOKING FOR WHO I AM

eye am eye

The lead question for day 2 of blogathon: Who are you and what do you see your work as "being?" What I hear in my head is the Who: Who are you? Who-who? Who-who? The funny part for me is that I hold being-who-you-are as number one. Everybody seems to automatically know what it means to be-who-you-are. I take it for granted I know who I am. But, when it comes to answering a direct question, I don't know what to say. I like the Rasta answer: I am I. It sounds pretty, but it's a cheap shot. It's like defining beer by saying beer is beer. What constitutes I? Blake said the eyes are the windows to the soul. No doubt about it. Here is a picture of my window. This picture of my left eye was taken by a 5 year old boy, Landon. I gave him the camera to take some pictures and he took pictures of my eyes. I'd been taking pictures of him, so he took pictures of me. I'll start here, with Landon, the five year old. I've known Landon's daddy, Justin, since Justin was a baby. His mother and dad were my friends. Justin was my child friend when he was little, my teenage friend, my wild friend in his wide-open years, and now his kids are my friends. I like kids. I like it when a child shows me toys and dolls. I like to see a child smile and laugh. I like a child to show off for me; do a dance, sing a song, throw a ball. I feel like I understand a child is every bit as conscious as I am. My few memories from very early childhood are of adults who listened when I talked. I listen closely when a child tells me something, anything. The Justin I knew all through his childhood is the same Justin I know now. I'm glad to see who he is now at age 30 is the same as who he was when he was 5. What I'm looking for in self to answer who I am is that something that has been who-I-am since birth, the thread that runs through a string of beads, aspects of self.

landon, 5

 

For anyone acquainted with reading horoscopes, this tells who I am in brief; Sun-Taurus, Moon-Cancer, Ascendant-Sagittarius, 19May1942SanDiego8:52pm.  Taurus is my main drive. A Taurus is like a donkey in that if he doesn't want to do it, it aint gonna happen. I've got stubborn in abundance. I have no problem with it, same as a donkey doesn't have a problem with it. Somebody wants me to jump through a ring of fire, I'm not going to do it if I don't want to. Call me a wuss, call me a pussy, call me a jerk-off, I'll laugh out loud; you're just barking to hear your head roar. It really pisses off anyone I get involved with in any kind of way who thinks controlling me is the way to go. I dove into six years of psychotherapy to find out what was motivating my attraction to women looking for somebody to control. Bingo: mommy. That wasn't all I went through the process for. It felt like the next thing on my path. Know thyself. It took. I learned a very great deal. And now the psychotherapist is a valued friend. Still, it's difficult looking for who I am to put into words, instead of just feeling intuitive about it. Perhaps the most important part to me of who I am is a lover of God. And where who I am is concerned in the God department, I go my own way. I cuss, I drink liquor, I do all the things somebody who claims a spiritual path is not supposed to do. Who says? I cuss because I like the spice and music in language. I drink because I like the bite of straight liquor, not to get drunk. A church would not accept my refusal to give up my sins. They're not sins to me. They're everyday life. God doesn't want us to walk a tightrope over a pit of crocodiles unless you're Philippe Petit and want to do it for the fun there is in it.

 

caterpillar watches the birds

 

What I have found that it could be about the poor that God loves is the poor live close to the bone. They don't pretend. They want to say every forbidden word there ever was and they know how to do it. The poor are animated by their humanity. They have nothing else. Want to get drunk and sprawl face-down in the dirt, go for it, do what you gotta do. Nothing about social climbing attracts God's attention. Fake people God stays asleep to. God waits for the individual to come to the end of needing to fake it. God waits. I've spent my adult life wondering what it is about the poor that God loves so much. Meher Baba, when he was in the body, sitting receiving people who came to see him in a long line or individually, he always stood up when greeting an American black person. The very people the white people look down on so forcefully. I don't attempt to be God-like by imitating saintly behavior. Makes me barf to think about acting sweet all the time. By the example of King David I've learned it isn't being nice that God loves. It's being yourself, it's following your own light, it's allowing the people around to follow their own light, it's getting shit-faced drunk if I feel like it. Last time that happened was sitting at the kitchen table with my friend Jr Maxwell, who was 82 at the time, New Year's Eve. We decided to spend the evening at the table talking like we did over our drams of white liquor, the best on this earth. By midnight our foreheads were on the table and we were laughing because everything was funny. I believe God thought it was funny too. One afternoon I stopped by his house and saw, in alarm, the storm door open a little ways and his foot was holding it open, him on the floor. I went to him fast as I could go. First thought: heart attack. I saw his glass was sitting upright on the floor beside his hand. I knew he was all right. He went down slowly and sat his glass on the floor on his way down. I did the stupid thing, woke him up and tried to help him up. No. He was fine where he was. OK. I put some bluegrass on the cd player of fiddlers he used to play banjo with. He stayed on the floor and lay there with a serene smile on his face for probably an hour. He was where he wanted to be. When he was ready, he got up.

a recent painting of jr maxwell

I had to take a break. Went over to Justin's with Melvin to see the race at Phoenix. Good race today. Play time with the kids. I went with the question of who I am in mind, thought I'd observe self amidst my closest friends, people I would die for. Self was content and happy the whole time. I look at them in the line of the people I have been close with over years, people gone for many years. In each generation I have seen the waning of mountain culture from generation to generation. Yet the culture continues through very different circumstances such that the culture is still very much alive in the mountain people. I am a naturalized hillbilly. I came from flatland culture, but adopted hillbilly culture for my own. I'm still relatively comfortable with people of urban/suburban culture, but am at home among my hillbilly friends. I don't see their culture a lesser version of city culture. I see it unique unto itself with its own history. An individual's humanity is important among mountain people. We know each other for who we are. I came to the mountains as a monk going to a monastery. In my imagination I identified in the early years with Chinese poet Han Shan, known only for his hundred poems that make the book Cold Mountain. He was a monk who lived in the mountains of southern China. I don't tell this. It's just my own personal self-image. I live quietly on a back road and stay to myself nearly all the time. On Sundays I go see Justin's family and sometimes on Friday night drive to Woodlawn, Virginia, to hear some good music of the region. On trips to town for drug store or grocery store or anything, I'll stop in at the coffee shop and see who's there. Who I am looks for the god in everyone I meet and I like to connect with others in that way. Not by talking about God. Rather by simply being open. Several years ago, I don't know about now, I had the name all over the county of a "white witch." Word was that good things happened to people who spent time around me. I had a guy I didn't know come to my door at 7 one morning because he needed a change in his life, needed whatever it is. I've heard it in different ways from different people. The consensus is that good things happen to people who know me. I don't pay it any mind. If there is something coming through me, I would ruin it attempting to take control of it. I just leave it be and pay it no mind.

round and round

 

 

 

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EVERYTHING WORKS OUT

 

     the home of my soul

I see signs at drug store, grocery store, around town about getting flu shots. Like everybody needs a flu shot. For several years, my adult life I'd not had flu shots. Flu came along every once in awhile. After several years of no flu, doctor tells me to get a flu shot or I'll get the flu. I wasn't so sure. I had the shot anyway. Paid for it. A few weeks later I was assaulted by the worst flu I'd ever had. It cost a great deal in medications to get over it. Next year I was told if I don't get the shot, I'll get the flu. Paid for a shot, then a few weeks later paid over $100 for medications to get over a horrible flu. I told the doctor the shot gives me the flu. He told me it does not do that. Next couple years I did not get the shot and did not get the flu. As far as I'm concerned, my experience constitutes a scientific study, an empirical examination, reasoned and rational. Last year a nurse congratulated me for not getting one. She said, "Hang in there." A few days ago I saw in news that 8 nurses at a medical university hospital in Nashville were fired for refusing to have the shot. Some gave religious reasons. My reasons are entirely practical. I don't want the flu. I wouldn't work for a place that required I have the shot. When it came to being told what to paint by a gallery owner, my response was I'd rather paint houses, the houses themselves. And did. Money is not a ring in my nose.

As far as I'm concerned, I know a flu shot will give me the flu the same as I know with less certainty I will not get the flu without the shot; it's maybe so / maybe not. With the shot it's a certainty, in my experience. Figure the odds. I like not having the flu and I like not having to pay $130 during lean winter months to be given the flu and then to get over it. When I don't get the flu, I don't have to spend my grocery money on financing some pharmaceutical CEO's Cayman Islands yacht. I object to that. I made a determination for myself years ago to be the change I want to see in the world. Be what I believe. When I came to realize that God indeed is, then I had to live accordingly. That does not mean go to church, wear polyester and never drink again. It means practicing love for the people around me, my "neighbors," the people in my life, the people I see in the course of a day, the people I think about. The best I can. It doesn't mean winning souls to the Lord, having a perfect Sunday school record, or never making a mistake. It means an intent in the heart, a guiding light. Mistakes are naturally made in a world of illusion. I trust church and preachers for spiritual guidance like I trust Ann Coulter to teach me history.

In the last months I've been looking at my life in a way I had never seen it before. It could not have been seen before. One, the first half of my life was lived in the Flatland, in city-mind, all my learning to then in city-mind interests. Half my life ago, I kind of bottomed out in that I saw I was going nowhere, had no forward momentum, no desire to join the world of career. I kind of went flat inside, like there was nothing to get up about. I'd been in the company of some pretty superficial people for a few years and that was nowhere. Like the Buddhist thing, nobody going nowhere. Then, in brief, I saw that God indeed is, convinced entirely to both my heart and mind. It was going to take me some time to get an understanding of love and get it opened in my heart. Love was shut down in me by age 10, thereabouts, if not several years before. It was several years in the making. Then at 10, shut down. Love wasn't a consideration in our house. We didn't do that. We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday night Missionary Meeting, Wednesday night Prayer Meeting, Friday night Bible Study, and sometimes I'd have to go to Youth For Christ on Saturday nights. I hated it. No way around it. Get in the car and sit still.

Kids have no recourse. This is one reason I dread being a child again. Kids have no recourse. They learn to take what they get and that's all there is to it. I hated that time of life for having no recourse. Couldn't go to the police, to psychiatrists, to teachers, to anybody who would listen. Nobody would listen because it's a kid talking. Kids don't know what they're saying. And the grownups don't want to get involved with the parents, who are the problem, and they know it. But what can they do? Nothing. I wanted to be put into a foster home; it would feel like paradise. Probably it would not be paradise, but it was in my dream. What I'm looking at is the first half of my life had spots of love in it, but they went away as time went by and it never took up as a pattern in my life, didn't even know what it felt like. I learned what falling in heat felt like which eventually led to that place called nowhere. It really was a life that came to a dead end devoid of love inside. I had love coming to me from outside self that I didn't notice, because I didn't have it inside. It really can be described as darkness living without love. I don't mean without a love partner or a love interest. I mean without love inside oneself, love in one's own heart. I never learned that in all those years of church five times a week.

What I learned was, No, Don't, and You-Better-Not. I came to a stasis that kind of teaching leads to, like paralyzed from neck down. All I had of my own was my mind, which was utilized mostly in rebellion, resentment, hate, clinging jealously to my private self that nobody could have or take from me. I don't want to live like that again. I won't. It was the enactment of a particular horoscope. I think it had something to do with Saturn and Uranus conjunct my Sun in Taurus. I felt like they choked down my life spirit with a religious belief system that had no life in it. Kansas fundamentalism. There is no judgment in this world like fundamentalist judgment. This is why I find it amusing to see the fundamentalists taking to right wing politics, showing their hand out in the open, their hand of judgment, hate, intolerance, where it is seen for what it is instead of disguised inside the confines of the religion as the Word of God Sez. Since I found the spirit of God is love, I came out of the stasis in my life, wanted to work outdoors and live remotely. The opportunity came to live on a remote dirt road in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC and work on a farm with some real life hillbillies, the real deal. The most beautiful people I'd ever known.

This was where the salt ran through the waist of the hour glass, the flow of my energy from a static belief system that formed my inner stasis and led me to dead end, to all the salt on the love side of the hourglass. I have found the home of my soul, the people of my soul, the mountains of my soul, and feel love inside myself in abundance. It directs my interractions with others and myself. I'm satisfied. If it took going through Kansas fundamentalism and rejecting it to get here, I'm all for it. Like becoming an alcoholic or junkie is the first step of the spiritual path for them that choose the path. Eventually, one must get over the addiction, which requires stepping onto the spiritual path. It's all to the good. Like yesterday, I repeated a phrase to myself reminding myself, Everything works out. I was a bit anxious, worrying. Then I took hold of my mind and said, Everything works out. I repeated that phrase to myself through much of the day, reminding mind the worry is agitation for no reason. I suppose when it gets down to what's real of what I have learned in this life time, this is it. I continue to live because things have worked out all along the way. To think that suddenly one day things are not going to work out is simply not practical.


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