Homophobia = Bestiality? A Proposed Godwin’s Law Corollary January 29, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Uncategorized.Tags: Al-Anon, dogwhistle media, faux-journalism, Godwin's Law and bestiality, Godwin's Law and pedophilia, he said-she said artifice, homophobia, Taking others' inventory
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Warning: This is a “three fingers pointing back at you” post.
Lately there’s been a lot of neanderthalism coming from the stoopid ‘Merkkan troglodytic far-right that has been creep-creep-creeping out of its hidey hole into the realm of the Eloi. I’ve come across quite a bit of projection in the media of late, that GLBTQ folks are also dog/cat/sheepf-uckers. While quite a few people challenge this notion, the dogwhistle-attentive media seem to pounce on it out of desperation to “keep drama going,” and the publicity-whoring wingnut characters (and who’s to say who’s just putting on a show vs. the out-and-out batshit crazy?) revel in the attention.
Anyway, I was also wondering about this compulsive need on the part of fundy xtian pSychopaths of all sorts to link us gay folk to interspecies intercourse. Personally, I think this should be a Godwin’s Law sort of thing: Just like we understand that 9 times out of 10, when someone links x to Hitler, they lost their argument (no matter what it is), so too it should be that when a group is linked to either pedophilia or bestiality, then they too have lost their argument.
But because it involves the personal, I’d go just a little bit further than that. I’d also suggest that these obsessions point to a deeper and darker shadow on the part of the accusers. I don’t much doubt that there is some element of toxic shame that has built up to cause someone to, as I read on some blog or other, dump their projected shame and ugliness onto someone else and point the finger at them. Because we are exposed to SO MUCH of the toxic sludge that tries to pass itself off as “discourse”, we really owe it to ourselves to apply that child rule “Yeah, you are, but what am I?” to the folks who make these accusations. While the accusation may be an exaggeration of their own shameful events, there is something there that lurks in their subconscious.
Now, we can’t expect the dogwhistle media to actually pursue the whole truth of a matter. The more I read about “reporters” and “journalists”, the more I see frustrated actors, directors and screenwriters who have been shunted off into creating artificial dramas that get as thin as the lamest sitcoms. The he said-she said artifice that equates vEmpire homophobia with truly empirical and accepting observation provides me and anyone else only an opportunity to either a) walk on by or b) to engage in talking over the troglodytes and screw the “referee” (something Dan Savage has done and very well, I might add) or c) to really attempt to “make it boring” and to gently try and direct the other side to consider Al-Anon–”try six different meetings to see which one is best for you.”
“We only offer suggestions, but keep an open mind before deciding whether the program is for you. You may not love all of us, but you will come to love all of us in the same way that we love you.”
I wanted a snow day :( January 28, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Personal Journey.Tags: 4th Step inventory
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Oh, it’s hard to be here when the weather is frightful. I don’t have Internet access at home, and the fact that I’m sending in this post means I’m not there, alas, communing with Gunder, perhaps going outside and shoveling snow (which I actually like to do, though my right shoulder ist mir erbuggen), and perhaps also casting a couple of spells and writing up a revision of that old play I blogged about yesterday.
Long story short, this post is here and I got nuthin’. Nope, zip, nada, zilch. Forget that it even happened. At least that’s what I’m feeling now. Perhaps if I keep typing something will come to me.
I guess part of it is the continued backwash of Steps 4/5. I sense a need to just vegetate, and that’s really what I want to do more than anything else. (Of course, I’d really like to get back to center, take a couple months off and just let my mind detox from the vEmpire. I don’t as of yet have that luxury/forced situation.)
So I post this FWIW. Wish I had something for anyone who’s paying attention to me. (Lately it seems that’s the crickets.)
Breaking Through the Backwash January 27, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Mystical, Personal Journey.Tags: 4th Step inventory, CEAHOW, magick, manifestation, recovery, signs
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OK. I seem to be wading out of the muck at last. In talking with my partner yesterday, I had a couple of epiphanies about my spiritual/magickal practice and the 4th Step work I’ve been doing. Really, I’ve been digging deeper to find more of the complexes that have managed to keep me from being aligned in my 3 souls. And in attempting to manifest even a cup of coffee, the process I’ve been going through has not been enough. Yesterday, I found I was continuously purifying using the rite I’ve been taught, and something did seem to break through. In any case, I got what I desired on my way home from an OA meeting in the form of witnessing a shooting star. It was like a cosmic FedEx truck moment!
Accumulating a list of things I need to purify wasn’t exactly my idea here. I had been feeling a pressing need, partly due to the training I’m receiving, to work the steps, and a friend in the fellowship asked if I wouldn’t like to participate in a step study. Ironically, I’m progressing with the Steps at a faster clip with my sponsor than I am with my study group. With my sponsor, I’ll finish up 4/5 tomorrow, and with the group, I’m just finishing up Step 3, though I think I’m just going to share the highlights of 4/5 and move onto 6/7.
After this, I need to take a “gentleness break” which is what Patrick Carnes encourages us to do as we work the steps. I’m glad that I’m pretty much through with this, probably the deepest 4th step I’ve ever done. And I’ve been through one that was more extensive. (Not as deep, and perhaps that was more a reflection of who and where I was at the time in my development. In any case, the breadth of the CEAHOW 4th step is impressive.)
It’s cold and sunny out, and with each passing day the light gets longer and longer, if only a minute at a time on the edges of the ever shorter dark. Brigid is on its way this Sunday. It seems only fitting that this transition should happen as emotional winter gives way to emotional spring. Yippeeskippee!
Title TBA January 26, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Uncategorized.Tags: blogging while depressed
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Today I feel unsure about what to write. Part of the reason is that I feel “down.” A number of factors come to the fore relating to this set of circumstances, not the least of which is that I’ve completed the 4th Step using The Gentle Path and am about to complete the 5th Step in the next 2 days. The backwash of Step 4 has been swirling around me in the last week.
Mercury is retrograde and will turn direct somewhere near my Midheaven from what I gather. I feel like my career is going nowhere, which makes total sense, given that the MC is about status in the world and career, etc. I feel like I shot myself in the foot at work–which I can’t know for sure really. I have an assignment from my teacher that isn’t going very well at all. Emotionally, a lotta-lotta-lot is going on for me. Essure-Pressure top stop already!
So. I don’t feel like blogging. Hopefully tomorrow it will be different.
National Identity Identification January 23, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Mystical, Personal Journey.Tags: Americaddiction, American identity fixation, recovery
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I was struck powerless yesterday, reading Ran Prieur’s observation that, unlike the breakups of the USSR & Yugoslavia, a breakup of the U.S. is less likely because, in the former examples various peoples identified more as “Ukrainian” or “Tajik”, “Serb” or “Macedonian”, etc., than they did as “Soviet” or “Yugoslav.” Contrariwise, here, we are all Americans vs. Rhode Islanders, Vermonters, Denverites, Hudson Valleyites, etc.
I remember a similar conversation with Sharon Astyk when I took her home adaptation class about New York State, that too many people identified themselves with the idea of New York State, and seemed all right, if sometimes uncomfortable, to see themselves linking up both Joe Bruno (indicted today!) and the East Village of New York City, as well as unusually fabulous Buffalo with Albany–”home of the average American.”
I say I felt a powerlessness gush over me because I knew instantly what he was talking about, and knew that “American”, like Jack Daniels, Catholicism, Heroin, Being Overweight, Macys Credit Card Holding, Anonymous Sex and other Addiction/Civilizationalisms/vEmpirisms was a powerful meme.
I didn’t cause it, I can’t cure it, I can’t control it.
And I am aware of this. This mutha is too big to be wished away. It is a shadow-critter that must be faced and learned from.
When I was getting abstinent, I remember taking my sugar addiction to my then therapist, and I put her on the chair. She appeared as a Southern Belle Iron Butterfly type. Mizz Scarlett with a whip. And in that initimatably Suth’n fashion of “Ah mean that in the nicest possible way!” she proceeded to tell me why I couldn’t do without her.
Her arguments were pretty thin, and I could easily dispense with Sugar in this visage. I will sometimes remember that to both mock and to recognize the power of the addictive form, however. “The nicest possible way” can be a truly undermining factor in all the muck.
I hear people rattle on about “American this,” and “American that,” and I know it’s ALL a sham. Ironically, it’s people who agitate for secession or sovereignty who “get” what the founding fathers said. To the unconscious ones, “American” is basically like Barbie, Ken, Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s, etc. It’s a brand name as applied to nations, and all them uthaz is nuttin’ compared to A(we’re #1-woo-hoo!)merica. People may say “Buy American,” but they don’t MEAN it. If they did, they would read packaging at the Target or the KMart, and leave without buying much at all. They would be going to the farmer’s markets and the local shops that Wal-Mart is putting out of business. “Buy American” is an empty slogan and one that ironically “only traitors really take seriously.”
“I’m ‘Merkin, see, so’s I bah mah blings (who carez if dey’s mayd in China?) at tah Wally and at tah Seeers.” (They probably do at least get their tattoos done by American artists I expect, and slather over the Harleys which may or may not be built down Mexico way. Hey, at least it’s on the same continent! “America” donchaknow!)
See, what I’m doing, and I hold this up as an example of the power and seductiveness of the Addiction, is “taking someone’s inventory.” I’m engaging in judgments that don’t further discourse, but only serve to mock and berate. Again, I don’t have answers of how to deal with the entranced, those besotted with patriotic b.s. It doesn’t matter whether they’re left or right. I am powerless over American identity, and my life has become unmanageable. I am powerless over alcohol, and my life has become unmanageable. I am powerless over food and my life has become unmanageable. I am powerless over people, places and things, etc.
I’ve really been going back and forth between the anger and bargaining phases of grieving this issue. That I can’t really help anyone get through this aspect of their blindness. This piece is SO big, so armed and dangerous, and I am such a tiny little speck. I have to surrender. I can’t, Star Goddess can. I think I’ll let Sugma’ad.
I threw an I Ching about this issue. One changing line in #49, Pushing Upward. To Endurance. It’s like with this issue, spring will give way to a strength that will endure. I guess I’m just a little shoot, growing up alongside the monoculture. I am helping to propagate a new species, and I will undergo the normal difficulties of spring–heavy snows that melt moderately quickly; cold, but few subzero temps overnight; grey days, but hopefully lots of rain to nourish my roots.
I need to be little. Little works. Calling no attention to myself helps. I can be invisible. That’s not hard, though there’s also the fame thing calling to me. How that will work is up to Sugma’ad and Diana too.
Forms of Self-Hate January 22, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Uncategorized.Tags: 4th step, recovery, self-hate
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Sometimes writing blog posts is tricky. Every so often I have the temptation to throw up my hands and say “I’m worthless for reasons x, y and z! [and aa and ab and ac and...]“ Sometimes I will take a human aspect such as jealousy, and own my own. There are people who relegate the ugly and disturbing inside their shadows, and here I come along and trot it out for everyone to look at, like a child brandishing his poo and saying “Look, look! I made this!”
(Sidenote: I have often thought about writing a post about the satisfaction that comes along with taking a really good dump! I’m not saying I will, but perhaps some day…)
I’m working through my 4th step from The Gentle Path, and I get these questions about loneliness, sadness, loss, grief, anger. Today’s was about self-hate. The example it gave of self hate was something along the lines of “I don’t finish projects when I’m really close to completing them.”
How many plays have I started? How many pieces of poetry, and other writings have I started but “lost interest?” How many times have I sent in the first draft of a play, not even sure it’s good and hoping/trusting that someone would like to see it polished/improved? (When I know that people prefer pieces that are much farther along than the first draft.)
I have hurt myself in many ways at various times in my life. Every once in awhile, I will consider what it would be like to be dead, to not have to deal with the sufferings and pains I endure on a daily basis. And I sing the praises of “death marvelous death!” much to the annoyance of Hades and Kali and all the other underworld deities. “We’ll come and gets you when WE’RE good and ready, mmkay?”
Today, I really didn’t want to write any postings at all. But MLK day was Monday and I feel the need to at least show up and put SOMETHING up each day. While I don’t get a lotta-lot of traffic here, I’m hoping some people come by to see what this gay-witchpriest-playwright-in-recovery has to say about stuff. I feel I haven’t posted a lot about the spirits of the region. Other things do come up, and I notice and remark on these other things. Yet I hope that I can find some aspect of the Hudson-Mohawk Valley to write on. As I did on Tuesday about my trip to Prospect Park.
Part of it is just the January blahs. I want for there to be other things to do. I want to be able to pursue what I want, rather than what people who pay me money decide. Really I want the fire/FIRE economy to end so that the water economy can start to trickle in and take hold, sweep away the burnt-out wrecks and husks of the structures that no longer serve us.
Anyway, I’m sitting here looking at these words, and I’m starting to fall asleep. (T.Hee!, not a good sign…)
I’ll just end by saying “I radiate blessings outward to everyone and every thing my spirit touches.”
Blessings
Pluto in Capricorn/Sun in Aquarius January 21, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Uncategorized.Tags: astrology, Pluto in Capricorn, semisextile
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The last time Pluto transited Capricorn was in the years leading up to the American Revolution (and then the French as well). The Sun and Pluto are in a semi-sextile relationship since yesterday. This is a minor aspect, and as such doesn’t really carry much weight in chart analysis, but I thought it was interesting that it should coincide with the Inauguration, which evidently occurred under a VOC moon.
Lately I haven’t really been all that interested in astrology. I know the craft fairly well, but it hasn’t been singing to me much. Not like other forms of divination. That being said, I do pay a bit of attention to where Mercury goes retrograde (right now retro in Aquarius, returning to Cappy before it goes direct), and I also pay attention to the larger movements of Saturn and the outers.
FYI, I look at astrology “belief” as a red herring–to believe in astrology can be taken two ways, the way it is usually read (i.e., the “what” or the content of astrology as a literal field of study), or the way I mean it, as a mode–the “how.” When a person believes in something, they will for example, believe it in English. Or in German. Or in Medical-ese. In poetry. In Comic Books. Or in Astrology. So I feel the notion of believing “in” astrology is the equivalent of believing in French or playwriting. As modes, you can obviously believe “in” them in the accusative meaning of “in” as opposed to the dative.
(If we want to get technical, I may have beliefs via astrology or English or the Drama and Poetry. The question of believing in astrology as a field, imho, is a squirrelly, and subsumed by the larger question about the utility of belief in and of itself, a question that the more I am exposed to my own and others’ B.O.S.’s (belief operating systems) becomes more suspect.)
Anyway, in paying attention to Pluto and its larger movements, and in meditating upon its place in my chart–in Virgo, in the 5th House, widely conjunct Uranus which becomes unified by the opposition to Chiron, aspecting my ascendant, moon and Neptune–I see that I have a sympathetic interest in this particular time frame. Both Virgo and Capricorn resonate to the earth element. My Virgo Pluto-Uranus in 5 has led me to an abiding interest in writing transformative and lightning bolt sorts of plays. I’m eager to decode some of the earthly element of the Pluto in Capricorn time through the language 0f the dramatic medium. Yet it feels like a slow, glacial process. Again, the movements are quite dramatic underfoot, but well, well below the surface.
(chip chip chip)
Both Capricorn and Aquarius have Saturn as a ruler of their signs. Uranus also rules Aquarius, and some astrologers consider it to be a subruler of Capricorn as well. Over the next year or so, Uranus and Saturn dance in opposition across Pisces and Virgo (having started on election day and becoming exact FIVE times with their various retrograde/direct movements) with their last exact opposition being in early Aries and Libra, squaring Pluto in Capricorn. Funny how it’s all tied together…
So while the Sun in Aquarius in the semisextile is not really meaningful by itself, I also felt fascinated that yesterday marked the Dow Jones sinking below 8,000. (“How low can you go? How low can you go?”) I opened up my belatedly forwarded 401(k) statement and saw that it had lost 25% of its value in the last quarter. A sense of vertigo and attendant sputterings came over me, but I have been expecting this for quite some time.
And someone on a forum website asked the question “What is happening that people aren’t paying attention to while the inauguration proceeds?” Hmmmmm…. There’s quite a bit to that.
I feel that Pluto in Capricorn portends a thorough refashioning of the notions of status and wealth, of governance structures and business arrangements, of feeling innately the place of this planet in all of our dealings and that if we cut Gaia out of the equation, we cut off our noses to spite our faces. Capricorn represents LIMITS. And Pluto entering the goat-sign compels us to understand and embrace these aspects or to suffer the consequences. That the sun has moved into Aquarius just blows a bit of air onto the situation. It might give us a bit of relief, but Aquarius too has its fixities and inflexibilities. And the new moon coming up this weekend will feature an Aquarius stellium, including Mercury retrograde into the mix.
Wonder what sort of blusterrific situations will start to emerge then.
Getting into Winter January 20, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Capital Region Notions, Mystical, Personal Journey.Tags: Ben Franklin, magick, Obama Inauguration, Prospect Park Troy, Troy New York, visualization, winter
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A couple of days ago, a guide of mine–Taliesin–told me that I am drugged. There are complex reasons for this, one of which is that I work in a cubicle, but the drugs that swirl in and through me come from various places. The most pernicious and destructive has been diet soda, and I am going cold turkey on that. Debt is another one, but I feel that something naturally evolves there to put me in a more receptive place around that issue.
I asked T. about seasonal affective disorder, and he said that the way out of SAD was through, to more deeply go into winter rather than to fight against it. I was actually eager to do this–I luv-luv-LOOOOOOVE winter! So I donned my winter duds and walked up to Prospect Park and communed with the landscape, the pine trees, the snow, the ice, the chickadees darting in and out of the pine branches.
I felt a calming grace fall over me, and a bit of the drug-fog cleared. I’m back at work today, so it’s back, but I have the memory of winter’s gentle cleansing light.
While I was there, a couple other guides appeared, and we had an interesting conversation about … things. I did two big magick spells over the past week, and I will be eager to see how a copule of entities work with/around/through these spells. Both are merely exaggerations of what these entities are already doing. My theory is that more of what didn’t work yesterday will eventually lead to the bottom we all require in order to move forward with our individaul and collective misisons.
Ben Franklin’s subject seemed to reflect back to me that one of my spells was working. I can’t say that I see that as of yet, but there are feelings that have to clear before anything obscured by the present moment becomes available for awareness. As to the other entity, things progress a pace, and I eagerly await the news I will celebrate. Though I don’t think I’ll be able to say much here about it.
Over the weekend, the thought crossed my mind that people who are paying attention to the local, to their bioregion, to the people who they see everyday are somehow “traitors” to the vEmpire country/system. And in a way it is true. When a person sees the various air-castles created around this globalization notion (which really has been nothing more than a world-wide extortion ring of mammoth proportions), the scoundrels around us all who would relish our continued participation in their dry-sucking of us Eloi-style sheeple will be spewing the traitor epithets. (That is already happening in different parts of the blogosphere, I know.) And perhaps not so ironically, they would be right. Just acknowledging one’s human connection to real food, clean air and water, to natural fabrics, etc., does renders one traitorous to a vEmpire intent as it is on including “profits” associated with toxic spill clean-up, pollution futures, armament sales, burials of soldiers, “sick care”, etc. If a person genuinely wants to create better lives for themselves and for their communities, then yes, they are traitors to the ‘Merkkkan cause, yessireebob.
“Why canchu just go inta yer trailer and eat them thar cheez-doodlz and ding-dongs and Krapt Mak-n-Chiz and watch teh damn Nascar already? Hi-falutin’ treehugger wussies!” Like these people have anything that’s even I might find desirable on a basic level. Guh buh!
In any case, with all the different energies that swirled around me, I must say mostly that I was alive to the magick of the snow, the ice, the blues and greys and light pinks I saw in Prospect Park and I let it infuse my golden spirit with its brisk bluish snow-fire-manna. Ashe!
Today, I watched the Inauguration, btw. I cried at the John Williams arrangement so wonderfully performed by that quartet. I turned my back to the TV screen while ffffRickin’ Warren gave the invocation, and I felt Obatala hover over the conference room table. As the invocation went on, I silently spoke the 5 points of the Iron Pentacle, trying to make the points around (Sex-Self-Passion-Pride-Power, in that order) into a mantra. As i did so, I saw my aura expand in a silver-gold glow, and I felt angelic wings sprout from my shoulder-blades to envelop me with protection and care. Whatever egregores lived inside the words of that speech bounced off that protection.
I was clean, unsoiled.
I will probably blog about BHO’s speech some time later. Maybe tomorrow. My initial reaction was: Good speaker, holds one’s attention. The sentiments were contradictory and confused, most especially that “we’ll defend our way of life” but we will reform how we utilize the resources we all have to share. Hmmmm. Seems mutually exclusive to me. But perhaps “our way of life” is something other than Darth Cheney meant? To be defined, I guess…
Holding Pattern January 14, 2009
Posted by frostwolftfirerose in Civilization Anonymous, Mystical, Personal Journey.Tags: collapse, vEmpire
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I imagine that some things have already happened. I imagine that certain vEmpire Entities (“vEs”) are no longer. The news stories relating to these vEs speak reflects the self-destruction of these entities mostly through their own incompetence, overreach and hubris.
Their apologists project onto the rest of us the very behaviors for which that they are on the hook, and it’s amusing to me that they really think that if they point at this minority or that perceived-to-be-less-than group, that they will fool anybody.
Most of us have already been exposed to drunks and druggies. To our eyes this isn’t much different. I beat a dead horse on this score, but we are witnessing a whole passel of people who are resolutely attempting to avoid hitting bottom. I don’t know how many of them will survive these next few time clicks (and I can’t be specific about whether it’s years, months, weeks, days, most likely NOT hours, but then what do I know?), but the more they resist the harder the impact’s going to be.
I know these things, lots of people know these things, many without knowing they know. But we are currently in a holding pattern. Some people are gripping on like it’s the top of the rollercoaster ride. And that may very well be just what we’re about to experience. But I like to remember how easy a lot of difficult work has been once I get into it. This holding pattern is a lot like the notion of “I should go to the gym” and the understanding that once you actually get there and start a workout regimen, you feel better.
Some people are trying to think of possibilities for us that are “present-time.” Like the relocalization, secession, and student-loan-forgiveness movements, for example. I wait for the understanding of where to put my prodigious energy. There are obstacles, and some of them are voluntarily ingested. (Soda with Aspartame seems to be one of my addictive barriers for the present time.) But they only make me a mite impatient to “get on with it.” I’m doing what I need to do. Whether it’s magickal workings or showing up to my life or my altar practice.
I see that I am to be a multi-pointed focused fellow–one who can maintain a “diffuse focus” (if you will) amidst various dimensions. (Dementias? ) This is a part of my pathway, I see. The person I wish to become–snap! I already am. I am an angel with wings you can’t see. I am a god who knows his work and his joy and his whole beautiful self in all his parts!
Come dance with this divine being!
