BABY VADA'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

         cocacola 600 charlotte

Baby Vada's first birthday party Sunday, a party of 20 or so all day. Baby was looking at different people, like whoever might be holding her at the time, who are you? have I ever seen you? She was comfortable when somebody put a camera in her face. That's like home with mommy who takes pictures of her almost every day. When daddy held her and when mommy held her, she relaxed, was in the arms of the familiar. My mind went to the time with friend Jr Maxwell when his mind went away. People would come to the house to see him, he would look at them and try to figure out who it was while they talked to him. When they or I told him who it was he pretended to get it. As soon as they were out the door he'd ask me who it was. I'd explain to his friends before they saw him that he may not, probably will not recognize them, and if he seems to it's because he's pretending. Nonetheless, his subconscious, the whole of who he is, is still there. Though his conscious mind isn't working any more, he recognizes you anyway, and attention felt good to him, it helped his spirit.


I experienced the joy of motherhood again, after my three kittens born on mother's day 1997 and given to me two weeks later, the day their eyes opened, by their mother by running under a car. That was my first experience as mother. I knew they needed mother love to live, so I went within and turned on mother love. It was mother love that helped me taking care of Jr, the diapers, feeding, cleaning, changing clothes, dealing with a baby that has no mind. Learning to communicate with the subconscious mind when the conscious mind was gone was not much different from communicating with a cat or a dog or a horse. They can't talk but they are good at communicating with each other. Learn how they do that and I can communicate with them. I've always lived with dogs and cats, so I'm well versed in communication without language, without the forebrain. I read these opportunities to activate the mother within as gifts from goddess. They tell me she's with me and that gives my spirit comfort.


I've been allowed into Justin and Crystal's hearts as family. I've seen Baby Vada since the very beginning and known of her since conception. Before she was born Crystal knew she liked bluegrass. After she was born she lights up hearing bluegrass. Reggae too. This is somebody with a brilliant mind. Justin was telling me she pays attention and responds. Like if she's crawling toward something she needs to stay away from, he said just the merest command she responds to immediately. I see two people I believe actually need each other and I'm happy for them. I'm happy for them all the time I'm around them and when I'm not around them. I can't help but see their relationship somewhat mystical, because so much love is involved and it grows. The house, itself, has a powerful love spirit in it, which surely complements the love between everyone in the house. Crystal's love energy is radiant. And Justin is the beneficiary. She brings the love energy in him to the surface. I'm happy that Baby Vada is to grow up in the light of parents with a very real love energy going between them. I'm happy for all concerned.


This evening Justin and I watched the CocaCola 600 until around midnight. Toward the end of the race Crystal, who had been sleeping with Baby V, came walking through on the way to the kitchen for something. She said, "You guys are retarded." There really wasn't anything to say to that, so we just heard it. He'd wanted to do some fishing during the time the race was on. His tv is set to record the race every week. I drove over there to watch the race when he was ready. Since the parkway opened, it takes 10 minutes less to get there. The closest to a wreck in this race was Tony Steward pulling in to pit stop, getting bumped and turned around in the pit road. It was a good clean run round and round the freshly painted track that had a beautiful yellow line around it that looked good above the slate gray track and the green of the infield grass below, cars on the track running 195. Sometimes I think I like the visuals at least as much as the race itself.


*

A WEAVER, APES AND MARTINSVILLE

martinsville

A day of many changes sitting still. At one point, looking at emails, it might have been the word weaving, a friend from earlier years came to mind, someone I'd not seen in 40 years, thereabouts. Thought I'd google her name, see if something came up, figuring there'd be a good chance of it. She had a website, a weaver. She was getting into weaving in the last years I knew her. I saw she'd been doing some really interesting work. I knew her whole family. I remember a time at a Christmas time cocktail party her parents put on. It was in the Sixties. They were playing jazz on the record player. We decided to put on the current Mothers of Invention album, We're Only In It For The Money. It got sufficient response, or reaction, to make it worth doing, then it was put aside. Her mother and dad were both terrific people, both Xcellent artists in a time when art didn't sell except to their friends. They held it together through thin and came out to the good. They were some of the people I hated with all my heart to leave behind when I came to the mountains. I didn't believe I'd be here more than five years. Mountain culture turned out to be a quicksand for me. I fell into it, and all that went before fell away, very much like dying. I got an email back just before I wrote the first words above, saying she thought I was dead. LOL Almost. Here is her link: www.louisehalsey.com


Among my emails today was one from somebody at a website called nanny.net. It's a website for professional nannies. I almost dismissed it as spam, but something about it didn't seem like spam. Thought I'd take a look. It was from Debbie Denard at nanny.net with a link to an article on the website that was called 10 Lessons Parents Could Learn From Apes. I figured this was someone who saw what I'd written about the documentary of the chimpanzee named NIM who was used in a half-assed "experiment" to teach him how sign language. The "experiment" was all askew without any, any understanding of the chimp and he ended up in a cage in solitary confinement forgotten. I was glad to see this list of 10 lessons parents could learn from apes. I knew upon reading the sentence it would be the image of ideal child raising, because I have seen so many four-leggeds raise their babies. It looks to us like they're not communicating, grazing side by side, but they are. The love between them is the same as among humans. Debbie evidently connected with my compassion for NIM and concluded I'd like to see the 10 lessons from apes. They can be found at: http://www.nanny.net/blog/10-lessons-parents-could-learn-from-apes/  NIM was taken from his mother, who lived in solitary confinement in a small cage, having babies and getting them snatched from her hands when two weeks old. Her despair when her baby was taken away was awful, and even worse that nobody noticed, and anyone who might have noticed would not have cared. It's just an ape.


In childhood I was trained to believe animals were not sentient beings. I didn't get it. They had eyes and ears, a mouth, feet, guts; stand them straight up and their skeleton looks awfully like ours. That was one of the many things I had to retrain myself about as I went on my own, out of the belief system of church, school, home, television, everybody; ie, everybody in my world. The undoing of the belief systems began on the flight away from the city of parents in a book someone I'd only met gave me for the flight. Albert Camus. The Stranger. By the time the plane landed at Norfolk, Virginia, it was a new me. I had connected with something like had never happened in my life. I had not changed yet, but that was perhaps the seed that grew. Two years later, it really was a new me. I was anything but what I was supposed to be. Git-er-done. That's where it started. I think of it as the beginning of self-awareness. The beginning of conscious non-conformity. The beginning of following my own light. Not the fullness of it, just the beginning, the very beginning, like when a seedling pops out of the ground and opens two round leaves to the light. Like, Oh.


Justin and Crystal returned from a weekend at the lake in SC where he caught a 41lb catfish. He had the tv record the Martinsville race. I went over and we watched the cars go round and round from about dark til 1. Martinsville is a half mile track. By the time they come out of the curve into the straight stretch they're doing 60, then a straight stretch of pedal to the metal, then brake to the metal for the curves. I like that at the lower speeds when cars tap one another it's not a death-defying roll end over end in flames. They lose traction, skid around in a half circle and take up at the back of the pack. This one had the slickest end I think I've seen. One of the slickest. Gordon was in front by inches, Jimmy Johnson was on the outside of him in a curve, Clint Bowyer attempted to pass below them, Johnson swerved down into Gordon, they both went sideways, Bowyer went sideways, and Ryan Newman slipped through the hole opened when Bowyer lost traction. It was an opening made for him, a hesitate and you're lost moment, and he took it. Good race. 497 laps of watching cars run in circles, then in the last laps it turned into a Martinsville race.

  

*