Ask Dr. Druid . day 33 . Walking with Sherrard

 

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 33

Walking with Sherrard

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    My dear friend Sherrard Grey now gallivanting in the FarStars was the one person I could go grokkingly in the woods with. Many folk are pleasant or even riveting to hang out with. But only Sherrard could walk two feet down the sylvan path and with me exclaim again, “Oh look at the scarlet hogwort leaf!” 

    Most folk quail or dim at constant daffy “Oh, look!” Sherrard could take it. It was a giga-treat to have someone besides The Blue and one’s own Jolly Brain to share the stupendousness with. The stupendous shock and surprise.

    With most companions, I recommend only stopping astonished in your tracks periodically. It’s not that one minds being thought mad. Perhaps one even prefers to be thought glad as a hatter. But sharing unbearable joy with unshaman folk can make them cranky. As your eyes get more vivid and poetry, you may find yourself being simply crushed at other folks’ dismal lack of enthusiasm. Fret not – or at least it serves no purpose to fret. Share every 1000th treasure and note the rest for The Blue or whoever your Secret Pal is.

    It can be daggone tricky to become more eclectic and more electric and then find your companions as alert as logs. You must navigate this conundrum, this riddle. You ought not be more dull to fit in. Nor may you begin to despise your slumbering fellows who will wake in their own time. Believe me, there will be fellow see-ers along the way & you’ll have a jolly recognition and immersing laugh so deeply true that you will know and re-know that the bizarre narcolepsy of the darling planet Earth is a puzzle that you are solving.

    Remember how bloody lucky you are to ever be awake alert stunned. Your gratitude must make you humble or you will just be an alert jerk. Which sucks. You are not are not superior for being alert, for having honed and honeyed attentions–you are l.u.c.k.y. You came across influences and confluences. It’s always your fault you can’t translate your new experiences to your friends or beloved. If you were so daggone smart, you could figure out how to entice them with crumbs like little birds.

    You do lead a double (octable?) life. Every single person (wall, old sock) has many things to teach you. You may be grand and fab at what you’re good at, but you ain’t good at what they’re good at. And if you are a real see-ker, you’ll patiently unfold what treasures and tricks each person each wall each old sock has got. And remind yourself to watch out for the hubris of humility too.

    I know, gods don’t I know how frustrating it can and will be to not be able to share instantly and straight across your electric mosaic of insights and outsights. Pick your moments. Remember how dim you are about playing the xylophone. Keep your eye on the xylophone when you begin interiorly or horrors! exteriorly to evince contumely. Experienced shamans know their luck. Prideful and preening fledgling shamans are not patient, are not generous and amusing. The puffed-up or faux humble ain’t got it yet. Avoid them pitfalls, friend, so you won’t look back upon yourself in excruciating embarrassment.

    The ancient Egyptians assumed that the stargods would weigh your heart after your life and if your heart was not light as a feather, you wouldn’t be honored. Pride and greed make your heart heavy. The stargods actually put your heart in a golden scale with a feather on the pan opposite your heart. This is a daunting adventure in lightening of your heart.

    I’ll never forget my several walks in the woods with Sherrard. They gave me courage and delight in the tiny fegg world at just the moment when I thought for sure it would be an utterly lonely adventure, this distilled perception thing. We never saw each other again for 40 years after that. Nor phoned. We mailed each other occasional letters which appeared out of the blue. Knowing a fellow see-er is out there is a lot. If one other person has seen a unicorn, it’s enough.

…………<^>…………

Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29; Day 30; Day 31; Day 32; Day 33;

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, aspiring agent, editor, or publisher person who would handle this kind of druid material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

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the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military-Corporate Budget on education instead ..………….<^>…………….  

Ask Dr. Druid . day 32 . Fencing

 

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 32

fencing

the duel for deftness

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     Sam Breeze throttled back on his snazzy new HelioJetter, the latest two-seater sport jetabout. He settled the tiny craft on the rooftop jetter pad at Max Thorn's InnerSpace MindGym, ISMG. Sam's previous full-passage Earth Trip had been in a cruder era, but he had made his useful mark in that lifetime. He'd been a pretty good portrait artist and had invented the telegraph which had revolutionized outer-world communication at the time. He came out of each lifetime with a deeper conviction that art had an essential part in any constructive endeavor.

    Art, fencing, and invention all shared a creative quality or posture that Max coaxed into your body's and psyche's muscle memory by merrily hollering or hissing “Au point” at you for an hour every instant your body and mind lost the perfect deft balance good fencing requires. “Au point.” (Oh pwa-n. The 'a-n' sound is like the beginning of 'angle' just before you put the 'ng' sound on.) Poised. Equally ready to pounce or to retreat. Not relaxed, but not tense. It is this deft state that Max cajoled and bullied his fencers into maintaining. Properly performed, it became nearly effortless.

    Sam grimaced cheerfully at the memory of the early days when he'd all but collapsed from the effort to make no effort. Learning like a butterfly to let his attention alight on things, to hover like a hummingbird sipping nectar.

    “Breeze,” Max would hiss suddenly behind his left ear, “Are you a hummingbird? Do you skim like a swallow? Are you a zephyr?”

    'FarStars no,' Sam would think, 'I'm a waterlogged, weak-kneed, lily-livered lump.' At first, all these alertness exercises made him feel even less competent, kindergarten awkward. Perhaps it was not worth feeling this ridiculous?

    “Dogs waste effort, cats waste none,” Max would insist. “Purr. Cats are always balanced, au point, poised. Watch them and admire. Learn.” The thing Sam liked best about Max was his refusal to guru. “I'm just a technician, kid. A batting coach. Keep your eye on the ball. Everything is a ball,” he'd cackle. Wise guys always cackle.

    In fencing, your weight is not on either foot. It goes straight down from the top of your head through your spine down between your two widespread feet. Though this position is physically useful in fencing, the au point, poised attitude is also always required in order to live vividly. Alert.

    With his white canvas fencing jacket open, Sam waited for his turn on the piste, the arm-span-wide special fencing strip laid out on the Gym floor. He recalled when he had learned to fly in his own body in the less-dense Realms of Experience and the first time he had levitated in his own room at home. What both adventures had in common was an un-gravity, a not-grasping, a not-clenching.

    Levitating, he had floated up like some large Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon and bounced gently off the ceiling, feeling at once delighted, incredulous, and entirely a fool. He was like a baby in this action. He couldn't control his motion yet. When he flew in dreams, he had careened and hurtled, and when he was about to run into a wall or a mountainside, he would flinch, duck, but dream-crashing never hurt anything except his terran pride and expectations. He got grace when he stopped trying so hard.  

 

     ISMG, the InnerSpace MindGym, was for people who found samuraiing a tad belligerent. All the disciplines and arts sought the Zone. The monk who illuminated the manuscript, the baseball player who had to concentrate but must not squeeze the bat too tight, the fencer on guard. The Zone.

    ISMG with a certain glee disdained 'peak experiences,' that treasure hunt of the previous century. Max had put his huge ruddy hooked nose up to the end of Sam's aquiline one and gazed owlishly at him, “Bloody hell, kid,” he whispered, “I want a peak life.”

   ISMG made every client keep a journal to remind them that all action, all repose was equally a chance to practice or perfect being au point, lightly intent. “If you can't do it washing the dishes, y'ain't gonna suddenly do it here on the piste,” Max chided. Like photographs, each action has to become focused.

    Sam thought that perhaps our blessed eyes were too well-engineered for our own good. If we actually had to 'manually' focus our nifty dual full-color, 3-D bio-cameras on the front of our faces, we might better appreciate the infinite adjustments of attention required to really focus on each thing. Visually we are lazy because it is done for us so automatically.

    As Sam took his place on the piste, the special fencing strip on the Gym floor, drew up his fencing foil before his face, Max cried gleefully, “Au point, Mr. Breeze, au point! Deftly, please.”

…..!…

…!…..

     Samuel Finley Breese Morse was a portrait painter, inventor of the telegraph, and of Morse Code. In Fencing we find him incarnated in an unstuffed shirt, one of the greater joys of modernity – being unstuffed shirtwise, that is. He is a distant ancestor of mine, and I always have felt the wells of invention and of codes and languages and arts across the zephyry ethers – resonances, unexpected echoes.

    Your attention can be piercing or tender. It is the precious stuff whereat your life occurs, or neglected, fails to occur. An unfit attention doesn’t serve you well in either delicate work or more landscape, global work. A fabulous attention is the birthright, the untollable riches of each conscious creature. It needs to hie itself  to an InnerSpace MindGym for aerobic practice in extrospection and introspection, both fueled by wry, lest you take yourself too seriously. Levitas is the attitude of attention that will delight you whether you’re in your own cozy hovel or in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Paris, France. I’m more interested in what happens to you in your own cozy hovel because only a few of the denizens of the darling planet get to visit Paris, France and everyone would like to be able to decorate their cozy hovel with the glories of perceptioning delight. Druids are staunchly not to say stubbornly egalitarian in opportunitys to thrive in verve, to excel in élan vital.

…!…..

Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29; Day 30; Day 31; Day 32;

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, aspiring agent, editor, or publisher person who would handle this kind of druid material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

You may comment anonymously.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2007 all rights reserved

copyright ask dr. druid 2007 all rights reserved

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I’d be very grateful if you’d send pogblog’s link to a friend:
http://pogblog.blogharbor.com  

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.. keep your heart bright. beauty is rising.

.for bombadilobo.

<^>..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military-Corporate Budget on education instead ..

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 31 . fegg

Ask Dr. Druid . Day 31

fegg

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    Fegg. F[aberge]egg. Fegg. Simple, splendid, extravagant, delicious, reverent, jeweled. Fegg. It is seeing and tasting that richness in the little world that is fegg. One of the Earth Decorator's most fegg is, of course, the hummingbird, an outrageous jeweled miniature envied on all planets of all stars. “Ah, Madame Deco,” an offworld Designer would sigh, hardly concealing stark envy, “How did you do it!?” Planet Designers are a good lot on the whole in spite of their universally being riddled with admiration twinned with envy. It's just that when you see something unbearably well done–the concept, the craft, the flash, the diligence, it haunts the heart with gratitude that it has been done–and envy that you didn't think of it first. Gratitude and applause minutely outweigh envy.
    It is no accident that having a clear sense of beauty, style, and fittingness is called ‘taste.' Fegg is the unpretentious exhilarating quintessence of taste. The eclectic rollicking embrace of teleology–the appreciation of design.
    Remember that the rose bush lavished with luxurious blossom is but a fantastic conjuror's trick–dormant dirt, water, sun animated by a pinch of some damn good design–and presto: roses. Fegg. The real question is not how we can find reverence, but once we open-open our eyes, how we can avoid being paralyzed by awe?
     You would think that if a person woke from being a wraith in the twilight worlds to this technicolor extravaganza in which we dwell that that person would run around going WOW, GEE WHIZ. Somehow a lot of us got fegg-impaired. Forgot to surrender to delight
    The Faberge Imperial eggs (particularly the ones by Perchin) are fabulous, and the notion of fegg derives a portion of its charm from the pleasure that human artisans can be so deft. But the planet's Designer has simply strewn our path with marvels upon marvels, has all but stuffed riches down our throat like fat corn down the foie gras goose's gullet.
    Faberge eggs usually hinged open to reveal some remarkable surprise, a spray of milky white chalcedony windflowers in a basket made of platinum and tiny diamonds, for instance. When your eyes have been pried open-open, you wake in the morning, look sleepily out the window, and put your hand to your heart in amazement. You are living inside a magnificent Faberge egg and you yourself are the surprise. You have been placed here tenderly by the same Artists who designed the stars. Fegg indeed. Not only are you here in this ingenious astound, a fact so impossible as to be miraculous, but you work. You can dance or sing a song. You can somersault. Do.
    We are so bombarded by idiot doctrines which distract us from the simple sustainable radiance which is our birthright, that we forget that we’re a miraculous jewel set in a miraculous jewel. It's not just the big showy stuff like the exultant unbearable ocean or the wide wings of a hawk in the sapphire summer sky. It is the dainty spider who can walk upside down on the ceiling and the familiar grime around the kitchen light switch.
    You must start slowly because as you realize it is surprise within surprise, and the knowledge multiplies crescendoing, the jolt of electricity searing in your blood can terrify you. The churches neglected to mention that the ecstatic vision and sensation is at your own fingertips, eyetips, tonguetip, nosetip, eartips. Your body can stand this surging power. Your body is designed to run at many mega-feggs of raw radiance. If you haven't tampered with the mechanism by drink, drugs, or stupid doctrines, the body has all the necessary safety systems.
    You can get as high on air as you like. You were designed for awe and delight. You were given senses and sense to be a co-designer in this blooming magic world. You cannot over-fegg.
…….!….

…..!…

Notes:  

It doesn’t matter how many times your poetry eyes are opened-opened. When you re-connect with that daffodil, with that patch of splotched wall, you will be re-shocked. Every time. As you explore in GrokLand and FeggLand, you’ll keep being startled by new pearls of outsight. You’ll realize with your real eyes that you cannot be reverent, thrilled, giddy enoughenough.

…..!..  

Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of  Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29; Day 30; Day 31;

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, aspiring agent, editor, or publisher person who would handle this kind of druid material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

You may comment anonymously.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2007 all rights reserved

copyright ask dr. druid 2007 all rights reserved

blog title image is a piece of andy goldsworthy

excerpt image MoMA 'egg in hand' unknown artist

article title slice ungakina tjangala

I’d be very grateful if you’d send pogblog’s link to a friend:
http://pogblog.blogharbor.com  

email: askdrdruid@gmail.com

.. keep your heart bright. beauty is rising.

.for bombadilobo.

<^>..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military-Corporate Budget on education instead ..

………….<^>…………….