Denver « The Gypsy Life

Having left the Rainforest of North Carolina and headed west I’ve landed in the middle of the country. I can’t say that travel through Tennessee and Missouri was the least bit interesting and at one point I just wanted someone to please beam me up and out of the sandwich I had become on I 40, as I crawled along with packs of sixteen wheelers for nearly ten hours. Crossing into Oklahoma, well, was a relief, as the trucks moved on toward Little Rock and finally let me out of what had been an interminable prison of fumes.

Sunsets. The best part of Oklahoma especially as they light the sky and on the horizon are mechanical oil wells pumping away with their black silhouettes like ancient dinosaurs still roaming the countryside. But once here, I remembered the years as a child on my grandparents farm but also remembered why this is not the state for me. The simplest way to describe my being the one to feel so alien here is to say that the mindset is overall…confining. Enough said.

I came to Oklahoma to house sit for my sister and hunker down to serious writing. But it took about a week to recover from packing, moving, packing some more, storing the last bits of my stuff, packing the car, saying goodbye to people I love, and then listening to my beloved cat meow for over a hundred miles. I have made this nomadic choice before but this round of simplifying my life in order to create more financial freedom and just more room in general for shifting my focus to my life as a writer, has not been easy. Age? Maybe. A very hard year? Maybe. But that’s not what I really think the difficulty has been. Each of us has our own personal stories we are living but on a global and cosmic stage that exerts a powerful influence on each and every one of us.

I believe that navigating the prevailing winds of change on the planet takes great focus, greater personal energy and impacts all of us at a deep level. Yet I keep orienting to life’s changing landscape as if it were twenty years ago when none of the challenges that currently impact all of us had revved up to the peak we are now facing. And so much of the shift all around us is …mysteriously unseen.

From ever-increasing electromagnetic assault, fear pollution, cellular change at a powerful vibrational level to inner tension from financial stresses, relational endings, health concerns, lost jobs, and the nagging questions of “why am I here and what am I doing with my life?”, these issues, energies and questions are epidemic for a huge part of the population.

These shifting inner and outer tides are no more prevalent than with those who understand that they are “old souls” on the planet for the umpteenth time. So, why is this the case? Is this collective phenomenon pressing on the old soul community harder because they have more tools or a greater commitment to change or transformation?

Is it because the shift that is brewing on our planet is simply requiring that old souls who have incarnated now are more responsible to lead the way out of one collapsing paradigm and into an emergent one of love and inclusiveness? Or is it that old souls are being pushed hard to shed all attachment of any kind, especially to lifestyle and constrictive or uncreative work in the world, so that they are unencumbered as freedom and mobility becomes a necessity in our lives? Yes. The answer is yes to all of the above.

So I confess. As I was swept along in between these loud, lumbering behemoths barreling down the road, containers full of mail, milk, food, tech, cows, horses and cars, I thought more than once, “What the hell am I doing?” And I have thought that many times as I drive from Oklahoma to Colorado.

Jumping into the unknown does not give you wings to soar above the fear or an endless measure of faith to overcome the doubt. In fact, taking a leap of faith because you cannot do anything other than jump, assures you that you will have a daily practice of quelling the doubt and fear, talking yourself into a few more uncertain miles until the Universe very predictably leads you into all the magic and the moments, the people and the places that you know instantly are why you jumped in the first place. Then you get up and do it all over again.

So tomorrow I will be in Denver, the Rockies looming in the distance with their first snowcaps. I look forward to being back to where I lived for eight years and crossing over the border, on through the town of Limon and then the vast vista of the high plans, the rolling sagebrush, and the cloudless sky stretched out before me. When I get there I will breath in the cooler Colorado air and simply say, “So, what will today bring?” I say that most every day now.

As most of you know I have been dancing with our governing body and our legal system for sometime now. All in an effort to renew my driver’s license. Can I say that I had no true idea of how crippled those systems are and how most of the true power for decision-making lies in the hands of people who personally feel quite powerless and who hate their jobs and are ruthlessly underpaid. So, they tend to be ruthless with me.

These clerks in life stand between a person needing to do some legal transaction that could change their life forever and getting a result. This clerk can make or break whether you achieve your goal with one swift glance at your pile of paperwork, raising their thin eyebrows at you in disapproval or can brandish one signature on a paper that you hold in your hand like a sacrificial offering, only to be put in a pile to be never seen again, like a cast away orphan that no one will adopt.

So, now four months into my surreal process of getting my driver’s license renewed, I have not only been told I am a “one of a kind case” but my fabulous and accomplished lawyer Martha from Denver has this week been branded a full- blown “troublemaker”. You must understand that neither Martha nor I look like street people, x-hippies, drug addicts or criminals. We look well put together and between us have umpteen years of higher education, I am a Harvard Grad, Martha 22 years as a lawyer and we are kind and considerate. In the end none of it matters. I might as well be Charles Mansen.

Since last writing I have flown to Denver, taken FBI fingerprints, supplied a second set of finger prints for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and been told that due to the use of curling irons as a teen they did not think my fingerprints would pass the scrutiny of either Bureau. Hmmm….what was it about those little swirls at the tip of my finger that was so unacceptable that I might just not be fingerprint “worthy”? And if I am not fingerprint worthy then what does that mean? It means I don’t get to drive.

I then, off the record, drove like a little old lady in the slow lane and back roads to get to Court on the day before Thanksgiving. I waited for my knight in shining armor, Martha. I sat inside this beautiful guilded domed building called Jefferson County Court House tucked up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The building was affectionately referred to by the locals as the “R2D2” building. You get the idea.

As I waited, I saw a marble bench with a life size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, the father of our country and our legal system, sitting on the bench with quill in hand. I thought, “I will sit next to him and meditate on the outcome of my day, can’t hurt since maybe his energy would rub off on me”. So Thomas and I sat there like an old familiar couple as every passerby from nose ringed and tattooed young people, to a group of Mafia looking guys that might have just been lawyers, passed me all saying, “Well he sure doesn’t talk allot does he?” The metaphor very apropos.

So, I sat in court with my lawyer who on that day had lost her voice too. Now, I find that simply perfect since I had “No Voice” with anyone in the system up to this point and called her hoping her voice carried more weight than mine. When the day we were hoping to plead our case in court arrived, she was not talking very much and in the end we were told we needed to file more and more papers and get fingerprints and generally jump totally new unnecessary hoops to satisfy someone down the chain of command that no one really knew the name of.

Then last week I hit the end of the line of options. The last straw, the last attempt, was to file an appeal and go to District Court….now let me remind you that this was not to prove I was not the Uni-Bomber, not to win or lose some battle for my child, or right to put a fence up and keep my pack rat neighbors at bay. It is not an appeal for the kind of justice we need and is only fair in our country to protect someone, to award a parent custody or to make sure child support is in fact paid. It is an appeal to get the simple act of spelling a name correctly accomplished, so that the Social Security Administration can breathe a sigh of relief that in fact I am who I say I am.

The papers were filled out while my lawyer Martha drank hot tea for her throat and gargled and took aspirin, so she could meet Thanksgiving head on the next day. She took time to run the gauntlet of absurdity while blowing her nose and feeling generally miserable and get down to the court to file a motion to appeal. She was told in no uncertain terms “that no one had ever attempted to appeal a name change document before!” Am I surprised?

So, my gypsy saga continues. I have no license, I cannot drive to the corners of the earth and in fact may truly need to buy a Gypsy wagon and a good mule. Anyone know where I can buy one? Or maybe a nice looking Chauffeur.