Sunday Meditation: Sunlight

April 1, 2007 / / Comments Off on Sunday Meditation: Sunlight

Take this meditation outside on a sunny day.

Ground and center.

Feel the sun where it touches your skin.

Feel the sunlight that penetrates through your closed eyes.

Breath in the sun.

Feel the warmth. Feel the energy. Breath in the energy of the sun.

The warmth of the sun is within your own body. It is a part of you. The power and energy of the sun are within your own body. They are a part of you.

Let the sunlight come into you, through your skin. Feel it reach into your very core. Feel how it warms you. It warms your heart, your feelings, and your hopes. As your heart is heated by the Sun, warm compassion flows forth.

Feel how sunlight energizes you. Feel it reach into your muscles and joints, and allow yourself to know the pleasure of movement that comes from being powered by the Sun. Feel the energy flowing into your thoughts. As your mind is heated by the Sun, inspiration flows forth.

Know that you are a solar battery. Your skin is solar paneling. You store sunlight within you and use it when you need it. Feel how the warmth stays with you, how the energy is a part of you.

When you are tired, you can draw on your solar energy. When you feel cold and distant, you can draw on your solar warmth. And when you need to renew yourself, you can return yourself to sunlight, and refresh your batteries.

Marines Ban Tattoos

March 30, 2007 / / 4 comments

Fast on the heels of yesterday’s post about banning some forms of body modification, comes the news that the Marines have banned “any new, extra-large tattoos below the elbow or the knee.”

Shakes points out that this is the whitewashed front that is meant to hide the ugly core. And of course she’s right. It’s not unlike banning the coffins of returning soldiers from appearing on TV. But I want to add that it is a part of the creeping Puritanism that I talked about yesterday.

This culture is increasingly trying to legislate and enforce a monolithic image of whiteness and purity, even while we become more diverse and pluralistic. Frankly, it freaks me out.

The suppression of diversity among those who “fight for freedom” is more than ironic, but more insidious than that is the notion that there is only one way to have a “professional demeanor.” The Corps says they “represent…traditional values” and so I must ask, whose tradition? Whose values? The values of the Marines risking their lives are expressed in the tattoos they choose.

Friday Catblogging: Convalescence

March 30, 2007 / / 5 comments

Probably the only good thing about Arthur’s long illness was that he got some quality time with the Gang of Two.

You know how sometimes you can’t get up because there’s a cat in your lap? In our family, we call that being “catted.” As in “Would you get the phone? I’m catted.”

Catted by Mingo
Howdy!

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Answers to Trivia of 3/26

March 29, 2007 / / 4 comments

Two unsolved this time.

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Body Modification Controversy

March 29, 2007 / / 9 comments

So, Suffolk County, New York (that’s Long Island) is considering a ban on certain forms of body modification.

There’s several things wrong with this story. First, They are fairly consistent in confusing the phrase “body art” with the phrase “body modification” (see the headline of the linked article; I heard the same error on the radio). Body art is decorating the body, either temporarily with things like henna, or permanently with tattoos. Some piercings which tend to be temporary (like an eyebrow piercing, which will close up pretty much as soon as you remove the jewelry) might also fall under the category of body art. Body modification is changing the shape of the body, with branding, tongue-splitting, scarification, etc. You can lump the two together, but they’re fairly different, and there are many tattooed people who don’t do the piercing thing (like me), and vice versa.

The reason this is important, obviously, is that it bespeaks an ignorance about the procedures they’re going after. Legislation rooted in ignorance, that always works!

But let’s keep looking at this:

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Hints are up

March 28, 2007 / / One comment

Hints for three items. Now with a crunchy chocolate coating.

Lions on the highway

March 28, 2007 / / 2 comments

So I don’t usually do dreams on this blog, but fuck it, it’s my blog. And this was very weird.

First part, I get a t-shirt from a big fat Orthodox guy. Later, I’m giving the shirt to a different big fat Orthodox guy, and just as he’s about to leave, he asks if the shirt was ever worn during money-lending, because if it is, it’s not kosher. So I say, How am I to know? But then I remember who I got it from and I tell him and that’s that.

Later, I’m in an Orthodox neighborhood in the car with Arthur. And I realize that it’s Saturday and if I start the car, we could get beat up. So we hightail it outa there.

Part Two: Driving down the highway, come to a tunnel underpass. Not a real tunnel, just passing under another highway or something. Like on the FDR Drive when you pass under the UN Building. Which doesn’t help you non-New Yorkers, but I digress.

Tunnel looks unusually dark. I mean, it’s only about six car lengths long so it should have more light from the other end. I go in and see a dead animal blocking my way, so I quickly change lanes and as I pass it I see it’s a lioness.

A dead lioness.

And then I see that the exit for the tunnel is blocked off, and the structure is being used to cage another lioness. Presumably the one who killed the first one.

So I back out slowly, and I see that there are people milling around, apparently also trapped by the blocked off tunnel. None of them seem to have cars, just me. And I see there are two more lions or lionesses.

I get out of the car and I try to find out what’s going on, and that’s when I see the gunman.

Gradually I realize this is a hostage situation. This is some kind of crazy person with a gun who has let lions out of the zoo, and is keeping us all trapped. Some talk starts about people volunteering to go with him, be a personal hostage, in order to get information or try to stop him, and Arthur tries to volunteer because he’s hungry and he thinks it’s a way to get fed. I yell and scream at him that he doesn’t understand that the situation is serious and he could die, but of course he says he does understand. And he’s hungry.

I notice Arthur’s hair is a buzz cut with a soft, silky, long growth over the buzz, just like small Orthodox boys. Then I wake up.

And may I say I have totally weirded myself out.

Tuesday Trivia 3/26

March 27, 2007 / / 29 comments

1. The drug-addicted wife and the dangerously rebellious neighbor are played by the same actress.
HINT: This actress was linked romantically, on-screen and in real life, with Warren Beatty. The director is French but the film is in English.
Solved by George (comment #19).

2. She traps herself in her own car, in her own garage, in the snow.
HINT: The stars of this film are a long-standing real life Hollywood couple, and their on-screen marriage is referenced in the film’s title.

3. She is so embarrassed by the intimate nature of her marital problems that she tells the priest in Irish rather than English.
Solved by hc (comment #1).

4. “You return with the inevitability of an unloved season.”
Solved by UNCLEagent (comment #8).

5. “No capes!”
Solved by maurinsky (comment #4).

6. It turns out that wearing dress whites isn’t a good idea.
Solved by Brandi (comment #3).

7. “Pull my finger.”
HINT: Recent DVD release.

Monday Movie Review: Notorious

March 26, 2007 / / 4 comments

Notorious (1946) 10/10
Alicia Huberman’s father has been convicted of treason. Now U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) has recruited Alicia (Ingrid Berman)to spy on her father’s Nazi cohorts in Brazil. While waiting for their assignment, Devlin and Alicia begin to fall in love, but their love is threatened when they learn that Alicia’s job is to seduce Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Notorious may well be Hitchcock’s only feminist film.

Okay, first let’s say how wonderful it is. Notorious is as perfectly constructed as any film you will ever seen. The composition of its shots, the masterful way tension is built, the subtlety and complexity of emotion, it is all simply perfection. And the acting! I never tire of watching Ingrid Bergman fall in love; she just melts into it, abandoning her very soul to sensation and feeling. Grant takes all his big, fascinating handsomeness and introduces weakness and pettiness and fear. Rains makes us sympathize with a Nazi, and Leopoldine Constantine is extraordinary as one of Hitchcock’s trademark evil mothers.

So how is this feminist? The complex and intricate script by Ben Hecht must be credited, as it explores the nature of sexuality, especially as it plays out between a self-described tramp and a man who says he fears women.

When Devlin says this, Alicia seems to understand that this means she is especially fearsome, because she is not just a woman, but a sexual woman. Fearing and also desiring women is the basic recipe for misogyny. One point of interest is that Devlin owns his own misogyny; he has always feared and hated women, it is not Alicia’s fault. And yet he hates himself for loving Alicia, and hates her for inspiring those complex and miserable feelings.

Is Notorious about Nazis, or is it about sexuality? Is she working for her government, or for the patriarchy? Alicia, hating the place that men (her father, her government, the reporters; all male) have placed her in, drinks and fucks. Given an opportunity to redeem herself through good works, she embraces it. But is the work truly good, or is it more slut-shaming?

In a pivotal scene, a group of government men sit and discuss Alicia’s work. They are distant, removed, stuffy. They are stuffed shirts who can politely discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Alicia, whose work is loathsome and dangerous. And at the same time, they can look down their noses at her for doing loathsome things. Again we must ask, is it her spying on the Nazis that makes her an ambivalent figure, or is this just a metaphor for all female sexuality; necessary but icky, praised for its necessity but still an object of misogynist mockery. Devlin suddenly sees the hypocrisy and objects in the strongest possible terms. He applauds Alicia for who and what she is, and not for the ideal he’d been hoping she’d become. In that moment, he is not measuring her by whether or not she sleeps around, only by her honor and courage.

Devlin has no first name, and so is an everyman; nothing more than an agent of his government, which I read as the patriarchy. At first, he loved Alicia but only if she conformed to his wish to tame and transform her. Finally, he loves her for who she is, a woman with the agency to determine whether or not she will be sexual.

Meanwhile, Alicia is being poisoned. And again, is this a murderous Nazi plot, or the social price of being a sexual woman? Is it really that different from her alcoholism, a self-inflicted poisoning to blind her to the way she is viewed?

You can certainly read it as Alicia hating herself for being sexual, which is not a particularly feminist act, but what Alicia seems to hate the most is being looked at and judged. Our first sight of her in the film is being questioned and photographed by reporters; she wants to get away. And again, she wants to get away from cops, from people who spy on her. Perhaps by becoming a spy she is taking the agency that was taken from her, but it is always when she is being looked at and judged that she drinks, and when her spying is discovered, she is poisoned. The judgmental gaze of others is the essence of poison to her, and when Devlin at last accepts her and understands that it was his own pain he was seeing, not her, she can be healed.

And also? Great movie.

Event Report: Akasha Con

March 25, 2007 / / Comments Off on Event Report: Akasha Con

So, we got back from Akasha Con exhausted. It was a fun event, if a demanding one for me.

I’ve been so drained the past few weeks, taking care of a sick kid and writing like crazy, and the day job has been intense. So to somehow manage to get up to Poughkeepsie on a Friday evening, well, I’m amazed we got out of the house in one piece.

Because we arrived late, it was hard for me to feel, at first, like I was in the swing of things, but I was welcomed with graciousness and enthusiasm, and I did manage to enjoy the Friday evening festivities and relaxed and laughed and made friends. Maybe I had too good a time Friday night, because exhaustion hit me hard on Saturday. Or maybe it was just getting out of town after the terrible stress of the last few weeks. I have to say, it’s unusual for me to just fold up from the tiredness like I did Saturday. It made me feel weird. And a little embarrassed.

There was a very nice merchanting room, small but beautifully laid out, with very interesting vendors, some of whom were old friends. It was great seeing Billy, and Amy, and it was a total joy that my table was situated so that I was sitting with Dorothy Morrison.

Even nicer than the merchanting room was the Wellness Room. There healers were set up with a great range of treatments, from a portable personal sauna, to foot baths, to massage, to reflexology, and more. Also, this was where readings were done. The most popular reader was a lady named Lisa Sullivan. I have no real idea what an Angel reading is, but she was sweet and down to earth and fun, so I bet they’re as real as she is.

So, Saturday I did readings and and sold some books and taught a class on the Structure of Ritual, and all of a sudden, towards the end of the class, I sort of collapsed under the weight of my own exhaustion. So, despite my intentions to really participate and engage, I took a nap. Then I changed for dinner, did another reading, and went to the banquet.

Can I just say this about the banquet? There appeared to be twelve long tables of ten people each. We were served last. Last. We. Were. Hungry. Also, there was one little roll per person and they weren’t fresh. Hungry. So. Hungry. So finally the food came, and the food was good. Ordering salmon is high risk at a banquet, because it is usually terribly overcooked, but I didn’t want steak or vegetable Wellington. The salmon was not overcooked, it was very tasty, but by the time the food came (we. were. last.) it wasn’t enough.

Then dessert came and it was cheesecake and I demanded the waiter find dairy-free cake for Arthur. “It’s his birthday,” said I, “You can’t have no dessert for him!” And Arthur got a plate full of pound cake, which he devoured.

Then the raffle prizes were given out, and that was a lot of fun. Arthur has a new friend who is very pretty and sweet and smart. She ate with us, but got up to assist in giving out raffle prizes, and it was fun applauding her. My student Christine won one of Lisa Sullivan’s “I Surrender” kits. The raffle benefits a scholarship fund, about which I am well impressed.

After that, Skinny White Chick performed. Now, this was funny. I was listening, and I liked the lead singer (SJ Tucker, who said she was from Memphis) and I danced some, but whatever. You go places, you hear musicians. I wasn’t focused on the music, even though it was very good. Then I hear this song that is so familiar, and I say to Mike “I know this song. This must be a cover.” And Mike says “‘Godboy’ can’t be a cover, can it?” And then I realized, I’ve been to Memphis for a Pagan event. And there was a local musician. Click! After the show, when I introduced myself, she hadn’t remembered me either. I mean, we both recognized each other, but when you travel to lots and lots of events, as both of us do, the fact that you recognize someone doesn’t register in the same way. I swear I could see a relative at a Pagan event and my first thought would be “Someone I recognize from events but won’t be able to name” before I realize who they are.

Anyway, SJ did a rousing “Happy Birthday” number for my birthday boy, and everyone danced. Amy took pictures and promised to send them.

After that was the Alchemical Fire Circle, which was very trancy and powerful for me, but I went to bed early, because when I began to feel sleepy, I didn’t want to risk a second day of crash and burn.

Arthur’s new friend joined us for breakfast Sunday, which was nice. I did more readings, taught another class (on The Way of Four), sold another book or two, and got a reflexology session. Which, yum.

Getting out was terribly chaotic, especially because Arth started feeling poorly again and I had to do a lot of the hauling myself. But he rallied and I rallied. There was rallying. And we managed to say our goodbyes and hit the road and have sushi and go home.

Phew.

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