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Oct 10
Ever notice that most music isn’t really happy? It’s like humans are more prone to write music when it’s a cathartic venting. Here’s one of my playlists from grooveshark of some music that takes me back to the mid-70s when I was a kid. Yes, I love the Beach Boys, I admit it! Aug 06
 High Priestess from The Gilded Tarot I am not actually into tarot as a divinatory art. However I have some limited experience with using Tarot as ‘archetypes’ in active meditations. So far it’s been ass-kickingly powerful. So I am feeling more fond of the subject than I used to be. I found this link today that I think those of you who like the subject might like: Another link of interest is: http://www.tarot.com/tarot/decks/index.php I do notice that their scans are so poorly colored it makes the cards I know look completely different. I found this link that has lots of pics of beautiful and unique decks.  The Universe, Thoth Tarot My favorite Tarot is the Thoth deck by Crowley and Harris (see ‘The Universe’ at left).  Archeon Tarot High Priestess I also thought this tarot was interesting, the Archeon Tarot with the second lovely High Priestess at right. I think there’s a lot to be said for tarot that is both ‘meaningful’ and ‘beautiful’. On the subject of remote viewing, I once did a session in a TKR Mission that was on a Tarot card. It was on this tarot by Dali, specifically the MOON card.  Dali Tarot The Moon Now the irony is that as far as describing the surface of the card I didn’t. However, I have a long history of “anomalous experiences” — somewhat in the “interdimensional-alien-anomaly” category — which in my perception do tie into the moon in odd ways. And sometimes very dark ways. If looked at it like an archetype — from genetics, blood and ‘overlords’ and more — the session was what I would have expected from myself. If looked at like a surface task, well, it sucked. So objectively it was a miss but subjectively, weirdly enough, it all kind of made sense to me. Which is more than I can say for some of my sessions on far more ordinary things, come to think of it. Some of the folks in TKR use Tarot for the base of their sessions. Not too many, 1.173% according to the stats. You’ll need to be logged in first before this link will work: http://www.dojopsi.com/tkr/rv/gallery/methodsessions.cfm?p=comp&themethod=Tarot It’s been interesting to see that as I’d never really seen Tarot done in a double-blind remote viewing protocol before. It had always been mixed in with the woo-woo in-person stuff that psychic readings are often done within, and being a bit skeptical I hadn’t taken it very seriously as a result. Aside from which, I guess it IS ‘free response’ but being based on a prop seems less-so than ordinary viewing. In any case, seeing some good sessions done using tarot as a “Witness” (term used in the dowsing sense) is interesting and demonstrates that this approach can work in RV as well. Who knew. PJ Jul 19
I kinda liked this random self-survey some friends are passing around in the LC world so I thought I’d fill it out too. Kissed any one of your Facebook friends? — my BF is on my FB friends Jul 09
LD was playing in this little ‘5 second video’ contest they run on Vimeo. The theme last night was ‘old video games’. The 9 pages of entries I saw so far were mostly just recreated screens of games for a few seconds. LD’s was actually partly that, part ‘concept’ and ‘pun’ — hilarious! Jun 17
I have a new blog with my best buddy where I’m talking about what I’m learning. Getting real into the “brain wave technology” stuff lately. I was into this like 15 years ago but there was almost no research and we didn’t have the internet then. Now there is way better light/sound technology, 15 years of research, stuff on the web, people sharing stuff — very cool! http://brain-stim.blogspot.com/ PJ Neuro-tech, Brain-wave Entrainment, and so on Jun 09
If there is any serious cosmic joke being played on me and my obsession with remote viewing, it’s that I may be the worst artist on the face of the earth. That’s right, the one skill most useful to RV, I’m not just bad at, I’m like a four year old. Seriously. There are quadriplegics who draw with their teeth who do better than I can draw with my hands. My 12 year old used to laugh at my drawing. Now she’s nice, because feels so sorry for me. It’s just that bad. I bought her a ‘how to draw’ kit a couple years ago. From this I did learn, sort of, how to draw a cube, a cone, and a sphere, the shading/shadowing to make something look like that. Sort of. Almost. That’s about all I learned unfortunately. I can’t tell you the tragedy of this. As a child I was crazy about art. I had a genuine “art trauma” when I was 5 with my parents — never mind the gory details — and abruptly quit drawing altogether. When I was in high school, I could visualize so well, that I could just look at a person, look at a blank piece of paper, and visualize them ’sketched’ on it, every line of detail. But it was like there was some block between my hand and my brain. Bummer! Today I splurged and spent some money I’ve barely got on art. The kid had some art books she wanted, as did I. And we need something other than extremely hard mechanical pencils that walmart sells. Shading is a nightmare with these things. I see no reason to torture myself… as if the situation isn’t bad enough already. So we got some books: Keys To Drawing (Bert Dodson) The textures book is for me. The cars book is for her. I didn’t get an animal sketching book that she wanted, as I didn’t find one with good enough reviews. I got some of them used that were a lot cheaper. I also have ‘drawing on the right side of the brain’ – the new one I think – on the shelf somewhere, I will dig out again. Then I went to an art supply shop online — since if Amazon is going to let vendors charge $6 s/h on a 99 cent product, I may as well go to an art supply with a vastly larger selection and pay shipping there all at once — and I got each of us a 12 art-pencil tin, kneadable eraser, blending stump and tortillion, sandpaper block and tri-eraser/refills. The other day we each got a little “tote”-thing with like 25 pockets and a place for sketch pads in the middle and whatever else one can imagine. It’s even got about 10 pencil/pen/etc. elastic bands across the inside of one of the outside side-pockets for ease. So I think we’re set. This cost a lot more than the single mom budget actually is comfortable with, but damn if I am going to be incompetent at this for the rest of my life. I can’t tell you how it screws up my viewing that either I can’t begin to sketch what I perceive, or in the process of trying, I usually completely screw it up, and not only end up with something bearing almost zero resemblance to what I perceived, but literally give myself “sketch-AOL” that messes me up, to boot! (For example, once when I am sure I was attempting to sketch the elevated curved inner wall of a pool table corner pocket, and the path coming to it, it ended up looking like an arch something was moving through. Gah!) I know I should have been working on this for the last 13 years. There is no excuse! I must be in denial or something that it’s taken this long. But better late than never. I figure if I start now, in five years, I’ll — ok, I will probably still suck, but I’m sure I will be light years better than I am NOW, and that’s something! Me and the kid have been sitting down each evening and working on art. She sketches all the time, mostly fashion design and anime but she wants to learn to sketch cars, weaponry, and other things. (Funny, I couldn’t find a single book like “How to draw big mean guns.” haha! I did find one for anime tanks-etc. but couldn’t afford it. No problem, we’ll be busy for two years with the books we’ve already got I imagine. Like either of us want to draw a tank anyway.) I also did not find any book like “How to sketch half-naked chicks in faery-clothes, royalty-wear and combat bikinis” which constitutes much of the “fantasy art” that I like and that constitutes the WoW (World of Warcraft) universe that she is into. One assumes that we’ll just have to work this out on our own. One exercise I tried for awhile some years ago was that when I finished an RV target and got feedback, I would then tell myself, “This is basically what would have been great to get as sketch info.” And then I would try to sketch the dominant, “most important” features or whatever, in the target. Except I couldn’t sketch, so I suspect this was not real helpful. As a means of gaining a little rapport with the target AFTER session, and “spending time with your feedback”, it’s a good practice though. Palyne Apr 30
I love skeptics. I know some who are scientists who study psi, and some who are laymen who sometimes observe or engage in discussion about remote viewing. It is always refreshing for a truly open-yet-critical mind to engage in anything. And as far as remote viewing goes, it’s a topic I’m truly interested in, so when people ask questions, even highly critical questions, it’s an opportunity for me to walk through something in my own head as well, to test my own sense of comfort with what I may know or think I know and what is still unknown to me (or anybody). Skeptics in many cases may not ‘believe in’ psi but they don’t disbelieve, either; they find all of it “food for thought.” Which is the way it should be until one has had sufficient close-up science-based (or personal experience) exposure to decide one way or the other. And then there are scoffers. This is a pathology; a psychological disorder. Having watched it for many years even when I was more a part of that than anything ‘fringe’, I suspect it’s mostly a profound personal insecurity about intelligence. It breeds this proactive “need” to go out and “make other people be wrong-er and stupid-er” with the drive of bad religion and the behavior of klan lynchings. Watching it on the internet is like watching a dsyfunctional angry 13 year old wearing an adult’s body and vocabulary. It is both tragically sad, absurdly ridiculous, and absolutely enraging for someone to be so “deliberately obtuse”–it’s a very profound form of dishonesty that manages to be proactively-assaultive as well as just passively-abusive. And usually, as par for the course, such people are profoundly insulting, patronizing, invalidating, and otherwise “trolls” as far as the internet goes. If you respond to their insults you are playing their game and you just lost the debate because you’re no longer debating about anything worthwhile anyway. If you manage to ignore that behavior and act like a saint, it just continues or (usually) gets worse, so it’s not something ignoring helps. If you attempt to ignore that and respond calmly and thoughtfully to any comment they make which that is possible to address, you are merely ‘making excuses’ or some other fundamentally-invalidating address of your efforts. Actual conversation is not allowed; this isn’t actually a mutual conversation, it is merely ‘attack vs. defense’. They attack, and you can defend “on their terms, in their territory, by their [creative] standards.” Which you will never be ok by, so why bother; anything you say is going to be used for insult not education. Discussion was not what they want on discussion forums, silly! In short, there is no possible approach you can take that is functional because they are inherently dysfunctional. It is a little like attempting to operate with a psychopath: it doesn’t matter how you behave, they are profoundly screwed up, and they are going to stay that way, and they are going to act it out on you if you are in their presence, because their personal misery is projected on the whole world they touch. In the case of scoffers, that’s mostly in the model of ’sneer’. There is no possible thing you can do even by their alleged standards (which will creatively flex to make any possible response not-good-enough) which would change this; decades of science will not, mind-blowing results finding people missing for decades will not; and in the rare case where something is too mind boggling to even debate it is, “just lucky” or “merely coincidence” or “yeah but some other trial failed” or “we don’t care what THEY do on THIS occasion, let’s look over at someone else on some other occasion!” What this means is that any efforts in this regard are a masochistic waste of time. It doesn’t help remote viewing, it doesn’t help anybody involved, it just gives someone the opportunity for mental-masturbation-via-internet at someone else’s expense. Save your breath. Learn vicariously. Inspired by this thread. (esp page 4 onward). Why do I bother. PJ Apr 24
I was looking for something else. A fantasy artist I cannot find the name for — Euro famous for sentient cat, little girl ballerina, high wire, harlequin, white marble castle-like environ in the sky. I keep thinking ‘Michael’ is part of his name, but a ton of searching didn’t find him for me. I stumbled on photos of celebrities/models and photoshop “after” pics that make it to print. It’s fascinating to see how the ‘idealization’ of faces and bodies takes place. Some of these are lovely people, but they are vastly thinner, tighter, smoother (whiter?) afterward. (This can even be done in reverse, like for rag-mags. They take an ordinary picture, make it into something hideous, and then claim it’s a ‘no-makeup’ shot of someone famous.) That reminds me, I saw a magazine pic of Reba McIntyre (born 1955) the other day. The woman looked 23. It was SO ’shopped I thought maybe stars can just skip the plastic surgery now. Nothing resembling them is going to be in media anyway. It’s not just an issue for what the distorted-reality does to men. (”Real women are so homely, and if they don’t look 10 years old from the waist down they’re too fat.” Like it isn’t exacerbating existing problems when children’s-bodies are sex symbols.) It’s what it does to girls when nothing around reflects something real. They fail by every cultural standard even when they’re beautiful. It used to just be unfair that young non-white girls had no role models, but now even the white girls don’t have anybody “realistically like them”. (It hasn’t improved for other races. E.g., other than Oprah (who owns the town) it’s not coincidence the famous lovely black women look like white chicks with tans. Come on, how fair is that?) It’s my theory that as a culture we have so “fan”-ta-”sized” our celebrities that everything’s moving toward just being “surrealistic fantasy art”. (Even the kids’ dolls are now mutant alien-hybrids. Even Barbie’s impossible proportions are looking normal by comparison!)
Speaking of scifi, the lovely Keira Knightly (of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’) is in the “Celebrity Cyborgs” category for example. Gee that’s nearly enough to give a different meaning to “man’s lust for machines”… On my very old website (half-present online) I have some awesome art from Matt Hughes (most of his stuff I’m not into but these are cool), such as “Kindred“, “Ars Moriendi” (the Art of Dying), and “Arachne“. I also like “surreal” art of all kinds — from photography to CGI — from tech to fantasy. Worth1000.com is huge, people come up with stuff I never even THOUGHT of, some fantastic art, really creative. Speaking of the above and lust for machines, that reminds me I read that ‘RealDoll‘ (the $10,000 blow-up doll for uber-nerds) added a line of comic-book fantasy variants, oversized eyes {and even lower-level oversized private parts, weird}, less like ‘real women’. I can’t decide if this is even kinkier or actually less disturbing. I suppose it’s fantasy so why not. It just strikes me as so weird-yet-funny. I guess I don’t mind that stuff too much, though many women I know are freaky about the naked-chick-flick tendency of men. (I only date Real Men, meaning they think Naked Chicks are cool in any format, and they’ll have two in extra-large, yes ma’am.) I mean it’s not like many women’s romance books aren’t a version of the same thing, replete with two-dimensional meat-babes. For all the screeching about how bad men’s love of trashy art is, I never hear anybody insisting we should yank all those shockingly graphic bodice-ripping novels off the shelves. Which is good, since once in awhile I love those! “Unrealistic but predictable” — just the opposite of life, just what I need some days.
(As for what it all means, who knows. My so-called interior or spiritual life is too bizarre to fit in any category really. But the labels don’t matter. It’s just another day.)
One day years later I was online and I saw this illustration at right. (”Modern Shallott” I don’t know the artist) Not only did it bring to mind that dream in a big way, but the surrealism of it reminds me of the inner world stuff. I find it so fascinating how human consciousness shares ‘patterns’. Remote Viewing reminds me of that, because it seems like there are a limited number of “forms and dynamics” in our world, it’s just that they have ‘infinite variation’, like there are only so many formulas but each one is infinite as a growing fractal. Maybe “archetypes” are basically all just variants of the “primal formulas” in the geometry of energy comprising us.
On the subject of art, below is the picture I have on my work computer as a wallpaper. One day instead of sharing my application [browser/excel] in our “Webex” [computer-sharing for online/remote meetings] (this was a BIG meeting), I hit the wrong drop-down button and shared my whole desktop. The gasps and then some comment and hilarity from the big office-meetings in Boston and San Francisco who were on the Webex — for them the screen is huge on the wall of a meeting room of course! — made me realize something must be wrong. Whoops. Thank God there’s no ACTUAL nudity or I’d have been in big trouble!
Well speaking of reality, I suppose I should be dealing with it rather than blogging. My Aerogarden seedlings went completely nuts and I’ve had to raise the hood-light an inche every day for days now; the tomatoes are so taking over that it’s hurting everything else and I need to get them transplanted. I would also like to barbecue though I don’t know if I will today (kebobs, yay!). Must mow the lawn too. Sigh. So little time off, so many things to do! PJ Apr 18
Man, the Aerogarden ’seedlings’ are just rocking! I’m really impressed. They’ve seen the growth in 3 weeks that would normally take at least 5, and without any of the leggy spindly stuff, the bugs and mold and more that are common hazards of seed starting. In case you don’t know, the Aerogarden took “hydroponics”, which was an awesome but major expensive pain in the neck, and packaged it in a simple little “E-Z” consumer product that costs between $100 (if you buy reconditioned on their website) to $200 (if you buy the one that the light lifts 2′ high on for full size [if small breed] plants).
I haven’t done much with herbs, aside from Basil because I am a pesto-freak (yes! I can eat pesto on anything! burgers, steak, salads, pizza and pasta (NOT lowcarb, AND has grains–bad PJ!), and it’s awesome on small pieces of stir fried chicken). But ok, aside from a few culinary herbs I’ve done none. That reminds me, the other day I happened to notice that all kinds of hallucinogenic plants are available via Richter’s print catalog for those into that (but don’t kill yourself please, it’s not hard to do).
Would it be child abuse if I just locked her in the house until she was 25? For her own good, right? She was in the “Miss Artiste Intellectual” groove in this one, as you see. She wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. Well, it could be worse. I wanted to be a rock & roller. :-)
The local power station blew out the other night and it was SO pitch black. We talked till like 2am about ghosts and dreams and reality and the future. She’s so cool. Total teen-angst drama queen — you know, hormonally, it’s just 5 more years of chronic, serious PMS — but smart and funny as heck.
Today me and the kid went back to lowcarb eating which we had abandoned for awhile. We feel so much better on that eating plan but the insanely time consuming nature of having to plan, shop, prep, cook, clean, for every freakin meal sometimes overwhelms me, and the minute I eat something crappy, usually with grains, I’m lost for awhile. I’ve been thinking about the “interpretive” nature of the viewer’s perspective on targets after feedback. I truly believe that the vast majority of ‘energy’ (information) we encounter when viewing is not even complete enough to be brought all the way up to the verbal or sketch level. And that doesn’t start on what I call ‘passive data’ that is ‘present’ but doesn’t get written down usually. I feel that the mind can put a lot of this together once it has closure and a kind of “context”. Following on all that I’ve been seriously thinking about writing up “interpretive” notes — usually something small — on a variety of targets I’ve had over time (such as Easter Island statues, as pictured at left). I can’t really say I got the data that I now ‘interpret’ to have gotten. But I find it very intriguing how my mind put it together once I had some “integration”, particularly on anomalous targets. This might just be fantasy or it might be allowing the mind to to have anchor and context and do what it does well, ’synthesis’. Still in the thinking mode. Stuff with no or limited feedback is kind of a touchy subject, thanks to damage done the field by people who refused any clue about remote viewing protocol (or related ethics) in earlier years. So I’m still ambivalent about the idea, or about making it public. I sometimes talk about my sessions on my Red Cairo blog. Maybe that should be enough.
Well, I’m off for the evening. Gotta view. Although I’ve been doing an experimental series on ‘Chakra RV’ (a cueing protocol), since I’m just restarting viewing after a long cycle out, it’s suffering enough from that, I think I’ll skip it for now and just drop to multiple short exercises for a bit, until I’m feeling halfway fluent again. At right is a pic of the chakras (one visualization of them). The process is simply cueing yourself to energize then focus ‘with’ a given chakra and cue yourself for the data. I wanted to experiment for a few reasons. I’ll write it up as a formal experiment for a tiny private group some friends and I are founding, if I ever get off my ass and finish a bunch of software in Taskerbot that needs to support it. PJ Apr 13
I’m going to try to start blogging on my own blog. I know that sounds funny but I have blogs all over the place for various focus topics. Importing it all to this blog which is what I want to do, has turned out to be not remotely so easy after all, which means even if I’m blogging elsewhere, nothing is happening here.
Friday I got a book, “The End of Materialism,” in the mail from Charley (Dr. Charles Tart). There was something kinda humorous about a book with that title arriving as a thick hardback with a glossy cover. I haven’t had a chance to begin reading it yet. But he’s a really good writer, I bet it will be good. His book ‘Waking Up’ was really cool — well many of his have been, but I recall really liking that one. He put a great handwritten note in the front. What a nice guy. Meanwhile, my kid is really getting into Art.
She is a total japanophile, go figure why, she got this at like age 5 and has never grown out of it as I expected she would. At the current moment she is teaching herself to draw Anime (a stylized form of japanese comics and animation), both in sketch, and then coloring it in via photoshop.My goal for April is to teach her how to build pages and insert pictures for her own website. For 12 years old I think she is amazingly good at this. Check this out, this is her original sketch at left, and the colored-in one at right.
“This is one is covered in blood because the character herself was through half the show,” she explains. Okaaaay. Once in awhile she goes through art phases that are either sexy or bloody, it cracks me up. Maybe it’s fortunate that the pink theme makes it look more like a painting mess than the real thing… But my point is that I think she’s doing amazingly well. I couldn’t do that kind of art at age 43 never mind age 12! She is working on learning 3D Animation software. Holy cats. *** I haven’t been meditating lately. I don’t know WTF is wrong with me except that obviously something is. And I MISS IT is the stupid thing, I mean I really “miss myself” and miss my guides and miss IG and miss that feeling, in general, that I am growing and learning and actually doing something on the inside of my life, and not just all the boring stuff that tends to fall on the outside.
Since I’m constantly struggling with the left-brain side of me concerning the guides thing, and am such a huge Archangel Michael fan, I bet these will be really good for me to plow through. (Hey, it turns out that this guy has a book dedicated to each of the major Archangels. Who knew.) The great mystery though is that I have no idea who sent them! There was nothing, not even a receipt, in the box with them. I thought maybe they were from my boyfriend but he said nope, not from him. So… either someone is going to be waiting for me to say something and thinking I’m ungrateful, or they were deliberately being my Secret Admirer! (Or maybe they think my obvious problems with these meditations indicate I really, really need help, haha.) They look really cool. Thank you!!
I’m way behind on garden and landscaping stuff. I quit eating enough protein and started eating more carbs (including grains), which instantly sends me back into chronic exhaustion land. In my perfect world, tomorrow night after work I go shopping for ‘real food’ and get my act together. I always wonder why I do this to myself — some self destructive tendency maybe! *** I’ve just recently started a new viewing cycle. Like four months late! Geez. I haven’t viewed much in eons and every time I re-start, it is LITERALLY like starting from scratch, having to relearn stuff, having to re-adapt to what seems a slightly different set of internal circumstance, and having to gradually re-acquire the ability to consciously get certain kinds of information. For example at first I won’t get people at all, and then I’ll objectify them, and then I’ll get pieces, and then finally I’ll start just getting them like any other kind of data. It’s always very frustrating when I re-begin — it makes me a very experienced and knowledgeable “newb” which is a weird combination! –it just takes sticking with it daily for about a month before finally it is slightly less mortifying an end-result.
In July, TKR is having a big party. Tons of awesome people are giving us interviews and live chats and we’re going to have a ‘viewing expo’ where third parties choose and hold targets and everyone with the courage can submit a ‘presentation session’ and when it’s all over, everybody who entered can vote, and the winner gets some kind of prize. Probably nothing too astounding of course!–but something designed to be “fun”, it’s more a social-fun, serious-show-your-stuff and public-recognition thing than a contest based on the award. Anyway I want to be able to view! So I have to get off my butt and view so by the time July comes around I’ll be at least a little bit fluent again! *** Work is going fine. I am shifting out of the job I’ve had for a few years. With the company I’m at presently, initially I was part of the Senior Project Management team, we did product development and stuff like that. A big reshuffling ended up transferring me sideways to ‘Production’ as an ordinary PM which was actually a big step down for me in terms of duties (and some salary), but I’d been only a contractor in the first role, so the HR bureaucracy didn’t really care. Anyway I had to become an employee and for the last few years I’ve worked as a PM for the hardside (physics and maths and astronomy, biology and chemistry and earth sciences, etc.) various online products that accompany university-level textbooks. The last six months I took someone else’s job too, picking up a dozen softside disciplines, and have been completely overwhelmed with work. That has finally gone down and I am spending this week catching up with everything, after which I should be transferring into doing “something else”, whatever that is, as a new team has taken over the Arts & Science group and my team has moved to Business & Economics. I like my boss and my teammates though. That helps a lot.
*** So last Friday was an interesting day. I normally don’t worry about storms here. I mean if I got all concerned about “oh there might be a tornado” with every storm, I’d just have to live underground through all of spring and summer. But I looked out the window in the late afternoon and my ‘gut sense’ told me that this was “just NOT GOOD”. I think it’s the vague sense of “sickly green” tone that is added to the shades of the dark grey sky that kicks off that feeling. Anyway, so my friend came by my house for something else and tells me, “Look, we heard there’s already tornados in the next town over, you guys need to let us take you somewhere.” (Since presently, temporarily, I don’t have a car.) So, we jumped into shoes and coats and piled into their car, 3 adults and 3 kids. Her husband K was driving. He’s one of those ’speed racer’ guys even at the best of times. We are barely out of the driveway when the tornado siren goes off. We are allegedly racing down the road when we see the first tornado behind us. And then another. Basically coming our way and fast. We’re going down this large, empty, nearly non-house’d street, and he’s doing like a safe 30mph. Mr. Speed Racer in parking lots and neighborhood zones is about to get himself and his family and mine killed because suddenly, at the moment of highest emergency, he decides to do the speed limit!! I say, “You can go FASTER, you know!!” and he says, “I don’t want to panic.” And I realize that he is actually trying so hard NOT to panic that he is “overcompensating”, clamping down on himself. Unfortunately, this moment of psyche insight is tempered by the fact that we could die for this, so I half-bellow, “TWO TORNADOS ARE CHASING US! I THINK THIS WOULD BE A REALLY *GOOD* TIME TO PANIC!!” and he finally speeds up. Men! We pile out of the car the instant it stops — hail starts falling hard that instant — and we run for our lives across the street and into the backyard of my parents house where their storm shelter is. They had it open and were standing there watching the oncoming tornados in awe, as we ran down the stairs into it as fast as we could. The last one that came that near us, annihilated the tiny town (Picher OK) just offside of us. The destruction these things can do is honestly something you’d have to see to believe. Like some of the wonders of the world, there is no photo that can begin to capture the aesthetic impact of the destruction. Here’s some pics from a local of Picher, May 08. (One small version at left.) Well that was a little excitement in our afternoon I guess! *** Well that covers the last what, 3 days of my life, which I suppose have been slightly more interesting than the average three days of my life. I have to go view now. Palyne Sep 12
A quote from this blog on Sep 4 (meditation was the 3rd evening):
At that time, my car had a problem with the heat/AC. The heating fan wasn’t turning on like it should. I wanted to get it fixed but didn’t have the money. Hoped I could spare it from my paycheck in a week (that’s today). Several days ago I got notice that the changed fiscal year of my company meant we were going to get our bonuses on the 12th. Yay! Mine was more than I had expected. Not that I don’t have 10x the “needs” of it, of course! A few days ago my car ran out of water. Shortly after, it ran out of water and the temp light came on. I had already arranged to get the heater fan worked on today. This morning trying to get it there, the temp light came on again. The head gasket is blown. It’s a side-mounted aluminum engine (cad 1988, my parents gave it to me 4 years ago when Jiffy Lube killed my truck). The mechanic said, “You can’t replace ‘em in these, I’ve tried, they don’t even stay, it’s a waste. It ain’t even worth the money to fix it. I recommend you get rid of it and work out something else.” So it took… 9 days, before my car “MOVED OUT OF MY LIFE” — literally on THE VERY DAY when I got a larger block of money than I’ve had in a couple years. Read the rest of this entry » Sep 06
I can’t believe it. So yesterday I blogged more than ever and had 2-3 new posts here and had imported several posts from other blogs and made some changes to the theme and new links and so on. Around 6pm it was fine. At 7pm the server went down. By 8pm the content was nearly 24 hours old. The server had a fatal error on the disks and had to replace them, so their last backup was the evening before. Gah! The initial WordPress import, will get comments. But if you then want to get only SOME posts or NEW comments, it still wants to import the ENTIRE blog again. Worse, it makes every tag into a category. The cleanup required is ridiculous. So for the moment this collection blog is… imperfect. But I’m sure it’ll work out. My meditating last night and this morning really sucked. I think I’m going to go eat. Palyne Sep 04
I’ve discovered that when I post something, I tend to edit it a lot right after. But the RSS feed takes the first version. So a lot of what people are seeing via RSS is a rather old version of a post. Bummer. Guess I should make sure it’s more like I want it first. Somehow though, seeing a post in the context of the real page makes a difference. I’ve also discovered that although WordPress says it will not import posts it already grabbed from another blog… it lies. It does. And then you have to manually get rid of every ‘tag’ that it changed into a category. And then you have to go add tags for every new post. And then you have to manually delete all the old posts. Thank goodness the first blog I tried this on was my Psiche, instead of Red Cairo which has vastly more posts! So from now on, I’m just going to have to copy a post I’ve made wherever, and add it to this blog (rather than weekly/monthly ‘importing’ from all the other blogs). I guess technically, I don’t post that often that this should be a problem. Usually I am posting mostly on one blog at a time, as there’s only so much time in life for focus, and my blogging follows my focus. Sep 03
It was 1993 when my father brought me a “computer”. I already did small PC building, point of sale systems install, and training for many types of software, but I’d never had a computer at home before. It had a tiny amber monochrome monitor… I loved it. USENET was the most chaotic thing I’d ever seen–it was hard to say whether the trauma of a truly unmoderated world was worth alt.sex.stories, but I explored the theory–but I ended up spending $8/hr on CompuServe for a long time in the end. Were it not for running into the writings of Jane Roberts, I’d regret that probably, but Seth books changed my life, so I figure it was a worthy investment. Palyne was far too unique a name. I didn’t want company investors discovering me on the internet. Nor did I like how men instantly hit on me or harrassed me with a female name. So I borrowed the “J” from my mother’s middle name, Joyce, since I didn’t have a middle name, and I became “PJ”. Given my style of writing, people assumed I was a man anyway. In August 1996 when I announced that I’d had a baby, a ton of my friends freaked out. “I always thought you were a man!” Men apologized for surely saying something to me they wouldn’t have said to a woman. Women told me they were giving up their crush on me now. Hilarious! As it turns out, I later married someone whose last name started with a J which I took as a middle name, so I became ‘PJ’ literally, in the end. But by that time, I’d already traveled around the country meeting online friends, the internet was my second home, and “PJ” had become as ‘real’ a name for me as anything else. Being able to operate in many diverse environments that were carefully “separate”, and to have all that separated from my “personal and business” identity — I was “Palyne” (pronounced like ‘Palin’) offline, and “PJ” online — has always been important to me. I have an ‘esoteric’ blog (Red Cairo), a ‘meditations’ blog (my Psiche), and a former (now archived) Remote Viewing blog (’firedocs’). Those are connected to each other. But I did not ever connect them to things I had in the LowCarb world, where I’ve also been very active at times. Because that is filled with ‘ordinary people’ and a lot of people who have belief systems that would have a real problem (from science to religion) with my “occult” involvement, which to them is RV. I have a ‘lowcarb’ and weight-related blog (The Divine Low Carb), and an ‘exercise’ blog (Tomboy Tough). Those are connected to each other. But I did not ever connect them to things I had in the Remote Viewing world, where I’ve been very active at times. Because that is filled with a lot of ’social politics’ and adversaries, and as our culture has made obesity into the last allowed open-prejudice, I really didn’t want to deal with that on top of everything else. Then I got a few other blogs, one for ‘gardening’ (The 8-Cat Garden) and one for ‘homeschooling’ (PJ’s Homeschool) and one for ‘webtech’ (ColdFusion Hell), and there was a dilemma, since I was ok with those being open to everything else, but I didn’t want people from Side A (Remote Viewing) running into Side B (LowCarb). It took about 10 minutes before the first person did. I felt like my privacy had just been wiped out. I tried not to mind, but I did. I’ve been meditating a lot lately. And just feeling a little bit more right with the world. More relaxed about everything including myself. September 1 was my mother’s birthday. She died when I was a child, and for some reason I’ve always used that day for a lot of reflection about my life. About what she might have wanted for me, what she might say about my current issues, that kind of thing. On that day I thought of posting something on one of my blogs, and it suddenly occurred to me: why am I hiding myself away? Why am I broken into pieces, separated and hidden here and there? I imagined what mom might say. It occurred to me that if she were going to wish something for me, it would probably be that I was courageous, that I was proud of whoever and whatever I was, that I was happy. So why the pieces? Because I think people won’t accept me as ‘cool’ if they know I’m overweight. Because I think people won’t accept me as ‘nice’ if they know I have enough occult background to make their religious nature run screaming into the night. And I realized, maybe thanks to all my meditation recently, that this wasn’t really it. This is what I’ve told myself. People won’t accept me see, so I limit their exposure to me to the pieces they’re ok with. But the reality is, that I’ve kept myself “in pieces” because I didn’t accept myself. If I had, I wouldn’t have cared what other people thought. I would have assumed that they could either take me as I was or move on. All the careful altruism about other peoples’ feelings and comfort zone were really just a level of denial about what really mattered, the ONLY thing that matters: how I felt about myself. It is my left-brain science-nut persona who doesn’t accept the part of me that has ‘rapport’ with Ganymede and tornados or ‘merges identities’ with people in RV targets. It is my social-snob persona who doesn’t accept the part of me that is overweight. It is my baptist background that doesn’t accept the part of me that considers the ‘occult’ a primary interest. Me. Not anybody else. I’m not sure why, unless I can blame it on the meditations, but I suddenly felt done with that. Just totally done. I am who I am. I am proud of who I am. So I’m fat, who gives a damn? So I’m into the occult of “psychic” work, who gives a damn? So I’m a weirdo, who gives a damn? My friends don’t care, and many relate to me about one or more of those. My enemies don’t matter. The world at large is filled with people who either are cool with it or who aren’t, and do I really care? Apparently not anymore. I suddenly felt as if all the separate blogs with no linking common ground was an outer symptom of an inner division I no longer had. I spent the evening of 9/1 making myself a blog at my home domain (palyne.com). I got a canned theme which I’ll change out eventually but I liked it for now. I imported all the posts of all my blogs, which then took me three evenings to go through and put tags on and categorize to have ready. I decided that I will import the new posts from all my blogs into this one and tag them. I’ll still have topic-blogs, so folks into lowcarb or meditation don’t have to deal with the other stuff, but I will not be ’separated from myself’ anymore. And I’ll use this one for stuff that is not specific to the genre of one of the others. So all of me is in one place. So I am not in pieces anymore. I am who I am. PJ Aug 23
OK maybe this is a little materialist, but if you knew what grunge I’ve been living in and for how long you’d see why I’m fairly excited about my decision to find a way to get myself a decent bedroom for my birthday in a few weeks. I’m getting this quilt. I love the colors, and the velvet/satin mix. The patterns could be better or more random personally, but I really like it for the colors and texture. It’s at seventhavenue.com for $70 (pillow shams are like $17ea or something). My bedroom is a small dark grungy pit and I think it’s long past time I feng shui’d it into something more like I want to live in. Aug 15
A reader-friend pointed out that I hadn’t posted on Red Cairo for so long people were going to think I’d keeled over. I have six blogs for different topics and I can’t keep up with one let alone six, so… that’s the way it goes. But I feel sadly remiss at not posting because this one, Red Cairo, is my most personal blog, where I talk about my dreams and weird experiences and psychic sessions and so on. You know, all the stuff that would make readers elsewhere run screaming into the night. I’ve often felt I survived well in the world mostly because my weirdness was well hidden. I “pass”, as people with issues such as deafness and autism call it; when you function well enough “like other people” that conveniently, they mistakenly assume you are one of them. Read the rest of this entry » May 31
I’m a bred consumer. I have this on good authority, from my ex-husband who grew up in Czech under the communists. I admit it. I was raised with wanting-stuff indoctrinated into my tiny little brain. I know this must be so, because when my life goes completely wrong, my plans to dig myself out of that hole invariably include some shiny toy or appliance that will help me change my life. I could use dumbells and cinderblocks, but I’d rather dream of Soloflex. You get the idea. I see those commercials with pumping big-drama music as sweat and shadows play on someone’s perfect and tanned muscles and little stars enter my eyes like a disney cartoon character. It’s a good thing I don’t have TV anymore. I’d be even more broke than I already am. It reminds me of the time my little girl saw a pair of high heeled all-lucite shoes. They looked like some kind of shiny princess shoe from a fairy tale. She tried to use my visa to buy it online. Fortunately I found this out as she’d mucked up the effort — too young to know how, and the company understood. I wanted to be mad at her, but when I saw them, I just couldn’t help but understood how this had probably affected her brain.
Yes, it’s true. I spent money on a piece of plastic that probably cost 4 cents in china to manufacture, all so that I could make something by hand with a tool rather than making it by hand with my hands. And it packs them densely so they are easier to handle in storing and cooking. And I can spice the burger in a big bowl first so they taste better. And it’s a lot faster and way less messy when making burger than doing it on the spot. And it stores more easily due to consistent size. And since they’re consistent the cooking time is always the same. And they’re a nice size for dropping a slice of cheese over the top. And I know exactly how many burgers I’ll get out a given package of burger. The burger doesn’t stick to the press (as I worried). The papers are a few bucks for 1000, more than I might ever use. It’s easy to wash. I’m on a new wave of effort to EAT MEAT. While I realize burger is possibly the worst on the list, it’s what I can afford and I’m just going to start sucking down fish oil to work on those Omega-3s. Being able to quickly cook something to eat gives a much higher probability I will eat at all. ** I’ve had a lousy week for some reason. More emotional than anything, although I think that doing a few highcarb days just as I’d hit ketosis and then dropping back to LC did not help AT ALL (my poor body). I’m so glad the week is over!! This weekend I hope to do lots of ‘oopsie roll’ experiments, savory and sweet. Then maybe we could have hamburgers ON something. May 28
June is usually a buggy month. The cats go out till Oct-Nov because otherwise the flea situation KILLS ME. And a ton of things start “bugging me” about my life that didn’t before, probably because there is finally enough consistent light outside that I drag my sorry butt out of its D3-deprived state and start caring more about my life again. As you know, I love plans. Making them… watching them crash and burn… looking back on them sorrowfully… that’s me! I’m a few days early this year, but it’s June Bug time: time to take a serious look at my summer plans and “the rest of the year”. And it’s time for my summer BIG PLAN! I’ve come to a few conclusions recently about my eating plan. Such as: 2. It is more important to do something consistently, than to do something perfectly sometimes, and terribly other times. 3. It is more important to better-establish a healthy lifestyle, than to lose any specific number of pounds. Because if those three things are worked on, stuff like “losing fat” and “becoming more active” are inexorably inevitable. I have a list of goals to meet between now and the end of the year: 1. Eat vegetables regularly. The only thing that has a specific goal-measure on it is this one: 5. Lose 30# That is less than 1 lb a week. Which at my weight certainly ought to be do-able. I’ve lost a whole lot of weight fast in the past when I bothered really trying for any consistent period. It’s combining the ‘intensity’ with the ‘longevity’ of an eating plan that gets difficult for me. I’m a sprinter, not a cross-country sort. I can do most anything briefly — and the more extreme, the better — but sane balanced approaches, even in the short term let alone the long term, are hard work for me. The last year I’ve been “off and on” lowcarb, to the degree that I weigh about the same as I did in 1/07 (maybe 20# lighter) — but then, I haven’t gained anything, so that’s good! I guess I’ve been ‘on’ again just enough to balance the ‘off’ agains. But as you know, it’s still depressing to look back on a long period of time and think, “How much healthier would I be right now if I’d actually got off my butt and been proactive about this?!” THE VEGGIE DILEMMA Eating veggies has turned out to be harder than I thought. Aside from bell peppers (and those, more ‘in’ things than on their own), it turns out most the things I like aren’t veggies! Onions and mushrooms are alliums and fungi. Peas are starchy, but even if I take the carb hit, they’re legumes. I didn’t eat veggies growing up and have little taste for them. I sometimes like broccoli in stir-fry. Tomatoes in small dose. I don’t like salad unless it’s buried in blue cheese dressing, although I can tolerate greek salad (which is tossed with feta cheese). So eating “3 cups a day of veggies” as Regina recommended (you may recall I’m following the eating goals she outlined for me–or I should be, anyway!) turned out to be a real pain in the butt for me. She suggests, ever the sensible one, that eating whatever I can veggie-wise is better than giving up on it entirely. Still. I didn’t expect it to be such work! Humor: the USDA’s “food pyramid” website — not that this isn’t the most moronic contribution to diet in history since cult koolaid anyway — can’t even get straight what is a fruit, vegetable, legume, etc. It’s just embarrassing. I’m falling behind in the required physical work of my life: near-constant lawn mowing, the backyard is a jungle needing several things before mowing can happen, the garden apparently had 2.7 billion weed seeds in the soil as the minute it started raining, the weeds were so high and thick I’m sure my seedlings are dying of shade, I still haven’t finished shoveling potting soil from the dumptruck, and so on. I haven’t been getting enough protein which I’m sure is part of not feeling “up to” more than I have lately, but that is changing. SO I WENT SHOPPING. I bought meat, meat, meat, and meat. While there I also bought a little bit of cheese and some fairly LC jarred sauces. I didn’t have room at the time but am going back tonight or tomorrow to buy produce, soon as I figure out what to do with it. I also bought the 5000 IU capsules of Vitamin D from the proteinpower.com website where, interestingly enough, I went LAST, but I could hardly find any elsewhere and they cost more when I did. I’m going to use that the rest of the year and see if I feel any difference as a result. I’m light-olive complexion (the hint of cherokee in my ~14 nationalities) and grew up in a beach city so I suspect I’m probably chronically low on D3.
The kid is on this eating plan with me! She’ll be 12 in August. This is a pic of her wearing my vastly oversized- on- her sweatshirt at the walking park a few weeks ago. Well that’s all I have to report for now. I’m a day late posting on my exercise blog, gotta do that tomorrow with my initial measures and counts of what I can lift and do for exercise. I’ll be doing chair-based half-squats until I am finally light enough that my knees can stand full squats. LOWCARB SOCIAL LIFE I recommend folks who want friends to learn with or hang with others, seek out the social forums for lowcarb, such as lowcarber.org, lowcarbfriends.com, etc. I don’t know what I’d do without my journal buddies, who put up with all my kvetching about everything in life, all my Mad Scientist plans and experiments, etc. Hope y’all are having a good early summer! And marshmallow, wherever you are, I lost your forum address, if you’d be so kind as to resend! May 20
Well! Good thing I wasn’t in a hurry to get all fit and trim or anything, since I’ve not been working all that hard on it the last week! But I’m slowly shifting my stance and focus here, so I think it’s going to be fine. Probably another couple weeks will slide me fully into something worth talking about. Things I DID do: 1 – Mowed the front lawn again. Sheesh, it grows like crazy. Things I DIDN’T do: 1 – finish shoveling the soil into containers (maybe today) So hopefully the next few days will see me finally catching up. Each month, at the turn of month, my kid and I have what she calls ‘awesome day’. We go to the olive garden for lunch, then we spend all day in the bookstore, drinking mocha frappes and reading. Sometimes we go somewhere else and she can buy something, like a shirt or shoes or something. Sometimes if we aren’t stuffed we’ll go somewhere for a late dinner (like 9pm) or just dessert (like outback). The date has to match when I get my paycheck so it’s seldom exactly at the first/last day of the month. This month it is this Saturday the 24th. Hence, our “summer of lowcarb” plans have been set for the 25th, after that. Not that it isn’t an always-thing, just that we really want to focus this summer. It’s a set-apart time because she’s out of school. Except my body decided yesterday … to make my start date yesterday. I didn’t really want to. I had carby stuff I wanted to eat! But sometimes my body seems to have a mind of its own, and it flatly refused. So this means I’ll be going off LC just as I got into ketosis, on Saturday, then back on again. Gah. That is never a good idea, it’s hard to do (the going back on and staying there after eating megacarbs). But oh well… I will make it work. Even a few days not eating badly will make me feel more energetic I’m sure. Having had about 10 carbs in the last 48 hours or so, after being at a normal carby diet (a few hundred a day) for quite awhile, I already feel like eating anything with carbs. Last night the kid asked me to make her oatmeal, but I had to admit that if I went near it, I’d eat it, so… NO. She’s been on LC with me before so she knows what it entails. I’m starting to get in that mode where I think vegetables sound good. This definitely indicates approaching ketosis, since they never sound good otherwise. By the time asparagus sounds orgasmic, I’ll be within 24 hours max of a hard Ketosis. Tonight the kid has Karate which means I can’t do jack ’cause I’m busy driving her to it, waiting an hour, then back, and added to getting off work and dinner and getting her ready for bed, that’s my night. (Welcome to parenthood. “You will have a life again in approximately 18 years.”) But I talked with Ry and we’ve agreed to do a more regular stint at the walking park at least a few times a week, so I don’t lose the cardio fluency. I sort of dream of the day when I can rapidly walk the whole thing without it being all that hard. Which reminds me, there is this thing I’d really like to get. It’s a vest (they have male and female forms) that holds small weights, usually 1 or 2 lb rods the vest is designed for. They call it a weighted vest. You start out wearing it around empty or with a pound or so, and then you gradually increase the weight, so it gives your whole body time to adapt. I was thinking it would be kind of cool if I were able to gradually add weight as I lost weight, so instead of losing that muscle I might get to keep it. Is this a crazy idea? It seemed kind of neat to me. I would already have bought one a year ago except my concern that it might not fit me. Hopefully if I can lose another 25# or so the extra large will. I’m planning to take measurements again — as frightening as that is! — and my weight the day we ‘officially’ begin LC again (5/25), as well as do a fresh survey of what weight I can lift and whether/how many of various exercises I can do. I don’t yet have any specific goals for the summer or for the rest of the year except “better than I can do now.” That’s all for this week. Hopefully next week I can say I’ve caught up on tons of garden stuff, shipping stuff, got a new weight training plan together, done some walking park, and been lowcarb for 8 days (minus 1). I should have all my starting numbers, weights and exercises as well. I’m pretty excited about this summer and the rest of the year. I know it’ll be a lot of work, but I’m sure I can do it. It’s just a matter of focus and intent. May 13
(I’m reviving this blog, and about time.) OK, so lately I’ve been doing that very odd thing that people did before they had gyms and personal trainers: I’ve been exercising by doing something constructive. I have to rake, then mow, then weed-eat, the property. That’s a lot of work for me. Granted, I live in a tract home, but it’s still a lot of work. I have to stop and rest on the porch bench for awhile between each part. But I’m getting better at it. I worked (and paid my housekeeper to work) on the garage for months now and I can actually walk all the way through it to “get to” things like the lawn mower, tools, etc. — what a concept! This is great and makes doing things a lot easier. Used to be that after DP moved in I had no idea where to find anything (and when I found it, it would invariably have been left out to rust), and the effort of even getting a couple tools to DO something was just off-putting. Now I’m starting to get my life and property organized again — I spent over a year since he left doing almost nothing besides working, coding (though not much of that anymore), and working on cleaning out the house, yards, and garage. I have regular watering, weeding, and just finished all the amending and planting, for my backyard garden. It’s a standing garden which is great, but that also means you’re doing stuff leaning over with a hand trowel, not a tiller and a shovel, and trust me, two-year weeds as thick as my wrist and three feet deep are still hard work. It was abandoned for two years and I’m just restoring it this spring. Still much work to do on the overall area but at least the beds are planted. I spent half the day today shoveling half my potting mix — this is a dumptruck load in my driveway of a ’soilless mix’ that is spaghum peat moss, pine fines, perlite, and something else I forget — into containers (20 – 70 qt containers) to add to the garden collection. It started raining huge drops, but the minute I finished my mad rush to cover it all–2 minutes, if that–the rain ceased. Got distracted with work, kid, shopping etc. I’m considering trying to mow the lawn before the storm arrives since it’s already too long again and I won’t be able to mow for a couple days after it rains. Trying to start the lawnmower nearly injures me so it’s more a matter of my courage than my energy at this point. In my attempt at procrastination, I’m blogging instead. *** I haven’t been weight lifting for a long time. I’d like to re-start that. I had a long list of issues that interfered–by which I mean, interfered with my personal priorities, because obviously, had I wanted to do it more than I didn’t, I would have. I’ve been walking off and on, with the kid. My city has a walking park with a 1-mile track. It’s surprising how fast cardio facility increases if you just move regularly. I remember realizing this decades ago with bicycling, that it would only take several days in a row of doing it to move from so wiped out I had to stop ten times and gasp for my life, to doing vastly more, faster, with no rests, and being ok with it.
The cardio-facility fades fast though. If I don’t move much for a couple days, it seems like I lose a whole lot and have to spend a couple days recovering facility I had previously. Eating crappy food takes me down fast, since it not only adds oxygen problems (gluten foods give me asthma which worsens sleep apnea so I’m O2 deprived), and some asthma, but all the water-bloating that goes with eating a lot of carbs too, which affects how limber I am, how stressed my heart is from bending over, etc. My “fitness level” can change radically in two days for better or worse just depending on whether I’m eating steak and eggs vs. pasta and tacos. I have cooking goals this week, like roasting a whole chicken and using the carcass for a soup; whipping egg whites stiff for a variety of experimental, vaguely breadish recipes; making more cocoa coconut oil/cream bites; and I got a few different “Black Angus” burgers and steaks at Super Walmart frozen section I want us to try. Tonight we must do stir fry and use our broccoli and colored bells before they go bad, with chicken and some gluten-free soy sauce. My eating goals are mostly to refocus. All in all, my eating has sucked off and on for the last — well actually, for about the last 17 months to be honest — but fortunately that means it is “ok” about half the time, I haven’t gained any weight back. I still weigh 375 on LC (390 if I fall off–I hold about 15lbs of water weight for carbs if I’m not LC) which is sort of miraculous given how much crappy eating and lack of exercise I’ve had a lot of the time. My exercise goals for the moment are still centered on the reality around me:
There is a big long list of OTHER stuff I ALSO need to do — but not this week. I’ve been reading about lectin/protein intolerances and I really want to make a bigger effort to get totally off gluten. Although I’m not giving up cheese at this point, I’d like to reduce the amount of dairy I intake as the protein, caseine, I react with craving to which tells me I have some allergenic reaction to it. (It doesn’t escape me, the irony that I spent my whole life eating two primary foods that I am probably literally intolerant to. It’s no surprise I’m huge but it’s rather amazing I’m not dead already.) I also need to get back to my note-taking on the Gary Taubes book ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ as well since even looking at the book as I walk past tends to inspire me back to eating meat/eggs/veggies. Boy that book was convincing. If I were on the jury, some people would already be hung! The man may be the first person who can make even my tendency for “overkill” look pitiful and weak. It’s only for really good readers who don’t mind really dense material, but it’s awesome for those. And… I want to do another beginning of weight lifting. I slightly injured myself the last time, plus my back room kept getting one of the 8 cats into it (two know how to open the doorknob!) and using it as a litterbox, so even when cleaned up you just couldn’t be in it due to the smell, which killed my enthusiasm frankly. The cats are going 100% outside as soon as this storm cycle is over so the horrendous flea situation we had last summer will not be repeated. Too many cats act like a wild pride–I am still waiting for DP to come get his so I only have my 4. (As usual, even long after I get rid of him again, still in some way he is managing to muck up some portion of my life! Oh well. I do love the cats, of course.) Anyway so within a week max I should have my “weight lifting room” restored. The TV/VCR/DVD is there now. I got rid of the whole media tower, center, TV, and all our VCR tapes (many hundreds) not long ago on freecycle. We have DVDs only now, in a couple fat zipper books, and what visual stuff we have is in the back room, as it hasn’t been used for much else. A coworker sent me a Christian “walking” exercise DVD, something to do indoors if it’s raining or something. That was nice of her. Also low-fat cookbooks. Apparently she either did not understand lowcarb that I mentioned repeatedly, or she is hoping to convert me, heh. It still surprises me that people think lowcarb is nothing but bacon and butter; several lowcarbers I know all but live on chicken and fish and broccoli and asparagus and things like that. … that would not be me. Anyway, I’m going to start posting on this blog hopefully weekly and talking about what exercise I have done, planning, and any subject matter that relates to exercise or my experience in that area. I think I’ve waxed on enough now… … I have to go mow the lawn. PJ May 07
This is just a chatty post to catch up a bit on recent life. It’s going fairly well here in nowhere Oklahoma. It’s spring, which aside from Autumn is the most glorious time of the year. It ranges from super-blue sky with super-green everything and flowering trees, to awesome thunderstorms and pouring rain. In the spring here, everything grows. This includes the 1,029,392,877 little tree seeds that have distributed themselves all over the landscape from every tree in the neighborhood. I’m the Maple Killer: I ripped out dozens of maple tree starts from a small mulched area the other night. This is definitely Ozark territory here in the NE corner, not the plains. Oh, and that’s not counting every weed that ever considered taking up residence in my landscape, especially my lawn. By the time I got my mower started, my lawn — along with much of the city — was a good 12-20″ long in places. I say ‘in places’ because I don’t actually have a lawn. I have some very interesting weeds which, when mowed, and slightly at a distance, give the illusion of a lawn. I’m not complaining. It’s green, it grows, I mow it, what’s not to love? I managed to get all my official garden beds planted, no thanks to killing my own seedlings (never mind how, it’s just too stupid). In the beds, which are 24-32″ high (it’s a ’standing’ cinderblock garden, see some old pics here), I’ve got something like: half a dozen red bell pepper I plant close, ’sort of’ in a square-foot-gardening style, but not THAT close… about 1.5-2′ between peppers and small/determinate tomatoes. I didn’t plant anything on the arch trellising this season, because I still need to tear out the odd square little beds that DP (as my lowcarb girlfriends call him, my Ex) created, and use their cinderblocks to make permanent beds between the arches. That is down the road some… there is only so much time in life, and let me tell you, it does not take much hauling of 30# cinderblocks before your hands and fingers hurt and you’re weary, and this is probably even for people in good physical shape, which I am definitely not. I do, however, have the containers left. I had to buy an entire new spate of containers this year, as the recent ice storm that wiped out 70% of the trees in my city (including mine. They are leafing out–their shredded remains–but at some point I’ll have to pay a small fortune to have them cut down and replaced, as they are trashed) also wiped out my containers, which had actually survived five years of winter outside without even a crack until then, but they literally shattered and cracked and broke all over with that freeze. These are big, 16-40 gallon (varies) size “tub” like containers you can get at dollar stores and walmart. The rain and wind have delayed delivery, but hopefully Thursday I will get the “soilless premium potting mix” from the local soil company (they sell mulch, rock, you name it), a dump truck with a scoop is going to drop it in my driveway, then guess who gets to shovel it all into containers and wheelbarrow them around the property. I will be in slightly better shape when this is all over, that’s for sure. Last week, a friend online sent me some clothes and shoes in my size and some quality cat food. Free stuff! Awesome. My boyfriend sent me a movie (”Kama Sutra” – do you think he’s trying to tell me something…?). A coworker sent me an exercise video and two cookbooks. My dad gave me a whole bunch of DVDs, me and Ry will be watching “The Golden Compass” tonight. And yesterday I got a $100 gift card from my boss. So it’s been a good time for the influence of others the last week or so, for sure. Thanks to the gift card yesterday, I was able to go to a local nursery and buy about four dozen seedlings for all the containers (from the big tubs to lots of hanging flower pots). A dozen are flowers; a dozen are herbs; a couple dozen are some more veggies. Anaheim chili pepper, mole chili pepper, hungarian wax (hot banana) pepper, couple more italian peppers, a golden tomato, cherry tomato, some more roma tomato, some more cayenne pepper. (Fresh cayenne are my fave peppers, although there are several in that class that are nearly indistinguishable from one another and they’re all good.) This Friday (payday) I hope to buy whatever the last things needed for this year’s garden: maybe more containers (not sure), and a bunch of hose and a good punch, a manifold and timer for the backyard, and a couple more fancy-spray nozzles for the garden hoses. From that point on, all I need is a couple scoops (dump truck full) of new cedar mulch and a LOT of incredibly hard work, and by the time Fall arrives, when it’s time to tear stuff out and clean up for the winter, I’ll finally be done with the stuff I should have had done by the arrival of spring, heh! Ry had her sixth grade chorus concert last night, so we piled into the city’s big-brag fully-restored landmark Coleman Theatre for it. She’s so adorable it just melts my heart. Meanwhile, my friend X is having a rather severe problem in her house. Her husband and both her children — now 10 and 11 — are quite psychic in the ‘medium’ sort of way, although her husband is a rationalist who works very hard to stay in denial of this. They began with a number of random occurrences and knocking and things like this, human-shaped shadows visible only to the three of them (X’s oblivious), etc. They believed they had some kind of ghost. I told them to talk to Archangel Michael and ask for his assistance in helping someone move on, and they did. Her father died as all this was happening, which probably didn’t help, except that it restored some sense of benevolence to it all. Not long later, this amped up into Amityville territory. First stuff started moving. I’ve had this effect myself during my bewilderness era and I know how crazy-making it can be. A dresser fell on her daughter (a bird-boned sort) several times. (And no, this is NOT like child abuse projected or anything like that. Stuff started falling and flying all over the place regularly, all four of them reported it to me separately at times.) The knocking increased. The out-of-corner-of-eye visuals increased. Writing started appearing on the mirrors. The TV remote control constantly vanished and would appear on the ceiling fan in the kids’ room, which nobody there can reach without a ladder. They could all be sitting in the living room, all is well, the cat walks out of the room, and runs back in 10 seconds later–covered in mayonnaise or something and very unhappy about it. One time her husband got so pissed about the remote control he duct taped it and CHAINED IT so it couldn’t go anywhere. The cat got coated with something again, his bottle of scotch vanished and appeared stuck in the dirt upside down and open in the backyard after having been poured everywhere, and after searching, they’d just given up looking for the vanished remote when they found it — in the butter container in the door of the fridge. The little girl would sometimes wake up with her long hair wound up and ‘hooked’ on this tiny hook in the wall above her bed. They kept taking the kids to sleep with them because they were all worried, but even when they do, the apparitions and stuff continue off and on, and her husband is often woken up by someone poking him HARD — physically — on the shoulder, even though he makes sure and nobody is touching him that he can SEE, yet it’s 100% physical and once he felt a whole hand slide down his arm. (Grossed him out.) They called the Oklahoma branch of some kind of ghost like society that has a TV show. Useless. These people had a huge stack of paperwork that took X a really long time to fill out. They show up, they set up a camera for ONE HOUR, and they leave–just leaving all the paperwork they worked so hard to prepare. X asked if there was someone they knew who could clear houses of this kind of thing and they only said, not in this region. And this was all just really annoying, frustrating, aside from the occasional things that seemed like a potential threat to the kids, until recently when The little girl can see and hear a spirit there. She says it says that her name is Sabrina and she died in a fire. She heard another who said her name was Debra, and she was several generations ahead of Sabrina. After the prayers with Michael, Debra went away. Meanwhile, they’ve now progressed to some impressive EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). Sometimes on the telephone, AFTER someone hangs up, there is a voice. Allegedly there is a spirit named Tim, an angry man who says he set the fire that killed Sabrina. Debra says that she is trying to help Sabrina ‘go to the light’ but Tim doesn’t want to let her go. Sometimes Sabrina quits talking and when asked why says that “he will hurt her” and then there’s sounds like a hard slap and her crying out. Meanwhile, they were all trying to keep this quiet — except for hoping the ghost hunter people might have some clue — because they don’t want anybody to think they are crazy, obviously, and if you tell someone that a small dresser threw itself on your kid, they’re probably going to think it’s child abuse and that’d be a total nightmare. So they’ve been suffering in silence about all this for awhile. Recently, they got some third party verification. The little girl had been on the telephone with a little girl who lives near me. When her little girl hung up, a voice came on the line, and the other little girl stayed on as a result. She gave the phone to her mother, who actually heard it. It was ‘Tim’ and he was foully cursing and threatening and saying, I can’t recall, but something like they couldn’t take Sabrina I think. X felt tremendously validated that someone outside their family had finally experienced this stuff. She tells me because I’ve had poltergeist phenomenon and I believe her–and the most unbelievable parts, for anybody who’s had it, are the most believable because that’s really how it works–like you don’t usually see stuff floating through the air from point A to point C, it’s just that something is at point A and a micro-instant later it’s at point C, for example. (Moved through time, not space.) Recently, her little girl was sleeping in the living room while she watched TV real late one night, not more than 10 feet from her, and in the space of an hour, when she woke up, part of one eyebrow had been shaved, her upper lip hurt, and she had tiny razor marks around her legs. Not cuts, but scrapes. Now, this seems as impossible as every other poltergeist thing seems: X was RIGHT THERE, though not looking, and her daughter was wearing clothes!–and this happened “under” them–and we suspect the sudden pain was what woke her up. She called out to her mom who said what is it baby? and looked back at her and instantly noticed a whole big rectangle missing from one of her eyebrows. This event scared the hell out of X, who sought out every razor and bundled them up and hid them in a closet somewhere, and made her husband SO pissed that he stomped around the house cursing at Tim and telling him he was a balless coward for picking on little girls and why didn’t he pick on HIM instead. He’s been trying to harrass Tim into spending his energy on him rather than the kid. Now, poltergeist activity is nearly always associated with children, and both of hers are near 11, which is about the age it usually kicks in. The family watches all kinds of spirit-related crap on TV, like Buffy and Angel and so on. I assumed, initially, that this was just PK activity, and that the slightly younger brother, despite that both the children are very healthy and happy, that this might be some subconscious PK acted out toward his sister. But I don’t think so anymore. The whole repetition of the spirit-stuff, along with the writing, voices, and the poor damn cat LOL, the endless issue with small items especially remote controls, is a little too constant. I told her, you “pay” attention. Every bit of attention you guys give this is just feeding it energy, period. QUIT! Ignore it. Marginalize it. Don’t give it any free energy. But of course over time, more and more, they could not ignore it, even though she says they tried that for awhile, along with prayer and so on. At this point they’re willing to save money (they’re pretty poor) for an exorcist if they only knew where to find one and it’d have to be someone that works on ‘houses’. She tells me there is so much stuff so constantly that I wouldn’t even believe her if she bothered trying to recount it all. I probably would, but I know what she means. I was so irked about the razor incident that I seriously considered stomping over to her house and seeing if I could call Michael and the spirit and do something about it all myself. But at this point, I’ve been out of mental work so long except spottily, I can hardly pay attention through a brief chakra meditation, never mind something that major, with an energy so turbulent. In other words, I don’t think I’m qualified, and I think as a result it might be dangerous. I’m ticked though. I want to be qualified to deal with that. It is inappropriate. I feel the need to “facilitate the adjustment” of the situation. I always said I knew the first time I saw the Thoth tarot deck that “Adjustment” was my card, and funny enough things often feel like that to me, like I simply feel some inner need to bring things into balance via adjustment. I know all the cosmic wiccans are the Empress and High Priestess and stuff like that, so Adjustment seemed a little disappointing and unglam by comparison, but it was a gut-knowing, what can you do, I didn’t consciously choose. (It just occurs to me that maybe the tarot is a map of humanity the way The Four or the Tree of Life is, and so maybe every person has one card that basically they fall most into the pattern of. Hmmmn.) I recently seriously acid-burned my fingers by spending like 7 hours cutting peppers and garlic. They hurt so bad I thought they would split open or something. I was talking to Nero (a guide) about it, and he made it go away totally, the pain, for about ten minutes. I shifted my attention and it came back. I was pretty damn impressed that he could do that though. Or maybe I did it but either way it was impressive. (By the next morning they were ok.) It’s raining, supposed to thunderstorm today. The back seat of my car is stuffed with four small flats of seedlings. The thunder is rolling and I think I’ll do something constructive here. That about sums up my recent life. Mostly I’ve been doing archmeds — or trying, denial puts me to sleep often lately! — and gardening and spending time with the kid. Viewing… barely… still working on getting ‘regular’ time for that. Around “having a life” that’s kind of hard. It’s a matter of priorities, and viewing is so important to me, and yet… so are other things. Ah, the dichotomy… PJ Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 19 April 2007 I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last few days. Ever since the archetype talked to me about time, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. About time, about space, and the brain-crunching idea of them not being separate really at all. Along with this, me and my best friend have been having conversations about my reality. Reminding me of all the stuff I know, that Seth would tell me, but that I’ve kind of moved out of thinking about for a long time. Talking about my physical reality, and what it reflects. Maybe me being uptight. Cluttered. And maybe “hanging on to things,” causing a sort of “reality clogging”. Maybe anal retentive can be a feng shui effect too. HA HA. o0o Epiphanies Today I had a sort of epiphany. Well not like a life-changing thing, but definitely a get-my-act-together kind of thing. It all started over a chat room. Since 1993 the TKR forum members have asked for a chat. For a long time I was adamant I wouldn’t have one. I didn’t have time to have it moderated, I would not allow the head-trip mind-F*** BS that a stupid number of people in the field online lived for in chat rooms, I wouldn’t put up with the ‘trolls’ which were actually viewers from all kinds of sources that resented Any God But Their Own, etc. I was cranky and snappy about it and that was that. But eventually, some of the TKR Admins themselves were asking. I have a soft spot for all of them. Without them I’d have to be spending all my time reading boards and carrying on monologues. They make that project possible and in doing so, free up a whole lot of my time. (Which is ridiculously limited even with their help.) I want to do anything I can to help them or make them happy. So, at the time, this was maybe 2-3 years ago, I went out and looked for chat options. I refused the easier stuff, like IRC, because I wanted something that we could control. I once vowed — and I still maintain — that I will never again run a project that is fully unmoderated, that allows evil abusers to deliberately stalk and destroy the entire project for everybody. I feel I owe it to anybody who spends their time in anything I run, to at least make sure I can somewhat protect them and their contributions from destruction, by being able to bounce/ban “trolls.” That the worst trolls are usually allegedly viewers themselves is one of the great ironies of this field, but never mind. The affordable options for software that allowed privacy, could be run from my own site (though tying into their server), could have rooms made/dropped on command, could do moderated “guest interview” chats, etc. were few. In the end I settled on a java-based chat hosted in the UK for around 30 bucks a month plus a hefty set up fee. We had the chat room up for awhile. I don’t know how long, maybe a year, 18 months? (My time sense is completely distorted. Never believe me when I estimate anything related to time.) We had a few guest chats. I was busy and didn’t get off my butt to make more of them happen, but they were fun and interesting. We usually had a few people show up on Monday nights after the Missions at TKR got feedback. It didn’t get much use otherwise though. I made an option in the dojo software, for users to schedule a chat, or to say when someone would be around, but there wasn’t much interest it appeared. This could be partly because the people expressing interest were mostly on the forum, while the chat you actually had to get to through the dojo. After what seemed like eons, I realized how much money I had dished out for something seldom used — and the software itself kind of drove me nuts anyway — and so I just canceled the chatserver and figured “eventually, I’ll do something else.” In keeping with the laws of Murphy, the minute I canceled it, all kinds of people seemed to want it. It’s like something in the universe senses the void. It’s like swearing celibacy and then watching people just pour out of the woodwork who are hot to have you. The irony is downright funny. Sort of. o0o Time marches on. So it’s been a long time and we haven’t had a chat room. I decided on what I wanted to get back in October of last year, and made plans. But it cost a bit. About $500-600, plus another $100 for the first year of the chatserver hosting. If I couldn’t swing at least half the total amount up front there was no point to doing it, so I kept putting it off, not having that much at one time. Time marches on. “Real Soon Now” in my world has the subjectivity of my time attached to it. This could mean in 5 minutes or maybe in 5 years. A friend once told me it was one of the most annoying things about me, but I feel sure he left out several far more interesting options. Meanwhile, another sort of parallel issue that ties into this epiphany has been going on. Since way-back-when — we are talking end of 1995 now — I’ve been regularly faced with the opportunity to make some money from something related to RV, and refused. o0o MoneyMoneyMoneyMoney For just over a couple of years, it was because of what I considered the ‘honor of the sensei’ — which is to say, people would offer to come give me cash if I’d just spend a full day letting them pick my brain, and I had an infant and no real job and a husband that didn’t work and I desperately needed it, but I felt that anybody worth teaching “should have a real teacher” — that being one of the ‘formal’ instructors I knew and had studied with — and I felt that it would also be unfair to the teachers to take money they should get. This was a real drama queen martyr thing in retrospect, because the degree of my need, the casual one-off nature of the options, and the obscene amount of money that RV teachers were making off the public anyway, should have made all that angst a moot point. But no, get me on any kind of kick where I think any decision is about the ‘honor’ of something and you might as well give up, I’m ten times as stubborn. Sigh. Sometimes I think my character was written by John Irving — it’s like the kind of thing you’ve got to have a sense of humor and a penchant for sociology to appreciate. TKR and the dojo’s software developed, and the time demands put into it kept up. It’s been reprogrammed and redesigned several times, and expanded continually. I’ve tried to keep a constant hand in TKR’s communications, as much for the insanity it keeps out as a side effect, as for anything I might contribute. The amount of hours eventually ‘averaged’ to like 40 a week at least every other week — evenings and into the night and all weekend generally, for eons. The amount of money I was spending just on that project alone, for server rentals, programming help at times, applets or software plugins on occasion, domain names, etc. — not counting other things like Firedocs or many other RV domains that I maintain — reached into the thousands of dollars. My friends started really leaning on me about it. They thought it was insane and ridiculous that anybody would seem to basically dedicate their entire life outside work and kid to something and get no compensation for it — their theory was that at the least, I should charge enough so I didn’t have to do all that work for free AND pay for it. But making stuff available was the whole point of TKR, so I didn’t care much. I made a decent income at my job, not great but enough that I could afford to fund it all with being dependent on anybody else. The politics and marketing media and business competition in the RV field, not counting disinformation, misinformation, mis-education (enough of that to span the globe several times), cult indoctrination and more made an island of sanity for RV — a FREE one — critical in my opinion. I wanted it open and out there. o0o Donations and Drama So then in the early days of TKR, the idea of a “donation” button was brought up. At first, I think I just refused, because I didn’t want to feel beholden to others. I didn’t want anybody to ever be able to say, “Hey, I donated money to you, how dare you let my name or opinion get dissed in your project?” I already had a rather surreal problem with one trainer thinking it was my moral duty to defend his reputation from the people he’d worked so hard to ruin it with, and the thought of that expanding to cover anybody who wanted to donate 20 bucks nearly gave me hives just thinking about it. Eventually, when the topic came up again, and more people had commented to me about such things privately, I decided to consider it. But then I realized that this might not work. Due to marrying a foreigner who never got legal here and some related issues bigger than anything you want to hear about (trust me), I owe the IRS money. This means that if I had actual INCOME — like, dependable income from a job or client — they could (they do) levy it. I had this idea that they would hunt down every person who sent me five dollars and send them all my personal info and a 1/4″ stack of paper with threats about what’d happen if they didn’t fill it out. Which I might add they did to several of my clients long ago, which contributed to them not being clients and greatly complicated my paying the debt. (Brilliant, they are not.) So at that point I refused because I didn’t know enough about it (now I know more) and I worried that debt might cause some problems if I took donations. More time passed. More money… more working through the night… and the subject would come up now and again, usually in private correspondence. I would shrug it off. It’s ok, I can handle it. o0o Recently, I dished out a few hundred for the first almost-half of the chatroom stuff. I was going to open it even with the limitations it had, stuff I hadn’t bought yet for customizing, but it turns out these “emoticons” and “preset comments” and “avatars” in it are so incredibly stupid, it is just downright humiliating to even be associated with. So with a sigh I realized it could be a few months before I had the money for the rest of it (so I could change them), given the way things are going in my life lately, and everyone would just have to wait. Yes, that meant I’d be paying monthly on a chatserver nobody used, but we’re talking about my reputation being proxy to totally moronic media. That seemed more important. Apparently if I can’t be cool I will take my ball and … not chat. So to my surprise, on the TKR board, the very next day (he must be psychic!) Daz asks for a chat room. I say sure, and explain it’s sort of coming but has to wait on a bit more funds. And he suggests — as has happened so many times before — that I put up a donation button and let people donate to the project for it. I wrote a message that I didn’t post, that said, “No, it’s ok. It’ll be here eventually.” And then just before I clicked on the send button, it all hit me. This is my conversation with myself, in personal vs. Devil’s Advocate (DA) form.
… I thought about this for awhile. The part that really bugs me about my inner voice (and I have pleaded, lately, for my Inner Guide to be more present in my conscious life, and I suspect this is his doing, as he is often making me see things about myself I don’t want to see), is that it makes me realize what a totally conceited autocrat I can be sometimes. So I didn’t post the message and instead went back to work for a bit while I mulled it over. I started thinking about the talks my buddy and I have been having about the clutter in my house and what the archetype said about time, space, clutter and feng shui, and I suddenly realized: o0o It’s all connected. All the crap I hang on to that I don’t really “need” terribly, that causes clutter in my house; all the issues I won’t let go of that cause me such resistance to ever “being vulnerable” or “letting someone help me” (because it would make me vulnerable — the Narrator talked to me about that years ago) — it’s connected. And I realized that what it amounts to, I am not “letting anything in” — not just ‘donations’ but really, the whole larger picture of being “acceptive” of how reality interacts with me — and I am also not “letting anything out” — like the house which, despite being 1.7 billion times better now that my ex is gone, is still way too cluttered for my taste. And then, in one of those perspective-switches that are so right they irk me, I remembered what my friend was saying about the clutter: that it’s a poverty mentality, of course. If you really trust you’ll have what you need in life, you let things go, you let them find use with others, you don’t hoard and store things that you never use or for really long periods of time. Everything around you, he reminded me, is literally a reminder (”an idea incarnate”, I thought) of what you think you lack, of what you think you won’t be able to get again when you need it. Instead of being surrounded by plenty, what I am really surrounded by is monuments to lack.
I wondered if that might relate to the extra body weight that is such a bother to get off me. Not allowing, not releasing, storing and hoarding. Kinda sounds like it huh. I’m really sort of astounded by the insight. Not that being a bonehead is new to me, I realize this about myself regularly, but I found today particularly insightful, albeit in a bit of a bruising yet freeing way. o0o Breaking The Habit I’ve decided that I’m going to change that. I’m going to improve myself. I’m going to be more of the kind of person I want to be, and I’m going to reshape my life to make it happen. So I came to two conclusions. First. I am going through my house bit by bit and I am getting rid of everything that I do not use regularly and/or that is not so hard to acquire (or needed in emergency) that I can bear it. My bathroom has like 15 towels. There are two of us. There’s so many they end up all over the counter and floor, the stack toppling off the shelf. They are out of here shortly. I’ll save the 4-5 that are big thick beach towels is all. I have a big wall cupboard and an oversized sink cabinet that are stuffed with stupid things I never use and probably 30 bottles of stuff. It’s out of here. My chronically crowded, cluttered bathroom has enough storage space, given there’s two of us, that it ought to be nearly zen minimalist. Really, this should be applied to my whole house. Make it so! I will LET THINGS GO. Second. I am going to make a page for donations on the dojo site, and put buttons on my various websites, and anybody who wants to donate can. I’ll let people spec out what project/thing it’s for if they want, and I’ll keep a public tally of everything in/out so folks know what it’s really for. There is no excuse for acting like a martyr and there is no excuse for keeping viewers anywhere, let alone members of a member-driven project, from actually helping shape their project or viewing stuff online if they so choose. It shouldn’t even be a big deal and it might be helpful to me AND to the projects. Make it happen! I will LET THINGS IN. And maybe, with a little more “energy flow” of incoming and outgoing and “allowing”, I can better deal with the stored clutter in my house — and on my body — and maybe, just maybe, it might even have some feng shui reality side-effect on my available time. Which is as limited as — surprise — my available money at the moment. It is actually hard. I feel all this inner resistance to both things. But I think this is what personal growth is all about, is about recognizing your limitations and proactively doing something to cure them and bring balance to yourself. I’ll put the donation page up tomorrow. For now, off to clean the house! Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 19 April 2006
One of my faves is Dr. Edwin C. May, aka Eddie when nobody else is around, who over the years has taken a lot of time to be kind to an uncredentialed but very serious layman with a million questions. He recently got Skype “video” — wow! It’s so cool!! (No. You will never, ever see me on this. — I’m shy!) — and today when he skype-ftp’d a quick run of a graph of current rough prestim research results, and an explanation of it all to boot, I just couldn’t resist grabbing a screenshot to show y’all. Now I was tempted not to post this, since it sounds a bit like name-dropping, but then decided what the hell, this is my daily life and this is my blog and they go together, right? Anyway, with great guys like him willing to be virtual-professors now and then, how can the science of psi NOT be interesting? Now if only I had all the requisite braincells and background math to absorb it, I’d be better deserving I imagine. But at least I don’t lack enthusiasm, heh! (Thus demonstrating my long-held theory on social chivalry: that if one can’t be useful, they can at least be decorative. Or in my case, perhaps, at least supportive!) (Thanks for permission ECM. Yeah, next time I’ll warn you so you can pose!) Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 18 April 2006
Dr. Radin has a new book just released, Entangled Minds : Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality [website] [[amazon.com] [quotes about it], which I imagine is going to add to the waterfall of drool I see invoked instantly in the public and media over anything containing the Oooh-Aaah word “quantum.” I should mention that Radin’s previous book, The Conscious Universe : The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena [website] [amazon.com] was a fabulous read. So I expect this book will be as well. (Thanks to the good docs for permission to post this photo.) Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 16 April 2006
Groovy pic eh? April 16, 2006. At left, in the shirt louder than New York, is physicist Dr. Edwin C. May, who is very conservative about psi and science (and not about much else). Then at right, looking suspiciously laid back (if not downright conservative… next to Ed!) is Stephan A. Schwartz, who by nature is as dynamic (particularly about psi) as Ed’s shirt. Dr. May’s currently working on physiologically (cardio) measured pre-stimulus-response trials. This means, “The experiments where they demonstrate, by measuring your heart rate compared to random sounds, that precognition [read: being psychic about the future] exists.” Schwartz will be speaking at the upcoming IRVA Conference (ref: Remote Viewing) in early May. (Thanks guys for letting me post the pic!) (This adding real-time stuff like photos is complicating my posting on past-dates, isn’t it! Well as long as I keep it straight enough that I don’t post a picture on a date prior to its being taken, I think I’m safe…) Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 09 April 2006 Sessions have had the coolest visuals lately. I saw a guy, so intensely clearly that if I ran into him in Walmart next week I would recognize him (and I’m not good with faces, so that’s really saying something). He was east indian ancestry it appeared, but an American I surmised. He was sitting on a firm couch with something on his lap he was writing on. He was well dressed, very cleancut, with back-length hair pulled back in a firm ponytail, which was curly. I watched him for a few moments, marveling at the clarity of it. It was just like ‘being there’ except there was no ‘peripheral’ vision, just him and the part of the couch and floor he occupied. Finally, from across the room I said, “Wow! I can SEE you!” — and he looked up in astonishment! Judging by the look on his face, I’d say he either saw me or saw something anyway, and obviously heard me. Then I had that sense he was actually remote viewing (of all things — I mean, maybe that’s not unusual I’d tune into him given that, but how many humans are likely to be viewing at the same time??), and I said, “Oh my god! Are you viewing?!” and went to his side (sorta flew-instantly) and looked down at what was on his lap. But he moved quickly, like in a fear-reaction, as if to snap close something or hide it — and then I was staring at my session paper. I was thinking hmmn, I will know him if I meet him, I think that was real, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the target. Not the first time I’ve seen people in session (whether a target or something spontaneous), though sometimes I just sense-hear them when that kind of thing happens. If I think to ask for a name I usually get it but I was so delightedly-astonished I forgot to ask, damn it! Of course, somewhere, some innocent guy is probably thinking, YOU SEE? EVIL ALIEN GOVERNMENT MINIONS ARE SPYING ON ME! and it’s all my fault. In a diff session on a volcano two neat data format came across. The first was a sense of kundalini. I’d never thought of this before but when you consider it, volcanoes being the kundalini of the earth makes sense. The second was this very vivid (but I knew not-quite-literal) vision of a sort: there was some ‘morpheous’ (changing and not clearly defined shape at bottom, seeming fuzzy or liquidy or moving) shape at the bottom, and then something tall that went up high–I shallow-aol’d antenna, knife blade, etc. — but then there were these great, totally round, lightning-type-EM energy bolts that went up it, one after the other. It looked just like something out of a science fiction movie, it was great. Sometimes the session experience is worth more than the data. Heh. OK a lot of the time. Still… A friend PEM’d me and pointed out that almost indirectly, in my post from the 7th I said something nice about Jonina and Glenn in the same paragraph. They were suggesting that this means hell has finally frozen over. Really all it means is that I recognize efforts in RV. I don’t have to always agree with someone or even get along with them to see objectively that they are doing what they believe in and they’re working hard at it. I sometimes have the feeling that on some level we are really all in this together, and that when we die we’re all going to realize that we were on the same team, and if we’d spent less time dissing or avoiding each other we all could have accomplished more. This reminds me of the time back in ‘97 or so when I was so pissed off about something in the RV field that I can’t even remember now, I fell into OBE by accident and hunted down Courtney Brown to “share my perspective,” aka just kick his butt. I was surprised at his spunk in fighting back, given that patronizingly soft little sotty voice he wears in the physical that always makes me want to punch him in the head every time I hear him on the radio. It ended up quite the Crowley-esque experience and by morning I was thinking that ever telling anybody would require instant ritual suicide for my honor, but now I think it’s just an example of the fact that whatever we do, say, think, etc. on the surface, may not really be the whole story and there’s probably a lot of spiritual stuff that means more, and is less petty, underneath. I do still dream about Mars, I admit. But that’s probably just an archetype. Not about RV… Lately I’ve been practicing a little more energy rapport than usual. I sure do miss hands-on work. It feels like I’m living in a canyon here, metaphysically, and it’s been so long since I did any regular eWork I can hardly even feel my chakras anymore, most the time. Well it’s time to get up. I’d rather stay in bed. Of course, in order to stay in bed, first you have to go to bed. I’m late. Gotta view first, so I can say I made time to do at least one session yesterday. Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 03 April 2006 Bob Lazar is apparently not talking about having worked on UFOs at Area 51 anymore. His current job seems a little more down to earth. Skye (Mistress of the Cool Offbeat) writes:
OK I admit, the area where I am most cynical about the government relates to ‘new technologies’, particularly anything that takes money from mega-corps (including the medical industry, agri-chem, etc.). I feel that our particular breed of capitalism has created corporatism, which has all kinds of side effects, including a clear difference between the government seeming to want (let alone pursue) what is good for the nation concerning technology, resources, etc., as opposed to what is good for maintaining solid control through the same agencies-corporations that already have it. I am conservative on economics, but that doesn’t mean I’m for the Evil Empires; there’s a difference. People often wonder why we don’t get off our dependency on foreign oil. Think about it. The government makes zillions (I’ve no idea of the real number) every DAY off ‘import taxes’ on oil. If we drill it here or don’t need it, we implode from the sudden drop in cash flow. So they don’t do jack about Bob ranting about the alien spaceship he was allegedly hired to help reverse engineer, but they give him hell about his novelty new fuel tech?! That’s interesting… Mar 06
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 01 April 2006 So many amazing things have happened lately! Lots cooking. Do I smell a ROAST?? Psychology professor and popular anti-psi lecture-circuit speaker Ray Hyman has finally come down off that high horse which inspired his infamous quote in the AIR report, “There is an ‘effect’ here but I don’t wish to call it psi.” After years of more careful evaluation he has finally decided to call it “voodoo” and has been seen wearing a funny looking hat all over campus. Legendary viewer Joseph McMoneagle was recently quoted by the Japanese media as admitting that he is not, actually, the greatest viewer on Earth. This sudden attack of modesty was followed by a coughing fit so severe he required medical attention. McMoneagle, a viewer-dowser and prophet, known as the most scientifically tested psychic and already a national TV star in Japan, was gesturing oddly and speaking at media cameras as the paramedics wheeled him away, but Nippon authorities refuse to confirm or deny rumors that he was yelling, “Soylent Green Is Peeeeeeoppppllllle!” Back in the states, the IRVA’s annual conference is coming up! In a daring break with tradition, IRVA leader and dynamic psi adventurer Stephan Schwartz is planning to dedicate his RV speech time to a political rally for the Right instead of the Left this year, as a gracious nod to the fact that all the STAR GATE guys were gun-toting soldier dudes and they aren’t so bad really. The eminent Dr. Jessica Utts is planned to be at this conference too, with a talk entitled “Why It’s OK To Hang With NewAgerbils As Long As You’re Educating Them.” A good lecture from her is worth the cover price. Seriously. Remote viewing’s fatherly Ingo Swann will be giving his annual IRVA public speech, “Why I Am Almost Never In Public.” Similar to previous years (and again to great disappointment), Swann who is the author of some of the most amazing UFO books and claims ever, is rumored to be insisting that again, he “has no desire to talk about UFOs.” Rumors also abound that the eBay market for his curious combo of ‘in-demand, self-published but out-of-print’ book Penetration is now providing eBay marketers an income slightly greater than Norway’s GNP. Though he says there is no republishing planned for it, Swann does plan to publish another couple hundred chapters in his internet book Remote Viewing: The Real Story, which I believe should bring it up to about the year 1882. If that isn’t enough to tempt you into buying tickets, engineer Dr. Dean Radin is soon to be publishing his book on psi and physics. Radin’s previous book The Conscious Universe was so inspiring that street buzz about his new book is more popular this week than even Pregnant Martians and Bush The Reptilian stories. Pre-order his book at amazon.com boys and girls (please… he still owes Dr. Dossey a bunch for that review quote!). (No but seriously — his last book was great. I’m sure this one will be too. He’ll be speaking there too.) Get tickets for the IRVA conf at rvconference.org. Scientist Michael Persinger privately admitted to New Scientist magazine recently that a new version of his Magnetic Helmet not only caused the subject to claim he was suffering a simultaneous alien abduction, IRS auditing and the smell of peanut butter, but the subject reported that the lab’s wall opened up and funky men with pins in their faces appeared. Unfortunately no follow up on this has been possible, as no members of Dr. Persinger’s household or lab have been seen since. Meanwhile over at TKR, the truly unexpected has happened: at least one “world expert at RV” has been seen doing a session provably in-protocol to demonstrate their amazing skill! Riiiiight. Hey! Happy April Fool’s Day y’all! {Hey! This was humor, for anybody who doesn’t perceive my feeble attempts above! Thanks to Rich’s RV Roast and Gene’s 2003 IRVA Conference Suggestions for the inspiration.} Mar 05
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 14 March 2006 Hey, Dr. Jacques Vallee has a website now. He’s my favorite UFOlogy-related researcher, which I grant may be more because coincidentally we agree in so many areas than because of his profound wisdom or my excellent taste. Still he is the kind of mind I desperately wish more people in UFOlogy (or remote viewing!) actually had. Thanks go to Tunde who posted this old interview at TKR that led me to it. www.jacquesvallee.net In the modern world, I think Vallee may be the only guy I feel like a genuine “fan” of. It’s embarrassing, really, since that’s a layer of separation from anybody, and I am normally not the fan type (is there such a personality?). I don’t know him and I respect him greatly. Perhaps it’s in part because after my “anomalous personal experiences,” some of which I recounted in the case study Bewilderness, I was working overtime for hanging on to my own sanity, working through my own theories regarding so-called alien and entity experiences, and he was like finally stumbling on water in the desert just after you’d given up. I knew what it looked like… I’d spec’d out some of it myself… but he was finally, thank someone if not God, the real deal: a researcher who was genuinely interested yet had no personal paradigm pushing an ‘angle’. I didn’t read anything about alien-related stuff during my experiences, initially because I thought all that stuff was nuts and I thought my own experiences were just some really bizarre psychology that I found interesting, if scary, but hoped would pass. I was more inclined to think I had weird dreams and hallucinations and multiple personality disorder, than that I’d been ‘abducted’ (a word which carries a lot of baggage, and I don’t think it’s always appropriate). Later I was afraid to influence myself, since self-validation was the most complicated area of my psychology to deal with. When I finally gave in and started reading, just once in awhile, I wished that I had read his stuff sooner. I recommend anybody interested in the subject check out his books, he has many, search on his name at Amazon. He also has an autobiographical book called Heart of the Internet, about his history with the computer science field, which is very interesting, to me as much for its view on the cultism surround “est” as for the computer angle (since a lot of the same cultism is prevalent in Scientology and Remote Viewing, and yes I apologize for using those terms in the same sentence). Mar 05
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 12 March 2006 “I was blind, but now I can seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” Actually, I was petrified. I don’t care how ‘routine’ it is or how many people are doing it. The idea of a laser CUTTING INTO YOUR EYES ought to frighten anybody. Yeah, yeah, I acted cool, casual — up until the operating room, when I clammed up and got very still, which is my response to trauma — but I admit, I was pretty scared about it going in. The first “hard pressure” experience is only a few seconds. Still it is a bit scary and uncomfortable. (Of course, you used to have to get abducted by aliens for eye care like this, and that can be scary and uncomfortable too.) You can ’see’ them opening and closing the flap over your cornea. And there is a longer period, where the adjustments are happening, where you are staring at nothing but see a kaleidascope of the tiniest imaginable pinprick colors, which I figured were the lasers configuring the various parts of the cornea. My correction was pretty severe, so the memorable smell of my fission’d corneal material wafting past my nose was highly present. That’s something likely to show up in a bad dream someday. They give you a mild sedative first. I was quiet and still in sheer terror though, never mind the drug, which did nothing but reduce me to feeling as sleepy as I do half my waking life from chronic sleep deprivation anyway. When it was over and they walked me into the typical eye exam room, and I sat down on the chair, the women were convinced I was going to pass out for some reason. I think because they wanted me to be talkative and I had a difficult time even forcing myself to say “I’m fine.” I felt traumatized and that makes me clam up. They were trying to convince me to lie down on the floor. I was ignoring them stonily, wondering why on earth they thought this would be a good idea. I finally managed to convince them I really was fine, as I’d said initially, and they left me alone to sit with eyes closed and wait for the doctor. Friday morning I had it done. Afterwards, you are supposed to wear these goggles they provide to protect your eyes, when you are inside, and these wrap around sunglasses when you are outside. Yesterday morning (Saturday) I went for a quick checkup. My eyes tested at 20/15 in both, which is perfect vision. (20/20 is actually slightly less than perfect, in case y’all haven’t heard the story of the guy who invented that using his slightly-imperfect assistant as his guide.) I went to the park and watched, with the clear goggles on but still, with my new eyes!, the birds and squirrels. The day of the surgery I mostly slept all day or just sat there with my eyes closed. I’ve worried something could go wrong. Until about a month out, when one is allegedly fully healed, it’s not really ‘over’ — and of course the closer to the surgery (particularly within a week) the bigger the risk. My left eye isn’t healing as fast and is slightly swollen and bugs me now and then. Doc says it’s pretty normal and as long as I keep taking the antibiotic drops and keep the eyes lubricated with these tears, it should be fine. Being the neurotic Virgo I am, I still worry like hell about this. I woke up last night and it hurt like crazy. Before that it had once itched like crazy — having your actual eyeball itch is a very novel experience. I reduced the brightness and contrast of my monitor and spent nearly all day yesterday on TKR computer stuff, which made me kinda mad, because I didn’t really want to but it was pain in the butt social politics stuff I felt I had to deal with before it got worse, and it actually required as part of it scripting some pages and writing up some policies and correspondence. I never did finish the solo-session page that is so overdue… later today I hope. Meanwhile, I really want to rest my eyes so I am going back to bed. Maybe I can meditate, or view for the Mission for this week. I’m getting used to the goggles, but I’ll be glad when I can ditch them. I’ve been hoping, before and after my LASIK eye improvement, to see this as a metaphysical allegory: that I am improving my ability to SEE, to be more aware, on many levels, not just my physical eyes. It could happen! ;-) Mar 05
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 19 March 2006 A friend of mine (without whom I might never enter the modern media world outside the internet) sent me some great shows on DVD. One was a TV/VCR capture of an old show called VR.5 (stands for Virtual Reality). Lori Singer stars, she does a great job. (Remember her in Falcon and the Snowman and Footloose?). Adam Baldwin co-stars, though I admit I can never tell all those Baldwin brothers apart. Too bad the series didn’t last longer, his character was heavy on the longhaired pretty-boy (and damn he sure was…) with a Bill&Ted Dimwit overtone, that character could have been written into something way better. Anyway, some other neat people co-starring now and then as well. The first one was a bit heavy as it was setting the series up. As the episodes went on I was so enthralled I actually sat and watched 13 episodes back to back. I can’t believe I did that. Hell, being off the computer that long when I’m not working, sleeping, showing or driving is a miracle in itself. But I watch very little in the way of movies (and we don’t even have local/cable on the TV’s) so that was a big deal for me. That show was so ahead of its time. This was in like 1997 they aired (which means concept/build happened before that). The Matrix, Sliders, Millennium, to some degree owe little pieces of thanks to this show exploring some concepts they picked up and ran with. What was coolest–and this may have been its doom (it was on the SciFi Channel) was that after the rather implausible hardware connect, from that point on, it is all about ‘the subconscious’. Tying heavily into peoples’ past, present and future, it managed to sort of include dreams, archetypes and symbolism, issues with memory, identity, reality, and a hefty dose of psychology 101…. all mixed up, which is basically a viewer’s cocktail. Because of that, every experience is like a whole set/reality of its own; Lori proves you can dress her in any imaginable way and she carries it off. Some very interesting psyche stuff there and some unexpected ideas as well. I super highly recommend it. What a great way to spend my saturday night. To think I was going to work on everyone else’s websites. Not happening! It’s morning now and I’m ready for sleep. Mar 05
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 28 August 2005 Everything you see is faking you out. But what you don’t see is faking you out even more. I was inattentive just now. I was reading through PhP code, attempting to figure out how I could clone and hack a cool blog plugin someone else made, to make another thing out of it. In the back of my brain while I wasn’t paying much attention, I was thinking of an Aikido master I once met, who in an introduction of his art to our Judo class, showed us how our ability to lift him ranged from physically impossible (the man was unmoveable stone) to easy (he was a little guy and light as a feather). This was running vaguely through my brain sponsored by a Swann quote (mentioning “Ahkido” as I think he wrote it) that had just flashed by earlier on the blog. The man had said if we were interested we might consider pursuing Aikido at some point. I never did learn much about that except one could ‘imagine’ themselves as lighter or heavier. So as I was reading through code I was half-daydreaming, and then all the sudden I wasn’t daydreaming any more; it wasn’t “mine”. It was more like a real dream except rather first-person. I was sitting on the ground, on a sort of mat which had sticks on each side, like in 3rd world countries or the old days, people might be carried on. Two young men were on each side of me, with others looking on, and I showed them this ‘trick’ of changing ‘how heavy I was’ to them picking up the thing I sat upon. I would have them go away for a few minutes between each attempt. Someone asked me, “Can you put it into simple words, to explain what you are doing with your mind? How do you change your body?” And the me-in-the-daydream-that-I-was-not-running (go figure. Who was running it?!) was thinking to myself, “That is the wrong assumption. I did not really change my body. I changed their experience of my body. But how do I explain that?” And finally I settled on something, and heard myself saying (to translate),
Just as that ended, my mind kicked in and realized all this had taken place like “someone else’s life that I was sitting in on.” I thought to myself, “What a wonderful insight!” After this morning’s meditations I was hoping that I might be more open to perceptions such as psi throughout my day. I suspect I was consciously thinking of precog for the most part. I wonder if “sudden insights” qualify. Mar 05
Archived from the former firedocs blog. 25 August 2005 He says the 500 mile walk across Europe was too easy. Of course, he’s only 73, and as he explained, he overtrained a bit with the daily gym and weekend hikes. Yeah . . . that happens to me all the time. A White Russian; child of the generation of escape. An observer once said that meeting Alexander made him suddenly aware that he was from the lineage of nobility: tall and graceful, with a ‘class’ and honor that imprints anybody with half a wit. Born in France, schooled around Europe, as a teen he left to Argentina when his mother agreed to marry a man there. While he and his mother were on the ship crossing the sea, the man died, leaving them to land with nothing and nobody in a strange country. He lived there 14 years. Got a college degree in journalism. “Played football (soccer) and chased women,” is what he says of his youth. Eventually, he immigrated to the USA, with essentially nothing. His wife once told me that he’d walked miles each way to work hellishly hard for pittance on the longshoreman docks of New York. It’s hard to imagine. When I met him, he was entrepreneur of a tiny company: a perfect idea ahead of its very imperfectly-timed market. Before that he’d been CEO of a successful publishing corp. (college textbooks for math and statistics, Duxbury). A white collar executive in the San Francisco area; a long way from the longshoreman life. He sold his firm to a larger company eventually, which in turn sold to a bigger fish. Not a bureaucrat, being a number didn’t appeal to him at all, though. He believed internet and “interactive” education was the wave of the future, and hiring his favorite statistics author to help develop “online education” he left to try it out. It was early 1990’s when his idea began; the mid-90’s before it began in the physical. It was late 1999 when Dr. Jessica Utts, the Managing Editor, sent me an email. Many years prior, I’d laboriously HTML’d some papers for her, which in 1996 had to use teeeny little graphics for every special character and they were statistics research papers no less. I did it for free when I was temporarily very poor, in exchange for getting the article, one of the most worthwhile scientific reviews of remote viewing in print. She asked me if I’d help, I was in a good space to do so, and so by Christmas, I was buried in thousands of FrontPage coded frameset files, every page and nav with its own unique javascript. (There is a special hell awaiting their former webmaster for my suffering, if life is fair at all.) Alex handed me autonomy and left me to finish and open his company alone — on Y2K. He was going to be in Cambodia. He’d waited all his life to take some vacations, wasn’t getting any younger, had planned it long in advance, and wasn’t going to put it off merely because after years of work, he was opening his computer-based company on the most frightening computer day of all time. I suppose at a certain age, hindsight gives you foresight, too. I worked through Christmas, the world didn’t melt down, and Alex came home and sent me a huge pot of flowers and some postcards from the far side of the world. I’ve grown up a lot the last 5 years. Much of it is thanks to him, who helped reparent me in the ways of patience, a quality I’d not been much exposed to. He put up with the worst of me and encouraged the best. He tried without success to tame my emails into mere novelettes. Like my previous most-favorite boss, the incorrigible Dan McGee (last I heard he’d founded a firm called Oregon Rain), he knows creativity and brains when he sees them, knows competence when he finds it, and never had even a shred of the “you don’t have a formal degree” attitude. They both totally overworked me, yet gave me sincere respect and positive encouragement, and treated me far better than they treated themselves. I’d probably have happily worked to the grave for either of them. Last year Alex sold the online statistics course (the CMS tech of which I built in SQL/CFML) to the company he’d founded and led all those years before. He worked hard to do it in a way that would keep me employed. That nearly fell through, but I managed to slide into a job which has turned out to be an incredibly good thing. But damn. I sure do miss Alex. Feb 23
It was 1998, and I had moved to Texas for a contract at Lockheed Martin doing website design. The people I was staying with temporarily had a hobby ranch, and the man of the house, named Guy, a retired Marine, was planning to kill a male pig for an upcoming in-ground barbecue. Guy was a good fellow, working to establish a civilian life, coming home with some PTSD from having been an active participant in ‘not a war’ that was ‘not in Central America’ for some years. I asked if I could help/witness the pig’s killing and butcher. This completely freaked out everybody who knew me, of course. I was once a vegetarian for nearly five years solely because of my love for animals and my sense of horror about the conditions our food industries imposed upon them. I can’t even go to the animal shelter without nearly having an emotional breakdown about all the little sentient furred souls I can’t rescue and take home. (As an aside, this explains the title of one of my blogs, The 8-Cat Garden…) But it was a guilt issue. A moral issue, the way I saw it. I felt like it was unfair that I got faceless meat in shrink wrap in the store. I felt like everybody who eats meat, just once, ought to have to witness that something gave its life for them. I knew it would upset me. But I felt like it was a sort of a requirement: if a pig was going to die so we could have a barbecue, what right had I to complain that I “had to watch” — surely, the pig had a more legit complaint about all this than me. I felt like you know, if it traumatizes me, then frankly that’s fair. A little surprised, he was, but Guy said, ok, sure. It was getting dark, just barely on the twilight side of dusk, as we were late to start. For a former Marine, he was pretty dense about firepower–possibly he had not actually killed a hog before, as I know he was pretty new to the hobby ranch. He normally hunted deer. To say hogs have thick skulls is an understatement. He should have been using a .44 or so. He used a .22, I think. We went into the fenced barn area and put all of the animals into the barn… except that pig. My heart wrenched. I can anthropomorphize inanimate objects, so you better believe I can project entire situational awareness and emotion onto any animal larger than a caterpillar. I imagined a sense of confusion and dread settling over the varied inhabitants of the barn. I imagined a sense of panic on the hog’s part as he realized that he was suddenly alone in the dirt yard, and there stood the human with a rifle. A sense of guilt for what hadn’t even happened yet overwhelmed me. I nearly started crying for the pig. I felt so sorry about the whole situation. I felt like, if I were him, I would be looking to me, the other unarmed human, begging, hoping for some miracle to occur and save me. Like a spider in the bathtub, trying so desperately to save its own life that even I, terrified of them, save them and put them outside, just for the ethics of it all. I had just been talking to the pig through the fence earlier. Had visited it for a few days in fact. Had another animal tried to attack it, I would have defended it. Yet here I was helping kill it. I wondered if doing so out of deliberation instead of ‘instinct’ like animals made humans sociopathic. Then again, maybe one reason humans are sometimes sociopaths and animals aren’t, is because thanks to the addition of some degree of autonomous awareness, we NEED to be able to shift into that when necessary: like for killing our food, even if we loved it 24 hours before, even if we are personally not hungry right that second, but planning ahead. But I was not about to make Guy suffer me being a wimp about it. So I stood stoically, a rope in my hand for the later hauling, and waited quietly. Guy aimed and fired. It was a perfect shot. Except, of course, that only being a .22 and at a little bit of distance, it did not remotely kill the pig. The pig screamed in pain, a truly bone-chilling sound, and took off running. I stood with my back against the wood of the barn, holding the rope he had given me, my stomach clenched, my jaws clenched, not even breathing in my horror. The pig ran blindly around the barnyard, a frenetic repeat figure-8 of no escape, marking its path in blood. Finally, Guy was able to get a lock on it and shot it again. It screamed again, and now it was — and fairly, I’d say — mortally pissed off, in addition to being in horrible pain and terror. This isn’t good. A fairly large pissed off hog is not an animal to mess with. Pigs are only cute and cuddly when they are not large, male, and enraged. The pig loped around the yard and turned, clearly rushing toward me now. I stood there in shock, thinking as fast as I could, given that I had already completely locked up in trauma. Guy couldn’t shoot it again now; at that point, he might have shot ME, as he was nearly on the other side of the barnyard. I considered trying to run out the little gate, but I didn’t want to let the pig out, because there were farm dogs all over — dogs that travel in packs and most definitely will attack anything covered in blood. The pig. Possibly even me. Marine training apparently kicked in. Boy did he move fast. Guy took three steps running sideways across the yard at an angle and literally leapt into the air, flying over the top of the pig as it ran under him toward me, and landed on him like a wild scripted TV wrestling stunt, a big serrated hunting knife in one hand, his other wrapping around the pig’s neck to hold on, which after faltering once under his weight (though he was a fairly thin fellow), instantly started half-dragging him forward. The pig was now really screaming. Blood was gushing all over the pig, Guy, the ground, and the pig was still running toward me. Guy pulls himself forward and with his right hand literally starts sawing through the jugular of the pig’s neck, trying to stop it before it got to me, trying to kill it the only way left, given the total failure of the gun to do the job. Saw-saw-SCREEEEEEEAM-gush, pig falters, pig resumes dragging, saw-saw-SCREEEEEAM — I think you get the idea. Guy is kind of yelling something at me that I can’t make out over the pig’s screams, as they get closer to me. (This is all happening at ridiculous speed, although my retelling makes it sound much longer.) The back of my head translated all this to, “He is probably saying something like, ‘Get the hell out of the way!’“, but I’m wondering what I can do to help him — I have a rope in my hands, and I hold it tight in my fists, leaning over a little, ready to try and wrap it around the hog’s neck and twist tight while moving to the side if it reaches me, probably futile and dangerous, but the only thing I could think of. But just at the last moment, the pig faltered again and finally fell, overcome by Guy’s weight and its own blood loss, gushing from the neck, bleeding at my feet, as a pool of thick red spreads over the dirt where we are all gathered in a tight little frantic knot by the barn door. Guy is still hanging on to him like a linebacker on the ground with a tackle, breathing hard. He looks up at me, covered in blood and dirt, and meets my eyes for a rather long moment. Forget the pig. Never piss off a Marine. Through this entire event I’ve made not a single sound. Inside my head though, I had a “thought loop.” That is something I’ve gotten at times in my life when I am so mentally affected by something — extreme mortification or fear — that literally some single, simple thought just plays over and over and over in my mind. I couldn’t stop my head. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Guy got up, and took the rope from me, and wrapped it around the pig, tied some special knot I guess, and starts dragging it. I carried the rifle, and we left the barnyard and went around to the front of the property, an out-building next to the house, and he took the pig and hung it up in this area where he normally skins other things (like deer I think). Guy went to clean up a little. Silently, with every muscle in my body still tensed, my stomach feeling like iron, I just stood there and looked at it for a long time. It was chilly outside, not that I felt the temperature. Its head hung down, with a big terrible gash at the neck, and as blood ran out in a small but steady stream onto the dirt, thick steam rose up from the gaping wound where body heat hit the air. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But as I stood there for quite a long time, a curious thing occurred. My perspective started shifting. I felt it happening inside me, like a change in awareness of some kind. I began to realize that for me, it was not the pig anymore. I no longer felt like, “This is the mangled body of the pig I was talking to yesterday.” Rather, I felt like, “This is a carcass.” I no longer had a sense of spirit, of identity, of sentience. It just seemed like meat now. *** The next morning its butchered carcass went into the barbecue pit. I didn’t really like the taste of it though. I never much liked pork aside from bacon and sausage (though I’ve learned to like loin) and I dislike anything even slightly gamey. If that death experience didn’t get a lot of nasty chemicals running through it, nothing would. I feel that spiritually, I brought that trauma on myself by basically feeling that I deserved trauma as part of this event. I certainly got a little. I do wish the whole death had gone better, for goodness sake. For the pig’s sake. And even for Guy’s. But I don’t feel guilty. And the odd thing is, I haven’t felt guilty for eating meat since that night. We are hunters. Animals are prey. If we were not killing them, something in the wild would be. If I had to, I would hunt. And while I would be sorry it was necessary, I would not feel guilty about doing it. PJ P.S. I was reminded of this experience thanks to a post and comments over at Tracy’s “Fear and Loathing in the Kitchen” blog. (Which seems almost appropriate for the subject matter of today!) Sep 04
This began as the 8 Random Things About Me blog-tag. Special thanks to Online Christian, Regina Wilshire, Breadless Mrs. B and Diet Pepsi Girl (?blogless?) overlapping the same tag, it is now the Buncha Random Things About Me. Hmmmmmmmmmmn…..
OK I found even twice times 8 exhausting for some reason, so I am stopping there! Tomorrow when I get off work I will go find some victims other bloggers to tag. ;-) Aug 31
Hey! I AM alive. Hard as it is to believe some days. Right now I am working like 8am to 2am. It’s nuts. So I don’t have much time to write and it’s kind of hard to formulate ANY thought, let alone a decent blog post. But I will be back soon! I have several major focuses in my life which tend to take up about 98% of my attention when they are present. At which point, everything else falls away. I go through these focuses one at a time. And when I am with focus X, everybody in focus Y and Z think, “What on earth happened to her?!” and my friends get irked at me and so on. I guess the reality is that I am a chronically over-committed sort and I can only be with any program “cyclically”. Alas, that seems to include an eating program. I’ve been ignoring Lowcarb for awhile now but AS OF MONDAY 9/3 I am back on a 12 week plan. I have a nifty spreadsheet for that as well as one for general tracking that I will link on my next post in case anybody else wants to use them. I haven’t had any money for awhile (when I say that I am being quite literal) but I get paid tomorrow so can finally go shopping for REAL FOOD. Not the carbfest nightmare (Ramen is 6for$1) I’ve been eating while in temporary poverty. I know, some great bloggers have exampled how LC can be done on a budget (Regina at Weight of the Evidence) has more than one good post on that) but I don’t think I budget well enough to do it on twice that budget. It’s a good thing I have a job is all I can say. Meanwhile back at the… er, mental world of PJ, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the stuff I blogged on some time ago regarding society bias against fat, and “fat activism” and things like that. It really moved me and made me feel quite differently about my lowcarb public stuff than I used to. I eat lowcarb–not as often as I should–because for me, it is healthy, it tends to avoid gluten, it definitely avoids carbs, it increases my protein, and I like the food. I am much healthier when I’m eating lowcarb. I feel so sorry for people who, when they diet, are really doing nothing more than being miserable and underfed for awhile but otherwise see little benefit to it besides a slow wasting of muscle that reads on the scale as weight loss so they’re happy. Totally aside from weighing some insane amount I am too frightened to step on the scale to rediscover, I would eat low carb because it’s good for me in so many ways. It isn’t really about weight loss. Yes, I *want* bodyfat loss — absolutely! But I want about a dozen other things just as much frankly, all of which matter too. Putting the focus on ‘weight loss’ first, is kind of misleading because it ought to be about bodyfat, not just pounds. Second, it’s kind of overbalanced because it ought to be about health, not just size. And third, it’s just incomplete, because LC is as good for me for other reasons as it is for gradual weight loss reasons. So I think when I get some time (in a day or so–by end of this weekend latest I hope) to come back and blog properly (I have several taggings I must respond to!), I think I am going to take my weight off my blog. I’ll keep it on my journal on the forum so anybody can see it if they want, as I link to it with my screen name from here; it isn’t that it’s a secret. Recently there was a big drama (actually I think it is quietly continuing) about an eating plan that is, off-paper and into the hands-on practice, basically a starvation diet. Well, I really want the focus on this blog to be “healthy lowcarb yummy stuff and life”, not, “the contest to lose scale-pounds by eating a certain way”, and partly that’s because this mentality about “eat this way to lose weight!” is really part of the same problem that drives people to starvation diets to begin with. If the focus were on what is healthy for you, what makes you feel good and strong and mentally clear and physically able, then there would never be any confusion about why living on 400 calories a day might be ok. I say this as a person who regularly, if not forcibly on a lowcarb eating plan, lives on sometimes that many calories a day. That is why I’m hugely fat. I ought to be a walking testimony-of-terror to anorexic groups about what mucking up your metabolism in the most serious way can do to a person. So I’m not saying I don’t understand. Eating is inconvenient and time consuming and in general a bother unless I have time and interest. If someone fed me, I’d eat all the time. When my laziness and busy-ness (I am over-”focused” as attention goes) has to compete with food, it often loses. So I am no saint on the food front. I’m just saying that the whole focus on butt-size compared to what goes in your mouth is really part of the problem to begin with, that causes people to starve themselves or live solely on cabbage or all kinds of other bizarre and stupid acts of hysteria to deal with fat. And meanwhile, it means that even the people who should most support the acceptance of ’size’ in our society, no matter what it is, are basically playing the same game as those against it, when the primary focus isn’t “Hey I’m healthy and happy and isn’t this eating plan great” but rather, “Here’s how much of that nasty ugly weight I’ve managed to lose.” Maybe in reality we shouldn’t congratulate people for losing scale weight–but for improving their health, which is just as hard-won an effort for people who do this in ways like removing cream from their coffee, or getting off gluten-containing foods, or improving their vegetable intake, as for people who do it by “officially losing weight.” My point is that the whole concept of an eating plan is life-wide. It shouldn’t really be about your butt. It should be about your health in 1001 ways, your longevity, your quality of life. Person X who is eating broccoli and roasted chicken but not losing weight if that’s the case, is working JUST AS HARD on improving his life as person Y who is eating pepperoni and frankenfoods but losing weight on the scale. A focus on health would circumvent a lot of problems and put the lowcarb focus where it belongs. I believe this issue of putting the health goals first and weight issues second is the way it ought to be, and I plan to do that with my exercise blog as well. Which I forgot I even owned until recently. Damn, I am such a scatterbrain! Can I blame this on eating all those carbs?! :-) Jun 16
Well there’s been quite a few studies so far that have made it clear that not getting enough sleep can reduce your cognitive function (read: your BRAIN, man!), decrease the strength of your immune system, impair performance on a myriad of skills tested, score higher correlation with all kinds of diseases mental and physical, and contribute to making you fat. Since sleep deprivation’s been the cornerstone of my life for the last 18 years or so, I find all this very interesting. My little shoulder angel says, Imagine how different your life might have been if you’d slept more so your brain had worked even better, if you’d had more energy, less fat, and been healthier! My little shoulder devil responds, Yeah, and you wouldn’t have got a friggin thing done, either. So recently, Cheri Mah of Stanford U authored a paper on a study done on six basketball players at Stanford, healthy student males. To make a long story short, they measured these guys for sprinting times and free throw accuracy on their normal sleep schedule, and then on one that included “as much extra sleep as they could get.” The abstract is totally unhelpful about how much this is. 15 minutes more? 3 hours? 6 hours? Well anyway… “more.” Perhaps the full paper has how much more. When getting “more” sleep, sprint times were faster, and free throws were more often accurate. The players also said they had increased energy, better mood during playing, and less fatigue. Wow. Beautiful! Sleep’s the best drug since sleep. I’ve seen this referenced on a few blogs and websites, including Krista’s. I decided to make a note of it here because the last week my body has been demanding a FULL night of sleep. If I don’t get it, I have very little warning before my body will just crash in the day, and I end up sleeping on my lunch hour and after work, totally screwing up my schedule and, of course, resulting in my not getting stuff done I had planned. I understand that at 41 — I’ll be 42 in September — I’m not a spring chicken, and sleep deprivation and all-nighters and things like that get way more difficult as most people age. But my body’s utter DEMAND — and taking it whether I’m agreeing or not — for SLEEP accompanies my beginning to work out. And I’m not even working out all that hard! I realize timing can be coincidental. But I don’t think it is. I think my body is basically knocking me out flat before I have a chance to stuff sufficient caffeine down my throat to keep us both awake — me and my body ;-) — all night so I can “do stuff”. So I’m not getting much done. But I’m sure getting more sleep! Jun 07
And here it is. I now have 52 goals and a year to accomplish them. I’m convinced if I am focused and remind myself of them often that I can get a whole lot more done in my life than the alternative — the normal “life passing by” without attention! In no order, so I can shuffle them without having to renumber later. :-) Health and Fitness (6) * shake off the burden of at least 100 more pounds of body fat. * be able to walk three miles at a moderate pace without stopping. * be able to ride 30 minutes on my exercise bike (any level, 80rpm) without stopping. * be able to do my kneebend-holds for at least five minutes. * have the muscle to do at least 8 squats without harming my knees. * establish enough habit where eventually I can say I have exercised every day for two months. Commitments to Others (7) * SM’s birthday present from 9/06 is getting a little old. How bout sending it? * K’s ebay to germany is like four months overdue. 6/19/07 * Send all the promised disks to S, given all the stuff she sends ME, sheesh. 6/19/07 * E’s shirataki noodles are aging in a box by the door. Send already!! 6/19/07 * clean up and sell printer-toner-etc. (worth 5K or so) for at least 1K, owe A half of the result * C’s website is broken, the database interface area. Fix it. * Either quit fully or finally do the new T site for C. * get M’s project finished programming and ready to open * transfer RW’s site to the PF 6/19/07 Medical (6) * get the kid to the dentist for pre-braces consideration * get the kid to doc and referral for minor surgery to remove skin tag * get myself to dentist and get tooth fragments removed House Stuff, minor (6) * get pot rack hung up in kitchen * replace hallway thermostat with one that has a display that actually works * assemble slant-desk and put in room. * add shelves to the walls in the kid’s room to deal with stuff. * add high shelf on one kitchen wall, to store food books and vases * get some kind of alarm for the big garage freezer so if power goes out I’ll know Finance (2) * Establish an actual budget, especially for food and kids’ clothes, and really good tracking system for all income. * Come up with a payment plan for all debts, no matter how pathetic, including some saving, and stick to it. Family (1) * Work out a detailed chores list for kid and be a hardass about making her learn some responsibility and dependability. House Stuff, major (10) * patch bathtub, or put in a cover-tub, or… * get a motor put in the giant attic fan, get it to work * replace bathroom sink-cabinet with something that fits * replace kitchen under-sink plumbing with something that works * make a ramp up the cat window of the garage * get drip irrigation set up for backyard garden * paint my bedroom * paint the living room * paint the kitchen and finish painting and replace cabinets * tear out carpet in weights room and clean and wax floor, whatever its nature Organization and Parsing –Hobbies, anomalies study (1) * get boxes of CD/DVD media sorted, all the massive uploading to FTP done where needed, database software created and data entered, and then disks stored or given away so they are not in boxes sitting around. –Hobbies, music (3) * figure out how to make my musical keyboard work again. * Find a decent place to store keyboard and other various instruments that have no place * Move the three guitars, amp etc. into the exercise room or living room perhaps. –Hobbies, sewing and crochet (2) * use at least 50% of all material to sew something useful; get rid of at least 25% of the rest of it, so the storage is not so much stuff. * get rid of all the lovely yarn I’m never doing anything with. Use one of the trunks to store the last of the material with. –House, General (9) * go through all the tubs of ’stuff to do something with’. Get rid of as much as possible. Put the rest AWAY already. * go through all remaining books. Give all away that I can. Condense the rest into minimal storage space. * make ceiling anchored hangers for various candle holder presents * give away or sell huge 1200 air conditioner in garage * give away or throw away stored Y2K food in 5g buckets stored in garage * get ex to take his boxes, books, etc. out of here * when finished painting (…) get rid of the ton of painting materials, paints, etc. in garage * get rid of or move all the stuff on the 2 black shelves in living room * get all new media onto media tower. Use TV center if more space is needed. If there isn’t enough space, consider getting rid of some of the VCR tapes. …and last but should be first: * Pray. EVERY DAY. Longer Term, Post 1-Year Goals * New refrigerator * New carpet * Invisalign for me! (clear braces) * Eventually, skin surgery, but that’s years down the road with low bodyfat% Immediate 1-3 month goals: * Get weight/squat cage put back together 6/17/07 * Come up with several pairs of sweats for outdoor exercise… make or buy * Sell enough stuff… save enough money… whatever… to get the kid & me a small non-inflateable (we have cats!) pool for the summer * Save money, deposit, pay for half, go on vacation Sep-Oct * Fix exercise bike, if it has a problem Jun 07
“If you want something to get done, give it to the busiest person.” Have you ever noticed that when scheduled, more stuff seems to get accomplished? Do you ever have those times where you go through an hour, a day, a week or weekend, a month, and it seems like not a whole helluva lot actually got done in the end? I’ve been thinking about a variety of motivational menus along these lines; there’s a whole smorgasbord of spiffy slogans and precise little plans that one could use to schedule their life as well as German trains. I was looking around my house earlier. You’ve heard the saying, “the walls talked back,” perhaps. My walls probably would, but they are muffled and gagged by the amount of junk stuck in front of them, waiting for something to be done. My house projects, life projects, health projects, kid projects, garage projects, and other “goals” are starting to stretch into the horizon of infinity. And if I’m not making a ton of headway on them, perhaps it is because I am not really trying. I am not constantly reminded of them. I don’t have any actual schedule for them. They just become “wishes,” lost to the binary oblivion of blogging or the neurological randomization of daydreams and unfulfilled plans. It’s time to expand my horizons, increase my recognition of my own potential, and explore the increased ‘attention’ value that reminder and planning for goals brings. So to this end I am creating The Fabulous 52. Also known as, “52 accomplishments I will get off my ass and do within the next calendar year, because I rock and I deserve to do that for myself.” These have to be possible — and reasonable — for happening within a year from now. Nothing that will take 2 years in any sane guess, or will require more money than 3 years of saving could come up with. They have to be things I control, e.g., I can’t count my kid’s hopeful weight loss in there no matter how much I want to help her, that’s her goal not mine. It can be anything from a construction project to a spiritual goal. There are 52 weeks in a year. How much is it to ask that I “average” accomplishing one thing of importance a week? (It can vary of course, I might do none on the list for a few weeks, then cover a dozen in the next couple.) If the things I would put on my F-52 list are not worth having some priority, why are they on the list? It needs to be stuff I really do want to get done. I can add and remove things from the list over time. The important thing is that I take the time to MAKE the list and to POST it somewhere, yes ON PAPER ’cause I’m a luddite, in my house, so I can SEE it. And to make a weekly habit of briefly reviewing it. 30 seconds a week to review. How hard is that? So the list takes time? — how much time do I spend on the internet? I have time to make a list of what is truly important to me. So next up, soon as I get them worked out (or most of ‘em anyway), is my Fabulous 52 for the next year of my hopefully productive life! May 16
The lowcarb internet world is amazing. You know, I’ve been on the internet since 1993, pretty much full time plus, not counting that from 1995 till present my job (on TOP of my other time on it) has been internet based. I am as world-weary street-wise a net punk as they come. I can hang in playgrounds that would send most people screaming into the night. Nothing phases me at this point; nothing shocks me. But the lowcarb internet world has surprised the hell outta me. I swear, I have never — NEVER, in all these years — encountered a community of people who were, across the board, so GOOD to others, so encouraging, so sharing. I’ve been in projects that I personally paid thousands and worked years to support and had maybe 12 people out of thousands even bother to be kind let alone say thanks. And yet, in the lowcarb world, the minor effort of my journal and this blog and whatever I might post on lowcarber.org has brought more kind, positive, personal response from people, via email or my lowcarber.org journal or this blog, than I have seen in any other field online in 14 years combined. People I would have zero in common with outside of “food choice” have shown me more kindness and humanity than plenty of ‘online buddies’ I’ve known for a decade. I don’t mean my buddies are bad to me! I just mean that people in lowcarb are often exceptional. They go above and beyond. I feel like I have met more people worth making friends, “real friends,” thanks to lowcarb than any other source of people. Despite the debates and social politics on the forums, still you find huge numbers of people being warm and compassionate and supportive on the journals than I’ve ever seen in one place before. I’ve seen support forums. Even for food. But lowcarb seems different. Could it be that unlike other eating plans, lowcarbers may have existing issues with food or emotions or life, but they are not starving and miserable at least, like most lowfat lowcalorie plans? I don’t know what it is. I just marvel at it regularly. My email address is thedivinelowcarb at gmail dot com by the way. I just realized today that I didn’t have it anywhere on this blog. I guess that would explain why I get so many messages through my lowcarber.org account even though it’s about this blog. I’ve gotten half a dozen private messages and several on my LC journal, in response to my ‘Hideous Truth’ post. Several of the private messages told me some of their own stories. It’s really amazing what deeply wounding, mortifying things people have to suffer when seriously obese, and the amount of sheer grim determination to get through it they have. I am starting to think that really overweight people may be some of the strongest people around. I think if you plucked the average thin person off the street and gave them the kind of issues the severely obese have, they’d go postal, or show up in ER within a day. That lowcarb not only seems to congregate so many good people, but seems to be an avenue for genuinely improving (and even saving) their lives, is truly inspiring. May 05
The other day I realized that my life already belongs to RV. It’s not really even a question. It’s not something that still needs to be decided. That’s been the way it is since the instant I heard of it. It was mine. I was there, it was here, and the whole process was just a matter of the details from then on. I’ve taken breaks, mostly from the “online field” that I’ve let drive me crazy — something which recently I think I kind of moved past fortunately, finally — and I’ve been chronically time-limited and sleep-deprived pretty much the entire period I’ve been involved with RV, so I’ve sucked at viewing anything even when I tried, and sucked at trying consistently anyway. Even a little consistency kicks up my results, and the moment they start getting interesting I have quit viewing. Repeatedly. It’s been a 12-year cycle. Thursday night I made a radical change in myself. I made a committment. Or rather, I accepted the one I already made. I’ve always been committed to Remote Viewing in general. But often I’ve felt that my own viewing literally was in competition with my “accomplishing something constructive with larger results,” and that has changed. Changed a lot. That night, I made a commitment to myself. To my own viewing. I’m amazing, you know. It’s just a matter of time until I can prove it. ;-) I wrote in the Firedocs RV blog that night, in the post “I AM a Universal Translator”: Screw objectivity. I know my path now. And Remote Viewing isn’t actually the end goal, funny enough. RV is a bridge to something so much bigger, to the conscious interaction with self, with the very nature of reality, that it’s indescribable. I’m sure the rest of my life won’t be enough to work all that out, though I feel my archetype and aspect RV are a start for me. For now, RV is my doorway, and it is my road. I’ve always been on it. I just didn’t get my act together to be aware enough until now; to take responsibility for where I am… and where I need to be. I’m not here by accident. It’s not that I’ve been wandering. I’ve always been on the road, but I’ve been so busy worrying about whether the road was well-paved for others that I’ve completely neglected my own focus. That is changing now. People can walk that road or they can fall off the highway or never find it to begin with, and it is not going to be my concern anymore. I’ll document my own journey as well as I can, as my breadcrumbs on the trail. But the journey is mine and it’s long overdue. May 03
Rykah got a pair of Calvin Klein deep wine (red) glasses. She can now actually see half the world she could not before. She loves them. And she looks adorable in them, truth be told. Thank the gods that somewhere between her father and my genetics, she got a blend that is nothing like either of us. Last night she came into my room and sat on my legs facing me and said very seriously to me, “Mom, I’m going to tell you something about me that you don’t know.” Sure this was going to be some major revelation, I was appropriately serious. “What is it, honey?” I ask in my best you-can-tell-me-anything voice. “My favorite candy flavors are blue rasberry and sour apple,” she says with great sincerity. I pause. “Wow,” I say, while searching for what to actually SAY. “Cool. I’ll keep that in mind.” Then she wandered off to do something else. You realize that when she decides to tell me something of monumental import, she will probably mention it, in passing, while running out the door to play someday. Off and on for — well, her whole life — I have always tried to make psi seem like a normal, no-brainer, no-big-deal kind of thing. We live many lives, we ’sit in on’ other identities when we dream, we leave our bodies when we sleep and sometimes when awake, when people die it’s only their body that dies of course, dreaming things that happen is pretty common, deja vu is our memory of future-awareness, and being deliberately psychic like in remote viewing is just another normal thing, it just takes more work to get the hang of for some people… like mom. The other day, enthused after overhearing me talking to my tasker about a kind of data I’ve gotten a couple times that I think is cool (a graphic icon that is representative of the primary form+dynamic of the target), she decided SHE wanted to do RV. “Naw, it’ll bore you, it’s more an adult thing,” I told her offhandedly, which was sure to make her insist she absolutely had to do it right this moment and nothing I could ever say or do would change that. She wanted to start with my envelope target pool. I didn’t think that was such a great idea. It was a pool of nearly 1000 that I made back in 2000, there are probably at least 700 left. The pool has literally everything including some pretty grim and grisly tasks here and there — but not that many statistically, compared to the whole pool. She was upset I wouldn’t just let her grab one and try and I didn’t want it to be a drama so I said ok, fine, they may not be appropriate but we’ll try a few. She wrote down person or people, a few colors. The target was a gorilla. She wrinkled her nose in disgust–it took one session to make even my ten year old detest animal targets, something most of us had to do a lot of before we took that view!–and then she tried another. blue. puffy. water. a few other things. The target is a heavily blue photo of a giant air balloon taking off over a lake and mountains. So she tried another. A train. A… tunnel or something like that. Some other data. The target is a train, or part of one, and the destroyed stationhouse nearby (war pic). I suggested she stop but she wanted to do more. So she tried another. She thinks it’s a plane crash. A lot of blood. She sees at the other end of inside a plane a tall man, black top to bottom in black-bandages, with a long shape in his right hand, like a crutch. I think to myself, this seems like her archetype for death (with me it’d likely be a skeleton with a rifle; with some, a black hooded figure with a scythe). There are people all over she says. She thinks something bad happened there. The target is the definitely losing trench of a civil war battle. With an environment rather similar to what you might get in a plane actually: looking down a row, a fairly contained shape with high sides, toward the other end, and bodies all over the place mostly to each side. “OK, no more target pool!” I say, breathing a sigh of relief that she does not seem upset about this (her taste for violence and gore even in media is tougher than mine for sure), and I tell her she has to use the dojo from now on. So she registers as ‘Rinnie’ in the dojo, and does a session. I tell her not to make it public unless she feels it is worth looking at, as otherwise it mostly just dilutes the list of what people wade through and then sessions that could really get useful input are more likely to get missed. She’s delighted that she gets a couple colors right at least, and posts it, and is more delighted that she gets some comments on it. “Valentines,” is what my buddy Eric once called RV Galleries “comments” on a session, and I agree, they feel like that. ;-) So she does another. She gets a few points close enough and she posts that. She gets a few more comments and she’s delighted. That seemed to pretty much exhaust her interest in the subject, so whether or not we will see her after this, who’s to say. I have no interest in pushing or frankly even encouraging her to psi, given how it messes with the stability of pretty much everybody on some level eventually. She’ll choose it on her own or she won’t. No matter to me really. Which reminds me that when I began in RV I was the product evangelist, but now I am completely UNevangelistic about the topic. (My web work is based on providing options for people already interested, more than recruiting new folks.) In fact I recall that many years ago, I argued fiercely with a couple friends who felt that probably only about 1/2 of 1% of the population was all that appropriate for it. Now I think that number might be a little high. “There is nothing like working HARD for a living to make a man a conservative,” is a political saying; it sort of applies to RV too I think. I get less willing to assume on people — or on any part of the process — by the day. Sometimes she tells me that I know nothing of her life or perspective, that I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be her. I try not to giggle over that, because I’m sure she is right, but that usually only comes up in moments of angst, like why I won’t let her wear makeup to school for 5th grade, even though most the kids in her class do. The generations — and their bodies — get older when younger, by the year. But it’s another day in suburbia. School pictures came out, progress reports came out, and they both went well for her in my opinion. Someday she’ll look back on this and I wonder what she will think, of her mom who spent her whole waking life outside work and kid on RV for a dozen years before the kid decided to try it, and probably for a dozen more years at least after. She got glasses so she can see the world around her, finally… and she got a dojo login so she can see, well, the world that is not around her, too. Maybe by the time she is 21 she’ll be doing ‘deep mind probes’ (…that term makes me laugh out loud) the way most of us sing in the shower. Mar 20
I’m just a griping fool today. Sometimes the degree of my obligations compared to my time, energy, or ability to meet them, is so ludicrous it’s like some kind of cosmic joke. The song of my life is a real Amy Lee number: not just words and lyrics for me, no sir. More like an angst-ridden rock opera Dolby soundtrack for the life of a drama queen. I just want to view. My work is more than full time. My kid takes a vast percentage of my available time; even just a long shower is a big treat for me. That’s more than I get most days. And what time is left per week, well, attempting to do something constructive (like improveing TKR’s free viewer tools) more than sucks it down and needs more. Never mind other family, or a life of any kind, let alone ‘time for me’. But the real bitch is that all I want to do is view. Everything in my life feels like one more obstacle in the way of me having sufficient time to view. Cyclically I get up the determination to tell the world to stuff it and focus on me, but it always passes far too soon, and I’m enmeshed and embroiled in other stuff. Mostly the fulltime work, single mom theme. When not that, then the do- something- constructive- for- RV- online- theme. I wonder when my Theme Song Guy is going to write one that is actually for me. Meanwhile, I improved three things in TKR last week, which (here’s a shocker, not) means I half-broke one of them, and completely screwed up something unrelated by accident while I was at it. There’s a reason programmers work in teams with alpha testing, beta testing, etc. — as opposed to one sleep deprived person coding fast as they can on a weekend or at 3am and then putting it online right after since well, the locals have to be the guinea pig beta testers, there isn’t anybody else for the job. Right now I am so sleepy I can’t sleep. I swear. I’m literally over-tired. My eyes are sore and squinty and I think I see more hairs turning grey by the day. I want to curl up but I promised the kid some mommy time tonight, so we’ll be watching some kind of amazon unbox. We watched the Veronica Mars third season recently. I guess today we might watch some of the sci-fi. I should be working on fixing TKR but I’m so exhausted I don’t think my brain is up to it anyway. Oh yeah, if I could quite whining for a minute, I could mention that Joe McMoneagle and Joseph Chilton Pearce will be speaking on March 23rd at a conference dinner held by the Rhine Research Center in South Carolina. See his blog. Meanwhile I am seriously deprived of best-friend time as well which is a bummer, since a lot of my sanity is based on good people who help balance me, since I apparently have none of the quantity of my own. And I owe so many people a variety of things like websites, book reviews, things I need to mail, I’m starting to feel like I should really review my budget, figure out where I can scrimp insanely, and try to come up with enough money to do a few hours a couple times a week of some local college girl helper. When I moved here 7 years ago, for the first couple years I had a 15-30 hr/wk personal assistant. There is probably something inherently snotty about me that I think I feel perfectly justified in having servants. Since I don’t have time to write more than one out of like 50 people I owe email to I decided to just write one thing on my blog. I figure my friends will read it and thank god I am not talking to them. Mission accomplished. As soon as I get some SLEEP, assuming a decent portion of that happens soon, I’ll be viewing again. Though lately I seem much more of an expert on how not to get around to it. Zzzzzzzzzz. Dec 04
Been on trains, planes and automobiles. Nearly home now. In a few hours I get up and catch a plane for home. I like the train, with a couple exceptions; in general, it’s neat. Below is what I was blogging earlier, but couldn’t get online to post until now. o0o just after dark, 3rd December 2006, somewhere in Illinois I am nearly alone in the dark. A few minutes ago it was light, and the train was rocking and rolling along, and everything seemed normal. Then all the lights went off, and in a sudden eerie silence, we slid to a stop. Not a planned stop. It’s dark outside, yet somehow the trees are recognizeably black-on-black as figures in the night. A very odd, muted wailing-whine has begun, two strands of anti-harmony that made the other few people in my small train car giggle nervously. They say now that the power has gone out and the engineers are working to restore it. The world outside seems like a lonely planet, with not even a moon to reflect on the featureless snow. My novel is no fun in the dark, so I turned on my computer to blog. I’m feeling a bit entranced today, maybe following on my attempt to seriously meditate last night in my sleeper car. Today I feel as if I am a halfling, caught between two worlds. One world is Mundania, as Piers called it, where all things are logical, the ‘real’ world as we pretend to know it so we’ll feel better thinking reality is really that small. The other world is something else, something filled with shapes and shadows, with astronomically improbable convenience of circumstance showing up just on time and then receding into the unmanifest like that is normal. It feels as if there are vague but living energies reaching right into my body, yet somehow a few steps toward the astral part of it, tugging on me, calling like a destiny I recognize as part of me but can’t seem to remember its name. All day today, thinking about returning to my ‘normal’ life at home, it has felt like something in a dream. I have the oddest sense, as if all of reality is a total illusion, a game that we are all playing, supporting each others’ delusions, psychically arranging to only meet or talk about the points of reality we think we have in common for the most part. It feels as if there are two very distinct worlds: one on the surface, that we think is the normal one, but is actually an interesting veneer, woven like a group dream out of the strings of time. The other, the ‘real’ world, a vastly deeper, infinitely more complex world, is what is really ‘real’, but which the liliputians on the surface of my reality dismiss as dream and fantasy. I try not to pay too much attention to it. I don’t want the Lilliputians to know just how different I am from most of them. I don’t want them to know I am not a character on their safe surface world. My deeper roots only frighten people. My adulthood is a testament to my dedicated attempt to learn how–and successfully–convince the people around me that we share an agreement about reality. I felt the pull today. I haven’t felt that since… 1993-5, my Bewilderness phase. I felt the pull of “coincidence I can count on.” It was pitch black. “Give me light while I type the password,” I thought, only to instantly have a light from some engineer outside flash in my window on my keyboard. The moment I finished typing it was past. Are those precognition… the arrangement of the present to fit the impending… or? I wasn’t surprised somehow. I have been talking with my body today. My beautiful friend. My earth elemental that has been so unrecognized and unthanked most of my life. It is indeed the ultimate Warder: the strength that carries me, defends me, anchors me in this world. My body has been my best friend lately. Ever since I nearly poisoned it by taking that medicine I was allergic to… I have been suddenly more aware of it, aware that maybe I am a selfish shallow brat not to have realized that my body has its own destiny, its own life, its own joy in living, and my ignoring it and abuse of it is so unfair. Body and I have become much closer the last day or so in particular. Today I’m distracted. I want to know truth. Back in that bewilderness era, I knew it. I could feel it, because it was so strongly inside me that I could recognize the distortions, distractions, confusions and evasions that stripped truth of its natural beauty. Nobody would believe. It doesn’t matter. I could feel ‘the red thread of truth’ as I called it, in what people said, in anything I read. I could separate truth from intent, another subtlety. It occurs to me to wonder why it is that the moment I launched into remote viewing well over a decade ago, the massive conscious psi that I had accepted as simply novel and inexplicable, actually went away almost entirely. It is as if a person who dreamed throughout their entire daily experience, suddenly was told, “Look here, how fascinating–you can dream when you sleep!”–and suddenly, something about the mental model of that, caused dreams to cease except during sleep. Did it wake my ego left brain up to protect me? How did I go from being impossibly psychic as thoroughly as I breathed, to studying psi yet having almost none of it manifest anymore, except in occasional dreams or experiences? I think… I think that is what I need to make a decision about. It is my focus, as the Narrator made clear to me years ago. You get what you focus upon, as Seth said. I always do. I am always intense. But I let my focus get distracted and diffused and join the drama-queen of surface reality. I’ve used “doing” things to cloak awareness of “being”. Until now, I haven’t felt like I had the energy to live the degree of self-integrity that I maintained in those years, that allowed me that kind of awareness. The effort to maintain awareness of every thought, to pull back from every tempting daydream, and from all the small sarcasms of daily life, was huge. It was a bliss of awareness, with the exhilaration of courage, and the unbelievable exhaustion of constant internal change. I was so happy, and yet, I recognized the sheer amount of work that it took to hold that state of mind, state of being, state of grace, was so much more work than most anybody would be willing to invest. I miss that, for the first time in a long time. [later] So, as usual the power was out in our train car. Nobody woke us to tell us we were at the kansas city train station. I woke up just in time to see the lights, realize where we were, get my stuff and get out the door before the train drove off with me to somewhere else. The Kansas City “Union Station” is apparently the biggest in the country except New York. I feel about it rather like I do the Atlanta airport. On one hand, you have to admit that it’s gigantic and it’s got tons of stuff and so on. On the other hand, if you make the mistake of feeling like the important thing is getting on a train or a plane, then your feelings maybe different. In Atlanta, even with trams and moving sidewalks the place is so huge you need to wear running shoes and just ship your luggage UPS to your destination instead. At the KC union station, once you finally get around the big area with the little train and all the shops and diners and such, and get yourself into where the actual train ticket counter etc. is, once you have done everything and there’s nothing more to do than get on or off a train, THEN you get to go outside, in like -2F degree weather, and walk about a city block down this sidewalk, and then this lonnnnnnng flight of steps (there is an elevator fortunately), and then down this lonnnng sidewalk beside the train. Should your nose fall off from the freezing cold prior to that, there is nobody to help you. Train cars, like hotel rooms, are always the farthest possible distance they can be from wherever you start. It’s like some kind of cosmic law. I found myself blessing myself for having shipped my luggage home, all but my personal laptop and a small carryon. It was still hard work! I was waiting to see if my kid or my friend came online. After insisting I couldn’t leave her, the kid has disappeared for half an hour now. My friend is probably working or busy or something. I should go take a shower but I’m freezing here. I think I’ll see if the radiator in this cheap motel room is capable of anything more interesting than what I feel. At this rate I’m going to put my coat and scarves back on and just sleep in my clothes. Meanwhile… being away from home, although not a huge thing as I worked during it, was at least ‘away from home’ which was a nice break. If I could just get enough sleep now, to feel human and strong, I can begin the priority shift I came to while away. Must sleep now. Dec 02
I’m a big fan of actor John Cusak. Of his sister Joan, as well. My other favorite actors are Bruce Willis, Brian Dennehy, Nicolas Cage, Chow Yun Fat, Tim Robbins, and I know I’m forgetting a couple… and some who’ve passed on, like Raul Julia and River Phoenix. Anyway after planning to see it for like five years I finally got around tonight to seeing John’s movie “High Fidelity.” His character was slightly similar, but rather more seedy, than the one he plays in “Must Love Dogs”, a more recent movie. He realizes at this one point that he’s never really made a commitment (to the woman he loves). That he always had one foot out just in case. And that because he was never really fully committed to her, he didn’t really focus on the positive potential of the future, either, but just sort of lived day to day. Jack Black is a helluva singer. I hadn’t realized. It made me think about that for a little while. About how our plans and dreams for our future come in two categories: idle fantasies, that we engage in for the pleasure; and creative construction, because what we’re daydreaming about is something we have committed to. So it really comes down to committment. If you don’t have your oars in, you’re not going anywhere except with the stream. I think I need to decide exactly what I want and don’t want in life and make a commitment to it. Dec 01
I used to be ambitious. I wish I knew what the hell happened to that. Day after tomorrow I leave for home. For some reason that really depresses me. I mean you would think that getting home, my own bed, my own car, would be great. I miss my kid, I miss my cats. I joke that I’m on vacation but I have worked full time plus done a lot of tkr and other related stuff so in reality I have not had a lot of time here. I just realized a few things today. Like: * what is wrong with me? both IG and Nero have given me specific exercises to do dating back to January (for IG). It’s been like a year and I still haven’t done them. With ambition like this, it’s a wonder I’m not still a slug. Wait. Never mind. * what is wrong with me? I keep making these halfhearted “someday I will make a real commitment” sort of wishes related to RV. When am I going to tell enough of the world to stuff it that I can view every day? I said once that any avoidance of RV for more than 48 hours that does not involve an NDE is denial. (How can it be denial if I admit it? My brain hurts.) * what is wrong with me? I’ve spent two weeks near the largest natural mineral hot springs in the country and haven’t managed to go there once. I can’t believe it. In reality I spent a small fortune, four DAYS in transit RT, all so I could do very little less than I do at home, except I didn’t have the taxi-mom duties. Sigh. It’s like all the ambition I once had, all the intensity, and commitment, has faded into some wish-I-could-nap, chronically sleep deprived, kinder-gentler lack of concern. It’s gross! Well, so… what’s wrong with me. I have work overdue and I’m blogging. I am supertired and I’m not sleeping. I need to meditate and pray and instead I’m typing. I was thinking the other day that I don’t really need to worry about remote influence, not that I ever did of course, but it seems to me I’m far more dangerous to myself than anybody else is. I left my ambition on a distant shore, I guess. Now, I just feel like… I’m treading water. Nov 30
Today I was looking at a friend’s photo collection and stopped in amazement. There was this photo that in one part of it, looked exactly like I recall from a dream I had years ago. It was a place with columns, and a squared pool, and shallow steps leading in, and in the moonlight. I’d forgotten the dream for years. In the dream, the pool was both a pool and a place of baptism. But a man of evil was living among us and he had a tendency to take people out there late at night and drown them. We would find their bodies in the morning and nobody knew the killer, but I suspected. Unfortunately, one night, he managed to kill me. But I had the last laugh. I came back, a ghost, I refused to leave, until I got through to the others that the evil was him, and they did away with him. We watched The Mummy II later. In one scene in this place I can’t remember the name of, there were all these huge round columns. It totally reminded me of this amazing dream I once had where I was in the middle of something that looked and felt just like that but the columns were like cohesive water (like the special effects in that movie ‘the abyss’) and when I would put my hand on one, gold light would spark where I touched it and shoot up from my fingers inside it and ‘rebound’ all over as it went up and then went across this really high ceiling, as if the entire enormous structure were made of that material. Then there was this other scene that was so much like another dream I had, this one back in ‘94, that I was stunned. In the dream I was standing in formation with a group of people in the sands of egypt, and this big 50 foot tall gold egyptian statue-man who was like our leader in some way rose up from the sand in front of us, pointed his finger at the far side of our group, and this huge blackness like a liquid shadow spread over the sand and crept upon us, coating us, we leaned away but could not move for some reason. Somehow it made a permanent change in the person and was visible and yet… it was not visible, too. Later in the dream the group and I were discussing what we should do now that we had this effect. The effects were things like, it made us need to live during the night instead of day, and it made us want to eat fruit, and I had this strong correlation in the dream of bats that sleep upside down, eat fruit, and come out at night. We talked about maybe trying to sleep in trees quietly but I said no, it’ll never work, people will see us and freak out and shoot us. When I woke up I was disturbed by the ‘darkness’ symbol in the really vivid dream, and the dreams I had with the big gold egyptian guys (and the sphinx, which was quite diff in the dreams–way bigger on top, diff looking, had a mate somewhere far away, and was sentient, a long-term “watcher” designed for that role by unusually tall thin people) were always unusually… “powerful” as dreams go, with an odd degree of ‘tangibility’ to them. Anyway. I just thought it odd that today I would see three highly unique things each of which totally sparked memory of a different dream all from many years ago. Nov 28
Tonight I watched this really depressing movie called ‘The Constant Gardener’. A tale of third world country and endless big corporation evil white man injustice. In other words — it’s just another day. ‘White men are the antichrist’ as some murderer once said before his death sentence was carried out. Sigh. As if all men aren’t equal in capacity for harm to others (and self). There are so many subjects I have studied, from a little to a lot, in my life. The three most demoralizing subjects I ever looked into were the AMA (American Medical Association), the issue of child immunizations in the USA, and Mad Cow syndrome. These being topics I wish I could surgically extract from my mind for my peace of mind. As Joachim Phoenix said in 8mm, “there are some things you can’t un-see.” I can’t change it; it’s too horrible, more than most can imagine; so I don’t want to know. We were talking after the movie about issues of the world, and the effect it has on a person when you start believing that ‘everyone’ is corrupt and that every government is evil incarnate and the world is just a bad place. In most, including me, initially it generates rage, a desire to fight it, to “do something.” In me, after that point, I realize what cannot be done, and work to let go of it, since negativity within me does me far more damage than most anything outside of me. In many people, though, they can’t let go. It just “eats away” at them from the inside. I can only conclude that it is my duty to be of warm heart and good intent and to HAVE FAITH, solely because that is what the world most needs and most lacks. It is easy to be hard. It’s easy to be cynical, to be cold. That’s the copout, the easy way, the ‘default setting’ of anybody living in the real world… eventually. * When I was 18, I was more cynical, cold and deadly than the average assassin. I hadn’t had any strong emotion in years. I was studying martial arts and firearms because I wanted to be sure that if anybody had the folly to beat up on me again, now that I was finally old enough to be free, that they would die for the error. I was borderline sociopathic, maybe a little more than borderline but as I had not ‘acted out’ any poor behavior (yet), I was still free. As one of my survival skills, I had many ‘layers’ of intelligence that I no longer have, that I let go of when I let go of the self-protective stuff that created them. But at the time, I was smart enough to know my problems. I knew how bad off I was, and looked for the only tool that seemed strong enough (and free enough) to help me. And I healed myself. It took years. It took more self hypnosis and conscious-dreaming meditations than I care to remember. I broke through and was able to have emotions again; I laughed maniacally and cried hysterically back and forth, separated by fits of sleeping deeply, for a week when it happened, and was bubbly inside and prone to tears over anything for a couple of years. My life, which had been a black hole of memory, came back to me in fragments, assembled in a spider web that conveniently makes me ‘feel like’ I remember my life up to age 18 when most of it I probably don’t. You are what you make yourself. I have a depth of ‘nice’ I couldn’t even conceptualize then; faith, and hope, and a warmth totally absent from me then. I’m a human because I decide what I will be. Not an amoeba; not stimulus-response only, although that often happens initially; but a conscious decision of what I want to be in this world. * Cynicism is the black tarnish that comes on the coin of experience. It cannot be avoided in the intake. One has to deliberately rub it off and refuse to let that cancer of the soul, that killer of hope, take up any residence inside. I believe there is an ongoing energy best called ’spiritual warfare’ that relates to this as well. It is amazing the world’s in as good a shape as it is, considering some of the ‘awareness’ I’ve had of the darker elements of spirit — and its evangelistic crusade to sway humanity toward a vibration that is more lucrative for other species. Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls has some lyrics in a song I like that relate to this:
Archangel Michael gave me ‘faith’, years ago, when I prayed for it regularly. It was a gift without measure. I don’t have as much anymore, or I don’t pay attention to it as often, that is my own doing. But when I really close my eyes, and center, and ask myself, what do I want to be inside? What is my self-definition? I feel it again. I have a couple of posts on the dojoblue blog (which is not going to exist much longer I think) that fit here:
In a world of cretins and creeps, thugs and thieves, there are still many beautiful people and things in our world. There are people who do not define themselves based on what is on the outside of their world, but based on what is inside them, instead. They don’t let the hard reality of the dark side of humanity pollute their self-definition. I will not be just a ‘reactor’. I refuse to be a “moral casualty” of the side-effects of the nightly news. I will be warm, and love at every opportunity, and generous, and as virtuous as I can manage in the circumstance of my life. There used to be a saying, ‘You are what you eat.’ I think it should be, ‘You are how you love.’ |
Over at 
I’m actually a fan of “fantasy art”, ranging from the 
My archetype meditations are going ok. Eons ago I did these daily and in an altered state. It’s ‘Virtual Reality’ at that point. I think when Jung talked about this stuff, nobody really understood just how “real and autonomous” the world inside you can be. Or how the work done on real-world issues can cause radical “change in reality”. I’ve had a problem ‘accepting’ things like ‘guides’, which I think make me sound totally retarded. This would be easier if they didn’t insist on showing up anyway! (My inner world really has no appreciation for how uncool it makes me sound in my outer world.) My fear-resistance to anything novel is constant. I saw this ‘demotivational poster’-inspired art that perfectly described the feeling and literally made me laugh out loud. In the meantime, I guess at least my head is self-entertaining. 
Once I had this really intense dream with ‘The Four’ (spiritual stuff). It involved some bizarre ritual in a cave high in a mountain, then the Senior being some kind of doctor saving my life in a really brutally-medical way, then my being put in a rickshaw (?!) and pushed at full speed down a mountain of crazy switchback paths on the edge, and then finally put in this shallow boat with my hands crossed and sent floating down a river. When I woke up I had the weird overlay of “The River Styx”. 
I was looking for a comic I couldn’t find, so never mind that story, but here’s another I found when looking. It’s the people behind the window and the construction workers on the ground laughing till crying that for some reason got me. Twisted and sick. God I love 
This is a painting by Luis Royo. I think it is brilliant, not just beautiful, but archetypal. To me it is like nature comforts technology… the ancient comforts the modern… as if the man is “carrying the burdens” of his gender, his culture, technology and time. I can’t articulate it very well but I find it very moving, insightful in a way that is very deep and spiritual. You gotta see 
The light is awesome. The base circulates water and keeps it a certain temp and turns the light on and off in cycles depending on the type of plants you select. They give you ‘nutrient tablets’ to put in the water and there’s a little red light on the panel that flashes when it needs more water or more nutrients. Even a simpleton could use this to grow seedlings or whole small plants. Here’s a pic from earlier today, this is exactly 3 weeks of growth with my own seeds (a few herbs, a couple flowers, a variety of paste and cherry tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, baby-style eggplants, Chiqi huckleberries and sunberries). The stems are really robust. I am supposed to already have snipped all but one seedling from each tiny podlet but as you see I haven’t had the heart. I gave them extra nutrients, hoping that would help, and I will transplant them before long.
Meanwhile, my boyfriend (how I love that man-o’-mine!) just sent me a copy of a book I’ve wanted for awhile, a ton of information on Herbs. I haven’t had time to dive into it yet but I’m the kind of freak that actually reads encyclopedias — even as a kid! — so I can hardly wait.
I was telling someone how the kid is growing so fast it is honestly difficult to believe she’s not older. OK, granted the face is a bit young, but look at this chick and tell me if she doesn’t look 16, even 20 years old–she’s already developed like I was at 17! For godssakes! She is 12 years old! Terrifying.
That stack of books from just below her elbow are my Remote Viewing lab notebooks. Did I ever mention that I get lab notebooks customized to say ‘Remote Viewing’ on the front? Am I like a TOTAL “RV Geek” or what?!
I discovered a new online music source recently, it’s called grooveshark.com. It is much better than imeem.com which I used until now. There’s more music and the interface is much simpler. Free of course. 
I’m currently listening to Suzanne Vega. This song is “Blood Makes Noise” which is from her 99.9F album that is kind of like rock & roll — my faves are first two albums which were serious folk, albeit slightly depressive in places. “In Liverpool” is a nice one, this is the first time I’ve heard it, I might go buy whatever album has this one on it. I really dig her stuff, mostly simple guitar songs. I think this is the first pic I’ve seen of her actually wearing makeup. Normally “totally plain” is kind of her trademark.
Oh yeah. At right is my faaaaavorite book title of the week. I’m thinking, if I die, where will I have Amazon.com ship the book??
At which point, the ton of data, like the iceberg under the waterline, can “put itself together” with the rest, and you get a different perspective. Once a viewer gets feedback, and has about 3 days to “integrate” the knowns with the data, their feelings about what the session told them tend to be very different than their feelings before or right after they get feedback. I used to attribute this to revising memory, but now I actually think it’s a lot more than that–and I don’t invalidate it the way I used to. As long as the viewer is honest about what is ’session data’ vs. ‘interpretive understanding after feedback’.
I have seemingly spontaneously been hit with a different yet similar set of thoughts nearly every night for a week. It basically says that The Four are interrelated (me and the three other ‘elementals of soul’ as I call my spiritual identity group) and that when I refuse to participate or grow that it affects them, too. I feel like THEY are telling me this. It’s not that there is really a ‘guilt’ involved here. It’s more like… an “awareness of responsibility” you might say. I’m starting to think that meditating with them is a bigger deal than I realized–not just for me.
Life is pretty ‘mundane’ at the moment but I guess I’ll do an overview, prior to future posts about whatever.
Saturday my kid got a cool package from some friends of mine with little Japanese things. I sometimes wonder if a small package of American things would seem as fascinating but bizarre.
Seriously, I can’t draw that well. Not even close. Meanwhile, she made another Anime picture, based on one of her favorite animated anime character, Lucy Nyuu from “Elfen Lied”. She says, “It’s a total failure!” because the character is about 2x too tall to be a “Chibi” (some Anime critter).
Which reminds me, it isn’t often that cool stuff falls both on the inside AND the outside, but today I got a couple books in the mail that look really fascinating, both by Richard Webster: “Communicating with the Archangel GABRIEL for Inspiration and Reconciliation” and “Spirit Guides Angel Guardians, Contact Your Invisible Helpers”.
Yesterday was Easter and I got the coolest Easter basket from my stepmom. She took eggs, and punched out a little area on the side and drained the egg, then colored them. Then she took baby seedlings and soil, and stuffed them into each of the eggs. You can plant them right in the garden, you just munch them a bit first with your fingers. Since it’s nearly time to plant out, that’s awesome!
I’m a little concerned that many of the ‘new jobs’ I’m hearing about that my team might take on, are more like tech jobs than PM jobs. I mean, I was hired into that company as a former lead developer for an online college statistics CMS, I have 16 years of webwork experience, 25 years of management experience, from line to executive; I honestly don’t want to ‘make e-widgets’ all day, not that I can’t, not that I won’t, just that I’m already overqualified for my job — or maybe far more accurate, I’m better qualified for a higher level job than the ‘number’ I currently am, and I was better qualified for this kind of detail-oriented stuff 20 years ago, personality-wise — but since I live in nowhere Oklahoma, and have no desire to move to San Francisco where the company is headquartered, no desire to really be ‘aggressive or ambitious’ in this role (first because I was burned out on working hours, now more because I just know I can’t move to CA), I accept all that without complaint. But it would just seem like such a waste for my skillset to be doing widget making. Though I’m grateful to have a job period, so I seldom complain!
In the end, it turned before hitting the ground and went in a slightly different direction. Whew. 
So on the endless list of ridiculous toys that I totally don’t need but decided to spend my precious money on anyway, this month we had: the hamburger patty press and papers.
DA KIDDO!
Although I grant I’ve had an obsession with science for most of my life, dating back to voracious reading of everything about (or from) George Washington Carver and J.B. Rhine in my school years, it really doesn’t get any better than the last near-decade or so, when thanks to my incursion into the study of Remote Viewing and its science, history, theory and practice, I’ve met a whole bunch of very cool people who are both brilliant and down to earth.
Demonstrating a very different kind of entanglement on a California sunny day, here’s a photo of 
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