Our little Sony Cyber-Shot camera takes amazing pictures. This camera was a christmas present to my son from his grandmother. My son and I both use it. It is our creative friend.
The image is of a human shadow that is “one” with a tree nymph of a cypress tree in a garden. Two shadows merge together as one. It you study the image you will notice aspects of the tree shadow blending with the human shadow. A hand and thumb extend out from the cypress. The human is slightly bent to right with a hidden shadowy tree nymph. There is magic in this garden.
Look to the background: look towards the shadowy places in your garden.. and you will find the nature spirits there.
Looking with eyes shut. A cup appears. It shines and comes to focus and out again, as an image in a cloud. Clear then vague, at one moment, and then gone. Life is this way. Rain falls and awakens the smell of the earth in all of her sweetness. This is when the cup is full. As the new moon approaches on the 10th of May one can feel emptiness as if one is holding an empty cup within. The moon then slowly pulls around again and again to reveal her fullness. The ocean waves respond to the wane and waxing that naturally show us the motif of a full or empty cup; and within the emptiness is a void. In this darkness one can find the bliss of creation and dance into fulfillment. The fullness of too much cake with too much frosting, at first, brings the joy of taste and pleasure… only to burden the body with a belly ache,. Expressing the empty cup and enduring days of sadness will be altered by a few full pints of beer with friends and music. To ask the question,
“Is the glass half-full or half-empty?”
It is an absurd question of duality and death. It can never just be one or the other, half-full or half-empty; for it is always oscillating dualistic within the continuity of time eternally. An impossibility to answer. It will be hot and sunny or cold and foggy, fires will burn and snow will fall. This too will pass…as a body & mind feels and thinks, as a sun dies another is born, as also another pint is filled with beer into an empty pint glass…
“The world is my country, all humankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.“
– Thomas Paine
Over the last few months, I have noticed a great deal of fraudulent activities going on. We have many local governments run by gangsters. These leading individual fools are making bad choices. Our local leaders are “wheeling and dealing” money and stealing from “the People.” This is inspired by big corporations as well.
They come into a community and influence little city councils with the “big bucks.” I wonder where the honor is with our local leaders. I wonder if most individuals drawn to public office these days are badly “power-warped” from the get go.
We live in a global community more than ever before in our history as human beings. The above quote by Thomas Paine identifies the real ambition of a true public servant for “the People.” Government should be as a fine membrane; set up to maintain and service “the People.” The above quote by Paine reveals the ideals of honorable leadership of a world, a country, or any spit in the wind local city government.
“To do good is my religion” is what we must hold all leaders accountable to. First our leaders must have a heart, a conscience. Second our local leaders need to understand that they are interconnected to other local governments.
They are the microcosm of the macrocosm. As this applies locally, it also applies to our states and our country.
As a leader one takes on responsibility for those she or he serves. Public office must be an honor of service. This must be the same locally and to the world. Everything is interconnected. We need extraordinary ambassadors that make a vow to serve “the People” a continent, governments, and countries. We do not want leaders who serve only their personal and private interests anymore!!!.
I call to the Thomas Paine’s of the world, countries, and governments to be leaders of “goodness.” Their greatest and highest inspiration must now be, “All mankind [humanity] are my brethren.”
Cheers ~ a toast to our future Leaders, our great new extraordinary Ambassadors!!
They purify the earth for My Lady
They celebrate her in song
They fill the table of the land with the first fruits
On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity The theater is supremely fitted to say; “Behold! These things are.”
This got me thinking about the continuity of an image. An image can fly around through many cultures and not really be understood, even though it sometimes carries great meaning, wisdom and insight.
Hudley Watercolor
As an older woman I find nothing in my current culture to affirm what I am going through, which is menopause. I look at the celebrities and they all practice yoga and get plastic surgery. Most of them all look the same. When I look at ancient or archaic cultures, I see women statues of big bosoms and round behinds. Some are smiling like Sheela-na-gig while holding their vulva’s open for all to see. I get confused.
I cannot talk to my mom because she is dead. My sister raced through menopause due to chemotherapy, so she does not really have to play the waiting game; something a woman goes through, wondering, what in the hell is going on?
(I must say in retrospection that both my mom and sister had their own suffering and were waiting to attend to with what they went through. It is different. I don’t know if either of them wondered about menopause like I do now?) All my grandmothers are pretty much dead or beyond reproach. I do not have a real tradition passed down to me. No old women sitting around the campfire telling me their wisdom women stories. So, I went looking.
My education is rich, and I have studied many cultures. Mostly it is the great erect patriarchs, histories, and mythologies, which are floating around in my brain. Occasionally a matriarch pushes a couple of men out-of-the-way like Cleopatra or Inanna the Sumerians Goddess; but this is rare. The Thirteen Grandmothers of the ancient Native American culture are extremely helpful, yet not really something that has overwhelmingly screamed to my ovaries.
I have found that it is a bird that has come to initiate me into my lost women mysteries. The owl has been with me all of my life, even when I was growing up on a wild hill in Woodland Hills. I remember hearing the hooting of the owl at night. I recall seeing a white owl in my twenties in Whittier while taking a walk on Easter day.
I remember the two owls perched on a tree at the medicine wheel gathering in Santa Rosa. The medicine man told me not to look at them.
“I would not look up at them very long, they are very powerful beings.”
Their eyes were like molten lava. Their image burned in my brain.
At home I have a plastic owl on the tallest metal racks in the kitchen. The kind of owl you see in gardens or on tall buildings to keep the others birds from pooping on someone’s property. The owl is looking outside. At night I can see it’s reflection on the widow looking inside at me.
I have been studying the Eleusinian mysteries for many years trying to understand them. Yes, this mythology is a good one. The archaeology is fab and it is as old and ancient as women. It isn’t telling its real mysteries to a patriarchal culture. I am only finding out now that the owl does have a story to tell by these mysteries.
I have learned that in part of the Eleusinian mysteries women would wear large coins on their heads. They would tie them on their heads and drink fermented drinks as part of the initiation. The image on some of these coins is the owl. I studied this ancient image and then I rendered this image on paper with my own hand.
This got me thinking about the continuity of an image. An image can fly around through many cultures and not really be understood, even though it sometimes carries great meaning, wisdom, and insight.
Who first saw this owl? They saw it, drew it from their imagination, and then a coin was created by casting the metal into a mold. This is the process of seeing, imagining, and creating.
Is it by chance that this image has flown from antiquity onto my wrists as tattoos?
Is there a place where the old women still meet around an ancient fire?
Is the continuity of an image as an owl, the ancient symbol of female initiation, my participation in this waiting game known as menopause? Is an ember of the fire still warm and are the ancient women telling me now their stories …if I take the time to listen? Or am I only melting into goo on the floor, that will soon petrify and with time fly away into dust?
“The more unnatural any thing is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration… But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we were born-a world furnished to our hands that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?
Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are this thing, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to us?
Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?”
Mom’s Rose Watercolor by Hudley Flipside
The above quote is written by Thomas Paine taken from his pamphlet The Age Of Reason. It is in reference to his ideas of Christianity as a mythology. In this time of “prepping” for the end of the world, I find myself comforted by the words of Thomas Paine.
What a brilliant and honest mind. His unique innocence is clothed as an adult with a knowing that prevails in his writing, as he writes,
“My own mind is my own church.”
If anything is to come in the days ahead , I hope like Paine, that we as human beings will let go of our religious mythologies.
If not forever, maybe for a while. See the real world around us as the continuity of nature. That feelings of love and acts of integrity and honesty are the best that we have to share with each other. To be grateful for a drink of water or a smile from a friend or child.
We are our own church and we hold our own truths; it can be a beautiful childlike innocence-a purity of our childhood that is ever-growing with us into our adulthood as something honorable. We are our visions and our inspirations.
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pain / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.” ~ ~ John Keats
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?
by: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Can a fir-tree say anything to humanity? What is Dickinson projecting onto the hemlock and fir-tree?
“The trusting woods” is a statement of observation which is the perfect blending of the subjective and the objective. For a fir-tree to get big and strong means years of growth, trusting that the sun, rain and moisture from the earth will be dependable. The woods have all the natural processes for life and photosynthesis to occur, the seasons and the arch of the heavens brightly shown as confidence in an abundant life. How dependable nature is. Does humanity think often about the great relationship it has with the “trusting woods” for oxygen? Our world economy is rooted deep in the “unsuspecting trees.”
“His …He…He…He” enters the poem objectively. Actions that bring great conflict to the passivity of nature as “His fancy, He scanned, He grasped.” This is the rape of nature. The sixth line of the poem states that,” He scanned their trinkets, curious,” is an objective statement showing the desire of “He” for the trinkets. This word speaks of those things in nature that are precious; trinkets are the jewels of nature. Nature then becomes an object to be “grasped” taken and used for the “fancy” of “He.” He is the “Who” that has robbed the woods.
Dickinson uses the “solemn hemlock” in her poem as the one witness to the rape of nature. An action “He” does against the “woods.” A beautiful poisonous plant is alerted to this action against the woods. The hemlock has a conscience. The hemlock knows it is wrong, and the inward reaction is the feeling of being solemn. “He” is poisonous to nature. This is a contrary idea. It is commonly known that the hemlock plant is poisonous yet, in Emily Dickinson’s poem, the “hemlock” is the face of truth.
Nature has a conscience in this poem, and “He” does not.
Today I watched my beautiful white Himalayan male cat mock pee on the outside brick fence. Male cats turn backwards and then spray their territory.
The male cat does this by vibrating their tail. Mr. Po Po is different because he is a very clean cat. I know he learned the pee ritual from Flash our other male cat.
Flash does the real thing. He marks his territory all over the yard. This is what male cats do. Mr. Po Po is a very intelligent kitty.
I think he realizes that peeing around is a filthy thing to do, but he is respectful of the social ritual and etiquette required of all male cats.
It is an important ritual to uphold. So he mocks his territorial pissing. My son and I laugh about it all the time.
CAIRO – Ema Mostafa, a village girl was shot and killed last month when she dared to spit in the face of the man who groped her.
~ Los Angeles times taken from article by Reem Abdellatif
I looked up the word groped in the Urban dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/, and it means what I know it means but put the word down and dirty on the kitchen table. It defines the word as to touch or fondle someone sexually to get em horny! This man was horny but the 16-year-old woman was not. The fact that she was brave enough to go up against a patriarchal system that she did not create amazes me. I think of all the young women who did not.
Think of all the women who did not…pause! This man was not charged with taking this young woman’s life. So he has done it before and will most assuredly do it again. Am I assuming too much? The article does not speak of any relationship between this man and young woman. The fact that she spit into the man’s face tells us the whole story very clearly.
Cairo Egypt on the red sea part of the Nile Delta. Oh Cleopatra! She now adds to her hidden army of women in the eternity of the afterlife , waiting. This death does not go unknown to the world. Ema is brought up and out to our attention knowing that here in the united states there is an accountability associated with such as action against any woman. She would find justice here, hopefully so!
I see a multitude of Ankhs turned toward this part of the fertile crescent. Forcing them to put down their political beliefs and ideologies and work strictly towards drafting a constitution for their [our] Nation. Why not be horny for peace and communication, where men and women come together in the continuity of history that goes back before this hateful inane patriarchy. CAIRO ! Listen to your women! Something old and new calls this place of women and their young girls and it is not to succumb to the hands of disrespectful men.
Greek word for the undifferentiated mixture of raw elements supposed to occupy the Word-Goddess’s womb before creation and after destruction of each recurrent universe. It meant Goddess herself in her state of “eternal flux,” when the fluid of her womb was not yet clotted into the formative state of solid world. Chaos is expressed in the Bible as the condition of the earth before creation, “without form” and “void.” (Genesis 1:2).
Pg 160 The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker
Anarchy
and
Chaos…
Debating with my family in the living room on this topic of anarchy and chaos left me sparked for writing. Since my early punk days I found that both words, anarchy and chaos, were used a lot. As a naïve youngster I had fun with the meaning of these words into action. Now I see the words used just as naïvely still.
As though the words and their meaning are crystallized. Now I am embarrassed into saying that people who use the words don’t always know what they are talking about.
The “A” for anarchy symbol is more a fashion statement than a knowing one.
I found that one element that the two words have in common is the word organization. Anarchy being the opposing of authority or hierarchical organization. Chaos being the lack of organization or order. Where the two words are contrary or opposed is interesting.
To understand that the key to anarchy is knowing that it is a political philosophy is the key to knowing that it is all about human relations. Chaos is not. This is the opposition between anarchy and chaos.
Chaos is a process of the void, confusion and disorder. Anarchy is based on the social and interpersonal relations between human beings. It is a conversational place.
The image below needs to be looked at sideways! Symbolic meaning: We have the left and right side of our brain. We are good and evil. A point that we need to be aware of from Blake’s perspective…a balancing act that can bloom into a lovely sunflower.
William Blake
William Blake
I can only gaze at the images of Blake’s work in a book, or on the internet … (maybe at times in a museum) and that will have to do.
I have been pulled into William Blake again. This means trouble because he takes me to strange places of my imagination… like no one else can. The game is light and shadow play, and it is real life. I am reading The Marriage of Heaven and Hell edited with introduction and commentary by Michael Phillips. It is good to have his writing placed in the context of history. Analyzing the why, how and who is important in understanding Blake’s work, but for me the real place is always the inward place of the imagination. We all have this place and all we must do is to use it.
This, for me, is the best place to start with understanding Blake’s work. He does get unbelievably detailed though and sometimes it does take a lot of study time to reveal his meaning.
I like this book of Blake’s because there are only a few editions of this work in the world. He did all the work himself. He is an originator of free speech with a fanzine of his own. Including his opinions of current events, his spirituality and esoteric perspective. He mixes it all up in a wild whirlwind of images and does not exclude nature. Heartfelt satire, humor and word play also splash the pages with words that are even misspelled. Re-created words run through his work.
Maybe this was since his hand wrote out each letter of this book. Who knows?
I find it refreshing and I think back on my days as an editor and publisher of an underground fanzine. To print it and get it out was a fast movement in documenting a growing scene. To me the message was more important than the grammar or spelling and the parallelism I draw from Blake’s work; as he is my mentor and teacher, and what we achieved on each issue is similar. He helps me, in a sense; feel relieved from criticism that I have received. That either consciously or unconsciously he is making a statement; He shows cleverly his intentions as in the statement from the Book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
Improvent makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
~Proverbs of Hell Pg. 69
Yes, the words “Improvent” and “Improvement” are the same words with the same meaning. Smart, what do you think? Something to ponder. This is what Blake does best he gets us to ponder, think and imagine.
I can only gaze at the images of Blake’s work in a book, or on the internet now… and that will have to do.
This next quote I have chosen is very current and insightful for our times. He also uses something I call “Nature Politics” in his work.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
~ Proverbs of Hell Pg. 68
A layperson’s notes on the study of William Blake ends here but will continue in the future.
I sometimes think there are two Wagner’s in our culture, almost unrecognizable different from one another: the Wagner possessed by those who know his work, and the Wagner imagined by those who know him only by name and reputation.
~ Bryan Magee, Wagner Scolar
I am celebrating Autumn. I usually do this by listening to Tannhauser. I focus in on The Pilgrims Chorus in this opera. The music feels like autumn to me and contains within it the movements of this time of year.
In this particular piece of music I am slowly brought to a powerful center of my relationship with autumn. I am taken there by the crescendo which is a motif and part of this music. It pulls me to a magical place.
I learned this chorus years ago by the occultist Corinne Heline. Her book, Color and Music in The New Age, first copyright 1964 by New Age Press , INC., is an interesting and mind altering perspective on esoteric Christianity, music composers and nature. Corinne Heline’s agenda is very clear.
I feel one can apply or superimpose what is in her book on any belief system.
When I speak of agenda I also refer to the music composed by Richard Wagner and how this song echos as a Nazi patriotic song that Hitler loved. Well thank goddess he was a human being.
I do not see it that way. Just because a person associates themselves with a particular opera or song does not mean that the same sentiment is carried on by another person.
I denounce Hitler and Nazism.
My focus is on my concept of nature politics and music. This is a continuity of dependable currents that tell us of a seasonal change within the world around us and within us, and it is happening now !
Atheism, Secularism, Christianity, all religions or belief systems in general, art, and the sciences can benefit by this music for the good of humanity and nature and beyond. This is my agenda.
I ask that you enjoy this music as an individual and hopefully it will inspire you to feel the current and spiritual nature of autumn.
I shall now be a little more free and open with you than I was before. I wish we were all true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity.
Anarchy seems so often clothed in the rebellion and intellectual dress of its followers. When I was younger we had the familiar old image of the Dove sign of two fingers held-up and apart as the symbol of peace.
In the punk rock years of the late seventies and early eighties that symbol metamorphosed and became the “V” of vice, vandalism and violence.
I am sure from the outside this seemed radical and rebellious and it was, but within my community of friends it stood for something more.
To me personally it stood for freedom from cultural and religious accountability, but not from what lived at the root of its meaning,
“all true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity.”
It was not laws and dogmas that guided us but a true creative spark to change what pissed us off. It was the Governments that lied to us and the dogmatic churches that belittled and brainwashed us with visions of hell and damnation.
The worst characters to this abomination of their creation being Saint Augustine and the first Christian king from Constantinople, Constantine the Great.
Putting the blame aside, I understand that culture and religion breeds morals and ethics. The most powerful being how we learn these ways of being as an oral tradition passed on from mother to child.
The ethics and morals of what is right and wrong nurtured by love, and this is the best scenario which is based on the bond between family and loved ones.
The goal is to break the bonds of family and so move out into the world as a whole individual filled with integrity.
The above quote from Thomas Rainsborogh’s mouth states clearly the knowing experience of the true anarchy experience. This is the freedom to make the best choice for all concerned.
This is not because we have to, or because of peer pressure.
It is because we are true-hearted, and that we carry ourselves with integrity as a single individual, with or without government, but hopeful that others will follow on their own accord.
In Aurora, Colorado James E. Holmes killed and it is still a mystery why he killed. My focus is not on him. He is an insane young man who because of his lewdness reveals to us a darkness, a shadow that this country must now face.
This is not Anarchy! It is something else and it is as dark and opaque as the sucking under-world. Yet, within this tragedy and drama is the extreme anarchy of a few individuals who cared, in a moment’s time, more for another than they did for themselves.
I am speaking of the ones that died that day to save another life. I am not a political fool for this country, it is nothing like that.
In the chaos of this a hope shines forth …can you see it? This hope best shows us what the anarchist experience looks like.
This is defined as an act for another that is based on the statement, true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity.
I am not saying that one should die for anarchy or die for another to experience this anarchy experience because it can be viewed and achieved in the smallest of choices or actions.
I am saying that my heart is honored to know that within humanity there are individuals who have a conscience and this is the blood of a true anarchist.
In these dark times I am often in a daze of overwhelmedness, today I cried and my heart-felt freedom.
Hold up the beam of light called conscience, hold it up to the Big Wigs, the Corpocracy, the Illuminati, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve… they don’t have a chance.
“Brown and Democratic lawmakers are in agreement on the approach to the tax plan, which would temporary raise the sales tax levels on the state’s tax and levels on the state’s wealthiest residents. They assume more than $8 billion in revenue from those taxes and anticipate extra cuts of more than $6 billion, mostly from K-12 education, if the taxes are rejected. “
~ Chris Megerian The Los Angels Times
Here we go money talk, I was thinking about how much money these same wealthiest people recently made in donations to presidential campaign here in California. We are talking big bucks. I have grown sick hearing from people who say “no taxes” and government rip offs. In the above statement it clearly shows me how the government has to force people to do what is right for the children of this state. Without taxes forced on them there is no money to educate our children. I am sorry but big business and the wealthiest people would not do it any other way. A governments most important element in its power, is in its service to the people. Also to the maintenance of what is created by the people. When these services are cut or put on the lowest part of the totem pole, it is sad. Welfare, healthcare and college financial aid must never even be considered in the equation game of government cuts. These services should be held high as a responsibility by us as the people to uphold and protect over anything else. Any sane person running for the presidency would take that campaign money and give it back right now to the states that gifted it to them. They would say, “Here this is for the people… this is for K-12”. Now, that is the candidate I would vote for. We are not taking sanity anymore..
I see that government is like a fine membrane. It’s function is to protect and serve the people. Kind of like a cell membrane, when healthy all is as it should be to sustain life. Yet, when cancer strikes ‘it is what it is’ and Wall Street is not interested in serving the kids or the people or paying for cancer treatments but it does not have to be this way.
~ Seminary of the Praying Mantis : Nature Politics
