#sb276

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

People protested vaccine mandates at the Women’s March in San Diego, California. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (closest pictured woman holding the banner) co-authored SB 276 which restricts medical exemptions in California to be granted at the discretion of government instead of doctors. As that bill passed through, she was verbally and emotionally abusive to women and men who opposed it. Her agenda is patriarchal, yet she is one of the official *leaders* here of the Women’s March. To work for equality for women, politicians and activists must actually believe the experiences of women and not overwrite our realities when we are harassed or assaulted or when we witness vaccine injury in our children, for example. If people are not willing to hear women and accept the truths of our embodied experiences, then their *support* for women is a sham and their *fight for equality* is a sham.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Truth is free

I literally screamed it until my voice gave out, and I gave up the screaming, but the message is still the same and will continue to be the same until enough people see the truth and speak that truth:

The vaccine program is not about safety for the people. It’s not even about control of disease. It’s about control of the people. FULL government control of the people.

The longer We The People allow this to persist, the more control our government takes from us. Speak out now while you’re still allowed to.

Yes, you will be questioned. Yes, you may be shamed and bullied. Yes, you may be abandoned by people you care about. That all happened to me. Because that’s what can happen when you tell truths that people don’t want to hear, truths that go against entrenched propaganda.

And when you speak out, the opposites can happen too. Yes, you may be believed. Yes, you may be honored. Yes, you may be entrusted to hold the personal stories of others who have been abused and injured — by the program, the system, the vaccines, and/or by people whose fear has transformed to cruelty as the propaganda intends. That all happened to me too.

The stories keep coming. They don’t stop because the truth itself is free. It doesn’t need to be set free from a corrupt system or even from your own throat. The truth is inherently free.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Saving the Shire and letting go

“We set out to save the Shire, Sam. And it has been saved. But not for me.” ...With any bit of political activism I do now, even just sharing a few words here and there, I think of this quote. Yes, I’m sad to feel the loss of my California, even as I’m still here. I do see people waking up. Stars emerge in darkness, even through haze and city lights. I watch others take up words in lieu of swords. Each time I refuse to censor myself in any way, I offer something to the end we desire. This is the work — the telling of truth, open to inevitable slaps in the face. I speak and bide my time, feeling in my heart I’ll need to leave here before life is done for me. I gather my memories from the canyons, the mountains, the creeks, from fields of lupine and poppies, so I’ll be ready. I stay for now, even knowing there are easier places to draw breath.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

The symphony of limbic resonance

Great conversation feels like musical harmony — notes sounded together to produce chords that feel better than those same notes played one at a time. You feel it in your chest, you know? Everywhere even. Strings plucked within you by the feeling of God. The pull and release reverberates from your core along your limbs. Talk with the person long enough, and you can still feel the resonance in your body as you fall asleep at night. Fireflies buzzing, lighting the dark inside.

Conversation with my friend S feels like that, only bigger. It’s an entire symphony in me. Limbic resonance, powerful enough to heal wounds formed long ago in attachments with less harmony and less presence. The kind of healing that stills a lineage of rumination and allows my mind to accept that after 17 years of our paths twining, she’s moving away, fleeing California as a political refugee.

Our talks along the river will soon be done. Wind, strings, percussion, and brass will be packed away. The fireflies echoing each movement will quiet and still. I don’t know what will come in to fill that kind of silence, especially in an introvert like me. But I have faith that it will be okay. I’m trying to have faith — faith in the infinite nature of the song, faith that freedom comes from the same source as love and the two are equally indestructible.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Letting it be

🎶Let It Be🎶 is for when I don’t want to let it be, but there’s no other way.

I fell asleep late last night with my body humming the song in every cell. My heart resists. It wants the other way, the impossible one where I get to keep what I have, right here.

The lyrics come anyway, despite my resistance, and my heart sings them too. It sings of faith that persists even when I send it away again and again. It sings of joy that plucks me like a guitar string. It sings in the resonance of surrender to what can’t be stopped. It sings in the freedom deep within that can never be taken.

The long road stretches before me. This highway knows too little justice and too many goodbyes. From the roadside I wave until she rounds the bend. Star Thistle pricks my shins, and I let them bleed awhile. The blood runs until my eyes close from the exhaustion inherent in not letting be what already is.

Hope lives on the long road, they say. I feel it sometimes in my dreams.

***

🎶”...And when the broken-hearted people

Living in the world agree

There will be an answer, let it be

For though they may be parted

There is still a chance that they will see

There will be an answer, let it be...”🎶

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Susan’s house

This afternoon I suspended my humanity and became a cat. I folded myself in layers on fleece blankets over a red rug over a wood floor over a foundation of ease.

My friend played the piano and sang to me of dams. And, damn, I was joyful. And, damn, I was content. Content to curl up in the madness of boxes packed in the hall. The big square kind that mean only one thing. I tried not to look at them, but truth once seen can’t be unseen.

Where now will I wear my threadbare dress with the tags inside out? Where will I go with my hair unbrushed without a care? Where can I be so readily real? Where else will I be so un-lonely?

Coffee strained through a paper towel and sweetened with milk and honey. The glass warmed my hands, and I didn’t want to let go.

Damn.

I don’t want to let go.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Slipping into a moment

Slipping into a moment can be so easy. Algae covered rocks and a bit of white water take us in and spit us out refreshed or pulverized, or both sometimes. Pinwheels line the path late in summer, growing over corpses of the lupine we passed in spring. They take turns watching the river in shifts of purple and gold. Sentinels. Witnesses like us.

I know a moment has me when I don’t think about the next watch — the one I’ll stand without my friend on the rock beside me. In the moment, I pluck the reeds one by one as she tells me her stories. I tie them in knots and slip them around my fingers to remember the feeling.