Eating M&M's In The Dark....

[~Sam~]

When I awakened, as per my usual at 2:30 AM, I went in search of something sweet to eat. I had asked Ken to get some candy when he went to the store earlier in the day, so with great delight, I took the bag of M&M's from the cabinet and made haste back to my couch.

The television and the lone candle I had burning on the coffee table were my only light as I opened that bag and popped two or three candies into my mouth. It's funny that I recognized that these M&M's didn't taste quite the same as they usually did. I held a few up to the dim flickers of candle light... I couldn't really see the colors of the individual candies, but one or two looked kind of light colored even for the yellow ones.

It never dawned on me that they might be a different offering from the company. But about 12 hours later I reached for the bag again. Before I poured some of the little round delights into my hand, I read the package... They were Valentine's colored M&M's! Trust Kenny to find a new way to give me chocolates to celebrate "V" day.

That was nigh on a week ago. I've long since finished that bag of candy, but I've been doing some minor "thought excursions" since then.

I suppose that acknowledging our Oneness with All of the Universe is somewhat enlightening. Realizing that we, and everything we can and cannot see, are part and parcel with everything else in the universe is utterly amazing.

Imagining that I was a molecule of water, I wondered what kind of molecule I would change into if I died as that molecule of H2O. There are many forms I could change into. But, would I be the same... only different?

Would I leave a hole in the universe when I changed? Not really. I would be the same me as I was as H2O, but my properties would be different. I might change into Ozone, hydroxyls or some other combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms. I might hook up with other elements to form a new molecule.

It would be a far stretch of the imagination to simplify the changes I would go through dying as a human being and changing into only my energy self... but, the physics of the changes are the same. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy is not used up, it is only exchanged. Just like in the movies... only different.

On another occasion I toyed with the notion of the past.

We can't go back to the past, because the past is not a place. The Now is the only time everything in the universe has.

I looked at the marks on the stairway wall. The marks that Ken leaves there as he leans on that wall for support to descend the stairs. Those marks, however long ago they were left there... are not the past. They are traces of the changes that occurred in past Nows, visible or not, but they are in the Now. There is no other place.

And as I lay thinking on that, I heard a car pass by the house. For that brief instant, the passer's-by and my own Now were in close proximity. But the car drove on, going wherever its driver directed it.

I was still lying on the couch... but that passer's-by Now and my own Now were the same. They still are. Your Now and my Now... One and the same.

It's the same time everywhere in the Universe. It's Now. There is no such thing as time. There is no past, only the traces of changes that are in the Now with us. The future exists in probabilities. We live only in the frozen river of change we call "Now".

In the shortly forthcoming Now, I'll go out and throw a couple of flakes of hay to the hay burners and maybe go up on the hill and sit with the goats for a few moments. I can predict this because I have the learned knowledge and the experience of doing these things. For all I know, I can trip in the middle of the road, end up with another broken bone, and never make it to the barn to get that hay.

You enjoy your Now, will ya? I'm doin' OK. I've been cleaning stalls and taking the horses out all by myself, doing laundry, and healing my broken collarbone. On Monday I got brave and drove my truck for the first time. I did all right, not great, but all right.

You All do the same.

Love,

Sam

http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_SM/0004-0309-1714-0305_SM.jpg

[~Sam~]

I did make it out to the barn last night and managed to throw that hay to the horses after all. No new broken bones either.

When I was folding clothes the day before, I overused my shoulder. Cleaning the stalls is much easier than folding clothes on that newly knitting collarbone. But I couldn't dump the wheelbarrow as I did the day before, and I didn't feel like I was up to bringing in Raven on my bad arm.

So I called Kenny and got his answering machine. I left him a message to try and make it home before 5:30 to bring the gelding in and empty the barrow.

As the clock ticked to 5 PM, I figured that he didn't get my message. Putting on my hat and pulling on my boots, I went out to bring in the horses. I turned on the barn lights, grabbed their halters and lead ropes and headed out the barn door.

Just as I got to the hill I looked up at the car coming down the road... it was my man. He didn't get back to his office, but he did receive my message after all. Radar Love.

Fine Man, Ken K.

You know... there were times during the last five weeks of my recovery when I felt like I deserved what I got. I flashed back to all the memory bits I've been holding on to so that I could haul them out and beat myself up with them...

"Why can't you be like your cousin Suzy?" My Grandmother would harangue me constantly with this question. I didn't like my cousin Suzy. She was blond, chunky, stuck her chest and butt out when she walked and thought she was the cat's meow. Why would I want to be like her?

In 1959, we all went riding in Blue Boy, my father's '55 Chevy hard top. It was nearly the turn of the decade and we were crossing the New Jersey Parkway's bridge over the Raritan River... heading towards the shore to watch the ocean be wild in the storm. "Well now girl,"my mom said to me. "It's going to be 1960 this New Year's. Don't you think you're old enough to change and be a good girl from now on?"

I wondered to myself as I replied "Yes", just what 'good 'was, and why was I being considered 'bad'.

Maybe I have a million of these little vignettes, but how important are they to my Now reality? How about I leave them in the memory traces of past Nows? Or better yet, I can start to direct my mind/brain to mellow them, to modify them to help make my Now more true to reality. Or, to bring them into a more sane focus so that I can look at the reality of what happened and try to learn some positive lessons from them. This neural plasticity is a very valuable mental tool to change learned behavior. I've modified my behavior to my satisfaction before and thought I was nearly done with the task... but I keep stumbling across these "bad girl" memory packets within. Oh well. Keep on working on it, that's what I'll try to do.

But then I looked around at my surroundings a few nights ago. I faced my real life situation and thought to myself; "Gee. Everywhere I look in the house I see pleasing things. Those things might be dusty and the floor may have more mud and dog hair on it than I'd like it to have in a perfect situation. But this ain't no perfect situation. Those perfect things exist only in our minds. They are the seeds of our dreams that we aspire to bring into the reality of Now."

Taking this thought excursion a little further, I thought about little piece of earth I live on. It is quite beautiful you know. I have two horses who love me. I have some mighty fine goat girls. Two awesome chickens who follow me and my clucking noises all over the barnyard. (Yes, I only have Hooligan and Chuckles left. The foxes ate all the others... it Was their intended purpose after all.) Then there's this big, black dog who's a true budz to me. And I know two cats and a whole raft of wildlife I can spy whenever I drag my sorry, skinny ass out-of-doors to walk in the woods.

I know a handful of folks who think of me as "friend." I think that way of them too.

Did I mention a terrific man who just seems to love the piss out of me? One guy who has stuck with me for half of my life, through thick and thicker, and still he thinks I'm great.

Now. How can a man like Ken love and respect me if I'm so gawdawful bad?

This must mean that I'm not as bad as I've been told I am. And as I remembered the futile searching for my roots, my desparation to find out where I came from and learn just who the hell I am... I find that after all of that soul rending mental wing-dinging... I am me, and ain't life grand.

Yes, I'm me. I have the DNA memories of my ancestors stored in every cell of this physical body in which I walk around. They have given me my height, my hair color, and my smarts. They whisper to me of times growing as humans, blinking through the smoke of the cave and staring at the pictures of ancient animals painted on the walls. They are the memories of my People, their language and their behavioral tendencies.

I'm also the me who has lived many physical lives here on earth. I have those memories to use at my discretion. Those times when I'm learning something that I've come back to learn and have run full tilt into.

I'm all of these things. I'm a product of my early learning. I'm the last in long line of Eastern Europeans. I'm the Now physical reincarnation of everyone I have ever been and everyone I will be if I chose to return again.

I am me. I am all the genetic material that I've inherited from my forebearers. I am everyone I've ever been and ever will be. I am me.

Damn, but that is an expansive feeling! I feel as big as the universe and connected to everything in my immediate environ. I feel as light as air and as deep as the farthest reaches of the universe. I feel calm as I sit here and breathe in the Now.

I am me, and this is my individual Now. I like me and I'm going to go out and make the best of the coming Now.

Please do the same. Have a good weekend... I'll talk at'cha soon.

Sam
http://us.inmagine.com/thumbnails/photodisc/pdv083/pdv083005.jpg
The wave function psi is the instantaneous state of EVERYTHING...
It is the impossible Now.

[teepi]

WOW....it's amazing what a bag of M&M's can bring about.

Yep, I'm still around....just way too busy for my liking right now but taking true advantage of every moment of good weather and bad...Building the new room in good and painting,painting in the bad. I REALLY don't want my sweetie to go back to that dump truck this spring.

I'm so happy to hear your doing OK Sam, I've thought of you often and actually took a little walk with Jackeddy to where I planted a good amount of the plants you sent and the lillies are just peeking up over the soil.
My daffodils have small buds on them also but alas, it's suppose to snow 3-4 inches and they will probably be screwed.

Hey, I read everything you wrote and I'm so glad you're YOU...you are by far the best "Sam" there is..all the great stuff and crap all rolled into one "Sammy Package".
Maybe someday I will be able to give you my big hug. Or Maybe you can feel it now.

POD, I came across your little package today and forgot that I hadn't mailed it, you went on your walkabout at the time it was ready and I was holding onto it till you got back and it went straight into the blackhole that is my work area.
I will go to town probably Tues. and will try to keep my thinking cap nearby and mail it.

Love you's
teepi

[~Sam~]

Hey Girl! I tried to reply to you and Glenn a couple of days ago. I've been having problems with my Link Sys fast ethernet adapter, and could access maybe 4 or 5 pages and then I'd lose my connection.


It took so long to write the first two parts of this thread because I had to copy from the first draft, minimize the page, disable my local connection then enable it again before I could call up my connection, come back to the Forums, paste from the first and try to submit what I wrote before I lost my connection again.

So when I lost my reply to you and one to Dad, I just shutdown my computer and went outside. Had the repairman here yesterday, but there's no guarantee that the problem is gone.

Teepi... don't you worry about those daffodils. They've got their own form of antifreeze built into the systems. My Andromeda bush is blooming and it's been 5 degrees a couple of days in a row. The giant water iris's new spring leaves are poking up out of the pond about 8 inches too.

I told Kenny that if he tells me he's worried about the plants coming up too soon or the trees sprouting buds and freezing one more time...(he's said the same thing to me for 29 years)... I'm gonna punch him in the nose.

The plants will be fine. They're pretty hardy, unlike our memories of the many Springtimes we've lived through and worried about plants only to have them flourish before our disbelieving eyes, and then we forget about them entirely.

I'm going to log out now and go check on some vacation spots that combine stall and pasture space for our horses and goats, cabins for us, and miles of trails to ride.

Do I have Spring Fever? You bet'cha.

Love,
Sam