Time and Space
“Do you know why the barber’s pole has blue and red stripes?”. That was the question he’d asked us that prompted what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. A conversation between four strangers, on a random afternoon, at an empty park, surrounded by relics that are themselves surrounded by a city they wouldn’t recognize. It was their town once but no longer.
The historic park we decided to visit that day showcases buildings no longer inhabited by the living. The interiors now protect mannequins in period dress locked and frozen in time and space. The props within try to tell a story but it always puts me in a strange state of mind. An uncomfortable unease of what was, what is, and what is yet to come. I wonder what the old wooden bones of each structure remembers. All the items once cherished by someone now stand alone and useless. What did they witness and how many stories are locked inside the wood, the cloth, the metal items that still retain the energy of the hands that once used them. How many different shades of memory are layered in place? Will the ravages of neglect and time turn even these energetic footprints to dust?
Sorry reader, my mind does like to ponder such things and I will get back to this story but first we must start at the beginning.
A couple of weeks ago, I was finally able to spend some time with my dear husband.
He made the fourteen hour long drive from Utah to California over the course of two days. I waited anxiously for his arrival busying myself with cleaning up the house and making it as welcoming as possible.
Peering out the kitchen window I checked the driveway (for probably the fifth time that morning) and like magic there sat the familiar burgundy colored truck having delivered him safely to his destination. I rushed outside to greet him and we stopped and stood motionless for a second facing each other on the cement path my father poured into existence many years ago. Time stood still in that moment and I reveled in it. He’s actually here… My body relaxed into his arms and I buried my head in the crook of his neck and cried quiet tears of joy. It had been six months since I had seen him last. I was relieved to see how fit he looked as I worry about him being on his own.
Our intentions were to spend as much time together as possible. The problem was finding someone to be with Mom during the afternoons. It didn’t really work out the way we’d hoped. Fortunately, one of my brothers did decide to come down for a couple days to be with Mom as it was nearly her birthday and he wished to spend a little time with her. This allowed us to spend a single leisurely afternoon at Strathearn Historical Park and Museum.
Fun Fact: In the church building on the grounds there are pictures of parish life. One of the photos is of my brother, Matt, being baptized as an infant.
We seemed to have the park to ourselves which allowed me to really take it all in.
No chatter of voices drowning out the sounds of silence. We took our time walking the grounds and learning about the lives of the people that established the town and the small remnant of buildings that survived the passing of time. We both find history fascinating and it often shakes me up as I have a tendency to blur timelines in my imagination making the physical artifacts of a different era come back to life.
At some point, I noticed a middle-aged couple walking hand in hand enjoying their time out together just as we were. A fluttering thought floated past my vision and I felt happy for them. As we came to the end of the self guided tour we ended up in the same spot peering into the windows of the old barber shop. I sensed a pleasantness about this couple so I broke the silence and mentioned that I had grown up in this town and never visited this park before.
That opened up an easy dialogue and we all talked and shared small bits of our lives with one another. It was something I very much needed as I spend my days taking care of a woman that is no longer interested or capable of conversation. Indeed, she is no longer interested in living and it reminds me of the mannequins standing day after day in the same spot with no hope of being the thing they pretend or want to be. She is so very tired of wearing her worn out earth suit as she anxiously waits to go back home.
Spaceship – LeAnn Rimes
We found much common ground with this couple which is rare in this dystopian dysfunctional world. The conversation flowed easily as if we knew each other already. As I spoke to Velia I was so relaxed (I am typically guarded) and I mentioned that I write a blog to keep my sanity intact and I also enjoy composing song lyrics and singing because it is the only magic left in this world. It was at this point that she asked me if I’d heard of LeAnn Rimes… I knew the name but because I am not interested in celebrity lives I knew nothing else about her only that she found fame at a very early age and, of course, has a phenomenal voice. At that point, she told me that LeAnn is her daughter-in-law and that, who knows, perhaps she could share my work with her.
Ah, yes, that’s what every creative longs to hear.
I immediately began to wonder if I was hearing her correctly. Remember, I am stranded for weeks at a time in my mother’s home and it makes me feel a bit fractured as I have only my own internal dialogue to keep me company. She asked me if I had a website to which I responded by giving her my business card. That was that and we parted ways. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day as I contemplated our accidental encounter.
When I write, there are many trains of thought that enter at once and it takes a lot of switching rails to keep them sorted and not crashing into each other. I try to go with the flow of it all and one thought that entered my mind was to look up the meaning of the name Velia.
This name derives from the Latin “vēlĭus,” meaning “concealed, veiled, hidden.” Velia (Latin: Vĕlĭa) is a high ground of the Palatine Hill. The Palatine Hill (Latin: Collis Palatium or Mons Palatinus) is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city.
“Concealed, veiled, hidden” is a great description of my life right now. I have no idea where I am going. I still have dreams but no real plans as my life belongs to my mother right now and I have freely given it to her. It is a temporary situation and I have promised her I would not let her story end as it began – alone and afraid. I am trying to stay on the “high ground” or the high road but it is exhausting me as I struggle to find and keep my “center”. My music website is called Seven Story Music. Another coincidence I find amusingly interesting as its name was inspired by a book called Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton. And so, the Seven Hills reference tied in perfectly, of course.
I believe there are no accidental meetings between souls.
We are meant to work out the message wrapped up in the mystery. We must pay attention and be careful in our interpretation of events. Do not let selfish worldly desires color the intended meaning behind the meeting. I admit, my mind created a fantastical outcome where I finally get to see if I can slip into a different dimension of life as a behind the scenes songwriter. It wasn’t long before reality body slammed me into the rink wall and I tasted the blood coming from the split lip of my reality.
Which leads me all the way back to the barber pole. In times past the barber would also act as a surgeon of sorts (tooth extraction, bloodletting, etc…) and the pole was a symbol that used the color red to represent arterial blood and blue for venous blood. Is this really true? Who knows, but it was a great segue into a much needed exchange of thoughts and ideas between four people wandering through this life and wondering what it will bring them next. Keith and Velia, if you are reading this, thank you for taking a good day and making it even better.
The ghosts of the past still pulse in that place and in all places that have been necessarily superseded and left behind. This is the crux of being human. We get old, damaged and no longer “useful”. We have been taught to drop the elderly off at the train depot to await their last ride to the great beyond in a tortured state of loneliness and despair. It sounds quite bleak (and it is) so what are we missing here?
Society has changed a great deal in the last hundred years. Progress, however inevitable and necessary, has a dark side that has diminished the spiritual life in favor of infallible facts and figures that drive every decision we make. Our personal finances are so bankrupted by government grift that most people can hardly survive much less have the financial resources to care for their elders. There is much we don’t understand about life and death and the space in between. Specifically, we all too often let what is sacred to the human soul pass us by.
The day Ken went back home I felt completely numb.
This depressive feeling stayed with me for several days. I am amazed at his willingness to support my decision to stay on here, providing care for my mother, for as long as it takes. I cannot allow myself to admit that I am beginning to unravel. But in this unraveling I am learning to surrender to the cosmic forces that I recognize bear me no ill will. The goal is to impart growth and expansion of its wisdom to all that will listen. We both understand this at some level but we can’t help but struggle deeply at times wondering how long we can stand up under the pressure of a life lived apart and the suffocating loneliness it often brings.
Psychology would suggest I am suffering with some sort of complex or malformed views on what it means to be human. There is an ever growing list of labels in the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Savior Complex: “A psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. This person has a strong tendency to seek people who desperately need help and to assist them, often sacrificing their own needs for these people.”
I won’t go into what I think of the soft-science of psychology here.
I will only say, in my opinion, that labels help no one. People collect diagnoses like baseball cards in a bid to find recovery or relief from the “thing” that torments them. It’s certainly an understandable pursuit but the label and the stats associated to it hold no true value in the quest to “know thyself”. The vital piece that is missing in the big book of mental disorders is what society has been engineered to reject. And the more we reject it the sicker we become. We are soul sick. I will leave you to figure out what that piece is. And I’m not talking about religion.
Am I suffering from a mental disorder? Do I have an affliction that needs to be cured? Do I have a, so called, chemical imbalance that requires medication? What is mental health anyway? Truly, our thoughts originate and take shape in the heart – not the mind or the brain. It is the heart that requires attention and there is but one “medicine man” that holds the key.
Where there is a need it becomes our choice whether or not we fill it. It is in trying times when we find out what we have in us and I think that is what frightens us the most. We have become a society that has lost touch with higher knowledge or our Higher Self. There are so many hidden truths all around us but you won’t find them if you refuse to look. My mother is bound by time and space, the cross of time and space, as are we all.
At the center of the M51 Whirlpool Galaxy stands a cross
Time and Space – Erin Douglass
The saga continues next week… As always, thanks for reading and Happy Mother’s Day! 💐
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The highest divine nature is love, pure love is selfless, and the highest form of love is sacrifice.
The highest stage of human development is to grow to this selfless giving and come to the stage of giving one’s own substance away. Ceasing to exist, in order to give life to other life. Continuing to live in what lives on, in another form.
For us humans, this is still far from our current stage of evolution. It requires imaginative soul work to get closer to this image and reality. We can do this, as an exercise, by contemplating the border between our current physical world and the spiritual world. In nature, we see life being torn away and disappearing at a large scale, and we feel like the physical life stops. But at the other side, it continues and becomes stardust from which new life is built and will be born.