Staying Alive

Some of you have asked about my references to Fire the Grid in my last post. "Staying Alive" gives you some of its history and a little more insight into me. I appreciate any honest and interested feedback--


No, this is not a recap of the John Travolta movie, though that was a lively fantasy, and wasn’t he hot back then? This is, instead, a stream of consciousness flowing from a source located in a writers’ blogspot. It begins with a blog from a girl floating down Boulder Creek in cool currents of gurgling waters rippling over me in Houston—while I sit, looking beyond my window, interconnected intimately with the shades and shimmers of the day passing before me in a moving stillness that is co-conscious with my own thoughts as they play through my fingers on the keyboard and then magically appear before me, manifesting in black on blank white pages.

And in that flow that ripples easily beyond time and space connecting us, there was talk of death—a death dry as choking on a cracker, a wet death mired in muggy mold, or drowning in the drench sweat—the death of a mate, the death of an old mother. And yet all those writers nationwide are choosing to stay alive. And it is my choice, also—staying alive. WHY, is the question flowing within this universal stream along my computer banks and spilling out onto my monitor. WHY—the word echoes off the banks of Boulder Creek from each weaving current that ribbons and curls its way through the sunlight playing with my mind’s eye. What beauty, what joy, what pleasure or passion—what pain is it that keeps us choosing to stay alive?

For one man, 89 and living in a senior center far removed from family and community, it was the passion of betting with a buddy what image would be on the next state quarter to be released. It was around 2003 when this was reported and his desire was to stay alive until the last quarter was released. He was from Wyoming and worried it would be Old Faithful chosen for representing the spirit of that state. He proclaimed a cowboy should be the symbol for a state wild as Wyoming and vowed to stay alive until 2007 to see his wish come true.

CNN reports that widows in India flock to Vrindavan to die as is customary in their rural Hindu communities, but they stay alive for years on the streets begging just for food enough to continue on. These widows are shunned from society when their husbands die, not for religious reasons, but because of tradition -- and because they've become a financial drain on their families. They can’t remarry; they must shave their heads and wear white, and remain alone. No-one speaks to them--even their shadows are considered bad luck. They stay alive hunched over in pain and sorrow, choosing, all 15,000 of them, to crouch in this city until death comes to take them from life, never to have to be born again into its suffering. Dying in Vrindavan is believed to release them forever from the wheel of karma.
Some in Vrindavan, through the caring of a benefactor, are now living in a home where each has a daily meal and a small room for a pallet where she can keep her minimal belongings (usually what can be tied up in a piece of cloth). These are struggling to make the transition from living in isolation to living in community after as many as 50 years living on the streets alone—and some don’t make the adjustment. Are they staying alive in Vindravan to be complete with the passion of their suffering?

My mother is a widow living alone, like me. She was once an active and athletic woman who was a part of many clubs and community projects. I remember her smiling eyes, in one moment dancing rhythmically in friendly conversation, and in another, becoming deadly focused in piercing blue upon her pupil who better know her words are Law, but in either case, the deliverance was punctuated by her hands moving musically to coordinate her body with her meaning.

She has always been a lover of music. She played the piano—taught lessons to the children of the neighborhood—sang in the church choir, brought the symphony to the small town schools, played records and danced with us when we were children. She loves to sing and dance as do we all in our family. She made our lives very active with her social engagement in the communities where we lived. My mother had the energy and motion of a flirtatious filly on the one hand, and the insistence and will, on the other, of a bull ram.

Today her arthritic hands still fly in smiling conversation when she can find someone who will listen, she can no longer play the piano (but Katrina’s theft of that treasured box so full of her essence was grievous to us all), her voice has gone so low and raspy with her years of cigarette smoking that she is no longer welcome in the choir. But though she is often thwarted with word loss in her memory, she can still deliver the law when the spirit of it is called up in her. Maybe that is why she stays alive.

When left behind in the loneliness and isolation that follow the storms and suffering of life, what is it that makes us choose to continue staying alive? I think whatever that particular passion or purpose is, it is a very individual thing—and may not even be conscious, though a much more meaningful experience of life would most likely come from knowing it. But if we were to truly pursue awareness, we might awake a mighty beast within us. It is perhaps a fearing part of us who keeps it hidden.

Sometimes in my loneliness and seeming widowhood, I see myself becoming my mother, all bent over with arthritic hands, poorly functioning bowels, and faulty memory—shunned from brighter company and ridiculed behind my back. I sit in my window looking out upon the world I only experience in my daydreams and half-written stories. I draw into me the essence of life from the bountiful store in the trees grown tall and thick in my yard and along the trails nearby—from the flowers, birds, bees, and butterflies busily buzzing alongside the dragonflies dipping into my lily pond while gold and ink-colored fish bring me my only entertainment.

And I realize—in my loneliness and isolation I have become rich in new life, with company I never knew before—at least not so intimately as now. I am filled with a new song that gladly uses me as an instrument for its playing and I am more alive than I’ve ever been. It is this purpose I see that has become the reason for my staying alive.

You may be aware, reader, that a young woman who had a near-death experience a few years ago has been inviting us (along with many others who have joined in her purpose) to “fire the grid” of human consciousness—for reviving the life force in humanity and in the living body of the earth. She’s asking that we prepare ourselves for an hour of meditation on July 17th by imaging just what it is we love about life on earth, what gives us the greatest joy and pleasure, what fills our hearts with love, what gets our juices going. In this realization and its strengthening in us through the practice of experiencing it, we build a repository for, or activate a core radiance of that beautiful and loving energy within us, and can, by intention, focus it just as we choose.

She and a growing force of others are asking us to join with them in this focus for manifesting a new life frequency of joy on earth at 11:11 GMT on July 17th. (That’s 6:11 am here in Houston, readers.) If you feel called like many others do, to “fire the grid” in this activation of passionate purpose, you must ask yourself that question—why do I choose each and every day to keep staying alive? It is both an easy and a difficult question to answer, is it not?