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RIP, Beau. After 48 hours of vigilant attendance and hospice care, and after every attempt to save him including veterinary house calls in his final hours, our beloved canine family member passed away Sunday afternoon in the company of his three humans. No longer limited by the constraints of their material bodies, he and his caprine brother, Casper, are hanging out together again in a sacred and transcendent space in our hearts. ♥

I’ve been on a writing hiatus since the beginning of August in order to facilitate moving my family into a new home.  Only this weekend are we finally moving things from storage to the house. Tomorrow will be the third and final day of loading and unloading a 20-ft truck and not enough room in our small house for all of it to stay. It’s time to simplify and rid ourselves of so much clutter. A yard sale will happen next weekend, and probably the following weekend or two as weather permits. We have way too many things to go through to do it all at once.

While I intend to write intensively in October, in the mean time I will publish some poems here over the next few days that were written earlier in the summer.

I’m officially back on duty as Secretary on the Board of Directors for the Friends of the Orcas Island Public Library (FOIL). After a leave, I can now attend the monthly board meetings and volunteer again during the week. Next month is our annual meeting for all  members and there’s a bit of work to do.

Remain resonant for some poems to follow!

m.

After one personal crisis after another, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My family finally has a home – albeit much smaller than ideal – on this paradise of an island where we live. So, among other things, we are moving this week.

My children’s story book is coming along and hope to publish in November.

I have two active short story series I’ve posted which I need to complete.

New poetry will be coming in September.

And I’m planning an article on imagination and manifesting reality with a book recommendation.

Stay tuned!

PS: Now, if I had written “Remain resonant!” – would you have picked up on that? I like the sound better. Although the imperative use of the verb is naturally demanding. Perhaps I could use the optative perspective in the subjunctive mood: “May you always remain resonant!” That works for now.

May you always remain resonant!

We live as we breathe, moment to moment, and our actions define us. To serve mankind, what we do now is all that matters and history is only important insofar as we have learned from it, from our mistakes in the past, and those of our ancestors. Any thoughts we have which may potentially serve mankind in the future may be instilled in our children. To that aim, we have two paths. The first is that we must lead by example and teach by our manner of living – by our manner of loving – during the formative years of their lives. The second is to leave them a documented history of their family, their culture, and the philosophies their parents have lived by in bringing them into this world. Consider this a documented legacy a reference for our descendants and anyone else if it has been made public.

Vladmir Megré, author of the Ringing Cedars book series, has made an effort to spread the idea of a ‘Book of Kin’ or “The Family Book” presented to him by his Siberian recluse, Anastasia. In the series the ‘book of kin’ in ancients days (referred to as Vedic times) implied a ‘living’ book exemplified by creating a space of love for a family where deeds can reveal as much as words. But, Anastasia (through Megré’s authorship) also inspires the idea of starting physical books now to preserve the future of our children. In my quoting a brief excerpt from Book 6, “The Book of Kin” and omitting a little from the dialog between ellipses , Anastasia says,

“The books read by Man today include many that are devised with a specific aim in mind — namely, the distortion of history and of the meaning of life. Many false dogmas are especially designed to disorient Man in space. This is not easily discernible all at once. But clarity comes directly a son reads a book of his forebears, which his father and mother have continued personally for him…

…the Book of Kin. In it a mother and father will write for their son and daughter about what is the most important thing that needs to be created for happiness in life. The children will continue to record the Book of Kin. There will be no wiser and truer books for families anywhere on the Earth. All the knowledge of their pristine origins will be poured into it.”

“But how, Anastasia, how can knowledge of one’s pristine origins turn up in a book which people are only beginning to write today? Where are they to find such knowledge? You said that the culture of our forebears, their books, were all destroyed.”

“Those that will begin to write already have this knowledge concealed within themselves. It is preserved within each one of us. When people think deeply and begin to write not just for anyone, but for their children, all the knowledge of their pristine origins will be revealed within them and come to light.”

I intend to create my own version of a ‘book of kin’ which as of now will most likely take on a three-volume format. The first volume will be a family history including the heritages of my mother’s and father’s families (their family trees), biographies of my mother and father, and their individual philosophies as presented by their ways of living during my lifetime. The second volume will be my autobiography, as extensive as I can make it with all that I can recall which I think is pertinent for future generations to consider. (I will, for example, not include the brands of toothpaste I used throughout my life.) The third volume will be about my philosophy starting with the nature of the universe from my perspective, and proceeding from that dance of physics and metaphysics, to the subjects of love, morality, religion, politics, education, and all of the complex conjugates that result from this interconnected web we have tried to dissect and classify.

The first volume of my “Book of Kin” will probably not take very long depending on how much other writing I am doing. The other volumes by their very nature will be evolving until my death. However, I do wish to establish a reasonable goal of completing the first edition within five years.

On July 13th 2018, SKA Africa, the new radio telescope array in South Africa released this most detailed and exquisite image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way to date.

Photo: SKA South Africa

The image width corresponds with a distance of approximately 1000 light-years.

See the SKA media release for how the image is made from the data.

The black hole with a mass of 4 million times our sun is roughly the bright spot located in the middle of the image and appears to be 200 light-years across. Looking at it in detail one cannot help being just awestruck by the smoke-like wisps of energy/matter which seem to be on the order of 1 or 2 light-years in diameter.  Just what these filament-like structures are is still a mystery to the scientists.  I find the spatial sense and dynamics of it all to be most humbling.

While studying these images a hypothesis occurred to me. It isn’t a new thought, but I had never before tried to formulate it insofar as publishing an article about it. So here goes.

I haven’t studied the physics of wormholes and never really doubted that they exist somewhere in the cosmos. Fundamentally, they are bridges between two points in the fabric of space-time. What if all of the galactic centers in the known universe are connected, not by other structure like wormholes which have some form and definition in themselves, but by some other intrinsic quality of space-time. Just as a klein bottle has only one surface (the inside and outside are all one surface), could it be such that the very center of every galaxy is one and the same point – one source of everything? The monad?

…food for thought and the subject of future exposition!

 

Several years ago, a friend of mine asked if I had read the Ringing Cedars Book Series, suggesting that it would resonate with me regarding its spiritual qualities and back-to-nature theme. I had never heard of it let alone read it. Since among my library of reference books there were hundreds of books still awaiting a thorough read, I thought I would probably never get to them. However, when the nine-volume set (there are now ten) appeared before me in the flesh several weeks ago as fodder for an upcoming library book sale, I took it as a sign that I should read it now – and not just read it, contemplate and meditate on its substance. Despite setting aside a dozen non-fiction books which I should read over the summer of 2018 which would foster one my major writing projects, I committed to reading this series by Vladimir Megré first.

In brief, this is a book about nature and spirituality, a philosophy of living, loving and co-creating. It is portrayed by the author, a simple Russian entrepreneur, as his true and faithful experience of meeting a recluse in the Siberian forest. This most beautiful and goddess-like woman whose name is Anastasia is so fully actualized, she exhibits the wisdom of all the ages as well as apparent supernatural abilities, all of which she says is present in every human and actualized once we raise our awareness.

At the rate of reading one book every other day, I’ve just finished the fifth book out of the nine and I cannot wait to document the potentially life-altering material presented so far. I’m not going to review the series which has been published for nearly two decades now, first in its original Russian and then distributed worldwide in other languages including, of course, English. I will not write with respect to what I like about the books – which is most everything – or what I don’t like, only a few criticisms, mainly with regard to language, translation choices. What I mean to express here is why and to what extent this series is important to me.

Much of what she says resonates deeply within me, affirming my heartfelt intuition about so much. Regardless of what happened to the author, he was divinely inspired to share all of this information which I feel is of utmost importance for human beings to ascend spiritually before plundering themselves into material oblivion. Nature provides everything we need while our technocratic endeavors drive us further away from who we are – our true essence.

When I finished the fourth book, I was inspired. That volume had some remarkable revelations for me regarding my magnum opus, a work in progress. It  will be instrumental – inspiring to say the least – for dialog in the first few scenes of my epic historical drama which is under development.  My play which takes place in Renaissance Europe contains the most fascinating blend of historical characters.  The relationships between the characters has been fleshed out, and moreover the connection of their ideologies was firmly cemented in my mind after reading this book. There is amazing synchronicity at play!

Suffice it to say that the series has made such an impression on me that I intend to read this series next year in its original language, Russian. I studied Russian as a senior in high school. Because I’ve I pursued other languages since then, my reading comprehension in foreign tongues has spread quite thin. So, I intend to begin studying Russian online in the fall to establish reading fluency. I’ve the necessary textbooks at home as well. This will be fun to say the least.

It has been the most inspiring journey so far. Changes are afoot and welcomed. I am immersing myself in nature again and for all my family has been going through lately, I needed this spiritual grounding, a serendipitous and relevant follow-up to the last book I read, Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.

So, if you are curious, pick up the first book titled Anastasia and absorb it cover to cover, for it is a very easy read. What you get out of it depends on how open your mind and heart are. Your potential is truly infinite!

Official Web Site for the Ringing Cedars Book Series

The ferry home carried with it not only passengers but revelation. With eyes free to scour the horizon I instead stared downward, entranced at the highly reflective crests of complex waves that covered the dark water’s surface.

I was almost convinced that I was looking at an oil painting which was moving with undulating, intermingling and conjugating colors when I suddenly understood through this visual realization that life and art are one. No, this gorgeous dynamic work is not a painting. It is the Salish Sea and it is dancing!

Science uses the term “interference pattern” to describe the results of interacting wave forms. In other words, any manifestation in reality is ultimately a resultant – a combination of wave forms that mutually “interfere” with each other. The word interference in English has such negative connotation – something getting in the way, preventing, hindering, etc . But, the negative connotation is not necessarily present in its derivative, Latin. Its component forms, “inter” meaning “among or between” and “ference”, a participial form, meaning “carrying” from “ferre”, meaning “to carry.”

This dance became apparent somehow as I grasped the constituent waveforms in their own form and rhythm as if they were the parts of a symphonic musical score. Each wave pattern with its amplitudes and modulations was a single instrument and other instruments followed as overlaying water flows varied direction, angled from the single melody line of propagation – some acute, some obtuse, together harmonious. And, in a second direction away from the melodic line, I saw a bass rhythm which appeared as a dark glass-like relief surface moving slowly away from me while water was flowing overtop, toward and behind me. The ‘glass’ had a motion and definition, an opacity, quite other than the water. Then I noticed yet another ‘instrument’, as if a second kind of liquid or vapor having a viscosity different from water, flowing in third direction. I could almost hear it; the sea was awash with harmony and counterpoint and it had lifelike character. It was more than a symphony; it was a ballet!

I must write a poem about this.

Dear Ms. Winfrey:

Welcome to Orcas Island!

My family moved to Orcas Island in 2010 for a simpler life. After camping on the island for the previous two summers, I knew then that this island was spiritually calling me home. And so, now at age 52, I often tell people that I have come to Orcas Island to die, mind you not for 40 more years! If, as a chiromancer once told me, I should live to be 92 then this will be my physical habitat where I will, in the words of Thoreau, “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

What belongings my wife (Mariah), son (Thian) and I had were stored courtesy of family until we got settled. We had little money and no work lined up. That was actually the plan. For three months we lived in a tent on property courtesy of an islander. Our son entered the public school in 2nd grade. My wife and I each sought employment and gradually moved into an apartment and finally a rental house in 2012.

After living for six years in one rental house – the longest duration that either my wife or I lived at a single address – we were required to vacate. Because of financial reasons the owners had to sell and we were not in a position to purchase the home. This could not have arrived at a worse time for us financially or emotionally.

My wife has stable employment and I am a freelance writer and a stay-at-home dad (although our son is almost 15 years old now and quite a capable young man). We have operated with a fixed income and have been spared the gouges of rental rate hikes over the years. Now, despite the fact that we have a modest rent budget of $1200/month, there is no suitable housing on our island for that rate. In fact, there have been only three or four, 3-bedroom houses advertised in the last six months. Astonishingly, even studio, one and two-bedroom housing is equally rare.

The housing crisis on Orcas is driving low-income employees off the island ironically resulting in job opportunities for those seeking to fill those vacancies. As long as we’ve been here, it seems “the Orcas way” is for an islander to have three jobs and it is quite often talked about humorously. People do what they need to survive here. However, the culture is changing. In addition to a large number of summer homes that lie vacant most of the year, Airbnb is reducing long-term, year-long rentals even more on our small humble island. Fewer places available for permanent residents lead to an economic problem that affects everyone from local business owners to tourists.

Madrona Tree, LLC, a company you are associated with has recently acquired a private residence and, in addition, an associate of yours, Bob Greene is apparently invested in some commercial properties on the island (see attached news article). While this seems to have caused some gossip in the community, the feelings are not necessarily good. As it is, each year brings a seemingly increasing number of tourist footprints and traffic. And while I personally welcome a regular periodic stream of visitors, most of us do not wish to see so much commercial growth that nature here gets uprooted for the West Coast’s version of Martha’s Vineyard.

There is, as always, another perspective. What seems to be a problem can be an opportunity for someone with your compassion and business acumen. This island needs low-to-medium income housing and, with the right investor at the helm, Orcas Island could thrive instead of struggle. Think of 10 or 20 acre parcels with affordable “tiny homes” that people can actually own or rent-to-own. This is community building at a fundamental level.

Ms. Winfrey, I want Orcas Island to thrive, yet, remain the peaceful “Walden” we islanders consider home. Will you help us?

Michael Armenia

Physical Address: the guest room in the basement of a kind friend’s home until we find housing

Mailing Address:
PO Box 323
Eastsound WA 98245

http://www.islandssounder.com/news/the-truth-about-oprah-winfreys-reported-land-purchase-on-orcas-interview-with-the-realtor/

I am first and foremost a philosopher. Literally, I am a lover of wisdom (from Greek, philos means loving and sophia means wisdom.) I have at my core a primal need to know everything, like an omniscient divine being who has lost himself, and so I pursue knowledge. But, knowledge is not equivalent to wisdom. I think of wisdom as applied knowledge. Anyone can obtain information, but information alone is impotent. What one does with it, can be insipid or magically transformative in one’s own life and/or the lives of other people. The acquisition of knowledge begins when one picks up a book (of course, not merely a common and profane book, but one of considerable virtue. And the book is only one means, a symbol, of education.). But, wisdom doesn’t come until after one puts that book down and, having acquired new intelligence, moves forward productively, or perhaps in more modern vernacular, pays it forward. This is, to me, what it means to live a productive life.

I am a material manifestation of spirit. There is a unique quality that makes me an individual among other manifestations, and I often use the word, soul, to communicate this aspect. Yet, I do not consider my soul as a separate entity from all other souls, other manifestations of spirit. If the cosmic spirit/material manifold were a thread – what I call The Great Thread in my meanderings – a thread that is infinitesimally thin and infinitely long with no beginning and no end, as a circle with an infinite radius, my soul is merely a knot along its path. Every form in the cosmos is a knot on this thread, some more complex than others; animals are more complicated than vegetables which are in turn more complicated than minerals, elements, and atoms.

I have been graced with this opportunity, of living as a human, to experience what life is like when perception is limited to four dimensions (three perceived as physical and one temporal). And I believe that the purpose of my existence is to process my experience of reality and transform it into something that can exist in form outside of my soul’s consciousness. To live and express outwardly is to love and to share. This brings me to the next sense of who I am to be in this incarnation – an artist.

I am an artist. My path to becoming an artist has, however, been quite protracted and my biography to this point is not the subject of this essay on which I consider to be my place and purpose on Earth in the 21st century. One thing that has been consistent from my birth is that I am (my soul is) fed by the process of creation. The process is my sustenance, not the byproduct, the journey, not the destination. However, the byproduct is my contribution to humanity. It is, therefore, essential that in sharing my life’s experience (as a knot) with others (the Great Thread), I must never veer too far away from my artistic endeavors, lest my soul should whither and this form of me should die.

When I say that I am an artist, I am most commonly asked about my medium. I would never limit myself to a single medium or, for that matter, any particular form of art. As a visual artist, everything that can be seen is my media. In the performing arts, the stage is my canvas for drama. As a composer, whatever can issue sound is an instrument. As a writer I have previously considered only non-fiction as productive for me and I have published (albeit in small quantities) essays, reviews, poems, and a non-fiction book. I’ve recently awakened to the notion that fiction can be a formidable art form as a vessel for wisdom as it has been with classical literature since the times of Ancient Greece and Rome. Besides the story itself, there can be any number of layers of subtexts woven into intricate tapestries conveying anything the imagination can conjure.

In fact, I have recently come to the conclusion that to be a fully actualized human, one must be a wholehearted and steadfast artist. And to be a great artist, one must be a skilled alchemist. One may have the common misconception that art is limited to contrivances like paintings, sculptures and other works that have aesthetic appeal. But, true art is merely finding and expressing form and inciting thought or emotion by the transformation of one or more substances, often but not always offering a fresh perspective. Repeatedly providing a gastronomic delight to diners in a restaurant can makes a chef quite the culinary artist. Indubitably you have heard of the ‘culinary arts’. Well, I assure you than anyone has the potential to be a great artist – a hair stylist, an auto mechanic, a clerk or a dishwasher. Success is simply an alchemical mix of substantial input, process quality and the legacy you leave for The Great Thread.

Finally, I come to who I am now – a writer.

My creative life, my being, was transformed during 2012 with the production of Bertolt Brecht’s play, “The Life of Galileo.” I’ve been working on my magnum opus for over four years now and it remains in its infancy. With an epic historical drama of love intrigue, religion, and philosophy in Renaissance Europe at the crux, it has become a much larger work that includes the visual and performing arts. The first limited edition tome will include the play I’ve been writing, essays, a musical orchestration, set design, graphics and more. Once done, it will be my source for a film treatment of a series I would like to produce (for the likes of Netflix et al). At the moment, I am cathartically processing some of my life’s hardships this year by writing a children’s story book which I will self-publish hopefully before Thanksgiving and a biography that will likely take longer.

This is who I am. This is who I must be now. If I am to give anything to humanity in this incarnation, it will be done so by means of paying forward what I have gathered while existing as this knot in The Great Thread.