[Content Warning] A fifth yarn - back to sailing

These comments are a little out of sequence, but sailing has not always been good. Most sailing clubs I've been to have been racist, sexist or misogynistic, homophobic/transphobic/biphobic / heteronormative/cisnormative, etc. (Every sailor I met until I was in my late 20s was white.)

I've been subjected to a level of transphobic abuse that left me unwilling to have anything to do with that sport/pastime, although sailing organisations have, for some years, been trying to address that. They've got the policies in place, although they are generic, but I don't know how well they have implemented them, and I don't feel like being a guinea pig. I'm more interested in cruising, but getting a mooring takes so long I would have to get a berth in a marina (I don't have car that could tow a trailer-sailor, and don't have the money or inclination to get one), which is another place I've received transphobic abuse.

I once wrote an email to a cruising blog about this topic, when a few people there were trying to discuss it.

My email was:

I thought I'd add my two cents worth to the debate about women in sailing - mainly, by providing some links about surveys on what keeps women out, and what has been done about overcoming those problems:

First off, the survey to find out what stopped women getting into sailing which was commissioned by my local state-based organisation, Yachting Victoria: http://www.foxsportspulse.com/get_file.cgi?id=2714747, with the support of a government body - VicHealth, because of the benefits to health of being active.

Of the issues identified in that survey, I can certainly relate to time commitments being a problem. When I was last sailing I had just begun a relationship with someone who wound up needing both hips replaced and on disability pension just after we got together (and just after we took out a joint loan), and since then there have been a swag of step-kids and now my father has Parkinsons.

The main reason I got out of sailing, however, was because of some blatant discrimination (I am a lesbian). I could have taken legal action, but I didn't have the time, energy or money to do so - see aforementioned family issues. I did talk to a few people about my experiences, however, and that has helped contribute to some codes of practice (starting at government level) about dealing with discrimination in sport generally, as well as in sailing. The Yachting Victoria document is at http://vic.yachting.org.au/get_file.cgi?id=3377463

On that, the 2nd last club I was a member of was the Royal Yachting Club of Victoria - they had Elliott 5.5s for hire, which were the closest we could get to the Elliott 6s to be use for the Gay Games in Sydney in 2002, and one of our team lived nearby. I had gone once before (about 30 years before) to a Royal club in Queensland, and was treated so snootily I swore I would have nothing to do with any club with Royal in its name, but there was no other choice. It became fairly clear at that time that the club was struggling (as a lot of clubs here are, compared to the hey days of the 70s), and they were opening their doors to a much wider circle -  there were even tradies who became members when we did :) . All still white, however.

When I have been talking to non-sailing people generally about getting involved in sailing, one of the biggest perceptions to overcome is that people have to be rich: I keep pointing out the need for crews, and have done so since I started as a skinny crew decades ago (my first skipper said my arms had the muscles of a chicken leg - I've done weight training since then, and a bit of middle age spread has given me more of a chicken wing effect, rather than a chicken leg).

The survey also mentions concerns about feeling out of place as a barrier, and about the openness of the sport to newcomers and to females, particularly in what can be perceived as a male dominated sport, as barriers. My experience has been that expectations of stereotypes is more of an issue - women were expected to be in the kitchen, rather than out sailing, when I started in the 70s. (I've refused to do any more kitchen duty than men ever since then - and I don't make cuppas in any engineering situation.)

One of the other issues limiting women's participation in a range of areas - and I am surprised this didn't come up in the survey - is lack of visibility. I've also had a fair bit to do with getting women into engineering (my day job), and the lack of clearly visible examples/role models is one of the major problems there. Lack of visible LGBT people is a barrier to addressing discrimination against LGBT people (discrimination has been shown to cause health problems, incidentally) and problems such as lack of confidence of LGBT people. Likewise, no doubt, for people of different races.

You yourself have mentioned the limited numbers of women you've seen in sailing. We seem to have more women actively involved in sailing here - 29%, according to the survey, and there have always been at least a few, throughout my sailing 'career', which has been good.

It helps enormously that there are now women in sailing who are very visible, such as the women you mentioned, or Dawn Riley (http://www.dawnriley.com/), or an Australian woman who is my sailing heroine: former female skipper of an 18 foot skiff, and navigator for the incredible Wild Oat XI and other yachts (including Volvo yachts), Adrienne Cahalan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Cahalan).

I was also impressed by the woman you showed tacking her way through anchored boats with two dinghies in tow.

Any increased visibility of women in sailing, or a reduction of the perception that women may not be welcome, will be good. On that, here are a couple more links about women in sailing:

• https://prezi.com/2fjfpzfsvggl/gender-barriers-in-competitive-sailing/

• http://www.womenandgirlsinsailing.com.au/assoc_page.cgi?client=0-9980-0-0-0&sID=296878&&news_task=DETAIL&articleID=33420799

I look forward to more women getting into sailing, so you can show more of us being active participants.

 I've also written about this on my main blog.

From https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2016/01/post-no-811-search-for-community.html:

When I was a kid, I learned how to sail, and became involved in the sailing clubs of a couple of places we lived. The experience was novel to me and, with my enthusiasm for history, I became fascinated with the “traditions” of the sea –things like always going to help vessels in distress, and “the romance” of sail (no Internet links as everything seemed to be based around finding a relationship partner  “romantic” cruises and the like).

Now, although the traditions of the sea and romance of the sail do exist, I was a bit naïve about all this:

• there were economic drivers behind many of the situations that put people at risk, economic drivers (e.g., enabling the growth of empires) that I do not see very favourably now;
• there were “less admirable” traditions that I selectively didn’t acknowledge (although my adoptive father pointed me in the direction which led to me finding them out), things such as bullying crews, insurance claims that killed crews, and the appalling working conditions and life expectancy generally of crews from the era I was holding in such esteem – see here, here (and here), here;
• there was also the involvement of marine traffic in slavery, and things like gunboat diplomacy.

(Incidentally, real historical pirates were sadistic and violent  criminals, doing things like rape, torture, murder and locking women and children in a burning church, although they did have some democratic aspects.)

Closer to home, there was the aggressive behaviour of many competitive sailors (usually not the case with the best sailors, I have to say) – a fault I also exhibited at times, to my eternal shame, and which is a small part of the reason I am not rushing to get involved with sailing clubs again. (I avoid yacht clubs because, in my parlance, they’re the province of the upper class / elite, and involve expenditures of money that are, at times, truly obscene [if you don’t have money, most sailing dinghies need crews, so go to a sailing club, learn how to sail, make a commitment, and enjoy :) ]. And I have been treated shabbily by some of those four decades ago although I was welcomed and very well treated by two such clubs in Melbourne when we were training for the Gay Games in Sydney, so things have probably changed.)

There is also endemic discrimination in most of the sailing clubs I’ve been to – even nominally LGBT sailing clubs have discrimination, and the vast majority are white people from the middle and working class. My experience of such discrimination is something I’ve contributed to those trying to stamp that out (e.g., see the AYF’s policy – which has a few key gaps and silences, particularly on the offence of misgendering and the vexed issue of access to changing rooms, but is a start in the right direction), but it has left me with a profound wariness of returning to those environs at any time soon. I also want to write about the discrimination against women and others I’ve come across in sailing clubs in a “how to” book on sailing that I’ve started (and may not finish this lifetime … SIGH). To quite an extent, this problem reflects the problems of society – hence, in the 70s, women were largely expected to run the canteen, whereas now, there is an increasing acceptance of women as active participants in a range of sports, not just sailing – although there is still a way to go . . . 

(and the original post continues)

But it hasn't all been bad. From https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2011/04/meditation-and-interaction-of-souls.html:

When I was younger, in my 20s (and getting frustrated with people thinking I wasn't yet even 18 ... ah, those were the days - in the last millenia!), I competed in a national sailing championships. I didn't do all that well for a whole range of reasons, but one incident occurred during one light weather race that is a good start to this post.
Basically, as we were sailing in a light wind, someone I knew a little, who was crewing in another boat, laughed. At that moment, a phrase from a book written by Richard Bach (possibly "Illusions"?), who also wrote Jonathon Livingston Seagull, came to mind. The phrase was, more or less, that we are the otters of the Universe - fun loving, playing creatures. As the phrase was comprehended by me, my eyes rolled up into my head, leaving only the whites showing, and I became aware of what I was led to believe was the soul of everyone in the boats - which I perceived as a large sphere of light around six feet (say ... two metres) in diameter.
Nowadays, I would probably describe this as having become aware of everyone at the level of their Soul Star chakra.
(and the original post continues)

Food for thought . . .

Copyright © Kayleen White, 2020 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)

A Ranger Plan

I'd had a promotion recently - not one that came with money, as it was in an entirely voluntary organisation based on psychic service to humanity. I'd been deemed as being fit to be a Lieutenant  - or Lootenant, as our American friends would say. As usual, worldly life demands came first, but I was now the leader of a group (a platoon) of nearly two dozen other psychics, healers, and diviners, people who called ourselves Rangers both because we were members of the Rangers of the Inner Plane, and because we were mostly proud - or at least satisfied - with the more than a year's worth of training in group and psychic work that we had received when we joined. It had actually taken me three years to get through the training, but that had been stretched out by having to care after family members - and there'd been not even a thought of criticism from anyone else.

And I should know, given the training we'd had on telepathy.

Normally I would meet with the other nearby platoon leaders, but we were meeting with other squadron and platoon leaders in our regiment. We weren't all face-to-face, of course - that wasn't practical when allowing Rangers to put physical life needs first for a group - a Regiment - that was spread over most of the south east of Australia. To conserve energy, we didn't try to do this psychically either: Internet was fine - practical, reasonably reliable, and easy.

I was expecting the Colonel in charge of our Regiment - which had been called the Isil'zha, from one of our founder's favourite television science fiction series - to begin, but no, we were addressed by Brigadier Daniel (we rarely bothered with last names) himself, leader of the Second Brigade, which took care of Australia.

"Thank you all for coming out tonight. As you've probably guessed, we're planning some work across multiple continents, so we're getting as many units involved as we can."

He smiled and continued, "How many people that will involve is, as always, contingent on other life demands, which are always valid."

"We've had multiple psychic scouting and divination tell us that three entities are trying to create a strong and direct connection between the emotions of suffering being caused by poverty and conflict in central Africa and the Sahel with conservative media in the US. Needless to say, we don't want that to happen.

"The Eight and Ninth Brigades have been working on getting rid of poverty and ending the conflict in Africa, both of which involve addressing corruption."

He paused and looked around us and those on the monitors before continuing. 

"As always, fixing these problems requires physical action, as well as nonphysical, and we have a few people in touch with what is happen in the physical world there so we can make sure we coordinate with them and support their needs.

"Over in the US of A, as always their politics is concerning, and the wide influence of their very backward and reactionary form of ultra-conservatism is of great concern. We're worried about what analogies and imagery they might develop and start using if this influence becomes active.

"Now, the three entities. Two are incarnates. One is a victim of abuse in South America. The fourth Brigade reports she was subject to prolonged sexual abuse, and has had no healing or support. Tenth Brigade, in India, has some healers who have lived experience, and they will be taking the lead in addressing her situation. Once the healing is done, the South American - fourth - Brigade will work at dissolving her negative links to the others.

"Somewhat understandably, she is unaware of the links, but has a subconscious perception that they enable her to get even with her attackers - who happen to be people like some of those in the USA. She doesn't understand, and is unlikely to at a conscious level, that she is actually feeding them what they want, rather than punishing them by giving them what distressed her."

I and quite a few others nodded at that. Learning that "all people are unique individuals" also meant what one considered good or bad varied across the range of humanity, thus one had to careful not to strengthen those negative people who would thrive on receiving hate, was a difficult lesson to learn, and even harder to implement.

We'd all grown quite a bit as people during our training.

The Brigadier continued: "The other incarnate is a male in Africa whose planned life path of gaining through corruption is disappearing, and, in his resentment, he wants revenge. Either the Eight or the Ninth will work at clearing the negative influences around him, and strengthening his impulses towards good."

He looked at our Colonel, and she smiled. Ah, this was where we would come in.

"The third entity is a particularly smarmy earthbound entity. They've been causing havoc ever since they died on the Second World War's Eastern Front. We're not sure which "side", or even whether they were in the military, but they've  been a problem ever since.

"This is where the Isil'zha Regiment comes into play, as we understand you actually had a similar case recently."

Our Colonel, Belinda, gave a run down on the operation we'd done a few months ago, where we'd found some very negative entities in a nearby block, entities whose energy was contributing to domestic violence - including violent.

The Brigadier continued: "The Sixth Brigade in Europe will be doing the work against this entity, and we want your Regiment to pass on the benefits of their experience, and then being on backup to aid them during the actual operation."

He paused. "As always with this sort of work, getting a time that suits everyone is near impossible, and this is one of those actions where we need everyone working at the same time.

"What we've settled on is early morning in the US and South America, midday or just after in Europe and Africa, and the evening here."

OK, that was it. Colonel Belinda took over, and we quickly arranged a smaller meeting for the Regiment.

But that's another story.


Copyright © Kayleen White, 2020 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)

[Content Warning] A Ranger Patrol

We were a small group that night: only a few over a dozen. We normally tried for at least twenty, and, even allowing for the demands of family, friends, work, and life, that was mostly achievable. But not tonight.

We were crowded into Dan’s living room when our leader, Casz - Carey, strode in, and announced “Gavin’s got an early birthday celebration for his middle daughter, Mae’s got a work deadline, and Ash’s still interstate.”

She was greeted with indifference: our two healers continued giving Reiki to anyone who wanted, our Artificer, Sarah, continued tending to her crystals and other magickal items, and about three people raised an eyebrow slightly - one twitched both brows up. Tara had a monobrow (and was proud of it and the heritage that gave it to her), but we counted each half separately, and none of it had moved anyway.

“Good.”

She smiled, and said briefing would be in five minutes, or after she had a cuppa, whichever took longer.

My Triangle comprised myself, obviously, and my friends Sharlot and Tony. We had finished our personal prep (meditation for Sharlot, music for Tony, and breathing for me), and were chatting, getting into the vibe of each other when Casz strolled back in, drinking a tea that had a seemingly impossible number of rosehip tea bags squeezed into her cup. She leaned against the doorframe, getting a sense of how everyone was.

As Casz's cuppa neared eat-through-the-bottom-of-the-cup strength, she strode to the mantelpiece, turned, and said “OK, people, listen up”.

The healers wound down their work and closed their patients’ auras, and everyone settled, focused on our Lieutenant.

“We’re doing a sweep of the next block over tonight, but in three, maybe four, stages.

“First stage: while Tara’s Triangle does recon, Kelly’s, Greg’s, and Con’s triangles will do protection. Graham: I want your team to help Artificer Sarah. Healers on standby.

“Second stage: we sweep anything negative from the block. There might be a third stage, depending on where the links take us, and fourth will be the usual mop up.”

I’m Kelly, by the way - and I’m ranked as a Corporal in our little organisation.

Casz’d made a good call with Graham: he was unsettled, and his Triangle wasn’t likely to be at full efficiency. We suspected his aunt’s cancer might have returned, but, unless he wanted to talk about it, we weren’t going to push - not even gently, especially not now.

Maybe later - quietly, gently, if he was open to talking.

Sharlot, Tony and I started our synchronisation: breathe and visualise to get key chakras on a similar frequency, then connecting the chakras using our favourite senses - colours for me, sound for Tony, and scent for Sharlot. After a few minutes we felt connected - we weren’t “one”, we maintained our individuality, as that let us draw on the unique strengths of our characters and our friendships.

But we could act as one on the astral, or whatever level of reality we were going to be on tonight.

And we could do that with our eyes open, as we had been trained to do - for some of the time, at least.

I felt someone kneel beside me, and slowly opened my eyes, fiercely keeping my astral focus where it should be. It was Bill - Casz’s favourite, who would be our Sergeant tonight.

“OK, Kel.” He was the only person I let call me that. “I’ve drawn protection duty tonight. For this first stage, we want you to focus on Earth energies, and anything that tries to come in from lower frequency realms.”

“Got it, Sarge” I replied. “Earth and etheric.”

He nodded and withdrew.

I sent a thought to Sharlot and Tony, and felt their understanding flow back.

We’d done this plenty of times before, and, through lots of trials, knew what worked best for us.

First off, we activated the chakra located in the base of our auras, a little below our feet, and connected those to each other. Then we each generated an energy from those chakras. I saw them as colours, so, to me, Sharlot projected purple, Tony blue, and I green; Tony equated to it as a C chord, and Sharlot described it in terms of a recipe.

We wove a fine net - a psychic shield - with the energies, and visualised it below the floor, acting as a filter for any negative or disharmonious energies.

Of course, when I say “negative”, that’s a bit of a shorthand for a concept we had spent months dissecting during our training - and we had also learned that energies that were simply incompatible - disharmonious - were more likely to be a problem than what people called “evil”, which was something else entirely.

But we didn’t want the distraction of the irritatingly annoying, any more than the grumpy, cranky, or vaguely malicious, let alone anything that was directed and intentionally harmful.

Once we had the net-shield in place, we extended antennae into the earth, and started to sense the influences about us.

Before I got too far into that, however, I opened my eyes, looked Bill’s way and found his steady gaze coming back my way, and he nodded. He knew where we were at, so I closed my eyes, and dove back in.

The house had a bit of a history, and some of it included shoddy building: we built a solid barrier around the residue of an old night soil station in the backyard, tied in to the magnificent trees in the front and back yards, and extended the filter down from the boundaries - where we called on Yinepu, known to most by the Greek name Anubis, to guard our boundary and the ways from the Underworld.

We could feels four streams of energy coming through - three through the Earth herself, and one through the etheric.

The etheric flow came from a pub two blocks away, and what little was good was lost in the chaotic jangle of uninhibited desperation, frustration, and anger: nothing much to do with that other than direct it deeper, and let Mother Earth herself transform and recycle the energies.

Two of the earth energies were beneficial - one from a nearby stream that hadn’t been altered too much, and the other from a local park on a hill. We welcomed those with gratitude.

The third came from a leyline that had been cut by a recent construction project. We checked, and found one of our healers could start work on that, including patching up a re-routing of the disrupted flow.

I was about to check how the other teams were going, when I heard Bill quietly say “Corporal”.

I kept my eyes closed, and listened.

“Hold at where you’re at for now, we’re dealing with some problems in the astral - with the help of Sarah’s toys. Should be ready to proceed soon.”

I nodded.

We’d all been trained well - we knew and trusted the abilities of the others in this, our little platoon, and had no urge to drop our tasks charge vaingloriously over and see if we could “help”. Tony and I had a mild curiosity - Sharlot was too focused, but we’d be told the relevant details later.

A few minutes later, Bill was back: Tara’s team was out searching, and trying to be as undetectable as they could.

Normally, we would extend the protection around whatever “location” we were working on in the nonphysical realms - mostly astral, but often etheric of late. That, however, made it impossible to be what was the astral equivalent of “invisible” - in fact, our protected sphere could be quite a distraction in and of itself.

So, for now, we kept going with our work. After a couple of minutes we could sense entities trying to come in - nothing too strong, nothing too malicious, so we redirected them into Mother Earth - except one, who was an earthbound human, one who thought he had to stay in the earth until the neochristian resurrection: it was a moment’s effort to do a well practised rescue, and he was on his grateful way.

It was always hard to tell how long these investigations went - it depended on mood as much as anything else, but tonight’s patrol seemed to be back in less than a quarter of an hour.

We could hear Tara, Casz, and Bill and the other sergeant conferring, and then felt the energy of consensus.

When Bill came to us, he explained there were three living people, two men and a woman, who were buried in energies that were not theirs.

“Kelly: Tara and Greg’s teams are going to work on the three incarnates with the healers, your and Con’s Triangles are going to do all the protection. We want you to take on Water as well. We’re expecting some discarnate earthbound entities in the incarnates’ auras, and have signs of two external controllers.”

The controllers were a problem: they were often dead - discarnate - people who just knew they were dead, and were either angry at that and wanting to get even with the world, or were taking advantage of being invisible to most incarnate - physically living - people to wreak revenge, havoc or act out on sadism.

Those entities didn’t want to stop doing harm, and getting their claws out of other’s could be difficult. It was the astral equivalent of trying to stop someone on a gun rampage.

We added in the energies of Water to our protective mix, and readied to split our shield to be present here, around the physical location of our team, and wherever these entities were on the next block.

I could feel our energies start to drain, and then Henrietta was there, doing their (Henrietta was non-binary) best work to boost our energies without disrupting our work. It only took a couple of minutes, and we were back to full steam. I sent a thought of thanks to them for their help, and went back to complete focus on our task.

Tara was good: we could feel her and Greg’s teams mopping up stray clouds of energy, dissolving psychic links (which some refer to as “the ties that bind”) with positive energy (which is actually more than the usual conception of “love”), and - with the aid of Sarah‘s toys - demolished some negative astral objects (one in the shape of a knife, one - surprisingly - in the shape of a tampon) that had started out as thought forms and been fed over several years. Using sounds to help destabilise those worked particularly well.

They found a couple of earthbound entities drawn to the conflict of domestic violence: one had been a victim who suicided and couldn’t break free of the despair, the other a perpetrator who’d died in a car accident. Once they were gone, the unease and fear and hiding energies lost a great deal of their strength, and the energies started to break up into smaller packages that were easier to dissolve, one at a time - again, with “love”.

The work was going well - I thought it was around 80% done (we all always checked actual percentages, and kept going until the consensus was 100%) - when we saw a small group of clear and bright auras coming our way. They had a sense of being incarnates, and paused nearby - waiting, patiently and politely, not wanting to disrupt our work, but clearly with something of import.

Casz herself went out on the astral to greet them, and we all felt the flow of information come back from her.

One of the entities was Brenda, a devotee of Bast, which also explained why two of the entities were cats; the other was Kara, an actual Valkyrie. [1]

The main source of the problems afflicting the block came, they told Casz (it was incredible how much cats could find out - even on the astral they could be observed but dismissed), from a particularly disaffected entity - an earthbound entity who had died without the power he craved, and was using his newfound “invisibility” to build an empire.

They were fairly sure he was, in turn, the puppet of someone similar, who had been building their energy for far longer.

Casz welcomed them to our work, and we set to with renewed purpose. We had seen this sort of working result in improved behaviour, sense of community, and mood in the places we had cleared; this was now suggesting we could improve the energies around many places.

And we were understrength.

Oh well, at least we had some outside help.

Casz looked over the area we were working - there! She directed us to focus all our efforts, all our energies, for a moment, all of us, even those doing protection or healing, to one location in a swirl of low strength negative energy. When we did, the energy blew away, and there was the entity we had been told off - hovering, almost like a puppet master, with links radiating in many directions, links carrying his subtle messages that warped and controlled the actions of those he influenced.

He started to radiate new links at several of us, trying to gain control of people and this new threat. Kara swept those that went towards her and Brenda away with contempt and an astral sword, not even bothering to call on a shield, while both cats clawed the back of the figure and then disappeared back to the bubble Brenda had built.

As protectors, our job was to take care of such threats, and we lassoed them with ropes of rainbow energy, and Sarah thought to us where a store of small shields were that she had created some time ago. We shifted those into place around those being threatened - all at the speed of thought.

In the meantime, Greg had drawn a tree root of energy from Mother Earth which encircled the entity, and started drawing his negativity away to be recycled.

The entity created a visualisation of a sword, an evil thing that radiated nausea, but when he lifted his arm to strike down at the tree root (it is amazing the physical world thinking that can limit actions in the astral) Tara’s team brought down a tornado of brilliance, which wrapped itself around both sword and arm.

Unsettled now, the entity looked up, startled.

The energy was rapidly draining out, and the entity was subsiding into an almost childlike petulance as he lost the reservoir of negativity that had been built up.

As this progressed, Con thought to us all of a group of entities who were waiting nearby to take this entity to the astral - one had been a parent in the entity’s most recent life.

That was good: we had all been working intensely for a while now, and despite the efforts of our healers, would soon need a rest. Having someone else to do the actual rescue would reduce what we had to, and make the evening a little less exhausting.

By now the entity was weakened enough not to keep actively fighting, so Can and my teams started mopping up the influences from the entity (how many years had he been there?) while also keeping the protection going.

Multitasking was also a key part of our training.

Suddenly Brenda pointed, and she and Kara stood (these physical world descriptions are, you understand, a convenient ellipsis for a more accurate description) shoulder to shoulder, and extending their adjoining arms: they extended a weave of indigo light that vibrated powerfully, and, somehow, outlined a delicate tracery of links going into the entity - mostly from behind, some into the head, some the sides of his back; links that had the same nauseating quality of the now long gone sword, but less obvious.

The controller had been controlled himself.

Brenda called to our healers, who radiated healing to each of the insertion sites, and Kara wrapped the cords around a spear, and delicately drew them out, making sure they couldn’t whip around and find someone else to connect to.

But the links were withering, dying as soon as whoever was on the other end realised they were were on no further use. Quickly, one of Brenda’s cats raced along the line of the links, and sent an image back to her, which she then relayed to us: an image of someone in a 1700s style British uniform, choleric, angry, petulant about the decline and loss of empire, and trying to subjugate the world - or at least this nation.

The entity wasn’t anchored to our capital: he was at the site of the first white settlement, the point where the violent white invasion of this land had started.

Casz, Bill and the other sergeant joined Brenda and Kara, and cauterised the links all the way back to the entity. They were good - very good: the entity would know he had lost a puppet, but not who had taken the puppet from him.

With that, the entity we were working on collapsed to a normal, miserable, lost soul - angry, but without the extra energy that had made the anger a tool of oppression. He reacted with a mix of shame and hope when his former parent came near, and was lost to our site as they enfolded him in light.

We, in turn, could now do the same with the block we were working on. It wasn’t enough to remove the negative energies, you had to build up a positive counter to it - like healing a trauma. This wasn’t just our healers’ responsibility, we could all do the basic skills to some extent, and we all shared in this part of the work.

It helped heal us, as well as the land we were working on.

Sharlot eased out of our team, and joined with the other passionate dog lover - Sarah - and set Yinepu to patrolling the borders of the block.

And with that, it was time to end.

We returned our awarenesses to our various selves, grounded and centred, and eased off the connections between the chakras, and all then spent some time making sure we were all ourselves - individuals, with our own mix of unique characteristics, and free of outside influence or connections that shouldn’t be.

We stretched and looked at the time - it had only been a couple of hours. Before we started the supping that would finish our grounding, Casz spoke up.

“Well, we have our next project. We’ll need to work on weakening Admiral Angry of course, but when we get to the big undertaking, Brenda will bring Bast and Kara will bring other Valkyries.”

We looked at each other and sighed. At least we had snacks now, and a few weeks of everyday life beforehand.

---

[1] You can find a story about Brenda and Kara at https://musingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2015/01/agent-of-bast.html

       If you want to know more about the Rangers of the Inner Plane, see here and here.You can also find an excellent sigil for dissolving hate at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tempest/2019/01/a-sigil-for-the-dissolution-of-hate.html.


Copyright © Kayleen White, 2020 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)

A fourth yarn - about me, not sailing

I wrote this for a friend in Africa - a young man I proudly consider an honorary brother - and his siblings, and have decided to post it here. One day I may write an autobiography, and all I'll have to do is collate all these "yarns" and stitch them together into something sensible. My (2nd - I have another who I am trying to get an antenna he bought to) young brother could relate to these stories: where he is living now has open drains and problems with floods. The sister I mention in this story is my adoptive sister: I also have a birth sister. 

When I was a teenager, in the 1970s, I lived in a town called Mackay (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackay,_Queensland), in the state of Queensland. Mackay is a fairly flat town - it has ONE small hill in the town, we used to call "the hill" (it's real name was - and this is surprising, given how small it was - Mount Bassett). The ocean there had a very large tide range - from high tide to low would vary from four to seven metres. Unfortunately, that meant our stormwater drainage for the town sometimes would only work when the tide was out. It didn't rain often, though - only in part of summer (December-January), but for those months everything was wet.

I was with my adoptive family then, and my sister, Ann, and I often had to walk through shallow flood waters to get to school. People shouldn't normally walk through flood waters because they can hide areas where the soil has been washed away, but the flood water we were walking through was still, not flowing, so we knew the soil was OK. Ann hated that because she could feel tadpoles wriggling from time to time :) (Our backyard stayed so wet one year that we had ducks fly in for a couple of days.)

We carried a towel with us, and when we got to school, we would dry our feet and put our shoes on. The school insisted we wear shoes, but we hated that - even when there were no floodwaters, we would carry our shoes with us and only put them on when we were at school.

Our feet grew fairly tough, and we used to show off in front of the tourists by walking slowly across the hot bitumen on the roads in summer. My feet are a lot softer now, but I still prefer to go barefoot when we can. In fact, we had a local politician, Fiona Richardson (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Richardson and https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-memorium-and-exhortation-to-engage.html), who I used to write to about many things before she passed away: I heard her say in an interview that when she was growing up in Tanzania, she used to go barefoot and still preferred that, and mentioned that I also preferred being barefoot. When she replied to that email, she crossed out "Dear Kayleen", and wrote "Dear fellow barefoot advocate" :)

Going back to Queensland, we rented a house in the style called a "Queenslander": it had the house up high, so floodwater could pass through underneath - and that gave us a cooler place in the summer. (A lot of people these days in Queensland have air conditioning, but we didn't, and my adoptive parents never liked air conditioning - we used fans and a few other tricks like wet cloths around the neck instead.) We would listen to the forecast, and depending on how much rain was forecast, we would put anything that needed to be kept dry up on blocks to keep it above the floodwater.

At that time, the streets in Mackay didn't have pipes to drain stormwater: they had open drains, about 1.5 to 2 m deep on either side of the road. When the tide was in, the stormwater would sit in those drains until the tide went out, and then it would drain into the ocean. If there was enough floodwater to cover the road so the drains weren't visible (another reason no-one should walk through floodwater - there might be holes you don't know about), us local people knew not to park close the edge of the road, but we would find occasional tourists who didn't, and would do what we called "a southern park" where their car would go part way into the drain. Next morning, we would see the car sitting sideways, half into the drain (no-one was ever hurt by this: they were moving slowly, and the cars didn't go far, but they did tip right over). After I left Mackay, the local Council replaced the open drains with buried pipes.

When I went to University, it was 1,000 km away, in Brisbane, at University of Queensland (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Queensland). I have quite a few stories from there, but I'll just tell you of my friend from Finland. His name was Marti Kankunnen - but there is a particular way of pronouncing that, with what are called rolled r's, and not many Australians could handle that in those days, so he used to introduce himself by saying "Gidday, my name is Marti K, but you can call me Bill". :) (While at Uni, he went back to Finland, and his girlfriend says he complained all the time about the cold, but she - despite having only lived in northern Australia - wasn't affected by the cold.)

When I finished Uni, I started work at a company in Mackay, but most of the projects we were working on were inland from Mackay, at towns like Moranbah (http://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/moranbah-qld). These days, we only send one or a few people to a site, and transmit everything over the Internet, but there was no Internet in those days - in fact, I can remember the excitement at our company when we got our first electric typewriter, so we went to site a lot more. That meant a lot more driving - up to 1,000 km in a day, which I wouldn't be able to do these days. When I started, I was told "You'll need a car: make sure it's a good one". (I bought a small car, but the company would pay me for using it, which is how I was able to afford that.)

We would drive inland from Mackay, and after about 20 km we went up a steep hill range until we got onto a plateau. It was only a few hundred metres higher, but cars in those days didn't have computers, and my car used to run very badly on the plateau until a friendly mechanic showed me how to make a small change to fuel-air mixture, and it would run properly. So I would drive to the top of the plateau, pull over to the side of the road, hop out with a small screwdriver, make a change, then get back in and keep driving :)

There were a lot of accidents, incidentally, because people were careless about driving then. I won't tell you about those, but there was one funny story about a boss of mine who hit a big pothole, and found he could only drive in reverse - he had to drive backwards for 30 kilometres to get help :)

The country we were driving through was flat, what we call "scrubby". I lost all of my photos from that time when I was living on my small boat in the 1990s, because they got damp. We didn't have digital cameras back then. The nearest I can find to give you an idea of what it was like is at https://www.outbackqueensland.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Cunnamulla_DJI_0703-rsz1048x699.jpg. The main difference is that where I was the ground was more red with a very fine dust called bulldust - which is also a slang for lies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldust). I worked in Queensland for 3 years, and then kept that car for another 13 years, and even after the 13 years I was still finding that fine red dust in places in the car - which is not bulldust :)

It was very hot, but I liked that country. In 2012, the company I work for sent me to Mongolia, where I worked for a few weeks in the Gobi Desert (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert). Except that it didn't have trees (or many roads), the country in the Gobi Desert reminded me of Queensland. We had digital cameras then, of course, so I've attached a couple of photos. You'll see camels in those photos: Australia also has wild camels - they were brought here, along with herders from India (wrongly referred to as being from Afghanistan), in the 1800s and have thrived - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel.

A couple of the things I particularly remember from that trip is that one of the local dishes was almost exactly the same as one my adoptive mother used to make, and the people I was working with showed me a small plant with white flowers that they could use for salt - it had a garlic taste, apparently.

I made friends with our receptionist in our office in Ulaanbaatar (I worked there for a few days to finish my report), and we used to email each other until she left the company a couple of years ago. When I went there, I had just missed their festival called "Naadam" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naadam), which involves wrestling, horse riding, and archery, which she loved going to.

Unfortunately, Ulaanbaatar (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulaanbaatar) has a couple of problems, and one of those is flooding in spring, when all the ice melts. In Mackay, floods in 1912 were so bad they changed the course of the Pioneer River that the town is built on (a friend of ours died driving into floodwater about ten years ago, which is why I am always careful about that), and Ulaanbaatar's floods are a major problem every year. I tried to get some people interested in doing some work on that and their winter air pollution problem, but without any success - fortunately, others are working on fixing that problem.

Another thing I remember from Ulaanbaatar is helping a young mother with a pram go down some steps - which is exactly the same as I would do in Australia. I've always found people are basically the same wherever I have travelled, and most people are good.

And on that note, young brother, I will go and get ready for this day.

Copyright © Kayleen White, 2020 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)