Just after dark, on my way to friends for a visit, riding through the village last night and the trick or treaters were out in force, spooky music drifted out onto the street, chilling screams, giggling of ghosts and ghouls and fairy princess’, and I wonder when I decided to make a point of not going out at Halloween? That was wrong. I was wrong. 

A coolish evening, and it had poured rain all day till a drizzly finish around 4PM and the leaves shook off a spray of mist, and the surfaces were covered in a fine wetness, All Hallows’ Eve, finally. So the month of endings has finally ended, a time to assess, take stock, see what still lies within to be nourished or transformed, removed, weeded from my world.

November, a time for action, reaction, transforming, renewing, course correcting.

For whatever reason, most of my most painful endings have occurred in October, so I decided to use that grief as a tool, of looking around inside and outside, for damage and/or desires, not to fix but rather just to gain a new perspective, to decide whether or not things need to be challenged, or merely set aside, done with, not done anymore, all that and more.

Am I hail? Healthy? Happy? Doing what I want to be doing, with those who make me more, do I need more, do I need less, and have I people around I can trust, are there those who need to go, or those who need more from me than I give?

Perspective, it really does all hinge on that, and thus believe what we believe based on where we are, physically and emotionally, who we are, who nurtured our darkest fears, or who calmed them, why those fears appeared, and where we go to alleviate them.

Today it is too easy to tap into whatever vein of fact, fiction or fantasy with ease, we browse with no fingerprints left behind, with secret passwords whispered on gaming sites, recruitment of the youngest and most vulnerable, of the disillusioned, fodder for a feeding frenzy of hate available to whoever may wish to wallow in their own newsfeeds set up to reflect our own bespoke prejudices, fashioned for us out of our likes and dislikes, following him, her, them as easily as one simple tap of our delighted finger. Ignorance is bliss.

Narrowed perspectives become thin and fit for our eyes alone, devoid of all the friends and foe that may trigger us, and so the people we interact with online are tailored to us, and we rarely see, hear, think, read, or feel those moments of disbelief, of rational voices we may be immune since they exist outside the blinders we fashioned for ourselves, to block the things that compromise our notions of how things should be.

Fed that pablum of catered content, we are rarely challenged, rarely asked to look outside our day to day bubbles, and thus our deeply held ideas, notions, concerns, fears nourished in a void we genuinely, with our whole heart believe, think we KNOW, and all those who we surround ourselves with know these same things, think these same things, and festering wounds of the past are left to thrive and grow.

With a nation in his little hands, tinkering with the hate and division that has defined a country since well before his own birth, some 70 or so years ago, and I sometimes can’t just stand idly by and watch in silence.

For the sake of my own sanity, therefore, I write.

This month I’ve challenged myself to do it every day, well post every day, something, and again joined the NanoPoblano, to blog every day, to branch out and engage with a community of those I have followed and admired for some time, the Cheerpeppers, and all the creative souls that gather under their umbrella of inspiration and community.

For those new to my blog, you should know that I write about anything, in whichever style I choose, inspired by memories or the moment, prose, poems, photographs, and sometimes all three. I write about politics, about life, what I love, well, and I suppose we must be honest and admit to the fact of who I, em, hate? No, dislike let’s say, as hate is a rather strong word that just doesn’t work for my own worldview.

You should also know I am an idealist, a nurturer, with an intuitive inner guidance system of right and wrong, constantly course correcting, and thus that is really maybe what this blog is, well certainly became, a way to course correct.

The other thing to know about me is, and dear lord this sounds corny, but I want to change the world.

Yes, you read that right, left and centre, lofty though that may sound, as out of reach as it may seem, I believe that every fraction of a millisecond of compassion, empathy, understanding, sharing, awareness, kindness, knowledge, conversations, or sometimes just how the moon looked that morning on my way to work, feed into this great ocean of vibes, adding maybe seeds only, tiny little seeds, but even the smallest seed may one day become a mighty thing, fragile though the flight of a butterfly, it can change the weather, why not a little ol’blog?

To what ends? I have no clue, don’t want to know, but definitely a more inclusive world, a more understanding world, a more compassionate one, a more caring present and future. And, sometimes, merely because a burden shared is a burden lessened, helps you to hang on to your faith, as God knows how often I have almost lost it.

So if this is your first time here, this is a blog about nothing and a blog about everything, and Seinfeldian as that may sound, its the truth. Temenos was a word I ran into long ago, it means a place where one can be themselves, a sacred place, a place marked off from common uses.

Like I’m walking forward, sometimes riding forward, and with every step, every turn of the wheel, everything I encounter, it changes where I place the next step, and so on, and so forth, and step by step I am different, transformed, changed, and that is what this blog is maybe most about, about change, about sharing the world as I see it, and getting it out of my dang introverted head.