Mush Head and the Owl

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Before Megan was born, Rob and I led tours for travel writers to the Amazon. The boat in the picture is from the movie Fitzcarraldo, and is the sister boat to the one on which we traveled from Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru.

In those days, Leticia was a border town, a John Wayne sort of place where everyone was up to no good. Iquitos was a city completely surrounded by and isolated in Amazonian jungle. The distance between these two cities was about 350 miles and believe me, in the Amazon, that’s a very long way.

The trip took about three days, if memory serves, and on one trip, we stopped at a village to trade trinkets for fruit, art, and whatever. I traded lipstick and some other items for a beautiful owl that the boat’s owner promised to set free in his animal sanctuary upriver. This owl was huge – don’t recall the particular type of owl, but he was big. He perched on a railing on the boat, his wings cut so that he couldn’t fly, and watched us, the gringo writers.

I spent a lot of time with this owl, taking to him, hoping to touch him, to engage him, trying to get him to eat stuff from my meals. But he refused because the food – cooked fish – was dead. So one of the guides told me to feed him live piranha that we caught in the river. I did and he loved it. I worried about this owl, talked about him, and finally one of the writers, this guy from NY, rolled his eyes and said, “Trish, you’re such a mush head.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I shot back.

“It’s just an owl,” he replied. “It’s not a conscious being. It doesn’t give a shit about you. You’re anthropomorphizing.”

“So a mush head is a person who anthropomorphizes?”

“Yeah. You got it. Animals don’t have feelings.”

Needless to say, this guy and I didn’t get along at all.

When we arrived at the jungle camp, the owner of the boat, Paul, an expat from LA, kept his word. He released the owl in his preserve and during our two nights in the camp, I heard the soft, haunted hoots of a happy owl.

Now and then over the years, I’ve thought about this guy from NY, about his term for me. Mush head.

When Megan and I rescued a wounded duck from the lake behind the house where we used to live, I heard him calling me a mush head. Whenever I fed a stray cat, when I got sick as Sea World during the awful whale act, when Rob stopped in the middle of the road to move a slow turtle to the curb so it wouldn’t get run over, I thought of this guy. Mush head is a term that means you are soft in the head, a bit cuckoo, whacked out, not entirely with it. And in NY guy’s universe, the term applied to individuals who believe that animals have feelings.

My memory of this guy was triggered this evening by a story I read about a lion and a lioness in Brazil. The lion, Dengo, 11, was separated  from his partner, Elza, 10, after sharing a cage for eight years. He apparently sank into a depression so dark that he just laid around and refused to eat.

The zoo in which Dengo and Elza were kept, ZooNit, was a non-profit organization supported by the government, but lost its license for non-compliance  on the basics- you know, space, cleanliness, food. Dengo was allegedly living in a dark, cramped cage.

When ZooNit was closed, Dengo was sedated for his trip on an Air Force plane. According to the articles I read, he will now share an open space with Elza and other lions and Bengal tigers. I imagine Dengo is eating again, roaming, and doing whatever lions do when they are happy.

Chew on that one, guy from NY.  And chew on this: I love being a mush head. Never mind that it has taken me decades to understand the owl’s message, that I had to look backward before I could look forward.  In the owl’s world, time is relative.

That owl I bought for a tube of lipstick and a handful of trinkets proved to be quite prescient. In indigenous traditions, owls are messengers between the living and the dead. In Harry Potter, the owls deliver the mail. In some esoteric traditions, they are symbolic of profound change. They are prevalent in UFO lore. When they are an individual’s totem animal, that person is probably living at levels for which there is no language. We’ve written about owls before.  If you put owls into the search box, a lot more posts come up.

For Rob and me, that beautiful Amazonian owl was a message about transformation at the deepest  levels. Within a year of that trip, we sold several books, became full-time writers, and were doing what we loved. A few years later, Megan was born, and our lives were transformed again.

I often think about that owl and hope that its haunting song continues somewhere in time. And yes, I’ve long since embraced being a mush head.

UPDATE

It just occurred to us that we’ve posted another synchro related to this same vessel about another one of our trips up the Amazon back in the day. You can find that story here.

 

Posted in amazon, animals as messengers, owls | 40 Comments

The Dunnings

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Trish and Rob

from Carl Jung’s red book

 

This story is from Judy S,  whose story, Judy and Hank, appeared on the blog and also in Synchronicity and the Other Side. Judy and Hank knew each other for 35 years – as partners, friends, soul mates. Hank passed on several years ago and Judy continues to experience synchronicities that follow the MO of spirit contact.

+++

On Saturday my friend Pamela and I were driving in Tarrytown just to escape the city heat and tour the Rockefeller Estate.  On our way to Kykuit we passed Dunning’s Road. Dunning was Hank’s last name so I looked at Pamela and said, “Hank’s saying hi.”

Then your book arrived and I began thinking about two of Hank’s (and my) friends, Jimmy and Glenn.  Glenn was unable to come to Hank’s memorial and I hadn’t heard from him since.  Well, I got a phone call the other night on the way home and the voice said, “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m on the Third Avenue bus.”

“Hi, Judy, it’s Glenn. I just had to call you because I read an article in the NY Times the other day about Mrs. Dunning (no relation) who is 101 and still drives her Packard.”

Now, of course this could just be a coincidence but I think your book brought this on. Pretty cool.

+++

It sounds like a  double synchro to me! Hank was just making sure Judy got the message.

 

Posted in judy and hank, spirit contact, synchronicity | 6 Comments

Ferris Wheel in the Sky

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kmNxzMe8iQ&feature=player_embedded#at=57

 

Some Sunday musings. This very odd video looks like a ferris wheel in the sky. It appeared on the news in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Why is it that the news in many other countries reports on stuff like this but the media in the U.S. does not?

If memory serves, the media sort of laughed about the Phoenix sightings in 1997, when hundreds of people reported seeing mysterious lights, Only years later did the Arizona governor at the time admit that he’d seen them too.

Even more to the point, what the heck IS this thing?

 

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFO | 14 Comments

Amazing Word Game

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here is a truly amazing word game, especially the last part, courtesy of Nancy McMoneagle.

***

Did you know that, the words “race car” spelled backwards still spells “race car”?

And that “eat” is the only word that, if you take the first letter and
move it to the last, spells its own past tense, “ate”?

And if you rearrange the letters in “Tea Party Republicans,” and add just a few more letters, it spells: “Shut the heck up you free-loading, progress-blocking, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, violent hypocrites, and deal with the fact that you nearly wrecked the country under Bush and that our president is black, so get over it.”
Isn’t that interesting?

***

Yep.

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 20 Comments

Trickster Economics

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Trish and Rob

On Friday afternoon, August 5, the coveted AAA credit rating the U.S. has enjoyed since 1917 was downgraded by Standard and Poor’s to AA+.  This one seems to have the trickster’s footprints all over it. It’s like Smeagol on hallucinogenics or Wiley coyote on steroids.

During the weeks of political theater in Washington over raising the debt ceiling, the U.S. Congress was reduced to caricature.  The Republicans were adamant that taxes wouldn’t be increased – even on millionaires, billionaires, and corporations, some of which  don’t pay any taxes at all.  The Democrats were adamant that programs in the social safety net – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – wouldn’t be cut and that the debt ceiling agreement would extend until 2013. In other words, that it wouldn’t be revisited during the 2012 election.

The Repugs insist that taxes shouldn’t be raised on the “job creators” – their catch term for the super wealthy. But the fact is that these so-called job creators aren’t creating any jobs. They aren’t hiring. They’re sitting on their wealth and it’s been growing in quantum leaps since Bush initiated these tax cuts early in his administration. Earlier this year, Obama extended the Bush tax cuts until 2013, and probably lost a major share of his progressive base. The man whose campaign was predicated on change was beginning to look like a moderate Republican.

At any rate, the day after Congress’ warring factions reached an agreement that doesn’t benefit the average Joe and Joanne, the stock market dropped more than 500 points, the largest plunge since the financial meltdown in 2008. It rebounded some today, August 5, but Monday should be a wild ride because of the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor’s.

At first, I thought, Wow,  S&P gets it. They understand that the posturing and political theater demanded a downgrade because raising taxes must be part of the debt solution. Then I read Paul Krugman’s blog. Krugman is a Nobel prize winner in economics. His bio is here.  (Be prepared to start believing you’re an underachiever!)

From the beginning of the stimulus package passage in 2008 to prevent economic Armageddon, he contended the stimulus package wasn’t large enough, that the government needed to spend more to prevent a long-term recession. Turns out he was right and he is undoubtedly right now:

“…it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies,” Krugman writes.  “The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really? Just to make it perfect, it turns out that S&P got the math wrong by $2 trillion, and after much discussion conceded the point — then went ahead with the downgrade.”

It’s as if the trickster is mocking everyone. See? See? You guys had to muck up the works by attaching conditions and caveats to what should have been a simple raising of the debt ceiling. You avoided default at the 11th hour, but it didn’t matter. S&P downgraded your credit rating anyway and Moody and Fitch may do the same.

The larger question, of course, is what’s the message here? With Mercury, the trickster planet, retrograde until August 25, there are apt to be more rippling shocks like this one. The conspirator part of my personality wonders if S&P is in cahoots with the Repugs, who seem to want the country to slide into a double dip recession so that Obama will lose the 2012 election.

For reference, here’s more info from Bloomberg.

 

Posted in politics, synchronicity, trickster | 16 Comments

Beloved Infidel – the F. Scott Fitzgerald Saga

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Rob was teaching another six-week meditation course in a Taekwondo studio at the rear of our gym. It was the fourth session and began with Rob talking a bit about what we were going to do that evening.

At the beginning of our first meditation, he said, we should ask about an issue that concerns us. It could be anything, in any area – relationships, profession, family, money, whatever. The music he played was comprised of an orchestra of singing bowls and the beautiful textures of the tones made it easy to slip into a relaxed state. For some reason, I started thinking about all the people we have known over the years who have died. Not just family, but individuals in publishing with whom we worked. I thanked all of them for what they had done for us, and suddenly recalled a weird encounter in 1988.

Diane Cleaver was my first agent. She was a Brit, gay, whose name I got from the parents of an aspiring writer who lived in the same complex I did in Vero Beach. I was teaching English to hormonal 7th and 8th graders at the time and writing nights and weekends. Diane had just left her position as an editor at Simon and Schuster, had joined Sanford J Greenburger, and was looking for clients. I had just finished my first novel.  It was 1978.

That first novel didn’t sell. Neither did novels 2, 3, 4 or 5. But Diane never gave up. I wrote, she submitted, and in 1984, Chris Cox at Ballantine Books bought In Shadow, my sixth attempt.  After Rob and I got married, Diane became his agent, too. Periodically, she would send tips our way that were based on our interests,  skills and location. Hey, you guys interested in this project? That project? One day she called and asked if we would be interested in working with Sheila Graham, who was writing a memoir.

“THE Sheila Graham who was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mistress? THAT Sheila Graham?” I exclaimed.

An amused chuckle from Diane. “Yes, that Sheila Graham.”

Well, yes, we were interested. I was beside myself. I loved Fitzgerald’s work, had read everything he’d written, everything that had been written about him, his wife, Zelda, and about his affair with Graham. I read a biography about his editor, Max Perkins and about his take on Fitzgerald’s relationships with Zelda and Graham. I was so steeped in Fitzgerald and his screwed up life that the mere idea of meeting Graham prompted me to pull out all my Fitzgerald material and thumb through it again. I think Rob and I even watched Beloved Infidel again, the movie based on Graham’s book about her three and a half years with Fitzgerald.  In the movie, Gregory Peck played Fitzgerald and Deborah Kerr played Graham.

So one morning in November 1988, we drove north to Palm Beach, to a condo or apartment complex, I can’ recall which – hey, this was 23 years ago – where Graham lived. We had made the appointment through a woman who worked for her. I got the impression that the woman was an assistant.

But when we entered the apartment, I realized the woman was her caretaker, a nurse or nurse’s aid. Graham was 84 years old, a small, frail woman in a wheelchair, her hair totally white, her glasses thick, riding low on the bridge of her nose. But there was nothing wrong with her mind, her memories. We had a lot of questions and she had the answers.

Graham met Fitzgerald in the summer of 1937, when she was writing her celebrity column, Hollywood Today, which she wrote for 35 years. She claims in her books – and when we talked to her – that they fell in love instantly. At the time, Fitzgerald was still married to Zelda, who was institutionalized, and was writing for Hollywood to pay for Zelda’s hospital bills and his daughter’s school bills. They lived together – he,  Sheila, and Fitzgerald’s alcoholism were constant companions.

During our conversation with her, she showed us a few pictures she had of herself and Fitzgerald, and said that other photo albums and letters were being sent to her, that we would have all of it at our disposal. The pictures were faded to sepia tones, but showed Fitzgerald as a kind of dapper Gatsby, and Sheila pretty much as she looks in this photo:

I asked her about the feud between Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It’s alluded to in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, where Hemingway expresses his dislike for Zelda. Sheila mentioned it and said that Fitzgerald always felt inferior to Hemingway. This has always struck me as ridiculous.  Fitzgerald was the better writer, with the soul of a poet possessed of the ability to delve emotionally into his characters’ lives, even into those dark pockets where all the demons live. Hemingway, I think, was a closet misogynist, Mr. Macho Man – I hunt, I kill, I take trophies, and – bottom line – I don’t like women very much.

I remember that Sheila’s living room smelled of sickness, a faintly floral aroma that isn’t at all pleasant. It reminded me she was 84, at her Uranus return, an astrological cycle where that  planet returns  to where it was when you were born. It’s the age of sudden death – metaphorically or actually – where you either accept where and who you are or choose to pass on.

Many years later, I asked Hemingway’s niece, Hilary, about Fitzgerald and Uncle Ernie. She didn’t know either man, but since she and Andy Garcia have written a script about Hemingway’s final days in Cuba, she has access to all the family files and memorabilia. “I just want to be done with him,” she said. “I don’t care who was the better writer. That was decades ago. I’m living my own life.”

And so, apparently, was Sheila Graham. Several days after we met with her, she died of congestive heart failure.

See what happens when you meditate?

Posted in Fitzgerald, Sheila Graham, writers | 17 Comments

Cowboys and Aliens

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Arizona, 1878.  Desert. Hot sun. A lone cowboy comes to suddenly, gasping and injured, obviously confused. He has a shackle on his wrist and tries to break it open with a rock, to no avail. In the sand, he finds a piece of a photograph of a pretty young woman.  As he’s puzzling over it, four men ride up behind him and say they’re headed for the town of Absolution and does he have any idea how far they are from it?

The cowboy (Daniel Craig), doesn’t speak. The four men wonder aloud if there’s a bounty on him and  one of them gets off his horse, rifle in  hand, and we suddenly discover the lone cowboy not only fights well, but the mysterious shackle on his wrist is some sort of weapon.

The dog that was with the four men follows the cowboy into Absolution, a town that lives in fear of  Colonel Dolarhyde – Harrison Ford – and definitely doesn’t welcome strangers. We learn that the cowboy doesn’t have any memory of what his name is, who he is, what his past is. He’s a blank slate.

The cowboy isn’t in town very long before the sheriff (Keith Caradine) realizes that the photo on a wanted poster looks very much like the lone cowboy. His name is Jake Lonergan and he’s wanted for robbing a stage coach filled with gold and for the murder of a young woman. The sheriff and his boys  enter the bar, where a mysterious woman is pestering Jake, asking him repeatedly if he remembers.  The sheriff, of course, attempts to arrest Jake, a fight ensues in good ole Western style, and the mysterious woman is the one who knocks Jake out.  As he’s being put into a stage coach later to be taken to the federal marshal, she approaches the coach and apologizes. “But it was the only way I could keep you here.”

The next scene is bizarre, unexpected, and riveting because you’re reminded it’s 1878, the Old West. Multiple lights appear at the end of the main road through town and people come out to watch, astonished, mesmerized. The lights grow larger, there’s some sort of percussive boom, and suddenly, multiple UFOs zoom over the town – and unleash a firestorm of destruction.

As people are diving for cover, dozens of them are whisked up into the air, the classic abduction scenario, except that they are lassoed by chains.

From IMDB, written by Universal:

“…Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known. Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he’s been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. With the help of the elusive traveler Ella, he pulls together a posse comprised of former opponents-townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors-all in danger of annihilation. United against a common enemy, they will prepare for an epic showdown for survival.”

This movie is such great fun, a classic western with stage coach robbers, Apaches, mean cowboys, and the intriguing twist of nasty aliens, who actually have a motive for being on Earth – they’re mining gold. The storytelling is tight, the pacing and conflict so perfect that your disbelief is suspended from the opening scenes.  It has all the Spielberg touches – including a kid and a dog – and it’s great to see Harrison Ford as a gruff, aging cowboy with a few things to learn about his own humanity. Daniel Craig is ideally cast as the archetypal outsider.

Interestingly, we didn’t read any of the reviews before we went to see the movie, so when we got home, I checked them out. The very elements we enjoyed about the movie, reviewers tore apart. I love it when genres are mixed – the reviewers not so much.  From the L.A. Times:

It’s hard to say what is most depressing about “Cowboys & Aliens” — the film itself, or the fact that this was the best movie a posse of major Hollywood players could come up with.

Our advice? Ignore the reviews.  Cowboys and Aliens is a great, imaginative romp.

Here’s the trailer link: cowboys and aliens

 

 

 

 

Posted in cowboys and aiens, movies, synchronicity | 22 Comments

The Cone

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

The cone is a dreaded phrase in South Florida at this time of year. It refers to the cone of probability that appears in every hurricane forecast. The farther out in time the forecast extends, the wider the cone gets.

As you can see from the image above, this is the cone of probability for Tropical Storm Emily. As of 11 PM on August 1, the National Hurricane Center forecast  that the storm’s projected path would take Emily across the Dominican Republic on Wednesday afternoon (August 3), before moving toward the Bahamas, with a possible landfall along the South Florida coast on Saturday afternoon, August 6, as a category 1 hurricane.  This means sustained winds between 74-95 mph.

Last week, I mentioned to Rob that we needed to have someone out here to look at a leak in our porch roof and also around a skylight in our kitchen. I was remembering how during our last hurricane in October 2005, the skylights – we have four of them – vibrated so fast and loudly in the wind that they filled the house with a kind of scary music. The  other day, during a routine thunderstorm, I noticed water dripping down from the kitchen skylight and pooling on the floor. In a hurricane, the structural integrity of your home depends to a large degree on the condition of your roof, skylights, and windows.

There’s a possibility that Emily will veer north, out into the Atlantic, before ever brushing Florida or any other part of the U.S. coast. That’s the scenario we’re visualizing. But tomorrow or the next day, I’ll head over to the grocery store – not just to pick up extra supplies, but to get a readout on what other people are feeling.

In the past, I’ve found that the collective sense about where a hurricane will make landfall may be more accurate than the hurricane center’s forecast. If the aisle with bottled water is completely empty, if there isn’t a single pack of batteries or bag of charcoal on the shelves, if the fresh fruit bins are bare, if shelves of canned goods are so stripped down that only canned beets or lima beans remain, then it’s likely the hurricane will make landfall.

My other indicator is wildlife. If, around Thursday, August 4, we find ants sneaking into the house in great numbers, if there’s a scarcity of birds in the neighborhood, if the squirrels aren’t ravaging the mangos on our trees, then the hurricane probably will make landfall.  On Friday, August 5, if Emily is going to visit our area, our pets will start registering minute fluctuations in barometric pressure and either won’t go outside or will dart out to do their business and return fast.

I recall at least once instance years ago when Fort Lauderdale, where we lived at the time, was under a hurricane warning – i.e., a hurricane was predicted to hit within 24-36 hours. But our cat wasn’t picking up anything unusual even eight to ten hours before the hurricane was supposed to make landfall. He went about his usual routine, chasing lizards, lazing in the sun. That’s when I knew the forecasters were wrong. Sure enough, the hurricane made a sudden unexpected turn away from the coast.

This is when our animal buddies become extraordinary messengers. Maybe the planetary empaths among us will pick up something.

 

PS As of the evening of August 2, the cone has been moved farther to the east. Florida is still at the edge of the cone, but hopefully we’ll just get a lot of rain, which we need!

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 17 Comments

Meditation and the other side

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Trish and Rob

I’d just finished the fifth session of my six-week meditation course when one of the students, who I’ll call Laura, approached me somewhat hesitantly. She had a question.

“Do your students ever make contact with the other side during meditation?”

With that, she launched her story. It happened during a meditation in which I lead the students on a cosmic journey. They imagine they are lifting up out of their bodies, through the ceiling, and into the night. I direct them  away from Florida, away from the planet, and off to the stars, but only after a detour through the center of the moon.

That last maneuver is a trigger for travel to other dimensions. Usually, during this meditation, I find myself seated and meditating on a platform out in space among a vast field of stars. Sometimes I’m joined by a guide-figure, who meditates next to me.

But everyone takes his or her own journey. Laura told me that she had encountered several dead relatives. All but one were there merely to observe and made no effort to communicate. The exception was her brother, who had died five months earlier of brain cancer. He greeted her warmly and told her that was fine.

Now, after the session, she felt energized and thrilled that her brother had made contact. “It was the first time that I’d seen him or even sensed him since his death.”

Meanwhile, Trish had put several books on a table in the lobby outside the entrance to the studio. Since I play a couple of the recorded meditations from  the CD that comes with Psychic Power, I usually offer copies of the book after one of the classes. That day, however, I’d also grabbed one copy of  Synchronicity and the Other Side, which had just come out.

I told Laura about it and she went home with the book. It was a good evening.

Posted in synchronicity | 44 Comments

Mercury Retro and the Debt Ceiling

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

 

It’s that time of year again. Mercury, the planet of communication, is due to turn retrograde on August 2. Unfortunately, this is the same day that the deadline looms for raising the debt ceiling of the U.S. For a bit of perspective on the kind of havoc that can ensue in this kind of situation, let’s look back eleven years.

On election night in 2000, Mercury was retrograde  in Scorpio when Tom Brokaw announced that Florida had gone to Al Gore. But at 9:20 EST, Mercury turned direct and moments later, Brokaw announced that Florida’s vote was undecided. The rest, as they say, is history.  There were ballot disputes in Palm Beach County due to the “hanging chads” and eventually the issue went to the supreme court, where Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding vote that Bush had won the presidency. O’Connor did a lot of good things when on the supreme court, but this decision was NOT one of those good things.

This kind of crazy back and forth is typical for a Mercury retrograde. Confusion, reversals in decisions.

So let’s take a look at August 2, 2011.  On that night, at 11:49 PM, Mercury turns retrograde in Virgo, a sign that is all about precision, details, perfection. At 12:01 AM on August 3, a mere 12 minutes later, the U.S. is officially in default unless the dysfunctional politicians raise the debt limit.

Our apologies to readers in other countries for whom this isn’t an issue.  But if the U.S. defaults on its debt, it could quickly become your issue. Presently, countries in the EU aren’t doing so great. Greece is in dire straits. Its credit rating has been cut out of fear that default is looming in that country. According to this excellent summary twenty-one countries may be facing default. It’s as if the global financial structure is having a nervous breakdown.

The breakdown won’t just affect “the markets” that so many political pundits refer to. Investors are nervous, investors are uncertain… as though we’re all investors in stocks and companies. Well, suppose you don’t have anything in the stock market? Then you’ll be okay, right?

Probably not. If the U. S. defaults, interests rates will skyrocket. The interest rates on your home mortgage, car loans, and student loans will go through the roof.  Food prices will soar and so will the cost of gasoline. And that’s just for starters. Nobel economist Paul Krugman has some insightful info on the subject.

On August 3, 54 million Americans are supposed to receive Social Security checks. For many of these people, the checks are their only source of income. Suppose those checks don’t arrive? It means these individuals can’t pay their bills. It means they may have to choose between putting food on the table and buying prescriptions drugs that keep their bodies stable and functional. It means they eventually may default on their mortgage payments and their homes could eventually go into foreclosure. It means the economic crisis triggered by Bush’s economic policies and perpetuated during Obama’s three years in office may deepen into an outright depression. Check out this article. Or this one.

The debt ceiling was raised numerous times under Reagan, Clinton, both Bushes. So why has it become such an issue now? Because a radical right wing faction of the Republican party – the Tea Party zombies – have a stranglehold on Republican politicians.

I would love to say, Well, I’m going to ignore it. I’m going to turn off my TV, my radio, and not read any Internet news. If I pay no attention to it, then it’ll go away. But I have a feeling that it may not be that easy to make stuff go away. Even if we create our reality from the inside out, we share the planet with six or seven billion others who are living out their individual scripts.We share a mass consciousness precisely because we all live on the same planet. I believe  we can mitigate our personal circumstances through mindful living, but ultimately what affects one, affects all.

Yes, the endless debates may  all be political theater, but the idea that any political party would bring this issue right down to the wire is unconscionable.   And it may well go beyond the wire.

As of Sunday evening, an agreement had supposedly been reached – although the votes in the house and senate won’t be taken until Monday. On Monday, Mercury the trickster will be stationary, preparing to turn retrograde.

Listening to the pundits this evening as they discussed what this so-called agreement entails, it looks as if entitlements programs, the safety nets for the most vulnerable in our society, may be going the way of the dodo bird. The wealthy will NOT lose their Bush-era tax breaks, the ones that Obama renewed through 2013. Corporations, of course, will continue to enjoy their many tax loopholes that have allowed companies like GE to not pay any taxes at all. So, once again, this “deal” seems to be made on the backs of the rapidly shrinking middle class, the sick, the elderly, and the poor. Once again, the Dems caved, just as they did during the health care debate.

We need a third party in this country.

Whatever is decided in the 11th hour on August 2 will probably be reversed once Mercury turns retrograde at 11:49 EST.   Stay tuned. We don’t just live in interesting times, we’re living a paradigm shift, and it’s huge.

– Trish

 

PS Paul Krugman says this deal signals that Obama caved and the U.S. may descend into banana repubic status.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in merc retro, mercury retro, politics, synchronicity | 38 Comments