Happy Birthday to Me!

 
October 2. Yep--it's that day again. I think birthdays are highly overrated. Certainly, we should not have them so often!


According to Astrologer Georgia Nicols:

If Your Birthday Is Today

Social reformer Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) shares your birthday today. You're charming, witty and attractive. You display grace and gentleness: yet you're tough inside. You're also frank, candid and erudite. You have much endurance and perseverance. People respect you. In your early twenties, you become much more aggressive about going after what you want. Work hard this year for success in 2008.

Hey, though long past my early twenties, I can live with that!

~

Last night I dreamed about the Dalai Lama. He wore a red baseball cap, as he did during his recent trip to Vancouver. This small man has a huge presence; goodness seems to emanate from him like an aura. (see below for more on that) He smiled and spoke with everyone, joked and laughed. The dream was sweet and calming--I woke smiling.

Years ago, when I, and the world, were younger and less jaded, I read a book called The Third Eye, by Tibetan T. Lobsang Rampa. It's a detailed account of how young Rampa studied to become a monk in a Lhasa monastery. Under the tutelage of older, wiser monks, he learned the tenets of Buddhism.

(Shades of the Kung Fu television series! However, the book was published in 1956; the series wasn't made until 1972.)

The book simply fascinated me. From the gentle Buddhist beliefs, the teachers honing young Rampa's abilities, to the depictions of ever more-challenging tests he undertook--all was esoteric and new to one who had led a fairly sheltered childhood. Rampa's trials culminated in an operation that opened his third eye, that mystical "eye"whereby he could see people's auras and know if they were good, evil, honest, etc.

I learned much about Tibet, China, Buddhism--which charmed me because it was light years above and beyond organized religions as I knew them. Who could not be intrigued by the concept of Astral Projection, whereby one can be in a meditative or sleeping state and travel on the astral plane, meeting people who are similarly engaged? Who could argue the Buddhist's solemn belief in reincarnation, which they call transmigration of souls?

To someone as young and green as I was then (despite my innate certainty that I Knew Everything) this was all mystical, profound, verging on mind-blowing information. At the time people were expanding their minds many ways--yoga, meditation, hallucinogens. Some trekked to the Himalayas in search of that elusive goal--Enlightenment.

I believed the events of the book, even to the point where Rampa fulfilled his destiny: at the moment of his death during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (misnamed--yes?) he transmigrated his soul into the body of an Englishman, Cyril Henry Hoskins. I believed then that it, that anything, was possible. Ah, youth!

Years later I was disappointed to learn that Mr. Hoskins, an avid student of the occult, had never been to Tibet, was called a hoaxter, the story was pure fiction, and despite the accurate details in the book, no record existed of a Lobsang Rampa ever having studied to be a lama.

He did, however, insist it was all true. And who are we, or anyone, to say it can't be so? Cynic that I've become, I still have brief moments of faith.

So on this birthday I'll think outside the box, outside the norm. Expand my mind. Work my way back to that young person who truly believed.

As Buddha said:

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

and

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.


I still admire the Buddhist beliefs, their tenets, their noble truths and precepts. Championing peace and good, honoring all life, can never be incorrect.

And maybe, just maybe the Dalai Lama and I were astral traveling at the same time!




--Cat

Bad Words and Reality Shows

 I don't watch reality shows because I don't believe in their reality.
That said, while recently channel surfing I happened upon one, then another reality show that was disappointing in its, well, reality dialogue.

An abundance of beeps highlighted the dialogue of both shows. Often the beeps outnumbered the words, so the viewer must decipher/read lips/guess the conversation.

I know a beep could have masked the A-word, the B-word, the C-word, the D-word the E-word... (well, maybe not E). However, I get the sense that the F-word won the count.

I don't completely disapprove of the F-bomb, as it's often called when used in an "oops" moment by politicians and celebrities. It's an effective word that gets to the nitty-gritty of the matter. Psychologists at a British university did a study which found the use of expletives strengthens one's endurance to pain.

Yes indeed. Stub a toe and find out how true that is.

However, I find that overuse dilutes the effectiveness of any cuss word. To me less is more. I'd rather see a show with a few bombs used in strategic--shall we say explosive--moments instead of tossed away like fluff in every other sentence.

Ditto in books. If I read a book in which a character goes overboard with the reality dialogue, it becomes a big yawn. But a judiciously placed pained/frightened/horrified/grievous/excited detonation bursts off the page and gives an effective single-word stress moment to a most dire (or alternately, most loving) event.

Disclaimer: Some fictional characters are defined by the language they use, so it's necessary to salt their dialogue in an appropriate manner. Some real people, too, have a limited vocabulary and can best express themselves by fixing on the single descriptive word they know.

That's reality for you.

~

Bad words

My five year old grandson on a recent visit learned a new bad word.

It was unintentional.

I don't know what tv show he was watching, but he said, in true five-year-old righteous fashion, "That's dickless!'

Uncle, knowing the boy's mother would never abide her child using such language, kindly took him aside and told him dickless was a bad word that should never be repeated.

Grandson looked perplexed. Could it be that other members of his family used this vulgar term?

He agreed never to say it again.

Later, Uncle told the boy's mother about the event.

She laughed and laughed. Uncle was now puzzled.

It was the boy's way of saying ridiculous.

Uncle, no doubt slapping the side of his head and calling himself a dickless wonder, had to admit to the boy he'd been mistaken about the word, it wasn't bad at all, etc.

No doubt Grandson was even more puzzled by this revelation.

He probably doesn't know any true bad words.

Give him a few years.

Learning the language is like a rite of puberty. And reality tv.

--Cat

The River God

It snowed today. Snowed!

On unseasonably cold days like today I'm reminded wistfully of the time two summers ago when I saw the River God in the (total) flesh.

Nikomekl River

There's a shortcut we take driving home over a one way bridge on the Nikomekl River, a placid little stream that flows to the sea. As this is in a tidal area, the bridge is part dam, opening and closing for flood control and to allow fish to travel up and downstream.

Until that particular day we had seen only the odd seal swimming in the lower part. One warm evening when the sun was low in the western sky, we were halfway across the bridge when "he" unexpectedly appeared.

First there were hands on the concrete wall that served as a railing. Then arms, a head, dark hair streaming rivulets of water. His muscles strained as he pulled himself up to the top of the rail. And there he stood in all his brazen glory, a handsome Adonis maybe in his mid-twenties, shaking water droplets from his hair and body, laughing, as gods might, at the stupefied expressions on the mortals' faces.

We did not stop--there were cars before and behind ours--but I can still hear the laughter floating in the golden air, both his and a split-second later that of all who'd been startled by this apparition.

Yeah, yeah, it was probably like my husband said, buff young guys playing a prank, or carrying out a dare.

I prefer to believe I saw the River God.

--Cat

Backyard Coyotes

 My husband came in last night and said he heard the neighborhood owl hooting. The owl is big and beautiful, white or gray, and has been around for some months, probably because to him this neighborhood is like a smorgasbord--all his favorite dishes can be found.

The owl's spooky who-who-who certainly invokes shivers. And we talked about the times we camped in the wilderness and at night heard owls and coyotes. Such lovely times.

Hah, my husband said, we hear owls and coyotes here all the time.

Of course, that's true. Wilderness, it seems, has come to the city.

And it's justified, right? We encroached on their lands, so they return the favor. Only they have no chance here.

Not long ago we saw two coyotes just outside our back yard, warming themselves in a sunny spot in the greenbelt. I wanted to write a poem about them, about how wrong it was for wild animals to pad along concrete streets, they should be free, yadda, yadda, yadda. I planned to write it in the style of a sonnet.

Well, there are sonneteers.
And then there's me.

But I will prevail.

Here are the first few lines I wrote:

City Coyotes

Beyond the fence, beyond the grass-banked stream,
I saw coyotes bask in morning sun.
They slept until the warming light was done,
Then wakened from their atavistic dream.
Their slitted eyes stared at encircling homes,
At fences slicing land that once was free.
Yet I believe their hearts can only be
On ranges where their untamed cousin roams.


A picture of the backyard coyotes:



-- Cat    first posted in 2007