The Disappearing Chef

Welcome Frostwolfmagic.net customers

2011-02-10T18:52:00.002-05:00

I'm glad you've found this blog. I will attempt to update this blog occasionally as issues relating to nutrition and health and "new age" modalities and awareness of how the spiritual and the culinary intersect come through the channel of this blogger.

I'm eager to venture forward into nutrition with awareness of ayurveda and TCM wisdom. Due to my herbalism class, I've become much more aware of how ther herbal elements have greater impact on our being than first understood. I will never forget for my own part how rosemary woke me up to the simple notion that food choices are important for self-healing.

Now I'm using a tincture on my crown chakra each day from the herb called "Self-Heal." (Prunella is the genus, I believe.)

I already have come to understand quite a bit about food allergies. Now, I shall begin a journey into understanding food as an enhancer of the physical state. I will right now give a short testimony on behalf of yellow flowered herbs. Calendula, dandelion, elecampane, elderflower, chamomile. These are all herbs that I've felt an attraction and affection for of late. (Also gentian, but that's a deep rich blue, which I'll save for another time.) I feel these herbs stimulate a will inside me, and I now seek to add other yellows into my diet. I've already got yellow squash and bananas. And I do eat a lot of orange vegetables as well - carrots and winter squash. Whites including parsnips, rutabagas, turnips. (And of course the greens!)

The yellow flowered herbs seem to work on elements of my being that bring out a fire of solar power. The color of that radiant sun imbues them with his fierceness, and it kindles that inside me.

May it lead me on to be of service to my community.

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.

Strength Odin Bear - Opening Night!

2007-03-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

At long last, the hard work of showing up to rehearsals, learning my lines, delving into the character of "Dale Harding" and interacting while in that character with my fellow crazies. I've pretty much not done much of anything else creatively. Writing draws from a similar map of brainware to what goes into creating a character. I think I can direct a play and write at the same time, because that's mostly administration stuff. Acting isn't "generative" in the same sense that writing is, but there is a different kind of generating going on within the actor, and that process does impinge on the writer, at least in me it does.

(I am able to act and write when a full-time job isn't involved, however. But I haven't been able to create at the workplace for a good decade now, not that I haven't tried.)

I needed to get onstage to jump-start my creativity in a different way. It feels good to be here, but I do long to be able to jump back into my writing. Perhaps I'll be able to get back to it next week.

In any case, I'm excited to be making my Albany debut in a wonderful play.

4 Wands Star Goddess Gnome - Weird feelings

2007-02-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

I'm sure this is totally tiresome, but I feel blech today--like there's another wave of tears to shed and there's this big blockage that's keeping that from happening. I have felt this before, but this feels really "vomital". Like I've got some minor infection of toxicity that's circulating in my spirit. It's good that I'm thinking of it this way, because I can see that there's this onslaught of entity-energy that's seeking to attach itself to any and all people. They don't really like my energy though, because I'm aware of them and they can only stay with me so long as I'm not aware, so long as I don't visualize the spiritual anatomy surrounding me. Once I do that, it's all over--they vanish!

I also wanted to post because I had a flash of insight into the Harry Potter books and their "application" to the muggle world as we understand it. I was thinking that Voldemort and his Death Eaters are like certain groups of individuals out there with a tendency toward the dark arts. Could it be there are various horcruxes out there for them? Could it be that Jerry Falwell, Pope Prada, Cheney and others like them have split their souls and that their despicable efforts to control all messages going this way and that, their desperate attempts to ignore the al-anonic lesson of "Let Go & Let God/Let Go or Get Dragged" that are backfiring with each moronic attempt to do more of what didn't work 5 minutesa go--could there be some sort of method for destroying these soul-fragments and thereby destroy their influence? I don't know. It was just a thought I had. Fwiw.

Ran Prieur said

2007-02-02T14:31:00.001-05:00

"the evil people own the stupid people"

I LOVE THAT!!!!

Chariot Kali Iguana - My Japanese Name

2007-02-02T08:56:00.000-05:00

According to a Japanese name-generator:

My japanese name is 石丸 Ishimaru (round stone) 一真 Kazuma (one reality).
Take'>http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/969/">Take your real japanese name generator! today!
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2 Cups Hades Otter - Finally Figured Something Out

2007-01-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

I'm all caught up in my work for the mo', and I've been surfing the web for a bit, and I saw something that made me go "Oh, yeah!" One blogger stated that "James Webb speaks for me." And that's sort of what made go, "Ah, yes! That's the problem. We're looking for someone to 'speak for me,' rather than speaking to one another about facing the deathiness surrounding us all."

Richard Moore in his thought-provoking book Escaping the Matrix made the observation that electoral politics is a waste of time, and that people who start to make things happen in their communities need to deflect the sirens' calls to "create a movement." Basically, I see people who seek "leaders to speak for them" are not feeling their feet, as it were. They are asking James Webb, et al., to feel their feet for them, as if they could actually do that. When we ask for someone to represent us at some body, we are in essence abdicating our own self-governance. To be fair, this doesn't really apply to world bodies such as Intergroups of 12-Step fellowships, whose "leaders are trusted servants, they do not govern." But when it comes to governance, I'm more and more inclined to believe that it's a grand philosophical, political, socioeconomic game of 3 Card Monte. "Watch for the vote, kiddle-kidz, where's the vote, find the vote. Is it the middle? Ha! Psych! No, the vote's been tallied ahead of time, but thanks for playing the game, now bend over and let me pull out your entrails! I'm entitled to my feast now that I've played you butt good!"

It just sort of hit me all of a sudden, and I thought I needed to share it with whoever might read my bloggellyy-bloggle-blog, Blat Man, Blat Man! But I'd love for people to read my little playkins too. So, hopefully onward!

9 Cups Freyja Griffon

2007-01-25T11:28:00.000-05:00

I've been cast in a play. I'm playing "Harding" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I'm now in the grip of studying my lines and creating a character. Fun stuff.

So I'll hopefully get back into blogging a bit later, but for now I'm sort of out-of-commission.

Still, I did write something fun. I don't remember what blog I read it on, but one of the LGBTQ sites made a remark in passing that gay people aren't ever asked to evaluate str8 relationships, but so many of these busybodies on the batshit-crazy toxic-belief-addict religious right feel they can judge ours. So I thought, what a funny idea: A reality show where queer celebs judge whether two het's are sufficiently matched to become engaged. Ergo:

QUEER EYE FOR THE KNOT-TIE
______________________________
A Comedy Sketch by Cinnumeg

CAST OF CHARACTERS

SION TEIKEDALL Our wonderful, obnoxious, obsequious host!
MELINDA LINDEN-READE Game show contestant bride. Darien blueblood with a guilty
conscience.
BRENT BURLEYSON Game show contestant groom. Trailer trash good ol’ boy
AYN O’LYNGIS Celebrity judge – sex advice columnist.
HELLEN O’DONNELL TRUMPEATER Celebrity judge – talk show host.
RANDIE Celebrity judge – pop singing sensation genderbender.

The action takes place in front of a studio audience.

SETTING & AT RISE:

The set of “Queer Eye for the Knot-Tie.” SL are two stands representing the Bride and Groom. On the Bride’s stand is a phone. SR sit the Three Judges: HELLEN O’DONNELL TRUMPEATER, the ferocious dyke talk show host; AYN O’LYNGIS, the sex columnist with a chip on his shoulder; and the amazing RANDIE, androgynous pop singing sensation. SION TEIKEDALL, the good-looking host runs in.

SION
Good evening, and welcome to “Queer Eye for the Knot-Tie,” the controversial show where people who can’t get married except in Massachusetts sit in gleeful judgment over those who have the dubious privilege of getting their partnerships sanctioned by the State.

HELLEN
And speaking as one who’s been there, done that, let me say it is most dubious, thank you very much!

SION
Yes, I don’t see why we don’t just go to Civil Unions for Everyone, but then again, that may just be why I’m a game show host and not a politician.

AYN O’LYNGIS
That and your prize endowment, big boy.

RANDIE
Heavens, I’m all a vapor!

SION
Well, let me introduce our usual panel of judges. He’s an outrageous sex columnist with a blog called “Pick-A-Pecker” and he’s most delightful when he’s sharp-tongued, give a hand for Ayn O’Lyngis!

AYN O’LYNGIS
Thank you, thank you to all those dicks and pussies that need my attention. Especially the former!

SION
Butt of course! And then we have the ubiquitous and saucy talk show host who’s burning down the house and taking no prisoners, give it up for Hellen O’Donnell Trumpeater!

HELLEN
I know, I know, you all want to be me. H-O-T, that’s me baby!

SION
And last but certainly not least, our most devastating viper because Randie only means well, our pop singing sensation whose gender is FAAAAAAA-BULOUS! Please welcome the amazingly talented Randie!

RANDIE
Hi, al. Trés fabu to be here, I’m sure.

SION
OK, OK, I know you’re all the reason we watch the show, but the reasons we’re here are waiting offstage. So without further adieu, let us meet the ones who want our Queer Eyes to Check Yes for Tying the Knot. He’s a self-described good ol’ boy living in St. Louis, but hailing from Whiskey Holler, South Carolina. Raised on Swanson dinners and Mac n’ Cheese that his Momma still makes in their repo trailer home, please welcome Brent Burleyson!

(BRENT BURLEYSON, a lovable doofus, enters. He wears a baseball cap and a long-sleeve t-shirt.)

BRENT
Hello, everyone. Thank you kindly Sean.

SION
That’s Si-on, Sir.

BRENT
D’Oh!

SION
Yes. Well, let’s meet your intended now. A PhD candidate with a Master’s in French Literature from the University of Connecticut who’s also a self-proclaimed expert in French cuisine, please welcome Melinda Linden-Reade to the show.

(MELINDA LINDEN-READE, a rather unassuming but sharp-eyed and stiff woman, enters.)

MELINDA
Hello, everyone. Charmed I’m sure.

HELLEN
So, Melinda, mon chat. Do you have a favorite French delicacy?

MELINDA
I’m partial to bouillabaisse.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Fishy eh? I see.

RANDIE
Antoine, stop! It’s all down into the sewer with you, isn’t it?

HELLEN
Hey, sometimes the tastiest fish comes from some deep diving, if you know what I mean.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Oh, don’t mind her, girl. She thinks every woman prefers muff to meat.

SION
Well! Before we let this get too sang-Freudian, we’ll transition now into our first challenge for our intended bride and groom. Before the show began, we took each of you aside and asked you both the same question, which was “it’s your squeeze’s parents anniversary in a couple of weeks, and your intended would like for you to get them a gift.” Each of you has answered the question, and now the challenge is to guess what your partner would gift wrap to give to your parents. Now, the judges are going to be paying attention to whether you two are on the same wave-length but also, they will be evaluating their gifts and people who would at some day like to have that same honor. This challenge is worth up to 60 points. Melinda, since you seem to be the more educated one in this to-be family—

BRENT
Hey, I resentuate that remark.

SION
Resentuate away, dear friend. First why don’t you describe your parents a little. What are we dealing with here?

MELINDA
Oh, they’re your average Darien parents. Dad drives his Mercedes SUV and Mom’s on a lot of charity boards.

HELLEN(lockjawed)
Yes, typical Darien everyday! Top Drawer of course.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Fwa-fwa-fwa.

MELINDA
Oh, but Dad does a lot of pro bono work.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Hey, I’m pro boner too! Why haven’t I heard of him?

SION
So Melinda, what do you think Brent would get your parents for their anniversary?

MELINDA
Well, it’s so interesting you would ask that question, Sion because his parents 30th is coming up. But since you’re asking me about what he’d get mine. . . I don’t know.

SION
There is a time limit, Melinda. The clock is ticking.

MELINDA
Well, I don’t know. My parents talk to him about the region of South Carolina he came from. I think maybe he’d get them some fine heirloom from the Low Country that only he and his friends know about.

(A buzzer sounds. The audience groans.)

SION
I’m sorry, that is incorrect. Brent? What did you say?

BRENT
Now, hon I don’t hold it against you. I’d be a man of surprises, like you was alluding to, but I’d get my buddies and family to he’p chip in and get your parents two bus tickets to join us for a right old Whiskey Holler festival for them to whip up a tune for!

MELINDA(horrified)
Oh, no, Brent! You really shouldn’t!

BRENT
Oh, tain’t no trouble at all, lassie. It’d be a swell ride from Hartford to Charleston and a slide down a pig in a poke right into my old Homestead, a’s right! See how we do things down there.

MELINDA
Where’s this coming from? We’ll talk about it later.

RANDIE
Well, I do declare, I sense an old Connecticut chill descending across this Maxson-Dissin’ line!

MELINDA & SION
That’s Mason-Dixon.

RANDIE
What-EV-er!

SION
Speaking of What-EV-er, it’s time to find out what ye olde judges think of Melinda’s answer and Brent’s gift. Ayn, let’s take you first.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Well, I’d say that the gift itself is a mite extravagant for Brent and his homies, and Melinda was off the mark about the heirloom thing, though she at least got in the ball park putting it together that her parents would appreciate some token from Confederal Way. I’d give them a 3.5.

SION
OK, and Hellen?

HELLEN
I sense some tension about this whole thing, like this question has ripped out the heart of the relationship. 2.

SION
Oooh! Cruella Deville herself. And Amazing Randie?

RANDIE
Oh, I want everyone to be happy. I give them a 3.

SION
All right then let’s see the other way around. Brent, your parents really are having their 30th?

BRENT
That’s right, sir. The middle of next month.

SION
Not Valentine’s Day.
(AUDIENCE goes AWWWW!)

BRENT
Yep, my parents are romantics. They always have the customary 3 packs of Twinkies for dessert.

MELINDA
They really are the sweetest people.

HELLEN
Stop, I’m going into sugar shock already!

RANDIE
Let’s give you an insolence shot!

AYN O’LYNGIS
Thirty years, huh! Wow. My partner and I have been together for 12. How do they do it?

BRENT
One thing I’ve learned from them, it’s the little things that count.

RANDIE
So Brent, what do you think your beloved would get your parents?

BRENT
Tell the truth, I’m scared to answer that . . .. bruhster.

RANDIE
Ohmigod! I think he gets it!

HELLEN
We’ll see how long THAT lasts.

BRENT
I love my Melinda Linden-Reader-Reade. But she’s a bit clueless about my parents. I bet she’d get them something she thinks would be cute but without my guidance, I don’t know. A year’s supply of Ham?

(Buzzer sounds.)

MELINDA(impressed, but embarrassed)
Rats! That was actually something I thought about.

BRENT(hides his face)
Oh, my.

SION
So, Melinda what did you say?

MELINDA
Well, I’m trying to be responsible like we talk about, and I know that you would probably tell me to get something else, but I know your Mom and Dad are partial to your sister Brenda’s kids and your brother Brian’s too—

AYN O’LYNGIS
Your parents named you Brent, Brenda and Brian?

BRENT
Yep. And Bryllis and Brevick bring up the rear. No offense.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Ha! None taken. I like this guy.

BRENT
So what’s the damage?

MELINDA
I said I’d get them a bunch of kids toys like a Slip ‘N’ Slide and whiffle bats and the like. So they’d have that stuff on deck when the grandkids came.

BRENT(alarmed)
You’re not--?

MELINDA
Me? No! Of course not! We use protection.

BRENT
Whew.

SION
Well, yes, that would be unfortunate if Darien had to shotgun Whiskey Holler into a driveby wedding wouldn’t it?

BRENT
All in all, I’m mildly pleased. Though I would still give you guidance, Mel. There’s better things out there than that.

AYN O’LYNGIS
Oh, come on! There’s nothing better than a slip ‘n’ slide! What I always say!

SION
So, Judges, how do you rate this one? Did they pull it out of the hat?

RANDIE
Sir, you are a peach. I think you’re just wonderful, and I do hope the best for you. I give these answers an 4.

SION
Very good. And Hellen?

HELLEN
Well, I don’t know. They don’t quite pull it out of the hat for me, but they did do better. 3.

SION
That’s pretty good for Hellen. And last but not least, our sexpert, Ayn?

AYN O’LYNGIS
I have to grudgingly give he same score as I did the last time. 3.5. I’m not sure you two belong together yet.

SION
There you have it for the first half of our challenge. Right now you have a score of 19, not great, but you’re not out of the running yet! Still, you’ll have to get 26 points for us to give you that all expense paid trip to the Beach Resort of your choice. On to our FINAL CHALLENGE! All right. This is also for thirty points. Brent, Melinda, this will involve some role-playing on both your parts. Now, we did an intake interview with you, and both of you said that Brent was the one who handles crises better, correct?

MELINDA
Yes, I hate to admit it, but I’m a stereotypical Gemini. I go to pieces at the slightest.

RANDIE
I resent that remark.
(Brightly)
But I don’t!

SION
Well, tough luck kiddo, because you’re the one who gets to role play the situation of crisis. This is the deal. It’s 4:50 on the Friday before you get married and you get a desperate phone call from your caterer. She tells you that due to an oil spill in Alaska, the salmon you ordered for the reception will not be coming in. By the time you get off the phone with her, you only have five minutes to come up with an alternate plan.

MELINDA
Oh, my. We have to have . . . Oh no.

SION
All right, girlfriend, breathe. This is a situation that could happen. Now, Brent. You’re not available, but it just so happens that her father is, and this is where you come in. You get to play Lincoln Linden-Reade in this situation.

BRENT
You want me to playact as I’m Mr. Lincoln, huh?

MELINDA(desperately)
Can he be my mother instead? She’s better at this sort of thing.

BRENT
Yeah, truth be told she’s right.

SION
Judges?

RANDIE
In the spirit of gender bending I say GO FOR IT, bruhster!

BRENT(embarrassed kinda)
Well, I guess that’s a compliment huh?

HELLEN
This ought to be interesting.

AYN O’LYNGIS
You took the words right out of my mouth, to make it available for other things maybe.

SION
All right then. The judges will be looking not only to see how well you negotiate this crisis, but also to see how well Brent knows Olga Linden-Reade and also, to throw in a bit of psychodrama, how her relationship with her daughter might impact the marriage.

AYN
Yes, I love to get all Freudian on you.

SION
Melinda. And “Olga”. You have five minutes. Go!

MELINDA
OK. OK. OK. OK. OK.

BRENT-AS-OLGA(clipped, business-like and just a tad cruel with a New England accent)
Tut, tut, punkin. These things are to be expected.

MELINDA
But we got the salmon because Aunt Olivia and all her side of the family—

BRENT-AS-OLGA
Well, I know Olivia claims to be allergic to chicken. She never got over that one time we got a bucket of KFC and that gizzard thingie—

MELINDA
Oh, mom. The wedding’s going to be a disaster.

BRENT-AS-OLGA
Easy, punkin, easy. Do they have other seafood?

MELINDA
What difference does it make?

BRENT-AS-OLGA(brutal)
Punkin, we really don’t have time for this. Do I have to get out my little box of goodies?
(MELINDA’s eyes get big.)
The wedding’s on Sunday and they need a decision now. First things first, like Brent’s daddy would say.
(MELINDA glares at him.)
Well, he would. Punkin. Halibut would be fine. Trout. In fact, trout Almondine—

MELINDA
We can’t. Brent’s sisters have peanut allergies.

BRENT-AS-OLGA
Tsk tsk. Let them have chicken!

MELINDA
I suppose.

BRENT-AS-OLGA
Well, it’s really all up to you. It’s your wedding.

MELINDA
It’s your wedding as much as it is mine.

BRENT-AS-OLGA
Yes, and it’s Tricia Mae’s as well, but the decision is in your hands. I think we have a couple of options. But then you know more don’t you?

MELINDA
Well, they don’t have salmon. They do have other fish, I guess. I’ll call them back.
(She dials a phone on her stand.)
Hello? This is Miss Linden-Reade—yes. Thank you. What other fish do you have besides the salmon? Snapper? Oh. That’s … that’s even better than salmon. Did you have that all the time? Oh. Well, then. We’ll go with that. Wow. You’ll have enough for 200 people? Well, then. Whew. Thank you.

(She hangs up. Canned applause, if possible.)

SION
Well, that was mighty efficient of you.

BRENT
Tweren’t perfect though, I can tell.

MELINDA
Brent’s daddy, huh?

BRENT
Yeah, yeah.

SION
Melinda, I take it that you didn’t really feel he did a good job playing your mother?

MELINDA
Well, he sort of knew how to snap back into it once I made my feelings known.

HELLEN
It’s nice to get them on a leash isn’t it?

AYN O’LYNGIS
Ruff ruff!

SION
So, judges, what’s your take?

HELLEN
Brent, honey, you’re a scary lady. You seem to have what it takes to bring out the beast in her. 8.

SION
Wow, that’s generous of our priestess of Kali, isn’t it? Ayn?

AYN O’LYNGIS
I had my doubts, but you two seem to be made for each other. 9.

SION
Goodness! Well I think there might be wedding bells in your future.

RANDIE
Oh, it’s so sad, and so wonderful, and so Donna Reed! 9.

SION
That means you got 26 points and you’re going off to have your honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta!

BRENT(excited, but sad)
Yee hawdie!

MELINDA(unsure, unsettled)
Well.

SION
Yes, yes, you two are destined to join the ranks of the future ex-spouses of America. And that concludes another episode of Queer Eye for the Knot-Tie. Be here tomorrow when we bring on our celebrity on celebrity edition with Britney Spears and her latest Man-Toy!

RANDIE
Swing Out, Bruhsters!

END OF SKETCH

5 Wands Hermes Goat - Dream, finances

2007-01-04T11:06:00.000-05:00

This morning, I woke up angry. I'd had a dream where I was trying to establish a new restaurant in New York City. I had a notion of setting it up somewhere on First Avenue between 6th and 12th Streets. I wanted to do it all by myself, however. It was a dream, so the "reality" of that is not the same as the waking world o' Maya. But still. I mean--really! I was going to set this up without having to hire anyone to cook, serve, clean dishes etc.? My dream self was deflecting these questions for some reason, knowing they were indeed legitimate, but unable to square these issues with the finances behind it.

Which for some reason got me thinking about the cunteous student loan debt I'm being Citigrouped by. "Citigrouped"="gouged"="fleeced"="decunted"="sucked-dry"="vampirized" etc. I swear, I looked at the cunteous missive I got in the mail from Student Loan Cuntoration and I saw the balance of the loan at a certain number, and I keep expecting it to go under another certain number. It seems to me it should have gotten there by now, but of cunt-course it hasn't.

I've paid about $40,000 thus far. There's something really WRONG with this picture. What are these vampires doing? Part of it is that I've been in a fog, and the cunts have been of course taking advantage of this.

So I guess this is a part of my awakening process. It's one of my 2007 Intentions (I don't use the word "resolutions" because it's really inadequate to the task) to significantly reduce my debt. It's also an intention to significantly up my income. I'm not sure what the best answer is to all of this, but I need to put it into the metaverse, the multiverse, turn it over to the Gods and Goddesses, and creature guides, that I dance free and clear of debt.

It has already come to pass that I'm free of debt. That is the magickal working I create at this time.

Hermes and Goat are my energies of this 10 Ik day. It's interesting that 10 is a number of manifestation and Ik is the wind. In my spectrum of deities and guides, I link Hermes to North (though at one point he was my East god, both directions being possibly linked to air, though I think of North as Earth and East as Air), and I link the Goat to the 2nd Chakra. Both rather earthy energies, really, though the 2nd chakra has elements of water and fire as well. Hermes revealed to me another dimension's ties to the issue of My Debting. I saw all these vaporous scaries, these darkling demons scampering about, until I let my eyes shine light on them, and they all became like dust bunnies. It was fascinating to witness this, and see that my anger, my resentments and shame and embarassment over this situation are phantasms. What is up to me is to use the tools of joyous obligation and gratitude to dig myself out of this unwanted situation.

And so I need to say that I'm grateful for the opportunity I received back in the years 1993-95 to have gone to graduate school, and to have learned more about the craft of writing dramatic scripts. It is my joyous obligation to pay for that, even if I have not been the most responsible about it and that I have been oblivious as to my omissions and deferrals. I have added to my burden through my lack of awareness and now it's time to say "enough." I am grateful that these are my lessons, and I pray that the blessings make themselves known to me, even as I feel all these phantasmic feelings and release them from the bondage to the false self. I will no longer immolate myself on a pyre of abasement.

7 Wands Cerridwen Hawk - Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day"

2006-12-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

I did get caught up a little in the holiday fracas surrounding this commercial bonanza-bananas culture, getting a whole bunch of stuff for my lovey-dovey. I've been blessed in many ways this year, and I send out gratitude for all that I've received. There's a part of me that feels like I didn't get what I wanted--I did ask for a couple of things that my partner chose to disregard. That's a bit disconcerting. Perhaps I will have to be more specific for my birthday coming up. Some stuff I'm not sure I want, actually--do I really need to get more shirts for work? Whatever.

For the most part, however, my time over the past two weeks was taken up by reading Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. I read a couple of his books twenty-six years ago for an assignment in one of my classes. I did an author study of the man's work, and it was quite amazing to a 17 year-old fellow to read Pynchon. I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow in college, and couldn't stick with it--too many distractions. Like Ulysses, I probably could only have read that book if I had to for a class. I read Vineland when it came out, which really didn't stick with me, and I chose not to pick up Mason & Dixon, even though I've seen it marked down at various book outlets.

Against the Day wasn't as much of a challenge, and I decided to add my name to the queue at the library for this one after reading the Times Book Review's take on this tome. I was heartened that the reviewer described this book as his most accessible one.

Parts of this book are just breathtaking with clarity, and there's a definite affection for all of his characters, even the most Lynchian villian Scarsdale Vibe. I have a couple of quibbles with certain aspects of the book. I found myself skipping over paragraphs of listed details that just couldn't hold my attention. I wasn't really in the mood for those digressions, and truth to tell, I wanted to finish the book within the 2 week checkout period without having to keep the book another day beyond. One review on Amazon said "oh, read it an anecdote at a time." Ha!

(It's a possibility that I may decide I need to read this book again, as another reviewer on Amazon also had done, and had started her review of AtD by saying she was 30 pages into her second read. I have to let the book sift through my consciousness a bit before coming to that conclusion however.)

My other quibble is more major--I found the book structurally didn't have much of a payoff at the end. But that could also be because I booked through the last third of it, reading it all in two days' time. It's more than likely I missed the significance of something earlier on that, had I owned the book or had more leisure in being able to read it, would have noticed and later on gone, "Oh, of course!" It's also possible that it wasn't there too, however, and that the structure indeed is part of the point.

All that being said, I did find Against the Day to be one of the most spiritual novels I've read in a long time. Pynchon is coming at spirituality through scientific exploration. He makes no bones about incorporating the mystical with physics. I described the book as "phystical" or "mysicist" to people. Some of the ideas he explores in the book are things I've arrived at through my own strange odyssey through these days of late-Empire, and in some ways I find myself wondering whether Pynchon isn't throwing this book out there to find his own "homies." It's funny, but Pynchon was mentioned in an astrology column for Pisces that Rob Brezsny wrote up a couple of weeks ago. Brezsny had been mistaken for Thomas Pynchon in a bar, and he used that as a launching pad to ask Pisces which celebrities we wanted to be mistaken for--in an odd way, a rather Pyncho-Shakespearean notion indeed. (Should that be Shakespereo-Pynchonesque?)

For me the most fun part of the book was the Yashmeen-Reef-Cyprian menage. I enjoyed the frank exploration of sexuality and its part in pushing people toward spiritual revelation. The climax of that story I found to be quite moving, but again, due to the speed with which I was reading it and trying to balance it all with the Yuletide festivities surrounding me, I feel I missed something. Still, I identified a great deal with Cyprian's story and his realization of falling out of the relationship with the other two.

The shamanic stuff, and all the language about the other world that's at a 90-degree angle to our own is material that I have seen only wu-wu sites really talk about. The wu-wu and the scientific frequently intersect, however. Some of the smartest people out there are also the most out-there anyway. I'm "out there," though I frequently have doubts about my actual intelligence. There are some things I'm just closed to, and some of those things I'm closed to are truly unfortunate, I realize. I pray for willingness and the willingness to be willing.

In any case, I do think this is a book that should be read by a lot of different kinds of people. It does make a person feel a bit smarter to immerse themselves in this alternative history that is also in its way a history of this moment in time. There's an unspoken Buddhist notion of time in this book--all time is now sort of thing. And in the last 30 pages, a mystical event occurs that throws some light on these odd times we inhabit. I was very grateful to Mr. P for having written this, and I hope to revisit the book sometime in the future.

6 Swords Freyja Iguana - Blognomie

2006-12-04T16:17:00.000-05:00

Haven't really felt like showing up to this ol' blog much lately. I go through cycles, and I recognize I'm in a hibernation mode.

Anyway, here's a poem I wrote and I hope to write 3 or 4 more of these:

Happy Christmas Poem #1
Let’s pronounce the word with a Spanish “c!”
“Deathember” would seem the best utterance
of the twelfth month’s name to fit its own taste
of festivity. Yes, we do protest
cherry and kelly favor as pretense
for that fantastical warm glow imagined
de los Navidades gone by, homes
revisited and remembered, faultless.
As if parents, siblings, various loved
ones never screamed a red rage, nor green eyes
envious, dripping venom, comparing
inside their tormented and holy minds
their own paltry gifts with that state-of-the-art
I-don’t-know-what, be-belled and be-whistled
sitting ’neath the Christmas tree, its label
addressed “To Shawn From Santa.” Oh, all the
“But what about me’s?” that dance in their heads
Indeed, remember the brave front put up
when Dad gave Mom a broom, promptly thrown out
into the snow, with Dad soon following?
Oh, certainly—a gay old time had by
all, right? Nothing to watch here, kiddle-kids!
“Merry Christmas?” my ass! Better to say
“It’s rough out there, call if you need back up.”

2 Cups Hades Bear (My Mayan Birthday)

2006-11-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

Also known as 6 Cimi, aka Death, but also known as "Transformer" and "World Bridger."

Couple thoughts about the election. I don't know what to think, honestly. Part of me is so underwhelmed, and part of me is relieved the democrats won. In the long run I don't think it makes a lot of difference though. I have been musing about whether "political power" is an oxymoron. The metaphor that comes to mind is that it's sort of like my allowance I got as a child from my parents if I did my chores. And there were all sorts of things my controlling parents built in to the system to get what they wanted, but essentially I was an underpaid slave. I'm like, "oh gee, great I get a vote, huh? Can I have $5.25 more now?"

My boyfriend give me a bit of a hard time about the fact I'm not registered. I conveniently let it slip my mind, but since I got suckered into voting in the 2004 election, I'm not sure I want to go back to that place again.

In that dismal event, I remember trying to send up a wish-bird to help John Kerry stay the course in challenging the fraud in Ohio. When I sent the bird up into the air, I fully expected it to head in a generally northeasterly direction. Instead, I sensed the bird got "batted" southwards. In fact, I sort of felt that it "popped", because he had of course already made his decision. My effort at sending him some positive intention was for naught. When it came out that he had conceded the "dyslection," I marveled at the event of my wishbird pfffftning into zilchhood. I simply knew, and realized this is all cuntnoise signifying vapors--the demicans and the republocrats are nothing but oligarchs and reptiles.

The other night I was at Valentine's on New Scotland Road and was gratified to hear that Dan Wilcox is someone who also sees that voting is a sham. He has a great little poem inspired by Allen Ginsberg, the title of which I can't remember. But the chorus is "Don't vote, don't vote, don't vote, don't vote, don't vote--it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax!" He doesn't know how grateful I am to have heard him perform that lovely piece! I start to feel a bit lonely out here in this corporate wilderness in which I half-heartedly partake. I pray for imagination to be able to move into the world beyond my wildest imaginings.

Four of my poems are published in "Other: Six" by Albany Poets. In my mind, it's really two--Toxicities #1, #2 and #3 are part of a seven-part poem, and I'll send them the other four for the next issue. In the meantime, I'm looking into learning more about shamanism. Jody's sister is being trained in that stuff, and I'm thinking there's something there for me. Don't exactly know what it is, but I read about something I need to do for myself. Once I perform these exercises inside sacred space, I will report what I learn.

Regardless of whatever else, sacred space is molto importante. I carry myself in a sacred bubble every day. That's what I see anyway. I make it thus.

I hope I can blog more. My energy right now is all over the place. Today is a burner day, of course, it being my Mayan Birthday and all. Still, I'm excited to be in this place and grateful to be alive and to have the awarenesses and interests and intentions I do.

In Lak'Ech.
Many Blessings

Princess Disks Vesta Beaver - Two Poems

2006-10-20T15:10:00.000-04:00

“Love Poem to You, Another Myself”

We have this disease inside us, you and me.
It doesn’t have to manifest itself.
Diet, belief, behavior, activity—any
Can spark the monstrous addict lurking
Within every cell of the corpus, and contagious
As cholera, it affects much more than you
Or me alone. We move inexorably now
Toward an endpoint of this phase of human
History, where enough of us must change
Radically to continue the species. Else all of us
Shall perish. No great loss really, considering
All our kind has done in its traumatized blindness
But sad too, in the sense of all that Could Have
Been. Even though I urgently want you to get
The message, there’s not much I can do. I pray
That you awaken to a self-chosen God’s will
For you, delicious creature unaware of how special
You really are. Can I transmit the mirror back
To your unseeing, donkey eyes, stubbornly
Braying for me to quit regarding you with loving
Intentions? Is there a way to burn through layers
Of scar-tissue, your hardened armor of socialized
Domestication, wherein you are capable of acts both
Ruthless and kind, both craven and compassionate?
Maybe not me, maybe someone else will come along
And in that exquisite, unguarded moment
Touch the radiant divinity within that points
Both of us toward an integrated blissful Now,
Where we remember our connections to each other;
Where we recover everything being all right;
Where we rejuvenate the Eternal Alignment of Our Souls…

**************

“To Jody”

I wonder if you recognize yourself
in me, as I do you. Oh, lover.
I see a luminous essence seeking
to bridge the celestial with the mundane,
the spiritual and the carnal, to see
the two as one. I marvel, terrified
that you thrill at the fights. And yet don’t I
seem to have a little thing about Death
myself? Sometimes even longing for my rest
Eternal? I’m not about to commit
to irreversible action, don’t fret it.
There’s some workings I still need to unfurl
into this twisted plane. We are here, you
and I, as emissaries of the Source of All.
But as I awaken to my true nature, Dear
Heart, I see that holding title to this form
is not the highest priority. While I
stand and sit and fuck and eat and drink,
shit and piss and sleep and work and rest
I will keep my gifts in focus, one
of which is our tender interaction
and I will work with Divine spirit and create
alongside the Holy That, with whatever may
from my intentions and actions issue forth.

I trust, sexy lover, you are doing the same….

Knight Disks Persephone Goat

2006-10-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

I've been in a bit of a torpor/whirlwind since returning from NoDak. There really is some sort of mojo that I respond to in the plains that I don't understand. When I go to my power place, I go to a place that's not unlike a more marshy NoDak. Perhaps on some level I sense that the lake itself has some amazing power in the situation that is my life. In any case, I felt a little twist in my heart when I got in the rental car to drive back to Fargo and board my plane.

Work has been mondo busy of late, and I realize that while I wasn't at work, I really wasn't "on vacation." This past weekend, Jody and I went off to Burlington and that felt more of a vacation than my entire trip did, with the exception of the driving across the state which I absolutely loved.

I have a lot to post, but I feel a need to let things sift a bit so that I might focus. I don't know when I'll be returning to NoDak, but I do intend on going again perhaps in the summer of next year. Provided things work out along those lines--anything's possible in this weirdass days.

Blessings.

8 Disks Hermes Gnome (Lamb)

2006-09-22T14:33:00.000-04:00

I put (Lamb) in parens) because lately I've been getting the two guides mixed up in my head. I think I've got my head around a system now, though.

Tomorrow I'm off to Devils Lake, North Dakota. The last time I was in that Christian town was during the Republican convention in 2004. Almost right after that, I went off to my first Witch Camp. That September was miraculous in many ways. I thought I might be moving to NoDak, but the Capital District of New York also captured my attention. Eventually I made my way up here instead, but NoDak is a place I believe will have some import in my future, if only because my parents are ascending in age.

My Dad has the Alz, and Mom has had to be tethered to him for the past decade. Evidently he's getting worse, and I'll be seeing firsthand what my mother has had to bear these past ten years. Eventually she'll have to put him into a home, but she's putting that day off for other reasons.

A part of me would like to live there, actually, even though I know I'd probably get bored fairly quickly. It's hard to know for sure, but I might actually be surprised and find some cultured people out in Jeebusland. I'm a bit nervous about the trip actually, much as I was nervous about my trip to the boyfriend's hometown of Fort Worth. I was pleasantly surprised there too, however and who's to say what I should expect in Devils Lake-a-Christian-town? Even if it is THE location of that infamous Jesus Camp documentary that's making the rounds of major cities across the Unraveling State of 'MerK-KaKa.

One thing I must openly wonder, however about some of the events placetaking 'round allns ussens: When will we do like Lopez Obrador in Mexico and start to create a parallel government of freethinkers? Will it happen or are we just too medicated/afraid/insane to do so? Just asking.

Hopefully I'll ponder this notion while I'm away, and I don't expect to check mah emails during thisn here vacation. Momzels and Dadzels have nary a computer twixt them. Mayhap I"ll find meself on a 'puter, but I'z likes to doubtz it. Yawynasonst, I'll be pondering that and also how the houses might line up for post-carbonic experience for astrological notions and foretellings.

Blessings to one and all
Cinnumeg!
FrostWolff!
Richard

Empress Dian-y-Glass Butterfly - More on Astrology

2006-09-13T11:57:00.000-04:00

One thing I wish to do for people when I consult with them is talk frankly about the times in which we live, and that I think studying the birth chart for its story can illuminate areas of expertise and wisdom for people to consider as we all negotiate the slide out of domestication and addiction.

Again, it would be for those who want it.

To those who are obsessed with their careers and their love-lives, I'm not sure that I'd have a lot to offer them. That's a superficial way to approach the craft of astrology anyway. And while I understand the notion of "career" as it relates to the 10th House, the present day notion of "career," like "nation" and "corporation", are at that same point in their history as the 8-track tape was in in 1976. In other words, just before they're to be rendered obsolete. We'll have to go through the houses and determine what their meanings will be "post-civilization."

Speaking optimistically, the 4th House will become the repository for all things civilized. The 4th House and its cusp (also known as the Nadir) represents the past and all things historical/hysterical. The 4th House corresponds to Cancer which is interesting in light of the diseases of carcinoma which share the same name. It also has an affinity with the moon, and themes of motherhood and smotherhood. Nurturance and sheltering and also neglect and abuse as well. The 4th House also relates to the Home, traditions of all sorts (whether living or ineffective), and some other soon-to-be-historical notions of patriotism and national identity. The 4th House represents the family and also prepubescence in terms of the life cycle. On the human body, it corresponds to the breasts/chest area.

As we participate in the civilization in its death throes, 8th House and 12th House issues will come to the surface, but eventually, civilization will be solely a 4th House issue. We might look to both our eighth house and again our fourth house (because the 4th house is 9 houses away from the 8th, and therefore would represent "the death of the larger system"), to discover what we have on offer for these large scale transitions. I have Sagittarius on the 8th House cusp, with Ceres located therein. Cancer is on my 4th house cusp. I can take a long view as to the nature of death and even provide some nurturance to people as they adjust to the new circumstances. My Jupiter (ruler of the 8th house in my chart) is in Aries and the 12th house, which also seems to indicate that making space for divine connection can also provide assistance albeit in an active and possibly even masculine manner. Perhaps I can be a contingent avatar of God Herself or Father-Mother God.

As far as my own reaction to the Death of the Larger System, it's deeply emotional as Cancer is perhaps the most deeply emotional of the signs. It's my personal belief that of the 12 signs, Cancer is the most quietly powerful. Leo, Scorpio and Capricorn try to throw their weight around openly and frequently crassly, but it's Cancer that evinces the still, quiet voice of authentic power. The moon is the closest body to the earth and it is as big in the sky as the sun is which is of course much bigger, and therefore much further away. The moon has a deep pull, and for me, the Cancer themes of the 4th House are magnified that much more. The Moon in my chart is in the 3rd House which means somehow I need to communicate my perceptions in the simplest manner possible, so that a child could understand them.

In any case, I'm currently using my own chart to start to come up with other understandings of how I can, as a caring craftsman working within Urania's Bailiwick, can assist others in their transition out of domesticity and to their lovely, free and perhaps feral essences. We will need to learn and listen deeply to one another, and we will need to reconnect with our Divine Natural Awareness (DNA!) and to discharge the destructive-necrotic-assasins that would wipe us all off the face of the earth.

I'm going to have to meditate on what the different houses might point post-civ'd folks toward and how the archetypal/apersonal forces as rep'd by the planets and the modes as rep'd by the signs will affect the populace. If any of you have thoughts it'd be much appreciated.

4 Wands Odin Otter - 12 Step Society and Astrology

2006-09-08T14:01:00.000-04:00

(Wow. It was kind of fun to type "4 Wands Odin Otter"! Under the surface, there's clearly a day of mischief waiting.)

Last night, I spoke with both of my sponsors in my two 12-Step Programs. I would really like to start a new 12-Step Program for any who are interested. Interestingly enough, this fellow Casey Maddox seemed to have the same idea before me, and even wrote a book about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Philosophy-Dies-Casey-Maddox/dp/0975301403/sr=1-1/qid=1157738371/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4477561-4725417?ie=UTF8&s=books

I actually have a play about something similar. It's about a woman who hits bottom, joins AA and starts to recover and then, miracle of miracles, gets fired. She works as a paper pusher for a company specializing in selective-human-pest-elimination (SHPETM) or what you and I refer to as "Contract Assassinations." The play is called Adrenaline and eventually I will publish it through a self-publishing website. It deserves to be published, actually, if not actually performed.

In any case, I've decided to start a new blog called "Empire Anonymous" (just in case Maddox owns a copyright on Civilization Anonymous. t-hee!)
http://empireanonymous-ea.blogspot.com

Anyway, the subject of my post today is the craft-poetic language known as Astrology. I've been meaning to post on this subject for a while with all the strange news about Pluto and Ceres and the "dwarf planets" and all.

I approach astrology as a craft, not as a science or art. Crafts combine both of those, actually, and therefore occupy an intermediate place. To craft a person-worthy understanding of the birth vehicle as evidenced by that snapshot in time of nativity is not unlike crafting the stageworthy play or the seaworthy ship. It is meant to be something that will help the native possessing that fleshly snapshot a mechanism for navigating life. The building blocks of this understanding are the planets, which I would describe as nodal foci of archetypal energies that operate in a style (zodiacal sign) which has quite a bit to do with seasonal understandings of the birth locale, and also in an arena of life (the astrological house) that covers a general area as understood by its location by axes north/south and east/west. To take an example from my own birth chart:

Uranus in Virgo in the 5th house for the Native born in Denver, Colorado:

Uranus is the archetype of the originator, the somewhat removed and revolutionary genius who can intuit as well as reason possibilities into being, the archetype of the "brethrenhood of humanity" as opposed to the mere individual, though often providing a stark representation of individual oddity. In Virgo, the archetype is expressed in a discriminating and sometimes exacting manner, as would befit farmers reaping their harvests (which takes place in the Virgo month, even in Denver, CO). That being said, Uranus in Virgo can get carried away sometimes with sudden and abrupt criticisms, often unasked for. In the fifth house, this Uranus will be looking to express itself in personal and self-directed modes but calling for others' captivated attention. Because of the Virgo influence, they'll take calculated risks, but in 5th House areas--gambling, children, theater and other performing arts, attracting power to the self.

This is in any case, a thumbnail of something I wrestle with. It's affected also by the fact that Uranus is conjunct Pluto and opposite Chiron and a Sun/Mars conjunction.

[In writing this, I wonder if someone who was born on the same day and time as me in say, Argentina, would have a different solar energy based on the fact that Pisces in the north is a "winter" sign (and indeed on the day I was born, it dumped 3 feet of snow), but in February, Argentina is in the "Virgo" time when they're gathering the harvest. At least I imagine that's true. I wonder if that's how the indigenous peoples of southern hemisphere locations do their cosmic craftings.]

Anyway, I will have more to post on stuff. I'll do that perhaps tomorrow. Tschuss!

6 Wands Star Goddess Chimera

2006-09-06T10:21:00.000-04:00

Toxicities

Meditations on Endgame volume I by Derrick Jensen

#1

I like sugar. A lot. Can't get enough
I trudge from Bodega to deli to bakery
and nosh on creamy high necrose
corpse syrup addiction civilization
genocide yea! Give me a case
of Twinkies, I'll kill the fuckin' world!
I taste one, I must have a gazillion.
McDonald's? I AM the 200 billion served!

#2

I love you, that's why I need you to hit
me. Rape my buttcunt. That's what it's
there for! I'm your Iraq, you can be
my Donald Rumsfeld. Daisy-cut me!
Shards! Explode your BLU-82
inside my volumnious caverns.
Aren't I here just for your pleasure?
Like a Trojan, dump me wherever. I'm easy.

#3

Dude, you don't know--good it makes
me feel, meef... When you've had a hit.
You can't. Give it. Up. Easy. No. I like
my crank. Better than sex, dude
I feel that juice give ... it's intense... heat
Such awesome. Sweet. ness. P'rm'ssating
mah beebah, 'n'... I'm -- like -- gone --
I like being gone. Better than being HERE.

#4 (with apologies to Brecht & Weill)

O show me the way to the next
Megachurch. O don't ask why. Must
not ask why. For if I don't find the next
Megachurch, I tell you GENOCIDE AWAITS!
O judge of Salt Lake Vatican,
I must now say "Fuck you!"
For I've lost my dear Pope Prada,
and must have Jesus. O you know why.

#5

At work, I surf the web and in the car
I'm listing to radio and at home I
watch the cable channels, and media
blankets my existence. Cocoon, feel
so warm inside. Katie really cares about
my zits! I know. I can see it in her
photoshopped face. Rush! He's my pal.
K-Hate, where everyone knows my name!

#6

Such a golden life I lead. I can't wait
to get to my job each day, to file, process
applications for loans, to send rejection
letters and collection notices. Why society
itself would teeter without my silent
workings. My rage is what nurses me.
One of these days, They'll give me
an Uzi for backup. Then they'll know effective.

#7

If only they'd listen to me. I know what
you need to do. I've got answers. World
would be better off, I tell you. Trains run
on time. People go where they're supposed
to. I know great chains of being. Listen
to the center-men and shut up. Do as
you're told, and don't give any lip. That's me.
I'll be the Enforcer. Grim job, but I'm determined.

****************

A Prayer to Liberate the Soul from Mere Empire

"Have you had enough yet?"
The question drops into me.
Soft ripples expand outward
and swell upwards. Salty tears
course down cheeks to Cerridwen.
Kwan Yin smiles benevolent,
at my willingness to heal.

"Take this civilization
away from me," I mutter.
Do I now dare to dream big
of life after broken chains,
beyond all pronouncements
into blind slaveries?
Wash away my addiction
the sentencing to squalor,
and the dead-end suffering.

Whatever my natural
birthright my be, I"ve lost touch.
Connect me to earth and sky,
fire and water, mystery
of center, above, below.
Point me toward the direction
and clear out scattered debris
littering my mindscape.

Help me resist continued
applied empire pressure
to forget my feet planted
on Mother's energetic
body and disembody
my own soul and self. Let me
learn to love this grand locale
in which I awaken

to cyclic celebrations
of seasons ever changing.
Somehow, I'm here to help heal
this planet and those who want
what I have. Others holding
what I want freely give me
what I need, transforming this
former husk into abundant
node of bright light, love and joy.

I radiate the pulses
into fecund multiverse
and call to me peers seeking
engaging contact, to push
forth and contain the harmful
toxins polluting our souls'
ecology, to banish entities
pathologic, sucking us out.

To connect the most sacred
with economies grounded
in the landbase surrounding.
Help me string together more
moments of a contiguous
mindfulness and to effect
meaningful change as I reach
out to touch the face of God

Herself in the mirrored flesh
that reads or hears these words.

Prince Cups Hades Dragon

2006-09-05T16:21:00.000-04:00

(Today's a burner day. Feel kinda blegh, but I'm starting to rally.)

I was going to post another set of poems I've been writing, and I shall probably do so tomorrow. Right now I'm reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame v.1. I've read a couple of his other books--Culture of Make-Believe and A Language Older Than Words. Both were helpful in articulating some things that I've implicitly understood for a long while, that our culture is based on the continuation of abuse. If we want the abuse to stop, then it so follows we also want the culture to stop as well.

Recently I came across a luscious website in the astrology realm--aquariuspapers.com. Mr. Wilkinson refers to this age as "The Grand Irrationality." I couldn't do any better. It's pretty cool lately how astrology seems to be offering all these ways to piece it all together. The whole Pluto affair has been wildly amusing, if you ask me. Hades and Persephone are just laughing in the same way that I assume "God" laughs in the statement "Man plans, God laughs."

I'm starting to ask my dream source for actions to take to hasten the birth of the next iteration of land-based cultures. Whatever else happens, I've decided for myself I need to be preparing to help others come to terms with the difficulties that are in all our futures, regardless of what happens ultimately. I've started writing a collection of monologues with the premise that all of us are headed into "The Great Sorting" as it were. One of the characters literally puts on a sorting hat and removes it to find she's been whisked into another world for her continued existence. (I doubt it would literally be like that, still it's a lot of fun to imagine. I have seven or eight characters who find themselves in different versions of the Earth, and some of them even can look in on other iterations, like to see the fundamentalist [insert religious toxin here] world that results in new scapegoats being made with the ultimate ends of nuclear annihilation of these errant fools. There but for the grace of Cerridwen go I, eh?)

I did write a series of 7 very short works that I'll probably submit to Albanypoets.com for their next issue. The collective title is "Toxicities" and they're in response to reading one specific chapter of Endgame called "Abuse." I'll post them here, maybe tomorrow. We'll see.

Still, I would like to get back to this blogging stuff. Perhaps, now that the latest burner period has ended, I'll be able to. I don't know. I definitely go through phases with this stuff. I always want to post, but many times I just don't feel I have much to say that's worth the effort of all this typing. (I type for a living, so I hope some of you will cut me some slack.)

Ace Swords Hermes Salamander - "Indra's Miracle Web"

2006-08-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

Indra’s Miracle Web

For the moment, we’re just numbers to some
As we waken to be stewards
To this beauteous orb
This grand planet, so majestic!
We are so blessed and don’t know it yet.
Can you now choose to embrace
All your natural birthrights
And shuck off the husk?

Getting closer, yes our time it is night.
Post-American reality
Makes its visions known.
All is changing, all is moving
Quickly becoming something else new.
What will it all come to be,
When we start to acknowledge
Just how we’re needed?

I’m a dreamer, I have visions myself
Of a time when each of us remembers
Why we are here
What we came for, who we really are
‘neath shallow and brittlest masks
I’m just another yourself
You’re my mirror and I am yours.

Drance among the trees
Skipping along with dolphins
Salamanders breeze
Crackling through air with undines
All connected we are
(Indra’s miracle web.)

6 Swords Hades Phoenix - Lughnaghsadh!

2006-08-10T10:59:00.000-04:00

Lughnaghsadh!

Six weeks have passed since the Sun
reached its peak from our earthsome
viewpoint. Already, the days feel so much
shorter than before. Try as some might to avoid it
Autumn has announced her timely arrival
on the shores of our Augusted consciousness.
If we let our eyes but see, the ants and squirrels
busy themselves with their preparations
for winter’s onslaught, much as our ancestors
did at one time (and our descendants no
doubt will take up again, contemporary
Grasshoppery notwithstanding). Sitting
underneath this wise Standing Person
in the midst of Albanian Washington Park
I trust in the mother of us all, this Gaia
that supports my very life, the one without
of which I am but atoms and particles
that would circulate in space without tether.
Pleromic unification around divine spark
but holds all threads together, embodied fragile
as this hirsute poet desirous of shucking
off the shorts in addition to shirt and sandals.
Our beknighted scientists, near-sighted Gnostics
of ego, have formally arbitrated that the former
midpoints, those equinox and solstice brethren,
were actually seasons’ beginnings. To differ
I beg. For really there are eight seasons,
and the one in which we are now infounded
has a strange Celtic name that looks unutterable.
Lughnaghsadh it is called, for a celebration
of the sun god Lugh. This fire festival of yore
serves to mark the initial harvests of the fields
and calls us to gather in what we have reaped
on our way to the midpoint of Mabon, fall’s
day with its equal night. Oh, it is a sweet
time of year, as the corn itself brings out
its sugar and crafts such delicious starches.
Soon the butternuts, acorns and sweet dumpling
squashes will be making their market debuts.
And I sing a song for cooling skies to become
commonplace come September, indeed the favored
turn of the wheel of the year. I smile blessings
outward to all. Happy Lughnaghsadh, one and all.

Tower Hephaestus Deer - Musings on courage

2006-08-02T15:02:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me today that today's world is so paralyzed and intoxicated with addictive hate, that it really does take courage to love and to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. The whiny worshippers of Jehovah-Satan (Yaldabaoth) pretty much wish to remain children. I think there are a number of people within the sciences that want to stay that way, just as much as I know there are within the arts. I myself have long felt rueful about being a playwright. I wish I could do theater without "theater people," many of whom are as addicted to drama offstage as they are alive to it onstage. People who wish to shuffle off their responsibilities to be human beings just make me tired.

And they deserve my love as much as our next sick and suffering fellows do, "in or out of the rooms of [Empire] Anonymous." Alcoholics=Narcotics=Overeaters=Gamblers=Sex & Love Addicts=Debtors=Empire=Domestication=Socialization=Absence-in-all-but-Body. Anonymous.

Sometimes I wonder if I even have the strength to treat the likes of W, Cheney, Ann Coulter with lovingkindess. I know they won't appreciate it, they'll spit on it even. Try to stomp their feet in my face. And I struggle with knowing the difference between compassion and "idiot compassion," forgiveness that's appropriate and worthwhile and the "codependent forgiveness" that erodes my sense of self just to make nice and be "in-control." Sometimes the compassionate thing is to express outrage. Sometimes it's taking defensive measures, though I don't know that the Israeli rabbinical council's declamation that there are no innocents where they dropped their bombs is anything but raving madness that needs to be contained somehow.

I must strive to send blessings outward, and ask the cosmos to heal sick humanity. To be shown where compassionate action lies, because frankly I don't know. I know it's not in protesting, not for me anymore. Show me where a protest has an effect these days. I haven't seen it, mostly because the protest continues the addicts' game. Really, it's about surrender, about knowing what to surrender and how. I won't even go into "why" because that's just conundrum-in-the-making for my ever-hungry addict to play with.

There are some interesting synchronicities going on too. I've performed my "Hekate's Prayer for the Common American" a few times in Albany now. People seem to really respond to it, not just the "calling south" aspect of it--I use my body as a percussion instrument as I sing it out. They're responding to the words as well. We know we have to turn to each other to create the Big Edens that are inside us, that are immanent within. I have seen a town we future-residents call "Scanekta." I don't know if I'm spelling it right. It's funny, I moved up to Albany understanding that Schenectady was nearby, though I've not seen my vision of Scanekta there. I've met people, and I've even been able to stroll the meadows and streets pied nue and the rest of me too! In total acceptance, and even sometime lust in some of the town's more bawdy residents. In my visions.

I'm being prompted to focus on what lights me up. There will be opposition because where I need to go carries the "threat" that others will have to also look within to find the Kingdom of Heaven. I'm going out on a limb, but I say the life I want is not only possible, but it's inevitable. Others have lived it, I will live it, and I offer it up that I'm living it now. I'm all lit up.

Blessings.

2 Wands Hermes Bear

2006-08-01T14:52:00.000-04:00

Hymn to Hermes

Ah, winged one, I don’t know why
I should have difficulties writing
a song to you, North God of my
understanding, but they multiply.
Perhaps it’s because you’re so intimate--
such a part and parcel of my mundane
existence. I employ the mail, use
the phone, I’m always communicating
and therefore I am embedded
in a reality as Hermetic as it’s
become Hadean, Kaliesque even.
Not to worry, not you. All of it
holds information. Scientists before me
often mistook their single pointed
awareness as reality’s cornerstone.
I refuse that tortuous error,
preferring instead to inhabit middle
spaces, seeking third modes of balance
midst technique and mystique.
Your godsome semibrother Hephaestus
favors craftsmen, but so too do you
in your own way. And know this,
Hermes, I do love thee as a brother,
albeit one who’s beyond mere corporality.
I see the beings in my pantheon
and those who come to visit as brethren.
I am I hope, sensible enough to grasp
that I don’t understand what makes
us equal, especially given that this
skin-packaged ego is slated for death,
amidst this deteriorating meat space.
Perhaps I will be engendering a magic
based on the current comprehension
of the transitional and the contingent?
I don’t know much, o Messenger God
of information, knowledge and the wisdom
perennial. I evoke you in the homely tones
of prayers to serenity without even knowing
of it. Therein I humbly seek you out
as companion into this realm of glorious
births, miraculous ascents, swoop-spectacular
falls and sweet endings. Sprinkle some of your
Trismegistal dirt on this hungry body. Cause
me to sing ululating praises to thee,
O Ruler of Geminis and Virgos.
Help me to lift the five hundred pound
And reach my voice out to others.
Helper of secretaries and lawyers alike.
You are community’s deity, Mercury.
Remind me I’ve nothing of which to fear.

10 Cups Hephaestus Fairy

2006-07-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

I've been a slug. Summer, is well, . . . yes...

That being said, I have been reading one of the Ur-texts of the integral "movement", though I don't think that's really the best word therefor. Perhaps "amovement" would be better? to go along with atemporal, arational, aspatial and aperspectival? Just a thought since Jean Gebser created a whole slew of different terms to speak of the aperspectival mutation that has been slowly gestating inside us all since the days of Leonardo da Vinci.

I started to post something recently, and I may still post it. A meditation on the nature of time and the both/and aspect of spiritual reality. (Not "Either astrology or physics," but "Both Astrology AND Physics." "Neither religion nor science, but both, and some other things developing as well.") It is helpful to try and slog through one of these books, and come up with my own conclusions rather than sit and try to be satisfied with the likes of Mr. Wilber and others. Most people don't go back to a text like The Ever-Present Origin, and while I can see why (and I would love it if I could get into a study group with others o' like mind about this book so we can all hash it out like it was an AA Big Book Meeting), I'm really glad I'm doing this legwork myself. I'll be curious to read other "Integral" thinkers, but I'm really planning on staying away from Wilber for the time being. I want to immerse my own "integrality" into the seminal texts.

Be all that as it may, I am also interested in submitting a couple of thoughts about the weirdness in the world today, and my own reactions to various people's perspectives on the boorish behavior of all parties involved in the Middle East. I read on one site that an "integral" perspective would side with the Israelis. On a gut level, I feel this is a rationalization of some sort. I don't see the Israelis or the Palestinians handling this matter with grace or in any way aligned with divine intentions. I'm not exactly sure what's going on in the Israeli mindset. The term "mad dog" does seem to be appropriate here. It sure feels like overreaction to me. It aslo looks like a number of people are a mite quick to jump on either bandwagon, either pro-Israeli or "pro"-Hezbollah. One of the things that increasingly has irked me about looking at the eternal tinderbox that is southwest Asian politics is that one can not seem to go about looking to find out what "reality" is without being accused of being "anti-semitic." It's a word that sends shivers up and down the spine, because that's tantamount to calling someone a Nazi these days. Ironically, it's when someone is called a "Nazi" that we've been told the epithet-thrower has lost the debate. Certainly most people check out when they hear the word. Perhaps the same fate needs to await "Anti-Semitic?" One can hope.

People like William Kristol become ever like the Wizard of Oz's man behind the curtain, only it's "ignore the Jew pulling the anti-Semitic strings." As if someone's race or "sectual preference" should absolve someone of acting humanely! Does the Holocaust give Israel the right to persecute a group of people who may have a legitimate point about the land they had stewarded for over a millennia? When I think of the Balfour Declaration, personally I think of the plight of Lois Wilson writ large on the map of the world. Lois Wilson was the wife of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometime in the 1950s, Lois realized that Bill's idea was so wonderful, that she and a friend (Ann S., I believe) got together and started Al-Anon. If only they had done so in time for the founding of Israel! Some of the Anglo-American codependence might have been addressed at that time. At least it would have kept the nascent apocalypticists in check.

There's more to it than that, I realize. A certain primal appeal to the dormant thug that resides below the skin's surface and rises up in nationalistic, "patriotic" fervor as evinced in the junior wars that are sporting events and everything that multiplies in devastation therefrom, is merely accepted and built into this system rather than confronted head-on. Few of us seem ready to address this winged lizard that clutches at our root and sex chakras so that we may enter into "the brethren of humankind," to celebrate our differences rather than seeking their (and our own) elimination. That is what is so disheartening about people on either side of the fence throwing about their addictive epithets--they are blind to the mirrors of their collective Other, and because they give that shadow more and more huge power, they threaten themselves with engulfment therefrom. I wonder just how many of them are truly gone far beyond the pale of recovery and into the wild urban desert of their own auto-mechanized insanity.

Part of it is in the Abrahamic creeds themselves, for all of them enshrine this unfortunate us-vs.-themism, which is part-and-parcel of Saklasian projection. G_d/Beelzebub aka Jehovah/Satan is the dualistic yin-yang that refuses to acknowledge its other side, and so becomes like the dog chasing its tail through the cosmos. Both sides need love don't they? Both sides need to put down their bats/bombs/rocks, etc. How this is achieved, I don't know. Anyway, I have other thoughts but I don't have time right now to put them all down. I need to not be a doormat and call it as I see it. My $.02

5 Wands Krom Hawk - Personal DNA

2006-07-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

More about me:

My Personal Dna Report

4 Swords Odin Salamander (?) - Current Matters

2006-07-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

I hesitate to put it this way, but working the 3rd Step of the fellowships allied toward recovery of our disparate split-off selves as they manifested (and continue to manifest) themselves through addictions of all sorts compels me to put it thus:

We have the government we deserve.

This isn't exactly the most original thought. Alasdair Gray averred as much in his mindboggling opus Lanark, which has been on my mind of late. I've also been letting PKD's insights about Empire--that to fight it is to become "assimilated into the Borg" as it were--marinate this abstinent and sober body. But I must surrender to the fact that even though there's a part of me that agrees with Julia Roberts ("He's not MY president"), that indeed GWB is indeed the King of my Dark Side, and as such, he is the apotheosis of all I find dark and scary in the world, or rather, dark and scary in myself.

The man is the king of projections of "the Other", and as such, he has declared me (another himself) his enemy. The violences continue to splinter and splinter and splinter, and it's kind of like the broomsticks in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which keep reproducing more and more broomsticks sort of like fractal patterns. "The Other" keeps bifurcating as more and more of us infidels are concocted through the smoke and mirrors of media-savvy.

I had this realization the past week after sharing about the toxic sludge that we're all slogging through. I know that so much of this is beyond my control, but I need to focus on what I can do through the situation. And involving my personal pantheon in the issues is perhaps the best place to start. I get inner promptings about a lot of stuff, and I've been having more dreams related to my job. Though I seem to be having dreams about every era of my life--college, high school, elementary school. For all I know, I'm having dreams about the future. Last night I had a dream where Albany, Seattle and Denver all converged into a seamless whole. Interestingly, I was headed to a mall called "Turtle Creek," which has connotations of "Turtle Mountain" to me--the Ojibwe name for the North American continent. This mall seemed to be next to the Starbuck's on State & Pearl downtown. And I was going to see a film upstairs in the cinema there. Perhaps I need to rise to the occasion and dream my wildest dreams, for recovery of my split-off selves seems to herald ever greater visions.

I've had moments in the past where I've been able to give thanks for the Neocons and their incompetent degeneration. I still have to send out even more FAG, actually probably FLAG (Forgivness, Love, Acceptance, Gratitude). Gaia loves us all, after all, even as we attempt our self-destruction. Perhaps the attempt will be successful, I don't know. The Norse had a vision of Ragnarok where only Freyja survives. Maybe I can invoke Freyja myself, or rather "Freyja Self" (ar-ar-ar!) (I think she finds that mildly amusing--thwack! or maybe not!)

I keep thinking there's more to do, though. Some things are coming to fruition. A couple of my poems will be published by a local magazine this month, and I submitted an article addressing my concerns about community to a bi-monthly gay magazine in the Northeast. Perhaps these will develop into fruitful areas of endeavor. I feel warm and juicy about it all.

When I contemplate my Triple Soul, Talking Self seems to be a rich and vibrant green! It's the height of summer, and T.S. seems to be expressing that very nicely. All in all, I feel fairly excited about life in general. Thank you Goddess and God!

10 wands Hekate Fairy - Thoughts on the Calendar & Astrology

2006-06-30T09:44:00.000-04:00

It's been a few months since I've instituted this Deity-animal guide model a la the Mayan Calendar, and I need to say a few things about it. I'm not sure that I have the animals right, so I think I'd better let them take over and say "It's me today" vs. my trying to impose an order. I have a feeling that some of them will stay right where they are, or they'll switch around slightly. I particularly have difficulties keeping track of the 8 and 9 and 18 and 19. For all I know though, the critters might decide to totally change things around. I could use a shake up.

(I am in a burner zone btw. My next burner day is Sunday, July 2 which will be a Hades-Sphinx day. Sphinx seems to work at #16. By my calendar, my boyfriend would be an East-Goddess/Sphinx. (Most likely Athena, in his case.) But #6 might be Wolf or Bear or Otter. I'll have to let that decide itself.)

As far as the Deities go however, I think the system works pretty well. The order does seem appropriate to me personally, and that's where things should stand. Today definitely feels like a Hekate day, and yesterday was a Cerridwen day. The deities seem pleased that they rotate over 13 days.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if they also fit with the planets, and perhaps even the signs of the Zodiac. Perhaps with the addition of Ophiuchus to the menagerie, there's another level of correspondence. Again, I'd have to go with the intuitive there, and I wouldn't think of the signs as being "ruled" by the deities. There's affinity, but not necessarily dominance.

8 Cups Cerridwen Beaver

2006-06-29T08:57:00.000-04:00

Edit: I wrote this poem over lunch hour, and it's about today's Goddess.

"Cerridwen"

I'd like to know more stories of you,
mystery goddess of the cauldron.
The first time I heard your name, a snap
of recognition puthed into awareness.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

Yes, you had the most beautiful girl,
the son whose face only you could love.
Chased over land, water, air and ate
Gwion Bach with a flap of your wings.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

After the chase ended with stomach
full of corn, your belly later became full
with a new life, that would become he
of the Shining Brow, Sexy Taliesin.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

Mother to great bard, what else is known?
It's as if all the other legends
of your deeds fell into that boiling
vat that holds the keys to your healing.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

I know you as Steward, the Mountain
of Playwriting. I've visited there
many times without knowing. I trek
to you, Inspiration Dispenser.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, bless this hand that holds pens.
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, push this hand 'cross the page.

***********

Over at astroworld.us, the latest thread is called "Had Enough?" This apropos question has hovered over the world for the past six years or so, since that fateful night of November 2, 2000 when the old fan's fecoflagellation started happening. Because of my awareness of the addiction process, I know that some people have a bottomless appetite for misery. They can't get enough suffering it seems. They're like alcoholics, but instead of booze, it's just suffering that gets them all high--though it takes more and more of that misery to get them into "the zone."

Personally, for the rest of us, I hope that fatal dosages of TheoBelloThanatoCorporate MiseryTM inoculates these people into the arms of deathelz and soon. Perhaps I'm venting a bit here, but I feel ensludged by the toxicity that surrounds us all. Am I supposed to eat all this biliousness and send it away, like shamans of old? Or am I supposed to do something else with it?

Last night I went to an Al-Anon meeting just so I could try to get a perspective on this mishagoss. Perhaps I need to go on a media fast, I don't know. It does get to be a bit much. In the meeting I realized how much of my perspective has been formed in the crucible of the dysfunction I grew up inside, that all of us grew up inside whether it had infected our families via the mechanisms of booze/drugs/compulsive eating/compulsive sex/toxic belief, what have you. Television injected the Dys into our homes, as the messenger of Empire. And I guess ultimately it really does come back to working on my own stuff in conjunction with living alongside this sick and twisted Empire that interpenetrates with my evolving-gnostic self.

I need to own that I've undergone a gnosis myself. Recovering from food addiction was the single most important thing I've ever done, and it cleared away so much of the muck of my life. I want to own my power and connect with the best and brightest future self now possible. I sometimes see that fellow, actually. For some reason, he/I look(s) like a throwback to shamanic cultures or a native medicine man. At least that's how my point of wisdom appears when I meditate on the Pearl Pentacle. This gnosis is ongoing, however. It's not something that I do once and it's done. As we say in "the rooms", I can't keep it unless I give it away.

Moon Krom Goat

2006-06-28T12:22:00.000-04:00

"Strange Choices #1"

Our choices are so strange today.
I don’t honestly know sometimes.
Do I believe what some would say?
That I must choose security
over freedom? That multiple
options of toothpaste availing
takes precedence over water
that’s free to everyone? Scoundrels
are looking to patent sunlight
and even the air we breathe, as
if they invented oxygen!
Satan-Jehovah works overtime
to insert his archons everywhere
and pollute each mind with ego’s
gossamer rewards. I say no
thank you. Give me liberty
I crave, or the other freedom
That lies in death’s sweeter embrace.

************

Strange Choices #2

Our choices are so strange today.
Sometimes I find myself at loss.
These folks whose sole business it seems
to provoke rage, fear, despair
to pack flocks into their churches,
who bleat intolerance at us
because their vinegar language
turns us off to their Saklas-God.
Clearly a form of insanity
holds by the wee-and-curlies these
self-styled Godly ones (O whither
that most unfortunate trademark).
The thing I don't get is how
these corrupted thuglatans go
unquestioned by the erstwhile
guardians, the fourth-estate whores
seem willing to receive Reverend
Almond Tinfoilhutte-Toller
and all Brittany and Tyler
Christofascist-Whites on the air
as the defenders against fact.
"On the left, we have the ocean
and its suspicious supporters
and on the right, the Right Reverend
will assail the seas for their grievous
mischief wetness! Watch the debate
over water's ev'lest wetness
How do we curb the ocean's onslaught
wave after wave, wicked moisture
pounds at the poor beaches! Tonight
at 11, join the Dream Team
Caspar Leche and Blanche Brotchen
take on this most potent issue.
You depend on them. Bet on it."

************

Strange Choices #3

Our choices are so strange today.
Where I wish to go is oddest
I'll admit--I'm looking forward
to seeing the Tower collapse
entirely. O Salamanders
Sylphs, Undines and Gnomes, please unleash
your elemental energies 'gainst
Black Iron Prison enslaving
our hearts, our spirits and our minds!
Cast a thunderbolt at Babel's
ivories and return us all
to our earthsome origins
where we can once again steward
this mystaculous orb and make
it shine with verbundance once more.
Guide my choices toward the simpler
and the greener options. I will
write poems and plays to that end
perhaps showing what's possible
in these improbable and dark times
even as I let myself out to help
you till the soil to grow the crops,
as I exert my back to lift sacks
of grain and vegetable onto carts
to give nourishment to others
as I sustain myself. I long
to cast off my civved persona,
and be in fertile nakedness
with you in your nudity grand
on this wholesome feast of planet!
I'll admit this fondest dream
seems impossible, impractical now.
rising oil and gas prices point
attention to where and how we
grow food we need to feed ourselves.
And thus I act as if the peak
of our technic heyday is past,
and seek now to be kind to you.
Let me be the stranger, dearest
Blanche du Bois's unknown to me now
within earshot of this poem.
I hope you remember kindness
with your simple version thereof
should either of us be in need,
for even that problem upcoming
is overcome when together
we come to meet it in common.

No one's smarter than all of us.

Hierophant Dian-y-Glas Iguana

2006-06-27T14:33:00.000-04:00

I have a burner day coming up in 5 days. Yippee for me

Here's a poem I wrote yesterday (Knight of Wands Xochiquetzal Jaguar):

Xochiquetzal

Flowers have to be tough! Who knew?
This goddess takes no prisoners,
that much is for sure. No sappy
bitch of brood-tits she! Ho ho ho,
she’ll slap me upside this empty
space I call my MFA’d head,
send me on solo committee
toward unasked-for resolutions.
Like that other Little Flower
of small-town France, Xochiquetzal
may inspire the insipid ones--
annualéd pansies, snapdragons
froth out blither-nanities
as they will. I seek thorny rose
return or tulips’ recurrent
perennial philosophy.
“Thanks very much, Quaff my fragrance,
but take care of my sharpened pricks,”
she seems to say, Aztec goddess
of spring’s awaken and budding blooms.
She stared me down this grand morning
after my Ha Prayer and writing.
Nothing hostile, but not warm-fuzz
either. No nonsense, day-by-day
growth from one sunrise to the next.
That’s what I can expect these six
weeks from Litha to Lughnaghsad
with my visiting East Goddess
who’s with me from Midsummer to
Fall’s begin. Ah, bounty! Thou hast
a lyrical and dulcet name
I trill it into this northern
air and welcome the moments when
I’ll dance naked in the rainfall
to celebrate your arrival.
Xochiquetzal, Xochiquetzal!
Bless me with your supplest strength,
Ye lover of women and soft
men who love other fellows. I
Catch your scent and send it beyond.

Devil Hermes Deer

2006-06-23T10:45:00.000-04:00

The Devil card in the Tarot is quite interesting, and I liked The Gnostic Tarot's take on it--that it does represent darkness and things that we'd rather not face, but that also in the path toward integration and wholeness, we need to shine a light on these things.

Like with the notion of cleaning my home: there's still this "abyssal" feeling (as opposed to abysmal?) that feels like I'm dangling over a precipice. There's some incredibly powerful "force" that really doesn't want me to go to the place of having a clean home. I don't get it, it's not something rational, and it doesn't want any part of that. And so I have to patiently shine my light on the "demon" that clutches at this illy behavior.

I have encountered these critters before and I'll probably continue to encounter them as I move on this path to becoming whole. This one feels particularly repulsive, but there's some gunk-covered beauty underneath the slime, just as there was when I went on that Medicine Walk last year and discovered "Soporis" clutching at my point of passion. This lizard creature has been set free and who knows where he's awandering these days!

Sacredness and Everyday Reality

2006-06-22T14:36:00.000-04:00

The past few days I've been of low energy, probably because I have a wee case o' pink eye. I started feeling sluggish on Sunday night truth be told, and I carried myself around feeling "unnecessarily" burdened. I'm so quick to judge myself.

As I've noted in the last cycle of poems on this blog (my interruption of the "6 Death Pantheon" cycle), I've had to address a very common situation of late, that being my aversion to cleaning my own house. My boyfriend made certain choices a couple of weekends ago that amounted to manipulating us to not spend anytime at my house that weekend. I confronted him about it the next day, and while he acknowledged his manipulation, he was just as clear that he didn't like to be at my place because of the level of squalor I'm comfortable with. While I can rationalize this all sorts of ways, the thing I still needed to face was the pain of this realization, and the pain is complicated.

There's something really disturbing and primal behind my reluctance to clean up after myself. I've been doing little things over the past few days--scrubbed the kitchen floor one day, the bathtub the next, swept the floor of my 'droom today--with the intention of "sweeping the temple" as one Jungio-gnostica has described. That orientation to sacralizing the ordinary has helped quite a bit.

I'm sure that some day soon the deep, dark primal energy will make itself known inside my space, but on some level I'm creating a container for that Familios-like being to emerge. (Or will it be more like Saporis or the demon-turned-angel I encounted at the CBE workshop at Easton last August?) Having approached the broom, the dustpan, the mop and the bucket (and it now occurs to me that I need to BLESS these implements), I am enlarging my sphere in ways I don't even know. It's odd, but I feel that over the past ten days or so, as I've aligned my triple soul a la Starhawk/Thorn Coyle, I am noticing that my Sticky One and my Talking Self are blazing white. I seem to be aurically all aglow for some reason, perhaps because something true and appropriate and potent is taking root inside me as I root myself in my world--O Albany! indeed!

Today as I walked to work, I felt that everything I'm doing and that others are doing is mysteriuosly sacred, even those people who are sitting in front of their TV sets watching Beelweh-Yahzebub knows what and stuffing their faces with non-food, or those people who are actively plotting to sever us all from our inalienable rights (and to forbid the ocean from manifesting wetness in the process and ordering the desert to grow networks of hydrangea next to cactus and morning glories, and, oh yeah, forcing me into heterosexuality).

I wonder if this is how Dumbledore must have felt on his good days.

Chariot Persephone Bear

2006-06-22T11:59:00.000-04:00

IV. Stern King Navigator, the 6 Death Speaks

Plunge right in, I guess. What else
can I do? I don't want to. Really don't.
It's coming up now for a reason. I could
choose to blame X, 1A, 6G6, Mars
for this turn of events. Waste my time though.
It is the right time, that noisome awareness
of Divine focus on raising my character
mumbles its inchoate insensateness.
Even in my oracles, Judgment appears
in the 6th House of health and hygiene.
Ancestors point their bony processes
at the floor, demanding I clean up after
myself. Mayhap it's a sign of more to come
to be removed from my lie? Or just that
I'mve crossed a new threshold wherein
the old warp of working and writing amid
squalor no longer works. The adjustments
made for meetings, food prep and new
commitments, budding relationships, needs
for fun and relaxation and my difficult
schedule must make its way around
the sweeping of the temenos, to sanctify
my abode for The Work as it Continues
As we say in os cuartos, I can't, the Gods
and Goddesses can. I think I'll le them.

Blessings!

Hanged Man Krom Salamander

2006-06-15T16:48:00.001-04:00

III. Voice of G6G

I’m not running away, you’re not pushing
me are you? Yes, we’re in a rough patch
and I’m at a loss as to what to say.
This is something you’re going through, and I
don’t understand, but I understand, you know?
There’s something really deep and really
painful. I’m concerned that you may be
wallowing. You say you’re not. You’re grieving
the fact of your forty-hour a week job—
not that you’ve lost it, but that you’ve even
got one. I don’t have a job like that, though
I work as you know, on my own. I bring in
the rent and the gas and the food and extras.
Oh, there is so much in you, honey! I’m amazed
at all that you’re capable of, but this cleaning
your apartment thing—well it does affect
me. I don’t like being at your place. You say
you want to clean, you’d like to put together
a home-business and do your creative stuff
which I support. The reality is though, you work
for a living. Lots of people balance the forty
with cleaning their houses, with going to meetings,
with working out, meditating, doing their writing,
working their food plan, taking and giving calls
to sponsors and sponsees, fixing up the backyard
having fun, laundry, getting enough rest,
looking for a decent therapist, moving to set
up your own business, and of course, being
in a relationship. You’ve got to pick up the slack,
sweetums, and stop paying attention to how
our culture’s going bye-bye bam-bam, which you
know I hate hearing about. Anyway, I’m tired
of this area of talk. Let’s move on to something positive?

9 Disks Dian-y-Glas Lamb

2006-06-14T11:27:00.000-04:00

"Grief #1 (Cont'd)"

II. Morpheus, voice of Dreamland

A glade beckons? It is the "Fen of the Civilized"
Tranquil it is where the ferns and make grow.
An ecosystem beauteous, balanced, delectable?
It sits atop a dung heap. But take a closer
look... Why it's not a mound o'feces at all!
Urbanity teems inside its busy hiveness.
Lok at the wars being fought, and over what?
So terribly rote, so blandly manufactured.
War? Is that the best these miscreants
can come up with? To keep this whole
pile of self-defined crap going? Oh, but it does seem
to keep the glade beautiful. Yet there's
the smell of plastic about it all. Now that
I look closer, the artificial texture of fronds
dwell close to what was mistakenly taken
for moss, but is just a green chemical slime.
All of it arranged so tastefully to present
"gorgemousness." And now let's catapult
you, dreamer, away from this infernalé
to something more tangible. Take a look
at the Ruined City, your true parayso.
Perhaps it seems just boarded-up buildings
and free-floating refuse, but everywhere
you turn, my sleeping groom-bride, nature
reclaims this fever swamp. Behold your future
changeling! Liberated from indenture
you trudge beneath the ground, your earth
Mother-Father, longing to fly above it
and you can. But it's standing in that grace
(paradox's fine alias) to comprehend deep
mystery of the subway cars shuttling
you between stations of your cross.
You must immerse yourself in the waves
of undulating soil as if Poseidon himself
was surfer king of dirt rather than ocean.
Your choice is more clear dearest one:
Choose your ruination consciously
rather than succumbing to the mere miscues
of the misguidedly leisured. That ant
heap will soon see the revolt of the lower
berths who will break the chains barring
their egress shut, forcing they way upwards
only to discover that the Titanic
ship of maquinacultura Carried itself
an iceberg too far, and without the supports
to ensure significant survival. Nay sleeper
as you waken, remember to flee into ruin
itself, and let Boreas and Notus learn you
their firm, loving, hard lessons and drape
you with their breaths, in recognition
that only through acceptance of what IS
can your human species move through all of it.

8 Cups Vesta Sphinx

2006-06-12T16:17:00.000-04:00

(Hmmm... mysteriously, interior-fire day this. And yesterday was Lugh-Phoenix, while Saturday was Hermes-Fairy. I got myself all aroundgeturned.)

GRIEF

I. Gabriel's Voice

He doesn't stop to think about it.
He gets up, he does his morning
routine, he walks out the door--
is he ready for the day? Never
really quite sure what that niggle
is that crawls around underneath
the skin of his chest. Somehow
he gets to the door of That Building
that houses his daily amnesic draft.
Other people drink, some eat, some others
have compulsive sex to medicate
that maw, that hole in the soul.
He used to partake--they don't work
anymore, so he must attend to that raw
emptiness he chooses not to name. (It's
all right, I've named it for him--Angel
of mercy that I am, I have clear eyes
to d.x. the civilization disease.)
He types, he faxes. He takes messages.
He stares off into space. He takes in
work, revises that which is not his own,
that he can not own, nor wishes
to take on for himself. He eats lunch.
A brief respite, whatever the weather.
He returns to That Building, and repeats
his morning. He connects sproadcially, he
squapes his true Self haphazardly
affixing a persona off a random trademarked
rack of masks approved for the enslaved
class. Then at some point, this Lethe
fog lifts and there he is again, walking home.
His cat is there. His boyfriend has his own
place, unable to tolerate teh accretions
of an unliving existence (and its reminders
of whatever the love is not doing) to be respon-
sible for his own life-force suppuration. Feeds
cat, calls boyfriend--"Hi, bye, love"--makes
dinner, muses about death. Ethylly-deathel
death, bat man, bat man, he sing-songs.
Wondering what a life might be like
post-collapse of all decrepit and old-old-old.
Nostalgia for necros and apocalypse
arrive as the two true loves of his life. A pipe
dream? Perhaps. Only the oil-clock knows
for sure. Even so, he takes off his clothes,
thinks about a clothing-optional town, dreams up
public fucking and jerks out a couple white
ribbons o'cum. Wipes the viscous away and
turns over, determined not to feel what then
washes over him in the land of Morphic Renaissance.

Tomorrow for me is Lugh Fairy

2006-06-09T14:18:00.000-04:00

Because I won't be posting tomorrow, most likely, I decided I needed to post this poem today:

"Lugh"

I dno't know you all that well yet
But I understand some things.
You've decided to be with me
And you'll carry me forward.

Newer projects are emerging--
for example, new abundance
of a different sort I'm used to
which you'll lead me to somehow.

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Even though I hardly know you
I feel we've known forever
of each other's simple beings
we rekindle our kinship.

Unassuming, you stole back inside
Before I was aware I'd missed
you. Your quiet way like light
you inform me you're here to stay.

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Lugh, I now make a home for you
It's your place, yes alongside
in the vanguard of my quickening
toward the life in your light.

You and a certain wisdom goddess
appeared now to assist this man
as he transforms himself amidst
planet's metamorphosis

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Chariot Odin Beaver

2006-06-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

"Od(e)in"

One-eyed, divine one
Driver of Sleipnir
Iggdrasil's brooder
Norns or no norns!

He's a coolish god,
inside from the cold
Bard of the Aesir
My heart he does hold

Originator of runes
Diviner of Wisdom
Integral, universal
Now your presence descends

He sees more than most
Medicine of Old
Healer from Dreamlands
My life becomes gold.

O he sometimes plays tricks
Divide the slain with Freyja
Ice wolves and frost ravens
Nestle at his grand feet.

He's a wiseass god
and a wise guy to boot
Odin of the Northern skies
Bring in change from root.

5 Wands Persephone Goat

2006-06-08T15:55:00.001-04:00

U Que Fazer Cumar?

Todar, rialetto fajul la quila.
Bejuma piarosa que la vija for?
Bolsa mirandu fejula triassi,
corraju xire la torega missa.
Ben traxessi pod' a lemma
firuca bexaala ensomno
foren dissa morrer fazer, taz
que micolu fencha bistecca.

**********

My Friend, the Cracks

Shells are meant as temporary.
We harm ourselves when we make
them permanent, epoxying fisures
when they appear. Better to allow
the breaking apart to proceed
on nature's schedule and align
ourselves with divine timing to creat
the life beyond our wildest dreams.

*********

Time-Freedom #1

It's all really happening at once--
French Revolution, Constructing
the Great Wall. World War VI--
whatever. All these lives came
and went, come and gone, will
come and will go, all currently.
Step with me into Real-Myth Time
with Thoth. Let us laugh at it all.

*************

Time-Freedom #2

I've got work to do, still
haven't quite gotten the lucid
dreaming down. I fall asleep
and I'm in the reality of THERE.
This is the Other World, and each
night I lay down to awaken
to Reality, where I feel truly free.
What's the next step to break down that wall?

*********

Who knows why #060806

I dream a lot about subways.
For some reason to get to where
I need to go, I need to travel
beneath ground level to pop up
from below at my chosen point
o'destiny. Other people dream-fly
across skies to their arrivals. Me,
Mother Earth pushes along. Don't mind. Much.

**********

On the Road to Xibalba Be #1

We are stepping into our shells,
this ravenous time's end approaches.
I am just one imaginal cell
on this huge larval badoy.
And I've appeared to herald what's next--
we will crystallize a chyrsalis
inside of which we will transform
into a brand new form of beauty.

**********

On the Road to Xibalba Be #2

"Acceptance is the answer to all
my problems." So says O Libro Grande.
I'm just another post-American-to-be,
other post-Americans-to-be thereamongst,
no guru, though I have things to teach.
More of a wayshower really.
I share that unfortunate history
of having gone through something.

*********

Could I be a 6-6-6?
It's kind of academic
at this point, as there have been
translation errors from before.
"6-1-6" evidently
is the "true" number o' da Beast!
But I'm a 6-Death, two-thirds
the way there. It's possible
I could be 6 trio
depending on how many
years after a new-fire fest
from the Mayan calendar
which I believe was '60.
"Is it I, Lord? Is it I?" --
I certainly have the laugh!

Magician Hades Jaguar

2006-06-06T15:14:00.000-04:00

Toxicity seems to be everywhere about today. I don't know if it's that stupid 6-6-6 thing or what, but I just feel ecchelly-blechel-blech right now. Part of it's that I haven't been getting the best sleep of late. I've been wanting to read, and I did make it to a bookstore to purchase The Gospel of Judas last night. It has done something to me, that much I can say--just what that is, I'm not so sure.

(Funny to read that particular book on 6-6-6. I didn't really think of it till just this minute.)

I feel better now that I've typed these particular words into my blog. The toxic crap just seems to pile higher and higher, and I know it has little to do with me really. I know I'm contributing to it somehow, but the pathway through it is being slowly but surely revealed. Earlier today I went to Facade.com and received three quick tarot readings. Each one featured the 10 of Swords. I don't really put too much stock in Facade's interpretations of the cards. They're a tad too cookbooky for my taste. I think of the 10 of Swords as being over-the-top aggressiveness and calling people on baseless grandstanding. It's actually a card of high comedy. Ten swords in the back of a fellow laying on a beach under a black sky? Bwaah!

I also think of the 10 of Swords as the Satirist's card. In the Cosmic Tribe, a beauteous naked fellow is being hoisted on "his" own petards. It's called "Delusion" there. It seems that with all the horrific stuff out there, the thing to do with the archonic consciousness is to laugh at it. Just laugh at O'Reilly, laugh at Rumsfeld, laugh at Pope-on-a-Rope etc. The risk sometimes is that the intellect can get too carried away, and people can get hurt. "Ill-dignified", I'd say the card could also be that of the Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib abusers. It could also be the card of Andersonville and of the prison guards at Auschwitz and other camp-like places, who use humor "to vent." Yeah, like "look at how that prisoner's balls bounce when we kick them off his body--hi-larious, bud!"

That's the kind of toxicity I feel I'm experiencing btw, and I don't know exactly from whence it comes. I just got up and did a quick banishing of the energies I'm experiencing. Interstingly enough, someone has a window open and I'm letting the negativities be blown away.

May this message find you well and toxin-free. Blessings.

9 Disks Freyja Butterfly

2006-06-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

Interesting dream: I was involved in a discussion of The Lost Gospel of Judas. What was particularly curious about the dream, which wasn't interesting in and of itself per se--in fact, I don't remember what happened in the dream--was that each time I awoke due to my natural callings, I went back to sleep and picked up almost right where I left off. It was as if I was in a dreamtime seminar that was happening for several individuals communicating through dream space. I had asked my dream source what my next step is regarding my creativity. And this is the dream I had. I'd also had another dream about an address: 1300 Cook Street. Have no idea where this is. There might be a 1300 Cook in Denver, on the corner of (guess what?) 13th and Cook. Or perhaps a 1300 South Cook somewhere near the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Just kinda interesting stuffels.

Princess Cups Dian-y-Glas Hawk

2006-06-01T13:45:00.000-04:00

"Dian-y-Glas: I, Devotee Hereof"

He called to me young.
I was eleven
when I had a dream.
Was watching TV
Afternoon movie.
It was at the break.
Kitty Carlisle, guest
chatted up the host
Giddily gushing
over this wondrous film.
Set my world ablaze
it did! He showered.
The film would cross-cut

and fade from one part
of his sexy blue
body' to another.
Water clung to his
amazing broad chest.
It showed everything!
His butt, succulent
c*ck and balls. I felt
touched by Lord Jesus
himself. Christ can
send mesages in nude
men taking showers
in deeper blue tones.

Many years later,
I was now forty--
whole Saturn cycle
gone, surfing the web.
A practitioner
of Feri Wicca
Had a blue god shrine.
Aha! Here he is!
Dian-y-Glas instead
of Greco-Jew name
He imbues many
men with his substance
irresistible.

I sat at my desk
subterranean
in awe and in tears.
I had no idea
that he'd been with me
all this time. I breathe
him in every day
now. His special blue,
a color of twilight
sky right after sun
sets in the lonesome
west. I throw open
my heart doors to you!

Dian-y-Glas, known too
as Melek Taus, I--
Devotee hereof.

Post-...

2006-05-31T13:54:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-31T10:56:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-05-30T11:49:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-05-26T12:12:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-05-25T11:42:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-05-23T16:06:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-15T16:45:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-12T14:53:00.000-04:00

(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

2006-05-11T16:47:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-10T17:08:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-08T16:38:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-08T13:34:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-05T11:49:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-04T16:17:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-03T15:04:00.000-04:00

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

Queed of Disks Hades Dragon

2006-04-28T09:48:00.000-04:00

I meant to try and post something yesterday (Art/Freyja/Jaguar), but I couldn't get around to it. Yesterday, I was surfing on my normal sites when I came across this observation from Matt Savinar at LATOC, that was about people who "embrace" peak oil--that we have some personal agenda in doing so. It may be anticapitalist, anti-suburb, anti-this, anti-that or I would imagine pro-primitive or whatever.

I was glad to read this, though at another time when I was a very different person, I probably would have been deeply mortified by this notion. I would have felt "Aha, caught!" and been deeply resentful and wounded. But because I can objectify certain aspects of my experience that cause me trouble, I can look at the situation and honestly ask "does that apply to me?" and go through it a bit more rationally to get to a deeper answer.

And yes, I think I do have agendae. Or is it agendas? It's more than one.

The first one is that I simply am aware that I have a role to play in the transition. Those of us whose birthdays are in the 1960s have Pluto and Uranus in Virgo. (At least from 1960-1968.) Those of us whose b'days are from 1964-66 have a bit more intensity, because Pluto & Uranus were conjunct in 1965 and Chiron opposed the conjunction between 64 and 66 when it wasn't as tight for orbs as many would like to see for conjunctions. I was made aware of the conjunction's effects in my early 20s and understand that people about my age have an extremity about us. We have some role to play in this transition, and I am both patient and impatient to get to work on it, even though I have very little idea of what "the work" is about.

Though I'm getting some ideas about that, which brings me to a second agenda that I know of. I need to post an observation I've made recently about a theme to some of my postings I've made on other people's websites. I have a feeling people's eyes glaze over when I mention that I lost 120 pounds through the assistance of a 12-step program, and that I think that the Steps and the Traditions as worked out by the original members of AA can be of great use. The fact of AA life is that it is "organized anarchy." The only requirement for membership in a 12-step group is simply the desire to stop the compulsive activity or intake of toxins. I've written before on how I think our dominator/Empire/civilization culture requires us to become addicts in order to "survive," which would probably be better read as "subsist." To live at the lower threshold of existence. And when we put one substance/activity down, something else like the game of Wack-a-mole pops up. Put down the booze, and the sugar pops up. Get the compulsive sex in order, and then start that cocaine habit. Because to live merely subsisting can not be sustained, and it would be better for people to find ways to abstain from subsistence if possible. Granted, that's not always a possibility, but in our culture, we are spiritually subsisting even as we acquire more and more crap through our unrestrained affluenza. And I'm heartened to see that at least one person has made similar observations about this life. Morris Berman in "Dark Ages America" pointed out how empty our lives are in his observations about fundamentalist Christianity and that it's distracting us from what we need to focus on to become sane again. Of course, I've also noted that the f.C. is a belief addict whose toxin is in the belief that "my way is the only right way for everyone." To act on that thought requires spiritual bankruptcy and moral death.

I think it's time for Empire Anonymous to start happening. "We admitted we were powerless over hierarchical thinking and head divorced from heart, and that our lives had become unmanageable." OK, that's not perfect, but my point is that AA and other fellowships do present a model for a way of life that can be a bridge out of dominator culture. It allows people to take care of whatever their business may be, but also to remember their primary purpose, which is to maintain their abstinence from the compulsion that would send them back into their misery and/or insanity/death. In any case, I'd like to see if there are other people out there with whom I can have a conversation about how how, one day at a time, they move away from the Empire/Addiction culture and into something more reasonable and humane.

Other agendas will probably pop up. But I seek to become right-sized in relation to Sex/Pride/Self/Power/Passion on the Iron Pentacle and Love/Law/Knowledge/Liberty/Wisdom on the Pearl. We are all agents acting upon one another in this reality, and I for one wish to be much more conscious of what effects I have on others and on this planet. I seek to be right-sized in all my affairs, and carrying the principles of 12-step and tradition work assists me as much as my meditations do. In fact it's because of those principles that I even do meditate today.

More to come.

Queen of Wands Cerridwen Lamb

2006-04-25T11:20:00.000-04:00

Interesting. I've drawn the Queen of Wands 3 of the last 5 days. I guess something is trying to get my attention.

Today's the one-year anniversary of my getting together with my boyfriend. A year ago today, I was coming down from Alexandria Bay, New York after having gone on a medicine walk--what is basically a junior version of a full-on Vision Quest. I managed to have quite a powerful experience upstate, within shouting distance of ye olde Canadian border. Coming off that powerful experience, I was ready enough to start to enjoy the fruits of a budding relationship. I still don't really know how it happened, though I drew a Goddess card from Doreen Virtue's deck. Athena popped up. I sat with the card and listened for her voice and she just said, "walk to the window." I dithered a bit, but as I started to walk to the window, Jody emerged from his office and looked at me. I told him what had happened, and we got closer together and then he said "she's telling you to kiss me." Which I had to say was what was on order. (bashful grin)

What a glorious Monday that was! We're going to a fancy restaurant tonight to celebrate.

There are all sorts of small changes around me and in my schedule. Today I worked out at the Y at a little before 6 a.m. I joined about 10 days ago, and have been working out either after work or on the weekend. This is the first time I did so at the time I usually meditate. After doing the anaerobic part, I got on the treadmill and let that take me into an internal place. I could even stare at a white wall, and thank Goddess, the television was off!

The tulips are everywhere abloom, in time for the upcoming tulipfest. Jody and I are planning on going to the Dandelion Gathering of Reclaiming in a couple of weeks as well. And the price of gas is going up. I am thinking of Jody's responsibilities this summer and his need for the car. I've been able to do without just fine, thus far. That has been a bit contingent on Jody's vehicle however. We had a talk about that when we started dating. A part of me would like to get a car, though I see what's transpiring around us all, and I wonder about it. I'm thinking "Enjoy it while it lasts, dude."

Queen of Wands Vesta Fairy

2006-04-21T16:02:00.000-04:00

Hm. Typing the heading gave me a sort of giggle. Today is to be a homey, carefree sort of day for making art, and lo and behold, I plan to read my "Persephoniad" at the Albany WordFest tonight, if I can get myself a slot. I think it should take 3 minutes. If I can only read the first three segments though, that's finezels.

I looked out the window of my workplace and saw the gas station's markers showing that gas is now over $3/gallon. Yesterday I posted about gratitude, and I stand by what I said. Last night I observed that gratitude is like a peace that, instead of sitting passively, circulates through my body in a constant motion. It's a flutter, I guess. I like the FAG acronym--

Forgiveness

Acceptance

Gratitude

(T-hee! Life, the queerest o' the queer, if we but follow ye middle way. Thanks Thomas the Rhymer!)

I'm thinking FAG is certainly what my local environment needs.

Male Lovers Xochipili Beaver

2006-04-20T16:01:00.000-04:00

Gratitude. That's my most awesome fuel.

I wake up each day, and I say a prayer of gratitude over the breakfast I make. When I remember it, I try and say a blessing over the lunch I make for work the next day. I try and remember to bless my food before dinner as well.

During this glorious spring, I send gratitude to the nature spirits and the fey of Washington Park. I walk down State Street from my awesome apartment (for which I am also so grateful!) and past the State Capitol (Cappy! The awsome woofers!) and the D&H Building/SUNY Systems Admin Building (Aurora Petra Majesta), and get a sense of the feelings and sentiment of the spirits of the city of Albany. I send them blessings as well, even sending physical touch to the Woofers. (Odd I suppose that the State Capitol's energy is canine. But that's what I sense. I don't call it, I just accept it.)

I send gratitude to the Goddess and the God at work. No one knows this is what I do when I raise my arms, seeming to stretch. Actually, I like the stretch, but it's a side benefit of "breathing one up to my sacred dove" and asking the Goddess to inhabit my heart chakra.

Gratitude is the name of the game each day. I wake up with it and I go to bed with it, if I'm not so exhausted that I forget, as sometimes happens.

The other night I awoke with a nameless fear. I came across a meditation recently "I am not my body." Someone else augmented and said "I am not my pain." To this, in that moment, I added "I am not my fear," which helped to disentangle the fear entity which had lodged itself temporarily in my physicality to separate and leave. The next day, I thought it's not my fear. I am not fear, is how I now say it. Fears do come and go, but because of my meditation practice, they don't stay for very long. I clean them out daily. Perhaps it's an apotropaic act, an act that childishly wards off "evil." (Pain. Fear. Despair.) But these things do have power when appropriately used.

And the other day, I realized I can even be grateful for the religion-drunks, those who've drunk from some toxic belief cocktail or mainlined junky doctrine. The sugar comas of the neoconservatives and the fundamentalist whatevers, addicted to hate and biliousness. I'm grateful for their negative example, of course. Pat Robertson and El Arbusto show me what I decidedly don't want. And they give me something to laugh at, something for which my laughter is a healing elixir, though they experience it more as peroxide to a wound, or as the entities inside the darkness experience light.

Those are my thoughts for the day. Those and that I'm excited about WordFest. I haven't signed up for a slot in the Open Mic--hope I can still scarf one up. I got an inspiration the other day for a story. Whether I get one or not, I'll post it. It's set about 1,000 years ago in this Mid Hudson-Valley region, and it's about the dream of a Medicine Man named Broken Wing, who wakes up from a vision of the future, that he experiences as a nightmare and a huge responsiblity. It's sort of a myth for our time, I guess. It came to me in a morning reverie, post meditation & offjerking. [!!!]

Tower Persephone Jaguar

2006-04-17T16:39:00.000-04:00

Spoke with my Mother yesterday. It's always a trip to speak with an O'Reilly-head. I love my mother, but I also know that she's deep in the clutches of something much larger than she or I can even attempt to do battle with. I mostly don't contest her.

On the immigration issue she said, "It's really very simple. Just keep 'em all out." Now, at first I couldn't let that pass, and I think I might have gotten a gentle point across, that the Racist Right really complicates the issue. I said there were emotions involved, and my Mom, the Libra with no planets in water, said "You have to leave the emotions out of it."

Easier said than done, right?

The truth about this issue is generally pretty ugly and gross. Corporatists of course favor race-to-the-bottom immigration. Racists favor erecting walls at the borders with snipers to "shoot 'em all and let the WRASP god sort 'em out." (I inserted the 'R' to add "rich" to the WASP acronym, for the Archonic Jehovah/Yaldabaoth is a rich-man's mirror-image deity. Invisible Donald Trump/Pat Robertson Cloud Being as it were.) To have an honest discussion on this topic would have been a marvel, to say the least. It blew my mother's mind that Wal-Mart (of which she is no fan, at least) is interfering with Port Security. What good's a wall going to do when you've got a corporate fifth column at work at the ports?

At some point, I realized it was better I just let my mother go off on her toxic way. She's of the school of thought that Peak Oil is a fabrication, a destructive mirage. Mother, bless her heart, also eschews the Armageddonists' insanity. But she really doesn't want anything to besmirch the fantasy of how we Americans live our lives and what sorts of difficulties we foist on others the world over. By her lights, I'm just a negative person, even though I mostly feel positive about what's about to boil over everywhere. Sort of like Jesus Jones "there is no place I'd rather be [than] right here right now, watching the world wake up from history."

I'm hoping that because I really do work at accepting "what is", at least as I understand "what is," will be the greatest service I can offer to anyone in Albany or anywhere for that matter. I have no idea who, if anyone reads this blog. I know there are a couple of ye stalwarts out there. And one of these days, I hope to post a link to various PDFs of my longer opuses I've been at work on. Currently, I'm attempting to write a Shakespearean 5-act play about marriage, art, walk-ins, work, the tripartite world, etc. It's a rewrite of a script I started years ago and shelved when I started working at law firms and "saw how the world REALLY worked." I have some fun little plays from that era as well--including the "Eight of Swords" I posted last week.

For today, I accept my mother's denial. May the belief b'ankey she clutches tightly to herself serve her for as long as humanly possible. Ditto for my brother and sister and everyone I know who currently has hedged some bet. For my part, I'm educating myself and taking quiet actions, ever reminding myself that pawns in a chess game often are the most powerful pieces because they're so quiet and slow, and easy to dismiss. (My hero!) I have no desire to be a guru, or to toot my own horn too loudly, else the stand-out nail gets hammered. In the meantime, it serves me and serves others and serves deity and guide alike to be kind and thoughtful in all my interactions with others.

I like where I am today. It's working just fine, even though there's evidence to the contrary. I'll integrate that at my leisure--after all, I do have time for that pursuit. At least I'm aware that I do. The three A's--awareness, acceptance, action--occur in a certain order by design. My awarenesses grow, my base of information accumulates more stuff and becomes knowledge that hopefully distills even more significantly into wisdom. (And Prayer and meditation do wonders.)

3 Disks Freyja Deer

2006-04-14T15:16:00.000-04:00

Interesting meditation today. Realized that I needed to switch the Above and Below god and goddess so that the order of 1-13 is:

Dian-y-Glas, Krom, Cerridwen, Hecate, Freyja, Hades, Star Goddess, Persephone, Odin, Hermes, West God (Xochipili until Beltane), Vesta, East Goddess (Kwan Yin).

Also, I thought I needed to post this song that I wrote years ago for a series of jaundiced short plays I penned called Furcht, Elend LLP: An Olio of Oiliness for These Unctuous Times. Furcht means fear in German and Elend means Misery. I was working for a law firm that seemed to relish going through its staff like cannon-fodder. We really were meat for the JD wolves at that place. Here 'tis. The song is entitled "Eight of Swords", in honor of the Rider-Waite card of the same image:

http://www.learntarot.com/bigjpgs/swords08.jpg

(The following is the stage direction:
Eight swords stand in the ground. OCTAVIA SCHWERTER, a timid woman in her thirties, enters and puts on a blindfold and binds herself loosely with rags. She sings "Eight of Swords."

OCTAVIA
"I put this blindfold o'er my eyes
because I despise the things that I see
I place these binds on my wrists
'cause there's I'm helpless to affect
my own reality

"Maybe I'm selective
I see things so defective
I can't make an elective
to move out the way

"If I had some choices
to express my voices
and make correct noises
to brighten up my day.

"Maybe my values are wholly misplaced
the golden rule seems so quaint, old-fashioned.
Maybe it's time I tried on a new face
one that has terrible teeth made for gnashing

"My issue is i've got goals to pursue
deserve a better life and you do too

take it from the rich
they can tell you which
one son of a bitch
selling drugs or pitch-
ing their wares in the malls and the markets
best line their guts as they lining their pockets

Who do I seek to emulate?
Is it learned or is it innate?
What can I choose to simulate?
Can I keep from becoming bait?

I'll position myself as unassailable
unmovable, unmoved, unavailable
except to the most privileged, exalted ones
sharp scales not soft skin covering their organs

"I can't rest until I start the transformation
into someone who knows how to use information
there's only one question that remains
with three variations on that refrain:
How much of a shark do I become?
How much of a shark must I become?
How much of a shark can I become?”

6 Swords Hecate Bear

2006-04-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

(I drew the 6 of Swords yesterday as well. Odd that I would draw the same card two days in a row, but there it is. It happens every once in awhile.)

This week seems to be filled with even crazier news than before. Perhaps it's because the craziest aspect of what's going on (and of course not talked about except as general grousing) is that fuel is creeping up to $3.00/gallon. I'm curious what the tipping point will be to see others start to talk en masse about the Involuntary Powerdown will be. Will it be $3.50/gallon? $4.00? Do I hear $5?

Someone mentioned offhand that the price will be whatever people can pay. I'm not so sure. It will be curious to see what people do as the price of gas starts to rise and rise and rise. I'm wondering how it will affect everything else we do, and how we'll not only deal with the situation, but each other.

Btw, I did see V for Vendetta this past weekend, and while I do recommend it, while I think it is a wonderful piece of art, I also recognize that it's propaganda for liberals. It'd be nice to think it might inspire people to actually come out for some radical sorts of actions. But I'll sit and wait on that.

Princess of Cups/Hermes-Salamander (Fire Elemental)

2006-04-06T16:08:00.000-04:00

Not been blogging much of late. Have wanted to, because I'm in a temporary writer's block again, due to structural concerns of having a 40-hour/week job. Over the last three weeks, I worked quite a bit of OT as well, and didn't have time to put anything down.

I was writing in my journal yesterday, yearning to be creative. Oh, my did I so wish to be in "the zone". For my belated Ostara/New Moon ritual last week, I threw a tarot reading on my creativity. My ally is ye olde Herm(es)it. It never occurred to me that Hermit and Hermes were of course interrelated. Could be that to find oneself in Hermitage is a devotion to the messenger god? Getting quiet to receive those messages was what I longed for yesterday and still do today.

I wrote a little poem on this today:

Twenty minutes is not time enough!
Dive deep into Hermit waters
after noshing on my healthy lunch?
How mad do I have to be here?
You try and create a something
that will speak a profoundest truth
in the space of a noontime break!
Ah, I need to choose gratitude
nonetheless, for my forty-hour
shackles (at least while they have me)
even if it takes up all the space
that it does, blocking my real work.

***

Today, I do have a modicum of time as the dust here at the firm seems to have settled somewhat. Since I'm typing "on firm time" as it were, I am reticent to put much down on the virtual paper of a blog entry. I have come to like the people I work with very much, and it pains me to see that some people are no longer here.

Some people have been making appearances in my dreams, and not in that ominous "you don't belong here!" way that coworkers have appeared in dreams during jobs I've thoroughly detested. I do belong where I'm at! I know it in my soul. But it's a curious thing to let people in on this in this sickly culture that is dying. I need to release the information at the appropriate time. That day is coming, I sense. But I've dreamt that my boyfriend was a co-worker and one of my actual co-workers was in the dream. I dreamt that my b.f. and another co-worker were helping me move into a Tourist Court-type motel (aka dingbat). I dreamt two of my co-workers were talking as if they were characters in one of my plays, and that one had arranged to whack someone on a Carnivore Cruise. (That's a rather wild play. Think The Sopranos meets How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying by way of My Name is Bill W. Yep. Pretty fun and weird.) And in a meditation recently, I saw my best and brightest self in the personage of the Managing Principal. (Not to be confused with holding the office of the Managing Principal, a job for which I'm so not cut out for 6 ways to Thors'day!)

Anyway, I need to sign this off for today. Hopefully I'll have more tamari.

Lovers (f-f) 1 Dian-y-Glas Wolf

2006-03-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

All right. What's been going on is basically that I've been doing lots of work post-layoffs. Some people were terminated at the company I work at and I went from working for 1 person to working for 3 overnight. That alone was a bit difficult, but it was also an extremely busy week on top of it.

I have been having to check in every day to remind myself of my purpose. I remember that joy is my birthright, as are all the points on the Iron and Pearl Pentacles (Iron: Sex-Pride-Self-Power-Passion; Pearl: Love-Law-Knowledge-Liberty-Wisdom). Joy is always just below the surface; all it takes is a moment to remind myself of that, and some deep breaths of gratitude go a long way to remind me of this.

I did have a chance to go to Akashacon at the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel this past weekend. Heard speakers such as T. Thorn Coyle, Christopher Penczak and Orion Foxwood. Got some insights as to elements that are going on regarding my path through this world. So much more is coming down the pike however. I take comfort (and give it as well) reminding myself to enjoy the present moment. Things are changing all around us, and I know "we ain't seen nuthin' yet." Mr. Foxwood alluded to the notion that if we think addictions are mighty prevalent now, we are in for a major shock. Personally, I think all we see is the tip of the iceberg and that the craziest addicts are holding office and running roughshod over others in service to the vampiric entities attached to their auric bodies.

I'm not saying I'm entirely free of those critters, and perhaps none of us are meant to be. I'm not sure. I discovered one in meditation last week that seemed to be connected to the levels of fear I frequently find myself in at the workplace. (Well, layoffs will increase one's fear load, won't they?) When it realized I'd seen it and sent light to it, it went "Uh-oh" and tried to burrow deeper into my aura, which was kind of funny and pathetic at the same time. I've sent it some light, but it's in denial mode--"I see nothing, I hear nothing, I feel nothing!" Still, I'm on to it, and I remember in my moments of fright that I can choose joy.

One thing I need to say about my recent move to "the Capital District"--a name which will one day have to change for obvious reasons: I am on a short financial leash here, and I don't honestly mind it. I have not been spending my cash on too much frivolity. OK, Akashacon was a bit silly, and my boyfriend and I stayed in a hotel. In a way it's kind of not a frivolity--Jody and I don't get to do as much stuff as we would like. It takes time to be in a couple! I'm not complaining, but I haven't quite figured out the balance between work, creativity, relationship, community-building AND daily upkeep of things like cleaning, bills, grocery shopping etc.

(And of course blogging.)

I'm hoping to post a little later today. There are a lot of things I would like to put out there that need outsorting--separating the old dross from the nuggets. There were things that happened in the Akashacon workshops that I need to sit with and sift a bit.

Good things come to those who wait.

6 Swords 13 Kwan Yin Butterfly

2006-03-27T17:15:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted in awhile. It's been crazy-busy at work the past two weeks. It's not been easy either, as there was a staff reduction. (Almost typed "stuff redaction". Fitting.)

I do have a lot that I need to pour out into the blogosphere, however. I'm hoping to get to all that soon. Maybe even tomorrow. Would be a good day, since it's Dian-y-Glas Wolf.

Priestess/1 Dian-y-Glas Angel or Deer

2006-03-15T14:31:00.000-05:00

First, just go here:

http://www.ranprieur.com/essays/fallsix.html

This is absolutely wonderful, it's exactly what I want, at least the last part when it gets to "You."

Second, I'm still thinking about my Mayan correspondences. Tried to connect with Phoenix, Sphinx and Angel over the past few days, but they "weren't at home." So I'm thinking perhaps it's really Hawk, Bear and Deer, and that perhaps the switch begins at Numbers 4/14.

There are interesting things afoot in my everyday life. Detox and connecting with the beauty of the ordinary are the hallmarks of my life at present. I have a feeling I'm about to start another whole process of change imminently, with the help of some things happening around me in dear old Albany. I don't know how much of this will radiate outward, but I'm guessing that it could be a butterfly flapping wings/100th monkey moment. Don't know why. More to come.

Queen Swords/13 Rhiannon Sphinx

2006-03-14T15:10:00.000-05:00

I don't like drawing the Queen of Swords card. There are certain cards that I get and I go, "great, what sort of day am I going to have." I keep a Tarot Log, and looking back over the days I've drawn this recently, they've not been so bad. Perhaps it's because I've seen that I'm more vulnerable to disconnect my head from my heart. In the deck I use, a sword appears to sever the Queen's head from the rest of her body. When I draw the Queen, I guess I"m sort of on notice that I'll be called on to use my head, but please for goodness' sake, include my heart as well. That has the most important information.

The Queen's energy did inform my meditation (or lack of it) this morning. The seasonal shifting of wintry energy into springing flux has me simultaneously stirred up and tired. I went outside for lunch this afternoon and came back feeling tired. I invigorated myself again by walking up 6 flights of stairs to my floor. That felt so good!

I wish I had some deep insight to offer today. But my 13 Rhiannon Sphinx day is full of quotidian value. I cast an I Ching the other night and got #41: Decrease. It put my everyday life in the context of some sort of loss, but also an embrace of the everyday, the ordinary. I can see the beauty in all that though.

Fine by me.

6 Wands/12 Vesta Phoenix

2006-03-13T15:44:00.000-05:00

Don't really feel much like blogging today. I'm at work, it's a Monday, there's lots to do. Over the past few days I've had the insight that I'm protected. I don't know what that means really. Perhaps it's just that I'm willing to embrace an ordinary life.

I threw an I Ching reading last night and got #41: Decrease. This was called "auspicious" in the sense that, if I am willing to embrace the ordinary, than I will be most fortunate. I moved to Albany as a means to embrace the ordinary, and I'm on-track to getting my wish.

That's about all I can say at the moment. I want to say more, kind of. Just don't want to be typing it into a computer. Sometimes I wish I could access the "Inner Net" that I've heard some people tell about.

10 Cups (Again!) Persephone Chimera

2006-03-10T08:23:00.000-05:00

My best friend finally read my blog! We over-40 folks can get so busy with our lives, and he's in flux with having relocated to Hawaii and now needing to find new employment. In any case, here's what Michael wrote me:

The Mayan Correspondence System meditation sounds like an awesome one on a
couple of levels. First, as you mentioned, it added to your divination
tool box. But second, it’s awesome to me because it points to the
mirroring aspect of our individual, microcosmic selves, and the collective,
macrocosmic self. In more concrete terms, you discovered that you have
been creating an individualized, personal system which mirrors an ancient,
communal system for understanding/divining sacred influences. It’s in
the way it sits in that cross-over point of “Is this me, or is this the
world?” that this meditation jives with me, because in the final analysis,
it doesn’t really matter (does it?). It works if it works, whether it
comes from inside or outside or both.

And yet, do we see that clearly? Do we, toxic folks that we are with our skewed
perceptions, projections and … get that it’s okay because that’s what the
world is doing, too? I myself haven’t trusted it in myself, but I’m changing. Who knows how it turns out…

Now I can’t seem to get back to the first few posts (the recent ones), but I’ll try again tomorrow. This blogging thing is weird to me—I don’t mean to be judgmental; rather, I’m confused—what do you get out of it? Motivation to write daily? Publication (that is, making personal processes public [which I understand IS crucial right now])? Something else? I really would like to know, if you’re willing to
share.

I hope you slept well. I love you.

*****

It's difficult to say what I get out of this blogging thing. For me right now it's a matter of faith that I'm giving of myself in a strange semi-nonymous manner. I don't feel completely anonymous doing this, but I also am not seeking to become a guru or to promote something other than other people's awareness/acceptance/action steps in breaking free of their domestication/civilization/addiction/thought-cancer issues. I'm still struggling with all that myself. I have moments of clarity, yet "the system" or "the Matrix" comes back with different sorts of enticements that boggle my mind. I'm going through something right now, though the message I'm getting from all sides loud and clear is that I am protected no matter what. For the time being.

I don't really know much more than that. I have no idea who reads this blog, though I have come to see that some people do read it. It's rather exciting to have someone link back to me. So far I only know of one wondiferous and illustrious blog that does this, and because of that, I'm one-step removed from several of the other websites out there that I'm obsessively checking each workday and some weekend days when I have a chance to.

Anyway, I may have more thoughts later. It's another 10 of cups day after all. And it's a Persephone day to boot.

8 Disks/7-Star Goddess Wolf

2006-03-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

Dream I had last night: My boyfriend introduces me to a friend of his, an East Village artist named "Jason" or "Jazz" or something like that. My b.f. disappears from the dream after that. I hang with this E.Vil artist, who has all these opinions, and I'm thinking "Ah, to be twentysomething again. Ugh." (No offense to the twentysomethings out there--just that my twenties suc-c-c-c-ckkhnted!! As they probably were supposed to.) This artist was o-so pereniallly disgusted and discontented. We were walking on the west side of Manhattan, on 8th Avenue right after Greenwich and Hudson merge into 8th, toward 14th Street. We were going to catch a bus to E.Vil. (It wasn't referred to that in the dream, just that I like to use it with affection for the place I used to live, a la Soho, Nolita, WeHo, LoDo, etc.)

Anyway, we walk through a patch of broken glass as I'm listening to Jazz/Jason/Jazzon talk a blue streak when I can't walk any further. I'm like, what gives, and I look down and there's this huge piece of glass sticking out of my right calf. I have this big gash there, but I don't feel any pain, that is until I looked down and realize "I'm fucking bleeding. A lot!" And Jazzon looks at me with this glass sticking out of me and asks me "Did you do that on purpose man?" I'm rather horrified and perplexed at this self-interested statement, as I pull the glass out of me and the blood throbs out of me. Sort of reminds me of fecal matter of a diarrhetic nature, the pulsing and the gaping of the hole like an anal-mouth from a William S. Burroughs novel.

I look up, see what I think is a bus and start toward it, bad leg and all. Jazzon has at least the presence of mind to question this move, and pipes up that I need some medical attention. The vehicle turns out to be a semi with those lights atop the car of the vehicle. And a couple of passenger buses heading to Port Authority pass by as well. Then I woke up.

Last night I went to a meeting of a salon of filmmakers and screenwriters in Troy. It was a good thing for me, though I found myself inside an internal struggle that this dream summarizes fairly well. I need to marinate in the mystery of the thing. The preoccupations I had when I was in the writing before my abstinence (anniversary tomorrow--3 years clean of sugar and flour, h'ray for me!) are way different now. I'm actually thinking of using my skill at crafting dramatic materials to point toward a way out of the megalomanic megalopolitan mega-mistake we all live in. The anger is still there, and the 'hipness" factor is still there, though the self-obsession seems to be in transition. There's a lot more thought to put into this, however.

Queen of Swords 6 Freyja Fire Elemental

2006-03-07T15:32:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted a lot of late because I'm in the throes of change. Yesterday (5 Hades/Lamb) I drew "The Universe" card. I am understanding there's a whole world open to me in a way I will have to find out for myself. Things are a bit in flux again, and nothing is really stable. It's all to the good, I feel. I know it is, actually. All is all right.

Princess of Cups/2 (Krom) Hawk "The Persephoniad"

2006-03-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

and yesterday was Chariot/8 Disks (two cards fell out) and 1(Dian-y-Glas) Otter.

I'm Writing again! I've been writing a lot.

Herewith is something I feel especially proud of--"mein Meisterwerk des Moments!!"

“The Persephoniad”
an Alternate Telling of a Primary Myth

I

None suspected she had prayed for it,
that she prepared for parting from Mom
for at least a few weeks. Young Kore
needed adventure. Thus, her dancing
feet took the maiden farther afield
where she sensed he was waiting: The God,
the mysterious caller who’d caused
that glorious azure bloom to grow
just inside hardest Per-Demeter.
As if hypnotized (but not really),
she skipped over to pluck the flower
but found herself plucked by Dis himself.
Grim Hades piloted his dark car
pulled by brawny black steeds glistening,
erupting forth out the richest earth,
from bleak Realm of Ancestry. He scooped
up his kicking, screaming, joyous
prize, she of fearful-happy frolic
and carried off daughter of barley
down to death’s palace in the sad place
that would have Persephone as queen.

II

Oh, scandalous whirlwind honeymoon!
Every bride needs a true vacation
from the world of mediocrity
The Underworld offers its own charms
for newlywed pairs. Orphic rhythms
propel dancers to primal heartbeat
gyrations. The kingdom of those who’ve
outgrown their mortal coils or ceded
them through no fault of their own has yearned
for a radiance such as Kore. To serve
such a one as she, the breathless ones
could only find ecstatic wonder
in coming to her aid at moments’
notice. Valiant Hades, God of Wealth
and Transition, that fun shadow God,
best kept secret, deeply embedded
in grandmother Gaia’s skin, squired his queen
boldly and tenderly. Hades knew
some things about shaking,
rattling and rolling in as many
words as can be conjured forth. What more
could a goddess of harvesting want?

III

Those halcyon days spent in leisure
through Elysium, Lethe, even
Tartarus with its bawdy ’musements
would have to come to abrupt end.
For every couple who elopes or
somehow denies the chance for public
endorsement of their nuptials crashes
’gainst walls of in-law intransigence
sometime. Kore and beau knew they would
soon face Demeter’s enraging song.
The harbingers thereof came thither
to Dis with influx of newly starved
into Ancestry’s kingdom. Legions
emaciated rattled their way
across the River Styx. Overworked
Charon ferried boatload past boatload
of wispy things reduced to structure
with tatters for skin to cover bone.
Psychopomp Hermes who guides the souls
recently dead to that pier betrayed
little resentment at this onset
of fresh death-work thrust upon him, but
one brutal day the Messenger took
the couple aside to apprise them
of mother-in-law’s wacky antics.
“I want for your union to go on,
of course,” he said. “But Zeus and Hera
are concerned for her recalcitrance.
Things cannot last, I fear.” Aboveground
bodies piled up. Below, souls crowded
in. So the wistful couple waited.

IV

Frequently two sides at least compete
to tell their versions of a story.
Historically, the official press
goes something like this: Wrongéd mother
grieves over theft of daughter from safe
shelter. Deeply wounded, she searches
frantically for her filial pride,
abandoning her sustaining work
in the process. Mayhem ensues as Mom
at last discovers the ugly truth
and wanders from the godly compound
pretending to no goddess’ raiment.
A fierce and comic woman dances
without clothes before this Divine One,
getting a laugh at the ultimate
in-joke and Divine Harvest casts off
her mortal cloak, exacting vengeance.
All the parties are called to table
and a deal is hatched wherein daughter
of grain spends half each year Olympus
bound and the other half in Lethe,
blah blah blah. Of course there’s more behind
the story, thank you very much. But Gods
do circle their chariots tightly.
The girl turning woman, has her side
as does her bold betrothed, that God
with overlooked gifts desirable.
None made it their intention to cause
mother-in-law pain, and yes, all knew
that her Smotherhood called for bracing
and healing tonic to pry daughter
from Agriculture’s hysteria.
They underestimated mother’s grief
and the depths to which she could sink.

V

Persephone, Death’s Sweet Goddess speaks:
“The pomegranate was my notion
kinda. I am Divine, with no need
for food but enjoy tasting berries,
squash’s firm texture, most beans and corn.
I eat only for that satisfaction.
Ambrosia is the only nectar
I crave. But the Elysian gardens
offer so much delight. I made it
appear I stumbled into the taste
of those luscious seeds. I knew what I
was doing. I longed to devour all
of those hanging fruits in his garden.
But I stayed composed. Six seeds would not
be ostentatious. It’s a true boon
to be wanted in both my places
rather than just one. Wherever I land,
I bring joyful gladness and relief.
Neither husband nor mother gets me
entire. I am the stuff of desire
itself. The arrangement satisfies
me, for I do grow tired of orchards
of apples, fields of corn and barley.
Those times, I long for my deathly reign.
And thereunder, I oftentimes grow
tired of dispensing tender comfort
forgetfulness to the departed.
Hence I yearn for the air to lift scents
of wildflowers across meadows, vales
and shore, to feel warm Helios’ rays
warm the skin and the land. Really, Zeus
has blessed this grain goddess with the best
of two amazing worlds. I rejoice
thus in my eternal good fortune.”

10 Cups Rhiannon Beaver

2006-03-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to note a theme going on in my observation of life, which is Detoxification. I'm seeing it playing out across a lot of different websites and find it interesting that my Toltec Reading from a couple weeks ago seems to be right on target.

Also, I had a really amazing experience with the Pearl Pentacle today. My point of Love carried over into all the other points, and the guardians of Law, Knowledge, Liberty and Wisdom all gave me the thumbs up. Wild.

And I had a dream about living inside a play I wrote called Adrenaline: A Denver Play, where the characters inhabit a Denver, Colorado that is headquarters to a Fortune 500 Company that has cornered the market on Selective Human Pest Elimination (or what the rest of us laypeople refer to as "contract hits"). I dreamed that one of my coworkers was gabbing with another coworker about how excited she was to go on this whackjob!

Have no idea what it signifies--Thomas Moore suggests in Care of the Soul that we let a dream marinate over time. I have a couple of those now to ponder. The world of my dreams seems to be a tad less surreal than the world of my waking. At least from an Internet-access-to-news perspective.

Empress 12-Vesta Goat

2006-02-28T10:53:00.000-05:00

Last week was both my Mayan birthday and my bellybutton birthday, as a fellow Pisces called it. I usually take off the anniversary of my umbilicus clipping, and since it was a Thursday this year, I also took the Friday off. My Mayan birthday was the day before, actually. I had been a bit sluggish last week, and I'm feeling a bit so again. Albany, New York is CCCCCCOOOOOLLLDDDD right now. (19 degrees, feels like 4.)

I have a draft post in reserve about a fantasy conversation I'd like to have at some point for real. But I'm realizing today, that I need to strive for humility. Yesterday was a Pisces New Moon, which I've read is a time to go deep into meditation and fantasy. I have lots of fantasies about community and being a part of a deeply reverent and loving existence. When I remember it, I realize I'm already there. I have grandiose fantasies of "being a resource" for others to turn to. I'm just another fellow who has his own understandings of what is happening around us, who also has the presence of mind to see that none of us has all the answers, and that the off-the-rack notions are so inadequate to the situation as to be laughable, were it not for the people who want to back it up with firepower. (Talk about being imbalanced on the Iron Pentacle. The Point of Power is balanced between Fear and Force. When we're in either of them, we are not right-sized.)

In any case, I've been meditating on the subversiveness of seeking to be right-sized. What an odd turn of affairs that it's become radical to wish to be "a part of." Werden die Wildnesse nie halten?