STAR CHART

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The most beautiful being was the eleventh of eleven sisters. She was youthful and playful, bounding with creative energy and joy. She had lived for billions of years in the black voids before the universe existed, not nearly as long as her older sisters, yet still she vibrated with such love of life that her sisters often thought of her as rather silly at best…sometimes downright irresponsible and irreverent at worst.

But also she was irresistable…it was impossible to be angry with her for long, because her bright blue eyes would twinkle and the skin around them and her smiling mouth would crinkle up into curved lines of mirth, and lilting laughter would well up within her and soon you would find yourself helplessly laughing with her and loving her for lifting the dark cloud that had temporarily resided over your heart.

Her form was graceful because her feet were always dancing, but the most striking thing about her appearance was the cloud of undulating silver hair that floated about her in tendrils. Being the creative sort that she was, she would weave bits of light together to make sparkling barettes, and tie back her hair in a dazzling array of silvery lights.

One day as she and her sisters were resting together and enjoying one another’s company, the eleventh sister excitedly shared her newest idea.

“I’ve been thinking about creating something very unique and beautiful.” She then went on to relate her vision of a sphere of great power, full of dynamic energies of four elements, a fertile palette for growth, love, endless creativity, and joy.

“Another pretty bauble for your hair?” the second sister inquired wryly.

“No, this is not for my pleasure only. I’ll create it in love, and then it will be my daughter.”

“What is daughter?” asked the ninth, who was closest in personality to the eleventh.

“It is a being that is part of you yet is separate. She is so much like you that you feel her sorrows and joys, yet is so different from you that she is a boundless source of surprise, exstasy, and pride.”

“I want a daughter too!” the ninth proclaimed.

“As do I!” the seventh clapped her hands.

The first sister who was the wisest and most serene, smiled peacefully. “We would all like to assist you with this daughter, I should think.”

Eleventh leapt up and twirled around in spontaneous joy at the idea. To think that all eleven of them would collaborate on such a grand project filled her with pleasure.

The creation of the Earth, and its home, the universe, took billions upon billions of years. The sisters sometimes fought, sometimes rejoiced, but none of them lost their vision of how beautiful their daughter could be.

Each sister had her own strengths and weaknesses to contribute to this grand conception.

The first, oldest and wisest like the most ancient mountains, could sometimes be dull and stubborn, and sometimes brilliant in the majesty of her solidity.

The second sister was quiet and prone to moodiness, yet also understood and had compassion for the negative feelings in her sisters. Her gift to the Earth was the restfulness of night…sometimes frightening in its obscurity, sometimes comforting like a huge soft blanket that protects you from cold emptiness.

The third was almost always cheerful and sunny. She had a ready smile and a great deal of concern for others, sometimes to the point of being overbearingly nosy. However, her intentions were good and she would always try to leave one in peace when she was asked. Her gift was that of light, whether its source was the sun or the moon…shedding understanding on things hidden and sometimes exposing what didn’t wish to be exposed.

The fourth had a mind as swift as anything you could possibly imagine. Her tongue was sharp as a sword and her thoughts would race around so fast that sometimes she even made herself dizzy. She was an excellent teacher however, and could slow herself down enough to expound patiently on very difficult subjects, bringing refreshing knowledge to everyone. Her gifts included the wind, which was at times a refreshing and gentle breeze, at others a terrifying hurricane.

The fifth had the most formidable power of all…she could fly into a rage or warm you inside with her tender thoughtfulness. She gave fire to the Earth with its throbbing heart of molten activity, terrible infernos that devoured all they saw, and tiny tongues that danced upon candles. She could be tamed into domestic campfires, but if she was not well tended and looked after, her spirit again went wild and her rampage could kill.

The sixth was a gentle, quiet being, who loved to nurture and care for her sisters, and derived simple pleasures from tending what needed to be tended. So she gave the Earth its plant life…which could be generously assisted into whatever creative designs she would have for it, and which would itself tend to and nurture anyone in its vicinity.

The seventh so loved the ideas of her older sister that she took them a step further and gave to the Earth all its animal life. The seventh was a bit more rambunctious than the sixth, and her animals demonstrated that quality in their mobility and noise. Sometimes they were wild and shy, sometimes gentle and sweet, others playful and curious. But they all had the same loving nurturance of the gift of plants.

The eighth and tenth forged together the interconnected ideas of creativity and spirituality, and the possibility of tapping into the oneness of the universe with the birth of any inspiring beauty.

At the end, the ninth and eleventh sisters stood holding hands and gazed upon the newly formed Earth and wondered what was missing.

“Will you add your gift next?” asked the eleventh of the ninth.

“No, for mine will be the greatest, so it must be the last.”

A wide smile dawned on the eleventh sister’s face, and she turned her water-blue eyes to the Earth again, and a tendril of silvery hair waved about her eyes. So she snipped a lock from her head and it filled half the Earth. “This is my gift to my daughter…silver waves called the Sea. And when the light shines upon it, my dazzling barettes will emblaze it with sparkling beauty.”

The ninth sister stepped forward with her gift of people.

“My gift is the greatest of all because it contains some of all of the gifts of the others. They will be solid or stodgy, frightening or comforting, aware or over-involved, brilliant or insane, destructive or tame, gentle, nurturing, diverse, creative, spiritual, and beautiful.

“This daughter will be the best of all daughters because she cannot and will not be controlled. She will test our love because she will ignore us, and she will inspire our love because she will be beautiful, she will wrench our hearts because she will hate herself, she will make us dance and sing because she will nurture herself and teach love.

“So let’s let her go and what happens will happen…and we shall give what she needs and watch the people learn and grow together.”

I had been thinking about that and wondering if I really wanted to work toward selling my art. Is it really something I want to do, or have I just accepted that as my mission because so many people have pushed me toward it? I still don’t know…but when I was younger my reasons for becoming a “famous artist” were not unselfish. I wanted fame, riches, and the envy of others. I don’t want poisonous desires to be my drive now, though. So what is my drive? Do I have a drive? Have I ever had a drive? I don’t want to be out to prove myself, I just want to enjoy life. If I try to go around selling my art, will I be selling my soul? Is it really what I want out of life? Or will I really be able to be it and do it without hurting myself in the process…in fact, can I thrive?

There are a lot of aspects to the Art World that I don’t like…the art critics, for example. Ha. I don’t like competitiveness or the high snobbery that I’ve seen in some people (and sometimes myself).

But I do love to paint. I love looking at others’ paintings. I love portraits…I love wet-on-wet oils…I love vibrant color, I love greys and browns. I love moodiness, and the what the color palette reveals about skin. I remember complaining when I was little that Dad used green on part of someone’s skin while he was painting. “Skin’s not GREEN!” He told me that skin is all different colors, if you look closely. You can see all different shades and variances of color in someone’s face…it’s not all “peach” (like the crayon). There’s green, pink, red, blue, purple, grey, yellow, orange… It dawned on me then, and I went to my room and got out my crayons and tried it out for myself. It looked terrible.

I was nestled behind Dan tonight in bed, watching the back of his neck while he slept. The light in the room was dim, and it was mostly in shadow, and I saw shades of green, umber, and red. I wished so badly I could just capture just that one patch of skin on a huge canvas…and a segment of the grey sheet which draped over his shoulder. And study all the variances of color in just that one spot.

I bought a Book of Shadows today. I’m pretty excited about it! It’s like a Witch’s reference book, except this one is a ‘modernized’ version so it’s not so irritatingly …fundamental about it. The original Book of Shadows is the Necromancer, which is originally in German, and is really, really old. They actually have a translated copy at Hastings, and in some other languages too, but I didn’t know about it until after I’d bought the other one. I think it’s better that I read more NF’ey witch stuff to begin with anyway. Any kind of dogmatic way of doing things really irritates me, and the older witchy stuff is really like that. Old school witches even scoff at the fluffy new agey pagan types, especially when they claim to be as authentic as the old school ones. I’d rather be somewhere in between, if at all…anyway. I don’t call myself wiccan or a witch or any of that…I just love learning about it. I hate labels. I would say I’m pagan because I don’t like the concept of Christianity, but that’s about as far as I would go.

So I’ve been reading it and am totally fascinated by all the information. I’d forgotten, but solitary witches each are supposed to write their own rituals and make their own Book of Shadows to contain all the information they learn, kind of a spiritual journal or scrapbook, I suppose. I’m all excited. Tee hee.

Shaman class went well tonight. A guy I work with showed up, which was pretty cool! I don’t really know him too well, so I was really surprised to see him walk through the door. Ha ha. We get to continue working on the things we worked on last week, namely:

·Spending as much time as possible outside; at least an hour a day (includes eating, meditating outdoors, sitting on the ground, and not wearing shoes, meditating on food and where it came from, thanking the plants and animals for providing for you)
·Reconciliation meditation (I don’t feel like describing this again…I think I did before. It’s going along well. The purpose is to boost your personal power, which I’ve never had very much of.)
·And a new one…we each get to make up and write out our own creation myths!

I was thinking today and on my way home from the class…I have really realized since I’ve been married, what an emotion-soaker I am. I can’t be in the same room, even the same house with someone without my whole body being on alert, and totally, utterly focused on them. It drives me crazy because it means if I’m reading on the couch and Dan walks into the kitchen, I can’t keep reading. I have to wait for him to leave the entire area before I can concentrate on my book again. I feel like I’m under a magnifying glass when I’m outside, sometimes. That’s why I love the dark so much…I can be outside without feeling like I’m being watched. Meditation is impossible unless Dan is gone at work or is in bed sleeping. I even went outside on the front lawn (in the dark) to meditate and I heard faint sounds from the kitchen…which is clear on the other end of the house from where I was…and it broke my concentration and I couldn’t get it back. I can’t have my own opinion if someone else has one. I can’t say, “I think this is right” because I have to wait to see if it’s “OK” to think that way. I was never trained to think or reason for myself…only told to listen to what other people and authorities told me was right. So I have no internal chronometer or compass.

All these customers keep telling me they saw me on the news a couple of weekends ago! The Flicks was having its independent film festival weekend and Dan and I went to a few of the shows, and apparently the news cameras we kept seeing actually showed us on TV. What I think is funny is that these people saw me on TV and said, “HEY, it’s that girl who works at Hastings!!” Am I like…a well known Hastings employee or something…it’s pretty funny!

I’m not working today, which is nice, but I have soooooo much to catch up on. I have to do grocery shopping, because we have NO food, and clean the kitchen, and make dinner. And take a shower. I’m just really tired and want to sleep all day. Which would probably be good for me…it’s just that then we wouldn’t be able to eat dinner or anything. I have to be at work tomorrow by 9. Oh…good. I was thinking I had to work café, but I don’t, I get to open books. Well, I can handle that.

Next week I’m only working books and café again, yay! No GSA (cashier) shifts for two weeks! Well…three weeks, actually. That rocks!

Working in books can be hard because I just want to sit down and read everything I find. There are so *many* fascinating things to learn! I was alphabetizing the women’s studies section…and I wanted to read almost everything I saw there. Wow, my brain is a hungry greedy vacuum cleaner.

I’m going to take a shower before bed, and that should make me feel better. I’ll sleep as late as I can tomorrow, too. Oooh…what should I have for breakfast? Toast, I guess. Toast and jam! Yay! Maybe some mild tea, too. Mmm, chai with soymilk in it. That’ll do! Maybe I’ll have one of those while at work tomorrow, too. Nums.

I am really tired of being sick. I hate just laying around not doing anything. It’s depressing. Although I’m not as depressed today as I was yesterday. Probably because I feel significantly better.

I got really sick yesterday…actually yesterday morning about 2 a.m. I was in the bathroom for about two hours…came to bed at 4 a.m., got up at 4:30, and spent two more hours in the bathroom. :p I slept a little after that…not too much though. My stomach was cramping something horrible and I felt like I was gonna die.

Finally about 3:30 yesterday afternoon I noticed (insert blog entry title here) so I called Dan. I called my doctor, who said to go to the emergency room, so Dan came and picked me up and off we went.

Turns out I have an infection in my large intestine, so they put me on antibiotics for seven days to clear it up. I already feel a lot better today…I’m cramping up only a fraction of the time and sleeping lots. I had an IV in my arm for the first time, which was interesting. Might sound weird, but it was kind of fun, the whole adventure. Now that the pain is over, anyways. I come from a family of hypochondriacs, and it just felt special to be the center of attention. (hee) I even made a joke to Dan … it’s funny to think of someone looking at my poop through a microscope. I am that interesting! LOL I could have lived without the rectal exam though. It wasn’t that bad…at least it was very brief…just…weird.

WHY did I get attacked on that thread? Why?? OTHER married people describe their naughty antics on the site…and I get lambasted only for being attraced to women? When other people have done so much “worse”, talked about it, shared it openly, and nobody said anything, in fact, gave encouraging comments?! Why? “This site has sunk to a new low”…did I really deserve that?! I thought that the site was really open minded and that people understood me…I thought people understood me…some people do…Ratboy, all the girls do. I guess girls and people named Dan are the only people who understand me. Ha. I’m just amazed.

OK, perspective. Two negative comments, or was it three? I should revise that…two or three people made negative comments. At least four people made positive comments. I should focus on the good. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The negative comments were more forceful so they stand out in my mind as being all-encompassing.

Anyway. Our assignments this week involve spending at least an hour a day outside, meditating outside, and eating outside, all while sitting (or standing barefoot) on the ground. What I’m nervous about is the meditation she’s asking us to do on taking back the power we’ve lost in life…I’m sitting here typing about it just so I can put it off. I know from experience that this kind of meditation is extremely powerful…I’ve done something similar before…and I know I need to do it if I’m going to be able to handle other stuff in class.

I just have a really, really strong feeling about this class. It’s 12 weeks long… and I just have a sense and a feel that this is going to involve a really big discovery and release of issues for me. There have been so many things that the darknesses of my past have hinted at that I find reaffirmed in small tidbits of information as Susan talks… I really feel like many things of the past few years have been leading me here and something big’s going to happen. I’m scared and excited. Nervous and fascinated.

I’m looking forward to meeting my power animal (I almost said meating! That’s not nice! LOL!) and I’m looking forward to all the things I’ll learn to do. I do wish I felt free to write about everything here…I really worry about being judged, not by my friends, but by other people who I know have stumbled across this site. It’s hard to write with the fear that people might think I’m gullible or silly or crazy or weird. It’s just that I really love this and I want to speak freely in my own journal. So dammit. Why don’t I? It’s my journal and if someone doesn’t like it they don’t have to keep reading it. Right????

So with that said, I do want to write about my experiences here. If I meet my power animal, things I learn from it, and if I get to meet any other spirits, I’m really excited and I feel open to the possibilities. We’re not actually going to do any of that, though, until we spend six weeks learning how to increase our levels of personal power and ability to stay grounded. I know I’m weak in both those areas so I don’t need to jump the gun or anything.

The exercise she’s having us do this week involves someone you’ve been very close to throughout life who has had power over you, be it a parent, old lover, sibling, whatever, and relive every moment you can remember with them and visualize reclaiming your own power whenever you’ve given your power to them. That’s the one I’m nervous about. But I can see how important it is in healing and empowering yourself.

After the 100+ degree weather we’ve been having, the hot stagnant suffocating heat, it feels so damn good to have some cool wet weather. It’s only in the upper 60’s right now. I turned off the A/C and opened the windows and back door to let the rain-scented cool air breeze through the house. I stood in the kitchen making coffee, smelling the rich grounds, and was instantly transported…I felt like I was in Seattle.

Seattle is a city that fills me with hope and energy, and that’s how I feel right now. I’m sitting here in Dan’s office next to an open window and I’m fairly vibrating with energy. I feel like pleasure is seeping in through every pore on my body. I’m drinking coffee out of my Seattle Pike Place Market mug that I bought there. *happy sigh!*