I awoke this morning to an extremely agitated dog: Mr Sky. Usually I am inclined to pass off Mr. Sky's moods to his personal insanity, his issues, or whatever. He barked incessantly as I emerged from the bedroom, sidling up to his mommy/protector as I approached to calm him. But he would not be calmed, although he did stop barking. I went to open the front blinds, which reveals the sumptuous beauty of the mountains before us, and exclaimed: "Those bastards!!".
The coyotes had upturned the heated birdbath. From tracks in the frozen mud I had already deduced that the coyotes knew about the standing liquid water in our front yard, the water that did not freeze when the temperature plummets. That explained why the dog was so inspired to hyperactivity. He'd had to endure the sounds of the coyotes' incursion, in the dead of night. His barks to warn us had not aroused us from our deep winter sleep, ensconced there atop a Vera Wang designer mattress. A threat to our well-being by thirsty coyotes?! "And these people just SLEEP through it?!". I hope Mr. Sky does not have to endure the burden of narrative-based thought.
Cut to the chase: I had to restore the birdbath to a condition that would serves the bluebirds and the flickers. Then I had to scoop feces out of Rosie the cat's litter box. All of this before coffee. Like, wow.
Above you see a photo of my writing studio. Studio tours are a big thing aqui en Taos. Let's give it a go.
To the left, immediately above my Field Journalist's hat is the bulletin board. The larger papers are a magazine article with some trendy and delicious alcohol-based drink recipes, and the confirmation papers for my attendance at the International Conference on After Death Communications, come April. As the Veil between the worlds of living and dead is stretched thin these days I am really looking forward to somehow sidling up to the spirit of Great Uncle Friederich Ebert. I am pretty sure that my deep compulsion to jump up in defense of Worker's Rights comes from Uncle Friede, whether it be through the auspices of DNA or via reincarnation. The penchant for journalism? Uncle Friede had that as well.
Just below the big papers on the bulletin board are two photos of the Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park, New York City, which is dedicated to the late John Lennon.The photos were a gift by the sweet Marlene Tafoya of Talpa, New Mexico. Marlene is the daughter of the late Alfelio "Cisco" Tafoya, who worked at my side as I sold booze through a drive-up window behind the famous Saint Francis Church in Ranchos de Taos. Cisco had a nasty form of leukemia. It killed him. We were friends.
To the right is a Mexican-made cabinet. Atop that is Rosie the cat's loft. You can see her ears poking up a bit. Behind her bed basket is my lovely didgeridoo, with which I serenade the wild coyotes in the dark of night. The bookshelf if probably the best part of the studio to peruse. First the signed copies . . . . .
Robert Bly's The Sibling Society. Robert not only signed the book, he also drew a mustache on his author's photo on the back of the dust jacket. Two books from Stephen Levine: Unattended Sorrow and Breaking the Drought. No other books on the shelf are signed by the authors, nor by anyone else.
Others? Stephen and Ondrea Levine, the famous Who Dies?. Fred Alan Wolf, The Eagle's Quest. Christian de Quincey, Consciousness from Zombies to Angels. Frank MacEowen, The Mist-Filled Path. Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express. Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance. Neil Gaiman, the beautiful and haunting American Gods. Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus and The Prague Cemetery. Peter D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac and Against Depression. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal. A biography of Great Uncle Friederich. Al Burt, Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes. John West, the amazing The Last Goodnights. Bernt Heinrich, Mind of the Raven. My sister-in-law Debra Weyermann, The Gang They Couldn't Catch and Answer Them Nothing. Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away. Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes the World. Several more as well, including The Tao of Physic by Fritjof Capra. Usually I also have a copy of Rick Strassman's DMT: the Spirit Molecule but I don't know where I put that book. I need a new copy anyway as the old one is coming apart at the binding. But I do have a DVD copy of "The Spirt Molecule" on the shelf, Mitch Schultz's film documentary from Rick's amazing book. A little promotion here: a screening of the film can be seen at the Guild Theater in Albuquerque, NM on January 25th, 2012. The author and the filmmaker will be there to answer questions after the shows. See the film, but do Rick the honor of reading the book.
I could sit here all day long and write about the things in my studio. Not possible. I was home sick from work yesterday(!), spent the morning waiting for a walk-in with my primary care rep, the lovely Marty, then waiting for the azithromycin scrips to be ready. Slept the afternoon away. The antibiotics started working almost immediately so I am going to work this afternoon. I really hated to miss a day of work! It's not just the money. In fact that the money has anything to do with it at all is strictly circumstantial. Too bad that few writers can support themselves with their writing.
One other thing is that I am awaiting arrival of Whitley Strieber's new Solving the Communion Enigma: What is to Come. I love Whitley's writing! His bold publication of Communion, about his personal alien abduction experiences, was a major inspiration for me to go ahead and write about my NDEs. This stuff is kinda embarrassing, ya know? Taboo and scorn, anyone? And Whitley also wrote about the embarrassing stuff with the great wordcrafting that portrays the immense depth of the experiences much better than so much of the New Age stuff does with it's "factory" wordage. By that I refer to the predominating styles of New Age writers. Not that they are bad. They are not. When I began to write about my NDEs I found that it was not enough to merely report what happened, then supplementing the prose with industry standard commentary. My experiences implored me to move into the multidimensional areas that require poetic musing along with a dose of literary expression. Our day to day life is so small. There is much more to life than the mundane refuges we inhabit by necessity. Much more.
Bath time for this literate primate. I need a steamy soak. It's not all about cleanliness, although that is a part of it all. It is about aligning my consciousness with the somatic experience that is unavoidable once it begins. Water is good for that. Aromas. Mindfulness. Ahh!
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