Independence: Into the Unknown

© 2012, Danise Codekas

So, if the planet is dying, are you going to grab a seat to an outer planet? Been thinking about the possibility, that is now a reality, the more flights and advances SpaceX makes, as a private, commercial carrier into outer space, that I just might buy a seat on that space flight,  from Elon Musk.

Leaving the population area of Seattle-Portland-Vancouver corridor, I realized how much I like peace and quiet, however, I also have tremors about never returning to earth, should I take off in a SpaceX seat. However, that is true for any time you leave home. You may never return.

Critical mass extinction grows as our numbers expand, human, animal and bacterium. At the same time, knowledge on how to save the planet expands, also. Side by side, life/death, extinction/expansion walk together into the future.

No one knows what is going to actually happen, however, their influence on your psyche, as to what to believe, how to live, can turn the tide toward annihilation or integrated balance of needs, space and peaceful co-existence.

Driving across this side of the North American continent, 3 times in the past 2 months, gave me a lot of re-adjustments in my thinking about what is really endangered out here from Seattle to Los Alamos.

Farming, water, fighting over wind energy costs vs. benefits, lack of food for animals because of the droughts, local restaurants that what to serve local, organic grown produce cannot find farmers who can fill their orders, and fast food restaurants advertising for help as people leave small town areas because of lack of work, failure of their ability to pay mortgages.

Selling off farm animals, and large acreage,  because they cannot feed the livestock, because of the drought which inhibits their ability to water their lands, and prohibitive costs of shipping in feed, due to gas prices. I see the connectedness of my food chain, to weather, the economy, closure of schools because families are migrating to urban areas hoping to find employment.

If there is one thing that will be said about this depression, and it is one, it will be the migration rates in population over the past 3 years, which continues as fewer areas provide jobs for current populations.

There are not that many large cities between Albuquerque and Seattle. Driving two different routes, twice, there is Seattle, Portland, Yakima, Pendleton, Boise, Twin Falls, SLC, Provo, (may as well include those 3 together, as it is one long industrialized-residential strip along routes 84 and 15), Farmington, Gallup, then the smaller towns in between, like Moab, Green River, and Cortez. 

Lots of mountains, desert, plains and miles of land, stretching out like the Atacama desert, with no human in sight, except the fellow travelers along the road.

Sometimes I wished to be back in the big city. Almost took a left, at SLC, the first time I drove back to Gig Harbor, so that I would end up next to San Francisco Bay. I wanted to smell the ocean, feel the dampness of the fog on my body, after driving for 3 days across the Southwest.

However, the thought of driving across Nevada desert, when I could be climbing Snoqualmie Pass, and be sitting at my favorite bistro across from the Gig Harbor Marina, gave me clarity and the will to drive on. On the way across the Pass, rain tested my wipers’ speed. It was a welcome back to the Pacific NW which I shall never forget.

And yet, here I am again, in the Southwest. When I drove into Gallup, it started pouring rain. Last night, for the first time in months, a storm came through Albuquerque, bending trees and sage bushes, dark, mysterious skies, and finally the sky could not hold back and let the storm rip overhead. Appreciate rain is something that I will remember to do, when I depart the Southwest.

This is a place I have wanted to experience for a long time. It is a dream of mine to live in a geodesic dome home, and here, near Santa Fe is where I imagined the dream to evolve into reality. It is still a dream, however, whether it is here or not, is not important since living here for a few weeks, in the past 2 months, between trips, has satisfied my curiosity about my ability to enjoy the environment, and how my body would respond.

My body feels good here, today. No aches, pains or any other glitches which I am aware of when living in the wetness of the Pacific Northwest. I am on an exploratory journey, again, trying to find that place, or a few places, which work for me physically, emotionally, creatively and humanly.

If I do not explore them now, check them off the list, or keep them on, I fear unhappiness and restlessness will continue to grow, as it did the least few years living in the Pacific NW.

A friend wrote today that we are all experiencing blowouts in our lives, professionally and personally. He listed some of the agitated reactions that are being observed by him with himself and his family and friends. People are reaching for something new and they are not sure what it is, he says.

I think we are all expanding our lives, and we create the opportunities to do so, throughout our lives. At this point in history, so many more of us are communicating the changes we create and blast them across our social networks with speed and immediacy.

The ability to do so, at lightening speed,  has never occurred in human history. These changes affect us intensely, because we are able to experience and explain them, immediately, across the planet to friends, family and strangers, with pictures. Thank you, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee.

So, in some ways I consider my migration a success, and in other ways a failure. Balanced, I am in that in order to know whether something will work or not, you have to do it, go there, experience it, say it, write it, build it, film it, sing it, paint it, photograph it and then share it with the world. Quietly successful until perfection occurs, could take forever.

Input from others assists when I falter, doubt myself, doubt the process. Cogitating advice from others takes place, however, the next move comes from a feeling, an urge inside me. I learned, long ago, not to blame anyone else for the way I am designing my life. When I come to a fork in the road, sometimes I can go both ways, and in that a new way evolves.

So, Elon, save me a seat on that off-planet, vacation shuttle you have parked in your garage. Next September would be perfect, or even the New Year’s Eve flight for 2012.

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." –Elon Musk

Or, as one of my ancestors once wrote, in a similar, 500-400 B.C., mindset,

“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”--EURIPIDES, Iphigenia in Tauris

http://www.facebook.com/danisecodekas

How Do You Create?

©2012, Danise Codekas

The incomplete life is a good life, if you are still breathing. So many serendipitous moments and experiences occurred in the last few months, I am still aligning the events with my brain and emotive body. Without a doubt writing has encompassed and recorded some of these events.

On this pilgrimage into to the southwest, I keep bumping into others’ ideas about creativity, including writers', yet, no writers’ experiences are ever the same, are they? The one thing, dominant in their writings about creativity and the inspiration, is the overwhelming passion they feel about writing. Some, a day cannot go by, without writing their words down.

The flow is unlike that which I feel, when I am sitting on a mountainside, camera in hand, watching a bear and her cubs walking together. There is a different rush and alertness than when I am shooting video, or clicking away at a pack of watchful coyotes, than when I sit with my favorite French pen, in hand with white legal pad, and stroke words between lines.

Both ignore time, yet one demands my full attention, remaining quiet or hidden so as not to frighten away the animals. The other, demands pauses, staring off into the distance, and what really surprises me, if I have pair of headphones on someone can be sitting in the same room, watching TV, and with my music and headphones, the words still flow.

It doesn’t matter whether I am alone, in my kitchen, or office, or enjoying flying between Madras and Singapore. I can write anywhere.

Sometimes, I seek out noisy coffee houses and restaurants for the sheer pleasure of the warmth of humanity that emanates, in a place where bohemian glasnost and hazelnut latte smells, swirl around the tables and talk, vilifying the cruelties of the world, and exalting the impeccability of joy, within the human spirit.

What really grabs my attention is when a cashier, or a barista, is an exceptionally joyful being. Making people relaxed, getting them to laugh, for no reason, other than it is more desired to uplift, than not.

Those humans are worth of my notice. When they remember me, flick my attention from my morning concerns to focus on who is standing before me, in a lackadaisical, kind kidding, sort of way, then they have my respect.

How to get to this point in a dialogue without saying anything of merit, for you, is the mark of a great writer. Some of them, boring treatises, white papers, dissertations, or scientific discoveries are those which do not tie the topic to the heart, or draw parallels, and enhancements, for any human invited to read the author’s document.

Sometimes, we just have to type along until ideas make sense. In my case, I write along, until what I understand, morphs into understandable dialogue. I reach a momentum, during writing, which excludes anything else in my orbit, sensually. Time and space disappear when I am writing.

All that is being transmitted across my fingers comes during the act of writing. I imagine, like a musician, humming along until the notes grab that part of the brain than says, and go write these bars down now. I can feel the words build in me for days, at times.

Some idea, like the one that pops into awareness, when you are half asleep, on a plane and it follows you along, for a few hours. If you don’t write it down, sometimes it is gone forever. Don’t know about you but I always figure it wasn’t meant to come into written form, then. Maybe in a few years or decades until that understanding is totally understood by a soul, yours or mine.

Comedians must be very good writers, I sense. To take serious subjects and draw parallels so that they can be delivered in a few minutes to a couple hundred people, and everyone laughs, or boos, however a universal paradigm is presented, analyzed and shown to be part of the human tragic-comedy, in a way, that connects everyone in the room.

They must write down some of their ideas, along the way, and need to present those ideas in 20 minutes. Very good editors, they must be. To collapse hour and a half speech to 20 minutes segments, we all understand.

How many ideas could we read and understand, if that were the norm? Those long, political speeches would become concise, understandable, and entertaining. If only a comedian could have a last edit with them.

I am going to sleep outside in my car tonight. There is something about being outside the house that has been feeding my curiosity, recently. When I visited the archeological site at Aztec, Colorado something clicked inside me when I walked into the great round kiva. It was built before horses arrived in the Southwest, before the Spaniards brought the horses to the new world.

Every time I sit in a square room now, no matter how large, I am suppressed. Not only do we change emotionally and psychologically, we also change spatially, internally. You could compare it to tasting vanilla for the first time or crème brulee. Some switch, dormant, clicks on, and there we are not content with just chocolate, any longer.

I am not content with just squares, any longer. I want a round house, still. Always a geodesic dome has been at the heart of my house building gene. Stepping into the kivas of Mesa Verde and Aztec reminds me that round is part of our DNA building material.

Discontentedness is easily mistaken as being uncomfortable. They are two different things. You can be uncomfortable, in your favorite chair, because the cushion is wearing out. Being discontented with a chair, has to do with the fact that there is another chair you have sat in or seen that you know will satisfy you more.

Where does this leave us for most of our lives? Leaving behind the desire for a new chair, fixing the old one, one may be able to find contentment. Once the mind is brushed by a new song, tastes a new flavor, or smells the scent of an ocean after years living on a mountain, there is no forgetting. It is physics at the most basic instinct level. Watching affects the observed and the observer.

So, too, the taster, the reader, or the traveler, sitting in a six thousand year old kiva are affected forever. True, every nuance may not be remembered at the mind’s forefront, however, the cells never forget.

The nerve endings that responded in the inner ear, at the back of the tongue, the optic nerve endings, the olfactory nerves remember forever and so we, you and I, are changed forever by the experiences we are led to by our souls.

The Crossroads

© 2012 Danise Codekas

Driving across the mountains and ledges of Colorado and Utah today, I fell into a somnolent meandering about my place on the planet. Long, empty bits of time, alone on the road was I.

Driving through golden desert, surrounded by monoliths of red rocks, pink stratum, and blue sky above. Statues of Egyptian gods, formed from relentless beatings by sand and wretched, from once standing mountains, to stand alone, higher than the skyscrapers which entrance the metro-skeptical, of modern day world cities.

The forms, amazing in their structure, remind me of one of Hemiunu’s designs, like the Great Pyramid. Maybe Khufu, too, decided to land outside of Moab and put together the Great Stupa,

Ruwanwelisaya, in Sri Lanka, so I could finally touch it,  and walk inside, without taking another 18 hour flight to the Indian subcontinent.

Finally, Moab, was there and grounding myself with an iced vanilla latte, seemed a very 21st century end to a long, sweltering, photo shoot from New Mexico to Utah.

It is big, empty world out here. There is more empty space in the world, than men and women covering it with their footprints and plastic bags. Feeling better about myself, cleansing many old beliefs and foolish illusions through the heat of the sun, and the unalterable majesty of emptiness portrayed by beauty in nature, enjoyed coffee.

The Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Zuni lead hard lives here, in their environment. They are kind, and were direct, no word games,  whenever we had interactions.

We forget there are those who are not afraid to leave their homes needing dialogue filters.

I know when someone is baiting me because they wish to not reveal who they are, as if they were afraid of who they are, and their defenses go up, against me, or you, and miss the joy of  an honest, heartfelt conversation.

I find myself ending these wasted word touches, as there is no real human intercourse taking place. They use, what I call, “Office Speak”. Pretense, illusionary, defensive posturing and tones, with no heart to share. Many lies, and more often, now, that financially, all of us know, the entire world has lost stature,  financially, in some way, pretending to be more, have more, understand more than we do.

Sad, this is for all of us. With suffering, comes wisdom, sometimes, and perhaps you can learn from me, and I, from you. I don’t want your soul. Having my own, keeps me busy. I am not perfect, nor do I assume you to be, or expect you to be. That is why you came to earth, wasn’t it? Learn lessons over and over, until understanding and compassion with self and others kicks in?

There is nothing you have I would steal, so your “stuff” is safe. So many people on this trip were sad, scared and seeking an answer to the collapse we all are mired in now. It will change, end, shift as all things do, in time.

Those who live close to the earth, who were not foolish with funds when they felt the pendulum of prosperity swing askew, survive. I never thought Christ, Buddha or Mother Theresa were angry,  impoverished people. I met her in Calcutta.

She had very little, yet, graciously offered tea. Tea and conversation with her interest in humans, and their lives and conditions superseded her desire to hide the true state of her life financially. She was not ashamed of her self, her choices, nor her lack of furniture or clothing.

Nor am I, now. Long ago, yes, when I was foolish and enamored of things. Now owning 13 boxes of things, a car, 2 computers, 3 suitcases of clothes, 1 bag of makeup, 1 bag of shoes, 3 hats, my relationship with people is different, in that my burden of taking care of all those things I had before, has lightened considerably.

The time spent taking care of those things, now is spent in nature, preparing my photographs for my portfolio, in order to find an agent, and writing. Strange state I live in, now, probably to you, who has many things to care for in your home. That is your life. This is mine.

It is 3:34 a.m., here in Moab world. Desert driving requires one arises early and stops, in the early afternoon. Hotel check in is 2pm out here, as the heat dries the brain, even though air conditioning is a dear friend.

I have to make a decision when I arrive in Salt Lake City, today. It will be made in moment of feeling, understanding the feeling, will come then. It always does. Shall I come to San Francisco, for what reason my soul knows, and has been quiet, so far, yet pulls me there. Or, continue on to Gig Harbor, sell my car, repack, and leave for Kauai?

Hmm. The crossroads are upon me. Are they also upon you? Go with faith, excitement of possibility, seriousness of a completion, amazement for a new beginning. Love, No Fear.

 

Time becomes immaterial, illusionary when death is an unknown, as I watch the wind and sand form new sculptures out of wind, silica and sun.

 

                    

Everything Is A Miracle

©2012, Danise Codekas, Corrales, NM., 11 June 2012

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be – Marcel Pagnol.

The forest fires rage around us here in the Southwest. The Gila National Forest fires has grown to about 270,000 acres. 40,000 more than it was when I arrived here 11 days ago.

Seems every time I have traveled far, in the past few years, some natural tragedy strikes somewhere in the world. Perhaps, I just need to see how people respond to it, who are directly or about to be directly, or possibly could be affected by it.

3 of my trips were washed over by three tsunamis. There was also 2 major 8+ earthquakes, and the tsunami warnings along the California Coast highway I was driving in Oceanside, and then in Long Beach, also.

On this trip, besides wildfires near me, or on the routes I would have traveled toward the west coast, there have also been 2 deaths, related to friends’ parents or best friends, job lost by people I care for, oh, and my own realization that one of my thoughts about how a place would work out for me, fizzled in the sand.

I am learning how to deal with life without a touchstone.

Then, my entire life has been an exercise in dealing with the surprises, loses and upheavals, where ever I may be resting that evening.

You learning that too?

 

The wonders of advanced communication networks makes it all possible, of course. In the old days, being 18000 miles away, the news would not reach me until I heard it on an airplane heading somewhere else.

An ancient East Indian asked me, after our flight from Madras took off, what I thought about the Oklahoma Terrorist Bombings. They had just occurred that day, or the day before in the US, the Date Line thing has to be figured into this equation.

When I was a student in Argentina, one of my classmates, who hated Americans, would make it a point to query my feelings about some action made by the US Government that day.

Sorry, I never saw the news, seemed to be a good response since he always snorted, in Castilian accent, and looked at me as if I was an idiot, and verified his lowly opinion of the evil, Yankees del Norte.

Lucid, I was, however, my interest were in things Argentinean, which he did not wish to discuss. I was the wall he needed to throw verbal graffiti at every day in school. He finally laid off the teasing once I started dating, one of our classmates. It is a macho thing that would take too long to explain, unless you are muy macho.

So, today, waiting for the green light to get on the road, that gut instinct that tells me when to go, one friend calls and lets me help him figure out what he should do about selling his business. “Get a lawyer”, is my response. He did not like it, however, being called an idiot by me, pushed him over the edge, and he was speed dialing his attorney, as we were disconnecting, I hope.

Then my dear friend’s mom passed, I just found out, a day after she arrived to help her walk down that road to the end. The day after she arrived to assist. Blessings for all the family, as to watch someone slowly dissolve from human form is difficult. Believe me.

My hope is there is not too much drama with the siblings and others who are called to bear witness to the mother’s passing. I like quiet around me when someone I love dies. It is hard to achieve, I find.

Another close friend, arrived at work to meet her replacement. The person who took her job from her. Her job advertised on her company’s website, that she found out about while she was on vacation. Crappy way to treat a long term employee. When she arrived, the air conditioning broke down. I told her it was a sign to Get Out.

Since it is heading up to 96 degrees today in downtown Albuquerque, hopefully, she will be able to think of someway to get out of the building. Luckily, she was smart and is two months away from obtaining her Masters in IT Project Management, and will find a delightful, challenging new career in the perfect air-conditioned buildings.

My  interview for today was sullied when the headhunter hit Reply instead of Forward to an email, which contained the map, the documents she wanted completed before our a.m. meeting, and required they arrive with me.

Then admitted, when I contacted her, to let her know her docs still had not arrived, that she did not have any job, in my writing/editing areas, but she would call around and ask employers in the area. Hmm. I sort of knew that since she avoided the question, last week, the chances of her having a senior writer/editor position for me was, well, dim.

I think we all know headhunters’ games, right? It is a numbers game and they expect me to be professional, right? I called another headhunter instead. This is the year of immediate, quick connections. Act immediately, or, let it go. The jobs I have applied for in New Mexico over the past 2 years, are still listed, and I still poke at them, every so often.

So, the only thing I question is why the Subaru Service Dealer in ABQ has not called back yet. The Impreza needs an oil change, even though I had one a few thousand miles ago, before this trip. 200 miles short of that 6-digit mileage reminder sticker on the front windshield.

Since I am not sure which way I am headed out of Corrales, and into what type of landscape, Death Valley-esque or Eastern California mountains, better get the oil change, and the free carwash. Which is what it is all about isn’t it?

Free carwash, free advice, free kindnesses, free wi-fi. Open up and share. We are all trying to grasp the meaning of our lives, in places we love or places that are testing us, with people we love or people who challenge us to the depths of our souls, or just allow us to be so we can hear the inner probes and screams, and words of soothing, from the depths of our selves. Ain’t life grand?

What wonderful opportunities we have to do things in this world.

How quickly your and my reality erupts, evaporates or is re-created in the blink of an eye, in less than 24 hours?

 

What planet in the universe would we find so entertaining, so fulfilling to our imaginations, to the exclusion of death, the final, physical blow? Beyond your death or mine, well, that will be another adventure to explore, n’est pas? Except for the outer space thing. I really want to go on that ride someday.

The sage brushes overflow with lovely lavender and blue colored flowers, outside the patio doors. Looking across the Sandia Mountains, at the other end of the patio, the cloud cover brings ash-darkness from raging forest fires at Gila. Awareness of nature is what we are learning at this point in timeline human.

Discovering not only our own true natures and abilities, but those of every living organism around us becomes critically important.

We live in an expanding universe on a rock, speeding through space at 18.5 mps (miles per seconds), which due to the growing weight of humanity, removal of minerals under earth’s crust, and the elimination of thousands of acres per day, of sustainable environments, which CAN feed us all, is shrinking in available living space.

For some this is wonderful since it means more people to sell things to, as the laws protecting nature, dissolve under the hands of government officials’ and mega-national business partners’ signatures, on those contracts signed behind closed doors.

Did you know that the Occupy Movement is calling for supporters to protest at the Bohemian Club’s meeting in N. California, at their 2 week meeting, which starts mid-July? Why was I not surprised, yet, a bit unsettled when I read that the Portland, OR Occupy leaders were then ones who kind of led the way on this one?

Here is the link: Bohemian Club Protest 2012 . Google Occupy Bohemian Grove 2012 and check out the links.

The amount of police and security and number of arrests should be larger than usual for the small, No. California location. The media and how it controls reporting of the protest will be interesting from a sociological point of view of mass media. As many attendees, control major networks and media conglomerates.

Someone, once, sarcastically asked me why I studies mass communications at Berkeley. My answer is the same now. I like to see how those in control use the media to control the masses’ minds.

I loved learning how to create a poll, in controlled language sequences, that would give me what I needed to get funding for projects, government subsidies and donations from the poor, unsuspecting public, such as, me. Finding out how they do it, how info can be bent to get what you want, logically, was fascinating and deeply disturbing to me.

“People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos, is because things are being loved, and people are being used.”-unknown

How do those in control keep it? Study mass communications, read Todd Gitlin’s works, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to gain control of a mind, with words, pictures and mindless, intentionally designed cartoons.

So, time to call Subaru again. Hope your day is in interesting one. Be aware of what is going on around you. Life and your work has import, for me and the rest of the universe. Use your time well.

“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein.

Grok with Me or Choose Disambiguation

© 2012, Danise Codekas

Not sure where to begin, tonight. 10:25pm here in the high desert. Quiet filled with crickets. Darkness against mountainside seeps into my eyes faintly tinged with chartreuse and blue, deep blue. I avoid the words.

There is no one to report to in my life. Freedom, a word I cherish, spoken to me by a friend tonight, from 1500 miles away, eases my temerity about the next step I shall take on this journey.

Does seeking a place, a community, an enlightened gentry who united change the world’s view that no longer supports our evolution, seem unusual to you, at this age?

I am not satisfied with the way the world works. Nor, am I satisfied with the way I live so as was mentioned to me earlier, I am looking for my “golden” city.

It is more than a city, though. There are people, who are creating the new paradigm of health, electromagnetics, eco warriors whose homes reflect sustainability and enhance the eco systems they intrude upon.

Perfection was never my goal. That is a goal for hubris, demented humans. Harmonic relationships, gracious respect of nature, intense collaboration supporting ideas and inventions that no longer deplete natural resources.

Instead, my new gang, utilize the known powers of those resources, much to the dismay of the old order, whose livelihoods shall be depleted, as my “golden” city thrives, and influences humans.

These enlightened, fearless new friends encourage other humans, governments, mega corporations,  to do a 360 degree turn in their production, law making insanity,  before all the trees, and waters, and foods are corrupted, by the old ways of doing things.

So many transitions over the last few days, for people around me and myself. Yet, the cleansing of many of these relationships was necessary in order to create a new way of communicating and expressing our true desires and needs with people who may not even be in our lives yet.

I am letting go of all those who no longer mesh with my paradigm, my understanding that in order to survive I must be around healthy, brave and inventive and intuitive people. The amount of sadness reflected in people’s eyes in the area I am currently visiting is overwhelming.

Seattle and its environs, people are still able to fool one another that their situation is not as desperate as it really is now. Here, in the Albuquerque area, the unhappiness, hopelessness is unable to be denied in those walking the streets.

No, not all. However, there is very little laughter anywhere around me. Stores, restaurants, parks, even spending time in Santa Fe, there was a morose undertone which overshadowed the beauty and power of Santa Fe. It was there in all my past visits, over the years. Not this time.

There is a reason the Hopi’s have descended into the Kiva’s and many of the ranches and sacred areas are not so easily accessed as once they were in the past. The Native Americans know that the darkness which has overtaken much of the world, due to the economic crashes which are still crashing after 5 years, brings many people to do things in order to save themselves, feed themselves, en mass.

It is better to be out of range of the protests, the anger which is becoming more obvious daily with foreign governments being over thrown due to the their harsh financial tactics toward their subjects.

I think many are blind to the true depression and the acts of depravity, many incite, because a world economic crash continues, after 7 years, and not any government can support the losses which continue to plague the nations and humans of the world.

Wake up. See the hopelessness around you and if it is over-whelming in your village or city, then perhaps you may want to go out and find your “golden city”, too.

You might enjoy being around happy, enlightened individuals rather than a city who is going bankrupt, a business model which has collapsed, and people who are afraid to try something new, elsewhere, and will pull you down with their negativity.

If you need a wake up call, maybe you should re-read, Heinlein's, Stranger in a Strange Land, again. Sometimes, to grok with others over literature is a very enlightening experience. 

Completely Unexpected

© 2012, Danise Codekas

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than I was and began diverting all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. -J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Address, 2008

 

And, so, go on I must in spite of personal embarrassment, when all wonder why I came so far, and did not stay in New Mexico. The embarrassment comes from not pursuing this dream, I had about living in New Mexico, sooner; not from what anyone labels my 1700 mile effort, tonight.

Illusions not addressed immediately always remain illusions, don’t they? Usually a preconceived idea about someone or some place, persists throughout one’s lifetime.

This New Mexico illusion of mine persisted for over 20 years. Different it is from a vacation here, which I have enjoyed spending here over the years. Much different outlook coming here with the intention of living here and no where to return to now. Cautious is not how I am now, in spite of realizing this is not the place I will settle.

Overjoyed is more my demeanor as, Caesar said: I came, I saw, I conquered.

Conquer? The illusions have been destroyed about what life would be like here. Wanted to build a geodesic dome here. Vastness, space, unending sky draws me. Yet, those qualities of place exist elsewhere in the world, and they aren’t in semi-arid conditions.

The heat is wonderful for a while, yet, moisture and water and green is needed by my being. I love it here, in vacation mode. Perhaps, it will appeal to me at another time in my life. This day, this week, there is another reason for my coming. Unexpected surprise which had to do with personal clearing and revelations about myself.

Listening to the evening chirping crickets, animals of the night talking and barking with one another, no sounds of anything mechanical, I love this peacefulness.

The blue sky, the clouds, the unending space up mountainsides which shoots across endless air, I find mesmerizing. There are reasons it is good to come to the desert in order to drain everything which blocks flow in my body, my mind.

The heat and endless pounding of the sun steals anything your body is trying to hide, hold on to, or fight. Just let it go is my mantra in deserts.

Abolishing , all that I owned for many years before taking this journey, difficult, though it was, is not  really difficult at all compared to feeling my bones melt and my mind enter a state of limbo, in which thought ceased to be important. All that was important was being able to breath, to sit, to drink water, to find shade.

Going through a psychological eruption and allowing all objects to be taken into new homes, by new owners, prepared me for the physical eruption, ending here in the high, New Mexico plateau.

Like a dying woman being led to water, my psyche sought this physical cleansing which was needed for me to continue on with the next part of my life.

Right now, tonight, I am thinking of leaving New Mexico and heading toward the Pacific Ocean. However, in this cosmic time period, full of surprising changes,  as you are all experiencing, fool, I would be if said “absolutely, I go”.

At this point, in all our lives, it is all a crap shoot which has been designed by each one of us during all these years we’ve been living lives, uncensored, sometimes callously so, and many times doing the exact thing we did NOT want to do.

Untrue to our self, our hearts’ desires, and ignoring what our souls needed which we were completely aware of, yet believed the ego when it said the word, “unworthy” or “impossible”.

There is not time left for you, to keep telling yourself, you are anything less than being able to manifest, and create, that which makes you happy and content, with someone of like mind who enjoys your state of mind, and does not want to change you, however, wants to share the excitement, of this wondrous place and time with you, without you needing to change them, either.

Luck has nothing to do with it.

Karma does and following what you are feeling inside.

So, like Caesar said, “No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.” The amount of writing flowing out of me, is also something unexpected. The desire to write overtaking most of my spaces between thoughts about other things.

That should answer any questions you have about my sanity, responsibility, or lack thereof, in how I am going about my life now, or where I am driving to next. Even I am surprised by the unexpected wisdoms, about myself, gained by moving to New Mexico.

That New Mexico is not the final stop, the new home base, is completely, something unexpected. Writing ferociously, now, also, and for this I am grateful, and still entranced with the power of this very sacred and powerful place.

Do not be surprised if I am still here after another 20 years, either. You, like me, really do not know what the next breath brings, let alone tomorrow. For now, let us agree, on something completely unexpected intriguing us.

Journey to the Center of the Soul

©2012, Danise Codekas

Well, transition to another state is always interesting whether it be a geographical location, and a psychological state. In my case, it would be both.

You really do not know how things are going to be for you until you make a move toward something new, and away from something old. The shock of disconnect occurred for me in a couple places along the 1700 miles I drove from Gig Harbor to New Mexico.

There were some thoughts about returning to the Pacific Northwest the next day, when I arrived at a motel which was crappy. There were a few of them as there are like to be on journeys.

Being here in New Mexico is like riding a seesaw. Some moments are clear, filled with excitement and possibility. Others, like this one today, come with a bit of fear. Makes me want to pick up a sledge hammer and beat against my fate which has not revealed the answers to my questions about survival, home, work and relationships.

Thankfully, two lovely friends offered me their home to use as a base while I attempt to begin a new life. At least a place to sleep and think and plan my next steps.

This morning with hot weather and smoky air from the Gila Forest Fire, all my body wants to do is sleep some more. However, I am going to jump in my air conditioned chariot and head to a job fair at the Radisson. Money is an important factor to consider if one wishes to write books, put gas in the car to travel to work, or another part of the US, to seek work.

I am giving New Mexico 3 weeks, since my friends may be relocating to another part of the country, if jobs applied for there, come through. They have lived here about 7 years now and are ready for some changes.

I sense that changes for them will come swiftly. I did not know this was occurring before I drove down here. For me, it was another indication from the universe that my life needed to proceed like an bullet, fast and true, to the best indicated situation for me.

There is no time for lying around. It is time for me, and you, to take action. Our futures can be had for the asking and with sincerity and passion, we can create it like we want it, now.

The super lunar eclipse with Venus passing across the Sun’s face offers an extraordinary moment in time for humans to create their lives, exactly, as dreamed. This astrological, astronomical energy shift will not happen for about another 500 years. Hope you all watched it yesterday. Here in NM it began around 4PM.

This picture from Journey to the Center of Earth represents some of the mind-games which are accompanying me on my journey to the center of my soul’s quest.

 

Unusual, challenging, nothing to reference, no touch stones, categorically, except my car, my breath, friends, and my language.

Every Action, Creates Reaction

©2012, Danise Codekas

Driving from Boise, ID to Bingham City, UT involves silence and vastness. Space becomes irrelevant. Tight cities, engorged by humans and their accoutrements, disappear as reality of that which lies beyond and encompasses most of the space across the earth, appears relevant, again, to me.

 

 

 

 

The difference between solitude and silence marks the miles driving through mountain passes, high plains, and unknown rivers winding beneath me and alongside route 84.

Exits named Ranch Exit, in southeastern Idaho, are just that. Exits from 4 lane freeways just for a thousand of acres ranch, the freeway divided when built. Ranch Exit 32 is a different Ranch exit, then the one for Ranch Exit 33 or 34.

The towns and villages along the way, like Nampa and Mountain Home and Bliss, all serve the local populations, spread out across miles of range and valleys, and those businesses that support the farmer, rancher, and humans who live in these far reaching places. I grew up in such a place in Pennsylvania, however, not so separated by miles from neighbors as what I saw driving across 300 miles of empty land.

I saw an Idaho Power pickup truck, hauling a canoe on a wooden trailer. Does he need it to get across the Snake River to an electric box, on a river island? I stopped in a village, for water, and driving through it, came upon a school for horse dentistry. I listened to a Mormon advice duo, on radio, list reasons for why homosexuality is unnatural and can be cured with logical reasoning.

I also had a Mormon tell me that a woman has to be chaste for a man to marry her. Did not get to ask him about divorced men, or divorced women conundrum. Guess there must be a lot of virgins for the picking. I wanted to ask him if Mormon men could cheat on their wives or wife, with an unchaste woman, but my gas tank was full and and I had to pull the gas pump out of my tank.

Out of the 3 hotels I’ve stayed in, only one of the them was worth the money. There is no rhyme or reason to believe comments about motels on any of the online booking sites. i should have remembered that from the last time I travelled into unknown territory. For some reason, thought that Utahians would live to a higher standard; then, there are ripoffs and scammers all over the earth’s face.

$3.44 gal/gas in Idaho, $4.45 in Bend, Oregon; $3.89 in Utah, for grade 85 gas. I run on grade 87, so it was $4.11/gal. What is grade 85 for? High mountain passes at 5311 feet? Rattlesnake Pass looked like they lived there en mass. You could feel the rattlers all smiling that they had bitten enough humans, who named the pass after them, and now, scares us all from taking that exit to check out the top of that ledge.

Silence has been my co-rider for the past 4 days. The wind and freeway sound, makes my ears tired. Good country western rock and roll playing on the fm, when in range of a tower. Thank god for 3 and 4G networks on the cell phones.

The best place for gas was LOVE’S across Idaho. Utah is still strange, in some way, perhaps it has to do with the power from the snow covered mountains, which finally appeared, as I climbed across the SE corner of Idaho.

Tonight, I sit at the NE corner of the Great Salt Lake, and to my back is a mountain, huge, and chained to it, is its sibling mountains, running north and south for as long as the eye can see. I sleep against it tonight, and look to the west from my balcony into eternal, vast sky.

 

Not sure who I am now. Some part of me was cleared away, erased, in the last few months. A mind eraser is at work now and the understanding I am not connected to any home or edifice on the face of the earth settles in, the further I drive.

Beginning a new chapter of my life and all that I knew before, did before, prepared me to let go of all that I had in my life. 13 boxes of goods in storage is all that is apart from me, now. A car, 3 suitcases, 2 laptops, IPOD, sleeping bag, shoes, food chest, music cd’s, flashlights…The things that are in my car and those 13 boxes are all that I have now.

Not sure I should have kept many of those things, now that I have existed for 4 days and nights without them. The universe conspired to design a task for me, which it has not divulged to me, yet. Evidently, the next indicated thing in my life’s mission, is to get in the car tomorrow and drive to Moab, UT., and, finally, write this update to my blog.

Probably, no one will read it since my inability to maintain communication with many of you, has impacted your interest in my life. I do like so many of you, however, this life transition takes up much of my energy, now. For the past two months, everything I was able to touch in my life, I have let go of, sold, or given away.

 

So, worry, decisions, and practicing release and offering gratitude, takes up much of my breath. Hope you can forgive me. However, since many of you are experiencing discomfort with your lives, and wishing or designing changes for yourselves, I shall understand if you are silent and contemplative, as I am now.

When we create a vacuum in our lives, the universe acts to fill it, only at its own pace, not ours. So, my driving 1600 miles, into an area I have never been before, is like driving through the cosmic energy vacuum, which is wiping from me all past regrets, bad memories, fears of failure.

And, once every couple of hundred miles, the cosmic, eternal power, places me alongside a snow covered mountain, in a king-sized bed, next to a Great Salt Lake 

 

Preservation is what salt was used for and the most valued spice of its time, back in the 900 and 1000 A.D., which grounds out, some of the  misunderstandings about myself, from my red-headed ego.

This soul of mine, connected to divine wisdom, then leads me across 600 miles at 5000 ft. altitudes, pushing my car and me with high winds of cosmic breaths, that blow all leftovers, from my past,  which no longer serve the new life I am driving into, and drops me at the foot of this lake, in a land founded by people seeking a new heaven.

 

(Shot of Great Salt Lake Lightening Strikes, by Scott Stringham)

 

 

 

 

In a day, I will be in a corner of the universe inhabited by Anasazi, the ancient ones. Into their cliff dwellings shall I rise, and meditate, as I walk  through the streets of Aztec, which by chance, has now become an  recognized World Cultural Site. Hmm. 

“They”  try to protect the power spots, from those who know what power lies there, and can use them for the good of all, don’t they? Declaring it so, allows them the rights to control access. I believe we do not spend enough time connected to earth, and in so doing, lose self.

This journey of mine is not about finding work or a new place to live. That is the human productive reasoning which satisfy those of you who needed to know why I was leaving.

 

However, as I have known, in some way, and made clearer as the distance separates me from the 20 years of life spent in another part of the world, I am reconnecting, re-energizing, re-touching my soul’s path. 

This is the last time, last chance for me to do this. If I did not listen to the call, pay attention to the dreams which erupted over the past year, some part of myself would die.

I had to do this. It was my life’s imperative that I do so. Not any of you can help me.

Many of you are getting the call now. Many of you are already on the path to your new lives. None of us did this with unknowingness. We planned it this way, now. Every action, creates reaction. Law of the Universe.

Unlike the Anasazi, who disappeared a thousand years ago, and no one knows where they went, like those from Machu Picchu,   you see me here, on line.

 

 

However, there may come a time when my new place is found; and,  my new life arises out of the ashes of my past.

No One Can Do It For You

copyright 2012 by Danise Codekas

2 days after selling most of what I possessed in the world, new things are being added to my empty coffers. Specifically, new brakes, differential fluids, and lubricants for the Subaru engine which will deliver me most comfortably, and safely to somewhere in the Southwestern US.

A going away present from my mother, the brakes will be appreciated, since Bremerton Subaru has me wondering why my rear brakes wore out before the front ones, which are pretty near perfect after 105K miles.

Some things cannot be undone in my life. Many of the circumstances which created the situation I find myself in now, took decades to foment their eventual result. My head is tired, continually, for the past 2 weeks, as tension about selling my stuff, moving across states which I've never driven over, in high heat, and 1600 miles, away form the brisk Puget Sound and all that currently is known to me in the universe, here in Washington State.

There are about 12 boxes, packed, stored and awaiting me to choose what things will share that car with me as I drive away, soon. Some of those things that are in plastic, 30 gal. garbage bags, like tapestries, hand painted rugs, and my Three Dog Down duvet, which I drove 1,000 miles for in 2 days, to purchase from the 3 Dog Down Factory in Polson, MT., one fine September, a few years ago. It is coming in the car, and hope it enjoys its seat in the back of the station wagon.

Since my unplugging from all that was my life, for 20+years, erupted into something larger than just a new location or a new employer, many of the friends I have spoken with are also having transition eruptions occur in their lives and hearts.

My friend Tom jumped on the chance to drive off with me, and fly back on SWAir, so he could have an adventure, share driving, expenses and those great road trip experiences and conversations that pop up in the middle of the night across a dark, moonlit sky south of Sedona.

Friends, who I am visiting in the Southwest, are exploring new job searches in locations with a bigger, livelier vibe to them. Another friend relocated to Alabama, and loves living in the mountains in the city with the highest number of PH.D's in the US. He has found his tribe, there.

The route keeps changing as friends who I hoped to visit, like my friend in San Francisco, already have their apartments booked with, visitors or friends, of roommates, are already committed to playing flamenco guitar, for their bed space in the Divisidaro living room.

Since I lived in Argentina, flamenco guitar has never been for from my heart, and watching some of the best in the world play, while living in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, I know the value of a sexy,  flamenco guitarist hanging out around the house. Really wanted to go toe-to-toe with the magazine guy who never spoke with me again, after he told me he was taking a 19 year old to Sea Ranch for the weekend. He was 48, and I had fallen for his bad boy LA ways.

Darn! I forgot that honestly expressing feelings about a man, to him, without a clue, whether he even knew how to spell my last name, is a big stupid thing to do. No, he never asked me out. Chickenshit is what someone called him. I guess he was, or, he just wasn't that into me. More than likely that was it and how does a woman who is not 19, compete with one, who is? Maybe he wanted a baby mama?

Oh, well, there are bad boys in Santa Fe, aren't there? Like I have time with looking for a new place to live, working on the book, taking photographs and finding a sustainable community to spend enjoying time with now.

I do not know what to tell those of you who are calling me crazy, brave, or lost touch with reality.

Whatever, your reality is, and I do not care at this point, anyway. Yes, it is crazy to rip apart my life, release anything which would require a 40 foot moving van to transport, and walk away from all that has been recognizable to my psyche and emotionally manageable.

Yes, it is brave of my to walk into the unknown, without a net of any great width, to catch me when I fall, falter or fail. I am learning something new about myself , driving onward on this quest which was brewing inside of me for 2 years now. Everything that has led up to this is a well executed plan of the universe for my edification, awareness and upliftment.

 It is an answer to a prayer, subconsciously murmured by me, for a few years. be careful what you think and dream about now. The time it now takes for reality to replace your wish or illusion desires, rapidly diminishes in length of time to activate, arrive or appear before you.

Be very careful how you wish, pronounce or curse those things, dreams, people you want now. Life does not exist in a vacuum and anything you want now, whether object or human or animal does not occur until you sacrifice something which makes a space for that desire to be placed into.

I was asked to sacrifice and release,  500 books, 80 works of art, crystals and Tibetan tankas, 300 pieces of clothing, 100 pieces of furniture, 1 Hong Kong Black Lacquer and Copper Bar, a house above the Puget Sound, friends of 20 years, 300 Cd's, 50 pairs of shoes, 100's of office supplies, incredible mesa pottery collected over decades. And the list can go on.

I did not sacrifice the necessities, the beautiful the sacred objects which provide my balance now. Too many things I can no longer remember, since a week has now passed from the moment I wiped away things which served me well, and their purpose being with me.

You will be asked to sacrifice also, however, you should know that a week later, I am relaxed and happy it is all gone. I do not have to house it. Now, all I have to house is me.

Some of you have asked about the handmade guitar which was designed for me by those 2 famous Mexican Guitar artists, from Playa Tijuana. No, I did not sell it, not that I did not try, however, some things are meant to be with me a while longer.  Since guitar appraisers, said it is a fine piece of art work, with the mother of pearly, amethyst and hand carved body. It, has a new place to be, also.

I know life is changing everyday, as do you. Once I began to look closely at what and who was around me, and what had disappeared from my location, my mind, my activities in the Northwest, I knew that a new directional signal had infiltrated my internal compass. For me, it is a personal apocalypse, of great magnitude, if things, objects are your gold standard of life.

What is important to me now, is not what was important a month ago, a week ago, last night. Change I am. Who are you today? I see many of you changing, wishing you could abandon the life you are creating by not being able to unplug due to fear, possibility of your unknown life awaiting.

And those of you who are calling me, begging me to push you into doing what I did, I am here for you, however, your way of disengaging, releasing and the reasons thereof, are different from mine. Know that we are all being challenged to be honest with ourselves and everyone around us. If you lie to yourself, no one will be able to tell or show you the truth about your Self. No One Can.

“The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it's only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. If you go to Bosnia or Somalia or Peru or much of the third-world then it appears that the apocalypse has already arrived.”-Terence McKenna

I Am Going, Too

©2012 Danise Codekas

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. -- Helen Keller

So much sunshine today along the Puget Sound. Thought a headache was coming on however it proved to be all the delving into plastic buckets in the mudroom, rucking around to see if there was anything I really needed to keep before the appraisers arrive to review for the estate sale.

Yow, I hired a group of professional estate sales pros to sell 20 years’ accumulation of those things accentuating 2 decades of my life. Some moments wanting to hold on and keep, and the next that previously desired, forgotten, in the exploration of the next box, bucket or pile of papers.

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did you learn to let go?
- Buddha

Deciding to cleanse my life of things unused, outdated, held onto simply for the say so, began forming last time I went to Kauai. My friend’s home both energizing and peaceful atop the Wailua River, has everything a body can require, yet devoid of the accumulation many of us require to touch, see, or require for our sense of worth to be vilified before others and our own 21st century mega-accumulation prone minds.

True, someday I made need something that is leaving the house in someone else’s hands, however, I remind myself of the other times in my life, I sold everything, packed up a car, or jumped on a plane, and arrived in a strange, new environment, without friends,and began again.

Yes, some fear, excitement, worries and exhaustion revolve my days now, as I prepare for the next part of my life to enfold. I also know that to continue, in the same manner now, would be grossly unfair to my soul, and headed to a future moments in which I would ask, “What if I had cleared myself of all baggage, packed the car, and started on a new part of my life’s journey in 2012?”.

 

My dreams for the past 2 months have been about ‘drive South’. Where, I ask. California? ABQ/ Santa Fe? LA? Hawaii? I need a place to live. Work. Friends. Fresh air. Joy. Music.

No clear answer is heard, and so I have no guarantee of an easy road, a soft place to land, or even a romantic end to my life. If you have an idea, a writing/editing/traveling job for me, a connection you are pulled to explore with me, let me know.

Danise@gmail.com is how to connect, send some wisdom and encouragement, or SKYPE Codekas, Fbook-danise codekas. Fun, huh?

Oh, you wait until you start feeling the urge to change. Happens for us all differently, yet the exhilaration of knowing something is right about the changes I am making, combined with the moments of flying by the wind, with faith, you shall feel, my friend. Your soul loudly declares you learned your lesson, in this geographic location, and the new place in cosmic reality awaits.

Unless, someone has a offer to travel to foreign places to assist them in their great adventure, I shall be in a Subaru Impreza wagon, green, with music playing and probably windows down.

Be well. Happy Earth Day.

And yes, everything could change tomorrow, and I decide to stay, for I will miss my family. I could collapse in a heap of indecision, once the last piece of my history walks away in the hands of a stranger. I don’t know. That is what an act of faith, guided by heart and sol requires.

Admitting I do not know however positive in order to be where the most growth and joy awaits, I must make these changes now, and release things and objects from my past. There has been good things received here. I was blessed here and blessed I carry on. This transition evolves and I grow in trust and a little bit more fear, outside the edges, than usual. So be it. It is 2012. I should have knows, huh?

Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.-- Deborah Reber

However, clearing the past, the unused, the unneeded, will conclude in a lighter load, for my journey in this life.

I am excited and hopeful based on the wonderful people and animals which have touched my life in the past 20 years. I think I have become more humane, and compassionate because of you all.

If I have pissed you off at some point, or been less that sincere or been bad, very very, I apologize. I can only do as well as I know, and learn from that in order to do better the next time a similar challenge arises.

That is what life is about isn’t? We don’t come in perfect; we are pointed toward perfection and joy and with helping hands along the way come to know the value of life, love and human touch.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.- E.M. Forster

Old Poetry Found in a File

Danise Codekas © 2012
A friend found some of my poetry the other day and lectured me about why I had never bothered publishing it. Unlike some children, my first writings were not prose, but poetry. Long days and nights spent in childhood pursuits leached into my consciousness in rhyme, rather than nightmares.

Perhaps I never mentioned them but the first books I read, alone, when I could read alone, were not fairy tales but epic poetry, odes and mythology. The first 2 books received when I was around 8, were the Iliad and The Odyssey.

Coffee table-sized, artfully colored in rich, powerful colors, the pictures were true to Greek tragic art. Reds,blues, black, emotive, powerful, images of Scylla, the Sirens, the death of Piraeus, the bloodshed inside the walls of Troy, as the wooden horse revealed the hidden Greek warriors inside, who stormed into the midst of a jubilant, sleeping city and burned it to the ground.

My other favorite book was the Aeneid, by Virgil, consisting of 12 books, 10,000 lines of dactylic hexameter, and is the tale of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior who heads off to Italy, after the fall of Troy, and hangs out with the Romans.

You see how I, as a child, would want to write poetry for her first composition.  Reading poetry quickly satisfies my soul and quickly reveals the energy of a situation, human or soul.  So here is a poem written around Easter 2002. ‘Tis the season, non?



Ode To A Cat; Ode About My Mistress, ©2002, Danise Codekas

He sits to my right
Watching my hands and eyes
Waiting for me to look his way.
He licks up his paw and rests it
On the desk again.
Waiting for me to stop typing and
Return to my bed.
He knows the hours have been long today.
He also knows it is time to go nite nite.

A cat has an internal clock built like we do.
It is based on sunlight and moonlight
Like it used to be for me in Crete.
Just the moon to light my nights and
The Sun to follow my mind, through the day.

This animal is tired.
Now with eyes closed he listens to the keyboard
As it clicks and stops.
His ears go up at the silence and he opens one eye slowly.

Is she done?
Will we go into the other place and lie our heads
Upon the pillows?
Will she lie down quietly so I can lie next to her,
And sleep,
And dream about Cat Heaven and things so wondrous,
Because my mind is not filled with angst or anger or fears.

I am just a companion cat who lives for many years,
With this woman of kindness and beauty.
Whom I know so well.
Better than anyone else in the World.

I know her moods and the sounds of her voices.
I know her eyes and the smile that tells me
She is content, with Me.
I am a happy cat,
An old cat.
A cat that awaits My Mistress.

She stops.
She moves.
And the Brightness goes away
As we walk into the other room,
With the Softness to lie on.

Whitney’s Opportunistic Death for Hollywood

©2012 Danise Codekas

I found a box of old journals and writings today while cleaning out my office. Buried in a large, plastic tub which holds another couple thousand of pages to be read, discarded or reviewed for another manuscript.

Writers tend to save words they write. We do not discard many things, and even the short missives we write alone, sometimes in anger or sorrow, or too personal for release, get saved and remind us of our past life, which brings about a day or an hour of incredible angst, joy or names of people long forgotten, years later.

I have about 300 journals, tablets and binders which sit awaiting their disclosure, or destruction. The new tub discovered today adds another 30 or so, to the growing library of my writer’s self. Looks like about 2000 pages or more of words, ideas, revelations, and memories.

Sometimes you just have to go back to the island, like Jimmy Buffet says. I just had to go back today in time, and I do hope you understand. Some of the journals and writings go back 15 years or more. The people and events written about reminded me of a time when I was a different person, in a different life, and yet, not so much so.

Finding them came at a point in time when I realized a new book was in the works. Different from the ones in process. The whole point to the discovery had nothing to do with writings found, but a search through boxes to find an install CD for my printer.

Eyes glazed over in boredom, reading about Whitney Houston’s dip into Hades’ mystique, the energy many people are fixated on becomes similar to the 1920’s ennui over Chicago mobsters and chain gang deaths unreported, unnoticed.

Houston was not the only person to create their own death while not quite dipping into suicide with intent, and unquestioned self-destructive action. She gets in a tub, drunk, drugged, sad, depressed, lonely and dies.

Many can relate. Drink and drugs, destructive life in process, compass gone wild in heart, and those willing to assist for money, affiliation and media exposure. If someone ends their life, everyone close to them, become responsible for their own actions which inhibited or influenced the rush to destruction.

Wishing to die and creating a lifestyle which rolls a Whitney Houston close to the edge of Hades, are two different things, entirely. She had moments of clarity. With her daughter; with her family. There were times when a light of understanding, a request for help were evident.

However, choosing to help someone, violently intruding into someone’s self-destructive lifestyle choices, especially when that person controls your income or entrée in entertainment kingdoms, or can withhold the monies for monthly stipends takes a brave, karmic bond.

Sometimes those dependents keep their mouths closed and agree, in silence, their choice was right, the results were shocking, and weep dramatically coffin-side hoping a Houston, opens the lock-jawed mouth, and offers penance and absolution, now that Houston sees everything everyone supported in helping her to her watery, Hilton Hotel grave.

The bottom-feeders will come out to profit from her death as will the performers and family whose first call after hearing of her death, called a publisher to sell their tell-all experience since the golden calf has melted into her alcohol soaked Hilton death.

Those people enjoying the wild pre-Grammy party at the Hilton, while in 3 minutes or less, Houston suffocates, heart-stops and floats around the bathtub until discovery, now claim, how sorry they are they partied on.

What contempt they demonstrate for a woman’s death, and how typical of media-crazed opportunists to claim horror over their partying, while a woman, who had given up on herself, walked into her karmic death. Not like she did not know she had fallen apart and was destroying her career, life, and body.

These friends, co-musicians, media moguls are sucking her famed coated bones dry, and like Presley’s personal staff at Graceland, whose claim to fame was how close they were to the bathroom when Elvis crapped and blew out his heart, Houston’s friends at the party central Hilton, are already building up their stories, and those whose rooms were on the same floor of her suite, can create the best sugar-coated lies in order to garner the important invitations from talk show hosts.

So let the milking of the diva’s dark and mysterious death begin, singing stars of America. The rest of us, out here, know what the game is, just like in ancient Rome, as it imploded upon itself and degenerated into greed, insouciance, and fear, know exactly how much you are drooling at the mouth to find a way to turn this into a golden, marketing opportunity for you and your trademarked, baby’s name.

Tired of lying to myself about my life. Houston’s death, as little as it effects me, as I, like you, knew she had become a drugged up, alcoholic, and her life blipped off my radar, think, based on my screwed up life, right now, those words so often left for the last pronouncement, when realizing possibilities of our lives: There now, but for the grace of a higher power, go I.

Close Enough, Radical Explosion

copyright 2012 Danise Codekas

Solar flares are driving me to drive too fast, in the sunshine, with the radio blasting, 15mph over the speed limit. Have to figure out why my computer is not talking to my printer, this week. New drivers? A disconnect which encompasses all my current social, physical, and mental accumulated wisdoms, to this point in time.

The unequivocal truth about the current time, in the universe, has to be the fact that that the current cosmic time is referred to as when all our past which no longer serves our growth, needs to be evicted from our lives.

So many lies I have told myself about me. All those negative beliefs about who you are, what your purpose is in the universe, need to be let go now. You have amount a year to do it, given the way cosmology is impacting all our lives.

There is not a lot of time to re-arrange our lives, o reach and strive for that which I truly want and can have, has shut me down in quiet unbelief while sitting in 14 inches of snow, and an ice storm without electr4icity, in order to process it. The massive solar eruptions, the past few days, of course, disturbed my complacency and contemplation, for which I am eternally grateful.

When earth changes, economics and personal revelations arise in the blink of an eye and a decision must be made, in order to advance, or vegetate, as we are now.

I thought I was safe for a while from impromptu, important actions, in changing my life. What a fool have I been? No? Yes! Unimaginable awareness of what life events meant in my life, and how refusing to own my wisdom,and the struggle is has taken to get to a point of clarity.

A half a million people have been wiped off the earth in the past 2 years, from natural disasters alone. Just wiped away, along with homes, animals, earth and man-made objects created for our survival. It took minutes to wipe off these souls fro the face of the earth. minutes, seconds.

The last 2 years have been hell, for most of us, if not all.  The ability to adjust to our new understandings, which involved moving, leaving, going, abandoning, waking up, or hiding away.

When the sun shines, when the joy breaks through in those seconds of momentary brilliance and awareness, all this crap I am enduring, struggling with, disappears, in a minute, a second.

The false reality which I hold onto appears clearly inside my head. My mind and heart know what the truth is, even though, my current physicality on the earth, in my office, in my living room, remains unchanged, until I begin to release stuff, clean up and re-arrange, and begin to divest myself of also the objects and stuff which have served well in my chapel of life, here in the Pacific NW.

Along with self-awareness and enlightenment, comes the appreciation of different, art,music, writers, vistas and revolutionary men and women, who, like myself, are battling themselves out of their old egg-shaped energy forms and auras, because the old forms do not sustain, exist, or allow growth into expansive new lives.

I find myself taking different roads, meeting new people synchronistically, and enjoying and celebrating those friends and families who are doing incredible new things, in their own lives, yet, seem to be in shell shock, that they are doing them. They believe it is unlike anything they have ever done before and do not know why they did something.

I cheer them on because knowing the why of doing something new, bringing something new into their lives, based on a gut reaction , rather than fear-based analytical, hierarchical social customs, they are breaking out of the mold and terrors which have enfolded them in pasty grays and ribald fluxes.

Clarity and joyous possibilities arise and learning their own value and worth and wisdom flies into their lives, and mine, with incredible speed and accuracy. The universe is responding to desires based on self-revealing truths, and anyone who is hiding inside their cars, houses, playing the classy voyeur, or virile stalker are being identified and identified.

We are becoming our true selves, as a massive group cosmic awareness overtakes us all, on the planet. Like the earth expands and breathes, as New Mexico land mass expands because of underground earth changes from the underworld of geysers beneath Wyoming, our bodies are also boiling away the dross of our old lives, that no longer serve, and we expand into things we could never have imagined which change our lives, quickly.

We are bursting to experience that which we have wanted to for a long tine, only difference is that many of know that now all the power to create our lives, as we see in our hearts, is possible and is occurring in 2012.

Sitting here, at 230pm, in blazing sunshine, hot sun, solar flares coming directly at me from 93 million miles away, blasting my third eye, and 5th chakra wide open, without a coat, and wearing sunglasses, leads me to believe that perhaps my time in the Northwest is at end.

I need more sun. It is time to go back to Hawaii or California or Santa Fe and the fear I feel dissipates, about many changes and grows in others. I will simply have to throw it back across the cosmic Grand Canyon, and take a new breath.

The time is not far off when I will leave this place,where I live. It can be measured in months, I think. Not many, not few,however 2012 is the year of transition for me, in so many ways, that I see now, and in so many others which, I await their arrival.

“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

                                     ― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Extremities of Courage

© 2012 Danise Codekas

“Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.”--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Well, did you think it was going to be easy slipping over the edge into 2012? Personally, I did not think about it until my life and the lives of those around me starting intruding into a quiet, well manicured life, which we all seemed to deluding ourselves about for some time, it appears.

“No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so.” ---Xenophanes

Not sure what you are about now, however, given the tragic events which encompassed universal notoriety during the past few months, my guess would be energetic seeking of your new private dream, scooping up the detritus of last year’s screw ups, which you so denied meant anything at the time you screwed up.

The immediate understanding, at the moment of impact, the results of the words, actions and masks you wear for us, out here, as you hide, still, the results of behemoth attempts, to become that which you are not feeling, you can become, as your soul screams out for you to become and grab onto those things you really want, really are, now.

Really, what do you want? If you know, this is the time to go get it. Banging your head on the seashore is getting old, when you want to let go of the familiar and move into the unknown horizons, which you close your eyes to because you do not deserve them; you have not suffered enough, completed enough penances, paid enough in pain and loveless lifetimes.

“I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from the start. I had to go out in the world and become strong, to discover my mission in life.”--Tina Turner

Guess what? No one cares. No one is asking you to get on your knees and beg forgiveness, pay a price, or deny yourself dreams, or even explore illusions which you were so frightened of, so sure something or someone was not real, yet you never reached out to touch, or ask, or journey to discover.

“If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”-Margaret Thatcher

No one cares, since everything you have now, or do not have, has been your choice. You and I both live in a free will universe. Everything you are now, is what you have chosen to be, and I am not asking you to pay a price or penance for what you have done, since, should we meet, all those experiences from the moment we look in one another’s eyes, are who you are in that present moment.

“You take your problems to a god, but what you really need is for the god to take you to the inside of you.”--Tina Turner

We may not connect; or, we may. Regretting that which you fucked up, in the past, yesterday, does it affect you today, this moment?

If that which you have desired ,your entire life, is offered you, right now, and you turn from it, because you do not believe there are other humans who are compassionate,  and understand that there is only serendipity and random synchronicity, which has import for a meeting to have taken place, between you?

There are grander, cosmic themes in our lives, in 2012, only because the lessons and clarity you received last year, is going to be put into action this year.

If you sit on your hands, and don’t make the phone call, run away and hide somewhere, bury yourself in excuses to not explore that which has laid festering in your soul, for a few years, because you lacked courage to pursue someone, something, then your life will be less than it could be.

“It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.”--Margaret Thatcher

You are not going to die if you pursue someone or something which you know impacted you with FORCE. How many people in your life affected you like that? How many ideas, have sat in your soul for years, which you keep smothering, keep pushing down into that dark corner of soliloquys,  enamored of its own voice, and passionless fears?

Pathetic? Is this a word you can ascribe to an attempt to touch someone, work for something, create something, in the past few years which you, still, to this day, are still castrating yourself over?

“Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.”--Jon Bon Jovi

Either connect, create, or be afraid for another year, another minute. Free-will universe is where you and I both exist. Together.

So, perhaps, a fool, I appear to be. Perhaps, a woman who speaks in circles and confusion, from a mind and heart that is tired of self-created mindlessness, which created loneliness, confusion and fire and rain, all of which seemed to block out the truth, I hid, inside.

If you could walk out that door, right now, without any consequences to your livelihood, or structured relationships, to see and talk or examine that person or situation which you desire the most, or fly to get the answer to a question, from someone, which you have thought about for days, years.

Call someone and ask the questions, without fear or reprisals, if you had a no-impact universal free-pass, would you go, call, try? This is what 2012 is all about. Your opportunity to reach clarity and recognize lies and truths. No more masks are needed to pretend, to hide who you are and what you want.

Why not act from depths, rather than fears?

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.”--Mohandas Gandhi