the amazing Owen Pallet

i have quite a few of these...









what are yours?

please listen and support KEXP. god dammit that station is so fucking good.

do it. just do it

http://kexp.org/

What do we leave behind. This reminds me. I need to smile more.



http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/09/walter-schels/

I'm Terri onestepforward's husband Gabriel Marquez and I wanted to let her DU family know she committed suicide last Thursday and I am utterly devastated. She made DU a daily part of her life and she learned so much and made such wonderful connections here over the past few years. She appreciated how important and wonderful this place really is and it was very special to her. It's hard for me to breathe right now but I did want to let her DU family know she LOVED all of you so, so much and I wanted to to convey my appreciation to you for all you gave her. You all meant so much to her. Thank you.








Here's a link to her final DU post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018614115

Once again, Thank you.

I'm onestepforward's husband and I wasn't sure this was the right place to even mention it but she passed away on Thursday. I'll do a more formal post about her this weekend. Terri loved her DU family so much she was always so happy when one her threads would make it to Cool or Greatest. So thank you for all the love, kindness, learning and joy you've given her throughout the years. I know for a fact she LOVED all of you so, so much.

Don't forget to love one another today and be as kind and forgiving to yourself and everyone you know because all our hearts depend on it. Thank you.

"You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”




"You don't say..."

There was an experience I had that I want to share. It happened when I was working as an electrician in a high rise building here in Houston, Texas, the Huntington Estates. We were wiring deceased Enron CEO Ken Lay's apartment back in 1997. He owned the entire floor so it had a beautiful view of the entire Houston skyline from the balconies on every cover of the building. I used to love just standing out there and marveling at the grand view. One overcast day i was standing on the southeast facing balcony and from around the corner of the building came a peregrine falcon soaring right at my eye level. We were at east 400 feet up so the wind gust made it easy for the bird to glide gently and slowly around the corner. She drew closer and closer until she was less than 20 feet from me. When she got right in front of me she turned her head and looked right at me. She hung there for what seems like forever just looking at me. In her eyes i saw an intelligence, an understanding. For those fleeting moments we connected. Then she shifted her wings and turned away from the wind and was gone. I knew she had a nest in the east facing window of the penthouse. I had heard about her from other workers but I never thought i'd be able to get such a good look at her. It was a simple but amazing moment, one that I cherish forever.



Do any of you have a moment like this you might want to share?


Peace

Hello, DU Seekers. I posted a version of this story on DU 2 but thought I would resurrect it for anyone who hasn't read it and open it up for discussion. Ok, here's my story;


One hot summer afternoon of my fifth year, I chose to do a little exploration under the old house where I lived. My old home was not much more than a shack lifted off the soil by great gray bricks. It had no A/C unit, wall or central, just a giant attic fan that was fun to send paper planes into and watch them disappear into the darkness. The space under my house always had enough light filtering in with plenty of room - just in case I had to make a hasty retreat. I knew I could get out fairly easily if I encountered some sort of beastie. So, danger be dammed.

My entire life I've always been the anxious type, even at five and my entire family reminded me of that fact often. So my explorations went on with the same intensity I was used to. While I was under doing my grand exploration on the cool hard dirt, lying on my stomach, hands buried in the soothing earth, a feeling began to pull me from my wild fascination of the tiny creatures and their world, a sense of great calm and peace came over me. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. I began to focus on my breath and nothing else... in...out...in...out. The peace I was feeling went even deeper. Then all at once I was filled with a vision of me, or at least what I thought was me. It's as if I was a wave on the surface of the ocean... but I could also sense the great depth of that same ocean. The part of me that I knew and could see was just a teeny, tiny part of something much greater. Then a thought came to me, "Who are you? Who is Allen? What am I? At that moment I didn't know anymore. Even then I didn't understand why me - a five-year-old would ask or care about such questions. It was that moment that started me on the long path to the profound realization - there is much more to me than what I can see.

Since then, I've found that there's so much more to us than just the life experiences we've had. We are not only the sum of our physical and emotional experiences but what we truly are...is the pure consciousness we experience this universe with. I've come to realize we're not merely punished flesh, we ARE life itself and our depth is unfathomable. We are the universe and there is nothing to fear...ever. We don't have to be weighed down by what happened to us in our past. We can simply learn from it and move on freely. The most important thing I've learned is that we can find a deep lasting peace when we connect to that depth that is more "us" than we even know. All we have to do to find this place is be still...

I have no idea what happened to me that day but I was changed somehow. For that experience in my life, I will be forever grateful.

~ AllenVanAllen


Do any of you have similar experiences you'd like to share here? I'd love to hear them.
Thank you for reading!

May you walk in stillness. May you stand in peace.