Mountain Sunsets

I'm sitting here watching the sun set. In a mountain valley it's not so much of a sunset as a long slow slide into deepening twilight. That comes from being surrounded by a ring of mountain peaks. People in the flatlands get sunsets, we get an hour of these lovely pale blues and pinks and purples. Then there are the stars. Oh the stars. I spend more and more of my time watching the sunsets now, and waiting for the billions of stars to slide into view. I seem to have more time now. My life seems more focused of late, more confined, but by the same token richer.

It's been a tough weekend. In my new quest to live a healthier life I decided to try the sweetener Stevia. I've read repeatedly about how terrible white sugar is, and how artificial sweeteners are full of chemicals. Stevia seemed a good answer. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to wonder what family the Stevia plant was a part of. Turns out it's second cousin to both sunflower and ragweed. And I'm allergic to both. It took three days of two packets a morning in my coffee to make me sicker than I've been in a long time. Saturday was a total loss. Initially I just figured I'd somehow glutened myself, but by Saturday I figured it out when I looked up info on Stevia.

What was even more alarming where the somewhat psychotropic effects it had on me. I have a rather distinct memory of thinking I was a chicken there at one point. Fortunately I had the good sense to stay in bed with the covers over my head. Yeah, weird stuff. But you know it's "100% safe all natural and there's never been one single adverse reaction to it reported." Uh, until now. So where do I go to report this? You gotta love the whole new green marketing machine out there. I now realize they're no more honest than all the other marketers out there. Everyone wants to sell you, but no one is going to be around later when you start clucking in your sleep and hunting for bugs.

But there are so many opinions out there about what is good for you and what is bad. I encounter that daily as I read more and more about gluten intolerance on the web. In the end I think you have to keep reading and figure it out for yourself: figure out what works for you and discard the rest. The Federal Government is convinced that wheat is good for me and should be the basis of a good healthy diet, whether it kills me or not. I seem to recall grains being the foundation of their silly food triangle. But I read a statistic the other day from a doctor doing research on Celiac Disease. He thinks as much as 80% of the population has one or more genes for gluten intolerance. I saw another figure, more widely accepted, that 1 in 113 people are gluten intolerant, most without knowing it. But wheat is good for you, any school girl knows that; it's just common sense.

I don't particularly enjoy listening to people prattle on about common sense these days. "Well, it's just common sense you know." Lately when I hear someone use the phrase common sense it seems to be emotional shorthand for "I don't understand" or "I'm afraid of learning that I don't already know everything." People just want to return to a time when common sense ruled, whatever that means. Things have gotten too complicated for them, and they just want to curl up in their cocoon and wrap themselves in what they've always known and eat their Wonder Bread. Gods, here's a thought - death by Wonder Bread. What a way to go.

But common sense to me has always meant something different. It's always meant listening to what my head and heart and soul are telling me. To me, in a very real way that is COMMON sense. I subscribe to the theory that we're all of one soul, all connected by this invisible thread. We can all, in theory, tap into the common knowledge, the common brain, the common sense, a common past and future. I said in theory. Actually achieving that has only been accomplished in bits and pieces in my life.

Of course my common sense theories puts me at odds with most other people's common sense. They'd tell me to shut up and eat my bread, it's good for me because the Federal government has always said so. The government knows these things and they wouldn't lie. These are the same people who think I should be married with 1.4 children and a Labrador Retriever, be Christian and living down in the flatlands in some suburban sprawl like place. Obviously I've never much listened to them or subscribed to their theories.

So I live in a mountain valley. I somehow figured when I moved here I'd encounter like souls. I'd find people here who aren't cut out of normal square cloth just by nature of the place they've chosen to settle. It hasn't worked out that way. Not at all. I'm surrounded by common sense people. They don't much like that I'm single or Pagan, or a single female Pagan. There is no community up here for single women, no way for them to fit in. We live on the fringes of their common sense view of the world. Then you throw in gluten intolerance and you rule out the one mode of socialization that exists for the single woman in these mountains; restaurants and bars.

So here I sit, watching sunsets. Watching the wind bend the trees against a darkening sky. I've always been more solitary a person than not. At one point in my life I did a lot of past life work and got glimpses, little vignettes of the past out of it. One moment I remember was unexpectedly loosing someone who was my world and the crashing agony of that. Who knows, maybe that's why I keep a distance in this life. Who knows how much hangs on from one life to another, how much of who we are is not just the sum experience of this life, but of other lives.

I used to worry that I was living this life backwards. That I was here to get past this need for solitude that seems to be hardwired into me. That somehow I was supposed to discover some magic, some point of view, some relationship that would make me a happy people person. But I don't think so anymore. Perhaps that's my karma. Yeah, I know, never second guess karma. But perhaps part of the lessons to be learned here is how to be alone, be still, be focused, be just me. How does that Eagles song go:

Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin'
It's waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still