May 2nd, 2008
It has been a very odd week. I’ll come to that after this piece by Steve Goodier. His is the real beauty, me, later, is the just real, and that won’t be as beautiful. I have questions this week and wonderings, not beautiful, except that there is nothing here, no thing, no idea, that is not, in its own way, beautiful, even if darkly so.
REAL BEAUTY
When a first-time father cuddled his newborn son, he immediately
noticed the baby’s ears conspicuously standing out from his head. He
expressed his concern to the nurse that some children might taunt his
child, calling him names like “Dumbo.” A doctor examined the baby and
reassured the new dad that his son was healthy – the ears presented
only a minor cosmetic problem.
But the nervous father persisted. He wondered if the child might
suffer psychological effects of ridicule, or if they should consider
plastic surgery.
The nurse assured him that it was really no problem, and he should
just wait to see if the boy grows into his ears.
The father finally felt more optimistic about his child, but now he
worried about his wife’s reaction to those large, protruding ears. She
had delivered by cesarean section, and had not yet seen the child.
“She doesn’t take things as easily as I do,” he said to the nurse.
By this time, the new mother was settled in the recovery room and
ready to meet her new baby. The nurse went along with the dad to lend
some support in case this inexperienced mother became upset about her
baby’s large ears.
The infant was swaddled in a receiving blanket with his head covered
for the short trip through the chilly air-conditioned corridor. The
baby was placed in his mother’s arms, who eased the blanket back so
that she could gaze upon her child for the first time.
She took one look at her baby’s face and looked to her husband and
gasped, “Oh, Honey! Look! He has your ears!”
No problem with Mom. She married those ears…and she loves the man to
whom they are attached.
The poet Khalil Gibran said, “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a
light in the heart.” It’s hard to see the ears when you’re looking
into the light.
— Steve Goodier
So – that is sweet, isn’t it? All that worry for nothing. Which is not to say that his fears, which I take from his fear to have come from personal experience, though he didn’t recognize or remember it as such apparently, aren’t real. The trick is to see the beauty in everything, God says that, in the books Neale Donald Walsch wrote. Judge nothing, love everything. Always and all ways. They are wonderful books, I still recommend books one and two with all of my heart, all of my mind and all of my soul. But.
There always has to be one, right? So here comes the just real part. Everything here is true. Everything, every word, I’ve written. None of them are falsehoods, they all come from my memory and from within me. I may have, here, created an impression of a person who lives in the light only. And that, if it has been read or felt or experienced in that way, is not true. I DO try to be positive here. I’m not sure that is always the best course. My name is not Pollyanna, it is gene. When I spoke on my main site of the CWG list that I was on for about half of 1998, I said I wrote there about a lot of things, that I learned there I could speak what was in me without driving anyone else insane, or alienating them forever, or just making them think I was completely crazy (and I apologize to those who are offended by THAT word but it is necessary here tonight) and having them run away screaming. It was a safe environment, an accepting environment, I felt enveloped by those wonderful souls who were on that list. I said that there were many more ON the list than there were who actively participated. I think at its largest it was upwards of 600 people, maybe 60 of us participated regularly, a few more occasionally, the others we called “loving lurkers”, those who read but did not write. Back then I was in the beginning of my no sleeping phase, that hasn’t actually ended yet, I can get drugged up enough to get four hours of silence, but still I begin waking then, and can usually can get back to sleep because of the drugs – legally prescribed, I add.
Then, though, I didn’t sleep. I fell asleep as I had all of my life, virtually instantly when I lay down, but I would wake after 3 hours and be unable to get back to sleep. So I’d get up come out here, to this very place, and write to the list, for hours, until I had to go to work, then I’d come home, come back up here and write till 10, sleep 3 hours and start again. I did that from early February 1998 through October that year. I always felt, I still do, when I am writing that I am talking to someone, just a conversation. And I wrote about everything in me, to begin with, I wrote about the pain of losing Brandon, this list, I joined it almost exactly 12 months after his suicide. I wrote about growing up on the farm, I wrote about how out of place I felt. I wrote about raising my sons, I wrote about my mistakes, I responded to things others wrote. I spoke from my heart, and many of those posts were written with tears streaming down my face. I got responses from those who posted regularly, but I also got many private emails from our “loving lurkers”, thanking me for saying things they felt but couldn’t express, telling me that they felt as I did, but did not have the ability or will or wish to express whatever that might have been publicly, but thanking me for saying for them, what they could not say themselves. I SO appreciated those letters. Which does not mean I didn’t appreciate those with whom I corresponded openly ON the list, I did, I do still. As I said, I think, on my main site – I need to get back there and do some editing, I tend to write stream of consciousness and that is not always grammatical or without typo’s, lol. And I have intended to “fix” that but haven’t yet. Anyway, we talked about the books, what we thought about them, what we reacted to, what we felt about them. I didn’t always agree with everything in them. And that felt a little, sacrilegious, because the list was formed because of those books – the only rule was play nice, and even that we couldn’t always do. For one thing, there is this story in book 1, of the Little Soul and the Sun. EVERYONE loved it. Neale loved it so much that he made into a completely separate little book. And I hated it. It filled me with horror as I read it.
The essence of it is that we “agree” to come here together to experience who we are not. And that we, in advance, forgive, although that isn’t quite right because we still love each other, what we do here to each other as we help each other experience what we are not, that we might truly know what we are, which is children of God, of love. So, we forgive our rapist, our murderer, our torturer, our Hitlers and our Stalins, in advance for what they will help us see here. We will finally understand what we ARE by experiencing here, what we are not. The books have a lot about this – duality, you can’t know hot if cold doesn’t exist, etc. I am sorry, but that very idea did, and does, disgust me. The argument is that if you are in a place where love is all there is and there is nothing else, how do you know what love is? Well, I KNOW the answer to that question and I am still amazed that Neale, and apparently God, as well as many of my list mates, didn’t. So while people were raving for a week or so about this magnificent interpretation, I was seething inside. And, finally one night, or rather early morning around 3 AM, I wrote out what I thought about that story and why. It started an enormous argument on the list amongst those who posted, but I got SO many emails from people who didn’t post, who thanked me for expressing what they did not dare or feel able to express. And there were more than a few active posters, who had been quiet while the lauding was going on who, once I expressed my own viewpoint, then joined in and thanked me for freeing them to express their own displeasure with that particular story.
I want to say clearly, it is THAT story, I am disagreeing with, not CWG. There are parts of the books that are not “right” to me, Jenna has explained that to me in this way, the books came through Neale’s filter, from God, but Neale wrote them down and edited them. There HAS to be parts of Neale IN them, he did not, though he felt as if he was, take dictation. He did, and he didn’t. jen says it in this way, if you are at a lecture and you are taking notes, unless you can write shorthand or record what you are hearing, your notes will NOT match perfectly what whomever was speaking said. It happens too fast, you will fill in the blanks yourself. And you will not always be 100% accurate. And there’s the rub. The books came through Neale, through his filter, his experience, his life and so fast that even he did not always capture exactly what God was telling him. I’ve gotta giggle here, sorry. I am not criticizing Neale. I love him. I appreciate him, I have written him – way back then, without response, he was already then into being NEALE DONALD WALSCH, as book 1 had made him quite famous, setting some sort of record for the NY Times best seller list – it WAS a book the world was waiting for, absolutely no doubt or question about that have I. And, of course, I’ve never met him, nor gone to any of his seminars, nor have I seen his movie, nor will I except under one particular circumstance. This Jenna has told me. The parts of the books I felt uncomfortable with, she explained to me. I need to tell you this. My first copy of book 1, was SO highlighted, in coats of many colors, so written over and around, with things that jen told me as I read it, that it was practically illegible, giggle. And then I left it on the bus.
I thought, well, maybe I should call the MTC and see if anyone turned it in. Jen told me no, someone needs it AND your notes, honey. So I bought another copy, and proceeded to make that nearly illegible too. Those notes are for me, not public consumption. But there ARE things in the books that are not quite “right” and I know what those parts are and why, why they were written as they were. jen’s gone through this with MANY times, is with me now as I write this. And desperately trying to distract me. She says I am going to say things that it isn’t time to say yet. And I am going to let her have her way and move off this track. Honest to God, she said, within me, thank you honey. How can you not love someone like that? She is the only entity on this planet that can move me off something I am on. The only entity EVER. In all my quiet, shy, little life, I have NEVER let anyone else do that. I have said yes, but not meant it. A zillion times. With her, it is different. And i let her have her way – she says, sometimes. And I guess I have to agree with that too, because there are plenty of times I have steamrolled right past her advice, never a good idea, but then I’ve not necessarily always been an angel. THAT is another story, the angel reader, for another time.
For this time, well, this could be taken as macabre, and I don’t mean it that way, so am saying upfront, if you feel that? Cut it out. Cuz I don’t mean any of this that way. First, I am unafraid of death. I KNOW where we came from and where we are going when we leave here. I have SEEN it, I have FELT it, in the presence of those two light globes. THAT feeling is what home is. What we feel THERE all the time. Why we leave that to come here is beyond me, lol. Except for the part of not knowing how wonderful THAT is, if we never know anything else. Now it seems to me that should be enough. It seems to me that would BE enough. If you feel perfectly wonderful ALL the time, why would you worry about that? Why would you want to worry about that? Well, God explains that too, but not to my satisfaction. Hey, I can say that. If She doesn’t like it, I’m not hiding, the thunderbolt can find me easily enough. So I don’t quite get that. BUT, I also have no fear of death because I KNOW when I leave here, I go THERE. And I can’t believe I ever left there.
So this life has been a little much for me. A little hard to grasp. A little hard to understand. All is not sweetness and light here and I don’t understand why. yes, yes, i know, all that crap about not knowing what good is if evil doesn’t exist. On a theoretical level, I get that. On a personal level, it pisses me off. Sorry, but there is no other word that fits. I have but one child remaining on this planet. One chose suicide, which doesn’t exactly speak well of my parenting skills, one is smart as the day is long, but couldn’t catch a break to save his life. Evan is loving, wonderful, not a good husband, I SAW that and left it alone because, well, he wouldn’t have listened to me, and it wasn’t my place to tell him how to be, he has to create his own life. He didn’t find the perfect match for him. She is not a bad person. None of us are, we are all flawed. So, he’s been separated for almost two years, soon to be divorced. All his fault? No. Not at all. He met and married a flawed person. Just like most of us do. I guess in order to see what we are not. Pthhhh.
Anyway, he lost his job last August for a couple reasons, he was getting divorced and needed to take time to go hearings, and they were sharing custody and when a 5 year old or a 7 year old get sick, SOMEONE has to go get them, if it was his day, he did. Then he got sick himself. He has, as I said, severe asthma. So they offered him a deal. You resign quietly, we give you 6 weeks severance and don’t contest unemployment. Except that resigning disqualifies you for unemployment. They didn’t mention that and he didn’t find out until he applied for it. Several ugly months pass, he gets the job of a lifetime, the day after New Years, they understand his situation and accept it, then he gets sick, the fucking asthma, sorry for the language but that is how I feel about that disease – because the ONLY reason it exists in THIS country to the degree it does today is GREED, we have poisoned our air and water for 70 years, and now more than half our kids have asthma, allergies, ADD, autism, and we still don’t see that we did it to ourselves. Dollars are still more important than people, particularly little people who can’t speak for themselves, children. So this week it happens again. And he spends several days in the hospital and his company? “They have a business to run.” Not fired yet, but on the edge.
So now we come to the macabre. Remember I started with that word? How can I help this human being whom I love more than any other on the face of this planet? My first born child, who is so like me, in many ways, better than me in many others. I’ve never had asthma or allergies, that comes from his mom’s side, I understand it, I went through his childhood with him, but I don’t have it. I’ve had the ability to maintain a steady income and work life, which is not to say I don’t have my issues, I do, but we aren’t going to talk about those here and now. That’ll be another dissertation, lol. Maybe. But I am scared to death for my child. He has had two years of pure hell and as much as I’d like to promise him it is going to get better? It isn’t, not yet, not for a bit yet. And I know. She knows and she tells me. So I wonder. I have longevity in my family on both sides, I mean real longevity, three of my grandparents went past 87, both grandma’s, though I really only knew one, and my maternal grandpa, who I look just like, went to 95 – though he did not want to. Grandma there, went into a nursing home permanently at about 84, he went to visit her every day, saw there many people he’d grown up with, worked with, and when she died, he was so alone. He spent his last three years with this far away look in his eyes and he’d often say, why do i have to live so long? He finally fell, in his kitchen, on the 4th of July, 1997, 5 months after Brandon died, I remember the day because Evan and I had driven up to the farm to see him that day and when we arrived, he was lying on the floor and the paramedics had just arrived. His eyes met mine and I saw the connection between us in them. I saw him virtually every day of my life until I got to be a teen and a pain in the ass and avoided everyone until I joined the Army. I knew his soul, I knew his heart, I knew him – he raised me as much as my own parents, he and grandma. He broke his hip. Spent a couple days in the hospital, then they transferred him to grandma’s nursing home for rehabilitation and he died in his sleep the first night. I got that. There was no reason, he still had his mind, but he was ready and he wanted to go home. He and grandma had 66 years, not all great years, he was a bit of a hellion in his early years too, but ALL I saw were the good ones, and some things I didn’t understand at the time but did later. They were each others life. I know what a great marriage looks like. I witnessed it. My parents were much the same, though dad died too young, or so I thought then, but they were perfect for each other, to each other.
So where is the macabre? Some of you are asking, I know. You googled the word and were brought here, lol. There are NO coincidences in this life. There IS something for you here, what you will have to figure out for yourself. But I’ll give you a little macabre now. My dad died at 62 from his first, and obviously last, heart attack. He’d been in WWII, seabee’s, they dropped those guys onto islands with their heavy machinery and they made air strips, so we could land planes and troops and hop scotch our way up to Japan. On one of those islands, they came under sniper fire, and they drove their caterpillars into a cave, the sniper fired into the cave, the bullet ricocheted around and hit dad in his lower back, turns out there is a small t-shaped bone there, not unlike the hyoid bone in our throats that killers always break when they strangle us. That bullet broke that bone, it was little and healed quickly, got him a purple heart, but not sent home. A few weeks later he was in Japan, driving the big cats that cleared the rubble after the bombs. Well, 25 years later, 1979, he developed an extremely rare form of cancer exactly on the spot where that bone broke. Interesting, the VA flew people in here to Minneapolis to look at it, it was so rare. He went through chemo and pills and, as we all know, if you make it five years past a cancer event, isn’t that funny, event, you are clear, cured. Dad made 4 years 10 months.
Back to the VA, who I have to tell you are not rocket scientists. I have many stories about THAT system, almost none of them dealing with what happened to my dad. Anyway, it recurred. I have tremendous guilt about this. I’m not sentimental in the way most people are. I don’t care about holidays, made up or any other kind, for the most part, I just wish they’d go the fuck away and leave me alone. I know this is at odds with ME. Because I love everyone, I absolutely truly do. There is no person alive, or from history, that I don’t think I could sit down and talk to and love on a personal basis. I am not kidding. One to one, I DO love everyone. Who is alive, who has ever been alive. I honestly think I could have talked sense to Hitler. No, that is not megalomania. It is gene. And maybe Will Rogers who said, he never met a man he didn’t like. I feel that. I LIVE that. I do not hate anyone in person. I have SEEN evil in its purest form IN a human being, only once, and while I would not want to be alone in a room with that, I still feel I could love it and heal it, with time and intention. Okay, maybe that IS megalomania, lol. Still, it is true, in most ways, I am not like other humans. And that year, for whatever stupid reason, I didn’t send dad a fathers day card. I just, well, the little things of being human get by me sometimes, okay a lot of the time, I’m just not good at, or care about the small things. Though they ARE important to others, and I DO try, I still fuck up. Example. For our first Valentine’s day together, three weeks about after our marriage, I gave my wife a card that said “To My Darling Husband”. I mean, she opened it and started laughing, and I thought, what the hell? And then she showed it to me. Gawd. Anyway, that year I just never got around to actually buying the card, I thought about it, many times, but never did it, and sort of just let it go. I spent the day with my own sons who were then 8, Brandon, and 9, Evan. In early July, I got a letter from my mom, asking if they had done something to hurt me and what was that, because dad had been so hurt by not getting even a card from me for Father’s day. Gawd. I didn’t mean anything by that, I wasn’t sending a message, it was just me not really behaving the way a human is supposed to. By the way? If you’ve gotten this far, and I suspect only I have, giggle, that is still me. Remind me about Dexter okay? That’s for jen and for another time. she will. Anyway, I wrote back, NO, I wasn’t upset, I was just thoughtless and busy and loved them both and why didn’t they come down and we’d barbecue and celebrate Dad’s birthday (7/11) and Evan’s (7/31) at the same time on Saturday the 27th?
Dad was doing his chemo, because the cancer had just come back,and he was so tired, but they came down, we had a wonderful picnic, we played uno, Brandon and my dad just got along so good, they were sitting next to each other while we played and it was a glorious day. And the last time we saw him, he died on Evan’s birthday, 7/31/84. I was 33. Won’t ever forget the phone call from mom. But, here’s where we move into the macabre, I loved my dad, we were never close, not the way I was with Brandon or Evan, but I loved him. I was not ready to be the oldest male in my family at 33. It seemed weird. All that longevity all around us but my dad dies at 62, not the cancer. A heart attack. Three of his four coronary arteries were 90% blocked. The symptoms he had and that his doctors attributed to reactions to the chemo were classic heart symptoms, but it never occurred to them to look at his heart.
So. Dad had nothing to leave me, he had a living wife, but it made me think, what would I leave my sons. I mean I’ve got insurance and a stable job. But here Evan is going to be 34 on 7/31 this year. And I remember thinking when dad died at 62, HIS dad died at 63 from lung cancer, apart from those two in my immediate blood line, there is longevity but not them, and I am now 58, will be 59 in September, that 62 was not enough, that he should have had more time. Then I watched my grandpa grow to 95 and ask over and over, why do I have to live so long? And in the middle of all that, I found CWG when my suicided. So here I am. Stuck in the middle with you. giggle, that’s a song. I have no idea who sang it. just in my head. 62 too soon, 95 too long. 21 barely started. What does all that mean? And then there are the lights. i KNOW there is nothing to fear after this, nothing, I will be going HOME. And if I didn’t? If it was just nothing? Well, gawd, I haven’t had a good nights sleep in 11 years, I’d take that too. But I believe in the feeling I had as I saw those lights. I am sure THAT is where I will be, THAT is what I will feel. And that doesn’t scare me. What I WANT to do is help my son. He who keeps getting fired because he has a dread disease, not because of his capabilities, because we humans have lost the capacity to FEEL empathy toward each other. This is where this was going to start, giggle, and here it is at the end, or at least the end of this post. I’ll come back to it. And we value dollars over people. We value IDEAS over people, particularly religious ideas, we will KILL each other for believing the “wrong” thing, or in some countries for wearing the wrong thing. This is one fucked up world. And we silly humans have made it. “Lesser” creatures have more empathy for their own than do we. If it costs a buck, fuck you and die. Does that sound harsh? I won’t say I’m sorry. I won’t ever apologize for having said that. Because it is the truth of how we treat each other. And THAT is HERE in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In other countries, we’ll just cut your head off and give it to the dogs. Or put it on a pole. Yeah, we suck. Go us. Away.
If the point was to teach us what we are NOT? Its been made. OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. How is it we have not learned the lesson, why is it we have to continue experiencing it? The books don’t give a neat answer to that. I have one. But I don’t like it.
So, coming back to the macabre, where I left it was, 62 too young, 95 too old, 58 and wondering. And what I’ve come to is, 62 isn’t too young, nor is 95 too old. When you’ve had enough, you can say when. My favorite movie, Regarding Henry. :^). And, you know? I have. I honestly have. At my age, there is nothing left that I need do. What I thought I might be has faded into what I actually am. Dreams are for younger men – sorry another song and sexist to boot, but still true. I’m not going to do anything from here, I don’t share the values of this society, I peter-principled out many years ago. So what holds me here? Does my son still need me? Fuck no. I’ve given him every piece of “wisdom” I have, most of which he rejects, as is proper, children need always find their own path. But I want to leave him something tangible. I WANT him to get my insurance, damn it, I’ve been paying for it all of my life and I want him to have it. But if I jump off a building or find a gun and just stop my existence, the insurance won’t pay. Hmmmm. I thought, well, maybe, I could write out a little 3X5 card, pin it to my shirt, jump off a building, and it would say, ooops, i KNEW I shouldn’t have gone up there. I’m not sure that’ll pass muster with the lawyers. As I think about it, I am where my grandpa was at 95. I’ve seen it all, I’ve done what I want to, I’m tired and I want to go home.
My son? Would be fine, he’s the age I was when my dad died and I survived that and he has skills I did not. Not necessarily the sense, he sometimes overrates things but still. I’m done. I’m ready. I saw the light(s). And apparently that meant nothing. I have searched, literally, the world over, and I have found no reason whatsoever those things should have appeared to me. I have no special powers. I have nothing to give. Sarah McLachlan has it perfectly in this song: Fear
And there is the truth of it, despite these oddities that have occurred in my life, I have nothing to give. I don’t fear that, I see it. And maybe that is the key to all of this, seeing through the illusion. But it still leaves me wondering how to fix this, how to end this. Step in front of a bus? I’m not really a bold guy when it comes to stuff like that. I don’t get why I can’t just THINK the end and have it BE the end. While I have no fear of what comes after, and I am so sorry for those who have been taught that is the worst of all fears, while I KNOW from my own visions that is NOT true, I have still this fear of the process of dying. Now that is a conundrum. I have means. I have the will. But it has to be an accident. Fucking insurance companies. :^).
So, if anyone has made it this far? What ideas might you have for me? We can make it a web exclusive if that pleases you. I don’t care if you are a mini-hitler or just a helpful soul. Why can’t I say when and have it mean when? Why should that apply to a cup of coffee and nothing else? See? This is another thing I do NOT like about this setup. When I THINK it should be over, it should BE over. grrrr. So let’s ponder that. email addy is up there. ideas welcome, much love, :^) gene
Tonight? Midnight blue, fits, don’t you think?
If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene
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