The Fool

She told me I was being fooled. She even said something to the effect that I had fallen into a societal trap. Before I had even failed the exam she suggested I was failing at the way I practiced feminism. Or rather, I was falling for a female blunder. I cried a bit I think. It was a rainy cold day in Philadelphia. I had just spent over an hour with the baby in the car seat, trying to find a Staples to buy a printer cartridge, so I could print the outline of some work in progress. Let's see, I did get it printed, but my stress level had reached an all time high. I think I got a ticket for where I parked and the heavy rain reminded me of how Easterners are so good at having umbrellas and how at that moment with River in my arms in the cold wet, I wished I had that instinct. I think I was late meeting her. She suggested a tea shop on the other side of Broad and, of course, north of the south side where I lived. In any case, I did not bring my baby, as I often had to meetings with her. I remember delaying for his naptime. I remember the way the seams were falling apart in the grey Jersey sky and also how the concrete and asphalt of highway one were cracking like an egg. I had him with me that time, but not now. She heard how I had structured my theory curriculum and she critiqued me severely. We talked about other things. She ended up noticing my exhaustion and stress. She did not want me to move, she did not want me to leave the program, and there I was asking to, because my family was failing to thrive. She told me I had been duped, she insisted I prioritize the work. She warned me that is how things operate in mysogyny. She told me the story of her engagement and subsequent breakup during her PhD exams. He thought she studied too much. She didn't understand the unintentional quality of it though. She did not see the flame go out in his eyes, eyes used to mountain tops. The earth is not vital there, he withered beyond his will. Neverthelesss, I let it go. And it is fine really. Sometimes I think I should have come straight back here and gone back to KBSU. Then I remember my mid-wives. I remember all I learned and the travel the work brought. I remember the beauty of Philly, and the awesome pre-school. I remember diversity. SO it was worth it? That is intense for sure. Did I really fail at feminism? I know when I went back to take my orals, after a gruelling re-take of maybe 40? pages in 24 hours, they snickered at my pregnancy. They think I failed. Canyon is beautiful. I treated him poorly tonight, bickered with him over not falling asleep, when he only wanted comfort. But I have none to give tonight, it was lost outside of me, it had been removed, so I could not give in the way he needed. But he was worth it, and failing feminism there is not vital to succeeding here, NOW. Maybe I am a trap, made of wires, or rods, perhaps even barbs. Maybe I was constructed this way and thats a fact. Or maybe I can find the key to unlock or dismantle the machine I have become, to reprogram the parts of me that cause constriction and corrosion. I am looking, looking... Or MAYBE...

A Post I Must Write In Order to Sleep

I have lost it. Completely and totally gone crazy. I can't figure out how to solve the problem, I keep trying all sort of futile solutions. The poor creatures certainly are confused at my approach. It's the ants. Tonight I took out the bleach and zapped the ones on the countertop. Before, I had been hitting them with essential oils of lavender and bergamot, which they actually seemed to enjoy and which I pretended was a warning. Nevermind that my countertop compost serves as their colony and I have done nothing to disrupt that. But a few nights ago I found a load of them in the overstacked part of my sink. It was like the rag was crawling with ants. I, of course, happily washed them down the drain...but cannot bring myself to crush their bodies...so I sprayed them tonight and watched them burn...imagining their minute screams, seeing them flail to get above the bubbles of acid eating them to bits. Then I got a paper towel, closed my eyes and wiped their bodies up. I still could not crush them. Really, something must be done, I am the schizophrenic ruler of an in home ant colony. When sweeping after my bleach massacre, I even let a few live as they skirted by my poky blade of disposal, humoring myself with the notion that I am a merciful goddess. A solution, I must find....not sure if it is with the ants or me.

(RE) MADE

My mother tells me I am in grave danger. She sees me running for a cliff, but she cannot catch me in time. There is fire I am running towards. "Maybe it has something to do with those nuclear people" she tells me. That makes sense huh? Or the climate crisis, or, my own transfiguration. I ask her whether my vision is facing up or down. She tells me I am just looking forward. I wonder if in any of these 4 dreams I have flown upon leaping. I write it down like that because, quite honestly, it was intense when she told me this. She told me there is a rock in her stomach, or something. She had dreams of fire out of windows when in London once, the night before boarding a plane. She thought the plane would catch on fire. But really, when they landed, they learned of my sister's apartment in Oakland burning down in the great Oakland fires. My sister lost everything, but she was safe. "Its like that time" she tells me. And I am sure my life is ending. But then I realize that is not the case. Something may be dying and transfiguring into a new form. Rebirth? Oh, how dramatic! It is painful like birth, but not nearly as so. The materiality of productive birthing is like nothing else created. The cliff is always sommewhere on a path. It is the moment of faith in intuition. The one who loves you most will encourage you to not jump, or at least exercise caution, that serves a purpose. If the impetus of sense is great enough, one still will leap, and that leap will lead to transformation. So in any case, I am laying here now. Still alive. Traveled to a cliff today and stood in a stack of fire ants. Yes, the vision is complete Mom, no worries. She felt better today after talking to me, hearing about my life. But I now have it written and enacted in this realm. This is the process by which life is (re)made.

Into View

Its the most obvious password in the world really. Either the way it is or reversed. Someone would discover it eventually. Which bag do I pack for this journey? How is it that each represents something--a style of travel to me which is crucial? One is soiled, black at the bottom, almost eating the complex angles and swirls of black and white radiating out, even as it hangs sun dried over the line. The other is heavy-duty, but forms well with walking a distance. Funny how one can take over the other and determine which tools I pack and I suppose how I pack them. Sometimes I find that it is nice to throw the curtains open. Mine are cranberry and embroidered, delicate and a reminder of a past, when elsewhere, and a present of these windows, this view. So I like to throw them open. This is the question: how is it that we lost Japhy? I mean I know how, I know because he would be the one to blindly cross the road, but also always watching, yelling "CLEAR!" for the rest of us. Always just on the edge. He was usually paying attention though wasn't he? His mode was no self-doubt in physical exchanges with gravitational space. The equation was wrong though that time. The timing was perfect for that accident. A second here, a second there. A moment somewhere and it wouldn't have happened! So I have been wondering what it meant that we lost Japhy? That's it on that. There is a rope. I see it and I climb up it, around it, its twisting. I think of the sounds. I think the intensity of that loss is still vibrating, its more even now, more melodic, we have healed a great deal, and we have found ways to walk meaningful paths. We have stayed interconnected. Thank goodness. Thank you. Ahhh yes, I remember now. When I was in Nepal, 8 years ago now, I got frostbite. Bad. I mean, not amputating my parts kind of thing. But, it hurt. And there were blisters. I believe this was part of a transformation for me, a suffering to open some kind of somethin'. But anyways. One night I was hurting badly from my hands burning and itching. It was extra cold and I think I was very tired from a long day of trekking. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I tripped hard on the rope holding up the potty tent. Somehow, I did not catch myself. I fell hard to the ground, belly flop. I lay there for a minute on the cold Himalayan earth, and there was not a cry in me. I knew I was the only one there to hear it and so I did not make a sound. Instead, I rolled over and looked at the immensity of the sky, I basked in a solitude, a sense of all "external" relations falling away. I feel that "aloneness" now. It scares me and I move to relate. A bit I do, but it is interesting, the relationship I am practicing on developing with the ants. Sometimess I flood them...sorry, storm, hold on boys! Sometimes, I let them live in the compost and scare them if they come out. Sometimes, I pick up dead ones by accident eeeeeewwwwwwwww! They are my relations for the most part. Let all else fade-away.

Big Lesson Learned

"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -W.B. Keats I failed in my attempt at activism yesterday. I went in protected as I knew I should. I went with a stone in my pocket which wards off attack, an anklet of grounding and protection to make sure I rooted down, I even had a copper pendant shielding my heart from the attempts to deflate it I knew would come. Not to mention I have been trained now, I am ready for near anything on this issue, my confidence in the cause is embedded to the core of my being. It was the Elmore County Fair afterall, and I expected some hostility. Since I had with me the daughter of a farmer from Elmore County that opposed the plant, I somehow felt local. This is the mistake I made. After about 15 minutes working together, I looked at the size of the people we needed to talk to and the time I had left, and I suggested we split up. I have now learned the number one rule of this kind of activism, DON'T EVER SPLIT UP. She said she wanted to, was ready, felt safe and comfortable. She said she knew what to say and how to articulate it. She came back 30 minutes later in tears, tears that would not quit flowing. "I don't know why I am crying," she said, "I just can't stop." Only one person was really mean to her. Telling her that what she was saying was lies, that she was wrong, implying that we, the group she was supporting, was illegitimate. It was enough to deflate her confidence, enough to shake her to the core. Immediately, I realized my mistake. What was I thinking? I was thinking she was protected like me. I was thinking she was ready, that was too wrong, not at all the case. I had not trained her, not even close. She had watched me, we had talked about the key points, but I had been greedy, and as a result she was devastated. After comforting her I went up to the guy who had inflicted the damage. "I hear you have some questions about the credibility of the organization I work for and I would like to answer those" He stammered through with me. I nailed each one of his points, grounded in nothing other than the stereotype in his head that I was an environmentalist. I unveiled the lack of self-interest at play in our work, I had him suggesting strategy by the end. I reminded him that he had just brought a college girl, a local girl, to tears with his hostility. I asked him to be more careful, and he asked me to be more careful too, I shouldn't have sent her out alone, he said. We were both right. There were successes too. A woman who is a published fiction writer and expert enviro activist that lives in the community signed on. She had been waiting for us to come. A gentleman from Utah, who spoke only Spanish, engaged me as I spoke to him in his native tongue "Una plant nuclear...". He encouraged me to reamp my attempts at proficient Spanish conversation, told me "Escuchas muy bien, tu puedes hablar, necesitas practicar, es todo" You listen well, you can speak, you only need to practice more. And I felt like I had been given the key, the language I have been hiding could be my greatest tool. The reason I have always worked on learning Spanish suddenly became clear: I need it for this work. I will start studying again today. I will never forget that first lesson though. Watching that sweet girl melt as a result of my lack of foresight. I should have known better, and the only way to do that is to mess up. But on that particular point I will not mess up again. Ever.

Present(ing) Progression

I come to you today at a critical intersection of space, time, and place. It is critical in terms of my own professional trajectory (AND YOURS), and it is critical in terms of the trajectory of energy policy in this country and the world. We are here, together, doing this work at a series of moments where time has accelerated, space is transforming and place, yours, mine, ours, the global commons, as well as that of the tiny rural community in Idaho along the stunning Snake River that is being threatened from so many directions that it is to easy, as activists, to literally be swept off our feet in a terrifying storm of chaos driven by money, greed, and fear. We must ground ourselves and in that grounding we must also continue to reach upwards, to a place where our vision exceeds the limits of the threats. I want to tell you a fable, a story, a myth. I want to take you to the place where I stand. Give a geneology, engage in a constructed history. Artifice. ART-i-fice. In so doing, I want to encourage ALL OF US to tell our own myths because it is through knowing your perspective and why you are here, why you do this work of brutal soul searching and endless, sometimes unrewarding battles, that you will be able to move forward. We need to ask ourselves why we are here, because if we don't we will get lost on the way forward and the work we do will not be as effective. It will have an effect, but the more we know from where our passion may come, or what we see in this work, or how we ended up in this place, the more intentionally effectual our work will be. I come to this place from studying globalized hierarchies of inequality propagated by a development matrix that tells us we are the "first world". I come next, to this work ,from Feminism. The locale from which I operated for many years, and still use today since I find that environmental work is deeply intertwined with the questioning of a dominant frame that has been driven by capitalist patriarchal, racist and class based hierarchies of exclusion and marginalization. In environmentalism I have found a way to finally address these issues in the most comprehensive form and at quite an urgent moment.I believe environmentalism is the encompassing movement of our time. I believe we are all here and we will all go back and continue this work because we know that. Donna Haraway is a postmodern feminist scientist working at the University of Santa Cruz. In her work "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" she describes the period we are in as a period of leaky distinctions and hybridity where we must find new combinations to talk about our realtionship to nature. She speaks of a post-apocalyptic threshold on which we precariously sit. She asks us to recognize ourselves as both animal and machine and she calls upon us to let go of a goddess myth of origins, where we view ourselves as pure and whole organic beings inevitably of the mother earth. She says, "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Picture Quote. "The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential." It is with this theoretical apparatus in mind that I will frame the picture of the fable I tell. This is the picture of a place I love. I am a third generation Idahoan, which means nothing to folks of 10 generations, not to mention indigenous origins. But it is deep for me. My state is beautiful. We have wild places to boggle the mind, we hold wild animals in huge numbers, our rivers our the lifeblood of the West. Thousands year old forest reach high into an endless sky where birds of prey some near endangerment, fly. ***Idaho is facing 3 immanent nuclear development and 1 possible. These 4 encompass a near (im)perfect representation of the fuel cycle. 1 uranium enrichment plant, 1 reprocessing facility, and 1 nuclear power plant being proposed by an exceptionally insane and ruthless nuclear developer. The final threat is a uranium mine proposed at the headwaters of the world class wild Salmon River. These nuclear dominoes are starting to fall and if one goes I fear they will all go. The state I love will become a radioactive wasteland. A place where people speak of the wildness in the past tense. Here is the map: We have a mostly rural population spread across widely dispersed geographical locations. Their is a tradition of jobs in mining, logging and agriculture. For this reason there is open hostility to any environmental movement, even when it protects these interest. One of the nations premier nuclear labs (INL) is located in Eastern Idaho (This is the main reason AREVA sited for coming to Idaho, that and the huge tax breaks) Our legislature is 80% R and 20% D. Our Governor will not admit that climate change is human caused nor will the majority of our legislators. All but one other large environmental group in the state either will not take a postition on nuclear and/or tacitly endorses nuclear power. 9% of our current energy comes from biomass. By 2015 1/3 of our energy could come from geothermal. We are 13th in the nation for wind potential. This is my first question: How do we bridge the gap between the perception and the potential? I offer this map to you as a way of encouraging you to remember your own. I know you have done it a thousand, maybe a million times, I know you have places you love as dearly as I love mine. I know you face challenges as great as great as me and unique challenges I have not yet imagined. But we can only find our actions by determining our praxis. This is the second theoretical apparatus at play in my fable. Marx talks about praxis as the melding of theory and action (I am a Marxist too, but I am not a communist, the distinction lies in the the implemenation of the theory) . I believe it is essential to recognize the way both of these are informed by experience. These three parts make up your praxis. They make up the place from which you act with intention. Arjun's "Roadmap" is a perfect example, an emblematic example, that we all must, as members of this Alliance create in our locales. He has done the global frame. Let us create the local piece. In putting them together we will come to decipher a fantastical and critical puzzle that is Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by 2050. Vernice's impassioned speaking is another example of praxis in action. She articulated beautifully the way her experience of racism, marginalization, death and disease has sparked her action informed by strategic theorizing. My first action from these two theoretical places-- the cyborg and the enviroteriat--leads to the second question. How do we create a clothesline consciousness? I want to see wooden clothespins hanging from the recycled cables of computers, telephone lines, and power cords among cityscapes where we are cleaning up the pollution, which, lets acknowledge again please, the communities most affected are racially and socioeconomically specified (this is a form of genocide). I want to see these lines made from the same rope used to steer cattle by the cowboy who currently will not give me the time of day, cause I am from that crazy radical group SRA. I want to see them among the rural areas, like those along the snake river plane where 750,000 barrels of radioactive waste is leaking into our aquifer from unlined pits that were built to store the waste from the weapons testing that my 2nd generation Idaho mother watched from a high-point in Boise. They went to watch the magnificent light from Nevada. They were told it was completely safe. Those clotheslines are there already. They are in my backyard, and your backyard and our garages right now. They need to be everywhere. Why? Here is a puzzle: The average clothes dryer uses 6,000 watt hours of electricity to dry a load on low heat. Go to the Energy Information Association website. Find your state's CO2 emissions, or if your state imports most of their power (like Idaho) find a state that has a high CO2 emission. Now, multiply that # by 6. That will give you the number of kilograms of CO2 emitted/kwh when you dry a load on low heat in a clothes dryer. Each time you dry your clothes it is the pollution equivalent of driving at least six miles. That is the place for consciousness shift--its the first impact, then we tell people the implication. I have conducted an unscientific survey of the ease with which you can find clothespins in the area we are staying. 4 stores (1 co-op, 2 CVS's, 1 Safeway). No clothespins. They need to be accessible. This is one action, one place I want to embrace. But there are more small acts we can encourage people to take. It is more than the act, it is the education and empowerment involved in the action. ***I would like to propose that we share small regional snapshots with each other. We each submit a map of our work and possible action. By doing that we can assess our similarities and differences and collaborate accordingly. This may help us breakthrough the difficulties of launching such a unified but large campaign. That is my fable, my story, my first conclusion. I am so excited to see yours as we tread, roots down, vision up towards a FUTURE FREE OF CARBON and FREE OF NUCLEAR by 2050. It is in 2051, that we will may live in the land of freed energy.

Reckless Blog 2

Its dangerous to have an on-line diary--even if you have two. Maybe its dangerous to have an on-line diary, but I do. I come here because I can't write on the other one about the day I had, or the night, or the evening. I will, parts of each, but not right now. not here at the end of this day when i am tired, overdone, torn apart and quite frankly terrified. I can't write there in this way about a crowd of progressives eating Barack Obama alive. I can't write there in this way about a group of activists pulling rank and bickering, eating their young. I can't explain how it feels to see the ground move out from under me, realize that what I thought was stable, affirming, a perfect fit is maybe just as bad as the worst of what I could have done. When did I accept the notion that righteous work would be done in a righteous way? maybe a more righteous way but not righteous enough. I can't write about how I am so tired from lack of sleep that I want to give in, sleep forever, not push myself into a frenzy of work that is sure to leave me depleted. Not near as depleted as the work that so many people do. Work that is not rewarding, work that they travel to from great distances and leave their families daily. Work that exploits them in the worst ways. But my threshold, pitiful as it may be, is low. This work is eating me up, it is spitting me out, it is dismembering my being. This happens sometimes. It is an "in"version that result in complete questioning. An inversion that makes me reach "out" and when bitten, bleed. I am learning to staunch this bleeding from a place with"in" my---self. I am learning to believe that even when a darkness beyond measure seems to descend it is the first indication that we are moving to a lightness. I am moving to a lightness. I despise individuation. I am disapointed by the frame that insists I operate as an internal soul with external behaviors. That is bull-sh-t! But it is. It is the way we are framed. Never mind the webs and the connections, and the places where meetings occur in psychic spaces. They are not part of the reality scape that is normalized and operative. Period. Period. Period. And still, I will insist that the internal external dichotomy is, if not a relic of the Cartesian frame then the Cartesian frame is a symptom of that misinterpretation of our animalness that is the scourge of society. It is the archetype for the multiple dualisms that create the contradictions, that lead to wars of revolution and the violences they in---flict. Dark and light is one of those frames. Read, here I go embracing a descriptive dualism that mirrors the internal/external dualism which creates the tension that leads to the conflict. But here I go: And it will be dark again sometimes, and I like the dark too. I like to imagine what may be there but isn't. I like to sense with my touch or my hands or my "inner"eye (Because I have an inner-self ...will someone please tell me what boundary distinction is present to demarcate where the inner-f-in self ends?!. The dark scares me, I need to be scared. And I know that when it gets dark again learning to orient myself through the work I did in the darkness before is the most critical tool I have. "I" INDIVIDUATED. It is dangerous to have an on-line diary--It jeopardizes ME and this post is why.

A Shower to Remember

Tonight, I had a shower in the rain. A shower of Atlantic Ocean rain with drops so thick and wet that I raised my head to the sky in a smile and soaked them deep within. I was walking, looking for a clothesline, when it started. Looking for a clothesline and pins to raise a clothesline consciousness, although they would also be useful, I though, for drying the dripping clothes I am wearing. I had forgotten about the East Coast rain. Forgotten, sitting in Philly staring out the window as the streets filled with that special wetness only cities magnify in the contrast they create with cement and cars and buses and lots of people, all running from the rain. Tonight, I ran, walked, skipped through the thickest of the downpour. Talked with others hiding under awnings, before darting back out and across, leaping over small river like drains. Then it stopped, the rain, but still, no clothespins, even after store number two, and so I got to walk, much further, through neighborhoods with yards with flowers I know like queen anne's lace, and black eyed susan's, and hyacinths, and echinacea, and plants I used to know, but could only recognize by sight and no longer name since they do not inhabit the West. And since the rain had stopped, I had the rare treat of seeing fireflies. Magical fairy bugs which I wish I could catch in jars with my children, but have yet to see even one in Idaho. And then, even though I have not yet peered up at the monument, stared into the reflecting pool, or paid tribute to Lincoln, right in this neighborhood there was a civil war cemetery with pillars, and wooden planks and cannons. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to have so much history right in your neighborhood. And then I remembered that their is a Native American burial ground two blocks from my own home, at the base of castlerock, and that was a neat epiphany, the way we do have a hidden history in our neighborhood too. But two more stores, and no clotheslines or pins...which is my point I guess. They should be available at all grocery and pharmacy stores. They should not be hard to find, and so it was a good unscientific survey, which will help me make my point. My clothes were dry by the time I walked back to my room anyways, and I can still smell the rain. I love being in the rain when it is so warm that the water leaves no chill.

More than 1 Kind of Religion

I am in D.C. and I forgot my power cord. A complete disaster, to be sure. It is funny how attached I am to the workability of this big clunky piece of material. It gives me access to my blog (s), other blogs, my e-mail. I feel like I need it, am willing to spend a hundred dollars on a cord to have it, and maybe I do, or it needs me, or I think I would cease to be without it. There was a house in the trees, on the ocean in Mexico that I stayed in once. Built tuna sandwiches on hard rolls with avocado and tomato. Lived on tuna sandwiches on hard rolls with avocado and tomato. And fruit, I suppose. I wonder what it would be like to sit there now. Without anything like I did then. No cell phone, no computer, no i-pod (which I still don't have, but want) no palm/blackberry duder thinga majig (which I still don't have, but want). Just me and the world I see and am interacting with. Instead, I am blogging, about my experience, which has really been limited to finding a power cord, so that I can blog . But I have also journeyed metro wide to this lovely theological union where I am staying. Sometimes I feel like I am living in some sort of weird novel about a girl being led to God. I keep picking up books, and reading t-shirts, and hearing references to religion, and now I am staying in a church. And I just want to say, the Christians have tapped into something, but I think they named it wrong and lost site of its quality, or something like that. Because when my life crossroads, it is eerie how religion seems to present itself, like a magnet to my need for answers. And sometimes I want to drop to my knees and declare "Ah yes I have been saved, lead me my father" And then, I just have to laugh, because that will never happen, not with the walls as they are now built historically around a patriarchal, oppressive, colonialist past that I deplore. Not with this language and ideal, not this form of idolatry for me. Give me a crystal, some rocks, let me hug a tree and watch the clouds, that is the place I know what others see here. But I suppose, at the moment, even that "religion" has been replaced with an utter devotion to the technical gadgets that distribute information through an interwoven global web. I certainly pray to this tech god, I certainly am what I do and so a cyborg have I become. Time for some blasphemy, I suppose, I am going into d.c. to explore, and I am not taking my laptop with me! (But first, I need to check my e-mail).

McCall This July

There is a veil, or one that was and sometimes is and the trees, reaching tall for the sky, are on the other side of it. This morning there is tea and toast with honey and the realization we are three, that means one of me, and so. It is an iron veil. I pull out the scissors, begin to snip away at these distinctions, begin to take large portions of this fabric and cut them into strips by categories, dip them in the lake, wash off the past, hang them to dry, hope their character changes. Last night I made it to the other side. I could hear the forest talk to me over the sound of the enactment of my caretaking. How is it that I let my motherhood get in the way of nature? Why is it that I am unable to coalesce the two into one experience? They are one experience. I made it to the other side in spite of the events, the popping, and the loudness, the dangers of water and fire. I made it there with them, by watching the lights above the Ponderosa Pines, filling the skyline I have seen since I was a girl, experienced as a blacklight poster in college, recognize still as the place from which my remains will flow, spin threw the air from above when I am gone, finally make their way to the bottom of this lake, and back again. We are mesmerized by the spectacular of colors, the celebration of it all, the archetypal remembrance of battle transformed into an extended frolic, and excuse to not work. A reason to play. Still, the brightest light in the sky for me remains the sliver of silver moon, like a half-wedding ring, shining, touching the tips of the forest. As the fireworks rise, it sets, sliding out of view, on the other side it goes, and I want to climb an invisible ladder, then descend with it, sleep in its rounded half arm. Sleep is fleeting, a chasing of dreams for answers, a chasing of dreams to remember when, in spite of my imagined dramas, life was more carefree, at least the weaving of it seemed to allow for more fabrics, more choices, fewer inhibitions of age, and change and responsibility. Today, I think, if I can pull back the veil enough that the material motorizations become simply illusions, I will chase that moon, down to the bottom of this lake, I will float there in the middle, breathing water through new found gills. I will hold to that moons curve and rise with it--like a trapeze that pulls me above the trees I love and then, with the wind, I will sway in the hundreds year old dance of these majestic beings, rooted deeply down, yet always reaching up.

Freaky Will

I have mentioned before that Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology in the BW sometimes is eerily on point. Well, this reading of my sign this week almost takes the cake: "Beginning in 1951, the US Government regularly set off nuclear bombs in the desert 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Most of the 1,021 explosions occurred underground, though for 11 years some were also done in the open air. Tourists used to flock to Las Vegas to watch the mushroom clouds, which were visible from that distance. As far as we know, the unusual lifestyles of Las Vegas inhabitants are not the result of mutations in their DNA caused by radioactive contamination. Let's use this scenario as a departure point for your own personal inventory sagittarius. What dangerous or tempestuous events from your life are now safely confined to the past? Are there any lingering consequences from them? If so, what might you do to heal?" I rest my case. Now if only I knew just exactly how to interpret this. Free-will gives me lots of options.

(Intra)Connection

Tonight, "D" showed me a girl with the same MA as me from the same school.  I couldn't remember her and I didn't know why.  We figured out that she graduated in the Spring before the Fall I entered the first ever PhD class.  It is strange, I didn't know though, because my job was largely to work with alumni as the Department GA.  In any case, she rocks it.  I feel like I have now accessed a feminist academic rebel friend, whose still ridin' a new wave.  Here She Is