The main thing about traveling is this… “things” get jettisoned- quick.  Amazingly fast, in fact.  

At first, the lack of baggage feels weird.

The other day I became so lightheaded I landed in an emergency room, convinced my heart had slipped

its moors.  It (my heart) was usually settled heavy and firm on top of my solar plexus.

But that day it was up in my throat and in the very next minute, out the third eye.  Like a fucking balloon, gone, that fast.  I panicked.

The oxygen the nurse gave me helped.  (Sweet girl, she said she liked my earrings, and I am so very,

very vain and attached to my earrings – it’s one of the reasons I know I could never become a nun.)

(Well, one of the reasons.)

So, I don’t know if it was the oxygen, or the radioactive dye they put in my veins, or the amusement of hearing Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” blaring over the PA while the gamma camera moved this way and that, but all of a sudden I knew everything was okay.  

That this wasn’t, after all, a good day to die.

That despite certain residue and the possibility of glowing in the dark; my heart was fine.

It (my heart), was, in fact, supposed to roam freely through the chakras, one minute in the pelvis, the next in the center of my forehead and then, you know, out and about in the world. (Yogi’s have a name for that, me, I’m a Midwesterner (although some of the sea has crept in).

An old poem, multiple times rejected and unpublished, yet a favorite (and one of the other reasons for not becoming a nun):

Since Budhy has abdicated his responsibility to provide:

Friday Funk for His Friends

it looks like i’m going to have to start things off with Cat.

So, JBK and I are up before dawn, stumbling around trying not to trip over the cat, who can’t figure out why we’re up so early and can she please have some espresso, too?  

We head off to the polling place, still dark, that is packed with cars and trucks and people. We hop the jeep up over the curb, park, and dash off to join the line.

It’s a long line.

The doors finally open.

And, a really cool thing happens.

A couple of three youngens behind us yell, “Hey Dr. JBK!”  JBK turns around and there are three of his ex-students from that gawd-awful university in that gawd-awful place in rural red that we’d hoped we left miles behind in the dust, well, except for moments like this.   🙂   So they chat, and the lines are crazy snaked, everyone opting for the paper ballot v electronic, and nobody quite knowing where the lines are, since we’re sort of all jammed in the middle of the room.  JKB is  a gregarious fellow, loud even, and utterly unaware he and his ex-students are now “the” entertainment in the polling station.  They talk math, and physics, and doctoral programs, and masters degrees, and teaching.  (Robyn, I think there was some number theory talk, I couldn’t understand them.)

An elderly black women chimed in that she forgot her glasses and couldn’t read her Bible. She smiles.

I realize at this point that I’m in the middle of party central, so I started chatting to the Bible-toting women and others who are muttering emphatically about wanting to be in the paper ballot line. There are some words about the ability to hack the machines.  There’s a lot of chaos.   It was damn fun.

We voted.  Did you?   🙂

Me mum left this earth decades ago and me babies chose not to be born. Seems to me I’m the last person to write an essay on mother’s day. So I’ll throw this out thought out there, and ask for your stories.

The creation energy isn’t limited to our bodies; it isn’t limited to our gender. We– all sexes, all ages– experience the process of conception, gestation, birth and mothering through our projects, our gardens, our loves, our lives.  We experience still birth, early death, abortion. We know the power of a two-year-old’s “No!” and rambunctious thoughts that won’t behave. Most of us have colored outside the lines. And we’ve all rocked ourselves, or someone else, to sleep at night.

So, what are your stories of love and creation?  Of sunny days in the park and late nights in darkness?  Who is your favorite mother?  Who is your most troublesome child? What project just wouldn’t take despite the best sex in the world to make it so? And what joy has been just too enormous for a single heart to contain?  “I wanna story!”  😉

Because Kokopelli, that rascal, was a mom, too, I’m sure of it!

There was once a little kitty. She was black with a crooked tail. She was quite neurotic all by herself and her neurosis should in no way be attributed to the person who fed her and napped with her and petted her on demand.  Not at all!  They shared a life and so maybe some neurosis spilled over but her fear of cars and traveling was all her own.

This kitty traveled half-way across the country, twice. She really hated highways. She never offered to drive and when the car stopped she’d howl like a banshee. She once tried to escape to an Amish village.  She was fiercely opposed to modern methods of transportation and thought the Amish might be her people and a good place to find a home. She was captured and kept from that life and never quite forgave her capturers for not allowing her to fulfill her destiny as a Cat of the Amish.

She really didn’t like tornadoes, either and took thunder and lightening sort of personally; fireworks, too. She had a special shoebox she’d go to whenever the gods of the sky made themselves known. She did like SciFi however and was a big fan of Mystery Science Theatre.

The kitty had many stories to tell.  There are many stories to tell about the kitty.