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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community...

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“A world community can only exist with world communication, which means something more than extensive software facilities scattered about the globe. It means common understanding, a common tradition, common idea's and common ideals.”

~ Robert M. Hutchins
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This blogging stuff is interesting. It remains its own phenomenon with many many people unaware that such a thing as a blogosphere exists.

Looking at the map of visitors is interesting... I mean for me, I know who some of those dots are. But I'll be darned if I'm aware of who all you other folks are. We've had visitors here from virtually every continent. And I'm sure not going to speculate why or how folks from Colombia and Australia and Brazil and Germany and Norway and Iceland and Mexico and Canada and... well... thats pretty cool.

Hey neighbor! S'up?

When I think about other places and other nations I know that the people there are what the Firesign Theater came to call:

Just Folks...



Firesign Theatre being a bunch of very wise men. Or is that wise guys?

Anyway... I know we all share the same basic situations. We have families and friends, and just folks we care about. We are all the same. And its not you and I, or you and I, its not any of us, that have problems and differences we have to settle with F-15s and RPGs. I mean I can only speak for myself but I sure don't see a need for all this militarized b******t our world's governments continually demand we keep them stocked to the hilt with. Heck, nobody needs to attack us here in the US, we're pretty good at killing ourselves. Wait long enough and we'll do ourselves in. And then you can have all the 7-11s.

You know right, that Lewis and Clark's whole mission was to scout locations for 7-11s? Think about it...

So, no pictures, just this short post about y'all. Its nice to meet you. Thanks for stopping by.

(Looking at that map again... I must've pissed off Russia and most of Africa. Oh, another thing... since I didn't make the extras' casting call for her movie last summer in Portland I still haven't heard from Jennifer Anniston. Poor girl, must've broke her heart...)

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[edited to add]

OK... I've posted about 30 pics of the Eugene Celebration Parade over at my photo blog.

Enjoy... this is a people's parade. Several local celebrities showed up, pols Bobby Greene, Peter DeFazio, Mayor Kitty Piercy, mayoral candidate Jim Torre... even Barack Obama showed up... and the green goddess made time from this season of ripening produce.

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