Walking Through the Water

Walking through waist high water.  My brother, Jaina, Me, Aima and Asata, Truth Maze?, Imani and Lerin.  We were trying to Get to "Lake Calhoun, but we were in some kind wetland, which had brick ruins of some industrial past.  The strange thing is that no one was particularly alarmed about being wet.  We had driven the minivan there and I had been concerned because we didn't have enough car seats for everyone, so there were four babies sleeping on the back seat with out car seats...  Earlier Ben and I had been in a 50s style Hardware Store sitting at the table in the front with three girls who were affiliated with the Sacred Woman movementl  Ben was acting kind of spastic, but it was charming them.  In fact an Older woman came up and asked for his number so she could hire him for landscape design.  

So wet, and wearing my army surplus parachute pants, in this wetland area I felt very at peace.  Happy with the company, and unconcerned about the elements ..... I don't know how it happened, but suddenly realized that this was Costa Rica and a semi fascist guy and his two henchmen sons had a plan to borrow millions of dollars from the Costa Rican Government to set up a "completely modern" hotel resort.  I could see him sitting at a corporate style desk talking, but at the same time I was flying over a natural landscape of grassy prairies and muddy roads.  I realized that nothing that he was saying made any sense, it was only persuasive because of the emotional quality he conveyed with the inflections of his voice.

The Grid had Fallen :

The grid had fallen and I was living on land outside of Ashville with a bunch of other people.   We were farming, though not enough.  We had some weapons and some herbs for medicine.  The region had errupted into some violence, as people who weren't willing to collaborate had to be eliminated.  Some of my communities leaders were trying to get "high" off chlorella, which I said was too powerful a medicinal to use wastefully.  I became convinced that I needed to go back to AVL to get the rest of my herbs, because I saw sickness or plague as an inevitability and wanted to be as prepared as would be possible.  No one wanted to go with me.  I first asked the largest member of the community a guy name Bear.  Everyone said that it was too dangerous.  My dad was living there.  He was old.  He was stepping back from living an active life and I could tell that he was very sad.  I told him I loved him so much and I cried. 

Finally Someone agreed to go to AVL with me on a mission to get the herbs.  It was Mos Def of all people.  We had some kind of weapon, between the two of us.  We went first to a yoga raw foods community that had been barely surviving by eating junk food and Ironically Mcdonalds ( I don't know how they preserved it, maybe it had enough preservatives to keep it edible).  They were tired but had mantained a strong spiritual practice I have to way they seemed at peace with the imminence of their death. 

After leaving there we went to the UNCA campus.  The students were defending the campus and when we arrived a student wearing a police uniform tried to stop us with a home made gun rigged to shoot nails.  WE were able to dis arm him.  We continued into campus.  The students were organized.  Many of them were wearing campus security outfits, but they were relatively unarmed, and even though they wanted to take us out, me and Mos were able to move through freely.

I had the sense that the story wasn't over, but woke up.

In that moment I realized that a huge reason that I have been focused on health and nutrition and wellness, not just for my self, but for my family is because I am trying in vain to stop time.  On some level I have been motivated by the unconscious belief that if I could get my family to eat well and take the right herbs and supplements, we could postpone death, and thus suffering.  In my lucid waking moment I understood that this is futile.  Death will come when it comes regardless of what preparations we take.  I knew I needed to release my resistance to loosing my loved ones.

I know that I will continue to practice yoga, and herbalism and conscious nutrition but I open to practicing without attachment to the outcome.  I open up to the inevitability of death, my death and the death of everyone I love.