Time Passages

I see that I wrote the following just over 2 years ago:

As I come out of the bus station, winter-morning Sandton is chilly and still dark.

Sunrise is still more than an hour away, but the streets are well-lit and a few early birds or late-shift-workers are passing along the pavement with their backpacks snugged around them like thermal blankets.
Venus greets me as she has for the last couple of months, high in the gap between office-block constructions. As I turn left along West Street, she is on my right hand and the Moon is on my left..
 "Paradise on my right. Hell on my left, and the Angel of Death behind"
..a youngish office worker trots past me,steaming from her mouth in the cold air.
My stride lengthens a little and takes on a steadier rythmn than usual, as if the Moon and Venus have opened a ritual promenade before me, all the way to work.
Yule is for me the time of greatest thinning of the veil. The time when even I can almost apprehend another world all around me, for all I lack the visual,auditory,olfactory and tactile senses to do so at other times of the year.
It's this point, you see, Point III:





The nadir of the annual trip around the Sun, when the Ecliptic is furthest from the Equator and the term MidWinter really holds true.
At this time, too, I am far more prone to erratic psychic experiences.
A couple of weeks ago I dreamt that I was walking through my suburb along the roads in sorrow, passing a great oblong hole in the garden of one of the houses - it resembled nothing so much as an open grave, but I knew at the same time that it was actually someone's swimming pool. The next morning I learned that a 7-year-old boy had drowned in a pool that evening.
Since it is getting colder - for Joburg, not to be compared to the howling ice of Northen Europe in any way - we bought a minky blanket for Warren to use on the couch when he's up in the middle of the night. This blanket was draped across the back of the couch as I passed it yesterday evening. It's a pale-grey-and-cream blanket with vaguely leaf-like patterns worked into it. All of a sudden, as I was calling Scylla for supper, I saw another blanket in its place: a pale blue blanket figured with white clouds and edged in white bric a brac. Shevek's blanket from when he was a baby. And I saw it quite, quite clearly.
Oh, but I do love Yule; the sense of things becoming as deep as they ever will, with a simultaneous sleep-shrouded and nerve-opened feel to the soul. I can quite understand why fires were left constantly burning for this time of year, and why sistra were rattled in abundance, to chase away the disturbing spirits and warm our helpful ones.....

..that was slightly pre-Yule. Now it's slightly post-Yule two years later, and it's striking how little has changed in my morning.
Jupiter is now on my left hand as I stalk the predawn streets of Sandton while Venus remains on my right; there are slightly fewer optimistic Gautrain backpackers passing me and slightly more taxi passengers gathered on the corner of the Michelangelo; it is noticeably colder this year than last year. Very minor changes;would I even realise which year I was in if I shuttled between 2017 and 2019?
Oh yes. Yes I would. For in 2019 Scylla has gone before us, back to the Mother, back to eternal Spirit, back to herSelf. And exactly one synodic lunation later, Taranis followed her.
The devastating hole these departures have made in my life and Warren's is almost impossible to English.
So once again we realise that life is always in flux - that change and flow is its very nature - and that whenever we feel most constant, most static, most unlikely to take another road, that is the point at which we should be preparing our boots to get a grip for a change of direction.

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

There are reports of a visible fireball being seen from the Cape yesterday.

Unlike the one I saw from Sandton in July last year, this one was sighted after 8pm - that's well after sunset - and was seen (and heard, apparently) by multiple witnesses.

I seem to have been the only person in Johannesburg to both see the mid-morning meteor entering the Earth's atmosphere on 12th July and report it to the Shallow Sky Survey although there were 2 more reports from outside Johannesburg of the object. That's enough for Tim Cooper to have triangulated a probable path for the incoming piece of space rock though:

So this morning I was wondering why the folks in the Cape are apparently more observant of their surroundings - including the sky - than the denizens of Sandton.

Yes, the Cape sighting was after sunset, and thus more noticeable. There was also some associated sound with that fireball which I didn't pick up on in the Sandton sighting. Although, you know, I'm getting along in age and my hearing is certainly not up to snuff.

But then I remembered this song from my youth:

Note that this is a song that I grew up liking and which has stayed in my mind for over 40 years.
That's the way I get most of my earworms - songs I know, some of which are on my portable way-back machine of a music playlist on my phone.

Yet on Sunday I woke up with the strangest earworm.

The song was Thoroughly Modern Millie.

I had no idea how that one had gotten stuck in my brain. But I let it go on for a while, play itself out and depart, as all earworms are destined to do.

However, I admit to being fairly surprised to learn on Tuesday that Carol Channing had just died.

The Immanence Of The Transcendent

I'm fortunate to have experiences of transendence from time to time in this life; flashes of the pure brilliant limitlessness which speaks to me in a tongue no human can quite master, although a few souls have tried. And I comprehend some of what they are saying. Sometimes.

For me, it does no good to try to parse the welling joy of watching the birds in flight (who know god is not dead) or the realms of serenity when contemplating the clouds. It is just a moment of languagelessness, and I can live with that.

And yet this sense is also, frequently, truly immanent in that it arises from the proximity awareness of  an earthly being - a cloud, a sky, a flock of birds, a constellation, the smile on the face of another human, a rolling in the sand of a canine friend - and so I perceive that this above-and-beyond is completely triggered by place or being.

An Immanance of Transcendence, if you will.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that frequently - far too often to be chance - when I am connected in my soul to the Love which is holding this all together, I have an odd memory-flash at the same time.

It is at Windsor Castle. In the room which holds the exquisite Dollshouse of Queen Mary. And I am about 10 years old, walking around and around it while the sun plays in from outside the room.
I am captivated by the fine detail in the dollshouse, containing scale replicas of some of the rooms in Windsor Castle itself.

It's quite something to see and I can understand why that one visit has stuck in my memory.
But what I can't quite get is why that situation, that image, comes up so frequently when I am transported by the connection to the Web of all Life.

..Or is there something there, just beyond my understanding?

A replica at 1/12th scale of life....hmmm...

Robin

I have most of my hearing back today - coming and going, it is true, but more here than not-here.

I stepped out on the decking which runs along the West Street side of the office and immediately a little bird flew down to sing at me. A robin.

Later, the same bird was perched, singing, on the second-floor fire escape, while I looked up at it and a pigeon on the third floor railing looked down on it.

Ken Wilber:

That very Witness is Spirit within, looking out on a world that it created. It sees but cannot be seen; it hears but cannot be heard; it knows but cannot be known. It is Spirit itself that sees with your eyes, speaks with your lips, hears with your ears, reaches out with your arms. When will you confess this simple secret and awaken from the gruesome nightmare? 

Can you see the words on this page? Then 100% of Spirit is present, looking out through your eyes. Can you feel the book in your hands? Then 100% of Spirit is present, taking the world in its hands. Can you hear the sound of that bird singing? Then 100% of Spirit is present, listening to that song. 

Spider Dreams

Can we take a single step which we have not mapped out for ourselves?

Is this Creation entire, without the possibility of stepping outside of its bounds?

Are we simultaneously dreaming and being?

For if we are both the dreamer and the dream, no misstep is possible - it's not even possible to formulate that possibility.

Creator and Creation entire, whole, flawless and without boundary.

Styx

Beneath the ground, a river runs.

In the darkness of the mass unconscious, a river flows.

Some of us it flows right through and others of us it flows around, and under - and we get to dip a toe in  it now and again.

Some of us were born with the river within, and some have opened their veins to admit it.

But all of us were born of the river.

It is the source and constant flow of all of Life. Endless, eternal, never ceasing.

To merge with its waters is the sublime experience of death, for from the river's flow arises all that is.

Five rivers do encircle Hades but this river is just the One. Which flows. Underground.


Image: eronzki999

Quantum Nonmechanics

The entire universe must, on a very accurate level, be regarded as a single indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as idealisations permissible only on a classical level of accuracy of description. This means that the view of the world being analogous to a huge machine, the predominant view from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, is now shown to be only approximately correct. The underlying structure of matter, however, is not mechanical. This means that the term "quantum mechanics" is very much a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called "quantum nonmechanics".
David Bohm~ Quantum Theory (1951)

Coming Back to Life

There I was, walking down by the river.

A river running through steep banks of earth and grass in haphazard tufts.

A river not notable for its cleanliness, but neither noticed for its dirtiness - a river not very much noticed at all.

The banks, however, were strewn with civilization's rubbish; bits of paper and plastic, stickers and labels, all in smallish pieces and none of them whole items in themselves.

As I walked, I came across a brown envelope stuffed with ...documents, apparently. Certificates, acknowledgments, results of examinations, testimonials. All of them mine.


I took the envelope unto myself.

There are many methods of soul retrieval, but vivid dreams must be one of the most satisfying.

image:Bags Revolt

Released

Well, as we head into a long Easter weekend here in Joburg, I can only say that it has been an incredibly...interesting week. So far, anyway.

Starting from a base of sudden radical worldwide distrust for all things digital - and Facebook in particular - my personal world wide web experience only slid rapidly downhill from there.

On Twitter, I was wont to engage in many a "conversation" between radfems on the one hand and transgender activists on the other.

Yes - I have a bias in this field. It is the bias which informs me that humans do not change their sex - especially after marrying, siring several children and hitting male menopause - and that this is a broad biological fact (nuanced I'll grant and nothing is quite that cut-and dried but a general rule nonetheless) and that males who believe, against all the evidence, that they were "born in the wrong body" and are suddenly really women have pain and brokenness I can only guess at, but that this disturbance should under no circumstances grant them a free pass into females' safe spaces, dressing rooms, toilets, girl-guide organisations and sports. Not to mention All-Women party Lists.

Well and so at one stage, fed up with the death threats, the vile name-calling and the general abusive-male-type behaviour from the transgender Twitterati, I called a member of the UK Green Party (who call women "non-men") "a broken human being". This earned me, after a couple of days, a 12-hour suspension from my Twitter account.

I went along with the instructions to delete the "violent" tweets and was reinstated. Ho, dear blogger community, but what did I do then but proceed to call the same Green Party transwoman a broken man. 7-day lock out.

I uninstalled Twitter from all my devices and felt an uncommon sense of having been released. From the cesspit, dear Goddess, deliver us. Even if it takes a huge whack across the chops to do so.

Not having my nose in Twitter has hugely cleared my head. I am even leaning towards taking up regular blogging again; you know, that environment in which we can use vastly more than 280 characters to say what we need to say, where our peers are not deranged, where we can witness the exceptional and beautiful use of the English language again and at bloody last.

The same day on which I recognised this growing tendency to return to sanity, I read a comment left, unnoticed, on my mirror blog (aquilakahecate.wordpress.com) from a fellow blogger I hadn't heard from in many years, and rekindled a conversation.
In addition, my wonderful, intelligent and emotionally highly competent son seems to have started up blogging again within the last few days - see my sidebar, "Finding My Routes".

Resolving to notice once more when the universe is trying to get my attention, I leave you, dear blogger community, with a wish-promise to reconnect with you again in the near future - for I believe that this is the future trend for those of us who still cling, however tenuously, to our Earthly sanity.

Nexus

It must have been sometime in Summer. The year-end exams were over and the light was deep and warm on the corner of Jan Smuts and Empire Road.

The Nuclear Physics Research Institute stood behind you two, as I brought the canary yellow Yamaha 400 Enduro to a halt by the pavement on which you were walking.

I don't remember, now, where I was coming from or wither I was bound, that afternoon in 1979. Yet there we met up, the three of us, for what was probably one of the last times in any of our lives.

The little, rounded, snub-nosed blond woman feigned terror of me as she hid behind the lanky, bushy-bearded Physics student she was out walking with.I must have laughed as I removed my yellow helmet - you both always managed to coax a lot of mirth from me.

I forget now what we were talking of. The sun, the Nuclear Physics Institute, the bike, the two of you: it was a Nexus in time and in space, burned into my immortal memory for all the spirals of duration.

Shortly, we went our separate ways. Me, to pursue a life of horrendous dissipation which would eventually end in my death, dismemberment and reforming. You two to - where?

The Nexus stands like a frozen wave now in my mind, reminding me of how the dance draws us together, pulls us apart, spins us off into Eternity with just the sharp-limned memory of a boiling place in time as testament to the meeting and parting of 3 different paths.

Laughing Dove

An example of the Mask of God manifesting in a strange and beautiful way is the pair of young Laughing Doves that has been sharing our bit of landbase for the past couple of months.

As you all know, we already share this portion of Earth with two energetic and devoted PitBulls, who exhibit their essential PitBull-ness on occasion by catching and killing any bird silly enough to strut on the ground too close to them.

Scylla, in particular, abhors flying things, and won't have them in her territory - never mind inside the house. Taranis has been known to kill a Hadeda Ibis and then eat the beak. Please look at the beak on a Hadeda when you next encounter one.

Yet these two Little Ones regularly walk casually into the kitchen when the back door is open, sit in Scylla's food bowl, and scratch around in the soil just centimeters from Taranis' nose. The dogs make absolutely no effort to chase them, letting them do whatever the hell they want wherever they want.

I find this mysterious and lovely.

Just as mysterious and not so lovely are the other-dimensional activities which have been going on inside the house ever since we bought it - ten years ago now - involving missing keys, Mag lights and sundry auto parts.

Now, I'll admit that a lot of this could just be two people who are a touch negligent about putting things down and remembering where. Except that, while Warren does tend to be this kind of person, I most certainly am not. I'm a little OC about knowing where stuff is at all times. So when things go missing and turn up in plain sight a couple of days later, it's a bit strange.

As an example, Warren misplaced his bright yellow Bic lighter a week or so ago. Since I'm in charge of the laundry, I would be the one expected to retrieve it from whatever washed-and-ironed pocket it had buried itself in.

But this wasn't happening, so Warren bought himself a new lighter.

This morning, I see the lighter sitting in full view on top of an employee timesheet Warren keeps for his casual hired man, Alex. Sitting on top of these sheets, very visibly on the study desk. The same desk I had dusted and polished the day before. A bright yellow lighter would not have escaped my notice then - especially as we had been on the lookout for it for some days.

Both Warren and I,as has become commonplace, assumed that the other had found it.
When both of us denied responsibility for turning the damned thing up, we agreed, sighing, that we had "faerie" activity once more in the house.

It's nothing more than a little annoying, and frankly, it serves to keep both our minds open to the possibility that what we register with our senses is often not all that is going on.

Like those Laughing Doves, walking safe and unharmed in PitBull territory.

Blue Pearl

What do you see when you close your eyes?
Behind the eyelids, against the red-black-grey formless designs drifting, what do you see?

I have been having hypnagogic hallucinations for a couple of years now, usually just before the onset of sleep. I see faces, crowds..mostly people I don't know in this life. Not one has ever been threatening. I am not afraid of this phenomenon at all.

But this afternoon - while taking a Saturday after-lunch nap - I suddenly saw, behind my closed eyes, the most  awe-inspiring field of blue.
Well, I say awe-inspiring. It was more like frightening. To my body that is.
This wall-to-wall field of violet blue was an exalted sight to my soul. But my animal body was going "what the fuck was that??"

So I googled around a bit, and found reference to the experience known as the Blue Pearl (or Light) Phenomenon.(That link is a bit flaky-be warned).

This is something I have never experienced before - not in meditation, or shamanic trance, or Pagan ritual. And it has really struck me a little dumb.

As a bit of background, I have to add that I've been suffering from an unusually intense form of 'flu this past week. I wonder if this has anything to do with it? The meds my doctor prescribed are nothing I'm not pretty tolerant to, so I've tentatively removed them from the equation. The actual 'flu virus my body is hosting at present is, however, a more promising line of enquiry...




Pic: from Invoke the Presence

The Wyrd

Dear Terence McKenna; still making me laugh out loud 14 years after his death.

Oh, and he is so right. The Shaman is the interface between the Culture and the Other, in human societies.

Paraphrasing the Bard:

"OK, you...you can go and be weird. We'll give you a hut on the outskirts of the village and -yes - when we need you we'll call you."

I think that there are more Shamans walking the Earth today than at any point in the past. We are experiencing that concrescence which is a hallmark of a great shift in levels of awakening.

Why, I had an hour-long conversation with a Shaman just yesterday, at work. I very much doubt he calls himself that, but that is the effect. You, you go over there and be weird. We'll call you and use you when - not if - we have need.

And so it is perhaps not such a shock to find groups of Pagans and other minority clusters at seeming war with each other: they are each and all behaving like the Shaman of the village, and being weird. It takes a certain level of weirdness to handle magic at after all.

And we so need our Weird ones at this critical juncture in our species' history.

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

I practically grew up on regular episodes of Dr Who.  Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee (the second and third Doctors) were My Doctors.

When we decided to cave in and buy a bloody telly with DSTV , it still took me a couple of years to register that this longest-running of all science fiction series was still showing.

I watched an episode with some trepidation - after all, I categorise Dr Who as a series for children - and then another one, and another. Soon, I was watching every week, and not enjoying the jarring disconnect of switching over to an American-made offering immediately after. The American productions all seem - despite their higher budgets, slicker sets and more glitzy packaging - to be the "children's " programmes, to me.

I don't know if it's because I was fed a good solid diet of daleks and the TARDIS when I was little, but Dr Who still has the ability to draw me in and provoke a deep resonance from somewhere in my Being.

Last night, watching the episode titled  The Rings of Akhaten, I realised that the studio sets on Dr Who have a strong aura of my dreams about them.

So, did my early exposure to this television programme influence the way I have dreamed ever since I was 7, or is there a deliberate effort in the production to appeal to the deep psyche? I don't know. But I do know that Matt Smith is arguably the best Doctor I have ever seen.

In other, not unrelated news, medical scientist Sam Parnia has come out and said it:

".. we might justifiably begin to conclude that the brain is acting as an intermediary to manifest your idea of soul or self but it may not be the source or originator of it…"

I would recommend reading the whole article for a broad take on this ground-breaking pronouncement from a non-religious man of science.

And then again, one of our more notorious character actors has exited stage left after a good long run. It's never easy to play a villian, or villianess, so I guess I'll just wish her shade rest, and may she return as a better person.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Just In Itself

Sometime in this week, between the enforced observance of a holiday which has little meaning for me and the knuckling down to some real, meaty work at my new place of employment - somewhere in there I suddenly realised, with a bit of a shock, that I was actually happy.

I know that sounds a little strange. Sure, I've had my periods of deep grief, spiritual torture and incandescent rage. But I'm still a highly privileged person, able to make my way materially in this culture without too much pain. Although that ability has, let me not deny, come at a price.

But it seemed to me, sometime last week, that I had paid my dues in great gobs by now, and that there was absolutely no reason for me to be a miserable old fart any longer.

Certainly, this culture is killing its landbase -and thus itself - at a rate which will cause us, and all the other life forms on the planet, much sorrow well into the future.

Certainly, the Patriarchy is clinically insane and we are turning on each other like overcrowded lab rats.

That's all very true - and yet...as an individual, I have my health, enough wealth not to have to worry about it, beautiful and beloved companions to share my personal space, and -lately - a job which I take great joy in doing, in an environment which doesn't stretch my survival resources to the limits every single day, the way they were stretched at Osiris Trading.

There is no necessity for me to be grumpy and depressed in my personal self. And yet I think I was giving the impression - to myself - that I was.

Let me face it: I can work to take down the culture as well -perhaps even better - in a happy, joyful frame of mind as I can in an enraged one.

And so I shifted my attitude.And in that shift, I noticed that the veneer of the world became a little more hazy than it had been. Outlines wobbled, and perspectives shifted. Starting to see the illusion of what we're walking around in, from a clear and deeply contented soul-set, has become much easier. I listen more deeply and see more clearly to what is real. And that is the essential god-ness , the precise and unmistakable mark of creator divinity of every last living energy we're swimming among. And that is a further joy, just in itself.

Right Relationship

..and of course, what I totally forgot to say last week, in expounding the virtues of plant medicines, was that it's always important to ask the plant.

Here's Stephan Beyer and Christina Pratt reminding us of why it is important for us as humans to be in right relationship with the world in general and the plants as allies specifically.

One picture which Dr Beyer painted, of healing plants being administered only in hospital settings by authorised medical personnel, was particularly chilling. Is this what we want? And what is it the plants want?

Rather than grasping at possible miracle cures, I suggest that we all take the time to alter our worldview.

Get out there. Sit with the plant, or the spirit of the plant. Ask it what it desires of us. Enough of this casual, anthropocentric disrespecting of other corporeal and non corporeal life forms already. It's a contributing factor in the wetiko disease, after all.

Back To Work

Am I looking forward to going back to work tomorrow?

You bet I am.

The last 3 months have been very productive, in terms of getting house, garden and bakkie sorted out, but more important was the opportunity to rest and refresh my soul.

For the last few years at Osiris traumatised me more than I was aware of. It was not so much that I suffered from bad management in the Fraud department - indeed, I was treated relatively very well - but more the everyday abuse of my colleagues at the hands of one immature and control-ridden Wetiko manager which bit deep and left me tired and angry.

I've never, in 30 years in the workplace, seen such abuse and I don't expect to ever witness it firsthand again. I have learnt much from that close contact with mundane evil - which is, I believe, the point of everything we experience on this plane.

Duality. Good and Evil. Hierarchical forms in action. Materialism, lack of consciousness and the workings of the Wetiko culture.The reasons we keep on showing up down here, eon in, eon out. And the way Love, of course, includes and transcends it all.

On Monday I'm starting at NetCare as a Data Analyst and I'm happy about it, although since it has been over 11 years since I last started as the new girl, it's going to be an interesting day, I'll be bound.

And all the while, I haven't given up hope that my erstwhile colleagues will -each and every one - find their own way out of that particular living hell.

Pic: from Peoples Drawing People

It's Not True

Woke from a sleep of battling demons to a shattering like broken glass.

And in the network of cracks, a slow realisation.

For the past 6000 years, humans have been Doing It Wrong.

Physicists (and we all trust Physicists- they're never wrong, hey?) now reckon that the Universe is like a brain.

It's perfectly obvious if we stop to think about it. From the micro to the macro, and all the scales in between: from the growth of molecular structures to the mammalian brain to the Internet to the cosmos itself, the principle of growth is networking.

Not Pyramidal top-down structures. Networking.

Not oh-my-gods-what-will-we-do-without-authority. People inherently know what to do.
This fear of widescale murder, rape and pillage is something we're enculturated with - it's not true.
Very likely, the evil that men do is caused by the control system, not suppressed by it.

And here I will agree with Neil Kramer when he says that "There are no bad men - just disturbed ones."

Although it can be very, very trying for most of us caught in the grips of control-freaked civilised men. We must still try to remember that they are afraid. Very, very afraid. Their whole world is coming apart in a slow controlled (!) fall, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

For the rest of us, who already know that people know how to Be, the age of polarity is drawing to a close. For all its lessons, I shall not be sorry to see it leave.

A Soul Retrieval Start

"The point is not to think good thoughts about yourself and remember that you're special. That's nice but it won't do any good if you haven't figured out who you really are. You are the perfect, pure essence and love of the Universe. That's what you are. Not what you're made of. It's you. You are the manifested love of the Universe. And your love has a purpose." 

I'd like to preserve that quote by Lisa at Panthea  and engrave it on my heart - at least for a little while.
I'm sure I've mixed my metaphors there but whatthehel.

Last night I dreamt I was at the  flat my Mom and Dad died in more than a decade ago. I was there with my family. We had a small female dog with us, part of the family, very devoted, very loving.

As I dreamt, I remembered that we also had a larger,male family dog, who we had all completely forgotten about for a long time.I felt tremendous guilt and deep sorrow that we had forgotten this boy -personal guilt and very personal, anguished sorrow.

In the dream, I remembered his name. I resolved to find him again and bring him home

Now, this dream may be blindingly obvious to all who read about it here. But believe me, I'm a lot denser than that in my daytime persona. It wasn't until around noon that the meaning hit me.

It's not, as I uncharacteristically assumed on waking, to do with the larger view of Beings in this Cosmos. Or if it is, it's only peripheral. It's directly about me, and a large part of my Self I lost a while ago.

We cannot remember Who we are until we re-member all our parts.

And Lisa said it on her Facebook page later that same day.

If I do not miss my mark,my soul retrieval skills are about to be given a strenuous workout.

Pic: Susan Bien

Walk - Notes From The Numinous

Thanks to Old Dog for dropping this seed , right at the end of his post.

"The door to the prison has been open all along. All we need to do is walk out."
 

 

 

 

Oddly, I can see the door. And I am walking.