The Big Sister I Never Had in Real Time
Do the Wa-TU-si and learn how TO see.
A forgotten place beneath the stars
Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.
The wilds of Arkansas weren’t quite this starry, but it was a near thing.
What did I miss?
God Bless America
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A snapshot of my psyche this July 4, 2010.
Trouble in Mind
Trouble in mind — I’m blue –
But I won’t be blue always –
The sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday
For those fighting a war within.
This Earworm Has Been in My Head for Days…
Pride ’87 LA
“Two-four-six-eight. You can’t even get a date.”
Dear Clusterflock
This morning on waking, I wondered, “Is it a human condition, to constantly try to crawl up from dark places?”
from the comments
If god hadn’t meant for us to suck dick, he wouldn’t have made it look like a banana.
It was everything I expected…
And more; I love all y’all. So big I could bust apart.
Kelsey! Thank you so much for all your work, it was a labor of love. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hope we didn’t leave too much to clean up (I’m thinking of all the left-overs in the fridge, for instance). Girl, you know how to throw a party. I would trade nothing for our hour on the meadow at the mountain-top with those who were there.
Postcard From Clusterflockstock
Wish you were here. Love…
from the spam
Thanks for making such a valuable blog, sincerely Kobos Mathers.
psychedelics in treating anxiety and ptsd
Psilocybin has been shown to invoke powerful spiritual experiences during the four to six hours it affects the brain. A study published in 2008, in fact, found that even 14 months after healthy volunteers had taken a single dose, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience. They also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they’d ever had.
I know this was true for me.
Hugo
A passing today…
Hugo is my friend’s dog, an Otter Hound, whom I came to know shortly after coming to work for “the greensman” five years ago. We were in the early days of the new greensman. Hugo came to the office with Kristopher. He was a Big Boy, his head above my waist as he stood on all fours. We “made friends” right away. (I rubbed his ears and whispered sweet nothings in them. I calmed him when Kristopher flew out the door, often a little late for a client meeting, when Hugo would whimper after him, standing at the door.) Hugo, would accept my call and come sit by me, often leaning into my leg, then lie down on the floor beside me to wait for Kristopher’s return.
I saw him immediately as an old soul. He was the oldest, grandest Knight in the roundtable of pups, Kristopher saved from certain destruction. Hugo spent fifteen years with Kristopher. I was fortunate to spend a few months with him at my side. In these years after, whenever we, Danny and I, would visit Kristopher wherever Kristopher lived, for cocktail parties and such, Hugo would sidle up to me, lean into my leg, I’d rub his ears, whisper sweet nothings. He would just hang with me for a while. Honestly, the biggest expression of unconditional love I’ve ever experienced. I can hardly speak another word. In his passing, oh, I started to say a light has gone out, but his light will still beam in my memory.
Corrections
We had a leak, leaking out, oozing up from the grout, between the ceramic tiles of the kitchen floor at the base of the sink. Called the plumber. This relates to my cobbled plumbing ten years ago. (I was putting a “model” from childhood together, reading the instructions, step by step.) The plumber corrected the “trap” coming from the disposal to the drain. (My trap was a sort of spaghetti affair, still it served okay, for about ten years.) Also, the dishwasher has “lived its life.” It leaks out the door. (I don’t think that has to do with my plumbing.) We’ll replace it, hopefully, in a couple weeks.
I never lived with a dishwasher, in all my years, until Danny and I lived in Detroit in 1993. Since then, I’ve been spoiled, we’ve had one ever since. Today the dishwasher was disconnected until Danny and I can replace it. It’s back to basics. Recently, too, we let the bi-weekly house-keeper go. We’ve been cleaning the house ourselves.
You know? I’m remembering things I’ve forgotten. When one dusts the surfaces and shelves of things one has accumulated over the years (that one might have out on display), when one touches such objects one is immediately reminded where they came from, what they mean, why you have them out on display.
It is a bitter-sweet excercise. Tomorrow, I’m going to mow the lawn (instead of having “the boys” from work do it), with a “reel” mower (no gas) I just bought at Home Depot last weekend.
Bullying?
I’m watching Anderson 360, tonight. A girl committed suicide, after a few months of abuse. I’m not asking anything more than wondering how such things happen. I felt oppressed a little by those around me in high-school. There were moments of physical violence, I once sat on the floor of the schoolbus because no one would let me sit next to them three on a seat. I was no where close to suicide at the time. Nor, really have I ever been. Still, some times I wonder how I survived it.
I never let my parents know what I was going through. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what help my parents could have offered, had I told them. There is something about surviving being totally alone in what one is going through.
Somehow, I didn’t want help. I would like to think I am who I am today because of it. I am also sure I am damaged, a little, for my reluctance to trust others to help me.
dear clusterflock
Is it only the internal compass that points true north?
the spiritual brain
Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.
New research has found that spirituality has a greater effect on the sex lives of young adults — especially women — than religion, impulsivity, or alcohol.
Trailer for El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970)
The strangest movie I’d recommend?
Allen Klein presents an ABKCO Film.
Avatar
Was awesome, y’all.
Scrooge | Lord Buckley
Not to bad-rap the cat’s animation, but if this is new to you, you might want to close your eyes and open your ears to Lord Buckley’s Christmas ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
You can get with it if you want to. There’s only one way — straight to the road of love.
A Yuletide message from me to y’all.
Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido
Michael Kenna. Fading Light, Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. 2004.
Ordinarily I’d not want to follow so swiftly on Deron’s post about the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, but if I don’t do it now, I might be some time.
A short while ago Phil Bebbington sent me a link to this documentary interview with photographer Michael Kenna. I found Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido calming and beautiful, and I want to share it.
“Even in the midst of a storm, it’s a wonderful place to come to ground, in a sense.”
Edward Cullen is Adam-God
John Granger makes a compelling case for why Twilight isn’t just mindless fluff.*
In a nutshell, Bella is Eve and Edward is the Adam-God of Mormon theology. Their “Fall”—when Bella/Eve/Man chooses the apple from the tray of Edward/Adam/God, although rife with dangers and difficulties, is the beginning of a spiritual transformation culminated by an alchemical wedding with the God-Man. The story is a romantic allegory depicting the roles and responsibilities of the divine and human lovers, but it has the specifically Mormon hermetic twist that sex within marriage is the endgame and the only means to personal salvation and immortal life.
The article is actually quite fascinating, I’ve read it twice. Bonus points: send it to your Christian sister who doesn’t want her kids to read those sexy vampire books.
(*You might find it hard to read if you struggle with concentrating on black text on a white background sans photographs and ads.)
Cast y’all’s votes, y’all.
Should I be the next Oprah?
Brother Blue is gone.
I will try and write about his impact on me. Meantime, this from the Boston Globe.
I drove this one, a couple times
My brother’s ’78 Z-28. He ordered it new, got tired of making the payments. Sold it. Kept up with where it was all these years. It is in pristinest of condition. The person who owns it now offered it for his friends to drive in the ride commemorating my brother’s passing. Doesn’t that say something about…?
Oh, y’all! I guess I’m still grieving a bit. Will you pardon my meanderings?
Danny and I were in this car once, alone on a nearly forgotten stretch of road outside Pocahontas’ city limits. I popped the clutch and bounced Danny’s head off the headrest.
Had this been the offer, ‘stead of the truck, I’d so be on the road to fetch it. (With apologies for the exposure. I don’t have the energy, just now, to correct it.)
