Troy-Albany Trance-Formations

Last night I was speaking with Sharon Astyk–I’m taking her class on “Adapting in Place” and she asked that people spend 15 minutes in a phone conversation with her. We got to talking about how wonderful my new place of residence is, and how well-suited it is for whatever is coming down the pike.

The Northeastern region of the U.S. is actually very well-suited right now, particularly as people leave for other parts unknown. I noticed though that Troy and Schenectady and Buffalo(!) of all places have a certain electricity to them. They do have some sort of civil juice happening there. I sense it every once in awhile in Albany, but the city does have this attachment to a sort of “truculent downtroddenness” like was depicted in W. Kennedy’s Ironweed. (Though I must say, Mr. Kennedy does adore his home town as well he should, and his book O Albany! has become one of my favorites.) That self-esteem problem is abetted with some of the state’s not-so-well-meaning dumpings on the city, particularly swelling its mental-health consumer rolls.

There are other aspects to the problems in Albany, but that is not the focus of this post. Instead, I want to focus on the bluefire that exists in Troy right now, and a similar sort of fire, perhaps a more green-orange fire in Schenectady. The good thing about these places (Albany included) is that there are people who are placeholders for civic pride. Trojans and Schenectadites (?) would do well to take a trip to “the Other New York” (as Sharon A. referred to it for from some time in the late 19th c. and up until the 1920s it was one of the 6 largest cities in the U.S.) to get a whiff of a place that has been on the ropes, and in some ways still is, and yet… One thing I can say about Buffalo is that people like it there so much, that some of them go away and return because of the personal warmth of the place (neither the temperature or the brutal winters keep them there), and others hang on there as long as they possibly can, until circumstances push them to seek greener economic pastures elsewhere.

The cities and other municipal entities of the Capital Region do have a special juice similar to Buffalo, but perhaps not as pronounced as of yet. Some of that I think has to do with some of the ossified politics that act as a rather sclerotic barrier to its burgeoning. At some point, the various cities will break through that. That is more an intuition than based on anything rational. There are “good-ol’-boys/girls” in Troy who seem to benefit from the sclerosis, but at some point they will have to face the simple fact that we all either need to change or die. And I’m sad to say some people will probably be obstinate enough to choose death over change.

It happens a lot with addicts–I know of people who continue to eat “food” and who only pile on more disablement to their physical problems until their bodies just give out. There are stories of addicts and alcoholics who give in to their jonesing and end up under the gravestone or their ashes spread out over a beloved patch of earth or sea.

There are of course addictions to ideas, religions, ideologies, nationalisms, brand-attachments, television shows, etc. We hit bottom when we decide it’s time to stop digging. And some people will clultch that shovel in their cold, dead fingers.

The electric energy of which I speak could be snuffed out, though I feel there is a redoubtable strength there. It would take a lot of stubbornness and militant ignorance (cf. M. S. Peck’s definition of “evil”) to squelch this energy though it won’t go away. Not unless some brilliant whack job finds a way to pave the entire landscape, including people’s backyards. It’s in the ground under our feet, this patch of Mother Earth we call for now the Capital Region. At some point, I hope we go back to calling it “Mahicanitauk” (someone feel free to correct me on the spelling, molto graz’).

To me, the energy in Troy reminds me of the blue sacred bubble I create around myself every day. My bubble is of a darker blue–Troy’s a more royal blue and mine is more cobalt. And this is only my perspective. But that’s what I think. And Schenectady–well, it’s more a heart and sex chakra thing. Ironic that Schenectady would get the more emotional green and orange, with a little bit of pink fire as well I sense. Green and pink are both 4th chakra colors though. (Perhaps Albany is vibrating as red and yellow? That would sort of fit, while Saratoga might be violet/white? Speculation there though as I don’t spend alottalotta time in Sarry.)

Troy with the blue of the 5th chakra though fits a lot because of the presence of RPI, Sage and Emma Willard, all interacting with a mere 40,000 souls. That raises the intellect factor by quite a bit. “And blue is an intelligent color, ya know?”

(Quoting myself there in a monologue I wrote years ago in my birth-town of Denver, CO called “The Cherry Creek of the Imagination”, after an area in Denver called (you guessed it!) Cherry Creek. One of these days I’ll write about Denver’s spirit, which is adolescent and Hispanic and “cowboy” with a similar self-esteem issue to Albany. Interesting that both are capital cities — for now at least.)

Off topic, I have another post btw, that I need to put up later today. Two days ago I encountered a past life self who has been hanging around me and manifesting in some of the helpless rage I feel about my student loan. Again, talking with Sharon helped there, but also talking with my best friend Michael in Hawai’i about it. As I shared about it and he, Scorpio that he is, asked me a couple of probing questions that at first I didn’t have an answer for, in that space I saw him: Eamon Brian Andrew Tracy, a late 16th century man who came over to the colonies, more specifically Virginia, and was worked to death as an indentured servant on a tobakkko plantation. Eamon carries an inchoate and voiceless rage, and it is up to me to give him a voice. My post will have a ritual aspect to it for that helpless rage that belongs to him does not serve me in the 21st century.

I must help him to release that and move on. And I must also mark that he had a presence on this earth, much as the “Virginiastocracy” of plantation owners and other petit officials might have liked for him to just shunt off somewhere else. But Eamon has done his share of haunting, I can tell. It’s served as a substitute for his real desire, but I’m here to help him now. It’s part of my job as a worldbridger.