Woman Plans Test Flight - ExTraOrdinAry VehiCle almost ready...

Saturday

Well, it's the weekend again. It's been another good full time. I've got Tom Waits on the player. I'm almost finished with a big day of accounting - no gardening, for it was too cold and I'm not going to risk getting sick right now. Prudence has finally struck.(Prudence strikes. Charity reigns. Faith is The Man - ruling and dominance metaphors live everywhere...) Daniel's doing ok. Just finished dinner, and the wonderful food reminded me again about how fortunate I am, on so many levels.

On top of simply having incredible blessings of food, car, beautiful shelter, great friends, loyal employees, loving family, and you, one thing I realized is that I have a freedom of choice - made possible, in part, by Constitutional architecture, as well as plain dumb luck - with respect to my future that I want to notice and cherish right now.

I notice it because I've felt constrained by grating limitation for so long, and I'm working to configure my attention in a manner that takes the new landscape in as fully as possible. I want to encounter this set of options slowly enough to meet them with an openness of being that allows the healthiest level of change. I hope that, in the intoning of these desires, I contribute to their unfolding.

I also sense that I'm like a parched animal in the desert, approaching water and almost blind with a single-edged need. The domesticated part of me has almost lost the wild nature's ability to pace my drinking after a long fast, to know how to just lie by the pool and take small considered tastes of water until the starvation wanes and only desire, not desperate need - a need that could founder me - emerges in its own due time.

What I also notice is that I have the luxury of choosing the turf of my societal playing field that I wish to work upon in order to confront the challenges of my world. This is a gift - and it's work to stay mindful of it.

So many people are born into an arena that they never leave - by choice or not (Doris Lessing - "The Prisons We Choose..."). And although Thoreau claimed one only needed twenty acres, one does still need twenty acres - and his were vastly different than mine. Over my life thus far, I've had the good fortune to experience several/many/daily opportunities to dramatically alter my conditions of personal work - to move, to radically change direction, to adjust my elemental ways of being - and another set of opportunities is making itself felt.

I like using the Tales to wander in them, and trust your patience with the explorations. So often, when/as I consider the options before me and talk them through, my friends who listen find themselves confused. "I thought you were going to..." they say, after hearing the 4th option that has effectively nullified the 1st and 2nd to their way of thinking, just as they were getting their minds around what Cynthia would be like if she did *that*.

It's difficult for most people to "keep up" without becoming frustrated, especially when they begin to bond with me. I think this is a function of my Parallel Dimensional Processor, a Conceptual Template upgrade I installed some years ago when I tasked myself to begin to think as if I were a being that moved between a multitude of dimensions (I feel a responsibility to match my world view with developments in science and physics), living in the different levels simultaneously, but not necessarily with equal parts of consciousness or life-energy investment - sort of like one of several Time-Share Dimensional Condos I visit every now and then, but always have the keys to.

I suppose I'm still encountering some difficulties with my PDP interface, since most folk I know now are primarily serial, with continuous multi-year life stories - or multi-life soul stories - that reinforce their seriality and dictate their options.

The net seems to facilitate higher orders of multi-dimensionality - perhaps the physical entrainment itself in F2F is still problematic.

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Sunday Morning...

What I've noticed over the last 6 months is that the Tales have become a vessel for expressing my presence in a world (and now becoming worlds) that very much did/does *not* exist anywhere but in my mind - at least, not at first.

I used the Tales, initially, to explore my feelings of connection with you because I was determined not to ignore my feelings of passion and soul-alignment again. At the same time, I've learned that my feelings are so strong that they sometimes hurt and frighten others, and stimulate reactions that destroy the very connection I sense. (I'm reminded often, throughout my life in general, of Farley Mowat's "Never CryWolf" - a cautionary parable about describing or pursuing what you love and see...)

The Tales provided me with an oblique route that would not run at you so headlong and directly with all that I was feeling, and even give me room to be wrong, or to let the feelings die, or change into something else that I could remain connected to, and not dismiss the experience someday as a foolish mis-assessment of what I was noticing.

And now I've discovered a repository for my thought lines, friendly ears - not solely yourself any longer, but my self, too - that hear me without doing anything else but listen. Emerging wisdom suggests that talking to friendly ears is one of the best things we can do for our mental, emotional, and physical health.

When I get the Feeling, as I have this last week, welling up strong within me, and you're unable to reciprocate with some overt response in this dimension due to [blank], I can put that pulsing sense of my self and my world (the Feeling) into these lines of word and empty black syllable on a bed of white light, and just let it be held for a while.

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OPTIONS

Very interesting local options are beginning to emerge. They're seductive, because they're local - they're so close, and so probable. All I have to do is want them, they're that attainable.

Do I want to finish the little cabin up river that Sam started when he was 13, and live in it this winter, in the woods with the hot spring and my plants? The electricity up there is problematic, but I do have my generator, and another little Pelton wheel off the creek would be just fine. The land is in a receiver shadow, and I don't think a Web connection is possible right now. All the work I'm interested in seems to rely on a web connection, so that's a parameter I probably shouldn't neglect.

My friend Rocky has urged me to come occupy the Fern Cabin (we're welcome to visit anytime you want to get away, and if you're inclined I'd encourage it) in the mountains of Jefferson County, an emerging nation IMO. They're almost totally self-sufficient there - grow their own meat and grain, have *plenty* of creature comforts - Brin's "Postman" scenario (the healthy part) plays out well there, and so I'll be scoping that out. The Yeoman ideal is appropriate with that landscape. Urban development is not imminent, and that may be my winter option.

OTOH, do I want to hang out in my very fun downtown apartment for awhile longer, just as Eugene is actually waking up (for it finally is) and with Bob ready to move out of with one of the best apartments in this building (and the best building to live in downtown, by far, for sheer coolness) overlooking the fountain (falling water!!!) and the park I like to sit in, and me next on the list for it if I want it?

If one did everything culturally interesting that came through Eugene to do, one would be out 5 nights a week, almost all year long. There's a very modest but very talented array of artists here, and venues are always opening up. I think a critical mass of people who remember some kind of urban nightlife from the cities they immigrated from has finally been reached this last couple of years, and the town feels a bit on the edge of a struggling but egg-shell cracking renaissance of creative exploration.

You'd posed the question about whether or not I needed Eugene for my axis mundi. On one level, it's tempting. It's pretty easy to fly in and out of, with quick hops to SF, Portland or Seattle all day long. It's probably as easy to take the shuttle flight as it is to drive most everywhere else. It's cheap, compared to larger places.

There are a lot of people here, being quietly, that are rather well-known in their circles in other parts of the world. They live unpretentious lives and do their business elsewhere, but live here. There are a huge number of people who are completely invisible to the most of the rest of the world, but do something elsewhere for funds, and base here.

OTOH, would I rather put myself and my body in a radically different place, and exploit this temporary option/window for change and contrast to the max? There's a monastery in Isernia, Italy I can hang in, and continue serious Chant work with David if I want. There's a really nice little hotel in Varanassi I could be in quite inexpensively, and do musical and modal work. Thailand has some cool spots. I like the Himalaya. I'm *very* inspired by being in the East (my friend Amon says Africa!), non-western - or at least tribal/affinity/clan-based - social organization is very compelling for me, and I feel a hunger to be immersed in it in order to describe it. I'm sure that, just for the asking, there are little nodes all over the planet that would have room for a creature like me for awhile.

In any event, I feel a very strong urge to complete "Chasing Spring". Every time I get moved by a new idea or an emerging social condition, I feel an urge to "do" something. Deep inside me, I *know* that if all that doingness were integrated and concentrated on this story through the images I'd construct to illustrate other option-sets for behaviors and reactions to the trends of our time, then I would have something tangible to offer that would be useful to some others, and that the utility would continue to unfold over time. Being useful seems extremely important to me - and it really is the only way I'm going to experience the satisfaction of a created progeny that contributes to the whole.

I know I need a web connection to finish the book, and utilize resources well. I have to have the web for what I'm doing with my music. I don't have to perform live for the next year, because I'm focusing on a web-presence for my music and I'm comfortable with my own personal studio work for awhile, if that's all that's available. Just a few more technical upgrades and I'll be portable and self-reliant in this respect.

I know I need a solid chunk of open time. Food, a water source, heat, shelter, electricity - battery watts are fine. I know if I were outside of the US I could possibly go for as long as a year - or even more -without having to do too much in the way of income-production. I don't need to be around people that I know. I really thrive in Project Mode, with a Mission, and a Strategy, and enough latitude to goof-off simultaneously.

Amara is presenting a very unique entree to an expanded world that's highly interesting to me. I don't think it has to be manifest in the physical, but if I choose to put myself in-step with some of what she's doing I would need a ground-life that had room in it to explore. We have some very similar directions and, while we don't need to meld work, we're certainly side-by-siding it, and I'd need time if I wanted to build on that. I'm going to visit her the last half of April, and see what happens F2F.

And then, of course, there's you.

I think I'd consider being in a geography that offered opportunity to connect with you more than once every 5 years - at least for a while. Of course, that's not up to me alone. But then, the most interesting stuff rarely is.

*********

What I'll do next is an unknown to me. I'm still enjoying the uncertainty of it. And what a blessing to be given the option, at this mature stage of my life, to consider and re-consider; and to choose and re-choose. A True Gift.

So, the first test flight of my ExTraOrdinAry VehiCle is running in simulation mode now. I'll be hopping in the car in just a few weeks to flow my body along some other terrain and contemplate the next set of parameters I want to be stimulated by.

I think it will be good to tromp a bit around the land where I was born (Palo Alto/the Bay) - at least, in that general vicinity - and see if there are any more clues to Life's Purpose floating in the redwoods, or beside the ocean, under the moon, through mists and rains and the swirl of that peninsula where my atoms first configured into this round of stuff.

What are you up to?

Configuratively, cynthia

PLUR. Remember PLUR

Peace

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2002