New-born albino Pygmy Marmoset
(Reuters)Updated: 2006-08-25 23:08
Rare newborn albino Pygmy Marmoset monkeys perch on a zookeeper’s fingers at Froso Zoo in Ostersund, Sweden August 22, 2006. The Pygmy Marmoset, which lives in the upper Amazon basin in South America, is the world’s smallest monkey and reaches 35 cm (13.7 inches) in length and weighs up to 100 grams (3.5 ounces) at maturity.
Picture taken August 22, 2006. [Reuters]
Tweet this!30 August 2006
MIRACLE IS SUNK
A PRIEST has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water.
Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle. But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa. One eyewitness said: “He told churchgoers he’d had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus. “He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. “He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back.”
Tweet this!Wal-Mart kills prairie dog colony on site
Daily Camera
Construction started this week on a Wal-Mart Supercenter along U.S. 287, and some local residents are unhappy with the company’s decision to kill a small prairie dog colony on the site. Earlier this year, Boulder County asked Wal-Mart to contribute to local land preservation to offset the impact its new store will have on local prairie habitat. Additionally, one local resident offered to help the company relocate the animals to city open space. The company rejected both offers and fumigated the colony after researching relocation and other options.
Tweet this!Oil CEO’s pay averaged $32.7m in 05
Bloomberg
Rising prices and profits translated into pay packages for oil company chief executive officers that are nearly three times the size of similarly sized businesses, a new study from two watchdog groups said. In 2005, the CEOs of the largest 15 oil companies averaged $32.7 million in compensation, compared with $11.6 million for all large U.S. firms, according to the study, released today by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
Tweet this!State Farm Shredded Documents to Avoid Paying Katrina Victims
Exclusive: Whistleblowers Say State Farm Shredded Documents to Avoid Paying Katrina Victims, Allegations of Massive Fraud
August 25, 2006 11:53 AM
Brian Ross and Joseph Rhee Report:The Blotter
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Part of yogic philosophy is the idea of “detachment.” This means that, instead of hanging on desperately to people, activities, or objects, we should learn how to flow with the current of life and recognize that change is the only constant.
“As the Buddha said, impermanence is the nature of the human condition,” according to yoga teacher Judith Hanson Lasater. “This is a truth we know in our minds but tend to resist in our hearts. Change happens all around us, all the time, yet we long for the predictable, the consistent. We want the reassurance that comes from things remaining the same. We find ourselves shocked when people die, even though death is the most predictable part of life.”
So the next time you notice that you are grasping onto something in your life, ask yourself what it would feel like to appreciate that thing fully while at the same time being prepared, when the time comes, to let it go.
Tweet this!The Warrior of Light and strategy
A sword can last a short time, but the warrior has to last a long time. That is why he must not let himself be fooled by his own capacity and so be taken by surprise. To each thing he gives the true value that it deserves. Often, when he is faced with serious matters, the devil whispers in his ear: “Do not bother about that, that’s not serious.” Other times, when he is faced with trivial matters, the devil whispers: “You need to spend all your energy on solving this situation.” The warrior does not listen to what the devil is saying. He is the master of his sword.
Pay attention to your allies
A warrior does not associate with anyone who wishes him harm. Nor is he seen in the company of those who want to “console” him. He avoids whoever is only at his side in moments of defeat. These false friends want to prove that weakness has its rewards. They always bear bad news. They always try to destroy the warrior’s trust, under the disguise of “solidarity”. When they see him injured they break into tears, but deep in their hearts they are happy because the warrior has lost a battle. They fail to understand that this is a part of combat. A warrior’s true companions are at his side at each and every moment, in times both difficult and easy.
Negotiating with the enemy
When the moment of combat draws near, the Warrior of Light is prepared for any circumstance. He analyzes each possibility and asks himself: “What would I do if I had to fight against myself?” This is how he discovers his weak points. At this moment the adversary approaches, carrying a bag filled with promises, agreements and negotiations. He has tempting proposals and easy alternatives to offer. The warrior analyzes each of these proposals; he also seeks an agreement, but without losing his dignity. If he avoids combat, it is not because he was seduced – but rather because he decided that this was the best strategy. A Warrior of Light does not accept presents from the enemy.
On the defense and on the attack
The warrior is careful with people who think they can control the world, determine their own steps, and are certain that they know the right path. They are always so confident in their own capacity of decision that they do not realize the irony with which fate writes everyone’s life. The Warrior of Light has dreams. His dreams carry him forward. But he never commits the mistake of thinking that the road is easy and the door wide. He knows that the Universe works like alchemy: solve et coagula, say the masters. ”Concentrate and disperse your energy according to the situation.” There are moments to act and moments to accept.
In the face of defeat
The Warrior of Light knows how to lose. He does not hold defeat as something indifferent, using phrases like “well, it wasn’t all that important”, or “to tell the truth, I did not really want that”. He accepts defeat as a defeat; he does not try to change it into a victory or an experience. He suffers the pain of his wounds, the indifference of his friends and the loneliness of loss. At such moments he says to himself: “I fought for something, and I failed to get it. I lost the first battle.” This phrase will give him strength. He is aware that nobody wins all the time – but the courageous always win in the end.
Tweet this!Some of the reasons I like the main Rain Dog…
Tweet this!Thousands of New Orleanians will see the premiere of Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina documentary tonight. T-P television critic Dave Walker got a sneak preview, and here’s what he thinks.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Dave Walker
The word other critics likely will use most to describe Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO is “wrenching.”
My word is “unfinished,” even at four hours.
“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” locks in on the black Katrina experience, which should not come as a surprise to anybody who knows Lee’s filmmaking career.
As such, “Levees” tells only half the story. Or, rather, 67.3 percent of it.
Frequently brilliantly, but still.
The tragic story of black New Orleans trapped in Katrina’s path has found a supreme chronicler, but the flooded-out residents of Lakeview or Old Metairie who attend tonight’s sold-out premiere at New Orleans Arena will spend all night sitting on a hard plastic chair and then wonder: Where am I in this?
Perhaps they’ll be coming attractions. Lee has said he’d like to make “Levees” the first installment of a series of films about the ongoing battle to save New Orleans.
“Depending how this ends up, I would like to go back (and see) how the city ends up and not let this be the final statement on the Crescent City,” Lee told TV critics last month in Los Angeles.
Those who were here know that, in virtually every way, Katrina was an indiscriminate storm that killed and destroyed without regard to ethnicity or economic condition. That is not the impression that the nation received watching coverage of the immediate aftermath of the storm, nor the one viewers will take away from Lee’s documentary.
In one of his future installments, perhaps, will be the stories of Lakeview families whose losses were every bit as tragic as the stories told so movingly in this film.
Or the similar stories of the Asian families in eastern New Orleans, the Central American workers literally putting roofs over our heads again, the doctors and nurses who risked their lives to stay with patients in drowned hospitals, the tourists who suffered alongside locals in the Superdome and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Four hours seems like a down payment.
As it is, Lee’s epic-length film has a few significant flaws but packs an overall impact that will move anyone who invests the time to see it through.
It’s not an easy task. Sadness and anger are the film’s relentless themes, a sign of the project’s emotional veracity.
For the next few weeks, we’re counting on TV retrospectives just like this to tell and retell our story to the world.
Political ramifications
On that count, Lee picks his villains well. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are, in order, the bad guys in this catastrophe. To a lesser extent, the local, regional and national politicians who made this mess and then failed to save their fellow Americans from it also take ire.
I’ll let others parse the political impact of “When the Levees Broke,” but not without sharing this nugget from one habitually quotable politician: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin good-naturedly describes Air Force One as a “pimpmobile.”
For those who can’t make tonight’s screening, HBO will premiere the film in two parts Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. All four hours will air in sequence on Aug. 29 at 7 p.m.
Act One watches the storm’s approach and landfall, then the levee failures. Act Two is immediate aftermath. Act Three begins with the rescue diaspora, then circles back to catch up on some of the cultural history that makes the dispersal such an ongoing tragedy. Act Four examines recovery problems (FEMA, insurance companies) and solutions (wetlands restoration, improved levee protection).
The film is framed by Louis Armstrong’s “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?” at the beginning and a concluding second-line rendition of “I’ll Fly Away.”
The overall structure is chronological, but Lee takes jogs in time to make editorial points.
The filmmaker is occasionally heard asking off-camera questions, but there is no narrator, just the voices of various witnesses both well-known and not.
Of them, standouts include Herbert Freeman Jr., whose mother died in a wheelchair outside the convention center; author Michael Eric Dyson, who is ruthless in recounting Condoleezza Rice’s New York City shoe-shopping-and-evening-at-the-theater getaway while Ethel Freeman sat dying in the heat; and WWL talk radio host Garland Robinette, whose emotions still roil a full year after he narrated Katrina’s deadly fly-by live on the air.
Adding a light touch
Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, once of eastern New Orleans and now a FEMA trailer resident, is the personification of her city’s eternal secret weapon in the face of despair: humor.
Recounting her survival year, she’s profane and prosecutorial, as much of a thread throughout the movie as Terence Blanchard’s deep-blue score.
A New Orleans native and frequent Lee collaborator, Blanchard himself takes an on-camera role in the third act, acting as his mother’s guide on her first trip back to her ruined Gentilly home.
A similar sequence in the last act shows actor Wendell Pierce, star of HBO’s “The Wire” and another favorite son succeeding so triumphantly in the wider world of the arts, retelling the devastation to his father’s Pontchartrain Park home, but also the subsequent and related damage done to his father’s soul by a heartless insurance company.
The heart of Act One is a sequence in which schoolboy Glenn Hall III plays “St. James Infirmary” on his horn to accompany footage of people wading out of their neighborhoods, then Wynton Marsalis sings it.
Act Two ends with a haunting montage of floating bodies, which you hope could be the film’s lowest mood trough.
Then comes the drowned child’s funeral that concludes Act Three.
“Wrenching” is right, in other words.
Letting rumors fly
But the film’s most troubling passage has been anticipated since HBO announced that Lee would make it.
Early in the opening act, several witnesses swear they heard explosions before the Florida Avenue breach.
Refutations are made in follow-up sound bites, but the overall takeaway is that intentional levee destruction might’ve, could’ve, probably happened.
For both Katrina and Betsy.
There is value in exploring how such impressions are made and last, but absent any real evidence beyond inexpert testimony — and there is no evidence introduced in the film — such notions must be presented as folklore and nothing more.
Here, they’re presented as likely fact, in a confusing sequence of quotes and clips that mix references to Katrina and Betsy with the one time there actually was an intentional levee destruction, during the Mississippi River flood of 1927. That breach inundated St. Bernard Parish.
“During Hurricane Betsy, there were rumors, and it became almost an article of faith with people in the community that the 9th Ward flooded because there was an intentional breach of the levees,” former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial says to Lee’s camera. “It was never investigated. It was neither proven nor disproven. In this case, for the government and others to sort of dismiss it without looking into all of it is not doing the people or the public a service.”
In this context, the same could be said for statements just like that.
Morial is a frequently recurring character in early parts of this film, and his righteous indignation at how seared he was by watching his fellow New Orleanians suffer in the toxic
water is leavened by the fact that he had eight years to plan and practice an evacuation that might’ve better served his city.
Later, a pastor from New York states as fact that “a master plan” has been put in place by “Trump land-grabbers” to “bulldoze down the 9th Ward.”
A quote from Nagin denying that possibility comes just a few seconds after, but again, someone is allowed to make an explosive charge for which no evidence is evident.
In a flash-forward at the very opening of the story, while Katrina still spins in the Gulf, Lee jumps to a December congressional hearing at which Nagin says, “We come to you with facts.”
It’s intended as a setup device for the four hours to come, and it’s largely backed up thereafter.
But the allies of New Orleans’ enemies will obsess over the few sequences that forgo known facts, allowing them to too easily overlook the sweetness and sadness in Wendell Pierce’s eyes when he talks about how his father paid insurance on that little house for 50 years and got nothing.
Awful anniversary
Among just a few other lapses, the levee section of “Levees” diminishes what could’ve been a profoundly compelling history of the most scarring unnatural disaster in recent American history.
Still, millions will watch and be hurt and angered, again, by what happened here and at points elsewhere on Katrina’s track.
And that’s a good thing, because here at K+1, New Orleans needs all of the sympathetic and accurately informed allies it can get.
. . . . . . .
TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.
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I was one of 2500 lucky ticket holders to see the first Tom Waits show in NE Ohio in 20 years. Whoo hoo! I’ve been a long time fan of the dark carnival music of Tom Waits and to see the man perform his mojo live was something I couldn’t pass up.
The Civic Theater is a beautiful old gaudy place that is only about 3 miles from my house. My back problems have been giving me serious grief for the past few weeks so I was heavily medicated at 7:30 pm when I realized I needed so scoot out for the show.
The two hour show was spectacular and I think the medication gave a surreal show, and even more surreal edge. I drifted in and out of the music and the mojo, never quite sure if what I was seeing was actually happening or not.
At the end…I just knew I was smiling from ear to ear and humming “Blue Melody” all the three miles back to my abode.
Tweet this!Yesterday was the three year anniversary of a sexual assault I experienced. I say “sexual assault” because I’m still not comfortable with the term “gang rape”. But whatever it is that I call it, it happened three years ago.
I’ve been experiencing a sort of free-floating anxiety the past week. I’ve been locked on some of the more “uncomfortable” events and memories of my life. I have a “mindfulness” practice in which I tell myself that the only moment that is, is happening right now. That my past and my future are only illusions and perceptions based out of ego and attachment and I can let go of them at any time.
That works most of the time. This week though, my past creeps back in and tried to land a foothold.
Shit from childhood that I didn’t ask for and didn’t deserve but has colored how I view people and relationships and all of human interaction. There is only a certain amount of work that you can do when my world view was corrupted from before I went to preschool. There isn’t any healthy foundation there to revert back to. To untie from. My world view was flawed from the start and cemented by self-fulfilling prophesies of disaster since then.
I’ve escaped from that cycle, but to what? I don’t know, but it seems to be better than what I have been through before.
Better than living a life of destroying everything I touch because I’ve being run by the machine that needs to do nothing but fill the gaping void inside of her. Fill and feed and fuck. I’ve escaped her. But I’m still left with the memory of that day on Bachtel Avenue when I *knew* I shouldn’t have gone in that house. Knew what was possibly waiting for me on the other side of that door.
But I went anyway, because the machine needed fed.
And now she’s gone the machine. And I’m the one left with the memory of that fat, smelly bastard sitting on my head. With my face in the old orange and green shag carpet that smelled like musty water damage and feet, hearing the laughter and the jeers as one after the other had their way with me.
And part of me just focused on surviving this event, because I have a four year old daughter that would live a fucked up life if her mother was murdered like this. Part of me just numbing out and hoping that each guy would be the last one so I could get out of here. Part of me terrified, like the rabbit and trying not to make a sound, and part of me so furious that I know that even if it takes me 20 years and a marathon of planning I will find each and every one of them and will make sure they know exactly what it feels like to have someone violate them against their will and think it all just a good time.
Four hours.
I was in that house for four hours.
When I left I was in pain, but numb. Numb from drugs. Numb from endorphins. Numb from trauma. The next months I spent in terror in my house. I don’t think I left my house once in those four weeks. I spent them locked in terror that those people would come back to my house and do it again. In terror of the hollow shell my life had become. Terror because I was throwing up in the mornings pretty regularly, even though it was pretty hard to remember it was morning after not sleeping for five days straight.
By September 29, 2003…I was free again.
But my life from August 15 until September 29, 2003 was spend in the most uninterrupted terror I’ve ever experience in my life. I knew that where I was, I would either die in that pathetic state soon, or I would find a means to escape.
Fortunately for me… For Mia…. For Jaden… I escaped. Got out. Got free and started to heal.
My back hasn’t healed. My back was fractured and stressed backwards to the point where I have some significant spinal stenosis and all the little “tailfins” on the vertebrae have snapped off. My back needs surgery and I’m not having it, because I don’t know how I’ll be able to heal properly and take care of my child. Just don’t think it’s possibly yet. So I postpone, and postpone and postpone. I’ve done this for three years now. I’m hoping to do this for another 2-5 years. I’m hoping my back will hold out that long. But I live with significant pain daily. Pain that I medicate for, pain that requires I get shots of steroids and a TENS unit for. Pain that won’t go away…ever.
And that daily reminder of pain reminds me of the even that started all of this bullshit. And I’m right back there in the shit.
It ebbs and it flows. It rises, and then it recedes. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. Right now, I have to take it easy. Be around those that know and love, no matter what and FUCK the rest of it.
I’m not going to be the 36 month time-bomb anymore. Find your entertainment elsewhere.
Tweet this!I got this last week from a girl I used to know back from the Andrew’s Brews coffeehouse days. She’s on myspace as Meija76 and she wrote this poem about me around 2001. I think I exited her life around 1997 when I took off to New Orleans, but I guess I made enought of an impact on her life to warrent a poem. I like it, so I’m posting it here.
I search for you in her lyrics
You, who passed through my life for but a minute
Your green eyes
Your green prom dress
Your green, green laughter
You stick to the edges of dream like a madness
I dont miss much about you
except everything
2 packs of Clove cigarettes
clenched through silent lips
You could drain them–all of them
And you usually did
You told me things that Im still working out
I dont know why but you and that place still haunt me
And I like you there
Gossamer and flickering shimmer
Reminding me.
Tweet this!Ohio Minister, Wife, Busted on Kiddie Porn Charges
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A 57-year-old minister said in interviews that he touched several children inappropriately during the past 37 years, a U.S. postal inspector testified.
David Wasera, former pastor of Newark’sSecond Church of Christ
, also said he had exposed himself to children at church camp and pretended it was an accident, Inspector Marty Arthur said in federal court Wednesday. Both Waser and his wife, Judy, have been charged with receiving and possessing videotapes of child pornography.
The couple face federal charges because the videotapes they are accused of possessing were sent across state lines. In July, an undercover postal inspector in Missouri sold the couple 10 videotapes containing child pornography, Arthur said. Some involved children as young as 4, officials said. U.S. Magistrate Mark Abel ruled Wednesday that David Waser should remain in the Franklin County jail pending trial.
“We have faith in the justice system,” said his attorney, Jane Koprucki. She declined to comment further. Waser was removed from his church position Tuesday, church members said. Judy Waser, 54, will be placed on electronic monitoring and allowed to return to the couple’s Newark home. Her lawyer, Steven Nolder, argued Wednesday that his client was not involved with any of the videos. Both Wasers said they knew child pornography was coming to their home, Arthur said. He said Judy Waser said she was aware of her husband ordering only one tape.
Tweet this!Police: Teen given to older man for sex
Thursday, August 10, 2006 · Last updated 8:34 p.m. PT
THE ASSOCIATED PRESSMUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. — A woman who feared she would lose her boyfriend while she recuperated from surgery arranged for her 15-year-old daughter to have sex with him, authorities said.
Police said the three signed an agreement specifying the sexual services the girl would perform and the compensation she would receive, including clothing and body piercings. The 37-year-old man and the girl had sex about 20 times over two months, police said.
“It’s incredible that any parent would be involved in such a blatant case of abuse against her own daughter,” prosecutor Tony Tague told The Muskegon Chronicle for a story published Thursday.
Authorities investigated after the girl talked to another adult, said police Detective Calvin Mahan.
The woman was freed on $25,000 bond after being arraigned on three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The boyfriend, Michael J. Fitzgibbon, was being held without bail. He was arraigned last week on six counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
It was unclear Thursday whether Fitzgibbon had an attorney.
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Hippy SippyThis article has been tagged since August 2006.
Hippy Sippy was immediately controversial, and outraged many people, including liberals and leaders of the (then) young generation. It was promptly removed from the market, but is still remembered due to its cultural shock value.
More recently, the name was adopted by saxophonist Hank Mobley for his song Hippy Sippy Blues.
References Picture of Hippy Sippy pellets and syringe
Tweet this!I forgot.
You know…I forgot that one of the reasons I keep myself as busy as I do is because something happens to me when I have idle time. My head tries to sort out some of the things I’ve experienced using logic and rational. And that doesn’t work, at all.
I don’t count time spend in meditation as “idle” time. No, that is a mindful clearing of my cup in order to let it be refilled with mental clarity and spaciousness. I consider idle time when I have less to do in tasks than usually fill my 24-hour day. I have some time to sit and think about things before I’m called off to the next deadline. The past two days I’ve had this. My daughter is on vacation with my Dad’s family and will be back Saturday. Since Wednesday I’ve been experiencing some of the effects of P.T.S.D.
Flashbacks, sense memory, and olfactory hallucinations brush past me, just enough to set my at dis-ease. Then my mind starts to go. Trying to make sense of the malaise I am feeling. Then I start to drift…back into that land where I was in charge of nothing and no one noticed anything and I disappeared.
Now it’s one thing for me…a 35 year old woman to say “I experienced childhood sexual abuse.” All well and good, right. That is the easy part. The hard part is living as that woman who wants, very much to have done all the healing work needed to be free from all the chains that tie me to that long-ago place. The gods know I’ve worked and worked and worked again. And lots HAS changed. I’m better at communication. I have developed boundaries. I studied some of the martial-arts and then learned some additional underhanded methods of using them to get out of situations if they ever went bad on me. I have healed a significant portion of my soul.
But like a burn, once I experienced what I did…over and over until I told myself that I liked it…hell, I convinced myself I engineered the situations, the flesh is different. The skin is always too thin, too sensitive and without the proper faculties needed to protect itself. The mind always reels, just slightly whenever a flame comes close. I wake up with nightmares that my wonderful life in my 30’s is just a dream and I woke up back in my old nightmare.
These are not rational fears. These panics do not respond to logic or reason. They make me feel small and powerless and feral once again, something that I know and I’ve proven to myself over and over that I am not.
As a graduate student in a psychology program I’ve learned all the responses to a child or young adult to tells about their abuse. It’s such and uncomfortable topic that most people shut down when the topic is brought up. For instance. I experienced a traumatic sexual assault, including rape on August 15, 2003. For four-hours I was kept in a house in South West Akron while one fat, smelly man sat on my head and others took turns raping me. When it was over, I was let go and I went back to my house, terrified, but never even considering calling the police. You see I had made some very, very bad choices in my life earlier that year and I was in a world of drug addiction where people pray on the vulnerable. That day, I was the victim. A few week later I got clean and realized that the pain I perceived in my back wasn’t a figment of my withdrawal. My back hurt, immensely.
X-rays and MRI’s showed that I had spinal stenosis, spondlythesis, a traumatic bifida and some fractures to my lumbar spine. I not only experienced the sexual trauma, but my back was fractured. I’ve lived with that pain for three years now, trying my best to make friends with it until there is something I can do besides medicate for the pain and spasms. And no…I’m not confident that doing the interbody lumbar fusion with instrumentation that my surgeon recommends will make my situation better. Not until I can find the time and the space to let it heal and being a single mom, that is difficult to find that personal time.
But that experience, no matter how awful it was, happened as an adult, was in an environment that I understood what was my part. No, it is NEVER right to rape a woman, but I do understand that the nature of the world of addiction is a predator/prey game.
When I was a child, I didn’t understand what was happening to me…or why. Moreover, I really didn’t understand why someone didn’t make it stop. Why no one even noticed.
Now, as an adult looking back I know that people didn’t want to believe that my abuse and exploitation was happening. It was uncomfortable and it was happening to a beautiful girl by fine, upstanding people. I remember a gym teacher making some “probing questions” to me when I was in the second grade and I somehow became so uncomfortable that I turned to around on him and came onto him so that he would just usher me out and leave me alone. I don’t know how I knew that would happen, but it all just came very natural to me. I didn’t think about any of it until much later.
My abuse/exploitation wasn’t violent. It was delicate for the most part and took place by 1 certifiable pedophile and a bunch of other guys and girls who were just party-people in the late 70’s just out to have a good time… And looking back on that, once I understood that it was going to happen and no one was going to stop it, I better figure out a way to learn to like what was happening.
But the time I was 12 I was IN that party-people circle causing my own sort of pain in other people life as I tried to stay far away from the horror that I believed I was.
I remember trying to tell my mother when I was six that a particular incident had happened during that day and I will never forget the doe-eyed stark terror in her eyes and her words; “That didn’t happen.” And for the next few years I really don’t remember much about my life. I was told that my experiences “didn’t happen” and I wanted, very much not to cause that terrified look in my mothers eyes anymore.
That childhood stuff comes back every now and again to really haunt me as nothing else can. It changes my ability to have relationships and to trust people. It makes me question my own judgment and allows me to think, that sometimes I can’t keep myself safe.
It all happened so long ago…but it changed me. And everyone wants me to pretend that it didn’t.
And I want to pretend that it didn’t, but it did.
Tweet this!It took be too long to believe
in my own innate worth.
To know my own soul,
To hear my own heart.
It took me too long before
I was able to trust it.
And know that I would be able
To be alright
Just as I am.
I made mistakes,
I felt pain,
I painted myself into corners,
No one would want to find themselves.
I took action,
I got out,
And I walked with the consequences,
Of my actions
And I became free.
No, it was even more than that.
I became unfettered,
I earned my wings,
I took my pause.
And I saw that life
Is very much in the little things.
And it is very much
In our ability to transcend
That which would serve to divide us.
And divide it does,
all the time.
Others, not awake,
No desire to transcend
Throwing stones in my tranquil pond.
Urging me to lash out,
Pick up my whapping stick,
And thump them soundly
From their ignorant slumber.
Stuck in pride and ego and division.
Then I feel sorrow,
Because that isn’t what I want at all.
And sometimes just because I can
Doesn’t mean I should.
But what am I supposed to tolerate?
Where is the middle path?
Between acceptance and tolerance?
Between acceptance and being cowed into submission?
I’m not sure I can see that line clearly.
I can see the Path though,
Clear, that is to me.
So I guess I just continue,
Chop wood, carry water.
Knowing I’ll get the tools
As I need them along the path.
And trusting that the process
Will provide exactly what others need
At the exact right time.
Tweet this!I’m sure I have my own set of obnoxious delusions. I know for a fact I’ve done a lot of hard work getting to stay mindful and awake through many uncomfortable and difficult circumstances. I know the universe has conspired to hit me upside the head with a 2×4 every so often when I started creating my own little illusionary reality that didn’t mesh with my Will.
But every now and again I run into someone in which it seems their ENTIRE view of self and life is illusionary. And what happens to shock me after that is that although teetery, it would appear that that life is precariously balanced and working in the short term. I’m pretty sure that if I tried something like I see them trying the universe would pull the rug RIGHT out from me and land me squarely on my hiney!
I know…I know. MOST everyone isn’t awake. Most everyone deludes themselves in order to tolerate their sub-standard world and compromises to their own belief system. I know this…but sometimes when I’m confronted by an example…it just shakes me.
Oh well…*sigh*, onto more meaningful things.
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If it’s hard for you to still your mind to meditate, the senior teachers at Kripalu Center have developed a five-step approach that could help. Follow these steps and allow yourself to fall into a deep meditative state that will reveal a closer connection to the present and help calm you when you’re upset.
Tweet this!Last night I had one of those epic dreams of lucidity. I knew I was dreaming, but the whole dream was so pleasant that I didn’t want to disturb or manipulate it’s flow at all. I woke up still tired from my adventures, but smiling.
I have been reading Liber Aleph by Crowley and last week we reviewed the section on dreams. So I’m sure that my Nature is just revealing itself in my dream.
I started out in a gymnasium in which a concert was being played. It was a NIN show from waaaaaay early in their day. I think it may have actually been an Exotic Birds concert but I didn’t get to see much of the band. I remember really enjoying the show and being excited that I was in a more intimate setting than the arenas that usually encompass much of the live music I get to see now. (Except for Tom Waits at the Akron Civic Theater this weekend, whoohee!!!)
After the show I sort of was traveling with Rent-boy from one show to the next. We weren’t together. But we were traveling partners and we weren’t on a bus, but a car. We talked a lot about things on that trip and eventually we landed back in New Orleans. There was only one physical thing we shared on that trip, and it was a kiss. Sort of a spontaneous sort of outburst, because there was nothing else to be done. We had gone to an airport because I needed to get to San Francisco and he was sitting in one of the airport chairs by a gate and I was facing him standing up, sort of leaning towards him. He was reading a magazine and I kissed him when he looked up and met my eyes.
That kiss embodies more “completeness” than I EVER experienced with him in real-life. We were both so preoccupied by our own selfish-lives and baggage that we never really gave of ourselves to each other. It was truly a relationship based on chemical convenience. I’m not discounting it. It was, what it was, but it was never “finished”. Every day was just another unfinished sentence in which I was always writing in the first person. The kiss I gave him in the dream was open and giving and it finished a lot of things that never, ever ended back in the day. He had that little smile of awkwardness, but of something that was nice and then we had to board the plane.
Our flight to San Francisco was crowded and I had to snuggle close to Rent-boy in order to have enough room not to be suffocated. I fell asleep on the flight and had ANOTHER dream. I woke up to Griffin, my orange cat-familiar, who was exiting my nicely packed duffle bag and yowl-ling that he was hungry and in need of love. I was surprised to see him, but I gave him the meet from my in-flight sandwich and he curled up on my torso and started to kneed and drool and then we all fell asleep. I dreamed in my dream of my life in New Orleans and many of the crossroads I faced and the path that I chose to take. I watched from the safety of my dream-within-a-dream of the uncomfortable realities that unfolded and the miracles which were created. Again…I was making much sense of the pattern of my life.
I woke up as we were descending into San Francisco and I notice I had many more bags than I boarded with. I tried to get Griffin back into the duffle bag, but he wanted to be carried. So I tried to get all these bags together while carrying my cat and among the throngs of people on this plane.
San Francisco airport was crowded as well and I get a little claustrophobic and rent-boy takes us into a special room which he has a club membership card too so I can get organized. I’m to be meeting my daughter, who is flying in to San Francisco airport from a vacation she was taking (I think with her dad, but I never saw him), and I keep dropping things from all the bags I have. Rent-boy says that my stuff will be safe in here and he’ll wait with it, so I can just run to the gate she’s arriving at, to meet her.
I do this and she arrives, carrying a large bullfrog and a stroller and more bags. I grab some of her bags and we walk together back to the room where Rent-boy is.
Once we get there she has a million things she wants to tell me so I try to listen while organizing the bags into something more manageable for our next flight. She puts her bullfrog down and Griffin immediately picks it up in his mouth and tries to eat it. But the bullfrog is too big AND seems to know how to box. Every time Griffin takes a nip, the frog reaches out and clobbers him in the head. I think that this is amusing.
I find it incredibly difficult to consolidate the bags and begin to throw away things that are not needed. Unfortunately I get too zealous in this effort and I end up throwing away any sort of bag to contain the animals.
I realize that our flight is 90 minutes earlier that I thought and at a gate much farther away so I grab the cat and the frog and load up the stroller with bags and corral the kid and off we go through the crowded airport.
My dream ended with waving to Rent-boy from the airplane, saying one final goodbye. The plane’s destination was unknown to me, but it was some far-a-way place like Siberia or Uganda or something like that. I had my daughter, my cat-familiar and her pet frog and some unmanageable belongings and all was well in the universe.
Tweet this!Entry for August 02, 2006 – Liber Aleph – APOLOGIA – preface APOLOGIA - a formal defense or justification; an apology; a justification for
something you believe in strongly.Father = Master Therion / Aleister Crowley Mother = Hilarion = Jeanne Robert Foster”mysteriously fortold in the Book
of the Law” – I wonder which book/chapter?PROMULGATION – the act of formally
declaring a new law.Every being has a Path and a True Will and has the means of
completing it. Some beings will NOT be able to complete their Will in this
incarnation because they may need to achieve a balance not currently obtained or
sustainable at the present time. They may need to wake up a bit more, or
to achieve this balance or to mature or pay back a karmic debt. Best not
to judge or worry because “suum cuique” or live and let live.Crowley plainly
wants to help his child to achieve his Path and participate fully in the Great
Work.
De Arte Kabbalistica – The Kabbalistic Arts
STUDY KABBALISM ALL THE TIME!!! Being able to reduce things beyond their correspondences, down to their numbers will open the “structure of your mind”. “Necessity rather than prejudice” – this is stating that when you can boil QBL down to its functional essence you can strip away all the structure of meme and associations that we have woven into every awareness we have. Satori stated “Why does Ms. Qlippoth listen to Yakov” and captured it correctly. Why do I, who has my focus on the qlippothic sides of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, listen to DONMEH WEST daily, with it’s strong focus on the front side/ascentionist view of Kabbalism? Because when I strip away all my LHP training and my Kenneth Grant texts on who you’ll meet on which path and why…I know that it is all essentially the same playground.
When I operate out of “WILL” it becomes necessity rather than my prejudice.I may not know why…but I know.The universe MUST be this open before we really can spend any amount of time “anatomizing” it for any productive good to come from it, and it not be only self-rightous busy work.The Gods pay homage to the “Great Souls” who, with “rigour” and “austerity” enter this Path.It is the way of Utmost Purity.
De Vita Corrigenda – “on the corrected life”
Liberty is the principle of self-control. We are born into a world in which we are trained, from a very early age, to be in bondage to our own Hinderances. (Associate with the Buddhist Five Hinderances). But these hinderences are “diseased appetites” whice are NOT in alignment with our True Will.Repression –> leads to neurosis & insanityRevolt against repression –> can lead to violence and sanctionsBOTH are disorders against our true Nature.This testimony of History and Liturature is a great scroll of Learning in which the vellum is our own skin and the ink is our own heart’s blood.
Terms to look up:
Procrustes \Pro*crus”tes\, n. [L., fr. Gr. ?, fr. ? to beat
out, to stretch; ? forward + ? to strike.] (Gr. Antiq.) A celebrated legendary
highwayman of Attica, who tied his victims upon an iron bed, and, as the case
required, either stretched or cut of their legs to adapt them to its length; –
whence the metaphorical phrase,the
bed of ProcrustesSource:
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.procrustesn : (Greek mythology) a mythical giant who was a thief and
murderer; he would capture people and tie them to an iron bed, stretching them
or hacking off their legs to make them fit; was killed by Theseus [syn: Procrustes]2 entries found for tabus.
ta·boo also ta·bu
P Pronunciation
Key (t-b, t-)n. pl. ta·boos, also ta·bus() A ban or an inhibition
resulting from social custom or emotional aversion. A prohibition, especially in
Polynesia and other South Pacific islands, excluding something from use,
approach, or mention because of its sacred and inviolable nature. An object, a
word, or an act protected by such a prohibition.adj.Excluded or forbidden from
use, approach, or mention: a taboo subject.tr.v. ta·booed, also ta·bued
ta·boo·ing, ta·bu·ing ta·boos, ta·bus To exclude from use, approach, or mention;
place under taboo.
GESTA DE AMORE – “On the history of love” The conflict between the passions and the society murders many loves.Abelard/HeloiseBeatrice / DantePaolo / FrancescaThe existance of the conflict is evidence of the wrong done to Nature.Crowley always went back to the foundation of evil is society.Per Contra – per con·tra ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr kntr)adv. On the contrary. By way of contrast.[Latin per contr : per, per + contr, against.]ULTIMA THESIS DE AMORE – “A Final Thesis on Love” Do not bow before false idols, but do not fury against them either…unless that be your True Will. Be prudent…be silent. Take time to find out YOUR True Will so that you know and are clear, so that you don’t mistake Fear for Chastity or Anger for Courage. When you break your chains of habit, treat yourself gently for a while until the ancient elasticity returns and you are restored. These are almost universal chains, declare the Law of Liberty and Truth to Love and if you overcome, you will be free.Acumen – ac·u·men ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ky-mn, -ky-)n. Quickness, accuracy, and keenness of judgment or insight.[Latin acmen, from acuere, to sharpen, from acus, needle. See ak- in Indo-European Roots.]
QUO MODO NATURA SUA EST LEGENDA – “On how one’s own Nature should be Examined” Your unconscious will lead you to your true nature. Pay heed to simple meditation, but give more attention to dreams and subconscious images. They will lead you where your Path lay.
DE NATURA SUA PERCIPIENDA – “On Comprehending one’s Nature” A.C. begsw his child to listen to the wise words of the Jesu “ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless you have the heart of a little child”. Makes me think of how Anpu weighs a souls heart against the lightness of Maat’s feather and if the heart is too heavy Sekmet eats the soul. STAY LIGHT
ALTERA DE VIA NATURAE – ” More on the Way of Nature” Repressions is the reason we have lost much of our original nature. Every man is protected from the loss of his own soul until his Abyss workings. The Will is not lost but buried beneath repression. It will always be revealed by night and dream and phantasy.
Tweet this!from Magick p. 169-
There is also the Gnostic name of the Seven Vowels, which gives a musical formula most puissent in evocations of the Soul of Nature. There is moreover ABRAXAS; there is XNOVBIE; there is MEITHRAS; and indeed it may briefly be stated that every true name of God gives the formula of the invocation of that God.——Crowley’s point is illustrated by G.R.S. Mead’s note that “the name ABRAXAS is the original greek of the BORNLESS RITUAL; see Appendix IV, Liber Samekh – MTB and the TSS gave the faulty tranliteration XNOBIS it has been rendered in Greek in the text. Richard Payne Knight discusses the lion-serpent God “Chnoubis of the Egyptians” in a Discourse on the Worship o Priapus. Mead discusses him as Chnouphis, chnum, knupis, chnupis and he is described in the late antiquity as Graeco-Egyptian literature as the “good-daimon” and “demiurge and God of the heart”; His convential appearance in Egyptian literature is as the ram-headed God Khnum who created mankind on a potters wheel. The God name Meithras, like ABRAXAS – 365
Tweet this!Cop censured for under the covers work
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Jul 20, 8:18 AM (ET)WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A woman police officer moonlighting as a prostitute has got off with a caution, New Zealand police said Thursday.The unidentified officer, stationed in the country’s biggest city Auckland, was discovered last year to have been a prostitute for a short time. “The officer concerned has been counseled. Under police procedures this amounts to a censure,” Deputy Police Commissioner Lyn Provost said in a statement.
The police officer, who was understood to be having financial difficulties, had not sought permission to have a second job. Such applications are considered on a case-by-case basis. “This type of secondary employment would never be approved given that the type of work is inappropriate and incompatible with policing,” Provost said. New Zealand made prostitution legal in 2003. An Auckland spokeswoman for the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective — a welfare and lobby group for sex workers — told the NZ Press Association that a prostitute might earn as much as NZ$500 ($312) on a busy night. Asked if she had heard of other police officers moonlighting as sex workers, she said: “We have law students that are sex workers, we have doctors that are sex workers. I mean anyone can be a sex worker.”
Tweet this!Rereading “Liber Aleph” by Aleister Crowley which may be better known as “The Book of Wisdom and Folly”. Another mage whom I know, but currently resides in a different state is also rereading the book and suggested that we study together online and discuss the chapters.
The book’s was written by Crowley to his “magickal son” O.I.V.V.I.O. It is 208 chapters and covers all matter of subjects and is written as an epistle. When I initially read this book I found it dry and uninviting with all it’s thou’s and thy’s, but now that I have some experience reading daily meditation books I am finding these reading much more approachable.
Also begining a working in which I’m going to be traversing the QBL paths on all four worlds at the same time. I’m not sure how that is going to work, but I’ll let you know as we dedicate in Malkuth tonight and press onward to the four Yods in the coming week.
Happy Lammas everyone! Enjoy the fruits of the first harvest and make merry!
Tweet this!Over the weekend I went to the Jedi Gathering at Whispering Hills campground in Big Prairie, OH. The group was a little smaller than last months Gathering in the Pocono Mountains and the training was much less intense. The weather was VERY hot and humid, which made many people crave the inside air-conditioning, but that wasn’t what I was there for. The workshops all started late and much valuable time was “wasted” on waiting for all members of the group to be in attendance.
It’s hard for me to take a group seriously when they don’t even take their own schedule seriously. I mean if I don’t show up to class until 15 minutes after it starts I don’t expect the professor to hold the class up for me. I just know I’m going to be late and try and get caught up on what I missed from someone else.
I think I was a little hormonal with PMS too. My fuse was a wee bit shorter than usual. I had a Tonglen meditation workshop to facilitate as well and I was very disconnected from the whole loving-kindness and compassion.
We did a basic trust-building excercise in which we fell backwards off things of varying heights and the other members of our group would catch us. Well some of us were VERY scared/nervous about doing this. For a group who is interested in developing Jedi like skills, this was just a very basic request. I was a bit dissapointed in the physical prowess of the group.
Maybe it was just that the PA Gathering was SOOOO good, that this one was hard pressed to compete with the one from last month.
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