Tonight:
Happy Birthday to JFK – the Gemini who would say,
“Now, let me say this about that…”
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Brewing Dynamic Bemusement!
from the customized Mystery Plays
of micro Inquisitional Face-offs
The Saturn-Mars opposition was permeating this past week-end. So that’s fun for us all to debrief and re-solve…
Quirky high degree of difficulty face-offs
with external Saturnine authority…
Here’s what I posted, on Facebook, that got more attention
(over 300 people) than any world challenging danger…
clearly micro resonant:
“I just had a shocking experience: all set to adopt a Tabyssinnian kitty (weeks of filling out paperwork, like adopting baby from China, that rigourous… visiting kitty in pet store prison.. Telling the animals here about new ally coming today…All eager. Adoption lady drives kitty over. She worried kitty might get out dog door…”I’ll keep door closed when he’s up-stairs.” She replied “I don’t believe you.”
Then, outside, she waved at me and my whole house (which is funky creative, art and masks from Bali and such), with cat walkways – tis a cat wonderland…) and said, “I just don’t like any of this.”I did sit in her car a while, (yes, against her will…couldn’t access the aikido moves..but did jin shin jitsu, with kitty, wishing the kitty well…And then she drove off taking kitty back to prison..(No one else has applied to adopt him…Boo hoo… )
I Ching says “hold back before you are led into compulsive entanglements.” A little too late, after sending her back the last 3 weeks of e-mails filling out forms, providing references.I did re-edit my last e-mail from “wishing you to seek treatment,” to “wishing you peace.” Must sage house, because she spewed neurotic poison all over everyone..including Stella, who is 19 and hobbledy,yes…but doing miraculously… very inquisitional…too witchy to have a cat…”and playing with it— we be in Trickster Training, after all….
That lady and I were each other’s perfect nightmare.
For her, I was the Rocky Horror Show castle –
her ricocheting off of Balinese demon masks, altars,
books on entheogenic christianity, Egyptian Book of the Dead,
the presence in fact of books – ack, no place for her eyes to alight
without ricocheting… And the jungle, non-lawn yard with
bamboo and banana trees…
Really, from her square brick colonial, with 3 boxwoods
in a row, from Trump Virginia suburbs, – she had really
never experienced anything like this…
Definitely her reaction was, “Too witchy to have a cat.”
The Inquisition has been customized for us all to dance with,
and journey to our liberating Trickster guidance and
blessing of circumstance…
So, I have journeyed to Dynamic Bemusement.
A Blessing and a toast –
“From all our relevant resonant customized face-offs,
we brew the Medicine of Dynamic Bemusement,
and toast each other, as we shall do tonight,
blessing all kerfuffle circumstance…”
And a return to the blessing invocation,
“Whatever is truly best for everyone- come on in…”
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From the comments:
“If you’re feeling frustrated and like everything you try to do is blocked, then you’re feeling the effects of the Mars opposition to Saturn that’ll be most intense of Sunday. Mars wants to get things done, and always on its own terms, while Saturn represents obligations, red tape, and inhibiting factors. Breathe through it! We’re supposed to learn something of value about our egos over the next few days. Instead of focusing on the ppl that are annoying you, try looking at yourself. ????
Chose your battles wisely today. Don’t seek to win fights. Strive to have the strength of character to do the right thing. ✌????”
“There is something seriously dark going on this weekend. May it pass like a storm cloud on its way to oblivion.”
From our own Rebecca Lowe: “(sidebar: there was a big solar flare that hit Earth Friday afternoon. I notice that when these radiation bursts happen, people do seem to get very rattled)..”
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And deepening down for the Jupiter-Pluto,
Mars, Venus, Mercury – everything delving…
James Baldwin:
“Not everything that can be faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed that is not faced.”
And from a great posting on Facebook:
“Death’s honesty (Frank Ostaseski talk)
“In one of Long Now’s most moving talks, Ostaseski began: “I’m not romantic about dying. This is the hardest work you will ever do. It is tough. It’s sad and it’s messy and it’s cruel and it’s beautiful sometimes and mysterious, but above all that, it’s normal. It’s a boat we’re all in. It’s inevitable and intimate.“ He said that people think it will be unbearable, but they find they have the resources to deal with it, and “they regularly — not always — develop insights into their lives in the time of dying that make them emerge as a much larger, more expansive, more real person than the small, separate self they’d taken themselves to be.”
That is one message that dying gives to living. “Reflection on death,” he said, “causes us to be more responsible — in our relationships, with ourselves, with the planet, with our future.”
Ostaseski summarized the insights he’s learned from the dying as “five invitations to be present.” 1) Don’t wait. 2) Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3) Bring your whole self to the experience. 4) Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5) Cultivate don’t-know mind. For 2), Ostaseski quoted James Baldwin: “Not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” An example of 4): a woman who was panicking at her difficulty breathing was encouraged to try resting in the moment between breaths, and there she found the handle on her panic and relaxed into the situation.
Ostaseski ended with a story. One day at Zen Hospice in San Francisco he was in the kitchen reading a book called Japanese Death Poems. A tough old lady from the streets named Sono, who was there to die, asked him about the book, and he explained the tradition of Japanese monks to write on the day of their death a poem expressing the essential truth discovered in their life. He read her a few. Sono said she’d like to write hers, and did, and asked that it be pinned to her bedclothes when she died and cremated with her.She wrote:
Don’t just stand there with your hair turning gray,
soon enough the seas will sink your little island.
So while there is still the illusion of time,
set out for another shore.
No sense packing a bag.
You won’t be able to lift it into your boat.
Give away all your collections.
Take only new seeds and an old stick.
Send out some prayers on the wind before you sail.
Don’t be afraid.
Someone knows you’re coming.
An extra fish has been salted.
— Mona (Sono) Santacroce (1928–1995)
Dearest Caroline, Reading your post about the Abyssinian. Have to relate. As one who has always loved the boxwood calmness (and yes, I have a row on each side of my driveway), my guess is you scared the shit out of her subconsciously. She has always toed the line, joined junior league and deferred all her own needs and expectations to meet those of others. Meeting you resonated with that deep self so strongly she wanted to run away. Nothing is an accident. She may become a disciple yet. So glad you wished her peace. And yes, therapy would help too – but with whom. You did give her a window into her own rigidity.
And one day, the right abyssinian cat will meet you perfectly.
OMG I was a saturnine authority on Monday with a (previously) snobby wine purveyor who had hit some bottom since last I saw her.
Had an interview with our tiny local newspaper, and came out as an MD Reiki crystal healer. Then a piano recital playing a particularly obnoxious piece (Bartok – Diary of a Fly) Holding space with shitting bricks.
I should add, as a ten-year old chronic runaway, then in foster care for two years before being emancipated, I was wild inside, and love my boxwoods to remind me that, as a metal/ earth (round and evenly low lying) element in the landscape, we create our own reality.