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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia Politics Writings Yellow, Gold, Kings, Fathers, and the Sun

The Yellows

Political conflict in America tends to happen between two groups- the Reds & the Yellows. Presently, the Reds are more or less aligned with the Republicans and the Yellows  with the Democrats.

I am going to discuss Yellows first, because they are currently on the offensive, attempting to brand Reds as racist, hateful, and ignorant, and in some cases going so far as to ostracize them from social groups.

Astrologically, the Yellows may be agitated by to Pluto’s voyage through the sign of Capricorn. Pluto represents lust for power and Capricorn our desire to be someone of importance in society. This transit intensifies the desire for prestige and social position, urges which are key to a Yellow’s psychology.

Yellows feel confident in their physical survival and tend to take it for granted. Unlike Reds, they do not worry that they will die of starvation or freeze to death in the cold. They don’t care about gun rights, for example, because they can’t easily imagine a time when they would be fighting for their lives.

Yellows’ drama revolves around their need to feel successful and respected. However- viewing life through a mental/social lens and frequently lacking connection to the physical and spiritual worlds- Yellows tend to harbor so many judgments about what it means to be a person of value, that it can be difficult for them to live up to their own standards. And that is where the problems begin.

Ideally, when a person feels like a loser they could take the opportunity to re-evaluate their own ideas. What does it mean to be a loser? What yardsticks am I using to measure success? Are these truly valid? But Yellows are unlikely to do this, since they are typically surrounded by people who share their ideas, making it difficult to step back and reevaluate .

The reason they tend to be surrounded by like-minded people is, of course, because they judge those with different values so harshly that they cannot easily associate with them, much less forge a deep bond. Although Yellows tend to be bright on a mental level, this mental light frequently blocks other levels of consciousness that run on darkness, giving them less access to imagination, spirituality, and the ability to change perspectives at will. They are mentally locked in to one view of life.

So, being unable to easily rearrange the contents of their own mind, when a Yellow feels blocked in their ability to achieve social status and validation, they begin to sublimate.

A first step of sublimation is when they cease to judge themselves by the success they have achieved, and instead pride themselves on their knowledge. Being mental, knowledge is an easy thing to devote themselves to.

Yellows are the ones to seek Phd’s with no obvious application. Maybe they would fail at running a business, but who can stop them from becoming an expert on George Washington? Who can stop them from obsessively following the news and then considering ignorant those who can’t place Syria on a map? Who can stop them from learning a second language and talking in a haughty tone about the importance of being multi-lingual?

This, of course, backfires when they become so terrified of looking stupid that it retards their ability to learn. The desire to seem smart, ironically, causes a person to become increasing stupid. The desire to seem knowledgeable causes a person to pick up less information from the world around them.

In another, more extreme form of sublimation, the Yellow may detach from the color Yellow altogether and try to become a Gold- a saintly, altruistic person who desires to save the world. This allows them to decide that personal success is, in fact, a superficial goal in the face of all the world’s suffering, and gives them a graceful way to exit the rat race without admitting defeat. For it is the rat race itself which is the problem- they tell themselves- and now they are part of the solution.

As a bonus, once Gold, they can occupy their minds with “those less fortunate” and those whom they see as beneath them. While those who- by their own standards- are superior to them are turned into villains, rather than painful reminders of their own suppressed desires.

For even when a Yellow goes Gold, that old yellow pain is still inside them. If they were competing in the rat race, at least the pain could spur them on towards better performance, but now that they have dropped out, the pain must be released in other ways.

So, even while ostensibly trying to change the world, the lion’s share of their energy will go towards disparaging those who are not doing their part. They cannot help but feel rage towards those who are murdering whales and enslaving orphans as they take another bite of their whale meat sandwich and check news reports from a phone made in a child slave shop.

Because, in essence, Yellows have a competitive, hierarchical view of life. They want to be better and more important than others, but- especially once they go gold- they can no longer admit this since it would be a moral flaw, and what’s worse, force them to deal with their own pain rather than turning it into hatred.

Communism and socialism are appealing to desperate Yellows (though less appealing to Yellows who feel they are “winning”- a group I have not touched on in this post). Communism demonizes the rich and successful. It turns them from objects of envy into hated villains. In addition, it promises the ultimate escape from the painful rat race- by abolishing the game altogether. Yellows would feel less conflicted leaving the rat race behind if everyone else was forced to leave it as well.

Of course, even in communism, Yellows would seek a way to feel superior to those around them. But perhaps they could accomplish this more easily once the most powerful all have a hand tied behind their back.

So, what is the solution for Yellows? How can they escape their own internal hell without dragging the rest of us into it?

If Yellows could form relationships with those who don’t share their values- i.e. people from other cultures- this could go a long way towards loosening the grip that their own prejudices have on them.

Perhaps this is why Yellows frequently idealize travel. Sourcing information primarily from the human world, they may need to be surrounded by different sorts of minds in order to step outside of their own.

Of course, travelling to faraway lands is not always practical. Ideally, Yellows could simply associate with those nearby who are unlike themselves, those who think differently. But this they will find more challenging. Faraway people are not competition, not much of a threat, and thus it is easier to see the good in them.

A related skill that would benefit Yellows is learning to suspend judgment. Can you set aside your judgments, your values, for brief periods of time, just long enough to enter the imagination of another person and see the world through their eyes?

Yellows are frequently so caught up in evaluating the world that their imagination becomes stunted. They don’t realize that life takes on completely different patterns- like a kaleidoscope- when seen through different eyes. Truths that are towering from one frame are no longer visible from another.

But if Yellows could practice this purple skill of changing their point of view at will, it could begin to loosen the knots in their stomach. Perhaps this is why Yellows are frequently a fan of drugs, because drugs give them relief from an overly fixed view of reality and help them to move into their third eye.

Above all, though, Yellows need to change how they define success. They need to realize that success is what you give to the world, not what the world gives to you. If others admire and respect you- that is their doing and possibly a credit to them- but no credit to you. You get credit for the light you emit, but not for the light that is shined on you.

Yellows tend to get caught up in striving to catch a glorious reflection of themselves in someone else’s eyes. Their fundamental need is self-esteem. But you can never gain self-esteem that way. I have come to believe that self-esteem is actually a  simple thing which hinges on one factor- work.

When a person focuses on doing whatever work they feel called to do- and the work itself becomes their goal- a source of light begins to build up from within. You see your own value made manifest around you- the cars you have fixed, the children you have raised- whatever it is you are doing.  You see in concrete form your own value and therefore naturally begin to lose the need for your value to be affirmed by others. It is already self-evident.

And luckily, this places self-esteem under our own control. To achieve a place of honor in society is difficult, may require sacrificing parts of our identity, and hinges on many factors outside of our control. But doing good work, and taking pride in it, is a universal cure available to everyone. Like sunshine.

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Charleston, West Virginia Music & Songs Sky Blue, Ether, Flags, and Fairies Uncategorized

We Fly

Everyone knows the way these boys start
Fluttering on the ground
Lifting their eyes towards the sky
Then circling round and round

Then they fly
Like a feather on the way
And they fly
Everyone knows the day

Lighting a candle when she sees him
Standing there in the door
Laying her wings upon the table
Won’t need them anymore

Then they fly.
Like a feather on its way
And they fly
Everyone knows the day

I gave up dancing to amuse you
That only worked before
Laying my candles in a circle
Lighting them on the floor, and I fly

Lying upon the bed in darkness
Dreaming of jealousy
So many dreams I dreamed I never
Once of being free, and to fly

Lying upon the bed in darkness
Held safely by the wrist
One ruby column shines like anger
One is just a fist

Walking into the room you lay
Your beer on the tableside
Laying your hands upon my face
For one moment you’ll be mine

And we’ll fly
Like a feather on his way
And we’ll fly
Everyone knows the day.

Download Mp3: We Fly

Random Thought #1: I don’t know how much longer I can keep making recordings because it  is so much pain just to get the most primordial recording. Technology is cold and hard. I wish there was a plastic pink recording machine made for kids that I could use with just a few chubby buttons to press and no cords.

Random Thought #2: You can never reach Truth, but the search for it causes your reality to expand. I think that is the whole purpose of truth- not to pin down reality, but to open it up. Though I don’t consider myself a virtuous person, Truth would probably be one of my favorite virtues, if I had to choose. It is always exciting and gives you little chills up and down your spine.

If I had to choose a God, I might choose the God of Truth, because I do believe truth will set us free. And the more truth we know- including dark truth- the more we realize everything is okay. Somehow, we are already living in Teddy Bear World and just don’t know it. I hope.

Random Dog Photo: Downtown with Slippers observing city life. People who go out 2 have fun at night- What do they do? we wondered. Why & how do they do it?

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Charleston, West Virginia Writings

I am Dumb.

Every time I finish writing a post, the other side of the coin starts to shine so brightly that I feel the need to either scrap what I wrote, or else write a second post completely contradicting it.

Recently, I wrote a post called “Projection” in which I painted myself as a smart person pretending to be dumb. But I lied. The truth is I am a dumb person pretending to be smart. 

At the time though, I was just sick of people who think they are intelligent because they eat quail eggs and pretend to read Shakespeare. Look, I know who Phillip of Macedon is and once asked a man for directions to the beach in French! So find someone else to condescend on.

Nevertheless, when it comes to what matters most- practical things- I actually am an idiot. I have no idea how the world operates.

How does money work? Taxes? Automobiles? How do people hook up in bars? Or walk into a dark alley and come back with a bag of drugs? Why is Ryan Gosling considered sexy? What clothes make you seem intelligent? What expression should you make when a friend tells you she is gay?

Why do people visit gynecologists? What papers should be filled out on a regular basis to not get arrested? Can you pour unused paint down the drain? What do you do with the body when someone dies? How can you safely flatter someone without accidentally offending them at the same time? (Hint-don’t complement them on their second chin.)

How do you change oil? Buy a house? Choose the right moment to pepper spray a stranger? Should you scream if a man leaps out of the bushes to grab you? What lines does a person have to cross to officially be a pervert? How do you activate a phone so it will call people? Or keep yourself from going unconscious under fluorescent lights?

What are you supposed to feel when you go to a U2 concert that makes it worth 200 dollars? Why should you travel to see the Eiffel Tower rather than admiring a telephone pole? How do you buy a plane ticket? Will the stewardess ask you for identifying information? How do you get that identifying information and what sorts of identifying information will you need to acquire it?

Even people on welfare amaze me with their worldliness… how does a person get welfare? What offices do they go to and what do they say to the officers? I imagine there would be so many forms to fill out and hoops to jump through that it would be just as easy to get a job at NASA.

I don’t know why I have trouble with these sorts of things, but no matter how much effort I put into increasingly my worldly intelligence, it doesn’t seem to help. For example, I can’t seem to memorize my address and zip code no matter what I do. I even made up a perverted song to help me remember it, but somehow the song gets scrambled in my head.

And being dumb (in a practical sense) worries me a lot, since I frequently feel my survival hanging by a few thin threads. And so I devote a lot of energy to “practivizing” myself but it never seems to help. For every little skill I gain, two slip out the other side.

Being practical is probably a state of mind, more than a set of skills & facts. So how can I get into this mindset? By carrying country stones in my pocket? (Stones are practical, aren’t they?) Eating dry wheat toast? (The texture seems practical somehow.) Wearing more brown colored clothes?

I think that last idea is the most practical of all. Brown is such a practical color. I used to have the idea that a person could become more practical by dressing up like a potato while singing songs about them, but now it seems to me that simply wearing a brown shirt would be a much more practical approach. Or perhaps a simple brown ribbon, tied around the wrist.

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Charleston, West Virginia Uncategorized Writings

Fiery Chunks

For a while things were going poorly in my domestic life. A dark and moody spirit filled the house. Then I remembered how the problems began when I removed all bright colors from my home to replace them with shades of black and purple. I can’t remember why I did this, exactly. I think I was trying to open a portal to the world where spirits live in the hopes of gaining magical powers.  At any rate, at a certain point magical powers seem less appealing than the ability to live a normal happy life. So I removed these dark colors, replaced them with yellow & other shades of cheer, and life seemed to pick up again.*

I am beginning to think the secret to surviving in West Virginia may be decorating in a colorful, chunky style, with plenty of homemade crafts and colors from warm end of the spectrum. Earthiness combined with fire.

My natural tendency, of course, would be to surround myself with all things delicate & dainty. But I don’t think lavender lace has the muscle to push through this heavy mountainous energy. And ultimately decoration is about survival, not self-expression.

Every environment presents us with challenges to our spirit. Sunny ones melt our brains, while cold ones freeze our hearts. Deserts dry out our emotions while moisture bogs us down. Plains fill us with desolation and rounded mountains with inertia. Here in West Virginia, a moist and mountainous environment, heaviness and inertia are the demons we wrestle with.

This mostly challenges men** since this squishy thickness makes it hard to be brisk and productive. It is a great place to be a woman, however, because so many of the spiritual and emotional diseases that plague other parts of America don’t exist here.

Mountain mamas don’t get ribs removed to fit into the latest fashion. They don’t see themselves as objects or obsess over the “male gaze.”  People here rarely seek meaning through career success, but rather through connections to God, family and nature.

But for men, this West Virginia environment is challenging. It is hard to get that dry, crispy feeling which allows people to think objectively. Hence why we are plagued by functionality problems- poverty, divorce, drugs, decay and disorganization. There isn’t enough yang energy for men to get their bearings.

So, what is the solution to all this? Decorating in a chunky colorful fashion, of course. This will obliterate all environmental challenges and turn West Virginia into a heaven on Earth. I hope. Stay tuned & I will let you know how it works.

* These statements seemed true at the time I made them (yesterday).

** For people who enjoy qualifications, when I refer to men, I am also referring to the masculine side in us all.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Earth, Pink, Mothers, Love Writings

Hello Again, Blog Post Friend

Well hello, blog post. I told you I would turn to you as a friend when there are no physical friends to be found. So here I am. How much can I confide in you, I don’t know. My life has been a toggle between transparency and invisibility. I don’t know the right place to draw the line. Sharing yourself can feel icky, but living incognito can be dangerous, making it that much easier for someone to lock you in their basement without anyone noticing.

Although I have written a lot of blog posts, they are usually from my brain, the only part of the body that can be safely shared. I guess that is why we have art, to share those parts of ourselves which are taboo to put into plain words.

I am trying to start drinking alcohol. Maybe it will provide a space for me to connect with those parts of myself that have no home in daily life. You are not supposed to drink alone, however, so maybe I will drink with you. I am fairly intoxicated right now, and it is making me cry to realize how homeless my feelings have become. Life is playing a role to please others and maintain harmony. Survival depends upon it.

In my case, my role is easy. Nobody expects anything of me. My only task is to have no desires, no emotions, and be mildly happy all the time. To never want or need anything. To be okay with constant stillness & isolation, to never need fun or adventure beyond a monthly trip to Walmart. To never be chaotic or make unexpected noises. Basically, to be a librarian.

But I can’t take it anymore. The pressure is building up and I feel like a kernel of corn who can’t stop himself from blowing. I want to get on the bus and just go somewhere. But where? The only place I can think of is the library. And I hate libraries. All those thick boring books with their gray waves. It feels like being surrounded by stones. It is hard for me to stay conscious in a library for more than a few minutes.

I want to be surrounded by a different type of wave. Bright waves. Fun waves. Romantic waves. The waves of adventure and boldness. No more sleepy, snoozy, waves filling the air 24/7.

But my horoscope predicts this state of affairs (caused by Neptune-the planet of insane asylums- afflicting my domestic realm) will continue for another 10 months. So far it has lasted for 2 years. So what do I do? Continue to bang my head against the wall in a vain effort to change what can’t be changed? Yes. I think that is what I will do.

As I mentioned before, the circumstances causing me to go insane is living alone with my husband who works from home, but sleeps through the day while working at night. To make matters worse, when he isn’t working or sleeping, he likes to lie down by himself in a dark room to think. He says this is the most important part of his work, and I’m sure he is right, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am going insane. He is the sort of person who never really needs to have fun or let loose, and while I admire this about him, it doesn’t change the fact that I am going nuts.

He doesn’t understand though, how I can be impacted by his actions when we are separate people. If he chooses to spend all sunlit hours lying horizontal in the darkness, what does that have to do with me? How can it possibly impact my state of mind? To me, however, the impact is self-evident. Wouldn’t anyone notice a difference between living in a circus versus a cemetery? A sunny day versus a cloudy one? Doesn’t everyone need to be cheered by the vital presence of others every now and then?

And now I am breaking another taboo by mentioning James. You are allowed to talk about yourself, but you can’t talk about anyone else, which basically means you can’t really talk about yourself either. Relationship issues are private and must be worked out in secret between the two people, which basically means they can’t be worked out at all. There is always someone with less power in a relationship, isn’t there? And for them the privacy of marriage only turns it into a death trap.

Maybe it would be better if relationships were opened up for public scrutiny, at least to some extent. On the other hand, everyone needs a secret garden where their inner self can live away from prying eyes. And that is what the domestic realm is supposed to be. So I do value the gag order placed on discussing domestic problems even though I am breaking it.

But I shouldn’t do that. So instead I will do the right thing. Swallow deeply, smile bigly and turn to magic for the answers. The one friend who has been there for man since the beginning of time, his secrets taught to us through our best friends- the grains. The staffs of life.

Feeding Slippers some corn eggs. Despite my domestic grumblings, you must remember that for many years my dream was to live in a big old house with a dog and tons of dishes. Now that dream has come true. But the planet who gave me that dream (when he spent 7 years travelling through the House of Domesticity) has moved on into the House of Fun & Romance. So now I find myself caring about things- such as fun- which before seemed stupid & pointless.
Adding more dishes to my collection. I am always convinced that a new color of dishes will be the cure for what ails me. I love to shop. Shopping + car rides are probably the only true hobbies I have.
Shopping at Fiestaware with Slippers. Luckily for me, shopping is Slipper’s favorite hobby as well. Spending an hour in a store where she can walk around and sniff everything is her idea of paradise. Mine too.
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Uncategorized Writings

Hi, how are you are?

Hi, how are you? I have been feeling weird, as though I have reached the end up some rope and there is no rope left to move forward with. The person I am used to being feels foreign to me.

Recently, I lost all my friends, probably due to Mars- the God of War- making his way through my House of Relationships. This forced me to detox from my relational self and once the detox was complete, I couldn’t relate anymore to my personality. I am, once again, a person without a personality, a crab without a shell.

And I feel aimless. Life feels dry and pointless. All I want is an adventure. But it is this restless feeling that usually leads me straight to the hospital, rather than standing atop Everest, an intoxicating breeze through my hair.

Everything is a swirl. I have written a million blog posts recently, but by the time I get to the end, my thoughts have shifted so far I can no longer relate to anything I said. Then I delete it. This will probably be deleted to, we will see. Word salad.

It feels like I have already done everything there is to do. I know this can’t be true, and yet every road *feels* like a road I have seen before. Why is this?

We all live in a reality, I guess, and that reality has parameters. Eventually, you get a sense of where the parameters lie.

Sure, there are books I have yet to read, but I feel like anything they say will fall within the parameters of the world I already know. Boring. I want to open a book and have a dragon pop out. He will  whisper in my ear where I can find buried treasure. I will go to dig it up and thus begin an adventure of epic proportions, dissolving my sense of reality and replacing it with something magical & expansive.

I know it can be done. To step outside the walls of your reality into a world that is fresh and new.  But how? I’m sure I could figure it out, if only my brain could step outside this swirling wind.

Here is a picture, for people who can’t stand words without pictures. These are some deadnettles I picked from the yard to make into deadnettle vinegar. I don’t know what I will do with it. Some people say it cures allergies, or maybe I will use it to clean the house. But deadnettles were covering the whole front yard this spring and I felt like it had to be a sign. Don’t you believe that the plants with the physical or magical qualities you need the most will find a way of making it to your door?