Bucking the trend: A town in England wants to de-globalize and stimulate its economy by instituting its own currency.

Fashion 50 years ago: I predicted in high school that t-shirts would be out of style in 50 years. I still have 40 years left on my prediction.

Madonna
Bubbles as passion
T-shirts as fashion
Slicing the apples
Blow out the candles
Spicy and smooth
Get in the groove
Laughing and dancing
Old-style romancing
Feeling a song
Staying too long
Missin and kissin
Chat in the kitchen
Naughty and nice
A fresh look on life.

Watching TV, you get the impression that the 2 biggest scenarios that create dysfunctional adults in our country are sexual abuse and parental divorce. These 2 items seem to affect a large portion of the population. I believe 1 in 3 women is the statistic for sexual abuse, and about 50% of marriges end in divorce.

Thankfully, I have not personally endured either affliction, however I am interested in the effects. Inappropriate sexual contact seems to effectively disconnect a person from their body. As one former child prostitute in Atlanta said, it takes away your feeling of ownership of your body. This seems to be very difficult for most women to reclaim once taken, not to mention the trust/justice issues as many times it happens at the hands of a family member.

I suppose parental separation stirs up all sorts of insecurities, from personal safety & security issues to trust/justice issues–feeling that others can and will withdraw love & acceptance from you.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this post, but I feel that these are 2 important areas for us to improve in as a society, in terms of both healing and prevention.

IMG_0028, originally uploaded by Chrissy Mc.

I had the good fortune to hike back out to Arch Rock near Point Reyes, and sit under a precarious ancient rock cliff to take this picture of a weird sea plant.

I was thinking about www today, and scribbled out the following symbol…it is 3 intersecting W’s, and I like it because it kind of looks like the start of a web. The internet is a powerful symbol for the coming together of minds and ideas. This might make a good tattoo!

“The Beauty Of Gray“
~Live, Mental Jewelry

This is not a black and white world
You can’t afford to believe in your side
This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say that the colours must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate
The Beauty of Gray

If I told you she was your mother
We could analyze the situation and be gone
If I said you ought to give her
Some of your water
Your eyes would light up like the dawn
The perception that divides you from her
Is a lie
For some reason we never asked why

This is not a black and white world
You can’t afford to believe in your side

I want to walk
And breathe
And dance with my eyes closed
I want to love
And share
And experience this life through you

I want to escape
And forget
And live in the now
I want to pulse
And melt
And drip to the floor
I want to spread
And permeate
And be in your body
I want to smell you
Taste you
And steal your warmth.

And I want to fly
Into tomorrow
Where anything I want
Comes true
And live my perfect fantasy
Where you know me
And we speak with the same heart
And we forget
All the years we wasted
Apart.

Lover, why do we pretend
We are strangers?
I've known you always
And yet you hurt me.
You steal my wishes and throw them out the window as you drive
Away, away.

And I am powerless
To chase you
Over that high wall
I can't even peek in.
And i sit with my back at the wall
Crying and feeling sorry for myself
And then i wander back to
My lonely world where i can create anything
But you.

And more time passes
And i miss you.
And you don't know
Because you can't see over that wall
Besides, you're driving away.
And the farther you get
The less real i am.
Until i don't exist at all.

And i build my castles
And entertain everyone
With my real stories
That sound like dreams.
And you get close enough
And throw a nickel over the wall.
I pick it up
And rub it without looking
Then throw it over the cliff's edge
And listen to it bounce
Down, down.

Then i turn around
And charge toward the wall
And pound and pound
With my two fists
Until they are bloody
And scream until
I have no voice.

Then i wonder what would happen if i
just wandered away from the wall
And never came back
And the ivy would cover it
And muffle your screams
And i could roll down the hill
Into an open green meadow
Where the sun
Warms my skin
And the winds
Caress my body
And I dance and sprawl
And shout in ecstasy
That reality has not escaped me.

Makes H a Dull Boyfriend.

“I recognize that I am getting older. And there are so many questions to which I am never going to know the answer. We are born into mystery and we leave life in mystery. We don’t know what transpired before and we don’t know what’s coming ahead. Is there a God? What is time? I love a good mystery.”

~William Shatner with David Fisher, People Magazine article, Up Till Now

Okay, this is the last straw. Oprah has credible doctors and psychologists on her show talking about their studies in hypnosis and past-life regression.

The idea of past lives doesn't fit my paradigms very well. My view of a random universe means that when you die, you scatter back into the infinite, atoms, quarks, and light energy. The likelihood of you reappearing ON EARTH, in another human body, soon after death, would be nearly impossible given a random reassembly of materials and expression of consciousness. You would more likely end up a piece of dark matter or something.

If indeed we do jump from human body to human body, than indeed the Hindus and the Christians and the Muslims are in agreement that the experience of conciousness IS Earth-centric. Taken a step further, our little life of 80 years would truly be nothing more than a learning phase of a larger conscious life.

Part of me wants to scream heathen foul-play. The other part of me is very intrigued. I may just have to pony up the money for a hypnosis session or five (or get back on my meditation plan) and prove it out myself.

Goodnight. God is Love. Rev Run.

I posted those thoughts today as an example of what it’s like to live inside as strong a paradigm as some religions and cults promote.

All of us have worldviews /paradigms for how the world works. When we receive information, we pass it through our filter of what we know to be true.

Part of my paradigm filter is that humans, though conductors of the divine/universal, are never always divine/universal. Therefore, the Holy Bible, though certainly inspired by the divine, cannot be 100 percent divine, as it passed through many human filters.

So, debating points 2 & 3 (geocentric universe & Noah’s microbes) with a Bible Thumper can’t even happen because you won’t get past point number 1 (Infallability of scripture).

It predictably turns into a frustrating game of bumping boxes.

I’d love to just let sleeping dogs lie in my family, but listening to arguments like these is like watching someone you love walk up a slippery slope and just bracing yourself for the imminent fall. Unfortunately, the other side feels the same way, only that the fall is a fall to the death in fiery hell, with the added pain of watching your daughter morph into the Devil’s Advocate (a great movie, by the way).

And I told someone the other day I didn’t need Daddy’s approval…I still think that’s true, but is it too much to ask not to be judged as an Antichrist? I actually get that a lot from people that knew me before I reconstructed my personal paradigms about the world. They almost always show disappointment and scold me for the change, which smacks me as repulsive judgmentalism and arrogance thinly disguised as care and concern.

Make no mistake, Fundamentalists “know” they are on the right path and that you are on the wrong one. What they don’t know (and what their paradigms do not permit them to entertain) is that all paths lead to the same shiny happy universe in the end.

We all must be allowed to follow the path that we feel brings the most light into our own and others’ lives. Unfortunately, I do not feel allowed at all–I feel temporarily permitted (by reason of insanity), with the permit revocable at any time.