Wednesday, December 21, 2011

MAKE THE YULETIDE GAY,,,

...hetero is good too...  ;o)

So, tonight is the solstice, which means that tonight is the longest night of the year.  Tomorrow morning the sun will be "re-born" in strength and begin to grow towards summer.

In days of auld the Yule log would be lit with a bit of saved ember from last years fire.  In our days of electricity it is difficult to imagine just how important that first "waxing" sunrise  was, especially in cold climates. 


Even in these days of modern miracles-- the "end of the world as the Mayans knew it", the New Age of Electronic Fire-- it is important to celebrate the Lights of the Season: The light of the sun, the light of candles, the light of child newborn to the world. 

It doesn't matter what you celebrate, or how, it is only important that you do celebrate! 

Hope you have a Merry Yule and Happy Holidays!!!!




Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I AM IGNORING THIS

So I posted this on facebook in response to this article about Pat Robertson's comments regarding this SNL Skit:

Why does Robertson think it is okay for Muslims to kill people when their religion is satirized?  Does he mean his perception of our culture is that it is okay for people to kill over religion but not Christianity? Is that really the thrust of it? It is always about power or money really.

It's so obvious to me that these people worship a very weak God that they actually have no faith in.  If you really believe that your God is mighty and your way is the best way why not live the fullest of that belief?  Moreover, why is it so important to him that people he doesn't even like or agree with are making fun of his God?

See that is the real thing.  You don't get insulted unless you would be complimented.  No one takes offense if they don't give a shit about the person expressing the opinion.  ...Unless they want power over that person for some reason.

Is it possible these people REALLY feel persecuted living among us? If all the haters got their own worlds would they be happy? We are all so aware of the seeming unceaseless diversity of viewpoints, cultures, etc  But I wonder sometimes if we are mature enough as a species to handle it? With 7 billion people on the planet, we all need to learn to cooperate a little more.

And if your Diety is so awesome than I would leave the fights up to It.

Then someone posted "Can we get Kim Jong Il back in exchange?"

I responded with a "lol" and then:

He is just such a stupid narrow minded hater that I really don't care about him, but I did think that skit was funny. I read the article just to see the "underside" of the humur, the "tragedy" that makes the "comedy" and I was like wtf with that statement about bodies in the street being okay? Okay with who? (I mean, outside of those people that did that.)

I think all reasonable humans are going to have to stop caring about ,what someone else thinks about their own personal opinions. So I suppose I should not actually even care about what he thinks about our acceptance of bodies in the street. SO I guess I just ignore him????

Maybe once you realise how ridiculous another person is to you, you just have to stop paying attention to them altogether.

EDIT: Like why I even have the reaction of him being a "stupid narrow minded hater" Because I think myself an intelligent broadminded lover in response to him? I need his idiocy to assert my superiority?

....Just a little afterthought too, is why their are no comedy shows on the Christian networks, and no Christian comedians.  Comedy and tragedy are very linked, and the ancient greek playwrights used to say that comedy was the more difficult of the two.

I think this is because it really depends on seeing the tragedy from another viewpoint, and religious zealots see nothing humorous in the world because they cannot see from any other viewpoints but their own.  There is no room for humour.  Or it is mean-spirited, vengeful comedy.

Monday, December 12, 2011

RON ATHEY

"I have no body:
I make endurance my body..."

Ron Athey and I do not know each other. I have never been able to actually observe Athey's work. I have met him and spoken to him a few times. I have vague retro-memories of him at Vinyl Fetish when it was on Melrose and owned by Joseph Brooks, in the 1980's. 

Really, I suppose I should say I know "of him".

However, Ron Athey's work has effected my life in deeply profound ways.  And his work and explorations have expanded the things I believed possible to such a degree that I have to say the world became a less frightening, less chaotic, and more filled with possibilities than movies like the Matrix.  

Athey 's performances have contributed to my ever expanding beliefs about the limits of the body, and the mind-body connection.  Ron Athey is as much a part of my motivation for beginning a yoga practice and strengthening of my own physical capabilities as my own vanity, health problems, or desire to learn the secrets of the anciet yogis-- like levitating and transcending violent deaths.

(During my own "bleeding/ female trouble" years with those uterine cysts and in the hospital, the whole extreme body art movement- not just Athey- often gave me the endurance to carry on.  What is one's own life but a long performance piece? Won't we all suffer greatly for our art? And somehow I can find the strength to continue another day.)

Athey is most often compared to Bob Flanagan but Flanagan was hetero-identified, if I recall, and more importantly, had cystic fibrosis. I've heard Athey called a secular (and sexual) Sufi, but again, for superficial reasons.  To convey the more shocking, self-mutilating aspect of Athey's work.

A mutual acquaintance of Athey's called him a "true Warrior". And I agree. But even warriors went to war, those berserkers, running into battle naked and mad.  Athey is better compared to a self-crucifying Christ. (And he does do a lot of exploration of Christianity in his work, as well.) Or perhaps a suspended Odin in performance.

He is slayer and slain, predator and prey, creator and destroyer.  He is Kali and Shiva; he is Anu and Tiamat both.

"I have no divine powers:
I make honesty my divine power."


Athey himself, as the instrument of his art, and as his corpus as the literal materials for creation of his art, transcends the physical dimension and embraces the most isolated and lonely places within it. His is the realm of the dark side of the moon.

Where is that place, in each of us, that must submit to be turned away from the light of the sun? For the moon to light the darkness, a trip into the abyss must be made, and part of us turned away from the light, and from the familiar, comforting vision of Terra Firma.

His work is so likely to produce a strong reaction in most people, that even in his mundane life his physical presence creates a visceral reaction...and that is even before you see his heavily tattooed face and body.


Athey comforts me as an extremely empathic psychic as well.  In the movie Unbreakable, Bruce Willis is an unbreakable, superhero strong, everyman.  He is the karmic or natural balance to Samuel L. Jackson's "bones like glass" character.  It makes sense to me that there is someone like Athey out there, given that even the photos on his website make me squeamish. (http://ronatheynews.blogspot.com/)


Ron Athey's performances eclipse all times and dimensions and experiences.  It is not possible to be anywhere other than fully present when viewing Athey penetrating himself with the Throne of Judas, or whacking himself bloody and hen creating designs from his blood. 

And, like music, his performances are created so completely and organically between performer and observer, that each performance becomes a marker in the collabrative life or shared relationship of the artist and his art and beholder of the art.

You will not forget that moment. You can not forget that moment.  You want to remember.  The strength, the power, the willingness to surrender,  is always there. 

"I have no life and death:
I make the tides of breathing my life and death..."

He has a book project right now that he was kickstarting. I would pre-buy this in a minute. I donated money to it, too. It is called Pleading In The Blood.

http://www.indiegogo.com/Pleading-in-the-Blood-The-Art-of-Ron-Athey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Athey

The quotes are from:
http://www.worldprayers.org/archive/prayers/meditations/i_have_no_parents.html

Thursday, December 1, 2011

YOU ONLY LIVE FOREVER ONCE

(Edit: This gets some random hits, people looking for the secret of immortality, or perhaps immortals, looking for kindred- and I realise that this post needs editing.  It is really two posts- one about my experiences with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome and anxiety and night terrors, and one about finding the key to immortality in a release of the fear of death.  The two were intimately linked in my life, but may not be helpful to someone else.  Also, I realise this title does not help the person alone in the night, searching for comfort.  I apologise.  I will edit it at some point.  I recommend this post on Retrocognition and Past Lives, as well.)

Until I was almost 30 years old I was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone at night, and terrified of going to sleep in the nighttime.

A good chunk of my sexual life owes itself to this fact.  (Not all of it.)  And often, when a relationship would begin to fail me--when I would lie next to that same person and still feel alone and afraid--I would provoke late night arguments.

I also welcomed becoming exhausted, just to be able to go to sleep quickly.

It wasn't until after a nervous breakdown and a lot of therapy, that I began to be able to sleep in the dark and by myself. (And I got a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder syndrome, which is just a way of saying "you are reliving past trauma repeatedly and suffering great anxiety for it".)

Part of it, I now understand, was that I could hear spirits more loudly at night.  For one thing, for most of these years I lived in a world where there was no God or spirits.  Everything was empirical and explainable by science.  When a person died, they died.

It's just that late at night, it felt like someone was there. But I had no explanation for that feeling.

One reason the spirits would often become louder is that it was so hard to reach me back then. Good or bad spirits, they were spooky and cold. Sometimes they were actually trying to soothe me.  Or warn me about real danger (and that is whole other thing- that I had to shut myself off to my own intuition, when I could not accept the psychic or spirit world). But their presence was so unwanted by me I refused to entertain their existence at all.

Just before sleep is when psychically I become the most "open".  And night is when the spirits have the most likelihood of being able to manifest visually to the physical human eye.  When I was a adolescent especially, too many things went bump in the night.

So, I would already be in a state of anxiety, just because the fear was always lurking, waiting for an opportunity to arise.  And once it found an outlet, it was relentless.  I was in such a state of anxiety.  I would often spend from midnight to dawn with all the lights on, checking and re-checking every closet and cubby, certain that there was someone in hiding in the house.

The other thing that would keep me awake was the fear that I was going to die.  Anxiety attacks often mimic heart attacks physically.  But worse, sometimes they just make you feel really, really scared, and the left brain will look for something to hang all that fear on.

Sometimes I would fall asleep and then wake up from nightmares, or just wake up, and be alone in the middle of night, terrified until sunrise.  All sorts of terrors- both rational and irrational.  I was basically enthralled to fear and anxiety.  And I was always very conscious of how few people--indeed, usually there was no one-- that I could be open about what was happening to me. And if I was, I never felt like they really understand the depth of my fear.  (Fear is VERY personal, isn't it?)

People frequently remark to me that I am so open.  Often they will add that my openness was helpful to them for some reason.

I lived with such intense fear for so many years, and hid it so successfully, that many people are surprised to learn that I have even suffered at all!

Fear thrives in hidden places.  The more afraid you are, the more you have to hide, and the more you have to hide from things.

Moreover, you have not seen the true measure of a person until you have seen how they handle fear when it comes upon them.  If there is anyone out there that is as successful in hiding their fears as I was, then I want to be able to share my experience so that at the very least, they do not have to feel so alone.

The fear of death hung over me for no "real" reason for many years. Most nights that I was awake, wracked with anxiety, absolutely nothing was going on in my physical environment. There is no greater fear the fear of death.  It is the fear upon which all others are based, or formed. And I was plagued by it on a regular, consistent basis.

I was so afraid to admit this.  So ashamed that I could have lived through so many real things, only to be unable to overcome my own mind.

The fear was crippling and so was the shame of it.

I tried unsuccessfully to rationalise my fear away, but death does not appear to be rational.  And the fear makes it hard to think clearly anyhow.

I have recently come to the belief and way of life that fear is a warning that I have separated from my higher Self, or the Divine, however you might want to call it.  Fear is not my enemy.  However, it is also not something I want to live with for long periods of time.  It is an alarm.  The reason for fear is to be hunted down, and then the "noise" shut off.

It is ironic that once I conquered my fear of death, I was able to release a great deal of anxiety.  It really is a matter of making the decision that feeling good is the most important thing.  Not winning the fight, or being right, or having every circumstance conform to what is most desirable, or judging other people.

If each obstacle is met with determination, and the commitment to seek joy is reaffirmed after every encounter with negativity, the rewards become obvious.  The learning process to overcome fear and focus on good feelings, and good feeling thoughts, wasn't easy.  But being terrified and unable to sleep hadn't been easy either.

The novelty of fighting my own reactivity was perhaps, at first, what worked.  Although I do think learning to look for the best in any moment or situation, regardless of how bleak, is an extremely worthwhile experience.  I should mention it was reading Victor Frankel's Man's Search For Meaning that really opened me to this way of living.  This was a man in a "real" nightmare, and he had found a way out. I recommend the book to everyone, but especially to anyone living in fear.

And once I began living in a headspace where I was consistently trying to stay focused in the present moment, I became open to the idea of being immortal.  I began to see how flexible time is.

And, ironically, at that point it did not matter! With no fear of death, and a determination to live as totally in the present as possible, immortality didn't seem very urgent.

This is when I read the book 2150 A.D. by Thea Alexander. A book I believe is actually a probable future, although I think that it will continue to evolve as we move towards it. (In other words, I don't think the book is gospel.  We don't need to all cut our hair short and wear Logan's Run tunics.  But I agree that we as species are shifting from micro to Macro as humans.)

I not only believe that we will evolve to the kind of "utopia" described in 2150 A.D. I believe that I will live to see it in this incarnation.  That I will live to almost 200 years of age! And I think I will continue to look young and fabulous.

That's what I am aiming for anyhow.

It's not really immortality.  It is more a kind of controlled aging process and lengthened lifespan, I suppose.

I think that when we first came to this planet and this thing called "humanity" we lived for hundreds of years in our human forms.  And then we decided to come for shorter periods so that we could all come lots of times.  (Everyone is an "old soul" as far as I can tell.)  We got to experience being a lot of different things in different times and cultures.  Being both genders.  Being parent and child.  Rich and poor. Friend and enemy; friend and stranger.

For most of my life the thought of dying was terrifying, but my life was so often unbearable.  Not just in actual, empirical things that happened to me, but in my nightmares and visions. Only the daylight was safe to be alone, and even in the company of other people I was often terrified.  And I was so rarely happy or comfortable with who I was.

To think that I might have had to live that way for seventy years was bearable only in comparison to death- to the unknown. If I yearned for immortality when reading a vampire or supernatural novel, it was to escape the fear of death.  Not for a lengthening of the life I was living.

True Immortality has its drawbacks.  You can only live forever once. So if you want to live forever, make sure you really, really like your life.  Because there will be a lot of it. 

Of course, many people believe that you only live once, and some also believe that there is no life after this one. Maybe it is even more important to release all fear if all you have is this one mortal coil, so easily sprung?

Either way, open yourself to all the good the world has to offer you.

The real key to either life-- eternal or ephemeral--  is to live in each moment, and to live in the Love present in each moment, the joy.  That is what creates the space for whole lifetimes to exist within the span of minutes.

You live forever, eternal, youthful and vital and vibrant, in each moment as it comes.

The NowEver.

And if ever you are scared or anxious or alone in the dark, if you can draw some comfort from my experiences than I am glad for it.