AQALuscious: Adventures In Integral Rant

to tide yall over til I return to deliver my usual AQALuscious delights...

2004-12-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

Rip, mix, and burn, baby:

"In Free Culture, his third and best book, Lessig shows his hand. He has a cause, and he wants us to rally to it. The cause is the protection of that imaginary piece of real estate known as "the public domain" and the "free culture" that has always, Lessig argues, been built upon and interleaved with it -- the culture of transformative art, of sharing and borrowing and reborrowing and retransforming, of collages, cover versions, dramatizations, fictionalizations, and adaptations -- the whole universe of ways new art builds upon and emerges from old."

Apocalypse now?

"Left Behind: Elective Affinities and Double Ironies... What are we to make of the strange parallels between this popular series of evangelical fiction and this aggressive Neoconservative strategy for American hegemony?"

Stan Goff is the Man On Fire:

"...we need all the myths in a basket, and Hollywood accommodates: Imperial myths, melting pot myths, and hegemonic military masculinity myths, to articulate a culture's prevailing images a society needs to project about itself in order to maintain certain features of its organization."

Some subtle smelling salt for the somnolent self:

"...it is almost impossible to speak any longer about the personal Laor and the political Laor. There is only one poetic persona in it, which is simultaneously absolutely political and absolutely personal. The voice is that of a poetic persona through whose life the "situation" passes and touches everything he has, grasping and refusing to let go. The child, the wife, the hours of wakefulness alone at night, memory, the very act of writing--everything is political. And from the other extreme, every terror attack, every act of occupation, every moral injustice--everything is completely personal."

the I, We, and It of recent raps

2004-12-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hey yall, just an integral sampling of the I, We, and It of recent raps:

"Christ dwells in cancer cells... I've always thought there's a drummer behind the drumbeat. The Universe, imagined, imagines you."

"More than 16,000 people converged on Fort Benning this past weekend to protest the School of the Americas...

"It is simply assumed that violence is the solution to any difficult problems the US encounters..."

Adventures in Boulder, continued...

2004-12-04T11:49:00.000-08:00

Alrighty then, can I just say that I'm having second thoughts about NOT posting my communication to Ken? I mean, I wrote it, for god's sake! It belongs to me! It's MINE, goddammit! (Throwing self on floor, turning blue.) Did you get that? Blue! Quick, somebody call a priest to exorcise the memetic demon in me!

I think all this dissonance is born of my continued reservations about Warren and my aversion to not having the weight and exact nature of my position broadcast to the integral community at large. Maybe I'm pathologically attached, but I continued to feel unsettled about this whole issue and feel compelled to air both my grievances and allowances with a circle beyond the Boulder scene. (If you're totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, back that ass up and read the preceding post.)

I've made up my mind. In the interest of free speech, what follows is an edited version of my letter to Ken:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond further now that I've had some time to metabolize our dialogue and to reflect on this matter at length.

I experienced Warren as demonstrating an uncanny capacity for listening and was particularly impressed with his openness, humility, and commendable lack of defense. I must confess to being disarmed by his warmth and good humor--in the space of ten minutes I was beginning to feel positively chummy with the artist formerly known as the repudiator of patriarchy!

Warren's contribution in bringing to fluorescence the shadow side of 1st and 2nd wave feminism as manifested in the institutional disenfranchisement of males is incredibly important, timely and mandated by the demands of a genuinely integral dialogue and evolutionarily informed orientation. I believe, however, that this contribution is unnecessarily depotentiated by an approach which limits itself to a conventional, translative perspective, and is further handicapped by reductionistic, sometimes regressive flights into survivalist explanations which lack verticality and distort relevant data and obfuscate critical issues.

Additionally, I feel Warren is guilty of "dumbing down"developmentally complex processes and fails to offer the necessary transitional structures [this is perhaps my primary issue] which might redeem what strikes me as a strictly 1st tier approach. He also seems ill equipped to adequately address the nuanced holarchy of the sex and gender constellation, and in my opinion evidences a lack of sophistication in his well-intentioned "ham handling" of issues which are clumsily framed in such a way as to perpetuate a contrived gender dichotomy which I find lamentably divisive.

That said--Integral is obviously committed to both depth and span, and god knows that what Warren lacks in the former he compensates for in the latter! IF Warren could be brought up to speed on the rigors of an AQAL approach and have his flatland tendencies tutored out of him, I think he could be a valuable asset to the integral camp.

Conceivably, Integral's outreach and demographic could be significantly expanded with the addition of Warren (though the google"hit" on the incest issue--which I'm fairly pacified about--is potentially problematic). In the interest of span and radical inclusion (really radical inclusion!) ;) and your longstanding friendship, it is with reservation but not outright protest that I recommend Warren's participation in whatever sub-domain of I-I you deem appropriate, though I BEG YOU to keep your compadre on a short leash and divest him of his Schlessinger-like oversimplifications. (At least I didn't have to endure from Warren the self-righteous platitudes the moral matron dishes with such decadence!)

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest I can breathe easy and move on to the truly sordid details of my subtle safari!

After the smackdown at the loft I went to the Westin Hotel for the videotaping of Ken and Warren's dialogue which will be aired on Integral Naked. There, I had the immense pleasure of meeting Paul Salamone (kick-ass editor of The Manifest e-zine, I-I's resident artistic director, indie rock aficionado, and the person most responsible for encouraging the writing efforts which got me on board with the scene in Boulder--ROCK, Paul!) After hugging Paul (and a number of other awesomely warm people) I happened to glance across the room to the person behind the camera and recognized (promptly throwing myself upon) my "forum friend" Dan Allison (aka, Buddha Boy, hereby nominated as the Integral Youth Mascot).

While Warren and Ken did their thing, Micki and I passed a pen and pad of paper back and forth, furiously scribbling rebuttals and counterpoints to some of Warren's more creative statistics and assertions. About three quarters of the way into the silliness, Corey (DJ Rekluse) cruised by and asked me my take on the whole gig. We whispered back and forth until one of the camera people turned around and shushed us so we shut our shit up and behaved like good little students in Integral Sex and Gender Studies Class.

After the dialogue at the Westin, went out to dinner at Tuk Tuk with about a dozen people who'd attended the taping, and over pea pods and pad thai did a sort of Deida vs Farrell/Farrell vs feminism analysis, circumscribed within a conversation which explored postconventional principles as manifested and translated in terms of conventional gender roles and attitudes. (Does that make sense? My world was rocked.)

Later that night drove through a snowstorm to what everybody referred to as "The Boulder House" which turned out to be Ken's place (he rents to the integral crowd since moving to Denver.) After Cher and Marco were kind enough to show me the lay of the land (amazing library, and thangkas in abundance, along with some Alex Grey originals and other groovy art), I headed off to thaw my frozen self in a blissfully hot shower (aaaaaahhhhh.) Turned out I slept in Rollie's room (Integral Naked's managing editor, aka, "Mooseboots Rolliesattva," who wasn't due back from Canada til the following day). I parked myself in my pajamas on the cushion, delighting in the velvet silence as it enveloped my motionless form. I noticed that my breathing, which normally takes about ten to fifteen minutes to regulate, almost immediately became slow and even, and I suddenly realized that the house held a profoundly palpable energetic support for practice. Practicing in the Boulder House felt a little like sitting with Genpo Roshi.

The next day we (Cher, Mark, and myself) headed back to the Westin Hotel for a meeting in preparation for the Integral Transformative Practice Seminar which was due to begin the next day. I walked into the conference room and made a beeline for the fireplace only to run into Diane Hamilton, Genpo Roshi's senior student who I know from Kanzeon in Salt Lake City. (The last time I saw Diane was at 2:00 am in her bedroom where she was conducting a seance with other sangha members around a ouija board--she's a TRIP!) She was presenting at the upcoming seminar, and needless to say, we were quite surprised to run into each other so far from home! I also met Willow Pearson (also presenting at the seminar), who I'd had the pleasure of speaking with for several hours a few days earlier in preparation for the Farrell dialogue.

The meeting began, and since I had no place to go (unless I wanted to hang out in the hotel lobby, which really wasn't to my taste) I watched from about ten yards away, perfectly content to cuddle up to the fire on one of the zafu's I'd snagged from the upcoming conference accoutrements. Jeff Salzman, who was leading the meeting, called out to me across the room, "Why don't you join us?" and I answered, "Because I haven't been invited! I'm not part of the seminar!" to which Jeff responded, "That doesn't matter! We need your input!"

I practically skipped over, thrilled at the invitation, and Jeff introduced me by saying, "This is Brandy, who as many of you know was invited here at the last minute into the lion's den for the Farrell dialogue; it turned out, however, that she was the lion!"

An hour or so into the meeting, I headed to the beverage table for some chai tea, and ran into Brett Thomas, co-host of the Integral Business and Leadership domain at Integral University, who was due to present an ITP module at the next day's seminar. We remarked to each other how cold the room was, and he made reference to both of us not having any body fat to keep us warm, and in unison, we both lifted our shirts to show each other our skinny bellies, laughing out loud and then hugging.

A conversation ensued wherein he expressed his need for editorial help with the web content of Stagen Leadership Institute, where he serves as R&D head, strategist, consultant, facilitator, and executive coach, and long story short--he hired me. Don't wanna jump the gun, but it looks like a working relationship made in nirvana...

smackdown at Ken's loft

2004-12-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Suckers! Though the tag-line of this entry's the naked truth, I figured all you integral voyeurs might be more inclined to peep this show with a title that teases. (All will be revealed, my AQALuscious compatriots...in due time.)

First off. Thanksgiving. I know it's after the fact, but let me just say I harbor more than just a bit of ambivlance toward this "holiday." As I wrote to my British friend the day before feasting:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the American commemoration of the settler's bountiful harvest ensuring their continued survival and colonization. Of course, it's also a celebration of what turned out to be the impending genocide of the native population, but we conveniently excise this fact from our consciousness.

Thursday afternoon, I received an email from Colin Bigelow (Ken Wilber's personal assistant who apparently believes he can subsist on a diet of martini olives and causal access), asking me, in essence, if I'd like to fly in over the weekend to address my issues with Warren Farrel face to face with Ken and Excomm (aka, The Integral Borg) in the Bald One's Denver abode.

Okay, I said. (It's kosher--no big deal, right? Like, I get an invitation from Ken to hang at his loft and air my issues all the time.)

Right.

"Oh, and by the way," says my Unspoken friend, "Excomm will be making a decision about whether Warren is invited to be a part of the Integral Sex and Gender Studies domain based on the discussion on Saturday."

No pressure.

Since Willow can't make it, I'm initially told it'll be just me, Ken, Warren, and the boys (the executive committee--Jeff, Marco, Rollie, Huy, and Colin. Um, can I get that testosterone on the rocks, and spiked--with estrogen?) Shortly thereafter, somebody with sensitivity training (maybe Jeff, who by his own admission is "as gay as a tree full of chickadees") must have realized that in the interest of gender parity, the issues at hand might be better served with the inclusion of another female (ya think?) and I'm informed I won't be the sole bearer of an XX chromosone configuration.

I flew into Denver Internation Saturday morning and wasted a half hour going back and forth with Orbitz after I failed to print my shuttle voucher and needed it faxed. By the time I jumped on the Super Express it was 10:45 and I was due at the loft by 11:00. I arrived half hour late.

Shit.

From the lobby phone I dialed upstairs to the loft and Ken answered, hello?

It's the Navigationally Challenged Wonder requesting to be buzzed in! (I was beginning to feel like a character in The Matrix.)

Turned out it was Ken, Warren, Jeff (chirp, chirp), Pashmina (I-I tech genius), Marco (IN big kahuna) Cher (resident media goddess) Mark (Integral Spirituality domain), Micki (HR Headmistress), and me.

Shook hands with Warren and Ken (my but you're tall, and...um, developed in more ways than one) and the games began. The entire exchange, which lasted about an hour and a half, was too involved to reiterate here, but suffice it to say that though I stand by my reservations about Warren, particularly as regards his theoretical orientation, I was fairly pacified about his actual character after witnessing his warmth and uncanny capacity for listening, and repeatingly noting his opennes and nondefense even in the face of taking him to task over the Penthouse piece. (I actually composed a letter to Ken detailing my post dialogue position after he solicited additional feedback, but I think better of posting it in the interest of privacy and politics--and here you thought I-I was free of all that first tier food fighting!) ;)

There's much more JUICE to this little tale but I've got copy to get jiggy with and deadlines to make. Stay tuned for further Adventures in Integral Rant and forthcoming disclosures about flashing my new friend at the ITP seminar meeting...

horrifying to hopeful

2004-11-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

!Hola my integral compadres! Allow me to share with you several points of interest--from the horrifying to the hopeful--that I came across during my morning reading.

Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, in a post election congratulatory letter to Dubya:

Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.

Paul Hodges responding to Canadian bioethicist Peter Singer's assertion of the nearly unlimited philanthropic application of nanotechnology in third world countries:

Well I love such naiveté. It’s sweet. But it’s not logical. Frankly, of course it’s true that nanotechnology could benefit the poor, of course it’s true that there’s areas of these technologies that in terms of energy, water and so on, that could be beneficial to the poor, and maybe some day will be beneficial to the poor. But the reality is, the issues are not what it could do, it is who owns it and who controls it. And the ownership and the control of this technology is initially with the world’s largest corporations and with the military of the world’s largest countries. And their interests are not the poor, their interests are to make sure that they are able to use technologies at the nano scale to benefit themselves and to make sure that they actually can use such a pervasive technological tool to strengthen their control over marketplaces, and naturally will not help the poor.

And last, Howard Zinn on hope and the nature of socio-political evolution:

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

On the home front, last night I dreamed that I "saw" my false self--it was a muddy brown, somewhat amorphous mass which seemed to be composed of swirling sewage and festering flotsam and jetsam. I didn't have much of an emotional response to the series of images, I simply observed them in an impartial but curious way (whereas my waking self would have been so averse I'd probably have run screaming for the shower). All of a sudden the dream became lucid, and I said to myself, "Oh, you're dreaming this! How funny! It seems significant--be sure to remember it once you wake up!"

Wednesday night I had a conference call with Paul Salamone and Marco Morelli to discuss the possibility of me assuming editorial direction of the upcoming I-I and I-U newsletters.

Opening the call, I was slightly anxious, feeling on the fringe of Paul and Marco's simpatico, but as soon as I confessed my nervousness I relaxed open into curiosity about how the conversation would unfold and began relishing the simple FUN of connecting with people I'd only communicated with through email.

As of now, the plan is for the newsletter(s) to launch sometime in December (naturally, the most insane month of the year!). Marco would network a series of sources for me to solicit copy from, and after polishing the various pieces, I'd have some wiggle room for my own AQALuscious creative embellishment. Paul (who's got some serious aesthetic flair) would then take charge of the layout and artistic dimension, ensuring a presentation with panache.

I really, really liked Marco and Paul's vibe--to my perception the interchange was very warm and expansive and I felt like the communication was clear, unencumbered, and consummately enjoyable.

My dream is to eventually assume a greater number of hours with I-I so I can quit my day job as a postal whore and maybe even arrive in Boulder already hooked up with fulltime employment. Now that would be creamy. =)

Taking back Jesus from the new Roman Empire

2004-11-18T11:04:00.000-08:00

Excerpted from Tom Hayden's editorial in Boulder Weekly, Learning From The Loss

(AQALuscious disclaimer: the "faction factor " in this piece is a bit annoying, but it's underlying thrust--shed of it's partisan posturing--is right on the money.)

Instead of "Jesus Saves," we need to save Jesus. This is no time for the Democrats to begin pandering to any on the Christian Right who have turned Jesus into a symbol for a vast and potentially illegal political network of tax-exempt, church-based, right-wing partisan activism.

Let’s look at the numbers. White evangelical born-again Christians, who were 23 percent of the total vote, gave Bush a 78 percent margin, and the very secular John Kerry 21 percent. White Catholics (like Kerry) provided 47 percent support. On the other hand, "white Jews" voted 75 percent for Kerry, voters who attend church "a few times a year" gave him 54 percent, and those who never attend religious services produced a 62 percent Kerry majority. People of color were Kerry’s strongest religious base.

In the wake of the election, many Democrats no doubt will begin repositioning themselves as born-agains. Instead they should articulate moral and spiritual values rather than misreading the separation of church and state to mean that such concerns are constitutionally out-of-bounds. They should also attack the transformation of institutional churches into de facto partisan agencies, and everyone, Christian or not, should battle to take back Jesus from Empire.

Jesus was a dissident on the fringes of the Empire of his day. As Father Gregory Boyle says, "Jesus stood with everybody who was nobody. He made a beeline [always] to stand with those on the margins, those whose dignity had been denied, the poor and excluded, the easily despised, the demonized, and those whose burdens were more than they could bear. And they killed him for it." Father Luis Barrios agrees, saying that the historical Jesus was ignored by the authorities until "he went downtown" to challenge the elite. As the Christian radical Cornel West writes in "Democracy Matters," "prophetic Christianity" is being eclipsed by "Constantian Christianity"; that is, the very Empire that crucified Jesus later transformed him into the symbol of an expansionary state religion. This is what the Machiavellians like Rove and the neo-conservative non-believers have done through the Bush presidency: build the beginnings of a theocratic state just beneath the surface of the Republican Party, a shadow network of believers nesting in every crevice of bureaucracy available.

It is no accident that the young men and women killing, dying, being maimed and disoriented in Iraq come disproportionately from God-fearing families in small towns, or that the Pentagon hierarchy still supports a general who promotes the superiority of "our God" over the Muslims. For some conservative Christians, neither the Crusades nor the Confederacy are over. They continue in whispers, in code, covertly, awaiting the moment when the Good News can be proclaimed again, from Washington to Babylon. For these people, the second term of Bush is the Second Coming.

The only way to counter this trend toward state religion is by engaging the Christian community, especially the conservative evangelicals, in a moral and theological dispute about Jesus. Talk of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not enough to break their paradigm. Pronouncements by liberal religious bureaucracies will not be taken seriously. The "people of faith" networks organized late in the presidential campaign are just the beginning of a populist spirituality as an alternative to the corporate-Republican cooptation of the faithful.

Stay tuned for a report of my conference call with the boys behind the scenes at Integral Naked...

Genpo Ox Herds all the way to Super Freak

2004-11-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hey yall! My little trauma fest has ended (for those who commented, thanks so much for the support--it means a lot) and The AQALuscious One is back in her usual fine form!

Saturday morning I drove to Kanzeon for Genpo Roshi's Zen Ox Herding workshop. Upon entering the zendo and noticing rows of chairs rather than the usual array of zafus, my mind turned instantly from mundane concerns and the thought arose, "Dammit! A perfectly good outfit wasted on the expectation of sitting on the floor!" (I'd worn jeans and a sweater when I'd rather have opted for an ensemble befitting my fabulous fashion sense.)

The workshop was AMAZING. Rather than providing opaque conceptual elaborations, Genpo rendered transparent the stages of enlightenment as portrayed through the ox herding images by directly engaging the participants in different exercises (drawn from the voice dialogue he incorporoates into his Big Mind process) turning their attention to the immediacy of their present awareness.

There were quite a few new people in attendance and Genpo made a particular effort to ensure he didn't lose anybody. With about an hour and a half to go, he inquired of a newcomer seated in the front row about her immediate experience, and she responded that she suspected that "all of this is pointless. There's no meaning in life, there's no reason for being here, and I really get the idea that everybody--including all of you--are full of shit and parroting stuff from a philosophy book."

Genpo immediately hooked in and asked with an undercurrent of humor, "Ah, am I speaking to the Pessimist?" After having a lengthy dialogue with the Pessimist, he called out the Cynic (who he called the Pessimist's "kissing cousin") and invited a thorough airing of it's grievances. He then asked to speak to Great Doubt, which he engaged with an intensity even exceeding the previous voices. I noticed his Presence, his absolute non-resistance--never wavered. Not once did he attempt to talk the voices out of their respective positions, nor did he make the slightest attempt toward pushing the self to disidentify with them. On the contrary, he affirmed and validated the voices through reflective listening and inquiry, pushing not for disidentification but for full ownership of the perspectives belonging to pessimism, cynicism, and doubt. He even went so far as to own similar experiences in himself and praised the voices for their perspectives, explicitly stating that he believed they were worthy of more respect from the self than they were accustomed to receiving. (The participant, without intending to be, was delightfully, charmingly comedic, and her humored flowered with every passing minute.)

After fully entertaining these voices, he asked to speak to Big Mind, and in a series of masterful pointing out instructions (accomplished through inquiry) which in no way negated the previously expressed perspective, he succeeded in revealing the Source and Suchness of the these perspectives. In a final stroke of brilliance, he brought the exercise full circle by laying bare the utter point-less-ness of Big Mind, demonstrating that it is not any point, but the Ground of all points and all perspectives. (After class, it turned out that the pessimistic participant paid her monthly dues and became an official Kanzeon member, and me, well, I hooked up Sensei with Saul Williams, since he's got a major soft spot for hip-hop.)

Saturday marked the end of a month long sesshin and there were people from all over the world in attendance. In celebration, a party was announced at Diane Hamilton's house. (Diane is Genpo's senior student, right hand woman, and is closely aligned with the integral psychology domain of I-I.)

The sangha was swingin'! It's not everyday that you see Genpo grooving with his dog to Super Freak, or Diane gyrating on a table, standing on her head, leading group prostrations, or conducting a seance from her bedroom. (I shit you not!) The live band had everybody singing to Brown Eyed Girl, Pretty Woman, and old Dillan songs. There was bellydancing in the back room, a tango performance by two women, and as the night wore on, kissing all around. The shindig was potluck and the dining room table was turned into a smorgasbord, and from the dozens of bottles on the kitchen counter, it was obvious that just about everybody had made a run to the state liquor store.

One guy in particular had overindulged, and expressed with all the earnestness his intoxicated self could muster that I was a manifestation of sky, and that until that night he had seen the sky but never I Am The Sky (I was wearing a sky-blue, fleece jacket, and found his confession both humorous and endearing.) I don't drink and by the night's end I commented to Genpo that I was fairly certain I was the only one not thoroughly inebriated.

Doen Sensei, Vice Abbot of Kanzeon has said he doesn't like gloomy sanghas, that he doesn't like centers where the teacher projects an air of inaccesibility. After Saturday's shindig and jitterbugging with Genpo (and every other member there), it's clear that the danger of this at Kanzeon is right up there with Dubya publicly declaring his sympathies with Satanism. =)

"got my rape hat on, but honey, I always could accessorize"

2004-11-12T16:04:00.000-08:00

I am numb, but I feel my edges curling in like burning paper. From the center of the cyclone I blow, trying to asphyxiate the flame, knowing I started the fire to snuff me out--

Ashes.

I am angry. And very sad. Ruined. I don't tell it to anyone this way, I don't tell it while I'm touching it. You don't fly a keyed kite in a lightning storm while standing in a puddle--

Shocked blank.

North face, sheets of snow. Reflective, white, smooth, pristine. Shock waves, reverberations, avalanche. Rocky crags--

Exposed.

Masculine gaze. Monological maze. Lost in the labyrinth, Minotaurs in pursuit. Caught, captured, ensnared, stripped. Cut and clawed to pieces, marred, defaced--

Marked.

The mind shares the secrets, the heart does not. Photographic negatives proffered, black and white psuedo-disclosures. The color hides in the heart, redness concealed from vampires who drain it dry--

Dead.

(Talk about ghostwriting.)

purging my baser instincts on 11/7, dammit!

2004-11-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

Salutations, my hygienically enlightened blogophiles! ;)

Oooh, it's a very temperate (60 degrees), steely gray, rainy day here! Magnifico! I feel very cozy here at work, if it's possible to feel cozy in black, nearly knee-high boots with four inch platform heels. (I swear, I must be like, six feet tall today--from this perspective, I've become totally fascinated with the parts in people's hair.)

By the way, this entry was actually composed TODAY (November 7th), but because I saved the links in a draft on Saturday, the date reflects 11/5.

For everybody who hasn't had the pleasure, allow me to introduce you to my illustrious forum friend, the Turquoise Troubadour. One of his latest contributions really struck a chord with me and touched on the deeper realizations that are dominating my awareness at this time (ie, that I can trust the integrity of my immediate experience), and I wanted to share his offering in the hopes it might speak to you as well:

How to move from controlling and being impulsive, to being spontaneous? ...It's about trusting. But I believe that you can’t really trust others FULLY unless you can trust yourself first. I’ve got to accept myself, every one of my many faults, not trying to change them, not indulging them, just accepting them, and trusting that I’m on a journey and its OK to be however I am right now. That’s what it is to love myself unconditionally. Unless I can do that, how can I love YOU unconditionally? And if I DO forgive myself – which is what it really amounts to – I find that I’ve spontaneously transformed into someone who can live for others, open to whoever and however they are, welcoming their quirks and overlooking anything they do to hurt me, because they’re on the journey too, they’re learning to dance too, and we’re both going to tread on each others toes now and then… Isn't that being integral? Understanding and seeking to compassionately embrace others, not naively blind to who and how they are but able to spontaneously trust in the divinity which can shine through them?

I'd like to follow that up with a gem from one of the most Open, equitable, and unfailingly friendly people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. His words ran deep with me.

To know how to hold on is easy. If you want to you will. When your grip is slipping, and [others] are stomping on your fingers, do you feel the pain? Good. Does it matter? No. If you are being what you want to be, without holding anything back then BE. You will hold on if you want to or if you must let go you will. Release the mind and follow what your heart tells you. It will show you what you need to be shown. Trust that what happens is not just you but [for others] too.

Heartfelt thanks, David and Shawn. (For anybody interested in seeing these crazy diamonds shine their subtle stuff full force--if you'd like to read their words as originally contextualized--click here.)

Hey, big thanks to everybody who responded favorably to my last entry. Having been relentlessly raised (razed?) to be a "lady" and to repress and deny all the courser elements of existence, I yet harbor fears that manifesting the more raw dimensions of myself will find my blog boycotted and myself branded as inveterately vulgar and somehow less than lovable.

That said, I may not relish raunch, but come on, the gross realm (and it can be gross) is fucking funny, is it not? I mean, the stuff the Witness watches, the descending current, the manifest nature of this moment, the earthiness of the Absolute, (how's that for a paradox?) is just too damn comical not to capitalize on, too amazingly mirthful not to mock!

As my friend Tim says, "Everybody has an asshole." In other words--and here I am compelled to quote The Great and Mighty Bald One:

You are not objects out there, you are not feelings, you are not thoughts-you are effortlessly aware of all those, so you are not those. Who or what are you?

One thing's for damn sure, for those of us aware of our assholes, it is clear that we are not these assholes, which leaves us free to witness them (figuratively, of course--contortionist's excepted) rather than be them, and this is good, because frankly, what remotely sane person wants to be an asshole?

Now, moving explicitly into the upper right quadrant (perty, eh?) and keeping with the spirit of my previous post, I give you The Five Stages of Bush:

The fro
The fade
The cactus
The crew
The snatch(ed) bald (viva la GentleLASE)

Hair is EVIL. That's right, evil--like right up there with depleted uranium, Monsanto's terminator seeds, the militarization of space, and mullets. As far as I'm concerned, it has no business being anywhere on my body except here, here, and here (pointing to head, eyebrows, and eyelashes.)

Ken hasn't covered this as yet (it belongs rightfully to his Post-Metaphysical/Wilber Phase 5 corpus), but female body hair is a product of the Fall, of evolution run amuck, of a kink in the kosmic order. The biblical passage that talks about "wrestling against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places"? HAIR, people! (And you mythic-membership literalists thought it was referring to Republicans.)

Fortunately, having come to the light, I have conquered the evils of hair--those little bitches are history! My illicit relationship with the razor ended a year ago, and let this be a lesson to all you unbelievers: with God (and a nuclear-strength laser), nothing is impossible.

(Having now purged the baser instincts from my system, I promise a return to the tame and tasteful blog that is in keeping with my higher AQALuscious nature.)

I am clean and you are (probably) not ;)

2004-11-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

The Five Stages Of Bush...

Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.

Acceptance?

(Sing it, Stu.)

For anybody who hasn't peeped Fuad's latest post, I strongly urge you to take a gander: http://fuism.blogspot.com/2004/11/election-reflections.html

I hate it that I don't blog more regularly, but I tend to be an all or nothing, extremist kind of chic--moderation just don't float my boat. I cruise by other people's blogs, and they're content to post these pithy little offerings which nevertheless pack quite a punch, like, thank you for visiting my crib, now that I've enlightened you, get the fuck out, get a life, and have a nice day. But no, El Loquacious Inebrianto must run on ad infinitum, like you people have nothing better to do than read my drivel, like my life is just sooooooooooo sexy the porno people are just clamoring to install video cameras in my laundry room coz me chucking wet clothes in the dryer is just so hot that it's fit for pay per view.

Speaking of hot, or trying to retain some semblance of it, I've been doing the gym thing before work rather than after, which means I'm arising at 7:00 am. I've seen some amazing skies on my way to the hell that is the stairmaster, and I'm making sure not to mar the pre-cardio serenity with the insertion of i-tunes into my ears. The immediate imposition of sound that soon after waking is a subtle violence to my soul, so until my body kicks into high gear I savor the silence that's just beginning to crack open as the world pecks itself awake out of it's sleeping shell.

My brief hiatus from the cushion is over. It feels good to be back. I'm actually finding that I'm wanting to sit for far longer than I have time for, like, um, Brand, get your ass up and go brush and floss your teeth--it's imperative if you want to keep your friends. (Who would have thought that sitting could ever preempt my hygiene rituals which are so regimented as to practically qualify as compulsions?)

Can I just be really offensive here and say how disgusting I find the average person's idea of personal hygiene? People, do you really think your teeth can be adequately brushed in three minutes? Do you really think that flossing is optional? (Ewwwww!) Do you understand that sliding a bar of slippery soap under your armpits for ten seconds does not qualify as sanitizing your shit? (ABRASION people--it's the key to clean.) And don't get me started on the oft overlooked areas--elbows, knees, between your toes, behind your ears, under your fingernails, for god's sake. And is it really necessary for me to tell you that yes, your butthole needs special attention, and girls, if you want to get what you're giving (and all who don't understand the reference need read no further), take a clue and realize that the Golden Palace's inner sanctum needs reburbishing, and not just it's facade (this would include the shrubbery).

Okay, rant over. That was harsh, I know, but it's for your own good.

It's grandly, gorgeously beautiful here today. The trees are still clinging to the last of their leaves and the sky is that deep, unperturbed blue that arises only after harvest has ended and the earth seems to somehow settle into it's orbit. Even though it's perfectly dry in the valley (and the temperature's tolerable at 61 degrees), the mountains are covered in snow and when the sun sets this evening the mountains will blush a brilliant pink. (Have you witnessed this phenomenon? Do you live in place where you know that snow reflects the colors of sunset? It's one of the most beautiful sights you'll ever see.)

I dreamed the other night that I was in the ocean swimming in rough waters not far beneath the surface. I came up for air at the dock and Genpo Roshi was there. He showed me how to dive deep, far beneath the commotion of the waves, and "spotted" me as I dived into the water. Needless to say, I found this dream very significant. Looking forward to sitting with him again on Sunday...

getting real

2004-10-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween! This has got to my favorite holiday of the year, probably because it falls within a season where the mountains are splashed with color and the shorn fields stretch out in stripes dotted with pumpkins and the crescent moon cuts like a scythe reaping a harvest of stars from a midnight indigo sky.

This time of year is when my life seems to complete full rotation on it's axis, when things revolve and evolve in such a way that it feels like some force beyond my will--though not contrary to it--is at work.

When I look back over my life, the most radical shifts in consciousness, in being, seem to reach some sort of critical mass on All Hallow's Eve, and though I've had more florid transitions than that which I'm experiencing now, this year is no exception. Mysterious ways.

I've been less than honest with myself. This much is clear. And I regret. I regret because you can't fail to deceive yourself without deceiving others and wreaking havoc in the lives of those close to you.

On some level, as much as I've tried to stay in integrity with my deeper self, I've been adhering to the designs of my ego, operating from a place of fear, and unconsciously recruiting agents of complicity.

This is, of course, all subtle stuff, nothing that any court of law could condemn me for, but having realized my tresspass, my own conscience indicts me, and I can't afford to luxuriate in self-serving guilt when it's clear I need to face the music.

I've been very anxious the past few days, trying to avoid thest things, even avoiding the cushion. I conveniently failed to attend this morning's dharma talk at Kanzeon, because I'm afraid of the starkness of what I'll witness when I sit still long enough to drop the distraction.

But even without the cushion, I do drop the distraction, and for the first time, things are looking pretty "clean," pretty naked, and I feel really vulnerable, like this is just too much exposure, too much pain.

So I experiment with the exposure, I run naked to trusted friends, noticing that even when I get square with myself, square with them, even when my little edifice of ego crumbles under the weight of confession and a torrent of tears, I still seem to be the same person, nothing is essentially different. It's still the same "me" watching from behind the scenes, now and then seemingly submerged under the flailing of an ego too afraid to drown.

leela said something today that struck me: We're all learning at each other's expense. It's something I've thought about so often, but she offered it to me at a moment and in a way that highlighted the bitter-sweet poignancy of the interpersonal dance and it's transformative potential. (Thank you for listening, leela, I love you.)

When I began this entry, I wasn't sure what would come out. This is, obviously, an uncharacteristically sober post, but I think it's particularly authentic, and authenticity is my call to arms right now.

To the person(s) I have harmed:

I am so sorry.
I've been lying to myself and to you
I was too afraid of the truth
So without realizing, without meaning to, I made up my own version
And offered it until you accepted.
I was trying to give you happiness
But I was also trying to protect myself
So my "gift" was actually a bargain
And thus a blasphemy.
You received a counterfeit
And when you suspected your forfeiture of authentic goods
I insisted you were mistaken, even paranoid
And shamed you for your insight.
You loved me freely
You gave me your heart
And I chastised you for not being satisfied with my mind
This was so unfair.
I saw from the beginning you were beautiful
I wanted that beauty
I was afraid to let it go
But it never rightfully belonged to me.
Forgive me for holding you
For denying you what is rightfully yours:
Someone truer than I have been
Who would not purchase their peace with your tears.
Such a one as yourself
Is worthy of the truth
I offer it to you now
And tell you once again,
I am so sorry.

travel log

2004-10-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

Oh WOW, New Orleans was a culinary shangri-la, a gustatory paradise! I ate myself into the ground!

After checking into our fabulous hotel, Jonathan took me to Mr. B's for dinner. Rather than going my usual au naturel, I swanked out in a crimson dress with lots of lycra, full-on make-up, and lips to match. In the ladies room I was checking myself out in the mirror, waiting for a bathroom to free up, squinting in the f-ing light (flourescent light, to those of you who appreciate the lovely greenish cast it lends to an otherwise porcelain complexion) exclaiming aloud, "Ooh! I don't need to see myself with such unforgiving clarity! God! there's that renegade eyebrow I've been trying to erradicate for the past two days!" and backing away from my excessively illuminated reflection lest I be seized with a compulsion to excavate my little handbag in search of my trusty tweezers.

At this point, a very beautiful woman emerged from the bathroom stall, gave me a long look, and said, "You look absolutely amazing in your red dress, and you need to know that! You go out there and enjoy your fabulousness!" (For all of you stifling the urge to dry heave at what must appear to be shameless self-promotion and insufferable vanity, do restrain yourself from exiting my blog and allow me to finish.) ;)

Legitimate arguments about the accuracy of this woman's assessment aside, although the compliment was directed at something as inane as my appearance, it was so obviously sincere and delivered with such warmth and generosity that it just made my night, and not because my aeshetic merit (or lack thereof) means so much to me. In that moment, this woman and I totally bonded. She opened up her heart and gave me a gift, simple as it was, and I opened up my heart to receive it, and there was that "touching" and mutual delight in each other that went so beyond the superficiality of the actual compliment or the ego which it pleased--it was subtle, baby! (Never underestimate the power of giving or receiving a sincere compliment!)

Jon and I traipsed around Tulane amid the architectural grandeur and massive oak trees, noticing the students and being struck by how young they really were, and finding it that much easier to forgive the follies and foibles of our late teens and early twenties by realizing that we were still kids at that time of our lives.

At the conferral ceremony we attended, I got to meet a lot of Jon's former classmates and friends, as well as mingle with about three hundred School of Architecture alumni where I scanned people's posturing, listened to their laughter, and canvassed their countenances. It's amazing how a slight hunch in the shoulders, a squared hip, a tilted chin, or a hand tucked in a pocket can reveal so much. I'm particularly struck by the strains of laughter--how a discordant tone can betray harshness, grandiosity, malice, emnity, or indifference, and conversely, how more harmonious notes can bespeak openness, tolerance, humility, vitality, and amity.

But it's the countenance that interests me most, which inexorably draws my attention. Faces generally don't lie, and the nuances of visage, the almost inperceptible facets of expression, the faint curve of a lip, the slight slant of a eyebrow, the laxness of jaw, the directness of gaze, and most especially the subtler qualities transparent to a trained eye...these render character all but pellucid. I surveyed the crowd surrounding me and asked myself, if I were in trouble, if my life depended on finding a confidant and ally in this sea of strangers, if I were conducting a "blind trust test," who would I choose? As I began my theoretical selection of candidates, I looked across the room to Jonathan who was conversing animatedly with an old friend, and recognized the same unfailing kindness and care that I had seen in his eyes our first night together when I met his gaze over the nirvanic veggie burgers at Houston's. I felt such a rush of pride in a person whose virtues run deeper than most have vision to appreciate.

We attended a lecture given by an alumni absolutely awash in accolades for his editorship of what is the premier, most progressive architectural publication in print at this time (dammit, I can't remember his name, or the name of his magazine). His presentation was off the cuff and from the heart, movingly so, but what really swabbed my deck was his explicitly integrally-informed vision. The man fucking covered every quadrant, relating architecture to self, culture, and nature, elaborating on the aesthetics and psychology of design, relating this to social activism and the demand for decent housing and the call for community centers, and weaving these dimensions and mandates to the techno-economic structures and institutions whose responsibility it is to support and nuture those capable of realizing a unified, wholistic poeisis and praxis in the service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I was inspired.

This holiday was the most pleasurable and poignant I've ever enjoyed, and it wouldn't have happened without Jonathan's unbelievable generosity. With the warmth, affection, and deep connection we shared, and between some of the most arrestingly gorgeous architecture in America, the stateliness of Saint Charles Avenue, the circus-like surrealism of the French Quarter, the cancan meets Larry Flynt bizarreness of Bourbon Street, the provincial charm of the crazy-quilt neighborhoods, the deliciously haunted gothic graveyards, the allure of the abandoned warehouses and crumbling tenements, the siren song of the Mississippi, and the aroma of creole spices and scent of voodoo wafting through the entire city, it was nothing short of magical. I think all of this is a memory I'll entertain from my deathbed. It was that beautiful.

the Big Easy and Dhakfu's Crib

2004-10-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Some separation! Come Wednesay, Jonathan and I are headed off to the most fantastically haunted city in America for some Halloween festivities and relationship fortification! (No, Phil, I did not say fornication, though I'm down with that as well.) ;)

It's so perfect that we're sharing this holiday together because in July Jon braved and bonded with the ENTIRE George fam (me, Mom, my six sisters, and our karmically blessed brother) in Goblin Valley, Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands, Zions, etc, which are my summer stomping grounds, so it's only fitting that I take flight to the Big Easy, since it's as dear to Jon's heart as any place on earth. (He graduated from Tulane with his master's in architecture and came of age in the Garden District in the shadow of plantation houses and gothic crypts and knows New Orleans' intricacies like the lines in my palm.)

I LOVE the haunted places, which is why I adore New Orleans, and also why I'm enthralled with southern Utah. New Orleans is haunted with the passage of Time and it's delicious decay, whereas southern Utah is haunted with the TimeLESS and the vast silence which only a place untouched by culture and it's constructions can possess. They're opposite ends of the spectrum, and I'm mad about both poles. (Oooooh! I'm so excited! Autumn's my favorite season, and Halloween's my favorite holiday, and it's just too scrumptious that I get to spend this time of year with my favorite person on the planet in the dark beauty of one of America's oldest outposts!)

Okay yall, nuff about New Orleans; cruise over to Dhakfu's crib and get a little taste of postconventional politics meets the Contraband-Culture Bodhisattva! (My little ditty on civil disobedience down at the bottom of the blog was inspired by the sentiments of such as Fuad, Zinn, Chomsky, and co, and no apologies to those of you who mistakenly confuse "integral" with "moderate.") ;)

Fuad offered his take on the debates and the feudal fanfare that passes for political process, and I couldn't resist but respond in kind:

So weary and teary of these pushers and powers behind the throne
citizens bling-bleary with bomb-fear who won't Mammon disown

Ivory towered, partisan animals
war dogs all, corporate whores, power-pimped cannibals

Labels and slogans, elephants, asses,
"free"-basing rhetoric, opiating the masses

Blood crusaders smoking crack, talking smack in the dockets
Defrock the motherfuckers, install the poets, priests, and prophets

Paging the sages spinning subversive
myth-making's inversive

Trump the Donald's extra-legal indemnity
Transcend the politics of identity
Embrace the Unborn Supremacy

We shall overcome

Peace out

integral outreach and souler flares

2004-10-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, I'm so overwhelmed by everyone's support as expressed in the comments to my last entry! To those of you who responded--thank you immensely for your warmth and enthusiasm and integral outreach--it's fuel for my fire and amplifies my happiness and sense of excitement exponentially! (Big hug, everybody!)

I am ecstatic about all the new friends I've made in the past six months through the integral community! I spent the better part of my twenties in the most profound social isolation and debilitating anxiety, wondering if I was too irrevocably fucked up to enjoy a community of "normal" people. (To hell with the tyranny of the so-called "normal," right?) ;)

Just four years ago, when I initially moved to Florida with Jonathan and was confronted with the prospect of having to hold a job that entailed daily interface with dozens and dozens of people, I felt paralyzed. I remember crying and crying the night before my first day of work and expressing the irrational fear that others could discern my history just by looking me in the face, and how I couldn't bear the condemnation I was sure I would see reflected. (I was well aware that this belief was utterly irrational, but because the experiences underlying it had not been sufficiently addressed and metabolized, I was incapable of altering the perception in any deep, stable way.)

Shortly following the episode of employment paranoia, it was to my utter amazement that I discovered that by and large, people liked me. Absolutely none of what I anticipated came to pass; in fact, I found that I had absolutely no trouble getting along and connecting with anybody: gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor, shy, gregarious, liberal, conservative, old, young, educated, or illiterate. (Coming from a horrifyingly homogenous racial and socio-cultural environment--can you say blue-meme Crackerville meets uber affluent, neo-conservative enclave?--I almost expected that my naivete to any real-world diversity might manifest as interpersonal conflict and was pleased as postconventional pie when nothing of the sort materialized.) The freedom of gearing up for the social safari dressed in my natural personality and divested of crippling self-consciousness was sheer euphoria, and I relished the hunt for human contact and made up for lost time chatting up people in grocery lines, gas stations, dressing rooms, bank lobbies, and reception areas.

But I was still a FREAK (and no, I'm not talking about my finely honed fashion sense, or my bedroom behavior), because as many people as satellited my sphere, there were so few who I felt I could express and share my depth experience with and actually be understood by. It was like, I was so juiced about sharing the loooove, about finding something beautiful in everyone and offering them the gift of that reflection and bonding in the openness which was created between us, but if I wanted to dialogue about development, if I wanted to discuss Dzogchen, if I wanted to conversate about Krishnamurti, if I wanted to exchange about Emerson, if I wanted to address Integral and elaborate the AQAL model, if I wanted to marvel over the mystics...fugettaboutit! Beneath the colorfully undulating social-scape that had been so essential to stablizing certain interpersonal aspects of my conventional development, the depth connection was woefully lacking, and I became painfully intimate with the face of transpersonal social alienation, which reached a climax on Christmas Eve, 2003, when in an act of divine desperation I suscribed to Integral Naked.

I skulked behind the scenes for months and months before finally getting up the gumption to contribute my first post, and great balls of mystic fire! seven months later, to the day, the world is my integral oyster and subtle aphrodisiac! ;)

Since then, I've made so many heart-friends, established so many new connections, networked across the country and continent, and watched as my world has rubbed it's I's and yawned wide open to infinity as it continues to awake as this Dream which is arising like a shimmering mirage in my awareness.

I feel such a sense of joyful, exuberant anticipation as to where my karma might take me, and for those of you who are walking with me, lending your presence and passion and playfulness to my path, thank you with all my heart!

AQALuscious blessings on all beings!

it's official!

2004-10-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

Well folks, it's official! Integral Naked's own Paul Salamone, who has been unfailingly supportive of my writing endeavors for months and who has been incredibly generous in negotiating a paid position with I-I on my behalf, came back to me via email this afternoon confirming I'm now being pimped by the most kick-ass integral site on the worldwide web. ;) It also appears I'll be working with Paul's pal Colin, producing some of the audio dialogues as well, so it seems I'm on to greener (or yellower, for all you Spiral Dynamics junkies) pastures.

Paul also relayed recently that he'd recommended me to eventually assume the position of IN's managing copy editor, which not only meant a lot to me personally (I have a lot of respect for Paul, so his opinion carries considerable weight) but really buoyed my confidence and fueled my dreams of working fulltime for Integral Institute. I'm not counting my chickens before they're hatched, but I am taking care to nurture my dreams.

Anyway, have I neglected to express how grateful and excited I am at the opportunities that are opening up for me and the possibilities that lay on the path ahead? I am! I am! I am!

my Rocky Road Realization

2004-10-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have neglected my blog for too long! Looking at the lapse I feel a pang of guilt like I experience when I notice that one of my plants has began to wilt for lack of water!

The past week and a half has been so full--it's manifested as a mixture of incredibly coarse, abrasive, relative recognitions applied to the rough grain of my life, combined with the richest, creamiest, smoothest infusion of subtle energy--call it my Rocky Road Realization.

My darling Jon was out to visit me this last week (Sept 27th-30th) and it was a beautifully trying time. There were never two people who love each other more than we, and I'm happy just to be in his presence, but I felt like our currents were colliding, and for the first time, the fork in our path didn't induce panic in me.

Thursday night after I saw him off at the airport I phoned Integral Naked's own Miss Congeniality (Ashley Cooper) and a lot of subtle stuff shook out. At one point I began crying and expressing a deep sense of conflict coupled with an intuitive sense of how things in my relationship might unfold, and then contorted my mind into a fury of second guessing, saying, "But maybe I'm wrong, maybe I can't trust myself." I paused and she interjected, "Did you hear what you just did with your voice?"

Her question was a clarion call and a light flashed on when I realized that the moment I had begun to second guess myself that I had stopped crying (effectively obstructing the energy) and moved from an unhindered, integrated, soul-level apprehension to a dissociated, intellectual, contracted construction. This was a revelation to me, and and there was a powerful transparency to the constellation of my awareness which allowed me to see that it was not the frantic cognitive constructions of self-doubt but the spontaneous authenticity arising from my Deep awareness in the NOW that was ultimately more real and the foundation from which I could TRUST my experience as emanating from that beyond my egoic self.

When I was at Dharmapalooza in June I entertained a conversation with my dear friend Joe (godfather of the Atlanta Mafia) about some of the same issues I was addressing with Ashley. At that time I was also crying, and also second guessing myself, and Joe told me in no uncertain terms that I could trust my feelings (meaning my deeper experience taken as a whole and not merely the emotional component of such). My response was to respond, "Sure, I can trust my feelings, but as to whether they belong to the present or the past, I can't determine, so I'm in a state of constant confusion and can't rely on them to guide my action!" What I failed to see until the other night is that whether the feelings belong to the present or past is secondary to the fact they arise in the NOW, and thus constitute my IMMEDIATE, AUTHENTIC experience (unlike the perpetual mental machinations), an as such are the only reliable source from which to act.

Friday night Jonathan called me while I was on my way to the mall for a little retail therapy and asked me to articulate my thoughts on the fruits of our time together. I told him that I didn't feel able to at that moment, and would respond in a letter. I expressed myself to him in email as follows:

My perspective has widened to such a degree that I'm literally not even sure how to convey it, how to do it justice with words, and that's why when you asked me to speak about everything last night I literally felt unable to. Everything that's transpiring within my awareness is not linear, not even cyclical--it's like this living, breathing, omni-dimensional constellation of emerging insight and growing clarity--and I didn't feel like I could produce any accurate reflection of my interior process on demand. My experience is not monological, but dialectical; not black and white, but swirling, whirling, merging, melding vortexes of color; not static or stagnant, but in flux and flow; not either/or but both/and.

The gravity and scope of all of this was of a nature that though it took me some time to metabolize and translate in such a way that I felt like I really had my "bearings," and as usual my sagacious friend leela was the person most instrumental in this process. She has endured many a phone call where she's lent her presence while listening to me wander around in my own awareness, gently but directly steering me back to the clarity of my own immediate experience when I stray into the shadowlands of cognitive confusion. Thanks to her, I feel like I've reached a sort of critical mass in achieving objectification of those contents of awareness which only two weeks ago constituted the subject of such.

Needless to say, in relation to negotiating the relative realm, these realizations have proved profoundly freeing, and it's been amazing to watch my world literally fall wide open to reveal a fertile valley of soul-soil that's nuturing the dreams and desires that are emerging from it.

It's now a week later, and early this evening I returned from work to messages to call Jonathan as soon as possible. I phoned and we connected and he told me how he'd been to his psychotherapy appointment and had realized that he was simply exhausted and--here he began to qualify by expressing his love and stating he wasn't leaving me and didn't intend to date other people--needed to take a break from our relationship for an indefinite amount of time.

As unsettling as his news was, I felt such a sense of "rightness" about it, such a sense of relief, tinged with a faint outline of sadness, arising within a field of trust in the kosmos. I told him that I was concerned with two things at this time: Being true to myself and supporting him as he did the same to those ends which furthered and fostered his greatest happiness, regardless of whether they conflicted with my own desires. I told him that I was sending him off with my complete support, and that I wanted him to be totally open to whatever he discovered in the space of our separation, and that I was with him in Spirit. We expressed our deep love for each other and hung up the phone.

Minutes later, a week from our previous conversation, I was back in touch with Ashley, and our dialogue was a two-hour supernova of insight, communion, and exploration. I had a very marked sense that our dialogue was amazingly auspicious in terms of setting the tone and rythym for what's around the bend with Jonathan and I, and for as much pain as this path may bring, I feel that we've both embarked on an adventure which will find us realizing our Heart's deepest desire.

To anyone who's shared this chapter of my story with me, thank you for your presence.

a birthday parable

2004-09-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

This entry is dedicated to the man, the myth, the musician, the indie-rock Bodhisattva and boyfriend extraordinaire, Jonathan Jaffee! (All hail his birthdayness!)

Thirty-six years ago today, Jonathan Jaffee emerged on this plane for yet another cycle of samsara. Rumored to be a Jesus killer back in his hardcore hebrew days several thousand years ago, all that negative karma required more than one lifetime to reparate and landed him a gig with Brandy George, who, in her zeal to help him gain merit, selflessly agreed to torture his ass with her neurotic obsessions and compulsions until the day of his final purgation.

Little did she see, however, that this construction was but a delusion of her own mind, and as fate would have it, there came a day where it became apparent that her favorite Jew Boy was already realized as the very Christ his people were purported to have killed, and that rather than she "saving" him, it was he saving her by making it clearer and clearer that though she searched high and low, there was, including herself, no one to save.

Jonathan, darling, if in fact I can be said to possess such, I owe you my sanity and capacity for compassion! You are a living example of selfless love and the Heart that is our true nature, and my life is immeasurably brighter because of you! You are an awesome embodiment of all that is good, true, and beautiful, and whatever corner of the kosmos you inhabit, it is better for your presence!

Happy Birthday, Baby! I love you so.

conversations from postal purgatory

2004-09-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

Can I just say that this day has been less than pleasant? That said, I am in no mood to detail my drama, and thought instead I'd slap up an email exchange between myself and a twenty-year old co-worker and co-conspirator who I find terrifically amusing.

Blogophiles, I give you Natalie Psuik and Brandy George, starring as Mormon miscreants in Conversations From Postal Purgatory:

N: I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR BLOG! i miss sitting next to you and your sanity. you just EXUDE it! i walk by just to get a whiff of bullshit-less air that you make in that cubicle of yours. this way i'll be able to at least read about the trans-mormon, lest to be smote with transcendental light day after day, as the unholy gawker. yes. i am natalie psuik, and i approve brandy george.

i'm really perturbed at that britney girl, for she has taken my abandoned seat (no one's fault but my own) and brought flocks of men her way. i really just want to rip her arms off her body and beat her senseless with them. there's my carnivorous nature rising above the tofu.

B: Thanks for being so excited about my blog, it makes me feel grand and amplifies my jollies exponentially!

I miss sitting next to you too. I have NOTHING against Britney, but she's so la la, like, just a teeny bit confused (crossing eyes).

That "bullshitless air" comment is one of the most ego-inflating compliments I've ever received; you know how to pour it on! (Sheesh, I'm gonna have to spend an extra hour in meditation just to get over myself!) ;)

N: you would think that certian individuals would learn from letting 12people go home around 11am. but whatever. [When things get slow here in postal purgatory, the sups send people home, only to leave the remaining employees drowning in customers ten minutes later.)

and i do swear that bullshitless is a REAL word. at least in my vocabulary. and this old man who couldn't hear monkies fuck if he wanted to, is spending all my social security money on stamps. if it were alcohol, prostitutes, or pot - i would be okay with it. because i know for a FACT that i won't get social security. what did they raise the age to again? is it 87 now? and that was 23.87 amonth? gracious of the government, n'est pas? i would rather have half a pot to pee in, thank you.

hopefully you're able to go on mental auto pilot so too many braincells aren't lost by the end of the day! i can just see it now - i'm 92 in an apartment with like, 61 cats, andall i do all day is watch the price is right (bob barker is in his1893th year...) blink once for yes and two for no, and my ticks ares creaming item numbers all day long - living on 23.87 a month.

N: I'm ego tripping at the gates of hell (if you're a Flaming Lips fan)

thank you. your support is SO appreciated. "hey nat, want to go to a corn maze?" as they're sure to pack the zippo. (and i thought this joan of arc behavior went out of style circa 1431. heesh.)

but, in psuik politik news:

there was a fierce battle with my brother over amendment 3 (9 parts changing webster's dictionary 91 parts homophobic) he was going off like those fags and dikes were going to slap him with their heathen goo that makes you sterile and transforms your children into liberal
activists. (if we could only be so lucky...)

i was like, "where in the hell is your psyche!?!" it really made me laugh because in greek mythology psyche is the personification of the soul. you have just gotta sit and think about
what these haters have going on in their MINDS. it's a fuck, really.

if the mind is the personification of the soul - i'd hate to read the auras of capital hill. talk about a dark mishap during holi.

anyway. working 10-6:30 really bites the big one. plus we have been insane today and alas - they keep sending people home.

B: A Flaming Lips Fan? YOSHIMI here, DIG? ;)

The Psuik Politik hyperlink has gone to hell (or the Whitehouse--same difference) and she that Battles Pink Robots and Republican reprobates can't get a hook up!

Corn mazes are perfectly frolicksome but only for those whose jeans are looser than their moral standards and looking for the perfect public place to consummate their counter cultural impulses. ;)

Tell your Jesus loving brother not to knock it til he's tried it, just to provoke him to a display of self-righteousness only a hardcore-hetero homo-phobic can aspire to and then inform him you intend to expand his horizons by testing the limits of his tolerance by assuming a sexual relationship with someone sharing your preferred tampon brand.

Yes, dear psyche has been confused with the monkey mind she is sovereign over, and the mental machinations attributed to her have as much depth as the petri dish she is supposedly examined in. Psyche will always be the mother of a mind asleep to it's source and suchness, and no amount of rationalize discourse will convince the wayward ego otherwise. (Meditate, dawgs, meditate!)

Speaking of, homegirl is hanging at Genpo Roshi's (Salt Lake's own internationally respected Zen Master and Spiritual Teacher Extraordinaire) Big Mind workshop this Saturday--viva la satori! ;)

What the FUCK is this today? I'm thinking they should lay off a few of us, seeing as we've got as much down time as Paris Hilton in a bordello. (Think of all the negative karma we're burning by hanging with this shit!)

Burn, baby, burn!
In agitation and equanamity,
Brandy

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do you say, my AQALuscious friends? Am I or am I not in the presence of comedic greatness? I think I'm working with SNL's future diva. ;)

savoring samsara (nod to Stu)

2004-09-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

Yeehaw! It's been a rip-roarin' wild ride the past few days! Something's coming down the postconventional pike but lord knows what! My monkey mind's ridden the merry-go-round more than once this week while I've witnessed it's smacked out antics with a smile borrowed from the Buddha.

I think it all started last week during a conversation with Jonathan, when it dawned on me, Oh my gosh! I am, like, super controlling!

No, girlfriend, says my boyfriend, you're like, the least controlling person I know!

Au contraire mon frere, I counter, it's subtle shit I'm shakin' down, it's way of life, it's super stealth, seen only by homegirl here!

Dig, people? This isn't the sort of controlling you think of when picturing your knuckle-dragging, grunting ex-boyfriend, or your whining, sniveling, "why do you have to hang out with your guy friends instead of me?" manipulatrix, this isn't all the overt I am the Law shit--this is that all but conveniently undetectable grasping, clinging, clenching, and contracting that constitutes your entire fucking ego identity that you would rather NOT die than give up, since to give it up would literally mean the death of the illusion you mistake (with relatively rare exceptions) for the sovereign of your psychic house.

It's not like all of this is conceptually nouveau, just that it really hit me in this moment of spontaneous Witnessing wherein it was all so crystal clear in a way never before realized. There was this really crisp recognition that all the things I'm trying to control by way of resistance are nothing but self-employed smoke screens serving to conceal the actual source of suffering, which is the action of resistance itself, and not the impinging "objects" which I imagine assail "me" in times of perceived threat. (And I've been a student of Buddhism for how long?)

Anyhow, swifty here will undoubtedy have to see the film roll on this one only about a hundred more times before she really gets it, but hey, maybe the workshop this weekend will kick off the subtle cinema in a Big Mind sort of way.

Bonding with leela has really been a shot to the sky that's shocked a flock of doves out of the kabbalistic tree in my head. The force of her presence on my subtle self is inexplicable to me, and though I don't pretend to understand exactly what's happening, I do recognize that some profound psychic shift has commenced with her arrival upon the scene of my life. I don't know what's around the bend, but whatever it is, I anticipate wider and deeper vistas ahead.

My relationship with Jon is morphing, in ways that can't find impression on my conceptual mind. Things are evolving behind the scenes with both of us, and at this point all I can discern is the mirthful movement behind the curtain and the sound of laughter that seems to be laughing at nothing but it's own play in the folds of red velvet. What I do know is that amidst the fluxing feelings and standing at the crossroads of confusion, I feel more love for this person--this dear, precious, unbelievably pure man--than I ever dreamed possible, and whatever our future holds, I will always regard Jon as the "mother" to my soul.

I can't make out the words, but there is a new sound, a new song on the wind...

and ode to I-I and girlfriends

2004-09-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Shined out of bed yesterday at about 10:30 and made myself a trough (three servings) of oatmeal peppered liberally with cinnamon and raisons and sweetened with just a touch of honey, chased with a multi-vitamin which, judging from it's size, was stolen from a horse stable.

Breakfast finished and still in pajamas, I settled myself at the computer and did some research on Sherilyn Fenn (of Twin Peaks fame) and completed a bio on her to pop off to Paul at Integral Naked, since her interview will be airing in the near future.

My darling Jew Boy called and gave me all kinds of props for the piece I'd just finished (the bio) and we bonded over the traumatic tale of his pristine Lexus being dinged in the door by his ninety-six year old, foxtrotting, (for real) neighbor who just lost her husband, and who could obviously not be confronted with something so "petty" while in the midst of her grief. (And you wonder why I LOVE this man!)

Then the High Priest of Hygiene showered and dressed herself and had the immense pleasure of speaking with her forum friend, leela, on the phone for the first time.

Leela, who's been accurately described as "Kwan Yin with Attitude," is one of those inimitable women whose combination of luminosity, colossal intelligence, cutting insight, quick wit, unconquerable compassion, post-conventional playfulness, and poetic panache defy categorization (I think I'm in love!). ;) Speaking with her in person was like a subtle punch in the third eye, and I hung up the phone an hour and half later noting a half dozen startling synchronicities between our lives and feeling like I'd been communing with an "earth-treading star." (I'm of the mind that this is one of those friendships that is benevolently fated and sealed for life.)

My sweetly passionate friend Gina arrived for our dinner date, and over the bread basket and french onion soup I thought to myself that she was living proof that I must have done something really karmically meritorious in my last life. (How else can I explain my incredibly good fortune in enjoying Best Friend Status with somebody so unbelievably huge hearted and exquisitely souled?) Gina comes from one of those families that statistically speaking, should have produced a serial killer and not the beautiful Bodhisattva that I was looking at across the table, and her life (like leela's) is a testament to her indominatable spirit and the goodness, beauty, and truth that prevails in the face of even the most blatant disregard for the sanctity of life. ("Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." --Albert Einstein.)

Afterwards, we talked in the car for about three hours, and during the course of the conversation the analogy of not being able to see your own eye as pointing to the reality of the Witness came up, in that whatever you can "see" (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc) is obviously not the transcendental Seer, since it is this Seer that is doing the seeing . (ie, "what you are looking for is what is looking.") Then Gina pointed out something that I thought was absolutely brilliant, and though I can't relate it as eloquently as she, the basic idea was that although you can't see your own eye, when you gaze directly into the eye of another, you can see the miniature reflection of your own face, and that this eye to eye (I to I) phenomenon is one of the kosmic "jokes" writ in flesh. Again: when, with illuminated awareness, you look into the eye (the I) of another, you are LITERALLY looking at your Original Face, your own Self. (As a side note, it is interesting that Integral Institute is abbreviated I-I, since it points to the truth that there is only one Eye--one I, one Self--who is always already looking ONLY at Itself as there are NO selves "other" to It.)

I bounded up the stairs from the parking lot where Gina and I had been talking and telephoned Grace, who I've been playing phone tag with for a week. Grace, who lives up to her name, is no-holds-barred brilliant, astoundingly generous, fiercely commited to her pathless path, intuitive to the point of being psychic, and icily beautiful (in direct contrast to her incredibly warm nature). Alas, Grace could not be reached.

Around midnight, and to the tune of hauntingly howling winds, I went to bed with a smile on my face, thinking that the day had been one of the finest Friend Fests I'd enjoyed in a long time. Today I feel my heart blooming open with all the friendships that are growing in the garden of my life, and I can't wait to see, after the coming winter, what Spring will bring.

this just in...

2004-09-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

This just in! Next Saturday, Septemember 25th, I'll be attending a Big Mind Workshop with Genpo Roshi! Being close to Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City, I've had opportunity to sit with this extraordinary embodiment of the Dharma on more than one occasion, but a whole day in the presence of this living Buddha should seriously fuck my subtle shit up--maybe even land me squarely in causal; I figure by 6:00 pm I'll have saved all sentient beings.

Seriously though, I feel so blessed to have this opportunity, particularly because I sense that my sitting practice needs strengthening. I'm realizing more and more that the support of a real life sangha (as contrasted with this, as wonderful as it is) cannot be underestimated, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make the trip to Salt Lake to sit with my dharma brothers and sisters as often as is possible.

Saturday the 25th...I'm counting down the days... Until then, I'll be heeding the wisdom of Blade Runner: Wake up, time to die...

giving it up for the Domestic Dakini

2004-09-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

Wow, yesterday was fabulous, even with the dead cricket splayed out lifeless on the strawberry slice garnishing my salad at Mimi's Cafe. Um, waitress, might we have the rest of our meal at no charge, and might you throw in dessert for good measure, lest we broadcast that your establishment is stricken with a plague and pestilence? ;)

The world arose in my awareness yesterday in full regalia; it was a series of exquisite hours crowned with azure skies, golden haze, and mountains firebombed red, amber, and pumpkin by gods wrathful at summer's theft of autumn glory.

My Mom (one hand clapping for the Bodhisattva Mama) and my sister Robin (Green Tara meets Jenny McCarthy) decided to hike the scenic trail in American Fork Canyon to Timpanogas Cave, an undertaking not for wussies, pussies, wimps or whiners, seeing as it's uphill both ways.

As we gleefully bitched our way to the top while exclaiming about the natural beauty, the elegance of the AQAL model, the archetypal significance of the spectrum of light, and cursing the deadly ultra-violet (to hell with safe sex, I practice safe sun), the spirit grew ever willing while the flesh needed a good Zen beating.

About three quarters of the way up Mom was stick-a-fork-in-me done, and Robin, hot and bothered, informed me I'd be going on without her. I begged and pleaded, told her we should forge ahead and bond in our mutual misery, reminded her of the sense triumph we'd feel upon reaching the summit, and appealed to the nobler aspect of her bodymind--feminine vanity--by stressing the many calories we would burn while ensuring our butts remained tight and tidy.

She capitulated and off we went, reliving our childhoods while reciting choice excerpts from The Parent Trap to each other, (Mitch to Maggie after she's punched him in the eye: Why do you always have to get so physical? I can't even talk to you about anything, you always wind up belting me) finally reaching the top, whooping and hollering in exultation, screaming to heat-dazed people on the trail below about what a BEAUTIFUL WORLD IT IS!!!

Heading back we were giddy (or delirious with altitude sickness) and laughing so robustly it must have carried down to Mom on the bench where she was waiting for us, because an unintelligible yell meant to be a sentence floated up which was obviously her attempt at acknowledging our presence. "Shut the hell up, Mom!" Robin screamed down, knowing this would be received with great mirth. "We don't want to hear you're shit!" I continued, "we don't give a flying fuck what you want!" Hysterical laughter bubbled up, followed by the humorous catchphrase of our childhood, recognized then and now as a term of exasperated endearment: "Stupid kids!"

On my sacred honor, on the sixteen arhats, and by the hallowed name of all that is AQALuscious, nobody but nobody kicks subtle ass like the woman who afforded me passage this time around into the manifest world. A thousand prostrations to my Mother--the Domestic Dakini with the luminous lila and mega metta!

I LOVE YOU, MOM.

laundry erotica,self-fulfilling prophecies, and gorging glory

2004-09-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

My first customer this morning introduced herself as Glenda. "As in the Good Witch of the North?" I inquired? She laughed and confirmed, and I wondered if the spirit of the The Wizard of Oz still lingered despite having expired from the television twenty-four hours earlier.

TGIF! no arising early tomorrow for postal prostitution! Tomorrow I'm going to make love to my bed until 11:00 or so, strip it naked for a good thrashing, then roll it over and over again in high heat. (Who knew laundry could be so kinky?)

This morning I logged onto the Integral Naked forum and my sense of having nothing worthwhile to offer seemed to have materialized as self-fulfulling prophecy. My post to the mental health (holy shit! I just figured out to hyperlink!) thread was perceived as "arrogant," and the subtle hostility of this pronouncement found me taken aback and questioning whether I had been less than mindful in expressing my position toward mainstream psychiatry and big pharma. (After examining this matter at length within my own awareness, I realized that because the subject is very loaded for me to the point where I actively expect excoriation for my unorthodox beliefs, that the force of my energy had managed to elicit such. I also perceived that I had been less than clear in expositing my position, and that the condescension of the response constituted a classic performative contradiction.)

As I said, upon reading the post impugning my position I was so taken aback I actually cried, since it brought up feelings of being invalidated, persona non grata, in the face of a presentation which reflects a perspective gained only by great effort and achieved at significant personal sacrifice.

I followed the sadness "down" to it's Ground until I found compassion (rather than shame) for myself and for the author of the offending post, and "girded up my loins" (doesn't that sound racy?) for a response which I hoped would further clarify my position while counting as a good faith effort toward mutual understanding. I think I succeeded, but the verdict's still out, since the source of the rebuke hasn't been seen on the forum since last posting.

Today at work I was awarded a $35.00 gift certificate to Mimi's Cafe acknowledging my unmatched flair for soothing the savage beast in difficult customers--I was delighted! (Of course, a raise and promotion to a cushy corner office would have been more appropriate, given a woman of my surpassing competence and inimitable charm, but I won't allow the sweetness of what's turned out to be a to be wonderful day to be soured with entitlement fantasies of Bigger and Better.) Tonight I gorge in all my glory!

calming the fuck down

2004-09-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

A week without an entry! I suspect it's because I've been a little tinged with the faintest hue of blue and am feeling cramped in the quarters of a mind that feels suddenly small.

As predicted, Bumbershoot didn't fly (since the airlines didn't), so my plans for a swinging weekend in Seattle were quashed.

Then it turned out that the bio I researched and wrote for Chantal to be posted on Integral Naked was for the wrong person! They were wanting a bio for Chantal Westerman, of Good Morning America fame, not Chantal Kreviazuk, the Canadian Chanteuse Extraordinaire! (In my defense, a last name was never specified, so what was I to assume except that I was dealing with somebody on par with Beyonce?)

Then I read a friend's blog, detailing a particularly horrific sexual assualt, which triggered my own shit to no end and found me parked on the bathroom counter in front of the mirror furiously tweezing my eyebrows and indiscriminately importing the anger into the next day wherein my sisters took it upon themselves to enlighten me: "Gosh, nothing personal, but you're being majorly bitchy!" (You think?!)

And I haven't been posting on the Integral Naked forum except in isolated instances, having been stricken with the sense that my stultified self has nothing remotely worthwhile to contribute.

I think this last turn of events cast a pallor over my days that the preceding can't accomplish, because the IN forum represents my community, my source of fellowship, without which I feel adrift in a sea of social alienation, despite maintaining my connections with my co-workers and local compadres.

Last night I went to the cushion and watched as it took my bodymind a full fifteen minutes to calm the fuck down as I thrashed the zafu into a formless (something better damn well realize the Unmanifest!) lump beneath my bathrobe clad bottom. God damn, but I hate this! There, my torturous twenty minutes of dedicated Witnessing are over! I'll witness my little ass into bed now with Rumi, thank you, never mind the fact that he was as gay as the day is long.

Rumi's poems are like magic carpets of subtle tapestries that spirit you away into a world of audible illuminations and tactile scents which melt you disappeared into the entire ecstatic display. After the austerely masculine practice of a cushion and bare wall, Rumi's feminine approach to the divine is the perfect compliment:

That which God said to the rose
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty
He said to my heart
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

Wow, wild synchronicity just now. Just received a phone call from a customer inquiring about the availability of the cat and dog stamps which are now sold out to the lamentation of animal lovers across the country. I informed her that stamps featuring animals were currently confined to the cute and cuddly reptiles and amphibians series, to which she replied, "No lions and tigers and bears, oh my?" which wouldn't have been terribly significant except that her whimsical inquiry was uttered at the precise moment the exact phrase was emanating from the overhead TV where somebody had decided to treat us to The Wizard Of Oz. (As if the film's not significant enough with it's themes of Awakening from the dream to find yourself always already Home.) Mysterious ways...

that great bastion of feminist values...

2004-09-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

Swell, that bitch Frances is raging across the Bahama's due full force for Florida on Friday, probably turning the airports in the Miami area into no fly zones, which means Jonathan can't get his ass on a plane to meet me in Seattle for Bumbershoot. Shit.

After working up my courage to inquire of Paul Salamone, kick-ass editor extraordinaire of The Manifest e-zine (primo publication) and member of the dreaded Closed Hermeneutic Circle ;) if he knew of opportunity to further insinuate myself in the integral community by pimping my services to I-I, http://www.integralinstitute.org/integral.htm responded--to my immense surprise and delight--with an offer to do copy writing: bios, talk pages, video blurbs, etc for Integral Naked.

I couldn't have been more thrilled, especially since even broaching the subject was an exercise in what felt like extreme vulnerability for me. ("Are you kidding? You think we want you? Ha, ha, ha, ha!")

Paul fired off a request asking me to write a bio for Eve Essler, Warren Farrell, John Davis, or Chantal--take your pick. I immediately deep-sixed John Davis--David Deida's antithesis, the nemesis of postconventional relationships, and author of: Men Are From Mars, Women Suck My Penis, ;) (hasn't he been on Oprah, like, 800 times?) and opted for Eve, offering to cover Farrell as well.

Paul came back and said, "Farrell it is," which was slightly odd, because I thought I'd been clear about Essler as my first choice, but I was happy to change course and figured that ol' Warren would be bait for some juicy internet fishing since he's known to have defected from the 2nd wave feminist camps to install himself as a prominent figurehead of the "father's rights" movement.

So I went trolling the web for bio information, expecting it to be a bit of a bore, and boy, was I wrong. It seems that in addition to embodying the gender enlightenment of a gnat (Farrell's touted as a cultural hero for exposing the "myth of male power" to the relief of women everywhere) that he's, um, boldly gone where many perverts have gone before: in 1977 homeboy gave an interview to that illustrious bastion of feminist values, Penthouse, which featured a piece titled: Incest: The Last Taboo--An Interview with Warren Farrell, wherein he extolls the virtues of "positive incest." (My my! "father's rights" take on a whole new cast in light of this information, n'cest pas?)

I launched a missive to Paul as fast as you can say PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome, otherwise known in progressive circles as Pedophile's Assinine-excuses Suck--do your homework on that one), expecting to be rebuffed as an overzealous, man hating, inveterate meddler, but instead received a very supportive (even complimentary) response, which was a tremendously positive experience for me in that calling attention to the sexual depredations of a prominent male didn't get me dismissed as crazy. (Commence deprogramming.)

Anyhow, I'm covering Chantal. Maybe Warren should think about covering his ass.

dribbling, dawn, dwa, blogging, bumbershoot, and The Repubic

2004-09-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

Hi! Ms Menstrual here reporting for duty! Sleeping wasn't so successful last night. I had the distinct sensation that my uterus had been filled to capacity with air, violently dribbled for about half a mile, and returned to me. (Ibuprofen was nowhere to be found.)

Gosh, but it's early! When I left the house the moon was still high in a slate sky, and by the time I reached work the clouds were rising like little hotair balloons over the green-gray mountains in coral backlit puffs; the only word that comes to mind is ethereal. At this time of morning, I'm usually sleeping soundly in my bed, dreaming of midnight milky ways (the candy bar, not the galaxy) and blind to these auroric displays of dawn.

Driving to work, through the sleepiness, I felt so awake. There's really something to be said for solitude, even if the only thing between you and another human being is a hunk of metal. When I'm alone, a whole other dimension of being opens up as mandalic awareness. The world comes alive, it hums a song that cascades like crystal through my mind and blooms my heart open in a pyrotechnic lotus, and I hear the earth chanting joy, joy, joy to an infinite sky that swallows up the sound in liquid, luminous silence. When I hear this sound, and see the person in the car next to me, I want to tell them to listen, and ask, do you hear yourself singing?

Ever since initiating myself into the blogsphere, my interest in other people's blogs has usurped my appetite for spin-free news in the tastiest alt/indie e-zines. I feel pretty out of the loop, so I plan to spend a good part of the day grazing at The Onanist, The Onion, The eXile, Rouse, Flak, etc. Maybe I'll even peruse Alternet, as utterly stimulating as it isn't. (Needs cayenne.)

Only two more days of postal purgatory and I'm headed out to Seattle with Jonathan (my boyfriend) for Bumbershoot, http://www.bumbershoot.com/ and this being my first time, I'm very excited. I don't know exactly what to expect (except rain), but I can count on the fine company of my favorite Jew boy who never fails to amuse me.

Speaking of amusement, breaking news is that Jonathan's penis has survived, as he calls it, the Guillotine Toilet. The Commode of Infamy, with it's spring loaded seat, has been known to nearly, um, behead more than one, er, member of the royal family, and in it's less calculating moments has left many winkie's with a mean case of whiplash. Long live the repubic! ;)

celebrating The War

2004-08-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

Watched The War last night with Kevin Costner and a 12 year old Elijah Wood, (of international fame for his starring role as Frodo in the Rings Trilogy). Offered in the spirit of To Kill A Mockingbird (though ostensibly artistically inferior), The War never fails to deeply move me.

Artistic lapses aside, Kevin's Costner's character, though a "failure" according to conventional (materialist) standards, represents the profoundest success as a human being, the epitome of true fatherhood, and a powerful exemplar of genuine compassion. I'm sure there's plenty who might find the film cloyingly sentimental, but the thematic grace and grit (nod to Ken Wilber) beneath the summer sweetness as told through the eyes of a child is more than sufficient to compensate for it's shortcomings, and addresses issues of war and peace as poignantly as any film I've ever seen.

protest and civil disobedience reconsidered

2004-08-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

My political views have been what might be called dissident for a long time, thanks to Thoreau's Essay On Civil Disobedience and a conscience sharpened on the whetstone of adversity. Since '96 I've been bemoaning the military-industrial complex, the penal system, big pharma, the dangers of partisanship, the evils of modern empire, and the profound ignorance which both breeds and nurtures these evils, but as of late I've had opportunity to further reconsider the role of nonviolent protest, especially in it's incarnation of civil disobedience.

In certain "integral" circles (those not living up to the ideals such a vision demands), protest and civil disobedience are dismissed as "unconstructive" in that such is said to represent a failure to adequately discern the contours of conflict and to evidence a misguided expenditure of energy which might be better put to use through developmentally informed action manifesting in entirely novel (and presumably more effective) ways of altering the current socio-political landscape as to "promote the greatest depth for the greatest span."

While I agree that protest in an of itself cannot possibly hope to address and transcend the igorance and pathology which breeds and perpetuates power abuse in the first place and is but one weapon in the battery of reform, I do believe the afore articulated proposition is somewhat untenable in that protest and civil disobedience are not necessarily mutually exclusive to integrally informed activism. Furthermore, I believe such a disdain for protest and civil disobedience bespeaks a tacit (and in my opinion, erroneous) assumption that "legitimate" (lawful and legislative) channels are the means par excellent for addressing and instituting change in the service of humanitarian ideals when there is ample evidence to the contrary.

Despite the many advances that have been made through the various liberation movements of the past two centuries, the historical record, both recent and otherwise, provides incontrovertible evidence that the denial and suspension of civil liberties by the power elite--that monolith supposedly amenable to more "progressive" persuasion through legal and lawful channels--continues to be accomplished through precisely these channels wherein the law is exercised not in the service of justice but of oppression, and wherein that which is incontestably immoral and unethical is sanctified on the altar of legality. Civil disobedience, with it's deliberate and conscionable breaking of those depredatory statutes which make a mockery of justice, pays homage to this realization by demonstrating the farce of law as executed by corrupt power structures, thus mobilizing the public to serve as the check and balance the bureaucracy shows itself largely incapable of.

There is a further danger in dismissing protest on the grounds it does not conform to more "progressive" standards. The modality of protest is not primary, per se; what is primary is the injustice it stems from and the reform it aims for. Complaining protest is "unconstructive" while failing to offer any substantive corrective to the injustice it is in response to constitutes a performative contradiction and hyprocrisy of the worst kind. Dismissing legitimate opposition on the grounds that it is not developmentally informed, integral, or evolutionary, is to miss the point entirely, the point being that despite protest's relative merits (or glaring lack thereof), it is perhaps the single greatest manifestation of the intolerability of state-sponsored trespass, and to become preoccupied with the modality of reform to the exclusion of it's meta-message is to remain blind to the fundamental injustice it demonstrates opposition to, thus promoting the very abuses it claims a commitment to ending.

cultural ignoramuses demand gastronomical therapy

2004-08-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

TGIF! I work for the philatelic (stamp hobbyist) division of the USPS, and normally the job is perfectly tolerable since I'm able to allocate about 80% of company time to my own interests, but today's business volume is enough to induce a psychotic break! It seems that every other customer is either a crotchety older person wanting to relive the "glory" of WWII and the debacle in Korea with the stamps commemorating such, (god, what will the government come up with next? an issue celebrating Viet Nam?) or a cultural ignoramus launching into a post 9-11 "evil Muslim/traitorous postal service" diatribe, to which I'm compelled to point out that equating Muslims with the Trade Tower crimes is tantamount to equating Christians with pedophile priests (which generally goes over really well). What I'd really like to tell them is that the Eid stamp was issued in order to subvert Christian values and inaugurate a Godless One World Order which will mark us with the sign of the Beast and promote the sale of alchohol on Sundays while issueing marriage licenses to sodomites, (sheesh, isn't that obvious? EID is DIE backwards, after all), but thus far I've managed to restrain myself.

I could really use some gastronomical therapy about now. (A Gotta Have It at Cold Stone Creamery--fresh strawberries and pound cake folded into Cake Batter Icecream--should restore my psychic balance as fast as you can say 1,500 calories.)

I blog on my first try--diagnose me!

2004-08-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

Roll out the red carpet, it's my first blog entry ever (and here I am in an ensemble to make Tom Ford run screaming in horror!) Makes me think that what with this being my blogging debut I should dish up something ridiculously extravagant, (I'm thinking Cecil B. Demille meets VH1's The Fabulous Life Of...), but hey, the dictates of conservation constrain me.

Being the web RETARD that I am, I feel rather proud of myself that I'm blogging! I mean, fucking look at me! I'm doing it right now! I feel like Bob (as in What About Bob?) when he's rigged himself to the prow of the ship and is screaming in jubilation across the water to Dr. Marvin, "I'M SAILING! I'M SAILING!!! I'm a sailor! I sail!" and later says, with barely concealed pride, "I sailed on my first try." Well dammit, people, I'm a blogger! I blog! I blogged on my first try!

Speaking of Bob, what a great flick! I always say that if you want to find someone deeply neurotic, someone you might catch feverishly counting the bristles in their toothbrush at 2:00 am, someone who excels at confusing diagnoses with actual diseases and fails to recgonize that the former are in fact descriptions of behavior and nonordinary states deemed socially aberrant (rather than bona fide illnesses in any traditional sense), someone skilled at delegating their shadow and discharging their shit onto unsuspecting consumers, look no further than your friendly neighborhood "mental health" provider. ;) (Not to throw a wet blanket over the entire "helping" community--there are a minority of authentic therapists epitomized by the likes of Roger Walsh, Peter Breggin, Frances Vaughan, Stan Grof, John Nelson, etc, and it's these exceptions and those like them that bring an element of sanity to a profession which is otherwise lamentably lacking in an approach which honors the full spectrum of human experience and is generally blinded by it's imagined heroics and prey to the seduction of rampant reductionism.)

Tune in later for further Adventures In Integral Rant...