Conscious Unconscious Choice delivered

So, when I mentioned a few days ago that ‘I know what I don’t want, but not what I want’, a friend from high school answered, “that’s your problem”.

In the meantime, 5 sunny days in a row I bicycled south of Leipzig to this lake, 25 min ride. Everyone bicycles in Leipzig, all ages and persuasions. At the Cossi See > lake, I found the first day a couple in their 80’s, naked, just having got out of the water. 59 degrees F outside max, with a breeze. I didn’t have the nerve that day, but a day after I got in, then the following a little longer, and again the following day getting my head beneath the surface, freestyle and backstroke (very limited time in the water), but did it. I then explored the Tierpark/Animal park where I’d go to on the way home, looking at and feeding leaves to goats, seeing other wild animals. I felt sorry for the owls, in too small of cages.

During my pondering over where to live, I was considering Freiburg after talking to my girlfriend in Berlin, she mentioned Vienna as well, so did another woman. Freiburg is small. I checked into Vienna, too large (although Berlin is larger, but familiar)…but I couldn’t make either of these moves. In the meantime, the hostel said they can’t continue to extend my stay. I moved to a smaller 4 bed room alone, after finding weird actions from one of the men in the 8 bed room. I feel relieved for that, but realized i had to step on the gas. I saw one apt in that town where the lake was, Markkleeberg, but it would become completely empty. Germans, as Italians, take all of their kitchen (all components) with them when they move; fridge, stove, everything. A tradition in my opinion that causes much more expense and hassle to the renters.

Now had a deadline. Had to skip a day of bicycling to nature….

….I began again in earnest, not to look for housing in Leipzig, but in Berlin. I updated my ads, WG-Gesucht, Ebay Kleine Anzeigen, Craigslist, and mainly put out my own ads. I had previously contacted people in WG’s > WohnenGemeinschaft = shared housing.

Then today eating my oatmeal in the hostel, I looked down and saw my phone had a call, i hadn’t yet turned the ringer on. It was Klaus. He had seen one of these ads, he phoned me saying he has a room. Previously he had rented it to a Polish girl. He has two cats. He spoke exclusively in German. Good that I can understand and speak it. I called him a bit later to make sure I had the name of the town correct, yes, Kaulsdorf, directly east of Berlin. 1 hour bicycle ride, 38 min. S-Bahn (public transport train line) to the station of this town. I later phoned him to get the address, and he told me, then sent it on the phone. 10 min walk from the station, 16 min. bicycle ride from the house to the 3 lakes by the town. That’s right. I’ve been going to swim every day and to watch and listen to the ducks, and there they will also be. And I see there’s a Tierpark Berlin which is a 25 min. bike ride from his address. 

So perhaps I was consciously/unconsciously choosing what I’ve adored, and after putting out all these new ads, this person found me. 

I then walked to the Leipzig HauptBahnHof (train station) and inquired about ‘regional’ train tickets to take my bicycle, and was given several alternative times, then walked down two levels below to purchase the tickets. I haven’t yet booked a hostel, but have informed this man that I bought the tickets and will phone him as I get on the train, he’ll meet me at that train station and then we’ll walk the 10 min. (google maps) to his house. 

I then walked around Leipzig today, without a bicycle, in the rain, taking some photos of the standing architecture of antiquity that wasn’t destroyed in WWII. I walked in a church and saw that Johann Sebastian Bach worked there for several years, creating songs continually, in the 1720’s, and taught singing… 

So, I actually looked and saw no other responses. He seems fine, gentlemanly over the phone. I haven’t asked him a price yet, I said €400 max in my ad. Also, though there are high rise buildings several blocks away, this is in a neighborhood with self standing houses and lots of trees. 

I feel immense relief, because I think that I really didn’t want to venture further away from Berlin, a city I am familiar with and know several people, and could once again play ultimate. I also put out ads looking for musicians. This man says that there’s WiFi there, hopefully it’s not merely via his telephone. I will wait and see. If I have to ‘commute’ 38 min. to Berlin via the train to go to libraries or cafés, to sit and work, I will. And bicycling home would be like going from Annville to Hummelstown. That was my guess, and it is exact. 1 hr 2 minutes, 11.4 miles. And from Berlin train station to Kaulsdorf bicycling is 16.9 km 1 hr 4 min.

So, I somehow believe that it will be a nice reverse, being in nature, then commuting to the city. 

Feeling relief, even though I haven’t met him or seen the place yet. 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Me in Berlin on Halloween

Leaving Berlin to Italy – Trieste or a small town somewhere?

Rosenthaler Platz gegenüber von Sanct Oberholtz

I just went to the main train station to ask a few more questions and precisely figure out where to park the bicycle over night to find it upon arriving with my luggage on a bus, Turns out the train i had scheduled has a bomb threat and is canceled ( uh hum, glad I went there today) so the woman agent printed out a new starting point and time and new track. As if in a dream, part fatigue, slight edge of anxiousness, I went through the motions to see where i need to go, where the elevators are, preparing as much as possible so that it will flow in the morning. This is perhaps from the influence of my parents, or perhaps i am even more extreme about taking precautions. I scoped out where to leave my bicycle over night, near where I’ll get off the bus.

Postdamerplatz Berlin

I was able to meet with my friend whom I met and hung out with up until I departed from Berlin, 10 years ago. Great to catch up with Argentinian Mariano, doing well with his wife and daughter starting 1st grade. Still see things in a similar way and harmonious support. I am taking advantage of the last day of the 9 € regional train ticket, anywhere in Germany. Going this last day of Aug. 31st that it’s legit, to Austria by the border. Decided that I’d rather go there if I have to hang out with my stuff all night, than to sit in the Munich station. Then buying a regional ticket via Innsbruck to Verona. Still need to investigate a hostel, and where i might land. Gonna have to learn Italian, pretty quickly. 

Berlin is like a circus of activity. Soooooo many people in the streets everywhere, all night, presumably. Many tourists….blah, blah. The bicycle lane actually freaks me out. Super fast, super determined bike riders, along with those carrying toddlers in bike seats before them and in wagons. Love bike culture, but don’t love rushing, high speed,get over or get hit bicycling. Went to the freakin mac store where Hermann, 1 man show, is still operating very successfully. My bluetooth keyboard magically started working, in his store. He also informed me that one can buy an English keyboard in an Apple store. Good to know. Also got my bicycle very elegantly repaired with a Farrhad Doctor, Bike Doctor – Berlin (Fahrrad-Doktor – Berlin) Bicycle Doctor, literally situated blocks away. They found and exchanged the left gear fixture with one they had in stock that exactly matched the other. This also not a chain, but very small bike shop literally crammed with bicycles. You can’t enter beyond a rope. 

I was so happy to stroll through Mauer park on Sunday to see a street musician every 10 yards, the park full of people on a sunny afternoon and then coming upon the hundreds of people listening, singing along and dancing on the stage to the institution that Irish Gareth started bicycling with the speakers and hosting, MCing with comedic flair Bearpit Karaoke

Bearpit Karaoke

Garth from Ireland who has created this karaoke institution in Mauerpark Berlin, Germany

Now with my repaired bicycle (derailleur replaced from a bike at some guy’s house in Portugal) outside of Aveiro, repaired by not a bicycle shop but guy who is a machinist, creating shifting gears for automobiles. 

Sitting outside of ,Sankt Oberholtz, still owned by Ansgar and evolving and trickling into other areas.

Circus Hotel gegenüber from St. Oberholtz

Blue Heron in the middle of Berlin

I do love Berlin. And at the same time I’m sitting here looking up trains through Austria and Italy and finding that it’s easy to find the trains and schedules and all allow bicycles. 

And the trip continues.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Quatre Septembre | Day father James Marcus Keiter died 2012 | Listen to Intuition

Today is the 4th of September. It is the day my father died, in 2012. I paid attention to this date when I saw a street with its name in Aix-en-Provence, France. When i googled in English, i found no reference, until I wrote quatre septembre and then it appeared. http://parisisinvisible.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-happened-on-quatre-septembre.html

“This particular September 4th was in 1870, and it marked the moment that a group of individuals in Paris proclaimed the beginning of a new Republic (the third) following the capture of Napoleon III by the Prussians in Sedan.”

My father was a musician, as was his mother. I played piano again at this building with a piano within their antique store, where the woman has gifted me with flowers and then local corn on the cob for my playing. This last Sunday I played really well, sensitively, fluidly. I was only under the influence of a full stomach and espresso. It’s the second Sunday in a row I’ve created the time to go there with my Classical piano music book. I remembered that when I was a kid, my father’s mother would join the family for a Sunday dinner and always play piano during her visit. I am carrying on her tradition, i thought to myself. 

My father also loved paint, dance and was a history enthusiast. I carry on these traditions. Thank you Daddy.

My father was dutiful and pragmatic. He relinquished the life of a clarinet musician to instead become a doctor to provide for his family. He warned me of not relying on art, or music and warned me of the last boyfriend with whom I was still in a codependent relationship, long after he ditched me. My father was an empath.

This article title popped up on my screen when I plugged into the WiFi network after bicycling to the closed library to sit outside of it. I ride miles and miles to different locations where I can plug in: to WiFi and electricity. I plugged the title words into google and it appeared. https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/9-secret-powers-of-highly-sensitive-people/

Frankly, I thought I would identify with it, and in many cases do ‘as far as aiming to save the natural world from humans’ and then in other respects I  don’t. I looked up ‘the opposite of empath’. Oh shit, it’s a narcissist. I guess I am a bit of both.

Last night on my way riding bicycle back from the next town, Hershey, with a palatable bar, I came upon a deer, a fawn, in the middle of the road, struggling to move. It was able to move three legs, struggling to get up. Horrified, I put down my bike off the road and tried to move it. Cars came. I swung my arms. Girls got out of their vehicle, one helped me to carry the deer off the road. They then left. I stayed with the deer. Didn’t know who to call. A man along the road said to call 911. I am upset by how the Policeman who arrived, responded. I was stroking the deer, holding her neck in my arms, trying to soothe her. The Policeman, without getting close enough to even check out the deer’s condition, announced for me to “get away lady, you are prolonging he deer’s misery.” The deer was only slightly wounded, the leg. He said that there is no place to take it. It will be shot. I was yelling as I was leaving, venting my anger about people driving so fast, hit and run. Police offering no other option without having even investigated, close-minded, thug mentality.

My plan had been to eject myself from the United States of Apathy (an example of why I am not exactly an ‘empath’). I don’t flow in and redistribute the energy to a harmonious new direction. I express my annoyance and all of my feelings, when I find people doing things that I think are irresponsible to others and unconscionable to the rest of the living world. 

I guess I can waver from feeling socially awkward and lacking in confidence, to feeling proud and annoyed with human behavior that I feel derives from not considering the larger picture.

So, just as I was sitting in Palmyra ‘pondering’ the upcoming UN Climate talks COP21 in Paris and then in a series of days I learned that an ex lover was involved in this, and within 2 weeks, I made the decision and went to Paris. Staying in a hotel reserved for the group of activists coming from all over the world and sharing their stories at the ‘placetobe’, was one of the more enriching and nourishing experiences I’ve ever had. I was and am passionately focused on  extending my knowledge and understanding. One of these people I met there and with whom  I’m connected on FB, had this message about the ‘pilgrimage to the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November. I had this on my radar, as a deadline. 

I was planning to move back to Europe soon, and thinking Portugal this time, because once again, I cower to the living expenses and overhead. Lessons not learned from my father.

The plan Portugal, with the knowledge in the back of my head of COP26 in Glasgow. Then two separate event celebrations popped up in September in the USA, separate sides of the country, but doable. I contacted several different factions of the people who I befriended 22 years ago in San Francisco when I lived there. I have an odd human habit of not staying in touch when I’m not in the same physical space, despite things like internet, telephones and facebook. I think we are all a bit tribal, yet, most have more responsibilities and families to hone into. 

I said yes to the wedding invitation in Providence, Rhode Island and began investigating rail travel. Pretty expensive for me, didn’t book it. I announced and tagged several people including the organizer of the street faire that I wanted to attend on the west coast in San Francisco, CA. Last time I hitched to San Francisco from Tucson, Arizona to attend this event The Howweird Street Faire (6 years ago or so), and never found any of the people whom I had known. The event had grown enormously. That was weird. I hitched back not having seen any of my former housemates and people i danced with. 

On the way to SF, which it now looked like I was going to hitch, I was thinking of doing a detour to help indigenous ‘water protectors’ in opposition to Pipeline 3 in Minnesota, yet having contacted them, the timing is off, I have to be willing to get arrested and frankly, the point was to get to SF, CA. 

So I decided this time to in advance, contact some people announcing I was going to be in their area. Here’s where the empath comes in. It occurred to me, that just like my former frisbee friend, when I wrote a long letter through LinkedIn, and never heard back from him, I thought to myself, maybe NONE of these people are going to respond, AT ALL, in which case, why go to San Francisco at all. Montreal, never been there, francophone, it’s only 7 rather than a 44 hour hitch, and it’s in the neighborhood of Providence. I’ve been thanks to Covid, keeping up with my french conversation group through 2020, on zoom. All the people whom I sat around a table with weekly at the Alliance Française, in Providence, Rhode Island, speaking French with one another. 

Okay, So I will travel with wedding attire and sleeping bag. The indigenous person answered my email inquiry, Let’s see if SustainaClaus, the Canadian man whom I met in Paris at the COP21 ‘placetobe’ who has been living in China, will have responded to me. He is a busy man, yet somehow I think he may have found the time.

Things emerge and guide, as one listens. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

I do have the discipline of my father, however, I am definitely following a very different path. I  remember my father calling me ‘hyper’ one time. I actually was convinced that I could apply for a medical marijuana license as a classic ADHD. I have very high energy, and was never diagnosed with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness…failed relationships. I have self-medicated all my life doing sports> running 3-5 miles, ultimate frisbee, swimming (when i can), bicycling, skiing, tinkering with technical projects, doing art, practicing music, painting, traveling, moving. 

the long of it:

After I was rejected from this last group house community where I didn’t quite fit in, that I’d circle back to the northeast and Pennsylvania, to my storage locker. I was now carrying skis and two pairs of ski boots and more boxes after passing by Taos, New Mexico where I had been storing this stuff in my friend’s house. I also thought, enough already. Since my affordable housing got covided out in Providence, Rhode Island, and I proceeded to investigate and chase ‘house exchange’ programs and then move back to where I had a lot of work several years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico (substitute teaching during the weeks and a 1st year adult ski instructor on the weekends and holidays. It fit together perfectly. However, when I inquired to the ski school, covid now reduced the staff to last years’ return instructors. So, I continued searching for ‘affordable housing’, in Statesboro and Savannah Georgia in Asheville, North Carolina. But it doesn’t exist, at least, tougher when you are single. Ironically, after 11 days of sleeping outside with my linens and sleeping bag, I have found an affordable place, and swiftly found items to furnish the room … there are some undesirable characters there….yet I feel safe.

I’ve come to Hotel Hershey to plug in and then will go to dance to cap off the night. I took my bass guitar to my storage unit today, Sept. 4th and grabbed a bungee chord, some magic markers to make hitchhiking signs, and have been preparing. Montreal borders are open. Have my Passport and CDC Covid Vaccination card. Not quite sure where I will go. Will see what emerges.

—,-,-,,-,

quatre sept 

This proclamation brought to an end France’s second empire, but as it also coincided with the invasion of France by the Prussians, its constitutional laws weren’t actually voted until 1875. The September 4th date is therefore a purely symbolic one.”

Magical Synchronicities | Arundhati Roy – Stories Select the Writers, not Writer’s Selecting the Stories

I had a series of magical moments after I had moved from a cafe to a waterfront area. I was looking over the Table of Contents (TOC) of this book I’m writing and realized several pages were not ‘recognized’. I was doing the quick and assured fix of formatting the title text and making sure there were page breaks, and this one page simply would not allow itself to be recognized. It would not appear in the TOC.

I had no choice but to look at the content more closely, having decided that I had completed this page, and then realized…

…that I  could subtly change the wording of this part of the title. And, oh, I see, it would be better to omit this and re-create this series of lines instead.

I had wanted to use the quick and obvious fix of reformatting the title, which functioned with other pages, but this one page would not allow me.

So, i don’t know about you, but I think that the book, via the computer, was not allowing me to hastily skip over this page, but insisted that i look at it more closely. This part of the story, did not want to be portrayed in that way.

I think it’s like magic, and I call this a synchronicity. Like a gut instinct or intuition.

sunflowerssunflowers to the left of me sunflowers to the right

 

I understand what Arundhati Roy means when she says that writers think they cull stories from the world, but in fact, the stories cull the writers.

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative – they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”

Here was the approaching back drop.

ducks the geese had already flown in two flocks to grass lawns

 

sunset september 6 in Providence, Rhode Island

 

sept 5th sky I had seen a green blue moon at sunset and later an orange pink crescent

Innsæi – The Power of Intuition | Nature Is Our Silent Witness

“The biggest obstacle to intuition is noise. We are bombarded with information and distraction all the time, and in particular, noise. The noise of the external world is muting our attention to the internal world.”

~ Malidoma Patrice Somé

Innsæi – The power of Intuition is an inspiring and thought-provoking documentary film in English with Icelandic subtitles. It was made by two Icelandic women Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir and Kristín Ólafsdóttir. They tell their story by distilling wisdom and insights from divers sources. They eloquently reveal that the modern western tendency is for people to disconnect from themselves and one another, ironically, the more that they think they’re connecting, through their devices.

Innsæi – The Power of Intuition

INNSAEI O PODER DA INTUIÇÃO DOCUMENTÁRIO 2016 COMPLETO LEGENDADO HD

Insight and intuition comes through that silent connection between one’s thoughts and feelings. It’s an emotional connection. One person interviewed mentions that 95% of our mental processes are unconscious. When interacting with another person, our brains process most of the information from implicit cues we pick up unconsciously; through gesture, tone of voice, choice of word, facial expression. Intuition lies outside of the things that we’re consciously aware of, yet can play an important role in guiding us, if we allow it to, by not being so enormously distracted with information and noise.

Innsæi Documentary Film

The richness of our lives emotionally, psychologically and spiritually emerges through the wealth of diversity of plants and animals which make up the life system of our earth. We are part of a huge, fabulously intricate and awesome network of life woven together. The more we tune into it, the more human built distractions will diminish. We need to cherish and support the entire living system and do our best to safeguard it. The refrain of Joni Mitchel’s song Big Yellow Taxi couldn’t be more accurate. “don’t It always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, they paved paradise, put up a parking lot”.

Nature is our Silent Witness, Intuition needs the vocabulary and many languages of nature

An excellent synopsis of the documentary film here in Zeitgest Films informs you that the film makers “Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir and Kristín Ólafsdóttir go on a soul-searching, global journey to uncover the art of connecting within in today’s world of distraction, disconnection and stress.”

This writer plucked out a lot of the important points of the film.

Intuition plays through the creative insight of the right hemisphere of the brain that coordinates information coming from many senses. In a recent conversation with a girl I met, I was talking about seeing through the heart and that we have a lot of neurons in our heart and gut. She brought up the fact that when speaking with people regarding sensitive topics like ‘climate crisis’, it’s extremely important what words one chooses. A word is linked to an emotional connection. A person’s attention may be immediately diverted because of their preconceived notion and association of that word. A word can cause someone to tune out, because of what they associate it with, or cause them to respond, because it is integral to their own way of responding to life – their operating system. Unconsciously, we label and draw conclusions from our associations with the word.

The mention of the performance artist Marina Abramovic who drew a tremendous response when people lined up to sit on a chair facing her, to look into her eyes. Her complete presence in the moment became this clear reflection into the person’s psyche. In that silence they are seeing themselves. “Something people rarely take time to do”, she says. In quietness with no disruptive waves, as she breathed slowly and aligned her attention and eyes to meet those of the stranger before her, people would in this silent communication melt into tears, or flicker into rage. She advises people to go into the unknown, to enter into a different pattern. Making mistakes is the way we grow.

The joy in his eyes and complete confidence in his tone of voice made me eager to attend to every single utterance. The more he said, the more it resonated. Malidoma Patrice Somé is an African elder who was interviewed. He was born in a Dagara community in Dano, Burkina Faso.

Malidoma Patrice Somé

He talks of our need for nature, that “Nature is a Silent Witness to our Intuition”. We couldn’t have intuition without nature. He wishes westerners would give credence to and have faith in their intuition, because this is how one connects with their past, present and future and makes sense of our own lives.

Somé says “The biggest obstacle to intuition is noise. We are bombarded with information and distraction all the time, and in particular, noise. The noise of the external world is muting our attention to the internal world.

He mentioned the Dagara tribe and I found this article written by a woman Sobonfu Somé, same name.

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN: SPIRITUALITY AMONG THE DAGARA PEOPLE

These words in particular pulled me in. “In the Dagara tradition, the healers have you walk so they can see how your body moves. Is your body ready to deal with this or are you still in conflict? The other way that healing happens is in the context of a community. If someone comes down with a particular illness, it is not seen as that person’s problem. It is a problem of the community, because that person is actually the voice of what is deeper in the core, in the fabric of the community.”

Last evening while watching a show of ice skaters at an outdoor rink, I smiled and clapped for the cute, hopeful, aspiring and the excellent technical maneuvers. I endured some of the music, telling myself, this is what this performer chose. And then a former olympic female figure skater entered and I recognized the first two or three notes of Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. My eyes welled with tears and continued for almost the duration of the piece. I can’t say I was feeling sad or that it was bringing up a reference to a specific event. To me it is one of those astoundingly touching songs, like “Beautiful World” in which the melody and voice convey something beyond words, into something that launches emotions with piercing clarity.

We all know that it is the music in films that determines how the audience will interpret a scene; to be lighthearted, comical, tense, melancholy or frightening. It’s the emotional impact of art, the intuitive, that opens the doors.

Take some time for quiet moments, to notice things and ponder. And especially to go into the unknown, the source of the known.

Meditate! Listen and observe.

Peace

educational eBook Trailer “A Seahorse Tale – A Spin on the Matter of Motion”

my eBook has a new name.

A Seahorse Tale – A Spin on the Matter of Motion

Young adult educational eBook for public, private, magnet, charter, cyber, home-schools, autism spectrum, experiential and expeditionary learning.

I suggested that it was the Final metamorphosis of the ‘eBook Trailer’ for “Adora & Vitali: A Spin on the Matter of Motion” – however a new name was born, through the brilliant perception of a mentor who appeared November 15th, 2019

A Seahorse Tale

http://spinonmatter.carbonmade.com/projects/4800092#1

A Seahorse Tale – A Spin on the Matter of Motion trailer thumbnails

Thanks to http://carbonmade.com for making it quite simple to build and display, for free!!

 

New 2020 Version of the TOC Table of Contents of Carol Keiter’s Young Adult educational ebook, A Seahorse Tale – A Spin on the Matter of Motion