A Wonderful Set of Dragonfly Wings

8/6/2019 A Wonderful Set of Dragonfly Wings

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ByEric Perez ©



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A message that I wrote to Martha Armendariz, my old friend thatnow lives in New Jersey some time ago, has an Alaskan origin. It somehowended in my hands and I, several times, had the intention to pass it on to

friends but, there has always been some kind of force to prevent me for thatto happen. Now, thanks to serendipity, while searching for something else, Ihave come across it again. Several years have passed but The Note is stillvalid, a sign that it may be worth the effort to try the wings on.

To start with; I should mention that I used to live in Anchorage as a foreignstudent, my knowledge of Alaskan winters, and my understanding of thelanguage at the time, were to say the least, poor. Of the winter it amazed methe short crisp days so brand new, the biting cold eves in South Central

Alaska; I had arrived in the fall to Anchorage and enrolled at the ACC(Anchorage Community College) and UA full time for the winter. I beganmy Chicaco days spent in awe at short rainy mornings, cloudy afternoonsand long dark eves in autumn as a well mannered tenderfeet believing I couldride my bike to the ACC for the rest of the season, nearly frozen fingers andchills from cold sweat convinced me of riding the bus instead.

About language those days, I was learning differences among the manyhues of gray, blue and white; and the differences among the diverse types ofsnow, such as slush, wet snow, powder snow, hoarfrost or the infamousyellow snow, this last one not to be eaten. Those colors and textures becamerepresentative of three Alaskan seasons from fall to spring. Those colorsmeant Alaska. I was forever flabbergasted with the early winter sunshine onthe Big Dipper's flag flying high up against the winter frost. A navy bluecloth sparkled with gold stars. A lovingly flag that flew stubbornly



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enwrapped with chamomile radiance, bathed by powder snow and framed

in pale blue skies of winter mornings.

My plan for enrolling in courses at the ACC and the UA was: ' anythingI hadn't done or learned before at Med. School in Mexico.’ Accordingly I got into arich diversity: Courses of Speech and Human Sociology got tangled withthose of Jazz Dance, swimming, Med. Lab. or Neurophysiology. The greatdiscovery was that I could form the most incredible combination of coursesthat had wanted to take in my dreams. Good examples could be the scientificand fun Human Sexology course, no lab included but practice assigned; orthe one that would become my favorite, a consciousness development classon human relationships: how to survive living with others. This awarenesswas taught by a lovely and likable presence: Laura Kelly.

She was talented and had the rare ability to connect with you and yourinner feelings; you would drift away in her class while very aware of beingthere. It was in class that I got The Note , a little piece of old wrinkled used uppaper passed from hand to hand. I looked at it as in a zoom take; it could beidentified as what it really was the means to escape from possible threats orto run away from portentous disgrace. The title of the note was Dragonflywings. Wings, as you by now should know, are the perfect traveling meansand companions if you are to get wherever you want, safe and sound.

Who in the zombiest of chances would have come out of a HumanRelations class with a set of wings? I did. Actually, to call a simple note, theun-cool name of wings, may be too weird, really. But never mind. What Iought to do now is to pass it on to you. This will be some liberating action.Six steps to liberation. Then you'll see the light anew. This is your ticket tothe light. If you really have known darkness you then know what thismeans:



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Dragonfly wings

1. DO LITTLE THINGS FIRST (Crawl before you walk.)

2. KEEP LIFE SIMPLE (Order your priorities.)

3. BE REALISTIC 4. THERE ARE PEOPLE NOT WORTH KNOWING

5. CHANGE IS PAINFUL

6. DRAWN UPON YOUR RESOURCES

1. DO LITTLE THINGS FIRST (Crawl before you walk.)

Computer kid junkies know it well. Grown ups have always put a specialemphasis in its assimilation. How come we don't do little things first? Weare humans, is our main excuse and we will find thousand more excuses thatwon't suffice. Yes, we are humans; we love freedom, and so on. It seemsobvious; it’s the freedom to make our lives miserable because we just won't

DO EASY THINGS FIRST.

-O. K. So what’s the big deal? Crawl Before you walk. Easy enough isn't it?There’s always one big BUT: But we ought to go now. But we ought to do itfast. But this is the opportunity of a life time, isn’t it? And so on. However, adifferent but could have been used instead.



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But, if we hadn’t gone in a hurry without the sufficient resources or wehadn’t started our trip without buying a map first and study it for our ownenjoyment several trips to the ER or the pawn shop could have beenprevented. But what would be the use then for the ER personnel? All thoseresources at state of the art hospitals wasted?Crawl before you walk<

2. KEEP LIFE SIMPLE (Order your priorities.)

This one sounds easy enough for an ancient, almost forgotten art thatmust be mastered. There are some Japanese courses in this respect.Simplicity is so elusive to our western civilization. We have learned to freakout just to think about the idea of simplicity. We, or at least I, specialize inthe baroque or elaborated. Simplicity feels absurd. Simplicity, figured out, asan aimless walk in the forest, appears unsatisfactory as a soothing remedyfor our civilized anxieties. But as in the walk, once in route to simplicity, we begin to feel better. Simplicity is as easy as turning the TV off, and asdifficult as deciding what to do with so much free time, before we choose toturn the TV on again!

3. BE REALISTIC

Let’s start by asking ourselves: How realistic can we be when we livesurrounded by fiction and virtual truths? BE REALISTIC?

Meanwhile we sit in our offices and living rooms wondering if we arerealistic enough. Our smart phones, modular systems, house mortgage,spouse, children or significant ones, and pets that configure our realities. TheMedia with the net, newspapers, and e-news casts, magazines, radio, andTV. All of them bring to our ears, eyes, and minds new and fractionedrealities. Many of them out of relevance to our individual realities, most ofthem passed events that have little relevance in our personal current



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happenings, or future speculations that if looked upon seriously doubtfully,if ever will take place. Reality is now as ever protean, always new and sometimes quite frightening.

The comfortable concept of reality as something definite and stable is lostor at least blurry. Living our hurried lives in the big cities is the source of ourreality. Not everybody like, Arthur C. Clark or Sean Connery, can have hisown island and from there live his very own and private reality. We have become Urban Aliens. - UA’s - commuting to other orbs through ourextended limbs: the digitalized Media. We have mutated into spatial crowdsthat can, with our visual extensions millions of kilometers away, visit Jupiter’s moons one moment, and the next, shop on line comfortably;

everything done in our living room.We see what we chooseto see. We are realistic rational animals, aren't we?We can see, hear, and feel what we want. However, we bend this fable to itslimits or beyond sometimes. We are converted into manipulators of realitiesand by doing this; we sometimes forget the essence of individuals, animals,plants, and things. We act completely unconcerned about their own realitiesand circumstances. Characteristics that make them what they are.

This could be illustrated with the fictional human crowds portrayed in thestory by Ray Bradbury, The Martian - from The Martian Chronicles.

He tells us of human crowds in Mars that go around longing for whatthey have lost of value in their lives, nothing different of what we normallydo here on Earth. Because, Martians are hyper sensitive aborigines, they endup as unaware casualties.

All this because Martians become instantly what others unwantedlyproject on them to be. This transformation consumes all Martians’ energies

and consumes them to extinction. It is a deadly combination. Humans aredangerous aliens willing to see only what their minds project on the natives,they create a fake reality out of wishes. And to add hurt to damage, typicalhumans are wishy-washy with their wishes and desires, this makes thedoomed Martians transform themselves into ephemeral realities. Bradbury’sMartians are the prototype of protean uncontrollable transformation: They



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are the heroes and the victims. Any one of them is a he or a she. She's the losttrue love. He's the lost lovedchild.

The result is a cruel joke, humans end up with amorphous remains,empty handed, and heart broken once more. Martians have a sadder end,

massacred-murdered by human thoughts and wishes.

Back in our current reality it seems that the typical -UA'-s of the worldwish Martians were here, becoming everything to fill in their empty lives.Lives full of so many material things, but paradoxically, so lonely and emptyin the multitude of anonymous crowds... To be realistic then may include theperception that realistic and realities go together. But they frequently clash.

BE REALISTIC! We all, at some periods of our lives, have lost sight ofthese simple, but somewhat magical words. They may accomplish for almostany one the needed glider to go sky high and get anyone on our ways towherever we want to be or what ever we want to accomplish in life.However, we should always keep a watchful eye once in a while, and recallthe Martian’s metaphor.

4. THERE ARE PEOPLE NOT WORTH KNOWING

This is a somber warning that gives chills even to the most adventurous.There is no bigger danger to a human than other human set into causingharm.

Do not talk to strangers. This seems a fair enough warning to build ahealthy but xenophobic society. On the other hand, treat every one by theGolden Rule. Love your neighbor. See everyone under a favorable light.Treat every one as you wish to be treated, are the shields and lubricants ofhuman interactions. And life is neither extreme. People act in a continuumrange. We seldom are completely good or completely mean; of course thereare sociopathic exceptions.

If we go trough life thinking that every onehas the same background and intentions and has had the same nurturing or frustrating experiences, we aresetting ourselves for big disappointment and great and uncomfortablesurprises. Reality sets things in perspective: What we think about people we





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5. CHANGE IS PAINFUL

Pain! We are born into it and we are always after the newest fad to get rid

of it. And without pain we couldn't be, much less become what we are. Painis our integrated alarm system. There is pain in birth and death. Andfortunately (?), there is also pain in growing. We get confused with thewhole thing. < Are we dying? < Is this a rebirth? < Growing pains or justarthritis? Gee, the assortment of options is dazzling. We try to forget that aswe change the PROCESS OF CHANGING IS PAINFUL.

We can hardly come to terms with the fact that, we are never the sameand we are always the same! Is that clear enough?! We must at least have

lived for a while and survive our share of mistakes to realize this. Theyounger ones don’t seem to notice much, or do they? They haven’t had the benefit of time, yet, just like new wine. For the older ones, long periods oftime have had to pass by, for them to understand change and pain as part ofliving. In this long process sometimes we have cried more than our portionof tears to deny this simple fact.

Just look at the cactus flower, so amazingly beautiful and ephemeral: It blooms in the warm summer night and by the next sunset it'll be gone. Weare left with a memory of beauty and some of delicate residues. This may not be seen as painful at all, as you try to remember, it was just a flower, anephemeral bloom. Now, please try harder, since pain is not a welcomememory, remember, for example, when you left home for real. That firsttime when you saw, from a distance, a house that would no be anymoreyours to call home, and it hurt. All the not so apparent changes then seemedabrupt and illogical and they hurt deeply.

Even now, after all these experiences and time spent on this blue planet,we, humans, ache. The everyday ache of living may be welcome or dammed.Acceptance or rejection won't change it. Aching through life is something wecan't do much about. Maybe looking at this ache as we look at the painproduced while canoeing on a white water river will shift our perception ofpain and suffering. We paddle on white water rapids. We hear rockscaressing or clashing with the canoe's bottom. We worry and do our best to



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keep a float. To keep on going is a must. Our kayak ought to float for at least just another journey. Sore muscles, sometimes blood, but always our sweatand efforts are part of the whole experience and we are glad to go on as wesmile, sometimes very painfully.

6. DRAWN UPON YOUR RESOURCES

Wild plants and beasts have a place in your future and may some day become fashionable as garden plants or become our best friends to surviveon this planet. Energy sources ought to be researched more energetically. Oilis not for burning but for obtaining, through clean technology: shelter,

furnishings, even food!Energy is every where in myriad forms, light, air, heat, movement,

friction, fermentation; why then only focus on oil and nuclear energies thatare not clean? Inertia may be an answer: inertia in living life on automatic,inertia on doing what my ancestors did. Not recognizing that the same brainless mistakes will produce the same dim results. Einstein said, we cannot expect different results if do the same thing over and over.

Well, the master directive is to protect Mother Earth, not just to playrabbits digging holes and munching on roots. All actions and conducts toimplement aimed at protecting our planet; our sustenance, our source andorigin; have to be given preference. Once common people like us realize this,we usually change. Folks then look for means to use their resources morewisely at home: the shelter, and the region where they live on our planet.We must draw upon our on resources, and we have plenty of them, poorlydistributed and managed.

Our planet’s resources distributed through dominant and aggressive acts,go way beyond the planet’s limits. And there has to be a limit for so muchhuman greed; we have to re-configurate work ethics and limit amongpeoples the excessive abuse that hidden under the anonymity of companies,we, humans, inflict on other humans, plants, animals and the planet. A baseline to consider is the inherent right of the others to survive in harmonywith the whole Universe.



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We can now understand that all human races as one, as Earthlings, mustadminister our resources for all newcomers, our children and their children’schildren. DRAW UPON YOUR RESOURCES. It sure includes intelligence,

motivation, and self discipline as well as all your possible talents which inthe whole maybe difficult to attain but not impossible.There have been and there still are great, grand , misunderstandings about

what our resources are. To the ravenous simple minded our resources maynot be more than the bank account or the savings account, or maybe thefamily and friends. He or she may be right but there are other resources thatmatter as much. As we acquire a global perception of humanity, we shouldrecreate our world to earthlings’ dimensions.NOW, THERE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL SET OF DRAGONFLY WINGS.

RECREATE YOUR WORLD TO EARTHLINGS’ DIMENSIONS Just to mention one last thing. Due to tactless tradition many of us

believe we ought to over populate this planet no matter what, while weshow little or no regard for the rest of the planet. Many sustain this with theweight of the written word, choose your favorite book. However this is notuniversal, for example, the aborigines in northern Australia are famous fortheir tradition of preserving the planet as it is, as if humans were theguardians of the pristine purity of nature.

It’s not only a question of how much the wallet suffer or how limitedpeople should live without their addiction to polluting cars and planes, butalso it means those resources as preserving water for coming generations.To preserve and take care of forests, jungles and prairies not only for yoursons, but also for sons of elks, birds, wolves and snakes. They have alsoinherited the land; just they haven’t got in their little minds that the land isonly theirs. They don’t think as creatively as we human s do.Earthlings, As a word, by necessity includes much more that just selfish, selfcentered humans limited by the learned, soon to be overthrown, concepts ofcountry, border, race and religion, once we realize and demonstrate throughscience the humans are one, the land is one, the planet is one; it includes all

living beings on this planet.

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A Wonderful Set of Dragonfly Wings