Universal Heartbeat

"Universal Heartbeat"

I am --
And like the thunder
It shook them all,
But only some were
Awake enough to notice

Within their steeled hearts
Their weary souls
Cower and respond: Ignorance (wrapped in wonder)
And then softly: status quo

Dreams have been
Left for
Such sleeping star children
It plays them each
A melody of hope
Pulsing galactic
In their veins

It beats
I am, I will
I am, I do
I am, I am

Waking star children
Let their eyes drop ice-sickles
Across keyboard handshakes
Of cold, blue screen-reflections
And meet brothers and sisters
On wires, in mega-computers

They're anchored tightly
Into a necessity
Food, air, shelter, water... love
They become the machine
And bound to its devices
Respond they: status quo
Noting nothing, no

Unshielded realizations
Inside them all
It beats
It beats the call
I am, I am
Forever have I been

But they have forgotten
To be, to say
What it is they have forgotten
But then, there is the breathing
And the beat
I am, I am
Sounding slightly louder
Neighbor to neighbor

And casting off the cold
It beats -- on
--Quit pretending
--Start believing
In the universe
I am,
A whisper

Ear to breast
Leaking messages of
Activist souls
Into the wave of all communication
In battlement with: status quo

Slow and steady
Slow and steady
They get ready
I am,
I am

It beats,
And star children wake
And secret wisdoms wake
It beats some
Til they break

I am,
I AM

Awake --

Neighbors sleeping near
Suckled on their: status quo
Ask the wrong questions
Follow all the same directions
While searching for meaning
In a chapter
That's long been closed

Too many ideas, not enough time

I'm having a hard time getting my head on today. It's like there's a block or something that really makes me want to do nothing at all and everything at once. And somewhere in the middle is my work that needs doing and my drive for projects other than what I'm required to be working on. I'm not sure when this happens if it's just me or if there is more to it.

I'm pretty sure that when I'm hormonal (yes, it's a cause) I'm less in control of my impulses. I say things, I divulge information on things. I get worked up. I talk. I feel uneasy about what I've said, and then somehow I can't seem to keep from saying more of it. I don't have the down-side from any bipolar-like disorder, at least I don't think so. But I'm pretty sure I've got the manic-side and go a little nuts and get all aggitated.

It wouldn't matter to me if I were bipolar, it's a credit to creatives and seems to make their work all the more deep and intense. The ability to let go of the whole rest of the world to focus solely on a project has got to have some merit. Those famous artists who have given their all to be creative and who have had their trials with the disorder recorded as part of the battle they waged to see their works through leaves little doubt that being sort of crazy is part of the territory.

Grandiose dreams and ideas are sometimes the jumping off point for those who want to make more of this world. Dream bigger than you are.

I'm good at that. I'm one of the best at fixing myself on some ideas and then working through them piece by piece by piece until maybe I get one or a few of them finished. I might be better at what I do than I think, even. And I need these dreams. They keep me up, keep me hopeful, keep me seeing this world as someplace where impossible things are likely to happen. I keep them alive and feed them hope and talk about them and share the visions with others.

But the bigger they get, the more I worry I'll fail them and the more I worry I've spread them too thin by sharing the energy from them. Do secret projects pull off better than public ones? I want to see others involved in the execution of these projects and to involve their hope and spirit, just like mine. But when I can't follow through or something is only possible farther down the way, am I setting these dreams up to fail?

Going crazy is OK

It's OK to go crazy. It's OK to feel intensely for things and to pursue them as though the consequences were unimportant altogether.

Pressing the RESET button

(by: By Bruno Furnari CC license for non-commercial use)

Going home is like pressing a reset button in my head. It's a reminder that I don't have to win or lose, pass or fail to be alright and everything is in order. My family supports me and knows I'm brave and tough, they know I'm scared shitless a lot of the time but still go out and do my best.

This is today's theme it seems, and while it's super late I'm wondering what is the reset for others. Is it a vacation or going to someplace you learned great things? Is it a day of rest and sleeping it off or maybe just making enough time in a day to do something you love, like I love to paint or just go out and shoot random photos.

It doesn't take a lot to get me out of a creative and energetic funk. It does sometimes take me a lot more to get out of a creative funk. In the news business it's sometimes easy to get into a call/visit, notes, write reports, repeat -- cycle. And I hate that because I want to write poetry in the newspaper and apply it to common things so that people will include a bit more poetry in their lives. Maybe it's just a romantic notion to believe others are interested in reading a finely tuned piece of news better than taking the bitter as it is, but you'll have to come up with a pretty good argument to prove I shouldn't keep on believing it.

I wear myself out. I literally go and go, hope and hope, drive myself and drive myself crazy with details, names, facts, dates, late history, early history, who's what doing, did, said had a dream. And I love it. I love the pace because it's an addiction and I crave it like one, too. But at least it's productive, even when it's not healthy. The adrenaline rush was why I loved hard, breaking news and chasing the cops around like a mad woman for a year. Instead, now I just chase anything in sight and refuse to narrow things down.

Then there's my friend's business and how I hope to help it grow and make it more because I want to see him succeed after being an underdog. And if I didn't see the potential for success, I'd probably still help him because I love him. And love is always a good enough reason to do anything.

I've set myself up to move to the next phase of a woman's typical life, skipping children perhaps, and going out for a graduate degree and my own business. I'm thinking my life will always be empty if I do neither, so I'm going to do one. It's not the success I care about but that people stop whatever they're doing and notice I was here, take something profound away from my expression (in whatever form it takes) and live a more fulfilled life for it. And I don't care about how big my audience is. If you're reading this and moved by it -- well then, maybe I've done it all.

In the meantime, I want to travel, which has a fee attached to it. I want to create art, which has a fee attached to it. I want to help others in drastic ways, which (usually) has a fee attached to it. I want to be free from the system, which has so damn many fees attached to it that the idea of trying probably cost something.

And then there is spirit.

I've stood at the crossroads enough times to know that down one path lies the status quo, the home and family, a career with success, fame or money. And down the other path lies the revelations for today's world that I can reach through spiritual transformation and a smattering of enlightenment. The trick to being enlightened is to practice it all the time, so it's obvious that you can't stay enlightened all the time unless you are wholly supported by others. Walking with one foot on either side of the spirit-line is knowing you're mad while experiencing the madness and embracing this. Our world was not built for such folk, but I've seen that it is wild and hungry for what such mad folk bring back.

Shamanism would be the closest thing I have to a religion, but I cannot truly serve the people as a shaman while participating in the social drama. Thus, the crossroads. And while that is the role I feel I should take, I wonder at myself for not seeking a shaman to heal and help me grow into that role. How like the vision-quests is my seeking for knowledge of the human animal in these days? How unlike animals we are.

I'm far from the crossroads this time. I've developed a fairly healthy network of contacts and have a wonderful relationship with an understanding, supportive, tenderhearted man. I'm learning all the obstacles to communicating alternative ideas to the people and about their trepidation for the evolution needed to bring about a common and peaceful future. Spirit healing is not just a thing that happens to an individual.

And so, writing this blog is also like a reset button, a channel to put out all my feelings so they can begin building again. Building new atop the same old, same doesn't necessarily mean the foundation was good when you started. When things start out askew, then there might not be enough room for roots.

There doesn't have to be a malfunction or error to press reset. Sometimes that just means finding north when charting a course or east. Sometimes you have to push the reset button over and over, over and over, over and over - - before the beginning point will have its right time or place, or that things will finally be out of danger from prevention by external forces.

I have a wellspring of hope that rises with the rains that come from the muse. It leads me to feel immortal in ideas and formidable against the status quo's chief naysayers. And I will live the life of a visionary, whether I have to just give it a little go at a time or push reset again, and again.

Terri

Hoodoo in East Texas



Eh, fuckit. Self censoring is stupid, especially when the best things can be said plain out.
I don't have a future in politics, and maybe by then nobody will care I wrote this today. Can't kill my art, can't kill my spirit. I got all I need. And I got magick.

Whether it's just another part of the muse working in my subconscious or it's the observation that nature is no mistake, I believe in spirit and magick. I believe in personal power, personal spirit helpers and guides, I believe that a real hoodoo work is set by intention.

I've done a few spells. That's probably a huge surprise (or maybe not), but I have. They worked, what's more, and that's probably less surprising than me working them. A more recent example was when I wrote this, offered it to the spirits and did some other things and then the girl who I wanted revenge on disappeared from my life. (But not before she ranted a whole bunch of nasty stuff online that could condemn her for being the nutjob she is. -Yep, I said that too.)

Hoodoo Blues
(in mimic of hoodoo blues lyrics of old)

Oh girl - you done gone an done it now

Mama done found out the truth of you

Quit pretendin, sweet-chile you ain't

Wishin sure can't help you out of a hoodoo

Judgement's a comin, you ain't no saint

Ya done let your sheep skin slide

And I done seen your other side

Woman done opened up her mouth

Let them black lies come tumblin out

She gonna get what she deserves

Girl gone get what she deserves

She's gonna get what she deserves

This Old Hoodoo Mama

Done pay for that graveyard dirt

Girl brought that grin, but she ain't no friend

She done lied to hear the truth

Then put it in her pocket with her sins

She gonna get what she deserves

This Old Hoodoo Mama

Done pay for the graveyard dirt

Gonna get them snakes to come rollin out

She gonna flail and shake and shout

Gonna get them lies tacked in her head

Or she gonna break instead

Girl gonna get what she deserves

She gone get what she deserves

Girl's gonna get what she deserves

This Old Hoodoo Mama

Done pay for that graveyard dirt

A strong hoodoo doesn't need to be bantered around, but cursing someone in public has been done and seen to work. This was some mess that was all public, and it worked in the public. I don't mean to sound proud, because we are what we are. Our power comes from what we are, but the willingness to use our natural powers lies only with us (not everything in our arsenal of protection and prayer is formal or God-given, for I disagree that God is involved in our daily lives on a micro-level but is more a universal presence that is given form through our individual beliefs).

I personally believe that the more the rootworker/hoodoo means it, the more powerful the spell will be, the fewer "ingredients" you should use and the sooner the results.

I might have just put the poem and all this on here today as an affirmation to my belief in magic and in using it, but I also might have something to sprinkle on the forehead of the damned and very soon.

Let those you love know you'd protect them with your body, mind and spirit. Let them be protected by your caring and let their transgressors feel your wrath. Sometimes doing drastic things is called for and the consequences of evil forced upon those who must be stopped before the worst can come.

Woman Eco-Information Warrior Strikes

OK, so the title of this one is a bit overstated. I'm definitely not alone in the promotion of positive changes for the Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, the Caddo Lake Wildlife Management Area nor any other part of the lake and it's unique habitat.

I'm in love with Caddo Lake. I'm in love with the culture of the Caddo tribe from history and today, and I'm in love with the idea that the land left over from a place that made warheads can become a center for peace, nature, animals and people to enjoy them.

And I feel like I have to write about it or burst from my desire to have people understand how precious, how delicate and wonderful this lake and its eco-system are.


All these happy feelings come from a World Wetlands Day meeting held in Karnack, Texas, last night for stakeholders to the lake. Only the most dedicated were in attendance as the weather was bitterly cold. But the meeting was a good way for one committee to remind the other groups of their intents, accomplishments and hopes. I always leave meetings like that jazzed about what is coming up next and do my level best to make all of them want to call me as it's happening. Reporting with up to date information and catching them in the act for live-shot photos is hard sometimes, but I always get to see the coolest shit.

I've lived in this region, what used to be held by the Caddo, for my whole life. I would swear I have seen their ghosts traveling lost along new highways and heard their prayers whisper across the age of white people in America. I've never doubted that this land was blessed and, somehow, tightly woven prayers for ages past still protect it. I wonder if others have had that same thought. It was a passing thing, something that really just made me pause to acknowledge it. These little truths that don't have to be proven are things that I include in the muse. Sometimes they are a premonition, just popping through, and sometimes they are a link to history floating in the air around us.

I've not been promoting my blog out lately, but if you happen to stumble upon it in the interest of the lake, then please feel free to write to me and to share your news about the lake, your love for it and any project or event for gathering people there.

This is your time. This is my time. We are now, and living in the moment at Caddo Lake is one of the most divine experiences I've had. That's why I can't wait to share it.