From !!!bmyers@ionet.net Thu Jul 09 03:41:30 1998

Newsgroups: alt.slack

Subject: A New World

From: !!!bmyers@ionet.net (TarlaStar)

Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 10:41:30 GMT

7/5/98 8:08 a.m.

I woke up this morning at 6:59. No lie. I looked over at the clock and

realized that if X-day were a fact, I'd be gone in one minute. So I

got up to pee. I didn't want to be Ruptured with a full bladder. It

would be messy enough without that little addition.

7am came and went, so I pulled on some clothes and went outside for a

little bike ride. There were masses of clouds in the eastern sky and

stretching rays of sunshine shot through them. I rode the bike up the

little hill that leads out of my neighborhood. In my mind I played the

they're-just-late-and-those-are-the-clouds-of-destruction game. Then I

asked myself, 'what would you miss?" And isn't that the point of it

all?

What would you miss and how would you change your world if you had

control? I don't know about anyone else. Sometimes I think we're all

so alike that we must appear as ants to outsiders (if there are

outsiders), other times, I think that I'm the only one who does what I

do inside my head. I've been saying goodbye for a few days now, months

actually, but more intensely in the last few days. We sent our

application off to NZ this week. If we are accepted for immigration,

this will be the last fourth of July I will have celebrated.

I will miss many things, almost all of them natural. Some things I

will miss surround my home. I am very lucky to have the circumstances

that I live in right now. I doubt I will have such space and privacy

again. So I've been saying goodbye. Goodbye to my favorite

restaurants, goodbye to the redbuds and the turtles migrating across

the roadways, goodbye to the big sky and the dusty beauty of a Plains

sunset. I have been letting go and emptying my rut. It's a win-win

situation as I see it. If we get accepted, I have consciously

acknowleged the things I love here. If we don't, I have made myself

conscious of the things I love. I have become aware again of my own

existence.

And we have to keep doing that to ourselves if we really want to live

our lives. We have to become aware, over and over again, of our

existence, of the things we love and get pleasure from. We must be

Ruptured from time to time. We have to pull the wool over our own

eyes, believe that we will leave, die, or otherwise lose everything we

are familiar with in order to renew our love affair with life again.

I will miss the butterfly migration.

Then we have the chance to leave...to go to a perfect place, to find

our dreams. Maybe we discover that we already live in heaven. Maybe we

come to realize that heaven is in your mind, in the way you look at

your world. Or maybe you decide that it's time to make that change

you've only been dreaming of. Maybe it's time to make your own heaven.

I told Sr. Testickler yesterday, "I am chasing my dream and I've

almost caught it. I could be living in the most beautiful place on the

planet, with the person I adore most in the world, doing work that

gives me great joy and satisfaction. What more could anyone want from

their life?" I mean it. I am one lucky animal. I live comfortably,

have a reasonable amount of mental stimulation, and work that I enjoy

which also gives others pleasure. I am healthy, have a mate I love,

and bear few obligations, none of which are onerous to me. This is

exactly what I would demand of heaven; that it stimulate me without

causing me great grief, that I be satisfied, yet still be able to find

goals to strive toward.

This morning I rode my bike along the roads, looking at the cows,

listening to the morning birds calling each other. I watched the

clouds spread out, thin and dissipate. There was no Rupture, yet I was

Ruptured. I saw the beauty of my world once more this morning. I

smelled the dewy grass and cowshit, and the pavement. I heard the

birds, the wheels of my bike rolling against the road, my own breath,

and I was happy to be alive, to be aware, to be exactly what I am.