A Moment's Public Reflection

I never did the focus-on-three-good-things some other folks are doing. It would probably help, but I'm getting by. Don't feel like it. How 'bout I pick three things without deciding ahead of time if they are "good" things.

1) The San Francisco Giants won the World Series.
2) I had a session with a psychic healer.
3) Everyone's sick.

One

My first reaction to the Giants is that this proves I have slipped into an alternate universe. In my world, the Giants last won the championship by beating the Cleveland Indians in 1954. They lost in 1962 when, with two outs in the bottom of the 9th, a runner bouncing at third base all ready to sprint home, Willie McCovey drove a line drive that rose through the midfield and into the glove of a leaping Bobby Richardson, the Yankees' 2nd baseman; again in 1989 in a painful sweep by the Oakland A's that was interrupted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake; and again in 2002, though to be honest I didn't pay much attention that year, being distracted by the death of my father-in-law and the completion of our house and the attainment of my Master's Degree and I dunno what else, life getting weirder and weirder in those days. The weirdness started healing when I moved out in 2010, and that year the Giants actually freakin' won the whole thing, and again in '12, and again in '14, and people are using the word "dynasty," which they absolutely should not, because it's arrogant and smacks of predetermination. Teams win by assembling unexpectedly great talent, working really hard, and getting really lucky. There's nothing dynastic about it.

Two
Earlier this year Sunya went to a music / arts festival up in the mountains. I didn't go, I forget why. She met a lot of cool people. One of them now lives with us, sort of an Alice to our Brady Bunch. Another has partied with us lately and is a stone fox, but people who know her (e.g. a fair number of folks at last weekend's big outdoor end-of-year Burning Man party) love her for her gifts. I dunno how best to put it, perhaps a sort of psychic clarity or strength she has. People who are sensitive to such things think very highly of her, and it is in fact her mission to heal the planet. It's clear she takes it very seriously, has a huge amount of knowledge on many (to me) arcane subjects, and seems to be incredibly happy all the time, which says something. Being a stone fox is totally irrelevant to any of that, except it helps motivate people like me to pay attention. It's also an echo of why her story is so varied and interesting and could form the core of a great fictional character.

All that aside, she came to my house the other day and spent a couple of hours determining what some of my blocks were and "downloading" some fresh wisdom into me from Spirit, whatever you want to call it. Some people want to say God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or the Creator, whatever makes them comfortable. I had no preference except many of those terms do carry unwanted baggage. The downloading involved a lot of intense concentration on her part that might appear prayerful to an observer. I didn't feel anything, no surprise, but I'm open to something having happened (or not). There were certainly some emotional moments right from the beginning. For example, on the subject of my supposed savior complex, she said she could feel that this came from an event in this lifetime, and that it happened very early on. Well, my theory has been built on my mother's story that as a baby I gave her comfort and joy while she was grieving the death of her first child. I was one year old when that happened, so early on in this lifetime is indeed correct. R (let's call her) had no way to know about that, and looking at that, and my concern throughout childhood that I never cause my mom grief, and then the girl I latched onto when I was fifteen who'd just been kicked out of a foster home and went through several others during her high school career while I provided a safe haven ... It can be an emotional subject, because that pattern carried forward in various forms for a long time and is integrated with the deepest parts of me. But this healing was basically a counseling session from my standpoint, and if I came out of it with some fresh insight and workable decisions then it was all to the good.

Three
Why the hell did I pick being sick for number three? Well, but I did. My jaw hurts. Has for a week. Started out as a sore throat on just one side and grew to include my jaw and tongue and ear. Chewing, swallowing, brushing teeth were very painful. Doc said no medicine, it will work itself out. I like that approach because it's cheap and doesn't involve foreign substances. He might be right too, as it is marginally less painful today than yesterday. Meanwhile, two other adults in the house sound like they're auditioning for leading roles in the bronchitis choir, and some of us missed work mid-week, and it's been "fun".

Alternate Three
I wrote about Burn The River last year, here. (Hopefully both links work.) I've little to add for this year, except that it was a great time. Yes, I could tell stories, but eh.

Here's a local paper writeup: Time to feel the post-Burning Man burn

Here are some pictures that aren't on Facebook: hneilphotos

Here's a picture taken last Saturday of the sign I made two years ago.