An Uncommonly Beautiful Spring

It is the highest sorcery when the world transforms into shades of blue and green.

It looked as if the clouds were enclosed behind the barbed wire fences, but the photo was something of a failure, except for that brilliant blue sky.

Big Spaces filled with horizon and sky

The emerald green emerges after the fires and the first rains.

The familiar landmark, Buffalo Mound, visible from Topeka.  Its resemblance to the top line of a buffalo earned its name.

Something happened in the translation of this photograph.  It went from brilliant and strangely lit at sunset to this drab photo.  What??

My nephew made the statement that the cameras in the smart phones take better photos than expensive cameras.  I politely disagreed.  I owe him an apology.  Though I have very little control over the photos taken with my phone, those photos reproduce the brilliant colors much better than my digital camera.  I wish I could post all of the photos I have taken this spring to share the amazing colors and the spectacular light. 

A Family Tradition

The author on her noble steed, Cricket.

The author's aunt on her noble steed, Cricket.

The noble steed Cricket gave birth to baby Patches on an Easter Sunday!

Patches grown up.

My aunt (sitting behind) and Superman on his noble steed Cricket.

The horse virus infected me surely before I was even born. Had I been born free of that incurable affliction, I was certainly infected almost immediately upon arrival. My paternal grandfather was a respected bronc rider as a young man and he retired a mature, respected cattle man. There was ample room in that time span for the horse virus to spread to those in his family born without natural immunity. The worst symptom is keeping expensive horses (even when the patient is unable to ride) simply because there is a need to see horses every single day. I could never get enough time with horses when I was a kid so I grew up, bought land, planted it to tall grass, built a barn and a fence and now I am the indentured servant to horses every single day. It is a powerful affliction, that horse virus.

I have written about my first loves - my father's cow pony, Lady, and my own first horse, Cricket. I have also written a bit about my grandparents, and my father and his brothers and sister. (Some links are included at the end, in case you are interested.) My aunt emailed these priceless photos and shared memories of the horses and the wonderful, long ago times. Receiving the photographs was better than winning the lottery! My dreams this week have been filled with the horses, my parents and grandparents, and that wonderful old farmstead on the bank of the Little Walnut River. My aunt and I came to the same conclusion that those were the happiest times of our respective lives. Undoubtedly, the secret ingredients were the horses and the freedom we were given to spend our days roaming the river.

I was the last child to ever love the old mare, Cricket. She was almost at the end of her natural life when she was brought to our barn for me to "ride". I was so young that I was more than content to simply sit on her, which was fine with Cricket. I always assumed she was one of my grandpa's retired cowponies but I found out she was actually purchased as a children's horse for the cousins one generation ahead of me. By default she became my aunt's horse, and shortly after, none other than Superman (my Uncle Jerry) laid claim to the gentle horse.

My aunt shared some wonderful stories. She tells them best: "Now you have heard the story of Jerry and Cricket. We had the yard fenced at the time. But he would ride that horse by himself at 18 months old. He would get up and put on all of his gear, neck kerchief, leather cuffs, pair of guns, cowboy hat, boots, pair of jeans and belt and his cowboy shirt and he would ride that horse till he’d go to sleep on her and Cricket would bring him by the front door and Mom would go get him and bring him in and put him in his bed."

And this: "Patches' dad was a big old horse. And Patches was not a good riding horse either. Rough ride! Oh, I remember Cricket when she was found that Easter Sunday as Daddy didn’t tell us. He just said, "Come on, let's take a ride". He took us down by the river and there she was with her baby colt. Didn’t have a clue she was going to have a baby! They never told us a thing! I think Dad was afraid she couldn’t do it cause that horse was so big and she was pretty old at the time. But she did it..."

So there you have a brief history of the wonderful old mare Cricket who carefully nurtured many, many children, not just those in our family. And there is the added wonderful Easter surprise story of Patches, the horse that grew up to step on my bare feet so many times that it had to have been on purpose. Surely she got that ornery streak from her father, the "big old horse" from next door!

Not only did I get a bit more insight and information regarding my dear Grandpa, my father, my aunt and uncle, but photos and stories about the horses, too! What a gift.

Superman

Bonnie Vista

A Sailor Writes Home

I Finally Arrive in the 21st Century...

At long, long last I caved in to the pressure and bought a "stupid" phone. I am not an idiot. Well. I am not an idiot ALL the time, but that cursed device makes me feel like one! I had to turn off the autocorrect feature because for one thing, it would not let me cuss. It would change all of my cussing and profanity into similar but entirely incorrect and inappropriate words that did not have the precise meaning I needed to sincerely express myself.

Then there is the maddening problem of the N letter never typing in the first time. Why does this happe ? It causes my texts to look like shut!

It is supposed to be a phone but I have only used it for calls about a dozen times. I missed the first three or four calls because I did not know how to answer! Every other goddamned function on it happens at the lightest touch of the screen. Someone had to tell me that you swipe across the button to answer. After that I noticed the flashing direction arrows next to the 'answer' and 'end call' buttons.

I can ask aloud and, verily, from the sum total of the human species' wisdom and knowledge, an answer appears instantly on the screen. (I now know that Ian Somerhalder is 5'10" tall.)

Now when I am dining out with the younger members of my family, I too can whip out my phone and silently ignore the dearest, most important people on the planet who are also staring at their phones.

My phone can tell me where an address is and how to get there. I can take unlimited photos of everything at any time. Better yet, I can record in living color, sound and movement the mundane events of my life and share it all with the rest of humanity - if I want to and if I can figure out the technology.

I admit it is sort of fun.

The irony of the modern smart phone is that I speak less to my family now than ever before. One of my brothers answers my calls about 85% of the time, the other 1% of the time. If I call, text, message, Facebook and email enough times, the 1%er eventually answers or calls me. My son's limit is around the sixty second mark for actual conversation, and that is only if we have not talked within the last sixty days. He is available by text most of the time though he has mastered the art of texting, reducing every fact and emotion to the absolute fewest characters possible. He is a Zen master of minimalist texting.

On the other hand, my daughter and I burn through texts and video chats and voice messages and live calls every day as if we have not seen each other for a decade. It is awesome.

To maintain a single apron string tie to my grown son, he and I play scrabble using our expensive and outlandishly functional smart phones. An app provides a method to play scrabble over time and distance, and a game can span several days. He has obliterated me in all the games so far, usually by at least 100 points. My vocabulary is more than adequate to spar with him, but I have not been using my smart phone to my advantage by looking up "words that end with the letter z" or "words that contain J". I do not know the common two and three letter nonsense words that can make two and three other words at once in the later stages of the game for 40 and 50+ points. He kills me with those in the end game.

You can guess which text is mine...

Loop Quantum Gravity Theories and Other Farm Related Discussions

My neighbor, a retired PhD, has been reading scholarly books about quantum theories, including an advanced college text book to help translate the terms and ideas. (My feeble efforts over the years have been to read layman's books such as "Einstein's Universe" by Nigel Calder; "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav; "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene; and "Introduction to Superstrings" by Michio Kaku.) I also spent a lot of time reading everything on Stephen Hawking's web page way back when I got my first desk top home computer. (Remember AOL?!) At any rate, I have not had occasion to discuss theories of relativity since my good friend Karl died almost 30 years ago. The discussions with Karl lent color and depth to much of my poetry written as a young woman and has fired my imagination since.

I admit I am intimidated by my neighbor's formally educated mind. I know my undisciplined and heavily existential bent is no match, but I do not let that stop me from making an ass out of myself. Here is my response to her summation of her recent inquiry into loop quantum gravity and string theories:

"You want to know something truly amazing? The more I get into the Buddhist world view, and the more I find out about the TRUE nature of what those monks had been doing in Tibet all of these centuries... our modern scientific theories coincide with their incredibly disciplined mental inquiry into the true nature of reality. At its purest, Buddhism is not considered a religion and the Buddha was not considered divine or a deity - but considered "conscious" or awake. It is amazing to me that the mainstreaming of relativity and quantum theories roughly coincide with the dispersion of the Tibetan monks across the world. I have been reading a lot about some of the contemporary Buddhist adepts in discussion with the best theoretical western minds and realizing they are discussing the same conclusions. Isn't that astounding?

Perhaps we are witnessing the actual evolution into a far more enlightened species as these ideas have spread across the entire planet and are consciously available in mundane reality to everyone. What if we are just on the cusp of a profound tipping point of conscious expansion - something akin to all those epochs of time while our ancestors slowly evolved until that one remarkable change produced homo sapiens with our big brains? What if we are soon going to take another leap of evolution and become an enlightened species as well? Hard to believe when the best the USA can do is elect Trump, but not every early homo sapiens unit survived... it was survival of the fittest. Maybe evolution is going to weed out the dumbasses for a millennia or two, starting with those who elected Trump? (I read a disturbing article the other day that blue collar white people are dying at an increasing rate in America - attributed to despair due to economics - but it's just because they are addicted to Fox News.) Only the brightest of the first homo sapiens survived, so maybe going forward only the most conscious will survive to reproduce. By that logic, Fox News is an agent of evolution!"

Her response to that was one line. (I think she understood it was a joke.)

So, that was yesterday. I woke in the wee hours this morning with a dizzying glimpse of ideas too big for my normal thinking. The faint echo of what I had been dreaming was the question of what exactly is the nature of numbers that theoretical physicists can describe the nature of reality using them? And here I was thinking numbers merely evolved as an easier way for humans to barter potatoes for beer or some such basic evolutionary need! It is like when my meditation teacher instructs us to "be aware of being aware". It is too goddamned mind boggling.

My neighbor dropped this little gem on me yesterday: the idea that space is made of discrete particles. Meaning, in my admittedly limited understanding, space is not mere emptiness but consists of quantifiable amounts of the smallest indivisible space "particle". I guess that means we can take infinite space and chop it up into its own "space" atoms. So, if you can dismantle a space particle into even smaller units of something else the way you can break an H2O molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, what would the smallest unit of space be?  And what would its components be? What is less than space?

I will be thinking about this on the drive to work every morning for months!

One Brother's Revenge Against His Bossy Older Sister

There is an established science now of the effect of birth order on children, apparently influencing even such things as career choice later in life. I was the first born in my nuclear family with two younger brothers. If there is one thing in this world that I know for certain, I was born bossy. For as long as I can remember I have known my way was right and everyone else was wrong. Of course, experience has taught me a vastly different truth but to this day my first inclination is that I am right and everyone else is wrong! With such an attitude you know my little brothers never stood a chance.

From the moment he was born my brother Randy was the apple of my mother's eye, so in addition to believing I was the supreme dictator of the universe, I was also inescapably jealous of my little brother. I committed various acts of terrorism against him when he was too small to defend himself - things like kicking up a red ant hill then setting him down amid the angry ants. I pushed him down the stairs. He was a gentle soul who simply wanted to be left in peace but I took every chance I had to torment him, I am ashamed to admit.

As we grew a bit older our sibling spats grew into fist fights. Physical fighting only lasted until he became stronger than me then the warfare shifted to sabotage and terrorism. It was every kid for him or herself if there was a chance we could tattle on each other to our mother. As I recall, by some basic instinct of survival, we would not tell on each other to our father who never messed around with getting to the bottom of the matter nor cared about any fine points of justice.

It was not all one-sided. I had worked long and hard to sculpt a clay horse that fell victim to a murderous coup my brother committed when he tore it apart. He could not wait until I discovered the massacre but tauntingly admitted to it during an argument. My poor mother was left to referee and settle such skirmishes.

Of course, my brother and I could knock-down drag-out fight, argue and be generally mean to each other all day long but no one else better lay a finger on either one of us. Then our blood loyalty kicked in, and all the skills we honed fighting each other would be turned against a common enemy. I believe this is how the human species has survived to become the dominant force on the planet.

We were teenagers when my brother committed the last act of terrorism against me. I devoured books by the dozens and one of my favorite things was to prepare a large bowl of popcorn then retire to the safe refuge of my room to read in peace. One of my brother's friends had a plaster cast of a very large snake someone had killed. It was not even painted but as a cast it was intricately detailed and, of course, uber-realistic. I had a large bowl of popcorn in the crook of one arm, my book in the other when I stepped into my bedroom to see a horrifyingly huge, pure white snake curled up on a little pink fuzzy rug. There was one millionth of a stunned second before chaos!

Yes, my brother absolutely knew the ultimate weakness of his first and most formidable enemy: my fear of snakes! Even though some part of my brain registered that there were no such things as pure white snakes, all other data indicated "huge snake" and my lizard brain took immediate control. I simultaneously screamed bloody murder, threw the bowl and the book as I astral projected down the stairs, leaving a trail of fresh popcorn. This was the best possible outcome for my brother and his friend, who were howling with laughter. I was crying adrenaline tears of fear and relief and outrage. My mother, who never made an effort to hide her opinion that I typically got what was coming to me even as she tried to judiciously settle our sibling squabbles, took my side though her defense was lukewarm. (It WAS funny!) She told my brother that sort of thing was not funny to a person as afraid of snakes as I was. But it was damned funny to my brother and his friend... and to me, still, all these many long years later.

How Is It ...

If you live long enough, eventually you will get sucked into the world of medical tests which are basically various tortures that cost an immense fortune. I have been lucky to enjoy good health most of my life - knees not included - but recently I had the experience of a heart sonogram. Images of my beating heart were visible on a screen in real time. It was the first time I have seen my own heart. It was dangerously close to a spiritual experience. I immediately considered the cavalier manner in which I have taken my heart for granted all these decades.

It was sobering to see how hard my heart works and to instantly consider the hearts of every living being on the planet. I marveled at the engineering that designed such a tireless, enduring muscle. It commences beating before we even have a brain! As I watched the images of the valves and chambers of my own heart tirelessly fueling my life, I felt a great regret for all the abuses I have committed against it physically and emotionally.

My mother's heartbeat was the first sound I heard in this life. I recalled the thrill hearing the first heartbeats of each of my unborn children. I remembered the times I lay with my ear against my husband's chest, lulled by the booming rhythm of his big heart. I thought of all the times I could feel the mighty pulse of my heart in my temples when working too hard or running or swimming or laughing or scared or mad as hell. Our hearts are merely along for the ride with us - for good or ill.

At some point as the technician was examining each chamber and valve and artery of my wonderful heart, she would switch something then the blood flow appeared in various colors - red, blue and magenta. As the blood entered into the next chamber, the colors mixed dramatically. It appeared as lightning within my heart. Now when I watch an approaching thunderstorm alive with lightning I will certainly recall my own beating heart.

How is it that we forget that our bodies are truly marvels of engineering? How do we forget that our lives are spent on an inexplicable living planet hurtling through infinite space filled with thermonuclear stars boiling light and energy into an endless universe? How do we forget that there is lightning within our own breast?

Invoking The Grandmothers

I usually avoid writing anything specifically political because that is not the purpose or focus of Spiritcreek. Politically charged issues carry a heavy and painful weight in these "generally wretched times" that I would rather not mix into the silliness of this particular blog. Despite certain issues weighing quite heavily in my mind, and my conviction that we are literally in an extended battle for our country's soul, I have refrained from opening my big mouth - for the most part. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and women...

When Mitch McConnell and the Republicans voted to silence Elizabeth Warren, when they refused to enter Coretta Scott King's words into the record - in the very highest halls of the Land of Free Speech? - I nearly exploded. 64 years of being interrupted, man 'splained to, talked over, ignored, ridiculed, dismissed, cussed at, yelled at, lied to and argued with came to a metaphysical boiling point. No, Mr. Mitch McConnell, you soulless bastard. No, Mr. Lindsey Graham, you whining, big-mouthed short man. No.

Elizabeth Warren does not speak for all women, but she damn sure speaks for a very solid percentage of American women, and quite likely a solid percentage of real men. Her voice is the only feminine political voice we currently have so get used to it, you old bastards! YOU are not the only people allowed to speak in this country.

Women are sending postcards to Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell and Mr. Lindsey with this message: Nevertheless, we persist. When I sat down to address my post cards last night, the names of my grandmothers came instantly to mind. Maybe for the very first time in my life I felt the actual spiritual connection to my ancestors. I know the maternal grandmothers' names far, far back, but I included only the generations of Kansas women. Marilla Jane, Mattie Fern, Mary Ruth, myself and my daughter - five generations of women who, living or dead, are mad as hell. Well, I am not certain spirits can actually be angry but they can certainly weigh in on matters of spiritual significance. My grandmothers weighed in on this deal in a very clear way.

Marilla Jane would not have been able to vote until she was 47 years old. Mattie Fern could just vote by the time she was 21. Mary Ruth voted her entire life. I first voted at age 19 (in 1972). Our votes matter. We are equal under the law and our voices will not be silenced by a bunch of old, soft-handed white men who think far more highly of themselves than anyone else thinks of them.

I know there is a fine line between the meanings of the words invoke and evoke, but I had to look up the definitions to determine whether I evoked my grandmothers, or invoked my grandmothers. Evoke means to draw forth, usually memories or feelings. Invoke means: cite or appeal to (someone or something) as an authority for an action or in support of an argument. As it turns out, I did both.