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.
Sometimes I wonder why this world is as fucked up as it is. It is pointless wondering, I'm well aware of it. And yet I wonder. I can't help it. I am by nature made to improve things, systems, myself. I am both good at it and enjoy it; the visionary who's walking with her head in the clouds and her two feet firmly on the ground. The questions usually are, does it work? Is it an improvement? Does it hurt anyone?
I think the basic problem of this world is our inability to communicate our experience. We live isolated in our heads, thinking our reality and experience is the only valid one. The result is pain, loneliness, fear. We can't see others as another version of ourselves. We can only focus on our differences, not our similarities. We see enemies where there is no enemy.
Art is the only way I have discovered to bridge the distance between one human experience and another, one human being and another. Art and love creating connections that surpass everything, distance, even time. Art is a child of love anyway, inflaming our hearts and minds with the closest there is to experiencing divinity. And love both flourishes on kindness and creates more kindness.
I wish I could take every human being by the hand and strip them of fears, and silly pride, and anger, and regret, and naked and vulnerable take them to the place inside where no armour is needed. To that one place where they are safe, and accepted for everything they are, and the only entrance rule is to let go of control, stop struggling. I can't do that any more than I can give eyes and ears to a stone. Each person has to find that place for themselves. It's not found in a church, or a holy place, or another dimension. You don't have to cross the sea or climb a mountain. You have to reach inside, to touch the unblemished part of you that everyone has. The part that knows it's all good, and there is nothing to forgive, and you are safe. You have always been safe because you are pure energy, you are stardust dreaming of falling in love, and to do that you need a body. That is all. You have always been perfectly safe and every transgression, imaginable and real, every slight and trespass is forgiven because it was a dream. You are stardust dreaming, and for a single moment in time, believing it. Believing it so much that it was real. There was no true separation, no real otherness, no alienation; just a part of the whole relishing its uniqueness before merging again, before becoming energy and love.
I wish I could make you see that. But in order to let go of control, to stop struggling, you have to love yourself first. And only you can do that.
"Hi ho, nobody home,
love nor hope nor honour have I none, yet I will be merry..."
The song of the
dispossessed is buried with them, piles of rotting flesh in nameless graves.
Then the crows, eaters of flesh, take it back to the Mother who's Unfathomable,
Unnamed, Sacred, Absent from this hellhole of a world.
"You know, Lilith has
had as much bad press as Lucifer, if not more. It's the same with Kali and Hecate.
Kali kills the parts of the self that not only don't serve a purpose anymore,
but turn into fully-fledged demons if left unchecked. Hecate was the goddess of
witchcraft, but also of justice, eloquence, a protectress of pregnant women and
children and the one who in her mercy gathered the souls of the mad and the
suicides from the crossroads."
And Lilith?
Luminous shadow of
Creation
the left hand of God/dess
Black Moon to Her Black
Sun
The Ancient One who walked
in the gardens of Babylon
The Second Born and first
to give birth
Exalted, revered, sacred
The ones scared of Her
power
called Her mother of
abominations
the One who gave birth to
Death
As if life itself isn't
the first step towards
the embrace of Death...
And you?
I weave. Silently,
incessantly, I weave. I write and pray and light candles and kiss my cats and
eat and walk and talk and weave. In my sleep I sing the song of the
dispossessed and wake up with my cheeks wet with tears. In my waking hours I
see the heart of the tiniest phoenix in the flaming center of a flower and go
back to bed with my cheeks wet with tears. Cause no-one else sees it, and when
I tell them about it, they give me that half-smile we give to children and
mentally challenged people.
If you have money, you are
eccentric. If you don't, you're just weird.
That last exit for me is music. Writing presupposes some kind of coherent thinking, music needs less thinking. Screaming, for that matter, needs no thinking whatsoever. But since it is next to impossible to start screaming in a flat without drawing the wrong kind of attention, music and writing it is.
2018 is here and thankfully I am here too. I have an impressive frostbite on my right index finger, good music in my possession, a wound inside my mouth, lungs full of mucus and a half-insane mother because one of our cats is probably not going to make it. I am resigned. She is not, and she is making me crazy too because she needs company. Oh well.
First blog entry of the year and I set off on the wrong foot. Someone once told me that this blog is always complaining about something. He made me feel I should apologise for feeling the way I did. Then I remembered my friend Virve, the one who died. In one of her very last messages, she told me to keep writing regardless of who loved my writing and who hated it. She said that neither category had anything to do with my writing per se, but the person themselves. The reason this blog was created in the first place was to be an online diary. I won't censor myself. I guess no matter what you write about, someone will be displeased. Then again, there is always the option of not reading what makes you upset.
So I was talking about sadness. Sadness is not acceptable by society. Mourning is not trendy or productive. Being constantly positive is the latest fashionable prerequisite. Everything happens for a reason. Everything is a valuable lesson. Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. And so on and so forth. Right?
Not everything happens for a reason. Most bad events happen because we are the most pig-headed and close-minded race of sentient beings I have ever had the unfortunate 'privilege' of coming across. There are less than five people I can talk with and not need to explain or be wary of their intentions. I survive by keeping a low profile and feigning ignorance. I survive by listening to music, reading, writing, and minimising the time I spend socialising. Which reminds me...
I've done a lot of socialising for my standards since October. Turns out the maximum amount of exposure to a large crowd (30+ people) I can handle is once every two weeks. I refuse to repeat it in a smaller amount of time. I simply get sick. Sore throat, cold, you name it. The funniest thing is that everyone who mets me regards me as super social and friendly. Low profile, remember? And to be honest, I do care about people. I am not friendly and kind towards them because I want to manipulate them.
Music is what makes our souls soar above the mud of existence. Man-made vibrations that express a multitude of feelings. Love is what makes our souls merge with something bigger, leaving behind us every smidgen of pretense and appropriateness. And to quote one of my most beloved heroes, "You don't choose the ones you love. What you do choose is the way you'll treat them".
If I extend my hands left and right in this small room, crammed with books and CDs and personal items, and with a cat sleeping on my bed, I am alone. Right?
No. Because they open the door of my heart and out they come, one after the other, the ones I love, my characters and creations. The ones I brought here and gave them flesh and blood and other people who love them and hate them and want to see them dead. And together with them my books and my comics and my CDs and my old drawings secretly open too, and countless stories pour out, colourful strings of every conceivable hue. Everyone I've ever loved and hated is here with me, and what I need to do is close my eyes and will them out. Every story humanity has ever come up with, or at least one variation of it is here with me, together with every note and colour and tear ever shed. How can I be alone? I am not. I am never alone. Even in the most desolate, tiniest cell of the whole world I would not be alone. There is a richness inside beyond anything. It merges with me and makes me ecstatic, makes my eyes so full of beauty and wonder that this world will forever pale in comparison. And that is why I am sad. Because my eyes and mind and heart perceive the fullest potential in a world that has gone to the dogs. And the gatekeepers of this world hate my guts for it.
Should I really apologise for that? I don't think so.
Two nights ago I had a very interesting dream. I was in the bedroom of a young woman I've known since childhood. She was in bed with me and we were naked. In the beginning of the dream I thought it was her, but then she attacked me and I knew it was a shape-shifting demon.
I started struggling with the demon. It was strong and trying to overpower me. I was stronger. I was fighting to hold it still and screaming sacred names of entities at the same time. I remember using Michael's name, and I also shouted "divine providence". Every time I yelled one of the holy names, the demon reduced in size until what was left of it was a handful of blonde hairs. So I got off bed and started burning those hairs using a candle, and even the hairs of that thing were struggling.
Just as I was done burning the hairs, there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and stood behind it completely naked. I was feeling at ease. Outside stood a tall, slim young man, whose features were Caucasian, but he had the skin colour of either an Arab or a person of one black and one white parent. His eyes were green and transparent. He was actually quite sexy and had a pleasant demeanor. He asked me if my friend was inside, and I replied she wasn't.
"Oh, that's a pity," he said. "It has such nice weather. I was thinking of taking her to the sea."
"I am sorry. She's not here," I said and closed the door.
I woke up feeling tired and cranky by my struggle with the demon. Two pieces of information came to me as I made the transition to wakefulness.
One, that pleasant dark-skinned man was a demon too, and he had come to take what had been promised to him. You see, that young woman I have known since childhood had a mother who was involved in magic. Unfortunately she was the worst kind of witch someone can be; sloppy and with superficial knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if she promised her daughter to some entity, or something tricked her.
Two, that man wasn't just any demon. He was the Black Man of the witches, also known as Nyarlathotep. He appears as a man of Arab ancestry sometimes, but is also seen with Caucasian features. Great.
So... exterminating shape-shifting demons by vibration (yelling) and fire, check. Flirting with Nyarlathotep, check. Shutting the door on his face while he came to collect a debt, check. Seeing that dream on the night of the full moon, check. Not that I am counting or anything. Just saying.
I really, really need to win the lottery. Life is so much simpler when all you have to worry about is what colour nail varnish to use. Not that it'd change anything in my case. I'd still spend my days choosing stickers and my nights grappling with demons. And trying to type a blog entry with a cat sleeping on my lap. Both my legs have gone to sleep presently, and I suspect that's what I ought to do too. I hope Nyarlathotep won't pay me another visit any time soon; I sorely need my beauty sleep. 😝 (If you enjoy my content, please consider supporting what I do. Thank you.)
I extend my hand in the twilight. The wind is blowing, the sky a mixture of blue and grey. The clouds travel fast, they rush out of view to other, faraway skies. The pine tree in my garden seems to shine; the lighter green ends of its branches are pale, diffused, in their own way luminescent. Further from the tender end, the foliage is darkening into cypress green and black. The tree slowly bleeds green into the approaching night while black engulfs it more and more, the nests of shadows in it growing, extending, darkening. It's a sight to behold.
The characters inside my head are chatting with each other. Each has a past, a present and a future. How can they not be real, if they have a past and decisions they regret, and mistakes, and people they've loved, and others that have persecuted them? Why are their lives any less important or real than mine and your life? What makes this overrated reality more important than countless others? I guess the answer would be, that's the reality you have at your disposal. But is it?
Can you tell reality apart from dreams? Some dreams I have are so real, so lifelike, that this reality pales in comparison. I've dreamt of the moment I came into being, not this lifetime, not this body. I was floating in a calm, shallow, warm sea. I was tranquil and fully conscious. Everything was black. There were no stars in the sky, no lights in the sea, because it was not now. There were no lights because there was no universe yet. No suns, nebulae, nothing. I was there and behind me was my mother. Paradoxically enough, or maybe not at all, there was no father. My mother was holding my head in her hands as she was pulling me out of the primordial sea and bringing me into being. Making me, not birthing me. Whole and conscious. Not a baby.
Shamans claim this reality is the dream, while dreams are far more real.
The first sign of shamanic talent in a person is that they start to go mad.
I'm not a shaman.
This is not real. This reality, this state of being is not real. The pain you experience, the decisions you make, the things you consider important, none of it is real. But this does not make it any less important.
I remember watching my world die. The stars were falling from the sky like rain, moving erratically, burning, and my mother was behind me. I wanted to run, to hide, but where can you hide when the world ends?
Energy is never destroyed, only transmuted into something different. It perpetually changes forms like a little child wearing Halloween costumes, and believing, really believing in their role. Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.
The only thing we have is Love.
There is no time, no place but now. Love.
What an astonishing multitude of boundless worlds you encompass in your infinite wisdom, in your devastating, magnificent totality.
May the Heart, Mother of everything, watch over them tonight.
"The angel Duma's tear, crystalline and clear, filled the vision of each of the onlookers. Reflected in it, they saw mercy, and miracles, and the knowledge that everything that is, has a purpose, and that purpose, somehow, included every one of them... on a deep and personal level."
"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid.
You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
"REALLY?" said Death. "AS IF IT WAS SOME
KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE
HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE."
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
"YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO
BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES."
"So we can believe the big ones?"
"YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF
THING."
"They're not the same at all!"
"YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT
DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW
ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET"—Death waved a
hand. "AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF
THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED."
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's
the point—"
"MY POINT EXACTLY."
-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Merry Christmas/ Yule/ whatever celebration you celebrate to everyone! I hope you are all safe and in the company of the ones you love.
