Note: This post was meant to go up yesterday, as an update to the post for the day before, but got derailed by a serious wordpress glitch. Now it’s the third day, and things are about the same with Shadow. He’s definitely back, but still confused, still some respiratory distress, and today we walked only 1.5 miles. (And trying to correct this update to the day before yesterday on the day after yesterday has ME mirroring his confusion . . .)
Today (i.e, yesterday, remember) he’s perky, seemingly his old self, despite panting again, in the same way, but not for as long, in the middle of the night. Eager for our morning walk, though I’ve decided to limit them to two miles from now on. Change in routine: take two walks, one with Shadow, one without.
I sense the panting is related to some kind of respiratory/heart issue, his way of nearing the end. No serious muscular problems at this point. Amazing, having to care for a near-dying animal as I am approaching the end myself, though with a much longer trajectory (maybe!) and for me, it involves . . . finishing what I started, damn it! Can’t let go until all my “legacy projects” are done.
Oh yeah?
What a joke!
How many old people have said and thought exactly that before they died. I’m reminded of my deceased father-in-law, Amos Joel, father of the cell phone, who died at 93. He was determined to write a book documenting his personal experience of the history of telecommunications. But he never finished; in fact, the one his family nicknamed “famous Amos” barely got started, stuck during his final years on outline and introduction. Here’s his obit:
It’s interesting, this all-too-human need to leave a trace when we go. Traditionally, this trace would be one’s children, grandchildren, etc. And I do have both.
But for me, that’s “not enough.”
Really?
WHY?
One very obvious trace that I live with every day is the wonderful redesign and renovations made by Steve, a now deceased dear friend of mine, to this house in Bloomington, Indiana. Legacies in the material world are VERY obvious. This trace continuously reminds me of him.
What is the fear of “not leaving a trace?” especially for me, who knows that “I”, my soul, is NOT my body? (Thanks to early OOB experiences.) Who, as a result, does not fear death? (And so, not easily mind-controlled. For example, I was not at all caught up in the covid psy-op. Not once, not ever; not from the beginning of the deep state global propaganda rollout in its increasingly obvious determination to kill us all.)
I neighbor of mine, 65 and just now retired, confessed during one of our recent bi-weekly Community Dinners we have been holding for ten years or so (one of my — obviously impermanent — legacies, perhaps; if it continues after I leave) that he was “wrestling“ with his need to have a legacy. Seemed almost embarrassed to mention it, because he sees his need as egocentric. And maybe it is.
Is it?
And if so, is that all it is?
I see myself as having to fulfill the purpose of my life, which is, as I have intoned solemnly, in pretended jest, for many decades: to open space; as in, “openspace is a VERB.” So doesn’t this imply that I should just appreciate that the task is both amorphous and endless, so why worry about pretending to make sure it happens and how “I” (my ego?) contributed? Yet somehow, I have a (deluded?) sense that I must accomplish a very specific task regarding this mission before I depart.
Oh? Then what is it? Another, ironic part of me asks.
Response? I have no idea!
Even so, the older I grow, the more I see my life as driven by the “opening space” mission; that I am here, on this planet, during this time, to open space, on all levels. To inspire us to melt, burst out of, punch through, distintegrate — the various boxes we put ourselves into — personal, interpersonal, social, cultural, metaphysical, etc. Which for me, means that, even on the most minute of levels, my every thought and action counts. The subtle (etheric?) landscape of my “influence” is (or can be) both limitless, and homeopathic.
I’m here to ask us to notice how any spacial “frame, ” no matter what the size, pretends to put limits on, or within, what is ultimately, the infinite expansive oneness of Being. That goes for all of language, and is especially obvious in English, as every child learns, pointing to a “thing” in the “outside” world, and pronouncing its “name.” Bottle. Box. Blanket.
Likewise with what we call “time.” I sense the astronomical Big Bang hypothesis as an attempt to identify a temporal limit, by asserting a beginning, before which was nothing. As in mathematics, before numbers: “zero.” Why do humans feel that need to find the beginning of the beginning? Can’t we imagine all that is as all that is and ever was and will be? No end and no beginning?
How DO we break through our frames? How DO we open space? — I ask, rhetorically.
And answer (or pretend to answer; which is it? and what difference does it make?):
By embracing paradox. Yin and yang. Over and over again. Not this or that, but this and that. Opposites, pushing forward in ever- dynamic struggle for dominance, brief integration, splitting, dominance, integration — over and over again, calling us always, for more, more! For when opposites do, even momentarily, integrate; WHEN WE DO LEARN TO OCCUPY THE (INFINITELY EXPANDING) SPACE BETWEEN SO-CALLED OPPOSITES, LIFE OPENS, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
My main “legacy,” in the material realm, possibly, if the five-year transition (that, mapped astrologically, began in August 2023, the very month of son Colin’s aortic dissection) is successful, will be to secure this place, this Green Acres Permaculture Village, as a new template for a transformation of the suburbs that celebrates individuality while connecting humans with each other and the conscious living Earth that sustains and nourishes all.
Individuality and Community: both equally necessary; a dynamic, constantly shifting, paradoxical requirement.
Individuality, absent Community, tends toward predatory capitalism.
Community absent Individuality, morphs into socialism, communism, transhumanism.
We individualistic westerners have endured way too much separation, isolation, atomization — all encouraged by architecture and city planning at least since the late 40s, 50s, etc., post-world war II, when all the “ticky tacky little boxes” started to get built for returning GIs and their wives and children. My dad was among those returning GIs.
Another legacy, for me, if I succeed, is an archive of my written work, both published and unpublished, over the decades. I have been working on this archive, my recapitulation project, in various ways for about six years now . . . And just as I said out loud last year, and still think, to myself, this year, “one more year and it will be done.”
Another is a recent and growing reverberation that stems back to Crone Chronicles magazine, which I founded in 1989, and published until 2001. See one current outgrowth, CAW: https://croneawakeningwisdom.wildapricot.org/
and https://www.facebook.com/people/Crone-Awakening-Wisdom/61556115513197/
I participated in the original zoom group that got CAW going, last year, to replace and expand, after 30 years, an earlier outgrowth, Crones Counsel, a wonderful annual meeting of elder women in various places throughout the U.S. CAW aims to connect not just crones with each other, but with awakening women of all ages.
In any case, with so much unfinished, I’m not ready to die, that’s for sure. Not my ego, and I don’t think my soul, either!
But of course, I could disincorporate at any time.
And that’s okay, says soul.
Shadow, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to need an archive or any legacy. He reminds me to live in the present moment, for that really, is all there is. All the rest is fluff, impermanent. And to love, and to be loyal, and to enjoy sensuous pleasures like rolling in the springtime grass, which he does, back and forth, over and over, until finally, when done, stands up delirious with joy! Like getting his hips rubbed by Marita, leaning into her probing fingers so deeply that he almost falls over . . . Like sleeping, whenever he lands, lots of hours each day. And that nose! Can you imagine the curiosity, the pleasure, the trigger alert of the canine nose?
We may have the “higher mind,” or is it the ego? that seeks to be remembered when we’re gone. But the memory, and perhaps even the soul, of little Shadow will live on in human hearts, just because.
Just because!
No reason needed.
That’s just for silly humans.