Liz Baumann

Dream I had last night:

I was skiing, someplace I’d been snowboarding before. My sunglasses wanted to fall off and without them I couldn’t really read the signs, but then decided I didn’t want to bother with them anyway. I ended up somewhere familiar, but then I found out the run turned into a whole bunch of jumps. At first I was trying to back up and let others go ahead of me, thinking I would go walk back to another run. It was difficult backing up though and I decided instead to just give it a go. I went, and the first jump wasn’t too high, but then I landed and the surface was ripply. I did not fall though. There wasn’t a lot of snow but the plastic or whatever beneath the snow was fine to ski on. There were more jumps ahead and I had a choice to veer right for different kinds of jumps, ones I’d done before while snowboarding. I was heading there but then decided to go back left to where I hadn’t been before. The next jumps on the left were even bigger than the first one, the first of these was really tall. But I managed it. I wondered how, why wasn’t I falling?

Side note: I haven’t downhill skied in years, preferring snowboarding now, and I never did any jumps on skis. Last winter I snowboarded a dozen or so times and started teaching myself jumps. I haven’t been to the mountains yet this winter.

Well, I asked for it.

Even though it was quietly and I told no one, it doesn’t seem to matter. As always, the question: “did I bring this to myself, or did I just see it coming?”

I’ve been learning to expect these things – if I even expect them – to come later, have a delay. “Patience is the companion of wisdom”, the sign said. This time, however, it came way sooner than I was wanting, and in a way I never would have expected.

But this confluence of events is one I know I must act on. I wrote of “righting a wrong turn” earlier this month. Well, perhaps that wasn’t a wrong turn after all. Maybe it was to line me up for this. Like it’s all part of some master plan. Every thing happens for lots of reasons. What becomes of it is not up to me, but that’s not important; the important thing is I recognize it and act; ride the wave.

Steve Jobs described situations in his life that prepared him for future events, saying “you can’t connect the dots going forward … you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” I still like to argue that you can connect the dots, most of us just don’t see the pattern well enough, or let preconceived notions of certain event’s meanings cloud our judgment.

A phrase popped into my head today, I haven’t the slightest idea why I thought of it, but I know it has meaning. I.e, I know this is either a “dot” or a connection. A particle or a wave. I just can’t figure out whether it’s the original one or the opposite that pertains to me. Or, both.

No vision, all drive.
All vision, no drive.

The invisible red thread
which weaves the common ground
conducting their illusions
are those spiders all around.

Everything happens, not for
one reason – that’s simplication.
But for many, all at once -
dreams’ overdetermination…

or is it:
Predetermination.

For what the future left behind,
present quietly concealed,
abidingly taking time while
vain, the pasts are revealed.

This world is so riddled
with word and with name
but anagrams are showing,
homonyms are the same.

The fire I did not start
no spark no fuel no light;
sure, clearly, it’s not visible
hiding there in plain sight.

With gravity of observation,
Four’s waves did thus form
and merged with those others’
to create the perfect storm.

Lessons from the frog
last, thinking it could hide
insecurely in the bathroom
but doors flung open wide

now once again encountered
this time she’s wearing red
why should I try to hide
what those other people said?

The sun of rocks and stones
had it backward, but no less
his timing was impeccable
for the future’s not addressed.

Is there such a thing as a “wrong turn”? Some believe there is no right or wrong. If everything happens according to fate, it would seem right and wrong don’t really apply. Free will? Well, I guess then the answer could depend on perspective. I personally feel there is at least some fate at play, in my mind at least I feel I have evidence supporting it, although I sometimes have been inclined to pretend it doesn’t exist. As for free will I’m undecided, but intrigued.

If there is such a thing as a wrong turn, I wonder if I made it when someone dangled a carrot in my face and I chose the stick instead. This was not long after I made a comment about wanting “more carrot, less stick”. I have noticed before that things seem to happen according to what has been said. Maybe I disobeyed this principle, making a wrong turn.

Can I right the wrong? I think I’ve been given enough signs in the last few weeks to suggest that I am going that way. Dreams, where a portion of it comes true within a few days later… three of those. Synchronicities that have meaning to me personally. I say trivial peculiar things and then see them manifest in metaphorical or symbolic ways. I speak of things I’ve realized about myself and then stumble upon them elsewhere. Feelings of intuition that are followed by observation.

Quite a few people have noticed the gray cloud hanging over my head since Thanksgiving and I’ve appreciated the support and advice they have given. I’ve taken some of it. Some of it just doesn’t fit me, and I’ve realized the importance of recognizing this. While I’m mostly out of my funke now, I’m still feeling rather shy and self-doubtful… in part because my shadow has caught up to me, bringing to the surface some aspects of my personality that have been dormant for the past year or so. How my shadow’s return is related to all of this I haven’t yet figured out.

In times like these I suppose some might suggest I look to my inner compass. But when the poles keep moving around, it is probably the worst advice to take to whether this storm. A weather vain is of more use here. Because also, I have consistently found that many of the best, most meaningful times of my life have happened when I’ve stopped trying to control things and just ride like the Wind.

ashes to ashes

Red sky at morning
A little late for the warning
Messenger’s last say
Now released to the day

Wings melt like lemon drops’
Underneath the pillow, pops
Will April’s flowers
again have the same powers?

Onward near the catstalker’s circle
Forgot when it was that
I stopped wearing purple

Raining on the ceiling
Then they blow the ice
And he said
We are here, both of the same year
Oh isn’t that nice

California Dreamin’
On such a winter’s night
Bluebird made his dreams come true
Why oh why can’t I?

I’ve been holding back lately.

The lack of blog posts is just one symptom. I started worrying about whether things I said might be offensive to someone. Not being able to grasp every possible reaction or viewpoint, a few times I’ve thought it prudent to just keep quiet. Don’t make waves. Then I realized I was also holding back things that weren’t offensive but just seemed trivial, or like I was repeating myself.

I’m seeing now that this behavior has bled into other aspects of my consciousness. I’ve been feeling a lack of confidence and am reconsidering whether everything I have been working on the past year has any worth. I’ve been making mistakes, which makes me feel like maybe I should be even more quiet. I’ve been considering returning to the practical form of existence that defined me for much of the past 15 or so years.

This all has me envisioning myself as silently clawing my way out of the rabbit hole and wondering if anyone will notice. Should I continue on up into the blinding sun? Or let myself fall back in? Is there a middle ground?

Somewhat aside from all this, I’ve been observing for months now what people I’m connected with say and comparing it with what I say or think or with what happens in my life. I frequently see correlations and synchronicities here and sometimes I point them out, directly or subtly. Many times the timing has been off in that things are said and later I realize they manifest. Since it happens quite often I’ve wondered whether we were somehow causing these things by saying them or whether the words are like a murky window on some preordained future.

But twice now in my time of personal censorship, other people still said what I was silently, seriously, thinking. This would seem to support the murky window hypothesis. I think…

Is this just an optical (or optimal) delusion? What is the point? Should I, can I, somehow harness this predictive power? Probably not if I crawl out of that rabbit hole.

But I’m still very sensitive about pissing people off. I don’t know if I can overcome that. Maybe I shouldn’t avoid it either.

If I’ve offended, confused or bored anyone, well, I call this blog my ‘public diary’; maybe you shouldn’t read other people’s diaries.

Last night on the Forbidden Planet: complete blur.

The 80/20 rule was followed
The 20 as acquaintances came first
Interesting
Still so many I did not see
I saw life passing me by once again when I said ‘hi’ to 5th Element
I said I was one of her 4
But I really rather like the idea of being the 6th
Randomness invited me over to the Otherside
I did not get a chance to find out Weather I could see my reflection in the Mirrorman
I got caught in a Bizarre Liz Triangle!!
I was happy to see the Southern Sun again
And, too, the woman who started it all
Or at least started my absurd relationship with the Whether
Pennycat told me that maybe my idea is not too crazy after all
I had too much to drink
There was a bunch of ice
And we all agreed that time passed too quickly
But it’s quality, not quantity
For me, at least.
Or I should remember that.

Not nearly enough pictures: Flickr

(Note: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons – living, dead or undead – is purely coincidental.)

Jake was a monster. He didn’t know how long he’d been a monster; maybe it happened in his sleep one night and he just didn’t realize it. Or perhaps he’d been a monster all along, even before when he had not noticed the physical markings; perhaps the monster was there all the same, just underneath, lurking, and dormant.

Jake had grown accustomed to his monsterness, of people saying they were afraid of him and running away at his approach. Indeed, monsterness had become a natural part of him, like the color of his hair or the size of his feet, and he’d come to accept and even appreciate it for what it was. Like a black widow spider has reasons for being what it is, he figured it must serve some purpose in the greater good, and therefore was simply a natural state and perhaps not inherently evil or bad.

It came to pass that the monster named Jake met a ghost. Ghosts of course are not real and things that are not real do not have names, so we shall only refer to this presence as the Ghost. Jake felt a strange kinship with the Ghost, even though he knew the apparition was a figment of his imagination and therefore shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Before long though, Jake and his imaginary friend had words and fell out. Jake, being a monster and all, figured he was the one to blame for the unpleasant discourse, even though what he said to the Ghost was not meant to be unkind in any way. Jake and the Ghost became strangers sharing the same house, not speaking to one another, each pretending like the other didn’t exist. Jake wished the Ghost would just leave. Of course Jake knew that the Ghost wasn’t real anyway, for the Ghost was at most just a ghost, but somehow this didn’t make things easier.

This sorry state of affairs carried on for a while. And even though Jake knew he shouldn’t be so sensitive – after all, he was a monster, and monsters are not known for being sensitive, especially concerning things that aren’t even real – truth is the icy silence was eating away at him. He’d told people of the Ghost he had once befriended but of course they didn’t believe him, and now that the Ghost wouldn’t talk to him anyway it just all felt like a dream, or a dirty little secret, something he should not speak of. He felt guilty even though he didn’t know what he should feel guilty about, for he was just as much a victim of fate as the next person, or spider, or ghost for that matter.

Then one day he was talking with someone who seemed to get what he was thinking even though he didn’t realize he was thinking it and at the same time managed to extract one of the ugliest of uglinesses from his psyche and place it on display for the world to see. It all happened so fast that he didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t even had time to put a name to this particular ugliness but then all of a sudden there it was, lying like a tangled mess of ribbon tape pulled from his gut against his consent.

And yet there, looking at its perceived ugliness, it didn’t seem negative at all, in fact it made people laugh, and many said they could relate.

Maybe he’d been looking at things wrong, he thought. Maybe this perceived negativity that was a part of him wasn’t really monstrous, but more like electrons: negative but necessary, sometimes meant to be shared, not always entirely insulated from the rest of the world. Maybe there was a bit of monster in everyone, not just himself, and letting a little of it out once in a while makes other people feel a bit more human and a bit less monster.