Maddy & Diddy

– a short snap of a tale –

She sighed as her iPhone buzzed hard enough on her desk to spin sideways. Maddy glanced at the time and just knew who texted her. Should’ve turned off all notifications, she grumbled. Diddy, her ex-husband, had texted her yet again. They’ve been divorced nearly 20 years now, remain friendly acquaintances even tho they live in different states and have two children between them. But why in hell did she ever married anyone named Diddy? What a stupid, fucking name! Of course, Diddy wasn’t his real name. Austin Willis Wallace was.

His mama used to play Bo Diddley records back when he was a little boy, however, and little Austin Willis would boogey around the house so much his daddy called him, “Diddy.” Name stuck. “Lookit Diddy go!” folks used to say. And when he grew up and married Maddy, he impregnated her. Two twin boys resulted, Dilbert and Data, named after two characters, one a cartoon and the other an android. Maddy rolled her eyes remembering her crazy youth and sighed with annoyed exasperation as her smartfone vibrated across her desk again. That goddamn Diddy!

Maddy worked as a nurse in neuro-oncology and had hoped to retire already, but having kids late in life plus the economic and financial upheavals of the pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine made it imperative to keep chugging away RNing on people’s brains. She was busy, tired, had to help Dilbert pay the initial installment on his reactivated student loans, and just wanted to go home and soak in the bathtub and play with her waterproof vibrator.

OK, what the hell, Maddy decided. She reached out and picked up her iPhone. Yes, sure enough, a text had popped in from Diddy. That goddamn Diddy! What did her ex-hubby have to say this time? She clicked on the message. Continue reading

Coming Home to Spider Meadows, July 2009

A challenged family returns to a home in the wilderness during late July of 2009

Note geographical and grammatical purists conspire to punctuate conversations with comments such as, “Oh, you must know the correct term for the Upper Phelps Creek meadows prior to the uppermost Basin is Spider Meadow. The designation is singular without the plural “s.” OK?” ¡LOL! The greater majority of people, however, stick a wee s on the end as “Spider Meadows” rolls off the tongue with greater ease and verbal grace than “Spider Meadow.” Besides, there are multiple smaller meadows before and especially after the main meadow of the valley separated by little copses and fingers of forest and boulders and riven by small streams. Finally, English is an incredibly dynamic language as it is so expansive and unusually inclusive. So, we shall refer to those lovely high mountain meadows along Upper Phelps Creek as Spider Meadows with an s, thank you.

Mother and Daughter contemplate the Universe. Sunday evening in Spider Meadows, GPW, 26 July 2009. Foto by William.

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Goddess of the Galaxy

~short prose thru a window~

The metro bus rumbled past below, squealing outside my windows as the driver braked to make the corner. Nash laid in bed against a stack of pillows as he listened to the bus and imagined its mix of passengers cringing from one another’s imaginary cooties and flu germs. Real ones, too, he wagered. Nash took another drag from his cigarette. Watched the smoke glide back out of his face to curl aimlessly up toward the ceiling. There he watched the smoke snake across the ceiling as ghosts of long-dead ivy. Outside above the city, bright blue sunshine hollowed out the sky to fill the man’s apartment.

Oblivious to the gargantuan maw beginning slurp at the icy cloud surrounding the solar system he dwelled within, the skies had poured rain for weeks and weeks, a damp, dreary rain. Started out romantic, tho, the kind of rain where lovers walk through the drizzle arm in arm murmuring over cups of gently sloshing hot coffee.

After one week, however, after just one lonesome week romance frayed into irritation. Another week later melancholia gripped even the cheeriest soul. Darkness more prehistoric than their sun grew closer and grew large as it sucked at tatters of soul. Many spurned lovers drank themselves dumb. Nash was glad to have quit all alcohol. Didn’t miss it much, well, maybe a little bit, yeah, the feel of a can in his hand, or a bottle, or a cup. Yeah, he knew he needed to quit these cigarettes, too. Loved his smokes, tho. Ghosts of many a death from old cancer wards swirled around the glowing end of his cigs reminding Nash of gravestones and mud and damp, musty magazines and libraries turned inside out of buildings with all their books facing into the rain. Aye, must quit those damn cigs. 

Soon people began to shoot and stab each other. A darkness greater than any moon obscured compelled them to violence and lunacy. Love became unrecognizable, as if one’s heart burst with lust and devotion but mutated swiftly into shattered glass jars of strawberry jam. Nash craved one more cigarette, just one more, but the round-the-clock news media flashed one horror after another. He felt as if they were all watching plague, pox, and parasites eating up the world on TV. So many people became so numb Nash thought they may as well have been watching a spooky, goofy old movie about an apocalypse on another planet far from the world of his ancestors. 

“Nash! Hey, G’Nash!” she called up to the man in the window. “Good morning!”

“Mornin’. What up?” Nash barked back thru the open windows into the big wide blue.

“Quick! Look at me!”

The man sighed a tired, lazy ass sigh, embarrassed at being caught behaving like a sloth in his own mind. He got up out of bed, snuffed out his cig, and stretched towards the ceiling. He quickly pulled down his shirt and walked over without anything else on to the window. Bathed in bright, blue sunshine, he stood in the large, open window and grinned down at the person commanding his attention.

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In Memoriam: A Letter to Nancy’s Family

Rev. Ms. Nancy Patricia Griffin Hughes, 1932 – 2019. Foto from one provided to the public by the family for her obituaries in various newspapers.

This letter was written to the family and friends of Nancy Hughes, the mother of my ex-wife Gwen and grandmother to our two children, Dylan (formerly Morgan) and Kathryn, aka “Kate.” Although she passed in June of this year, her family elected to celebrate her transitions this past October at a wake they dubbed Momfest, held out at the Hughes family cabin at Willow Lake outside Lynchburg, Virginia.

Had hoped to attend and read a version of this letter, and was unable to do so. My printer wouldn’t work, didn’t have everyone’s email addresses, and didn’t wish to burden my ex-wife with reading my letter out loud for me at such an emotional gathering nor make copies to hand out to people. I think she emailed it forward to her siblings, but not everyone in the family knew of the letter. So now this letter is shared here this Xmas Eve for anyone to read. For Nancy was a Gift for the whole world.

Goodbye, Nancy. May the Afterlife be the journey you always imagined it to be. Thank you for sharing your life with so many people from Egypt to Tibet, from Canada to Ireland, from France to all over the United States and elsewhere. Here’s my letter as follows:

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Goofin’ with my Fam on Cam: An intersection of family & technology captured in time

Fun Family Moments with technology & the Memories they generate recaptured from May 2000 & June 2001

The Bass-Hughes/Hughes-Bass Family goofin’ around on their new LogiCam attached to their Compaq computer where they lived at Orca Landing, a small intentional community as urban cooperative household  in Seattle. L2R: William, Baby Kate, Morgan (now Dylan), Gwen, & housemate Baby Dylan (under Gwen’s chin). Tuesday 9 May 2000. Foto by Computer!

These pictures are not by any means “good” as far as quality of photography goes. They are fuzzy, blurry, and fusty. Nor is this a traditional article the general public may seize upon with joy. This is more of a family legacy post, a digital heirloom for now, nearly two decades later, and the future beyond every tomorrow. Yet these capture a certain nostalgia, a few moments back in yonder spacetime of joy and befuddlement, of tears and misery, of surprise, confusion, and laughter. Even moments of glee!

All but the last three fotos were taken by what was then an amazing new tool, a Logitech Webcam mounted atop and connected to our Compaq Presario desktop PC running OS Windows 98. At the time the Internet had shifted from bulletin boards & Gopher protocols to MS-DOS-based programing for Microsoft programs, IBM Peanut desktop computers, and Apple’s Macintosh to the growing, glowing World Wide Web with way cool browsers such as Netscape. Oh yeah, remember MS-DOS? And those fancy, old Peanuts and sublime early Macs? Gosh, remember Netscape? What an astounding expression of technology the Netscape browser was! All of these artifacts are today considered “vintage technologies.”

Morgan & Kate. Morgan now goes by Dylan. Here they are focusing on this hypnotic vintage technology! In the age between TVs and smartfones, too! Here at Orca Landing, Seattle, woo HOO! Wednesday 3 May 2000.

While we were having so much fun posing & goofing around with our new Logicam, these hi-tech companies were booming themselves right up into a massive financial bubble. The Dot-com Bubble began around 1994, the year my first daughter Morgan Hannah (now my eldest child Dylan Blair) was born, and ended in 2000. This hyperspeculative bubble finally burst, many companies died, the economy crashed, and a recession kicked in. The bursting of the bubble was a process lasting into 2002. Around the same time Compaq, once one of the top leading brands of personal computers, fell apart and was gobbled up by Hewlett-Packard.

This particular recession, which in some ways began a decade earlier in Asia, continued in parts of North America into 2003 and across Europe till around 2004-2005. This crazy tech boom of the 1990s laid the foundation, however, for stunning digital transformation of civilization over the next two decades. This remained true even into the midst of the Great Global Recession, an economic and financial catastrophe that began in late 2007. These events greatly affected our family and friends even as we carried on our daily lives. Our vintage technologies allowed us to preserve some of the good times amidst all of the gloomy news. Such memories remind us our glasses were more than half-full rather than half-empty or knocked over. So let’s raise a toast to those happy moments of yesteryear and be present to the little joys all around us even now, woo HOO! Yes!

Here we are, however, back in the day at the turn of the Common Era’s 21st Century in awe of those blurry, silly, and spontaneous “vintage tech” pictures. Digital spontaneity is one of the keys to understanding this brief time in history. The astonishing speed of computerized camera technology reached the point people felt free to be spontaneous in the moment. These were the beginnings of the digital selfie boom! People were goofy! Solemn. Smiling! Frowning. Weeping! And grinning, too.

Momma Gwen gets in on the action, too!

Small, precision-image camera technology making the Logitech cams and then the tiny iPhone and Android fone cams were initially developed back in the 1960s by the NRO, the secret National Reconnaissance Office. This unique technology was finally released into the public marketplace, seized upon by private companies, and made its way into mobile devices such as cellphones. The NRO was a clandestine Federal intelligence agency formed in 1961 but wasn’t officially declassified until 1992 after the Cold War was over. It’s early cameras are considered superior to those in the later Hubble Space Telescope.

Social media entered the global picture, and, boom! Our planet would never be the same again. At the same time, sadly enough, this the lull before the storm, before the growing, intermittent Global Long War on Terror exploded into a worldwide conflict with the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States Home Front in September of 2001.

In the meantime, while this long war still burns and smolders around the world, let us nevertheless enjoy these precious moments in time. Perhaps they will fortify us to more closely re-examine our history of violence as a species. Perhaps doing so will illuminate and motivate us to find ways to generate peace and love instead of war and hate. Meanwhile, we move forward. Life is messy! Enjoy the pictures!

“Shirley Temple Kate.” Kathryn Elizabeth stylin’ at Orca Landing in Seattle, Tuesday 26 June 2001.

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Seattle Vignettes: A Prose Poem in Five Parts

  1. Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
  2. Bag of Dimes
  3. Tattooed Hands
  4. Donuts, Needles, Jelly, and Blood
  5. P.S. Box of Donuts in the Rain

 *All of these vignettes are interpretations of real events I experienced in Washington State along my way to work from SeaTac to Seattle and back again during the Cascadian Winter of 2017 – 2018. ~ Author’s Forewarning

Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
Rain poured in torrents
as dawn broke sunrise into silver and gray.
I hurried down South 176th Street in SeaTac towards the airport to catch my train to work.
Can’t be late again.
Won’t be late again.
I shall arrive early to work
to keep my job alive.
My commute is 3 hours long roundtrip.
Why do good people scatter their trash along the streets?
I passed all kinds of trash, mostly food related, as I approached the SeaTac Visitor Information Center,
also known as Seattle Southside Visitor Center.
A man lay curled upon the lower steps. Continue reading

Facing Fear (Your Deepest, Innermost Fears around Love)

Sometimes the Dragons we must eventually face hide within the wilderness of our own hearts

Often in the pursuit of adventure and facing one’s terror amidst avalanching mountains and flooded whitewater rivers, one may forget the Hardest Work and the Greatest Challenges lay not at Death’s Door in the Wilderness but in being with people including those we love and those who love us. Much of the time, however, it’s face to face with the mirrors of your own self.

This speaks especially with those we love or used to love. Our most difficult practices arise within the relationships we form among ourselves, with other people, and especially our selves.

The greatest Dragon we must someday face is not some monster in a cave abiding over those hearts we treasure the most. No, the greatest Dragon is us as we face our own shame, anger, & fear, yes, fear of turning back around to look those Others in the eye and atone for the consequences of damaging our relationships with them. Perhaps the hardest work is facing those whom we have hurt and wronged. Oh, the messes I have made! And cleaned up, too. It’s a neverending process at first, and, over time, the more one practices the easiest such practices become.

“Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love but in reality, love is the only thing in the world that covers up all the pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in the world that does not hurt.” – Liam Neeson

So, yeah, listen up. Love doesn’t stop. Who turned it off? Stop pretending. Do the fucking work. Stay with the pain. Transmute it with breath and blood. Face me. Let me face you. Choose to keep on loving no matter what. Awaken into the Oneness we once shared and, yes, still exists. Whether or not you believe in Twin Flames and the Twin Flame blues is up to you, and besides, doesn’t change what we had felt so true. Keep the fire burning before the last flame blazes out taking with it every precious memory of what was & what almost could have been.

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 10 August 2017
SeaTac/Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

NOTE: The quoted statement from Liam Neeson was borrowed from Wild Earth @ http://wild-earth.tumblr.com/post/136230670895/everyone-says-love-hurts-but-that-is-not-true.

The image of the red dragon & heart is a Free Download from Public Domain Pictures, License CCO Public Domain, @ http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=4445&picture=dragon-heart.

This essay/cry out was first published to my Facebook page on the evening of Thursday the 10th of August 2017.

Copyright © 2017 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

Lost My Wife

Foto by William Dudley Bass on Saturday morning the 24th of July 2017.

Walked down the street on the way to work recently & came upon a haunting illustration at the rear of an abandoned restaurant slated for teardown. Felt intrigued by the bittersweet mix of symbols & metaphors. What’s the story behind a mystery as old as time when the first dawning of love went awry?

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Videos for Rose

There’s a story behind these videos. Both are personal and initially intended to be private. As I’m a beginner with handheld videos, these are, from any professional and even personal viewpoint, terrible in quality. They are shaky, unedited, and thus raw as Hell. Even so, I’m sharing them. Doing so is, for me, a breakthru in shame and embarrassment, of breaking thru mental barriers of not-looking-good, not-sounding-smooth, and worrying about what others may think. Toss all that crap. Yes! Even so, I feel shy in making these videos. My hearing impairment’s there. My speech impediment is there. The TMJ (temporomandibular joint) injuries from long ago gradually worsen over time and increasingly affects the ability to open my jaws properly to speak. Still, I go for it anyway, damn my own fears.

Besides, these videos are not for me. I wouldn’t put them up except to get those videos to someone special who lives far away more than halfway “down” the planet. She is one of the most amazing, inspiring, funny, romantic, and eccentric women I have ever met. We are so much alike with so many unexpected and startling synchronicities we wonder if those esoteric spiritual descriptions of Twin Flames are true. Seems so for us, anyway. Especially as we met by accident in such a fantastical way with mindboggling results. So of course the possibility of us being Twin Flames feels real for us. Besides, even if Twin Flames are more of a mythic fable, it doesn’t matter for we are both at choice to choose the next step together…or apart…moment to moment.

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All is One

All iOne 

by

 One of Many

 

*

 

7

Seven Practices, for now.

* We are One.

* Accept everything.

* Know our minds create all beliefs.

* Forgive everyone.

* Love everyone.

* Respect all things.

* Serve life.

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Old Man God with the Green Guitar

Discordian Harmony at the Pacific Northwest Folklife Festival

with

Zombie Jimi

Mystery Musician aka Zombie Jimi

Mystery Musician aka Zombie Jimi

 

Sunday 24 May 2015

My eyes heard him hunched over his old green guitar before my ears could see him stretching notes thru the air. Old Man God stood in the Center of Seattle crouched in the corner facing Jerusalem on the other side of the world before turning his back on Abraham’s minions to face Ancient Timbuktu instead, his skin all black as Mississippi Goddamn and his beard as snowy white as polar bear belly all while focused on changing what never changes as he grasped the old, banged-up, burring, purring, electric, green guitar in his hands the same way Neptune once burst open the sky with his trident held high all a buzzsaw humming like Betty Dodson’s Hitachi Magic Wand gripped in Goddess hands orgasming the Himalayas apart with the Love Song of a Cosmic Chainsaw. His hands trembled all steady with purpose as he caressed his green guitar with the adoration Zeus once had for electric thunderbolts and nymphs sweaty with humid rust. Old God Man shuddered back on his feet, unwound his pelvis as Mike Mulligan once cranked up trusty Mary Anne, lumbered forward at the wall as a Zen steam shovel on testosterone and played his green guitar with a certain must with a deliberate lust driven to play things as they are with a ferocious thrust not what others demanded oh yeah he played with raw beauty and ugly grace oh yeah he played with verve to shear men and women like sheep oh yeah played his old green guitar so damn hard I swear the sky blazed electric blue and in the midst of such Rapture heard a vast groaning zombie drone as reanimated angels buzzed straight up outa the ground like Jimi Hendrix lighting up Woodstock high up on stage high above the mud deep down in O Mississippi Goddamn mud it’s Nina Simone eating up the sky with her brow all furrowed like eight thirty o’clock way up upon a stage crowded with pianos on fire PIANOS ON FIRE! giving voice to the lynched the burned and to the drowned. Aye, my hearing aids filled with the android squeals of Betty Dodson Jimi Hendrix Nina Simone jackhammering open bones skin and soul to touch my love with feathers stuffed with steel.

See, I heard all these things in a voodoo of pain nothing could change not even Deuteronomous Dali Bosch. Continue reading

“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

You asked.

I shall whisper an answer into thy eyes here.

Love is the most powerful energy in the universe.
I dance intoxicated with glass after glass of such red, red love.
How miraculous is this power of the heart!

Only presence of mind is as powerful.
Silent, awake, aware, intentional, and conscious.
Such stillness of mind directs the flow and dance of love.

Indeed, such presence of mind sustains the heart’s love
long after the energy ebbs and flows.

Love is a choice.
As energy one can choose to turn it on.
Or off.
Choose love.
As you first chose your self.

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BANALITY, or: Abandoned by Angels

I lay my head down
in the boneyard of relatives
to feed Aunt Bea’s chickens.
Over in the corner
in the shade of Grandpa’s old pear tree
my mother lays among buzzing yellow jackets
feasting upon apples scattered in decay.

Momma pushes away all of her children,
those of us still alive;
screams for us to grow up;
demands we stop listening to the news;
shouts we better hunt us up
some animals for breakfast.

Desperately she lifts tattered, dirty burlap,
shoves small bones ragged with chunks of meat
into her vagina as she mourns and grieves
the deaths of three babies
from dirty, unwashed hands.

I glance up and see Aunt Bea peeking down
thru broken shutter slats guarding old attic windows.
She won’t come down;
expects us to visit her instead.
We do not dare, of course.

Aunt Bea is hungry beyond pain,
yet she avoids the bone yard where
her sister screeches
in the shade of serpent grief.

She pushes notes at us
from under her door,
notes so raw her letters leave us
wet with terror.

Aunt Bea’s eye sees me as it always does,
quivers with relief as it watches my head twitch.
Her one enormous eye, wild, heavy, swivels “Yes!”
I stand up headless and walk away
as chickens cluck and peck at my face.

My old twin head Wilson, severed across the throat,
rolls in staggered jerks beneath
swarming hens, roosters, and slaps of Momma’s shoe.
I’d once saved Wilson’s life from drowning.
My twin washed up on Absinthe Beach north of Yurka
five years after vanishing off Nikumaroro.

I return to the shed to cook down
p-ephedrine with hydroiodic acid,
red phosphorous, iodine, and lye.
Daddy slouches naked in the shadows
among broken antique furniture once
slathered in now faded yellow, green,
red, purple Dutch Boy lead paint.

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Death Ain’t Grim

Death is my Lover
Without gender or genitals
Neither soft nor hard
Death just cums
Into my Soul

 

 

Copyright © 2013, 2015, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you. Even if there are more words in this than in the poem up there. 🙂

 

Sleeping with Ghosts on the Appalachian Trail

Ruminations, Romance, and the Lives of a Family Long Dead

Story and Photographs by William Dudley Bass

With extra stories & photos added later about recovering the original 2001 published article with related media controversies, found 1991 pictures once lost, new history of the old homestead with a “new” trail shelter, and of the Pregnant Rhinos’ eldest daughter’s 2015 attempt to thruhike the AT. There’s often more to a story than the tale itself.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

In late May 1991, almost three months into our odyssey along the Appalachian Trail, my wife and I planned to sleep among ghosts. Old-timey Virginia ghosts. It seemed like a fitting thing to do while walking across our home state, a journey as rich with rumination as it was with hardship and joy.

Gwen and I had embarked on the first day of spring from the top of Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to backpack the whole Appalachian Trail end to end. The AT, as we hikers called it, or simply “the Trail,” stretches more than 2,000 miles northwards across 14 states to the summit of mile-high Mt. Katahdin in north-central Maine. Almost a quarter of the Trail passes through the Old Dominion, making Virginia home to the longest section of the AT, more than any other state. Gwen and I took six-and-a-half months to backpack the whole Trail, climbing Katahdin in early October on the day after our third wedding anniversary.

Rich in both history and wildlife, the Appalachian Trail is an intersection of people and wilderness. Those who backpack end-to-end in one push are known as “thruhikers,” while those who attempt to complete the whole thing in stages are called “section hikers.” Most take on trail names. Gwen and I were thruhikers, as such a distinct minority among the day hikers, weekenders, and picnickers. We called ourselves the Pregnant Rhinos.

Our trail name arose from a backpacking trip out West the previous year, when we got teased about the huge new internal-frame expedition packs bulging from our backs. “Damn, y’all look like a coupla pregnant rhinoceroses,” exclaimed a teenage boy, his own rickety, external-frame pack jangling with pots and pans and sloppy blankets.

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Valentine’s Lupercalia and the Death of Love at the End of the World

LOVE

LOVE IS.

LOVE IS LIFE.

LOVE IS POWER.

LOVE IS DIVINE.

is god love ? is love god ? and goddess ?

or is love merely a human attribute projected upon an imagined image of deity ?

 If indeed God is Love and Love is God, can Love love?

We humans make messes of Love.

Such as celebrating our lust as things fall apart.

Ancient Pagan Festival of Lupercalia

Saint Valentine’s Day

Blood and Life

Birth and Death

One Love

Many People

Valentine’s Day

Armageddon of the Heart

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine's Day Night.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine’s Day Night.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn't known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn’t known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

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Ghosts and Hauntings at the Old Bass Family Farmhouse

Old Bass Family Farmhouse on a visit to Virginia from Seattle, December 2005. Foto by William Bass.

Old Bass Family Farmhouse on a visit to Virginia from Seattle, December 2005. Foto by William Bass.

A ghost, yes, an invisible ghost, scared me nearly all to pieces once upon a time back when I was a little kid. I was young, so you can laugh if you wanna, but I was well read and smart, too for being such a squirt. The way that ol’ ghost stomped down the hallway of an old farmhouse in my direction freaked me out. Made my big Frankenstein hearing aid SCREAM. I could hear this ghost, too. I could feel it, feel both the vibrations of the stomps and the cold blob of air moving along with it.

I was a young boy back in the mid-to-late1960s sometime. I don’t remember how many years old I was or what grade I attended in school. What I do recall, however, was the weather. It was Summertime. Lush, green Summertime! It must’ve been between grades. I reckon I was in late elementary school or maybe even early middle. Not sure. But it was Summer that I know. And a ghost scared the bedoobus outa my insides. This true story began late one afternoon.

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Blood is Messy

Some kids dress up as superheroes and monsters from Outer Space. I dreamed of being a serial killer. And as Richmond sat surrounded by Civil War battlefields, there were many grownups that dressed up in butternut and gray to play war among trashy shopping malls and picnic tables. Ever notice they’d rather shoulder rifle-muskets and fire cannons than play at being saw-wielding surgeons surrounded by piles of amputated mannequin limbs?

Me? Well, I was different. I am a serial killer. But, I ask, who killed and maimed more people? Soldiers, of course. I was far more selective. Yes, indeed, I am a serial killer. Yea, I imagined I lived in a comic book and was born for death.

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A Man Left All Alone in Love

Grief swells fierce
From deep inside
Chambers of my Heart,
Chambers pulsing with magma.
No, I realize, feeling it now,
Feeling hot sad heat rise
From deep down inside my guts.

Alone at work,
Sitting at my desk and staring at reflections,
I see only memories
Of Love forever gone.

Storms pour in from the ocean.
As I look outside the window,
A wall of tall cedars and firs
Braces against the wind,
Then surrenders in a wild sea of heaving green.

And the rain pours.
The rain pours.
And the rain pours.
And what was once deep, shared love
Rushes into the sewers of the city to
Live forever lost at sea.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 20 & 28 November 2012
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Running Towards the Quiet Roar of the Dharma

I felt swallowed by suffering into the giant maw of a monstrous lion. Over the past few years I’ve lost almost everything but life, and even that was in question at times. In the midst of such suffering I learned to run towards the roar, the roaring of lions mute with fear and rage and cravings. I had to learn to do so or else the Grim Reaper would hug me with his scythe. I learned to run towards the quiet roar, the quiet ROAR of the Dharma, to stay present to the miracle of my life.

An unusual compression of numerous losses traumatized me more than I would like to admit. I even ended up semi-homeless for two months and staying with friends for a few more. I say “semi-homeless” because I lived out of a tent pitched back in the bushes behind three enormous woodpiles and a Native American sweat lodge with access to the facilities of a nearby house. All in the middle of urban North Seattle. In each moment I was awake I ran and sometimes stumbled towards that quiet roar, that quiet ROAR of the Dharma.

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Inner Shifts of Being

Sunset from the bluffs while gazing across the Sound toward the Olympics. Richmond Beach Park, Shoreline, Washington, Sunday 23 September 2012. Foto by William Dudley Bass.

Sunset from the bluffs while gazing across the Sound toward the Olympics. Richmond Beach Park, Shoreline, Washington, Sunday 23 September 2012. Foto by William Dudley Bass.

Something has shifted in me recently. What has shifted is I’ve lost my taste to speak harshly of others.

During the unexpected challenges of recent years I almost crumbled. The past few months were particularly difficult emotionally and financially. I could’ve sunk deeper into cynicism and bitterness and wallowed in apathy and self-pity. Instead I found the strength and the courage to pivot into a field where there are no paths. My life was my own to choose. My life was mine to live.

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When Machines marry Humans for Love

If some folks can’t handle the vast variety of marriages expressed around the world, wait till humans start marrying sentient machines.

(Saturday 12 May 2012 via Twitter to Facebook)

—-
Response to Facebook Friend Liz T.: Liz, I’m honored. My comments were inspired by a convergence of 4 thoughts: Romney’s recent address at Liberty University where he collapsed his opinion & wants with a definition of marriage, and I sought to respond by not being one of many autokneejerk reactions, and of studies of marriages taking many forms including but not limited to polyandry, polygamy, polyamory, group marriage, open marriage, gay marriage, intersexed, etc., without extolling nor condemning any one choice. Ethics, not morals.

(13 May at 8:46am via mobile to Facebook)
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Yellow jacket punches thru a spider web as a humming bird dips into petite, purple flowers. Green stalks quiver above the grass as I brush my teeth this side of windows.

(Mother’s Day Sunday Morning 13 May)
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Sol slips behind the Olympics across the Salish. Sometimes those mountains rise above the water. Tonight they cut open the sky as it bleeds down into the sea.

(Monday night 14 May just after sunset.)
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Once upon a time a long, long time ago in some faraway place much like home, an epidemic of broken hearts raged thru a land afflicted with romance and delusion. The realm’s healers were quite perplexed to discover a broken heart does not bleed but turns to stone. And when they chipped away and cracked these broken hearts open out spilled the most sparkling diamonds. From every one.

(Tuesday 15 May 2012)
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Overcome with emotion, the first healer scooped up handfuls of diamonds from the cavity of a broken heart turned to stone, the one he cracked open eight minutes ago, to discern any clues to the current epidemic. For a moment, for one, infinite moment they sparkled with the Eye of God. Blinded into madness by such health, he danced with the Joy of Oneness as he knew nothing else no longer mattered.

Jealous and dismayed, his associate broke open another broken heart turned to stone, snatched up 6 diamonds only to feel them dissolve into liquid and penetrate his skin. His glee turned to surprise then fear then horror.

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Aye, Dirt is Divine!

Aye, I like that dirty ruttin’! where all things Primal are revealed to be Divine, where all things wet & messy are but the rapture of a mango opening into your mouth, where intimacy is the portal for spirit to merge with soul, for flesh with flesh, for star dust with stardust, the many becoming one.

 

(Inspired posting to Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY“.)

William Dudley Bass
Posted to FB on 26 May 2011,
Here on 8 July 2011
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem first appeared as one of my posts to Facebook on 26 May 2011, and then onto my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/aye-dirt-is-divine-aye-i-like-that.html. Eventually I revised it and re-published it here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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The Eye of Everything

As the we ride the Earth thru endless cycles of rotations upon its revolutions around Sol, cycles that may someday stop perhaps even before Sol drags all its planets around the center of the Milky Way, light shifts, darkness expands, love heals, and across a Kosmos jammin’ with spinning masses a voice shouts suddenly from the shadows before a fire blazing in the hearthmaw…jerks us awake as copies of The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart slips from our grips…and with scolding index finger jammed up the Sacred Ass of God with 3 more dirty fingers pointing back down into Blessed Inferno…the reincarnation of Krishna Allah shakes His many eyes open & peers around the circle at us & shouts again, “Each one of us has a point of view. Each culture and religion has a nest of views like a den of snakes. Above, however, above Us only God has View.” Another shout breaks open the smoke…”Assalamu alaikum…for the 10th Avatar is here in our midst as the mystic Christ revealed not as another Prophet, but as…us! You! Me! Yes, us, all of humanity.” And the Kundalini rises blind up the spine singing “Everything is Sacred even if you hate it.” Cerridwen Shiva Mary Vesta Isis Gaia boils hot love deep inside every nuclei of every cell as She weaves One Giant Eye in Divine Dance to crown Her spiraled, flaming root.

 

(Inspired by Prezz Pressley’s poem “EYE” of 6/20/2011 warning one to consider the angle of one’s sight amid the Sun and the Night when one is Wrong and one is Right.)

William Dudley Bass
22 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening Period.

NOTE: This was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/eye-of-everything.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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On the Altar

Toppled from the throne of a once-vast and mighty empire whose fearsome name no one remembers except broken stones, King Ozymandias bled his tears into the sand, sand that sucked him deeper as a mad old lover whose yoni won’t let ’em go. The more he cried the deeper he sunk & drenched the sand with three million tears, fifteen hundred thousand tears from each eye, the tears of all he killed raped maimed and tortured upwelling thru his body like water pushing up thru a tree to breathe & become one with air. Tears dried & sand turned hard as cement became rock as Ozy all petrified his core solid rock choking his soul so tight his head splintered off his neck into scattered shards of light……with a whistling sigh only the wind heard the lost souls of thousands soared high & free riding upon the wings of they own sorrow grieving nothing save the ecstasy of union with Earth. Eons later as humans walk the Earth in blind oblivion of their own impending tipping point so many so many can’t even see the very Altar they stride upon everywhere they turn, an Altar hungrily awaiting for its sacrifice, waiting for its flood of tears. Yea, O Hungry Ground.

 

(Inspired response to Prezz Pressley’s poem “The Altar” in June 2011 in the Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.”)

William Dudley Bass
23 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem found was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 23 June 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-altar.html, then revised, edited, and re-published here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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A Window Only You Can Shut

Oh a window opens in the sky
And I see myself
Far away among stars
Looking back
I behold the most precious Earth,
Love Itself
On fire
Beating back the darkness of death
Civilizations upended
Men and women and children running about
Screaming and shouting
In the center of it all
God dances with no arms

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 – after a week of pondering
Edmonds, Washington
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published on 21 January 2010, on my first blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/window-only-you-can-shut.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Oh, the Freedom!

Oh, the Freedom
Of being down on my knees
In the gutter
Reeking of waste.

Dripping with Earth
I feel the stillness of God expanding
Embraced by Goddess enveloping.
Oh, I swim amid their pressed loins
As a dolphin leaps into air
From warm waters dripping silk.

It doesn’t matter where I am
Or what filth covers me
For I am in Love
And
All is sacred
All is divine
All is holy
Even excrement.

Adult admonishing reviles juvenile curiosity
Forgetting to hear among the scattering of scat
Giggles of the Divine.

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 after a week of pondering.
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published in early 2010 on my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-freedom.html, then revised and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Holy Sea of Mind

As refreshing as a cup of cool water
Pulled up deep from the well
In the afternoon of a hot, sleepy day
God lives inside my Mind
Or so my Mind likes to think.
In truth
God lives deep inside my Heart
And sails the mind everywhere
As a ship sails the ocean
For Mind is everywhere an ocean unto itself.
With Mind anything is possible
If so believed.
The Body may turn Mind aside
Even as Body stays rooted in
The Earth of a Planet turning around the Sun.
When my ego turns inward
And I lift my eyes to
See the sun rise upon the cusp of dawn
I look inward across the infinite seas of Mind
And feel God pounding in my heart
Pounding as the greatest most fierce
Most kind lover
I have ever known.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 22 December 2009
&
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This poem was first published in one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 21 January 2010, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/holy-sea-of-mind.html. Eventually I revised this poem and reposted it here on my new website this late March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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The Devil in Uncle Watt

Family Stories & Genealogical Exorcisms

Uncle Watt bit off the head of a big, fat, juicy green tobacco worm, peed on his deaf cousin Aumon, and poked mules in the ass with a sharp stick just to see ‘em kick. Oh, yes, he was full of the Devil. Yes, he was! So people said as they laughed remembering the men, and thus my efforts to untangle dead ancestors one from the other to find the truth lured me down into a genealogical exorcism stained with the racism, class struggles, and violence of our common history.

“Oh my Lord, he done got the Devil in ‘im BAD,” Raffie, an ancient-oaken-looking man who said he used to work beside Uncle Watt on the farm once told me back when I was a young laddie lad. “Yeah, Lord, I’m tellin’ ya, it was BAD! Yessir! Twas BAD havin’ the Devil take a hold of him like it did.” As late as July 2009, Helen, one of my beloved aunts and a Beatnik artist then in her 80s, when asked about Uncle Watt called him “quite a character.” And so I tumbled down the dumbwaiter chute of a family mystery. Who was this “Devil?”

My Dad told me stories. Raffie told me stories. Uncle Willy told me stories. Even Uncle Aumon who got peed on told me stories. Willy and Aumon were brothers, and as they were also my Dad’s uncles they were really my paternal great-uncles. All of them would shake their heads with bemused dismay and chuckle. They could laugh simply because Uncle Watt was dead. He died young and wasn’t around anymore to torment anyone with all his foolishness. I never got to meet him. Dad said, “Uncle Watt died before you were born, Son, long before you were born.” He didn’t remember what of, tho.

“You don’t remember what he died of?” I asked all eaten up with a bug-eyed churn of impatient dismay.

“No, I don’t recall anything,” Dad replied. “Wait. Something about his toe. His big toe, maybe? Hell, I don’t know. Can’t help ya there. Got work to do now. Don’t you?”

Turns out Uncle Watt died long before my Daddy was born, too, as in a little over two decades before Dad’s birth. The strangeness about Watt Bass includes those who told all those crazy wild tales about him spoke as if they were there running alongside him in the same window of time. Whenever I asked way back then how long ago did those events happen not one person seemed to know. Asking a few questions turned into an unexpected adventure in genealogy as I dove into the rabbit hole of fading memories, cryptic notes on faded paper, and incomplete information online.

Watson Bass was a fun-loving guy who apparently was constantly pushing people’s buttons, telling jokes, and playing pranks like biting off the head of a giant caterpillar to pee all over Uncle Aumon, who was but a laddie-lad, then, too. He lived life on the wild side. Chased pretty girls but never married. Or so I was told. Which I found out was wrong, wrong, wrong as he certainly did marry. Unless I stumbled upon the tombstone of the wrong Uncle Watt. Turns out I didn’t as the correct tombstone was also the same shared with his now-deceased wife.

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My Beloved & I (2001-2013)

I love this amazing woman, Kristina Katayama.

Then 12 and a half years later we divorced, darn it, but not before we dove thru our Hearts deep into the Center of the Sun.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina, April 23, 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass, March 17, 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina in Seattle on 23 April 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass for this essay on 17 March 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Note: Click on any photo to expand it, and click again to make it even larger. Click the back arrow to return to the essay. All photographs protected by Copyright with All Rights Reserved. Thank you, and enjoy!

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“Bobby’s shot! Bobby Kennedy’s been shot!”

When we first learned Bobby Kennedy was assassinated

Hot, muggy day in farm country Virginia. Late spring, not yet Summer. The Solstice was about two weeks off, but all practical purposes it was Summer with school soon to be out for the season. Humid with a hint of afternoon thunderstorms, the air was pungent with honeysuckle flowers and tree pollen and the promise of picnics in the shade and swimming in lakes.

I was outside in the yard playing. My little sister and brother were probably around somewhere, playing with me, but I don’t remember them this particular day. I just remember my Momma, and Daddy, too, a little bit.

We grew up on Riverview Dairy Farm in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Outside of the town of Farmville. Earlier in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s the Civil Rights movement had swept across the South and into Prince Edward Country. Racial desegregation and integration efforts polarized whole communities, shut down the schools, and brought Mike Wallace to Farmville for the Evening News and Prince Edward County before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Vietnam and Southeast Asia burned overseas and riots and urban guerrilla warfare kept erupting all around the United States. We were still in the thick of it all, this second revolution or quasi-civil war or whatever you wanted to call these rock’n’roll times, with no end in sight. As time would tell, these Troubles would grind and rumble on till 1975. Though many in the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere on Earth movement today claim to draw their inspiration as much from these turbulent times as from the Arab Spring.

The sharp staccato roar of the gasoline-powered farm tractor washed over us as Daddy drove it around and around the pasture out back. We were used to that awful mechanical racket, however, and other than a glance over now and then paid it no mind. It was a green and yellow John Deere 420 with a wide, adjustable-width front end manufactured back in the mid-to-late 1950s. Dad sat up in there turned sideways in the seat as was his custom, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping the big fin of the rear fender as he made sure the tractor and the mower and the line of hay and the lay of the land were in perfect alignment. He wore blue denim jeans, a white, short-sleeved T-shirt, and a khaki baseball cap. Back then he smoked Camel cigarettes, too.

I heard a shriek. Loud one, too. Momma! I stood up.

The back door of the house slammed open and Momma sailed down the stairs. I remember her in slow motion, dressed in white clothes, had on a white skirt or dress. Black hair thrown back. Her legs wide as a ballet dancer’s leap. She raced shouting toward my father as he rounded the side of the pasture closest to our backyard. By then I was running there, too.

“Bobby’s shot!” Momma yelled. “Bobby’s been shot!”

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Dancing at the Gates of the Underworld

“Celebrating the 13th Mortiversary of the best man I’ve ever known,” leapt from the glowing blue and white screen a few days before Halloween. The author was a gorgeous and stunning enigma who turned heads whenever she strode into a room, or in my case, a tipi during an all-night Native American prayer meeting. “Mortiversary?” I wondered in awe. “Oh, he’s dead!”

Then I felt the glow of shame for not getting it right away at my friend’s expense. Here was a woman honoring the life of a man who once moved her deeply by celebrating his death. From beyond the veils between worlds he continued to move and inspire her. In allowing her self to feel so moved she inspired me and my heart opened to the pain and the sadness and even the magnificence of death.

As storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade said about two years ago on a blustery November night in Port Townsend, “Welcome to the Endarkenment.” He felt the world has energetically moved away from a period of awakening, enlightenment, even bliss into a period of darkness and turmoil and chaos. It wasn’t all bad, either. Such dark times are often the cauldron of creativity and transformation. Our spirits fly away leaving our souls burrowing into dirt and filth, transforming both into rich soil.

It was Samhain, the Celtic New Year, All Hallows Eve 2011. This year it fell across a three-day weekend with October 31st falling upon a Monday with two more dark holy days following. Samhain (usually pronounced as ‘sow-win’), Feralia, Pomona, Halloween, Hallowmas and All Soul’s, Dia de los Muertas … it’s that time of the year to really celebrate Summer’s End and herald in the Endarkenment. I love how they mix and blend together like the blood and genes in our Postmodern flesh.

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