Pam commented on the Blue Moon post:

Hi. I have been trying to think of what to say but can't think of anything except, I am so sorry about your friends and I can't imagine what they (and you) are going through. Do you believe that our spirits live on (in other dimensions)? I struggle with it; it seems impossible but at the same time I've heard and read stories from people that makes me ponder. - Pam

Little Beauty, I have already wept, wailed, wallowed, and cursed for them all many times over enough to fulfill any lamenting custom in several lands. I know I'm being selfish about it, especially in Sally Jo's case because I just want them HERE, not THERE. When I wah for them, it's the blindered side of my Inner Child having a temper tantrum because some really fun playmates are leaving my party.

Death IS life! It's SIDS for Seniors. We Americans have a tendency to overlook that. I'd like to thank the predominant cultural religions for that: You die, you go before your god, get judged pretty harshly for your worldly stupidities, and depending on whether you ascribe to the Vatican, Yaweh, Mohammed, or to Dante Alighieri, you're sent to various hotspots around the universe with varying degrees of unpleasantries.

I personally think all this is an opague attempt at trying to control the masses and whip them into shape. Support the church, pay the tithes, follow the leader, even if the leader is telling you to believe some really stupid and irrational things. Crowd control. Think Jim Jones, the Inquisition, the 'Holy Wars', Jihad.

I lean towards taking the responsibility of my own actions while here and cutting out the middleman or priest to intercede for me as best I can. I know what kind of Didoes I pull that I shouldn't have - I was THERE when I did it. It cuts down on the coin, lets you sleep late on holy days, but more importantly, the guilt is incised right out of the mix.

So. We're scared to death of death and it's consequences, which I believe makes us bale on life, too. We don't want to face the big D so we live as if there will be no tomorrow wasting our time on piddling shit and overlooking the fact that this is a really good theme park here with lots to see and do.

As for our spirits living on, I've had this proven to me a number of times. I wrote about one physical manifestation of this in 'The Afterlife of Sam, The Dog' in January 2007. I've also talked to the dead on many occaisions. Before you reach for the Straight 8 - the jacket with eight formal ties, try asking the 'out there' for some help on an everyday project. It's fun and informative. I 'talk' to my dad all the time to ask for help with things mechanical or carpentry because he was a worldly ace with it. I more often than not get an amazingly quick solution on how to do something that I've not done before, something totally not in the vein I was thinking. Ascribe this to spiritism or Psychology 101. I don't really care as long as it works.

I wrote almost every single college paper on autodrive using the same approach. Whether you want to call this savantism or that I possibly could have been given the ideas, and sometimes, footnotes to support them from an outside source is up to you. I've quit trying to persuade folk around to my view of living.

Can I give you some directions on where to start your query on why I think psychism and 6th sense issues are real? Read " I am Psychic", also from January of this year. Read some of the new books out on fuzzy and quantum physics.

So, young Padowan, let Yoda be your guide on this matter. Remember the training of Luke. Listen, you should. Buy or rent the entire set of philosopher George Lucas' works and watch them.

When it comes right down to it, each of us has to believe in our own theories. I just offer mine. But one thing I know as utter, unmitigatable truth is that when Death happens, it won't matter what your beliefs or theories are. What awaits us (or not) will be there.

It is what it is.

You know now that it was the blue moon in May, as in ‘Once in a blue moon’ - two full moons in the same month? Well. Yes. Annie, Teresa and I used this to go on a Red Eye Turnaround to Augusta, Georgia to see Sally Jo.

You’ll also guess if you’re a reader that I tend to pidge around when I have something serious to write about. Just one tiny bitty bit of chicken shit to my nature of balls out, hair afire, Mach 10, 60 MPH in one spot. So. Sally’s dying, don’t you know.

She has this shit ass illness called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, as I've told you. It’s a wicked bad disease that mimics Parkinson’s and Lou Gerhigs Disease. She’ll die by choking. I watched her suffer through several of these spasms as she tried to eat orally on our visit. She refuses to give up the taste of food even though she’s intubated for direct meals and medications through a tube in her abdomen.

Sally always was stubborn like that. She refused to give up on me when I was a non-responsive basket case drooling on the sofa and contemplating a trip to the woods with Sara Jane, my Rueger. She and Carol Gray saw to it that I went on holiday to the hospital.

She refused to give up on her kids, too, her sisters, and any of the cases she ever worked as a deputy sheriff. Murderers confessed to her and showed her where they hid the bodies when they talked to no one else. Loonies told her about ‘Wonderment Sticks’ and I made one for her to shake at the most reprobate of speeders complete with grape root windy-ness and jewels to get them to slow down. She keeps it under the pix of me and her and Carol.

And she’s refusing this goddamn awful disease that will eat her nerve responses until every neuron in her tall ass ole body just shuts down and quits.

I told Katy and Sue to fly me up and we’ll see her out together. None of us want her to choke to death (a horrid way to go) and we hope that she’ll fall into a peaceful coma and sleep herself into the afterlife. If not, I hope the medicoes have the cajones to help her out.

I’ve thought much about the Three Norns with all this illness and dying. The Three Norns or Fates, the Great Wyrd Sisters who card and spin the skein of our life, then weave us into being, determine the length of our days, and then cut us from the weft of experience and age when we have wended our way to the other side ever recycling,

I read my mama the Book Of Fates by Z. Budapest on the stages of life – one that I was reviewing for the International newspaper, Goddessing championed and published by friend Willow Lamont - as she was dying under the aegis of Hospice in 1999. I read the last pages and squeezed the book Z wrote – something you do when a read has been so good and you could find no other words than The End or the copyright page. Ma looked up from the bed and said, ‘Just in time’. And it was. She passed very shortly afterward. I will love anything Z Budapest writes from here on out because of that book.

Now. Besides Sally Jo, I have my mentor Shirley DesRochers in a pickle in Tampa General Hospital with a hell of a hack and whack job on her colon for diverticulitis. This is the latest in several of them and she’s been fighting fistulas, infections, and you put on plastic when you go in to see her. She left me a fatalistic message on my machine before she went in over a month ago. I save it because she tells me what a good, good friend I’ve been to her. They told her there would be no more surgeries. She doesn't have enough colon yet to digest a taco, let alone take a shit.

I promised her tonight when I trudged up huffing to the 8^thfloor from a parking lot that was built in the back forty that I’d bring my cards and play straight with her when I read to say what I see. She asked me. I will. No matter how grim the news. She can take it. She has gonads, too.

Death doesn’t scare me personally. I just hate to leave a mess. And. I hate to be left behind by all the enormous Goddess women and men my life has wrapped around. Doesn’t seem quite right, although the sidekicks and good guys always get whacked in the movies.

When I gack, I hope some friend will write a line or two about me saying that they missed whatever quality about me that struck them as worthy. I know that I shall miss my girls and their faces.

Pissed Off Cat

I just had to share this with you. Granted. The language is more than graphic, but it spoke to my heart. I had a drive and did close to the same thing at every car rolling by, innocent or not. When I realized what I was doing, I started laughing at myself. Talk about Road Rage!

I watch people in cars. I know that's unusual. We're set up to just watch the car as if IT was alone and making decisions to accelerate, brake, turn, hesitate or just cruise. It's a little like being in Christine, the movie about the maelific car who deliberately tries to kill folk.

So. I open the mailbox and here sits Pissed Off Cat sent to me by Martha. M says she got a note from her sister, Celia in Alabama who was tempted to do a genealogy search to see if their family was related to the cat in any way. M allowed that it could be the case.

Cars are our last bastion of privacy. We can pick our nose, sing, curse, think and even scream (ahem) on occaision - all with impugnity. That is, until Homeland Security figures out how to listen in by building bugging and homing devices in every Detroit model.

Swimming In The Big Creek

So. Linda Conner and I sat on the deck outside the room she's living in at Dogpatch this evening and talked about the heat. It is a matter of fact here in Florida. We are the Northernmost Caribbean Colony, don't you know. Listed temperate wise as Subtropical, having palms, beaches, and many of the denizens of the tropics flying by and nesting, we also have subtropical weather. It's hot in the summer. And sticky like sex.

Linda mentioned that she brought her bathing suit from Maryland and allowed as how she had swam in the Potomac. She said she remembered to pack the suit thinking that she'd go to the YMCA or the beach. "Posh. Tish. There's a 300 foot wide and three to four hundred foot deep channel cut right off the back of Dogpatch", I says. Adding that all she need be on the lookout for is water snakes and amorous gators during season. SWFTMUD (SwiftMud - the local water management authority in Southwest Florida) keeps them culled out.

The water is clear and cool and serves as the reservoir for drinking water here in the Tampa Bay area and points south. Okay. Hopefully, I won't pee in it. Fish are abundant and mostly left unmolested except by a few local fishers and water birds like Heron, Grey and Brown Pelicans, Eagles, Falcons, Cormorants, Seagulls and Terns. The fish grow so big that the big birds often drop them on lawns - instant cerviche.

The neighborhood kids across the canal know what kids have known for Millennia - that the water was made for swimming. Indeed. I swam these very same shores as a young girl when it was Six Mile Creek and before the Army Corps of Engineers came in to better it. There were small waterfalls then. And palms, palmettos, magnolias, vines big enough to hold a full-grown man. Gators, Florida Panther and Brown Bear thrived alongside Gopher Tortoises. They are all gone from the bed of that once lush and mystical place of my youth. They were bulldozed and bermed against the natural flooding that made sure this land was fertile and welcome for many species.

Instead of the meandering zees of the natural creek bed, the Army Engineers made sure that it was tamed into a nice, straight line. The Army likes everything straight, including their soldiers. They blasted the natural blowholes of springs, which fed the Creek. Those springs turned the water a lily blue and the underwater sand landscape lunar white. Water in Florida only gets brown when the leaves from oak and other indigenous trees tincturate it with tannins from the leaves when they fall in.

I swam in it then. One of a long succession of Florida denizens behind Temuccuans, Seminole, Florida Crackers who gathered wild Spanish cattle out of the underbrush to build their ranch herds. I'll swim in it now that it has lost all but a whisper of its original beauty and majesty. Maybe it will wash off some of the years I've accumulated since then. But, I'm sure the waters will do the same thing to me now as they did then. Chill.

Panther

I was ten years old the first time I saw God. This huge canal I live on was then just a creek that meandered for six or so miles draining into the Alafia River, then into Cockroach Bay which shelters fish nurseries and scallop beds.

I spent many hours there in defiance of my mother who extolled the dangers of those wild woods . She warned me about escaped prisoners who sometimes ran from the county jail downstream and hid there amid the palmettos. To her mind, those men were more to fear than the gators and snakes that she had come upon there when she defied her mother to go visit the creek in her youth.

Never saw any escaped prisoners. Me and the neighborhood kids once saw a body floating down under the train trestle when we'd gone down there to swim. We found out later that it was a drunk that stumbled into the creek and drowned out behind the Six Mile Creek tavern upstream. But nothing live ever appeared moving on two feet with steely eyes the color of stones bent on murder and mayhem to a child . So I continued to go. Mostly by myself.

There were small springs and pools surrounded with Louisiana irises, elephant ears big enough to use as an umbrella when brief, angry summer storms came up. Paths wound their way around stands of palmetto and water oaks, the sand sparkled in the sun from quartz or mica flecks like diamonds beckoning you on. Huge woody liana vines were a favored pastime to play a wannabe Tarzan. One of my favorite trees was a huge magnolia growing formally in the midst of all the gangly oaks. I loved the glossy leaves and would fashion a crown out of the dinner plate sized blossoms. I sniffed in the heady fragrance of them until my face was yellow with pollen and I was almost drugged from the rich smell.

Sometimes, I would just sit on the banks of the stream watching fish or making stick villages on the sandy paths. I knew how to pull young palmetto shoots to chew off the tender pink-white flesh on the root end and there were huckleberrys and fox grapes aplenty. Whenever things at home got out of control, I sought the comfort of that swamp.

My sister Lynda and me once went to cross the creek at Masaro's cattle crossing - normally just shin deep. But there'd been a hurricane three days before and we were swept away by the clawing current that had undercut the sandy bottom. We swan diagonally to the bank, catching a branch and then quickly letting go when the current occupant - a cotton mouth mocassin - objected with a hiss. We finally made the other side at a steep curve in the creek path, me pulling Lynn out of the water behind me.

She laughed the whole escapade through. I was a bit more sober for my three years on her and knew that we had been very lucky not to have been pulled into a gator hole or an undertow. I'd had my share of stupid living playing chicken on the train trestle that spanned the creek as it blew a frantic warning to my skinny, small form. I would dive into the waters when I could feel the rails vibrate and see the dust snake up from the heavy ties sitting on their bed of quartz rip-rap. I only did it a couple of times. News of a neighborhood boy who lost a leg while trying to jump onto a box car and ride down to his road somehow sunk home. I used to wonder if they ever found the rest of his leg and what they did with it.

Crossing Masaro's Dairy pasture was another wag at danger. If you timed it just right, you could cut off a good bit of leg work by cutting through the back corner. You had to ease yourself through the strands of barb wire and mind you didn't tear your shirt or your skin, both of which assured a march to the switch tree in the back yard. Mr. Masaro kept Brahma bulls in his herd for beef and they policed the pasture with a vigor to be admired by any Green Beret unit looking on any intruder as a threat to their territory and dominance over the few heifers peaceably grazing .

The trick was to time it so that the bulls were on the other side of the big pasture with their asses to you. You had to get through the barb wire fence on the quick and silent, high tail it the long block to the other fence, then skinny your way through that one before you were spotted. I once spent a miserable afternoon in a live oak with Brahma's grazing and farting below until their simple cow minds wandered them off to the far side of the pasture and it was safe to shinny down the tree and out through the fence to home again.

It was on one of these successful shortcuts that I saw Him. I was slowly and silently picking my way through the late morning sun along my favorite path. On both sides, palmetto fans waved in the dappled sun filtering through Spanish Moss beards in the trees above. He came out of a palmetto stand on the path before me, all dusky gold and brown and shining. His eyes glowed like amber. A long, pink tongue panted out his rhythm between sparkling white teeth that looked about a foot long.

He was a big cat, fully grown, sleek and fat. We both stood stock still, regarding each other. Six steps would have carried me to him, so close I could smell the musky fur, but I was still, quiet. I do not remember being afraid. I remember being in a place of awe. The wind stopped. The trees and branches absolutely fixed. The air danced with an energy I've seen so very few times since. I don't know how long we stood looking at each other, but it seemed like forever and a second.

A blink, then two, he just melted into the palmetto stand across the path from me and didn't move a branch or crack a twig under His big feet. After all, I was nothing to concern Himself over. Aware that something very special had happened to me, I felt privaledged. Knowing it was special and had not happened to very many people, I knew I could tell no one. I was also positive that despite my knowing that I'd spent a moment in utter holiness and divinity, an ass whipping would have awaited the disclosure and would surely have spoiled that moment.

I became obsessed with religion, God, divinity, the spiritual path. Sometimes my reading was uplifting. Other times, it was dark and morose. Mostly, religion was confusing.

I asked to go to the Methodist church next to my elementary school with Patty Brian and was allowed. I found disappointment there when I would here the message of brotherhood extolled at the pulpit and the petty sniping and gosip aimed at a poor family from my neighborhood. I went a second time to be sure that this confusion of Christian message, Hades behavior was indeed not a fluke and quit.

I am also saddened that such a majestic creature should be in the twilight of their lives with diminishing numbers hovering around 100 of them. Texas cougars have been introduced into the gene pool in hopes of replenishing the species. The offspring are lighter in color and much smaller than the big male I remember. Maybe it is because I was so small and thin.

Over the years, this sacred and special moment when I was indeed in the presence of something both graceful and divine has become incorporated into my spirituality. I don't think I've ever told the tale whole to anyone. It is my miracle, my introduction to sacredness. Now you have it. Trying to explain how and why I was so affected at such an early age would also somehow sadden the colors of it. Perhaps it will recall your first discovery of something sacred outside of yourself. So I'll leave it to you.

The art above is by Edward Bierly and can be puchased from the National Wildlife Federation.

Molly's Gone

I read that newspaper columnist and writer Molly Ivins passed from her bout with breast cancer. I'll miss her. She was a hellraiser that managed to get the ridiculous antics of politicians everywhere across for what they were with humor and satire.

Martha sent me this link that has a film clip on it of Molly's "Dildo Diaries". There is language and images that may be offensive to some, but no matter what your bent, she will show you the idiocy that passes for government.

Visitors

Sasha called me from Valdosta. She is on her way to visit a friend in Tampa and wants to see her old Auntie while here. Anastasia Lynda Maria Kerik-Coglianese is the only living reminder I have that I had a sister - viable and real. She is called 'Sasha' , a nod to her Siberian ancestry that lies atop her Italian paternal surname. Her mother was murdered and left in the Yuma River in Arizona like so much flotsam in 1986.

I haven't seen Sasha in four years since she called me from 2 miles up the road four years ago to announce that she was bringing 'friends' ...which consisted of two gay men, one a transvestite, and a young woman of questionable bent. They stayed at Dog Patch a varying amount of time up to 2 months - except for Kent, who really wanted a change from his background of managing MacDonald's restaurants. Kent stayed two years and continued to find a life in Florida. The rest went home in dribs and drabs, Sasha included. She tired of the slow cotillion here at DP.

Such are the vagaries of youth. I used to do the same thing at their age - my early 20s. I was footloose and could go where the wind carried. No longer. Age seems to have weighted me down in ways hard to describe to you. But you know. We no longer can pick up and waft away on the breeze like an unfettered dandelion blossom when we age. We seem to need more than the iron in Geritol to hold us to the Earth. It's as if our fractious bones are ready and able to pick up and fly without leathered flesh to the next realm at any moment.

So. I am looking forward to seeing my Baby Girl. I fell in love with her at the Tampa International Airport in the 1970s when her tiny squirm of a body was thrust at me for the first time. Lynn and Ed had come to meet me at the airport. I wished that I had been around for her growing up when she was without her mother. But I was engaged with struggles of my own and could not afford forays out to rescue anyone else.

Now, she is grown up. I can tell her stories of her mother, including confirming that her bent for travel comes from her mom. Lynn was always up for an adventure, including an unexpected trip to Columbia that happened on the way to college classroom. She came home with an incredible emerald, stories to tell and no homework.