Dragging through it all

Feel like a stuffed Robotic Santy this year?

I guess so many of us go through the gifting and visits by rote, and it all used to be fun. A bottle of Chianti and a candle stuck in a Chianti empty was all we younger people needed to get the party started way back when...music, though! Music gets you into some sort of adjusted feeling of belonging, even when you are old and grey.

I can't stand Chianti on my tum these days, and I don't eat turkey, or stuffing that has been in it. In fact, I'm vegetarian and I never bother whining away about getting what is traditional. A few cranberries and some delicious and fancy hors d'ouevres or sweets really cheer a person up a bit, though, anytime.

At left and above, I decided to show you the life-size Santa I found down south in the US a few years ago. Santa I do not need, either, but it is interesting to note that the legend must have been built upon a reality of gentle travellers, who could not resist gifting the kids of each village, nor donating purses to those in need.

I discovered Holly trees that were fifty feet high in southern US, so magnificent, really; they were rich with very fresh berries, since the climate is so much milder than in Ontario. We tripped around in just shoes and light jackets, instead of facing 16 degree below weather and snow.

Not only Holly grew in Kentucky, USA, but I found, to my amazement, that clumps of Mistletoe (an air plant that grows on trees like Orchids) clung above my head in half a dozen spots where my husband and I were visiting. So, kiss someone under this (shown at right):

Oh, I do feel a bit sour and maudlin this time of year, but I love to travel, anyway!! I like the gifting part because I love my family.

Giving Lots!

A member of my family sent me a great link as a "card". I appreciated this so much, because the Christmas Jukebox had a collection of really classic retro songs on it:

You can find this on: Heavens Gates, A Fifties Christmas Jukebox.

Link here to play the songs (great cartoons, too) http://heavens-gates.com/50s/50s_christmas.html

There, squeeeeze, (associated sounds of phishing for last dime stuck in bottom of green shopping bag) I gave to you and yours! Wasn't hard!

Laughing Lots!

Just thought I'd add a Night Before Christmas Poem I made (like a zillionteen others on the net) in case you found it amusing.........

A Doctors' Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas,When, 'pon top of the house,

There seemed to be restlessness-could be a mouse (?)
It couldn't be the family,

They were neat as a pin,

Surely, mice were too educated to ever get in…
Still, something rumbled, it crunched and repeatedly sounded,

As carols and bells through the night air resounded…
On top of the roof there stood someone quite bulky,

Took a look with the laser,

Must admit I'm a bit sulky..
Only two hours off this year, then its' back to the lab,

This had better be fruitful,or that visitors' on a slab!
(Note: The stockings were hung from the mantle with care-

All their toes had a star,

So we could look after the dears.

Wee nursies at night, they could take a quick peek-

Are the children all well,

Is each one asleep?)
There - on the roof, stood a dirty old hippie,

A nose obviously sprung from F.A.S., not so pretty!

A belly that groaned with intense, obese strain,

And frost upon frost on the senile old brain.
The old boy had lived upon Schnapps and fruitcake,

And the stink as he farted could make the ground quake.
At once, I remembered the Hippiecratic oath,

And I called 911 to get rid of the oaf.
I repeated my Doctors annotations to reception,

And all they could say was,

Must be your epileption,
Why, Doctor, they complained, in great disbelief,

How could there be a man on your roof- Oh, good grief!

And his dress is all red, you say, (Have ye had too much cheer?)

And, don't you forget, sir, to take your pills this year!
Have you forgotten? -Why, a great sack, you say?

We've no room for obscenity, to you, sir, a good day!
911 cut me off, and ,in fear, I imagined,

The weird old creation above shoved his bag in.
Quick! The children!

How could he?

Why, bats poo on rooves!

Quick boil all the soot, and the soles of their hooves,

And that man-must be crazy-all clean- das is goot!
But, I must be hallucinating,(Must be my patients)

There are deer on the roof too, (A condition that's latent?)
He has called them by name, so strange and bizarre,

Saying "on Donner, On, Blitzen,"

"Fly, Rudolph, and Bonghead, and Cutie, and Vixen"
Poor old soul must be saying,

From unimaginable dendritic tangles,

Why he's chosen the roof,

Where his dementia rangles,
Donner means "done, eh?"

From the blitzen of drugs,

And Rudolph, his old friend,

From a tough gang of thugs?
That vixen from the twenties,

He remembers her well,

But I'm sure she's departed

and now he's IN HELL.
Where's my kit,one more client-

There's no time to lose!It's back to the grind and on wi' my shoes!
I gathered (much later) and really, how quaint,

That he carried toys for children,calling himself a saint.

Santa Claus was his name,

And he muttered "Saint Nick"
Note to self:Check the ground for some tainted oil slick.

Perhaps it's from Russia,

Then again, from a cat,

But there must be some truth to this schiz-Fancy that!
Morning broke,Christmas Day,

And the kiddies were fine,

But Dad suffered hypothermia, and haematoma, this time.
Ah, me(said the Doctor)

Anything for the kids,

But he slunk (cause he stunk from last night) onto the skids.
He skied and he wailed

For a full week, to say,

I love you, dear children,(Though Daddys' away)
You'll always be well,

That's my present to you,

And there'll be no more hippies.

I'll swear that, to you.
We'll take little Santa And study him - parfait,

And then Happy New Year to the dear-Take 'im away!

..................................................................................................................................................................

There is also a site full of happy poetry just like that right on this URL I'm about to post..

Laugh lots, go ahead, link to the poems below...December won't seem so awfully depressing.

Night Before Christmas Parodies

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/historical/a/twas_the_night.htm

Gayla, a good gift would be a call from you!

Happy Something?

Do You Love Photography?

The Deep Purpleness of Our Heritage

When I chose images for my little photo arts book, I found that my heritage quest and the explorations that I have made in Eastern North America matched up with some of the themes and discoveries that I have mentioned in my work, Meeting Ananda Bodhi - Heavenly Enlightenment .


More than a few images spoke to me, and in depth, about the profound history behind the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and even Wicca!

Perhaps you understand the micro photonic images in plants, or, like me, you can see where pigment or gem has come from, and what history it has been made to portray.
Most of my images are made for meditative spirits like you.

My first education was as a Material Artist, majoring in Metal Arts. Work over 45 years has sensitized my vision to understanding earth, and strolling through its mysteries and messages.

I hope that you will love these images the way that I do.
Deep Purple started with a little photo essay I made for my website, Herbs by Northdays Image. Although some of my herb study shows in the book, the name Deep Purple expresses a love of the spiritual in all things. My theme name comes from an early 20th century music score, and song, by that name, by Peter Rose.

My journey made me a pop-up mini-Publisher (albeit of my own work) and I am publishing my book, Deep Purple, under the name "Natural Light". It has a Canadian ISBN number, although it can be obtained from the book manufacturer, Lulu, an US firm.
Lulu.com also lets you download an online version of a photography book. My download price for 100 pages of images is half that of the printed work.
One of most delightful discoveries I have made about becoming a Canadian publisher is that you do not pay a company to produce a library number (ISBN) for you. Instead, you donate several copies of your work to a government library for Canadiana. It is really very charming, and I am (for once) delighted with the Government of Canada!
You can find my work on Lulu.com, either in the books' description page, or on my Lulu storefront.LINK TO: Deep Purple, to view the book description.

If you have questions about the content of Deep Purple, or wish to comment about anything, feel free to add your perspective here.

Cutting Through

Ha-Cha!

Perhaps you have grown up with the expressions, "splitting the bindu", or cutting through red tape.
Maybe your idea of challenging the world is to arm yourself with the sword of truth.

When I was a young student of eastern studies, I had already grown up with the European concepts of the sword of truth, the double edged sword, the "Sword of Damocles", as if the sword of truth dangled above a young, innocent students' head, anyway!

We are innocent people who use concepts that are rhetorically romantic to most of us. Few of us arm ourselves with swords in order to conquer the world.

During my early years studying Buddhism, one of the meditation techniques that I learned was "splitting the bindu". We were supposed to imagine the subject that we sought as a bubble or gem-like bead in front of us. Bindu means "bubble", or "gem".

This technique, we were told, was an ability to "intellectually" cut through problems that we found hard to face, like bad feelings, psychic chit chat, even illness in ourselves and others. As well, when we did not understand a situation we were told of this technique for "lightning-swift samadhi" (the sword of change).

All of us tried this and some of us adhered to the concept, as if surgeons, construction people, etc.

As I grew a little more mature I started to notice that "splitting the bindu" was starting to be troublesome - this idea was becoming ferocious as young people dreamed up antique swords and giant blades, smashing them with brutal awareness at peoples' intellects. Thoughts are believed to be soft and quiet, but these were dynamic and also vicious.

The hostility and agression within the troubled peoples' thoughts had been so worrisome and noisy as they thrashed away like bizarre antique celtic warriors, that I became more and more turned off at their attitudes and also at the technique.

I was pregnant once or twice. Most people are absolutely sure that their babies will, indeed, move their tiny selves via conduction and pressure, through the vast canal and into the new realm of babyhood. When I went into labour, the pains were monumental, and I screamed very, very loudly. Although I was relieved that labour has started, it was quite a few hours before the babys' head went beyond crowning, which is when the tiny soft top (or, fontanel) of the babys' head can be felt as it begins to exit the vagina.

My tools on hand were very little beside the stirrups separating my legs and a can of icy cold ginger ale, which, when I was a poor young person, was, in those days, somewhat of a treat. The ginger ale was such a luxury that it calmed me down- I got my strokes, took my pleasure in getting away with something I couldn't afford.

It took patience to get that little one out, each time. Because of the size of babys' head, Doctors had to cut a small slit in the wall between anus and vagina, saying that it would rip if they did not ease the birth procedure. Though it worked, I was in a great deal of pain after the birth, on both occasions.

Surgery is cutting through with finite awareness. The baby is not damaged; sometimes the parent must suffer, but it all goes away and the happy Mother can get on with life.

I must compare the attitude of these frustrated worshippers with that of a person hacking the whole procedure out, rather than using established technique for ease of exit. Since Doctors had to use forceps on one of my children, I am well aware that intellectually (or otherwise) slashing through the whole ball game does not work in every way, and that flesh and the psyche (your body mind and spirit)are always going to be a consideration. Things are not always perfectly set up so that everything works smoothly, and perhaps this is why the "short path" to investigating in ones' mind is an intellectual sword and not a treat like the can of ginger ale.

Still, to a woman, cutting through what could be a person with a sword just did not measure up to softer ways. Why not massage the bindu, I murmured sweetly to myself.

Let the bindu feel itself in other bindus! Yay! Blow on the bindu ( a really good technique) or pick it up.

It was not within my nature to think of sqeezing it because it is supposed to be a tender bubble.
Have you ever slashed through an iridescent bubble to see what was truly within it? You're not going to see much besides a lot of wet, sticky stuff...and there goes the entity that is a bindu- pop!

I wondered about all this, becasue I had travelled around and I probably got pretty radioactive climbing around on ravines and camping across Canada and the US. I discovered that this was probably the case when actual thoughts both ways, were becoming almost like weaponry. For one thing, some of we students could feel how our ancestors or theirs (in meditation) had cut through peoples heads, hands and babies, with great anger and hatred.

I have always been a tolerant person, but I can equate the feeling within my heart with the chagrine some people feel about the word "fuck". Since these people irritate me enormously, since they are always complaining about words that are just in peoples' thoughts, I have thought about getting on any bandwagon about thoughts and radioactivity, or thoughts and ancestral violence in the family.And I voted not to bother people like the speech whiners. Maybe others were not radioactive and they ahd to convert their rouge past.

I have come to peace with the concepts of "splitting the bindu", arming myself with that arcane sword of truth, or using "psychic binoculars', in the understanding of how my body and mind work together. I do not sport swords, binoculars, periscopes etc. within my body. I do not wish to arm myself with what manifests when I make an analogy; that is, radioactivity from a polluted world is hardening the dust that I breathe in from its esponged state, as it rots back through my body toward nature.

If I think I have an object in my grasp, or pressed to my ear perhaps, the radioactivity and even the empowerment that my own DNAs' nucleopeptides can give the substance, will actually take some recognizable shape within my own system.
(the answer: babies in the uterus do not need cell phones)

Neither do I allow myself, ever , to agress what I do not understand with a sword idea. I don't want to cut and strip, peel, mutilate, viciously split things away. I need to soften things with my mind, just as a deep cloud of steam softens away with sunshine and fine breezes. The ship is revealed, sparkling, and its flags waving in the sun.

I figured this out a long time ago, after the last idiotic oaf imagined his bubble of mystery in front of him/me splitting and making satisfying blood.

I had had enough. Of blood, of course, women need very little more in their line of vision than they see once per month, or after their tiny one is creatively born from them. No, we have that pre-established slit and blood look down pat, thankx yah!

I quit.

I never went back toward the arcane in meditative concepts. From then on, I ignored Zen staffs that beat one over the head and concentrated upon the finesse and quietude of Zen conceptualization.

I also studied Qabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism, and Tarot, which is involved with Qabbalah in a borderline way.

My first card in Tarot was "The Fool". It's associated letter from the Hebrew alphabet is aleph, meaning (originally oxen) and also A and the numerical letter zero.
Aleph also means or has the connotation of original breath. If a great One exists (as I believe) then original breath is in association, sometime before the butterflies mated with the strawberries and made heart beats, or original hearts.

So, I tried being the fool on the hill, day after day.

"Day after day, alone on the hill, the man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still.." (Beatles song)

I associated with that type of spontaneity, being an initiate with little sense. I had my little life and my books and my cards, and my lovers. But when I was alone, I had yoga breath- a type of yoga called "Pranayama". This yoga of pure and focused breathing did, actually change my life. And it was that breath of life concept; that need to soften clouds away from the iridescent surface of that bindu, so that the sky would shine through it and the soap on it would stop spinning. I just blew, in my minds' eye, or with my own breath, upon what I did not know about. These were the stars, the sun, the greatness of God.

And what I found was truly amazing. Awesome.

My breath was also connected to the original breath of the Creator, so that I saw afar what was part of the great soul that is ours within Gods' greatness.

So, I learned not to grasp, touch, cut through or to desire and to envy, but to be still and womanly about what was too big and bad.

I didn't want to create an alter me with weaponry aimed, potentially, at already disastrous circumstance.

I could go on, but to give birth is sometimes a parting with someone as well to be parted. To create is like giving birth- part with the initial components to further the construct. Give it life and part with some of your own air- breathe life into it.

In my world, (and I feel like Bluebell) there will not be war. Drop those swords and blades. Share water and air and earth and fire, and become the great gifts that are inspiring. To learn something, try quiet methods first, not bullyish and uneducated slashing.

War makes war. Giving life bears no unkindness.