surprise frog package *sniff*

froggy things arrived by post
two of the things i love the most
two funny books! for laughs or napping
all in wondrous froggy wrapping!

from Osprey, a fellow doggerel lover,
a lover of silliness and surprise
a person of remarkable energy and humour and passion,
the funnest and most creative time of my life is due to her.
it changed me for the better.

now she is on her way out the door,
into the next something or nothing,
a light will go out in our world. 
she plans her exit for the solstice,
to steal off in the darkness while everything sleeps.

all of us who knew her will carry a little of osprey within us, and feel joy and loss when we think of her -- and i have her books!!

i had some Lear and Carroll and even Don Marquis, and all those funny books, but of  Belloc i only knew to be kind and tender to frogs!  osprey wanted to further my education in this respect, and as she will have no more use for these books, i am so happy to receive them.

 the synchronized unicycle and knitting drill team at an early rehearsal

go

liz's cat died.
so sad.
but then,
you know i'm sure.

it was her smart cat.
so now will the dumb one be the smart cat?

i mean if you don't care about cats, why are you even on the internet?

anyway it's a chance to reprint (without permission) the best dead cat poem by someone who really gets it.

On the Death of a Cat
- Franz Wright

In life, death
was nothing
to you: I am

willing to wager
my soul that it
simply never occurred

to your nightmare-less
mind, while sleep
was everything

(see it raised
to an infinite
power and perfection)--no death

in you then, so now
how even less. Dear stealth
of innocence

licked polished
to an evil
luster, little

milk fang, whiskered
night
friend--

go.

^ ^

well then go ahead and panic

happy birthday to Doug Adams.
oh no! you're still dead. :(
just pour me some old janx spirit

“Oh don’t give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don’t you give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”

the unseen becomes felt

often people become more 'spiritual' as they age.
the usual explanation is that they feel the approach of death.

but i think it's expanding awareness.

picture my baby son at the ocean. 
the infinite sky, the endless beach, the limitless sea.
what did he do?
picked up nearby cigarette butts.

as children our area of awareness is so small, because everything is new. 
once the nearby is familiar we extend our awareness out another step.

awareness expands and grows as we age and become familiar with a wider and wider circle, until it reaches and then includes the unseen, the felt, the sensed world beyond our 5 senses, the world we maybe scoffed at in our body-centered youth.

$5000/week for AS LONG AS YOU LIVE BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

there's this mail i got a long time ago -- maybe more than a year?  i don't remember exactly. to win a bunch of money.
i looked through it in an idle moment, and did the "paste this here" "scratch this off here" things, and sent it in. why not?
since then i've gotten lots more!  each time there's stuff you can order, but nothing i can't just go buy somewhere if i wanted it, which i don't, so i just paste and scratch and mail it back.
now they are telling me, a year or so later, that i am about to win $5,000. a week for life!
so i sent that one in. 
oh boy!  
maybe i'll win!
liz says i should send it in the name of a younger person, then it would be worth way more.
which started me thinking -- how long do the people who win these things live?
has anyone checked to see if they are dying young, or after a certain amount of time?
do they die mysteriously in small plane crashes like popular democrats?
after i win, should i change my name and move to another country?

we should all be so lucky

a few months ago a friend sent this email to me and several hundred other people to let us know about his mom...hope he doesn't see this! too good not to share.


 FOR YEARS I'VE ASKED MOM TO NOT DO ANYTHING ON MONDAYS AS I'M TIRED FROM THE TWO TWELVE HOUR SHIFTS I DO AT xxxxxx OVER THE WEEKEND SO YOU CAN IMAGINE HOW PERTURBED I WAS WHEN I FOUND HER MONDAY MORNING, HAVING PASSED ON PEACEFULLY IN BED THE NIGHT BEFORE. WE SHOULD ALL BE SO LUCKY! ALL MY RELATIVES DESCENDED UNINVITED THE NEXT DAY & JUST LEFT, DO I GET MOM'S BOSE RADIO? THE SILVER? THE NEW WICKER SET ON THE PORCH?? NO- I GET A SMELLY, FILTHY, FLATULENT DOG...... ALL THE GOOD STUFF IS GONE ALREADY.... VULTURES I TELL YOU!! I APPRECIATE ALL YOUR "THOUGHTS", BUT IN LIEU OF 'SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS' EMAILS I WILL ACCEPT CASH.

24 hour vigil

sitting out of time
in palpable emptiness
with nina's body
                     
                                                  ~mudpie

a long strange Sunday!

this morning i was the umdze and it was my first time leading the new long chants. 

then i had lunch with karen, always fun!

home in time to go to Raglan Shire's annual talent show - fun even tho i could not always get the audio to work.  i took no pictures, but i am sure there are hundreds posted by now!

then to Show and Tell in second life, my sunday ritual.  Barney and Flo have organized and hosted it for i think 6 years.  i've been going for almost 5 years.  this was the last one!  they want their sundays back after all this time.  very sad...i will miss being at the forefront of creativity and with the funnest audience anywhere! 

and then...Gianfar Peaks sims invited all dragons, & dracophiles, of whatever breed, genre, world, age or style, to a memorial service for Anne McCaffrey, beloved author of the Dragonriders of Pern stories, who passed away last week.

held at the Weyr Bowl at Shaula Weyr, dragons of all sizes, and other avatars of every stripe gathered to keen, as is the tradition in Pern. it was heartbreaking and perfect.  i did manage to take some crummy pictures of this awesome tribute: (click for youtube to see bigger)

birth and death

at noon, six of us showed up for meditation practice. 

afterwards, we began our discussion with a chapter from Chogyam Trungpa's book, Smile at Fear and wound our way round fear to the subject of death.

a fine traditional Buddhist topic for a beautiful summer afternoon. 

awareness of one's fear of death, and appreciation of the impermanence of life, can have a beautiful effect on how you live.

the six of us, all women today, all know we are going to die, have been dying since we were born. 

as Buddhists, we are accustomed if not comfortable with that understanding, although knowing it and KNOWING it are not really the same.

only one of us has an actual doctor's assurance that she is dying... and barring some strange accident, she knows what she will die of...in the near future.

she described for us what that is like, and how you can't comprehend that you are going to die in quite that mind-stopping way until a doctor tells you that this is it.  

she described some of what she has wrestled with; she said often people say they'd like to die in their sleep, but she wants to be there for her death -- she said "i missed my birth, but i want to be present for my death!"

another of the group said that giving birth, which 3 of us have done, seems similar to dying. 

for one thing, she said, we couldn't possibly convey a full understanding of what it is like to give birth.

those of us who've borne children agreed, it is an experience beyond transmission. the non-moms looked like maybe they thought they knew quite well what childbirth is like.

the moms smiled to themselves remembering how manners, poses, learned behaviors, modesty, ego, fall away and become irrelevant when you are aware and giving birth... and so also, can we assume?... when one is aware and meeting death.

.

what leaving already?

it isn't like her
she's never done this before,
elizabeth taylor

                              ~mudpie

what do you say to a dead man?

i fell in love with Warren Christopher yesterday

npr's website said he died
i knew the name. i clicked the link
i saw his picture
my heart burst with love
an old man 85
a good man
he tried - he worked so hard
he did so much
his heavy spirit clung to me
i held his spirit i didn't know what to say
it would not leave me
my heart was so full
i said what little i knew
or understood
of how to guide the dead
he would not let me go
i need to learn more
in case this happens again
i tried to send him off
to people who know how to help
in these situations
but the love between us was so strong
at last i remembered that today
i am going to a friend to work on a project
a friend who knows
who can guide the dead
or the living for that matter
my heart grew lighter then
and i wrote this