Dry Shoes

My foot slips off the log and I hesitantly look down to see which one.
I am off balance and shaking like crazy.  "Go get help"  I calmly cry out, hoping my quieting voice tempers my footing which is 20 feet above the creek below.

At first I panicked and screamed "GET MOM!", and to think just minutes before my feet had confidence when they decided to cross the higher log.

The first steps were easy as I began my crossing.  I can do this.  The other kids would never attempt this, opting for the regular route just steps away.  Slipping off the regular log just gets you a few bumps and bruises, possibly wet runners, but slipping off the higher log you surely will die.  And this is what I am thinking as I stand dead still in the middle of it, untouched and untravelled, as I suddenly discover.

My feet death grip the rotten pine that has toppled and landed in the middle of the ravine, suspended only by dead roots on one side and languished tree tops on the other.  In between a worn and smooth pathway has been gilded by seasons, allowing my renegade foot to firmly reattach itself to it's spine.

Most of the other kids have run off, leaving me stranded and the contest winner.  My sister, at first, teases me to get a move on, but I can't.  I drop my eyes briefly towards the depth, but my knees remain locked, my arms waver and flop in the air as if conducting orchestra, trying to maintain harmony and even calm.

I am alone and the wind is heavier in the emptiness.  I feel it's weight bending me.  Pushing me.   The sunlight is also being pushed away into shadows of tree trunks and caverns combining into one big patch of black.  I twist my head and my sister has now straddled the log and is shimmering herself towards the sunset, towards me.

Richard's mom is calling him in for dinner.  Their backyard is close to the ravine and I can smell what they're having.  Corinne inches her way closer to me, yelling "SIT DOWN.  SIT DOWN".  I am frozen stiff and can't move a muscle.  All around me is lush evergreen.  And bacon.  She is telling me to sit my bum down and bump my way backwards to the edge.  "I will be right here", she promises.

I close my eyes, realizing no one, not even my sister,  has run off to get my mom.  I keep my eyes shut and can hear the creek below.  I actually believe I can hear salmon spawning and currents jostling amongst the boulders for the best path to the river.  Then I heard the river burst into the ocean, then the ocean burst into the horizon fading away.

My eyes opened just long enough to fall down.

We shimmied our way back to the edge, together.  It's dark now and we're late and will probably be "grounded" for a week with no T.V.   At least, Corinne concludes, our shoes are dry.

Suddenly

I felt safe.  That's the last thing I remember.  Being safe, secure and in control.  When I opened my eyes I realized I was floating horizontal and just inches away from rock bottom.  My knees banged against the rocks, the branches and twigs.  It was a sunny, hot day and I felt safe in the gentleness of it's summer.

We purchased two huge inner tubes, huge.  Not baby floaty type toys you take to the neighbourhood swimming pool. No. We tied those mean action drifters from an army surplus store with water ski rope lines, a case of beer and our two young kids.

We cast away into the middle of the river like everyone else.  Our cars neatly parked in the middle of no where, in the dusty heat of forest fire embers.  Daniel tied the lines, and we would float in pairs along the other pairs of families holidaying in the wilderness.  Our agenda is to drift downstream, maybe catch white foam, an eagle, possibly a bear.  All I want is calm and to get drunk.  Maybe a tan.

Suddenly.

As I was pushed downstream the salmon drifted with me, eye to eye, watching me tumble in the river's current.  I gasped for air left and right and he followed me.  His gills kept pace with my heartbeat, swallowing air until I reached the beaver dam, when my foot caught in twisted branches and caged me in the soup of mountain's thaw.  The water is transparent and I can see the sky and clouds outline dead trees floating above me.

By now I haven't breathed in 20 seconds, possibly more.  My head spins and jerks in the watery turmoil, and I gain 10 seconds of air here, another 5 seconds there.  I am wearing a life jacket that keeps my torso afloat, my shoulders, my arms, but it doesn't save my airway.  I fight to keep my head up high in only inches of angry river.  I am searching for the salmon.

I am pulled down deeper.  How deep can this river go.  How deep before I drown and am lost forever.  My hands catch rock but they are slippery and I can't hold on.  They are so fucking slippery!  Branches.  I catch branches and they are so slippery.  How deep do I have to go before I am forgiven and remember to jump up.

"MOM". Over and over again.  "Mom, jump!".  I hear faint sounds.  I look up for one more breath towards the picnic sky and birthday party bubbles, I look up and she is blowing me kisses.  I grasp her last kiss and return to summer.

Yellow Smiley Face

I picked up my husband's mobile phone and scanned through his text messages.  I just learned how to do that recently.  Everyone around me has an inbred mentality about this stuff, except me.  Where was I when all this technology trampled on my old school smarts.

I read messages such as "love you, drive safely" or "miss you lots", and yellow circles that smile.  There are heart shapes and more yellow circles, love you, miss you, xxx.  They weren't from a secret lover.  No. They're from our son.  To his dad.

Brandon doesn't text me that sort of stuff.  I have a home phone, a land line only, which is as useless as teats and spring lamb to slaughter.   Both my kids communicate with their thumbs on tiny keyboards.  I use to get car rides home from teen skate using my thumbs.

If my kids had to choose who to live with, they would pick their dad. I probably would, too.

They have long forgotten me.  The one who brought them to work, let them use my computer to play games. Let them drink hot chocolate, make hot chocolate.  Bought them train sets just because.  Came back to get them from daycare because they banged fists over and over again on the window, crying for mommy.  I came back.

But if I couldn't go back, I called at least 10 times a day.  I still call at least 10 times a day, every single day, which is probably why they hate me so much.  Dad text messages instead.

And he also bought all the useless crap.  The memorable stuff.

Yellow smiley face.  Yellow smiley face.  Yellow smiley face.

Intuition and Quantum Physics: Who Knew!

There are no accidents because we are all connected as one.
 "Spooky actions at a distance" is what Einstein called it
== the "entanglement theory" or instantaneous communication.

This occurs when two particles are entangled, any change to one
of the particles creates an instantaneous change in the other,
regardless of the distances separating them.

I remember a trip my family took to Sechelt.  My dad decided
to go for a nice drive along the coast.  As we travelled further
away from town, my mom became anxious and nervous.

As we drove further away, my mom became panicky.

She pleaded "let's go back.  I don't like it here".  She said
something bad was ahead, something evil.
Dad shrugged it off and continued driving anyway.

By now my mom is screaming, "Turn back now!
There is something wrong ahead". My mom's panic lessened with every
mile back to town.  Then she was fine.

Was my mom picking up a signal from the Big Bang.  A connected
wave of thought, like radio waves, electromagnetc waves radiating
out into space. Did my mom pick up a frequency of evil,

previous, past or present.

My dad was angry we didn't get to see the mountains.  He believes
in physical proof, not some gut wrenching feeling.

At the quantum level and subatomic particles, most physicists think
that it is all chance and randomness. Probabilities rather than certainty.
So I suppose my mom probably thought something terrible would happen
to us, and she was certain of it.

"God does not play dice.", said Einstein. He was not willing to
give up the notion of classical physics. (Neither was my dad as previously noted.)
He proposed that there must be hidden factors, what he called hidden
variables, which really control events at the quantum level.

Einstein devised a thought experiment to show that the usual
understanding of quantum mechanics is incomplete. It pointed out a
paradox. If particles are governed by chance, then some of the
predictions of quantum theory would also indicate that particles
far apart from each other do not always behave independently.
The quantum potential is able because it contains “active information”
about the entire system.

In effect, it allows the particle to “JUST KNOW” the big picture.
In my mom's case, better safe than sorry.

Physicist John Bell, influenced by Physicist Bohm, proved
theoretically that to extend determinism to subatomic particles would
necessarily imply what has come to be called"non-locality", that particles
far apart from each other would have to be connected or
communicate at faster than the speed of light.

And that's why my mom insisted I be taken off the heat lamp at the hospital.

The nurse said I was too cold, only 3 hours old.  My mom sensed,
felt, connected to me as my blood began boiling inside, cooking.
She knew - three rooms away.  The nurse tapped the gauge above the heat
bed.  It was broken and was set on low, though it radiated extreme heat.

O what an entanglement web we weave.

Even though the quantum potential reinstates causality, it leaves
us with a universe very different from the commonsense world we
experience, or at least the one I could have easily missed out on had it not
been for my mom's refusal of objective reality.

The universe could not have happened of its own accord.

It relies on  the law of causality, and the complexity of the universe.

We affect each other with a signal of some sort, a communication,
that travels between us.

A reality where we, a bunch of particles are strung, really close together.

Our fantabulous! brain, such as we are .....

I haven't blogged for awhile.  My 7 followers have dwindled to 5; one died in her sleep and the other is an atheist and has mysteriously disappeared.

Did my cat know he was dying.  Was he looking forward to seeing me again in Heaven.  Nope!  His brain was too small and genetically hard wired to survive as a cat.  Lick, lick, sleep, lick lick.  Mice.

As humans, we are hard wired, too.  

We are unique.  We are aware. 

We are aware we will die.

And our coping mechanism is to create religion and beliefs that keep us alive, forever.