Dreaming

He `elele ka moe na ke kanaka

A dream is a bearer of messages to man

For a girl who used to be afraid of her shadow, the Round One now finds herself in many places, and lives thousands of miles from the homeplace. Crossing the bridge of Serendipity I watched her step off into an exquisite landscape of DreamTime. The night was not passing comfortably. I watched her go through the rituals of healing that often work the magic of distraction, shifting the affects of a chemical that will not dislodge. Often Sal will methodically go from cure to cure in a night of pain, careful to keep from touching her dear Sam who lies beside her. She knows that some of these energy works are best completed without Sam's touch. No need to side-track the spend qi, sharing something that really just needs to be recycled. There are other nights when Sam's touch is the only cure, the elegant solution.

On this particular night though it was the Dream that offered Sal the comfort she sought. Sometimes the physical body is too dense to lift from a criss-crossed tangle of stimulation. I listened to her prayers after all the tools of comfort failed to ease her from the pain. She is a strong one to most people who see her, and through and through that is true. But, the vulnerable child that has a memory of being scared of her shadow is part of our Sal. Prayers helped the wee child when there were no others, tools or folk. This night I listened as Sally invoked the aid of those angels who never forget her, and know just where to take her for comfort.

The deep folds of the comforter quieted, her body still and she was on the other side of that bridge. A beautiful broad-branched plumeria grew in a yard lit with gentle light. Big succulent yellow-pink blossoms filled the plumeria. Sal stretched herself easily beneath this tree, released a deep rich breath and that soft wide smile filled her face. The heavy weight of discomfort rose from her, a cloud of glittery dust refreshed in the air between plumeria bough and the broad forehead that was now relaxed. Dream moments are without boundaries of time, and even as I witnessed I could not tell how long we lingered. The roots of the plumeria rose from the scantly grassy lawn, like mini mountains the roots rolled from the trunk of the tree. Did I not notice when we first arrived, or did the tiny fairy flowers the size of diminuitive Jasmine pikake turn to a double row of fairy lights when I was not looking?

"Ahh...it's my brother's work. He is such a fantastic garderner, and a beautiful, beautiful boy." Sal had found a way to bring comfort to her soul through the asking. In the days when she and her brother were small kids, the world was a place of distress. There were things neither she nor her brother could change. Perhaps the experiences of an adult day spent in pain opens up that trap door to the old times. What I shared in this DreamTime with dear Sal was the tonic that humans sometimes take for granted as they climb onto the sheets and under the covers. Dream material waits to be called up at any moment, and with the asking any number of alternative realities are possible. Sal and her angels conjured up a sweet night of joy, a release from the day that just needed to be put to rest.

Float

City serves society in multiple ways, and reflects the value humankind has given to the production of “plenty” and the convenience of choice at any time of day or night. In the years that Sal has lived she has learned that the value of things is greater when you know what things are important. Serious and ever seeking the gal is rarely relaxed! That makes it tough on her, and she knows it. Whatever can she do about it? Well, with the Harvest Moon bright in the evening sky, there’s really nothing to do about it except to accept her nature and step aside from it when things just get too worrisome. “Float gal,” her astrologer suggested when Sally asked for advice. “I’m no expert on the illness you suffer but it sure sounds like a Neptune thing to me. Moving from place to place like the tide and being sensitive to the environment. Your friends don’t know how to relate, so they disconnect? Well, if you can’t do anything about it you might as well float.”



The cool weather and cold drizzles dilute the pleasure of floating, still the advice had found entrance into the armor of our gal's armor of worry. Living with an illness that thrives on worry tends to take the Willy out of your Wonka. There really isn't a lot that can be done about losing touch with friends and family when they don't get the STAND BACK IF YOU'RE SCENTED mandate. I watch dear Sal when she slips on an unexpected sniff of toxin, see her weaken and lose her grip. Floating is easier when there's a ready supply of floating toys so I was glad to see her collect new tapes that take her away for a moment or thirty, music and voices to get her away for a little while. The internet connects Sal to a gaggle of friends who don't need to pass the sniff test, and it's here that our gal finds creative and innovative ways to float. There's a small and cherished home-made doll sitting in Sally's 'fortune corner'. She wears a tie-dyed shirt and a pair of tie-dyed shorts. The doll is cuddly, made of very soft cotton and has been a comforting friend for years. When Sally was at her lowest, someone very special made and sent "Minnie" to her. She has been loved ever since. Storytellers are always on the look-out for something juicy, something that whets the appetite for a tale. Today I watched as Sal escaped into the pages of the internet and found The Comfort Doll Project (click on it for a float), I looked over at Sal's "Minnie" while Sal floated up and down reading and viewing the beautifully heart-made creations. Here's where a storyteller can cross her eyes, and see the parallel universes that leap over the bridge called Serendipity.

One way to step out of the way of your own dear suffer'n self, is to step for a moment into the slippers of someone else.

More

From behind the wheel Sam said, “No matter what the economy is doing, you find it happening right here.” Sam and Sally were out on a morning run of errands. With the doggedness of a beagle Sam zig-zagged the barriers that kept traffic off Spokane Street. Through a slim hole in the barrier signed “LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY” he maneuvered the Subaru through the opening to get mid-block up Spokane. Construction and destruction make transiting the industrial sections of Seattle twice as complicated on a Monday. When the weather turns soppy Sam has a ready list of things to collect and people to see.

The marvel of this process has been the collection of craftsmen Sam has ferreted from the side-streets and sheet-metal workshops in this Pacific Northwest city. Sam was on a route to see Nick the metal man and creator of the beautiful copper roof to be. Nearly a month earlier, Max made their beautiful swing-out windows and delivered them. He was curious to see what Sam was building having never heard of a gypsy wagon. Round as Claus and of affable spirit Max was pleasantly surprised to see the home on a trailer, and together the two wood workers walked the perimeter of the tiny home. Max was especially taken with the roundness and curves of the vardo. Our friends had thought Max would also make their Dutch door, but Max never returned from vacation. Life changes. There were many other things to keep the vardo moving toward completion.

The last of the morning’s three stops led to a small door at the bottom of a driveway behind Stella’s Coffee. Slim was now making the door. Finding a new door maker took time and pacing. Sam loves to hammer home the importance of pacing. For all his lightning energy the mid-western farm boy has a sense of cycles that serves him. Being near his tribe of Workers Sam drew on his history of knocking on doors for a job to inject himself with project flexibility. The tall one multi-tasks while keeping his focus on the position of those screw holes. Our gal Sally did not miss the eloquence of her Sam’s dance. She knows he can get himself pretzeled with a detail that won’t untangle, and witnesses his temper when someone backs him into a corner. Don’t play a crab for a sissy, they don’t like that and they have sharp claws that pinch.

Four ribbed walls-to-be inform the world of the vardo in the making. The iron trailer upon which the pearl-like hermitage is built is twelve feet long and eight feet wide. The inside walls will give our dears just shy of a ten foot length. The other two feet will be their porch, useful for a multiple of purposes. With great care and many investigations, samples and tests to determine whether wood, sealant, and electrical outlets would be safe for both Sal and Sam, Sam Tall framed and tinkered with the shape of the vardo. There are experts who now offer their services to those who live with the fall-out of an over synthesized world. With the world of knowledge accessible through the pages of the internet library Sally spends hours at the keyboard researching material/products that work for sensitives like her. Like the Akashic Records the internet opens the world of human knowledge to those who sit to find them. No longer a library with old wooden drawers with Dewey Decimal indexed cards we surf the sea of a cyber-ocean of things/ideas/theories that support or contradict our own.

Throughout the cities and towns on the planet Sensitives re-write their lives. This part of the tale involves a community who will welcome Sam and Sally with their extension cord life. Here’s what I mean. “Where will you park it when you’re done?” Sam Tall had just shown a small group of Seattle MCS friends the photos of the vardo in progress. “Ever heard of Tahuya? It’s near Hood’s Canal. Sal and I have friends who are willing to share a spot on their acreage with us. Sal’s been friends with these folks for thirty five years. We’re working on this being our shared living place.” Turtle Woman Sal’s long-time pal lives with Parkinson’s Disease. The disease has created a hall of mirrors for Turtle Woman. She says she’s never sure who will show up on any given day. What Sal sees in her friend is an amplified version of the young woman who has always been Turtle Woman. Creative and communicative, her artist friend has always spoken her mind, and continues to do so. Complications happen when one of those mirrors in the artist’s hallway is turned in on itself, echoing into itself. What her experiences have done for her only Turtle Woman knows, but to see how unconditionally willing to share with Sam and Sally is to see communion of saints in practice. “I build the house,” Sam told his friends, “Sal builds community.”

Indeed, as Sam worked the details of his craft, molding walls, running electrical conduits and shaping the curved arch into the roof, Sally’s job is to care for herself and create a shared housing life with welcoming friends. When the summer heat settles into the city, the exhaust fumes from the billows of industry, the cars, jets, trucks and buses choke the oxygen from Seattle’s ethers. For all who breathe and especially those with illnesses like Sal’s the smog defies breathing. On the worst of days Sal and Sam separate for a few days at a time. Once again the Subaru become home for Sal. All the essentials go with her: nebulizer and medication, the air mattress for sleeping, two paper bags with clothing and towels. Sal always travels with food to share and to eat. She is a good cook, and her friends love that she conjures meals. The oxygen-rich air from the family of fir, cedar, and hemlock and the cool fresh water lake below Turtle Woman’s home turns Sal’s trust button back on. She can exhale. A new and troubling habit of holding her breath loosens its grip, and Sally relaxes.

Fresh air and conversation over dinner give the old friends new information about who has come to dinner. The Tahuya home is clearer and safer for Sal thanks to Turtle Woman’s promise to clear out the poisons and use fragrance free products. Life with Parkinson’s is not easy, and yet life with the illness out here on the lake keeps Sal’s old friend going. Turtle Woman has a pharmacy of pills that keep the pain, anxiety and discomfort of Parkinson’s at bay, and timing is everything. Each of the tiny pills does the work her brain used to do on its own, and at regular intervals, the spikes and dips of a short-circuited inner network even out. Mr. P, the nick name Sal has for Turtle Woman’s husband, has learned the color, count and timing for Turtle Woman’s pills.

Sal watched her friends pack up for a day trip across the pond. Mr. P quietly counted the mini mounds of pills stored in the pill-minded, going through the lot like a bookie keeping track of his bets. “Looks like you need one more Synamax, just in case.” With the help of a beautiful walking stick Turtle Woman moves through her wooded retreat with care. On the bad days the cane isn’t enough so she must ride out the pain, sometimes rocking herself into a calm that is as ancient as the sway of the giant firs that surround her, like a mother calming a child. “We have become our mothers,” Sal told her friend one afternoon over the phone. There are times when the comfort we need comes from unseen sources or from the old gods who send the wind or rain. But more often than not a sister who knows that life is thornier than we’d have wished it to be, is the one the gods send.

Here

Day in and day out is marked by the simple progression of time. Sam has attracted the loyalty of the winged ones and the critters who make the steep slopes below their apartment home. Small plastic bags of raw, shelled sunflower seeds are part of the weekly bundle of food Sam buys when he makes the trek to the Co-op. One handful for Sam, one handful for the birds. Like many who spend time observing the nature of things, Sam and Sally made friends with the animals.

Split the Sparrow

Spring was tardy
The sun busy behind bundles of deep clouds
With the wind and the stars, no doubt.

We watched her
One brown spotted sparrow
Her tail feathers split in right angles

War injury, disabled by a wandering cat?
Injured perhaps, but no less able
She ate, she flew, she lived.

Tardy spring or not
Babies birth and want to eat
They chirp and yell and will not sleep.

With summer’s sun two birds
Did come and made our day
To watch.

A baby plump with mouth wide open
Called to his momma, “Me, me, me, me, me.”
And she with the tail half-there complied.

She ate, she fed, she lived.


JOTS (short for Johnny on the spot)

“Where do you live? Is this place you live, also the place you call home?” A scrawny black cat found her way to the cooking table outside our dear friends’ basement home. It was the smell of simmering chicken that led her there no doubt, like a jot across the length of the cement sidewalk she was on the spot. Within a blink Sally Round knew this was a wanderer, bred wild this feline must have had some time with human company for in spite of the near bones look of her the wee kitty meowed as sweet as it comes, wound her face and neck around Sal’s ankles and moved shamelessly toward the smell of food. Hundreds of the feline wanderers survive among the House Dwellers. When Sam Tall and Sally Round made camp in the Subaru along the salty black lava beaches of Oahu there were baby wanderers who found them, too. In the dark of night those who rest for the night in one spot don’t necessarily call it home. But to the feline ones I wonder whether any separation exists between the two questions. Where they find food and a place to sleep, that is home for the time. That’s what begins to happen to House Dwellers ushered out of the illusionary safety of walls and a roof. Safety is contingent, and the need to move on ever the possibility. For now, the young wild cat sleeps near by and once, or twice a day Sam fills a plastic bowl with food for her. Sam Tall walks around the side of the house, passes the ancient evergreen that shadows the drive and leaves the bowl on the porch step. Kitty follows underfoot. The sadness comes for Sal and Sam when they privately know they cannot attach themselves to another cat. But, they do for today.


Pewter Rabbit

Beatrix, did you know the bunny’d come?
Oh, how like you to send one in the knick of time.
Pewter yet shinier
Shameless
Loves dandelions
Top to bottom
Turns tail to the sunflower sprouts
Bunny on our front lawn
Makes us giggle
Makes us smile
Wild bunny on our front lawn
Makes us feel
Like friends

Squawk Box

Big mouthed busy body
Opened to the world
Knows our business
Speaks about it
Never minds
The time of day

Sam Tall has built many things. His earliest work was big; building forms for bridges that would span mighty rivers, swinging in a cement bucket in the dark frozen Wisconsin winter, laying floors in nuclear plants. A huge ocean-viewing home overlooking Kahoolawe on the island of Maui was a Sam Tall project. Our man Sam has used his body to do the work he loved, and in the years as laborer and builder he has touched, smelled and absorbed every chemical, solvent, additive and sealant typical of the American jobsite. The tiny basement Everything Room sits on the southwest-side of the city and to Sam’s delight the new place is within a few minutes drive of a builder’s choice of goods and services. Sam’s history and his life with a Sensitive conjured his biggest challenge. Sam and Sally wrestled for months the idea of building a safe Gypsy-style caravan-a mobile safe place, not really knowing the answers to “how” “when” or “where.” Life in the Everything Room drew our pair closer to some of the answers on some days. With newly experienced stability there was room to put texture to the imaginings that had filled their minds and sketchbooks. The basement apartment was an answer to the “where.” The city offered lumber yards, fabricators, window makers and shops where nuts, bolts and fasteners could be picked out of bins in numbers of Sam’s choosing rather than in packages of a dozen when he only needed one.

On alternating days questions and challenges grew like a yard-full of dandelions. Viewed this way you could say the new and unpredicted questions like that yard of dandelions are not all bad. Sam and Sally love the stout-hearted yellow flowering wild green. Yet, as I said in the very opening line it may be a bit premature to begin the tale because in fact the story has not yet been completely made up. It’s a brave decision to be sawing, sanding, nailing and build within steps of their kitchenette. Tools and the processes tools create can be problematic for a Sensitive, all that dust, the collection of smells that cling to Sam as he weaves his way into and through the aisles of Big Boxes and Seattle alley-ways. The truth is, as I began to weave this part of the tale, I am reminded that this very imperfect location offered space for building, and life with multiple chemical sensitivities means being vulnerable most anywhere. So again, I watched as our friends accepted what was on offer, and adjusted.

Summer came to the Pacific Northwest and brought with her the sun. Sam Tall is used to heat so when the cool weather lovers of Seattle withered from humidity and heat he was energized. By mid-August the beginnings of the Gypsy wagon was anchored stoutly to the steel frame. Although Sam and Sal had taken as many precautions in choosing building material, they discovered that the foam insulation would not be a safe material after-all. That’s the thing about constructing this vardo: the rules for building are different. The mantra to simply ‘be green’ is not enough. When given the ‘put the questionable material in the jar test’ the foam insulation sent dear Sal into a spin and into her bed to recover. On more than one night, I have watched Sam glaze over and melt into the creases of his face. How to make things work for his Sal is a question he can’t always know. Cancer in his Sun and Taurus in his Moon, the man makes homes. Perhaps the kernel that is his origin allows him to improvise--to make these homes without knowing everything at the beginning. Things change, a crab moves side to side to get where he wants to go. Sal knows that the choices she makes are her full time job. “Every decision made is a choice between resentment and miracle.” Her meditation reminds her that there is a choice. With slow yet steady progress the two dears practiced this simple and powerful lesson from The Course in Miracles. Some choices led backward, retracing and replacing a direction that was just not the right fit. Other times progress was divine and effortless.

Keia ... Kela (Here ... There)

Journeys lead a body to places new and different, or familiar with degrees of variation. Like migratory creators our old dears returned to the Pacific Northwest when the final straw made living on the island, in a car impossible. Pele goddess of fire and maker-of-new-land has big plans for re-building Earth, and stopping her volcanic activity is not part of the picture. VOG has become a regular presence on the islands since the new vents on Hawai`i Island turn rock into corridors of liquid fire. Sulphuric acid is the main ingredient in the volcanic off-gassing, a tough love sort of off-gassing that defies escape especially for a multiple chemical human living in a car. Jay John Sam Tall’s old friend had a place in Seattle where they could land. It was an offer, a small yet real one and Sam and Sal have learned to recognize small miracles.

They live mostly in a tiny room other people might use as a place to set up a table surrounded with a few chairs where tasty meals could be cooked up on the stove a few steps around the partial wall. The opening between the dining room and living room is hung tightly with a mint-green flannel sheet tacked like an animal hide in a yurt. The flannel wall and plumber’s foil backing keep the smell of old, moldy, smoke-trapped carpeting out of their safe abode. A sturdy steel-constructed air purifier runs day and night to keep the room as clear as possible. The large sliding glass door brings the Outdoors in yet seals the smell of smoke, jet exhaust and the remnants of airborne residue from the industry that is the reality of the environment. That rice kernel of strength within, a promise to live is polished daily, and our friends make camp.

The small and efficient kitchen built thirty years ago serves Sam and Sally in a fashion understandable by those who live with chemical sensitivities. They use the sink, though don’t drink the water. Seattle’s water system is purposely tainted with fluoride. Our gal Sal is seriously sensitive to the chemical that some say is one of the best kept secrets for crowd control. Others shout fluoride’s ability to keep teeth cavity free. So much information, still we must make our decisions based on what rings true. Rather than drink the tap water Sam has rigged a water filtration system up outside their home space. The reverse osmosis systems filters the fluoride and most ever thing else out of the water. Glass jugs emptied of their favorite Northwest cider fills with the chemical-free water. None of the cabinets are safe. The old particle board construction is in the long and short run filled with hazardous fumes. Three decades later the smell of deteriorating wood and glue is a whiff of danger. Silvery plumber’s foil covers all the cupboards and cabinets in the kitchen. The refrigerator and stove remain unused; instead a long-used plastic cooler with water jugs frozen solid in the upstairs freezer keeps food chilled. Rather than risk filling their tiny safe place with smoke from the stove, a large covered walkway outside serves as kitchen with a hot plate for boiling a kettle for tea, cooking a soup and a slow-cooking crock pot for stews.

There are in-door luxuries our two dears do enjoy: a shower with hot water, a private toilet and an electric washer and dryer free of past smelly detergents or dryer sheets. To get at the luxuries Sam and Sally must go out to get in. The two large rooms between their dining room safe-place and the bathroom are carpeted and unlivable, so a snaking path out, in, and through three interior doors opens to the bathroom-laundry. “You’re only using one room,” J.J. their friend and the owner of the home was thrown for a loop when he saw how his friends had reconfigured the apartment. Sally corrected their friend, “Two rooms. Remember we’ve lived in a car, showered at the beach, washed our clothes in a cooler and shared a toilet with the throngs. Now we have a room to sleep in, electricity to heat us, a sink inside and a bathroom with a laundry. We’d like to rent this place and use it just as you see it.” Who’s to know for sure what J.J. thought? Sam’s longtime friend offered the migratory pair a place to re-write the rules about what’s normal. Over pancakes and biscuits at the local diner the three friends agreed to a rent and work-trade arrangement that satisfied the trio. Family and friends don’t get how differently Sam and Sally live with the world, until they see them live it a day at a time. Creative survival and the steep learning curve served up as multiple chemical sensitivities have taught Sam Tall and Sally Round that living in a house can be as safe as setting up camp in a mine field. So, for now the yurt-like life suits our man Sam and his dear wife Sally.

It may be premature but this story insists on continuing

The water’s edge is where you can find her most mornings. Unlike the warm turquoise waters of Waimanalo the temperature of bath water allowed to cool slightly, the shores of Puget Sound circle a body of salt and fresh-water that is nearer to iced than hot tea. But the air is water filled and clear, and the wind likes to dance there. She comes to be with the agelessness of the wind. Her nose, lungs and soul seek refreshment and comfort. In a common day, the illness might wake before the earliest of morning’s light. Sadness, pain or disorientation from an overload of exposures to chemicals, fragrances and gasses clogs her river of energy and will not free her for a new day. If, on those mornings a small crack of hope finds its way to the unending well inside, our gal Sally knows being with water is part of her cure. Once out of the house it’s a short drive to the water. Flowing with the water within her, listening with that old memory of cosmic agreement here at the water’s edge Sally Round is reassured that the old gods have not deserted her. The answer to her prayers just might be, “Not yet.”

Her ancestors believe being reborn a human as likely as balancing a grain of rice on the tip of a needle. “She chose to return to Earth as human, and there was an agreement. Blow that memory into her, she forgets,” said the sea. The stars though most brilliant in a night sky are often still awake in the every morning when Sally moves toward the water, “Still her brother, while I call on the innocents to rid her of those rancid collections. Blow makani, blow.” And that is what the sea, his sister the wind and the cousins of the stars do for Sal every time she comes. It’s not so much that the confusion clears so much as a bigger picture makes room for things other than the chaos. Some stages of human life are unclear and no amount of bargaining speeds up the process. A soul’s journey is like that. Cosmic time hums at a rate different from a human’s time.

The fortune teller did not fit Sal’s sketch of a seer. She was younger than Sal by at least ten if not twenty years, dressed in ordinary tee shirt with her dark hair clipped just below her ears. Her name was Japanese. She was Japanese, and will be Japanese for as long as she lives this life. While on those morning walks at the shoreline Sal prayed for assistance and out of a deep sleep the dawn brought a hint: Akasha (It means “the sky” in Sanskrit.) Sally had learned of the Akashic Records years earlier, but the full meaning of that library of soul memories would need human time to reach our gal when and where she needed it. The time was now, the puzzles of her dear life were absent of pieces, she knew it in her bones. Which pieces was the question. At the time of their meeting, Kimiko was just starting her voyage into the world of professional record reader. Sal liked what she read on her website, enjoyed her writing style, recognized that American English was not her first voice and found that a plus. There would be a candor and freshness in her perception and descriptions.

I must tell you our gal Sal has had many teachers in her life, and each of them have shared insight or clues that soothed Sal’s heart, or itched at the curiosity in her mercurial mind. Astrology and numerology have long been staples in her quest for the big and little movements or congestions in her life. This time though the information Sally sought was more specific. What that might mean she wasn’t sure. With anticipation Sal picked up the phone at the agreed upon 2:30 appointment. “Hello.” “Hello. Is this Sally?” the voice was bird-like and confident. “Yes, this is Sally.” “This is Kimiko.” There was a bit of small talk, but very little. The phone consultation lasted just short of an hour. Sally could stop and ask questions at any point. She had very few. Kimiko was new at her art, yet was finely tuned intuitively. There was a written summary as part of the reading, so Sally used her journalist’s note-taking skill to jot what seemed especially important to her. The reading was a broad and detailed assessment. As promised Kimiko’s Akashic Record Reading was like a thorough physical examination conducted by a doctor who included the mind, body and spirit in the process. The service was not limited to the one phone consultation and was not really fortune telling. She provided Sal with three written documents attached to an email communication. An energetic clearing intended to restore Sal’s crystal of a soul to its full beauty was the first focus. Like rays from a precious star glistening atop your Christmas tree, Kimiko said Sal’s star was missing a couple parts. The reading and the homework Sally received were like a million tiny pin holes that freed Sal from a breath held too long. “Poisonous apple indeed, the fabled fruit of jealousy and spite seemed to be the only way our gal Sal could explain her life. Surely there must have been a badly turned jot of fate that was causing such fright.” There are issues a soul can find challenging in the human form, so dense and ‘primitive’ is the body, yet after the session with Kimiko Sal felt an immediate relief that lifted our gal from the murky under-toe. There is a Hawaiian proverb from the collective wisdom of Mary Kawena Pukui: E ho`a`o I pau kuhihewa Try it and rid yourself of illusions. The stories we tell ourselves are fluid like water or as vulnerable as fertile earth poisoned by the conjurings of chemical companies. The fortune teller offered clues to the source of Sal’s poisoned apples and offered a return to a soul healed. Through the twenty-one days of homework Sal rid herself of illusions that wore her down and blocked her from joy and peace. This was a piece of Sal’s puzzle that hid from her until now.

To be continued.