Karma Grinds Slow But Exceedingly Fine – Update April 2019

Sing It Stevie!!

It seems so long ago. October 2016. 2 1/2 years ago. At the time my so called business partner had shoved a giant knife in my back. Go back a few posts and read it for the background. In his greed and shortsightedness he thought he would figuratively turn into Al Pacino from Scarface. The world would be his oyster.

The King!

At that time I honestly did not know how I was going to recover from that. That wonderful human being had locked me out of everything. I mean everything. Being the somewhat cautious person I am, fortunately I kept a backup copy of our customer database and some other important records. Even with those backups I knew I was in for a rough ride. Almost 4 years of hard work down the drain because I trusted someone I never should have. I did not listen to that little voice in the back of my head. It’s interesting because about 3 weeks after it happened I stumbled across by the weirdest circumstances a psychic that offered a session. I really do not give too much credence to psychics even though I have run across 4 or 5 in my life that told me things that there is NO WAY they could have known. No leading questions just straight out facts that blew my mind when they told me.

Well, this psychic I crossed paths with in October 2016 told me the same thing. One of the first things she told me was that I don’t listen very well to my “inner guidance”. I’m not sure if she said inner guidance but she did say I do not listen very well when “something” is trying to tell me something. She said you tend to ignore it. And she was right. She told me other things that were aligned with what I knew.

A long time ago I met an older woman that took my name including my middle name and wrote it on a piece of paper. She then started drawing lines under each letter. Row after row. After she was done it sort of looked like an upside down pyramid. When she finished she studied it. And then she spoke. What she told me blew my mind. I can’t remember everything but I do remember being blown away listening to this woman describe my life.

Another time early on in my life I ran across a couple that could see auras. Now little ol Laurie sort of laughed in my mind but the gentleman was very cordial and asked if I wanted mine read. I was in a good mood and I said ok. Well, in his living room he had a large full length mirror. It was very ornate and old. He asked me to stand in front of it. He stood directly behind me and just said to look at my image but don’t stare at it. Gaze at it but in a sort of non-focused way. He said most everyone can see auras if they practice. Well I tried and I gazed but I could not see any. After awhile he began to describe what he saw and what colors were showing and what they meant and what the breaks in the colors meant. He started to describe something that was happening in my life at that moment. He then started to talk about very specific things that were happening to me. I had just met this guy about 20 minutes before in the course of my business.

There were another 3 or 4 times I met people in the course of my business that after speaking to them for a while I felt there was something different about them. It’s hard to explain but it’s something you feel. And those 2 or 3 others were equally mind astounding. One was a woman. A friend of a friend. She spoke to my friend on the phone and asked me if I wanted to talk to her. I said sure. Well, she began to tell me things on the phone that there is NO WAY she could know. Even my friend did not know those things about me. This woman went on to say one thing I did not take much thought of. She told me (and I still have the tape somewhere) that in 6 or seven years I would start an import/export business. I never had the slightest interest in import/export businesses. My business at the time was local. Here’s the really weird thing and I still get goosebumps saying this. About 6 years later I did start a very successful import business. How about them apples?

I could go on with a few other psychic stories and I could go on with my lifelong intuition but suffice to say I do believe there is more to this world than what you can bang a hammer on. I have lived in three haunted houses in my life. The last one was VERY haunted. VERY. I had never been in such a place where sounds and manifestations took place. Mainly after dark and in the middle of the night. Knocks, scrapes, phones ringing in the middle of the night, text typing by itself on my phone in the middle of the night, footsteps downstairs, footsteps upstairs in the hallway, items missing then reappearing the next day, toilets that flush by themselves, very cold parts of the house, footsteps on the roof in the middle of the night, computers that reboot themselves 3 or 4 times a day, did I mention items that disappear and then reappear a day or two later. Yea. I know some of you think I must be nuts. You had to have been there. Never in my life had I come across anything that intense. The other two places were minor in comparison if you consider footsteps in the room above you and the stairs squeaking like someone is coming downstairs normal.

Anyhoos, not sure how I got off on this woo woo tangent. Suffice to say that I need to listen more to that “inner voice”.

L

Somewhere In Colorado

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Sara (Tucson 1980) By Stevie Nicks


Do you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing?

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

 

L

Somewhere In New Mexico

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the very magical influence of Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles

 

Timid Souls Who Neither Know Victory Nor Defeat

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst,
if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

 

L

Somewhere In Texas

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Dreamboat Annie by Heart

 

 

When You Build Your House Then Call Me Home

Dreams Do Come True
A heartbeat that never goes away. It stays in your thoughts your entire life. It drives you. It consumes your thoughts. It overpowers your emotions. It’s the voice that has no voice. It speaks in a language unknown to most. Unexplainable. Undefinable. Unmeasurable. Limitless. It knows no bounds. It is not constricted by time nor thought. It knows nothing of failure. Distance means nothing to it. It has been by your side since the day you were born yet most have never met it. It patiently waits. For to it, time has no meaning. Whether it takes 10 years or eons it matters not. It is already home. It knows you are separated and wants to help. But until you want it as bad as you would want air if held underwater it will not come home.

Today I stumbled across an old notebook of mine from 2014. In it I wrote some thoughts I had that summer oh so very long ago when the seed was still growing.

June 5th 2014

Have you ever had a burning dream locked away inside your soul, burning so bright and so deep all day and all night long it rips your very essence apart knowing it has not come true. A fire inside so strong it overwhelms your soul with its yearning to be free of its constraints, to burn inside you with such intensity that all else pales in comparison, something that cannot be explained, something so far beyond words, beyond feelings, beyond thought, something so deep it yearns for decades to become real, yet has never appeared in the exterior world. It drives you mad with intensity, like gasping for air when held underwater, you see it in its completion in your mind, every day and waking hour of your life, yet not a soul besides yourself knows of it nor could understand why it’s so important. Something so real, more real than the external world, more vivid than anything you could possibly imagine, a dream that refuses to die.

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

How bad do you want your dream? Like air if you were held underwater or it’s OK if it never happens? That burning desire inside, that all-consuming desire, that almost unbearable yearning inside you that has no words to describe it, that is what will bring your dreams into this world. That feeling that has no words are your very dreams trying with all their might to reach you.

When you build your house
Then call me home


 

L

Somewhere In Texas

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Sara by Stevie Nicks

 

All My Memories Gather Round Me

Do you ever feel you were born on the wrong planet? Do you ever look around you and say to yourself WTF? Do you ever wonder what the purpose of your life is? Do you ever look up at the Milky Way at night in the middle of nowhere and wonder what it’s all about? Do you ever get a feeling something is just not right? Do you ever try to speak with people and all you get is that blank eyed stare cows have? Do you ever look at what other folks do with their lives and wonder why anyone would do that or would even want to? Are you a square peg in a round hole world? Do you have itchy feet? Do you love to travel? Do you love to visit new places and explore? Do you march to the beat of a different drummer?

I plead guilty to all of the above. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to look at the stars at night far away from the maddening cities and ponder what was, what is, and what will be. Would that be imagination? Or something else? It’s hard to say. In my mind images take on a life of their own. It’s like 3-D movie swirling in my mind. Perhaps that’s why I gave up television and movies a long, long time ago. Sure, I still watch a few programs, mainly historical or educational but for the most part I have no desire for a TV or movies. That’s pretty odd eh in our media saturated society. Sometime I wonder what a person from 150 years ago would say if he was somehow transported to 2017. Probably die of a heart attack from the non-stop constant barrage of media images.

That said I did see a movie this week. Which is so rare for me I cannot remember the last time I went to the cinema. Actually I can. It was in 2012 and it was for a movie that was directed by the same director as the one I saw this week. Ridley Scott. Yes, I am the world’s biggest science-fiction fan. I remember seeing the first Alien on the big screen way, way back. This week I had to see Alien:Covenant. Yes, I cheated and read some of the reviews on IMDB and there were a lot of the “WTF has Ridley done to the Alien franchise???”  Yes it is very hard to understand that so-called highly trained scientists would do some of the most stupid things ever imaginable but hey it’s just a movie. Or is it? I like Ridley because he isn’t afraid to dwelve into deeper concepts. I enjoy his films due to the overt and the deeper, more hidden concepts. The concepts that I was thinking about a long, long time ago. Way, way before the first Alien hit the silver screen. The WOO WOO stuff. The woo woo concepts that are not spoken of in polite society. In polite society one only speaks of the latest media blitzes spread across the vast media canvasses of tv, radio and news. Those things are more or less ok to ponder and comment on. Off that track down into the rabbit hole the masses lose their footing and run for the safe surface.

Ridley’s concepts are something for another post but I just love to ponder on the food for thought he tosses out. Is it just a stupid movie or is it an allegory? Does life exist somewhere else? Or is this rock we are on for a split second all there is? These are the sort of concepts I ponder out in the country all by myself looking up at the Milky Way at 1 in the morning.

Milky Way Galaxy
Milky Way Galaxy – From Way Out In The Middle Of Nowhere Spanish Peaks Colorado

Every once in a while a meteor or two will appear (especially in August, the 2017 Perseid meteor shower will peak on the night of August 12 and early morning of August 13) that whets my appetite more. I’ve always owned telescopes my whole life. There’s something about a telescope that words cannot describe. Below is the one I have owned for a long, long time. A Meade LX200 8 inch.

Meade LX200 8 inch

I guess I am just a horse of a different color. Someone that marches to the beat of a different drummer. Things that interest me bore others. Things that others are interested in just plain bore me to death for the most part. In a world of common I must be the most uncommon person on this planet. I ran across a video today that pretty much sums up my ideas on what is normal and what is not. What pursuits are worth it and which ones are not. At least to little ol Laurie. Take a peek at this video and see if you are a horse of a different color too!

And here is something I will leave you with. A timeline trailer of Alien:Covenant that pretty much tells you what to expect and it has John Denver singing Country Roads. What more can you ask?

 

L

Somewhere In Texas

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Country Roads by John Denver

The Value Of Life Can Be Measured By How Many Times Your Soul Has Been Deeply Stirred.

Soul Has Been Deeply Stirred

From One Honda To Another – Somewhere Out In The Middle Of Montana

Well, I did it. Instead of continuing the journey this year on a Harley Ultra Limited I decided while in Needles, California (121 degrees!!)  to continue this year in a roadster. A very special roadster. A 2002 Honda S2000. Yah, an AP1 that revs to 9K. Oh yea!!  I was honestly looking for a Ultra Limited on my stopover in Needles and by chance ran across this one owner, babied S2000. I’ve owned many roadsters in my life, MG’s, Midgets, Spitfires, Vettes, Fiats, Kharmen Ghia’s, Wranglers but I have always had a soft spot for MGB’s. The late 60’s to mid 70’s MGBs. Whoa!!!!!  There are no words to describe them. Especially the MG Midget, that was just an insane car.

1975 MGB
1975 MGB

 

With roadster memories stirring in my head I motored on down to Temecula and picked up the S2000 for the 2016 journey.

Palm Springs Traffic Nightmare
Palm Springs Traffic Nightmare

The S2000 is a pretty rare car, the S2K forum estimates only about 40,000 of them are left in the USA. I can vouch for that. Since leaving Temecula I have seen just 3 of them on the road. I started playing a daily game while driving. Count the other S2000’s, count the other roadsters of any make and count the motorcycles. Roadsters are a rare breed I’ll tell ya! So many more motorcycles I see daily than roadsters. Some days I see no roadsters, some days one or two. The S2000’s are few and far between. While in Billings, Montana I saw this yellow one in a parking lot. The local Honda dealer said he knows of 3 S2000’s in the Billings area. Rare as a hen’s tooth!!!!

Yellow Honda S2000 Billings Montana

1930's Roadsters
1930’s Roadsters in Red Lodge, Montana

 

There’s something about a roadster (in much the same way as a motorcycle) that simply cannot be explained. In many ways it’s as if you are flying a biplane a few feet above the ground. An old Stearman or a Travelair.

 

Travel-Air-4000
Travel-Air-4000

 

Travel-Air-4000
Travel-Air-4000

 

I was watching a video about the head engineer that designed the S2000. He said it’s not a car, it’s an experience. I cannot agree more.

The Value Of Life Can Be Measured By How Many Times Your Soul Has Been Deeply Stirred.

I love this quote. How many times in your life has your soul been deeply stirred? I mean DEEP! Beyond words deep. Can’t explain it deep. Words pale deep. The Place Where There Are No Words deep.

A long time ago when I was going through a lot of challenges in my life and my business I met by chance a most interesting character after my vehicle broke down. He gave me a ride to a gas station and on the way somehow the conversation got around to what we do for a living. He mentioned to me a few years before he was homeless living in a van near Malibu, California. But even though he lived in his van he had a burning desire inside, he wanted to create a new product in the hair care field. That’s all he ever thought about he said. Even as he lived on pork and beans in his van. Flash forward a few years, this homeless man was sitting next to me driving a Mercedes. He said it was rough but he never ever gave up. One day he said he met someone who believed in him and offered him the opportunity to develop his idea. Even though he was homeless he was schooled as a chemist. Funny eh? A fully trained chemist living the homeless life in Malibu. He said all it took was one good idea and his life took off. His products were picked up by salons all over the US and Europe. He became a multi-millionaire within a few years from the hair care products and bumped into me on Sunset Blvd in Pacific Palisades. I still remember his story to this day and wonder where he is now. He was definitely stirred by something. A deep, all-consuming burning desire. It drove him, it consumed him, he thought about it all the time and one day, in ways he could never imagine, his dream came true.

Illusions-Richard Bach
Illusions-Richard Bach

2015 Harley-Davidson Ultra Limited
2015 Harley-Davidson Ultra Limited – Coming in 2017??

 

L

Somewhere In Montana

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of One – ZooTV Live In Sydney by U2

The Creator Stands On His Own Judgement, The Parasite Follows The Opinions Of Others

The Fountainhead Howard Roark courtroom scene with Gary Cooper

You know something? I am a very stubborn person. Probably the most stubborn person in the world. I cannot handle someone telling me what to do or trying to impose their “plans” on me. I am a polite person up to a point, go past that point and I will tell you to take a hike. So many people in my life have thought they know best what is right for me. I have a message for you. You don’t and never will.

I never try to impose my will on anyone else. I don’t try and shove things down their throat. I don’t tell other people how they should live their life and what I expect of them. I don’t expect anything from anyone. And I am perfectly content. What gets me is some “authority figure” or someone else who somehow thinks it is their destiny in life to force others to do their will.  Force others to make a choice between 2 bad alternatives. No thanks, that’s not my bag baby! Nod to Austin Powers.

What is it about some people that have this driving desire to tell others how they should behave or how THEY WILL behave. I call them the controllers. There are 2 kinds of people. The ones that want to control others and the ones that DO NOT want to be controlled. Can you guess what side of the fence Little Laurie falls on?

I had teachers in elementary school mark on my report card a big fat F because I did not play well with others. I remember one teacher (Mrs. Berong) in my 4th grade class that scolded me saying I was never going to amount to anything in my life. My own mother told me the same thing when I was 15. I can still hear the words in my mind and can still see her in our den screaming those words. I just bit my tongue and went about my business. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and it was diametrically opposed to her wishes and desires. We could not be further apart in our personalities. I more or less divorced my parents when I was 18, raised my wings and flew away. I guess I could say I more or less divorced my mother when I was 18. I still kept in touch with my father who pretty much understood me but my mother was another story.

Now most of you out there have great relations with your parents but there are a few of us believe it or not that had to divorce their parents for one reason or another. My mother wanted me to go one way and I wanted to go another. We fought about it all the time. And I am a very, very peaceful person. My ideal morning is sipping a cup of coffee on the porch of a cabin deep in the woods next to a large, tranquil lake. The lake is so still and quiet. Not a single ripple on it’s glass smooth surface. That’s me. The most stubborn person in the world and the most peaceful and quiet.

Why people choose drama is beyond me. On a drama scale of 1-100 with 100 being the worst sort of dramatic life that is possible I try to stay in the 1-3 range. I’ll put this song on my headphones and just stare out over the pristine lake sipping my coffee.

Beethoven: Piano Sonata no 8 ‘Pathetique’ 2nd movement

Watch the video above. In it Gary Cooper enumerates pretty much everything I stand for. If someone else starts to tell me what I “should” do or what I “have to do” or what I “better do” then the gloves come off. For the most part I will ignore that sort of stuff and if I cannot ignore it I will walk. Life is too short to deal with that BS and those sort of people. No thanks.

 

L

Somewhere In Arizona

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Shooting Star by Bad Company

 

How To Live Your Dreams

In my travels this year I have seen so many folks that are not living their dream. Or perhaps they are if you consider conflict, fighting, anger, confusion, consumerism, mind numbing entertainment, running on the hamster wheel, etc… to be living your dream.

No, the dream I am talking about is the one in the back of your mind. The one that no one knows about. Only you. The one you gave up on a long time ago and settled for what’s on the table.

I think this quote below says it all for myself.

I’m going to check out of this bourgeois motel, push myself from the dinner table and say, “No more Jell-o for me, ma!”

You have to get really fed up with the status quo. I mean really, really fed up. Enough that will cause you to break out of that daily momentum of mediocrity. You know, that routine where you just keep repeating the same stuff over and over and over again. You have to change. Most are not willing. Look around you. What do you see? Do you want to end up like that? If not, you better plan on changing something today. To change the future you must change what you do today, if you keep doing the same things you will keep getting the same things in the future.

How bad do you want to change? I mean is it a minor want like you want an ice tea? or is it a hunger? Does it drive you insane not having it? Is it an all consuming fire within you or is it a small wish easily acquired like a new shoestring?

I’m telling you right now most folks just do not have that fire, that spark, that all consuming passion. Or if they do they are hiding it pretty well.

When you want your dream as bad as you would want a breath of air while being held underwater then you will have it.

Most don’t have that all consuming, burning desire, instead they settle for the mouldy, scabby pigeon crumbs tossed their way.

I say no thanks.

Along my journey to my dreams I had a lot of doubts and low moments. There were several very low times I could have thrown in the towel and given up. Some of those low times were decades ago and some were in the last 5-10 years. I mean really low times. Really, really low. So low that a lot of other folks really throw in the towel for good and check out of this hotel forever. In those times I used to tell myself something I learned a long time ago from one of my early mentors. It was this.

“Six months from now you are going to be laughing about the current situation.”

And you know what? He was right. In all those really low situations I found myself in it always happened that six months later I would laugh about what happened six months back and how serious things seemed at the time.

Don’t believe anyone that tells you your dream is impossible. Better yet, keep your dream to yourself until it comes true. Even then, keep it to yourself. A piece of gold in your pocket does not increase in value if others know about it.

P.S. If somehow you are unsatisfied with your current life and feel you need more “things” to be happy I want you to look at one website and compare those at the site with how really fortunate you are if you live in a 1st world country. You really, REALLY have no idea how lucky you are to begin with and all the opportunity that surrounds you. Click on the KIVA link below and find out just how lucky you are and how perhaps you can help make a dream come true for someone else.

Click to the right — KIVA – Some dreams can come true for $300-$2000

 

 

L

Somewhere In Texas

“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Lotta Love by Nicolette Larson

 

Unicorns Don’t Exist But I Keep Looking

If you wanted something really bad how long would you search for it? A month? A year? A lifetime?

See, I was told a long, long time ago unicorns don’t exist. In spite of all the people that told me they don’t exist I kept searching. The so called experts told me I was wasting my time. Those around me searched for other more common things. Things that could be found easily. With barely any effort. That’s not what I wanted.

I’m here to tell you that unicorns do exist but they do not grow on trees.

The rarest of the rare. To most a figment of a wild imagination. Or fairy tale.

Unicorn Dreams

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours … In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

I’ve heard the following expression my entire life. “PROVE IT!” From the ones that only believe in things that can be hit with a hammer. If a hammer cannot hit it then that’s proof it does not exist. I get tired of that real quick. I suppose that is why I have chosen to walk the path less traveled. I’m not that good around people that need proof. People that drink from the fountain of the many, I prefer the fountain of the few.

I wish I could tell you that your dream takes just a few weeks to appear. Perhaps. But that’s not the way it works most of the time.

You see, you were given a very special gift. It’s been with you your entire life yet you probably are not even aware of it.

If you had a magic box that could make anything happen instantly how would that be? For most on this backwards rock the results would be a disaster. People cannot control their thoughts. That is why things do not appear magically in seconds. But they do appear. In months, in years or decades. What you think about, what you concentrate on, what you dream about does appear sooner or later whether you like it or not. Everything you see in front of you right now was just a dream a few years, a few decades or a few centuries back. Everything, bar nothing.

What is your unicorn?

What is your unicorn?

 

L

Somewhere In Texas

Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”

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This post was composed under the magical influence of Sarah (Cleaning Lady Version) by Stevie Nicks

My Dinner With Andre – A Conversation To Ponder…

Does this video set off your inner tuning bell? It does mine. Funny, I gave up on newspapers and media in 1977, this movie comes out in 1981 and said the same thing. Now it’s 2015 and this clip has more meaning than ever.

This will inspire you, big time. It’s a scene from the 1981 movie, My Dinner With Andre. A conscious conversation worth listening to twice (or maybe ten times).