Winds of Change

Burning

I did it! Friday night we had a gathering for those of us who have been learning to spin fire to light up for the first time.  It was amazing.  Here are some photos of me spinning fire.

I got a tattoo to honor this time of change in my life. I will post a picture of it when it has healed.  I had a wonderful night Friday night. Made some new friends that I hope will continue to be a big part of my life.  I am happier than I've been in a long time.

Something's up

For the past few weeks strange things have been happening in my life. I know this will sound crazy but it is as if something, someone, the cosmos, whatever, is trying to get my attention. I don't know how to explain it all.  My ghost lady has been more active lately.  Things have disappeared and re-appeared in ways that I cannot account for - and other people have witnessed this now.  The strangest of these experiences occurred the night before my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I had gone out to celebrate with a friend and when we went to pay for our drinks, my atm card was missing from my wallet. I knew I had put it my purse. My friend brought me back to my car, I got in it, drove to the store where I got out and purchased a coke, got back in my car and went home.  No atm card to be found. The next morning I was going to go to my office and see if it had fallen out of my purse there and when I opened the door of my car, three things were nicely laid in the driver seat of my car - a piece of paper, a big red plastic thing, and my atm card. There is no way these things had been in my seat as I got in and out repeatedly, with me never seeing them. I did NOT sit on these things over and over, not noticing. And in some ways even freakier, when I went back into my bedroom to get ready to leave for a few days, I found a strange cell phone ON MY BEDSIDE TABLE. Not my cell phone. Not one I have ever seen. The battery was dead so I couldn't check for phone numbers to call and it couldn't be called. I have no idea where this cell phone came from.

Then I had a very strange dream. And just now - just as I have written this, I realized a connection to my previous story and this dream that I had not made before. You will understand as I tell the dream. It began with me holding a cell phone - and now that I am writing this, it was very similar, if not identical to the one that appeared in my bedroom. It had a cover that flipped open from the bottom - not like the one I have, but like the one that showed up in my bedroom. (Now this this is creeping me out!) In my dream, I opened the cell phone, and the phone grew in size and the glass cover of the led-read out section shattered. I scooped out the glass with my hand and put the shards of glass into my mouth and began crunching down on the glass. Then I panicked - realizing what I had done, and began trying to scoop the pieces of glass out of my mouth with my hand. But I couldn't get the glass out - and it hurt! And there was more and more glass in my mouth, along with this yellow mealy mush. I was scooping and scooping, nearly getting my entire hand in my mouth, but my mouth was still full of this glass and mush. And suddenly, I pulled out a whole piece of my upper jaw with teeth - like four teeth still attached to the bone, all in tact.  I was shaking and realizing I needed to get help, but couldn't talk, and then I woke up, feeling very freaked out.

Then last week, I was sleeping in my room after my kids had gone to school, and my dog came and woke me up - something she doesn't do, and it was clear she wanted me to go out to the kitchen with her. She would push me with her nose and then run out in the other room, and come back to push on me again. I got up and followed her to discover a bird flying in our kitchen. IN our kitchen. Now we had the patio door open a small bit so the dog could go out if she needs to, and the door onto the screened in patio propped open a small bit, so the dog can go out into the yard. But for a bird to get in either door would not be a simple task, a straight flying in. Corners had to be turned and small passages in through both doors accomplished. The dog was not trying to catch the bird, just watching in amazement. The bird flew back and forth a couple of times, then landed on the top of the fridge, and sat there calmly. I went to get a towel, expecting the bird to fly around at my approach, but she didn't. With little effort, I tossed the towel over the bird and scooped her up, and took her outside. I laid the towel down and opened it, and the bird just sat there. I thought maybe she was injured, or very scared, so I placed her in the towel on top of our garbage can outside, so cats couldn't get to her. I went inside and got my purse to go to the store - and the bird was still there on the garage can. I went to the store and came back - and the bird was still there when I drove up, and only flew off when I got out of my car. A friend of mine is convinced this was no ordinary bird visit, and has a book that gives explanations to such things, which she is going to share with me this weekend. It was very strange.

Now back to the dream. I have had a tooth problem recently - not a bad one, just odd. One of my side teeth that was filled when I was very young - a piece of it just broke off for no reason. It didn't hurt when it happened, and the dentist has done nothing to fix it, saying unless it is painful it's not necessary, and it appears that the tooth may be dead, and a couple of my teeth in the back look "weak" as he put it, which he found puzzling.  Over the weekend, I was doing some web surfing and came across a recent interview with a man who had worked at Ground Zero in NYC as a counselor for the rescue workers immediately after the attacks. I was there at the same time, doing the same thing. I was there about 9 days, off and on, over a three week period, beginning a week after the attacks. This man says he has had 4 teeth fall out and a number of teeth that his dentist says are dead - with no explanation. He said this is a sign of low-level radiation poisoning, and there have been reports that lots of radiation was detected at Ground Zero, and they (the govt.) covered this up. I, too, have had the constant throat irritation ever since I was there and a persistent cough. He reports the same. And said many other things that I remember, about rumors that were flying around at the scene, but were discounted at the time, about the health hazards, that are now proving to be true. But I remember the rumors about radiation - and the wild rumor that the water supply of NY had been dosed with stuff to fight radiation poisoning and other toxins. And he talked about how the firemen and police, who he worked with, were not allowed to take their clothes home that they wore on site - they had to bring clothes to change into and leave the contaminated clothes in decontamination bags that were discarded. I was there as a volunteer and would wear my clothes back home, and bring home the clothes I had worn in my backpack after a 3-day stay. These clothes stunk and were covered with ash and whatever the hell that stuff was that covered everything. It was in my hair, up my nose. I would blow my nose and it would be black. And now I'm worried. And I don't know what to do about it all. I still have no medical insurance, and don't want to go to the doctor and get diagnosed with anything that would then prevent me from ever being insured. But I've had little signs that something isn't right with my health, and it fits the description this man gives for himself and other who worked at Ground Zero. And, some suggest dreams about teeth falling out have to do with poor health concerns.

I feel like something or someone is trying to tell me something, and I'm not sure what it is. And maybe none of this stuff is connected, and maybe it all means nothing. But I can't stop thinking about it all and wondering if something's up.

Have you ever?

Have you ever had the desire to spin fire but don't have the right materials or the place where you get your groove on isn't conducive for flaming balls being slung around - fire codes and all that? Here's the thing for you - LED Beaming Poi!

Just don't hit yourself in the head with them - I hear it really hurts! My pair are on their way to my house as I write. Along with a jar of tribal neon body paint, so I can look like this!

Find all your fire spinning supplies at Home of Poi , as well as nifty video lessons! I'm not nearly as good as the person in the video - and that is an understatement. But I'm really enjoying it!

My Catholic Days

I've been thinking about the Pope's death and what, if anything, I should feel about his passing. I don't wish for anyone's death, nor celebrate the death of bad people. But likewise, someone's death does not make me suddenly care more for or about someone, and it doesn't change who they were, or what they did while they were on earth. I will admit I do not know everything this pope has accomplished. But many of the things I am aware of, I have been completely opposed to. The only exceptions I can think of at the moment is the way he opposed the invasion of Iraq and in the last few years, he, in my opinion, spoke out correctly against the actions of Israel in the Palestinian situation.  But his stand on the use of condoms, gay marriage, birth control in general, the role of women in the church, and his part in covering up or ignoring the actions of pedophilic priests, are all morally  reprehensible. So I don't agree with all the "the Pope has been one of the most wonderful moral and religious leaders of our time" rhetoric the media has held to in the coverage of his death. And I think it is an outrage the way this event has been exploited to allow religious leaders to promote their agendas through the media coverage. You can't watch the news without hearing a priest talk about how great the Catholic Church is, and going on at length about the Catholic message of saving souls.  I'm ready for it to all end.

When I was in high school, I actually converted to Catholicism for a couple of years. And one of the reasons I left the church is the blind adherence to church teachings without regard to the individual.  I had a good friend, Kelly, who was 19 and I was 17. We had met at church and Kelly had been raised a Catholic, with a very strict home life. Kelly was going through a very difficult time, for reasons that were never made clear. But at this time, the drinking age was 18, and most bars would turn a blind eye to us 17 y.o.'s who showed up. So Kelly and I would go out together a lot and go to bars and dance. Kelly was drinking quite a bit and began going home with guys she would just meet - sometimes 2 or 3 different guys in a week. And she would have sex with them. She and I would talk about this - she felt horrible doing it, wanted to stop, didn't understand what was driving her to behave this way, but kept doing it.  And, she wasn't using birth control of any kind. This was before AIDS was known to be a threat. I encouraged Kelly to get on the pill and she agreed that conceiving a child would be the worst possible outcome of what she was doing, for many reasons, but including she wouldn't even have a clue as to who the father would have been. But, Kelly was torn - birth control was not acceptable for a Catholic to use. Yes, her sexual activity wasn't acceptable either - but, why add more sin on top of sin? That's the way she looked at it. I convinced Kelly to go talk to our priest, thinking he would relieve her of this worry - because there is no way getting pregnant would be a good thing for her or the child being brought into this world.

Kelly agreed to go to the priest. And left her meeting with him feeling like the most vile human on earth, and having been told that she was making the right decision to not use birth control, that if she got pregnant, even under these circumstances, it would be God's will and should be accepted as such. And what Kelly needed to do was just stop having sex, find a good man and get married, so she wouldn't have sex out of wedlock - and pray a lot to make these evil desires go away. Looking back now, and with what I know about what happens to children, especially girls, who are sexually abused, I will bet Kelly had been abused in this way at some point in her life - and I'm basing that on the many conversations we had about all this while it was happening. Kelly was very distraught but agreed with the priest's advice. Kelly began dating someone right away, with the intention of quickly getting married. The guy was physically abusive, which she felt she deserved because she was such an awful person. And they married within a few months. I left the church shortly after this. I couldn't believe the priest, a man I trusted to help me with my life, could have given such damaging advice that did not at all reflect the circumstances of my friend's life. I lost contact with Kelly when I went away to college and have no idea how her life ended up - if she stayed married to this man, if he continued to abuse her, or what. She was expecting their first child when I moved away.

Before I moved away, I had been dating an older guy - he was in his early 20's, who I had met at the church. We had both quit attending. One night, we were at my house talking, and he sat on my couch, crying, telling me things I did not understand at the time, about what had happened to him at the church. He had been one of the altar boys - but not a boy. This church served the college campus where we lived - so as a college student he had helped prepare the sanctuary for mass and assisted in the mass with communion. I understand now what he was trying to tell me. This same priest had made sexual advances toward my friend, and had more than once physically touched him in inappropriate ways. I do not know what the outcome was, my friend only alluded to such things - yet he was devastated by it all.

I do not have a fondness for the Catholic church, or its leaders, or the Pope. I hold them all accountable for the damage that has been done to individuals. Yes, some good has been done. But I expect more from our religious institutions, if they are to exist, and promote themselves as a moral compass for the masses.

Breaking News

Human Beings Die

Most people seem to have not quite grasped this reality. It has become a state and federal legislative issue, created a media feeding frenzy, and gripped the attention of Americans for the last couple of weeks, as if there had been no deaths, ever before, that deserved our attention - or that could have been prevented, or should be prevented.

Since humans first emerged on this earth, some 34 billion people have walked the earth. 28 billion have died.  71 million people die each year. 195,000 people die each day.  30,000 of those daily deaths are due to starvation. Starvation. 30,000 people who would otherwise be healthy and live full lives, are dying due to lack of nutrition. Not people in a persistent vegetative state, with no brain activity. But people who could feed themselves and swallow on their own, no feeding tube necessary. 30,000 people who could live, die every day from starvation. And there are no reporters rushing to the scene of their death. No protesters holding vigils, demanding these people be allowed to live, to just be fed for god's sake, to be given the basic human necessity of food and water that would sustain their lives. Where is the outrage? Where are the bills being passed that demand the sanctity of life be protected by just feeding these people? I'm sure, if asked, most of them would say they want to live. It's not a question of do they want to be kept alive or not. Why aren't their lives being protected? Why aren't their deaths prevented?

I just find it all rather disturbing.

The death of one woman, Terry Schiavo, who had no brain activity, became a national cause and crisis.  And now the impending death of the pope has stepped in to give our media another frenzy. Every last breath and bodily function will be reported to the world. This one death in 195,000 will be overwhelmingly acknowledged - while the others die without notice.

Where is the concern for the living?  If we want to protect life, how about ensuring everyone has access to necessary and basic health care? How about making sure all humans have access to basic nutrition - food and water? How about stop dropping bombs on people? How about cleaning up our air and water?

Is it just me, or does it seem that something is horribly wrong here? That we intentionally kill so many people in so many ways - people with healthy bodies and functioning brains. Yet. It was the ending of an artificially sustained body - not even sure you can call that life, that generated so much outrage and outcry for the protection of life.