saying goodbye...

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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

- Will Rogers

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Well, my run here at the old farmhouse has come to an end.

I've live here for 13 years, longer than anywhere I've ever lived. Unfortunately I ran into some medical issues last summer, both to me and one of the dogs.

Then my roommate lost her ability to pay her share of rent last fall after she lost her job. She stayed on thru to the spring of this year with her newborn son. Because she had no work I was left with keeping the utilities paid, plus all my other bills (including the medical bills) and I was lucky I was even able to afford food.

As a single dad I raised my 2 kids here. There was no way I was putting a new mom and her newborn baby out on the street. Plus she was a great roommate, a friend and I loved her and her baby like family.

When I was raising my children here my daughter was always on me about getting food stamps. Call me stubborn, call me a masochist, heck! call me a hard-headed Swede. But I was an able bodied male and damned if I was going to let Uncle Sugar get into my life any more than it already was.

So it is that at 67teen I find myself once again with major life decisions to make and new changes - in whatever form they take - to deal with.

If you be of a mind to help I've started a self-fundraiser to help pay off my medical bills and to maybe help my transition into the next phase of my life.

Ideally... I will find someone, an organization or an individual, somewhere, that will find me the perfect fit for their need of a resident caretaker.

It's my perfect job. I do carpentry, plumbing, household electric, painting, gardening and I'm a photographer and writer. I've been a medical amateur professional for 2 decades as an events medicine volunteer. I did wildlife rehab in the early '80s. I am a published writer. I am a  published photographer.

And I love the land.

Living in nature is where I need to be. I've lived off the grid. I love isolation and quiet.

I've spent 60 years being squished and squeezed by the forces of conformance. But I DON'T fit. Sure I've muddled through, going where the universal winds of whim carry me, but "civilization" is all just too much.

I am not a consumer. I am a warrior for my people (friends, family and community) and for the earth's living beings without a voice. I am a teacher, perhaps even a bit of a healer. I am an artist.

I am an elder and there is still strength in my wings. I know I shall fly but where will I land?

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“It’s clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it’s not easy.”

- Terence McKenna

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aaah... summer - or why the hell are you killing my elephants? (and whales and sharks and lions and rhinos and humans...) Part 1

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And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.

- Black Elk

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Trying times my friends, trying times. Hang on to your hats 'cause this shift is just starting to get interesting...

... or not. All is illusion. Matter does not matter. At least it must not because we have been such shits as stewards of our little globe of matter.

Over the decades I've fought many battles, stood with many of my relatives on this line or that. I've made great friends - and few enemies. I've managed to maneuver the morass that is this pit some call civilization with more than my share of luck.

  

And I don't like it. When I was a kid outside is what mattered. Lizards and bugs and birds and reptiles and all the critters and leafy ones. My curiosity kept me busy turning over rocks and peering into water and learning about the life around me. 

And I was lucky to have great parents and a world that didn't consider children walking without adult supervision a crime. We came and went. We rode bikes. We played games and sports. The school playgrounds stayed open after school... ice cream was a nickel a scoop.

Then one day I ran into civilization head on.

I was probably 10, maybe 11 and collected butterflies and other winged things. I knew their life cycles, their Latin names and where they roamed. I could draw them with skill and a knowing eye.

Until... the day I was discovered by 3 older boys while I was chasing butterflies in one of our local parks. I don't remember much other than I was scared shitless. I'd been picked on - heck I had an older brother - but this was 3 bullies. And they bullied me of my innocence, shamed me for my curiosity and study and they pushed me around for their amusement.

I never chased another butterfly. I stopped catching tadpoles and watching them grow to become frogs.

I mean in one sense it was ok, all cultures have their coming-of-age initiations. Mine was just not ceremonial, kind or honoring. But it certainly filled the bill for the civilization in which I would grow up.

to be continued...
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I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.

― Abraham Lincoln

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