4 Wands/10 (Hermes) Angel

Some days it's hard to write stuff down. It's totally counterintuitive that I should have a day like this and not blog. I hate to speak of why, since I'm typing these words in that period between lunch hour and knock-off time, but I suppose intrepid readers might be able to parse between the lines.

Nonetheless, I feel that I need to blog about something that has been vexing me, and I'm sure vexes a lot of people. I'm in debt. I hate being in debt. I've been in debt non-stop since I was 18, actually. First it was undergraduate loans and a paltry credit card. Then I got deeper into credit card debt and slowly dug myself out of that, only to put it on again. I had a debt to my college which took 10 years of their withholding my diploma to pay off. Actually, I feel that this was a real accomplishment, though I pooh-poohed it at the time. But it took years of being prodded and of wanting that diploma, not that I've even framed it or anything.

Then I went ahead and got myself into graduate school, the singularly best thing about which was that I got myself to New York City and somehow through the grace of ye Goddess and Gods and God/dess-lings, into recovery programs and a whole new way of apprehending the spiritual aspects of life. I was able to completely pay down one credit card when I got into recovery at a much deeper level, and then the "Whack-a-mole" system took over.

I see what I did. I merely substituted a couple of addictions for the ones I'd been addressing, and went to town with money and food. Food brought me to my knees first, but I'm still struggling with the debting situation, which began with what at the time seemed an OK thing to do--to go into debt to try and get my playwriting career jump-started. I produced a play on credit cards, and when I got depressed about the outcome, comforted myself by buying a whole bunch of books.

This debt thing I know I share with others. I know that I'm not alone, but I have wondered to myself if

I am doomed

in light of all the dark stuff that is transpiring around us all.

I mean, seriously--are debtor's concentration camps coming back into the consciousness a la Charles Dickens and all those horrid British taskmaster cunts like Uriah Heep and Scrooge? Pluto is getting to the end of Sagittarius, which means it's about to enter CaPRICKorn, the Scrooge sign par excellence. (As an addict, I am a real pro at conspiracizing. But it's true too, that if you're not paranoid, either you don't have enough information or you have been able to transcend the mishagoss. I have days like that, really. I do. More and more frequently.)

I wrote on my blog over a year ago that Bill Wilson of AA Fame told me in a meditation that we all lived in a "Distribution Camp." In other words, the barbed wire and the gas chambers and the Capos and the Sadistic Guards, etc. of all of our worst Auschwitz macabre fantastical nightmares are all things we carry with us. "Never again," was never really true as it "Never Stopped." Just mutated into a more genteel, happy-face vision. I was struck by Morris Berman's notion in The Twilight of American Culture that the American vision of fascism would be more perky and filled with prat-falls. Lucy Ricardo, Sturm-und-Drang Trooper, with a chorus of militarized cheerleaders screaming "Take World," rather than "Take State"--that seems to be the marching orders de la derecho. Con Sparkle-fingers no menos.

My boyfriend pointed out to me that the whole MONEY-Shitballs aspect of civilized existence can bring me to the point of defeat even before I muster the courage to face what's going on. He pointed that out to me when I was looking for work in the Albany area once I knew I was moving here. I know that part of the MONEY thing is that I'm living with my parents' fears of depression and deprivation, and that as I've lived more of my life, I see how I have unconsciously duplicated some of my parents' actions out of unconscious fear. My parents did declare bankruptcy in 1981. I don't feel that's an option I can exercise, as the banks and credit card companies have taken away that possibility as they seemingly were meant to do--not so much because they're evil malefactors charged with Archonic destruction, but because they seem to be meant to help all of us understand what we don't want. We don't want to live feeling as if our lives belong to someone else. We don't want to feel enslaved by the fact we need to breathe clean air, eat decent and nutritious food, have outlandishly nurturing and joyous sex with another (or others) of our delicious loving, and to live inside beauty.

I am yet another person who wishes to get off the grid, and I feel that on some level, I'm joining with those mysterious others who are "seeking to sneak over to the machine of civilization and put sugar in its gas tank." Back in the 90s, when I was in my obstreperous and addiction-fueled 20s, I mused about finding that poison pill that the corporatocracy would eat out of its incessant coprophagia, that would act to kill the beast once and for all. After all that, I'm not sure the effort was something that was worth as much attention as I gave it, but at the same time, I see the benefit of creating a Death-Vulture symbiosis out of the Mayan calendar. My Mayan Day Sign is Death, and it seems to be about creating the situations wherein people wake up to how things aren't working for themselves anymore. The old fixes don't work, and new fixes are just as pathetic as the old ones. Death as Day-Sign as I experience it is about the 6th Step, ("Were entirely ready to have God/dess remove all these defects of character") which is necessarily about getting to a place where the pain of continuing as we did before is worse than the pain of changing.

Vulture (which is btw, my boyfriend's day-sign) is about taking the structures in place when this realization is reached, and going on from that point. Converting the remains of what is defunct, ruined, moribund into the foundation for the next flourishing turn of a collection of lives, sort of like what goes on in a Philip K. Dick novel. (I'm thinking of Dr. Bloodmoney especially.) But I think also knowing full well that this new structure is organic and is as much about dying and being recycled as was the previous one.

I took a step today about my debts. I'm nervous about it, because it means I have to let someone else see the wreckage of my life. Ugh. But I also know it's my propensity to hold onto stuff way beyond the expiraiton date in secrecy and silence (in civilization or Ruiz's word "domestication", we just do things secretly and silently, stealing in stealth). So I took a step toward healing my MONEY wounds today. A little bit of pain isn't anything to be afraid of. I may be rejected, I may be partially accepted or accepted in full. Whatever, it's Divine Will and I will accept it.

I didn't intend to write a long post. (Obviously I did have the time. ) But there we go. 4 of Wands in the Cosmic Tribe is "Reward." (If I get a chance to I'll link to it later.) And Persephone/Sphinx are my deities of the day. It's all about facing the stuff hidden inside and accessing higher wisdom. Curry Chicken! (Joke: Chinese for Curry Chicken: Ga li ji.)

(A Little Laugh by T. Hee and R. Arar!)