Fern's Grotto

Astro Blog

2007-09-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

Please Check out my new purely astrology related blog: www.wisestars.net/blog

Venus Retrograde

2007-07-29T21:33:00.001-07:00

Venus went retrograde on Friday. My goal for the next month and a half is to carefully track the events of this retrograde period. I plan to be a sort of astrological Hercules Poirot, a bloodhound on the scent of Venus, tracking her backwards motion with impeccable attention.

On Friday evening I spent time with two old friends. Despite the traditional caution that social events may be unpleasant during Venus Retrograde, I actually had a wonderful time and felt very social indeed.

I wondered if it was because they were "old" friends. Friends from the past so to speak, and this would make sense with the retrograde.

However this theory was dashed on Saturday when I hung out with a new friend and had another most excellent social outing, spending a very happy frolicking time at Limontour Beach, poking around Inverness, dinner at my favorite Fairfax Mexican restaurant, Pancho Villa's followed by a new French film-"My Best Friend", at the Rafael.

Honestly, this was the best social weekend I've had in months. So make sense of that Monsier Poirot......

LURID VENUSIAN ACCOUNTS WANTED!!!
Anyone who happens to read this who cares to write in with their own accounts of Venus Retrograde adventures is strongly encouraged. I'm particularly interested in encounters with old lovers, misadventures in dating, bad haircuts and fashion mistakes.

May your Venus retrograde get off to as good a start as mine.....

Shiny Happy People

2007-03-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

When we left off yesterday, my sidekick Deborah Oak and I were dreaming awake the Power of Compassion in the craft, ready to embark on a Wizard of Oz adventure in beautiful British Columbia.

Spirit Rock in Woodacre is a Buddhist Retreat center conveniently located about 10 minutes away from my new home in Fairfax. The Buddhists practically invented compassion, and so I've began to regularly attend their Monday night "Dharma Talks" and meditation evenings. I'm aiming to absorb the essence of compassionate wisdom through my pores, and distill this perfume into a form fitting for The Wizard of Oz and other witching ways.

Recently on Dharma Talk night at Spirit Rock the teacher talked about relaxing. She described all the different areas of life where it is possible to relax: physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. She talked about the mechanics of relaxing into ourselves, into our lives and our feelings. About how to let what exists in the present just exist.

As I've taken this in over the last couple of weeks, allowing myself, as the teacher advised, to let my inner voice remind me throughout the day to "relax", dropping my shoulders, breathing in more deeply, I've become more aware of my life just how it is now, here, in the present moment.

Gratitude is a popular concept right now. Being grateful has taken on a sort of aura of coolness. Experts from every conceivable discipline are prescribing gratitude as the ultimate remedy for a host of problems. From the local raw food restaurant "Cafe Gratitude", to The Secret and Oprah Winfrey, everyone's rooting for the gratittude attitude.

Though I can be a little snarky about these kinds of sheep-like mentality themes, I'm also ambitious to become more of what Deborah Oak Cooper calls a "shiny happy person".

This past Sunday, I sat in the joyful, bursting, bright and colorful loopiness that is the lovingly created living room of the aforementioned Deborah Oak Cooper, surrounded by my Independent Craft Teaching sisters, a newfound group of Reclaiming affiliated individuals, and a menagerie of roaming cats and dogs, including my sweetie, Sweetie.

The occasion was a salon concerning that energy body we call Reclaiming. "What is Reclaiming?" was the topic. When the Independent Craft Teacher /Good Hair Guild, et al first dreamed this salon up, one other Sunday last year, I thought the title wasn't sexy enough, and lobbied hard for "Sex, Drugs and High Fashion", or something to that effect, yet simplicity did seem to be the key, and the questioning, ended up being (as usual), more dynamic than the answer, as the questioning is what brought me home.

So today, on the path to "shiny, happy, personhood", during the Aries season, I celebrate and give thanks for the beauty and spark of new birth. I celebrate this pulse of life arising from the community home I thought I'd said goodbye to.

As I practice the art of compassion towards myself, relaxing into what is right in front of me, I understand how deeply I've missed this sense of place, and how grateful (yes grateful), I am to be returning home.

Returning to Reclaiming

2007-03-28T00:55:00.000-07:00

“We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time” T.S. Eliot

Reclaiming entered my life my second year of college, when a visiting friend insisted I read the Spiral Dance, going so far as to hand over her well-worn copy, and ordering me to read the first chapter. As I read, I had that experience that commonly occurs when you find your spiritual path, the feeling of returning to a home long forgotten.

Soon after reading that first fateful chapter, I discovered that the Reclaiming collective was based an hour away from Sonoma State, where I attended school, and furthermore, offered classes and had a yearly Spiral Dance. This was 1988, and I was 18 years old.

Fast forward almost 20 years, 20 years of changing homes, relationships and jobs. The one constant throughout this time was my involvement in Reclaiming. As I moved through the ranks from volunteer and student to priestess and teacher, my passion and excitement for Reclaiming ebbed and flowed, evolving and deepening as my spiritual path took the usual zig-zaggy twists and turns.

As the SF Bay Reclaiming Community has grown increasingly polarized over the last several years, I became more and more fed up with the direction Reclaiming was going, and finally, with sadness and frustration I took to announcing to whoever would listen that I was divorcing Reclaiming, but keeping the same last name. Fed up with being shunned, ignored and marginalized, my spiritual center for the first time in years lacked a community focus, and I resigned myself to going back to semi-solitary practice. Honoring spirit alone, and when possible, in the good company of my witchy compadres and fellow "Reclaiming Refugees".

Then my Feri initiation opened me up to Hinduism in a completely unexpected way, and yoga, Ayurveda and mantras claimed my attention, a new love affair with a surprising spiritual partner entering my life from an unseen direction.

But, throughout it all, part of me has been whispering, “you’re still a witch, you’re still a witch”. With curiosity I’ve been observing my unfolding Hindu/Pagan self, wondering where this new road would lead me.

I followed the Hindu deities right into a study of Jyotish astrology, and got my chart read by my teacher. He confirmed that there was a signature in my chart that meant “tree spirit worshipper”, or, as he said, “basically this means you’re a witch”.

Around this time, after a five year hiatus from witchcamp I was unexpectedly asked to teach at BC Witchcamp, with the story of The Wizard of Oz as the working for the year.

My dear sister/friend Oak was also asked to be on the team, and together we embarked on exploring the book that shaped both of our childhood’s with our adult witches eye.

“Compassion”, came to us both simultaneously, as the place we wanted to start the story from, and so our path developed, a weave of of Power and Compassion and their place in the craft........

Tune in tomorrow for the "Return to Reclaiming Part II"

Mercury Retrograde on Valentine's Day Offering

2007-02-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

This Quiz:
http://www.youthnetsouthampton.org.uk/breakout/lovelanguages.php

Is my offering to Mercury, who went Retrograde on the day of love....

The Five Languages of Love

My Love Language makes perfect sense to my Virgo self with Acts of Service at number 8. Must be my Moon in Leo's house that so much likes to receive gifts:)

Your primary love languages are probably
Acts of Service and Receiving Gifts.

Complete set of results
Acts of Service: 8
Receiving Gifts: 8
Physical Touch: 6
Quality Time: 6
Words of Affirmation: 2

Brigid

2007-02-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

The Way the Forest Shelters

I know about love the way the fields know about light,
the way the forest shelters,

the way an animal's divine raw desire seeks to unite with
whatever might please its soul-without a single
strange thought
of remorse.

There is a powerful delegation in us that
lobbies every moment for
contentment.

How will you ever find peace
unless you yield to love

the way the gracious earth
does to our hand's
impulse.

Rabia

Post-Holiday Saturn Opposing my Moon Blues

2007-01-15T21:15:00.000-08:00

I feel like a should have a badge entitled "I survived a month-long holiday visit with my mother".

I think that's all I want to say about it for now.....

The moon's growing skinny again, working its way back to new. So admirable I think, the
way it goes along every month, growing and shrinking, same as always, but always different.

My quiet little dog is all better from her rather serious bout with pancreatitis. So weird to watch a being I love puking and dry heaving and miserable, made me think about those who were worriedly watching me during my endometriosis related vomiting episodes. Not fun....

Sort of lying around waiting for something to happen. I'm coming off the tail end of a bad week of cramps, and though my mind is busy wanting to make all kinds of things happen, my body is not cooperating. The disconnect is challenging as always, and maybe that's the point, as I try so hard to learn how to be patient with it all....

Magician Landing

2006-12-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to write a lot about how I haven't blogged for awhile, because not only is it obvious if anyone were to look at the dates (which I can't imagine anyone would spend a whole lot of time doing frankly...), but I'd rather write about more interesting things....

It may be too pat to describe the last six months or so as the fool transforming into the magician, but it has been magically and uncannily this way, as I find myself manifesting like crazy, though not without stress and a variety of petty and sometimes not so petty challenges...

First and foremost SWEETIE:

Thank you Diana's Grove for bringing this pure essence of love disguised as a dog into my life.

We have a good time together every day, what more can I say....

Life lately is: Alis natural clay paint, dry rot, plumbers, electricians and handy men, learning to use a drill and other tools. This strange new world of home improvement is fascinating and mundane at the same time.

My new life came about as I took over the guardianship of my family home, an interesting and karmic job involving the sorting of piles upon piles of stuff, like Psyche sorting the seeds, I've been immersed in the details of seperating what is valuable and should be saved, and what needs to be cleared and let go of.

Living in a new town, with a new dog, a new house and creating a new life. Lately I think a lot about how I can feed my roots, my foundations, my past, my old friends and connections, as I branch out and grow towards the future and the continuing fast paced whirl of transformation.

Am I Fooling Myself?

2006-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

Since March I've been contemplating the parallels between my life and the Fool card from the Rider-Waite deck. Feeling like I'm taking a big leap of faith in a lot of areas of my life, though this time, at 36 I've got some good solid tools, and I've done some sometimes achingly difficult work to keep my heart open as I jump off all the cliffs I seem to be faced with now: work, home, relationships....In every area there are scary unknowns, leaps to be taken, or leaps I already have taken.

Today, as I spun through mid-air, the voice of doubt began swirling around me, whispering in that sly, insidous way the voice of doubt seems to have..."Maybe you're just fooling yourself, maybe this new terrain you have in mind to land in is an illusionary and temporary distraction, and you should just give up trying to have goals or desires, maybe even if it is ok to have these goals and desires, they're not really reachable anyway, and I should just stop fooling myself, maybe I'm too old to imagine something different could manifest, so again, stop fooling around, get real."

The voice of doubt chased me around for my whole walk around the gourmet ghetto of N. Berkeley where I make my temporary residence now.

It wasn't until I got home, fed the dogs and relaxed a bit that I realized I had not one, but two little dogs following behind me during that walk. Both dogs have an uncanny resemblence to the dog in the image. Perky, tails wagging, ready for any kind of adventure. Like the Rider-Waite fool, I realized I do have companions on this free-fall into the unknown: instinct, the ability to forgive, loyalty, and love of life. My canine companions, both rescue dogs, reminded me that life can change unexpectedly and suddenly for the better. And for now, that's all I need to believe in.

The Summer of Housesits

2006-05-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

In Berkeley, embarking on the first of my summer of housesits, I feel a little bit like I'm on a vacation, though I'm still working. Living out of suitcases, in a new environment, and enjoying the sites, sounds, etc.
My companions for the next couple of weeks are Mei Mei and Wang Wang, two small dogs with big personalities, as seems to be so often the case....
Mei mei and I instantly developed a special bond. She is so smart and good, I find myself fantasizing that JC and S come back and decide two dogs are more than they can handle, and that Mei mei needs a new home, specifically, with me.
Wang wang is enthusiastic, silly and affectionate, but lacks Mei Mei's depth.

I walk them around my old neighbourhood in N.Berkeley's gourmet ghetto and remember why I loved it here. The fabulous, voluptous gardens, overflowing with spring flowers, the food, the diverse community, and the sort of subtle way that the university permeates the environment here, both in good and challenging ways.

Today I did a reading for a young Russian man. His chart was strikingly similar to my own, and it was almost like giving counsel to a younger, male version of myself. My "fetch" as we call it in the witchy world. So interesting and magical of an encounter, to guide him through the terrain of his Saturn return, as one who has come out the other side.
As I began to complete the work of my Saturn square, exactly seven years after my Saturn return at 30, I notice how lately so many of my clients are in the midst of their own Saturn returns. It's almost as if I'm being challenged to look at what I've accomplished, how I've grown and what I've learned since that time seven years ago.
Funny, I just realized that's about when I moved into the house in this same neighbourhood I'm housesitting at now. Maybe it's a literal trip down memory lane, though with a twist, as I stratagize and plan for a house of my own.

How Would You Live Then?

2006-05-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Thank you Asata!

How Would You Live Then?

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
blew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerful sang
from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver
of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
and every day -- who knows how, but they do it -- were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Blue Iris)

Liberty

2006-05-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

Ok-well maybe a few more.....

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell

Living with War

2006-05-10T14:35:00.000-07:00

Two words today:

Neil Young

Goodbye New Mexico, Hello San Francisco

2006-05-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

Monday
Goodbye to New Mexico….Ate breakfast at Cloud Cliff Café this morning, a lemon ginger scone. If Tara’s Organic Ice Cream had been open at 9am I probably would have gone there instead for Garam Masala ice cream, but I guess they think people don't eat ice cream that early.
Breakneck speed and 98.1 back to Albuqurque again, no Army guys this time. Made it just in time for my flight with overpacked luggage from all the shoes I bought in T or C, and all the books Tandra gave me.
Got home on a hot San Francisco day, dragged myself up and greeted Casey, who’d just arrived home as well. We went over to El Metate for dinner, having a nice chat on the way. The rest of the York street crew will trickle in in the next few days it sounds like. I’m back to work tomorrow, with a busy week ahead.

Sunday and Day 7 in New Mexico

2006-05-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Back to Dr. Lad and luuuuuve. I drove down to Albuqurque at top speed, having stopped on the way to look at a house in Pena Blanca, which made me a bit late. Drove by some Army guys running in the morning heat, and I guess I was driving too fast because their sergeants, or the men in charge, were waving their arms wildly at me as I passed, I assume to get me to slow down, which I did a few seconds after the wild arm waving commenced.

Luckily noone chased me down, so I made it to class, my new favorite New Mexico radio station 98.1 keeping me company on the ride down. I was listening to a talk show where there was an author discussing the transition from a more matriarchal culture to a patriarchal one, and the current earth changes, so I was a bit distracted when I flew by the Army guys, though I did register them, and felt bad seeing them sweating in the heat to build their strength to go to Iraq and kill or be killed.

Anyway, the class was a shorter one today, Dr. Lad talked about becoming the clouds when you looked at the clouds, becoming Shiva, becoming luuuve. That this was the way to prevent trauma, that the way to heal trauma was to stop it from happening before it started, but if you couldn’t do that, then soothing and healing the senses with color, sound, smell, taste and touch was the next best option. Mostly though, Dr. Lad modeled the art of devotion to spirit, to god, to Krishna, Ganesh, Shiva, Lakshmi and more than anything, to “luuuve”.

After class I had my date with Tandra in Madrid. Drove there trying to make it by 5:30 because we hadn’t made any other plans other than I would meet her at her store “Cowgirl Red” at 5:30. Lots of Cowgirls in New Mexico……Anyway, drove into Madrid. and fell in luuuve. In luuuve with the art that greets you when you’re still on the highway, in the form of a gallery that reaches across the road and pulls you in with art and more art, art pouring out the door and onto the street. The peace statue in the form of a glorius woman that welcomes you, arms wide open as you first enter town, the little main street lined with lush trees, and the old soda fountain, which has just gone out of business and is, in my opinion, begging to be transformed into an organic ice cream parlor.
Madrid, with the Clint Eastwood, and I mean really old-time western saloon, with men (and girls, as in cowgirls) in cowboy hats and boots and smoke and beer and music. So we (met Jen in town), had dinner there with Tandra, since it’s the only open restaurant in Madrid. There was a live band playing, a blues rock type father/son combo. In the middle of the show a sort of circle dance formed and before I knew it my hand was being grabbed and I was dancing around the saloon holding hands with what seemed like most of the residents of Madrid, and then the older lady next to me grabbed me in a big bear hug and asked if I was from Madrid, and said she was local and something about liking me very much. She didn’t seem that drunk, and so I took it as just a sign of the general good naturedness of this funky, eco-western artists town.

We went back to Tandra’s home aka shrine to the Virgin de Guadalupe and ate ice cream and talked for many hours about the moon and the stars and the planetary cycles and being women and men and New Mexico and then Tandra, who is in the middle of moving, had us go through boxes of things she was giving away and gave us tarot cards and books and shared her Master’s Project with us, which is a one-act play involving the Virgin de Guadalupe and the pope and a number of goddesses, having an intense dialogue about how, when and why things went to hell.

Staggered out of the guadalupe house about midnight, drove back down to Santa Fe, crawled into bed and passed out into a night of deep dreams.

Saturday

2006-05-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday-
Today I drove down to Albuqurque for my class at the Ayurvedic Institute with Dr. Lad. I decided I don’t like Albuqurque. It reminds me of Fresno aka the “Armpit of California”, or the place I went to high school. Dr. Lad on the other hand, was much more satisfying than Albuqurque. A slight, gentle man in his sixties, he talked to us, with his heavy Indian accent about trauma and pain and how to cultivate “luuve” as a healing force. Perhaps my favorite part of the training was listening to Dr. Lad pronounce the word “love”. He luuuved to say luuuve, and he said it in such a sweet and unpretentious way, that I sure felt lots of luuuve and affection for him.
I was asked to share lunch with these two women who turned out not only to be from California, but both of whom are friends with Komala Lyra and Simone de Winter, the wonderful ladies who facilitated my Panchakarma retreat in January. One of the woman is helping to run the fabulous aromatherapy extravaganza floracopeia.

Drove back to Santa Fe to meet up with Kate and Kathi, when I got a call from Jen, who had spent the day exploring Madrid. Turns out she had run into a woman in Madrid who had just returned from the Shamanic Astrology workshop run by Daniel down in Faywood (see previous posts for the story of our Faywood Adventure). This woman, Tandra, has been studying with Daniel for the last several years, and so Jen wanted me to meet up with her that night, since we had driven all the way down to Faywood to try and learn more about the Shamanic Astrology.
I was hot, frazzled and feeling like a Pitta Dragon from a long day in a classroom, and also wanting to spend time with Kathi and Kate, but I agreed to go over to “Tiny’s” bar and restaurant for a little while to meet up with Tandra and her friends.
At Tiny’s there was a classic rock cover band playing way to loud, an Elvis impersonator who made me wish Deborah was there, and lots of smoke and bad food. Kate called in the middle of it all to ask me if they could pick me up and take me to Cowgirls to meet with some friends. I said yes, and set up a time to talk with Tandra the next day in a quieter environment.
At Cowgirls, (where we were waited on by yes, a cowgirl), I met Kate’s new sweetie Sebastian, and Sebastian’s new dog (name lost to me now). I also learned about the intricacies of letting dogs lick your hand, lizard aliens and Shirley Mclaine, and how the governor of New Mexico, though a Democrat (or perhaps because he’s a Democrat), is a total lech.

Friday in Santa Fe

2006-05-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Didn’t make it to Taos (read previous blogs for the epic story of “How We Tried to Get to Taos”).

Got waylaid going through Santa Fe at El Farol, a tapas bar and live music place on one of those windy, adobe streets that for some reason reminds me of the houses in the funny little towns in one of the Star Wars movies. We had a sweet as pie, witchy (large pentagram, black boots, cat-eye glasses) waitress, who not only drew us a map to a place to stay, but wrote down her home phone number in case we got lost.

Luckily Queen Kathi ni Keefe called us just in time and rescued us with an offer to stay at her home. Welcomed exuberantly by her crew: dogs (Shydog and Eugene Fox), roommates (Indy and name missed roommate), and home (art, Santa Fe colors, and funky Kathi style), we were more than happy to rest our weary heads in her sunroom in the back.

Morning was Kathi and Shydog and Jen and I in pajamas in the sunroom. Kathi told me the story of how she and Shydog met six years ago when Kathi found Shydog in the dump behind her house with oodles of puppies (sorry guys, I know it was more than ten, but the exact number escapes me). Kathi wooed Shydog with the kind of patience and heart that Kathi has and the whole story ended up making me cry, literally, because they’re both just so damn sweet.

href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7642/928/1600/Kathy%20and%20Shygirl.jpg">

href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7642/928/1600/Kathy%27s%20Dog%20E.%20Fox.jpg"> Eugene Fox, the newest edition to the Luana St. house is pretty awesome too, he’s fattening up a bit and getting over some early starvation issues. All the dogs make me think of my beloved

Mexico Adventure Day 4

2006-05-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

Las Cruces like the rest of S. New Mexico was hot and sunny.I got up and did some yoga and meditation on the adobe balcony, and then we quickly got dressed to make it down to breakfast. After breakfast and our morning travel photo documentation project we headed over to the “historic” downtown plaza. Walking around the Mesilla Plaza we came across a little square with a fountain, beautiful southwestern art, wrought iron and flowers. Going inside we discovered “La Paz Imports”. We knew we were in the right place when we noticed the repeating owl motifs. I got a hand-painted gourd with the face of an owlon it, a wooden spoon and a Curandera’s Egg, used to invoke Love, Prosperity, Fertility and Happiness.

After continuing our walk around the plaza, we left to further explore Las Cruces. These efforts got a bit sidetracked due to some lengthy negotiations around our travel plans, but after some emotional wrangling we got back on track and decided to head up to Taos as planned. This time we were pretty determined to make it there without lingering to long anywhere on the way or getting sidetracked.

Unfortunately, on the way out of town we got a little lost, luckily a kindly farming couple in a bright (and I do mean bright) yellow truck gave us directions to the freeway, and I meditated on the moon conjunct Saturn, and how many different ways it could manifest in one morning.

On the road to Taos, about an hour north of Las Cruces we started getting hungry and realized we were coming close to T or C. Remembering that the vegetarian restaurant, The White Coyote Café was open on Thursday’s, we felt pulled to stop and eat. We’d both been eager to try White Coyote out when we’d been in T or C on Tue and Wed, but it had been closed both days. We decided to stop for a “quick” lunch, vowing that we would only be in T or C long enough to eat, and as much as possible try not to get involved in any Taos distracting conversations.
About two hours later, after a long leisurely lunch, a chat with Eunice the cook and owner of The White Coyote, dessert, and another visit to Pelican Spa, we found ourselves, at my instigation, talking with Danielle Fitzgerald a local real estate agent and land visionary, who had recently moved to the area from Oakland.
Danielle proved to be worth the detour, as she passed on valuable info about buying property in T or C and the surrounding area, and offered to show us her land anytime. She was interested in building a retreat center on the land and developing it in a sustainable manner. She talked about bringing green builders out for a weekend educational workshop in the fall, and I promised to try and hook her up with one of my favorite Bay Area Green Builders.
Roughly three hours after we drove into T or C we successfully made it out and on the road to Taos.

New Mexico Adventure Day 3

2006-05-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

Wednesday
Jen’s alarm didn’t go off so she didn’t make it down to Las Cruces, and instead came with me to look at the promising brown/orange adobe we'd spotted yesterday We were greeted by the sight of Leah, Syd’s agent and the owner of the house Eagle X, a 70 something cowboy, writer, castle builder and jack of all trades. Jen and Eagle quickly became immersed in deep conversation while I queried Leah about the house. It was quite clear that Eagle liked apricots, castles and color. There were probably at least 15 assorted apricot trees on the property (this is in the midst of a somewhat barren desert land), cement hand built castle models, complete with toy soldiers dotted the by now familiar eccentric landscaping of the front yard. Eagle also pointed out several half-finished fish ponds, layered with brick, and I admired the flourishing Honeysuckle plants around the front entrance. Inside the house, Eagle introduced us to the “Blue Room”, the “Green Room”, and the “Red Room”. The rest of the house was painted a bright almost fluorescent yellow that my 14 year old housemate Casey would recognize from his own room at home.

Eagle shared his self-printed autobiographical cowboy/fantasy story with Jen, and then described his plan for his next book. A fantasy that takes place on an island near Antartica, where animals rule the roost, and humans have to fight for their rights. The very worst punishment that can be levied is being banished to a town called T or C. Though Eagle seemed to be in fairly good humour, Leah had told us he’d had a bicycle accident a few months earlier, which was leading to the sale of his house, as he could no longer keep up with the upkeep of watering his apricot trees, etc.
We said our goodbyes to Eagle and went back to Pelican Spa

for what we thought was our last visit for awhile. We were driving out of town when we noticed that the Good Medicine Shop, which had been closed the previous day, was now open. I had wanted to go into Good Medicine because it offered massage, spa treatments and astrology, and I was curious to meet the person who had manifested a shop with the same mix of healing modalities that I practiced. We went in and quickly struck up a conversation with the proprietor, April Heather and her partner Gonzo. It became a much longer “quick stop” than we’d anticipated when we first stopped in. April Heather, a women in her 50’s had been doing for massage for 15 years and astrology for 12. She’d opened the shop about a year ago. It became clear that though we had very similar interests, we had very different and unique styles of working. Despite our stylistic differences, we found common ground in the universal language of astrology and were off and running about a variety of star focused topics. Jen meantime was deep in conversation with Gonzo, and they soon had all manner of crystals and rocks spread out around them, as Gonzo helped Jen choose a good assortment of rocks to take home.
Almost from the moment we’d come in, Gonzo seemed convinced that we needed to head south to Faywood Hot Springs instead of sticking to our planned route of going north to Taos, and try and meet this man Daniel, who was a Shamanic Astrologer. I was pretty set on going to Taos to see my friend Colette, but the more I kept talking with Gonzo, the more I became open to the idea of changing our plans. Gonzo picked out a piece of Smoky Quartz for me, and a heart shaped fluorite. Then he threw in a clear piece of quartz “on the house”, we kept talking, and he went back into his room and came out with some small sage bundles and added those to our pile, again “on the house”. We seemed to have a hard time leaving, but knew we had to go, when after another twenty minutes, Gonzo added a pair of magnets to the pile “on the house”. We were afraid he was going to give us the whole store, so in exchange for his generosity, and to satisfy my curiosity, Jen and I agreed to head south to Faywood. Since Jen hadn’t gotten to go to Las Cruces in the morning, we figured we could take a detour through Las Cruces after a visit to Faywood.
Wednesday Night
It was too expensive to stay the night at Faywood, so we looked around for a nearby hotel in the strip mall palace of nearby Deming. After eating at “Si Senor” in Deming, we headed over to Faywood, arriving just before Sunset. We walked up to an outside reception area, and the first thing I saw was a somewhat intimidating looking german Shepard guarding the roost. After ringing a bell for assistance we were met with the face of an equally intimidating looking woman, who wasn’t too pleased with our request to tour the baths before we handed over our money. When I found out that Daniel the shamanic astrologer and his whole crew had left that morning, I began to wonder if I’d made a big Neptunian influenced mistake and gotten us headed off for some kind of spiritual wild goose chase with our trip to Faywood. We managed to survive the Faywood hazing process somehow, got our tour, and finally made it to the springs, which were beautiful, peaceful and soothing. Jen and the only other hot springs patron got into a deep discussion about motorcycles and airplanes, and so I took off for quiter pastures at another nearby pool. We soaked for about an hour, did a bit of evening birdwatching, and watched the sun go down before drying off to head back to Deming.
On the road to Deming we realized it wouldn’t be much further to Las Cruces and would save us time to drive there in the evening rather than stay the night in Deming. We arrived in Las Cruces about 10 o’clock, ready to crash just about anywhere, when we drove by a lovely Bed and Breakfast in Mesilla, near Las Cruces. Amazingly, they were open, and we were greeted by the very sweet front desk person who offered us not only a great room rate with breakfast included, but also Lemon Ginger cookies and Spring water for a bedtime snack. We fell quickly asleep, ready to greet Las Cruces the next morning.

New Mexico Adventure Day 2

2006-05-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
The next morning we woke up and went out into the courtyard to do some yoga. Like the rest of the place, the decorations on this outside patio were unique and interesting. There was a perfect likeness of George Bush’s head made out of paper mache sitting on a chair, a little frightening, but kind of funny. Fifties style lawn furniture, potted plants and a large blue clock permanently stopped at 9:10 added to the quirky ambience.
I was eager to learn some new poses from Jen, a Viniyoga teacher, and to get a bit grounded in the New Mexico soil. I found Jen in the courtyard talking to Terry, an artist and traveler who had recently moved back to Tor C with his dutch wife. He was an old friend of Syd’s and he and his wife were taking some time out from their travels to rest and soak up the waters of Tor C. We chatted with him for awhile and then got going on our morning practice. About a half hour into our stretching, Jen noticed a cat behind the screen door of one of the units who was contemplating a bird in a nearby tree, pretty soon after the cat made an appearance Terry’s wife came out and we had a delightful talk with her. She told us they had spent the last 10 years or so in Holland and now they were spending their days doing yoga and soaking up the water of T or C.

We also ran into Syd, the owner of the property, and made an appointment to meet him down at the spa office to look at some houses for sale in the afternoon. After a few outfit changesand some tea we were ready to encounter downtown T or C. The first place we noticed was a large health food called Little Sprout, smack in the middle of downtown. It looked brand new, and offered freshly squeezed juice, smoothies and wheat grass juice, as well as an impressive array of health foods. I was kind of surprised to find some of the rather obscure things I like to eat in this little town, so it was a nice morning welcome and we felt right at home.
After a fruit smoothie and the purchase of an herbal tonic made from a local organic herb farm we headed out to main st. to investigate T or C further. I went into the local thrift shop while Jen headed for the other natural foods store. I quickly found six pairs of vintage heels, just my size, priced at a dollar a pair, and was happily looking through the rest of the offerings when Jen found me about an hour later. She got me out of there before I bought more then I could realistically bring back and told me about her strange finger stabbing incident at the other health food store. A little blood offering to T or C, luckily it didn’t require anything more than some bandaids.
Our next stop was a little import type store where I found a coin purse with a picture of Krishna on it and a little black dress. Jen looked at tarot decks and we talked with the owner about the various merits of different decks.
After a brief self-guided tour of T or C we met Syd back at the office and he gave us some addresses for rental properties. We looked at about six before we found one up a little beyond town that caught our eye, and called Syd to make an apt. to meet him there the next morning to look at the inside. In the meantime, Jen had found out some info about Las Cruces and decided she would try and go down there in the morning and I would go alone to the house apt. We planned to try and leave T or C right after the apt. around 12 to make it up to Taos that evening to visit with Colette.
That evening we hung out in the Pelican Spa’s “Great Room” where there was internet access. We worked on our Mother’s Day ad for massage, astrology and truffles in between long leisurely soaks in the private hot spring baths
that were included in the price of the room. The décor in the Great Room stoked my creativity, and I came up with the outline for a Fall 2006 Waters of the Southwest/Anytime Wellness retreat in T or C.

New Mexico Adventure Day 1

2006-05-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Monday

Jen and I arrived in Alb. Late Monday night and headed for Truth and Consequence. We arrived about midnight and checked into our room at the Pelican Spa , a small funky place run by entrepeneur and art collector Syd Brown. It consists of about 13 apartments decorated in an assortment of vintage furniture and original artwork. Units include kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms, and free use of private hot spring baths. We were exhausted and frazzled from the flying, driving and general chaos of traveling, so we quickly got into bed and fell asleep.

Life Has Been a Little Scary Lately

2005-11-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

I got back from my Thanksgiving in Colorado with my family on Sunday night, and promptly threw up. Something about traveling (the stress, the motion, the noise, the family?), seems to worsen my premenstrual distress. Spent the last couple of days in the bathtub, but now seem to be enjoying a reprieve that I hope lasts for a little while.

Like another blog writer I was reading earlier today, something about being with my relatives puts me into a sort of catatonic state, I get slow and sleepy and revert to that teenage feeling of being slightly cranky and wanting my space, angst ridden and yet wanting some connection all at the same time. I managed to emerge from this at a few notable times during the four days, having several meaningful adult conversations with my lovely aunts.

They are both so warm and wacky in their own ways. They live in these non-descript suburbs of Denver about 10 min. away from each other. Each cultivates their backyard garden to be wild and beautiful, full of roses and irises and fountains and faeries. My cousin made a video of my Aunt's garden from the spring time and I was blown away with how beautiful it was. I was curious to see if their neighbours shared their garden aesthetic and so took the opportunity to do a little spying and peer over the fences at each of their houses. For as far as I could see down the row of fences, all the other backyards were just as straight and narrow and blah as can be. I felt proud of my aunts and how they are each creating a special place for the wild to thrive in the midst of all that conformity.

We looked at Aunt B's chart and I described her first house Pisces planets as being "forcefully caring", Aunt R and my Mom got a big kick out of that and spent the rest of the visit quoting me every time Aunt B got going. Personally I love that Aries/Pisces part of Aunt B, the agressive compassion, the intuitive drive. Another interesting find was that Aunt B had and still does have many of the same symptoms as I do as far as the nausea and vomiting preperiod wise. She advised several different things that she has tried and used, so I'm dabbling in some new methods now.

The Thanksgiving family visit also revived my somewhat sporadic geneaology search . Aunt B. gave me some geneology info that she got from a distant cousin. I discovered that not only do I have the same birthday as my Great-grandfather, sharing in the birthday phenomenon of my mom's side of the family (many of the younger generation were born on the same day as those of the older generation), but also did some research into the family's connection to Mexico's oldest circus, "The Atayde Family Circus", and found that a. we are related and b. the circus's first performance happened on my birthday over a hundred years ago.
Curiouser and curiouser......

Rose Tattoo Feng Shui

2005-10-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

Since I got my new rose tattoo, I've found myself with that particular shoulder barred, and felt that familiar defensiveness rise up (chip on my shoulder?), prepared to hide the rough, hand-drawn pentagram if the situation warrants it.
The situation has warranted it in the past, wearing tank tops on hot days when I taught second grade and my principal was around. Never wanting her or the conservative parents who populated my top notch school to think they might have a devil worshipper teaching their children.
I've carried my pentagram tatoo for the last 15 years. It holds with it the memory of the pain and the drama and the trauma of the ex who hand inked it on my skin one drunken evening in the kitchen surrounded by members of his punk rock band. It holds the memory of my first tentative steps into witchcraft, knowing this symbol was important but not really knowing why. And gradually, as I learned more about the symbol, I began to explain to people the origins of the pentagram as they asked about my tattoo-how it represents the five stages of life, the five directions, the five points of the human body.
When I decided this summer to have the tattoo transformed into a rose, it seemed like a simple impulse. After 15 years of ambivalence about the pentagram, due to both the circumstances in which I got it, but also the aesthetics, I was finally certain of what I wanted in it's place. I wasn't exactly sure why, I just knew I wanted a rose.
Later I remembered my epic summer rose dreams. Dreams so powerful and bold I brought them both into therapy and told my friends and anyone else who would listen the littlest details.
The Rose Tattoo experience is restructuring my physical feng shui. The act of getting it, the syncronicities leading up to it, and the whole process surrounding it's final placement on my skin have been magical and reignited my love affair with the divine.

This process of rearranging my inner feng shui is powerful, as I realign my inner vision with my outer self. These days when I go out in public with my shoulder bared I don't think about hiding my tattoo, instead I feel pride. So now I'm in the process of re-calibrating this inner impulse towards shame and fear towards one of pride and openness. The rose on my back is beautiful, I love the little rosebuds coming up to the top of my spine, I love the red richness of the full blown rose, the touches of pink and yellow like the rose of my dream, or the roses of my mother's garden. Every time I think of the tattoo I think of my love for roses: rose flavored ice cream, the smell of wild roses, the paradox of the rose and thorn.

Mr. Seventh House Cusp, Continued................

2005-10-12T19:08:00.000-07:00

My next date with Mr. 7th House started somewhat begrudginly on my part. I was secretly hoping I didn't really like him that much, so I could avoid yet another encounter with a man living on the edge.

My relationship history includes a self-employed (read broke), chef and construction worker, a writer living off his mother's small inheritance and a graduate student and part-time river guide. So while I've always appreciated the interesting stories and diverse skills my prior boyfriends have brought into my life, I've grown tired of the feeling that going out to dinner once in awhile would be a major expenditure.

More than that, the lack of stability and uncertainty that seems to be part and parcel of this breed of men has left me yearning for someone dependable, loyal and reliable. Someone who "shows up" as we say around my house.

Unfortunately, Mr. 7th House wasn't showing much promise as far as being a "show up" type of man. Though he seemed eager to go out again, when I finally agreed he called me later and said he hadn't realized that he had class on the night we agreed to meet, so could we do the next night?

I told him I'd think about it and call him back. I was tempted to just call the whole thing off then, not looking forward to future recurrences of this kind of sketchyness.

I decided I'd give him one more chance and called him back the next day agreeing to see him a couple nights later.

We met on Sunday in Downtown Berkeley after my weekly Qi Gong class, and the minute I saw him I knew I was in trouble. There's some weird glow that happens around someone you just genuinely like. It's like the air sort of warms and the light changes around you. That old chemistry thing.....

So we're off to the races with Mr. 7th House. I have to admit that besides the one change in plans and his lack of funds on our first date, he's proven to be fairly reliable. Calling when he says he will, showing up when and where he promises too. Being honest and forthright about what he's thinking and who he is.

So our next date is this Friday, and I'm heartened that when we we were discussing what we should do he asked if I'd be interested in a "casual dinner and a movie".

A Date With My Seventh House Cusp

2005-10-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

In astrology, the seventh house is the house of the other, the "not-self", or who you relate to in a deep way through marriage and close friendships. It exemplifies all those qualities that you are both attracted to, but also find challenging in your partners and significant others.
The seventh house is like a magical mirror of who you are expressed in another person. The cusp of the seventh house is like the power spot of this house, just as the ascendent is a sort of amplified version of your first house of self. Like all mirrors, the Seventh House Cusp does not represent a perfect reflection, but rather shows you a sort of inverted perspective on yourself.
Recently, as my Venus has been arising out of the rather frigid (ok, they were also bracing and enlivening) waters of Saturn I've began to reaquaint myself with my Venusian side and have found that this energy is flowing more, I have more juice, interest and apparently ability to attract a bit of love into my life.
Though Venus as a planetary energy tends to be rather lazy without more enlivening aspects, in real life, her energy can be good at stirring up a few adventures of the heart. Lately I've been experiencing this first hand as I seem to have met, and have had a few dates with what appears to be, my Seventh House cusp.

I met Mr. Seventh House Cusp a couple of weeks ago when I went to the semi-annual Leftist Lounge held in Oakland every few months.

The friend I was with is kind of an activist rock star, and I was staying at her place, so I knew I was due to stick around for awhile while she chatted up her entourage. To keep myself busy, I kept moving from room to room, looking for people I knew and stopping to dance every once in awhile. As the night got later,people got looser, and the tepid dancing got a little warmer, and I noticed this sort of apirition in a white shirt moving into my sphere of dance. This white shirted being was kind of cute, and so when he waved at me and said hello I smiled back and we begin to circle each other sort of purposefully. This went on for a long time, and the circles got smaller and smaller, until at a certain point I realized there was a name for the kind of dancing we were doing and it was what my 13 year old housemate Casey refers to as "freaking".

Impressed with myself, and hoping Casey would be later when I recounted my evening, I continued to stay in the orbit of my white shirted friend. Pretty soon, we were forehead to forehead, and then I found myself kissing a stranger for the first time in far too long. Kissing strangers in public would perhaps have been thought of as being a bit "loose" in times gone by, but it crossed my mind that if anyone in the Leftist Lounge was hanging on to that kind of archaic morality, they were either a FBI plant, or at the wrong party.

The night began to close, and it was time for me to sweep out as part of the rock star's entourage, so I handed white shirt my card. Up to this point we hadn't really said a word to each other, I didn't know his name, age or relationship status. All I knew is that we danced really, really well together. This non-verbal communication arrangement had worked out very well for me up until this point, as I was able to avoid the kinds of awkward communications that being hard of hearing and in a loud environment usually tend to produce.

White Shirt called me the next day, and I discovered we had all sorts of things in common, he seemed available (ie not married, gay or in jail), and he appeared interested in me and not scared away by my lack of hearing or astrological inclinations.

On our first date White Shirt showed up without a lot of pretense or funds, having borrowed money from a friend to take BART to come visit me. As I found out he's short on cash because he just got back from months in S. America where he was traveling and learning Spanish. As I also discovered, he spent a year teaching English in Thailand, is interested in the martial arts and has had at least seven profound encounters with fires in his lifetime. One of which left his legs badly burned. He also is a student at CIIS and in his classes has recently been focusing on the concept of mirrors, and how humans are mirrors to each other in relationships.
As he talked about himself (which he does quite easily, seeming to want to impress me a bit with his adventures), I realized that there was something strangely familiar about White Shirt. The boldness of going on a first date without even the money to take the train, the recklessness and adventure of his past, his desire to impress, the fires, the mirrors.....Then it dawned on me, Mr. White Shirt was almost a walking embodiment of Aries flavored by Sagittarius. At this point the revelations flew fast and hard. Like the geeky astrologer that I am, I quickly had the realization that Aries rules my Seventh house cusp, and further, since Mars is Aries ruling planet, and my Mars is in Sagittarius, that I had just gone out on a date with the living embodiment of my Seventh House Cusp. Given that Mr. White Shirt (hereafter to be known as Mr. Seventh House Cusp), had shown up two days before the an eclipse almost exactly conjuncting my Libra rising/Aries descendent, I figured it was time for a lesson on my Aries ruled by Mars in Sagittarius Seventh house cusp.
To be continued...........

I Fought the Law and the Law Won

2005-07-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to the Clash's version of "I Fought the Law and the Law Won" a lot lately. I have the tape in my car, and I just keep playing it over and over again, singing along loudly and with gusto, unashamed for once of my off-key pitch.

Over the last week, as I push rewind once more, I keep thinking to myself: why this song, and why now?

I'm thinking that maybe it's got something to do with an alternative interpretation of the law. Maybe the kind of law that's calling to me now, the kind that has me continuing to press rewind is the kind of law that we talk about with the Pentagram of Pearl. This kind of law is natural law, organic law-Saturn's law if you will.

So when I meditate on my relationship with natural law it becomes clear to me that the message of "I fought the law, and the law one", is uniquely appropriate to me right now, as I come out of a period of Saturn conjunct my Venus, and get ready to embark on Saturn square Saturn. I think of all the times I've fought the law, both literally and metaphysically.

When fighting the law in terms of the actual police department, committing acts of civil disobedience, I'm not so sure I would agree that the law won. I often came away from those experiences feeling more empowered, more inspired and moved by the unity of people joined together for a cause.

But it's becoming more and more clear to me, that in the instances where I try and fight natural law, or spiritual law-it always wins. And frankly I'm glad.

There's an almost rueful, lusty, joyful quality to the way the Clash sing "I Fought the Law, and the Law Won". It feels like an acceptance somehow of our humanity, our ultimate powerlessness in the face of this natural law, this order in chaos, the patterns of which are sometimes hard to trace-but we know this:
We're all born, we all die. There's a beginning and an ending, and likely another beginning and it all keeps on cycling around-what a beautiful law, and one I don't really want to break.

Saturn Conjunct Venus

2005-07-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

The planet Saturn has been conjunct my Venus for the last year. Saturn has to do with lessons, limits, structure and boundaries. Conjunct means basically "on top of" and Venus, as you may know, is the goddess of love and beauty, as well as pleasure, resources, values, and self-esteem

And yes-I've certainly felt like there have been some limits on all of these things this year. Prior to the beginning of this Venus/Saturn period I hadn't had a relationship in roughly two years. As I now enter my third year of the single life, sparked by sporadic crushes, one night stands, and other strange and unpleasant interludes, I wonder if things will ever change.

Apparently, from the astrology books I routinely consult, this is a common feeling experienced under a Venus/Saturn transit, well really under any Saturn transit. That feeling that life is just one long road of drudgery, with no end in sight. The particular planet Saturn is effecting gives some indication of that particular form of drudgery, so for me it's been all about love baby......

Though as the transit comes to a close over this two week period, I've felt some of the hard work (Saturn loves hard work), I've put into this area of my life come back to me in unexpected ways. For example-last week I got an out of the blue email from a dear friend who I see fairly regularly, one of those soul sisters you can almost take for granted because they're so much a part of your life. She wrote saying she wanted to make sure I knew how much I ment to her, and how much she appreciated me. The magic in the mundane-that's a Saturn gift.

Also through the week, I spent time with someone who is part of my magical community, someone I'd considered previously as not necessarily an ally, and found unexpected pleasure in connecting with them and by the end of the week found I had a new ally.

And over the last few days, I've received several emails from students, clients, friends, letting me know how they value me, appreciating my skills, abilities etc.

So Saturn offers me up his gifts-true rewards as the airlines say....

Diana's Grove

2005-07-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

Diana’s Grove

Back in San Francisco after ten days in Missouri at Diana’s Grove I find myself feeling a bit disoriented, sad, claustrophobic even. Missing the land, the people, the animals. Missing the very essence of Diana that permeates the air there. Diana, or as the Greeks knew her-Artemis. Diana, moon goddess and protector of the innocent, huntress, wild goddess of the hounds. Midwife to life and death, she moves freely at night, running through the dark forests with her dogs, shape shifting, using her arrows to bring down only the most prized game.

Diana’s Grove Retreat Center is a unique combination of a mystery school and dog rescue service. Here magic, myth and healing are studied against a backdrop of a constantly changing dog population. Dogs rescued from the highways, dropped off in parking lots, abandoned in old trailers. At the Grove both dogs and people find a place to gather their strength, receive nourishment and commune with others before returning out into the world beyond the Grove. Though the mix of humans and dogs can be chaotic, and as the dog population grows, sometimes unwieldy, there is a strange beauty in this unique expression of the goddess Diana’s qualities manifesting in the mundane world.

I’ve come to the Grove for the past two years to teach astrology. Two of my grandest passions are astrology and teaching, and both manage to intersect here in a unique and wonderful way. But the real reason I return to the Grove every year is because I feel I am visiting the very essence of the goddess Diana, immersing myself in her fierce, uncompromising wildness. At the Grove I greet my own wild self, reflected back to me through all the people I interact with there, through the dogs, the land, the night sky.

I found myself one hot, humid afternoon walking down the path towards the fields, as Prancer, a year old Walker hound ran after me, big hound ears flapping, panting in excitement. I headed towards the creek, wanting to cool down and quiet my mind from the busyness of teaching. I stripped off my clothes and stood naked in the heavy Missouri air, taking in the beauty of just that moment; creekside, Diana’s Grove, June 2005.

Prancer came prancing in, grinning and shivering in excitement as only a wet happy dog can. We chased each other through the creek, turning in circles, him barking in excitement, and periodically taking off to run full speed up the creek bank, before turning and running back full speed towards me, floppy ears flying, teeth bared in a big dog smile. I tossed sticks in his direction, which he caught and being a hound, neglected to bring back. For over an hour we played in the creek bed, surrounded by dragonflies, and water plants, small blue fish and turtles, flat stones, and tree roots, the sun beating down, the water just barely cooling us both. For that hour I felt my own wild self, reveled in it, and felt regret as I left the creek, leaving the fullness of it there, as I returned to a more human place.

So the Grove shelters the wild: Dog wild, people wild, land wild. Though the land is shaped, grasses mowed, cabins built-it’s mostly left alone, to grow where it grows best. Though the dogs are fed, bathed, sheltered, trained and nurtured, they are respected as wild creatures, and the people too are encouraged in their wildness. Encouraged to create, express, retreat, offered nurturance, love and care, midwifed through their transitions of both loss and gain.

Diana watches over all of it, sharing her wild self, connecting us to the divine through both the mundane and the magical work of the Grove. How the human intersects here with the divine is more complex, as people both find joy in, and struggle with the chaos, danger and risk inherent in interacting with the dogs and the land. We are startled by a dog fight, uncomfortable in our fear of the unpredictable, the flashing white teeth, the savage growl. We sweat and scratch in the face of the heavy heat without air conditioning, the omnipresence of ticks, poison ivy, mosquitos. It's a tricky balancing act-human and wild. As a culture we've navigated this relationship in a most destructive way, crushing out what we fear, creating neat rows of cement and power lines to control our "savage" self.
At the Grove, the balance may be tipped a bit the other way, as the dogs swarm in packs, interupting human moments with play, fights or other canine expressions of self.

I watch how this wilderness contained in Diana’s Grove unfolds in a cycle, its own pattern-a chaos held together by common goals-survival, freedom, communion. I watch the beauty of this wilderness, noticing its qualities: unapologetic, instinctive, sure of its place. There’s a love there, though I can’t define its particulars, a kind of love that permeates the wild and contains the differences, smoothes the conflicts, and guides the flow of that life and death cycle; easing somewhat the brutal transitions.

I take it all in, under the silver light of the stars, and the coolness of a dark night, I soak up Diana’s lessons as I would the warmth of a lunar fire. Feeding my human self with the beautiful chaos of nature, gathering in the mystery as I ready myself to leave the dark forest and reenter the light of day. Remembering the energy, the power, the sustenance of Diana’s realm.

Rolling Stones Gather No Moss

2005-05-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Rolling Stones are making their way towards San Francisco for yet another geriatric concert, and tickets are going for over $5,000 a pop. Meditating on this, the fact that the Stones, a band I grew up with, a band who wrote probably THE song of my childhood, that these same Rolling Stones are most certainly getting more than they need, has led to some interesting realizations.

"You Can't Always Get What You Want, But Sometimes, You Get What You Need..."

Yeah-so that's the song that shaped my childhood, and even more frightening that's the song that seems to have shaped a good portion of my adulthood too.

It's got a tricky message that song-Because it sounds good at first, ok-that's nice, you get what you need, and it's good to get what you need, right? Why should you need anything more than that? That's seems a little greedy, capitalistic really. If we all had just what we needed, maybe some people wouldn't be so poor and others wouldn't be so rich. It would be communism basically.

And the question that comes to me then, after musing on this 60's hippie koan is:
Do I really want to live in an internal communist state?

And the answer, once I had finally, after 35 years, posed myself this rather crucial question, is "Hell, NO!"

Anarchist state maybe, but communism? I think not.

Frankly, though I get that you can't always get what you want (boy do I get that one), I'm ready to have more than I need sometimes.

So here's my new song-

"You can sometimes also get what you want, even if you already have what you need."

Row Your Boat

2005-05-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Last week the days seemed slow and without movement in the areas I wanted to see change happening.

So yesterday I decided to do the homework we had assigned to our Rites of Passage class and set the intention that I would notice all the events of my day as if they were happening in a dream. The "If Life Were A Dream" lense became really hard to maintain as the day progressed and things began to shift and change rapidly.

I went to my old office-The Ruckus Society to meet with some folks about my web site and new marketing materials, and ended up doing some massage and healing work, hanging out with friends I hadn't seen in awhile, and reinvigorating old connections I thought were done.

By the end of the day, I had worked out an arrangement with my former boss to come into the office a couple times a month and do bodywork on folks.

This was a particularly satisfying event, as it felt like a graduation in some ways-an external acknowledgement of my changing role in the activist community.

So if life were a dream, in my dream I graduated, I came full circle, I've completed some part of the new journey I began last fall.

The rain continues, and I feel like San Francisco is caught in this strange between the worlds place-it doesn't really feel like spring-It's like we're going to rise up and float away momentarily.

Well-this calls for a song-
"Row, Row, Row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream...."

The Rising Sun

2005-04-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I worked down near the ocean on Judah St. at Other Avenues food cooperative. I'm learning that sometimes you need to do work you don't like so much in order to do the work you do. So in order to support my astrology/healing/teaching life I was down near the water offering up samples of organic tofu to surfers, hippie moms and other healthy types.
Just so happens I spent a good part of my childhood within a five block radius of Other Avenues. My bohemian private school was right around the corner. Rivendell: school for the children of idealists, artists, rich society dropouts and other creative types. My Mom cleaned the school on weekends to get a discount on my tuition. I remember listening to Shaun Cassidy records over and over again as she vacuumed and scrubbed. I was ashamed to be there on those weekend days. Now I think back and wish I would have helped her.

The 7-11 was there that I used to walk to everyday with my sad-eyed friend Benjamin and Billy who was my closest male friend and liked to call me Murgatroyde and put on puppet shows of the Jungle Book and later grew up to be a famous ultra-cool, somewhat snooty puppeteer. He's so, so gay and very hip and living in New York putting on underwater, ethereal shows with avant-garde puppets. We haven't spoken since I was in college, when I called him on a whim. He was far more interested in talking about his new boyfriend than the "blast from the past" I presented him with.

The health food store is right next door to where the donut shop used to be that my mom worked at and I would hang out there every morning with my crayons and coloring books, eating donuts and receiving offerings from the old people who came in. They'd leave me money and toys and other little things, telling my mother, "what a beautiful child", "look at those eyes". Once a photogropher came in and asked to take my picture. My mom has a series of photos of me running down the street in front of the donut shop, looking mischievous and unruly.
And I remember Other Avenues, when it was just across the street in the smaller shop, before they moved. This was almost 30 years ago. We'd shop there, my mother and I. I remember the big vats of peanut butter, and the smell of vegetables, and the strangeness of it, how it was so different than a "real" grocery store. I was always a little embarrassed, a bit angry to be in this "weirdo" place. One more sign I was being raised outside the mainstream I so wanted to be part of.
And the N Judah, that muni line running down to the water. Every morning and every afternoon for almost four years I'd ride that line down to the beach. At eight years old, getting on the bus in the morning, taking the first bus to the N and transferring at 19th st. meeting my friends, all of whom had come from their own corners of the city, and together we'd ride the N down to the water, down to the fog and the cold and down to Rivendell. The weirdo school by the sea. I loved it and hated it.

So yesterday, at the tofu gig-it was a beautiful sunny day. Sunny like I never remember it being down there as a child. I was so depressed from my parents fighting I don't think I recognized the sun, or at least retained it. My whole childhood seems banked in fog, cold, damp and unclear.

But yesterday it was sunny, and hardly anyone came in to eat tofu. So I sat outside in the sun and soaked it up and looked out at the blue water, and watched the light that only seems to come from the combination of the ocean and sunrays beaming down on moving water and creating those small diamonds that seem to rise and fall with the waves as the tides move, in and out along the sand.

I thought about how astrologically speaking, my progressed sun is about to drop over into my ascendent, my "rising" sign. And I realized that my progressed sun has been in my twelfth house, the house of shadows and veils and behind the scenes endeavors, since I was about eight. Eight, which is just about the time all the trouble intensified with my parents divorce. My "Sun", my light, has been hidden for almost 30 years, and in May, it begins to come out. My sun begans to rise.
Being down there yesterday, re-visiting that time when my sun went behind the clouds, remembering why, remembering myself then, it was good. I wouldn't change the past, I've had an interesting life, a complicated life, a juicy life.

As my sun moves into the light, I am thinking about the brightness to prepare for, the heat and the light. Part of me wants to get sunglasses and start putting on the sunscreen. Part of me is ready to soak it all up, taking in the Vitamin D, taking in the UV rays and the solar fire. Part of me is really ready to step out from the shadows, the fog, the damp and into the light.

The Web

2005-04-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that I couldn't fly. I was stuck in some kind of house and couldn't fly out. I've always in my dreams had the power of flight, been able to will myself up and over roof tops, amazing people on the ground with my abilities. Last night, every time I started to lift off, I came down, heavy and human, back on the ground.

Marla's death on Saturday has brought with it some of this heaviness, the heaviness of grief, that strange, clumsy feeling of loss that comes and goes, uncontrollable and unwieldy.

Marla and I didn't know each other that well, but we'd see each other at parties, gatherings, actions, and I could always depend on her for a bright, welcoming smile. She was warm, open and clear, and she was a part of my web, my community-this motley collection of people who have held together this last six years or so. Coming out of the WTO protests in Seattle and somehow moving in the same direction all this time, some of us married now with babies, other's forming their own little pods of home and family. My grouping lives, all of us in the Mission District- with four, or maybe five or six households within a one mile radius.
And Marla was part of this, part of the web. So on Sunday, after learning of how she died in Iraq, we sat and drank whisky and cried intermittently and ate, while the phones buzzed around us, and memorials were organized, and interviews given, and there was a bit of familiarity in it, almost like we were at an action.

But this time it was different, because Marla was not somehow in the background, part of our network, our tribe.

We feel her loss, and together we are mourning.

Fern's Grotto

2005-04-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

this is another test

Old Ladies

2005-03-30T18:28:00.000-08:00

Today I was standing on a street corner at 22nd and Folsum, waiting for the light to change and I smelled what I can only with the best of intentions call, "old lady perfume". I turned and looked next to me and there was indeed an old lady standing there.
I thought of my own personal retinue of old ladies. My grandmothers.
Great grandmother Rosa, lying in the bed of her nursing home. Offering up Jordan almonds and lemon sours, candies I still love today. Her long white braids twisted on her head. She had been a seamstress in Portugal, and even now, I have in my closet pieces of lace and old linens that she had some part in making. I thought also of her daughter in-law Matilda, my grandmother, the farmer, the survivor. She also always had something in her hands, something she was making, creating.
Then there was Maria, Matilda's mother, the only other great-grandmother I knew. She was a tough one, full of moxie. Married three times, first to a bootlegger who ended up in an insane asylum after trying to kill her. Big bosomed, voloptuous, but with a plain face, she managed to woo a number of unsuspecting men. She lived to be in her eighties, and I remember her singing these innocent little songs about birds, smiling, showing me pictures of her family. I didn't understand much that she said as she spoke mostly in Portugese. But I knew she loved an audience.
I thought also of my Grandmother Ann, my only surviving grandparent. Garrulous, suspicious, a little cranky, though with that false cheerfulness she puts on, she is relentlessly alive. I called her today and went through the routine-She asks me "how are you feeling?" How's your job, living situation, etc.? How's your mother? Have you talked to your father? Have you heard.....?" She always seems to keep it at five minutes or under, as she doesn't much like the telephone.

None of these grandmothers make me think much of sweetness or powder like that perfume. My grandmother's are pretty no bullshit, hardcore survivors, making it through the depression, the wars, poverty, violence, immigration. Somehow standing there today, they became real people to me. They changed from being "sweet old grandma's" to being women. Real women, like I am right now.

Old ladies. I'm on my way, not for awhile yet, but today it seemed real for a moment. Someday I'll be standing on a street corner, and someone will be smelling my old lady perfume.

Three Teachers

2005-03-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Last night I did astrology readings at a belly dancing benefit. It was a strange melting pot of people and times in my life coming together in unexpected ways.

My old dance teacher is the leader of the troupe, and I haven't spoken to her in over 6 years. I left her class as I was just starting to learn to lead and perform because I felt I wasn't good enough and wouldn't be good enough, and really wanted to just dance without the pressure to be good enough, but she was pushing me to "excel", so I left.

One of my witchy teachers turned peer who is in a big plutonian brouhaha was there.

And one more, though a more current former teacher, my thai massage instructor was there. She's in Jill's troupe.

So-three teachers.

I did readings for witchy teacher and her boyfriend and was getting a little dizzy with the virgo/pluto catholic monastery past life energy. I think I was paying back some debts there, or something else dutifully karmic.

There was a chair massage guy there who had one of the belly dancers chasing after him. He was a big, sexy brawny taurus/aries/pisces type guy-we did a trade and flirted for a while though the belly dancer kept trying to tug him away. He gave me his card, and saturn goes direct on Tuesday and starts moving away from my Venus, so maybe I'll get some relief from this affliction of a sex drought.

It was a weird night overall. What struck me most about the crowd and the performances and the event was how white it was. I think I noticed that mostly because belly dance originates from a region that is so not white and it was a little weird to be surrounded with this tribal music and all these white people (myself included of course).

SOMA itself is so white-Except for the bouncers and security people, and the parking guys who wave their hands madly every time someone leaves a spot, hoping for a tip.

It was a little depressing to watch them dance-the aesthetic/costuming was great-western saloon bordello meets 1920's geisha girl. But it was weird having this very culturally rooted dance form turned into a choreagraphed hipster nightclub dance complete with sets. I didn't really get into it. I prefer the more traditional dance connected into the culture. It's got more life.

The Winds of War

2005-03-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

This morning was a windy, sunny March day. I left the house about 9 to go to my acupuncturists office downtown. After my appointment I was leaving the building and heading towards BART when I heard the sound of steady, thudding drums up ahead. As I approached Levi Plaza I saw a Marine Corps drumming outfit arrayed on the steps like toy soldiers in their red and white uniforms. I intended to rush by, tuning out, safe in my own city space bubble. But as I passed in between the booming drums, the stiff soldiers and the admiring tourists, I was almost knocked over by the waves of aggression rolling out from this manifestation of Mars. The thudding drums, their metal shining in the sun as the wind blew from all sides, their red, blood red uniforms holding in their stiff, proud, upright bodies.
Mars broke through my bubble as I walked by, almost staggering a bit from the force of the energy. I thought about what Krishan and I had talked about over the weekend. How San Francisco is in it's own little bubble.

My own hometown oasis by the bay, complacent, a bit sleepy, dedicated to ourselves and our growth. Yes-we've got verve and our own special brand of radical fire, but we're so steeped in it, so laden with our own juice, that I think about how we can get caught off guard.

Seems like the waves of war blew through the city today, they cut right through me too, as I headed down Stockton street on my way home.

Sunday at the Beach

2005-03-14T08:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday finally made it to the beach. Piled into M and J's station wagon with I and the dogs and headed out to Fort Funston. It was one of those windy, sunny, foggy San Francisco days, where what to wear at the beach took up a certain amount of consideration time, because it could be anywhere from 50 to 80 degrees down near the water.
Finally arrived, it was brilliant and bright and the sun shined on the water and the waves crashed and Gus barked and barked, chasing balls, chasing Salty, chasing us. We huddled into a little cove and sat and talked and I had my moments of sunshine and grace. The grace came as I was thinking about those waves rolling in on another day, a day halfway across the world when they didn't stop and didn't stop, and just kept on coming, and washed over the people on the beach and washed over their loved beings and washed over their day in the sunshine.
The fragility of life, appreciation, gratitude. Sitting on the beach with the beings I love and feeling the fullness of life, in the awareness of death. Riding that edge, the thin eggshell between the worlds, so fragile, so thin.

Now's the time isn't it? The spring equinox, when the life eggs come out in full bloom, the colors explode, reminding us again, there's life, beauty, hope, possibility. I'm soaking it in, soaking it in like a dry sponge.

Blogging Blots

2005-03-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

Just wrote and tried to post something and it disappeared. This is not an auspicious welcoming into the world of blog....This is a test.