September 9, 2004

• CURSE+BLESSING=INTENSITY

  I had to resist the urge to copy Rich Humbert’s entire commentary on this week’s Celestial Weather.   Here’s a little highlight:

  We’re finishing up work, preparing for the coming fall and
  winter.  It’s harvest time and in true
  Virgo fashion we should focus on separating wheat from chaff, putting energy
  into what will nourish us over the coming winter and composting that which has
  served its purpose. 

  Both Mars and Pluto bring cleansing purgative energy into
  our world.  When they combine, as they
  do this week, we need to prepare for an extreme amount of this energy.  We need to be physically active, flexible,
  and as said before ready to release and move forward.  As individuals we can choose to channel this powerful combination
  of ingredients.  Nations and other large
  social groups have much less conscious choice. 
  The boundary breaking action of the outer planets is often violent and
  ugly and the innocent often suffer.  The
  “long view” over the decades and centuries required for humanity’s unification
  can help us place these violent episodes in a context of growth and
  evolution.  This is not much comfort if
  it’s your friend or family member caught in time’s gears.

  At the 2 o’clock position is Chiron whose glyph resembles a
  key.  Chiron is the teacher/healer of
  mythology who freed Prometheus from his suffering on the rock.  Chiron himself was wounded and learned his
  healing skills by curing his own wound. 
  Chiron’s orbit is eccentric and passes inside Saturn’s orbit and almost
  touches that of Uranus.  He connects our
  day-to-day Saturn limited world with the transcendent world of the outer
  planets.   His energies become available
  to us as we mature and realize that we need to heal ourselves, that we have
  flaws and wounds from this life and those before that need healing.  All the Virgo planets that a grouping this
  week and in next week’s New Moon are connected harmoniously with Chiron.  This suggests that a healing is taking place
  for those who are ready for it.  To
  access this energy, we need to reach beyond the mundane and seek a larger world
  context for our lives.  We need to take
  the next step on our spiritual quest. 

  Even on a personal level, not all of us all the time will
  handle these intense forces gracefully. 
  With that in mind, be extra polite on the highway, careful in
  conversation, slow to criticize, and avoid confrontation where possible.  Anger lurks just beneath the surface with
  Mars and Pluto in stress.  Old wounds
  can easily re-surface and new wounds will linger painfully in the mind.

  I probably wouldn’t have even looked at the Celestial Weather Report in
  my email if I hadn’t been downloading Greyfox’s email so the box at the
  server didn’t overload and start bouncing messages, and noticed his
  link to this:

  The Village Voice: Horoscope: Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny
  
  
  
  VIRGO
  (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): As the relentless nihilism of the mass media
  threatens to quash our ability to even perceive, let alone exult in,
  life’s glorious beauty, we need new words to remind us to see with our
  own eyes. I have one: mirabilia, which is actually an old term that
  hasn’t been used much in the last 400 years. Its literal definition is
  “marvels that inspire wonder,” but I’d like to add the following
  nuances: beguiling curiosities, enigmatic joys, changes that inspire
  amused awe, and sudden deliverance from boring evils. I’m happy to
  report that you Virgos, more than any other sign, are currently poised
  to see, create, and attract mirabilia.

  That made me stop and reflect on the myriad of mirabilia I’ve been
  experiencing lately, and aroused some curiosity to see the
  details.  What I see is that the heavy traffic in Virgo now is
  impacting my natal curse/blessing pattern,
  especially Jupiter conjunct my natal Sun/Chiron conjunction, Mercury
  sextile to it from Leo, the transiting conjunction of  Moon,
  Saturn and Mercury in Cancer sextile my Sun/Chiron conjunction, and
  Chiron now in Capricorn trine transiting Sun and Mars in Virgo which
  are coming into conjunction with my natal Sun and Chiron.  
  Not until I stopped to look at this had it really hit me how scattered
  I am right about now.

  I can’t seem to carry any project to completion without frequent pauses
  to reflect on deeper significance.  The past few weeks while I was
  gathering photos and working on the 1974-’75 memoir segment, I came to
  realize that the watershed time half my lifetime ago involved a great
  deal of disillusionment and pain.  Remembering the pain from then
  doesn’t hurt now, and seeing the disillusionment from this angle, my
  current perspective, is satisfying, gratifying, validating,
  liberating.  Who needs illusions, anyway?  I had thought when
  I started this blog that my “healing journey” involved my food
  addictions and physical health.  When I started writing the
  memoirs I saw them as a side-trip, a distraction.  Now it has been
  integrated into my healing journey, healing my past.  The key to
  all of it has been honest self-disclosure.  I made the conscious
  choice at the start to be truthful here, and it has paid off in ways I
  never imagined.

  And all of the above is another side-trip, because the blog I had intended to post today follows:

  As a
  result of Doug’s dishwashing binge and in support of its continuation,
  we had to do a water run yesterday.  This may well have been one
  of the last warm and pleasant water runs of the year — no hats and
  gloves needed, no ice at the spring yet.  Another big plus was one
  of the only blue skies all summer, since the big wildfires started up
  north.
  
  Doug had the camera as I carried some of the empty jugs and buckets (or
  bugs and juckets as we call them) down and started filling them.
  
  Naomi was riding by on Magic and stopped to say hi.

  
  Doug carried the full buckets up, and I took the camera while he filled
  some more.  Right after I took this one he looked up, scowling
  into the sun and I said, “smile.”  He said, “You’re kidding,
  aren’t you?”  Later as we loaded the water into Streak Subaru Doug
  said the only thing keeping him on his feet and moving was the knowlege
  that it would hurt even more to get up again if he sat down.  I
  know I’ve mentioned it before, but this bears repeating:  Doug and
  Greyfox both have the same damned disease I have: myalgic
  encephalomyelopathy / chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome. 
  We are all grateful that they don’t have it as severely as I do. 
  I hope I’m dead or someone finds a cure before they get as disabled as
  I am.  I could write a cruelly black comedy about a whole
  household of crips like me.

  
  I took the camera and wandered across the highway to the big muskeg, which is putting on its fall colors.

  
  Traffic is sparse on the highway now.

  
  The tourists are headed south.

  When we got home I checked my comments on the cupboards full of clean dishes and found that Exmortis wanted to know where we have room for food.  That would be the larder:
  
  Koji nosed his way into the pic.  He doesn’t get many
  opportunities to sniff around in there because the door is usually
  shut.  Make no assumptions about the contents of containers in
  there.  I use old coffee cans and potato chip tins for storing
  grains and such.  You even get a glimpse here of one of my
  saucepans hanging from the ceiling at top right, and some of my root
  beer mugs on the utility shelf at lower right.

  While I was up on the stepladder taking that pic, Doug was at the
  comp
  reading the previous blog.  He said since I had the camera I
  should go ahead and take pics of the mixing bowls and mug
  collection.  The mugs there in the top shelf are only the recent
  acquisitions.  When it gets to full capacity (like now), I pack
  them up and make room for more.
  
  As a bonus here, you get to see the assortment of strainers hanging on the wall.

  Doug then reminded me that I hadn’t posted a shot of the cabinet over
  the coffeemaker (which I have turned into a tea brewing machine –works
  great!) where we keep the mugs we use.
  
  This is my favorite part of my diner ware collection — so many subtle
  differences in shape and size, and all so elegantly simple.  The
  black object dangling from a hook behind the center mug at bottom is a
  stovetop espresso maker I gave Greyfox not long after he moved up here
  when he expressed a nostalgic yearning for espresso.  I think he
  used it twice, maybe.  What he really was yearning for was his old
  city life, I suppose.

  Meanwhile, I’ve gotten more comments on my kitchen cabinet tour, and I
  now intend to respond to some of them.  Nobody expressed a wish to
  see my pots and pans, so I’ll spare you that… but you don’t know what
  you’re missing.  Maybe I better tell you, just so you’ll know,
  that my tongue has been firmly in my cheek throughout this whole
  business.    …and I can, quite easily, tell the whole
  unvarnished truth with tongue in cheek.

  OMG, if I had that many dishes in the cupboards, DH would be disposing of them!!

  Posted 9/8/2004 at 3:39 PM by spinksy

  
  I had a husband like that once, my
  first one, forty-some years ago.  I left him and never again
  married a man with the delusion that the house and household goods were
  his to do with as he would.  At the very least they are ours, and we consult and compromise over them.
  
  

  That’s
  a lot!  But see, my four plates look like they take up the same about
  of room that 20 of yours take up.  So that’s a plus, lol.

  I love the way you talk to your cat.  I do the same.

   Posted 9/8/2004 at 3:57 PM by grisaleen

  Doesn’t everyone?

  Dishes a good post.

  Posted 9/8/2004 at 6:12 PM by JadedFey
  

  What can I say?  Dishes just me.
  

  I’ve
  been away for a few days…this is great.  I loved this..maybe because
  people don’t normally show you what’s hiding in their cabinets. I’m
  down to one cereal bowl.  I should thrift it and get some but I’m
  terrified of the energy that objects hold.  I’m scared to own anything
  second hand.  It’s sick and I wish I could get over it.  THanks for
  sharing.
   
  Posted 9/9/2004 at 4:55 AM by fatgirlpink
  

  Oh, Darlin’, you need a little
  aversion/immersion therapy!  Just think of this:  the steel
  nails in the walls of your house absorb all the vibes of those who’ve
  lived there or visited.  The stones everywhere pick up
  “influences”.  And what about the coins, eh?  Are you afraid
  of second-hand money yet?  Be afraid, be very afraid… then get
  over it.  Shamans have numerous ways of cleansing and purifying
  objects:  with smoke, with water, with salt or sunshine.  It
  takes more than a puff of smoke or a ray of sunshine to exorcize a
  ghost.  It’s all a placebo — the energy doesn’t go away, but the
  people who get smudged or ritually bathed lose their fear of it because
  of their belief systems.  Don’t let it get you down.  I
  actually love antique shops and old graveyards for the vibes I pick up
  there.  We don’t need to fear ghosts or leftover
  information.  It only has as much power over us as we give
  it.  And that’s true of everything.
  

  I look at your photos and
  think EBAY! I got rid of a lot of stuff that way. Unfortunatley I have
  been yard saleing and “helping people move” and aquired it all back
  again. ANYWAY…I’ve GOT to catch up on more of your posts so toodles!Posted 9/9/2004 at 9:29 AM by sobasysta

  EBAY?!? 
  OMG, I’ve never even seriously considered getting rid of my
  dishes.  If I had my druthers, I’d find room for more rather than
  curtail collecting.  The way I figure it (and it was my benighted
  parents who taught me this) as soon as I get rid of something, then
  I’ll have a use for it.  On the one hand, if it really worked that
  way I could dump all the dishes and then my ship would come in and I
  could realize that long-held dream of the wilderness lodge, therapeutic
  community and retreat center.  But then I’d have to make do with a
  bunch of new dishes instead of my classy collection of old ones… and
  the “use” I’d suddenly develop would probably (according to Murphy’s
  Law) be some disaster that called on me to feed a multitude and I’d
  have to scramble around for utensils and serve on *shudder* styrofoam
  with plastic forks.  (You haven’t seen the collection of stainless
  steel flatware, either.)

  Dishes
  is probably my least favorite chore; standing at the sink in that
  slightly bent position, being mostly still, plays havoc with my back,
  knees, and feet.  And that connective rib tissue thing—I get it up
  high mostly, hurts to breathe, turn, like you said. Ugh.

  Anyway, I always get that nice “squared away” feeling when I do have the energy to clean the house well.

  Talk to ya.

  -Sher

  Posted 9/9/2004 at 10:20 AM by BluePaNDoRa

  The arduousness and pain of dishwashing are why I cut Doug a lot of
  slack when it comes to doing that chore.  For many years, when I
  was having “bad days” with the damned disease I would let the dishes go
  until they were all dirty, and then we’d use paper plates until the
  good days came back and I could clean house.  I’ve been chipping
  away at a big general housecleaning all summer, and am barely keeping
  ahead of entropy, cats, dog and primate messiness.  I must get
  done before Greyfox moves back in, or ELSE… else I’ll be living the whole winter again with my bathtub full of his impedimenta.
  

  LOL–the expression “powerless over dinner ware” springs to mind.  Loved it!

  Posted 9/9/2004 at 10:36 AM by ArmsMerchant

  As he often does, the Old Fart nailed the situation succinctly.  I love him!
  
  
  

  • 4:08 pm
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