DREAMS

Lately my dreams have returned to me in all their splendour and majesty. One big contributor to this is the fact that I have relinquished all sleep meds for the past few days, which is a stretch for me. I was told by Rosemary - an RN at Vista Health where I intern - that with a steady diet of Ambien, one can get to where one's brain is dependent on them for sleep. I guess I already knew that, but it was sure nice to sleep straight through the night (albeit with no memory of dreams - ever). What was left was for me to be able to teach myself to sleep. I had looked at all kinds of techniques and stuff before and I had heard of the following one that she mentioned, but honestly I didn't think it would have as much of an effect that it did. What she suggested was not to lay in bed after waking early (which is what happens to me all the time). Instead, if you can't get back to sleep in like 15 minutes, you get up and do something else in some other part of the house. For me, I must avoid computer and TV with their flashing lights. The last time I did this, I just went and sat in the living room for a bit in the dark and then went back to bed without doing anything except that. Tonight if it happens, I'll study for my NCE. That oughtta do it!

Last night I dreamed that my grandfather was showing me a baseball grenade which was covered in leather. In a lot of my dreams, I seem to be wandering through apartment complexes or houses with which I am unfamiliar. Sometimes these places are haunted, but it's more of a startling effect with these rather than an outright nightmare. I can't remember the last time that I had what could be considered a nightmare, and I imagine that's a good thing.

I rediscovered part of a dream journal that I had begun back in 2005. This greatly inspired me, as it appears I was able to stick with that one for some months. I don't remember having a lot of these, honestly, but that's what makes them even more endearing to me I think. One back in March of 2005 (I think that's the right year) includes the following:

I think I saw a spirit guide in my dream last night. All I remember is a doll, like a ventriloquist's dummy, sitting in a box on a shelf. He was scolding me for not being able to project myself out of my body yet even after all the books I've read and instruction I've received. Then I became lucid for a bit - I remember looking at my hand in wonder. Seems like the voice urged me on to fly, which I did. I know that I was in and around a forest, but I can't remember exactly where.

Such is the subject matter of my mind. I look forward to returning to such great adventures, as this is only the tip of the iceberg that I have seen in my time. One thing I would love to be able to do, however, is to type the dreams without having the blaring light of a monitor or the hassle of waiting for a computer to boot up. I'm sure I'll figure something out. If I can just get the gist of it down, it will serve to continue to exercise that part of my mind within which these precious jewels of the unconscious are stored.

"... We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep." (from Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)

SHRINE

I had a wild hair and created this mini Buddhist shrine here in the computer room. I got the statue at Crazy Earl's not too long ago. Note the Karana Mudra that this image is sporting - it signifies the banishment of negativity, demons, etc. I learned from being in the houses of my Asian friends and relatives growing up that you put the Buddha way up high on a shelf like this. My friend Tuan Nguyen had godparents who had an electric "laughing Buddha" that you plug in - it was in their entrance room on such a high shelf. I really loved that thing, as it would randomly light up every now and again and laugh. This feature, however, freaked Tuan out, as he said he would be walking around the house late at night and the Buddha would just start laughing randomly (he felt) at him. If anyone out there knows where to find such an electric laughing Buddha, please give me the link, as I have searched the internet in vain for one to purchase...

Much to the chagrin of my Christian friends I'm sure, I've even toyed with the idea of featuring a different deity in my shrine ever so often in this manner. I have it in my mind to assemble images of Christ, Hecate, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Ganesha... Who knows? I don't think I'm an idol worshipper so much as a collector of symbols from the world's religious thoughts. Yes, yes, I know: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." But I believe that the nature of the numinous is as such that it demands a greater articulation and exploration. The One God has many faces.

PEACE OF MIND

I've not written to you, oh my blog, in quite some time.

This weekend, I've been convalescing from a cold and have somehow avoided getting a stomach virus which seems to be all around me. I slept a lot yesterday, which I indeed have to be sick in order to do. Overall, my body is better but somehow I feel like I'm unbalanced. Maybe it was the sleeping a lot... I'm in one of those "how am I going to get through this school and career thing and not feel like an imposter" moods, most certainly. Humility, I realize, is the integral state needed for spiritual progression, but I'm falling back into low self-esteem-type stuff, which, because the focus is on myself, is just as bad as being egotistical. At least I'm realizing this and processing it, I guess.

Again, too much thought...

Great Spirit, guide my way...

WILD WILDERNESS DRIVE-THROUGH SAFARI

So Jenn, Michael and I went all the way up north to Gentry yesterday to see this drive through zoo they have up there. All in all, it was a good trip I think. Here are just a few good highlights, as bandwidth on this site is limited. Peacocks, emus and deer are a very common and predominant sight there as they are wandering all over the place. Jenn found a fairly good sized peacock feather which were being sold at the front office for $1 a piece. Though we really bought nothing except a bottle of water from them, Jenn commented that the prices were not the usual gouging you would expect in attending a theme park or a theater (who could forget something like a $4 Coke?).

Watching all these animals and observing their various plumage, I got to thinking about natural camouflage and how it came about in the natural world. Naturalists are quick to say that the tiger's stripes are to help the beasts to be more stealthy and undetectable in the bush and so forth, but what I wish to understand is the origin of how such a selection is made from the genetic level. The tiger certainly doesn't just say in his head "I think I'll turn a little lighter because the scrub isn't as thick..." etc. Similarly, over time, prey species develop eyes which are more on the sides of their heads (allowing them to have an almost 360 degree sweep of vision), while predator species (like us humans) have stereoscopic vision which allows them to track and home in on prey. Interesting thought anyway. Enjoy!

OBSERVE MY HANDIWORK...

A week or two ago, our mailbox was demolished. This is a common occurrence in our neighborhood for years, and the source has varied from crazy-assed mailmen (who have only served to demonstrate the veracity of the term "going postal" by their actions which Jennifer has witnessed) to assholes who just want to tear shit up. The culprits of this last attack, we figure, fall into the latter category, though we can't be for certain. Anyhow, we stopped getting mail for a while because the box was just left lying in the yard for many days. Finally, just today, my father and I took to the task of repairing this thing for hopefully the last time (we went through this a little bit in times past, but it wasn't so bad as to knock the whole thing over before). We got 40 pounds of Quikcrete and half buried a little mold for the base before we filled it with the stuff. Here's a before and after for you, my gentle readers. Please observe Crybaby the kitty taking special note of our finished product:

The duct tape you see was to hold part of the crappy aluminum frame together as the rest of the thing dried. I buried part of the column itself in the concrete this time. The blue jeans you see were added because my dad said we needed cloth soaked in water to help the stuff to not dry too fast.



Our neighbor Debbie said that (a week or two ago) she heard something that sounded "almost like a loud motorcycle" and the sound of breaks squealing. When she looked outside a few minutes later, our mailbox was lying on the ground. Anyway, there's a piece of rebar driven down quite a ways in the ground now with the 40 lbs. of concrete anchoring it. I'll be curious to see if such an auto will be able to speed away after hitting that! Hah!

ANOTHER SAD ANIMAL TALE...

I must start off by saying that Jenn and I just came off of a good mini-vacation. I took her to see Jeff Dunham at the Verizon Arena in Little Rock on Sunday, and we stayed overnight and returned this morning. We stayed at a Best Western nearby which had been newly built, so that eliminated a lot of the usual problems one runs into when staying at a hotel. The only drawback was that somehow we got a room on the same floor as some kind of pee wee baseball team. We kept hearing preteen kids running up and down the hall and yelling occasionally. Jenn complained when this kept happening after 10:30 at night, and this seemed to help somewhat. The show itself was pretty good, but it really amazed me how such a simple comedic ventriloquist performance (with the addition of his friend the "Guitar Guy") commanded somewhere around seventy dollars a ticket (for floor seats). Given, one doesn't see that many ventriloquists these days and Mr. Dunham has worked for many years to make a name for himself, but wow... It's just the human touch, isn't it? The guy brought out jokes based on his life experiences, and he was genuine in doing that. Gives me hope for humanity in a way because people resonate to such a performance with such force. It's hard to explain, I guess...

But now for the sad animal tale. Jenn and I returned the rental car in the middle of the day today. Since I returned it to the Fort Smith airport terminal, we took lunch and even did a little shopping on that side of town. We usually go back to Van Buren the Barling way through the bottom lands when we're on that side of town, and we cross the bridge over Lock and Dam 13 to get over the river. It was on this bridge where Jenn spotted a cat that was not much more than a kitten - a little black one with some spots of white. She begged me to get out on the bridge as she turned around and try to get the cat out of this very life-threatening situation. I obliged, and we ended up kind of stopping traffic there for a few minutes while I tried to approach this terrified feline. When I first approached, it looked up at me with eyes full of terror and ran out of the middle of the road, jumping up on the concrete guardrail. "Don't jump, kitty," I said, but it was hard to use slow and deliberate mannerisms when you are in the middle of a bridge and traffic is flying by. I walked as carefully as I could toward the kitty. Panting from the heat, it looked back at me again with terrified eyes. Then, it looked down at the water flowing fast underneath us hundreds of feet below. As I walked to its side of the bridge, it hurled itself off and into the river. I watched with disbelief as it took what seemed like forever to hit the water. It floated away, and amazingly I think it survived the jump as it seemed to keep its head above water. I'm always going to carry that image in my head of the cat plummeting toward the water belly-down with all four legs extended. I feel a little guilty for hesitating at that critical moment when I was within arm's length of grabbing him, but I feared that 1) he might have had rabies or something similar and 2) that he would probably have clawed me to pieces if I did put my hands on him. Jenn consoled me by saying that at least we did try to do something for the little critter and that he was certain to die if he stayed on that bridge. Maybe he was able to swim to safety... There's a part of me that clings to that possibility. Jenn reminded me that the Lock and Dam 13 area is where a lot of people drop their unwanted pets off at. That's just depressing...

WORRY

Against all better judgment, I tend to worry about things. What if I totally flop professionally after graduating from John Brown? What if I'm not making the most of my time? What if my continually poor diet leads to health problems? I could choose any of a host of things to run over with in my mind, and I often do. Over the year, however, I have found ways to divert this constant morass of nagging and unproductive thoughts. I basically ask myself if there's really anything I can do about the issue right now. If there is, I will take action - even in some small way. If there's not, I rationalize and tell myself I'll pick another time to deal with it during a more opportune moment. Of course, this doesn't work every time, but I've found that this simple method is effective. Speaking from a cognitive behavioral perspective, a lot of my worry comes from my core belief that I'm lacking in different ways. Even though I was raised in a good loving home I still brought with me from childhood some feelings of inadequacy for whatever reason. Thinking back, I could have done and been so much more than I am today: the backwards-looking "what if" regarding things I might have done differently. One part of me dwells on such regret, while the other focuses on present-day opportunity (and the latter part is the one that I try to feed the most).

Being a former English major, I'm always interested to divulge the etymology of certain words. I looked for this with the word "worry" and found the following at Answers.com:

Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle." Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking." This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example. In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute." It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century.

I like that image of being strangled, as that says it all.

As I often preface this to my friends, I know the thought of one's eventual and inevitable death is a morbid thought (and obviously this fact of life is a great source of worry and fear for a lot of people), but actually it helps me with being able to rationalize the absurdity of some of my worries. Who will be around in 100 years to acknowledge any of my shortcomings? What will it matter to me then pending the time I've ceased to draw breath and after my body has been simplified by cremation into dust? One could use this as a license to totally live for today and totally not give a shit about anything, of course, but that's out of balance as well. Going in that direction, you're bound to have some regret regarding what could have been or find yourself homeless at 40, having burnt all your bridges with the people you know after so many years of self-indulgent celebration. Life's meaning is something that you create for yourself as you go within the parenthesis of birth on one side and death on the other. You cannot control the happenstance of your birth or the inevitability of your demise, but you can work to make the most of your life in between.

ABSINTHE

For years, absinthe for me was one of those forbidden pleasures as it was not legal to sell it from within the United States. I always got mine through Alandia (http://www.alandia.de/) who assured me that even if my purchase were intercepted at the border, my money would be refunded. I don't have to worry about that now (or the outrageous shipping fees that applied for overseas transportation). They carry the stuff at Shamrock! Incredible! What you see to the right is a brand I formerly had to order from overseas but which is now available locally. It originates from Austria and is known as a "bohemian" absinthe. The only real difference is that it contains less anise (the herb that gives absinthe that really powerful and not-so-desirable (in my opinion) licorice taste. Because of this, it makes it easier for you to mix it in cocktails.

Absinthe has a rich history and was, of course, outlawed here in the States and most places abroad around 1915. Wikipedia has a really good entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe

The following particular paragraph, quoted from Wiki, says it all. Though absinthe has long been knows as some sort of devilish psychoactive poison, those claims are just not warranted:

"However, the debate over whether absinthe produces effects on the human mind additional to those of alcohol has not been conclusively resolved. The effects of absinthe have been described by some as mind opening. The most commonly reported experience is a "clear-headed" feeling of inebriation—a form of "lucid drunkenness". Chemist, historian and absinthe distiller Ted Breaux has claimed that the alleged secondary effects of absinthe may be caused by the fact that some of the herbal compounds in the drink act as stimulants, while others act as sedatives, creating an overall lucid effect of awakening. Long term effects of low absinthe consumption in humans remain unknown, although the herbs in absinthe have both painkilling and antiparasitic properties."

The only danger that I might warn would-be experimenters of is that it's not as easy to tell how many drinks you feel you've had. The absinthe does indeed "wake up" the brain, and the experience is quite beyond normal alcohol intoxication. You travel above the normal swaggering "blarrgg" of an alcohol buzz to a place where you find a flight of ideas and an overly talkative impulse.

Something I did over the weekend was to experiment with a basic absinthe martini recipe I found on Webtender. Here's what I ended up with:

1.5 oz. Stolichnaya vodka
1.5 oz. Mata Hari absinthe
1.5 oz. Gallo dry vermouth
add a little red grenadine to taste (but you don't have to)

Shake all that stuff up in one of those mixing things along with some ice and pour yourself a cocktail. Drink heartily, but be warned...

"After the first glass (of absinthe), you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world." - Oscar Wilde

patriotism

On Friday, I had a conversation with an associate (who will remain nameless for certain reasons) about America and I asked him generally what he thought about our country. He is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent people that I know, and when posed with this question he voiced his opinion that he thought Denmark and Norway had better health care systems than the US and that in general those European nations were just better countries. By this declaration, he jumped on the traditional liberal bandwagon which is of the opinion that America is inferior and full of itself. Granted, America IS full of itself, but that's part of why I love my country. Why does it seem to be generally accepted that highly intelligent people here in the states eschew and seem to be embarrassed by their country? I must make clear that I'm certainly not one to endorse blind acceptance to any government, as that's where so many peoples have gotten into trouble in the past. One must remember that America was set up so that its citizens could criticize and be heard AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

I think that America is the greatest country in the world, warts and all. We have our problems, sure, but we're always working on them. We are a hodge-podge of gene pools which traditionally has built off of the strengths of variation and differences in opinion and ways of life. There's a reason why the brilliant fathers of our country put the First Amendment first!

the skies

Suffer the skies and their mist

Suffer the strange mud of the forest

Suffer the selfsame seas that floated Noah!

Oh, how far shalt thou goest?

See! Do you not see?

The obscurity is gone, and all that's left is...

Me

Jennifer's birthday party

Today, my Jennifer actually turned 30 years old. Yesterday, however, we had her party here at the house. Though a fraction of the folks that were actually invited showed, we still had a decent crowd I think - a crowd which was made up mostly of family and people Jenn and I know from work. All in all, I think everything turned out rather well. However, as you can tell by the cake here, Jennifer has a rather pessimistic view of aging which she shares with our society at large. Growing old is inevitable. The kids that think they're so cool today will feel totally left behind by the generation which comes after them. 'Twas ever thus, and ever thus will be... I'm going to be 36 this year when August 19th comes around and I feel totally cool about it. There is always more to learn and so many different ways to evolve and express myself that I do not feel limited or ashamed in any way. As I often quote from my man Tennyson: "Old age hath yet his honor and his toil..." This body is not meant to live forever. Whenever I go out in public somewhere I'm quick to remind those around me that everyone we're sharing the room with at that moment will inevitably be dead in 100 years' time. Jenn just thinks it's a morbid thought, but I find it quite liberating really. If you look at it in the right way, you see the simple truth that the most important thing for someone to do is to make the most of this very moment - RIGHT NOW. It reminds me of Nike's oh so popular slogan from the Nineties: "Just Do It". I watched this show on MSNBC one time that talked about successful businesses and their stories, and they said that people were writing in to Nike during that particular campaign saying that they "just did it" and it changed their lives. Obviously, such a phrase means different things to different people. I challenge you, oh readers - what does it mean to you?

self loathing

This morning, I moved our pet turtle from the bathroom sink (where she had stayed for well over a week) into a cooler which I had cleaned out in a good way, I thought. Apparently the soap I used to clean out the plastic container was toxic to Looksi, because before I left for work she was dead...

I feel like utter shit. Though this death was certainly not intentional, I still feel quite responsible.

Just thought I'd share this...

a visit to my aunt's house for Father's Day

I spent a couple of hours at my aunt's house today with my mom's side of the family. Mostly, we were there to honor my grandfather, the celebrated World War II veteran and pillar of my family for many many years. From left to right, here's my mom, my granddad and my grandma all posing for a pic:

Can you believe that my granddad is 88 years old and that my grandmother is 84? Jennifer has often jested that I'm descended from a line of elves...

And yes, I brought that champagne you see in the foreground. It was Chandon - good crispy stuff!

My grandmother is going through some early stage Alzheimer's right now, and it's quite tragic. So far, the Aricept has been staving off the inevitable, but unfortunately we all know that her illness is just that - inevitable... I owe them so much love for the love and kindness they have shown me over the years, and I feel powerless in the face of this disease of forgetting that is slowly encroaching... All we can do is enjoy days like we had today when grandma was so much like her old self. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, my friends...

As a sidelight, here's a squirrel that came to drink from Debbie's birdbath. The picture looks kind of faded because I took it looking through a screen door...

Shrek: Forever After and the Devil...

For those of you that know me, you know that I often have weird ideas and such. I've thought at times that I might be a little Schizotypal even, but I think I get along with people alright...

Anyway, I went with my family to see Shrek: Forever After last night and noticed something interesting toward the end. Hopefully mentioning this won't give any of the plot away for those of you who intend to see it, but here goes... There's a scene in which Shrek and Fiona are chained together in a giant castle room - one on one side and one on the other - so that when one of them moves toward the other, the other is pulled away from them. Then, the dragon that had been guarding Fiona as she grew up appears and begins to attack them. When the dragon entered, I thought to myself "This is the Devil card from the Tarot!" Observe:
It makes sense when you think about the plot of the movie as well. Shrek and Fiona have grown apart and allowed other things (false beliefs) interfere with their relationship. It culminates so well, because if you look at the card, the male and female on the card could choose to free themselves from those bonds if they so wished. The scene with the dragon (which represents all those things that tore them apart - black magic, separate dream fulfillment, holding on to anger, etc.) represented all those things up to that point. It's bloody brilliant! I wonder if they did this on purpose, as it seems so perfect.

me and my scleral hematoma

I'm just now getting over what I think was a sinus infection. The walk-in clinic doc didn't really ever tell me what my formal diagnosis was, and I didn't ask him. He just gave me some antibiotics. Anyway, I think I coughed or sneezed so hard that I blew a blood vessel in my eye!


Creepy, eh?

The technical term for this, I think, is scleral hematoma. My mom, especially, was all worried about this, but I assured her that I had consulted with some of the nursing staff where I work and that they had told me it was nothing serious.

Writing just to write

Last night, drugged as I was on Ny-Quil and Trazadone (I'm convalescing from a sinus infection), I dreamed that I was climbing a light sandy brown cliff's edge and came across a rattlesnake on one of the ledges. It was right near my foot moving its diamond head back and forth, and I was thinking to myself "Shit! I hope it doesn't bite me!" That's about all I remember. I just recall the awkwardness of having to stay clinging to the cliff's edge and trying to dodge the snake at the same time.

Two primary goals I have for myself (which are more like hazy dreams at this point rather than goals) are to 1) take martial arts lessons and 2) take heavy metal guitar lessons. Two beautiful things which I would find a great solace in. I find many excuses why I shouldn't do them now, such as focusing my efforts to finish my degree, but really that wouldn't take too much of my time. I should just do it, shouldn't I?

Days with my father in Eden

Back on my MySpace blog, I wrote at length about my time in the wilderness. I go to a certain place outside of Van Buren called Lee Creek Reservoir every time I get a chance, and most of the time I'm with my father. He knows it best, as it is an area (now turned into a park area by the city of Fort Smith) in which he grew up as a small child. It's so typically Arkansan - creeks and rocky ledges abound, and if you get up early enough you can spot deer usually in the process of sprinting away from you.

I found a mountain biking enthusiast site which talks about this place. It's here:
http://trails.mtbr.com/cat/united-states-trails/trails-arkansas/trail/PRD_164622_4514crx.aspx

One of the posters back in January 2004 had the following to say. I don't know where he got his information, but he is correct about the grave stones - there are some out there that are clearly marked as Confederate soldiers:

"I do not ride a bike on this trail, but enjoy a nice little hike. The trail has many historical features, one being the site of a Civil War battle between Confederate Infantry and Union Horse Soldiers. The Southern Forces were retreating from Pea Ridge,Arkansas trying to get reinforcments to Van Buren, The Battlement walls are still visiable and some of the Grave sites are of Soldier of both sides, Buried where they fell. The trail is nice for a family to go on an outing and easy for the children to keep up. I recommend Spring or fall as the best time. Summer time is Hot and Humid and makes it difficult to enjoy..."
Anyway, I took my camera out there early last Saturday morning. We picked a couple of cups' worth of blackberries. I also got some interesting insects in the camera lens that were lurking about the blackberry patch. I even found a dung beetle scurrying around in a pile of deer shit, though he had dug himself too deeply by the time that I had been able to get my camera out. I didn't think we had those in this part of the world...

My father and I use this place to recharge our batteries. There's a magic about it that speaks to us every time we go out there. My dad said that his mother used to forbid him from going out there (but he went anyway), telling him that there were "demons at Crack-in-the-Rock". Crack-in-the-Rock is the old name for it long before the reservoir was built there, as there is a giant crevice at one part of the trail where you could easily fall in if you were careless.

This past Saturday when these pictures were taken, my father and I saw several deer. They were much too fast and much too surrounded by wilderness for me to have gotten them in the eye of my camera, however, because I still haven't figured out how to do manual focus (you'd have to be able to do that in order to focus in the distance) because the automatic focus keeps catching the trees in the foreground. One of the first deer we saw were a couple of fauns - one still possessing the little white flecks on their bodies, resembling Bambi...

Guided Imagery

A therapist gave this to me today...

Guided Imagery

Now, this is how to reduce stress.

Picture yourself near a stream.

Birds are softly chirping in the crisp cool mountain air.

Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that place called "the world."

The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is clear.

You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're holding under the water.

Look. It's the person who caused you all this stress in the first place.

What a pleasant surprise. You let them up ... just for a quick breath ... then ploop! ... back under they go ...

You allow yourself as many deep breaths as you want.

There now ... feeling better?

The page refers to the following link, but the site has no search feature so I couldn't directly link the exact page: http://www.cleanjokes4u.com/

The Importance of Vitamins

For years, I have suffered from insomnia. I have tried all kinds of remedies from Kava Kava to Trazadone, but lately I came to a realization thanks to a Dr. John Selig. John is the stepfather of one of my best friends, and a month or so ago I had a chat with him during which he asked me to rub my index finger across the top of my thumbnail to detect any ridges that might be there. Mine was full of them. He related that this was a sign that I was vitamin deficient, and I agreed, as my diet is a horrible one. Based on this, I made a resolution to get back into taking vitamins again, but since I have a hard time swallowing the damned things, I haven't been very consistent in the past. (Choking for like 10 minutes followed by yacking them up will do that to you...) Soon after this when we were at the store, Jenn noticed some gummi vitamins that were for adults, so I decided to give 'em a shot. Usually I question the authenticity of any vitamins sold at Wal-Mart, but it seems like the better the vitamin, the bigger the pill. These suckers turned out to be the best vitamins I've had to date! I could feel the energy after the first day or so! What's more, I have had much less trouble sleeping. I used to depend on energy drinks to keep me going through the day and had developed a one-per-weekday habit. Now I'm good to go without that stuff. It's great! I'm thinking that one plus of chewing them is that the vitamins may get more readily absorbed in this manner. So, if you guys are insomniacs or just find yourself dragging through the day, you might want to get on some vitamins that work for you. Like I say, I've fought this stuff for years and nothing has really helped consistently but this.

The end of a quick day, and another piece of the puzzle...

From my perspective, it can truly be said that time flies. My work day went by without a hitch, and as usual I had many conversations with different folks whom I find fascinating.

Since I didn't have anyone to see at the clinic this evening, I went by to see my grandparents again. My grandmother was in a better place today. She didn't really say much but was at least able to recognize who I was, and she would giggle about simple things. My father came with me, and mostly we just talked to my granddad. He told us one detail of the fabric of his life which I was unaware of tonight - it is for these bits of information that I am the most attentive. His father was named Hiram Taylor, and it has long been a part of our family history that Hiram left my great-grandmother with many children and moved out to California on his own. My grandfather never forgave him for this. He told us tonight how one day when he was on an air base during the war, he was told he had a visitor. That visitor turned out to be his father, who at this time was driving a really nice Buick and doing well for himself. Apparently Hiram knew some celebrities out in Hollywood (which my granddad couldn't remember the names of) and wished to take my granddad out to see them, but my granddad refused. He also tried to give him $40 upon leaving. "That was a lot back in those days... but I wouldn't take it..."

Sunday evening

Last night I spent some time with three of my dearest old friends. One of them - Jason - was just back here in his home town shortly before returning to where he actually lives now in Dallas. I brought some musical equipment out to my dad's house (which included 2 guitars, a bass, and a microphone) so that we could be as loud as we wanted to be (dad lives out past the city limits), and basically we got hammered and played music late into the night. It was a welcome reprieve from my recent stressors involving my girlfriend's son Michael and facing the reality of my grandmother's steady decline into the nightmarish haze of dementia. Jason is a graphic artist as well as a musician. In fact, he's the one that introduced me to a lot of alternative punky metal type stuff as I was growing up - stuff like the Dead Kennedys and Danzig. He's really good at playing covers, and we all drew great enjoyment from belting out songs from the Misfits as he played my ESP MH-400NT at an earsplitting volume. "I WANT YOUR SKULL! I NEED YOUR SKULL!"
I can't believe my dad slept through most of that, but he was snoozing toward the end in his chair in the midst of us.

I found it also helpful to immerse myself in everyday duties. I went to the store by myself and just really took my time Saturday. This was right after eating some Chinese food which didn't agree with me, and as a result I had to take the "Wal-Mart poo," as I referred to it when telling Jennifer of my experience. You never know what you're going to find when you go in there, and it is for this reason that the Wal-Mart poo is a very final option when all others have been exhausted. I went to the restrooms at the back of the store thinking that it might be less populated. The first of two stalls was locked but did not have any feet that could be seen which means that some asshole kid must've took the trouble of locking it from the inside and crawling out underneath, sliding through the unspeakable nastiness of the Wal-Mart bathroom floor in order to complete the feat. That left me with the handicap-accessible stall in the very back. Cringing from urgent cramps, I gazed at the head and found that on the back part of the lid there was the unmistakable shit-stain, complete with a happy fly who was exploring it. I seated myself on the front part of the seat, made my deposit, and was soon on my way...A somewhat-related joke I heard last week which has really stuck with me and which I will leave you with:

"Why did Tigger stick his head in the toilet? He was looking for Pooh..."

the cards speak to me

I decided to give myself a Tarot reading last night. It had been a long time since I have touched my cards which lay on a bookshelf next to my bed.

The first card in my Celtic spread was the Ace of Wands, crossed by the Two of Pentacles. Death was at the top of the cross, and the Hanged Man was set in the future place. My foundation was the Emperor, and in my past was the Four of Swords. In the final outcome, I got the Five of Cups. I was thinking to myself, this is heavy with Death and change and reversal and loss... Where is that in my life? Then today I learn after work that a) my grandmother has had another one of her manic dementia spells and b) my fiance's kid got kicked out of day care after only being there a few days this summer. The cards were clearly telling me that for a while now my shit's been really solid and positive but that my fortune was soon going to change.

What is the lesson of loss? It is that there is always something left over...

I have my sunny day, but...

...here I am sitting inside. Indeed, 'tis the end of my 4-day weekend and I can't help but feel a little crestfallen. Actually free time brings with it its own perils, such as pointing out how poorly focused I often am. The bottom line is that I think too much.

Michael (my girlfriend's son), my father, and I did go to take a walk in the woods at a place called Lee Creek Reservoir outside of Van Buren. We've been there many times. My dad actually grew up within a few miles of there, and it's a beautiful trail with a creek and many rocky outcroppings. Unfortunately today's walk was cut short because Michael was feeling sick and asked us to go back almost as soon as we arrived. That kinda sucked.

I probably need to be preparing for the next day's day treatment activities (I work in a day treatment which serves the chronically mentally ill) but I'm feeling wholly unmotivated. The house is quiet. Jenn is reading some kind of vampire novel in the living room. Michael is in his room watching TV. And I am here getting buzzed on what's left of this weekend's alcohol. If you have the time and inclination, I would highly recommend the following beverage - the recipe of which is found here: http://www.webtender.com/db/drink/4718

I feel content, but I do have to pee a lot.

Changing Times

Though I realize I have very very few readers at this time anyway I still wanted to keep posting here but found that I had to struggle with logging in. First they had a login for Blogger and then they wanted you to use Gmail, and since I don't hardly ever use Gmail I had to dig out the old password I had created when I made up the Gmail account just for the Blogger's purpose... Whew!

the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

-o-

Something that I've found to be very effective and meaningful in my spiritual development is a ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP). I first learned it from Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick and have performed it on and off for years now. Lately, I have come back to it, and I can really tell the difference on such things as dream recall, for instance. I see ritual as a moving meditation, and this simple yet effective performance is such a good example of that. The archetypal elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water come together and are purified in you. When I look to the east and visualize air, I use the memory of when I used to walk off of Skyline Drive near my home and sit on a cliff's edge to look off into the distance past the river and miles beyond. When I look to the south and visualize fire, I imagine a desert landscape with the sand beneath me and the hot sun baking into my flesh. When I look to the west and visualize water, I usually imagine a waterfall or a babbling brook from one of my nature hikes in the nearby hills. And finally when I look to the north and visualize earth, I think of ferns and trees growing up between the moss-covered stones as I take in the fresh scent of the black soil. The next step is building the Archangels, and that's always been a bit more difficult for me because, of course, I don't have anything from direct experience to base them on. Raphael is perhaps the easiest, but the rest are more difficult for some reason.

This is a celestial magick - one far removed from that which the average person might think that magick is all about, i.e. conjuring demons or casting a spell to bring yourself some money, etc. This part of the Great Work helps to clean you up and strengthen your aura - it's kind of like taking an Astral Shower, if you will. When I did this in the past for any length of time, people around me reported experiencing "little nasties" or little spirits hanging about. These can lead you to feel like you're being watched or cause you to think you're seeing movement - like a shadow - right on the periphery of your vision. It used to really irritate my fiance at one point, but we don't notice them that much any more. I recall one of my most triumphant moments many years ago when a good friend came to spend the night with me up in Fayetteville at my apartment. He slept down in the living room where I had been doing my ritual work, and the next day while we were having lunch, he mentioned to me that "something" had been bothering him for most of the night - a shadow which kept bouncing up next to him in and out of his vision and causing him to feel weird. This friend may be a bit superstitious but is not one to really be all that open-minded into things spiritual at all. "I did that!" I exclaimed, and even though it wasn't an intentional result, I knew it meant that I was really making some ripples on the Astral Plane.

This ritual is such a great one for setting apart a sacred space, both physically and mentally. I do it in combination with the Middle Pillar, which just energizes some of the central chakras, and a standard sitting meditation. It's helping me to scrape off the dross of my anxious thoughts and put into motion some thought forms which gather the good stuff to them. Slowly I am beginning to separate the story of me from the reality of who I really am...

For those of you who may be interested in this, here's a really great document I found long ago which describes the ritual and the theory behind it in nice simple terms:

The Essential Skills of Magick

If any of you have had experiences with this ritual, please let me know!

The Process of Unlearning

Essentially what we reach for in spiritual practice is a reversal of things that we commonly would strive for on the earthly plane – it is a letting go. Being as a little child in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven involves forgetting your differences and judgments. Arguably we are encased in flesh because we have identified so much with this life. We are all bits of God who have hidden themselves in the world of time and form, reveling in the tension of separateness to be able to feel the thrum of the dualities such as love and hate, power and weakness, pain and pleasure, and so on. After some time living on the Earth plane, we get lost and become so fixated on matter that we lose sense of where we really came from – Nothingness! To be born necessitates having to die someday because that is the way of form – like the alchemists say: solve et coagula. In the world, gathering knowledge is given great respect because it can pave the way to a great career and give you the ability to do things. However, part of the true purpose of the Path is the Forgetting – the Leaving Behind. At the same time, though, it can be said that in approaching the Spirit, you are learning how to forget. It’s kind of like trying to describe to someone what the sound of one hand clapping is…

Presence

I'm continually delighted by the fact that my job as a mental health paraprofessional so often dovetails with my own desire for personal growth. On Saturday I used a Books-A-Million gift card which I procured from my girlfriend's parents at Christmas to buy a couple of therapy books which have already proven to be very useful. One of these - The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook by Davis, Eshelman and McKay (sixth edition) - has a whole chapter on focusing, which in the book's therapeutic context is a kind of present awareness of where one's feelings are along with being able to articulate them. I guess it's pointing toward the classic therapy thing about getting in touch with your feelings and so forth. Anyway, Exercise 1 on page 119 is called "The Shy Animal at the Edge of the Woods". It's so simple yet so profound... Basically, it asks you to imagine that you are taking a walk on a beautiful day and happen to spot a wild animal looking back at you from a woodsy grove. You want to continue to watch the creature so you become as still as possible. The final question is "What are the qualities or attitudes you would embody so the animal won't get scared and run away?" I just love that analogy, because the inner landscape is exactly that delicate and tenuous. So often we lose touch with ourselves and pay no heed to the mind-body connection. This kind of redirection of focus hinted at in the above exercise allows one to get to a place where overwhelming emotions no longer override our judgment.

Of Thought and Judgment

I think about a lot of things all day long. My thoughts are a continuous stream of memories and reflections - an unceasing torrent of imaginative wanderings. I suppose by Decartes' rationale that this is a good thing because such experiences demonstrate that I am alive. However, the weight of these thoughts are as such that it is sometimes difficult to enjoy myself. One very obnoxious comic named Doug Stanhope did a segment called "Carnival Head" on one of his albums (No Refunds) in which he describes the times he's tried to go to sleep without the aid of alcohol or other drugs while lying in a motel room alone:

"I have a brain that just won't shut the fuck up... 1 AM, 2 AM... That's when the carnival inside my head starts... There's always music playing in there that sucks... 'We didn't start the fire!' Hmm... There must be something that rhymes with orange... Then, my ex-wife gets in there: 'You never took me to the Botanical Gardens!'"

I often can't sleep either, and for me such an observation hit the nail on the head with its intimation of such obsessive thoughts. Lately, I've been listening more to such mainstream New Agers like Eckhart Tolle, and even though I don't particularly like the increasing commercialism that seems to be becoming more evident in his organization's thought stream, I really like what he has to say. In his book The Power of Now, he says "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you" (page 13). Like most of the other such observations in his book, that insight has been around for centuries, but he has found a really down-to-earth way to express it which people have really responded to. Thoughts become fueled by our emotional reactions to them and perpetuate themselves thus. It's almost as though they have a life of their own, and that, too, has been said many times before. Tolle goes on to say in one of his talks that "all thought is judgment," and I think that's a profound statement.

In the Tarot, the suit of Swords represents the power of thought. To do its job, a blade separates one thing from another by cutting. The mind by nature is inquisitive, and the whole process of making sense of something is based on the determination of how one thing is not like another. That's the bedrock of science - drawing the line between the rational and the irrational. But spend too much time trying to make things fit and put them into the right boxes and you have become irrational yourself and have lost sight of the elusive truth. The sword cuts both ways.

The realization of an empty space within is essential for spiritual growth. Lao-tse said it best: "We turn clay to make a vessel, but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends." What do you think Jesus meant when he said "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"? A child is pure because he or she does not have a lot of hard-wired preconceived ideas about things just yet. He or she hasn't really learned how to hate - that would involve some serious judgment. In order to hate, you have to have enough of a developed sense of self to say "How could they do this to me!" A child can become utterly fascinated by a bug crawling along some rocks because the mind that's observing the bug is not saying to itself "oh, it's just a bug," classifying it, and stowing it away with all the other boxed up memories in the Memory Closet. The child's mind is grooving to the experience of bugness.