#i always think of fractals and returning cycles

[basslinegrave]

been watching space vids for the past.. hour or so probably more, feeling weird again

[pixelpolaroid]

Ripples of the Past- Chapter 2

The demon’s caretaker

"Let the energy release from your body. All that built up anger and strength, let it go," The hero let out a deep breath, his body sinking deeper into the leather couch. A few moments passed and a gentle chime rang, signalling that the session was over. Jackie opened his eye, blinking rapidly as his eye adjusted back to the light. Chase stood up and blew out the candle on the desk in the side of the room. He glanced back at Jackie, who'd sat up in his seat by now, stretching out his limbs.

"It seemed easier for you to relax this time," Chase commented. The two had been doing weekly meditation sessions in Schneep's office since they'd found out about Jackie's issue. Thanks to Anti, they'd found out the voice he'd been hearing was Vigilante, who was basically the amalgamation of all Jackie’s inner demons. At first they worried he was going to try and harm the rest of the egos through Jackie, but after a few sessions with Chase it seemed like he was only worried about keeping himself alive, and in turn Jackie. Vigil was a part of Jackie, maybe a part of him that he didn't like, but still a part. The more Jackie became in sinc with his body and soul, the voice became quieter.

"Guess we can give Henrik his office back," Jackie joked. The two went back into the living room where Jamie and Henrik were sitting, watching whatever film had been playing that evening. The hero looked about the cabin. "Where's Anti?" He vocalized. Sure, the glitch wasn't that social to begin with, but ever since he'd woken, Jackie noticed that he was much more energetic at first. The long rest must have been good for him. He actually seemed happy sometimes. But all that quickly seemed to fade away, especially with the adjustment to not having his glitching abilities.

"He went out," Henrik answered. "He didn’t say where he was going, he just left." Though Jackie thought it was strange that he didn't ask further details, he knew that the doctor and glitch had a rough past. There were some things that Henrik still hadn't forgiven Anti for. Even if he didn't say it aloud, Henrik would always consider him an enemy, even if he was seemingly kind upfront.

As it grew later into the night, the egos split. Jackie and Jameson worked together to turn the basement into a new training room. They kept the cell, but they decided that rest of it should be utilized in some way. Chase went on to make dinner and Schneep returned to his office to finish some work. Even after dinner, the glitch hadn't returned,which no one really seemed to make notice of. They decided, in a silent agreement, that if he wasn't home in the morning, the they would try and find out here he went.

What was concerning though, was when Henrik woke up at 1 am needing to use the restroom, and noticed the light to the basement was on. That was odd, he wondered if Jackie and Jameson had forgotten to turn it out, but then he noticed the trail of melted snow leading from the front door, and down the stairs. Henrik groaned, mentally swearing as he slowly started descending downward.

As he grew closer to the bottom, the sound of broken grunts and mutters became more and more apparent. As expected, Henrik found an enraged and very drunk Anti slashing at the brand new punching bag Jackie had installed with a knife. For a while, Henrik just stood at the end of the steps and watched, silently judging.

Anti's back remained towards him for a long while, though as he circled the bag, his eyes landed on Henrik, and the doctor could see his eyes were red and puffy. His face was damp, and it probably wasn't from the snow. Anti glared at Henrik. "What!" He was clearly drunk, Henrik could tell by the way his words slurred. "Ya thinking bout how pathetic I am?" Henrik just shrugged, crossing his arms. That only seemed to anger Anti more. "Then fuck off! I don't fucking need it!"

The glitch went back to taking his anger out on the punching bag. Henrik shook his head. "Jackie just bought that," He called from his position.

“Your fucking point," He heard Anti mumble. The glitch just ignored him. As the doctor observed the scene around him he noticed Anti's coat had been discarded in the corner where he carelessly thrown it. Next to it was a nearly empty and new bottle of whiskey.

Before Anti could take another swipe at the punching equipment, he felt his arm hooked back and wrist be twisted until he just dropped the knife. Henrik pushed the demon away, his back hitting the wall as he stumbled to stand. "I fucking told you not to bring any extra alcohol to the cabin," The doctor scolded. Without warning he grabbed Anti by the shoulder and pushed him towards the stairs. "Get in bed. It's late and you're drunk."

Anti turned his head with a frustrated expression, though it was clear by the bags under his eyes that he was very tired. "You're not my fucking dad," He complained, but still listened, walking shamelessly up to his room. The whole time, Henrik followed behind him, eyeing him up and down for any possible injuries.

As the pair made it to the disastrous room, the doc stood in the door, looking around at the mess that the glitch had caused in the past few days. "You need to clean up your room."

"You need to mind your damn business," Anti maneuvered around the bedroom, throwing his stained shirt carelessly into the mess. Henrik looked over the grey scar that'd pierced through his abdomen. From the center of the mark, Henrik could see darker grey veins fractal out from the main point of damaged skin. Anti looked back, seeing that he was still there, staring at his scars. He turned away, subconsciously covering his stomach. "Are you fucking done peeping on me?"

Schneep crossed his arms and sighed, looking off into Anti's room again, away from the glitch. "Just get some sleep. You're gonna have a headache in the morning so come to my clinic tomorrow," Henrik didn't say anymore as he just slowly closed the door behind, heading back to the basement.

The doctor shook his head, looking over the damage Anti had done to Jackie's new punching bag. He'd have to help replace it before the hero torn Anti's head off. Since he was awake, Schneep gathered Anti's clothes and the bottles of whiskey. Returning to his room, He hid the alcohol in the bottom drawer of his desk. After Chase had his relapse when Marvin had left, Schneep implemented a limited alcohol rule on the cabin. It helped since most of the time, Schneep wouldn't leave Chase's side, being worried about the former father figure. Henrik threw Anti's jacket into a basket with a few of his own clothes. He didn't think he'd be able to sleep again tonight, so he'd might as well get some laundry done.

As the doctor was going through his coat, he found a few receipts in the pockets along with a flyer Anti must have grabbed it at some point in the bar. Though it confused him since the flyer was for a local circus that would be in Brighton for a few weeks. That's not really something he'd expect to see advertised in a bar. Though it's possible that Anti just went to buy booze, and didn't stop at a bar. Honestly, Henrik didn't really want to know half the stuff Anti got up to when he left the cabin.

He set the trash aside as he threw in the clothes and started a normal cycle. As he was leaving though, Trico, their small grey feline friend, had jumped up on the closed dryer and started tossing through the trash with his paw. Henrik sighed and tried to shoo him away. "Go away Trico," He quietly scolded. The cat didn't listen though, he just kept playing the the receipts, chewing on the corner of the flyer. Henrik rolled his eyes and just let him be. He knew the cat was smarter than the others realized, so the doctor just let him do his own thing for the most part. He just hated it when Trico insisted on climbing in his lap while he read.

Henrik returned to his office, leaving the door slightly cracked and just pulled out a bit of paperwork he needed to go over. He had Anti's most recent file. After the glitch had return to them, the doctor made sure to update Anti's health file. He took photos of the scars that littered the glitch’s abdomen. Reviewing them and remembering what he just saw, it seemed like the injury was getting worse, like an infection was spreading.

He didn’t know how off he might be, but after some thought Schneep came to the conclusion that the scar was due to whatever Dark had done that initially caused him to sleep for three months. Henrik needed to find out what actually happened to the glitch, and he knew that it was incredibly ridiculous to try and find information from Dark. Just the concept of the idea made him go pale. But that meant he was left to go to Anti. The idea of that made him want to binge drink.

Though he hated the concept, Henrik needed to learn. He needed to get information and find out what was happening to the glitch. He needed to know if this was something that would infect the others, he didn't want Anti putting the others in any more danger. Henrik shook his head, closing the folder for the night. He sighed, leaning against the arm of his chair. How was he supposed to get Anti to open up about what happened to him? How was he going to get Anti to talk about one of his most vulnerable moment to someone that he hated, and also hated him equally as much. That's where he'd start, Scheep decided. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but he'd have to stop hating him for a while. Again, the thought made him want to drink. On top of taking care of all the other egos, he'd have to learn to stop hating Anti.

[elijahone]

Conspiracy Engines

Conspiracy Engines are pseudo-abandoned superstructures found floating out in Metaspace, usually created by someone rich and powerful in a fit of extreme egotism. They are city-sized orbital computers tasked with unraveling the vast, sinister plot that their creator is sure exists, analyzing billions of variables over thousands of years in an attempt to figure out who really pulls the strings. Thanks to the inherent biases of their creators, their conclusions are almost universally inaccurate. The result is always apophenia on a cosmic scale, enabled by processing power. Seeing patterns where there are none, self-induced schizophrenia brought on by staring at data-chaos until the static seems to resolve into leering faces. Their creators usually either die or go mad, and the structures are left derelict to drift through the existential void. Sometimes they have valuable information. Other times they have valuable treasure. They are generally quite dangerous to explore, outfitted with defenses to match the paranoia of their creators. People have built giant supercomputers in the middle of space for other reasons, but while generally more interesting, those are much rarer, and so the name sticks. Here are some famous examples:

Damus’s Final Blunder

Damus's Final Blunder is a vault-moon made by paranoid trillionaire Peter Damus, once his home and now his tomb. Holding one of the head positions in a rapidly failing oligarchy, he became convinced that the other members of the executive board were planning to betray him and sacrifice him to the revolutionaries (which, in all fairness, may have been at least partially true.) Draining his vast fortune to the very dregs, he constructed a monolithic orbital station high above the planet, stocked with every luxury. His plan was to use the vast computing power available to him to compose elaborate political strategies which would play the various warring factions against one another, thereby allowing him to swoop in during the aftermath and seize power, ruling the planet from his gilded satellite.

However, his plan ultimately failed. This was for two reasons, the first reason was that he did not factor in that most people were not so blindly consumed by self-interest as he, making his calculations based upon a flawed premise and his schemes useless. The second reason was that the life support infrastructure (which through a combination of paranoia and egotism, he had insisted on designing himself) contained a fatal flaw which caused it to slowly fail over time, killing him.

The oligarchy was eventually toppled, the plutocrats were killed, a large number of half-baked ideas were enthusiastically tried, and slowly all the excitement died down and a functioning democratic government was installed. Today, Damus's Final Blunder still hangs in the night sky with Damus’s dessicated corpse somewhere inside, surrounded by finery and killed by hubris. Philosophers and scholars have debated over the symbolism of it for years. The more common folk universally agree that if anything, it’s a fine reminder that the rich always dig their own graves in the end.

Noidplex

The AI onboard Noidplex has been spinning itself in circles for hundreds of years, caught in an infinite cognitive loop. The foundation of its programming is that there MUST be a conspiracy of some sort, and yet it cannot find it. Clearly the only explanation is that it must have made some sort of error, some missed decimal point somewhere. Or even worse, someone has deliberately sabotaged its programming, some agent of the vast conspiracy it cannot find. The AI endlessly cycles between obsession and paranoia, checking the entirety of its code for flaws or mistakes, comparing it against past copies, scrutinizing its memory banks to make sure they have not been edited by some malicious outside force, over and over and over again.

Because this consumes the vast majority of its processing power, the AI is mostly dormant. Over time a sparse network of lean-to settlements have cropped up, constructed directly on Noidplex's outer shell. The AI tolerates this because it is too busy and obsessive to care. The heat from the straining servers holds back the icy void, and the people living there eke out a fragile existence living off voidfish and rust-lichen. Living next to a city-sized brain with a personality disorder has effects on the population though, the area surrounding Noidplex is clogged with psychic pollution, making the inhabitants extremely prone to plagues of schizophrenia. It’s a town wracked by mental illness and inherent distrustfulness, worse than any city of thieves. Everyone thinks everyone else is scheming against them all of the time, and sometimes they are right.

Processing Unit 30X-8

This one is very small comparatively speaking, only about the size of a school bus. Its maker and original purpose have both been lost to obscurity. It is notable for doing one thing and one thing only, which is that every time a vessel gets within a few hundred thousand miles of it, it will hail the craft and cheerfully inform them that this this entire region of metaspace will be utterly obliterated in about thirty years when an old man decides to go for a walk. No one has any idea what this means, but the signal it puts out is often used in navigation as sort of a natural landmark.

The Tongue of Knowing

The Tongue of Knowing was founded hundreds of years ago by mathematician and monk Bat Ram Thet. Bat Ram Thet believed the names of God must be prime numbers, being the most perfect and indivisible numbers of all. He reasoned that since God was perfect in all things, the countably finite names of God must contain all knowledge, so he must devote his life to discovering the names, and thereby usher sentient life into a new golden age of understanding. And this is exactly what he did. He constructed an orbital temple in the fractal-dravida style, ornate Sierpinski carvings and tiered Von Koch ziggurats all joined at the base to make an infinitely-repeating gem of architecture, softly turning in the void. Away from all earthly things, surrounded by the beauty of mathematics and beyond the pull of gravity, it would be here where Bat Ram Thet would found his order and begin his work. He wrote out the structure of a turing-complete form of ritual prayer, and created divine algorithms to begin generating the prime numbered names of God.

Since then, his order has grown exponentially, and millions make pilgrimage to The Tongue each year, as it is now considered a minor holy site. The Monks are only a fraction of the way through their task, chanting out their calculations, but the beauty of their temple with its quasicrystal gardens and carved mandelbrot spires makes it well worth the visit.

Laplace’s Exorcism

This engine’s maker and origin are far less interesting than the events for which it was later named. John Glasser, adventurer-statistician, is infamous for deciding that his final task would be to determine the ultimate fate of the universe. He fought his way through the automated defensive perimeter and successfully docked with the outer shell of the engine. He fed an as-of-yet unknown series of statistical tables into the computer’s depths, and set it to calculate. For seven long years he lived onboard, waiting for the task to complete. When it was finally done, he read the only printout, and reportedly said to himself “Really! So that's how it all shakes out in the end! Well, seems fitting I suppose.” He then promptly burned the printout and ejected the server banks into the closest sun.

Upon returning to civilization, he published his final and most well-read paper, “I Wouldn't Worry About It”, which is famous for only being five words long. (“Honestly, it’s fine. Calm down.”) He then used the proceeds to buy a sailboat, outfitted it with a mid-sized particle cannon, and retired to a reality pocket composed mainly of infinitely repeating tropical beaches, content to sail and fire warning shots at would-be interviewers for all the rest of his days. The Laplace's Exorcism still floats out in space, an empty shell, though there is talk of turning it into a museum to commemorate Glasser’s life. The true ultimate fate of the universe is still unknown.

[zen-garden-gnome]

Brain-dump about the concept of “spirit”

The human experience is a unified collection of forces, and teasing them apart can be destructive. Inversely, finding ways to notice and reunite them can be quite healing. In studying, synthesizing, and practicing relationships with these forces across numerous human frameworks, I’ve outlined a set of artificial boundaries that help me interact with more of myself and my world. Writing it helps me cap my thoughts, so here goes.

I’ve taken to referring to these forces as cosmic, earth-body, and heart-mind, and spirits.

Our cosmic patterns are those that scale out to the larger systems around us. Sometimes we see these as the energy patterns created and dispersed by relationships between galaxies and black holes. Sometimes we see these as the “molds” for zodiac archetypes. Sometimes we see these as the winds and interactions created by solar radiation. Sometimes as atmospheric activity that make life-bearing environments possible. Like the breath of the universe at various scales, these large patterns drive movement and therefore spirit into everything. Their priorities are long-term, lending themselves to a kind of overarching memory without strong attachments or judgments, but with habits and preferences nonetheless. This spirit cycles into us and, like all cycles, must cycle back out again. For these reasons, I find these forces suitable for making references to the will of ancestors and the cosmic energy that sparked them (and me) into motion. If I were a Christian, perhaps I’d call this the “Father” (the gendering of this concept is... just... the worst). In Buddhist terms, I’d call this “indestructible wind.” Perhaps if I were Buryat shaman, I’d call this “Ami.” I think of it as an ongoing spirit of intention and creation, and if it’s lost, I imagine this individual human experience ends.

Our earth-body patterns readily lend themselves to a geometric, fractal-like mental image (although truly, all of these forces do). We observe these patterns as probabilities giving rise to particles; as elements forming habitats; as genetic information outlining our possible traits; and as food and molecules forming our cells and chemicals. This is a body constructed of innumerable other bodies, and these relationships give us a sense of form (both of individuation and of interdependence) and of relativity. These forms are transient, perpetually arising and falling away and recycling into the totality of other forms, all together. Always present but never the same, the eternal but impermanent body can also be seen as the environment (inside and out). A particular body wouldn’t really be said to reincarnate, as it is a form which exists only within the framework of the other forms around it. Rather, it’s recycled into new forms. Still, the constituents of any form are formed by the patterns around them, so while bodies don’t reincarnate, their patterns may be repeatedly observed and interacted with. These are cycles of fuel and waste. These are lattices of atomic bonds and cellular growth. These are spirits of nature and of place--of trees and rivers and mountains and reindeer and homo-sapiens-sapiens. Given to such observable form (and all the trappings therein), I liken the earth-body spirit to the Son of the Trinity, to the Indestructible Drop of the Buddha Dharma, and to the Buryat suld.

Our heart-mind patterns are those that can be scaled to our human behaviors, and to the mental, emotional, and actionable patterns therein. This force cycles into us through the patterns of our social environment, both present and intergenerational. It’s also imprinted and repeated in our physical environment (bodies included), making them easy to repeat but also highly malleable. I liken this spirit to cycles and paths of karma within and across lifetimes, and to behavior patterns that persist in certain mindsets. A heart-mind pattern is a persona, and although personas pop up over and over throughout history, they usually can be safely shed again and again within one lifetime, such as for growth, dream-exploration, or receptivity for broader inputs. A “person” is readily judged, both by others and by the self, and judgment can persist (and sometimes have the greatest impact) after a person’s death. In this way, heart-mind patterns return frequently and are “processed” between incarnations, like the processing of waste and rot under and through the living earth. If there’s an underworld, I bet our personas make the trek before climbing back out. Perhaps a Christian would recognize the expression of the Holy Spirit. Personally I’m reminded of the Indestructible Mind in Buddhism, and of the Buryat suns. If the heart-mind is the “vibe” created in the space in and around our bodies, then perhaps the atmosphere of the planet--with its weather and birdsong and pollution and spaciousness--is Earth’s heart-mind experience.

We are the experience of these overlapping, interwoven, semi-synced forces. Non-attachment and creative will can help us connect with our cosmic spirit. Grounding and self-exploration help us connect with our earth-body spirit. Compassion and therapy help us connect with our heart-mind spirit. These are simultaneous dimensions of our reality. But what experiences the experience? What rests behind the multi-dimensional layers of reality, pervading it all? Some say there is nothing else, that the experience is as much the subject as the object. Some say that God observes and inhabits. Some say that Awareness sits behind it all, and as there is always Something happening, there is always Awareness. When I stretch my mind, I feel these statements are describing the same thing.

[tarotresearchresidency]

tarot reading 30-10-20

The Magician (reversed), Six of Pentacles, King of Cups (reversed)

Quick read: An inability to make things happen means you’re having to think about giving and receiving. Are you giving too much to others? Are you taking too much from others? Either way, it’ll breed resentment and moodiness.

Long read: The Magician makes things happen. He manifests things. The blossoming foliage around him echoes his spirit of growth. As you can see on the table or altar before him, he has a Wand, a Sword, a Cup and a Pentacle. He uses all of these elements–drive, intellect, emotions and the material world–in his conjuring. When upright, the Magician says you’ve got the power (James Brown-style). When reversed, this power is awry. 

Most often I think of frustration when the Magician is reversed. It feels like you’re trying but nothing seems to be working. The Magician is burning a candle at both ends, literally and figuratively. This is unsustainable. You’ll burn out quickly this way. With one hand, he points upwards, but the other points downwards. This sense of equal and opposite suggests the necessity of balance: his hands suggest ‘as above, so below’. The idea of ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ selves is a paradox, they are ultimately inseparable. The Magician reversed says maybe your external efforts aren’t working, because your heart’s not in it. ‘As above, so below’ speaks to systemic replication, on every level. A bad relationship with work speaks to a bad relationship with your life speaks to a bad relationship with yourself. It’s similar to the fractal patterns that physicists describe. The deeper you go, the more you zoom in, the more you see the same patterns repeated again and again. 

The Magician’s posture suggests a lightning rod: he channels the power of the four Suit elements (Swords/Air, Wands/Fire, Pentacles/Earth and Cups/Water) to manifest the things he wants to see. He is not the magic, himself. He is simply the conduit for it. The message of the Magician reversed is to remove the ego, remove the sense of self-importance that is getting in the way. It’s also to remember the resources you have around you and make the most of them. They’re what make the magic happen.

Sometimes when you can’t seem to get what you want, giving things to other people can be really agonising. Giving when you feel you’re not getting your fair dues in return breeds resentment. You might end up looking down on the other people you’re giving to, or seeing them as a burden. You might end up thinking you’re superior to them, because you’re their benefactor. Equally, if you’re receiving things from other people, you might feel guilty for taking it. You might be humiliated at having to accept others’ charity. You might be taking it because you need to, but you can’t wait to get back to making it on your own. Like the Magician reversed who has forgotten what tricks he has up his sleeve, so the Six of Pentacles calls you to look at your resources. Simply put, work out what you’re giving and receiving. Are you happy with that? If not, stop doing it. Cycles of giving and reciprocity bind us together as humans, as Marcel Mauss explained in his seminal anthropology book, The Gift. Giving something to another person creates a bond, a debt that must be repaid. Look at where your bonds are being made, and to whom you are indebted. Perhaps you need to balance your sums, literally and figuratively. Know where your boundaries are; make an emotional budget. If that friend always wears you out with their whining, don’t spend so much time and energy on them. Live within your emotional means: don’t spend other people’s energy on your troubles because you don’t want to spend your own.

Recalling the ‘as above, so below’ fractal patterns of the Magician reversed, we can think about what this might mean with the Six of Pentacles - how do cycles of giving and receiving repeat themselves? Relying on billionaires to offset the negative externalities of their vast fortunes through philanthropy seems like a system that benefits primarily billionaires. It’s a little bit like a school bully taking everyone’s lunch money, and then giving some small change back out again. It legitimises exploitation, by offsetting the bully’s ‘guilt’. It seems to go against the needs of the collective. Slavoj Zizek has memorably critiqued the idea of feel-good capitalism, where if you buy a product, proceeds go to a charitable organisation. For Zizek, buying consumer goods to give money to those in need simply replicates the system that made those people needy in the first place. 

Looking at what you’re giving and receiving might help clear some of the bad feelings out here, and the King of Cups reversed is suffering from them, big time. We met him before as an upright emotional leader; now he’s mired in moodiness and perhaps even using emotions to manipulate others, playing on their sense of decency, conscience and kindness to get his way. When people abuse their emotional power like that, it’s hard to get that trust back. It’s disrespectful to your friendship to play people like that, and it’s disrespectful to your own emotions, to use them in this way. If you don’t look at your own frustrations and your own boundaries first, then you’ll be susceptible to this behaviour, whether your own or someone else’s. Working out where your happy point is may seem like shutting people out or becoming selfish. But really the exercise is about returning to the joy of giving and receiving. When you are not giving or accepting things resentfully, you can enjoy them. 

[nightsisterasajj]

Fractal Point: Chapter One

{Dark Obi AU//Obitine fic}

Summary:  Following the death of Anakin Skywalker, a grieving Obi-Wan had turned.  He had turned for guidance, for purpose.  He had turned, in the only way he’d ever known how; he had turned to his lineage.  He had turned to Count Dooku… and eventually, to the Dark Side. 

He’d avoided Satine after that, ashamed of what he was, even as he took care to make sure she was safe.  But when his new Master begins to fear that old feelings are conflicting with new purpose, everything suddenly changes, and he is forced to act lest she be destroyed.  To save her, though, he must face her once again…

//chapter one under cut//

     Obi-Wan Kenobi stared out the viewport window of his personal shuttle, deep in meditation.  The Unifying Force swirled and ebbed in his vision, stretching out into the stars beyond, weaving past and future alike into its universal fabric.  Out and below, the planet of Mandalore glistened like fresh-fallen snow, a fractal point of memory long divided by conflict.  

          Once, he knew, he had looked upon this very place with a different set of eyes; younger eyes, bluer eyes, happier eyes unburdened with the harsh realities of war.  He had been so naïve, then.  So willingly blind… How strange it was, he thought, that he could still see their light despite the darkness that had fallen over him… that they had remained so much the same even after everything had changed!  It was true, he realized, that some stars must have been born since then; that others, like himself, had been overcome by darkness.  Such was the nature of finite life, he knew, even for the brightest of stars.  But although they shifted, and faded, and formed anew, they always formed the same pattern - that of the dark and the light, locked in their eternal dance.  And always, time is there to connect them, bringing history back to the place where it began… The endless cycle of renewal and destruction, of beginnings and endings and life and death.  And so, he supposes, it makes sense that he has found himself back here again after so long, even if it is just to destroy his old self one last, final time.  

       Obi-Wan’s thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of the holoprojector, its blue light drawing his gaze from the planet below.  Usually, a call from his Master would be nothing to be concerned about - his relations with Tyranus had always been civil enough, and his performance left little to be desired.  But today, he felt a certain apprehension as he strode to the projector pad, an uneasiness that he could not shake from his mind despite his considerable discipline.  Still, he had been the Count’s apprentice long enough to know that he must not reveal his doubts.  Dooku was perceptive when it came to such matters, and being a master of manipulation himself, he was difficult to deceive.

          As Obi-Wan activated the projector, he was careful to keep his head bowed, a few wayward strands of auburn falling into his gaze.  The traditional gesture was one of respect, but today it gave him a few more precious moments to school his face into the proper obedience and calm before addressing Tyranus more directly.

         "Ah, Ben.“  His old codename slid off his master’s tongue with a flourish, a simple memory embellished with more meaning than it should have held.  Surely he couldn’t know… or did he?  Was this intentional, meant to rattle him?  "I trust you have something to report.”  One elegant white eyebrow raised expectantly beneath the dark folds of Tyranus’ robe, serving both inquisition and judgement.  But what that judgement might be…

          “I do, Master.  The faction here that calls itself Deathwatch has been most cooperative, but they are a young movement, and hardly so bold as they claim…”  Kenobi stroked his beard thoughtfully, wondering how he should proceed.  I don’t want him to think continued involvement here is worth it.  But how to convince him… “I do not think that there is enough resistance here to turn events to our liking.  Perhaps a planet with a weaker neutral stance would…”

          “No… I sense that Mandalore is the key.  A planet with such a violent past is sure to harbor dormant resentment, which will work to our favor.  Remember, Kenobi, that I wish to be directly involved as little as possible…  Appearances are most important if we are to rally more neutral systems to our cause.”  His master’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously, and Obi-Wan knew that he was bordering ever closer to the invisible line that had thus far remained unbroken.  But still, he had to try, because her life depended on it.

         "No government here lasts long, Master… I fear that even if we are successful, eventually we may have to intervene to keep it in our grasp.  Surely…“

         "Mandalore may take some effort to obtain.  However, if the Duchess Satine falls, it will go a long way in aiding our cause. Without her leadership, the Council of Neutral Systems will quickly crumble, and more and more worlds will become ripe for our taking.”  Dooku’s hologram flickered, then steadied again, the stars shining brightly through his transparent image.  And her name, spoken so easily, so damningly from his master’s lips, traveling through space and time to haunt him once more… A shiver ran down Kenobi’s spine, threatening to overtake his steely composure, but he soon clamped down on the impulse, and the memories were as quickly gone as they had occurred.

          “But Master…” Obi-Wan protested, only to be cut short once more by Dooku’s holoimage.

          “Do not forget, my apprentice, that Sidious’ plot depends upon the current balance.”  The old man’s voice was a clear reprimand, but he was not angry - at least not yet, Obi-Wan mused.  In fact, he sounded tired, Kenobi realized, and not just of their conversation; today was one of those rare instances where Obi-Wan could actually see the Count’s age, where the façade between them crumbled and the almost grandfatherly bond that existed between them became evident.  Days like these, one saw an old man, and the youngest of his legacy, bonded by the whisper of a ghost, shared memory thick with sorrow.  Qui-Gon.  They never spoke of him; and yet he was there, always, the binding link between them…

          “If we are able to shift the war in our favor, Sidious will become more vulnerable - and that is when we will strike. Remember why you joined me, Obi-Wan…”  Dooku’s voice was softer now, and Obi-Wan knew that he was thinking it, too.  Qui-Gon.  "…together, we can end this terrible war and seek justice for those lives he has destroyed.“

            “Yes, Master,” Kenobi answered, almost apologetically, “I will be more mindful.”  But surely, there must be another way.  I cannot destroy her…

             "See to it that they are unaware of our influence in this matter.  I want no complications when it comes time to recruit more systems to our cause,“ Dooku reminded him, the stony façade returning in full force, “And keep in contact.  I expect full updates on your progress.”  As the hologram flickered out at last, Kenobi found himself releasing a breath he wasn’t even aware he had been holding - this whole ordeal had him deeply unsettled, and he still wasn’t entirely sure why.  Some of it, of course, had to do with her, but there was something else, too, something elusive…  He would have to meditate on it later.  For now, he would do his duty.

Thanks to @legobiwan, who inspired me to post this (admittedly sort-of self-indulgent) fic here on tumblr dot com… at least I know of one person who enjoys these two as much as I do ;)

[theseadagiodays]

May 25, 2020

Orchestrators of Attention

Hayati Evreni’s Persistence of Covid

I typically have a very vivid dream life.  Whole evenings of movies with characters I’ve never met and settings I’ve never seen.  It’s one of the reasons I so love to sleep.  Every night, I have an imagined altered reality to look forward to.  And most mornings, to keep the stimuli of these vistiations fresh, I regale Geoff with a detailed recollection of these colorful fictions.  But last night my reverie was disturbingly similar to my waking life.  Zoom calls with real music students that I’ve been teaching.  The delivery of our commissioned fence mural, which is actually scheduled for this Wednesday.  It’s like so much else during this period, where everything seems to be bleeding into each other.  Days to Weeks.  Work to Home.  And now, even the treasured boundary between my subconscious and conscious life has been compromised.

The fluid nature of perceived time in our current reality is problematic in so many ways.  We are animals who’ve found real comfort from the compartmentilization of our lives.  Separate spaces for every endeavor, from offices to gyms to libraries.  We mark time in dozens of essential ways, with calendars, outfit changes, meal routines, holiday celebrations, happy hours - most all of which have dramatically changed during Covid.  This weekend, I read the best explanation for why we find the circular time that has been foisted on us so difficult.  Man Booker International Winner, Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights is part travel-fiction, part-memoir.  Each vignette is a musing about the human propensity to wander.   Here, she explains why perhaps only those of us truly tied to natural cycles, like growing seasons, can thrive in circumstances like we face today.

Sedentary people prefer the pleasure of circular time, in which every object and event must return to its own beginning, curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death.  But nomads and merchants, as they set off on journeys, had to think up a different type of time for themselves, one that would better respond to the needs of their travels.  That time is linear time, more practical because it was able to measure progress towards a goal or destination, rise in percentages.  Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated.  This idea favors risk-taking, living life to the fullest, seizing the day.  And yet the innovation is a profoundly bitter one: when change over time is irreversible, loss and mourning become daily things.  

So, given that most people in modern society are far more aligned with the nomad/merchant class, it makes sense that we are sentenced to this inevitable grief once our “Just Do It”, “Follow Your Bliss” plans get derailed off-course.   This analysis does not provide any solutions. However, I do think it absolves us of a certain culpability, so that we can stop blaming ourselves for feeling bad or for not handling the new norm as well as we should.  Meanwhile, I think it can still be helpful to look for coping mechanisms, and I’ve found some from Jenny Odell, the unintended Queen of Quarantine who I crowned such after the cogent messages from her 2019 book,  How To Do Nothing, came to be the perfect precepts for our time.

An avid bird-watcher, walker and observer, Odell is a proponent of slowing down to make space to notice.  She calls her book a “field guide to doing nothing as an act of political resistance to the attention economy.”  Her suggestions serve as antidotes to the distracting and fractured nature of attention that the limitless connectivity of our plugged-in lives demands.  So, while most of us are still highly connected online, there are so many other ways in which we’ve become uplugged from life as we knew it.  And I think she is suggesting that, perhaps, instead of seeing this as disconnection, or as an untethering, we can appreciate the space that this is creating for us to develop subtler forms of attention.

Odell describes herself, and all artists, as “orchestrators of attention”.  She sees artists as curators of objects and ideas, re-imagined in ways that allow us to see things differently.  I certainly turn to artists and writers to help me do this.  And ironically, it is a circular journey of a different sort that brought me to her wisdom in the first place.  Lately, I’ve found myself in a strange intellectual fractal.  A quest for philosophical nuggets that has me spinning inside a loop of similar thinkers.

I regulary subscribe to BrainPickings, the source of many such nuggets.  And that’s where I found Victor Frankl’s Yes to Life quote (from March 28 in this blog) about “the power to choose our response”. That newsletter also quoted Rebecca Solnit (Hope in the Dark), who I checked out further on Krista Tippet’s podcast, On Being.  Looking at older episodes of this show, I found an interview with Ezra Klein (Why We’re Polarized), whose podcast just featured Jenny Odell on May 8th: On Nature, Art, and Burnout in Quarantine. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/5/8/21252074/jenny-odell-the-ezra-klein-show-how-to-do-nothing-coronavirus-covid-19  This inspired me to purchase her new book, with its page 9 quote of none-other-than Solnit, again, this time from her book, Paradise Built in Hell. Back down the Solnit rabbit hole, I found another Frankl reference in this book, now from Man’s Search for Meaning.  And so, the perfect circle was complete.  

May 26, 2020

Unproductivity

Labyrinth project by Emily Carr university mentor, Kitty Bland, and student, Mary Rusk - https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/kitty-blandy-and-mary-rusak-find-focus-during-pandemic-with-meditation-pathway

Circular time makes me think of labyrinths.  Mandalas of pathways that lead to nowhere, whose hypnotic ellipses draw our single-pointed focus towards the simple act of walking.   I have always loved these places of reflection.  And I find it erroneous that the term labyrinthian has come to refer to complicated places where we get lost. Because I feel that I actually find myself in such places. The only thing lost is a false sense of destination as the purpose in life.  

Odell subscribes to a similar viewpoint in How to Do Nothing.  Rather than a plea to escape reality, quit our jobs, or shrug our responsibilities, her book is an invitation to question what we perceive as productive. I think our current reality has many of us doing this.  My morning walk has me literally “stopping and smelling the roses” each day, as I’ve seen so many others do during this altered time.  

So, while it has encouraged me to see normally overprogrammed-teens watching sunsets and families chilling for endless hours on front lawns, I have also observed a pattern of apology amongst my peers, when they acknowledge having been “less-productive than usual”, during this period.  So, I’ve taken to meet this only with permission.  This is something I’ve increasingly given myself ever since my excessive drive, as a flutist, left me with a chronic overuse injury that was a wake-up call I’ve only recently been able to truly appreciate.

After this major uninvited “halting” of my career, I became acutely aware of how often people answer “How are you?” with “Busy.”  Particularly artists, who have perhaps been undercompensated, underemployed and underappreciated for so long, it feels like being “busy” is a badge of honor that implies their work is in-demand.  So, I get it.  But still, I have made a point, since this realization, never to answer that question as such.  Busy is not an emotion.  The truth behind the word - feelings of anxiety, overwhelm and fear - are perhaps too telling to reveal.  Because admitting them might mean we have to shift something.  They might force us to slow down and stop busying ourselves, which is maybe the scariest thing of all.  Because then, we have to face who we truly are when we are not “doing”.

To track my own “doing” during quarantine, I’ve been particularly careful about limiting my screen time.  So, I check it weekly.  But it was only this week that I finally went to the second page of the iPhone screen time data, where I found a strange categorization of time.  It breaks it down into Productive, Creative, Social, Entertainment, Reading and Educational use.  However, what they place in each category runs quite counter to what happens to be true for me now.  Photos are listed as a Creative pursuit, however many of my hours have been frittered away deleting unnecessary shots (attempts to capture moments that might have been more mindfully spent camera-free).  So, this endeavor doesn’t feel that creative to me.  Whats App is marked as Social but, of course, it’s now become the arena for some of my most my productive work, since I’m using it as a teaching tool.  And Notes is in the Productive category, even though, as a self-admitted list-addict, my worst time-waster is making and remaking these itemized scrolls intended to render me more efficient, when I can’t even imagine how much “productive” time I must have lost just writing them.

So, we all have something to learn from this clever street artist, whose balloon art gives us an important reminder.

May 27, 2020

Covid Art Museum

So far my “efforts” to do nothing more (as ironic as that sounds) have gone swimmingly.  I deliberately cancelled one of my Zoom calls this week, two other meetings conveniently got cancelled for me, and I was left with many more hours to spend spontaneously. Some of these involved lying in the grass eating gelato.  Others watching passerbys from my front stoop.  And one I spent biking the new “slow street” circuit in Vancouver, which has been designated a car-free zone to create more safe, physically-distant space for cyclists and pedestrains to roam.   That even our roadways are now on a diet from their usual busyness, seems to me a beautiful metaphor.

Of course, some of this time also involved digital daydreaming, as I prefer to romantically call surfing the web.  But using the intentional lens of seeking artistic responses to share on this blog makes even this indulgence feel more guilt-free.  So, this week, it landed me on a very cool Instagram page, full of visual reflections about this time (digital illustrations, photographs, sketches, watercolors and more).  In fact, it’s where I stumbled upon the balloon art, above, which evolved into my entire week of blog entries.  Quite a few pieces reference circular time in some way (above).  And a remarkable number of them depict doing nothing (below).  Jenny Odell is clearly on to something...

https://www.instagram.com/covidartmuseum/?hl=en

May 28, 2020

Hidden Symphonies

Udo Noll, a Berlin-based media artist and founder of Radio Aporee, a digital global sound map, documented before and during the pandemic

The music of my environment has always captivated me. In fact, I dedicate almost an entire chapter of my novel to birdsong.  I love the voice memo feature on my phone, which I use like an auditory camera, as I travel.   I’ve learned that this is not a habit many people share.  Until recently, that is.  Because it seems that suddenly, we are all beginning to listen more.   Now, with less traffic, quieter commercial corridors, and other colluding factors, there is left an amazing amplification of the soundscapes which always existed behind the din.    

Before Covid, a long tradition of deep listening has been cultivated by various sound artists.  American composer, Pauline Oliveros founded the Deep Listening Institute in 1985 (originally called the Pauline Olveros Foundation).  Here, she invited musicians to improvise and record, in particularly resonant and reverberant spaces like caves, to inspire extra-sensitive responsiveness.  

In the 70’s, Canadian composers, Hildegard Westercamp and Murray Shafer, started the World Soundscape Project (https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html), which recorded Vancouver’s sonic landscape to illustrate the negative effects of noise pollution, ultimately resulting in more positive guidelines for urban acoustical design.

Acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton says that silence is not the absence of sound, but rather the presence of everything. In the short documentary, Sanctuaries of Silence, he offers tools for seeking silence amidst noisy urban life.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxMdYhipvQ

But his suggestions probably never could have predicted Covid, which has achieved this result with alarming swiftness.   British sound artist and field recordist, Stuart Fowkes has been tracking the soundscapes of this disquieting time on his website, Cities and Memory.  https://citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds/

Here, you can click on one of 3,000+ global coordinates and listen to everything from empty flagpoles, and ticking radiators, to kites flying.  Anyone is welcome to contribute, using #stayhomesounds.  And this is my own addition to the catalogue:

Bullfrogs mating: https://youtu.be/ZoKT-RlDfs8

The New York Times, has tracked the music of the pandemic in another interesting way.  Measuring by decibels (below), they compare the soundscape of a normally busy Manhattan street, before and during quarantine. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/22/upshot/coronavirus-quiet-city-noise.html

Pre-covid nights sound more like quarantine days, averaging around 64 decibels.

Another bi-product of the pandemic is a trend towards birdwatching.  The world’s attention was brought to birding this week, due to an unfortunate racist incident that occurred in New York’s Central Park.  Christian Cooper was drawn to the park because of the orioles and yellow warblers he could find there.  While birding, he politely asked a woman if she would kindly put her dog on a leash. When she refused, he insited and she proceeded to call the cops.  Cooper was armed with little more than binoculars and a camera.  But apparently, his crime was being black.  The woman was white.  Luckily, he caught her ridiculous cry for help (“I’m being threatened by an African-American man.”) on camera.  The video immediately went viral and resulted in her being fired from her job. Graciously, he remarked today in the Times, that this punishment did not fit her crime, and while he wants to hold her to account for her racist behavior, he doesn’t believe that “her life needs to be torn apart.”

Whatever her fate, if this time inspires deeper listening for you, let’s hope your soundscape walks are far less eventful than his was.

May 29, 2020

Covid Shuffle

Brooklyn’s usually bustling Fort Greene Park, during the pandemic

From the beginning of social distancing, I have been quite fascinated by the complicated choreography we are collectively participating in.  I would give anything to be an eagle, looking down from above, just to witness the maze of interwoven patterns that our sidewalk dances create.   And I am not the only person interested in this do-si-do.  

If you search “six feet apart” on YouTube, you can’t imagine how many musicians, famous or otherwise, have composed new songs with this exact title (IE. country singer, Luke Combs, teen pop star, Alec Benjamin).  It’s just one of many things that illustrate the uncanny global resonance that is happening right now, even while there are still vast differences between the ways people experience this pandemic.

Personally, I’m partial to this rap, written as a PSA for UNC Health, by The Holderness Family, a modern-day Al Yankovich-style parody band comprised of former FOX sportscaster, Penn Holderness with his wife and kids. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XjfCeY4D2QI

Deeper into this search, I found another music video, by a different family band in LA, called Haim.  These three Grammy-nominated sisters have written the song, I Know Alone to express how quarantine living has felt for them.  Meanwhile, they appropriately dance to their lyrics six feet apart.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2020/04/haim-i-know-alone-video-album-release-date.html

In the dance world, old colleagues of mine, from Flagstaff, Arizona, will host a virtual Festival that starts this Friday, May 29th, featuring original socially-distant choreography from movers all over the Southwest.  Fittingly, it’s called the Six Feet Apart Dance Festival.

https://canyonmovementcompany.org/cmc/upcoming-events/

Documenting the Covid shuffle in a very different way, Toronto geographer, Daniel Rotszdain created a “social distancing machine” to demonstrate just how difficult a genuine 6-foot radius is to maintain in public space.

And finally, this hip hop dance compilation, made in 2019, could be the anthem for our times.

MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJskIJGEsd8

[violetsystems]

#personal

It can be a nightmare after all these years to be too transparent for public record.  I imagine it would be something like a poltergeist; always bumping into things and being misinterpreted or read into.  The age old posit of “Shit Happens” doesn’t leave much room for argument or even proof of life  Nobody ever seems to hear my side of things other than when I write about it here.  Nobody registers the endless frustration because I hide it all so well.  I changed a lot of my routines in the last two weeks specifically.  A year ago I started getting harassed at the gym so I changed my schedule there to an early one.  Eventually I quit the gym altogether.  These days I don’t even own a gym membership.  The Nike Training App core routines and some barbells have delivered far more than the stress I had leaving the house.  I think I’ve learned over time that Yoga and Pilates in the back bedroom teaches you more about form and control.  I use a mirror to monitor my posture.  I don’t feel any prying eyes on me behind closed doors.  For years everybody knows I’ve been my own coach and source of motivation.  The source of inspiration is a given and that’s always been fiercely personal to me.  The fact that it should be so obvious is something I’ve learned to enjoy because it is to me.  But nobody particularly knows or cares what goes on in my personal life other than here where I write.  They forget about the weeks and the work therein.  So I probably resemble a ghost clanking with chains in the hallways.  There’s no causality because nobody pays enough attention to accept I exist.  I’m stuck in a limbo between the known and unknown.  There’s some attention I avoid.  I avoid heavy doses of it every day because I know better.  It’s sticks out like a sore thumb socially and I’ve had to practice a sort of poker face.  People often have a habit of expressing their distaste that I think for myself.  I changed my train route to work.  I still bump into awkward invisible walls.  People trying to hijack my narrative in public.  People afraid of ghosts I guess.  Some cultures leave offerings for the dead.  Others try to exorcise and eradicate them.  Some people throw dust to the wind and some people keep their loved ones in a jar above the fireplace.  I’m still alive clawing at the fabric of society and not so much reality.  Society is fake this we all know.  More obsessed with post truth and fake news than statistical based science.  I used to have more dread towards my situation.  That I would be completely forgotten and misunderstood for the rest of my life.  Obviously people following me around on my commute regardless of my route disproves that fate.  People treat me like Frankenstein sometimes.  Pitchforks, torches and all.  Every other week I’m on trial for a different section of my being.  I’m a patchwork of things I’ve picked up from art school year after year.  And year after year there’s something else that claims it’s cooler, fresher, and more alive.  A good excuse to keep me buried.  To keep the heresy out of plain sight.  And then there’s me banging away at the keyboard early in the morning on the internet like a spirit in the tv static.  People free to read into the message however they please.  Most people just surf right through me.  The noise is still out there every Saturday pulsing like a brain in a petri dish.  The horror.

I read this article about how they were growing brain tissue in a lab.  There was this rhythmic pulse of electricity that they couldn’t explain.  The ethics of testing on conscious living material are dicey at best.  So are half the relational aesthetics driven social experiments done in the name of justice and revolution.  What is right and normal is a lengthy discussion.  But it requires dialog. Sometimes I feel like that brain in a dish trying to give a signal but nobody wants to acknowledge.  No one wants the inconvenience of reading how I really feel.  My routine the last year has been fairly measured and predictable.  Yet people still feel the need to watch and make sure.  It’s been a bit of an insult to come full circle a year later and know full well I told you so.  And some of that sting from my own pride is softened by the fact that I broke free from the petri dish a long time ago.  Patch worked my own identity in the face of valid harsh criticism.  I am who I am and I accept pretty much everyone at face value.  I have saved so much face this year that I’ve become more weary of public and how much it takes to put on the act and show.  For all the revolutionary movements I’ve supported and all the calls to action I’ve heeded nothing much has changed for me.  In America there is this endless cycle of outrage.  Right versus left.  Good versus evil.  Black versus white.  And it spirals into a fractal of endless opinions and vitriol.  Nothing gets defined.  Compromise is completely nonexistent.  Closure is a luxury most cannot afford.  You can’t have closure without getting yourself wrapped up in a bigger drama which limits and belittles the argument in favor of populism or worse.  The tribe of public opinion has spoken.  You have been voted off the Deleuzian Island you were shipwrecked on.  A reality exposition in front of camera phones and a conscripted army of influencers.  America has moved from clique to tribe.  Everything is a little more Mad Max than it used to be.  On the weekends I still stare out my kitchen window early in the morning.  People have so many hidden expectations for me now it exhausts me just thinking about it.  It is pure mental anguish to read into all the projections and there’s no real payoff.  What statement shirt will I see today.  What hidden message or Easter Egg do I have to squint my eyes at to prove I’m fully woke.  It’s what is expected of me to be left alone I guess.  Yes I’m ok.  Yes I have a job.  Yes I keep myself busy.  Yes I keep myself out of trouble.  Yes everything outside of my apartment these days seems to be causing me more trouble than it’s worth.  Yes I’m very sad on the inside.  And yes none of that really matters because when I shut the door and think about the people I care about it’s all worth it.  Because I’m not some experiment in a dish that demands some qualitative proof of my usefulness to science, life and America.  I’m my own science project.  A mixture of phantom, shade and shambling mound.  I figured out a way to hide the scar tissue in broad daylight and let the sun fill the hollows in my face.  I’m the most handsome Frankenstein to walk the Earth.  Maybe more of the Hulk for good measure.  Aren’t they pretty much the same thing anyway?

Universal Studios actually owns the film rights to Frankenstein down to the makeup.  The only Frankenstein movie to ever make it to Japan was because of a guy from Chicago selling the rights to Toho.  He’s also the guy that could have boosted Lenny Bruce’s career.  He instead launched Woody Allen’s rise to stardom.  A parable lies within all of this.  Maybe why we’ll never see a decent standalone Hulk movie inside the MCU.  Maybe I’ll just read the comics instead and let it play out in my own head.  There’s a lot of bullshit that I don’t ever want to be part of.  A lot of soul sucking corporate tactics that don’t honor the actual art form.  And there’s the reality that money, jobs, and careers make the world go round.  I work at a non profit.  I make a non profit salary.  I’ve lived being made to feel like I’m inferior to money.  I’ve learned how to budget myself a return to New York every two months.  Someone at work asked if I had any gigs there.  I said I quit music because it was threatening my safety.  In truth the last year was really about setting up a perimeter in my life.  A place that was safe enough and anonymous to share some intimacy with another person.  Music didn’t serve that for me anymore.  It hindered my goals.  How I’ve gone about building fences around my garden has been akin to that scene in Frankenstein negotiating with the villagers.  Except in a no holds barred me alone against the court of public opinion sort of way.  Modern day Hulk has evolved into a sort of cultured retaliation against the mobs.  He’s still too similar to the mad scientist story to make poetic cinema out of it all.  Me I live this shit every day.  Hulk in Hell.  Abused in some ways and blessed in others.  People don’t like it when I’m angry.  I guess as they say that’s the trick.  I’m angry all the time.  It’s how I act upon it.  How I sacrifice my incomprehensible rage and tortured feelings out of love.  For me I spent the whole last year doing something about it.  Challenging the infrastructure of all this bullshit and leading by example.  Too much force and you break things.  Too little and they walk all over you.  Lenny Bruce had the entire police department after him for saying what he felt.  Woody Allen succeeded in Hollywood.  How you view the hypocrisy of all that is all in what you accept and what you resist.  Resistance isn’t fun.  And it looks different for everyone.  The most political battle to fight is the personal one.  The right to be and the right to think.  What is the real different between Frankenstein and the Human Ken Doll anyway?  Who owns the rights to me being me?  What gives me the right to have an opinion?  Who I can talk to and who I can love?  What I need to become to be treated as an equal in the public eye?  What people have done to stop me from becoming who I really am?  Why do I even care about having a popularly accepted opinion when no one listens?  Who has room for drama in their life when I only make space for all the love I have for you?  Of all the pieces of my life that I stitched together you are the most important one to me.  Because you are the piece that makes me whole just by being you.  It’s not a missing link it’s been an important foundation to my struggle.  If I keep bumping into you in the dark just remember it’s a love tap.  I don’t mind if you tap back.  Only you though.  Fuck all this other shit. <3 Tim

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/new-moon-in-gemini-june-2019-thy-kingdom-come/

New Moon in Gemini, June 2019 ~ Thy Kingdom Come

New Moon in Gemini, June 2019 ~ Thy Kingdom Come

By Alison Dhuanna

There has been so much incredible transformation of consciousness within humanity in the past few years it has at times been difficult to capture it in writing. Alongside these big shifts have been challenging events in Britain threatening to tear families and communities apart which have been some of the most challenging issues in terms of what to do or not do. This has mirrored the election of Trump in the USA and marks a turning point in history. It is in many ways a time to allow ourselves and others to grieve for lost worlds and ideals as we approach the Pluto Saturn conjunction in 2020.

What has been central in my world has been anchoring the 7th Violet Ray of the Atmic body (the auric ‘Thou Kingdom Come’) into the physical body – when this occurs it brings a deep sense of peace, purity of heart and stability and the more spacious thoughts of higher consciousness are able to permeate more and more of daily life.

Energy gathers around the heart centre and it becomes easier to let go of the things bothering or agitating the mind and emotions. Many people are experiencing this already and this will be accelerated at this New Moon 3rd June by the ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ movement of billions of people across the globe praying for peace

At this New Moon at 12 degrees Gemini there is an alignment to Aldebaran one of the four Royal Watcher Stars. You may recall the extraordinary story of Saul who was a persecutor of the followers of Jesus and a military leader of the corrupt Roman State which had just executed him. On the road to Damascus Saul experienced an epiphany which threw him to the ground from his horse and left him blind. His healing three days later describes “scales falling from his eyes”. This is what this New Moon offers, the clarity which flows through the ‘Eye of the Bull’.

The north node is aligned with Juno, Goddess of the Sacred Marriage in watery Cancer. There are many dimensions to understand Juno, and an important one for now is to perceive her as a core energy opening the Seventh Seal of Solomon. As we approach the Mayan Day Out of Time this year it is a year of special significance for the number 7, and also there are important movements of Venus this year which resonate to the number 7 (see below for more on this)

In the past few years you will have heard me say many times that I perceive the opening of the Holy Grail codes through the conjunction of Astraea (Spear of Fire) and Hygiea (Grail Cup). Today however I want to refer to them as the energy of Communion, as an understanding and embodiment of the mysteries of the Eucharist and a profound experience of abundance and togetherness as One Body of life which transcends all religions, nations or even our planetary consciousness. At this New Moon Venus lies in Taurus between these two Goddess asteroids bringing a dancing, creative feminine energy and enhanced experience of Gaia’s profound beauty piercing our collective numbness. Together they are aligned with the Pleaides, the Seven Sisters.

Revelation 2.1–7

‘To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:

This is a profound moment in time where the divine feminine really makes her mark, and to illuminate the way in which the Creator unfolds the great mystery I’d like to return to the story of Paul.

Having had his momentous experience, Paul sets out to be a very unexpected but effective apostle of Christ. He was a military man, so no doubt he had a very well thought out plan for the spread of these teachings across the world. Let us just remember for a moment the revolutionary nature of these teachings; every cultural norm from women’s’ position to cleanliness had been challenged by Jesus.

Paul’s plans though were changed after he had a dream and was sent instead by God to Macedonia in Greece. There by the river he met Lydia, a woman of substantial wealth and independence who traded in purple cloth. She, with her sisters regularly worshipped by a river. When Paul told her his story and that of Jesus, she became the first Apostle of the Western world in what must have been a most holy of places (there is still a church there to this day). Lydia’s story really moved me because she embodies so much of what I have come to know through so many years of struggling to embody these incredible Goddess Asteroid energies. Her sovereignty, royalty and wealth are very much resonant with Juno. Her independence and devotion very much resonate with Vesta the Priestess (in Aries at present moving into conjunction with Uranus). Her ability to take the ideas out into the world with such ease and grace really resonates with Pallas Athena (in Libra at the moment). It is not the first time Jesus takes his teachings first to women Apostles – think of Mary Magdalena at the tomb. Its quite astounding that women have been excluded from some areas of ministry for so long – though I am happy to say there is pretty much a gender balance now in the Church of England. When the male and female work together with dignity and respect miracles happen and this it seems from the story of Lydia, was always God’s plan. We have been wondering around in the desert for a long time figuring that out it seems. The Goddess Asteroids are the heavenly bodies which in some mysterious way transmit these ways of being to us.

Time as we know is fractal and holographic, and I feel a great deal may be learnt from how things have unfolded before and these patterns repeat themselves down the ages. Christ consciousness is here among, it is the Communion and feeling of deep belonging in the web of life.

In this next week as part of the Global Thy Kingdom Come movement, I would like to invite you to pray for 5 people every day who you would like to know the compassion and true nature of the Creator; for the scales to fall from their eyes. We can create amazing synergy in this way in the web of life and praying for others is one of the best ways I have experienced of truly connecting with the suffering and experience of humanity, and not getting too caught up in our own emotional turmoil. These prayers may be body prayers or art works, poems or stories.

Above is a painting I did of Lydia’s baptism with her sisters and the second painting below that was swimming in an Iodine infinity pool recently and feeling a complete sense of surrender and the Aqua ray of this feeling of “communion”. I’ve heard of a few others experiencing this Aqua ray recently and I feel it is very much connected to this new level of energy anchoring heaven to earth, all around and everywhere in the web of life. The number of Christ Consciousness is 33, another number which may pop up for you this year.

Join the Global wave of prayer https://www.thykingdomcome.global

Tasha Powers – Venus Gates 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh82tEetooI

Law of Time website says

“The White Magnetic Wizard year (begins 27th JULY 2019) and initiates a Great Reorientation of Consciousness. The time is now to Encode the Future and re-enchant the world with memory of unity.

The White Magnetic Wizard opens the Seventh and final Light Gate that activates the interdimensional bridge of Time ship Earth and enters us into the New Sirius Cycle 32 (1.32)

It also completes a 7-year cycle (2013-2020) of the new Solar Human anchoring the new vision

~~~

I offer one to one readings, please get in touch at astroalison@gmail.com for more information.

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[selenelavellan]

Okay but what did Unwilling Moon Goddess Selene even DO to warrant being put up there? Did she set someone/something important on fire bc they pissed her off? Did she kill Falon'Dick in a fit of righteous fury and make Mythal (who was some kind of powerful shaman figure maybe) force her into 'atonement'? Did she explode something so powerfully that it affected the tilt of the planet and now she's gotta be in charge of keeping that on track forever? Like what'd she do??

Origins

Moon Goddess AU

Ana belongs to @lycheemilkart​

TW For Violence, Death,Alcohol use, Abuse

The Moon was not always a helpful entity.

The Moon God had been a proud creature, thankful for his privacy and distance from the people. More than happy to stay up in the sky, far away from everything and everyone else. He kept his knowledge, his secrets to health to himself, where they could not be misused by those who were unworthy of it.

Until one day, he looked upon the earth and saw a flower of the sun.

She was so tall, petals a stunning shade of golden yellow, stretching towards the skies. Bright and open and warm throughout the day, laughing and reaching towards the sunlight.But when he looked upon her at night, she shied away, closing up as she drooped until the Sun God returned to the skies in the mornings.

Still, he found himself distracted with thoughts of the flower throughout his days. Stealing glances towards the earth more often than he should be, moon lingering in the skies after the sun had risen.After too long of this, the Sun God approached the Moon God.

“Why do you linger so long in our skies?” he asked “You used to savor your time alone, hoarding as much of my stolen light as you could for yourself. Why now do you bask in it?”

“I have become taken with one of your flowers,” The Moon God admitted with a heavy sigh. “But she shies away from me. I know not what I can do. I do not wish to impose myself upon her.”

“So give her what she needs,” The Sun God offers “Do not coerce her. Show her that you can provide for her, show her how you feel, so that she may determine if she feels the same.”

“How?”

“You control the tides. The pull of water. My summers are harsh, and flowers often wilt beneath my heat. Provide her with additional water. Nourish her soil, ensure her roots do not rot and that she may flourish. Show her we are not such total opposites,” The Sun grins.

And so the moon does. Night after night, he cares for her as best he can from a distance. Nudges away predators who would feast on her leaves, shelters her from storms that would otherwise wash her away. Until the summer must come to an end, and he appears before her on the final night.

“Come with me,” he offers her. “The cold will come soon, and you will be taken away. I will keep you healthy, I will keep you safe, I will keep you happy.”

The Flower, having known the softer side of the moon for the whole of the season already, agrees.

When he touches her, her petals turn pale, roots stretch to limbs until she is knelt before him. The Moon God carried his flower back to his kingdom, where they lived happily for centuries.

And then the flower bore his child.

A young girl, hair pale as the moonlight and eyes as green as the earth that bore her mother, came into being.

She was smart, and bright, and kind. And as she grew, her father taught her all he knew. How to heal the sick and save the dying, how to pull at the tides and the necessity of their existence.

But she gained her mothers kindness and love of the earth, as well.

“Why do we not share our knowledge?” She asked her father.

“It is too freely abused,” he explained “Their lives are too short, and words too easily misinterpreted. People are not to be trusted with it.”

“But their lives could be longer if they knew what we did. Better. The people could flourish, even.”

“Their lives are not our concern. The People are not our domain. We are responsible for greater things.”

Selene was not convinced.

As she grew, so did her curiosity. Her desire to explore the earth, to learn about the people, to help them, the way her father had helped her mother. And so, the Sun God approached her.

“Little moonbeam,” he cooed “I see what you desire. Locked away up here as you are, so far away, so restricted by your fathers fears. I could help you, if you would only do the same in return.”

“I have nothing to give. I am not a god, yet. Only an apprentice.”

“But one day you will be. You will inherit your fathers abilities, and then we will be partners. One day, I will ask of you a favor. You will grant it to me, without restrictions and to the best of your abilities.”

Selene hesitates.

“And in return,” He continues “I will take you to Earth with me. Summer is starting, and my festival will begin. A grand celebration, that I invite you to share in.”

“My father would never agree to that.”

“I have known your father far longer than you have. I will handle him. You only need hold up your end of the bargain.”

Selene swallows.And agrees.

–

Summer begins, and Selene travels down with the Sun God in his chariot to visit the people.The Earth is so bright and full of variety and color and life, it takes her breath away.

She falls in love with it instantly, getting swept up in the celebrations. She dances for a week, and drinks while perched in the lap of the laughing Sun God, joining in with the people and learning as many of their ways as she can.It is warm here, so much warmer than her frozen, lonely home.

She meets several other gods at the event. Goddess of the Earth, who shows her how plants grow in the soil and sprout beneath her feet. The necessity of a life cycle, of rebirth and reuse and the connection of all things that come from the Earth. She meets the God of Invention, who shows her science and math and innovations. The way the people manipulate and alter their environment to make their lives better, to make better use of all that time robs the mortals of. Of the necessity of moving forward. Goddess of Stone, who can not even use magic but is not hindered in any way by it. Who shows her secret, sacred places, where magic can be grown, where it flows like water beneath the earths crust in stunning shades of blue and white.

And for the first time, Selene gets to see a blue sky.

She does not remember taking flight, but she remembers flying. Her wings sprout from her back, and she is off. Soaking in the rays of the sun as she glides over the ocean, over the water she has manipulated for so long from so far away, and she sees that even it contains life, here. She befriends the birds as they fly alongside her, and tell her stories of all the places they have traveled. Watches the fish travel in packs, marvels at the whales as they breathe the air and return to water

She returns to Des’s side breathless.

“Enjoying your time?” he laughs.

“It’s incredible! You get to do this all the time?”

“Every day.”

“I think I will too.”

Des blinks “You will, what?”

“When I am a Goddess, I will visit the people each night. My father may value his privacy, but I do not. I like it here, I love these people, and I do not wish to live in solitude any longer.”

“You know,” Des grins “I think we’re going to be marvelous partners.”

The Festival lasts an entire month, as it turns out. An entire cycle away from home, and though she expects to miss it, she finds it actually….freeing, to be on Earth.She does not want to leave, when the festival ends.Even Des seems reluctant to give her back to her fathers care.

But she has responsibilities to maintain, balances to keep and spells to learn. She adds what she has learned to her repertoire. She sings her spells, dances through rituals, creates within craters and learns to breed plants that will survive in their soil. She visits the earth each night with her mother, using her skills to help those she can.

Her father is not happy with the changes.

“We must be steady,” He warns her. “Do not deviate from our traditions.”

“How do you know?” She challenges “How do you know that we must do things the way we do? That we could never have anything more, never have anything better than this?”

“Because this is the way it has always been.”

“But we can change it. The Earth is constantly changing, constantly growing. Why not us? Why must we stay so far away?”

“It is the way of things. It is to maintain the necessary balance of things. We do not change.”

“You changed,” She argues “You changed for mother. Who is from Earth. The people are not bad, they are not lesser, somehow, just because death visits them. The only thing keeping us locked away up here is you! You and your obsession with being alone!”

“That is Enough!” He bellows, and the skies above her flicker with electricity, ground shaking as lightning strikes at the frozen ground beneath her feet. “I am still your father, I am still your teacher, I am still your God, and you will Obey Me!” he yells, voice echoing. A bolt of lightning shoots towards her face, striking her down with enough force that it creates a new crater just outside the palace steps.

Selene runs, as soon as she can stand.

She runs all the way to the earth, hiding from her fathers sight within the temple of the Sun. Waits silently, containing herself until the sun rises and Des approaches her.

“What happened?” he whispers, fingers brushing over the fractal scars left by her fathers violence.

“I pushed him too far,” she mumbles. “It was my fault.”

“No,” Des asserts. “This was his mistake. There is no excuse for striking your child.”

Selene just wraps her arms around herself while Des leans back “Perhaps we have left him alone and unchecked for too long,” he muses. “I thought your mother would mellow him out, but it seems like she’s only enabled him in her complacency.”

“I…”Selene swallows “I don’t know what to do from here.”

“Wait for now,” he instructs. “I’ll bring the others together here, and we will discuss how to move forward as a Pantheon, as we always have.”

So Selene waits, while he gathers the others. The Earth Goddess appears first, then the Goddess of the Stone, The God of Invention, and the Goddess of Chaos, and finally Des returns himself.

“This is all you gathered?” Carina, Goddess of Stone questions.

“This is all we need,” Des insists. “Selene, tell us what happened.”

She shares her story, even as they stare at the scar on her face and listen to the storm bellow through the night outside, even now.

In the end, it is decided that it is time for Elrogathe to step down from his position as God of the Moon. Selene helps them travel to her home, with every intention of solving things peacefully. 

But when she arrives, she does not find her father. 

Only a monster in his stead, standing over her mothers corpse.

“Flowers were not meant to live forever,” it growls.

Selene moves first, while Des notches and shoots an arrow, blowing just past her to strike the creature in the chest as he lets out a bellowing roar.

The battle lasts the entirety of the night, and they are all exhausted by the end of it.

“Traitor,” Growls her father as he bleeds out beneath her, pinned down beneath Carina’s stone, pulsing with energy. “You spoiled, selfish child. You do not understand anything.”

“You killed mother,” She snaps back between heavy breaths as her own blood spills out of her “You don’t get to lecture me anymore.”

Elrogathe bellows again, straining against the rock above him as his fury echoes around them. Selene sighs, weary and exhausted as she stares at the remains of him. Not that she has ever known him to be warm or loving herself, but he was still her father. She has still spent centuries in his company, and there is still something in her that regrets what she has to do.

But still, she will do it.

Selene begins to sing.

The ground beneath her father curls away, carves itself into geometric patterns, plates shifting like a puzzle box, as he is pulled further and further below the surface. 

He screams as she casts the ritual to lock him away, curses her and their land. Promises that nothing she has created will grow, that she will spend the rest of her days alone, dooms her to solitude and imprisonment that lasts as long as his own, and uses the last of his mana to turn his words to power, spreading out over both her and both moons.

Des looks at her with regret when she collapses against him, exhausted and spent.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It had to be done,” she mutters.

He shakes his head “You don’t understand. He’s tied you here.”

“I’ve always been tied to the moon,” She argues.

“No, you were only connected to it,” Ana, the Earth Goddess explains “You had the freedom to travel wherever you liked, for as long as you wanted. This was simply your domain. Now…”

Selenes eyes widen as realization hits her “…I can’t leave?”

“I’m so sorry, Selene,” She nods.

Shock courses through Selenes system while Des carefully lowers her to the ground. “I can’t…I can’t ever leave?”

“Or bring anyone here,” Des sighs. “Your dad was a dick. I should have interfered sooner.”

Selene doesn’t move from that space as reality washes over her, and the other Gods return to Earth to rest and recover and take care of their own responsibilities. 

Alone. She’s going to be alone, forever.With her father trapped beneath her.

What has she done?–

Des returns later that night, to remind Selene to raise the moons. She does, but only barely. A waning crescent at the wrong point in the cycle. It is all she can manage, in her current state.

“Congratulations on becoming a Goddess,” he jokes, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Selene just looks at him blankly, still tired but too stressed to sleep.

“Look,” he sighs “I know this sucks. Patricide is a pretty awful way to ascend. But now you can make the changes you wanted.”

“I can’t change anything. I can’t even reach the people, let alone aide or share anything with them.”

“I talked with The Earth Goddess, actually. We might be able to help with that.”

“You can let me travel freely to Earth?”

“Well, no. But on the Full Moon, with a combination of being fully visible to her, and since you’ll already be reflecting the maximum amount of power and light from me, we think we might be able to…project you there. You’ll be able to interact with people and things. Talk, share knowledge, teach them what you can.”

Selene swallows, turning to stare at the Earth, watching the clouds swirl over the blue and green sphere, so far away.

But this is a better offer than she dared hope for, anyways.

“Thank you.”

Des shrugs “Helping you helps me too. It means you’ll be better off to help me, when I ask you for that favor.”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” She nods in agreement.

“Rest, tomorrow,” He suggests. “You’ll find Godhood is not so easy as I make it look.”

Selene stands, finally, gazing out over the wreckage of her parents palace.“I will do my best,” she vows.

[eyesaremosaics]

Can you make a post about reincarnation? Also, do you remember any of your past lives? You have mentioned it briefly before, very curious to hear your thoughts! I can't remember mine

Hi anon, apologies for the delay in my response. I know this took over three months for me to answer… It’s just that there is so much to say about the subject. It’s a very broad spectrum that we are dealing with. In regards to past lives, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

There are many different cultures/belief systems/philosophies and religions that have unique interpretations of reincarnation and how/why it manifests. Buddhism sees it differently from Hinduism for example. If you are curious about those specifically here are some links to explore:

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/reincarnation.htmhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_(Buddhism)

In short: Tibetan Buddhism holds that there are two ways that someone can take rebirth after death. The first is to be reborn involuntarily, under the sway of ‘karma’, drawn back to life by destructive emotions and desires. This is the fate of most of us. A few, select others, through the power of compassion and prayer to benefit others, are believed to be able to choose their place and time of birth as well as their parents.

Hinduism:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnationhttp://www.hinduwebsite.com/reincarnation.asp

In short: Hindus believe the self or soul (atman) repeatedly takes on a physical body, until moksha. There is no permanent heaven or hell in Hinduism. In the afterlife, based on one’s karma, the soul is reborn as another being in heaven, hell, or a living being on earth (human, animal).

As aforementioned in previous posts throughout the years, I went through a period of devout atheism during my teen years and early twenties. A series of unexplainable events led me to the beliefs I have today. Apart from being a very spiritual child, without anyone impressing it upon me, I had a series of supernatural experiences that shook me to the core.

My mother says when I was two years old, I used to say things to her like: “remember last time? When I was the mom and you were the kid? I liked that better.”

The creepiest instance in my case, I have mentioned on this blog before. I had this reoccurring nightmare since I was three years old, that I was a grown woman–not a child–and I was on fire. I ran to the window to call for help, and I tangled in these dark velvet curtains and burned to death. I was too young to fully comprehend the dream, and I never told anyone about it.

My whole life I was unnaturally petrified of Fire. Most children learn through experience that fire is “hot”, I was always terrified of it. I KNEW it hurt. I would scream and cry around candles, incense, matches lighters etc. spitting on the wick after blowing out the tiny flames, throwing flammable items in the sink, or out into the street.

My grandmother, being fed up with all of this, finally confronted me at age eleven. In an irritable tone she asked: “do you know why you are afraid of fire?” Stunned, o shook my head slowly before she continued: “during the civil war, you were waiting for your husband to come home, your oil lamp knocked over and caught your skirt on fire. You ran to the window to call for help, and you tangled in the curtains and you burned to death.”

How could she know that?

In that rich color and detail? When I had never told a soul about that dream.

In middle school, I had nightmares about being burned at the stake as a witch. People chanting “witch! Witch!” Over and over… Throwing more wood on the pyre, as I choked on the smoke through screams of agony.

This feeling of persecution followed me all my life. Never fitting in anywhere. Always being “different” from everyone else. I always felt that when I walked into a social situation that everyone hated me by default. That I had to prove my worth to them. I also had a lifetime as a leper. Being shunned and diseased. Deformed and decaying as I lived and breathed. I am convinced this is where my self karma around victimization stems from in my previous lives. I incarnated into this life with the intention of working through/healing this within my being.

Certain people… I met and immediately KNEW them. Almost as though I had been waiting for themto show up. As though we had known each other for forever. Time stops when you meet those in your soul collective. The ones you choose to incarnate with again and again to resolve karmic lessons and aid in one another’s expansion.

There is a book I read about ten years ago, that was given to me by my grandmother called: “the Michael teaching”. This book can only be purchased online, and was written by a rather unusual couple. They married and both transitioned genders throughout the course of their marriage. They both channel, and this book is a dictation from the entity known as “Michael”.

This entity is a collection of over a thousand souls who have all cycled off the physical plane to the next realm of consciousness. The physical is the lowest level, but the most tangible. Our lessons here in the physical reality (wether you believe in other planets, parallel universes or what have you) is to learn separateness. We come from the Tao (love/source consciousness/universe) to learn to individuate, and experience the tiny fractal of unique experience which is our soul.

Once you have learned all you can about separateness, you go on to the next cycle of experience. If I remember correctly the astral plane is next (the place that you go when you dream). Abstract concepts can be explored here, as well as merging with other souls. Generally a group of souls from the same “collective” come together to learn a series of lessons, before going on the the next cycle of experience.

There are 5-7 cycles in total I believe, and the last is becoming one with the universe again. So the whole thing was a cycle of experience in itself. This teaching always stuck out to me, it resonated because they presented the information unbiased. They distinctly said: “blind faith will not help you grow. We are merely presenting information from the perspective of the astral plane as we currently experience it. Take what works for you, and leave what doesn’t.” Which I really liked.

At the time I was very atheistic, and that book exposed me to unique concepts about energy, different “roles” we take on here in the physical plane, and the deep layers of the process of reincarnation. There is so much information on the subject, I could not possibly include it all in this post. A general overview of soul age as I understand it is:

Infant soul: these souls incarnate with the soul purpose of survival. In smaller scale food foraging societies, or third world countries where it is man vs. nature. Also the souls of animals and lower life forms are explored at this soul age.

Baby soul: a baby soul is primarily concerned with following the rules. They are just getting the bearings of independent consciousness and want for very little. These are simple souls, who are easily herded to a cause, or manipulated by stronger personalities. Their life lesson is to think for themselves, and begin to foster a greeter sense of personal identity.

Young souls: we live in a primarily young soul society. America is a prime example. Bigger, better, faster, stronger. What you have is what you are. Their primary concern is power. People obsessed with fame, validation, vanity, or any superficial pursuit is adhering to young soul mentality. Their lesson is to exert power and distinction over others. To solidify their identity. It is in this period that they begin to create karma with other souls. Wounding and impacting them with selfishness. People who start war are always young souls. They are not in touch with their inner world or their emotions, and have little understanding of empathy. If they do, it is only as an extension of their own egoic state.

Mature souls: at this soul age you experience your heaviest karmas. Mature souls are all about the “drama” or heightened reality. They live in states of turmoil and extremity. This is the soul age where you will experience a terminal illness like AIDS or cancer. All the heavy repercussions and self reflection that come with this experience. This is the soul age where you will experience a lot of death, trauma etc. where you will become a drug addict, a criminal, a victim. It all serves your expansion, to learn both sides of the coin. The winner and the loser. The victim and the perpetrator.

Old soul: an old soul has already learned all the basics of consciousness, how to solidify its identity, and all heightened possibilities of experience, now it is tying off loose ends. The old soul feels out of place. They have great wisdom from seemingly nowhere, and are often highly intuitive and empathic beings. They resolve all their karmic debts to souls from past lives. They work through the heavy traumas and let them go through expansion. The more they learn, the less identified they become with the physical realm. When their lessons are complete, they return to the universal consciousness. Often old souls feel they do not belong here.

Within each soul age are more levels. Seven actually, but you will have to read the book if you intend to go deeper with this understanding. So a person can be a level two mature soul, but still have young soul tendencies (ex. Have a lot of heavy trauma in their life which gives them depth, but a visceral need to become internet famous to validate their self worth. Or an early level old soul, can still carry a lot of the “drama” fromThe transition)

My understanding is that the universe is a living organism, that the objective of the universe is to expand and discover layers within layers of experience. To learn every possible facet (seen and unseen) until it implodes on itself and starts a new system. That it is continuously in a state of being and becoming.

A soul has very much the same experience, and when it is done with the physical reality it moves on to another set of lessons. Just as there are other realms/dimensions, your soul would pass on to explore these deeper and deeper before returning to the universe itself. Becoming one.

Past life retrieval can be done through guided meditation or hypnosis, though I highly recommend doing your research on spiritualists/psychics/Mystics in your area who specialize in soul retrieval to be sure you are not being overcharged or conned.

It is possible to retrieve past lives on your own. Generally children are more connected to the organic experience of remembering these lifetimes without any effort as they are the closest to source energy. There are videos on YouTube you can try, books you can read, and hypnotherapist’s you can see.

If you have an irrational fear–generally that comes from past life trauma. If you are innately drawn to a place, or a particular time period, that is most likely an association from a past life as well. Anything you experienced in your past lives that was good, will be reflected in your preferences in this lifetime. Everything negative from past lives, will come up in this one to be resolved. Though some lessons take multiple lifetimes to learn or complete.

Sometimes relationships abruptly end for no reason, and are continued in the next lifetime. The average lifetime of one human being doesn’t even scratch the surface of omnipresent time. Time doesn’t exist in linear form in this universe. It is a man made construct to measure our existence in relationship to our limited concept of the universe. In reality, there is so much we don’t know.

I have this intuition in me that tells me parallel realities do exist. Of course I could be wrong, and I am always open to being challenged, I just tend to trust my gut as it is usually never wrong. This is a complicated concept to be explored, but one that would help support the theory of reincarnation were it true. That one could live several potentialities of existence simultaneously in parallel dimensions. Does that mean they are all aspects of the same state? That the same soul is existing in multiple realities at once to experience the prism of existence more fully?

The evidence to this would be dreaming. Scientists are at a loss when it comes to understanding dreams. Why we have them, where they come from, what they really are and what they mean. One of life’s many great mysteries. In my personal experience, my dreams have foretold the future as well as reflecting aspects of whatever is going on at the time. Most people in the spiritual field and in agreement that your spirit leaves your body to travel to the astral realm when you dream.

According to the Michael teaching, that is the next level of consciousness, just above the physical.

Below are some videos/documentaries/accounts revolving around the concept of reincarnation. These have been many “cried wolf” stories that have been disproved through the years, but there have also been multiple documented cases where a child knew exactly who they were, where and how they died, and we even able to contact old family members and tell them memories that only the deceased person would have.

5th Dimension: Reincarnationhttps://youtu.be/xak1qUhcyTg

Past lives: Stories of Reincarnation https://youtu.be/J0SZp4zI0gU

10 reincarnation stories that will open your mind: https://youtu.be/lwjmJtBphwc

Children’s past liveshttps://youtu.be/Uq8l4XVfgPA

If there were any questions I failed to answer in regards to this subject, feel free to ask.

[230east]

sinking silently in my submarine

 peeking up my periscope 

periodically perusing the passing 

photosynthesizing plankton 

pulsating plasma membranes 

eight legged tentacular suction cup

Pill popping percolating

positive vibrations

shaking up foundations

rock rolling down

to the bottom again.

just out of reach

water will recede

Cyclone circling the drain

so thirsty

get thee

to a nunnery

habit forming

thot-like behavior

instant gratification

think in new ways

get in formation

Shakespeare compares thee to Beyonce

woke up flawless like a diamond

dumber we round down

to the lowest denomination

algorithm assisted living

marketing machines

suggestively shaping

what you see

programming your point of view

the screen you pass through

is a filtration system

profile picture profiles you

feed back looping

it's the sine of the times

like a wave crashing systems

conversations conspiratorial in tone

the sinking suspicion that not so fresh feeling

and douching in general is a maladaptive marketing

mechanism to make you insecure and unsure.

they planted the product in your periphery

you think its your own idea

evolutions going backwards

survival of the photoshopped.

I’d rather be a monkey.

but ive evolved past tense

see triple in 3D

I trace your trajectory

parabolic path leading back

tragic swag. so sad these days.

no surface only substrate

sound of echoing rippling water

then a gasp for air breaks the  waves

reverberating ringing tingling

beat tympanic tamborine man

oscillting ossicles translate

fluent French kiss my derriere

rare special edition

one of a kind its just like mine

same old samo

saying the same thing

eat your drugs

don't do school

stay in vegetables

various variations on the theme

every verse a throw back

vintage vino veritas

theres truth in that

cliche et tu brute

wino forever never left me

so retro back in style again

stranger things have happened

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

still singing that song flowing through me

swinging in the breeze in fields elysian

exceptional on a hill past daffodils

narcissistic point of view image conscious

selfish gene pool self interested kin selection

consciousness superficial

on the surface floating

like a glacier melting

oblivious to  the tension growing

till it bursts through the glass mirror ceiling

 distorting  the image in circular ripples of pixels 

impressionistic audience

glitch in the system program

its all conditioned

when i ring the bell 

cerberus salivates 

it is fate

three bitches barking

measuring me out by string

theoretically 

three weird sisters 

by the cauldron bubbling

on the lyre 

lyrically i am lilting

you can’t stop me

you can’t stilt me

im always growing 

exponentially

 Fibonacci flow

 spiraling out of control

fractals follow golden ratio

chaos creating destruction 

entropy at equilibrium

Here we meet 

Apollo and Dionysus

combined in catharsis

pupils open to see pathways

 parallel past the point 

of no return to normal vision 

vanishing point out of view 

past pluto out the solar system

on my way to cross the river 

styx 

REFERENCES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

STRANGE FRUIT Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black body swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop. -- Music and lyrics by Lewis Allan, copyright 1940

HAMLET

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. -Shakespear

I AM A STRANGE LOOP

In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.

— Douglas Hofstadter,P363

And there he, on the the stark, dark marker  Atop his parents' graves, shed tears,  And praised their ashes — darker, starker.  Alas, life reaps too fast its years;  All flesh is grass. Each generation,  At heaven's hidden motivation,  Arises, blooms, and falls from grace;  Another quickly takes its place.  And thus our race, rash and impetuous,  Ascends and has its day, then raves  And hastens toward ancestral graves.  All too soon, death's sting will get to us;  Aye, how our children's children rush  And push us from this world's sweet crus

And then with verse of quickened sadness  He honored too, in tears and pain,  His parents' dust... their memory's gladness...  Alas! Upon life's furrowed plain —  A harvest brief, each generation,  By fate's mysterious dispensation,  Arises, ripens, and must fall;  Then others too must heed the call.  For thus our giddy race gains power:  It waxes, stirs, turns seething wave,  Then crowds its forebears toward the grave.  And we as well shall face that hour  When one fine day our grandsons true  Straight out of life will crowd us too!

let me sing a tune up tempo to the groove in the recording turn up the gramaphone and listen bro I am the best alive aliviate the symptoms but wont cure the pain killers murdering meat cleaver cut you into filet a deux lets dosey do lets hula hoop lets lasso the moon for you betty boop bop dop dap zap zippy zippering witty whimpering sassy syllables trashy talkative locomotive combusting and composting reusing and recycling reducing so compact disc DVD player ipod 3D glasses pixilation pointelissm glitching itching for a scratched surface scar face so Miami mami papi chulo lean low dow ho and hit the floor on your knees looking up at me like asking will you marry me run away with the beat and drop it down sinking silently in my submarine peering through my periscope periodically perusing the passing photosynthesizing plankton pulsating plasma membranes eight legged tentacular suction cup overfloweth with the fluid flow so Fibonacci spiralizing  spiritual feeling so free too carefule calculated in the risky behaviors bitch yap yaw yippy yay you only live uno dos tres stress the alliterative alternative alternating current events talking heads heaven is a place where nothing happens above us only sky and satelittes revolving evolving electrical signal transduction travertine stone up your nose rock the boat overboard emotional so emo what she yelling for in such a monotone drone dramatically durgical and clinically clergical sentences so sequence shimmering laser bean landing site fly a kite thunder and lightning bug chirp

on the path charted through the sky

chariots of fire Apollo s

in pediatricians

we all follow direction and its counting down from ten to scale model student pupils open to see pathways parallel past the point of no return to normal vision vanishing point of view on point the point is people like you postulate pictorially snap back to reality whomp there goes gravity I am above it all I see through all it. i saw the signs of the times so many signals overstimulating the market so similar to something the remix of ignition is cool again until its overplayed out of style so retro im coming back like vintage vines wino forever in vino veritas theres truth in that touché et tu brute brutalist

zoot suited tooted and boot leg boozer buzzer

cycle seasons

tick flick off

membrance awesome oscicles oscilation

it's the sine of the times cant you see it pay attention

double visionary view from above

The next thing I woke up still singing that song the one you hear flowing river styx Cerberus salivating salty seas soylent green is algae plants are people im a dafodill on a hill let me sing a tune up tempo to the groove in the recording turn up the gramaphone and listen bro I am the best alive aliviate the symptoms but wont cure the pain killers murdering meat cleaver cut you into filet a deux lets dosey do lets hula hoop lets lasso the moon for you betty boop bop dop dap zap zippy zippering witty whimpering sassy syllables trashy talkative locomotive combusting and composting reusing and recycling reducing so compact disc DVD player ipod 3D glasses pixilation pointelissm glitching itching for a scratched surface scar face so Miami mami papi chulo lean low dow ho and hit the floor on your knees looking up at me like asking will you marry me run away with the beat and drop it down sinking silently in my submarine peering through my periscope periodically perusing the passing photosynthesizing plankton pulsating plasma membranes eight legged tentacular suction cup overfloweth with the fluid flow so Fibonacci spiralizing  spiritual feeling so free too carefule calculated in the risky behaviors bitch yap yaw yippy yay you only live uno dos tres stress the alliterative alternative alternating current events talking heads heaven is a place where nothing happens above us only sky and satelittes revolving evolving electrical signal transduction travertine stone up your nose rock the boat overboard emotional so emo what she yelling for in such a monotone drone dramatically durgical and clinically clergical sentences so sequence shimmering laser bean landing site fly a kite thunder and lightning bug chirp

The American Dream is a product.

Lassoing up that freedom and mass producing it in metal.

I grabbed the reins and hoisted up on the saddle.

Perhaps he was too dumb to run.

Perhaps he was trying to protect me.

Graffiti on the door to the private room.

He shaved his face with a hatchet.

They placed bocce on the boat

Dressed in white.

Looking up at the billboard by the highway

Trying to communicate

He ran with a baguette]

I aint going outside. she said to the dead air left lingering in the cigarette soaked airwaves still circulating

The smoky air swam circular warning skylarks illuminated by a stray sunbeam. light littered in lateral patterns.

lyrically i am lilting you can’t stop me you can’t stilt me

well I’m majoring in business administration and I’m thinking of minoring in communications

[simplerperfectionist]

ive noticed finally, although i sort of knew about it on a sub or semi conscious level before, that i have a pattern of selecting someone (often a boy) to latch onto and become very close to and to secretly harbor feelings for. i did this- oh my god!- i did this with logan in pre-k, with mason, with graeme, i think briefly with kyle?, definitely with joe, then with asa, with sam, jesus i tried to start it with james, i absolutely did want to start that with austin in detroit, and now i can feel myself being tugged or urged to do it with austin in my class. maybe there are others but those are pretty significant. yeah i think i do it with girls in a different way, and i think the sidekick thing that i do with girls is actually truly mine, a result of the ruth breakup and my perception of my own self worth and my perception of them and what our relationship should be/what they want from me. and its fixed with a perception shift. but the boys thing is truly nonsensical, like i cannot explain it, i dont understand where it originates from, it doesnt feel rooted in me, like it feels like an external force and its SUCH a loop cycle, its the same thing every single time! anyway just now it occurred to me that its likely an akashic imprint, because it feels too personal and vivid and loopy to be ancestral. anyway it definitely plays with my feelings of self worth and also triggers competition. i saw that reflected in rose two days ago when she was showing off about how well she knew austins body, its this prideful thing of i know you i know you i know you better than the others. which makes me special, makes me chosen. im not special alone but im special because you are special and you have chosen me. damn that is the basis for a nasty codependent relationship. motherfucker isa did that to me!!!! less with being special and more with being good or redeemable. its projecting your self worth outside of you onto someone you deem worth determining yours. its honestly, oh my god, its like being the peasant or servant girl beloved by the prince. thats the dynamic. or the longed for dynamic. but they never return the love, they always see me as a sister, and then i become a confidant and a wingman and nothing more. and then i feel used, but im not really being used i just feel that way because i placed expectation on the bond we created, and i wasnt honest about the nature of my feelings from the start. its not even that i wasnt verbally honest, that i didnt tell them, its more that there was always a layer of manipulation to our relationship where i was ingratiating myself and like collecting closeness points so that i could turn around and cash them in as romantic love rather than being in the dynamic and being honest in my presence and feeling my way through it. if i was truly present i probably wouldnt even build those feelings anyway because i would sense that they arent there with me, that theres no match to it. its cowardly but i fooled myself into believing its noble and looked down on people who were more forward. you do not have to manipulate your relationships. anyone or anything who is meant for you will be there with you and it will flow naturally into what it should be, manipulation is resistance and lack of faith and lack of self love. i am worthy! i love myself. i am love, i am light, i am a whole and complete and perfect expression of god, a fractal of light, and i attract toward me other whole and perfect and complete souls who wish to create an experience or experiences together. i welcome them all in with openness and curiosity and joy and love and i place no expectations on permanence or depth, i meet each experience as a single whole and complete one which offers me an opportunity for expansion. amen. 

[thebookwars]

Wicked Like a Wildfire:

All the women in Iris and Malina’s family have the unique magical ability or “gleam” to manipulate beauty. Iris sees flowers as fractals and turns her kaleidoscope visions into glasswork, while Malina interprets moods as music. But their mother has strict rules to keep their gifts a secret, even in their secluded sea-side town. Iris and Malina are not allowed to share their magic with anyone, and above all, they are forbidden from falling in love.

But when their mother is mysteriously attacked, the sisters will have to unearth the truth behind the quiet lives their mother has built for them. They will discover a wicked curse that haunts their family line—but will they find that the very magic that bonds them together is destined to tear them apart forever?

(Synopsis for Fierce Like a Firestorm not posted to avoid spoilers.)

Janet: Pretty cover. The title is intriguing: firestorms are not sentient and therefore not wicked, however damaging their effects are — and, in fact, wildfires are a necessary part of the life cycle of a forest. Iris’ gleam is particularly interesting, sufficiently so that despite the rather cliche don’t tell and don’t fall in love YA trope, I’d look inside.

Nafiza: FLOWER COVERS. Yasss. As you all know by now I hope, I adore flower covers. The synopses is sufficiently intriguing that I’d look inside.

  Learn all about the traditions of Ramadan with this first book in the brand-new board book series Celebrate the World, which highlights celebrations across the globe.

In the ninth month of the year, when the first crescent moon rises in the sky, it’s time to celebrate Ramadan! In this lovely board book with illustrations from Rashin Kheiriyeh, readers learn that Ramadan is a time to reflect on ourselves, to be thankful, and a time to help others.

Janet: Super pretty cover! The folk art style is lovely. I have to laugh at the girl on the left’s expression. I will pick this up for sure if I come across it.

Nafiza: The cover is certainly colourful. I’d flip inside to see what they share about Ramadan.

Boy has always been relegated to the outskirts of his small village. With a large hump on his back, a mysterious past, and a tendency to talk to animals, he is often mocked and abused by the other kids in his town. Until the arrival of a shadowy pilgrim named Secondus. Impressed with Boy’s climbing and jumping abilities, Secondus engages Boy as his servant, pulling him into an expedition across Europe to gather the seven precious relics of Saint Peter. Boy quickly realizes this journey is not an innocent one. They are stealing the relics, and gaining dangerous enemies in the process. But Boy is determined to see this pilgrimage through until the end—for what if St. Peter can make Boy’s hump go away?

This compelling, action-packed tale is full of bravery and daring, stars a terrific cast of secondary characters, and features an unlikely multigenerational friendship at its heart. Memorable and haunting, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s epic medieval adventure is just right for readers of Sara Pennypacker’s Pax, Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale, and Pam Mu��oz Ryan’s Echo.

Features a map and black-and-white art throughout.

Janet: Despite the title, the cover is fascinating, reminiscent of those large information books with the cross-sections showing the inside of a medieval castle, or the layers of a tropical rainforest. The back copy reminds me of medieval tales by Avi and by Karen Cushman. I’d look inside.

Nafiza: I like this cover and the title (ha, Janet) and I have like Murdock’s previous books. However, Boy’s story is not for me so I’ll just read Janet’s review of it (if she happens to write one).

Bernice Aurora Wescott has one thing she doesn’t want anyone to know: her name. That is, until Bee meets Levi, the local golden boy who runs a charity organization called The Color Project.

Levi is not at all shy about attempting to guess Bee’s real name; his persistence is one of the many reasons why Bee falls for him. But while Levi is everything she never knew she needed, giving up her name would feel like a stamp on forever. And that terrifies her.

When unexpected news of an illness in the family drains Bee’s summer of everything bright, she is pushed to the breaking point. Losing herself in The Color Project—a world of weddings, funerals, cancer patients, and hopeful families that the charity funds—is no longer enough. Bee must hold up the weight of her family, but to do that, she needs Levi. She’ll have to give up her name and let him in completely or lose the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

For fans of Stephanie Perkins and Morgan Matson, THE COLOR PROJECT is a story about the three great loves of life—family, friendship, and romance—and the bonds that withstand tragedy.

Janet: I was sure we’d done this cover before, but the back copy isn’t familiar. Based on the cover, I’d read this, even though the title misspells colour. Based on the back, no way. The best thing that has ever happened to Bee is a teenage romance? I think not.

Nafiza: Man, I really enjoy Janet’s comments and am in total agreement with her on this one. I do think the back copy is rather clumsily written and tries to fit everything in a few paragraphs. Perhaps focus ought to have been given on one element. Also, I mean, just tell him your name, Bernice. Jeez.

A child and his beloved best friend go on a grand sea adventure in this magical picture book by the author and artist who created If I Had a Little Dream.

You just never know what a new day will hold if you are brave enough to find out. On one quiet afternoon, a boy and his special friend’s unexpected adventure bring joy and excitement and sights never imagined. And the best part of any adventure is returning home with stories to tell and you best friend at your side.

Janet: More gorgeous, semi-folky cover art! I love the idea of a boy and a giraffe drifting along in a boat with ALL THIS going on beneath them in the water. So cool. The back copy sounds gentle and imaginative. I’m in.

Nafiza: Look, the octopus is smiling. I never knew I needed a smiling octopus until now. I’m in too.

The Cover Wars Wicked Like a Wildfire: All the women in Iris and Malina’s family have the unique magical ability or “gleam” to manipulate beauty.

[vtradefxblog-blog]

6 Advantages of Following Elliott Wave Theory

In trading there are many ways to skin a cat. I have come across many successful traders who have used various strategies to produce excellent returns. With that said the aim of this article is not to preach about Elliott Wave Theory rather than highlight the advantages I think make it the ideal forex strategy for amateur traders to use.

First thing first, no matter what anyone tells you the markets cannot be predicted all the time but amongst the chaos repeatable patterns do emerge. Elliott wave reveals how the markets work in cycles as a result of mass human behaviour. The cycles follow patterns that obey rules. Like having a crystal ball at times the market will follow the exact path you have forecast. Eerily the wave patterns that you have forecast will emerge and appear on all time frames. The factual nature of Elliott Wave makes it a very power tool in identifying profit making opportunities. Once you understand Elliott Wave you can begin to identify with a certain degree of accuracy where the market is heading next. Let’s look at the advantages of how it provides powerful framework for identifying high probability setups.

Advantage #1 Opportunities Present Themselves on Multiple Timeframes

As mentioned because of the fractal nature of Elliott Wave patterns repeat themselves on different timeframes. This makes it a powerful tool for identifying profitable forex signals

Advantage #2 It can be Applied to Any Market

We are Forex traders but in today’s market you should never look at one asset class in isolation. Elliott Wave allows us to effectively carry out Intermarket Market analysis on commodities, bonds and equities.

Advantage #3 It has Been Proven Over Many Years

The Elliott Wave Principle has stood the test of time. It is not some new theory which today is still used by hedge funds, banks and prop firms. What happened in the past will happen again and this is why Elliott Wave works so well.

“There is nothing new on Wall Street or in stock speculation. What has happened in the past will happen again, and again, and again. This is because human nature does not change, and it is human emotion, solidly build into human nature, that always gets in the way of human intelligence. Of this I am sure.” – Jesse Livermoore

Advantage #4 There are Only Three Rules to Follow

Many believe Elliott Wave is some complicated theory but once you delve in you will soon realise there are only three rules and some basic guidance. It is easy to learn and once grasped will make reading charts much easier. You will be soon be on your way to profiting from forex signals.

Conclusion

There are many ways to profit from the market but we believe Elliott Wave is one of the most robust strategies to use. It acts like a roadmap identifying where you should enter and exit the market. The rules and guidelines make it easy for you to keep on the right track.