Post-...

In the 90s ("like, ohmigod Sunbeam! That is like so LONG ago!), I remember having a conversation with a theater techie type person about the prefix "meta", how wonderful that was to drop in front of other words. Meta-transformative. Meta-baroque. Meta-modern. That quickly devolved into metacarpal. Metabolic. Etc. I even went so far as to craft "metacarpal tunnel vision quest for fire engine red nail polish sausage and biscuits." (I could go on, but for dignity purposes, I shall cease and desist therethrough.)

Anyway, another one of those wonderful prefixes is "post-". I've been thinking that perhaps it's time for some of us to embrace a transitional label--"post-national." Which would mean that some of us would be "post-American", but also "post-Mexican", "post-French", "post-Chinese," etc. And I would also like to embrace "post-corporate", which would also mean "post-Monsanto," "post-Microsoft", "post-Archer-Daniels-Midland," etc.

We need to move "post-business," as well as "post-fundamentalist." Some of us might be "post-religious" and others "post-atheist". Others "post-pagan," even. I'm even willing to say that I'm a "post-artist." I can certainly embrace "post-wage-enslaved". See? There's all sorts of possibilities with "post." Of course there are also things like "post-free", "post-tolerant", "post-loving", synonym for which might just be "dead", "necrotic", "moribund." We are moving not just through a "post-literate" age, but a "post-tonic" age as well. Some people even seem to be "post-feeling" and "post-sensitive." (Again, that death synonym thing applies.)

Perhaps all this is moot. I'm seeing that I need to embrace much of that which I am not, in order to bring it all to light. Yesterday I read in scattershot mode Paul Levy's latest on awakeninthedream.com. I have been "fascinated" with Bush and Co. and have felt the hooks of that destructive illness sink its tenters into me. It's because of what's going on in the country, that I have come to see myself as "post-American" and "pre-neonatoheiric" (newly-born sacred--feh, I'll come up mit etwas besseres). Even so, I consciously send light and love to all these neoconservative servants of Yaldabaoth and Chthulu and the other archonic entities because we are all sons and daughters of Sophia.

Just something I needed to say today. Part of my FAGging it, as it were, though I need to add love into that and change my Fag into a Flag.

8 Wands Athena Otter

"Athena Can Speak Through Us"

Please start with what is
and then build from there.
Aware, then accept--
All of it's of use.

Take action when called
once all has been viewed,
taken hold within--
really grasp the truth.

Effective, I know
from. I help design
the best responses.
bestow clarity.

Let me to guide you
to your wildest goals.
I give you patience
to break it all down.

One step, then the next.
There may be trouble--
you act in context
of others' desires.

Accept reactions,
do not pressure them.
Might still go forward
once you find the flaw.

Opponents sometimes
are in your own brain.
Sometimes friendship hides
fierce adversity.

Sometimes a loved one
stands in our pathway.
Find the space to breathe
and discover worth.

Please start with what is,
and then build frrom there.
Aware, then accept--
all of it's of use.

Princess Wands Vesta Griffon

"For Vesta"

Not everyone has a fireplace
keeping the warmth in their houses
but many people who live inside homes
at least have their stoves

It's on these stoves we cook our food,
and thereby keep our inner warmth.
Gas and oil and coal and wood
fuel these heatgivers.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We give you thanks and praise
for bringhing home the sacred fire.
Let's gather 'round the blaze.

Not everyone has a spouse
to kindle their sacred flams beside
but many have warm hands as tinder
to warm their jewels.

It's with these hands, we build reserves
for moving gracefully through our days
and there come moments when the sparks
catch other's bright eyes.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We sing our thanks to you
for holding sex as something sacred
and each of us has our view.

Dear Goddess, now I'll speak for myself.
I see a multicolored path ahead
A deeper sense of sacred presence
comes to rest in me.

Thank you for my loving boyfriend
our sex-container holds in so much
and I am blessed with food, understanding
how my soul is fed.

Vesta, my blessed sister!
I shout my gratitude!
Gentle fire transformed me from inside,
birthed a new attitude.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We give you thanks and praise
for bringing home the sacred fire
Let's gather 'round the blaze!

Fool Persephone Salamander

"Song for Krom"

Living in the city,
I can easily forget
I'm as much a part of
Nature as Green Man is,
so sometimes I've got to
get to trees and pasture
Everyone needs their
toes feel dirt

My poor feet feel trapped
inside these leather dress shoes
sometimes I just long for
Nature, Cernunnos' house
and before I know it,
feet have done carried me
onto a bus, next stop
mounds of earth!

Skippin' through the hills and the valleys
imbibing that mountain air
feeling the breezes, the sun on my skin
My head is now clearing!
My heart is expanding!
I need to strip naked and roll in in the grass!
I confer with a speaking brook,
tells me "You feel your feet!
Just be at one with the rocks, the trees, the leaves!"

'Cause before I know it,
I'll be back typing documents
and catching busses so that
nature where horned one dwells
has to live inside my
heart until next time
the urge does come
and come it sure will
like the next breath I take
so in pause, I need
to remember that the soles
my feet in woodland strolls
shall carry me through
days of concrete on end.

Ace Swords Star Goddess Gnome

"February 23, 1964, a Hades-Bear Day!"
A song!!!

Most people will not laugh
when upon you they think.
Indeed it's frowned upon
to smile or even wink.
Death, sex and taxes too--
the debts o'er which we drink.
O Hades I do adore
you, it's my twisty kink.

I
got my clue
I want you
to be trure
kiss me do
where I'll skew
breaths come few
Lungs turn blue.

Hades' Day
Words to say
Drift away
Not so gray!
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
A OK
Take me 'way
'Yond this fray.

Yes, too subversive, I
to embrace not the right
or hug even the left
For middle is most bright!
Persephone's you are.
Apocalypse love bite
And I do cheer at this
For humor is your might.

I
got my clue
I want you
to be trure
kiss me do
where I'll skew
breaths come few
Lungs turn blue.

Hades' Day
Words to say
Drift away
Not so gray!
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
A OK
Take me 'way
'Yond this fray.

My left shoulder's your home
Don't need to read no tome.
To hold you as the grave
is merely unwise-brave
You help me embrace life
to rise above the strife
Good days are Hades' days
Fun-filled days,
kill all hope and
Live each day as if it's your last, lovely Hades Day!

Ace Wands Freyja Sphinx

Went to the Dandelion Gathering in Becket, MA this past weekend. A number of very interesting insights arose during this time.

1) I seem to need to address a "psychic infection" that would appear to be easily cured. I was in a healing ritual to address my creative wounds, and when the healer started to work on my aura, she basically "raked" my auric egg. Well, wouldn't you know but I discovered this awful structure that seems to be embedded even into my skin! I felt like as she was brushing through this cotton-candy-like gauze, that it was pulling my arms and legs with it. It really didn't want to let go. I saw a "spine" of something that looked like broken pieces of wood. This yielded to a brilliantly lovely orange and pink hibiscus, and then I saw a beautiful red-skinned man of either Hawaiian or native descent in a cape made of orange feathers with indigo eye-dots.

The really strange thing is the very next day, my boyfriend and I were walking around the pond at the YMCA camp there with a fellow who knew some things about biology. We saw a duck that fled from her nest and we thought we heard a beaver dive into the water. Other people actually saw the beavers. One of the things that we did see however was a tree that was "infected" with these caterpillars which had concocted some sort of white gauzy material around one of the tree's crotches. The caterpillars reminded me of the wooden structures I saw, though they seemed inert and dead in my vision.

Hawaii also seems to have not been too far away from the vision either, in curious ways. Two people who Jody and I hooked up with grew up there. Oddly enough they live a stone's throw away from my old alma mater. Very interesting that.

My best friend thinks the man in the orange feathers may have been Kamehameha or the Hawaiian deity Ku, or perhaps more likely, a figure connected to my second and sixth chakras. He was there to help me heal my creative wounds after all. He could also be Xochipili or some other mesoamerican deity, too. I don't know, but I had a kickass meditation with the fellow, who just likes to be called "Yal." And no, it's not short for Yaldabaoth--he said "Certainly not!"

2) I performed "Hecate's Prayer for the Common American" at this gathering as part of another celebratory ritual. I use my body as a percussion instrument for that piece. I have a couple of those I do this with. Got a lot of positive feedback about it. Need to pursue this somehow.

3) Another fellow witch told me to pursue another avenue for my hunger to teach. He's familiar with some Albany area schools and mentioned one I'd only vaguely heard of.

4) Almost immediately, people from Dandelion have started to show up in my dreams. One person was evidently instrumental in helping my declutter . . . something.

5) On the way home, Jody and I listened to Chanticleer's "Sounds of the Spirit." I had a curious reaction to one song called "Como Pod' a Groriosa" by Alfonso X the Learned of Spain. (It's listed as Alfonso XII which is wrong, I've come to discover.) It's written in a dialect called "Gallo-Portuguese." I feel that somehow this language is rather important to me on some level. I suspect a lot of my "automatic writing" might very well be in a language similar to this. I'm not sure, but I sometimes have seen this fellow in a doublet who goes on and on about Mirandola Mirandola, and I've wondered if it wasn't Pico della Mirandola himself. It could be I'm sure, but I remain skeptical. Though interestingly, my best friend mentioned encounters with famous people in his last meditation. I won't embarrass him by saying who, but I've been there!

So there's a lot to chew on there. More where that came from, but that's what I know so far.

2 Cups Hermes Lamb

Had a very productive weekend, but the thing that was most amazing was a meditation that took me, of all places, to Hogwarts!!! Yes, that's right. Instead of my receiving an owl, it was more like the Owl dragged me to the place and summarily dropped me off without even a "how'd'yado?" It was pretty awesome to come face to face with a Hermione Granger and a Ron Weasley who were still bickering as ever. I was there they said, to recieve "the Draft of Innisfree." Very interesting that. They administered it to me, and I felt like they had given me something that is germinating inside me. It feels like a creative project of some sort.

After the meditation, I sat down and wrote a ten-twelve page play a la Ed Wood, which I've entitled "The Hairbrush of Dooooommm!" It has a dreamlike logic. I had a couple of unusual dreams relating to the healing of my creativity which I've been seeking. Interestingly, both had barges in them. I was transported to a barge in the first, and in the second, a barge was rear-ended by a smaller craft in the Hudson River. A tractor trailer fell into the river. "The Sabre Dance" was playing. Needless to say, I woke up laughing.

I'll get that play upgetyped sometime soon. Probably will post it here, FWIW. La la la, I wrote something! Yeay for mih!

Queen of Wands Star Goddess Hawk

(Hmmm. Triple goddess as it were, for my Hawk's a Ms.!)

I'm thinking this might be the most important post I have done to date. I want to talk about FEAR. False Evidence Appearing Real. Face Everything And Recover. And of course, F Everything and Run!

I'm not sure if I've told this story on my blog before. But every once in awhile, I find myself in Phobos's company. And when I become aware of the critter, he just skedaddles. The first time I found myself in his company, I didn't even realize he was an entity. And I call him "He" because Phobos in the Greek Pantheon was the son of Ares along with Deimos or Terror. Fear & Terror, lovely eh? (I would like to add I have a collection of short, in-need-of-rewrite plays I entitled Furcht, Elend LLP: An Olio of Oiliness for These Unctuous Times. Furcht, Elend are German for Fear, Misery, and it's a slant on Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches: Szenen von der Meisterrass--in English "Fear & Misery of the Third Reich: Scenes from the Master Race.")

Anyway, I had been reading a wonderful book--Freeing the Soul from Fear by Robert Sardello. I had gone up to the Cloisters on a lovely spring day two years ago, and I had finished lunch and walked to a bench in the Fort Tryon Park and read some more of what this wonderful teacher has to say about meditation. I picked up a rock and just meditated on it for five minutes. Being the compulsive thinker that I am, it was a challenge to piece together thirty-forty seconds of "peace", but I did at least manage to do that, focusing on an image of the rock which I decided to carry with me. Since this meditation, I've done it with other rocks, paper clips, and a candle flame, all of which work well. It doesn't really matter what it is, because you dissolve it anyway and then sit in the "void", with an incredible sense of well-being.

Anyway, I got on the bus back downtown and decided I wanted to go to a bookstore. I was looking for a specific item--the Druid Animal Oracle. I vaguely remember talking with my best friend about animal guides, and had just discovered that the Otter is indeed one of those. I've had some wonderful experiences with Otter as a literal guide through parts of NYC that I didn't know existed, and Otter's all about play. I know Otter's got a bead on Albany now, but I haven't had the time to pursue his adventures as of yet.

Anyway, I found what I was looking for and went to the checkout stand. At the time I had two credit cards, and I knew one of them was close to being maxed out. The other one, however, I din't have the card for as I had lost it. So I had to grab the one that I thought might be outgemaxed. Sure enough, the clerk said (with a sort of "Ha-ha" chuckle in his voice) "I'm sorry that card's declined your purchase."

Instantly, I could feel all my hormones ablaze. "Caught-caught-caught" was the sound of the alarm in my brain, but interestingly instead of feeling it throughout my entire being, I only felt it in my body. I really felt the adrenaline coursing through me and realized that I could just feel the rush of heat to my face, the quickening heartbeat, etc., and not take it in, not react to this stimulus. I looked at the counter and witnessed myself and made a conscious choice to only let my body be the vessel that experienced the wave of energy and not let the rest of me get upgecaught inside.

I told the clerk that I had lost my other card, and expected it in the mail, that it might even be in my box when I got home (which indeed it was, funny enough), and that I would be back Monday or Tuesday to pick this up. He duly noted my name and put it behind the counter where they keep stuff to pick up and I walked out of the store and for the first time ever:

I Felt Joy!

It was pretty incredible, all in all. I later understood that I now had a tool in meditation to put myself in a place of well-being and happiness, and that what Abraham Lincoln had said about "Most people are about as happy as they want to be," only told part of the story. People who had access to this tool were lucky if they ever felt joy at some point in their lives, and even then only a faux joy that would come with something like winning the lottery.

Anyway, since this particular Phobos-encounter, I have come to see that fears are like these winged entities that exude malice and threat. Sometimes they really are bad-assssss entities, but a lot of the time they are parts of myself that have been cut-off from my awareness. I do have moments like one particular night a few weeks ago when I woke up feeling a nameless fear. And when I got quiet and retreated into my Self and my body, I saw one of these winged dark things at the foot of my aura, trying to paw its way in. "Caught!" in reverse, huh?

What I'm trying ultimately to say about False Evidence Appearing Real, is that I have the personal experience of feeling that adrenaline rush course through me and disbelieve that I have to follow it to the ends of the earth. My five minute, imperfect stone meditation, where I only could get maybe 30 seconds together of uninterrupted focus, actually had a preventive effect. I have had other experiences where I've been confronted by ugly fears in others, and been able to breathe into the experience and get calm so that I could be effective in the matter at hand. I start every day with meditations, and the fears are sometimes there around me. They disappear when I start to breathe in the Ha Prayer, however. And the only ones that come in now are the ones I consciously invite in, with the help of one or several of my many guides.

Fear. It's not you. It's beside you, not of you or in you though that is what it wants to make you think. It wants to override your visions, your motility, your volition and turn you into a machine, and the more addictions you put yourself into, whether it's sugar/flour, booze, drugs, toxic belief, power-over others, shame, American Idol, or whatever, the more vulnerable you are to the machinic/Matrix aspect out there.

Because fear is the currency of so many people out there these days, and because predation/vampiry/cancer/addiction appears to be the dominant M.O. in the Unraveling States, Counties, Burgs, Towns, Hamlets and Individuals of AmeriConned there's a lot of icky-smelling vapor in the air. But that's ALL it is, vapor. It's not real.

There is another power source within, much deeper than the adrenal glands stoking fight or flight energy. And that, my friends is a source of a deeper awareness and understanding of what's really going on.

Free. Your Soul. From Fear....

8 cups Hades Otter

Woke up feeling snoggy. Lots of people are writing about feeling disconnected, or, as one fellow refers to it "pushing rope." I've been feeling that for awhile. It's amazing however, how much acceptance of all my situations really helps, and also how interconnected we all are.

I've been musing about the conjunctions taking place around us all, and how interwoven they are. Last night, I asked about how do I heal my creative wounds, and do you know, I dreamt about worrying over paying my taxes? I still don't quite get what the two have to do with each other, and I'm letting the dream just be. Last night I got a ride to the Mall with a fellow OA, and I broached the subject of Peak Oil with her. I also talked about debt--for some reason, debt and finance are becoming two of my favorite topics. At least in relation to relocalizing. Funny, one of the websites I logged into suggested that someone graduating from law school look into bankruptcy law, and that's one of my firm's areas of expertise. Another example of shining synchronicity.

I'm thinking now of the card I drew today. In the Cosmic Tribe, it shows 8 cups with sour faces, each with a brackish substance flowing through them. Sometimes I literally look at that as a card of sickness, and today that's what's on order. Went to bed last night with a sore throat. Hades and Otter helped give me a wonderful meditation today however. I see my Self as a yellow light radiating a gentle, comforting glow out into the world.

Tower Freyja Griffon

Debating about what to post today. My boyfriend's away for the week, and I already miss him. I've been a bit frustrated with surfing today, and I'm wishing that I had a bit more of a focus than merely trolling for connections. I'm happy that other people are seeing connections between things that I hadn't really thought of before, such as immigration, megachurches, white-male paranoia, satanic ritual abuse and religious belief addicts, interestingly all under the guise of Saturn.

I'm looking forward to trying to get to writing some stories and plays for the Great Turning. I've already come up with a title for an olio of plays:

Empire Anonymous

Scenes from the Great Turning

I came up with an idea for a short play to go into this larger one, though I don't want to say anything about it yet. I need to go back and read some S. Beckett, however. His work is prophetic in odd ways, as is Chekhov's. I think those two writers more than any other theatricians have relevance in today's world. Shakespeare kind of does, at least his more mystical pieces such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Tempest needs to be released from its imperial ambitions, I think. But it's still a play I enjoy.)

We'll see where it goes, if it goes anywhere.

I'm exploring conscious dreaming right now. Perhaps something will come of that as well. My intention for tonight is to ask for a dream to show me how I might heal my creative self. Had a dream last night about how to best express myself creatively, and I had a dream about getting blocked from going to bed. I knew I had to go the long distance to go the short distance correctly, but I had failed so many times, I now had a blanket to use at the point I usually fail. Sad, really. I mean I have a M(other) F(ucking) A(rts) degree you know?

Whatever.

Followup to Earlier Post

I'm very glad to have perused Mr. Uchitelle's book. I didn't read all of it--there are sections about the history of labor post-WWII, and while that might be useful anecdotally, as far as policy goes I'm rather uninterested. I also lightly skimmed the end chapter which is about solutions to the issue. If it doesn't address peak-oil and how our whole structure is collapsing around us and tries to address "things the federal government can/should do" (as well as state governments for that matter), then I think it's mostly a waste of time. The stories about the individuals and what they went through opened my eyes however to my writer's blocks in a new way.

I've often mused about these blocks as they come up, and they've come up a lot more frequently as I age. I've wondered at times if, as I stay abstinent with sugar, flour and other substances, if I wasn't also using the pen and the paper addictively. I would say that in one way I was--I really am an approval addict as well, I want for people to say "Dang, I wish I'd have written that!" or "That really was a good play. You had me in stitches" (if I did intend to make it humorous, or moving if I meant to be moving or thought-provoking/enraging if I meant for a work to have an eyeopening function).

Receiving some sort of recognition is a part of the ecology of the writer's work, and I've gone so long without that I've wondered if I didn't just dry up. But really it's the skittishness of getting back in the saddle again. I had an incident that happened in the B&N Cafe on 22nd and 6th when I was a member of a writer's group, where a self-absorbed customer basically told me to shut up. I was reading my piece aloud quietly at the table, and I was shocked and deeply wounded by this K.Nttack. I tried to read my piece a little quieter, but K.nttacker was so self-absorbed and selfish and thoughtless and EVIL about it, I didn't know what to do. It was studying for some vampire test, I'm sure on its path to its K.Nt needless to say, and it did shut me down, probably in more ways than I even know about.

I'm thinking as I write these words, that I probably need to do some soul-retrieval to ferret out some lost parts of my soul that the K.Nttacker severed from my awareness and palimpsested with my seemingly endless hatred echoing out and reverberating off of other surfaces.

Really, it all comes down to "How dare Vampira disrespect my work?" How dare Vampira indeed.

3 disks Cerridwen Dragon

Play ideas today:

1--I was reading about the NY Times Magazine article over the weekend, about the Belief Addicts' Wwar against Contraception, which is really a war on fucking for the sake of fucking as has been noted elsewhere. I thought it would be a nice thing to pen a play and call it "Hell House" but to turn the idea of the Belief Addicts' hell-house notions on its head and have the true Hell House be a compendium of wingnuttery as per the Robertson, Falwell, Ayatollah, etc. notions of "heaven" where people who do have sex are put to death in various and sundry ways, where people who are not obedient are punished, and where people who are obedient are also punished, because of course, how DARE someone be obedient to the Devil himself.

2--I started writing this one just a moment ago, but I've been thinking about the strange notion of "American theater." I am moving in the direction of feeling this is a historical field of study, as opposed to something that will continue to evolve. (Sort of like peak oil.) But I was thinking about my need for recovery in this area, my resentments and my underlying belief that "I'm not a good writer." I'm reading The Disposable American by Louis Uchitelle, and I realize that I have a lot in common with laid-off workers--the same sorts of recriminations, the coulda-woulda-shouldas, the "well, it's because THEY'RE so "F.I.N.E." (F*ck'dup/Insecure/Needy/Emotional), etc. that hides my own being "Fine." I was reading Uchitelle's book more to get a sense of how I need to be approaching my understanding of where the entire populace of the world is headed, but realized that I have my own work to do in that, while American theater isn't being outsourced, it has been through quite a few downsizings in terms of its vision, its aspirations, and even its stagings. Oh, sure, they're all well and good for the Christmas Carols and the musical comedies, but even stagings of Chekhov and T. Williams are suffering along. Anyway, I was thinking about the FINEness of playwrights who are trying to be working in this shell-shocked, overprofessionalized and sterile world. So, four characters: Phuc-Tupp, Insa Qure, Nee Dee, and Evangelio Morell-Chanel (aka E-Mo Chanel). All of them playwrights, all of them taking on some aspect of this decrepit ambience that needs apocalypse ("Ignore the Artistic Director behind the Curtain!")

Perhaps that is too obscure, but I was thinking about an evening of theater I penned entitled "Is There a Market for This?: Four Short Plays about Theater." And I was thinking the first play should be replaced with something else. Perhaps it's this one, I don't know. But the idea just came to me, and I think I might explore it, if for no other reason than I know how to write plays, and I think I can put that use to good purpose in fashioning stage-vessels that can convey useful information to those who are understanding the transitional nature of our place in the cosmos.

Just a couple thoughts on this day.

3 Disks Athena Gnome

I've been exercising of late, and today's the first day where I've not felt tired. Of course, I've gained five pounds in the last week, pretty sure solely from the muscle-mass I'm acquiring now that I'm Y-ward 3x/wk.

Really, I don't know why but I'm starting to feel quite hopeful and optimistic as well. I don't know if it's because of Beltane or the exercising, or from the fact that lots more people are starting to see what's around them, a little at a time. Perhaps all three? Could be.

I remember to have gratitude for everyone, even the people whose experience, weakness and hopelessness remind me "There but for the grace of Goddess go I." I'm grateful to Fred Phelps, Jerry Falwell and all those kooks out there who seem to have fallen into a toxic state of believing in their incapacity to produce excrementa odorifera. I'm grateful to the neocons who are convinced that bombing people is the acme of masculinity. There but for the grace of the Goddess go I, indeed.

10 Wands Vesta Deer/Angel

Actually, I believe I got off track somehow with my calendar notions. It's sometimes difficult to figure out which guide is the one that feels right, though I do believe the deities have been simpatico with the energies of each day. Today definitely feels like a Vesta day, though I'm not sure if it's an Angel or a 12-point Doe day.

Amidst reading The Great Turning, I'm realizing that somehow I've been really blessed with the desire to become an elder somewhat before my time. Perhaps it's a Pisces thing, though I also think it might be a multiple past-life thing where I've been of a monastic and solitary bent. This go-around, I really want to groove with being a part of a community birthing itself. I'd like to be a "community midwife" as it were.

There was a wonderful metaphor in Korten's book as well, that when the caterpillar is ready to form the chrysalis, "imaginal cells" appear that the caterpillar treats as "invaders" or "viruses." But in actuality, they are there to help the caterpillar form the chrysalis and transform into the butterfly it's to become. Korten likened those of us who call ourselves "Cultural/Spirtual Creatives" to these imaginal cells, and that as more and more of us appear, we will help to push the whole of humanity into that chrysalis and therein transform.

(And the Butterfly in the ahead-of-me-chakra REALLY loves that notion! I'll have to see if two days hence is a Butterfly or a Salamander day. I know that the day after is a wolf for that is definitely #20 of the animals.)

I like this notion especially though, because it suggests to me that while I may be here to usher others toward the chrysalis state, I am also in the throes of transformation as well. In fact, I'm reveling in the notion that the process is already underway in my case. In my meditations, I feel that certain chakral centers open and warmth and light and "air"--I don't really know what else to call this breezy energy--stream in. It's not easy then to go to work and sit at a desk all day (and make myself tired in the process), and try to send this loving breezy energy out to everyone I know, but I remember that I'm giving service to others, just by being here as well as by "doing the work" in front of me.

I feel blessed, and I share that blessing with everyone, and I feel too, that certain things--flowers, trees, buildings--share it back! We're all a part of life-life-life as well as "ethyly-deathel-death" as I like to call it. I like to "FAGG" it--Forgive Accept and Give gratitude. T-hee!

Fool Lugh Bear

Huh. Funny that all the words in today's title are monosyllabic.

Interesting story in the news today about the health of Americans being worse than the British, who we have looked down our supercilious and arrogant noses at for their wretched health-care system. The Brits have been the poster-child nation for the horrors of socialized medicine. Guess the last laugh's on us, eh, silly americans?

On the note of health, I've been tired a lot lately. Downright somnolent. I've been working out and I did join the Y to gain more energy. Perhaps it just takes some time, but I wonder if it isn't more that I just sit at a desk for too long. I do find myself getting up as much as I can, to go get the mail, to scan documents, make copies, etc. Perhaps my inactivity is killing me slowly? It certainly could be, couldn't it? I have also had a craving for sugar-free gum of late. That could be a sign of some other sort of imbalance.

Anyway, I did write a poem. I'm reading David Korten's The Great Turning right now. There's a lot for inspiration in this book. I'm boggled at the intelligence that is lodged in each cell of my body, as terminal as they are, and by extension as terminal as I am. Amazing.

“A Song of the Earth’s Mystery”

REFRAIN: Celebrate Mother Earth
Her wisdom profligate!
Living Mater-Matrix!
Grow, ripen, die, rebirth!

Lichen fix nitrogen
into soil. The plants do grow!
Who knows the mystery
of the fungus-loving
tree, where mold kills the bugs
attacking their needles?

REFRAIN

Surrounded by old bones
and death upon more death
we are. Wood of our houses,
even the glass of windows
built on corpses, remains
of beings gone before.

REFRAIN

Your liver is rebuilt
from who it was two months
past. Your skin will again
change six weeks hence, no part
of it will remain here.
You’ll be a different Shawn.

REFRAIN