now is pema chodron, teaching me:when discovery and exploration and curiosity become your path, if you follow your heart, you're going to find that it's often extremely inconvenient. when you take refuge and become a Buddhist you become a refugee, you leave home and become homeless. you've left the shore but you haven't arrived anywhere yet. you've left home, you've become homeless, you long to go back, but there's no way to go back.Refugee: that is what it means to become one who wholeheartedly is using one's life to wake up instead of going to sleep.It's like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do next when you don't know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart.(P.Chodron The Wisdom of No Escape). namaste, my beloveds

now is realization: i am on this journey to learn how to be alone. what a surprise! i am thinking about where to be next, who to see, and i am only sure that i have still not accepted the idea of this journey as mine/about me. i have been going from one refuge to another(thanks to my friends) but only sitting with myself when i am travelling. i have expectations of connection/re-connection with others from the past but...i am becoming more sure that i really do want to be alone. read about antarctica and a small dwelling, one room, just enough, and it sounded so calm. cold, yes, but calm. i don't know today. i guess it's time to take refuge in the buddha and the dharma, that third jewel is just not doing it for me.

now is terror:somehow someone has decided that people like me "disgusting" should be terminated. maybe on the dancefloor. now i have always been of the mind that there were those who would condemn me to hell, but now there are those who want to hurry my voyage there. i am not scared, i am NOT SCARED and will not go back into that useless closet. this country encourages violence against others, sells guns to just about anyone(editorial in albq paper today about how easy it is to buy exactly the gun that was used to murder those lovely queers. it took the writer 7 minutes, using a driving license and a minor background check of about 2 minutes and about $600 to buy an assault rifle in philly.) now i am not going to arm myself(i wonder if any of the ones killed in orlando had guns?) except in the light of truth. my beloveds, this has got to change. people with guns kill people. or deer. or dogs. or someone that offends their god or their sensibilities. what can we do? speak out. it has worked before. and pray to whatever Power you hold dear to show the USA the way out of this madness. as for me....i am going dancing. namaste,goldenrod

now is something unusual: a throng celebrating a diversity that was newly embraced, an ancient demon banished from hearts one queer auntie at a time. "some came to sing/some came to pray/ some came to shine the dark away(namaste, m.safka)." and seeing the  amazement on faces turned from blindness to Light; and hearing happy shouts and feeling the cool breeze off the mountain, blowing fresh and renewing our vows of respect for the Other, and ourselves, carrying the scent of pinon and locust down Central...blessed be, Queen City indeed. 

now seems to be about endings. i face the west and call to water. i know that all will go. so how should we honour our lives? should we go on and on, steeped in suffering and the breakdown of the body? should we take our chances with the afterlife, walking calmly forward into that western light? should i help someone who wants to go on to go on? and what about me? i wish that i have someone who cares enough to help me let go if i need help, to hold my hand or push my wheelchair into the ocean, or just to say that i have the choice today. namaste, Babe. 

now is a place between the sun and the moon; i am on the side of the mountain, looking across the Valley. the sun is setting to the west and the moon is rising over sandia. she is full; i am full; i perform the ancient ritual, forming a circle and calling in my beloveds, both living and not; together we face the six directions and call forth the Powers that dwell there(and within each of us). there are few places more sacred, more lovely than this hillside in new mexico. thanks be to Elena Gallegos and her avatars who made this a place where this tired old mystic can sit and breathe in the pinon and juniper and chamisa and the night as it covers Albuquerque.  

now is a ghost from the past, someone who is worried that i might be dead:NOT. i did kill our connections,blocking your phones, spamming your emails, boxing up your letters and etc and storing them away for the archives. and then i hit the road. i am on the road like kerouac but without the paregoric. i am so glad to have unbound myself from the past, not destroying it but transmuting it into stories and more stories....remember when? i do.