On The Winter’s Morrow

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show. ~Andrew Wyeth

Winter Snow Path

 

Living outside, I would not say that I have control over my own life (for who really does? I give my will to the universe and move in the ever present Now, walking along the beach of the unknown), but I am much freer than when I lived inside, bogged down by some of the fabricated economic controls that are too often in the US used as fear-mongering. Out of doors, I am much happier and at peace outside of society’s box than inside it.
But what of the winter, I have been asked many times.

Two years ago, when we (my boyfriend, Stephen, and I) first walked away from our home it was still winter and the coldest we slept was 18 degreess, with no problem, and that was without a tent and only summer sleeping bags we zipped together. The average winter temperature is not very cold here in this part of Pennsylvania (for instance, nothing like Alaska’s or Maine’s winters).

Cold NoseI am looking forward to the winter, it will be beautiful to witness as the snow falls or to wake up to a mountain top of snow. Outside, one can see all of the changes, even the subtle ones, as the seasons merge with one another. For example, the official date of Autumn is September 22, but when you live outside, you notice that Fall begins well before that, usually around the end of July and beginning of August and lasts, in the tiniest, minutest ways all through August, even before the temperature changes in September. You can smell Fall coming in August. One day in August, we woke up and the sound of the wind in the treetops was different and we both knew right then that Fall was on its way. The sound of the forest changes, the animals behave differently well before the end of September. Everything PREPARES first for the Fall and you can see all of the preparation throughout August and September, something otherwise missed if living inside. You learn to synchronize with your natural surroundings. We would weather the winter as easily as the animals do.

SeasonsJust the other night, in the tent we listened as a thunderstorm began miles away in the distance and the reverberations of the insects’ calls danced off the still air and anticipating trees. Then we saw lightning, and listened intently as the wind picked up, starting at the tops of the trees first, before descending around their barks and rushing through the forest proper and down near the ground. We listened as the insects hushed, just slightly, as if they, too, were waiting for the storm. And we can hear it coming, we can hear the sheet of rain rushing towards us like the sound of a train. The sound is unmistakable. Last year and earlier this year, when we used to live near a stream, the sound of the stream increased as the storm approached. And when we walked about outside, two years ago, we were often caught in the storms and we were still awed by their beauty. We have seen colors of lightning that have dazzled us, we have seen the satellites shoot across the air, we have seen red lightning (called sprites, I think) that actually occur high above the clouds, we have been so close to lightning strikes as to feel its heat and notice that lightning actually burns a fire orange! Like looking at a string of flame, it was incredible! We saw the rare Strawberry Moon two years ago, we have watched the positions of the constellations change as the seasons and the earth revolve. Nature calls the spirit within humans. . . my boyfriend and I just answered back. We have never regretted it. We often wonder whether we can sleep again while inside. Although, one day, we will probably eventually return to the indoors , for now the Winter’s morrow bothers us not, and we look forward to exploring the seasons merge from one to the other, as humans merge from one phase of life to another, as the universe slowly moves on towards an unknown eventuality. We await. . . and we prepare looking for the mysteries beneath, looking past our physical eyes . . . seeking more to see.

*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“Winter Snow Path” by blmiers2
“Seasons” by Dawn Ellner
“Cold Nose” by Laszlo Ilyes

The Guise of the Neurotypicals

Rain for 3 days changes one’s countenance. What one could have begun in high spirits after the middle of the second day (and certainly after sleeping two nights in the damp) one’s spirit have plummeted and take to finding any small not-even-an-imperfection worth bickering over. The bickering is not the humdrums, though; it is the sulking that can drive one mad.

heaven's glowI try not to sulk, although, I admit to becoming rather pensive and confused over otherwise simple matters. This is the effect rain, cold, and damp have over me. It is why I prefer the sunshine to any other weather because I love to be out of doors. To frolic with little clothing, bare feet, flowing hair, the sun warms skin burning in the ultraviolet, vitamin D chemical reaction (ah, but we are such waveforms, our lives the modulation of frequency), grass and soft dirt beneath the soles of my feet. The soles of my feet softened by earth rather than blistered and calloused by cotton and leather imprisonment—how I hate socks and shoes—skin perspiring and pores breathing oxygen high; there is nothing like the sun and its reaction upon me. I prefer the sun, despite knowing its illusion. I prefer the reaction of, the chemistry of it all.

How it affects my form, the same as the animals and the flowers and the earth, all but the buildings and pavement, which reject the sun, irradiates it back into the atmosphere like the hell it is. “Pollution” of excess heat, no absorption just toxic waste. I abhor that my chosen avoidance of neurotypicals would force me to dwell in the rain or snow just so they will not follow. But I am sick of the running, I am sick of their false power. They have none! No more or less than I. Why do I behave as if they are my superior, as if they are the determination of my choice?

fractal stock dg 11012012It seems as if I enact the predestined pre-determined whims of some unseen force always trying to show that I should milk the cow, to benefit from their (neurotypicals’) willed obeisance and their unconsciousness, because I have conscious. But my question always keeps me from this game. Why is that the only game in town available to a conscious being? Why must a conscious being consume the unconscious? Does that not make of me a vampire? Why is it only vampirism that is offered? Is there nothing else other than vampirism or escape? Is this the joke?

I do not think so. I think, no, I intuit that there is something more. That more than 2 exists. How can choosing from only 2 promise freedom? Was I not then forced to choose? What freedom holds there within? Would not freedom arise from presentation of any number? Or from the fields and folds of my imagination? What of this 2?! Who made it up?

owl fractalAnd this idea of happiness: why does it only arise from either of the two? What is this happiness? What probable unfulfilled promise is this? Who are the parties of this contract? Who is selling this dream? The same misery supposedly arising from the either end of the two? Who invented this will, and why should I borrow it? Why should I trade for naught? This is what I cannot comprehend about it.

I would rather live outside the 2 and the guise of the neurotypicals, forgo such commercials and happiness and misery and, live instead until I die doing as I will, always expanding, always genesis. What wrong comes from this? What expectations?

I have no expectation, great or small. I was once asked did I have expectations. I said I had none, why would I? How could I? I wait in the moment until another moment arrives, until then I have no idea what should transpire once there, and I have no judgment afterward; for every moment is fleeting. For this, I am called naïve. I do not know why really. I am also called autistic, I do not know why really. I have heard the definitions of such accusations and still do not understand. The terms are always rudimentary to me, as easily applicable to genius or wisdom as naïve or autism. Does that not depend only upon the beholder? As I have no such estimations of my own. I do not know why, yet, it seems that neurotypicals do have some kind of expectations of me, that pop quizzes are always laid before me that I inevitably fail. But my failure is not from lack of study, only from a differing version of perception.

It is if I am not expected to have ways of seeing unique to how I am, but must circle the correct answer on the test before I am permitted worthy enough to pass the next level. Will I never graduate from school?!

fractal stock 8I do not want schooling; see I dropped out of schooling (although, I possess both high school diploma and college degree, but these pedigrees are not what I mean). I will take my chances at autodidactic, thank you. I do not need a mentor, nor do I need validation in order to be comfortable with what I see and think. I do not care if no one believes anything I say or if no one cares about what I say. I am not in pursuit of celebrity or guru or other such nonsense. I do not understand why that is difficult for neurotypicals to grasp. I really do not care if neurotypicals and their guises think me stupid, intelligent, pretty, ugly, man, woman, disgraceful, pleasant, love, hate; why would any of that matter?

When I argue with such nonsense it is not the accusation I counter, but the premise presented. The argument is untrue, a contradiction, so I make the mistake of trying to unwind the contradiction, but I lack patience, sanity, and motivation to tarry effectively or very long. . . . because I really do not care, and more it drives me screaming into madness days required from which to recover.

So, the quiet is far more preferable than proof, disproof or thought. I want to live in the woods and the sun, not to avoid certain kinds of people or to escape industrial civilization, but because I wish for quiet . . . so I can think (intuit, i.e., thinking without words). So I can Be (i.e., chaotic stillness). So, I can share true conversation and swat these gnats from my mind.

A job or social security are both just banks to me, a place that deposits money to an account electronically. What difference does the name and architecture make? They are both symbols of bureaucracies, both ships steered by regulation and law, both subjects of the Ancient Ones. Why do I care the guise? Madness beats beneath each mask.

*Image Credits (all artwork used with permission through CC license)–
“Heaven’s  Glow” by PapayaPirate
“Lights of the Mind 0007” by agsandrew 
“Fractal Stock DG-11012012” by DsyneGrafix 
“OWL Fractal”  by dzikir
“Fractal Stock 08” by Ox3ArtStock

The Beauty of the Wood

See all the colors,

the layers within:

 

the color of the blue sky in the green leaves,

and there is the color of the sun in the tree.

The leaves, the flowers, the root systems of the trees. . .

See then how all are connected to compose this environment called Forest.

 

See the motions of time—

By looking at a stream,

see when last the floods came.

 

Study the fallen tree,

and know of weather,

of climate, of wildlife and flora,

the health of the soil and what has happened to the tree.

 

Following track marks in the dirt,

know the ways of Animal.

By observing animals,

see how they think, see what they see.

 

And then,

ultimately,

communicate with and within this environment. . .

 

And know Us.

 

*Fractal image, “Infernal Autumn”, by Timmetrius

 

 

Nikola Tesla Was Onto Something Here

THE FRONTIER OF GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS

“To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.” ~Nikola Tesla, A Machine To End War

One of the most beautiful happenings to witness in this chaos-span called Life on this planet: a lightning storm. Oh, how utterly standard and mundane you may think, Reader. Ah, but perhaps you should think, as within that seemingly fleeting flash of energy-blast of heat many times brighter than our favorite star, the Sun, comes Fruition. Comprehend, mayhaps for the first time, as I did, the immensity that is a lightning storm ( and really oughtn’t we to say lightning storm, for is that not the true star of the “performance” of a thunderstorm).

Having spent some years researching and studying electricity (and, again, here lightning be the star of the show) as well as neuroscience (more electricity) so with the history, movement, evolution, and tomes of electricity coursing through my fevered and excited brain (fevered and excited at what new things I am learning and thinking and comprehending and awareness and consciousness), allow me to take you upon a Wonderland journey. Shall we begin?

First, imagine the reports of Nikola Tesla supine upon his couch in his laboratory beneath those great windows contemplating lightning, perhaps giving birth to new thoughts, ideas, inventions, and inspirations. Imagine Nikola Tesla engulfed in white plasma, yet unharmed, like some kind of mysterious, divinity-zapped Shaman. Contemplate this kind of power. An intense and great power that cycles (it has moods!) and can be harnessed. Contemplate, in a lightning storm, the power of efficient use of lightning (and here is where we can give a grateful nod to dear Mr. Tesla). What can be accomplished with its unleashed power, electricity (nowadays such a natural occurrence as electricity is leashed and has been since the days of Thomas Alva Edison. What absurdity, this? To leash the abundance of electricity?! Prior to the innovations of Edison, electricity was studied because its powers were so mysterious and so curious. But it was Edison who thought of how to leash it in order to profit from it. It was Edison, so I’ve read reported, that came up with the idea of charging people by the kilowatt hour. Up until then, electricity was merely turned on or off, like the valve of a water hose)? Can you see how all those great minds were as enamored with electricity?

Such beauty, this lightning. It’s the action: the interaction of cloud, ground (earth), particles, atoms, molecules, direction and current, all combining into this reaction called Lightning. How interesting its origins. Light-ning. Yes, light, progenitor of so many living organisms upon this planet. It is brighter than any other light seen on Earth, and enough to spoil the sun before the eyes. Now, as we meander further, think of the brain and the “lightning” that is said to occur there. Think of the unleashed power occurring there with every moment. Imagine, now, the “magick” from whence ideas come . . . awareness . . . Consciousness. Imagine lightning in the moment of conception, the first moment that seems not actually the first, but a continuation of the “first” moment the universe was conceived. Can you not see, dear reader, the similarity between these events? That we are as lightning as we are as consciousness as we are as universe.

Don’t you love the possibilities of this universe, this planet? Don’t you truly love what it is capable of, including growing humans?

“Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.” ~Nikola Tesla, A Machine to End War

*Image, “Plasma Earth III”, by Nicholas Raymond