What We Leave Behind Us When We Go

Randy Travis wrote a country song and sang it and the line that stuck in my mind, "It is not what you have, It is what you leave behind when you go."  The lyrics in that particular phrase have rambled on through my brain thousands of times in the last 20 years, with a bitter sweet refrain.  It is sad to realize that what we leave behind us when we go is more important than what we offer while we are here and still alive.  Of course he was singing about the left behind items of inheritance of the dear departed.  However just yesterday I got to thinking about it in another way.  What if it is just the things we leave behind that we forget?

Not only does Randy Travis sing, but he and his wife are in the hospitality business in Hawaii, or places to stay.  When you think about all the hospitality industry in every major city and who works in them to clean them up after guests have departed,  you may run into the movie title, "One Day Without A Mexican!"  Mexican people carry the weight in the United States of jobs as clean-up personnel in hospitality, lawn care, field work, and many other entry level jobs...minimum wage earning positions.  The joke in the movie or the point in the movie is that is all of them vacated their lowly positions, the United States would fall apart and not run, because they do all the tasks that everyone else does not want to do.  But then lost of people who come from other countries are doing the same thing...there are just a majority of Mexicans that labor in low end jobs.

All of these  folks who labor in menial task laborous jobs, such as in hotel work, rooms keepers, stadium cleaners, janitorial workers....are the first pickers of the field.  Meaning that the general rule of thumb is that they get to keep whatever "anyone leaves behind."  In some cases this may not be so, however,  in making the point of this article, I am declaring that "the workers keep whatever they find, either under the finders keepers rule, or because they simply do not disclose lost items."  Some buinesses care and others do not.

In Hotels, "what you leave behind" may not be of importance to you and it may be something that you do not care about, such as wore clothing items, or previously read books, or cast off food items, or papers, or magazines...what people cast away or leave behind is usually intended for discard or trash...that is the reason we leave things.  Those things "we leave behind" are the issue and subject of theis article.  We are speaking on the unimportant things we discard because we no longer want them.  However, to the person who finds them, they may become very important as an asset to their earnings.

For instance, plastic bottles collected by rooms keepers in any hotel can be recycled and the earnings from this trafficking of plastic into the recycled business can be more than the rooms keepers working wage.  Recycled glass bottles added to this can become another additional income.  And then there is paper.  If all these items are salvaged and saved from each rooms keepers rooms every day....the rooms keeper can ultimately benefit greatly from "what you leave behind."  Food left in the refrigerator can also become a boon.  People often do not want to carry partically used packages of food with them because they anticipate buying a whole new menu as soon as they are on the road.  They may leave 40 or 50 dollars worth of food in the room, discarded in the trash.  This food may not be considered totally sanitary, however a rooms keeper of international descent may feel they are shopping at a gourmet supermarket...open or unopened packages of varieties of foods just for the picking!  Add that to the income of the rooms keepers.  Add cast away agricultural products from field workers...grocery stores where clerks work...The Dollar Stores where items get tossed out into the trash and picked up by Trash Pickers!  This backyard economy thrives!  These folks who are privey to these types of situation can add considerably to their incomes.

The money off recyclables, the money off cast off food items, and the savings from cast off room items, such as beddings, pillows, linens, soaps, toliet papers, lamps, mattresses, etc., can accumulate into a wealth of dollars that are saved because these people do not have to spend their wages to get these items.  Add this savings in a dollar value to their already existing dollar income....and you have an increase of money from the recycables at about an extra perhaps 200 dollars a week and from the salvaged food items about 100 a week and add that to the general income of a rooms keeper of around  300 a week plus the tips to a rooms keeper...at around an approximate 100 a week or more....and suddenly you may have a different viewpoint of the thriving UNDERGROUND economy that is part of the United States.

If you want to know why the economy is suffering, instead of looking at the "slow economic growth"...look to where the growth is thriving.  Not at the top, but at the bottom of the food chain!  The people who are working this country to death are the ones in the low end immigrant jobs...because some are here because they are not here legally and some are gaining incomes and not paying taxes...and milking the welfare systems with "anchor baby newborns" and fabricated monetary needs and fabricated medical needs.  This "pulling down" of our once vibrant and useful country is what is creating the "great economic black hole!"

In my lifetime I have heard nothing but sympathy for these "types" of people, but they are smarter and clearer in their disciplines and daily work than all of the Fortune 500 Companies...and they know how to use the underdog systems.  They know how to work Economic Gorilla Warfare!  So as Randy Travis clearly sang, "It is not what you have while you are here, but WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND YOU WHEN YOU GO!"  He was telling us something and was anyone listening?

There is an old saying that my own Mother used to sound out to me, "Another man's trash is another man's tresure!"  50 years ago I just looked at her and said, "huh?"  Today her words have meaning and are worth their weight in uh, "trash!"

People cast away so many useful things.  Tom Hanks used the movie title, "Cast-a-Way!"  I think the message in the title is the same as Randy Travis's...It is not what you have...it is what you leave behind you when you go...and there is for certain good in doing this.  By all means nature is filled with creatures that harvest the leavings of other creatures or biological processes.  It is all part of the process of nature cleaning up after itself.  Can we push this idea to the weather systems and global warming?  In the last recent years we have observed our planet pushing its weather phenomena to the brink of recycling humans.  The droughts in South Africa, the Tusnamis, the Earthquakes, the Floods, the Rains, the Hurricanes, the Tornadoes, the Volcanoes, the Fires,  the Snow Melts, not to mention the effect of all of this on the Human Conciousness....the outbreaks of social warfare...on many continents.  Human suffering is not a joke!  People are stressed to the max and drawing on their personal beliefs in God to overcome the dispair....as human leave behind their refuge...they are entering into the system: every nuclear facility along every coast.  Humans will be the first to go...and the effects of the radioactive wastes given to the earth as its inheritance or our inhabitance will be distributed for the end of all time.  A beautiful  living creature or planetary entity will roll over and groan as it melts back into the cosmic tide.  A sad and tragic fate to our Grand Mother Earth...what have humans in total, left behind?

How have we been hospitable to our Earth, that has been our Mother, and our Host here on Earth?  What do we leave behind?  Is there some force of transcontinental life that will fill the void in time and space and energy?  Is there some force that will pick up the cosmic trash and recycle it and make life worth something again...make it worth the doing and the living?

Humans are fighting over the rights to trash as they try to live.  People fight over garbage left in Hotels, on the streets, in garbage cans, behind stores,  and storm chase to find things that hurricanes blew hundreds of thousands of miles...high in the Himilayas, a man's wallet with family photo is preserved as an airborn aritifact .  The address in the wallet is from Kansas.  People are fighting over trash.  Instead they should be fighting for the Life Of The Earth!

The Way It Was

The Way It Was

In the year 2000....I arrived on schedule to pick up my young child from the school, however I usually allowed extra minutes before the final bell.  So it was 3:05 in the hot afternoon.  I walked over to the drinking fountain.  I noticed off to my left a strange and unusual sight before my eyes:  8 small children, both boys and girls, 2 white females, 1 black female, 1 asian male, 2 hispanic males, 2 while males; all around the first or second grade level...all sitting or some standing out in the full hot sun on the hot tar asphalt playground at the tether and basketball area, I repeat, in the full hot afternoon sun.  

They were squirming around like slow cooked worms in a fry pan.  There was no teacher supervising them.  I could see they were painfully and extremely uncomfortable on the hot asphalt and in that full hot sun.  One little white boy kept smacking the little black girl hard on the head.  One little hispanic boy kept laughing and forcring her to keep in the way of the little white boy that was hitting her.  One little white girl, dressed in a thin fabric blouse and pants, found it impossible to find a spot that was not burning hot.  She was crying miserably and in obv ious pain.  I could not believe what I  was seeing.  This was supposed to be a public school and these were the school children.  And this was their treatment?  I wondered what was going on.

Now off to my right was a class outside in session gathered around tether ball poles.  There were maybe 15-20 of these students between 6 and 7 years old.  There was a teacher with them.  Apparently he was the teacher, and he was punishing the separated 8 children by putting them on the hot asphalt in the hot sun.  The children the teacher was working with were in half sunlight and half shade.  They were all standing upright.

I got my drink of cool water, walked left towards the 8 children in the sun.  I looked off to the right toward the Bruite and the main buildings.  Standing beneath the shade of the halls were four teachers starring out at the 8 children suffering in the hot sun.  I thought that was strange, that they were "teachers" watching or allowing children to suffer these conditions.
hat
I bent over placing my hand flat onto the surface of the sizzling hot asphalt.  Instantly my skin burnt and I recoiled in pain.  I could have incurred 2nd or 1st degree burns from the asphalt, had I let my hand sizzle longer.  The sun, hot on my head can cause brain damage from excessive temperature or heat radiation.  That much heat can dehydrate a body within minutes, especially a small sized body that weights only 40 or 50 pounds.  Dehydration also can cause irritability and various forms of aggression.  Therefore the punishment these teachers were giving the school children was making their behavior worse, not better.

I just had a drink of water.  I was fine.  I could walk out of the hot sun, without recourse.  I did not have to place my bare skin or my fragile non-heat resistant clothing on the hot tar.

I tested the surface of the hot tar again, I asked the little black girl if it was too hot, she looked up her eyes pleading mercy and said, "yes, mamam, it is..."  then the bell rang.  I waited for my school child.  I went to his teacher and asked her professional opinion.  She said she agreed with me and sent me to seek the school principal and make a more formal assertion.  I did this.  The principal said she would take care of it.  I do not know if she ever did.

My school age child told me they had done this to him and others as well.

Personally, I believe that the P.E. teacher who put all these children on the hot tarmac needs to be sanctioned for his methods of punishment due to a lack of consideration for the health and well being of the childre.  In addition to sitting the 8 children on the hot tarmac, after it was over he did not even allow them to get a drink of water, and instead he continued to compound his already cruel and abusive punishment by reprimanding the children for wiggling, getting up to run around and escape the hot asphalt, and hitting on each other.  I consider the P.E teachers methods to be cruel and unusual punishment based on the fact of my observation of making them sit on the sizzling hot tarmac in the heat of the sun for over 25 minutes.  This is excessive for a 6 or 7 year old child.

Perhaps the school was thinking of making the punishment so bad that it forces the children to want to do good to avoid the pains of the punishment again.  However when a teacher mades a judgement and the well being or health of the child is placed in serious jeopardy, then that teacher himself needs severe discipline sanctions and a reprimand....parents are taught to trust the system...but when the system fails, we need to speak up and see changes made that give providence to our children so that they are encouraged to learn.

This was in the year 2000...in the State of Nevada...where the sun is very hot.

ODE TO THE GATEKEEPER

ODE TO THE GATEKEEPER

By Merrily McCarthy

I want to curl myself
Up in your lofty pine boughs
Run my tongue, to taste
Your silver/green pine needles
Roll upon your ancient wood
Until absorbed, I feel part of you…

When I am thirsty
I drink deeply from your eyes
Their liquid amber glow
Filling me to the quickness
Of my heart…
My hunger demands, more…

I listen to you, pines
Listen to your shimmering
Listen… harkening to your voice
Watch the Raven,
He talks to me
And the small sky peepers
And the Mountain Blue Jay
And the flutter
Of the Dogwoods; their gospel green leaves,
Flowers of white petals
Sitting as statements in the sun…
Delicate visual poetry.

Set me upon thee strong member
Pierce with lust and passion;
Not the cold/hot melt of snow
When so cold it burns…

There are more than
Four seasons to my heart;
Each more eager
To change into love
Than the last…

Puff your breath deeply
Into my eager wanton lips…
Allow me to swell within
Filled by your soul-vesseling vapors…
Where I may take you
Down with me
Whence flows
The oceans heavy currents
So formly moved by it’s unrest…

I want to die in your arms
Have your truth buried in me.
I want to lay with you
In the sweet moments of tomorrow
Sharing our dreams together…
With no unspoken promises
Still burning upon our lips.
I want to cry out
Know why the eagles soar
Every time I am loving you…

I want to be the first sight
You see in morning light,
As we rise to dawn of day…
And the last ear at evening end
To hear what song your
Whispered words will play,
Now tenderly hold me close
While gentle sleep floats us away…

When the sun sets,
It’s pale pink rays spread
Across the horizon of the sky,
I want your heart surrendered...upon mine
Entwined as we both melt in our heat…
Pulsing to the rhythms of an earthen beat…
Carry me upon your waters
As we move soft, low and sweet…

May I bear the burden
Of your full weight
Bouldering above
Your mighty talus feet…

In Old Europe the GateKeepers lived in the towers of the entrance Gates and controlled who entered the palace and the cities.  The Gatekeepers basically in this manner controlled not only who came and went, but also controlled the economy and the politics of the settlement.  If a GateKeeper did not wish something to be told or sold or brought into the city behind the walls he could send it away and no one would ever know.  GateKeepers were given extreme power in Old Europe.  Modern society has evolved the gatekeeper methodology to  be implimented into software systems as well as the traditional people controlling information, such as in the newspaper companies or the United States Capitol, or simply a bouncer in a nightclub.   GateKeepers are everywhere in some form or the other as they may be informal or formal.  An Editor can be called a GateKeeper.  A minister is a GateKeeper for religious thinking and related activities.  A parent is a GateKeeper for the offspring and how the children relate to the rest of the social structure.  Our environment is a GateKeeper because we as humans have to conform and live within the boundaries of environmental possibilities.  A husband or a lover is also a GateKeeper in a family or in a relationship, or the GateKeeper could possibly be the wife or the mother...just depends on whomever exerts the controlling powers at the time.  It appears to be somewhat embedded in our system of thought.  Perhaps today humans refer to it more on the level of self actuating responsiblity, as opposed to an intellectual activity that is removed from ones own immediate resources.   It is interesting to note that this old system still flourishes and helps contain and regulate the flow of information and the input of knowledge and who gets rich and who does not.

When Old People Cry

When Old People Cry

Would you like to place
Your succulent youthful lips
Of softly rosen hue
In front of mine
For me to fully view?

How would you feel
To taste my warmth
That lingers wet
Upon my aging cheek?

One tender knowing kiss
Placed gently
Caressed by our breathe
Whence we lovingly speak...

Is it to much to hope
That tomorrows love
Is better born
Than my old wrinkles
You find today
Growing from, I see
Your frown of scorn...

As you place
Your Golden Kiss
Upon my old and wrinkled face...
Is there some wisdom torn
From pages written long ago
When springs love is renewed again
Kissing good by to winters
Softly falling cold blue snow.

I offer up my wrinkled cheek
Having tipped its last tear good by
Now I settle in with decaying age
Knowing youth is gone.
In my last and final phase
I allow myself the luxury
WHEN OLD PEOPLE CRY...

At last we finally meet
Understand this destiny of ours.
The ancient storms of billowing dust
Are fastly filling my cracks of time
I cannot escape the weight as I bend
Yet, I stand against it to struggle
From my darkness, I see your light.
Although I am burdened
Battle scared and torn...
The love I feel for you
Floods my thundering heart
Amidst noble and sacred cause
When brightly worn...

Tho my last breathe
May whistle between
Lost and missing teeth...
Lo, many ruptures of my veins
Corrupt to watch -
I nurse the tumors and the aches
Causing me to tremble -
Feeling your glowing passionate heart
Surrounds, ah, embraces
My insistent body and my vibrant song
Like a mantle of protective cloth -
Streams of fabulous shimmering gold
Keeping me from falling
Into the furnace of the unloved
As I slowly dimenish and grow cold.

Your thoughts ever so worthy
As well your cherished gift
To us of life...
Found deep
In the well of your heart.
Handsome youth;
Born from your Mother's
Tender bearing womb...
We bear witness
To your noble nature,
Caring character -nourished by inspiration
From the man you are within...

Favor me with acceptance
As I lay my aging body
In the path of your great grace...
I realize I am not worthy
To gaze upon your most lovely,
Gracious face...

Now at times scattered in the web
Of my wracked and feverish brain
I collide with ancient atoms
Free radicals of storm and strain
And I wash my hands of genocide...
Finding a humble solitary rock
Willing...
Somewhere in the universe its placed
Bury my head upon it' s edge.
No, there is no culmination
Only souls determined disintegration
I know sorrow; I know it's happening:
WHEN OLD PEOPLE CRY.

So I allow you to kiss me
Your lips: comfort divine.
And for as long as I have
Left to remember
Your soul and mine entwine.
I joined with you
Returning to blessed youth
Giving to you -
Surrendering -
All my knowledge, my ancient wisdom
And my truth...

If you look really hard....

If you look really hard you might find an anteater roaming around Yosemite Valley.  Of course they are shy creatures and tend to cling to the edges of the cliffs where they can hide under the nearest tall trees.  I had to chase this one  out in the open and he refused to show me all of his body.  But he kept rolling this rock under his foot.  My guess is he was crushing black ants and then snorting them up with his long snout.  I think his snout might be a bit clumsy if he was kissing an aardvark...but it would be great for other things , like sniffing out a squirrel in a squirrel hole.  Or getting into a crack in a rock.  Or ferreting out honey or acorns stored in a hollow tree.  Keep your eyes open.  This is  a good time of the year to be watching for the anteaters.  The big black ants and spiders are everywhere, well they are not flying, but they are all over the paths especially at night when you can not see them because when it is dark in Yosemite Valley it is so dark everything looks like a tar baby.  Spiders do not fly, but they do drop out of the trees onto your shoulders or your hair...this is a freaky sensation when you are walking around through the forest and you start to itch and you feel a set of 8 feet running across your arm.  Have your camera ready so you can show your pictures to your friends and family on any where on the Internet of the Yosemite Valley Anteater.

Here is another Yosemite Valley favorite...a nut eating squirrel.  Most squirrel do not stand in the path on a tree branch to chew on a nut.  but this guy is brave and has been waiting for someone to come along and take his picture.  He posed for a good 5 minutes so I could get the perfect shot.  I liked the other one I took where he was balancing on one foot and juggling three nuts at the same time.  That was way cool, but I do not have a high speed shutter so I missed the action and all I got is a blurr of nuts hitting the squirrel on top of his head as he was falling off the branch.  it was a Kodak moment!

You have heard of mushrooms.  Well this is one of Yosemite Valley's largest to date.  It had a baby mushroom next to it the day before this one popped out of the ground, but we would assume some critter got more hungry than i got happy with my camera.  This is like looking at Alice in Wonderland...wow Alice your own private toadstool!
A piece of this and you would have many rock climbers not ever wanna come home.  I had a picture of a purple one and one that was golden colored...truly an event.

These guys are a band called Ravens of The Valley.  They run a very clean act and clean up after themselves whenever they play, which is often.  They are very popular and have regular groupies and shows.  Their music is more on the classical side in particular when they lay on a good string.  they will entertain for hours and the pay requirement is just a bit of whatever you wanna give them.They are already fat so do not take the handout seriously!  The little bird needs more nourishment.  The larger ravens decided to take matters into their own hands.

Yellow Pine Pollen

YELLOW PINE POLLEN


FILTERS THROUGH THE AIR
BLOWING LIKE CLOUDS OF SULFUR
SPEWED, BLOWN BY A FINE WIND
MINED FROM PINES TALL AND SLIM
SCATTERED UPON THE WINGS OF PUFF
DROPPED, THIS FINE PINE DUST
EVERYWHERE YOU STEP
IT IS GATHERED BY
THE FOOTPRINTS YOU MAKE
THE DUST OF POLLEN IS THERE
NO MISTAKE...
SWEEP IT UP 
IT APPEARS AGAIN
LAYERS UPON LAYERS
BREATHE DEEPLY FRIEND
FILL YOUR LUNGS
GET UNDER YOUR SKIN...
YELLOW PINE POLLEN
COLORING BEAUTIFUL WIND SCAPES
WITH YOUR HUE FILLED CLOUDS
BILLOWING, SHIMMERING
AS THE SUN LIGHT STREAMS
THROUGH IN BEAMS
LANDING SOFTLY SETTLING
NOW HERE, OR THERE
EVERYWHERE
IN YELLOW PARTICLES
DUSTING THE CORNERS
OF BUILDINGS
OF STEPS
ON TABLES
ON CHAIRS
ON THE GROUND
IN YOUR HAIR
DUSTING THE SPIDER WEB
THAT LIVES WHERE IT HANGS
BY THE SPIDER THAT IS COVERED
IN YELLOW PINE POLLEN...
YOUR CAR IS STRICKEN IN 
PINE POLLEN MESSAGES...
LINEAR WRITINGS OF YELLOW GOLD...
DO YOU LOOK UP IN THE TREES
SO YOU SEE ITS BOTANICAL ORIGIN?
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES?
THEY SAY THAT LAST YEAR
THERE WAS NO PINE POLLEN
AND THIS YEAR, WE HAVE
POLLINATION IN TOTAL 
ILLUMINATION...
NATURE HAS CHANGED AGAIN.
SHE MAKES YOU TAKE NOTICE
OF THE UNSEEN MIRACLES...
SHE EMPHASIZES THE WEB
THE CONNECTIVITY OF ITS PARTS
ARE YOU SEEKING THE RADIUS?
IT LEADS TO THE SEAT OF YOUR SOUL.

The Mighty Merced River

Moving this way or that
Shifting out of control
Grasping for more of the same
Swooping backward
the river...
Owns a sense of urgency
To go quickly
Somewhere
To push each arching wave
over, out of the course
Of all the other rivulets 
attempting in desperate motion
It flows
as long as there 
is its substance...
water.
It flows disrespectfully 
Of all other
Molecules...
But its own.
Is its destiny Mercy?
If you are not in its way...
Not under the booming
Barreling of her mighty waters
Not ready nor willing
To succumb to her
roiling, frothing momentum
The earth is able.
The mountains,
can hold her in check,
between her heavy
clumsy granite legs.
Between the exploding
clefts in her cheeks
Like the sounding 
of an ancient ape
booming out across all earth
its need to regroup or mate...
But slowing her slightly
With distractions
such as fallen logs
perturbed troubled boulders
curbing her avaricious lust
to take whatever lays upon
her surface,
to sweep away what may
fall into her deep folds...
Knocking against a boulder
as big as a house
or roughing on pebbles
as small as marbles
in a boys game.
But, the River is
not a game;
not for little boys.
She is for herself,
for humans,
for creatures,
for all life on earth:
who need to understand
Her wet essence.
Every drop.
Represents life itself
for us all.

And she will take you 
Back with her
To a beginning.
Someday she will claim
you...victoriously.
Leaping upon your limpness,
Churning at your struggle,
refusing to release you
from her suffocating grasp.
Boiling, Foaming, Gripping:
Stealing, releasing you of
your energy...taking back
her water she gave you 
to drink...
Dashing you to bits
in her madness
to reach the hot empty
aqua-furnace far below
the earths crust:
steaming forth from her hot mouth.
Quenching the never-ending thirst.
With cold up welling swells,
splashing high,
jumping all boundaries;
rolling where she will,
filling spaces
with calm beams of liquid light.
Existing as water can
unseen and despoiled by
humans...
bouncing, playing
wet leap frogs on the rocks.
Chasing after boulders from the high side,
top to the down, rushing thrusting
eager to reach the bottom.
Embodied by its unholy weight
It"s power...
into the abyss
of froth choked ecstasy
releasing the fragrant scent
of water...
of evergreens and air...
blended with climate-wine.
Sweet, I sing of River Waters.
Intensely pushing or pulling
on your colony of currents.
Curling, expanding, embracing
this crazy tumbling
of being somewhere
then displaced to nowhere
another position in our universe.

You River, unstoppable torrent,
reaching in never ending 
streaming; surround me.
Complete my soul.
Allow me to be swept away,
drenched in your wetness.
Loved by your elemental viscosity.
Your silken cool gurgle touching
under my skin...
Within me your surging power
Thundering space between my pores.
I dare,
I delight to swim with you.
To know you intimately,
sweeping pressing against my urgent return,
fulfill my need.
I see the curves of your river spine.
Fountains of wonder stream forth.
Flowing in endless precision.
Each boulder your sturdy bone.
Each particle of wet drops,
your life BLOOD.
Spilling hard against the earth,
Dropping from the pale lithosphere
You bleed out onto our earth
You leak from your wounds;
yet you slip through my fingers
disappearing...
AS THO YOU NEVER WERE.
Leaving me damp
Wanting more
Come
Crash down on me
Suspend who I am

Make me one more drop of you...