Does anyone else feel like we are in
the trough of a wave that has just passed over us as a species? I
sure do. I see things are changing fast! And it's been on my walking mind...
Terrorism is nothing like it was in the
last decade. Several wars are winding down at once. The Arab Spring
brought an intake of breath, though still seems to be waiting to
exhale.
The Mayan prophecies and other end time theories turned out
to be wrong (or wrongly interpreted).
In the US we are in the middle
of the presidential election cycle with another two term president,
witnessing all the second term scandals and lame duck trends. Yet the
US Supreme Court, thought to be very conservative five years ago,
seems to be making some more progressive rulings including not
overturning the Obamacare, along with sociocultural decisions that
would have seemed unthinkable in say 2004.
Culturally, there are other big
differences from only a few years ago. What is becoming more socially
acceptable is changing very quickly. Same sex equality (i.e. DOMA and
the overturning of Prop 8 in California) and the initial steps toward
national marijuana legalization (14 states now allow medical use and
since last November two states, Washington and Colorado, have
completely legalized it for recreational use) are the most changed.
Also young people – the so called Millennial Generation (children
who were born after 1980 and came of age around 2000), are leaving
institutional religion at an accelerating
rate.
Economically, the US is barely
improving. Europe is barely maintaining. Asia and South America are
actually growing. A balance seems to be taking hold of the
international monetary systems of the first and third worlds.
It is
obviously not a cure by any means. But one gets the impression that
complete global financial collapse might still be avoided if someone
smart enough could come along to completely revolutionize the
philosophies that are driving free markets—no breath held by this
author.
Tied in with economic change must come
environmental policies that make doing business itself sustainable,
along with the obvious ecological sustainability that is needed, for
one cannot live long without the other. Solar electricity is always
going down in price, and more encouragingly the hi
tech batteries that store electricity are becoming extremely
efficient and durable.
Aside from the continuing problem of CO2 rise,
which is now crossing the 400 part per million mark ahead of
schedule, the crooked pathway to renewable energy is slowly almost
painfully straightening out. We may end up scarred with a higher global temperature before it's all over, but at least now most people - no matter what political side they are on - know the we have a lot of work to do to clean up our act.
Overall?
Not too bad here in the early
days of the 2013 summer season. Not as bad as it's been in the last
few years. Not as bad as it could be. The problem with waves is that
there always has to be another peek of chaos after every lull of
relative peace.
I guess I just want to sit here for a
moment and acknowledge that sometimes it isn't ALL going to hell.
Sometimes humanity takes a break from being collectively
schizophrenic. Yes there are always things to complain about. Ranting
is usually my favorite hobby (as many of you know), but even I like to have a break every
now and then. What about you?
Here are some quick images from a recent walk to Naples from Casco and back.
As blogging will be my only source of income for awhile, any donations are happily accepted. Please feel free to click follow and I would be honored to have you share these posts. Thank you.
That's what I see right this second: Pink clouds rolling over and through each other sensually, freely as the sun is absorbed by the horizon, a spectacular end to a ruggedly revealed day...
I did not sleep last night. My mind looped over and over with all the failures and stupid mistakes in my past, like it used to before my IWALLK Odyssey of 2011.
Also, I lost my bed when I had to move. I've been sleeping on the floor, on some folded up blankets for the last three weeks. It's not too bad. I have found that if I fold each of three comforters in thirds - stacking them, and add a knitted blanket underneath them all, my hips and shoulders don't really dig into the floor as badly. But this is a kind of blanket statement I guess?
Even though the whole arrangement is no more than about 24 inches wide and 6 feet long, my three-legged cat Buddy can still sleep on the base of the blankets, and from years of self control in other beds I avoid kicking him.
I only sleep on my side. So about 45 minutes per side is all my hips and shoulders can handle. And by the time I get up in the morning my lower back is a mess. Thankfully, the remedy for that is to walk 5-12 miles a day if possible. Walking is also my transportation, heart medicine, mental writing time and time for meditation.
However, LAST night was a frustrating alternation between almost falling asleep and having to turn over to relieve my hips. By dawn the other folks in the house were up with the ubiquitous TV in the background, in the room next to mine, smoking cigarettes, coughing loudly, etc. We are separated by only a curtain. I was exhausted by that time, yet whenever sleep would begin to overtake me I snored and woke myself up.
When I finally, reluctantly, stood up after such complete frustration over night, I knew in my heart that I couldn't take much more... Something had to change.
I prepared my backpack for my daily walk. The sky was unusually clear, blue and bright after such a large amount of rain yesterday.
Finally, out the door and on my way, I felt that characteristically free and relieved sense of temporary peace that I always feel when headed down the road. It is my refuge, my sanctuary, the brilliance of being alive and able to go wherever I want I suppose. Walking is when I am most at peace.
I spent the day video documenting the route, that I might post the images on this revived blog. I also took the time to write down the names and addresses of the several restaurants, bars and pubs that I'd passed in the last several weeks, for later solicitation; to get my band a few gigs this summer.
By the time I'd reached the Naples Causeway (a 6 mile walk or so from my new "home"), I'd accomplished most of the walking goals for the day and sat on a bench peering out across Long Lake at a darkening and blurry carpet of thick grey clouds rolling in from the west, accumulating moisture as they licked at the lake. I rushed through a sandwich and some cranberry juice, while I carefully observed the trend of the distant rain growing ever closer and realized that it was working its way back in precisely the direction I would be retracing my steps on the journey home.
The urgency to begin the walk back became obvious. The blue sky and white clouds of morning were being chased southeastward by the the growing tempest of a series of thunderheads rising off the many lakes and western mountains of this region of Maine.
Video Images from the walk to Naples from Casco
I'm not an amateur hiker, and my blue poncho is always kept at the bottom of my backpack, just in case the worst should occur. Why do I call rain the "worst"? Because no weather related act of God is more uncomfortably received by the walker. Unremitting sun goes down. Blowing snow can be no problem with proper dress. Dark nights walking down unlit wilderness roads are only psychologically challenging... But rain - as a downpour - simply finds ways to penetrate all defenses and it is very difficult to get dry again. In addition the backpack becomes a burden. Flipping the back of the poncho over it raises the base of the poncho up past my shorts' pockets. But not covering the backpack means it will be completely soaked.
This time I elected, if such misfortune struck, to not cover the backpack, because I knew that the only non-waterproof item was my notebook. I knew that no matter what got wet I would be home within 2 hours of leaving the bench and could dry it all out.
I did remarkably well time wise; reaching the 3rd of 6 miles without a drop. Then... There it was, drop number one, streaking over my right cheek, like the spark of a wet falling star.
It was not an ideal spot to venture off the road to en-poncho myself, being the soft shoulder of a sharp curve on Route 11 (speed limit 45 mph). But better to do it then, than in the midst of the deluge to come, when I would risk moistening the interior of the poncho--obviously defeating the purpose.
It wasn't long before the poncho was on, snapped and hooded. I strapped the backpack back on and continued slogging in the loosening sand. Huge drops pelted everything; soft wet bullets... It seemed as though it might even hail.
On I marched. I felt as if I was in the worst part of a tragic movie. Eighteen wheel trucks, dump trucks, cement trucks, and logging trucks raced past me to my right. It was obvious that they were trying not to cast the puddles on the road to my legs, but there was no avoiding it.
After 20 minutes of nearly complete watery immersion, headed home in what I have been lately seeing as my non-life, only to face a broken computer (I typed this by clicking each letter on an onscreen keyboard, since my regular keyboard failed a couple weeks ago), another night of uncomfortable sleep on the floor, in a room that is not my own and a far cry from private, with no money, one or two meals a day, seemingly no prospects, and while remembering - perhaps magnifying in my memory - the almost mythical (though purely material) life I once enjoyed, but hated, spiritually, only a few short years ago... then... right then... I GOT it!
I stopped for a moment.
It suddenly occurred to me what it really means to live in the NOW. That's what I am getting closer to. I'd always considered that my past was gone and my future was incredibly uncertain. But now I surmised that futures never arrive. I also realized that if that were so, neither past nor future could exist. And therefore, even the NOW itself didn't really exist. After all, by the time any moment is being comprehended - in Truth - it has already passed by and never is the "next" future moment arriving, because to comprehend that next moment means it has already become a non-future moment. Terence McKenna called the running consciousness moment "the smallest datum of felt experience." To me there at the side of street that datum WAS/IS/WILL BE Eternity.
This concept had been working its way through my pea brain for a while. At that same time earlier this morning I had psychologically searched for clarification of my own strange life's wanderings in recent years; why I had dumped the distracting complexities of a job as a office supervisor, left my $1,000 per month apartment, largely given up automobile travel and stepped out into the fringes of society full of the shadows that are ignored and even despised by all the people who feel they instead must shun simplicity in favor of such man made complexity.
When I left all of that, I trusted that the Creator was actually encouraging me personally to find a more substantial and long lasting form of satisfaction. And today was the long-awaited confirmation that that was indeed the answer to my search for peace of mind; there should be no respect for conventionality.
As I stood there slack-jawed in a kind of silent astonishment, the rain stopped. A warm breeze billowed over my poncho and the iPod battery died.
When I finally got home I knew that I had been to a separate lucid-dream-like reality. No friend of mine knew where I was anyway on that walk and in a positive sense, no one would have cared. Thankfully, my house mates all had the rare opportunities to leave for the night, giving me a refreshing spot of privacy - a bit of comfort - that I hadn't known for months. Then I took a cleansing shower and dried myself off. And to top it off, I received word that several people were offering ways of getting me a new computer.
Now these might have been fortuitous events, but they were hardly either answers to prayers (I never presume to pray for such trivial, non-spiritual solutions to my struggles in this regard). They were not miracles. They were just commonplace, though still pleasurable, and they came at just the right time.
Their values in the context of my current thinking though were that they are typical of the Creator's action within my minds.
Collectively speaking, when we struggle and claw our way through homelessness, hunger, danger, darkness, uncertainty, pain, social rejection, and seemingly unending chains of disappointment, because we are following that inner voice, we are setting ourselves up for the maximum amount of spiritual growth in our NOW (or smallest datum of experience). Our Final selves are waking; our souls are becoming literally conscious, as they "dream" already resident in our destinies.
What makes the enlightenment typical - what gives it that Flavor - is all the petty, material things in the world that by "chance" become just a tiny bit more stabilized as icing on the cake; by running smoother. When we actually ACT upon the sometimes socially "insane" Suggestions that arise within us for finding the spiritual goals that we truly desire, we come to places in our lives where we suddenly understand how we are supposed to feel. We are meant to be joyful!
As long as I can keep this lesson in mind I believe I could reach a point where every day can end with pink clouds in the sunset, and the satisfaction of where I am NOW; without worries about the past or anxieties about the future.
The sun was sparkling bright, the wind was cool and the air was clear and bright. I've been settling in well here at my good friends' house in Casco. Buddy took no time at all getting adjusted. He is also reluctantly growing to know the little dog, Max.
Buddy is old, deliberate and stuck in his ways. He only has three legs, so moving slowly is his preference. Max - on the other hand - is young, hyper and will do anything at any time. And though Max could run circles around Buddy the two of them seem to have worked out an arrangement. Max came a little too close a couple times, and Buddy batted him, without using claws, though Max squealed as if Buddy had ripped him open in a bloody tirade!
I've been letting Buddy stay outside on the sunny days while I walk. And today was perfect. Buddy is a sun follower. As soon as he ventured outside, he began luxuriating in the sand driveway soaking up the sun, just like this (from a few years ago)...
Buddy Rubbing in the Dirt
I made an exploratory walk last Thursday to check out some of the surrounding roads. The closest store is in Naples. And I am in Casco Village (which is actually at the northwestern edge of the town of Casco). Naples is famous for its Causeway--a small strip of land between Long Lake running to the north and Brandy Point running to the south. There is a marina and a pier where the Songo River Queen II docks...
Songo River Queen II
First, was the walk into Casco Village, past the post office and the library, until I reached Leach Hill Rd (about 1/2 mile from the house). Immediately that road climbs up a relatively steep mountain for about 1,000 ft, to an elevation about 500 ft above the village. At the top are several beautiful barns and a couple old horse farms with northern views. Viewed on Google Maps one can see how Leach Hill Rd runs southwest for about mile, then sharply turns northwest for another half mile, then plummets down to the southwest for a mile until it intersects with Poland Springs Rd (Route 11).
Essentially, that first thousand feet on Leach Hill Rd is the only uphill part. The rest of the nearly two and a half miles is a slow, enjoyable downhill walk; which is nice until you realize that it will be a two and a half mile slog back.
Where Leach reaches Poland Springs Rd, it is a further two and a half miles southwest until Roosevelt Trail (Route 302) is reached, along with a Big Apple convenience store, with another, bigger store about 2,000 ft further southeast, which I also visited.
It is about one and a half miles back west, past Poland Springs Rd, and onto the Causeway. When I got there I sat on a bench looking out across Long Lake for about 15 minutes.
I haven't been sleeping well for the last couple of nights and it was starting to catch up with me. I had just walked nearly seven miles and it was another six and a half back.
The walk home was characteristic of many return journeys. I fell easily into a second wind, which for me, means a meditative state. That uphill slog I dreaded went by easily. Sometimes going uphill is actually easier.
I am having a resurgence of feelings about society as Iwallk through it this year, similar to how I felt two years ago, but more so. I view all of the social activities that I no longer participate in as even more primitive than I found it back then, and the reluctance of the majority of people to even contemplate changing the way they think about what is "normal." For this reason, as has been the watchword of this blog, "simplification" will continue to be my focus, and ways of achieving it my goal. So, I will be delving back into these and other subjects in coming posts.
