blah blah blog sheep, have you any wool
You may have noticed that this blog has been down, and while I expect that my blogular disappearance didn’t suck as bad for you as it did for me, still I apologize for any inconvenience. It’s all good now–I exist again! O frabjous day! So, continuing with the blog, currently in progress:
I am ready to shed the pursuit of money as a motivation. I am willing, should my life moment-to-moment choices lead me there, to end up walking strange streets with whatever I can carry and defend. This does not mean I want that, but as long as fear and desire to prevent a poverty-stricken fate remain my sole driving force, then my attention stays sourced in what I think of as the struggle for survival but is really avoidance of inconvenience.
Some way-in-the-back fey part of me longs for and seeks some kind of life on the street, covertly awaits the circumstance to compel me out there where I might be seen and recognized by others of like kind. Oh yeah, a city speaks to me; eventually I suspect I’ll be drawn in to one or another, at least for a while.
Still, the bulk of me would far prefer to feel (and be) empowerful and functional, and one of the measures of empowered function is, or ought to be, the ability to choose one’s path unforced by circumstances such as lack of cash.
I release myself to find the level on which it is right for me to live, with the understanding that I will enter windows of opportunity with alacrity when they open and that I will perform the work that I am called to do with all my heart.
I am open to the possibility (among many other possibilities) of utter bare bones poverty. Being open to it is not the same as desiring it; certain socially paradoxical parts of me do, of course, while other parts of my multiplex brain emphatically desire something entirely different. Come to think of it, the same would be true for just about any possibility I might imagine. In my heart, I encompass the full spectrum of desires, so I need to choose my actions based on other criteria. My many hungry desires compete and strive to be the ones that survive to be fed, and I now relax the controls I’ve imposed on that chaos. Let it seethe, I don’t have to worry about it.
I’ve finally released the pressure it’s taken to keep the doorway to my most-feared futures closed; the friction of resistance was starting to seriously compromise my structural integrity. My last ten years has been at least partly devoted to a mad inner scramble to avoid some form of destitution. Some of it was not my stuff, for when I entered my relationship, I merged identities to a large degree. I used to be more comfortable with poverty before we met. Of course, back then, it was more like: “I’ve always been poor, it’s my lot in life, oh well.” The relationship and the new perspective my partner brought into the mix has helped me to evolve a new way to be with the prospect of being poor and homeless.
Now, it’s more like, “Been there and done that; there’s nothing more to be afraid of there.” No matter what the future brings, I will already have survived worse, barring of course, the diseases of age and death, which this article does not address (can you say ‘can of worms, don’t go there’?).
Still, I do expect my efforts to be materially rewarded; I expect to be supported for doing the work I am here to do. I am giving in to doing what I’m best at, and I do believe that is the path to some kind of, whatever you want to call it, abundance (I am soo tired of that word, but can’t think of a better one).
I do know that I will give my gifts and receive in return as part of the natural ebb and flow of life. Still, I don’t yet know the shape of my future. I will learn more as I experience more. I know that I have the power to jump off this cliff and survive, but whether I’ll learn to fly or drop into the ocean at the bottom and swim hasn’t been determined. My life feels as open as it ever has since my birth; more so. I emerged into this life, took a look around, sighed and slumped into unconsciousness. How boring. This is better.
Issues around poverty go way back. My childhood was spent poor. We used to wake in the morning in the winter to find the drinking water in the bucket by the stove had frozen over.
We lived in what most folks would call squalor, no running water, no electricity, down endless miles of mucky, rutty back bush roads that led straight up the butt of nowhere, at least from the human standpoint. From Earth’s point of view, of course, it was a wealth of wilderness, thronging with ancient spirits and wild innocence, and I was blessed among humans. This innocence was beginning already to be violated; little logging operations like the one my dad worked at were already chewing away at the bush. Compared to now, though, it was nothing. It was true wilderness.
The scale of human encroachment on the wilderness I was born into has exploded on a nuclear scale. From the air, the whole vast province now seems to suffer from mange. Helicopters rake kilometers of trees from mountainsides so precipitous that olden loggers could not get to them. It makes my stomach turn, my heart clench, my temples throb to imagine. The fuss made over the pine beetle seems hypocritical, given the scope of the very deliberate and intentional destruction by humans that has been taking place.
Oh, grimace, groan and gag me with a greasy spoon. Okay, enough. I have to go sing now.