I say to myself I need 5 minutes, I need a time out, I just gotta get away from all this stuff I’m doing.

So what do I do? Well what I do is I step outside.

I stepped out the other day. There was a patch of snow, covered the ground. Patches of grass broke out. The air was cool and cold. And as I breathed it in, it filled my lungs with this wonderful fillness of freshness and light itself. I looked up and the sky was crystal blue and clear.

A single hawk was soaring high. It just kept going higher and higher, and I watched him for a few minutes.

Introduction by Phil

If you listen very closely, the souvenirs that you gathered over your lifetimes and placed in your home might whisper their history to you.
Can you hear them?

   The actual song itself is available only in spoken form, as requested by Philip.

Response by John

I love that last GEM recorded by Phil, entitled Something Says You’re Home.

One day I went outside and saw mushrooms everywhere. Not only was the yard absolutely full of mushrooms, but they were all so different from each other. It’s like elves and fairies were celebrating there in the night before.

Some were large and off-white. Some were small and orange. Some were dark, dark brown, thin and tall. Some were white with an orange ring at their edge. Some were tiny and delicate, the size of a dime. Colony upon colony of each kind.

There was a huge 8 inch mushroom. There were colonies of bright yellow sprouts, just stems forming, of young mushrooms.

When my children were very young, we would play a game. They would smell spices, herbs, and other flavorings. The idea was not necessarily to know their names, but rather to become familiar with them directly, meeting them, letting them talk to the children.

Remarkably, many years later, I learned that this is how indigenous people would learn about healing plants – by meeting them and learning from them, rather than human experts.

The children really had definite opinions about each flavoring.

Singing
I love to sing
How healing
How fun
How silly
I feel great , challenged, healthy from the art of sounds I am trying to make
Giggling, understanding, figuring out all the things that go into this
Mainly it is the pure joy of doing something that lights go for it
Don’t let others stop you
I was once told not to sing
Had I listened I would never have learned to sing
I instinctively knew I enjoyed doing it
You may also know what you may love to do
You may get talked out of doing it by yourself.

I’m in a concert
I’m being serenaded
I walked out
Listen to this
It’s amazing
The sounds of summer
The warm weather is here
And I am up in New Preston
I was just leaving a great event with friends and I said
Listen, listen to this
Wow you can be entertained anytime during the day by nature
You just walk out and there it is
I love the sound of the serenade
Encore, encore
There is all kinds of music out there
But the music of these peepers, frogs and nature
I just can’t explain it what a concert this is

Artwork by Bruce Zboray www.bruce-zboray.artistwebsites.com


I am drawn to thin books. Books you can read in one or two sittings. With pictures or a fancy border – like an ancient manuscript – decorated. And a hard cover with cloth, where you can feel the weave.

Others may enjoy epic novels of a thousand pages – not I. Maybe it’s me wanting to “know” the whole book at once – no need of bookmarks for me.

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather “I have found a truth.”

Say not, “I have found the path of the soul,” but say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”

For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line. Neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

Your heart knows in silence, the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sounds of your heart’s knowledge.

You would know in words, that which you have always known in thought.

It is amazing how our subconscious can change what we actually see.

I remember reading about a person, who when hypnotized could not see another person. Their mind was able to completely eliminate that other person from anything they were looking at. Their mind would fill in the background so the person looked invisible.

What does this say about us?

Every day you get up and you head to work. You drive the same way. You take the same roads, the same highways, you make the same turns. But perhaps you commute via train or subway. Five days a week, for the last five years, and it’ll be going on for the next ten years.