more tales from the Planck Barrier......letter to a cheeky monkey:Uranian Pinball, rocks reef and disconnection

From a comment to a puzzled new friend on the tidal ebb and flow of people in your life and the importance of feeling joy.....and love.

I've always called it Uranian Pinball...being a spiritual catalyst, bouncing off situations and choice, chance, we get so serious, forget the crazy flashing lights, the improbably silly Rube Goldberg contraptions, shiny silver ball bouncing willy-nilly teaching us to go for it, to be free and joyous in whatever connections you make. I think that even more than love, many more folks are afraid of joy, being joyous and dancing til you fall down like a drunken sufi...

As I now live in oz(Atlanta) and this year was my third set of 17 for me, the last being my own trip to OZ, May,1990, it seemed appropriate to write you.

Actually, even though I grew up a stone's throw of the Gulf of Mexico, I never spent any time snorkling or SCUBA diving. At my first 17, camping at Sea Grove Beach we brought jewels from Glen Hartsfield's daddy's cow pastures . The sun sparkled on the water, I went in . Later, seconds, minutes multipleminutes- do you know the English poet, Stevie Smith? Glenda Jackson did a wonderful film "Stevie" about her life- she had a poem "Not waving- drowning" - caught in the undertoad, I waved, my friends waved back . I finally remembered, "turn over, put the sun on your face and let the waves take you for a stroll"...17 yrs later, I found myself on the"Great Barrier Reef" they said only 13 meters...I heard 13 ft, I said to self 'no worries, I can count the grains of sand' eventually I did the math. lol The point being that although out of my depth the sheer exuberant joy of where I was, the crazy kaliedescope of little fishies and I JUST HAD to be a part of it.

A few days before, I had climbed Uluru for my 34th b-day with a 89 yr old Swiss man as my companion. His entire life he'd dreamed of that moment. We chatted and he yodelled for me and we laughed at the amazing blue... My traveling gals, one born in Sydney, the other, the Bronx never made it off "Chicken Rock". Kate was plastered to the side, fly on paper until this very gallant Canadian pried her off.

On the Reef, Valerie (from the Bronx)sat cross-legged on the dive platform, mask to her face, peering into the blue from 6 feet above the surface?!?!She was out of her depth and unwilling to truly trust.

Like you, I think I have been puzzled, as well. I have always been such a curious Monkey, so many interesting people, connections, conversations. I have loved this world and those in this world with a fierce joy, but I let others' fear of going deeper, really connecting make me doubt my true essence, teaching me some hard lessons of deep connection dissipated by fear. I spent years feeling a longing for "true" connection. Being first person experiencing, but third person analytical, was my salve for hurt. These first two poems were written while living in NYC. The last at the solar eclipse in Pisces shortly before I suspect your birthday. You do realize that as you describe your experiences that are your life's metaphor for the Pisces / Aries cusp?
As we expand our boundaries beyond this 3d world that most call home, we are here I really believe not to proselitzye, pontificate, expound ad nauseum high-blown esotericism ( I know this idea pisses some people off-every one is an angel,light-filled etc etc etc etc)but we chose as Lightworkers to be HUMAN in all that it entails and show others not just "Light" but Light-heartedness.

Ok, enough of Toni's Ruminations.....a few poems from the past when I was "puzzled" too.

Alie(n)ation
There are beings calling.
I hear the shell of their breath
at my ear
and I feel at home
in my land again.
Familiar faces,in a place
frequented in a dreamworld.
Intangible recognition
and side-longed longings.
brings pained sightings,
aware that even the most familiar
is fruitless.
Fruitless on a
full-blown full-moon morning
and those, like ships sighted on a horizon,
could be friend or...
more likely than not a
night-passed ship of fools, a fool.
What a shipwrecked fool I am
in a salt-land looking for
spring-fed eyes.
Thirst, an object to be held, eyes to lips,
to eye to heart to eye to heart.
Parched words on green papayaleaf,
camouflaged beings, chameleon souls.
Psychic bondage.
Spirit decayed,
grasps straws, seeks bridges, wings,
safe harbors in the eyes
of beautiful strangers

Feb. 1984

Sinkholes

Re-surfacing/
the blacktop, the highway
to success and endless admiration.
Few knew, even suspected, that
like the land of her childhood
there coursed through her,
eddy and swirl,
an underground system
of life-giving springs, surfacing only
when obvious ground gave way.
Sinkholes, sinking feelings
all hope springs not eternal.
The others, those that fill her
life with events,
flock, thirsty creatures
at an oasis.
Deserted, when well-springs ran to sand
She sahara-sat in an urban wasteland.
Emotionally parched, heart
bone-dry,
She tried to remember the time.

August 1984

fast forward to the present.........

03/19/ 07

The Solar Eclipse, dancing to Gilberto Gil's Luminoso, a 30 yr revisit of voice and guitar, in my backyard with my Rat Terrier pup, Panda aka Pandemonium T. Wigglebutt the Circus Dog.....
Luminoso

Tonight I danced.
Under a constellation in copper,
reflected off needles of pine,
here and now
is my home.
North Star,
my mother,
navigates me back,
back, back to the edge
were my past and future
find they are the
same destination .
A language known
only to my heart
speaks the legend
of this strange map.

It takes three points to
triangulate your path:
your soul,
the direction of fair winds,
and the soft seas of destiny.
I find these points reflected
in your eyes
and the moon.
My eyes diffuse
in this balmy night
where my soul
floats, cries and
dances,
in this strange world of
possibility.

I have come to a place now where Here and Now truly is my home and I have joy AND peace of mind with this world and all it's changes. Those that pass through my life, or those who've agreed to be my teachers on this strange journey Home
have blessed me with every event, joyous and not so....

Now go outside and play you cheeky monkey!

love to you,
Toni