How Trump Showed Me I was Behind Bars
A letter to my dear friend…For some, our darkest hours…
Here is a letter to read and sign (if you are so inclined) on the election in the United States of Donald Trump. I am in no state to write about this unthinkable outcome. In grief and shock, anger and fear and in the minority, Ellen
Dear Mr. Trump,
This is not what greatness looks like.
The world rejects your fear, hate-mongering, and bigotry. We reject your support for torture, your calls for murdering civilians, and your general encouragement of violence. We reject your denigration of women, Muslims, Mexicans, and millions of others who don’t look like you, talk like you, or pray to the same god as you.
Facing your fear we choose compassion. Hearing your despair we choose hope. Seeing your ignorance we choose understanding.
As citizens of the world, we stand united against your brand of division.
Sincerely,
Sometimes in the darkest moments the brightest lights shine. Let’s make Trump a force that brings the world together, to fight for everything we love.
With hope,
Ricken, Alice, Emma, Christoph and the whole Avaaz team
Avaaz is a 44-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (“Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18 countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz’s biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
astonishment
My friend, Tiramit at Dhamma Footsteps, says it better than I ever could, so immersed in shock, fear and grief are we, obviously the minority here in the U.S….
POSTCARD #231: New Delhi: Trumpets blare, the sharp impact of it hits immediately, a cloud of birds fly up in a flutter of uncertainty. Trees splash outwards in branches, twigs, leaves, blossom and seed. Astonishment… how could this have happened? Eyes open wider and wider, like a camera aperture opening so far it exceeds structural integrity, implodes, buildings collapse in controlled demolition made to seem like a natural disaster, the ground beneath us opens up in sinkholes. Words explode into fragments of meaning… thus, the un-expect-ed-ness of this unnerving turn of events.
Curtains open on the First Act. Enter, stage right, the President of the Disunited States, Hollywood version of narcissistic Third World dictator, well-dressed gangster with his carefully balanced coiffure and infrastructure of war, catastrophe, greed, hatred and delusion – a victorious returning to power, with paid-for breathless wave of applause. Financial Advisors grab all the wealth stolen by…
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Death of Fear and the Beauty of Death
Tears
over fears
of what’s to come
Husband such a
precious soul…
Stay in the present
Enjoy every moment
of together
It is fleeting…
Bipolar mind
medications
fight living
in the present
So unZen
Why can’t I
just be
like before
breakdown and
before medications
Why can’t I
be jolly with he
whom I worship
Why the constant
chatter of
loud thoughts
Would that I could
go with him
when it comes time
And if not
hope that I can
help with his
last breath
Secretly
I want to
be the first
to go
quite selfishly
He who cared
for so many
deserves that I
care from me
for him
and more
Would that
each moment
were not filled
with looking
at Illness
Old age
and Death
and the fragility
Of having a body.
artifact
POSTCARD #230: New Delhi: From somewhere deep in Antiquity (2nd-1st century BC) the Indo-Greek created a likeness of the Buddha saying, okay, this is who he was, and this is what he was like. Before that there was nothing; a stupa marked a place where he had been and what he had said there (supposedly), but no actual identity, no story of how it began, what the cause of it was – always the echo of ‘and what was the cause of that?’ (repeated endlessly) prevented the writer from saying, ‘it was something like this, you know?’ because, even before it begins, the story requires the listener to gently comply with the constraints of a starting point… “Once upon a time” (and this is as good a place to begin as any), so we fall into the story, become the story – we believe in the story because we are…
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passing away
Now THIS man is a true leader!
POSTCARD #226: New Delhi: October 13 2016, at the end of that day, I came downstairs and Jiab looked up from her Thai friends fb page and said: the king is dead. Jiab has this minimalist way of communicating. I checked on the internet and got the necessary information and for the rest of the evening there was no discussion, silence, clink of cutlery on dinner plate.
Next morning a Thai friend came to see us and she was wearing black. All through the weekend I could hear Jiab’s fb videos of the mourning, I looked from time to time and people were distressed, in tears, the entire population wearing black now for one year, newsreaders on TV wear black, any unnecessary colour is avoided. Many Thais change their fb profile image to black and white for the duration of breavement.
I’ve seen it before when Galyani Vadhana, Princess…
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In My Own Voice
My dear friend, Kitt, is a natural public speaker and a wonderful advocate for the mentally ill. She and I are both Bipolar. She is Bipolar 2 and I am Bipolar 1. In this post she successfully achieves what I was trying to do in my book, “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.”
Night Visions
I look up and
my head swims
with delight
making me giddy
with awe.
So humbled
one being
like all others
on this earth
gazing heaven toward
under a canopy
of stars.
Diamonds
with infinitesimal degrees
of infinite distance.
Each a quiet distant world
in one of endless galaxies
in one of endless universes
in one of untold possibilities.
Street Life in New York City
Inspired by a post by Tiramit at Dhamma Footsteps…
Have seen the plight of the working poor in India, especially working women in films like Ankur,” and in many other Indian films. But it is not just India. It is everywhere. And it is not just the working poor.
The belongings of the first resident to set up camp near a seminary and a church
A block away from our apartment in New York City is a tiny campsite of homeless people. I think of them every morning at prayer. I wonder should I bring them food? Coffee? Meantime, in shame and shamefully, I cross the street to avoid walking into their bedroom. I feel for them especially when I am sick and think how horrible to be homeless when sick. But actually it is a daily horror. Only a scaffolding protects against the elements, the heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter. And know I could be there, too, if not for the grace of God. For these people are most likely unemployable. Most likely they are mentally ill, like me, only unlike me, unable to work because they are untreated and homeless. My husband, a retired psychiatric social worker had many homeless clients who could not work and could not get it together to get disability. These clients spoke of the horrors of homeless shelters and explained how living in the streets is preferable.
The residents of this little homeless camp seek refuge and food in the church across the street. As they huddle in comforters in winter and on the sidewalk in summer, I ponder their lot in life while we have our little lives, wrapped in middle class comforts.
And in the United States we have a candidate who speaks to the rascist and xenophobic of our country. To our shame to have even running. But he also speaks to the working poor who are failing despite working one, two and three jobs, to the people who would despise the people down the block because the residents are not working. And he promises his followers a better life. And they believe his fantastic lies. Such are among the many problems of having an underclass of the working poor.
exploitation
A slice of reality, not just of Mother India, from my friend, Tiramit at Dhamma Footsteps…
POSTCARD #219: Delhi: Everything comes to a stop when I see this photo, sent by Jiab in Gujarat, West India. All the pain and suffering I’ve experienced recently is suddenly nothing when I see the endeavor of this woman pulling what looks to be the trailer belonging to a truck. Even so, some would say, it’s easy for me to say, easy for me, comfortable in my male middle class security… and I search for words: admiration, respect, deference. None of these seem to describe the way that lady who looks like my Auntie is pulling that thing with the momentum of a short run at it, to get up and over the incline leading up to the bridge, then over the top and holding the weight as the trailer gathers speed on the downside.
When I first examined the photo it looked like there were two women pulling the…
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groundedness
Another beautiful post from my friend, Tiramit!
POSTCARD #218: New Delhi: Jiab sent me this pic of the cow in Gujarat. There’s always something that ‘clicks’ inside me when I see the cow in the city traffic in India. The aloof separateness of the Gods. Something about the bovine ‘mother’, sacred cow that all Hindus are conscious of.
There’s also a memory of something from my home on the farm in the North of Scotland when I was a kid. I remember long nights and short days, aunties and grannies wearing comfortable wooly cardigans, porridge in a cracked bowl, coal and wood fires, cows in the fields, a black-and-white collie dog – and it’s this that I notice about the rural/urban Indian cities, cows sitting on the pavement, goats nibbling and chickens pecking around, the sound of a cockerel in the distance. It’s the farmyard scene where I was brought up that followed me here!
There’s a…
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as the crow flies
From my friend, Tiramit, over at Dhamma Footsteps… pure poetry…
POSTCARD #211: Delhi/Bangkok flight: I arrived at the place and couldn’t remember how exactly I came to be there except for the journey returning to me in flashes; scanned by X-ray machines, identified, processed, held in aircraft cabin pressure for 4 hours… then look out the window and see small green rice fields with water everywhere; 1800 miles southeast on the Asia map as the crow flies.
Placed on the ground and I have to get my things quickly, put together the parts of who I think I am in this new context of a day I missed the beginning of, and things out there are just happening anyway. Extraordinary, even so – catching up on the rebound, the momentum of the journey, the sense of something recharged, action endowed with purpose because I’ve arrived in what remains of a day that belongs to other people, those who have…
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Illusion Crumbles
Age has crept up on us
like a thief in the night
I think
as I watch the clock hands
remain stuck on 1:30
as I wait
in the third doctor’s office
in six days
with my newly retired husband
ill again
with the illness
that drove him
from his beloved work
with the poorest of the poor
mentally ill
and I wonder
as I worry
about him
how did he do it
and why
and why
did he marry me
taking my major mental illness
as a dowry
and I wonder
how did it happen
that we got so old
we look at people
30 years our junior
on the TV
in the waiting room
and think ourselves
like them
but we are not
old age has crept in
like a thief in the night
were we always broken
cast under a veil
of delusion
which now becomes
seen at times
as bodies
fall ill
and age creeps in
are we finally seeing
the unreality of the “reality”?
Whispers of Spring
Spring green and faint yellow
Sap flowing amid stone and evergreens
A burst of red
Cows heading past lone bare tree
The hide-out of the Spring Peepers
Layers of Spring texture
Greening grass at end of day
Seeking God in New York City
Riverside Park and Trapped Nature
Political Wall
Home Furnishings in the Shelter of Union Theological Seminary
Customer in Local Coffee Shop Window
***
Twinkling stars, infinity sky
no longer can I see,
blinded by the might of
fierce night light in the city.
Now the universe appears
behind closed eyelids
unbound by hour on the clock.
Energy fields in the sky of day
once transported me instantly,
now I battle noise and numbers
in the megaphone metropolis.
My private piece of sky to see,
sitting in the summer sun,
in the backyard playland,
sits now in memory
along with the macro world
of insects underfoot.
The infinity of the terrestrial lawn,
now is writ on microscopic cells
inside my convoluted brain.
Our little piece of paradise
Our little barn for sale
Home now the concrete jungle.
I will find God here, too,
amid the traffic and the trash
Overcrowded cities can
team with spirituality
as manifest in Mother India,
satsangs to the barking dogs,
insistent horns
streets full of homeless.
Here, too, a camp
one block away
reminds one of the blessings
of a dwelling and food to eat
and humbles one
amid serenades
not of crickets
but of sirens
and the cooing of pigeons
or the sweetness of a sparrow.
T’is true the Divine
is manifest in nature,
easy to see there
everywhere
but He dwells here, too,
in the rat filled streets
among the humble
somehow majestically in
the lowest of the low,
I would I could see Him in
the Sadhus of New York City.
His mighty kingdom
lies within the Self
bursting within the heart.
Have mercy on me, oh God,
and please open my heart
to the Compassion within!
The Veil of Love
4AMand you a warm lump
under the covers
of Morpheus
and me wide awake
with eyes moist with tears
I write
lest I forget
the vulnerability of you
yesterday
lest one day
you ARE no longer
a day of dread
so locked into desire
for your presence am I
fearful of the future
lest it tears me from you
or me from you
“Until death do us part”
the import of those words
have begun to resound
with a fierce vengeance
now 30 years later
the treasure of you
multiplies like the loaves and fishes
for I fear a famine
not of food
but of your presence
I try to hold each wrinkled emotion
on your face
in a forever place in my heart
lest you be torn from me
Not following the wisdom
of the sages
to live forever in the present
the specter of loss
hangs over me
haunting our life together
And yesterday
when you cried
when you disguised your tears
with embarrassed laughter
your eyes dripped diamonds,
sparkling as they fell
in response to mine
I crying because
there will never be
a happily ever after
at our age
sure as shooting
death will come
and rip us asunder
Perhaps our love
will be born again
in Samsara
but it is a “perhaps”
without a guarantee
My faith is feint
and my heart shudders
and flutters
under the threat
of separation
as you lay
a lump of warmth
in the land of Nod
Our love a fairy tale
in a fierce steely reality
of endings.
Chogyam Trungpa
The Dawn of Hope and the Hope of Dawn
I await the dawn
rigid with anxiety
each minute an hour
as you sleep beside me
lost in the land of Morpheus.
I cannot rest,
try talking to God
cannot hear Him.
Where is He?
No Presence felt
inside my icy heart.
Do the birds wait
like me, in despair,
for that first magenta burst
of the high and mighty sun?
Then when the first light comes
you awaken and bring tea,
I put my hand on your back
to bless you with Reiki,
as we lounge together drinking warmth.
And I feel God’s presence
and I feel joy and peace and love,
all snug in bed with you and God…
It is for these few special moments
I live.
A Mooji Fall
Maybe the last post, certainly the last for some time.
Following the way of Mooji and the energy negates blogging.
Thank you to a few friends: Bert, Ashley, Tiramit, Sue Vincent and Hariod and more.
Sending love.
MOONSIDE 
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