I don't know about you

But yesterday was this weird frustrating absolutely waterlogged day. Every time I even thought about blogging all I could think of was bitching about how irritated I was.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut and kept putting one foot in front of another and the day rather dramatically raised its wet head and shook it off.

I think that is one of the harder parts about all this, that when you begin to brush against frustration et al, that you can “disappear” inside what is going on in the immediate and forget that it is all just a part of getting someplace.

It didn’t help that this week was an overall difficult week, emotionally at least. Things came up and rather than doing my normal duck and go on – I hit this point where I decided I was not going to “duck” or “bounce back” but to stay with these things and untangle them.

I am…if you haven’t guessed by reading this…a very resilient person by nature. I am like that old toy, a Weeble, those round bottomed and weighted creatures that you could whack and “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”

However, and if you have been reading along for a while you know this, back in the day when life was really, really difficult and I packed myself off for some temporary therapy to get through, I received a warning from the therapist. He said that resilient people, the survivors that can take whatever is thrown at them and bounce back up have a time limit. And one day, when something happens, they won’t be able to bounce up again because they are too worn down. And that most often, when that something happens it is in an area of their life where they need to bounce up for themselves but they have used up all their bounce recovering from things that other people have seen fit to throw at them and that had more to do with the other person’s issues than theirs.

I am not at that point yet, but I know it is close. And this past week a bunch of stuff came up that had to do with me and only me and I had to work through it even though, by pattern, I usually would have put it aside to deal with some things that were effecting me and created by other people.

And I feel like…I have spent several hours in a dark room inside of myself pulling up the shades, letting the light in and cleaning.

Which is a good thing, but I would not like to repeat that thank you very much.

But it will come around again. And each time it does, it will get easier to handle because each time I do it, whatever fear, anger, pain , grief I have surrounding the thing becomes less all-powerful and just…real.

People forget, because our culture does not encourage memory, that those are valid emotions too. And they are a part of everything. Joyous love contains threads of grief, anger, fear and pain – I could go on and on about the whys and wherefores but the reality is that our range of emotions are part of our human experience. I do not believe we ever respond emotionally to something with just one little neat category of feeling. We do not shift from sadness to happieness to “now I feel anger and now I am at peace.”

Our emotional experience of the world (internal and external) is a constant web of all possible emotions. At any given point in time we may be on a strand that is made more of one than the other, but all of the other strands of the web are still present. They have to be for that is what holds the web together. Every part is necessary.

We tend, especially in clinical therapies, to present to people an understanding of their emotions as separate things within themselves. But no emotion travels alone.

Anger holds love and grief and happiness and peace.

Anger…I just about lost my mind towards the end of the week because one of my clients stiffed me again but after much pressure on my part they actually reprogrammed the portal and lo! discovered that yes! They never did pay me for ½ the work I did in September.

Good god…

And today…I am up early and slamming through my needful things so I can take the whole afternoon off and do….else.

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Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
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dead bodies

So, in the mix of strange things that happened yesterday I wound up talking with a woman about where would be the best place to hide dead bodies on Benefit street. Its for a murder mystery she is writing that is based in town.

And the past two days have really been focused on dead bodies, some literal and some figurative. But it is odd how the things we think and experience and are told can become like another person that lives in or around us. We take care of them as if they were a living being that we lived in relationship with. And when, as some of them do and should, they die – we are left with the problem of what to do with the dead bodies.

It is hard to bury them and walk away because they have been, rightly or wrongly, so very important to us. And it is not like we have a picture album to look back on to experience their memory. Sometimes these “people,” even though they have been a great source of harm to us, have become all that we have known to be consistent in life and at one time, we lived our lives as if they were the most important thing to us.

As if we loved them.

And we did, and a part of us always will and so it becomes hard to let go of the dead bodies we carry inside because it feels like it is a dismissive and rude act to perpetrate on something that we love.

In class we talked about the nature of journaling. How sometimes it can be a cathartic thing and how sometimes it can make it worse. As we talked about it more what was revealed was that if you already knew you were angry, sad, lonely, hurt, happy, joyful or whatever – and you wrote about it, the process was healing and settling.

But if you did not know these emotions were living inside you and were just…out of balanced and sat down to write and they were revealed – it stirs up a world of trouble with no settling in sight.

That is because journaling is an act. When we know we are angry and we write about it, we are finding something to do with our anger. If we are writing and discover that we are angry – what then do you do?

It is why a lot of people stop journaling. Its also why some people journal prolifically and have a great insight into themselves but no ability to make any changes in their life – because the only action they know how to do with the emotion is to write about it.

Our dead bodies are most often strong emotions tied to historical events. They “rise from the dead” inside of us when we encounter a new situation that in some way mimics the old. If you are not careful, you can assign to the new all that is really of the old and that is how you create repeating cycles of behavior and situations in which you are shooting yourself in the foot.

You have to keep asking yourself “Does it fit?” And when you ask that and the answer is “No” nothing is going to change because this dead thing has had a longer life inside you then the new. You have to keep actively reminding yourself that what is dead is dead and has nothing to do with the new. Then you have to go about playing Frankenstein and making a metaphoric body within you for this new and living thing to inhabit.

This process is a part of what it means to choose to be “innocent.” To come to a new situation with openness. To willfully choose to lay down your experience to learn from something new. It is not a momentary thing but an effort.

Its been very dry here. I haven’t realized how dry until I plugged in a warm air vaporizer and within 20 minutes the mad kitten was sitting in front of it looking like she was meditating and then she went and curled up in the middle of the bed (in the path of the steam) and passed out for hours.

Ok…here we go again, another day…another pile of things to get through…but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.

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Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
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group therapy

I walked down to get my coffee and was thinking about what I would write, came back – the radio is playing in the background - and completely forgot what roll I was on because of something I heard.

A Japanese lingerie maker has created a new corset-style bra that unfolds into putting ring.

I just don’t know if there is anything left to say after that…

Could you imagine? I mean…

a) what type of “encounter” are you having that it is appropriate to remove your bra and voila! there is a putting ring

b) and what…transforms into the putter?

I had my first class last night. It is perfect, very small and very intimate. I can weave in a bit of what I will be teaching in Mexico about the sublime with the basics of how you create a “writing life” and begin to elevate your writing to the next level (which for many is simply writing on a regular basis).

I warned them that the first class was probably going to be a bit more like group therapy then a writing class because it is important that we have an idea of where we all are coming from. I asked questions about what writing meant to them; what kind of “mythology” surrounded them about writing (like growing up in a family that thought writers couldn’t earn a living) and basically trying to look at some of the stumbling blocks that may be in place.

I can’t wait to read what they do with the first assignment.

And the mad kitten is spending more and more time indoors with me again because it is colder. We pretty much have been doing our own thing for months now and I have forgotten…..ZIP!!!

Ok…this seems to be how the day is going to go…I was writing this and now it is hours later (hours after the word “forgotten) I was eating my new wonder food Poha – a flattened rice with no husk that you can make in cold water or milk – when I got overwhelmingly tired. Lay back down and was out like a light and woke up to the sound of someone knocking at my door.

It was my dangerous landlord who I have not seen in a month or two. And the next thing I know we are careening down the streets in her gold minivan to try and start the boiler for one of her tenants. It was a no-go, the boiler was already on and something is wrong with the thermostat. So much for a free fix.

She pointed out to me more of her buildings and the fact that they are all painted red with black trim, because that is the color she likes. The building in front of me, that she owns, is the only odd egg. It is blue, but she doesn’t want to mess with it yet.

And then we started talking about Maine and snowshoeing and GPS. She told me that she loves hers but never uses it on the highway when she has to get somewhere at a certain time because it always takes her on off highway routes…

and then…

she told me that when she has time, she picks a destination that requires the highway and then follows the GPS as it takes her on all the backroads to places she has never seen. She has found ice forests and other strange things. She is 70, this is her winter sport and I think it sounds like a very cool idea.

Ok…I am just going to start the day again and see what happens.

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Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

the company we keep

They say that you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep.
What do all these countries have in common? (read the list slowly then see the answer below)

* Afghanistan
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Bahamas
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Barbados
* Belarus
* Belize
* Botswana
* Burundi
* Cameroon
* Chad
* China (People's Republic)
* Comoros
* Congo (Democratic Republic)
* Cuba
* Dominica
* Egypt
* Equatorial Guinea
* Eritrea
* Ethiopia
* Gabon
* Ghana
* Guatemala
* Guinea
* Guyana
* India
* Indonesia
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jamaica
* Japan
* Jordan
* Korea, North
* Korea, South
* Kuwait
* Laos
* Lebanon
* Lesotho
* Libya
* Malawi
* Malaysia
* Mongolia
* Nigeria
* Oman
* Pakistan
* Palestinian Authority
* Qatar
* St. Kitts and Nevis
* St. Lucia
* St. Vincent and the Grenadines
* Saudi Arabia
* Sierra Leone
* Singapore
* Somalia
* Sudan
* Swaziland
* Syria
* Taiwan
* Tajikistan
* Tanzania
* Thailand
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Uganda
* United Arab Emirates
* United States
* Vietnam
* Yemen
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe

They are the only countries that still permit the death penalty (as of 2007, several countries on this list have since outlawed the death penalty).

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Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

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Cassandra Tribe is a member of Newsy.com

fried chicken

Today is going to be a miracle day…I have so much to pull off including teaching the first class tonight. I am thrilled because the class turned out to just be a perfect size and that gives me a little bit more room to weave in a few more things.

Why do I have a feeling we will all get in trouble together? Ahhhh…but that is how a class should be.

☺

And balanced in this I am trying to handle all my mixed emotions about it being Veteran’s day. I mean…I am a veteran and it should be my day (I love when people say that) to celebrate….what? To acknowledge service to my country and to be acknowledged by it I can see. But I am not too thrilled with either the military or society in general when it comes to dealing with the realities of soldiering.

And I was reading the news late last night, the bit with the headline “Obama’s Sorrow at Fort Hood.” And it pained me. Where is this very public sorrow at the sacrifice that soldiers give, knowingly or not? Where is the public sorrow that children with no other option have only the choice of being expendable fodder or killers in service of something that has no recognition of the sanctity of human life? It blew my mind the psychological design of the military and boot camp. And the drill sergeants were quite open and honest about the program, it was designed to stop people from thinking for themselves and to become a machine that acts automatically and follows orders without question. In combat areas things become blurred because the necessity becomes to make the soldier believe that what they are doing is for a higher good. As it becomes a necessity to make the general public believe that we are not fighting battles against other people, but some great ideal exists that elevates mere death to sacrifice and service. Dead is dead. Shooting or bombing or doing anything else to someone because someone else tells you to (and often doesn’t offer you a full and true explanation) removes the soldier from participation in one of the greatest abilities of mankind – conscious decision and action.

Every one has to believe that what they are doing is for a greater purpose, that the enemy knows and accepts that in choosing to fight they will may die. As well, that in choosing to fight that you might die as well. The perception that death is accepted is necessary to people believing that war is just. If civilians were exposed to the actual fear and panic that occurs within troop ranks, the absolute questioning of taking someone else’s life, of the damage that happens to someone when they engage in destruction – we would not be engaged in nearly as many actions as we are. However, coated with this kind of fairytale that everyone accepts the risks knowingly, it is easier to preserve the illusion that war is just.

Which brings me to the last supper. No, not the private dinner party for men in dresses – although – that does get woven in as to why it is such an important story in the Gospel; but the last meal of a prisoner condemned to death.

It has always puzzled me why this was a ritual. I was wondering if it was some way of making the prisoner, or us, feel good by offering us the belief that in their last moments they got to indulge in something they loved. But it is not.

In Greek and Roman times (and the Aztecs did this as well) those condemned to death were given a last meal and forced to eat it if necessary. They weren’t asked what they were like, they were fed whatever or whatever was deemed a part of the ceremony. The reason they did this was the cross cultural belief that if you ate before you were executed, your soul was prevented from coming back to haunt those who killed you because in eating food from your executioner’s hands you were showing your acceptance of your fate.

With the rise of Christianity and the story of the Last Supper, the last meal of the condemned began to represent not just acceptance, but forgiveness of the condemned towards those that were about to kill him. It was a sharing of something associated with life by someone who was knowingly going to die that was the act of forgiveness.

Flash forward to the modern Western Penal system.

People who run prisons are no fools.

They know that key to having a “successful” execution lies in having the public and all parties believe that the entire act is carried out with the permission and acceptance of all parties involved. There have been several papers written that examine how to develop an execution to maximize the perception of a calm event. The prisoner must always be seen as having accepted their fate as their due. Their act of eating their last meal, ordered to their liking, was developed to enhance the sense of public benevolence towards the condemned. In their “accepting their fate” the good public then offers them kindness. It is the equivalent of a “hug.”

Stated point blank in several penal papers is the fact that if the public ever developed the sense that the accused did not accept and willingly participate in their death then people’s attitudes towards the death penalty would change dramatically and the risk of volatile interventions would be high.

From the moment a prisoner walks onto death row, there is a pre-set psychological method put in place (much like how boot camp is designed) that is to transition them from a conscious human being to a pliable entity that can perform their role in order to maintain the myth of the execution.

There is a new film out (I don’t think it is in the states yet) about the most prolific executioner in the UK. He was called in specially to perform the hangings at Nuremburg. His claim to fame is his fastest death was 7 seconds from exit door of the prison to the condemned being pronounced dead at the end of a rope. He provided this service for years…and then…it took its toll and he became one of the most strident anti-death penalty activists around.

John Allen Mohammed lay on that gurney for 5 minutes while they prepared the lethal injection.

As Heather Moon pointed out, of all the prisoner’s that have sat on death row for years and years, why was his case pushed through so quickly?

And why was the evaluation of his psychological state and the MRI that showed proof of malformations associated with schizophrenia discounted?

The people of Washington lived in a state of terror during his attacks and 10 people died. They will never come back and the grief of their loss will not be assuaged by killing John Allen. My heart aches for those who lost their loved ones because of his actions, but it aches even more to hear them speak of the closure that his death will bring them because I know that will not happen.

John Allen, and I mentioned this before, was a vet with gulf war syndrome and quite a few documented other issues that were ignored by the military.

And if you follow the Ft. Hood thing, forget the scramble to tie that man to terrorists, whackjobs find whackjobs…what is getting buried is that he was transferred from being a physician at Walter Reed hospital to Fort Hood because he was evaluated as having difficulties handling patients and suspected instability.

The military medical system, and I do not mean to offend anyone working in the system (and if you are worth your salt then you know this is true) is made up of a majority of Doctors and such, trained by the military and within the structured military environment that most likely would not have successfully completed a civilian schooling and internship. But its cheaper to produce your own, isn’t it? And damaged vets are something we don’t like to pay attention to because it threatens the myth we must maintain to support violence.

As I said in my status comments last night, I am a Veteran. I do not have health insurance, I could get free health insurance through the VA, but…I have more respect for my health and well being than that.



Ok…coffee and onto my things.

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Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com

Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com

horse's ass

You know…how old am I? Just because I read about something on the Internet does not mean I should jump out and try it.

But you know…

I already had the walking poles…

And I was writing about Nordic walking this morning (I am pushing myself like a little machine to clear bills, eat and not have anything shut off in the interim…another two weeks of pounding and I can drop back to my calm little underfed life) and as I read about it…the total body, low impact and highly efficient work out that it claimed to be I started thinking about my snow shoe poles in the other room…which…are the same as Nordic walking sticks.

So the next thing I know, I am bounding down the street to the main walking path in my long johns with my bright blue poles and off I go.

First of all, it would appear that I cling to things. You are supposed to let go of the handle on the back swing and I had a hell of a time doing it. I settled for a quick flap of my fingers while my thumb remained firmly glued to it instead.

Then, there was the issue of remembering what pole goes with what leg.

And,
that the poles are suppose to angle on the back swing so your torso is forced to twist and move.

And then,
because I had just read a description of this on the Internet and been doing it for….oh….say….15 minutes…I decided that I was ready to try an advanced technique….Nordic jogging. Where you use the poles to push yourself off the ground with each stride.

I won’t go into what happened then but I horrified the other people on the walking path with their little color coordinated walking suits. So I stopped and had my back up cigarette.

I am going to try it again, for a few moments I got the hang of it and it was fun, easy, goofy and I’ll be damned but it was working my whole body.

In the middle of all this, everything has conspired to bring the “city of love” to the forefront. I have two of the roles cast already – War, you know will be “The Lady” and I have also found the “Demon of Hope,” I know who I want for Love but don’t know if that is a pipe dream and on and on. This is good…War and Hope were on me today wanting to know more about what is going on. So I have set for myself the task of clearing all these old things, establishing a more lucrative routine all so I can sink into the city for a few months and see what is what.

All this,
all this,
I love the feeling…

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Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com

Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
Cassandra Tribe is a member of Newsy.com

dirty bathrooms

Last night got strange, for me, and I fell asleep and dreamed. Just a relatively normal dream but it brought me back into a dream situation I have visited before only is had changed significantly.

So, I jumped online and was googling around and found a forum dealing with the symbolism of this dream and was absolutely shocked. Not so much about what people were thinking it meant, but that so many people had posted that they found it unbelievable that other people had the same dream as them.

I mean, to a T, which plays into the whole concept of synchronicity and the collective unconscious.

So…here is what I had been dreaming and here is the dream I had last night.

In my dreams, for years now, whatever is happening occasionally I go into a large public bathroom. It has several stalls and a line of sinks. White tile on the floor and so on. Never because I have to pee or anything, but for whatever reason in the dream I open the door and step inside.

At first when I dreamt of this bathroom it was dark and cavernous, sewage had over flowed onto the floor and their was puddles of it everywhere. The stalls all sat in shadow with some of their doors closed, but you couldn’t see anyone’s feet. I never made it past the entrance way because the feeling I got from it was just bad.

Over the years there have been some changes.

Slowly the bathroom got lighter. Then when I came in there would be people in it, but the people were as nasty and bad feeling as the place was still dirty.

Then, a few years later, it was still nasty, the people were sketchy but the water was running and there was less sewage on the floor and less toilets blocked up and I would go in and quickly wash my hands or face and leave and get back to my dream.

Then last night, in the middle of what I call a “little obvious dream” (the kind where you are like – oh yeah right, I was thinking of that today) I opened a door and there was the bathroom.

Well lit, clean (er) - not sparkling but your basic truck stop clean. All the stalls were in use by people who were just…normal.

I actually went to use one of the toilets but…ahhhh….had difficulty figuring out how to do it and then I woke up.

Now, I have come across several interpretations of this dream. One is that you have to go to the bathroom when you are still sleeping (not…wake up and I am fine). Two that is has to do with money (frankly, I don’t believe that either but it is a popular school of thought to tie dreams to money or love because that sells) and three, that it represents some internal emotional process going on that is dealing with something that I cannot directly remember, or have not made the connection to it being so very deeply disturbing to me. The dirtier the bathroom, the less it can be used, the more frightening it is - the more power this hidden thing has over you. As the bathroom becomes cleaner and more friendly, the more its power is lessening as you begin to deal with it (even if you are unaware that you are doing so).

The presence of people in the bathroom and the fact that for most people they are dreaming of a public bathroom has to do with the fact that whatever this thing is, we are conscious in a way that it is effecting the quality of our life and is not just some private thing that has no effect on how we live. The more people and interactions in the public bathroom that are “normal” the more this thing is ceasing to interfere with your life.

It is striking though, to sit and read someone else’s almost verbatim description of your dream.

Its funny because I think I have told you that I dream in “another country” a very set and defined land, complete with a population and it is consistant over time. However, there are doors in the dream that open up (like to the bathroom) where I become aware that I am no longer in my dreamworld, but in a dream designed to work something through. So, I wake up and do the research.

And now…

Coffee and much much work.

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Buy The Demon of Providence on Amazon.com

Video Release: October 2009

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copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe.

All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com
cassandra tribe is a member of newsy.com