#i keep wondering what would have happened if i challeged one of them to an Actual Physical Fight

[memecatwings]

thinking about starting another fight w w/ncest tumblr just to Feel Something again

[newwayastrology]

Advice

Perhaps 75% of my clients have read an astrology book or two or five, etc. As well, I see a lot of social media astrology. It leads me to say this - ASTROLOGY IS IN BAD SHAPE.

People are still locked to the "this is good" and "that is bad" idea. I remember like it was yesterday when my brother (who introduced me to astrology) said this, "You have Sun square Saturn so don't expect to achieve much. That's a bad luck contact." My silent response was, "Watch me." As a senior in high school, I made the All State team in Pennsylvania. In music, I was part of a Grammy Award winning production team for R&B Song of the Year for, "Never Knew Love Like This Before, by Stephanie Mills." And I can't even name all the people I have toured with and/or recorded for, names like Stevie Wonder, George Benson.....tons of artists. I was selected by a top astrologer to teach his work in another country, had a book publisged, was recently asked to be the VoicesofAmerica.com astrologer, spoke at UAC twice, etc. Bad luck? No achievement? Get that noise outta here!👹

And, you see, what my brother did with me is what the majority of astrologers do with clients and in books. This good and bad stuff in astrology is carried over from ancient times when life expectancy was 45 years. If you got the flu, you died. They were dark, bleek times and astrology was created in that context.

THIS IS NOT -1000 BC. Every human has had an issue. Michael Jordan's father was shot and killed. Magic Johnson lives with HIV. Hillary Clinton has a husband who couldn't keep it in his pants. Beyonce has had three miscarriages. Every human has a moment in life, or many moments. You are challenged by these issues and it is up to you to manage and grow from them. You are dreaming if you think life is supposed to be a picnic. Life is how you manage challenges. Welcome them. Theyare how you grow and develop. Even pregnancy and childbirth cannot occur without tension. Heterosexual sex requires an erect penis. That's tension!

If you look at every square, opposition, etc., as being BAD, you will always have a poor perspective about astrology. You will look at your own chart (which you should do maybe twice a year), see a measurement coming up and you'll have sleepless nights, all because some astrologer is practicing astrology from thousands of years ago and wrote it in a book you saw.

As well, it is REAL IMPORTANT to know and understand that your horoscope, those planets, have ZERO CONTROL over you. If you got fired, it didn't happen because of your horoscope. It happened because you effed up!!! The horoscope just indicates it. It didn't cause it. If planets were the cause of everything, you would be able to tell me, right now, the times you will go to the bathroom this coming March 13th.

Another thing - PLANETS TRANSITING HOUSES MEAN SQUAT! No event can possibly be seen ahead of time because a planet is transiting a House. That's some astrology from centuries ago. There is the possibility that ten planets can transit ten separate Houses. Which one calls the shots? What if Saturn is transiting the 6th and Jupiter is transiting the 6th. Which one calls the shots with your job status? Nothing significant but, usually, negativity comes out of the transiting Houses business. "Neptune is getting ready to go in my 6th. I hope I don't get sick." "Jupiter is going in my 7th. I hope I meet someone." It's BS.

I have been doing astrology professionally since 1980 to the tune of 250-400 clients a year. Never once did I refer to a transit through a House. It can't help.

When you see negativity in an astrology book, ignore it. Everyone will have challeges. Passing a history test in high school was a challenge. When an athlete is trying to become professional, look at what they endure. What about someone running for President? That stuff is hard and you don't see people get to those positions with a horoscope dominated by trines and sextiles because those aspects are NON-MOTIVATIONAL. What happens if you do nothing every day but eat and have a good time? Nothing! That's a trine. What happens if you are in the gym three times a week and discipline your food intake? That body develops into something it wasn't before. That's the squares and oppositions.

Please forget about what you think is bad in astrology. And, understand that if you've never used astrology to help people on a consistent basis, all you know is what you read in a book. The difference between that and the real deal is like what you thought life was at age 8 versus what you know now.

[whatmyheartsaw]

What My Heart Did Chapter 5, Episode 3

Thawing from Below

Present Writing always seems to get harder for a time once I uncover a new element of deeply embedded truth. Since all the discoveries about my grandfather’s murder trial and how that trauma has passed down through the generations, I’ve been numb to the stories that until now have been so important to recovery. Nearly a year has passed. My mother died in January, and my father is in a nursing home. It’s almost as if my mind and body have needed to put all the facts of my ancestry aside and place any realizations into hibernation or a dormant state until I am able to adjust and understand.

Spring is slowly unfolding again in the Shenandoah Valley. As I watch the bulbs burst from the ground and the leaves and blossoms timidly emerge from the barren limbs of flowering trees and oaks, I think back to winter’s rough hand. How do trees and plants weather ice storms, snow cover, and frozen ground to faithfully reemerge each spring? What is their defense against the difficulties they are handed each and every season?  

So, like any curious gardener or naturalist would do, I looked it up. I wanted to remind myself of the process I probably learned in 7th grade, and maybe glean some insight into how we as humans can be more resilient. I found an explanation by Gary Watson, head researcher from The Morton Arboretum in Illinois that struck me.

“Plants from climates with cold winters have evolved to survive winter by going dormant. That means not just dropping leaves and slowing or stopping growth, but also reducing the amount of water in branch and root tissues. The lowered concentration of water in a plant's tissue acts like a natural antifreeze: It means it takes deeper cold to form ice inside them.”

"There's always warmth in the earth," Watson says. "The soil may be freezing from the surface, but it's always thawing from below."

Throughout the winter, he says, plants are adapting constantly to the changes. The biggest danger to plants is a sudden deep freeze. "As long as they have time to adjust, they're OK," he says. "It's when change happens suddenly that it can cause trouble."

As I let that description of how plants adapt to the challenges of winter sink in, the correlation to my own life emerges. “There’s always warmth in the earth,” throbs in my heart like a drumbeat.  

2014-2017 Dismantling my “busyness” took some time to settle into. First it required shutting down one business, stepping down from a non-profit board, and figuring out how to be more present with a family that was 750 miles away. The road was a bit bumpy to say the least. I considered moving closer to my family, but given my business was just starting to earn me a decent living, I didn’t think about that long. So instead I traveled and tried to keep up with the work on the road. I quickly saw that if I was going to eventually relocate, I would need to reposition my business in the new town. And while I wasn’t technically opening a “new” business, the expansion to a new market wasn’t much different. For two years I shuttled back and forth between Virginia and Florida, networking, teaching classes, and taking on new clients in both locations. Busyness took on a whole new meaning. But I rationalized the effort was “focused.”

Soon there was a second grandchild on the way. As rewarding as it was to spend time with my new granddaughter and anticipate the arrival of #2, the trips were exhausting and expensive for someone chronically ill and financially strapped. Despite my efforts towards self-care, in addition to the bouts of fibromyalgia and gastrointestinal maladies, I caught more bugs that lasted longer and had less and less energy for other parts of my life.  Friends and social activities were infrequent, and I dragged myself from task to task with a gritty determination that held my fractured pieces together like glue drizzled over a pile of straw. I knew I was hanging by a thread, but the realizations of how family trauma is passed on and my intuition about how to stop the cycle kept me driving forward. I couldn’t undo what had happened to me, but I might be able to contribute to greater understanding, support, and love in subsequent generations. Quitting wasn’t an option.

What I didn’t realize was how fragile my recovery still was. Spring and summer turned to fall, and the stones I thought I was turning to reveal a saner life just uncovered another cloudy puddle of fear. Being part of the more animated, vocal family that my son married into set off all kinds of triggers. I had to practice boundary setting again and again in order to keep myself from splitting apart, and I wasn’t sure anyone understood my challeges. More intimate contact with other people’s unhappiness and passionate disagreements reminded me just how ill-equipped I was to be a grounding force within a family. Despite how far I’d come, I had a long way to go.

By early 2017 I found myself dismantling again, but in a much more dramatic way. During a trip the previous fall where I met with multiple clients, did the whole family fall activities thing, and tried to fit a visit with a friend from high school into the mix, I literally went blind. I was fighting off yet another cold, and prior to an early flight out, had booked a room at a small lake resort near the airport hoping to get some much needed recovery time. When I arrived at the hotel, I noticed my eyes were tired and cloudy, but went about having dinner and enjoying some time by the water watching the sun set. By the time I went to bed, my eyes were quite bloodshot and red, but I passed it off as fatigue and decided a good night’s rest would help.

In the morning my eyes were glued completely shut. Somewhere I had contracted a nasty case of conjunctivitis. How was I going to get my rental car back to the airport and catch my flight? I felt my way to the sink to bathe my eyes. Warm water helped, but I looked a fright and there was no time to make other arrangements. So, like every other time in my life when the going got tough, I went. Donned my sunglasses, loaded up my bags, and got safely to the airport, on the plane, and home from the airport without incident, all the while conscious of not spreading the horrific eye crud to anyone else. 

But the pink eye did me in. Despite my careful attempts to manage the infection, it moved from one eye to the other and back. Even with treatment, I was unable to see for several weeks, and stumbled through limited work. Three eye doctors and several months later, I was left with a twitch and a clue that perhaps I wasn’t seeing my life clearly. By May I had shut down the Florida business operation and was regrouping once again, wondering if I would ever find my way out of the fog of trauma. The frustration of never quite finding the path to healing was driving me mad.  

Present Today I woke to a cool spring morning, Easter in fact, and the metaphor of resurrection isn’t lost on me. I noticed the oak tree that groaned and shattered so violently during the winter’s first ice storm has, in spite of its scarred limbs, begun to rise to spring’s call with a splash of brilliant green.  

I feel as though I’ve risen from the dead more times than most people could fathom, but these old trees give me pause. The season has turned again, and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can too.

Holidays bring mostly painful memories for me – but this Easter I’m focused on the fun parts that did and do exist. The waking to eggs hidden in the house. An Easter basket and a new dress or shoes for church. A new tradition of funny bunny ear photos. 

And as I relive and enjoy the good parts, I see that the legacy of childhood abuse and how it passes down through generations is a lot like the hardness of winter. Just when we think we’ve recovered and created eternal summer in our hearts - just when we think the storm has passed - winter comes around again in a blinding snowstorm or coating of ice, freezing the soil and forcing us into hibernation. And each time the winter of our pain recurs, it’s easy to despair and believe the ravages of those traumas will never heal. But remembering there’s always warmth in the earth, thawing us from below, can help us keep going. Accepting we may never “heal,” just like accepting that winter will come again, is a sweet surrender to a truth that can settle the restless heart of a trauma survivor.  Somehow, even through generations of all kinds of human trauma and pain, just like plants, we too can wake from difficulties of winter and rise again to a new season. And perhaps that’s all the healing we really need. 

Read previous episodes of What My Heart Did HERE.     

[x0401x]

GOUACHE Members interview

Jin’s solo interview || Sidu’s interview || Original (full translation under the cut)

“Kagerou Daze -in a day’s-” is a bodily sensation-type 4D short movie, which was released in the second theater system of the national-wide TOHO Cinemas on November 4th in MX4D™. The movie’s opening theme song, “RED”, made by the creator of “Kagerou Project”, Jin-san – who is not only its lyricist and composer, but also the light novel and manga script’s writer –, together with his new-formed band (GOUACHE), received great repercussion in the entire Mora site immediately after its publishing. Other than that, Jin-san has his other band and works as support musician as well, and has been much talked about for recruiting such experienced members.

In this interview, to celebrate the movie’s presentation to the public and the huge popularity of “RED”, we have successfully gathered comments from the GOUACHE members! These news will consist of each member’s official talks about the band and its songs, from the thoughts they’ve put into the compositions to the possible future developments. It’s a must-read for the fans as it’s packed with detailed answers! Please enjoy it without skipping any words or sentences!

GOUACHE Members

MARiA (Vocals) Born on 1/31/1992 in Ibaraki Prefecture. Had her major debut in 2014 and works as GARNiDELiA’s vocalist. Is an artwork producer, in charge of songwriting, and also dances during live performaces. Is a model for several fashion brands as well, and has been earning the support of young women from her generation.

Jin (Guitar/Vocals) Born on 10/20/1990 in Hokkaidou’s Rishiri Island. Is a music composer, light novel writer and scenario writer. Specializes in creating untramelled works that do not get caught up in stereotyped concepts.

Gushimiyagi Hideyuki (Guitar/Vocals) Born on 1/31/1990 in Okinawa Prefecture. Started working as a guitarist, then created his own band, Creature Falls Umbrella, in 2014, and became its vocal-guitarist and composer as well.

Shirakami Mashirou (Bass/Vocals) Born on 5/5/1988 in Okayama Prefecture. Besides being solo artist and singer, he’s also a bassist, composer, arranger and recording engineer, working as a producer of anything related to music.

Ibuki Fumihiro (Drums/Choir) Born on 8/27/1990 in Hokkaidou’s Ohibiro town. Is a Jazz drums course graduate from Senzoku Gakuen Music College. Is the leader of the band O.P.P.A.I. and works as support artist for many other bands. Actively takes part in numberous national and international performances, no matter their genre.

GOUACHE’s official Twitter account: GOUACHE_JP (T/N: Please follow them, guys. They don’t have even 3k followers yet. The account is bilingual, so you can get information from it even if you don’t speak Japanese. Their English is a little awkward but it’s easy to understand. Also, they’re considering releasing their songs overseas, so the more non-Japanese followers they get, the greater the chances of that happening.)

Q&A

──I believe that while “RED”, the opening theme of “Kagerou Daze -in a day’s-”, is about “a sight that adults can’t understand and only reflects in the eyes of children”, it also deals with more universal themes. Were there any feelings you had wanted to deliver to people other than the current “KagePro” fans?

Jin: I was the one in charge of the lyrics of “RED”, and just as you said, it’s a piece aiming to deliver a worldview that reverberates within the “child-like heart” of the biggest amount of people possible. A “child-like heart” is what I personally consider one of my most valuable themes, so since I was using it, as expected, I ended up needing quite some time for the composition.

To express the scenery of a bygone summer’s day through words is a very specific task, and for that, I received advice mostly from the member Mashiro-san, and thus it became the way it is. That’s why these lyrics that are about a sight I saw in the past have, of course, been sprinkled with memories from a summer that Mashiro-san himself has lived. I think that lyrics like these being born is also something that reflects the band’s taste, so I’d wish everyone enjoyed this part of them too.

The majority of the GOUACHE members write songs, so I believe we will be releasing compositions from several polished viewpoints from now on. Please look forward to it.

──I was wondering if the song “RED” wouldn’t be the equivalent to a business card for the band GOUACHE. Are the things GOUACHE wants to convey contained in this song? I’d also like to ask what the theme of GOUACHE and what the message you actually want to deliver are.

Gushimiyagi: “RED” was the opening theme of the “KagePro” movie, so Jin was the one to take the lead in the making of the composition. But rather than a business card, it wound up as a work with the concept of what would happen if GOUACHE made a piece that leans towards “KagePro”. Therefore, I think the interpretation that the song “RED” is a piece that equals to a business card for GOUACHE just because it's our starting song would have only been valid if we were to make it through our upcoming activities. I’d be happy if people could feel GOUACHE’s theme and the things we want to transmit through the works that will be born from them.

──“RED” also had a simultaneous release with a high resolution sound generator version. Any concerns regarding the HighRes? Is there any piece that you want to listen to in HighRes or that you already listened to in HighRes and thought “this is amazing”?

(T/N: A sound generator is a device that generates sound waves by reproducing multiple basic waveforms. The finest ones can even detect the increase or decrease of air pressure in the room during recordings, so fluctuations in the atmosphere might interfere with the results.)

Ibuki: We still don’t have equipments that support HighRes for home recording, but we have been able to compare the three types of HighRes equipment through analyzing one piece from a CD lent to us by a musician otaku Senpai. I’ve always had doubts as to whether or not human ears could process sounds that can’t be recorded into CDs, so I was extremely shocked when, even while listening to it blindfolded, I could clearly tell the change in atmosphere. When I checked the sound mixes from our usual studio recordings in the control room, it sounded similar to the time I brought the sound generator to my home, which has a different speaker. The CD gives the impression that the sound leaps into surface, and the HighRes gives the impression that what leaps in is one particularly lengthy soundwave. I usually enjoy listening to music with an analog during home recordings since I can feel its depth more than with a CD, but I get concerned about the noise. “RED” is, more than anything, a song made by people obsessed with creating sounds, so please do try it out in HighRes. We want you to listen to an aspect of it that you absolutely can’t hear on YouTube.

──It’s said that the HighRes can reproduce even the “atmosphere” of the recording studio. Your usual tweets cause us to assume that you might have an obsession with the recording equipments and environment, but keeping in mind the viewpoint of those from the sidelines, we’d like you to tell us if any of you have ever thought something along the lines of, “I want people to listen to a sound generator from this angle”.

Shirakami: This time, I played the drums for recording with the image of an American rock band in mind. Their sound gives me the impression of a low center of gravity, gradually-increasing highs and clear vocals. It’s a sound that has long been a personal favorite of mine, and together with these members, engineers and directors, I attempted challeging it through all kinds of trial and error while making this song.

In order to increase the impact of the zone that embeds the unique notes of the guitar and, especially, the bass, taking advantage of the interval in-between the Japanese rock band-like guitar sounds, the individuality of the bass comes to light from the middle part onwards with a low gravity center kick. My position of making the drums take on a moderate, not-too-wet intensity was chosen by one of the engineers. The bass was recorded in a dead room, while the guitar was recorded in a semi-live room.

(T/N: In this context:

“Wet” is jargon that refers to a very thick, deep sound with little to no sustain.

A “dead room” is basically a room designed to be acoustically “dead” ─ as in not produce echoes and be free of ambient noise.

A “live room” is the opposite, designed to be highly reverberant, while a “semi-live room” is a toned-down version of it.)

The playback environment also influences it, but I feel it becomes easier to notice the change of high-end in the HighRes. I think the subtle breaths of the vocals, the tale’s nuance, the reverberation of the cymbals and snares, the mood of the guitar amplifier and the contrast of the opposing tight-kick bass are conveyed more clearly in it.

Regarding the recording equiment, we usually leave them in the care of an engineer that we normally count on, so I don’t know for sure, but the drums were selected from the cymbals to the head of the kick, and several guitar amplifiers and distortion effectors were tested. I’d be happy if people could feel the difference of the main guitar’s sound, the bass’s effective arrangements, and the players’ wills, which don’t depend on the studio.

(T/N: High-end is a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed on the basis of high price or quality, and distortion effectors are devices made to alter the sound of amplified electric musical instruments.)

──Lastly, I’d like to ask about your expectations for the future.

MARiA: “The five of us, overflowing with individuality, want to make interesting and fun things together first and foremost!” is what I thought when forming the band. I think it’d be great if GOUACHE could deliver various worldviews through its melodies, tunes and lyrics! I believe we’ll announce new songs like crazy in the near future and, of course, we want to do a live with all our might, so please look forward to it!!!

──Members of GOUACHE, thank you very much!

[826valencia-blog]

The Impossible

Written by Keven P. for the Immigration Essays project at Mission High School in March 2017. 

This journey starts in the sadness of mourning. At home there are just salient thoughts where the only voice is my worry about what will happen with my siblings and me. When I leave my house I am thinking of my grandparents and my speculation about the journey. No feelings, no emotions. Only a mind without thoughts. It’s very important to never lose hope, since it makes us not give up and achieve our goals. If we stop and let our fears take control of us, it can be a really bad decision. The most important thing is keep in mind our dreams and never let them go.

Everything starts with a big motivation. I see El Salvador very far away and in front of me there is a new land--Guatemala is my next step. When I arrived most of the things were the same, but I didn’t feel at home. With my siblings we slept the first night together, and we were excited for what should be our second day. New people from all parts of Central America went with us on the journey. We took a bus from a bus station at Guatemala city, and from there we traveled a little more than eight hours until we arrived to a part close to the border. When we entered a little house we got a big surprise; there were too many people. I think we were like sixty or more people. I felt shy, very shy, and the only people I knew was my brother and sister, no one else. Finally I fell asleep because I was so tired from the journey. When I woke up I didn’t remember where I was, everything was so confusing, but after a while I realized what was happening.

After five days we finally took the next step. Now I was seeing Guatemala so far away, but what I didn’t see in front of me was the first big challenge. A deep darkness was in front of us. That darkness blockaded the new land, which was Belize. After too many falls and wounds, finally we had seen the light in front of us. It was a very nice feeling. We had to cross a river to get to Belize. Belize felt very sad; I felt it in this way, and there was my first experience with the English language. I felt weary because I didn’t understand anything about that language. But we just took ten hours to pass it. Now my second big challenge was coming. We had to cross a jungle to enter  Mexico (the third step). It was terrible; we walked like two hours without eating and everyone was very tired. Thanks to God we got out of there and we crossed a road. In the other side there was a van waiting for us.

In this part the only important thing to me was that we don’t give up since already my siblings and I got it. We took the last bus to get to Monterrey, Mexico. There we arrived to the famous “Hieleras” (a place where every immigrant arrives to prepare for the most important step or challegent, which is crossing the border Mexico-United States). I felt so proud of myself and of my siblings because we achieved something impossible since some people can’t do it or died while they try it. We arrived there at the morning and we left in the evening. Everything was happening in my mind I felt a big adrenalina rolling inside my body because we were ready to cross the famous border. In a point I felt how all my hope was leaving me ‘cause ICE was above us while we tried to cross. I thought “All this effort for nothing!?” But then something magical happened -- the ICE agents left. We got to the other side, thanks to God.

At this point life smiled on us. We started to walk when ICE came back for us, took us and drove us to the jail, where they processed our personal information. Finally it all ended, but what my brother and I didn’t know was . . . we couldn’t stay anymore with our sister, because she was older of eighteen  years of age (and the laws here don’t apply to “adults”). I felt like my life was tearing apart; all my life spent with them, they were my confidants, my best friends, my siblings, they were my everything. But the most painful part was that this journey made us inseparable and created a great confidence between us. After a while I got courage and I prayed to God for strength, and  just from that I contained my tears. With my brother we arrived to a “house-home” in Virginia, made for young immigrants.

Something changed in me in that moment. During a week of staying with them, I traveled with my brother to San Francisco. The arriving was special ‘cause the was my first time I saw again my parents after a good while. Everything was incredible; finally the piece I missed I’d found. After ten years or more I came back to my parents’ arms. Little by little my concern grew larger since now a new piece was missing me -- my sister’s. During my first school day, everything was horrible. I didn’t like the school, my classmates, I hated the language, the teachers; I really didn’t feel safe, I didn’t feel at home, and it was deepening my concern about what would happen with my sister’s case. The first month at school was very hard because I didn’t understand anything. The time was passing and we didn’t get an answer to my sister. By three months we lived in the darkness.

When the time arrived, my sister’s case was approved and she was sent to us. Finally again my family was complete and more together than ever. From this point I knew everything would change; I improved in school, I set up my grades, and I focused to learn the language. I had some classmates that told me, “You just have a little time here. You’re studious now, but just wait to get confidence here . . . you will be in gangs and this kind of thing.” Now I laugh at them ‘cause I show them the opposite, and it makes me happy because inside of me, I see my grandpa’s image standing up with a big smile, proud of me.

The wonders of life are the changes; sometime it takes wrong ways but it’s just to learn and to not do it again, but most of the time the changes are positive. Personally I thought my journey would be the worst, but we don’t know what is waiting for us behind that door, and most of the time we are scared about that. But what really we don’t know is the big opportunity that is there, and just the fear we have and all what we think is “I can’t.” Now, my journey is the best that could have happened to me ‘cause it change my life, it helped me to improve myself, and being blessed by God to give me all what I need. The big secrets of life are the changes that it gives us and the most important is “NEVER GIVE UP,” and to trust in ourselves since we never know when this opportunity will come back.