In Memoriam: While you were Sleeping

Perhaps I shouldn't admit I'm surprised whenever I find a new person that reads my blog. It's just that, blogger lists views to my blog, and usually they are around 3-5, per post, unless I post a reminder to facebook. So I assume my regular viewership is 3-5 people. More than that is a surprise, and a puzzle: how blogger is not counting them?

In any case, I just found another regular viewer, who commented favorably about how I'm pretty good about getting a blog post out every week, so I'm feeling compelled to write one before the new week begins. Though it would be easy now, at 9:13 pm, to turn off the light and go to sleep almost instantly. But here we are.

This Thursday, a dear friend of my family passed away. She spent most of her life doing loving service for people in various forms, and as her body was slowly breaking down, she showed a remarkable humor and warmth that reminds me of a Vietnam war vet I met at a Tom Brown course. It seems that, for some people who go through really difficult things, faced with the option of crying all the time or laughing, they choose to laugh. I don't think it's an easy choice, though it sounds like the obvious choice to make, from a third person perspective. I consider it a rather heroic choice. They are served up a lot of physical and mental pain, and they are choosing to respond not by closing down and getting bitter, but by laughing at it, and getting other people to laugh and smile too. Truly the way of the peaceful warrior.

In any case, on that morning, before I had gotten the message. My giant lingam on my altar, which is the central element of my alter, fell over, scaring me and chipping one of my other crystals. This happens very infrequently, and it always seems to indicate something energetically powerful going on. Though the lingam is egg shaped and resting in a small cup/bowl of sorts, I position it carefully and test it from all angles to make sure it's secure, and it doesn't fall more than once ever 6 months or so, maybe longer. So I knew something was up, but I didn't know what.

I wish I could remember the order of what happened next. But I don't know whether I saw the emails yet. Probably. As soon as I saw them, I understood the lingam falling. But then, on the drive up to my school, I witnessed the most incredible sunrise. There were deep blue fluffy clouds floating along, interspersed with brilliant golden light making the tips of trees on hilltops shine brilliantly. It was beautiful. And then, as I turned a corner with more of those "God Rays" shining through, I saw a full on, huge, vivid rainbow. It was dimmer around the top, but it went all the way around, a complete half circle, ending in a brilliant golden pool of light illuminating a huge bucolic meadow amidst the otherwise mellow blue light. It gave the distinct impression that going there would reveal some kind of treasure or revelation.

All this accompanied by a soft misty rain.

Nature's way of adding a little exclamation point to the fact that this soul that just passed was worth noting for her loving, kind, strong heart, and that she was much loved by the universe. Something that could perhaps be missed, since she was also very simple, humble and unassuming. This seems to be the rule rather than the exception, when it comes to particularly bright souls.

She passed away peacefully, in her sleep, this Thursday.


(Note: this is not the rainbow I saw. I was driving, and preferred to just soak up the beauty and awe rather than unsafely scramble for my phone camera.) But this gives a little bit of the jist of it.)



In other news, I discovered, "Stranger Things" a Netflix original series, thankfully only 8 episodes long, that a friend of mine thought I would love. She was very emphatic about this. She was even more right than she suspected.

I rarely watch more than one or two episodes of anything these days, because even if it's engaging, I'm too busy to just be engaged. I demand that stories be masterful works of art. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time. This show is so well done it makes my head spin. I could watch and listen to the intro alone for like twenty minutes.

(youtube video of the intro)

It's like it takes a finger and jabs it into some primal nostalgia/aesthetic pleasure zone of my brain and triggers it constantly. I feel like one of those rats that's been wired up to have it's pleasure center triggered every time it touches the lever. These rats end up dieing of starvation/thirst because all they do all day is press the lever repeatedly. That's kind of the experience of watching this show for me.

I won't say it's perfect. The creepy bits are too creepy, and the very end leaves room for a second season, which is something I hate (I like my stories to have good satisfying closure. Also it means it's going to wrench another several hours out of my clenching fingers, whenever it becomes available, because I am probably physically incapable of stopping myself from watching it.)

I don't know how much people who are not me would like it. There are references to D&D which other people might find charming, but not nearly as powerful and meaningful and nostalgia-inducing as they are for me. In any case, if you want an idea of one facet of my aesthetic, done to an absolutely perfect sheen, take a look at this show, subtract out about 7/10ths of the creepiness, and add in a more elegant, self-contained and wrap-everything-up ending. And if your aesthetic is anything like mine, don't start it if you have something else you need to get done that day.

I normally don't really keep track of how long I spend on my blog posts. I just know the answer is "too long" but since I made a note in the post at the beginning of when I started this, perhaps you are curious, as I was, about how long it actually took to write and edit something like this. Currently, it is 10:20 pm.

Good night, and much love.
May your paths be happy ones. May your friends be true. May you spend your days in laughter, love, and service.
-IO