Our Souls’ Needs

copyright2011, Danise Codekas

“We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths. “ ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914

Another Holiday Weekend for the USA and the sun is shining in Steilacoom. The Roadsters are all lined up in town, and streets blocked off the street fair and parade. The fun run up Chambers Creek will be great since visibility to the Olympic Mountains and Vancouver, BC beyond is pretty, darn incredible!

The view from the back deck is amazing and I am enjoying the laughter of my great barista, here at the cafe, as she wrangles laughter out of all her customers. We are all in high spirits. Some, higher than others, so it seems, from the beer cans in hand, walking by.

Looks like a few friends are not in good moods and want to burrow in and pull the covers over their heads today. I am heading for my sister’s farm, where 2 horses, 2 cats and 1 happy Dalmatian await head pats, finger foods and walks to the pond.

Will have to head back to the house and block off the driveway so no one parks here once the fireworks begin at 10pm, otherwise, I will need to park in the apple orchard which will disturb the moles who are digging up dirt piles, this week. They keep the ground under the 100 year old roots, aerated and that is good for old trees.

I am trading organic apples for organic tomatoes this year, with my neighbors, and that is a really good thing. 100 bushels of apples and 40 bushels of pears, from my trees, will garner me some organic spinach, eggplant, cukes and squash from neighbors. Bartering is Better, is the motto for the summer of 2011.

Seems my first boyfriend’s antics arose in my memory banks, this week. I was working on Chapter 9, of my book, when out of the blue he appeared out of the mists of time. Strange how the brain works, and how a perception of someone changes when the truth of the matter is understood.

Realizing what I should have done with him, and of course, that being when I was 17/18 years old, well it is easy to go to a woulda- coulda-shoulda-type of mindset.

So here is what I have come up with from the little trip down memory lane. OK, yes, he was the “first” and if I need to explain that to any of you, then you need to go turn on your black and white TV set and plug in that 8-track cassette.

No, I do not remember what “it” was like,and occurred in Chambersburg, PA. The motel was called the Dirty Goose, although true name was the White Swan, and Penn State students frequented it frequently.

I realized, this week, when I caught him walking along the river road with the French exchange student, the summer previous to when we did “it”, I should have not seen him again, when he came racing up our driveway to “explain” why he was holding her hand.

He also her took her to his prom, as we met in April and the prom was in May. That was his reasoning for having to keep his commitment to take her. yes, I was naive, and thought the sun and moon set and rose on his dappled biceps.

He loved old cars and had a primo Studebaker, and collected them over the 1 year we were seeing each other. When I came down with a vicious flue, my 2nd quarter at Penn, and was sent home to heal, he stayed on to finish out the semester with a 3.5GPA and my dorm neighbor, next door, as his new squeeze.

Of course, this was not revealed to me until I returned the next quarter, when my dorm mate sat me down, my first evening, with a bottle of tequila, something to smoke, and very slowly revealed the way in which Lyle lied and laid, a lot, with Valerie, while I lay recuperating, 4 weeks at home.

In order to divert me from committing dormicide, my roommate and her boyfriend, attending GW in DC, brought his spider monkey, George, to spend the week with Melissa and I. George was a great divertissement, and the night I caught Lyle crawling through Val’s window, around 2 am, I knew it was time to change dorms, schools and geographic location.

I have found over the years, that a change of location, after the end of a relationship is a wonderful way to clear your mind and get re-balanced. It is healthy. I think I have moved after the end of all relationships, of any length, now that I think about it. Good thing I love to travel.

The reality of the situation is that we all bury memories about past relationships, that had uncomfortable ends. Eventually, those memories arise, when we least expect them to appear before us.

One of mine popped up yesterday and I began to realize how all relationships, which involve sex, change me, and maybe you, too. When sociologists came out, with the idea, of 3 to 6 degrees of separation, lies between humans, they also researched the idea that we have all had sex with one another. Seems it has been proven,depending on who you read, with DNA research.

So, what can we do but enjoy that which we love to do, with the people we are with in the moment. We are all connected under the firework's skies tonight.

Lyle is long gone, but I can say there must have been a reason for us to meet and be together at the White Swan, on that September 9th. Probably because it was my birthday.

So, my freedom to be me comes from struggles with life, love and the desire to follow a soul purpose which drives me on creatively. I imagine that those who came here not in the pursuit of land, but in the pursuit of their soul’s purpose which needed freedom to create and breath, also would understand how I would roam the planet, when faced with knowing that someone, I believed in to be truthful and faithful , was not.

We all search for freedom, love, and great joy in our life’s work. We are motivated by creativity, and beauty.

We seek peace, art, nature, music which moves us and inspires us. We do not seek to suffer, but reach for joy. Like those who came here, to find their joy, hundreds of years ago, we, like the pioneers of old, are still seeking that freedom, with those who appreciate and sustain our souls’ need for the same.

We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken