The Singing Bowl and Life

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

 

Back in December, I wanted to find some special Christmas gift for Rob and after seeing a Tibetan singing bowl on Butternut squash’s website – aka Jeri Gerard – I emailed her. Then we spoke by phone. She wanted to find exactly the right bowl for him and asked me some questions about Rob – how he looked, his interests and so on. We agreed on a price and a week later, Butternut had tested dozens of bowls and found what she felt was the perfect singing bowl for him.

She only sells the genuine McCoy, bowls once owned by Tibetan monks who used the bowls for everything – for eating, begging, for the tone they produced.  I knew the bowl she had selected would be the real deal because once a year or so, Jeri travels to Nepal to buy jewelry from the local people that she sells on her website and at shows.  She also gets involved in the lives of these people, bringing supplies and books for the schools, meeting and living among the people. She recently started raising money for a school library in Nepal and reports that construction on the library has begun. She walks her talk.

Rob uses this bowl in his meditation classes, a particular tone to end each class, and every time, the tone is different and somehow fits the texture of that class.

A few days ago, eight  months after I purchased the bowl, I received an intriguing email from Butternut. She had come across something in a book on singing bowls that she thought we might find of interest. The book: Singing Bowls: A Practical Handbook of Instruction and Use by Eva Rudy Jansen.

The quote:

Sound creates and sound arranges. There is a third aspect which is just as important for understanding singing bowls and why they are increasingly being used therapeutically.

This aspect relates to the tendency of objects which make almost identical movements, to move completely synchronistically.  Christian Huygens, the 17th century Dutch scientist, noticed that when two pendulums were placed next to each other, they eventually started to swing in the same tempo.  Similarly, after a while, two wave movements which are almost but not quite the same, change and become increasingly similar until they are exactly the same.

This is called ‘the collective arrangement of phases’ or synchronization.  Women are familiar with this phenomenon in their menstrual cycle.  Friends or sisters who live in the same house often menstruate at the  same time.

The chapter, Butternut said, talks about how “the soothing waves that emanate from the singing bowl can help the body to resonate more harmoniously by working on the waves of water within one’s own body.”

She was struck by the implication of this passage’s global impact.  “It seems to indicate that the waves of energy or emotion, whether positive or negative, that we put out will resonate in everything around us. In effect, it is our own actions that cause the synchronicities around us.  To me, it points to the same thing that many religious leaders have talked about: we must become the change that we hope to see.”

She notes that negative emotions can also multiply. “A single tweet can cause enormous ripples. With the technology we have now, it is even more important to keep ourselves in the proper frame of mind.”

So in this era of instantaneous connections and communications, how can we each become the change we want to see?

( 28 years ago today, Rob and I got married at my parents’ home. Happy anniversary, Rob!)

Posted in butternut, tibetan singing bowl | 16 Comments

When the Impossible Happens…

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Trish and Rob

An editor once told us that she was wary of books about synchronicity because most manuscripts on the subject that had come her way were dry and academic with many convoluted sentences peppered with academic parlance. Such books tend to feature the scientific paradigm of controlled experiment and statistical analysis. Bottom line, they don’t sell well for commercial publishers.

While her comments ring true about some tomes published in the years since Jung introduced the link between coincidence and science, there  are other academic writers who say it all quite well for a general audience.

A couple that come to mind: The Bridge Between Mind and Matter, by physicist David Peat, and The Sage of Synchronicity, by futurist Marcus Anthony.

Another one I’m reading now is When the Impossible Happens, by Stanislav Grof.  Here is a bit of his clear thinking and writing from that book.

“Traditional psychiatry does not distinguish between true synchronicities and psychotic misinterpretations of the world. Since the materialistic worldview is strictly deterministic and does not accept the possibility of ‘meaningful coincidences,’ any intimation of extraordinary synchronicities  in the client’s narrative will automatically be interpreted as ‘delusion of reference,’ a symptom of serious mental disease.  However, there cannot be any doubt about the existence of genuine synchronicities, where any person who has access to the facts has to admit that the coincidences involved are beyond reasonable statistical probability. This certainly is the case with Joe’s extraordinary encounter with the praying mantis.”

That last line refers to a startling synchronicity experienced by Joseph Campbell. We wrote about that story here.

– R

Posted in Joseph Campbell, Jung, Marcus Anthony | 28 Comments

800 Statues & the Spear of Destiny

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting exchange (at least I thought so) related to history, synchronicity, the Spear of Destiny and.. Indiana Jones. It began with an e-mail from Peter Levenda, author of the Unholy Alliance, a book that deals with esoteric Hitlerism and Nazi occultism. If you’re not familiar with the story of the Spear of Destiny, the spear in question supposedly is the one that pierced the side of Jesus and it was sought by Hitler as a power artifact.

Here’s our slightly edited exchange:

P.L.: Rob, you might be interested to know that they have discovered a cemetery in Indonesia that is “populated” by German U-boat crews from WW II!  The area is called “800 statues” because it was a sacred site to the Hindu religion before the advent of Islam to the area.  Nazi U-boat crews made it as far as Malaysia and Singapore during the war, where they transported valuable raw materials back to Germany and shipped technological information (plus uranium) to the Japanese.

I smell another Indiana Jones book in here somewhere!

Rob: That sounds like a natural for Indy…especially for a latter day saga in which Indy discovers A.H. alive in Malaysia long after the war. Of course, the Fuehrer has an important artifact that he’s using for protection or invisibility. Something like that.

P.L.: As a synchronicity … I am due to give another interview for a cable channel this month, on the theme of Hitler’s sacred artifacts, i.e., the Spear of Destiny, etc.

Rob: As another synchronicity, I once proposed a book called Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny, but Lucas nixed the idea. Oddly, he thought it would create legal problems because of the book, Spear of Destiny. I suppose that would relate to the fact that mainstream historians dis the Spear of D as fiction. Also, Lucas always wanted me to focus on actual artifacts, not made up ones. (Years later, the Spear of Destiny was the subject of an Indiana Jones comic book.)

P.L. Okay … the Spear of Destiny is an actual artifact, not a made up one.  The Spear of Longinus (also known as the Holy Lance) was held in Vienna, and taken to Germany after the anschluss along with the crown jewels.  Thus, there would never have been a legal problem because of Trevor Ravenscroft’s poorly documented book (the historians dis Ravenscroft because of the bad scholarship … but the Spear is and was real, and Hitler and the Nazis did covet it.)

In this regard I can heartily recommend “Hitler’s Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire” by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick.  Published last year by Simon & Schuster, it is a well-documented, no-nonsense approach to this aspect of history.

In any event, Lucas’s objections are without merit at least as far as the legal aspects of the case as well as the fact that the Spear did and does exist. In fact, there are several Spears … each with claims to authenticity (as the spear that pierced the side of Jesus) … which would make a good plot twist for an Indy novel.

Rob: I’ll be interested in seeing your interview. I enjoyed reading
Spear of Destiny years ago, but subsequently read that Ravenscroft
made up parts of it, including the scenario about Hitler repeatedly
going to a museum in Austria and staring at the spear for hours.

P.L.: As for it being the spear that pierced the side of Jesus … well, that’s the whole story.  It is supposed to be.  Of course — as in the case with the Shroud of Turin — archaeologists and scientists disagree that the Spear of Longinus is the actual spear … but it has always been presented as such.

If you subtract all of Ravenscroft’s speculations and inventions and go back to the basics, there is a Spear of Longinus in Vienna;  Longinus is the name of the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with his spear;  the one in Vienna is supposed to be the self-same spear.  Whether it is or not in actuality … well … what about the Holy Grail?  If Lucas only wanted to use real artifacts then the Grail would be out since no one has seen one or even knows what it is supposed to look like.  At least in the case of the Spear, one (or, actually, several!) exist.

The photographs in Ravenscroft’s book of the Spear are genuine, of course. It’s the same Spear that you can see today in Vienna.  What he made up is almost everything concerning Hitler … however, as Kirkpatrick points out, the Nazis were obsessed with the Spear (whether that includes Hitler or not is debatable, but Hitler was obsessed with the rest of the Crown Jewels and there is a photo of him staring at them).

****

By then, it was after midnight and the exchange ended with me raving that Indy’s mentor, Abner Ravenwood, had a last name close to Ravenscroft, and that I had been staring blindly at my mousepad, which featured a large capitalized word in the center: RAVEN – part of the title of my novel Romancing the Raven, the cover art on the pad. It was time for bed.

 


Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Ziplining: Or How to Confront Your Fear in the Rain Forest

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Megan, ziplining with the boot on her broken foot

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Ziplining is  advertised all over the mountainous regions of Costa Rica, but we had heard it was best in Monteverde – the cloud forest – an area at about the same altitude as Denver, 5000 feet.  So it was on our list of things to do.

The afternoon we arrived in Santa Elena, we made  a reservation for ziplining for the next morning. We would be picked up at 10:30 by a van from eXtreme Canopy. I didn’t particularly care for that word  EXTREME. There were plenty of other ziplining companies in town, why not choose one that just said, oh, you know, canopy flying or ziplining for the timid?  But Megan, the thrill seeker of the family, insisted we could all do it and would be fine.

I made the mistake of going online that night to check out exactly what was entailed in ziplining. And then I had the rest of the night to imagine myself in a harness, snapped onto one of fourteen cables that extended over the rainforest canopy, several hundred feet above ground. eXtreme canopy boasted the longest zipline in the region – nearly a kilometer long. And did I mention the Superman part of the  adrenaline rush? This is where you wear a chest harness, are snapped onto the cable facing the ground,  and race through the air with your arms extended at your sides and your feet cradled in little cuffs of rope.

Even the next morning when the van picked us up, I still was pretending I could do this.  Most of the people in the van were young – early twenties, Megan’s age, from all over the world, and were really psyched for the ziplining.  After a ride over a really bumpy road, we arrived at the facility.

More vans were pouring into the facility and we all lined up at the desk inside to pay and sign a waiver – you know, if the cable breaks and you fall to your death, your heirs  won’t sue the facility. Not exactly the kind of thing a paranoid person like myself wanted to read.  I passed on the Superman part of it, saved five bucks.

Then we filed into another room to be fitted for our harnesses. The guy who fitted me with a harness and helmet was super friendly, asked where I was from and had I ever ziplined before? By this time, my throat was so dry with fear I could barely speak. “Listen, is there any way to slow it down once I’m on the longest line?”

“Slow it down? No, no, no way, there are people behind you.” Then he gave me an odd look. “Why would you want to slow it down?”

We trekked into the information area in the woods, where one of the guys explains how it works: right hand behind the pulley, not in front of it; squeeze to slow self down, but don’t jerk on the cable;  if you start spinning,  squeeze gently and lean to one side. At this point, I looked at Rob, then Megan, and said, “I’m outta here.”

I returned to the building, divested myself of the harness and helmet, got a refund, and spent the next two hours talking life and politics with a young woman from Barcelona, Spain. She was four months pregnant,  worked as a nurse in a nursing home, had had her share of mystical experiences, and referred to Bush as “un assasino” – an assassin. I knew I was in good company.

Rob and Megan raved about their experiences afterward and I thought a lot about that.  What was there to be afraid of? Thousands of people had done this. It wasn’t like I had to jump out of an airplane. And wasn’t there a possibility that I could use ziplining in a novel? To do that, I would have to experience it.

So on our last day in Monteverde, we headed out again, with a different company, to zipline.  I still felt some of that same fear, the dryness in the back of my throat, a pounding in my head. But I thought of Megan’s two skydiving experiences, thought of DJan, who used to teach skydiving, thought of  everything that could go right – instead of everything that could go wrong.

One of the drawbacks of being a novelist, at least for the kinds of books I write, is the what if scenario that always lies at the nightmare end of the spectrum. What if the cables break, what if the child is abducted, what if the alien ship lands, what if, what if… So I shifted my thinking to what if it all goes perfectly and I love it?

There must have been fifty people in this group, all of them much younger than Rob and me. Their excitement was infectious. I climbed the stairs with Rob and Megan to the first platform. I suddenly wished I had my camera. I had even left my cell phone behind.

I was relieved the first cable was short. Two hundred feet, if that. I could do it. One platform to the next and there was a guy on the other end who would unhook me from one cable and hook me up to the next. I didn’t have to do anything except remember to place my hands correctly and bend my knees and cross my ankles.

Off went Rob. The cable didn’t break, he didn’t spin, he was racing toward the platform – and was laughing!

Then it was my turn. I made it to the second platform intact. That was my primary thought. I did it. Then as the guy connected me to the next cable, that dryness returned to my throat. This sucker was long. “How long is it?” I asked.

The young man laughed. “Not long enough,” he replied, then nudged me forward, off the platform, and I was airborne.

The wind sang, the smells of the rain forest rushed through me, the trees two or three hundred feet below me swayed like hula dancers,  the sky loomed above me,  vast, bluer than blue. And for brief moments, a bird soared just above me, as if celebrating with me, cheering me on. Hey, it’s not so bad up here, right? Pretty cool, isn’t it?

And so it went for fourteen cables, each one longer, higher, faster, and I loved it.  And I especially loved that my fear had dissolved. I plan to do this again, maybe even try the Superman part of it.

During the periods on the ground, we met others in our group – kids Megan’s age who traveled on a financial shoestring. That evening, Megan went out with a group of young women her age from Australia and returned to our cabin raving about the glories of backpacking around Central and South America.

I’m beginning to think that fear, at least this kind of physical fear, is an illusion, an atavistic throwback to some other life. Megan thinks my next step is jumping out of an airplane.

Well, maybe. Just maybe. Big maybe.

Posted in Costa Rica, ziplining | 14 Comments

The Golden Scarab Synchro Contest

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Trish and I were stopped at an intersection in the heat of the day, somewhere in the 90s, when she started fiddling with the air conditioning controls. “What’s wrong with the AC? It’s not working right,” she complained.

At that moment, I look out the window to the boulevard and noticed a hand-written sign about three feet away. It read: AC SERVICE – FREE TEST, followed by a telephone number. There really wasn’t anything wrong with our AC, but spotting the sign was still a meaningful coincidence.

That’s because we’d just been talking about synchronicity, actually about starting a contest offering several of our books in return for synchros. Earlier, three boxes of books had arrived at our door containing the new trade paperback version of The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity and also The Synchronicity Journal, a guide for recording your own synchros.

We will pick the best five synchro tales submitted and will give away five copies of the two books. So send us your story or stories through the comment section of this blog.

Entries for the contest will be accepted until  midnight Tuesday, July 19.

Update: We just learned that the journal, the trade paperback of 7 Secrets and Synchronicity and the Other Side are now all available from Amazon, in book form and for the kindle, and from Barnes and Noble.  Hmm. No one told us. We just happened to look and there they were. So our second synchro book, Synchronicity and the Other Side is out a month early!

Amazon: Synchronicity Journal, 7 Secrets, Synchronicity and the Other Side

Barnes and noble: Synchronicity Journal, 7 Secrets,  Synchronicity and the Other Side

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Murdoch’s Watergate?

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

If you’ve been following the phone-hacking scandal that began in Britain and which seems to be burgeoning like a crop of mushrooms after a hard rain, then you know who Murdoch is. Let’s take a closer look at this guy. There’s a synchro here. I promise.

In 1986, an Australian born, naturalized American citizen named Keith Rupert Murdoch created Fox Broadcasting Company. He became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only  U.S. citizens could own American T.V. stations.  Before this, he had extensive media holdings in Britain, Australia, and in the U.S. Tabloids like The Star were owned by Murdoch – you know, those cheesy papers in the checkout line at your local supermarket that feature the latest celebrity sex scandal.

In 1996, Murdoch got into the cable news market with  the Fox News Channel, a  24/7 cable news network.  As progressives learned during the Bush years, Fox News became the mouthpiece for the Republicans and Murdoch’s power to influence – i.e. brainwash –  the public’s attitude about politics grew exponentially.

I remember being at the gym in the aftermath of 9-11 and looking around at all the televisions and every single one of them had Fox News on. A friend told me that her husband became so disgusted with seeing Fox News on at his gym that he quit the gym and found some other place to work out. I didn’t quit my gym (which later folded), but I started bringing a book with me for when I was on the treadmill.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq, the patriotic fervor on Fox News became a kind of grotesque and horrifying cheerleading squad for war – the war in Iraq, then on Afghanistan, and always, of course, for the war on terror. Through its mouthpieces like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and the chorus line of  blond bimbo Barbies, the network thrived on spewing hatred, racism, and any sort of divisiveness they could cook up.

During this period, when driving Megan to and from school, I would find solace in Air America, where  Stephanie Miller, Al Franken, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Thomas Hartman and other progressives provided a window of sanity. After Air American declared bankruptcy, Franken went on to become a senator and Maddow and Schultz, thanks to Keith Olbermann,  found a home at MSNBC. There,  they continue to present a more fair – if not exactly balanced – reportsa and opinions of the news, a counter to every major talking point the Fox News people have for a given day. And, let’s face it, if there was no Fox News, MSNBC would still be treading water in the middle-of-road CNN realm.

In 2008, when Obama really started gaining ground in the polls, Fox News pulled out the stops. The dark, reptilian brains in the newsroom were slammed into overdrive, cooking up bogus issues at the speed of light. The birther issue. The pastor issue. The socialist issue. But at the heart of it all was the race issue.

Meanwhile, Glen Beck was pulling in millions a year for spewing hatred and racism, people like Greta van Sustern who ran a respectable show on CNN, jumped ship for a million bucks, had a facelift, and became unrecognizable physically – and politically. She was now a Fox News mouthpiece. When McCain picked Palin as his running mate, Fox News was ecstatic about the cutie from Wasilla – wink, wink – and made valiant attempts to ignore the fact that she was so stupid and ill-informed about the basics that she could barely complete an interview with Katie Couric on September 24, 2008, weeks before the election. If McCain still wonders why he didn’t win, he can start by looking at a re-run of the interview in which Palin was baffled by a simple question about what newspapers she read.

Now here we are in July 2011. Fox News has been on the air for a mere 15 years and Murdoch’s personal fortune is now estimated to be nearly $8 billion. In the 2000s, he expanded his holdings to satellite TV, the Internet and film industry  and bought the Wall Street Journal. In 2010, On the Forbes list of the most powerful people in the world, he was ranked 13th (how’s that for a number ranking!).

One of Murdoch’s holdings in the UK is (or was) News of the World, a tabloid that had existed for 168 years before folding this week.  The newspaper has been accused of hacking into cell phones of everyone from royalty and the former prime minister to crime victims to get the scoop on stories.

And, because it’s always interesting to see what other countries think, here’s something from Times of India.

Princes Charles and Camilla, even the queen herself, may have been targeted. Then there’s the hacked phones of families of the 7-7 bombing victims in London, attempted bribery of NYC cops to release the phone numbers of families who lost loved ones in the 9-11 attacks, and the hacking of a  kidnapped teenager’s cell phone, which set off this furor.

The synchro, at least for us, seems to lie in the parallels to Watergate. From Wikipedia: “On September 29, 1972 it was revealed that John Mitchell, while serving as Attorney General, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance intelligence-gathering against the Democrats. On October 10, the FBI reported that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the officials and heads of the Nixon re-election campaign.” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, reporters for the Washington Post,  suggested “that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even the White House.”

On August 9, 1974, Nixon – facing possible impeachment in Congress – resigned, the only resignation of a U.S president.

Back in 1974, cell phones didn’t exist. Neither did any brand of personal computers. So what’s the 21st century equivalent of a break-in? Getting hacked. Hacking is the nefarious shadow that slips into your life through your computer or your phone and steals parts of your personal life – your identity, your money, your soul. A hacker invades, like a virus, like cancer, like some alien life form.

Richard Nixon resigned, Murdoch probably will be forced out of his own company. Well, he’s also 80-years old and a billionaire. Very few will shed tears the day he steps down.

So does Fox News hack phones to get scoops as at least three of its sister newspapers have done? We don’t know yet, but we’ll probably find out a lot more in coming days and weeks as the scandal spreads across the Atlantic.

We’ll let Howard Kurtz, of the Daily Beast and former Washington Post media reporter, have the final word here:

“Mr. Murdoch, whose empire stretches from Fox News to The Wall Stdreet Journal to the Times of London, is engaging in corporate damage control by shuttering Britain’s bestselling newspaper. If media ethics were his prmary concern, he would have fired his top London executive who ran the paper during the phone hacking. Maybe someone should put up a statue of the media mogul outside the News of the World buidling, to remind us of the dangers of corrupt journalism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Fox News, media, politicians | 14 Comments

The Ultimate Sweat Lodge Experience

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Trish and Rob

A  survivor

James Arthur Ray promised his sweat lodge experience would be transformational and he was right. In his last sweat lodge experience, three people died.

What are we to make of this over-the-top New Age guru and his kind? This article lays out the story well, but leaves us with a lot of questions about New Age entrepreneurs like Ray.

“Start living in harmony right now, and know that everything you want is within your reach.” That was a key message Ray offered. But who was he offering it to?

Mainly rich folks. His retreats cost between $10,000 and $20,000. You have to already possess quite a bit prosperity before you could take a trip with James Ray. So why did people do it? For self-improvement or a need to become even more prosperous? Maybe some were spending their life savings for a chance to be close to a New Age guru.

Ray told followers he planned to become the first new-age billionaire. In March 2009, Ray bought a 7,234 sq ft house in Beverly Hills for $4m.  But it seems that the dark trickster caught up with the proposal: How about a small concrete cell to work off some karma?

We’re not against wealth or even opposed to obtaining a prosperous life through writing New Age self-help books. We’d be hypocrites to say otherwise. Yet, it seems that Ray’s life was not so different from born-again Christian evangelists who promise the world and the beyond as long as you can pay.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Dust Storm

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

 

 

It’s a dust storm moving into Phoenix and reminds me of scenes from every disaster movie I’ve ever watched. Is this normal? I found it bizarre.

 

Posted in weather | 12 Comments

The Three Crows and Sins of the Sinnin’

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This synchro comes from Gypsy. Her stories are usually layered and complex – not just one synchro, but several. This one is particularly strange!

Gypsy has been traveling lately and was in Delaware when this one happened.

+++

A few days ago I went out to get a bit of sun and decided to run through the nearest drive through to grab a breakfast sandwich on the way home. I got there and decided to stop to eat for a moment and pulled over to the next parking area.

I’d been playing with some words on a piece in my head and decided to just jot them down while I nibbled, so I pulled out my notebook and began. One word ran into more and more and then into line after line and into page after page. It was like an exorcism of sorts, a very dark and heavy piece from something many moons ago that I’d not thought of in years.

The initial words took on a life of their own and so several pages later, I sat and looked at what I’d written.  I guess I was shocked as to where the piece had gone and was sitting there mentally debating as to whether or not I would ever post it.  It was a bit overwhelming that I still carried such vehemence over the incident so many years later,I just leaned back to soak up the sun and close my eyes to it all.

Now, it was a hot day here,  not a breath of breeze at all. My windows and sun roof were all open and the sun was blazing down, and then suddenly  a wisp of wind came through the car and literally pulled one sheet from my hands, just one of the 4 pages I was holding. So I’m sitting there holding the other three and watching the single page blowing out into the parking lot.

I was so shocked to have a single sheet of 4 blown out of my hand by a non-existing breeze that I’m immobilized and just sit there, looking at the sheet of paper on the ground beside my car. I debated whether or not to pick it up. Maybe it was a sign to just “let it go” in the most literal sense, blow it off, let the writing be the act of exorcism and let it be gone.  One of my little voices tells me to get out and pick it up as I didn’t want it to fall into other hands even though there are no names in it.

I open the door to get out to pick it up and just as I bend over to get it, I hear a loud bird call. It’s different than all of the seagulls who live here, different from any of the other many birds around this area. I’m  trying to remember what kind of call it is and realize there are no other birds at all around. Where were all the seagulls that usually flock over to my car? That area is a behind a busy restaurant and usually packed with seagulls looking for free meals.

Just as I’m realizing which kind of bird this call is from, I look over to see not one but three black crows land just a few feet away. Three black crows.  I’m trying to assimilate what it all is, what it means, then get back into my car to grab my phone and snap a photo.  By the time I turn around to snap, two sea gulls have landed there with the crows.

The piece I was writing is called “the sins of sinnin’.

+++

What I find intriguing about this story is that Gypsy still held three pages of what she’d written and just as she’s about to get out and chase down the flyaway page, three crows land. Do three crows qualify as a “murder of crows?”

That phrase may have originated from a fallacious folk tale that crows form tribunals to judge and punish the bad behavior of a member of the flock. If the verdict goes against the defendant, that bird is killed – murdered – by the flock. The basis in fact is probably that crows sometimes will kill a dying crow who doesn’t belong in their territory or much more commonly feed on carcasses of dead crows.

Esoterically, crows are associated with battlefields, medieval hospitals, execution sites and cemeteries. So perhaps the meaning of the crows in Gypsy’s experience is that these feelings have been buried too long and through the writing, Gypsy has exorcised them, executed them, severed their power over her.

 

Posted in birds, birds as messengers, creativity, crows, gypsy | 24 Comments

More Dog Park Politics

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Ty, American Bulldog, and Noah, Golden Retriever, at dog park

She wears stylish, expensive glasses. Her cheekbones are admirable. She’s skinny and actually treks around in three-inch heels that would murder my feet. She has five children, a husband who is allegedly her manager, her adversary, her partner – who knows for sure? – and John McCain picked her as his running mate in 2008 and probably damns the day he did so.

Never mind that she is the half governor of Alaska who surrendered her job when she realized she could make more money doing what she does now, zipping around the country in a bus to maintain her media visibility. Never mind that she is, well, stupid, and doesn’t have a clue about foreign policy, domestic policy, the constitution, or anything else that it takes to be president. She’s cute, she winks, she grins, she’s a Barbie doll on steroids. And she has a clone named Michelle Bachman, congresswoman from Minnesota, the shame of every Democrat in the state.

For some perspective, I return to the dog park where we take our Golden Retriever most afternoons. It’s a perfect spot for political commentary. And we have our Sarah Palin, our Barack Obama, our Osama Bin Laden,  our Michelle Bachman, John McCain, our floozy like John Ensign, and that Congressman – I forget his name – who showed his abs on craig’s list. We have all those archetypes at the dog park.

It starts with Lily, a black pug, five years old or thereabouts, whose obsession is a small red ball that her human hurls across the park with a lime green ball thrower. This is Lily’s  thing, her passion, her total obsession. Every toss, every race to the ball, is Lilly’s Sarah Palin moment – or her Michelle Bachman moment –  when she reveals just how resolute and stupid she is. Don’t get me wrong. There are things I admire about Lily – her resoluteness, for instance. Once she catches that ball, she hurries back to her human – or some other human – and drops it to the ground at the human’s feet, and retains her grip on that ball. Our dog, Noah, eighty times her size, stands over her, barking –give me that stupid ball – but Lily just bites down harder on the little red ball. Like Palin, like Bachman, Lilly knows what she wants.

At some point, Lily’s human – Todd Palin, some anonymous advisor – tells Lily to release the ball and it gets thrown again by him or Rob or me or someone else who is willing. Then the race is on again and the Palin/Bachman media machine is in motion. In the dog park scheme of things, this motion comes from the human bystanders, cheering Lilly or Noah or both or simply laughing at how dogs interact.

Then there’s Lou, a Doberman, beautiful, sleek, fast  and so focused on Frisbees that she’s a Frisbee thief. I think she’s a bit like Hilary Clinton was during the 2008 presidential campaign, smart and determined and fixated on the goal. Sometimes Lou loses -Noah beats her to the Frisbee – but she’s remarkably determined. She lets Noah enjoy his triumph, tagging after him as he trots back to Rob or me, but instantly ready for the next throw.

Diesel, an American bulldog who hasn’t been fixed, is Mr. Macho Man. Most afternoons, he and Ty, another bulldog who HAS been fixed, race along opposite sides of a fence, barking fiercely at each other, but neither of them has an opportunity to act on his aggression. In fact, some days when the fences between the different sections of the dog park are opened and Diesel and Ty meet face to face, they aren’t sure how to act. It’s like, Huh? Who’re you? How am I supposed to act now?

Diesel and Ty are like any two politicians on opposite sides of the political spectrum. They recognize they’re both American bulldogs – politicians – but beyond that, they have zip in common. When the fence is no longer an impediment – like when Obama invites the Repubs to dinner or whatever at the white house – they aren’t quite sure what the protocol is.

The poop at the park is a big deal. There are poop bag dispensers at various locations in the park (four sections for various sizes of dogs) and whenever you see your dog doing the deed, you’re supposed to pick it up.  But there are people who come to the park daily, sometimes twice a day, who don’t bother.

So one day this guy from NY who owns a golden (Charlie, female, like Stephen King’s Charlie in Firestarter) sees this woman’s dog pooping and tells her about it. Minutes tick by, she doesn’t pick it up. No surprise, really, since she never scoops up her dog’s stuff. But Charlie’s human gets pissed off about it, scoops up the poop, and shouts, “Here’s your dog’s poop!” and hurls it at her.

She files assault  charges against him.

To me, this speaks of the accusations  that Repubs and Dems hurl at each other about Medicare, Social Security, the debt ceiling, you name it. Neither party has a clue what the other party is about.  Neither party has a clue what ordinary Americans are about, either. There are only talking points – the poop bag and what’s supposed to happen with it. So the rest of us – the middle class folks spread through four dog parks of different sizes – are left in a bind. What’re we doing here, anyway? Who’re we supposed to vote for? Does our vote even matter?

Some days, the quandary is resolved in unexpected ways. Today, for instance, we went to the eye doctor for our annual checkup. This is where you get those drops that cause your pupil to open so wide you feel you’ve died and been reborn.  Even wearing sunglasses, it hurt to be outside on a bright South Florida day. We were still feeling the effects when we took Noah to the park – and immediately sought shade.

Not too many dogs around, and after sniffing out the territory, Noah seemed bored. The collies arrived – three of them, lazy dogs, no fun, everyone  knows it. They’re kind of like Fox News, giving off erroneous impressions on what it means to be a dog. Human Jamie was around with mutt Sephera, who loves people but can’t abide other dogs – and Noah trotted over to Jamie, looking for the treats she usually brings into the park with her. No treats today, so he withdraws.

Noah glances around for some small dogs to chase down, but no one is up to the game. Too hot. Even the Australian guys, Frisbee freaks, are panting hard and fast. He starts digging a hole, to cool off, and refuses to chase the battered Frisbee Rob tosses. Even Lou is too hot to cross the vast expanse of two parks to catch this one.  There’s a message in all this. We just have to figure it out. Maybe the message is total silliness, that dogs care about dog stuff and humans care about human stuff and that border is never breached.

But. What I love about the dog park is the honesty I see, the sniff that says you’re cool or the obvious shunning because you’re a big, fat yawn with no chance of winning.

I think that for the 2012 election season, I’ll be looking at the dogs in the park for my insights into who will be president.Hey, it’s as good as what the bookies predict.

 

 

 

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