#only to enjoy the act of consumption like it's a metaphysical experience

[roxannepolice]

Srsly Mucha ads are something else, because they elevate commercial trinkets into divine gifts. Be it chocolate or a casino or a bike, they are offered to us mere mortals by ethereal beings who merely took on a form our minds can comprehend and look with benign joy at us consuming their blessings. All for prices from before the great depression.

[its8simplejulesblog]

As I Write This

My laptop is on my lap and my feet are crossed on my brilliantly teal blue yoga mat. I often think about what in my right mind made me interested in ever starting yoga but I’ve found in life that there are some things that don’t need to be explained. I had an interest in pursuing it and I did, it’s as simple as that. I didn’t, however, ever think it would turn into what it has turned into today. 

When I tell you that I practice yoga what do you immediately think of? I know initially for me I thought essentially of vsco girl contortionists which, unfortunately for me, did not match my vibe. I am neither flexible nor necessarily affluent and aesthetically pleasing. In fact, I still can’t touch my toes (September 6th update: I can touch my toes now! Vsco girl here I come). I thought of entitled white women that rattled on about manifestation and things that truthfully sound like a load of garbage. However, I went in with an open mind and that’s all you must do. Your practice is entirely selfish in the best way. It is about you and only you and your metaphysical connection with yourself. 

So what does that look like? Well I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t look like a pretzel all of the time..if ever. In fact, the important part about yoga is that it is equally a connection between mind and body. It is you talking with yourself and quieting your mind and if that takes you touching your feet to your head then fine, but that’s not the case for me. Quite simply, yoga and meditation take the form of acknowledging your consciousness. There is often the misconception that you have to meditate only in utter silence sitting cross-legged with your eyes closed. That’s not true. I know people that are most appreciative out in nature, and they meditate while walking. Some mediate while playing sports or playing the guitar and laying down on a carpet. The importance is that you take the time to recognize and prioritize the thing that makes you most content. 

In the heart of my minds eye (Julia wtf..why are you speaking like this) I see yoga and meditation as voluntary gratitude. This is something that I really came to define as my personal practice. This is why I enjoy and look forward to yoga and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether I can touch my toes or not. As my own personal definition, I recognize yoga as experiencing and accepting the world exactly as it is and this often begins with the metaphysical, rather than the physical. 

In everything that we do, we can direct our thoughts. Whether you currently think so or not, your body will never feel good if you don’t mentally feel good. I know a lot of people that use the excuse/ example of saying, “well when you get sick your body deteriorates and because your body deteriorates you have to stay inside and because you have to stay inside you can get sad and depressed.” To which I would argue that never in a thousand years would I say that being sick in and of itself causes me to be more sad than I already might have been. If anything, it just highlights whatever negativity was already there. 

Our bodies are representations of the internal, not the other way around. I believe this is why I find psychology and sociology so intriguing, and are frustrated when it is refuted and defined as a “fake science.” In my eyes, empirical science is only half of the story. I know that while data is important (I DO always gush about statistics after all) inquisitive research means even more. In our minds we are all different. We experience the exact same situation differently, we react to them differently, this is something that could never be empirically explained and to that I revere the scientists that are denied credibility solely because they cannot produce equations on paper. 

If you’re a close friend of mine you’d know that I’ve been struggling with my self worth recently. This manifests itself in my constant requests for confirmation that my friends are not bored of me and that I’m still interesting and worthwhile. This feeling is like a groundhog because as quickly and passionately as it pops up it will go away and I continue with my life, but that’s the thing about the subconscious, it doesn’t “go away”. When Punxsutawney Phil announces the coming of the next season he doesn’t just pop underground and cease to exist. Every single thing that we worry about is housed in ego and as our egos like to title themselves our “identity” you can’t shut that up and suddenly become a shell of a (wo)man. 

For that very reason, I’ve come to adore the job that I do as a social policy research assistant. At it’s very core is the act of interviewing those that you would never even THINK you had anything in common with. The project I’m currently working with is with the elderly and disabled, two things I’d pretty confidently claim I am not. And yet, constantly their words set of alarms in my mind. Not a warning bell, not a “get the hell out of there it’s going to suck to be old” bell either, but moreso, a glimpse into all that life has to offer in the most inspirational way. 

Yesterday I was speaking to the kindest woman I have ever spoken to. She was orphaned at 17 and her mother had died of cancer and she had been suffering from a disability to the point where she is currently homebound at the age of 57. Was this disheartening Yes, but what did we talk about? We talked about the fact that she had multicolored crystal prisms all over her house. We talked about the fact that whenever she was depressed she reminded herself that everything she was feeling was temporary and she would see color again soon. We talked about how because of all the things she had been through she developed a passion for service through the mother of her ex-boyfriend who took her in and forced her to carry on. We talked about how she was proud of me and thought I was perfect for this inquisitive role (remember I have never met this woman) and should continue on being curious and kind as I have so much life ahead of me. This is what meditation is all about. You don’t have to sit in silence, but rather reflect on what the world around you means. 

She told me she wanted to give me a prism :) 

I mediate through reading. My entire LIFE books have been healing for me. I have found that I look forward to being in my own head and learning constantly learning about anything and everything because every book, in its own way, is applicable to life. And its for that reason, when my dad and I walked into 2nd and Charles the other day, that I had this urge to look for “Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. To be truthfully honest, I had seen a tik tok about it about a week before, that was kind of like a parody for the movie trailer and for some reason it stuck with me to the point where an entire week later I was roaming the aisles for this book. 

If you didn’t know, 2nd and Charles is a second-hand book store so there is never any guarantee that something you’re looking for is there. In fact, I had been roaming for about as long as my impatient temperament could take when I turned around by accident and there it was on the tippy top of the shelf behind me. I couldn’t tell you what drove me to grab this book at this exact time in my life, but I have never been more thankful for a book in my entire life. 

Elizabeth Gilbert simultaneously writes like God and your older sister. Her language is divine and it rocks you from the very essence of your soul but she’ll also talk about how much sex she’s had and how bloated she was after eating more pasta than anyone should ever eat and how she didn’t give a fuck. And, I don’t do this often, but I found myself repeatedly stopping to type quotes in a note on my phone. If you haven’t yet heard of it (I’d be surprised) but “Eat, Pray, Love” is about a woman in her mid thirties who lived the ideal life in New York but ended up going through a nasty divorce with her husband and went through a complicated affair after the fact. 

I think that a lot of people misjudge this book as being equivalent to a rom-com like cringey love affair of superfluous nonsense and un relatable emotional sentiments. That couldn’t be further from the truth. This book was raw. She is often sobbing on her bathroom floor or crushed with suicidal depression. She is infinitely lonely and feels so small and it is nothing short of a mirror into all of our lives at some point. She goes to the countries to work herself out of this nightmare after a notably horrible episode on her bathroom floor where she finally admits to herself that she refuses to live her current life anymore. In Italy, India, and Indonesia she details her experiences in the pursuit of pleasure, devotion, and balance of a means of essentially finding her purpose. 

When I say pleasure, you’ll probably think of Rome and romance and sex and pretty people. Those things definitely weren’t absent in her description (Except the sex because she decided to remain celibate for the year), but her pleasure presented itself in the most genuine form. Through her appreciation and slow consumption of good food, her slow meander through Italian architecture, her sunset discussions with new friends. These are things all the more important to being content. 

I personally enjoyed her description of India the most as it brought me back to my experience with yoga and the individualized nature of the practice. Liz studied at an Ashram (a religious temple) under a guru for multiple months. It is at first torturous for her to find the the faith and courage to let herself go to some divinity that is not tangibly seen but she so acutely describes how important it is to quiet your mind to the chaos of the world. Once you do so, you really realize the lack of weight it ACTUALLY has on your life. This means that the way you perceive your situation will dramatically change the way you act and feel and treat others, something I have constantly been repeating in my other posts. Similarly, one of my favorite aspects of this section is her description of religion not as a border of political and historical idol complexes of rules and punishments, but a thin golden thread woven together with hundreds of other thought processes to form a spiritual connection between self and the divine. 

In Indonesia she balances the two through helping others. I won’t go too much into detail but everything is so perfectly combined. So much so that I have tenfold more a desire to go to these three places than anywhere I might have mentioned before in my discussions of travel now. 

In reading her words, she mad me cry and compose myself only to cry even more. That’s the beauty of a book that is so well renown, yet applies to every reader’s individual experience. I felt like she was addressing me directly. I really felt like someone or something was speaking through her directly to Julia Larock and I have read plenty of books and have never once felt like that. Specifically, here are a few quotes that really punched me in the face: 

“There are only two questions that human beings have fought over, all through history: How much do you love me? and Who is in charge?” 

“Vipassana meditation teaches that grief and nuisance are inevitable in this life, but if you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) will pass”

“How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer- you can finish it yourself, from within yourself. It’s not only possible, it’s essential”

And so as I finished inhaling her words after hours and hours of reading today I decided to try a new kind of yoga. Not that I had been doing it incorrectly before, but I wanted to focus my meditation more on gratitude. So I rolled out my mat and put on my meditation music playlist on spotify (don’t make fun of me it’s a real thing and it will change your life) and just sat. I originally tried to close my eyes, but that actually distracted me more so I kept them open (that’s the thing about meditation, you just do whatever works for you) And this time I actually let my mind wander, but only to a positive place. A place of thankfulness and peace. A place where every negative aspect of my life still existed, and I let it enter my mind, but it never once turned into the chaotic anger that it once was, the shame was there but I controlled it, the hurt arrived but it was nothing compared to what else I saw. 

I saw Ryan giving me the longest hug of my life while I sobbed in the West Chester parking lot, I saw my mom stroking my hair while I sat on her lap and told her about my day, I saw my brother and I playing rock band and taking it way too seriously, I saw my Disney roommates and I celebrating Christmas together, I saw Steven and I discussing how similar we are, I saw myself walking hand and hand with some of the young children I met on the dirt roads after church in the Dominican Republic, I saw Lauren and Steph and I screaming when we saw each other in the Longwood parking lot, I saw walking on the boardwalk with Lauren and Amanda scaring me from behind, I saw myself playing golf with Graham and Cameron, I saw myself having photoshoots with Jaelyn, I saw myself handing out drinks to Brewed customers that wanted nothing more than to tell me their entire life stories, I saw all my robotics friends supporting each other at competitions, I saw all of my fellow TFA interns drunk at our staff social (oops ;) hehe ) I saw my dad telling me he was proud of me, I saw Zach taking care of me even though we just met, I saw the hoards and hoards of kids in China writing me love letters and calling me a Disney princess, I saw the zoo in Australia where we took little Ethan for the first time, I saw Eloise telling me she was pregnant and I could be an aunt to her daughter, I saw my cousin Genevieve telling me that she wanted me to come to Cape Charles with her family because “whenever you’re with us the vibes are good.” 

And I literally just sat there and cried. 

Maybe it would have been a little bit eerie if anyone walked into my room, but it was a silent cry. I wasn’t sobbing or dramatic or weepy, there were just tears, because there was so many thoughts flashing in my mind and I probably only sat there for 15 minutes. And towards the end, over top of it all, I kept hearing the words “I’m speaking to you.” It was kind of like a mantra because I heard it in my own voice, but it wasn’t necessarily coming from just me. It was like in my own voice I hear, “I’m speaking to you, I believe you, this love that you see in these memories, hold onto that because this is all I want for you.” 

And that’s all I want for me too, and for everyone really. Because at the end of the day when we better ourselves we better everyone. 

When I finally dragged myself off the mat I picked up my phone for the first time in a few hours today. There was a text there from Casey, who is the youth group pastor with the group I used to be apart of at UD. He told me that he was thinking of facilitating a mental health support group this fall and he wanted me to advocate for it and be a part of spreading the word about it because I’ve been blessed with so many connections. What a situationally ironic time for a text like that, after just sitting in gratitude for those in my life. I told him that I’d absolutely love to be a part of that and now here I am, writing this. 

I’m not going to try to be disgusting and poetic and say that my life is changed and nothing will ever be the same. I’m positive I’ll still get upset and angry about the same things in my life. The difference though is that I don’t see that as an impenetrable barrier, but more like a hurdle where all you need to do is put some pressure on yourself to get yourself in the air. 

And once I’m in the air I’ll bring out the prism that was just given to me and it’ll create color. 

[thirdpoliceman]

Chapter 1, Part 1a - Spoiler Alerts, as Well As Who, What, When, Where and Why

Alert: Spoiler alert below. Keep reading.

Welcome. Let’s jump right in. Preliminarily, however, let me say that the thoughts in this blog  will contain spoilers in the sense that they will convey what happens in the book, such that if you have not yet read it (the book) and you continue to read this blog, you will be informed of what happens in it (the book) at a time preceding that at which you read it (the book), if you do (read the book). Accordingly, when you read the book, if you do, having read these thoughts here in this blog first, you will not be surprised or--if that word conveys too much a sense of shock--informed or appraised of the events of the book for the first time upon reading it (the book) for the first time. Rather, upon reading of the events of the book in the book for the first time after having read about them in this blog beforehand, you may instead have a sense of mere recognition or remembrance, rather than surprise or appraisal. The consensus seems to be that recognition and remembrance are inferior feelings or senses than surprise or (first) appraisal. So many people, when reading, viewing or otherwise consuming a media work about a media work of entertainment (as opposed to information or news), prefer to be notified of spoilers so that they can not read, view, or otherwise consume them. By avoiding that, they can preserve the sense of surprise or initial appraisal for such time as when they first read, view, or otherwise consume the subject of the work that contained the spoiler alert. And thus, they can be happy. And in fact, their knowledge that a spoiler can exist, may heighten their anticipation, thus increasing the ecstasy or relief they feel when they read, view, or otherwise consume the event in the piece of entertainment that would otherwise have been spoiled and relegated to the ash heap of recognition or remembrance.

And I cannot fault people for wanting to avoid spoiler alerts. Anticipation, tension, dread, and trying to guess what is going to happen next are some of the primary senses that give people enjoyment in consuming a story. I am not going to pretentiously claim that people shouldn’t avoid spoilers or that spoiler alerts shouldn’t be given because it doesn’t matter whether you know about a plot point or twist beforehand or for the first time when you actually consume the story. That is ridiculous. Especially in the case of plot twists, which The Third Policeman surely contains, audiences do get a great sense of enjoyment when they are surprised by a truly unexpected and original plot twist. The more innocent among can revel in the cleverness of the story and laugh at how they were fooled, much like a magician’s audience might. The more clever among us can also get enjoyment from an unspoiled plot twist if they saw it coming or were able to guess it before it is revealed, the sense of “I told you so” or, “I am smarter than you” is real and rewarding to those of us who are insecure assholes. 

And even if what is spoiled is not a twist, or is a predictable one, or is just an interesting or original plot point, its spoiling can still lessen the consumer’s enjoyment of the entertainment media. This is true because not only is anticipation and the original reveal of unexpected events or information part of the essence of enjoying a story, it is arguably the entire essence of consuming a story. Many of us know people who refuse to read fiction or who may even refuse to watch fictional television or movies because it is, in their mind, “a waste of time.” I myself fell into this camp for a number of years. And I think many of use have that sense too, the sense that we all have such a finite amount of time in our lives that to spend it consuming someone else’s made up stories is not only a waste of time, but an abandonment of our own lives. But it is just too hard to act on it. Just as Nietzsche cautioned that the true atheist must be willing to stare into the abyss, consuming fiction carries with it for most of us a sense that for every minute that we are watching or reading it we are losing a minute’s worth of chances to turn our own lives into the greatest work of fiction ever lived, with each of us as the protagonist!

So, I think only two things can, for most people, justify consuming fiction, even if they don’t consciously make the judgment, and the first of those things is the mental stimulation and reward that comes from consuming an original work and not knowing while consuming it what is going to happen next. Trying to figure out what is going to happen next, or just enjoying the anticipation or dread (depending on the style of the work) inherent in watching or reading a work of fiction is an enjoyable mental exercise in and for its own sake. In this way, it is like solving a crossword puzzle, or doodling complex shapes, or writing for fun, or tinkering with a project car, or knitting a complex sock, or any number of other mentally stimulating hobbies. And interestingly, few people consider such things “waste of time” like many consider consuming fiction to be. For this reason alone, a spoiler alert is a considerate thing to provide it, so I will provide it:

SPOILER ALERT: This blog contains discussions and expositions of numerous plot points and twists in The Third Policeman, including a very big plot twist at the end that may change the reader’s whole understanding of the book.

With that spoiler alert given, let me just return briefly to a couple of threads left dangling above. 

First, the other thing that I think justifies the consumption of media fiction for most people is the idea that fiction can provide insight into the human condition. If so, by consuming a good work of fiction we can learn about ourselves and others and become more enlightened, better people. I think this is true, but it is a revelation that comes for most people later in life or not at all. For most, the anticipation and pure entertainment is enough. The greater reward, however, in consuming fiction, at least if it’s good, is that it will cause you took look at life, or a given event, emotion, or personality trait in a new way, and make you a more empathetic and well rounded person. 

This type of fiction, though, is harder to find. And it is not necessary that fiction do this to be rewarding. Mediocre fiction can be rewarding based on the anticipation, the plot twists, the unexpected jokes, the whodunnit, the genuinely scary horror film, or even the physically impressive action move. Even bad fiction can be enjoyable and not necessarily a waste of time. The vapid but funny sitcom, the “reality” show, the derivative and predictable comedy that still makes you laugh in parts, violent action, and titillating sex scenes can in sufficient quantity make any fiction enjoyable enough to be worth your time, at least some of it, and can be rewarding in the same way a couple stiff drinks and an evening alone with RedTube can be. They may be a “waste of time,” but they can be enjoyable.

To be enjoyable and worthwhile however, is a tougher road to hoe. Much fiction accomplishes this goal with a good plot twist, a truly original joke, an entirely new action set piece, great cinematography, or intricate plotting, and the like. But these things will only make fiction as worthwhile as a crossword puzzle or a good first-person shooter video game--not a waste of time, but perhaps not worthwhile when consumed in excess. 

To be truly enjoyable, worth while, and not a waste of time in any sense, though, fiction should and can be all those things. It can contain the brain candy of easy jokes, violent action, sex. It can also have mentally stimulating unpredictability, twist, anticipation, original humor, and plot twists. And it can provide its consumer with truly edifying insight into our unifying humanity by shedding new light on our experiences and emotions, or even the metaphysical questions that have been with us always.

The Third Policeman has all of that. For this reason, I can truly recommend it. For this reason as well, it provides fodder for a blog in the way that few other books can because it has so many layers of enjoyable and thought-provoking material: the funny, the weird, the sublime, the absurd, the dark, the sad, the scary, the ridiculous, the pathological, the loving, the regret, it’s all there for the taking. So on to the blog!

Oh wait, I forgot the other dangling thread from above: It’s interesting that there are no spoiler alerts for nonfiction. If you’re reading about current events, history, science, or watching an instructional video on YouTube, there’s no sense comparable to that in the world of fiction that your audience should be warned that you’re about to tell them something they don’t know. 

For example, when you read about Band of Brothers, no one ever says, “Spoiler alert, the Allies won and Hitler killed himself.” When you read a review of Dunkirk, you don’t see, “Spoiler alert: Through a massive civilian boatlift, the UK managed to evacuate the bulk of its surrounded expeditionary force, most likely enabling the Allies’ eventual victory.”

Or, when you read about Ken Burns’ The Civil War or 2016′s Free State of Jones, no one ever warns you, “Spoiler Alert: The Union won the war, but the Confederacy won the peace after Lincoln was assassinated by sabotaging Reconstruction and infecting the whole of the U.S. with a Lost Cause myth that wouldn’t die, fueling Jim Crow, disenfranchisement and state-sponsored racism that persists to this day, giving a small white, fundamentalist Christianist cult undue influence over American politics at both the state and federal level that maintained its grip even when liberalism otherwise reigned supreme (such as during the New Deal, which largely excluded blacks from its largesse and which arguably made racism worse by expanding the federal government’s role in housing while at the same time institutionalizing racism by redlining, which destroyed previously integrated neighborhoods and has crippled the accumulation of wealth in the African-American community ever since) and that remains entrenched today through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and undue representation of small states in the Senate, and which has ultimately resulted in the failure of the United States to come to terms with the fact that the Confederacy were a bunch of traitors who were fighting for the right to own people, the leaders of which should have been hung or exiled for treason, and which excuses and blinds people to the utter pervasiveness of racism and class-oppression in the United States today on a scale unprecedented in the world with the possible exception of Apartheid South Africa.” I mean, what if you didn’t know that going in?!

Or, when you’re watching a video about how rotary engines work, they don’t mention, “Spoiler alert: Since the discontinuation of the RX-8, these engines are not currently in production in any vehicle and likely won’t ever be again due to their excessive oil burning and fuel consumption, so this is a waste of your time except for curiosity’s sake.”

Then again, maybe it’s because you’re consuming non-fiction in order to learn something and if they gave you a spoiler alert about things that you might not or did not otherwise know, they would be encouraging you not to go learn about those things. 

So yeah, I guess it makes sense that there are no spoiler alerts in non-fiction. 

Now, on to the blog!

[libramoon2]

Manifesting Destiny excerpt

Moon in Libra I may not have a lot, talking about material things, and more concretely, the symbol behind all that stuff, money, and the fantasy of all that stuff money can be exchanged for. When I say I don't have a lot, that is only in comparison to some American dream, or even many people I know and interact with. But, I could as easily compare my store of possessions to the truly poor, and see myself quite wealthy. That's the point. I am. Quite wealthy on my own terms -- with everything I value. I know I complain horribly because I can't afford some terribly important toy. But, hey, they say Danes love to complain, yet keep testing out as the happiest people on Earth. And why are the Danes so happy? Because they like what they get. They don't need wealth in terms of breakable toys and up to date impressing accoutrements of ostentation. They are happy to have fulfilling jobs and lots of time to play and enjoy with loved ones. Me too. I could be Danish! Well, a Dane of Irish/Italian extraction born in the USA. But my point is that I don't even have time to be buying the latest gadget and fashion or keeping up with high consumption rates (and wasn't consumption some romantic disease a couple of centuries back?). I'm way too busy having fun, expressing my lovely creativity, and lovelier sexuality (hee hee). If sex sells second-degree products, I'm obviously ahead of the game, going directly to the first degree real experience. Is that what the "make love, not war" people were about? Walking my hero's journey to the music of my soul Dancing, in tune with my Universe Millions of sparkling diamonds light my cotillion Moon in Aquarius With Celia it was mostly "Persephone" with the occasional "Seph" when truly informal. Danny and Marie tended to go with "Peri" softly sweet. I was 5 when he left. Marie carried forward the tradition. I was 12 when she left, more permanently. He still called me Peri when we talked by phone, on his very occasional letters, when he came back for that short time to bury his sister, though I was less innocently sweet by then. I was turning bitter. Why not? My world seemed to be in a steady state of crumbling. But I loved for him to call me Peri, when I was his little girl. All I wanted was to be his Peri whom he loved enough to take back with him to his real family in California. I was even willing to be big sister to precious Maya and baby Osiris (Sy). Gwen was eclectic in her deities, in her lifestyle, in all her ways, but staunchly firm against Danny's previous life intertwining with the life they shared. She was adamant that he cut his ties with Celia, apparently some big loyalty test he had to continually pass. His trip back East for Marie's funeral must not renew ties to us. He was not cruel. Far from it, he was completely loving, even apologetic. How could I feel anything but love, and misery in knowing that he would soon be gone again? And contempt for Celia, how could I feel anything but? What is it about kids? We would do anything for a loving glance from the rejecting parent, while spitting in the face of the parent who is always there. Such contrary creatures. I love it when Tom calls me "Purr" "Purrsephone" though I am way too clumsy to be catlike. With him, I do purr with contentment. I won't abide "Percy." Friends will generally put up with the whole mouthful, but will often fall into the easier "Seph" as Celia did, or even “Peri.” I am not exclusive about these names. They are only attention-getting sounds. I was (secretly) bothered back in school when the popular kids and hangers-on dubbed me "Phoney." I think they thought they were clever. Names. Symbols that attach to us, as if some kind of definition. Mostly we are so accustomed to this designation of sound and letters by the time we have any coherent awareness, we simply accept that this is who we are. At least I didn't have the cognitive dissonance of responding to my name in the midst of other children designated by the same vowels and consonants. At least as a child, I got to feel that my unique name might be tied to a marvelous destiny. I had only a vague idea of the myth, then, that I had been named for. I didn't think about my ancient namesake, torn between two worlds. All I knew was that I was named for a goddess. I wonder what her friends called her. Did her husband, God of the Underworld, call her "Purr"? Did she feel content in his realm? This is what we writers do. We wonder about things that never were, and spin out tales from our wondering. I mean, why should what is called "reality" be seen as more truthful than fiction? So much of our reality is made up, stories we tell ourselves or everybody knows. Names that are imposed when we are too young to understand that it is only a name, a word, a metaphor for who we really are. Still, our names are certainly more colorful and meaningful than some random alphanumeric designation. Moon in Gemini I've been thinking about that theory of human life being some kind of ultimate point of the Universe. Divine Design, I guess. God’s will with the "scientific" twist about all these highly improbable coincidences that had to be just right or life wouldn't have made it. But then, self-evidently, we are here, as well as a plethora of other things and beings. I mean, there's no logical reason for it to have been other than accidental, the vagaries of eternity and random chance. Not that I believe it all accidental. I have a multi-layered view of reality. On some level an event could well be an accidental meeting of forces. On some level it could be eternally meaningful, part of a work of art or grand legend. On some level it could be imagination, maya, a random thought soon forgotten, a dream, a metaphor. On some level it could be a cosmic joke or a cosmic unraveling of all that is which includes all that could be, all existing at once, but seen spread out, like taking in a panorama. Sometimes I think I awaken into a subtly changed Universe, maybe a very close parallel dimension, where all those little differences appear like memory glitches or strange miscommunications. Reality is definitely not what it's made out to be in school and mass media. No, it's not the drugs. I really don't do that hardly anymore. When I did, I was way too involved in self-pity to have any conceptualizations of this nature. It is difficult, though, to speak of these concepts in prose. The word/referent link is slippery. Maybe that's why scientists use math. Is math a kind of poetry, symbolic language to describe concepts not easily manipulated into common parlance? I never thought about math like that before. The way it was pigeon-holed in school didn't make sense. Of course numbers are often combined with words as adjectives and functions, often act as metaphors. I think I'm digressing. Okay, music is based on math, intervals, rhythms, resonances. But is the music I hear in my head mathematical, or pure experience based on intuitive emotive reaction to sound? The language is the map, the human-made interpretation and communicative symbology. The experience is the territory, the reality. I think art is meant to bridge the gap, to be a language of more direct experiencing. Who else could I talk to like this without sounding so totally out there? Good to have you to converse with, Persephone's journal. No, that's not fair. I do have friends who get these conversations about, well I guess metaphysics. Tom and I definitely connect on that level. There is something very basic, a pull, a cord (chord?) between us. Something meant to be? I can say we get each other on a fundamental level, but that is map, not territory. On many levels we complete each other. We can experience other lovers without jealousy or even concern, because what we share, even sexually, is about essence and mutual need for that deep expression, again poetry, music, knowing beyond words. Maybe it's just me, too hung up on words, my writer's world. But then, I do directly experience all the time. Experience, that's the element of writing, of any art, you can't fake. You can learn all the tricks, but experience is what provides something meaningful to say. Without that, all you've got is language. What use is a map without territory to refer to? Moon in Libra I was an adored child. The grown-ups in my life may have been totally screwed up, but they always loved me unconditionally. Somewhere I always knew that. I mean, I was a total pariah in my neighborhood, but the people who counted knew I was amazing. Imagine my guilt when I kept screwing up, big time. Yes, out of my large-scale self-expressive hubris, I, an inexperienced young woman with big chips on my shoulders, managed to keep showing myself to be a fool. Probably no one was even watching but me. My mom still tells me I'm great whenever we speak. In a real way, all that bratty messed up behavior is behind me now. I have become someone I created out of the ashes. I have become a woman I can be proud to present to the people who believed in me. They never expected wealth or fame, just that I would do them proud as a strong-minded, independent force upon the Earth. I'm getting there, bit by bit, in my own idiom. I feel the late Spring wind, with hints of Summer's heat. I keep getting flashes of scenes from my childhood, like trailers from a movie. Maybe I'm working toward some revelation that will put my whole life in perspective. Maybe my stupid, childish belief in my special mission is true, and there is a great piece of art incubating inside me. Maybe I'm psychotic, having delusions of grandeur, incubated in my psyche by too being given too much adulation in my formative years. I think Celia was sexually abused by her dad. She's never said anything. All the stories I hear, though, the women I know who have gone through that hellish childhood, the way she is so reserved, secretive, brash in that forced way, gives me that idea. Marie told me about some of the tortures her dad and his older sons laid out for Danny, to toughen him up. The suffering of little children that no one seems to see in this world of Disneyland and video cartoons, it breaks my heart. Yeah, what happened to my parents was, obviously, a generation ago. It's still happening today, right now. Parents raise powerless kids unable to connect with the blessings all around us, insisting they put on a happy or appropriately miserable face to fit in and keep the family secrets. I do hear the stories all the time in the women's groups I attend. Pagan artists are far from immune. Even if I myself wasn't molested by my nearest and dearest, there were always those pathetic men, young and old, looking at me in that sadly dangerous way wherever I went. These days I discount their presence as a matter of course. There's a lot to be said for a Darwinian theory of a predator society. There's a lot more to be said for a magick theory of alternative realities within which we can craft a world in which we can best live. It is important to craft the spell carefully, mindful of the power of the words of incantation. Not too limiting; not too open to evil; not too micro-managed at the expense of spontaneity; it has to be carefully thought through and made just right. In this cosmic sense, I am not working on a deadline. You might say it's more of a lifeline. I was a damn mystical little kid, and I've still got it -- that magical world where I am quite at home. Moon in Scorpio It's like I'm consolidating. I feel myself moving into a deeper version of me. I'm drawn to examine where I've come from, who I've been, roles I've tried out, tried on for fit -- consolidating data to make the leap into a more fully informed identity. I have this body I inherited not from one person or another, but an amalgamation of DNA. Thick, long, abundant red-gold hair that I sensuously enjoy flinging against my skin, a gift from my father and, as Marie told me, gifted to him from sainted mama Louella. She died before my mom and dad ever got together. Had she lived longer and I still been born, no doubt I would have known and loved her as did those of her children I did know and love. Thank you, Grandma Louella, for your luscious red hair and your vivid, creative imagination, your manic energy, your loving gentleness, your brilliant spirit. Then there's my clear sun-kissed skin from Celia's Southern Italian ancestors of whom she never speaks. My moss green eyes must be nature's synthesis of Celia's green-flecked brown and Danny's turquoise blue -- his compromise of Louella's green and Robert's blue. I have the womanly version of Danny's strong-boned soldier's build, though not his height. Still, I am taller, generally larger, than small-boned, petite Celia, who undermines the expectations of her small size with her fierce determination. So, I've got this hodge-podge of inherited traits to work from. ("From which to work"? Who comes up with these stilted forms, or lesser forms, and their distinction? I am wandering ...) I've always been so independently self-defined. But then, I've often been doubting my own definitions as against those who disrespect me. There's a thing about being an artist, or so it seems to me, of constantly being confronted with oneself, doubting and refining values and interpretations. Maybe it is an unhealthy self-obsession. But those stories, songs, poetry, have to come from somewhere. Or not. There does seem to be a glut on the artistic market. Everybody has their creative spark to play with. I certainly don't want to court the wages of hubris. Yet, to even bother to bring to market my scribblings, my strangely main marketable skill, I have to spend a lot of time in that place in which I know I am brilliant and well worth listening to. Okay, it's the muse, the Goddess of Artistic Visions. She tells me what to say. I am but a vessel. I am a vessel of my ancestors and my muse. I am also a fully functioning human, being and becoming. I’ve got to be expressing my love of adventure, growth, assimilation of experiences, experiences that become me. Looking through the experiences I have come out of, feeling this new to me drive to consolidation. It feels good to touch my core and know I am someone I can count on. The days are so long now. There's so much to celebrate. Solstice next weekend. Thank Goddess, I have turned in my songs and stories. My time is my own for Solstice dreaming. Very soon Tom and I will be dancing and sending out wishes beneath the end of Spring Full Moon. Moon in Aquarius Summer Solstice. The Sun reaching its peak performance. We certainly gave a peak performance at the Goddess Center tonight. Despite all the nervous energy attacking our community lately, or maybe because of it, finally finding an outlet to feel good in release. I, of course, was brilliant, dazzling in my presentation, recitation, expressive movement to elegant improvisational music, as well as my bit parts in ritual incantations. It was a living dream, despite or because of all the sidebar drama. I love this motley bunch we think of as our pagan artistic community. Creative types, lovable but totally crazy, loudly proclaiming our mutual lovefest when not loudly proclaiming our independent outrages. Everyone needs a special place to come first, to be more noticed, to be catered to and expect nothing but applause for whiny venting or sympathy for yet another crisis. Not to mention, though everyone does, loudly, personal traumas, romantic disconnections, family issues, how can I get my work done when they turned off my electricity or who can afford simple errands with gas going up practically every minute, and on and on. Personally, I haven't had a car in years and would happily laugh at fuel prices if they didn't drive up my groceries as well (and then there's the winter heating costs on par with burning large denomination currency). Don't let my pecuniary disdain fool you: my prima donna streak is as wide as any. But I am so cool. I've learned the fine art of taking advantage of confusion to subtly get my way. And, of course, my way is the best, isn't it? Never mind. The point being the result was marvelous and an excellent time was enjoyed by all. Nervous energy transformed to kinetic dancing, electric performing, what we humans call "fun." Ritual wine and cannabis-laced cakes may have helped in taking the edge off, I'm sure. Ritual, to keep the community whole, healthy, in tune. Ultimately, everyday can be a celebration of being alive. We just seem to find some strange and nasty ways of celebrating a lot of those days. Is war a celebration, homage to the war gods? When we are totally horrid to each other, and ourselves, is that a celebration of the horrors within us? Do the wealthy celebrate their position with human sacrifice? Do people farther down the food-chain celebrate our pretentions to superiority in casting down and condemning those with any differences we can elevate to shame? Yeah, we arty types, we're selectively insane. Dancing on my inner stage, limbs and neck moving right along, to remembered music, I am in tune with my human contradictions. Dear Goddess, let me dance out all these questions for my dreams to ponder. I mean, without that annoying irritation, no pearl forms. I am a gypsy dancer, casting pearls before the swinish crowd. Dancing in firelight reflecting my visions, days of early dawns, late sunsets, sweaty heat and sudden storms bursting with lightning. My lover returns from temporary slumber. Soon his hand will remove my pen from mine, taking my hand into his. We will dance together in Summer's early light. Moon in Taurus These preachy Christians give me a pain. All this warning about the homosexual scourge, I guess a subset of the general sexual scourge plaguing mankind. You'd think we somehow invented biology in defiance of the Lord. Yeah, Lord, the metaphor that says we are a race of serfs, making our living at the pleasure of the owner of the land. So it's okay if you are a sorry excuse for a friend or lover or whatever so long as you make the right sacrifices to the protector to whom you owe allegiance. Doesn't sound like what I've heard of Jesus. To my understanding of the story he was a righteous, kewl dude. I don't remember him ever saying anything about the evil of gayness. He probably was pretty much gay himself, hanging with all those worshipping dudes he picked up along the way and told to forsake their families to come with him, sleeping rough, giving solace to the lonely and sore of heart. Think of the parties with him turning water into wine and blessing the whole occasion. Jesus wasn't about repression or exclusion. He was about life and love and peaceful coexistence. You know, it makes sense that those admonitions against gay sex in the Old Testament were in a section about dietary laws. Apart from the obvious joke, those laws were really about health risks. God's people were being warned against eating creatures seen as unclean. What could be more unclean than sticking a part of your body into the part of another from which excrement flows? Seriously. God was warning his people to have safer sexual practices. So where do his people come off making such a big deal about condoms? I mean they are one of those clever human inventions, a way of compromising so we get to have fun and health. I guess some people are wound so tight that they have to have old, ancient, strictures to hold onto. Sounds like insanity to me. Which is fine. I mean, there's plenty of insanity of all flavors out there. Mostly we manage. I just prefer not to be ruled by the blatantly insane. I prefer to have the common moral code based in sanity. Even if I give credence to the worship of their God, he didn't write the Bible. It was guys of the day who I guess could be compared to our journalists, telling the stories as interpreted by their own culture and precepts. Yeah, God would want his people, his hands, his workers upon the Earth, to avoid blatantly unhealthy practices. He would want them to be fruitful and multiply in a time when there was such a high rate of early death, all those battles for the glory of God, and disease. But in those Ten Commandments, the holy law, there is nothing specifically about sex at all. Adultery? That about honoring your sacred bond, your oath of faithfulness taken in marriage. No sex. No drugs. No rock and roll. These are not proscribed in the Commandments. Maybe Christians wouldn't be so bad if they actually believed in their religion, the part given by their holy spirit, not the clergy politicians. Part of having a minority faith, you have to really think about what you believe in the face of all those followers of the One True Church, culturally supported, even mandated in a lot of ways. Goddess, give me strength to see the truth, as much as I am able, despite the mass-hypnosis I strive to avoid. It helps to have friends, and lovers, who agree in alternative beliefs. I guess that's why we have religions rather than everyone practicing their own private, personal spirituality. Moon in Virgo My refuge, my sanctuary. When Daddy Danny left us, Celia was inconsolable and resolute, the way she can be. In some ways she clung to me as all she had left of love and family. Still, she had, what I now realize, an acute awareness that I had my own issues of abandonment, anger, mixed with fear and loss. She wanted me to have my own space to work it out in, not entangled with her grief. My mother is at heart a woman of the written word. Her safe haven and playland as a child was in books. In college she had concentrated on literature, with an ambition to teach as a college professor, something her public school teacher parents could view with pride. Even without the laudable career, she lived in a world of literature. To focus her mind and cope with emotional outrage she worked, reworked, never satisfied, on a poem she had started in college. I had been named for that obsession, a poem based on the myth of the Goddess Persephone. She is obviously a strong romantic archetype for Celia. Though, of course, her rational mind would never think of Goddess worship. When I asked why she was always writing, sometimes sobbing or angry over the closely worded, scratched out and revised in margins, pages, she set her draft aside to answer. She pulled out of the desk drawer a fat spiral notebook and a plastic case of colored pens. "I know it has become sad and confusing here since your daddy's been gone. Sometimes it's hard to talk about your feelings. It can help to write what you feel, even when there's no one else around you have some place safe to open up and let out what you need to say. Try it." Even at 5 I had been reading and writing for as long as I could think about. These skills came naturally for me as walking and talking. Instinct from DNA? I liked fairytales and diverse myths from different cultures which I found in books laying about the house. I liked to write little doggerel verses, simple song lyrics, my mimicking of Danny's craft. I took the gift, very seriously, and sat among the cushions in a corner of the room, playing at making words with different colors as I saw them in my mind. That notebook and its descendants have been my sanctuary, sounding board, never failing friend and companion. I get to focus the whirling storm of thought and emotion in my mind onto a magical manifestation of words on paper. Look, here, thoughts, feelings, spun out into a metaphoric web into which I safely let go. I soothe, energize, inspire myself with ramblings emerging from subconscious grappling with all the daily influences input into my senses, revelations made visible. Who needs drugs? (I mean other than for socializing or specific biological ends.) I'm not the practical one. It's Celia who has that Virgo critical breaking down of information skill to fall back on. I'm just a mass of Sagittarian fire, caught up in my enthusiasms of the moment. This notebook is my continuity, my exoskeletal structure, giving my bits and pieces a place to come together. Thanks, mom, for this nightlight to watch over my dreams. Moon in Capricorn We stopped at some generic fast food place to get some take-out grease on our way to an afternoon concert in the park. The staff seemed pretty spiffy, alert, working as a well-oiled team, with cute smiles and calm speaking style to deal with the milling clientele. Hobbled old folks, snarling young folks, brawling children, drawn-eyed parents, an imbroglio like some surrealist comedy. Spending so much of my time safely ensconced in my little fringe community, I forget how sad and unempowering daily life in the city usually is. Thank Goddess I've never been mainstream or Main Street. Thank the whole blessed pantheon that I've been able to frame my lifestyle in my chosen direction, somehow getting the little breaks I need to keep my self-creation moving along in my own idiom. Apparently, most people don't get those breaks, or don't recognize them as breaks. They seem so tightly wound and scared, and bristlingly angry. Not everyone, but the general trend. Reading comments on blogs, or hearing bits of conversation on the street, there's so much blaming, sarcastic digs, caustic platitudes, pointing at the designated scapegoat or anyone daring to disagree. Was the voice of the people always so mean, so closely wrapped, so crab-like stealthily pinch/withdraw/pinch again? Yeah, Cancer (the sign of the Crab, not the ubiquitous disease) rules the commoner, the public or publick, those served by the publick house or politician. Families like those of the kids at school, giving them the license to torture me for being different, foster these so-called conservative values. I never knew my grandparents, any of them, apart from stories. I didn't grow up in the wake of those emblematic American homes of the 50s. My dad ditched his military family history to be a ne'er do well songwriter, living pretty much on charisma. My mom rejected her Italian-American working class school teacher family traditions to follow a romantic dream. When she woke up, finding herself a single parent in a different working class neighborhood where she was figuratively spat on for being too much the intellectual elite, she closed off from the people of tradition yet again. The values I assimilated were not those of my grandparents, or even my parents or peers. I kind of made it up as I went along, mostly doing my real living in self-made fantasy. Perhaps that is how writers are formed, the creative sort that tell our visions, not the tell-all gossips or tech texters. Filmmakers, too, and other kinds of creators from the seeds of mental masturbation, are we all creating worlds in which we can feel welcome? What about those who work at those quirky idiosyncratic jobs, finding those precious niche markets in the hidden back alleys of commerce? Meanwhile mainstream commerce stamps out all the perky fast food servers and other barely above bound servant laborers willing to totally be the brand, mold themselves into appropriate hive-worker mentality. All the flag-waving "land of the free" and the patriotic hatred of those who "hate us for our freedom" while those so fervently defended freedoms are carelessly forgotten, even defiled, in the name of everyday practicality, in the name of some commercially designed prescription for survival. Or, in short, selling their souls to The Man for a promised share in the American nightmare. I assure you, me, this is no whine of bitterness from a certified loser. I'm not the loser. I'm the lost child that slipped through the veil into Neverland where life is a never-ending adventure. I never have to grow up into some semblance of tight-wrapped normalcy, however "normal" is being defined and by whom. That was never my role. Maybe we who have slipped through the veil are like the tribal shamans. Maybe we have a sacred duty to live apart from the life of the norm that we may intervene with the deities, bringing back treasures beyond knowing, invisible to those who refuse to see. Or maybe we just get to ride off and enjoy our adventures, regardless of mainstream rules and desires. Maybe I was incarnated for some divine purpose. More likely, I get to define my mission for myself. Everyday I get to create my life, my art, my self and expression. I thought that was the purpose of freedom, the primal scream of the American dream. Full-Moon tonight. Hear me howl! Moon in Taurus It's about the grounding, the safe and sacred place to release the charge. Feeling inadequate, out of focus. Yeah, the deadlines get tiring, their continual obligation, too tiring and I send in work not up to the standard I expect. No, no one is calling me on it. We all seem to have entered some summer space of lazy disregard or hyper-giddiness. Lots of our community energy is dissipated on far-flung festivals, self-finding excursions. We who are left behind far from forming a responsible core seem to be melting in the chain of sudden storms, wilting like the grass inundated in rain. I don't know if it's part of the global warming thing. It's sure not any warmer, just wetter than my mental collection of summer memories. I have to get a new pen. This one keeps leaking at critical moments. How am I going to market my angst if I can't read it? I talked to Celia, Mom, today. She calls from time to time to check in, keep up to date. I call from time to time when I need to blubber or be cruelly sarcastic about childhood memories that erupt disquietingly, or just because once in a blue moon I feel like a daughter. Today she was the one who wanted to talk about memories. I was feeling squeezed by the deadline for my Lammas piece which was refusing to come together. We talked at cross purposes for a few minutes. Aunt Marie died 17 years ago next month, which means my as yet unmet half-brother is about to be 17 years old. Not an especially commemorative year. I guess he would be going into his senior year of high school, except, as I recall, they were being home-schooled so as not to miss any educational opportunities. Gwen liked to pick up and go en famille on a whim without having authorities or institutional calendars to consult. Danny's new family (though not so new by now) was only peripherally on Celia's mind. Mostly she talked about me, asking about what projects I was involved with and intimating that she would like to see me, get together, share some quality time, when it might be convenient. I know, I don't visit her enough. She really has always been there for me, despite our difficulties. I admit I am at least as difficult as she is. It's never been a question of love or loyalty. We have very different styles, ways of being, enthusiasms. I don't blame her anymore for my broken-home upbringing or the glaring differences between our family and those of my neighborhood peers that I suffered for. Yes, I did blame her, unfairly I now see, for a lot of my years. I know better now. I've told her so. Still, I manage to avoid spending much time together. It seems better that way. Perhaps, well more like definitely, there are issues we need to work out. Perhaps in the fullness of time we will. I guess I could start thinking toward arrangements to visit for her birthday in September, Virgo on the cusp of Libra. Well and good, but this decision hasn't done a thing for this twisted feeling, just short of anxiety. My sure cure -- I can go talk to Tom about it and feel safely secured within his protective psychic and physical embrace. That's what this human thing is about -- sharing the little bumps and bruises and irrational moments with someone who gets it and gets me and is happy to be that place of safety and love. Why not be there when we can? Moon in Cancer Those narrow-minded pro-capital idiots. This must be why I rarely watch tv. Then I think I ought to be more aware of the wider political world, to inform my writing and probably my somewhat political opinions. So I have to be made aware yet again of the incredible stupidity that calls itself practicality. I mean, Mr. Smarty-Pants Business Man, you are not the Crown of Creation. Profit is not the be all/end all measure of worth. Some of us only minimally deal, out of necessity beyond our control, with money as a means to an end. The end is to pay our rent, have a space where we are allowed to operate our lives without being thrown out on the street with no place to keep our stuff or even shower off the muck. We deal peripherally with the world that believes so adamantly in the fiction of finance. Our real lives are about art and family, relationships, philosophy, finding deeper meanings, being absorbed in passions, following dreams to unexpected realities, being, believing, enjoying, getting involved, having lives we value, worth living. There is no need or sanity to hoarding greedy profit, gambling called investing, rating wealth in dollars, playing for the ownership of all the toys or golden parachutes or that other jargon. You somehow feel justified, entitled to rape the world of resources that we all might share, not because you have some marvelous plan to increase everybody's share and make us all happier, healthier, more empowered, but for your sacred bottom-line, for your profit-based greater glory. So you pay off politicians and wave your power over the people that the meek and hypnotized may fall into place, serving you and blindly buying what you sell, no matter that it takes more than their paltry pay, keeping them tied to your usury. Needless suffering, horrible tragedies squeezed out of what could have been happy lives. You preen and crow, so sure of your superiority. What twisted you so grotesquely? Obviously you have talents, drives, whatever got you to your reign of power. Why wasn't it enough for you to be happy, content, doing your part, making your mark, without trampling and faking your way to proudly display your place stamping above the heap you designed? I can be arrogant too. I don't need or believe in you. I have, in being me, all I need. What I value is so much greater, more life sustaining, pleasurable, even more powerful than any amount of currency or IOUs or numbers on an accounting sheet. Why am I so incensed? Buttons pushed; response aroused. Equilibrium re-established. Lammas celebration this weekend. In community we are strengthened. And we have a whole lot of fun. Let's see what this Lammas Solar Eclipse brings. Leo rules rulership. Perhaps the emperor will discover he is naked. I am happy to dance under a moonless sky and call forth the light that is the other side of darkness. I like to play that game where there are no toys, only the limitless power of imagination. We all have the power to do what we are. To some extent we have the choice of how far we go, in what direction. Moon in Libra All this talk about "the economy" as if there's a war between capitalist free market and governmental programs, or as if any policy could be one size fits all. People get so caught up in ideologies and competition, putting down viciously any idea defensively seen as contrary to our preset mindset. Well, obviously, not everyone, but enough to be an enormous unnecessary obstacle to real world optimization. What makes more sense to me is a kind of two-tier economy. You've got your basic tier in which everyone gets a piece of the pie covering whatever is deemed to be the basics. This sphere can also include basic infrastructure like public health facilities, public transportation including roads and such, public safety organizations like emergency and law enforcement, or more rationally peace enforcement. Then there's public education, libraries, art and culture centers and events. The second tier would be the free market capitalists to provide the goods and services they do best, consumer goods, luxuries, lifestyle and status markers, specialty niche fillers, fads and fancies and fantasies and innovations. People will want to go beyond the basic and fulfill dreams or create profits because there is more to human satisfaction than basic comforts. We like to shine, be respected, show our stuff. We like to earn credits to win prizes. We like to build our personal empires or be part of exciting or valued projects. We like to work when that work is appreciated and not oppressive. We are not in a position, even in impoverished areas, where we need to live by the creed: If you don't work, you don't eat. We have plenty of potential labor to provide far more than enough for everybody without demanding full participation. There are plenty of people who have no desire to be part of the quest for financial wealth, yet give full value to the social net. Raising children is valuable work. Caring for ill and infirm family and neighbors is valuable work. Organizing and participating in volunteer projects addressing community needs is valuable work. Providing education, art, cultural events is valuable work. Yet it is also legitimate to live, enjoy life as best one can, privately, without fanfare or public obligation. Humankind is so much better served by people pouring energy and intent into their passions than people grudgingly performing jobs out of obligation or desperation. If there is concern about less appetizing but necessary work being done, there are certainly ways to address this: 1) What is unappetizing to some may be interesting or useful in some sense -- psychologically or other -- to others. This is another advantage of a diverse population, when properly celebrated. 2) Ways can be found to reward, show admiration for, or otherwise make more palatable such tasks. 3) Ways can be found to give over as much as possible of these tasks to technological aid. 4) We can figure out better ways to take care of the needs now served by such tasks. The best incentive, result and means of moving toward this expanded economic model is the unleashing and uplifting of the great gift of human creativity, along with a generally increased zest for life. It doesn't have to happen all at once. If we consciously make efforts in this direction, eventually the tipping point will be reached, the more rational paradigm will take hold. As the benefits become evident, that which is best in us will continue to move forward. Moon in Sagittarius We are the stuff that dreams are made of. Every little fleeting thought, sensory input, synaptic connection is raw material for literal dreaming and the surreal expressionism of art (writ large or small). Something is impinging on my sense of equilibrium. I'm not sure what. Perhaps it will work its way into my dreams, or my art, unconsciously; perhaps that is its purpose. Maybe it's just the rain and celestial fireworks making me edgy. Maybe it's the impending Lunar Eclipse. The time between eclipses, solar and lunar, in the selected month is theoretically fraught with meaning, changes, revelations. Tom's been out of town these past couple of days, overseeing a festival he's organizing. I've been working on my own projects. Busy lives. Isn't that what lives are for, to create those manifestations on the material plane, playing with all those art materials, making those markings upon the world, enjoying the use of the stage? Why am I here in the city in August while the world seems to be caught up in countrified festivals (the world, that is, not caught up in war, politics, Olympics, or business as usual) Couldn't tell you. It's an intuitive thing. Maybe basing my life on pushes and pulls from some mysterious inner realm is a cop-out or otherwise unsound, but, really, what else is there to go on? It seems to be working well enough to keep me alive so far, despite all the massive insanity I've lived through to tell about. I have no problem believing the craziness happens to give me a wider perspective, object lessons, growth experiences. What doesn't kill you makes you stranger, as I've heard here and there. Part of my job description, strange and road-tested, transfiguring all with my magic pen-shaped wand, inking out this hero's journey through lands of Oz and Wonder and Never and the ancient mysteries. My dreams have been less than clear lately. Lots of movement from one situation to another without segue or apparent connection. When I wake up, it's all a jumble in my inner eye. No clear images. I feel like there's been a scoop taken out of my psyche to make room for new images waiting to be assimilated. I like the late night quiet. It's like another world from the day which belongs to consensual reality. The bread in the fridge has gone stale, ready to turn into the comfort of bread pudding-like french toast. Lemons are too expensive to praise the virtues of lemonade; I prefer iced tea (with lemon) which I have assembled of herbs and water, intermingling and waiting in its refrigerated bottle. All part of this complete pre-dawn, pre-sleep breakfast. This summer's been more cool and wet than I remember as usual. The paradoxical blessings of global warming? Some say we are born in a dream, all the buzzwords and hyped stories imaginative metaphors for our psychological concerns. Apart from being overly influenced by Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone," what might be the meta-analysis of my dreams? The stuff that I am made of? Moon in Aquarius I can hear Patty Smith in her intro to "Gloria" emphasizing "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." People talk about the troops -- and where did that designation come from, simplifying human lives into uniform units -- fighting, sacrificing, dying for my freedom. I am so very sorry for all this horrendously stupid suffering. I never wanted it. I never condoned it. My freedoms get stomped on all the time with or without anybody's sacrifice. It's up to me, every day, to make sure I am free. These folks, dying in some far off post-imperial war sure don't seem free. The folks they're killing for the existential crime of being the designated enemy sure aren't free. Freedom's got nothing to do with it. Or security. More officially sanctioned violence in the world makes nobody safe. Honor on the literal battlefield is neither a surefire way to make a career nor the mark of a real man (male or female) -- not in these days when there is so much real work, made even more imperative after all the wanton destruction, needing doing. Maybe people get so frustrated with discrepancies between what they're taught to want and what they get that blowing stuff up, people, livestock, antiquities, whatever you've got, feels more satisfying, like something decisive has happened. Or maybe that's just my silly girlish romantic idea of warfare. I've never been in armed conflict. Maybe it's all so regimented that no one gets to really feel much of it at all. Occasionally some lives or limbs or other body parts get lost. Occasionally buildings crumble, homes, families, neighborhoods, lost in the rubble. Whose freedom benefits? How do I benefit? Is this meant to be some Malthusian pruning back of population to serve up bigger pieces of pie to we who remain? The pie is ruined by inedible rubble. Careful, you'll break your teeth on that soldier's bones. It we want freedom, and whatever safety is actually possible in this unreliable world, wouldn't strapping manpower be better used to build and grow, teach and heal, explore, improve communication skills, party and create? That thing about power coming from the barrel of a gun only works while you're the fastest or biggest gun. People who feel empowered to be free can get killed. We all die. It's part of the package. People who give their power and freedom to fear never live. They may as well be robotic troops. There seems to be a common idea that if we can get the right toys, enough of them, it's as good as being free. Violence to get those toys and hold them is a wonderful game. Just because I don't get it doesn't make them wrong, if it works for them, I guess. It does make it wrong for me and the others who have our own games to play that are being obnoxiously and sometimes tragically interfered with by the violence and its consequences. Our rights must be at least as legitimate, as important, as theirs. Who is charged with the promotion of peaceful, cooperative, creative, life-affirming initiatives and maintenance? Billions of taxed dollars and huge military organizations get wasted while we are expected to gloriously applaud, then individually muster what energies we can in the service of paying bills and taxes to keep the war machine, the industries and their corporations they serve, marching along. Who made these rules anyway? The sinners that Jesus keeps dying for? It seems like a bad bargain to me, not just because I am on the ripped off end. The Goddesses are so much more sensible, gloriously enjoying as a sacred example, not horribly dying in martyrdom. Isn't that the way it goes: guys hopelessly posturing their foolish macho pride while the women get to not only do the real needful work, but also have to keep cleaning up all that needless mess. Well, not all guys, nor all women, but enough to prop up the metaphoric stereotypes. Men aren't from Mars, nor women from Venus. We're just variations of the biology of Mother Earth. Would it help if we made a point to remember that? Until the colonization of other planets, we're all stuck here together. When we do it right, we can have so much fun. So what's the stupid hang-up? A topic for eclipse meditation ... Moon in Aries I know I'm letting it get to me, but it hurts. In my gut, in my heart, in my mind I really do feel the pain of all the ugliness. People behaving viciously; there's no need. There's no reasonable reason. Yet it happens everyday, all the time, in all manner of horrid manifestations. People beat their small, defenseless children. People plot against supposed friends, stab them figuratively, sometimes literally, in vital places. People use the love others feel for them as tools of torture. We deceive to the point of creating insanity. We embarrass ourselves to mortify those who could have been allies. We deceive ourselves into thinking it's fine to destroy over petty differences. We are pretty damned evil. Not all the time, nor all of us, but way too much for comfort. This is what I get for listening to gossip. All the nasty little demons of everyday lives come tumbling out over glasses of wine. But it's always there, too, in the headlines, even if I resist reading the details, in the broken faces on the street, even if I resist hearing their stories, in the song lyrics and radio news breaks. Yeah, if it bleeds it leads. Sensationalism sells, and what's more sensational than brutality? Of course, I should move my mind toward counting my blessings. My life, these days, is relatively safe and sane. My lover is sweet, not bitter and deranged. My family life may have been imperfect, but never violent. My neighborhood runs to the bohemian, not the territorial warfare of the oppressed. What I suffered in my less enlightened times I survived, minimally scarred. (Just scarred enough to be intriguing, not hideous.) So, let it go. Think lovely thoughts. I shall clap my hands and save a fairy's life, shall I? I shall drink delicious magical potions and swoon into bliss, no harm, no foul. Or maybe I could get by meditating on my umbilical reminder. We are all one -- Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm. Because, what do I think I can do to combat the ugliness short of creating and surrounding myself with beauty? What would be wrong with that? There's always dark beauty, dark humor, the magic of darkness, the yin-yang shadow, the cup of refreshingly sour lemonade, the decadent delight of the bittersweet. That is what we do with the ugliness, I guess. Paint a graffiti mural over it all, clouds and whales and galaxies. Make it just an incidental part of the picture, disease germs and bloody revolution, Malthusian balance, life eating life, the tragedy of survival in all its ugly methods of demise. Why can't we all die peacefully in our sleep? Is there a vital truth to be gained from pain, torment, cold vengeance, scary demands of conformity, inescapable agony because someone profits? Who said any of it has to make sense, be nice, or feel good? It's only tragedy if someone's watching, and labeling. Otherwise, it's just private pain, like could happen to anybody. Isn't that what pain receptors are for? Maybe it's just interpretation. I say pain. You say pressure or discomfort or neural activity. I say torture. You say enhanced interrogation techniques. I say I don't want to see it anymore. You say here are some lovely blinders, part of this complete costume. Enjoy the fantasy ball. Your pumpkin awaits. I say awake me from this nightmare. You say: you are awake. Start dreaming. If the world was mine to create, what would I do differently? How would I reorder the better angels and the spiteful demons? This world seems to be moving into ever more fateful times. Then, all times must be fateful, chock full of ugliness, armored in beauty, blessed, cursed, nurturing within a burning crucible. If we could learn to program not in binary but in multiplicity, what answers could we compute? Would that mean anything to the battered child no longer able to survive? Or the battering parents killing themselves vicariously? Suicide bombers desperate for release from bondage, desperate to create their own context. Is there that possibility of escape with popular, market designated art? Is there a way to reconcile with human complexity writ large on canvas? None of it stems the pain, staunches the endless bleeding. Still, I have deadlines to keep and pages to type before I sleep. If I could just get rid of this queasiness so I could concentrate. I am so sorry, ghosts of the brutally defeated. Blessed be you all. May we all find peace, tranquility, pleasant dreams to erase the pain, reach transcendent beauty. Moon in Gemini "It's not that I don't want to be self-disclosing. I just think no one wants to see me disclosed." Celia told me. The last time I was living with her, after the whole adolescent rebellion thing that kept our conversations minimal, after my whole wrecking my life thing, yet again, stalwart Mama stepping in to take me home and care for me. After I got sufficiently bored with my self-pity, we had some good, deep conversation, now and then. I tried to let her know that what she disclosed I cherished, even while reserving my right to be a brat. I have the typical Sagittarian foot in mouth disease, not reticent like Celia at all. More like Daddy Danny who never knew a party he couldn't be the life of. I'm not that flamboyant, but I do manage to get myself in quite a bit of trouble with my radical ideas outspoken. But then the more gentle-caring side of my nature will kick in. I'll start seeing everybody's point of view and go all soothingly good-humored. Mostly I get along pretty well socially. Yet I do so enjoy that quiet understanding, deep emotional sharing without need for explanation, like I have with Tom. We do talk, so much, about everything, passionately. But there's that other layer where no words are needed for complete attunement. Yes, Goddess, I love him. I thank you fervently for the meeting of our paths. I'd had no idea it could be so easy, so beautiful, safe and magnetic, while exciting, energizing beyond any dream. Amazing how people affect each other, like elemental forces. I can be so very different in one relationship from another. These others, they pull out different aspects of ourselves, aspects even that we were never aware existed until there they are. There I am, in a way I wasn't before this other's influence showed me this way of being me. I do like the me he shows me, the feeling of being we. More and more, too, I like the me I show me. The better I get to know me, through all the relationships, especially the one, or many, with myself, the better my respect, love, appreciation for this marvelous creature grows. That can't be bad. All this stupid talk about selfishness, the great sin. Wherever I go, whoever I'm with, I'm always here. Doesn't it make more sense to spend all my seconds and minutes and lifetime with someone I love and appreciate and enjoy? I haven't got Celia's self-deprecating hang-ups, or Danny's well-deserved guilt over spinelessness. They don't need those hang-ups, though they seem to think they do. I certainly neither need nor accept such self-imposed limitations. There's plenty enough limitations, just being on the material plane in a social network, bumping against everybody's rules, restrictions, expectations of conduct. It is so easy to lose yourself in all the cross-current. Anchoring to a secure inner voice can be essential with all those conflicting voices vying for attention. No wonder the world can seem so crazy, everyone a hair's breadth from total meltdown one way or another. People clinging to whatever voice tells them what they want to hear, or are used to hearing, no matter how miserable it keeps them. Yeah, well, I would have more compassion for these miserable folks if they didn't seem to want to make everyone else miserable too. Yes, Persephone, everyone isn't as magnanimous as I. Named for a doomed goddess, I must be special, eh? Blessed be, each and all. Moon in Libra I want to take notes, record the world going by. Change can come so quickly. How can I know what I am learning, what has meaning? There have been times when I have looked back so clearly; I see the metaphor, the spiritual lesson, the brightly colored thread woven through my life. I didn't see it then. Then I was caught up in the moment's crisis, scared out of any possible wits that I would not find a way out. There's always a way out, if you can be calm enough to find it and resolute enough to take it. At least, I need to believe that. I feel the call of Autumn, change, forward moving energy. Challenges in the air. Will I be ready? I'm barely holding together as it is. When I was a kid I wondered about the future, the new millennium, how special is that! The past would be behind, with this whole bright and shiny new future to do whatever was imaginable. When the millennium came around, of course, I was in no condition to make much of it. Just another day, another year in a pointless series of days and years as far as I was consciously concerned. The calendar doesn't matter. It was, no doubt, devised for political reasons at the time. Some philosopher, I should probably google, I think said we can't step in the same river twice; everything constantly changes. I especially see the change from summer into fall. So why put the New Year in the middle of winter? Whose idea was that? Yeah, we may need a ceremony to convince us that the Sun is returning, but it doesn't mean we have to change the year so abruptly mid-season. Winter doesn't start on December 21, even though that may be the longest night. We all know when it is winter, when it turns cold and snowy necessitating heavy clothing and lots of it. Or is that too regional? And what will Global Climate Change do to that regional experience? At least in my culture, the school year starting after Labor Day has marked the change into another year. I am a grade older now, wiser, more in control. Yet this is when we are still in the servants' sign, the time of harvest, golden fields to be plucked of crops ready to be sent to market. They say new ways must be found to produce more food for a growing world, in these times of climatic change, in these times of economic uncertainty and the decline of vital resources. Still, people have long thrived through times of much less, probably still do in some societies. There seem to be the people who gossip and complain and catastrophize, and people who sit back, think, work it out, find solutions and creative outcomes. Of course there are other people as well. I know there are those who try and try and always get knocked down yet again, just a bit out of step with the main flow of acceptability. There are also those shallow hangers, smiling and flocking to the bright center of the parade, whatever it takes. I prefer to make it (or not) on my own terms, which have nothing to do with fame or fortune as popularly portrayed. I enjoy living simply with occasional treats, especially unexpected treats. I like being true to the principles I have figured out for myself through the life I experience. I like knowing I can count on myself while acknowledging the great goodwill of my fellows which allows my actual dependencies to be easily reconciled with continued independence because it all goes around. What I really like is getting away with being a brat because I'm so cute and clever. Ah, truth. Then, I start to think I am getting too old to get away with being a cute, clever brat. It's probably getting to be time to buckle down and work on more marketable skills. Just how long do I think I can get by on this low-level career mosaic of some art promotion here, selling my clever words to low-circulation publications, working events paid by distribution of door proceeds or tips, the occasional temp gig, whatever comes along and grabs me for a short term recompense? I know Tom could and would support me without a second thought, but I would end up feeling owned. Okay, this is something legitimate to be thinking about as the seasons change. Note that I never considered running to Daddy Danny now that I am no longer a package deal with Celia, obviating Gwen's objection. It did have to be said. The Pisces Full Moon will be available for celebration in a couple of weeks. There is plenty of time to devise a ceremonial spell to supplicate the Goddess to bring me the awareness I will need to find the path She ordains for my next phase. Free will is free. It is what we use to make our own what destiny demands. Or not. It makes more sense than running on chance, in my experience. Then, my experience may be a game of my mind, placing what comes in according to my expectations. It's all so tenuous! What makes sense of it is to go with what works for me, whatever my rationale of personal insanity. Full Moon ritual it is. And dreams, paying attention to what they say in their slippery dream language. Moon in Sagittarius I really enjoy wandering bookstores, sampling the wares, finding hidden treasures to make note of. I don't buy retail, prices in books like prices in general getting ever more emblematic of the cultural rift between the economic classes. There are still libraries and secondhand outlets for we financially challenged. Wandering the store, though, is free and fun. Sometimes I run into those author events where you get the lecture, free coffee, and the Q & A, which can be quite edifying. Today there was this author who apparently had written about the tumultuous 60s, heyday of my father and the social revolutions we are still embroiled in sorting out. It wasn't all sex, drugs, rock n roll and flower children. I've heard the stories, at this point from a wide variety of sources who mostly lived it first-hand. It was about all kinds of people breaking out of their stereotyped roles. There was the Civil Right Movement at first. A hundred years after the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, you could have fooled large segments of society who didn't seem to get the word that "equal rights" had legitimate meaning. I'm not sure what the eventual catalyst was, maybe all that post-WWII social flux slowly sliding down, shaking out. The mass communication of tv might have helped. There was all that idealism around the JFK presidency; imagine a liberal Irish Catholic able to be elected, exhorting us to ask what we could do for our country. Whatever the background, change was playing around our collective psyche. A whole lot of people started to feel a need to make this rights thing right. And it grew. African-Americans needed rights. Draftees needed rights. Women needed rights. Gays needed rights. All the oppressed groups saw the light, that they were Americans too and entitled to be taken seriously. It's amazing to think about how radically different the world was not all that long ago. My parents may be getting on in years, but this was all within their lives, within a generation. That vast worldwide storm of social upheaval is my direct history, living memory, available on tv archives and affecting our everyday lives in ways we no longer even think about. When my mom was a kid, women were teachers, nurses, secretaries (or, of course, whores, but we don't speak of that), if they worked outside their home at all. Mostly they were housewife/mothers, and happy to be so. Or so the myth goes. Not that they didn't have plenty to keep them busy; and not that today there aren't plenty of women who opt for that lifestyle. During WWII, the one they thought would defeat the fascists and make the world right again, women patriotically did all the work left behind by the men going off to fight the good fight. Then, the guys came home victorious and it's the kitchen and bedroom for you, little lady. Well, no, not if you're too poor to have a kitchen and bedroom if you don't take some shit job not considered manly or worthy of decent pay; but proper women with good providing husbands get to spend their days cooking, cleaning, caring the for kids, and providing a safe hole for hubby's semen. I suppose guys got to feel the pressure to earn their perfect fiefdom. Then, there were all the closeted queers making life miserable for themselves and undesired wifey. This is the world the Christian Conservatives are so hot to restore, when men were real dicks and women were real tits and ass babymakers. Great! Backlash. But how does it make sense to lash out against freedom, rights, equality under the law and in the marketplace? Aren't those the grand old flag founding American values we get to go to war for? And I don't remember where Jesus said" "Oppress thy brothers and sisters as thee would want thyself oppressed." Wasn't Jesus about love and forgiveness? I am so confused. At least I'm not a Christian. How do they reconcile the teachings of their Lord and Savior with the preachings of their angry hellfire pastors? I guess that analogy about flocks of sheep is right on. Pardon me for being a bitter practitioner of an alternative faith. We pagans know about dark and light, and the necessity for giving full reverence to the whole. We are not so easily fooled by exhorters of light who lead into darkness. We like to celebrate life in all its intricacy, rather than insisting on some narrow path from life to a death-dependent reward. So, what's the difference between the supposed Muslim call for martyrdom rewarded by virgins and paradise, and the Christian reward of Heaven after a righteous life of suffering? I guess that the Christian is not required to die in combat, and is not promised a sexual hereafter. After all, you know, sex is bad. Procreating is essential, but the means impure. So sad. Jesus, I am so sorry for what your so-called followers have wrought. I know you tried, gave your life to teach them better. I hope you are enjoying your paradisial reward. I think you would be happy conjugating with "sinners" rather than virgins. I mean, isn't that virgin thing about claiming ownership of the fruit of the womb? What should that matter in the afterlife? "Sinners" are so much more experienced, much more fun. I mean, we are talking reward. Sorry, Islamic martyrs. Though, I suppose, being intent on martyrdom, on dying for your people, you never get much chance to be very experienced yourself. Maybe it would be more fun for you to experience newly together with your afterlife harem. What about the Muslims who don’t die in battle? Do they get a segregated corner of Heaven, or a piece of paradise devoid of virgins? Someday I want to learn Arabic and see for myself what the Koran says. Moon in Capricorn Of course the Goddess Center women are all abuzz in heated political debate, or rather debate about the highly hyped issues and candidates. I'm generally more into meta-politics, the underlying philosophies, paradigms, ways and means in the developing of the structure within which to perform our interdependent social roles -- much more fascinating than the media memes. Happy little packages we can carry through the day to give us our unthinking preferences are useful if we want politics to be a binary system. They don't end up so happy, though, when you do throw in some thought. Of course, thinking just leads to confusion. I am not happy about the sexist/racist political warring. I know, sisters, we want a woman in the Whitehouse (and I don't mean First Ladies and staff) because that would somehow give us, what? More power? A better shot at an executive position or fulfilling political ambition or respect? Because once we acknowledge we have these equalities of expectation, women will naturally elevate ourselves without it being worthy of comment. Until our culture respects its female half, a figurehead of gender is just another target for bad humor and rancor. To me the sensible course is to go with the candidate whose style of leadership is one I can respectfully get behind, if such a candidate presents, even from a so-called third party. Who makes these decisions about what political organizations are more legitimate than others? Is it just based on longevity? Doesn't that keep us stuck with the most entrenched in corruption? Or is it based on the size of the membership? It seems rather self-fulfilling that the groups who get the status will get most of the flocking crowds. These elections become such a big deal -- a national orgy of angry rhetoric and divisiveness. People finally vote, then seem to think we are governing ourselves by proxy, their job is over. Then we get to bitterly complain that the jokers can't get it right because they are not all things to all citizens. Meanwhile, for the local elections, the level at which most of our everyday lives intersect with democracy, small enough for individual activity to really make a difference, no one shows much notice or interest. I guess we pretty much just like to complain, not do the work to fix the problem. So, great, we get to get up on our high horses in mock battle, make our symbolic gesture in the voting booth, and righteously complain that the bastards don't know their ass from the hole we want filled in in front of our house. Ah, America, home of the equal opportunity idiots, selling our birthright for a bit of entertainment and self-satisfaction. Didn't the Roman "bread and circuses" come before the fall? Or is that why it's become so important to throw out the invading hordes of Mexicans and Muslims? We are a nation of immigrants and religious freedom, as long as you all are our kind. See why I don't get into political arguments with my friends and colleagues? I mean, I'm all for political action, but that's a totally other realm of discourse. Time seems to be moving faster lately. I have to get my brain in gear and work out the logistics of my visit to Celia for her birthday, less than a couple of weeks away. Tom had wanted to fly her in, put her up in a swank hotel, wine and dine and entertain her for a few days, including bringing her to the Mabon celebration, which would also allow me to participate. I ran this by her, and she would have none of it. She wants me to herself without distractions, she says. She always has been essentially very private. I can see that she might not be comfortable amongst a large gaggle of witches, mostly strangers to her. It's her birthday. She gets to make the rules. I'll have my work in in plenty of time for the holiday, so I may be missed a bit but not needed. Tom said he would rent me a car since I refuse to deal with airport security, and it's only a few hours' drive. Usually I take the bus. I want to go a couple of days early so it won't be a rush, so I'll have time to acclimate. Celia moved out of our old neighborhood a couple of years ago, once she realized I wouldn't be returning. She found a smaller place, top floor of a two-family double-decker, a condo, closer to her work. I won't have to deal with old neighborhood memories. I haven't made any memories in this new neighborhood. I've only briefly visited, not often, and spent that time with Celia, not the neighbors. I know she has friends at work, but she likes to compartmentalize and doesn't bring them home much. There's just her and Pandora the cat, who replaced the now long dead Mao of my childhood. This will be good. We will be adult women talking about our lives, our relationship, working on that primal mother-daughter bond. Then I will come home, back to my life, renewed, enriched by this familial experience. It's all good. It's golden, like autumn leaves. Moon in Pisces Harvest Moon, too overcast to see your resplendent glory. We've been dancing to, if not exactly under you. The weather should be clearer tomorrow night for the full Full Moon effect. Or will another hurricane come up the coast to drown you? Unsettled weather. Unsettling times. Uranus conjunct the Full Moon at the time of harvest. The Towers were struck by lightning, manmade lightning. Fire and brimstone. I wonder about the Christ and anti-Christ quoting scriptures, using prophecy to further causes of today. If Christians wonder why I mock them, or more likely take offense (turn that other cheek, guys), how would they feel about castigations of being Satan Worshippers, evil heathens, unbelievers in the One True Church (splintered as it may be). They leave no room for me. I, on the other (left?) hand honor them by taking their creed seriously. There's room enough for all of us. Why don't they want to see that? They've only been around for a couple thousand years. In the beginning was way before any of us can remember. At the end we all die, onward to whatever afterlife does or does not await us. The Bokononists, in Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" believed the world ended when they died. Their world did. Of course, their world was a fictional one created by a human author. So like a god, the artist, creator of worlds. Don't worship me! I don't want the responsibility. Why would a god? Why would a President? Why do these politicians want to be President of The World Power? What kind of power does it really give them? Well, if we the people and our other representatives aren't looking, paying attention, expressing our minding, who knows? Maybe it's not some mythical anti-Christ and Beast we need to be concerned about. Maybe the threat is much more mundane and RealPolitik. Beware of politicians on a mission from God. So, dear Goddess, tomorrow night belongs to you, under the Harvest Moon. My intention for supplication to your wisdom will be brought with holy honor. What is the nature of my harvest and my sacrifice? The Vestal Virgins were not physically intact, but free of the domination of any man. Perhaps I am in that sense a virgin as well. Though the bonds of love -- but are bonds of love a domination if it is a love between free equals with no expectations, no demands? What am I willing to sacrifice? It's not like I've got much. Maybe I can sacrifice my ignorance, my unfounded fears, my ill-advised temptations, self-imposed limitations. I sacrifice my weakness in the service of my strength. Sounds lovely. The thing with magick -- be oh so careful when wishing that you are ready for the consequent reality after tweaking to magick's demand. Be careful what you will for; it may become your destiny. I could be such a well-adjusted coward. Well, part of me would be. I am opening myself to destiny, not out of bravery, but necessity. What else have I got? It's far too late in the game to switch over to a "normal" lifestyle. I have the candles, the incense, the herbs, the wine, the spell. Wish me luck. I am a daughter of Jupiter. Luck is my Ace in the hole, my guardian talisman, my banner and armor. Moon in Taurus I don't get what these economy down the tubes explainers are talking about. There is no free market. At least not in the land of the free where everything costs. There are all kinds of regulations, petty and large, but mostly opportunities for people to be paid off. There are licensing fees and inspections and filing papers and setting up appropriate accounts for paying taxes, paperwork constantly prying into the time that you want to be spending on making the business happen. Creating a small business, even before making it work, is made so difficult, as if we didn't really need and want all the local and specialty enterprises keeping our daily lives running with the manufacturing and distributing of goods, services, community glue, backbone of a thriving economy. I took a bunch of courses at community college in small business management. After investigating my job options, doing some kind of art promotion seemed the way to go. I had picked up some idea of how art and making a living might intersect while I adhered to Mark. Not that he was very successful, but, amazingly (to me) he did make a living from selling his paintings. Of course I got to learn about blackmarket sales and distribution close up at Brent's side, though I may have been more focused on sampling the wares. Having had some basic marketing and business accounting classes, though, I'm sure my amalgamating brain cells did their multi-tasking and I did pick up salient lessons. I do seem able to come up with decent strategies and ideas, useful enough for various friends and cohorts to be happy to trade favors, ask my advice, invite my participation in their and mutual projects. My point being that these big deal business as theft types at the top cry so hard about free market liberty, small government, social welfare is none of our concern, blah, blah, blah; but they don't play by those rules. They do all they can, like buying politicians and advertising hypnosis, to get their sweet, sweet deals, laws swerved to their favor, keeping the little guys swamped in paperwork and regulations that they have departments of experts to play for them, merrily screwing the workers and consumers, setting themselves up as too vital to fail so they get bailed out when they go too far, excused from every stupidity and vile act and liability with the best justice money can buy... Where is anything resembling a free market whose invisible hand chooses products, prices, promotes innovation and creative problem-solving (not just financing), gets the best to the most for the least? There is no free market. There probably never has been. Like the people's communism that is meant to form once the state has withered away, instead the state stands firm no matter the dire straits of the common people, those communism was meant to uplift into mutually benefitting community. They're only theories. In the real marketplace corruption and strong-arming rules. The more you've got the more you can get by paying off the refs and cops and rule-makers. Meanwhile, the people with the great ideas who might be truly providing what the people, the customers, the market would so greatly desire have to get nickel and dimed, insulted and threatened and broken one way or several so that if they ever do manage to make a go of it they need to develop talents having nothing to do with their purported product but all about scrabbling and scheming, skimming and hoarding resources. At least admit the game is fixed. Admit that winners and losers are not about moral desert, but immoral leverage. Maybe if we finally let the corporations fail, too big or not, let the market happen, let the millions of little good ideas sprout up in communities everywhere, suited to their individual little markets, we really could have that diversity of ideas and cultures and small solutions that we ideally say we want. Even if profits were not the only motive, even if we were more concerned with people having the products and lives we each really want, it would still be a marketplace of freedom. I know, the script says we are mere vassals in the service of our Lords. Isn’t it better to be vestal virgins in the service of our Goddess, no man's slave? I've got to get my act together to get it on the road tomorrow. On my sacred mission to celebrate her birth with my mother, just at the changing of the seasons. It seems appropriately, what? Generational? I'll be leaving from here, Tom's place. We are spending our last few precious hours of Summer together, since by the time I'm back next week it will already be Fall. We got together shortly before Spring, kind of a half-versary. Bed and breakfast a la casa with Tom, dinner with Celia, a long drive's worth of transition between. Today we have unplanned plans to play like kids, in a totally other world from logic or economics or politics, just Tom and me and the we of our common becoming.