Housing About...

I've spent the last three days in major Spring-clean mode.   Spring Day (the Equinox) was literally like a bucket of glacial water dumped over my head, snapping me out of the autumn/winter fog I had been dragging around.

Je veux que ce bras durci ne traine plus un cher image.   ~Arthur Rimbaud

There's no way to gracefully translate that phrase, but I chanted it like a mantra from 1983-85 - as I tried to figure out just who had the 'hardened arm' (bras durci) and who was dragging (ne train plus) whom.     As the 2008 follies wore on, it came back like an earworm.  

Then the Equinox:  as the energy in my world rose up and broke over me, I watched that phrase shatter like an icefloe and wash away.   The resulting range of motion has been amazing!  

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And like a social confirmation of this new solar year, my dear friends (sortafamily) from Colorado are coming into town on Weds. - I'll be throwing an party for them on Saturday night, kid-friendly, nosh-happy and mostly outdoors.    With some luck, the drought will hold! 

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My April forecast from PlanetWaves

Cancer (June 21- July 22)   "The ethics of a professional situation may be weighing on you, but I would propose that's a waste of your imagination and thus your potential. You seem intent on proving yourself right, or demonstrating who you are; give it up. You're as right as you need to be, and it's only a point of emotional confusion, based on the past, that is leading you to believe that you've got a problem that you do not have. "

Hmmm... 

"So what's really going on? You want more, with urgent, yearning, lustful passion. You may not even know what that passion is pushing you toward." 

Well, it is the *first* day of the new year (counting from the Equinox)...  I don't expect a lot of visible movement until after Venus falls backward into Pisces.   I found out today that Neptune (which rules Pisces) is considered the 'higher' expression of Venus, so as Venus enters that Piscean --Neptunian--  energy, there should be  an upburst of true love.   Love in the holistic sense:  sensual, social, familial, planetary.  

  

Either that or a hell of a drunk. 

"I suggest you think less in terms of results and more in terms of your potential. That will mean devoting yourself to new things rather than sticking with the ones you've been pushing with such determination. You're much closer to connecting with one of those fresh experiences than you imagine. The key is this: give up on whether it's right or wrong by an external standard. Connect with the calling that only you can articulate to yourself.""

That's the plan, Stan.  Since 1989.  

from my PlanetWaves subscription... 

Soundkissed...

The sun finally broke through! just in time for Spring Eqx!

I was talking to a potential employer yesterday - having a really nice interview in his garden. The sun was weaving in and out of the clouds, and above us a cardinal was pitching its voice like a major league singer. At one point a whole happiness swept over me, and I had an intuition that people like this guy - smart, kind, a little disorganized, but oddly ventriloquized through his *environment* - are coming through for the long haul.

I don't think I got the job, but the interview itself was powerful and informative, which'll do for now.

househol(ding)-up

Second and a halfth day of rain - hallelujuah! The coldnastycold, not so much, but it is forcing me to stay near the desk and actually finish a thing or three.

We haven't had any substantial rainfall in a couple of months, and even with the two+ days of precip, we're still off. This breaks a 19 month drought, but only if we get more rain soon after this wave.

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Besides the Writing, there is the Seeking of Job, which rolls along smartly. Wish I had the sub-employed insouciance of vuboq - but that might require I be 30 (again). Noooooooo...anything but that!

A couple of days ago Q asked me what was my favorite year of this lifetime. I told him it was the year I got pregnant with him. (Awwww...) It was true enough, 1994 rocked. After I thought about it for a minute more I said, "Honestly, baby, I don't think I've had my favorite year yet."

Which had better be true.
For everybody.

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Focus

Being on the tightrope is living;
everything else is waiting.
--Karl Wallenda

6 minutes (or was that weeks?) to Save the World...

Venus is retrograde in Aries for the next six weeks - then the planet of Love, Beauty, Wealth and Taurus will remain in Aries until the end of May.   This is extra-hot fun in the old town, I'd say.  What I experienced the day V turned retro was as close to being flayed alive as I can imagine.  But readers of my blogs know that I work *with* these things hands-on, usually without the gloves.   

The next day was only slightly worse.   But my dreamstates informed me last night that the best is yet to come.   Oh joy.    

Friends & Finehearts - I'm just sayin'...  The next six weeks may not be overly comfortable in  the Mystiverse -- but I am apprized that the shakedown is not only necessary, but will be --in the end-- highly productive.  

The dreams weren't grim or anxiety-ridden, just clear.   And somehow I said "Yes"  without knowing what the super-secret surprise might be at the bottom of the box.     Well, that's incarnation for ya. . . 

Today I did find expanses of the Bone Bikini project that I thought had been lost to the pixilated Pluto that undersees the online world.    Just in time for a full moon in Virgo.   Yay.  And a new sadhana came busting through before I could figure out how to oh-shucks it off. . . so something's definitely on the move.   

art trails

The Boyness is home for a day or so, getting his sleep & food fixes.   I have noted before that people tend to get sloe-eyed and drifty here; as soon as Q hits the door it's snack, snooze, wake up long enough to eat dinner, then crash again until 27 minutes before the bus skims by our house.   What a life.  

Yesterday, as we were getting through phase One and Two, he mentioned wanting to make 100 drawings of his friends.   "That's a great idea: let's go get a sketchpad," I replied.   He looked as though I had offered to take him to the Louvre.  "Really?!"   

Off we went  to UT and the new art supply store in  the University Co-op.  I had forgotten how much I love those places - I am a sucker for a nice easel, and the smell of art supplies is in my blood.   We poked around in the sketchpads and artists books, comparing papers, bindings, handling.   How much time does it take to get to the page, how cooperative is the book?  where do you keep the pencils?  what kind of gum is best for each lead?   We looked at beautiful graphic sets, Staedler, Uchida, Faber...  I sighed at the prices  a bit, but we ducked out with a nice set for less than ten bucks.   

He's got a good eye, but really. . . I've got to get this kid some art lessons.   ( Oh wait, isn't he going to a Fine Arts high school next year?  Then the lessons will get some kid. . . ) 

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Growing the Bone, and Venusian Moonwalks

The murder of the Kashmiri dancer Shabana really hit a nerve with me a few weeks ago, getting me off of my ass and back to work on the Bone Bikini project. When my 13-year-old read this:
"R.I.P. Shabana, who was murdered by dickless wonders on Jan 2, 2009..."
...he said, "Mom, that may be the coolest opening line to a post ever written." High praise indeed. I wasn't aiming for cool, just clear. We're getting there.

So "Meeting the Girl in the Bone Bikini" is back on my desk, though the visual component (Life to Smoochey!) is still in limbo. I will forge ahead with what I have and focus on the cunthropological aspect of this project (that's anthropology, bliss-side up).

I'm working uptempo right now before Her Ultra-Highness (Venus) goes retrograde in about a week. That planet is already doing an extended tour in Aries, not her happiest placement, but with plenty of energy and a certain bitchiness in the best sense of the word. Have I mentioned that one of the Girl's epithets is "The Great Anger"?
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Moondark in Pisces

at 6:59 tonight.

This new moon is said to be characterized by dreaminess to an almost intoxicating degree. I feel boundaries dissolving, and the air liquifying, as if everything can be spoken and heard in a medium of supreme elasticity and presence.

Enjoy your moment of omniaudience. Whisper into it lovingly. . .
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Shabana's Rose

"...Oh body swayed to music, oh brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

~wbyeats

Venus no more than flipped the phone open and Pan appeared...

(Aphrodite holding a cell phone)
So here we are at the curve in the road. And it feels like the Gs are picking up, no? Inaugural Balls bouncing everywhere! I am writing about 20 minutes out from the Oath of Office (OoO?), and although I'd like to feel something else, all I get is Nerves. An apprehension that doesn't seem to want to settle down.

Anne Ortelee says it might be the effect of Venus being thrown every which way astrologically this week. Maybe so...

"Thursday Venus accelerates her energy and her desire to release or change. She’s captive between three malefic this week so she’s not feeling the love. [. . .]

"[T]he POINT of the whole week ~ and the upcoming eclipse ~ is the separation implied by the Venus/ Saturn aspect would produce very positive outcomes. This eclipse talks of deciding to make greater commitments in a relationship. (Anne‘s Note: or to end it and move along to a relationship where you can find a greater commitment!) Either way, the eclipse is gentle and individuals can trust the situations that arise and allow themselves to be led along by their momentum."

Since this is a week that leads to a newmoon/solar eclipse (1:54 a.m. Monday the 26th), you might want to click through the astrological sites listed to the right and pick up a feel for our astral garments. It promises to be a bit of a rough ride (on the way to the Garden). And you know the deal with transitional energies: you have to both loosen up and hang on in the right rhythm.

Party on, but remember where you left your keys.
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Donate2Play?

My friend Kim just posted this very bright idea on her Facebook profile:


...It's an online literary/art journal with a reading/seeing fee of $5. This goes into a fund to support orphans (god, it hurts to even *write* the word). Odd how flexible money can be. Five bucks seems like a pittance in Starbucks, but suddenly takes on volume when pressed into this kind of action.

Very cool...

Opusculum Mystagogum

'09 is certainly pulling the Product through my fingertips. This has something to do with a new level of self-awareness and acceptance. It is finally becoming clear that I am . . .

• not crazy
• not unethical
• not erratic
• not too much
• not not enough

It seems I am actually an artist. Not just a writer, and no longer a poet (though I took part of my training in that realm). Mostly I have shielded myself from this awareness through the kinds of intimate relationships cultivated over the last 25 years. Both of my husbands and the amor fati were most comfortable in a certain middle-class equanimity. Don't get me wrong, I loved that about them, sought them out for it, but it turned into a very weird mirror for me as I spilled through the edges of the frame.

Bad metaphor: In truth I couldn't see myself in it at all; and I only understood my own energy through another's attempt to contain it.

Now I am starting to get just how differently I exist here. One voice is holding sidereal conversations, another wonders about adding apricots to olive bread, and yet another is hefting language like a diamondcutter in Amsterdam.

The art appears --on its very own-- when Love walks into the room... and they all turn to listen.

That's where I live now.
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Accomplishing What Exactly...?

"The goal of any abusive personality is domination, to make their targets do things that they otherwise would not do. Abusers typically use language to create a black and white world where catastrophe is the only perceived alternative to following their demands.

"The abusive personality uses controlling language to gain hold over others and uses a variety of negative techniques to destroy their will to resist. If the target buys into the negative framework then they quickly lose touch with their goals, dreams, and vision of the future. In this hopeless state they will tend to develop a powerful need that can only be satisfied by giving all power to the abuser."

Thus columnist Fe Bongolan summarizes how Mr. Bush was able to work his magic. . . and I still find myself asking: But why did we let this happen? My '09 kicked off in a wave of gloom as shadow of this abusive eight years stretched out, obliterating the last decade and set to consume many years to come. I keep asking myself ~What did we intend by letting people without a scrap of compassion or creativity lay claim to so much power for so long? Surely there is another ratio somewhere on the continuum; a point from which to rebalance the past as well as reclaim the future.

On one level I see that even the question is too big. Where do I go within myself to ask it comprehensively? [Insert self-deprecating, evasive half-answer here . . . ] Enhhgg, you know I'll never make a good post-modernist... I was born without the full irony gene.

(Ah... first time ever: I am having deja vu while blogging. Hey Shadow, nice to see you. )

Anyway, I am pondering this as I see yet another of my community has shuffled off the mortal coil this week; he was the same age as CP-M, every bit as committed to social justice and now every bit as gone.

Consumer Paradise

Today's adventures in Cheap & Weird. Tonight at HPB, I finally found (for 1$) a financial plan that makes sense. Quit Today! [√ ] says the jacket, Pay Cash! [√√] Don't Retire! [√√√] And the outcome:


Yep. Die Broke. Which isn't as bad as it sounds if you've been living on the Next-Gig Plan, like most of us in Austin. I think the author forgot the parenthesis: Die Broke (but Happy).

Then, the Bibliomancy: I opened the book to a chapter heading "Help your kids die broke." Hmmm... It began: "Inheritance, even the expectation of inheritance, is actually harmful to families, the giver, the recipient, and society." Woot! I would not say 'even' but especially the expectation. I remember the odd circling and probing that went on at my dad's funeral - a dance I ducked pretty much immediately. I got his raucous sense of humor, that was enough.

Then the author went on to talk about the 55% estate/death taxes, and how quickly the "gift" can evaporate. Which is why, I am told, some people take out extra insurance on their 'loved' ones to help that deathpie grow higher. And while Bush did sign a decree ordering the suspension of death taxes for one year in 2010... this is a move I expect Mr. Obama will reverse. Which will make the zopilotes among us so sad, so Veryvery Sad. (Here, do have a hanky... )

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As for the Crazy Water -- it's actually pretty good, but No. 2 didn't taste so Westexassy as No. 3. You know, that smell/taste of a rusty stock tank? Its soft, but leaves a weird prairie feel in your mouth. Coyote water. Yum.

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Updating the Adage: "If you can't say something. . .

. . .evolutionary, then shut your piehole*."

Yeah, I'm back...

As for the sentiment above, I have to thank one of my favorite stargazers, Bridgett Walther for the inspiration. Like most 'strols she isn't always kind to Cancer, but who can blame 'em? With a name that rhymes with major-cause-of-death-in-the-modern-world, Cancerians are always-already living in a condemned building. But this time Bridgett managed to say something ... uh... nice?

For January 13: You think with your heart today. Sure, you understand the logic, the format, the procedure. The driving force and reason to move forward, however, comes from your heart and soul. All the logic in the world can't drown out the compelling message beating from your heart. Your instinct and intuition carry a lot more sway than alleged sensible suggestions. You're a passionate creature, driven by the ever-changing Moon. Every couple hours, you feel a little different than you did earlier in the day. Many people shortchange your complexity by labeling you 'moody.' You're a lot more mystical and complex than that. I think the word others are searching for is evolutionary.

Yes, well... thank you. Finally, a dab of credit. I realize this is akin to thinking that the radio DJ is playing break-up music just for you, but sometimes information lands juuuust so...

[This muse-blogeuse is brought to you by Mercury Retrograde, which asks (as you take the inbreath to speak): Will this tickle or sting? Both? Then fire away...]
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(*who're you calling crabby?)

SnuggleMoon

You know, some moons are just better than others for the Smoochie stuff. Since my smoochmeister is still barred from human contact (no, he's only metaphorically in prison), I had to work out the kissyfactor in other ways (my poor 13-year old son is receiving the Leo's share), mainly by distributing hot tea, gourmet chocolate and big, fluffy blankets.

As I was coming out of retreat, my friend Angel met me for the landing. As she hugged her way in to the living room, she exclaimed: You're really warm! I put my teacup in her hands, seated her on the Big Purple Monster Love Couch, and wrapped her legs in my best, almost-cashmere-soft blanket. Being fresh offa the boat, I couldn't really talk (after a couple of days of gazing into Goddess' bellybutton, words fail), so I spent about an hour writing down questions, and ~(0)mg!~ actually listening.

Do I need to add that it was a *really* good retreat? 'Just wish I could spoil everyone like this. . .

(and just why not? I ask you...)

Well, there is the not-talking part, which is a trifle weird. Though a few years ago I met an MD who used to go Silent for 2 or 3 days at a time, while still practicing medicine. Might have helped that she was Lakota Sioux.

And I wonder? does writing count?

Sometimes that's louder than speech.

Another View of this Full Moon...

Astrologer Lisa Dale Gilmore writes:

"Cancer rules emotional healing of all kinds and this mystic rectangle opens the way to bring love back to all your relationships. Venus in Pisces lends a tender, openness to communicating difficult, yet important feelings to others; especially those surrounding issues of abuse, manipulation (Pluto) or anger (Mars.) The mystic rectangle will support truth-telling that is gentle yet firm. Couple this with the compassion of Moon in Cancer and we have an ideal time for healing estrangements and conflicts.

I am writing this after waking up a little while ago, the entire bedroom vibrating with a rainbow fire, sliced up in a grid of crescents like a geometer's map. Whoo-hoo! Now *this* is a full moon!! Cosmos, baby! Come give us some sugar!!

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Lounging through the Apocalypse

Despite the fact that no-one gave me that nifty office/bed for a New Year's gift, last Sunday I spent all day au couchant. All. Day. (What was that question? Did I *say* 'we'?) I spent a good deal of it working on IDNLw/5Men... or attempting to, as I kept finding myself rolling into trance - not too unusual for writing in general; but it may turn out to be a staple of the genre I am fashioning :: disruptive non-fiction.

Anyway, it was the only position that made sense for this Sunday. The kiddo is off with his Da, I am working on a couple of on-line projects, and I was still flummoxed by a vibe on this year that I have no other name for than: Unbridled Chaos.

Now, I am oddly comfortable with Chaos. I'm pretty sure Bridled Chaos has had its time (thank you, Bush Administration), and Unbridled is a necessary and important phase. But somehow the temporary quality of it needs to be underscored. I am saying this as I consider a recent suicide in my second-degree circle... I didn't know her, but a good friend of mine did. Sunday night she threw herself off of the little hill where I went into labor with my daughter 30 years ago. She was quite young, 47, and had four children - three of them still at home.

I recognize the feeling of Why Not that went along with her irrevocable moment. There are some days, my angels, that it is just better to stay in bed. To simply say ~No, none for me today~ to everything that would drive you to despair, even if it looks like you are saying No to your responsibilities, duties, gifts, obligations. Because sometimes No does mean Yes.

I am off to do a Bardo practice for her.

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CP-M, come easy through the Round Door.
All is Well.
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Happy Half-Day to Me...

Today is my half birthday. It is marked by a very odd feeling of acceleration, not in the usual direction (down); and not quite the sense of levity or exhilaration (up). That would be the Jupiter-in-Aquarius effect, I think.

The first thing to show up in this morning's meditation was a smiling skull. "Hi Mom," I said.

We regarded one another for a minute, then She shifted into Neil Gaiman's Death character.

After a while I was reminded that my own earthly mother is one of Kali's emanations, and that comes with its own set of blessings and requirements.

(At some point she and I need to have a discussion about that. Probably somewhere near the offramp. )

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Hmm... I wonder if there's half a piece of cake out there somewhere...

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Life after Irony

Jeez, the first few days of this year have stripped me out - feels like I'm being suited up for some kind of year long bee-dance. A whole-body language in which I have to be instantly articulate, but with only the vaguest idea of how I am understood.

Not that the pie-hole is going to be sealed. But the bee-dance will grow louder.

This has to do with figuring out how to live in a kind of freefall, I guess. As Gen Salerno said of my sign this week:

Imagine there is a place you can go where you can eat a full course meal in total darkness. You order it without reading a menu; the waiters might be naked for all you know. You could even eat naked and no one would see you because it is so dark. Now imagine that you heard from some source that this same restaurant had some problems with the health board. Would you go to it? Why or why not? Clear motives and intentions, as well as reliable sources are important in any situation that has to do with the exchange of energy or resources. Mutual transformation is a shady category for our society and it is very hard to get straight answers from any one direction.

Back at that 'clear motives and intentions,' I have a policy of transparency that is inviolable. When I first dated the half-husband, I handed my journals to him, saying: It's all in here. And that loveboat didn't sail without a clause that included my other lifelong creative and sexual consort. I owed both men, myself and our kids that basic honesty.

I cut the teeth of this issue on the Philosopher Husband, who had extracted a promise that I would 'renounce' my consort. That was when I discovered that it was possible for a truth vow to convert to a lie before the warmth on the words had abated. It wasn't because I intended to deceive, but because I didn't have the courage to recognize who I loved.

Love takes courage... a will to know, to discover the truth of another person's desire, of his/her gifts and hatreds. In monogamy, the will-to-know is given very little space in which to evolve, so it often becomes a game of accumulating information about how to control one's partner. And of course the simplest way to control sexuality is to destroy it.

This, my angels, is not love. Courage is not mere endurance; and long love is not barely-controlled disgust, nor servile self-ablation, nor a relentless drive to manipulate desire into fear-of-loss.

That's not even close to my exhaustive 'not-love' list - which I have accumulated by watching my lover struggle with the fears that entrapped him in 2008. As for what love actually is, my working definition right now is Love=Witness. Love witnesses. This doesn't mean a Quaker passivity, it goes to the question of Wit, intelligence.

Gen says 'it's hard to get straight answers...' It's way easier if you work with straight questions. Just ask.

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Aquarian Transit Jam

Well, I'm starting to get an astrological cognate to that lovely NYvibe that came spasming through on Wednesday night.

The background: Chiron and Neptune have been in Aquarius for several years already and remain there in 2009. In addition, they are reaching the peak of their conjunction, a relatively rare occurrence (roughly every 100 years) that starts a new cycle of these planets' interactions. Jollying up the crowd is Jupiter, which enters Aquarius on January 5 and spends a year in that sign. Along the way, it will light up Chiron-Neptune, enlarging their process so we can deal with it more successfully. [from Mayan Daykeepers]

Oh yeah, here we go... My moon and Chiron are in Aquarius. Neptune, also presently in Aquarius, has expressed itself through deception and hazy boundaries in my professional world this lifetime - so it's already invested with a particular ... ah ... flavor.

Starting tomorrow, the inflationary force of Jupiter will be entering Aquarius, pumping up that Neptune/Chiron conjunction. . . "Jolly" you say? Like gasoline is jolly on a fire. Oh, and where is the moon? in Taurus, of course. Great... and just to make absolutely sure that I get the full force of this series of transits, the moon aspects Pluto a little while later.

This is such an unmistakeable slam-dunk through the primal wound (Chiron, y'all). Awrighty, then. Having been recently informed that the gifts with which I've been entrusted are not worth 3.5 million dollars (long story, see Co/Labyrinth), I guess I'll have to up the ante a bit. 7 million? 10? How about 13?

I can either be on the rim of the Wheel or at the axl for this one. Break out or break in, but something's gonna blow.

"Ashes, ashes, we all fall up."

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Overlapping Energies

Ultimate day of the Old Year. It should have been like a long sigh, an unclenching, a gathering looseness that invaded at the eyelids and worked its way around slowly, to the palms of my feet.

But no. I woke up half-in/half-out. I am swiveling on a dream-hinge, seeing that the only way through is to change my name, go into hiding, into seeking; to become park ranger, a secretary, the granny hen of a pack of flaxen-haired beachbillies. To put the rest of my orgasms on ice and take the veil of social security.

Whuh-oh, I do not think so, I said it out loud as I launched across the wall; I didn't fall so much as sink. After I was in my body, I kept going, not around but down. The year wasn't just rolling away, it was capsizing.

Thus, my maudlin New Year’s Eve didn’t feel like jetsam, getting rid of a little baggage; when I tapped, it rang all the way to the core. Uh-oh, I thought, trying to focus and refocus. The crosshairs kept cutting through, like retinal scars. Uh-fucking-oh…

AllGoodBoyo and I rolled in the door eight seconds before the cusp. I sank into Samadhi; he hit the TV as the Ball was about to drop. Seven-six-five… something let go of the tips of my mental fingers like a man finally drowning. Four-three-two... something else swept in wearing a bone skirt and very little else. One.

The televised cheering was a strange soundtrack to my vertigo.

It promises to be a very weird year.

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Boy, that wore off quick...

Did we just have a New Year's day? Why does it feel like November the 90th around here? Nevertheless, in honor of the ostensibly "new" year, someone sent me a link to a productivity site called 43 folders. It doesn't suck at all.

The same can't be said of my life, so on the page that asks 'Why are you here?' I clicked the "I Suck" tab.

I don't do Self-Improvement - why fuck with well-oiled imperfection? (Don't roll your eyes at me, perfection is a dry hole...) But I got my only chuckle of the day from this passage:

You can’t just turn it [skillfulness] on and instantly be the thing you wish you were. It takes reflection, thought, iteration, and a personal commitment to facing the stuff at which you suck. And we all suck at something. You totally suck at something, and it secretly drives you nuts every goddamned day.

Now it took me a moment to figure out how to line this up. What is driving me nuts every goddamn day has nothing to do with where I'm manque, gimpy, broken. But that nuts-driving reality --upon which I am having nyooooo effect-- might be better traded for a suckaeity over which I might exercise a soupçon of, dare I say? Control.

Over what, exactly? Who knows what I 'totally suck at'? beyond the things I have given up on in the last year without really noticing: financial solvency, trust in humanity, clean socks.

So the first trick is to identify it. Oh. Maybe procrastination? No, that can't be it, I'm really *good* at procrastination.

Hmmm...

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OneoneNine. . . OneoneNine. . . OneoneNine. . .

We begin this year with a quote from Oh!8:

If I didn't know better, I'd say 2008 has already eaten about 5 snack-sized years. Alot, too much, and waaaaytoomuch has already transpired in my 2008, and we're only 8 months into it.

Only.It is to laugh. And this seems to be a consensus: most everyone I know is having The Year of the Barking Spider.

Turns out that was the optimistic assessment. But somehow we made it into the New. AllGoodBoyo groused this morning: Looks exactly like the old year. Isn't it great that by simple (and consensual) figmentation, we get to call it "09"? Hey, I'm okay with figment. (Okay, a little more than okay.)

Over in FWOL yesterday I published my year-end rantlette about books that keep turning/burning into other books. As if that's a problem! I am reminded that the Prajnaparamita grew to 100,000 verses, but with subsequent rescriptings became smaller and smaller until it popped out as a single syllable. Of course, if we get to that point, you won't actually read the work so much as inhale it.

Narrative as nosespray. I like it.

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And now, the Word-of-the-Year from GB. . .

Home Stretch...

As I mentioned back on the 18th, last week was... well, it was like a breech birth. Painful, wicked slow, and with people standing around holding surgical instruments, mumbling behind their masks "chopchop..."

But we survived. And the baby, while still aborning, has made past the ischial spines and is headed (or butted) into the breathing world.

Even as Pluto is heading into my solar 7th house - the house that some give as the Romance sector, others say it is all important partnerships. (5th is considered the marriage house - note that even the Chaldeans knew that one wasn't the other.) Pluto has been in my 6th house, the career house, for the last 13.5 years. When it hit in 1995, I should have had more astrological information. I vaguely understood that my 'art history' orientation wasn't big enough to contain what I really needed to do, but my ego was all wound up around being a doctoral student, and I couldn't --well, didn't -- make the shift gracefully. Instead I had to let myself be dragged through a series of traumas to let go of that program and move closer to what it is I actually do.

Jerry Goins showed up (again) about 4 years into this cycle, and I see now that the intrinsic energy of my 6th house stuff may have been a factor in his decision to return to the studio. Which is where I needed for both of us to be. I spent the rest of this Plutonian period working his art into view, sensing that we wouldn't actually hit paydirt until the very peak of this cycle, which should have happened last spring and summer. Then, as most of you know, everything went to hell.   Or to Doris.     Six of one... 

***

This week still has its challenges, but they promise to be more decorative. Between now and Wednesday, I will finish up the project with CDR; Thursday, in keeping with this weird year, I am taking Thanksgiving alone, grateful for the End and Beginning of Everything.

The weekend will also see me completing the rebuild on my computers, which skittered into darkness the day the LHC came on-line. We'll see if I have sufficiently quantized enough in the last 9 weeks to reestablish their functioning (They are still operative in some dimension... I figure it's just a matter of creating a semblance of continuity).

There's more, but it pertains to For Writing Out Loud, the other side of my reality.
***
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*

P.s...

I sit here laughing gently as the Zabriskie Point soundtrack explodes in the background. Don't get too excited, cher zopilote. "Ending" isn't the same thing as 'quitting.'
***
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*

Speaking of "F"s...

I am working through a five-F motif these days as I clarify whatever I will finally deposit here on the literary front. Quentin threw a little cocktail into the mix today when I discover he had flunked two classes --two core classes-- in the magnet program this six weeks.

I found out at noon; that pretty much wrecked the rest of my day. We had an interesting 'discussion' last night about this. I am, for all intents and purposes, powerless to affect the situation.

He is living primarily with his dad this year - whose instinct is to buy off or ignore, if not outright reward, Q's 'peccadillos.' (Insert teeth-gnashing sounds here.) I rented a very small cottage last year to keep my expenses down while Jerry and I worked on MGBB and another project. That, of course, has gone to hell - so here I sit, half-books scattered all around me, no space for my kid, the amor fati and everything that we have tried to accomplish on an artistic front completely fucked.

Oh, and let me emphasize: this has been a multi-year (well, multi-decade), total-investment, no-holds-barred core effort, involving longstanding attempts to soothe, placate, pacify and otherwise de-fang a host of antagonists to this process. To no avail. Not just to no avail, but to rather extravagantly failure (there's that "F" again). Well, if you're going to blow it, might as well be Zabriskie Point as opposed to pop-goes-the-weasel.

Yeah, feels like the End is Nigh. Man, where did I put my codes for that launch sequence? I know they're around here somewhere...

***
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*

Just *get* through the week...

The energy of this week just seems ... what is the right word for it? ... twerpy. Shizzled, manco, in a word - crunk.

The streets are overwrought, people look and feel like they've lost themselves down some weird, umbilicated hyperhole; there's an odd, hungry feel to people's most casual exchanges.

I hopped off of the bus to pick up some things from Wheatsville on the way to my spa tonight. When I got back on 20 minutes later, the kid who had been across from me on the earlier bus, wearing a subgenius t-shirt *was still sitting in the same spot.* "Honey, did the bus run backwards?" I asked. He shook his head, peered at me and said: "Hey, I remember you." (I kind of look hmmm, more like myself these days, so people don't forget having seen me.) "Yep, but why are you still on this bus?" "I don't really know... I am having the weirdest day."

With that, everybody in the first four rows chimed in. A cascade of weird-day stories spun around the bus. People just seemed relieved to see it others' eyes.

Tonight, as I get home, it hits me: Just get through the week. Just get through. It. On the 21st I am finishedfinishedfinished with Scorpio for another year. And a few days later, Sara's deathday, and then (Koto Drummers Thunder here) Pluto exits Sagg. Exits, let me say this again, departs the 13.5 year-long obsessive Sagg mindlock, even as Uranus begins direct motion.

I can feel the pressure of this ending in my bones, in my joints, goodgawdamighty, in my hair. There's a new cycle coming, and certain portents (I'll write them after we're through this Gate) indicate it's gonna be a honey.

Just survive the next 72 hours, and loosen up for the following 100.

Cloudlight

Looking through the Book of Blue the other day, I came across this image - recalling the habit, acquired in my mid-20s, of giving my lovers a copy of the Tenochtitlan crystal skull - the original of which I encountered at the Museo Nacional in 1980. Jerry received the first one, then Juan Antonio - I think I may have given one to Ram Dass (though I never slept with him), then a few minor deities who wandered through my bedroom. Around 1990 I started giving them to people I hadn't actually taken pleasure with - Bob, Bev, Richard, Pepe, to name a few. Quentin insisted on his sixth Father's Day (2002) that I give one to his dad, so I sighed and bought one for Kent.

Then in 2004 I found a suite of four 'crystal' skulls, all made of malachite. (It is not insignificant that I found them in Celebration, a shop devoted to ritual accoutrements where I bought our dorjechangs.) These skulls were so luscious - a deep, glistening green like algae in the stone. I bought all four on the spot, and set out on a trek around the country that autumn to deliver them to the Five. Well, four of the Five. Jerry's is a little different.

Now as I think back on this incredible find (I've never seen anything like them before or since), I marvel at the passage. The crystal skull, symbol --for me, anyway-- of the inseparability of love and death had transformed in the malachite skulls to reveal Green Man himself, not just an aureole or skin of vegetation, but all the way down, to and through the bone.

***
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*

Full...

...Moon perfects during the first 20 minutes of November 13, 2008. I've been feeling the uproar toward this blanched fire arriving all day.

It is full in Taurus, sailing into the last third of Scorpio. There is a lovely Pluto/Venus conjunction going on nearby, Pluto (Scorp's ruler) in the deep sky talking into Venus' (ethe)ear - the planet which rules Taurus, both illuminated by Luna at the moment of her perfection.

Ought to be a Rilly Big Shew up in there somewhere.

Dream yourself Awake, kids. I'm rootin' (and branching and flowering) for ya...

Heaven in the 'hood

Many astrologers have been pointing to the Saturn/Uranus opposition that will impose its Janus-head over the election tomorrow. Today, in the run-up to that expressive little number, we have an aspect that for me personally is almost as interesting: Venus, gliding through Saggitarius, squares both Saturn and Uranus. The planetary body that presides over erotic love is making 'creative' (a square can be creative, y'all... quit laughing) aspects to both the lord of Glum and the lord of Chaos. Oh joy.

Now the thing about Venus is, she's stronger than she looks...

WE interrupt this post for the morning oracle: as I am writing this, my coffee shoots out of the espresso machine and all over the counter. This, being a first, compells my attention.

... as I was saying, stronger than she looks. And while those ol' outer giants are going to have Big Words in the next three days, it's the little inner planets who get to express this on a personal level. Venus will be hooked up today to both of them, talking the Master of Melancholy (Saturn) down from his ledge (read 'ledger'-eh?); helping her good friend Ouranos remember the meaning of his name: all things are in the equation.

Now as I was watching that hot black goodness spread across my kitchen counter, I was reminded that even Venus needs a container. Casting around for what woman in history has managed to fully own her sexuality in a creative context... the cupboard is damn near bare (maybe Annie Sprinkle and Susie Bright as contemporaries, but my situation is structured a little differently). Hmmm... Madame de Stael? Too much money. Sappho? Too gynophiliac. Well then, who?

Maybe --despite having been ill-used by Plato-- I'll go to work on my Diotima impression. Diotima sits between the old revolutionary Socrates (Uranus), and his rather dour and sycophantic protege, Plato (Saturn). What a hoot! totally missing the point, the idea of "Platonic Love" is laid at Di's doorstep. Hilarious, since Plato did love the boys, and most definitely in the uranus kinda way. Platonic love. Uh, sure.

And it is beyond irony that Diotima, chief haetera, a woman who was educated in all ways to be equal to, and then ultimately the teacher of men, should be blamed for the idea that 'dispassionate' love is categorically superior to sensual. I just shake my head.

And dip my pen into the coffeepot again.

***
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Guilt, Shame and Galactopoetics

I have always been fascinated by the relationship between manipulating people through guilt and the use of shame to control one's own behavior. You would think that one or the other would be sufficient, but they are often used in duplex: not 'carrot & stick,' but a rather 'rock & stick' methodology.

These tools are so culturally pervasive that those of us who have either been born with serious resistance, or developed an immunity (moi) to them are seen as cold-blooded as microbes. 'Sociopath', I believe, is the term.

Not to say that sociopathy isn't a real problem. More than a touch is required to ascend the ranks in most Fortune 500 companies. And don't get me started on the military (In another post we'll discuss the relationship between guilt/shame and 'honor'). But in my case, the fact that I cannot be guilted -or its minor corellary, 'shamed'- into anything gives me a certain hard glow. One I polish daily.

This story should give an idea of the extent of my immunity: Just before I announced that I was pregnant with my son, the half-husband moved in next door to me. We would sleep at his place or mine, alternately. One morning I woke up and walked out to my porch to find that my entire house and yard had been papered with a pornographic magazine called 'Misty' - which featured nothing but pregnant women! Seriously!! It was like a sex manna storm had been set loose on my neighborhood, but it stopped at the edge of my yard. At first it freaked the shit out me, of course - but after a few minutes I just started laughing. What a weird homage. It certainly had an aggressive cast to it, because no one but the Half-husband and the couple with whom I ran our gallery knew I was pregnant. (Oh wait, Jerry Goins knew, and although cranky about the pregnancy at the time, porn-storms are not his style. )

Right now I'm in the middle of 'doing my Saturn,' which involves confronting a group of people who use the fear/guilt/shame mechanism as unconsciously as they breathe. And their mechanisms have interfered with a significant aspect of my life for a very long time. I was born with Saturn in Scorpio, and every few years I have a little throw down with that energy. And this year it is an especially boisterous ride, what with two full moons last Spring in Scorp, and this new moon drawing a boost from the upcoming Saturn/Uranus opposition.

It looks like the spirit of the 'Misty' pregnant porn journal is alive and well. I was looking through the 'Net a few minutes ago, and found this at the very end of my name search:

1. sex resorts, sex moaning, family fuck, artistic sex,

   - 9:22am
   ... www.bomobox.com.vc www.colmia.com.vc www.easterwood-airport.com.na .... mysti-sherwood.net www.-lingerise.biz www.mup.syss.net wwwrunwayy.net ...
   vorah.ibelgique.com/512.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

I just smiled. Really, my angels, you can do better than that! If you are going to cut through those shame nets you were born into, you're gonna have to use sharper language!

It's like an inverted driftnet: the Moby Cunt (mystecete that I am) remains in the Vasty Deeps; but snarled up in the guilt and shame nets is the manyheaded Ahab of my 'admirers.' Use your fear of me to cut yourselves free! Come on, kids, FOCUS. I give you my whole-hearted permission. You'll quickly see that shame is just fear of yourself, and as for guilt... While you can never 'repay' the debt to the ancestors who hand-over-handed you here, guilt is the old, festering Greek style of acknowledging that debt. "Athens of South America," indeed!

Use those daggers (your attention) to cut through what is actually binding you! You can do it!!

Once you're out of the guilt/shame nets, and you start swimming in the open waters, you'll never go back. I promise.

****

I was hoping to find a link to the astrologer who has a really lovely riff on how to work with Saturn, but she has the article embedded in her site. Here's a snip:

A few of you wrote asking exactly how does one do their Saturn? Well, you are already doing your Saturn each and every day you live. Saturn is why you incarnated as well as acting as the anchor in your chart. Saturn is your work, your purpose and your reason for being. The more you “do your Saturn”, the more grounded, happy and content you will be. Certainly, there are more difficult aspects to your Saturn as well as fears associated with it. Saturn, after all, rules fear. But even THOSE hard spots are sources, fonts of energy and places for you to work with, exercise and go to for nourishing refreshment, revitalization and succor.

First, look at where your Saturn is by zodiac sign and house placement. Second, get your hands on a ruler ship book or make a list of all the things that fall under that sign or take place in that house. Third, pick words from each category to build yourself a set of options or tasks that you can pull out to help you do your Saturn. If you think of the heavens as giving us energy in the form of planets and signs, the idea is to use up as much of the energy as possible by doing your Saturn in many, many ways.

Sign and Countersign

This afternoon I headed out for a meeting with a local garden committee - hopped on my bike while thinking about this last post - the Sara-seasonableness of it all. I looked down, and there was a seashell on the ground next to my bike. A very nice California murex, with a lovely little crown of coral.

I spend a fair amount of time in my back yard. It isn't more than about 200 square feet, so I know it pretty well. 'Have never seen a wave break back there, and I promise you, pecan trees don't generally produce *sea* shells.

Came back from my meeting to find that my heartdaughter isn't able to come this weekend from California after all.

But she sent her best impression. . .

No Pizza, No Taters, No Sops...

Okay, I am bastardizing the Wallace Stevens title terribly. You'd think I didn't like him (but I so do!). My other favorite title from his oeuvre is "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." The married would say it is about love, while lovers might say it's about marriage. That's from the pejorative perspective - me, I love fiction. Supreme, especially.

But I digress.... really this post is about food. And the fact that there is no pizza on my sidewalk this morning. There may be Inner Pizza, though. The heartdaughter Alegra is on her way to Austin this weekend, and I have promised tamales, a move my own (deceased) daughter would heartily approve, since one will wind up on her altar. Shabash!

Sarah'd've been 30 this year. All growed up. Alegra is trailing her by 10 lunar months, apparently her mom didn't get the memo that the damedaughters were coming till Sara's birth. Too bad they're only able to meet through my imagination, but it'll do.

Pics from far left, clockwise: Catherine Swan, dogini and Sara at age 4; Sara (age 6) with Stewart (Annie's husband); Sara (14) & madre in Amy's Ice Cream photobooth; moi, Annie (godmother) and Sara, age 5; godmother and Sara, 12 months; Sarawicca in the roses, age 15.

the Bride

Well, okay, the bachelorette... This is my darling heart-daughter-dame Alegra, whose wedding vows I will joyfully deliver this weekend. See that big fat red Spinel on her finger? Word up: this girl's got Voice.

c'm((o))n...!

Riding the WorldWave...

I am preparing to go to California in about 2 weeks to either Speak or Hear the connubial vows of a dear friend. I say either since I am quite okay with doing one or the other. She and her fiancee have asked me to minister the heirogamos, and I was pleased to say yes. But we'll see...

I've done a few weddings in varying capacities, but this one feels like it extends far beyond their personal history. I was chatting with another Planetwaves reader --Tachikata-- about the difference between open marriage and just dating (something I know a bit about, having spent my teen years in the Mc~~~~~'s household: Carol, David and Marta sharing the big bed). And after a couple of exchanges, Tachi comes up with this:

I had a strange dream yesterday -maybe because of this conversation. I remember there was water around me everywhere, someone was holding my hand, showing it to me. I had a silver ring, not on my annular but on my middle finger in my left hand. My skin seemed so dark. I had never seen that ring before. It was round and big, with features making some strange pattern i could not recognize, in the middle a red stone. The voice kept telling me to look at it. My mind captured the image.

The ceremony in California is happening near the water, and the wedding rings are rubies and red spinel. As are my commitment rings -- rubies and silver, which I generally wear on the middle (Saturnian) finger. The 'strange pattern' ring is my commitment to full enlightenment this lifetime, the rubies are my commitment to amor fati. Same thing, eh?

There's a shift coming along here, as women integrate the meaning of committing *through* the Ruby, through the red bodhicitta that is the special dispensation of passion and its inherent purity. I think Tachi picked up on that in the dreamstate.

Let's see where else it goes.

Mo'racles

Sometimes it feels like I'm just walking through a gigantic Tarot deck.

Yesterday was a 9.9 on the ten scale of weird. Woke up knowing that something was shifting irrevocably inside *and* outside - one sign was a high level of physical soreness that had no source. It was as though I'd tumbled from a fifth floor balcony (see Galactic Core post for keyholes and whales metaphor). Really sore. I figured that the best way through the day was purgatory: meditate, yoga, steam, water, fast and meditate a little more. I went to the gym to initiate the process. Had a lovely workout, steam, stretch. Put myself back together rather elegantly (it was a green silk day) and headed home.

As I walked down the street, I hear a "hey lady, can you help me?" I turn and a man in an electric wheelchair is struggling to move out of the sun. "These guys won't let me borrow enough juice to recharge my chair," he said, pointing back to the firehouse. We had a brief discussion regarding the nearest 'public' outlet (his name was Mario), and I got behind his chair and started pushing. That sucker was *heavy*... I pushed him about two blocks, up the gentle incline of Fifth street (which ascends toward Congress), until I found a little business that seemed the right vibe.

I stepped inside and talked with the owner for a moment. He seemed irritable when I walked through the door, but softened as we spoke, offering an outlet near his front door. Back outside I started to push the wheelchair and its none-too-light passenger, but was suddenly helped by two of his employees, who rolled Mario through a bay door and around the corner to the plug.

As I continued my way down the street I found myself musing on my first wedding anniversary dinner . . . in which a stranger dropped into an epileptic fit right in front of me. I was wearing finery that my husband had brought to me from London's West End wardrobes, and I rarely look like that. The choice was similar - and both times it was pretty much 'damn the petticoats, full speed ahead...' I hit the ground, pulled the guy up into my lap and fished his tongue out while he bit the bejeezus out of my hands, thrashing and spitting everywhere. It was a considerably more dramatic scene than yesterday's, but the outcomes were similar: People made it home.

So here's the Oracle: if I want to be of (spontaneous) service, play dress up more often.

You think?

Pluto, Sagg 28 and the Galactic Core (Look out now...)

Continent-Wide Telescope Brings Galactic Black Hole into Focus

Can I say this without whining? It has not been a pleasant year; but this last week just piled it on. Absolutely everything I have attempted since the beginning of August has gone awry. Everything. Not that I wasn't warned - on August 2 I had the weirdest 'meditation' . . . in which I came out of my practice more frazzled than I went in.

This is not why we meditate!

While I have done many things to steer that slo-mo wreck of a month into an oblique landing, I finally came teetering to a halt yesterday. Rocking on the edge of the abyss, I looked all the way down, and set loose an exploratory Halllllooooo. Oo...Ooo...Oooo.... it called back. Then it hit me: Pluto! I checked its position on my charts. Oh yeah, there it was on 28 Sagg, edging up to the degree of my rising sign. Pluto has slowed down to nearly stationary, and when it does go completely still in the heavens (before it begins moving direct on the 8th), I'll bet I feel it. I wondered about that voilet-dusky guy I kept seeing in my mind's eye all day, the fellow who looked like he had gotten a tan under a death ray.

I can't say we're friendly yet, but there's something happening there.

Then I looked at my chart again. What's this? It seems that I was born on the degree through which one sees the Galactic Core. THE Galactic Core, the supermassive 93 million mile wide Black Hole that produces all of the mojo for this galaxy. And I was born with my rising sign ("where I'm headed" in astrological lingo) pointed right into that baby.

So that was yesterday. Pluto stomping up and down on 28 Sagg was pushing me through a door- as the Great Yoni, the Cosmic Dark Matter/Mother was pulling from her side. It was like squeezing a blue whale through a key hole.

I'm still blue, but not quite so black.

***
So the bigger story for the rest of the 6.8 billion people who turn under these stars is that Pluto conjunct the Galactic Core is happening for the last time... whatever 'last' may mean:

What's so compelling about this conjunction of Pluto and the GC is that it's the last in Sagittarius for roughly 26,000 years. The next conjunction, in 2254, will occur in Capricorn, and the Age of Aquarius will be well under way. We're truly on the threshold of a radically different future. [Pisces Chronicles]

Besides the aesthetics of my lovely "13" - doubled up in the 26 we note, where else have I heard of that 26000? Oh yes, the Mayan cycle - which ends/begins in 2012.

***
Still mumbling to myself about the implications of taking birth with the Galactic Core on the horizon (that's what a rising sign means). You thought I was hard to live with before...

***
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*

Who Needs an Office...

. . . with a bed like this?

A couple of side tables, a wireless connection and a skylight. Enough plants and it might turn into Biosphere III.

Frivolous it ain't...

. . . this is what happens when I spend too much time contemplating Latin America without actually being there. I start feeling like Saturn and Pluto have mated and their dour, implacable offspring has become my personal planet.

In my early 20s I stepped into a relationship between the developed and developing world in this hemisphere. After living in Mexico for a couple of years right after Reagan was elected, it became clear to me that the 'third' world had many things right, but responsibility for its own wealth and power wasn't one of them. Beginning in the late 80s, intellectuals, artists and a few stateswomen started attending to what theorists handily call 'imperialism,' and how to either dismantle or reframe it. For the last three decades, I've been deeply involved with that question, even as it played out in scenarios that seem a million miles from political concerns.

The 'million miles' are located specifically between issues of 'national sexuality' and how its deformation turns up in the public sphere.

Exposing the effects of that distortion is part of my metier and process. Because I go all the way down to the gummy black bottom of these issues, feeling will always lead cognition. The social effects of these distortions are often so gruesome they simply fail to rise to the level of discourse, and fall into the same psychic blind spot as the impossible idea of 'trash.' (There is no garbage, only unloved material.) So my very weird calling is to bear witness to this twilight space and return from it with some semblance of language.

I've never thought my vocation would be easy, but lately (as in the last 10 months) resistance has been at an all time high. Which means we're getting very, very close to a breakthrough.

First day of the last year

of non-high-school.

Q comes home today from his first day in 8th grade. Senior year, as it were, in the lower school scene. He is in a magnet program, so there's no conjoined 9th grade at this facility. He is, as they say, the shizzle in this big white tank of a school.

I am very curious how they all weathered each other.

***

We finished his hair, but not mine. I have to wait till we see something happen with this auction before I can spend even a dab on Manic Panic. Meanwhile I look like I was left out on the beach one lemon too long. Blondissima.

In other news, someone who wishes to remain anonymous (good luck with that, pal) has given me a month at the Hilton. Hallelujuah! Steam clean! balanced weight! (my ass now fits into one mirror) CNN while running in place!
_____________

Ah yes, the Hair Chronicles. Here be the look...

Boy reading Howard Zinn's essay on the United Mine Workers. Aloud. With new hair.

sleeping hair

the allgoodboyo truly hates it when I take pictures of him while he's asleep...




But (shhhhh) these are photos of the new hair, sleeping...

Or half-way hair. This was the pre-henna stage.

Polishing the Eclipse

Today we had a partial lunar eclipse in Aquarius; since this is my moon sign, I tuned in a little more brightly than usual. More than any other eclipse I've noted, this one was vigorously linked to its antecedent, a full solar eclipse in Leo.

That one - at around 5 a.m. on Aug. 1 - just knocked me on my ass. It was, of course, on the new moon. What I call 'moondark' is my second favorite phase - and I have learned to track that infinitesimal instant called the 'tirsthi.' The tirsthi is the instant -half a second wide, but millions of parsecs deep- when moondark is poised between waning and waxing again.

In Indian alchemy, the tirsthi is the gateway to one of the stages of awakening, and I think (though I don't know this from direct experience) that the Kalachakra Tantra points itself to that gateway as well. I do know that if I ride it correctly, it performs like a bright, black needle, piercing and releasing all manner of built up muck from the month.

Aug. 1st solar eclipse was like bathing in a lake full of black fire. The tirsthi normally lasts oh about a minute or three. This one just kept coming. It lasted for hours. I would work with it for a while, then say: Awrighty then... and try to come out of ritual space. It pulled me back in throughout the morning: just a little bit more. Just a bit, just a, just... more.

Today's was gentler. I have several things that need to come to completion over the next week, for others as well as myself. Kirsti Melto's description of the lunar lineup helped visualize what was actually coming down the shoot; and Eric Francis was his usual bratty, funny, slightly paranoid self about these aspects. Julie Debowski also had some sharp insight, as well as Priya Kale (one of the Planet Waves alumnus). So I was able to catch and place certain waves with more precision. Now we'll see what the salt rime spells out as the energy recedes a bit.

I'm paying such close attention to my 'astral' body because somehow I am being redistricted. It's like this: I am still living in the house, but someone has come along and built a ladder from the inside of my kitchen to the top of the tallest pecan tree. To simply climb up and out is starting to feel like first nature.

As below, so above...

B'days, 13 year olds and about that 'Normality Restored'

Quentin and I usually try to *do* something on the major holidays and birthday - go somewhere unusual rather than acquire more stuff. My current economy rather circumscribes the extent of my goingness (and besides, I took him to Denver in June, so that's about the extent of the World Travels this year, I think). So for the birthday, we spent Monday surfing the city buses from one thrift store to another. It wasn't quite as hot as the usual August fare, but every time we clambered back on to one of those rolling refrigerators, we sighed.

As I came over the Speedway bridge toward my rendevous with the kiddo, I saw a pristine white Persian cat snoozing down in a dry, limestone riverbed. Whipped out my camera --thinking this was an emblematic Leo moment-- and the battery went dead. Thus, no pics of the day.

A little later I did manage to get a photo of him in some of his b'day garb. The T was part of an earlier expedition.

Next comes the hair. We were going to initiate the process that night, but got into a rather serious discussion about how he sees himself (confident, but grim; surrounded by adult idiots) and how he sees my choices (to write, to cede most of the parenting to his dad, to embrace the economy of an artist). It wasn't an easy discussion, but definitely worth a little hair dye!

Thirteen is an intense, interesting, powerful year - turbocharged by the fact that it's also a prime number. Normality? I expect it'll roll around in about four years.

Meanwhile, bring on the pinks!

Watch this Space. . .

. . .for Adventures in Haircolor. During Q's birthweek (starting Sunday) we're 'headed' into new, heretofore invisible parts of the Spectra. Here's your baseline:

Dirty Blonde Mom & Auburn Offspring

_________________________________________________________

I found Sophia sleeping behind Vajrascotva today, so decided to try and coax her out with the camera... As you can see, our other family members are either sporting scales, wearing rainbows, hairless or headless. Thus:

What this blog needs...

...is a picture. And a plant. Or possibly a picture of a plant.


(More pics coming soon...)

Welcome to the Big Year...

If I didn't know better, I'd say 2008 has already eaten about 5 snack-sized years. Alot, too much, and waaaaytoomuch has already transpired in my 2008, and we're only 8 months into it.

Only. It is to laugh. And this seems to be a consensus: most everyone I know is having The Year of the Barking Spider.

I pulled down E' Everywhere because I couldn't keep producing a blog that was increasingly just a series of throatclearing noises. EE started during one of the sweetest periods of my life: I was writing and publishing art criticism, running a gallery, carrying out productive retreats, took my son to Europe. My closest friend was finally back in the studio (after a 15 year hiatus), and we were starting to explore how to fully collaborate. In the meanwhile I managed his shows, built a couple of websites, wrote fourhundredthousand grants, furnished our studio, and finally got him converted to Mac. (genuflect, genuflect)

Then, in 2006, I lost the lovely old rental I'd been managing for the previous nine years, and things spun out.

The short form of the story... well, there is no short form. I just tried to write an abbreviated account of events, and there can be none such. Three (no, actually four) moves later and I'm still looking for my bearings. (Which are probably somewhere near my marbles, in case anyone cares to roll them over to me.)

However. Some strategies for thriving in the coming months (and years?*) are starting to emerge. While EE is gratefully dead, ThirdSpaceCharm will chronicle another set of adventures in chronosynclasm, reverse prosmosis, experimental atheology and other SueDoe, SighAnts experiments.

________

(* Years? assuming we don't go skittering off of this planet like fairy lint once we've cancelled gravity with our capmelting insolence.)