Simple Man
--Lynyrd Skynyrd

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say
And if you do this
It will help you some sunny day.

Take your time...
Don't live too fast,
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Find a woman and you'll find love,
And don't forget son,
There is someone up above.

Be a simple kind of man
Oh be something you love and understand
Be a simple kind of man
Won't you do this, for me son, if you can

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul,
And you can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.

Be a simple kind of man
Oh be something you love and understand
Be a simple kind of man
Won't you do this, for me son, if you can

Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow you heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.

Be a simple kind of man
Oh be something you love and understand
Be a simple kind of man
Won't you do this, for me son, if you can

We're all in this together (it's alright, and I put myself in his hands)

Everything is crying out for me to really put things into action. Every inspiring quote and bible verse that has come my way lately. So that's what I'm doing. It's funny how much one can deceive oneself. I mean, I thought I was putting stuf into action, but I wasn't as much as I could, and I knew and and I didn't. Anyway, I'm ever so slightly less scared now, so I am ready to do whatever I may do.

I graduate next Thurday! OMG! Now I'm a big almost uni person I realise they're not so big after all, hehe. Busyily preparing for Lip Sync (doing fantabluous dances from Oliver and High School Musical, hoorah), and writing fuzzy wuzzies, and going to 18ths. Too busy to study. But the HSC is in only a month! HAHAHAHA! Speaking of the HSC, I shan't be posting here much until after I finish and then spend a few weeks in a drunken haze. After that, I shall REVOLUTIONALISE this blog. Until then, fare thee well chickies

(and guess what I just found out...this is post number 200)

"The real woman acts spontaneously. If you ask her a question, your question gets a response, not a reaction. She opens her heart to your question, exposes herself to your question, responds to it..."

You Owe Me Nothing In Return

Alanis Morissette

I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it

I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it

You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I'll hold it

You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won't judge it

(and there are no strings attached to it)

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I'll grant it

You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you'll have it

You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I'll support it

You can ask for anything you want anything at all and I'll understand it

(and there are no strings attached to it)

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

I bet you're wondering when the next payback shoe will eventually drop

I bet you're wondering when my conditional police will force you to cough up

I bet you wonder how far you have now danced you way back into debt

This is the only kind of love as I understand it that there really is

You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I'll lose you and I'll hear it

You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss I'll empathize with

You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion and I'll hear it

You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis and I'll hold it

(and there are no strings attached)

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

Happy Birthday

All Is Truth
Walt Whitman

O me, man of slack faith so long,
Standing aloof, denying portions so long,
Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,
Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,
but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,
Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.

(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be
realized,
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
And that the universe does.)

Where has fail'd a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?
Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?
or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see
that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called
lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,
And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as
space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but
that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,
And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

...there's a lot of love to go around...

I'm doing cartwheels

...I'm doing cartwheels...

You're really loving this aren't you dear

Now you've got me on the ropes out here

With nowhere else to run to now

Just stay and face the music

It'll all tie me up into knots

...It'll all tie me up into knots...

(Then straighten me out again, more beautiful than before)

Someone believes that Saint John of the Cross should be the patron saint of writers

:)

Father's Day today, and it was pleasant. No dramas, no issues. Dad let us just catch the train just to Burwood, and he picked us up from there and we went and had lunch at the hospital with Annelise. Nice food, pleasant chatting. And he dropped us back to Burwood only a couple of hours later.
I went for a walk and saw so many families having gatherings, and I spied on the next door neighbours who were having a gathering too. Like Christmas and Easter, I love these days where people get together and just hang out or whatever. It reminds me of loveliness. And the air reminded me of Paris and dreams of bliss I am relearning from childhood, although I didn't see them then. The bliss of my Personal Legend, perhaps, hehe. Going back to my roots, the things that always resonated so strongly with my heart, but I had to wander away to go back to them, like The Wizard of Oz. Of course, nothing's over yet, or anywhere near an absolution (I'm slowly coming to terms with that) so I cannot say. All I can say is that...phah, who knows

:)

Don't forget to heart your eyes and cross your teas

Inspired by Saint John of the Cross's writing love poetry to his captors, and also by The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo, which I just read for about the sixth time or so (something new every time) I have begun a book which I call Love Poetry To The Shadow, For The Light: A Book of Alchemy, and have begun work on its first poem.

I'm scared.
I'm hopeful.

:)

How often has my spirit turned to thee!

Yesterday I heard a little story about Saint John of the Cross...that, while he was imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition, tortured and all that, he wrote love poetry to his captors :)

*

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
--Bob Dylan

*

Now, some lines from Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth (a fabulous name for a poet, I do believe!):

That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all it's dizzying raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence...

And I have felt
A presence that disturbes me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought,
And rolls through all things...

Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive...

And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her, 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greeting where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all we behold
Is full of blessings...

Pensieve doggie. Windswept old farm doggie. The wise one of the pack. Nature boy.

I wonder what he's thinking?

Maybe he's thinking about unicycles...

Maman related a tale to me today, and it goes a little something like this:

Ok, so I was wlaking along, minding my own business, when suddenly out of nowhere this crazy man on a uniycle tries to run me down, and he's screaming "Give me back my iced cream, please!"

Or, in other words, she saw a man, a man who is the father of a guy who was in my grade at primary school and he's a vet and he used to bring his rats in and they were cute. So she saw this man, walking two dogs (whippets, to be exact) AND RIDING A UNICYCLE! Just casually riding along, two whippets and a unicycle, up hills and everything!

Random picture time

...

there we go

:)

p.p.s. I'm expecting Alyssa's whole-hearted support of the Hanson faction of my fan club any moment now...Yep, any moment...

p.s. Taylor obviously isn't as pretty as you, Bryan

Ariel

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! ---The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks --- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through air --- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel --- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies, Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. -- Sylvia Plath

Poets are so incredibly clever. This one little poem that may seem so simple has so many possible interpretations, so much so intricately woven into it that I could write pages and pages just analysing it.

Wow, I say!

Here are some stories - my english extension two major work. All done! And a few days early, too.
Some of the spacing and stuff is a bit dodge here, but you get the idea.
And if there are any typos or anything PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
Other than that, I would love to hear what you think of them
Enjoy
:)


There’s Something In The Water

Come, come, whoever you are!

Wanderer, worshipper,

lover of leaving,

come.

This is not a caravan of despair.

It doesn't matter if you've broken your vow

a thousand times,

still, come,

and yet again, Come!

- Jelalludin Rumi -




Swimming



Meet me.
You know where.
Whispers exchanged within a chatting congregation.
Like a pearl hunter, I could dive into those dark eyes, swim deep into their depths on a single breath. I’d brave sharks for you. A shaft of sunlight inlaid with drifting dust pours through a stained glass window, bathing the girl below in a wash of blue radiance, touching her long black hair so that it glows as if made of light itself. The minister standing before us delivers a sermon that teeters precariously between wrath and love, and I float languidly on the currents of thoughts and memories…
A voice in my head. Her voice. Dancing between the audible and the nearly imperceptible sounds that bubble below, like a running stream as it tumbles stones and fallen leaves, pours over rocks, into hollows deep and secret…
And I remember hearing her voice through a crowd…
Girls fluttering around like hummingbirds, lacing up boots, tying ribbons, chattering, giggling, fluffing the sleeves of their best dresses. Hurry up girls, you’ll be late, Mama calls, and in a flurry of excitement we file into the cart that waits to take us the half hour trip into the town to the bush dance: an occasion designed for the meeting of boys and girls, for the forging of bonds that they spend their young lives preparing for and the rest of their lives living. We three girls barely manage a goodbye to father before we are out of the cart, greeting friends with squeals and hurrying into the hall to join the circle of dancers.
Gema was there, in a light blue dress, sapphire ribbon in her hair, laughing and dancing with her sister. She’s Italian, her family had migrated to Australia only a few years before, and I have heard stories; that they are witches and dance naked under the full moon and cast hexes on innocent victims. A friend had sworn the family attacked chickens, used the blood for their satanic rites.
Still, I thought Gema had the most beautiful hair I had ever seen.

Everyone was thoroughly engaged in their day of rest. My four younger brothers and sisters were playing cricket in the yard with Papa; Mama was watching from the shade and applauding enthusiastically despite her ignorance of the game, and my older sister Vivian was having tea with her fiancé. I dreaded their imminent marriage for I would miss Viv something awful. Mama told me I was not to fret, I should be happy for her and look forward to the day when I too would find a husband of my own. Indeed it seemed that day was fast approaching. At a dance a few months ago I met David, a man who had since provoked many giggles from my sisters. He was courteous and not unpleasant to talk to, and I was not opposed to the idea of an impending engagement. But today I had dodged his attentions after church with the excuse of a headache, and so slipped quietly away while my family was occupied.

The resonance of the distant ocean and the occasional calls of birds were the only sounds that intermingled with the salty atmosphere as I made my way around the rim of the lagoon. The water shone a brilliant blue in reflection of the sky that stretched above, and bright midday sunlight sparkled on the water’s surface. The cool water licked my toes as I walked, past swamp hens fossicking for food in the reeds, and a single pelican floating lazily on the soft current. Tiny fish, specks of brown like fallen leaves, darted at the suggestion of my approaching footsteps. If I crouched, still, patient, I would be able to catch them in my hands. But that would be the activity of another day. Eager to hasten my journey, I began to skip like the little girl I had not long ago left behind, splashing water, scattering ducks in my wake, thinking of all the things I would say to Gema. I wanted to tell her about the baby lorikeet that had been pushed out of its nest and fallen at my feet like a precious gift but wouldn’t eat anything I gave it, so it had died in my hands and I buried it in the mud of the swamp. But as I anointed its grave with my tears, I heard a twittering screech, looked up, saw a lorikeet flying overhead. And I wanted to tell her of my bubbling fantasy to not only run away and join the circus, but start one all of my own. Lemon meringue tent with pink polka dots. She would be a mermaid in the freak show and it would be our little secret that she wasn’t really a freak at all, and we could be together forever in our spotted tent, drinking tea and playing games with the elephants and the tigers and the clowns and the real freaks.
Suddenly I stopped in my tracks, almost stepping on something. Some thing laid out on the sand. A fan-shaped shell, shades of white, encircled by a ring of little dark green orbs of seaweed flesh joined as if beads on a string. Carefully placed twigs radiated out from the circle like rays of light penetrating mist. I wondered if Gema had left this as a sign to me. Or if perhaps some other soul had come along and left it there for me to find; a widow with no friends but the sea and the birds she would feed every morning, or a drunk whose favourite hobby was to leave little blessings for people to find, and watch the look on their faces when they discovered them. I glanced around but saw no distant form on the sand, no eyes in the bushes. Just to be sure, I said a thank you aloud before walking on.
Sand gave way to a carpet of leaves and dune brush became trees. Peering into the shade of the melaleucas, I saw nothing but the trees. Until a suppressed giggle reached my listening ears, and, gazing around, I spied a figure that seemed to materialise out of the white bark of a tree. Gema, cradled on a melaleuca bough. She launched herself to the ground and began to run, glancing back at me with a gleeful giggle. A challenge. Her hair flew after her, and I followed. Trees seemed to appear in front of me out of nowhere and it was as if I was running full pelt in some labyrinthine quest for a prize as elusive as a cloud. Laughter rang through the atmosphere and dissolved air like dew in the sun, and when I caught her I had the feeling it was nothing to do with my own athletic merit. Hugging her, I felt the dampness of her hair, smelt salt on her skin. That was Gema’s scent, a salty sweetness that somehow seemed to follow me wherever I went, as if it were trapped within my own clothes, my own skin.
She must have been swimming. She loved to swim. Even when she was not in the water I felt that she was, that she moved through some other world, her own fluid surreality, and to me she was a dolphin, or a mermaid, some beautiful creature of water. I wanted to submerge myself in her world, dive in and swim with her, through her, navigate the sea of her like the explorers who set out, blind, to discover new lands.
Taking my hand, she led me through the paperbark forest and when I asked where we were going she answered only with a smile. We walked amid the trees and when we neared the water’s edge she told me she had made a discovery. She lifted her arm, parting the wall of reeds, and beyond, there floated a wooden canoe, complete with oars.
Doesn’t it look like it’s just waiting for us, Claire? It’s like God himself liberated it from the bondage of ownership and sent it downstream to this very spot to await our arrival!
There’s water in the bottom, I laughed.
We’ll empty it out.
It might have a hole.
Only one way to know. Help me.
We climbed in, rowed out onto the lagoon. We floated on the gentle current in silence, watching the world around us, running fingers through the water as if it were hair. So quiet. No one around but she and I, the wilderness and the soft sound of the sea. I smiled, held her hand.
She told me stories of mermaids and sailors, sea monsters and deserted islands. And she asked, with a mischievous grin, how David was and I told her I did not want to marry him, I wanted to marry her. I knelt before her and asked if she would be my wife. We talked of how we would live in a house by the lagoon and eat fish for every meal and swim every morning before breakfast and our children would learn to swim before they learnt to walk because it was without doubt a far more valuable skill. She pitied the poor people who could not do it. I admitted that I did not do it well but said I was eager to learn. She smiled, leaned towards me, touched my face softly with her fingers, put her lips to mine.
Eyes still closed, I heard a splash of water, or was it her laugh? I opened my eyes and she was gone and for a moment I panicked, until a head draped in black hair appeared, looked at me with liquid eyes, then submerged itself again. I gazed over the edge of the canoe and caught sight of Gema’s diluted form swimming below.
I longed to join her, but worried what Mama would say if I arrived home with my dress ruined. She didn’t much approve of me spending so much time with Gema as it was, said she was a bad influence. When I asked how this was I was answered only with a scolding and a disapproving look from my father that sent a pang of regret through my heart.
Boo!
The decision about whether or not to join Gema was made for me. I found myself toppling and before I knew it I was submerged in a silent world. My body seemed weightless, inconsequential, and as it sunk deeper into the water a cool, gentle peace washed over me. Suddenly it did not matter that Gema was a girl, as long as I loved her. Trying to whisper a thank you to the water, all that escaped my mouth were bubbles and I realised where I was. I looked up. Rays of sunlight poured into the water and I flapped my arms, trying to reach them. My head broke through the surface. Air filled my lungs, driving out the fluid that had crept in, and I struggled against the weight of my waterlogged clothes to get back to the little boat. I held on to its overturned body, spluttering and coughing. I felt a pressure on my shoulder and a voice in my ear.
It’s all right Claire.
Suddenly the air was pierced by a screeching cacophony as dozens of white forms rose from the greenness of distant trees into the huge blueness of the sky, flew through the infinite azure firmament, tearing me from whatever it was I thought I might say...and I just started to laugh. I laughed until the whole environment around seemed filled with a noise that didn’t sound like me at all. It seemed that the hills themselves had joined in this insane chorus. Or maybe I had joined them. Even when I stopped, the sound seemed to ring in the air about and I went all silent and just listened. And listening I heard the sound of the ocean beyond, and I realised that this lagoon was but part of the immeasurable sea. It was nature’s nursery for creatures that would, when the rain had fallen heavily for days, be released into the vast enigma that waited beyond.
And closer, I heard Gema’s breath, soft, seeming to whisper secrets in my ear and I turned around and chuckled at the mystified look on her face.
Let’s swim, I laughed, and duck dived down into the water.




Liquid Blessings


The red earth already shimmered with heat as Kathleen watched the school bus pull away. The sky shone a clear piercing blue and a few bony sheep huddled in the sparse shade of a mallee tree, taking what they could get and, being sheep, not complaining about what little that was.
Not a cloud in sight. Not that she expected otherwise. Still, it would be nice one time to look up and be greeted with the hope of rain. She remembered when she was a kid: her first thunderstorm. The firmament had been transformed into billowing dark cloud that hung over the earth and the children had screamed.
The sky is falling.
A sense of tense anticipation filled Kathleen’s world, an expectant pause that invoked a feeling almost of dread, like the peak of pressure before the burst of a dam. It was this feeling that she remembered most about her childhood. A colossal clap of thunder inspired a crescendo in the screams of the kids, but their voices were drowned out by the downpour as it pummelled the corrugated iron roof. Eventually regaining their courage, they ran outside and played in the red mud. After that day, as if by magic, the earth was for a time covered in a carpet of wildflowers, and she and her brothers and sisters explored this newly created landscape, playing hide and seek in fields of flowers and presenting bouquets to each other, to parents, to friends; posies were exchanged even between the white kids and the black.
Kathleen had carried the smell of that poignant moment with her since - the thick, fresh smell of rain - so that whenever the scent reached her in years to come she would, like the sky, feel such release she would cry.
She walked into the house, the same house in which she had grown up. And even though so much had happened over the years, so much had changed, the feeling of the place remained, as if it were somehow inscribed on the memory of the land itself. It was that desert feeling, so potent, yet so hard to describe. Like the body of some creature - ancient, elemental, vital – made up the very substance of the land.
She said good morning to her parents. They ate breakfast together, although they had already been up for hours. They chatted about the weather and wondered when the rain would come, the standard talk of the breakfast table, and Kathleen sipped coffee and thought about the day ahead. She hoped her parents would go out so she could steal away before the kids got home. She chuckled to herself. Still sneaking around like a teenager.
Maybe she should feel guilty. Her husband had been killed in the war and she had been given the medal of bravery that was meant for him. It now hung, framed, in her bedroom and the children would admire it and beg her to tell them the story of how their father had died saving his best friend. A hero. She had been invited to services, had met the Prime Minister and been told how proud, how honoured she should feel that she was given the great gift of being able to send her man to death to secure peace on earth. Yet, from the day the dreaded telegram arrived at her door she could not shake the oppressive melancholy that settled over her eyes and her heart. She stopped going to church, the church that had told them all of their sacred duty, convinced her husband of it. The mood in the house became despondent; the children missed their father terribly, and she could not bring herself to be the mother they needed.
Years ago after she married her husband, a new wife eager to please, she had agreed without hesitation to move to the city. She did not at the time realise what she was leaving behind and it did not matter while he was around, for she had reason to live like a wife and mother should. After he went to war she busied herself with the children and charity work, knitting socks for the men on the front and writing letters for those poor souls who had no one to care for them. She decided that he would come back one day when the war was over. She held on to this faith through the long years even when it seemed the war would never end.
But it did, and her husband did not come back to her, so she did the only thing she thought she could do; go back home.
Home. That’s what the property was to her, not because of the house, the memories, the people, but because of the sense of it. It was the only place where she felt that there really was something sublime to life, something beyond her existence that would go on into eternity even when she couldn’t. The silent expanse of the land pulled her from a state of mind she could hardly stand, pulled the whole family from the shadow of a man that pressed in upon their lives. And so maybe she should be content with what she had been given; but sometimes things happen, and although everyone tells you they’re wrong, you simply do not believe them.

Walking across the land towards a dilapidated wooden shack crouching amongst dry shrub and mallee trees, Kathleen wondered what would happen if her parents found out. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, they couldn’t punish her, they couldn’t really do anything. Still, she dreaded discovery. Yet the dread was not potent enough to stop her and as she reached the hut, knocked on the door, his greeting removed all such fears from her mind.

On her birthday, Paul had had nothing to give to her. He took her out into the desert and after they had walked for almost an hour he stopped and began to dig at the scorched earth of a dry riverbed. Perplexed, she watched him digging in silence. Until he spoke. Look. There at the base of the hole lay a pool of water. Laughing, she had dipped her hands in and let the mud and holy water trickle down her arms.

He taught her about the desert. Told her how she could find water herself by following the flights of birds, tapping into tree roots, digging in riverbeds that seemed all but dried up. He told her which plants she could eat, which were medicinal, which made the best spears. He taught her desert survival, even though they both knew she would never really need it. You never know when you might be sent out into the desert alone to face the devil. Best to be prepared.
She asked him about his family. He said he was born on a mission and didn’t know who his father was. His mother had died when he was young and he could hardly remember her. But he didn’t miss not having parents, for the Aboriginal community on the mission was like a single family. Ancestral distinctions blurred and faded away. They were beaten if they spoke their own language so they learnt it in secret, learnt to speak it in tones barely audible, whispered it from bed to bed in the dark.
When he was fourteen a white woman, a widow, invited him to her house. Her breath smelt like brandy, her clothes like perfume, and she would give him treats; dried fruit, caramels. One day she took his hand and put it between her legs. Nine months later she had a baby with dark skin and when they took it away from her she cried so hard. So did he.
Paul maintained that his most potent memory of growing up was when once he spilt a cup of precious water. Salty tears welled up in his eyes and the cup blurred on the dirt before him. But he heard a timid cough, and when he looked up a little white girl was standing before him, and, with sparkling blue eyes, she held out her cup to him.

Some nights Kathleen drove herself crazy because she would get so lonely and yet could not have him there with her. Anger shot through her mind, blame, and then she worried that everyone was right to hate them, and then she would eat herself up inside with the guilt of betraying both her dead husband and her lover, one in action, the other in thought. Which was worse?
But morning would come, she would look out over the desert and pray and feel somewhere within her that everything was all right.

Lazing together in the heat. His dark arms reminded her of the branches of trees as he held her - their strength, their weathered texture, the way they made her feel she was cradled in the spirit of the earth itself. Tracing his skin, pale fingers against dark flesh, trailing down his breastbone, the ridge of his nose, the edge of his jaw, winding through his hair.
A light breeze caressed her skin, picked up a dry leaf on the floor. There was moisture in the air.
Look!
Through an opening in the wall of the shack they caught sight of a hint of greyness. Could it be? They dressed, dashed outside. Dark clouds approaching fast, soon to cover the whole sky. A fresh, chill wind blew. That sense of tense anticipation crept up on Kathleen, prickling the back of her neck. She took his hand in hers.
As the sky broke open and rain fell to the earth, so too did tears fall from her eyes. She lifted her face to the sky, and opened her mouth to receive the liquid blessing.



Warming the Snow


Late night. Early morning. The glow of streetlights seeps in through the curtains, illuminating the room with an eerie night-timely light that shimmers and pulsates almost imperceptibly, or is it just my tired mind? By this time (what time is it, anyway?) my brain has softened into a lovely mush and I prod at it like a child discovering the feel of sand or play dough or rain-soaked soil. Let’s see what happens if I do this...
Three sleeping forms lie in one bed, exhausted after a long day of driving and sing-alongs, too poor to bother with two rooms even in this cheap motel. I yawn and, restless, stare past the curtains through the window to the parking lot outside. Coloured metal gleaming silently in the night. I envisage where those cars have been and the lives they have touched. I picture an old tan van chugging along the Nullarbor Plain, surrounded by nothing but low shrub and space space space. A middle aged woman with dark grey hair dozes on a mattress in the back, wearing nothing but a single earring on her left ear - a black pearl enmeshed in silver thread, glinting in a tiny beam of sunlight that rests upon only it. The teenager driving wears a purple shirt decorated with a hand-painted red rose out of which bursts a crucifix, and he sings along to the music emanating from the speakers…thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox…and he turns around and sings loudly into the back while the woman snores in a very unladylike manner indeed. But the way he looks at her, with those piercing blue eyes…
Beyond the parking lot lies a deserted road and silhouetted houses. From the window of one, a dim light radiates, and then the curtain parts and the face of a girl appears. A girl with golden hair and red eyes and faint green skin, looking out into the night. Why? Maybe she’s doing the same thing as I am - searching for a soft, warm bed to lay her mind upon a while. Or maybe she’s thinking about…androgynous ponies like Botticelli angels with vampire teeth frolicking amongst deep purple storm clouds…Perhaps she’s waiting for her knight in shining armour to come whisk her away, but she doesn’t know that when he comes he will be robed in a deep jade dress, holding a brass chalice filled with some dark, thick liquid and singing hymns to Persephone…And beyond the houses stretch hills furry with trees, seen only as darker forms against a dark sky.
I turn around. My eyes meet another’s and I smile, put my finger to my lips. With a yawn the eyes are closed and again it is just me awake in the room. Like a guardian angel, or a stalker, watching over three forms as they sleep.
Tessa, Kaitlyn, Joel and I. We have just finished university and so embarked upon a long-awaited road trip, starting at Sydney, probably ending at Sydney. That was the extent of our planning. We’ve been talking about this for years, though. Our great escapade, our chance to see the sights, to live the life, you know how it goes, and as the final exams came around our idle dreams began to take form, to pull themselves from the murky depths of imaginings and into clearer, crisper waters. The semester ended leaving each of us with a certificate in hand and a buzz of anticipation in head. We threw up our caps, saw them suspended in the blue sky, and headed off before they came back down again.
The night before we left we built a bonfire to send us on our way, fell into a sort of silent vigil as the sun set, each of us absorbed in our own worlds. Dreams of the future, fears and hopes intertwining, weaving the fabric of our shared existence under a shifting sky of shimmering misty yellows, oranges, pinks, finally fading away slowly to hues of blue and eventual darkness. The bonfire crackled and consumed the wood with which it was fed. Stars appeared above, until the darkened firmament was dotted with points of brilliant white light, and I got to thinking. Freed from the institution of education that had dominated my life, our lives, I was afraid of the strange path that lay ahead. How on earth would I be able make my own way out there in the big world?
Joel spoke of the vast expanse of the universe. He’s studying to be an astrophysicist (he’s like a bloody genius, I tell you; we all say he’s crazy but really we’re just in awe of him). It’s his great passion, contemplating the unfathomable. He obsesses about things that the rest of us only like to think about for a minute or two, here and there. The idea that we are all made of stardust, or the incredible distance of even the nearest star, or the billions of galaxies far beyond our own. He told us that ninety-six percent of the universe is concealed from any human perception to date, while I contemplated the fire lit area surrounding me. I thought it was funny that he spent his life with darkness and telescopes where you couldn’t see the beautiful blue of his eyes…I imagined stars gazing down towards this little corner of the universe in millions of years time and spying two sapphire points gazing back at them, minute but persistent, and I imagined the stars would wave back with their arms of stardust and glow extra bright.
We danced together in circles around the fire, rings and rings, forging a solid ring of gold out of our whirling selves. And we chatted about this and about that; about our mutual trepidation of the lives that lay ahead of us; and about the more immediate adventure we were soon to embark upon. Through the talk, though, and through my efforts to focus on the texture of the piece of bark I held in my hand, I felt some faintly discomforting sense shimmering before or maybe within me that could not be put into words. Even when I tried to grasp it, it remained elusive until finally I gave up, gave in, and let it float and pulsate while I bobbed on the surface of this inextricable something like a cork in the ocean.

We get up and leave first thing in the morning. Of course, for us first thing means eleven-thirty, after check out I know, but between heaving our arses out of bed, showering, eating breakfast, the time just seems to fly by and next thing you know you’re late. We play I Spy in the car and, with exclamations of cosy nostalgia, listen to songs from our childhood. Hit me baby one more time.
We get to the village where we’re staying (or at least hoping to stay if we can manage to get accommodation). At the Information Centre we’re given an address and Tessa grabs a couple of pamphlets to keep her entertained. We discover that this town was further down the valley once upon a time, until it was relocated in the sixties. The place was flooded, the whole valley, and a lake created where before there was none. Apparently, when water levels are low the remains of the old town can be seen jutting out of the water, as if reaching from their submergence to the world in which they once belonged.
The place we get is pretty cheap but looks all right. We dump our stuff in our room and have a look about the lodge, which pretty much means checking out the dining room and the TV lounge, deserted at this time of day with everyone still up at the slopes. Joel, ever the macho slob, sits down and turns on the TV.
What do you think you’re doing? We didn’t come here to watch TV you know. Come on, let’s go for a walk.

By the time we get back the lodge is starting to fill up and we’re just in time for dinner. The food is decent, the company good, and we get nicely toasted and chat away to the others, who are mostly around our age except for a middle aged couple who blend in anyway. We follow the crowd to the lounge room and talk some more for a few hours, make a few friends. This girl starts chatting to me, says she’s Alex from Perth. She’s flicking her shiny blonde hair, the type that seems to slide perfectly back into place no matter how many times she runs her hand back through it, and telling me she’s just broken up with her boyfriend so her oh-so-wonderful friends whisked her broken heart over here in the hope of driving him from her mind. I’m looking for an escape, but all my friends seem to be enthralled in conversation with someone or other and she’s just about to make me guess her bra size when my saviour comes along.
Thank god. Kaitlyn, you’re my knight in shining armour.
I was watching for a while to see how far it would go. When it looked like she was on the verge of jumping on you right then and there I figured the time had come. You’re so cute, darling. She laughs.
People start filing off to their rooms until eventually only the four of us are left in front of the fireplace that’s almost devoid of fire. We sit in silence for a while. I lie back, watch through a shimmering golden veil as the firelight makes things look a little different, shows them in a new light, so to speak. I chuckle to myself.
Eventually I venture a question.
Do you guys think you can be in love with more than one person at once?
There’s a pause.
Maybe. But it wouldn’t work. Jealousy and all that.
Throughout all history people have been paired, so, you know, there must be something in that.
Yeah, I suppose.
I get to thinking about that lake down there, how surreal it seems that there is a whole town submerged within it. This image comes to my head; a town asleep, soundless. A ghost town just lying there like some ancient ruined city that has long since reached its inevitable demise. Life, in fast motion.

This morning we actually did manage to leave early and head for the slopes. We travel on up the mountain, weaving around, sometimes downhill even though we want to go up, up, up to the highest parts of the country. But sometimes down is up and you just have to roll along wherever the road takes you. First past farms with light brown paddocks, almost yellow, where sheep and cattle stand amongst grey rocks and chew on grass that seems inedible, dead. It seems so strange how little water there is here, as if the mountains and the lake have taken it all for themselves. The land becomes national park and snow begins to appear. One minute I’m gazing out the window at the green and brown of the bush and the next thing I know it’s all covered in white, the branches of trees laden with white, white fields stretching out between hills, and the whole sense of the place is transformed into something else, something silent and beautiful, laid out on all sides forever.
We reach the ski fields, hire skis. Neither Tessa nor Kaitlyn have been to the snow before and they get a rude surprise at the discovery that it’s cold and wet. Joel and I laugh. We try to convince the girls to take a lesson but they reckon they’ll give it a go, can’t be that hard. We snigger.
Suit yourselves.
Little yelps as they board the chairlift. I take off my goggles to get a good look at the fields around me. The white carpet reflects the sunlight so brightly it becomes this luminous shroud over the earth that lies beneath, concealing life. Life that will come back again and thrive in the spring when the snow melts as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be unharmed after being crushed and frozen and deprived of nutrients for months. It’s amazing the way the experience of a snow-covered forest really does feel like they say – the whole landscape seems so silent, like it’s this subtly vital life form that has receded into slumberous solitude for the winter months. I never expected literature to tell the truth. Well, I did, but that’s another story…The snow shimmers, sparkles, twinkles, melts in the sun and magically becomes some other substance, forming droplets filled with rainbows and micro worlds at the tips of hanging leaves. How strange to think that all of this is just water in a different form, water in disguise, and in a couple of months it will shed its disguise and run down the mountains into streams, creeks, rivers, and eventually become part of the ocean or clouds in the sky, be transported to some distant corner of the world, and continue on forever.
The top of the lift, and in a flurry of screams and tangled skis the girls end up in a heap on the ground. We laugh and help them up.
And they’re off, speeding down the slope, poles in the air, whizzing down at full pelt. In hysterics, we ski down after them, meet them in a groaning clump at the bottom and help them up again.
How about we grab a coffee?
What, giving up already?
Sitting together, still laughing, I feel the heat of the liquid move through me. I watch as the steam rises, swirls, instils itself in clothes, hair, skin. The sense of smiling faces, a crystal vibrato, resonates throughout the air, seeps through the glass and the material and the metal into the environment outside, mingles with the air and warms it up, just a little.

I am not impressed with The Pet Show right now. Not one little bit.
They had a segment on ferrets that was so very biased. They chose weirdest and most offensive ferret owners they could find - a goth lesbian couple who had about a dozen ferrets. There was this shot where one of them was sitting on a chair staring blankly at the camera with ferrets crawling all around her. Them in the little information section afterwards the people said that you feed ferrets baby chicks. Baby chicks! What the hell!
That's discrimination against ferrets! I don't appreciate it. I should email them. Ferret rights please!


In other news, I love Hanson so much. They make my heart hurt. I don't know what it is about them, but it's always been that way. This spontaneous heart welling up when I listen to them sometimes. Hehehe. Another group that is unfairly discriminated against. I should become a Hanson/ferret activist

It's hard to find a good picture of them though...Some activist

Taylor's so pretty

In more other news, clean white sheets remind me of summer, and my windows are open! It's nice to be able to look out without the view being obscured by dirt. Maybe I should clean my windows...There's a magpi couple that sit on a pine tree that is flat the the top for some reason or other, looking all regal. They remind me of The Lion King.

How did hopelessness come to be regarded as a mark of sophisticated realism?

I was lulled to sleep by the bright blue wash of the full moon last night, and I was greeted by the sense of spring in the air when I awoke today. I was too hot in bed. And I opened the window wide, which I'm not allowed to do in winter, as much as I'd like to freeze to death just so I can hear the outside from inside. The sun shone and it was so blissy and I had rude awakenings to face up to and not so rude ones, too. Both very welcome, as much as I try to rile against the former. More good news: the rude awakenings have not yet sent me to a place where I am blind and lose all faith. I think that's progress, dont you? Time will tell.
Exams coming up, and the finishing of major works. Suddenly I am stressed and realise there's not so much time as I thought. Hehehe, that's always the way. Ach, King Lear! *pulls out hair* Tell me, how would YOU stage the struggle between order and disorder in King Lear? Because I'm at a loss. Stage it? What the hell? How can I write an essay on that? I DON'T UNDERSTAND!
But I'm sure I'll survive and all will turn out for the best becuase I love you.
So goodday to you
:)

...as I read the narratives of black people who were captured and set to slaving away their lives in America, I saw that this inner spirit, this inner capacity for self-comforting, this ability to locate God within that they expressed, demonstrated something marvelous about human beings. Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God, just as it has created us with the capacity to know speech. The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate!

I suppose this has all been thought before; but it came to me as a revelation after reading how the fifth or sixth black woman, finding herself captured, enslaved, sexually abused, starved, whipped, the mother of children she could not want, lover of children she could not have, crept inot the corners of the fields among the haystacks and the animals, and found within her own heart the only solace and love she was ever to know.

It was as if these women found a twin self who saved them from thier abused consciousness and chronic physical loneliness; and that twin self is in all of us, waiting only to be summoned.

--Alice Walker, from 'A Letter of the Times', from The Collected Short Stories

Must post!
I'm terrible at multitasking in any way, and that includes listening to music, particularly music wiht words, while I'm doing anything else. And I'm supposed to be studying now, but nice music kept coming on an I didn't wnat to turn it off. So guess what! All the music that's been coming on, every single song since I decided I have to settle down and do work has been classical!

My life is just so completely filled with coicidence at the moment. It's magnificent!
Praise be

:D

The more you run away from it the faster it catches up with you. The day you learn to stare it in the face is the day it loses its power.
--mr see subtle

Realising that it's not the place I want to be...it's the feeling

I can have it here, now

GUESS WHAT!

Because I've been blabbering along about sir kandinsky esquire (otherwise known as kandinsky) for the last while, my mum calls me downstairs last night to see...
an article about him in Time! About an exhibition that is one of the very few times ever lots of his works have been shown together. Now I just need to get to England, or Switzerland...

Ah, coincidences :)

Oh, but then I turned over the page and saw an article that hurt my feelings at first. Aww, poor moi. But then I was like, screw that! As if I'm going to let that put a dampener on my dreams! You see, it was a review of some book that sounded nice, but the reviewer said that it was just too cheesy and lame and that what people really want to read about is the dark facets of human nature. And! in the course of dissing this book, it also dissed the movie of Pay It Forward. Although I don't really remember the movie, I do remember the book, and I thought it was great. He said that the movie was only redeemed by the fact that the kid died!
So after some exclamations I decided that instead of being all hurt and hiding from it at all, I shall instead take it as an inspiration to figure out some way of writing that fits into my dreams for it, but also reaches a bit of a wider audience than a book like that might.
Because I have read that the secret to life (according to some sculptor...Henry soemthing) is to have a task that you devote your whole life to. But the trick is, it has to be something you cannot possibly do.
So I was thinking maybe mine could be something along the lines of : write the best novel ever written, in the opinion of everybody; so good that it inspires hundreds of millions of people to have a significantly better life.
That seems suficiently unacheivable to moi.
So when you read it, you can all say "wow, I remember when she was just a budding little naive silly writer" and people will be like "omg you know her!" and you'll be like "ah, sure"
and that's my story
maybe i'll write a story about it one day
speaking of stories! I shall soon be posting some short stories i wrote as a major work for school!
bet you can't wait

cheerio!
:)

Ways To Relieve Stress, from http://www.lessons4living.com/stresscat.htm

dedicated to my fellow hsc students...and everyone else

Watch a sunset
Go to the beach
Be positive
Sing a song
Pet a dog
Tell a joke
Listen to music
Blow bubbles
Take a nap
Dance a jig
Take a walk
Write a letter
Have a cup of tea
Ask for help
Smile
Take a break
Do it now!
Stretch
Keep a journal
Hum a tune
Practice patience
Get up early
Meditate
Do Tai Chi
Play a drum
Prioritize
Give a hug
Throw a ball
Play with a child
See a movie
Plant a flower
Say "No"
Set Limits
Eat a snack
Read a book
Practice kindness
Light a candle
Laugh out loud
Lie in the sun
Walk in the rain
Run in the park
Talk to a friend
Take a bubble bath
Avoid negative people
Take a deep breath
Ask for what you need
Go to bed on time
Walk a labyrinth
Give a compliment
Clean a closet
Go barefoot
Give a blessing
Watch a sunrise
Say a prayer

:)

Renunciation has both sadness and joy in it: sadness because you realize the futility of your old ways, and joy because of the greater vision that begins to unfold when you are able to let go of them. This is no ordinary joy. It is a joy that gives birth to a new and profound strength, a confidence, an abiding inspiration that comes from the realization that you are not condemned to your habits, that you can indeed emerge from them, that you can change, and grow more and more free.
~Sogyal Rinpoche

More Kandinsky

I really like him at the moment

Over the last couple of days, almost every time (except twice) I click on the "next blog" button it hasn't been giving me advertising ones and the such, but instead ones written by real people, interesting ones, a lot of which I now read. I like them, it's nice just reading what people write about their everyday lives, and looking at pretty pictures and stuff. Because they often have cool things to say. Oh, and a significant number of them have been from Santa Monica or Santa Cruz, California, and Rob Brezsny from Free Will Astrology lives in Santa Cruz. AND one talked about something that was talked about on the blog listed on Free Will Astrology, and well as talking ab out a random artist I looked at a couple of years ago who I didn't care about at the time but have since reevaluated that opinion. And they've all been about things relevent to me at this point in my life. So yeah, I just think it's cool
:)

I'm really growing to like taking complete responsibility for everything I do; it makes me feel so empowered, like I can do what I want, rather than just thinking it's just how I am or something. I can say to myself this is what happened, no excuses, no beating self up about it, it's not what I want, therefore I just won't do it again. It's scarey at first, there's always inate resistance, but once you begin to overcome that it's nice.

Kandinsky!

The common people

A series of marvelous coincidences:

For the past few weeks I have been seeing hearts wherever I look - in patterns in the grass, the paint on the walls, the carpet, the clouds. Common things. They would just be there when I looked and jump out at me.

Then, I don't remember what it started with. Ah, yes. Subtle Being posting on normal, everyday events. Commenting on lost writings that spirit is right here now. A Course in Miracles. The need to unite spiritual practise with the mountains of school work I am choosing to be buried under. A post On Being Ordinary on a mailing list I belong to: So much easier to sit in the sunlight and enjoy the show wheneveryou can. To just be an ordinary person and live an ordinary life. Nomethod or experience can bring you closer to or further from whatyou already are: you are nothing more, or less, than the ordinarystuff of life. How relaxing And how extraordinary is the ordinary. A thing from another mailing list I belong to: Do you think most realize that what they're really after is more "living," not more rewards? Yet by conditioning the former upon the latter, they have a tough time with both? Yeah, not yet. But one day they will. Sometimes, not realizing what you have, means not knowing what you want. You know, for most people. Hehehe. The Course in Miracles. Yesterday afternoon, watching the end of the movie Hope Floats: it's what's in the middle that counts. So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will. A conversation started by Jeff at dinner last night about enjoying now, being the best you can be now, about how if you won the lottery or something and had millions of dollars at your disposal, what you do in your day to day life shouldn't necessarily change that much because you should be living your best already (unless of course you're a struggling writer or something who works in a cafe just to provide money for the real dream; but even then you can still make the most of the day job). So many messages saying something along the lines of the time is truely now. Paulo Coelho's mailing list Warrior of the Light: “Lord”, I finally said. “I am not nailed to that cross, nor do I see You there. This cross is empty and so it shall remain for ever, because the time of Death has passed. This cross was the symbol of the infinite power that we all have, nailed and killed by man. Now this Power is born again to life, because I have walked the path of common people and in them I have found Your own secret. You too walked the path of common people. You came to teach all that we were capable of, and we did not want to accept this. You showed us that Power and Glory were in everyone’s reach, and this sudden vision of our capacity was too much for us. We crucified You not because we are ungrateful to the son of God but because we were very afraid to accept our own capacity. With time and tradition, You again became just a distant divinity, and we returned to our destiny as men. “There is no sin in being happy. Half a dozen exercises and an attentive ear are enough to make a man realize his most impossible dreams”.
Think there's something in that?
I didn't fully realise the wonderfulness and coincidentalness of this until I thought it out here. Looks to me like the universe always provides the answers to that which we seek.
:)

LOVE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE

Living on free food tickets
Water in the milk from the hole in the roof
Where the rain came through
What can we do

Tears from your little sister
Crying 'cause she doesn't have a dress without a patch for the party to go
Oh but you know she'll get by

'Cause she's living in the love of the common people
Smiles from the heart of the family man
Daddy's gonna buy her a dream to cling to
Mamma's gonna love her just as much as she can
And she can

It's a good thing you don't have bus fare
It would fall through the hole in your pocket
And you'll lose it in the snow on the ground
Out walking your dog to find a job

Trying to keep your hands warm
But the hole in your shoe lets the snow come through
And it chills you to the bone
You better go home where it's warm

You can live in the love of the common people
Smiles from the heart of the family man
Daddy's gonna buy her a dream to cling to
Mamma's gonna love her just as much as she can
And she can

Living on dreams ain't easy
But the closer the knit the tighter the fit
And the chills stay away
You can take them in stride, for family pride

You know that faith in your foundation
And with a whole lot of love and a warm conversation
But don't forget to pray
Aaking you strong where you belong

Where you can live in the love of the common people
Smiles from the heart of the family man
Daddy's gonna buy her a dream to cling to
Mamma's gonna love her just as much as she can
And she can

"Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!"
-- www.tut.com

Happy Fourth of July!

I know I'm a day late, but better late than never

I also realise that I am in fact not American. Nor do I generally have any allegiance to that evil country, at least not in the past.

However, there's no harm in remembering how wonderful and powerful the that nation's founding principles are, whatever you're views are on contemporary controversy. Therefore, here's a bit from the Declaration of Indepedence. May we all put these principles into practise in our own lives

:)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


The only justification needed for love and forgiveness is the fact that we are alive.

:)

All thoughts, feelings, behaviours are like muscles. They strengthen or diminish in direct proportion to how much you exercise them.

Therefore, faith, hope and love are muscles, too.

So, I am running for love (quite literally; a nice little ritual)

:)

There's something about the way animals look so much like people that makes my heart ache and burst forth.

There's something about sitting in the sun on an oval under bright blue sky that feels like bliss.

There's something about the flight of birds that makes my heart fly with them.


Luf
:)

The following is all from the Free Will Astrology newsletter

"Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones bruise even at too heavy a human touch. Every strawberry you have ever eaten has been picked by callused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represents someone's knees, someone's aching backs and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat." —Alison Luterman, quoted in *After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,* by Jack Kornfield

*

Prayer can have a medicinal effect, according to a study of 990 heart patients at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City. Five prayer teams prayed daily on behalf of half of the patients. Though they did not know they were being prayed for, their health improved faster and they needed fewer drugs than the patients who did not have the benefit of the prayers. The report on the experiment appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association. (Source: Associated Press)

*

"A major psychiatric study of 1,200 Finnish reindeer herders found midwinter to be quite a cheery time, despite darkness and daily temperatures that averaged a bone-chilling minus 22 degrees. 'All kinds of disorders, including depression, were rare in the darkest season,' Dr. Nayha Vaisanen and his team of scientists concluded in the 1994 issue of the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia." —Lisa M. Krieger, *San Francisco Examiner*

*

MIRABILIA REPORT

Mirabilia n. innovations generated by unseen presences, enigmatic phenomena on the cusp between fake and real, odd acts of deliverance that inspire love or wonder or both; from the Latin mirabilia, "marvels."

* In 2002, scientists discovered a secret underground river running 800 feet below a Mauritanian town in the Sahara Desert. With a flow rate of 8,450 gallons per hour, it is the biggest unnamed river in the world.* Oblivious to dire biblical prophecies about swarms of locusts, residents of Beijing, China, warmly greeted their arrival in 2002. They scooped the insects up in large bags, deep-fried them, and made them the main dish of an enormous feast.

* Two percent of your fears are based in fact and are actually worth worrying about, while the other 98 percent are either imagined or else not yours, having infected you through the psychic version of contagion.

* Astronomers have discovered a crystal as big as our moon at the core of a dying white dwarf star.

* A Japanese genius invented a robot that can belly dance.

* Twelve percent of the population [of the US] believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

* Because half of the world's vanilla crop is grown in Madagascar, the whole island smells like vanilla ice cream.

* Your body contains so much iron that you could make a spike out of it, and that spike would be strong enough to hold you up.

* Bali has 80,000 temples.

* Some piranhas are vegetarians.

THIS WEEK IN PRONOIAC HISTORY

In an act of random violence, playwright Samuel Beckett was stabbed by a pimp on a Paris street. A stranger, the pianist Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, found him and got medical help. She visited him in the hospital, and eventually the two were married.

Bach's St. Matthew Passion is a highly regarded musical composition. Yet the score disappeared and the work wasn't played for years after Bach's death in 1750. In 1829, composer Felix Mendelssohn rediscovered the long-lost manuscript being used as wrapping paper in the estate sale of a deceased cheese salesman. He arranged for a public performance of the piece, and its revival began.

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT

This perfect moment is brought to you by the thousand-year-old rose bush that's growing on the wall of the Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany, and by the fossilized remains of a 40-million-year-old wild rose found in Florissant, Colorado.

Everything by Lifehouse (I know I've posted this before, but I wanted to reaffirm it, and this time a different part has been foregrounded)

Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place
where I find peace again.

You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose...you're everything.

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Cause you're all I want,
You're all I need
You're everything,
everything
You're all I want
your all I need
You're everything,
everything.
You're all I want
you're all I need.
You're everything,
everything
You're all I want
you're all I need,
you're everything,
everything.

And How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

But what if I'm a mermaid...

Why does it sometimes do that funny spacing thing when I post things like that song before?

War On War by Wilco

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

It's a war on war

There's a war on

You're gonna lose

You have to lose

You have to learn how to die

Just watching the miles flying by

Just watching the miles flying by

You are not my typewriter

But you could be my demon moving forward through the flaming doors

You have to lose

You have to learn how to die

if you want to want to be alive, okay?

You have to lose

You have to lose

You have to learn how to die

if you want to want to be alive

You have to die

You have to die

You have to learn how to die

if you want to want to be alive, okay?

Bird Raptures

The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, everything
That is so silent, sweet, and pale,
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.

Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale.

O herald skylark, stay thy flight
One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.

~Christina Rossetti

Where the ocean is deepest
And the sky meets the earth
I rise in tandem to your breath
Oh, morning
Lift me to your prayers
And speak gently with my eyes.
Take my Soul and leave my heart
Next to the pillow of our desire
Near an occasional dream
Love, you have absconded like
A dog with a bone,
A bird with her song,
And if my wings should unfurl,
Take me high and away,
Leave nothing to chance,
Leave nothing at all.

Where is this beat that keeps all this
Together? Is it an echo of Love? Is
It the want of Desire? Please take me home,
Remove these long shadows of doubt, let the sunshine
In and the evening dwell in the honeysuckle of my heart,
Oh, dark Love of mine, touch me, release me
Make me whole again.

Silence. I dwell in thee. I am starlight falling
Into
A hungry flight of wings and creatures that stir,
Ripping the seams of Night, plucking arias from
Heaven from Hell's liquid tongue, flowing in deeper
Shades of twilight memories and ravages of ancient fires
In bodies of Lovers, holding on. Holding On.

Ana
6/8/06

You could be completely wrong in your view of life.

Some humility can do wonders for a person, despite the negative connotations that word has gained.

It seems difficult. How do I not be what a part of me so loudly claims is all me, and indeed has coaxed me into believing ti my whole life, unbeknownest to my conscious self.

I have backed away from really learning this humility a lot. Ostensibly, because it was 'too hard', I simply 'couldn't do it'. But then tonight I was like 'well, I'm just going to stay with this, at least think about it' because even that sort of acknowledgement is helpful - it gives invitation, helps look at something else other than that loud voice that says it knows while a part of you quietly but persitantly insists there's something better, even if you don't know the words to put it into. So I was just being with it a bit, and it became subtly but increasingly accepted, if only a little (hey, a start if great, just one step and then seeing what happens).
So then I get home and Dad, his girlfriend and I get into this discussion. We had different perspectives and different paradigms of reality. But eventually he said something that was so incredibly in line with what I had started thinking. And I decided to let go of trying to get dad to see something and instead just let him teach me. He seems to have such a good idea of how people work in lots of ways.
It took a difficult affront like that to my 'ego' (by that I mean the part of us generally accepted to be the true human mind), an event that was offered to me by life, so I see it, (crazily, coolly, relating my horoscope for the week - I only jusy thought of that - how cool; it's like what I said before, they seem to fulfill themselves and afterwards you realise they have, as if they are prophesising or perhaps setting up the field, effecting the subconcious or something) and also my little step of willingness to let me learn that seemingly dificult lesson. But really it's not that hard once it happens, I guess because when it happens it does becuase your ready. Hm.
So what I'm trying to say is, primarily, just to solidify my ideas, which I have not learnt that well through this...Must think on it more, not let it slip away (by the way, something I've noticed recently is that my mind seems to easily let go of that I believe I really need to learn, like that feeling with dreams, that they just fade away to the edge of your consciousness and into the sunbconscious and you cannot get them back again - what seems to be innate resistance to its giving up sovereignity - but I have found that if I just stop and think 'well, this is important, I intend to get back to it' and sort of relax, try without trying as some have said, not something that can really be consciously explained but can be learned intuitively, that it comes back.
To reiterate what I see to be the little morals here (I stress what I see to be - anyone can get whatever they want out of it):
- the "little willingness", no more than a little at first to get it started, like that mustard seed of faith in christianity
- this can mean actually cinsidering it, giving it the time of day, and not just in a false pretence sort of way, but with the thought that maybe there is something you can learn
- humility - that is, that you don't know everything, you aren't the supreme ruler
- and things just sort of happen, fall into place so nicely that your eyes sparkle and you cannot but marvel at how cool it is to be alive (I mean, you can easily not do that, but if you think of it logically you can seemaybe you're mistaken about that too?)


How do I share without doing it in an ego supremacy, superiority way? "you wonder if it's crap or if it's forced or if it's uninspired..." Keep persevering? Just keep at it. Like that Leunig cartoon which I'm having trouble putting here now, but I've posted it before: http://pastichna.blogspot.com/2006/03/may-you-build-ladder-to-stars-and.html

G'night

Tadaima aware go wakatta

I understand just now the deepest beauty



Not that personally do yet. But it is itself beautiful

My horoscope for the week:

This would not be a good week to cast a curse on God in revenge for what you think are his mistakes. Nor would it be a favorable time to draw blasphemous cartoons of saints, or pretend that atheism is any less of a faith-based belief system than religion [my italics]. In fact, if I were you, Capricorn, I would utter a few prayers, purify your motives, and do some really good deeds--just in case there's even a slim possibility that divine help is abundantly available to you right now. (P.S. From what I can tell, there's more than a slim possibility.)

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123606
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003957.html#more
I would like to support these articles by posing that things are much better than we tend to believe. Think about what life would have been like in any time in the past, not clouded by romantic notions, and surely one cannot deny this.
And in relation to just general existance, is it not true that most of us tend to give more weight to the 'negative' and just sort of gloss over the 'positive'. Too tired to go into this now. Maybe another time.
But, please, just think about it a bit. Maybe you'll come to the same conclusions. Then again, maybe you won't. I'm open to opposition.
Goodnight. I wish you all oodles of blessings
And another article before I go. i haven't read it all myself yet, but it seems worthwhile
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600

from Ashes and Snow

It's difficult to leave what you're used to, but, god, it's worth it


Some stuff to do! Hooray!

22ND CENTURY PRONOIA THERAPY
Experiments and exercises in becoming a bewilderingly enlightened,
ecstatically grateful, unselfishly proud Master of Fiendishly Benevolent
Tricks

1. Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson has proposed that the single greatest
contribution to world peace would come from there being six billion
different religions—a unique spiritual path for each person on the planet.
The Beauty and Truth Laboratory urges you to get started on doing your
part to make this happen. What will your religion be called? What rituals
will you perform? Write down your three core tenets.

2. You'll also need a new name for the Creator. "God" and "Goddess"
have been so overused and abused that most of us are numb to them.
And given the spiritual opportunities that will open up for you as you
explore pronoia, you can't afford to have an impaired sensitivity towards
the Great Mystery.

Here's an idea to stimulate your search: The Russian word for God is
"Bog." The Basques call the Supreme Being "Jingo." To purge your
psychic dockets of built-up fixations about deity, you might try singing
improvisational prayers to "Jingo Bog."

Here are a few other fresh names to inspire you:
Blooming HaHa
Divine Wow
Whirl-Zap-Gush
Sublime Cackler
Chthonic Riddler

3. Since ancient times, China has hosted three religions: Confucianism,
Buddhism, and Taoism. The typical Chinese person has cobbled together a
mélange of beliefs gathered from all three. This is different from the
Western way, which is to be faithful to one religion or another, never
mixing and matching.

But that's changing in certain enclaves in North America, where growing
numbers of seekers are adopting the Chinese approach. They borrow
elements from a variety of spiritual traditions to create a personalized
path. Religious historians call this syncretism.

As you meditate on conjuring up your own unique mode of worship, think
of the good parts you'd like to steal from other religions.

4. Most religions designate a special class of people—priests, rabbis,
ayatollahs—to oversee official communications with the Source. This has
led to a prevailing assumption, even among those who don't follow an
established faith, that we can't initiate a divine conversation without the
aid of a professional class of trained mediators. Among some sects of the
ancient gnostics, in contrast, everyone was regarded as a potential
prophet who could experience epiphanies worthy of becoming part of the
ever-evolving doctrine.

As you create your own spiritual path, experiment with this approach.
What might you do to eliminate the middleman and commune directly
with the Source?

5. The chorus of an old Depeche Mode song goes like this: "I don't want
to start/ Any blasphemous rumors/ But I think that God's/ Got a sick
sense of humor/ And when I die/ I expect to find him laughing." I have a
grudging respect for these lyrics. In an age when God has been co-opted
by intolerant fundamentalists and mirthless sentimentalists, I appreciate
any artist who suggests there's more to the Infinite Spirit than the one-
dimensional prig described in the Bible or Koran.

On the other hand, Depeche Mode's notion of the Blooming HaHa is also
disinformation. It's as much a hostage to pop culture's knee-jerk nihilism
as the right-wing bigots' God is to their monumental hatreds. One thing I
know for sure about the Supreme Being is that while she does have a
complicated sense of humor, it's not cruel or vengeful.

Your assignment: Pray to be granted a healing sample of her comedic
genius—a funny, shocking miracle that will free you of any tendencies you
have to believe the age-old lies about her.

6. Will there be prayer in your new religion? If so, we suggest that you
avoid the body language traditionally used by Christians in their worship.
The gesture of clasping one's hands together originated long ago as an
imitation of being shackled; it was thought to be the proper way to
express submission to divine power.

The prayers you make, however, may be imbued as much with reverent
exuberance or ecstatic gratitude as somber submissiveness. An example
of a more apt gesture is to spread your arms as wide and high as they'll
go, as if you're hugging the sky. Any other ideas?

7. What if the Creator is like Rainer Maria Rilke's God, "like a webbing
made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence"? What if the Source of All
Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as
much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual? What if
the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of
your understanding, forcing you to deepen your perceptions and change
the way you think about everything? Close your eyes and imagine you can
sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining
intelligence.

8. At one point in James Michener's novel Hawaii, a native Hawaiian tells
ignorant missionaries, "You cannot speak to the gods with your clothes
on." Whereupon he strips and prepares for prayer. Test this theory. Find
out if your communion with the Divine Wow improves when you're naked.

9. A few Christian sects now enjoy a new addition to their once-staid
church services: holy laughter. Parishioners become so excited while
worshiping that they erupt in uncontrollable glee. Some may crack up so
profoundly that they fall on the floor and flop around like breakdancers.
Others repeatedly leap into the air as if on pogo sticks, or wobble and
zigzag as if trying to dance while drunk.

Imagine that the holy books of your religion prescribe laughing prayers as
a reliable way to know the Divine Wow. Recite one of those laughing
prayers.

10. In Judeo-Christian cultures, many people associate the sky with the
masculine form of God. According to this bias, the Supreme Father rules
us all from on high—up, away, far from here. But if you were an ancient
Egyptian, the sky was the goddess Nuit, her body its very substance. She
was a loving mother whose tender touch could be felt with each new
breath.

For one day, act as if you and Nuit are in constant contact.

11. In Kevin Smith's movie, Dogma, pop singer Alanis Morissette played
God. Anthony Quinn was Zeus in the TV show, Hercules, and comedian
George Burns performed the role of God in three movies, always "without
makeup," as he bragged. Your assignment is to choose the person you'd
like to portray God or Goddess in the movie of your life.

15. In *Letters to a Young Poet,* Rilke urged an aspiring bard to change
the way he imagined the Supreme Being. "Why don't you conceive of God
as an ally who is coming," Rilke said, "who has been approaching since
time began, the one who will someday arrive, the fruit of a tree whose
leaves we are? Why not project his birth into the future, and live your life
as an excruciating and lyrical moment in the history of a prodigious
pregnancy?"

How would your life change if you made this idea your working
hypothesis?

16. In some ancient Greek dramas, a god showed up out of nowhere to
cause a miraculous twist at a crucial point in the tale. This divine intrusion
was referred to as theos ek mechanes, literally "god from a machine,"
because the symbolic figure of the god was lowered onto the stage by a
crane. In modern usage, the term is Latin—deus ex machina—and refers
to a story in which a sudden event unexpectedly brings about a resolution
to a baffling problem.

Write a tale in which you're the beneficiary of such an intervention.

17. In Frederick Buechner's book, *On the Road with the Archangel,* the
star is the archangel Raphael. This supernatural helper has a tough gig:
gathering the prayers of human beings and delivering them to God. Here's
how he describes the range of pleas he hears: "'There are prayers of such
power that you might say they carry me rather than the other way
around. There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and half-hearted
that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some
prayers are very boring.'"

Compose a prayer that's so powerful and entertaining that it could thrill
an archangel.

18. Thousands of scientists are engaged in research to crack the code of
the aging process. Their coming breakthroughs may allow you to live a
healthy and vigorous life well into your 90s—and even beyond.

How can you contribute to this worthy cause? What might you do to
promote your longevity? Brainstorm about possible strategies.

And now I drink a toast to your coffin. May it be fashioned of lumber
obtained from a hundred-year-old cypress tree whose seed will germinate
this year.

19. Let's move on to discuss the possibility that sooner or later, the
physical body you inhabit will expire. Your heart will shut down. Blood will
no longer course through your veins. The fleshly vehicle you knew as your
home for so many years will begin to rot. Is this the ultimate proof, as
some people bitterly proclaim, that there is no God and that pronoia is a
lie?

I say no. I say that the Creator includes death as an essential part of
evolution's master plan. Lifetime after lifetime, our immortal souls take on
a series of temporary forms as we help unfold, in our own small ways, the
inconceivably complex plot of the divine drama. Each time we die, it's
hard and sad to our time-bound egos. But from the perspective of the
part of us that has always been and will always be, it's simply part of the
epic adventure.

Assume, for argument's sake, that what I've just said is a fact. Describe
how different your life would be if you not only believed but perceived the
truth that your essential self will never die, but will inhabit many bodies
and live many lives on earth.