Thursday, December 16, 2021

The best Christmas gift is to help someone in need

Arnoldo Lopez Contreras was labor trafficked in San Francisco, then seriously injured on a job, and has been struggling to get back on his feet ever since. Because of the prohibitively high rents in the Bay Area, Arnoldo has been living in his truck for several years.

On August 2, 2021, Arnoldo's truck was stolen in Oakland. Thieves took his transportation and his home. They got all his personal belongings, $4000 worth of tools, and his newly won Green Card. They took the small foothold he has been carving out for years, as he's been working to gain stability and send money to his family.

Arnoldo is working hard to regain what was lost, but it is challenging to start back at square one. He's been working as a handyman and painter, but he needs to replace his tools in order to work. He needs a reliable truck. He needs a place to sleep.

Please help another person have Christmas. He can hardly believe that complete strangers would be kind enough to donate when he has been through so much. Let's show him that despite what he has been through, humans can still be kind.

Anything you can spare, no matter how little, will make a difference. You can find more info and donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-a-labor-trafficking-survivor-stay-sheltered

Friday, December 10, 2021

Listen carefully to your gut

 
Your body never lies to you. You should listen to it, especially if you want to follow a path related to magick or if you are an empath or psychic of any kind.
 
If you're feeling stressed, or angry, your body is trying to give you a message. Whenever I feel angry, it's because someone is violating a boundary and entering my personal space uninvited. My mind may not be up to speed with what's happening. I may need to discuss with a friend to put my finger on the exact reason I feel mad and how that person is disrespecting me. It's not always obvious, but I know something is wrong. I know it because I'm irate. What my mind can't immediately locate under layers and layers of social conditioning, pretence, and polite coercion, my body understands just fine. The animal in me bares its teeth and wants to bite. I should listen to the message for my sake. Careful here: listening to the message does not mean acting on it. Feelings exist to give you feedback. They aren't there to tell you what to do. Impulsively acting on them is not going to take you to a better place.

What if I'm wrong, you'll say. What if the person or situation is OK and I'm the one who has the problem?
 
Even that is a valid reason to back off. They may be safe, they may even be suitable. But if you are not feeling comfortable, then you're not ready. Not being ready is as valid a reason as they come. And if you're right about feeling uneasy, believe me, you don't want to find out why the hard way.

A few nights ago I was out, doing my walking routine. I usually pass by an old building with a large garden. The garden fence is mostly non-existent. If I step into that garden, I find myself walking alongside the street. The street and the streetlights are no longer visible, because there are large bushes that act as a natural fence. I need to take thirty to forty steps in that garden before I find myself on the street again, exiting through a hole in the fence. 
 
It's usually quiet in there, and sometimes I take the detour because I want to feel the change in atmosphere. This building is very close to Ymittos mount, and even though it's next to other houses and in theory I am still in the city, the atmosphere is different than walking on the street. I don't take the detour every night; only when the mood strikes.
 
So here I was, strolling without a care in the world, listening to All About Eve. I love that band, especially their sad songs, and I was in a good mood when I reached that place. I walked five steps in and realised I was terrified, though there was nothing there. I took one look at the way the light wind was making the tree-tops shake, another look at the darkness, and something inside me screamed, "get out, get out now, return to the light." 
 
For a split second my mind attempted to barge in and convince me that everything was fine. You know: there is no reason to feel that way, there is no-one here, you should not act like a baby, blah de blah. Thankfully I'm way past the point I need to prove myself to anyone, myself included. I elbowed my mind in the nose, metaphorically speaking, turned on my heels, and I was outta there. I admit I breathed a huge sigh of relief as soon as I stepped back into the safety of the streetlight, and I kept looking behind my back until I had put some distance between me and that place.

Now you're probably expecting some dramatic explanation, some proper justification for my behaviour. I am sorry if this is going to be anticlimactic. I don't have an explanation. I can say that the particular night was in the time-frame between the two eclipses. During eclipses various gates open, as eclipses are powerful astrological phenomena that release a lot of energy. Maybe something had stepped out of one such gate. What I do know for certain is that I am too old, and have had too many nasty etheric encounters in my life to shit in my pants just because the wind was blowing. I was spooked that night, I was downright terrified. I like darkness a lot, but that night, the wrong kind of darkness awaited in there. It was the hungry darkness that lurks in bad places during the small hours; the darkness that causes car accidents to happen, that makes normal people decide to bash their wife's head in because she said the wrong thing. That sort of darkness. And honestly, exorcism rituals are a lot of work. It's just plain stupid to have to go through one because you carried something home with you. 
 
To sum this up, don't ignore your own body screaming something at you. Feeling like an idiot for being spooked without a reason is a hundred times better than going through damage control because something bad happened. And some bad things cannot be undone, so please be vigilant. These are strange times.

Hope the new year will be better. Take good care everyone.

(As per usual, if you'd like to support this scaredy old cat, please buy her a coffee.)

Monday, June 21, 2021

The unprepared runner

The effect I was aiming for...
Roughly the effect I was aiming for...

The following incident happened a while ago. I finished work, took the bus, got off and went to the supermarket. I said the same thing I always say: I need just a couple of things. I don't know if there are people who walk into a supermarket and indeed get out with "just a couple of things". Maybe there are. I'm not saying it's as improbable as spotting fairies or dragons. I, however, am not one of them.

So I get out of the supermarket with my backpack bursting at the seams. I have no use for the average feminine bag; if I could carry with me a military backpack (or three), I would. In the one hand I have a chocolate milk with a straw, in the other hand another bag with what didn't fit in my backpack. I say to myself, no way you'll walk a kilometer carrying so much weight. You'll get the bus. 

I start walking towards the bus stop. It's at a distance. I take sips of my choco milk and walk, not a care in the world. Then I turn and glance behind me and realise the bus is at the traffic lights. Shit!

I start running and develop a good speed. Great, I say to myself, you'll manage to get to the stop before the bus. At the same time I feel that my trousers have begun sliding down, and my smile vanishes. I start opening my stride as much as possible, to stop the damn trousers from slipping further down. I probably look like a chubby pelican doing ballet leaps, with my legs stretched to the max trying to stop the inevitable. Just before my butt is fully revealed, I stop and place the milk on my right hand, the one that carries the bag with the groceries. I put the index finger of my left hand around one of the belt loops of my trousers to keep them in place, and resume running. 

Thankfully the bus driver saw this grown, mature woman keeping her pants in place with one hand and carrying what looked like a week's worth of provisions for the Mongolian army in the other and he took pity on me. He stopped before the bus stop and let me onboard. Thank you, Mr driver.

I probably don't need to refer to the fact there was a bus stop just outside the supermarket, in a small street nearby, and I discovered it months after that incident. Do I?

(As per usual, if you'd like to support this lunatic, please buy her a coffee.)

Monday, January 25, 2021

Four of Swords: Forced Rest


And so I'm reading. I'm re-reading bits of my saga, which I wrote in 1999 and 2000. Yellowed pages that smell good, and have water stains on them. The ink I used to write has been smeared and erased in places, and my writing style, twenty years and thousands of pages later, seems too descriptive and overly emotional. But there are parts of me in them that shine effortlessly even now. It makes me happy and sad in equal parts. When I'm looking for a comforting place to hide in and recuperate I hide in there. In the world I brought here in bits and pieces that have never been connected in one, larger body.

I'm tired. Nothing new. Trying to push on, trying to keep walking. I'm terrified of stopping. In this world we live in, where dog eats dog, humans fight over nothing and find nothing to unite them, I am terrified of stopping. I'm chased by a battalion of anger and sadness, people, circumstances, unfinished jobs, unattainable dreams, frustration and tiredness. I need to find a safe place to rest, to put down my burden and sleep. I'm starting to think I'll sleep when I die. I've been chased by Gods, demons and mortals for almost forty three years now. I get bitten a lot, and before the wounds are healed I get new ones. I'm a goddamn geological formation of scabs. I don't even stop to think about it; anyone who gets too close on the other level gets incinerated. The only problem is you can't kill real, actual people without going to jail. Ha ha ha.

I'm tired. I need to rest. I need to hide and live the rest of my life invisible. It's impossible, of course. No matter where I go, they'll find me. I stink. My being is inhabited by my soul, and my soul stinks to them. That small pulse inside called soul colours my entire existence, skin and bone and blood, and it smells of the Other Side. It smells like understanding and forgiveness, taking care of every life from the smaller to the biggest, protecting the weak ones and the different ones and using resources to promote well-being, health and literacy, justice and medical care. It smells like safety and individuality and different families and fucking utopia. I stink of it. I stand out like a flower in an abattoir. And I can't help it. I am what I am, I can't change. I can't stop caring and wanting to protect the ones who can't protect themselves. I can't stop hating injustice, pettiness, vanity, racism, stupid mind-games, cruelty and hypocrisy. It's who I am. I know right from wrong. Loving, evolving, moving on is right. That's what I want for me and everyone else. And those who don't want it, well, I just wish to stay away from them. I don't want to change them, or educate them, or make them change their minds. I can't change them anyway, it's futile. Just want to keep my distance.

This world hates my guts, and I suffocate in it. It will pass. I'll push on. Time is always on my heels, biting me like a hyena, trotting behind me to tire me until I collapse. It circles above me, a carrion bird. And I give him the finger. And I walk on.

I recently came across this poem that pretty much says it all. Enjoy. And if you'd like to support me, please buy me a coffee.

Pursuit, by Stephen Dobyns

Each thing I do I rush through so I can do

something else. In such a way do the days pass--

a blend of stock cars racing and the never

ending building of a gothic cathedral.

Through the windows of my speeding car, I see

all that I love falling away: books unread,

jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. And why?

What treasure do I expect in my future?

Rather it is the confusion of childhood

loping behind me, the chaos in the mind,

the failure chipping away at each success.

Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape

and so move forward, as someone in the woods

at night might hear the sound of approaching feet

and stop to listen; then, instead of silence

he hears some creature trying to be silent.

What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly

down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;

the other ever closer, yet not really

hurrying or out of breath, teasing its kill.

From “Cemetery Nights” by Stephen Dobyns (Penguin Books: 100 pp., $14.95) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.

Taken from here.