... and it's raining

Who doesn't need a personal laminator?

It seems appropriate that today, given inclement meteorological phenomena, my task should be waterproofing pieces of paper.  Much more practical than writing poetry about how the slippery ooze reflects my inner state.

a glance at ecological restoration

excerpts from Bill Jordan's book The Sunflower Forest:
"Besides this, in attempting the paradoxical trick of reversing and reliving history in order to escape it, the restorationist creates a context in which to explore, experience, and perhaps even reconcile cyclic and progressive time. In fact, this double experience of time is implicit in the word "restore" itself. The "re-" suggests the cyclic and dynamic, while the "-store" indicates the stable, the stationary, and the unchanging. Combining the two--the circle for return and regeneration, and the line for progress and change-- generates the figure of the rising spiral or helix of evolution, each turn of which marks a return to the old and "original," but at a higher level of self-awareness."

"the idea that the goal of restoration is a "self-sustaining" ecosystem is so misguided--not only because the idea is ecologically untenable, but also because it is precisely the effort of sustaining the ecosystem against the pressure of novel influences that accounts for much of the value of restoration as a way of defining and making us aware of our relationship with it. "

"Properly and reflexively carried out, it generates nothing less than an ecological definition of who we are--that is, a definition of our species, or of a particular human community, expressed in terms of how it has influenced and interacted with other organism and with whole ecological systems over a particular period of time."

from my readings:

"It is not numerical singularity that guarantees uniqueness; rather eachness derives from the imaginal potential, the God, in the thing."

"We can respond from the heart, reawaken the heart. In the ancient world the organ of perception was the heart. The heart was immediately connected to things via the sense. The word for perception or sensation in Greek was aisthesis, which means at root a breathing in or taking in of the world, the gasp, "aha," the "uh" of the breath in wonder, shock, amazement, an aesthetic response to the image (eidolon) presented. In ancient Greek physiology and in Biblical psychology the heart was the organ of sensation: it was also the place of imagination. The common sense (sensus comunis) was lodged in and around the heart and its role was to apprehend images. Sensing the world and imagining the world are not divided in the aesthetic response of the heart as in our later psychologies derived from Scholastics, Cartesians, and British empiricists. Their notions abetted the murder of the world's soul by cutting apart the heart's natural activity into sensing facts on one side and intuiting fantasies on the other, leaving us images without bodies and bodies without images, an immaterial subjective imagination severed from an extended world of dead objective facts. But the heart's way of perceiving is both a sensing and an imagining: to sense penetratingly we must imagine, and to imagine accurately we must sense. "
-James Hillman, Anima Mundi

Just after 1

The unholy hours just after
one in the morning
are irretrievably tainted
with a wide-eyed
discomforting electric guitar buzz
the hoarse, desperately thirsty
tones of a blues riff
grinding somewhere
behind your eyeballs
as your common sense rages against
a buzz of a different kind
caffeine burning away at your soul,
baring mechanical clockwork
laboriously and painfully grinding out the latest
in a lone pocket of wakefulness
a pinpoint of halogen or fluorescence
holding vigil
against the enveloping sea
of unconsciousness.

burst into flames

another song recommendation!
'the burdens of the planet earth
gravity, hypocrisy and the perils of being in 3D'

I've been reading tarot cards a lot lately. I received a beautiful set called the Spiral Tarot, with art by Kay Stevenson, as a gift. I have heard many rumors about the correct way to treat a tarot deck and the manners in which it should be used. One such myth says that a tarot card must not be purchased by the user, but should be received by some other means. I take this to be the same kind of superstition that says you should never buy opals for yourself, because it's bad luck. Then again, I have never bought myself anything with opal gemstones... However, this deck matches my own character fairly well, I find the spirals on the back cover personally significant, and the paintings are rich and organic, almost overflowing (yes, there are pastels and flowers and it's very optimistic, but I'm a pisces, ok?).
I have friends who do not want to know their future (a perfectly respectable attitude). When I consult this deck for practice and give myself personal readings, I've heard people remark that it's dangerous, as if I'm tempting fate by looking too often into something best left alone. My counter is that I don't know anything more about my future than before I read the cards. I get a hazy impression that certain forces are present, forces which I have already identified to be working in my life, and it is those forces to which I attribute the cards' meanings. Once I have read the cards, I incorporate the images into my story of the present moment, and they fade into my memory, leaving only the impression of mysterious knowledge, acknowledgement of hidden meaning. No wonder fortune tellers can create such a veil of mystery around them, the meaning of the cards is so opaque that one forgets the significance even as one discovers it. I am not certain that tarot cards tell us anything beyond the symbolism that speaks to our unconscious in the present. By doing frequent readings on myself, I am learning what the cards mean in the context of my experience, so I can understand them better. I am learning the language of the symbols.
The card I'm concerned with today is the Moon, one of my favorite cards in the deck.
Thirteen's observations on the tarot are very apt for this card. I'm especially enamored of the description of the moonlit landscape as a land of lunatics and poets. This is a card ruled by Pisces, and it is incredibly beautiful, powerful, and dark, ruling as it does over dreams and nightmares alike. You can become lost in this darkness and wander aroud howling at the moon, but this card has real guidance in it as well, if you will listen for it. Let yourself be guided by intuition through the emotional and mental rollercoaster ride that will surely follow. For surrendering and following a higher purpose through the night, allowing yourself to be led, your reward will be inspiration, visions, and creative genius. I also see the threefold Feminine Mystery represented in this card, and note that the moon has a light and a dark side. It's power lies in receptivity and reflection. The lunar cycle aligns the tides and our own bodies. This is a card of artistic vocation, though you must decide whether to listen to the voices calling you and take up the endeavor. You are not in control of the nighttime muse, though you decide whether or not to become a vessel for her.

once upon a time

There was no way to describe what happened next. Neither of them had any idea before that moment, and it would have been hard to pinpoint the exact spot where the world rearranged itself and sat there waiting for them to wake up into it. All that can be said is that something wonderful happened, and when it was done being surprising it left them with sparkly, new and pleasantly upside-down stomachs, and the morning gradually crept up on them as the change did, so by the time they heard the birdsong and saw each other again in the half-light, they were completely and utterly swept away, breathless, swimming and not missing the air.

hot off the er, needles

Here's my completed sweater! I've been working on it for two+ years. That is, if 'working' means keeping it hidden in my closet and forgetting about it for a year and a half. AT (=Aunt Teresa) has reassured me that this is still a success, at least it hasn't been sitting around since 1985. That's older than I am. The yarn and pattern are from a Japanese knitting supply company called Noro. I don't have qualms about using their yarn, because the quality is so high, though maybe I should be looking for some local yarn for my next project. I love variegated yarns, and patterns that show off the color changes. I want to try hand-dyeing this summer. Anyway, now I am nice and warm in my (slightly chilly) house, wearing my sweater and my felted elf slippers. At the risk of this turning into a knitting blog, let me post those as well. In order to felt wool, you agitate it in hot soapy water to make the fibers stick. the final stage involved felting the slippers onto my feet. Yes, I sat on my kitchen floor, rubbing soap and soggy wool onto my feet, much to the amazement of my family.
Because knitting projects take me so long, my taste often changes completely from the time I start the project, and the finished product sometimes ends up looking completely different than I envisioned it anyway. Glad to say that I still want to wear these, though the elf slippers don't leave the house.

What is possibility, what is hope?
And the fate of our hand-crafted lives? What will it (we) become?
Are we then just octopi clinging to a coconut shell? Are they us clinging to our future selves?
Fortunately China Mieville doesn't spend all his time thinking about such things. But aren't you glad he mentioned it?