| HELP - Missing Child |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|07:20 pm] |
I need prayers and help from anyone in the Austin TX area. My 11 yr old step-son Jordan Rouse ran away from his mothers house on Friday the 18th. No one has seen him since a bus driver from Cap Metro recognized him from his picture and he had dropped Jordan and some other kids off at Metric and Howard at 1pm Friday. They live off of Parmer and Lamplight. He is now listed in the APD as a run away and they put him in the international database because at 11 he is very young to be one. Jordan was last seen wearing blue jeans, gray shirt with a royal blue hoodie with Brooklyn written on it and tie up boots.
We are all really worried and scared for him. Please keep him in your prayers and hope for a quick safe return.
UPDATE - JORDAN IS HOME SAFE |
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| protocall |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|04:27 pm] |
Cedar has me in its seasonal clutches. I am reading people's snow updates on Facebook and thinking that maybe I could live where cold killed flora for half the year.
Last year it got so bad that simply functioning was a challenge. This year I do not have a boyfriend with a carpeted apartment and a long-haired black-furred cat, so I am better off to start.
But I am still need to start following the cedar protocol: No re-wearing clothes. Wash hair every night. Change sheets and towels often. Basically give up my slacker ways for the sake of the interior spaces of my head. Including the pocket holding my sanity.
I see how adding Ava's challenge to blog for 30 days about things that make me happy might be a good addition to the protocol. I love the weather this time of year: the perfect cool of days and the intense blue sky. It makes me want to be outside, hiking, walking, sitting. It's a challenge to feel bested by tree spooge when it's so beautiful outside. So I will have to remind myself of simple things that are good.
Today, there was a moment of looking out the laundry room window. Out at the blue sky, over the neighboring backyard with an attentive sweet dad playing with an unseen kid. Closer in, a tiny bunch of bright orange leaves rustling lightly against the blue sky. They rustle and stop, like they've noticed me noticing them. They stop for a second, as if posing, then blow the other direction, shimmying in the turn of direction.
That was today. Earlier in the weekend, I felt immense gratitude for the casual way the universe can give gifts. Just when I was feeling acutely posse-less, there was someone next to me, also alone, that I was acquainted with. This happened twice, just to make sure I noticed. The second time turned into a conversation of several hours that covered many things on my mind. How to answer the soul's call to change, letting go of the past while honoring what made it good, figuring out how to move forward without a map. Writing. I talked about writing with someone who is studying writing, someone who will be writing as her main activity January through May before answering that next step question.
So today my gratitude is for windows that let me see the sky.
But also, still, and very much: fellow travelers. |
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| Writing update |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|03:42 am] |
It’s been months since I updated this blog but its time I change that. Since I last wrote I have continued to settle into life in Houston. While I don’t want to go into too much detail here, when I moved I was leaving behind a situation which had become unhealthy for me. While I’d grown used to writing in close collaboration with two housemates, with the dissolution of that household I had lost access to what had become habitual parts of my creative process. I was also in a very bad headspace, and I’ve never been the sort of artist inspired by own misery or suffering. I feel like I have to learn how to do this writing thing all over again, in many ways, right alongside all the other adjustments major life changes bring.
I have a great social circle here in Houston and many supportive friends here and elsewhere. I’m making some deeper connections and even connecting with other creative types here. Mentally I’m in a much better place, but ironically the longer I go without writing regularly the more it affects my well being, creating a dangerous cycle.
But it’s one I think I am finally breaking. The other day I revised “Becoming,” which remains one of my favorite pieces of my own fiction, and submitted it to a possible market. Kiki Christie and I have also been very slowly returning to work on Honeycutt Tales, our erotic novel. I’m also working on a couple other ideas for erotic stories at the moment and have written a bit on one particular idea.
I’ve upgraded Wordpress to 2.9, the latest stable version, in the hopes that the improved interface will encourage me to blog more. I may broaden the scope of what I put here a bit and ramble more about whatever is on my mind (which is frequently sex or food). In the meantime, you can also keep up with me on twitter which I update frequently.
Finally, the paper which Reesa Brown and I wrote for Arse Elektronika 2008 has been available for some months now in Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep from Re/Search Publications. There are a bunch of great essays in it so check it out.
Originally published at approximately 8,000 words. You can comment here or there. |
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| My morning Google adventure |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|09:16 am] |
Sometimes Google seems a little 1984, but this morning it was a little more like a pleasant (and free!) psychic.
I ended up on a little Google adventure that stemmed from doing a search that included the word "awakened." I had a little fun bouncing through pages, but one of the first things I found was a blog series called, "The Awakened Heart: 30 Days of Happiness"
/cue smiles/
I read a little bit. The author didn't seem to give a mission statement for the 30 days before she started, and she really didn't keep up with daily posts, but she occasionally posted some happy little something. It seems the idea was to talk about all the good parts of her day, then list some things that were sources of happiness for her (new music, poetry, books, her kids, etc). A sort of electronic counting of blessings, if you will.
Anyway, I like the idea. I like the notion of really *focusing* on your happiness on a daily basis. Our lives are beautiful, lest we forget.
I've decided I'd like to do it. And I think I'd like to challenge you, my fine friends, to do this with me. Can we embark on 30 Days of Happiness together? Let's all post at least one happy thing per day for 30 days. I'll be excited to see how each of my friends approaches this differently. (Hell, I'm already looking forward to my Happiness post in which I must proclaim: "I was too happy yesterday to find time to post my happiness for the day!")
I'm starting Monday -- Solstice -- because that seems to make sense for a 30-day starting point for me.
What say ye, my lovelies? Take the 30 Days of Happiness challenge with me?
(Oh, awkward link post here -- my laptop has gotten a bit wonky as of late: 30 Days of Happiness: http://thedivinefeminine.blogspot.com/2009/09/30-days-of-happiness-day-one.html) |
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| The Lovers at Keep Austin Bizarre Christmas Bazaar |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|08:01 am] |
Hello friends,
The Lovers will be playing twice this weekend at the Keep Austin Bizarre Christmas Bazaar!
Free admission, free parking, great Christmas shopping, bands, and circus performers in huge heated circus tents!
The Lovers will play twice, come to whichever fits your schedule:
- Friday afternoon, Dec. 18th, from 3:00pm to 4:00pm (today)
- Sunday evening, Dec. 20th, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Keep Austin Bizarre Christmas Bazaar
Fiesta Gardens
2101 Jesse E Segovia St
Austin, TX 78702
(take Chicon Street south almost to the water)
You can find the full list of live acts (The Lovers, Barebones Orchestra, Toast, firespinners, etc), the vendors, and a map here:
http://www.keepaustinbizarre.com
Thank you,
The Lovers
Open your mind, let the walls come down, let yourself be loved!
http://myspace.com/theloversaustin |
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| Couch for Sale |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|01:30 pm] |
Posting from Craigslist. Hope this doesn't piss anyone off, but a friend of mine in N. Austin is desperately trying to sell his couch before Christmas. Please pass this on to anyone who may be in the market for a very well taken care of used couch.
( Click here to read more. )
THANKS! |
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| What dreames may come? |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|11:58 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Lhasa de Sela, "Who By Fire" | ] |
The Witch of Portobello:on a spiritual quest/for love/for truth/but was the world ready for her revelations?
Last night, I started watching The Experimental Witch Videos
"I believe @keithpp explains better than my page _The Experimental Witch,_" stated by Paulo Coelho on twitter 24 hours before the Rome premier of the film he inspired to be created through new media.
Also this evening, I discovered Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian @ the Criminology Institute of the Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Hebrew University of Jerusalem... whose fields of interest include: women, law and social control; women, the military, and violence; rights and identity of children and women in areas of conflict; and policing family violence.
Checkpoints and Counter Spaces
Indeed, we are living in crucial times... Neda Agha Soltan's family have continued to make clear accusations that Iranian gov't security forces are solely to blame for the death of their daughter
And in my continuing to feel the even more recent absence of yet another particularly enigmatic & ethereal being whom I felt like I never knew as well as I had wished (I was often too shy to talk with her, even though we certainly danced at the same times, and both contributed to the construction of many of the same sacred spaces), I have to wonder if there is more that I can take away from this experience... other than to cherish every moment with the people whom I love, as if it were our last? Our LA & Austin extended family communities were finally able to celebrate the life of Andrea Burden, this past weekend. And Lucent Dossier posted another heartfelt tribute to her, entitled "Be Kinder..."
This is a sentiment which always leads me to contemplate PKD's cyber-gnostic philosophy of compassion:
"It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are."
Paulo Coelho often references that "God has a masculine and a feminine face, rigor and compassion." This is a common theme in esoteric doctrines throughout human experience. Although many dominant religions have forgotten about the divine feminine, she is beginning to reveal herself again!
However, at the same time that I am embracing the cosmos with love, I am also returning to the rigors of discipline in my daily life... I seem to get more out of my life when I not only honor the cosmic bliss of the eternal now, but also celebrate the ceremonies of the ancients!
So, on that dark note, here's a deep lecture about the philosophy of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ernest Becker... from Professor Sheldon Solomon, for which he suggests a mash-up title, "The Structure of Evil: History is a Nightmare from Which I am Trying to Awaken."
You can also download the entire transcript, but here's a profound summary of one or two of Becker's main points that I feel is particularly pertinent to this discussion:
"All right, well his argument is as follows, as articulated in the _Escape from Evil_ book. What he says is, 'Look, no matter how powerful and convincing your culture is, it is ultimately a symbol. All cultural constructs are symbolic, they’re human creations; however, death is a very real, physical phenomenon.' And the point that Becker makes very simply is that no symbol, regardless of its power or potency, will ever be sufficient to overcome the physical reality of death. It’s like mixing apples and oranges.
Consequently, and I’ve got to degenerate into some psychoanalytical language, which is probably okay for some, less so for others, what Becker says, again borrowing from William James, he says, 'You know what, therefore no matter how good your culture is or how much you believe in it, there’s always going to be some residual anxiety about death.' And you’re not aware of that, he claims, because that anxiety is repressed.
And then, using Freud’s ideas, what Becker says is that repressed anxiety is projected onto another group of individuals, either inside or outside of your culture, that you designate as the all-encompassing repository of evil, the eradication of which would make life on Earth as it is in heaven. He calls them scapegoats, and I think we’re familiar with them; they’re either in-house or external ones. Either way, Becker says, we’ve got a problem; either you run into people that are different and that’s a problem, or you declare somebody to be different and that’s a problem. Because what Becker then goes on to do, borrowing very heavily from some sociologists that we’re very fond of, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in a book called _The Social Construction of Reality,_ what Becker does following Berger and Luckmann is to talk about the psychological processes that are instigated when people encounter others who do not share their beliefs, or encounter somebody who they have designated as different."
Regarding this scenario, I have always been a proponent of libertine philosophy in one form or another... and I particularly enjoy Frank Herbert's maxim known as the sign of profound accord:
"We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."
To conclude, I must offer one more quote from Prof. Solomon's lecture:
"Becker also insists that there’s got to be a religious dimension to any serious effort to improve the human condition. He basically said, 'You know what, there’s no way that we’re going to get out of this without dabbling in religion broadly defined.' One of my favorite Becker quotes in The Denial of Death is that 'Psychology can only take you so far, at which time it drops you directly on the doorstep of religion.'
Well what does he mean by that? His point very simply is that every one of us, whether we liked it or not, just to get up in the morning we have to believe things about reality. Every one of us has beliefs about reality. They may be religious, they may be secular, but every one of us has beliefs about reality. And if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s no way that those beliefs about reality can ever be unambiguously confirmed."
In my first reading of The Denial of Death, 20-odd years ago; I confirmed that there is something extremely valuable in ritually re-enacting the heroic stories of our ancestors (what Joseph Campbell would have referred to as ceremonial celebrations of The Monomyth) that seem to in some way account for some sort of need in this unconscious/a-rational/spiritual facet of our existence... journeying down into the underworld and up into the divine realms, or simply going outside & beyond our normal experience in order to bring back some sort of gnosis that can benefit ourselves & our people (whether or not they are ready for it, like in Plato's allegory of the cave)... and in fact, I would like to even suggest that the ultimate myths are those which benefit ALL people... for whatever different lives we may lead, we all have one thing in common... "When we have shuffle'd off this mortall coile"
In this vein, I have always been fascinated with shadow-work... whether by one microcosmic way or another macrocosmic way (however devolved)?!!! So, perhaps it's no wonder that I am curious about things like Terror management theory?
And if you prefer the graphic novel (aka "comic") medium... check out "Reapy: The Littlest Harbinger of Death!" |
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| Ferrofluid |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|01:58 pm] |
Quick, someone invent a lava lamp based on this! Darn, it's too late to make a killing selling it as a Christmas gift.
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| want stuffing? |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|12:14 am] |
I'm cleaning out a good chunk of cushions and polyfill stuffing.
Anyone got a project coming up that could use it? Lemme know & I'll set you up. :) |
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