I'm A Pepper

omg, watched The Life Aquatic in bed last night and I'm totally delighted. Why hadn't anyone told me about this movie? Or, errr, had they and I just didn't listen (always a good possibility)?

Not a "laugh out loud every five minutes" movie, but could this movie have any more brilliantly crafted comedic details? Could Bill Murray be any more brilliant? I was hypnotized by the madness and need to watch it again because surely there were other tiny hidden details of a mad mind that I totally missed.

This movie is totally worth it just for the acoustic foreign language Bowie songs in every scene. ::laughing out loud:: That was too fucking perfect. Also, the fact that they doled out $600+ Glocks to every crew member but every other object was old and busted was a perfect detail. Ugh. There are too many little details to mention. Ah ha ha ha, but the "I'M A PEPPER" shirt had to be one of the most hilarious.

Gah, I totally loved that movie and have to watch it again because it's like a 'hidden pictures' page and how many other things did I not see?

Surely the most mundane of my posts, but Jim and I were lying in bed entranced last night and I still have that nice glow this morning. That movie and the mad brilliance hidden in ever scene makes me feel much less alone in the world! :)

Visionary

Because you asked so eloquently, here you go:



You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness.
Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connect to your soul.
You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable.
Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings.

You have great vision and can be very insightful.
In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.
Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend.
You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.

Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Now, as you know I LOVE quizes and the like, so you really didn't have to twist my arm once you had directed me to this, but really, are we going to start making my postings here into some sort of *party*?!?! ;)

The Most Beautiful Form of Haiku

You asked for impressions from my trip... so, join me in a tanka?

Free from circumstance,
touch on top of secret winds.
Transcend this and that.

The Sun

So, over tea and chess this morning, while I force him to listen to the acoustic version of "Happy" by Sita over and over again, the boy I tripped over in the book store awhile ago says:

"Perhaps you are simply treading water in a high tide of escalating consequences."

The context is utterly unimportant but isn't that a lovely thing? I shall surely be using that at some point, in some conversation. There's something so beautifully and contradictorily wise, pithy and offhand about it all at the same time.

And after I recovered from my laughter and had kissed him on the neck as reward for such a delightful sentence, I thought about how often people lose confidence in the belief that the sacred power of their original nature attracts the right people to them.

I would advise all to place their confidence in their own Higher Self. Throw off the negative cultural conditioning that keeps you from knowing your true beauty and the power of your charm. Step into the full light of truth so that your deepest motives, principles and mission may reflect their brilliance. People squander so much energy, giving power away to people who criticize or "shame" them. It is my belief that your authentic shining self, if unsupressed and if projected without too much cleverness, will be a magnet to attract special people who truly appreciate you.

Or perhaps I was just too brainwashed by Donald Shimoda in my younger years.

(but, really, when I was walking along reading and tripped and fell over his outstretched legs, where he was sitting and reading, he looked at me so cheerfully and said "I assure you, I did not do that merrily!" Nor was he surprised when I answered with a Sunday's quote and we've been playing chess every since. I pity people who have such encounters and are shy or speechless or awkward or scurry off with eyes downcast and make nothing of the million of tiny moments that make up our lives.)

Seven of Cups

What a joy it is to 'be in love' when you are able to keep your idealization of a loved one in proportion to who that person really is.

Too often, I think, people forget that they need to be careful not to burden their relationships with too much projection, as if absolutely everything should be possible with this certain person by their side. Many people believe that meeting that 'right person' means that all their needs will be met, almost magically. And, so they wait and wait for the 'right' person -- in a stupor of perfectionism.

Why distract the focus of a union with a preconceived set of ideas you thought up long before this person crossed your path? Discover the other in his or her reality. Then spin your dreams for the relationship together -- in the present moment -- and they will have more of a chance of coming true in the future.

And so I learn and forget and learn and forget again. And I offer a whispered little prayer of thanks for those who have stood firm through all my moments of blindness. To those whose images I have allowed to flicker through form after form of my imagining, during times of my forgetting.

Change

There are times when a relationship can no longer work as it has in the past. Change persists despite one's preferences. Often, when releasing yourself from what used to be a close relationship, the overall feeling is marked by a fair degree of detachment. When certain ideas have surfaced which emphasize differences between you, then the basis of the relationship is in question. Naturally there is a change in the quality of interaction. What used to be a river of feeling between you is now a trickle. There may be nothing left to cling to or be sentimental about.

I would have you not think such change of emotional intensity a bad thing. Think of it as you would a change of season: the situation we are in is becoming dormant and the temperature is dropping into frosty zones. You may need to thicken your skin or put on a few more layers of emotional padding, but why choose to allow yourself to be injured during this climatic shift? It is not really about you anyway. It may simply be about change.

I worry for those who fear change and cry over dissolution. It seems that they are second-guessing what the highest and best outcome should look like. It seems that they are the most far gone from being mindful.

Home Safely

Ah, light of the heavens, I am so very tired. Pocito and I were so extremely tired yesterday, after our late return the night before, just mostly slogging through waiting for bedtime, when we were unexpectedly invited to a birthday BBQ. We vowed we would not stay late and then somehow didn't end up leaving until 1:00 in the morning. Such things don't happen all that often because one or the other of the little ones generally melt down much earlier, but it was a very harmonious night. We forced ourselves out of bed at 9:48 this morning because one of the nannies was due at 10:00.

Sleeping so late -- good gods, 10:00 is practically mid day in my world! -- was extraordinarily pleasing. I'm now having a cup of Italian coffee I was gifted with in Malibu and then I'm going back to bed. Nannies make me such a more pleasant person.

This is mundane, to be sure, but I've yet to completely decompress and assimilate the pleasure that was my trip. More obscure, lyrical and esoteric posts on the subject to come later.

Baby, I'm Ready To Go

Well, if we're *all* going to do lyrics, here's mine for today:

"Lower the curtain down in Memphis, Lower the curtain down all right.
I got no time for private consultation, Under the Milky Way tonight.

Wish I knew what you were looking for. Might have known what you would find.

And it's something quite peculiar, Something that's shimmering and white.
Leads you here despite your destination, Under the Milky Way tonight"

Ooohhhhh. Now that I type it out, I find it's actually eerily relevant to my relatively recent past.

Anyway, flying from impending storm to continuing storm and that seems pretty consistant with my climate as of late.

More in a week. Be safe and well until then.

R/Me11

Lovely lovely lovely weekend of little sleep and much role play. Level 11, just so you know. The damn bird almost topped me, max'ing at level 10 before we got booted. That thing is a melee monster and always just itching for a fight. I was considering trading him for lynx, when i happen to find one, but I've grown fond of his big, gangly cocky attitude. The elementalist was his usual brash, unorganized, non-tactic-using self, running hither and yon and being a blight to my more strategic sensibilities and the Malkavian was beautifully brooding in appearance and it always made me smile to see him in front of me. Smiles of pure joy that burst out almost every time our paths crossed and that he will never know about, and that would probably cage him in some way if he did...

In other news: To L.A. tomorrow, to breathe with my fellow Tantrist, among other visits, guestings and parties. So, expect not much from me for another week. I have not lost my resolve to write often, but intend to spend the rest of the week either laughing in merriment or in that space wherein the anicent connection between the mind and the heavens is complete.

Wish me power.

R/Me4

Can't. Stop. Killing. Trogs.

Have done *nothing* but play Guild Wars all day. And I don't even consider this the "real" playing -- since I'm playing alone and with NPCs. Will start playing with the boys later tonight, or at least one of them, so don't expect to hear from me all weekend. I will be practicing my illusion magic or sleeping.

Resolutions

Since I only consider my "new year" starting with my birthday, I will make my resolutions now. Since all else seems to be in manageable order, it seems I have just one:

Next week I'm going to regularly start doing my morning Tai Chi with the Sai.

Really this time. Tired arms be damned.

A Story.

I Know a boy with a hole in the pocket of his coat and – -- steady yourself now --– I didn’'t fix it. Can you imagine?!?!? My letting a boy I Know walk around with a hole in his pocket, undoubtedly losing change and cigarettes and important bits of paper covered in secret codes? It would be akin to me sending my man off to battle with torn sandal straps. Unspeakably sinful horrible horrible betrayal of loyalty.

Oh, it'’s not that I didn'’t *want* to fix that hole in his pocket. I was *mad* to fix that hole in his pocket. I found myself two, three, five, ten times called to that hole in the pocket of his coat. In such moments it is as if I find the perfect recollection of the Elder Eddas. And the memory it shrieks from my DNA? The secret of the universe and godly wisdom encoded into my oh so human genome? “"Fix that hole in his pocket, fix that hole in his pocket, fix that hole in his pocket.” " And thus would I become as one with God.

It would have been a matter of three minutes work. Done quietly and without fuss and without announcement or knowledge.

And I did not. And would you know why? ::shrug:: Simply because I did not. Called and called and called to that hole in his pocket and never once did my body move. And people like to think there are choices, always choices, but it always comes down to whether or not you find yourself moving, doesn'’t it?

And so two, three, five, ten times I found myself just breathing. Breathing. Breathing. I breathed so much I almost had a tantric experience all on my own. (Which I suppose was the reward for not moving. ::winks::)

As to the ‘"actual"’ why’s of my not moving: ::waving hand dismissively:: that’'s a matter of mundane discussion, isn’'t it? The boy would not have appreciated it in the right spirit or the boy perhaps would have appreciated it not at all or perhaps the boy would have even *resented* it. Or the boy and I are never in the same context and so that moment hours, days, months later when he stuck his hand in the pocket of his coat and found it fixed, he would have seen all in visions of reality that would not have matched my own. Oh, he would have called me a Sweet Thing, and perhaps kissed me between my eyes. But, he would have seen me though a filter that would have obscured me entirely. Because – -- if we must talk of the mundane -- in hindsight, I find I now believe he has he seen me that way all along.

I do not remember thinking about it conciously. Never once did I *decide*. But I suppose it was such thoughts, and more thoughts, and less thoughts, running through my head while I sat there and smoked and drank wine and admired his mouth and breathed, that kept my hands idle.

But it was when he left for battle, with that hole in his pocket finally out of my reach for good, unfixed and hazardous still, that I realized the simple answer, the simple feeling, was that the boy I Know was only a boy I know.

And that is how the illusion of "‘choice’" becomes a matter of never having had one.

And with stories do we forever add and subtract import to and from events. Forever do we make nothing of everything and everything of nothing. But you, who know the spirit of your blood, will know that this story required exactly this many words and not one more or one less.

Why I Post At All

I have been posting for five days. Mainly, at the request of certain friends scattered about the country who I see not often and talk to only sporadically, despite their repeated emails (I have a horrible hermit streak). A request that in this new year I be more accessible, even if it is only in glimpses, out of context and indirect. I would have most likely honored their request regardless of when they made it, for their sakes and not my own. But, with a coincidence of timing, their request was made at a time when I found myself without outlet and so the idea had even more appeal.

Drawn to seclusion I may be, and yet there are occasionally those with whom I find I feel secluded even while totally exposed. That I rant to, cry to, reveal myself to again and again in every light imaginable. I had such a one until days ago, when I realized that the every light imaginable had not included the one capable of clearly illuminating our circumstances. And I revere the person still, but they are no longer another home for me. And I chose, though it felt not like choosing, to be silent to them.

And so, with some small part of my spirit wandering, I was perfectly inclined to agree to this venture of brief glimpses and lack of context. And I expected nothing more from it than to bring pleasure to those who have pleased me for years and to perhaps find some small venting of myself in the process.

And I have read many other people’s posts in the past five days. A page at random, bits of archives here and there, posts in the middle of the page, without chronological relevance. And in that time, I have commented twice. To posts that for some reason resonated within me at that exact moment in time. I cannot say why one and not others, surely there were others that I found comment worthy.

And a girl I commented to today, said about my comment:

“…what you said seemed to have the energy of a benevolent universe. thank you for your wisdom.”

And how, other than flukes of fate and timing and mood, was I there to be wise for someone who needed wisdom? Such things make me so contemplative about how little I understand anything. And I think: “how odd it all is” because you know what amuses me most about the situation? That she was just as receptive as I was giving.

How often does that happen in “real” life which is so filtered and so often our minds and opinions are prefabricated? What if this girl turned out to be *not* a stranger? Were she to turn out to be my neighbor who all this time has seen me through eyes, under raised eyebrows, that take in my cut offs and scruffy hair, in the yard with the roses and overgrown herb garden? Would she dismiss my words without hearing them? Or if she turned out to be my mailperson or my waitress at my favorite bar or my best friend or someone I know’s ex-girlfriend….

What a difference the context you know a person in can make in how you hear what they say, in whether or not you are inclined to even listen. It is a trait I believe I have mostly shed in the many years I have been studying myself, but how often you *see* it.

What if I had walked up to this stranger in the grocery store, after overhearing her post via conversation, and made my comments? Would her reaction have been the same? Would the wisdom still have been inherent in my words? Or would she have already made 10 million split second judgments of me and have placed them between my spirit and hers? Perhaps it’s my hair she would not like or my eye liner or lack of it. Perhaps even just the sound of my voice. Any and all such filters we create again and again and again throughout our in-person interactions with others. And such filters are necessary, of course. Such boundaries and valuations. The world is full of stimuli and it must be channeled and prioritized in some fashion.

But the key is to build such walls and channels as temporary as possible, so that they contain but can still be moved. And the key is to notice when such necessary structures of convenient processing become immovable temples built to ourselves.

I am glad I was here. I am glad I commented when I did. I am glad she heard me when she did. I am glad we do not ‘know each other’ and never will. I am glad that we existed for one moment of anime to anime and not persona to persona. And while she is grateful for my ‘wisdom’, I find I am grateful for that moment which validated my having chosen to be posting here. Symbiosis is a beautiful thing.

Non-Intimate Intimacy

"Writing can be understood and misunderstood in many ways. In most cases the author is not the right authority to decide on where the reader ceases to understand and the misunderstanding begins. Many an author has found readers to whom his work seemed more lucid than it was to himself." -- Hermann Hesse

I hope only for lucidity on one of our parts. If that wish is granted, let misunderstandings fall where they may. It is the times when I realize that neither of us have been lucid that I still cannot seem to appreciate.

And I find that with some people there is a diffusive filter between us, and that we can hold whole conversations with neither of us realizing we misunderstand what's being talked about because we've missed an important piece of information in the beginning -- perhaps something as simple as mishearing a name or a date or location. And conversation slows down not all, despite the fact that we are, and have been, discussing two different things. The moment our mistake is realized, though, there is such a cold shock. A realization that all of your words have gone into a void and that there was no point to having said them.

I do not find such filters to be a bar to friendship, per se, but they create a surreal state of intimate non-intimacy that I am not able to enjoy at this stage in my life.

The Hermit

It is often hard for me to wait for a course of action which will harmonize what I want with what is currently possible.

It is often hard to think things through carefully... when demands on you have been high, causing frustration and giving you scant time for reflection. While I have a gift for understanding the larger implications of a situation, it is hard to remember that I cannot just lock myself in my room for fifteen minutes and expect to come up with profound solutions.

Happy New Year

They found me sitting in the tree last night, avoiding the party, and one of them laughed and the other said "Excessive desire for forbidden or unobtainable fruits does not lower the branches of the fruit-bearing tree. Still, no blame."

And so I am reminded that there is more usable energy in the available than there is in my desire. And it brought me back down to the grass and I felt so whole body sleepy that I ended up falling asleep at 10:30 while watching Fantasia with el poco uno. They woke me up for a shot of Tequila at midnight and I drank it without even getting up and fell back to sleep immediately.

They will chide me today for not celebrating the new year, but I am the only one who saw the dawn.