Who’s Soul did Frankenstein’s monster have?

“‘…from that moment [he] declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against [Frankenstein] who had formed [him] and sent [him] forth to this insupportable misery.’”

Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter 16, p. 12

Once upon a time I found the novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, the new Prometheus. I became friends with Frankenstein’s monster. He was not the film version because I looked to the quality of his brilliant soul.

I authored a short story entitled, Who’s Soul did Frankenstein’s Monster Have? I put the story in a folder and took it with me wherever I went. I was inspired and torn by my insight.

I felt I may have understood something no one else ever dared to wonder about. This was back in the 1980’s. Then, as busy, and as careless as a young punk might be, I lost the folder at a Mexican restaurant up-town Whittier, CA.

This loss haunted my nights. Back then backing-up-files was not so easy. This may have been before floppy disks. I did not make a copy of my short story of a monster’s revelations.

I did keep the little doodles about the story which I will share today. I did not misplace the folder. Someone took it and still, has it?

As one gets older time seems to bend backwards. It comes towards you so you can say hello again to those times of youthful inspiration.

I looked through all of my plastic boxes to find these images in my art closet. So glad the doodles were safe and not lost.

My story too… in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford !

Christine Blasey Ford water color by Hudley Flipside.

People are strange when you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted Streets are uneven when you're down When you're strange Faces come out of the rain When you're strange No one remembers your name When you're strange When you're strange When you're strange ~ The Doors

Julie sang the above song to me. We were on the hill playing. She acted like she made it up. I knew that maybe she did not. This song marked a change in the neighborhood. The 16 and 17-year-old boys were smoking funny cigarettes.

Confronting ghosts from years ago and feeling much better.

I am writing this because of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story. Maybe her narrative was not successful in stopping the nomination to the supreme court of Judge K. I believe she told the truth and with great risk to her family and to herself. I admire her honesty. So, in support of her naming those who assaulted her, I will name mine. Mike Hansen and Michael Myers (maybe more). Dr. Ford is free now yet the lies and darkness within Judge K’s being will continue to manifest until it destroys him. Maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually. That is how karma works.

The mid 1970s and early 1980s held wild times. A new sexual revolution that became dark fast. I did not live far from where Roman Polanski was arrested, at Jack Nicholson’s home, for the sexual assault of 13-year-old. I knew the girl who was drugged and then molested. I never imagined something like that would happen to me. Drugs, sex and fun was fundamental at that time. Luckily, my mom and dad kept guard. They were not always interested in school stuff, but they did keep guard. I was protected from the house down the hill. A single mom with an empty nest most nights. Except for the teenage boys.

The endless drug parties were unchecked by the adults in the neighborhood. Michael Myers, no relations to the character from the film Halloween, ruled there. Any girl 13 to 16 was not safe from his advances. The peer pressure was enormous!! Once he was 18 he continued to make his moves. That is where Mike Hansen came to my aid. He was my boyfriend who protected me from the age 15 to 17. Until Mike cheated on me and we broke up. I started going out with another boy who was a friend of my girlfriend’s boyfriend. We dated on and off for about 6 months.

Mike Hansen wanted us to get back together. One night he invited me to a party where he was living with Mike Myers. They lived in an old apartment next to a local Catholic Church. It seemed safe enough. A few friends were over and someone handed me a beer. The next morning, I awoke naked and alone in Mike Hansen’s bed. I did not remember anything from the night before until years later. This narrative gets worse because I became pregnant. As a 17-year-old my voice was invisible. I was confused and overwhelmed.

Pregnant with two boyfriends. It was not a good place for a 17-year going on 18 to be. The bad words spoken, tension and moral pressure made me crazy. Mike Hansen wanted to entrap me into marriage. I said no. The other boy was helpful, but he soon broke up with me. I blamed myself. It was not until years later that the images of that night came forward. Memories became clear to me. Around the time after giving birth to my first son at 34. Yes, slowly it was clear to me. I will not go into the years of grief and despair that I worked though.

Looking back, I remember Mike Hansen was mad at me, so I assume he or another drugged me and let me be raped by whom ever was at the party. I feel that they planned it with intent and foresight. In a sense I felt relieved that I remembered this. I felt sad too for a long time. I did not regret the abortion back then. It was intuitively the best thing to do. I realize that now.

Today I went back to the apartments. I don’t live far. The apartments have expanded. There are more parking areas. The apartments are now secured and closed from strangers. The apartment where Mike Hansen and Mike Myers lived are at the corner of Serrainia Ave and Ventura Blvd. or De Soto Ave and Ventura Blvd. The streets change as one crosses Ventura heading west.

As a kid I knew this area. I walked by these apartments everyday, Jr. High School and later in High School. A few of my friends went to the Saint Mel Catholic School right near the apartments. Across the street, where there is now a Wells Fargo Bank, there was a 7- Eleven. My friends and I could get a Slurpee for 10 cents. Why wouldn’t I feel safe there. It was where I grew up? My dad owned a building only a few blocks down on Ventura Blvd. My family had history here.

Julie Myers was a good friend of mine. Even though her brother and I never got along. Yet, like her bother, I never could really trust her. The late-night stories she told me. I listened to her tell me stories about both her brother and Mike Hansen. They were revealing. They pursued girls. I heard many stories that made me jealous and unsure. Something wasn’t right. I guess I was one of the girls too. I never believed Julie’s stories…. maybe I should have.

My Mentor Tree and Eucalyptus Friend

The tree replied to me today, “I AM WHO I AM.” This is the same whisper I always heard from my mentor tree and eucalyptus friend.

Dad first visited the eucalyptus tree when he went horseback riding in the San Fernando Valley. The late 1940s. He rode from Ventura Blvd towards the dirty hills of the Santa Monica mountains. It is not easy to imagine that there once was a horse stable found near Ventura Blvd. and Canoga Ave.

He told me how he stopped one day under the eucalyptus tree and looked over the valley. Once he saw a for sale sign there, a hill covered with wild sage and wilder nature. My dad made it happen.

His brother was a carpenter / builder and his mother already invested in properties throughout the San Fernando Valley. They made his dream come true. They made it happen for my dad and mom. As a WWII Vet he secured a government loan.

Dad and his brother, Had, created a plan to build a house on that wild hill in the San Fernando Valley. They fought like brothers often do. My dad fought for the large sliding windows that looked over the valley. He also fought to build a house which cuddled around a eucalyptus tree.

I learned to climb that tree as I was learning to walk. The smell of the eucalyptus tree on foggy mornings before going to school or during rainstorms often filled my bedroom. I climbed that beautiful tall tree on my way to the top of the red brick chimney often.

Sometimes to see thunderstorms break across the valley. There I silently sat listening to the sound of coyotes in the distance and viewed lights in the night sky. All this magic still captures my imagination.

Once I left home, I often went back to visit with my parents. The first thing I would do was hug my eucalyptus tree. The seed pods from the eucalyptus are a wonder. Round and cone-shaped with a five-pointed star in the middle. Always a signal autumn was approaching.

Today a walk on a slightly foggy morning at the end of August brought back this memory of a eucalyptus tree I grew up with. I was beholding today to the only eucalyptus tree in my neighborhood. Whispering a scent and showing an aura that took me back to my nebulous childhood.

July moves into August

July moves into August. A time of justice and heat, a time of foresight and deep. For me it is about news… some bad and some good news. I have known this time of the year to be delirious dark and forbidden. Today it has reached an illuminating place of thanksgiving.

Between our psyche and the cosmos is magic. Magic moves between our hidden unconscious coming forth from our dreams. Yes, that Magic coming with psychic foresight of knowing. Real causality or synchronicity does not matter to me. Natural magic! I live all combinations.

Yesterday we went to Naval Air Station Point Mugu. Driving to Ventura from the San Fernando Valley can be harsh on a Sunday. We found a little farming street to follow down to Point Mugu. It romances the beautiful Pacific Ocean. Which is why we were there.

My dad was a WWII Veteran. As kids we enjoyed fishing on the pier that is located on this naval base.

Husband and I sat in our car for sometime. Wondering if we could approach and visit the pier for old memories. We did. A tight solider asked for husband’s driving-license. As the solider was taking the license from husband, I explained my family story. Before you could think we were quickly told to make a U-turn. No good byes or safe journeys.

Point Mugu has since merged with nearby Naval Construction Battalion Center Port Hueneme to form Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC).

We ended up at Port Hueneme Historical Society Museum. A sweet little place that smelled pleasantly old! The building was filled with old women and older history items. Outside the rather small building were many monarch butterflies. Hub bobbing around ourselves like best friends. We were then told the story.

It sounds like a magical potion. Milk weed, Cosmo flowers and chrysalis. It was the story of how someone took the time to love the process of this lovely butterfly. All it takes is a little love and a few nasty weeds to attract the attention of nature’s finest beauties.

Today upon my waking up I enjoyed a very good dream. A dream I have been waiting for since my mother’s death. It was a closure dream. In this dream husband opened the front door to the usual UPS knock. There was another package, another calculus book, or similar book, for the kids. Then we heard another knock on the front door. This time I opened the door. From top to bottom the front door was filled with packages. My husband gave me a guilty look. A pouting praying mantis face.

“It is not Christmas time,” I said.

I pulled out one of the packages. A large white one. A box that might conceal a dress or new pants. Then I saw on top the name ‘Holly’ written in cursive.

“How could mom give me this after her death?”

A wonderful gift from her. That is what mom would do. Write our names on top of our gifts. It was her writing…. I know it by heart!

Today has reached an illuminating place of thanksgiving.

penny candies

I sometimes miss the wildness of the street. Every street corner there were many people hanging out. Most were friendly and handing out flowers. Most eventually grew up and went on with their lives.

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley during the 1960s was wild. All the corner streets were filled with hitchhiking youths. Carrying incense and their innocence. Topanga Canyon was a way to the beach. They moved towards the Pacific Coast Highway.

As a kid I would walk down to Gary’s Market on the corner of Dumetz and Topanga Canyon. My friends and I bought penny candies. We also got bakery goods. We would sit and eat. We sugar gazed at the craziness.

Now I often take a drive to Box Canyon. That place where the Manson Family once lived. I love writing about this place and that time. It seems to be a place that has not been touched by time. It still feels and smells like the late 60s and early 70s.

As kids we walked or rode our bikes there. Not as many cars made the ride or walk easy. There were trees to climb and plenty of friends. We felt safe. Gone for hours at a time! Funny my parents never seemed to worry about us.

It was not until after the Manson trial that I learned to fear the wild places of my youth. Yet smoking pot would always highlight this paranoia.

Charles Manson is dead or is dying. The creepy crawl is not over though. Today I will take a drive-up and down Box Canyon. With freedom there is always danger lurking about. Those corner streets filled with hippies were not so innocent as I thought they were. As I once was. Maybe darkness gazed at us, unaware to us, back then as we ate our penny candies.

Pluto Love

As Pluto movies into Aquarius, it is important to engage the subject. I have a contention with Pluto that is difficult to explain but as a woman I have learned to address him as part of my “animus.” In Jungian terms, the male within me. The rebellion in me is contained in a proper place now. Where love is the foundation of the amber that holds this male power at the edge.

So, I mention these two posts, ‘Pluto Love’ and ‘Electric Honey: The Heart is more than a muscle,” as my understanding or my ‘outward into the world communication.’

Pluto is in my natal 10^th house. Personally, and generationally, I honor this. Love is the key to all of this and needs to be amplified with Pluto.

“To improve the external situation in the world, we must begin by accepting that world as a mother accepts her child; to improve our intimacies, we much extend the same benevolence to ourselves. The acceptance we must cultivate is the same: the emphasis remains on the inner world.

As Carl Jung pointed out,

“The upheaval in our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same.”

We must come home to ourselves with a mothering acceptance, and so give birth to ourselves with a mothering acceptance, and so give birth to true emotion, the basis of all true intimacy.”

Pg. 129 Astrology Beyond Ego – Tim Lyons

Pluto

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies was made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”

– Carl Sagan

I am often confronted by Astrologers and critiqued. As I am not one, I am an esoteric student that has built a relationship with our planets in an extramundane way. As with Venus and Pluto, that pulls at us aware or at us very unaware.

Through logarithms, math, and aspects or otherwise.

For me it is my creative imagination, dreams, and myths. This is my formula or elixir.

I am forewarned by a dream that helped me understand this dynamic relationship. It is ancient, old as the light and the darkness, the male and the feminine or Gods and Goddesses.

Life and death, peace and war, power and truth all play in this drama in our souls, in the world and out in the cosmos.

It is a mystery that we all face… and we all must pass through this initiation of our evolution.

th (22) while back I had a scary dream. I was with a group of people. We were all running from evil monster zombies. The feeling was dread. We found a train and traveled to the country. It was horrid. The thought of death approaching was a sickness in us all. We found a cabin in the countryside. I had my white cat Mr. Po Po with me.

He ran from the cabin out into the darkness of the night. The zombies were there. The monsters were close. I had to run after my cat. Terrified I ran out into these monsters of chaos and fear beyond enduring. As I found my cat. I hugged him. I was confronted by the evil that pursued us. Everything stopped. I looked into death and he said this to me,

“I cannot hurt you with that cat.

You all run in fear and hate

Yet there in your hands is your love

I cannot touch you or harm you with love.”

th (23) was overwhelmed with dread, then fear, and then I felt only my cat’s love. I walked slowly back into the cabin and told the others what happened to Mr. Po Po and me. We all sat in a circle and held hands. We now knew what to do.

e sang a new song.

Pluto and the underworld.
Pluto and death.
Pluto and nuclear weapons.
Pluto and power of the underground.
Pluto and transmutation.

Pluto loves Persephone!

Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30: Act II, Scene 2: “Torna, o bella” (Chorus)

Translated… I hope this is correct!

“Come to the realms of bliss,

great hero, tender husband,

rare example in any age!

Amor returns Eurydice to you;

already she revives and recovers

all the flower of her beauty.”

Electric Honey: The Heart is more than a muscle that pumps blood.

Mana

th (17)

“We know that something unknown, alien, does come our way, just as we know that we do not ourselves make a dream or an inspiration, but that is somehow arises of its own accord. What does happen to us in this manner can be said to emanate from mana, from a daimon, a god, or the unconscious…”

Pg 336 Par 2 Memories, dreams, reflections ~ C.G. Jung

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The yard is the shape of a crescent moon facing west. The cypress trees line the crescent shape that enhances the progression of the equinox in the night sky. Last night walking out into the darkness looking up,

“Hello Jupiter.”

Wings like a moth, or a big barn owl, or a giant bird swam through the darkness towards the south. Very high in the dark sky. A very large bird just west of Jupiter. A foreign site next to the consistency of the progression. All captured within the eyes of this little backyard. The ascending full moon was low on the horizon yet the light-numinosity surrounded the large creature.

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A bottle named Delilah

A bar in the living room and a bar in his beauty salon. Drinks at the Chinese restaurant on Ventura Blvd.

Lights that lit up the bar at Christmas time reflecting off gifts simmering gold, green and tall bottles of colorful liquid. Tall cupboards that he reached for, then pouring that rich golden juice.

Named at a bar from a book while she was in labor. Drives out with beers at the side. Music and laughter, screams and yelling while holding a hand and butter on bread.

Two faces, one happy and one sad over their red brick fireplace. He always reached for that bottle…named Delilah. Jazz playing on the radio.

I thought those bars would last forever; I was happily fooled. They are now gone forever only stinging my memory now!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/brilliant-disguise/

Elderberry wine

Once while working as a Home Health Aide on the East coast, I did a nice thing for a wise old lady. She had grace, experience, and savvy. Her home was a grand home that had been in her family for generations.

In my mind she seemed like Scarlett O’Hara. Now in a wheelchair most of the time she told me stores that I will not share here.

She survived her family and had none to tend to her needs. Her memories were as clear and vivid as her mind, well her past memories not her present ones as much. One story I will highlight is how her father made Elderberry wine. They kept the home-made wine in their basement.

Her home had a spiral staircase, beautiful chandeliers, and ghosts. I focused on the living room and kitchen because this was all the house that was in-use. We were both alone in Rochester New York.

I decided to visit her on Christmas Eve… yes, I visited the wise old lady. I loved her story so much that I gave her a small gift of Elderberry wine. We shared a shot of the wine and that was all!

I hope I never forget her smile. I put the wine up in a closet far from her knowing reach.

The Visiting Nurses Association told me another aide found the wine and accused me of being an alcoholic. In my defense they did not appreciate the truth I told them. I guess I stepped over my bounds, yet I know this wise old lady and her ghostly dad… had a good ole’ family time that Christmas Eve. I sure did.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/nice-is-as-nice-does/

cock-horses

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross. To see a fine lady upon a white horse, With rings on her fingers, And bells on her toes. She shall have music, Wherever she goes.

~ Nursery rhyme

Watching “That ’70s Show” with the teenage son last night took me back when I was actually a teenager at that time. Some of the show is superficially realistic.

There were the pot smoking circles of deep reflection…ha ha. The same record (vinyl) playing repeatedly. Sex was a big deal as well as a girlfriend or boyfriend. The same old thing…my kids have a different experience.

It got me thinking about the time when my dad was asked over to my boyfriend’s house. I was 15 and went missing.

I was gone for two days and no one knew where I was. Even my brother Greg looked out over the valley concerned that I may have been abducted.

Mike’s dad said to my dad,

“So your daughter and my son are having relations.”

My dad gave a strange look,

“You mean they are copulating?”

Of course, Mike’s dad laughed and said,

“Something like that…”

Mike and I were in the room and we were a bit scared. They had found us hiding in the attic above Mike’s parent’s house. Mike had a nice little set up, like a ’70s van with food, beer and pot. We had two days of copulating and I even read a book. Well that was the real version of “That ’70s Show!”

This takes me to the word my dad used, copulating. Tonight, Venus will merge with Jupiter in the night sky. It will not be a Venus Observa!

“Technical term for the male-superior sexual position, which Adam tried and failed to impose on Lilith, and which the Catholic church designated the only legal position for marital intercourse, since it afforded the least pleasure to the wife. Patriarchal societies generally opposed such female-superior sexual positions as those favored by the worshiper of Shiva and Hecate, and by medieval witches who, as the nursery rhyme says, rode on top of their “cock-horses.”

~ Pg. 1044 Barbara G. Walker

Tonight, Venus is doing her magic. Lilith will be proud and a few happy men!! As Jupiter and Venus merge tonight guess who will be on top??

* The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets