The Great Grey Beast of February – Last Day

So here we are at the last day of February. Every year since I began my monthly cycle February kicks my ass. Maybe it is to remind me that I am human. Maybe it just happens because I’m so sensitive to my personal biology. Anyway, Februarys start off like any other month. I think I’m actually more manic the first week or so because I know it is the month of the Grey Beast and I’m still feeling pretty normal. This year on the 8th of February I was thinking I may have done enough “healing,” “recovery,” and “integrating” that the Grey Beast was not going to pounce. I didn’t feel it looming at all. I went to sleep and woke up on the 9th firmly in its jaws. And so, for the past 20 days I’ve spent fighting the urge to draw the window shades, lock the door and watch the lifetime movie network all day and night. I have a very active seven year old and depression isn’t fair to her. Still, I don’t think a lifetime of psych meds are the answer to my dilemma. I’m not the type of bi-polar where I swing so fast and so rapidly that I bowl over anything in my path as I give way to my chemically-imbalanced impulses. It is more of a pressure and a looming sense of futility and impending doom. Over and over my core belief cycles telling me that: “You are no good. You will never be good. You are a burden to everyone and a drain to resources. The world will never be right, so long as you are in it, so why don’t you make quick work of destroying yourself and save us all a lot of trouble.” Over and over it manifests in various ways. I don’t buy into the mantra, but I know its true. Then I get confused how I can know it is both true and not true. Then I convince myself I AM crazy. Then I tell myself that it is only a temporary, seasonally-induced insanity and I must not act on these messages. I must hold fast until March. I must continue to chop wood and carry water. I must embrace the ordinary world until the buds pop on the branches of the trees, the robin returns, and the Canadian geese come to chase the children at the bus stop.

Most every year I make it through. 2003 I didn’t. 2003 I gave in to the messages. I said “Fuck it.” I’m really, really good at being a nihilist. But I committed to important, long-term responsibilities, so I can’t be a nihilist any longer.

And it’s stupid. I’m surrounded by people who love and care for me. Who think I am “exceptional” in areas that are important. I have people who admire the path that I have walked to be who I am. I have others who would, at a moments notice, come to my side in support if I asked them, adding their resources to mine in the fight. I have more people like this than many, many others. But in February I can’t possibly believe this. In February, I can’t possibly think of a single reason to call them and ask for help. I’m too much of a burden and a bother and a bore. I don’t want to detract them from their important lives for my pathetic needs. THIS I do believe.

I’m better, but I’m still no good at asking for help.

Baby steps. One at a time. One foot in front of the other, gets us slowly in the direction we intend to be going.

So here we are, on the last day of February and the Great Grey Beast will soon be dissipating. And I know from the experience of 23 sun cycles that one day I will get a whiff of something on the air that informs something in my system that the hibernation period is over and it is spring. Time for mating and reproduction. Time for frisky play as that new world comes back to life. Persephone has returned from the realm of Hades, back into the loving arms of Demeter and the realm will blossom once again and the Grey Beast will be no more.

For 11 moons…

But that’s a long time. Eleven moons is enough… And then I’ll prepare for the Grey Beast again and cross my fingers that I survive another one.

Twenty years and I STILL love this song…

[ especially the Depeche Mode remix of it]
Sometimes I feel I’ve got to Run away I’ve got to Get away From the pain that you drive into the heart of me The love we share Seems to go nowhere And I’ve lost my light For I toss and turn I can’t sleep at night Once I ran to you (I ran) Now I’ll run from you This tainted love you’ve given I give you all a boy could give you Take my tears and that’s not nearly all Oh…tainted love Tainted love Now I know I’ve got to Run away I’ve got to Get away You don’t really want IT any more from me To make things right You need someone to hold you tight And you’ll think love is to pray But I’m sorry I don’t pray that way Once I ran to you (I ran) Now I’ll run from you This tainted love you’ve given I give you all a boy could give you Take my tears and that’s not nearly all Oh…tainted love Tainted loveDon’t touch me please I cannot stand the way you tease I love you though you hurt me so Now I’m going to pack my things and go Tainted love, tainted love
Tainted love, tainted loveTouch me baby, tainted love
Touch me baby, tainted love
Tainted love
Tainted love
Tainted love

Arcadian Journals

Woweey Zoweey Batman!!!

I just found my journals from when I was a teenager tyke! I’m talking 13 – 16 years old! Eap! I’m going to put up a few entries from those journals here for preservationist history. I’m going to enter those bad-boys word for word (strange spelling and all, remember these were the glory days of Prince and his EYE WOULD DIE 4U shit… Hell, I just realized all this TXT messaging shorthand that the youngbloods do now…

We were doin’ that in the WAY BACK days…that and pegged acid washed jeans! Boo Ya!

I get my CCW license tomorrow. I am so stoked! I got to go get me a nice little Steyr M9 after that…that’s right. Come to mama!

If you want to check out the old writing…just check the archives. I’ll post them with their REAL entry dates. So, if you want to find out my innermost thoughts when I was 13, check out 1983. 15? 1985.

My life is going at a pretty good clip. Actually,…

My life is going at a pretty good clip. Actually, it’s going a click faster than I’m comfortable with. I’m working on pulling back that click, but I’m finding that the resistance is strong from external forces and I’m not in control of my life as much as a was a few short months ago.

Why the change?

I moved from being my own employer, to having an employer. I have returned to the world of indentured servitude. I know what it is. I know what it is like. And yes, I’ve signed on to the hamster wheel once again. Why? Mid-range goals needed the stability of a regular paycheck. So yes, from 8-6 on Monday thru Friday I’m officially a cog in the corporate machine.

Since returning to active, external, full-time work my daughter has been having some behavior problems at school. There is a HUGE part of me that just wants to chuck the work and shadow her to help her (intimidate her?) into behaving more appropriately. That isn’t responsible though. She’s seven and she should be able to be accountable for her actions while at school. I’ve taken away toys, privileges and other things that she enjoys. I think that she is improving and then I learn that she’s back talking, not working, making poor choices…etc. She has outright lied to me when I ask her to self-report. She tells me that she received a “green card” for good behavior and that she doesn’t have homework, when she does. I’m not into physical punishment, but I’m running out of options.

Then there is her hyper-sexuality. The child-psychologist says that she is well within the normal range of curiosity and sexual play that is appropriate for her age. I know that some of her experience has lead to a more comprehensive knowledge of sexual behavior and that she feels comfortable discussing issues of sexuality with me, and for that I am glad. What she doesn’t seem to get is that the inappropriateness of her actions. Talking when it is class time. Respect to teachers and sexuality as a private thing. Showing money that she has to others. She doesn’t have a very solid grasp of boundaries.
Then again…neither do I. But I’m improving. Maybe I need to get some more boundaries between me and my child to help her model.

Again, people around me think that I’m a together, well-represented, professional woman. I know I’m doing too much again and I’m getting tired of treading water. Then again…it is still February and the Grey Beast has it’s claws in my for a few more weeks. Maybe this will pass. I hope so.

The Wretched

Just a reflectionJust a glimpseJust a little reminderOf all the what aboutsAnd all the might haveCould have beensAnother daySome other wayBut not another reason to continueAnd now you’re one of usThe wretchedThe hopes and prays The better daysThe far awaysForget itIt didn’t turn out the way you wanted it toIt didn’t turn out the way you wanted it, did it?It didn’t turn out the way you wanted it toIt didn’t turn out the way you wanted it, did it?Now you knowThis is what it feels likeNow you knowThis is what it feels likeThe clouds will part and the sky cracks openAnd god himself will reach his fucking armThroughJust to push you downJust to hold you downStuck in this hole with the shit and the pissAnd it’s hard to believe it could come down to thisBack at the beginningSinkingSpinningAnd in the endWe still pretendThe time we spendNot knowing whenYou’re finally freeAnd you could beBut it didn’t turn out the way you wanted it toIt didn’t turn out quite the way that you wanted itNow you knowThis is what it feels likeNow you knowThis is what it feels likeYou can try to stop it but it keeps on coming.

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I’ve been waxing reminiscent about Mr. Reznor and his still-beautiful mouth. I don’t know why. I don’t usually trip down memory lane, knowing that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Maybe I’m celebrating my 20 year anniversary of my crush on the dude. Who knows. All I know is that I get a good feeling in my heart when I think of how good he is looking and seems to be.

I think I’m just remembering the early 90’s and how crazy they were. Empty, but crazy. I don’t know how most people are supposed to go through their early 20’s. I know mine was filled with wretched excess in many areas. Gluttony of the worst kind. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be that person ever again. But it has taken 15 years of distance from those days for me to even be able to THINK of some of the things I did, people I used, lies I lived.

Hell…it is what it is…but it isn’t very nice. I wasn’t a very nice person.

But I did enjoy all the dancing and the music…I will be glad when my kid is old enough so that I can go out dancing again. Something about connecting with a rhythm that helps a soul shake free of its mortal coil.

The Meaning of 93

One cannot but help to encounter the phrase ‘93′ when travelling Thelemic circles. One of the first questions many beginning Thelemites and non-Thelemites ask is “why fore this ‘93′”? The short answer is that it is an abbreviation. To explain it we must look into the meaning of the phrase ‘93′, we must first discuss some of the basics of Thelema.

In 1904, Aleister Crowley received a document he would come to call Liber AL vel Legis. This document, more commonly known as The Book of the Law, is purported to have been dictated to Aleister via an entity known as Aiwaz (or Aiwass), whose name enumerates to 93. Further, the prime message of Aiwaz is summed up in the Greek word Thelema, which means Will, which also enumerates (in Greek) to 93. The philosophy of Thelema supersedes and incorporates the Philosophy of the previous Æon (or Age), that being summed up in the word Agape, which means Love.

Aleister Crowley, acting in his capacity as the Prophet To Mega Therion (The Great Beast), selected three verses as a summation of the principle of Thelema, those being:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” ? AL I:40 “Love is the law, love under will” ? AL I:57 “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt” ? AL III:60

Further, The Book of the Law enjoins us to spread Thelema to every person we meet (III:39):
All this and a book to say how thou didst come hither and a reproduction of this ink and paper for ever — for in it is the word secret & not only in the English — and thy comment upon this the Book of the Law shall be printed beautifully in red ink and black upon beautiful paper made by hand; and to each man and woman that thou meetest, were it but to dine or to drink at them, it is the Law to give. Then they shall chance to abide in this bliss or no; it is no odds. Do this quickly!”

This injunction has been interpreted to mean that Thelemites should begin and end their conversations with a relevant quote from Liber AL vel legis. Typically, this manifests as using verse I:40, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” to open and verse I:57, “Love is the law, love under will,” to close.

Since Will means Thelema and Thelema equals 93, Will thus equals 93. Likewise, Love means Agape which equals 93, thus Love equals 93. By simple reduction, we condense the phrase “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” into its essence, namely “Will” which can then be replaced with the number “93.” This reduction/substitution can also be applied to the phrase “Love is the law, love under will” into “Love Love under Will” or “Love Will/Love” and then into “93 93/93,” which is what one commonly sees on email. Verbally, the three 93’s are combined into one.

93

T H U M B P R I N T main page – Jan 2006

Good greetings in this first month of the new year. So far, so good. This year is shaping up to be the best one yet. When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I was always doing things that I was “too young” to do. I was always waiting until the system was going to give me the same privilege that older people got. Now, I’ve been an adult for over 15 years and while I hear a lot of belly-aching about the perils of getting older you know what? I can’t WAIT for it!!! I have been relishing each new year and all the wonder and incite life provides. I can’t tell you how much beauty and awe I find in the simple things, such as watching my child grow and develop into her own person.

The greatest gift I have ever given to myself is permission to just be me. To appreciate this “hand of cards” that was dealt to me and to play it to the best of my ability. To stay awake so that I may participate fully in my world. And permission to keep ugly and harmful people away from me and my circle. Sweeping out the riffraff and letting them have their own life, their own mistakes and their own pain. Pain is an efficient motivator. May they get what they need.
For those who are new to the whole THUMBPRINT thing. I’m China. I’m a red-headed square peg in a round hole world and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have struggled for most of my life with my perception of myself and the world around me, and questioned my purpose in it. Recent years have offered me some trying and painful lessons and from those experiences I have been able to heal and grow and discover my own inner strength, fortitude and peace.

Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain © Jim Carroll

Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain
© Jim Carroll (Author of The Basketball Diaries)

1. Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest
than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame With bitter vengeance

Pills and powders only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet’s poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift
Your Body becomes a magnet
and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly
into a false lust In timeless illusion

2. The guitar claws kept tightening,
I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion,
threaded right through
Lucifer’s wisdom teeth,
and never stopped their reverberating In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding
From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth’s own blood
And chatted with the
Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3. You should have talked more with the monkey
He’s always willing to negotiate
I’m still paying him off…
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up…
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn’t pass customs and immigration

4. Here’s synchronicity for you:
Your music’s tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you
I listened then… It was all there!

Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassable in time, As time itself stopped.
And the walls became cages of brilliant notes

Pressing in… Pressure
That’s how diamonds are made
And that’s WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5. Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like “incognito libido” And “Chalk Skin Bending”

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6. And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that’s where the pain came from
That’s where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7. But Kurt…
Didn’t the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?

That’s what I don’t understand
Because it’s kept me alive, above any wounds

8. If only you hadn’t swallowed yourself into a coma in Rome…
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Belini or Rafael’s Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty’s arms
Where it all began…

No matter that you felt betrayed by her
That is always the cost

As Frank said,
Of a young artist’s remorseless passion
Which starts out as a kiss And follows like a curse

Conversation with the master – sex

(Here I have transcribed some notes on conversations with J. between 1982 and 1990)

Why has sex become a taboo? Because it is a process of alchemy: it transforms a vast manifestation of spiritual energy, which is love, into a physical gesture. “It is imposible to understand sex as we see it nowadays – a mere response to a few physical stimuli. In reality, it is far more than that, and carries with it man’s and humanity’s entire cultural burden. Each time we face a new experience, we bring with us all past experiences – both good and bad – as well as those concepts which civilization has made into rules. “This is not right, and we must recondition the brain so that each sexual experience is unique, just as each loving experience is unique.”

Very difficult. – Very. But one must try, because almost all human beings need to keep this energy in movement. So, the first thing one must understand is that it is made up of two extremes, which walk side-by-side during the entire act: relaxation and tension. “How can one set these opposite states in harmony? There is only one way: through giving oneself completely. How does one give oneself? By forgetting the traumas of the past, and by not forming expectations about the future – in other words, the orgasm. How can one do this? Very simply: by not being afraid to err. “In reality, what usually happens is that we begin a sexual relationship thinking that everything might go wrong. But even if it did, what importance would that have? One must merely be conscious of the fact that one must give one’s best, and any wrongs immediately are put right. “Once the search for pleasure is being carried out by giving oneself, with sincerity, one senses the body becoming tense, like the string of an archer’s bow, while the mind becomes more and more relaxed, like the arrow being made ready to be fired.

The brain no longer governs the process, which begins to be guided by the heart. And the heart uses the five senses to show itself to the other. – The five senses? – Touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste, all of them are involved. Oddly enough, in most sexual relations, people try using only touch and sight: acting thus, they diminish the fullness of the experience. – Do both partners need to know all this? – If one partner gives himself completely, he breaks down the barriers of the other, however strong they may be. Because the act of giving means: “I trust you”. The other, who to begin with may feel rather intimidated, wanting to prove things which aren’t even under discussion, is unarmed by the spontaneity of such an attitude, and relaxes. At that moment, true sexual energy comes into play. “And this energy is not only present in those parts we call “erotic”. It spreads throughout the entire body, into each strand of hair and expanse of skin. Each millimeter is now shining a different light, which is recognized by the other body, and which combines with the other. “When this happens, we enter a sort of ancestral ritual, which is an opportunity for transformation. All rituals, in whatever form, demand that one be ready to allow oneself to be led to another perception of the world. It is this will which lends the ritual meaning.” – Isn’t all this rather complicated? – It is far more complicated to have the sex one sees being carried out nowadays, a mere mechanical act, causing tension during the act, and emptiness afterwards. Everything spiritual manifests itself visually, everything which is visual turns into spiritual energy, I don’t think this is so difficult to grasp.

After all, we are born knowing we have a body and a soul: why not understand that sex also has them?”

Happy Birthday to My Birthson’s Mother

To a wonderful lady, a tremendous mother and a good friend.

I hope that your birthday is filled with the knowledge that you are such a blessing to so many people, in so many very different ways.

I, for one, cannot imagine what my life would be like if you and your family had not come into me and mine, two years ago this day. Luckily for me, I don’t have to imagine. You did…and I am a better person for having known you.

I love you. I respect you. I admire you. Thank you for helping me find my birth son’s mother. I trust you. Much love to you and yours.

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Today is Aimee’s birthday. Two years ago today I was pregnant and was meeting with her and her husband and their 10 month old daughter (also from an open adoption.) In our talk we introduced ourselves to eachother and shared our hopes, dreams and vulnerabilities to eachother. In doing so we began to weave a path around our conjoined love for the child that was growing inside me, which would be raised by them.

Today my birthson is 20 months old. Happy, healthy and well-loved from every one around him. They are amazing people. She is an amazing woman. She is my birthson’s mother and I am glad to have met her.