Part Eighteen, What Lies Beyond: A Tale Told With Time

What Lies Beyond

The Road Ahead . . .

Joan Ann Lansberry

November 15, 1998

This inviting path is at Boyce-Thompson Southwestern Arboretum,
(which is north east of us, by sixty miles)

The whiteness of a white page, the tactile sensation of its smoothness, the feel of the pen between my fingers. . . there are reasons I don't always use the computer for first drafts. I stretch out on the bed, away from the living room with its loud TV. Soft harp music soothes me. I retreat into depths of self. It's necessary at times to retreat, pull back. I slouch down into me.

*      *      *      *      *
So I'm now on the other side of forty. Another online journalist said she heard of a saying that if you can't imagine yourself old, it means you will die young. It's likely hogwash, but it spooked her. I look at the mirror and imagine my reddish blonde hair gone white. It will be a blonde-white as was my grandmother's. Imagining my nose and ears bigger . . . I'll just fill the lobes with more earrings, no doubt . . . go for four, or five, instead of just three. I'm imagining myself thinner. I'll wear wrinkles proudly. I won't lose my passion. I know that. I won't lose my passion.
The dreams that I've had since youth will still be with me. I'll still be creating words and images, perhaps much finer than now. I'll still wear bright colors. I can grow into this. I'll still thrill to beauty in all its forms. I'll still be me.
I think that's the scary thing about age. People fear they will be someone vastly different than they are now. What a sight we "baby boomers" will be, rocking in our rocking chairs to vintage rock tunes, remembering the glory days! But never forget, each and every day of our evolution is a glory day. I claim this forty-ness. I claim it and make it mine. Forty fits fine.

November 16, 1998
The past revisited . . .

June 9, 1983
What I want to do: Make beautiful poems and love beautiful women, be sensuous all the time, free, say what I feel, be what I feel, know what I feel, me - macho, drive that car RIGHT, man.
I made a huge dumb mistake driving Tuesday, and I haven't got back my confidence . . .

Not Much Has Changed!
Over fifteen years and not much has changed! Only now I struggle to learn the stick shift. Laura and I took Anton to his first day on the new job. They house the inmates requiring maximum security in a very remote part of the state. After Laura found our way out to less remote regions, she let me take over the car. I did fine, absolutely perfect, until I had to stop the car. I stopped too short, and had to advance a little further. Sputter, sputter . . .sput.....it died! "Give it more gas!", Laura screamed. It died twice. I saw a large truck waiting impatiently in the rear view mirror. Finally I got it going again. We practiced stopping and starting several times before the lesson ended. The trickiest part was parking the car. I had it in first, and I kept rolling backwards. "Why am I going backwards? I'm not in reverse!" "Give it more gas!"urged Laura. "You're going uphill!" It then rolled into place. We were home safe.

November 18, 1998
Star Trek: Voyager aired its 100^th episode tonight. The opening scene shows the ship buried under snow and ice. Chakotay and Kim are the only survivors. They, along with a friend, explore the craft, and see their frozen crew mates. Gradually we learn they are fifteen years in the future, and hope to change the ship's fate. Chakotay and Kim survived because they were in a separate shuttle craft. Kim was to relay co-ordinates for the ship to adjust their flight during the first use of a slipstream engine that would have allowed them to return home to earth. However he had sent the wrong formula. The ship crashed because the created wormhole collapsed on them. The small shuttlecraft made it through to the alpha quadrant. During the fifteen years since, they had acquired technology which allowed them to send a message back in time to save the vessal and crew.
Of course, they weren't able to make it back to earth. (And spoil future story-lines?) However it was a thrilling episode. It ended in a special way. Along with the message of proper co-ordinates, Kim sent a message to the younger version of himself. Captain Janeway and Kim marvelled over this mystery.
As I laid down tonight, preparing for sleep, I pondered a me fifteen years in the future. I wondered what she would tell me. I could imagine the warm, loving message of encouragement she might have for me. I could almost feel her. . .
. . .And an epiphany came over me so strong that the force of it nearly pushed me out of bed and to the computer:
It was me, all along, the Goddess was, and has always been a part of ME. I haven't lost Her, for She is right there inside of me, the best part of me!
She's the best part of all living things. We like to externalize it, but that's not what it really is. I have long understood how people could believe they are 'channeling' a spirit which inspires their creativity, for poems will arrive in my mind whole. I seem but merely to write down the dictation. I knew it was really coming from that part of the brain people call the 'subconscious', the part from which arises all intuitive leaps. And so with the God/Goddess energy. It's really all right here, within us.
The world seems a brighter place, now.

November 20, 1998
last 'rose' of summer. . .

I was contemplating another boring day of routine, as I was taking out the trash. But on route to the curb, I saw one last flower hanging on to the bush in front of our house. The mountain of dishes could wait. Grabbing sketch book and pencils and a chair, I captured it before it wilts.
If you look closely, you'll see my initials are on their side. The bloom was originally in the lower right hand corner. But this is as the scanner captured, which I decided was a better angle!

November 21, 1998
Local news. . .

"The Arizona Daily Star, PHOENIX - A federal judge voided Gov. Jane Hull's proclamation for a state Bible Week to begin at midnight tonight.
Judge Roslyn O. Silver said yesterday that the declaration violates state and federal constitutional requirements keeping government out of religion. She also said the Arizona Civil Liberties Union showed that some people would be ``irreparably harmed'' if the proclamation took effect."

In another article, the Star also included some people's reactions to the ruling. A Deborah Dunn, who works at Chapel in the Hills Baptist Church, decried the ruling as proving "Our society is running down an immoral path that's going to lead to destruction. . ."
I had to comment on the rest of her statement in the Community Front Page:

Showing their stupidity...
By Joan Lansberry
"That's why we have so much trouble with children now, they think they come from an ape! They're going to behave like animals if they think they come from an animal. . . ."
Behaving "like animals" isn't so bad. Non human animals have rarely exhibited the amount of cruelity some humans have exhibited. If we don't examine our animalness and accept it, we can never evolve. For instance, if we can't see what we have in common with our dog as he yawns, or begs for a treat, or wants petting, how can we see what we have in common with other humans?

Laura had a comment: They'd sure squawk like hell if someone wanted to proclaim an "Atheist Week". Which further proves Government has no business concerning itself with religion OR the lack thereof. I'm glad the federal judge wisely upheld separation of church and state.

*      *      *      *      *
("Let's do something different this weekend," I begged Laura and Julia. Laura had heard a review of the movie "Pleasantville" which made it sound entirely promising. "Dr" Laura, of the quack radio counselor fame, said it attacked everything she valued. As she passes out scathingly 'pious' judgements to all those seeking her guidance, we figured the movie was bound to be good.)
David Wagner is a nineties teenager who escapes the trouble in his life by immersing himself in an old TV show from the fifties. "Pleasantville" is a "swell and perky" place where nothing disturbing ever happens - a perfect utopia, it seems.
A TV repairman visits him and his sister one day and gives them a special "high-powered" remote control. High powered it is, for as they struggle over who gets control of it, < < ZAP! > >, they are both transported into Pleasantville. As "Bud" and "Mary Sue" of the show, they find themselves in the black and white world of the fifties. When "Bud" and "Mary Sue" interact with the other characters, unpredictable things happen. For these characters, when faced with what's not in the script, literally don't know how to act. Each new random difference from the script sets off a myriad of changes, starting with the appearance of . . .
One RED flower on a bush!

November 23, 1998

AT THE WHEEL . . .
Where are you going?
Asks the voice within.
I look out toward the horizon and
the cloud swirled sky.
Rich am I,
drenched in dreams -
these nighttime things of fleeting colors,
and these ghostly day-time urgings -
Where are you going?
Asks the voice within.
All I know
is in my hands.
With what forceful pushing
can I turn this wheel,
to whatever starry clime?
Hold it now, hold it -
that control which requires
such delicacy.
  JAL, 11-23-98

November 24, 1998
Jus' No Doubt . . .
Laura woke up this morning with a cartoon in her head. Perhaps it was inspired by her evening's consumption of a small bottle of whisky!