(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.

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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

Sometimes…you are in the right place at the right time in order to do something for someone and you have no idea if it is the right thing to do.

Cryptic, this is what is occupying my head today. I have just alternately between trying to get some work done and napping, it is amazing how the older you get the longer it takes to recover from one night spent staying up till 3 or 4 in the morning. Its almost like it is more difficult to recover from that when there were no drugs or alcohol involved. God, when I think back to my younger days and I could literally just spring back from any excess and go hang off the side of the building like nothing had occurred.

And I don’t think it is a function of aging in the body. I think it has to do more with when I stay up that late, all self and naturally motivated, I am paying attention. When I was younger I was not paying attention to anything and the fine art of paying attention can be exhausting.

I sat around with a group of my friends who are all pushing 70 the other day and we sort of went through the litany and list of things we have been told about aging that are just not proving to be true (and then we side tracked into the scary fact that nutrasweet makes a great ant killer but that is another story).

Your body changes yes, your mind changes yes, but there was a round table rejection of all the crap about sexuality diminishing (it gets stronger and deeper), risk taking calming down (it really gets stronger) and energy levels diminishing (longer to recover but the stamina when you are going is phenomenal).

And we decided that how you age really depends on what you believe about it in your younger years. If you fear it, your fears come true.

And that is true about anything and everything. Fear is a subtle decider. Like fearing that you will always be alone or even that you will “hook up” with the wrong kind of person can make that happen oddly enough because on some levels, we seek to provide proof for our strongest beliefs. If we have allowed fear to become our strongest belief, then we will seek to create a life that confirms it.

Aren’t we all such subtle and complicated beings.

I am toying with the idea of recording a quick, no-nonesense video of “Striking a Match.” Not sure yet, my naps have severely changed my time frames for the day and I am now stuck on the desire for bon-bons and thinking I may sacrifice my laundry money for two minutes of pleasure (that will then make me sick but oh well).

Blame it on the gentle rain.

of being broke…first, I was broke because my focus was on the Demon and I was a bit unfocused because of the move. Now, I am broke because I am working my tail off to try and pay off all the Demon bills by the end of November. Isn’t it an odd life when you are earning money but have none? It is…just what it is.

For a lot of people, the approach of the holiday season is not a joyful occasion, it is just one big bill. But you know…I was thinking back to last year at Christmas when things first started getting tight with people and there was a move (from necessity and from fear) away from the grandiose holiday splash and to the simple gathering of families and friends. Adults did not give presents and children got a select few, and all showed up at work the next week absolutely stunned at how much more they enjoyed the celebration.

Now, we have all suffered this past year and things are getting better – slightly, but for some reason, the urge to splurge has crept back in. A large part of it is we have been told it is our civic duty to spend, to feed the economy, to prove the recession is over. But the reality for many is things are only better if you squint your eyes, hold your breath and pretend you are someone else.

If you remember last year…oh! the stories I heard about the traditional Christmas fights and arguments that went missing. There is no need to pick up all that again. And while we all want ease and a touch of luxury, this may not be the time to make that the focus. Even if things have gotten better for you, give yourself a break for yet another season.

‘nuff said.

I read “Monster” yesterday on Re-verse. I was sitting in a car with a spastic dog on my lap (a Maltese Chihuahua named “Rocko – the Dish”) with a friend who has never heard me do my thing live before. The Dish was oblivious, but when I got done there was this dead silence on the radio and my friend was just looking at me. She looked at me and said, “It sounds like you are actually there, feeling those things.”

But that is the nature of reading something aloud. It doesn’t matter what it is or what it is about, you become the voice for the piece. You are the grocery list, you are the Monster, you are the public service announcement because while you are speaking you must communicate the reality of the words…not just recite them. But, it is not you doing it, who you are gets left at the door, so to speak.

I am gearing up to start teaching a class next week, basically on how to make the process of writing a part of your life. I am starting to look more and more towards it, going over the class notes and expanding and deepening them to include what I have been learning of late.

And I am sitting here, way too early in the morning, looking at a pile of work I have chosen to take on that will allow me – three weeks from now, to drive a truck out of the driveway with all my other bills paid or well on their way to being paid.

The carrot at the end of the stick.
The light at the end of the tunnel.

Money is such a funny thing.

In some ways it is a little bit like breathing. You have to be able to do it without thining, if you think about it too much then the breathing becomes difficult.

Ah well.

The Mad Kitten was none to pleased that the Dish came for a visit. She hid in her room, the Dish ate one of her toys, then ate through his leash, then spun around and ignored the same toy she ignores and passed out. But as soon as the Dish was gone she came down and it was life as usual. This week we are going to be starting the adjustment to her spending much more time indoors because of the cold, which means I have to get back in the habit of playing with her.

And….and…at some point I have to do something with my website, I have been cheating for months and just slapping stuff on the landing page rather then putting stuff on the schedule et al. A clean-up all around is needed…isn’t that what November is for?

work work 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

Who knows? Standard time came back this morning (fall back) and I have no idea if any of my little clocks have automatically updated themselves or I am sitting here under the delusion that it is 7:30.

Ah well, all I have to do is get it all figured out before 3pm EST when I will be reading “Monster” live on Re-Verse’s Halloween Hangover show. Which, find your favourite Poe or other creepy poem and call in and read it. Check out my tweets this morning or status updates on Facebook or myspace for the links and phone numbers to call.

So anyway, last night was the Halloween Wedding and it was so much fun. The groom was Beetlejuice, and the bride was dead (complete with hatchet gashes to the neck and head and blood all over her dress). Carmen Miranda was there, threatening people with her banana and everyone followed the rules and came in costume at least. Before we even got started the fire alarm went off and everyone wound up in the parking lot waiting for the fire department to come turn it off. The champagne glasses had skeleton hands for stems and the blushing couple managed to make it over the broomstick without injury.

It was a Pagan ceremony and it was beautiful. I have been to them before and sometimes they can be awkward, I was talking to the High Priestess and she said that it is hard when one of the members families is not Pagan, they have to tone it down a bit and the beauty of the words gets lost. Striking to me, given my over-the-top Christian background, was just the sheer similarity in the ceremonies.

But I love when they give the couple a loaf of bread and say “so you may never go hungry.”

When it came time for the rings, Beetlejuice reached into his suit jacket pocket and took out a severed finger with the ring on it and quickly tossed the finger away saying “she meant nothing to me!.”

There was no official photographer but cameras everywhere and they will be building a web site with images from the wedding and I will post the link when that is available.

Standing and waiting for the fire department though – the night was so beautiful and windy, the clouds racing over the moon and me, with my 3 hours sleep and pleasant zoning comfort just…relaxed into the experience.

I had a conversation with a young man earlier in the week, I like him a lot, he is in his 20s and going back to college and trying so hard to be grown up and he said to me that he had bee trying to plan an “adult Halloween”…which he described as “you know, dinner out and maybe a movie” and thank god his friends grabbed a hold of him and literally pinned a cat tail on him and slapped some ears on his head and took him ‘round to parties.

Halloween is many things. We could discuss the symbolism for days but one of the roles that Halloween plays in adult life is it allows us all to step outside of ourselves. Particularly in times of economic stress Halloween becomes one of the largest holidays because, in its own way, it gives us respite from our daily lives and allows us to reconnect with a larger sense of possibility. It has never been about children and treats.

Which, btw, I started cracking up about all the news stories about the recession being over in the US. By the numbers, maybe, but we still have a long way to go.

And while we wait to get there…there is life to be lived, poetry to be written and love to find.

Life should always be this ripe with possibility, no matter what time it is or that we think it is.

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

3 hours is not nearly enough sleep for anyone, let alone me, but…that is how the cookie crumbled yesterday. I got more work done then I think I ever have, which is good and needed and now I have to jam in an entire work day before the wedding and while finishing the Ichabod Crane outfit for the wedding. In the back of my mind is this steady chant though “truck, truck, truck” so here I am, slaving away again.

But, it is fun.

In its odd, overburdened way….I am still trying to clear the old and get ready for the new but it is such a painful process not painful, but slow and just trickling.

But it gets done. I do feel a little wonky today not having near enough sleep.

And I sat to work on the new piece “Ages” a little bit ago and all that came out was question after question after question. And some of it came from Heather Moon’s comment about that the nature of cells is that they can only communicate when they consume each other.

Notes from Ages:

 - repulsion mistaken for connection
 - mirrors for sight
 - what is the same repeated again

 - What is it within us that allows us to risk again?
 - Why is not memory enough to satisfy?
 - How strong is our intuition and why is it the one thing we are quickest to deny?
 - What is desire that is tells us to throw caution to the wind, or tells us to wait?
 - and at what age do we cease to know the sound of our own voice?

Questions and more questions and more questions – I know what the piece is about but I cannot yet explain it or touch the emotion involved, its sort of…anticipation…in a way, I think – but what is being anticipated?

These are the things I would so much rather be thinking about today but…I have to get some functional, productive and bill paying work done.

So I pedaled my fine self in the morning chill cross town, over the bay and to a firend’s house for breakfast. I hadn’t seen them in a while.

While things were cooking I started looking at the newspaper, at the horoscopes.

Libra: You’ve been considering an upgrade of your transportation situation, but you’ve been waiting for the right moment. Pick out a color…the moment is near.

And we started goofing on how bad and ridiculous horoscopes are getting, nonsensical….foolish.

We eat…go outside to have our coffee and smoke.

The next door neighbor comes over (who I have known for years and says) “I was thinking about you, do you want to buy my brother-in-law’s truck for $700?”

His brother in law lives in the house across the way. The truck is incredible, his son’s who just went into the service. We cut a deal then and there, I will pay him over three weeks time as I am still catching up on all sorts of bills.

I go back…alittle stunned at the events and text a copy of my horoscope to a friend.

She txts back, “Pick blue.”

and I type, “funny you should say that, I just bought a blue truck.”

Now excuse me, I need to catch up on my work since I need to earn a wee bit more money this week.

☺

(I was asked to post this in my blog from medically reliable sources, please feel free to copy and post it around)

PREVENTING SWINE FLU  
      
The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it's almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.
      
While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):
      
1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications). ALWAYS WASH HANDS BEFORE TOUCHING FOOD OR YOUR FACE.
      
2. "Hands-off-the-face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, or bathe).
      
3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don't trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don't underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.
      
4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (ability to clean nasal passages), but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population. Neti pots and sinus rinse kits are available at the drug store and relatively inexpensive..under $15.
      
5. Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (escpecially citrus fruits). If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.
              
6. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.
      
{Dr. Vinay Goyal is an MBBS,DRM,DNB (Intensivist and Thyroid specialist) having clinical experience of over 20 years. He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital , Bombay Hospital , Saifee Hospital , Tata Memorial etc. Presently, he is heading our Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre, Malad (W).}

From the CDC:

Swine Flu Symptoms

According to the CDC, like seasonal flu, symptoms of swine flu infections can include:

    * fever, which is usually high, but unlike seasonal flu, is sometimes absent
    * cough
    * runny nose or stuffy nose
    * sore throat
    * body aches
    * headache
    * chills
    * fatigue or tiredness, which can be extreme
    * diarrhea and vomiting, sometimes, but more commonly seen than with seasonal flu

Signs of a more serious swine flu infection might include pneumonia and respiratory failure.

If your child has symptoms of swine flu, you should avoid other people and call your pediatrician who might do a rapid flu test to see if he has an influenza A infection. Further testing can then be done to see if it is a swine flu infection. (Samples can be sent to local and state health departments and the CDC for confirmation of swine flu, especially if a child is in the hospital.)

Swine Flu High Risk Groups

With regular seasonal flu, infants and the elderly are usually thought to be most at risk for serious infections, in addition to people with chronic medical problems. Swine flu high risk groups, people who are thought to be at risk for serious, life-threatening infections, are a little different and can include:

    * pregnant women
    * people with chronic medical problems, such as chronic lung disease, like asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and immunosuppression
    * children and adults with obesity

It is important to keep in mind that unlike seasonal flu, more than half of the hospitalizations and a quarter of the deaths from swine flu are in young people under the age of 25.

Serious Swine Flu Symptoms

More serious symptoms that would indicate that a child with swine flu would need urgent medical attention include:

    * Fast breathing or trouble breathing
    * Bluish or gray skin color
    * Not drinking enough fluids
    * Severe or persistent vomiting
    * Not waking up or not interacting
    * Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
    * Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

Swine Flu Symptoms vs. a Cold or Sinus Infection

It is important to keep in mind most children with a runny nose or cough will not have swine flu and will not have to see their pediatrician for swine flu testing.

This time of year, many other childhood conditions are common, including:

    * fall allergies - runny nose, congestion, and cough
    * common cold - runny nose, cough, and low grade fever
    * sinus infections - lingering runny nose, cough, and fever
    * strep throat - sore throat, fever, and a positive strep test

What You Need To Know

    * Swine flu likely spreads by direct contact with respiratory secretions of someone that is sick with swine flu, like if they were coughing and sneezing close to you.

    * People with swine flu are likely contagious for one day before and up to seven days after they began to get sick with swine flu symptoms.

    * Droplets from a cough or sneeze can also contaminate surfaces, such as a doorknob, drinking glass, or kitchen counter, although these germs likely don't survive for more than a few hours.

    * Anti-flu medications, including Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir), are available to prevent and treat swine flu in high risk children.

    * The latest swine flu news from the CDC includes advice that daycare centers should do daily health checks, separate ill children until they can go home, encourage kids to stay home until they are free of fever for at least 24 hours, encourage proper hand-washing, and teach kids to properly cover their coughs and sneezes to help everyone avoid the flu.

Lisa Niemi was quoted recently as saying that she misses her late husband, Patrick Swayze, on a “cellular level” and despite 22 months of preparing for his death that her grief was an animal of its own.

Cellular attraction is not something to be taken lightly or dismissed. It is far different from lust at first sight or that instantaneous sense of connection and communication – cellular love is a kind of communication established between the beings of two people that exists beyond words.

Just standing next to someone, resting a hand on them as they talk begins a dialogue in which your conscious experiences are absent, heck even body memory does not come into play because it is about the very raw nature of one being talking to the very raw nature of another.

But just because that is happening does not mean it is enough to rely on to create a 34 year long marraiage. Because along with cells, people do come with memories and consciousness, experience, prejudice and dreams and all of those must be taken into account as well. Your cells may dance together on a microbiological level, but your beings must still bond and seek to enhance that bond.

I have had a few conversations of late about the “stopping” in relationships. How, in the beginning, there is a push to get to know someone and then everything stops – mostly because we assume we have gotten to know the person enough or it is as far as we choose to go in our comfort zones. But that newness is a daily thing, no matter how long you have been together, because our momentary experiences are always shaping and changing us.

I am beyond irate about the San Francisco bay bridge. I mean, this is what I used to do for a living, build bridges and everyone always talked about their fear of being called to work on that one because not enough proper maintenance has been done and when the powers that be finally decided to do it, that bridge would be a death trap to anyone working on it.

Now, the bridge has spoken. Bridges speak three times (this is the ironworker lore), the first two times are the only warnings you get and the third time, it is between you and your God if there is anything else on this planet they need you to do.

Once, that bridge was damaged in an earthquake. And then around labor day a structural beam revealed that it was cracked (whisper one), so they closed it for a few days and did a bizarre jerry rig patch with a supporting rod that came crashing down the other day (word two). Engineers who have made a career of studying the Bay Bridge are up and arms saying that the bridges needs have to addressed now before disaster happens and fear that the powers that be will rush through another patch to open the bridge again.

Because of short term thinking.

But that kind of short term thinking will bring some very bad things.

But the majority of people who use that bridge will not consider this, they will only focus on the fact that this public thing is supposed to make their life so much easier that they do not even have to think about it. That is the strange thing about how we have become, we strive to reach a point in which we do not even have to consider the things we rely on, that are a part of our lives in such a way that they are like walking, like breathing…intuitive, but often we forget how they actually work.

We do that with the people in our lives as well. We seem to strive to get to a point where we forget that they exist as entities separate from ourselves and that leads to the age old complaint of “being taken for granted.” When you begin to take someone or some thing for granted (and ask anyone who has lost a car engine for having no oil) then we fail to see the small things needed from us to continue helping them to be and in turn, helping is to be with them in our days.

They say (in the lore again) that iron is one of the most powerful and magical things to work with because it is a core material of the earth, it has its own life and moods and spirit. Any ironwoker worth their salt developed a capacity to read and listen to their steel and iron which is why one of the most common complaints by their romantic partners is they felt like the worker was having an affair with their steel. Wood is not the same, because it is so changed by the time you work with it. But iron holds a life that the more you touch it, the more it speaks with you on a cellular level.

Two pieces of the earth, speaking together.

And isn’t that, when you think of it, what two people are? Two pieces of the earth speaking together?

I went to the gas station and got two cups of coffee today to start the morning. There is much to be done and then and then…hopefully I can work on the new pieces. I got speed sick last night which I am hoping will be my only version of the flu.

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

Saturday, on Halloween…I am going to a wedding. It is a Tim Burton themed wedding and everyone is requested to come as one of the characters from his movies. I tried for “frankenweenie” but couldn’t pull it off so I am working on something Ichabod Cranish.

I think it is a wonderful idea. I cannot tell you how long it has been since I have been to a wedding. One of the best I ever attended was a “black and white” wedding, where guests were requested to wear either all white or all black (up to them). The reception was in an old castle and they had Flamenco dancers as the entertainment.

I also have a secret in the works, but can’t tell you what it is for months to see if it actually happens, but I think you will enjoy that too.

And the poor MK. I was steadily not doing work in the cave and decided that I had to flee to the café for coffee and a different environment to get the rest of my things done. It has been raining off and on all day, so I called and called for the Mad Kitten to come inside so she wouldn’t be left out in the rain and…nothing…now since she went missing those few days she has been real good about staying close and coming when I call her so I started wondering.

I poked my head out the door into the rain and called her again. Mind you…when I call her it is more of a sound that for whatever reason makes us both happy…”Ba-peep!” My neighbors must think I am nuts.

So now I am standing in the pouring rain going “Ba-peep! Ba-peep! Ba-peep!” and I hear this absolutely piteous cry. Look around…nothing…ba-peep? Cry. I look up and there she is on the roof looking like a drowned rat, all eyes and as soon as we make eye contact she just lets loose crying.

F---ing Stan, I bet he led her up there and in the downpour she got confused.

So…in my new boots…I climbed up and plucked the poor shaking and drenched thing off the roof.

None of my cats have been good climbers. My dog used to trip and fall out of the RV all the time (not to mention walk right into telephone poles) I am fortunate that the few fish I have had somehow came knowing how to swim and weren’t reliant on me teaching them. Walter and Gladys, my two ring necked doves…well, the less you know about them the less embarrassed I will be.

I am trying to get all of my things done so I can write tonight. Something to go with “striking a match” and the title floating around in my head is “Ages.”

And hopefully, by the time I get the last of my bread and butter work done the rain will have let up.

I have been surrounded of late with things that have shown the way that rules and rhythms contrast and what a different experience it is when you let go of the rules for a bit and listen to the rhythm of life around you.

The Lady, sadly, is moving tomorrow or the next day and it feels a bit like summer has drawn finally to an end. A bunch of us were talking about how seasons go, how sometimes it is the weather that signals the change, but more often it is the end of some kind of experience. Doing the Demon, the intensity, the connections we all had are fading and passing as we all move onto our different things. But there is the lingering promise of reuniting for “the city of love.’

Such  a strange life this is all turning out to be.

Sometimes I just sit here with the cursor blinking at me and a million thoughts in my mind and yet none at all. Just waiting for whatever it is inside me to draw the lines between the dots and reveal the next step.

Which is something I am investigating now. I have to raise the bar tremendously to get ready to even attempt to write the city. I have so much to learn and over the next 4 months I am actually going to be teaching quite a bit which will be good for me, give me an opportunity to investigate things without all the oomph being on me. Plus I am really enjoying, as more and more people find me online, that they are sending me their work and their links. Its like something grand has opened up of late.

And I watch the news and haven’t had much to say because I have just been watching the opposite happen in the world. Governments are shifting from following rhythms and whims to trying to adopt some global rules. The UN is suddenly finding the voice it lost over the past 20 or so years and the major…children…of the world are whining and complaining that they don’t want to play that way, but they are stepping more carefully.

They are stepping more carefully while people seem to be tentatively exploring the rhythms of life rather than the rules.

Which is a wonderful thing, I see it reflected in the way that so many of the poetry community are starting to be willing to reach out to each other, I have had more contacts from poets around the world in the past week just saying “hey…the world appears to have changed and how poetry is handled and published has changed…what do you suggest?”

Come aboard…come aboard….come aboard…writing is  lonely enough process fraught with the threatening darkness of one’s own navel that we are fortunate that we live in times in which we can reach to each other across cities, across oceans, across languages.

But backs to rules and rhythms…there is a place for them both, the art comes when you begin to learn not to “decide” which needs to be in place and instead discern what is needed in the moment.

OMG it is 8:30 and I have been up since 4, how on earth can I be running late already? It is raining, MK is cocooned under the quilt. Funny how she can be so adamant that she has to go outside and then peaks out, sees the rain and its like the dial gets turned down…she won’t poke her head out till noon and even then it will only to reposition herself in the paper bag she has adopted.

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

Its like the blog has its own little life today…PSAs and now this….I got an email from a poet from Canada asking if I would be interested in swapping links with him and when I went to check out his site, I was very impressed with his writing.

So…links swapped, I asked for permission to reprint one of his pieces and here it is.
Evictee, by Bruce McRae (and I am encouraging him to show up on the Speakeasy too)

Evictee

You mean the house inside the house.
You mean the mythmaker's lodgings,
with its many doors and million windows.

Which is the sea under the mountains
or a thirteen billion year old light ray.
Which is everywhere, like ancient snow.

Oh, but why didn't you say so?
You mean the house next door to the nothingness,
across the road from the flaming hospital,
by the exploding dancehall.

Where the carbon blobs happily dwell
and midnight barks like a dog.
Where the spectral sailors are knocking.

The house made of bones being broken.
The house of minds snapping.
The house where the World used to live,
until Tragedy stopped by for a while,
until Time spat out its toothpick.

I remember the blinds in the kitchen
coming down hard.
Like a fist on a table
or satellite crashing.
I remember there were walls in the cellar
and an angry lightbulb on all night.
With vast continents
hidden under its floorboards,
Mr. and Mrs. Chemical, long dead now,
rearranging the grassblades,
old toys still in the yard,
bejeweled in the glistening rain,
the roadway passing
filled with the children's lost voices:
like a skip-rope-rhyme
in my feverish mind.


    Copyright © 2008-2009 Bruce McRae, Victoria, BC, Canada.   All rights reserved

Then you or maybe someone you know needs to know about this upcoming event:


Financial & Legal Presentation for Same Sex Couples on November 10
Nathan Bishop Middle School
Special Guest Rep Frank Ferri

RSVP to Karen Melo at 401-432-8805 or
kmelo@oceanstatefinancial.com.


- On Tuesday, November 10th Richard Streitfeld, CPA, CFE of Aaronson Lavoie Streitfeld Diaz & Co,  P.C., along with Karen Melo, CFP® of Oceanstate Financial Services, and Philip Laffey, Esq. of Marshall & Laffey Ltd. will be hosting “From Obstacles to Opportunity - Financial and Legal Guidance for Same Sex Couples.”

This is the first local presentation on this important topic in over five years.

Our special guest is RI Rep. Frank Ferri, an openly gay member of the RI House of Representatives and known for supporting LGBT equality.  This event is being presented in conjunction with RI Pride and Queer Action of RI.  Any net proceeds will be donated to support these organizations. 

The discussion will address the issues that confront same sex (and other unmarried) couples...  How should we own property together?  What are my rights when decisions need to be made and my partner gets sick?  How can we grow our wealth and minimize our tax burden together?

The event will take place at the fabulously “new” Nathan Bishop Middle School 101 Sessions St. Providence, RI (near the Jewish Community Center on the East Side).  Registration is at 6 PM and the presentation will begin at 6:30.  The cost is $10.00 per person or $15.00 per couple.  RSVP by Nov. 2nd to be entered into a raffle for dinner at a local restaurant.

Seating is first come, first served.  When this seminar was first offered in 2003, over 150 people attended.  To avoid being turned away, please RSVP to Karen Melo by November 2nd at 401-432-8805 or kmelo@oceanstatefinancial.com.

If my typos get excessive, mind you, the lap top and I went out to the café to work yesterday and had peanut butter. I practically have to stand on the ‘a’ to get it to work.

Such is life, I think there were also crunchy bits in the bottom of my bag that have worked their way down into the keyboard and every so often (like with “k”) there is this nasty crunching sound and then everything is ok.

One of the side bar discussions that started yesterday was “what do you think an Alien would look like?” and this is kind of nonsensical and yet, as revealing and important as the whole 2012 discussion.

What do you think an Alien would look like? And do you find the image you create in your mind frightening or comforting?

Or do you think no such possibility exists at all?

They have found about 300 new planets over the past week or so that exists beyond our solar system. Extrapolation of numbers means the chance that an “earthlike” planet exists are high.

Why do we assume that Aliens would be like us?

Why do we assume they would need anything in the same way that we would?

Why do we assume that there would be anything different between us at all?

The prevalence of Alien theories arose during WWII and the beginning of the nuclear age. The hypothesis that life exists elsewhere has been around for a long time, but the more we look back (or forward) and see things that we (culturally) cannot understand how they were done (pyramids, Mayan calendars) the more we ascribe them to essentially “super humans” that we could not possibly be.

We even, culturally, give them exaggerated human features – the features that we both fear and recognize are so intrinsic to the human experience. They have large eyes (the windows to the soul, to see), huge heads (to contain their so much better then ours brain), a flawless sense of reason and logic (having triumphed over our messy emotions) and long, long fingers (the human hand exaggerated, all the better to make brilliant things).

In our mythology of Aliens the strong thread is that they come in peace (but want something from us), peace is misunderstood and destruction ensues (usually triumphed over by an underdog – even in human terms – hero).

We continue on thinking that these highly advanced beings a) have a need or curiousity to study us and b) for all their advancement have not managed to resolve basic issues that we grapple with  the destruction of resources, over population, war.

I find it interesting that we have made of the concept of Aliens a mutated and exaggerated image of both the best and worst of ourselves.

In movies, with better makeup, we have expanded our visual imagining of Aliens to include more diverse forms, but it always returns to the image of the most frightening Alien being the most like us.

That is what made the Alien in “Aliens” so frightening is the character was so tied to the very human realm of “motherhood.”

Who is to say that we would even remotely understand an Aliens motivation?

What do I think an Alien looks like? Its like asking me what face I would put to God, I have no idea because I realize that my experience does not even remotely allow for any type of imagination to reach out to even begin to picture it.  Honestly, I doubt if I met an Alien that I would even recognize them because my human experience would demand that I place the experience in some kind of framework so I did not go insane.

Do I think that there are other lifeforms out there, hands down of course. But I am more concerned with this one.

I think, when I look back on all the Alien movies I have seen, the one – to me – that best represented what could be, was K-Pac. Where even in the movie you are left with the question of “is he an alien or is he just crazy?” because that is a core question, could we ever recognize what is different? Would we ever allow something to be different from us? And what would happen to us, if we discovered they were different or differently abled, but not capable of either destroying us or saving us?

Ok…coffee and it is all spreadsheets 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

I am supposed to be writing about the intricacies of changing a fuel line but decided I would “pre-reward” myself instead and come here…

☺

Do you remember the panic sisters from last year? Well, they are doing just fine. The world did not end when Obama was elected and all that happened is they are trying to figure out how to pay off the excessive credit card debt they have from using it as an excuse to purchase excessive amounts of automatic weapondry.

However, the panic sisters…after several months of calm, are starting to come apart at the seams and cast about for new things to justify that life as we know it is coming to an end.

Why is it that we do such things? The panic sisters are extremes, searching and scouring the news and the skies for omens that not only are they right, but that they are so right that they are about to be destroyed. It is not even a case where they are looking for proof that they are right and then launching onto some vast mission to save the world, they just want a little acknowledgment that what they long held to be true was correct and now “life as we know it” is about to end.

If you are fairly new and don’t know who the panic sisters are, you should search my blog for them. They are quite entertaining.

But every week with them there is a bubbling and boiling suggestion of what “the real problem is.”

The only real problem I see is that we spend far to much time looking for problems and too little living our lives as if they had an effect on how everything goes.

I watch, with great amusement, the online BBC newsfeed as the exact same story will change its headline on the average of three times during any given day. From the factual, to the panicked, to a more subdued but still “shocking” content that carries with it the faint glimmer of re-assurance.

And that is the pattern of how many people’s reactions (not thinking goes) – we take a “thing” that means nothing one way or the other and cast it to the far end of panic then reel it back in and try to find something reassuring to undo the panic and miss altogether what the reality of the event was.

Like the 2012 things, unfortunately most will miss what the actual event is, and I am not talking about galactic changes and cosmic movements – I am talking about a kind of global push in a new direction by mankind that is happening simultaneously (but by no means spontaneously). We will divide into two camps – the “2012 is happening camp” and the “you must be an idiot to believe that” camp and we will miss what the whole process is an indicator of.

Life is changing.
The world as we know it is changing (as it does everyday but that is another thing)
and we can block our participation in the change by trying to clearly delineate what that change will be before any of the choices have even come up.

I had a nap…I can almost spell now, amazing how sleeplessness goes right to the grammar….

I am much more focused then I was yesterday. The nicest thing, about the part I was talking about yesterday about looking forward to something, is in not putting any expectations on it, in just allowing myself to experiencing being excited – I also got nervous and then had to work against trying to pull something out of a bag of tricks to make myself feel calmer (but that is a whole other post, but sort of relates to this one) is that things became more than they would have if I had been approaching it with a definite plan and idea of what was going to happen.

So cryptic. But sometimes, there are no words to really describe something and to do so would put it into pictures and images that limit the experience and your understanding of it.

I came back and had a comment asking me about 2012, which I talked about way long ago last year as far as the specifics of the Mayan calendars and explaining that in no way shape or form did the Mayans perceive the world as ending. It is simply that one (of hundreds) of their calendars are drawing to a close and another is beginning. In the ancient world view, one cycle ends and another begins and you can so to figure out the time frames for this.

The Gregorian calendar, which the majority of the modern world follows, was invented in the late 1500s and then adopted by the Pope as gospel in 1582. This calendar is the epitome of man’s imposition of order (as defined by their species experience) by negating everything but a simple mathematical formula that is endlessly perpetuating and unchanging.

Now, I think that part of the reason that end of the world scenarios grasp the imagination so much is that deep down, we know that nothing is eternal and unchanging when it comes to our lives. Just our own mortal clocks would be a constant reminder that this is not how it goes, when we hear a suggestion of that as being so, we gravitate to it – mostly not understanding the draw because so many function in denial of their mortality.

Ingrained, specifically in the American culture, is the lack of being able to imagine the world without our individual presence. The concept of “life goes on” after we die is something most people find very depressing to think about – which is yet another blog post. The majority of the Christianity here has even transformed the idea of Heaven as an eternal place where our lives are recreated and when we get there, everything we have lost is returned to us. Or maybe we become a part of a great glowing thing that has just been waiting for us to arrive.

So it is funny/strange that the idea of the “end of times” holds such appeal to so many people.

But it is more than that. In all our back and forths about the nature of love and relationships we have pretty much agreed that the one thing that threatens the growth of both is the desire to “know what is going to happen.” For assurances of what will be before we embark on the process of being a part of it.

We like to “fall in love” at first sight, against are will, inadvertently because it frees us from the responsibility of learning about the choices involved in love and choosing to be in love.

We like our guarantees.

It is, shall we say, a hang over from being a child. A child, who knows nothing, has limited experience and is essentially ignorant; finds the world a vastly frightening place because it is so unsure. One of the role of parents is to set expectations, rules and boundaries that help define the world for their child and keep them safe as they are taught how to handle the known and unknown (blog topic #3, why we don’t teach our children how to handle the past). If the family cannot provide this kind of definition, the child will begin to look for definition by finding some kind of group to attach themselves that offers a clearcut set of expectations and definitions of the world. They gravitate to social groups, sports, gangs, cliques and trends. All in the effort to have a sense of themselves as they are placed in a world defined. A world that can be understood and that they can feel confident (falsely) in their expectations of it.

Now, adults who are struggling to grow beyond this need for assurance and promise (as we all do and it is a back and forth thing) are ripe for anything that promises a direct result. The self-help book that promises a new you in 30 days, the sure fire diet, the list of rules for success, the religion that promises unconditional love and a free pass to heaven, the person to whom they must only say “I love you “ once and the relationship is forever and unchanging in its emotional stability.

Every so often, an end of the world scenario comes to the fore, or if not that, then a very specific date (or span of dates) in which “things are going to change.” People are drawn to it because it offers the security of knowing.

Now, that said. Do I believe that there are cosmic times of change? Yes, hands down.  I even think it goes beyond that in ways we do not understand because this is, afterall, the universe and we are put a really small part of it and not the central focus of it.

Do I think that Man has the capacity to accurately predict the times in which it would occur? Not specifically.

If you back off the 2012 end-of-the-world scenarios and look at its predictions of global change and are preparing for that in that year then I can say with all honesty that you have missed the boat. What people are talking about happening in 2012 has already started now, and if you are waiting for the doors to the party to open, then you are missing being a part of hanging the decorations and selecting what music will be played. By the time 2012 comes around, people celebrating it as an year of shifting will be looked at as dilettantes by those who realized that the world, the universe has begun a collective shift now.

People who presume that events happen at the point at which they gather are making one of the most fundamental errors in all human perception – that something only exists when we notice it. And the error of modern times, that we can schedule major events in life. Just look at the nonesense with the recession – it will be over in 3 months, no, 4 months and 2 days. Life does not work like that. Even countries that have announced they are out of the recession acknowledge that it is only by the numbers but that real life is still in it.

If you think the world is gathering for a cosmic change in 2012 then get off your duff and be an active part of the change. You can’t know what it will be, you can guess – but what you can do is try to be a part of the change you imagine is coming. For what we dream becomes poetry, what becomes poetry becomes science. All the Mayan dreams became the Mayan tales of the world, became their science of understanding the universe and allowed them to create calendars that gave them a frame of reference to gauge living.

As far as the world ending, it has just as much chance as ending two seconds after I post this as it does on December 21, 2012. In my eyes it has even a greater chance because I can understand and point to the things in the world that could cause its destruction in an instant now…5 years from now, I can but imagine what will be and we have a tremendous potential for change (and are changing in some fundamental ways that may remove one apocalyptic bugaboo – world war III).

As far as the Mayan calendar goes…here is the link again to that fabulous site that looks at all these theories, from Atlantis to Planet X to 2012.
exitmundi

They have done an excellent job of tracing the source of all these theories.

Now…the last thing I will leave you with is a question. In all the 2012 brouhaha, look around you and ask yourself, who gains from my fear of it? Who profits from my believing this is going to be a devastating or dramatic time of change?

Look at the people promoting this, it is a high emotion thing they are tapping into and ask yourself why, if someone professes to care about me, they would be seeking only to play upon my fears or irrational desires for everything to get magically better?

What does that say about them?
And what…does that say about you and where you are right now?

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

Google predicts that within about 5 years, the majority of the Internet will be in Chinese.

There was a major conference of Asian countries in which they are wanting to design their own form of the Asian EU to take advantage of the fact that they are the countries that are pulling out of the recession the quickest. Recognizing, and rightly so, that it positions them to firmly take the position of global leaders in all things economic and industrial (including manufacturing).

I am sure that this simple and practical (and sound, I believe) idea will escalate into our Christmas bugaboo here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, people are arguing about the bank salary caps. Saying that it will create a “brain drain” because these stellar executives who “pulled us out of the crisis” will flee to banks not bound by these restrictions. And what? Fresh blood and new ideas won’t rise to fill their position? Seems to me that these stellar executives are still too close to what caused the problem in the first place, better to revoke their license to practice in the same manner we do with doctors who screw up and so threaten the life of their patient. Let them go be store clerks and let the store clerks take a whack at managing investments. After all, we might need an infusion of people who are a little more in touch with the reality of money then a continued leadership by people for whom money is nothing but a number on the paper.

I was talking with a friend yesterday and he told me that if he won the lottery he would start a charity for the middle class. For all those people who have just enough tools to work with, but no funds to take the step that would allow them to soar.

What am I not saying? This is a 360 degree topic turn (in a way) but I am distracted right now, it is early and I find myself in the absolutely fine position of looking forward to something today like I haven’t looked forward to something in a long time. And it is distracting to me in the best of ways.

Its 5am, dark, balmy and MK is already in position under her little tree outside. We have developed this new language in which as she pops in to check on me, or comes into a nap I reach out and touch her nose, or she will reach out her arm and we touch paw/hand and that is it. She starts purring and passes out. Its like these moments where we are just reminding each other that although we are busy with other things, we are still present and connected.

What am I not saying? Chance, I am becoming to believe, originates more inside of you than anything else. Opportunities abound and you know the old cliché about “you have to be open to seeing them”, it is true. But we become wedded to what we think our opportunity should be that we close off and wait for it to be delivered and miss what is walking beside us.

But half of our wanting to define our opportunities comes from the fear of experiencing anything new. We allow our pasts to shape our definitions rather than allowing them to educate us and then form our own.

I keep going to the notes for the City of Love and stirring them around. I am going to keep pulling out the ideas and themes and small bits (like I did with “Striking a Match”) and develop them as small pieces to see what it is they really are and what they require of me.

OK…obviously I am just not stringing two thoughts together well this early so I am off to overcaffeinate myself and see if I can’t get my brain to sit down in her chair and pay attention today.

Ciao

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 have achieve incense, but still have to get white candles. Ideas passed on to me by someone who knows the depths of my dreams, ghosts and their penchant for battling in my sleep.

I lit the incense and MK woke up and looked at me and just started her motor going.

There is something else that Longinus says that I know is important but am still wrapping my brain around, it is, afterall one thing to read something and go “ahhhhhhh” and quite another to get it coming out of the tips of your fingers.

“What wastes the talents of the present generation is the idleness in which all but a few of us pass our lives, only exerting ourselves or showing any enterprise for the sake of getting praise or pleasure out of it, never from the admirable and honorable motive of doing good for the world.”

Now, all this was written way back when …like in the first or third century AD and yet hasn’t it remained a common complaint?

The other comment he has (I have a pages of notes) is that the choice of words should suit the dignity of the subject.

How many of you, when you sit to down to write (and I mean anything) contemplate for any amount of time the “dignity of your subject?’

It is an unusual idea, because suddenly the writing becomes less about you and more about your ability to do something worthy of the topic you have set yourself.

All this is subtly changing my work as I practice it, I have two other books from the same era I am working through...taking notes…writing things on the wall, in books, on scraps of paper as I begin the process of approaching the art of writing poetry, which is different from the role poetry has really played in my life before where it was bent in service to my needs. I want, more than anything, to bend myself to the service of the poem…if that makes sense…

then again, I am still writing about concrete

☺

In the mix of all the mess of the past month and finishing the video and then moving directly into my traditional nervous breakdown, I have been steadily studying some very old “teachings,” not forms, about poetry in preparation for writing the city of love and just in general to take another step forward.

Painted on the wall of my studio is a very distilled version of Longinus’s “Rules of the Sublime” which, for the first time, I tried to apply when writing “Striking a Match.”

They are:

1) the power of grand conceptions
2) the inspiration of vehement emotions
3) proper construction of thought and speech
4) nobility of language
5) dignified and elevated word arrangement

In other words:

1) think big, outside of yourself, think of the world the universe and more
2) feel it to the absolute height and power of the emotions involved
3) now say it in a way that can be understood and believed as reality
4) choose words that respect or “dress” the concept and emotion
5) arrange the words so to carry the whole idea and not just the word or phrase

I also started working in a whole bunch of other stuff he writes about (and Aristotle too) about how to pace things, use metaphor, repeat words etc.

Its an ongoing process…but written on the wall opposite the rules of the sublime is the phrase “Tension is the great integrity.”

In other words, your words should hang suspended as if in something that only you know the outcome of but leaves the reader in the tension of uncertainty – how will this poem end? Will it be good? Will there be disaster? And you the poet, who knows, gives nothing away but builds each possibility equally before bringing them to the end.

But the end cannot be a surprise because of #3.

☺

The thing about the sublime and why it can make a poem good, is it echoes life. It is the process of balancing reason and emotion without giving up one or the other. If you have grand ideas, but no emotion – it is too cold and dry. All emotion and no idea, then it is a breathtaking rollercoaster that is forgotten in minutes. And either/or/and without a means of expressing them to others and maintain a respect to why it was originally written just undoes the whole damn thing.

I almost dare to say that I feel normal again (whatever that is for me). I wrote over 8,000 words about concrete yesterday, which is a bit much but I am trying to recover my finances from the video and upgrade my life.

And get back to studying all these things that were forgotten.

Striking a Match

Striking a match
holds the promise of many things.
If I have chosen to pour gasoline
on myself on others on things,
then the promise is destruction
that will be without meaning,
for no two people
sifting the oily ash shall agree
on why I struck the flame.
Houses will be left without memory,
people will be chosen to blame,
and if anything of me is left,
I will be examined
but not believed,
for the nature of destruction
is to destroy all meaning.

Striking a match
holds the promise of many things.
If that match sparks a flame
that flares to the wick of a candle,
then the smallest part of life is enshrined,
with flickering boundaries,
its borders unprotected,
worn at by the waves of night
and changing with the slightest breeze.
In that small circle of light,
vision lacks clarity
and life has the substance of dreams,
and no two people shall agree
on what was there,
for the nature of flames that flare
is to disappear before anything can be seen.

Striking a match
holds the promise of many things.
If that match falls on dry wood piled just so,
the flame feeds fire and warmth grows,
light cannot help but be cast,
to reveal what has been
and what has yet to pass.
Yet fires by nature consume,
themselves or what is foolish enough
to fall in,
and no two people will survive
the coldness of night when the fire dies,
or the hunger of a fire
grown wild,
for the nature of being consumed
is to stay till there is nothing left within.

No one person can survive,
in darkness in cold or blaze
for each and all
are beyond their control.
In striking the match,
there is a promise of so many things, 
lighting a candle
held in another’s hands,
their circle of light
reveals rocks you can move,
to ring wild nature and contain,
to find fuel that will not destroy
but sustain,
for the nature of striking a match
is to see what can be done,
and where you may choose
to begin.


c.2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe All Rights Reserved