It is remarkable how draining pain is, while my shoulder was a lot better yesterday it will still like there was this loud party going on somewhere in my body and I couldn’t hear myself think over the noise. Every time I put the heating pad on I would disappear into this catatonic zone (which someone explained was because I was tensing my body to deal with the pain and when I put the pad on, the pain was eased and my body could relax and immediately want sleep).

The ‘d’ is now sticking on my keyboard. The ‘a’ is fine again.

I blame Lady Gaga. I have been steadily getting ready for the Mexico performance and as part of my workout added back in shadowboxing and when I first heard “bad romance” I over did it. Funny to think that the kind of life I have lived it is an automatic thing to pop ones shoulder back in the socket and not even really register it in the moment.

It showed up later demanding attention.

Freedom of Speech is an interesting thing. There is a push, globally, in the UN to introduce a new framework that is designed to provide an extra layer of protection for people’s fundamental Human Rights that is running smack up against the Western and particularly American concept of “Freedom of Speech.”

Quite a few Islamic countries have gotten together and are pushing forward an initiative that would “ban blasphemy.” In other words, it would make ridiculing a religion a Human Rights violation.

Now…here is how it works. Making fun of something is not “freedom of speech,” as insulting some one is not a part of it either and that goes for institutions and politics as well.

Freedom of Speech is routed in the mature expression of what you believe in minus the immature need to put down or ridicule someone else. What gets difficult is adjudging when someone’s criticism has served a purpose further than just expressing the fact that they personally do not like something or crossing into being insulting.

That will be something that is always argued about.

But ridiculing something or someone is not a basic Human Right. None of us have the right to seek to diminish someone else to either prove our point or entertain ourselves.

Someone used the example in conversation yesterday of the times of President Bush and the bumpersticker “Somewhere a Village is Missing Its Idiot.” Now, this person is a diehard liberal but to her, and rightly so – that bumpersticker was offensive because it was a childish insult to the Commander-in-Chief. In the same manner that so many are upset that there are rightwing t-shirts aimed at Obama now with biblical quotes about “may his children be fatherless and his wife alone,” those t-shirts are not funny by any stretch of the imagination but they are an expression of disrespect that is rooted in the personal and carry no critique of the politics or expression of personal belief.

They are juvenile, bullying expressions.

Insults are not covered by “Freedom of Speech.”

But humour is something that has long been used to convey a political attitude. Political cartoons are based in Sarcasm, a poking fun at the powers that be.

Here is where is get tricky again, to poke fun at politics is a form of expression that shoul be protected within reason, as long as it does not go into poking fun at an individual politician on a personal basis. Yet, individual politicians become “icons” for the politics so how can you tell which is the commentary on the ideology and which has overstepped the bounds to use personal attack?

Religion is a personal choice. It is probably the only thing covered in Human Rights that is inarguably a personal matter. It should be protected from undue ridicule. However, if that Religion in any way, shape or form crosses over and becomes involved in the politics of a country than that Religion is subject to the same allowances for expression of sarcasm and ridicule that any political ideology is.

Why is it okay to ridicule ideology? It isn’t really, because ridicule is extremely immature and does not foster debate but humour communicates concepts quickly that are part of a critique and voice of opposition that cannot be shut own when it comes to the arena of discussing matters that are not rooted in personal choice but have to do with broad community goverance.

People have a right to speak and criticize and to convey their opinions in any form that does not incite the choice of personal removal of Human Rights (ie violence against members) in relation to public entities and corporations.

If your religion is involved in your politics then you have move your personal religion into the arena of the public an you’d best be prepared for it to receive the same treatment as an opposition party does in presenting its ideas.

But…however  and again, here is the limit, the criticism of the Religion must be mindfully aimed solely at the religion in relation to the politics and not towards the personal religion or its followers.

Religion, because it is such a primary personal choice has absolutely no place in the governance of any community unless it is a private and restricted religious community that seeks no interaction or influence with other communities that are not of the same religion (and by same religion I mean 100%). So, a convent…for example, may govern itself completely by its religion but cannot seek to participate in local community governance without understanding that they are opening themselves up to being “public fair game.” Individuals from the convent may join in local governance but…as I have said and written in numerous articles before…if you are an elected official you are not there to let your moral compass guide you but to serve the community by best trying to keep in balance the needs of everyone to most preserve everybody’s compass in good working order. That’s an “everybody” and not a some or a majority.

Why not a majority? Because majority rule in variably violates somebody’s Human Rights. The morality of governance must be rooted in the principles of defined Human Rights and nothing, nothing else. All laws et al should be balanced and weighed against the this framework in order to adjudge whether or not the proposed law would violate the tenent of Human Rights (usually in service of the majority) or if that Law serves to provide increased protection of the Human Right.

Ahhhhh….yes….I do believe I am finding scattered bits of my mind laying around today.

I discovered “what’s that smell?” the other day in my truck. I was trapped in the cab for 20 minutes because I did not have the strength in my arm to undo the seat belt and couldn’t get it together to figure out how to o it left handed so I had time to sit and think about the smell that fills the cab when I drive. I had thought it was exhaust but was able to discern the smell of gas and sure enough, got out and checked and the fuel filter in is all ass backwards and the hose has worn through.

So that is my project today.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

It was like a balloon popped.

At some point on Thursday I pulled my shoulder out of its socket and whacked it back in place. By late that evening the pain was unbearable. By Friday morning my IQ had plummeted to an all time low. I could not think straight.

Then I had to jump through a bunch of hoops about passports and visas for Mexico to make sure everything was up to snuff with all the new regulations, which is something that I never want to repeat. But, a huge chunk of stress was lifted.

And then Verizon called and announced they were going to credit my account almost 3k in charges that I had challenged.

Now, I have been struggling to try and pay on this bill while challenging it so there was no interruption of service since I need the broadband and cell to do what I do and it has been a grinding form of stress. And suddenly…it is gone.

So my shoulder decided it needed all of my brain power and I wound up sprawled on a friend’s couch with a heating pad and just slept and slept and slept.

I feel achy but capable of thought today.

☺

I woke up and it hit me…I have room to write again. I still have a few weeks of “bill focus” but suddenly everything has shifted and life has become an open book again much sooner than I was expecting it.

Funny how that happens. And in the middle of all this, while I have been out of my writing (and blogging) routine I have been slowly brewing things in my head. There has so much been going on just as far as learning about writing and also learning about life.

Now, the challenge is to start to bring it out into the open.

One of the recent changes I have made to my routine is to kick myself out of the cave each morning and go down to a coffee shop to work and it has been a good thing. Usually I flee to coffee shops to get nothing done but this is different. Not only does it get me out, but it puts me around people. And my librarian has served as a kind of inspiration to me because she hits the same coffee shop to work on her writing. The place has no wifi, no loud music…it is actually a bakery. So I am thinking…now that I have a little more room to play with in my day…I may make that my writing place for a bit.

So much stirring and brewing. My arm still aches, my body feels off but everything is slowly coming together.

My goal is to have a video for “Striking a Match” up and out by Thanksgiving.

MK has gone “squirrel” I have never seen anything like it before. She walks around with her tail laid flat along her back unless she is holding it in this peculiar curl. I will have to take some pictures and post it.

Soon…soon

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

The morning after the class I sit and write notes about whatever I have learned about the whole process and about the people taking the class and their writing. Then it escalates into this absolute flood of ideas and connections that have to do with my own work and projects and it just becomes this sweeping thing.

One of the things I m doing with this class (because I can and because it is a perfect size) is I am weaving in elements of the workshop I am teaching in Merida and elements of Eat not the Heart. I am thinking that when I do the re-issue of Eat not/ Kore I am going to combine it with a writing program. Bubble bubble toil and trouble.

The class was fabulous. They left last week pronouncing themselves reluctant to write or in need of rituals and returned with rockingly good poems that they spent more time on and writing in places and at times they never expected. Hands down, not a one of them did a good job of writing a bad poem, they kept sliding into these beautiful phrases and destroying something that had just begun to suck. But when they got to the poems they wrote that were meant to be good…my god did they shine.

What is even better is that each of them have very strong and different gifts that are already establishing themselves in their own language. I am going to be heart broken when the class is over. I am though, going to submit this class again and design a more advanced “writing group” style class.

Working with people. Being around others who are actively working towards a goal is the single most important thing to do to keep your own efforts going. Even if you are not producing your own things, they are being worked on inside of you and we respond to our environments. The more we choose to create an environment that supports and reflects our goals…the better able we are to achieve them.

And even if all you have to put you in contact with others is the Internet it is enough to keep you going. Things change as you grow in all aspects of your life.

What is that quote? Always have a definite plan but learn how to be flexible in your approach.

A lot of people eschew flexibility in favor of ritual and routine. Sameness brings a kind of comfort of familiarity and it can be used to really enhance your ability to learn and grow and become but you have to be mindful of what you are choosing to let remain the same.

When I walked into the classroom last night the staff had returned the chairs and sofa and whiteboard we use to the room but they were slightly out of place. Now the nature of writing and the nature of this kind of class is all about being willing to become flexible and responsive to change. However, it is also process that is rooted in vulnerability. So returning the room to the exact same position it was in during the first class was important. It removed the trigger of being vulnerable in an unrecognizable environment and allowed everyone in the room to be vulnerable in other areas because they recognized the safety of the environment. It is why, if you are just starting to write or are blocked writing it is so important to define an area, choose a pen and a book that are dedicated to writing. Because this becomes the recognizable “safe” room for you to be vulnerable in. As you get more and more into the habit of writing, the act of writing itself creates that safety.

And on and on and on.

I had several late night phone calls last night. One from someone who is striving to break free of grief and learning that grief never goes away, it just becomes a part of life and life goes on and becomes different. Different can hold its own loves and joys and happiness but the grief from before will never be forgotten because love is never forgotten. No matter what the circumstances that brought the presence of the love to an end, you can never lose the fact that you loved. As you grow through that what you experienced becomes  part of what you are capable of and opens the door to go even further and deeper.

Whoops…phone call again, time to run up and jump in the truck…it looks like it is going to be that kind of day.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

Sometimes we forget how things happen. As time passes and people die, we lose the ones who lived through a moment in time that can correct our sometime revisionist ideas of the past.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court issued its ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education concerning desegregation in schools. In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered US Army Troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the order and protect “the Little Rock Nine.”

It was not until 1964 that congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

In 1918 both houses approved the 14th amendment that redefined citizenship, removing references to slaves and expanding it to include persons of either sex. In 1920, enough states had ratified the amendment to make it a part of our constitution.

The bill of rights and constitution of this country are designed to protect human rights. The US has become a leader in promoting international human rights and yet, has not become a signed member of the International Human Rights Treaty. But, as we have been discussing, if you are knowingly already violating it why would you sign it? I mean that is basic common sense.

Anyway…

The point being that in our progress towards civil and human rights in this country it has never been left to a matter of popular vote. In fact, like in the 60s, the judicial review and change in our laws to try and enhance the presence of justice in our society was anything but popular.

Part of the role of the government is the creation of community law. The judicial branch is supposed to back up and look at the big picture beyond immediate political needs and try to keep the laws and direction of the country in line with the stated goals of :

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

There was no Bill of Rights originally because the founding fathers looked at the phrase “we the people” and said “well, that covers everyone.” It was not until the complexities of society began to unfold with a class system that “we the people” needed to be more specifically defined. But that…was the original mistake that we are still trying to recover from.

How do you define who is a “person of the United States?” Particularly when you note that the term citizen is used later and specifically in regards to roles, “we the people” stands as its own phrase with its own definition.

We would not have any form of civil rights in this country had it been put to popular ballot. Each time an amendment is passed individual states have to ratify it with 35 of 50 states approving for it to become a part of our institution, and then it applies to everyone. That is a part of our checks and balances.

The whole human rights thing is kind of going in reverse. Mostly, I think, because our federal branch of government has lost the sense of its role and is behaving like all this is a popularity contest. In reverse of how things should be, individual states and cities are adopting the International Human Rights Treaty and placing laws and regulations on their books concerning them. This is not put on a ballot. These laws are passed by governing bodies because it has to do with the overwhelming sense of ethical direction of a community.  It is not a subject that has a lot of lobbying or campaigning because it exists in the realm of justice, to which our governments are supposed to act as a check and balance to the will of the people to make sure that they don’t get out of control; in the same way that the will of the people needs to balance out the will of the government through ratifying amendments.

Washington DC, the city proper, is an odd little place. Enough said about that, but it has, on its city rules, laws and regulations …in Chapter 25…a definition of Human Rights and the protections of…

Gay marriage passed in DC and was supposed to go to city ballot and the city came back and said “Ahhhhh…no-can-do….there will be no balloted vote on whether or not to allow same-sex marriage because to do so would be in violation of our city laws and regulations that protect Human Rights. It would be a direct violation to offer up for public approval the question of whether or not a certain group of people can participate in a privilege that is offered to others and governed by the laws of this city. Sorry…no ballot…the measure stands because it is an issue of Human Rights.”

Makes you think, huh?
 
What would happen in this country if we stopped fighting for all these separate little rights for separate little groups and instead, went for the reality – that we have no national Human Rights Law on our books. We are not a signatory of the International Human Rights Treaty and we need to be. Otherwise we will keep fighting for table scraps and as soon as one portion of the population is fed, another one will pop up and say “what about me?”

The issues are not about gay marriage or immigration rights or poverty issues or the death penalty…those are symptoms of a much greater ill, that issue is that this country is willfully choosing to ignore the basic Human Rights of all. As long as we keep trying to quilt together a just society we will never be warm.

Cause you can argue with anything small and specific using religion or politics or money when you are trying to block something from happening because semantics can be a powerful thing…but what poltics, what religion, what amount of money would be strong enough to support a denial of someone’s humanity?

No matter how jaded or ignorant someone is, there is a strong core of connection that exists between us based on our humanity. It is why even the worst racist, homophobic, fascist bigot in an instance of unthinking altruism will reach out and pull a screaming black queen out of the path of a train. Our humanity is hard wired into us. No matter what we pile up on it as our “beliefs,” we cannot escape that awareness of the life next to us. If we manage to suppress it, it eats us alive inside.

The more we segregate our efforts the less we will move towards supporting this part of all of our natures and allowing it to develop into what guides us morally and ethically on a personal, community, state and national level.

In Rhode Island, the governor vetoed a bill in which same-sex partners cannot claim the body of their deceased partner for burial. The case came out of a partnership that had lasted 17 years and one of the partners became ill and died and the hospital refused to release the body to his partner for burial. In the same breath, Carcieri said that he was open to the idea of domestic partnership laws…anything but marriage and it would give domestic partners almost but not all the rights that married people have in the eyes of the law.

I would like to know what type of person could deny, to the surviving partner, the right to bury their loved one according to the loved one’s wishes. And then justify the denial by saying that it protects the sanctity of marriage. Our beliefs can make us behave in inhuman ways. Which is why altruistic moments always come as shocking sneak attacks, because that is called our humanity breaking through despite (sometimes) our best efforts to block it because blocking it can make the world seem an easier place to be. Beliefs will fool you into thinking there is a hard and fast answer.

There isn’t.

But there are hard and fast truths. We all live. We all die. We all deserve to live a life that is free of fear and want, that allows for us to strive to be our best, that allows for us to love and be loved and to participate fully in the communities we live in.

“We the people” is a kind of perfect statement. We just need to erase that list that people started penciling in about who the people were – we don’t need to add to the list, we need to stop doing that – it is self defeating. What needs to happen is to increase awareness that the term “people” applies to everyone, in the plural – no need for any other definition. It is one of the few things in life that is really that simple.



Caution: The following is a brief video issued by Amnesty International that contains content that may be upsetting to some. The original video was broadcast as a television commercial.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

there is a new form of plastic surgery that is fast gaining popularity, it just really hit America and has been available elsewhere for the past few years. It is the kind of plastic surgery that immediately raised red flags and funding for doctors of all stripes to study its effects.

Its called “vaginal rejuvenation.”

In this process the external appearance of a woman’s sexual organs are “rejuvenated” into an idealized appearance. This appearance, researcher’s found, is 99% identical to the appearance of the vagina in a pre-puberty girl. Reasons for this surgery are two-fold. One, it is done for women who feel they are “ugly” down there so that they feel more comfortable having sex and with themselves in general. Two, it is done to “correct” sexual organs that are considered “protruding” and painful for the woman.

Now.

What they have discovered in their surveys of women who have had this procedure is that:

1) rather than decrease their discomfort with their sexual organs and sex it has dramatically increased the woman’s aversion to their organs and sex. Dramatically.

2) In correcting “protruding” organs, the nerve tissue in the vagina is so damaged as to render feeling next to non-existent. Claims of pain have been proven to be much more rooted in the psyche of the patient then in any medical evidence of pain presence or, as one researcher put it, ‘men would appear to have a rather more protruding sex organ with far more nerves and rarely experience pain.’

Of course, we could debate the whole thing about how a woman’s sexual organs are perceived or how culture and society has maintained a heavy message of a woman’s vagina as ugly and dirty (if you like the way they look then you must be a lesbian, that is the only acceptable explanation – you must be deviate from the norm – just look at how many people keep trying to rewrite Georgia O’Keefe’s life to justify her vaginal imagery).

But more immediately bothersome to me is the idolization of the pre pubescent body. It feeds not only this but many of our body and eating disorders. To look as if you hadn’t a hormone in you nor would you recognize one if it came up and bitch slapped you is not just the ideal from a man’s eyes, but has now become internalized in a woman.

Why is it so desperately unacceptable to be a mature woman? And this plays into our perception of age as well. Bad enough if you are a “womanly woman” but even worse if you are growing older and not taking the pains to hide it.

Why is being a woman so very distasteful?

Even (and I know I may irk quite a few with this comment) the trend of shaving…and I mean everywhere…how much of that is about sensation and how much is it about how you feel it makes you look “down there” and if you back up and think about it…what does that make you look like “down there?”

And why…have you chosen to recreate the image of a pre-adolescent girl?

I am trying not to use graphic terms so that more of you are comfortable reading this. We have discussed before how our bodies are the first language we speak to someone and often carry the more honest undercurrents of our intimacies so…in the choices you make with the presentation of your sexual organs…what are you trying to say to yourself and to your partners?

Now, especially with the shaving thing, that is a deeply entrenched trend that most do not think of beyond “I like it.” But within each trend that you choose to follow lies a very important message that you are internalizing about your self.

Making those decision is neither harmful or helpful unless you have made them without any thought as to what the other, more subtle things, they are bringing into your life and psyche.

On the flip side of this is the other extreme of covering as much of your body as you can because (fill in the blank). You have to know exactly what you are imagining would be running through someone else’s mind if they saw you dressed differently. Would they be sexualizing you? If so, what covering your entire body in an effort to enforce a kind of respect and privacy for it also carries with it the reinforcement of the idea that a woman’s body can only be seen as a sexual object. What we deny in extremes carries with it the contradiction of confirming it and often, encouraging the behavior. It gives license to behave towards a woman who is not “privately clad” as if she were nothing more than a sexual object because that is the frame of reference for behavior that has been set up.

None of this has an easy answer or solution because it is too tempting to fall to one extreme or another. But awareness, awareness of your choices and what has truly motivates them is what will allow you to continue to make them, or change them, in a way that enhances your life and does not cater to an internalized message that is subtly destroying your sense of self worth.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

of which, today, I appear to have none…after all my ranting about consistency I hit one of those combo days where I just don’t feel that great, am irritated (by the garbage collection system here) and a few other things and just stumbled and lost that little fine tuned consistency that I was raving about.

However, the difference remains that rather than throw my hands up and go “I’ll start again tomorrow” I am spinning in circles and still getting things done. My least, these days, is at minimum adequate to keep everything going. Before…my least was a big fat nothing.

But oh my…I would like my brain back at some point today. I will settle for tomorrow though.

The painter who painter the painting that I liked so much (and they didn’t), was moved by my comments (and yours) into a place where she knows what needs to happen in the painting to bring it to where she wants it and has agreed (after) to let me post a photo of the image and the description of it. This will happen sometime soon.

I don’t know if you have been following the froufrah about some comments made about the British show X-factor but several musical guests have come out and made fun of it, if not down right insulted it. X-factor is kind of a spin off  of Idol and (Insert country) has talent. Except that it is different. The judges have no noticeable achievements of their own except that they have celebrity. Their ability to judge the merits of the contestants is based solely on whether or not they will sell. It is, an unapologetic popularity contest.

There is nothing wrong with that (one person called it glorified karaoke) as long as that is exactly what it is presented as. This is not a search for talent or a planned development of skill (as many of the talent shows are as they increasingly challenge the participants to do something outside of their comfort range)…it is just sheer popular entertainment.

One of the things that we talked about in class is how the word “talent” is so misused. I know I mentioned this before but there is a difference between “talent” and “skill.” We use the word talent where we should be using the word skill.

Talent is defined (this is a modern cultural definition and not the original meaning) as “celebrated excellence.” It used to be defined as a noticeable ability in one area. What people are beginning to recognize that is talent (and this is a modern sociological definition)  is “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied” (Buckingham & Coffman 1999).

In other words, talent is how well you are connected to your internal life and then being able to communicate that to your external life.

The productive application is called “skill.”

We are used to thinking that skill is something that you learn and progress in, but this sociological definition of talent also means that it is not, is not (and repeat this twelve times in front of a mirror) it is not something that you are either gifted with or not, but something that you have a capacity to develop as you develop your own awareness of your internal life and then can become aware of it in relation to the external world.

Oy…like…duh…that is also one of the core definitions of Love. Mature or  a developed capacity to Love is found in your awareness of yourself (self-love) and then being able to experience that in relation to others (brotherly love and intimate love).

Funny how all this all comes down to the same thing.

But talent and skill are both things that you can develop. Now, depending on how your brain works and your learning styles etc and so forth is what is going to bend you in one direction or the other as far as what vehicle becomes your tool for expressing your developing talent and skill. Visual mediums, Aural ones, words, whatever…all of the art, craft and just plain creative forms are vehicles for talent. Vehicles we learn to drive better as we practice the skill.

But no, we do not pop out of the oven painters or writers or musicians…they are vehicles we find that for a number of reasons allow us to begin to voice our talent through skill. But talent develops and matures, it is not a static thing.

It is not a case of “either you have it or you don’t,” we all have it and in becoming more aware of ourselves and ourselves in relationship to the world the better able we are to pick appropriate vehicles and direct our practice of skills.

to focus….

I love my blog…I have found my mind again.

Hadn’t realized I left it on the Internet.

I need a clapper so it beeps and flashes when I call it.

I think I am going to discourage the MK from hanging out with that thug Stan, all she needs is a 40 ounce and some boxer shorts and her attitude would be dressed.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel and it is called Wednesday. Not that anything is going to get better financially, but I will have finally established enough of a schedule of work that I can back off working spastically because I have begun to work consistently.

So as of Weds, I am back only having to do a set amount and can turn my little headlights onto all of my other things.

While I have been doing all this to try and catch up from the wreckage of the Demon (it topped out at $8,534 and that is still with not paying any one anything and it is still not in its final version)  I am determined that I will keep the consistently so I don’t get slammed again on my next obsessively large project.

But…I achieved truck. It is wonderful. It has a reverse I can find and…it needs just enough work to make me love it. But its new enough to have a computer so I am embarking on learning how to read codes and untangle all of that. But it was a joy yesterday to actually be able to go drive an hour and see…

a painting…

a painting the painter is not happy with at all and I would have taken it down and wrapped it in silk and driven slowly with my flashers on all the way home and hung it in the cave with candles and food in front of it as an offering.

All I could think of is, my god…what will a painting that the painter thought got it right look like? The idea of it took my breath away.

And then…while on my mad adventure with my dangerous landlord she started talking to me about the book she is trying to write and she asked if she could send me a series of vignettes she had done for me to look at.

I said “yes” and she did and my god…this woman writes like Jack Kerouac. It is a brilliant thing that is coming into being.

And then I go back in my cave and plunge into hours of desperate hack writing and think “Wednesday”…on Wednesday I get to start making beautiful things again as part of my day too and I just smiled from ear to ear.

The mad kitten was less than pleased that I was out for most of the day. I got back and she went out and then pissily stayed out until 2 am. When she came in and I shut the door she became this vicious, obnoxious harriden. She has not attacked me like that  in months and, she has her outdoor claws so it was not pleasant. Then she grumpily tried to go to sleep and if I came near her she got up in a huff and moved…with her back turned to me and steamed herself to sleep.

But she woke up in full kitten mode. Stuffing herself under the duvet, purring and trying to nurse on my nose, my chin, my neck. All done with that look of sheer, blind love.

She is a funny duck.

OK…back to my hacking away at it all.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

But yesterday was this weird frustrating absolutely waterlogged day. Every time I even thought about blogging all I could think of was bitching about how irritated I was.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut and kept putting one foot in front of another and the day rather dramatically raised its wet head and shook it off.

I think that is one of the harder parts about all this, that when you begin to brush against frustration et al, that you can “disappear” inside what is going on in the immediate and forget that it is all just a part of getting someplace.

It didn’t help that this week was an overall difficult week, emotionally at least. Things came up and rather than doing my normal duck and go on – I hit this point where I decided I was not going to “duck” or “bounce back” but to stay with these things and untangle them.

I am…if you haven’t guessed by reading this…a very resilient person by nature. I am like that old toy, a Weeble, those round bottomed and weighted creatures that you could whack and “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”

However, and if you have been reading along for a while you know this, back in the day when life was really, really difficult and I packed myself off for some temporary therapy to get through, I received a warning from the therapist. He said that resilient people, the survivors that can take whatever is thrown at them and bounce back up have a time limit. And one day, when something happens, they won’t be able to bounce up again because they are too worn down. And that most often, when that something happens it is in an area of their life where they need to bounce up for themselves but they have used up all their bounce recovering from things that other people have seen fit to throw at them and that had more to do with the other person’s issues than theirs.

I am not at that point yet, but I know it is close. And this past week a bunch of stuff came up that had to do with me and only me and I had to work through it even though, by pattern, I usually would have put it aside to deal with some things that were effecting me and created by other people.

And I feel like…I have spent several hours in a dark room inside of myself  pulling up the shades, letting the light in and cleaning.

Which is a good thing, but I would not like to repeat that thank you very much.

But it will come around again. And each time it does, it will get easier to handle because each time I do it, whatever fear, anger, pain , grief I have surrounding the thing becomes less all-powerful and just…real.

People forget, because our culture does not encourage memory, that those are valid emotions too. And they are a part of everything. Joyous love contains threads of grief, anger, fear and pain – I could go on and on about the whys and wherefores but the reality is that our range of emotions are part of our human experience. I do not believe we ever respond emotionally to something with just one little neat category of feeling. We do not shift from sadness to happieness to “now I feel anger and now I am at peace.”

Our emotional experience of the world (internal and external) is a constant web of all possible emotions. At any given point in time we may be on a strand that is made more of one than the other, but all of the other strands of the web are still present. They have to be for that is what holds the web together. Every part is necessary.

We tend, especially in clinical therapies, to present to people an understanding of their emotions as separate things within themselves. But no emotion travels alone.

Anger holds love and grief and happiness and peace.

Anger…I just about lost my mind towards the end of the week because one of my clients stiffed me again but after much pressure on my part they actually reprogrammed the portal and lo! discovered that yes! They never did pay me for ½ the work I did in September.

Good god…

And today…I am up early and slamming through my needful things so I can take the whole afternoon off and do….else.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

So, in the mix of strange things that happened yesterday I wound up talking with a woman about where would be the best place to hide dead bodies on Benefit street. Its for a murder mystery she is writing that is based in town.

And the past two days have really been focused on dead bodies, some literal and some figurative. But it is odd how the things we think and experience and are told can become like another person that lives in or around us. We take care of them as if they were a living being that we lived in relationship with. And when, as some of them do and should, they die – we are left with the problem of what to do with the dead bodies.

It is hard to bury them and walk away because they have been, rightly or wrongly, so very important to us. And it is not like we have a picture album to look back on to experience their memory. Sometimes these “people,” even though they have been a great source of harm to us, have become all that we have known to be consistent in life and at one time, we lived our lives as if they were the most important thing to us.

As if we loved them.

And we did, and a part of us always will and so it becomes hard to let go of the dead bodies we carry inside because it feels like it is a dismissive and rude act to perpetrate on something that we love.

In class we talked about the nature of journaling. How sometimes it can be a cathartic thing and how sometimes it can make it worse. As we talked about it more what was revealed was that if you already knew you were angry, sad, lonely, hurt, happy, joyful or whatever – and you wrote about it, the process was healing and settling.

But if you did not know these emotions were living inside you and were just…out of balanced and sat down to write and they were revealed – it stirs up a world of trouble with no settling in sight.

That is because journaling is an act. When we know we are angry and we write about it, we are finding something to do with our anger. If we are writing and discover that we are angry – what then do you do?

It is why a lot of people stop journaling. Its also why some people journal prolifically and have a great insight into themselves but no ability to make any changes in their life – because the only action they know how to do with the emotion is to write about it.

Our dead bodies are most often strong emotions tied to historical events. They “rise from the dead” inside of us when we encounter a new situation that in some way mimics the old. If you are not careful, you can assign to the new all that is really of the old and that is how you create repeating cycles of behavior and situations in which you are shooting yourself in the foot.

You have to keep asking yourself “Does it fit?” And when you ask that and the answer is “No” nothing is going to change because this dead thing has had a longer life inside you then the new. You have to keep actively reminding yourself that what is dead is dead and has nothing to do with the new. Then you have to go about playing Frankenstein and making a metaphoric body within you for this new and living thing to inhabit.

This process is a part of what it means to choose to be “innocent.” To come to a new situation with openness. To willfully choose to lay down your experience to learn from something new. It is not a momentary thing but an effort.

Its been very dry here. I haven’t realized how dry until I plugged in a warm air vaporizer and within 20 minutes the mad kitten was sitting in front of it looking like she was meditating and then she went and curled up in the middle of the bed (in the path of the steam) and passed out for hours.

Ok…here we go again, another day…another pile of things to get through…but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

I walked down to get my coffee and was thinking about what I would write, came back – the radio is playing in the background  - and completely forgot what roll I was on because of something I heard.

A Japanese lingerie maker has created a new corset-style bra that unfolds into putting ring.

I just don’t know if there is anything left to say after that…

Could you imagine? I mean…

a) what type of “encounter” are you having that it is appropriate to remove your bra and voila! there is a putting ring

b) and what…transforms into the putter?

I had my first class last night. It is perfect, very small and very intimate. I can weave in a bit of what I will be teaching in Mexico about the sublime with the basics of how you create a “writing life” and begin to elevate your writing to the next level (which for many is simply writing on a regular basis).

I warned them that the first class was probably going to be a bit more like group therapy then a writing class because it is important that we have an idea of where we all are coming from. I asked questions about what writing meant to them; what kind of “mythology” surrounded them about writing (like growing up in a family that thought writers couldn’t earn a living) and basically trying to look at some of the stumbling blocks that may be in place.

I can’t wait to read what they do with the first assignment.

And the mad kitten is spending more and more time indoors with me again because it is colder.  We pretty much have been doing our own thing for months now and I have forgotten…..ZIP!!!

Ok…this seems to be how the day is going to go…I was writing this and now it is hours later (hours after the word “forgotten) I was eating my new wonder food Poha – a flattened rice with no husk that you can make in cold water or milk – when I got overwhelmingly tired. Lay back down and was out like a light and woke up to the sound of someone knocking at my door.

It was my dangerous landlord who I have not seen in a month or two. And the next thing I know we are careening down the streets in her gold minivan to try and start the boiler for one of her tenants. It was a no-go, the boiler was already on and something is wrong with the thermostat. So much for a free fix.

She  pointed out to me more of her buildings and the fact that they are all painted red with black trim, because that is the color she likes. The building in front of me, that she owns, is the only odd egg. It is blue, but she doesn’t want to mess with it yet.

And then we started talking about Maine and snowshoeing and GPS. She told me that she loves hers but never uses it on the highway when she has to get somewhere at a certain time because it always takes her on off highway routes…

and then…

she told me that when she has time, she picks a destination that requires the highway and then follows the GPS as it takes her on all the backroads to places she has never seen. She has found ice forests and other strange things. She is 70, this is her winter sport and I think it sounds like a very cool idea.

Ok…I am just going to start the day again and see what happens.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

They say that you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep.
What do all these countries have in common? (read the list slowly then see the answer below)

    * Afghanistan
    * Antigua and Barbuda
    * Bahamas
    * Bahrain
    * Bangladesh
    * Barbados
    * Belarus
    * Belize
    * Botswana
    * Burundi
    * Cameroon
    * Chad
    * China (People's Republic)
    * Comoros
    * Congo (Democratic Republic)
    * Cuba
    * Dominica
    * Egypt
    * Equatorial Guinea
    * Eritrea
    * Ethiopia
    * Gabon
    * Ghana
    * Guatemala
    * Guinea
    * Guyana
    * India
    * Indonesia
    * Iran
    * Iraq
    * Jamaica
    * Japan
    * Jordan
    * Korea, North
    * Korea, South
    * Kuwait
    * Laos
    * Lebanon
    * Lesotho
    * Libya
    * Malawi
    * Malaysia
    * Mongolia
    * Nigeria
    * Oman
    * Pakistan
    * Palestinian Authority
    * Qatar
    * St. Kitts and Nevis
    * St. Lucia
    * St. Vincent and the Grenadines
    * Saudi Arabia
    * Sierra Leone
    * Singapore
    * Somalia
    * Sudan
    * Swaziland
    * Syria
    * Taiwan
    * Tajikistan
    * Tanzania
    * Thailand
    * Trinidad and Tobago
    * Uganda
    * United Arab Emirates
    * United States
    * Vietnam
    * Yemen
    * Zambia
    * Zimbabwe

They are the only countries that still permit the death penalty (as of 2007, several countries on this list have since outlawed the death penalty).

Today is going to be a miracle day…I have so much to pull off including teaching the first class tonight. I am thrilled because the class turned out to just be a perfect size and that gives me a little bit more room to weave in a few more things.

Why do I have a feeling we will all get in trouble together? Ahhhh…but that is how a class should be.

☺

And balanced in this I am trying to handle all my mixed emotions about it being Veteran’s day. I mean…I am a veteran and it should be my day (I love when people say that) to celebrate….what? To acknowledge service to my country and to be acknowledged by it I can see. But I am not too thrilled with either the military or society in general when it comes to dealing with the realities of soldiering.

And I was reading the news late last night, the bit with the headline “Obama’s Sorrow at Fort Hood.” And it pained me. Where is this very public sorrow at the sacrifice that soldiers give, knowingly or not? Where is the public sorrow that children with no other option have only the choice of being expendable fodder or killers in service of something that has no recognition of the sanctity of human life? It blew my mind the psychological design of the military and boot camp. And the drill sergeants were quite open and honest about the program, it was designed to stop people from thinking for themselves and to become a machine that acts automatically and follows orders without question. In combat areas things become blurred because the necessity becomes to make the soldier believe that what they are doing is for a higher good. As it becomes a necessity to make the general public believe that we are not fighting battles against other people, but some great ideal exists that elevates mere death to sacrifice and service. Dead is dead. Shooting or bombing or doing anything else to someone because someone else tells you to (and often doesn’t offer you a full and true explanation) removes the soldier from participation in one of the greatest abilities of mankind – conscious decision and action.

Every one has to believe that what they are doing is for a greater purpose, that the enemy knows and accepts that in choosing to fight they will may die. As well, that in choosing to fight that you might die as well. The perception that death is accepted is necessary to people believing that war is just. If civilians were exposed to the actual fear and panic that occurs within troop ranks, the absolute questioning of taking someone else’s life, of the damage that happens to someone when they engage in destruction – we would not be engaged in nearly as many actions as we are. However, coated with this kind of fairytale that everyone accepts the risks knowingly, it is easier to preserve the illusion that war is just.

Which brings me to the last supper. No, not the private dinner party for men in dresses – although – that does get woven in as to why it is such an important story in the Gospel; but the last meal of a prisoner condemned to death.

It has always puzzled me why this was a ritual. I was wondering if it was some way of making the prisoner, or us, feel good by offering us the belief that in their last moments they got to indulge in something they loved. But it is not.

In Greek and Roman times (and the Aztecs did this as well) those condemned to death were given a last meal and forced to eat it if necessary. They weren’t asked what they were like, they were fed whatever or whatever was deemed a part of the ceremony. The reason they did this was the cross cultural belief that if you ate before you were executed, your soul was prevented from coming back to haunt those who killed you because in eating food from your executioner’s hands you were showing your acceptance of your fate.

With the rise of Christianity and the story of the Last Supper, the last meal of the condemned began to represent not just acceptance, but forgiveness of the condemned towards those that were about to kill him. It was a sharing of something associated with life by someone who was knowingly going to die that was the act of forgiveness.

Flash forward to the modern Western Penal system.

People who run prisons are no fools.

They know that key to having a “successful” execution lies in having the public and all parties believe that the entire act is carried out with the permission and acceptance of all parties involved. There have been several papers written that examine how to develop an execution to maximize the perception of a calm event. The prisoner must always be seen as having accepted their fate as their due. Their act of eating their last meal, ordered to their liking, was developed to enhance the sense of public benevolence towards the condemned. In their “accepting their fate” the good public then offers them kindness. It is the equivalent of a “hug.”

Stated point blank in several penal papers is the fact that if the public ever developed the sense that the accused did not accept and willingly participate in their death then people’s attitudes towards the death penalty would change dramatically and the risk of volatile interventions would be high.

From the moment a prisoner walks onto death row, there is a pre-set psychological method put in place (much like how boot camp is designed) that is to transition them from a conscious human being to a pliable entity that can perform their role in order to maintain the myth of the execution.

There is a new film out (I don’t think it is in the states yet) about the most prolific executioner in the UK. He was called in specially to perform the hangings at Nuremburg. His claim to fame is his fastest death was 7 seconds from exit door of the prison to the condemned being pronounced dead at the end of a rope. He provided this service for years…and then…it took its toll and he became one of the most strident anti-death penalty activists around.

John Allen Mohammed lay on that gurney for 5 minutes while they prepared the lethal injection.

As Heather Moon pointed out, of all the prisoner’s that have sat on death row for years and years, why was his case pushed through so quickly?

And why was the evaluation of his psychological state and the MRI that showed proof of malformations associated with schizophrenia discounted?

The people of Washington lived in a state of terror during his attacks and 10 people died. They will never come back and the grief of their loss will not be assuaged by killing John Allen. My heart aches for those who lost their loved ones because of his actions, but it aches even more to hear them speak of the closure that his death will bring them because I know that will not happen.

John Allen, and I mentioned this before, was a vet with gulf war syndrome and quite a few documented other issues that were ignored by the military.

And if you follow the Ft. Hood thing, forget the scramble to tie that man to terrorists, whackjobs find whackjobs…what is getting buried is that he was transferred from being a physician at Walter Reed hospital to Fort Hood because he was evaluated as having difficulties handling patients and suspected instability.

The military medical system, and I do not mean to offend anyone working in the system (and if you are worth your salt then you know this is true) is made up of a majority of Doctors and such, trained by the military and within the structured military environment that most likely would not have successfully completed a civilian schooling and internship. But its cheaper to produce your own, isn’t it? And damaged vets are something we don’t like to pay attention to because it threatens the myth we must maintain to support violence.

As I said in my status comments last night, I am a Veteran. I do not have health insurance, I could get free health insurance through the VA, but…I have more respect for my health and well being than that.



Ok…coffee and onto my things.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

You know…how old am I? Just because I read about something on the Internet does not mean I should jump out and try it.

But you know…

I already had the walking poles…

And I was writing about Nordic walking this morning (I am pushing myself like a little machine to clear bills, eat and not have anything shut off in the interim…another two weeks of pounding and I can drop back to my calm little underfed life) and as I read about it…the total body, low impact and highly efficient work out that it claimed to be I started thinking about my snow shoe poles in the other room…which…are the same as Nordic walking sticks.

So the next thing I know, I am bounding down the street to the main walking path in my long johns with my bright blue poles and off I go.

First of all, it would appear that I cling to things. You are supposed to let go of the handle on the back swing and I had a hell of a time doing it. I settled for a quick flap of my fingers while my thumb remained firmly glued to it instead.

Then, there was the issue of remembering what pole goes with what leg.

And,
that the poles are suppose to angle on the back swing so your torso is forced to twist and move.

And then,
because I had just read a description of this on the Internet and been doing it for….oh….say….15 minutes…I decided that I was ready to try an advanced technique….Nordic jogging. Where you use the poles to push yourself off the ground with each stride.

I won’t go into what happened then but I horrified the other people on the walking path with their little color coordinated walking suits. So I stopped and had my back up cigarette.

I am going to try it again, for a few moments I got the hang of it and it was fun, easy, goofy and I’ll be damned but it was working my whole body.

In the middle of all this, everything has conspired to bring the “city of love” to the forefront. I have two of the roles cast already – War, you know will be “The Lady” and I have also found the “Demon of Hope,” I know who I want for Love but don’t know if that is a pipe dream and on and on. This is good…War and Hope were on me today wanting to know more about what is going on. So I have set for myself the task of clearing all these old things, establishing a more lucrative routine all so I can sink into the city for a few months and see what is what.

All this,
all this,
I love the feeling…

Last night got strange, for me, and I fell asleep and dreamed. Just a relatively normal dream but it brought me back into a dream situation I have visited before only is had changed significantly.

So, I jumped online and was googling around and found a forum dealing with the symbolism of this dream and was absolutely shocked. Not so much about what people were thinking it meant, but that so many people had posted that they found it unbelievable that other people had the same dream as them.

I mean, to a T, which plays into the whole concept of synchronicity and the collective unconscious.

So…here is what I had been dreaming and here is the dream I had last night.

In my dreams, for years now, whatever is happening occasionally I go into a large public bathroom. It has several stalls and a line of sinks. White tile on the floor and so on. Never because I have to pee or anything, but for whatever reason in the dream I open the door and step inside.

At first when I dreamt of this bathroom it was dark and cavernous, sewage had over flowed onto the floor and their was puddles of it everywhere. The stalls all sat in shadow with some of their doors closed, but you couldn’t see anyone’s feet. I never made it past the entrance way because the feeling I got from it was just bad.

Over the years there have been some changes.

Slowly the bathroom got lighter. Then when I came in there would be people in it, but the people were as nasty and bad feeling as the place was still dirty.

Then, a few years later, it was still nasty, the people were sketchy but the water was running and there was less sewage on the floor and less toilets blocked up and I would go in and quickly wash my hands or face and leave and get back to my dream.

Then last night, in the middle of what I call a “little obvious dream” (the kind where you are like – oh yeah right, I was thinking of that today) I opened a door and there was the bathroom.

Well lit, clean (er)  - not sparkling but your basic truck stop clean. All the stalls were in use by people who were just…normal.

I actually went to use one of the toilets but…ahhhh….had difficulty figuring out how to do it and then I woke up.

Now, I have come across several interpretations of this dream. One is that you have to go to the bathroom when you are still sleeping (not…wake up and I am fine). Two that is has to do with money (frankly, I don’t believe that either but it is a popular school of thought to tie dreams to money or love because that sells) and three, that it represents some internal emotional process going on that is dealing with something that I cannot directly remember, or have not made the connection to it being so very deeply disturbing to me. The dirtier the bathroom, the less it can be used, the more frightening it is  - the more power this hidden thing has over you. As the bathroom becomes cleaner and more friendly, the more its power is lessening as you begin to deal with it (even if you are unaware that you are doing so).

The presence of people in the bathroom and the fact that for most people they are dreaming of a public bathroom has to do with the fact that whatever this thing is, we are conscious in a way that it is effecting the quality of our life and is not just some private thing that has no effect on how we live. The more people and interactions in the public bathroom that are “normal” the more this thing is ceasing to interfere with your life.

It is striking though, to sit and read someone else’s almost verbatim description of your dream.

Its funny because I think I have told you that I dream in “another country” a very set and defined land, complete with a population and it is consistant over time. However, there are doors in the dream that open up (like to the bathroom) where I become aware that I am no longer in my dreamworld, but in a dream designed to work something through. So, I wake up and do the research.

And now…

Coffee and much much work.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

All on fire and constructing this poetic and effective blog in my head about the refusal of appeal of execution for the DC sniper (a mentally disturbed man suffering from Gulf War Syndrome set to be executed on Veteran’s Day of all days…yay rah..makes me proud to be a Veteran)…and I jumped up and decided I needed candy before I did that.

Then I immediately jumped to the fact that I have eaten the entire stock of vanilla Charleston Chews from the corner store (where for some reason my nickname is “White Baby”). So I was intensely thinking about murdering Veteran’s on Veteran’s Day and what type of candy I could get when I stepped out the door and closed it.

After, of course, carefully locking it.

And realized I had just locked the Mad Kitten and myself outside.

So I went and got candy.

Nonpareils (very disappointing) and caramel creams (which I love but always make me sick) and came back to discover that yes…the door was still locked.

So began the process of balancing on a upturned recycle bin, prying at the bay door with a piece of broken fence and fishing around with a telephone wire I found in the garbage to try and unlatch the top and bottom bolts. All while the mad kitten raced and raced up and down the driveway (which she never ventures into without me) playing in the leaves.

And on and on it went till at last I looped the bolts and pulled them open.

By then I had sucked down all my candy without enjoying it at all.

John Allen Mohammed is a Veteran of the US Military who served in the Gulf War. He went with some mental difficulties, came out with the same and a passel of other problems. PTSD and the Gulf War Syndrome. And he received the typical care that a Veteran of a war receives in our country, which is just abysmal.

He was not a high functioning man.

When he began sniping he was successful because he had a helper who drove him and watched out for him. The helper got life. John was sentenced to death. John, would not have been able to kill as many people as he did and evade capture without that helper. Yet again…the imbalance in justice. The inconsistency in what we choose to apply the death penalty to.

I said he was not a high functioning man and yet he was capable of high functioning planning of the attacks and how to prep the car so he could shoot from it. This is not indicative that he was high functioning enough to understand the totality of what he was doing. All he did was follow what was perhaps the only repetitive and structured training he ever had, had to best kill some one.

The military, back when I served, aimed all of its course at an 8th grade level comprehension because that was the general education and comprehension level of the majority of its enlisted forces. While I was in the service they dropped that to a 6th grade level and changed the nature of the ASFAB (the test you take to get in) because the comprehension level of the people still willing to enlist had dropped sharply.

Military training is designed to make people who function on the mental and emotional levels of an 11 year old efficient and self-sufficient combat machines. Everything about it is designed to be successful in that arena. A non-functioning adult in everyday society can function well in a military one. It is…it is as structured as a group home or psychiatric society. Until, that is, you get into combat and then already damaged people are thrust into an intense and erratic situation that damages them further. They are usually deemed unfit for duty and discharge into a veteran’s support system that (as was revealed this week and has been all year) is about as good at monitoring the capabilities of their physicians and psychiatrists as the Roman Catholic church has been at managing their paedophiles.

Speaking of which, the psych community is rocking and a reelin’ from a study released out of Britain that tackles the subject of Women Paedophiles and their prevalence. What they have found is challenging all our social myths that they either do not exist or are only coerced by their male partners. But I am not up to writing about that now.

Now…I am wondering if it is worth a longer walk to the other store with my keys in hand to get a Charleston Chew.

Whoops…oh my….whatever am I going to do?

I appear to be starting my week fully rested, relatively fed and caught up with things. This just won’t do. Where is my drama and angst?

☺

Oh…and it is a beautiful, warmish day. This won’t do at all.

I was allowed to borrow this absolutely amazing gizmo yesterday. I have it for two weeks. It is called “The Air Snooper” and it is a small black box with a thick antenna that ends in an open circle. You turn it on, calibrate the center dial to “Normal” and begin to slowly move it around your walls, floor and windows. When it detects even the slightest draft it will register it by telling you if the source is causing hotter or colder air.

Sometimes the worst drafts are in places that you cannot feel oddly enough. Like the one I found that runs around the entire length of the room where the cinder block joins the cement floor, and there are two blocks that are slightly chipped on the face that just send in a steady, subtle stream of cold air.

Someone I know found it in a garage sale, it looks like it is from the 70s. I checked online and they have either a lame version that sends puffs of smoke out or one really cool thermal unit (I think from Black and Decker) for fifty bucks (all digital and bizarre but sounded similar to what I have, the puffs of smoke thing, I think would miss a lot).

So I am crawling around my house while it is warmer and finding all these small places that work to bring my temperature down.

Ingenuity is often not so much the product of one person’s effort, but lies in one person who can bring several individual efforts together.

In Europe, Spain in particular, they are testing something called “platooning” or “road-trains”. In this – cars, trucks and buses are linked together electronically. The lead vehicle is driven by a professional driver and the ones that follow are your basic long distance commuters. By being linked to the lead vehicle, however, all of the “train-cars” do not require their driver to drive. Their cars follow the exact movement of the lead. It is like sitting on a commuter train but in your own car.

The principle behind it was to try and discover a way to begin to manage congestion through controlling the speed and fluidity of movement of blocks of vehicles. When you do this, congestion is lessened because rather then being a bunch of individual pieces moving and responding according to their owner’s whim (which inattentive and over compensating driving is one of the key contributors to congestion) blocks of vehicles are guided by professional drivers or conductors whose job it is to ensure that the ride goes smoothly and quickly. The result is a faster commute and less consumption of fuel. They also wanted to design a method that had those results that did not require billions of dollars in disruptive highway renovation.

Of the few places where “group think” is a benefit…that is one of them.

Now that is ingenious. The simple concept that the way to handle the growth in congestion is not to change what has been, but to create a new method of driving that accommodates it.

Group think that is unhelpful is the emergence of the iPhone worm. I don’t know if you ever encountered “Rickrolling” but it was heavy on youtube for a bit (and other places). You would click on a link and it would take you to the video, which would start and then suddenly it would change over to the video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It was an annoying crack on the site or video.

Now, there is one for the iPhone that comes in and changes your wallpaper to a teenybopper pick of Rick and puts the title “ikee never gonna give you up.”

Unfortunately, the person who made this worm also released four different open source code versions of it which means more and potentially nastier ones are going to come.

If you have an iPhone and you have done what is called a “jail-break” on it, which means you have bypassed Apple’s locks so you can install apps that are not approved by Apple your phone is open to this worm. The program people use to do a jail-break is called SSH. It has a default password: Alpine, which most people never change. Change the password to an alpha numeric sequence and your iphone is protected again.

Strange how some people choose to contribute their efforts to do something that will make the world a better place and some do it “to make a point.”

I have learned to be cautious with people who have “points to be made.” Or, who want to “increase people’s awareness” they seem to be the most prone to acting in ways that purposefully (or inadvertently) create a destructive environment. Even in mild and potentially helpful instances, like protesting or publishing announcements about studies or news stories that are informative and exposing – when they are just thrown out there to “increase people’s awareness” they really don’t do that…they just feed fear and a sense of helplessness. When people combine awareness with competent and thought out suggestions for actions, then that becomes a creative thing.

Ok…I am slowly waking up…

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

In 3 days time, not only will it go down to 32 degrees at night, but it won’t get much warmer than 45 during the day and - it will be cloudy.

My means and processes for insulating and keeping the space warm continue. Some nights, as it colder, I play “identify the draft” and as promised, I don’t do anything about it unless I now there are going to be several full days of cold in a row.

But even the mad kitten is starting to spend more time indoors.

And I am holding out on buying my wonder heaters and depending on these lame little baseboard type heaters for a very good reason. I don’t want the fact that a forced air heater can keep kicking on to combat cold to make the place warm. If I was also paying for my electricity the bill would go through the roof then. I want, for another few weeks, to get my space all insulated and sealed off enough to maintain a minimum of 65 degrees with the lame-o heaters, then I can bring in the blown air with a thermostat and will be happy.

I upgraded the compost toilet, since I seem to be having more guests of late, to a charming little rose wallpapered box with a real seat.

And life goes on.

I feel like…I am circling two projects of mine but not working on them yet because I am trying to figure out what they need. One of them, the poem “Ages” I have tentatively started writing but I already know that it is going to push me and I am trying to clear some space in the day to start going back to the library and studying. The other, the video of “Striking a Match” keeps almost happening…and then I back off because the idea just isn’t right.

But…this is progress. The fact that I can have a fully formed idea and then go “ahhhhhhh…no, it can be better” and recognizing that my topics are demanding I go learn is new. I was talking to some one about “the city of love” and trying to explain how it is not yet at the point where I can down and write to it, but that I am at the point where I can pick similar pieces of the theme and work on getting my skills up to doing the small bits first.

What I think is funny…and I have been having this conversation with quite a few people…is how there is a strong cultural myth about art that the moment of inspiration is the truest to the art and the artist.  Its like there are room fulls of people sitting around waiting for a flash of light before they dare to begin. What makes up that moment of inspiration is in side you already, it just hasn’t had to cause an explosion to gain your attention.

Someone I know was bemoaning that she wanted to paint again but dreading the fact that it has been so long and been so loaded with other issues that she knows if she starts painting and they suck…as they will because she is out of practice and they won’ match what she sees in her head…that she will get frustrated and disappointed and give up again.

So I thought about it and decided that she should set herself to make 4 paintings. The first 3 must absolutely suck. If they even show the slightest sign of pulling themselves together and having a redeeming inch of quality on the canvas that she needed to exert all of her skill to undo that. She needed to “do herself badly” on the canvas. But not in a scholcky and fast way, but with as much attention to detail and effort as she brings to all her paintings. Then, on the 4th painting, she is free to paint as well as she can.

She thought I had lost my mind at first and then thought about it and decided it was a good idea.

And I am thinking of taking my own advice and when I get stuck on writing a piece, go ahead with it and make it as awful as I can. Then go back and use it as something to edit off. For me, I work best if I have something on paper I can manhandle.

I am resisting temptation of getting a dog. I just can’t because I know next year is going to have a fair amount of travel in it for me and I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Not to mention it would send MK over the edge. She is already having jealous fits. She has gone from hiding from company, to enjoying company to sitting on top of my head and expressing her ownership of me in front of company.

Ok, I am a little more organized in my head then yesterday (which would not be hard to do). So off to get some work done and I will be back later.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

If you have never seen a fibroblast cell you should check it out. They are beautiful. They look like peacocks.

I have no idea where they are from or what they do.

They are just pretty.

And that…should tell you about where my mind is today…

☺

Yesterday was this strange and intense rollercoaster. I think coming off the ‘Rihanna’ post and moving right into ‘vaccines of gold’ fed the whole intensity. I got a slew of comments about the whole “who gets it first” issue with the H1N1 vaccine. It all boiled down to just about everyone agreeing that the wrong people and agencies (or companies) were being left to make decisions about something that they were ill prepared for.

There is a lot of anger floating around about it. There is just a lot of anger and frustration in general as people watch all the touting of the recession being over and things starting to upswing and the only evidence of that is a fickle stock market. I think the fact that the past year has educated many people on the reality that Wall Street is nothing but a well dressed casino and yet we have lived our lives and run our government as if it were a reliable and predictable influence is contributing to this.

Our economy is complicated. Over 60% of our economy is dependent on consumer spending, which it has no longer become as important to understand how this came to be as it is on how to change our economy to something that is not dependent on whim.

We no longer really make things. Or invent things or do anything but consume things. We are gaining a bit in being leaders in the Service industry but we have lost our status as innovative leaders. Even the computer industry is slipping away and in 5 years I doubt any US based technological company will be doing more than niche development.

How to you go about getting back to participating in a world economy as more than a wallet and an open mouth? It takes a lot. It takes a lot of individuals deciding that what they dream of doing is worth every risk to make it happen. But for decades we have been building a culture based in the myths of “oh no you can’t.” Which is one of the reasons that Obama’s catch phrase grabbed so many people. We know we can, we’ve just lost the belief that we are enough to make it happen.

We wait on other people’s approval, money or interest.

But…I bet you can fill in the blank to what I say to that.

I am in the process of doing an updated rewrite of “Eat not the Heart” in preparation for writing the second book in the season. I have made some changes, not in the content (except a heck of a look of proof reading and re-writing since I have become a better writer over the year) but in naming the concept.

“Kore” (pronounced Kor-ay)

You might recognize that name. It is the name of a very old incarnation of the Goddess of Creativity.

But I had to put all of that aside and wait and live what happens after you do the things outlined in the first book. Some of it was not what I expected. Amazing how you can educate yourself.

Ok…I made a choice to stay up to 3am. My body got me up at 5:30 and I need profound amounts of coffee.

I am off to make the first payment on the truck and I have decided that I will walk the 3 miles there. Because it is cold, because it is beautiful and because I am beginning to live the kind of life where I can make decisions about that.

Sometime later I will have to tell you the tale of playing “secret agent” with a friend who almost ran out of gas, sending me pounding the street pavements with a gallon of gas in my back pack and texting madly as we tried to find each other. Most of mine consisting of “For God’s sake! Don’t get on the highway!” Cause I could just see myself hoofing it up the on ramp.

(my apologies, for some reason the morning post did not go thru)




there is a limit to the amount I can understand. Maybe it is old age…maybe I am just…dense.

But the H1N1 vaccine….

I mean…

Why did Goldman Sachs and Citicorp get it first?

I do not buy the “it’s a great way for it to be distributed.” Sorry, I am not that dumb. And frankly, if you look at the demographics of the both of those corporations they do not have a high percentage of high risk employees.

Now…I can understand the logic between getting the vaccine as fast as possible to key people that are necessary for the successful running of the country. I even think that Obama’s kids getting it lickety-split makes sense. No matter who the President is and what party he is from, I want his mind on his job, especially in this day and age and not distracted by illness in his family. It’s a little bit rude of me, but that is what I think.

It makes sense that key people in highly sensitive and classified areas also receive the vaccine because without them, things could get real shaky while they are trying to find a temp to cover while someone is out sick.

Getting it to hospital personnel first makes sense. Hands down.

But…Goldman Sachs and Citicorp?

Ok…let me put it this way…literally there is not one job in either one of those companies that someone new cannot learn to do within a week. And, there is not one job or responsibility managed by those companies that cannot be stalled or delayed or covered while someone is sick. And, honestly, should death occur…its not like the world would fall to pieces because the CEO or COO crapped out. They are just as immediately replaceable, skill wise, as the damn front receptionist.

Despite their huge bonuses et al, all these people in these positions ARE NOT the only ones who can do them and NEITHER does the safety of the world and the universe beyond rely upon their daily and clear headed presence.

I mean…look where that got us in the first place.

But somehow we have transformed the white collar executive into a god. Granted they may have specific internal knowledge, but the nature of having a staff is that they are trained to bring any up to speed and cover for them should anything happen. The system is already designed for them to be replaced in an instant. If they get sick, it is no big whoop. It certainly should not have pushed them to the front of the list.

I am…deeply pissed.

We already have an abysmal mortality rate for pregnant women in comparison to the money we spend on their care (mostly due to the rise of Cesareans). We have an abysmal child mortality rate compared to other industrialized countries. And you know what? This is a glaring example of why.

The paper thin claim that it is an excellent way to distribute the vaccine…I am sorry…blow it out your ass. Go give it to the schools and you can even vaccinated pregnant mothers easily. That is the arena that will reach the most high risk groups from all demographics. You want to give it to a business that will be able to reach a lot of people in the high risk group? Give it to Walmart.

You want to distribute the limited doses in such a way that protects the stability of the economy? I got news for you, give it to all truck drivers. They are the back bone of the infrastructure and mass sickness among them will bring this country to a standstill.

I am just…deeply disappointed.

and pissed.

2 young children have died in RI within the past month from H1N1 who had no prior existing conditions. They were not on their way to work at the bank when this happened.

pissed…disappointed…angry

that about sums up the beginning of my day.

---

I was having an irritating, political little day but then someone sent me this and it has all taken off on a new track...

“The first part of Rihanna’s vaunted interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer just aired on Good Morning America. It was only a five-minute clip — a teaser for the real interview that’s coming tomorrow night on 20/20 – but already the singer has said more than she did in the nine months following ex Chris Brown’s violent attack on her.

GMA cherrypicked some gripping excerpts for this interview trailer. The part that everyone will be talking about came when Rihanna acknowledged getting back together with Brown in the weeks after he assaulted her. “It’s pretty natural for that to be the first reaction,” she told Sawyer. “The moment the physical wounds go away, you want the memories to go away.” Love, she said, had blinded her at the time. Given how many victims of domestic violence do go back to their abusers, it’s important for the public to hear an explanation of that toxic thought process.

Rihanna told Sawyer that she eventually ended things with Brown after thinking about the example she was setting for fans in abusive relationships of their own. “When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result in some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that.” She said she became ashamed that she had ever been with someone who was capable of what Brown did to her: “I fell in love with that person. That’s embarassing.” (excerpt from Simon Vozick-Levinson article for EW)

It has also been pointed out in several news locations that Rihanna has been the victim of a crime and just because she is also famous, that does not mean that she has to become an automatic advocate.

But she has. And she has chosen to.

I could sit here and blither along about reasons why but honestly, I don’t now why she is choosing to do this. I could be cynical and relate it to the release of her new album, but you know what? She is a musician and given any point in her life, ten to one she has an album coming out or something to promote.

What is very, very important is that she talks openly about the kind of thoughts and emotions that makes someone who has been abused seek to hide the abuse – and not just from others, but from themselves.

As she says, “you want the memories to go away.”

And somehow, this extraordinarily young woman – talent and riches besides – some how came to a realization and series of choices that most women in abusive relationships have to struggle for years to achieve if, that is, they ever get there.

One of the most powerful books I read about domestic violence was fictional. “Rose Madder” by Stephen King. What made it so good is in using his ability to tell a tale of believable horror, he not only could put you inside the woman’s mind, but in her world of escape as well and used metaphor to illustrate the process of what it takes to break free from abuse.

Because anyone who has ever been there will tell you that just leaving does not end it. The words and memories are trenched inside you and unless you get them out you will always be at risk for becoming emeshed in an abusive relationship – whether your role is the as the abused or the abuser.

And that needs to be put out there too. It is common knowledge that men who come from abusive families have a higher risk of becoming abusers. But what we do not talk about is how thin the line is for a woman (or anyone) who has been abused, to become abusive in some way towards another.

It is because that is what they have learned about how to communicate and handle their stresses, emotions and fears. Sometimes, even in the assertion of one’s self being a victim you create an intolerable and abusive situation for another during your recovery.

Personally, I think Rihanna is going to make one heck of an old lady. She is certainly growing well and fine in all the ways that are important. While it is a horrible thing her drama has played out on an international stage, perhaps, in a way…it is what is best for for and pushed her. But only because of who she is, where she is trying to go and what she holds to be important already.

As short as each of our lives are, they are long in the moments. You are not defined by your any one thing that happens at any point in your life. You are only defined at the moment of your death, when you look back and can see the totality of what you have done and become.

There is nothing that is so important that you need to be hurt.
There is no love so great that it should tear you down.
For every one person who loves you, there are three or four others that would if they got the chance to know you.

And…

And…

no matter how much it feels like it, you are never without someone to turn to and someone who will understand.

Of which I have one, which I seem to have managed to locate this morning without any of yesterday’s problems. I should be grateful that I am not getting full out sick, merely having these spates of “speed sick” in which I am threatened with the flu but saved at the last minute.

And here I am…on a good day.

With my face, of which I have one.

And I have managed to pass my first milestone in pulling myself out of the financial hole. It’s funny when I think that for a few months there, writing for money was the hardest thing around – I did it, but it was like pulling teeth. Now, with effort and desire, I have a routine in which my worst and most unproductive days are meeting the same quota of articles as my best weeks before. I foresee a truck in my future sooner than I thought and a little less stress about bills.

Which brings me to yet another stage of balancing in which the demands for money to support a life are against the whole need for time for creative development. However, I have learned so much over the past few months that I am getting better at managing my time for that too and there is not this horrible sense of resentment or denial towards the time I have to give to support myself.

It is slowly coming together. Now, if I can get the next video funded that will even take it a step further.

So complicated.

I know someone (in passing) who ran smack up against “the industry” in trying to pull off a project and it all fell apart. For a lot of reasons, but everyone was focused on the fact that her face was not deemed adequate enough to sell the music.

Now, do I even have to say anything? I mean, this is the kind of crap I go on and on about. It is realistic to acknowledge the role that image plays in success in our culture. It is even fair to say that image trumps talent. If you have the machine to create the image you really don’t have to worry about what you put out there. Give it a driving a beat and no one will realize its schlock. Which, BTW, have you seen the video of Christopher Walken doing a a dramatic reading of Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’?

That was a total aside.

But, back to the topic…if we know these things, why do they hold such power and sway over us? Because we know them, but our irrational side still believes in them with all the emotional power that we contain. Intellectually, we understand what is going on and the “game” being played, but emotionally we have taken in the message that how we look is our worth and talent.

What really got me, yesterday, as this woman vented on Facebook, was that she is talented, she has done radio shows, she is admired and looked up to by many people, especially young woman. And in broadcasting her very, very emotional reaction to what was going on she gave credence to the idea of image being everything because the people who like her had to rush to comfort her rather than join her in a recognition of the irrationality and unfairness of what happened.

She reacted in a very real and valid way, yet…especially if you are in a situation in which you represent something to someone else – it was in appropriate because it did not respect the role she plays, in essence, as hero to many young woman. It created a shocking environment where someone else’s perception of how you look trumped all else. And…the only way people could figure out how to comfort her was to…you got it…reassure her on how she looked. The fact that she is a talented musician and poet was dropped to the ground for the most part.

Now…we are what we do. We are poets, musicians, artists, writers, accountants, administrators, managers, servers etc and so forth. We do these things. Some of us lead dual lives in what we do in half our life (at work) is not the sum total of what we do that defines who we are. That is fine, that is called working with reality.

But how we look…really, we don’t have much to do with that. You can spend all the time you want on makeup and clothing and it still does not change the fact that you didn’t do anything about how you look, its genetics. To base your identity in how you look is to cease to be, because you cease to do. The actions you perform to “make a image” don’t really “do” anything. They create nothing lasting, they bring you no new places, you do not learn and grow from them and the effect they have on others is transitory.

Yet we live in a world that idolizing the time spent on dressing something we didn’t have anything to do with and that willfully (and easily) will ignore what we have done.

Our language and actions can subtly underscore the validity of image over substance. And that is something that especially a woman in a position of influence must be mindful of because young woman who have not leaned one way or the other will follow your lead.

Makes me tired.

Speaking of tired, if you follow the BBC you may have noticed that after weeks of articles focused on the ills of fat, there was a spate of articles about the hatred and prejudice that fat people suffer in society and now, there is a rising trend of articles of how being fat can be good for you.

The only truth we have is in ourselves. The trick is to learn how to get past the truths that others have written in your body to read what you actually know. But that takes a willingness to not seek easy answers or, in fact, answers at all. Because truth consists not of answers, but of a statement that allows you to explore.

Coffee, coffee and then back to the grind.

I am determined today to do that quick test video and get it up today or tomorrow. I will let you know when it is available.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

I woke up feeling like a train hit me. This is nothing new, I have been fighting getting sick for a bit but the weather is changing too and I woke up, looked around and then promptly went back to sleep.

Which made MK happy. Even she stuck her head out the door this morning and was like”oh no” came back in and had no problems with me closing the door.

She is buried in the bed as I write this.

The thing is (now I am sliding slightly towards whining), that because I am on this kick/need of working – I can’t just stay in bed.

Which finally (and a little late) there is some emergency legislation bouncing around yet another kind of stimulus package in a way, where the government will reimburse companies for each employee being allowed to take 5 paid sick days whether they have sick days or not. Who knows if that is becoming reality but…the reality is that most people cannot miss work, cannot stay home with kids whose schools have closed because so many of us live on the edge or work in jobs cannot accommodate absence.

Ugh…I am waiting for the Sudafed to kick in. Today of all days I have to finish something that requires me to add numbers straight.

Last night I got introduced to “the Venture Brothers.” I don’t think I have laughed so hard in so long. The Venture Brothers make Family Guy and the Simpsons look like Disney trailers. The humour is very adult. Brock Sampson, The Monarch, Molotov Cocktease, the Aqua Teens….what was interesting was the humour, while adult, did not digress into a raw sex or body parts or any of the kind of immature jokes that are passed off as adult humour. Especially the Brock Sampson set, it is an over the top cartoon where Brock is a former agent who is now employeed as a combination Nanny/Body guard for a scientist and his children. His archnemesis, Molotov, is also his romatic interest and what makes what happen between them so funny is the humour is based in real life.

Any way…I am just drifting along and trying to not just connect the dots today, but heck, even find them to get them on the same page.

I am going to have coffee, yoga and do some work and then try this again.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

okay…today I actually ponied up and when I did my yoga (which I am not nearly as dedicated to  as I should be) I added in a specific form of kundalini kriyas (a form of movement and breathing that opens charkas). Now, I am by nature a skeptic about all of that because I have encountered far too many flakes who toss those words around as excuses to get them out of being responsible for their own lives. Chakras, karma  - you name it, terms like this have been usurped by the great god “I can’t help it.”

But…I have had some very strange stuff going on in my life of late (half of which I haven’t talked about here because I would have no idea where to even begin) and I was doing some research and tripped across something that led me to believe that trying to do a kriya, particularly the Heart Chakra Kriya (where you use the “breath of fire” – it just sounds cool) would help me to participate in the seeming random coincidences flying through my life.

Because there is no such thing as a random coincidence now is there? But often, lacking any concept of what to do, we just sit and let things happen around us and hope that one of them will give us instructions on what our part is supposed to be.

So, I found out about this particular kriya, it fit with what was going on in my life and I watched the video. And that is when I found out that after a year of trying to sit in the lotus pose that the little MF-ers sit on a damn pillow to do it. I mean, even I can do that.

So I am on my pillow doing my thing, which is remarkably similar to flapping one’s arms like a bird or a drunk cheerleader and breathing fire (which is also remarkably similar to making choo choo noises only with your mouth closed) and when I was done, I lay in corpse pose (exactly what it sounds like) and was just shocked at how much my muscles felt like they had just spent three hours lifting weights.

And then I stood up.

And that was enough to sell me on the whole process. I felt so…calm, centered, downright powerful with no need to fight. The “breath of fire” is a means of breathing that floods your body with oxygen and the movement of your arms pumps your heart and circulation so it all goes speeding through you. What was surprising was the sense of …capability that came with it all.

Then I signed on line and did my twitter thing and noticed that I have a celebrity listserv following me and just started killing myself laughing.

Me and my new found strong self sailed down to the corner store and bought Charleston chews and here I am.

Doing my thing.

There is a renewed push on to move the capitol of Iran from Tehran to….somewhere else. The stated reason for it is that Iranian seismologists have been clamoring for years about the potential for disaster as the city lies on over 100 fault lines. Skeptics say it is just another move by the powers that be to try and get away from the liberalism in what is the Middle East’s largest city (population 12 million).

But who is to say? I think that politics aside it kind of makes sense to try and make sure that the heart of a nation is someplace where it is not in danger of randomly falling in. And I think, what the skeptics miss, is that the Liberalism will follow the capitol. Its why there are no strong pockets like it in other cities in Iran. What good is it to be a rabble rousing liberal in a place where decisions are not made?

But something is coming to pass that is going to prove to be very interesting, both to the so-called Islamic world and non-Islamic alike. Approval has been given (at least on the money and studio side) to make an epic movie on the life of the prophet Mohammed. An I am not talking about “approval has been given to make a little movie that will never see the light of day outside a mosque.” I am talking about the producer of “The Matrix” and “Lord of the Rings” has the project in the pipeline as they say.

From an artistic point of view I am really interested in how they will handle the fact that you cannot show Mohammed on screen. Plus, being familiar with his life and the Koran, I think it would make an amazing cinematic experience.

From a realistic point of view, I think trouble is a’brewing and wonder how on earth they are going to negotiate the many different interpretations of Islam. I mean, will this turn into another film like “Mel Gibson’s Excellent Gospel Adventure” or will it become more of a “Ten Commandments” which transcended specific beliefs and told a story that most any one could relate to because it managed to straddle belief and archetype.

It will be interesting to see.

It will also be interesting to see because there is a subtle push, especially in Iran, to redefine Islam into that which is “acceptable” and that which is considered a “fringe movement.” The powers that be, in the name of closing down radical Wahhabism, are closing pretty much any mosque that does not support a form of Islam that is deemed acceptable to the state.

Funnily enough, it is the US that is raising its voice in the UN saying that the actions of Iran towards these mosques are in violation of the international codes to protect religious freedom.

But that is the nature of our country. We are contradictory. We promote islamaphobia and in the same breath cry foul if it is threatened.

Like that Doctor in Texas who went to interview for a job with CAIR and was informed that her Hajib violated their “no hats” policy, only to have a very, very red faced administration apologize and offer her a pick of jobs saying that they needed to train their employees on the difference between dress codes and religious protection.

Sometimes discussions start by stepping on toes, rightly or wrongly.

But what draws me to the idea of this movie is it can be a powerful bridge between two worlds. The idea that one can express the nature of Islam without promoting one kind over another is sort of vaguely naïve, but the motivation is in the right place. Here is an epic story that if you strip it of the words and names that have become so polarized and politicized can speak to the world. The prophet with a message who overcomes his own life to give and teach others is one of the most powerful archetypical stories in human history and almost all major religions have a version of it at their core.

The secular world has “star wars, “ then there is Buddha, Christ, Krishna and Mohammed.

Almost makes you wonder if there was some kind of cosmic fertility treatment and out popped the octuplets of religion.

But a part of defusing fear is learning how to take it from within and put it without. Like talking about a nightmare with a child, by speaking of the nightmare outloud, it becomes less frightening.

Ok…now I am sliding into ramble. The mad kitten is under the impression that we are getting up at 4am again. I had to split the cave into 2 sections to increase the warmth in the bed and work area. She slept so soundly and then woke up and started petting my (still tender) nose until I woke up. At least this way, with the cave split up, I can keep the door open, even though it is only 35 out and still be cozy while she does whatever it is mad kittens do in piles of cold cold grass in the dark.

Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com Video Release: October 2009 copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com