Neural networks

            In some way my neural network has started the work of Spider woman in stretching its web and integrating all aspects of my experiences to build a home.  So no matter where I am on the web, no matter what intersection or triangle the center has been set and strengthened.  But the thing is, I can’t predict where I will be on the web either.  I don’t know if this is good or bad.  But this is the way it is with webs and triangles.  As much as I want to be able to predict the structure of my life  I realize that it can’t be.  I can try to set the conditions but I can’t predict what will become of me in my becoming.  That would be impossible.  I would prefer that but then I suppose it could be tiresome to have everything so ordered and predictable.   Never said I chose the road.  It’s more like the road chose me.  It’s as if it forms me in time with it’s thickening geometry.

            I think of my neural network as being like Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes.  All points are equally strong and set in their triangular units.  The units that make up the web are a parcel and symbolic language;  a solid syntax of building that belies the delicate appearance of the structure.  If I fall apart, in some way, the structure will be there.  The framework is always more solid than the item, especially if it’s an organic “item.”  Bummer.  But true enough. 

            I think of Mark Rothko and his rectangles of color.  I thought of the abstract rectangles and his death and couldn’t fathom the depths he must have traveled to bring one color into relationship with the other on the canvas.  Yet his simple canvases speak volumes.  Ceremonial at times, their force pulls me back to something ancient.  They’re like eyes through to another way of knowing.  When I look at them I am drawn into a deeper place within myself and I wonder what went into his hands.

            I know that we can’t all survive our trip.  It seems that everything that informs us, changes us.   A condition of change is always an end to something or some state.  It’s not necessarily a definitive end that’s why we can use the word transformation.  There is always the residue of endings residing on the edge of beginnings.  If we dive off into the open seas we will change.  We will be seized by a new element and within this watery world everything is possible.  But we swim through the natal waters of our world and take residence in the element that gave birth to all that resides on land.  And our neural net holds us to what is true within us during this time. 

  

*Conversations with Nic available at  http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

*The wild blue - a prose poem about the movement from grief to resilience that is about personal loss but also how we are connected to our world and how our lives are folded back into the world again after we lose people or places that we love.  http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

The journey toward the chipmunk and other stories

While Homer has his heroes and gods and goddesses, as we all might some days - he never did talk about the chipmunks.  Somebody has to....

 

If anyone had wanted the goods on me they would have had it the other day. I knew there was a chipmunk in the house. It was hard enough living with that reality. I know my cat can hold the reality of a chipmunk living in the house and still get a good night’s sleep. She did it two nights running, best I can tell the amount of time that poor thing was stuck in the house.  But Molly would check the grates and sniff around the study now and then during the day. That’s what made me suspect the critter was in the house until I finally saw it and confirmed my suspicions.  But when it came out into the open, well, I just wasn’t prepared for the next part.

I was on the phone with a good friend asking for a recipe.  That’s when I saw it and it saw me seeing it.  So it wasn’t my imagination.  All the books and everything that I kept tidying up over the last few days wasn’t an indication of a new behavior pattern from Molly.  She kept to the usual items we left as a release valve on the countertops for her to knock over.  Empty creamer containers from the diners; empty skate cases from the beach. Anything that made a nice enough sound when falling on the wood floor and then had the added benefit of making a good sound as she practiced driving the ball down the soccer field.

When I saw the chipmunk and it seemed to go, “Cripes! She’s here too!” it ran back into the bowels of the house; first by the dining room and then I lost track of it and feared it went into the bathroom or the basement. I was hoping it went into the bedroom after losing the dream of it opening the front screen door and leaving of its own free will.

This seemed like the time to run and get Molly and lock her in the study. She was behind the French doors in the front room and banging the doors so much that their weak excuse for a lock wasn’t going to hold much longer. I’m not sure if my concern was more for the chipmunk or me trying to pry the chipmunk out of her jaws.  But I knew I didn’t want to face either situation.  I grabbed her and she must have thought we were going to go hunting the chipmunk together because she was eager but didn’t squirm out of my grip.

Once I got her in the study I starting whooping and hollering to rouse the chipmunk from wherever it was and drive it into the bedroom. Well, that poor thing must have freaked. Suddenly, I saw it run to the bedroom and then try to escape through the open windows. But the screens stopped it. It ran across the bed, ran into each windowsill but the screens were there every time, blocking its escape.

Then it looked like it was coming at me. My neighbor just got done telling me the other day that they do that - run right at you.  I totally freaked.  I screamed and yelled as I jumped on top of the bed. What a sight that must have been. I think I could have jumped higher than Michael Jordan at that moment. My heart was racing.  I kept on hooting and hollering really loud and the chipmunk was running amok.  'Oh shoot', I realized, I’d have to get off the bed, run to one of the windows and pop out the screen. I did just that too.  And don’t ask me how I moved so fast because I have no idea.  I jumped off the bed and unhooked the latches that held the screen in and pushed the damn thing out of its tracks and onto the flowering hastas outside.

Then the critter was trying at the windows again but the wrong ones. Damn.  It was trying for the windows but expecting the same results, no pass to the outside.  What’s that saying about trying the same things and expecting different results?  The definition of crazy. But clearly not the definition of chipmunk.  It kept trying the same thing but expected the same results.

Honestly, I wish I could tell you I know just what happened and how it got to the open window the second time but I can't even though that's all I was focused on. But when it got to the window with no screen it was just staying at the edge of the window as if maybe it still didn't have access to outside.  This time I yelled so loud I thought all the neighbors would be calling the cops.  I swear that the force of my sounds is what finally gave it the final push out the window.  It leaped. What a leap! If there were Olympics for chipmunks, really, when you think about it, there should be, it would have won the broad jump. I don’t know who displayed more valor that day. The chipmunk or my cat Molly. It certainly wasn’t me. By the way, nobody called the cops. So much for neighborhood crime watch.

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Change your mind - and you change your life

from Conversations with Nic -http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

You often create your own resources for moving on.  There are landmarks, some wisdom recipes, and other ways of knowing that are laid down like tracks for the trains but you frequently miss these or find them after you’ve gone through something.  You’ll find yourself saying, “Oh, that’s what that meant.”  It’s an initiation.  It’s a natural desire to learn something on your own.  Possibly going through these trips and transitions activates something in us that would otherwise lay dormant if it was handed over.  I came to recognize the rules of the road as I went along.  An important one was that I couldn’t change Nic.  Not a chance of that happening.  But I could alter my consciousness.  That’s how I freed myself from his pull and moved on.  And I learned about my desires.  My desires and Nic’s are much like the use of smoke itself.  Sacred and profane.  Going on the road was a way of announcing to my psyche that on this level the conversation and the journey were about my desires not Nic’s.  Before, it was all about Nic.  What he wanted.  Where he wanted me to go.  These trials are a part of journey.  If I could find a creative response to them I would be on my way home.  Creativity is a word I now freely exchange with desire because the more choices I could create the less chance of being manipulated by another.  

            Arise, wake up, and go home are three definitions of the word origin that resonate with my journey.  In finding your roots, returning to your true nature, you will wake up as they say people do when walking their true path.  All three meanings represent various levels of spiritual consciousness.  Including, getting back to basics, to your core self before someone or some element’s desire co-opted your own.  To return to your truth, arise, wake up, and head home.  It’s a pretty neat package.  Getting home is the tricky part.  There’s nothing in the hero’s manual about how you’ll go or how long it will take you.  After all, this isn’t a job regulated by the unions.

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