Shortly before Tom entered my life, this fabulous character, James, appeared as a younger sibling for Taliesin. I'd decided that it would be good for Taliesin to have a companion of his own species. Perhaps this was resonating with a synchronicity of the Universe planning something similar for me. In fact, the first time I brought the new kitten--who appeared to be made out of black pipe cleaners--out from his own room, Taliesin seemed unable to quite SEE him, as it another cat in his H.O.M.E. was inconceivable! 

As you can see, Taliesin not only adjusted somewhat, he eventually played with James, and James played back. Still, Taliesin never 100% adjusted to having a younger brother. Nor did he accept sharing me with Tom. Taliesin performed his Mission as a sort of guardian angel of my heart, keeping it open until I met Tom. Though he moved with me to the lovely H.O.M.E. in the Hill Country of Texas that we share, his Mission had been accomplished. Before too long he returned to Source. He's buried under a mountain laurel in the orchard.

Thus in a new and very different part of the world from Colorado, began the best years of my life. Tom has actually known our beloved friend Shanti (at times fond of wearing Mammy turbans) longer than he's known me. (Concerning Tom's RFD t-shirt you'll learn more farther down this page.) We are fond of tubing on the river at the bottom of our hill, when there is enough water. What bliss, drifting along amid towering cypress trees, past limestone ledges with palmettos tucked along the shoreline, enjoying herons and turtles and damselflies! As you see from the inundation below, now and then a prolonged cloudburst causes our low water crossing to flood. In fact there's something wonderful about being forced to surrender to the intensity of forces of Nature and stay at H.O.M.E.!

Miss Pearl, as she's now known, showed up in our lives about a year + after Taliesin died, as a younger sibling in turn, for James. Born of a feral mama cat under the floor of a local feed store, Pearl had been caught in a live animal trap and was teensy weensy. After the first night, I told Tom, "I don't know if I can handle the responsibility. I mean she's weaned, but . . ." He laughed: "It's too late, she already loves you." Of course, that was mutual!

The heart, human and feline, is a curious creature. I adore Pearl madly, however she selected Papa Tom as her preferred parental figure. Maybe it was the "good cop, bad cop" thingy, as I ended up trying to control her wildness to Tom would not regret another child. She's a Triple Goddess, like all great females: Bast, Hathor and Sekhmet. The kitties are in fact, Zen Masters as Tom pointed out at some point. Great teachers. Mysterious clowns.

Tom's got a sort of gypsy nature as well as being a deeply-rooted Green Man. For years he worked for American Airlines and often flew around the world to visit various botanical gardens before I showed up to slow him down a bit. We still love traveling however, and I have enjoyed taking him to some of my favorite power places. A certain jut of rock overlooks a specific bend of the Big Thompson River in Rocky Mountain National Park. There Nature speaks with uncommon eloquence.

Some thing seem meant to be. Clearly the path of my life was preparing me for meeting Tom--sometimes a refiner's fire, other times an antediluvian dissolve. Life is alchemical. It's ALL synchronicity. Of course, in daily life our conscious mind filters out most of the connections and a lot of the meaning so we're not totally overwhelmed.

However my primary emotion in recent years is almost always gratitude.

Another uncanny similitude all along during the decades before meeting Tom, is the numberless quirks and wonderful oddities of fascination that we share. For example, we both love LITTLE, BIG by John Crowley, a fairly obscure masterpiece of a novel. We're NOT identical twins, though even folks that have known us quite long often call me "Tom" or refer to him as "Bruce." Oh well! Supposedly that happens over time as you live together, entwined like ivy on a thyrsus sharing the same penultimate pinecone. That RFD shirt in the much earlier photo by the river refers to a publication put out by the Radical Faeries of Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee. I'd vaguely heard of the Faeries, "Sort of like gay hippies," as Tom says. I'd never been to a Faerie gathering until we went one spring & I knew I'd found my tribe on this planet.

Another now-departed member of the family of our lives is the astonishing wisteria vine that long graced a majestic cedar tree in front of the house. We had wisteria viewing parties, invited ecstatic friends to join us, read poetry & inhaled the indescribably fragrance. Only, as George Harrison sang so eloquently, "All things must pass . . ."

The richness of our lives really cannot be expressed, or even hinted at here. Just in the year 2009 we've been so blessed, attending the 9th Annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress in Washington State where we finally met & studied with an extraordinary teacher, Orion Foxwood. His books THE FAERY TEACHINGS and THE TREE OF ENCHANTMENT are so excellent! At that gathering was a crop circle (this one admittedly manmade) and yet numerous Orbs were photographed, far more inexplicably! I often used to say "I'm not woo-woo," only my mind opens more all the time, as, who knows?!

Then there are our very special friends Joe and Nerissa. See how people sometimes just glow??? I've had the honor of arranging a number of book signings where Joe graciously met the public. His book ZERO LIMITS changed my life. Joe's brilliant writings on Law of Attraction and Ho'oponopono have finally gotten me interested in business, via what he calls "Spiritual Marketing." And boy, does it work! Another immense gift is getting to know the lovely Nerissa. Tom says that she and I look married in the photo above--only she's the love of Joe's life. Joe and I are both blessed with the best partners in the world! 

James and Pearl are likewise quite an astonishing pair of complementary characters. He's a love-button; she's a fierce warrior princess. Still he's no wimp and now and then gives her a good boxing, just as she's not totally hostile to me. Once in a Blue Moon Pearl even gets on my lap!

Lately I'm recognizing that it all boils down to non-duality, or the term I prefer: Oneness. I used to consider the concept a sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo. Only it's now the place where science and spirituality meet and merge in, well, Oneness! Nothing is really separate from anything else. The little green tree cricket and the magnificent calla lily seem to be demonstrating this in a manner far beyond symbiosis, in a way that words cannot even begin to approach . . . 

Zero

Life only gets better and better for me the longer it seems to go on. Yet it's not really a matter of linear time, so much as those deeper levels of reality in which there really is no such thing as time. Rather, existence apparently unfolds within a sort of timelessness, the Eternal Now. Seems everything happens simultaneously. The painting above, done in the later part of the year 2008, is a symbolic representation of Zero, or the Divine, the Source, Oneness (whatever you wish to call that "bigger thing" we're all part of) as it's intersecting with its creative expression: the Universe. At first I called the painting "Metatron," then "Crown of Creation." Finally I realized it's called Zero.

 Though we lost James in February of 2010, something still too painful to mention much, there IS  a new child in the family & Willy-Boy is a piece of work, a fire-cracker, an absolute sweetheart!!! You can see what a proud & adoring papa I AM!