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The leaf reminds me of a church window, of the glass that glows so brightly on sunlit days. I trace the veins with one finger, following nature's architecture from stem to tip. I lift it to the light and let my eyes travel over it. So broad to catch the light, so thin to let the air flow in and out, and just like the church - built a "brick" at a time into a beautiful part of life.
The queen, in person, is much like the king. In our kingdom we have no ideas such as the queens of your fairytales; our history is one of egalitarianism, strong leaders with a sense of duty, sacrifice and protection. So, she had better role models I suppose, athletic women, all capable of taking command. We find your role models for women worrisome, so much psychological battery to starve and be weak, together with well intended calls for strength bringing cognitive dissonance - psychological torture en mass. With healthy role models, children learn easily what a lifetime of school cannot teach. They see our queen - a healthy, strong, decision-maker, freely cooperative not subordinate - and they become it too. Surely you know how natural learning works? We do.
Thus, we know the importance of having the right queen, not by blood or birth, but by who her spirit shows her to be, by her authentic self. Our queen is loving, empathic, clever, artistic, spiritual, practical, athletic, motherly and devoted to the service of others. She is honest, forgiving, compassionate, joyful and grateful. She is a humanitarian, an environmentalist and full of life. Our queen is a scientist, a writer, a philosopher and athlete. She is brave, giving and nurturing. She is all these things naturally.
Your monarchy has been entitled, unhappy, dysfunctional, aloof, unfit - obsessed with wealth, power and status... and look what you got. On our planet, we have a healthy society because we learned basic biology better than you, it's the foundation for everything. Natural God given leaders provide the north on your moral compasses, they are as the stake to the tomato vine, the anchor for the nation. A queen will have both great wisdom and a child's heart. She can live in modest homes, sleep under trees, eat ordinary food and still have the respect of nations. I wish you had leaders as such as ours, to heal yourselves and your planet... but perhaps you do, can you find your queen?
These moments pass as photographs, each morphing so perfectly into the next. My inner eye sees each water-petal among the many, airborne in the briny breeze as translucent confetti. Then as if the almighty pressed "play" - they continue their journey in real time, companions in companionable silence. For in this time of rain, sky and sea become one.
My dreams dwell not upon this earthy plain, yet soar to the clouds and are reborn in the blue above, beneath stars who always shine. So whilst they are the beauty above, an ever changing canvas of silvery swirls, as soft as the finest of cloth - they are simply a thing to fly through as I become heaven-bound.
Racism hijacks the fear centre of the brain - it hardwires the image of the one you are taught to fear straight into the same part of the brain that ancient man needed to run from, or fight, a predator. Yet we are no longer cavemen and the use of hate over love is something ugly and cruel. It is counter to our creator's wishes; it is against our duty to love and show compassion. So resist the call of fear and hate. Use your higher mind and the emotions that bring a sense of love; for with evocation of such love comes bravery, nobility and the right kind of pride. It is then we can feel as one national family in all our ethnicities and faiths.
The stress you get from the media, from anything, is a bit like running too many files on a computer. It slows things down, stops you from being able to do what you need to do. When you learn how to empty your mind it's like going back up to full processing speed. So, though we call it mindfulness, it's really mind-emptiness, or mind-calmness. That's when you get to be in control and reach your full potential. Those things that make you afraid and distracted, those people who push racism, sexism or hate/fear in any other form, that's the virus. Mindfulness is the cure.
I choose the most perfect memory of my father and cling to it. I choose it because in that moment he was the person he should have been, would have been, had it not been for the stress of life. In that snapshot his unwarped personality was something so golden and sacred I want to keep it forever. Like an old movie reel I can play it at will, 1979, on the back lawn of our old house. He's laughing, relaxed after mowing the lawn. He asks me if I want an aeroplane ride and of course I do, what four year old doesn't? In moments he has my right wrist and ankle. He spins like a shot-putter, but he never lets go. The garden turns into a green blur, I'm flying- flying until he can spin no more. The memory has no smells or weather, other than a lack of rain. The garden is in fine detail: the crab apple tree, the rhododendron bush, the weeds in the flower beds. But the finest detail is his face, creased with love and my joy- not only for the ride but for being with him, for being with my Dad.
We've all got these trauma brains now, brains that developed with less love than we needed, crap food and violence. We've all got these short attention spans and the need to pull people close only to push them away when things get hard. It's that urge to run, that fear of trust, that uncomfortableness with nurturing love - addicted to the dysfunction and rejecting the cure. It takes a bravery to let it in, to allow the self to be loved by another. I think to let it be solid, lasting, good, I need to love me too and that's been so brutally hard. And they say you gotta have someone else love you first, so ain't that a vicious cycle? So, yeah, I've been bad. I pushed you away. I made up reasons for stuff you did and believed them, as if you ever could have had a mean intention, that was never you. So our breakup, my coldness, my spite... it's bad wiring I'm fighting. At least now I know, at least there's a chance for something better. So, I can say hand on heart I don't deserve this, that I have throughly earned your distain, but you wanna be my friend? Because I wanna learn how to be yours. If I help, if I'm kind I might start to like myself and that would be a start to something better.
Under the melting snow there are fragments of colour, a vibrancy from petals that appear so delicate at first glance. Yet there they are, healthy and entire beneath the crystalline water flakes. They are ready to be beautiful as soon as the warm weather comes to turn their cocoon into soft water. They are tenacity of the patient kind, the kind that holds on rather than battling that which will pass of its own accord.
The future is fabulous. When we got the universal basic income there was time to do God's work. We volunteered, we had fun with the kids, we helped each other out. I gotta tell you, it's as if we were asleep before - alive and not really all at once. We have a community again, something my granny would approve of. The robots taking the bad jobs, the AI removing masses of people from banking and law, it made us human again. Everything is play - science, math, reading, music, sculpture, dance, philosophy... We have festivals, so many of them! Without all the stress we're so much healthier in body, mind and soul. With the new techno-agriculture and building ways, nature has room to thrive too, it's what you guys would think of as heaven, or paradise, a promised land of peace. Get here soon, okay?
In darkness,
Believe in light,
In loneliness,
Believe in friends,
In sorrow,
Believe in joy,
In pain,
Believe in empathy,
In frustration,
Believe in patience,
In anger,
Believe in perspective,
In indifference,
Believe in love,
For in evolving wisdom,
Lives hope for us all.
"You really don't get it, do you? Let me say this real slow so it sinks in. Your petty-meanness is the punishment, it is the karma. As soon as you feel it your body makes stress hormones that have all kinds of awful effects in your body. My inner-peace, that is my reward. So, getting involved in this stupidity... would be stupidity. Ciao."