Martha Ann

Martha Ann’s young ghost spoke.

“My dog licks decomposing leaves off my fingers. People working over me manifest degrees of abject seriousness creating and validating their existence.”

A child whispers, “I need help.” Others listen with the heart-mind of a child, receive and write. 

“After Vietnam my older brother spent a month with me in Colorado before going to West Germany to work as a military newspaper editor and finish putting in his time. I'd come down with a cold that winter. Father wrote letters to him about my condition, how my energy dropped, how I became weak. He took me to the doctors and they made their diagnosis.

“I had a rare form of AML leukemia and started chemotherapy treatment. I needed bone marrow transplants. The prognosis was maybe five years for a complete remission. My mental attitude was strong and positive. They tried every experimental drug on the market. I lived long enough to enjoy one last Christmas when my pain was a sickness leaving my fragile body.

“Through this I stayed in school, in Girl Scouts and kept riding horses. I am far away. My long blond hair flies in the wind. I am the wind of strong intense discipline. My back is straight in the saddle. My blue eyes penetrate fear approaching a jump.

                                                                                                                                                       “Long before I died I started collecting horses. A smart witty precocious thirteen year old girl, I left home at an early age, went up to my neighbor’s to be with the horses. This is how my love started - my collection of stuffed horses in brown, white, black evolved into carved wood figures and clay models. Horses were my passion. I dreamed horses.

“I leave the stable leading the pinto by the leather reins. I am dressed in tall black boots, riding pants, stiff white shirt buttoned at my frail neck. Only I know I am sick. I am dying. It is my secret. I am in heaven. I speak magic words, a secret dialogue. You can tell by the horse’s response they understand me. I ride my horse in green pastures under blue sky. My face is serene.

“My sickness was a long slow meandering journey. I maintained my external optimism, smiling, laughing doing excellent in school. I knew I was sick.”

“She was a warrior girl,” said my brother. “Horses gave her comfort. She knew the freedom, the release, the passion. She rode every day after school. Weekends were spent grooming, laughing, and loving her relationship with horses. Her spirit on the horses was clear. She had no fear.”

“The drugs made my long blond hair fall out and I wore a wig. I tolerated all the inane questions and insinuations from classmates. I maintained my self respect and dignity.

“Dad, what happens when they run out of experimental drugs?” I asked one night at dinner.

He had no answer.
“My heart gave out three days after Christmas, 1972.”
"My brother received the expected phone call at at a military Field Station north of Kassel."

“Martha is gone,” said my father’s cracking voice.
“What happened?”
“I went to Children’s Hospital on my lunch hour, and she was lying there and she looked so beautiful yet so weak and she said, ‘Dad, hold me. I feel I’m going to faint,’ I did and then her heart stopped. It just wore her out.”

My brother cried. “I’m so sorry dad. I’ll get a flight out.”
“You will always remember her as a happy little girl,” he said.

Angels welcomed Martha Ann, gave her shelter and guided her onward. She never saw fourteen of anything. She never went to high school or college, fell in love, made love, worked, lived, traveled abroad, or explored future worlds.

She experienced infinite joy inside the deep dark passages of her vibrant trembling spirit. Her life was all wrapped up in one tight package with an expiration date.

She danced in wild remote mountains, climbing higher, smelling wild Columbine flowers, fixing them in her hair, spreading meals in spring meadows below clouds. Cold winter became her domain, her life, her now. Her childlike wonder and spirit energies soared over time’s river in her labyrinth. She evolved on her path of light, love, life and perfection, a human on a spiritual path, a spiritual being.

On her brief sojourn in the river of time she demonstrated tolerance, charity, integrity, kindness, trust, tranquility, dignity, harmony, compassion, and truth. Martha Ann validated her authenticity and hurled her thunderbolt.

I, meanwhile, return to my curious childlike nature, where I make a play, a la’ab.

Martha Ann remains an angel of light. Her Jinn is fire emanating life and consciousness. Fire consumes fear and ignorance.

My memory of her is a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions, and consciousness.

Meditation in the cosmic dance dissolves the self.

A Century is Nothing

Grit & Gratitude

Being nine Lucky helped 4th grade geniuses become more human near Jakarta.

Engage-study-activate. Everyone had fun.

Students learned that whining was boring and useless. Smart ones knew without understanding. They knew what they didn’t know.

Kids shared Socratic discussions. They explored and expanded creative imagination journal writing, cross-disciplinary art, chess and teamwork development projects. They built and flew kites.

They practiced good manners and treated everyone with respect.

They focused on developing character: zest, courage, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, fairness, generosity and integrity.

They shared soft eyes, relaxation techniques and meditation mind maps. They accepted personal responsibility for learning and exploring the process of becoming.

He assisted them to develop critical thinking skills outside imaginary social and educational conditioning traps. “I am here to help you make mistakes.”

One day a young teacher kid said, “We need challenges, Teacher Lucky.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“We need hardship and deprivation.”

“Yes,” said another teacher, “we need to take more risks.”

“How do you develop courage?”

“Through failure. We love to fail better."

“Correcto mundi. Welcome to The Think for Yourself Academy. Everything we do is an experiment.”

They planned, designed and constructed an elaborate high-risk rope and creeper vine obstacle course in jungles challenging body, mind and spirit. Teamwork skills blossomed like orchids.  

*

Residents near his garden sanctuary passed a tall green spiky cactus stretching arms into bluebird songs. A nanny carrying an infant memorized the echo of white cat paws trailing flip-flops. Faustus, seeing throughinnocent eyes rode behind his pedaling Chinese father.

A laughing skipping girl negotiated freedom.

A beggar wearing broken shoelaces studied pavement. A man spinning in his labyrinthine puzzle struggled with an activated cell phone in worn green baggy shorts hoping the call would save him from loneliness, boredom, alienation and metaphors like death.

Children in pink pajamas collected brown leaves and fragrant yellow-white hibiscus flowers.

In Bahasa sun a middle-aged daughter spoon-fed her mother in a wheelchair. Swallowing love her smiling mother remembered when she did all the feeding.

The Language Company

 

 Gili Air Island

If I grow up I die

Being nine Lucky helped 4th grade geniuses become more human.

Engage-study-activate.

Everyone had fun. Students learned that whining was boring and useless. Smart ones knew without understanding. They knew what they didn’t know.

Kids shared Socratic discussions. They explored and expanded creative imagination journal writing, cross-disciplinary art, chess and teamwork development projects. They built and flew kites.

They practiced good manners and treated everyone with respect.

They focused on developing character: zest, courage, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, fairness, generosity and integrity.

They shared soft eyes, relaxation techniques and meditation mind maps. They accepted personal responsibility for learning and exploring the process of becoming.

He assisted them to develop critical thinking skills outside imaginary social and educational conditioning traps. “I am here to help you make mistakes.”

One day a young teacher kid said, “We need challenges, Teacher Lucky.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“We need hardship and deprivation.”

“Yes,” said another teacher, “we need to take more risks.”

“How do you develop courage?”

“Through failure. We love to fail better."

“Correcto mundi. Welcome to The Think for Yourself Academy. Everything we do is an experiment.”

They planned, designed and constructed an elaborate high-risk rope and creeper vine obstacle course in jungles challenging body, mind and spirit. Teamwork skills blossomed like orchids.  

*

Residents near his garden sanctuary passed a tall green spiky cactus stretching arms into bluebird songs. A nanny carrying an infant memorized the echo of white cat paws trailing flip-flops. Faustus, seeing through innocent eyes rode behind his pedaling Chinese father.

A laughing skipping girl negotiated freedom.

A beggar wearing broken shoelaces studied pavement.

A man spinning in his labyrinthine puzzle struggled with an activated cell phone in worn green baggy shorts hoping the call would save him from loneliness, boredom, alienation and metaphors like death.

Children in pink pajamas collected brown leaves and fragrant yellow-white hibiscus flowers.

In Bahasa sun a middle-aged daughter spoon-fed her mother in a wheelchair. Swallowing love her smiling mother remembered when she did all the feeding.

Every August

“Tell us a story,” said kids.

"I’ll do my best,” said a Zen monk. "I heard this story from a friend in The Windy City and it’s stranger than creative nonfiction.

"Funny how it comes around just about this time every year, just like last August. Somebody said August is the cruelest month. Easily the hottest. A local 15-year old girl killed herself yesterday with a single shot to the head. Makes you wonder who, when, where, how and big WHY.

“Last August it was M in old Chi town. The perfusionist. She called a wrong number out of desperation and I inherited the inevitable task of talking her through the drama of her life.

"I answered the phone in Tacoma and kept her on the suicide hot line. It produced basic peace of mind for her. I created poems and a well-done intense piece entitled The Last Several Pages about a book she was reading. She said was going to join a procrastinators club but kept putting it off. She finally settled down with an older divorced real estate salesman.”

"Walking through fires," said Omar, the blind author of A Century is Nothing.

"It was a tough one. All about listening, a lot of listening, recognizing faces of fear, seeing truth. Letting go. Moving on. Finding balance.

"So, another August rolled around again. Out of curiosity I called one of those 900 relationship toll-free numbers and left a message: Independent orphan seeks open-minded spirituality adept woman for casual relationship and friendship.

"Did you get any response?" said Omar.

"Three. The Relationship Express hummed along the tracks stopping at stations named Loneliness, Emptiness, Friendship, mid-life Crisis, Ticking Time Bombs, Endless Conversations, Rhapsody of the Disenchanted, Still Looking After All These Years, and Where’s The One?

"It zoomed past scenic views of Depression, Melancholy, Trust, Hope, Anxiety, Doubt, and Fear as I transited into the listening role with a couple of new women.

"Both from Montana transiting through self- discovery, broken relationships and renewal. We’re riding the range, mending fences, and setting up new parameters. Now I love women, yes sirree, well all right then, but I know better now and it’s just this curious nature of heart and mind to be out there making new connections. I’m not saving anybody.

“All the stations have various levels of becoming. Passengers stuck on levels bang their heads and hearts against transparencies grasping their Gestalt, shattering mirrors and delusions. They work out in private emotional, physical, spiritual fitness centers. Levels replace levels. Each level has a center. The vortex is the equilibrium, the source."

"We are works in progress,” Omar said.

"I’m just doing my work,” I said.

“That’s a powerful statement,” Omar said.

"Yes it is. Now I wouldn’t be the first person to say it’s healing work but I’ve learned to listen.

“Not all the clowns are in the circus. I make it perfectly clear to these kind ladies that I am not in the rescuing business anymore. Nope. No way. Honesty is the best policy and I’m not in the mood to waste their time, my time and our collective energies establishing a Heavy Deep & Real relationship. HDR. The emotional bottom line is they’re looking for a kind, sensitive man who won’t screw around and fuck up their lives. They’ve been cheated on, dumped on and left taking care of the kids. They need someone who will just listen to them without saying, 'I can fix it.' They know what’s what. They know how the world works, how the heart beats. They have their own toolbox. You’ve gotta have a good tool box."

"Tools. Couldn’t agree with you more, " said Omar.

"We’re all passengers on life’s train," said the monk.

It’s the Circus Train!

A fall loon, schools of minnows circle and zoom. I stand in Puget Sound shallows as the Florida circus train rolls north. I yell and wave amid swirling dervishes on granite in rapid ocean tides breathing in and out.

“It’s the circus people.”

“Step right up, under the big Irish bog top!”

People wave from their moving life station. They are the old tired eyed circus veterans standing next to new clowns filming water lap land. They reload memories into instamatics. There are midgets barely able to see over the edge next to sturdy muscular mustached roustabouts. Everything they need in their magic portable city is on rolling stock; water trucks, tents, buses, cages.

There is a bright red ‘For Sale’ sign in a train window. Someone decorated a rolling window with a plant garden spilling into water vapor. Someone displays a stuffed hanging elephant. They are living their dream life on rails. They are caged people living with watered and fed animals.

They have city routines; set it up, do the show with all the temerity of tenacious trainers, take it down, roll mile after mile this gleaming circus waving as the ocean waves a silver fish and one silver sparkles skyward. When they reach the Canadian border they will reverse engines and roll east through Big Sky country toward winterized Florida. Rare dawn light passed sleepy stations, bathed in dew diamonds.

Riding the rails follows our spirit journey.

“The simple way is to listen, stay detached, share and establish levels of responsibility, limitations and boundaries while remaining open to the big picture,” said a monk.

A shadow carrying a candle passed them in the dark.

"Not too much wisdom and not too much compassion," whispered a wandering monk climbing Cold Mountain toward a bamboo cabin sanctuary.

"Who are you?" said a child.

"I am a wandering monk."

"Where are you going?"

"To gather medicinal herbs for tea."

"Would you care to join us later?"

"Yes. We all have (a) ways to go."

"That’s a powerful story. Your friend is onto something there. She touches into what people deal with in their daily lives, their form and their emptiness. It’s not fiction. Or is it? Is it a lie layered with your imagination to make it true?”

"Good question. Omar speaks and writes from the heart-mind. There are people who don’t want to hear this stuff, but say hey kid, they can take it or leave it. I’m willing to take her at her word. It’s about the human condition."

"Well said. Life is something to be lived and not talked about. What say, shall we rest here awhile, enjoy some food, companionship and a siesta?"

Everyone gathered in a sacred circle. It was all light in their interior shamanistic landscape.

Source: A Century is Nothing.