Friday, December 28, 2007
800 year old Aztec pyramid found
Another pyramid found in Mexico City! (Link to original article; link to screenprint of article)
Mexican archeologists found the ruins, which are about 36 feet (11 metres) high, in the central Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political centre for the Aztec elite....The pyramid, found last month as part of an investigation begun in August, could have been built in 1100 or 1200, signalling the Aztecs began to develop their civilization in the mountains of central Mexico earlier than believed....The archeologists also have detected a sculpture that could be of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or of the god of the sky and earth Tezcatlipoca.
Whoo-hoo!
But notice that only a British news source reported on this. Nothing from America. Know why? Because everyone in America hates Mexicans, and what are Aztecs but old, dead Mexicans?
(Thanks to my friend Chule Balam for sending me the story!)
grief & religion & the sanctity of life
You would think that atheists, who believe in no afterlife at all, would be terrified to die and to have anyone they loved die. Seeing someone you love go out like a candle flame, never again to exist in any form anywhere but your memory? That's terrifying, isn't it? So much more so than thinking your loved one will be in Heaven hanging out with Jesus and maybe growing a set of angel wings and hovering over you like a cosmic umbrella until you die and join him/her.
But the atheists I know don't fear death. Most of the pagans don't either--whether they believe in reincarnation or home or the Elsewhere Bar (see my Alzheimer's blog for more on that)--whatever happens will happen, right? And probably it won't be bad.
I think, secretly, all these militant bible-thumpers are terrified of going to hell. I am not afraid of hell because I understand that hell and the christian devil were invented by man, not god. There is no red guy with horns and a pitchfork and cloven hooves waiting to burn me forever in a vat of fire. But the bible-thumpers believe that there is, and if they believe that, they can worry that they will end up there. And thus they have to be afraid that others they care about might end up there too, and therefore they have to fight for every scrap of life, no matter how degraded it is (I'm thinking of my father's final weeks in his own private hell of 104 fevers and organ failure and ongoing brain damage)--surely it must be better to them for someone to be trapped in a defective body, in pain, than to be burned forever?
I just can't think that way. Thank the gods.
Yes, I am sad that my dad died because he's not with me anymore. I can't hear his stupid jokes or get his help buying a new car or bringing home a load of bricks in his pickup for my Circle. But his end was horrifying and I wished it to be over. When I see the goofy obituary picture I have hanging by my desk at work, I smile and try to remember him that way, not as a thin, starving, fevered shell of himself, unable to communicate on any level, except moan in pain. Even going out like a candle flame is better than that.
12.19.14.17.0 4 Ahau 8 Kankin burner
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Synesthesia
I've known for quite some time that I have synesthesia because smells have colors. It is a condition where some of your senses either switch places or overlap. Cool, but no big deal.
I recently answered a question on synesthesia on Askville, and someone had a link to www.synesthete.org where you can take a test to see if you've got synesthesia or not. I knew I had the smell thing and I figured why not take the test and get registered.
And to my surprise, I have TWO kinds. Seeing time in spirals is a type of synesthesia! (If you've ever read my essay on how I found my way to the Tzolkin, I talk about seeing time in a spiral. I thought everyone did. )
So here is the test (top graphic) and underneath it is a diagram of how I see the year, screenprinted from the program I used to make it for the test.
My viewpoint is always around the end of November. So when it's summer, and I close my eyes and think of the year, my viewpoint isn't in June. It's still November.
Now I wonder if this condition is what makes me obsessed with time and the Tzolkin. Maybe the ancient Maya all had it too, and that's why time and calendars and tracking them were so important. But with my 100% European blood, how can I be a throwback?
12.19.14.16.14 2 Kankin 11 Ix Happy Yule! Happy Solstice!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Father dream
I was really upset by this. Not because I had to babysit my dad, but because I couldn't have him with me, and I couldn't really leave him somewhere else unattended. So I was out in the lobby area, where there were a lot of plants like how the Meriden Square used to be when I was little, and a friend of mine from high school, who I haven't talked to in probably 10 years or more, came up to me and started telling me I was hanging out with the wrong people. In the dream, I thought she meant some friends I've retained (or regained) since HS, but now that I'm awake I wonder if she meant my father? I was very angry at her. I said, "You haven't been my friend in 20 years, and now you dare to tell me who I can hang out with?"
I decided to just go home. Turns out this lounge area was also part of the airport (that's handy). But then I couldn't find my return tickets. My mind was completely blank. I couldn't remember if I'd taken the return tickets with me when I left home. The flight was boarding and I was checking every pocket of every back, searching for the paperwork and begging them to let me on the flight. I'm not sure my dad was with me anymore; I think he wasn't.
And then my husband woke me up because it was past 7 a.m.
This is one of those dreams where I can pull out elements of real life. My high school reunion (20 years) was the Friday before my dad died. I thought about crashing it (I wasn't paying $60 a person to go for the whole thing) but I wasn't in the mood. The one-time friend who was lecturing me in the dream was there, because someone else sent me pictures. I am going on vacation in 18 days (Chichen Itza, here I come) so anxiety about plane tickets is obvious as well.
And of course, my father is dead. And there he was in my dream, following me around happily, glad to see me and have my attention. But he wasn't welcome where I went. That's the part that puzzles me. At no point during the dream did my dad talk to me (in the last year or so he was alive, his aphasia was so bad he couldn't have a conversation anymore) or try to communicate in any way except to be agreeable about what I asked him to do.
If this was someone else's dream, I would say that the person's newly dead father's spirit had attached itself to the dreamer, but that it shouldn't be, and that person had to let the father go. Or that the dreamer was holding onto the father. But I let my father go--I even did ceremonies to break the ties because I worried that subconsciously I was holding him back from dying.
After my husband's maternal grandmother died (they had to pull the plug), he and his sister both dreamed that she kept calling them on the phone saying "why won't you talk to me?" and they both said, "you're dead, stop calling," and eventually the dreams stopped. If this had been that sort of dream, I'd understand it and probably wouldn't have posted it here. But what could this one be about? I'm watching over my dad, but he's not welcome where I go? That's what I pull out of this.
12.19.14.16.11 8 Chuen 19 Mac intention portal
Monday, November 26, 2007
bye bye daddy
Haven't processed it yet.
12.19.14.15.816 Ceh 11 Lamat
Monday, November 19, 2007
Dreams & more
Saturday night/Sunday morning I dreamed of Chichen Itza. When I got there, the Pyramid of Kukulcan was covered with vines and surrounded by a pool of water, very beautiful. I wanted to climb it, but instead I ended up going inside. (As far as I understand, that pyramid doesn't have an "inside"--there are no chambers, it's solid, or maybe has a core of older buildings.)
The walls inside were white, and the halls and chambered formed a spiral structure. When I got close to the walls I saw that someone had inscribed very elaborate pictures with a very thin stylus. Someone had taped big sheets of paper over it and was making rubbings, and someone else was coloring the rubbings, trying to make sense of the carvings. But there were hundreds, thousands, of square feet of these etchings/inscriptions and whoever was working on it had barely started. I wanted to help but I had the understanding, somehow, that it was a graduate student project, not a regular person project, and I wasn't welcome. The carvings were so fine you could only see them if you held a light at a slight angle. They were really amazing, because they were carved when there was no electric light. I can't remember all the chambers I went through, only the last one. There was an old man there, with dark hair and a beard. He didn't look Mexican. He was doing horoscopes. I went over to ask him how much a horoscope was. He answered me with a really weird denomination of money (I can't remember what it was) but whatever it was, the price was 3 of them. It was an existing unit of money but the initial letter was a t. Like "tollar" instead of dollar or "teso" instead of peso. I asked someone about it, and it turned out he was only charging $.30 (thirty cents). I wanted to order horoscopes for everyone I knew for that price!
And basically that's when the alarm started to go off, and I couldn't get back into the dream.
------
So my dad woke up, and is eating, but he still can't speak or communicate in any way. He still has a slight fever. It's just prolonging the inevitable, dragging out the pain. And for what?
------
My cat, Nutter, who has what might or might not be cancer, has gotten really thin and lethargic. He leaves the kitchen to use the litter box and sleep in a nest of blankets on the couch, but mostly he sleeps in the cat carrier--probably 22-23 hours a day. He fell when trying to jump onto the bathroom sink to drink. He walks really slow. His breathing is starting to be fast. Wednesday we're taking him to the vet for a check-up but I think it's going to be a one-way trip. :( The vet gave him 3 months to live and Wednesday will be exactly 7. How can I complain? I had him more than twice as long as I thought I would. He found friendship again with Sputz and the baby kitten, who both sleep with him and lick him.
Doesn't mean I won't be sad to kiss him goodbye.
12.19.14.15.1 4 Imix 9 Cen
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
musings on death
Today's 12 Vulture so it's a good day to let things go. Maybe my dad will let go of the earth today, but I doubt it. He is fighting so hard to live.
Last night I was talking to a friend of mine who is an atheist and I told him honestly that the only reason I can't be one is because I refuse to let go of the idea of an afterlife. I need it.
And that made me think about right-to-life people and how they think the sanctity of life is more important than anything. Most of these people are Christians and they have the whole Heaven thing. If you believe in Heaven as a place of ultimate peace and angels and clouds and all that, why would you ever fight for someone to stay here on earth, especially when that person is suffering, sick and in pain? Wouldn't you WANT them to be freed from their physical pain and go onto an everlasting peace? How can you believe in the fluffy Christian Heaven and yet want to keep people here on earth? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
It seems to me that the atheists should be the ones trying to keep people alive, because they believe there is nothing there after death, that you wink out like a candle flame.
I don't want to go out like a candle flame, and I don't want those I love to go out either. I don't know how I would ever let that go, or why I would ever want to. It's a comfort to me, like having a security blanket or sitting with a purring cat on my lap.
For me to believe that after all this suffering, my father is going to wink out and cease to exist would make me absolutely insane.
12.19.14.14.16 12 Cib 4 Ceh
Monday, November 12, 2007
Dad
Softkey Left | softkey Right |
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
2 dreams
I had an "I'm not in this" dream where some ancient Babylonian or Sumerian god came to life after someone did some kind of ritual and it was rampaging around killing people. I couldn't find a picture of the exact god I saw in the dream. (image source) This picture is of Marduk's dragon. The god in the dream had the same kind of awkwardness, especially about the legs and feet, but he had a thicker body and a bigger head and was orange. Not the orange of a cat, but crayon orange. It was kind of cat like-like, or maybe like the a child's drawing of a lion. He looked like a drawing come to life and stomping around but in 3d. And it was a vicious nasty monster, killing everyone in its path.
I was in the other dream. For some reason Willy and I went to Boston. We had to park the car way up high in some weird garage. And it wasn't a nice spiral ramp so you hardly know how high you're going. It was a very steep (like South St hill) ramp and at the top was a glass bridge, two lanes wide, leading to the garage. I said, "I don't want to go up there" and Willy said "I don't want to either" but we went. And of course once we got onto the horrible glass bridge we were forced to park the car there. Willy took off and left me there alone (I guess he thought I was following). I was terrified and unable to move. He was in a building at the same height but across about a 20 foot divide. He told me to throw him my purse so I would have both hands to grab things as I walked. I did, but of course it fell short, and in slow motion it hit outcroppings and awnings, slowing down every time, but at the bottom on the sidewalk it still broke open spewing my things everywhere. Although I knew my PDA was in there (the same PDA that once broke after a fall from the sink to the floor) and my camera and my wallet, etc., all I cared about for some reason was my phone. I had to cross the glass bridge and go down the steep ramp and get to where my broken things were. Someone was trying to sweep them up and throw them away but somehow I convinced that person that the items were mine, and gathered them up. I don't remember if I found everything or if anything (everything) was ruined.
That's a pretty symbolic dream, huh?
12.19.14.13.7 15 Yax 9 Manik
Thursday, October 11, 2007
my daddy's leaving :(
My dad has Alzheimer's, as some of you know. He recently got put into a nursing home after a series of truly unfortunate events which you can read about on my Alzheimer's blog. And now it seems like he's dying. He fell and then had a seizure, or vice versa (we don't know) but he's got bleeding deep in his brain that can't be treated.
This is a man who was a nice guy his whole life. He held doors for people, he took out the trash, he put soda in the fridge. He loved animals and butterflies and raspberries and until he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's he never raised a hand in anger to anyone. So why exactly would any god do this to him? Why would he choose this for himself?
It's kind of funny that the episode of Scrubs where the Jesus-loving nurse tries to convince Dr Cox that everything happens for a reason is on in the background as I am writing. Because I am trying to find that reason.
Why would a mild-mannered quiet kind man suddenly decide to forget his whole life, his wife, his daughter, everything, and turn himself into a violent, angry, confused man? Why would he choose to suffer--suffer so badly he begs us to kill him, threatens to kill himself--and to watch his family suffer? Where is the lesson? Where is the balance? What is the contract behind such a decision?
And if we agree to everything before we come here, why would I agree to such a plan? To watch my father wither away in body and mind and spirit, like a chocolate bunny at Easter? It's a long fucking goodbye, and drawing it out isn't making it any easier or better. I'm just sitting here, writing, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for any of this to make sense.
Friday, September 28, 2007
dream
The initials are real people I know. I don't know who Brian DePalma is or if he's a real person. Snoop Dogg, of course, is a rapper.
I was on 91 near exit 13 and I saw a limo with blacked out windows. I forget who I was with in my car, but that person (female) said, “oh, that’s probably J, out with his girlfriend.” I was amazed. J? Girlfriend? Limo? The person with me said that J had been doing a lot of work for Brian DePalma who owned a funeral home and was some kind of gangster and that he let J use the limos when there was no funeral. And J was pretending to be in the music business and picking up women. He had a baby with a black woman and tried to bring the baby home to his wife to raise. She said, predictably, “fuck that” but why she stayed married to him or put up with it I don’t know. But now he had a different girlfriend, another black woman.
Then I was somewhere talking to C (J’s wife) and she told me that she had a GPS tracker in his car. She seemed kind of wistful when she said that he knew all kinds of good places to “park” (like he had taken her to them at one point) and when she used the GPS locater she’d recognize the places, drive by and there he would be, porking some woman in the back seat of the car. (Not the limo.) Again, why did she allow this? I don’t know.
Then I was in some kind of store. I was looking at the New Haven Advocate. There was an article about J and S, of all people, with photos of both of them, and a colored map showing the places both went and how they didn’t intersect. The story (which was badly laid out, very confusing, and in my dream I was critical of it) said that S made a Facebook page soliciting men with the intent of getting J. I think it was supposed to be something C cooked up (do they even know each other?) but the article didn’t say that. That S got hundreds of responses before J answered. That she met him in a bar, he realized he knew her, and supposedly then the jig was up (how he didn’t recognize her Facebook picture wasn’t explained). It made S sound like a major slut. It also had, on the map, exactly where she lived, in some kind of vegetable growing hippy commune. I knew she wasn’t going to be happy about any of that so I was waiting at this store for her to arrive with her commune. And we had some things we had to give her—can’t remember now what, but it seemed like a big piles of stuff, maybe folding chairs? Something very weird.
She arrived but the commune leader, a big tall woman, wouldn’t let her talk to me. S saw me and came toward me. I waved the article and pointed at the (chairs) and she said the (chairs) weren’t hers and she didn’t want them. I tried to find out what to do with them but she wouldn’t/couldn’t tell me, and then the woman made her go back in line with the other hippies.
A fat white guy who I think was Brian DePalma came into the store with a really skinny black guy who had long braids or dreads down his back. I was looking at the black guy, thinking he looked familiar, when an alarm went off. The black guy completely freaked out and that was when I realized it was Snoop Dogg. I thought, wow, Snoop Dog, but had no desire to meet him or talk to him. He was yelling and waving a gun. The white guy was trying to calm him down.
The alarm was still going off.
A lady with some kind of hand-held device was checking things in the store. She came to a big cabinet on the wall near where I was and the device signaled that the thing causing the alarm was inside. She opened the cabinet and it was full of people’s stuff, like backpacks and bags and jackets. One of the backpacks set off the alarm. She reached into the pocket and there was a brand-new Speak n Spell in a clear slipcase. She held it up and said, “It’s just this, nothing to worry about,” and I went over to look at it closer. I said in a really quiet voice, “it was one of those that started 9/11” (I guess meaning explosives in one?) and she looked at it again and looked at Snoop Dogg, who had stopped yelling and put his gun away. “Let’s not tell him that,” she said, and put the Speak n Spell back into the backpack without even taking it out of its case to check if it was real or a bomb.
Then I noticed a bunch of checks, maybe 9 to12 of them, stapled to a bulletin board and used as a background for a message scrawled in magic marker. I went over to look at them. The checks had a background of whales and dolphins and had all been dated January 2 but I can’t remember what year. They had CC’s name and old address (in Wallingford) on them and the message was something about 2012 but now I forgot what.
12.19.14.12.9 17 Chen 4 Muluc
Monday, September 03, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Ahuizotl's tomb found
The tomb of Aztec leader Ahuizotl has possibly been located in Mexico City. I believe he was the Revered Speaker right before Motecuzoma.
Yahoo has a slideshow here (it's a weird pop-up, not sure how the link will work) with a brief blurb that basically says that beneath a stone monolith carved with a representation of Tlaltecuhtli, the Aztec god of the earth, Mexican archaeologists, using ground-penetrating radar, have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Emperor Ahuizotl, who ruled the Aztecs when Columbus landed in the New World.
The AP article says the site is off Mexico City's Zocalo plaza, between the Metropolitan Cathedral and the ruins of the Templo Mayor pyramid. A colonial-era building (built on top of the ruins of Tenochtitlan) fell down in an earthquake, and now archeologists can get to the spot. The archaeologists say Archaeologists say ..they have located what appears to be a six-foot-by-six-foot entryway into the tomb about 15 feet below ground. The passage is filled with water, rocks and mud, forcing workers to dig delicately while suspended from slings. Pumps work to keep the water level down. ... As early as this fall, they hope to enter the inner chambers — a damp, low-ceilinged space — and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was likely cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502.
Ashes aren't as good as a mummy--not much to examine. But still, if there are grave goods --gold and treasure unplundered by Cortez...imagine what might be down there waiting for us?
In the lower right corner of the picture, in Tlaltecuhtli's hand, you can see the 10 dots and rabbit signifying the year 10 Rabbit...1502, when Ahuizotl died.
12.19.14.10.6 13 Cimi 14 Yaxkin
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
4 Caban-Ollin-Earthquake
I've always found it interesting that no one advocating the "2012 is the end of the calendar/world" theory can explain the discrepancy. 12-21-2012 is 4 Ahau (Xochitl).
12.19.14.9.17 4 Caban 5 Yaxkin
Monday, August 06, 2007
Aztec pyramid found
Archaeologists have discovered what they think are ruins of an Aztec pyramid razed by vengeful Spanish conquerors in what is now one of Mexico City's most crime-ridden districts.
Construction workers unearthed ancient walls in the busy Iztapalapa neighborhood in June, and government archeologists said Wednesday they believe they may be part of the main pyramid of the Aztec city, destroyed by conquistador Hernan Cortes in the 16th century.
"The main pyramid"? What the Spanish called the Temple Mayor? I thought they already found that--in 1978. The pyramid couldn't be so big that they'd find another piece of it far away. I tried to find a map of Mexico City showing all the various ruin sites, but they were all lame or not functional.
12.19.14.9.16 4 Yaxkin 3 Cib
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Why the world is degenerating
Choice tidbits, of the moist and juicy kind:
Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"
....
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land.
....
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words--...assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? ...
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin' tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation.
....
Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states ..., but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.
~~~~~~~~~
Do I even need to comment? Go, follow the link and read the whole thing. Then pop over to the Voluntary Human Extinction site.
12.19.14.9.15 3 Yaxkin 2 Men
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
white light and balance
File this under "something to think about" (ie, "Thoughts" in my tag cloud).
The vast majority of my friends are pagans or pagan-friendly. In rituals, meditations and so forth, many of them (with one exception) are inordinately fond of flinging around "white light" and "white light protection" and also emphasizing they do "good" works only.
And that is all fine and good. I don't use "black light" or do evil nor I am I suggesting you do so.
However, I do believe in balance. Ironically, so do all my friends who love their white light protection. They think that adding more white light makes the universe a better place. . . but if all things are in balance...what balances out all their extra white light?
Years ago, I switched to "Clear light." Clear light doesn't have the polarity of white light. It is all colors, all things, and therefore can be what it needs to be when it needs to be that. You need red? It's there, in the clear. You need black? (and sometimes, you do, and not just to see if there are cat pee stains on your clothes)--it's there.
Anyway, I don't have an answer to this, like so many things I talk about. It's just meant to provoke conversation and thought.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
2012 for the millionth time.
The WORLD IS NOT ENDING IN 2012.
The WORLD IS NOT ENDING IN 2012.
The WORLD IS NOT ENDING IN 2012.
The WORLD IS NOT ENDING IN 2012.
The history channel has this short clip on their website about 2012.
It spouts all the familiar "Mayan calendar is ending in 2012" nonsense (over pictures of the Aztec calendar stone!). Added to this is something not explained about how if lay the I-Ching onto history it also ends in 2012. (Huh?) And of course, in the same 3 minutes, they manage to throw the Bible in there as back-up, and talk about some web-bot project that predicts nuclear war for 2009 and a "solar event" for 2012 (supposedly this bot "predicted" 9/11, the blackout a few years ago in NYC and the tsunami of 2005).
I am about ready to simply give up on my crusade to explain that the calendar doesn't end, it's going from 12 Baktuns to 13, that's all, but I'm running out of breath.
12.19.14.6.7 12 Manik 15 Zip
Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Breakthrough Celebration, May 15-29, 2007 A Cascade of Peace Events
(more info on the May 22 event I posted yesterday)
The Breakthrough Celebration, May 15-29, 2007 A Cascade of Peace Events
by Carl Johan Calleman
We are now rapidly approaching the exact midpoint of the Fifth day of the Galactic Underworld (May 22, 2007 in the Gregorian Calendar), a point in time of a potential profound shift and breakthrough into peace and balance brought by the incoming energy of this Fifth day.
The Breakthrough Celebration around this significant shift point will occur over an extended period of time, May 15-29, 2007, to allow the aspirations for peace that are now surfacing in a new way to be expressed for more than a single day. There are also practical considerations such as weekends in the modern calendars of the world that must be taken into account to allow for maximal participation.
The peak of the peace events will at any rate take place during the days May 19-22. The 19th may be a day of preparation and creation of intentions, followed by May 20 (the World Peace Day), May 21 (the Jerusalem Hug) and May 22 (the World Tree or Medicine Wheel Day).
This last day is 5 Ahau (Ajpu) in the Mayan calendar and fire ceremonies will be performed among the Maya to bring peoples of the four directions together in peace.
This cascade of events may be used as a guideline by everyone who wants to focus in concord with the worldwide Breakthrough Celebration. Yet, the idea is not to have a rigid organization of this cascade, but to support creativity everywhere. Having said that it is recommended that those inclined to participate try to gain the relevant information as soon as possible rather than to wait until the last moment to find out what is happening. The purpose of this Breakthrough Celebration is both an end in itself and an exploration of new territory. What many will want to explore is the possibility of manifesting a peaceful external reality by the creation of an inner peaceful state. The scale of these events will, despite many qualifying factors, allow us to test the Hundredth Monkey hypothesis that a high enough number of people focusing on, or actually being, peace may have an effect on the future of the planet. I feel it deserves to be pointed out in this context that the focus of this Breakthrough Celebration is not anti-war, but being in peace, if nothing else because the anti-war intention takes the existence of war for granted. It is by being peace and creating peace in ourselves through any of the many spiritual practices to be used that we can help introduce peace in the collective consciousness of humanity. Thanks to the painstaking work of Joseph Giove, who has co-ordinated much of these efforts, we also have some hopes to find some objective verification of the effects that these meditations may have on the external reality.
I feel by far most of the participants in this cascade of events will take part because they want to contribute to a peaceful future for the planet and turn things in the right direction. Yet, it is
not an accident that they are coming together at this very time. These events happen against the energetic background of the divine plan as this may be understood from the Mayan calendar. For the serious student of the different Underworlds of evolution in this calendar system it is obvious that the Fifth day, ruled by the energy of Quetzalcoatl, holds a special Breakthrough quality in any of the Underworlds. The fact that already at this point so many people have pledged to participate in the meditations around the midpoint of this Fifth day in the Galactic Underworld is very telling. Although this Breakthrough Celebration has been prepared for by the Oneness Celebration (June 6-8 2004) the Midlight Meditation (June 1-2, 2005) or the entry point of the Breakthrough Celebration (May 27-28, 2006) this earlier events were of a considerably smaller scale than what that of the midpoint of the Fifth day.
This is not an accident and it has been predicted since long because of the very breakthrough nature of the Fifth day. A great value of the Mayan calendar is that knowledge of it will help people be aware of their relationship to the divine time plan. The particular Fifth day of the Galactic Underworld is conducive to a breakthrough in the balancing of the two hemispheres of the human mind and of the planet, something that by itself may prepare for a quantum jump to
oneness and peace. Yet, the way I look upon it, peace or balance will not come automatically in the Galactic Underworld, because in this Underworld human beings are attaining a state of consciousness where we are no longer puppets of the divine plan. We have, in other words, on this level to make a choice, collectively speaking, as to whether we are going to manifest the reality of Oneness and Peace that the divine plan creates the possibility for. There is thus a
tremendous value with every person that makes this choice and will work to see it come into fruition.
The closer we come to the fulfillment of the divine creation process late in 2011 the more difficult will predictions be, because at the level of the Galactic Underworld increasingly more will depend on the choices human individuals make. This may sound quite paradoxical, but personally I do not believe in either of the simplistic views ("we totally create our own reality") or ("everything is pre-determined" ). Especially in the present Galactic Underworld the future of the planet depends on an interaction between energies of time that are conducive to a certain reality (as we may learn from the Mayan calendar) and the choices that human beings make and especially the inner reality that they create.
It may be argued that external peace (absence of war) is not the most urgent challenge facing humanity at the present time. As was pointed out by Don Alejandro in his recent message environmental concerns may now be more pressing for the survival of the planet. Yet, the peace meditations around the midpoint of the Fifth day is about supporting an inner change and the creation of a new coherent field of consciousness. Hence, it is possible that such a field will
bring about positive effects also when it comes to other things that plague our planet. A state of Oneness by itself is about breaking down not only perceived barriers between people, but also between the human beings and nature that ultimately are behind global warming and other threats to the planet. Hence, in my opinion, peace, being peace, is a focus as good as any for this Breakthrough Celebration.
The second half of the Fifth day (May 22 - November 19, 2007) of the Galactic Underworld may be expected to be energetically favorable for a rapid broadening of the desires and manifestation of peace in the world. Needless to say, not everybody will be part of this process and many will resist it. Yet, the parallel especially with the Fifth day of the PlanetaryUnderworld (1913-1932) is natural to make. The first half of this saw a hard resistance to the breakthrough of the modern world with its democracy, a resistance especially manifested in World War I, where the old empires sought to hold on to power. The second half (1923-32), however, was the time when this resistance was flooded by the new collective desires for collective participation in the rule of nations and a new freedom. If we are able today at the midpoint of the Fifth day of the Galactic Underworld to prepare the ground for peace something similar may emerge in our own immediate future. For this to happen we need not only to walk our talk, but actually be our talk of peace of oneness, and if we are we may be part of co-creating with the divine an flooding of peace.
Carl Johan Calleman is the author of The Mayan Calendar (Garev, 2001) and The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear and Co, 2004).
And no, I'm not a big fan of his work. But this seems important enough to post.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
call for peace prayers, from a Mayan Elder
Subject: A call from Don Alejandro Oxlaj, Grand Elder of the Maya, for Global Meditation on May 22 (5 Ahau, Ajpu)
Please feel free to post and disseminate!
Date: May 11, 2007
From: Don Alejandro Oxlaj, Guatemala de la Asuncion
Don Alejandro is charged as the primary keeper of the teachings, visions and prophecies of the Mayan people. He is head of the National Mayan Council of Elders of Guatemala, Day Keeper of the Mayan Calendar, a 13th generation Quiche Mayan High Priest and a Grand Elder of the Continental Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides of the Americas. He is also an international lecturer on Mayan Culture.
Don Alejandro gives us this timely message: a call to action, a call to come together and be as one. Don Alejandro will be performing a Sacred Maya FIRE Ceremony in Guatemala , and be joining the thousands of others around the planet during the Break through Celebration.
"Brothers and Sisters of all colors, holding hands around the planet on May 22nd 2007, let us reflect on this, let us meditate in our own way, in our own language, according to our own culture or religion, because we have only one Sun to shine upon us equally, one air that we breathe and gives us life, one water that we drink and becomes blood in our veins and all live on Mother Earth. She feeds us, she holds us. Brothers and Sisters of all colors, together united in meditation to make conscience to the men in power, governors, politicians, business people: no more war, no more contaminating bombs, no more death. Together we can make a difference."
In the name of the Heart of the Heavens and the Heart of the Earth, greetings to you. In the name of the Maya National Council of Elders, Spiritual Guides of Guatemala, we address the following to you for your great magnetic connections at the global level:
The Spirit of the Maya Nation and the Spirit of Mother Earth make us look for ties of friendship with all peoples of the world. The Maya Prophecy tells us, " …We will meet for we are one like the fingers of the hand". We all are children of the Earth, we are flowers of the garden of our Creator coming in different colors, in different shapes, in different sizes, with different aromas; speaking different languages, and each one worshiping and meditating in their own way to the same Creator who has different names according to their own culture.
We hope this communiqué reaches all institutions, in private sectors as well as governmental ones; landowners, scientists, and all people in general. Brothers and sisters, there have been over 500 years of extermination in the face of the earth, extermination of humans, extermination of our brother animals and ancient trees, every day at a faster speed. The elders from the National Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides of Guatemala are keepers of mystical and millenary knowledge. Like the birds, tirelessly in their flight, they live to see the prophecies fulfilled. We want to make all people and governments in the world conscientious, and have them analyze and reflect at the situation of the planet in the present time. Let us start by remembering that the Americas were a paradise 500 years ago. Virgin forests, cities of beautiful animals, cities to an innumerable variety of colorful birds, flying in freedom; they provided food for everyone. The waters were abundant and pure; and the people, they lived in their own traditions, guarding their cultures and conserving the beauty of Mother Earth. Our ancestors lived to be over 100 years old, free from contagion and illnesses. They were respectful and obedient to the laws of our Creator.
Let us talk now about our present times. We enjoy new advances in technology, inventions that make everyday life easier for us, we all use them, but the negative side is that we are finishing up our forests, and contributing to the contamination of the planet, the rivers are drying out, the waters are being contaminated. Our crops are affected by plagues as well as plagues killing our animals. We are threatened by contagious illnesses, incurable illnesses unknown in the past. Very harmful are the use of chemicals, the insecticides, transgenic seeds, etc. And most of all, these days, the nuclear testing: nuclear bombs and a great deal of war weapons, and the war in itself sterilizing or killing the planet Earth and affecting all living beings. Many people are homeless, children begging in the streets, others are involved in prostitution. Predators are on the rise. Dead people appearing daily in the streets, kidnappings, extortion, shootings in the schools, parents killing children, children killing children, parents raping their own children. All this is a direct result of the contamination. There is no respect; no respect for life. The authorities sell themselves. The justice can be bought or sold.
Now lets speak about the future. We, the traditional Mayan elders, and all indigenous peoples in the world, meditate on the future. We don't think only for today, the present, we think for tomorrow, for our children, grand children and future generations. We see a dark shadow approaching, a shadow that will cause a lot of harm. It is the great contamination. All this is due to man's creation. We are digging our own graves. Wars are being transported to other countries; they reason in their speeches it is on behalf of freedom, but the result is more slavery. They speak that it will bring new development, but the result is more hunger for the underdeveloped countries. If we continue like this, the time will come when there are no more soldiers to form battalions. The Maya National Council of Elders of Guatemala ask all nations of the world – their governors and the governed ones – to put a stop to the contamination; and to the big and small enterprises, to find alternatives.
We don't want any more wars, no more death, no more nuclear testing, no more chemicals, because the warming up of the planet is unbearable to Mother Earth. If we don't change, sooner or later, she will strike back with millions of lives lost.
Our Creator created us here over the face of the earth to worship him, to love and respect each other. We all are equal, we are flowers of the earth, in different sizes, of different colors, with different songs, with different smell, but all looking at our Creator, honoring him with different dances, different music, different ceremonies. We all plead to him, we are his children, he is the creator of all that exists, all that we see and all which is beyond our senses. He has given us our life with an intelligence to do well. Brothers and Sisters of all colors, holding hands around the planet on May 22nd 2007, let us reflect on this, let us meditate in our own way, in our own language, according to our own culture or religion, because we have only one Sun to shine upon us equally, one air that we breathe and gives us life, one water that we drink and becomes blood in our veins and all live on Mother Earth. She feeds us, she holds us. Brothers and Sisters of all colors, together united in meditation to make conscience to the men in power, governors, politicians, business people: no more war, no more contaminating bombs, no more death. Together we can make a difference.
May 22nd 2007 is 5 Ajpu, the Day of Grand Father Sun, he shines upon all of us equally, he doesn't know discrimination, he doesn't get lost on his path, he doesn't get ahead or behind himself. He gives us warmth, he gives us life. One Sun, one Air, one Water, One Mother Earth. May 22nd 2007 day of Grand Father Sun, Grand Mother Moon.
The Maya Prophecy says: "Arise, all arise, not one nor two groups be left behind, together we will see once again the place from where we have come from"
Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj/ Wandering Wolf
Grand Elder of the National Council of Elders Mayas,
Xincas and Garifunas of Guatemala
More posted here.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Fluffernutter the Wonder Cat
12.19.14.5.10 18 Uo 8 Oc
Most likely, the mass in Nutter's lung is cancer. :(
He will be 14 in August and we've decided against surgery or anything invasive to prolong his life.
Right now he doesn't appear to be in pain, he eats like a piggy, he seems as happy as he's been since he lost Zen last year...if it hadn't been for that weird fever last month I'd never think he had a terminal disease.
Am I sad? Of course. Some afternoons I lay in bed with Nutter purring beside me and sob. I still miss Zen so much. I know Nutter misses him too, and that's played a big part in our decision not to have his lung removed and to aggressively treat the cancer.
Ironically, other than the tumor, he is very healthy for his age.
The picture is one I took a few months ago with my camera phone. It looks good on the tiny screen but on a PC monitor it's very dark with a green tinge. I changed it to bw and cropped it.
Crossposted.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Abundance thoughts
I've had some major abundance issues over the past few years (except when it comes to "bad" things, which I have plenty of). Mostly about money, obviously. That's what abundance issues really means in new-age speak. I lack money.
Now, finally, Will's got a real job, starting today, with all kinds of great insurance and perks.
As soon as I heard that last week, even though technically our financial situation won't REALLY change for a few months, I started THINKING differently about money.
What happened?
I've been needing new tires for my Pathfinder. I've got part of the money set aside, but I don't have the special key to get the lug nuts off, so I haven't spent the money on tires. I picked out some at Town Fair for $109 each plus all the extras. This weekend, a friend offered me, for FREE, tires for both the Pathfinder and Will's Santa Fe. That's $900 in savings--I only have to pay to get them mounted and balanced. Even after getting both cars done, I'll have money left over from what's set aside in the "tire fund."
I found a $10 on a bench yesterday.
Two of my 3 students overpaid me this weekend for the Shamballa Healer training (a new workshop). Obviously they think it was worth what they gave me, but it was more than I ASKED them for.
One of my students bought me dinner on Friday, and another paid for lunch for the whole group on Sunday.
Now that I can AFFORD to have my broken tooth fixed, and go to the physical therapist, now I have INSURANCE to pay for all that.
So there really is something to the power of thought and creating reality.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Sunspot activity to peak in 2011-2012
I find this interesting because of the whole "2012 thing" (as I so artfully call it; when I do actually want to sound insightful I call it the "2012 event").
A lot of people correlate metaphysical energy/activity with sunspots and solar eruptions. (Steve Rother of Lightworker.com, for one.)
CNN.com says:
The peak of the next sunspot cycle is expected in late 2011 or mid-2012 -- potentially affecting airline flights, communications satellites and electrical transmissions.....
Half of the specialists predicted a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots expected to peak in October of 2011, while the rest called for a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots peaking in August of 2012.
Of course, there's one school of Mayan-apocalyptic thought which claims the "end date" is October 2011, lead by Carl Calleman. (Read the debunking of this false end date by John Major Jenkins here.) I'm sure CC will use this to prop up his saggy theory. (Part of his theory, about cycles, is very interesting indeed. It's the end-date that throws it all off. He can't take into account that the cycles he's located might be a little bit fuzzy when you look at thousands of years. He also ignores the Long Count's 13th Baktun start date even though his theory is supposed based on the Long Count. Sigh.)
Back to CNN.com
During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the sun, the agency said. Solar flares and vast explosions, known as coronal mass ejections, shoot highly charged matter toward Earth.
This crazy amount of solar activity can cause, among other things:
- Airlines flying over the pole face loss of communications that could force them to use a different, longer route at an added cost of as much as $100,000 per flight.
- The Global Positioning System is immensely important to commerce and can be disrupted by solar activity.
- Operating floating oil rigs in the ocean requires keeping them positioned within a few inches to prevent damaging drilling gear. "They have to know when GPS is going to be accurate."
- There is an increased radiation risk to humans in space.
- Currents can be induced in long electrical transmission lines, causing blackouts.
- The solar storms also can heat the Earth's upper atmosphere, causing it to expand. This increases drag on satellites, slowing them down. It also affects the position of the space debris encircling the planet, and it is essential to keep track of that debris for the safety of space flight.
Which I don't believe, but I'm starting to get discouraged explaining WHY.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
another opportunity
Just a year ago, I received the news about my beloved Zen's thyroid condition, which led to the heart condition that killed him about 100 days later. I wrote this essay, called "Love, Loss and Tolerance" about how I felt about my black Siamese kitty.
Last Thursday, for no real reason, I skipped the ASC meeting. I was up there, one exit away, having dinner, and I decided I was going home.
When I got home, I went through my routine of calling Nutter. It looks like this: I yell "Where's my kitty?" and he comes downstairs and meows at me, gets on me, purrs, the whole thing. When Zen died last year I made a vow to Nutter that every day for the rest of his life I would spend time playing with him and petting him and make sure he purred.
He didn't purr on Thursday, although he did come down the stairs. He looked...wrong...I guess. I asked my husband if he thought Nutter looked sick. Will thought he looked tired. I did some things and eventually went upstairs to bed. By then Nutter was clearly sick. His third eyelids were showing, he was completely lethargic, uninterested in anything including his comb. He wasn't meowing at all (usually he "talks" constantly to us). He was shaking too. He left the bed and went downstairs into his basket. Will, who is usually indifferent to the cat, took the basket and put it on his desk so he could pay attention to Nutter. When he came upstairs to bed, he brought the cat (in the basket) with him. I slept upside down in the bed all night, one hand on Nutter, giving him Reiki and Shamballa & whatever other energies came through, basically waiting for him to die. He looked that bad.
In the morning, his eyelids had retracted and he begged for food. I called the vet anyway, because he was still sick, but not as bad as the night before.
The bottom line is this: Nutter's got a mass in his chest. It's probably cancer although we're obviously hoping it's not. I will know in a couple of weeks for sure. I've got a Shamballa Basic Healer class this weekend that will feature Nutter healing, and of course I've been working on him constantly.
My first instinct, of course, is to do everything for my cat, regardless of the cost. But he's almost 14 and I'm not sure he'd BENEFIT from being cut up and radiated and all that. He's near the end of his natural life. I hate to let my kitty go, though. It's a selfish thing, I know. Keep him here with me, unhappy and in pain, or let him go and find Zen on the other side, his friend he STILL searches for 9 months later?
I'm keeping to my vow of playing and petting and combing and purring, pouring antibiotics into him twice a day and hoping I won't have to decide, that it will be just a bad infection and we'll clear it up just fine.
cross-posted to my Pets blog
Wiccans get military headstones
This has been an ongoing battle and I'm glad it's over. Personally, I wouldn't want a pentacle on my headstone (I don't define myself as a Wiccan, merely a pagan) but I'm glad for those who do. Of course, since I'm not in the military, I should be able to get ANYTHING I want on my headstone. If I wanted a headstone. Which I don't.
Key excerpts:
The Wiccan pentacle has been added to the list of emblems allowed in national cemeteries and on government-issued headstones of fallen soldiers....The pentacle has been added to 38 symbols the VA already permits on gravestones. They include commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.
Have you ever even HEARD of any of these? I bet there are more Wiccans than some of these obscure ones in the military.
"This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation's veterans," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the Wiccans in the lawsuit.
Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons. Variations of the pentacle not accepted by Wiccans have been used in horror movies as a sign of the devil.
"Variations not accepted." What a sly and funny way of saying "upside down" or "point down."
Monday, April 16, 2007
April Showers=very big pool of souls
We're having what's referred to as a "no'easter" here in Connecticut--a multi-day Biblical deluge, which has caused my pool of souls (the nearest body of water to the west) to swell dramatically and look VERY hungry.
I found a slightly blurry picture I took 2 years ago for this blog, of the spot where I usually give my offerings. It was also taken in April. The same pine tree is in the center of both pictures.
12.19.14.4.4 12 Pop 8 Kan
Thursday, April 12, 2007
burner day events
Today's 4 Ahau, a burner day. As soon as I logged onto Yahoo, I saw that Kurt Vonnegut had died. :(
Someone blew up the Iraqi parliament, a story so fresh there's not even a link, only a banner, on both CNN & Yahoo news. And a suicide bomber took out a bridge in Iraq this morning.
There are two good quotes from Kurt Vonnegut in the linked article. One is from a tombstone in Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
The other is from an interview. "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap," he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.
The loss of someone who thought like that indeed affects everyone. I hope wherever he is now, it's beautiful and doesn't hurt.
Monday, April 09, 2007
13 0 0 0 0
12.19.14.3.17 5 Pop 1 Caban
Today when I left the gym, I looked at my dashboard and saw that my odometer was at 130,000 miles (My vehicle's from 1994) ...or, in Long Count time...13.0.0.0.0, which of course made me think of the whole 12-21-2012 debacle, which I spend WAY too much trying to debunk on Yahoo Answers, to no avail. I swear every time I answer a question and explain that the calendar isn't ending, it's rolling over, it's an energetic change, yadda yadda, five more questions pop up asking the same stupid thing.
I actually have a picture of my Long-Count odometer--I took it with my camera phone and emailed it to myself, but it takes a long time for the emails to arrive, and who knows if I did it correctly. When it arrives, I'll add it to this post. UPDATE: 05-12-2007 (12.19.14.5.10 18 Uo 8 Oc)--I gave up on messaging the photo to my email and signed up for Pix Place at Verizon. Here it is.)
I will say it again, here, in plain English.
On 12-20-2012, the date in the Mayan Long Count calendar will be 12.19.19.17.19. (the next to last count is 0-17, not 0-19). The next day, every count goes up one, to 13.00.00.00.00. It is absurd to believe that the Baktun count only goes to 13 and then resets to zero. Who decided this?
In fact, on Wikipedia, someone wrote:
"It has been suggested in many New Age articles and books that this [12-21-2012] will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or something else entirely. However, the Maya abbreviated their long counts to just the last five vigesimal places.....This is confirmed by a date from Palenque, which projects forward in time to 1.0.0.0.0.0, which will occur on October 13, 4772. This date cannot occur with the correct Calendar Round unless b'ak'tuns 14 through 19 also occur. The Classic Period Maya likely did not believe that the end of this age would occur in 2012. According to the Maya, there will be a b'ak'tun ending in 2012, a significant event being the end of the 13th 400 year period, but not the end of the world." (Emphasis mine.)
How much plainer does it have to be? The baktuns aren't resetting until 4772, over two thousand years from now. And you know what? some idiot will be saying at that time, "The Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on 10-13-2772."
Sheesh.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Happy New Year! Ephemeris is up!
Yesterday was 0 Pop--the Mayan New Year's Day.
The energy of 9 Eb--another intention portal--will be carried through the next year. So every day, you can set your intentions, recite affirmations, pray, conduct rituals, do spells...whatever you need to communicate with the other side of the veil. Nine is on the high side of being balanced, which is always a good thing (next year will be a 10 year, which is on the low side of being high, if that makes any sense). And of course the energy of Eb (Malinalli in Aztec) has to do with karma, journeys and the road of life.
I put the 150-year Mayan-Aztec ephemeris up last night on my regular web site. Enjoy.
Friday, March 30, 2007
grandpa dream
12.19.14.3.7 4 Manik 0 Uayeb intention portal
Welcome to the dead days. I started mine off with a weird dream.
I was an adult in the dream, not sure how old, but with a friend of mine I'll call J. I haven't seen her in years; she moved out of state.
My great-grandpa (who died of emphysema when I was 11) was sick and I wanted to go see him. I had just been to see him with my grandma (his daughter-in-law; he was my mother's father's father) but I wanted to go see him by myself. And J drove me, but didn't come in with me.
When I saw him the day before, he'd been in a room right across from the nurse's station, right where you come in. But that room had someone else in it. I asked and they said he was in room 108, upstairs. The stairs were not at all hospital like. They were a great tier of riser-less slabs with many landings and 90 degree turns. I just looked at them. A doctor came up and said "she doesn't like backless chairs, she won't like those stairs, take the elevator." By backless chairs he meant the kind without back legs. (The pictured chair is from Ikea.)
I went up the elevator and found my Big Poppy (that's what I called him) in a room by himself. I thought he had had some kind of stroke or something. I sat with him and held his hand and he started telling me something (can't remember what) and in the middle of a sentence, with no fanfare whatsoever, he died. I sat there for a moment thinking he was just gathering his thoughts but he was gone. I saw his x-ray displayed nearby. Except that it wasn't a black and white regular x-ray, it was in full color and looked more like the scans you see on TV that they do of mummies. And it showed that my Big Poppy's sternum had been crushed into small pieces (how could he even breathe?) and many of his other bones--just about all the big ones--were also broken. I had no idea how the damage happened but he had been moving and not in any apparent pain. I went and told the "she doesn't like stairs" doctor that Big Poppy was dead and not knowing what else to do, went back to J's car. She had moved it from where I left her. I found her peeing in a public bathroom (a one-seater) but for some reason she had left the door open and anyone could see/hear her. And she was peeing really loudly. She laughed that I saw/heard her but wasn't really embarrassed.
We got in her car and went to some kind of meeting with a bunch of others, in a library or similar space, but one where we could talk. The "stairs" doctor came in and said he wanted to help us deal with our grief. But only I was sad; no one else knew my great-grandpa. Then he changed the subject and started talking about drugs. He put a bowl on the table between me and J (we were sitting across from each other). It had little packages in it, like origami, but tiny. He instructed us to take a packet, open it, and take the drug inside "to see what it felt like." So like idiots we all did. The drug was some kind of amphetimine (not meth) and right away we all got hyper. (Which doesn't happen when I take amphetimine based diet pills, but we'll let that slide.)
The doctor kept talking about the dangers of drugs but we were all high and ignoring him. J grabbed a bunch of the packets and took more amphetimine before anyone could stop her. She was acting really wild. The doctor tried to restrain her by grabbing her but she just kept going for the bowl. No one else knew what to do. He hauled her off and I left and went somewhere with my mom. Not sure if she knew her grandfather had just died.
We went to a used book/cheap book place. There was a really long table of books and we started looking. Some DVDs were mixed in. I found a 30 second "welcome to Stephen King's World" DVD and next to it was a weird medal. I couldn't really read it, it looked really old. Then I saw that along the top of the stacks were--toys? models? miniatures? don't know how to describe them--of the Inquisition. Like the Inspector General, a head Torturer, etc. Collect the whole set. The medal had come from one of them.
For whatever reason, my mom and I got on a bus. My mom started talking about J and how weird she had been acting when my mom saw her earlier. I didn't want to say that she was high. (No matter how old you are, some things you just can't say in front of your mom.) A guy I know from the ASC got on the bus and started talking to me. My mom knew him too, but not as an ASC person, and thought it was strange that we knew each other. In the distance I saw someone chasing J through a field. The ASC guy noticed and said something like "she's not feeling well today." And I thought that was an understatement.
I'm not sure what I got at the bookstore--I think it was a book, not a DVD. I remember a little of it. This dark-haired girl with a newborn baby was dressed in some kind of ancient middle-eastern costume (but I don't think she was middle-eastern). She was in a fight with someone. In full costume, with her baby also in costume and a little boy who was a friend of hers or maybe a brother, they were sitting on cushions on top of an advancing tank. A framework around them held billowing brightly colored silk like a curtain or backdrop, but those coming at the tank could see them clearly. The tank met the resistance on a bridge (a modern bridge, like the one over the Connecticut River on I-95, but not so high up) and the girl had to jump, along with the little boy, and throw her baby into the water. They all survived. The girl found a big blue piece of something floating and pulled herself on it. The baby and the boy just swam back to shore. It took her forever to drift that far. When she got to the shore she was dirty and muddy and there was a small fish in her shoe. She watched it flop around and thought she should put it back into the water, but she was too tired to move and it died.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
150 years of the Mayan-Aztec calendar
Technically, my vast undertaking, of documenting the Mayan-Aztec calendar correspondences for 150 years, is finished. I made the PDF this morning in hopes of putting it online tonight.
I make PDFs all the time at work. A full-color full page (11"x17") pdf takes 90-120 seconds (1 1/2-2 minutes) to distill (make into a PDF from the source file). I knew this would take some time. I had 15 documents (10 years each) plus a cover page.
Distilling this monster took over an hour. And because Acrobat repeatedly asked me questions, I had to sit there and babysit.
The final document was....drumroll please....1013 pages. Yes, ONE THOUSAND THIRTEEN pages. It's a 6 mb PDF. I can't possibly put that online. And that's as small as I can make it--each day is reduced to 1 line of 9 point landscape text. But 150 years, that's something like 55,000 lines.
So I'm going to have to make a series of smaller PDFs (probably 10 years each). That means I lose the ability to link between the decades. But what else can I do? Who wants to wait for a 6 mb PDF to load just to look up one date?
So it will be a couple more days before it's up and searchable.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
the "how are you" condundrum
The other day it occurred to me that people don't care how you are. They say it, but if you respond with anything other than a platitude, they get annoyed. We have a new guy at work and the other morning he came in and asked how I was. Without thinking it through, I responded honestly: "I have a headache." He was on his way by my desk.
He stopped. I could see his mind churning. Now I have to stand here and talk to her about her headache.
It's as if by answering his question I placed a burden of further response on him that he had no interest in.
But to say "I'm good, how are you?" puts me into the same bind. If I don't care enough about him to tell him the truth about how I am at that moment, then I don't care how he is. I don't care about his headache, his dead dog, his bitchy girlfriend (whatever, making up examples).
I think "how are you" should be outlawed unless the person asking CARES about the answer and wants to invest time in discussing it.
"Good Morning" (and any other "good" greetings and salutations, including "have a nice day") are also stupid. They are mere politeness and have no emotion or energy behind them. Do any of the people who wish things labeled with "good" or "nice" onto me really care? No. They are words.
Let's stick with "hello" and "goodbye" shall we? Then again, some evangelicals want people to say "heaven-o" rather than that horrible other "h" word (hell). And of course, for the atheists to complain about, the original meaning of "goodbye" was "God be with you" so that's pretty offensive too. So what do we say? Sciby? (Science be with you) and Earth0 (rather than get heaven OR hell involved)?
So, Sciby and Eartho to you.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Jaguar Nights 2008 calendar & Myspace
I'm working on Jaguar Nights 2008. It's going to be in a different format; instead of a wall calendar it will be a 5.5" x 8.5" desk/briefcase/purse calendar, with 80 pages rather than 36. 1 week per page (2 weeks per spread) plus the rest of the pages will have all the extra information and more from last year. Full color cover--a drawing of a jaguar I'm still working on--and hopefully available everywhere, not just through Amazon. The price will be slightly higher (probably $15 vs $13) because of the additional costs to print so many pages.
I still have (very few) 2007 calendars left. Order through the link to the right or through my website.
I am putting together JN 2008 while perched on a 75 cm bright green yoga ball with my cat on my shoulder, on my chest, on my neck...basically on me, purring and being cuddly. So if you've seen me lately, and seen that my neck and throat area are scratched up, you know why. I tried putting those plastic nail caps (fake nails for cats) on Nutter's back feet and he would rip them off. I'd put them back on, he'd pull them off. Finally I got the hint and gave up and I just bleed for his affection. He misses Zen so much. And so do I. It's been 7 months.
ASIDE: If you are interested in using a yoga ball as a chair (it's very good for your back and abs and it burns calories because you have to shift constantly to keep your balance) this is an awesome one. Burst strength of 1100 lbs means no fear of popping from having an over-large butt (like I do). Only comes in green (the purple one is 65 cm--I have that one too, for watching TV on). I sound like an ad...I'm not, I promise. I just like it a lot.
I have also started a Jaguar Nights myspace page: www.myspace.com/jaguar_nights. Basically its blog is a clone of my Jaguar Nights blog--I'm just doing it to network and find more customers/more interested people. Not much on it yet, but if you've got a myspace page feel free to add me as your friend. I've got a "personal" page too, just cuz.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Happy burner day
Today a bus fell off an overpass in Atlanta and killed a bunch of people even as some sort of bizarre hybrid tornado-blizzard thing raged across Alabama and Georgia eating people like grapes.
I've found that burner day effects spread across a couple of days, like ripples.
12.19.14.1.19 2 Cauac 12 Kayab
Friday, February 16, 2007
worm in my foot dream
A few weeks ago I had a problem with my right foot. (The so-called "good" foot, meaning simply that it's attached to the non-edema leg.) A small dark purple lump appeared deep under the skin on my instep and the ball of my foot was swollen and purple. Basically it looked like the bottom of my foot had turned into a gigantic varicose vein. I was in terrible pain for about a week, had energy work done, did my own things to it, and then one morning I woke up and the pain was gone.
This morning I dreamed of it. I was outside in a desert with a bunch of hippy-like people and my foot started bothering me again. One of the people wanted to look at it and touch it. Touching hurts A LOT and I don't allow it. But this person knew how to touch it. She pressed on either side of the lump as if it was a giant zit and it popped. But instead of blood or pus, a worm came out. It was maybe 6-9 inches long and had a large flat triangular head about 1/2 an inch wide. (The body was maybe a 1/4" wide.) Well, the worm didn't really COME out. It became visible and she somehow pulled it out.
I know worms, snakes, & dragons (and feathered serpents for that matter) are all related in dream and shamanic imagery. Being eaten by any of these signifies going into the underworld or into the subconscious. It's a transformation thing, related to caves. (Like the underground bunker dream I had about my friend with cancer a few weeks ago.)
But I didn't get eaten by the worm. It was inside me. And I didn't eat it.
I've had worm/snake/dragon inside me visions and dreams before. Several years ago during a shamanic journey a white snake/dragon and a black snake/dragon were put into my body by a very powerful figure to clean me. But they were VERY small and are still in me. One of them put a diamond in my heart. (Which is strange because my Launchcast station is playing "Shine on you Crazy Diamond" as I write this. I can't make this stuff up.)
This worm didn't feel like it was in there to help me. And it didn't feel like an accident that it was in me. The woman put it in a jar (it was still alive) and started asking me what foreign countries I've been to. In 2003 I went to Belize, Honduras and Grand Cayman on a cruise. I didn't take my shoes off in Belize that I remember, nor do I remember eating anything. She was trying to convince me this worm had been in me all this time. Doing what? And why?
Sometimes I just need to put these things out here on the Wall.
(The Wall is the Internet. I wrote a book about a priestess from Atlantis coming to our time and she wanted to get people's attention. She asked where the wall was, the place to post information. It's the Net. The book didn't ever completely gel, but that priestess is still in my head. Tse Nen Ray is her name.)
PS- today is 1 Snake.