A few months ago I was reading and studying Buddhism. It is the only organized religion that I can see myself having a strong faith in. Lately I have been on a very spiritual journey, induced by huge changes occuring in my life (i.e. moving to a new country, starting grad school, ending a relationship, leaving friends and family, health issues....) and in my meditation one contemplation that I read when I was studying Buddhism is coming back to me.

Contemplate the Corpse. I contemplate the decay of a corpse from human to dust and I think about how all we have becomes dust in a matter of time. All that is left is your spirit or your soul, even that becomes part of everything. So I meditate on detachment and personal solidarity. If I have nothing, I have me and I am part of everything. I have me.

Sometimes it comes to me as "Starting over at Zero". If all I have is me, then that is a wonderful thing that I have. My spirit or my essence is a strong foundation for amazing things. My essence is strength, emotion, vulnerability, motivation, observation, and beauty. Those are great building blocks. I'm a great person!

This meditation reinforces my future. Everything is possibly if you intend it. My friend Dani and I have been talking about the power of thoughts and how you think of things. If you want something, imagine that you have it already and the universe will be affected by your thoughts. It's a fun outlook on life. It's looking at the world like it is a plentiful, bountiful and overflowing space that offers all you need. You just need to imagine it and believe. The man who writes free will astrology has a book called, "PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings". It's just an outlook that can change everything about your experience.

Our thoughts, positive or negative, have so much power. It is my choice to think positively and in such a manner that I can achieve all of the things I desire.

I just need to put it out there!

Oh, and every strong female friend I have should read the comic book series by Alan Moore. "Promethea".

*******************REMINDER THIS VOTING SEASON*******************************

NO on MEASURE 43, Be aware of bad legistlation

So I spent a part of my weekend (two weekends ago) volunteering at the Clackamas County fair for Planned Parenthood and it is something I must share. I sat in a booth and watched people walk by and as they read planned parenthood sign they would either come forward and ask why we were there or they would squinch their nose up and try to walk away. At first I have to admit, I was happy to see the squinchy faced people walk away. I wasn't sure what my purpose was there except to support Planned Parenthood and support the right to choose.

But after an hour of watching the coordinater, Samantha, take on people, aggressively asking almost everyone that passed by whether they were Pro-choice (FYI Clackamas county is VERY conservative. Some analysts say that their voters were the deciding factor in passing the Anti-Gay marriage bill. They are majority right wing republican and Pro-Life.) I started to understand why we were there. We were NOT there to change anybodies minds. A short conversation at a County fair is not going to overturn deep felt moral opinions. We were there to oppose a very badly written, unsafe, unrealistic initiative that is on the ballot in October. It's called Ballot Measure 43.

NON-OREGONIANS: There are 43 other states dealing with measure much the same as this one. California is fighting the same initiative and they are predicting it will pass. Please, check it out in your area.

Here's some info on the initiative: "On July 25, the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office certified that a mandated parental notification measure will be on the November ballot. This is a near replica of the notification measure that Oregonians rejected in 1990. Like that measure, this initiative would change Oregon law to prohibit an older teen who is 15, 16, or 17 year old from seeking abortion care from a medical professional unless a parent receives a mandatory written notification letter at least 48 hours in advance. There are no exceptions for rape and incest and doctors could be sued if the parent doesn’t get the notification letter. Current Oregon law requires minors 14 years old or younger to obtain parental consent before any treatment.

1. Measure 43 isn’t written for the real world Not every child is raised in a stable, healthy household – news reports about abuse and sexual assault from family members confirm this almost every day. Requiring notice to the very people who may be responsible for the assault makes a bad situation worse. Troubled teens at risk need a counselor, or a doctor, not a judge, and not a notice in the mail to the abusive parent.

2. Measure 43 could drive a troubled teen to put their health in jeopardy Desperate teens that live in homes filled with abuse or violence could put their lives and health in jeopardy by seeking illegal abortions from unlicensed providers.

3. Measure 43 is unworkable If a teen wants to bypass the notification provision, she is required to go through a bureaucratic process run by the Department of Human Services that requires her to plead her case before an administrative law judge, who can take two weeks to reach a decision. Administrative law judges usually deal with permits and license disputes, and aren’t even required to be lawyers.

4. Measure 43 is not necessary Oregon’s teen pregnancy rate has declined by 39% over the past ten years as a result of strong prevention and education programs. And surveys have shown that 75% of teens voluntarily consult a parent when faced with an unwanted pregnancy."

First of all. VOTE. Second of all VOTE NO ON MEASURE 43. This measure is NOT about whether you are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. It's about abuse of the system, protecting teens, forcing the government to be a parent, and it's really about fanaticism out of check. You can be a check and balance with your vote.

Oregon Right to Life is not really pushing this in the media because they don't want to activate Pro-Choice voters. They are hoping this measure slides by because People will say "Hey, a parent should know when their Child is going to have an Abortion". But that is not the issue. Parents who have good relationships with their kids WILL KNOW about their kids wanting an abortion. My mother is the first person I go to when I have a big problem and she always has been. This Measure will only serve to hurt kids (kids that can't vote, by the way) who have bad relationship with their parents, are unable to afford health care because of their financial or social situation and those that are put into a horrible, humiliating situation. THERE IS NO EXEMPTION FOR RAPE OR INCEST. This means that a girl could be raped by her father and she will have to go to her father to have him sign off of the abortion.

Please vote, get the word out. ESPECIALLY, talk to people who are Pro-Life. Don't shame them or try to get into a moral battle. Just explain why this measure will not serve any good and actually will hurt our society and add more red tape. Republican values are set on less government. This measure is trying to make the government a parent. No one should agree with it.

Even though he is very mild mannered, this commentary gave me chills.

Go here if you can't view...

..>" target="_self">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rdd0sbFcCA

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha



Sigh.....

Today is a better day. Much Better.
I contacted several different friends who know me on several different levels and in different aspects.It was like I had mulitple personalities and they were all giving me advice based on the different aspects of myself. It was incredibly helpful. It's a real gift to be able to ask multiple people for advice.

The best advice I got, was that everything is right. There is no wrong direction. Whatever I do I'll come out all right because I am resilient, strong, and I can make things happen. All paths are the right path. All directions lead to great things.

Futures so bright......it's always going to be bright......it's all in your outlook.

Today is quite possibly one of the crappiest mornings ever.

I feel lost. I feel wrong. I feel like everything is just not right.

I cried last night while in bed for no reason. I could try to attach reason to it, but that would make it too easy to write off. After crying, I couldn't sleep so i picked up a pen and notebook and wrote for an hour. I felt a little better after writing down everything that I want in life, writing a little about how I feel in my life right now, and wrote a little about what I should do to make the way I feel about life improve.

Then I started watching a DVD my friend Dani gave me and I fell asleep to this video.
This morning I woke up kinda shaky. I recently moved in with two wonderful friends and so I'm figuring out how to get around. It was raining...well, it was pouring. The kind of rain that soaks you like a swimming pool in 5 minutes. That was nice. I enjoy rain. It's cooling and beautiful. It smells like peace and sounds like happiness. I love rain. Quiet joy.

The peace ended as soon as a got to work. I had tons of left over work from being sick on Friday and I didn't get breakfast because I haven't gone shopping for food yet. Then the feelings I had last night that made me start to cry came back. They came something like this....

I'm unsure about whether LISPA is the right program for me, or just the one right now. Is it really going to be a good investment....

In the last four months, I've been accepted to grad school, planning to move to another country, lost my best friend and closest confidant, lost a lover, moved out of my home, had my trust and honor totally offended, reconnected with old friends I haven't talked to in months, connected with new friends I will meet in a month, performed in a dance theatre show that was outstanding and fun, and solidified what I want for my future, esstentially finally understood what my dream is.

Holy Crap. I'm reeling and questioning and excited and sad and happy and worried and confident and weak and strong and violated and secure and....and....and...

Nothing about my life right now is normal, conventional, or boring.

I feel so confused. I feel so lost.....what a shitty morning.

Today, I am sicker than a dog. I can't breath straight out of my nose and I cough those kind of coughs that sound like I have been smoking three packs a day and drinking glue. The kind that make you want to upchuck when you hear them on the bus.

Anyways.

I'm still giddy about school, my goodbye party, seeing friends, and doing this dance for Nature Theatre of Oklahoma for the TBA fest. I preform tonight and I home sick right now. We'll see how that works out. It's only eight minutes of dance, I can hold my breath for that long......

I am moving into a friend's house this weekend. I'm kind of excited. Well, yes I'll have to start paying for food but I'll get to know my two friends more before I leave and have a good ole time. Woooaaahh....two weeks left in Portland and then my life changes forever. I'm sooo looking forward to it. Portland has been good to me. I've learned so much from the people and from myself being in it. I wish I would have gotten more involved politically and I wish I would have performed more, but I don't regret anything. Portland will hold a special place in my heart. I want to visit someday, but I doubt I will ever live here again.

I'm glad I sold my car months ago because I've been given the opportunity to see Portland by walking. If I can give anyone advice on how to appreciate their surroundings....sell your car and start walking. You become aware that there is so much you pass by in a car. So much you are disconnected from in a car. A car really narrows your awareness. You only think of where you are going to get to and where you are coming from. There is a whole world in between and when you walk, you can't NOT see it. Unless you put on headphones and blinders. I've learned to appreciate the speed of walking and the gifts it gives. I'm nothing but thankful.

the show with zefrank





the show with zefrank





the show with zefrank





the show with zefrank



Yes. This is Ze Frank. He is extremely interesting to watch talk.

This morning I was riding the bus and sitting next to a cute guy. Of course, at 7:45am on the bus no one really talks to anyone and so I kept knitting and he kept looking down at his show and everyone else kept doing their individual morning bus action. The bus was very quiet except for squeaky brakes and a cough here and there.

But at the next stop, three adorable little girl tumble onto the bus, oblivious to the individualized solitude of morning bus riders. The first little girl stopped and looked down the length of the bus as if she had never been on one (or perhaps it was just the austerity or seriousness of the people) and with a huge open face and wonderfully loud girly voice said, "WOW"!

I couldn't help but smile and chuckle. Neither could the relatively attractive guy I was sitting with. But no one else on the bus broke their self involved silence. We two in our seat laughed a little more for being the only ones to have broken free of the monkish morning bus persona. We kept watching the little girls interact with each other and bounce from one side of the bus to the other figuring out their seating arrangments (very important to 2 year olds!!). One of the girls was carrying the lunches in a little wicker basket. She belonged on a hallmark card that says something about sunny skies and being happy. She continually would call for her older sister to come sit next to her, but the sister was playing the "I'm too old for you" game and finally the grandmother sat down next to the little one in order to make her stop asking.

The guy next to me made some comments about how cute they were and about the politics going on with the big and little sisters. It was lovely to talk to someone on the bus whom you shared laughter with. As we got off the bus at my stop we chatted a little more. He asked me what I was knitting and I told him about London. Time was getting short and I had to get to work and then there was an awkward "Have a nice day!" And I was off walking down the street.

But I was joyful. If those girls hadn't broken me out of my morning bus blindness I might of had a mediocre morning. But instead, I walked to work with a bounce in my step and a bit of a blush left over from meeting someone and sharing something nice on the bus.

How Great!

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Cancer Horoscope for week of September 14, 2006
Those of us born under the sign of Cancer the Crab are sometimes pathologically self-sufficient. We can dole out love in abundance but be conflicted about asking for and accepting the love we need. Keep that warning in mind as you meditate on the following advice: It's high time to love yourself more and better--to experiment with new strategies for taking care of yourself, nurturing your creativity, and providing yourself with pleasure. Just don't let this honorable work blind you to the gifts that other people want to bless you with.

One of my favorite poems:

America
by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility.
Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles
more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad.
She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago.
Her needs a Red Reader's Digest.
her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories,
I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

(I am reposting this here. I wrote this blog entry on Myspace on August 26th. Each time I read it, I am empowered. )

Have you ever watched a movie that explained clearly something to you about your life? That chronicled the flow and feelings of your past and future, without reenacting the events.

The movie was Australian. It won the 1985 Australian Academy Award for Best Picture. I grabbed it off of the shelf at the library because I liked the name and the movie description intrigued me. Its called Bliss.

This movie was made in 1985. I was five years old then, but as I watched it today, it was a profound commentary on my past and present (and probably future) without actually reenacting anything I have lived through or likely will live through. It was poetic, magical, grotesque, comical, and profound. It mixed modern day decay with the possibility for wholesome existence. The tone, style and flow of the film felt like my own. Elements of the movie were in fact part of my personal history: advertising, being out of touch with nature, a huge life change, and the pursuit of a wholesome way of living. But it exaggerated life. It added magical elements to reality. It dealt with the way of living and dying.

It reminded me why love storytelling in art; why people tell stories, why my passion is to tell stories with theatre, and why I create what I do. Why my favorite book is 100 years of solitude and like water for chocolate. It is something that resonates throughout my body. Reality heightened.

It reminded me of why I attempt to transcend modern existence with art, what I love about life and why I wish to perform and to create onstage that love in a production. Magic. Magical realism. It made me realize the magic in life and the magic that I have in me to create with. I want to pursue the elevation of life to a heightened level. Not just in theatre but in everyday living. Living life with the fact that magic is in everything. It is in as much as you believe it can be in. Not just in a theatre where you suspend your disbelief or at the fingertips of a magician who is palming a coin.but that it actually exists. Embracing, some would see this as naivety, as a principle and the foundation of this world that the unexplained, surreal, and magical happens.

I believe in fate and its variableness. I believe that the environment guides you towards your intended path and that you will never know what that path is. And that not knowing is a wonderful and nourishing thing. I believe that if you close your eyes and imagine your are flying, if you really free your imagination and feel the wind, smell the air, feel the air pressure change and hear the earth below.then your really are flying even if someone watching you says that you are just sitting with your eyes closed. I believe there are separate dimensions and worlds within every person. And that death is just a physical removal from this world. You can come back; you just arent seen and viewed by othersunless they close their eyes.

The world we live in, this modern day world that we pollute, we cultivate, we decay, we purify, is beautiful. It is astoundingly complex and unique. There is so much of it, so many inhabitants on it. I love it. All of the foods, flowers, people, valleys, mountains, rivers, oceans, plants..its breathtaking and unbelievable. But I believe that it is only part of our existence. That other part is behind our eyelids and in our imaginations. And that world is just as complex and wonderful.

Marvelous. Just marvelous. This is great. I want to share it and be in it.

I'm going to post info about me, London, thoughts, highlights, political grumbles, and whatnot here instead of in Myspace. This place feels more nuturing and less immature.

Here is my meditation for today:
Let go of the past! Let go of the future! Let go of the present and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With your mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death. - Buddha

And right after I read my meditation I went to Postsecret and read these three postcards:

For some reason, Life resonates very strongly with me right now. I don't necessarily want to go off and become buddha like into the ether. I want to stay here and revel in our existence filled with desire, pain, hurt, love, exasperation, and idiocy. I'll be Buddha later.....:)

Everything is personal and yet absolutely foreign.

My meditation yesterday was: "In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt."

I feel very guided by fate right now. I feel messages are being sent to me from the universe and I only need but follow without fear or judgement.