Troy-Albany Trance-Formations

That’s a Wrap! July 17, 2012

Well, it’s time I put a cap on this blog.  The truth is that over the past few years, I’ve been changing quite a bit, and I do believe that blogging is in my future, but it will not be focused on the Capital Region now, as I have relocated out of the area.

Now, I’m not that far away, and I might revisit this blog at some point in the future.  My gut feeling is that I will be returning to the Region at some point, and I’m sure I will be making infrequent visits, just as I probably will have some infrequent jaunts down to NYC.  But I’ve relocated to the Shawangunk Nature Preserve in Cold Brook, New York where I am eager to learn just what it means to live closer to the land.

I will most likely reinstitute my Frostwolf Pines blog toward this end.  It will be quite a fun journey I hope, and I trust that there will be a learning curve, and that some things will seem arduous and others not so much.  Thus far, it’s not so awful to have to boil my water.  It is something to get used to an outhouse and to warm my water for my shower.  Still, I’m eager to get ahead of the curve.

The most successful candidate for a position is most often the volunteer, as it says about February 23 birthdays in The Secret Language of Birthdays.

So I volunteer to move in a  new direction–maybe even the Volunteer State of Tennessee eventually.  There is a possibility for that.

So tune in to Frostwolf Pines, sometime soon.  Hope to catch you on the new channel, as it were.

Azimuth a’ Frostwolf

Yet another girt of desperation May 28, 2012

I have not been blogging much, and I have been subbing a lot. Today, I have an exquisite ambivalence about being a substitute teacher. There have been a lot of good days that I’ve enjoyed the work, but this past week, I had a hard time of it. In a way, I was sort of set up to have a difficult time, but whatever. Live and learn.

Still, I have had this gnawing sense that I need to put something here in the blog, and I have not wanted to own up to all that’s been going on. I have hit bottom with compulsive spending and people-pleasing in relation to my ability to take care of myself. I am now availing myself of help in the form of yet another 12-Step program that can help me to see where I need to go next.

An associate of mine has pointed out to me that as the smart fellow that I am, I could also use that to create another blog that will showcase my writing in a different milieu, that of the book review. I will be revisiting books I read as assigned texts from my school days as well as books, plays, poems, films, etc., that I feel are also helpful to today’s youth and educational institutions. That is something to look for in the near future.

Evolution continues apace. I show up to the mystery that is this life I lead, that is leading me toward my role as the shaman by the river. I don’t quite know how I will get there. But I feel confident that the days of this reality approach.

Slow Motion Spiritual Awakening: Letting go of dependencies March 5, 2012

Today’s question is about self-sabotage, and what does it mean to try and go forward with my writing and an alternative approach to making my livelihood, as we enter into collective course correction.  I recognize that I’m not able to go along the old pathways, that the persona I have been crafting is ill-suited to a 9-to-5 debt-slave experience. I struggle to come to terms with having had a mistaken notion of honor, as something somehow divorced from war, brutality, slavery and mass dehumanization of others.  Unfortunately, acting from a place of honor in an extractive economy is difficult. Because one must deny the underlying foundation of the culture (pillage and plunder), “honor” accompanies the shaking down the peripheral castes of people seen as lesser simply due to the fact of their extremity from the central core.  (And if they are of a different hue than the dominant ones, the easier it becomes to rally around a cause such as “the betterment of the savages,” right?)  The central core has quite a few modes of enslaving the peripheral colonies and to rationalize it in the process, and that rationalization, that of course the installing the indentured servitude is beneficial to the “aspirants,” requires ruthless focus and enforcement to continue.  Ultimately such forcing of solutions fails, but the mechanism of denial just keeps morphing ahead of the game, until it finally succeeds in creating docile humans who are eager to compete against one another for slave positions called “jobs,” and submitting themselves to continued degradation over time.

Such mechanisms take place here in the central core as well, for within the core nation there are hubs and peripheries as well.  In quite a few states, the capital is a hub, sometimes the only hub, and the rest of the state is a periphery.  The bigger states have a few major hubs, like California, Texas and Florida.  Some states, like New York have a couple of hubs, though one or two of them seem to be on the decline at any given time.  Those particular hubs serve as peripheries contemporaneously with their hub role.  Hub locations are great at sucking stuff up, and not so good at giving back anything but waste and debris.  Their “contribution” tends toward things like glamor and status.  This notion has been going on in Empire after Empire from the earliest ones onward.  And we are witnessing the decline of the biggest and the greatest of all so far. 

Empire, like addiction, is a wily foe, and one that represents a much larger force than I am capable of dealing with on my own.  Of myself I am nothing.  I would not be comfortable in saying that it can be vanquished for all time.  I imagine it’s mechanism is a bit like a herpes virus, which lives with us all our lives, dormant in the bone marrow, just waiting for the moment to be unleashed.  That irksome meme is lodged in our mental DNA, as it were, and certain factors unleash its tyranny upon the unsuspecting.

As I try to find my way through the thicket of leaving the vEmpire behind, while adapting in place near one of its minor hubs, I am frequently wracked by waves of shame, rage, guilt and abandonment feelings because the part of me which measures up my meager accomplishments as subpar against some idealized and stale notion of success got stroked in high school and college for this ill-fitting success rubric.  It’s so easy to get lost in that despairing system of wishing the lottery would “just pick me, pick me!” but which is more invested in celebrating its feasts and self-congratulating for its “honor” and its “magnanimity.”  Our success culture acts akin to Scar in The Lion King, actually, picking its teeth and extolling itself while acting as parasite upon the Savannahs.

Several days ago, the question “What are your plans for the future?” flummoxed me, and it probably will continue to for a little bit of time.  Twelve Step work teaches me to live for the present moment, so I don’t really make too many plans.  We say that if you live one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pissing on the present.  Hence, my plans for the future pretty much don’t exist.  I do have a sense of myself having a bright prospect once the vEmpire really starts to crater, once neighbors really being to understand the nature of our reality.  I have quite a few hats to wear as that energy really gets going. 

The interim period called “now” has me concerned, and it wearies me to live with expectations that the other shoe is going to drop.  How much longer can I sustain this expectation?  I feel like the loved one of a dying person who just gets to the point where he wishes that the terminal one would go already.  And again, there’s the feeling of guilt and sorrow, but people really do have their limits.  Others may be hard on me for this state of affairs, but I need to go toward a happier place with the awareness and I strive to do so. 

At some point an enjoined reconciliation of finances with reality will have to be wrought, which will point up a whole host of uncomfortable truths that most of us don’t have the stomach to face.  We could actually end up like Scar too, divided amongst our “allies” who have propped us up all those years, severed as we are from the rest of humanity due to our own arrogance and grandiosity.  (I guess the banksters serve as the jackals, hmm?)  I’m holding out for people waking up and starting to make some voluntary choices and to begin to understand the nature of gratitude and forgiveness, and being able to extend these principles outward.

(Such as in debt forgiveness, but I won’t explore that avenue much further, other than to observe that it’s a distinct possibility, and in my estimation a necessary eventuality which will have to be factored in.)

Let me apply this notion of gratitude and forgiveness to my current situation, where I don’t know what’s in store for me.  I can’t go back to being a fake corporate zombie, ever discomfited in the shackles of the timesheets and evaluations, chained virtually to the work stations in LLPs–Lobotomizing Lunatic Plantations.  While I would love to see a filmscript or playscript produced, I understand the devastating odds against that happening, particularly as I am trying to scribe works in mind of the future I want to see happen rather than the indefinite undead status quo that TPTW wish to keep going with the fresh blood of . . . . well, some fresh hosts to be determined.  I have long known that I need to find some stopgap measures, such as learning to do handyman work, to help to bridge the gap toward a new way of life.  Still, it’s quite a difficult mountain to climb psychologically because of that same inappropriate rubric I cited earlier, that the high school kid who got into the Ivy League school is holding up to remind me that I’m not where I thought I would be.

Bill Wilson noted in his writing on emotional sobriety that these ideals of a younger self no longer fit us as we age, but they live well past their shelf-life.  And in some ways I find that people sharing in meetings inadvertently adds to this idea.  It was also pointed out to me (somewhat rudely but I still appreciate the awareness), that it’s easy to fall into the use of a phrase like “emotional sobriety” as a gimmick, as a shortcut that can short-circuit the real work that needs to take place.  That work here is the elimination of dependencies upon anyone and anything other than the God(s) of Our Understanding, the Infinite Power and Love of the Source.  Bill himself noted that he was just supplying a gimmick, but that it was one that could also prove helpful in the long run for “old-timers” who have been around and are still miserable five, ten, even twenty years later, that we had to be ruthless in eliminating the dependencies upon others for status, prestige and the like. 

As awkward as I feel, I know I’m in the right place.  Each day I seek to discover divine will, what it is that the Great Spirit of All Creation desires for me on a day-to-day basis.  And it’s quite confusing because I still have not only the old rubric in my head, but also the perishing petro-dollar-denominated economy in the reality outside.  I’ve been taking halting steps at sending out inquiries to theaters that might be interested in my work.  I’ve been making attempts to pick up the phone and call people for help about what I can start to be doing to make ends meet while also preparing for whatever socioeconomic and geopolitical melees may await us. But it all feels so half-assed and hollow.

My truth today is that going after all those high-school and college-age dreams has not sustained me for a long time.  Because I’ve not really had a handle on the fact of the dependency aspect of the “dream,” I have kept rallying around the hapless quest, because I haven’t figured out what else to do.  I haven’t quite come up with a way forward that puts my talents to task and to the test in a gift-economy sort of arrangement.  (Well, for one thing I don’t know how to, but since when is that an excuse?)  And along the same lines, I haven’t quite ascertained how to go forward with what I can offer to a post-carbon-developmental/experimental arrangement either, while also finding a way to eke out an existence alongside the terminal vEmpire.  I guess there are a couple of post-civilizational career counselors out there, and maybe one day I’ll have the funds to hire one.  Hopefully I’ll find a way through before it all goes to hell.  If it be my Godsoul’s will.

The immediate task ahead of me is to root out all the dependencies save for that on God Herself.  I’m a total rookie at this, but I have had the minor breakthrough of this understanding:  I don’t want any other dependency because it hurts too much.  I’m again at the jumping off point, wherein I must abandon myself to God as I understand Her, and trust she has in my Hir care and protection.

…Make me a channel … February 28, 2012

Because I have quite the prodigious mind, it is always the easy way out for me to share of my intellect with people, whether they want it or not.  I t’s a mixed blessing to havbe a blog like this, where I can spew out thoughts that well up, that seem urgent in the moment, and if I were to go back and look at my blog entries, I could probably call up the state of mind wherefrom I wrote whatever came through the fingers and the keyboard into this cyberspace real-estate.

What is more difficult for me is to get into the heart and to the gut, and to call forth whatever inspirations and awareness of life arises from the emotional, spiritual and instinctive  areas of my existence.  I might like to think I’m being emotional, but if there is any desire to make an appeal in what I say, then there is a possibility of unconscious manipulation occurring.  And while I might say I don’t care what people think, the truth is I care more than I realize and thus the motivations can be well-hid indeed.

Today I was on a phone meetingf of one of the many 12-step programs out there I can avail myself of, and I spoke about the new book Emotional Sobriety published by AA World Service (I think).  I have been getting a lot out of this book, and funny enough, a reading today was from the signature piece of that little book, which Bill Wilson wrote for The Grapevine in January 1958.  In that writing he speaks of the St. Francis Prayer as his touchstone for working on his own emotional sobriety, which is a tough but rewarding concept to work on.

In contemplating the prayer, I recognize I am in one of those both/and places in my life, where I understand that I am a person who needs to be comforted, to be understood, to be loved, but that I must get through this time by loving, understanding and comforting others myself.  It is part of what we are all called to do, it is a common aspect of the work of each human being on the planet to perform these tasks, and to forgive, to forget the ego, and to allow new experience to form us into the persons we seek to become.

(“It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life,” as the prayer suggests.)

Today I needed to take a day of self-care and let my aching back heal from performing a lot of physical tasks.  For a self-employed person, self-care would seem to come at a cost, and yet it is something I can’t afford not to do.  I need to pace myself, because as I age, I understand that my health needs to be preserved, and that while some people wish to go through things quickly, for me the slow and careful way will need to take precedence for the most part.  Part of the problem with self-care though is that I can easily isolate, and that’s not good for me.  I’ve been on the phone a lot between my naps.

Part of self-care too is in meditation and prayer, and I find I don’t seem to be doing these as much as I did a year ago.  I guess honestly, the reason I’m not meditating right now is because I feel really sad. Much of the time, I don’t feel I have the inner reserves required to meet whatever might be coming at us.  I told my best friend today that a part of me also feels sad that I don’t seem to care as much about things like who wins the Oscars for Best hoo-hah-whatsit.  I used to live for that sort of thing, and … Feh!  It doesn’t offer the same sort of hit anymore.

I seem to be grieving the aspect of myself that so felt desperate to become famous and recognized.  I’ve long known that these are but fixes that have lost their spark for me.  It doesn’t take away from the fact that I am a writer, but it puts it in a different plane of understanding.  I still wish to write to connect with people, but I understand that I need to align it with divine will, and to connect out of a need to serve rather than a need to satiate ambition.

How does a writer serve others?  That is the question I need to begin to delve into.  How does a shaman-priest-playwright benefit his community?  It starts within of course, and I need to allow for the words and actions o fothers to seep inside me, for that is frequently where God Herself”s promptings live.

As part of this work, I need to let others help me.  I need to ask for help, which is quite difficult, but I’m doing it.  Haltingly, a day at a time  I need to feel the sadness, and yes, the anger that exists alongside it, and of course the loneliness and the fear.  The occasional joys.  And above all, gratitude for being able to be awake to all of this.

I don’t know the way forward.  THe other day, I had an appointment and I was asked in the interview what my plans for the future were.  I couldn’t answer.  I am a writer, but I’m not able to make money at this right now.  It would be nice to, yes.  But I don’t know what sort of b-job would be good for me these days.  I just finished reading Walden Two, in which Mr. Skinner observes that it’s a form of violence for a person to work at a job at which he ill-suited and incompetent.  The problem is I’m fairly competent at jobs that don’t suit me for  a period of time, and then they wear on me, and before too long I become a dull knife.  It’s because I’m participating in my own self-abuse.

I at least have the presence of mind to say “Fie” on the zombie jobs and the cubicles of vampiry.  I (and you dear reader) deserve much better than that.

But what does that look like?  That is the question.  I see that teaching is a part of it, but I’m not sure in what capacity as of yet.  I’m struggling to find my way.

Where there is hatred, may I bring love.  For example, with the Republican campaigns, I see there’s a lot of fingerpointing toward this that and the other Others out there.  Help me to love the people so afflicted with the lie of separation.  Therefore, also where there is error, may I bring the spirit of forgiveness.

Where there is discord may I bring harmony.  Help me to not inflame troubled waters and to effect reconciliations, if it be thy will.

Where there is wrong, may I bring truth.  But please be careful with my ego eager to take control of any situation.  All things in good measure.

Where there is doubt, may I bring faith.  Help me, O Lady-Lord-Brother-Sister to awaken the dormant awareness in others that all is as it should be and that people can take comfort that they are right where they are supposed to be.

Where ther is despair, may I bring hope.  Where there are shadows, may I bring light.  (And also I might add, where there is too much light, awaken the healing aspects of the dark as well.)  Where there is sadness, may I bring joy.

That last one is a challenge for me much of the time.  I can let people cry and cry if they need to.  I know I need to myself.  But I also wish to laugh and to play and to dance in the sunshine of the Spirit.  Help me to find these sunny parts of my character and shine them into the world, which so needs it.

May all this be so.  So mote it be.

Blessed be.

Thoughts on the 7th Step and the vEmpire February 20, 2012

At some point, I think that governments are going to have to outlaw 12-Step Groups. As addictions and cancer and other diseases of abnormal growth begin to fester and tear at the collective psyche of the vEmpire mindset, any attempts and forays toward sanity will be seen as treasonous by the psychotic minds that steer this RMS Titanic into the iceberg field.

Which of the steps is the most treasonous? Well, the first one probably, where we admit that we are powerless over whatever compulsion alters our body chemistry to the point that we do insane things. The 2nd Step too is a treason to the addict mindset because we are acknowledging that we are insane and that we need a higher level of awareness, thought and presence to be able to get through it. Higher than a corporation, a government or a church structure, and then in the 3rd Step there’s another sort of treason that emerges when we come to our own conception of God(s) that will resotre us to sanity, and make the decision to align/turn over our will to that Source Being.

Still, I was thinking this morning about the 7th Step and how I am seeking to let go of certain character traits such as self-seeking, overwhelming ambition and self-pity, and that I really do get in my own way.

It was pointed out to me recently that many artists died penniless, and they still went after their work. I guess I’ve been resistant to that, and the vEmpire’s seductions of fame, instant celebrity, etc., can make for an intoxicating cocktail of fantasy and self-loathing combined. I can get into “compare and despair,” due to the compulsion to envy. That hasn’t hit me so much lately, but I see that in this toxic swill of addictive notions, envy is a stock in trade, one that is zealously fanned by various forces in our culture.

Perhaps people think I’m being paranoid, but I view this is the eagle’s viewpoint, surveying the barbarous steel-concrete-glass-asphalt Jungle Barbarous.

In trying to fit myself to the world I find myself in, I feel a lot of pain, for I can’t follow the path to my heart and strive after compulsions at the same time. Of late, I have been experiencing a lot of difficulty, of feeling like i”m driving with the brakes on because the unhealthy aspect of the ego is still trying to go after the dreams I had in high school. And now that I’m subbing in middle schools and high schools, I can get a sense of how that all came to be, how that aspect of things really hasn’t changed all that much.

“Humbly asked God to remve our shortcomings.” Or in my parlance, “Humbly asked Godsoul to dispel that which no longer works for me” This is the part of the 12 Steps that reminds me of the Goddess Beloved Prayer, wherein I ask Goddess Within and Without to fill me with the clarity so that I would know myself in all my parts, that all that no longer serves creation is dispelled, and that I also be filled with the power that exposes me in my hiding, so that I may emerge from the caves and live and dance and celebrate life in the ecstasy of divine love.

Talk about treason!

What is asked of me as a playwright-shaman is certainly not an easy path, for I am now in the midst of assembling yet another 4th Step of my resentments, shame and fears about my writing. And by extension fame/obscurity. It helps me to frame the work I do here (or rather The WORK) as treason in a way because I sense that a lot of people look at where I go and they shudder at the prospect of doing this themselves. I get to be the pioneer here, letting the Venus and Jupiter in Aries push me toward a dare and toward my own honor. I have to be a sort of Eric the Red of the Interior New World as it were, reacquainting myself with the shadowed parts of myself that have been shunted off into the wilderness of my shame and despair. And I have to go here, because it’s what I’m called for.

I’m reminded of Ibsen, who was once upbraided by the King of Sweden for writing “Ghosts,” which he called a most unsavory play. And Ibsen dug down deep into himself and spoke, perhaps with a bit of fear, that “he had to write that play.” He had to write all of his plays, didn’t he? And though it took me a long time to find appreciation of it, I am eternally grateful to him–especially fo “A Doll House” which pointed up my own awareness of the difficulties in my own relationship at the time I saw a production of it. Ibsen sort of prepared me for the life I have today. Odd to consider it, but I see that I am a bit of Nora Helmer and a bit of Hedda Gabler at the same time.

I suppose it is theoretically possible for people to work the twelve steps and twelve traditions without treason to the vEmpire, but it has to be by necessity superficial. And then what’s the point? People like that aren’t going to stick around. When people clutgch at this life preserver they are desperate for their viewpoint and mode of being to change. I certainly was, and I have come to understand more about how I still get in my own way.

Self-seeking, thoughtlessness, self-absorption, inconsideration of others, fear and resentment, self-pity–these all crop up because my ego strives for that which is not available to it. Consdieration, courtesy, tolerance and love, forgiveness, acceptance, gratitude–these are the ways through, and, yes, though we extol these concepts in vEmpire, the actual workings of them bypass the puny and pathetic cconstrictions and conscriptions that officialdom/corprorate heirarchy would impose. They ask for a thiimblefull of mana. Bwahahaha! Impossible. They demand a dry ocean to sustain them. They demand the potato to grow branches and roots rather than to be a network on the ground.

How treasonous is that? Potatoes,strawberries, etc. What a bad idea! Nature? The nerve!

(Not to diss trees and the arboreal, but I also celebrate the rhizomatic, huzzah, huzzah!)

To be continued, but I realize that I have embarked on a provocative path. Ultimately I wish to be free from all my compulsions, and to bask in the sunshine of the spirit. Living my process I encounter agony when my ego takes me into places iit’s not meant to go. Like everyday life as we live it, immersed as it is in fantasy, shame, despair, disease and sicknesses of all sorts. I partake of these at my own risk. And the bad news, which is the good news, is that I find myself in a painful state sooner rather than later.

God Herself, I ask that you transform all of me into the Healthy Priest who makes all things sound. Please alter those traits that no longer serves the Work of this God, that stands in the way of usefulness to you and to my fellows. Grant me the strength to go out from here and to enact divine and aligned will in this delicious garden of possibility.

Blessed be.

My new version of the 3rd Step Prayer February 5, 2012

God Herself, I avail myself of thee, to cocreate this reality and work with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of unhealthy Ego so that I may better perform in alignment with all my parts. Take away my difficulties and shine your light and dark on my fears so that their clearing may attest to thy Power, thy Love and thy Way of Life. May I do aligned will of all my parts with Godsoul’s direction and guidance always. Blessed be.

Deeper Spiritual Awakenings – Further Aries Ideas January 6, 2012

“Let us find you.”

Those words resounded in my consciousness the first time I saw Big Eden about ten years ago at the Quad Theater in the West Village of Manhattan.  This particular film I’ve written about a few times, but yesterday in a session with my counselor, it became apparent that the very thing I’ve been longing the most for I’ve been also resisting.

It’s so easy to fall into the self-deception.  “There are all these steps I need to take to call forth my tribe.”  And I can start to enumerate them one by one, but isn’t it true, like in the film, that the tribe emerges in the places we find ourselves, and that our tribespeople emerge more out of happenstance than anything else?  Henry Hart in the film of his spiritual awakening lives in a nurturing and loving place and he’s going to be the last to wake up to it.  That’s the struggle of the film–will he see this place, Big Eden, Montana, loves and adores and cherishes him?

So too, the question seems to be for myself, will I so awaken to the love that is everywhere around me?  Evidently it takes a deeper level of surrender than I’ve before known.  I guess this awareness emerges now, in 2012, the year of the Water Dragon, last year of the known Mayan calendar, because I need to know from true power versus mere force.

And I’ve been forcing–how I’ve been forcing!  As I have been pondering the messages of my Aries transits, I began to understand that Aries as the innocent newborn, approaches an experience fresh.  Sometimes the energy will seek to imprint his or her energy upon the place of experience, and other times he or she will sit in simple and “stupid” awe of something greater.  I put stupid in quotes because I see this type of stupid as the shutting down of intellect in a positive sense.  Perhaps there is a better word for that?  But I am aware that Aries is first and foremost an instinctual sign, and much of its power just comes from daring to press through and say “Here I am!  I am HERE!” and present his or her Aries self as worthwhile and powerful just from the place of being.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The power of Aries is in the seedling pushing its stem out from the seed up through the soil and cracking that wishful surface to salute the sun and take in the nourishment that is everywhere abundant, that the seedling knows is its due.  And yes, the seedlings are vulnerable to various herbivores that might see its succulent new juicy green-flesh and slurp it up.  But that’s life–all things feed each other.

My counselor reflected something quite important and disarming back to me yesterday.  In talking about my intentions for writing a television show about a gay couple acting as guardians for their respective nieces in a small Northeastern town as the society comes apart in a sort of Modern Family meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only where the monsters are climate change, socioeconomic instability, enviornmental chaos and resource depletion, that my intention was to write to the current moment.  (Interestingly, yesterday I flashed upon Dickens as being a necessary influence here, and I had a copy of Bleak House with me in the counselor’s office.)  I further said my goal was to push the characters toward the creation of a Transition Town in this fictional place out of It’s a Wonderful Life and Our Town both, and he asked what a TT was.  It was in the course of my explanation that he asked, “so you’re scared about these things?”  And I had to of course say that yes I was, but I felt compelled to get to the hopeful side of things.  To which he countered, “but you seem more scared than hopeful.”

I got very silent as I took that in.  Part of me was embarrassed.  Part of me thought “F*ck, he’s being a manipulative therapist!”  But part of me was relieved to be caught.  Because I have probably been marinating in the fear for a really long time, and have felt quite powerless to do anything about it because I’m one person and there’s not a lot just one person can do.  And then I said, “I guess what I’m seeking is my tribe.”

I’ve been deceiving myself that I’m in a place of hope.  I want to be.  I see that’s the direction I need to go toward, but it’s not quite the reality that I can visualize that I’m there and it is so.  I also have to do the work of feeling my feelings, of feeling lonely, scared and sad.  I’ve known this.  I’ve said as much.  And I also need to take some actions toward the creation of the tribe, but really isn’t that more just a clearing of the space and deepening my soulful connections to others and to all that is?  To All My Relations?

I now grok that it’s time to release the idea that “the next place” I live will be the one where I really find community.  I love Glens Falls and the North Country, but for today my work is in Rensselaer, New York.  And while I believe that a lot of the structures that we have in place, entities like “Rensselaer County,” “New York State” and the “United States of America,” are quaint fictions that scared sedentaries tell themselves and fortify in their effort to whistle a happy tune, I’m whistling my own secessionist happy tunes as well, alongside them. Sometimes dissonant, sometimes consonant which really unnerves and disgruntles.

For yesterday, I also was confronted with the last few paragraphs of the “Working with Others” chapter of the AA Big Book, which ends “We have ceased fighting anyone and anything.”  As I drove home from the last place I attended to my own obligations, I felt something open in my abdomen under my heart.  I guess that was my third chakra.  And the thought “I don’t have to be afraid anymore” just manifested in that quiet open space.  It came from the still small voice in my being, and it’s right on schedule I guess.  But yesterday was a day for tears of joy and a new appreciation for my juicy reality.

The seedling stretches through the earth, and senses there is light emergent.  And the intellect now needs to understand its duty is to support this exciting prospect.  Its not in the lead here, and I seek to align myself to Godsoul’s Will for Me as I understand its amazingly loving voice.

I will let myself be found.

A Meditation on Aries, Or, Confessions of the Son of a Libra Mom January 1, 2012

The title of this post covers a bit of ground, and yet once I’m finished with this, I don’t think I will capture anything of what either idea suggests.  They are related, however.

Aries and Libra roughly correspond to the onset of Spring and Fall respectively.  They are both cardinal signs, signifying the beginning of their respective seasons as well as the beginnings of certain sorts of actions being taken in the world.  (As I’ve noted elsewhere, the emotional beginnings of the seasons lie in the middle of fixed signs, with the festivals of Imbolc, Beltaine, Lammas and Samhain, but that’s not germane to this topic.)  Ariees and Libra both have the dynamic of self and other, with the Aries focused on the self and frequently being accused of selfishness, and Libra focused on the other, and frequently being accused of enabling and passive-aggressive behaviors.

Aries is fire and Libra is air.  They both have an obligation to work on that self-other dynamic with the foci respectively being on the individual within the relationship and the pairing as well.  And having grown up with a Libra mom who I think quite consciously sought out to repress the Aries aspects in my character with a good deal of success, I see that I have a troubled relationsihp with this dynamic in my own life.

It’s amazingly fitting to bring all this up right now.  Nearly 22 years have passed since the Sun progressed into Aries, and this past Samhain, the Moon progressed into the sign where she will be for the next 2 or so years.  And this arrangement could not have arrived at a more needed time.  I’m finally finding the wounded male child within.

Since Samhain, it’s been a quietly dramatic struggle, one that visibly doesn’t look like a lot going on.  Basically, I’m like the seedling coming out of the seed and wending its way through the earth in search of the sunlight and the water I know will be available to me once I break the surface.  The deck is being cleared for a serious growth spurt on an energetic and psychic level, and for me it really is entering into the Aries aspects of my character.  I have both Venus and Jupiter there, in the 12th House, intercepted by Placidus Houses.

For a short time in my 20s I was confused about which house system to use, but Placidus has always intuitively felt right because of this interception.  (I even have an interception by Porphyry, which is comparatively rare.  It happens though when one of the double-housed sign poliarites happens to be on the midheaven-naadir axis, as it so happens in my chart with Taurus rising and a Capricorn MC.)  I have long felt though that my Venus and Jupiter energies have been quite muted, and I was under the impression I would finally get access to them sometime in my 40s.

I didn’t know however, that it would involve struggle, but that’s Aries for you.  I liken the Aries side of me to that part of me that will always be cranky and colicky, the little baby that didn’t have the best birth experience in the world.  In the addict part of my character, it’s the part of me that can manifest as restless, irritable and discontent, and have a volcanic eruption.  The nice thing about Aries that is also unsettling, is that the sign gets really angry, erupts and it’s gone.  Gone, poof, just like that!  And while another person might feel they’ve got all this acidic goo all over themselves, the Aries is free.

Whatever we might feel about this phemonema it’s just the way things are, and to the Libra Mother I had, this was most intolerable.  I don’t have a lot of memories of my early childhood, but I have the consciousness that when I awoke to the more or less continuous consciousness of waking experience somewhere in my 5th or 6th year, I was already “de-Ariesed” if you will.  The fiery warrior energy would come out every once in awhile in a sideways fashion, but for the most part I was the docile Taurus rising, Pisces dreamboat child even into my teens.  It wasn’t until I figured out I was gay that a small iota of Aries came back into my life.

But for the most part, the non-Aries parts of my character have been rewarded again and again.  So that has meant that the Love and Faith natures of my being have been eclipsed by other factors, most notably my Cancer moon which I admit can dominate a lot of areas in my life.  And now it’s coming to be the time when that Cancer moon needs the challenges that my Venus and Jupiter will be issuing to it in their own expression, so that the Cancer moon can strengthen and get rid of some of the smothering energies that I know so well.

I have a feeling that a lof of my best writing comes from some Aries influences.  I have this one play Timberline,, which is still my favorite play I’ve ever written, over 25 years later.  It’s just a 20-minute piece, but it captures a moment in a way that I’ve not been able to quite pull off since.  It has a spring-like freshness to it, and it’s so frickin’ present!  (I have it on Cerridwen’s Mountain for those who are interested.)

The other day, my best friend and I were talking and I was reporting this whole Aries thiing, and he is the one who got me thinking about the Libra Mom connection as he also has a Libra mother.  One thing Libras have a real hard time with is direct speech.  “I feel this way.  When you take that action, I end up feeling this feeling, and I want you to stop it. ”  Libra wants to negotiate, and as such categorical statements about feelings especially are very hard for Libra to integrate. As both an air sign and the one sign in the zodiac that is a machine, Libra frequently has to approximate the notion of feelings.

And my mother, god herself bless her, was born on a day when there were no planets in water signs at all.  Interesting she should marry a double Cancer (with Leo rising) and have a Pisces sun-Cancer moon son.  Now, Aries is a fire sign, and most often Aries won’t be having too many direct feeling conversations with a person.  The Aries will be more like “I did x.  You don’t like it?  Tough noogies.”  Though there’s the part of them that is the dependent child and they have a hard time holding on to that.  Still, Aries is the sign famous for “Do what you need to and make the apologies later.”  And you know, it more often than not works for them.

Still, Libra HATES to be left out of decisions, as much as they dither about them.  They are really quite decisive, and they have been historically quite adept at being generals and captains of government especially.

And when I figured out I was gay, it’s interesting to consider the Libra mom side of things, because from her then-unhip position, this was something I never consulted her about–how could that possibly be true?  Didn’t I know that of myself, I was nothing, and couldn’t I see how such an evil decision revealed as much?  That’s why she left the Bible turned to a heinous passage in my room that one night.  And then when I told her to read the “judge not, lest ye be judged part,” oh how offensive–and ARIES!–how dare I?

(Libra does high dudgeon best of any sign.)

And this dynamic set up that 5 year period in my 20s when I disowned my family for a time because I needed distance from a family that would disown me for being gay “because they loved me so much.”

And even though there’s a part of me that really wishes I was done with that whole fracas around my coming out, it’s really a deep echo of something that took place even earlier in the fractals of my life.  I have the sense that there are some events that were too difficult for the 2 and 3 year-old Dicky to be able to assimilate and some dissociation took place.  After all I was quite the docile child.  People could have accused me of being afraid of my own shadow and I’m sure I had days where I was.  Where the hell did that come from?

My brother, with an Aries Moon, got that part of me which was so violently repressed.  He took on that extra Aries energy with a vengeance and he was sort of a terror, into GI Joe, cowboys and indians, wargames, etc.  He loved sports as a kid.  I detested them. I’m sure there were certain predispositions in me toward the arts and interior crafts as opposed to the outdoors and the energetic arts.  But I wonder if there was not something more in all that, having to do with some of the things I was told to repress because it’s good manners.

The path of adulthood that I seem to be on right now is one of reclaiming all that spring equinox, baby, seedling, daring, I MUST BE FIRST! energy.  And I understand it’s really Jupiter that is driving it.  Jupiter just finished a transit through Aries–burned through the sign really quickly 😦 but it has given me an impetus to do Aries things.  Wear red.  Eat spicy foods.  In fact a TCM student suggested I not eat cold foods during the winter because I’m experiencing a lung deficiency.  I’m delighting in ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg.  I need to be around fire sign people right now.  It’s not an energy I feel comfortable with, but I’m trusting that the warmth they give off will have their needed effects.

That Libra captainship of my mother through the rocky terrain of raising us kids certainly did mean well, but she somehow got it into her head that good manners meant annilhilating this part of her kids, and was really angry when her other son turned around and thumbed his nose at her.  And today I’m grateful for it, because I need to reclaim that little guy as I go forward.

So to all the Aries and fire-sign people out there, all those who have an activated 1st, 5th or 9th House, let’s talk.  I need to get warm in your presence, and I need to learn a few things.

T.W.R. December 10, 2011

Trees, writing, recovery.  Interesting to think of the three as a unity for myself, but then when a friend asked me if I was working with Twr, one of Feri’s father gods, I had said I had times when I did and when I didn’t.  It turns out that TWR means what the essence of my spiritual practice/the work of This God.

The last few months have seen me sew up a new awareness of mastery in my life, one that has been with me for quite a while actually.  Just as Twr has been in the wings as a “golden shadow” as he observed it to be, so too has the mastery of being a playwright/scrfeenwriter been working quietly alongside my forays into trying to please others and coming up wanting.

For the time being, I have embarked on a journey into writing several projects, and it’s difficult to know from day to day which one will hold my attention.  I have a television project, a play and several screenplay, and then there are the odd devotions now to different deities that arise.  I feel a need to find some time with both Twr and Oya sometime soon.  (Odd, I’ve been find the colors yellow, red, paprika  and burgundy quite attractive of late, and the first two relate to Twr, and the others to Oya.)  Today I’m also dealing with a little bit of a feeling of a cold coming on, so I need to take it easy.  Even so, I must go outside and commune with a few trees I know nearby.

Trees, writing, recovery.  The 3 legs of Frostwolf’s Trigonometry of Divinity as it were.  (What is the cosine of this God?  Indeed, which is the hypotenuse?  I guess it would be the writing actually.  Trees squared plus recovery squared equals writing squared! Oh, Pythagoras! Archimedes–Eureka indeed.)

The mastery awakening is also due in part to my reading recently of Hesse, which Mr. John Michael Greer has been expounding on in his “Archdruid’s Post” blog.  I’m quite grateful to both Messrs. Greer & Hesse for these amazing texts.  Siddhartha, Demian and now Magister Ludi.  I have been understanding much of what is at the root of my loneliness, and it’s quite frankly because I don’t meet that many peers.  I’m sure that I sound like a snob when I say this, but I can’t help it.  I have certain gifts and talents and I have been slow to recognize them because for so long I’ve accpeted how others see me as the sum-total of It All.

The equation: Other People’s Views + Self-abandonment = Suicidal Grief would seem tto be proved therein.

Now that I’m embracing my mastery and stepping into my self-possession, I am becoming aware just how seasoned and amazing I am with my attentions to writing.  I have so much to offer.  So I will have to look into finding ways to connect with people who want to learn what I have to offer.  This will be an interesting challenge, considering that I have the South Node in the 9th House of higher education.  I need to offer it to youth, I think.  Or “the young at heart.”  It’s all about beginner’s mind and working with the heart in whatever we do.

That’s Twr’s essential message actually.  Interesting that he should find connection with Tiphareth in the Cabala.  The Sephiroth of the Heart.

Busy at work November 29, 2011

I’m working on taking the script I had written before called “OMG, Like the World Is Coming to an End, Fershur, Fershurrrr!” and rejiggering it to become a television show. It occurred to me about 10 days ago that all of my inspirations for the project were from television–“Glee,” “Modern Family,” “Will & Grace” and even “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” It’s one of those situations too, where in thinking about the earlier script as a play, I was looking to find ways to cut it, but instead kept getting other ideas about where the characters could go. So I’ve stepped out of it being a theater work in a conventional sense.

I’m wondering how TV is going to evolve as our world changes with all its variations and variables. Nothing is going to stay the same, and the sooner we all start to acclimate ourselves to an ever-shifting new normal the better. I’m thinking it might be interesting to turn it into a serial play first, and see where it goes from there. It’s not the first time I’ve had an idea like this, where I get more ideas for a script than what I had originally intended.

Still, I wish I had more time to actually write. Between subbing and my construction work these days, I’m a bit swamped. I need some angels to come and help me with all that I need to do.