like i said, eat more cosmic munchies

church

from 5.29

Brooks feels validated because mama nell smoked. Ha! Perhaps.

Went to waffle house today, searched around the farm for things to paint- found three big rocks, the lid of a bucket, four glass vases and a green glass serving dish, pieces of wood, a pole, some paper, a tree. Painted a tree purple, go look for that. Glow in the dark paint too, which I got when I went to Lowes and then Wal-Mart because it’s simpler there. I woke up at 8:30 and went out to the couch, feeling pretty restless. Watched an MSNBC report on Wal-Mart half asleep, so I guess it got into that really delicate, infinitely delicate headspace between sleep and awake. It took me a while to turn my head on this morning, waffle house did the trick.

I think that getting up and painting a picture during that restless period I experienced this morning would be an enjoyable experience and a good way to start the day. A free associative painting and whatever other medium I use to spill out what is bouncing around my head from the dreams or whatever headspace I was in just before I woke up, or got myself out of bed at least. Isn’t it funny the thought process we go through each morning to get up? That seems crucial but it’s rare I find myself really talking with other people about their experience inside their heads first, and I mean first thing in the morning. Everybody does it; nobody talks about it, hmmm, interesting. I wonder how many other universal things we each do and all do that are so intimate to each individual they are almost unnoticeable unless you know to look and pay attention to it. Observe the observer, hmmm? Internal processes we all do just to stay floating upright in this slippy sloppy sloopy world of aqua “reality.” Don’t you agree?

tea bag metaphors

“Wisdom becomes knowledge when it becomes your own personal experience.” -written on the piece of paper attached to the tea bag I brewed today.

“The field is like your body, your being. And your body is like your ego within the field, the larger field, and the crickets and cicadas and birds are like the energy fields that are always in the field. The degree to which you can discriminate and become aware of the varying frequencies in the fields is the degree to which you heal, are a healer, allow yourself and others to be healed.”

There is a tendency to get going and then something unsettling, something I’m unsure about or emotional or uncertain about comes into mind for just a moment and the whole train fractures, jumps track and I spiral off into sitting uncomfortably numb at the station again. I realize clearly now that what I’m doing is not what everyone is doing. This is what I’m doing, the thinking not everyone is doing. Is that something? Is this doing something? Can I follow the dharma? The truth? The path? Can I get off the path?
I realized over the past month and a half that there was a lot about my Dad’s death that I haved yet to realize and face head on. Death is a very powerful, overwhelming phenomenon with an infinite number of angles and perceptions and fears and things that depend on faith but can’t be seen without it that force the soul to explain itself to itself, and the process of having to explain yourself to yourself is uncomfortable and evolutionary. It’s so hard to maintain a fresh perspective on yourself but it’s the most important and beneficial thing you can do.

=========

Thank you for teaching me to count my blessings, integrity counts, character really does matter, it’s better to learn to do it myself the right way the first time, God’s behind everything, and that the best thing you can do is leave the world around you a little bit better than when you found it.

how would you illustrate it?

Ends
.chs

When people hand me a roll of developed pictures I always
Look at the bottom picture first. I like the ends,
I like basketball but only watch the playoffs, fourth quarter,
And I like my team to win, my answer to be right, my song to play
When I’m having a rough night. I don’t suggest you live like me.
Most people would go crazy with a tick like mine, always
working backwards through space and time.

But then one day I met a man with a roll of pictures
That was never meant to be viewed first from the end,
For when I glanced and flipped right past I vanished
In a flaring comet skipping atmospheres, booms brightly and
Passes on to a place where I have no bearing. No bones
To beat a harmony out and hope that someone will seek me
way down here in this place, it’s ghostly quiet.

Now the only way I know to send a wave off your head
Is in a form of misconfusion and dancing open ends
Like the Rumi’s of our dreaming winds who guide us
With lenience, connections and pretending places,
But I learned the secret of the space that awaits us is
Much more liquid than this basement of a gaze
where I’m talking to you Now.

tiny people and regular sized soccer balls

merry 6 two six of 2006 everybody

walk into the sky why don't ya?

from my may 27th journal-
The sensation that he is aware beyond what he can express. It means he really and truly does know what you’re saying to him and he can sense the deepest parts of it, it makes you feel reenergized and hopeful that all those things you want to tell him, all those things you’re afraid its too late tell him, really are getting through to him when you do tell him, and it helps him have as much peace of mind as it does me. We help each other ease into the light. It’s so powerful it’s hard to stare it in the face some times, but that’s all you can do and it’s all you need to do, as best you can, just stare it in the face. Stare him in the face. Tell him you love him and appreciate everything he’s done and that you’re going to keep it going, keep it growing. Tell him to say hi to dad. Tell him you’re so glad he’s about to find peace. He’s so close to being infinitely free. Pop is an infinite being. Tell him you’ll meet him in the fields whenever and forever. Tell him you love him again and tell him about how much you love grandma and how much he’s taught you about everything. Thank him for laying the structure that was so stable it lasted all the way down to me through dad. Tell him to tell dad you love him. Oh heck, I’ll dad myself, right now. Love you dad, hope you’re doing well.

eat more cosmic munchies

The bullfrog that moved into the fountain while Pop was sick seems to have moved on. I had a feeling it was Dad and he was there to help Pop ease over. He reminded us every note with a ribbet and a croak. It was beautiful, Dad stood guard, if only as a frog.

-----

Equilibrium
Everyone’s got one
One is made up of one
Equilibrium
One center point of balance
One zero point per soul
One place where one relates their place
Swimming in the whole

In a vacuum
Those who know
Have it easy

-----

Wisdom:
1. ALL it takes is enough motivation
2. Start fishin’ the lake
3. I/You really can help people
4. Write more letters to old friends just for the heck of it
5. Think about what the hardest thing for you to do is and then do it.
6. Think concrete.
7. Always be going forward from HERE.
8. Sadness has the power to spawn change.
9. Wake up and stretch.
10. Take the time to heal.
11. Nobody reads the balloons, except Keller, so don’t lose heart.
12. If you have the God given ability to be self propelled, be self propelled.
13. Recognize the other person is you.

-----

What lumps things together? Matter for instance? Perhaps it’s metaphysical membranes. I should see more of those I suppose. Go into the purple crescent next to the D note. Badaa badaa ba badaabop.

Note to self: Eat more cosmic munchies that look like glowstick spaghetti. Starry skies are a good source.

twenty three

birthday dinner in dallas with the family at javier's

wakarusa photos and setlists

wakarusa june 10th and 11th shows

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Keller and the Keels Setlist
Set 1: Whurley Booger, Culpepper Woodchuck doesn’t give a fuck, Ladies and Gentleman > I Wanna Rock and Roll All Nite, Big Ass Crater, Vanilla Ice Cream, Diamond Dupree’s Blues, Here to Get My Baby Outta Jail, “Song about drinking shine in the woods”, Legalize It > Soul Shakedown Party, Breathe > Longview > Brick in the Wall > Breathe, Freeker > Portapotty, Bird Song, Last Dance with Mary Jane > Breakdown > I Want a New Drug > Last Dance with Mary Jane
E: Goofballs

Keller Late Nite Set
Set 1: Instrajam>Apparition, Freshies, Life is…, Fuel for the Road, the Lost Song, People Watching, Stupid Questions, Dogs, Skitso, Love Handles, Alligator Alley, Don’t Forget to look Down (new song), St. Stephen
E: Freakshow
-------
Railroad Earth
Set 1: Coldwater, Like a Buddha, Old Man and the Land, Instrumental, So Do I, The Hunting Song, Song about Soldiers, “I wanna heal the world’s troubles, can you feel it coming’?”, Head, Instrumental

Set 2: all I know is Seven Story Mountain and Dandelion Wine
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Yonder Mountain String Band
Set 1: Sideshow blues, No Expectations, Idaho, How ‘bout you?, Instrumental, new song about the engine running cold, Mother’s Only Son, Ramblin’ in the rambler > new song with Bela Fleck > Ramblin’, Years with Rose with the Flecktones flute player > King Ebenezer > Years with Rose, Holdin’
E: Death Trip

colorful subtlties

more celebration photos. are those watermelons we're carving?

------

i think i know
chs

How often do you pray with your eyes open?
Who told you to close them when you sleep?
Who sets up things that don’t make sense
And turns big wheels that don’t connect?
Who made me blind but full of feel?
Who tricks me daily with delirious zeal?
Who twists the ironies I cannot miss
And turns me upside loose and limp?

I think I know, I think I know
Didn’t ever meet him till the day by the shore
In the waves the tides spoke loud to me
I saw the moon and it was pulling trees
And the trickster reminds he always here
In the thoughts you thought were just getting clear
He heard the words inside your head
And gave it back with a slight of chance

He’s a rhyming fool and he makes it so cool
But it makes him a delicate, powerful tool
So don’t doubt what you’ve heard for too long
Accept that ring and your own overtone
Be a match made memory of the perfect prince
then run back home and spread, spread, spread what you know.

another shot for me to understand it right

after the service we came back to the farm, just like we did after dad's service, and we had a party, and we got happy and we told stories and of course, we got out the super deluxe slip-and-slide we jimmy rigged together for maximum length and width, and just enough slope. needless to say it was a celebration and not a mourning event, good long peace was a long time comin'. I have begun to learn what a sacred thing family is.

------

my talk with pop today, june 3rd

He was foolin’ with his two teeth and commented on how he thought he’d had all his teeth abstracted already, but it seems like he still has two. He said he thought he was gonna make it out of here with them but now he thinks they might have to be abstracted. He knew they were cutting the hay before I did somehow, and he is beginning to show that he is aware of what’s in the room even beyond what it appears he can see. He knew the wire was wrapped around the lamp and he knew when his glass of water wasn’t sitting on the bedside table anymore. He told me “we really like those two ladies you boy’s brought around.” I told him thanks for teaching us to count our blessings, and he said “I’ve got too many blessings to count one by one.” I told him he was a lucky man, that we’re all lucky men, thanks to him, and he said “thanks to the good lord.” "We've had a real intresting life out here." "Good to let it run its course." I told him there was a frog in the fountain behind him and he said it must be a bullfrog and I said it is, and it’s huge, and I showed him how big it was with my hands and he smiled. Lots of smiling today. He got really excited they were cutting the hay, I told him there was a great breeze that kept the hay dancing and tried to give him some visuals so he could imagine sitting on the front porch. He kept saying he hoped he’d get to see them finish bailing tomorrow. He asked if there was something we could do about his sore throat, Cassandra gave him his pills and told him they were for his throat and he said oh good, swallowed them, then said he thought that would really help. I have to give it to Cassandra on that one, mental states are everything. When I told him I was going to go sit out on the porch and watch them cut hay with grandma he got the biggest smile I've seen in years and said louder than anything I've heard in a long time “maybe I’ll go get my mowing machine and come down there and help ya!” it was so great.
The revelation came yesterday following the night where Lloyd asked me how I was going to relate to people since I had led such a “rich” life. He said it and then appended it with “rich experience.” I explained that I understood those worries, worried about them a lot, but can only use myself as an example. I can’t tell anyone how to make their life better and more meaningful, but I can show them how I went about beginning to do so in my own, and perhaps some universal tools or attitudes or something can come out of it. I will explain myself with myself, what else do i have? what else does anyone have? I admit in some ways i am using the world around me and those around me and all that is not me, or appears to be not me, to dynamical come to an awareness of what is me, and then, i suspect, see that in the purest of hearts me and not me are made up of One.
Maybe the revelation though is that if there is anything I can help people with, based on experience, it’s how to deal with death and find meaning in it and celebrate life instead of worry about things you can’t control and can’t ever really know for sure about. This is where faith comes in and it’s up to you to keep your well of faith full. There’s a thin line beyond which you really cannot fake, find that line and then cross it on faith toward the good. It hit me when bobby lowe and his wife were there and I saw a pamphlet called “the dying experience.” This is what I can share and give to people, i think, i think i have a feeling, i think this is what the universe has been waiting for me to figure out. That reminds me of “the prayer path” bobby’s wife described they do at their church. This would be a good thing to set up on the farm with gongs. The unfolding of a revelation. Is it possible to package up something like that? I should try to think concrete and go from there. Find one overarching nugget of truth to share and then plan a path of reflection that will bring one there. Maybe me first. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for my blessings.

my grandfather, dad's dad, passed away on my birthday last tuesday and we put him in the ground on saturday, his own birthday. i don't know where to begin so i'm just going to post the words i spoke to him at his service. i kind of melted on the delivery so if anyone couldn't understand me through the tears this is it. it's been a powerful gemini season this year and in a lot of ways i'm just getting in to the thick of it, but life is good and i count my blessings.

*

Dear Pop,

It was this time last year when I came down to the farm after graduating from college that I realized you and I have a special cosmic bond. It was about June 14th or 15th I remember because it was just before your 88th birthday and it was just after my 22nd on the 13th. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I remember telling you-
“Hey Pop, if I’m 22 and your 88 and our birthday’s are five days apart, that means that I’m almost exactly a fourth of your age to the day. Neat, huh?” It was neat and you got a smile out of it and for whatever it was worth, it was worth something to me. I had never thought of it before, but I guess it’s been set up like this since I was born, but only on my 22nd birthday and your 88th did our ages match as neatly as they did. I wondered if it was a twins thing since we’re both Gemini’s, just like your twins, Dad and Lloyd.
I made it back to the farm a little earlier this year, just in time to help you and grandma down your homestretch. I spent the winter working in the mountains and when the snow started to melt I followed it down the valley and then down the country and flowed south and arrived on the farm around the first of May. I have a tendency to just show up down here without calling because I like surprises and it’s more flexible that way, and when I showed up you had been in the hospital for three days and grandma, starting that day, didn’t have a ride to the hospital to see you. She said I must have been sent by angels to show up when I did, and since I really didn’t know why I was here exactly when I was, except that I ALWAYS gravitate towards this place, I believe her.
For the last month and a half or so I did my best to try and play a role in your peace of mind any way I could, but I think it was you who helped me more than I could help you. Once we got you back to the farm it begin to feel like things were really as they should be. You were home on the piece of land you cultivated, and you not only cultivated the land, you cultivated your family and your principals and your community. Frances and Cassandra and Ann all did a real good job keeping you as comfortable as could be given your ripe old age, I can’t thank them enough.
I would come over from Mama Nell’s in the morning and say hello, then I’d go play out in the fields, and then I’d come back in and tell you about the turkey’s I saw or the frogs that were living in the pond or the inexplicable peacock that found us on the top of the mountain behind the house, and you would smile. I would describe the weather and the wind blowing through the hay and you would smile and it meant a lot to me just to see you smile. And after I sat with you for a while I would go and sit with grandma on the porch, or look through her drawers full of pictures and I discovered something new about your life, and myself, everyday.
It was hard to see your body begin to shrivel, and it was even harder because I have seen that shriveled face and boney body before when my father journeyed through his own homestretch over three years ago. It is a very intense experience to look into your face and know that I came from in there, but it was the kind of intensity I’ve come to look for in life. Dad’s death, when it happened, seemed a little out of order at the time, but you, you were an old man who lived a remarkable life and did more for the community and your family than I ever really understood until these past months. As hard as it was to see you like that and all the memories it conjured up, it is even harder to describe the feeling of having someone on the other side to hand you off too.
Since you passed I’ve been trying think of a way to describe this strange cosmic bond I’ve come feel with you the past two months, and it’s been hard because it’s such an intangible, magical sort of thing that is a part of the very fiber of my being. I don’t know where I end and my dad begins just as I don’t know where you and I begin. I thought our birthday connection might be a way to start talking about it, or maybe that we’re both Gemini’s and Gemini’s are twins, or maybe trying to describe the experience of sending a message to my father through you as we handed you off to him on the other side. I didn’t know how I was going to do it until I received a short email from a high school friend of mine. My friend Chris came out to the farm once for a week in high school and met you and grandma. Remember? He was the one I learned to drive that old red truck with. Chris only met you once, but he knows me very well, and I think I’ll just go ahead and quote him here in hopes something about you that I am eternally grateful for can come through.

“Dear Cole,
I’m in Germany for the World Cup and heard about Pop. Just wanted to express my deepest sympathies and also let you know how great it was to have met your grandfather and stayed with them that week in high school. Not only was he always very traditionally hospitable, but he always seemed an intricate and responsible aspect of the person you are today; kind, loving, and tolerant.
My grandmother died six days before her 90th birthday and it seems, in retrospect, that the things to remember are those which touched your life the most, i.e. the life they lived and the lessons they were able to convey as lessons learned and the examples they were able to set because they were around this long.
Please give my best to your family,
Chris Dillavou”

Dealing with death is never easy, it’s not meant to be, but if there is anything I have learned since losing my father it is that death, paradoxically, is the most powerful catalyst for life there is. There is no stronger motivating force than the example of a life well lived, and you Pop, are a storybook example of how to live the good life. You embodied every principal you stood for, and there is nothing more powerful than that.
During one of the last conversations we had I thanked you for shaping the farm into that masterpiece it has become. A place where people actually feel the energy shift as they come up the driveway. I thanked you for raising my father so well that he raised me well enough to know what’s good, I mean what’s really good in the world. For teaching me to be humble and to count my blessings and to keep it simple but try and make it sweet. To know that if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing right, and that it’s always a good idea to help a neighbor out.
Now I admit this cosmic bond bit sound a little crazy, and I wasn’t sure if I was making it all up or not until you decided to pass away on my 23rd birthday, June 13th. I’m still digesting what it means, and I don’t reckon I’ll fully understand it for a long time, but it feels beautiful and the word “honored” keeps coming to mine. It will take a lifetime to express my gratitude to you Pop. As I learned with Dad, he may have moved on, but the lessons he taught me continue to blossom and come to light in my soul each year I live because some things are hard to understand from some ages. Your influence, I have a feeling, will be much the same. Not just for me, but for everyone who knew you, or knew grandma, or knew your sons or their families. You are the trunk of the tree of my self as well as your family as well as your community. You have earned your peace more than any person I know, and we are all blessed to be your branches, or even just to sit in your shade. I hope you’re havin’ a good time up there with your mother, and I hope you and Dad are telling stories about the good life. You inspire me to find a way to share the blessings I have been given with my community and to realize my own self worth.
It’s sad you’re not around to ask us, “how’s it comin’?” anymore, but it is such a relief to see you released from the body you literally lived to the bone. Like grandma said, “Sure am gonna miss the old fella, but he’s in a real good place now.” You left before I got a chance to thank you for my birthday present, and I understand, because you leaving on my birthday was a gift. I have never received anything quite like it, and so for your birthday, today, I want to give you my word that we’ll take good care of grandma for you, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Laying you into the ground the same day you came into this earth feels incredible and complete and whole to me. It feels rare and divine like you really went the whole full big circle, and you never forgot that character really does count for the entire length of your journey, you even taught it to me. You will be missed but ever present in us all, so happy birthday Pop, thanks for everything, and whenever you and Dad want to whisper something in my ear while I’m walking through the fields, I’ll be listening.

I Love You,
Cole

Zen Quote for June 13th, 2006
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. –Willa Cather

Seven Story Mountain
Railroad Earth

oh lord, to see a light
but fail in strength to follow
. . sometimes it’s hard to let it go

oh lord, to fail in heart
and each day grow more hollow
. . . sometimes i just don’t wanna know

but the road that led me here
is begun to disappear
sometimes i wonder where i am

oh lord, to hear a voice
but let it fade & wallow
. . . sometimes it’s hard to let it go

oh lord, to find the words
but keep them in & swallow
. . . one day the top is gonna blow

but the road that left me here
is begun to disappear
sometimes i wonder who i am

oh lord, to stumble blind
for years without knowing
. . . sunrise has burned my eyes again

oh lord, to crumble quiet
watching from the silence
. . . sunrise has burned my eyes again

it’s a Seven-Story-Mountain
it’s a long-long -life we live
gotta find a light & fill my heart again

it’s a Seven-Story -Mountain
it’s a long-long-life ahead
gonna find a voice & fill my throat again