I have no filing system for this kind of thing, no drawer labeled incoming prayers, no shelf where I keep my relationship with the divine, organized by denomination and date received, which made the whole situation somewhat administratively awkward. It only took a few days before I stopped pretending it wasn’t happening and started paying attention, which turned out to be the more interesting choice and also, as it happened, the only one still available to me.

Then the others started and things got strange.

Songs from the fifties and sixties began materializing at odd hours with no explanation, no return address. Jumping forward a generation, the Cranberries popped in one night, just the chorus cycling through over and over. You know I’m such a fool for you, you’ve got me wrapped around your finger, do you have to let it linger. Not to be outdone and let the 90s rest, Natalie Imbruglia showed up with her own rendition. That’s what’s going on, nothing’s fine, I’m torn, I’m all out of faith, this is how I feel. Somewhere in the back of my head, a subconscious Casey Kasem had apparently taken up residence and was counting them all down for me.

I should mention at this point that I study vibrational frequencies, how living trees and healthy soil and distant planets all emit measurable signals that interact with our own energetic systems in ways that science is only recently getting around to documenting. I even wrote a book about it (The Seven Lights, now available on Amazon). In my book, I connect the chakra system to quantum physics to the electromagnetic frequencies of the planets themselves. I mention this not to be impressive but because the universe, apparently finding the irony completely irresistible, chose this particular season of my life to demonstrate the entire thesis of my own book directly into my head while I was standing at the kitchen sink.

Here is what nobody tells you about an unsolicited internal playlist. It has a structure. It has an arc. It is, if you bother paying attention, telling you a story about yourself. I get it now, we all are too busy or too thoroughly distracted by ordinary life to get the message any other way.

It began with petition. Lord, hear my prayer… the sound of someone who has exhausted their own solutions and is now, whether they recognize it as such or not, asking something larger than themselves to take over the scheduling. Then came the songs of suspension, the ones about being caught, being torn, existing in that specific purgatory between the life that has ended and the one that has not started yet. Anyone who has ever stood in that particular portal will recognize that frequency immediately.

The Universe put in another quarter, and the playlist shifted.

Mine eyes have seen the glory manifested as a declaration. It’s a completely different energetic posture and the playlist knew the difference, even if I was still catching up. Something had moved. The asking had completed itself and something else had taken its place. The next record in the universal jukebox dropped and my mind was filled with Then It Must Have Been Love, But It’s Over Now. It was loud. I think that was the finality of someone closing a door on a room they have finished with. There was no trauma-drama or backward glances. Talk about your Eight of Cups moment. It was a surrender of a situation that was no longer worth the fight and I freely let it go.

Oh, but the Universe wasn’t done just yet. How could it be? Here comes the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Let’s welcome the Coen Brothers to my head. Why not? There’s plenty of room! I’ll fly away, oh Glory, I’ll fly away looping over and over, but no dirty dishes this time. The sink is clean. I’m taking the clean sink as a good sign.

F.R. David, alone on a stage with one guitar, singing about how words don’t come easy, a rather pointed thing to drop into the head of someone who has been trying to make themselves heard by a world that keeps looking the other way. With more stars than a Jerry Lewis telethon, the line up continued…

Then the Lord’s Prayer showed up in its entirety, set to what I can only describe as a disco arrangement. After months of fragments, the complete version landed all at once, including the part about daily bread and the part about thy will be done, which is the section most people prefer to treat as decorative because full surrender is considerably less comfortable than selective listening.

I swear, I’m trying to move through life, but the hits keep on coming!

After what could be self-described as a very productive day, the closing act assembled without warning, almost like a pre-planned flash mob, rivaling the lineup of We Are The World. Sinatra stepped up first. And now, the end is near. The Lovin’ Spoonful followed with their one burning question…. Do you believe in magic. Then Ace, unmistakable from the first note. How long has this been going on, how long has this been going on.

The answer, it turns out, is the whole time.

The universe is not subtle. It is, however, extremely patient, and it has an excellent memory, and it will keep sending the same message in different formats for as long as necessary until you finally stop doing the dishes long enough to understand that the playlist is not random. The songs are not coincidence either. The story the lyrical messages have been delivering has been true the entire time. I guess I was just too busy arguing with the noise to hear it.

The dishes are still getting done, but something has shifted in the frequency of the kitchen. I am a bit concerned now. The refrigerator is starting to sound a bit different.

I asked his Lordship, Tobe Juan Kenobi, what he thought about it. He opened one eye, considered the question with the gravity it deserved, and said “Idunno”. Which, from a cat, is about as honest an answer as you are going to get.

Every time I look up, he is facing the same direction, head perfectly still, not so much as a feather out of place. For all I know he could be made of metal, one of those decorative chimney toppers people put up and forget about. But something tells me he is not. He is too deliberate for that, too consistent, and metal birds do not usually make you feel like you are the one being watched.

Which brings me, as most things do eventually, to the internet. Dear Google…

There is a community of people who do not believe birds are real. Not in the way you might dismiss a conspiracy theory with a wave of your hand, but with the organized conviction of a movement, complete with merch and a dedicated following. They have the kind of internal logic that, once you start pulling the thread, is considerably harder to dismiss and makes you really start to wonder. The theory, stated plainly, is that birds are surveillance drones, replacements for the original birds (the OG Birds), phased out sometime in the middle of the last century and replaced with government (or alien) operated technology designed to monitor the population from above. The ones that seem to be watching you probably are. Their migration patterns are data uploads. They recharge on power lines usually, but apparently this one has been reversed engineered and can recharge on top of a chimney.

This sits right alongside the Flat Earth Society, which also has members, as they are fond of pointing out, from all around the world. Around the world?? These things are easy to dismiss right up until you are sitting at your window on a bright afternoon with a pigeon staring at you from a chimney across the street for four hours. Without blinking, I am assuming, but it’s really hard to tell.

I once had a pigeon epiphany in high school that has stayed with me always. Sitting in a tree eating my lunch one afternoon, I found myself watching a pigeon on the pavement below for the better part of forty minutes. Then it happened. The voice of God, or something very much like it, spoke directly into my ear and told me exactly why pigeons have orange feet. The voice said the reason they have orange feet is so when they stood still, ants would come to investigate the bright orange color. Without a thought in his little pigeon brain, the bird would simply bend down and eat the ant. There was no chasing, no effort, no wasted movement, just a bright orange lure and the patience of a fisherman waiting for results. It was almost like a bird door dash. Food just came to it. I sat in that tree so long I missed English class, but it was no big deal because the teacher never took roll. And besides, I was doing an experiment in humanities. At the time I found this brilliant. And now I see it, it’s come full circle–there is a bird directly across the street on that chimney, looking straight into my window. He’s been there for hours. I find it slightly more unsettling than I probably should.

I can’t be watching a bird all day (can I?), so I put my head down and return to writing. Two hours later, I look up. The pigeon has not moved. Whether it is a government drone, an alien observer, or a bird with genuinely nowhere else to be, I cannot say with any certainty. What I can say is that the line between a watcher and a thing being watched is considerably thinner than it appears from either side of the double-paned glass.

Tobe has since relocated to the windowsill, where he is now watching the pigeon with the same unblinking attention the pigeon has been directing at me. Three of us, watching each other across a street on a bright afternoon, each presumably convinced that one of the others knows something worth knowing.

I returned to work, these words aren’t going to type themselves. When I looked up later, the pigeon was gone. Between one glance and the next, the chimney empty, the afternoon carrying on as if nothing had been sitting there for four hours. There was no departure, none that I saw. Just absence where presence had been.

I hope the pigeon got the intel he needed on me. Either that or I bored him to tears, but either way, he’s gone. Did I blow his cover? Was he called back to his spaceship? Or was he never really there at all? I looked down at Tobe and thought “where’s the bird?” With the wisdom of the ages, you know, the ones that are locked inside every cat, he looked up at me and answered my telepathic question with his feline precision… “Idunno”.

I had driven out there to participate in another CE5 session. This was not new for us. We had been doing it for a couple of years, long enough for the routine to settle in and stop feeling like an experiment.

Since we were seasoned pros, our prep took very little time. One friend pulled out a speaker and placed it nearby. In the darkness, the speaker began humming the sounds from inside a crop circle. The sky was still holding onto the last light of the day, but it was fading in the slow increments that made you very aware of how gradual darkness actually is.

The first part is always waiting, which sounds passive until you try it. Conversations drift in and out, and eventually someone mentions something totally unrelated, then stops halfway through because it no longer seems important. I noticed that the crickets stopped and started again, usually without any clear pattern. The night was peaceful and calm. An occasional cows could be heard in the darkness, settling in for the night.

I took my chair and my place outside, in the ring of friends, and began to focus on the sky above me. The stars began to come in layers. The obvious ones arrive first, like the friend who always shows up early, followed by the smaller ones that require a bit more patience… but well worth the wait.

Time passes here in a way that is difficult to measure. Minutes feel longer than they should, though not in an unpleasant way. Together the circle set our intention for connection, hoping to find something more than human life.

As we started the music for our meditation, the coyotes–who circled our group without anyone knowing–instantly began to sing loud and in unison. It was like they were waiting for a musical cue. Ever been sitting in the middle of an open field at night, only to discover you are surrounded by wild coyotes? That’s an experience everyone should have at least once.

I nervously giggled, then closed my eyes hoping to be transported out and among the stars.

I don’t remember much of the meditation, other than I was having an actual OBE. I was drifting through the universe. Everything was so vivid and bright. Then, out of nowhere, I could hear someone in our group… snoring. That instantly zapped me back into my body and my journey was over. I felt like Richard Collier when he saw the penny in “Somewhere in Time”. Zap. I am back.

Sitting in my chair while the rest of the crew drifted through the cosmos, I began to look around.

Then something appeared. I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t jump and scream. But I did look back over to my friend and whispered.

“I think I saw something”

She looked at me and asked “Was it right over there”.

I nodded.

“Was it about three feet tall?”

I nodded again.

“Did it sparkle?”

I just smiled. Did it just sparkle? Did it EVER! It sparkled like someone was beaming down from the Enterprise.

The truth isn’t out there. The truth is already here.

In very quiet houses such as mine, one thing usually leads to another. One day, I had a feeling that I was being watched. I looked down at my feet and I saw his Lordship asleep, so I knew it wasn’t him. I looked out the window, and there he was. The Dragonfly.

A dragonfly sees the world in a way that makes human vision look like a rough draft. With eyes that occupy most of its head, constructed from thousands of individual lenses working simultaneously, it assembles a near complete picture of everything around it at once. Above, below, sideways, behind, a panorama so complete that blind spots are essentially a concept it never had to develop. Three hundred million years in the making, perfecting its design while the rest of the planet reinvented itself over and over, the dragonfly simply continued unchanged.

What makes this even more interesting is that they are born underwater, spending most of their life in the dark before they ever fly. The eyes come first, the sky comes later. Clarity, it turns out, is something you have to earn the hard way.

It took a few years for me to realize it, but I discovered that the noise of a city has a way of encasing you, narrowing your view down to what is directly in front of you. After enough years of being desensitized, you stop looking around entirely.

One of the last things my husband did before he died was buy me a car. Not just any car. He bought me a Mustang… Convertible.

For most of that time after his death, the top stayed up. I did deep-down inside long for the wind on my face, my ponytail caught on the breeze. Then one day it occurred to me, a la Ferris Bueller, that this was life and if I did not grab it, it was going to pass me right by. So I took a deep breath and lowered the top, and oh, the things I saw…

Suddenly friends wanted rides. Drawn to something they could not quite name but recognized immediately, they discovered they wanted that shift in perspective too. To feel the leather warm against their backs, the wide Texas sky suddenly enormous overhead. I had somehow become the Pied Piper of Perspective. In what appeared to be a rainbow of color, I always kept an assortment of scrunchies pushed back on the emergency brake. You never know and when in this position in life, you have to be prepared for converts.

Driving with the top down changed something. Removing the roof from a car has a way of reminding you that there was a sky up there the whole time. With nothing between me and whatever was above the treeline, I started seeing things other drivers, sealed inside their climate controlled certainties, were simply not positioned to notice. Clouds drifted by in various shapes, storms appeared on the horizon. There was a time when I pulled up to a red light with the top down and the music cranked. I looked up at the red light and I saw a UFO! Wanting to point it out to the drivers around me, I looked around and realized I was alone at the intersection. Just Cindy Lauper and I, idling at the red light. I sat there and watched in disbelief. The UFO was silent, stationary, for as long as the light stayed red. When the light turned green I proceeded through the intersection. I reached the other side. I looked up again and the UFO was gone. Completely vanished. Disappointed I didn’t get to point it out, I drove on to my lunch date. I should have arrived there at least fifteen minutes early, but when I got there, everyone told me I was forty minutes late. Oh, the things you see when you look around.

Moving to a small Texas town turned out to be the largest roof removal of all. The city noise was gone. The first few weeks felt like a ringing in the ears, that specific silence that is not actually silence but is in reality the absence of interference. Then one morning the frequency underneath everything came through, clear and steady and completely unmistakable. It was the sound the world makes when nothing is drowning it out. It took a few weeks of deafening silence, but at last, I could finally hear.

The dragonfly at the window this week hovered for longer than usual and then it was gone. Three hundred million years of engineering, a near complete view of the world in every direction simultaneously, and it spent thirty seconds looking into a home office at someone looking back.

Maybe it saw something worth noting. Maybe it was simply on its way somewhere else and the glass caught the light at the right angle. Maybe the difference between those two things is smaller than it appears.

The view from here, at least, has never been clearer.

For practitioners of herbalism, metaphysics, and holistic wellness, this question is practical. If consciousness leaves energetic imprints, and if all living systems process information, the possibility that plants contribute to a larger informational field becomes increasingly grounded in observation and inquiry.

Plant Consciousness and Intelligent Networks

Contemporary research challenges the outdated notion that intelligence requires a brain. Scientists examining plant signaling systems have documented how plants respond to environmental stimuli with remarkable coordination. Through chemical messengers, electrical impulses, and root network communication, plants adapt, defend themselves, and alert neighboring organisms to potential threats.

Forests share nutrients via underground fungal networks, often called the Wood Wide Web. Trees transmit stress signals across roots and redistribute resources to weaker members, demonstrating a living network capable of long-term adaptation and environmental awareness. While these findings do not confirm any form of mystical consciousness, they do illustrate that plants operate within complex systems that store, transmit, and process environmental information.

Plant Consciousness and Universal Memory

Metaphysical traditions describe the Akashic Records as a vibrational archive holding the energetic imprint of all experiences across time and space. Personally, I have called it the file cabinet of life. Some researchers and spiritual practitioners propose that this field is not just abstract but living, and that plants, as some of the oldest and most responsive organisms on Earth, may interact with or reflect this informational network. Just as trees share nutrients, stress signals, and chemical messages through root networks, they may also encode energetic patterns that resonate beyond the purely physical, hinting at a form of plant consciousness that participates in a larger web of planetary memory. Have you ever heard a mushroom sing? Check this out.

This perspective suggests that the evolutionary history of plants, their adaptations, responses to environmental stress, and survival strategies, may carry both biological and energetic records. Each growth ring, chemical response, or adaptive change could be seen as a kind of imprint, a living archive of experiences, much like the Akashic Records store vibrational data for all living systems. In this way, interacting with plants, whether through observation, cultivation, or intentional meditation, may be an engagement with a system that has been processing, storing, and transmitting information for millions of years. Just imagine the wonders the Sequoia Trees have witnessed.

If reality functions as an informational field, the all living organisms must contribute to it. Plants, which predate human civilization by millions of years, have adapted through climate shifts, geological changes, and ecological transformation. Their cellular structures carry evolutionary memory, encoding environmental history.

Viewed metaphysically, plants may act as living archives of planetary experience. Scientifically, this same phenomenon manifests as DNA and epigenetic adaptations. In either interpretation, plants hold records, making plant consciousness a compelling lens to explore both biology and spirit.

Plant Consciousness in Biofield Science

Interest in biofield science, frequency healing, and vibrational medicine has grown significantly as researchers explore the subtle yet measurable electromagnetic and energetic activity present in all living organisms. These studies suggest that living systems, including plants, are constantly transmitting and receiving signals that influence growth, health, and adaptation. Plants, in particular, appear highly sensitive to environmental frequencies, with their signaling networks and chemical responses functioning as a form of energetic communication that complements their biological processes.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health monitors ongoing research into these energy-based healing modalities and provides insights into how living systems interact with electromagnetic and vibrational fields. This work highlights the possibility that plants, as part of complex ecological and energetic networks, may not only respond to environmental stimuli but also participate in broader biofield interactions that connect all living beings. Have you walked through a forest and felt that it was alive? Perhaps alive in a way you didn’t quite understand? By studying these phenomena, practitioners and researchers are uncovering new ways to understand plant consciousness, how plants influence human physiology, and how energetic interactions can support both ecological and personal wellness.

Herbal traditions across cultures classify plants by both biochemical and energetic properties. Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine categorize herbs according to warming, cooling, drying, or tonifying qualities that influence human physiology.

Search trends in herbal energetics, plant communication meditation, and energy healing reveal a growing public fascination with plant consciousness and its potential influence on human energy systems. Whether interpreted scientifically or energetically, plants demonstrably affect human well-being beyond vitamins and nutrients.

Herbal Spirit Medicine and Plant Consciousness

The tradition of herbal spirit medicine suggests that plants possess distinct qualities that influence both body and awareness. Observing growth patterns, environmental stressors, and symbolic correspondences guides therapeutic use.

Plants encode environmental conditions in growth rings, chemical composition, and adaptive responses. Trees preserve climate data over centuries; medicinal potency shifts with soil, sunlight, and stress. In this sense, plants function as living data repositories, embodying plant consciousness as a bridge between biology and energetic awareness.

Plant Consciousness in Ecological Awareness

Renewed interest in animism, the metaphysical world, and earth-based spirituality reflects a broader cultural shift toward ecological awareness and a recognition that all living beings, including plants, possess intrinsic agency. Far from passive, plants actively contribute to dynamic systems, responding to environmental stimuli, interacting with other organisms, and participating in the complex networks that sustain ecosystems. This relational intelligence aligns closely with the concept of plant consciousness, suggesting that plants are not merely biological automatons but active participants in the energetic and informational web of life.

Research in ecopsychology supports the tangible effects of engaging with green spaces, demonstrating measurable benefits such as reduced cortisol levels, improved mood regulation, and enhanced cognitive clarity. Studies on practices like forest bathing and mindful interaction with nature reveal that exposure to plant-rich environments can recalibrate human physiology, offering both mental and emotional restoration. Plants, in this sense, act as living partners in the cultivation of wellness, transmitting subtle cues through sensory and energetic channels that humans can respond to, consciously or unconsciously.

Intentional gardening, plant-focused meditation, and ritualized interaction with herbs and trees extend this relationship further, creating a framework for relational awareness. These practices allow individuals to recognize plants as responsive entities that hold memory, transmit signals, and participate in larger ecological and energetic systems. Whether experienced psychologically, biologically, or energetically, these engagements foster emotional balance, sharpen focus, and deepen one’s sense of connection to the natural world, illustrating how plant consciousness manifests both in observable interactions and in the subtler vibrational exchanges that sustain life.

Do Plants Hold Conscious Memory?

While science has not yet verified metaphysical archives like the Akashic Records, research confirms that plants store, transmit, and respond to information in complex ways. If consciousness is foundational, plants function as active nodes within a planetary exchange system. Even if consciousness requires neural networks, plants demonstrate distributed intelligence through ecological networks.

Exploring plant consciousness invites further inquiry into how living systems process information, store environmental history, and participate in broader informational fields. From your basil to your fern, you interact daily with systems that have adapted to sunlight, soil, water, and environmental change long before your care began. This is biological, ecological, and potentially energetic.

If consciousness is a continuum rather than a hierarchy, then recognizing the awareness in plants challenges us to rethink how we live on this planet. Our gardens, forests, and fields may be communicating in languages we are only beginning to understand. Maybe the next evolution of human intelligence begins not above nature, but in conscious partnership with it—and perhaps that awareness begins with a simple act of respect. So the next time a wildflower catches your eye, think before you pick it; it may be more alive, and more aware, than we imagine.

It was a wasp. A large one, built along the architectural lines of something that evolution had been quietly perfecting for three hundred million years and was clearly quite pleased with. Something that ancient and that precisely built deserved a name, so I gave him one. Winston. Then, apparently satisfied with whatever conclusion he had reached, Winston left.

I decided this meant nothing, which is the decision a reasonable person makes when a wasp looks at them through a window.

Winston kept coming back, pulling up to the window each morning like he was on the winged-insect metro line that has run this exact route since before either of us was born. Then one morning the universe, apparently feeling that one regular visitor was not quite enough, sent a hummingbird.

Where Winston was Cretaceous, the hummingbird was unambiguously New Age, a lightworker in iridescent form, dispatched from whichever corner of the universe handles that sort of thing. It materialized out of an apparently empty sky, hung at the glass for approximately three seconds with its wings occupying several positions simultaneously, and then vanished back into whatever the world is made of between moments.

This is when I made the error of mentioning it to other people.

People who have clearly spent considerable time in the better-organized corners of the internet were ready for this. A hummingbird, I was informed, is essentially the Eight of Rods made flesh, incoming good news, and the general suggestion that things are about to move. The universe, after some delay, had responded to my message.

The wasps, meanwhile, were being reinterpreted for me in real time.

Ancient protectors, I learned. Builders of nests near doors and windows not for architectural reasons but for spiritual ones, standing guard against whatever forces have been circling the perimeter of your life and would very much like to get in. In the full cosmological taxonomy of uninvited wildlife, they are, apparently, the bouncers.

I found this genuinely moving for a period of roughly forty-eight hours, which ended when I walked onto my patio and discovered three wasp nests arranged along the door frame with a thoroughness suggesting not instinct but committee. A fourth had appeared at the garage door. Winston had begun conducting daily inspections through the office window, peering in, hovering, departing without comment, which, spiritual significance aside, is simply a lot.

I knocked the nests down. With full awareness that I may have been dismantling a protective barrier between myself and whatever the universe has been trying to keep at bay, I did it anyway, because there is a limit to how much metaphysical gratitude one can sustain while standing at close range from a structure housing several dozen stinging insects with a personal stake in the outcome.

They rebuilt. Of course they did. Ancient protectors do not simply accept a planning rejection and move on.

So we have arrived at a kind of arrangement, the wasps and I. Winston appears at the window each morning, considers whatever it is he is considering, and leaves. The hummingbird materializes on its own schedule. I sit at my desk and contemplate whether I am being guarded, guided, or simply occupying a property that sits on some kind of migratory spiritual flight path that nobody mentioned in the listing.

The honest answer, arrived at after considerable reflection, is that I have absolutely no idea, but I’m leaning towards the third option.

What I do know is that there is something about being noticed, even by a wasp, even by a creature with no discernible reason to single you out from the general scenery of the world, that feels strangely like being held. After the kind of months where you begin to suspect the universe has simply looked the other way for a while, something stops at your window and hovers there in defiance of aerodynamics, for no apparent reason. The perfect Monday.

The world is, by most available measures, a considerable amount to deal with right now. And yet here is a hummingbird, three seconds at my window, wings defying physics. An otherwise ordinary morning, seen only by those who were paying attention to the wrong thing at exactly the right moment.

I’m choosing to take that as a good sign.

The aliens hadn’t meant to crash, of course. They had every intention of landing somewhere sensible, like Switzerland, where visitors, especially the quiet, interdimensional sort, were generally tolerated so long as they paid their taxes and didn’t disturb the cows. Instead, a minor miscalculation involving the difference between Earth’s “north” and Galactic “north-ish” introduced an unfortunate encounter with an orbiting Tesla Roadster and several communication satellites. The result looked less like first contact and more like a galactic first fender bender.

This, of course, triggered the planet’s favorite pastime: armed speculation.

Nobody could quite agree which country’s drone had fired the decisive shot. Every government claimed responsibility or denied it entirely, depending on which way the wind, the polls, or the stock market were blowing. What was clear, though, was that something remarkably unidentifiable had become decidedly identifiable once it hit the ground.

Among the wreckage was a single grey, the understated kind of extraterrestrial rarely seen outside conspiracy forums and direct-to-streaming documentaries. He didn’t survive the crash. Beside him lay his traveling companion, a tuxedo cat named Tobe, who had accompanied him across several parsecs mostly out of curiosity and a firm belief that any sofa in the universe could, given enough time, be claimed as his own.

When Tobe came to, his head ringing and tail twitching, he spotted a faint red beam flickering between their bodies. On Earth it would have been a cat toy. Here, it was the final, flickering pulse of a targeting laser, the thing that had ended their voyage. He looked at his little grey friend and understood, in the deep, wordless way only cats can, that it was too late.

Tobe padded to Al’s side and collapsed there, the unfamiliar weight of grief pressing him harder against the planet’s gravity. He tilted his head, blinking at the sky, and made a promise in the silent vocabulary of vengeance that all felines seem to know by instinct. Then the laser began to quiver again. It jolted, hummed, and in one sudden motion, struck him squarely in the chest.

Tobe looked down at the light, blinked once in mild irritation, and thought that if this was the end, it was at least suitably dramatic. He slumped beside Al, whiskers twitching one last time.

Their journey wasn’t over exactly, just headed somewhere farther than GPS could track.

Never can trust rogue drones.

March twenty-eighth is the “official day” my husband died. The date stamped on paper, notarized, filed somewhere that probably still smells like toner and stale coffee. The problem is, that wasn’t when it happened. He’d been dead for three weeks by that date, existing where no one could find him. It was the damn’d-est thing too. The three weeks he was gone, the three weeks he had been dead, and for those three weeks I saw him, I felt him. He was in my apartment two states away. Each night he was there. I could feel him slip into bed behind me every night. A memory, a dream, a ghost? I wasn’t sure, but every night for three weeks I felt the mattress move like someone sat down behind me, the covers shifting, and feel his body fit its usual shape against mine. It never felt strange, only familiar, like muscle memory replaying itself. I didn’t know he was gone. My senses never bothered to tell me. I only knew that I felt loved and safe and for three weeks, I had the most wonderful dreams. In those dreams I found the forgiveness I could finally give him, and at last, I could rest.

The day they found him, he didn’t show up. I didn’t know it at the time. The apartment felt wrong before I knew why. Something in the air gone slack, the kind of silence that holds still, thick with memories, making it almost impossible to breathe. I flopped across the bed, too exhausted to move. I was working two full-time jobs and raising our daughter alone. I could only lay there until the ceiling started to flicker and my eyes glazed, rolling back into my head. I waited for the weight of him to settle into the mattress, but he never did. My hand found the cold side of the bed and stayed there. And in the darkness I had my last semi-peaceful night. All I knew was he was gone, again.

Grief doesn’t wait on the porch like a polite stranger. It kicks open the door and sits down unannounced, somewhere close, watching. I’d rinsed a cup, started breakfast and paused halfway through. I forget why I stopped, but I went and checked my email. And there, at the bottom of the inbox, was a message telling me he had died.

Looking back now, I can see me moving robotically through the days and nights. It was like I was remembering someone else’s life and then sometimes, a breeze would shift and slap me back into reality and I could barely breathe. There were times I doubled over, gasping for air, unable to accept the reality. But I had to, there was no other choice.

I used to think nostalgia made things beautiful, but it’s really just a parasite. It feeds on repetition and tells you it’s sentiment. It lives in smell, in texture, in the way certain songs still sound like they’re breathing. It doesn’t want closure, it wants proof that you’re still available to remember. I remember now, all the sights, sounds, all the feelings, but they are getting dimmer now, now that they aren’t in my active thoughts.

This was the 15th anniversary of his death. I don't know where the time has gone. I don't know why it hurts, why I still miss him so much. I've been thinking lately, why are all these feelings coming up, not just for him, but for everyone who has gone, for the life that has moved forward.

Fifteen years is a long time on a calendar and no time at all in a body. The part of you that knows dates moves on, the part of you that remembers how he smelled when he walked through the door does not. Anniversaries poke at that split and the mind starts replaying things you did not ask for. Faces, rooms, pieces of conversations, whole versions of yourself that existed before everything cracked. That pull I was feeling for him, and for everyone else who is gone, fits what grief people call an anniversary reaction. Old losses wake up, not just the big one.

So right now, we are standing at a different threshold. This New Moon on April 17 is in late Aries, which astrologers read as a pressure point for new identity, new direction, and a push to step into a life that looks more like you and less like old obligation. It is “go time” as far as I’m concerned, but others are saying it is more of a slow structural reset. With Saturn in the mix, life is insisting that the changes be real, grounded, and sustainable. Either way, the theme is the same: who am I now, and what am I building next.

I thought long and hard about this idea, about the shifting of our souls and life paths that we are on. Seems like our brains and our souls are doing the same math from different angles. On one side, the body remembers what it lost and protests the distance. On the other, something in you is sorting, packing, trashing, clearing space because it knows the next chapter is not meant to be crowded. The downsizing, the urge to let things go, the sense that you are getting ready to walk a new road alone, all line up well with how this April 17 moon is being described. You can’t reach for the future if you are gripping tightly to the past.

I guess we are not “going backward.” Instead, we are doing a hard, necessary thing. We’re reaching back, touching once more, and shedding one final tear as we loosen our grip on the past.

The hurt? That just means it all mattered, and still matters. But the shift means you do too.

And it was just such an occasion as this that I noticed it. Another one, sitting across the intersection in the median. It was a shoe. Not a pair of shoes, but one lone shoe. Sitting in the center of the road, the single shoe sat dying. Leaning slightly to one side, the heel pressed into the asphalt as if it had found a place to rest at last and had no intention of moving. Glinting in the morning sun, the leather reminded me of the overly tanned skin of a chain-smoking snowbird, looking as if it had been somewhere doing things I shouldn’t know about.

Instantly I had a dimly lit flashback, a deja vu, that triggered a memory. It carried me back to Monday mornings when I drove to high school. Like clockwork, I would be stopped at the red light on Westheimer, just before the train signal. Yes, I did go to school on the other side of the tracks. Waiting my turn to cross the intersection, I would look around, somehow always keying in on a single shoe. A different shoe each week. Always resting upside down in the gravel, wedged between the curb and a crushed can of PBR. This time it was a red slingback shoe with a slightly scuffed stiletto heel. It looked like it ran for its life from the Pink Pussycat Lounge that was directly on the other side of the street. But this poor sole had been shot in the back before it could scale the curb, never finding the freedom it craved.

I wondered how a shoe could be left in the middle of a lane and no one would ever notice. I mean, seriously, wouldn’t you notice with the very first step? Could it have fallen from the back of a truck or slid out of a box? It’s a real head-scratcher, that’s for sure.

And then I thought maybe the shoes weren’t lost at all? What if someone, or something, was placing them there on purpose? Maybe it was extraterrestrial intelligence testing us, leaving the shoes to see who notices, who pauses, who even bothers to consider a red slingback or a scuffed flat lying in the middle of the road. If it was an extraterrestrial experiment, the obvious choice would be an Air Jordan, but those are expensive and someone would probably snatch it up before the experiment could be completed. No, they leave the ones that nobody wants, the ones that have already been abandoned by their human owners, and watch to see if anyone pays attention at all. Off-worlders are smart like that.

I imagined the otherworldly ones observing from above, invisible, patient, seeing us drive past, seeing us ignore the evidence, seeing only a few humans pause long enough to register the anomaly. Maybe those are the ones who pass the test, the ones who notice without needing explanation, the ones who will be taken away when the time comes? And maybe “taken away” isn’t scary at all. Maybe it means someplace better, someplace quieter, someplace where lost shoes don’t have to wait for glances from strangers to exist. Oh, the lessons we could learn from abandoned Aerosoles.

Just how much can I ponder while sitting at a red light? You’d be amazed. And so the Interstellar Travelers will be too. If you need me, I’ll be off planet, shopping for a new pair of Space Birkenstocks.

It headed downwind, the way anything on wheels does here, propelled mostly by gravity and WD-40. By the time anyone noticed, it had already passed three driveways and the neighborhood cat. One of the neighbors finally glanced up from their phone long enough to watch it roll past, like an oddly cheerful omen. They decided it was not their business and went back to scrolling. There was no way they could have caught it anyway, it was eastbound and down. Around here, if a thing is not marked with your name and it is not alive with sharp edges of death, it falls under the category of “someone else’s concern.”

By early evening, the missing trashcan had found its way onto our community Facebook page, where all events, large and small, go to be processed by the collective mind. “Is anyone missing a green trashcan,” the post asked, accompanied by a blurry photograph of something that could have been a trashcan or could have been a small kayak if you squinted. It was floating down the creek behind the Square, surrounded by sticks and foam cups, looking like a prisoner who just escaped from Alcatraz. The comments arrived quickly, piling up faster than the debris and plastic WalMart bags in the water.

The discussion did not stay on the trashcan for long. It never does. Someone declared that the flying cans and migrating bins were clearly “a sign from the universe” and that this was probably related to solar flare activity or the Schumann, which sounded profound for about three seconds before being drowned out by someone else who said it was just “Texas doing another interpretive dance again,” which felt more accurate. From around the corner, another neighbor jumped in to mention that a trampoline had just cleared a privacy fence on Peach Street and appeared to be headed toward the Dairy Queen parking lot. This was shared rather calmly, the same way you might announce that the mail had arrived or the birth of a new pony.

A trampoline in flight barely counts as an event here anymore. It is less a crisis and more a seasonal phenomenon, like cedar pollen or Girl Scout cookies. We all know the routine. It’s a day with wind strong enough to rearrange your thoughts and if you are caught outside, the fine sand particles will give you an instant Microdermabrasion. There’s no need to fix your hair and for goodness sake, do not wear a dress. It’s a day when the sky turns a color that is part sand, part old Seven-Up bottle green. They aren’t colors that appear on any official weather chart, it’s a phenomenon we Native Texans have always witnessed. Just look up and watch the clouds stream across the sky at a rapid rate. Trees begin to lean in one direction, listening for something I assume. There are always secrets on the wind.

Oh, there goes another trampoline. It rises slowly at first, just enough for someone to see it out of the corner of their eye and think maybe this is the first sign of alien disclosure. Then it lifts higher, freeing one leg, then another, until the whole circular contraption clears the fence and lifts upward in a slow, uncertain arc. It turns gently, as if bowing to an invisible audience, and then flies across backyards and rooftops with a sense of Manifest Destiny. Someone whips out a cell phone and records it, of course, narrating in that calm, faintly bored tone people use when talking about the weirdness of life. The video gets posted, the comments fill up with the usual jokes about “trampoline season,” and somewhere out there, the original owner just sighs and orders another one. Thank goodness they have overnight shipping on Prime. Maybe they should order some sort of anchors for that bad boy this time.

What used to surprise us now barely moves the needle. The real irony is that the more absurd things become, the more normal our reactions get. You would think the sight of someone’s backyard gym equipment sailing past power lines and over the highway would prompt deep existential questions, like it is a metaphor or a sign from the Universe about how we need to make changes, yet somehow it mostly leads to discussions about wind speed and insurance deductibles.

I’m just waiting for the fourth horseman to ride, so to speak. Won’t be long before a barbed wire fence falls over, giving up the ghost, and collapsing on the ground. Then the cows burst forth out into the road, meandering past the Dollar General. Thankfully the sheriff still rides a horse on certain days, and everyone knows that when things finally go sideways enough, he will show up with his hat, his radio, and his very pragmatic understanding of cows. There will be no girls night out on the town, the heifers can be rounded up, the fence can be mended, and the road will be cleared. There is, however, absolutely nothing anyone can do about the trampoline. Just wish it a good life, until we all meet again.

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

Three days after I graduated I packed up, with my degree in hand, and headed off. Naturally, instead of going into production, I went directly into the land of television engineering.

And just why did I spend the last four years learning about production? Maybe I did it so I could spend four more years studying art and philosophy and psychology and photography? Maybe I did so I could embrace the last few years of my hippy-child life? Maybe I did it to prep myself and keep one foot inside the metaphysical world? (C’mon… The Matrix, What Dreams May Come, Pan's Labyrinth… These are all worlds I could see deeper into, deeper than the average bear.) I do feel I had this “insight” because of the wide-eyed hippy-girl life I had led, up to that point. I think deep down I knew the entire time there was a “real world” and then there was a “reel world” to live in. Beauty and hope lived inside the reel world, and that’s where I wanted to be.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, A time of confidences

I moved out, all on my own, and moved to the coast. Beach life. Living and working two full time jobs, the beach began to become a place where I could relax and take a breath. I thought this is what life was like. Work hard, be a good person, help those you can, and then relax and enjoy the wonders of the world. But I was wrong.

Shortly after graduation, my ride-or-die BFF died. College had not prepared me to face a world without her. We were only in our mid-twenties, and there were so many plans we had made. Plans to buy houses side by side, plans to knock down fences so our children could have one large yard to play in. Plans for double weddings, vacations in the sun, and dreams of our husbands grilling in the backyard while we sat on the patio, surrounded in our Hawaiian Tropic and Mixed Berry Bartles & Jaymes bubble. I never imagined a life without her. But then one day, her cancer came back quite fierce, and she was gone.

Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you*

Now I sit in my remote office, watching storm clouds roll in. In the distance I hear thunder. Or maybe it is just someone finally rolling in their trash can, I cannot be too sure. I have been feeling a shift on the horizon for months and looking out the window, I can finally see it. The change is physically manifesting. So what does this have to do with bookends you ask? Maybe nothing, but I am seeing symmetry. A new cycle started so many years ago. The same situations that were present then are back. I am seeing them again, a clear signal to me that this chapter is drawing to a close.

When I moved to this little town five years ago, I didn’t know a soul here—and I still don’t. It’s quiet now, giving me a chance to look back and reflect a bit. A few days after I moved, a huge storm hit. A major storm. A frog strangler*, as my mother called them. I have to admit, I was a little scared. I’d never experienced winds like that before, not even during tornados or hurricanes. But during that storm, the oddest thing happened. All my smoke alarms went off. It is a long, weird story, but the house would fill with smoke, then clear, only to fill with smoke again, until I finally called the fire department. I can tell you more later if you like.

That night, five years ago, the roads flooded and it took the fire department about two hours to get here. His Lordship and I were ready to bolt with a moment’s notice. But we were flooded in. A typical damned if you do, damned if you don’t moment. Everything ended fine, but that was the first time I had ever done “Smoke Detector ITC”. I can tell you more later, if you want. Just leave me a comment below for that story later.

Fast forward five years.

I’ve been thinking about relocating, and I’m mentally preparing for it. Researching, visiting the communities I am interested in, driving around a feeling the vibe of the area. I’m making the first steps. I have been telling friends for a while, it’s like being inside a house for a long time and then finally opening the front door. When you do, you look outside and see the porch is gone. There’s not a path from the door. You don’t know where to go or which way to turn. It’s grass and spring flowers from the threshold to as far as the eye can see.

The only thing I do know is that if I don’t take a step I will forever remain in the same place. So, I’m taking a step. Make a move and the Universe will make a move, and hopefully, we’ll meet in the middle. Walk a bit, just a few steps, and a path will show up. At least, that’s the information I’m going with.

There’s another story there, about the first time I hiked up a mountain alone. Let’s just say, it’s all about your perception, and the journey truly is what it’s all about.

Anyway, back to the most recent storm. The one that hit last Tuesday night.

The thunder rolled, the lightning struck, and right on cue, the smoke alarms went off… again. There was no reason for that–the batteries were all changed three days before. Unable to reach them, I was left with no other choice. I found myself having a strange deja vu. I had to call the fire department again.

“We’ll come out when the storm stops. It’s raining too hard right now.”

Firemen who didn’t want to get wet? Isn’t water a main component of their job?

Thankful that it wasn’t a real emergency, I can see the bookends forming before my eyes. The message is loud and clear. This is the time for a new chapter to take shape.

*Bookends Written by Paul Simon

*A “frog strangler” is a Southern U.S. expression for an extremely heavy downpour. The idea is that the rain falls so fast and hard that a frog might look up at the sky with its mouth open in shock and end up drowning in the torrent.

When it happens, I usually turn to The Google, the modern Oracle of Delphi, and search for the lyrics. Always, there would be a clue, a hint of how to handle a situation, direct from the Universe. It was never a gift. I had to put in the work to find the answer. It would be nice if once, the Universe would just put a post it on my bathroom mirror. I’ve been asking for that for years. Maybe… someday.

A few weeks ago, the Universe flipped on the Third Ear Jukebox (it’s like the third eye, but it’s what you hear), flipping through songs that I heard in my youth. Now I’m left with the question… how, just HOW is that still in my head? A song I haven’t heard in a gazillion years!

IDK. But stuck on a never ending loop is Micky Dolenz singing:

Come with me… leave your yesterday behind…
And take a giant step outside your mind

Now, just WHY would the Universe choose this? Everyone knows I have always been a fan of the Monkees, but I was on #TeamPeter (I met him once. Something I never could have imagined as a child. Working in television had its perks, and meeting Peter Tork was the best perk ever.)

Ok, Google, gimme the lyrics please so I can untangle this seaweed that is in my cerebellum. What message is there for me, in these long-lost lyrics? What do I need to know?

Though you've played at love and lost
And sorrow's turned your heart to frost
I will melt your heart again
(Ok, that tracks)

Remember the feeling as a child
When you woke up and morning smiled
It's time you felt like you did then
(Ok, I’d like that too. But how?)

There's just no percentage in remembering the past
It's time you learned to live again at last.
Come with me leave your yesterday behind
And take a giant step outside your mind

Oh, is THAT the message? It’s time to let go. I mean, we’re in a Mercury retrograde now. The load is much lighter and easier to manage, when you’re not dragging everything along with you. So, Universe… is that the message your sending me? Is this the message I need to share? Anything else… oh, but wait… there’s more… there’s always more….

Don't sit in your lonely room
Just staring back in silent gloom
That's not where you belong
Come with me, I'll take you where the taste of life is green
Come with me, I'll take you where each day holds wonders to be seen
Yes, every day holds wonders to be seen…

Shades of Ravi Shankar! We are all feeling this change, though no one has actually said it aloud. I have been reaching out to friends, asking them. “This may sound strange but have you…” They pause a minute, wondering how I knew. It was like I was psychic or something. There is a shift in the air, the old rules are at last bending without too many noticing, the push forward already moving beneath our feet. None of us openly talk about it, and yet we all know. We are the lightworkers, shining a light forward.

I am stepping carefully, praying hard that I’m on the right path at last. I think I am, I think many of us are, but we don’t have a map or a GPS. A lot of our steps are unsure at this moment. But, if we don’t take the first step, we’ll never end up anywhere.

Come with me… leave your yesterday behind…
And take a giant step outside your mind*

Finally, I am able to unclench my hands. For a moment, I can breathe, and I can see clearly now. We’re starting down the Yellow Brick Road.

Looking up, I see sunny skies ahead… and not any Flying Monkees in sight.

*“Take a Giant Step” by The Monkees was written by Gerry Goffin, Carole King & Goffin & King.

From where I sit, I can see into every store, past the metal gates. Each storefront feels like a metaphorical mirror reflecting the lives of people I know and those I do not. The boutiques shimmer with vanity, the bookstores murmur with quiet ambition. Contrary to popular belief, you can judge a book by its cover. The electronics shops pulse with the fragile hope that something new might fix something old. Inside them I sense the movements of unseen lives, repeating patterns that continue without interruption. There are arguments I will never hear, gestures caught midair, and choices that will carry consequences long after I walk by. None of it requires me. The world continues in its habitual chaos, its delicate absurdities. I scan through the mall as if through a gallery of human life, watching each reflection with the detached amusement of someone who has no lines in the play.

The pretzel shop is closed, but the smell is still there, warm, yeasty, and lightly salted, rising through the air as a reminder that life can give you hints of pleasure without ever letting you touch them. I breathe it in and imagine Tobe sniffing along with me, although he does not sniff and would rather pretend he is too sophisticated to be distracted by dough. Across the corridor, puppies glow beneath a heat lamp, completely unbothered by my existence, and I tap the glass to see them respond, paws and tails conducting a choreography that feels like laughter at my expense. It is impossible to be part of their world, yet I watch, and that is sufficient for now.

Tobe eventually tires of my philosophizing, which he expresses by standing, stretching with what I can only describe as passive contempt, and trotting toward the fountain. The water is turned off at night, leaving a few coins glinting at the bottom like misplaced hope. He studies the empty basin, then looks at me as though I’m personally responsible for the absence of flowing water. I tell him that no one drinks from mall fountains and he blinks slowly, which is cat for you disappoint me.

Together with his Lordship, I wander toward the food court, where the chairs sit stacked in anticipation of daylight. The neon signs are still on, buzzing faintly, their enthusiasm undimmed by the absence of customers. There’s something comforting about their commitment. A sandwich place has a poster promising freshness every day, which feels like a bold statement for a business that hasn’t served a human in several hours. His Lordship jumps onto a table and surveys his kingdom, like a medieval lord who has conquered an empire of empty fry baskets.

I have the distinct sense that if invisibility were a condition with benefits, this would be the VIP section. No lines, no expectations, no small talk about weekend plans. Just me, Tobe, and the rotating advertisements on the digital board announcing deals for products I can no longer buy. I consider this the definition of peace, though I can already hear the faint murmur of tomorrow gathering outside the glass doors.

The mall is quiet for now. However, the skylight reveals the storm still raging above. Rain strikes the glass with the exaggerated drama of someone convinced they’re making a point. Lightning flashes. For an instant, every storefront flickers to life, the mannequins illuminated like saints of retail. I stand there thinking that this is how resurrection probably works… a brief, meaningless burst of light followed by a return to stillness.

From where I sit, I can see into every storefront, each one a glowing diorama of what passes for ordinary life. I am the omnipotent observer, though the universe has yet to thank me for my service. This half-existence suits me more than I want to admit, a continuation of the liminal life I’ve perfected over the past five years. I imagine myself as some forgotten oracle, gathering stray details no one asked for, perched like the old man of the mountain who outlived his own relevance. Perhaps it is time to descend and distribute my wisdom to the unprepared, or at least to those unfortunate enough to stumble past me on their way up, looking for a better view.

His Lordship returns, unimpressed by my train of thought. He leaps onto the bench, circles twice, and folds into himself, tail twitching in what might be a case of satisfaction or judgment… it’s hard to tell sometimes. His expressions are ambiguous, though his message is usually clear. I sit beside him and watch the reflections slide across the floor while the storm continues its performance overhead. Beyond these walls, I have witnessed people argue, kiss, breathe… convinced only of their central importance. I remain the audience, taking mental notes during the dress rehearsal, unsure whether I ever auditioned for the show.

Above, the storm advances with no consideration for decorum, clouds colliding, rain streaking the skylight in precise, angry lines, and lightning flashing in sudden, embarrassing bursts that remind me the world does not need anyone’s permission to take a moment and remind you just how small you truly are in this Universe. I watch the trees in the parking lot bend, sway, and resist, and I take measure of the mall in comparison. It is not safe because storms do not care, it is safe because it is closed, because the gates hold, and because Tobe is beside me, which makes him a better companion than most people I have known.

For now I wonder as I wander, walking between the locked gates, smelling the pretzels I cannot touch, counting the small, absurd victories of being unseen. Tobe purrs beside me, his attention fixed on nothing in particular. I understand that liminal life is temporary and that safety is often found in absence, for those who are brave enough to look for it. I know in the upcoming hours, the mall will reopen, the storm will end, and the world will demand engagement. But for this interval I am a spectator with the best seat, companioned by a cat who regards me as adequate furniture, and that is almost enough, for now.

The Year of the Snake is ending… thank-the-gods-I-do-not-believe-in! It’s really a big deal, in the cosmic world. Even the folks who don’t do the woo are feeling it too.

Snakes. Other than the world’s greatest baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, I have no room for snakes in my life. For the most part, you never see them… until it’s too late. And the shedding. Gross. A little bit of moisturizer would take care of that, wouldn’t it? But, I’m growing as a person, metaphorically that is, and I’m trying to
embrace the end of “snake-life”.

With that in mind, I decided to try something similar, beginning with my hands. I looked at them, really looked at them. To my surprise, I saw my grandmother’s hands. Are these really her hands, the ones that survived the Depression, raised four children on a farm, made kolache dough while the sun rose and set and rose again? Or are they just mine, dry, a little scaly, the result of forgetting to put on the healing hands moisturizer?

I thought long and hard on that, never finding an answer. There are so many lines across the backs of my hands. The skin feels so soft and thin. I was always told that if you have a lot of lines on your hands, that means you’re an old soul. You’ve lived many
lifetimes. Your hands remember and the experiences of those lives are recorded in your hands.

Watching and remembering all the lines of my lives, I took my Kitsch Exfoliating Bar and slowly began to wash my hands, gently scrubbing the backs, watching the water run over them and down the drain. Was someone downstream about to get a huge dose of me? Do water treatment plants interfere with our Karma? Have I been standing here at the sink for a bit too long?

My skin began to soften and change. It did not shine, there was no magical alchemist transforming my hands into Midas-gold. It certainly was not offering me any form of wisdom. It did, however, make me consider that the act of letting go can be strangely physical. You rub, scrape, rinse, and the remnants of what no longer belongs to you fall away in a very obvious and entirely unceremonious fashion. There is also a bit
of metaphysically metaphorical clarity that comes with this. Could this “water ceremony” be an homage to Pisces Season, to the end of the Zodiac? To the start of something fresh and new? My hands felt fresh and shiny, like the bottom of a new little baby.

Meanwhile, the solar eclipse is making an appearance, not here of course, but you can feel the energy. I’m just resting, still being productive, but resting. The Sun is rearranging the light, like a memory of a curtain being pulled back, and letting the sun shine in. I look down and see His Lordship at my feet and stretched to the sun. The only shifting he’s done is to follow the warmth, like a cat version of a sunflower.

A few weeks ago, Punxsutawney Phil popped out of his burrow and did what he always does: blinked at a crowd, wondering why they woke him up so damn’d early. He declared six more weeks of winter and returned to his underground sanctuary. Huzzah, Hurrah, Good Show, Be Gone, I want to go back to sleep. He is a model for waking from darkness that has been surrounding us all. Watching Phil reminded me that leaving your own insulated home is rarely enlightening.

The light of the late morning sun reaches across my desk, landing on a stack of papers that I swore yesterday that I’d handle tomorrow. Is yesterday’s tomorrow really today, or is every day really tomorrow? The sunbeam sits there like it has a purpose in life. It’s taunting me, poking me and daring me to look away. Oddly enough, I can feel the eclipse deep in the air too. It’s happening at the bottom of the world, but in the grand scheme of things, we feel the power of the moon and the sun all over the planet. There is an obvious shift in balance. I wonder if other people can see it too, or is it just me? Is it because I’ve been on the sidewalk of Fremont Street a bit too long? Maybe change begins like that, with the pull of the weight that tilts the day toward something new?

The only sound I can hear is His Lordship, snoring away. Stretched in his patch of sun, this has to be the ultimate image of satisfaction, certain that the world was made for this hour alone. I sometimes wonder if he already knows things I keep trying to figure out. No, I know he knows things that I do not. I’ve learned to watch him too, pretending he’s strolling down the Vegas Strip in his tuxedo-ed fur tux. He isn’t rushing, not in a hurry. He’s in the moment and maybe that is the point.

I sip my Diet Dr Pepper and glance out the window in my office. The tree (singular) stands bare, against a never-ending blue sky, the kind of blue that only shines in Texas, against a sky that looks half awake. There are patches of green that are coming alive again, suggesting that winter might be loosening its grip just a bit. But this is Texas. We’re lulled into thinking Spring is almost here, and then the weather changes so quickly and tries to kill us. I saw snow clouds two days ago. Just as I am thinking this, a jeweled flash cuts across the sky, right in front of my window. A hummingbird, coming out of nowhere, zips by outside. Where it came from and where it went, I haven’t a clue. In the five years I’ve been mindlessly staring out the window, it’s the first one I’ve seen.

I saw it clearly enough to know that it was real. A hummingbird in February feels improbable, and yet here it is. Cosmically, the timing is almost theatrical, but the meaning is obvious. That is a perfect sign, when you live in the land of the woo-woo.

Sometimes I wonder if something so small, so filled with nature, can carry an entire message for humanity. Maybe this is what transformation looks like when stripped of grandeur? A quiet scene, a few rays of sun, and a flash of movement that reminds you to stay awake to your own life. How many people has this little bird passed in front of, and gone unnoticed?

My hands rest on the desk, still softened from washing, marked by lines that tell a story longer than any words I could type. They belong to the past and whatever shape the future decides to take next. The year turns, the snake is finally slithering back to where it belongs, the fire horse is rising up and ready to make the stagnancy come to
life. Somewhere, there is a door opening. Something has shifted. The hummingbird appeared at the exact moment it needed to, and that is more than enough for me.

Maybe leaving one year for another is noticing the fire just ahead, waiting for you. Good, bad, or ugly, this is life, the only one we get (at least for this go around). The answer really is to take a deep breath, keep your eyes on the light, and see what turns up. After all, this is your life to live.

It was Valentine’s Day, 1997. The day started off with me buzzing around, planning a wonderful dinner for my husband, picking up the last of the items I needed, and wrapping his gift. I cleaned the house so much so, you’d think that House Beautiful was coming to do a photo shoot with Martha Stewart. The yard was mowed, the laundry done and in the early afternoon, I began making his favorite meal. I knew this was going to be a wonderful night.

Right on time, he walked through the front door. I was still in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes I had used earlier. I dried my hands and walked around the island, going to give the man I loved a hug.

“Here ya go,” he said, plopping a baseball cap for the Astros in my hands with an expression that suggested completion of an obligation, rather than the thoughtfulness of a well-executed gift. Not wrapped, not even in a bag. Just tossed in my hand as he rounded the corner in the kitchen, mimicking a runner rounding the corner at third, and being waved in to steal home. He didn’t even stop.

I studied the stitching, the unfamiliar colors, and the Gas Station “Free With Fill-Up” promotional tag still attached, amazed at how little thought had traveled ahead of the moment. Seriously? I had never worn a baseball cap in my life. Maybe a wide-brimmed Scarlett O’Hara sun-bonnet, but never a baseball cap. And besides, it was an Astros hat. Everyone knows I can’t stand that team.

It was then that a deeper thought formed, somewhere beneath all of those surface details. My hands held the realization of just how little he cared. My heart sank, like a rock into a pond, settling into a dark awareness of slow recognition. The ripples mirroring each other until they finally touched the shore of a distant land. I finally had to admit to myself, as I felt the lone tear trace the side of my face, that emotional distance had entered into our relationship long before that day. Our interactions with each other had become shaped through habits that replaced attention and through conversations that completed themselves without curiosity, so that love remained present in name only while its presence in practice had begun to thin… much like his hairline.

Looking back, I see that was the first of many straws that snapped my back. I couldn’t take much more and through the year, it was just one back-handed moment after another. I was broken completely. My tears, a salty magic elixir, had created well worn trails down my cheeks. Slowly, I began to heal from these knife wounds to my heart. Scar tissue must have built up and I was finally able to deflect these attacks. By December, my camel’s back was strong and I was moving forward, but the Valentine’s Ass was no longer by my side or in my life. He died a few years later and we never really had a chance to forgive each other for the way things ended. Do you think, if he was aware that was our last Valentine’s Day together he would have acted differently?

I doubt it.

I drove out to see my father in February of 2021. It was Valentine’s Day, and I just wanted to see my father. Life had become so stressful since Covid started, and our distant family was pulled even further apart by the disease. My father’s health wasn’t the best, and I didn’t want to take the chance of bringing any sort of germ to him. He was isolating out on the farm, so he had a protective buffer that surrounded him. I did make sure to stay in daily contact with him, hoping that would be a substitute for presence. In his eyes, it wasn’t.

Following the same two-lane highway that had carried me there for years, I drove past feed stores and rusted mailboxes and stretches of pasture where cattle stood motionless in the sun. The air was warm in that Texas way that makes February feel forgiving, like winter didn’t just try to kill us all, and with the windows lowered I could smell dry grass and distant water. It was the kind of ordinary afternoon that never suggests it might become important later. I had made the trip so many times that I no longer thought about distance or time, only the unspoken obligation, the expectation that was always put upon me to show up and the small hope that something between us might feel different when I arrived.

The old farmhouse sat where it always had, low and weathered against the open land, with a porch that sagged slightly in the middle and screen doors that never quite closed the way they should. I can close my eyes and open my heart, and I hear the strained sound of the screen door as the spring is stretched open, then bounces twice when you drop the door. Usually, someone inside was screaming “don’t drop the door”, but we never really heard it. We were kids and by the time the screen started to move close, we were half way into the yard and far from the house.

My father had lived there for years, surrounded by tools he no longer used and rooms that held more dust and memory than movement. Each visit revealed some new surrender to age that neither of us mentioned out loud. When he stepped toward me, I saw how much smaller he had become, though the shape of him was still familiar enough to pull me back into childhood for a moment. I always looked up to him, figuratively and literally, even though he walked out on our family when I was only 8. I remember he always said he was 5’10”, but now I towered above him.

I hugged him carefully, aware of bone where strength used to be, and he held me with the same brief pressure he always had, allowing only his hands to touch my back briefly, as if affection required restraint. It didn’t take long until our conversation settled quickly into its usual pattern, questions about work, backhanded comments about how long it had been since my last visit, and how I should visit him more often. Never mind that it was a three hour trip for me, one way. The ever-present edge of disappointment carried his general unhappiness beneath ordinary words. I tried to explain the long and “non-traditional” hours I worked, the six hour drive to visit for just a bit. I tried but he refused to see beyond the barbed-wired fence that surrounded his fields. The dialogue never really changed much between us. Love existed there, I believe that now, but it moved through channels so narrow, rarely spoken in the language either of us might have needed.

We sat for a while in the mild afternoon light that drifted through the windows, speaking about nothing that would last, and when I finally stood to leave the moment felt no different from any other departure. I remember thinking I would come back soon, that there would be another Sunday or another holiday, another stretch of warm weather that would carry me down the same road again. Nothing in his voice or posture warned me to stay longer, and nothing inside me insisted that time was running out.

The drive home felt ordinary too, shaped by fading sunlight as I passed the old rusted metal train bridge, the arch rails and cover reminding me of something out of Stand By Me, and the knowing that I would be returning to my normal rat-race routine. For a long while that day remained just another visit folded into memory. Only later did it separate itself from the rest, taking on a weight I could not change, becoming the last Valentine’s Day I would ever spend with him. What stays with me now is not what we said, but how easily I believed in more time, how certain I felt that love could wait until the next visit, the next season, the next chance to try again. Maybe someday, we’d really connect and I’d finally have the father-daughter relationship I always dreamed of. Maybe.

If I could step back into that afternoon, I would hold the hug just a little bit longer and let silence stretch without rushing to fill it. Our presence matters, even when words fail. I can see now, time does not announce its endings and ordinary days carry more finality than we ever expect. I try to live now with the mindset of what if this is the last farewell. I try to leave on a note of love. God, how I try.

The simplest moments deserve our full attention, while they are still ours to live.

I would consult the astrology charts, look to see where my natal sign was and figure out where my descendant lurked. And, oddly enough, it was accurate. Turning to Tarot, those readings were spot on. I could never read for myself, I think there is a Tarot caveat or something. Wasn’t that one of the levels of hell in the Inferno? Don’t worry, I shielded their naked-ness.

Yeh, I don’t agree with this level. I don’t think their heads should have been ripped off and put on backwards. Just because they tried to look into the future? They weren’t trying to game the system or get the winning lotto numbers. You drive with a GPS now, don’t you? Divination is the same thing. The road ahead, while still filled with potholes and bumps and detours, is just a bit smoother if we can see just a little bit of the conditions just ahead.

GPS. Divination. Google Maps. Pretty much all the same thing these days.

But there came a time, around 2021 when my GPS malfunctioned. That’s what I’m calling it. The road I was on was ripped away from me. All the careful planning I had been doing, out the window. The rug… it wasn’t ripped from beneath my feet. It was snatched and put on eBay, never again to be seen. I’m off-roading and I don’t have a four wheel drive.

That’s what it’s like now. I reach out to SO many people… phone calls, emails, texts, social media postings. Even Substack. And each message falls into the abyss. Am I the last person left on Earth?

I check the charts again. Ok, Mercury, we’re in the shadow. That tracks. Eclipse season, ok, I see you working.

The ones that do send a message back… those messages are filled with anger. Hurt. Confusion and pain. There’s a lot of static in their replies. So I have to ask myself. Do I reply? Do I try to help? Where were they when I was going through all of this, alone? When I couldn’t get the time of day? When all I was offered was “hugs”?

They were too busy following the misdirection, ears and minds filled with white noise. Too full to hear my words, no bandwidth to hear my cries.

If I were to reach a hand out, would they pull me under again? There are so many crying out now. Do I say '“screw you” and go on, knowing that I am moving away from that mess? What kind of lightworker would I be if I did that? So, I try to reply, reach out, and connect. But experience has taught me that it’s ok to let of of their hand, let them freefall and land on their own path. I don’t need to beg them to come with me. It’s always been their choice. That’s taken a lifetime (well, 17 lifetimes I’ve been told) to learn.

There’s a cosmic cork shoved into the system, it seems. The pressure is building, it’s starting to rise. If something doesn’t change, and soon, I am afraid that this is no longer mirroring cosmic constipation. We will instead by priming ourselves for a cosmic colonoscopy.

What’s the lesson here? I’m not sure. Eat more fiber.

And during this excavation period, I started to remember. I started to think again. My memories kept me warm and gave me a connection I have been missing.

I “left home” four years ago, moved into a town where I knew no one, became injured and slightly disabled and lost my job. Crap, right? When it rains, it pours. I’ve lost all members of my family, except for his Lordship, Tobe Juan Kenobi–the World’s Greatest Tuxedo Cat. My ride-or-die friends have all taken detours. I get it, we all have a life to lead, we all have our own stories, but I have discovered that if you’re out of sight, you easily fall out of mind. So, I stay in contact with a select few these days.

During this most recent re-enactment of the life of Richard Leakey…. I un-earthed a few truths, I do believe. I can’t help but wonder, is there a familial connection to these revelations?

On the outside looking in, I have noticed that selective hearing annoys people. They take it personally, as if you are refusing reality out of spite. I have never seen it in that light. I don’t know why they react that way. I have always thought of selective hearing as a survival skill.

In my own personal experience, this magical gift of selective hearing has been passed down quietly, like a family recipe that never gets written down. My dad did it, my uncle did it too. I have found that I do it as well.

It works like this… something would be said, usually something heavy, dire, or unnecessarily grim and what we hear always comes out the other side, carrying a tone that is lighter, funnier, occasionally ridiculous. It’s like our ears received the message, the brain took a detour, and what landed was a version of reality that felt more livable. Less alarming, a little silly, most likely wrong. When this happens IRL, I often think of the movie Life Is Beautiful. How special the father was, trying to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. It is the ultimate example of loving someone so much, you want them to not see the horrors in life. I have loved people that much, but they often failed to see it as love, and choose to see it for something else.

I still wonder if we all share some hereditary hearing issue or if this is simply how certain people adapt. You take in what you can, you soften the edges, you tilt the story just enough so it does not crush you under its own weight. The alternative feels unbearable, especially lately.

This winter has been harsh. My country feels unfamiliar in a way that seeps into daily life. My friends are gone, my family is gone. My ride-or-die friend, well, she died. Conversations that once felt safe to me now feel loaded or impossible. I find myself alone, with His Lordship, which sounds dramatic until you realize it is mostly me and the quiet, negotiating what to absorb and what to reroute before it settles in too deeply.

Sometimes I think I buried myself in a liminal space on purpose. Not to hide, exactly, but to survive what I sensed was coming. I read tarot, I do astrology, and I watched Pluto make its move. I knew something was shifting, grinding, rearranging itself beneath the surface, and I suspect my mind started preparing long before the evidence showed up at my door.

Selective hearing, in this context, feels less like denial and more like triage. You choose what gets full volume and what gets remixed into something tolerable. You let the dire pronouncements fade while something faintly absurd sneaks in instead. A disco tent in the middle of winter. A joke that should not work but somehow does. A moment of levity where none was scheduled.

Maybe it is not about refusing to hear what is happening. Maybe it is about choosing how it lands. And if the brain occasionally swaps catastrophe for something a little more amusing, a little more survivable, I am inclined to let it.

He ran off and hid, as he should have, but finally came and sat next to me on my bed. He flattened up against my leg, I scratched his head. He got closer and threw his arm over my hand. Then he pulled my arm to him and held on tight.

I think that was his way of saying “sorry I peed all over your banjo, mom”. We’re rebuilding, baby steps. I blame it on the full moon and eclipse season. Be kind to each other, we’re all we have.

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I spent most of this beyond-cold stretch sequestered in my bedroom with my cat, stationed beneath four heavy blankets, like a person who has accidentally wandered into a survival challenge that takes place entirely on a mattress. At first, Fort Blanket felt like a solid strategy, because each added layer seemed to build an extra wall between me and the cold. Then, at some point, the blankets stopped behaving like comfort and started behaving like architecture, which is to say they provided shelter while also limiting my freedom in ways I did not fully appreciate until I tried to adjust my position and realized I had, in fact, been anchored like a small boat in a storm. Pinned down by not only the weight, but by memories of my family, thoughts of my grandmother making these blankets, and the times we huddled together when I was a child.

It was through this weight of cotton and emotions I discovered what I now call the “Reverse Princess and the Pea”, which is not a fairy tale about delicate royalty so much as an everyday tale about heavy blankets and private betrayals. The reverse version happens when you are trapped under a weighty pile and suddenly discover the bottom sheet has a wrinkle, or that you have somehow arranged yourself directly on the belt of your robe, and your nervous system reacts like a pampered aristocrat who has just found a single pebble in their satin slipper. Your brain calculates the cost of escape and realizes it will require lifting four blankets that now have the collective mass and stubbornness of a sleeping bison. You now have to either summon the strength to lift the whole situation and reset it, or accept that you will be spending the next several hours thinking about one ridge of fabric as if it were a philosophical problem. (This is where the magical powers of chocolate would normally come into play. Endorphins, you know.)

My cat, His Lordship, Tobe Juan Kenobi, has handled all of this with the serene authority of a creature who believes the laws of comfort were invented for his personal benefit. Naturally we communicate telepathically, being both Lightworkers and all, and he often reminds me that he finds the human habit of frequent repositioning mildly suspicious. He curls up, assigned to keep the warmth in place, then opens one eye when I shift. Not in the form of an alarm, but in the way a supervisor checks on an employee who has become suddenly energetic.

There is no bustling outside. The entire country of Texas is now iced over. I have said many times, the only ice that belongs in Texas is the ice from Sonic. Even if I wanted to go anywhere, which I do not, the recent run on the grocery store settled that question for me. The shelves were already picked over last week by people hoarding on instinct.

I have left the door to the bedroom cracked a bit, enough for his Lordship to escape to the winter lands, beyond the realm of the space heater, and find his litter box. He moves through the opening with the calm confidence of someone who knows the route is safe, and I watch him go, wondering if I should follow. I can see the kitchen. I can grab sustenance, a bag of pre-popped popcorn, make a quick sandwich before I freeze. But then, I remember that my current position under four blankets has the structural integrity of a well packed suitcase. Maybe I can go a bit longer without food. (On the bright side, I’ve lost about four pounds in as many days)

Part of “Freeze Life” is how quickly the mind starts telling stories, because once you are confined, your brain begins reaching for comparisons that are dramatic enough to match the boredom. I have been thinking about the Donner Party more than anyone should in a suburban bedroom, and it is not because I imagine my situation is the same, but because the idea of being so close to relief and still halted by cold has a way of permeating into your brain when you are measuring the distance between the kitchen and the bed. They were right there, close enough to almost touch the next chapter, and then they froze in their tracks, literally. I am only a few steps away, a short dash across the cold stone floor. There is a box of Jr Mints on the table. I can see them now. They’re laughing at me, daring me to pull back the layers to my fortress of solitude.

Thankfully, there is a thaw coming on Wednesday, and I can make it to WalMart. (My curbside order is already submitted, thankyouverymuch) I am treating that forecast the way you treat the first friendly face you see after an ordeal. I am not expecting miracles, and I am not composing speeches about resilience, but I am looking forward to the small relief of air and “warm” temps. I am very thankful and extremely blessed that his Lordship and I had a home to shelter in and survived the “first blizzard of ‘26”. We didn’t have much snow here, it was mainly ice. Last time I braved the wilderness, I saw that it had only snowed about two inches. I am quite certain that is the only time in history when any woman ever said “two inches is more than enough”.