TEN THOUSAND THINGS AND MORE

The spirit guide was not my own. He only showed himself because I had an affinity with someone from the group he was caretaking for. Speaking of caretaking, it is the right word, more correct than any word has ever been, - because the person the spirit guide was watching over was a caretaker of an apartment building. Unfortunately, I could not hear what the spirit guide said because there is not audio in these visions. But, I shall relate the impression and the vision anyhow… 

He appeared as his face and hair, possibly shoulders. In film this is called an Italian Length Medium shot. Maybe it has something to do with Italian Neo-Realism and all that. I can’t recall exactly. He was white, with dark eyes and dark hair. Not a sage or shaman, no…nothing like that. Just a normal person. Maybe he was a bit ahead of the ones he was in charge, so to speak, of watching. I think he was just saying hello, - acknowledging that it was seen and heard, - the respect and memory for one of his group.

There was one more thing. He seemed to look down as if at a table and I got the secondary vision of him running his right hand across the table as if to say, Go ahead, continue, and I felt it had to do with writing about the person as sometimes I do. It’s not me that does, - but the muse truly I would think, or some higher form.

Then the spirit guide, as I said, and let me reiterate, not mine, - left. And so again I remember the man the guide is now taking watch on. He was intelligent and kind would be considered cool. In his workshop was a large poster of a group of people in black and white dress, formal dress. Perhaps it was a party from the past. The picture was also in black and white. Maybe his father or grandfather was in the photo. On the bench were tools and small projects.

Leading out from there was a green cement walkway that turned into stairs. The stairs met up with white stucco walls and there were square holes cut out in the walls. I sometimes call these windows without glass. If you looked through the openings you could see the Atlantic Sea and just in from that, the sandy shore where tall palms kept watch.

One time we all went out there into the sea and just sat around in the water. There must have been ten of us. With the sky blue and not a cloud to be seen, with the sound of the lapping whitecaps nearby, with the sandbank we were on cushioning ourselves, with the gulls that flew by talking as we talked, with the big ole ship, rusted, far away nearer the horizon line, going past, with the piers far to the North and the South, with the dusk and the night, full of soft lights and warm sounds if sounds could be warm, waiting, with the light talk of the fish or the waves or of nothing much at all, and with the white boulevards up the way, the small stores, the passersby, the old conch shells both in and out of the vast ocean, with the old bookstore on the other side of the street, with these and a thousand no ten thousand things and more, I shall remember the man that the spirit guide said I could and perhaps should.

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SEARCHING FOR MAX EHRMANN THROUGH THE SUBTLE STREAM

Everything is in the Desiderata, isn’t it? Especially one of the early lines where it says to avoid loud and aggressive persons as they are a vexation to the spirit. Boy when I pulled up there was some loud-ass lady at the parking area. Of course her dogs were off leash and running around the cars and people, the aged walkers and everything else. Instead of pulling them in she seemed to just stand there and yell at this or that and in her yelling she was making excuses left and right. How long would we have to wait, I thought, before she disappeared somewhere on her own walk? Finally she seemed to go. Five or so minutes felt like an eternity around that bad energy. 

The place was too busy, but the other places would be

busier. So we had to go for it. We went to the forested farm-land, and it was not great but not horrible either. A few joggers came by, which was surprising. We travelled the uppermost part of the valley wall, and also down to and across to the open areas. There were some mushrooms growing on trees and some blue skies peeking through. The early buds are still just that though…buds. They need time and rain, sun and process. After the loop, it did not feel that we really had done much, - so we went down an old place known for its quietude. There is a very small stream there and a little walking bridge. We stayed around for ten or fifteen minutes looking, listening, and enjoying the quietness- finally.

Going back I saw a dead coyote by the side of the road. Right
away, because of its size and coloring and where it was situated, - not far out at all and on the right side, - I thought it was the coyote that I had seen days before, the playful young curious one that had been watching me. It would explain his disappearance.

Going on from there and taking the long way

there were some colorful fields and fences and displays of the day- sun, blue, green hill. But the last two days of the week are hardest because the crowds come from who knows were to invade the normally sparsely walked areas…

Stopping briefly to by the outsides of a handsome and small church, it could be

seen that the day was becoming clearer, warm, and sunny. I think it’s a nondenominational place and they put up sayings outside in black letters against the white plastic. Something perhaps clever or a part of a psalm or proverb. There is a small graveyard out back with names of old-timers like Robinson and McCarthy, Wells and Duckworth, or simply Smith or Johnson.

Near the end of the drive there was a hawk alighted atop a large highway entrance sign. He saw all the construction and traffic and wondered, - What are these people up to? The sign said it was the way to go south, but I noticed that when he took off he chose north.

The city is south and he knew it.

Definitely a literate hawk.

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CAR AND COYOTE OR WAITING BY THE HONEY COLORED HILLSIDE

There was an old car down the way. It sat abandoned for decades, a ghost of its former self. The sides riddled with bullet holes. .22 calibre for the most part, but others. One man told a story about how it all came to be. I listened. Seems like he had the car for a 1965 something and it was in fact a 1964. Someone had driven it there and left it, though at the time it was in regular if not good condition. The owner of the farm found it, down, way down and practically hidden in the bush by a small stream. The farmer notified the police and somehow they traced the information from something in the car or the plates themselves. Its seems word came back that the guy was in Florida. I don’t know if it was a jail thing or not. The police, so the story went, - decided it was a case of ‘finder’s keepers,’ and let the old farmer have the car. Somehow he sold the good parts and left the body there. It still retains the color- a sort of gold. The original farmer and the owner are perhaps ghosts, spectres, - themselves. Maybe they met and had a laugh about it- compared notes. What did you get for that engine anyways? - asks the old owner. 

 

And so the path goes. There are things sprouting and buds being borne into infancy that shall

in the coming weeks reach adolescence and then more. What does a forest or field look like in mid-June? In mid-July? In mid-August? The coyote, lost, separated from its pack perhaps, - or its parents dead, and sibling too, - was actually not seen this day. Where was he? I could feel the presence of his absence. I waited by the honey colored hillside. I looked at the sky that was for the most part a continuous blue affair w. some dispersed clouds down the way. There was a breeze, but it would only dance around a bit unlike the days of the loqacious winds. I thought he might show up, atop the large summit, - right there, silhouetted in the late afternoon calm, - a feral but mysterious event. He is a trickster, a good omen, a mystery, a survivalist, a lost soul, a secret, a mythology unto himself, a living flesh phantom, a curiosity. He is a type of animal Essene, a playful gnostic sort. He is all these and more. Recently, he saw me, ran off, and I thought he was surely gone. I looked up and found him...about fifty feet away through some dense chaparral. He had only feigned running off. He was instead staring straight at me.  He is also I heard tell starving and turned around, - out too much in the daylight and the open. He didn’t show up. Or did he? Was he there watching us? I looked and was more still than the middle of Source. I watched the land w. the eyes and aura and spirit of a shaman- trying to see what is normally hidden.

But I could not discern where he was.

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