you’ll love this:
Mermaid High: Shapeshifting Hallucinations as Metaphors for Power and Transformation Through Solanaceous Intoxication

far too much has happened lately to write about…1 week to go and still a lot to get done. Doesn’t stop me continuing adventures though 🙂

—
Breathless, I plunge headlong into those depths,
Driving deeper with each bestial stroke,
Yet also sensing ascent to a crest
On which celestial beings evoke
Sensations of velvet and ambrosia,
The savor of which I have a foretaste.
Yet I know at the moment of closure
All trace of this divine bliss is effaced:
At the instant when I am on the brink
Of sharing the gods’ prowess without bounds,
A little flick will suffice, and I sink
Unmanned to my terrestrial surrounds.
Yet so sweet is this fore-glimpsed sensation,
I wait craving for the next frustration.

(from Stephen Denning’s Sonnets 2000)

i cried a lot last night but it seemed to have cleared the air somewhat. Just wanted to make a note of some dream snippets

I dreamt of falling under water in the sea very far, underneath the wooden ship that contained my people. The commentator said that it was alright, being a woman I could swim faster and stronger, but as I struggled to the surface, not giving up to drown but kicking.. it also took two others to swim down with an air bubble to give me that vital breath I needed to carry on.

I also was somewhere looking for healing, apparently it was accupuncture-shiatsu (though I’m not actually sure what shiatsu IS). Strange sensations of pains in parts of my face and other areas being breathed out, tangible unwindings. The guy checked me out and confirmed -something- about it always being the same for those born premature, fighting for life from the word go, they carry it with them..not knowing how to just be at peace.

I know I’ve mentioned this to most people but I was cesarian delivered best part of 2 months premature, in a fair amount of distress, and it is thanks to a good doctor and my mother’s medical knowledge that both she and I are alive at all. Occasionally the truth of this sinks in. And people wonder why little things like colours and breezes fill me with joy. (of course everyone can realise this with just a bit of reflection on mortality :))

Another note before it dissapears back into the subconscious, a couple of weeks ago now I was struck to the core the two ultimate things that drive me (and maybe others), one of the biggest paradoxes to balance.
Wanting to absorb totally and completely into someone else, something larger, loose myself
Wanting to express and develop the ‘individual’ spark of me, find -my- voice, create

I was thinking about being in the womb, and how you are totally a part of someone else, safe, ignorant, reliant, warm. But at some point the baby has to kick and fight it’s way out of that into the cold world, placenta snipped and voila, a seperate person. ((thought: what makes that happen, and what if you get pulled out early? really prem. babies have to finish actually growing and developing outside the womb, it’s an amazing thing to learn about: some osteopaths were discussing how they reached right in and worked with the baby’s simple and strong desire to -live-, it was this which drives the growth and healing even if the incubators and devices provide the raw materials..tho human touch is incredibly and vitally important. I’m telling you, these osteopath-type people don’t need to believe in miracles of life: they deal with them everyday)) I know these words are clumsy. But I think you find the same kind of pattern of drives all throughout life – growing up, moving away from your parents, in relationships with other people, with god, the universe… absorbing into, moving out of, taking in and nuturing others as well as relying on them to hold you. It’s very simple underneath, but for some reason has taken me ages to acknowledge.. (ack stupid words will give up now)

To be lost in another or to find myself alone, I don’t know which scares me more. Though I suspect there is a way to find this ‘healthy balance’ people keep going on about. *grin*

for the wolves..

I ran along the sea today, it was grey and gales, wind and spray.

Turbulence, my life has briefly unravelled into chaos. This year, for so long running to one person after another, to try and find some space, somewhere to rest, I am truly emotionally exhausted. (and have a cold fit for mid-winter *grin*)

still. a couple of weeks and I will be in Japan. And I will be ready, or not. And when I return, my first priority will be in searching out a place to call mine. Space. Too long away from what’s important. Too long in everybody elses world but mine own. I need to get back to my center and build outwards from there.

is she still in here? have i betrayed myself too much? I don’t think so. Take me to a land where I can’t talk in lies, where i have nothing but simple days of eating and working and sleeping. Outside. Wind. Mountain.

yes

If you could take ONE book with you to Japan for 4 months, what would you choose?

(not counting phrase books etc) My aunt suggested ‘war and peace’ but that could be a bit heavy. I’m not sure whether to take something to study of a nice fiction.

———–weekend blur of activity—-
– meeting blue lory and showing her round portsmouth with Josie. Her amazing portfolio. Sitting drinking coffee and wondering about childhoods. Talking about AI in a rose garden. Walking around the top of portsdown hill looking over hampshire. I particularly loved how she picked out aesthetic colour combinations in the scenes around us, helping me see things in a different way. I realised a bit more about art..

-going to see “red hot chilli peppers” in london’s hyde park with Jon and his dad. Never been to anything remotly close to a 10,000 person open air concert like that. I sat on his shoulders and was overwhelmed by the faces, the singing, the pink sky sunset. The feeling of being totally immersed in a crowd, being one tiny part of something huge… (more on that train of thought later). No one could see me but I danced 🙂

-I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST FIRST TIME WOO- (which is a huge relief and also encouragement for boosting my confidence)

monday-sitting on portsdown hill again, this time with Jon, surrounded by ears of golden barley, watching the solstice sun setting: a fiery red with mordor-style black clouds. Sipping madeira and toasting the universe in general. Thin crescent moon and navy radar installations. A fox appeared from nowhere and walked right past us – truly magical moments.

So many things tied up with that setting sun.

Onwards to autumn 😉

So, today I randomly tried some accupuncture. What can I say, the cute bespectabled chinese lady sweetly encouraged me into it after her consulation highlighted many of the things I already know under the vague heading of ‘yang imbalance’ and something about the kidneys.

see also: curiosity.
see also: procrastination.
see also: jaw tension, knee aches, pains, lethargy..
see also: wondering about other options I could look into learning apart from the full time degree course of osteopathy. (fun but oh-so expensive). After watching some kinesiology work I reckon that there is something to this meridian malarky so what the hell give it a go. Shiatsu? Massage even? It might be I need to do something else to get me started, though I do crave the intense study of human anatomy in all it’s complex glory that I could get out of a full on degree.

cat’s experience of accupuncture

I have never been so excited at the world in general as I am in this one single moment right here NOW.

Over the last few days: we’re talking Major Shift in Consciousness, BANG, old pattens going going going gone!

I have so much to do, the next mountain to climb. Excitement, searching out the new, making connections, all this I can do. Now its time to learn some patience, commitment, and how to maintain and develop things,myself, friendships.

I have 50 million ideas I want to draw, and paint, and colour.

draw a line in the sand, then step over it. I look back at my past and see it afresh, I am amazed at the things we keep from ourselves, probably for the best..still..

you know how it is. sometimes you see something about yourself, or the world, and you can never go back. Push that past back into the darkness, or take responsibility and transmute it… oddly the saner I feel the harder it is to talk about it without sounding insane or delusional – you know how irritating that is?

still never mind. it’s all good fun.

(Animals from childhood returning to me : peregrine falcons, hawks…remember when you wanted wings?)

Ready to grow out of childish, defensive behaviour without loosing the child…responsibility does not mean denying fun or laughter.

phew..

ok, thats out, now to turn myself back to studying travel insurance.(or maybe i will dance a little first)

(31 days)

There was a small dark haired young boy, and I ripped apart his face with my teeth, then tore into his stomach gouging out intestines and warm steaming organs. Just enough so he was still alive and dripping blood I let him go, stumbling, silent, in shock. i wanted to be caught though I doubted he’d get very far.

Being the nightmare in the dreams rather than running from them seems like a strange reversal.

Still. I woke up from the general horror of it, and wonder at the fact I am capable of such things even if just in my dreams.

Unsuprisingly, a dream full of spiders, and robot spiders, unbeliveably big the size of dogs. A bright yellow and black one opened a wide mouth and gulped down a cute little baby, which was comically disturbing.

In real life all the spiders I encountered yesterday, including a shiny black and white one just above my bed, were bloated with eggs.

I still can’t pick them up, dreams or otherwise. Though the familiarity is slowly starting to help.

Apart from the horror, I dreamed beautiful norweigan landscapes, trees, mountains and setting light from the sun.

hmmm..

I feel the need to run, and keep running, till I find trees and shade and mud.

so. I look on the ‘net to find any resources on how a woman’s psyche changes during ‘pmt’ time, but all I got was a million pages on “if you suffer x,y,z then go to the doctor and they will diagnose you with a disorder and give you these drugs.”

No help at all.

So we look somewhere else. The extract below has helped me understand a lot more about what is actually going on, clarifying in myth and imagery many of the personal observations I’ve made over the last couple of years.

the power and poetry of the period

don’t you just hate it when someone asks if you still love them and you find yourself unable to respond with a bright ‘yes of course’.

fuck.

lets hope it is better in the morning.

“the most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power of all true science. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”

– Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions.

“Of how it is that the soul informs the body, physical science teaches me nothing; and that living matter influences and is influenced by mind is a mystery without a clue. Consciousness is not explained to my comprehension by all the nerve paths and neurones of the physiologist; nor do I ask of physics how goodness shines in one man’s face, and evil betrays itself in another.”

– D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form

——-

which spawned this chaotic 2 minute outburst