The Disappearing Chef

2 Cups Odin Dragon

2008-06-06T16:32:00.002-04:00

I've started bipolar meds and an anti-anxiety. I might also need an antidepressant on top of it, but I'm not sure. I know they're supposed to help, but I feel sad that I need chemical altering in order to function in this world.

I guess in a way that's to the good. The society that is dying everywhere around us (implode, implode, implode away accelerando!) makes it difficult to survive without some form of medication. The pharmas have it the way they want it, and yes, I've resisted it all this time. But we do live in pharma world, don't we? When in Rome...

I do long for the days when I won't long for death. Right now, I feel rather numb. And tired. I really want to go to sleep right now but I have my therapist appt. tonight.

I tell people frankly that I pray collapse of the decrepit, the necrotic, the no-longer useful. I'm hoping that perhaps if I put it more that way, rather than "collapse of civilization" they won't be as offended. But the two are the same to me. To bring light to the vampires and watch them fizz into a fine wispy smoke--that is a brilliant dream as well! And also to find the cooling and healing aspects of darkness that would ground some of the more heroic and egotistical workers in the light.

("What, lightworkers egotistical? You don't say, tsk-tsk-tsk!" T-hee, and all that cheery rot!)

Vive le weekend!

6 Swords Drychtyn Salamander - Here I am again

2008-06-04T15:21:00.002-04:00

Perhaps there's another massive round o' death on the horizon.

Think it was on Karen Bishop or the Reconnections' sites that mentioned that people were feeling way down before the events hit Myanmar and China over the past couple of months. But I've been feeling really awful the past couple of weeks. There's more than a bit of self-destructiveness going on in my life at the moment.

Death. Yeah.

Hermes Iguana - Recognition Fixation

2008-04-16T09:17:00.002-04:00

Yesterday evening, I was walking home from work and I was on the phone with my partner. One of the interesting developments in my life recently is that I have begun to undertake work on a novel that is being fostered by the avatar/deity Taliesin. It's a strange tome that is coming through me, and there's a big part of me that feels like "I'm wasting my time." But that is a part of me that mewlingly desires some recognition and, yes, the drug of fame.

Well. Part of my issue is that I'm having a hard time lately being clear with stuff. I feel murky, and the murkiness gets me into trouble, but I know I've talked about Taliesin helping me with this book, and my partner forgot about it. And I told him that I was annoyed that he forgot it and that "I'm going to have to somehow train your memory." As I walked home and then when I started making my dinner, I realized I was really rather incensed by the whole thing, and that it really touches an old, old thing. I found myself musing about praying to have a starseed walk-in come into my body so finish out the term of lease on this body. Because I didn't want this pain anymore.

So, I se there's a lot of power there, a big old complex in my fetch that I need to transform. I did a Thoth deck tarot reading on it using a spread Gerd Ziegler designed that basically reminded me that there are many good things in my life today as represented by the 2 of Swords and the Sun, but this ancient failure (7 of disks as the "what's really going on" card" has congealed in my spirit (the Hanged Man) and needs to be burned away in the fires of transformation. Once I do this, I'll become the Knight of Wands (rather than Prince of Wands--this is a Thoth deck where Knights=Kings, Queens=Queens, Princes=Knights and Princess=Pages). And the failure itself may be transformed into the Princess of Wands, a fearless energy that speaks truth, come what may.

I'm studying Hawaiian mysticism right now for my Feri training. In order to become the healer I know I can be, I need to heal this aspect of myself. I was spoken to cruelly and with cavalier and reckless abandon. That I have taken it and run with it with my own fetch's simple notions. As a college sophomore, I really had no understanding of my sensitivity and impressionable nature regarding "authorities". I put it in quotes because the authority in question really relies on my giving it weight, and because I was unaware that I was in that place of looking for approval and recognition ab supra, I didn't understand just how vulnerable and delicate I was. So now I really need to double up my efforts to love my fetch and to soothe its hurt, to heal its pain. I can't change the fact that an authority at Dartmouth in the Sanborn House basement hurt me in the fall of 1983. As with my coming-out fiasco, I'm sure that I will one day be grateful for the pain she caused me, but right now I still feel a sting and a desire to lash out.

The best thing I've done is put C*ntypoo as a character in a play of mine. If she wants to say that's who she is, that's fine, but she'll have to admit she's a homophobe, a misogynist and a racist as well. Does she really want that? Maybe she should just live with the fact that "I saw, I know, she disgusts me." Irony of ironies--take that, Blanche. Unlike Alan, I'm not going to kill myself.

Still I've got my work cut out for me. Yich!

Hanuman "Max" = Hamlet is a Comedy

2008-04-08T14:57:00.003-04:00

I've been in a down mood or up-and-down mood rather. There are some days I look forward to stuff, and then days like this when I wish I could have just stayed in my dreams for the whole 24 hour period. (And last night I had a sex ritual dream! So there you go!)

But I've been musing on a notion that will probably raise the hackles of Shakespearean puristcunts--and of course that's a positive thing, isn't it always? But I recently had the opportunity to read an essay by Curtis White that suggested that "Hamlet" was a realy subversive play, masquerading as courtly entertainment. And I've got to admit I saw White's point. The tragedy of the play isn't really onstage--it's in the audience.

It struck me though, that if a director really wanted to be subversive, he'd augment all the stuff that was about Hamlet actually WANTING to die, and "go for the laugh-jugular." Now, it might be an experiment that failed, but I think it could fail BIG and in such a way as to make all sorts of people feel really uncomfortable in the process.

See, White's point is that "Hamlet" is about an ordinary fellow who doesn't have what it takes to be a gangsta, in the Claudius-Gertrude-Hamlet Sr.-Fortinbras mode of Gangsta.

Don't like "Gangsta"? Well, I think Tony Soprano is another Claudius stand-in. But it doesn't have to be the C*nt-character James Gandolfini played. There are a lot of people who can stand in for Count Vlad-Claudius C*ntworth. And Hapless Hamlet and Ophelia, Laertes and Polonius are just fodder for all that empirical evil that exists in the rottendom of Denmark. In fact, "Kingdom" and "Rotten" are basically the same thing. Something is King in the Rottendom of Denmark. And it is the structure of the whole c*nterprise itself.

So if Hamlet decided "To Sleep perchance to dream," and instead of going towards doubts about the death-dreams, he just glibly glides past it all, and embraces death-death-death, it could be quite discomfiting in more ways than one.

These thoughts are with me because I feel that the c*nt-spirits that want me to kill myself are getting desperate. The days of this c*nterprise called "American Empire" are clearly numbered, and it's difficult to see what the path forward is exactly. I did a tarot reading on 4-4-08 to discover that pathway, and the end result is the Queen of Cups--an emotional mastery of the situation. ("I'll cry tomorrow" anyone?) The theme interestingly is the Knight of Wands, and my lens into the situation is the 3 of Cups. The environment is the 7 of Pentacles which means that people are hard at work through the whole thing. As the fiasco unfolds, the hoi polloi will be "woikin' hard, woikin' woikin' woikin'" as I recently read somewhere. And I'll probably be amongst them, but working with my Fetch and my Godself to find the way through.

I wonder if this helps anyone.

Hanuman Undine - The Ugh Zone!

2008-03-26T15:44:00.002-04:00

For any people who have not given up on me and this blog, I offer my deepest apologies. As well as to those who have given up on me, and the notion that I just got sick of it and left this off.

Right now I'm experiencing a supremely blech!moment. The spring equinox (or "Sprinquinox!" as I like to call it) tends to bring out a crazy energy in me. Last year, I dealt with this energy coupled with a deep post-show depression after having acted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; boy was that painful. That was when a person I know with a social work b.g. told me that in the Northeast, March and April are the times of year when people are most likely to kill themselves, suffer job-losses, divorces, and other sorts of traumas. So basically I see that I'm here AGAIN, another year older, but at least I'm not going through a post-show depression. (There is that at least!)

In thinking about my own personal wheel of the year, this is the 12th house time in my chart. Around Beltane, interestingly, is when the Sun hits my Ascendant. I do notice a sort of push inside me at that time, and that excites me. It also comes right after my next Feri training session with a teacher in Massachusetts.

I started a new job about a month ago, as well. My old boss finally hired me away from the previous job--offering me quite an increase in salary. Transitions always take a little bit of time, and I'm not quite out of the woods with finances yet. But next month looks to be pretty promising, should the economy not hit the skids. That being said, I do pray for the economy to crash and for the financial system of extraction/dehumanization/civilization/addiction/vampiricuntishness to fail and fail grandly! (Morte a la civ, vive a la civ!)

I have not been praying that as much as I've been praying to embody the flower above my head and to know the work and joy of this god that I am, to know/love myself in all my parts.

Blessings to you all. We'll see if I somehow maintain this more in the coming months.

Strength Hekate Undine

2007-09-28T09:27:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I realized that the Wolf is not a guide of one of the directions or a chakra guide, but is sort of the guide of my corporeal being. So when the wolf sort of subsumed into my being as "Frostwolf"--duh!

Anyway, I had an odd random thought. I have a difficulty with things military, so I find it kind of funny about the whole Iraq thing in a way. I kind of want to say "You know, I don't support the Iraq war for my own reasons, but I really loathe military ign'anz, so I'm all for keep the troops over there. Let them all shoot each other up! Let them be sitting ducks and Iraqi target practice. Let the Darwin awards come and gather them up! Huzzah!"

/snark

Princess Wands Star Goddess Gnome - Las Vegas & America

2007-09-18T13:51:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, I wrote a poem (I need to dig it up--it's somewhere) called "Las Vegas Nativity." An amazing art-work called "Hide & Seek" by Pavel Tchelitchev sparked this poem, but it also inspired the likes of T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg as well. That's really more about the painting than about my poetry, but I remember the theme of the piece was really about Las Vegas and how it's come to be the emblem of America.

One of my instructors took issue with that, but then again, he was a rather idealistic sort. Now, I'm not saying I'm "realistic" by any means, and at the time I was trying on an ill-fitting armor of cynicism that wasn't doing much of a good job at anything, least of all protecting me from "the cold cruel world." But over the years, I've noticed that Las Vegas has increasingly become the one city that I would identify as the quintessential "American" city of the last 25 years.

Las Vegas and Tony Soprano in fact, are the apotheoses in city and fictional character form, not only of America, but of the "gangstarrangements" of Empire culture. Oh, to be sure, Tony Soprano is held off to be garish, crude and obnoxious--oh, it's so fascinating to look at that darkness! (As if it was over there somewhere, in yeah sure, Joizey!) But the joke's on most of the rest of us chumps, because J.P. Wall-Street Tenore is exactly the same sort of thug as T.S., and every city deprived of a sense of self today I think would love to be as delectably tawdry and glitzy, not to mention outwardly lucrative as Lost Wages is.

What this has been making me aware of however, is that this all sounds really cynical. And yet, I don't see it that way. Acceptance of reality, even a dreadfully noxious reality such as ours is, is a prerequisite to finding any sort of mental health through this process. This IS the way it is right now. It's like we're all living in that Rumi story about the man who wakes up, but he's the only one, so eventually/inevitably he succumbs to being asleep again. It's hard to stay awake while the diseases both in and outside of us are doing pushups trying to muscle their way back in, or more likely to osmose back in because inertia gets the better part of valor.

I had a conversation with a fellow, a perfectly lovely guy. But he's in that place of "you know what the problem is? It's the government"--and off he goes. He is also a fellow who reflexively takes Israel's side in stuff. Honestly, I don't think he gives it much thought, and in spite of the fact that I like the guy, I sense that having a real conversation about Israel's actions in the world would call forth all sorts of psychological drums that would drown out any sense of reality. But I said to him that accepting things the way they are is the first step to really taking the higher road, even if it is to rebel, which I'm not so sure is the way. (I'm leaning more toward just letting inertia get the better part of me, and just finding a way to stop cold however best I can--give no energy to empire one way or another.)

Of course then he went off on another fascinating tear about how the founding fathers were smugglers and that the Boston Tea Party was a smugglers' action basically. Fascinating, but he missed my point. Ah well.

Acceptance. The answer to all my problems. Turn it over to the Star Goddess source of all there is. Transmute it in the crystal green shimmering heart of that plasma pleroma stuff of which we are all made. Blessings!

Emergence Persephone Deer - Bluggahz

2007-09-06T15:31:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I'm out of synch with other people, or I'm in-synch with something else I don't quite understand. I seem to be both up-and-down simultaneously. Perhaps it has something to do with the upcoming Equinox, but it could also be Saturn in Virgo approaching an opposition to my natal Mars. I don't know.

I felt slightly upbraided posting about it on Astroworld.us. I asked if other people who logged into this "and other blogs" were going through something similar. I should have said something slightly different, like other spiritual blogs or something, I guess, but--well, consider me upbraided.

I also need to toot my own horn, though. I posted a letter that I sent to the Albany Times-Union to Vermont Commons. I'm curious to see if anyone will respond to it. I have to login to register and see I guess. Perhaps I will do that.

Priestess Drychtyn (Star Goddess) Beaver - Pattern

2007-08-23T14:34:00.000-04:00

I have noticed that when I ask questions about what I sense as "TSHTF" and "TEOTWAWKI" (The Shit Hitting the Fan & The End of the World As We Know It, respectively), that I keep being told just look and perceive what is around you. "You will see the answer."

I don't do my gratitude lists often enough, but more often than not in the past few weeks, I've been feeling happier than un, serene r/t agitated, excited about life r/t moping around keening for death.

Oh, I still am constantly thinking about death--I think my sensitivities are too fine for me not to be attuned to all the death around us all. If I was in the sugar and flour, I wouldn't be feeling all of that so much. I also sense that when I read "news stories" about these stupid actions people take out of a compulsion to hate and stoke fear and rage, that I'm saying a lot to computer screens and in my imagination "Let me repeat back to you what I hear you saying. You're saying 'SPRAWK SPRAWK SPRAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWKKKK!!' Does that pretty much sum up your views on [fill-in-the-blank]? Believe it or not, I'm not trying to make fun of you, but there are just certain concepts like hate and such that aren't a part of my lexicon, and I hear this kind of Bill-the-cat thing that you're doing energetically."

I am almost done with Curtis White's The Spirit of Disobedience and I see that I do sort of need to "misbehave", at least in the sense of becoming a one-man Boston Tea party. And to create beauty.

I love his take on Brokeback Mountain, and I need to write him a mash-note about both this book and Middle Mind, tell him also about my favoritest film of all time, Big Eden, which was just on Logo last night!

I think I have a lot more on which to blog, but what I started to write about was the stuff going on all around us. My guides and the oracles I cast all seem to point to my staying put and emanating whatever it is I need to emanate in these times o' opportunity and crisis. Somehow my destiny is tied in with those of the people in this Upper Hudson Valley. I feel an invigorating connection to the land, whether here or in Troy or almost anywhere else around here. (Latham, Colonie and parts of Albany do seem to be under a soulless pall right now, at least around the big-box stores, strip malls and larger malls. My addict-self is drawn to them and I cry, Oh, How I cry...)

As much as others are screaming "Sal si puedes", I somehow need to trust that I am right where I need to be, and that the Goddesses and the Gods, God Herself will provide...

Scary as that is.

7 Wands Freyja Iguana

2007-08-21T10:16:00.000-04:00

It could be just that we're having an early taste of autumn--the weather is way too cool for this time of year. While I normally LOVE this weather, I find that I want the summer to continue until maybe the last few days before Mabon. And of course to continue past it with some Indian Summer weather as well. These things being said, I do love the clouds and the way the light works right now. It's a mite premature is all.

I feel an electric sense of possibility in the air. I'm not exactly sure what the source of it is. In addition to the weather, it could also be that I see a momentous amount of opportunity in the strange economic/environmental times we inhabit. As the wheels come off the elite-driven cart, the sense of dislocation and upset will indeed be great, and the very vocal people out there might end up being summarily dealt with. Or not. Quien sabe?

The source could also be the book I'm reading now--Roy Eugene Davis's The Spiritual Basis of Real Prosperity. This book is written in such a clear and concise way that I feel that it is restructuring my brain. That is definitely to the good, as I desperately need it. I've been out there seeking a counselor to work through some of my financial demons with, and it's definitely a good thing.

HRH Queen of Drama named her student loan "Victor" because the villain in soap operas frequently has that name. I haven't gone to the effort to name mine yet, though I think it is a good idea. I am thinking though I might name it "Leona Maybelle Shirley-June" or something elite-coquette sounding. I want to name it in a way to leech power from it. I was thinking also of Hagridizing it and and naming it "Fluffy" or "Toodles."

Saturn is about to move into Virgo, and the taskmaster has actually been kicking up a storm in my chart at the tail end of Leo. I have the planet natally in the opposing sign of Aquarius, around 27 degrees. Saturn is at 29 Leo right now so it's hitting not just Saturn, but also the midpoints of Saturn-Sun and Saturn-Mars, all of which are nearby. As Saturn enters Virgo, my Mars, Juno, Pallas and Sun will get it, followed by Uranus and Pluto and Chiron. And then it will also activate my Yod with Venus. I'm going to have a very interesting couple of years here.

There is a huge expanse of "stuff", and I sense they are mostly "goodies." Who knows where it will lead me, but I have this delicious sense of something. And it's just a feeling in my heart, a fire kindled and stoked by Lugh, Athena and Freyja whose day it is today in my personal pantheon. Lugh and Athena are the visiting West-Water God and East-Air Goddess for this quarter of the year from Lughnaghsadh to Samhain. They're here for certain workings and they're having quite an effect.

All in all, life is good while everything around us all seems to head toward ye olde crapper. Morte a la civilization, vive la Civilization!

Moon Hermes Wolf - Mishmash

2007-07-31T14:41:00.000-04:00

My thoughts are a bit jumbled, and part of that is due to the GORGEOUS weather we're having in upstate New York. Ah. Mah. Gahd. Ess.

Part of it though is also because I have not really been shielding myself well of late. I'm sort of like Harry Potter who sort of thrills at being able to get into Lord Voldemort's mind through his weird connection to the Militantly Ignorant wizard. I guess in part, I sort of get that through the different waves of energy out there, I am connected to all sorts of variants of "You-Know-Who" and of late I've been really susceptible for some reason to feeling bad about my munzel situation, especially as regards my student fucking loan from ye olde Cuntigroup.

So. I'm now seeking outside help. My partner suggests that I should be "open to medication." So, I'm going to try, kicking and screaming though I am right now. I have gotten into dark, deep places because of the finances, but I think in part the issue has gotten magnified out of proportion because of that susceptibility to other people's depressed thoughts.

I recently logged into "Village Blog" where the folks there were talking about reading The Different Drum by M.Scott Peck. I read The People of the Lie a few years ago and I found parts of it to be really amazing. For some people the notion of exorcising evil as a medical practice seemed beyond the pale, but since I've had some experiences with shall we call them "disky spirits", I feel that receiving different sorts of intervention might not be a bad thing.

When I read People of the Lie, I appreciated Peck's observations about what constitutes evil and it has helped me understand my own shadow a bit more. I am glad that I can read Christian writers such as Peck or Jim Marion with equanimity, and without feeling they're out to convert or "heal me of my wounds." In fact in The Different Drum, that very theme is explored at length because that approach stands in the way of making, building and maintaining community. Peck's observations about this amazing process are quite helpful, as it turns out, and I'm curious how I might utilize some of these in the process of being a producer for a play for example, or the board member of a theater.

I have gotten to a place with my spiritual understanding of things that is curious in our culture--I am simultaneously fairly far along to see that I'm farther along than probably 95% of my fellow Americans, about equal with maybe 3-1/2%, a step behind 3/4 of 1 percent, 2 steps behind another 3/8%, and WAY behind only a handful of people which I see as increasing in number over time, and to which I aspire to one day be. And the best part of this is I don't see it as a hierarchical thing. Somehow I appreciate and embrace that I am right where I'm supposed to be, and find gratitude for being here, where "we're all fucked, but life is good" as Derrick Jensen says. The other 5% of people I see myself as being a part of here understand that "we are all one." Peck also addresses that as well, and comments that it is still just the beginning, which I also understand and sometimes breathe heavy sighs over.

Anyway, the thing I'm understanding is that I'm acting as an unwitting prophet-come-lately. The finance stuff is exactly what a lot of people are feeling, and we're all feeling the burdens accompanying the rise in prices of everything around us that we need to survive. I myself wonder if I will even survive the conflagrations that are about to descend upon us all. Of course, none of us is guaranteed survival, "my guides notwithstanding." I try to keep a wider perspective going, and to remember that my survival really does depend on being able to deeply care for others and to receive that in turn.

I see that some others, such as the Cryptogon fellow, are out there peddling their fear-based stuff. It helps, I suppose, but there's no balance there. I can heap my scorn on the fluffy-bunnies out there as well, but come on guys! If it's all going to be like that, maybe I'd want to end up eddzelly-dedzel dead already!

We have to remember to create the lives we desire along the way. One of the tools I use when listening to someone try to sell me on something is to take in the whole person and ask "does she have something I want?" "Is there a characteristic or trait this man has which I would like to cultivate, and is it something I perceive from what it is they're trying to sell me?" Most of the time, sadly, I look and find Gertrude Stein's Oakland--"no there there." Most of the time, it's zombie-selling, and I'm not on board the necro-train.

Even with someone like the aforementioned Mr. Jensen or J.H. Kunstler, I wonder if they have something I want. I understand the passion behind their words, certainly. But in creating the lifeboats for post-Empire modes of living, I need to remember to partner with my personal pantheon and my personal chakra totem-poles to create that life beyond my wildest dreams.

Last week, during all this stuff, I was lucky enough to take a pause at work, and have the owl and the eagle fly into my consciousness. I've gone through all the "what is the significance of this?" and "ooooh! I must be special" mishagoss. These things are always happening, but most people just aren't aware of them. They seem to be pointing me toward something eminently practical, and dare I say really prosaic. They seem to be drawing me into a room in a K-8 sort of school that is a combination of an art class and metals shop. I'm not sure what it is I'm being called to do here, but there is significance here, and I'm getting some specific pictures in my head about the place. The Owl is perching on a vise for example, and I sense there's a built-in forge nearby to where I see myself standing.

So. Quite a bit going on for old Cinnumeg this Lammastide. Sheesh.

Lovers Dian-y-Glas Goat

2007-06-13T11:00:00.001-04:00

Hm. My card of the day (heterosexual lovers, as opposed to gay or lesbian), together with the God and the animal guide, all point to a heightened awareness of sexuality and beauty. This morning, I decided to do a Medicine Card reading on the fly. I used a "Moon Lodge" Spread: East was Porcupine reversed, South was Hummingbird, West was Spider, North Coyote and Center was Racoon.

I'm taking myself too seriously, basically. That's the message of how I'm tripping myself up, and what I need to keep in mind is the path of beauty.

It's not an easy road for me to keep to, however. What is beautiful to me is in flux at the moment. It used to be a beautiful thing for me to express myself in dramatic forms. I struggle to make the attempt to do this today. My attention to beauty seems to drift elsewhere right now, so I'm "in the hallway."

My partner and I took a trip across this gorgeous state to Buffalo and back. We witnessed much beauty along the way, and also spied some less than beautiful areas and moments. I want to share so much beauty with people, and I know I have it in me, but it's so confusing. It will out in its own way, of that I'm confident.

In the meantime, let me seek to find it within my heart to become generous.

10 Swords Star Goddess Goat

2007-05-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

I did a tarot reading on an online website about my passions and seeking a balance in my life. The counseling I received was pretty amazing, but basically the thrust of it was "Do your job; focus on doing it well." Last night I was inspired to at least try to do my job as a writer, and I showed up to the page, but I didn't get anywhere.

I will say that using the "money shot" metaphor of narrative thrust is a useful tool for certain kinds of writing. It's just that it's addictive and over time the bang from that buck gets less and less, and I find I would rather find something that is more sustaining.

My thought right now is to turn to a Tamara sort of experiment, perhaps where there are a couple of characters who have that explosive money-shot dynamic. I'm thinking one of the characters may just have to be Hamlet Etapucci IV or some ridiculous name like that, the gangster-tragic-hero wit da Joizy akzen'. But there would be 6 to 8 other characters all of whom would be the protagonist of their own plays, and I could leave it to the individual audience members with their maps of addictions to decide who they wish to follow. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that most, given what the characters would be, would probably go after Hamlet Ettapucci IV or Starletta Enbittermentus, our fancy-ass celebrinazi.

See, I see I have all this violence inside me, all this rage, and I need to get it out of me and sculpt it into something that can be useful. This stuff is inside me, and it's been lodged there deep. I need out it to pull, and it takes some effort and a careful attentiveness to how I draw the toxins out.

Trees help.

3 swords Hades Dragon - More thoughts on drama

2007-05-23T14:07:00.000-04:00

I had a lunchtime meditative talk with Hades about stuff today. Yesterday, my oracles and what-not seemed to be pointing me toward notions of balance and passion, and one thing I know in my bones I have a passion for is divinity. My attraction to divination may just come from the notion of personal divinity, which is that awareness of how my will and divine will intersect and become one. To get to that place, I need to go through a vetting process about my desires as they enter into my awareness, and some of the things I see that I seem to want eventually reveal themselves to be ephemera. Some of the things that I seem to think I don't want have become indispensable, for example kale of all things. Kale and brussels sprouts are two foods that I have come to cherish for the simple reason they make me happy. I have no idea why this should be, but I'm looking forward to having kale with mixed vegetables, pork, rice cakes, butternut squash and an apple for dinner tonight, along with a couple of other small items.

My meditation with Greece's ancient death god today seemed to turn on the notions of drama and how it has been a passion of mine in the past. I used to get caught up in whether or not tragedy was a possible expression for the contemporary American. Now I see it as a rather pointless notion. The tragic hero's definition was way too constricted in order to fit Aristotelian notions of reinforcing the then status-quo wherein proper governance was a bastion of a military and intellectual defense of patriarchal self-aggrandizement which articulated a rather reactionary and paternalistic viewpoint that didn't bother to disguise a hostility toward some notion of "primitive" (read egalitarian and/or matriarchal) peoples. (I acknowledge that I can't really prove this notion on its face, though I believe that Shlain, Gimbutas and others have articulated similar notions about how the alphabetic cultures had warred against cultures of image and imagination.)

Aristotle still continues to have a death-grip on the notion of what constitutes a proper narrative, however, one which is very similar to the male ejaculation process. Hamlet's Money Shot is the moment at the end of th play when Hamlet kills Claudius. Oedipus' Money Shot is of course his realization that he is the contagion afflicting Thebes and he puts his own eyes out. Frank Galvin's Money Shot in David Mamet's screenplay The Verdict is when he calls Nurse Costello to the stand and redeems his sorry-ass ambulance-chasing career. And I suppose we'll be seeing a long-delayed Money Shot when The Sopranos ends this final season.

It isn't a surprise that some women are good money-shot creators, like J.K. Rowling for example--though I will say that the climaxes of the Harry Potter novels are a bit peremptory, kind of like a handjob. I love the Harry Potter series, but that is a characteristic weakness common to all the books, with the possible exception of Book 3. But the thing I love about the HP books is the world she creates, so I don't mind that JK has to hit the buttons to create that rush for He-Who-Must-Be-Served, that Voldemort-lizard brain inside us all. Still, isn't it interesting that the climaxes are the very places where there's not much heart? Oh, there's plenty in the aftermaths thereof, especially in Books 4 and 5. I can't read Book 4's ending without crying, and when Sirius dies in 5, I feel a great loss.

Anyway, these are kind of interesting digressions about the nature of the western/patriarchal/addictive/civilized notion of narrative THRUST and CLIMAX, with scant attention paid to afterglow. I'm wondering about how I as a playwright can play to reconnect the sexual, the sacred, and the theatrical and how all that can work to subvert the thuggish paradigm inflicting its' wounded rages upon the greater populace. Some of our ancient myths probably tell of ways to tell stories that are not as "climactic" but desirable and pleasurable to tell and hear. But to get to that place, it might be that some sort of "abstinence" from "narraporn" might need to be effected. Could it be that Aristotle and his band of soul-thieves over the centuries (and in whose school of cuntishness I too have been trained, but to my benefit, whose dog in my hand don't hunt at any rate), have created an addiction that is just as pernicious as toxic belief or Jack Daniels or Jelly Donuts or Juris Doctorates? Jingo Drama, perhaps? After all, the earliest playwright in the annals of Greek record whose work is still extant, Aeschylus, was a brillliant (gangster) statesman/general.

Sidebar, along those lines, Woody Allen alluded to something very interesting in his brilliant piece Bullets Over Broadway, when he had Chazz Palminteri's gangster character be the real playwright in the works, and not hapless John Cusack. Dianne Wiest's famous "Don't speak, don't. Speak, don't, etc." speech is the ultimate in the censorship of the heart and soul ain't it? But in a cunture like ours, it's cunture-artists we get. Kunt-kunt-kunt, eh? Dracula Falwell would be motht pleathed.

Balance Freyja Jaguar - Tragedy and Thuggishness

2007-05-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

This is a thought that hit me yesterday while I was walking past Capital Repertory on North Pearl. The show that's there now, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, isn't one of my favorites I must say. The company did an admirable job of it, though I also recognize that the part of Abigail Williams isn't all that well written. And she's the one who everyone's afraid of. I guess it doesn't have to be well-written--it sort of underscores the vacuity of our civilized culture that it isn't, though I sincerely doubt that was Mr. Miller's intention. In fact, I was thinking about his essay about how "modern" man can have tragic figures. In an odd way I agree with him, but that's because I was thinking of the civilized notion of the "noble."

Basically, if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd have to be writing his tragedies and history plays about folks like Bush, Cheney, the Gottis, the Russian Mafia, the yakuza, etc. Really, today's ultimate "tragedian" is John Woo, of Hong Kong violent film fame. Because the whole civilized notion of "nobility" is really a palimpsesting of all the blood and gore that went into the creation of say, the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the French and Castilian monarchies, etc.

In fact, if we were to get to a more fundamental notion of the "noble" that bypassed civilization, then the ultimate "tragic hero"--that figure who's perfection itself with a tragic flaw--would have to be your average Indian or indigenous tribe member, the very like of which we all emerged from centuries ago. The generic Indian's tragic flaw would be guilelessness and a lack of street sense, and then getting swept up/aside in the maelstrom cancer of civilized progression. The more violent Indian/indigenous would have found his role in the civilized realm fairly quickly, although to be fair most were probably used as soldier fodder for wars waged at a grand scale. All of us are destined to be et up by the civilization maw over time, unless we somehow find our way out of the quicksand.

First thing we do though is stop digging, stop our flailing about and get calm. Perhaps we'd then be able to float over to the shore rather than be pulled under by the muddy sucking of the quicksand.

7 Cups Hekate Bear

2007-05-08T14:35:00.000-04:00

Some days I feel wildly out-of-sorts. I just drew Coventina from Doreen Virtue's "Goddess Card" deck, which counsels me to detox my mind and body. (I feel my body is fairly well detoxed but I do have some Splenda and nutrasweet coursing through my system. Perhaps it's time I dispensed with those, as well as the coffee.)

Anyway, I am noticing such mood-swings in the past two weeks. All last week I was down because there are certain "6th Step" promptings to make big changes in my life. One of my character defenses is passivity, which is really difficult to break because I'm so "well" rewarded for it. I don't rock the boat, I don't really talk about stuff. It's gotten so bad that I really don't know what I want right now. It's not necessarily the passivity that is driving me to the lack of self-knowledge. Right now I'm feeling that a lot of stuff is elusive and I keep turning compulsively to oracles and the like to help me chart a course through this painful muck.

Right now I really want to cry. This will pass I know, but I think that there might be some sort of purification that would take place if I did just let go and cry the buckets inside me. This happens to me every once in awhile, I notice. There's a pattern here.

The past three days I've been able to access joyfulness again. It's nice, really nice, but I feel like I've been eating soy--I don't feel grounded and on the planet. Yesterday I finished re-reading Freeing the Soul from Fear by Robert Sardello and I have been using some of his exercises. They really do help to locate oneself in a larger dimension than this mere corporal one, where fear tends to lodge and secure most of its power. In doing these exercises of the imagination (and they are much like physical exercises in that they take attention, time and work), I have been able to transform some of my fears. One oracle I performed for myself last night acted as a confirmation that this was indeed the right thing for me to be doing. And this is also a process of purification too, I realize.

Yesterday I also read Carolyn Baker's "The Spirituality of Collapse" on her website. I recognize that part of my path is to open myself to the collapse that is going on all around us, but with those miraculous eyes of the soul. When I let myself just be with the collapse stuff, I can sense the light of all creation vibrating all around us. Deep inside I know that what's going on is a rupture out of the darkness, a rift of light and beauty is pushing something into Gaian reality. I need to somehow be a part of that process, and I am readying myself. I don't really get it, but I feel like I want to say "uckitfay" to a lot of stuff. Perhaps at some point I'll get to. But I need to show up for what I need to and do it in the spirit of joyful obligation, if for no other reason than it keeps me "sane" (whatever the hell that means these days...).

Prince Cups Brigid Goat - Poems of Murd$rous R*ge

2007-05-04T12:13:00.000-04:00

So much depends upon
a field of bloated corpses
of finance mucky-mucks
composting under
the brilliant sun,
raising generations
of maggots!

*********

Therapists like to say
that homicide is better than
suicide. Die Sanmerde Weill
Grand Master C*nt of the Universe!
Die Cuntigroup--
Vampire extraordinaire!
Let us all stake the hearts
of c*nts everywhere!

*********

Beltane Dawn (after Lydia Davis)

Oh, the sun is shining and the tulips are growing. Quick, let us grab the suit-c*nts at the Student Loan Cuntoration and execute them gangland style in celebration of Cernunnos!

Knight Wands Hermes Salamander - Call to Community

2007-05-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

A Beltane Call to Community!

I call to the 4 winds,
to the elements,
to all the elementals and the deities,
to all the ascended and not-so-ascended masters,
to all those who are awakening or have awakened to their divinities,
(especially if you are in the northeastern New York, western Mass,
Southern Vermont/New Hampshire areas):

I call to me those who would partake in a community
to earth these vibrant and unruly energies
that are roaming rampant on this planet.
I call to me those who have a Big Eden vision
that welcomes, affirms, and loves we strange human beings
into a place of healing and recovery
from the toxicity surrounding us.
I call to us those who face down fear
in all of its forms, and yet who refuse to judge
those of us who are still in its clutches.
We acknowledge what formidable creatures
Phobos and Deimos and Panic are
and we call to us the allies
who will help us work through and with these energies
with respect and love to transform them
back into the soulful materials from which they were twisted.
We breathe our love and desire back into the earth
and we link up with others who have similar notions.

We call forth from inside our deepest reservoirs,
the soulful imagination to begin the artistic lives
we know we all wish to lead as we grow our own food,
as we support each other's economies of practical love
as we put our attentions onto our glorious communities
including ourselves as an important partner in the web of life,
no greater and no lesser than spiders, dandelions and wolves.

I send out this call to the cosmos and to the blogosphere!
I radiate a golden and loving light to all who would receive it.

Blessed be. So Mote it Be!

7 Disks Jesus (!) Angel

2007-04-19T13:48:00.000-04:00

I'm re-reading Freeing the Soul from Fear by Robert Sardello and Your Money or Your Life by J. Dominguez and V. Robin right now. After having finished S.M. Stirling's Change Trilogy, I feel the need to understand how my fears and financial insecurities have been plaguing me of late.

I want to write more poetry on collapse and what-not, but the Otter told me I need to write "from my place of joy" to find more possibility and expansion. In an odd way, facing my fears and freeing myself therefrom and also taking some concrete actions about my debts and worries on the financial front will probably overflow into a place of joy for real.

Sardello's book is particularly helpful right now, because, unbeknownst to me but suspected of late, fear has made its presence felt. Like a lot of people, I too was hypnotized into believing I could put fear into a box and ship it off to Arcturus. No such luck. Sardello reminds me that fear is a potential within human experience. It is something that the soul can either transform into beauty and freedom or allow it to fragment, beat down and deprive me of a sense of liveliness and joy. It's been doing the latter, and like I said, I had no idea. Fear LOVES to work that way, because the entity of Phobos doesn't really like it when we transform it into something useful.

To be fair, I've not worked with Ares' son. (Is Phobos (Fear) older or younger than Deimos (Terror)? Just curious.) Perhaps Phobos does like to be included in different aspects of our lives, a la Hekate, the Star Goddess, Odin et al. To become conscious of my fears has been something I've resisted unsurprisingly. They've come to my attention in all their stark monstrosity just these past 3 weeks, since the show ended.

I hope I have the wisdom to try and post some of this journey. I have a feeling this might be of use to a lot of people. Fear is something we all have to deal with.

10 Wands Dian-y-Glas Deer

2007-04-09T15:32:00.000-04:00

Slight change of plans from the last post. Over the weekend, I came more face to face with an awareness that I need to start forgiving others. It's not for them, that I need to forgive, it's for myself. To set mysel free. So here's the first stab at a poem I may need to send to someone.

"I Forgive You _____________"

Barbs of truth's tendrils may be named "Dolores"
or more likley "Trista". But I have held them
fast lo these many years. The "Admin-truth"
is that you played goalkeeper. I've been most
ungrateful! I'll cop to it. You shut the doors
against a most inappropriate placement indeed.

I hate to admit how much I've enjoyed the while,
while I wallowed in bile-colored waters.
All this time, I've pretended you had O So Much
Kraft--Sie hatten ueber mich zersiegten!
Heil _______! and the Horst Wessell song played
underneath your tarantel-dancing feetles.

The actuality's much more ordinary. I gave
you poems to read. You read them. Said "No,
I won't accept you into my class." Clap-clap-clap.
End of story, functionary, fairly automatic.
Perhaps only minor flaking off the rhinus?
Even now, print reporting the facts, I want to die!

Cut to 23 years later. I'm still writing.
I've even returned to poetry and prose,
even after acquiring a Dramatic Writing Mo'-Fo'
Arts Degree from Now You Undertakemassivedebt
University in la Village-Oest and yes!
I now work a legal secretary gig (Hooray Death!)

to pay off the burdensome loans my fat
head on top of my fat ass decided would be
an oh-so-grand investment in my fyoochah!
And I have no one but myself to blame.
Yes, you're pretty much off the old roundpoint.
And today I see I carry this irritant.

A part of me would sort of like to hold
this delicious resentment to my breast.
But I can't justify it cluttering my heartspace.
So much heart-soreness after weight-loss
compels me to dispense with anything that would
interfere with my hardwon sugar-flour freedom.

The time has come that I need to forgive
you for causing me this pain that I took to strange
depths and morbid inside twistie-freeze ties.
Some necrotic tissue must needs be expelled
so that a healing may take place, wherever
the light of the sun might compel it to grow.

On some level, I comprehend you saved me
from some worse fate, had I actually been taken
into the paneled and sterile walls of your web.
Today I embrace the life I have made for myself
so much brighter and joy-prone than ever before.
And I release you from contracts heretofore unknown.

Queen Disks Hermes Beaver - Collapse Poem #1

2007-04-05T14:17:00.000-04:00

I think I might be trying to write a series of Collapse Poems, and I'll post them on my olde blogge.

"Collapse Poem #1"

The temptations toward silence catch me up.
I know about the Terrible Triangle--
Easy-access oil easing into history,
impending collapse of all kinds of stocks--
fishery, currency, speculative, whatcha got?--
and of course, global climate changes.
The PErfect Storm buffets the shores
of insular denial belonging to most of us.

I can't help but sense it all amassing,
but there's other craziness to appraise!
Will we be boneheaded thugs and attack
Persia's conttemporary legacy?
What vaporous demons hold our erstwhile
rulers' minds in thrall? Such nuttiness!
Reason would forswear silence? Or perhaps
that would be enabling and fear? Whatever.

America is done! Over! Kaputt!
The ideal of neo-Iroquoisans--
Franklin, Madison and Paine, et al.
whose forebears were as much Hiawatha
as John Locke--that imagined America
exists in many folks, from Vermont
secessionists to the relocalizers
focussed on the earth beneath our feet.

We are all on our own, but together.
Imperative need, to radiate warm smiles
to folks as yet strange to me. Neighborly
affections that lead to knowing, despite
the sadness I feel about my urban landscape,
not knowing how many will see the April 5
three, five, ten years hence. Just how
will ratcheting down expectation proceed?

Will it come through suicide or disease,
murder or starvation? Internecine wars?
Those who love me share their concerns
when I describe myself as optimist facing
today's tricorn concerns. I recognize
hope is a fool's prospect, to foreclose taking
lifegiving actions. O strange Trojans, Albanians,
Schenectatoids! At least I have your backs!

I'm not much, of myself. But let me say this:
No one of us singly, is more intelligent,
more resourceful, reasonable and humane
than all of us together applying to common
purposes. The nation, the state, the counties
as of yet have not yet hit their bottom.
But I do know the deep agony. I'm here--
let me help you through it, as you'll help me.

Twelve years next month I've marinated
in Twelve and Twelved church basements.
I've uncovered my addictions, some most
unreasoning like those Evil White Powders
Sugar and Flour, some oh-so-easy to dispense
such as Codependence. I've awakened now
to larger compulsions than these yet:
Empire seems to be Addicts-as-Rulers-Amok!

I admit I am powerless over Empire--
socialization, domestication, civilization--
and my life has been indeed crashing
itself into Unmanageability's cliffside.
I didn't cause it, I can't cure it,
I most certainly can't control these cancers.
And I seek to find most elegant surrender
to the higher powers that will restore me.

No, I can't, the God can, I shall let her.
God Herself at the center of the cosmos,
with all her emanations and radiances
Assist me that I may offer succor
and testament to local-divine ways.
The middleman meddlesomes of nation-states
and beglobed corporate sterility
they shall fold with your gentle, sweet breath!

I pray humanity's awakening
to the power within and next door. Your bones
and my blood, our skin, brains, gonads--
Sources of power, pride, passion and self
in addition to el sexo dulcissimo!
These will lead us back to the ground beneath
our sensitive feet. Let us all open to love's
difficulties and catch each other in our falls.

6 Disks Odin Chimera

2007-04-04T10:37:00.000-04:00

An interesting development is taking place in my personal assembly of guides. The Chimera which I have been including as representative of the mythic 2nd chakra point seems to be choosing to leave me. Our energies haven't really been all that compatible, and the creature is choosing to move on to work with someone else. I'm not sure what mythic creature will come in to take his place. That will be interesting to observe. Chimera was sort of there today, but I actually felt the Goat more this morning in my meditation. Part of that was my own confusion--I sometimes get my animals confused in my head. But part of it too is that the chimera's presence isn't very strong, and truthfully hasn't been for a while.

Another interesting development: I've been dreaming about people of other races. I dreamt two days ago that I was in a reverse "Six Degrees of Separation" (the film/play) situation. I was staying with an upper class black family somewhere in the city. I was doing normal, everyday things like eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, shower/shave, etc. and it seemed every little thing annoyed the bejeesus of the patriarch (interestingly his name was Charles White). I got fed up with him and started to refer to him as "Mr. White". For some reason my getting all formal with him got his attention. I told him I don't make assumptions about whether I can "duzen" vs. "Siezen" with someone, so I always defer to the formal. He seemed impressed and somewhat mollified, but I wasn't having it. Also, someone was in the dream who I'm angry with, and when I woke up, I realized I was effin' furious at this person. I wrote a fun poem about it that I'll include below.

I dreamt last night I had a Latino ex who was in the closet. He was a handsome fellow with green eyes and reddish hair. Wouldn't recognize as Spanish until you started talking to him. There was another woman there, who was not happy to see me, and the ex was sort of ignoring both of us as we all got ready to go to Church, or at least that's what it felt like.

Here's the poem:

There are poems in the grime of my bad
upkeep of living space, skittering about
with the dust mites and the resentments.

Ah, yes, I smile in wistfulness. Such fun
recognitions to be had in say, opeing
my shirt drawer to arrange my tops
and expel the misplaced shorts and socks.

Put them in the drawer above, oh yes,
and wil I'm at it, I see I've amassed
some offpissed feelings at that bitch
sometime friend who flew all the way
out here to help her other friend die.

And oh, wouldn't it be great if we could
see each other again? Hm. Sure. And so
I shelled out preceious geld I wished
elsewhere to spend. Bought the bus ticket
to Port Authority, and left message after

futile message, and not once did we even
speak by phone! And by the way, he died,
her friend, how conveeeeeeeeeeeenient that, the hook
of responsibility she so deftly evades yet again

so she can lift not a fuckin' finger to inquire
as to what was going on with me. Oh! And here's
a solo sock. To the trash with ya, 'longside dead friendships!

3 Swords Hermes Wolf

2007-03-23T11:06:00.000-04:00

Fuzzy thinking usually leads to that Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde sort of split that I've been reading about in ye olde sphere du oggly-bloggel-bloggens. One of the basic tools I learned how to use early on in my various recoveries was "think it through." Think through where trying to do something for someone that they can do for themselves would lead me. Think where the first drink would lead, where the first bite of a German chocolate cake would lead me. Where going to the bookstore when I don't have money would lead me. Knowing that these things give me an initial high that is followed by a crash of remorse and self-recrimination, I can make a different choice.

This sort of thinking things through is anathema to Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, the presence of the absent-hearted reactors who need to knee-jerk demonize anyone who doesn't automatically sign on to their point of view. I used to feel scared of the bullies who spout "if you're not with me you're against me," but lately I've been finding them amusing. They remind me of those brainiacs who say "if you don't drink, I can't trust you." Which means they trust people who do drink, and how do you work that out, objectively speaking?

It's "objectivity"--becoming aware of what is and accepting it--that is THE enemy, which is why J/H types seem to be a bit more comfortable with the various versions of themselves that show up in all political stripes. The Pat Robertsons as well as the Larry Kramers. The David Kortens as well as the Milton Friedmans. The Andrea Dworkins as well as the Camille Paglias, etc.

Many people just aren't capable of nuance, of taking in the whole rather than focusing on the part. They remind me of the strange story of a practitioner of astrology that my own astrologer told me about, who said that where Virgo was in a person's chart was the most important thing to look at. More important than the sun, the moon, the ascendant? Wierde! (Weird+merde? I mistyped, but I kinda like it.)

I was thinking about this after seeing a headline on one of the local papers about some people pushing immigration reform. I thought, perhaps that is an issue I could use permaculture principles to explore, as I don't really have a huge emotional stake in it and I can see multiple points-of-view. I can see the point-of-view of the immigrants themselves, looking for a better life, just as I can see the point-of-view of people who have invested their lives in this hopeless system. I can see the grand victimization that is going on, and the seemingly urgent attempts to find scapegoats and fall guys, the desire to deny what is really going on--and denial is sometimes a friend, though it mostly appears to be a friend when it's really holding you up from facing necessary changes. There's a lot more going on with immigration than meets the eye, and there's a lot of exploitation of fears that lead to racialist bunkum that has nothing to do with anything, save for feeding some people's addiction to hate and rage.

There's flow, density, fuel and wisdom to be gleaned from taking the whole issue in and not settling for easy answers, for inviting ALL the parties to the table, even where there is distrust, and for bringing on those pesky emotions as partners to the whole affair. Decisions shouldn't be made solely based on feelings, but neither should they be entirely discounted, and when people feel disappointments at whatever compromises are honestly agreed upon, then those need also to be expressed. And if someone "loses" in the process, then something needs to be done to atone and to make up for the loss. We are all in service to each other, after all. (Non sequitur: Perhaps Donald Trump should start to do windows?)

Princess Wands Odin Salamander

2007-03-22T16:03:00.000-04:00

The last ten days or so, I've been thinking about the notions of anomie and malaise. Each day I leave my house and from about 8 in the morning until 6 at night I enter into a mental fog. For quite awhile I have struggled with this phenomenon. 12 Step work tells me I need to accept the situation once I become aware of it, even if it's not something I would particularly like or approve of. To be able to find the ways to act upon the situation, I must first accept it as it is.

Well, I'm struggling to accept this malaise that accompanies my mandated participation in this decrepitude surrounding us all. "Mandated" by "authorities" (aka cunts) who arrogate "authority" to themselves and impose a "consensus" upon me and upon you, wylion. ["whether you like it or not."]

I accept the cunts, the addicts, the vampires, without accepting their "authority." It's partly why I invoke different deities each day. They help me to get through it all, and now I'm starting to enter into a new phase of my creativity I find pretty damn wonderful, if I do say so myself. I've decided to revise a play I wrote, and I'm going to submit it, a very short "intensity" I wrote several years ago, and a brand spanking new "Post-American Teaching Play" I call Hiawatha Creek Exorcism to a local play festival. (Once I revise it to my liking--I need to expand it threefold.)

I joyfully accept these lessons (and interestingly enough, the Salamander of today aligning with the Storm from the Mayan tzolkin calendar suggests accepting my lessons as blessings and my enemies as angels) and to cheerfully embrace my obligations to slog through it all.

Truth be told, I feel better already! Thanks Bill W. and Dr. Bob!

I pray

2007-03-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

Universal debt forgiveness.