| Move-in / Move-out of journals (mostly) complete |
[Dec. 25th, 2007|12:51 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | doma | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | noisy fridge | ] |
Hello All!
The strange person ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) artemisian42 who has recently friended most of you without a special message or "hello" is me.
I'm finally moved into a new journal space (the aforementioned).
Life is Good.
See you over there, I hope? |
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| Bon voyage, little bumblebee..... |
[Jul. 21st, 2007|01:43 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | activism, art, astrology, biking, birding, books, bright ideas, cestina, cooking, czech, dance, dreams, ev2g, film, food, garden, german, habibi, health, hiking, horses, humor, kayak, last days, music, mythology, nonviolence, photos, poetry, quotes, sailing, school, vacation, vanity, wine, wtf, xc ski, yoga, zen tarot | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Mr. Spot's Chai House | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | *tuc*tuc*tuc*tuc* mellow techno (unidentified) | ] |
So, the Big Changes.....
I did find what I was looking for - and more - at the Soulcraft Intensive experience at Breitenbush Hot Springs, in beautiful, beautiful Oregon.
I found that it is time to leave the old imagination of myself, which I have harbored since the traumatic times of adolescence....as the Dream within me died, was killed, was sent into dormancy, into a Most Harsh Exile....becoming the hard-husked seed which I have once again UnEarthed, brought up from the Underworld, in all its repulsive glory. It scares me, this thorny-cased germ of Desire; Desire which is at once "Mine" and yet "Not Of This World."
I found that numinous place, at Breitenbush, the wise, old trees calling my Name, their wordless whispers carried in the invisible ether which weaves our separate lives into One. Wise old Cedar, standing sentinel at the beginning of The End, that overgrown path into the thicket of unmined Desire, pointing deep into the wood: Go, and you will Come Into Being, it seemed to say. With my Skin crawling, I found
The Place Where the Two Worlds Meet
So infrequently I pass by this way
consciously
How strange to meet you here, like this.
In the silence
that roars forth my Name
But which I don't yet have ears to hear.
How long you've waited in the Shadows
Beckoning
Peering out to see my eyes looking back
Wide open
Afraid
Tangle of eyelashes
Then darting
Away--to safety
To the light
To the tender, frayed white threads that have
long been bunched in the right corner of
the box that
my Grandmother never opened.
I couldn't bear to look
Into that sickly
Black hiding spot
Where years of torment spent
anguished
In self-pity and denial
'Tis easier to play the victim
Than to risk being your
Own Hero
Invincibility comes
With invisibility
. . . so it would seem.
But the road not taken may be
the last.
The final hurrah in a
night-lit day
Upperworld of folly
Laughter--"good times"
Never having to countenance
the unrequited Love
That rests so silently,
so gently
In my breast.
But the perilous Journey into the Underworld is not without rewards. Oh no....for as I discovered, those threatening, trembling teeth set in soft pink gums, upon closer inspection, transmute to brilliant rays of light....
And I Received a Star in Return
Pretense dissolves
under the rhythm of time
Beyond our individual horizons
Beats another.
Pressed into Action
Being denied---
Entry
Into this narrow neck of womb
Warm, rippling, smooth yet
oh so rough
softest landing on pinkest flesh
Rhythm ceasing unceasingly
Thrumming in my ears.
What pale of night
Dons such cloth?
Wrapped around the eyes
of the Child
Stripped bare -- untied
raveling like a spindle
Unknown Being -- Unknown Doing
Who pulls the thread?
Wallow in it, lap it ALL up
Don't leave one rock unturned
Because pirates bury treasure
EVERYWHERE
Like crafty Raven
in his Lair.
Esteemed friend
Do not be scared.
Here, you have it on YOUR honor:
Grace is everyone's heir.
To be a Light
Go to the Dark
The torch to brighten the way
Is your OWN Heart.
Prickly heat of lion's jaws
Feel those voluptuous claws
TEAR YOU PRETTY
Naught to pity
for YOU are Grace's heir,
You ARE Grace's heir.
The Czech word "Čmelák," means bumblebee...and is the moniker given me by my now ex-husband, Kaj, that dear, sweet karmic friend, who was a lot like a gatekeeper to My Underworld....it was an appropriate name for this part of my Life, the part which he and I shared, for a bumblebee is not supposed to be able to fly, according to the laws of Newtonian physics....hehe How appropriate, it seems.... Kaj just may have been my Shiva, throwing himself under the feet of Kali as she nearly lost her hold on her Purpose and Meaning, as she almost raised the Sword which Cuts Through All Delusion to make the Ultimate Sacrifice, to destroy ALL Creation, rather than to foment a Creative Destruction, to Bring Life Back Into Living Balance. Kaj: Thank You for keeping me from The Ultimate Void. And Thank You for helping to send me into The Living Void. Life is not all Upperworld of Folly.
So, I bid thee all this Hearty Farewell: Artemis walks the Earth again.
I have been gone for too long, it feels....yet I never even left. How could I?? You didn't think I would leave you NOW, did you, dearest, dearest Mother Earth?
In my final, personal closing ceremony at Soulcraft, I offered my hand to Mother Earth in marriage....and in gratitude I Gave myself to Her, taking my vow in the form of a silver ring which I could only wear upon my finger for a couple of days before it itched and itched...and told me that its proper place is on the altar, for Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon, the Virgin of the Forest, will marry to no one....not in any literal sense....for as surely as I type this now, I am in thrall to Mother Earth, I am here to Love Her with the Bravest Heart which beats eternally within Me.....All True Courage is born of Love, for courage without Love is brutish.
I have established a new LiveJournal, which I am going to slowly put together (not being in a hurry), and which I will announce here, when it is ready to launch.
In the meantime, Greg Kimura reminds us all, that we EACH have a Gift to Offer to Our Selves, to Our Global Family, to Earth and to the Universe....
Cargo, by Greg Kimura
You enter life a ship laden with meaning, purpose and gifts
sent to be delivered to a hungry world.
And as much as the world needs your cargo,
you need to give it away.
Everything depends on this.
But the world forgets its needs,
and you forget your mission,
and the ancestral maps used to guide you
have become faded scrawls on the parchment of dead Pharaohs.
The cargo weighs you heavy the longer it is held
and spoilage becomes a risk.
The ship sputters from port to port and at each you ask:
"Is this the way?"
But the way cannot be found without knowing the cargo,
and the cargo cannot be known without recognizing there is a way,
and it is simply this:
You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.
The world may not know it is starving,
but the hungry know,
and they will find you
when you discover your cargo
and start to give it away. |
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| POTD (Proverb of the Day) |
[Jul. 14th, 2007|07:30 pm] |
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.
--African proverb
BIG changes coming soon.... Watch This Space..... |
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| Bookstores are dangerous -and- The Zen Oracle |
[Jun. 27th, 2007|10:22 am] |
Of course, the Elliott Bay Book Company is evil and has a huge display of all the new books out this month, right next to the register...can I just bop in and pick up my reserved copy of "William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books?" ooohhhhhhh nnnnnnooooooooooooooooo, I must fondle many volumes, and leave with Blake and Václav Havel's new memoir, "To the Castle and Back."
I was also interested in "Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics" by Gino Segre. ("Segre brings to life the momentous 1932 gathering of 40 of the world's leading physicists, which ended with a humorous skit based on Goethe's Faust--a skit that eerily foreshadowed events that would soon unfold as Europe was moving ever closer to war.")
And the title of Al Gore's new book made me laugh quite heartily, "The Assault on Reason." The book is billed as "visionary." Well, yes, people naturally like their visionaries, for they seem to be able to see over the horizon and bring positive "good" news, that the people would like to hear. However, the people tend to be ambivalent towards the "prophets," who upbrade everyone for whatever their role in the current situation, giving the "bad" with the "good," for the prophet knows, there really is no absolute human concept of "good" and "bad".... there are only consequences.
In other pedantry, today is my first day of a week-long vow of silence, as a part of my summer independent study "Soulcraft." This will be my last post for a while, as I shall endeavor to be more contemplative and observant of myself. I've already noticed a few interesting things, which makes me think I should make this a regular habit. (I was inspired to do this by Gandhi's accounts of how much he got out of it. That Gandhi....)
At work, I'm carrying around a post-it note around that says:
"I'm not trying to be rude, I'm on a vow of silence through July 3rd. We can have a Zen-like conversation, though, and that way, I can answer ALL your questions. :-)" |
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| More book lust.... |
[Jun. 26th, 2007|03:51 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | books, poetry | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | v praci | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  devious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Neko Case (in my head) | ] |
YES! Today I am to obtain a copy of "William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books," reputed to be a sublime reproduction of his illuminated works....
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
......
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged. This I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
--William Blake
Quite frankly, I want to memorize a lot of his poems and such, that I might liven up fireside follies during camping outings this summer. This will have to wait until after the kiddies have retired to bed, before "Uncle Willie" can come out, lest there be nightmares. |
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| More QsOTD -or- Who's got da power? |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|03:21 pm] |
Authority relieves us of the responsibility of independent action.
They can let you out of the jail now, because they've put the jail inside your mind.
--Starhawk
It is better to do your own duty, however imperfectly, than to assume the duties of another person, however successfully. Prefer to die doing your duties: the duties of another will bring you into spiritual danger.
--Bhagavad Gita
It's so interesting to see how the historical and the existential can get so confused, and mixed together, so as to never make sense of what the hell is going on around you. (Lawd knows, I struggle with it!) How people do get worked up about the idea of "spirituality," as if it were a static object of some sort. At the bottom of it, I reckon all that term refers to is "one's experience of the world." That's all the "spirit" idea is, that a person actually has an experience of existence, of life.
Of course, as Robert Sardello puts it, the problem in this modern society (USA) is that people who are in a consensus trance of reality tend to operate on theories and not on their own experience. He argues that, via socialization, we inherit these "theoretical frameworks" which are supposed to define or explain our existence, then the theory itself is totally forgotten, and we "take the forgotten theories to be reality." It's sort of a pall of prejudice towards everything, a projection of ideals upon one's experience and upon the phenomena around you. It was just this trend of trying to organize existence through "theories of everything" which prompted Edmund Husserl to work to found the branch of philosophy known as "phenomenology." (defined - (1) The science or study of phenomena, or things as they are perceived, as opposed to the study of being, or the nature of things as they are. (2) The philosophical investigation and description of conscious experience in all its varieties without reference to the question of whether what is experienced is objectively real.)
It seems to me rather unwieldy to try to negotiate reality via determinism (i.e., theoretical frameworks) when you live in a (mysteriously) indeterminate universe characterized by its non-linearity.... |
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| Perception is self-referential |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|12:55 pm] |
Only in a completely moribund society would disrespecting someone be commonly understood as a sign of self-respect.
(hehe, and I ain't talkin' causality...I'm just describing a situation. How it might have gotten to be moribund is whole 'nother kettle of fish.) |
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| QOTD |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|08:38 am] |
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
--Joseph Campbell |
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| Reanimating old acquaintances |
[Jun. 16th, 2007|11:48 pm] |
I'm finding that through my grounding, meditation and mind-body integration practice, especially through heart-based practices, I'm developing quite the relationship with the trees around my block. :-) It's amazing the richer view of life obtained by using the heart to perceive the world. It's a matter of subordinating the mind to the interpretation of the heart's perception and feeling, and I'm so curious how this will develop. I haven't worked with the heart-based techniques for very long, and I'm sure it will progress a long way from this starting point....
I may have always had a creative portal open through my writing, but it's always been mediated in some way through the mind-body schism of the worldview in which I was steeped...like having a straw to suck through instead of the floodgates opened wide.
Through taking walks around the neighborhood and trying to communicate with the plants, just being open and friendly and receptive to whatever, without expectation, I'm getting more and more of a sense of what the master Japanese "natural" farmer Masanobu Fukuoka meant by
"A life of small-scale farming may appear to be primitive, but in living such a life, it becomes possible to contemplate the Great Way. I believe that if one fathoms deeply one's own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of all worlds will be revealed."
I'm beginning to remember this natural connection to the animate, sentient world of our fractal reality, a connection which came so easily when I was a child, and it's quite pleasing to reanimate my old acquaintances of childhood.
"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook."
"It is a rare qualification to be able . . . to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Everything in the realm of fact is already theory. . . Let us not seek something behind the phenomena--they themselves are the theory." --Goethe
(Yea, this approach has ever yielded me the most "truth.")
"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." --George Washington Carver
(would someone please inform the U.S. Government?) |
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| New books, new books! yaaaayyyy |
[Jun. 16th, 2007|12:03 am] |
Yaaayyy, one last mark on the collective - yet mediated - consciousness known as the Internet, I got's some new books today and this particular bookstore caused me to realize: I must buy every single book Thich Nhat Hanh has written. I was tempted to buy many today. I think he might be a good mentor for me....hhmm, an excuse to go to France? ;-) hehe
Be Still and Know: Reflections from "Living Buddha, Living Christ," by Thich Nhat Hanh, a small, handy-sized book of quotations excerpted from his exploration of the deep spiritual connections between Christianity and Buddhism. The book itself will undoubtedly be invaluable to me in grad school....
Transformation and Healing: Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh, with his commentary on the mindfulness teachings of the Buddha, organized into 20 exercises. I thought this would be a perfect complement to the summer independent study of "Satyagraha."
Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self (Revised, 2004), by Anodea Judith. So far, this is a wonderful melding of psychology and spirituality, exploring the chakras through Jungian psychology, somatic therapy, childhood developmental theory, and metaphysics. To understand "chakras" I think one has to know that there's more to life than meets the eye. The chakra isn't a "literal" thing in the sense that we SEE it with our eyes, it's more of an energy field idea. For instance, electromagnetic fields are absolutely integral to our existence, and yet are invisible to the naked eye. Is not this just one such "unseen" plane? There are many metaphysical maps to use, but I'm just "naturally" drawn to Eastern ones as the most usefully descriptive, and I'm quite pleased with the way Anodea adds Western psychological perspectives to make it more accessible to the average Westerner. A lot of interesting charts and illustrations, too. |
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