The Road
In southern California, the sky is clear and blue - wisps of clouds move slowly across the sky and on this Sunday, the temperature matches northern California at 46 degrees fahrenheit. A walk, errands, and a visit with the folks await.
Driving between Los Angeles and the Bay Area is usually beautiful. Up Hwy. 5 and down Hwy 101 - makes for a nice roundtrip. The landscape has changed with the rains that have been with us. This trip, we started with cold and partial sun, and ended with rain that went to drizzle and then cool, dry and star-filled skies. The landscape took us through rolling hills, the oceanside, through rural and urban communities. The weather was much like life - partial sun, partial cloud, sun that comes and goes, then finally nightfall.
Most of the trip was taken up with listening to the voice given to Octavia Butler's Mind of My Mind. Wow, what a storyteller that one is. Where the ideas and words come from is clearly the past and the future. The images from the words foretell a possible world that quite literally could blow the mind. Only got half way through the saga, as there were pauses for conversation about the state of things, both personal and in the world.
The imagination is contagious, making one realize that our capacity individually and collectively has barely been explored. What might the world be like if our imaginations could open to what ancestors had hoped for us all? That we might recognize one another, truly see one another in this life and form as human beings. Did our ancestors intend for this world to succumb to intense fears about why certain people lean toward individualism and others toward collectivism and then attach labels that create strife? Probably not.
Realizing that misery among human beings is cultivated out of placing priorities on gathering things rather than gathering wisdom, seems to be what emerges when seeing what has happened to the world in which we now live. The road provided the space and time to listen to a story, to imagine how human beings might relate to one another one day, to re-examine what humanity means today. While traveling through space and time across the state, a realization came through: We are living in multiple layers, all the time. Though consciously, our bodies and brain make us believe there is only one realm; if one accedes to true reality and allows for simple being, the fact of occupying multiple places and times, emerges.
Within one cycle called "a day", the road made it possible to share stories with friends to create warm memories and to sit with another to remember a life that has transitioned to another realm. Then, to receive generosity in the form of books donated to a school for refugee children south of the border, and in the drive home, to experience what nature can do to nourish the land and deliver a new day of possibilities. Another "wow.".