YouTube - Free Hugs in Sondrio, Italy

YouTube - Free Hugs in Sondrio, Italy: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

It is as it is

The semester's just about over. Classes are out. And now it's on to packing and getting the house ready to sell.....and getting ready for Christmas... when I wish I had the energy of a twenty-something and the wealth of a banker (though not a Wall Street Banker), and the charisma of former president Clinton.

 

...and how about the skill set of a team of handymen! That'd set me up great!

 

 

 

Strange story-dream (really dreamed it!) titled Little Fellow

I had a little fellow attached to my side – a kind of misshapen, half-formed other self, a twin self, who was so small and misshapen that I forgot about him, hid him under my shirt until he spoke to me suddenly one day on the way home from the store.

He spoke in a really tiny voice and it would’ve sounded cute if it wasn’t so insistent.  Hey! Don’t forget about me down here.  I need some looking after too!  And I looked down at him and I was shocked, astonished, once again, at his tiny features and misshapen form, and yet he spoke!  He had intelligence!  I covered him with my hand to reassure him that all was okay – and reassured myself too, if you want to know the truth of it, and went on my way.  I was going home, and this part of me quieted down.

I could never forget he was there though, because he was connected to me on the inside and when I lay down at night, I always lay down on my left side so as not to disturb him.  And he didn’t move, of course, but I could feel him connected to me and was very careful of that side of myself.

At home, with my friends, I tried to find a place to get comfortable and take a nap but my friends were all up and talking.  I couldn’t get comfortable and someone noticed me and announced that it was time to cut the bugger off me.  I replied with horror that it wasn’t that easy, that he was connected to me on a deep level, that we shared the same blood even and that to cut him off wouldn’t just be a flesh wound, but would leave a gaping hole in my side where blood would run out.  They began to get interested in the idea anyway and they were all stirring and coming around to me in excitement.  I became more alarmed and jumped up to get away from them.  I tried to reason with them but they seemed only interested in making things better or removing so-called defects and weren’t interested in what could happen as a result.

I ran to the outside of the building and climbed up to the roof, trying desperately to get away.  When that seemed hopeless, since they were still coming, I decided to throw myself off the roof, and I did – and gently floated down and down, past the many stories, to land on  the ground below.

Later they found me and I felt a pain and an ache in my side, and a bandage covering where my “little guy” used to be.

As I sat in my spot in the big room with the friends, I felt the blood seeping out and wetting my shirt.  I had told them and they hadn’t believed me.  But I knew.

I was still feeling dull and weak and it would probably take awhile til I could fully come to terms with this, my form changed so deeply and the hole it left behind. 

What was that part of me?  What did it mean?  And where did it go if it was cut away?  Was that a good thing, after all?  Or needless suffering?  Was it a drain on my life force?  Did the hole of bleeding leave my life force to run out or create movement and flow where there had been only stagnancy?

Was something feeding on my life force that I had to be careful with and mindful of?  Something that had no use but was merely an appendage?  Or a useless hopeless thing that had worth nevertheless?

Were my friends my friends, or hooligans? Was the dull ache of the knife to be feared more than the ever-present nagging and insistent presence of "the other?"  Was the wound more important than the taking care of that part of me?

Was it more important to create the wound from the dis-embodying of the little self, and thus to free up stagnant physic energy which before had been bound up in maintaining that self, even if that meant the blood would flow freely, at least for awhile, and thus would cause concern in and of itself, as a wound that may not heal?  We have no proof that it will heal.  We have only evidence of its opening and flowing, and a dull ache within.  Surely it will flow onto the ground (of being) and nourish the roots there.  For a new life.

See with me.  See within.  Go within and feel your way through.  Throw out your prejudices and make your way in the darkness of mind, the darkness of soul.  Get to know the lay of the land inside your own psyche, inside yourself.  Become familiar and decide where to make your home.  Watch the comings and going and be the tree, fixed in the garden, aware and strong and rooted deeply in the earth and the ground of your being.  Deeply rooted in your own being.

When midnight comes to you

And petals lose their flowers

Dropping silently in gentle

Repose around the hours

Stalking visitors impose

Their demands upon your wishes

Replacing joy with Everests to climb

And choking seaweed for the fishes

The shocking calls ring out

Deafening and senseless

Monotone and monosyllabic

Wasteland without fences

Freed and wandering, you pass

The signs of many splendor

In and out of coils of hope

Your break and then engender

It moves within you, spirit comes

A shadow of your life

Rising up and filtering out the noise

Its own truth like a knife

Cutting through the bonds of past

Miscarriages and labors falsely keeping

Opening up old wounds to free

The love that lies there weeping

Your soul has truth, potency

Obscured in light of day

It waits til lines are blurred at night

For what it has to say

When lines to outside pleasures’ gone

In the midnight hour at last

One can commune with one’s self

And hear the voice of soul broadcast

In the dark, I tumble down

To a lost reverie and pain

Quiet dreams and lost horizons

Given up for security and gain

Here I open up my heart

For there’s nothing left to do

With silent peering in, I hope

To discover something new (true)

Something I’ve lost or forgot about

thrown upon the heap

Of once-bright treasures left behind

And toys that never weep

Useless and hopeless, they all seem

Dolls and toys flung away

The flower petal dress and dew drop hands

Still, they sing to me this day.

What can they offer you or me?

What can midnight bring?

If all the world’s a stage, then I

Must surely play the part within.

Clues abound, though overlooked

My stubborn mind ignores it

Still my softest of friends speaks to me

And tenderly implores it

Many soft things hang in the shadows

In the quietude, I’m feeling

Quiet rules me now instead

And a modicum of healing.

This reverie of knowing must

Permeate the day

To bring forth unknown qualities

Into the conversational play

So the midnight brings its own reward

A fulfillment and a pain

Dark and moody, fearful, present

To what is secret, again

Midnight is the dark of it

And fear of it, I think

Lurking in the shadows of life

Leaning on the brink

Til all my being’s tuned to it

My justifyin’s disappeared

My fear like a bad melody

Stuck and can’t get cleared

(My fear laid open for me to see

It’s not as bad as feared)

When midnight comes to you,

Listen to what I say,

be aware the dark’s not as dark

as what you feared in day

so sink into your favorite chair

let go of daily busy-ness

slow as the hour proceeds from here

to make contact with the is-ness.

astrological weather

From one of the my favorite astrological sites, 12House.com:

THURSDAY JULY 29 MOON in PISCES MARS enters LIBRA
Moon Void of Course 10:44 pm (CDT) – 3:42 pm Friday afternoon

Mars the god of war marches into peace-loving Libra this afternoon. As the ruler of Aries, the opposite sign to Libra, Mars is more aligned with our masculine, assertive, independent nature than with the feminine, mind-your-manners nature of Libra. Mars here directs our energy toward balancing the scales, looking at both sides of an issue and ‘fighting' for justice. When Mars moves through Libra, we may have more difficulty pushing our own agendas without first considering the rights and desires of others. Since being in relationship is an ultimate ambition for Libra, we will be highly motivated to find ways to get along and to please others, maybe sometimes at our own expense. We might become more demanding of relationships now, wanting to hold people to higher and more equitable standards.

http://www.12house.com/home/powerpeekhtml.cfm

design your own

only way to start is to start

I've let this blog lapse, as I often do, until something starts niggling at the back of my mind and I remember about it again.  I always wish I could write witty, timely prose and that expectation and challenge stops me in my tracks.  So I procrastinate, pushing it into the back of my mind until a little worm of a memory starts wiggling around back there....

I wonder if I should title this blog something that reflects that one step forward, two steps back approach.  There just seems to be so much else that is compelling on the web that I don't even think of what I might have to say.  I have the urge to just quote "them."  Ha, ha.  Like a news-gathering service of items that interest me.  But I want to be more than a relay system.

I long to be creative...in an erudite way.  In a cultured, yet spiritually-aware, sophisticated, though down-to-earth and personally-warm writing persona.  I long to be opinionated in the best possible sense of the word.  Opinionated in the grandest of spiritual traditions.  Like Rumi.

But so much of the time, it seems like I am but a sheep, following others' opinions, likes and dislikes, afraid of unearthing my own.  Afraid of identifying my own, and following my own.  If there's someone else that is "for" something that I am "for" also, then I can have it.  Then I can cherish it.  Why can't I just have my solitary love of something?  Without needing validation through others also valuing it?  Maybe because I'm always running up against my parents' opinions (long after they're gone), society's expectations and opinions, and the world at large (whatever that is).  The world at large, for me I think, is everyone I encounter in a given day, AND WHAT THEY THINK.

Hmmmm.  Time to retreat to Walden's Pond, or a facsimile thereof.  My own thinking woman's retreat from the cares (and opinions) of the world.  We all need one.

And we all need, I'm thinking, those with whom we share similar views.  But just not to require validation from them for their opinions so that we can value our own.  It's a fine line -- but the difference between standing on your own feet surrounded by caring others who share the same ground and leaning on them for where they stand.  Think about it.

more art

Happy Birthday to my nephew, Keith.

...make it and show it!

I was looking at Celtic art and ancient warrior shields yesterday and reading about Creation Spirituality. I had made a leather string sculpture or something with beads and small bits of rock and shell which looked artistic a few days ago and last night, I grabbed it and decided to rework it into a "real" thing I could take with me and "use" instead of just viewing as quaint but "useless" art. Notice my judgements around art. Not pretty. But I'm working on changing that. ... anyway, I came up with something that I thought I could live with -- something like worry beads to have when I want peace, and after reworking it a few times more - when I noticed I had left some beads out or wanted to change the position of a rock, etc., I came up with this. I am very happy with it and immediately thought of sharing it on my blog. Especially since I haven't felt motivated to write much in awhile (for which I apologize).

What I made is really an amulet, or talisman since that's kinda what I was thinking of when I made it. See Wikipedia:

An amulet (from Latin amuletum; earliest extant use in Naturalis Historia [Pliny], meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word "telein" which means "to initiate into the mysteries") consists of any object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner. Potential amulets include: gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants, animals, etc.; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—(Latin, "go back, Satan"), to repel evil or bad luck.

Below is an Omamori, a Japanese amulet (also found on Wikipedia).

Here's to you discovering your passion and hidden talents! You know you have them! I know I do! Now, let's get out there and use them!
Blessings, Lauradeanne