h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok. There's something going awry around here in south Florida, I've been feeling it for several months now but have been thinking that maybe the thing that's changing is mostly me with a smidgeon of my environment going unbalanced. It *feels* like I'm living in Puerto Rico again, the way people do business, the way people can't seem to be relied upon to uphold very simple commitments. It's agitated, inefficient and stressful. But I've kinda been thinking that it's just *me* becoming hyper-sensitive to stuff as I float further and further away from 'normal' concerns and deeper into a zone of focusing on what *really* matters, and is enduring.

It's not just me feeling this way, though. Talking about it to some other people, they're feeling the same thing. A number of them are also planning to leave the area, and it's not something we'd even really *thought* about a year ago. There's some kinda underlying agitation going on here which is bigger than all the overt little irritants. Tonight I was talking about it to a friend who's mostly pretty reasonable, and she mentioned the real possibility that this chunk of Paradise might be under water in the not-too-distant future, and it gave me the willies. I mean, is *that* why I suddenly feel driven to get the hell out of a place I was in love with six months ago? I dunno. Could be. I have always had intuitions, didn't always follow them, though. This one is huge and undeniable, and my reasons for deciding to scoot have been more about people expecting me to speak Spanish rather than them learn English, and about the yeah, yeah, yeah f*cking *agreeing* to everything, with no *intention* to follow through. And part of it has been that I've come to realize that I have to work too much to keep living in a place that I once loved being a part of, but now I'm mostly a hermit painting in my apartment, and I could just as effectively move elsewhere and do the same thing I *am* doing, but without living in an environment that's making me nuts, a place I sequester myself from. I can still come back and work and visit periodically, and I'd not be missing anything but the stress.

So. Tampa it is then, for the near future. I need to teach my nepphie some things about self-reliance, just in case the world as we know it takes a dump. I think that's going to happen, one way or another, and within his lifetime for sure.

I'm relieved to have reached this decision. I'm not very happy to be seeing it in a bigger-picture kinda way, much easier to just think that I'm getting old and crotchety. But I guess I can't just 'unsee' something, once I've seen it. I'm not a republican, redefining terms doesn't make unacceptable things ok. I don't even need to be right about this feeling of impending doom, would *love* to look back on this journal one day and laugh at how wrong I was. But I don't think that's gonna happen.

So.
Meanwhile.

Things I can do to influence my immediate bubble of Britta's World:

1) I must not exacerbate other people's stress, or feed my own with frustration/anger because there's a very good chance that they're acting the way the do in response to the same stuff I'm feeling, but they maybe aren't as aware of it as I am, because their lives are so stretched out running the gerbil wheel.

2) I must continue to paint, because that's what keeps me stable. I can see me painting away in the aftermath of the most dire circumstances, just because so much of the other stuff beyond survival simply won't matter. (No, I don't think it'll actually come to that, btw. I hope.) But there *is* something divine in doing something so inherently useless (in a practical sense) when your world goes upside down.

3) I need to start thinking about a broader way to be Useful.

You absolutely should listen to your inner voice. I believe with my whole heart that that's your Guardian Angel.

You only have to read how no animals perished in the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 and the aftermath to realise there's a lot we don't know - or have forgotten in the mists of time.

This world is so noisy we have forgotten how to listen. Take a long walk along the beach when there's no-one else around and just listen.

I'm thinking of youand you are Useful, you're one of my friends.

Hi Annie! I just popped over to your page to see what's going on with you, so sorry to hear about your mum now too. Hope things swing the brighter way for both of them soon.

Guardian angels. Hmmmmm. I kinda see those intuitions as being the result of my mind processing the accumulation of all sorts of barely-noticed data with overt stuff, and the 'feeling' is just the way it pokes me with what it knows. I tend to veer away from supernatural explanations, but either way, they're pretty much the same thing. Anyway, the feeling is that I've gotta move on, so I shall.

I don't know if that image of here being under water is what's actually going to happen. Doesn't matter, really, because it's the sense of floundering, not having stable ground to stand on, and the change in what I've formerly felt I could rely on that's essential in that mental image that came over me last night. Shit. I guess it's about *all* the things going on here that are in a state of flux. I worry about ecological sustainability, I think we've already pushed things past the point of possible return. I'm sooooo angry at Bush for not even *mentioning* in his state of the union address that ALL of us need to start changing the way we use resources, immediately. He just blathers on with pipe dreams that it'll all be just fine if we continue to look for alternate sources of energy. And there's the lies, the manipulations of executive power that the majority of the public are willing to accept because it allows them to maintain the illusion that Everything Will Be OK, no matter how absolutely NOT ok it is, in the context of how this government is designed to work. And then there's Alito nominated to SCOTUS. I'll not even go *into* that outrage. So those political events trickle down into the rest of society, maybe people have just given up on the idea that there's something valuable in accountability and... decency, I guess, and they're fixed on expedience and immediate results without thought of long-term outcomes. I'm convinced that all these various changes in baselines are interconnected, and I'm just a cork bobbing around on a huge, turbulent ocean, and I have very little control over where it'll swirl me.

The good thing, though, is that I *am* a cork, not a brick or a slowly deflating air mattress. I've been forgetting that part too often lately, need to re-invest in my practice so I can make *sure* that I'm ok, and living the Happy, no matter *what* circumstances assail me. That's what the Practice is *for*. (wish I had time to go out in the Everglades for a few days and fill up with real stuff, and detox from artificial distractions, though. *sigh* But that's not part of my 3 month goal, and maybe it's time to just Practice my way into refluffing without the cushion of escape.) I can do that.

On being Useful: It's not that I feel as if I'm useless, at all. I'm actually pretty good at helping individuals to make little shifts, take a more productive approach to things. I think I maybe need to figure out a way to put that to use in a broader scale, rather than just through random touches and bumps. I've been drifting away from the SGI organization over the past year, not because I'm in disagreement with their goals, but because I feel that the inherent structure of the organization creates some counter-productive spin-offs. It's greatest strengths are also, often, it's greatest weaknesses in aplication. I guess I just wanna do it *my* way, cut through the peripheral bullshit. *snort* Yet another instance of a MoGgie knowing best, and being impatient with other people for not *getting* it.

So, this has been a useful rant, in that I've sorted out some of my thoughts on some of this stuff. Kinda self-indulgent, buy hey, that's what journals are for, right?