before seeing this movie, the sum of all fears revolved around what it would be like to attempt to convince the movie-going public that ben affleck is a leading man we should care about.

after seeing this movie, the sum of all fears is that you might find yourself someday having flashbacks to his particular brand of unleading man idiocy, or, perhaps, his at best feckless hair.

My mom's ancient cat, Glaeken, passed away this morning at the age of 20 years, three and a half months.

tags: historical events

STREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...ahem....
Thanks, I feel much better.
Job trying to kill me again.

On a good note, Penguins up 3 games to none against Philly in the series. One more win and we go to play for the Cup! I already know everything about Pittsburgh kicks everything about Philly's ass, but I still get such satisfaction when it is proved again and again and again.

mood: stressed

Our Lady of the Earth and Sky invites all to join us for our May 2008 Picnic Event. The event includes a community ritual, lawn games, and a potluck picnic! PLEASE NOTE THE DIFFERENT LOCATION FOR MAY ONLY.

Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008 ~ 3:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Where: Tolt-McDonald Park & Campground in the "Barn Shelter"
31020 Northeast 40th Street, Carnation 98014 (see directions below)

Event Schedule:
3:00 pm Site Opens
3:30 pm Opening Introductions
Ongoing: Lawn Games
5:30 pm Pre-Ritual Discussion with Ritual Potluck to Follow
7:30 pm Clean Up & Closing Goodbyes
8:00 pm Site Closes

Special Notes:
Please carefully read this entire message -- many details are different for this month's event! For the month of May we are meeting at Tolt-McDonald Park and Campground, NOT the Longhouse! We have the Barn Shelter reserved starting at 3:00 pm, and must leave by 8:00 pm. Please help us respect the park and the other people enjoying the space by not arriving at the Barn Shelter before 3:00 pm and by helping us clean and leave the shelter by 8:00 pm. The Barn Shelter is a former dairy barn converted into a picnic site. Take a look at the park websites linked below if you like!

Park Website: http://www.metrokc.gov/parks/parks/toltmacdonald.html
Barn Shelter: http://www.metrokc.gov/parks/parks/toltmacdonaldS.html

Ritual Information (from this month's ritual writer and director - Sabia):
Bring your favorite picnic dish and your feast gear and join us for a Picnic Ritual at Tolt-MacDonald Park! If the weather is sunny (or at least dry), we’ll eat out under the open sky – otherwise, we’ll watch the rain pour down as we dine with our friends, remembering the sacredness of food and taking pleasure in sharing a meal.

What to Bring:
Snacks for yourself, plenty to drink (water etc. - no alcohol allowed on site), a picnic potluck item to share, and your own feastgear (plate, cup, utensils) -- none will be provided. You should bring proper storage for your food items, such as a cooler, to store them in until the potluck. Please bring layered clothing for colder/wetter weather if desired and/or you might want sunscreen if it's sunny. Feel free to bring and play your drums or other instruments. Also, please note that, due to allergy, noise and space concerns, no pets are allowed in the Barn Shelter during the event (except service animals).

Registration:
We have a suggested donation of $5.00 per person for this event (5 years old and younger free); this includes all aspects of the event. It is important for event and ritual planning that *all* people check in. Please do not arrive before 3:00 pm as a courtesy to those who have the space before us. We must also leave by 8:00 pm, so please clean up after the ritual to help make that happen.

A Note About Children:
This site features many natural outside features that pose potential risks for unattended children; therefore, children MUST be under adult supervision (in line-of-sight) at ALL times during this event. There are no organized children's activities. There is a children's play equipment area not far from the Barn Shelter.

A Note About Parking and Carpooling:
There is limited parking at this site - please carpool if at all possible. Once at the site, due to limited space and potential number of participants, we advise that folks leave most personal belongings in their vehicles.

Directions:
From SR 520 east, take the Redmond Way exit and turn right onto SR 202 East (Redmond-Fall City Road). Drive 7.8 miles to Tolt Hill Rd. and turn left. Drive up and over Tolt Hill 3.2 miles to the stop sign at SR 203 (Fall City-Carnation Rd.). Turn left, cross the bridge and drive 1/2 mile to NE 40th St. Turn left and follow the road to the end for the park entrance.

From I-90 east, take the Preston-Fall City exit (#22) and follow Preston-Fall City Road 4.5 miles to the stop sign at SR 203, just after you cross the bridge over the Snoqualmie River. Turn left onto 203 (Fall City-Carnation Rd.), drive 5.7 miles to NE 40th St. Turn left and follow the road to the end for the park entrance.

The Barn Shelter is a large, bright red converted dairy barn and it is located on the east side of the park behind the park office. It has its own parking area right beside it.

Hope to see you there!

Our Lady of the Earth and Sky
PO Box 20032
Seattle, WA 98102
Website: http://www.oloteas.org/
Email list sign up: http://www.oloteas.org/lists.asp
Email: oloteas@oloteas.org

My Place in History

To be in the presence of greatness and history inspires and depresses me. Depresses my hope of greatness when I live such a simple life; but, inspires me to become great and standout in history. I want to be less common and inspire others to live a great life.

Written by Me on May 11, 2008

Play, laugh passer-by, knowing that you too must die. - Nicomedia A.E. 187 Epitaph of Apollonius

As soon as one sees with one's own eyes the whole which one had hitherto only known in fragments and chaotically, a new life begins. - Goethe, Italian Journey November 1, 1786

mood: tired

I could feel weeks ago that depression was starting to set in. The last two days I have cried out of pain and I realized that I need to grieve. I need to move on. I need to grow up and change. Having fun is all well and good, until you realize that your foundation is cracked. I have decided to accept it. I put this message on MySpace (www.myspace.com/bluechaoticrose) as a warning or partial explanation why I will be falling off the face of the planet for a little while:

I am more broken than I thought. I need time to fix me. Please don't bother to call, write, or visit; because, I will not answer. I'm serious. No questions. I'll be out of my hell when the time is right.

I really need time alone. I feel that I am broken and that I am made of scars. Things I thought didn't matter to me and things that I thought I had gotten over...are not resolved. They still affect me. I have been hit down once again and the tears keep running. I know that each day will be a struggle as I face my fears, self-confidence issues, and re-evaluate where my life is going. I just need some time alone. I don't think friends are going to help me through this one. As my boss said once, "Grow up." That's what I am going to do. I hope you all don't miss me too terribly.

mood: depressed

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship? I am.
2) What was your dream growing up? That somehow I'd end up in a rock band.
3) What talent do you wish you had? Is non-paranoia a talent?
4) If I bought you a drink what would it be? I usually default to Captain & Coke
5) Favourite vegetable? Onion
6) What was the last book you read? Synchronicity: Science, Myth and the Trickster
7) What zodiac sign are you? Virgo
8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where. Three piercings in each ear
9) Worst Habit? Talking too much
10) If you saw me walking down the street, would you offer me a ride? If I knew it was actually you, sure
11) What is your favourite sport? To play? I did like to play touch football...don't care to watch sports, though.
12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude? I like to think I have a realistic attitude
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me? Say "Hi, fancy meeting you on this elevator!"
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you? My grandmother
15) Tell me one weird fact about you. I walked on my toes as a child
16) Do you have any pets? Four cats
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly? I'd invite you in and ask what brought you to my part of the world
18) What was your first impression of me? Nice and easygoing
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary? Scary
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be? I'd have better skin
21) Would you be my partner in crime or my conscience? Depends what the "crime" in question was
22) What colour eyes do you have? Greyish blue-green
23) Ever been arrested? Nope.
24) Bottle or can soda? Can
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it? Buy a new harp
27) What's your favourite place to hang at? Bookstores with coffeshops
28) Do you believe in ghosts? Yes
29) Favourite thing to do in your spare time? These days, probably socialize
30) Do you swear a lot? Used to...not quite as much now that there is an impressionable, preverbal person in the house
31) Biggest pet peeve? People who presume I'm their best buddy on contact
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself? Unique
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance? I do, when it's done right
35) Do you believe in God? Not in the sense in which that divinity is generally framed
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you? I can only speak for my half of the equation

tags: memes

Dear Matei,

You are 4 and a half months old and have had an extremely busy couple of weeks growing hair and teeth and regaling all and sundry with your drooling and screaming. As stressful as your teething has been at least it is nice to know that your screaming has a cause and a purpose other than doing what near-drowning and particularly violent strains of influenza couldn't to finally be the thing that kills me.

And today I can see two bottom teeth that have broken through the gums which leads me to believe (and hope! and pray) that the worst of this might be coming to an end, which would be gratifying because frankly I want to start slathering lidocaine on my own gums and then my bleeding eardrums. I would prefer laudanum but apparently they don't make that anymore.

Your new toothiness is exciting (farethee well sweet gummy smile!) as it is the first rite in your independence from me. I am taking this new toothiness as a cue to start introducing solid foods into your diet since you are growing fast and losing weight at a rate your father and I would find enviable on an adult but consider alarming on a child. My milk supplies seem to be dwindling along with my Life Energy and my willingness to allow my nipples to be used as chew toys. (Bosoms must always be treated with respect my son, and it would behoove you well to remember this when you reach adolescence and beyond. Also that there are few problems in life that a nice long sleep won't soften Matei, including toothaches and hunger pangs, I wish you would take my word on this and give it a try).

This month you have been adding all kinds of new tricks to your repertoire which now includes laughing, rolling over in both directions, making excellent attempts to sit up, engaging in all kinds of contortions while on your side, catching to gnaw, gurgling in long sentences and stroking my face. Sadly your skills do not yet include Reading, Talking To the Internet or Lying In Bed While Daydreaming although you are getting better at Watching TV From Baby Seat. I merely suggest these skills as examples of things you might one day enjoy, but frankly I am prepared to accept almost any variant of Amsuing Oneself Quietly Without Causing Obvious Destruction.

Although loving you is easy raising you is hard. And although I am always the best mother I can be, I am not always as good as I want to be. Our relationship is one of deep attachment and frequent friction. On hard days, the days when I run out of patience before you run out of energy or the desire to be carried around, and when you end up wailing and screaming and I end up screaming back and punching pillows which funnily enough makes you howl all the harder and I need to let you lie there and scream for a bit while I leave the room and cool down until I know I've got my own angst and rage under control enough that I am not going to grab you too hard or shake you.

Those are deeply distressing moments for both of us, but in the end for all the clashing of wills, our relationship, yours and mine, is ultimately about forgiveness.We start over. I come back into the room clamer. I pick you up. You cling to me and sob into the side of my neck in a way that breaks the heart. I hold you. I release my anger nd resentment and you your stress and sadness. And so each hard day we make our peace. And start over again.

We may be bruised but we still love and I will always keep trying. I won't give up on you, just as you donćt give up on me. That is my deepest promise, the cornerstone of our sacred covenant.

Love,


Yo Mama

PS I am sorry I haven't replied to comments on the past couple of entries. I read them and I appreciate them but my internet time is slave to Matei's catnaps and generally burns like fossil fuels.

tags: love letters to mah kid

I'm glad I found a plutonian community, I keep reading the libra sun description and for some reason, I don't really fit except for the "justice&peace" values the rest is all wrong. I looked at my chart and realized I had a pluto singleton in its own sign scorpio in my 2nd house squaring my other singleton venus in leo. The two planets are constantly "in friction" and this probably explains why I'm always the last one picked in sports and why I've always had so many problems with "relationships"(of any kind  but especially "romantic">.>). I don't know what the "requirements" are but, this is what I've got so far. (Tell me if I'm wrong ^^)

mood: blank

( Boston Creme Donut. )

-Angela

location: Home - Couch mood: happy music: XBOX 360 Oblivion tags: memes

From the Lilith-Pluto aspects:

With a Lilith-Pluto aspect, a person has the evolutionary intention to connect with Lilith on the deepest levels, and to manifest as his or her most important work in the world, his or her gift of soul to the world, a reclamation of the wild nature that he or she possesses. A Lilith-Pluto aspect speaks to reconnecting the soul to the natural wisdom and primal methods of the natural world. For those with this aspect, the challenge lies in healing the Plutonian wounding in order to make this reconnection, and to allow that healing to be informed by an orientation to the processes of nature foreign to the kinds of collective realities we’ve created over the last few thousand years.

If the Lilith-Pluto person engages in this reconnection, he or she can be a powerful force in his or her community or the world, offering an example of soul empowerment by connecting to the deepest levels of self, and bringing into the world in a passion for redefining our idea of change with reconnection to the natural cycles of life.

Here it is! Thankful Thursday:

+ My household
+ Jim
+ Rufus and Fritz
+ Flea treated dogs
+ Flea treated carpets
+ Vacuumed house - dishes done.
+ My sister's birthday is upcoming; May 11th! We have plans
+ I got her a really fun birthday gift
+ I am learning how to chill out about this stupid knee
+ One day it will heal entirely
+ I will never again take my routines for granted
+ Maintaining my body weight with hard work and self control
+ My arms still kick ass!
+ My abs are going to kick MORE ass in the coming months
+ I am going to Physical Therapy! I think this will make me a better athlete in the grand scheme
+ I get to learn new stuff there
+ Jim is patient, fair, understanding - and has a winning smile.
+ My friends
+ My mother
+ The quilt she gave me that she has handmade. (It's allll mine.)
+ Hot chocolate
+ Healthy food
+ Grandma is helping out with Jill's bday celebration.
+ Having sick leave
+ Mental health days
+ Nobody. Because actually... swimming may be my best ticket to not going insane in the next few weeks.
+ Finding ways to keep my dreams alive
+ New Jewelery
+ Nobody. For not taking me personally.
+ Pretty skirts
+ Payday tomorrow
+ Consumer whoring
+ Saving money
+ 125 push ups done
+ 5 sets of 10 reps of my 20#ers on free weight military press
+ a few curls

-Angela

location: Work - Desk mood: thankful and optimistic tags: thankful thursday

Stephanie Azaria's site offers a new "Living Myth" column from my hyperactively typing fingers, focusing on Ceres.

You can find it at http://thecosmicpath.com. Scroll down to find the link to it.

Ceres got into May's column because of Mother's Day: Ceres as an archetype of the mother can show us much about how we relate to others in any nurturing capacity, no matter the kind of relationship.

Enjoy!

Just a few quick and pointless thoughts…( Read more... )

Granted, neither of the aforesaid musical breakthroughs is complete unto itself, but the fact that both were initiated and successful on some level is a major step for me.

The first breakthrough came as a result of involving myself in a project with other musicians. It's a musical version of "exquisite corpse," where each of us contributed something we originally composed and the whole thing was then put together by one person. I've never composed a piece of music before. I didn't really think I was capable of it...well, not capable of producing something that would sound very good, at any rate. I had made a sort of half-assed attempt at composing something a few years back for a completely different project of an Initiatory nature. I ended up abandoning it for a different medium. I found it again for the exquisite corpse enterprise and transcribed it into the appropriate key signature that we had been given. Then I started messing with it. It started out as a very simplistic and solemn medieval-sounding thing, and over the course of a few months and a couple sessions of messing about for a couple hours each, it morphed into the A-part of a hornpipe/reel that I still need to at least compose one other theme for. I managed to come up with a simple walking bass line for the left hand that I thought would work for my little scrap that was being attached to a greater whole of which I was unaware of the exact contents, and then I recorded it.

The second breakthrough came last night. My harp teacher is in town coaching some of her former students for the Midwest Regional Fleadh next weekend. I took a lesson with her, and we did a little brainstorming session where we worked on the process of how one goes about coming up with a left hand part for Irish traditional music. We had done this once before she actually moved, but this time it seemed to be sinking in a bit better. I didn't really come up with anything in that session on Sunday, but I definitely started to see a way into it. Yesterday I sat down with the piece again and started to play the right hand for the A-part over and over and over again, and I just started to come up with something. Before I knew it, with a bit of tweaking and messing about over the course of about two hours, I had come up with something I found pleasing. Now I just need, like in my own original composition, to come up with a B-part.

I knew when my teacher announced she was leaving that, theoretically, I should be able to advance on my own; after all, I'd had six and a half years of her communicating the blueprints of it all to me in little pieces here and there, and I'd definitely developed some sort of metasense for what I was doing, not only with studying Irish music on the harp, but also just all of my experience with other instruments, with singing, and with just simply listening to music. It was just a matter of how to tap into it and start to manifest all that had accumulated inside.

Through some unintentional programming early on -- and we're talking really early on...like the age of six or seven -- I left myself with the impression that I could not do this type of thing, that all of my musical talent was pretty much passive and not active in the sense of being able to grasp and play already "revealed" things written by other people, but not to interact with music on its more structural, theoretical level. This has been a major psychological block for me that has spanned nearly my whole life, and to have been able to lift it, even for just this tiny little unremarkable-from-the-outside-looking-in instant has been an incredible experience for me. Over the course of the past months I've done a lot of thinking about the roots of the block, and I am probably going to write about them. I don't know if it is anything that anyone else will find interesting since it's such a personal, nitpicky thing for me that other people, particularly other musicians who have never had this problem, might not really get, but I think I need to get it down in writing sometime soon, if only for myself.

mood: awed music: Lenny Kravitz - "Always on the Run" tags: harp, musical breakthroughs

Congratulations to Whitiger and her honey on a beautiful baby girl! May they have the help and the sleep they need to do the best job possible!

Babies are great!

mood: excited

"I never had a voice to protest, so you fed me shit to digest." These song lyrics are from "Bother" by Stonesour. I have felt like too often. This is never going to happen again. I am learning to stand up for myself. I have started by going after what I want without any regrets. I have started by getting angry at the injustice done against me. I don't take revenge, but let the anger mix with my intelligence and build my power, until I realize that if they are unjust, their time will come. Slow revenge, but satisfying to the lazy. Now the song playing is "Let's Start a Riot" by Three Days Grace. Here are the lyrics.

Let's start a riot, a riot.
Let's start a riot.
If you feel so filthy, so dirty, so fucked up.
If you feel so walked on, so painful, so pissed off.
You're the not the only one refusing to go down.
You're not the only one, so get up.

I love angry music. I was called a "bull in a china shop" by my boss today. Haha. She must see my confidence and eagerness. I want to do this job well, improve it, and move on to the next challenge. I want to create long-lasting change even after I leave the company. She's also called me young and driven. They are lucky to have me. :P

mood: confident and restless

5.4.08: Haven

The outside reflects the inside on the surface. But what if you touch them together. What if you put your finger into the mirror and it goes through. And what you thought was what you are, is only a reflection of the things that have happened outside of you. And isn't you. Well, it is reflected on you, the reflecting quality is part of you, but the things depicted in the images that lie on your reflective surface, are no more part of you than trees painted on a painting are real trees inside the fiber of the canvas. The things reflected on your surface are just paint. Just references to things in your surroundings, but they are not the things themselves.

In this way, if someone yells at you - say when you are little - and tells you, "There is something wrong with you. You are bad. You are rotten", those things are not you, even though they are energy in the form or words reflected on to your surface. But they are just reflections, they are no more in you than a real tree is in a painting. You are a canvas. When we are little, as Michele says, are parents are our Gods (and even when we're big). Our Gods paint on our blank canvas for us and just by being around us, before we have (and because we have no) real skill in how to paint on it for ourselves. Our name is painted on us. Labels for our behaviors or reactions to our physical appearance are painted on us. These paintings from our parents are the first paintings we see, and so we practice and follow the examples. And I think this is why long after we are trained and in the practice of firmly holding our own brushes, we sometimes still paint those same images upon ourselves.

And we have this understanding that those images are ourselves, and they're not. They are just what colors and shapes that have been or that we have allowed to be reflected on our surfaces. We are not the reflected images. We are the funny silver lining and glass in a mirror that allow a reflection. But we are not the reflections themselves.

And we are still more.

If we touch the reflection, with our muscles of perception relaxed, our fingers will slide through. The reflection will ripple and deteriorate. Our whole hand will go in if we reach. What's down there?

Muck. Sometimes an endless reaching for no bottom. Stones. Little natural creatures that live in such places - the parts of our bodies, its intelligences, that run themselves, things like that.  Things that fell in and haven't been retrieved for one reason or  another. Stillness. Turbulence too sometimes.

But it is nice, on a still day. When the reflection - when it isn't being ruffled up by our fingers poking through (or some other external thing exerting an effective force) - is a still mirror. Where you can catch the shapes and clearly match their parts one to one, toe to toe, in the external world and the mirror world. In that stillness it is easier to see how such things can be together.

**********



5.3.08: Glowing Coals

What is it about a city at night, that when looked down upon, seems like the remainder of coals left over from the burning of an exhausted day. Or the stars in reverse, as though they've fallen or we've tried to build them in some dirty and machined and clumsy and clearly synthetic way here on Earth?

**************
This is how I am understanding A New Earth, how I am feeling through meditation and after a psychic reading and all other sorts of things that have begun to coalesce in what appears to be just enough quietude to allow the beginnings of coherent meaning.

This morning, while carpooling five children to elementary school, I coasted to the gas pump.

I have NEVER done that before.

My gas light has been on for a couple days. And I don't drive much. And I have been too busy/lazy to bother with it. My car started sputtering at the red light right before. I said to myself,"Oh Shit! We have to stop!" wait...that wasn't to myself. hehe

So I pulled into the gas station parking lot where my car immediately dies. And I coast ever so gracefully to a gas pump.

Where I was promptly raped by paying $52 for 14 gallons of the good stuff.

Yay.

So in my effort to distance myself from distraction, I came up with a post in my head. Der. Failing! Failing!

Anyway, so here it is:

****

New Rules

1. I will not get online until I shower

2. I will not get online until I sit for ten minutes with my Word program open in anticipation of writing. If I don't write anything worth saving or don't write anything but free-write, so be it. But always ten minutes. Always.

3. LJ doesn't count as my writing journal (even my writing journal on lj, not yet at least)

4. I may ... just may need to stop listening to the Withdrawal EP. There are moments of such despair that I find myself hollowed out and crumbling and creating feels like a waste of more time of an already wasted world. The problem is the very next songs are usually so desperate and dangerous that I get loud and angsty and that is good for me and my writing. Anyway, I'm just throwing it out there. May need to change my music.

But lord I love this band. And I realize that I am completely subjective about it. There are just so many parts where I recognize something and can't place it. And normally, I'm like: this sounds too much like [insert band here], i will just listen to that band instead. But Withdrawal doesn't make me do this. It's like homage to so many influences. It's like a mix tape of my youth (I've said this before. Recently?), but instead of each song being by a different band it's like all the bands. Playing at once. How's a little ex-indie girl suppose to deal with THAT?


Anyway, so those are the three rules.

And to throw another out there ...

Eventually:

5. I have to do a chore before getting on the internet, but since my ribs aren't really going for it, we'll wait to see what the doc says first.


These be the new rules. All in favor? All opposed?

The Ayes (eyes / I) have it.