Finding the Way

I am not in keeping with the Tao. My balance has shifted, and like a spinning top starting to wobble, I feel the center moving out from under me. Luckily though, I have reflexes like a cat, and having no shame in taking advice from said wise felines, I find ways to regain that balance.

As a quote from the t.v. show Firefly so eloquently points out, “The wheel is always turning….but that only matters to the people on the rim”. So, be centered.

The answers are there for you, you just have to ask the right questions. The universe works in mysterious, although not necessarily subtle ways, and believe it or not, it can work for you. Knowing what you want in life is half the battle. Wanting what you don’t need will only bring mental clutter, but if you want only what you need, you might be surprised at how easily you can attain it with your new-found clarity and focus. Without the distractions of the things you want, you might realize that that isn’t really what you wanted at all. Perhaps it was only what your parents, your boss, or society wanted you to want, and lacking perspective you believed that you wanted it too.

All too often people want money. But for what? Usually people feel more secure when they have a financial cushion to land on if needed, but is it the money that actually makes you feel secure? What if you were just a caring, loving person? Wouldn’t you feel secure knowing that you have people that care about you and would be willing to help you out in a pinch? Money is but a material thing, and it is less useful than many other material things when it comes to survival. (I mean, geez, you can’t even start a fire with it)! For example, which would you rather have in the event of a major catastrophe: money, a knife, or your loved ones intact? I think it’s clear that the living things in our lives are simply irreplaceable, while the material things may come and go, money most of all.

Getting back to the center though may be easier said than done. What if you don’t even know how far from from balance you are? Well, perhaps you should talk to your cat; they’re mighty insightful when it comes to these things. If you’re allergic to cats, then your body is also a pretty good indicator of your mental and emotional well-being. (The first thing your body may tell you is that your allergy to cats must be remedied)!

The longer I live, the more sure I am the the answers are always there, right in front of us, but we humans have a way of making things more difficult for ourselves than they need to be. So have a little faith, and simplify. Focus, and find the center. You cannot see how far from balance you are when spinning around with everything else. The center is where you can see it all, in relation with everything else,  and put things into perspective. From the center you can take action with much less risk of throwing yourself back out of balance.

So relax, let the universe do what it’s been doing since the dawn of eternity; and in your quest for balance, don’t forget to snuggle your cat.

Long time, no internet…

Welcome back to my humble blog. It has been quite some time since I’ve had a working computer and internet, and a lot has happened in that time. The good, the bad, and the ugly…but hey, that’s life for ya. We’ll start with the gritty so we can end with the good…

The bad is sad, and it was pretty ugly too. However, everything is relative, so if you don’t like how something looks from one perspective try a new one. Death seemed to cling to me for a few months there, and with it that unshakable feeling that I’m not living up to my potential, and I’m taking my loved ones for granted. I kept feeling like I should have told people how much they meant to me, because you never know when you will end up choking on your tears and all those unspoken words. But when I take a step back and look at this rather bleak picture, I see that it is just one storm cloud in a white and wispy blanket over the skies of life. I decided that I needed to step out from under that cloud and the way to do it was to tell those people that I have what they mean to me. Even if I don’t tell them everyday, there is a list of people (and animals) that I think about and are thankful for every morning when I walk to the bus. I take time everyday to remind myself how lucky I am to have them here, in this world, because even though I can still love them when they’ve moved on, it’s just not the same.

As for the ugly, well, there’s some ugly shit happening all over this pretty planet right now. We’ve got the standard list of ugliness: war, corruption, greed, starvation, exploitation, and environmental devastation, and the ugliness that happens a little closer to home: bullying, ridiculing, and stereotyping, just to name a few. With all this ugliness, what’s a peace-loving hippy to do? Well, the same thing you do anyway…spread the love. Forget about all the nasty, dark, and downright depressing BS and focus on planting the seeds of beauty in your own mind. Let those roots grip your soul and hold fast, spreading leaves through your body to absorb that precious life-enriching goodness that is all around you, should you chose to be open to it. Today the sun is shining brightly on my personal happy-plant, so lets move on to the good shall we?

THE GOOD: The only one you need~

I GOT MARRIED!!!!! Not to just anyone of course, but to the man I love more than anything! He’s so dreamy….he cooks, he cleans, he snuggles cats (better then me even, if you can possibly imagine), and best of all he’s MINE!  I just needed to take this opportunity to gush, and to show my appreciation to my honey for all that he does for me. I also need to thank everyone who made my wedding day so great not even amnesia can make me forget! I won’t name names all over the interwebs, but you know who you are…family, friends, we wouldn’t be here without you.  Even if you couldn’t make it, it’s all good, that’s what anniversary parties are for!

More good: I’m back in school after taking the fall quarter off to get hitched. Learning makes the brain hurt sometimes, but it’s all worth it when I look at some poor uneducated fool and know that that’s not me. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power~ and I wouldn’t trade that for a lobotomy full of rainbows and sunshine.

Well, I suppose, I should get back to my responsisillities now…yes, responsisillities, because responsibility is so much better with a side of silly.

~S~

Nostalgia, and other weird feelings of sleep deprivation.

It’s 5:20 a.m. and I have given up on going back to bed. I don’t normally have any problem sleeping, going to bed, or getting back up. (Except in winter when it’s cold, and blankets are warm, but I don’t think I’m alone there). Lately however, I have been stressing myself out, drinking too much coffee, napping during the day, then being unable to get back to sleep, and before I knew it I found myself very sleep deprived. When I’m sleep deprived, things get weird.

It’s kind of hard to describe all these ‘weird’ feelings, but I’ve pinned nostalgia as one that seems to pop up more in this strange state. For example, recently I heard a song from the early 90′s, and immediately this wave of memories, these little blips of places and times that I don’t know if I’ve ever been to or just imagined as a child, came washing up.  It makes me wonder how many “moments” I’ve had over time, with different people, and I wonder how many I actually remember. How many cool places have I traveled to, people have I met, and things have done that I’ve been absorbing with my senses all this time with my brain dutifully storing bits away for the moment it might be needed? (How many have I just made up? How many were images in my mind from books that I once read or t.v./movies that I had watched?) To liken the brain to an iceberg is one of my favorite analogies, that is, that our conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg. Under the surface lies all those little bits of your day, sorted and stored while you sleep, sometimes popping above the surface as dreams, and sometimes remaining so far below that when you recall it you think you’re a psychic. Truly I just can’t comprehend all that, well, my brain can.

Going back to that feeling of nostalgia, there is one thing that I think contributes significantly to that generally infrequent feeling, and that is: unhappiness with current circumstances. If you’re not doing anything fun to be happy about, then perhaps the mind just lets you remember those times when you were happy about what you were doing. At this time in my life I feel a bit stagnant, like I’m not doing much with my time. I feel like I used to do more; at work I was productive, and made glass jewelry that I could be proud of, now I hawk consumer goods. I used to have a social life, now even though I feel generally more sociable and less shy, I can’t seem to find the time to to hang out with friends. This has led me to a lot of reminiscing, and that is well and good, but also sometimes sad. I miss times that will never be had again. I always seem to take time for granted, and think that somehow all the same people can just re-group at the same place and magically it will all be the same and I can do things better the next time around. I guess that’s what high school reunions are all about,  but it just isn’t the same. People change, times change, and you can never get those experiences back, no matter how many times you watch silly videos, or look through old photos.

The other weird feelings I get from sleep deprivation include a long list symptoms that sound like they belong with prescription meds, including shaking, nausea, and headache. Not recommended, though when necessary it can be made to be rather fun. There is generally a very silly phase for me, followed by a cranky nap-time phase. (Note: stay in the silly phase as long as possible. Drag it out like it’s your job…it is the only part of sleep deprivation that’s worth a damn). This is generally when I want chocolate, and other junk food, but somehow end up with coffee. No, no, no. But then the coffee says, yes, yes, Yes. Then you think, good god, did that coffee just talk to me? I think I need some coffee. Hence the coffee wins, and the war against your stomach begins.

Overall, I have to say the very best part about sleep deprivation, is when you find that perfect in, and you slip into the most restful sleep you’ve had in too long. It’s tricky, but with the right amount of forcing yourself to stay awake, eating well, and getting things taken care of, it can be done. I keep telling myself that I just have to get through one more week and finals will be over and projects will either be done or not, and I can rest my weary head and sleep so much that I actually get younger. So I keep telling myself. Leave a comment if you like, but please don’t shatter my sleep-deprived fantasies, thanks.

S.G.

Nuclear Power Anyone?

So, I’m trying to gather up some opinions about nuclear power for a research paper I’m doing. I would greatly appreciate it if you could all take a moment to participate, because the more feedback I get, the better my research. Thanks!

The proposed budget of federal loan guarantees to underwrite new nuclear reactor construction is currently at $58.5 billion. If the industries default on those loans, the burden falls on the tax/rate payers.*

There is a growing demand for cleaner, safer energy alternatives such as wind, solar and hydropower, as well as geothermal and ocean power.

Thanks for your participation!

*http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nuclear-power-subsidies-report-0504.html

Is It Really Worth It?

The more I learn about the inequity in this world, the harder I find it to be nonviolent towards these self-serving parasitic bastards who see absolutely nothing wrong with exploiting that which does not belong to them, at a price that they do not care to pay, for the benefit of no one but themselves, and even so only temporarily. Why the hell would anyone trust these people, invest their money with them, and fight for their rights? Because they are fucking morons. That’s right, the people in congress who back these guys up do it because they are conned into thinking that it will somehow make things better for them. They think that with all this money, power, and control they will somehow have a leg up on everyone else, but in reality all they’ll have is more problems.

Not only will these guys have to fight that much harder to keep the people suppressed, and unaware of the situations in which they are being exploited, but they have to keep fighting their own conscience until their moral compass is about as helpful as a decapitated homing pigeon. In an effort to prove to themselves that they haven’t made a huge mistake they keep pushing in further, doing whatever the corporate fat cats tell them because they don’t want to take a hit for being such blithering fools in the first place.

What exactly are these injustices that I’m talking about? Well, everything from the privatization of water and information, to the devastation that poor mining communities (and any community where resources are being extracted/processed) deal with, to the abysmal incompetence of our healthcare providers, to the factory farming of our food and the injustices faced by those workers, to the devastation of the world’s natural resources,to the basic facts that some people in this country sit in a cushy chair in a beautiful office making those “hard decisions” while the majority goes out and acts on those “hard decisions” and actually has to perform all of the very real hard work. It absolutely disgusts me to think that the majority of these cogs in the corporate machine would actually do things differently if they hadn’t been so diligently gluing their eyes shut to avoid the very real pain that they are directly responsible for.

It grates on me too, that there are organizations out there who claim to want to help, to stop these immoral wrongs, in the name of all that is good and holy. These guys hold their signs in front of places like planned parenthood, and put down those of us who want to get a checkup but can’t afford one anywhere else. (Remember?…all those health care problems we have because a few CEOs think they deserve $200,000,000 in annual salary and bonuses? You know, the ones that can’t pay for a surgery to save someone’s life, or a simple checkup, but can pay for Dick Cheney to have as many bypasses as his fat black heart desires)?–For the record, that man needs to die. I am not a proponent of violence, and I like to think that I have a little love for everyone, even the bad guys, but this man should have died a long time ago. (Along with many others). Okay Cheney, got it? GO DIE NOW.– Okay, back to the issues. It really irks me that so many organizations that actually do hold some clout here don’t do anything about it. There are a few that really do, but you never hear about it, and you better believe the fat bastards want to keep it that way. Instead, you hear about how awful gay people are, (yeah, THEY’RE the ones ruining the country….riiiight), you hear about interracial marriages, and of course there is lots of news about the upcoming end of the world party. (I am invited, right)?! So when it comes to loving thy neighbor are you going to say, “Sure, I’ll throw down a little so that we can all go to the doctor”, or will you say some bullshit about God favoring those who work hard and work the capitalist system for all its worth? I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from my relationship with God…s/he’s not impressed with us. As humanity we are pretty much failing the test; we can’t learn to take care of each other in a world of abundant resources, with a mind for problem solving and ingenuity, and with hearts fully capable of the compassion needed to run a healthy society. We have time and time again (since the dawn of time, for crying out loud) let ourselves slip into selfish consumption, taking all that we can possibly get our grubby little hands on so that we can be better off than the other guy.

The problem is not laziness, as many capitalists would like to make a point of. The unemployment problem in our country is not because people are too lazy to work, I assure you. The problem lies in the capitalist system itself. There is something to be said about working hard, from the bottom up, to become “successful”, and in a way, yes you can earn that the hard way and feel good about it. But the thing is that only one person can do that at a time, and it’s not from working hard, but from selling out. Those “hard decisions” that those CEOs have to make involve how many people they want to lay off so that they can continue to make record profits.  What’s is the point in that? Who wants to be that one guy who gets to tower above everyone else on his lonely pedestal, watching for the ferocious wolves who would tear him down from his throne in a heartbeat? Who wants to have to constantly guard themselves against the terrible things that they do, living in a world of denial, weak justifications, and outright lies just to maintain this level of superior discomfort? Who wants to have to look people in the eye, knowing full well that the suffering those people face will be all theirs soon enough, but then still have to keep the callous façade of intellectual superiority and inconvenient necessity.

Sign me up! I’d love to tell the mother of a child who died from E. Coli  0157 that factory farmed meat is the safest in the world, and no, she can’t sue the company, not even for compensation for the hospital bills that piled up after an agonizing death over the course of two weeks. (Oh yeah, that whole health care debacle, really sucks huh)? Of course, I’d love to hold a press conference and tell people that their children are getting sick from the byproducts from my factory, but that it’s going to be okay…we’re building a bigger facility to hold all the contamination…twenty yards closer to the school! Oh what’s that, you want to take me to court? Hahaha, silly little hillbillies! You can’t afford to beat my lawyers! Don’t you know? Didn’t someone give you the memo? Justice is for those with money…so if you really want to beat the system, you have to join it. Go sell out and get rich, then see how far you get suing anybody then.

The saddest thing to me might not even be seeing the horrors that a certain few are responsible for, but to think about the darkness so prominent in these people that such atrocities could ever come to fruition. It’s kind of cliché now, but really, how do these people sleep at night? Can they really justify all that they do? Or is it all just some ambien induced dream to them? As much as I want to punch these people in the face, and make them pay for all of the pain they bring to this world, all they do to hold humanity back in its quest for cooperation, and all the imaginary necessities they make up, I really want to talk to them…to break them in a way. I want to know what really makes these people tick. What happened to them to make them such unfeeling people, and what do they need to snap the hell out of it? As much as I want to hear that Dick Cheney finally had his last heart attack, I really want to hear that his heart had opened up. Not from retractors either, but maybe because he finally let all his wrongdoings into his soul and he died unable to cope with the pain he caused. I want to see someone in a position of power and authority do the right thing for once, and break down and cry because they can’t hide from themselves anymore. I want to see someone announce on a coast to coast broadcast that they are giving up the life of power they have been living to go to the communities that they helped to destroy, and they are going to start fixing the problems they caused.

I guess there’s no harm in dreaming. Where’s that ambien again?

~S.G.

Motivation…and the lack thereof.

Oy. I’ve been having a particularly intense few weeks, and it’s leaving me rather drained. Oddly enough though, to a certain point having a lot to do is my motivation to keep going, but once I get some down time I never want to get back up. (What’s that they say about objects in motion)?

I think one big part of my problem right now is a foot injury that has prevented me from going on my regular uphill walk to the arboretum. It’s amazing how far a little exercise will go to help keep you energized.  After taking it easy for a couple days I found myself struggling not to take a nap while doing homework…then it became struggling to not just sleep all day. That was a problem. My sleep schedule was way out of whack, and so my eating schedule started to suffer as I was starving for dinner at about 4:00a.m. not to mention having to get up at 7:00 to get to school. (Why did I want to go back to school again? Oh yeah…mad bling..that’s right, eyes on the prize$$).  Anyway, I’m starting to get back on track again, which left me a few moments to try to squeeze something wonderful out of my head onto this blog for y’all like some glorious zit. Sorry, I guess it’s just sebaceous fluids for you instead.

All of this napping left me to think about what the hell motivates me in the first place. I feel like I used to just want to do stuff all the time, whereas now I feel like some crabby old lady that makes excuses all the time. “Well, I could go out and enjoy myself, but I’m broke, and I don’t know what to wear, and my hair is being weird, and I have this hangnail, and, I mean, I couldn’t possibly leave my cat at this time of night…” Yep. That’s the life.  Sometimes I see people, you know, those people who seem to just have time to do it all; they go running in the morning, eat well, hold down two jobs, have a happy relationship, party all night and go on great adventures every weekend. You see the pictures and hear the stories, and you know that they must have some boring side to them somewhere…right? Between all their friends and parties they must secretly crave to just sit around in sweatpants for a night with a quarter of their body weight in junk food watching other people make fools of themselves on some vain reality television show. I mean, I can’t be the only one, right?!

In reality though, real reality–where life happens–I wish I had time to do all these fun things and not feel like I was about to have a seizure from sleep deprivation. I wish I was better at managing my time so that I could save money by not buying things out of convenience. (Bringing a lunch instead of buying out is a case in point). I wish I could just let go of all my stupid little hangups without neglecting responsibilities. Where is the balancing point? I know people who have partied it up and say that they wish they had focused on their education instead. I know people who have worked hard in school and got jobs only to hate what they do now, they can’t believe they worked so hard and stressed out so much over it, and they wish that they had lived it up a little more while they were younger. All I’ve learned from this is that life will always leave you with a little more to be desired from it unless you let go of that desire.

Maybe this is all that Tao stuff I’ve been reading about, but it makes sense. Instead of trying to find motivation, I think I’m better off just going with the flow. If motivation wants to be found, it will. I’m not going to do stuff because I have to anymore, but because I don’t want to not do it. (Even dishes)! I’m sick of fantasizing in my head about all the stuff I could or should or eventually will get around to doing, but instead I need to just git ‘er done. I’m always fiddling around with details, and getting stuck on irrelevant points, and taking too much precious time to do too little. Boo.

That being said, it’s time to get some more shit done! That’s my impromptu brain splurge for tonight, and unlike my last few post I will not nit-pick the shit out of this, editing it for weeks before posting, only making it worse in the process. No, you get this one freshly popped…enjoy.

~S.G.

Ignorance is Bliss

I have often noticed a strong inverse correlation between a person’s intellectual prowess, and their ability to thrive in social interactions. We all know the adage about dumb blondes; saying that “blondes have more fun” translates to me as, “You’ll have a better time if you are oblivious to reality”. I have always had a hard time relating to my peers, usually because it is difficult for me to small talk about what outfit looks the cutest when I am concerned with the abuse and exploitation of innocent living beings around the world, current political events, the ram shackled state of our nation, and the pollution in my own backyard.

I find that in order to have as much fun as everybody else, you have to be as dumb as everybody else–drink a lot, and be loud. Awesome! But only just a little. This kind of behavior is fine to me in moderation, but I feel like so many people out there, across many generations, are finding that this is acceptable for every weekend, or even every other day. It makes me wonder how often these people ponder the lives they live, if they want to do more with themselves, or if they’re even aware of the kind of things going on around them. Rather than talking about, reading or listening to the news, people more often tend to flip open their phones to send an irrelevant text. It’s so easy for people, in this culture especially, to get so wrapped up in their own image and hopes for ‘success’ that they forget what it is that truly makes them happy. I always wondered what really goes through the heads of the bleach-blonde, Beverly Hills Barbie wannabes as they get ready every morning,  applying layer after layer of chemical products. Do they want to live this life, or is it that they know no other? How many of these girls are deeper than they would ever let anyone know, because their image would be somehow tainted?

Our culture, and our society does not value information of the same sort that it used to. When knowledge about the world was a novelty, it was highly sought after. Now however, technology has made information both more accessible, and easier to discount. A friend of mine was disbelieving when I told her that radioactive particles had been found in the milk in some cows here in Washington State. Sad, but true. Many people I’ve talked to either had no idea, or just didn’t want to believe that the radioactive particles released in the nuclear disaster in Japan last month have reached the U.S., all the way to the east coast in fact; but they have, and it’s a big fucking deal! I know I’ve been bringing  that up a lot, because this is no joke folks. It is far too easy to think that the danger has cleared, and all will be well, but the sad reality is out there.

The cliché of the American people being sheep is scarily true. I’m afraid people of this generation have forgotten what it means to think for themselves, to draw their own conclusions based on facts and evidence, and to not believe everything they see or hear that sounds somewhat impressive.  In a way I can’t blame these people, and I of course am in no position to judge–we all do it. Who really wants to sit down and face the facts about how truly far gone our society is from something even remotely resembling healthy? It’s not a pretty picture, and I can understand why some people choose to go out and get away from the oppression of their own daily lives. I for one, however, do not want to be seen as a ‘downer’ because everyone else is too busy suppressing and ignoring their pain to realize just how bad it really is.

So where is the happy medium? Can’t you be aware of the issues surrounding you, but just not sweat the small stuff? I suppose one of the keys is to know when to just blend in with the sheep, and when it’s best to ruffle some feathers. A lot can be said for the people who can truly live it up, be in the moment, and not worry about all the problems of the world all the time. The world needs people to help them to lighten up, but one must remember that problems don’t just fade away when your perception of them does.