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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Christmas 2015

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You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.

- Terence McKenna

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For me, over these 6 decades come and gone, this season is a triad of "holidays" (holy days). Dec 21 is both the day I mark as the Winter Solstice and my mother Vivian's (RIP) birthday.

Of course these days my mom's birthday is kinda sad as I do miss her, very much. She was such a good soul and having to raise me along with my 2 1/2 siblings must have been quite the challenge.

The Winter's Solstice... aaah... this is me. Long ago I slipped into the life stream of the natural world. And that world is one that exists not just as material but as the core of my heart, mind and soul. 

I love the earth. More than my mom, my family or my friends. 

Nature is all. It is all we have and all that we have has come from her. The life here on our planet is absolutely connected to life everywhere. There is no other, there is but here. Infinite life expands in all directions - macro and micro.

But Christmas... sigh... 

... Christmas was great as a kid. Innocence makes so much believable. But Christmas is like the Kachinas. It dances into the village costumed and caricaturized. Dancing a lie, a myth but telling the story. Only when an individual is old enough are they made aware that the Kachinas are their relatives, their neighbors. The masks come off.

For me the mask came off Christmas when I started doing sweatlodge and traveling with the plant medicines, the entheogenic spirits. 

I can't in good conscience share the "joy" of giving. Our consumption will be our doom. It's as simple as that. While many of my friends understand this, the majority of modern humans are clueless. For 40 years I've been at odds with the society around me. Heck, I've flung my body at that wall more than once.

And it's never been easy! I mean I sure don't want to be the Grinch. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, especially the children's. So my kids were raised celebrating Christmas. But once we moved into the farm celebrating Christmas became an enigma. It was mid-winter, energy bills are high, I'm raising 2 kids (teenagers!) by myself and I don't believe in it. 

Luckily (?) I've never had an issue being a bit different. It was tough maturing into it but the same process was always involved - "how many sheep does it hold?" Because of me being me fighting to save an old growth forest or being a hippie working for an environmental organization in the middle of conservative ranching country or driving a truck with pot leaves painted all over it when pot was still illegal (ughhh, gross!) takes a certain amount of crazy. The rewards tho'... that's the kind.

AND driving that truck (20' flatbed loaded with tons of lumber) for almost 5 years with no violations shows a certain level of skill. 

I'm not trying to change anybody. I do work hard on occasion trying to change minds - and hearts - but mostly I want to enjoy this lifetime's sojourn on a beautiful planet. A planet I call home and mother.

Merry Christmas!

(self portrait)

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Please, if you like this, visit my other blogs as well:

AE, photographer (my photography)

Good Dog (drug war) (drug war)

Eugene Emeralds at Civic Stadium (Eugene Emeralds baseball)

for those who enjoy my work with Courtney

My Oregon Muse (adult content)

and my Facebook

My photography on FB

Thanks for visiting, feel free to leave me a comment or share with your friends.

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Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

- Terence McKenna

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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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As always I get stuck. Where do I start? What the heck do I want to say or point too? Will it even matter? Do I write about the good? Do I point out the bad shit going on?

Well hell... I guess I just start eh? Kind of like reaching into a closed sack of surprises just letting my brain decide. Could be dangerous...

Ok, best first.

Without a doubt I am a child of the '60s. Born in 1951 my teen years happened in the sixties. And good times they were. But the '70s... that was the decade of growth for me. A decade full of reaching into adulthood and expanding the new horizons being an adult offers.

There was a small, relatively obscure band that I favored back in those days, perhaps you've heard of them. While their beginnings are obscured by clouds, it does take one to meddle a bit, perhaps take one of those journeys to the dark side of the moon or climb over the wall in order to find their tunes. The group is called Pink Floyd. Yeah, I know, but all the bands took on funny names back then - Pink Floyd, Frijid Pink, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Santana... crazy stuff right?

Now no longer a teen I find that I am once again in the 60s. MY sixties. 63 freaking years old! No one told me when I was young that young-me would become old-me. So be warned! You too shall wither! Hah! so enjoy your youth, live like it does matter. Do cool things, be adventurous (and safe, duh), live life with some gusto. Love like it matters, live like it matters. And in that living after so many decades you will have your soundtracks, those songs and tunes that will trigger memory and emotion.

So ok... this relatively unknown band - Pink Floyd - does have a small but dedicated following. I suppose that some of them like me, smoke herb. As incredible as it sounds, music can be enhanced by the use of some substances. Pink Floyd? Oh yeah...

Now that I am on WiFi and catching up with all that I've missed (really not that much) wwwebwwwise, I have both the time and capability to watch videos. And to find a video both awesome and with a Pink Floyd soundtrack? Awesome...

A friend of mine, one of those people I would know from Adam should we happen to pass on the street, posted this to FaceBook and I love it! Mike is an ex-cop, river rafting guide and a Buddhist monk (nice mix right?) and his sharing a Pink Floyd tune spoke volumes about the man he is... a genuine and unique individual that obviously is a man of finely tuned tastes - obviously because they are so similar to mine.

So sit back, put the vid on HD, full screen, and enjoy, I'll be back: