Elephants, Elephants Everywhere

This planet I live on is just one single cell. From within the atmosphere, amongst the beasts life is a constant struggle for resources and reproduction of patterns. I happen to be one of these beasts, and I have come to wonder, in time, where all the elephants have gone.

This morning I was at the local fitness club, and entered the sauna for my morning meditation. I read a daily inspirational book that looks at the spiritual development of former malcontents and scoff laws who have found great benefit from daily inventory of one's spiritual condition. My reading was delayed, because a guy in the Sauna wanted to talk about Elvis. I ended up revealing that I don't like Elvis too much because I consider hi, to be sort of the patron saint of White Supremicist Ignorance through Market Manipulation. 

The guy transfered the thought to the question, do I believe that all people actually came from Africa. I wasn't sure where he was taking this, and the Sauna isn't a great place for heated arguments, so I got into an anthropological perspective, and said that I believed that the development of human culture had to do with the Elephants having become friends with the primates about a million years ago, the hominids followed the elephants out of Africa, and everywhere there were human developments up to 60,000 years ago were places where we had had followed the elephants.

That was enough to blow his mind and we left it at that.

LAter in the day I began to think, while meditating at group on Active Listening facilitated by the same Buddhist Matron from the day before, that I had never really considered the role of the Austrailians and PAcific Islanders in changing the human relationship to elephants.

There were no mammoths or other Pachyderms in the Antipodes and on the Polynesian Islands besides some on the Northern Siberia to Alaska Route.

I began to wonder how development of Modern Human conscioussness, around the rising and falling of the ice sheets that created the isolated groups of Elephant Friends who are the primary Eurasian and American Phenotypes had been influenced by the isolated families in the Antipodes.

In the places where the humans killed off the elephants, the population density seems to be sparser than the places where they lived in harmony with them. How does this differ from the places where there never were elephants at all?

Oh ganesh, where is Vinyaki?

Veteran's Day 11/11 - Make a Wish

On and On and On Anon ... 

Valentines Day of 1975, I was born, thus prolonging the relationship of my Mother and her Husband, my Father. She went to great lengths to conceal from me the fact that I was unexpected, that she would have preferred to have already left him. 

The hospital was in Olathe, Kansas - but the residence was Lenexa, Kansas. He was a Military man. She had met him when she was the secretary in the hallway on the military base. He was decorated and respected - EOD Paratrooper - he jumped out of planes to diffuse bombs in foreign countries after the fighting stopped. He collected Dog tags and took part in complex Intelligence operations. He lived up to the job, and that included ( in his view ) a charismatic Playboy lifestyle that she didn't necessarily understand.

When they conceived me, it must have been around Memorial Day of 1974, which was my older ( and only ) sister's first birthday. She had been trying to bring it all to end then - but he seduced her. His job took him out and about, globe trotting. The day they conceived me, Richard Milhouse Nixon was President of the United States. By February 14th of 1975, when I was born, Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford had become POTUS. 

This morning there was a transit of Mercury across the face of the sun, and I have spent much of the day engrossed in Recovery from certain physical, emotional, social and spiritual scars.

One aspect of this recovery is that I am now training to be older. Once upon a time I didn't care whether I lived or died, but I have now resigned myself to the fact that I must make the best of this living experience. By 'training to be older' I mean that I have begun spending more and more of my time with folks who have lived longer than I have - seeking their insight into how best to improve this world by lessening the suffering in it.

For example, this afternoon I attended a meditation group where I was the youngest, led by a Buddhist Matron named Alison. She asked me a question at one point, about my history, and my reply caused her to remark, " Sounds like there is a book in you. Better start writing it."

And so, I have begun, again, this memoir, the Bad Folk Blog, to make some note of my thoughts about the passing of the days - that perhaps there will be a useful understanding and literature may develop from my experiences in a way that goes beyond my mere frustrations and exhortations.

SO, it is veterans day. Today the world breathed in, and out, as the Queen of England remembered the English speakers all around the world who had died and deserved Rememberance and memorialization.