On an old friend and a new critic — I don’t know what’s best for you. You may not, either, Nor may I know what’s best for me. I tried to understand you as much as I could Through all the long years of our history. But maybe you needed something else. Maybe when I thought I was helping, All the while you were thinking how Stupid I was. How I just didn’t get it. It hardly matters now. I feel old When I read comments from bloggers Who trash insights that I wrote with love - That I intended, in fact, to help!

On the Gaia channel. I did not expect the Gaia channel to reveal that I had a Male Chauvinist Pig prejudice. But there it was, and I could not deny it This pretty Canadian girl Theresa Bullard, whom I would have wanted to date in college, purports to be a Physicist, a Metaphysician, and a Mystery schooI initiate. In other words, someone more educated and far more advanced than myself. Isn’t that silly? If she’d been teaching a class when I was in school, I’d have taken it just to see if I could get her into bed. Male contemporaries will relate to this. How many times in the 60's did you have this conversation with another guy:

When everything wants more pieces of you than you have to give — A Request From the Guides — Be the Best Version of Yourselves Your choices shape it allmedium.com Excellent posting by Jocelyn, above. It really helped to center me in the midst of many conflicting shards of information, all blowing around in an informational tornado and threatening to cut me up. Whatever is really happening, whatever spooky enemies or karmic circumstances may be messing with me, if I can just manage to be the best possible version of myself — then that will be enough. Because it’s the best that I can do. Everything else must be left to Life and Fate and the Matrix.

If not the real thing — Humorous Poetry of the Pretzel-like mind In the Beer section at Fry’s There are Domestics and Imports. But there are also “Import Wannabes” Called Craft Beers — of all sorts. If you think you’re a reincarnated Scottish ale, but you were born in the States, You can call yourself a Craft Beer And can congregate with your mates. It gives you a sort of panache. “We’re not run-of-the-mill, we’re elite. “The intelligentsia, don’t you know. That’s us.” Makes us feel ballsy, less effete.

Wise things I’ve said that I need to remember — As Lewis Carroll has his character Alice in Wonderland say, “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” So here is some of the advice I have given myself. Note to Self: LISTEN! Just because someone did an assholic thing at some point in his life, does not mean that he’s an asshole now. You have to go through the fire anyway. So you might as well come out well tempered.

We should all lighten up. — I know that most of you have found the GAIA network. They have a new series on channeling, which I am absorbing and enjoying immensely. I’m just going to write down some spontaneous thoughts here. I apologize if some of them seem disconnected. One of the subjects broached in this program is psychoactive plants, used for millennia to help access higher knowledge. It makes sense that these elements of the earth should react with the physical brain and body, which are also made up of elements of the earth.

So what? My wife went back to God. Do you hear what I am telling you? My wife went back to God. Yes, the Sun is a big deal. But God is bigger. And we are all parts of God. Only someone incredibly powerful could have endured so much suffering for as long as my wife did. I believe that enduring physical pain alters our perceptions of reality and teaches us wisdom. I believe that pain shows us why we should value bliss. And why we should wish bliss for everyone.

Poetry — Scatter the ashes in Nature. Let the four winds take them. She is not in the ashes. She has already been released. But let the elements of Nature go back to Nature. She kept our dogs’ ashes, Knowing they were not there But wanting to be reminded of their sweetness. I need no such physical reminders. So I set them free today, To go back to Nature as well. It is not beyond the realm of possibility That their ashes, Scattered over rocks in Arizona And her ashes, Scattered over the Rocky Mountains May blow together some day Decades from now When my ashes have gone there, too. And Nature will be reunited with Nature As we will have been reunited, so many years before.

Was there ever? — Valentine’s Day Update: I want all my Medium family to know that my wife, Nora, died in her sleep around 8:00 this morning. I was asleep also, so it was a blessimg for both of us. I have more than a sneaking suspicion that she hung on this long, to make it to Valentine’s Day. I get your message, sweetheart. I also know that her loving brother and mother came to bring her home. - Ted