earendel and the lens of life

Once again I found myself sitting in a parking lot on a hot summers day, the rays of the sun so blinding it forced me to look away. My Warby Parkers looked cool but offered little protection from the intensity of the golden orb overhead. Finally the car in front of me moved. There was no reason to take the next off ramp, mine just two exits away. The overpass was backed up just like I-5 and offered no relief. Angry I hit the steering wheel. ‘Damn’, I said, ‘so this is what I earned with a college degree. Just damn’! Arriving home there were mouths to feed, clothes to wash, a disgruntled husband to placate, and children to referee. And I was tired, so tired. Not just for sleep, but of the daily grind and this painfully predictable life I lived.

The acrid smell of smoke hovered above the dank damp dew that covered the earth. I awoke to a hideous dreamworld. This was surely the face of hell as I lay on the bowels of the earth having looked death right in the eyes. After the battle a white flag signal was given and a cease fire followed allowing both sides to gather their wounded and dead. Sometimes bodies were gathered that had penetrated deep into the oppositions lair and then carried to a neutral zone. Sometimes the boys worked side by side picking up their wounded and dead, and sometimes they spoke. ‘Sorry for your losses Johnny Reb’, ‘and sorry fer yourin’ was the reply. Someone put a torniquet on my left leg to staunch the hemorrhage, the sawbones sure to add it to the platter of appendages harvested that day, an offering to the red horse and its faceless rider. The acetic smell of blood and torn flesh permeated the air. And death and dying were everywhere. Hands lifted me on a stretcher and with great pain I lifted my hand to my face and felt the empty socket where My right eye used to be. No longer one of the boy’s in blue I looked rather British wearing red with as many holes as honeycomb. I wish I was dead.

Everything status, image, and curb appeal. From my cookie cutter house on country club drive on the top of the hill, to my Arena Red Metallic Porsche 911. The boys across the street bent low trying to sneak a peek feeding their fantasy while following the descent of the garage door. Confident, charming, and oh so witty, coiled to strike, dressed to kill, and oh so pretty.

I could hardly breathe, the stench overwhelming, i.e. bodily fluids, puss, piss, and intestinal putrefaction. The only thing that separated life from death…..a single breath. One single damn breath! Don’t breathe I screamed in a chloroform induced haze. I shuttered to think anyone could endure this assault on the soul and senses let alone strive to stand and survive to assist the wounded and comfort the dying. And I realized we were all just pawns in this orchestration of blood and gore, sacrificed for the King in this real life and death chess game of war. We were the expendables, maybe on a list of commendables, but in truth just another faceless name inscribed in an army archive.

It was girl’s night out and my, we knew how to play. This time it was a two-day stay at the Lodge at Bodega Bay, where the wine country meets the coast between sandy shores and seagrass. Featuring world renown Napa Valley wine, pared with upscale artisanal cuisine we pampered ourselves with mud masks, massage, manicures and Malbec. Saturday night we rented an uber, bar hopped and danced the night away. For Millennials and Gen X Girls, well we stole the show doin’ the Salsa, Bachata, West Coast Swing and the Flamingo. When we arrived back to the Lodge inebriated and exhausted we collapsed on our beds laughing, now with the look and feel of bone weary burned out Baby Boomers.

As I lay in bed with a tent canopy over my head my shame and resentment smoldered. ‘Get me a stick, tree limb, or anything’ I yelled, ‘so I can hobble out of here and take care of my own personals’. Now fully conscious it was a humiliation I could not bare without seething. I never was aggressive to the nurses or their kind administrations, but was firm and finally received an old pair of one size fits all crutches. Initially with assistance, but in short order I mastered the crutch canter with the enthusiastic support of my bedridden audience of avid cheerleaders. Finally the day came after measurements where taken when I was fitted with a simple prosthesis. It was painful and always would be, but with a fierce determination I was soon walking without crutches. I was more fortunate than many. My amputation was below the knee allowing more flexibility and fluid movement.

It was quiet tonight. Just me and the TV. About as intriguing as brackish ditch water. Wasn’t interested. The kids had school activities and my husband was in the Bay Area working a job called a ‘hybrid’, the term given to folks who moved inland seeking sanctuary from the high cost of living and all the threats that surrounded covid, and now having to return working parttime in the office, the rest from home. Come three to four in the morning commuters played circus performers articulating their way on just another Commiecalifornia freeway. Some made this pilgrimage every day, 2 1/2 hours over and least an hour longer coming back. I was able to relocate to the valley and although my commute was a paltry fifteen miles, it could take upwards of an hour before I rolled up the drive and into the garage giving the gawker gallery an accentuated look at my legs. I took a long hot comforting shower, hair down, no make-up, standing naked in front of the mirror. I stared turning sideways, and then pivoted once again looking over my shoulder at my pompous posterior. An honest appraisal before I looked at my apparel. Sighing I spoke to the face in the mirror. ‘Over time things certainly do relocate. But what the Hell. Us girls have our ways to alter, rather I should say, to enhance our appearance’. Slipping on a night-gown I sat on my bed and faced my closet with its profusion of thread.

The day came, and I said my goodbye’s desperately trying to find worth in this hell we called earth, looking intently into the eyes of all the boys in tent seven. I guess I was lucky, though I really didn’t feel that way as I was able to walk away, leaving broken bodies and betrayed souls many never able to work the farm again let alone feed and clean themselves. They called me Patch and it stuck. I wore it like a badge. Tears filled my eye as I turned to hug the nurses, angels in disguise, each one of them. Never have I known such selfless service. Never. Walking out I shook the hands of the doctors. They were giants in my mind confronting more absurdities on any given day than most folks face in a life time. I left Kansas to join the fight, a free state, now with nothing to return to. The farm and family all gone, and my sweetheart hearing reports that I was Incapacitated and that even if I lived I could not return. My best friend Clay stepped up to comfort her grief stricken heart. After a roll in the hay, there was a child on the way and nuptials spoken. With the pay I saved as a union lieutenant I made my way west and the great beyond. Wherever I went folks looked at me shaking their heads with sorrow and regret or just plain distain. Such was the sentiment for what remained of the bodies and souls of the boys of tent seven with nothing left in life to gain.

Looking in my closet I felt like I was staring at an old west ‘hemp holiday’. Cause ‘hanging’ there were Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Cartier, and Prada ‘wanted’ by women all over the globe. Wiggle-walk wonders Sam Edelman, Marc Fisher, Berluti, and Valentino stepped up feet first in this fashion parade of ‘wanted’ flotsam footsam, thousands of dollars on display, largely owed and a normalized part of the American lifestyle. Us Millennial/Gen X girls wear debt like a badge or clothing label on proud display, our aggregate total i.e. personal loans to credit cards, home and auto loans the largest of all age groups. An involuntary shutter draped my body head to toe. The rumor rag at work, ‘the gossip monger’ spoken in hushed tones, reported on good authority or was it from reliable sources or just Cordelia over coffee, that due to the present ‘economic climate’ the company was downsizing sometime this year. Sure to be blamed on global warming or it’s ugly step sister climate change. I feel a cold breeze and the winds of change, all believable. After all, it is all validated by empirical science and SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess).The question left standing as I gaze out my window watching our pale orb dip below the earth’s rim in a gray haze. Where will I graze in this changing multinational maize?

Arriving in Kansas drawn like a dog to a buried bone, I rode out to what was once a happy home. The ‘Diggin’s’ had been razed, only skeletal remains stood like sentinels atop the ground. All my kin were buried underneath a dirt blanket over by that lone oak tree. No bones were to be found hidden in the ground for this lonely hound. So I slowly rode back to town, all my memories crashing like waves on the shore line of my mind. Got supplies at Schrader’s General and then mounted fixin’ to leave when I saw Emma, my sweetheart. And for a moment the world went silent. She was all that was alive of the hell I had survived. She looked up and stared with a faint realization, shielding her eyes with a gloved petite hand. She began to raise her right hand in recognition when her left hand rested on the evidence of her indiscretion. Lowering both her hand and head, she slowly turned and strode the mourners walk inside the door of a clothing store and out of my life forever. Sitting straight in the saddle lost and entangled in a web of emotion, falling falling into dark oblivion, I was abruptly halted by the sound of her voice. ‘Oh how I love thee’, spoken so soft and sweet. I then tilted and bowed my head touching my hat, breathed deeply, exhaled, turned west and rode into the sunset, mountain, sea, and endless sky, a new life to claim. All I had ever known, I now left behind. All that remained where just the faces and names. All else lurked in the undefined darkness and shadows. What I did not see was Emma rounding the door and standing in the shadow of the glass front watching me with her hand to her mouth, tears cascading down her cheeks, her body shaking. ‘ Oh God, it’s him, my love, it’s him. He is still alive’. Then slowly lowering herself to the floor she whispered, ‘forgive me, please forgive me. I would never, never, never deliberately hurt you’. Oh how she longed to run to him, hold him, and kiss his lips again. Instead she watched as her happiness rode away, and with him her heart.

He was a simple man, stripped of everything he cherished in this life. His needs were basic. He didn’t ask for much. But one thing he couldn’t live without; someone to love who loved in return. Such was his lens of life.

I stared in the darkness as I lay my head on a pillow in my bed in a Clos du Bois Cabernet Cloud. The bottle only 2/3rds down, not yet a dead soldier. There was a night light in the lav if I needed to stumble my way to the loo. I never look up. I never really ponder the man upstairs and the miracle of creation. For me there was nothing to see in the night sky. Maybe a supermoon. What the fuss. With industrial pollution, smoke, fog, and smog, and the ambient light of the city there was nothing to be seen anyway. Laying here still and alone I began to doubt myself. But not for long. Everything is green and go, only positivity’s not life’s realities. Everything the way I want it to be, not the way things really are. So I put my earphones on, a video within my reach. Time to empower. I had my mat, meditation, and mantras, mystics, mentors, and masters. I was woman, the ‘go girl’ of the Queen of the day time tv screen.

She was a fading Madonna Material Girl. She lacked for nothing, but needed everything. Blind, naked, and impoverished, but she would be the last to know. Such was her lens of life.

So tell me what you see. What do you hear? What do you think? How do you feel? And what do you believe? You love, you hate. You repel, you embrace. Everything you have ever known presaging birth and conception to the present incarnation that is uniquely you, everything, just everything, the simple being of who you are made possible by your lens of life. I will tell you something. It’s not a secret. It’s all a profound delusion, this lens of life, the lens of illusion. I do not profess to know it all. Nor will I attempt to teach you. That depth of communion only for a few. If you step out of the bread line of hypnotic amnesia, and take a different path of understanding soon you will realize you were not supposed to comprehend that everything that happens is part of a long range plan. That is a path of discovery and honesty only a rare soul will take. Everything in your life under the scrutiny of God. Total Exposure. Soon you find you’re quite by yourself, but never alone. You can’t tame lions, only lambs.

The masses have never hungered after truth. They prefer the manna of man, not of heaven, being told what to think and how to believe. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste in order to deify lies and those who supply them with their illusions, their masters. Those who attempt to destroy those illusions and possibly threaten their paycheck, pension plan, or PayPal account…always the enemy. The ability to control someone’s mind by manipulation, confusion, group think, and the fear for safety…that is the highest form of warfare, not fought in tanks and trenches, but by political persuasion, diplomacy, and seduction.

Beware the man who right out the gate comes bearing beads, candy and cake. Always look at those who surround him. It is said that a lie soothes then kills, and truth hurts then heals. So don’t kill me the messenger if your hair is on fire and your mind implodes smoke coming from every node, but only after your arse overloaded your mouth like a hurricane west wind. You react, your lens cracked, chipped, or marred by internal debris, causing distortions in the image quality, contrast, and color fidelity. Better look behind you cause your hair is not the only thing on fire.

So what color of glasses do you wear to shield others from the fractured lens you bare? There’s always the popular color of rose, but now rainbow, shades of pink, purple, black and blue. Whatever shade you use it colors everything you choose. Simply it means you see everything only the way you want to.

What do you have, what do you loose? What do you keep, what do you choose? It’s all interpretation. To know the truth, you’ve got to read between the lines.

As the earth and it’s inhabitants stand in the crosshairs of time on the eve of destruction, there is something very special happening and not generally known. Deep in space, farther than we have ever seen before, there arrives a light seeking the earth appearing after 12.9 billion light years of travel at a speed of almost six trillion miles a year. Currently due to the universes expansion, it is twenty eight billion light years away, a measure of distance not time. Hubble in an earth orbit 320 miles above Sol-3 was the first to discover this star in 2022. But it is the James Webb telescope in an orbit around the sun and a million miles from earth that gives us a peerless review of the antiquity of space. This star is located in the most strongly magnified galaxy ever known, the Sunrise Arc. And within this galaxy lies the most distant star ever detected. It is estimated to be fifty times larger than our sun, at least a million times brighter, and twice as hot. Due to a phenomena called ‘gravitational lensing’ both Hubble and the James Webb were able to detect this star because of it’s alignment behind a wrinkle in space-time created by a massive galaxy cluster. Located between us and our star, it is so massive it wrinkles the fabric of space itself creating a magnifying effect allowing astronomers to look through this cluster like a magnifying glass. Our star only appears as a single point of light even in Webb’s high resolution infrared imaging. It is estimated to be magnified by a factor of at least 4,000.

This star is called Earendel, pronounced Air-in-dale. It is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘morning star’. Discovered by our eyes(telescopes) in space its arrival to earth remains unseen, and not with observation. Nevertheless look up! A steady stream of light has come and with it hope, help, and deliverance. Evil and evil men cannot stand in the presence of such light.

For so long the earth has anticipated Earendel’s coming, and soon all eyes will see. For he is ‘the bright morning star’, the most holy and powerful light in the universe.

Look up and lift your heads!