I decided
if they sent me to war at 18
I would not kill
even if it meant I was killed
for I was sure to be sent to war
meant to be killed
and I would not have my last action on the earth
to be taking another’s life

I decided
nightmares were things to keep to yourself
for if they were silly fears
there was no need to share them
if they were real fears
then you just had to face them
so I never shared them

I decided
other people had strange ideas
about how to act
what to like
who to like
they would not like for me to like
the things I like
the people I like
they would not like for me to be
who I am
but I liked who I am
their rules were silly
so it did not matter
I would just not point out to them
who I am
I would just be
who I am
and everyone would be happy
with their silly rules
and I would be happy being me

I decided
god did not live in ‘god’s house’
god was not an old man with a beard
god was in the rock I found on the beach
in the dogwood blossom
that floated all the way across the yard
to land at my feet
god was in the flowers that my granny planted
in the dirt she planted them in
in the ants that crawled in the dirt
god was in threads on my blanket
in everything I could see and touch
and all these god things were special
and should be treated that way

I remember these decision
like they were yesterday
and while I was only 6 years old
when I decided
in all these decades
I have never changed my mind

One thing I think a lot about is how people communicate with others non verbally, from a distance. Yes, I believe in extra sensory perception (ESP). And believing and being able to prove something are two different thing. The big problem is how people go about trying to prove ESP. Their idea is that I can look at a card, and you can tell me what it is. I can stand in a room, and you can tell me what color the walls are. That’s not what I am talking about. Those are contrived tests to prove something that most people who say they have ESP never even claim they can do, yet are dismissed as frauds if they can’t produce results in such a ludicrous test.

Extra Sensory Intuition might be a better term for what most people would call the trait if they have it. The mother knows a child is in danger. You have an urge to call someone, and they needed you to call. You take something with you as you leave the house, wonder why you took it, and then later, you are in an unforeseen situation where it was needed. You dream something repeatedly, and then it happens. Nothing to do with concentrating on a card to guess it’s character.

This concept is dismissed by my skeptical friends because it is ‘not testable’. They want the mind reading, spoon bending tests they heard about in the 70s. They don’t want to look at a harder problem. But, it was not long ago that genetics were not testable, and relative to history, not long before that that we didn’t even know what genes were. For years, I was told that i could acquire a taste for certain foods and drinks. Now we know that my genes created taste buds that can’t stand bitter flavors. My mind will not simply be retrained to like them by tasting them. For years, I was also told that if I just started getting up at the same time, and going to bed at the same time, then I too could be a morning person. Now we know that several genes are mainly responsible for the fact that I am more creative and alert from 10pm to 4am, while others bounce out of bed cheery with the dawn. A ’scientific’ study (with low populations and subjective questioning) says niteowls are not as happy with life. I think that is probabaly because they did the test before noon while the niteowls were having to put up with the cheery morning people. Let’s do the test again, but at night while forcing the morning people to stay awake past their bedtime and sing our niteowl songs, and hear our niteowl stories. But I digress.

One thing I find interesting is that the same friends that dismiss intuition as something for people who are crazy, religious, liars, or all of those, accept scientific theories on bending time and space, quantum physics, and electron particle acceleration as brilliant scientific advances. All fascinating areas to me, and places I think we may find some answers on intuition. I mean, think about it. We know our brain wave energy can be measured a certain distance from our bodies. That we can measure now. We know that certain signals to certain synapses or areas in the brain can trigger certain responses, images, auditory processes. Now if time and space are not linear, think what that could mean for brain wave energy outside the body. The time and distant between you and me is great linearly, but what if we could somehow bend things for a period so that we are much closer in time and space than we currently can perceive, or measure, or test? If moving an electron in one part of this bent space and time can trigger a response in another part of that space, then consider the possibilities.

I saw a study that the article about it said ‘proved’ there was no god, because there is an area of the brain known to be associated with feelings of self, and if the symmetrically mirrored area of the brain is stimulated, then the study showed people could feel other presences around them. The conclusion was that since these feelings could be stimulated in tests, and the other presences did not exist, then no such presences (spirits, angels, gods) exist. That’s a huge leap. One, if you stimulate an area of the brain to make the subject hear a bell tone, does that mean bells do not exist? If you stimulate an area of the brain and the person has visual images, does that mean the things they see do not exist in reality? I think it has only proven that a specific area of the brain processes others around them. Maybe those others they sensed in the experiment were memories of people from the previous day, or years. Maybe they were imaginary people created by the brain when the people area was triggered and had nothing visual, tactile, or auditory to work with, so it took pieces of various memories. Or maybe, there were ‘others’ around them. We don’t have a way to measure that, yet. The study started with the conclusion that there were no ‘others’ in the room, and then based on that assumption, reached the same conclusion. The articles conclusion was not science. But the work itself was brilliant, and may lead to all sorts of answers in areas of mental and physical health, learning, communication, and intuition.

Another problem with how people look to test intuition is that they need words. Intuition is thoughts, not words. This idea is difficult to put into words, much less figure out how to test it. Difficult, not impossible, and not to be dismissed as undo able. Here’s what I mean. Before i typed this, i thought it in words. before i thought it in words, I thought it. Got it? Try this. In mid thought, Stop. As you are thinking something, form half the sentence in your head, then stop thinking it before you finish. Now don’t you already know what the rest of the words would have been, before you formed an english sentence, or a spanish sentence, or the thought in whatever language? Or think of it this way. A baby cries when it is hungry, it knows what it wants, but it does not know the word hungry, or food, or eat. That is the kind of thought that intuition is composed of. It’s not “the card is red”, or even “i should call my mom”. It’s the raw thought, before language processing. And just like somethings are not easily translatable from one spoken language to another, those types of thoughts are not always translatable to language. Testing something that hasn’t even been described in words clearly so far, is a difficult task.

All this rambling to say, there are some amazing discoveries we are making in science, proving things that we didn’t even know to ask before, or that we had no way for it to be testable. I never believed i was not a morning person simply because I was too lazy to get up at the same time every day, or that being avert to mornings made me less intelligent. But I could not prove that to the people who said it, until now. Don’t decide what we will and will not learn from discoveries we have made, or are on the verge of making, not before we see what the next question is that they raise. What are the next two pieces of new knowledge that we thought of as unrelated but can put together to answer a question that leads us to the next question that we were unprepared to be able to answer, but now suddenly see possibilities? My intuition tells me we are on the verge of some scientific society shattering discoveries, or simply some society shattering discoveries. Binary is a universal language,and scientist all over the world can communicate using that one language; ‘there is no end to what they can do’, what they can discover. But we can’t decide what those discoveries should be, then test to prove ourselves right. John F. Kennedy said, ‘The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask “why not?”.’ He was a very intuitive man.

I admit I have lost a lot of faith in people, but I was in a funeral procession on Sand Mountain today, and I saw something that made me change my mind, a little. People pulled over as the funeral procession passed. I don’t see that much any more. I’ve even been told it’s a weird southern tradition that should be done away with, and that it’s annoying, and a waste of time. I strongly disagree.

The procession was rather long, but only about 30 to 40 seconds from beginning to end, from the hearse to the last car with his flashers on. It really didn’t take that much time out of anyone’s life. And it was a great show of respect to the people grieving, just to stop, for less than a minute, as if to say i understand what you are feeling, and nothing I am doing, no where I am going, is so important that I can’t stop and acknowledge you, a fellow human being, and your loss and your grief. If nothing else, when you stop, you can reflect for that 30 or 40 seconds on how short your life is, how little time you have with the people you love. 30 seconds. Can you really not spare 30 seconds from your life.

I was the next to the last car, so I got to watch out my window, or in my mirrors as the people started back to what they were doing, and it wasn’t just driving to where they were going. I saw a man stop his riding mower in his yard until we passed. I saw teenagers that had stopped passing a football until we passed. People stopped working in their yards. One man stood in salute until we passed.

We drove for what must have been 20 miles. People stopped on the two lanes, on the four lanes, one the divided four lanes. Only two people did not pull over. One was a police truck with his lights on. The part of me that has become cynical wondered if he just used the lights to not have to stop, but I don’t really think that. The other was a young woman on a cell phone, oblivious to all around her. She is probably the type of person that has made me cynical. They type that thinks stopping for 30 seconds is a waste of her time. The type that has forgot how to use words like please, thank you, excuse me; the type that can’t stop to let someone, that can’t see them coming, back out of a parking spot, but blows the horn instead, to say I am in a hurry and more important than you; the type that waits on you in a fast food or a store, and instead of saying ‘can i help you’, just stares at you until you figure out they are ready to help you; the type that when you hold the door for them, they just walk through as if it was expected, and don’t bother to say thank you, or even give you a glancing smile; the type that need so much to be in front that they will risk their lives and everyone’s around them by weaving through traffic to save 5 minutes. Those people make me think there’s little hope for the world.

But today, I got a little hope back. Maybe things like consideration, respect, politeness still exist. It wasn’t a big thing they did. It took 30 seconds of their day. But it was kindness. It was consideration for fellow human beings. Maybe it’s only left on Sand Mountain, but at least it’s still out there somewhere.