It's Good This Way

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One needs to have land, a little piece to borrow from the planet, for your lifetime. Otherwise your going to be paying someone for a place to call your own and regularly owing for it. That’s a major loss of freedom. Then the next thing you need is the freedom to do what you want on that piece of land. Build a life on it. This should be anybodies right. The property should be a price that you can pay at one time so that one does not have the imbalance of payments. If your rich this reality does not apply, because then its only a matter of money, but if your poor this is very real and very right and good. An empty piece of land. Like an artists canvas that your going to paint your lifes story on. Bring what you have and make the start. Starts arent that important because they are so far from the end, which holds all the accomplishments. So, cardboard shack, tent, trailer, or even the open air if need be. And before any of that, get the plants in, so they grow with it all. This is the place your life will be.

It's good to be in a house that grows.A constantly emergy structure. Its good to do your own work. And it is very good to make it like you want it. Some people are satisfied with a tiny shelter, leaving them close to nature, their time and energy free for other pursuits. And some prefer to keep on building, adding, accumulating, improving. Whats important for this process to feel free and good is to not buy more than you can pay for. A few sacks of cement, a beam or two. So as you look around you, you know you don’t owe for it and it is all yours. Nice new building materials and lots of professional labor may produce a quick eye pleasing result, but the feeling that you didn’t pay for it yet doesn’t feel good.
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Second hand materials are in keeping with the times. We have long ago used up more new than we ever should have. A little at a time. Get a room to get out of the weather and store things in, dig a hole for the wastes, and set up a sheltered spot to cook and wash dishes. Haul in some water and get out the kerosene lanterns. Then, when and if you can, get hooked to the utilities. Thru the years this process produces wonders of creation. If you do your land right, you can use it to make your living from, if you don't have another way. Since you have claimed this piece of earth to be yours for your existence then you should be able to do exactly what you want with it with no one elses say so. Home sweet home.

In modern so called progressive societies where almost all is finished before owning or using it and nothing is paid for fully yet and where for many nothing will ever really be theirs but part of their wages, it leaves an emptyness where freedom should have been. A dead end to construct your own life and no way out. An endless existence of no where to belong, to settle and build and have your freedom.
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The word poor has to much thrown into it. It could mean you only own one car and a little house or it could mean you do not own a thing. And there is so much inbetween those two situations. Poor without poverty, poor with balance, poor and natural. The poor for the most part live right. Their main problems being to protect themselves from the rich. A favorite quote, if the poor lived like the rich the world would already be used up. These overstuffed houses, mini mansions, with all the goodies on credit, meeting the deadline so it doesn’t get taken. Working your life away so that the biggest presentage of your money goes for rent or payments. Juggling, ducking, dodging, playing games to keep afloat. Always wanting whats next because all it does is make a little bit bigger bill. It makes a state of mind that’s like a rat on a treadmill. No center.
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Living right is a great contribution and a worthy life. What more can we do than do our part right. Without abuse or greed, without taking part of what we don't believe in. Maintaining our freedom.

Treading

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Life is good even with the evil swirling around out there. I guess maybe that’s what makes it so worthwhile, it being good. Good is work, like diamond mining, you have got to dig for it. Evil is easy, it just spreads all over, common place as clouds. We aren't born anything, except who we are. And that will go according to what we did. Babies can be evil and hate can be a good thing. Listening to some really great music you can kind of get the rhythm for these kind of things. Over and over again. Nice is a good word. The English version of it just sort of short circuits it a bit though. Amable, simpatico, better in Spanish. Simpatico is something you can wrap around yourself and the world has beauty. Wandering along the coast line, seeing what the high tide pushed up and finding treasures. Warm winds and nights that glow. Soft sounds and coyotes howling, smelling the heat of the hills. You know it's there, evil. Reach out to it, remember what you learned, they are doing bad things. But not in my head, not in my back yard nor home, that’s freedom they aren't going to get from me. Free to be good and have it good and take what you want because what you want is good. It's the shame, the comparison. Good is so good, and evil is so evil and the two are for the taking. Harmony, chaos, corruption, balance. It hurts to rot. Sort of a deteriorating feeling, like life is no good anyway so you might as well. You jump in and don't worry about how to stay afloat, your drowning anyway. They are out there killing, right now, sending their armies out, doing it. Those they kill, they die as I think of beauty and good things. Look at the colors on a peacock, he has twelve different types of feathers to adorn him, why is he so beautiful? Life is good, there's the island out front, drifting in the mist, a swell breaking on the south side, no one lives there just goats running free and happy. I wonder if they know about me. Least we forget, while we wait for our doom, life is very very good, so much beauty, so much awe. It feels so good to be alive, like some rare privilege. Chill nibbling at my warmth, but can never penetrate the core. More beauty than one can fathom, amid all this disaster and tragedy, mine to make my life good while the world suffers. The good life, living good, so good. Why do they do all this evil? They don't need to, it would roll right along without it.

Heavenly Mike

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He came into our lives at the right time. My husband needed a watchman for our home here in Mexico. Due to immigration problems it had become necessary to live elsewhere for awhile and due to land disputes we could not leave our property unguarded or it might get jumped. So it was a dilemma.

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One day as we were driving down the highway pondering on what to do we saw an old man walking down it. My husband said I wonder who that is, not being that many walking on that highway. I told him, its our new guard. He pulled to a stop and asked the man, a hobo and an american, where he was headed. Mike, because it said Heavenly Mike on his baseball cap, said Argentina, I have been walking since I left Florida.

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I told him jump in, I will give you a meal and a place to sleep, I could tell he was an honest man. All he had in the world was in two plastic sacks and he had white hair and clear blue eyes. He stayed almost a year. The only thing he asked of us in return for his guarding was the promise to not overload him. He would look a little shakey and worried when he said it. He said he might turn into a revengefull jackass if that happened.

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So he took over the guard shack and just came out to make the rounds and prowl at night. He never changed his clothes the whole time. He had a warm musky garlicy smell about him, not bad. I gave him new clothes once, but he kept them pressed under his mattress wrapped in plastic. He saved everything, even all his empty cigarette packs. He told me many things about his travels, how everyone was good to him and the police let him pass. House wives feed him, even McDonalds gave him a free hamburger. How he slept on benches and drain pipes and cooked on wood fires. He shared his recipes with me. Flour fried in garlic with catsup, a favorite. And how to use ground coffee six times before giving up on it. He said he was a man with a skillet and to not talk to him about anything that could not be cooked in one, that would be useless. He also told me that most people are pushy crackpots and to beware of the handshakers. He spent lots of time straightening his shack and writing things on tiny pieces of paper that when I saw them never made sense.

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Then we moved back in to our abandoned home, to repair and replace and set it up again. He watched, but stuck to his rule, don’t over load me, so we asked nothing of him. A brave handsome man with a beautiful smile. I did not mind him there. Until he started to answer my questions before I asked them. I would think, who took my dishsoap, and he would say, the kids have the soap to wash the car. Then one day I felt my mind a little invaded, and I thought to myself, that is creepy, I wish he would go away and leave my thoughts alone.

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So he came into the house when my husband returned and said, Well, it is time to get walking, before I turn into a revengefull jackass, again. Argentina waits. He packed a plastic sack, refused money, put his new clothes on and carefully packed the old, laid out all the cigarrette packs on the cot and counted them, then walked away forever, turning back just once, to take off his Heavenly Mike cap and tip it at my husband and I in farewell.

Poor and Proud

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He Who Divides and Shares

is Left with the Best Share

(Old Mexican Proverb)

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The word poor means different things for America than it does my country, Mexico. Poor in America means failure and a disgrace that deserves no respect. This is sad because poor should mean just not having much money and nothing to do with the person. Poor in America is associated with the word trash and riffraff and lowlife and never-do-well. Here in Mexico poor means you are a worker and have little money to save as it needs to be spent on daily survival. There is nothing wrong with that, its how it's always been and should be. Living working, making it, but not going beyond what one needs, our share.

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One of the reasons poor in the American way is very sad is because they have been groomed to be misfits and examples, the weak exception that did not make it. Government and society have left no natural place for those who don't want to keep moving higher, or cannot. You can't outlaw a class or type of people, but they have tried. And by outlawing what one needs to be and do in order to live poor and decent, it does not make them disappear. Poor exist, in harmony, or in abuse.

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Poor is natural, it allows one to find the simple in life and make it surround them and fulfill them. Poor is something to be proud of, it means you did not take more than was yours. One can be successful at being poor and make a worthy life of it. But one cannot have this choice in America. You make it good, or you don't, and if you don't your no good. But here in Mexico, it is beautiful, peaceful and balanced. The poor are proud.

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The very essence of America is set up to be rich and richer. It's there in all the details. If one wants to buy small amounts of food and household needs, they cost more. The smaller the more expensive. Here in Mexico one can buy a part of a bag of soap if they cant afford the whole. Toothpastes and aspirins come in such small amounts as needed very cheaply. One cannot hardly find a one burner stove plate, only as gourmet items at fancy prices. Here, one can buy a clay and wire one for just pesos. The banking system is such a con in America to make people participate. I should imagine it is hard to function in America without checks and cards. Here you pay a bill at a bank to the persons or company account and simply fax the receipt it has been done. You don't even need ID. One cannot even buy a used mattress there, it is illegal. And the worst, the poor of America never have a chance for a little bit of land to live their lives on, but here in Mexico, land is free to all the poor who want to use it.

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America has made its poor a disgrace, no one or themselves have respect for them and they have so little hope for a future. Many are in jails being used for slave labor. The poor keep getting squeezed, used, oppressed. Their government gives them enough money so they circulate it and are not dead ends, but nothing else to help their lives. This money traps them, belittles them and makes them beggars who loose faith in themselves. The poor here are respected, a force that keeps the country in balance. It protects the family, home and the worker, it makes life right. The freedom to be poor and proud

Harmony and Tolerance

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The below quote is a comment from a friend posted on Furtherleft Forum. I wanted to try my thinking at answering to it. (Thank you sonshine, and I hope you don't mind.)

"I dream of a wand and the power to make peace thats the LaLa land i live in where people are kind caring and giveing to thouse in need .Like if you need food something to do feed them if thay need work give them if that need love hug them if thay need clothes give them if thay need a home a simple shelter help them why cant we live in harmony and tolerance >?????? someone at least ancer me that ?"

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Answers, if there is questions there must be answers, it would seem. But one so much simpler than the other. And questions can have so many answers. But I tend to move toward the simple ones, like you, sonshine, suggest above. Take care of it, provide for it. What is around us is our responsibility. You seem to have the answer to that one. But what good answers if they don't become realities. It takes the many to believe to make that so. Now, the reality is, not caring. Each for their self is what is preached and pushed into the minds.

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For one thing Americans, as an example, are too what they think of as self sufficient. They probably have adopted this attitude to make up for the fact they are so dependant on the unpleasant ease their government provides for them to the point where they rarely need to think outside the bounds. I watch Americans sometimes down here in Mexico. They want to do as much work as they can to build their own house, to prove something to who or what ever. There goes the local labors jobs. They live here rich and mop their own floors. There goes a maids job. They give to red cross, and the man who delivers their water they give all their left overs too and a good tip too. Charity fulfilled, guilt need not be theirs. Building a high threshold to suffering.

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We don’t know how to take care of our own anymore. With the loss of the family structures strength in modernized people, we step further and further away from it. Our governments do not want us to take care of each other. They would rather provide, so the dependency is on them. People helping each other is a power they can't afford to let free. Modern mans main message seems to be, think of yourself, spend your life on searching for that, there is always more so go after it. And man puts on the blinders and tunes out all that he can that interferes with that pursuit and to hell he says with anyone that gets in the way of it.

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You ask, sonshine, why we can't live in harmony and tolerance, and my best answer, for today, is, there is no profit in it. No advantage for those who want the advantage. The power greedy.

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Take a handful more than your share and you have tipped the balance.