Betrayed In San Bernardino

Here be the sorry saga of how a relationship across class lines ended in eviction. What redemption there was and what future hope for my landlording venture.

Betrayal

I pulled up to our San Bernardino rental property an hour ahead of the sheriff and prepared myself for the eviction of my contractor, Mike, from the house he had put so much of his talent into restoring, making improvements as if it were his own. I had sorely wanted to avoid this eviction scene, the tawdry humility of it. I had told him so too, but he had chosen to draw it out to the bitter end, long overstaying his promise to be out after Thanksgiving. He had nothing left to lose. His life shattered by the betrayal of his wife. His son plucked from his life (the son of the kidney transplant story that had so long been the focus of everyone's concerns).

"Hi Mike," I called out to him when I saw him coming out of the house. He had a large old truck I hadn't seen before, backed up to the porch and a section of the railing had been removed to make it easier for him to pull things out of the front door into the truck bed. He smiled his easy smile and came down the stairs towards me rolling his eyes as if to bear up against all that the universe had poured on his head.

"So you've had quite a time of it," I say to him playing into his victim role, hoping to have his cooperation by being friendly even though he had refused to return my e-mails or phone calls in the last week, having not moved out as promised. It had made me uneasy about what I might find at the house, so I was happy enough to ease back into our old camaraderie. He introduced me to his assistant Frank, a pockmarked Hispanic man who seemed eager to please. Mike was moving next door to the shabbiest house on the block. He had asked us, early last year, if we wanted to buy it for $40,000 presumably so he could have steady work fixing it up. It had been on the market nearly a year; the owners needing to follow a job. A sale was pending; the across-the-street neighbor had bought it for $55,000. Their son had moved into it. Mike had probably traded his skills for a room. He was storing all of his tools in their garage.

I hadn't wanted it to end this way. Nor had he.

"I wish I'd known," he said when we got to talking about Jennifer and the latest news on her criminal activity. The rent owed added up to nearly $3,000 when we started proceedings and was now over $5,000. Catherine had called him twice since we'd given them notice, but he didn't call back. He said Jennifer had stolen his phone, deleted all his messages. Mike had entrusted all administrative details to Jennifer. She was the one who kept us apprised of things at the property, sent us pictures of repairs, sent the rent money. When Jennifer first decided to grift us she just asked us to forgive them not being able to pay the full rent, that they were short that month. The language of her e-mails included both of them and were filled with emotional promises about how they would pay us as soon as they could. Then she wrote me that her mother was ill from a bad reaction to a drug for her kidneys and she had to go to Oregon to take care of her.

"This woman knows way too much about kidneys," I thought, but didn't say anything, figuring Mike knew about this excuse and was hiding his inability to find work behind it.

In June Mike got a big disability check and they were paid up again so all seemed well. The next month the new tenants in the back house entrusted Mike with their rent in cash and asked him to buy a money order and send it to us because they were afraid they would be late. Jennifer wrote to tell me about the cash being given to Mike. I received an envelope, but no check. I called Jennifer to ask if she had left the money order on her desk somewhere. She swore she had enclosed it. She also wanted to tell me that their truck was broken into the other night, but oddly enough nothing was stolen. As I talked to her I discovered a tiny hole in the lower right hand corner of the envelope and a crease as if someone had extracted the money order through that hole.

"It's been stolen", I told her and she voiced surprise. I asked if she could find the receipt and get a replacement. She said Mike had the receipt in the truck, then reported back that it was nowhere to be found.

"It must have been stolen from the truck," Jennifer reasoned. By this time the whole story was so fishy even I couldn't believe it. I called up Mike and asked what he thought. He said he would shoot the son of a bitch who stole it.

"But doesn't it seem suspicious?" I asked. He changed the subject, started talking about alien sightings. So, I thought, he was in on it too. Eliseo, in the back house, had lost his phone so couldn't be reached for questioning. We were stymied. A thief would not bother with a receipt nor would one bother to take the trouble to pull a money order from a hole in an envelope when it would be easier to take the whole thing. Obviously someone wanted me to know the check had been mailed and a replacement could not be had. Then Jennifer sent their money order it was short $50. This made it the same rent Eliseo would have paid, but again we didn't ad it up. Catherine was mad that they had arbitrarily set the rent lower at their whim.

In September, Jennifer wrote again. "I don't know if Mike told you, but my mother died and I had to use the rent money to fly to Oregon," she wrote. I figured mother died years ago and was being made freshly dead for this new excuse, but we didn't think a person would lie about such a thing. In October, she wrote to say she was still in Oregon waiting for money to bring her back and then they would find a way to pay us all the money owed or find a less expensive place to live. This was Catherine's cue to write them and ask them to leave by November 1st. We heard nothing from them after that and I realized we had lost control of the situation. I was sure they were blowing us off and would stay as long as they wanted rent free. We would have to actually evict them. I got a referral from my friend in LA who had sold us the house.

The law office referred cranked out evictions like hamburgers. For $650, I hired this MacEvict house and on Halloween our three day quit or pay notice and our 60 day notice was served. (Because they had lived there longer than two years it had to be 60 days, not 30.) The lawyer speculated that they would be long gone before then. I still couldn't believe that Mike would so easily give up the house he had lavished so much time customizing to fit all his needs. Two weeks later we both got frantic messages from Mike.

"I know I'm behind on the rent, but I'll make it up to you. Jennifer stole all my money," he said pitifully. Then another message to say that she had been arrested near the border of Oregon. I felt a sense of relief that it wasn't him; that he was still the man I thought he was, but Catherine didn't want us to call him back and get roped into his drama.

He called again. This time I answered. He talked to me in his most calm professional voice, telling me he could understand how it must look especially given how Tally had disappeared on us with two months' rent due just last May. Told me he was not the kind of guy who didn't pay his bills. That he was nothing without his reputation and would pay back every cent he owed. I wanted to believe him, wanted to give him back his home, help him find his kid, but Catherine didn't trust him; why hadn't he called as soon as Jennifer left given that November's rent was due?

Jennifer was doing time, had several cases of elder abuse against her from her job as a caretaker in the homes of ill patients, Mike told me. A patient had been screaming for her and a neighbor had come to see what was wrong; Jennifer was not on the premises. She had stolen from others, whatever she could lay her hands on. I tried to reconcile my acquaintance of her with this criminal mind. I remembered the first time I met her. I was curious to see what kind of woman Mike was hitched to. When I walked up to see her face I was almost sorry I had been curious. She was not just plain, she was ugly in a way that made me feel sorry for her, but repulsed me at the same time. I had gone out of my way to treat her as a peer, ate dinner with her, even talked about how important it was to gain the trust of my clients. I had assumed she shared my assumption that one had to actually be trustworthy.

When I saw her last summer she had told me that she couldn't work overnight anymore because Mike couldn't seem to get their son to school on time. It was an issue, she said. But was that enough to leave him or was she just sticking around to embezzle his disability money? When our eviction notice was served she must have realized the game was up. Mike said he never saw the eviction notice.

Jennifer's sentence for her elder abuse was all of three months, only the jails were so overcrowded she got off on a work permit and only had to serve her time on the weekends. Later she was arrested for a hit and run which she tried to blame on Mike, but he had already reported that she had taken the car so that wouldn't wash. There was no end to her badness. Nor was her mother dead, but mother was a shady character too, Mike said. The whole family was like that. I asked him what she did with all the money she stole. He said he had no idea. Later he revealed to me that she had a conviction for possession of cocaine on her record which should affect the custody case. He had had his own run-ins with the law he admitted, but he'd never been convicted of anything. This did not exactly reassure me.

On the morning of the eviction he was telling me how he got her car back. The sheriff drove up, saw us talking. A young man in a sharply pressed uniform, he asked me if I was Jennifer. I said I was the homeowner. Trying to be friendly he made an attempt to pronounce my name. Then he walked through the mostly empty house, picked up the vacuum cleaner and put it outside as if to fulfill his role. I asked him how many evictions he did.

"Twenty-five a day, 100 a week," he said. He made it seem routine.

This one too was routine so he had me sign off on it. Then he stood there shooting the breeze with Mike, ignoring me. Mike showed him his truck, put up the hood and told how he had fixed it after it had been parked for years in someone's yard. Mike appeared to be writing his number down for the Sheriff in case he too needed cars fixing. He was networking at his own eviction.

Redemption

When the sheriff left, the plumbing company showed up; the foreman striding in with a clipboard, a blue tooth headset in his ear. Mike had told the truth about the leak he had written me about in his final e-mail. There was a lake under the house that required another company to come out and pump out 326 gallons of water before the plumbers could begin their work. The galvanized piping was rotting and the foreman recommended re-plumbing the entire house with copper and PEX. I saw the wisdom of it, though I was pained by the sticker shock—$6,400 not including the $1,800 for the water pumping. The foreman shut off the water, not realizing the back house was shut off too. Said he would be back in two days after the ground had dried up a bit. Then the locksmith showed up to rekey the 15 locks on both houses since Mike had keys to the back house as well and we didn't want to worry about Jennifer or him trying anything. It would take all day to do both. I offered the locksmith a bagel; he smiled and explained that he was on a special diet for medical reasons, told me about a holistic doctor he was seeing. How his cancer went into recession because of this diet. He looked more computer tech than working class. The law firm had sent him. He also served as the eyewitness reporting on the condition of the property.

I went to check on our tenants in the back house at the end of the day. They asked when the water was going to be turned on. I called the foreman; he said the water couldn't be turned on until the end of Thursday. This was disastrous. I couldn't leave my tenants without water for three days. I went next door to find Mike sorting his things in the garage.

"We have a situation here," I told him. He reached for his wrench came over to turn the proper shut off valves to the front house, then turned the main on. We went together to tell Eliseo his water was back on. I owed Mike now and he knew it. I drove to my room at the Super 8 motel. No camping on the property this time round.

The next morning as I drove in from the commercial, spruced up end of town, I called out to the powers for help, any powers out there. Asked for the day to go well, named all the details I had in mind, listing them out loud. I worked alone in the front house spackling and cleaning. Mike had promised to come over and help. At eleven I went next door and rang the doorbell. He answered, said he'd had a late night, would be right over. An hour later he makes it over and asks me what I'd like him to do.

"I'm worried about the pool," I tell him. It was a large inflatable variety with a pump set-up on cinder blocks. It was deflated and looked terrible covered with mud and algae. I asked him to remove it and fill in the hole. He takes the pool away. But shortly after digging the hole back in on itself, he quit. Said later that he didn't feel good, but he revived enough to take another truck load of his tools out of the garage that night. Catherine was mad that his stuff wasn't off the property yet. Mad that I was still talking to him. Wanted to fly down and throw his stuff on the street. I still felt I needed him. There were too many things I wasn't sure how to fix. One of the bedroom doors was missing a doorknob from an unfinished repair on the door, the kitchen counter was missing a piece of molding and the railing on the porch hadn't been put back. Mike brought me the doorknob.

In the afternoon a van drove by, slowed to look at my 'for rent' sign and made a U turn. The passenger asked what the rent was.

"$975" I told them. "And a $500 deposit."

"That's not bad at all," she said and asked if they could see the house. A very fat Hispanic woman who had been driving, climbed out, followed by a moderately fat one, a skinny young white guy and a child. I showed them in. The first woman introduced her daughter whom I realized was not fat at all but was pregnant. The mother said she had five kids all told. The young man said he was the boyfriend.

"We get social security," the daughter told me.

"So do I" said the boyfriend. "I'm deaf in one ear," he added by way of explanation and turned back his ear to show me a scar.

"How are seven people going to fit in a two bedroom house," I asked them.

"Oh this is much bigger than the apartment we live in now", said the daughter. "We have bunk beds", they explained. I was feeling out of my depth and was wishing someone would tell me, right then, that I couldn't possibly rent to seven people. I gave them an application so as not to appear to be discriminating. Then my mother calls and they drive away while I'm still on the phone.

The plumbers came back the next day. The foreman looked serious; he hadn't counted on the line running all the way to the back house. It was going to cost more to replace that line too, $1700 more, might take two days longer too. I groaned inwardly and approved it. If they didn't complete the line the old pipe would clog up the new. Our loan on the property would now top $200,000. We were in for the long haul; a very long haul of renting. Luckily help was arriving.

Veronica, our real estate agent, a young, ambitious Hispanic woman had agreed to be our eyes on the ground for an hourly fee. She pulled up in her black Mercedes and jumped out in a black Nike warm up suit, a white Nike cap over her long black hair. She gave me a hug. I gave her the tour, introduced her to Blanca in the back house. She admired all the work that had been done since she sold us the property. She was studying Suzie Orman's online class and was practicing her financial analysis, asking how much we put into repairs after the $100,000 we paid originally.

By a stroke of good timing, she was also able to meet a couple who wanted to rent the house. They had come by the day before and had returned, having seen the condition of other offerings and apartments with no yard, no patio for their cat. They were moving from San Diego to be closer to family. I liked this pair; I could see they were normal in the middle class sense, though his teeth were sorely in need of dentistry. They were struggling some to rebuild a life. Everybody who comes to San Bernardino is struggling some. It is the end of the line. They didn't have jobs, they had SSI benefits and an army stipend. But she was a fighter—a feisty bantam fighter—determined to put her life back together after a breakdown. He was going to go to school on army money. Veronica asked if they would send copies of their bank statements and documents to prove they were getting these benefits. She was a lesson to me on tracking accountability. They actually had bank accounts. And decent credit which was even more rare. I promised to peruse their application over the weekend.

When they left I told Veronica about Mike, how he still had stuff to move. How he was living next door. She was incredulous that people were taking him in, that he would actually find housing after an eviction.

"He's friends with everybody," I said. Mike was a living example of community building, of surviving on connections and I admired that. "He's charming," I added, "even I fell for it. He fixes things; he can bring cars back from the dead," I added. This idea of trading skills for favors was a novel concept to her.

"He a white guy?" she asked.

"Yes," I said appreciating her having made this distinction. In this diverse neighborhood a white guy was the universal glue. His approval and friendship were valuable to everyone of minority status. Veronica nodded. Being a white guy also meant getting away with more.

While we stood there watching the plumbing job in full swing, a truck from the electric company drove up. I realized he was there to turn off the electricity. I told him I was the homeowner and he said he would leave it on if I would call up the electric company that day. He showed me the name on the current bill. It was Mike's last name, but with a different first name. He must have been dodging old bills. The man assured me I would not have to pay his delinquent bill.

Showdown

After Veronica left, I went to tell Mike he was missing out on the fun. He was still in his boxers looking confused when I knocked on his door. I wanted him to put back the railing and finish smoothing out the dirt after the pool clean-up, but he looked quite pale and was clearly out of commission. He went off to the doctor, came back later and told me he might have an ulcer.

"Well that wouldn't be surprising", I said. He was often conveniently ill when he didn't want to face something. The final day of my visit, the day I had to have everything of his off the property as I promised Catherine, I saw him take off in the morning with Frank and I knew they had found work and I would get no more help from him. I called him up reminding him that he still had stuff to move and I was leaving at five. At four-thirty he dropped Frank off. Frank came over and politely asked me what I wanted him to move. I pointed out everything and he set to work while I went to the hardware store for bolts to put back the railing on the front porch because the plumbers had cleaned up everything when they were done and thrown them out.

"Those bastards," said Mike when I called to tell him, but he made no offer to come back and fix it. I was getting tired of these not quite finished jobs he had left me and the plumber leaving me holes in the wall to cover. But I was proud of being able to do it myself. When I came to the final sweep out I saw there was still a stack of particle boards and closet pieces and a kitchen garbage can full of trash left from Mike's stuff.

I went next door and knocked. Frank answered the door looking nervously at me.

"Can you move the rest of the stuff?" I asked him. He said he'd do it later. I explained that I had to have it finished before I left.

"I'm busy right now. I can't do it. I'm waiting for Mike," he said. I didn't like the way he was blowing me off like that and his tone of voice was condescending. I gave him another half an hour then called Mike to complain. Mike didn't answer. He was blowing me off. Had no reason to make good on his lip service to make it all up to me. It was my turn to show my irritation at his having dragged things out, left me to clean up after him.

I did in fifteen minutes what Frank was too busy to do. I'm surprised he didn't come out, given the racket I was making tossing the garbage can into their yard and the particle board and closet pieces on top of it. The final touch was a bag of soccer balls. I tossed each one over the fence at Jennifer's car parked in the front yard next door. I threw a few into the engine compartment just to unnerve Frank. He had the hood propped open to charge up the battery. There was a stick almost thick enough to be a log in the pile of leftovers and I tossed that gently onto the engine. Frank came out ten minutes when I was just about to load finish up. He threw the soccer balls back into our yard trying to hit my car which was in the driveway just before the porch steps where I was standing. A ball hit the house with such force I knew I was in for it.

"Why did you do this?" he asked.

"Because you're so lame," I said.

He threw more balls at the car. I felt strangely calm. My black belt training had accustomed me to physical attacks, allowing me to think clearly. He wasn't aiming for me. He was completely focused on the car. I heard him mumble something.

"What" I said.

"You're so fucking stupid," he shouted.

"No you are," I said calmly, "I'm just giving you the same back."

He bent over to pick something up. And I heard a thwack as that something hit the side of my car. It was the log. Then silence. We both realized he'd gone too far. I saw myself standing there alone after dark, having deteriorated to the level of my slum lord neighborhood. Things could get unpredictable.

"Okay," I told him, taking out my phone, "I'm going to have to call the police." But I was not wearing my glasses so had to squint a bit at my phone as I pressed 911.

"Go ahead", he said and went inside. I was rid of him this stand-in of Mike's lame performance. No one had come out to see what the ruckus was about. I stood listening to the quiet and closed my phone, the call uncompleted.

I locked up the house, loaded my cleaning supplies and step ladder, drove off the property, got out a final time, listened for any trouble and closed the gate. I felt in control again. I had reclaimed my property and had new tenants waiting. Mike might take it out on the house given my losing it with his last bit of crap, but something in me had shifted. No one was going to take advantage of me quite so easily again. I had faced my fear—an eviction—and acquired a new authority. I was no longer operating on a hope and a prayer. Things would be businesslike now and probably not nearly as entertaining, but that was fine with me.

Happy Paradigm Shift

In which I enter the auspicious year of 2012 through various avenues of my subconscious from shopping cart to under the house storage to apocalyptic revelations.

Let There Be Little Lights

At breakfast I rarely pass up looking at the newspaper shopping ads to see what trendy new stuff people are tempted to buy that I might later have to persuade them to give away. Plus I like camping items, my category of shopping vice. Thus I found myself perusing the doorbuster ads for Black Friday; the deals were particularly vehement. Possibly the impact of Buy Nothing Day, combined as it was with the Occupy movement, had spooked the retail sector. (Buy Nothing Day is timed to coincide with Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, said to put the retail sector into the black as we go into the Christmas shopping season. This is partly because it is a holiday falling as it does on the day after Thanksgiving and family members communicate what they might want for Christmas by going to the mall together.) In recent years the retail sector has fought back such anti-consumerist notions with more and more breathtaking deals on their most popular items guaranteed to lure shoppers into the mall on the day and make the evening news with some mob incidence of bad behavior. 

I eyeballed the Home Depot ad. The store is so close to my house it has become a part of my route. My eye was caught by a modest offering of LED Christmas lights priced at $2.95, a quarter of what they would normally go for. Festooning the outside of the house with strings of light to create a winter wonderland (and add to the utility bill by hundreds of dollars) was a feat we enjoyed vicariously courtesy of our neighbor across the street. But we did have a string of lights outlining the perimeter of a room inside the house. They created a lovely festive atmosphere for parties and were bright enough that we didn't need any other lighting for our dining purposes. LED lights required so little electricity that it occurred to me that I could power the entire room with a car battery that could then be recharged with a solar panel. I had seen a truck battery put to domestic use powering a TV at a cafe in the outbacks of Brazil. When I asked how the battery was recharged I learned that it was put back into a truck every so often. These simple technological work arounds devised by the developing world have always had enormous appeal to me because they sip, from the first world, cogent bits of technology while preserving the magnificence of the surrounding landscape and the timeless lifestyle. Such timelessness was perhaps a fantasy associated in my memory with exotic travel, but I still longed for it.

In order to get this string of lights hooked up to a car battery I would need an inverter to convert the 110 voltage and accommodate the conventional two prong plug. Traveling consultants have been using such inverters for years to power laptops from their cigarette lighter outlet while working in their car. It so happened that Pep Boys, the automotive big box store next door to Home Depot, was offering doorbuster sales of inverters. And jumpstarters. A jumpstarter is simply a mini car battery inside a portable box. It is usually used to jumpstart a dead car, but also comes with a cigarette lighter outlet. Now I was really excited.

In complete violation of my long time covenant with Buy Nothing Day, I found myself at the above big box stores at 7:30 a.m. filling a shopping cart. My guilt was somewhat mollified by another idea. I could now take this show on the road. Because all of the components for my third world workaround were available at such chain stores it could be easily replicated by others who were more mainstream than me and not quite so geeky. And by combining the festive notion of Christmas lights with the back up components normally associated with an emergency I could introduce a new paradigm. A power outage was no longer about fumbling with a flashlight waiting for a utility company to restore power; it was a festive holiday liberating the house from an unreliable centralized system. It was this kind of paradigm shift that really excited me.

The solar panel is a little pricey at  close to $90, but the point was anybody could create a mini off grid system with these off the shelf components. My solar panel was also bought, several summers ago, from an auto supply store; Frye's has them too. It comes with all the bits to connect it to a battery. No additional wiring is needed. It would recharge the jumpstarter battery in a day. Thus the whole system was self-supporting. I was able to keep my kitchen lit with a string of 200 LED lights for 3 1/2 hours before the battery needed recharging. (The lights drew 7 watts from the 8 amp hour battery.)

I took my road show to my neighborhood networking meeting and in five minutes persuaded six women of the beauty of this system. Being organizers they were already well schooled in the virtues of emergency preparation and as traveling consultants were familiar with inverters and car chargers for their mobile devices. My colleagues immediately recognized the usefulness of the jumpstarter. But I was also gratified that they made the connection with how easy it was to create and use an off grid system. 

Of course there is a bit more to a kitchen than just lights. I had my propane camp stove, barbecue and solar oven, but the achilles heel was the fridge. This led to a little side trip underground.

Musings From The Man-da Cave

I was feeling so geeky with my obsession with LED lights, that when I came across an interior design book at the library about Man Caves I realized that a piece of me had been waiting to be identified and named. I laughed with recognition at sentiments expressed in the introduction. Wives taking over the house and rendering husbands uncomfortable in their own home. College trophies, sports paraphernalia, outdoor signs, Christmas lights and beer bottle collections exiled to the basement or garage. 

I wanted a man cave of my own or perhaps more to the point, a Man-da Cave.

The real stories behind these thematically male spaces revealed a devotion to civility and a responsibility to wives and family that was quite endearing. The man of such integrity needs a man cave to get away from his responsibilities. I recognized this to be exactly why I cultivated my obsessions with expedition camping gear, alternative vehicles, off grid systems and tiny houses. These obsessions gave me a place to go to get away from an increasingly complex world. 

I did in fact already have such a space. One that wasn't considered an actual part of the house. It was already cave like. You had to be stooped over to walk around in it like cro magnon man or like the office space between floors in the movie Being John Malcovich. It was the space under the house, which being on the side of a hill, afforded more height in parts of it than the usual crawl space. 

I started taking it over when I moved in 17 years ago, because with four adults in residence at the time, we were very short on storage space. The man of the house had already stashed stuff on the shelves that had been affixed to the supporting pillars of the house. So I put in more shelves, lots more, for my boxes of love letters, and newspaper clippings from when I had my ten minutes of fame riding my unicycle to work. And collection of early hand drawn Banana Republic catalogs from when they were cool and had an old jeep in the store and actually sold vintage stuff. And stamp albums, Pride day button collection, vacation slides, a manual Olivetti typewriter, karate trophy, rolled up posters, a hood ornament I meant to make into a lamp, art projects and materials for art projects.

The floor, like most crawl spaces, was originally bare earth and got quite damp in the winter and muddy in parts. In fact I kept my worm bin down there and the worms were so happy they reproduced in amazing quantities and looked like flowing lava when I piled them up to collect the vermicompost. But I decided that the damp made the house cold, so I painstakingly leveled the dirt, laid sand over the damp part and covered it with very wide thick sheets of plastic. To protect the plastic, I lay tarpaper over it. I cut both right up to the footing for the posts using a stencil so there would be no gaps. When we got new vinyl flooring in the kitchen, I put the leftovers over the tarpaper. The white vinyl transformed the space into an actual room. Unfortunately the worms died from dehydration since I didn't realize the climate had changed so radically and didn't water their bedding enough. After that I didn't come down so often since there were no living beings to bring food to and take care of. Then it just became a storage space.

After reading the man cave book I went down to the space. I unfolded a camp chair to sit in because, in the bent over position needed to navigate this catacomb, frequent rest was warranted. I took a picture of myself in the chair sitting next to shelves of old paint and the chainsaw resting on a milk crate. Posted to flickr with the above description, it soon became my most popular shot of the quarter. Apparently others found the idea of a woman creating a man cave just as endearing.

I didn't put up any Christmas lights but I did cover the pink insulation overhead with flattened cardboard from empty boxes of Cheerios, stapled to the joists; (a client liked to save the boxes for me to recycle). It gave the place a cheery op art feel. I found pictures of Queen Elizabeth the First from a presentation I had given at a class on cultivating peace and put one up on the hatch that was the entrance to the cave. The space was already well lit with bare bulbs in old lamps. 

At Home Depot, looking at lights again, I discovered LED light bulbs. I brought one home to test in the Man-da cave. The new technology was a fine improvement over compact fluorescents. Better color, more solidly built, lasts 23 years and leaves no hazardous waste to dispose of. Also dimmable and uses less energy. I gave one to a client as a gift and she was enthralled by it.

Into my freshly swept out and spruced up Man-da Cave, I surreptitiously dragged in my latest object of interest—a diminutive chest freezer. I got it off Craigslist for $50. I wanted to see if I could make it into a low energy fridge like the guy in Australia living on the side of a mountain powered by a few solar panels. Such a workaround wouldn't suck up more power than a 100 watt bulb, he promised in his online report. You do it by plugging the freezer into an external thermometer that keeps it from turning on so much thus raising the temperature to fridge like conditions and cutting the energy used. Beer makers had discovered the same thing since chest freezers were the ideal size and shape for a beer keg. Beer making was a very man cave thing to do. This kept me from feeling too much like a survivalist nut job outfitting my bunker. 

I sat in my camp chair admiring the still unplugged freezer. Maybe next month I would buy the $60 thermometer thingie. It was time to join the family above for the holidays. (Family having now comfortably integrated Catherine's middle brother Steven as a member of the household. This would be our second Christmas together.)

Discovering Pluto

On Christmas day, during a rare period of blissful inactivity, I lay on the couch reading a book, by an astrologer, that I had requested as a gift. I discovered that my astrological chart revealed a voracious and irrational interest in acquiring knowledge. This was driven by subconscious forces on account of Pluto being so dominant in the 8th house of my chart. I was struck by this explanation. I had believed my pursuit of information was driven by feelings of inadequacy, but this explained why I never got around to actually becoming an overwhelming success. Success apparently wasn't my goal. In fact there was no actual point to my reading so much at all. I was just addicted to those ah ha moments of understanding. What a revelation. 

The author, Jessica Murray a San Francisco based astrologist, advised the mature reader to embrace the dark obsessive side of Pluto's influence, in order to transcend it and transform it. Having recently brought to light the mementos of my past, hidden in the subconscious underground of the house, I figured that, metaphorically speaking, I was getting a good start. Especially since I was augmenting the space with innovative attempts to live lightly on the planet.

The actual point of her self-published book Soul-Sick Nation: An Astrologer's View of America, was to invite readers to help transform the subconscious dark side of America's obsession with power in order to save this materialistic, over-militarized and self centered nation from destroying the planet. Her analysis of the political landscape of said nation was so right on that I fully accepted her advice and found her astrological analysis of recent U.S. history fascinating. The book had been written in 2006, but it was absolutely fitting for the portentous upcoming year of 2012. 

The End Of The World

On New Year's Eve Catherine, Steven and I watched the hollywood disaster movie 2012, just for kicks, and found it rather exhilarating to see the entire planet break up into disaster movie compendium of earthquake, flood, hurricane and what all, as the self appointed survivors (an obscure American writer and a Russian millionaire and their respective families, plus token minorities) competed with each other to board secret government arks built to weather the flood Noah style. 

The next day as the new year pealed out on a clear sunny day, it did feel different. 2012 was not so much pregnant with promise which implies certainty, but strangely giddy with the uncertainty of it; the hope and expectation that dramatic change is afoot. After all we have already ended 2011 with Occupy and the clamor for change in the United States which had for so long preferred business as usual. While on the other side of the world a mega flood had threatened my relatives in Bangkok in a year notable for excessive catastrophic climate events and earthquakes. The new year seemed positively brimming with end of the world material. 

Of course the world is not ending on the winter solstice of this year, per the predictions of the Mayan calendar (misinterpreted by an apocalypse obsessed culture), any more than Santa Claus is expected down the chimney every Christmas. But that doesn't mean we're ready to give up Santa Claus. An opportunity for cataclysmic change, especially within our collective psyche, is too good to pass up. The anticipation of it is potent with power as we climb on board the appointed year. For apocalypse or not I still believed in the potential for events of cultural consciousness to shift quite suddenly just as all those ah ha moments had flooded my mind with new, liberating, understanding. The stars were aligned for it.

Meanwhile on the other side of the earth the Buddhist calendar brings us the year 2555. This, to a Thai, must seem to be mocking them with laughter because 555 is Thai internet slang for LOL. When you say the number 5 repeatedly in Thai it sounds as if you are laughing cartoon style—ha, ha, ha.  Given all that my Thai contacts have put up with, of late, with the flood and crazy making incompetent politics, there hasn't been a lot to laugh about save for the cartoons and photos of escaped crocodiles my contacts posted of their shared dilemma. To laugh, I realized when I put the year 2555 together with 2012, was an appropriate response given the irony of governments attempting to dominate nature by investing so heavily in manmade systems only to smother the natural systems that ultimately supported life. (The Thai flood was not only caused by climate change, but made worse by deforestation and the paving over of swamp land, with industrial parks, that would have absorbed much of the water as it flowed to the sea; so much like Katrina.) Laughing was a response that affirmed my non-complicity with the craziness of it.

The world as we know it—especially the world as Americans know it and that everyone else is trying to copy—should come to an end. And if we can't wrestle our deluded leaders into addressing the situation at hand, we will just have to laugh at the absurdity of it and do what we can to wrestle free and find sanity.

Occupying Myself

Sometime last year I read an article by a psychologist about the historical impact of a recession job market on college graduates and how the government needed to do something about jobs now because otherwise we would create a whole generation of young people who would break off from the mainstream and stop believing in the system. My first thought was "Why on earth do we want yet another batch of young people who believe in the system when things are so bad already. This, after all, is the exploitive, growth oriented system that was fleecing us all for every last dollar and natural resource."

Then I realized, with a flash of recognition, that I was in college during one of the worse recession years of the'70s and the slim pickings in jobs was something I would never forget. Here then, was an explanation for why I grew up to be such a malcontent!

Of course, there was more to it for me, my birthright and sexual orientation having landed me in a precarious geography of amorphous identity. There were, however, two distinct and conflicting sentiments that led to my awakening. The first was the idea that a college education would match my appetite for knowledge with meaningful work that would result in a respectful career as a professional of some sort and a respectable income. This was how it had happened for my parents. The problem was that I didn't believe in most of what was being taught in school even at the very liberal, no grades campus of U.C. Santa Cruz. All I could discern was that each discipline held a narrow view of the world and not one of those world views had a place for a cross cultural, non-Western, gender bending, female empowered perspective. The knowledge I was being exposed to simply wasn't relevant to me.

So I asked my mother why did I even need to get a college degree?

"So, you can live in the manner to which you have become accustomed," she said pleased to quote this witty truism.

My mother's answer led to my second revelation. Obviously I needed to become accustomed to a lifestyle that was a whole lot less pricey. My parents worked hard in their fields. Too hard I felt. We also worked hard at the leisure end of it too, driving to the mountains in the winter for the rush of downhill skiing, maintaining a boat so we could sail in the summer, keeping the pool and the house clean so we could entertain at our own home. I didn't want to work that hard just to get to the point of working harder, especially since none of those professions looked kindly on homosexuals in their ranks. And the closeted ones already there were trading self-oppression for privileges. I had already spent three years in the closet in high school and the constant vigilance at so young an age made me long for freedom. Freedom from these Faustian bargains. I dropped out of college.

(I did eventually finish a college degree, a queer friendly one in graphic design; one I could afford on my own at a state university, while working nights at a movie theatre and living at home. I didn't want to be branded a loser just for not finishing school.)

If It's Already Broken...

For the crop of students who have now become a phenomenal people's movement called Occupy Wall Street, the above psychologist's warning was quite prophetic. When OWS burst on the scene in a way that could no longer be ignored, it confounded the mainstream media. What were these privileged kids on about? I too wondered. Was it just about jobs, given those crippling college loans? But too many jobs were Faustian bargains with the environment.

From early articles about what OWS, I was pleased to see how quickly they were learning to be an inclusive movement. On Facebook, contacts began to post edifying charts and graphics about who were the 1% and who were the 99% and how it got that way. (Wow our gap between rich and poor is bigger than nearly everyone in the world!) In a matter of weeks all the old lefty radicals were coming out of the closet, daring to voice anti-capitalist sentiments that had long been suppressed for the sake of corporate funding to their pet environmental and social justice non-profits. Our top speakers and writers paid visits to New York to give teach-ins through the human megaphone. Every lefty cause jumped on the Occupy wagon with its agenda; we all understood that the system was broken. That no serious demands could be addressed through the usual democratic process. Obama had been our hope, but he too, was completely beholden to moneyed interests (just as Clinton had been).

"I told you that people needed to get in the streets," said Catherine. Yes we'd been needing to get in the streets forever, but had long been too comfortable and too amused by our many toys. The planet being destroyed wasn't enough. Polar bear starvation and whales tortured by sonic discharges not enough. Islands of plastic in the ocean not enough (and still largely a well kept secret). Entire villages in the developing world poisoned by corporate pollution not enough. Jobs sent overseas to exploited cheap labor not enough. Healthcare only for the healthy not enough. Poisoned food not enough. Tap water made flammable by frakking not enough. Oil spills not enough. Unjust wars not enough. Just plain moral outrage not enough.

And besides marching didn't seem to do anything. It was just a way to show the international community that we weren't all asleep. It never occurred to me that we would have to camp out. We weren't homeless. But here we had a group of largely white, middle-class, college graduates fed up enough to live in tents. I never in my wildest hopes saw it coming. I believed that such youth lived in the safety of a virtual world, were too absorbed to go outside, let alone sleep in it. They were digital natives as one colleague calls them.

Camp Occupy

As an aficionado of urban camping, I had to see how it was being done. I contacted, Stacy, my fellow camper and we zipped downtown on Muni. As we entered the Justin Herman Park near downtown San Francisco, a man in a motorcycle jacket came out of his sizable tent to greet us. He was a troubadour he told us and it was his aim to be of benefit to the celebratory atmosphere of the camp, entertain tourists and add to the general bonhomie, he said. As Stacy humored him I stood watching a man in a polo shirt and chinos, pulling a rolling suitcase. He asked me if I knew who Geng was. I had no idea, naturally, and pointed to campers he could ask—white guys like him, but dressed as though for combat at a music festival.

Stacy and I took a circuit of the camp, We noted the many porta potties reeking of pinesol, the garden of vegetable plants and the catering tent busy with volunteers. Outside a white board offered classes in making sauerkraut and chinese noodles. I was particularly heartened by the talk on urban homesteading. A dog sat on a white pouf outside a tent; inside his mistress lay reading a hardback book. Rounding the corner we came upon a man listening to tunes from his laptop with portable speakers. He told us about the lamppost where you could plug into an outlet. We explored the communication tent that supported the camp's website and Facebook page. Inside sat a bearded man at a laptop. Next to him an Asian man peddling the bicycle powered generator connected to a sealed lead acid battery. As we left I saw the newcomer, his rolling suitcase in the care of a handsome multi-racial man with long black hair. They were working their way to a tent bearing a sign that said "bag check".

As we walked back up Market Street to catch the bus, we came upon the original Occupy encampment in front of the Federal Reserve building and noted the many political placards in the planter boxes. "Living Unsustainably is Self-Destruction", said one. "Tax the Rich," said another.

Two days later I had a client in Oakland. My client and her partner were pleased to report having been part of the march two days ago. After finishing my work for the day, I took the opportunity to visit Oakland Occupy, now famous for their run-in with police followed by the very successful general strike and the aforementioned march.

I emerged from the BART station a block from Frank Ogawa plaza. The entrance was marked by an altar to the marine who lay in the hospital following the blow to his head from a canister thrown by police, the night of the recent raid. At the front of the camp sat several white guys next to a sign that read "Tobacco donations here". I stopped at a pop-up shelter at the entrance to the plaza and spoke to two women, one black one white, sitting at a table under a sign that encouraged people to volunteer for services. Apparently no services were in demand, but something of an educational or self-care nature was encouraged. They offered me a free paper from an organization working for housing and racial justice.

As I walked into the camp on the newly laid hay (the original lawn having turned to mud), I noted the very different atmosphere from Occupy SF. Where SF had a familiar Green Festival atmosphere, Oakland had something fresh and edgy about it as if a village had sprung up of newly empowered people who were now busy helping themselves. I walked past a group of black men putting up a tent. At the library tent a white board had a long list of requested lefty authors. In the back corner, someone had built a hexayurt, a structure popular at Burning Man festivals, made from insulation board taped together with extra wide strapping tape. A sign on it said it was "A Red Tent" to honor the sacred feminine. A white woman in a sweater and boots stepped out of it. She invited me to come inside explaining that it was a woman only space; she showed me her pile of bedding. She had been there a week, was likely homeless before; she was accompanied by her chihuahua Elvis. I did not ask why Elvis was permitted in a woman-only space.

On the other side of the camp was a childcare tent where two children and their mother played with the toys laid out on a living room size rug. A gender-bending musician sang to a small crowd at a PA system on the steps of the city hall. Down the stairs on the right, a kitchen crew was busy preparing food for a line that was already forming. Before I left I stopped at a table loaded with donated clothes. A white woman in a bicycle helmet was busy folding and putting the clothes into categories. I stopped to lend a hand, wanting to participate in some way. She told me she lived nearby and came everyday because it was such a happening place. Yes it was magical in a Brigadoon sort of way, for the threat of eviction was a constant tension at the Occupy camps.

Oakland police had a recent history of acting rashly in a city fraught with problems and starved for cash. Later I would read that desirable public space in Oakland and other cities was now in the control of absentee corporate real estate interests. These interests feed the city with a specialized tax money earmarked to maintain a downtown area conducive to business. They were also given the power to specify how that tax money was used. (Don't we all wish we had that right?) And now they were demanding the police clear the camp. They also had the power to hire private security forces called Block by Block, a sort of Blackwater force for urban security. Mayor Quan was taking the blame for weak leadership. She may have supported Occupy, but her hands were already tied.

Change In The Air

For Americans the Occupy Movement has transformed the national dialogue dramatically. No longer will the notion of lowering taxes on the rich to raise all boats be the accepted wisdom. But the biggest crime of our financial system is still to be understood. For it is not just that the 1% refuses to share their wealth with the other 99%, it is that they have created a financial system that gives the illusion that there is so much wealth to be had in the first place. So focused are we on the power of invested money to make money that our financial system has completely lost touch with reality—with the actual physical world.

Societies used to survive hard times—wars, famine, et al—by setting aside enough grain to feed the population for the duration. The appetite of investors for real world resources has taken such food reserves, through international treaties like GATT, and thrown them on the table to play with. As with other "commodities" like forests, oil and clean water, all are bid up and made into trash as fast as possible with no sense of how long it takes to renew those resources (if they are renewable) and no back-up plan if they aren't. And that is scary. Not only are we leaving nothing for future generations, we don't even know if we are leaving enough for ourselves.

We have a system with no feedback loop to warn us when we are doing irrevocable harm to the planet. Investors are positively rewarded by rising prices to buy until a bubble bursts. And when the bubble does burst we have more of something than we know what to do with. (I know I help people throw it away. And bigger stuff like the empty condos in Bangkok that I saw on my last trip.) This overproduction of everything, making trash out of resources as fast as the market will bear, plus the pollution and carbon footprint it took to produce these items, is planned obsolescence on a planet threatening scale.

As the Occupy camps are evicted, the movement has declared that they are an idea whose time has come. Indeed there is astrological precedence for such a vetting of corporations, government, and other patriarchal institutions. The last time the planets and stars were aligned thus was during that other era of protest—the Sixties. Already the comparisons are being made. Occupy has set a mood for stripping away falsehoods and testing the viability of all our social system. There is no end to the things we could examine. I can hardly wait.

A Tale of Two Sculptures

At a recent conference with the Institute Challenging Disorganization, speakers offer insights on shopping that further explain my search for a cosmic connection. Hint: It's not shopping.

A Tale of Two Sculptures

While in Raleigh, North Carolina for a conference with the Institute Challenging Disorganization, I arrived a day early to take in the sights. Diane, a fellow organizer and historian, invited me to join a few other colleagues on a tour of the town. She had rented a car and scheduled a full itinerary.

My plane came in later than all the others, so I did a bit of my own research and found a public bus going into town that would allow me to catch up with my friends. And through the miracle of cell phones and good timing, I met them on the sidewalk just as they were walking up to the capital building which I had just had time to tour on my own. The group was headed for lunch at a local vegan restaurant discovered by Margaret, our organizing colleague and vegan blogger. (The presence of vegan dishes in any town is a good indication of how hip it is and Raleigh was very accommodating on that score.)

After lunch we headed to the Executive Mansion where we were to enjoy a tour that could only be had if reservations were made at least a week in advance. Since we were so well organized, courtesy of Diane, we were admitted as promised and were welcomed by ladies of a certain era, eager to show off the Southern charm of the mansion. The four rooms we were permitted to see were decorated in the lush manner of stately homes with pastel blue drapes and pale yellow wall paper. But at the top of the stairs, back lit by a tall window, stood a large, modern glass sculpture that looked about as out of place as the slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It was of a translucent aqua glass; the top was rounded like a tombstone and there was a square hole in the middle of it on a rakish angle. A narrow space split the piece down the middle from the tilted opening to the floor. 

The docent took her time telling us about each of the rooms pointing out the high quality of the crystal chandeliers, the cut glass punch bowl, the needlepoint done by local ladies, the china engraved with the state seal and the portraits of all the wives who had lived at the mansion. So it was not until the end that Diane asked about the unmentioned sculpture at the top of the stairs.

"Well that's a very controversial piece," said our docent. "I don't really understand it," she added. She then brought over a lady of authority who told us everything she knew about it. It was a gift we learned. Obviously one of those awkward gifts from an important relative so had to be displayed. It was created by a Czech artist and was made from lead crystal. It was worth half a million dollars. The back was completely flat, she told us, as if this was a deception that should have rendered it half the price. And, as a clue as to its burden on them, she concluded that it took eight men to move it into position. So no putting it away when the important relative had gone. She remembered one more detail. It was not always blue. At night it turned to a deep grey. For the ladies, this last feature seemed to add further deception, but gave it a mysteriousness that hooked me. It made the sculpture seem alive. 

I thought no more of it until the next day when we toured the very modern North Carolina Museum of Art. This eco building had been a prison and was now remodeled with a climate controlling sheath that filled it with natural lighting and kept it cool, plus it had a water catchment system that emptied into a garden. It was at the cultural opposite end of the spectrum from the mansion downtown. Inside I perused the paintings in the modern collection and the found-art metal sculpture from South Africa, then came to a large, bottle green, glass sculpture the shape of a triangle. It had the same worked edge as the blue one at the mansion. Chipped like a flint arrowhead. Was this another piece by the same artist?

A museum docent helped me find the name of the artist. There were two artists and they were indeed Czech. She did not know about the one at the Executive Mansion so asked another woman on the staff who came over and told me it was a temporary exhibit. She seemed not to have been to the Executive Mansion, but when I described the blue glass sculpture she asked me if it was called Vestment. I didn't know. The name of the piece and the name of the artist was not given by the ladies at the Executive mansion.

"Did it look like a vest, a garment?" she asked. Well, yes, it could be a vest. This being modern art you never really know.

"I think I know it", she said and was satisfied. But I was not content for the story to end there.

"You really should go and ask for it. They wouldn't miss it," I told her. "They think it's controversial." That such a benign piece would be considered controversial seemed to startle her, but I could see that it was not her place to go across town to ask for a sculpture at the governor's mansion, however misplaced. 

I couldn't leave it alone though, and when I returned to the conference I told the story to a few friends. Margaret, seeing my passion for this story urged me to write to the newspaper suggesting that it should be moved to the more appropriate setting of the museum. But I was not looking for a project. I had done my job. In my mind the younger woman from the museum would venture to take a tour of the Executive Mansion so she could see for herself how misplaced the Vestment sculpture was. And then she might bring it to the attention of someone of higher authority who would eventually manage to have the statue gifted to the museum. 

I had done my part. I had made myself available as a messenger, a molecule of connection in the larger scheme of things. I was a part of something larger that may or may not be meant to happen. 

That night, I described to my conference roommate Kim, that when I was traveling through England over the summer, I had the sense that everywhere I went everything was happening exactly as it was supposed to happen and everyone I sat down next to was exactly the person I was supposed to have a conversation with. 

'I've had that happen," she said. But what was it?, I wondered. This sense of being a part of something, but not having to try very hard to make it work. For I wished to remain a cosmic slacker and appreciated things even more when they came easily. 

What is Shopping?

Last year at the same conference I had been fingered in one of the coaching surveys for possessing an anti-social element in my character. I was guilty of too much independence. I was not contributing to my community. 

"You might want to change that", said the coach who had offered the survey, "for you could be perceived as uncooperative". 

And so I found myself, while choosing a desert at lunch, saying something to the conference chair about the next conference which was on materialism. This prompted her to beg me to join the conference committee. And so we named the conference "Acquiring Minds: How We Think Act and Feel About Our Possessions". As a result of my participation and rather little effort on my part, an old friend of mine from a writing group I belonged to some 20 years ago, was going to speak on the topic of world cultural habits regarding shopping. And I would join her on the stage as part of an ad hoc international panel made up of our foreign organizers from the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Japan, with me representing Thailand.

As I spoke, to the 140 conference attendees, of my shopping experiences in Bangkok, I felt myself describing a sort of shopping Shanghri La. I evoked visions of marble palaces filled with politely bowing, costumed staff welcoming customers into acres of the finest goods the world had to offer. (That is if you were looking for the latest status items from European designers and could pay the luxury tax.) Only the organizer from Japan could come close to such a customer oriented experience. Asia had fully grasped and exploited this ritual of modern materialism.

The next day, in keeping with the conference theme, a speaker, who was an expert on point of sales marketing, gave a humorous presentation on the tactics used in his profession to make the public buy more, especially of things they don't need. 

"Need is a four letter word," he told us. (If people only bought what they needed profits would stabilize, i.e. stagnate which was worse than death in a growth oriented capitalist system.) As I listened to him I realized that he was the high priest of this shopping religion.

"Mark it up, mark it down, move it out," he said making the sign of the cross in reference to his Catholic background. The phrase summed up his entire thesis. In-store marketing was designed to create an experience that made the shopper feel they were a part of something bigger, that they were having an interaction with a community, be it a brand or an event. The emphasis on novelty and change, competition with others, how you felt about your role in life and the perceived value of items when on sale or discounted, were all part of creating a dynamic setting that made you want to return to the store to see what was new. And that was the whole point. 

For the shopper's perspective we had a very special speaker, who swore us all to confidentiality as to her station in public life, then generously presented photos and details of her secret life as a compulsive shopper and hoarder. She was used to her cluttered house, she told us, because she did not see the excess of things in it. After all she could still move around. She swung her arms around to demonstrate. Take a picture and show it to your client she advised. A picture makes you see. And see we did, all the clutter sprawling across her living room to her kitchen.

She spoke of the thrills of ownership, of her delight in things. Her sense of power to be able to buy anything that caught her eye. How the bidding on e-bay made her ever more competitive. How easy it was to pick up the phone and buy what she saw on QVC (a TV shopping channel). How she had grown up poor and didn't have the pleasure of owning stuff. Shopping was an itch she had to scratch—a lot. But with the help of her professional organizer she had begun a program of reform and had devised a way to scratch that itch without actually buying anything. This was done by looking at catalogs. And here she acted out how she carefully circled the things she liked, folded down the corners of the page and set it aside. Then she diligently worked to give away what filled her house.

To be addicted to shopping is the acceptable addiction pointed out a third speaker. Our society and economic system wants us to buy more than we need. This speaker, a psychotherapist, had devised a treatment for compulsive buying disorder. It included an arduous, record keeping cure that involved writing down everything bought that day with the price. This daily "weigh-in" is then analyzed and each item ranked as to necessity. The money spent on unnecessary items is added up; the patient then sees how much money she has spent on what she didn't need. The patient is coached to change her conversation from "how can I use this attractive thing" to "do I really need this, how will I pay for it and where am I going to put it".

My hoarding clients bring home things they find left in bags and boxes on the sidewalk with signs marked "free", put there by their neighbors. The opportunity to rescue and possibly make use of free things (usually by giving them to someone else) gave these clients the same feelings of discovery, novelty, self-worth and interaction with a dynamic world.

"It was just there on the sidewalk like God had put it there for me to find," said one of my clients about a blue plastic box she had picked up that turned out to be just right for something she kept on her cluttered desk. (I forget what. Rubber bands maybe.)

Dancing With The Cosmos

Marketing experts aim to recreate that feeling of being in the right place at the right time, receiving if not a message from God, then at least an inspiration to buy. 

"Logic makes you shop, but emotions make you buy" said our guy in marketing. Whether free or paid for, the emphasis is on things. In a material world what is it that can replace things? My experience of everything happening exactly as it was supposed to happen, gave me an inkling. A series of experiences that are satisfying just as they are. A conversation with the cosmos. The universe answering in coincidences.

It was a coincidence that I had seen the two glass sculptures by Czech artists. No one else in the group had seen that. It spoke only to me. Perhaps, as an organizer, I simply wanted to put a like item with a like item. Or, on a psychological level, I had identified with the sculpture being trapped in the wrong culture and wanted to find it a more suitable home where it would be appreciated. Or on a cosmic level the sculpture was appealing to me to send a message. "Help me Amanda Kovattana, you are my only hope."

The psychotherapist, left us with a final thought. "You can never really get enough of what you don't need." 

When everything seems to happen exactly as it is supposed to happen you are content and do have all you need. But more than that. And I cannot seem to name it. There is a mystery involved, partly planned, partly luck. Co-creating with the universe is a popular way of putting it. All I can offer is that it won't clutter your house and it won't take eight men to move, but it will be dynamic, require a more subtle receptivity and the sense that the conversation is ongoing wherever you are.

The Once And Future Ley Line

Part two of my report on the ancient sites tour of Southwest England with Freddy Silva and the Prophets Conference.

The Prophets

Our group traveled in not one, but two large coaches. The word Avalon was inscribed across the side in foot high letters announcing our mythical trek. But we were not on the trail of Arthurian legend, we were going further back in time to uncover the mysteries of ancient sites.

I sat in the back of the bus with an astrologer and a conspiracist, both English women. I met Stella the astrologist, walking from our B & B to the coach parking lot. She plied her profession in Australia and had her own magazine column and radio show. She looked athletic in her biking shorts and sports shoes, but complained that I walked too fast. Too much success had usurped her exercise time, she told me.

I met the conspiracist when we stopped at Silbury Hill, a man made mound. 

"Silbury Hill was built to monitor human progress", Freddy was saying, neglecting to mention who was doing the monitoring.

"It's like trying to talk to people about conspiracy theories," I said to the conspiracist, coincidentally picking up on her pet obsession. Giants, levitation, healing stones—it all came under the category of alternative realities not readily accepted by the mainstream. 

"I just don't say anything to people," said the conspiracist whose name was Elizabeth. I realized then, that she had probably indexed the whole kit and caboodle of conspiracy theories. 

"It's the Virgo in you that is so attracted to conspiracy theories," I heard Stella telling Elizabeth on the coach. "When I come across a conspiracy theory I just read it once then leave it, but you're obsessed with them," she explained. I was relieved to hear that there was a reason why the idea of conspiracy itself was so addictive. Rather than analyze the usefulness of the content, people gave in to the intrigue and paranoia of uncovering secret information. Fond as I was of certain conspiracy theories that had fundamentally changed my view of government, there were plenty of egregious things wrong with our exploitive capitalist system that was no secret at all. But I stayed out of it. I was absorbed by Freddy's book drawn by material I had never come across before. His information stimulated my mind, keeping it pliable and allowing new thoughts to arise. Serendipitously enough, just as we arrived at a new site I would be reading about it. 

We were at St Catherine's, a chapel high up on the top of a hill, sitting all by itself above the little village of Abbotsbury. Freddy called our attention to the placement of the chapel.

"If you want to encourage a congregation to come to church you would build it in a much more accessible place. So there must have been a different reason to put a chapel half a mile up a steep hill. There was; it was to take advantage of the telluric energies." I had to look this word up when I read it in his book. Telluric energies referred to earth energies. They could be currents traversing the landscape or ley lines as they were named by Alan Watkins, a Welshman who discovered the phenomena in 1921.

The chapel of St. Catherine's, a building of light colored stones and a lovely peaked doorway was situated on the Mary ley line, the feminine current. Once inside the heavy wooden door we found an empty room, no pews or an altar; nothing at all inside just light from the clear glass window. Freddy asked Peachie, a woman on staff with the tour planners, to lead us in ceremony. We did the same toning exercise as we had done in Stonehenge and found the note to be much higher. It was indeed a feminine energy.

Outside a stiff wind blew which Freddy attributed to the masculine energy of St. Michael. While we were inside, a rainstorm came upon us. It lessened when we departed from the little chapel. This was no accident Freddy commented; with this many people we were a force interacting with the land, thus rainstorms would wait until we were sheltered.

I was glad to have on my heavy waxed cotton raincoat, anyway, along with my water shedding leather hat. I had decided to bring the coat, instead of just a windbreaker, because of a shamanic journey in which a cockatoo showed me what the weather would be like for our trip. When my friend Gail in Henley read about my journey with the white bird, she said it must have been their cockatoo Tallulah who had guided me. I'm sure it was I replied, excited at having seen something with an actual connection to my trip. I had been wondering, since cockatoos were not native to England. When I met Tallulah she was indeed white with a yellow crest, but much smaller in person. Or perhaps it was I who was bigger. At any rate, in shamanic tradition, I had scoped out my trip beforehand and was thus prepared. None of the Europeans had brought rain jackets.

Having explored the divine feminine, the following day was devoted to becoming acquainted with the masculine energies. We began the day with another chapel on a hill, St. Michael's of Brentor near Dartmoor, built in the 12th century on a volcanic plug. With its dark stone and squared off tower, it looked aggressively masculine. The hill itself was ragged and spiky with weeds. Four thousand years ago, a mound had stood on the site. We dutifully climbed up to the chapel.

"All of you taking the steeper path must have Capricorn in your chart," Freddy joked watching the handful who were on a goat track straight up the rock face.

Inside the chapel were pews facing a stained glass window depicting the Archangel Michael, sword in hand held vertically. Behind us a workman was fixing something behind a metal grate. We did not attempt a ceremony, but listened to Freddy tell us how the sword of St. Michael pierced the telluric forces represented by a serpent or dragon. This piercing was done to prevent the geomagnetic force from moving away. The telluric energy was then captured inside the church where it was enhanced by the design of the building.

Once Upon A Ley Line

For the ancients, the land was all about power spots, places where the veil between the worlds was thin allowing a connection to the divine and guidance to what future lay ahead. Currents of geomagnetic forces connected these power spots along straight lines aka ley lines. Freddy explained that temple builders aimed to tame the currents of earth energies and keep it from moving. The cornerstone of the building pierced the current just as an acupuncturist pierced a meridian with a needle. The altar was then placed directly over the current. The altar was the spot where initiates experienced enhanced shamanic journeys. Or as Freddy put it, you went to the altar to be altered. 

I already knew from my year studying the earth based feminine tradition, that the snake was a symbol of the goddess and the story of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland represented the Catholic church taking dominion over the earlier pagan religion. So I was a little alarmed that, in Freddy's version, the snake was being pierced, but he was telling us that this was necessary to insure that humans could access its powers within a temple designed for the purpose. Then the Catholic priesthood took control by positioning themselves at the altar as the middle man. They kept the people from this direct access, denounced the symbol of the snake as evil, claimed the divine knowledge (direct access) was forbidden to man and made St. George a hero for slaying the dragon. It all amounted to the same thing. The control and dumbing down of the populace.

In the foyer of the little chapel of St. Michael, I was surprised that I felt a definite physical sensation. Long upright rods of pressure were stabbing through me into the ground almost pinning me in place much as the sword might pierce the dragon. I sat down next to one of my tour mates and told her how "stabby" the energy felt. She agreed. 

While we were in the chapel it again began to rain. It lessened a bit as we climbed down the hill to board our coaches. Freddy knew of a good pub in a nearby village, but when we got there the cook said he couldn't accommodate so many people so our coach drivers took us to the nearest big town where we stopped at a market square and fanned out to all the local eateries. I joined one of the prophet conference speakers, invited by his girlfriend who had shared with me the stabbiness of the energy at St. Michaels. Geoff Stray, a Brit whose day job was driving a bus, had written a half dozen books on the Mayan prophecy. He and his girlfriend were more interested in my work as an organizer than prophecy, but at the end of our lunch I couldn't resist asking how they were preparing for 2012. They weren't. It was a non-starter of a question. What exactly did one prepare for? Nor did they seem worried. (Like Freddy they would probably advise putting a case of champagne aside and inviting some friends.)

By afternoon our luck was running out. As we headed up the narrow little country lane to St. Clether's Well, we were thwarted by a bridge that was out of commission. Then when we decided to head for our third destination we were faced with a road that was closed. This meant turning the bus around; a seemingly impossible task. The driver, an older man experienced with country roads found a "T" intersection where he hoped to make the turn, but the back wheels started to dig into the soft shoulder and we appeared to be stuck. We asked him to let us out so the bus would be lighter. The drama of the stuck bus continued on for some time as everyone tried to help. Finally with enough traction from rocks borrowed from a neighbor's landscaping and handfuls of gravel several of the prophets threw under the wheel, half a dozen men in the group managed to push the coach to solid ground.

Freddy commented on how troublesome the male energy had become, referencing the state of the world, unbalanced as it was by female energy, but how we had managed with some grace to avert disaster. We were too late to make it to our third destination, but Freddy found another St. Michael's chapel on the Michael line. This was a ruin at Barrow Mump just off the motorway with easy access for a coach. A perfect save. On the hill the wind whipped around us as Freddy bid us all imagine archangel Michael delivering into our hands a sword of light. Afterwards, I realized the wind had taken my prized turkey feather right off my hat. It was nowhere to be found. I was upset that this insatiable masculine energy had run off with it, but all things considered it was a fair price for so many days of awesomeness. (There would be other more modest English feathers to adorn my hat.)

So it was with eagerness that we looked forward to our final day when the masculine and feminine energies would be expressed in perfect balance. For this experience we headed to nearby Wells Cathedral. This medieval example of architectural perfection stood in the middle of the town surrounded by green lawns. Stepping into a medieval church felt downright modern after all the ancient stone circles and neglected chapels. The Cathedral was teaming with life. A youth orchestra occupied the main hall rehearsing for a concert. Men and women in clergy robes strode purposely about.

Freddy pointed out the structure built to support the walls in the transept. After it was found that the walls were bowing outward from the weight, a builder had been called in to fix the problem. He neatly designed a double arch shape that happened to incorporate the shape of the vesica piscis, a symbol of sacred geometry discovered by the ancients and first recorded by Pythagoras. Freddy felt that this was on purpose claiming that builders were a subversive lot and were still faithful to the old pagan ways. The word pagan, he noted, is French for someone who lives in the country. Here a division of city and country culture was implied. The city culture being about centralized control and thus more authoritarian while the pagan culture followed the old ways of individualized access to the divine. (This rather reminded me of the city states of Asia aggressively courting the globalized market and sucking up all the resources of the nation while the peasant cultures in the country continued with the remnants of a localized sustainable economy while they still had access to the land.)


In the chapter house stairwell of Wells Cathedral, Freddy pointed out more subversive activity in a small decorative statue of a monk piercing the dragon. (Actually the monk has a stick in the dragon's mouth and is smiling so no struggle seems to have ensued.) This, he explained, indicated the builders understanding that there were telluric energies present. There were other dragon motifs at Wells showing dragon heads with beams coming out of their mouths very similar to the Chinese way of depicting dragons. The Chinese were aware of earth energies too, and put them to use in their study of Feng Shui.

Pilgrims Purpose

Skeptics, Freddy told us, would not be able to experience a site as designed for they are pre-programmed not to feel anything, defiantly waiting for proof, for the some feat of magic to be performed. Yes, skeptics, are by definition non-participants. And human participation was the final element needed to bring alive the power of a site. We were entering these sites as pilgrims, Freddy told us, not as tourists and that made all the difference. The quality of our attention and awareness are expressed as electromagnetic impulses and such impulses react with the forces held within the temple, fusing into a sympathetic resonance that then allowed for an interactive experience. 

The stairwell where the dragon was pierced led to the chapter house, a large round room with an arched ceiling. The large space easily accommodated all 50 plus of us and we spread around the perimeter sitting on the bench. Here again we toned the room with sound and were rewarded with the heavenly acoustics characteristic of cathedral space. The proportions of the room were so pleasing that we perceived it to be in perfect balance by whatever criteria, whether masculine with feminine, yin with yang or architectural ratio. None of us wanted to leave. The place opened us to reflection and memories, filling me with a sense of connection to the distant past that commanded my undying loyalty more appropriate to an age of faith than of doubt and bringing tears to my eyes. In real time, the room made me feel in balance, finely tuned, strong and agile. I wanted to dance the space despite the hard stone floor. I waited for everyone to leave, before leaping across the floor and turning a few cartwheels.

Wells was built over an ancient site as most medieval cathedrals were, whether to convert the local pagans to the new religion or to continue to capitalize on the earth energies is open to interpretation.  We visited the garden courtyard where the foundation of the original chapel can still be seen. Across the lawn was a small window in the wall looking into the garden where the original well head emerged as a lovely pond. 

Water in the form of underground streams, as well as electromagnetic energies were the first two elements required for placing sacred sites. Next came sacred measure and geometry. The entire cosmos of the planets studied and taken down in numeric form, then embodied into the measurements and architecture of the temple building, recorded there for posterity. Thus when we visited Glastonbury, that afternoon, we heard the story of how King Henry the VIII came to Glastonbury to demand the treasure (taxes collected) and not being given any blew up the cathedral, not realizing that the cathedral itself was known as The Treasure, a farmer's almanac of information about the movement of the planets, eclipses, seasonal events. All that was left was a few buttresses and a piece of the chapel ceiling.

For our final event together we climbed up the side of the hill just beneath the Tor. The Tor was the iconic symbol of Glastonbury. It was the tower on top of a hill; said hill was once surrounded by water and was the island known as Avalon. Freddy got out his dowsers and found an energy vortex in the ground, counting out nine spirals. He then directed us to form two intersecting lines like a celtic cross. Thus joined we ran together in a counter clockwise direction to insert our energy into the vortex. After three or four turns we ran the other direction to release the energy. Freddy counted the spirals again and there were 23. This was to show us that in interacting with the land we were able to increase the energies and keep them potent. 

Thus the purpose of the pilgrim was revealed. To bring to the earth our energy, keep alive the fecundity of the land and keep the planet happy so both would thrive for another year. Not a bad practice considering our current relationship to the planet.

The Prophets Tour

Part one of my report on the tour of ancient sites in southwest England. In which I learn how the visitor's participation animates the power of the sites in their role as temples.

Stonehenge

Of all the iconic landmarks that could represent England, I was most attached to Stonehenge. Its mystery kept alive something that history hadn't managed to categorize and box up. It dominated the landscape, despite being bound on two sides by noisy highways. To the average visitor it was cordoned off and had to be viewed from a distance, but Freddy Silva, our tour leader, had promised that we would have complete access to the stones. And though there were so many of us that we had to enter in two groups of 26, we would all have an hour at sunset to absorb the mystery held within the circle of stones.

Catherine and I were in the second group. We stood on the path feeling the stones from afar. And we could feel it too. I hadn't known to do this on previous visits, but having practiced feeling for energy forces emanating from individuals in my Shamanic healing workshop, I was enthralled that this sensation was so defined against my palms, like a wall of buoyant energy. I was too hard of hearing to hear the high pitch sound given off by the stones, but Catherine could hear it. Both of these phenomena Freddy had mentioned we might sense.

Since this tour was a part of my Shamanic exploration, I came prepared to dance my spirit animals at the site. I had my iPod with me and began to do a jig of sorts, much to the amusement of Catherine who was taking video pictures of me (and listening to her own iPod—to a Buddhist dharma talk). Then we hung out on the grass, on this clear evening, watching the first group mingle about among the stones. After a while, I lay on the ground to attempt a shamanic journey, but I couldn't do it; the site appeared to be protected underground by a rigid replica of the stones and I was unable to proceed. Just at that moment Catherine was telling me to get up. It was time to go in.

As we entered through the gateway stones, Freddy told us to hold an intention for something we wanted to ask the stones. Ask the stones! I was surprised by this New Age speak for I had joined the tour because of his knowledge of geomancy. At the same time his charming manner told us not to hold him accountable for any of this woo woo stuff. (I often used such charm myself just to see how far people would humor me. To charm was, after all, a casting of a spell to remove you from ordinary reality.)

And so he told us the story he espoused, about how Stonehenge came to be built by a race of Egyptian builders—giants who were some twelve feet tall—who came to Britain circa 8,000 B.C. as part of a temple building boom after a global flood. Said builders had levitated the stones into place. In England this levitation story is popularly attributed to Merlin. I was familiar with discussions of levitation from other New Age literature, but giants—not so much—apart from Jack and the Beanstalk and Haggard in Harry Potter.

These builders were "dedicated to the preservation and transmission to the future, of a body of spiritual knowledge from the remote past," Freddy says in his book Common Wealth. They wanted to "maintain an unbroken chain of self-help centers in the face of potential chaos…because temples are living organisms that amplify human potential". It was the part about amplifying human potential that had excited me enough to make this journey across ocean and continent to see for myself.

Curiously, once inside the circle, I could no longer feel the electromagnetic force. The stones seemed quiet and protective. Later I would learn that the site was designed in such a way that an electromagnetic field was created around the perimeter to protect it and to alert those who knew how to use such sites. Perhaps that was why I couldn't journey outside of the site. And why I was seeing a picture of it all locked up. Duh.

Stonehenge was originally intended to be a lunar calendar, Freddy told us, which was why the blue stones used to be outside the circle of larger stones, but when the climate changed, the ancients moved the stones inside to adapt to the new solar oriented climate. Thus mankind went from a feminine culture (governed by the moon) to a masculine culture (governed by the sun). That's for sure, I thought, but I'd not heard it attributed to a change in climate.

Even more interesting was the healing properties that Freddy mentioned was associated with the stones through sound. Sound was a method healers used to put the human body back into alignment. This coincided with recent information I had learned about the use of sound to open the chakras for healing. 

Sound was a tool we would use to raise the level of energy within the site; this would make it easier for us to access what the site had to offer, Freddy told us. He then instructed us to find a note that we felt emanated from the stones and sing it. This was called toning. I'm not much of a singer, but I did indeed feel that the note I picked was true to the stones; it was also in harmony with the rest of the group. 

He then suggested we look around and find the stone that was calling to us, go to it and see what it had to offer. He encouraged us to "go with the faeries" as we did this. In his own way, he was speaking in shamanic terms.

The best way I knew to access knowledge from an "inanimate" object was to use a fluid mind—enter the dreamscape with my spirit animals. Standing before a large stone on the perimeter, I meshed with Mongoose, climbed up to the top and asked for a vision of the future. I saw a man in a horse drawn cart coming down a dirt road. He looked like Igor from the movie Young Frankenstein.

"You've been reading too many peak oil books", I said to Mongoose, and climbed down again.

At the next stone I meshed with Bear, climbed up to the top, looked at the sky and saw a space ship by twilight. Well now, this was more fun. I stayed there waiting and a hatch opened. A humanoid alien walked down the gang plank, put out a finger and touched me then returned to his ship and took off.
Having got the obvious visions out of the way, my mind was emptier of expectation. I approached a small stone about waist high. I had Mongoose touch it. (We were not allowed to touch the stones; it made the guards anxious.) The pint size stone started to dance and reminded me of Silly Putty, a favorite toy I made my parents buy me when I was ten. What had entranced me about Silly Putty was that you could press it onto a newspaper and take from it an imprint. The stone was telling me it was a publishing stone. Good enough; I had friends telling me to publish and now a stone too. 

Behind it was a taller stone with a tiny hole where an eye might be. It told me it was a reporter stone and received massive amounts of information through his one eye. This visual amused me so intensely, I was satisfied that I had found the right message. I sat back and watched a crow fly to the top of the lichen encrusted stones. He caught a wasp buzzing about there and ate it. 

The sun was setting. It was time to go. As we left the site, a woman in our group came up to me.

"I love your energy", she said. This is New Age speak for I think you're hot—on a cosmic level. 

"Are you Native American?" she asked me. Ah, she was fooled by the feather in my hat. I told her my background and asked her where she was from. 

"Jerusalem," she said. 

The Hat, The Shirt, The Feather

My outfit for Stonehenge was purposefully flamboyant. For the trip, I had sewn a shirt from fabric so full of colors it looked like a Rousseau jungle. The shirt had a floppy collar and wide medieval sleeves ending in elastic clown ruffles at the wrist. (Very useful for pushing up the elbow when the day turns warm.) To the open V neck collar, I could add my white aviator scarf when the nights got chilly. I wore the shirt like a tunic with my black belt with the sun ray brass buckle (made by a craftsman in San Gimignano from our visit to Italy). Worn with black pants, it was, all in all, a swashbuckling effect. When you can't blend in, you might as well stand out. It makes people consider twice before pigeonholing you. 

To complete the outfit I had to have a hat. If I was not to be English (for I knew the English did not hear my accent as English), then I might as well be American. This called for a baseball cap or a cowboy hat. The closest I had to a cowboy hat was my leather Australian Bahmah (also perfect for rainstorms).

My mother noticed the feather poked into the hatband when she came to take us to the airport. She commented on it being shaman like. Indeed, it was the final shamanic touch. It was a turkey feather, often used by Native Americans in their ritual ornamentation. I found the big, brown and white striped feather on a recent camping trip to Henry W. Coe State Park. There you can hear the wild turkeys gobble as you wake up. They left me the feather on the trail near the campsite.

 "It's all about the hat," I told my mother as I put it on my head for the ride to the airport.

The Prophets

In the next few days I would get to know the tour members. Many were professional intuitive counselors, astrologers, channelers, healers, Reike practitioners, massage therapists plus an accountant. The tour leaders referred to us as prophets after the name of their conference. It was not altogether a misnomer. I had been "prophesying" doom for some years now.

At Avebury we gathered at the very long procession of what was originally 600 stones standing in two lines about 20 feet apart. The pairs of rocks were designed to wake up the entering initiate as electromagnetic energy bounced between them. 

The site was on two ley lines known as the Michael and Mary line (or in pre-Christian times as the Apollo and Athena line). The stones on the left guarded the female line and the ones on the right, the male line. Several of the prophets said they could feel the pulsing between the pairs of stones. I couldn't feel it, but I was used to being the dumb one in the group.

To show us where these energy fields began and ended Freddy asked for a pair of dowsers and sure enough one of the prophets produced a pair. As he walked across the field in front of the stones, with the L shaped metal rods in his fists, the dowsers turned just as he reached the edge of the stone and turned again when he reached the other edge. I was dumbstruck. Now I was going to have to learn about dowsing. (It is not unlike the pendulum with which I already have a familiarity.)

For his next demonstration Freddy called for a volunteer. We had, by then, entered the main field where the stone circle lay. We were at a very large female rock at the entrance of the circle. It had a seat in it where the volunteer would sit. Once she did so, Freddy scanned her with his hand to discover the site of the ailment (as I had learned in my extraction healing workshop). He held his hand there and toned the appropriate note into the rock face. At the top of the "sound" chamber the rock jutted out capturing the sound and sending it back down to the patient.

"I can see her chakra expanding," said one of the prophets with a North American accent.

"Ah good so it's working," Freddy said.

Later I spoke to the woman who could see chakras and asked if she was an intuitive. She said she had been able to see auras since quite young and was giving classes when she was thirteen, but there was not much money in intuitive work so now she was a coach. Hmm, yes, join the club.

On the third day, of the tour, we followed just the Mary line for we were devoting the day to getting a feel for the feminine energy. And what a lovely day it was for taking in the sites. First a fertility site where the Cerne Giant with his impressive phallus was etched in the hillside with lines of white chalk. Then a visit to the Cerne Well in a quiet walled garden behind a church. 

As we sat in the dappled light under the trees, Freddy encouraged us to enjoy the contemplative environment and to drink from the stone basin in the ground at our feet. The water was full of iron and was good for us, he said. We would also be drinking the memories of all those who came before us which would connect us to the past and future. The water was cool and thick. It had been a long time since I could drink water directly from nature.

This, I thought, was the perfect place for a shamanic journey and just as I picked my intention for the journey (to help me further bond with my two power animals), a German woman, not from our group, spoke up and announced that she was going to lead a shamanic journey and anyone who wanted to could join her. I looked up to see a large, bespectacled woman in a poncho and a hat much like mine. In her hand she held a handmade skin drum.


How serendipitous was that? I put my face in my hat to block the light and she began to drum exactly the beat that I was accustomed to.

And so we three spirit friends, Bear, Mongoose and I set off on a fast ride in a dinghy up the Cerne spring. We were enjoying the open countryside when the spring led us into an underground tunnel behind the Cerne Giant. We then came to a large wooden door. The drum bid us enter and we walked into a sun filled village peopled with celebrants. Following the path we came to a rock face from which water poured forth. A pretty woman in period dress and flowers in her hair stood beside it. She handed us each a crystal goblet and bid us drink. This we did and were thus refreshed and bonded in this ceremonial pilgrimage to the wellhead. Just then the drum sounded the beat of return and we hurried back the way we came, boat and all. It was such an invigorating journey it filled me with magic. Afterwards I got up and introduced myself to the German shaman, exchanging a few words about our shamanic traditions.

A Prophets Advice

For lunch there were two pubs to pick from, The Royal Oak and The Giant Inn. Naturally I picked the Giant. Soon other prophets joined me, ones I recognized for their high level of intuitive skills. When they asked what I did for a living they were fascinated that I went into people's home to do actual clutter clearing. How funny, I thought, for their work was equally exotic to me.

Another prophet, an Englishwoman, sat down next to me and bid me tell her about the feather in my hat, asking if it was an eagle feather. She also wanted to know what was up with the red rock lobsters on my bright yellow shirt. I explained about the turkey feather and told her how I had made the shirt from a vintage Hawaiian sarong (in the same style as the Rousseau jungle shirt). This seemed to past muster and she proceeded to speak to me as a peer. 

She was a channeler, she said, as if describing an ordinary job. (I love that down-to-earth quality of the New Age Brits.) I asked her how that was different from a medium. She said mediums just work with dead people. She used to do that, but dead people weren't any wiser for being on the Other Side and she was tired of them leaving footprints on her psyche. Channelers, she told me, work with the energy of the earth, Gaia for instance, to ask her to be gentle with her back cracking which we experienced as earthquakes.

She asked how San Francisco had managed to avoid having an earthquake, because from where she stood, one was due, what with all the earthquakes happening in Japan and all.

"I don't know", I said, "all of us who live there are nuts." For living in earthquake country, I was thinking.

"It probably feels good living there", she said, "because of all the negative ions coming out of the cracks in the earth". I hadn't thought of that.

"We'll you must be doing something right," she concluded. Yes, according to Gaia relationship theory, we must be in her good graces. I liked to think so with all the weekend events I went to to improve things with the planet.

She told me about brokering deals with unfriendly spirits that harmed the environment. It sounded so much like what I'd been reading about possession by unwanted entities, I told her about my hoarding clients. She said I should do space clearing after I decluttered my clients' homes. 

"I'm not really trained in space clearing", I told her. "It's more the department of my Feng Shui colleagues." 

"I'm giving you a hint," she said adamantly, not put off by a lack of credentials. "And you should change your name to Ananda," she added. This was a Sanskrit name also used in Thailand. Perhaps she had changed her name too, I wondered later. She had a Celtic one with a handful of vowels. I heard it as Elfa.

When I told Catherine, that evening about Elfa's suggestion, she reminded me that Ananda was also the companion to the Buddha. Yes, I remembered. He was the dumb one who didn't get what the Buddha was going on about, asked a lot of questions and wrote everything down.

"Well, that sounds about right," I said.