Category: Writings

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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?
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Plants and the Emerald Kingdom Purple, Magic & Sorcerers Uncategorized Writings

Me & Geography

Recently, I haven’t been feeling like myself. This could be from spending too much time on Facebook where you don’t get treated like yourself, but more as a dumping bin for people’s unwanted emotions.

The reason I was on Facebook, though, was because I couldn’t move for a while due to a kidney infection. And so I’ve been taking antibiotics which might also be causing me to feel strange as the bacteria I have loved and relied upon die off around me.

Last night in a dream, I was attacked by two men. A third one came up to save me, but it turned out he was a friend of the bad guys and stuffed me into their black van.

My life feels upside down. I live in a large historic house which requires money and care, but my husband’s job is building a cryptocurrency trading site that pays nothing. Nor does he want me to work, since he prefers I spend my time on music & other shadowy interests. So, financially, there is not just a paucity but a growing vacuum, with no sign of change in sight.

Psychically, I feel depleted because my husband sleeps through the day and works through the night, meaning I rarely see him. Lacking transportation or friends in this city, I rarely see anyone else either. I can make friends online, but there I am just a replaceable commodity. People are friends so long as political ideas align, but the second ideas diverge it is over. And still it is essential to talk about politics, because it is the only thing online people are passionate about.

And then I do astrology readings, which makes me feel both connected and depleted at the same time. I don’t charge for them, because it is easier that way.  I learn a lot from looking at people’s charts and I enjoy it. If I turned this into a business, it would limit the number of charts I could see. Nonetheless this creates a void situation. Psychic energy going out, psychic energy not coming back in.

It feels like my whole life is a void, one that I must fill with my own energy. But sometimes this becomes exhausting and I don’t want to entertain myself anymore. I want the world to take me for a ride.

So, as usual, I have devised an impractical solution. Unless you have a lot of patience, you should probably stop reading now, since this may be difficult to explain…

Basically, I don’t believe all humans live in the same reality. In the USA, we believe we are living in a scientific world, and things generally appear that way. But that is not how all humans experience things.

The different realities a human can inhabit correspond to the different climates and ecosystems of the earth. For example, as you move closer to the equator and heat increases, the objective grid of reality starts to melt. Scientific laws become more mutable.

Likewise, in places with dense plant life, more energy starts to come in from an alternate reality which I call “the other world” for lack of anything better to call it. This ‘other world’ is not a scientific one, but more closely adheres to the laws of dreams & imagination. Anything conceivable can be.

Water and humidity also create a more fluid and malleable reality than dryness. Hence, why our Judeo-Christian religions- in which spirituality depends upon restraint and holding fixed beliefs- come from the desert.

Therefore, in a tropical rainforest, science is at its weakest and magic at its strongest. In a northern climate (less sun, drier air, sparser plant life) rationality is at its zenith.

Higher powers, of course, can still come into play in Northern climates, but they will play by the rules, maintaining the perception that a person lives within a  fixed objective reality and not a swirling dreamlike one.

None of this means that location determines reality. Humans learn from nature for the purpose of re-sculpting it. Ecosystems are patterns. A northerner who felt their soul was dying could emulate the patterns of the south. A southerner who felt their brain was melting could emulate the patterns of the north. (Generally, northern patterns suppress the heart and enliven the brain, while southern patterns do the reverse.)

So, back to my own life. I am going to try to bring in more energy from the South- the tropical rainforest to be exact. Because in a rainforest, there are no voids.  Voids belong to the north and to deserts. In the rainforest, energy is so plentiful, you are constantly beating it back with a stick.

But why am I even sharing this with you- my faceless, invisible readers? Normally, I prefer to keep my inner world safely hidden. But this is yet another experiment I am trying. I am going to imagine you, reader, as a wise and loving friend, someone who truly understands me. Perhaps I will pretend your name is Brad.*  You are a perceptive and open-minded man with intense interest in everything I have to say. I love you, Brad.

* I might rethink that name. We will see.

Slippers & nature. Two forever friends. Plus, a very strained smile since we are so near the edge of a cliff, and Slippers loves to pull and is way stronger than me.
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Music & Songs Plants and the Emerald Kingdom Politics Uncategorized Videos Writings

Paw Paw the Ringing Boy (Video) & Why I Hate Eastern Religions (Sorry!)

As I’ve said before, I never know what to say about songs. I don’t think they have literal meanings and yet it feels so haughty to say nothing at all. So, I will say I believe this song was inspired by my experiences with spirituality combined with the woozy feelings of spring.

My spiritual experiences have mostly involved the complete subjugation of myself to another person. This is why I got married the first time. First, I had to go on a private retreat with my spiritual guide to achieve enlightenment (I was a teenager at the time, so it seemed to make sense.) Then of course while driving me to the “retreat” (which turned out to be the basement of his parents’ house) he had to grab my crotch to subjugate my ego. Things degenerated from there until a few days later I had to marry him since I had now touched his naked body which was too pure to be touched out of wedlock.

I don’t think my experiences are unusual, but just what you should expect when dealing with a Spiritual Person. When you see Spiritual Things going on, rest assured there is something dark and perverted behind the curtain.

But why? I don’t know. Maybe because humans can’t be spiritual. It isn’t real. The spiritual world is something we connect to- just like we connect to dogs and plants- but not something we can embody.

If it wasn’t unpopular to do so, I would want to warn people away from all Buddhist & Hindu spin-off movements practiced in America. “Eastern Religions” as we call them. It is not the religions in their natural environment I object to. Even though my degree is in Tibetan Buddhism, I think it is hard, maybe impossible to understand the role religion is playing in another culture, so I don’t have an opinion on whether these religions are good or bad in faraway places. (Although I can say, the history of Tibetan Buddhism is basically a blood bath.) But I do object to the form I see these movements taking in America. I have been involved with a number of them, and while I understand how they excite people with the promise of new horizons, I have never seen them play out well for anyone in the long run. Even meditation (I used to practice Transcendental Meditation) is, in my opinion, better left alone.

My involvement in these realms did lead to many of what you might call spiritual, blissful and transcendent experiences. But I imagine a person could have many of these same experiences from doing drugs. Drugs would probably be preferable to the extent that the person would realize there was a recreational, escapist quality to these states of mind, rather than believing they were rising up to a higher spiritual plane.

One problem with all Spiritual things, from meditation to Christianity is that they tend to create a ricochet between two polarities- good and bad, bliss and suffering, etc. The more a person attempts to bind themselves to one side of this polarity, the stronger the other side grows. But since you are attempting to identify yourself only with the positive side, the negative side gets projected or suppressed until take on a life of its own. Like a poltergeist. One way this can play out is the “spiritual” person becomes a magnet to the dark people who now balance them out. That is how things played for me.

Anyway, here are a few more problems I have with Americanized Eastern Spirituality.

  1. The subjugation of the ego: We have an ego for a reason. It is our self-interested mind. If anyone wants to help you transcend your ego, run as fast as you can. You may as well get a lobotomy.
  2. The denigration of thought: These religions will subtly- or overtly- push the idea that thoughts are a negative thing to be transcended. An impurity of some sort. The guru will humbly giggle about how we all have thoughts- they are nothing to be ashamed of- and yet- let’s just try to gently push them to the side a little, shall we? Thoughts are clouds which block the sky of Pure Awareness. For a long time, I tried to restrict my thinking due to this pernicious influence. When at last I managed to release this notion and feel good about thinking to my heart’s content, my life filled up with color.
  3. Navel gazing: As a rule, I think people are better off striving for external goals than internal ones. Survival demands it. Families and communities rely on it. Navel gazing seems especially harmful to men. Males have a lot of energy that needs to radiate outwards. If they try to fold that energy within themselves, through meditation for example, they become pent-up and angry. You see this a lot in long term meditators. Poke their peace bubble and they explode. Women, on the other hand, are built to hold energy inside like a pool. But meditation is bad for them as well because it focuses on the mind and stillness, whereas women really need the freedom to feel and express their full range of emotions.
  4. Disconnection: Ultimately, a meditator’s life becomes all about themselves. They live in a little bubble and focus on controlling the weather within that bubble. Their goal is essentially their own personal happiness. And though they succeed at feeling high and connected to the universe, it is still a different feeling from the more thick and liquid connections we are meant to have with other humans. A deeper form of happiness arises, I think, when a person no longer cares about their own happiness, their own psychological state, but is focused on goals which transcend their subjective reality. Paradoxically, caring less about your own state of mind is probably the truest way to uplift it.
  5. Gurus and spiritual leaders: All I can say is do not touch these people with a 10 foot pole unless you want to get fucked hard. The strange thing is, you WILL have spiritual experiences around these people. I don’t know why that happens. Maybe it is self-hypnosis. Maybe they have absorbed so much blood and energy from their previous victims that it gives them a form of radiant power. But walk away. You don’t need these experiences. Regular life is more supernatural than any of these spiritual things. We are just so used to it that we forget. At the very least, hire a detective prior to any contact with a spiritual person. He will find bodies. Guaranteed.

Anyway this is just my opinion, and I know there are exceptions to everything. Someone out there was born to meditate, just like some of us were born to swim with sharks or bury ourselves alive. But when people push the idea that everyone should have a meditation practice, I want to hurl. Just get a second job delivering pizzas. Or learn to build houses. Our minds are already working the way they should. We don’t need to tamper with them.

To swing, to fight
A world at night
To shake, to weep
A world asleep.

They sleep, I see
No one touches me
They think I don’t know
The place where all the children go.

Paw Paw the ringing boy
When spring comes he will bring you so much joy.
Paw Paw the ringing boy
When summer comes then the world will fade away.

These things
A world of strings
But look, you’ll see
The world is me.

Alien, okay
I don’t care what they say
I am bought and sold
Although he is very old.

Paw Paw the ringing boy
When spring comes he will bring you so much joy.
Paw Paw the ringing boy
When summer comes then the world will fade away.

Your needs
A string of beads
I dance, I twirl
A milk white pearl.

Worlds fade, worlds end
I dance, I spin
No one touches me
Except for spirituality.

Paw Paw the ringing boy
When spring comes he will bring you so much joy.
Paw Paw the ringing boy
When summer comes then the world will fade away.




Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Uncategorized Writings

What are Values?

Values live on top of a person’s head. They are sometimes confused with goodness, but no set of values can make a person good. In fact, an excessive focus on values can separate a person from the actual seat of goodness- their heart.

The heart is good, but not Good. It is the fuzzy mammalian instinct we have to empathize with and help others. The heart is caring, but not Righteous. It doesn’t care because it should, but just because it is naturally furry and soft. It might not even be aware that it cares; it just reaches out a warm hand to others automatically. The heart expresses her warmth through actions.

Values, on the other hand, are cold and harsh. You could compare them to stars guiding a person through the desert. They offer no warmth nor coziness, but can provide austere guidance and possibly exhilaration. We turn to stars when we are lost and travelling through barren, inhospital places- such as the ocean. It is the same with values. If our whole life were a walk through a rose garden, they might never cross our mind at all. We think of them most when we have nothing else.

Values are useful so long as you choose the right ones. Like stars, values encircle the globe, existing at all locations. They are infinite, and all have polarities- opposites- which are equally valuable. Honing into the right value can help a person to stay focused on their spiritual purpose- like a soldier tuning into Bravery or a salesman into Enthusiasm. There are Soul Values which guide us throughout our life and relate to our deepest purposes, and other values which we may plug into temporarily to navigate an obstacle. Adopting the wrong values, however- such as a soldier plugging into Empathy- could make it impossible to fulfill our mission.

There are two ways to adopt a value. One is to mentally accept it as an idea that you *should* live by it. In this case, it is generally a value derived from our peer group. This can create strong feelings of anger as the foreign value and our nature continually clash. Eventually, this anger may be projected onto others whom the person sees as lacking the value, relieving the guilt they feel in being unable to live up to the value themselves. Ultimately, of course, the angry person needs to question the value of their value and likely trade it in for another, more suitable, choice.

In other cases, a person tries to actually live by a chosen value. I am not sure how common this is, but all our heroes, for example, are people who at least seemed to embody one value or another.

The beauty of a value is that it can unlock supernatural powers. By choosing to follow a value, you are connecting to a living set of higher powers who will set things in motion around you. If you choose the right value, they will be like winds that carry you to your destiny. Choose the wrong value, and it will be an exhilarating ride that leaves you dashed against the rocks.

Shopping with Slippers.
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Writings

A couple more questions about sex…

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about sex. Not the act itself but the force that drives it. What is this red thing and what is it trying to do? What is happening when a person gets aroused? What does it mean? Why can people be turned on by things that are dark and dirty, things which they themselves find disgusting, and never by ice cream cones? Or the Mona Lisa?

I think understanding sex drives is the new frontier of psychology and will shed new light on many things. One of which is men. Currently, if something arouses men it is said to be attractive, as though beauty itself is what men find stimulating. This causes women to base their own femininity on their ability to give men erections. But, is it possible, that if they understood the actual factors at play in sexual desire they would no longer consider this a worthwhile goal?

There is also the question of whether sex is always sex, or if the dick can perform multiple functions with only a superficial resemblance. Just as the mouth can eat or throw up… just as words can threaten or seduce… is it possible that an orgasm can be either an expression of desire or an act of elimination, an attempt to rid oneself of negative feelings and attachments?

Why can we feel a strong charge towards certain people, but not to others? What does this charge mean? What happens during a sexual encounter and how does it change us? Is there a lingering bond between people who have once had sex? What kind of bond is it?

What does it mean when someone has a sexual encounter in a dream? Does sex impact men and women differently, with men gaining energy through random encounters and women losing it? What makes a person gay or causes them to have a foot fetish? And why is sex important? Why does it make people lose their minds and take risks they wouldn’t take for other forms of pleasure? And is it even a pleasure or something else entirely?

Until recently, I wouldn’t have considered sex to be a significant factor in most people’s lives. But once I turned my focus onto it, I started to notice it operating more and more, as a covert yet powerful force in human affairs. Like a light in the center of the earth causing all roots to secretly dig towards it. Why? What are we really looking for?

Categories
Astrology Charleston, West Virginia Writings

Projection

Although you probably hear the word “projection” being thrown around a lot, if you are like me (or at least the person I was until yesterday) you might not have a clear idea of how psychological projection works.

I vaguely saw projecting as the act of imagining others to have qualities they don’t actually possess. But what I’ve realized is that projecting is more about actively trying to dissociate from a specific part of yourself, which you then try to see in others. But seeing this quality in others is more of a side effect. The heart of projection is trying to detach from a part of yourself.

Another aspect of projection is that you don’t realize you are doing it. And while it is easy to imagine other people doing things unawares, it can come as a shock to realize you have been doing this yourself.

Yesterday, I experienced this shock when I became aware of a projection I have been carrying on throughout my life. I realized I have always tried to divorce myself from being in any way intellectual, educated, or sophisticated. Instead, I would project these traits onto others and feel in awe of their cosmopolitan qualities, despite the fact that they would frequently be people less “cultured” than myself.

This may seem like a strange aspect of oneself to project, since many people view sophistication as a desirable quality. Astrologically, though, it makes sense. There are a few factors in a person’s chart that determine which parts of themselves they desire to offload onto others. For example, the qualities of any planet opposite to Venus at the time of birth, will tend to get projected. I was born with Venus opposite Jupiter, who rules higher education, philosophy, wealth,  and the high brow parts of a culture in general. Therefore, I would want to see scholarly, urbane qualities in others, but never in myself.

I grew up wealthy and as a child my identity was the smart, intellectual one, which never made me feel especially cute. Perhaps this is why I dreamed of being an uneducated hayseed from the country.  When I first read Rousseau, his glamorization of the Noble Savage went straight to my heart. I wanted so badly to be that natural, lovable person, uncorrupted by human culture. And it seemed to me that poor people were somehow closer to Rousseau’s ideal.

Eventually I began trying (subconsciously) to associate myself with everything the opposite of the wealthy world I knew.  My favorite wine had to be Boone’s Farm, Strawberry-Kiwi. I tried to read harlequin novels and listen to cheesiest forms of country music. I attempted to become a secretary, a stripper, a worker at KFC. Some of which are noble jobs, but to the culture I came from, they were shocking and inappropriate choices. Especially secretary.

It was probably this same projection which caused me to move to West Virginia. I remember as a child how Kentucky (where I lived) was generally ranked second to last in everything. This made me proud. But West Virginia was always dead last in education, wealth, etc, which made me jealous. Being in last place made West Virginia pure. Beautiful.

And the more I convinced myself that I was, in fact, a rube, the more I would take pleasure in being wowed by the wealth and sophistication of those around me. If someone spoke a few words of another language, attended an art gallery, or took a plane ride to another country, I would be floored with admiration. Impressed. Delightfully intimidated. Feelings that gave me an almost sexual thrill. It made me feel warm and rosy to be a nothing, looking up in astonishment at someone else. Again, this was happening subconsciously, at the reptile level.

Over time, the projections grew more extreme. At first, it took a person’s trip to Africa to impress me. Eventually, their trip to the Olive Garden would do the trick. There was a point when I came close to being institutionalized for  mental retardation, while just a few years earlier I had been getting scholarships to Ivy League schools. So why did I feel such a desperate need to separate myself from the gloss of education and wealth? What was I trying to gain?

I don’t know. Maybe I felt more feminine and lovable as a simpleton. Maybe I felt restricted by my identity as a smart person. One drawback to being tagged intelligent is that you can only keep that label by expressing ideas that other people find intelligent. While for me, the ideas closest to my heart usually fall into realms which society finds fruit loopy, or sometimes just too far our and individualistic to be considered at all.

Maybe I felt confined by growing up wealthy. When your dinner chairs are valuable antiques, you can’t paint purple polka dots on them when the mood strikes. No one glues dinosaur figurines to a brand new Mercedes. It always seemed as though “the poor” had more options for how to express themselves. Of course, now I see things differently. Whimsical life choices are far more appealing when money is all around. When you are really poor, you don’t want to glue dinosaurs to your car.

Or it could be that we project aspects of ourselves as a response to external pressure. Another person convinces us to leave parts of ourselves behind so he can feed off them. After all, my obsession with being lowly made me eager to give away anything of value that I did possess, and to treat those around me like nobles. Maybe there were people encouraging me.

Causes aside, it is easy to see the damage this sort of projection can cause. Of course, people can project their “negative” qualities as well. If, for example, someone has a testy planet like Mars or Pluto opposite Venus, they will tend to see anger, hatred, and manipulation in those around them. Nonetheless, these projections are still damaging to the one doing them, because we can’t project our aggression onto someone else without giving them our power and agency as well.

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So, that is all I have to say. My hope is that by sharing my longstanding pattern of projection with the wide and faceless world, it will be harder for me to keep doing it! 🙂

 

 

 

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Charleston, West Virginia Writings

The Reptile is the Magician

Sometimes I have the urge to go to seed- to just drop my identity and normal pursuits and be nothing. That is the state I have been living in so far this year and in that state I have nothing to express. Hence no posts or new songs.

One thing, though, that has been coming more and more into my mind is the importance of our reptile brain. The brain that rules sex, survival, rage, murder, and also (I think) magic. I see this brain as residing somewhere in our genitals. Its counterpart is the mammalian brain which lives in our heart and is concerned with love, relationships, and goodness. We tend to identify much more with our mammalian self while viewing our reptile as some crude, simplistic biological piece that exists primarily for breeding and the continuation of the species.

This I do not agree with. Although the reptile speaks the language of sex and survival, these are not his true goals, much less the survival of the species (which I seriously doubt any organisms give a f-ck about.)

The reptile is our connection to the black world of death and magic. He isn’t afraid of death, because he always has one foot in death’s alternate reality. Our reptile is connected to the primordial (but hardly primitive) ooze of pure knowledge that created us and he shares this ooze’s magical powers. He has the ability to transform and recreate reality at its most fundamental and even material levels.

There are multiple parts of us that connect into different realities. Different spiritual realities, for lack of a better word. The black world of death is just one of these. Each one of these worlds contains its own symbolic language. Sex and violence are the language the world of death speaks. Violent and sexual desires that come into our mind- especially when they are not in line with our heart- are messages from the world of death. This world can also speak to us through creativity and dreams (although both of these can emanate from other worlds as well.)

There is way more to say on this subject, but I am just beginning to figure things out. All I want to get across right now is this message: The reptile is far from a simpleton. He is a magician.