My oasis
And cave.
Not reaching out
But reaching within.
Agathos daimon holds my heart
Humidity holds me back.
“Coninuctio” “in mercurio”
Planting seeds
Which do not ripen.
Outside my oasis
Seeds dry in the heat.
Inside the cave
I listen to Mercurius speak.
“The desires of the mind
Will take you nowhere.”
I will miss the daily prompts on WordPress. When I created my blog almost 7 years ago it was so exciting to post and read other posts. I do less and less of the daily prompts, but I always go back to do them. Now I find it is all over with. Kind of like a club that goes out of business, or a group of friends that stop seeing each other. Nothing stays the same.
Takes me back to when I was going to university at Los Angeles Mount Saint Mary’s college. I attended 2004 to 2007. I enjoyed all the courses I took. I put 200 percent of my time into learning. I left because the curriculum started to sway a bit off its ecumenical track. There was a kind of pressure stating to form about preferences over whether one was a catholic or not.
I became very strong in my interreligious perspective. I love studying history, culture, myths, and humanity. I was getting very close to finishing the Master’s program. One course forced me to make a moral decision to leave the program.
I was in a very interesting course on spiritual discernment. The course was taught by a Sister / Nun who was rather old and taught the course more like a high school course than a master’s course. I liked her, and she seemed filled with integrity until our confrontation about child abuse. Currently, it was in all the news. The Los Angeles Sex Abuse cases. It was very troubling for me to behold. My 6-year-old and 15-year-old sons where very near and dear to me. We were not attending any catholic church at the time, but I was still angry.
The Sister said to the class that all of this “child abuse ” will make the Church more authentic. I stood up and said,
“…but Sister one child is too many, how can this be?”
Sister looked at me and said,
“That is, your opinion!”
I was overwhelmed. I finished the course with an in-depth paper on the Mandala! I got an A on my paper. Yet I continued to rub the head of the department the wrong way. I was heart-broken. I left. I paid off my student loan in a couple of years.
In 2007 I read this in the news, ” Catholic Church Settles Los Angeles Sex Abuse Cases for $660 Million.” Shocked but I knew then that what I was feeling was my own spiritual discernment. Mine was right on. I wanted to move towards becoming a chaplain. I wanted to work with helping others regardless of their age, sex, faith etc. Yet, there is one thing that is unacceptable. I am glad I left the program.
The end of the semester I left the university and went to my first music event in a long time. I attended the Wiltern Theater to see Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. My hair was to my butt and red. I was on a new path again. I never went back to the Wiltern, but I did revisit lots of bands and shows since then. It was a freeing time of spiritual and musical discernment. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club help[ed me through a rough time of heavy discernment!
Life is about change. Old things die away, new things break into the world. I just wanted to hold on to this memory of two family couches that we got as hand me downs from Marge and Fred. Thank you, we love you and you are both still in our memories.
Neighbors’ blooms under California rain 2018
It was about 11 years ago when Marge passed away, it was on the day of the Mardi Gras. Her things ended up being sold and given away. We were given one of her many couches. A rustic beige couch with embroidery running all over it and white lines moving over it. I sat on it a few times at her home in Tarzana California. She lived in the hills next to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Gazebo where the character Tarzan was created. There was a time when the hills of the San Fernando Valley were once sparsely populated. One might reflect upon nature and come up with all kind of stories to tell.
The couch was originally bought for a trailer. Marge was then married to Fred Ahern. He was an American filmmaker and worked with Alfred Hitchcock and Quinn Martin. Fred and Marge originally purchased two couches for a trailer in the desert. Bullhead city Arizona. Marge did not like living there so they moved it back to the home in the Tarzana hills. They were both my husband’s grandparents. Marge was his maternal grandmother. She married Fred after my husband was born. He remembers when they purchased the two couches.
Fred was a good man and always treated my husband as his own grandson. Today we are letting go of the hand me down couches. The couches supported our two sons and us for about 11 years. Fun years. Colorful years with a room full of young boys, gamers, and sleepovers. The couch has been a good best friend. I say couch but there are two. A long couch and a love seat couch.
When we first put the couches in our home they smelled dusty. Now they are covered with hippy colored blankets, my mom’s knit and crocheted blankets and a hand full of cats, books, and laptops. Right now, youngest son is asleep upon the love seat. I think he is feeling a need to be close to it now. It will be gone soon. He does not usually sleep on it like this.
Today is the day we will put the couches outside for bulky item pick up. I never meet Fred but somehow, he has been close to us the last few years by way of a couch he purchased. I think my husband feels a closeness to the couches. It is not until this morning that I realized this. The sadness and grief of loss is always a sober wake-up call… yes always. Two couches are a connection to my husband’s past. It holds memories and moments before I entered his world.
We purchased two new couches last week. Today is delivery day. Marge and Fred’s couches are going away forever. The couches will be rained upon today.
We named our first son partly after Fred. When the hospital nurse handed me a document to sign for his birth certificate, I surprised my husband by sneaking in the Fred in Johnfred. I was completely in a ‘after giving birth’ trance I guess. I am glad I did it!
Football kitty is not letting go of her couch as a little Bodhisattva might naturally do!?
I am the Siddhartha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ahern
I have enrolled a new image for The Seminary of Praying Mantis. She is Vesta.
“In her role as sister. Vesta represents the principle of focus and commitment. She functions as autonomous self-identity transforming creative energies into purifying and integrating personal circuitry.” ~ Demetra George & Douglas Bloch
Doing some research and writing and thought I would add this to my site… goes well with the other gallery Flipside Fanzine Covers I have up here.
Flipside Issue 1
First Issue issue sold through the mail was to Kristian Hoffman (from the Mumps) ~ Pooch
DATE: August 28, 1977. FORMAT: 8 1/2×7” Xerox PAGES: 20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN 100 STAFF: AL, Lash, Tory, Pooch, X—8.
Flipside Issue 2
DATE: Oct. 1977. FORMAT: Shitty offset, 7×8 1/2″ PAGES:20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN 200 STAFF: AL, Lash, Tory, Pooch, X—8.
Flipside Issue 3
“ART SCHOOL ISSUE”
DATE: Nov. 1977. FORMAT: Xerox, 7×8 1/2″ PAGES: 20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN 100 STAFF: AL, Lash, Tory, Pooch, X-8.
Flipside Issue 4
DATE: Nov. 1977. FORMAT: Offset, 7×8 1/2″ PAGES: 20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN: 300 STAFF: AL, Dean Ded, Larry lash, Pooch, X—8.
Flipside Issue 5
ISSUE # 5 DATES: December 1977. FORMAT: 7×8 1/2″, offset PAGES: 20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN: 300 STAFF: Al, Dean Ded, Larry Lash, Pooch, X—8.
Flipside Issue 6
DATES: January 1978. FORMAT: 7×8 1/2 PAGES: 20 PRICE: $.25. PRESS RUN: 400 STAFF: Al, Dean Ded, Larry Lash, X-8, Pooch.
Flipside Issue 7
DATES: March 1978. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11″ Offset PAGES: 16 PRICE: $.50 PRESS RUN: 400 STAFF: Al, Dean Ded, Larry Lash, Pooch, X—8
Flipside Issue 8
DATES: May 1978. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11″ Offset PAGES: 16 PRICE: $.50 PRESS RUN: 500 STAFF: Al, Pooch, Dean Ded, Lash, Gaby, Pete, X—8
Flipside Issue 9
DATES: August 1978. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11″Offset PAGES: 16 PRICE: $.50 PRESS RUN:500 STAFF: AI, Pooch, X—8, Pete, Gaby
Flipside Issue 10
DATE: November 1978. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11” Offset PAGES: 16 PRICE: $.50 PRESS RUN: 400 STAFF: AI and X—8
Flipside Issue 11
DATES: November 1978. (Flipside Calendar for 1979) FORMAT: 7 1/2×5″, offset PAGES:28 PRICE: $1.00 PRESS RUN:500 STAFF: Al, X-8, Gerard, Gerber
Flipside Issue 12
DATES: January 1979. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11, offset PAGES: 16 PRICE: $.50 PRESS RUN: 500 STAFF: Al, X-8, Angola
Flipside Issue 13
DATES: January 1979. FORMAT: 8‘1/2×11, offset PAGES: 24 _. PRICE: $.75 PRESS RUN: 500 STAFF: AI, X—8, Angola
Flipside Issue 14
DATES: April 1979. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11, offset PRESS RUN: 700 STAFF: Al, Nate, Jill, Paul Problem, Lois, Angola, Gerard, and X—8
Flipside Issue 15
DATES: July 1979. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11, offset PAGES: 24 PRICE: $.75 PRESS RUN: 800 STAFF: Al, Jill, Paul, Angola
Flipside Issue 16
DATE: October 1979. FORMAT: 8 1/2×11, offset PAGES: 24 PRICE: $.75 PRESS RUN: 1000 STAFF: AI, Paul Problem, Jill and Hud (cover)
Topanga is the name given to the area by the Native American indigenous Tongva tribe,[7] and may mean “a place above.”
I learned to accept the major changes in my home town! The food mall galore stands where I once played miniature golf! The humongous blue slide where we slid down for kicks is gone too ! It is invisible now! Instead my mind now views the Chinese sushi restaurant where I sit with my kids ! Maybe the place where wild animals once gathered! Gathering years before us! Underneath lies the multilayered changing earth; holding lots of fossils and maybe our cherished lizard people!
Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why. ~Hunter S. Thompson
Christmas day 2017 no cars in the street… big deal…
Anyway , I was admiring the empty Topanga Blvd! Remnant of my cherished youthful days! The ’60s and ’70s are no more but memory time !
Now real-time with Son two and one 2017
Math computer science music… stress-less….
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/cherish/
Ghoulish is one who delights in the revolting, morbid, or loathsome.
Today is a day of terror and disdain in New York. Another violent attack on innocent people. The last month or so has been very revolting, morbid and loathsome. An attack on the soul of humanity…very sad.
I am not one who delights in the revolting, morbid or loathsome. Halloween is about running around and getting free candy. It is a time of parties with friends and family. The graceful time of honoring our ancestors.
Spirits ascend but come to visit us in the wind and in our hearts and our memories.
My cave is safe and warm with love.
A love song for all of us… what a ghoulish time.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ghoulish/
I have not done this for a while. To randomly pick a book and open the page and read a paragraph. It is a type of trance effort. Some of the worst and best loved characters that I have read or studied live in a kind of trance world. A place of myth, magic and raised consciousness. William Blake, Carl Jung and the pitiful creature known as Adolf Hitler. I am studying Hitler’s biography now. I was amazed how his and their lives moved in the same worlds.
William Blake “Pity”
Blake is a marvelous visionary and artist. He inspires humanity to think and brings beauty in reach of our grasp. Jung heals humanity with his depth psychology. Hitler inverts compassion and goodness. He shows us what the worst part of human nature is. They all use their unique wills to inspire or destroy. Blake and Jung show us that humanity is a wondrous reality. They have dived into their unconscious, and show us luminous stars and a good conscience. We find our history and our future with inspired foresight; what it is to do good for humanity. Blake keeps the best and the worst at bay while focusing his will to ascend to transcendence. Hitler did this too. To understand him, his world, one becomes aware of a trance of darkness; he is a mythologist of national German superhuman qualities…of what it is to be demonically insane! He is without a touch of human soul or spirit! No sparks make him human. Hitler is the trance of a monster! How can anyone in their right mind address such a hideous freak as him with a salute?
Mozart Magic Flute `Karl Friedrich Schinkel
The place of science, math and technology works in our modern age. The worlds of Blake, Jung and Hitler are different. One cannot superimpose our current world upon theirs. Which leads me to the randomly picked book and paragraph today.
“It is one of the wonders of human existence that a person can live a long and happy life without once becoming aware of the reality of consciousness and its ability to transcend the immediate physical level. At the instant of death, will time suspend its rule long enough for such people to realize what they missed?”
~ Pg. 153 Jacques Vallee, Confrontations; A scientist’s Search for Alien Contact.
I love Vallee. He is the scientist that places himself in the world of myth, magic and raised consciousness! He does not ignore art or music either. He rings the heart of a compassion that wants to know. He transcends a nationalist myth blending with Blake’s “universal humanity,” or Jung’s “collective unconscious.”
“In his late works, he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen in to deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.”
~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.
The traitorous Monostatos appears with the Queen of the Night and her three ladies. They plot to destroy the temple (“Nur stille, stille“) and the Queen confirms that she has promised her daughter Pamina to Monostatos. But before the conspirators can enter the temple, they are magically cast out into eternal night.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/trance/
here is some eclipse music….
https://hudleyflipside.com/my-shop-get-my-weird-stuff-here/
Posted in "In the beginning there was a void except for the written word." The Avengers (Band)
Tagged 2017 Celebration, Alternative music, Art, beauty, comics, current-events, Esoteric, Fanzines, Flipside Fanzine, Flopside Comics, Goddess and Home, Hudley Flipside, Mr Fuck, Music, nature, Old School Punk Rock, old school punk rock clothing, Oral Tradition, poems, poetry, politics, postaday, Praying Mantis, punk rock music, science, Solar eclipse of August 21, Subculture, the written word, Underground, Women, Writing
“It was bound to happen, with so much media coverage of ‘punk’ fashion’ Time, Newsweek, New West etc.… well the punk fashion show was held at the Palladium you all know the story…”
Flipside Issue 4 Nov. 1977, Press run 300, 25 Cents.
Devo, Blondie, and my favorite The Avengers played this gig. 1976 to 1979. Those years flashed by, It was during this time, during my metamorphosis into becoming a punk; I remember a couple of times I met Terry. First time was at the Punk Fashion Show….
Looking forward to speaking this Sunday…
https://www.facebook.com/events/810875865754408/
Posted in "In the beginning there was a void except for the written word." The Avengers (Band), PUNK NO-stalgia :Punk Rock
Tagged Alternative music, beauty, current-events, entertainment, Hudley Flipside, Los Angeles Clubs, Old School Punk Rock, Oral Tradition, Punk Fashion Show, the written word, Underground, Women, Writing
Please if you take anything from this site please tag hudleyflipside.com as the source of this material. NOTICE this is all copyright material Hudley Flipside (aka Hud) and Hudley Mantis…. most importantly ‘Hudley’ is the pen name and pseudonym created by (me) Holly Duval Cornell.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
