ENDINGS

Endings, the ones you know are coming, are never what you had supposed they would be.  Sometimes, another day passes and what you were, you aren’t.  Sometimes there is fanfare and a big to-do, but when the door closes, life on the other side keeps going without you. It’s up to you to figure out what to do with this side. And sometimes what you thought would be ending, doesn’t.

What I’ve enjoyed the most about my husband’s retirement from the Justice Court bench is that there will be no more middle of the night phone calls asking for a search warrant. That’s an ending I can sleep right through, night after night.

Today I accompanied my husband on the last day of his monthly stint as Cannon Beach Municipal Judge.  However, what was supposed to be his last court day, wasn’t. Instead, he was asked to come again next month because his replacement has not yet been chosen.  We didn’t know that, though, before court, so I sat through court and watched him preside for what we both thought was his last time. 

He asked a young man to take off his hat in respect for the court.  The kid had gotten a ticket for taking his parents’ car without their permission, and driving.  He wasn’t apologetic for that at all.  Will I sound like an old geezer if I say that no one teaches manners anymore?  Even geezier if I say no one teaches the difference between right and wrong?

I remember (yep, here it comes) back in 1968 when I began teaching in Burns, Oregon.  The judge, who was also the judge for the neighboring county, came once a month and the first thing I learned in that town was that the judge was loved and feared.  Everyone wanted to behave just to not have to appear before him.  The courtroom had to be absolutely silent during all the proceedings (not even whispering) and men had to remove their hats.  If either rule was disobeyed, he shouted at them and sent them from the courtroom.  A standard for proper behavior was set and expected.  If parents didn’t teach that, or teachers, or Sunday school teachers, someone did.  People still made poor choices regarding right and wrong as they have since Adam and Eve, otherwise why would there be need for a court of law?  But everyone with a lick of sense in Harney County took off his hat and shut his mouth in that courtroom. And they wore decent clothing as well.  No tank tops with rather indelicate language and logos splashed across the front.  My judge has had to ask young men to turn their offensive shirts inside out and leave their manure-laden barn boots in the hallway.  But, I digress.

Another young man appearing before my husband today had not done any of the work he was supposed to do in order for his MIP to be dropped, not a lick of it in seven months.  He asked for another month in which to complete his assignments.  He said he’d been moving to another city, and settling in, looking for a job. The judge was not pleased with the young man’s laissez-faire attitude but gave him another month, along with a reminder of the six-month jail sentence he would receive should he not comply. The judge did not comment on the young man’s earring holes the size of 50-cent pieces.  Self-torture is not against the law in Cannon Beach, I guess.

I remember (yep, once again) when one of my students returning from traffic court told me she believed no judge should never let off first-time speeding or MIP offenders because then all they learn is that they can do something at least twice and get away with it. Out of the mouths of…teens. And SHE had just gotten away with speeding for the second time.  I think she was wise beyond her years.  A terrible driver, yes, but wise. This is what I learned from my parents: NO! means NO!  The truth is, difficult as it is to stick to what you say as a parent, teacher or official, those receiving the NO! appreciate, sooner or later, that big STOP sign at the end of their noses. 

Yes, I digressed again.  After all, I didn’t get in trouble for it the first time.

The docket contained more miscreants and scalawags who either expected to be forgiven for driving 68 mph in a 55 mph zone “because it’s impossible to see my dashboard when it’s dark” or who just admitted their guilt and paid their fine. The court room finally emptied of all save the judge, the city attorney, the clerk and me.  Just when the judge prepared to adjourn the court, the city attorney worried that the woman in the red coat way in the back had not been heard.  The judge said, “That’s my wife.”

That has happened every time I’ve gone to watch my husband perform his duties.  Apparently to every attorney and official of the court, I look like a rogue, a scofflaw, a knavette.  An antique delinquent. 

The last day that wasn’t a last day yet ended with a laugh.

New Year Treats

Every New Year's Day since my husband and I have known each other, 34 years, we've enjoyed a celebratory walk.  And on every walk we take, at the turn-around point, we kiss. Here we are in Oceanside, Oregon, on the beach. It's a small thing, our ritual and who knows why we started doing it, but we like it.  Our society sorely needs positive, loving rituals.  My friend, writer Martha Goudey, says to celebrate the small things.  It's the small things that lead to bigger things in the long run. At least 34 years so far.

Sometimes it's important to change our perspective.  Look down instead of up.  Find something of beauty, something to love where you've never looked before.  We take our cameras everywhere we go as a matter of course because we never know what we'll find.  We take the normal "isn't that cool!" photos, and then, we find the extra-normal, the super-normal, the "Wow!" photos.  Here's what we saw when we looked down:

Bicycle

Forest

Beauty Salon

Change your perception and amazing things will occur!  And you'll still see the everyday beautiful like this:

Our first day of 2013 was glorious.  I hope that every day of this year will be, for all of us.  If we remember to celebrate the small things, change our perception, and be full of gratitude, they will be glorious days, indeed.

AFT GANG AWRY

AFT GANG AWRY

Ever have a day where everything goes awry, one damn thing after another?  Where if you were smart, you’d go back to bed, but you’re washing the bedding because the cat puked in it, so you can’t?

Today is one of those days for me. I woke up at 7:00 which isn’t so bad since I’ve been lately sleep deprived, but it’s not so good, either, since our Y moved the time of my water aerobics class up by half an hour to 8:30. At the time I should be taking a shower, 8:00, I haven’t even eaten breakfast which I must do because I took my prescribed medication an hour ago. The medication requires eating an hour later. Because I was late arising, I am late breakfasting.

So, I place my coffee, banana, and zucchini bread on the—WHAT? 

Well, what did YOU have for breakfast, Mr. Ding-Dong and Tootsie Pop?  At least MY breakfast had a vegetable in it.

Anyway, I place my coffee and zucchini bread on the side table and reach for my iPad, multi-tasker that I am. Oops. I also lack depth perception and hand-eye coordination. The iPad collides with the very full, giant-sized coffee cup which tumbles as fast as it takes me to shout my favorite curse word, the one containing “sh” and “t,” and the cup shatters the cat food treat dish on the floor. All across the living room floor in a five-foot radius, arranged like a modern art installation, lie splattered coffee and cat dish shards.  The coffee cup, resilient to droppage like all of Wal-Mart’s finest china, remains intact.

The zucchini bread sits untouched and inviting. I contemplate leaving the entire mess right where it is and dealing with it when I return home after my workout, if I ever do, knowing what I have to clean up. I could stop to clean up the mess and be late to my class or not clean up and be less late. The shower I need is moot by now. Ain’t gonna happen.

I think of my cat, who is now hiding under the couch, hissing, and how even though she’s been unpleasant this morning, I don’t want her hurt by walking on glass fragments.

Guilt sends me to the laundry room where I tug on several towels from the rag shelf in the cupboard, and they all fall on the floor. Those I leave where they lie for later.  No cat’s ever been killed by a pile of towels, I reason. 

I sop and mop. Transporting towels dripping cold coffee all the way into the kitchen, I open the garbage can lid and shake the shards into it and throw the towels into the laundry basket.

I am only ten minutes late to class. Without a shower. My hair sticks out at odd angles all over my head. My head resembles a porcupine’s do had it lain on only one side all night long. No one says a word about my rebellious hair during class. That’s how you know people love you. Or have no words for what they see, one or the other.

After getting the mail, I race home to pick kale in my garden, enough for a friend and for the new recipe I plan to try, a Mexican vegetable strata which incorporates both kale and zucchini of which our garden has an overabundance.

I change clothes first because I don’t have a good track record keeping my clothes clean when I garden or cook. Or eat breakfast in my living room chair, apparently. I think people who do are abnormal and suspect.

Wearing one of my previously stained tee shirts, the nicest one in my vast collection, I begin the recipe assemblage, like a shorter Julia Child with a lower humming voice, cutting, chopping, and sautéing.  Whipping the naughty eggs.

I slice a couple of potatoes and zucchinis I grew this summer, and some sweet potatoes I didn’t. I chop kale and onion from our garden. Fry up the chicken sausage. Layer after layer I arrange, and then I discover—no enchilada sauce. The dish wouldn’t be right without it.  It’s called Mexican Vegetable Strata, right?

I change my clothes, again, and head for the store for green enchilada sauce. Three cans of green enchilada sauce and four bags of tomato sauce, paste, and puree later, (I like my larder stocked!)I arrive back home.

I forgot to take my personal grocery bags into the store, so the cans are heaped in bags made of that flimsy grocery sack plastic that can be slashed by anything sharp, like an orange, for example. Of course, the clerk had not double-bagged to compensate for the can weight, and one of the bags splits and cans tumble out when I open the car door. I joyfully chase rolling cans all over the driveway and under the car, exhausting the catalog of my cursing repertoire, employing those soothing fricatives and plosives that serve us so well in the midst of frustration. See, multi-tasking, once again.

Tin can roundup complete, once inside the house, I change into my cooking and slopping clothes yet again.

Now it is 2:30 and way past lunch. Time to stop to have my second meal of the day, zucchini bread.

WHAT?  Well, what did YOU have for lunch, Ms. half-a-wienie and three M&M’s you found in your sweater pocket? Did I mention my meal has a veggie in it, and raisins, nuts, grain and eggs?  That makes five food groups!

In a wise act of self-preservation, I eat without electronic devices anywhere near me, a most uneventful lunch, then finish assembling the strata. I turn on the oven to preheat as I sprinkle on the Tillamook Mexican cheese.

I carry the pans to the stove, but I feel no heat. Oops, forgot to push the start button. Ovens these days are so picky, so touchy, so demanding.   

Ten minutes later, the Strata is in the oven. Whew! This quick and easy recipe has taken four hours and an entire retinue of curse words to assemble.

While the Strata bakes, I take a break to gird my loins in anticipation of what else this day might have to offer. I shudder to think of possible events, so I won’t. If all goes well, I’ll reach dinner time unscathed.  What can go wrong lying on a couch?

Don’t tell me.  After my day, I don’t want to know.

Some days aft gang awry. But that gives us pause to be grateful for the days when all flows smoothly, doesn’t it?

And for the succor of zucchini bread.

POOP ON A PLANE

We are never too old to learn, I’m told.  I’m also told that life is an adventure.  I’d say that both maxims are true, based on my flight back from Phoenix last Sunday night.  No, there was no terrifying turbulence, no horrendous hijacking, no aisle full of snakes.  Nope, just me and one after-dinner treat.

Well, and the seat mate who had to get up and pee six times during a two-hour, 44-minute flight.  I learned that there are people who have to pee more than I.  I also learned how irritating getting up and down to let such a seat mate pass by can be.  He apologized and said he had tried for an aisle seat.  I was outwardly compassionate, assuming he had a horrifying health issue that he could not even whisper in my ear.  Besides, I had the lucky opportunity, thanks to his kidneys, to exercise my quads by bobbing up and down every 20 minutes.  Just like zumba! 

You know what I felt like?  Locks.  On a canal. 

(Wasn’t that a great analogy?  With the water image and all?  Woo-hoo!  On a roll now.  No, wait!  A waterslide!  On a waterslide now!)

If you are anything like my cats, by now you are asking, “Treat?  Where’s the treat?  What’s the treat?  You mentioned a treat?”  In fact, you are probably presenting me with your behind and your tail standing straight up right now, looking back over your shoulder, longing written all over your whiskers.

OK, then.  Here’s the treat part of the flight.

Dinner was a surprisingly tasty chicken curry and arugula-laced salad, accompanied by the treat, (ready for it?) a chocolate truffle.  I decided that I would save my treat for later if I got tired.  Once we landed and I got my luggage and vehicle, I had to drive home.  Chocolate would  keep me awake during the two-hour drive.  (I don’t live anywhere near anywhere.)

An hour later I got bored and hungry after all those squats.  I thought of how that chocolate truffle might spice things up a bit.  Yet, besides keeping me awake, chocolate also makes me squirm.  I had to weigh the consequence of side effects against desire.  Back and forth the arguments flew in my mind, for what seemed, oh, three seconds.  My mind made itself up.  Chocolate it was.  (Did you doubt which argument would win?)

I reached in my pocket for the truffle which I’d dropped there the hour before.  I felt the metal wrapper and tugged on it, but when my hand rose out of my pocket, there was no truffle, just a smushed orange foil wrapper and fingers full of what looked like poop.  I gazed stupefied at my hand, as if it belonged not to me but to the Poop-Hand Monster someone had stuck in my pocket for a practical joke. 

I wasn’t alone in my shock.  My aisle mates and seat mate stared at the offending hand as well.

I stuck it back in my pocket where it nearly drowned in melted chocolate.  With my other hand I reached into my purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and thrust my cocoa-hand into it.  I wiped and wiped.  Soon the hankie was full of brown.  My hand was still covered.  Did I have another hankie? 

I unzipped my computer bag with my clean hand and saw something white.  Great! Another hankie, in the nick of time!  I whipped it out, and shook it out.  And realized it wasn’t a hankie, but my spare pair of underpants.  Fluttering in the open space of the aisle.

How long does a moment of mortification last? A second? An hour? A lifetime?

Before anyone could see was in the open space imitating Old Glory in a stiff breeze, I wadded up those panties and stuffed them back into my computer bag.

(Don’t you carry a spare pair of panties in case your luggage doesn’t make it to your destination the same time you do?  Of course you do.  We’ve done it for years, you and I, and it’s a good practice.  I now suggest that you recall where you stow them, however.  And buy something to get out the chocolate stains.)

What now?  My hand was still ganached and my pocket still full of melted goodie.  Licking my fingers was not an option.  Can you imagine what that would have looked like to my already shocked section of the plane?  Euwww!  Gross!

Thankfully I remembered the sani-wipes in my purse and maneuvered one out of its plastic wrapper.  Two or three, actually.  I wiped out my pocket to the best of my ability and then my fingers and palm.  They looked clean, so I raised my fingers to my nose and smelled.  Chocolate. 

I heard a gasp and then I thought.  Crap!  Can you imagine what sniffing my formerly brown fingers looked like?  Euwww!  Gross!

Did I sink into my seat in humiliation?

Of course not.

I got up and locked myself in the bathroom.  I peed.  It was my turn.

I washed my hands.  I walked back to my seat, head held high.  Maybe my seat mate and aisle mates wondered what I did in there since I’d obviously already done some duty in my pocket.  But what did I care?

Instead of reading the in-flight magazine or finishing the crossword or sleeping, I had made use of my time in-flight.  I had learned something.

Do not put a wrapped chocolate into your pocket for later, no matter what.  Delayed gratification is not a good thing.

P.S.  I think this should be a movie, don’t you?

Remembrance of My Dad

My father, Ernest George Keltz, died December 15, 2011, at the age of 90.  This is what I read at his funeral:

Philosophers have long tried to determine what qualities make the measure of a man.  I think all they need do is gather at a celebration of his life, like this one, to know the answer.  Look at the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have received his gifts, who have learned from him, and who have been loved by him.  This room is full of family who are connected by this one strand of humanity, a thread now sewn by the most tender of loving hands, binding us one to another, each one holding his or her memories fast to the heart—and posted on Facebook.  Such wonderful posts by grandchildren JC, Courtney, Kathy, Sean and more to come, I’m sure.

As my daughter Kathy wrote, Dad was a quiet man who taught by demonstration.  He was so shy as a teenager that he fainted the first time he tried to give a speech.  Yet with persistence he went on to achieve honors in FFA speaking.  He wanted a farm of his own and with Mom’s help, he achieved that goal.  All of us connected to Dad have watched and learned that quality and use it in our own attainments, whether it is to further our educations, or combat our demons, or follow our dreams.

Another quality our father demonstrated was that of sharing the gifts and talents you have with those who have a need, that sense of community that says we share with those we love and those who are unloved, in order to make this world a better place.  I remember sacks of garden produce for those who had no garden and Christmas boxes for those who had no extended family.  I note that is a legacy he has left to us who follow.  Many of us work in careers that focus on service to others—teachers, nurses, community managers, mentors—or we serve our communities in our retirement, and many more of us are presently studying to hold positions of service to others. 

Our father loved a good joke, whether he was playing it on someone or recounting a particularly naughty one he heard from a friend or family member.  Once, when I told him I was studying French, he said, “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?” which was something he had learned to say during the war.  He thought I’d forget it but I didn’t and when I learned what that meant, I told him.  His face turned the shade of a ripe tomato.  He was famous for passing the butter and then pushing it just enough so your thumb got covered.  How many of you when you were younger got asked to pull his finger?  You tried to NOT make that mistake twice!

If we can laugh, we can handle anything, and we Keltz people love to laugh and laugh to live.  When last I saw Dad, he told me I was looking good.  Since he could barely see, just out the upper corner of his left eye, I asked him if he could even see me.  Parts, he said.  Well, I hope they are the good parts, I said.  He laughed and I laughed and it was the best thing to do just then.

Dad was full of stories and I could hardly wait to hear him tell and re-tell my favorites.  How he would hide under the washing bench outside their cabin when the Indians came to visit; how the horse he and Virginia were riding on to school got spooked and took off running and she threw her arm around his neck and nearly choked him to death before he could get the horse stopped; how he and his dad laughed when their friend Jack Starr said he could handle bees and he took off running when the swarm came after him, losing his black hat with the silver spangles; how his dad sneaked whiskey into the pumpkin pie sauce Grandma was making and she thought it was the best pumpkin pie sauce she’d ever made!  How as a young boy he got lost in the woods in a snowstorm overnight and used his brains to figure out how to find his way back.

I know you all are thinking of your favorite Dad and Grandpa stories and wanting to tell them again to each other.  I want to be there to hear them.  That’s one other thing we Keltz people have in common, the love of story.  There are many writers—poets, storytellers, songwriters—among us.  Eric and Susie have begun to compile some of those stories being recalled so far.

Dad loved music and we all share that connection as well.  We loved to hear him play the harmonica and asked to hear that for as long as he could play.  My favorite was “Red River Valley.” We loved to hear him yodel, even though sometimes we pretended we didn’t, and we asked to hear that for as long as he could yodel.  When I was little, he sang songs where he combined naughty jokes with music—She has freckles on her butt, she’s nice—or She talks with a giggle and she walks with a wiggle and she sure can roll her…eyes.  He’d start in on Barnacle Bill the Sailor but he never got too far before Mom would say, “ERNIE!”

When I was small, he sang me “Duke John was a mighty fine man, he had 10,000 men.  He marched them all up a hill and he marched them down again.  Want to hear the second verse?  Duke John was a mighty fine man…etc.” He also sang, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.”

One of the greatest gifts I received from my father was a surprise.  He was happy to hear that I was marrying and I teased him that now he could sing at my wedding, never imagining that my shy father would go before a group of people and sing.  That is exactly what he did, with my sister’s help, overcome his fears because he wanted to give a gift of love.  He sang at my sister Anita’s wedding as well.

Most of his descendents have gone on to share their musical gifts in one way or another with their communities because we’ve learned from Dad what a gift that is, both for the giver and the receiver.  A Keltz gathering is a musical gathering.

Several years ago when our father almost died, he went down the tunnel, saw the white light and he heard the music.  He couldn’t describe the music, he said, because it was beyond description, too lovely for our words and nothing like he’d ever heard before.  That was the thing he remembered most from his experience and I believe he looked forward to hearing that heavenly music again.  It does my heart good to believe that he is surrounded by that loving sound again and he is a part of the choir.  It does my heart good to know he is at peace, the story of his earthly existence all told and complete, with the sequels that are our lives still unfolding with him as a central character guiding us.  John Donne wrote, “When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”

     The man who sang at my wedding will sing no more on this earthly plane; neither will he cry.  He is at peace, a part of the universal music, his story complete.  But he remains with us, connected by that thread that binds, forever, in our memories and our hearts.

Responses to Weird Phenomena

Dear Readers:

I am sharing with you the responses I received to the prior blog.  I thought all of you who shared would be interested in hearing from each other.  I removed names in order to protect privacy.  Some responses were logical and scientific in nature and others, well...not.

B Michael (optometrist) had to tell me that as we age parts of our bodies begin to sag (no kidding!) and that goes for the vitreous humor lining of the inside of the eyeball.  As the shreds sag and eventually land in a pile in the bottom of our eyes they set off electrical signals which the brain sees as fireflies until all has peeled off and settled.  Not really a pretty picture, but no worse than the flap under my upper arm that wiggles when I shake my hands.  I honestly don't have much help for you in the remembering too much department.  I am in constant fear of not remembering enough: names, dates, words, directions, calculations.

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YES, YES, YES!! I do have scary similar experiences, especially the snippets of memories that I can't quite grasp once the experiences are over. When these "spells" first occurred, I would have to run for the bed and stay until the spell passed. They seem now to be less forceful, and I usually just freeze (as in a fugue? heart attack?) and let it happen. I have asked three doctors about these experiences, and they all looked at me as though I had three heads.  I have been told by doctors, by the way, that if there are flashes, a doctor needs to look into the problem.

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Yep, happens to me all the time and not just recently.  The oddest memories randomly come along having nothing to do with what I am doing in the moment.  I have not experienced your peripheral vision thing though....

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OH YA!!  I will write details later.  I thought I was nutz.  The floaty things to the side . . . I was thinking it was Mike's wife still here so I started talking to . . .ummm . . . her?!  Not talking back.  I'm serious,  girl scouts' honor.  And yes, going to a different “level” or “awareness”. 

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Well, yes, I have these things as well.  I suppose the flashes out of the corner of one's eyes might have an ophthalmological explanation, but let me tell you when I experience them most.  Just after the loss of someone important to me.  I'm thinking, at least in my case, that it is that person making contact for a last goodbye.  And not just people, but pets as well.  Gene and I both do this. 

I think perhaps the older we get, the more we pause to reflect on past memories which seems to unlock the door for more memories to flash.  I also find myself humming or singing a certain song unintentionally and then realize that the song is pertinent to thoughts or actions happening at that time.  For instance, after visiting with the folks who ran Joel's Grocery, a neighborhood store a block from my home in La Grande, I found myself humming Jim Croche's I've Got A Name.

I'm wondering if the closer we come to our end, the more our past friends and relatives draw close - the flashes just out of our sight.

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I have also been "seeing things" usually off to the right, more like shadows or dark shapes.  I hope they're my guardians and not some sinister soul or voyeuristic being...AND having occasional memory flashes.  These are interesting cuz so much of my past lives has been blocked for some reason that I welcome a brief reminder of something or someone I had forgotten all about.  I usually try to expand on the memory which doesn't always work.  Maybe both of these events is a sort of awakening, a growing, tho not of a tumor...more like evolving in bursts. 
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Good for you- this sounds like a conscious mind expanding.   There’s so much we’ll never know.  The only thing close that I  have experienced is when I’m falling asleep, I have these revelations that explain very deep concepts, but they’re just a flash and it’s impossible to hold onto them.  I feel so wise when it happens, but it’s also frustrating.  This hasn’t happened to me for a couple of years.  Send your blog to Dana Anderson if you know her.  She would have some enlightened comments!

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I've noticed both of these things.  That fleeting thought thing is so weird.  Happens to me at least once a day and I just think to myself, what the hell and consider it a brain leakage of some kind.  The eye thing I have a different take on because of my eye surgery 3 years ago.  I always worry something has gone wrong with the surgery, but then it goes away and I breathe a sign of relief.  What funny things age is doing, although now you've heard that the brain thing also happens to younger people.  Tooooooo much.

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 I would like to share with you an experience I had years ago and still have on occasion, when I am especially in tune with myself.
It must be over 20+ years ago that I went to New Mexico and did a week long program with Chris Griscom at The Light Center.  (http://lightinstitute.com/site/ )  It was a multi-incarnational week…. J  She took us back into a “past lives” and at the end of the session she would ask “when did this happen?”  On the final session I went to a rather magical life and was a child playing with my son (who was in this life my brother).  It was in a place I had never seen before, either in this life, pictures or history books.  When she came to the questions “when did this happen?” … my answer was quick “NOW.”  There was not a shred of doubt that it was happening right that moment simultaneously with the life I was currently experiencing.  (fun, huh!)  I won’t go into describing the other life, but what I think is pertinent to your discussion is that after the sessions, that life would unexpectedly come into my peripheral vision.  It would disappear if I turned to look at it, but if I just continued to allow it in my peripheral vision, it would continue and I could experience it.  (Kind of the same as when you first experience deep meditation, if you allow any kind of a “wow” you lose the meditation … but if you just allow and stay in that moment you go deeper and deeper)  Now this other life would pop up at the oddest times, like even at a stop light when I would be driving or when I was waiting for something else to happen.  Those moments in life that you pause ---

When I consider that it happens less to me now, I realize, sadly,  I am taking less time to “pause….”  Thank you for making me think about this.  I will make some changes to allow for pauses more often.  J

As an addendum – As I said, I had never seen the place/location of this other life.  It was kind of tropical, but way more magical than any tropical paradise I had seen before.  About a year after the sessions I was in an art gallery in a California beach town and I saw a painting of “my place.”  The artists was there that day and although there was a large crowd and we did not have an opportunity to go into a long conversation, I was so excited about it I ran to him and said I’ve never seen this place in this life before, I live here in another life.  He smiled and said “I know.”  I went back the next day and he was gone, and I have not seen him since.  (I know, that part kind of sucks, doesn’t it?  I think if I write a story about it, I will change that ending for sure!) 

So maybe the peripheral visions are a simultaneous life/alternate reality bleeding through?  It was for me. 

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I am seeing so much out of the corners of my eyes that I am getting bored with every day reality. 

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Good reading because it is good writing. You're dangerous to an old order that's time has come.  It's time to return to the ferment of the past.
Dangerous your pen is.

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Some of you haven't been having the experiences I wrote about, but you have been recipients of vivid dreams.  One such response is on the blog itself and this is the other:

As for the dreams…I saw as clear as day, but in the dead of the night last night, five concurrent bombs explode here in LV.  I was at a school filled with small children and celebrating somebody’s birthday party when the explosions deafened us and created the thickest, blackest, and oiliest-appearing clouds I’d ever seen forming in the sky.  The school we were in was located on top of a hill, allowing us a panoramic view of the bomb sites scattered across the valley.  Muslim terrorists claimed responsibility.

The night before, I was traveling through CA and found myself in an enormous stadium with a yellow, orange and glittering red stage and a marquis with Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Peter Lawford’s names scrawling across the top of the whole thing. We attendees were all wearing huge helmets of the same colors and moving our heads in unison to some stupid rap tune.

WTF???

P.S.

I must confess that I had consumed my boyfriend’s killer chili with a generous sprinkling of tobasco sauce on each of those nights.  Could these be brain farts, or something more?

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I found all the responses interesting and hope this discussion continues.  Already, more examples of weird phenomena similar to ours have been winging themselves my way and to some of you. 

Weird phenomena

At lunch yesterday with a friend, I was relieved to learn that certain brain events I've been experiencing the last year are not particular only to me.  She's been having the same experiences and she says many people of all ages are similarly affected.  Whew!  I thought I had a brain tumor.  Maybe these phenomena have visited you as well.

Quick flashes of moments from out of my past burst into my consciousness--not long events, but images that have occurred  just seconds in real time.  These images are not significant in any way nor are they relevant to where I am in the present or to what I am doing.  They just flash, like there's been a rent in time and they have squirted back out to me in the now.  For example, one that flashed the other day was what I saw out our rental car window in 2000 when we went to San Diego.  Houses in a housing development as we drove by on the freeway.  That's it.  All my flashes are like that.  No meaning, no connection, just things I saw for an instant some time in my past.  I can't attach any meaning to them whatsoever other than to realize they are things I have seen.

Another mind event has been the past-at-a-glance moment.  My lunch friend calls it "The Big Picture."  My life comes back to me in total, as if I'm reading a map of myself.  Everything is compressed into a smaller portion and I take it I'm supposed to glean something from being presented this outline.  Sometimes I get an "aha!" but as I'm always trying to pay attention and make meaning from daily events, I've covered a lot of ground already and there's not much of anything new to come up for me.  So why is this mind feedback occurring? 

Again, I thought this was happening because I'm at the over-65 stage of life.  I assumed this was something that happens in brains our age because of our age.  The total-life phenomenen is quite opposite from memoir thinking, where I am going through events moment by moment in order to make story from them.

My friend tells me, however, that this and other similar events are happening to people of all ages.  She says there is a shift in consciousness going on and quotes a four year-old who said, "Things are going to change.  The crystals inside us are turning on, and they'll be telling us what to do."  My friend in her career persona is privvy to what goes on in the mind of people of all ages, and this shifting is happening in one way or another to all of them.

One more experiential oddity--I have been seeing movement out the corner of my eye and sometimes above me, birdlike, but not birds.  When I look straight on, nothing is there.  Yesterday while I worked at the stove canning beets, I noticed there was a multitude of movement at the window end of my kitchen--swift, black cloudiness zipping back and forth.  I see a lot of this movement when I work in the garden as well.  But when I focus straight on, nothing.  I know I don't have cataracts or macular degeneration or any other eye malfunctions.  I do have migraines from time to time due to air pressure changes, but the events I'm describing do not accompany the headaches.  So naturally, I worried brain tumor.

Until this morning.  As I recounted the weird phenomena lunch discussion to my husband, he said he has been experiencing the movements as well.  He's a left-brain, logical thinker not prone to whimsy, so if he experiences the same events, then what the heck is going on?

Another friend just told me she thought the mind flashes were her brain being so full of memories that it had to dispose of a few.

Have you been experiencing any or all of these same phenomena?  Do you have an explanation?  Is your consciousness shifting?  I really want to know.  I find it all very interesting and am glad to learn I'm not alone in all of this strange territory.  I don't mind the wondering--we don't really get a lot of answers about mystical events, do we?--but as with everything else in life, inside our brains, or the ethereal, I'd like an explanation, too.